The thumping of blades filled Dr. Keeva Moss’ ears as she looked around the dim cabin of the military helicopter. The camo-clad men sitting along the wall were enhanced United Continents of America Marines. They all stared forward at nothing, like mannequins waiting for life.
“They’re still getting briefed,” a Spanish accent said from her left.
Keeva looked over and scanned the nametag of a lean pseudo-Hispanic man sent by the Rioshon Corporation. He was introduced as Dr. Seager Phair before they boarded the helicopter. A name which did not match his Caribbean skin tone. There was no rank on his chest or gear other than the Rioshon logo.
He had a pristine grin and unwavering confidence as he continued speaking.
“There’s a signal scramble bubble surrounding Great Inagua. Rioshon Corp had it installed to prevent errant communications leaving the island. The broadcast is tight, so the Marines have to get all their orders and such out of the way before we get there.”
“What about you?” Keeva asked over the thumping blades. Her mother’s Irish accent slipped out, giving away what the pale skin and green eyes might not have. “No one giving you orders?”
“You’re with Medical Investigations,” Phair said, ignoring her question. He looked up and down the rows of Marines, “That explains the High and Tights. Rioshon would have used mercenaries. Expecting trouble from the locals down there?”
She shook her head. “MOIRA observes and reports on any issues with molten salts mining. Facilities harvesting nanite components are monitored and must account for unmonitored time. Standard stuff. No cause for alarm.”
Keeva was employed by the Medical Oversight, Research, and Integrations Agency as a liaison to the UCA’s military and the Corporate Oversight and Compliance office. MOIRA was content to leave her in a lab studying the effects of Bio and Nano technologies on human interactions. However, sometimes interactions happened outside the lab.
“Lucky for MOIRA, you’re not their PR person,” he replied with a grin. “Some oversight’s better than none, I imagine.”
“What?” Keeva asked.
The men around them wore battle armor, loaded with high tech weaponry. Phair held both his hands in front of him as if holding a fictional rifle.
He went on. “You bring two thumpers of Marines with hard ammo to all your ‘observations’? Don’t get me wrong. Rioshon would have just ‘glassed the island’ and then started over if you didn’t want to put boots on the ground.”
Keeva knew Phair was right. Rioshon had only called MOIRA and the UCA because they wanted a sign-off that the island was safe. Keeva was the authority and she would assure people the mine was not a threat to humanity. The molten salts mined at Great Inagua were one of the primary components in building nanites, small biological robots which UCA and companies like Rioshon used throughout the world. Without an okay from the oversight office, mining on Great Inagua would stop. Nanite-based technology leaving the UCA’s territories would be questionable and that was a cost no one was willing to pay.
Avoiding Phair, Keeva switched on her internal feed. The helicopter faded away and she was now observing the office of Dr. Anton Bressic. The feed was from a few days back. In the feed Bressic, medical facilitator for a Rioshon mining outfit on Great Inagua, hovered over a battered corpse.
Bressic pronounced the miner deceased. The miner had been crushed in an accident a few days prior. The video was a formality and Bressic gave the location as his ‘office’ in the island’s makeshift town.
Keeva touch-typed on her left forearm and the notes appeared in her vision, adding to the list she had made over the last few viewings.
She had watched this playback too many times. There were always more notes to make. Every time she went through the footage, she found errors in Bressic’s process. Identifying them would not save the doctor’s life, but perhaps when she used them to document lab requirements, others could be saved. Keeva reached behind her ear and adjusted the playback volume.
“Mister Taylor and two other miners crawled free of a cave-in of Tube 48. Near as we can tell, they were the only three left from an eleven-man team. Eight stories down and very battered, they managed to make it to the surface,” Bressic said as he stared at the camera.
Behind him, two drop-cloths covered the bodies. Protocol said he should have quarantined them separately, especially since they were mining molten salts.
“Hours after Taylor and the others got free of the rubble, they began to collapse. Based on scans of their internal organs, I was surprised they had made it out. All three subjects presented the same muscle and bone damage. All died within hours of reaching the surface.”
She typed “calcium” and “iron” on her forearm’s translucent keyboard. The words appeared on a notepad in her field of vision. She stored the note with others in the playback. Calculations for gestation time were correct. That and the presence of the molten salts narrowed her focus. But other components were missing.
