Daughters of Demeter

"Well?" Rebecca asked, "What's it look like?"

Sarah smiled, "Give it a second boss, it's still processing."

All four of us were down on the main hold, and we all crowded around my girlfriend as she held the display unit from her special scanner. The ship was at Jump-0, on a course for the mining colony at Regulon-4.

We got out of the Fuminja system without any trouble, and as soon as I had the ship under way we were down in the hold to inspect the cargo we'd just taken on board.

"No bomb," Sarah announced as soon as the image came up on the screen. "Looks exactly like last time, consumer goods up top. And..."

She scrolled the image downwards and focused on the false bottom, "And a box of drugs and a data crystal in the hidden compartment."

"Good," the captain smiled. "Let's scan the other container to be sure, then maybe we can relax."

Sarah and I agreed, and the three of us got to work while Jenny watched. She was also monitoring the sensors and comms, on the off chance someone from Fuminja tried to come after us.

Rebecca and I passed the emitter and detector back and forth around the second container, then we all waited for the device to chew on the data before it produced an image. Sure enough it was the same as the first, random goods to fill up the container and a box of hypospray ampules in the false bottom.

While Sarah started packing up the sensor Jenny asked, "What will we do with the cargo, now that we know it's safe?"

The captain thought for a second or two, then shrugged as she moved to the first container. "We'll crack them both open and take the contents of the hidden compartments. I want to find out what's on the data crystal, and if that doesn't tell us what's in those ampules then maybe you and Amanda can analyze them and figure it out."

She broke the seal and opened it up then started unloading it onto the deck. I joined her and helped out, while Sarah took her special scanner back to the workshop and stowed it away. She rejoined the rest of us and pitched in as well.

It took about ten minutes to recover the two boxes from the containers' hidden compartments, then another ten or fifteen minutes to clean up the deck and put all the consumer goods back in the shipping containers. Or, almost all the goods.

"We'll keep the booze too," Rebecca decided. "This actually looks like good stuff."

There was a case of brandy in one container and two cases of whiskey in another. When we were finished in the hold we carried all that up to the main deck along with the two little boxes of drugs.

"Hard to imagine miners drinking fine brandy," Sarah commented as we set the cases down on the counter in the mess.

Rebecca pointed out, "There's more than just miners there. Corporate types, managers, bigwigs, whatever you want to call them. Folks with expensive tastes and deep enough pockets to import this stuff."

The captain opened the two boxes of ampules and retrieved the data crystal, then she pushed the drugs across the table towards me. "I'm going to have a look at what's on the crystal. Can your little scanner analyze this stuff?"

I picked up one of the small glass bottles to have a closer look at it. It contained a clear fluid, that looked more or less like saline as far as I could tell. That wasn't unusual though. There was a label on the ampule, but there was no drug name or anything else I could recognize. Instead there was a barcode, a lot number, and a serial number.

"Ok boss I'll do that right now," I told her as I set the bottle back down where it came from.

The captain headed to her cabin, I figured she had something to read the data cyrstal in there. And at the same time I moved aft into the storage compartment. I opened up my med-kit and pulled out the scanner, then returned to the mess where Sarah and Jenny were looking at the two little boxes of mystery drugs.

"Be careful with that stuff," I cautioned my girlfriend. "Until we know what it is, best to assume it's dangerous."

Sarah nodded, she had one of the ampules in her hand but she put it back in the box while I took one back out. I set the small bottle down on its own on the table, then picked the correct setting on my scanner and tried to figure out what it was.

"It's not any known drug," I commented as I read the small screen. "No surprise there though. The carrier is saline, like I figured..."

My voice trailed off as I adjusted the scanner resolution. "It's picking up tiny particles in suspension in the fluid, but they don't have any recognizable chemical structure. It can't even determine if the substance is organic or inorganic. I'm honestly not sure what to make of this?"

Jenny frowned, "Can your scanner determine the density of the particles? Such as a particle count per millilitre for instance?"

"Hmm," I frowned as well while I fiddled with the settings on my scanner.

It really wasn't designed for that kind of analysis, but I found a setting that would work. It was for checking for contaminants in a patient's blood stream, but I adjusted the parameters so it thought I was testing a sample in vitro rather than working on a live patient.

A few seconds later I told Jenny, "It's not really meant for this kind of thing so don't hold me to these figures, but it reports twenty-thousand particles per millilitre, plus or minus fifteen percent."

"Seriously?" Sarah asked as she picked up another ampule. "These are what, five-mil ampules? So there's almost a hundred thousand particles in here, but it looks like water."

Jenny sighed, "It's probably nano-tech. The only other thing I can think of is some sort of virus. Based on our earlier conversations and information regarding what sorts of research is forbidden in Imperium space, my guess is nano-tech."

My girlfriend quickly put the ampule back down as she grimaced, "Either way, maybe we should carefully seal these things up in something that can hold both nano-tech and viruses?"

"They're already sealed in the ampules," I pointed out.

"Until someone drops one or the ship hits turbulence and they fall off the table and break," Sarah responded.

I picked up the one I'd been scanning and put it back in the box, then closed both boxes up. "We'll have to ask the captain if she has anything secure we can seal them in. And hopefully that data crystal will have more information on what we're dealing with."

The three of us were left waiting another ten minutes or so, before Rebecca finally emerged from her cabin.

She was carrying a small strongbox in one hand, and she set it on the table then opened it up. It was empty, and we watched her carefully pick up the two boxes of ampules and place them inside the strongbox. Finally she closed and sealed the strongbox.

