Table of Contents
Chapter 11
Warehouse, Kazi Depot
Osara System, Ballas Branch
At 04:00 Kazi time and with just a few hours of sleep, three entire burn teams poured into the three puddlejumpers waiting outside the warehouse, headed to handle the growth nearest the Research Facility. They would have more than 50 men, each armed with a gauss rifle, a flame thrower, a handgun, and several home-brewed grenades, thanks to the science teams over at the Research Facility.
Additionally, they would receive flyover bomb support from two puddlejumpers leaving the Research Facility. The research teams there had been cooking up some kind of firebomb since Sara’s team discovered how the hatchlings had reacted to flame. Johns was glad they had. He finally felt like they had the ammunition to take care of the problem, Raymond Duke be damned.
Johns was tired. His eyes felt like sandbags. He had no doubt he had deep circles underneath them, but he hadn’t bothered to look. There would be a lot of sleepless nights until they got this taken care of.
The growth at the second impact site was already making him nervous; then, he discovered that the first site needed to be cut back again. It was hard to deal with the fact that he thought they’d had the Communications Station, now being lovingly referred to as Site A, dealt with. For the first time, he wondered if they would need to do this forever. Stuck sending young men out in the wilderness to burn back a parasitic mucous that would slowly eat the entire planet.
The teams loaded into the seats on either side of the puddlejumper and strapped in. The flight was going to be about twenty minutes, plenty of time for Johns to reflect on what had happened and what would be happening next.
The first order of business was to take down Site B. It was where they first encountered the hatchlings and was sure to be farther along. Once Site B was burned, they could move to Site C, which was farther away from living people, so they had a little time to spare. In the meantime, the Research Facility had been instructed to batten down the hatches until they could get out there.
Once the puddlejumper had started, the sound of the whooshing of the air made it too difficult to hear much of anything, so Johns stayed in his head. You could feel the nervousness in the air — the idea that the unknown was again on the other side of the door, and they were about to go through it. Some part of him loved it.
Johns turned his head and watched Rick. He was sending hand signals to one of the team members, mimicking a sex act. How Rick managed to talk about sex during a time like this, Johns would never know, but it was quintessential Rick. He chuckled with admiration. They were on a god-forsaken research colony with an invading alien force that we were about to battle, and Rick still found a way to reference dicks. Having a guy like that around was essential.
As the pilot came over the open channel to tell them that they were approaching the drop site, you could feel the air suck out of the ship. One of the men puked into his helmet and was sucking out what he could with the puke vacuum built into the bottom of the faceplate and helmet. Johns grimaced. He was going to be smelling bile the rest of the day. Maybe death would be preferable.
They would drop in a new area, as the growth has easily covered the clearing that they had dropped in last time. On the horizon, you could see the blue reflection shimmering off the vegetation and glowing into the air. Soon the forward motion stopped, and the craft began descending toward the forest canopy. Johns kept waiting for Blue Goo to be pasted all over the windshield, just as it had in the video, but it never came.
Johns had sat down with the pilots of each puddlejumper to show them the video of the puddlejumper crash, leaving them uneasy but prepared. They were operating under the assumption that something could shoot from the canopy so that the puddlejumpers would spend as little time low as possible.
The light flashed green, and Johns was the first out of the ship. As he rode the rope down, he saw the other teams descending nearby. One-by-one the security personnel started sliding down the rope toward the ground below. The small valley they were in was vaguely blue, like a bright blue moon was hovering over the drop site. Kazi only had one tiny moon, and it didn’t bounce enough light back to the surface to make a noticeable dent at night.
As each person descended from their respective puddlejumper, they ran to form a line that faced the Goo. They were each about three meters apart with their flamethrowers in hand. The decided strategy was to use the flamethrowers to push back any hatchlings coming their way. If any yet undiscovered creatures made their way toward them, they still had the gauss rifles on their back. The handguns were for last-ditch efforts if these went south. The Security team would move up first, with the civilian volunteers following close behind.
Everyone had taken their place in line within seconds, stretching nearly across the clearing. Johns could see in the distant sky that the sun was just beginning to hit this side of the planet. There would be light soon. Johns felt that familiar twinge in his stomach but pushed it down.
“Forward,” Johns commanded over the open channel.
The line began moving forward, marching its way through the dense forest. You could still hear the boots crunching on the vegetation through their environment suits. They crept as quietly as possible, making their way toward the glowing blue light that shone through the trees, illuminating their line. Johns couldn’t help but think that it was beautiful.
They had made their way to the edge of the goo growth within a few minutes. It had grown considerably since the last time they had been at the site. They stood quietly for a moment, listening.
“If you see anything, report in,” Johns said to the entire group.
After a few seconds of silence, “Burn,” he said. Immediately, the light from 50 flamethrowers lit the woods around them as they burned the goo back. You could hear it pop, cackle, and hiss as it was exposed to the flame. Several men stood back, gauss rifles in hand, focused on watching the horizon through the night vision HUD setting. They’d see any warm body moving.
They burned for several minutes without interruptions before Johns received a communication from the pilot of the puddlejumper.
“Payload incoming, ETA fifteen minutes, over,” the pilot said.
“Roger. Please notify me as you get close. Remember, we want to cut the Goo in half if possible. Don’t be afraid to burn down the forest around it, either. We don’t have the luxury of being picky.” Johns replied. “I’ll relay out exact coordinates. Don’t drop anything on us, please.”
