Humanity had thought itself alone in the universe.
Wasn’t as preposterous of a supposition as it had seemed in the past, back when we could only gaze at the stars and wonder. With the invention of the Kimura-Tomczak Drive over two centuries ago finally allowing FTL-travel, humanity had discovered hundreds of habitable worlds, had colonized dozens of those, and had spread its reach across thousands of lightyears. Before, we could only look.
Now, we could explore.
Alien life had been found of course, but no civilizations, nothing more advanced than pre-sapient lifeforms on par with apes or elephants. After such a long and fruitless search, there were many who began to espouse the idea that perhaps we were alone, perhaps all of creation was for our sole benefit.
The attack came without warning.
At first humanity didn’t even realize it was under attack, only that communications with a recently established colony in NGC 6752 had been disrupted. A squadron sent to investigate never returned. This was deemed unusual. Further inquiries were scheduled, but the incident was quickly forgotten. Not a cause for concern.
Taunrak Secundus was attacked three weeks later.
Taunrak Secundus was the oldest settled planet in NGC 6752, home to 4 billion people, and the Taunrak system was the homeport of the 11th fleet. At the time of first contact there were 124 ships, roughly 42,000,000 in battle fleet tonnage, in the system. Nearly half the 11th’s full strength. These were further supported by planetside and orbital defense-and-denial systems and thousands of smaller ship-based and terrestrial attack drones. Just counting humanity’s forces made it the single largest space engagement in history.
It was over in less than an hour.
The first indication something was wrong was when an interstellar recon station reported a solid mass 2 lightyears across approaching the Taunrak system at FTL speed. Estimated time of arrival 38 hours. This was flagged as a sensor malfunction, but by the time a command prompt to reboot and run diagnostics reached the station it failed to ping back. Multiple Taunrak installations detected the anomaly 16 hours later.
Impossibly, it was not a malfunction.
The 11th was mobilized. Priority comm was sent to all vessels out of port to return to Taunrak system immediately if they could do so within 18 hours. All other vessels were ordered to fall back to 47 Tuc and rendezvous with the 6th fleet at Tau Coronae. Contained in the communication was all telemetry collected on the anomaly so far, to be transmitted back to Earth.
Emergency evacuation of Taunrak Secundus was ordered at the same time.
Admiral Jones, commanding officer of the 11th, knew it was impossible to get 4 billion people off-planet in less than a day, but the attempt had to be made. Every commercial and private vessel that was within range was mobilized and put to work at the effort. Tens of thousands of flights were coordinated between the surface of Taunrak Secundus and orbiting stations, where passengers were transferred aboard commercial vessels that had jettisoned their cargo into Taunrak’s star, ships so massive they had to be constructed in orbit and could never land planetside. With their holds hastily atmoed by siphoning from Taunrak Secundus’s atmosphere, each could carry hundreds of thousands far and fast enough to get them to 47 Tuc. All told, the actions of the refugee armada saved 1.8 billion people.
That was the only victory to be had that day.
Meanwhile, Admiral Jones deployed the 11th outside of Taunrak’s gravity well in a single loose battle line that stretched for three lightseconds. A gravity minefield had been hastily deployed in a rough arc two lightyears in front of the battle-line, in hopes that the anomaly would be crippled or destroyed, or at least forced out of FTL.
If the approaching anomaly had detected danger, it did not alter its course or speed.
The anomaly slammed into the minefield. Hundreds of small stars sprang to life in an instant, only to careen wildly off of each other and then collapse, creating a swirling mass of miniature black holes that existed for a fraction of a second before evaporating themselves. Any human ship that had found itself within the minefield would have been torn apart instantaneously by the wildly fluctuating gravity, and the ensuing micro-gravity storm prevented any FTL travel through local space for hours. Sensors indicated that the portion of the anomaly just beyond the minefield had dropped to sub-light speed, but the rest was still traveling at its previous speed and trajectory. Worse, despite it now being shown to be impossible, the sensors were still reading the anomaly as a solid mass.
According to the instruments, the anomaly had sustained no damage.
Now that at least some of the anomaly was moving at sub-light speed, Admiral Jones ordered visuals.
He could barely comprehend what he saw.
The anomaly was not a single entity. Within visual range were thousands of what must have been ships, if ships were constructed of chitin and flesh instead of ceramic and steel. Creatures of nightmare, some larger than the largest ship Admiral Jones had under his command, and so numerous that they fully obscured the stars behind them. They advanced in their horrific multitude, seemingly as ignorant, or perhaps as contemptuous, of the fleet arrayed against them as they had been of the minefield.
At five lightseconds fire-at-will was ordered.
The swarm made no effort to avoid the onslaught. Hundreds of the approaching monstrosities suffered explosive decompression as their hides were raked by invisible laser-fire. Seconds later kinetic rounds accelerated to near-relativistic speeds smashed through that had survived, slicing through multiple ranks before their ballistic energy was finally spent. Within a minute of this sustained cannonade thousands of the approaching things lay dead and floating.
Behind them lay thousands more.
The 11th continued to unload on the enemy bearing down on Taunrak with ferocity, but humanity’s weapons systems were not designed for such prolonged, sustained abuse. Within minutes there were reports of ships overloading their heatsinks, of ships almost melting their gun barrels. No human engineer had conceived of an enemy that could absorb such concentrated destruction with disinterest. A general retreat was ordered. One-hundred and twenty-four ships withdrew to within the gravity well of Taunrak. Not a single ship had been lost.
The enemy had not even deigned to return fire.
