The mega-mosquitoes themselves, like the Plasmodium parasite they carried, shared a very high percentage of gene sequences with their smaller relatives on Earth. After much debate amongst the scientists on the armada’s ships and specialist zoologists back on Earth, it was suggested that the Mud Lizards most probably farmed the mosquitoes for food. On this basis it was reasoned that eventually, by keeping a close watch on the ‘mosquito farms’, Mud Lizards would surely be encountered.
A change of tactics
After nearly a week however with no contact with any Mud Lizards, Xplozhen decided to take a different approach. He ordered the complete destruction of all of the identified mega-mosquito farms. His reasoning was that if these were indeed food farms, then destroying them could get the Mud Lizards out into the open. He was right. After the 7th food farm was destroyed by pulse torpedoes fired from the two cruisers, the Mud Lizards struck back. The next patrol that went to the planet’s surface was hit with some form of explosive weapon, after which the Mud Lizards sent up a number of small spacecraft to attack the Lucifer.
The Lucifer itself was a relatively small and lightly armed ship but was protected instantly by the Galaxy Class Skirmishers from the cruisers. These small and incredibly fast attack craft engaged the Mud Lizard ships, destroying over half of them well before they could get anywhere near to Lucifer. The Mud Lizards managed only to disable 2 Skirmishers and so, although overall honours were in Earth’s favour, the aliens were not complete pushovers in the space battlefield.
The food fights back
The Mud Lizard ships retreated and the Skirmishers returned to the cruisers. Xplozhen called together his Executive Group for a virtual briefing on Lucifer. As his senior team faced each other at the conference table, Xplozhen started to speak.
“Well people, we now know they can fight and they have some weaponry that can hurt us. It seems to me though that we have enough of the upper hand here to be able to overcome them. This assumes of course that there aren’t one heck of a lot more of them down there waiting to pop out from wherever their main base is. If we’ve just seen their best shot I think we can finish this all off quite quickly. Let’s get back to destroying those artificial bug houses of theirs and see what their next reaction is. Any questions?”
There were murmurs of agreement from the three new acting Captains with one, Lieutenant-Commander Koobe’ton, in charge of the cruiser Venusic, saying, “I’m happy to take over the bombardment General. We can be ready to resume fire in 5 minutes.”
“Thank you Koobe’ton. Go ahead. Attack!!”
The conference duly closed and Koobe’ton instructed his weapons officer to lock pulse torpedoes on the next bug farm. The torpedoes were fired but this time the Earth bombardment failed. The pulse torpedoes were attacked by some sort of ground battery that the Mud Lizards had deployed to protect the bug farm structure. The presumption made was that the Mud Lizards had entered the structure from beneath, which would fit in with the existence of an underground network of tunnels or caves that were somehow shielded from the armada’s scanning devices.
Koobe’ton’s cruiser fired four times and each salvo of missiles exploded before reaching the target. Each time the destruction happened more quickly than before, suggestive of an intelligent interception system that was learning from each destructive response it made. Koobe’ton called off the attack and went into another virtual conference with the General and other ships’ Captains.
“It seems they have surprised us General,” said Koobe’ton. “They have erected a very effective protective shield now around their mosquito farms. Our standard pulse missiles seem ineffective.”
“Suggestions people, suggestions,” barked Xplozhen, clearly annoyed by this unexpected turn of events.
“We’ll need some time to determine precisely the nature of their intercept mechanism Sir. It does not appear to be missile based. We need to work out what it is and then just find a way around it, possibly by modulating the frequency of the pulse torpedoes,” said the Chief Weapons Engineer.
As Xplozhen considered what the Chief had said, warning sirens sounded and a voice in everyone’s head said, “Incoming, incoming. All staff to Battle AlphaRed.” Almost immediately the Lucifer shook and vibrated, then juddered noticeably.
The General yelled for an update from the officer on watch, “Report Lieutenant. What’s our status?”
