by SD Tanner
“Do you think they know about the navs?” He asked.
“No reason why they wouldn’t,” Leon replied. “We know they learn and adapt fast. All they have to do is see something once and we’ve been to this nest twice now.”
“Are the other nests as remotely located?” Dunk asked.
Scanning the entire country and the world for nests was taking time. There were only twenty-seven people left alive in NORAD, and that hadn’t left them with many satellite specialists. The survivors of what was essentially a massacre were working around the clock to capture and analyze the images, but it was taking more time than he felt they had.
“We don’t know yet, but so far we’ve confirmed images of similar nests in Houston, Cincinnati, Orlando, Syracuse and Boise. They’re smaller than this one so they’re harder to see, plus there’s a difference between the nests and the fences they’ve built around the larger population areas.”
“We need to get into this nest,” Bill said firmly. “It’s the closest one, plus it seems to be more important than the others.”
“Umm…that would be a suicide mission,” Lexie replied uncertainly. “I mean, Tank and I could get in there, but we’d never get out alive.”
Raising his hand, he was surprised to see he was missing his pinky and half of the finger next to it. He wasn’t sure he’d ever get used to seeing his damaged hands. In his mind, he was as whole as he ever was, and his new reality always caught him by surprise. He could still walk and run in his dreams so waking up was always disappointing.
Dismissing the thought, he said decisively, “You’re not going in there, Lexie. That’s not an option.”
“Maybe one of us has to,” Tank said.
“No,” he replied firmly. “Enough people have died. I will not lead a suicide mission, at least not yet.”
Leon nodded. “And we won’t follow any other battle commander so Ark’s decision stands.”
He turned to look at Bill and Dunk. “Give me options.”
Dunk walked into the three-dimensional image and looked up at the cavern above his head. “The engineers have been working on developing robotics for you.”
Ever hopeful he might run again, when he’d first arrived at CaliTech he’d asked the engineers to build him a set of robotic legs. They’d told him that, although they didn’t specialize in robotics, the hydraulics they used in the Navigator suits might be a good starting point. His request wasn’t on the approved project list for CaliTech, but the engineers were enjoying the challenge and had been working on it in their spare time, not that they had much of that now. He didn’t know Dunk was aware of their extracurricular design work and nor did he know how far they’d progressed.
“Is that anywhere near completion?”
“They’re liaising with the medical team to work out how to send messages to the brain like a real limb does.”
“So, how does that help us?”
Dunk walked out of the three-dimensional image and gave him one of his slightly insane grins. “They’ve got the robotics working.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means the robotic limbs work, they’re just not integrated to a human central nervous system yet. That’s trickier, but One-of-One is working on adapting the mechanism we use to transmit messages through the optical nerve, and the software team are working on translating their code into organic messages.” Grinning triumphantly, Dunk added, “Building legs for you is just a spin on what we already know how to do with the visors.”
He hadn’t realized they were so far advanced with their design. Feeling a flare of excitement, he stuffed down his emotions and focused on the wider problem again. “Okay, that’s good news, but how does that help us?”
“We don’t have to send the navs into the nest. We can send robots.”
With a derisive snort, Lexie asked sharply, “And just where are we gonna get a robot?”
“Not a robot, Lexie. Robots,” Dunk replied, emphasizing the plural word.
Bill grinned at Dunk. “That might work, but we’ll only get to use it once. They might ignore a robot the first time, but they won’t the second time.”
“Then you better get it right the first time,” Jo said firmly.
Jo was right. The critters learned so fast they’d only fall for robots once before they’d know to destroy them. It meant they would have to gather all the intel they needed in the one attempt. He also agreed with Lexie that, considering their current situation, building robots might be a stretch.
“How can you build them?” He asked.
“More importantly, what are you going to build?” Bill asked.
Walking across to the screens at one end of the training hangar, Dunk flicked up an image of one of the smaller spider shaped critters they’d found in Seattle. “We’re going to learn fast too. We can build a robot that sort of looks like this one. We have the robotics to make them walk on eight legs and we can attach cameras to it.”
“But once they’re underground we’ll lose the signal,” he objected.
“That’s not a problem. We’ll build a hundred of them. Some will carry repeaters that we’ll have them drop the deeper they go. The repeaters can receive messages and relay what the cameras on the robots are seeing.”
“You should arm them,” Bill added.
“Sure, we can attach bombs to some, repeaters to others, and cameras to all of them.”
He nodded. “That brings us back to my question. How can you build them? Do you have all of the right materials?”
“Yes and no. We can repurpose metal, circuit boards, joints and power packs. The thing we don’t have are the programmable chips.”
“What are they?”
“They’re the brains of the robot. We download the control software onto the chips.” Waving his arms at the hanger, Dunk added, “Everything we build uses these chips. We have them, but they’re all in use.”
“And the robots won’t work without them.”
Dunk gave a sharp laugh. “Not a prayer.”