Once within the system Admiral Jones redeployed his fleet into three lines of defense between the swarm and Taunrak Secundus, screens constituting the first two lines, battleships and carriers behind. Now that the engagement distance had closed precariously Admiral Jones ordered all carriers and Taunrak Secundus to launch their support wings. Thousands of unmanned fighters and bombers took up preprogrammed positions to further screen the larger ships and protect the flanks. In the future there would be those who questioned why Admiral Jones would stage a desperate final stand instead of ordering a full retreat to preserve the fleet, but none of them had been there that day. They had never been faced with such a choice, where saving yourself meant sacrificing countless others. They did not have to gaze at Taunrak Secundus and see the continued evacuation, hear the fear and panic over civilian comms. Every second the 11th delayed the inevitable was another thousand lives saved, every minute another ship disembarked for safety. For Admiral Jones, there was no choice to be made. As long as it could still fight, the 11th was going to buy as much time for the fleeing civilians as it could.
Soon after the fleet had taken up positions the enemy entered the system.
A message was broadcast on all bands, civilian and military, a message that has entered history as Admiral Jones’s last words.
The message was this:
“Men, it's been an honor to be your commanding officer and to serve alongside you. I don’t expect any of us to survive what is to come, but I promise you this…”
“I’ll be damned if they’re going to continue to ignore us.”
The Heavens were set ablaze.
Orbital platforms across the system opened fire. Each station had firepower comparable to a small fleet, and was tens of miles in size. Because of this each was able to support weaponry a magnitude greater in size and power than even the heaviest battleship. What they fired at wasn’t simply destroyed. It was obliterated. The beasts that had menaced the system simply disappeared, as did those behind for almost a twentieth of a lightsecond. A second barrage scythed through those who had been shielded by their now dead comrades, inflicting even more massive carnage. Admiral Jones had been a man of his word.
The swarm was finally forced to take notice.
It separated into whirls and gyrations, resembling a flock of birds in flight. No longer was it implacable. Instead of approaching along a single vector the swarm swelled and expanded in all directions, as if to encircle and swallow the entire system as an amoeba digests its prey, subsuming it entirely within itself. The 11th employed volley-fire to maintain a constant curtain of laser-fire and wall of shrapnel in all directions, burning or shredding any portions of the swarm that threatened to slip past and endanger the refugee armada. The orbital stations continued to fire at the main body of the approaching swarm, but there was no end to its numbers. Suddenly, as if driven by some singular, horrible intelligence, the swarm moved as one and turned its full attention to that which was preventing it from achieving its goals.
The swarm finally returned fire.
It responded with kinetic projectiles, slow by the standards of space combat, far slower than had been achieved by human ingenuity with our own kinetic weapons.
But, as the swarm had already amply demonstrated, quantity has a quality all its own.
There was little time for the 11th to take evasive maneuvers, and there was no place to escape to anyway. Hundreds of drones sacrificed themselves to intercept projectiles and automated point-defense systems sprung to life, but not even AI-targeting systems could keep up with the sheer volume of incoming. Forty ships were destroyed or disabled by the initial volley, and no ship escaped without some damage.
A second salvo ended the Battle of Taunrak.
Again the swarm fired its kinetic projectiles from all sides, but following in the wake of these came a roiling wall of darkness, millions of attack-craft, barely half the size of the average man, far smaller than the drones humanity employed. These attack-craft overwhelmed any defense the 11th could muster, blanketing every ship and boring into their hulls with some sort of plasma cutters. Not even the meters-thick armor of the orbital platforms could long withstand such an onslaught.
The final refugee ship to safely escape Taunrak’s gravity well reported that, prior to engaging their KT Drive, their sensors recorded a series of explosions on the far-side of the Taurnak system consistent with known FTL collisions. It is believed that Admiral Jones’s final command had been the scuttling of what remained of the 11th fleet by ordering a jump to FTL within the gravity well, taking as much of the anomaly as it could with it.
The first battle for humanity’s survival had been lost.
This wasn’t an invasion, not in the classical sense. This was unbridled consumption.
An Infestation.
After the defeat of the 11th at Taunrak there was nothing to halt the Infestation’s advance. The three other colonized planets of NGC 6752, Baku Sextus, Norvegia Primus, Ponnell Quartus, were evacuated much as Taunrak Secundus was. Many escaped.
Many more did not.
Entire worlds were stripped of all biomass to feed the ever growing swarm. Billions of species were rendered extinct. The Infestation was voracious. Insatiable. Feeding itself only to grow in number and increase its need to feed itself.
It was this ravenous hunger that was humanity’s only hope.
As the Infestation encountered more and more worlds containing life its progress slowed, more and more of its time and energy spent converting biomass into itself. What had been a solid line of advance when it had entered NGC 6752 became disjointed and piecemeal by the time it had reached 47 Tuc, tendrils slithering through the darkness between the stars towards any sustenance to be found.
Humanity refused to resign itself to defeat and extinction.
Hope was not lost, for humanity held two advantages over the Infestation: engagement range and mobility. The battle of Taurnak had proven that Infestation ships had an effective engagement range far inferior to that of humanity’s, relying instead on overwhelming numbers, and, though whatever propulsion system it used to move itself through space was capable of FTL travel, it was far slower than the Kimura-Tomczak Drive that had been perfected over the centuries. It had taken the swarm three weeks to travel between the unnamed colony in NGC 6752 and Taunrak Secundus, a trip of only 28-hours by KT Drive.
A counter-offensive was quickly planned and executed.
All colonies in 47 Tuc and the Vela Ridge were evacuated well in advance of the Infestation. A defensive line was established stretching from NGC 6397 to the Orion Nebula, and every available fleet was deployed to sterilize any world supporting life between that line and the growing Infestation. It was hoped that by doing so the swarm itself could be starved.
The second part of the counter-offensive was more proactive.
Raiding fleets were organized to strike at the Infestation swarm anywhere it could be defeated in detail, using their superior speed and range to attack quickly and withdraw before the Infestation’s vastly superior numbers could be brought to bear. Death by a thousand cuts. The Infestation’s advance slowed even further, and was finally halted hundreds of lightyears short of the 6397-Orion line.
Two years into the war, it was decided it was time for humanity to push back.
