Zephyr, Tau Ceti, 16.19.775 CW

22.3 megaseconds since the catastrophe

"There are two things at work here," Chef said as he gave his briefing. In addition to Cadotte, bat Avi, and Kasel, who had all been in the arboretum when the investigation had kicked off, Alexander, Singer, and Saito were physically present—the last on the strength of at least having biological training, if not botanical.

"The first," Chef went on, "is a clearly engineered strain of an old, old fungus called 'botrytis blight'. The two strong pieces of evidence for its being engineered are, firstly, a divergence from the last recorded gene sequence; and secondly, the fact that the blight was entirely eradicated from Dream of Spring in the earliest days of its flight, and hence, has never existed anywhere in the diaspora.

"The way it was eradicated in the first place was by extending nano-immunological protection to the botanical biosphere. Ordinarily, that same protection would adapt and successfully eliminate even a novel strain of this fungus, the same as it protects people—biological people, that is—from germs they might encounter for the first time when visiting different, isolated parts of the diaspora. That protection appears to have been deliberately altered or weakened."

Singer interrupted, "Appears to have been?"

"So far, we only have implication. It happened, therefore, something must have allowed it to happen. It shouldn't be possible to engineer a fungus that's entirely proof against the nano-systems. Ergo, the systems themselves must have been convinced to ignore it. Castor's looking into it to try to find out for certain."

Saito looked up from what appeared to be either a doze or a brown study and said, "Tell him to feel free to bring me into it. I did a dissertation on nano-immunology, you know."

Chef visibly blinked on screen. "I didn't. I should have. Thank you, Doctor."

Singer looked at Saito. "How much trouble are we in?"

"None. Yet. I've already checked, triple checked, and then turned it upside down and checked it again. I'll need time to check every crew member, but the sampling I've already done," he nodded his chin at Kasel, bat Avi, and Cadotte, "shows that their systems reacted to odd spores in the environment and successfully broke them down immediately. Our personal nanosystems are not affected, and the fungus is not resistant to fully-functional nanosystems. The cuttings came in with both the fungus and the modified plant nanos, and those have both spread, but while botanical nanos descend from the same tech tree, they're very focused on plants and designed not to spread to non-plants."

"And we are not plants," Singer said with some relief.

"Ask me after three more whiskys. A temporary vegetative state is sounding good about now."

Singer considered. The pattern here certainly fit. The adversary, whoever they were, kept hitting them all from blind sides. This attack didn't just exploit a blind spot. It created another one and then introduced a matching threat into the gap.

Before Singer could voice something of this, Alexander asked, "Does this explain why the person who killed Gupta was embedded in the AI institute in the first place?"

Cadotte answered, "It sure could. Nanotechnology deliberately does not partake of autonomous, personified AI, but it definitely relies on AI-adjacent processes to network and effectively deal with threats."

There was silence as they all chewed on this, and then bat Avi raised their hand.

"Go ahead, PO," Singer said. "You're part of this meeting. No ceremony here."

Bat Avi put her hand down with a smile and said, "Thank you, ma'am. I was going to say: we need to tell Newer York!"

"We need to tell the Admiral," Singer countered. "He needs to tell Newer York."

The PO looked like she wanted to protest, so Singer held up her hand to forestall her. "I know. We all made friends there, or already had them. But we're not out on our own any more. We go through channels. I trust Admiral Karenski. I'll get him the word as soon as we're done here. The couple extra kiloseconds aren't going to significantly delay the word getting out compared to the light-lag of the message getting out to the relay network."

The other woman still looked a bit pugnacious about it, but finally nodded, perhaps reasoning that she was just adding seconds to the delay.

"Anything else?"

"Not just now," Chef said. "I'll have Castor's report for you as soon as I get it."

"Then let's get back to it. Chief," she said to bat Avi, "please alert me the second you see any sign of the infestation spreading; also if any research you do comes up with a fungicide that will be safe to use and solve the problem."

Kasel caught it, but was out of bat Avi's immediate field of view, so she missed his broad grin and nod.

"Yes, ma'am, but...begging the Captain's pardon?"

"Yes, Chief?"

"I'm not a chief, ma'am."

"You are a chief, Chief. Or you will be in a few shifts or two when we have a kilo or two for ceremony, if you don't mind waiting."

"N-no ma'am." Bat Avi was clearly having trouble with words, but finally took a deep breath and said, "Thank you, ma'am."

"Good, then. Dismissed, everyone."

They all left except Alexander, prompting Singer to ask after the doors closed, "Something, exec? We had discussed it, after all."

Alexander smiled and said, "Yes we had, and that was totally worth it, but..."

"Commodore Haraldsdottir did something very similar to me back at Gliese before formally promoting me. I was curious what it was like to be on the other side of it."

"Ah! So it was science!"

"Absolutely!"

"Well, then. As long as it was science. I'll leave you to your making the Admiral's day worse."

"Thanks," Singer said, with no small asperity.

Karenski, true to Singer's trust in him, had a message fired off to David's Star almost before she'd finished telling him the tale as they knew it so far.

It crossed in the mail.

In far less time than it could have taken for the TCTF's warning to reach David's Star, a warning from the Governor General came back with similar conclusions and similar gaps in their knowledge, but also with dire news.

"It's spread to most of the food crops in the system," Karenski told her. "They're not in danger of starvation. They plan for this, unlikely though it is, and have stockpiles. And, of course, they could always finally build replicators if they had to. They have plenty of raw materials in system to become replication mass.

"But they're looking at possibly having to completely reseed every green space in three major cities and all the minor ones. There was a separate note from the Admiral, and he looked like he'd been actually tearing out his hair."

Singer could tell from the heat that her face must be flaming red, reflecting her sheer anger and dismay. Aloud, however, she managed to say calmly, "Has it gotten downwell?"

"To Revi'i? No, and that's probably another reason nobody's going to starve. Revi'i also have a surplus. The Admiral is pretty sure that whoever did this originally intended suspicion to fall on the Revi'ini, and left them alone as a result."

Singer nodded. "If we hadn't gone there first and told them what was already going on, that very well could have happened. They're pretty cordial on the surface. I think they even like each other now. But there's a layer of distrust there that goes back gigaseconds."

"Exactly. Donato also mentioned that the other explorer ship they've been expecting back, Buzz Aldrin under Captain Erasmus, is still late, and he's becoming seriously concerned. Their new Baldursdottir, however, should be making its first starfall shortly, and will be reporting back promptly thereafter."

"With something like good news, I hope."

"I'd like that, too, Elyah, but we might just have to settle for any news at all."

"Like luck?"

Karenski seemed puzzled, then grinned. "Exactly!"

They signed off not long after that, and Singer took herself up to the Observation Lounge. The arboretum would not be a place of peace, right now. The green spaces of Newer York had been a much needed balm to her. They were vital to the functioning of the city, not just decorative. The idea that they might be dying, or worse, have to be deliberately killed and reseeded....

For the first time in a long time, she was really, really angry. The kind of anger Cadotte had, according to Kasel's report, just managed to get past.

Only right now, Singer had no idea how to deal with it at all.