“So, how do we get them?”
“There was a company that supplied them. We had a large shipment on order before the world went to hell. We can check where the delivery was and have the nav squad get them.”
“How long will it take you to build the robots?”
“That depends on how many people work on it. Give me the resources and we can set up a manufacturing style process.”
“How many do you need to build?”
“For redundancy, I’d aim for over a hundred of them.”
Lexie gave Dunk a skeptical look and sounding surprised, she asked, “What? And you’ll just march them into the nest like an army of baby bots?”
Giving her another one of his mad grins, Dunk replied, “Yeah, why not?”
Without knowing how deep the nest went, using a missile to blow it up was risky. They could easily fail to kill whatever was inside of it, plus the critters would learn about their missile capability. The baby bots would be a safe way to penetrate the nest and show them what was inside of it. If they could find whatever it was the critters were defending so fiercely, they could use the baby bots to destroy it. Building customized robots might have seemed like a stretch, but he’d already seen what Dunk and his engineers could do.
Turning to the group, he said confidently, “Okay. Let’s build us some baby bots.”
CHAPTER THREE: Only half crazy (Dayton)
Cassie was still strapped to the bed with wires reaching across the top of it to the two machines on either side of her. Her head was covered in the colorful wires reading her brain activity, and attached to her still human arm was a clip on her left forefinger registering her heart rate. She was breathing on her own, but they still had her on a catheter. Surrounded by so much equipment, she looked small and vulnerable lying under the soft blue blanket. Her brother, Ben, hadn’t left her side, and he was stroking her forearm, which was almost the only exposed part of her that wasn’t covered in pads and wi
res.
Cuffs secured her ankles and wrists to the frame of the bed, and the man behind him was wearing a Navigator hydraulics suit and armor. He was acting as their guard just in case she fully turned and became a critter.
Giving the Navigator a resentful look, Ben asked, “Does he have to be here? Cassie wouldn’t hurt anyone.”
She hadn’t spoken to them yet and they weren’t even sure if she was really conscious. Her brain waves were showing spikes that were well outside of human range. One-of-One believed some of the alien cells had penetrated the tourniquet and her arm wasn’t the only part of her that was infected.
“We don’t know what’s going on inside of her. Until she can speak to us, we have to assume the worst.”
“What is the worst?”
He didn’t want to tell Ben that Cassie could really be a critter and she might look far more human than she was on the inside. Ben was only sixteen and she was his last surviving relative that he knew of. His chances of finding any other members of his family were beyond remote, and it seemed a lot to dump on such young shoulders.
One-of-One had walked into the room just in time to hear Ben’s question. “She’s not human anymore.”
Ben’s eyes widened in horror. “How can you say that? Just because she has a funny arm doesn’t mean she’s not human. It’s only her arm.”
Flicking the cover from her tablet, One-of-One said blandly, “Her scans don’t agree with you.”
They’d spent the morning with Cassie securely zip tied inside of the MRI machine. The results had been confusing and One-of-One had taken the images away to analyze them. He hadn’t wanted to discuss the results of the scans in front of Ben, but short of pushing One-of-One out of the door, he knew she wouldn’t get the message.
Trying not to sound as frustrated as he felt, he asked, “So, what did you conclude?”
Putting her tablet on the waist-high patient table, One-of-One continued flicking through the images. “She’s a hybrid. Not one single part of her doesn’t contain anomalous cells.”
“What type of cells are they?”
“I can’t be sure without taking a range of biopsies.”
“Give me your best guess.”
“Other than her arm, I don’t think they’re plastic. I think she has some of the same cells as the jelly like substance inside of the critters.”
Sounding horrified, Ben asked, “What does that mean?”
“She’s a hybrid. Neither one thing nor the other,” One-on-One replied tonelessly.
“B…but you said the critters weren’t alive. Does that mean she’s dead?”
One-of-One studied the scans. “I don’t know. Parts of her might be, but the human parts still need food and oxygen. Glancing under the bed, she added, “There’s urine inside of that bag, so she’s still functioning like a human at some level.”
“Are the foreign cells concentrated on specific areas in her body or organs?” He asked.
She gave him one of her tight smiles. “That’s a good question and yes. There seems to be a higher percentage of cells filtered throughout her brain.”
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t know.”
Seeming unable to deal with what they were saying, carefully avoiding the wires on her forehead, Ben began to stroke Cassie’s hair. “You have to wake up, sis.” His voice cracked as he spoke and he thought the boy was reaching the end of his ability to cope.
Placing his hand on Ben’s shoulder, he was trying to guide him away from Cassie when she opened her eyes. Ben pulled back in shock, elbowing him in the gut as he did.
“Cassie?” Ben asked.
She began to whisper in a soft monotone voice and he tried to lean past Ben to catch her words. The Navigator had also stepped forward and was standing at the end of her bed watching her warily.