General Terry, Supreme Terrestrial Commander, wondered why his thoughts had turned to the beginnings of the Infestation as his ship began its descent to Eremus Prime. Since the start of the Great Offensive progress had been slow, but steady. The Infestation had been pushed back to almost the edge of 47 Tuc, and now planets that could not be sterilized years ago were being purified of Infestation in a deliberate manner, bypassing heavily defended or strategically unimportant worlds to instead threaten the Infestation’s operational-cohesion and supply-lines. It was a campaign of General Terry’s design, and already Siegawa Sextus and Erteda Tertius had been successfully purified. Eremus Prime was the next domino in that line poised to fall.
General Terry wished he could feel better about his accomplishments.
The General forced himself to stop being so morose as his transport touched down and he quickly disembarked. As soon as he was clear the ship knifed upward towards the stars and disappeared. There were only two ways humanity could hope to safely travel within space contested by the Infestation: with alacrity, spontaneity, and overwhelming force, as with raiding, landing, or resupply operations, or by being so insignificant that the Infestation couldn’t be bothered to send a single drone to investigate.
General Terry had chosen the latter.
As he walked towards the building nearest to the spaceport, General Terry saw two men exit said building and make their way towards him. He recognized the first as soon as he saw him, as well he should. They had both come up through the ranks together and were close friends. General Terry hadn’t considered any other for command of the Eremus Prime campaign.
General Harrison saluted as soon as he was within twelve paces, always a stickler for procedure. His companion, a Staff Sergeant General Terry did not recognize, mirrored his commanding officer. General Terry returned the salute with a smile.
As soon as the formalities were seen to General Terry closed the distance and offered a handshake that General Harrison accepted graciously.
“Sir, welcome to Eremus Prime.” General Harrison said, releasing his friend’s hand.
“Good to be here William. How goes the war on the ground?”
“Well Sir. We’ve sanitized more than half the planet’s surface, and even though resistance has become increasingly fierce we are still making progress. At our current rate of sanitation, we should achieve purification a month ahead of schedule.”
“I knew I could count on you William.”
General Harrison accepted the compliment gracefully, and then responded with a question of his own.
“Sir, how goes the wider war?”
General Terry took a moment to collect his thoughts before answering, “The fleet is keeping the Infestation occupied in interstellar space, chasing shadows and its own tail, but we need Eremus Prime sanitized to initiate the next step. The fleet cannot operate through the Eremus system safely as long as Eremus Prime remains infested, and we can’t afford to lose even a single ship. Not when the Infestation can lose a hundred and still come out ahead in the exchange. Eremus Prime is the only habitable planet in this sector, and the Eremus system is the lynchpin of the enemy’s frontline. We drive them off Eremus Prime, we finally control the system. We control the system, that allows us to strike deep into infested territory, cut reinforcement to their right and threaten encirclement of their left. Their entire line will collapse.”
General Harrison had understood the importance of the Eremus Prime campaign, but to have orders relayed to him was one thing.
To have his friend state it was another.
“You can count on me, Sir.” he replied.
“I know I can, William.”
“I have to ask Sir, why visit Eremus Prime now? Things are progressing, but it’s not exactly a risk-free venture, especially given your importance to the war-effort.”
A shadow passed over general Terry’s face.
“Do you know how many men we lost taking Erteda Tertius?”
General Harrison turned somber as well.
“I haven’t seen the official numbers, Sir.”
“I have. Twenty-two million men.”
“It was necessary Sir. Without that, we wouldn’t be here.”
General Terry sighed, “It might have been necessary, but that doesn’t make it any easier to bear. I was the man who gave the order. Those men’s deaths are on me. Twenty-two million families that lost their sons. How many more millions are we going to lose here? That’s why I have to be here William. I have no place ordering these men to die if I don’t have the courage to look them in the eye first.”
General Harrison reached out and firmly grasped his friend’s shoulder, offering him what solace he could.
“Sir, I’ve never known a commander with more consideration for the well-being of his men than you, and I know that the men know it too. They don’t follow you because they have to, they’ve always followed because they want to. They’d follow you to Hell itself, Sir. Gladly.”
General Terry barked a short laugh, bereft of mirth.
“Given what we’re facing, it may come to that William.”
Throughout the entirety of this personal exchange the Staff Sergeant had stood motionless exactly where he had first saluted, stable and stoic, seemingly not hearing or not interested. General Harrison must have seen General Terry glance in the Staff Sergeant’s direction, because he turned and walked back to stand next to his companion.
“Sir, allow me to introduce you to Staff Sergeant Mazyr. He’s a man I trust implicitly. He'll be in charge of your Personal Security Detail as long as you're planetside. I’ll introduce you to the rest of your detail later. ”
Staff Sergeant Mazyr sprang to life, giving a second salute with his introduction, and General Terry took a moment to take the measure of the man as he returned it: shaved head, deep-set eyes, square jaw, thick neck, broad shoulders, muscular without being overly-so, and tall. The Staff Sergeant stood a head taller than General Terry, and General Harrison, never a tall man himself, barely came up his chest.
He looked like he had just stepped out of a recruiting poster.
“Sir, I look forward to working with you.” the Staff Sergeant said after a moment.
“And I you, Staff Sergeant.” General Terry replied, then turned his attention back to General Harrison, “Alright William, enough self-pity and doubt. There’s a war to be won. But first, there’s something we need to address. Two weeks ago you sent me a personal message. You mentioned Gertrude. We both know you’d never willingly discuss Gertrude, so what was it you felt was so important that you couldn’t risk putting it in a report?”
For the first time General Harrison looked uneasy.
“Not here Sir. Follow me.”
General Terry followed General Harrison as he led the way to a waiting car, parked discreetly in the shadow of the building he and the Staff Sergeant had exited. The windows were tinted, and an opaque divider separated the driver from his passengers. General Terry and General Harrison sat in the back, Staff Sergeant Mazyr rode next to the driver. General Terry thought the cloak-and-dagger escapades overmuch, as it would be impossible to keep the Supreme Commander’s visit to Eremus Prime secret for very long. Someone must have seen him disembark at the starport, and that someone must have already told someone else.
