Extinction Code

by James D. Prescott

  Then, with the comparison complete, the computer spat out one additional point of commonality. Mia slumped into the chair, not at all ready for what she was seeing. The alien had Salzburg.

  Chapter 60

  Mia climbed up one level to find Hart at comms.

  “You’re white as a sheet,” he said, rising to his feet. “Everything all right?”

  “I’m not sure.” She stumbled up the circular stairwell that led to the Orb’s mess, clawing at the railing as she went. She braced herself against the bulkhead, drawing in a deep breath, the muscles in her chest constricting painfully. When she had things at least partially under control, Mia broadcast to Tom and the others. “Are you guys still in the lab?”

  “Affirmative,” Tom replied, jovially. “We’re heading back now. Mia, you will not believe this place.”

  “Did you find what you were looking for?” she asked, still struggling to control her breathing.

  “You sound stressed,” Sven said, his deep voice even lower over the radio. “Are you hurt?”

  “No, but I need to know if you found the library you were looking for.”

  “We did,” Jack assured her. “Anna’s sent the elevator down to get us. We won’t be long.”

  Mia caught a rustling behind her. She turned to see a woman in a blue biosuit emerging from the submersible.

  “Dr. Ward, is it?” the woman asked.

  “Did you just arrive?” Mia replied, still feeling a touch disoriented. The implications of what she’d stumbled upon moments ago were so vast she was having trouble processing it.

  “We’ve been here a while,” the woman said. “I’m Lieutenant Brooks with the ONI.” Strands of her hair were waving free from her bun at the back. It looked as though she’d been asleep or engaged in some challenging manual labor. “I expect while you’re here that any and all pertinent discoveries will be shared with Naval Intelligence.”

  Mia swallowed. “Yes, of course.” As far as she was concerned, she had no reason to hold onto the secret. Surely the military could be trusted. But that nagging feeling kept creeping back in. She’d learned the hard way what happened when you trusted the wrong person. The ONI had their own mission and for all Mia knew, classifying her discovery as top-secret could stifle any future research into fighting Salzburg.

  “We’re all on the same team,” Brooks assured her.

  Mia watched as she spoke, noticing how the woman’s gums were more prominent than her teeth. She remembered seeing the same thing among great white sharks on a Discovery program.

  “We have files on everyone here,” Brooks went on, scooping her helmet off the table.

  “I’m only here to study biological samples,” Mia protested. She wasn’t looking for trouble and wasn’t sure why the woman was sizing her up like this. “Once we know what we have, we’ll be happy to share it with you.”

  “So you have something?” Brooks’ eyes narrowed.

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “No, but you implied it. Let’s cut the bull. We know very well why you’re here, Mia. You wanna save your daughter.”

  Mia felt heat rise up her neck and into her face. “Excuse me?”

  “We also know about your little stint in rehab. Yes, of course, why wouldn’t we know? Don’t think you weren’t vetted before the Navy allowed you to come to a highly sensitive facility.”

  Mia put her hand to her head. The room was starting to spin. Was she having trouble adjusting to the change in pressure in the Orb? “I-I’m not sure what any of this has to do with my daughter.”

  “It has everything to do with your objectivity,” Brooks said, folding the helmet under her arm. “The human race is at the most critical crossroads in its history and you’ve got one person on your mind. What about the rest of the country?”

  “Or the rest of the world,” Mia added, suddenly wondering if Brooks was right. Had she been so laser-focused on finding a treatment for Salzburg that she’d lost her way?

  The whoosh of the inner airlock opening sounded behind her. Brooks leaned in. “Like I said, we’re in the intelligence business. We know what you’re going to do even before you do. When the time comes, make sure you remember whose side you’re on.”

  Brooks strode toward the airlock, acknowledging Jack and the others as she went by.

  “What was that all about?” Tom asked, alarm growing in his voice when he saw Mia’s face.

  Mia spun and watched Brooks close the airlock behind her. “I think she was threatening me.”

  Chapter 61

  Jack followed Mia down to the Orb’s lab to process the DNA samples he’d retrieved from the ship’s library. He had suspected for quite some time that if such a database existed, it would likely be located close to the chamber the animal was incubated in, a DNA master file of sorts that could be copied whenever a particular species was “ordered up”. The tricky part was waiting for Anna, still on the bridge, to remotely open the tray door housed beneath the glass enclosure. She repeated the commands for two additional pods. Since arriving, they had only seen a single source of activity in the alien lab. If other species had also been manufactured, recognizable or not, Jack felt it was important to know.

  Mia inserted all three samples and set the machine to sequence the genome for each.

  “I saw what Brooks did back there,” Jack said, half-seated on the table before her.

  Mia’s expression hardened. “If you’d arrived sooner you would have caught the whole show.”

  “Intimidation’s her only weapon,” he said. “She’s trying to remind you who’s in charge.”

  Tom and Sven came down, the larger man having trouble navigating the narrow stairwell.

  “Hope we’re not interrupting anything,” Tom said, not sounding very genuine.

  “The more the merrier,” Jack offered, waving them into the tight space. He turned back to her. “You wanna fill us in on what’s got you so spooked?”

