“Maybe your ‘Star Fox’ can help out?”
“I’ve only just figured out how to say hello,” Gnox said.
“How damned hard can it be?”
“Very hard,” she said, finally looking up. “Their syntax changes depending on context, as does the morphology. I didn’t realize we were missing a dozen phonemes, because they were on the borderline ultrasonic range. Lastly, every word, besides having seemingly random phonemes tagged to them, may have as many as six morphemes.”
“What in the fuck is all of that supposed to mean?” Kent demanded.
“She means it’s a very complicated, very alien language,” Al said.
Gnox looked at him and nodded appreciatively.
“Can you understand it, or not?”
“Yes,” Gnox said. “Given time,” she qualified. “I dearly wish we had an expert in Pirahã. The Star Fox’s reluctance to use recursions suggests certain elemental familiarities.” She glanced at Admiral Kent who was staring at her in annoyance. “I am fluent in 42 languages, conversational in another 11, and have a spattering knowledge of 20 more. Like most polyglots, I pick them up like some people collect fridge magnets. However, linguistics isn’t my specialty. I’m a biologist by profession.”
Kent continued to examine her. She had a vaguely Asian appearance with a hint of epicanthic folds on her eyelids and straight black hair which she wore in a short, pageboy cut. She might have been 20 or 30 pounds overweight, though probably from poor personal habits rather than a genetic predisposition. She also seemed to be always smacking chewing gum which, for a career naval officer, was highly frustrating. She went back to her notebook.
“Do all your scientists dabble in multiple fields?” he asked Al.
“Specialization is for insects,” Gnox answered for him.
“They’re not really my scientists,” Al reminded him. “The director of NASA was eaten, remember? I was only the director of the colonization program. We had less than 100 employees.”
“Yes, you’ve reminded me every time we’ve had a meeting. However, since your boss is a pile of shit and bones in DC, you are the head honcho.” Gnox gave a tiny laugh, obviously finding the image he created amusing in some way.
“Right,” Al said. “Which is why I came to you with information about the alien ship and what it is capable of.”
“Theoretically capable,” Kent corrected.
“It’s more than theoretical,” Al insisted. “We’ve had three successful tests.”
“You call putting a seven-ton skiff into orbit fast enough to nearly capsize the John Finn a success? Jumping Jesus, man, the shockwave tore one of the .50 caliber gun mounts off her deck! It’s a miracle nobody was lost.”
A damned good thing we decided to run the test remotely at the last second, too. “You need to understand, there are risks with trying to reverse engineer something like this.”
“A half-mile high waterspout from a seven-ton boat going from zero to Mach 10 is more than a slight risk.”
“I agree,” Al barked, getting tired of walking on eggshells around the admiral. “Damnit, you can’t do research like this on military ships! We need somewhere with better equipment and people suited to direct innovations. NASA doesn’t just invent stuff, we set it in motion and shepherd the development.”
“NASA doesn’t invent stuff,” Admiral Kent said and snorted. “You convinced me to pull into Cape Canaveral and rescue your people before you told me you had an alien and its ship. You convinced me, because you said it would lead to a cure and probably advance our space program a couple hundred years. So far, I have one alien who won’t talk and the coolest water park attraction in history.”
Gnox snorted with laughter and shook her head as she wrote. “Star Fox can talk, just not any human language we recognize. And, as I said, we’re making progress.”
“What’s with its name, Star Fox?” Admiral Kent asked. “People laugh when they hear it.”
“Long story,” Gnox said.
“Suppose you tell it.”
“Do you really want a lecture on the origin of a video game?”
Admiral Kent narrowed his eyes as he tried to stare down the scientist. She didn’t look up, which made the game more difficult. “Never mind,” he grumbled under his breath. Al could see the barest of a smirk on Gnox’s face from where he was sitting.
“We’ve made progress on their biology, at least,” she said. “We are sure their amino acids are not the same as ours, which is why she won’t eat the food we give her.”
