Greenflies Read online

  “Good work,” Caufield said, rising, “I’ve got something to check up on.”

  “Will do, boss,” Frank said, turning back to the monitors.

  Caufield exited the control booth, and descended a set of stairs to the “dugout.” The entryway to the Quonset hut in which the training ground had been assembled was packed with lines of soldiers awaiting their turns at the holographic ghosts inside. Currently, they were parting to allow for the passage of a gurney with the unconscious Captain Arnold. She followed the gurney out, and Dr. Ramachandran, who had been waiting outside the door, fell into step beside her.

  The two walked wordlessly and separated from the medics escorting the wounded man to the infirmary. They walked past another Quonset, from which emerged the sounds of grunting and bodies hitting the ground. Fifty pairs squaring off and throwing each other to the ground in hand-to-hand training generated quite a racket. There were another set of medics at this door, and they saluted the pair of senior officers as they passed. The pair continued on to a Humvee parked near the entryway of the firing range, on the main drag of the training facility. The sounds of high caliber weapons fire and intermittent explosions were a constant din over much of the base. Every soldier had to be rated on weapons to penetrate both Greenflies and their transports, two weapons systems that had been only experimental a few weeks prior.

  Only once the pair were in the Humvee, Captain Ramachandran in the driver’s seat, did Caufield break her silence.

  “You’re aware of our mission, Captain? Any questions?”asked Caufield.

  “The Colonel briefed me fully, ma’am,” Leena replied, pulling the Humvee out and heading along the dirt road towards the distant airfield.

  “How did you extricate yourself from weapons training? What excuse did you use?”

  “Excuse, ma’am? I just said I was under your orders.”

  Caufield scowled and said, “The goal was to minimize suspicion. Now, should an interested party investigate, they will find that you were under my orders to have a lunch date with a civilian. That will arouse suspicion. Your next dose will be appropriately reduced.”

  The Humvee swerved slightly, and Leena winced as if she had been struck. The reaction only lasted a moment, however, as she knew a continued loss of her military bearing would only result in further dockings of her dose. Caufield was much fairer than her previous handler. He would have cut her dose in half for that momentary loss of control. Leena had once spent a month in debilitative withdrawal that her former handler could have ended at any point. He had simply wanted her to learn her lesson.

  The vehicle bounced along the dirt until it reached the airfield tarmac, already with twice the number of bombers that had been here their first day. The Humvee darted around the numerous ground crews and made its way to the subterranean garage embedded in the cliff-face.

  Before they reached the garage attendant sergeant, essentially a valet in practice, Caufield made one last comment to her charge, “Remember, Captain, this girl has the capacity to kill Gamma Team, to put you in an institution in permanent withdrawal and end my career. You are to be as giddy as a schoolgirl. Help her with her cheers. Check out boys’ butts. Be whatever it takes to gain her trust. Understood?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  They pulled up to the sergeant, who performed an initial security check, and then sent one of his men to park the vehicle. The pair of women, one in a severe suit and the other in crisp BDUs, walked in lockstep through two more security checkpoints before entering the central elevator leading to the research facility proper. They descended one level and began navigating the concrete corridors of the research offices and laboratories. As they reached Xenosociology, both of their demeanors changed, as if by a switch. In the front of the office, they found a young, blond woman busily filing, obviously trying to impress someone with her diligence.

  “Miss Rudisell?” Caufield said, then repeated herself. Finally, she had to tap her on the shoulder to get her attention.

  Meg spun around, and pulled a pair of earphones from her ears, looking sheepish. The sound had been set so loud, the music was still audible as the tiny plugs dangled around her neck. Leena and she grinned at each other, Leena waving, making a point of being outside of Caufield’s line of sight.

  “Hello Miss Rudisell,” Caufield said, smiling and offering her hand, “May I call you Meg?”

  “Um, sure,” Meg replied, juggling her files a little to shake hands.

