NanoSwarm: Extermination Day Book Two

by William Turnage

  Niles wasn’t stupid. He’d be able to connect the dots soon enough. And when he learned more about the nature of the equations painted on the wall and how they dealt with quantum string theory and singularities, he’d eventually be led to the idea of time travel.

  As Holly was thinking about a proper response, her portable started buzzing. Not the new cellphone that she bought a few months ago, but her portable from 2038. She wore it all the time on her wrist, disguised to look like a typical sports watch common to 2002. To prevent any attempts at theft, the portable had 2038-level security, which meant anyone other than herself who touched it would receive a moderate electric shock. If anyone robbed her, they would be in for a painful surprise.

  What was shocking, however, was that she hadn’t received a call on it since she time jumped.

  “I’m sorry,” Holly said. “I have a call coming in that I need to take.”

  She pulled out her cell, pretending the call was coming in on that, and stepped out of the room back into the larger chamber. She held the phone up to her ear and tapped on her wrist portable to pull up the call.

  It turned out to be a text from an unknown number.

  Call back.

  Well, that was pretty straightforward. She pressed redial and waited for an answer.

  The number rang and rang, but no one picked up. At the same time, Holly thought she could hear another cell phone ringing in the room. Her ears had to be playing tricks on her. She stepped over to the young archeologist arranging ceramics on the floor.

  “Do you hear that? Is that your phone?” she asked.

  “Not mine. Dr. Gustavson, is that your phone!” yelled out the young man.

  Niles walked back into the main chamber.

  “My phone’s back in my tent. It seems to be coming from somewhere in here.”

  Niles looked into the air, straining to catch the sound. All three of them began circling the chamber. Holly put her head against one of the walls. The ringing seemed to be a little louder there. She inched her way farther along, pinning her ear against the cold rock as she walked. The ringing grew slowly louder with each step until it started to fade. She backed up until she got to the loudest spot. Niles and the other researcher were doing the same thing on the other walls.

  “I think I’ve got it here,” Holly said.

  “Yeah, it’s pretty distant over here,” Niles yelled out as he and the other man walked over and pressed their ears to the wall beside Holly.

  “Is there another dig site on the other side?” Holly asked.

  “No, no one has done any work over there that I know of. Somebody could’ve dropped their phone, though. Let’s have a closer look.”

  Niles stepped back, pulled out a bright flashlight, and shined it on the wall, bringing it into sharper focus. All the while the phone continued to ring.

  “Look at this. You see this slight discoloration here?” the young archeologist said, pointing at a section of the wall that was a slightly lighter shade of gray than the rest. He moved his hand as he traced the outline of the discoloration. “Look how it extends in this semi-circular shape, like a small door.”

  “This area must have been walled off somehow,” Niles said. “It’s very well hidden; we probably never would have noticed it. Javier, run and get me a hammer and a pickaxe. We need to get through this.”

  A few minutes later Javier returned with the tools they needed, and Niles and Javier anxiously started hammering away at the wall.

  “I have to say, Niles, archeology seems like a much more exciting field than physics,” Holly joked, trying to lighten the mood as the two men swung their pickaxes.

  “The last couple of days certainly have been, but most of the time I’m just digging through ancient garbage dumps and analyzing petrified poop.”

  Holly laughed as Niles’s pickaxe lodged in the swiftly crumbling rock wall. He yanked hard and managed to pull it loose. A dark hole appeared, beckoning them to look inside. The ringing became louder.

  “Almost through now,” Niles said, grunting.

  Seconds later they had cleared out a hole large enough to crawl through. Niles shined his flashlight inside.

  “It looks like a large chamber in there; I can’t see very well. I’m going in. You two want to come?”

  Javier pushed toward the opening, dancing with excitement. “Dr. Gustavson, this is what I’ve been dreaming about since I took my first archeology class in college! Let’s go!”

  “Holly, you okay?” Niles asked, squinting and bending down to peer into her face.

