Greenflies Read online

While it possessed no facial features, and, in fact, no face, the Greenfly expressed irritation with its skin, collected the beetles, and continued down the tunnel. Already, it could feel the effects of oxygen creeping through the layers of armor bugs. Soon, it knew, it would begin to itch, and then its blood would turn to froth as the oxygen opened holes in its hide. It needed to find an appropriate arrival location before that occurred.

  Nearly fifteen minutes later, it came across a locked steel door, where the tunnel came to an end. The ditch water re-entered a pipe. While a human might register disgust at the touch of this increasingly putrid water, the Greenfly entered the pipe without a thought. When it resurfaced, it found itself in a large cylindrical cistern room, with a diameter as long as several transport craft end-to-end. While the ceiling was low at the periphery, it sloped up to the center, where the ceiling was so high, the Greenfly was not even sure it could leap up to it. Numerous pipes emerged from the walls and ceiling, but the Greenfly felt certain neither they nor the water they dripped would interfere with transport.

  It set the sensor beetles down, so that they could begin the laborious task of measurement. In the complex environment, it would take some time, and if everything met with their approval, it would still be perhaps forty minutes before transport ships could begin arriving.

  The Greenfly operative huddled in a corner and folded up, to reduce his surface area and allow the armor bugs to double up over his skin. His likelihood of surviving was debatable at this point, but with the continual flashes of red approval from the sensor beetles, it was clear that his mission had been a success. While few Greenflies themselves would participate, very shortly their invasion force would arrive. If he survived, the Greenfly had secured his blood supply for over an Earth century.

  The B-1 was preparing to begin the long journey back to the airstrip in Utah. While other teams might take the opportunity to sleep, Gamma remained wide awake in the bomber bay of the craft, sitting along the makeshift benches as attentive and erect as a soldier in boot. It had been an easy rotation, flying over the Hawaiian islands, the very little land area meaning much less likelihood of Greenfly attack. The position of the moon was such that the both of the aliens’ teleportation windows nearly coincided, so, once the B-1 returned to base, the squad would have nearly eight hours of sleep before being redeployed.

  “Colonel,” the pilot said over the intercom, “I’m receiving new orders from SAC. We are to proceed to Tokyo for a drop within the city. We will be refueling en route and escorted by Japanese aircraft inbound.”

  Marshal paused for a moment, considering the implications of an urban incursion. The positioning of snipers, anti-air cannon, and artillery had made most large cities on Earth invulnerable to Greenfly attack. Japan, he knew, had been amongst the most fervent advocates of civil defense. Perhaps it had to do with the radiation the alien transports emitted when they arrived and Japan’s historic experience with radiation sickness. There were precious few streets in Tokyo where a Greenfly could stand without receiving a .50 caliber bullet from a high office window.

  “Acknowledged,” he replied, “Any further briefing?”

  “Command will be online with you in two minutes, sir,” the pilot replied.

  Marshal looked back at his team, who were prepping their equipment and strategy assessments. Rice and Decker were already engaged in satellite communication with SAC, collecting maps and satellite intel of Japan, before even learning the threat assessment. Decker was identifying skyscraper drop-points and sniping positions. Rice was simply trying to gain a functional understanding of the city and its defense infrastructure in the short time before arriving. The others were primarily doing weapon checks, monitoring the pressures of fuel and catalyst in their laser rifles.

  “Colonel Marshal,” a distorted voice came over the headset, “This is Caufield. Do you copy? Over.”

  “This is Marshal. Over.”

  “Japanese civil defense reports multiple radiation peaks from beneath the streets of Tokyo. Repeat, beneath the streets. This does not appear to be a sterilization event, but a troop deployment. Currently, no hostiles have emerged from Tokyo’s subterranean infrastructure, but there are increasing signs of alien activity there. XTB wants observers on the ground there to monitor the situation and advise local defense efforts. Beta team is also being deployed. They were holding over Midway. We are timing your arrivals to coincide. Beta team and Japanese defense comm channels are to follow. Over.”

