Invaders (a sequel to Vaz, Tiona and Disc) (37 page)

***

Balan looked up, the genegineers were back. “What?”

“We have good news.” When Balan just looked at them, they continued, “We’ve found a common virus that afflicts many of these aliens. It mutates its outer coat and manages to infect them over and over again despite their becoming immune to the antigens in the coat of the previous virus. Almost all versions of it affect the respiratory system, thus causing them to spew viral particles into the atmosphere which then spread to other victims.”

“Yes, yes,” Balan said impatiently. After all, she had no need to understand all these biological details that so fascinated the genegineers. “Is there a reason you’re telling me about this?”

Genegineer First nervously bobbed his muzzle. “We’ve modified their virus. We believe it’ll spread even more rapidly and be much more lethal. After a few days of respiratory infection to ensure dissemination, it should destroy their clotting system and thus cause them to rapidly bleed to death. We’ve administered it to one of the aliens and will observe to see if it spreads through their herd. If it does,” Genegineer First nervously glanced at Balan, “we should be able to leave this… planet and return home with the others. It’ll do its job while we’re gone.”

Balan could understand why they’d consider this good news. Everyone on the lander was a little bit nervous about how dangerous these aliens had proven to be. She knew they all worried that some of the aliens on other islands might realize what was going on here and come to attack. She tried to tell herself they were too primitive to figure it out, or to care if they did, or to hurt the lander if they did mount an attack; but she kept remembering that the way their ships accelerated in space was far from primitive.
Maybe we just haven’t seen what they can do?
“Okay, good work,” she said, turning away.

Genegineer First said, “We need more of the aliens to test it on. We only have four of them left.”

Irritated, Balan wondered what they’d done with the others.
Probably dissected them. Or just killed them to see how they die.
She grunted, “Okay, we’ll get you more.”

Once the genegineers had left she gave orders to round up another group of the aliens. Then she sent a message telling the mothership they might be able to return with them after all.

She didn’t try to talk to Levon, she was finding such conversations too stressful.

***

President Miles struggled muzzily toward wakefulness. Speaking to her AI she rasped, “Tell them I’ll be right out.” She looked toward her husband. He reached out sleepily to pat her arm.

Pulling on her robe she stepped into the room that she’d designated as her nighttime command center. Usually when they woke her up they had all the screens lit up, but this time the only people present were her military liaison for the alien team, a couple of NSA people, her Chief of Staff, and her Secret Service agents. Evidently they thought they could present whatever she needed to know about without using visual aids. “Yes?” she said, trying not to sound grumpy.

“Sorry,” one of the NSA guys said, “we’ve just translated the aliens’ latest transmission to the mothership. They now think they’ve designed a highly communicable and rapidly lethal virus. They’re apparently testing it, though a few things about the syntax of the message implies that they may need more humans to test it on, that’s not clear.”

Her military liaison, Colonel Nantz said, “Um, this is probably related. The aliens have started moving around Tabuaeran as if they’re looking for something. From what you’ve just said, I suspect they’re looking for more people for their testing program.”

Miles said, “We got everybody off that island though, right?” At the Colonel’s nod she raised her eyes to the ceiling and sighed. “Thank God for that!” she said tiredly. Dropping her eyes back to look at the people in the room with her, she said, “Recommendations?”

“We’ve got to stop them!” The NSA man said.

Miles grimaced. Dryly, she said, “Thank you for stating the obvious… but how?”

The woman from the NSA, her name tag read Taggart, narrowed her eyes, “I thought we had a nuclear weapon standing by? We need to use something that’ll sterilize the area.”

Miles looked at Colonel Nantz, “Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t that nuclear torpedo still almost a week away?”

Nantz merely nodded.

Taggart said, “Can’t we just drop a nuke on them?”

“They shoot down aircraft. They won’t have any trouble with missiles either. The only things we’re delivering successfully get there underwater.”

Taggart said, “So deliver an A-bomb underwater on one of the discs.”

Colonel Nantz said, “We’ve been working on modifying an airdropped nuclear weapon for that, but there are… issues. They’ll tolerate being underwater, but we don’t have an established way to detonate them there. We’re working on it, but…”

“Conventional weapons then,” Taggart said impatiently.

Nantz grimaced, “I don’t think they’ll generate enough heat to sterilize the virus. But they
could
aerosolize it and spread it all around.”

Nantz and Taggart sat there staring at one another for a moment, Taggart chewing her lip. Slowly, she said, “That alien vessel is a spaceship. Presumably it’s tightly sealed. Can you guys use conventional weapons to knock it around hard enough to injure the people inside without breaking it open?”

The Colonel’s eyes widened slightly, “I’d have to talk to our demo experts. I think it’d be pretty scary, but it might be possible.” His eyes turned questioningly to President Miles.

Miles gave a decisive nod. “Check it out. Try to think of other ideas. Tell the guys working on that underwater detonation of the A-bomb that their lives and the lives of their families may depend on them getting it to work soon.” She paused and frowned, “I’ve heard fuel-air explosions are pretty awe-inspiring and generate a lot of heat?” She looked at the Colonel. Upon receiving his nod, she continued, “They seem like they might sterilize the area. Ask the people that know about them whether there’s any way to deliver one underwater.” She turned to her Chief of Staff, “Call a meeting of the alien team in two hours. Make sure each of them knows what’s going on and ask them to bring ideas.” She glanced back over her shoulder, “I’m going to catch a few more winks.”

