Swarm

by Devon C Ford

  His shout gave Hendricks enough warning even before the two men raised their weapons, issued a war cry and started forwards, to let his hands fall from his rifle and draw his pistol in a blur of speed. They hadn’t made any distance toward him when both they fell dead at Tanaka’s feet each sporting red holes in their foreheads and gaping craters at the backs of their skulls.

  Hendricks, holding the pistol in both hands, switched his aim to Tanaka as smoke drifted from the barrel pointed at his head.

  It was his turn to shout. “Did you really think we’d bow to your will? You’re nothing but a pumped-up bully who relies on the power of others stronger than him to maintain control. We arrived later than you on Earth, but we’re all from the same beginnings; our mission is the same as your ancestors was a thousand years ago. To rebuild civilization and start over.”

  Tanaka glanced at the two dead warriors beside him, chosen as his personal bodyguard because they were supposed to be the bravest.

  “Somehow,” Hendricks went on in a lower voice, “your people decided that the world hadn’t seen enough evil and began ruling like kings and not as people working together to build a good and just society.” He curled his lips and spat the next sentence with venom. “Judging them by your standards, I can see how it happened. This is not how we do things, and until you understand that fully, stay away from us.”

  Tanaka glanced behind him, expecting his warriors to come and save him from the man who possessed the one thing that he thought made him superior. He contemplated pulling his own gun, empty of bullets or not, and threaten the man with it, but the seconds old display of him killing with his own weapon told him that he wouldn’t hesitate.

  Hendricks fixed him with a hard stare. “Leave now while you can still walk but be warned: if you try and attack us, I will hunt you down and rip your spleen from your body and feed it to The Swarm.”

  Tanaka had never been spoken to this way before. Anyone who went against him or displeased him in any way was usually killed or made an example of in front of the whole community. It was how he kept them in fear of his power.

  He backed up, shocked and trying to figure out what his spleen was. His anger and arrogance for the first time replaced by something he had not felt for a long time: fear.

  Staggering slightly, he vented his petulant anger at one of the bodies lying at his feet and gave it a hard kick. With every step his fear reduced, his anger returning in full. Hendricks, still with his weapon aimed at his receding back, watched his every step.

  When he was fifty yards away, just as Hendricks was beginning to lower his pistol, he reached into his jacket with one hand and pulled something out. Hendricks snapped his arm back up and tightened the pressure on the trigger. One more ounce of pressure and he would send a bullet straight into Tanaka’s face. Even at that range he knew he was unlikely to miss.

  Tanaka held the object in the air and shouted, “Tonight, you die. I will send The Swarm to kill you all!” He began laughing at his own sick joke. “I am the controller, the bringer of death. I will pick over your bones.”

  Hendricks spoke urgently, “Annie. What is in his hand? Do we need it?”

  Annie bleeped in his ear. He knew enough about her now to know it was her thinking signal. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a drone sweeping closer to Tanaka who was shocked by the sudden appearance of the strange flying object. His anger once again changed to fear as he held his arms up as if to protect himself from an evil spirit.

  “It’s a portable transmitter. We have many in our stores of similar design,” she answered quickly.

  “Do we need to get it, was my question, Annie,” snapped Hendricks.

  “Yes, it would be logical to take it from him—”Hendricks took aim“—but tactically I would advise against such a course of action.” Hendricks lowered the gun a fraction. “We know what he has, which gives us an indication of how he controls The Swarm. When we get access to Charlie site Annie, we need to find out more. If we take it now it’s just a transmitter, and we have plenty of those—it’s what he does with it that’s the unknown factor—”

  Amir, who was connected to the conversation, interrupted Annie.

  “I agree, Hendricks, we need to get to Charlie Annie urgently.”

  Hendricks lowered his weapon and watched as Tanaka turned and, still laughing like a maniac, walked toward the trees and disappeared into the gloom cast by their branches.

  Hendricks, trained to be suspicious by nature, started to think to himself that Amir’s desperation to reach Charlie Annie may have motives other than to control The swarm, but he decided not to question him further and just watch him carefully for any clues.

  As the last of Tanaka’s warriors turned and retreated into the trees, he pushed his pistol back into his holster and turned back toward the gate.

  “We may need to get to Charlie site, but we need to survive tonight first,” he said, more to himself but still heard by the others, as he strode back

  Annie bleeped in his ear. “I have been thinking about that, Jimmy,” she said, “and I have some ideas I would like to discuss with you when you are ready.”

  Chapter 9

  A Ditch in Time

  Hendricks waited for the gates to close and the locks to engage before he allowed himself to relax.

  He looked up at the walls where most of their small community had stood to give the appearance of a greater number of fighters. Everyone who was old enough had received basic survival and firearms training as part of the preparations they all went through before going into cryo, but whether they could be relied upon when the pressure was turned up was another matter entirely.

  He spotted Anderson as he held a hand out to help Cat down the last few rungs of the ladder to one of the pods and chuckled quietly to himself. He had proved him wrong, so maybe the others would too when the time came. Watching how Anderson was treating the nurse brought a larger smile to his face as his own memories of when he was a gawky teenager and first discovering the joys of the opposite sex sprang into his mind.