They continued burning. The goo had grown well into the thick vegetation of the forest, and multiple trees continued burning long after they had passed them and moved on, illuminating the forest behind them. Johns had several team members peel off to watch their backs as things became more cramped. They still didn’t know how far these beasts could go once they were off the Goo, but they seemed smart enough to sneak up behind them.
Ten minutes later, Johns received word from the pilot that the strikes were five minutes out. He relayed this to the group and they pushed off the goo a bit to stay out of the blast zone. They had been burning for nearly twenty minutes and hadn’t seen any sign of the hatchlings that had attacked them previously. “Maybe they died,” Rick said. “Poisoned by the atmosphere or something.”
“I’ll believe it when we find their bodies,” Johns replied.
The goo smoldered as they backed away. The goal of the explosive drops was to burn a giant hole at the epicenter of the growth. The more they could take out, the more fuel they denied it. Ahead of them, toward the epicenter, the goo was thicker.
Minutes later, the sun began to streak through the canopy above, and they heard the low whirr of the puddlejumpers as they made their way toward Site B. They passed over their heads and quickly made their way toward the growth site. Seconds later, the floor began to shake as the bombs dropped. The bombing lasted nearly a full minute as the pilots tried to spread the damage as much as possible. The team cheered them on. They could hear the subtle differences in the sound of the bombs as they got further away and circled back around.
Once the explosions ended, they cheered again, this time longer. They stood and watched the black smoke billowing into the red morning sky. The forest around them became eerily silent. In the distance, you could see a halo of blue-orange from the Goo and burning forest.
They crept forward to continue their burn but were halted in their tracks by a faint rumbling sound. At first, Johns thought of the bombing. Was this another drop? But Johns’ concern grew as the rumbling began to build steam. He could see the puzzlement in those around him as well. He knew what was coming.
“Battle positions now!” he screamed into the coms. The fifty men dropped to their knees and pointed their flamethrowers toward the goo. Seconds later, the first wave of hatchlings broke through the treeline about one hundred and fifty meters in front of them, making a beeline toward their location.
“Light ‘em up early!” Johns screamed into the open channel.
The first wave of hatchlings was met with brutal force. They ran headlong into a wall of fire from 50 flamethrowers. Several waves did. Hundreds of them shrieked and either ran off into the woods or shriveled and died in a burning heap on the ground in front of them, their skin popping and blistering. Johns could see more coming behind them in the forest.
The second wave was brighter than the first. They diverted their way around the flamethrowers, trying to find gaps near the edges of the line. They turned to meet their new approach angles. Those in the middle of the line fanned toward the edges, shooting their flamethrowers as safely in that direction as they could. The hatchlings danced and evaded the flames, trying to find a hole in the defenses.
They found one.
A young officer at the end of the line let a scream out into the open channel. Johns looked down the line and could barely make out a body being toppled by a dozen hatchlings. As he went down, the man continued pulling the trigger on his flamethrower and caught the man beside him ablaze. He screamed, and others ran over to try to put out his environment suit. More hatchlings quickly jumped on the first man, tearing away at the vinyl material that kept him away from the air of Kazi.
The officers surrounding him pointed their flamethrowers at him feebly. They swung their rifles, trying to beat them off of him. The creatures ripped his environment suit open and began to dig into his flesh. He let out a wail into the open channel before another security officer had the heart to end it for him, grabbing his gauss rifle and launching a hail of bullets into the growing pile of hatchlings on top of him. With this affirmation that the situation was over, the rest of the team lit the pile up with their flamethrowers. You could hear the screams as dozens of the two-foot-tall lizards burned alive at the other end of the line.
The rest of the flock quickly turned tail and scattered back into the forest. They had dispatched them and a burned pile of them on the forest floor.
For the first time, Johns could tell there were hatchlings in different stages of development. Some were small, perhaps a foot tall. Others were larger, past two feet, with a darker, harsher look to their skin.
At the opposite end of the line from Johns, a wave of the beasts engulfed a group of four officers who had wandered too far forward. They were quickly overwhelmed, and based on the screams coming through the coms; the creatures had gotten into at least one of their helmets.
Standing a few feet from Johns, Rick pulled his gauss rifle from his back and started unleashing rounds into the cloud of creatures. Each bullet that struck the creatures pierced a hole and sent the blue goo shooting out of its body.
Johns pushed forward while Rick peppered the hatchlings with a hail of bullets; Johns laid a consistent flow of flame at all the hatchlings that dared to come in their direction. Across the line, Johns could see that they were pushing. Occasionally, a man would get separated and engulfed by the Hatchlings.
They continued burning, and a few minutes later, they heard the hum of the puddlejumpers who had returned with the second load of explosives. The hatchlings perked up at the sound of the turbines, looked toward the sky, and then took off through the jungle back toward the impact site. Johns and Rick stood in amazement as the hatchlings retreated into the forest.
“Pussies,” Rick said into the coms units, resulting in several belly laughs coming in over the coms.
The bombs dropped, and the pilots did a second pass, sending the visual data to Johns’ coms unit. He and Rick watched closely, planning their next move.
“Damn, those bombs knocked that whole thing back,” Rick said as he pointed at the screen.
“Yeah, we only have to knock down this area,” Johns said as he pointed at the Eastern side of the remaining growth. “We can burn that area back, burn it back to the impact site, throw some grenades in whatever hole is left, and then pack up and get out.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
Johns relayed the plan to the rest of the squad and took a headcount. Thirteen people had perished in the fight, leaving thirty-seven left. They could only find 9 of the bodies as some were sitting in heaps of ash, covered by burned Hatchlings. No one felt the need to comb through them to find confirmation.
