by Greig Beck
CHAPTER 39
Office of the Chief of the General Staff, Russian Ministry of Defense, Moscow
Colonel Nadi Borishenko stood at attention as he waited for the general to finish his call. His hands were sweating, and he felt he stood on the precipice of greatness … or on the edge of an abyss.
General Yevgeni Ivanovich nodded as he listened for another moment, and then: “As you command, sir.” He slowly hung up and then just as slowly turned to Borishenko.
His pale eyes stared for a moment as though X-raying his soul. “You can control this?”
Borishenko stood rod straight. “Yes, sir. The German, Schneider, is working with us to provide us, and us alone, with an insulating component. And antidote, if you will.”
“Why?” The general sat back.
Borishenko permitted himself a small smile. “He believes he has unfinished business with America. He wants to make them pay.” He met the general’s eyes. “I can vouch for him, and his usefulness.”
“Can you?” The general continued to stare, and Borishenko felt the tickle of perspiration run down under his arms.
“This meeting didn’t happen, and there will be no record of your project.” The general nodded. “Your mission is approved.”
Borishenko felt his heart swell with pride and a little nervousness. It meant President Volkov himself had authorized his mission. He saluted, and was about to turn away.
“Colonel.” The general’s gaze was reptilian. “Remember, you vouched for him. You own this.”
“Yes, sir.” Borishenko saluted again and then turned and quick marched out the door. His plan had been simple. Following the successful test over Ukraine, they would undertake a larger and more ambitious attack.
This time, their rival was someone a lot bigger and had a lot more to lose. There was a fast freighter, the Illiansk, already loaded with twenty-four sealed drums of the silachnid eggs waiting in Severomorsk, and now ready to go. Its target was the port of New York and New Jersey, the third largest working port in the United States, with a surrounding population of over eight and a half million people.
The swarms would be released and infiltrate the entire American eastern seaboard. Millions would die and they would tie up resources for years. Perhaps forever.
If that happened and everything went as Borishenko hoped then recognition, promotion and greatness was his.
He felt nothing for his adversaries, as he too had unfinished business with America. And also with Colonel Jack Hammerson – he just wished the American colonel was on the front line.
Yes, I do own this, he thought. Borishenko beamed with pride as he marched down the long corridor, humming an old Russian song.
CHAPTER 40
USA – USSTRATCOM Headquarters, sub-level 1 laboratories
“Don’t give up hope, Matt.” Lana still had an arm over his shoulders as the pair sat together.
“It’s been too long.” Matt slumped forward, staring at the ground. “She’s out there, somewhere, alone.” He looked into Lana’s face. “I can feel it.”
Lana simply nodded.
“She’s not safe.” Matt rubbed both hands up his face, hard, trying to wipe away the mental images of his mom screaming for him. “Megan was with her,” he said softly.
“I know, but …” Lana didn’t know what else to say. Frankly, she didn’t hold out hope of seeing Matt’s mom alive again, but would never say that out loud.
“I know her. I think she’s hiding somewhere until these things are gone.” Matt sat back. “And that’s why we have to kill these bastards. Make them go away forever.”
“Damn right.” Lana stood, and held out a hand to Matt. “So help me do it.”
Matt gave her a broken smile. “Yeah.” He took her hand and she hauled him up. “Yeah, let’s do it.”
Lana led him in through the lab doors. She had been allocated an entire laboratory and twenty chemistry, biology, and geology specialists, plus an army of technical assistants to work with her.
Matt was an invited observer, and Hammerson, though an observer himself, watched like an impatient bird of prey as the teams worked.
Lana also had at her disposal an electron microscope and gene sequencer. She looked at the waiting samples – all she needed was a single viable spore.
She let her eyes travel along the wall where, stacked in layers, waited two dozen sealed metal cases containing the priceless moon rock samples.
Since their retrieval from the moon, all had been examined and tested, and then all had been pronounced inert to the point of being sterile. The presiding wisdom was the dryness, the vacuum of space, and also the prevailing exposure to solar radiation, had totally sterilized them over countless millions of years.
But Lana also knew that fungus was one of the most resilient living things in existence. And fungi were radiation resistant. Decades ago, they survived when an explosion blasted radioactive material throughout northern Ukraine. They had been found in reactor pools in Chernobyl, and had been grown in the orbiting space station.
Fungi were tough. Fungi could, and did, adapt. And something else … fungi could hide.
Lana called for the first case to be opened. The moon rocks had been extensively examined, photographed and X-rayed. But most only externally. They were so valuable that only a handful were ever internally examined, and most times they were pulverized to examine their mineral composition only.
She drew in a deep breath, readying herself. She knew, if she had to, she would examine every one of the rocks internally, twice. And that meant breaking each and every one of the rarest things in the world open, and potentially destroying them.
One of her assistants brought her the first sample. It was roughly shaped like a large pockmarked peanut, and was colored a purple–gray. It had the texture of pumice.
She had a facemask on, and also a small electric rock saw. She brought a magnifying glass down in front of her face from an extendable arm.
“Making a preliminary cut, on sample …” She checked the label on the slot in the case. “… 275x013.”