When Bressic said “surface”, her eyes zeroed in on the drop-cloths.
“Once I have pulsed the bodies, I can get some of the boys to box them up and ship them to the mainland,” Bressic commented, unaware of the stirring and shifting behind him. Always strap the bodies down, Keeva thought, as one of the dead miners shuffled to his feet.
The first few times she had watched the playback, Keeva yelled at Bressic to move. A problem of ocular playback was a belief the action was occurring in real time. By the tenth viewing, Keeva hardly flinched when a raged and gashed hand reached over Bressic’s left shoulder and ripped open his neck.
Bressic wheeled around, a pulse of blood flowing from his throat as the two mangled miners set upon him. He hardly screamed, possibly due to the efficiency of the first strike. Keeva could hear him groan while being ripped apart. Not even the mercy to kill him first.
The third miner rose off the table. When he eventually collided with the camera mount, the camera would fall. The remaining hour of footage would be of a blank ceiling.
Keeva had already stopped the replay. Frozen on the face of the miner the moment he struck the camera.
His skin was scraps of flesh tenuously holding on to bone and muscle. Dust and debris still embedded in some of the injuries, but that hardly drew her attention as much as the miner’s eyes. A haunting orange light burned in his pupils, as if the irises led to an unholy fire in his head. The skin on his face, like that of the men behind him, was tight to the bones. It was desiccated and reflected a red-green tint, possibly from the office lights.
The video faded away, returning Keeva to the dim lights inside the military helicopter.
At the front of the helicopter bay was Captain Tory Waters, a stocky man with obsidian skin. His eyes blinked rapidly and then he bellowed, “Landing zone coming up in ten minutes. All weapons hot and all digital eyes open. Birds will not remain. If you need it, bring it with you.”
#####
“We’ve been on the ground for several hours,” Keeva said as she trudged behind a few of the soldiers. The green tint highlighting everyone’s cheekbones told her they were all using ocular enhancements. Everyone except Phair, who showed no signs of implanted equipment. She continued recording. “No local presence reacted to the helicopters landing, and no bodies have been found. I’ve tested the air and water from the island and find no traces of contagion present. Will report as necessary.”
“You know no one is getting your calls,” Phair said as he plodded along beside Keeva. He was wearing a large backpack, fuller than the soldier’s packs, but not camouflaged.
He moved effortlessly which made her wonder if he was wearing a blast vest like she was. Two layers of dipped Kevlar did not seem to be slowing him down.
“Major Bhume back at the landing zone is barely getting through to the helicopters. No way your reports are making it back to MOIRA. My guess? They’ll all send the minute we leave.”
They landed on the northern side of the island. Major Bhume had commandeered an empty building to protect the landing zone and monitor all operations. He then sent two teams of six to investigate the mine and one team with Keeva and Phair to investigate the town on the eastern side of the island.
Keeva let Bhume ‘lead’ the mission. The Marines responded better when he barked orders at them.
Much like she allowed Captain Waters to lead this team, though if there was trouble, Keeva knew everyone would be looking to her. Being the liaison meant she outranked all the Marines, but only on paper. She knew not to get a big head about it. Picking your battles was as much a skill in the field as in the lab.
She reached up and shut off her recording device. Immediately the edges of her vision lost a slight red glow. A green glow remained which meant her ocular lenses were running in low-light mode.
“What makes you so sure the scrambler is still running?” Keeva asked Phair, when he slowed a bit.
Phair looked at the forearm keypad built into his uniform sleeve and pressed a few keys. A screen just past his cuff displayed a three-dimensional graphic of the island. The graphic rotated, popping up red dots along the coastline.
A combination of blue and red dots filled the center of the graphic. Phair pointed at one of the red dots and said, “Each of these is a poly-barrel fifty cal. Their domains overlap. The blue dots are generators for the scramble bubble. Just like the sentry guns, they run on geothermal energy. I can ping each asset, so I know they’re live.”
He pushed a few keys and locked in on one of the guns. When he brought up the display, a quizzical look crossed Phair’s face.
“What is it?” Keeva asked.
