300 Miles to Galveston (13 page)

“But ancient Greeks probably didn’t create targeted nanite clouds.”

“No,” she said. “I’m afraid that by the time we find out who did this to us, there won’t be anything we can do about it. We’re half blind, half deaf, and starving, and the fight hasn’t even started yet.”

“So, we need to prepare for war?”

“No. We need to prepare a doomsday weapon. We need to figure out who or what has done this, find a weakness, and cripple them in one strike. We cannot win in a stand-up fight against beings of this technological sophistication. We’re the natives, and they’re the colonists. We need to make staying here so expensive that moving on to another world, even light years away, is more appealing than staying. We need a terror weapon.”

“Maybe that’s where you come in,” she said. “I’ve been hoping to find a mutation in the gene pool, someone who didn't respond like everyone else, and whose differences can help me understand how the nanites work. Come back this evening, after we’ve done the analysis. And don’t talk to the other evacuees about what we’ve discussed. We don’t know how they would react. They might be jealous, and make things difficult for you.”

“How do you know I won’t just tell them?”

“You just fought your way across 300 miles of Texas to give your daughter a better chance. I don’t think you’ll jeopardize that for a few social points. If I’ve misjudged you, and you do something that puts my mission at risk, I will have you and your daughter thrown in the brig, and every other non-com troublemaker taken back to shore and left without so much as a C-ration and a pair of disposable swim trunks.”

She called the ensign, who escorted Kurt and Sophie to their quarters.

* * *

A man stood before their empty, neat bunks. “So, you’re the last two.”

“Hi. I’m Kurt, and this is my daughter, Sophie.” His outstretched hand was not taken.

“I was expecting two friends.”

“I see. Can’t say I’m sorry.”

“No. You can’t.” He stepped aside.

Sophie took the top bunk. Each bed had clean sheets, one pillow, a thin blanket and a plastic box with a light blue or pink cross on it. Sophie opened hers, the light blue one. It contained bandages, shaving cream, three disposable razors, nail clippers, flossing picks, and a dozen other items. Kurt opened his, and noticed the neatly-stacked sanitary napkins. They switched boxes.

After meeting some of the friendlier evacuees, they learned there were not 41 of them aboard, as Sophie had heard on the first broadcast she caught. The original message was for 60. They had accepted 15, including Kurt and Sophie. The others were taken back to shore, some calmly, some in handcuffs. The most common cause for rejection: Mental instability.

“What’d they tell you, after they took your blood?” a middle-aged woman asked.

“Not much. Just, be useful or we’ll throw you in the brig. I’m Kurt.”

“Nice to meet you. I’m Phoebe. Yeah, that’s what they told me, too. I’ve been here three days, though, and they haven’t asked me to do anything useful. Just, stay out of the way.”

“How do you pass the time?”

“We’ve got cards and poker chips, but the serious players like Paul,” she gestured to the unfriendly man, “bet their supplies instead. Some draw or write. Surprising how much paper there is on this ship; they let us use the scraps from the dot matrix printouts.”

“Dot matrix? You mean, impact printers?”

“Yeah, they still use those in the Navy. I think it’s for multiple-copy forms. Mostly navigation reports, weather warnings, that sort of thing. At least, those are the scraps they give us.”

There was an announcement over the intercom, and the ship started moving.

“Well, I guess you really are the last two.”

Paul cursed, then glared at Kurt.

* * *

The USS
Fort Worth
was built for shallow water, capable of sailing up rivers in pursuit of their missions. In fact, it had been tested in the great lakes near Wisconsin, not the North Atlantic.

The sleek grey ship sailed east, seeking the mouth of the Mississippi.

* * *

The Ensign interrupted their friendly Texas Hold ‘Em game and asked Kurt and Sophie to accompany him to medical. Kurt looked to Phoebe, who said, “You’re the first to be asked back.”

From the serious poker table, Paul stared.

* * *

“Sophie, I’d like you to sit up on this table, please.”

“What’s going on?” said Kurt.

“I think you know,” said Nicole. She pushed up one of Sophie’s eye lids and shined a pen light. “Follow my finger, please.” She moved it left and right, up and down, then checked the other eye.