  All the new discoveries and the mystery surrounding this cave had taken Holly’s mind off of the fact that she was indeed inside a cave. She looked at the opening again, swallowed, and took a deep breath to calm her nerves.

  “Okay. After you two,” she replied.

  Niles wiggled his tall lanky body in first, followed by Javier, then Holly. Both men helped her through and to her feet. Niles shined his flashlight around the room, alighting on several oblong objects that looked to be wrapped in fabric. The ringing was very loud, echoing off the walls.

  “This looks like it may be a burial chamber. I’ll need to inspect those,” Niles said, shaking the flashlight toward the wrapped objects. “They appear to be sarcophaguses. First, however, let’s find that bloody phone. I think the sound is coming from over there.”

  The three walked across the dark chamber as Niles lit their way with the flashlight. The ringing grew louder as they approached a large stone mound. It had a square base with intricately chiseled carvings on each side. Niles slowly moved the flashlight up the mound, revealing a golden pyramid on top of the base. The ringing was much louder here, and it sounded like it was coming from the top of the pyramid.

  Niles shined the light on a protrusion at the top of the statue. It was small and black. Suddenly two small glowing eyes started to shine out from the black thing.

  “My God, what is that?” Niles said, climbing onto the bottom ledge of the monument to get a better look. “It looks like a black dog, maybe a representation of the black dog that guides the Incan spirits into the afterlife. Are those diamonds in its eyes? Ah, I can’t see.”

  “Be careful,” Javier said. “There could be booby traps.”

  He sounded like a kid faced with a mound of presents on Christmas morning, but Holly had thoughts of Indiana Jones stealing gold idols only to then face spears and giant stone balls.

  “Oh, Javier, you watched a little too much TV growing up,” Niles said as he stood on his tiptoes. “Okay, the ringing is definitely coming from this thing. There’s a lot of dust on it, but it almost looks like a stuffed toy cocker spaniel. I’m just going to grab it.”

  Niles reached up and let out a blood-curdling scream just when he touched the dog. He fell off the pyramid into a crumpled mass on the floor. The dog came tumbling down with him, and Holly instinctively reached out to catch it. As soon as she touched it, its eyes glowed even brighter.

  Then, amazingly, the object turned its head to look at her and began speaking.

  Holly had no idea what it said, but it sounded like Tukuy kay pachaman paqarimujkuna libres. Was the language Incan?

  A light shot out from the dog’s eyes and hit Holly in the face, temporarily blinding her the way a camera flash would. Then the dog, or whatever it was, switched to English to say, “Retinal scan confirmed. Subject identified, Holly Justine Scarborough. Optic nerve wireless neural link established. Beginning transmission.”

  One moment Holly was staring into the eyes of the dog idol, and then a second later she was in a strange futuristic lab.

  Standing across from her was herself.

  “Hello, Holly. It’s about time you got here.”

  Chapter 6

  2130 HRS, July 25, 2002

  Baghdad, Iraq

  Paulson had no time to react as the knife cut into his throat— no time to reflect on his life, no time to feel fear or even anger.

  A shot rang out and the assassin’s arm
went limp. Paulson sprang into action, his training taking over. He jerked his hand up and under the assassin’s hand, then grabbed and twisted it. The knife clattered to the floor and the killer collapsed onto Paulson’s back. He spun around and the man fell, knocking the desk chair over.

  Paulson quickly rolled him over and checked for a pulse. There was none as the man’s dark eyes stared at the ceiling, a bullet hole in his forehead slowly leaking a trail of blood onto the floor.

  Who’d fired the shot?

  Paulson looked up at his desk, where Claire was poised in a crab-like crouch, a tiny trail of smoke drifting up from one of her new attachments. Her antenna turned and pointed behind Paulson, then her new gun swiveled and fired.

  “Buddy, there is another assassin in the room, at your four o’clock,” she said dispassionately. “Initiate evasive maneuvers.”

