Distraction - Bruce Sterling [198]
Menlo explained that he had come on a quiet, personal reconnaissance. The new CDIA was considering a military attack across the Louisiana border.
The Collaboratory’s War Committee met in full to hear Menlo out. There were fifteen people listening, including Greta, Oscar, Kevin, Albert Gazzaniga, all the Collaboratory’s various department heads, along with six Moderator sachems. The Moderators were delighted at this news. At last, and with federal government backing, they were going to give the Regulators the sound, bloody stomping they deserved! Everyone else, of course, was appalled.
Oscar spoke up. “Field Marshal, while I can appreciate the merits of a raid on Louisiana—a lightning raid … a limited, surgical raid—I really can’t see that a military attack on our fellow Americans gains us anything. Huey still has a grip on the levers of power in his state, but he’s weakening. His credibility is in tatters. It’s just a matter of time before internal dissent drives him out.”
“Mmm-hmmm,” said the Field Marshal.
Gazzaniga winced. “I hate to think what the global media would make of American soldiers shedding American blood. That’s ghastly. Why, it’s civil war, basically.”
“It would make us look like barbarians,” Greta said.
“Economic embargo. Moral pressure. Net subversion, information warfare. That’s how you handle a problem like this,” Gazzaniga said with finality.
“I see,” said the Field Marshal. “Well, let me bring up one small, additional matter. The President is very concerned about the missing armaments from that Air Force base.”
They nodded. “They’ve been missing quite a while,” Oscar said. “That scarcely seems like an urgent issue.”
“It’s not widely known—and of course, this news isn’t to leave this room—but there was a battery of specialized, short-range, surface-to-surface missiles in that Air Force base.”
“Missiles,” Greta repeated thoughtfully.
“Aerial reconnaissance indicates that the missile battery is hidden in the Sabine River valley. We have some very good human intelligence that suggests that those missiles have been loaded with aerosol warheads.”
“Gas warheads?” Gazzaniga said.
“They were designed for deploying gas,” Menlo said. “Nonlethal, crowd-control aerosols. Luckily, their range is quite short. Only fifty miles.”
“I see,” said Oscar.
“Well,” said Gazzaniga, “they’re nonlethal missiles and they have a short range, right? So what’s the big deal?”
“You people here in Buna are the only federal facility within fifty miles of those missiles.”
No one said anything.
“Tell me how those missiles work,” Greta said at last.
“Well, it’s a nice design,” Menlo offered. “They’re stealth missiles, mostly plastic, and they vaporize in midair in a silent burst dispersion. Their payload is a fog: gelatin-coated microspheres. The psychotropic agent is inside the spheres, and the spheres will only melt in the environment of human lungs. After a few hours in the open air, all the microdust cooks down, and the payload becomes inert. But any human being who’s been breathing in that area will absorb the payload.”
“So they’re like a short-term, airborne vaccination,” Oscar said.
“Yes. Pretty much. That’s well put. I think you’ve got the picture there.”
“What kind of insane person builds things like that?” Greta said in annoyance.
“Well, U.S. military biowar engineers. Quite a few of them used to work at this facility, before we lost the economic war.” Field Marshal Menlo sighed. “As far as I know, that technology has never been used.”
“He’s going to bomb us with those things,” Oscar announced.
“How do you know that?”
“Because he’s hired those biowar technicians. He must have