“Ensign, can you excuse us, please?”

Surprised, he left.

Nicole turned a monitor on and swiveled it towards them.

“You have non-human DNA, sweetie. Not a lot, but it doesn’t take a lot to make a big change. I can see it in your eyes, of course, and I know your father has, too. When did the change start to occur?”

“I noticed a couple of days ago,” said Kurt. “There was also a change in behavior, though I’m not sure how much of that is just becoming a teenager. She’s become... more aggressive.”

Sophie just watched them talk.

“Have you experienced any changes?”

“We both heal very quickly. I guess that started about the same time.”

“Right. Well, you don’t have any non-human DNA, so I already knew the answer to that, but I wanted to be sure.”

“Here’s what we know, so far. The nanites bond to each person, and become integrated into their bodies, copying the DNA so they won’t be rejected by the body. Somehow, Sophie’s nanites got exposed to additional DNA during that bonding procedure. What I can’t explain is, why that only happened recently. She was exposed to the nanites three years ago, like everyone else. Their adaptive process should have been fixed within a week. Yet from what I can tell, your nanites – both of you – are recent adoptees. And, here’s the really strange part,” she said, zooming the screen in on a graphic neither Kurt nor Sophie understood.

“Both of you have nanites that copied DNA from a direct blood relative – but not you, Sophie, nor you, Kurt. Someone else. Sophie, do you have any brothers or sisters who have died?”

Sophie gasped. “My older sister, Kristine, died the same year as the meteor shower. We visited her at the cemetery just before our trip down here. During our visit, she... well, she kind of blessed us. She was aware, though not fully there. She touched Dad and I at the same time, and ran her thumb across our foreheads. She’d... never done anything like that before.”

“I see. Did anything happen around that time that might have sparked her into acting differently?”

“Well, I snuck out to bring her a walkie talkie.” She looked at her dad, and he nodded with a knowing grin. “I just wanted to talk to her, even if she couldn’t talk back.” Tears dripped as she continued. “I heard her key the mic on, once. At least, I think it was her.” She looked at her father.

“I listened in once, but I never keyed my mic. If you got a broadcast signal, it was from her.”

Nicole’s eyes lit up. “That’s it. That explains everything. These nanites could respond to certain radio frequencies. Whatever frequency your walkie talkies were set to activated them somehow, at least within the close range of a handheld transmitter.”

“Ensign!” He came inside. “Get the XO. His ears only.”

* * *

Commander Eric Bozek was a trim man in his mid-40s, congenial but serious.

“They respond to certain radio frequencies. These things are going to be activated, to do something, remotely.”

“Like what?”

“Still working on that. Different frequencies may activate different functions. What was your walkie-talkie set to, Sophie?”

“Walkie-talkie?” said the Commander.

“Channel C. Sorry, I don’t know what frequency that is.”

“Probably something within the 27 megahertz range, the citizens band,” the Commander said to Sophie. “I was a Radio Shack geek when I was your age.”

Sophie smiled.

“Can we test different frequencies without... well... activating these two? I don’t need two civvies exploding or turning into monsters on my ship.” He winked at Sophie, but his voice resonated with genuine concern.

“If we can line the test chamber with something that blocks radio waves, they should be fine.”

“Easy. We can practically make a Faraday cage with of some aluminum foil and duct tape.”

“It’s always duct tape, isn’t it?” said Nicole.

“Binds the universe together,” said the Commander, tenting his fingers. “I’ll report to the CO. Good work. Keep me apprised. And,” he said, turning to Kurt and Sophie, “keep this under your foil hats, for now.”

Sophie looked confused. Kurt raised a finger to his lips, and she got it.

Chapter 14: Hide until You Hear English

Two hours later, Nicole had her test box. It looked like a fish tank with aluminum foil on the inside and a small trap door with wires going into it on top. Two parabolic mics pointed at it from opposite sides.

“I need fresh samples,” she said, and filled two test tubes with blood. “Now I need you to leave the room.” Kurt and Sophie waited outside.

Opening the lid to the test chamber, she placed the first two samples into a rack at the bottom, then closed the lid with a half-turn of the handle.