A voice came back to Xplozhen, “Our engines are almost stopped. The ionisation chambers are clogged with….oh my, this is unbelievable…..”
“Show us man. Show us,” shouted Xplozhen.
The officer on watch pushed, into everyone’s head, images of the ionisation chambers that were so critical to the hyper-lightspeed engines. They were full of mega-mosquitoes. The same thing had happened to the two cruisers and the Space Patrol Carrier.
Xplozhen watched incredulously and then said “Someone tell the ruddy scientists that what they identified as food has just attacked us.”
The next moment a further report from the bridge let the General know that Mud Lizard craft were once again approaching Lucifer. As before, Skirmishers from the two cruisers were launched and saw off the Mud Lizard ships relatively easily. By now though all four of the armada’s ships were unable to engage hyper-lightspeed. General Xplozhen, at this point unsure of the full impact of the bugs on the ships propulsion units, decided that a strategic retreat was the wisest option. He ordered all four ships to break orbit and move back from the planet at least a trillion kilometres. All of the ships were able to do this, though at a sub-lightspeed. As they pulled back they saw no sign of any more Mud Lizard ships attempting to follow them.
Return to Earth
Within hours the mega-mosquitoes had all been removed from the various ships’ engines and immobilised. Some members of the crew were bitten in the process and were now being treated in the MediLabs. Apparently, as Xplozhen listened to the report from his Chief Executive Officer, the mosquitoes had been able to enter the ship through ion vents. Their approach to the ships went undetected, as individually the creatures were too small to be picked up by scanners that were focussed on detecting Mud Lizard ships. After consulting his senior staff, General Xplozhen took the decision to break off hostilities and return ultimately to Earth, in order that some solution to the mega-mosquitoes could be found.
As the armada restored hyper-lightspeed and set off for home, intensive research began on the mosquitoes to find out how they worked. There was much to be determined before another Earth armada returned to Plasmolidium to tackle the Mud Lizards again. When forces from Earth did go back, it was clear they would need a much bigger and better armed group of ships.
Chapter 3 - Interstellar War
Mosquitoes on Earth
When news of the battle involving the Xplozhen armada had become known the government had taken immediate action to secure, as best it could, all approaches to Earth from Trappist-1. Every space station was placed on AlphaRed alert and all military ships out on patrol or on exploratory missions were pulled back to within 5-10 light years of our Solar System, forming a ring of ‘watch’ posts, alert for the approach of any alien craft. The Space Patrol Corps then began preparing a much larger invasion fleet to go back to Plasmolidium.
The Lucifer and RARSP ships had brought back with them live specimens of the mega-mosquitoes and these were studied in Earth’s premier research laboratories. One of these was the International Laboratory for Communicable Disease (ILCD) and here it was established that the mosquitoes were part biological and part machine. In addition, the Earth Engineering Consortium (EEC), working with the ILCD, determined that the mosquitoes, whilst capable of individual action, could also communicate with each other and work as a single complex organism for a common purpose. A mega-mosquito was basically a single tiny element of potentially larger programmable bio-machines. It became clear that they had worked in such a collective way to disable the engines on the ships that had made up the Xplozhen armada.
&
nbsp; Whilst it was possible that the biological components of the mosquitoes could be a food source for the Mud Lizards, their use as a weapon was clearly of grave concern. Eventually, scientists at the EEC worked out a way to totally immobilise the electronic parts of the mosquitoes. This gave the Earth a new weapon that could be used in any subsequent battles with the Mud Lizards’ little flying friends. The so-called ‘mosquito pulse’ was rapidly manufactured and fitted into all combat ships.
Plague
This all seemed very positive of course. The people of Earth were kept informed and were very pleased to hear that the authorities had found a way to deal with the Mud Lizard mosquito threat. However, as the armed forces continued to put together an invasion fleet in space to travel to Plasmolidium, the news broke of a viral plague affecting workers at the ILCD. The plague rapidly started to spread across the planet.