  She ran her hand along the table’s surface, distinctly aware of the hardened plastic it was molded from. She then told them what she had found.

  Jack remained quiet, then asked, “What do you suppose it means?”

  “As far as I can tell, it’s pretty clear,” she replied, her hands clasped together now. “Genetically speaking, those praying mantis people you found mummified in the hold of the ship are our distant cousins.”

  “Not only us,” Jack said. “That means they’re related to all life on earth.”

  Tom cleared his throat, painfully aware he was in over his head. “How’s that even possible?”

  “Panspermia,” Sven said, the word surprising even himself.

  “It’s the idea that microbes blasted into space could seed other planets,” Jack explained. “Some have theorized that was how life may have got started on earth. I think what Dr. Smith—er, I mean Sven—is suggesting is that process may have happened in reverse.”

  Mia wasn’t sure. “So a piece of Earth rock gets blasted into orbit and somehow lands on a planet in another solar system, laying the foundations for an insectoid race?”

  “Saw it in a movie once,” Sven said, grinning sheepishly. “The aliens came back to reclaim their old home. Then a big war broke out.”

  Just then results for the first two specimens came back. They studied the screen as the computer searched for a match among animal species on earth. The first sample returned no known matches. The second found a name: Mesonyx.

  Jack’s eyebrows rose up. Mia too looked surprised. Tom and Sven were lost.

  “Is that a good thing?” Tom asked, his gaze bouncing between them.

  “Neither good nor bad,” Mia told them. “But definitely a surprise. See, fifty million years ago, Mesonyx was a wolf-like creature that lived and hunted on land. Perhaps due to environmental pressures, such as changes in climate, scarcity of prey or threats from larger mammals, they began spending more time in the sea. Slowly, over millions of years of natural selection, they evolved into the aquatic species we
know today as dolphins.”

  “First early man,” Jack said under his breath, “and now early dolphins.” A picture was beginning to form.

  That was when the computer finished analyzing the template DNA belonging to the proto-primate plesi. On a hunch, Mia asked the computer to compare this template sample from the alien lab to the genome she’d developed earlier from the plesi ejected from the ship.

  Mia filled them in on what she was doing. “The incubation chamber used this very sample as the template to create the archaic primate species you watched grow to near adulthood.”

  “That was before it was sucked out of the artificial womb,” Jack added. “And fired from the ship in one of those pods. But if one is merely a template, then they should be identical, so why are you comparing the two?”

  The computer zeroed in on a segment of DNA, flashing a red light.

  “There’s a section that doesn’t match,” Mia said. She ran a further test to isolate the discrepancy.

  “Could it be a mistake during the replication phase?” Jack wondered.

  Mia felt the breath catch in her throat. “The error occurred in a single gene, altering the protein it produced and its effects on the organism.”

  “A mutation,” Jack said, watching in awe as Mia’s fingers flowed across the keyboard. “But what was the new gene that formed?”

  A moment later they had their answer.

  “Monoamine oxidase A,” she said, her pulse fluttering. “Otherwise known as MAOA.”

  “That’s all great,” Tom said, wringing his hands. “But what is it?”

  Jack turned and regarded both men. “The gene that controls violence and aggression.”

  Chapter 62

  The normally smooth skin on Mia’s brow wrinkled as it always did when confronting a big discovery. “It’s nicknamed ‘the warrior gene’,” she said. “Monoamine oxidase A is an enzyme that breaks down neurotransmitters in the brain—dopamine, norepinephrine, serotonin. The MAOA gene helps to regulate this enzyme. Humans carry various forms of the gene, resulting in different levels of enzymatic activity. In other words, people with one type, MAOA-L, produce less of the enzyme and thus show a far greater tendency toward violent behavior while those with the MAOA-H version produce more of the enzyme and demonstrate far more empathy and kindness.”

  “A good versus evil gene,” Tom said, gripping the armrests of the chair he was sitting in.

  “Certainly looks that way,” she replied.

  Jack scratched his chin. “What about the second specimen you tested from the alien lab? The template for the Mesonyx. Did it show any signs of MAOA?”

  “None whatsoever,” she replied. “But we would need to run through every DNA template the ship has in order to rule them all out.”

  “Dr. Greer?” Anna called over the radio.

  The muscles in Jack’s jaw seized up. “Anna, is everything all right?”

  “It is, Dr. Greer. Although I must admit to listening in.”

  Although they were on the Orb, Jack became distinctly aware he was still wearing his OHMD glasses, which had allowed her to listen in on the conversation. “That’s fine, Anna. Would you like to add something to the discussion?”

  “Not at the moment,” she replied. “But given your recent discovery, there is a file in the ship’s archive that you may find particularly illuminating.”

  They all exchanged a curious glance.

  •••

  After suiting up, Jack found Commander Hart at the comms center and asked if he’d seen or heard from the ONI team.

  The edges of the SEAL’s mouth turned down as he shook his head. “Can’t say that I have, Doc. Last I heard they were searching for the ship’s propulsion system. I did see Lieutenant Brooks was in the Orb about an hour ago. Want me to scan the radio channels and send them a message?”

