Chapter 70

In the days after the battle, the world turned its attention toward the little island in the Seychelles. At Dr. Pascal’s urging the Akeso made its way to the island at top speed. Its arrival was greeted with concern and suspicion, but once Five stepped off the boat and began vouching for the kindness of the crew and medical staff, that suspicion faded. Dr. Pascal and her team were soon delivering medical treatment to wounded who’d been on both sides of the struggle.

Priya and the most badly injured clones were taken aboard, while the others were treated on the island. Kai went on board, too, remaining at Priya’s side, waiting and hoping she’d regain consciousness.

Paul, Gamay, Chantel, and the crew of the Isabella were treated and cared for as well. Of this group, Gamay was the only one Dr. Pascal found herself concerned with. Physically, she was fine, despite the surgery that Vaughn and TAU had put her through. But mentally she remained withdrawn and quiet, a far cry from the normally cheerful woman they all knew.

She met with Kai often, checked on Priya throughout the day and night, and spent a great deal of time at the ship’s rail, staring out across the bay. Her behavior wasn’t completely surprising, all things considered, but it concerned everyone. Paul stayed close to her throughout, his strong but quiet nature providing excellent support while allowing her to process what she had been through.

Due to international fears regarding the fertility virus, the island was quarantined to outside visitors, other than the medical personnel on the Akeso and certain computer experts who arrived in hopes of retrieving information from TAU’s memory core, but it was like picking through the bones of a digital dinosaur. Little could be done on-site.

TAU’s optical and digital hard drives were airlifted off the island and taken to a lab in California, where they would be examined forensically one by one. The devices numbered in the thousands, but many had been burned and shattered, or overwritten by the viruses Max had unleashed inside TAU, and the vast majority of them had been corroded by the salt water that burst in from the ruptured cooling tunnels. Between the extensive damage and TAU’s encryption system, no one was expecting to find much of value.

In the meantime, a package arrived at the NUMA office building in Washington, dropped off by a delivery rider no older than the kid who’d brought Rudi his unwanted sandwich a week before.

The mail room didn’t know what to make of it and sent it up to Hiram Yaeger’s office. It was addressed to: My friend, Max.

Yaeger opened the package cautiously, discovering pages of medical notes, genetic coding, and other scientific information. He soon realized these were transcriptions of genetic research, most of which described the creation of the sea locusts, methods to speed up clone growth, and the genetic data on a novel pathogen labeled fertility virus x1 .

A note read:

Sorry, Max,

I couldn’t get this to you directly without the risk of TAU taking it away as soon as it arrived. I logged into the Georgetown University server and created a student ID for myself. That allowed me to download the data, forward it to a printing service, and have a hard copy made that could be sent your way. Hopefully they did a thorough job.

Good luck,

Eve

At the bottom of the order page was an AI-generated photo of a young woman with dark curly hair, green eyes, and olive-colored skin. She wore glasses and offered a wry smile. The image was copied from a student ID bearing the equally fabricated name created by Priya’s program: Eve Gray.

The data Eve sent the world had provided a head start in creating a vaccine to fight against the fertility virus, but everyone was going to be happier if it never reached shore. Science teams from a dozen countries were tracking the approaching swarms. The size and extent of the larger swarms were breathtaking, and world leaders were considering the use of chemicals, poisons, oceans of burning petroleum products, explosives, and even nuclear weapons as the means to destroy the sea locusts before they made landfall.

While those discussions went around in circles, Kurt played a hunch he’d had ever since he’d seen the satellite photos showing the sea locusts traveling in perfectly straight lines.

Migrations in the ocean were still something of a mystery. Despite plenty of research, marine biologists still struggled to explain how whales, sharks, and other species could navigate the featureless waters of the ocean and still get from place to place accurately.

The most widely accepted theories were that the animals detected and followed magnetic lines from the poles while also possessing an ability to detect the angle of the sun, or that they possessed some form of internal guidance that humanity had yet to find or understand.

But migrations tended to go back and forth along the same line, while Vaughn and TAU had shown the ability to guide their nightmarish creatures in any direction they wanted and to have them hold their courses through storms, thermoclines, and conflicting currents. This told Kurt something more was in play. Something simple and direct.

To prove his theory, Kurt and Joe took one of the high-speed patrol boats from the island and raced to get out in front of the swarm heading for Africa. Using a suite of radio receivers, he and Joe looked for a signal. Before long they’d picked up a repeating electromagnetic pulse. Shortly thereafter they found the device that was transmitting it.

A hundred miles from the African coast, he and Joe reported their findings to Rudi. “The sea locusts are following a signal from a self-propelled AUV. Looks to be about twenty feet long, completely automated, and broadcasting a repeating pulse.”

Joe streamed video of the device as they waited for a response. The navy-blue autonomous underwater vehicle was moving along the surface at a slow and steady pace. No more than four knots, just enough to keep it ahead of the brood, which at the moment remained under the surface.

“Looks like something we should destroy or send to the bottom of the ocean ASAP,” Rudi suggested.