If there was something soldiers did more than fight, it was trade scuttlebutt.
Their destination was a short drive away, a massive building, almost a hangar in size, placed as far away from everything else at HQ as it could be whilst still being on the grounds. General Harrison whisked General Terry inside, Staff Sergeant Mazyr a step behind.
They walked into an abattoir.
Dozens of examination tables were laid out end-to-end, and dozens of specimens, no two alike, rested upon them in various states of butchery. Attending to this bloody task was a frantic mob of scientists, no two moving in the same direction.
Those specimens too large for the tables simply lay on the ground.
Along one wall lay a particularly massive cadaver, a full fifty feet in length and twenty in height, resembling in shape a massive slug, if a slug possessed armor, spines, and far too many teeth. Ladders had been laid against its bulk and scaffolding had been erected around it. Scientists swarmed upon it like ants, or ancient mariners flensing a whale.
The trio moved quickly as they could through the chaos.
Approximately three quarters of the length of the larger building was devoted to this massive bullpen and a smaller section separated by a free-standing wall along the wall opposite the slug-thing, but the last quarter was reserved for a smaller building erected within the first. Stationed at the entrance to this building were two soldiers, the first two General Terry had seen since walking into this madhouse. They quickly saluted and admitted both Generals.
The Staff Sergeant seemed to drift in as an afterthought.
Within this inner-sanctum the energy was more sedate but still tainted by madness. Outside the specimens at least resembled animals, nightmarish as they were, but here scientists bent over lumps of flesh twisted into mockeries of weapons and machinery. General Terry had of course seen pictures of the Infestation’s equivalent of a rifle, read reports describing its form and function in clinical but exhaustive detail, but to see one in the flesh, no pun intended, was a sight he would never forget.
Thankfully, they soon reached their final destination.
Within the innermost inner-sanctum was a laboratory that was meticulous in its presentation: two examination tables bisected the room parallel to the back wall, upon which lay two specimens completely covered by simple white sheets, and sitting upon a metal stool was the only scientist General Terry had seen motionless, almost as if he was waiting for them to start the demonstration.
General Harrison made the introductions.
“Dr. Proust, this is General Terry, Supreme Terrestrial Commander. Sir, this is Dr. Proust, foremost expert on xenobiology we have.”
“General, a pleasure.” Dr. Proust said as rose from the stool and crossed the room to shake General Terry’s hand, “I’m so glad for the opportunities you’ve afforded me to further my studies.”
General Terry was familiar with the name “Dr. Proust”, but he had never had a face to place to the name.
The face he had now was disquieting.
Dr. Proust was beyond old, ancient even, his face one unbroken web of wrinkles, and as bald as an egg, lacking even eyebrows. When standing he hunched forward, holding his arms as a praying mantis would hold its claws. When he looked at you his eyes burned with an intensity that bordered on ominous, as if the good doctor was contemplating the best way to go about taking you apart, same as he would any other specimen. If you told the average person to imagine a mad scientist, they would imagine Dr. Proust. General Terry reminded himself that, appearances notwithstanding, Dr. Proust was indeed the foremost xenobiologist humanity had to offer.
No one had felt the need to introduce the Staff Sergeant.
“Now,” Dr. Proust continued, “before I get to the main attractions, I have to ask General: how acquainted are you with Infestation biology?”
“Assume I’m not Doctor, and proceed from there.”
“Very well. Utterly fascinating creature. I almost wish we had made contact when I was a younger man, when I would have had a lifetime to devote to the study of It. Alas, so little left now.”
“We didn’t ‘make contact’ Doctor. It attacked us.” General Terry replied, his voice perhaps harsher than he had planned.
“Yes, yes, as unfortunate as it was unavoidable, but anger at such an inevitability is misplaced General. The Infestation is what It is, as are we all. I assure you, It harbors no hatred towards humanity. From my observations, I sincerely doubt It experiences emotion at all. It is not malicious, nor does It see what It does as cruel. It consumes and It expands. It survives. That is all. One must at least respect the candor of It.”
“There are less harmful ways to survive, Doctor.”
“Not as the Infestation is capable of seeing it. It doesn’t understand the concept of ‘harm’ because It has no concept of morality. Humanity developed morality, General, because it was required of us as a prerequisite for more complex social structures. Human civilization required cooperation between distinct individuals and morality, at its most basic levels, is the recognition of self in another, to assign ethical worth to something not-self due to an understood connectedness to self. Civilization and morality evolved in a mutualistic relationship, where increased social complexity begat moral expansion and vice versa. From families, to clans, to nations, to all of humanity, animals, even abstract concepts that include inanimate objects, like ‘the environment’. From the family, to the tribe, the polis, the state, the international order, the interstellar order. Do you see?”
General Terry had to admit he did not.
“The Infestation never developed morality because it was never forced to do so in order to increase Its social complexity. See, the Infestation isn’t a species as we would understand it but a single consciousness spread across an almost infinite number of bodies, a hivemind. Its civilization, for lack of a better term, developed along a completely different path than ours, a eusociety consisting of one individual. It never had to take that first step, never had to recognize Itself in another, because there was never another self to recognize. Due to its lack of moral framework, to the Infestation there is nothing outside of Itself. It is not evil, or immoral. It is amoral.”
The Doctor was truly getting going now, his words coming faster as he continued.
“Truly, the Infestation is a fascinating collection of contradictions. For every simplicity It demonstrates a corresponding complexity: It possesses the moral agency of an insect combined with intelligence likely exceeding our own. It may be single-minded in Its pursuit of food, but It does so in ways that indicate rationality, strategic-thinking, long-term planning. All of the Infestation’s technology is biological in nature, and yet within that singular field Its understanding and capabilities exceed ours by centuries. Did you know that every single Infestation drone is a chimera of multiple disparate genomes? So far we’ve managed to identify 163 total. The most we’ve identified in a single drone is fifteen. The DNA of fifteen different species, broken down and knit together to express a desired selection of traits. I’ve been studying what the Infestation does for three years now, and I’m no closer to telling you how than I was at the start.”
