Chapter 24
4:15 p.m. Local Time, January 15, 2038
Holloman Air Force Base, Alamogordo, New Mexico
Holly stood beside Mattie and watched as the meteors streaked across the sky. They’d just arrived at Holloman AFB and stepped off their Chinook transport copters, the snowstorm having cleared out in early afternoon. She glanced over at Mattie, knowing she was acting like a curious scientist.
“How does it feel?”
Mattie narrowed his eyes and turned his head to the side in puzzlement.
“How does what feel?”
“The nanovirus coursing through your body. Can you feel it?”
Mattie smiled.
“Funny, no one has ever asked me that before. But you know, if I concentrate, I can sort of feel it. And sometimes after extreme exertion or in times of extreme danger, I can feel something click inside of me, like a switch going off. Then I get a power surge. It’s hard to explain.”
“Are you scared?” Holly asked intently. “About what could happen to you today?”
Mattie’s smile went away immediately.
“Terrified.”
Holly decided not to press the issue; she was afraid enough for the both of them. Instead she looked around her. Holloman was a flurry of activity, clearly on high alert. Fighter jets were being prepped, weapons and equipment moved, and troops were running in formation to who knew where.
She followed Mattie across the tarmac to a large waiting area on the outskirts of the runway as fighter jets streaked overhead, powerful and fast. The injured in her group were wheeled off on gurneys to the base infirmary.
“Don’t worry, you’ll be okay, Patrick” she said, gently patting his shoulder.
“Well, I won’t be getting my morning jogs in any time soon, but as this old leg gets used to my new biocast, I should be walking without crutches in a little while.”
With the latest advances in medical technology, broken legs could be healed very quickly and most people could expect very little in terms of pain and limited mobility afterwards.
Holly glanced over at Jing Wei and her husband, Charles, both in handcuffs, heading to base interrogation. Mattie had tracked them a short distance into the Lincoln National Forest. They hadn’t gotten far, and he said he found them huddled under a blanket, trying to make it to the nearest road. The supersoldier apprehended them easily and brought them back to the ranger station. They hadn’t said a word since Mattie cuffed them. Holly knew they would talk eventually. She was sure the military had sophisticated mind-probing techniques that could extract information directly from the brain, even if the subject didn’t want to talk.
She felt sorry for Jing for just a second. Maybe all she wanted was to save her husband. Holly would do the same if she knew Jeff was going to die in a car wreck. But Holly wondered if her friend was indeed a traitor. That whole business of meeting with a suspected Chinese spy turned her stomach. If Jing had worked with the Chinese to destroy Chronos, then she was truly evil and deserved everything she got.
As Holly walked, she felt a tingle behind her ear. Then everything went dark, and static filled her ears. She knew it was Whittenhouse’s EM pulse emanating from her com-implant—she’d tested it a few years ago—but it was unnerving nonetheless. It only lasted a few short seconds, then her vision and hearing returned to normal. Up ahead of her, Mattie had collapsed to the ground. Evangelista was standing beside him, weapon drawn, pointing it at Mattie’s head.
Holly approached slowly, not sure what to expect. Was Mattie turning? Would he attack everyone on the base and kill them all? Her heart was pounding as she examined his face.
“Ahhhh,” Mattie moaned.
His face was changing. The once young face of a man in his mid-twenties slowly decayed into that of a man in his nineties, but a man in a time before age treatments were available. Wrinkles formed around his eyes and mouth, age spots appeared on his skin, and his body began to shrink, transforming from the lean, muscular frame of an athlete to the frail skin-and-bones frame of a fragile old man. He appeared much older than his fifty one years.
Holly gasped, she couldn't believe her eyes. What had happened? Had the nanovirus burned through Mattie's body, reversing their youth giving properties and aged him beyond his years? Was it contagious? She backed away in fear and disgust.
Evangelista called over a medic.
They lifted Mattie and placed his weakened body onto a gurney.
“What happened? Where am I?” he spurted out, his voice rough and gravelly, like a man who had strained and re-strained his vocal cords.
“Mattie, they’re going to help you,” Holly said to him, her voice quavering. She was still shocked at his transformation.
“Oh, my back. My back is killing me,” Mattie grumbled.
He stared off into the distance before turning to Holly again.
“I’m sorry, what did you say your name was? Do I know you?”
“I’m Holly Scarborough, Mattie. A friend.”
She tried to hide her sorrow as the medical staff wheeled him off. Mattie had gone from superhuman to pitiful before her eyes. His old injuries, long healed, coming back to haunt him once again. She wasn’t sure which was a worse fate, aging instantly and losing your memories or having your mind controlled by a nanovirus. Either way, Mattie appeared to be lost. Shaking, she turned to Evangelista.
“Would you really have shot him in the head?”
“Without hesitation.”
Holly glanced at the gun again. It was equipped with an EM pulse cartridge as well as a high-caliber round and some other attachment she didn’t recognize. Paulson likely had the weapon specially designed to kill Mattie, to handle his supersoldier healing abilities. She wondered how he could make tough calls like that and was glad she was not in a position to have to do the same.