In the first week several hundred people died and, as numbers escalated in ensuing weeks, panic began to break out. By week 4 over 250,000 people had been killed and within a month the figure across all countries approached 3 million. Little could be done to help anyone who contracted the virus and most who became ill died within 48 hours. The speed at which the virus was spreading led to predictions that humans on Earth could be eradicated within a year if the virus remained unchecked.
It became clear fairly soon after the first cases that the virus was linked in some way to the mega-mosquitoes brought back from Plasmolidium. Further study indicated that the virus had been latent within the mosquitoes, and had been triggered into activity during the exploratory investigations of the mosquitoes at the ILCD. In fact, by the end of the first month of the outbreak, President-Professor Bathari Lowe, Head Research Scientist at the ILCD, established that the virus had been set to be triggered on exposure to the Earth's atmosphere. It seemed clear that the Mud Lizards had deliberately released a biological weapon on Earth. This came to be known as the Mosquito virus.
Fortunately, Earth's ships in space and at space stations were unaffected, as all of the mega-mosquitoes had been brought down to the Earth's surface before the virus had first emerged. Consequently, preparations for the invasion of Plasmolidium could continue in space, whilst on the planet’s surface, desperate efforts were being made to find a cure to the virus that was devastating the population.
Earth’s invasion fleet
This time the military were taking no chances with the composition of the fleet that would travel to Plasmolidium and re-engage the Mud Lizards. The new invasion force comprised over 30 ships that ranged in size from the Supreme Dreadnought Class to the Conflict Class Cruisers that had gone on the first expedition. There were two Supreme Dreadnought class warships in the group. These giant spacecraft dwarfed anything else in space. As large as most space stations, a Supreme Dreadnought had a crew of over 5000, in addition to the 30,000 space patrol troopers typically berthed on board. In total the number of military personnel preparing to set off for Plasmolidium in this new armada was in excess of 120,000. In addition, the fleet had at its disposal a further 10,000 WarDroids and some 2000 Space Skirmishers. Earth’s military forces also now had the new pulse weapon which could be used to disable the mega-mosquitoes and prevent them from undertaking any ‘collective’ hostile activity.
Addressing the plague
Back on Earth, all government and private medical enterprises were working flat out to try to find some way of combating the Mosquito virus. The finest research minds were brought together to focus on this one problem. Of course, the gene sequence of the virus had been rapidly determined, as had the nature of the proteins that were encoded in those sequences. Both the gene sequences and the proteins were unlike anything ever encountered before on Earth. All current antiviral therapies were tried with infected patients but to no avail. Almost every pharmaceutical company in the world quickly started to generate new drugs and new treatments based on what was being discovered about the structure and nature of the virus. However, despite computer predictions and encouraging laboratory test results, none of the new drugs or therapies had any significant effect on infected humans.
One of the private enterprises that had started to screen its own library of drugs for effectiveness against the Mosquito virus was ClonaCat. This company had been founded around 2120 by Tjoorbaert Morabitz, at the time the World’s most famous genetic engineer. Tjoorbaert was also a massive cat lover and believed that other people, like him, would pay small fortunes to have their beloved pet cats cloned after death. Tjoorbaert was certain that he could do far better than earlier experiments at domestic pet cloning, that had not quite fulfilled needs.
However, just like the early experimenters in this niche market, Tjoorbaert found that the cats he created were never totally the same for the owners as the pets they had just lost. ClonaCat was looking like a failed enterprise until scientists working there on the horse genome, accidentally reactivated some ancient genes, and created the first modern day unicorn. This led to a whole new sports activity, unicorn racing, and ClonaCat became a prosperous concern through the selective breeding of unicorns for racing purposes. The income from the unicorn part of the business enabled Tjoorbaert to continue his research into the domestic cat genome, which remained his passion. In addition, ClonaCat diversified its operations into gene therapy for a range of infectious and hereditary diseases.
