Bernhard sighed. “If this is about my reasons for doing this, I told you that it’s none of your business. I let slip something personal that I didn’t mean to, and I would appreciate it if you just let it go.”
Johnson looked away from him. “Maybe I should. But I also have to wonder it, whatever it is, it’s affecting your judgment.”
“I passed all the requisite psych tests, which is more than I can say about a couple of the other people here.”
“Is it a family member?”
“Johnson, seriously, why can’t you let this go?”
“Because you seem to be isolating yourself. And as lead scientist on the American side, I think I should have some say in whether or not that can put us in jeopardy.”
They finally looked at each other. While she was certainly pretty and fascinating, he didn’t want to get too close to her. There’d once been a time when he hadn’t had any connections to others at all, and that had allowed him to keep a purely military-related approach to all problems. Anything he did either served his country, or it didn’t. But that had changed a little over four years ago.
“I have a daughter,” he said to her, keeping his voice low enough that this particular tidbit of information stayed between the two of them.
Johnson smiled, then thought about it. “But not a wife or girlfriend?”
“Her mother was also Air Force. We let off some steam together as a one-night thing. There was nothing particular between us, but nine months later, Victoria came along.”
“How old is she?”
“Um, I think she just had her fourth birthday?”
“You think? You don’t know?”
“No, I don’t. I rarely see her. After Victoria was born, her mother decided to leave the Air Force and works now as a private contractor in Florida, while I’m still based in Nevada.”
“So she’s not really in your life very often?”
“No.”
“But she’s still important enough to you that you think about her.”
“More than think, Johnson. There’s no animosity between me and her mother at all, and she has a husband now that loves my daughter very much. But even though I’m not there and can’t ever be there, given how much I’ve dedicated myself to my military career, I do everything I can to have some kind of presence in her life. Sometimes I’m not so good at it, but I pay my child support every month and then some. There’s already enough money in the bank for her to go to a smaller college after she graduates high school, and I’m still putting money in. But although she knows I exist, sometimes I think she wouldn’t even recognize me if she saw me.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. I’m not exactly father material. Her mother and stepfather will give her a good life. All I can do is make sure she survives long enough to have that life.”
“But, Bernhard, that doesn’t mean you have to be suicidal destroying the Visitor.”
“I’m willing to die if I have to if it keeps her safe, but that’s far from the first option. However, if at any point I come to the conclusion that it’s a matter of her life versus mine, even if there’s only a slight chance at her getting her, then I won’t hesitate. And I won’t let anyone else stop me, either.”
“Hmm,” Johnson said quietly. She got a far-away look in her eye. Bernhard cocked an eyebrow.
“Now you’re the one that looks like she has something on her mind that might affect her judgment.”
“Huh? Oh, no, you don’t have to worry about that. I was just…thinking.”
“About?”
“It’s personal.”
Bernhard stared at her unblinkingly until she realized the irony in her trying to use that excuse. She chuckled.
“Okay, fair enough, but I’m sure you’ve already got a detailed file on me.”
“Even the most detailed file is only going to be facts. It’s not going to include your emotions.”
Johnson nodded but stayed silent for a while. Bernhard thought maybe the conversation was over when she finally spoke up. “It’s just that all your talk of your kid made me think of mine.”
Bernhard tried not to act surprised. “I guess the file on you isn’t as detailed as it should be. I didn’t say anything about you having a child.”
“That’s because I don’t,” she said quietly. “I was going to, but it didn’t happen.”
Bernhard waited, knowing that pushing her was the wrong tact to take right now.
“I got pregnant in high school. Junior year. But when I got to eight months, um, he didn’t make it.”
“I’m sorry, Johnson.”
“I threw myself completely into school after that, and my grades became the best they’ve ever been. They stayed that way through college, too. I guess you could say that’s how I got to be where I am. Now, I don’t actually want any kids. I love my career and don’t have much time for anyone else. But I do think of him sometimes. Sam. I was going to name him Samuel. And while he wasn’t expected, I was prepared to love him and do everything in my power for him. So, I guess what I’m saying is that I think I get it. I may not have or want children of my own, but I understand that need.”
Bernhard nodded. He wasn’t sure what to say after that, but thankfully, he didn’t have to.
“Dr. Johnson, your turn in line if you need it,” Hodges said.
“Boy, do I ever,” Johnson said. She got up without any further glance at Bernhard so she could take her turn in their makeshift bathroom. Once she came back, it was Bernhard’s turn.
Doing his best not to pay attention to anything else in the hall other than what he was doing, Bernhard did his business quickly, zipped back up, and then, given the privacy of where he was for the moment, stopped to consider the situation. The Visitor was enormous, and it would be ridiculously difficult for them to search the entire thing for the bomb. Instead of wandering around aimlessly, they needed to find some kind of central control area. A ship this advanced had to have a way to track people and things aboard it. That way, too, the scientists might be satisfied if they got access to some form of alien computer.