  “Acknowledged. Over,” he motioned to Rice to begin entering the information into the team’s comm network.

  The belts kicked in mere feet above the rooftop, waves of electromagnetic force repelling them from the earth, and incidentally, decelerating the team from terminal velocity. They hit the rooftop with barely a bending of their knees and quickly deployed to the edge of the building.

  They had landed on a square skyscraper, among the tallest in the city. They had an excellent vantage point over the tight streets and crowded skyline. The streets were filled with the helter skelter chaos of a populace racing home in face of a disaster. Some were trying to evacuate the city, while others were just trying to make it back to their apartments while still others were considering the benefits of looting. The view was crisscrossed with scaffolds set up between buildings for snipers to defend the city.

  Marshal belted out, “Take up sniping positions! Rice, get me Tokyo civil defense for coordination. We need to know where to deploy.”

  Four members of Gamma each staked out a compass direction and aimed their laser rifles downward. They scanned the streets intently, but there was no sign of any alien activity. No Greenflies, no transports, not even any alien aircraft appearing in the skies. There was chaos below, to be certain, but it appeared to be of human origin.

  Rice spent several minutes trying to raise a figure in authority on his comm., but in the end admitted defeat, “The chatter is extremely confused down there, and there appears to be some periodic distortion. If it was anyone other than the ‘flies, I’d say it was jamming. From what I can tell, there have been no sightings of any Greenflies in the city. There were sightings of strange creatures in the sewers some time ago that prompted the alert, but there have been no attacks. The descriptions of the creatures don’t match any of the aliens we’ve seen so far, either. That could just be lost in the jumble or translation though. These people were not prepared.”

  As if the world itself was agreeing, dull explosions rumbled from far to the north. They were small, perhaps the intensity of a hand grenade, but they were occurring in rapid succession perhaps a mile away. Marshal raced over to that side and stood beside Decker, at guard there.

  “Report.”

  Decker was peering through the scope on his laser rifle, significantly larger than that of the others.

  “I’m seeing explosions inside what looks like an office building in that direction… not plasma… I don’t know what to make of it, sir.”

  The tiny pops turned into a continuous rumble, and the building that Decker was indicating began to drop in respect to the skyline. A mountain of dust replaced it, slowly and methodically as seen from this height. As the office building dropped completely from sight, the dust began to flow like a river in the streets to the North, coating the cars and panicked pedestrians. Even from this great height and distance, the crashes of vehicles below could be heard. The lights of the city went out in a great square surrounding the obliterated building.

  “Birds, sir. I thought I saw birds around the building just before it collapsed,” said Decker. “A huge swarm of them.”

  “We’re moving out!”Marshal shouted, “Rice, report the destruction of a building to base and that we’re on our way to investigate.”

  With that, he bounded off the rooftop, and his men followed. The belts they wore turned their descent into a glide across the street below. They hit the next rooftop, ten floors lower, with all the impact of a feather, and they continued their sprint northward. A group o
f surprised Tokyo civil defense soldiers stared on at them as they ran past them and leaped off the edge of this building as well. This time, they jumped in parallel to the street grid and allowed the belts to slow their descent into a long glide path to take them a half mile before reaching street level. As they descended, the street was replaced with the animate cloud of dust, and then their visibility dropped to a few meters. The belts kept careful track of their altitude, though, and when they reached the street, it was with the same lack of impact as their previous drops.

  The street was a maelstrom of noise: car horns, screams, curses and cries for help in Japanese. The dust and darkness had combined into a special kind of hell for the people on these streets. Car headlights provided some relief, but not enough. Gamma Team’s laser rifles began emitting a red cone of light, a very powerful flashlight, but not much competition for the gloom here. They could make out cars crushed by large pieces of rubble, pedestrians helping to pry strangers out of their vehicles, and several cases of people breaking in to storefronts, perhaps for shelter, perhaps for goods. They bypassed all of these sights, moving purposefully forward into the gloom.

