Chapter 12

Kazi Depot Command Post

By the time they landed, Johns was starting to feel the fatigue set in. A full night of preparing for the burn and executing it had really worn him out. He went through the decontamination process then retreated directly to his quarters for a few hours of sleep. When he woke, he made his way down to Command for a generous cup of coffee. The small metal coffee cups weren’t going to be enough to satiate him today. The coffee was dreadful, but he still downed two full cups without much of a thought. He hadn’t noticed that Rick was sitting in the meeting room just to his right as he chugged, but a flicker of movement in that direction caught his gaze and he turned around to see Rick wearing a big shit-eating grin.

“Tired? Or thirsty, maybe?” Rick yelled from the room as Johns strolled his way in.

“Both.”

“And who could blame you?” Rick said.

Johns settled in with his freshly poured third cup of coffee, putting his feet up on the glass table across from Rick. They sat in silence for a moment, save for Johns’ sips from his metal mug. Rick was reading on his tablet.

“What are you reading?” Johns asked.

“Weeks old news. Since our light communications are down all I have is the news that trickled in before the impacts.”

“What’s the point?”

“I read the news every day, usually. Gotta keep some routines, I figure,” Rick said.

“Really,” Johns said with a little bit of surprise in his voice. “You read the news every day?”

“Well yeah,” Rick said. “You’ve never seen me read? I read every morning before our briefings in this room.”

“I guess I wasn’t paying attention,” Johns said. “Maybe none of us were.”

Rick nodded, looked at his tablet, but then pulled his eyes back toward Johns. “What do you mean?” he asked.

“No one saw this coming,” Johns replied somberly. “No early detection. No warning system. No preparation for something like this. Where was Osara Prime? Better yet, where were we? They caught us with our pants down. Imagine if this had happened on Osara Prime?”

“That’s true enough. But how were we supposed to detect these things coming in? They aren’t much bigger than a ship and they don’t have a drive signature for us to detect. Who knows how they fly so damn fast. We can’t even track every rock floating in a system.”

“I don’t know what I expect,” Johns said. “Seems like, during the war, we were prepared for anything. But we won the war and ended the Resistance and everyone has been walking around in a fog for twenty years.”

“Doesn’t help they just don’t care about us. They wouldn’t have done anything to help us even if they did see it coming. Shit, this whole planet looks like it’s in danger of being overrun by a hostile alien species and those fucks in their golden towers on Osara can’t even be bothered to send us anything other than some food and bandaids on a transport ship. They’ll let us get ripped apart one-by-one here before they send any real help.”

“You’re right. Well, we’ll see. That’s their position now. I sent one more message along and would expect to hear back in the next day or so,” Johns said.

“And you think they’ll change their minds? Based on what? The Toads?”

“Is that what we’re going to call them?” Johns said with a big smile on his face. “God those things were fucked up.”

“Whatever is coming shooting out of their fat fucking mouths is acidic,” Rick said, mimicking the toads by blowing up his cheeks and pretend to shoot liquid across the room. “Which isn’t the case for the Goo. I mean, I know they looked exactly the same but I talked to Sara and she said that the Goo is only slightly acidic. Enough to burn through the plants over hours but not enough to melt a man’s face off.”

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Johns said, before catching Sara walking into Command out of the corner of his eye. “Speaking of the devil.”

Right on cue, Sara saw them sitting in the meeting room and shifted in their direction. She came through the glass doors, her hair waving at the breeze they created as she swung through.

“More good news?” Johns asked. It seemed like every time he and Sara ran into each other she had something awful to tell him.

“Nope.Well...yes, actually. Good news,” she said with her hand behind her back. She pulled it out to reveal a full bottle of potato vodka and three shot glasses. “I thought we could have a drink.”

“Fuck yes we can!” Rick said with pep.

She brought the bottles and glasses over and neatly arranged them on the table. The way she carried herself reminded Johns of his wife. She had been somewhat of a neat freak. Everything always had its place and moving it from that place — even 6-inches to the right in the cupboard — and you would hear about it. It had been a bit of an adjustment for Johns when they had first moved in together. He wasn’t messy. The military had always dictated that he keep clean. But he wasn’t clean in the way that she was. In time, he learned to appreciate that way of living.

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Sara poured the glasses, giving each a smidge of room in the top of the shot glass. They grabbed them and carefully clinked them together above the glass table.

“To those we lost,” Sara said. Johns nodded.

“Here, here,” said Rick.

They threw their shots back and each grimaced just a bit as they went to set the shot glass back down. For some reason, Johns was less bothered this time around. Maybe the impact of losing a single, identifiable person and the effect it would have was too personal. Losing a group — thirteen this time — made the tragedy so massive that there was really no way to wrap his mind around it. It was the same way he had felt during some of the battles when he had lost hundreds or even thousands of people during the war. Today, twenty years removed from battle, perhaps his threshold was lower for this type of thing. This was the best that Johns had felt in days.

