Greenflies Read online

  “In short, we believe the Greenflies found an alien species through exploring the galaxy and domesticated it for multiple purposes. They appear to have done this multiple times as the alien transport, alien aircraft, and many-legged insects are as distantly related to each other as they are to us. And, we appear to have a specific example…”

  The image switched to that of one of the bees from the alien weapons and a simple Earth honeybee. There was a distinct resemblance in appearance, but not beyond coincidence. Then a few gene sequences began running beneath the images, and the symmetry was telling.

  “The alien bee is essentially a distant cousin of the modern honeybee. As in the case of the many-legged insectoids, the differences between the appearance of the alien bee and the Earth honeybee is mostly caused by a number of artificially added STOP codons in the alien bee genome. It is essentially a domesticated version of one of the honeybee’s ancestors. Based on the difference in the genome, we believe that ancestor to have existed between sixty and seventy million years ago.”

  The murmuring grew significantly in the auditorium. It was not only the significance of the Greenflies having visited once before, so very long ago, but also the coincidence of what else happened within that range. A giant meteor struck the Earth, and all dinosaurs died out.

  “We suspect that the Greenflies identified the ancient bee as an efficient weapon in administering toxins. It had already developed a number of the features we see in them today: a barbed stinger that detaches, a venom sack that continues to generate and pump poison into the victim long after the stinger has detached, and a complex venom. The Greenflies appeared to alter the behavior of the creature to tolerate living in a launcher, and they added over a dozen substances to the venom, some of which have no analogue to anything toxicology has ever seen. Three of the substances have proven completely inert in terrestrial physiology, indicating that the alien bees have probably been used on other planets with significantly different biochemistry.

  “So, based upon these genetic sequences, we find it reasonable to conclude that the alien hover-transport, the alien aircraft, the many-legged insectoid family, and the weaponized bee are all examples of species encountered by the Greenflies which they chose to domesticate. They are only related distantly, perhaps two billion years ago. The Greenflies, themselves, are another story.”

  The image onscreen changed to that of a Greenfly undergoing autopsy. Several pointers towards the image delineated the major boundaries between the tissue types. There really weren’t many: the bony tissue, the muscle, four tissues associated with the complex skin, the nervous tissue, the vascular tissue, three eye-related tissues, and the remarkable teleportation organ that fed the Greenfly its blood supply from some unknown source.

  “In a manner of speaking, the Greenfly isn’t even related to itself,” the speaker continued, “Each of the tissues you see, with the exception of the bone, has a unique genome nearly completely unrelated to the other types of tissue. For instance, the muscle has only 1% homology with the vascular tissue. In terrestrial species and all of the other alien species we’ve seen, each and every cell of the body possesses the entirety of the genome. In the Greenflies, each tissue type has its own and only its own genes necessary for function. There is no redundancy and no junk DNA.”

  Gene sequences rambled across the screen, showing virtually no correlation with each other.

  “This feature, in conjunction with a number of other aspects of Greenfly physiology leads us to believe they are of artificial origin. The bones of the creature are constructed of a strong silicate mineral with no cells and no apparent way to be laid down. The bones appear to have been cast, at their adult size, with no sign of growth or childhood. The pattern of the cells atop the bones is consistent with a layer by layer deposition of cell sheets with vascular tissue in between the sheets. As there is no other suggestion of any reproductive ability, we conclude that the Greenflies were most likely manufactured.

  “But there is one more piece of evidence from which we draw this conclusion. Here is a microscopic image of the Greenfly nerve cell.”

  A large number of blobs appeared onscreen. They were colored red, probably by an artificial dye of some sort. In the middle of each red blob was a pair of bright green circles, one noticeably larger than the other. The individual red blobs, presumably the nerve cells, were photographed in the midst of extending tendrils to each other. The collaboration of them all looked much like a net.

  “Unlike all terrestrial species and the alien species we’ve investigated, and even the other Greenfly cells, the Greenfly nerve cells possess two nuclei. The smaller of the two appears to provide operational information, and the gene sequences are similar to what we see elsewhere in the creature. Similar in that they code for proteins just as our genes do. The larger nuclei are significantly different.”

  A code ran across the screen. There were much fewer gaps in this code than the others that had been shown, as this code was fundamentally simpler. It only consisted of two kinds of nucleotides, repeating again and again in different patterns.

  “The larger nuclei consists solely of adenine and thyomine units, not distributed in the three-unit code for translating proteins. Rather, the data appears strikingly binary. It is our hypothesis that this second nucleus represents a genetic memory. The Greenflies may not only be manufactured, but also programmed…”

  As the presentation continued, Butler’s mind began to wander towards the possibilities. Given the Greenfly’s capabilities, it made a kind of sense that they were purpose-built lifeforms. From their vacuum-loving skin to their ability to adhere to any surface, they were clearly meant to live in space, crawling about asteroids, space stations, or who knew what else.

  At the same time, it was difficult to justify evolutionarily why a species evolving in such an environment would have any need of such terrestrial features such as, albeit clumsy, tool-using limbs. It made far more sense that they were constructed by something else, presumably a ground species, that wanted a biological robot to function in space.