He was starting to get numb to it again.
The sun was up now, giving them enough light to complete the job with full visibility. They looped around outside the growth area, burning as they went. Where the bombs had dropped, the forest was still burning intensely. They would have to avoid that area for a while. They settled on burning back the largest slab of goo growth to the East.
By mid-morning, they were finished with the burn and had pushed it back to the impact zones, which devastated the area’s forest. A wildfire had started, and Johns figured it would be best to get everyone out of there rather than stick around. The forest fire would handle what was left of the growth site and they’d keep an eye on it with drones in the meantime. They talked their way back to the field, loaded into the puddlejumpers, and headed back toward Kazi Depot.
Chapter 12
Kazi Depot, Kazi
Osara System, Ballas Branch
By the time they landed and went through the decontamination process, Johns was starting to feel the fatigue set in. A whole night of preparing for the burn and executing it had worn him out, but they had bought themselves some time.
He retreated directly to his quarters for a few hours of sleep. When he woke, he went down to Command for a generous cup of coffee. The small metal coffee cups weren’t enough to satiate him today. The coffee was dreadful, but he still downed two cups without much thought. He hadn’t noticed that Rick was sitting in the meeting room just to his right as he chugged, but a flicker of movement in that direction caught his gaze, and he turned around to see Rick wearing a big shit-eating grin.
“Tired? Or thirsty, maybe?” Rick yelled from the room as Johns strolled his way in.
“Both.”
“And who could blame you?” Rick said.
Johns settled in with his freshly poured third cup of coffee, putting his feet on the glass table across from Rick. They sat silently for a moment, save for Johns’ sips from his metal mug. Rick was reading on his tablet.
“What are you reading?” Johns asked.
“Weeks old news. Since our light communications are down, I only have the news trickling in before the impacts.”
“What’s the point?”
“I read the news every day, usually. Gotta keep some routines, I figure,” Rick said.
“Really,” Johns said with a little bit of surprise. “You read the news every day?”
“Well yeah,” Rick said. “You’ve never seen me read? I read every morning before our briefings in this room.”
“I guess I wasn’t paying attention,” Johns said. “Maybe none of us were.”
Rick nodded, looked at his tablet, but then pulled his eyes back toward Johns. “What do you mean?” he asked.
“No one saw this coming,” Johns replied somberly. “No early detection. No warning system. No preparation for something like this. Where was Osara Prime? Better yet, where were we? They caught us with our pants down. Imagine if this had happened on Osara Prime?”
“That’s true enough. But how were we supposed to detect these things coming in? They aren’t much bigger than a ship and don’t have a drive signature for us to detect. Who knows how they fly so damn fast. We can’t even track every rock floating in a system.”
“I don’t know what I expect,” Johns said. “Seems like, during the war, we were prepared for anything. But we won the war and ended the Resistance. Everyone has been walking around in a fog for twenty years.”
“Doesn’t help they just don’t care about us. They wouldn’t have done anything to help us even if they did see it coming. Shit, this whole planet looks like it’s in danger of being overrun by a hostile alien species, and those fucks in their golden towers on Osara can’t even be bothered to send us anything other than some food and bandaids on a transport ship. They’ll let us get ripped apart one by one here before they send any real help.”
“That’s their position. I sent one more message along and expect to hear back in the next day or so,”
“And you think they’ll change their minds? Based on what? The ?”
“Is that what we’re going to call them?” Johns said with a big smile on his face. “God, those things were fucked up.”
“Whatever is coming shooting out of their fat fucking mouths is acidic,” Rick said, mimicking the toads by blowing up his cheeks and pretending to shoot liquid across the room. “Which isn’t the case for the Goo. I know they looked the same, but I talked to Sara, and she said that the Goo is only slightly acidic. Enough to burn through the plants over hours but not enough to melt a man’s face off.”
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Johns said before catching Sara walking into Command from the corner of his eye. “Speaking of the devil.”
On cue, Sara saw them sitting in the meeting room and shifted in their direction. She came through the glass doors, her hair waving at the breeze they created as she swung through.
“More good news?” Johns asked. Every time he and Sara ran into each other, she had something awful to tell him.
“Nope.Well…yes, actually. Good news,” she said with her hand behind her back. She pulled it out to reveal a full bottle of potato vodka and three shot glasses. “I thought we could have a drink.”
“Fuck yes we can!” Rick said with pep.
She brought the bottles and glasses and neatly arranged them on the table. The way she carried herself reminded Johns of his wife, er, ex-wife. She had been a neat freak. Everything always had its place; moving it from that place — even 6 inches to the right in the cupboard — you would hear about it. It had been a bit of an adjustment for Johns when they had first moved in together. He wasn’t messy. The military had always dictated that he keep clean. But he wasn’t clean in the way that she was. In time, he learned to appreciate that way of living.
Sara poured the glasses, giving each a smidge of room in the top of the shot glass. They grabbed them and carefully clinked them together above the glass table.
“To those, we lost,” Sara said. Johns nodded.
“Here, here,” said Rick.
They threw their shots back and each grimaced just a bit as they went to set the shot glass back down. For some reason, Johns was less bothered this time around. Maybe the impact of losing a single, identifiable person and the effect it would have was too personal. Losing a group — thirteen this time, seven from the puddlejumper crash — made the tragedy so massive that there was no way to wrap his mind around it. There were families across the station absolutely devastated right now, living out some of the worst days of their lives. It was the same way he had felt during some battles when he lost hundreds or even thousands of people during the war. Today, twenty years removed from battle, perhaps his threshold was lower for this type of thing. And while he was devastated, this was also the best that Johns had felt in days.
