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  Alice looked up, interested. The doctors had promised a cure for the alien virus trying to take over her body, yet since she’d arrived at the asteroid base they’d been more interested in taking samples than actually curing her. She supposed her body was a living reservoir of alien virus, and she couldn’t really blame the doctors for wanting as many samples as possible, but she wanted it gone. The aliens had infested her system. She wanted her body to be hers again.

  And if the virus manages to adapt to their treatments, she thought, it will take me over anyway.

  She shuddered at the thought. She wasn’t scared of conventional threats. She knew she could handle anything any human opponent could mete out. They could hurt her, they could kill her, but they couldn’t break her. But the alien virus didn’t care about how mentally strong she was. Given time, it would worm its way into her brain and take over. There was no hope of resistance. It scared her more than she cared to admit.

  The doctor leaned forward. “Are you alright? Your heartbeat just spiked.”

  “Bad thoughts, doctor,” Alice said. “What are we going to do today?”

  “We believe we can sweep the virus out of your system,” the doctor said. “However, I must warn you that there is a high risk of death ...”

  Alice laughed, despite herself. “You do know what I do for a living?”

  The doctor sounded irked. “I’m required to explain what is about to happen,” he said. “A few years ago, a process of cellular rejuvenation was developed that - in theory - promised a form of immortality. Tests appeared promising, but experiments on living humans were universally disastrous. I’ll spare you the medical technobabble, Alice. All you really need to know is that the process both rejuvenated and killed the body’s cells. The operation was a success ...”

  “But the patient died,” Alice finished. “Why do you think it will work on me?”

  “It won’t rejuvenate you,” the doctor said. “What it will do, we think, is kill the alien cells. They are so profoundly different from yours that they can be taken out without risking your health.”

  “You think,” Alice said. “What if you’re wrong?”

  “Then you die on the operating table,” the doctor said, flatly. “If you need time to think about it ...”

  Alice shook her head. None of the other treatments had worked. The best she could hope for was remaining in the isolation ward, with constant treatments to keep the infection under tight control. The slightest mistake - or the virus successfully adapting to new circumstances - would end her life, once and for all. It was worth any risk to get rid of the virus. Besides, if she died, at least she’d be free. The thought of seeing her mother and grandparents again was tempting. She’d always believed there was something after death.

  “Now, please,” she said. “I see no reason to delay.”

  “They’ll start setting up the equipment now,” the doctor said. He walked around her slowly, studying her naked body. “Have you been feeling any differently recently?”

  “Not really,” Alice said. There were so many sensors placed against her skin that the doctors would know if there had been any changes. They were probably more aware of her body than she was. “Just the regular hot and cold flashes.”

  “The virus is a tricky customer and no mistake,” the doctor said. “But we have made a start on understanding it.”

  “I hope so,” Alice said. “Do you have a vaccine yet?”

  “No,” the doctor told her. “But we live in hope.”

  He sat by the side of her bed and chatted to her about nothing until the orderlies entered the room. Alice was almost grateful for his company, even though he had nothing useful to say. The doctors were under orders not to talk about current affairs ... Alice hoped that meant that nothing had happened since Invincible had escaped the alien system. Her imagination provided too many dangerous scenarios. There could be a full-scale war going on right now, with hundreds of alien ships pouring into the human sphere, or the aliens could be mounting a stealth assault. She had no way to know.

  We know how to detect the infected, she told herself. And there’s no way any ships will be allowed to land on Earth without being checked first.

  She felt the jerk as the orderlies detached the bed from the wall and pushed it towards the door. Alice looked up, interested, as they passed into the corridor, but it was as bare and bland as the average military base. There were no paintings on the walls, nothing that might make the setting a little more comfortable. The bed moved down the corridor, passed through a pair of airlocks and entered an operations theatre. A large machine, covered with glowing lights and computer displays, squatted in the centre of the chamber. It took Alice a moment to realise that they were going to put her inside the machine.

  “Your heartbeat is picking up again,” the doctor said. “Are you alright?”

  “Yes,” Alice snapped. She took a deep breath, controlling her fears. She’d been through worse. She’d been through a lot worse. “What’s ... what’s going to happen?”

  “You’re going inside the machine,” the doctor told her. “You’ll hear a buzzing sound, but you shouldn’t feel anything. And then we’ll take you out once the process is completed.”

  Dead or alive, Alice thought, morbidly.

  She felt her body start to tense as the orderlies carefully inserted the bed into the machine and pushed her inside. Alice had never been particularly claustrophobic - and her training had cured her of what little she’d had - but she still felt nervous as the hatch closed behind her head. She was lying in a long metal tube that resembled a coffin ... she told herself, sharply, to stop worrying. If the process worked, she could return to duty; if the process failed ... well, she hoped the platoon would say something nice about her during the funeral. And then they’d get drunk at the wake and swap lies about her. She hoped they’d be good lies.

