by Devon C Ford
“It’s him,” she said simply.
Hendricks signaled to the men to get ready and, with a final check of his equipment, stood up and walked into the open.
“Weapons down but stay alert,” he said as the men formed up behind him, their weapons held low and eyes scanning everywhere.
A horn sounded from the walls as they approached, heads appearing on the walls and ducking from view. His body tensed ready for action when the gate fifty yards ahead of him began to open. He relaxed again when, instead of armed warriors, a group of older men stepped out from the shadow of the gate and walked toward them.
Stopping five paces apart the elderly man at the front held out his arms and said simply, “Welcome.”
“Is that your work?” Hendricks asked, nodding his head toward the walls.
“No, not mine personally, but it is a symbol of our willingness to end the bitter conflict that we have suffered since our ancestors first woke from their long sleep. It is now time for peace. The war is over.”
Hendricks raised his head and looked at the head of the last Tanaka, his unseeing eyes staring over what he had once ruled, fixed to a spike on top of the walls.
Epilogue
“Annie, have I got this right?” I asked, not quite believing what he had just worked out.
“Yes, David,” Annie replied calmly. “If we want to control The Swarm, we must access Echo site Annie. I have studied all the data and records from Charlie Annie and now we have found the device Tanaka used to direct them I understand it more fully.”
“Wait.” I held my hands up. “Call Weatherby and Hendricks in here first, they need to hear this.”
Under five minutes later the two stood in the small room Anderson had adopted as his office. The desk that took up most of the space was filled with screens and keypads linked together by a tangle of leads. “Annie, I’ll explain what we’ve discovered, but please interrupt if I miss anything.”
“If we want to control The Swarm, we need to get to Echo Site.” I let that statement hang in the air for a while before continuing. “Eades created the origins of The Swarm but, following the asteroid impact where his region was hit by irradiated lumps of debris caused by the last-ditch nuclear strike attempt, his creation mutated and evolved rapidly. It became, over the course of a few years, what we see now.” I looked at two blank faces I was on the verge of losing. “The science will take too long to explain, but it appears the hive queen that he developed controls all swarms globally.”
“How?” Amir asked.
“Through VLF, very low frequency, that is,” I explained unnecessarily as both knew what it meant. “The computer Tanaka used to control it was powered from Charlie site and the transmitter, the one he kept in his pocket, sent the coordinates to the transmitter built into the structure of the bunker.”
“Yes,” Amir cut in, “we installed it as a back up to send data transmissions to the other sites if primary means of communication failed.”
I looked at him annoyed at my flow being interrupted. “If I may continue,” I said staring at him. This was my meeting and not his. “The best guess is that the hive queen at Echo site receives it then gets relayed by, again we suspect following our study of the organic electronic devices in the captured bugs we dissected, VLF transmission to them. And then they just follow the instructions like lemmings.”
“Can’t we send our own signal?” Hendricks asked when I paused.
“Unfortunately not,” I replied with a sigh. “Tanaka’s device was uniquely programmed, and Annie can’t replicate the code without accessing Echo Annie’s memory, which she can’t do until we reestablish the communication link, and that can only be done at Echo site.”
“How far away is Echo site?” Hendricks’ voice sounded tired as he knew it was a long way.
“Annie?” I asked.
“Echo site is four thousand six hundred and twenty-two miles from our current location,” Annie said, this time her voice sounded apologetic.
“There’s no way we can mount an expedition over that distance,” Hendricks said dejectedly. “Just walking there would take years; it can’t be done.”
“David, may I?” asked Annie.
I nodded, grateful to let her take the lead. “I agree, Jimmy, until we know what the condition of the site is, the unknown dangers and supply issues involved means that to mount such an expedition is far beyond the capabilities we have.” She paused as if knowing her next statement needed a little drama. “But I can reach the site in approximately twenty-two days.”
“How?” Weatherby and Hendricks asked at the same time.
“In the bunker Mister Weatherby had secreted at Charlie site is a prototype drone. Its capabilities are far beyond the ones we are currently using. Due to its size and weight it was impractical to send to the ARC so was included in the inventory at the bunker. It’s called a Long-Range Autonomous Reconnaissance Drone Aerial Surveillance System or, as I will refer to it by acronym to save time, LARDASS”
I interrupted with a childish but ultimately justified laugh as did the others.
“Lard-ass, Annie? Seriously?”