  They reached the edge of the debris field proper, and they found the number of screams had diminished in relation to the number of car-horns locked permanently on. The visibility here could be measured in feet, even with the bright red cones of the laser rifles. They were still over a block from the point of collapse, but the former office building loomed like a low mountain before them.

  Decker stooped to investigate something at his feet. He held it up for all to see. It looked like a small seagull or tern, badly burned from the explosions it seemed. Its gut was bloated out like the throat-sac of a frog, and its bill was filled with razor-sharp teeth.

  “Birds, sir,” he said, “Sort of.”

  Marshal nodded. “Sample it. Ramachandran, Rice, Klugman, look for survivors in these cars, and keep trying the civilian channels. We need some firefighters and paramedics in here. Hegerty, Decker, with me. We need to make sure it’s safe for the civvies. The ‘flies are up to something here. They’ve never targeted a structure before.”

  The group divided, Marshal taking his group around the periphery of the rubble field and the remaining troops beginning to open up cars and look for survivors. The cloud was lit up slightly by the firing of laser blasts, as the troops forcibly opened cars and the light played in the motes of dust.

  Marshal’s group found more of the birds as they began circumnavigating the field, all badly burned by what looked like chemical explosions. Some of them were mixed in the rubble and covered in dust. It was actually several minutes before Marshal and his men realized that the dust was moving.

  Swarms of black ants were crawling through the rubble.

  “We think they’re sampling the dead in the rubble,” said a voice from the darkness.

  Six shadows moved into view. They were bulky and black, wearing the same armor as Gamma Team, and they had apparently been circling the rubble field from the other side. While the three members of Gamma didn’t react in a startled manner, didn’t even raise their weapons, the six soldiers shadowed in dust all had their weapons raised. Not even Hegerty moved in a reactive manner, despite his previous experience with these men.

  “Major,” said Marshal.

  “Colonel,” replied one of the six.

  “Lower your weapons. We’re on mission,” said Marshal blandly, “What do you mean regarding the ants?”

  One of the six, obviously Farcus from the sound of his voice, said, “The folks in biotech have been expecting something like this for some time. We’ve been giving the Greenflies so much trouble, partly because they are not adapted to this environment, that they have chosen to field new ‘equipment’ that is designed for Earth. Remember, they’ve been to Earth before, sixty-five million years ago. It makes sense to field an animal from its planet of origin. It just must have taken time for them to breed them… to specialize them.”

  “The birds?”asked Marshal.

  “Or what birds were millions of years ago with some modification,” Farcus said.

  “They explode,” stated Major Arnold bluntly.

  Farcus added, “Their gizzards are filled with an explosive mixture. They swarmed inside and around the building, and they exploded. The ants are probably another Greenfly device. They are crawling through the rubble, taking tissue samples from anything killed by the collapse. People, rats, mice, insects. Then they’ll go back underground to wherever these creatures are teleporting in.”

  There were more popping noises far off in the distance, from the southern side of the city, only slightly audible over the continuous car horns.

  “There goes the neighborhood,” said John Murray from Beta Team.

  “They can’t simply destroy a city with radiation because that would destroy the DNA they’re here to collect in the first place. They can’t occupy it in a conventional sense, because they know we are capable of resisting them in an urban environment,” said Farcus, “So, they decided to sneak in and slowly demolish a city, using a domesticated insect species to collect their data.”

  “They’re going to disassemble this city,”said the Major.

  A rumble could be felt through the ground, as a second building in the city collapsed.

  “Quickly,” added the Major.

  “At the rate of one building every ten minutes or so…”began Farcus.

  “Come with me,” Colonel Marshal said, then turned back the way they had come.

