Rose rubbed the bridge of his nose and watched the corpsman work. A big flap of Weasel’s scalp was ripped. It was a bloody wound, but not a dangerous one, as long as it was dealt with. The corpsman, who was closing the wound with staples, was doing a top-notch job of taking care of it. Weasel was a pretty tough character, only flinching as the staples were clicked into his flesh. Behind them, the injured had been loaded into the Osprey. The engines revved up, and the big VTOL craft rose off the deck, angled over the side, then turned toward the carrier.
“Weasel, pretend I’m not a scientist, or an engineer, or whatever you are, and explain this device to me.”
“In simple terms, we can use it to purify anything that will fit inside.”
“Anything?”
“Yes. Food, water, animals, whatever. But Dr. Breda said it wouldn’t un-zombie anything, because Strain Delta modifies the brain to this weird 2.46 hertz frequency, almost like a computer. Oz said it might be possible to read the programming and change it, or something.”
For fuck’s sake. “Okay, sorry I asked. So, it can make clean food? Even from the infected stuff?”
“That’s the whole point,” Weasel said, frustrated.
“Is the machine hard to make?”
Weasel got a vacant look, and his lips moved. Rose wondered if he’d just lost his last marble. “No, not really. You have to sacrifice a microwave for the magnetron, and you have to collect a few other parts that shouldn’t be hard to find. Probably have to manually control the cycle because I built mine with a breadboard.”
“So, yes?”
“Yeah, isn’t that what I said?”
Rose’s radio buzzed for attention. “Weasel, when your head is fixed, get some rest.”
“I’m not tired.”
“Okay. Can you make some more of your…”
“Februus Devices?” Rose nodded. “Sure. I’ll need some parts.”
“Tell Sergeant Grady what you need. Give him a list.” The sergeant was off to one side, standing by the ship’s railing. He gave Rose a ‘thanks a lot’ look. “I have a call I need to take.”
“Sure, sure,” Weasel mumbled as the corpsman finished treating his wound. Rose sighed and clicked the radio. “General Rose.”
“General, this is Captain Gilchrist on the Ford.”
“Captain, you calling to say you found the sub?”
“We’re hunting what appears to be two subs, General.”
“I need you to avoid sinking them.”
“Sir, you cannot be serious. They’ve sunk one ship already.”
“Yes, and they sent commandoes aboard this ship to kidnap Dr. Lisha Breda.”
“The woman from that genetics project?” Gilchrist asked. “That’s unfortunate, but is she worth risking more sunken ships, especially one of our few remaining military craft?”
Rose considered the question. If they had the treatment device that she’d helped develop, and she was one of the only people still alive who understood Strain Delta, was she worth the risk? She was one of the only people he liked, and he realized he wasn’t willing to let her go. But he needed to make a logical decision, not an emotional one.
Suddenly, something came to mind. He remembered the flight from Hood to the west coast. Part way there, one of his transports had been attacked in an airport outside Truth or Consequences, New Mexico. Could these seemingly random events be linked? It seemed unlikely, but it was what he had to work with. He explained the attack to Gilchrist and how he believed the two were linked. “I also believe Dr. Breda is of crucial importance to our survival.”
“General, risking assets right now goes against my better judgement for the sake of those in harm’s way.”
“I understand. Will you do it anyway?”
“I will. I have an old Viking ASW plane following a sub heading north. The damned thing is fast, goes almost 300 kph. Luckily, the Viking is faster. I can’t risk losing the Viking, though. If there’s any sign of a counterattack, I’m calling it off.”
“Understood. The sub must have a base. If you can find it, I’ll do the rest.”
“Shouldn’t we leave it to the Marines? We don’t have a bunch, but this is what they’re trained to do.”
“They’re providing security for the Flotilla. I’m betting this sub is heading for an island. If it is, the fuckers are in my territory. Keep me up to date, Captain. And thanks.”
