‘What about the ceremony, sir? I’m getting asked what we’re doing.’
Pinter too had seen inquiries enter his queue. He bounced them for now. ‘Send a message that we will be delayed, all fine, Colonel’s orders.’
‘As you wish, sir.’
The Colonel was reluctant to land. Landing meant that time really would have gone backward for him and he was once again a Serviceman. He could look in the mirror and see the man he used to be, but inside he was forty-eight years older and had been long retired. His time was done.
His memories felt like bad dreams that made him afraid to fall asleep again. He had left those nightmares decades ago. He had lived another life and now he was being drawn back into the past. He remembered the sweet rot of his men and the smoke of his burning enemies. He saw the teeth and claws of the twisted humans, launching at him like vultures —
‘Colonel, are you okay? You’ve gone pale,’ Quintan said.
‘I’m fine.’
‘Is my flying too bumpy?’
‘No, no. I just don’t want to land. That’s all.’
‘Another pass? Straight over the middle?’ Crozier suggested.
‘No. I shouldn’t. Time to face the music.’
~ * ~
There actually was music when he landed. A bugler sounded off as he stepped from the squib and a drummer rapped along as he inspected the line of Servicemen standing at attention. His overlay hung names on them and gave bullet-point histories of their careers.
The man in charge was a ginger-haired Lieutenant who was looking down at his clipboard and refreshing the image he had of the Colonel in his files. Pinter’s overlay marked him as Campsey, Lt, James. A lackey of Zim’s who had been borrowed from the General to duplicate the perimeter boundary they had constructed around the Cape.
‘Lieutenant Campsey?’ Pinter held out his hand.
‘Yes, sir.’ The Lieutenant saluted and then shook the Colonel’s hand.
‘I hear you have a mysterious entity that has destroyed a whole city. What do you have to say for yourself?’
Campsey stuttered, ‘But, sir, I —’
‘At ease, Lieutenant. If we can’t joke about the end of the world, what can we joke about?’
‘Sir?’ The poor man was confused. He looked down at his clipboard to see if there was anything written there for him to say. The Colonel let him off the hook.
‘This all looks very good. Let’s check the perimeter and then I want to visit the thought room.’
Turning around, he caught Quintan Crozier grinning and Pinter swiftly claimed the man to be his personal aide. The pilot’s face fell as the command came down the line.
Pinter: Get my bags, Crozier. Quick smart.
~ * ~
Lieutenant Campsey, Airman Crozier and Colonel Pinter boarded an open-topped hover and programmed it to guide them around the boundary line.
Their first stop was where the unitracks had been demolished. Across the ravine the mass had stopped advancing and now probed the air and dirt with its yearning black tentacles.
Services was progressively clearing land from all sides, excavating a series of canyon-deep trenches with remote dozers. The beast somehow sensed the machines if they went within a hundred metres.
‘So it can see?’ Pinter asked.
‘We don’t think it can see, visually. Stealth drones can approach quite close, so we think it is hearing them, or feeling the vibrations through the ground. It may be picking up the radio control signal, or the electricity, or heat.’
‘Then it has senses. Can it feel?’
‘Does it feel pain, you mean?’
‘Yes. Cut it to see if it bleeds, tickle it to see if it laughs. That sort of thing.’
‘That is outside my purview, sir.’
‘Of course. We’ll schedule some tests immediately.’
‘What kind of tests?’
‘Oh, the usual. We’ll throw things at it to see what happens.’
‘And if that doesn’t work?’ Campsey asked.
‘Then we’ll try something more extreme. Don’t fidget, Crozier. If you have a question, ask me.’
‘I was just wondering if that is the best way to engage with an unknown and hostile mass,’ Quintan said.
‘I may not look it, Crozier, but I’m an old man. I like the direct approach, I’m not planning on dancing with the thing.’
‘But attacking is aggressive.’
‘Yes. But twelve hours ago it took four million lives. What do you call that?’
‘But...?’
‘Yes? Speak freely,’ Pinter prompted.
‘We don’t even know what this thing is.’
‘That’s the beauty about the unknown. You never know.’
‘You’re enjoying this?’ the airman asked.
‘Immensely. Enigmas are good for the soul.’
‘And what if firing at it achieves nothing?’
‘It can’t achieve nothing. If we hurt it, then we can consider it alive. If we don’t, then we treat it like pollution and clean it up.’
‘And if it is alive?’
‘Then we try to communicate.’
‘You’re going to talk to it?’