Still, despite the likelihood that the bomb had been taken by something from the Visitor itself, he couldn’t escape the nagging feeling of paranoia that someone from their group still might be the culprit. The problem with that idea, though, was motive. Sure, there were people among his team that would have a reason to either steal or hide the bomb, but what would be the point in the long run? He felt like he was missing something, something important.
“Captain?” Bernhard turned at the sound of the voice to see Stroebel in the short hall with him. “Is everything okay?”
“Yeah,” Bernhard said. “I was just thinking. What is it?”
Stroebel looked over his shoulder in the general direction of where the others would be around the corner. “I wanted to talk to you. In private.”
Bernhard stood straighter. “What is it? Is something the matter?”
Stroebel walked up to him. In fact, he stood much closer to Bernhard that he was comfortable with. He looked down for a second as though he were considering exactly how he wanted to word what he was going to say. Then he looked back up at Bernhard and opened his mouth.
He spit at Bernhard, but the things coming out of his mouth were not saliva.
Bernhard reacted quickly, his nerves already on edge thanks to the direction of his thoughts and Stroebel’s proximity. He dropped down just in time to avoid whatever Stroebel ejected from his mouth and felt moisture graze his hair as it arced over him. It made a strange buzzing sound, something like a mosquito, and Bernhard’s short-term memory told him that was an important detail, that he’d heard something about a noise like that recently, but he didn’t have time to think about it. Instead, he immediately went for a throat punch on Stroebel. Stroebel’s reflexes were fast, but he hadn’t been expecting a counter-attack, and despite backing away, he still caught much of Bernhard’s force in his neck. As Stroebel staggered and then fell
onto his back, Bernhard grabbed his rifle from where he’d set it against the wall and turned it onto Stroebel.
“Listen up, Ranger. You have exactly five seconds to explain to me what the hell you’re doing.”
Stroebel looked like maybe he was trying to answer, but Bernhard’s punch had made it hard for him to breathe and he choked as he tried to find words. Bernhard heard several others in the outer hall respond to the sounds of a scuffle, but before they could get here, Bernhard heard that insectoid buzzing again from behind him. He turned, unsure what to expect.
The glob Stroebel had spit at him had hit the wall and slid to the floor. Now, covered in mucus, the glob unfolded from itself to show a mass of three worms. Each worm, once it was separated from the others, was about one foot long with a tiny maw full of sharp teeth at one end. At irregular intervals down their segments, the worms each had three bulbous pink areas that pulsed like hearts. They seemed disoriented by their unexpected trip into the wall, but they quickly oriented themselves and turned to Bernhard.
Zersky was the first one around the corner. “Bernhard, are you okay? Stroebel, what are you…oh holy hell!” Zersky saw the worms and aimed his weapon. Before he could pull the trigger, the worms dashed forward with unbelievable speed. Two of them rushed right past Bernhard. He didn’t have any time to figure out where they went, as the third coiled up and then sprang directly for Bernhard’s face. He raised his weapon in an attempt to slap the creature away, except the worm immediately wrapped around his rifle and squeezed tight. The lightweight but strong polymers that made up the rifle should have been able to stand up to the force, but the worm crushed the rifle in a matter of seconds and then was once again coming for Bernhard’s face. He dropped the weapon and grabbed for the worm, catching it right as the toothed mouth tried to get between Bernhard’s lips. He lost his balance in the struggle and fell backward, hitting the floor hard enough that his vision flashed white.
Elsewhere nearby, Bernhard could hear multiple shouts and screams, as well as clear noises of a struggle as others on the team must have been fighting off the two other worms. Someone fired multiple shots, and someone else – possibly Dufresne – was screaming for help to get one of the creatures off of her. Bernhard, unfortunately, couldn’t pay attention to any of that. It took all his strength and concentration to keep the worm from making any progress on him. It had given up on getting into his mouth, apparently, and was instead snapping at his nostrils. Bernhard had absolutely no clue what this thing was, but if it desperately wanted to get inside him, then he desperately wanted to keep it out.
Teng ran into Bernhard’s field of vision and knelt down to help wrestle the worm away. With the combined strength of both of them, Bernhard was finally able to get the thing away from his face.
“Hold it still on the floor!” Teng said. Bernhard did his best, but the thing was slippery and strong. Whatever Teng planned on doing, he needed to do it fast or else the worm would literally slip right through Bernhard’s fingers and go after another target. Teng disappeared out of sight for just a second and reappeared with his own rifle. Holding the rifle butt down, Teng smashed directly onto one of the worm’s pink bulbs. The bulb splattered, breaking the worm in two.
The two halves wriggling in Bernhard’s hands kept moving for nearly half a minute before they finally fell still. Bernhard wondered for a moment if they were like certain other worms, where the two halves might grow to create two whole new worms, then watched with relief as the two parts instead shriveled and dried up.
Finally, satisfied that the worm wasn’t going to somehow pop back to life and come after him again, Bernhard let go and turned to face the others.
All the members of their team had gathered at the end of the short hall, crowding around to see just what the hell had happened. The scientists had stayed back up to this point, with the military members coming forward and preparing to fire at whatever bizarre alien threat might come at them. Bernhard saw the second of the three worms on the floor nearby, also with one of its bulbous pink nodules crushed.