* * *
Joint Combined Evacuation Fleet
150 miles West of Puerto Escondido, Mexico
Theodore Bennitti wandered the deck of the USS Bataan. A nearby crewman, tending to a recently returned Osprey, glanced his way, making sure he didn’t stray too close to the still spinning VTOL aircraft’s blades. Theodore was too busy to notice; he needed fresh air and open spaces to think.
Back at the Cape, his office had been located in The Plaza, Kennedy Space Center’s HQ Building on Merritt Island. It had been five kilometers from the launch complex’s northern end. As a director, he’d had an easterly view from the 3rd floor. It had been a decent vantage point from which to watch launches, and he’d seen many in his time at NASA. The new building being built a block away was seven stories tall and would have had even better views, but now it would never be completed.
On nice days, he would walk out to the extensive grass lawns around the Plaza to think. At night, the sky was beautiful. In the 70s, before the population explosion in Florida, you could often see the Milky Way. With society’s collapse, all light pollution was gone. He guessed the spectacular views were back.
He had a lot to think about, and the flight deck was a near-perfect place to think. They were sailing through calm seas as midday approached. Since the Russians were no longer hunting them, the environment was much calmer—you could feel it in how much calmer the crews were.
Theodore had gambled the Star Fox would be enough evidence to convince Captain Chugunkin the plague wasn’t an American construct. It was a gamble because they couldn’t let the captain physically touch the alien. For safety, they kept her away from all human contact. He and Dr. Gnox were concerned the Russians would believe the alien was nothing more than a fancy, animatronic creation or CGI.
He’d found out from Gnox only minutes before the meeting that Nikki, the alien they’d called Star Fox before, had made major strides in learning English. What neither had known was the extent of those strides. By the time Captain Chugunkin met the alien face-to-face, Nikki was not only conversant in English, but Russian as well.
How was that possible, he wondered?
* * *
The purpose of the conversation between Nikki, Captain Chugunkin, and Theodore’s group of scientists was to convince the Russian guests not to start a war. However, Nikki had other plans. She started by revealing how the Russians shot down their starship in orbit. Captain Chugunkin was confused and offended by the suggestion.
“How could my government have shot your starship down?” he demanded. “You can fly between the stars, but we shoot you down with a missile?”
“It wasn’t a missile,” Nikki replied, speaking first in Russian, then in English, thereby announcing she’d learned Russian. “It was a directed energy weapon, a particle beam with more than a gigawatt of power.”
Captain Chugunkin’s mouth turned into a thin line, and Theodore knew a truth had been told. A truth the captain hadn’t been expecting.
“The weapon was fired from the following coordinates.” Nikki rattled off some numbers, and Captain Chugunkin’s face paled. “In addition,” the alien said, looking at Theodore and his team, “this happened after you invited us to return.”
“What?” Theodore gasped.
* * *
He shook his head as he walked, mumbling to himself. His government, always good at keeping secrets, had kept a doozy. Who would have thought the much-hyped Roswell incident had really happened? Or at least, the popular version had happened to cover up Star Fox’s species making first contact with humanity.
*
* *
Admiral Kent hadn’t been quick to buy into this new revelation, even after Nikki provided a litany of names from the 1950’s US military and government. Theodore and the other scientists had less trouble accepting the new paradigm. Certain technological innovations beginning in the post WWII era were far too convenient.
So, the US had invited the aliens back, but they hadn’t bothered to prepare for their return. They’d been too busy covering up the initial contact and profiting from the technology gifted to them. Then the Russians, in a typical overreaction, shot the aliens’ ship out of the sky.
Chugunkin wasn’t happy with the situation, especially when he realized the aliens had shared tech with America, but not with them. That was one of the things Theodore wondered about. The Russians had kept pace with the US technologically in many areas, even exceeded them in some. A common school of thought suggested the Russians would have exceeded the West had they possessed a better form of government. The particle beam was a huge mystery. Where exactly had they developed this technology? Had they developed it at all, or was its origin extraterrestrial as well?