She walked into the waiting room on the side of the tarmac, leaving the others behind. It would be an hour or so before the next hypersonic transport was ready to shuttle them to the secret base. In the meantime, Holly needed to call Jeff so that they could update each on what had been happening.
No, that wasn’t why she was going to call. She needed to hear his voice.
After a short conversation, Holly felt invigorated. He still had that effect on her after all these years. She knew she was too old to have the butterflies of young love dancing in her stomach, but they were there anyway, fluttering and flapping around. They were halfway through this crisis and would be together again soon. She hoped.
She found a comfortable seat in the airport waiting area, next to troops about to be deployed. She thought it might be good to catch up on the latest news, news that would be much different from this same time so many years ago. A tap on her eyelids brought up a virtual newsfeed. A quick run-through revealed nothing too out of the ordinary. There were mentions of the meteor shower from the traditional news outlets and a lot of chatter on the social streams, but no talk about anyone getting sick. There was also early coverage of the com-link blackouts and news reports on traffic accidents as people blacked out for a few seconds. Overall though, they were lucky.
Holly tried to distract herself with the latest silly animal videos, but nothing did the trick. There was simply too much happening or about to happen to find any peace in mindless distraction. Some time passed before a tap on her shoulder pulled her away from a fluffy kitten riding on the back of a Great Dane. She looked up and found a young soldier standing over her.
“Ma’am, the transport is ready to board. Did you have any bags?”
“Just the clothes on my back.”
She’d left everything she had at Chronos. No matter, it was all replaceable. She stood and shuffled into line. Chen was up in front, already walking, with a slight limp, biocast still in place.
She blinked to check the time. Seven thirty. In the first timeline, half the world’s population had already died by this time, including President Diaz, whose violent death was shown on worldwide Streamcast. But th
is time around the world was eerily quiet.
Holly glanced at the dark sky overhead. Where were the nanoswarms? Were they just sitting there, waiting to attack? The first fireball had landed above Chronos at nine a.m. the next day in the first timeline. They didn’t have data on any other landing sites, so the swarm attacks could very well have started earlier elsewhere. That still gave them ample time to fly out and get to the other base.
She was about to step onto the stairs to enter the transport when something caught her eye, streaking out of the night sky. It was bluish-green and much larger than the tiny meteor showers they’d seen earlier in the day.
Oh no.
Everyone around her began pointing up, staring at the object hurtling at them. Even the troops paused to stare, open mouthed. An officer snapped them to attention, barking orders.
“All civilians back inside immediately!”
Alert sirens rang out across the base. On the perimeter, under lights, EM pulse cannons swiveled upward, toward the streaming meteor. Holly turned around and headed away from the transport. Away from Jeff once again.
She looked back over her shoulder at the meteor. It was hard to tell, but it looked like it was heading straight for them. They still had a hundred yards or so to the waiting room. Holly didn’t think they would make it.
She was right.
The meteor zoomed overhead, blue fire trailing behind it, the force of its path pressing down upon her with gale force winds. She and everyone standing beside her were knocked to the ground.
A huge explosion lit up the far end of the runway where the meteor hit. Dirt and debris flew high into the sky as the explosion rattled the surrounding buildings.
Holly struggled to her feet. One of the military officers was screaming orders, but deafened by the explosion, she couldn’t understand a thing. She tried to find her way back to the waiting room, but everything was chaos. She was disoriented, and people were running in all directions.
Someone grabbed her hand. Patrick Chen. He was saying something, but she still couldn’t hear. He pulled her off the runway. Slowly her hearing began to return. She heard the loud base siren, then she heard Chen.
“We have to get inside, Holly! Come on!”
They moved toward the nearest building as fast as they could. Jogging up beside them was Tony Evangelista, looking as fit and ready for action as ever. He looked over his shoulder, then stopped. Holly did the same.
Far down at the other end of the tarmac, a blue-green orb rose from a deep impact crater. It hovered in the air, shimmering from the base's lights, steam rising from its surface into the cold winter night.
“Holly, Chen, we need to get inside now,” Evangelista said.
Holly stumbled backward, staring at the orb. The entrance to the waiting area was just a few feet away.
The orb moved forward.
Holly and her group reached the sliding doors to the waiting room and backed inside. She could still see everything outside through the glass.
“I don’t think these doors are going to do much stop that,” she said to Evangelista.
Strobe lights suddenly hit the orb from all directions, lighting up its reflective surface. Then a missile fired from one of the base towers struck it. But the explosion was muffled, and the orb didn’t seem affected at all.
From her narrow viewpoint Holly could see several EM pulse cannons perched around the base swivel and take aim at the advancing orb. Those monsters were much improved over the early cannons they’d used to fight the first nanobots thirty-six years ago.
The cannons fired in unison, hitting the orb, cutting right through its heart.
Tiny glittering dots fell to the ground like snowflakes.
The orb exploded apart, turning from a solid ball into a gaseous cloud.
Holly knew all too well what that meant.
"Oh no," she whispered. "We need to get back. We need to get out of here."
Chen and Evangelista looked at her as she tried to back away, terror spreading through her body. But she couldn't move. She was transfixed by the scene outside.