  “Meg, it’s a pleasure to meet you. Leena has told me a great deal about you. My name’s Mariah,” she said.

  “Ms. Caufield is in charge of our unit. She’s also the one who helped to get you this job here,” Leena interjected.

  “After all you’d been through, I could hardly allow you to be kept in quarantine, as the military was planning,” Caufield said. “It wasn’t a simple matter given your age, but I felt you should be someplace where you could feel safe without feeling trapped. How are they treating you?”

  “Oh, they’re all very nice. Mostly just guys who need someone to clean up after them,” Meg said.

  “I’ve got to run to a meeting, but I thought I’d spare Leena for awhile to check up on you. I understand the mess hall isn’t as bad as it could be,” Caufield said, “If there’s anything more you need, let us know. I know it can be hard away from home.”

  “Thank you, ma’am,” Meg said, “I surely will.”

  Caufield excused herself, leaving Meg and Leena to stare after her.

  Once the door was closed, Leena said, “Stiff as a board, isn’t she?”

  Meg chuckled, “She’s your boss?”

  “And how. Come on, let’s get out of here.”

  They headed out into the hall, in time to catch a glimpse of a man passing by. Leena leered after him, then shook her head.

  “Nice butt… about as close to your age as we’re going to find around here… but I think we can do better,” she said.

  Chapter 10: Troy

  The faces in the Pentagon war-room were severe. It was a much larger V-shaped table than from the initial response meeting to the Greenfly threat with much greater representation from the different branches. The opening of the V was filled with a panel of monitors on which were displayed similar tables in Langley and the White House. While Lassiter was not at the head of the table, by and large, most of the attention and blame was being focused upon him.

  “Your missile shield lasted all of a day!” accused the Chief of Staff, “And now we have alien craft appearing in our upper atmosphere every few minutes!”

  Lassiter replied, “Yes, sir. It’s true that the Greenflies adapted to our missile interception program far faster than we predicted, but we feel it’s essential that we maintain it.”

  The Greenflies had continued their trend of modifying their deployment tactics when the new human attack emerged. The missile interception program ensured that when a Greenfly transport arrived in North America, a missile would strike its location within a few minutes. The first day of this tactic had resulted in twelve obliterated transports, but by the second day, the Greenfly vehicles were no longer staying put long enough to strike. They were appearing, and the interception missiles were fired, but after disgorging their troops, the transports would leave again, and the Greenflies would disperse. The missiles would strike empty terrain. Once the Greenflies had done their sampling of the local plants and animals, a second transport would arrive at a nearby location (apparently predetermined), and the Greenflies would teleport away. Only one missile had struck in the four days since that tactic had begun. In addition, the Greenflies were fielding more and more of their teleporting aircraft, confusing the satellites and interception missiles with targets they could never strike.

  “Why? It’s costing us a half a billion a day and not killing anything,” said the Chief.

  “Because it forces the alien foot soldiers to be on the ground without an escape route for quite some time. It makes manned interception more feasible,” L
assiter replied.

  “So, now you’re an advocate for the manned interception program?”

  “Yes, sir. We have gained significantly more knowledge about the origins of the aliens since I formulated my earlier opinion. The neutrino tracking initiative in Europe, assisted with ground telescopes, has located the source of the alien incursions, and it is much too far away to reach without the Greenfly teleportation technology. If I may…”

  “Please.”

  The General signaled to his aide, and an image appeared on one of the monitors. A similar image was being displayed in the White House and CIA headquarters. It was a model of the solar system out as far as Jupiter. The planets were blown up well out of scale, and Earth was shown rotating with the teleportation window of the Greenflies a reddish outline.

  “The Greenflies have appeared to be limited to appear on only one half of the planet, and that window of teleportation has migrated across the earth in the weeks since their initial appearance. We don’t know if the aliens are incapable of teleporting through the solid rock of the earth, or whether they feel it necessary to view their destination from their home base. So far, no aliens have appeared under a cloudy sky, indicating that perhaps they will not commit to a target they cannot see from space. We think the teleportation window represents their field of view from their base.”