“That won’t solve the problem,” Kurt said. “It might make things worse. If we take away the signal, the swarm might go off in all directions, which means they’d still end up somewhere we don’t want them to be.”

“I see your point,” Rudi replied over the radio. “What do you propose?”

“We capture those AUVs, take over control, and make the locusts go where we want them to,” Kurt said.

“Sounds reasonable,” Rudi said. “Where will you take them?”

“Back along their existing course,” Kurt said. “To the most barren spot we can find. We can park them there and leave them with nothing to chew on except each other.”

“Interesting concept,” Rudi replied. “You’ll have to prove it. The Chinese are so concerned about the brood approaching Thailand that they’re getting ready to go the nuclear exterminator route. Can’t say I blame them. The swarm is two hundred miles wide.”

“We figured you’d need a proof of concept,” Kurt said. “You’ll either have it in an hour, or Joe and I will need an industrial shipment of bug-bite ointment.”

Rudi signed off and Kurt put the radio down.

“Once more unto the breach,” Joe said from the helm.

Kurt nodded. “Get us in close.”

As Joe eased the patrol boat up beside the AUV, Kurt used a boat hook to grab it and pull it alongside. It was perhaps ten feet long and covered by a small but not insignificant number of barnacles. Kurt felt like they were trying to lasso a shark or small whale. “Isn’t this where we came in?”

Joe laughed, but said nothing.

Finding a couple of hard points, Kurt secured the AUV with a metal cable, which he anchored to the stern. “Secured for towing,” he told Joe. “Take us back around and head for the dead zone.”

Joe swung the patrol boat in a wide one-hundred-eighty-degree turn.

Doubling back on their existing course took them right over the submerged brood of sea locusts, and the miniature beasts didn’t wait long to respond. A hundred yards behind them, the sea began to churn. Soon the locusts were erupting from the water and taking flight. The sound of their wings beating the air went from eerie to ominous and all-encompassing. It overrode the hum of the patrol boat’s engine and the sound of the wind. It rendered normal conversation impossible.

Joe picked up the pace, putting some distance between them and the growing swarm.

“I’m the Pied Piper of locusts,” Joe shouted.

“I just hope Vaughn was meticulous on his maintenance,” Kurt shouted back. “This would be a really bad time to stall out.”

“Did you check the fuel level?” Joe asked.

“I thought you were going to do that,” Kurt deadpanned.

The fuel was plentiful, and the engine ran without skipping a beat. They held their course and tracked along the path of destruction, the sea appearing deep blue and oddly clear.

Kurt kept his eyes on the trailing insects, watching in astonishment as they grew into a cloud ten miles wide and two miles high.

“How far back do you want to lure them?” Joe asked.

“Ten miles at least,” Kurt said. “We should probably make it twenty.”

Joe checked their position on the GPS and nodded.

Twenty miles from where they’d picked up the AUV, they reached the point of maximum devastation, where the locusts had stripped the ocean bare and the natural recovery process had yet to even begin. There was nothing for miles but salt water and open sky.

To account for the size of the swarm, they added another mile and then began to slow.

As the patrol boat came to a halt, Kurt jumped in the water. swimming to the captured AUV with a hammer in his hand. Several strikes to its propeller rendered the flukes useless. To make sure it didn’t sink, they wrapped it in life preservers and bolstered it with a set of buoys. To keep the locusts off it, they doused it with motor oil.

“Not the most environmentally friendly choice,” Joe noted. “But everything is relative at this point.”

With the roar growing louder and closer and the setting sun vanishing behind the approaching swarm, Kurt climbed back into the boat. “Get us out of here,” he said. “Or we’re going to be locust food.”

Joe brought the power on smoothly, pushing the throttle all the way up. Picking up speed, they raced to the east, riding the waves in a heavy, percussive pattern. The discomfort was a fair trade for putting maximum distance between themselves and the descending horde of hungry insects.

From several miles away, the swarm appeared like a swirling ball. It circled around on itself, expanding, contracting, appearing at times to turn inside out. Kurt had seen that pattern before: in the great schools of herring trying to avoid a predator, in flocks of starlings converging on an empty field, and in the tank beneath the solar panels in the bay off Vaughn’s island.

“Moths to a flame,” Joe said.

The swarm would churn and twist, descending into the sea and rising back into the sky a dozen times over the next seven days. Each version smaller than the last. Aircraft and satellites from various nations watched it grow tighter and more compact. Ten days on, a well-equipped expedition moved in to find that no more than a hundred thousand of the locusts remained, feeding on the bodies and eggs laid by the others. In another week, they, too, had vanished.

Similar scenes played out near the coasts of Pakistan, India, Thailand, and five hundred miles west of Australia. But in those cases the AUVs were destroyed and replaced with more powerful beacons broadcasting a matching signal.

Each brood was larger than the last, with the swarm approaching Thailand estimated to number in the trillions and believed to weigh a combined seven million tons.

When the fires of consumption had done their job, teams of scientists moved in to study what was left. Thousands of specimens from each brood were collected and preserved. They were studied and examined in great detail. Only one oddity was found that did not comport with the data Eve had taken from TAU. Not a single sample was found to carry the fertility virus.