Biowarfare, one of the nastiest of all weapons. A dying person falls against Sunshine as he stalks a dereg world to hunt his target. The pale lips whisper "They're about to attack CRC, warn them." And hands the killer a file warning of the disease, engineered to try to circumvent the immunoflu. -- Anon Guest
The datachip was smaller than Mr Sunshine's fingernail. Light and small and easy to lose. Mr Sunshine added it to a case in his pocket. He knew better than to plug it into his datareader and look at its content then and there.
That way lead to inevitable betrayal. It could be a trap. To discover the truth, Mr Sunshine needed an air-gapped inforeader isolated from the rest of the network.
He didn't have time to thank the individual who pressed it into his palm. The stranger was gone. Blending with the huddled masses of this Deregger world in need of strategic readjustment. Mr Sunshine continued with his objective before returning to his CRC evac vehicle.
Once there, the datachip was properly analysed. In a datareader inside a faraday cage in the orbiting mini-station's analysis section.
It was pure data. Documents and evidence and at least one research paper.
Analyst Clare looked through the documents, speed reading them all the way through. "Oh, this old chestnut. Ha! I owe Makl half an hour."
"Nothing urgent then?" guessed Mr Sunshine.
"Nah, they're only trying to sabotage the immunoflu. Again. They can splice in all the deadly DNA they like, but... it only ever turns into a common rhinovirus or a different variant of the immunoflu."
"That happens all the time?" boggled Mr Sunshine.
"Well, I'm the dummy who bet Makl that they'd given up on this nonsense." Ze re-read some of the denser scientific text. "Yeah, they're just re-inventing another version of the immunoflu. Harmless."
"So the leaker thought it was dangerous and acted in defiance of their polity," said Mr Sunshine. "A genuine effort of concern."
"Heart's in the right place," said Clare. "If we can find them, we should reward them. They risked everything to get us this."
"I didn't get a good look at them, sorry," said Mr Sunshine.
"I did say 'if'," said Clare.
[Photo by Conny Schneider on Unsplash]
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