  The planets moved, but a plane representing the alien teleportation window seemed to point at the same location continually, a point somewhere near Jupiter, but trailing a little in its orbit.

  “The neutrino detectors have also been receiving very faint readings associated with the aliens departing or arriving from their home base. While it is impossible for them to localize these readings, they have been able to determine which pulses coincide with which arrivals here on Earth. They have discovered that the alien craft, while teleporting, propagate through space at the speed of light, and the transit time is compatible with this region of space.

  “As you know, most of the asteroids in the solar system occupy a belt between Mars and Jupiter, but there is also a rich concentration of asteroids called the Trojans in front of and behind Jupiter, sharing its orbit. The Greenflies are perfectly adapted to surviving in space, so an asteroid field would be an excellent home with plentiful resources. Since the field of view window coincides with the trailing Trojans, we set telescopes to comb the skies in this region. That’s where we found this.

  The image changed to that of a perfect circle, in gray, outlined by starry space.

  “We don’t believe this is an artificial structure per se, but a known asteroid about three miles across that has been mined and machined into a sphere for the purposes of launching an invasion of earth. You see, the sphere is not perfectly round. It is squashed along its axis, to the same amount which Earth is. It rotates with a 24-hour day. The physicists in Utah are saying that the purpose of this sphere, which they have named Troy, is as a launching platform. An alien transport on the surface of this asteroid can match relative velocity with any point on Earth, so that when it appears here, it is not moving relative to the ground it appears over. The alien teleportation seems to conserve momentum. There is a significant difference between the angular momentum of Earth and Troy due to their different orbits around the Sun, which may explain the wobble seen in some alien craft appearing at the leading and trailing edge of the teleportation window.

  “To defeat the Greenflies, we need to attack Troy, and to attack Troy, we need teleportation technology in the form of the alien transports. I advocate intercepting an alien incursion and slipping a nuclear device onto their extraction transport.”

  “Nuclear weapons? Have we completely given up on negotiation?” asked Dr. Barnard from the CIA, “We do not yet know the extent of their operations here. We may be talking about wiping out a colony of millions. Perhaps an entire nomadic civilization.”

  One of the Joint Chiefs replied, “They continue to cause casualties daily that our intelligence can’t accurately verify. It may be in the hundreds, mostly killed by the non-conventional radiologic weapon which is their teleportation technology. Were they human, there’d be no question about responding definitively.”

  Lassiter spoke directly to Barnard, “Dr. Barnard, as director of the research efforts in Utah, you’re aware that every finding is painting these creatures as little more than biological robots. They are most likely incapable of negotiation. The effort in Australia, when they attacked the human negotiators, would bear this out. Your interrogation of the captive has produced no information as to their intentions. We are running out of options.”

  “It’s an entirely alien mode of communication possessed by an entirely alien mind. Xenosociology is making great progress, but it will just take time,” said Barnard.

  “We’ll have five manned interception teams deployable for tomorrow night’s window. Given the new alien tactic and current weather predictions, we can nearly guarantee that at least one of them will be able to intercept. There are tactical nuclear weapons in storage at the Utah facility. I’d like authorization for one warhead in each team.”

  Meg looked down at the troops in formation. The five active teams were at the center in the underground hangar, twenty-nine men and one woman, clad in matte black armor with a frighteningly large assault rifle on every back. Surrounding them were groups yet to be cleared for interception, in simple gray uniforms, unique to the duty. Meg and a few dozen others were standing on the catwalks above the troops. Among those here were a pair of Congressmen, for whom the formation was probably intended. She thought it might be more than that, though. The sight of the troops in full gear, ordered like centurions could only boost morale, for themselves and the spectators who were putting so much stock in them. There was to be a short speech by General Lassiter, and then the squads were to march to their B-1’s and prepare to defend humanity. Only a select few were aware that a nuclear weapon was going with them, and Meg was not one of them.

