Instinct (2010) (7 page)

The drone that rumbled from within the cave had been reduced to a few stuttering hums.

That was the signal for Mills to load his own weapon. It didn’t have an official name, as it had arrived from the
Pentagon in the same way as all MEROS-specific technology: in an unmarked box with nothing but a serial number and a set of instructions. In spite of this, the soldiers needed to call them something and had christened this one the Ripple Gun. Cocking it like a 12-bore, Mills pointed it into the cave and held on tight as the flared end of its umbrella-like form whirred round hard and fast. His feet shook as if he were using a pneumatic drill, the revolutions turning faster and faster, grinding into his shoulder at one end, amplified by lasers at the other. It was sending out a wave of low-frequency vibrations that caused the ground to shudder like the tail of an earthquake. The effect was uncomfortable for humans, but for anything smaller it felt like time spent inside a washing machine; no permanent damage, but it would be a
while before they knew which way was up.

The movement subsided, gradually dwindling to nothing. It always took the soldiers a minute to readjust to the return of calm, but when they were ready, Mills and Garrett stepped aside to let Carter and Jacobs take their places.

This was the point at which the mission became tricky. There were always targets that remained unaffected by the two preparatory measures, either buried in the depths of the nest or separated from the others on a search for food. Both Carter and Jacobs could see on their head-mounted motion sensors that several of them were indeed active, and it was their job to make sure these rogues posed no further threat.

Senses heightened, they stepped further into the
cave and drew identical weapons. Like all the small arms used by the team, these handguns resembled the equipment of conventional warfare but were advanced far beyond the use of something so crude as a bullet. Instead of a trigger beneath a barrel, the ammunition was dispatched by sensors attached to the user’s synapses. When they came close to anything they were trying to immobilize, the gun pointed at exactly what they were looking at, assessed the distance and size of the target and fired at the point where it would cause most damage. It took some getting used to; with no need to aim or shoot, a strong instinct was removed from the process, but it was 100 per cent accurate and left no surplus ammunition at the scene.

The shells were like miniature canisters of enhanced CS gas, so they exploded on impact in a cloud of thin, freezing vapour that filled the air and clung to every surface. This was the main reason for the protective suits. Although not fatal to humans, the vapour could cause temporary paralysis, as it did for its intended targets.

Carter took the left side of the cave and Jacobs the right. Stepping forward as if on thin ice, Carter gently set down each tread of his sole with as little sound as possible. He wanted nothing to distract him or Jacobs from any more significant noises.

As they approached the nest, it became harder to keep the fear at bay. There had yet to be a mission in which all the wasps were incapacitated, so it was only a matter of time before –

The first one shot out of the corner to Carter’s left.
He caught it immediately, sending a shell straight through its head.

The sharp report of his weapon made Jacobs turn and see if she should get involved. She needn’t, but it meant she missed the one on her side: a clatter of frantic wings that headed straight towards her.

She moved her arm across to take a shot, but too late. It was in her face now, flapping across her mask, looking to get a grip on something.

Carter raised his weapon, but Jacobs’ arms were too close to the wasp. A muffled
fuck
came from beneath her mask.

Several of them were using the distraction to rise up on Carter’s side. Two headed towards him while another pair aimed for his back.

But Carter was fast and alert. He whipped his armed hand round in a wide arc that took all four of them out in less than a second.

Jacobs was still struggling, and Carter realized they didn’t have time for this. It could penetrate her protective suit at any moment.

He waited for a safe opening …

waited …

waited …

crack!

The canister ripped the wasp in two. It fell to the ground in its still-twitching halves.

Jacobs calmed quickly enough to feel she had let Carter down. He could just make out a
sorry
from behind her mask.

No problem
, he replied.

That seemed to be it. Looking around the cave for more movement, the sensors detected nothing, so Carter and Jacobs shut off their weapons, withdrew to a safe distance and allowed Van Arenn and Wainhouse to take their places.