“This is Rioshon’s outbreak protection,” he replied, staring at the display. “Boats can’t land on the island, and nothing leaves unless it is cleared. Rioshon does not want an international incident. It seems the poly-barrels on the Eastern side of the island are half-full. A lot of rounds have been expended on that side.”
“So, Rioshon sent you here to make sure the site stays contained.”
Phair tipped an imaginary hat and continued. “Seager Phair, machinery and engineering specialist. Rioshon Corp contracted me to check on this equipment and verify the threat was to the biologics on the island, not the tech.”
The Marines hunkered down on a grassy knoll a few yards ahead of Keeva and Phair. Unsure why they were stopping, the conversation ended. They both moved forward toward the position.
Two of the men had taken point, rifles over the edge of the knoll, scopes out to surveil the land. The other four were crowded around a laptop, which had a piloting console attached.
The output was on everyone’s forearm display as a soldier spoke. “I’ve run about five passes through the main alleys. Still nothing. All the housing and buildings suggest there were people here, so where did they go?”
Captain Waters shook his head. An expression somewhere between determination and annoyance crossed his face. He locked in on Phair and said, “Twenty-five on a shift. Three shifts going for six months. There should be more than two hundred people on this patch. Are you sure one of your machines didn’t go haywire and kill everyone?”
“The sentries on the interior only fire at airborne targets, much like the ones on the perimeter will only fire at things in the water. The only thing shipped out here were Administrative and Sentry bots. Nothing armed. No entertainment, and nothing in town. Just paperwork bots for the mine offices.”
Keeva’s ears perked up for a second and she asked, “What series of robots?”
Waters interrupted. “They could have programmed a few functions into a bot. Maybe moved it over from the mines. That kind of thing happens.”
“The bots are Tasker Series,” Phair replied. He looked over at Waters and continued. “Which means they are preprogrammed and locked down before shipping. They are non-learning, and run weekly reimages from an internal drive. I can’t think of why people would screw with them.”
“Give them enough time, humans will always find a reason,” Waters replied.
Keeva tried to remember details about the Tasker Series. She knew they were made of aluminum and plastic, but wondered what their program series was. Turning to Phair she asked, “Did the Tasker series have accessible positron relays?”
“Sealed in the spinal column at the base of the neck. Why?”
Waters switched off his forearm display and said, “Four of us will head down with Doctors Phair and Moss. Jimenez, you cover us with the drone. Harris, keep an eye out with your long rifle.”
Waters looked over at Keeva, then pulled a silver cylinder from his shoulder pocket. It was about the width of his palm. He pressed a button and a spike launched out of the bottom. Jamming the cylinder into the ground beside Jimenez, he yelled, “Can you see the sentry beacon, Dr. Moss?”
On a small multidirectional display in the corner of her vision, Keeva saw the blinking silver marker. She nodded.
Waters immediately said, “Then let’s get moving.”
#####
They moved down the eastern side of the knoll. Grass crushed under Keeva’s feet as they avoided the few carved paths leading into the shantytown. The streets shone with phosphorescent lighting, but the buildings were dark. Keeva’s ocular lenses began ramping up their low-light amplification.
Phair wore a set of night vision goggles and followed Keeva by less than a step. The soldiers moved a few yards ahead of the pair, checking doors and windows, none of which showed signs of life. Above them, she could hear the six blades of the drone whistling past.
The Marines were four housing units in when Waters voice whispered in her audio implant, “We’ve got something here.”
Keeva walked toward one of the common areas which connected a group of six housing units, like an extended porch. Against a table was one of the Administration robots. The treads under it speared to the ground. Its squat body leaned against the table while its saucer–shaped head was only loosely attached. Phair followed Keeva into the area and shook his head at the scene.
“Fucking people,” he huffed, kneeling beside the damaged unit. “They trapped the little guy, then tore him open. Looks like they used a plasma torch to cut into the spinal column, before draining the positronic fluid.”
“So now they have all the components of Soma,” Keeva said ticking positrons off a mental checklist.
Waters pressed his glove to an ear, then turned to Keeva. “I’m gonna leave Haynes with you two and check out what the others have found. You okay with that, Dr. Moss?”
She gave a quick nod and Waters took off, disappearing deeper into the complex. Keeva looked at Haynes, who eyed the perimeter, his rifle at the ready. Something had spooked the Marines. Since she had not heard it on her comms, Keeva figured the Marines used an emergency frequency just for themselves.
