Chapter 14

Johns’ Quarters

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 by himself for nearly an hour as he waited to cool down before making the call that he knew that 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 were able to kill one of those things, pull that shit out root and stem. She didn’t know for sure, but Sara was guessing that the entire Goo network provided its own ecosystem. She thought that if we cut out the Queen that was producing the Goo, that the rest would eventually die, or at least put us in a position to burn it back without worrying about it coming back. The whole time they had been fighting against a conveyor belt of Goo 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 make sure that 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 com unit and set it on the desk before loading up a message to President Raymond Duke.

He took a deep breath 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 to this message. It’s encrypted and very sensitive. Keep it on your local device.

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 that was 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-five 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. 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 that we’ve identified what is driving 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 we are going to go 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 with his palm as if he was 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 for fighting aliens.

And we have three of them. If we manage to kill one, we still have to kill two more. And there’s so many variables. Are any of them bigger than the others? Will we be able to 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, 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 was some general with a big-picture stick up my ass.

But nuking it 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 it, to help me with the evacuation. If they can’t be used for something like this, what are we going to 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 Kazi 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 Kazi. I’ll...keep you updated on our progress with the Queens.”