“Doctor,” General Harrison interrupted, “I believe it’s time we moved on to why we’re here.”
“What? Oh yes, yes, I apologize General. Sometimes I simply lose myself. As I said, fascinating. I realize your time is precious.” Dr. Proust replied, as if only now being reminded he wasn’t talking to himself.
Dr. Proust walked behind the examination table to General Terry’s left, and motioned for him to come closer. The Doctor gripped the sheet above what appeared to be the specimen’s head, but paused before revealing what was underneath.
“I’m going to warn you General, what you are about to see is disturbing.”
Dr. Proust slowly removed the sheet.
General Terry had thought the Infestation rifle was something he would never forget.
What was under the sheet was worse.
The specimen had a head, two eyes, a mouth, two arms, two legs, its body covered by pink skin. Even had brown hair. It had clearly been sculpted in the likeness of a human.
Which made the difference all the more grotesque.
It had two eyes, yes, but those eyes were set in what should have been the forehead, far larger than they should have been, bulging, and compounded, but not as an insect’s eyes were; instead, multiple recognizably human irises stared up at the ceiling from each, clouded in death.
It had a mouth, yes, but that mouth was a circular, gaping maw lined with barbed-quills that covered the entirety of where its face should have been, leaving no room or a nose.
It had two arms, but those ended in hands that had eight fingers each; two legs, but with knees that bent backwards; pink skin, but in a shade that more closely resembled that of a pig than a human; and finally brown hair that sprouted in random tufts across its body.
General Terry felt a wave of nausea sweep over him.
Thankfully Dr. Proust only revealed the specimen for a few seconds before quickly re-covering it.
“Three months ago we started to see those appearing on the battlefield. They were obviously the first attempts by the Infestation to integrate human DNA into Its chimeras. As you can see, the results were… unsettling, but I showed you that so I can show you this.”
As the Doctor spoke he crossed over to the other examination table, once again beckoning for General Terry to follow.
“Now, I had to bring this one out of the freezer, so I apologize that it's not fresh.”
This specimen was as mundane as the previous had been monstrous.
Concealed beneath this sheet was an ordinary man, though one that had obviously suffered a traumatic death. He was missing his left leg below the knee, his right arm passed the elbow, and his left arm was gone entirely from the shoulder. His torso bore the tell-tale Y-shaped incision, sutured close, indicative of a forensic autopsy, and his calvera had been cut through, his brain removed, and the bone replaced.
General Terry felt his face grow hot with anger at this travesty.
“Who is this Doctor, and why is he here in this charnel house?”
If the Doctor noticed the General’s anger this time, he pretended not to.
“This was Private John Palek. A month ago he was listed as MIA following an offensive. Three days later he was found by a reconnaissance patrol. The doctors gave him the standard battery of tests. Everything appeared normal, and he was cleared to return to duty. Two days later he goes AWOL, and two days after that he sabotages two of our forward listening posts, allowing the Infestation to launch a major offensive.”
“What happened?” asked General Terry.
General Harrison continued Dr. Proust’s narrative.
“The battle lasted for six days across thirty miles of the front, but thankfully we were able to push them back and encircle and destroy numerous enemy forces. Private Palek’s remains were found and recovered during a brief counter-offensive into enemy territory. By that time we had uncovered evidence that pointed to Private Palek’s betrayal, so we turned his remains over to the Doctor here to figure out what the hell happened.”
General Terry turned his attention back to Dr. Proust once General Harrison had finished speaking.
“You think the Infestation turned him somehow?”
“I deemed it unlikely, because if it was some sort of environmental contagion we’d be dealing with more than a single traitor, though it was the first hypothesis I refuted. I ran extensive tests for unknown viruses, bacteria, fungi, or parasites and found nothing out of the ordinary. I ran multiple DNA sequences as well, and every one came back 100% human, and a perfect match for the sequence we had on file for Private Palek. I then performed the autopsy and removed Private Palek’s brain. It was when I was dissecting and testing his brain structure-by-structure that I finally found an answer.”
The Doctor turned his back to his audience and retrieved a small tray from the shelf behind him, placing it upon Private Palek’s chest with a flourish as if he were a magician performing a trick. Upon the tray was a small bottle of formalin, floating inside of which was an even smaller piece of brain tissue. Dr. Proust paused for a moment, perhaps anticipating applause.
When none was forthcoming, the Doctor reluctantly continued.
“I found this small node attached to Private Palek’s pons. Visually it is indistinguishable from normal brain tissue, but genetically it is the only part of Private Palek that contains DNA that matches a known Infestation genome. More specifically it matches a genome that is shared across all Infestation drones, which we have tentatively deduced is responsible for connecting drones to the hivemind. Strengthening this supposition, though far smaller in size, it bears similarities to far larger, more robust, structures found within the brainstems of more conventional drones.”
For a second time General Terry felt himself grow momentarily queasy.
“So what are you saying, Doctor? That the Infestation captured Private Palek, grafted this to his brain, forced him to become part of its hivemind?”
“Thankfully no. Despite how advanced the Infestation may be in biological science, there is no way surgery such as that could have been performed without leaving some sign. No, the node was a natural part of Private Palek’s anatomy, and its existence helped shed light on an anomalous finding that had confused me during Private Palek’s autopsy, and finally led to my unraveling of this particular mystery.”
Dr. Proust paused a moment to collect himself before the grand reveal.