Keeva gave a chin jut to Haynes and asked, “Anything I should worry about?”
“No, Ma’am. I’m sure the Captain is just being overly cautious.”
The reply was as neutral as a UCA Marine could deliver. Keeva turned her attention back to Phair. He pulled the pack off his shoulder and was rooting around in it. Pulling free a bolt driver and a box of bits, he said, “Soma wouldn’t lead to the beastie you saw in the video.”
Earlier, she guessed he had seen Bressic’s video. Now, he had confirmed it.
Phair used the bolt driver to unscrew the robots head. It looked like an old-fashioned flying saucer, a pair of dishes with a ribbon of clear optical sensors connecting them. He continued. “I’ve been to a couple of Soma dens. Belize, Korea, even the New Syrian Republic. None of them had any issues with what you saw on the video. This looks like a few of your miners just wanted to get high.”
“Why did Rioshon send these smaller bots out here? Why not send bots that could protect themselves?” Keeva asked. She had seen fewer of the Tasker series of bots in the last few years.
“Rioshon was actually pushing to replace these units with more humanoid bots,” Phair said, as he slid the top off the robot. “These were probably remainders, sent out here to get some use before they were scrapped. Studies show the more human a bot looks, the less chance someone will destroy it for positronic fluid.”
Phair looked up at the Marine waiting with them. “Where did Captain Waters go?”
Haynes reached a gloved hand behind his ear and repeated the question.
Phair continued to pull parts from the top of the robot, sliding finger length pieces of metal into a box in his pack.
Within moments, the Marine replied, “Dr. Moss, Captain Waters says they have something for the pair of you. Three buildings over. He says they will hold position there until we arrive. Ready to move when you are, Ma’am.”
#####
“Soma’s a euphoric,” Phair said as they moved through a few alleys toward the center of the housing unit area. “If the whole island was trying to get high, they would need more bots than we sent. Though, if everyone was juiced up on Soma, they could have walked into the sea, and the poly-barrels would have torn them apart. It would explain the missing bodies.”
“Walked into the sea? Maybe they ran,” Waters said as he stood in the entryway of Bressic’s office.
Keeva flipped on her camera when she saw the outside of the building. She had seen the interior on video but this was different. The front door torn off the hinges, standing open. She looked at Waters, whose hands were tight to his rifle. “Did you find something, Captain?”
“More a lack of something. You need to come with me,” Waters replied. He gave a glance at Haynes. The Marine quickly left to secure the perimeter.
Keeva followed Waters. Phair trailed behind her. She was quick to notice the gashes and grooves in the doorway, and in the walls around the front of the building. It was as if something or someone had struggled to break out for a while, then succeeded. When they moved through the little building, she caught sight of more scratch marks and gashes in the walls.
She and Phair continued to move cautiously, while observing the damage. Ahead of them, Waters held his weapon at the ready, waiting for something to jump out. They rounded a corner. Keeva found herself in the office seen in the video.
Within blood stained walls, equipment was tossed in various directions, body parts laying around the room. She did her best to avoid touching anything, simply following Waters as he kept a distance from the parts.
“Look at the cuts,” Phair said from behind the pair. He moved around them and crouched a slight bit closer. “Whatever tore these men apart did so with precision, and tried to waste as little flesh as possible.”
“Men? This might just be Bressic,” Keeva replied.
“I saw more than two elbows on the other side of the gurney. Judging by the skin tones, I’d say a group of people came in here to help the doctor and met a similar fate,” Phair replied, as he hovered over an arm. He reached into his pack and slipped out a set of colored lenses. In seconds, he had affixed them to his Night Vision Goggles.
The lenses spun amid a series of whirs and ticks. Then they finally locked in. “Well, I’ll be damned.”
“What’s going on, Doc?” Waters asked.
Phair took a step back from the wayward parts. “Captain, you need to call Commander Bhume and the other squads. Have them head back to the extraction point. Same for us. We need to just slowly back off, okay?”
“What is the problem, Doc?”
Phair stood and backed up. He turned to Waters. “Tell your men to meet us at the front of this building. Tell them not to touch a damn thing, okay?”
