Greenflies

by Darling, Andrew Leete

  He turned to what might be left of the Russian’s humanity. He addressed the man in Russian, “How could you do, it? How could you betray your own kind and teach the Greenflies how to kill us?”

  A moment passed and the Russian’s deep voice filled the room. It was impossible to gauge where exactly it was coming from. It seemed to emit from all of the vertical passageways simultaneously.

  “You speak as if there was a choice,” it spoke. “The thing within me makes demands and I am obligated to obey. It does not speak to me in words, or even thoughts, but rather through cravings. Even now, I find myself thirsting for your blood and should I delay the satisfaction of that desire, the thing within me will discipline me. Perhaps I will feel I am burned alive. Or perhaps a part of me will be severed from my body, and I will lose a little more of my humanity. If I give in, however, you cannot imagine the pleasure of fulfilling my craving.”

  “What’s your name?” shouted Marshal. He was aware of the danger of revealing his position while the Russian could conceal his, but there seemed little other means of achieving tactical advantage other than through conversation.

  “Sergei Borisovich,” said Sergei from somewhere below. “It is a pleasure.”

  There was a loud noise from across the room, and Colonel Marshal swung around a column to open fire upon it. He immediately cursed himself for falling for the ruse as the giant man erupted from the hole right in front of him. The clothes had been burned away from his chest, revealing bright orange scar-like tissue, plugging the hole through his body. With his damaged left hand, Sergei swept the rifle from Marshal’s hands. The large sleeve fell away from his right arm and he drove it toward Marshal’s throat. Marshal reached out with both hands and caught the arm where the wrist would be on a normal human.

  Marshal found himself with a gray wolf’s head inches from his faceplate, snarling and spraying spit across his field of view. The animals eyes were maddened, and its saliva was all foam. With the sleeve gone, Marshal could see that the front of the wolf blended seamlessly into Sergei’s forearm. There were even tiny, atrophied forelimbs beneath the wolf’s head trying in vain to scratch at him. Sergei leveraged his mass to force Marshal against the wall, Marshal’s hands still locked around the wolf’s head to keep it from biting into his throat. Sergei leaned in more, and Marshal had to bring his legs up and plant his feet in Sergei’s shoulder to hold the wolf’s head back.

  Marshal felt the battle slowly being lost as the strength in his arms began to wane.

  Meg came to, face down on a solid surface, her first sensation being that of blinding pain in her chest. She managed to roll over, and saw there was bright red splotch of blood on her pressure suit. A tiny whitish splinter emerged from the fabric at that point. She nearly passed out again when she realized it was probably a piece of a rib. She’d never had a fracture before, much less a compound one, and the pain was unlike anything she could imagine.

  Someone said something nearby, in a soft, almost conversational manner. It was the same language as had been spoken by the alien maid earlier, and, at first Meg thought it was the maid. Then she began to take in her surroundings for the first time.

  The room here was spherical and immense, its diameter easily the size of a football field. The ceiling of the chamber was filled with the same oval passageways as the previous room, and she had no doubt fallen through one of them. Plank-like structures with handholds dangled from each vertical passageway and hung down like vines from a tree. They terminated at platforms, suspended in the spherical room by light supports, seemingly arrayed at random in three dimensions. Meg had landed on one such platform. What had spoken, however, was nothing on the platform. It was a transparent hourglass-shaped structure, pulsing with purplish fluid. There were shapes inside, mostly nestled at the center of the hourglass, but their shapes were indistinguishable.

  The hourglass repeated the word. Despite its gigantic size, the voice that emanated from it was somehow small and tenor.

  “I don’t speak Russian,” Meg gasped. Breathing hurt. Talking was a nightmare.

  “English, then,” the hourglass said.

  “You speak English?” Meg asked.

  Somehow the hourglass managed to sound hurt in its response, “I am expert in verbal communications, and I have been monitoring the radio communications of your world and assimilated several languages.”

  “You’re the Whaleship, aren’t you?”

  “I am.”

  It really should be Jerry here, she thought, or even Franz. It should be someone who could find a way to use this opportunity. But they were both dead now, most likely.

  “If you can talk, why haven’t you been communicating with us?” said Meg, “We could have just given you what you want.”

  “What I wanted was the extinction of the human race and 75% of all land biota,” the Whaleship responded, “It would have been inappropriate to directly ask for it, and agreeing to those terms would have been uncharacteristic of the strong survival instinct your planet was known for. Also, communication is not a standard procedure as it has been two hundred million years, in the subjective time of your solar system, since the last time a sentient tool-using race was encountered. I was not able to formulate cogent strategies against your kind without the input of a formerly human collaborator. It is hoped that these strategies will be more faithfully recorded for any future encounters with species such as yours.”

  Meg spoke again, now in small increments to minimize the pain in her chest, “You recognize… that I am human …and you understand tools?”

  “You are clearly human, cladistically, despite your differing genome. The Greenflies are inherently simple-minded in distinctions such as this. Their limitations facilitate the accepted hierarchy. Regarding tools--yes, I understand them in the abstract, although I lack the ability to construct or manipulate fine inanimate tools. The tools you see in this section of the vessel are remnants from the original crew. They are quite old from your standpoint, although not as old as you would imagine. It has only been three thousand of your years from my perspective since the extinction of their species.”

