Animalis (4 page)

“Don’t you dare bite me,” Jax whispered to the pair.

“What’s that?” Hank said. “I’m done. On my way.”

Jax fought the wind current, pulling himself along a tube that ran along the ceiling to the door. The countdown was getting dangerously low:

05:50     05:49     05:48

He was nearly to the door when the lights went out. The yellow and orange flash of the emergency lights had been cut, and the blackness outside of his retina monitor was absolute.

“Jax, power? Ah, son—” Hank stopped himself from cursing. “Lights!” And a beam of light came streaming down the corridor from Hank’s suit.

Jax quickly switched his own light on from his retina monitor.

“Watch your speed,” Jax said.

Hank was falling too fast through the hall. Something had happened to him; he was too far away from any of the walls to slow himself down.

“It’s the suction,” Hank said. “Abominable rat. Jax, grab my hand!” Hank put his hand out as far as he could reach.

Jax moved. He had to keep a hold of the tube, or they would both tumble to the end of the plane. His mind bypassed his other hand, which was holding the two suffocating ferrets, and his only other option was his feet. Jax stretched his body out.

“Grab my foot!” Jax said, and he felt Hank’s hand hit his boot.

It was no good, Jax’s legs were knocked away before Hank could get a grip. Hank tumbled passed, spinning now from hitting the boot.

Jax hesitated, but he knew what he had to do. The ferrets were getting in the way.

He started to let go of his grip on the tail.

“Umph!” Hank’s light stopped a few yards down the hall, and was moving back toward the door.

“Hank! What’s going on?” Jax held onto the tail. He twisted his body to shine the light down the hall. His body wasn’t being tugged toward the tail of the plane anymore.

Hank emerged from the darkness being pulled along the ceiling by the rat.

“Human, getting in the way. Getting into trouble.” The voice of the rat was quiet in the thinner atmosphere.

“Jax! It’s got me. The rat’s got me! Get me away from it!”

“Scrounging around my plane. Quit wiggling! I’ll get you to your pod.”

Hank was still moving closer. Jax checked the countdown:

04:22

Could he trust the rat to bring Hank to the pod? Why would it care? They were all about to burst into flames anyway. Jax might still be able to save the ferrets, if he went for the pod now, and he still couldn’t shake the feeling that they were important.

He took the risk: pulling himself along the tube while he opened the pod with the retina monitor.

When he got to the door, the rat was right behind him. Its puffy marshmallow body bulged and curved, grasping the ceiling with three limbs while carrying Hank’s weightless body.

“Jax, what are those things?” Hank asked. “We’re not taking anything with us.”

Jax pushed the ferrets through and then took Hank’s hand. “I know this sounds stupid, but they feel important. Some dream—or déjà vu.”

“Not going to happen—not on
my
mission,” Hank said. His eyes shot back and forth, reading something in his monitor. “They’re not even animals, Jax. The computer can’t find a match from the scan. What if they’re an unknown species of Animalis?”

“What?” Jax hadn’t thought to check the icon the program had generated for the creatures. It was a horrible thought, bringing unknown, possibly dangerous animals onto a military plane. What was the worst they could do, though, bite a few people? He imagined an Animalis plot to blow up the military plane. No, the creatures weren’t going to explode. The chemicals would have shown up in the scan and thrown up red flags.

Jax checked the countdown:

02:52

They were going to be hitting atmosphere very soon, heating the pod and the plane to unbearable temperatures. If the rat wasn’t able to seal the hole it had made, the heat would easily pour into the plane and incinerate them all.

“I’m sorry, Hank. We don’t have time. I’m launching as soon as we get the door closed.” Jax pulled himself into the pod. “If they are a new species, that could be big news for science. We could be sitting on some—what’d you call it?—prolific creds.”

“That’s ridiculous.” But as Hank said it, he climbed into the pod. “And it’s ‘prodigious.’”

As the door closed, Jax looked out to see the rat one last time, but it had already vanished into the blackness. Jax commanded the pod to pressurize with air. When the ferrets had come in contact with the interior of the pod, they had lodged into a nook between the chairs.