The saw started with the high-pitched whine of an angry mosquito as she gently applied it to the stone. Dust was thrown to the sides and the saw cut easily through the soft rock. In seconds she had it in half and then opened the pieces out to see what secrets they held.
Inside there was solid matter, heat burnished from the saw. She turned it slowly under the magnifying glass, searching for her clues. After another moment she placed one piece in a small vice, and then let the computer take control so it could shave away a slice that was only a few microns across. After that, she dropped it in a sterilized solution.
Lana slid it under the microscope. She knew what she was looking for – the telltale spores of fungus were usually rounded shapes. But could also be spiky, rods, cones, or coiled threads.
But in this one, there was nothing like that at all.
“Logging sample 275x013 as having no visible presence of spores at two hundred times magnification. Sending to spectrometer and electron microscope for lower level analysis.”
Though the technicians would review the sample at a chemical level and a much higher magnification, she knew that there would be nothing. But she still had high hopes as there were hundreds more samples to go.
She selected the next. “Sample 275x014.”
She began the procedure again. And again. And again.
Lana performed the same process eighty-three more times, and even though she had taken several rest and coffee breaks, her wrists and fingertips ached from gripping the tiny saw, and she often needed to blink to clear her blurring vision. Plus she felt the beginning of a needle of pain deep in her skull – the telltale sign of a concentration headache started to form up like a storm front.
She was almost about to brush sample 275x098 aside, when her brain replayed the image again in her mind. She froze, and then pushed the slide back under the viewer.
There – a long thread of things that l
ooked like bubbles all joined together.
“Hold it, hold it …” Lana adjusted her magnification, and stared hard into the lens.
Matt, who had been chatting by a coffee urn, stopped his conversation and turned.
Hammerson fast walked toward her desk. “What have you got?” he demanded.
Lana began to grin as she continued to stare into the scope. “I think I have a globose spore shape that would translate nicely into realized community assemblages.”
“And once again in English?” Hammerson asked.
She pulled back. “Putting it up on screen.”
Lana switched on the projector and the images she was looking at were displayed on a huge monitor on the wall. The group watched and she sharpened the focus to reveal something that looked like a long and lumpy loaf of bread.
“Those spore globes are all fitted together nice and neatly.” She started to smile. “I really think we might have something here.”
“Well done,” Matt said.
“Is it viable?” Hammerson asked.
“Only if we can manage to rehydrate it.” Lana whistled softly as she increased the magnification again. “This is one tough little son of a bitch; it’s surrounded by an outer rodlet layer of hydrophobic proteins and melanin – basically, it’s super armor-plated.”
“It would have to be to survive the Theia impact, solar radiation, and then a few billion years on the moon.” Matt grinned back.
“Damn right.” Lana used the microscope and precision tools to commence her work. “Okay, going to release it from the matrix, and then try and rehydrate just one of the spore globes.”
Her teeth clamped together as she carefully worked at a near microscopic level. In a few minutes she moved to using a needle probe to extract a single tiny globe and place it on a dish. She then added a drop of liquid.
“First up, just sterile H2O.”
She went back to the scope, and everyone turned to the projected images on the screen.
Lana changed the magnification to five hundred times and the translucent globe hung in the solution. Lit from below it shone like a tiny full moon.
They watched, and waited, and the seconds turned into minutes. Lana squinted into her eyepiece.
Hammerson exhaled impatiently. “How long?”
Lana looked up, scowling. “Minutes, hours, days – we don’t exactly have a rule book or any precedents to follow on this.”
Hammerson’s jaws worked behind his cheeks, as his glare seemed to intensify. “We haven’t got days to wait for that thing to germinate, or whatever it’s supposed to do. If it doesn’t, I want you to try something else.”
“But …” Lana started, but then wilted under his gaze. “Okay.”
“Time is one of our biggest enemies right now. Instead of waiting for a single test thread to complete, why don’t you try the other tests at the same time.” Hammerson lifted his chin a fraction. “Sound like a plan?”
Lana nodded, and then started to prepare some other test dishes. “Going to bathe another globe segment in a glucose solution, and another in –”
“Silicon,” Matt said. “Try a silicon solution.”
“Yep.” She nodded. “Good idea.”
Lana prepared the next sample segments and their solution baths, and within an hour she was carefully placing the tiny specks of the globe segments into each of them.
She changed the viewscreen into multiple sections so they could watch each one at the same time.
Again they waited, minutes passed. Hammerson paced, slowly, his boots squeaking on the linoleum floor. Lana exhaled and sat back in her seat, and tried to think of other tests.
“It might not be a viable specimen after all.” She turned to the steel cases. “If it isn’t, I’ll have to keep searching.”
“Look!” Matt’s voice spun her back to the screens.
The sterile water and glucose sample remained inert, but the spore in the silicon solution had what looked like a single fine hair sticking from it.
“Is that contamination?” Matt asked.
As they watched the thread vibrated.
Lana beamed as she held up her hands in front of her mouth and clasped her fingers together. “A hyphae … it’s germinating.”