“I really do have some good news, though,” Sara said. “We just got back the latest images from Site A, and the growth acceleration has flatlined.”
“The acceleration of the growth? Meaning it’s still growing just as fast as it was?”
“Yes, it appears to have topped out at around three square miles per day, unimpeded.”
“What slowed it?” Rick asked.
Sara shook her head.
“We don’t know. Nothing, maybe. Maybe burning it back slowed it down a bit. Most likely, that’s just the top speed that it will grow. Maybe there is a resource limit.” Sara said.
“Resource limit?” Johns asked.
“Yeah. If whatever it is needs fuel, the fuel that the planet is providing caps out at a certain point. New growth means minimal gains, but everything up until that point continues to ramp things up. As it gets bigger, it has more landmass to feed, and each individual gain doesn’t mean as much for it.”
“Ok. So here’s a question. How do we kill it?” Rick asked.
“Well, if I knew that, I’d tell you.”
“Sure, but best guess?” Johns asked, trying to persuade her to go on a limb a bit.
“Well…I do have a theory I’ve been thinking about.”
“Go on..” Johns said after waiting a second.
“Well….we’ve tried burning it back. All the way to the impact hole that goes down into the Earth, right? We even threw grenades in there. But what if we didn’t go far enough? The growth seems to reset but quickly ramps up uninhibited after we burn it back. If the question is whether or not we destroy every last atom in this thing, well then we are never going to be able to stop it because we can’t eradicate it. But that can’t be the bar. It has to be coming from somewhere. That’s not how life…well, most life, works. Most life has a few requirements. What if there is something down in that hole that keeps these growths alive?”
“Like a…central nervous system or something?” Johns asked.
“Yes. Like a central nervous system. Something that is living or operating down there. A brain, if you will.”
“So you think this is some creature down there or just a pile of goo making the whole thing hum?” Rick asked.
“It could be either,” Sara said with a face that said that she realized the implication of what she was saying. “There could be something down there, living. That came down in the squid when they first landed on Earth. They might even crash land just so they can burrow themselves down in the dirt. Or…it could be a big pile of goo. Or it could be nothing. We can’t know until we look.”
“Drone?” Johns replied.
“Well, we certainly aren’t sending a living person down there to have the first look,” Rick chimed in.
“I don’t know, I think you could handle it,” Johns said as a smile flashed across his face. Rick side-eyed him and continued on.
“Well shit… we don’t have to wait to do that. We could send one out tonight. Most of our drone fleet is keeping a constant eye on the growth areas; we could divert one or two right into the hole.”
“Those things cost money,” Johns said.
“Oh, here we go. Mr. budgetary concerns himself,” Rick responded.
That made Johns give a full-throated belly laugh. He and Rick had butted heads over the budget many times — particularly when Rick had tried to classify the usage of a puddlejumper as “work-related” for a friend’s bachelor party.
They helped themselves to another shot of liquor, and Sara excused herself back to her room. Johns and Rick sat there for another hour, discussing their next moves and playing out different scenarios for their endgame. They retreated to their respective quarters for one more rest before the next burn.
He wondered what his ex-wife would think of him now — and of this situation. Unlike some military wives, she never cared to know what missions he was on. People in his unit would talk about how their wives would beg to know where they were every time they spoke. Ellie never did that to Johns. She barely asked anything.
When Johns reached his quarters, he waved his hand in front of the access control, and the doors slid open. He made his way into the room and began peeling off his clothes. He looked at the time. 23:00. He would have enough time for a full six or seven hours of sleep, which is certainly something that he was looking forward to.
“Sleep mode,” he said aloud, and the A.I. adjusted the lighting in his quarters. As he slept, the illumination would slowly turn the brightness down, helping him to ease into sleep. He opened the drawer next to his bed and took out a small paper object. He looked at it longingly, rubbing the edges of the photograph.
He rubbed Anna’s face and wished that he could touch it again. It was the only physical picture that he had from them. He had printed it on genuine wood paper, afraid he might lose track of the file itself one day. He would give anything to have another chance. He slid it back into the desk drawer. He could never bring himself to look at it for long. He could get lost in it for hours if he couldn’t pull it away. He missed her dearly.
Johns laid his head down and sighed, knowing tomorrow would be another tough day. There was no end to the tough days on the horizon. Every day was going to be a tough day. He let his brain wander to the goo but forced himself to pull it back. He couldn’t spend every hour thinking about the enemy. He wouldn’t be fresh when it was time to make decisions. Sometimes you can outthink yourself.
With each passing moment, he drifted closer to sleep. His breathing deepened, and he began to see his thoughts wander toward dreamland. As he was on the cusp of sleep, his coms unit vibrated on his bedside table.
“Damnit!” he yelled and pulled his coms unit in front of his face.
It was Sara calling him directly. He picked it up.
“What is it, Sara?”
“I’m sorry, boss, but I just had to call you,” she said, semi-frantic. “We just got the footage back from the drone. It took a peek inside the hole at the impact site. I think you need to see this.”
Chapter 13
Command Post, Kazi Depot
Osara System, Ballas Branch
When Johns finally returned to Command, Sara and Rick were already waiting for him. The worry on their faces took him back, but he took his seat with them in front of the screen.