  He looked away from his lovestruck friend and got down to business.

  “Sierra team. Four of you remain visible on the walls for now, choose between yourselves, the rest meet me in the central area. We need to prepare for what may come at us tonight. I’ll keep the channels open for those on the walls so you can listen in and contribute as well.”

  “Jimmy?” asked Annie. “Can I suggest we include some engineers and one or two others at the meeting? I think they will be able to comment better on the feasibility of my options. In the meantime, I will return all but one of the drones for recharging to enable me to maintain continuous cover.”

  “Of course, Annie, get whoever you think necessary to join us. And good idea about the drones.”

  She bleeped her down-tone. The tone this time, if he was not mistaken, sounded pleased with the praise he had just given her. Perhaps even a little smug.

  ~

  “I have studied how The Swarm acts and run through many possible scenarios,” Annie spoke through a speaker hidden in the wall of the pod nearest to where Hendricks had called them together. Annie had asked Amir, Dr. Herbert, and three engineers he had not had chance to get to know yet to the meeting. Hayley Cole, armed with her ubiquitous tablet, accompanied Amir.

  “The most effective way as we have discovered is to use the gun systems to keep The Swarm from breaching the walls. I have studied the action and am confident I have learnt enough of how they act to be able to stop another breach occurring. The problem we all know with that is we have very limited reserves of ammunition. I then began processing other ideas, the simplest of which is fire. Doctor Herbert, I assume I am correct in my assumptions that all animals, no matter how primitive their cognitive abilities, will avoid fire?”

  “Yes,” he replied pushing his glasses that had slid down his nose back into position. “The more primitive the animal of any kind, the higher level of aversion to fire is to be expected. Even though we b
elieve these bugs have some remote guidance, they are still animals with their own simple brain. So yes, I believe they would have a natural instinct to avoid anything that they sense would be a danger to their existence.”

  “Thank you, Doctor Herbert,” Annie replied. “With the equipment we have we can dig a shallow ditch around our position and place combustible material in it. If we use a suitable accelerant it would catch fire quickly. I can give us enough warning of their approach so that it will be burning fiercely by the time they arrive.”

  Hendricks started to interrupt but Annie stopped him.

  “Mister Hendricks, if you are about to comment on the amount of labor required to keep a ditch stocked with enough dry wood to keep us safe in the long term then can I stop you there, it is something I am fully aware of.”

  Hendricks smiled and shrugged in acceptance as everyone looked at him. “Okay, Annie, carry on.”

  “The dry wood and availability of a suitable accelerant does not make that solution a long-term prospect. If The swarm arrived during a period of intense rainfall as the topography of this area suggest would happen regularly on a bi-annual schedule, then we would be at risk of exposure. Until my next proposal can be completed, however, it should provide us with an extra layer of protection without relying on the gun system.” She did one of her pauses again, waiting to see if anyone had anything to add or ask.

  “All of the pods are fitted with compressed air thrusters that were used for small course corrections in space and to stabilize the crafts on their return to Earth,” she explained. “If we remove these systems from the pods and attach them at strategic positions on the walls then, using the internal air compressors, any of The Swarm that climbs the walls could be easily ejected from the area.”

  Everyone stood silently as they thought over the idea. One of the engineers, a man called Clarke who was one of the last to come out of cryo along with his wife and ten-year-old son, spoke first.

  “That’s a pretty good idea,” he said, looking at the men in charge as though he hadn’t yet figured out how to address the computer who thought for itself. “The amount of psi those thrusters kick out should be enough to more than knock them off the walls; if we can get the nozzles right it should even be able to blow them apart.”

  Dr. Herbert sounded excited as he spoke. “We can test them on the carapace remains I have in storage from the dissections. If you can pierce the chitin, which on the specimens I have studied is the hardest I have ever encountered, then even a low-powered burst of air should damage the vital organs inside sufficiently to kill them.”

  Amir looked at Clarke and the two other engineers. “Can you build it?”

  They all nodded thoughtfully before Clarke responded. “I don’t see why not. If you can let us inspect what we have and look at what we might need to rig up a working system, then we can come up with something I’m sure.”

  Hendricks this time beat Amir to it. “Gents, this doesn’t have to be a thing of beauty, it just has to work,” he said, driving the edge of his right hand into his left palm with each emphasized word. “I know how you engineers go about things. Just cut out the first twenty planning and design changes you normally go through before you even build something and get on with it. How long before you can tell us if it’s a feasible proposition?”

  Clarke, who puffed his chest out in mild indignation, was about to respond when another of the engineers cut in. His Australian accent was cheerful and full of confidence as he spoke.

  “No worries, mate. It’s why Mister Weatherby invited me on this gig in the first place I reckon. I was the best bush mechanic he had; when it’s a nine-hour drive to the nearest shop you learn to get a little creative so we’ll get some something rigged up for you in no time.”

  He looked at the other two engineers.

  “Well? What’re you two standing around like a pair of drongos for, eh? Let’s get on with it!”