Ben turned to face the Navigator. “Stay the fuck away from her.”
Stepping into the space Ben had left by Cassie’s side, he bent over her face. “Cassie, can you hear me?”
“…resistant species…monitor conditions…town compromised…tunnels vulnerable…track and report…”
“What is she saying?” One-of-One asked.
“I don’t know. She’s talking about a resistant species and vulnerabilities.”
“That makes sense.”
Giving One-of-One a look of disbelief, he asked, “How does that make any sense?”
“Communications is always a two-way port. If you can receive then you can also send.”
Still perplexed, he asked, “And that makes sense, how?”
“We don’t believe the critters have a brain and that means something else must be thinking for them. To do that it must have a way of communicating with them…a port. If Cassie has the same port then it can talk to her too.”
Turning to look at Cassie, his head spun at the implications of what One-of-One was saying. It wasn’t Cassie who was talking. It was whatever it was that controlled the critters, and this was possibly their first contact with the alien lifeform.
“But she’s talking in a language we understand. Do you really think an alien would do that?”
“She’s still partly human, so maybe her brain is translating it into a language she can understand.”
“Are you saying she’s tapping into the alien’s brain?”
“Why not?”
Putting an earpiece in his ear, he said, “Ark, you need to hear this.”
“What?”
“Cassie is talking. One-of-One thinks she’s in contact with…the head cheese of the critters.”
“Interesting. Make sure you record anything she says.”
One-of-One put in her own earpiece. “Ark, it’s more interesting than that.”
“How so?”
“Communications is a two-way street.”
“What does that mean?”
“If we can hear it then it can hear us.”
“Not following you.”
“It means we can feed it data.”
“Oh, well, that is interesting.”
Listening to Ark and One-of-One, he seemed to be the only one who didn’t understand what they had in mind. “What am I missing?”
Ark’s steady voice came through his earpiece. “It means we can send the head cheese a message.”
“What do you want to say other than fuck off?”
“I wouldn’t waste my breath saying that, but we can lie to it. You know, give it misleading information.”
Ben was still standing back from Cassie’s bed and he gave the young man a sympathetic look. He didn’t know it yet, but Cassie had just become a new weapon in the military’s arsenal against the critters. She was no longer his sister in body or spirit, and the Cassie he knew was as good as dead.
“She’s still a person, Ark. She has rights,” he said softly.
“We’re not gonna hurt her,” Ark replied steadily. “But she can give us a tactical advantage and we need to work out how we can use her.”
“I suppose healing her is out of the question.”
“Can you heal her?”
Looking at Cassie, he studied her young face. “I don’t know.”
“I’ll tell you what, you work out how to heal her and we’ll work out how she can help us.”
He might be young, but Ben wasn’t a stupid kid. With a downturned mouth, he said, “Cassie would want the aliens dead.” His eyes filled with tears. “She’d be okay with whatever you need to do, but for me, please don’t hurt her.”
Rubbing his forehead tiredly, he replied unhappily, “I won’t let them hurt her, Ben.”
The whole time they’d been talking, Cassie had continued to whisper her strange words. Removing his earpiece, he placed the microphone on her chest so Ark could record what she was saying. Turning to One-of-One, he said, “Pass me some tape so I can secure this mike to her.”
CHAPTER FOUR: On the edge (Bill)
Back in Toyland again, he surveyed the large room and was impresse
d by how quickly Jenkins had transformed the weapons division into a production floor. Gone were the partitioned office areas and long rows of tables trailed down the middle of the room. People were sitting only six feet apart, busily filing and bolting parts of guns together. Walking behind them, he reached the test range where more people were firing weapons at targets. They were clearing the gun as working or sending them back to the production line. The guns used depleted uranium-tipped bullets and those were being manufactured in another building. They would need more raw materials and components, but Jenkins knew exactly where they could get what he needed. It would be yet another mission for Leon’s Navigator team to make sure they maintained the supplies they were using to create the weapons.
Jenkins kept Dunk well-informed about their progress so he wasn’t in the weapons area to inspect their production process. It was Candy they needed to speak with, and Leon, Ark and Tank had already wandered across the floor to her area. She’d called him to say the new weapons were ready for testing, and striding across the floor, he joined the others who were already listening intently to her briefing.
She was holding up an odd-looking gun-shaped weapon. “This is our latest attempt at a viable laser gun. We’re calling it the Hellfire.”
The gun was so large it could only be held using both hands, and Candy grunted with the effort of moving it as she adjusted it into a firing position. “Currently the power pack is still attached to the gun which makes it a heavy bitch, but that’s not a problem for a nav.”
“Why don’t you use the power from the nav suits?” Leon asked.
Tank answered for Candy. “The nav suits drink power as it is. At least this way when we run out of power we can take the suit off and we’ll still be armed.”
“What does it weigh?” He asked.
Candy gave him a dour look. “That’s part of the problem. It weighs around forty pounds.”