“Alright,” Sara said while she fiddled with her hands. “This you have to see.”
She hit some buttons on her terminal, and a video pulled up on the screen in front of them. It was a top-down view of the Kazi forest, stretching in all directions. A sea of green.
The drone lifted its camera, and they could see Impact Site A in the distance. The drone made its way toward the center of the impact site, flying directly above it and slowly down to the ground. The jungles of Kazi began to lift on all sides of the camera, pushing their way to the top of the screen as it lowered itself into the impact site, and all you could see was concrete covered in goo. The Blue Goo had grown slightly since the last burn but was still relatively small.
Johns could see that the drone had centered itself around the hole at the center of the impact site. It paused when it was about 50 feet up, taking a reading of the area, and then continued down. It went slowly, safely, like a living thing, protecting its life against an unknown foe. It carefully made its way down into the hole about five feet across and angled down into the ground at about a seventy-five-degree angle. The fleshy blue surface of the goo shined all around it as it maneuvered. A protective lens slid over the camera and applied a filter to make the shining blue a bit less bright.
The inside of the impact crater was fleshy. It was almost as if the walls were breathing, and Rick commented that it reminded him of his days at University. They were wet and slick like the skin of a toad. The drone carefully navigated its way further. In the walls of the impact site were openings on either side of the larger tunnel, which was about five feet across. The drone hovered just outside of one of the openings, shining its light down—another tunnel. Barely wide enough for the drone, it moved forward with care.
For several minutes they watched as the drone made its way deeper into the tunnels, taking several winding turns. The air readouts got more interesting the farther down the drone went. It detected high levels of sulfur dioxide. Soon, the drone camera showed an opening at the bottom.
The opening was tight and moved like a living organism. The drone hesitated but then attempted to push its way through. The fleshy walls tightened around the drone like a snake had swallowed it.
It exited and entered what appeared to be a cave. It was large, with ceilings perhaps fifty feet high. The cave’s ground was covered in several feet of Blue Goo, illuminating the entirety of the cave. It took a moment for the ground to come into focus. It removed the filter lens for a moment, giving a peek at just how blindingly bright it was. Johns almost had to look away from the screen. The drone reapplied the filter, and the ground slowly came back into focus.
“What the hell!” Johns said.
In the disgusting blue soup toward the back of the cave floated what were maybe twenty giant, oval-shaped eggs just like the one they had found at Site A. The goo flowed through them, with blue luminescence shining through the shell’s veins.
The goo was also climbing the cave walls, stretching several dozen meters high. Johns wondered if the goo would continue to rise and spread until it covered every square inch in the giant cave chapel.
Toward the back of the room, a mound was tough to identify. At first, it looked like it might have been a giant pile of eggs. As they got closer, it began to look more like a sheet draped over some furniture. Except it was living. Breathing. Pulsating. Lightly tinted blue ooze dripped from the flesh-like substance. At the end was an opening that resembled what Johns could only describe as an anus. It pursed and opened slightly.
Then the anus started to open. It puckered then stretched, and a white, smooth surface appeared in the opening. The sides of the organism constricted around the opening, which opened wider with the strain. Juices poured from the opening as the smooth object was forced out—a slimy egg.
“It’s fucking nesting,” Sara said. “It’s alive down there, Nick.”
Rich side-eyed Johns. He had never heard anyone call him Nick before.
Johns took a deep breath and leaned back in his chair.
“Keep watching,” Sarah said.
The drone on the screen moved closer to the opening. It was mere meters away when a small warning flashed on the right side of the screen, turned red, and a movement notification lit up the screen.
The drone turned quickly. The giant sheet-like birthing organism was rustling, twisting toward the top of the cave. A giant lobster-like claw emerged and latched onto the wall outside. A second leg appeared on the opposite side. Then four more toward the tops and bottoms of the organism.
A huge, bulbous creature began to move its way out, lumbering as it progressed. It took Johns a few moments to realize that the beast actually did have a giant blue bulb attached to it and that it was not the front of the creature but the back. His heart filled with dread as the enormous creature began to turn around.
It stood at least twenty feet high. Blue goo dripped from the bulbous mound on its back, which breathed and heaved as the giant creature attempted to move around. The beast had four lizard-like legs and an additional six clawed appendages from the back of the creature. They were long, perhaps fifteen feet each. Johns’ mouth fell open.
The creature waddled at the drone, letting out a growl that can only be described as a hellish moan with a high-pitched tinge.
The drone watched as the creature leaned back. It spread the six clawed appendages on its back. Then, in a split second, one of the claws lunged forward, and the drone was plucked from the air. Its feed dropped, and the screen went black.
“God damn. It’s a queen!” Johns said. “That giant bubble on its back was the birthing sac! You could see it connected to the egg-producing thing on the wall.”
“Exactly,” Sara replied. Johns sank in his chair.
“Ho-lee-shit,” Rich said, a lightbulb apparently going off in his head a moment later “…Yes? Shouldn’t I be? How are we going to kill that thing? It’s creating the Goo. It’s dropping eggs quick enough for a drone to catch a live birth in the twenty seconds it was in its lair. And the damn thing is about twenty feet tall with javelins for arms.”
“I’d have thought you’d see this as good news,” she said.
“And why’s that?” Rick said, exasperated.
“Because now we know how to kill it.”
