Ghost of the Gods - 02 (42 page)

Noah was staring at her with one of his unreadable expressions. Sarah was unsure where that idea had come from. Was it hers? Had it come from the god-machine or was she somehow channeling these hives? She was afraid it was the latter, and that made everything she did suspect. She needed help to sort this out. She looked at Mark. They were so distant right now. She didn’t like how they had walled off their emotions from each other to become ghosts. She wanted him back in her heart the way he had been before Pueblo Canyon. She allowed a small portion of her feelings to leak out onto the n-web. Mark turned toward her and his expression softened. He moved over next to her and took her hand. Noah seemed caught off guard by the small display of affection.

Sarah Mayfair – Colorado – March 7, 0002 A.P.

Sarah watched on the CROWS targeting display as Noah returned from retrieving his Land Cruiser. A few hours ago the vehicle had been left a short distance from the mine with an unconscious Mustafa in the back. She held the crosshairs on Noah as he drove up to the Stryker. Noah pulled to a stop a few yards from the open ramp. He dragged a half-revived Mustafa behind him like a dog on a leash and cuffed him to a tow lug on the rear of the Stryker, then went back to the Land Cruiser. Mustafa was radiating every kind of emotion and was clearly still under the influence of the drugs he’d been given.

Moments later, Noah stepped inside the crew compartment carrying a liquor box and set it down on the floor. The top of the carton was open. Inside were liter-sized plastic water bottles. Noah pulled out one of the plastic bottles. Inside, Sarah could see a glass jar and a stoppered chemistry flask. The two items were stacked on top of each other. The jar was upside down so its glass bottom was touching the flask. The jar was filled with white powder. The flask was filled with clear liquid. There was a seam where the plastic bottle had been cut open and resealed with glue.

“Sulfuric acid and potassium cyanide,” said Noah. “When the two mix you get—”

“Hydrogen cyanide gas,” said Mark. “The same thing the Nazis used.”

“I thought we were choking off their air supply,” said Sarah.

“We are,” said Noah. “If the hives detect the gas then they will have to shut off their blowers, cutting off their own air supply and driving themselves out of their nest. If they don’t catch on fast enough then the gas will do an even better job of driving them out. Hydrogen cyanide is not lethal to hybrids, but it will stun a hive. The nanotech linkage throughout the central nervous system has a weakness to cyanide. I have six more boxes of these in my truck. It will not take that much. The gas is largely odorless. If we are quiet about our business, by the time they figure anything out it will be too late. The gas will addle them and bring them down to the mental throughput of an organic. The guide will be forced to collapse to a minimal survival operation level or die. The hybrids will be on their own. The seeds in their blood will be fully occupied trying to repair damage, and that will drain the hive to the brink if they do not flee. Cyanide linkage disruption is horribly painful and cannot be blocked.”

“How do you know this?” asked Mark.

“Experimentation…”

Noah had a satisfied smile on his face. Sarah realized that Noah must hate the hives even more than she did. She thought of Mark. He wanted to stop the hives at any cost, but did he have enough hate in his belly for torture? Noah looked Sarah directly in the eye.

“Do you want to help?” he asked.

“Yes… I hate them,” she said.

“Mark?” asked Noah.

“Let’s get this over with,” said Mark.

Noah sent her and Mark a memory capsule, which contained a marked-up blueprint of the area along with instructions. Noah would stay behind to finish off the hybrids in case they fled the mine early. She and Mark each took a box of the cyanide bombs. Other supplies went into backpacks. They each set out on foot in different directions.

Sarah had left Ralph in the Stryker, which was equipped with NBC air filtering. She did not want him anywhere near this gas. She reached the first vent after only five minutes of walking. Already the muscles in her legs were tightening. She was carrying a lot of supplies, plus her M4 plus water, and the trek was mostly uphill. This was going to be a physically draining day.

The vent was a 12 inch diameter pipe that came straight out of the ground. It was topped with a metal cap with hundreds of small holes drilled into it, forming an armored grill. On the top of the cap was a rounded metal hat with a rim to keep the rain out. The whole assembly was painted in camouflage colors. Some vents were inlets and some were outlets. Sarah took a sheet of paper from her backpack and held it next to the grill. Airflow sucked the paper to the grill and held it there. She had found her first target.