  “So you understand tools?” Meg asked again.

  “I thought I made it clear,” the hourglass spoke, “Yes.”

  “Good,” said Meg as she raised the laser pistol Leena had given her over her head and pointed it wobbily at the center of the hourglass, “Because I’m going to shoot you.”

  “You are really quite strong,” Sergei said, leaning forward slightly more. There wasn’t much exertion on his side. It was mostly just mass. The wolf’s head itself didn’t need to breathe (as it was plugged into Sergei's circulatory system), so Colonel Marshal’s efforts to strangle it were useless.

  “This isn’t my fault, you know,”Sergei said, “It is the thing inside me--what it will do to me if I resist.”

  The wolf’s teeth were gnashing up against Marshal’s helmet at this point, his arms quivering with effort of keeping it away. At this point, his body weight was suspended completely by the wall behind him and his legs on Sergei’s shoulder.

  “Then we’re in the same boat,” said Marshal, weakly.

  With a last burst of effort he twisted with both arms and legs. The wolf’s head made an audible cracking noise as its neck was rotated one hundred eighty degrees. Marshal dropped to the ground, and the wolf hung limp from Sergei’s elbow, its tongue lolling from open jaws.

  It was clear that last moment of action was all that the Colonel had left in him. He lay on the ground, his muscles refusing the orders his brain was giving them to move. There was another weapon in his boot, a trusty combat knife, but there wasn’t enough strength left in him to reach it.

  Sergei looked down at his beaten opponent. The wolf severed itself from his elbow and fell to the ground with a meaty thump. The wound created by the action was alive with small orange tendrils. He advanced on the Colonel, the orange wound held forward.

  “Such strength and speed for a human,” he sai
d, “Yours shall make a fine new right arm.”

  The Colonel flailed one last time, but he was held down by Sergei’s mangled left hand. Sergei placed his right arm's stump against the Colonel’s own right elbow and smiled as the tendrils began to force open small gaps in the Kevlar there. Marshal grunted as the tendrils pushed into the flesh of his arm. They began to spread through his right forearm and begin the microscopic surgical work of severing the arm at the joint.

  And then the orange began to turn to brown.

  Sergei sensed something was wrong, but it was too late to stop the process. The brown shade of the goo passed into his own body, and his right arm began to seize. He brutally pulled away from Marshal, the brown mass separating wetly from his body. Throughout his body, the microscopic architecture that was maintained by the Harvester was falling apart. Blood vessels burst. The backup organs that had never belonged there in the first place disconnected from the native systems. Most dramatically, the hole in his chest that hadn’t quite healed yet burst open with streams of all-too-red blood. The Harvester was dead, and Sergei was about to follow. He collapsed on his side a short distance from Marshal. His mouth gaped open like a dying fish.

  Marshal thought he understood the question. He rolled to his own side to face Sergei fully.

  “High tolerance,” he gasped, “I’ve had a lethal dose running through my veins since the mid-eighties.”

  He lay there for the better part of a minute before getting to his feet and hobbling towards his lost rifle. He had pulled muscles from his ankles to his neck in holding Sergei off, and his left arm hung limp at his side. He slung the rifle over his shoulder and headed for the hole which Meg had fallen down.

  “What is it that you want?”asked the voice of the Whaleship.

  “I want you … to send us back to Earth… and leave us alone,” Meg said, grinding her teeth with the effort of holding the gun aloft.

  “Earth has been destroyed,” said the Whaleship.

  Meg fired the laser pistol, sending a beam a few feet from the center of the hourglass. She made as if she intended the shot as a threat, even though shooting had been entirely accidental.

  “Stop lying!”

  The Whaleship did seem taken aback by the blast, although that might just have been some attempt to emulate human intonation. “I assure you that I am not, although I am sorry for your loss. Sergei warned me that humans would try to find a way to reach me, most likely by utilizing the teleportation ability of some of the lesser breeds. The use of this ability would indicate that humans are far more dangerous than may be permitted to continue, even temporarily. That came to pass, and even more worryingly, humans appear to have interfered with the Greenfly hierarchy, finding a way to duplicate the Greenfly blood supply and offer it as payment. You show impressive ingenuity and would be a threat to ourselves and all the living worlds which we protect.

  “An asteroid had been prepared to teleport into position to impact your world to reset the biosphere once our sampling mission had been completed. Once we learned of your destructive potential, we reset the destination such that it would arrive in the core of your world. The energy released from such a displacement of solid mass would be sufficient to shatter your world. The asteroid was sent immediately when you and your party were detected in the cargo bay. It is en route.”

  “So, stop it!”shouted Meg.

  “It cannot be stopped. It is displacing at the speed of light. No information can reach it in transit,”said the Whaleship, “Again, I am sorry for your loss, but the sacrifice was necessary. Please do not destroy me.”

  “Can anyone be saved?”