Chapter 14
Johns’ Quarters, Kazi Depot
Osara System, Ballas Branch
Johns returned to his quarters after over an hour-long talk with Sara and Rick. It hadn’t been all that productive. At each of the impact sites, there would likely be another Queen, creating chaos from the comfort of her underground hive. They would have to kill the Queens — all three of them. Or Kazi would likely be overrun within weeks. And they weren’t sure that they could even kill one.
Their best guess was that the Queen had come down in the squid vessel. Maybe it had burrowed underground and created the lair that would serve as its launchpad in the area.
Johns poured himself a drink of the good whiskey. He sat and drank for nearly an hour as he waited to cool down before making the call that he knew he needed to make.
Sara did have a point. If you were the half-full kind of person, you might see this discovery as an opportunity. They could, assuming that they could kill one of those things, they could pull that shit out root and stem. She didn’t know for sure, but Sara was guessing that the entire Goo network provided its ecosystem. She thought that if we cut out the Queen that was producing the Goo, the rest would eventually die, or at least put us in a position to burn it without worrying about it coming back. They had been fighting against a conveyor belt of goo the whole time and hadn’t realized.
Still, Johns was more of the half-empty type. They still had to kill that thing. They still had to go down there and ensure it was all burned back. If they are going to beat this thing, they have to put an end to it, site by site. Three crash landings. They were still going to confirm by drone, but Johns assumed that meant that there were three Queens out there.
Once he felt that he had sufficiently thought things through, despite not really reaching any conclusion that he was confident in, he pulled out his terminal and set it on the desk before loading up a message to President Raymond Duke.
He took a deep breath and hit record.
“Hey, Raymond,” he said in a thinly-veiled attempt to convey his lack of respect. “Just wanted to check in and give you an update. We’ve just discovered something that I would classify as significant. I’ve attached the video of the incident that I am about to describe. It’s encrypted and very sensitive.
This morning we sent a drone down into the impact site hole to investigate what was down there. Previously we had just thought that the Goo was growing directly out of the impact site, but we found what looked like tunneling down deeper into the ground.
Following those tunnels, the drone came into what can only be described as a large cavern functioning as a nest for the organism. The Blue Goo was climbing the walls. The ground was covered in Goo several feet thick. There were unhatched eggs and a birthing system that appeared to be producing those eggs at a very rapid rate.
The drone encountered a large creature, maybe twenty feet tall. Several thousand pounds…maybe more, who knows. It was connected directly to the birthing mechanism. A large bulb in its back seemed to produce eggs, and the goo itself poured out of it. We’ve hypothesized that this is a Queen-like mother organism for the goo and all of the creatures that have birthed from it. Our best guess is that it is a self-confined ecosystem. The Queen creates the goo and Helldog creatures. The creatures secure land and kill living creatures to feed more biomass into the system. The goo inhabits the land and feeds on the fauna, feeding the Queen and causing more growth.
If you hear my head scientist tell it, this is good news. She says we’ve identified what drives the organism’s growth throughout the different impact sites. She’s right, of course.
We can’t let these Queens continue to produce. Early tomorrow morning, we are taking our best men and going down there and try to kill it. We’ll take the few high-powered gauss rifles that we have and flamethrowers down there and try to burn her out.”
Johns hesitated for a second. The expression on his face softened, and he released some tension from his shoulders. His head fell into his hand, and he rubbed his palm as if attempting to quiet a headache.
“Look…Raymond. Let’s put the personal shit aside. That doesn’t even factor into this. That can’t factor into this. This is too big, too important.
I have a bad feeling about this. Not just tomorrow, even though I do have a bad feeling about that too. We have three impact sites. That means three of these monsters, these Queens. The guys we have here, they aren’t soldiers. They’re used to breaking up fights in the food courts and falling asleep while they guard the labs. They’re great people, but they aren’t built to fight aliens.
And we have three of them. If we manage to kill one, we still have to kill two more. And there are so many variables. Are any of them bigger than the others? Will we fight quickly enough to keep the Goo from eating us alive?
What I’m saying, Raymond, is that I know the protocol here. I know it’s bad. You guys would probably think it’s bad, even if it wasn’t. But the fact is that we can’t control this. I don’t have the resources here. We’re a research colony, not a military outpost. You sent me here to rot, and now you’re stuck with me. But you’re lucky you have me here.
You guys won’t send a fleet, and I get that. You can’t put that many people at risk. This shit could contain pathogens that threaten the whole system. You’re probably planning on nuking it from space. That’s what I would recommend if I were some general with a big-picture stick up my ass.
But nuking doesn’t mean that you can’t send anything. It doesn’t have to be a full unit. Send us something small. A few haulers big enough to get people off-world. Some special ops guys, if you can spare them, to help me with the evacuation. If they can’t be used for something like this, what will we use them for?
If we manage to get out, we’ll quarantine for as long as you want. All of us. We’ll live on a station and never set foot on Osara Prime again. Whatever you need us to do to make you feel safe about letting us live. But let them live, please.
I’m serious, Raymond. If you don’t send someone, every single person on Kazi is going to die while these things spread. And who knows where they go after that? Maybe they make their way to Osara Prime. I’ll…keep you updated on our progress with the Queens.”
Chapter 15
Hangar, Kazi Depot
Osara System, Ballas Branch
You could hear a pin drop as the select members of the raid team watched the drone video of the Queen. The small team represented everyone in the station with real war experience, which amounted to 8 people. They couldn’t risk someone doing the wrong thing this time. They opted for a small precision unit rather than trying to overwhelm with numbers.
