Authors: Riley Barton
Keith took a seat across from her, and the man introduced as Agent Perkins seated himself beside her.
“All right Fox, we’re all set,” Keith’s voice called through her helmet speakers.
“Roger that, Keith,” Agent Fox replied. “Starting main engines now.”
Luna anxiously gripped her seat’s padded armrests as the aircraft begin to vibrate while the rotors powered up.
“Ever flown before?” Keith asked, amusement in his voice.
Luna gulped, “No, sir. This is my first time.”
“Don’t worry. Terence Fox is one of Unitech’s best pilots. You’re in good hands, Miss McKelly.”
Luna nodded. She was actually quite excited. But as the chopper turned and began taxiing out onto the runway, Luna screwed her eyes shut and uttered a muffled half squeak, drawing curious glances from the men seated around her.
Why do I always have to make a fool of myself? Why?
she thought, picking up the sound of a stifled laugh through her comm system.
“Miss McKelly?” Keith called to her. “You
do
know we’re in the air now?”
She slowly opened her eyes and released her death grip on the armrests. “We are?”
Keith nodded, obviously fighting back the urge to laugh, “Yeah. We are.”
Luna glanced out the window and saw the cityscape of New Denver dropping away beneath them. She smiled and peered out the window with renewed curiosity—her fear quickly replaced by an overwhelming sense of ecstasy. She was
flying!
“May I have your attention please?” Agent Fox said, his voice echoing through the team comm. “This is the captain speaking—”
“Just get to the point Terence,” Agent Rush replied, sourly. “I’ve had enough of your shenanigans in the past year to last me a lifetime.”
“All right, fine. Have it your way … fun hater.”
“What do you want, Terence?” Keith said.
“Well, I wanted to say that we’ll be reaching our destination in just under twenty minutes—thirty tops. Everything looks good right now as far as the weather’s concerned.” There was a slight pause, “But there may be a storm coming in later this evening.”
“That shouldn’t be a problem, Mr. Fox.” Luna said, figuring out how to work the team comm. “If everything goes as well as I hope it will, I’ll have all the samples I need within an hour or two. We can be home in time for dinner.”
The ensuing silence was defining.
“What? Did I say something wrong?” she asked, looking around at the others.
“Never say ‘we’ll be home in time for dinner’,” Fox replied. “Haven’t you ever watched old movies? That’s like the jinx of all jinxes!”
“Come on guys. Forget these idiotic superstitions!” Keith cut in. “We’ll do exactly what the lady said and be back home in no time. End of discussion.”
A flurry of
yes, sirs
echoed through the comm system, and then there was silence.
“All right, team,” Terence’s voice called out some time later, “we’re approaching the landing zone approximately one mile from Lab Station 121. Touchdown is in three minutes. Copy?”
“We hear you,” Keith replied. “What’s the status on that storm front?”
“So far so good, but it’s too early to say for sure. I’ll tell you one thing though, I’ll feel a lot better when you guys are all back aboard and we’re in the air again. I hate sitting on the ground.”
“I hear you there.” Agent Patterson, a tall black man, cut in.
“All right, I’m beginning my approach. Stand by for landing.”
The Stratocruiser began loosing altitude, and Luna felt a sickening, sinking sensation in the pit of her stomach. She grabbed onto the armrests again, but this time she kept her eyes open, focusing on the foggy swampland racing by the small window.
The chopper lurched once then settled onto its hydraulics, easing to a stop as Terence cut the engines.
“Welcome to the swamp,” Rush said, unbuckling his harness.
Keith shrugged off his harness’ shoulder straps and stood up, addressing Luna. “Now that we’re here, would you mind telling us what it is we’re looking for, Doctor?”
Luna fumbled with her restraints until she found the release button. “First of all, I’m not a doctor. I’m just a researcher. But I guess that’s beside the point. We’re looking for a species of protozoa native to this area. It secretes an enzyme vital to my research, so we need to find a lot of them—just in case a few don’t make it back to the lab.”