Before clean-up could begin, Van Arenn had to secure that unharmed specimen for Dr Trent, a task that created twice as much danger as simply wiping them out. It meant they could not engage the pyroballistics until one of the little bastards had been captured, and all for that civilian who was drinking hot coffee down where it was nice and safe.

He had done it many times before: post-operational analysis had required specimen collection on every mission until three years ago, when they had managed to increase efficiency to a point where such precautions were no longer needed. In the early days, they had to see what changes, if any, had occurred to the wasps after deployment of the weapons. Now, they knew the alterations were not significant enough to require this measure.

As Wainhouse kept an eye on his motion sensor, Van Arenn removed a flat, square package from his backpack and inched forward. He would certainly come across them soon, but it was the element of surprise that made his job the riskiest. Mills and Garrett’s light and ripple had a range that was almost perfect, but that margin of error was what could cost Van Arenn his life. Caves like this were the most
dangerous, because no one could tell how far their depths snaked back, or whether overhangs and outcrops could shield the insects from the effects of the weapons. In addition, the CS gas could never be relied on completely, as it had to dovetail with any new genetic alterations. The rate of failure was low, but not quite low enough.

Van Arenn was among them now, advancing with as little disturbance as possible. He looked ahead to see the familiar signs: the nest structure, like a vast, crusty spread of brown honeycomb, and the first of them, lying on their backs, temporarily anaesthetized by the primary weapons.

His concentration was broken by the unusual feeling below his left boot. He looked down to see the bones of a human laid out in skeleton formation from the toes to the skull. Although Van Arenn had seen this sort of thing many times, the size of these bones made him stop a little longer. This one couldn’t have been much more than a child. He had to stop himself thinking of the moment when the wasps had attacked, the fear of a boy who could do little as the skin and tissue was gripped then torn from his body, quickly, but inch by inch.

Ten yards in and the wasps were piled up to his knees, so he was wading more than walking. This was far enough. He looked down, trying to find a good-sized specimen with its wings spread out. They always looked better that way.

There was a perfect example on top of the heap,
just to his left. It had frozen in flight, each of its wings extended to the width of one of his large palms.

As he reached forward, he paused. At this stage, it was possible that one or two of them could be stuttering to life, but he couldn’t tell for sure through the mask that covered his ears.

Ten seconds and I’m done
, he thought, removing the tight plastic covering. It revealed a foot-square sheet of Perspex surrounded by metal tubing. Carefully, he slid it underneath the creature’s thin, barbed legs until it lay in the centre of the sheet, then he moved the switch at the side, immediately transforming the flat Perspex into a transparent cube encasing the wasp.

Meanwhile, the sporadic sputter had become a more constant hum, but he didn’t have time to look up. He moved the switch again to lock the structure in place then passed it back to Wainhouse.

‘Cap–’ Van Arenn could just about make out that Wainhouse had spoken, but didn’t hear what he said. He was too distracted by what was in front of him.

They were moving, crawling and flitting amongst each other.

It was time to get out of there.

Van Arenn turned, catching his heel on a jutting stump of rock.

It only put his stride off by an inch, but that was the difference between finding a clear space to plant his foot and flattening a wasp’s head with the edge of his toe.

The release of the dead wasp’s alarm pheromone was instantaneous. The first effect was as if the volume
control on the hum had been violently whipped clockwise, sending the noise to fill every forgotten corner of the cave.

Van Arenn knew instantly what he had done, as did the rest of the team. The mission had just gone from by-the-numbers to red alert.

This meant a recharging of the Ripple Gun. It would take about a minute for it to be ready again so that the soldiers could reassert their dominance. For that minute they were going to have to defend themselves with everything they had.

Van Arenn ran out to join the others, drawing his CS pistol as he went.

Carter and Jacobs had already reloaded and had been waiting for Van Arenn to clear the target area so they could get a shot in.