Neither Waters nor Keeva reacted to the calm fear in Phair’s words.
Phair continued. “Switch your optics to scan for gaseous emissions. Then filter down to Dioxide-based compounds and tell me what you see?”
Mentally, Keeva ran through the selections of her ocular filters, following Phair’s directions. She could see Captain Waters doing the same. When the filter kicked in, a matte of greys and blacks seemed to coat the walls and floor, but an ambient blue glow was pouring off the ground.
“What the Hell is that?” Waters asked.
The question was not directed at her, but Keeva knew the answer. “Carbolidium dioxide. That shouldn’t be here.”
Waters turned to face her and Keeva scanned him for the same emissions before he demanded clarification.
“Carbolidium Dioxide is the exhaust of nanites,” Keeva replied. She looked over at Phair. “But nanites are outlawed anywhere molten salts are mined or processed.”
“Why the Hell is that?” Waters asked.
Keeva watched as Phair scanned the room. He dropped to the ground and began pulling pieces of hardware from his backpack. She looked over at Captain Waters. “Nanites draw their power from human tissue. They run based on brain wave patterns, and heartbeat detection, which is why they become inert the minute their host dies. However, in certain doses, molten salts may act as an alternate power source.”
“There are safeguards put in place to prevent sentience from forming in the nanite programming,” Phair interrupted. He unfolded a collapsible back stock and trigger housing from his bag. As Phair attached a wide shotgun style barrel to the end, he continued. “If nanites exist or replicate outside of a human host, it could cause a world of trouble.”
Waters was visually impressed with the collapsible shotgun Phair had unpacked in a matter of seconds. When Phair began shoving rounds into the breach, Waters finally said, “Dr. Phair, you were not authorized weapons for this excursion.”
“Not a weapon, Captain Waters,” Phair said, racking a bright blue shotgun round. “This is an electro-mag pulse emitter. A tool I packed in case I needed to power down a rogue bot. It may come in handy now.”
Waters looked away, tapping the button behind his ear, “Jimenez, I am sending you my optical configuration. Pass it to all the other teams and then set the drone with it. What do you see?”
Keeva watched the lump of flesh on the ground emit a cobalt blue light. Nanites trying to rebuild, the job they were programmed to do. However, without mass to work with, they were trying to steal it from whatever they could find.
She looked at Phair. “This doesn’t explain the bodies on the video. They were haggard and beaten, but they came out of the mine looking normal.”
“They came out of the mine looking healthy, trying not to draw attention. But they were hurt,” Phair replied, pushing Keeva and Waters back. He kept the barrel of his rifle aimed into the room but did not fire. “Once they were back in town, they shifted to necessary organ function, and the outer shell began to fall apart.”
“That’s crafty,” Keeva replied. They moved toward the front of the building.
“Bhume is the only one responding to Jimenez’ call,” Waters interrupted. “Charlie and Alpha teams are at the tunnels, but neither is responding. Major Bhume is calling in air support. He says they show no Carbolidium presence at the landing site.”
“Craftiness denotes intelligence, especially if they were trying to access more material,” Phair replied.
“What material are they trying to get too?” Waters asked as he moved out the front door of the building.
No one had a chance to answer. A ragged body standing behind one of Waters’ Marines drew their attention. The body was emaciated. The skin still on it hung limply. Fragments of muscle and bone peeked out from between patches of skin, though none of it appeared to bleed.
Captain Waters froze. The creature had a hand on Haynes’ shoulder. Uniform fabric, metal, plastic, and skin were all peeling away, moving in small flakes toward the creature. Keeva could see trails of blue light racing across Haynes’ chest, the concentration greatest at his throat. All the swirls of light eventually returning across the decrepit arm on Hayes’ shoulder.
“The nanites are taking any tissue and bone they need to rebuild,” Keeva said in disgust. “They are taking him apart like ants.”
Phair rushed past her, bringing the barrel of the shotgun to bear on the creature, but not before Waters reacted. Triplet bursts of rounds impacted the creature where he stood. Tight clusters tore swathes of muscle and flesh away, though there was little reaction. It looked up at Waters and flashed a set of spit-glazed teeth.
Phair took aim and yelled, “Captain Waters, get back.”