  Even their mode of communication made sense for a space-based creature. With their writhing skin and its heat generation capability, they could broadcast infrared messages to each other, visible perhaps hundreds of miles with their telescopic eyes. If the language truly consisted of fractal patterns, as Butler suspected, then as the distance increased, one Greenfly would still be able to make out the message of another, with decreasing content, until the sender was just a single blurry flicker at the edge of sight.

  A flicker, Butler thought. They were almost certainly built to communicate at incredible ranges with simple on-off patterns.

  He stood up, in the middle of the presentation and began squeezing past people to the edge of the row. He drew a few stares, from the speaker among other, but Butler was one to seize upon any “eureka” moment that struck him, regardless of social impropriety. Once out of the auditorium, he all but ran to the detention area.

  Once there, out of breath, he forced himself to calm down. The locking mechanisms would not forgive his enthusiasm, and this “eureka” moment could easily be spoiled by sudden incarceration in a steel box. He very slowly and deliberately went through the procedures to get through the door.

  Once again, he held his ID aloft as he moved down the hall, but this time he moved with a sense of urgency. He hoped the motion detectors wouldn’t incarcerate him for jogging. Both of the soldiers at Greenbeard’s entrance were looking at him peculiarly as he bounded up to them.

  “Um… sergeant, right?” he began, “Do you have a flashlight in addition to the usual… um… what is it called? Gun, yes!”

  The sergeant, obviously a little confused, withdrew both a small mag-lite and the pistol Dr. Butler was obligated to take with him into the observation booth.

  “Thank you, Sergeant,” said Butler, “if you would?”

  The door was opened and Butler entered the observation booth. Greenbeard was sitting just as he h
ad been left, seemingly incapable of becoming bored, another trait which probably served him well in space.

  Butler turned on the flashlight and pointed it towards Greenbeard. There was no reaction. Then he began sweeping his hand in front of it, rhythmically, something like Morse code although completely random. Butler’s suspicion was that Greenbeard, programmed as he was, could only interpret information as language if it came in the form of infrared. The flashlight was warm, and now that there was a pattern…

  There appeared to be a little interest. Greenbeard seemed curious at his odd behavior. Under the theory that maybe the bandwidth was too low for him to register as language yet, Butler increased the speed to about as fast as he could go.

  The result was dramatic. Greenbeard leaped against the glass and stuck there with all six of his limbs, his eyes fixed on the flashing pattern. The writhing of his skin stopped for a moment, and then every pylae on his skin began to raise and lower in unison. It took a moment for Butler to interpret the pattern. The Greenfly was aping him once again, duplicating on its skin the pattern of light flashes.

  “So, you’re willing to talk,” said Butler, “But are you willing to say anything?”

  Chapter 8: Mobilization

  The Sea Knight swooped low over the rugged Utah landscape, several others following in formation, all only a couple hundred feet from the ground. The reason for the low flyby was ostensibly to give Maria Caufield an opportunity to inspect the facilities they were approaching, but a secondary consideration was the time it permitted her to speak with her team without any onlookers.

  Gamma Team’s pilot Kim Lee Hu was a fan of low flybys, so he certainly wasn’t going to complain whenever his boss asked for mid-air conferences such as this. While not altered in the same manner as Gamma Team’s field personnel, he was privy to their secrets. It came with the job of dropping them from B-1 bombers at ridiculously low altitudes at just under the speed of sound.

  The team was up to full strength again, both Ramachandran and Marshal released from quarantine. They were lined up on the benches along each side of the rear compartment.

  In addition to Colonel Tom Marshal, the field commander, and Captain Leena Ramachandran, the medic, the team consisted of four members. There was Lieutenant Charlie Decker, a gangly six-and-a-half-footer born in Alabama and trained to be a sniper in the National Guard there. He had never even left the state until Caufield’s predecessor had come to recruit Decker from his deathbed in the VA hospital. Next to him sat Lt. Liam Hegerty, a brown haired Irishman small in stature but once known for being the easiest person to provoke on an island full of people easy to provoke. Now, he was as straight-laced as they came, though he still had a tendency to spend most of his training sessions with the bag or a sparring partner. Lt. Stanley Rice had been a computer programmer for the Air Force, and not a particularly good one. He had the acne scars, thick lenses, and gaunt face that bespoke of misspent years in front of computer screens in his youth. Now, the glasses were held on by thick goggles unlikely to be ripped off by terminal velocity. Next to him sat Lt. Joe Klugman, who had been a corporal in a demolitions squad of the Army Corps of Engineers. Somehow, despite his training, he still held onto a bit of a beer gut, and despite the surgery, he still maintained the ability to get irritated, while the others had completely lost that emotion. The doctors suspected that for Klugman, it was simply a matter of habit.

  All were in the black armor they jumped in. While they held an equivalent military rank, in truth, all were employed by the CIA with no appropriate uniform. There was talk of a formalization of their command under one of the military branches, but for the moment, the black armor would have to suffice. The stiffness with which they all sat removed any doubt as to their military nature.