“Can’t we just sprinkle something on it?” This time she laughed out loud. “What’s so goddamn funny?’
“Having a different amino acid chain isn’t something you can sprinkle new seasoning on. The alien’s biochemistry is completely…well…alien. It can’t eat our food; it could be toxic. Same if you tried to eat the alien’s food. It might taste just fine. But it would either do nothing for you or cause a chemical reaction which could kill you. Sort of like anaphylactic shock on steroids.”
“How much of its alien food do we have?”
“Enough for another month. She’s been rationing herself, probably because she knows she can’t eat our food. I have the only other biochemist on our team working with samples to try and synthesize some basics. Think of it as watery soup.” She shrugged. “It’s a start.”
“You keep calling it a her,” Dr. Curie said. “Why?”
“Because she said she was a female,” Gnox said. “I told you we had our first breakthrough. We have a couple of words we’re sure of, and now we are beginning to develop a lexicon of simple terms.”
“Okay,” Admiral Kent said and turned to Dr. Gallatin. “What can you tell me about the disease?”
“We’ve managed to pull together some data we got from HAARP and the other three nations that shared data before the world’s communications went down.”
“Sorry, HAARP?”
“The Human Advancement and Adaptive Research Project, led by an old colleague of mine, Dr. Lisha Breda.”
“Wait, isn’t that those nutjobs who were chased out of California for trying to make superman or something?”
“Their research was rather non-standard,” Dr. Gallatin said. “They weren’t doing eugenics. They were trying to unlock sequences within DNA which would make us effectively immortal, as well as immune to all diseases and cancer.”
“Sounds like they’re the ones who created this zombie plague,” the admiral said.
“Hardly,” Dr. Curie said. “You don’t accidentally make zombie plagues like they do in the movies.”
“Dr. Curie is right, of course,” Dr. Gallatin said. “Besides, if Dr. Breda is correct, this plague isn’t a lifeform.”
“Sorry, are you saying it’s not alive? Then what the hell is it?”
“Closest thing would be a nano virus,” Dr. Gallatin said. Admiral Kent blinked, so he elaborated. “Think of it as a super-small machine.”
“Like them nanites I’ve heard about?”
“Yes!” Dr. Gallatin said, obviously relieved he wouldn’t have to school the admiral on the subject. “Only, these are smaller than the best we’ve managed by several orders of magnitude. So small, their programming may be embedded in their construct at the atomic level. In other words, it’s not from around here.”
“No way it came from Earth,” Al agreed. “If a country could have produced something as complex and elegant as this, they would have revolutionized the entire biochem industry ages ago.” Dr. Gallatin nodded in agreement.
“Okay,” Admiral Kent said. “You know what it is; how do we stop it?”
“We can’t,” Dr. Gallatin said.
“Why not?”
“Because it’s everywhere,” Dr. Currie said. He took a glass of water from the table. “It’s in this water.” He gestured around the room. “It’s in the air we’re breathing.” Then he patted his chest. “And it’s in us, Admiral. We can stop it with airtight seals, but it’s already in the air. We know
it automatically mutates to different forms when various versions of it come into contact with each other, though we don’t know why.”
“I stand by the theory that it’s a form of vector,” Dr. Gallatin said. “A bioweapon.”
“My God,” Admiral Kent said. “Did the foxes give it to us on purpose?”
“That’s one of the questions I’m going to ask,” Gnox said. “Once we get past ‘see Dick run,’ of course.”
“What about surviving it?” Admiral Kent asked.
“The only way to survive it might be to hide from it,” Gallatin said. “Get away from uncontrolled groups of people. Have proper food production set up. We know very high temperature breaks it down, so we can start with that. With time, we can hopefully find ways to mitigate it.” He looked the admiral in the eye. “But frankly, there is no way to stop it.”
* * *
Pacific Northwest
Classified Task Force
“You’re wasting your time with her.”