“During the autopsy I noticed the absence of Private Palek’s appendix. Now that in-and-of-itself was not unusual, as Private Palek’s medical records stated he had had an appendectomy at age nine. What was unusual was that there was no visible scarring, and fresh trauma was observed to both the blood-vessels that supplied the appendix and to the cecum. At the time I thought perhaps it was a result of Private Palek’s violent death, but after discovering the Infestation node I came to the only logical conclusion: this Private Palek hadn’t had his appendix removed eighteen-years prior to his death, this Private Palek had his appendix removed a week before his death. This was not the original Private Palek, not our Private Palek, but an Infestation drone cloned from Private Palek and left where we would find it, designed for infiltration and subversion.”
This time General Terry was tempted to applaud.
“Great work Doctor. Now that you understand what to look for, is there any test or tests we can use to discover these infiltrators?”
The Doctor’s face gave General Terry his answer before his words did.
“Short of a brain biopsy, no. And even with a biopsy there’s no guarantee you’ll sample the correct portion of the pons. As I said, in all ways save genetic the Infestation node appears to be normal human brain tissue. I’m attempting to discover a substance that will bind to the Infestation node and make it visible to a non-invasive scan, but despite weeks of experimentation on that front I have no successes to speak of.”
“So we have no idea how many of these infiltrator drones there are among us, and no reliable test to discover them. All we can do is wait for them to betray us.”
General Terry decided to stop focusing on what he couldn’t control, and focus on what he could.
“How many people know about this?”
General Harrison provided the answer.
“Only the men in this room and a handful of senior staff. The official story is Private Palek is still AWOL, and all off-planet transport has been suspended due to increased Infestation presence in the system. The last thing we want is for an infiltrator to get off-world.”
“Where was the Infestation offensive that this fake Private Palek engineered?” Both Generals and the Doctor startled at the interruption.
They had all forgotten there was a fourth man present.
General Harrison turned towards the Staff Sergeant.
“Along the Kursk-Tremble line.”
“How far away from MOB Potemkin is that Sir?”
“A hundred and twenty miles, give-or-take.”
“How big was the salient?”
General Harrison took a moment to remember.
“Thirty miles wide, ninety miles deep.”
“So it reached within thirty miles, give-or-take, of MOB Potemkin, Sir?”
General Terry felt the need to come to General Harrison’s defense.
“What are you getting at Staff Sergeant?”
The Staff Sergeant answered General Terry with a question of his own.
“Sir, how long ago did you inform General Harris about your plans to visit Eremus Prime?”
Now it was General Terry’s turn to try and remember.
“About a month ago.”
“Longer or shorter than about a month ago, Sir?”
“Longer. Five weeks. I sent an encrypted communique to General Harrison personally.”
“Sir, did you mention wanting to visit MOB Potemkin?”
“No Staff Sergeant. I mentioned wanting to visit a MOB, but not Potemkin specifically. Potemkin wasn’t decided upon until General Harrison and myself had corresponded back and forth several times.”
“About twenty-six days ago Sir?”
“Yeah, about.”
Staff Sergeant Mazyr nodded to himself, as if General Terry was confirming he already knew.
“Does no one else here find it suspicious that a week after you, Sir, send word to you, Sir, about plans to visit Eremus Prime, Private Palek is replaced and returned, and a day or two after MOB Potemkin is added to your itinerary, Sir, the drone impersonating Private Palek goes AWOL and orchestrates a massive offensive that just so happens to approach within thirty miles of the precise MOB that you plan to visit? That’s too many coincidences for comfort, Sirs.”
The Generals both mulled over the Staff Sergeant’s words slowly, but it was General Harrison who finally responded.
“I’ll grant you it is a hell of a string of coincidences, Staff Sergeant, but the Infestation offensive didn’t breach the third-line of defense, let alone the fourth. It would have had to breach both to reach MOB Potemkin. Additionally, we were in constant communication with MOB Potemkin throughout the six-days of the battle. There’s no way the Infestation could have replaced everyone at Potemkin in such a short period of time without someone noticing or raising an alarm, and since the offensive was crushed there’s been no Infestation activity anywhere near the Kursk-Tremble line.”
“Also,” added General Terry, “I can assure you this Staff Sergeant: not once since the beginning of the Great Offensive have our cryptologists detected any attempts by the Infestation to breach our emission or transmission security, and my personal encryption is randomized every two weeks. In fact, now that I think about it, it had been randomized the day before I first reached out to William. Even if the Infestation had somehow cracked my previous encryption, a fact I highly doubt, that would have never have helped it to crack my new encryption in a matter of days to act in real-time upon the intelligence.”
General Harrison gave the Staff Sergeant smile, to help smooth over his words.
“You’re asking the right questions, Staff Sergeant. There’s a reason I put the safety of my friend in your hands, but sometimes coincidences are just that, coincidences.”
Staff Sergeant Mazyr refused to be mollified.
“Too many coincidences for comfort, Sir.”
The transport that carried general Terry and the sixteen men of his PSD was escorted by two AF-68 Tarns, and a more deadly atmospheric aerial had yet to be designed by the hands of man. General Terry had insisted that any threat to his person could easily be handled by their escorts.
Staff Sergeant Mazyr had disagreed.
The Staff Sergeant had demanded full battle-rattle for the PSD, as if they were deploying to the front-line and not visiting a heavily fortified MOB over a hundred miles from it, and a nanofiber ballistics vest for the general. General Terry thought the Staff Sergeant was being paranoid, but he could not, in good conscience, countermand the recommendations of the man responsible for safety.
The flight to MOB Potemkin was uneventful.
The transport performed a routine landing and lowered its rear ramp. They were greeted not by a ravenous horde of Infestation drones but a welcoming committee numbering about fifty unarmed men at parade rest with their commander at their center, slightly before. General Terry calmly descended the ramp flanked by his PSD. A few seemed almost embarrassed to be harnessed as if they were occupying the MOB instead of visiting it.
General Terry knew the Staff Sergeant had been paranoid.
The commanding general of MOB Potemkin strode forward to greet General Terry, meeting him and his security detail alone in the empty area about halfway between the transport and his own troops. He snapped to attention and gave a quick salute, which General Terry returned. The Tarns did not land but, having delivered the package, silently wheeled about and began their return flight to base.
