The Void

CHAPTER 31

Hammerson clicked on the satellite image of the mountaintop crater where his HAWC team and the NASA scientists were deployed. The spore-mist had risen more than a dozen feet since he had last checked and he expected the hyper-aggressive slime mold — or whatever that weird shit was — would have expanded its territory about the same amount.

Nestled in its warm cocoon underneath the atmosphere blanket it would continue to grow, but thankfully for now, not become the super-aggressive form that had attacked and killed the NASA scientists in lab-45 and many of the townsfolk of Greenbelt.

Once again, he clicked on the extrapolation software his techs had put together. It used predictive analytics to create an advanced timeline for how far and fast the biological gas and the underlying organisms were likely to spread. A digital clock raced forward, speeding up the designated area of the Revelation Mountains.

Hammerson’s eyes narrowed as he watched — in another hour, the atmosphere blister would have climbed a further dozen feet. In six more hours, it would reach the rim of the crater. Following that it would begin its long, slow spillover into the valleys.

The environment was still harsh, but as the mass grew the total land it absorbed would grow as well, doubling exponentially every hour — two miles would become four, become eight, become sixteen, become thirty-two, then sixty-four, and so on, and so on.

They had twenty-four hours before the atmosphere blister and carpet of deadly ooze beneath covered 200 square miles. It would then encounter the first of the villages in the lowlands. It would also then enter a more benign climate, and switch on. Once that happened, it was anyone’s guess as to whether it could be controlled or when the free-floating spores would be lifted on the winds to firstly infect Alaska, Canada, the rest of the US, and then the globe.

Colonel Jack Hammerson knew General Chilton was right to take immediate and significant corrective action. And if he didn’t have a horse in the race, he would have come to the same conclusion.

Fact was, HAWCs died, and there were very few old ones, himself being an exception. But time was moving against them. For now, they had the organism contained in a natural kill box. The biological mass would overflow the crater rim in approximately six hours, the detonation would occur in — his eyes moved to his countdown clock — just on five. But his team didn’t know any of this.

Chilton had authorized the use of a single GBU43B Massive Ordnance Air Blast — one of the most powerful non-nuclear weapons ever designed. The MOAB was not a penetrator weapon but was created primarily for surface targets, just like this one.

Hammerson had seen test drops; the things were city killers. They initially detonated with the explosive force of eleven tons of TNT and would raise temperatures to 4,500 degrees in an instant. The secondary ignition of the methane-rich atmosphere would amplify the thermal dispersion, turning the entire cusp of the mountaintop into a molten cauldron.

He slammed a fist down hard on his desk — there’d be nothing left of it or his team. And he couldn’t even warn them. As far as communications went, they were deaf, dumb, and blind. He couldn’t send anyone else in. But even if he thought there was a slim chance of making it in time, or making a difference, he’d goddamn HALO drop in there himself.

He looked again at the visuals — the mountaintop looked like it was stuffed with dirty cotton wool. Trying to affect a blind landing in something like that was suicide.

He could send a probe, drop in a communication spike, but it’d have to land right on Alex’s head for him to find it — impossible. Hammerson lowered his hands. Unless the probe could go looking for him.

He drummed his fingers on the desk as his mind worked. Go looking for him — and then find him.

He lunged for his phone, calling through to the weaponry labs.

“Get me Grey. I need a piece of his tech on a plane, right now.”