Sarah took out a hacksaw and went to work. This would be the hard part. Explosives would be much easier, but then the hive would know someone was attacking their vents. Sarah thought the cyanide bombs were sinisterly ingenious. The glass jar was thin and had been weakened by scoring its bottom and sides. The flask had also been scored. There was a doubled ended hardened metal point glued between the jar and flask. The metal was probably unnecessary, but it would help shatter the glass on impact. All Sarah had to do was remove the water bottle cap to give the gas a place to vent and then drop it.

Sarah was covered in sweat as she sawed at the vent. After a few more strokes she was able to pry it back. She wasted no time dropping two of the cyanide bombs into the pipe. She could faintly hear them crashing at the bottom. She then dropped down a few rocks to make sure the glass was well smashed. It didn’t matter where in the vent the bombs cracked open. Blowers would draw the gas deep into the mine. Even if the hives had good air filters, a great deal of concentrated gas would pass through the ventilation system. The filters would be saturated quickly and stop absorbing the gas.

“Breathe deep, little bastards…” whispered Sarah. “Breathe it all in.”

Sarah Mayfair – Colorado – March 7, 0002 A.P.

Half the day was gone and the job was done. As Sarah walked toward the Stryker, she could sense Mark was inside. His defenses were lowered a bit. It had been a hard day. Poisoning every vent on the blueprints had taken longer than she’d expected and used most of Noah’s bombs. Her sense of the singularity had faded as more vents were poisoned. She no longer felt any faint attractive pull. Instead, she was experiencing for the first time the unfiltered emotions of a hive. The emotions had started radiating in small flashes, which slowly built to the stampede of uncontrolled feelings that were now circulating. The cyanide gas had denied them their self-control. Anger and fear were the dominant emotions, but there was also a growing resignation, almost sadness. It was if they were all drunk. The volume and number of distinct emotional fingerprints left no doubt this was a real hive and not some kind of Trojan horse.

Mark, Noah, and Sarah were sitting inside the Stryker. The MK19 was aimed at the opening to the mine. They were watching a cross-haired video feed from the weapon’s sight on the large command and control screen. Noah had moved Mustafa and handcuffed him to the front of a half exploded Army truck near the entrance to the mine. Sarah could see Mustafa in the display and the sheet of paper pinned to his chest. The paper had a single word scrawled on it:
Surrender
. Mustafa looked fully awake. The hive members would soon have to flee. They couldn’t remain conscious in that environment much longer.

“Why are they still in there?” said Mark.

“They have to be planning something devious,” said Noah. “Otherwise they would have surrendered by now. The guide has withdrawn into itself. Mustafa is better than any white flag. Seeing a powerful illuminati like him captured by Peacekeepers will cause all kinds of confusion in their degraded hive minds when they emerge.”

“If they emerge,” said Mark. “Your blueprints may be missing something else like, say, a backdoor. You have to admit your plans were a little sketchy here.”

“What suggestions have you offered?” said Noah. “EMP bombs!”

“At least that’d work…”

Mark and Noah began arguing, but Sarah had no interest in taking sides. She watched as Mustafa tugged at his handcuffs. He was fully alert and in pain. She zoomed in on him. His lips were trembling and moving as if whispering. She had a bad feeling.

“It looks like he’s whispering,” said Sarah.

Mark and Noah continued bickering.

“Hey, guys... Guys! It looks like he’s whispering,” said Sarah. “I can’t see anyone inside the mine.”

Noah leaned forward to scrutinize the display… then his eyes widened.

“That rotten insect!” exclaimed Noah.

Before Sarah could ask anything, Noah had tromped down the exit ramp and was on his way to Mustafa. Mark crouched next to her to look closely at the display. Sarah zoomed out the field of view so they could see Noah. The man appeared enraged as he marched toward the mine entrance. This was the first time she had seen the god-like hybrid display any uncontrolled emotion, though nothing radiated from him on the n-web.

“What is he doing?” asked Mark.

“I have no idea.”

“Crazy bastard,” said Mark.

“Which one of them?”

“Both…”

When Noah reached Mustafa an argument erupted. It looked like Noah wanted to beat Mustafa senseless. Sarah could hear faint shouts going back and forth. Noah kicked some dirt at the old hybrid. Sarah felt no pity. Noah started to pace. Sarah could see Mustafa shout something. Noah pulled his sidearm, spun, and casually executed Mustafa with a bullet to the head. The sound of the report reached them moments later.