When he ducked beneath their guns, they emptied their clips at the rocks closest to their end of the nest, creating a CS barrier to bring about their primary aim: stop the wasps escaping.

They were too far away to see what was happening in the most populated area of the nest, so they just had to keep firing. This gave them the protection they needed, but it also created a cloud of gas. Visibility was reduced to just a few yards.

The soldiers watched, their weapons aimed at the swirling grey.

The hum of the wasps became the anonymous hum of the cloud.

How long would it take?

How many seconds had to tick by?

Each wisping curl made a shadow that drew the aim of a gun.

Each finger was poised with aching tension.

Pulses thudded with –

Three of them exploded from the vapour. Jacobs was quick, shooting the first through its left eye.

Carter got the next one. Jacobs’ shot had been instinct but Carter’s was very deliberate, sending a bullet into the jaws to leave a splatter of insides across the cave wall.

But the last one got through to Van Arenn. He had fumbled with his safety catch, leaving his weapon temporarily useless.

The wasp powered through to his suit, driving its mandibles into the arm. Carter could have shot it with ease, but he would also have blown Van Arenn’s wrist in half.

‘Shit!’ Van Arenn gave a stifled yell from behind his mask. The gas was seeping into his suit.

He was coughing uncontrollably, waving his arm around in a desperate attempt to loosen the wasp. But it wasn’t working: the mandibles had cut through to the flesh.

The pain seared through his arm like the blast of a blowtorch. The intensity of it grew as the jaws closed, taking in more of his muscle. He was going to pass out.

Carter got a grip on the wings, tore the wasp away and punched it into the cave wall. As he did so, Van Arenn collapsed in a heap of blood, mucus and violent coughs.

Carter and Jacobs dragged him away, the exposed flesh of his deep, jagged wound searing with the pain of the gas.

It was now time to finish the job. Wainhouse held on his back a large tank from which a metal-alloy hose wound its way around his waist like a silver anaconda. He stepped forward, pointed the hose at the walls, and pulled its trigger, emitting a spray that resembled a fine mist of molasses. Then he guided it across the wide span of nest, taking great care not to miss any potential hiding places.

This part of the job reminded Wainhouse of his previous life as a painter and decorator in Caspar, Wyoming. The main difference was that old ladies’ parlours were not usually caked in the prone forms of giant wasps.

He enjoyed stepping on the paralysed bodies, feeling their exoskeletons crush as their internal organs became a sticky mess beneath his boots. It was like the satisfaction of squashing a dozen empty cigarette packets at once.

Soon he was in the depths. He could hear his breathing, mixed with the thick dripping of the spray and the occasional tennis-ball-landing-in-stew sound of a wasp falling from the wall with the extra weight of the liquid coating. He looked up to the ceiling and the giant sweep of nest that stretched away to the back of the cave. The mist was designed to break this down, leaving no discernible evidence.

Wainhouse continued to spray as he walked backwards
to the entrance of the cave. There, he bumped into Garrett, who had taken over from Van Arenn, and turned the hose off. The others were waiting just outside, relieved to see Wainhouse return. Operations never went wrong from this point. Once Garrett had given them the signal to clear the area, they knew the threat would soon be over. All that remained was for the fireballs to be deployed, and the mission would be finished.

Garrett did not enjoy replacing her friend under these circumstances, but she did relish the chance to use the pyroballistics.

She removed the smooth, black spheres from their casing. They had a fat weight to them, like huge ball bearings, and Garrett liked the idea that something that looked so perfect could cause so much destruction. She felt for the shallow indentations at either end and pressed them until she heard the solid spring release and felt the sphere rocking gently in her palm.

She held the first one up between thumb and forefinger as it vibrated with increasing force. This was accompanied by a hum that increased in pitch until –
Pyanggg –
the sphere leapt out of her grip and shot towards the back of the cave. The force of repelling electromagnets sent it to stop just short of the far wall, where it hovered a few feet off the ground, still shaking as if alive.