Callsign: Deep Blue - Book 1 (A Tom Duncan - Chess Team Novella)

by Robinson, Jeremy

  Lori began to sweat as she read further in the files. The air conditioning vent directly over her head in the ceiling was doing nothing to regulate her body temperature.

  Apparently, there was a massive quantity of natural Uranium in the granite of New Hampshire’s White Mountains and it off-gassed Radon. They were exposing the salamanders to Uranium radiation, just as Deep Blue’s medical staff had done to King’s friend, George Pierce, when they were trying to cure him of the affliction with which Ridley had saddled him. Deep Blue’s team had eventually been successful in healing Pierce. Unlike with George though, Maddox’s work had discovered that the uranium radiation wasn’t having the same effect on the salamanders. It was making them aggressive and Maddox saw a few inches in growth overall with all the samples, but it wasn’t speeding up their regenerative capabilities.

  So Maddox had gone to the next step, without informing Ridley, apparently. He had used Wnt proteins from some of the creatures they had utilized the Hydra serum on and the regeneration began to go off the charts. He hadn’t dared to use a raw undiluted sample from the Hydra itself because the salamanders already had regenerative abilities. Unfortunately, the treatments had had yet another unintended side effect—rapid cell division. The man had had a few startling failures that resulted in melting and even exploding amphibians. Lori snickered at the thought of exploding creatures coating that lab weasel Maddox with slime. The man also couldn’t seem to get the creatures to breed anymore after he had experimented on them. He suspected it was because of the radiation but he really wasn’t sure.

  This was the information the intruders had looked at. Lori wasn’t certain why. She definitely had not seen any salamanders running around the base—in fact, they hadn’t even found any in the labs. Then it occurred to her.

  Wait. Why didn’t we find any in the labs?

  She flipped her monitor back to a Manifold era map of the facility to figure out where the salamander lab had been. It had been on the level Manifold had called Y level. Under the main labs level, where the gun battle had taken place between Knight and Gen Y. Just one lab away from being directly under the lab in which the gun battle had taken place, in fact.

  Lori wiped sweat from her brow as she recalled everything she could about the cleanup and data mining procedures. Eli Jacobs had brought in a hazmat team to clean up the chemical soup that had spilled as a result of the gun battles and the Hydra’s resuscitation and escape from the facility. And the damage had been done to the labs level and two levels below it, as cracks had appeared in the floor as after grenade damage…

  Oh no…

  The salamanders had been under the Hydra. They had been contaminated by the chemical spill. They had received a stronger dose of genetic material from the Hydra. Its blood had mixed with the spilled liquids, as had more than a few gallons of human blood.

  But there were no salamanders on that level when Jacobs went in…

  Like several trains all slamming into each other after speeding into a railway turntable, ideas and thoughts crunched into Lori Stanton’s brain. The cavern below the Labs section! Radiation! Genetic material from the Hydra! Black Zero was down in the cavern! Deep Blue just went to Labs! Rapid cell division! Growth! Regeneration!

  Lori frantically checked the motion sensors for the Labs section of the base. Lots of moving bodies in the train platform. Even more heading toward it from the direction of the access closet that led down to the caverns.

  Dear God, she thought, one creature with ultimate regeneration was insane. There’s got to be at least fifty of them.

  Before she could figure out a way to contact Deep Blue to warm him though, she heard a loud metallic thumping noise. Lori’s body froze completely. She was worried about Deep Blue and Black Zero, but it hadn’t occurred to her to be afraid for herself. Until now. Everything was silent except for the hum of her CPU and the air conditioning vent.

  She slowly reached for the keyboard to switch the window on her monitor from examining the motion sensors placed in the Labs section where Deep Blue had gone, to the Central section—where she sat now. The screen refreshed and all the blood drained from her face. Then the metal grill over the ventilation duct above her head clanged open, as it burst downward. She tried to scream, but she didn’t have time.

  10.

  Section Labs, Former Manifold Alpha Facility, White Mountains, NH

  The gunfire and screams sent all the men on the platform into complete panic and disarray. Duncan, however, was startled for only an instant, before opening fire on the laptop. It took him three shots to hit it and shatter the device into silicon shards and plastic fragments. The man had sprung up from his crouch and started to run, but Duncan eventually made the shot.