  I wasn’t a failure, she thought, as she waited. They wouldn’t have promoted me if I’d failed.

  “We’re about to begin,” a voice said. It was loud enough to make her jump. “Are you ready?”

  “Yes,” Alice said. She calmed herself, again. “I’m ready.”

  “You shouldn’t feel anything,” the voice told her. “If you do, please let us know.”

  “Yes, sir,” Alice said, tiredly. “Get on with it.”

  There was a long pause, then she felt the machine start to vibrate. The buzzing started a second later, sending chills down her spine. It felt as if she was trapped inside a wood chipper. It was hard to escape the sense that she was about to be tossed down the chute to her doom, even though she knew better. Her body started to quiver a moment later. It felt as though she was standing under a very hot sun. No, it felt as though she was sunburnt ... under the skin. The buzzing grew louder. She gritted her teeth and tried to force herself to relax, somehow. Her skin started to crawl. It felt as though a hundred fingers were drifting over her bare skin ...

  A stab of pain shot through her. For an insane moment, she thought she’d been stabbed everywhere, that a knife had stabbed her ... her mind spun as she struggled to make sense of her feelings. She’d been stabbed ... no, she hadn’t been stabbed. Fire burned along her veins, tearing at her sanity ... she told herself, firmly, that the alien cells were burning up. Her emotions were completely out of control, flashes of rage followed by quivering fear and burning arousal. She felt her arms and legs jerk, despite the restraints. It felt as though she was convulsing, as if death was not far away.

  She thought she saw, just for a moment, her father standing in front of her. She felt a hot flash of anger before realising that it was just a hallucination. She had no interest in seeing the old man again, not after he’d murdered his wife, Alice’s mother. Maybe she had committed adultery. That was no excuse for murder, for forcing Alice and her sister to grow up with their grandparents and a succession of boarding schools. Her lips twitched. They’d asked if she really thought she could cope with military training. After boarding school, mil
itary training had been a snap. She certainly hadn’t been one of those tough guys who’d cried when they realised they were sleeping away from home for the first time in their lives.

  They didn’t go to boarding school, she thought. For all the grumbling about military rations, the Royal Marines had better food than the boarding schools. Less unpleasant disciplinarians, too. The sergeants had been bastards, but they hadn’t been bastards. They’d have learnt better if they had.

  There was a hot stab of pain, stabbing right into her brain. Alice screamed, helplessly. She thought she heard someone trying to talk to her, but it was impossible to make out the words over her own screaming. She was on fire. Her entire body was burning. She screamed and screamed until the world went black ...

  ... And she woke up in a different room.

  She took a shuddering breath, swallowing hard as her body tried to retch. There was nothing in her stomach to throw up, she thought. She tested her restraints - she was still tied to the bed - and then lifted her head. Her skin looked normal, even though she was sure she should be nothing more than ashes. She didn’t even look burnt. Her body felt ... it took her a moment to realise that she felt normal.

  “Good morning,” a voice said. A man wearing a doctor’s uniform peered down at her. “How are you feeling?”

  Alice blinked at him. He wasn’t wearing a protective suit. “Am I ... am I safe?”

  “We believe so,” the doctor said. He looked to be in his late forties, old enough to be her father. His nametag read VENN. “How are you feeling?”

  “Hungry,” Alice said, after a moment. “Am I cured?”

  “We killed the alien biological material in you,” Venn told her. “You’ve been asleep for several days, Alice. We wanted to be sure it wouldn’t grow back.”

  “And it didn’t,” Alice said. “Right?”

  Venn smiled. “Right.”

  Alice tried to lift a hand. “Can I get up now?”

  “If you like,” the doctor said. He carefully undid the restraints, one by one. “I wouldn’t push yourself too far though, Alice. You’ve been through hell.”

  “Hell was basic training,” Alice said, dryly. She sat upright, looking down at herself. Her arms and legs felt uncomfortably flabby, unsurprisingly. She hadn’t had any real exercise in weeks. “Is there anything to eat?”

  “It’s on the way,” Venn said. “Alice, there are some things you need to know.”

  Alice swung her legs over the side of the bed and stood, gingerly. Stabs of pain flared up her legs, reminding her that she hadn’t been allowed to walk for weeks. She cursed under her breath. It was going to take months to get back into condition, if the Royal Marines hadn’t already given her a medical discharge. They certainly wouldn’t let her take command of a company until she was back up to speed. She silently promised herself a long program of heavy-duty exercise, whatever else she had to do. She’d been the first woman to receive a commando badge. She was damned if she was just giving up.

  “First, the virus did make one permanent change to your system,” Venn said. “Your scent has changed in a manner we don’t quite understand. We think it’s a marker that you were infected, a marker that other infected would be able to sense, but we don’t know for sure. We also can’t find a way to fix it. The aliens may always consider you one of them.”