  Meg could pick out Leena easily, even with the helmet. She was a full head shorter than the others down there. She had become familiar with that entire team, from Leena’s descriptions. All of the other spectators were being respectful and silent. Damning propriety, Meg gave her a wave, but refrained from outright cheering.

  A hand reached over her shoulder and pulled her arm down. Meg turned to see Maria Caufield, looking particularly severe today in a dark blue suit dress with a certain tin man quality.

  “Meg, may I speak with you for a moment?” asked Caufield.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to break manners or nuthin’, er, anything,” said Meg, her grammar somewhat improved since working for Jerry Butler, who never let a linguistic mistake slide. “I don’t want to miss the send-off.”

  “It concerns the mission,” Caufield said, gesturing that Meg should follow, “And how you can directly influence its success. Please come with me.”

  Meg was extremely confused and more than a little nervous as she was led off the catwalk and taken through a side door out of the hangar. They proceeded to walk towards the infirmary, and Caufield would speak only when there was no one else in the hall. It led to a very spotty conversation.

  “As you know, the only one of the squads out there that has seen action against these creatures is the one with which you are familiar. We have new recruits from Australia and China who were at the major confrontations there, but they will not be fully trained for over a month,” Caufield said, stopping as they saw one of the civilian contractors in the hall.

  She continued after the man had passed, “You are also aware that the Greenflies hold special interest in you. It’s in our best interest that Gamma Team be the ones who intercept this potential incursion, as they are the best trained and have prior experience. We would like to use you as bait, so to speak, and you may have heard that the alien sensors aren’t very good at determining dead from living things,” She stopped speaking again, this time because of a passing Air Force officer. It was an awful spot to stop the
conversation; Meg stopped following immediately.

  Caufield coughed a little laugh and took the young girl by the arm, “Oh please, child. We have no intention of harming you. We’d just like to take a pint of blood and air drop it over the center of Gamma Team’s patrol zone. I waited until now to ask because we need the blood to be as fresh as possible. Secrecy is important for the morale of the other teams. You’ll be doing your nation a great service.”

  “Oh, um, okay,” said Meg, finding herself led into the infirmary at this point, “If it will help.”

  The infirmary had only one other person, a young Air Force medic with whom Meg was unfamiliar. He indicated that she should lay down on one of the three examination tables there, and she found herself half-placed there by Caufield.

  “Don’t worry,” said Caufield, “It shouldn’t hurt a bit.”

  Ten minutes later, Caufield was handing the pint of fresh blood to Lieutenant Klugman, the demolition man from Gamma Team. The other teams were already boarding their aircraft but lacked the low-yield nuclear weapons that were to be distributed under high security. The cylinders, the size of a large thermos, would be coated with a thin layer of the girl’s blood. It was hoped that the small quantity of genetic material would be sufficient enough to coax the Greenflies to take the cylinders, intact, to their extraction craft.

  “The weapons are to be distributed shortly. Place one sixth of the blood on each weapon. The shielding in the B-1 should prevent premature detection by the ‘flies. Hold on to the remainder until you are airborne. Drop the bag somewhere over your patrol region,” said Caufield, “It may have been a cover story for the girl’s sake as she shouldn’t know about the nukes, but it isn’t actually a terrible idea. Inform Leena that, if this works, we’ll have the proverbial goose that lays the golden eggs, or rather golden bait, and her continuing work with the girl will be well-rewarded.”

  Klugman grimaced, about the most emotional response you could get out of any of Gamma Team these days. It was clearly from jealousy, as he had not been offered any similar opportunity, not that he was a good choice to bond with teenage girls in any case. The expression lasted barely a moment. While Caufield’s predecessor would have punished it, she decided to pretend she had not detected it.