Chapter 18
Subject: Agent Jim Crawford
Agent Jim crawford
“Well goddamn, that’s disturbing,” Jim said, looking over an intel summary of the ground team’s smash and grab. He’d watched the helmet feeds live and rewatched the feeds from different perspectives a handful of times, but that was before Wraith, Estevez, and the army of analysts aboard his little fleet got their hands on it. Jim was looking at a zoomed in still of what the marine sergeant dubbed ‘wall creatures’ in her narrative.
A full day had passed since the ground op. Jim had figured it to be good to give the scientists time to figure if they’d gotten enough from the samples and video footage before they started blowing fireline into the terrain from orbit. The fire was completely out of control, and a windstorm was pushing it towards New Carthage at a rate that made Jim quite uncomfortable. He pulled on a uniform jacket, but left it loose, and pressed the ‘join call’ button on his display. It was now or never.
The virtual meeting space was already full. Video feeds from the stakeholders Estevez had decided on popped up around him. Estevez, the planetary admin, the marine security sergeant, a creepy looking dude that was listed as ‘security liaison’, the scientist Doctor Carney, a rep from NCPD’s xenofauna control team, and, of course, Wraith.
“Okay Wraith, take it away,” Jim said. This was the great thing about having an AI assistant, it never balked at your orders. Never shied away from work. And it always did a near perfect job.
Wraith started, “thank you for joining, each of you. This gathering is to discuss the extreme xenofauna activity occurring around New Carthage and to determine a control strategy during orbital firefighting operations. I’d like to begin by allowing Lieutenant Command Estevez the opportunity to bring us up to speed on the current wildfire situation.”
Estevez cleared her throat, “hello, yes. So, currently, a wind event has picked up with winds gusting to nearly 100 kph out of the east. That has caused extreme fire behavior and we are expecting the fire to make a long run today. As such, we want to begin our fire control operations as soon as possible. We predict that we need to begin operations within the twelve hours in order to have the greatest chance of success. All ships are currently in position and awaiting orders.”
“Well whats the hold up then? Get to it!” The planetary admin added. A ‘mute’ icon appeared over his head.
Wraith cut in, “this is a reminder that all operations are being conducted at the sole discretion of the ranking United Human Dominion representative, in this case the SIU team in orbit, and any participation in planning meetings is a privilege. Further interruptions will be considered insubordinate and will result in your removal from future involvement, and possibly, criminal charges.”
Jim paused his video to laugh. The planetary admin was beet red and sputtering. He could see the NCPD rep’s mouth twist up into a grin that he quickly fought back down.
“My apologies for the disruption. Thank you for that summary, Lieutenant Commander.” Wraith continued, and Jim felt that it was enjoying the exchange. “Yesterday morning, a joint operation was launched to investigate the nature of the xenofauna threat. The operation was successful, but unfortunately resulted in the loss of two lives. Asset Protection Investigator Elizabeth Ward of the New Carthage Police Department and Security Officer Emmanuel ‘Felix’ Greene of the Scientific Advancement Section’s Expeditionary Security Forces. Please take a moment of silence to remember their sacrifice.”
Jim saw the security sergeant, ‘Turner’ the name said’s, video feed turn off. He hadn’t prompted the AI to take a moment of silence, and it was one of those weird, human-ish moments that made Jim suspect the thing was starting to be more than just a computer program. Wraith waited until Turner came back before continuing on.
“I would like to give Doctor Carney an opportunity to discuss her team’s findings,” Wraith said.
“Good morning, Doctor Carney, research lead on the planet Oasis III. We have a hypothesis as to the nature of the xenofauna attacks and the unusual occurrences and discrepancies that we have detected in our usual monitoring of the planet’s ecology. I will be providing a summarized version of our hypothesis; of course all data will be available freely to all stakeholders for independent confirmation,” Carney cleared her throat before continuing. “We believe that the ‘spikes’ launched at the planet were a dispersal vehicle for an alien bioweapon. This bioweapon appears to be able to transform the biomass of other living things into tools to serve it’s own end. We have observed an apparent extinction of nearly all local wildlife around the town of New Carthage. We have named the areas in which the biomass is gathered and accumulated ‘nurseries’, and it appears that the bulbous creatures that Sergeant Turner encountered in village, and again in the burrow are a sort of biomass processor. We observed one regurgitating a black dust, which we sampled and found to be spent medical nanites.”
Everyone in the meeting space turned pale. Jim hadn’t heard any of this, but he was not surprised. He feared it to be the case, but he was waiting to hear it from someone who was actually qualified.
“We believe that the medical nanites are sufficient to combat the bioweapon inside the bodies of the colonists, leaving us unaffected. This is supported by the fact that children who did not have medical nanite systems disappeared alongside local wildlife. We have observed this trend in every location where the alien bioweapon plume landed, and it is spreading outwards at an exponential rate. I suspect that, if the bioweapon creatures have any higher level intelligence, that the firefighting method that has been proposed will be seen as an attack, as it will destroy several nurseries. Any questions?”
Jim could tell everyone had questions. Hands shot in to the air and he could see the planetary admin yelling maniacally at his screen. The creepy liaison dropped off the call. Wraith called on the NCPD rep.
