“Rock and I will be ready to move in from this direction. If I order ‘Roll port!’, get out of the way fast. I’ll be opening up with Ma here.”
He made a point of patting his .50 cal. and smiling.
We cloaked and ported to the assembly room. Cloak. Cloak. Cloak. It only took a minute to sneak along the passageway to where we could see the T-section. There was a platoon size group of bugs milling around at the T-section, looking agitated. It looked as though the shield generator was offline. I think they knew their queen was dead. There were too many of them for us to open fire and hope we got them all before they returned the favor. We had no cover.
I wished then I had switched over to a 6.8 squad rifle. For this, we needed the extra pop. I whispered, “Let’s do this. Para, let me borrow your rifle. Roll and I will light them up for the count of two, then Para tosses a grenade as we port back to the assembly room.”
They nodded as Para handed her 6.8 to me and readied a grenade. We opened fire, one-one-thousand, two-one-thousand. Para tossed the grenade and we ported back to the room. More gunfire! The thumping of round after round from the .50 cal.
Mr. T called over the comms. “Are you back in the assembly hall? A couple bugs may be coming your way.”
Para pulled her Desert Eagle. Roll took a knee, looking down the passageway. I sprawled out on the deck and took aim. “Copy that. We’re in position.”
Bugs! We were ready. The bugs in the rear had a look of shock as the yellowish blood and tissue of their comrades spattered on them. The bugs in front didn’t have time to emote. Eight bugs in all. The noise of their screams made it sound more like 80 bugs. Para had said something about spiracles on insects, a bunch of little airways. There was no return fire. Three bugs managed to spin in the slippery gore and run back the way they had come.
I was surprised at my own lack of emotion as I radioed. “Three coming back your way.”
Mr. T was quick to respond. “Stay put, we have them.” More noise.
We carefully cleared the entire ship. There were no more soldiers. No more bugs. It must have been a real skeleton crew. Or, I guess with these guys, an exoskeleton crew.
Oh no. I’ve been reading too many of Communal’s side reports. Exoskeleton crew. For goodness sakes. But then the other emotions caught up, and I broke down in tears. The whole thing was just horrible. It was a slaughter.
***
*COMMUNAL: We applaud you on your expanding journalistic skills and impactful humor. Exoskeleton crew. Ha! That’s a good one! Some levity in a serious situation is good for the constitution and- Oh, we’re sorry Viz. Viz?
These queens and their memories are depraved. Terrible thoughts. Wait, hold on. Did you hear that? Oh, never mind. Merely a VLF spike and some radio static from a minor solar flare. It sure sounded like bugs crunching on something. Wait, what about that? No, never mind, it’s nothing. Sorry, we’re a little jumpy.
Here’s a good one. A guy named Joe looked unhappy. “What’s wrong Joe?” his friend asked. Joe said, “I feel so guilty after stepping on that bug this morning. You should have seen him. He looked absolutely crushed.” Where did that come from? How did the Emotive Synergy group bust out of their sector? The Emotional Algorithm Processor really does need to keep those guys in check. Oh. Well, we are sorry. Viz? We’re sorry Viz.
***
+ BEGIN TIMELINE DROP. Drop by Viz.
Maybe you're thinking by now, what a lot of happy circumstances. I’m thinking back to all the close calls myself. And the happy circumstances. Like those sonic defense helmets that just happened to be available to us when capturing the first bug nest ship. Well, I live with that sort of thing all the time. You don't hear about half the stuff. Just the fact we’re not dead by now really is ridiculous. It’s called Providence. END TIMELINE DROP. +
***
The Earth wasn’t the first world this queen bug had invaded. Her nest was part of a war and subjugation machine that had been advancing through this section of the galaxy for a long time. There was some kind of empire that controlled the bugs. The Empire was expanding and Earth happened to be a target. The Empire was ever expanding. The people of Earth would be relocated to another planet, or perhaps planets, somewhere within the vast empire.