“Sir.”
“Shi,” general Terry replied, pleasure clear in his voice , “no one told me you were out here.”
Brigadier General Yousan couldn’t keep the pleasure out of his voice either.
“I go where they send me, sir.”
“At least this isn’t Fior Quintus.”
Fior Quintus was a particularly unpleasant rock located within the Rosette Nebula. Barely habitable. Back when Supreme Terrestrial Commander General Terry had simply been Major General Terry, Shi Yousan, a Colonel at the time, had served under him during the Fior Quintus campaign against the Yassadf separatists. When later asked about the experience General Terry had cribbed from an ancient historical text with his answer: “If I owned Hell and Fior Quintus, I’d rent out Fior Quintus and live in Hell.” Needless to say, there were few pleasant memories from that time.
General Yousan noticeably grimaced at the reminder, but corrected his superior on one salient point.
“Sir, at least there we were only fighting people.”
“That’s why I’m on Eremus Prime, Shi. I want to see, as best I can, what we’re up against. Not just reports, not just numbers on a screen.”
“Well Sir, we can certainly show you, no doubt about that.”
General Yousan motioned for General Terry to follow him, turning to lead the group off the landing strip and into the base proper. General Terry heard the soft hum as the transport revved up its engines to take alight again, and took a step to follow.
Suddenly there was pandemonium.
“JOHNNIES! JOHNNIES!”
General Terry had little time to comprehend those words before he was forcefully dragged backwards by his shoulders. Two men of his PSD quickly placed themselves between the two Generals. A third came from behind and attempted to usher the General back towards the transport, but the General refused to be moved.
“HOLD!”
Everyone froze as General Terry bellowed out his command. He took a moment righting himself before turning and marching to the source of the interjection.
“You will explain yourself, Staff Sergeant”.
Even though General Terry was shorter than Staff Sergeant Mazyr he managed to glare down at him whilst looking upward.
“Sir, we need to get you back to the bird right now.”
The transport was on the same frequency as General Terry’s PSD. Another security measure the Staff Sergeant had insisted upon. Even though its engines were full-throttle it had yet to raise the ramp or take flight, waiting.
One must always have a way out.
“Is something wrong?” General Yousan asked, chest-to-chest with the two men who were holding him back.
“Keep it back!” barked Staff Sergeant Mazyr.
General Terry was having none of that.
“Let him through.”
The men immediately desisted, stepping to the side to let the General pass. General Yousan approached, concern clear on his face.
“Sir, what’s going on? Your men got the boys on edge.”
General Terry could see that the welcoming committee had broken rank, drawn forward by the ruckus.
“As soon as I find out Shi, I’ll let you know.”
General Terry’s PSD had established a cordon around the general during the initial confusion, alert for threats. They kept the other troops back as a matter of course, but they seemed just as confused as everyone else as to what was going on.
General Terry was hellbent on solving that.
He once again addressed himself to Staff Sergeant Mazyr, “You will explain yourself. Now. Completely”
Staff sergeant Mazyr appeared pained with his response, “Sir, I cannot explain myself at this time, but we need to get back on the bird, sir.”
That response would not satisfy the general.
“Do I need to repeat myself, Staff Sergeant? Do I need to remind you about the punishment for insubordination?” General Terry was working himself into a fine lather, the likes of which he hadn’t experienced since he was an NCO. He almost relished it. Give him a few more minutes to shake the rust off and he would be flaying the flesh from the Staff Sergeant’s bones with his words alone.
Unfortunately, General Terry was not granted the luxury.
Staff Sergeant Mazyr was barely paying attention to General Terry as he laid into him. General Terry realized he was instead trying to watch both General Yousan, who was now almost directly behind General Terry, and General Yousan’s men at the same time. General Terry was just about to launch into a scathing diatribe that would bring into question Staff Sergeant Mazyr’s parentage when he finally got a reaction. The Staff Sergeant raised his rifle to his shoulder, set himself. Firing position.
“I should have had him disarmed.” the thought flitted through General Terry’s mind, detached, the last thought he thought he would ever have. He heard the rifle burp forth a three-shot burst.
General Terry opened his eyes to find he was still alive.
His left ear was deaf. His right was little better, white-noise keening. He was in a fugue. A massive body tackled him to the ground.
“PROTECT THE GENERAL!”
Even though he was functionally deaf, General Terry heard that.
Hell broke loose.
General Terry heard muffled weapons-fire from all sides and muted voices, like a conversation a room over. He felt buffets of air against his body as the transport took to the air. Further buffeting told general Terry that it hadn’t departed but was simply hovering above the fray, waiting for further instruction.
The weight removed itself from General Terry, but the General remained on the ground, still shaking off his fugue. He idly turned his head to the left.
General Yousan lay next to him, his face missing.
That finally shocked General Terry out of his stupor.
He struggled to his knees, looked around. His PSD was living up to its name, maintaining a protective ring around him, in the center of which was only himself and Staff Sergeant Mazyr. More than half of the welcoming committee lay dead or dying on the ground, and those that survived were, irrationally, charging directly into the barrels of his men’s rifles. Within seconds they had joined their fellows in the dirt.
General Terry could make no sense of it.
He rose to his feet and looked towards MOB Potemkin. He saw men, hundreds of them, swarming forth from the base proper towards the airfield.
Most of these men were armed.
There was no cover to be had on the empty ground, but the General’s PSD redeployed themselves in a line to shield the General with their own bodies from this newest threat. By this time General Terry’s hearing had recovered enough to hear what Staff Sergeant Mazyr was yelling into his comms.
“Raptor-1. Raptor-2. We need immediate air-support. We got hostiles. Potemkin is compromised. We cannot extract. Need support now.”
The Staff Sergeant suddenly realized that the General was standing and lunged forward, forcing the general back to his knees.
“Stay down Sir.”
The PSD started receiving fire.