  Caufield looked over her troops, concern all over her face.

  “I have no doubt that you can perform the combat duties they’re asking from you, but I need an honest assessment,” she said, addressing Marshal primarily, “Can normal humans make the jumps they’re going to be asked to? Can you train them?”

  “No,” replied Marshal, “Not the way we do it. You can give them larger chutes and automate the deployment, but they’ll never be able to trigger them just as they hit the ground effect the way we do. Or detach the chutes at the right height to drop to the ground without injury. They’ll be able to do conventional drops out of a B-1, I think, but not as we do. They’ll have a period of immobility while they waft down and disconnect from their chutes. The Greenflies may be able to exploit that.”

  “Ma’am, the bigger problem is once they’re on the ground,” added Hegerty, “The ‘flies are faster than a normal person, by a fair sight. The ones we fought just had bug-guns. Now that they’re packing plasma, I’d give a team of normals poor odds against a group o’ ‘flies. If it ever came to hand-to-hand, the advantage is totally theirs.”

  The Colonel continued, “In reviewing their tactics, I believe the first few encounters were just scientific surveys. Once they realized humans could be dangerous, they began military probing missions, the ten-transport attacks with armor bugs and air support. Now that they know our capabilities, I suspect we’ll see more advanced tactics. Their adhesion allows them to capitalize on structure exteriors as high ground. They have the under-utilized ability to instantly reinforce with teleportation. If they realize the value of the radiation associated with their teleportation, there is no effective counter.”

  The Sea Knight was passing over the air field of the base, a massive tarmac the same dusty color as the terrain leading against a cliff-face with large steel doors. Once, aircraft were kept in the underground facility and wheeled out onto the tarmac for duty. Now, the underground hangars were filled with scientists, so the aircraft sat lined on the tarmac until the above-ground hangars were completed. There were ten B-1 bombers present, and Caufield knew the number of black jets would double shortly.

  “So, you’re saying the interception plans are doomed to failure?” Caufield asked.

  “It depends on the desired outcome,” replied Marshal, “Human troops, properly armed, can make a dent in Greenfly forces even in a brief, one-sided battle. Missile damage can most likely debilitate a transport. If a transport is debilitated, the Greenflies may die as a result of our atmosphere after a period of time. Reports suggest Greenflies can still be penetrated with armor piercing rounds, even when covered in armor bugs. The human teams will have an impact. The question remains as to how much attrition the Greenflies can tolerate. I expect heavy human losses from this strategy and comparatively light Greenfly losses. We simply do not know their available resources.”

  Caufield pondered the input. Marshal had served in Vietnam, and there was a certain similarity between the wars. US troops could deploy rapidly throughout the conflict zone and dominate once they arrived, but VC were prevalent everywhere and could worry the foreign troops. Much like the Greenflies, the US could arrive anywhere but not stay long. Eventually the US had been driven out by casualties and inability to deliver a meaningful blow. If the Greenflies had similar limitations in holding ground and military strategy, inflicting casualties might lead to an eventual victory. Every early encounter where a Greenfly had died had led to an immediate change in tactics, indicating they reacted to strategic threats.

  “Ma’am, what’s to be done about the girl?” asked Ramachandran.

  “Hmmm? Oh…Megan Rudisell,” murmured Caufield, “You and Marshal put me in an incredible spot with that stunt. With her status as appearing on the alien sensors as she does, she is too valuable to remove as a security risk. Seeing you receiving your injection gives her the power to expose us instantly. If she so much as tells someone who will believe her, it’s a simple matter to check the video record to show Colonel Marshal deliberately obscuring his hand from the camera. A drug test on any of you would be resoundingly positive and would lead to investigations into the team, your scrubbed medical records, and my knowledge of the procedure. In the current climate, there�
��s no way of knowing how it would end… your fundamental technology is outlawed by international treaty, after all. Your performance in this new capacity could dramatically improve the outcome. Until then, we must keep the girl quiet.

  “I’ve pulled strings to keep her happy at the new installation. Real work, instead of sitting around in a cell. I want all of you to make an effort to get on her good side. When the time is right, we’ll make it clear to her that revealing her information would only serve to disband the team. Be her friend; make her one of the gang. Stay close enough to know if she reveals her information. Rice, you’ll be bugging her telephone and any other equipment she uses. If her status changes, we may make further choices on how to deal with her. If she attempts to flee the base, consider it a standing order to shoot her. We are to assume she is a priority target for the enemy.”

  They were now some distance from the airfield, and another set of structures was coming into focus, mostly prefab military buildings. Cranes and construction equipment were milling about the half-built complex. Far from futuristic, this secondary base could have been pulled from World War II: Dirt roads, wooden buildings, a primitive obstacle course consisting largely of rope and timber. A few modern elements, such as a microwave tower and surface-to-air missiles, stood out from the primitive training facility. Squads of troops moved with purpose and precision between the half-built buildings and those building them. A Blackhawk was offloading troops at a bed of earth that served as the training facility’s helipad.