  They found a fire engine and several military trucks parked near the where they had left the remainder of Gamma Team. Ramachandran and Klugman were tending to a victim in a car, while Rice appeared engaged in conversation with the civil defense soldier in command. A dozen soldiers were crawling through the rubble, occasionally brushing off ants, tracking down those still alive here where the rubble was thinnest.

  “Rice, report,” Marshal said, walking straight up to his number two.

  “More paramedics are en route, sir, but they’re concerned about the stability of the nearby buildings. And there’s been a second collapse.”

  “Are you in command of this unit?” Marshal asked the soldier to whom Rice had been talking.

  “Yes, I am…”the Japanese captain began to introduce himself.

  “I’m taking command of your men,” Marshal said. “You are to get to a landline or reliable means of communication, and report to your superiors that…”

  “You have no authority!”

  Marshal gave the Captain a well-practiced glare and did not avert his gaze from the Captain’s eyes for a moment.

  “Captain, your city is being systematically destroyed by an alien embarkation point somewhere beneath it. Every ten minutes several thousand people are going to die. I need your men, and you’re going to get in touch with your superiors to get me all the additional troops and municipal staff I need to destroy the embarkation point. We’ll need infantry and sewer workers, and you’ll have them meet me at…” Marshal paused to look at Rice.

  “Sanitation works at the port, sir?” Rice suggested.

  “The sanitation works. Inform your men,” said Marshal. He then climbed into the passenger cab of one of the two military transport trucks present as if the matter had been resolved.

  Chapter 19: Tunnel Rats

  The manhole cover was skidded across the pavement, revealing a dark portal beneath the street and an unimaginable smell. Surrounding the hole stood the two XTB teams and a small contingent of Japanese Civil Defense soldiers. While the XTB soldiers had a resigned look born of experience, the Japanese soldiers were making no great effort to mask their fear. Far to the north, the rumble of another building collapse punctuated the moment, and a twitter of incomprehensible but obviously terrified conversation passed among the new recruits. Fortunately, wind was blowing the new dust cloud away from their position, but there was a growing dusty haze across the city.

  The Major from Beta team peered down the
hole and tried to listen for any fluttering of avian wings below or the sounds of Greenfly motion. The aliens, having no sense of hearing themselves, were often prone to reveal their location audibly. This time, they were either not present or keeping silent.

  “It’ll most likely be Greenflies down there, right, Farcus?” he asked his technical consultant.

  “I doubt it, sir,” Farcus replied, “There will be some birds, most likely, but if the Greenflies have adapted one earth life form for combat, odds are they’ve created more. The birds wouldn’t be very effective in the tunnels, and Greenflies are too sensitive to oxygen to guard a permanent embarkation point. I think we’ll see something else.”

  “You mean, like the turret bugs?” asked Arnold.

  As if in answer, a low cry, somewhere between a growl and a howl, emitted from the sewer entrance. It sounded like nothing anyone in the crowd had ever heard, save perhaps in watching B-grade monster movies. The rumbling of the cry spoke of great size, and whatever it was beneath the streets certainly didn’t sound scared.

  “You’ve gotta be shitting me,” said Murray, under his breath. Clearly, similar sentiments were being uttered in Japanese.

  Colonel Marshal was unimpressed, “Gamma will go first. If birds are encountered, we’ll aim for the water, to kill them with a steam explosion. The sewer network forks frequently. Major, distribute the civil defense personnel defensively to prevent our being flanked. Hegerty, Klugman.”

  The two Gamma soldiers flipped down the low-light attachments on their helmets and clambered down into the hole. They issued the all clear, and then the remainder of the soldiers began descending, first Gamma, then Beta, then the Japanese troops.

  While the smell was still revolting, the sewers themselves were more orderly than their American cousins. The walkways were ample on either side of a central trough, with a low volume of water within. The sewage and storm drain systems were separate in Tokyo, and the team had been fortunate enough to enter in through the storm drains as opposed to the odoriferous alternative. The tunnel continued in either direction with obvious branching points in either direction.