The cloud spread out in all directions, hitting jet fighters and other aircraft still on the runway. The high-tech machines began to melt away like sandcastles in the rain as the nanobots overran them. Overhead, another meteor streaked by and landed with a crash somewhere nearby.
A few dozen feet away, the swarm hit one of the soldiers running for cover. His face began to peel away, revealing bare teeth and then skull as the bots devoured his body. Holly grabbed onto Evangelista’s arm and held it tight as her own arm began to tingle. She flashed back to her last close encounter with the nanobots in Lechuguilla Cave. She’d sooner die than have those things eat her flesh again.
The swarm came closer.
She unconsciously began tapping the window in front of her—three, two, one, three, two, one—as she stared in horror. She’d cured her OCD long ago with a psychotherapeutic bio-implant, but in times of high stress, her brain became too overloaded for the implant to function properly.
“Look.”
Chen pointed to dozens of missiles firing out of silos surrounding the base. A loud whomp reverberated each time the missiles went up, like the sound of fireworks shooting out of their tubes.
“What are they aiming at?” Evangelista asked. “The swarm is here.”
The EM pulse cannons fired over and over again, but the swarm was too spread out now to be destroyed, and it was growing.
The missiles flew up, high over the base, then stopped, as if their engines had given out. Then they exploded overhead. But instead of a bright fireball of explosive power, each missile generated a red dome of light that spread outward and dropped rapidly to the ground.
Was this a new kind of pulse weapon?
The domes of light fell in waves, connecting together. They hit the ground like a giant red waterfall.
Holly jumped back in horror as part of the swarm hit the glass doors right in front of her. The tiny nanobots dug their claws and teeth into the glass, trying to break through.
Then the pulse wave hit them.
And they began to writhe and twist uncontrollably.
In seconds they all fell from the door onto the ground and lay there clicking and flicking their wings, trying to rise again. All over the base the swarm dropped to the ground in a metallic hailstorm.
Outside, military men and women emerged from half-devoured tanks and transport vehicles. Several started stamping the nanobots under their boots. Holly, Chen, Evangelista, and a few others in the waiting room came out as well. Holly kicked a pile of bots with her boot. None of them moved.
It was over.
Cheers rang out from all over the base. Men and women embraced in victory.
Had they won? Was the fight really over?
Another blue-green meteor streaked by overhead and -landed farther away.
The base EM pulse missile defenses activated immediately and fired toward the crash site. More red-dome pulses fell in the distance. No orb emerged from the crater.
Their new defenses were holding.
They were winning!
Chapter 25
5:00 a.m. Local Time, January 16, 2038
Chronos Two, Hillah, Iraq
Sighs of relief spread through the command center, then slowly people began to applaud and even cheer The new pulse missiles and EM cannons were working perfectly. Reports were coming in from military bases all over the planet, telling how the nanobots were falling crippled from the sky.
But to Vice President Paulson, it all seemed too easy.
Of course they’d planned for this for decades. They knew the nature and exact time of the attack, so they were ready. But the identity of the attackers still puzzled Paulson. He and his team had spent countless hours trying to figure it out, following lead after lead, all resulting in dead ends.
They’d planted spies in all the major governments and terrorist groups, but found nothing. No one was capable of creating a nanoviru
s or these horrible nanobot swarms, much less shooting them into space on a rocket.
Until they figured out who they were fighting, the war would never be truly over.
“Looks like we’ve done it, old pal.”
President Diaz wore a big smile and was already smoking a cigar.
“Care for one? Cuban—straight from my cousin’s farm.”
Paulson shook his head. He’d never been much of a cigar man. He preferred a nice glass of scotch when the occasion presented itself. But he didn’t feel he was there just yet.
Diaz frowned at him.
“Come on, we’ve won. It’s over. We’ve saved the world from annihilation. The Apocalypse will have to wait for another day.”
“We still don’t know who did this,” Paulson grumbled.
“We’ll get them,” Diaz said, casually brushing away Paulson’s concern.
“We’ll continue our investigations. We still have all our covert operations in place. Whoever’s behind this will make a mistake revealing who they are. Then we’ll come down on them and crush them like we have these metallic insects they’ve thrown at us.”
Diaz glanced away for a second, his hand still on Paulson’s shoulder.
“Hey, Natalia. Can you be a sweetie and grab everyone some champagne?”
Diaz smiled as he stared at the Venezuelan intern’s ass as she walked away.
“Mmmm. She’s a hard worker, that one. If you know what I mean, Buddy.”
“Uh huh.”
Paulson cracked a half smile as he too watched Natalia hip sway her way out of the room, turning heads as she walked out.
“Buddy, we need to talk. In private.”
Claire was touching his arm.
Diaz glanced at her, a sick smile crossing his lips.
“Yes, you two go talk. I have some generals to congratulate.”
Diaz looked up and down at Claire’s body before he walked away. Paulson knew exactly what he was thinking, but he didn’t feel sexually attracted to Claire at all. He assumed she was fully functional, although he’d never really thought about testing those functions. Despite her beauty and outwardly human appearance, she was still just a machine.
NanoSwarm: Extermination Day Book Two Page 20