“Where’d the third one go?” Bernhard asked.
One of the Chinese scientists said something that Teng translated. “He says he saw it going down the hallway. There’s no telling how far it went or how fast.”
“Would someone please mind telling me what the hell that was?” Hodges asked.
“I don’t know,” Bernhard said, then pointed at Stroebel where he was still sprawled out on the floor and trying to catch his breath. “But he might.”
Chapter Nine
Among their military equipment, they had some heavy-duty zip ties, which they immediately used to bind Stroebel’s hands behind his back while Bernhard told the others exactly what he had just seen.
“He spit at you?” Houston asked. “He spit worms at you?”
“Sure did,” Bernhard said. “Johnson, you’re our biologist. Teng, who’s yours?”
Teng ushered one of the Chinese scientists forward and introduced him as Pai. Bernhard recognized him as the member of their team that would have been grounded for his mild asthma if the Chinese hadn’t pulled their bureaucratic weight to ensure he stayed on the team. Now, Bernhard supposed, was the moment where the guy would get to prove he was as important as they said it was.
“Johnson and Pai,” Bernhard said. “You two gather up the remains of those worms. All military, keep an eye on Stroebel. We’re going to move this whole party to somewhere we can have a nice chat with him.”
They passed a few more of the rooms full of sleeping soldiers before Bernhard found something different that might suit their needs. This room had a series of long tables in it, although there was nothing on them and absolutely no other furniture or decoration that Bernhard could see. The tables would make for a good place for the scientist to study their specimens while the military side was forced to conduct an interrogation of one of their own.
Stroebel was forced to sit on the floor next to the wall while the rest of the military contingent surrounded him. Most of them kept their weapons at the ready. Although Bernhard didn’t want to believe that one of the people under his command was some kind of traitor or spy or…whatever the hell he was, Bernhard couldn’t deny what he’d seen with his own eyes.
And already, before he even started questioning the man, he wondered if Stroebel was the only one like this.
“First, tell us who or what you are,” Bernhard said. When Stroebel began to open his mouth, Bernhard held up his hand to stop him. “And don’t get cutesy by giving me your name and rank. I want to know what you really are. And if anything tries to come out of your mouth this time other than words, then I will not hesitate to give the order to kill you.”
All expression vanished from Stroebel’s face. He simply cocked his head and stared blankly ahead of him. “Very well,” Stroebel said in a monotone. “As the language of this one’s kind would say it, this one’s cover is blown. I do not see any particular reason to keep pretending. This might even make an interesting game to pass the time.”
Bernhard exchanged looks with Teng before continuing. “Are you Stroebel, or are you something else pretending to be Stroebel?”
“I am the Nerve. But I believe what you really want to know is whether this one that you call Stroebel is alive. The answer is no, not in the capacity you would understand it.”
Several of the people around him hissed in breaths at that, but Bernhard kept himself focused on the task. “When those worms came at me, they made a buzzing noise, like bugs. I knew something about that sounded familiar.” Bernhard nodded at Sorensen. “When we went in to see the alien fighter craft, you said you heard something like that. Stroebel was standing right next to you, but he said he didn’t hear anything.” He looked back at Stroebel. “That was you, wasn’t it?”
“That is correct, Captain Bernhard. Is there anything else you can deduce about me from what you already know?”
“One of those worms got to him and infected him somehow while we were a
ll preoccupied with the craft,” Sorensen said. “Is that what you’re saying?”
“What exactly are those worms?” Bernhard asked.
“Those worms are me, and I am the Nerve.”
“But what does that mean? How are you, this Nerve thing, related to the Visitor and why it’s here?”
“The ship you refer to as the Visitor is my sheep, and I am the shepherd, protecting it from the wolves.”
“Great,” Zersky said. “It’s talking in riddles.”
“No, I think I get what it’s trying to say,” Bernhard said. “You’re some kind of organic security system, aren’t you?”
“That would not be a completely inaccurate way of looking at it.”
“Sir,” Sorensen asked, “how do we know anything it’s telling us is true? It could be just feeding us a line of bullshit right now and we wouldn’t know the difference.”
“I am not programmed to continue lying after having been discovered,” Stroebel, or more accurately the Nerve, said.
Sorensen clucked at that. “That’s exactly what you would say if you were programmed to lie, isn’t it?”
Stroebel shrugged, a movement made difficult by virtue of his hands still being tied behind his back. “That is a logical conundrum, is it not?”
“So are you saying that all those worms were you?”
“I am a hive organism, so yes.”
Johnson came over to join them. “I just overheard that. Can I try asking him some questions?”
“Be my guest,” Bernhard said.
“You took over Stroebel’s body, but you said he was dead as far as we understand it,” Johnson said. “What exactly do you mean by that?”
“I was forced to consume a portion of his brain when I entered him,” the Nerve said. “Any individual that I take over effectively ceases to exist except as a part of me.”
“And that’s what you tried to do to me?” Bernhard asked. Despite himself, he found it difficult to keep the venom out of his voice.
“That is correct.”
“Why?”
Alpha Contact Page 6