  “That’s something I may be able to use,” Alice said, slowly. She sniffed her palm, experimentally. “I can’t smell anything, though.”

  Venn nodded. “Most humans wouldn’t be able to smell it,” he said. “A dog, however ... be careful around dogs. They’re training dogs to sniff for infected now. You’ll give them a false positive.”

  “Ouch,” Alice said. “Anything else?”

  “You’ve had quite an uncomfortable set of days,” Venn told her. “You were lucky to be sedated. Now ... you’re going to be passing water at an accelerated rate until you finish passing the alien material out of your system and ...”

  Alice met his eyes. “When can I leave?”

  “We would prefer to keep you under observation for several days,” Venn said. “After that, if there’s no sign of a relapse, we can release you. I don’t know where the military will want you to go, afterwards. They may wish to keep a close eye on you.”

  “Probably,” Alice said. She had been infected, after all. It was unlikely she’d be allowed to return to Earth. “I want to return to active duty.”

  “That’s a matter for higher authority,” Venn said. “I can certify that we have killed the alien biological matter in your blood, Alice, but I can’t clear you for active duty.”

  Alice rubbed her forehead. No, Venn couldn’t clear her. God knew she was in no state to return to active duty. She had to get back into shape, then endure interviews with the shrinks until they cleared her ... if they ever did. They’d be worried about tiny fragments of alien biological matter hiding within her body. The virus might just be biding its time, waiting for her to leave isolation before it started to take over her body again. And yet ... she could think of a dozen simple precautions. Surely, she wouldn’t have to spend the rest of her life in isolation.

  “I’ll see what my superiors say,” she said, as the door opened. An orderly entered, carrying a tray of food and drink. “And I will return to duty.”

  “I hope so,” Venn said. “You’ve been very lucky, Alice. Everyone else we studied is too far gone to help. The alien virus left its mark on you, but them? They’re never going to be free.”

  Alice shivered.

  Chapter Three

  “Well,” Flight Lieutenant Monica Smith said as they stood on the balcony and looked down at the starfighters on HMS Invincible’s landing deck, “they don’t look particularly photogenic.”

  Wing Commander Richard Redbird resisted - barely - the urge to make a rude gesture in her general direction. “Just because they don’t look good doesn’t mean they’re not good,” he said. “And just because you can’t stand in front of them with your hair streaming in the wind doesn’t mean you can’t fly them.”

  Monica smirked. “I did get asked to model in front of the Tornadoes,” she reminded him, mischievously. She struck a dramatic pose, pushing out her breasts. “My photo was on everyone’s wall.”

  Richard rolled his eyes at her. Monica had been asked to pose in front of the aerospace fighters, although it had been by a PR guy with a slight lack of common sense. Richard found it hard to believe that any prospective starfighter pilots would be attracted to the navy by a pretty blonde girl standing in front of a spacecraft, even though he did have to admit that starfighter pilots were often lacking in common sense too. Their survival rates were so low that senior officers made allowances for them.

  “I think you were replaced the moment some hot babe in her underwear came along,” he said, finally. “And how many seconds do you think that took?”

  He ignored her snort of irritation and turned his attention back to the starfighters. The Hawks didn’t look like much, he had to admit. They certainly didn’t look as deadly as the Tornadoes. They looked more like worker bees from a shipyard than jet fighters. But they were configured for operations in space, while the Tornadoes had been designed to operate in planetary atmospheres as well as deep space. The concept was cool, he admitted freely, but the technology was not quite up to the task. The Tornadoes lacked the manoeuvrability of craft designed to operate solely in space, while they were larger than aircraft designed to operate within a planetary atmosphere. Richard knew, all too well, that the high loss rate amongst Invincible’s pilots during their encounter with the alien virus owed much to their outmatched starfighters. The aliens had kicked their ass.

  It could have been worse, he told himself. But if we’d been flying genuine starfighters ...

  He allowed himself a smile as he studied the Hawks. They had come out of a multinational design project, something that had worried defence commenters back when the project had been announced, but Richard hadn’t heard any complaints f
rom their pilots. And there would have been complaints, if the craft hadn’t lived up to their promise. The multinational nature of the project was an advantage, even if it was a blow to national pride. Being able to fly off American and French carriers might be useful. No, it would be useful. They were going to war, again.

  Monica caught his eye. “You got your speech prepped for the maggots?”

  “I know what I’m going to tell them, yes,” Richard said. He’d lost nearly all of his surviving pilots as the Royal Navy distributed their experience through the fleet. He was lucky he’d been able to keep Monica. There had been times when he’d thought the carrier’s flight wing would consist of him and a collection of newly-graduated pilots and reservists. “Are you ready to slot them into your squadron?”

  Monica gave him a sweet smile. “They’ll be kicking ass and taking names by the end of the day.”

  “Make sure of it,” Richard said, dryly. He watched the ground crew move the Hawk into the launch tubes. “We’ll be deploying soon.”