Sliding her chair to the keyboard, she tapped a command and ran the test.
No radio waves escaped the chamber. Good.

Next, she ran a series of radio pulses, each sustained for ten seconds, in the 27 kHz range.

Then she adjusted the microprobe which had been inserted into each sample, locking onto a patch of blood cells in each, and watching on a split screen. The nanites, normally transparent, shone violet-white in the ultraviolet light of the text box. They were busy, locking into two-nanite hybrids. Once assembled, they quickly repaired every damaged cell they touched.

“Huh,” she said.

* * *

Nicole and the XO walked on deck. The steady crash of the ship’s break kept their voices from traveling far.

“Here’s what I’ve figured out. A 27.3 kilohertz signal tells them to combine into units of two and do rapid cell repairs. At 38.1 kilohertz, they assemble into one long strand.”

“What’s the purpose?”

“I don’t know. Best guess, to carry an electrical signal. They’d essentially be a net of microscopic wires, connected throughout the body. A secondary nervous system.”

“A way to carry alternative signals? Perhaps to have the body do something the brain wasn’t telling it to do?”

“It’s possible. Not sure how... yeah. It’s possible. I mean, they’re essentially tiny connections of switches. Connected like that, they could combine their functions into... a computer.”

“Well, we know they can act autonomously. And, now you’ve seen them act in groups.”

“If they can arrange themselves in the right way, they could run sequences, achieve consensus, and send commands throughout the body, overriding the brain’s signals by disconnecting the major nerves and inserting their own connections.”

She leaned against the railing and looked at the moon, bright even in daylight.

“I mean, this involves several leaps – I haven’t seen them do anything other than assemble and fix broken blood cells in a test tube – but yeah, it’s possible. It’s a framework.”

The Commander took a deep breath and looked across the sea. A massive metallic sphere, perhaps two miles away, descended. It was perfectly reflective, like the chrome pinballs the Commander remembered playing with in his grandfather’s rec room when he was a boy.

“I don’t think we have time to run every possible option and double-blind test everything.”

“No,” said Nicole. “I don’t think we do.”

* * *

The klaxon bell pulsed five times, repeating every five seconds.

“What’s that?” said Sophie.

“General Quarters,” said Phoebe. Everyone looked at her. “Am I the only one who read the contractor’s manual?”

“What does it mean?” She had to wait five seconds to hear the reply.

“Could be anything. At GQ, we’re locked in here, and all the sailors go to their stations.”

“But it’s probably not good,” said Kurt.

“When are alarms ever good?” she said.

The klaxon bell stopped, and the Commander spoke over the intercom.

“This is the XO. At 14:22 hours, a large artificial object was seen performing a controlled descent into the Atlantic Ocean two nautical miles off our starboard bow. Communications with the USS
Freedom
and the USS
Independence
have confirmed identical sightings on the East and West Coasts. We do not know the purpose or capabilities of these objects, and until further notice we will remain at General Quarters. I will keep you apprised. Bozek out.”

Three identical spheres had descended, each 1,000 feet in diameter with a mirrored surface: one in the Gulf of Mexico near New Orleans, one in the Pacific near San Francisco, and one in the Atlantic near Virginia Beach.

Four minutes later, an antenna rose from each, rising straight up 100 feet.

Nicole pointed to Kurt and Sophie and told them to double-time it.

They stopped at the brig. There were only two cells, one already shut and lined from the inside with aluminum foil. The cell doors were made of horizontal and vertical steel bands, forming open squares about four by four inches. They could hear people in the other cell taping the corners of the foil sheets firmly to the bands.

“Get in, now!” Kurt and Sophie climbed in the open cell, and Nicole followed. Inside was a blue canvas bag with a USS
Fort Worth
patch. Nicole unzipped it and started handing out aluminum foil, tape, and a knife. She cursed. “I only have one knife.”

Sophie said, “I have one.”

“How’d you get that past – never mind. Cover the door.”

Kurt pulled long sheets of foil, and Sophie taped them in place, except where she needed Kurt’s height. They checked the edges, applied a few more pieces of tape, and sighed.