  That was when they came streaming out of the far hallway like a wave of darkness and streaks of light. At first, Duncan couldn’t believe what he was seeing. The shapes were liquid, and shiny and squirming. Easily as large as Floridian alligators, they came flowing over the floor, ceiling and walls out of the hallway and into the larger cavernous space around the platform.

  Salamanders? Duncan’s mind was stunned. What the hell?

  But these were not ordinary salamanders. The Gen Y team members remaining on the platform were firing at the creatures with a steady stream of MP5 fire, but the creatures seemed to suffer little damage. Mostly a shiny black with several large dinner-plate sized bright yellow spots on their backs, the creatures were moving fast with their side-to-side wiggling motion, and they seemed to be attacking the Gen Y men. Duncan could see a few had a viscous white fluid on the tops of their backs and he recalled that some species of salamanders could emit a kind of poison from their pores.

  Then the first one leapt off of the wall at a Gen Y man that had gotten too close. The leap was probably over ten feet, and the beast wiggled and twitched through its jump as if it were still crawling on the wall. At the last second, the man turned and opened fire on the thing, but the bullets did nothing to stop its momentum. Its flattened black head split open like the lid of a horrifically dirty trash can and its mouth literally swallowed the Gen Y man’s face. His body began to spasm instantly and the giant amphibian clung tightly and rode the man to the concrete floor.

  The men were all yelling and shouting now. Everyone was firing their weapons at the nearest wall or ceiling or floor. The only one that seemed to have any presence of mind was the man leading the Gen Y team. He strode purposely toward the waiting electric train. When the first of the giant black and yellow bodies got close enough to him on the floor, the man calmly tossed a grenade at the thing. It opened its mouth wide as the payload approached it and seemed to simply let the device continue falling right into its gullet. The man took three more calm measured steps toward the train. The salamander, almost to him at that point, exploded in a splatter of shining black chunks with a spray of liquid and fire behind the man.

  He boarded the train as Duncan watched. It was then that Duncan recovered his wits enough to open fire with his own rifle on the creatures heading across the platform in his direction. Like with the Mp5s the Gen Y team had, his bullets seemed to have little effect as well. Then he noticed the spattered remains of the detonated salamander were still twitching across the ruined concrete surface of the platform for a moment.

  Ridley and his damned regeneration experiments!

  Duncan ceased firing at the beasts, recognizing that he was wasting bullets. Instead, he fired at Gen Y men that were already doomed to a death at the hungry maw of a violent overgrown salamander. He killed three before two of the remaining men on the platform noticed and started firing back at him in his direction. He retreated, back behind the cover of the edge of the tunnel entrance, and he realized he didn’t want to kill any more Gen Y men anyway.

  If they’re gone, I’m the next food source for the salamanders!

  Instead, he glanced back and watched the last living men on the platform hammering on the walls of the electric train as it began to depart the station toward D
uncan’s position. The man that seemed to be their leader showed no concern for the men he had left behind to their dooms. Duncan’s mind was racing and he catalogued the man’s emotionless actions somewhere in the back of his forward cognitive processes. He leapt across the rails to the shadows of the far side of the tunnel before the train passed by him. He rejected the idea of trying to get on the train as it went by—it was already moving too fast, and he still had his HDT. Right now he had to focus on stopping or containing the giant creatures that were steadily advancing on his position and which were now feasting on the last few screaming Gen Y bodies—the matte black of their BDU uniforms jerking and heaving under the shining, undulating, black and yellow skin of the salamanders chewing on them.

  Duncan turned back into the tunnel and raced to the bio door. On the far side of the door, deeper inside the darkened tunnel, was a control panel on the wall. Unlike the panels near the exterior doors, this one was still lit. He had noticed it as he had passed it before. It had several features, but the one he liked the best was a large red button with a pin through it like on a fire extinguisher. Duncan pulled the pin out and slapped his palm on the button. The huge white bio door hissed shut on its hydraulics across the whole mouth of the tunnel. The rubber seal scraped into place across both sets of rails on the floor, then inflated, sealing all air transfer between the tunnel and the station. Duncan stepped up to the Plexiglas window and peered through several inches of translucent plastic into the train platform. Two of the huge salamanders had just reached the foot of the door. The last remaining men on the platform no longer moved. Now that the door was closed, opening it would take an act of God or several hours of answering computerized sanity checks.