The Colonel shrugged. ‘If we can. Don’t forget that the only animal on Earth we have ever been able to talk with is ourselves, but we learnt to control them anyway. I just want to know what it wants. Carry on, Campsey. Continue the tour.’
They proceeded to where the land met the sea and stood on the headland to look through the waves.
‘It doesn’t seem to behave any differently underwater,’ the Colonel observed.
‘No, sir.’
‘Is that interesting?’ Quintan asked.
‘Very much so. Tell me, is it still expanding?’
‘Its coverage isn’t, but its volume seems to be. Results are inconclusive.’
If it is an animal, Pinter thought, then it is either feeding or resting. ‘And we don’t know how far underground it goes?’ he asked.
‘No.’
‘Is there a contingency in case it does advance again?’ Pinter asked.
‘The mass hasn’t expanded since its initial appearance.’
‘That wasn’t the question. What is the strategy if it does?’
‘I don’t know, sir.’
‘Understood,’ Pinter said gravely. He twisted around to look at Crozier, who still wasn’t sure why he was there. ‘What would you do?’
‘Me?’
‘Pull back?’
‘Yes. Until we know more.’
The Colonel fed his command into the strategy-matrix, or strat-mat, as it was usually shortened to. The commander’s primary role was to continuously build up and revise preset reactions for every event they could conceive of, just in case one eventuated, and then continually revise it as new information came to light or circumstances changed. He remembered it was like guessing the future.
Campsey pointed out the notable defences as they began their return journey. ‘Mobile artillery and plasma tanks form a two-tier boundary. Overhead, the border is patrolled by ten drone squadrons of one hundred each. The same as the Cape cordon.’
‘And orbital coverage?’
‘Currently at forty per cent.’
‘I’ll ask Shreet to condense that. Anything else?’
‘We’ve constructed the viewing platform, as you requested.’ Lieutenant Campsey tried to shift the focus. Soon he would get to the end of his list where the Colonel would be shown to his sleeping quarters, and then he could report and hope to be returned to his former unit.
‘Then take me to it,’ the Colonel ordered him.
The hover tilted and began driving up a ridge on the western side of Busan where it set down at the base of a high scaffold. Tall trees surrounded it and the platform floor sat just amongst the topmost branches, pushing out to give a view of the beast and the ocean behind it.
If not fo
r the enormous black mass, it would be a picture worth sharing. As it was, the graceful bay was interrupted by the sluggish beast. Arms, or tentacles — or whatever they were — lifted up into the air and then dropped back down. The distance made them look slow and languorous.
‘Are you sure it didn’t creep out of the sea?’ Pinter asked, not really expecting an answer. He watched for a while, forgetting the others were there. He had stood like this at the base of mountains, volcanos, the world’s tallest trees, trying to absorb their immensity.
‘Yes, I like this. Set me up here.’
‘Here, sir? This is just a viewing platform, your quarters are much better equipped.’
‘I have all the equipment I need, thank you, Lieutenant. But do fetch me some chairs and a table. And get a canopy over this, will you? I don’t intend to let my new skin go the same way as my old one.’
‘Yes, sir.’ Campsey inserted the new items on his to-do list.
‘Now, let’s see what your researchers have achieved. Crozier, get me some water while I immerse.’
~ * ~
The Prime had ordered the best minds across various sciences to work on the problem around the clock and for the last eight hours the highest-ranked brains in the WU had had their streams in a permanent connection to a virtual common room.
The first thing the Colonel noticed was the babble. There were a thousand experts tuned into the room, their thoughts and musings overlapping without inhibition.
‘Why hasn’t it touched the trees?’
‘How could it have grown this fast?’
‘Where does it draw energy from?’
‘What are its core functions?’
Theories and epistles were written and dumped into the pool for factioning. The Colonel stood in the centre not engaging with the mess of inconclusive notions, just listened to them as they spoke over the top of each other.
‘Who is in charge here?’ he finally asked, prioritising his communications to interrupt everyone else’s.
A female avatar stepped forward to introduce herself: Gretchen Caswell of the Wissenschaftskolleg. ‘I am, Colonel.’
‘Correction, Miz Caswell. I am in charge. You are organising the thought room.’
‘That is what I meant, Colonel.’
‘Just straightening out the language. It’s no bother. Tell me what you have so far.’
‘Well, sir, we have a lot of ideas but no hard evidence.’
‘Why is that?’
‘It is only the first day, sir, and we are limited to observational study. Until we have a sample to work with, conjecture is all we will be able to offer.’