In the name of mending bridges, Kent agreed to share the details for making the salvaged alien drives work. Nikki hinted that she could do something about the nanovirus. However, she told them their ship was the problem. The mothership, which was shot down, crashed somewhere in the western United States. That was news to Theodore. Nikki’s ship, which was in the Bataan’s hangar, was more of a ship’s boat, maybe a captain’s yacht; it wasn’t intended for long flights.
“When the mothership was critically damaged, and we were forced to enter Earth’s atmosphere, our ship’s computer issued an order to abandon ship. Escape pods were scattered all over the northern hemisphere.”
“What about the virus?” Dr. Gallatin asked.
“It was an accident,” Nikki replied. “A result of the attack.”
“Accident?” Kent demanded. “Our planet is dead!”
“I am not an expert,” Nikki said. “You must understand that what you are calling a virus is really a machine.”
“We understand it is a machine,” Gallatin replied angrily.
“Do you?” Nikki’s whiskers twitched, and her ears vibrated. The Vulpes weren’t exactly the same as foxes, just similar. They appeared less mobile than the terrestrial species. “Then you understand such machines are useful for much more than causing diseases?”
Gallatin opened his mouth, then closed it with an audible pop. He shook his head. Dr. Currie spoke in the silence.
“You mean they’re, what, tools to you?”
“Tools with a great many uses.” Nikki leaned closer to the window separating her from them. “Any tool can be dangerous, if proper care isn’t taken. Its name is not pronounceable to you.”
“We call it Strain Delta.”
“I know,” Nikki said. “The tool your Strain Delta came from, I will call it Pandora, was a dire accident. We did not expect to be attacked. I am not a member of the crew. My job was to negotiate with your race. I must assume the damage to our ship was in the engineering section, which is where Pandora was stored.”
“We did this to ourselves?” Gallatin asked, still shaking his head.
“The Russians did this,” Kent snarled, glaring at Chugunkin.
“If we had known there was an alien starship coming, maybe we wouldn’t have shot it down.” Chugunkin said.
“Knowing your government, I doubt it would have mattered,” Kent replied.
“This is not productive,” Theodore intervened. “At this stage, we need to work together to fix this, or at least salvage something from it.”
“We need to find my ship,” Nikki said. “Without more of my people and my ship’s resources, there is nothing else I can do. If what you say is true, Pandora will continue to wreak havoc until your race is lost. Or worse.”
“Worse?” Kent gasped. “In the name of God, what could be worse?”
“You don’t want to know.”
After the meeting, Chugunkin agreed to assist them in any way possible. Theodore spent a few minutes talking with his fellow scientists.
“What could Nikki have meant by worse?” Gallatin asked almost immediately.
“A worse plague? What can be worse?” Curie asked. “Jesus, Theodore, the damned thing is reprogramming humans into cannibals!”
“Grey goo,” Theodore said.
“Pardon me?” Gallatin asked. Curie looked confused too.
“A theory of nanites. Many speculate about a special kind of self-replicating nanite, like these. Only, instead of doing simple jobs, or even reprogramming people, these are dissasemblers. They only exist to replicate and take things apart. They replicate and disassemble until there’s nothing left except primordial elements. Grey goo. A whole planet of grey goo. Theoretically, a galaxy of it.”
“That’s fucking worse,” Gallatin agreed.
* * *
“Grey goo,” Theodore mumbled, shaking his head.
“You okay, sir?”
He glanced at the deck crewman, confused. “Oh, sure,” he said, realizing he’d probably been talking out loud. The man nodded and went back to his duties. Theodore was once again alone on the aircraft carrier. Water stretched away as far as he could see. Other ships were within sight, but as far as he knew, they were alone on an endless sea of water going on forever. Just like the universe.