A bright blue ball erupted from Phair’s barrel, chased by a torrent of fire. It collided with the slack chest bone of the creature, erupting in a pulse of blue energy. Light arced around Haynes and his attacker, shaking the pair of them. The air crackled with energy. Phair pushed Keeva back, keeping her and Waters in the entryway of the building, as the electricity faded.
“Captain Waters, call Major Bhume and tell him we need to evac. Assume anyone not communicating is a loss,” Phair said as he walked quickly to the fallen pair. He turned to Keeva and asked, “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” she replied with a shudder. “The pulse fried the nanites, I take it.”
Phair placed his hands on Haynes’ body. There was labored breathing but hardly any movement. Seconds later, he sputtered and died.
Waters approached.
“What happened?”
“The nanites which paralyzed him died, but so did any bio-mech elements keeping him alive. Probably a pacemaker, a shunt, or another medical condition. At least he went quickly. What’s the word from Bhume?” Phair asked without missing a beat.
“Helicopters inbound. Bhume says to head back to landing zone.”
“The Hell you say,” Keeva chimed in. She reached to her headset and opened the comm. “Major Bhume, this is Dr. Moss. Direct one of the helicopters to land using Jimenez’s drone as a beacon. I have a pair of bodies to take back for examination. That’s an order.”
Silence filled her ears as Keeva waited. She wondered whether Bhume would question her authority. Her answer came in a terse response.
“Understood, Dr. Moss. One helicopter, your location. Bhume out.”
#####
It took forty minutes to carry the two bodies from the center of the shantytown to the extraction point, because of the maximum pace of two people dragging stretchers, while others maintained a moving perimeter.
Once they reached Jimenez’s position on the knoll, Keeva began processing the bodies. A half hour later, she switched off her recorder after all the preliminary safety precautions were complete. Her copious notes assured she would not get blindsided like Bressic. Protocols saved lives. After double-checking the bindings, she walked over to Phair, who was sitting along a small ridge with a few of his bright blue rounds, and the Tasker robot’s visor.
“A few more minutes and we’ll be on the Thumper back to Havana. You’re not going to need whatever that is,” she said, plopping down beside him.
Phair tucked the rounds in the center of the visor and laughed. “Better to have and not need, than need and not have, Dr. Moss.”
They could hear the thump of a helicopter coming. She swatted him on the shoulder. “Told you not to worry.”
A military transport chopper wailed past them, heading for the northern landing zone. Phair stood up and smirked. “First one is headed to Bhume’s location. Figures he would take the first ride. Payback for de-balling him on the comms earlier.”
Keeva grimaced, but she said nothing.
Phair continued. “I told him to pass the optic configuration to the gunners, to fire on anything with a blue glow. We should know in a few seconds whether he followed orders.”
A patter of gunfire echoed in the distance. A few seconds afterward, the heavy guns on the transport ship erupted.
Phair looked at the men with Waters and said, “Bhume’s only got two sides to defend. It’s a better position to be in. When the bird comes for us, our friends will be coming from all sides, trying to overrun us. But they’re gonna wait until the Thumper is closer to the ground. We need to load Dr. Moss, the bodies, then everyone else. You with me, Captain Waters?”
“We’ll keep ‘em back, Dr. Phair. Just do everyone a favor and make it quick.”
The sound of the blades from the first helicopter began drifting away. A second chopper approached and started to hover.
Jimenez remarked, “Captain, the drone’s picking up a wave of blue lights headed this way.”
“You know the drill. Keep shots tight and lethal. Anything with a glow, light it up. Jimenez, call out anything not in the main body,” Waters ordered, as he took a position with his men.
The thumper began to hover above Keeva, holding position and slowly descending to the ground. Both of the gunners were in their cradles. Like Waters’ men, they were not firing.
Phair rushed up alongside Keeva and yelled, “Can you see them in the distance? They are waiting for the Thumper to land. They want to use the aircraft to get off the island.”
Keeva switched on her comms. “Send down cargo ropes. Do not land. I say again. Do not land.”
One of the gunners would have to abandon his position to send down ropes. Keeva heard the first bursts of gunfire as the lines began to descend. She looked out to Waters position and saw bodies racing at the soldiers.