***

Balan’s head hurt. It seemed like every which way she turned, more things were going wrong. First the soldiers who’d gone out to round up more of the aliens hadn’t been able to find any. This despite the fact that there was no way they could have gotten off the island unless they swam off one at a time! No boat had arrived. No aircraft had come.

Balan had decided they must be hiding and had asked her technical people about radio transmissions. If they were hiding, it only seemed reasonable that they might be communicating with other aliens by radio. What she’d learned was that there seem to be small low powered radio sources
all over
the damned island! Not coming from people but from various devices that practically
littered
the landscape.

“What are all these devices saying in their transmissions?” she asked the engineer.

He just looked at her for a moment, then shook his muzzle, “We don’t know.”

She snapped impatiently, “Why not?”

“They…” He gave her a look that made her feel he wondered if she was joking, or maybe not very bright. “They don’t speak the same language we do.”

Balan remembered learning, oh so many years ago in school about how rendas had originally spoken many different languages. Though that was ancient, ancient history it made her realize with some embarrassment that there was certainly no reason to expect that these aliens would speak the same language that rendas did. It was just something she’d never considered. Rendas hadn’t met an intelligent race until this one, so it had seemed like it was something that was never going to happen. So, therefore, not worth worrying about. “Can you translate it?”

“
I
can’t. Maybe someone could, but I think it would take years.” The engineer frowned, “Unless you could force one of the aliens to tell you what their words meant.”

“Yeah,” Balan said disgustedly, “if only we could find some of them.”

She wondered if she should be trying to destroy the little devices that were transmitting, but decided that there were so many of them that it would waste too much time.

***

Tiona felt a little strung out. She’d arrived at the White House for a 4:30 AM meeting of the president’s alien team. They’d hashed out some strategies. Since Tiona didn’t have any role in those plans she’d gone off for a nap, but now they were meeting so they could watch what happened in real time. It was nine in the morning here in DC which made it one in the morning on Tabuaeran.

She looked around the room, amused to see that President Miles, despite being awake a lot more than Tiona had been, looked pretty fresh. Parque said, “Just to bring all of you up to date in case some of you aren’t aware. The image you’re looking at is a combined infrared and lowlight video picture of the alien vessel. Some of the military’s demolition experts have loaded a series of discs with large lumps of C4 and camouflaged them as small boulders. They were assembled by a Navy SEAL team in one of the submarines that’s been hanging off the coast of Tabuaeran. They were put in plastic bags and flown underwater to the beach where one of the SEALs cut them loose. Since then they’ve been moving slowly toward the alien ship, a strategy for moving devices onto the island which has been successful so far. They’re in place now and should soon lift into the air alongside the alien ship to be det…” Parque paused as everyone focused on a group of rocks that suddenly leapt into the air along one side of the alien ship. They weren’t touching it, but were a few feet away. Tiona could see another group jumping up, a little further away on the other side of the alien ship. She wondered for a second if they were going to try to crush the ship between them like a nut in a nutcracker
, That doesn’t make sense! They’re trying to do this without rupturing the alien vessel. No one wants it to leak!

A sudden flash whited out the screens in the area where the column of discs had leapt up along left side of the ship. The alien vessel was knocked violently to the right and began to fall that way. Then a flash burst from the discs on the right side of the ship, knocking it back the other way. Looking a little like a felled tree, the ship now leaned to the left.
Timber
, Tiona thought to herself, realizing that they’d knocked the ship so that it fell in a direction that laid it out on a flat surface.
Probably because it’s less likely to break the structure if it lands flat.
As it bounced, but then settled apparently undamaged, Tiona thought to herself,
That was some precision demo work! Knocking it back and forth like that, then laying it out without breaking it… Pretty awesome!

Though she couldn’t help thinking it seemed pretty reckless too.

I didn’t think of any better options myself though.

The president said, “What do you think? Do we send in the fuel-air explosive?”

A lot of people started talking at once, but President Miles waved for silence and then started taking advice from person one at a time. Some thought, even though the ship didn’t look broken, they should deliver the fuel-air bomb which was waiting just off the beach in an attempt to sterilize the area in case some viral particles had leaked out. Others felt vehemently that the bomb might break the ship to release viral particles. If they cracked the hull, but didn’t blow it open they couldn’t be certain the bomb would generate enough heat inside the compartments of the ship to sterilize it.

Finally President Miles waved for silence. She turned to Cooper, “Is that nuclear weapon ready to go yet?”

Looking frustrated, he shook his head. “Sorry, no.”

“What about a conventional air-delivered nuclear weapon now that we’ve knocked the alien ship on its ass?”

The general spoke to his AI for a moment, then looked back to the president. “Two of the apertures we believe they project their beam weapon out of are still on the upper sides of the alien ship as it now lies. We don’t know how much of the sky they can cover, but I’d hate to have them shoot a nuclear weapon down with that beam weapon. It probably wouldn’t go off, but when it hit the water and broke up it’d contaminate a lot of ocean.”

Someone exclaimed, “That’d be a hell of a lot better than letting the virus get loose!”

Miles said, “Send in a conventional Trident missile. If they don’t shoot it down, follow with a nuclear one.”

Cooper frowned, “Are you wanting to detonate the conventional Trident? It might break open the ship.”

Miles shook her head, “Don’t arm its warhead. It’s just a test.”

***

Balan was haranguing her officers. She wanted to know what could possibly have happened to the humans on the island, and if they were really gone she wanted a plan to get some more.
This damned lander should be carrying some kind of aircraft!