“I am glad that my attempt at humor was successful,” she said without a trace of humor in her words. “The original designation for the prototype was the Long-Range Reconnaissance System, which the designers simply called LARS which is a name that was common in the twenty-first century in areas such as Denmark and Sweden. It is derived from the Roman or Latin name Laurenti—”
“Annie,” I interrupted. “The point, please?”
“I apologize, the…drone is designed to covertly monitor and send back intelligence on insurgency groups in all theaters. Developed to fly silently, it recharges via PV, that’s photo-voltaic panels, and a small deployable wind turbine giving it the ability to remain on station indefinitely, tracking its targets as they move.”
Weatherby interrupted Annie with more than a hint of pride in his voice. “The concept stemmed from severe losses special forces were suffering on covert reconnaissance missions in inhospitable theaters. The drone is capable of replicating most of their mission parameters with no danger to life. It ca—”
“Why twenty-two days?” interrupted Hendricks as he could see Weatherby was about to continue extolling the features of his wonder drone.
“If it flies at night and recharges during the day, I calculate that is the minimum flight time needed,” she replied curtly. As if in reaction to her calculations being questioned when they should be taken as fact.
“Is it vulnerable to anything?” I asked.
“Only the electronic disruption prototype device designed and built by the same sub-division of Mister Weatherby’s organization.” Both mine and Hendricks’ eyes turned to Amir, who shrugged.
“If you make bullets,” he said unashamedly, “doesn’t it make sense to make armor too?”
“My first summation,” Annie continued as she ignored us, “was that Echo site was destroyed when the asteroid hit. I was not as independent as I am now and programmed only to observe the other sites when I passed overhead in space. “I understood my error when we studied the records when I brought the others out of cryostasis in the bunker; I assumed the crater at the site was from an asteroid impact, however, following our discoveries about Eades when we connected to Charlie Annie, I discovered a more likely probability.”
“Which is?” Hendricks prompted.
“The site remained active for fifty years following the impact, until it was partially destroyed by a nuclear explosion. If you recall, I mentioned this when we were in the bunker. I do not know who fired the weapon, only that the blast radius and pattern fit the profile of a ground burst, low-yield tactical nuclear detonation. The fact that The Swarm is still being controlled by their hive queen intimates that she was not killed in the strike and was most likely located elsewhere. Until I can observe the site, I cannot answer anything else with certainty.”
“How will you control the drone over such a distance?
” Amir asked. I wasn’t sure if he looked smug at finding a potential flaw in the plan.
“The ARC has just enough fuel for me to reposition it in a geostationary orbit over the route I have planned, and I will link my signal directly through the onboard array. The solar panels are still operational and will provide sufficient power to broadcast continual live feed which I will analyze and report on. I estimate that the decaying orbit the station is in will render the possibility of this plan unviable in seventy-nine days.”
“So, you have thought of everything,” Hendricks replied, looking at Weatherby’s slightly sullen face. “When can you start?”
“As soon as the drone is unpacked, fully charged and checked over I can begin.”
~
The sun was setting when the large, odd-shaped drone with its eight conical rotors that looked more like ice-cream cones than a drive system, spun almost silently to lift it into the sky. The chameleon camouflage system as it was known with some obscure official reference being abandoned because it wasn’t cool, instantly blended it into the surrounding environment to hide it from view.
“What Annie said got me thinking,” Hendricks said to me casually. “If Echo site was targeted by a nuke, then the chances are it would be either the Russians or the Chinese. My question is, why would they still have an operational nuclear arsenal one hundred and fifty years after the impact? And why would they use it against Echo site?”
He put his hands on is hips and watched the darkening sky the drone had vanished into. I’d asked myself the same questions and more, but the conjecture always led me down a dark road. Better to wait until we have more data to start extrapolating, I told myself, but I still couldn’t shake the feeling of dread. I sighed and answered Hendricks.
“I have a funny feeling we may not like what Annie finds there.”
About the Authors
Devon C Ford is from the UK and lives in the Midlands. His career in public services started in his teens and has provided a wealth of experiences, both good and some very bad, which form the basis of the books ideas that cause regular insomnia.
Facebook: @decvoncfordofficial
Twitter: @DevonFordAuthor
Website: www.devoncford.com
Chris Harris was born in south Birmingham and proudly declares himself to be a true Brummie, born and bred.
He has a wife, three children and one grandchild, all of whom are very important to him and keep him very busy. His many interests include tennis, skiing, racquet ball, darts, and shooting. He’s also been an avid reader throughout his life.
Facebook: @chrisharrisauthor
Website: www.chrisharrisauthor.co.uk