  “Many already have been saved. A number of living humans are being kept in holding cells elsewhere on this vessel for potential domestication. With this latest incursion, they were to be put down as too dangerous for experimentation. There are also the remaining members of your party, numbering three at this point.”

  “They’re still alive?”

  “Three of them,” repeated the Whaleship.

  “Can anyone on Earth be saved?” asked Meg.

  “The breakup of a planet, even under such extreme forces, takes some time. Conditions for human survival might persist for awhile after the detonation at the core. Duration is difficult to gauge”

  “Rescue them!” yelled Meg, making a jabbing gesture with the pistol that hurt her as much as it threatened the Whaleship, “Order the Greenflies to go there and rescue them!”

  “Such a rescue operation would take several hours to complete. I do not believe it is within your power to hold that weapon for that duration,” said the Whaleship.

  Colonel Marshal dropped from one of the tubes above. The levitation devices on the hips of his armor folded out and allowed him to glide to the platform on which Meg lay. Without skipping a beat, he hit the platform and pointed his own rifle at the Whaleship core.

  “You stand relieved,” he said to Meg.

  Meg’s arm fell to the ground, the pistol sliding away on the platform. Tears streamed down her cheeks, half fatigue and half relief.

  “Obey her orders,” said Marshal, “Mount a rescue of all the people you can. And put me in touch with my men.”

  “Yes,” said the Whaleship.

  The radios in Marshal’s helmet and Meg’s collar crackled to life.

  “Colonel, this is Ramachandran. The Greenflies are disengaging. Repeat, we are in what Dr. Leitner believes is a power distribution center, and the Greenflies are disengaging. Should we continue with mission objectives and destroy the installation?”

  “Negative,”replied Marshal. “Proceed with the loyal Greenfly to the insertion point. You will assist in rescue operations to Earth. First priority should be military personnel to further assist with the evacuation and supplies. Visit Utah and collect what survivors may be present. They can further direct rescue efforts.”

  “Sir?”

  “Earth is a lost asset,” Colonel Marshal replied, without emotion. “Bring all evacuees to the teleportation pad waypoint. Medical personnel would be appreciated within the first group of evacuees.”

  Chapter 25: Lost Asset

  Dr. Barnard stood before one of the windows of the Whaleship passenger section antechamber. The low gravity agreed with his arthritis immensely, but there was no joy to be found here with this view. The Whaleship had displaced itself into position between the Earth and moon to facilitate the evacuation. Before him, Earth writhed in her death throes.

  The formerly-blue globe was now traced with glowing red lines, delineating the edges of tectonic plates even now spewing forth fountains of lava miles high. Immediately below the ship was the western hemisphere. It was nighttime at the surface, but the outline of the western edge of the continent was clearly visible, painted in day-glo orange and red. Southern California was a sea of lava, and rivers of red flowed down the slopes of the Rocky Mountains and the Andes. The sea was no longer blue, but a white foam indistinguishable from the clouds seen from this altitude. Soon, the water of the world would be entirely in the atmosphere, and the surface would be a single ocean of lava. The world would not blow apart as in science fiction movies. Such things were simply not possible due to gravitation. This would become what planetary geologists referred to as a resurfacing event.

  The passenger section antechamber was, so far, the only area of the passenger section to be used solely for refugees. While there was many times the available space in the chambers below, purpose-built for residence and control systems, the vertical passageways were simply not suitable for human travel. Ropes had been thrown down to the chamber where the Whaleship’s brain resided, but otherwise the lower sections of the passenger section were unused.

  Most of the refugees were being taken to what the Whaleship referred to as its incubators, cavities in the ship with Earth-like atmosphere, used for growing terrestrial organisms.

  Still, Barnard was surrounded by a hundred other civilians and medical personnel in this one room of the passenger section
. Perhaps it was a mess hall or meeting room for the Architects. It probably had sufficient space for a thousand of the creatures. The Architects were evidently small creatures, if the maids were any indication. Several of the artificial servants plied the antechamber, offering water and military rations to the survivors in Russian. Something would have to be done about that.

  “Sir,” said Colonel Marshal.

  The Colonel had been standing a few feet away trying to get his attention, but he had been entirely lost in the scenes of destruction outside the window and the scenes of survival within it.

  “I’m sorry, Colonel,” said Barnard, turning to the tireless old soldier, “Report.”

  “We’re still finding survivors in secure installations in the center of continents, sir,” said Marshal, “The earthquakes have incapacitated most remaining survivors with motion sickness, but we are still meeting some resistance. After the events of the past year, the survivors are not prepared to be rescued by Greenflies. We send human soldiers as much as possible, but the earthquakes render them incapacitated quickly. The Greenflies appear to be immune to this effect.”

  “The atmosphere?” asked Barnard.

  “The science team reports it unbreathable worldwide at this point, sir.”

  “Ash,”said Barnard despondently, “Concentrate all remaining efforts on the list of emergency shelters I’ve provided to you. We established them at the onset of the Greenfly threat, but, I fear we buried them too deeply in the ground. Cave-ins… collapses…even magma… but at least they have independent air supplies.”

  “We made those a priority some time ago, sir,” said the Colonel.