They geared up and loaded into the puddlejumper. While they were on their way to the site, a dozen drones with explosives mounted to them were going to dive into the queen’s cavern and detonate themselves on the Queen. A few had been directed toward the long birthing canal, and a few were going to dive-bomb directly into the eggs themselves.
Then, the team would follow up with gauss rifles and flame throwers to hopefully finish off the queen and burn everything down. They were taking a calculated risk that could end with them all being killed. In that cavern, they had no idea when those eggs were going to hatch. They didn’t even know if their flamethrowers might speed up that process in some way. But it didn’t matter. It was the best and only idea they had.
Johns put the feed on the screen and they watched as the first drones made their way over the forest and toward the glowing blue goo in the distance. As it neared the goo, it scanned the area. You could see creatures scattering along the goo, eyeing the sky as the drone circled above. They appeared to run in flocks, patrolling various areas of the goo and launching themselves off of it to go find new resources to feed on the wildlife. The closer the drone got to the impact site, the brighter the glow became.
Soon the first drone was making its way down the hole at the bottom of the impact crater. He could see that the drone was more sluggish, encumbered from the weight of the explosive that had been strapped to it. The drone laboriously made its way into the opening and slowly through the tight tunnels. They had no real plan for getting themselves through the tunnels. The walls looked fleshy, and they hoped that with their rifles and early explosions that it would open up a path for them when they got there. Otherwise, they were squeezing their ass through the tight tunnel.
The drone made its way through the tunnel and out into the cavern. You could see the jaws of the crew drop. There was even more goo, and it seemed to be pouring form the separate cave where the queen was. They watched as the drone accelerated across the room, training its crosshairs on the cave with the queen. It moved so swiftly that the Blue Goo surrounding the room became a blur. It dove into the cave and the feed was cut.
Immediately, the feed switched to the next drone that was making its way into the cavern now. It was just in time to hear the familiar blood-curdling scream that the Queen let out when the first drone has landed. A dozen or so other drone feeds were being shown in smaller boxes around the edge of the screen.
They watched as the drones, one by one, made their way into the cave and dive-bombed various areas. The feeds would go blank as the explosives were detonated, but they could see the carnage from the feeds of the drones that were following them. The Queen was quickly coaxed out of its cave and from what they could see, was being badly injured by the drone bombs. One drone appeared to have been knocked out of the sky or was hung up on something as it was recording the action but not moving at all. Through that drone’s feed, they watched as the rest of the drones exploded over the eggs and the birthing canal. With each explosion, the queen let out a scream. The team cheered as it looked like an effective initial attack had just been completed. Maybe they were going to be able to take this thing after all.
“Prepare to drop,” the pilot said over the com channel. Johns hadn’t even noticed that the puddlejumper had made its way over the impact site. The back of the plane opened and they took turns sliding down the rope and securing the area at the bottom. None yet.
They made their way into the opening of the impact site, which was big enough for the whole team. As they climbed down in, Rick climbed into first tunnel and began hacking away with a machete, cutting away at the fleshy meat that had taken over the walls of the cavern, spraying blue goo with each swing.
“Behind us!” one man yelled over the coms channel.
“Burners, hold the line!” Johns yelled. He hadn’t expected them to arrive so quickly, but then again maybe he should have.
Two burners stepped forward, launching fire toward the entrance. The good thing was that the path through the entrance was not wide enough for the creatures to pour in more than a few at a time. They were going to have to come single file and that made them easy work for the flamethrowers.
The first creatures began coming down the entrance but were quickly burned away in a roar of the fire. Rick and Johns continued to hack at the tunnel and were making significant progress. Sweat poured downs Johns’ face. The walls of dirt and thick goo were hard to cut through. Within a minute or two, he would have cut a path large enough for them all to get through.
The creatures continued to pour in, shrieking as they were burned alive at the top of the tunnel. The biggest risk was that these creatures weren’t burning up quickly enough. A few of them had made their way inside the cavern engulfed in flames, which put them all at risk. The Blue Goo was flammable enough that Johns was worried about what would happen once they were throwing fire around in the Blue Goo cavern swamp.
“We’re in!” Rick yelled as he gave the blue, fleshy material one last final chop.
The team began making their way into the tunnel, the burners burning behind them as they went.
“Back your way down. Once we’re in, you guys hold the tunnel!” Johns screamed and the two men with flamethrowers nodded in acknowledgement. Johns went running off down the tunnel, following the men. As he went, he switched to the feed of the remaining drone, which was still stuck inside the cavern. He could see the queen rummaging around the far end of the cavern, looking a bit worse for wear.
They made their way down until they reached the thin fleshy tunnel that entered into the cavern.
“This will be weird,” he said before sliding in head first and being pushed through and out the other side.
The team walked into the giant cavern. The sheer size of it never fully came across in the drone videos. It was gigantic, and bluer and brighter than Johns had imagined. The visor on his environment suit automatically filtered his vision to cut back on the brightness.
“Split up, we need to hit this bitch from all angles!” Johns yelled into the coms channels. The men began spreading out around the rockface that sat above the Blue Goo swamp below them. It looked as if several more feet of blue goo had been added to the floor of the building. The air was thick in the cavern. It felt as if there was a weight on his Johns’ chest.
Johns watched as the Queen first noticed them from across the room. He could see that her front right leg was blown apart pretty well and she was missing two of the javelin appendages from her back. She was worse for wear, that was sure, but still very intimidating even from across the cavern.