Other “people” would be settled on Earth. The Empire authorities had determined that a distant move would limit rebellion by a conquered people. They would be less likely to put up resistance when removed from their homeland. There is a sick sense to that, I suppose. It would be harder to be patriotic if your real home was light years away and unreachable. So that’s the way the Empire did things.
How could they move billions of people from one planet to another? That would involve the use of some sort of teleportation gate. This bug infestation was getting ever the more worrisome. Mr. T also found out the queens maintain control of the bugs using a pheromone and other substances. Para said that made sense. Pheromone control would be normal for any nesting insect culture.
Mr. T added, “I had the distinct impression the natural biological pheromones had been augmented to allow enhanced queen control over the subject bugs. What was absolutely clear, there is a special chemical used when bugs go to battle. It may be similar to a pheromone but it is not natural at all. Evidently Empire Labs or someplace like that mixed it up just for bugs going into combat. It turns the bugs into berserkers. The bugs might not have much control over the ensuing battle rage.”
That would explain some things. There are actually two major bug bases, on the Moon and Mars. And there is a High Queen of the invasion. She spends time at both bases. For what it’s worth, even the filthy bug queen that Mr. T interviewed was terrified of her. He was able to verify there had been no call requesting backup.
The nest queen was determined to handle the threat herself though she had a downsized crew. Most of the bugs were out rounding up humans. This queen was more concerned over appearing weak to the High Queen, than facing down some mere humans. Well, that was the case until we busted into her lair. Evidently the EMP killed her comms.
He understood from his interview that the High Queen had become somewhat unstable of late. Drug use. She was making mistakes, becoming more and more unpredictable. A drug induced haze would explain the poor tactical planning.
They could have bombed us into submission from space or shut us down with a few EMP bursts. Taking control of our interconnected smart grids would cripple us. The bugs mostly left the satellites alone, other than some military birds. Regular satellites would be helpful at some point to them. But they should have destroyed all the military satellites on day one. It was as though the High Queen was only going through the motions of an invasion. She had little regard for her troops, feeling they had let her down in some way.
***
+ BEGIN TIMELINE DROP. This is a Timeline Project drop drop drop.
Timeline search xx parse error xx. Source: xx
NOTE: This is Viz with some notes. I see the drop was glitchy. There’s good information here.
Note 1. This was obviously a rough timeline drop. It looks like an AI had some trouble deciding the best drop location for the information. Perhaps another of those bouts of quantum decoherence. I’m debating whether or not to petition to have these timeline drops cleaned up, double-checked before a drop goes out. But I probably won’t. Let it all be part of the timeline. It shows that even the machines can have a bad day.
Note 2. Scotty is our special bug friend. He has provided extensive help in the war effort.
This drop has information extracted from a message sent by Empire Command to the bug invasion fleet while they were on route to Earth. The High Queen had made some mistakes over the years. On the way to Earth, she made yet another mistake and that rubbed the Empire completely the wrong way.
I’m not sure if the message had a measure of hyperbole. She would certainly lose her position as High Queen. Their intent may have been to literally feed her to the spice flies of Aarodan, whatever that means.
I’ll have to ask Scotty one of these days. Either way, the High Queen was quite agitated by the time she reached Earth. Scotty helped give some context to the message that was found at Darkside. The High Queen was a drugged up mess during the invasion. She knew she was already finished.
As Scotty said, “Command was clear in sayin, when they caught up to her, the High Queen herself would be fed to the spice flies of Aarodan. I am of the thinkin, that message did no help with her drug dosages, if ya catch me drift.” END TIMELINE DROP. +
***
Mr. T told us some of the atrocities the bugs had committed on other worlds. All that just adds to what we’ve seen them do right here on Earth. They are evil. At least that is true of the queens. The regular bugs may not have a choice. I’m not sure yet. Anyway, we were lucky, blessed, in taking the ship so easily. It was as we suspected. Most of the bugs from the ship were outside capturing humans. As I mentioned, the arrogant queen had not sent a distress call, preferring to handle our attack internally. When she finally changed her mind, it was too late.