  As they walked away, Amir turned to Hendricks in an attempt to take control of the meeting again. “I’ll organize the digging of the trench if you want to get on with other security matters. Would that be useful?” Hendricks nodded his agreement, glad he didn’t have to point out the stupidity in putting their only trained soldiers to work digging trenches.

  “But first,” Amir asked, “can you give me your appraisal of the meeting with Tanaka? We were all listening in, but you were face to face with him…” Amir left it open to see if Hendricks would start talking. He didn’t and just stared at the man asking and forcing him to fill the silence.

  “Did you have to kill his two henchmen?” Amir asked finally. “I don’t think that helped the situation.”

  Hendricks smiled at Amir with a bemused expression. “Mister Weatherby, you listened in on the same conversation, right? He told those two goons to kill me. They’re fanatics. They’re more frightened of disobeying their Tanaka than they are of me flat-packing the pair of them like an Ikea coffee table.” He paused trying to control his rising anger once again at Amir’s interference in how he operated.

  “You,” he said in a low, acidic tone, “not so long ago, lectured me about hostile takeovers. Now, if I’m not mistaken, and to be clear I’m not, the takeover he was planning was about as hostile as it gets. I showed him we weren’t to be messed with and he backed off like the true coward I expect he is. The pair I killed were, as you would probably call it, ‘unfortunate collateral damage.’ I could have killed him too but decided not to because a leaderless army tends to do rather stupid things. I’ve seen it before, on this very continent actually.” He paused to grant Amir the full weight of his eyeballing.

  “We’re beginning to know him, to know his weaknesses and how to deal with him. If I’d killed him, who knows who’d have replaced him. Maybe someone with more guile and cunning who’d be harder to understand and, if necessary, kill.

  “We gathered valuable information with that little exchange out there. His anger led him to tell us about the transmitter he has in his possession, and the fact he keeps it on his person means it’s very valuable to him. It also shows me that he’s an arrogant bastard who doesn’t like not being in control of everything.”

  This last comment was aimed directly at Amir but spoken in such a way that he would be the narcissistic asshole for claiming it was meant that way.

  “Do you have a problem with any of that? I believed we had an agreement: I deal with security and you organize everything else.”

  Amir again realized he had made the wrong move in trying to assert his control again. “No Hendricks, you were right to act as you did.” He placed a respectful and sincere hand on his chest as he spoke, convincing Hendricks to the same extent as believing a crocodile’s smile. “Please accept my apologies if it came across that I was trying to interfere in any way. I just don’t want any complications to stand in the way of us reaching Charlie site as soon as possible, and a siege by Tanaka would delay that considerably.”

  Hendricks nodded his acceptance of the apology. As Amir was walking away, followed by the ever-present Miss Cole, he had a thought and called out to him to stop.

  “Mister Weatherby, I think you may have inadvertently struck on something there when you mentioned a siege.” Amir stopped, taking a few steps back toward him and asking for an explanation. “We haven’t the manpower to protect a large group of us if we have to leave the compound and do things like start planting crops and tend to the animals we have in cryo. I’ve been only thinking about supplies of ammunition and how to extend them, but how much food and other necessities of life here do we have stored?”

  Amir nodded, accepting the olive branch Hendricks had apparently extended to him. He thought for a few seconds before replying. “The planned storage for the Ark was enough to feed everyone on board for over six months. Charlie site had a far greater storage capacity as it held more people and it was cheaper to store it there than transport it to space, as did the Echo site facility in Europe, both in case of initial crop failure or any other
problems we may encounter in trying to become self-sufficient. The failsafe for us in space was that we could choose to land at either site if one failed to survive and use their resources to supplement the ones we’d bring back down with us.” He seemed to think about it, lowering his head slightly. “We also had the option of keeping non-essential personnel in cryo until there were sufficient resources available.” His head snapped back up and his voice grew more confident once more.

  “You’re right though; we’re not monitoring or rationing their use as we probably should be. If, for some reason, we find ourselves in a siege situation and are unable to leave the compound, then we could use all our supplies before we’re able to replace them with what we’d planned to grow ourselves. Once I’ve completed the work on the ditch, I’ll have a complete inventory of our supplies done”—he turned to give the slightest nod to Cole who was already furiously tapping out a note on the tablet that appeared in her hands—“and we can decide if we need to introduce a more strict system of rationing as a precaution.”

  Hendricks nodded, trying to further rebuild the bridges between them as having the man as an enemy wasn’t good for the long-term prospects of the community or indeed himself. For them to succeed they needed to get along, therefore he made his tone as placatory as his simmering anger toward him allowed. “If you can do that it’d be great. And before you say it, I understand the need to reach Charlie site. Once I know we’re secure from attack here we can plan the mission to reach it.”

  The relief shown on Amir’s face aroused Hendricks’ suspicions again. Realizing he may catch him off guard he quickly added, “Mister Weatherby? Is there anything else at Charlie site I need to know about?”

  Amir’s face, for a split second before he managed to bring it under control, showed either panic or guilt. Hendricks couldn’t decide which, but he knew it was there. Stammering slightly on his reply, Amir answered a little too quickly to be believable.