“Launching,” Jax said.

With a jolt, the pod detached from the plane. Jax could see its exterior now, glowing orange, creating a trail of excited atmosphere behind it. He pulled the pod up, fighting to escape the death dive, forcing their bodies against their chairs.

They had made it. As they continued to rise out of the atmosphere, the glow around the pod faded.

The countdown ticked off its last numbers:

19     18     17

The two of them looked down in unison, the prospect of watching the plane explode was too alluring.

11     10     09

Jax frowned. These were the last moments of the rat’s life. Scurrying around, muttering to itself, so convinced it was going to fix the problem. Jax wasn’t even sure the thing had been self-aware. But then it had helped them, pulling Hank back to their pod, and Jax felt sorry that it had to die.

05     04     03

The plane was still falling, carving a beautiful streak across the sky. Dropping farther and farther away. The hull of the plane would soon pass three thousand degrees Fahrenheit. At any moment, the expanding pockets of air in the metal would burst, causing a chain reaction that would instantly rip a hole through the plane and into the fuel tank. The intense temperature would ignite the entire supply at the same time, creating an unbelievable fireworks show.

00

They waited.

“Wow, what did the rat do? His engines are showing active again,” Hank said.

“No, that’s impossible,” Jax said, but he actually felt hopeful. It was strange, he realized, to hope for an Animalis to live.

Jax had one of the pod’s cameras zoom in, and he saw the blue flames coming from the plane’s jets. He marveled at the rat’s tenacity. It looked like it was gaining altitude again.

“I would have lost a lot of money on that dumb rat,” Hank said. “The computer said the engine coolant line was gone. That’s a repair you can only do from the outside, with a new hose, and about three hours of labor.”

But from the way the rest of the ship was put together, Jax figured the fix was probably far less than Federal Aviation Association standards.

“Yes, sir,” Hank said. “I’m receiving the trajectory now.” Hank was staring a few feet in front of himself, probably talking with the captain through his retina monitor. “No … No, that’s plenty of distance, but our pod is right in the line of fire. … Yes … Yes, sir.” He turned to Jax. “Throttle your starboard thrusters for about three seconds.” Hank’s attention went back to watching the rat plane gain altitude.

Jax hesitated.
Line of fire?
Were they going to have the
Hornet
shoot down the rat plane? Jax raised his hand, ready to hit the thrusters to get out of the line of fire. But he didn’t want to. The rat hadn’t attacked them, and probably would have cooperated with any demands the captain had made. It might have been close to US airspace, but it wasn’t trying to enter it. International law dictated that lethal force was reserved for military combatants. It was one thing to let the rat plummet to its own demise, but completely different to shoot it down without exhausting nonviolent measures.

Hank started to open his mouth again, but stopped. He was watching Jax.
Now,
he mouthed.

Jax had to throttle the thrusters; it was mutiny not to.
Chain of command, orders are to be followed …
It had been carved into the very core of his brain during boot camp.

You aren’t the one shooting it down,
Jax tried to tell himself.
Let whoever pulls the trigger on the
Hornet
take the blame.

Hank pushed Jax on the arm; his eyes were intense. He nodded to the thruster controls.

But Jax couldn’t do it. He pulled his hand away from the thrusters.

In a flash of movement, Hank threw his weight on Jax and contorted his body in front of him. His arm shot out and slammed down on the thrusters. The two ferret creatures squeaked and hissed, with the force of the pod rocketing to the side and clearing the path for the laser beam that would come from the
Hornet
.

“Clear!” Hank said.

Jax looked up and saw the turret on the front of the
Hornet
light up. The tip glowed a hot white, and the molecules of ozone that were in the laser’s path radiated light as the laser fired. He turned to look at the rat plane. It had moved too far away for Jax to see, but he could tell about where it was by the stream of vapor that had formed from the ozone condensing and releasing the energy the laser had left behind, trailing off in the distance.