Gabriel was the last one he expected to speak up about the Coastie. “Somebody sent her,” Michael said.
“Probably the same person who’s trying to break my satellite kill switch,” Gabriel said.
“So, you’re saying it might be worth getting info out of her?” Michael asked. She shrugged in reply. Michael gestured over the conference table they were seated around, and satellite imagery popped up. “We weren’t tracking the south because we were monitoring the west in preparation for leaving the Columbia River.” The images displayed various surface contacts identified by markers; friendly in green, unknown in blue, hostile in red.
“The Russians are still out there.” Chamuel was staring at the red marker.
“Yes,” Michael said. “Even after you said they would move on.”
“Something’s changed,” Chamuel said. “Before you ask, I don’t know what.” Her dark skin was shining with sweat as she slouched in her mobility chair. “But something is influencing the Russian’s actions.”
Michael looked at the projected map and narrowed his eyes in thought. Chamuel was the tactical genius. A savant. She could manage dozens of simultaneous situations on a global scale. Her gifted mind was not affected by the infirmities which plagued her body. “You need to find the exact position of the sub. What orders should I give our ASW?”
“Nothing, for now,” Chamuel said.
Michael nodded. “Ariel, report?”
The man code named Ariel looked up into the video pickup. He was of average build and appeared indiscriminately Asian. Most who met him guessed he was Japanese, but he insisted otherwise. There was no way to tell from his accent because he was mute. He wasn’t present at the table as he was too busy with his analysis, but he typed an answer into his computer which was spoken for him by his voder.
“We’ve made real progress on the amino acids issue. We’re testing synthetics on cell samples from the alien classified as Vulpes. So far, so good. We’ll know more in a few days. Their biology isn’t dissimilar from ours in most ways. They have chromosomes, though a lot more than we do. They breath oxygen and exhale CO2. They eat and shit.”
“That’s good to know,” Jophiel said and laughed. Most of the seven around the table laughed or nodded.
Ariel typed another line of text. “The Vulpes’ food supply is in excess of 4 months. The ship had large stores. I’m not concerned—we’ll have the issue licked long before our visitor’s chow runs out.”
“You want to go next, Jophiel?” Michael asked.
“Sure,” the linguist replied. Despite being the oldest among them, her eyes were sharp, and she was as spry as a woman half her age. Her hair was pure white and looked like it hadn’t been cut during her lifetime. She kept it pinned up in an intricate knot. “Their language has elements we’ve never seen before, or rarely, at least. It has more in common with Pirahã than any other terrestrial language. I’ve just nailed down how he uses phonemes, and there are five or six morphemes.”
“How far are we in developing the Rosetta stone for their language?”
“I’d say 55%. We’re still running into a lot of ambiguities because of those damned phonemes.”
“We’d like to have the first questioning session before we arrive at base,” Michael said.
“I think we’ll be close,” Jophiel said.
“Good. Raphael?” Like Ariel, Raphael wasn’t present. While he worked, no other humans except his team had been in physical contact. He looked up from his lab equipment, and Michael wondered if he’d been listening. “Do you have a progress report?”
“This alien nanovirus is a stone-cold bitch,” Raphael said. “I know I’ve reported how bad it is, but the more I study it, the worse it gets. The damned thing is hard to kill, and it reproduces using dozens of energy sources from sunlight to thermal and even some sorts of radiation.”
“Did you just say it reproduces using radiation?” Ariel asked.
“That’s what I said.”
“How is it doing that?”
“We don’t know,” Raphael admitted. “The more we take this thing apart, the more I think we should have a robotics expert on the team instead of an immunologist.”
“I’m the closest thing you’ve got to a roboticist,” Michael reminded him. “I’ve read your report. It might be a machine; however, it responds more like a virus.” Raphael shrugged. “Do you want to alter your conclusions in regard to Strain Delta?”
“No,” Raphael said. “It cannot be contained or stopped with any technology we have.”
“What about your position on our visitor and the virus?”