Mark Freedman – Colorado – March 8, 0002 A.P.

It had been sixteen hours since they had gassed the hive and Mustafa had been murdered. Mark was lying inside a sleeping bag on the roof of the Stryker, staring up at the night sky. The nanotech transformation of his nervous system was complete, along with the development of his immune system, which now had more than enough free-swimming COBIC. Noah had driven off to retrieve something without explaining further, except to tell them he would be back by mid-morning with enough provisions to fill their vehicle. Sarah was keeping watch inside the Stryker. The night air was very cold. An assist was alerting him it was not a safe temperature. He didn’t care. He’d go back inside before long.

Mark was disturbed by the ease with which Noah had killed a handcuffed prisoner. Mustafa had regained some of his basic capability and was likely on the verge of sending a memory capsule warning the hive. Yet there were other ways to stop him besides murder. Over the past days Mark had been provoked by Mustafa many times and many times he’d wanted to kill the hybrid. Mustafa was good at doing that but Mark had not sunk to that level, while Noah had with great ease.

Mark watched the sky as a small meteor shot across the rich background of stars. In that streak of light the meteor had died in a final, magnificent display after traveling for untold billions of years through the universe. Its death reminded Mark of the mysteries that surrounded them all. He was a scientist and understood full well the limitations of what humankind really knew and how much we pretended to know. We knew nothing when compared to the vastness of that night sky above him. He entered the timeline program and found three reincarnation matches and one of them was for himself.

Ancestral memories flooded Mark’s consciousness the moment he accessed his match. At the same instant he knew he’d made a terrible mistake, as his identity and willpower were subsumed by the timeline archive. It was very disorienting to be inside someone that seemed like himself. The thought patterns were similar, as were the ways of dealing with things. Boundaries were erased. It was like finding his body had been stolen and given to some random person. There was an overpowering, irrational desire to take back what was his. Experiencing the mind of an alien would have been less unsettling. Something was also terribly different in this timeline. He was absorbing far more of this lifetime than was contained in the excerpts within the archive.

Without warning, a second timeline was added out of nowhere to the one he was already reliving. He was now experiencing two lives and unable to break free. How was this possible? A third timeline came into his mind, overlying and blending with the first two. Strange feelings of déjà vu emerged from collisions and overlaps between the three lifetimes now replaying. Just when he thought he could finally bear what was pouring into his soul, a fourth and then a fifth timeline were added as if to increase the level of insanity on cue. Mark caught hold of a revealing memory fragment. While helpless to stop the psychological assault, he now understood what was happening. The root timeline, the one he’d unthinkingly opened, was of a man undergoing some form of past life regression as part of a religious ceremony. The man had consumed a lucid dream inducing powder extracted from red spider lilies and was having out of body experiences entering into one past life after another. The echoes of these lifetimes ran deep, all the way to their origin. From different epochs, Mark saw flashbacks of monumental cities. He saw flashbacks of jungles with prehistoric mega flora and fauna. There were flashbacks of love, death, war, and joy. The flashbacks increased in speed and variety as lifetime after lifetime unspooled. Civilizations grew and then fell—they all fell—and their ends were all apocalyptic. An endless number of lifetimes were laid bare before him. While evidence and belief in an afterlife still eluded him, all doubt about reincarnation was obliterated in these few moments; and that was all the entire experience had taken, a few moments. Mark feared he would go insane if this went on much longer, but it did. In less than a minute he was weary, but it went on. In less than five minutes he was no longer Mark … but it went on.

Mark Freedman – Colorado – March 8, 0002 A.P.

What seemed like lifetimes later, Mark awoke, confused, in complete darkness. Somehow he’d managed to break free of the timeline. His heart was racing. His body was overheating and yet he was shivering. He was balled up in the end of the sleeping bag on the roof of the Stryker. It felt like he was suffocating inside the intestines of some large animal that had devoured him. He struggled to get out of the bag. When he finally stood, he almost stumbled. His legs were wobbly. His skin was instantly covered in gooseflesh from the sting of frozen air. He climbed down into the Stryker. Sarah was sitting at the CROWS weapon station. Her eyes looked glassy in the reflected light of the screen. She looked over at him and he could see an entire expanding universe in those emerald green eyes. His mind was a spiderweb of past lives all woven into an incomprehensible whole. He was weary and wanted nothing more than to shut it all down and crawl into her arms to sleep forever.