“I really do have some good news though,” Sara said. “We just got back the latest images from Site A and the acceleration of the growth has flatlined.”

“The acceleration of the growth? Meaning it's still growing just as fast as it was?”

“Yes, it appears to have topped out at around three square miles per day, unimpeded.”

“What slowed it?” Rick asked.

Sara shook her head.

“We don’t know. Nothing, maybe. Maybe burning it back slowed it down a bit. Most likely that’s just the top speed that it will grow at. Maybe there is a resource limit.” Sara said.

“Resource limit?” Johns asked.

“Yeah. Like if whatever it is needs fuel, the fuel that the planet is providing caps out at a certain point. New growth means minimal gains, but everything up until that point continues to ramp things up. As it gets bigger, it has more landmass to feed and each individual gain doesn’t mean as much for it.”

“Ok. So here’s a question. How do we kill it?” Rick asked.

“Well if I knew that, I’d tell you.”

“Sure, but best guess?” Johns asked, trying to persuade her to go out on a limb a bit.

“Well...I do have a theory I’ve been thinking about.”

“Go on..” Johns said after waiting a second.

“Well….we’ve tried burning it all the way back. All the way to the actual impact hole that goes down into the Earth, right? We even threw grenades in there. But what if we didn’t go far enough? The growth continues uninhibited after we burn it back. It has to be coming from somewhere. If the question is whether or not we destroy every last atom in this thing, well then we are never going to be able to stop it because we can’t eradicate it. But that can’t be the bar. That’s not how life...well, most life, works. Most life has a few requirements. What if there is something down in that hole that keeps these growths alive and growing?”

“Like a...central system or something?” Johns asked.

“Yes. Like a central nervous system. Something that is living or operating down there. A nest, if you will.”

“So you think this is some creature down there or just a pile of goo that is making the whole thing hum?” Rick asked.

“It could be either,” Sara said with a face that said that she realized the implication of what she was saying. “There could be something down there, living. That came down in the squid when they first landed on Earth. They might even crash land just so they can burrow themselves down in the dirt. Or...it could be a big pile of goo. Or it could be nothing. We can’t know until we look.”

“Drone?” Johns replied.

“Well we certainly aren’t sending a living person down there to have the first look,” Rick chimed in.

“I don’t know, I think you could handle it,” Johns said as a smile flashed across his face. Rick side-eyed him and continued on.

“Well shit… we don’t have to wait to do that. We could send one out tonight. Most of our drone fleet is keeping a constant eye on the growth areas, we could divert one or two right into the hole.”

“Those things cost money,” Johns said.

“Oh here we go. Mr. budgetary concerns himself,” Rick responded.

That made Johns give a full-throated belly laugh. He and Rick had butted heads over the budget many times — particularly when Rick had tried to classify the usage of a puddlejumper as “work-related” for a friend’s bachelor party.

They helped themselves to another shot of liquor, and Sara excused herself back to her room. Johns and Rick sat there for another hour, talking about their next moves. They retreated to their respective quarters for one more rest before the next burn.

He wondered what his ex-wife would think of him now — and of this situation. She never really cared to know what missions he was on like some wives. People in his unit would talk about how their wives would beg to know where they were everytime that they talked. Ellie never did that to Johns. She barely asked anything, in fact.

When Johns reached his quarters, he waved his hand in front of the access control port and the doors slid open. He made his way into the room and began peeling off his clothes. He looked at the time. 23:00. He would have enough time for a full six or seven hours of sleep, which is certainly something that he was looking forward to.

“Sleep mode,” he said aloud and the A.I. adjusted the lighting in his quarters. As he slept, the lighting would slowly turn the brightness down, helping him to ease into sleep. He opened the drawer next to his bed and took out a small paper object. He looked at it longingly, rubbing the edges of the photograph.

He rubbed Anna’s face and wished that he could touch it again. It was the only physical picture that he had from them. He had printed it on genuine wood paper, afraid that he might one day lose track of the file itself. He would give anything to have another chance. He slid it back into the desk drawer. He could never bring himself to look at it for long. If he wasn’t able to pull it away he could get lost in it for hours. He missed her dearly.

Johns laid his head down and sighed. Tomorrow would be another tough day. In fact, there was no end to the tough days on the horizon. Every day was going to be a tough day. He let his brain wander to the Goo, but forced himself to pull it back. He couldn’t spend every hour thinking about the enemy. He wouldn’t be fresh when it was time to make decisions. Sometimes you can outthink yourself.

With each passing moment he drifted closer to sleep. His breathing deepened, and he began to see his thoughts wander toward dreamland. Just as he was on the cusp of sleep, his coms unit vibrated on his bedside table.

“Damnit!” he yelled and pulled his coms unit in front of his face.

It was Sara, calling him directly. He picked it up.

“What is it, Sara?”

“I’m sorry boss, but I just had to call you,” she said, semi-frantic. “We just got the footage back from the drone. It took a peek inside the hole at the impact site. I think you need to see this.”