“Into what?” Hammerson asked.
The wall of the spore bulged outwards as the thread thickened and was then enveloped by a wall of its own. The long shoot-like thread began to swell.
“It’s absorbing the nutrients in the solution.” Lana was transfixed. “Unlike plants, which use carbon dioxide and light as sources of energy, fungi meet these two food requirements by assimilating organic matter. Carbohydrates are usually the preferred source, but they can readily absorb and metabolize a variety of soluble carbohydrates, such as glucose, xylose, sucrose, and fructose …” She turned. “But when it comes to this tough little guy, it’s silicon.”
“Amazing,” Matt said. “And it’s getting bigger.”
The long trunk-like tendril expanded at its end into small filaments that looked like claws. In a few more seconds, the growth and movement stopped.
“What happened?” Hammerson squinted. “Did it just die on us?”
“Unlikely,” Lana said. “I think it’s just absorbed all the available nutrients, so has gone inactive.”
“There’s only one thing I care about: will it destroy the silicoids? Will it do the job we want?” Hammerson demanded.
“I don’t know. Most fungi are saprotrophic, meaning they obtain their food from dead organic material. What we want is for it to be a parasitic fungus that gets its nutrients by feeding on living organisms. In this case, on the silicoid bugs.”
Lana’s vision turned inward for a moment, as she thought it through. “We need to do a test.” Lana swiveled her chair toward the HAWC colonel. “And for that, we’ll need more live specimens.”
CHAPTER 41
Hammerson watched from the war room with growing unease. They now knew that the silicoids seemed to feed until they hit a certain growth point. Then they’d burrow under the earth where some sort of rapid evolutionary metamorphosis took place as the next growth phase occurred. When they reemerged, they were bigger, stronger, smarter, and just damned different.
Plus they were now laying eggs in hives and the swarm populations were increasing in size. It all meant that the human race was under a grave threat and facing its very own extinction event.
The last reports he had indicated the silicoids were as big as a man now, and probably three times as strong. How do you separate and capture a few specimens when they were in among an army of their own kind? he wondered.
He thanked all the saints that at least they didn’t fly anymore. Maybe it was the energy to weight ratio making it too costly for them. Or they had simply evolved beyond that. And their evolution continued.
“And then what comes next?” he muttered.
The satellite detected the heat bloom on the soil surface of the field outside of Cedar Rapids. The good-sized town had over a hundred thousand residents that had all been emergency evacuated. The silicoids were coming up, expecting to swarm into the town for a free meal on all those innocent people. Instead they’d find nothing but an inferno.
But that was the second part of their engagement plan. The first part was to grab a few of these monstrosities for Doctor Lana Miles and her labs to do their work on.
It was a simple process, and one that had been used for decades to trap birds or other fast-moving creatures: The bugs passed a certain point triggering ground-level canons to fire, dragging a hundred square feet of iron mesh over the desired patch of ground. When it dropped, its weight pinned down anything underneath it. He hoped the huge gauge steel mesh would be enough to hold a few of the bastards so his team had time to hog-tie them.
And that was the easy part. Before they rained hellfire and damnation down on those hellish things, they needed to grab the trapped silicoids and get them out. He knew the bugs would be fighting back, and the en
tire swarm would undoubtedly be trying to eat his team alive.
Hammerson laughed with little humor. When it came to missions like this, there was no one skilled enough, brave enough, or maybe mad enough, to do the job other than his HAWCs.
Hammerson looked up at the countdown clock on the satellite image of the site on screen before him. It was time.
“Come in, Bravo.”
“Bravo in, boss.” The deep voice of Roy Maddock came back, calm and cool.
Hammerson looked at the satellite image as it panned across from the heat blooms of the outer fields to the HAWC position.
His team had dug foxholes, and the three HAWCs were in deep, with shielded cover ready to be pulled over them for insulation.
Maddock was easily spotted as his six foot two inch frame was bulked up even more by the armored suit he wore. With him were Klara and Vin – each warrior was worth a dozen standard Spec Ops, and Hammerson trusted them to get the critical job done. Or die trying.
“Bugs are coming up. Get ready,” Hammerson said.
“Confirm. We’re locked and loaded and ready to rumble,” Maddock replied.
Hammerson smiled grimly. Locked and loaded, and tech’d up to the hilt, he thought. He just hoped it was enough.
“Sir, we have emergence.”
Hammerson turned to the technician. “Show me.”
On his screen another satellite image drilled all the way down to ground level. It now showed manhole-sized eruptions in the earth as the things started to burrow upwards.
“Showtime, Bravo.” Hammerson folded his arms, sucked in a huge breath and let it out real slow as he watched.
*
“Roger that, out.” Maddock turned to his team. “Muscle up, people, we have incoming.”
“HUA.”
Maddock did a weapons check one last time, which took a few extra seconds considering their armaments. Though the HAWCs had several forms of weapons and munitions, from modified flamethrowers to high-speed shotguns, and even concentrated emitted-light weaponry, lasers, they all knew that their objective wasn’t to stand and fight, but one of retrieval – snatch and grab.