“Okay, do we have any idea how to locate one species of microorganism among billions? This is a
swamp
we’re talking about,”
Agent Perkins chimed in.
“Alex has provided me with a map to the location where the first sample was taken along with a genetic analysis of the microbe we’re looking for.” Luna walked to one of the crates containing her equipment. She popped the lid open and removed several sample cases, which she handed to the agents along with a small holo-pad containing Alex’s data.
“Here,” she said, punching in a few commands on the small handheld device, “I’m uploading the details of my research to your heads-up displays. If you see anything that looks like a glowing yellow cloud in the water, mud, or foliage, it’s most likely the microbes. Scoop up a sample with the kit I just gave you, and put them in their corresponding containers,” she said, demonstrating each step.
“Is that all there is to it?” Agent Rush asked.
Luna nodded and strapped her own kit to a magnetic utility clasp on her armor.
“All right then. Let’s get to it, men,” Keith said, walking to one of the Stratocruiser’s storage compartments. Luna watched him type in a quick series of numbers, and the door opened, revealing a rack filled with 9mm submachine guns.
She took a step toward the chopper’s loading ramp, doing her best to ignore the weapons. She had never liked guns, and she was finding it hard to keep her unease in check.
Easy. Calm down. The swamp is dangerous
—
you know that,
Luna told herself, watching the ramp slowly lower into the boggy ground outside.
Those guns are for your protection. You wouldn’t want to get eaten by something out here, would you? No, I didn’t think so.
She forced herself to forget about the arsenal behind her and began to concentrate on completing her task.
“There was a Swamper attack here not that long ago,” Agent Fox said over the comm.. “The area may still be hot, so watch your step out there.”
“Understood, Terence,” Keith said, shouldering his weapon. “Just man the scanners and keep me informed. If anything so much as blinks the wrong way, I want to know about it.”
“Will do, Keith. I’ll keep the engines warm.”
Luna stepped off the ramp and immediately felt her feet sink into the bog. She grimaced and pulled her boots out of the thick muck with a loud sucking sound.
It’s like it doesn’t want to let me go!
she thought, fighting to take another step. She struggled out from under the Stratocruiser’s tail section and took in the bleak scene spreading out around her.
They had landed on the fringe of a long since drowned forest; its massive moss-covered trees reached into the sky like gnarled hands begging the rain for mercy. She shuddered and looked away from the haunting sight, but everywhere she looked she saw more of the same: fog and rain obscuring the muddy browns and greens of tangled swamp plants and rotting trees. As she walked into the swamp, tiny droplets of rain and mist accumulated on her faceplate, rolling down its slick surface into the dank water sloshing around her feet.
She ran a gloved hand over her visor to clear her vision and stared off into the swirling fog. There were other objects, too, not just trees. Luna strained to see through the gloom, activating her HUD’s built-in magnification screen to get a better look. She sucked in a startled breath as the blurry objects snapped into focus. They were buildings. Ruined skyscrapers of a long-abandoned city that had been claimed by the swamp.
“Hey, there’s a city over there!” Luna said through the team comm, pointing at the ghostly ruins.
“You’d be surprised how many ruins there are out here,” Agent Perkins replied. “A lot of cities went down when those terrorists screwed up Cathedral. Compared to back East, this ruin is nothing.”
“Not quite,” Keith said, trudging over to stand beside Luna. “According to Alex’s readouts, that city is where Laboratory 121 is.”
“Well, I guess that’s where we’re going.” Luna replied, struggling to free her feet from the thick swamp muck. “If the team there found this sample, then that’s the best place to look. There may still be some research data in their system’s mainframe. Maybe even some live samples—if we’re lucky.”
Agent Perkins cursed under his breath. “Just make it quick. These ruins give me the creeps.”
Almost a half hour later, the mud-caked team cleared the edge of the swamp and stumbled into the ruin. Keith ordered his men to fan out and provide cover for him and for Luna while they examined what was left of the abandoned research complex.