“The Vulpes didn’t intentionally bring it.”
“But the alien did bring it,” Chamuel said. “Recently, not decades ago?”
“Yes,” Raphael said. “Given the rate at which this thing replicates, there’s no way in Hell it’s been here since the ‘50s and only started reproducing now.”
“So, one of the first questions we need to ask is why they brought us a world-ending, zombie plague?” Michael asked.
“I’ll be sure to ask him as soon as he understands the question,” Jophiel replied.
“Azrael, anything to add?”
“Not at this time,” the man replied.
Michael had always found Azrael’s pale, white skin and pink eyes disconcerting. His mannerisms, which were somewhere between Jeff Goldblum’s and Captain Jack Sparrow’s, didn’t help. “According to my information, you got the crates from archive before everything went to shit, and we shut down worldwide GCCS. Correct?”
“Yes,” Azrael confirmed. “I’ve been going through the crates, but it’s going to take a lot of time. The air force didn’t label things well in the ‘50s.” Michael gave him the stink eye. “If I do this too quickly, I could ruin some very fragile, glass sample slides. I’m a damned archeologist, not an investigative journalist.” Michael nodded slowly. “Vulpes is the same species—it explains why the government dropped everything in a hole and shoveled dirt over it.”
“Our charter was to keep this sort of thing from happening,” Michael reminded them, casting his gaze around the seven-sided table. “We failed.”
“The Heptagon was created before anyone had a clue what was coming,” Chamuel said. “With as little funding as we’ve gotten over the years, is it any surprise what happened?” Nobody could argue her point. “The powers that be had decided it was more important to guard the tech than to prepare for a possible botched contact scenario.”
“Very well,” Michael said. “Everyone, keep up the good work. We’ll arrive at base in two days.”
* * * * *
Chapter 2
Afternoon, Thursday, May 2
County Courthouse
Junction, TX
Cobb peeked over the heavy railing and down to the first floor. The sound of crunching, splintering, and snapping wood reminded him of a woodchipper, without the motor. It was accompanied by growls the likes of which he’d never heard before. It didn’t sou
nd like the infected, it was much, much deeper.
“What the fuck is it?” Vance hissed from behind him.
“I wish I knew,” Cobb said. He lifted his M4 and set it on the railing. Judging by the sounds of tearing wood, he’d see soon enough. A big chunk of bench went flying. “I think we’re about to find out, though. Better get some more guns down—”
He was cut off by three, massive benches exploding away from the barred doorway. They revealed a massive, furry, brown shape which triggered an old, old memory.
“It’s a bear!” Vance yelled. A big head tilted to look at them. Blood dripped off a massive muzzle with half its skin torn off. Cobb saw a splinter at least a foot long embedded in the bear’s face. It locked its tiny, black, beetle eyes on him, and Cobb felt his bowels turn to ice water.
Cobb welded his cheek to his M4 and found the bear’s head through the ACOG scope. He flicked the safety off. Bang! The bullet took an alarmingly small divot out of the bear’s head. The effect was nil. The bear snarled, grabbed another of the barricade benches in its massive paws, and tore it free.
“Oh shit,” Vance hissed and swung his riffle off his shoulder.
“Is that a 5.56mm?” Cobb asked.
“Yeah.”
“Not good enough. Got a hunting rifle?”
“Harry has an AR-10.”
“Better than these,” Cobb said and patted the M4.
Vance looked at him for a second, then turned and ran.
Cobb looked back at the bear. Its whole upper body was through the doors. One of the benches was stuck, but the bear had the wood in its jaws, furiously shaking it from side to side. It’s a damn grizzly. Where did a grizzly bear come from in Texas?! He started pumping rounds into the beast. Half his rounds missed the wildly swinging head. Others hit and tore away fur, flesh, and some bone. Blood poured from its head, but it took no notice.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck!” he yelled. The bolt on his M4 locked back.
Turning Point (Book 3): A Time To Live Page 3