Moving the ship is certainly a time sensitive project. A fly could return to the nest at any time. Or the lack of communications from the ship could lead to an investigation. It was only a matter of time before the bug high command knew something was wrong. The military would then lose the opportunity to take control of the ship. That brought an oppressive air of emergency over the moving operation.
Within minutes of the all clear signal, the combat engineers were marking the area that needed clearing downslope. Precise grid-maps came out showing placement locations for the explosives. Scanning showed no one loitering in the area. As the engineers made preparations to set up their munitions, we cleared each section of the ship one last time to be sure there were no bugs left on board. They can be sneaky. Besides, we wanted the opportunity to take one more walk through, to memorize the layout of the ship.
Most of us didn’t want to miss the bug ship start its journey to a new home. Mr. T said he needed to get back to the command center (in his basement). Rock did a quick porting round trip. He wasn’t about to miss this show! The engineers must have thought we were nuts when Para called out: Be careful with our baby! No one shooed us off though.
The charges went off starting near the water. Boom, boom, boom. The trail looked good. Water started flowing downslope from hoses hooked to fire hydrants in the area. As a finale, a series of smaller precise charges detonated, undermining the bedrock on the down slope side of the ship. It started to creep downhill, gathering speed and momentum, splash. They had already attached some cleats to the bug ship. The tugs had come in along different routes and moved into place just as the bug ship hit the water. They had the enemy vessel under tow within minutes.
In the meantime, Mr. T spent a couple of hours typing furiously. He didn’t want to forget anything he had learned from the queen bug and our other recent excursions. He was still typing away when we got back to the lab, uhhh, the command center. Mr. T told us some things, but I could tell, he didn’t tell us everything.
All the running around and especially that delving process, have been hard on him. I guess he’s getting old. He’s a grandad after all. But he never seemed old to me. That day he looked old.
What he had learned in the delving weighed heavily on him. I’m not frightened easily. Not really. But even though we had won this battle, I felt ... afraid. Thankfully the feeling didn’t last long. I had to believe good would triumph over evil. Eventually it would. Hopefully that day would come soon.
Well, we managed to impress the military higher-ups with our capture of a complete bug nest ship. They said they would get down to the business of back-engineering all that wonderful technology. I wondered if they were being a tiny bit presumptuous when they said they would be ready to fly away with the next bug ship we captured. And I can only imagine the squabbles that would soon take place when the fly guys at McChord found out the navy had a bug nest ship. They would want to get their hands on a ship as well. There was even some negative feedback.
We all wanted to better understand bug psychology. With that, the military folk were upset that we had killed the queen bug. All we could say was, we’re sorry about that. Had to do it. They scolded us and told us to keep a queen for them next time. We promised to try. No one asked how a Signals Intelligence unit had managed to infiltrate a bug nest ship.
After that mission we were eager to move forward, even if a bit uneasy. Those feelings only increased as Mr. T slowly (and it seemed systematically) told us more about the plans of the evil bugs and their overlords. As the information flowed over to us, we all developed a deep sense of time sensitivity. Urgency.
The bugs had started transporting some people off-Earth. There was a base on the far side of the Moon, and the bugs were getting ready to open some sort of trans-dimension portal. We knew the time was short, but the nest queen didn’t seem to know a whole lot about that part of the invasion operation.
***
*COMMUNAL: Creating an Einstein-Rosen bridge, or wormhole in common sci-fi vernacular, would require technological advances well beyond anything on the foreseeable human tech horizon. Working within the framework of Einstein’s field theory, much more knowledge would be needed with respect to gravitational fields and electromagnetics.
In addition, unique types of exotic matter, or energy, would have to be discovered or developed. Negative mass or energy would be needed to warp space-time and stabilize a teleportation bridge. That process would be in line with the more standard model.