But there was no explosion, or burst of debris. Jax had stalled too long, and the rat plane had moved out of range. The laser had certainly hit its target, but with several miles of atmosphere getting in the way of the beam, it had lost too much of its concentrated energy to do any damage.

Hank spoke again to someone in his helmet. “No, the pod doesn’t have enough oxygen to stay in orbit for more than twenty more minutes. … No, if it enters the atmosphere it will burn up. … Yes …” Hank waited with his eyes closed when he had finished speaking. Then he turned to Jax with a solemn expression. “Alright, I don’t know what you were thinking, Jax. Go ahead and return to the plane for docking.”

Hank lifted himself off of Jax, but slapped the back of his helmet hard with his hand. Jax felt his stomach sink. What was he thinking? He could actually be executed for what he had done. Was he willing to trade his life for the rat’s?

Or worse, he could be dishonorably discharged and sent home.

Chapter 3

Discipline

“I—” Jax stopped himself. With a light click, the seal released and he pulled his helmet off. He waited a few more moments as Hank did the same, effectively cutting off the microphones that would have recorded their conversation.

The pod had latched onto the company jumper, and the two of them were stalling before opening the hatch. Even the two ferret-like creatures were quiet and unmoving. Jax had expected them to start scurrying around once the orbital weightlessness had ended, but for the most part, they had stayed out of sight behind the two chairs.

Beyond the pod door, Jax could imagine the captain waiting for him. In his mind, Hernandez’s face was contorted with rage. Would he give Jax time to explain himself? Could Jax justify his actions somehow?

Or will he send me home before I even open my mouth?

Jax was the one stalling. He watched Hank burn through information in his retina monitor, his eyes shifting in seemingly random directions like he was an insane person. Hank was busy with something.
Writing his last will and testament …
But that wouldn’t require any eye movement; the words would have been easily dictated as he thought them.

“I’m taking the blame,” Jax said. “They can’t bring you down with me and—”

“Yes, you take the blame,” Hank said, cutting Jax off. “But it’s because you were the one that found
this
information while I was busy trying to follow the captain’s, admittedly ignorant, orders.”

A prompt blinked in Jax’s monitor, linking to a document. Jax opened it and scanned through it:

… arrive in Port Hedland, Australia …

… the cargo of the two planes …

… explosives. Narasimha will provide the targets …

… all evidence will vanish …

“Is this real?” Jax asked. “This was in the rat’s computer?”

It was outrageous: the Animalis militants attacking Australia? It was the one place that had opened their arms to receive the Animalis! There had been rumors that they would begin attacking North America next, and that was the reason the border patrol had been reinforced by the US Army. It couldn’t be Australia.

“It was.” Hank reached for the door. “And it’s a good thing you stopped us from blowing up his ship and making them scatter back into the woodwork. We might still have a chance to actually do some damage if we—Ahhhhhh!” Hank jerked his body out of his seat.

Jax heard a hiss, and the white ferret creature ducked its head back behind the chair.

“It bit me, Jax! Your stupid thing bit me!” Hank backed up against the wall, holding his side.

Jax released his harness and moved in front of the gap the creature had come through. Now even his choice to save the ferrets was backfiring on him. They weren’t even grateful that their insignificant lives had been spared.

There was a knock at the pod’s door.

“Warrant Officer Schneps?” said a grizzled, accented voice. It was the captain.

Jax felt a cold chill filling his stomach. Hank, though, had to have some kind of plan brewing with what they’d learned. The computer’s information still hadn’t settled into Jax’s mind. He wasn’t sure if Hank had fabricated the document, or if they had really stumbled across secret Animalis plans. He would keep his mouth shut for as long as he could, go along with whatever Hank was scheming, and do exactly what he was told to do.

“Let me do the talking,” Hank whispered.

——

“What do you plan to do with this soldier?” Captain Hernandez gestured to Jax like he was a maggot. “Insubordination is unacceptable.”