  Containment. Check.

  Duncan turned around to head back to his dirt bike and felt his stomach lurch. As if he had vertigo, he watched as the darkened walls, ceiling and floor of the tunnel shifted and shuffled around him. He instantly realized his mistake in sealing the door behind him.

  11.

  Under Section Dock, Former Manifold Alpha facility White Mountains, NH

  Gino Ravenelli could not believe the day he was having. He was wearing the pony bottle and the dive mask, thank God, so they kept the raw sewage from entering his nose, mouth or eyes, but he couldn’t see a thing. He had lowered himself into the muck and swum under it to a lateral tunnel near the base of the cistern. Even with the facemask blocking the stench, just the idea that he was swimming under a river of shit made his skin crawl. It was as if his body instantly recognized it was in a place it should not be. In addition to nausea, he felt wild disorientation and his muscles cramped as he felt his way along the tunnel wall with his hand outstretched in front of him. It was a standard sewer tunnel—just large enough for him to wriggle through it, the mushy solids and slime easing his passage. He found it easier on him if he closed his eyes as he went. It wasn’t as if he could see anything out the facemask anyway.

  After what seemed like a lifetime, and with Gino acutely aware of the dwindling supply of air in the tiny pony bottle, he reached the end of the tunnel. It was just a flat concrete wall at the end, but as he felt along above him on the ceiling of the tubular wall, he found a smaller drain that clearly led into the tunnel at this end.

  It’ll have to do, he thought.

  He removed the small C4 charge he had set before descending into the cistern, twisted a manual dial that acted as a detonator, and pushed the device against the side of the drain wall, just over the drain’s entrance to the tunnel. Then he began to wriggle his bulk back the way he had come. It took a long time and he was aware that the small pony bottle’s air was nearly up, when he felt his legs were no longer constrained by the walls of the tunnel. He shoved off with his arms and his body was floating freely in the large cistern. He swam to the surface and wiped the slime from the front of his mask’s faceplate. The rusted metal ladder was within arm’s reach. He grabbed it and began climbing, not stopping to take the mask or the pony bottle off.

  At the top of the ladder, Gino threw his body into the original access tunnel he had used to reach the cistern. He cinched his eyes shut, and covered his ears with the palms of his hands. He held his breath.

  The explosion was gentler than Gino had expected. He felt a distant rumbling deeper in the facility, but the only effect near him was a loud belching bubble of sewage that spayed up nearly to the ceiling of the cistern behind him. Then all was quiet.

  Gino shuffled backward out of the access tunnel, grabbed the flaking rungs of the ladder and twisted around to peer down at the bottom of the cistern through his smudged facemask. The level of fecal matter had dropped by probably 70 percent at the bottom, but he still couldn’t see the entrance to the sewer tunnel submerged beneath the surface. He rapidly descended the ladder and swam to the far wall, once more diving under the surface and feeling his way to the tunnel. Then he shuffled down its length again. When he reached the end this time, the drain that had been above his head the last time now felt like a large open area. He swam upward and in a short time, his hand no longer met resistance and he realized he had broken the surface of the nasty substance.

  Gino Ravenelli wiped the muck a final time from the faceplate of his mask and his thoughts lightened. He scrambled up over the broken concrete and porcelain remains and found himself on the tile floor of the bathroom. A bathroom that looked like it had received a visitor with the worst case of explosive diarrhea in history. The walls and ceiling were splattered and coated with raw sewage and the detonation of the C4 had destroyed a significant number of fixtures in the room. The metal stall dividers had been blow across the room and now rested against the far wall, blocking the exit from the room The floor was coated under nearly two feet of sewage.

  But Gino had eyes only for the sink.