Azz-Lex shows up
The gene therapy division of ClonaCat, like all other such laboratories, had been working around the clock to try to find a way to combat the virus delivered to Earth by the mega-mosquitoes. However, just like every other laboratory they had drawn a blank. Tjoorbaert was in deep thought at his home, wondering what to try next, when there was an announcement from his front door that he had a visitor.
Tjoorbaert went to the entrance of his apartment to open the door and greet his visitor as he normally did - he was not a fan of allowing visitors to be greeted by artificial intelligences. To his surprise though, when he opened the door no one appeared to be there. He stared into the space in front of him with a quizzical look on his face, stuck his head far enough through the open doorway to look both ways down the corridor outside, but saw no one. He withdrew his head and was about to close the door when he heard a gentle coughing sound.
Tjoorbaert was startled a little initially as he wondered where the cough originated from. He then looked down and, sitting at his feet, was the most imperious looking black cat he’d ever seen. Surprisingly large, probably about half as much again the length of a normal domestic cat, sporting massive whiskers and the ‘snootiest’ of ‘head back nose in the air’ poses imaginable, this black cat stared up at him.
Tjoorbaert instinctively knelt down to pet the cat which equally instinctively drew its head back and said, “Please don’t touch what you couldn’t possibly afford to buy.”
The Cat speaking was a bit of a surprise and caused Tjoorbaert to fall backwards from his crouched position onto his rear end and hands. He stared at the talking cat. A talking cat, he thought. Was he going mad? Was this a trick? Cats did not talk. Convinced he was dreaming or hallucinating, Tjoorbaert crawled backward on his hands and bottom sufficiently to close the door, then stood up and went back into his apartment. As he poured himself a large mind-bending drink his front door re-announced that there was someone waiting to see him. He went back to the door of the apartment and opened it. He looked down and the same black cat he’d seen before was still sitting there.
It opened its mouth and spoke again, “I say, but that really was undeniably rude. Had I started to follow you my face could have been hit by the closing door you know.”
With that, the talking cat walked into the apartment and Tjoorbaert blinked several times before closing the door again and turning around to face the four-footed furry feline.
Tjoorbaert spoke, “I know you are not real. I am imagining this. I’ve been working too hard on a cure for the Mosquito virus. I need to rest. If I close my eyes, you’ll disappear.”
&nbs
p; “No, I won’t disappear Professor Morabitz,” said the Cat, “you see I am real.”
“You can’t be real,” said Tjoorbaert, “you’re talking.”
The cat looked back at Tjoorbaert and rather haughtily said, “Well what do you expect me to do in my efforts to communicate with you? Miaow??”
“Well yes actually. Even in the 22nd Century cats cannot talk.”
“Ahh, but my dear Professor, I am not from the 22nd Century.”
“Oh this is ridiculous. I am going to close my eyes and you’ll be gone.”
Tjoorbaert closed his eyes tightly for what seemed like an eternity, but was actually no more than a minute and when he opened them, to his intense relief, the cat was gone. He sighed and sat down in a chair with his drink. As he brought the glass up towards his lips though he became aware of a tapping noise coming from his office, which was just off the apartment’s lounge area where he was sitting. He marched over to the door of his office, went through, and to his astonishment saw his imaginary cat seated and tapping away at the surface of his desk. He opened his mouth and his eyes grew large, but before he could say anything the cat spoke again,
“There really isn’t too much time Professor so before you say anything, two things please. First, feel this pain.”
Instantly, the cat leapt over the desk and jumped over to where Tjoorbaert was standing. The cat then gripped hold of the lower part of one of Tjoorbaerts legs, and sunk into his victim’s flesh all 18 available claws. Tjoorbaert screamed as he tried to lift his leg and shake the cat off. After a few seconds the cat let go voluntarily and, as Tjoorbaert limped around in a circle clutching his punctured leg, the cat said,
The Zygote Crystal Page 4