“Yes, uhm. Well, if they, the bioweapon creatures, see our firefighting as an attack, how do we keep our people safe? Should we evacuate the city? Go to the station?” He seemed to be at a compete loss.
Jim jumped in, “I’ll answer that one! You’re all gonna shelter in place for now. Hunker down. WE will coordinate personnel movement on the surface. I’ll start devising a plan to get everyone off world, but I need to make this one-hundred-percent clear. We do NOT leave the surface until the plan is absolutely ready. We are not going to risk spreading this bioweapon off planet. I will authorize the shootdown and sterilization of any secret air-spacecraft that takes off from the surface before I give the go ahead. I know that sounds fucked up, but the station is simply not ready to take in more than a couple hundred people, and none if the ships in orbit are prepared or capable of adding to that. There’s always a way, and we will find it, but it is going to take time.” Jim eyed everyone before cheerfully adding, “that’s all!”
A moment of stunned silence passed through the meeting as the realization of what was to come dawned on those on the ground. They were about to be caught in the middle of a shitstorm with no way to get out of it. Jim decided he needed to take control over the meeting before things got out of hand.
The planetary admin raised his hand and Wraith called on him. He spoke, “what about the situation in orbit? Are we going to be attacked again?”
Jim’s eyes narrowed, “I’ve already told you we have orbital superiority. The planet is safe from external threats and we have a couple of months before the cavalry gets here to save the day. We need to hunker down until then.”
Jim eyed the room. He had a few more things to say, but needed less people before he said them. “If there’s no more questions I’m going to move on to small group briefings.” Jim tapped his fingers on the table for a few seconds, not quite long enough for someone to think up a question, but long enough for Jim’s patience on the matter to wear thin. He had a lot to do.
“Alright, Wraith take the cop and the admin and get them lined out on your lockdown plan. Leave the science team and Sergeant Turner with Estevez and I.” Jim said, watching as the meeting participants split into groups.
Jim addressed the science team lead, Doctor Carney, “those samples you got, the air samples that show the original bioweapon organisms and how they hijacked the local bugs and whatnot, I’m deeming those mission critical. Plus anything else you’ve got. The samples from the village, the samples from the burrow, and anything else you can think of.”
Carney nodded and smiled slightly. From her perspective this probably looked like a first class ticket off-world. Truthfully, Jim didn’t give a shit about her or her team, but those samples would give them a real interesting shot at developing countermeasures. He’d have to see to keeping them alive and the samples safe as a top priority.
“Send all of your data up here and make a few physical backups. Catalog everything and make sure you can move them on short notice, got it?” Jim added.
“Of course, we’ve already done most of that, but you need to know that the physical samples need to be stored at low temperatures to keep the media stable. So, if we need to relocate, or we go on a trip off world, please keep that handling condition in mind. They’re good for a few hours outside of our sample cooler but beyond that and there will be degradation.” Carney said.
“Figures, alright, make sure you have adequate backup power and let us know if there’s any issues on that front,” Carney nodded in reply Jim dropped them from the call, leaving only himself and Estevez. He took a deep breath and put a toothpick in his mouth.
“Estevez, a thought crosses my mind and I want to just throw it out there,” Jim said, pulling the toothpick from his mouth and examining it.
“Alright Jim, what’ve you got?” Estevez asked.
“Do you think all of the Adversary ships just carry bioweapons like this? Or is this a specialized ship that was sent to carry out this specific mission?”
Estevez scrunched her face and took a pause before responding, “I’ve been wondering that too. There are far more questions than answers right now it seems.”
Yeah, no kidding, Jim thought. “Keep up the good work,” he said, and dropped the call.
Jim sat and pondered, mulling over the problems and the potential solutions in his head. This was the most fun he’d had on an operation in years. It had all the right elements, and conditions were perfect to leave him free to make decisions how he wanted, without oversight, and without the boss getting in the way. He’d given the folks on the ground a few hours to figure out how to shelter in place, which Jim thought was more than adequate, and watched as a trio of low-orbit gunships fired their coilguns down to the planet’s surface, rending great masses of dirt and blasting firebreaks through the jungle. It was the perfect backdrop for quiet contemplation.
Jim’s mind was occupied with thoughts of mass evacuations from the surface. If the bioweapon continued to multiply exponentially like it had, sooner or later he’d need to start moving people off-planet. And if the bioweapon was truly as deadly and transmissible as Estevez and Carney thought, anyone who wasn’t filled with medical nanites would be in mortal danger unless the evacuees were thoroughly decontaminated.
But, how to decontaminate them? Where to decontaminate them? Where do you even put that many people? New Carthage had just under a hundred thousand people. The station was designed for a maximum surge population of less than five thousand, and it was never even finished. It had four heavy lift shuttles that could move quite a few people, but even then, it would be a massive undertaking to evacuate the entire planet. And Jim would be damned if he was going to put a single ship in his formation at risk of being contaminated.
The best plan was to stabilize the situation on the ground, maximize survivability, and keep everything copasetic until contact was re-established with the rest of the Dominion. They had ships that could handle this. Hell, the fleet had factory ships that could build damn near anything. They could build a hundred-thousand person floating hospital above the planet to move everyone to. That’s the plan then, hunker down and avoid making the situation any more complicated.