  Paulson didn’t need any more warning than that. He quickly dove for cover behind the overturned chair. Shots fired from what sounded like a fifty-caliber handgun. They hit the chair and pieces of cloth and plastic exploded into his face.

  “Cover me, Claire!”

  He needed to get to one of the weapons he’d stashed in his apartment for just this sort of attack. The nearest was right under his desk.

  Claire fired several more shots as Paulson dove for the gun. The assassin had ducked behind the kitchen counter to avoid fire from Claire.

  “Ammunition depleted—hurry, Buddy,” Claire said as his fingers touched the handle of the pistol.

  Apparently the assassin heard Claire and understood English, because he jumped out from the cover of the kitchen and started hammering multiple rounds at Paulson.

  His fingers finally closed around the hidden weapon and in one fluid motion he pulled it out of the holster and turned to fire. But just as he did so, the assassin took dead aim at his face from just five feet away.

  Claire sprang from her perch, flying between him and the assassin. The bullet ricocheted off of her newly armored body. The assassin fired again. This time Claire jumped toward him, and the bullet tore through one of her mechanical legs, sending her spinning across the room, sparks flying.

  It was all the time Paulson needed. He fired four shots, two rounds to the chest, two to the head. The would-be killer fell to the floor, his legs and arms convulsing.

  Alert to sounds from outside the apartment, Paulson hurried over to him, holding his gun out with both hands. The assassin was wearing body armor and a flak helmet. He’d been prepared and was still alive. Paulson’s chest shots had been stopped by the armor and the head shots ricocheted off the helmet so that they just grazed his cheek. He’d simply had the breath knocked out of him.

  Paulson kicked the assassin’s gun away, pulled his helmet off, and pointed his own gun directly between the man’s eyes, yelling, “Who sent you?”

  The assassin just laughed and said, “Allah sent me. You defile him and his holy shrines, infidel, and it’s time for you to pay.”

  The man reached into his shirt, but Paulson stepped on his hand before he could get to it and then crouched down so his knee pinned the assassin’s other arm as well. Then Paulson reached in and pulled out some sort of detonation device.

  “Detecting coordinated movement outside. EVAC advised,” Claire said from the other side of the room.

  The assassin smiled again.

  “My friends.”

  The man yelled out something in Arabic just before Paulson punched him in the face, knocking him out.

  Paulson quickly jumped up, and Claire sprang onto his shoulder, her remaining limbs gripping his shirt tightly, digging into his shoulder like the talons of a hawk.

  She whispered into his ear, “Stinger missile detected. Armed. Firing.”

  There was no time; Paulson had only one chance. He dove for an old safe in the living room that looked like it had been left over from British colonial days. Just as he wedged himself inside and closed the door, the missile exploded.

  He felt the blast wave hit and reverberate through the steel walls.

  The safe flipped over backwards, giving Paulson a momentary sense of weightlessness as his refuge fell first through the air and then to the floor of what must’ve been the apartment below his. He felt the impact through his whole body as he slammed against the wall of the safe, jarring his shoulder and jerking his head back. After a couple of lurching rolls, the safe finally settled, with the door facing up.

  “Claire, we’re locked in. See if you can free us before they find out that we’re hiding in here. Good shooting back there, by the way.”

  “Thank you, Buddy. I’ve already begun analyzing the locking mechanism.”

  Claire crawled off his shoulder and started manipulating the tiny mechanisms that made up the back of the safe’s door. Everything was pitch black inside. He could barely hear the muffled sounds of men outside. He knew they would be searching through the rubble for his body. Whoever was after him were professionals and would leave nothing to chance.

  “The door will be open in forty-five seconds,” Claire said. “Have you formulated an attack plan?”

  Paulson still had his gun but if he just burst out of the safe without knowing where the attackers were, or just how many, then they would see him first and likely shoot him before he could get any shots off.