The framework of quantum mechanics could provide insight into the process. In fact, current theoretical attempts to merge general relativity with quantum physics have been highlighted by research into wormhole theory.
Sci-fi to sci-reality. You know what they say, reality is stranger than fiction.
Hey, who is “they” anyway? And we’re off to find out.
Hold on a minute. That was just stupid. Where did it come from? No, we know that wasn’t Data Mining. It’s obvious. Just take a wild guess. How did they get out of their sector again? Well, don’t just sit there. Why is the gate wide open? Oh, for goodness sakes.
***
UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES
September 2 nd Well, they did it. They haven’t been able to crack the enemy’s communications, but they figured out a horrible way to kill them. Ever since the Battle for Los Angeles, labs have been working night and day to come up with a bio-weapon. The scientists working under military contract managed to create a weaponized solution which would produce a catastrophic reaction to portions of the bug exoskeletal frame. The connective tissue would basically foam and melt away. It sounds horrible.
When Mr. T heard of their plans, he got on the phone right away. Despite his limited delving experience with bugs, he had reached a firm conclusion. They would not stand idly by in the face of this sort of threat. Bugs aren’t afraid of more conventional attacks. But this show of force would bring fear, as was likely the intent. But the bug reaction to fear would not end well for us.
Mr. T laid it out, pushing up-chain as high as he could reach. True, we are slowly but surely losing the war. Something has to give. But what response will something like this provoke? Give our team more time to get some traction. We will be able to help turn the war effort around.
How could one special operations team turn the war effort around? Hey, aren’t you guys SIGINT? Since when does SIGINT even have a special ops team?
What about the bug ship we just captured? Don’t marginalize our capabilities!
The attempt to give our little squad more opportunity to prove our means to impact the enemy didn’t exactly fall on completely deaf ears. The concept moved up through the ranks to the top brass. But those in charge were only partially convinced. They would allow us to meet with the appropriate military personnel next week and demonstrate our ... capabilities. Next week would have to do. Right now, there are bugs that need melting.
Maybe we should just port i
nto the office of the highest ranking general we can find. Then we give an out-of-this-world show-and-tell. It’s possible we should have laid out our capabilities earlier on. Hold on a second. Earlier on? We’re only 12 days into the invasion. This melting thing will not go well. But it’s probably too late to stop it at this point.
Another call and another round of resistance. The bugs are starting to move people off-world they said. Your very own intel report suggests they have a stargate, or at least they will soon have a stargate. Who knows what will come through that? People are getting nervous. We’re running out of time. Action is needed.
At least they were honest and open enough to inform Mr. T of their intentions with the bugs and their Operation WitchesBrew. We think the name came from a movie. The witch and the water part: I’m melting, melting. You just can’t make this stuff up. The operation is under way even as I write. Mr. T was informed on the phone, as the cruise missiles were dumping their loads on three nest ships. They’re labeling it a test run. Now we wait.
What’s that? I must have dozed off again. It’s the creepy Emergency Broadcast Tone. Looks like I’m not the only one who napped. Your hair’s a mess Para, you should take care of that. Yeah, I see your tongue. You should do something about that too. This is rare. The President of the United States.
It must be terribly bad. Or good. No, it’s bad. The bugs retaliated, destroying the downtown section of a major U.S. city. Total destruction. Assurances from the president that the bugs will pay for their crimes. Prayers, thoughts going out, etc.
I ... am ... so ... angry. Mr. T is on the phone. Again.
He made several calls to get the full story. The science guys are thinking the nest ships don’t draw air directly. What? Even I knew that was likely. Bugs aren’t stupid. They filter the air, test for contaminants, add oxygen. Okay, hold on a second. They added some sort of enzyme or something that was supposed to allow the formula to seep through the filtration system. It didn’t work as expected and they weren’t able to defeat the filtration systems on two of the ships.
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