  He raced over and turned on both taps full blast. The water was flowing and sprayed so hard off the porcelain of the sink that it splashed back up and all over Gino’s chest. He smiled around the mouthpiece of the pony bottle. He didn’t care in the least. He dunked his head in the sink and scrubbed at his short hair and his face until he was sure the now warm water had washed most of the muck from him. Then he removed the pony bottle and took a breath of the air in the room. It was stale and he could almost taste the nastiness all over the place, but he continued with his scrubbing, taking large handfuls of the liquid soap from the dispenser that hung slightly askew on the wall. When he felt his head was clean enough, Gino removed his facemask. The large quantities of shit and muck on the rest of his body would have to wait, but at least his head and hands were cleaned off.

  Gino had covered the tip of his FN SCAR with a small plastic baggie and had sealed it off with a rubber band before descending into the cistern. Now he waded through the knee-deep muck toward the door out of the bathroom and into the submarine dock, the plastic-covered tip of the weapon leading. He grabbed the metal bathroom stall divider and heaved it away from the door. Then, with effort, he was able to manhandle the bathroom door open against the tide of sludge that weighed against it. The brown liquid surged around the door as soon as he had cracked it and spewed out across the floor on the other side.

  Gino Ravenelli, White Four, stepped out into the submarine dock expecting an enemy force. He just wasn’t expecting an enemy force that wasn’t human. After the horror of the sewer, his nerves were already frayed. But as hundreds of creatures raced and slithered toward him, the bullets from his FN Scar having no effect, Gino began to scream. He was still screaming as the salamanders began to eat him.

  12.

  Section Central, Former Manifold Alpha Facility, White Mountains, NH

  Matt Carrack was definitely having a bad day. He hung on a supple, black, 11-mm climbing rope that spooled out of the small satchel around his back as he descended the ventilation shaft with a repelling device. His LED headlamp was illuminating the grease smeared on the wall of the shaft and the blood spatter all around him. He had stopped just above the murderous razor grill that ha
d made short work of White Two.

  After no word back from White Two and White Three on their mountaintop mission, Carrack had become concerned. When he couldn’t reach White Four out at the Dock or White Five at labs via his satellite phone, Carrack began to get pissed off. The only thing going well so far is that Keasling really was sending the tank.

  Carrack had scaled the mountain himself and gone to check out the vent shafts down which Two and Three had presumably descended. The lids to the vents were lying on the ground near the top of each vertical shaft, but he didn’t see any ropes or anchors. The shafts were narrow enough that the men had probably muscled their way down. His most powerful flashlight did not show any sign of the men, but that was to be expected with the pseudo S bend halfway down each shaft.

  Carrack had set an anchor and slowly rappelled his way down into a tight shaft, his rope spooling out from a nylon bag on his back as he had gone. Shortly before he reached the S bend, he noticed the slippery substance on the walls, but thought it was just a fluke. After sliding down the S and into the lower part of the shaft, Carrack could see that the substance on the walls increased and he recognized it for what it was. Lower down, his light illuminated the razor grill and Carrack understood the trap and what had happened to his men. The deathtrap had not been present when he had inspected the shaft from below a few weeks earlier. He could see the section in the shaft wall where the razor grill had been recessed and camouflaged. Now dented badly, it still held some of the remains of one of his men, as well a mangled FN SCAR and a few other bits that hadn’t sluiced through the grill.

  Now, he leaned down and used the small blowtorch he had taken with his other gear from his own HDT dirt bike, and began to cut through the blades below him. When the last cut was made, the grill fell down, but did not fall out of the opening where the vent’s true grill hung askew from the impact of his man’s remains. There was a 1-inch diameter hole in the side of one of the blades and Carrack had clipped an aluminum carabiner through the hole and connected the ‘biner to a short length of cord. He wouldn’t risk the noise if the cut grill were to fall the fifty feet to the concrete floor of the hangar below. He had likewise secured the other metallic remains. Carrack’s suspicion that they were under attack had been confirmed by the deathtrap. He needed to play his next moves very quietly. The murder grill would stay attached to his waist by the four-foot length of cord and the biner, and he would lower it softly to the ground as he finished his rappel.