The captain’s physical presence was intimidating. Jax felt an electric charge in the air—a weight to the moment that a wall screen, no matter how realistic the representation was, could never reproduce. The pod behind the three of them was closed, with the two animals still inside, and Jax and Hank still held their helmets under their arms. They stood in the vacuum chamber with the captain as the
Hornet
descended back through the atmosphere.

“Nothing,” Hank said. His voice was confident.

“If you’re incapable of keeping your soldiers in line, you’ll be stripped of your command.” Hernandez leaned closer to Hank, lowering his voice: “It needs to be ground into every man and woman that thinks they can wear one of those uniforms. Orders are not given as a suggestion. The organization of the military is strictly maintained because the people who are burdened with the responsibility of making decisions have to know with one hundred percent certainty that their decision will be executed.”

“This soldier may have prevented us from making a bigger mistake,” Hank said.

Jax kept silent but cringed at Hank’s audacity to speak back to the captain with that much confidence.

Hernandez straightened with a scowl. “What do you mean?”

“I had given Jax permission to review the information retrieved from the computer …”

The captain’s nostrils flared at this reported breach of need-to-know protocol. But Hank kept talking.

“And when we were on board, he came across two never-before-seen animals. They don’t match anything that is known to science—animal
or
Animalis.” Hank let that sink in for a second before continuing. “This is more complex than just cutting off one shipment of weapons.”

Hank looked back at the pod door. “There. You see that?”

Jax turned along with the captain and saw the white creature’s head sniffing the air around the window on the pod door. Now that they were on the plane, in the presence of the captain, the creature looked more like an infestation than some important scientific discovery.

Captain Hernandez grew so big that Jax thought he was on the verge of erupting. “You brought an animal on my plane?”

Hank kept going. “Two, sir. But what Jax found in the data recovered was much more disturbing than these animals.”

The captain raised his head, looking at the air three feet in front of himself.

“That is the document that highlights what we discovered,” Hank said. “The Animalis are not planning to attack the States, like we all thought. Their next target is going to be in Australia, somewhere in Port Hedland.” Hank waited a moment while the captain scanned the document.

“What does this have to do with those two animals?” Hernandez asked while reading.

Hank lowered his voice, almost dramatically: “They may have the ability to create new forms of life,” he said and then waited.

The captain stopped reading and looked at him, nearly rolling his eyes.

“Check for yourself; they are completely new to science,” Hank said. “And it’s impossible that they have just now been discovered. They were
created
, and the only explanation is that the Animalis now have the same technology that created the Animalis in the first place. It could be the Ivanovich Machine!”

Hernandez folded his arms and let out a breath weighted with lost patience.

Jax had never heard of an Ivanovich Machine, and couldn’t tell if the captain had, either. The way Jax had always understood it, there hadn’t been any special technology used to create the Animalis. It had been the work of hundreds of scientists working in secret for nearly a decade at the beginning of the twenty-first century—a deranged Russian billionaire named Romanov, throwing aside every moral objection to achieve his insane vision for the future.

But the captain wasn’t stopping Hank. “Proceed,” he said.

“With the protection clause in the United Nations Security Council’s resolution ten-nine-seven-five,” Hank said, “all participating members of the body—Australia included—are required to foster efforts made to maintain normal societal functions.

“There is a precedence,” Hank went on, though the conversation had officially gone beyond Jax’s understanding, “for a US Army unit, or company, to peruse hostile combatants into an obliging country.”

“And Australia is forced to oblige,” Hernandez said. “You’re talking about what happened in Germany, with the Sen Grial unit?”

Hank watched the captain’s face as he thought about it. Jax was amazed to even see him considering it. Would their company be sent on a secret mission to break up a series of terrorist attacks? If Hank was actually trying to convince the captain to act on the information, it was real. The documents and the threat to Australia were real.

“I had the foresight to leave the rat’s computer with the appearance that it had blocked me from accessing its encrypted data,” Hank said. “The rat is sure to divulge that he was boarded by the army, and that we took the two animals, but it is unlikely that they will change their plans knowing that the computer wasn’t hacked. We have a real chance to get one step ahead of the Animalis militants.”