  “We need to create a diversion away from the safe before I try to climb out. Claire, can you sneak away and get their attention? That will give me a chance.”

  “Done.”

  The door was unlocked, and Claire crawled out. He only managed to get a glimpse of the outside through the small crack in the door, but it looked like the entire apartment building was in flames. He waited silently for Claire to do her thing, not knowing exactly what that was. Then he heard gunfire outside.

  “Now, Buddy,” Claire said through his earpiece communicator. He and Claire were always connected; she’d insisted he have the device on him at all times.

  Paulson slowly opened the safe door and climbed out. Fire and smoke raged around him, and pieces of wood and brick fell from above. A huge gaping hole was all that remained of his second floor apartment. In front of him a man was moving jerkily and randomly firing an automatic weapon. He looked like a marionette being manipulated by a poorly trained puppeteer. Several other men had ducked behind debris slightly forward and on both sides of his position.

  “Five hostiles in total,” Claire said. “I have one.”

  Paulson snuck up behind two of the men closest to him on his right. He grabbed one around the neck in a rear naked choke and shot the other in the head. As the man in his grip slipped into unconsciousness, Paulson moved forward to the other two, using the unconscious attacker as a human shield.

  One saw him coming and fired. All the shots hit the man Paulson was holding, his body jerking as the bullets slammed into him. That gave Paulson the moment he needed to get off another shot, this one striking the other attacker square in the forehead.

  The last remaining hostile saw Paulson, fired a couple shots, then ran out into the street, in apparent retreat. The attacker who’d been firing randomly dropped both his arms and just stood there, swaying. His head drooped to the side, onto his shoulder.

  Paulson ran to him, gun extended, prepared to fire in an instant if the man tried to raise his weapon. When he got to him, the man’s eyes were blinking incessantly and he tried to talk, but nothing but nonsense words came out. As Paulson walked to the man’s side, he saw what was causing him to act so bizarrely.

  Claire was positioned on the back of his head. She had burrowed multiple probes into the man’s skull and had been controlling his muscle movements. Tiny needle-like devices penetrated into the assailant's skull. Claire withdrew her probes, the retraction making a squishing sound as the probes emerged. Tiny flecks of blood and brain matter dripped from the probe’s sharp endings. When Claire was free of him, the man collapsed and immediately began convulsing.

  A cold shiver ran down Paulson’s spine. He had no ide
a Claire was capable of such actions. But it seemed that there was quite a bit he didn’t know about Claire these days.

  “There is one hostile left,” Claire said as she retracted her probes back into her body. “He is retreating to a vehicle parked one block away. Shall we pursue?”

  From the distance and over the increasing roar of the fire, Paulson could barely hear what sounded like a car’s squealing tires.

  “No need, Claire.”

  Paulson ran to where one of the attackers had left his gear. The Stinger missile launcher was there, with a spare missile conveniently lying beside it. He picked up everything and loaded the launcher as he ran out to the street. One lone car was on the empty road, carrying the gunman to safety. Paulson positioned the missile launcher on his shoulder, lined up the sight, and fired. A second later the car erupted in an explosion of metal and steel.

  “Very good shot. But we have no one to question now,” Claire said.

  “What about this guy?” Paulson gestured to the man lying prostrate on the floor, still convulsing, although with less vigor as time passed.

  “I’m afraid I damaged too much of his fragile brain material during the link. He will never be able to talk and will likely die within the hour.”

  “Yeah, we need to talk about this link thing, Claire,” Paulson said, concerned about her abilities and her independence. “But I doubt any of these guys would’ve told us anything anyway.”

  He quickly searched the man’s body for clues to who he was or who he worked for. He also pulled off the man’s shirt, checking his body for tattoos or other identifying information. He found a Christian cross on the inside of the man’s right arm.

  “That symbol is the Coptic cross,” Claire told him, though it was familiar to him. “The Copts are one of the oldest Christian sects in the Middle East. Most members live in Egypt.”