Scott Mackay - Phytosphere

“A write-off.”

The implications deepened like water in a well from which he couldn’t escape. “And the phytosphere control device?”

“They haven’t told me one way or the other.”

“And the Tarsalans?”

“A lot are coming down. Lenny says they’ve had at least three confirmed landings in Chattahoochee.

That’s why they’re going to need some of this spray stuff. Though he thinks a few macrogens might have already penetrated Marblehill.”

Neil shook his head. “I…don’t know what to say.”

“Lenny’s on his way.”

Neil’s heart thumped in sudden overdrive. “Really? Right now?”

Greg gave his head a little nod, looking bewildered by the situation. “It’s high noon in Dodge, Neil.” He put his hand on Neil’s shoulder. “The helipad is just behind the swimming pool. There’s an emergency exit back there.”

“And we should be okay in the pool area, waiting for him?”

“It’s the safest place in the club. We’re done with the second line, aren’t we? We gave it our best shot.”

“Is he going to get here before—”

“Like I said, I don’t know where they got that tank.”

“What about calling in an air strike?”

“The risk of collateral casualties would be too high.”

He nodded, deferring to Greg’s experience. “I guess we’ll see you when the helicopter gets here.”

“I hope so.”

Greg went his way, and Neil and his family went theirs.

They turned left down another corridor, and in the middle of this corridor, doors led out into a courtyard where Neil saw crates and crates of ready-to-eat rations stacked on skids—this was where they were keeping the food. He continued along past a gymnasium, sweating in the wild heat, slowly coming to the realization that he had indeed played his endgame, and that it had failed.

They pushed through some double doors, and now the corridor smelled of chlorine. He understood what Greg meant, that the pool had to be the safest place in the whole complex because it was right in the middle of it all. They went in through the men’s changing room, where the air was damp, and heavy with the scents of B.O., deodorant, and cleanser.

“Careful, it’s slippery here,” he said.

“I can hardly see,” said Louise.

“Let me open this door.”

He opened the door to the pool area.

The windows—high, narrow ones—let in a ghostly brown light, probably the last natural light they would see for a long time. Louise and the girls filed through.

The pool was large. At the far end he saw a diving board, as well as a series of diving platforms. He saw some orange life rings with the word “Homestead” stenciled in black on each. It was just an ordinary institutional swimming pool, but for some reason it had a profound effect on Neil. In this age of the phytosphere, he saw it with new perspective, and the pool struck him as a museum exhibit from a time gone by. Swimming for pleasure. Swimming for recreation. Even swimming for exercise. Those were things of the past. He remembered his father’s swimming pool in suburban Illinois. Remembered himself, Gerry, Ian, and Greg horsing around in it, playing Marco Polo.

“Let’s set up by the diving board,” he said.

“Can we go swimming?” asked Morgan.

“We have to listen for the helicopter, sweetie. And we should be…ready. For anything.”

Yes, ready. They were stuck here. Until—and if—Lenny came in the helicopter. And once they got in the helicopter, then what? How long could they last at Marblehill? And could he trust Lenny and the rest of the airmen not to mutiny against them? What if the airmen turned against his family?

He looked up at the windows, hearing gunfire far to the west of the Officers’ Club.

How long before the goddamn dark came back?

He was just thinking he might take out his book again, try to lose himself in Monet’s water lilies, when his phone rang. The phone. He reached in his bag, pulled it out, engaged it, and pressed it to his ear.

“Not too good,” he said, when Fonblanque asked him how things were going at Homestead.

And then he told her they were abandoning the base, and how he had devised his own 937 at Marblehill—rubbing it in because he didn’t need them, the whole Oval Office crowd—he could survive on his own.

When she asked him about the virus, he had to tell her the truth.

“It looks as if the carapace responded. I’ve theorized that carapace material has jailed or quarantined the lytic-phase virus. There’s no way the virions can spread.”

“Is there anything else you can do?”

He didn’t like the desperation he heard in her voice, as it allowed him to guess what had happened to the phytosphere control device. And he didn’t like how she naturally assumed they were still all part of the same team. It galled him. She obviously wanted him to work miracles. But the infrastructure was

gone. The resources were practically nonexistent. His shoulders settled and a great bitterness overcame him.

“Given what I have to work with, I don’t think so.”

“And you’ve had a look at your brother’s stuff?”

“It’s all garbage, Leanna. There’s something about a stress band, but it’s…useless observation.”

“So you have nothing encouraging I can pass on to the secretary or the president? Because the TMS offensive didn’t go exactly as planned.”

A thin layer of perspiration came to his forehead. Outside, the gunfire was getting closer. “So I heard.”

“From who?”

He hesitated, then decided it didn’t matter. “Colonel Bard.”

“We were hoping to secure the Tarsalan phytosphere control mechanism.”

“And?” But he already knew what she was going to say.

“Our orbiting mines were effective beyond our expectations. The control mechanism has been damaged and is no longer operational. We now have no effective means of turning off the phytosphere from their end.”

Neil’s shoulders sagged further. The absolute idiots. “If there’s no way to shut it off, it’s just going to grow and grow. You know that, don’t you? To be honest with you, Leanna, it could turn into a real…doomsday scenario. I mean, if it’s gone—have your troops confirmed that the control system has in fact been destroyed?”

“Damage reports are still coming in. Our technicians are looking at it. The growing consensus is that it’s beyond repair.”

He cast around for possible solutions. “What about Tarsalan survivors? Maybe they can help us develop a new one.”

“There haven’t been many survivors.”

He exhaled, and for the longest time he left his lungs empty, as if there were no point in breathing anymore. But at last he took a deep breath and sighed. “How many Tarsalans killed?”

“Confirmed or expected?”

“Confirmed.”

“Over twenty thousand. But it could rise as high as thirty. As for our own troops, only seven hundred.”

He took another deep breath, fighting to get his anxiety under control. “Did they think we were bluffing?”

“I don’t know what they thought. I’m surprised we destroyed the TMS as easily as we did. I don’t think

they were expecting such a strong military response. The alien mind-set…it’s a hard thing to second-guess.”

“What about refugees?”

“Our Maxwell fighters have orders to escort as many to Earth as they can. But some of our pilots have been engaged.”

“Are any Tarsalans getting through to the reserve areas listed in the U.N.’s last counterproposal?”

“We believe so.”

“What about Chattahoochee National Forest?”

“We have three civilian reports of alien landings in and around Chattahoochee, and dozens of reports of landings throughout the southeastern United States. It seems the Tarsalans have already engaged several units, and my analysts tell me the fighting is expected to worsen in the coming days.”