Then, she closed on them. She wasted no time and the sheer speed with which she was able to get across the room was shocking. There was almost no time for anyone to say anything over the coms. Johns had thought he heard someone try but before they could really get going, they were drowned out by the sound of gauss rifles and flame throwers unloading in the general direction of the queen as she approached them.
Her first target was Rick, who immediately barrel-rolled as she approached and was able to avoid several close stabs from her javelin arms. The second man, Joaquin, wasn’t so lucky. The queen drove her javelin toward and pierced him through the stomach. Joaquin screamed and the team continued to dump rounds and fire into her thick exoskeleton as she ripped Joaquin in half and tossed his upper body across the cavern, hitting the wall on the far side.
The burning was more effective than the bullets. The Queen made her rounds on their side of the cavern, taking swipes with her claws at anyone that was close. Several men took umbrage behind large stones. Others dove out of the way. But Johns quickly realized that the Queen refused to approach the flame.
Rich reached into his backpack, pulled out a grenade and let it rip. It landed at the injured front right foot of the Queen and went off. The Queen’s front right leg burst outward as she screamed. The men rushed her. The first, Quinen, the younger member of the team misjudged the queens level of disability and stumbled too close, his flamethrower throwing fire against her hardened shell-like exterior.
Johns kept a close eye on Joaquin. The screaming had stopped and Johns knew that he was quickly bleeding out at the far side of the cavern.
“Apply pressure to Joaquin!” he screamed into the com channel.
She screamed before one of her javelin appendages flew threw the air and drove itself through Quinen’s stomach. Scarlett blood poured out of the tear in his environment suit, spilling down his front side and landing on the bright blue ground below. The sight of it pushed the others back.
Johns pulled a grenade from his utility belt and launched it toward the Wueen’sbhead. It bounced off of what he guessed was her chest plate and exploded a few feet away from her. She screamed as bits of burning hot shrapnel tore through her softer bits.
Johns could feel the cavern rumbling beneath his feet and all he could do was hope that they hadn’t damaged the cavern and it was was now collapsing in on itself.
“TOGETHER,” Johns screamed into the coms channel, pulling his grenade up and showing the group. The Queen lumbered toward them, unable to find her footing with large portions of her legs missing. She slipped to her side, falling into the goo-covered ground, catching herself with her mighty limb that would have been analogous to her right arm. A thicker blue ooze drained out of her wounds and poured on the ground below her where it met the ground goo and began bubbling, almost as if it was boiling.
The team made eye contact, pulled the pins on their grenades, and sent them sailing toward the queen who was now near dead-center in the middle of the chamber. Two bounced off of her chest plate and fell toward the ground in front of her. Rick was to Johns’ left and he watched as Rick’s grenade sailed, plopping perfectly into the blue muck below the queen’s body.
“DOWN!,” Johns screamed before jumping head first into the blue sludge that lined the ground in the upper area.
Each of the grenades exploded nearly simultaneously, with just a split second of lag between the first batch and the second. It was deafening. The entire cavern seemed to jump with the explosion. The sound of the explosion and the high-pitched, shrill scream of the queen filled Johns’ ears. For a brief moment there was nothing but the sound of the five grenades exploding within milliseconds of each other. It reminded Johns’ very much of the panic inside of Kazi Depot when the lifeforms had first arrived.
Seconds later, when Johns finally felt comfortable enough to lift his head, he looked cautiously over his shoulder at the carnage behind him.
The queen laid motionless in the middle of the gigantic cavern. The nest of eggs behind her has been nearly completely destroyed as well, with several eggs broken open and leaking a version of the blue juice that was bright, almost fluorescent onto the floor below. It pooled on top of the thicker, more viscous blue fluid that coated the floor of the cavern.
He stared for a moment, watching for any signs of life from the matriach, who was slumped over in the middle of the cavern. A few deep heaves rippled throughout her body before she sat still.
Cautiously, the team pulled themselves up, each of them now absolutely covered in blue. Johns wiped a significant amount of goo off of his visor as he lurched toward the queen, flamethrower at the ready by his side.
They stood around her, guns pointed for a moment.
“Is she dead?” one of the men asked.
“Let’s find out,” Rick said, before jogging toward the giant bohemoth and kicking what was left of what would be her right arm.
She responded, lifting her right arm and letting out one final shrill wail. Instantly, a dozen flamethrowers ignited, trained on the beast. Her wail howled and dissipated with each passing second. The heat was intense, and Johns could see parts of the great Queen melting against the heat. They continued to burn until the once-mighty Queen was nothing more than a bubbling pile, charred black from the heat of their flamethrowers. They stopped. The pile stunk. It must. Johns could swear he could smell it through his helmet. Pieces of the queen glowed red, emanating out from the center of the pile.
Johns left the group just as they broke into applause and started high-fiving each other. He walked over toward Joaquin’s body. The Queen’s javelin had left a giant gaping hole in his stomach. His intestines had been pulled from his body and portions were hanging out over the white of his environment suit. His hands lay on top of the hole and pile of intestines. No doubt the kid had been trying to figure out what had happened to him. His face was almost frozen. Scared, his eyes wide.
Johns barely knew him. He couldn’t have been older than twenty-two, twenty-three. Born at the hospital on the north side of Kazi Depot, most likely. A mother had lost a son.
But — they had killed her.
If Sara’s hypoethesis was right, then this node would be exterminated. Johns hoped with everything he had that she was right. Because if this thing kept growing without the queen around, then they were all truly fucked.