He turned to go inside; he needed to make some notes. The walk had cleared his mind, just as he’d hoped. A thousand things still rolled around inside his head, but there was some coherence to his thoughts now. Just as he reached the hatch going down, a thought came to him.
How had the alien suddenly become so good at not one, but two, languages? He’d spoken to Wilma Gnox right after the big meeting, and she’d confirmed she’d kept her language interactions to mundane subjects and terms. There had been no discussion about the plague. So, exactly how had Nikki known they called the plague Strain Delta?
* * *
Ocean Vista
The Flotilla
150 Nautical Miles West of San Diego, CA
Rose grabbed his radio the instant it beeped. “General Rose.”
“It’s Captain Gilchrist. The Viking shadowed our bogey to San Nicolas Island.”
“San Nicolas?” Rose asked, wracking his sleep deprived mind. “Northwest of San Clemente?”
“Yes,” Gilchrist replied. “It was a navy weapons testing facility. About 20 years ago it was deemed largely off limits. Classified research.”
“Like stealth subs that can go faster than a jet?”
“Not faster than a jet, but fast, yeah,” Gilchrist replied. “Thanks to that bastard Watts, we have some space assets back. One is a National Reconnaissance Office bird with a recent view of San Nicolas. It’s interesting, because I shouldn’t have access to data on a classified installation. A small squadron of ships just docked there, including one with a big, shiny something aboard.”
“Something?”
Gilchrist hesitated. “If I had to guess, I’d say it’s related to the alien escape pod thing Osborne brought aboard.”
“No shit,” Rose said.
“No shit.”
“Are there any defenses you can see?”
“As a matter of fact, yes. My analysts have identified two SAM sites, a radar installation, a big aircraft hangar, and some of the weirdest looking helicopters I’ve ever seen at the airstrip.”
This is some skunk works shit, Rose thought. These fuckers must be the ones who took out my aircrew in Truth or Consequences. But why did they take Lisha? “Captain, have you spotted the submarine?”
“There’s a shadow that I think is the sub.”
“Captain, it is my intention to attack the island and retrieve our kidnapped doctor.”
“General, that’s a US installation.”
“Which is harboring unknown people who attacked my forces, sank a private vessel, and kidnapped a scientist.”
“You
have a point. However, I can’t risk running surface assets out that way. There’s still a sub out there, and I have a feeling it is going to be trouble soon. The Viking is coming back now.”
“What can you do then? You don’t have any bombers left, do you?”
“No, and I don’t have any helicopters to spare either, not with those SAM batteries.”
Rose cursed.
“However, I do have cruise missiles.”
“Well, that sounds lovely!”
“They likely have the ability to down them, so I’ll have to overwhelm them. The Russell has 12. We used a lot during the Coronado fiasco. It might be enough to do the job.”
“I’ll take what I can get. Hold one.” He looked up. “Lieutenant Drake?” Drake was his newly assigned aide. Rose had grabbed the man from his extremely limited supply of officers. He had been in logistics at Fort Hood, but he had served in a combat brigade when he’d been a 2nd lieutenant.
“General?”
“I want all four Osprey’s spun up and ready to go. Find Master Sergeant Ayres and tell him I need the two best, most rested platoons ready to mount up. Full assault ruck.” He looked at his watch. “We dust off in 15 minutes. Time to get some payback.”
* * * * *
Chapter 9
Afternoon, Saturday, May 4th
Classified Genesis Facility
San Nicolas Island
Pearl Grange sat quietly in the storage locker and waited. The voice whispering in the back of her mind had slowly become more understandable. After she’d woken up, all she could understand were the most basic ideas. Go straight ahead. Open the door. Wipe the blood away. Put on clothes.
Now that she’d sat in total darkness for several hours, the voice was becoming clearer and clearer. A constant flow of information and ideas. Where things were located on the ship, crewmember schedules, what areas to avoid.
Turning Point (Book 3): A Time To Live Page 32