“Why’d they build this place in the middle of a ruin?” Keith asked, sweeping the entrance to the complex with the powerful LED light mounted to his gun barrel.
“Probably so they could use the city’s power grid to link up with Alex’s land feed,” Luna replied, snapping on a hand-held light. “He has ground-based connection conduits to every active Unitech complex in the hemisphere—including the swamp research stations. Running the land lines through existing AI power grids is way easier then building new ones from scratch.”
She shone her light on the grime-covered walls and wrinkled her nose in disgust. “Wow … the swamp sure takes over in a hurry.”
“All the more reason to finish quickly,” Keith muttered. “Where’s this mainframe you were talking about?”
Luna pointed her light at an open doorway just ahead of her, “It should be through here, in the station’s main control center.”
The two of them walked through the dark doorway and cautiously surveyed the deserted room. There were several chairs positioned around a cluster of holographic monitors, a few desks that looked as if they’d been scavenged, and bits and pieces of research notes scattered across the moist floor.
Luna seated herself in a soggy chair and powered up one of the terminals, the dim glow from its polarized screen casting eerie blue shadows over the abandoned control center.
“Found anything yet?” Keith asked after a few minutes had passed.
“Almost. There’s a lot of data to go through in here. Okay, I’ve got it.” She looked up and pointed back to the main hallway. “There’s a cold-storage room down the hall on the left. According to the last log entry, they have several more samples in there. If the cryostasis systems weren’t damaged in the attack, then these should still be viable.”
“And if they’re not?”
She shrugged. “Then we’ll just have to do things the old fashioned way and find more samples ourselves.”
“Okay then, let’s get moving.”
She stood up and retrieved her light from where she’d set it, then led Keith back out into the hallway. They walked down the long corridor and were nearly to the cold storage room when Keith noticed that a section of the hallway’s wall panels had been removed, exposing the knotted power cables beneath.
“Miss McKelly. Look at this.” He shined his light on the exposed wiring.
“It looks as if it’s been shorted out … look at the burn marks on the wall,” Luna replied, kneeling to get a closer look. “Wait a second … this isn’t a power conduit. This is Alex’s land-line cable.”
“What are you implying?” Keith asked, crouching down to join her.
“I don’t really know … I’m no expert, but it looks to me as if someone were trying to splice into the Unitech data stream from here.” She rubbed her hand over the charred remains of the cables, sending a shower of blackened debris to the ground.
“Wait a minute. Are you saying
Swampers
might have hacked the Unitech mainframe?” Keith asked, raising an eyebrow.
Luna shook her head and stood up. “Well, I guess they probably
could
have. But from the way things look now, I’d say they didn’t meet with much success. That is, unless they were actually
trying
to fry themselves. It would take a technological wizard to splice into Alex remotely. Whoever did this was an amateur, at best.”
“Or an idiot.”
“Or an idiot,” Luna repeated, shining her light down the hallway. “Okay, our cold storage room is just ahead. Cross your fingers and hope there are still some samples alive in there.”
She led him down the corridor and then turned left. The connecting hallway went on for nearly fifty yards before ending abruptly at a large, reinforced door with the words
Cold Storage
stenciled across its metallic surface.
Luna shined her light on the door’s mildew-covered keypad. She wiped the blue-green grime off the device and quickly typed in a series of numbers she’d found in the station’s database. There was a click, and the door’s mechanized lock disengaged.
Luna smiled, clipped the flashlight to her belt, and gripped the door’s heavy latch. “Here, help me get it open.”
Keith slung his weapon over his shoulder and joined her. Together they heaved the heavy, two-foot thick door open. Then they stopped and stared in open-mouthed astonishment.
Everything inside the cold storage room was
crawling
with the life forms they had come to collect. No matter where they looked, their HUD’s registered the protozoa, bathing their faces in bright yellow light.
“We’ve hit the mother lode, ” Luna whispered, fumbling with her sample case.