"That doesn't exactly fill me with confidence boss," Sarah commented.

The captain just nodded, with a grim look on her face. She fished the data crystal out of a pocket and handed it to me, "The terminal in your cabin will have a reader. The data's not even encrypted."

I accepted the crystal as I asked, "What are you going to do with the drugs?"

"Good question," she hesitated for a few moments as she frowned at the strongbox.

It didn't take her long to come to a decision, she picked it up and stated "I'm going to hide this in the fighter. We never go in there, it's a sealed self-contained environment that doesn't share life-support with the rest of the ship."

As the captain headed for the port airlock Sarah cringed, "The more I hear about this, the less I like it."

"Me too," I sighed as I looked at the data crystal. Then I got up and went back to our cabin to check it out.

Sarah stayed in the mess, I got the feeling she didn't want to know what had the captain so spooked. And Jenny waited there too, though I wasn't sure if she already had access to the data. I figured she might have been able to read it when the boss looked at it on her own terminal.

I sat down at the desk, the chair was mostly comfy but it didn't have much room for my tail so I had to wrap that around and left it on my lap. The terminal was fairly low-tech, it seemed like part of the ship's original equipment and probably hadn't been used in a long time.

I popped the crystal into a little port on the right side of the screen, and a moment later the crystal lit up with a dull glow as the terminal loaded its contents.

There was only a single document, and like the boss said it wasn't encrypted. I opened it up and found myself looking at something like a drug monograph.

The first section discussed dosage and how to administer it, which was straightforward. The recomended dose was five millilitres, so one ampule represented a single dose. Though reading further it indicated that two-point-five mils was enough to 'achieve a sufficient population within the subject'. Delivery could be intra-muscular or sub-cutaneous, but intra-venus was preferred.

The document explained that intra-venus delivery resulted in the subject being 'ready' within minutes, wheras the alternatives could take up to twelve hours for the 'population to migrate from the injection site to the target locations'.

The next section outlined the test procedure, and that's where things went from uncomfortable to downright horrible.

The preamble stated, "Careful analysis of past failures revealed the presence of infrasonic frequencies in the test subjects' work environment. As a result, the activation frequency has been moved to the ultrasonic range starting with this batch. Please recalibrate your equipment to produce a 90 dB tone at 22.22 kHz. This change should greatly reduce incidents of unexpected activation and consequently lower the mortality rate in test subjects."

I continued reading, and found the details of the test procedure to be equal parts straightforward and vague.

One day after the subject received the injection, they were to be isolated in an 'interview room'. There, they'd be exposed to the ultrasonic 'activation freqency'. At that point the subject was expected to become 'docile, pliable, compliant, and attentive'. Then the person administering the tests would give the subject a set of verbal instructions. According to the text, this was referred to as 'conditioning'.

Unfortunately the specific instructions weren't included in the file, instead it referred to another document that must have been delivered separately. Probably as part of an earlier shipment.

Finally the document indicated that after the subject received the instructions the ultrasonic tone would be discontinued and the subject was to be released to return to their normal routines. They were to be observed though, to ensure they remained under the influence of the instructions they were given.

According to the monograph the effects of this conditioning were expected to last between ten and twenty days, though it said the process could be repeated to extend the duration even further. There was no mention of repeating the injection, it was just the ultrasonic tone and verbal instructions that needed to be refreshed.

Finally the document said to expect a mortality rate of up to ten percent, which was down from the seventy-five percent they experienced with previous batches.

I was left feeling almost nauseous as I stared at the terminal.

The monograph was careful not to actually say it, but it was clear to me what was going on. They were developing a kind of mind control based on nano-tech. And once someone was injected, it seemed like they could be controlled indefinitely with nothing more than an inaudible tone accompanied by verbal instructions. That meant people could be controlled remotely through comm devices, or even while watching entertainment vids.

I could only imagine what the Imperium would do with that kind of technology. Depending on how effective it was, they could start injecting it into their soldiers to guarantee loyalty and obedience. Or if they could get it into a whole planet's population, they'd never have to worry about any kind of rebellions or uprisings.

For that matter they could expand their borders at will and conquer neighboring free worlds without resistence, if they could get it into those populations. Or at least into a planet's civilian and military leaders.

I finally shook my head and tried to rein in my imagination. Those ideas might be on someone's wish list, but the technology was a long way off from producing those kind of results.

If the last batch they tested had a seventy-five percent mortality rate they weren't going to be putting this into active use any time soon. For now it was more like an inefficient chemical weapon that had an awkward delivery mechanism. And if they just wanted to kill people, they had much more effective ways of doing it.

I read through the document a second time to make sure I hadn't misread or overlooked anything, but it confirmed what I already figured. The shipment we intercepted was possibly their break-through batch. This was the one where they figured the mortality rate would drop to acceptable levels, if you could call one in ten acceptable.

There wasn't anything else in the file or on the crystal, so I ejected it from the terminal then left my cabin. I headed back to the mess, where the others were all still sitting around the table.

I slumped into my chair next to Sarah, then reached over and placed the data crystal on the table in front of the captain and asked "What are we going to do about this?"

"I don't know yet," Rebecca sighed. "Right now our priority is patching up the ship. So we need to plot a level one jump to Rolandan-2. I think we could all use a break, take some shore leave, time to unwind and relax. Then we'll put our heads together and figure out our next move."