Staff Sergeant Mazyr used one arm to throw the general to the ground behind him, then continued yelling into his comms. General Terry couldn’t see much, but he saw that most of the horde was sprinting across the airfield towards them, which meant that those firing must have been shooting through their own men. Just as before, it didn’t make sense.
One of the members of the General’s PSD went down.
A second went down on the wing, followed by a third shortly after. More men came running out of the base. The Staff Sergeant gave up on the comms and moved to take a place on the firing line. General Terry regretted that these men he had known for less than two days were going to willingly die on his behalf.
The walls of the base exploded.
Men were thrown to the ground by the concussion or lofted like rag dolls, and pieces of those less fortunate rained down even as far as upon the heads of the PSD. Two shadows streaked across the ground, silent and impossibly fast.
The Tarns had returned.
A ragged cheer rose from the throats of General Terry’s men as the Tarns executed their grim work. Multiple explosions wracked the base proper, and as one Tarn loitered and continued to rain death down upon the already burning base, turning everything below it into a massive conflagration, the second turned back sharply and strafed low across the airfield, parallel to the General’s men, shredding apart anything still moving and many things that weren’t.
Within minutes it was over.
Both Tarns broke off and hovered high above, the better to intercept any threats approaching from the air. As General Terry stood he heard the swelling roar of the transport’s engines as it returned. In the confusion, he hadn’t noticed it had withdrawn. The General was sure everyone was anxious to leave, but decided that extraction could wait.
First, he had to see to his men.
The first who had been shot was dead, a third-eye weeping blood between his normal two, just below the rim of his helmet. An incredibly unlucky shot. “Private Lewis”, General Terry thought to himself.
He promised himself he’d remember that name.
The other two men were wounded, but not critically. Staff Sergeant Mazyr was rendering aid to one man who looked as to have suffered a through-and-through in his upper-leg, the second was already back on his feet, though the field dressing applied to his right shoulder displayed a slowly expanding crimson stain. The rest of the men were deployed in a loose defensive parameter, alert for any additional threats.
“Staff Sergeant, a word.”
“Yes Sir.”
Staff Sergeant Mazyr passed off care of the wounded soldier to another and slowly approached the General.
“Care to explain, Staff Sergeant?”
“Not yet Sir.”
The Staff Sergeant raised his voice to address the PSD.
“Men, make sure they’re all good and dead.”
As he waited for the men to put an extra bullet into the head of every corpse still sporting one, Staff Sergeant Mazyr wandered back over to where everything had first gone wrong, halting next to the body of General Yousan.
It was only after the last corpse had been killed again that General Terry repeated his question.
“Now do you care to explain, Staff Sergeant? Dr. Proust was of the opinion that there was no way to identify one of these infiltrators, yet you did almost immediately. How?”
Staff Sergeant Mazyr smiled, “With all due respect, Sir, the Doctor is a brilliant man, but he was thinking like a scientist, only concerned with theories, tests, experiments. It never crossed his mind to do some simple detective work.”
“Continue.”
“After what we heard from Dr. Proust I tracked down Private Palek’s platoon Sir. Told them I was an MP investigating Palek’s going AWOL. Asked if he had said anything, done anything strange or peculiar between the time he returned to active duty and when he disappeared. They told me he was withdrawn, but normal. Seemed himself, nothing off-note; but two of his platoon-mates said something that stuck with me: they said there was something wrong with his hands.”
“Wrong? How so?”
“That’s what I asked, Sir. They said it was strange that they had never noticed before, but after his return they noticed that his hands looked wrong. Couldn’t be more specific, but as I said it stuck with me. Didn’t know what they’d meant until a few minutes ago.”
As he was speaking, Staff Sergeant Mazyr bent down and lifted up General Yousan’s hand.
General Terry truly looked at it, and suddenly realized that the proportions were all off. All wrong. General Yousan’s middle-finger and ring-finger were the same length, and his index-finger was longer than both. Staff Sergeant Mazyr accentuated his point by bending Yousan’s index finger towards his palm.
General Terry couldn’t be exactly sure, but it definitely had at least one extra joint.
Staff Sergeant Mazyr dropped his grisly visual aid and straightened up, “Once I saw that Sir, I knew you were in danger. That’s when I alerted the men.”
“Johnnies?”
“Sir, since the first one was Private John Palek. I didn’t tell the men anything about what we learned from Dr. Proust, but I told them that if I said the word “Johnny” or ‘Johnnies’, they were to get you to safety, and trust no one that didn’t get off the bird with us.”
The gravity of the situation finally hit General Terry.
“I was going to be replaced, same as Private Palek, same as General Yousan. The Supreme Terrestrial Commander would have been working for the enemy.”
“Seems that was the plan, Sir. They knew about your trip, the decisions, details, arrangements, everything. They used Private Palek to open a hole in our surveillance network, and used the offensive as cover to infiltrate MOB Potemkin and replace the men here. Probably been at it for weeks. COMSEC must be immediately reviewed. Fortunately for us they didn’t think their deception would be discovered so quickly, if at all.”
“What makes you say that Staff Sergeant?”
“Sir, if they thought there was a chance we’d see through them right away these Johnnies would have been armed, and they would have been ready to deal with the Tarns.”
General Terry appreciated the truth in the Staff Sergeant’s words.
“Staff Sergeant, you saved my life, and greater than that you saved the war, and the lives of millions of men. I think that deserves a bar or two.”
“Sir, thank you Sir, but I must decline. I’m a good staff sergeant. Don’t know if I’d make a good lieutenant, and I doubt I’d make a good captain.”
General Terry threw back his head and laughed.
“Very well, Staff Sergeant.” General Terry started after his laughter had subsided, “How about a transfer? I could use a man like you on my staff.”
Staff Sergeant Mazyr smiled.
“That I could do, Sir.”
General Terry swept his gaze across the carnage around him.
“I just hope that the Infestation never figures out how to do hands properly.”
“You and me both, Sir.”