After another moment of thought, the captain sighed. “If you are unwilling to decide how to keep your own unit in line, I will take it upon myself to choose a course of disciplinary action—for the
both
of you.” The captain looked back at the door to the pod again and said, “Get those animals contained and ready for medical to sedate.”

Jax and Hank saluted. The captain returned it and then left.

Hank just stood there, with his hand still held to his forehead in a salute, staring blankly into space. The echo of the captain’s boots seemed to hang in the air, vibrating. Jax wanted Hank to say something, some lighthearted joke that would show that everything was still going according to plan. But he wasn’t speaking, and his face was growing pale.

The captain wasn’t going to send them home; Jax was confident of that. He had been paranoid to imagine that he would. He shouldn’t even have been surprised that the captain would ignore Hank’s recommendation to bring the war to the suburbs of Australia. That was a decision for a general at least. But the threat of being kicked out of the army still loomed in the possible future, twisting Jax’s gut with a sickening nervousness. And then there was the idea that the Animalis had created the two ferret creatures using this Ivanovich Machine … Jax still didn’t know what that might mean.

Quietly, Jax began to undo the seals of his spacesuit. He stepped out into the hall and the closet door folded open. When he turned back and looked at Hank, he was still frozen in place, though he had lowered his salute.

Say something,
Jax urged himself, but nothing was coming to mind. He finished pulling off his spacesuit and hung the pieces up in the closet.

“Hey,” Jax finally had it. “Are we going to watch that arena video or what?”

Hank turned. “You’re actually going to like this one,” he said, and his signature smile lit up his face again.

——

“What’s this you’re watching?” Felix asked, poking his head through Hank’s cabin door. “Aw no!” he said after watching for a moment. “The decapitation video? Again?” He stepped into the room and moved beside Hank. Maven stepped through behind him and folded her arms.

Jax wasn’t excited to watch the video and adding decapitation made him want to reach to the wall and shut it off. But he wouldn’t … because somehow these horrific videos made Hank feel better.

“Way to spoil it,” Hank whined. “Jax hasn’t seen it yet.”

“That croc is at the top of my nightmare list,” Felix said. He sat down on the cage Jax had printed out to hold the two mystery animals. “Look at how its eyes roll back into its skull when it tries to bite.”

The relief-like images on the wall moved as fluidly as if there really were two tiny Animalis attached to the wall. With sections of the wall extending up to four inches away from its normal flat surface, the video demanded everyone’s attention. The floor of the recreated arena sloped up slightly, adding to the illusion of depth for the two Animalis to stand on. They seemed almost puppet-like and silly—impossibly realistic dolls circling each other—but when they struck, it was with a savage violence.

“Maven, have you seen this one?” Felix asked.

She shook her bobbed black hair. “No.” Her eyes weren’t on the wall screen, but on what Felix was sitting on.

Felix looked down too and immediately jumped up. “What on Earth?”

“They’re not mine,” Hank said. He stepped away so that Felix could examine them.

“I thought they were going to incinerate on the rat plane, so I rescued them,” Jax said. He kept glancing back at the arena fight, both to let Hank know he was still watching it and because the motion of the tiny figures on the wall activated his protective instincts. He didn’t want them jumping off the wall and attacking someone. Impossible, but instincts were hard to reason with.

The two Animalis were equally matched in size, five and a half foot, 150 pounds. The crocodile stood on its hind legs and wore a ragged, tan jumpsuit. Its little eyes glistened, and the thin vertical slits of its irises gave no indication of thought or emotion. The thing was evil and—Felix was right—nightmare worthy. With a quick hop, it backed against the wall of the arena and huddled against the wall as the ram threatened it with its large horns.

“Can I hold one?” Felix asked, already undoing the latch of the cage.

“Absolutely not,” Hank said. “I’m not giving those things another chance to bite me.” Hank pulled up his shirt to show the little bandage on his hip. Hovering in the air beside the bandage was an image taken of the puffy, red skin where he had been bitten.