  Jack considered the idea. “I may not be their biggest fan, but I do want to make sure they’re not in any kind of trouble.”

  “You think they may have found something big and are keeping it quiet?” he asked, cocking an eye.

  “The thought had crossed my mind,” he admitted. “It’s not like them to keep out of sight.”

  Hart laughed. “You do have a point. Most of the time they’re banging around with salvaged tech and stuffing it into the submersible.”

  “Appreciate it,” Jack said walking away. By the time he reached the mess, a vague sense of uneasiness was stirring deep inside his gut, a feeling that would continue to nag him long after they reached the bridge.

  Chapter 63

  While Jack was wrestling with an uneasy feeling he couldn’t quite put his finger on, Mia was in the process of stepping into a strange new world. Her vitals spiked as the inner airlock door sealed shut and the one leading down the ladder into the ship swung open. She had grown used to the biosuit, opting to keep it on even while on the Orb for that very purpose.

  Her breathing came in short, ragged bursts. On the main platform, she stood frozen in place, her knees weakened by the immensity of the structure. Inevitably, her gaze was drawn to the central column and the narrow walkways radiating out from each level. But it was the pastel-colored lights shimmering up the body of the cylinder she found hypnotic to behold. The sensation was similar to finding yourself in a wonderful dream, the kind you hated waking up from.

  Jack reached out and touched her arm. Despite the suit’s robust organic polymer, his touch was welcomed and reassuring. When their eyes met, she caught a hint of envy.

  “I wish I could join you in seeing it again for the first time,” he said.

  They headed toward the closest bulkhead and a set of ramps which led up several levels to the bridge.

  The muscles in Mia’s legs began to burn. “Why not take the elevator?” she asked.

  Jack smiled. “I figured you’d want to get a look around on your first trip inside.”

  Soon they reached the bridge. Anna was there to greet them. She rolled forward, extending one of her robotic arms, her digital features lit with a beaming smile. Jack introduced them, one at a time.

  “She’s a robot,” Mia said, shocked.

  “A glorified toaster,” Jack admitted, grinning. “Yeah, that was my first reaction too. At least before I got to know her. You’ll find she’s so much more than what you expect.”

  Mia contemplated this as she shook Anna’s hand.

  “Dr. Ward has a special project for you, Anna,” Jack told her. “One that I’m sure you’ll enjoy.”

  “I cannot wait to hear about this special project,” she replied, leading them back to the main console.

  “But first, what is it you have to show us?” Jack asked.

  Anna tapped the screen and then waved her arms, scrolling through the holographic options swirling before them. “If you recall, Dr. Greer, the lab specimen ejected from the craft was tracked by a recording system.”

  “The specimen that died soon after breathing twenty-first-century air,” Jack said.

  Anna nodded. “Yes. I considered this as I listened in on your conversation about the MAOA gene you found in the deceased animal’s genome. If the pod had made a recording of that event, why would pods ejected earlier not have done the same?”

  Jack was intrigued. “That would give us a visual record of the species dispersed from the ship.”

  “Correct. After rolling back through the archives, it became abundantly clear that the bulk of the ship’s activity occurred within a few hundred years after the impact and the resulting mass extinction.”

  Mia found the idea of images from sixty-five million years ago fascinating. “How many pods were sent out at the time?” she asked.

  “One thousand five hundred,” Anna replied. “Although there were two to four creatures of the same species in each pod, often two males and two females. It should also be noted that some of the pods travelled vast distances.”

  “The aliens were repopulating the planet,” Tom said. “Like some sort of technological Noah.�
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  “How many video records have you found?” Jack asked, feeling the excitement dancing along every nerve ending.

  “I have found recordings for each of the one thousand five hundred ejections. However, there is one in particular worth viewing.” Anna made a swiping motion with her robotic arm. The green glowing hologram disappeared, soon replaced by a flat moving image that seemed to curve in on itself. It was as though the video were being projected on the inside of a sphere, with the effect that it could be viewed perfectly from any position on the bridge.

  Images appeared of a pod speeding toward the earth, slicing through thick white clouds. Moments later, a sparse landscape came into view. From this high up it was obvious the earth had already been blackened and ravaged by the tremendous impact. But it was also clear that life, resilient as it was, had begun to reclaim the devastated lands. Among the ruins, oases of green foliage dotted the area. And it was into one of these islands of life that the pod landed. Clouds of dust rose up as it struck the supple earth. A door opened and two furry plesis charged out. Several seconds passed before two more followed. This last pair approached their new surroundings with caution. They skulked around, listening intently for danger. Anna flipped ahead a few days. By now the animals had all climbed into a nearby tree and created a nest. But only one male and two females were visible.

  “Wait a minute,” Jack said, noticing the numbers were off. “Where’s the other male?”

  Anna scrolled back several hours to reveal a scene where one of the males was chasing the other, squealing and biting. The scene continued for several minutes, those on the bridge feeling as though they were watching a PBS nature show set sixty-five million years in the past. Then it happened. The more aggressive plesi caught up with his wounded brother and sank a mouthful of sharpened teeth into his opponent’s furry neck, staining the jungle floor red with blood. The animal twitched a final time before his body grew still.