Re-Coil - J.T. Nicholas Page 0,105

case, our coils are the machines.”

I thought about it for a moment. It made a certain amount of sense, at least as far as it went. Which, I admitted ruefully, was a whole lot farther than I’d thought about it. “Okay,” I said. “So, let’s say you’re right. It’s one entity. I still don’t understand why it wouldn’t send everything at us at once.”

“Self-preservation, as Ms. Chan said, Mr. Langston,” Korben drawled. “Every ‘meat-puppet’—as you elegantly put it—that we destroy takes a processor offline.”

“Exactly!” Shay exclaimed, forgetting, in her excitement, her dislike of the assassin. “Look, we knew from the outset that we might not be getting all of the virus here, and it’s possible that there are multiple entities if bits of the virus went off in different directions. Think of those as different branches, like the branches we lost on the Persephone. But I’m almost positive that Bliss isn’t in the ship itself—there’s no trace of the nanites or their code in the ship’s systems. The coils that are here represent the entire possible processing power for the entity.” I couldn’t see her face, but I could hear the grin in Shay’s voice as she asked, “How much of your brain would you risk on any given endeavor?”

“So,” I grunted. “We’ve knocked a few percentage points off of Bliss’ processors. Great.” It was hard to keep the sarcasm from my voice. “But what now? If we can’t just blow up the ship for fear of spreading the virus, what the hell are we supposed to do? Even with the full team here, there’s no way we’re going to cut down hundreds upon hundreds of infected. Unless, of course,” I said, turning to face Korben, “you’ve got more of whatever the hell it was you used when we came in here.”

“Not as such,” Korben said. “The device I deployed on our entry was a small-scale version of the… let’s call it the cure, shall we?” He didn’t smile, but there was a note of amusement in his voice. “It was developed as a test case and it seems to have been effective. But the delivery method is far too contained.” He pointed at a canister off to the side that the security team must have brought aboard with them. “We have enough of the seek-and-destroy nanites to take care of the entire ship, but only if we can access the proper distribution channels.”

I thought about it for a moment. Thought about the ship. Thought about how I would spread something to every compartment, every corridor, every hold. Every place one of the Bliss-infected might be holed up. “Environmental,” I said.

“Exactly, Mr. Langston,” Korben replied. “If we can get to the life support systems and get them back online and then introduce our little friends,” he tapped the canister, “then we should be able to effectively neutralize all of the resistance aboard the ship.”

“And set you guys up with a nice little stock of freshly blanked coils,” Shay muttered.

Korben only shrugged, but I was reminded of the effect his weapon had had on the infected. Yes, it had seemed to wipe out Bliss, but it hadn’t killed the coils. Instead it had left them standing, staring blankly. Living and breathing but… empty. Ready to be filled? To be re-coiled?

I shook my head. It didn’t matter. Regardless of whether or not Genetechnic was going to try and squeeze more credits from the situation by “salvaging” the infected, we still had to clear the ship. And damned if I wanted to try and fight my way through the entire passenger manifest. The hunter-killer nanites were the best shot we had of taking care of Bliss.

“Shay, can you find us the best path to Environmental?” She nodded at my question, eyes already taking on the faraway look of interface. “Then why don’t we get on it before Bliss decides to send another platoon of passengers to stop us.”

“We’re ready to move out, sir.”

Korben nodded to the Genetechnic security chief. The two dozen soldiers in all but name were arrayed throughout the room, most stacking up on one side or the other of the hatch leading from the bridge. Six had been detailed to remain here and hold the room against any attempts to cut off our escape route once we penetrated deeper into the vessel. Everyone had been tapped into Shay’s heat map of enemy movements. They’d all watched the footage—live and in color—of Korben and I battling the Bliss-infected.

We all knew what