Waters and his men focused on the closest targets. Keeva saw body armor and military gear on the bodies of some attackers. One of the other teams was already lost. Phair had been right to order Bhume to evac. Every casualty would add material for the overclocked nanites to feed on.
Keeva and Harris buckled the bodies onto the wire harness. She took a quick glance at the firefight and saw one of the creatures in a military uniform get torn apart by the helicopter’s heavy gun. Instantly the others around it began pulling nanites and pieces onto themselves.
Harris grabbed the cable and yelled, “I’ll ride the cable up and send it back down. Free up the gunner.”
She knew Harris was the better choice to go up the rope. He ascended with the two bodies as Phair ran up.
“Why didn’t you go?” he shouted.
“Harris can work the line. Gives us a second gunner so they can land,” Keeva said, as she listened to the scattered gunfire around them.
“No chance,” Phair replied. “They’re waiting. The numbers they are putting out are test balloons, gauging our response. They won’t let the bird land without rushing en masse.”
“Whoever gets hit gets absorbed by the others,” Keeva replied. “Every one we take down just consolidates the nanites. Eventually they’ll take us.”
“You got enhancements other than the optics?”
“No,” Keeva replied.
Phair put a radio to his face.
“Pilot, when you see the flash, give two Mississippi, then bring the helicopter down.”
“Roger,” the pilot replied.
Phair keyed his radio again. “Captain Waters, slow your rate of fire and fall back to my position. Let them come a little closer.”
There were no more words between them. Gunfire faltered as men fell back to Phair and Keeva’s position. Creatures began pouring from the trees, though the gunners on the Thumper were still picking off one or two.
Keeva looked at the rushing, makeshift mass of bodies. They were amalgams of flesh and bone, held together by crazed robotics attempting to recreate a human being.
Phair fell to a knee and placed the Tasker’s saucer head on the ground. He connected a small battery and a white light began to pick up speed around the outside of the visor. A few quick rotations and it exploded in a flash of blue, followed by nothing but black and dull sound.
The gunfire from the Thumper stopped with the flash. Keeva felt as if she had been punched in the throat and ears. She was dazed and could feel someone grabbing her arm, but shrill screams, thumping, incoming rotor wash, became the most prominent sensations. Amid all the havoc, she let herself get shoved around, hoping her faith in Phair would be rewarded.
#####
Keeva was laying across three seats inside the helicopter when her vision started filtering back. It was a grainy mass of gray and white, but better than the black she had been staring at. In front of her, Phair was adjusting levels on a handheld tablet.
“Can you see anything,” he asked.
She nodded, but the blur in her vision increased with the movement. When she looked at the tablet, it had a cable running up to her neck. Concerned, she asked, “What are you doing?”
“Coding the nanites I put in to repair your EET recorders,” Phair said blithely. “I had some unprogrammed nanites with me. I’m using them to map and restore anything fried by the pulse. Don’t worry. I’m only working on the tech in your head and nothing else.”
“What happened,” she managed to get out, her throat on fire.
“I wired a handful of rounds together to create a pulse which would brush everyone back,” Phair said with a grin. He hardly looked away from the screen. “Waters’ men only had one optic a piece. Harris was the only one with life-saving implants. I gambled that the horde not caught in the blast would feed on those who fell, before coming at us. After the blast, we left in the commotion.”
Phair slipped a square of clear gel into her hand. Keeva knew it was a data drive and was about to ask why when he said, “In case Rioshon tries to memory wipe the last twenty-four hours. Bhume called in the prelim report. Blamed the Soma-jacked miners for the interaction, based on your findings. Rioshon launched rockets from the Havana location to solve the problem. A series of overlapping strikes will burn the surface, then they’ll follow up with EMP’s for anything else. After a lather, rinse, and repeat, they will call the island safe. The hope is to have new personnel on site in three days.”
“Thanks,” she rasped with a smile.
Researching what caused the reaction at Great Inagua would take time. Keeva had bodies to work on and perhaps they would lead to understanding what they had seen. Rioshon’s response was about profit and loss, nothing more. Keeva leaned back and looked out the small window beside her head. In the distance, she saw the tail fire of rockets burning toward the island before she let the helicopter blades lull her to sleep.
END.
By H. James Lopez
