A Darker Magic (Starship's Mage Book 10), стр. 68
There was no way everyone was going to live—a twenty-fifth-century pacemaker could take a lot, but this shock was beyond it—but it was a lot better than cluster bombs.
Exhaustion finally tore the spell from her grip, and Roslyn stared across a thoroughfare that had been full of charging zombies a minute earlier. The only motion was twitching, and for a painful second, she thought she’d killed everyone.
“I have thermal scans on the target,” Lieutenant Herbert told her quietly. “They’re still with us, sir. I don’t know how long they’ll be down for, but they’re still with us. At least ninety-five to ninety-seven percent.”
Roslyn could have lived without that clarification as she stumbled. She pulled a second dose of Exalt from the suit medpack. Even that one would be a terrible idea—but she had three.
She’d survive the third until she came down, if it came to that.
“Movement?” she asked Herbert.
“Negative,” the pilot replied, her tone hushed. “Shock only puts someone down for a few minutes at best. The hell?”
“I’m investigating,” Roslyn replied. “Cover me.”
The shuttle dipped into view, settling onto the roof of a nearby building with its cannon trained on the crowd as Roslyn walked forward to the edge of the crowd.
Her suit warned her that ozone levels were high. The air was breathable but not entirely safe. That would change quickly enough, but Roslyn wasn’t taking chances.
“Do you have a drone you can send in for an air sample?” she asked Herbert, kneeling by the closest person.
“Good idea. On its way, sir.”
Roslyn’s focus was on the youth next to her. He was maybe sixteen years old, dressed in an old-fashioned school uniform of blazer, shirt and tie in white and burnt orange. His pulse was ragged but present at her touch, and she could see him breathing.
“Vitals are weak but steady on first exam. Victim is unconscious and unresponsive,” Roslyn said, as much for the record as anyone on the channel, as she worked her way down a checklist. “Minor surface injuries and abrasions from the mob. Some burns from the stun spell.”
Still unresponsive. The entire crowd was unresponsive.
“I’m taking a blood sample,” she decided aloud. There was a syringe in the medpack for that, and she swapped the Exalt for it. Something weird was going on.
Roslyn was by no means a qualified nurse, but she could manage a blood sample and a rough bandage on an unconscious subject.
“Do we have any way to analyze this on the surface?” she asked the command network. “Lieutenant Herbert?”
“I think Dr. Breda should be able to run the analysis remotely through the gear in the shuttle. I’m going to come in and land behind you; you can come aboard and load it in.”
“That’s not safe, Lieutenant,” Roslyn snapped.
“Safer than you might think,” Herbert replied. “There’s no nanites in the air, sir. They didn’t survive your zap.”
Roslyn looked at the vial of blood in her hand…and then down at the unconscious youth she’d taken it from…and then at the over two thousand people she’d zapped down who’d stayed down.
“We need this blood sample analyzed now,” she said firmly. “Bring the shuttle in, Lieutenant.”
46
“It’s…not clean, per se,” Dr. Breda told her five minutes later. “But the nanite population appears to be below replication concentrations. I’m going off pure visual analysis here, Lieutenant Commander.”
“Of course,” Roslyn conceded. “Anything further we figure would dissolve what’s left, yes?”
“Exactly. Now…the people you shocked, are any of them waking up?” the doctor asked.
“No,” Roslyn said grimly. “I think we’re having the same post-Orpheus syndrome that we had before. Mass comas. Fuck.”
“With what I’m hearing about the Cardinal-Governor’s relief force, we can handle that,” Breda told her. “What we can’t handle is a violent and infectious populous. I’m still hoping for an answer in their files for dealing with the comas.
“Even if they didn’t care about their test subjects, they had to at least have tested for how to handle recovery from the weapon,” the doctor continued. “Basic sense, let alone medical ethics.”
“I’m not sure Mage Lafrenz was aware of anything I’d call medical ethics,” Roslyn pointed out. “But…we’re sure this is below replication levels?”
“If it wasn’t, Commander, you’d be seeing people get back up under the weapon’s control,” Breda said grimly. Data flowed across the screen in front of Roslyn, spectrographics, zoom, video…the Mage understood about a quarter of it. “I need to use the unit to run deeper tests. Can you get more samples? At least three different individuals.”
“Hey, Herbert,” Roslyn said to the pilot. “Do we have a hazmat suit for you?”
“Would you believe me if I said no?” Herbert said. “On my way. I’m not good at blood draws, though.”
“Neither am I. What kind of tests are you running, doc?” Roslyn asked.
“This unit is capable of a standard bioscan,” Breda told her. “I’m moving the sample into it remotely and running the scan. I then want to run visuals on unscanned samples for comparison, and I want to see how different individuals have reacted.
“If nothing else, I’m the only person authorized to recalibrate the stunguns issued to our people,” the doctor concluded. “I want to know damn well this worked before I do. The situation is already atrocious. Let’s try not to make it worse.”
“Agreed. Come on, Lieutenant. Let’s go play vampire.”
For all of her forced cheer, the street full of unconscious bodies chilled Roslyn. She’d done this. Arguably, she’d done all of this—everything in Nueva Portugal could easily be considered her fault, and she’d be surprised if she didn’t end up in front of a court-martial, Warrant or no Warrant—but shocking twenty-five-hundred-plus people into unconsciousness had definitely been her.
But they were alive, and they weren’t tearing into her evacuation zone.
“Chambers, this is Dickens,” the Marine CO greeted her calmly. “We’ve pretty thoroughly broken up the mob, but the overall circle is drawing closer. I think we’ve got a steady plan and can slow things down, but…”
“But you’re playing matador for a bunch of people we don’t really want to hurt,” Roslyn