‘And we can’t get a sample?’
‘Our earlier attempts failed. It absorbs everything it touches. All the vehicles we’ve put close to it have been consumed.’
‘I understand. I guess that will be our first priority. What have you observed? Can we communicate with it at all?’
‘No, sir, we have tried all known communication methods: radio, light, optical and audio. Nothing.’
‘No response at all?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Nothing reactive?’
‘Negative.’
‘And I presume it isn’t emitting anything either?’ She shook her head. ‘Spectral analysis? What’s this thing made of?’
‘Results are inconclusive. It has been changing since it first appeared. There are traces of all elements you’d expect to find in a large city.’
‘From the language you are using, the room seems to be assuming this to be mechanical. What do the biologists say?’ he asked.
‘They don’t think it is biological.’
‘So what’s the leading theory?’
Miz Caswell looked uncomfortable, her face stricken. ‘I would prefer not to suggest anything at this time.’
The Colonel scratched at his chin and thought. ‘You were right about having nothing to go on ... We don’t know if it is sentient or non-sentient ... Animal, vegetable or mineral? Or all of the above?’ The Colonel started creating his own task list, making the collection of a specimen the top priority, and then creating commands to follow once that was achieved. ‘We’ll need containment plans for the study of the samples. Can you put together the relevant protocols?’
‘Yes, Colonel,’ she answered. ‘How will you do that, sir? Get the samples, I mean.’
‘With a hook and a line. While I concentrate on getting you a sample, I want tests devised for these questions, but we won’t make an attempt until I have approved the containment strategy. We cannot afford for this to break out elsewhere.’
‘No, sir.’
‘And then you’ll have twenty-four hours to tell me what this thing is.’
~ * ~
The Colonel blinked out from the session and turned around to find Lieutenant Campsey standing nearby, his screen of protocols hugged to his chest. ‘What next, Lieutenant?’
‘Would you like to see your quarters?’ he asked nervously.
‘No. I think I’m going to watch for a while. Leave me, will you?’ Campsey turned to walk away. ‘Oh, and Lieutenant. Have my capsule made up for two people. I’m expecting some company in a few days.’
‘Company, Colonel?’
‘Yes. A friend.’
‘Sir ...’
‘That will be all.’
Dark lenses slid over his eyes, cutting the brightness in half.
Pinter had quickly become used to the overlay during his recovery and now ran constant tasks in the background. He watched the analysis of the beast’s progression, the initial rapid expansion of the mass slowing when it reached the edge of the city. When it hit the fields it followed only wires and the unitracks. It didn’t go over the plants and he wondered if that was significant. It was like it was targeting animals and tech. Metal and flesh. He flicked an order to the Lieutenant to make sure wire connections were severed to at least a kilometre from the city edge, as well as all roads and unitracks to be cleared well back from the trench.
The Lieutenant acknowledged receipt of the message and tallied up his new work orders. There were suddenly twenty-six new items on his to-do list.
‘What should I do now, sir?’ Quintan asked from behind him.
‘Just watch. Watch and think.’
‘And then what?’
‘Watch and think some more.’
‘I was wondering, Colonel, if I could ask you a question?’
‘Don’t hesitate with me, Crozier. Life is short.’
‘Why did you draft me? What am I doing here?’
Pinter turned to the airman and made the shades over his eyes open so they could be seen clearly. ‘You’re here for company.’
‘That’s it? Why me?’
‘Because you were laughing at me.’
‘I wasn’t,’ Quintan said.
‘I saw it. I can play it back for you if you like.’
‘No need, sir. I apologise for laughing.’
‘Yes, but the thing is, as soon as that twip started talking I knew I couldn’t bear it here alone.’
At that moment Pinter received a ping from Geof Ozenbach. He allowed the connection and the figure of the weaver superimposed itself into his vision. A see-through ghost of his former colleague.
‘Hello, sir. You are looking well,’ Geof said.
‘I’m new and improved. To what do I owe the call, Geof? How goes the hunt for Pierre Jnr?’
‘I’ve been distracted by the new phenomenon, to be honest, and I’m making contact because I’ve been looking at this black mass.’
‘The beast of Busan.’
‘Yes. I’ve been patterning the spread to find its point of origin.’
‘And?’ Pinter asked.
‘It looks like it came out of Shen’s laboratory.’
‘Shen Li?’ The Colonel escalated the conversation for the thought room to take notice. ‘The symbiot guy?’
‘That’s
him. I think this is one of his experiments.’
‘What kind of experiment, Geof?’
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