Chapter 11

“Sentry units, report.”

“Sentry one, hive entrance clear.”

“Sentry two, hive entrance clear.”

“Sentry three, hive entrance clear.”

“Sentry four, hive entrance clear.”

“Sentry five, hive entrance clear.”

“Sentry units, get your drones in the air. Sound off once the locus is in place and your drone is at the entrance. Remember, we need them a minimum of fifty meters inside the lair.”

I glanced over at the screens to check the tanks and shook my head. It had sounded crazy when I first heard it, but I had to admit that little girl had come up with a better idea than any of our professionals. Five vacuum sealed cylinders with a teleport locus inside the base each held a thousand gallons of Doctor Morris’s formula ready for deployment. The AI couldn’t actually initiate the teleport, as it was a weapon, but they could link the pads, so I just had to hit the button to initiate the transfer.

“Sentry two, locus and drone in position.” Over the next three minutes, the other four teams confirmed readiness.

“AI, establish teleport links.”

<Teleport links established.>

I glanced at the tactical screen and smiled as I hit the button to deploy. “Sentry units, lock the controls down, and activate the fields.”

That was the longest fifteen minutes I could imagine before we were able to confirm activation through the cameras on the drones. Ten minutes later the feed cut off and a massive debris cloud rose up over the lair, blocking the view for a hundred miles in every direction.

Remember those experimental mining charges I mentioned? The Sa’arm had been tinkering with them for years, trying to figure out how they worked with little success. Unfortunately for our heroes, the Sa’arm was studying the device when the neurotoxin gas filled their lair. That shouldn’t have been a problem, but the gas had an unexpected side effect and the Sa’arm units studying the device started spontaneously combusting after extended exposure. With the covers off and the safety features disabled, the heat of the burning Sa’arm damaged an open control circuit and triggered the device.

One of those safety features had been a limiter, so instead of fifty meters, the recycler field expanded to almost two and a half kilometers before the device overloaded and burnt out. When a five-kilometer sphere of a planet’s crust just disintegrates, well, you just saw the results. Not that any surviving sapient, whether human, Confederacy, or hive-mind gestalt, had any way of connecting some odd devices left by the old Bosunites with what was happening as a side-effect of the human’s new weapon...

“What the hell happened? Can we re-establish contact with the ground teams?”

<Unknown. The gas may have interacted with something inside the lair and ignited. The resulting explosion appears to have exceeded the 100 megaton range. Ground forces likely have been vaporized. Reassessing.> There was a second explosion that dwarfed the initial one. <Tectonic activity detected. The initial explosion has destabilized a fault in the planet’s crust resulting in a volcanic eruption with a VEI of 8.>

“100 megatons? Is there any radiation signature or was that just the explosive force? What exactly does a VEI of 8 translate to?”

<No radiation signature detected, so the explosion was not a nuclear weapon. VEI is the Volcanic Explosivity Index. Taking from Earth history, the 1883 eruption of Krakatoa that destroyed seventy percent of the island had a VEI of 6. A VEI 8 event is a minimum of one hundred times more powerful.>

“Did we cause this?”

<Unknown, but the volcanic fallout will likely be an extinction-level event on this planet. I will be recommending that further testing of this weapon on planetary surfaces be severely limited.>

Fuck. That killed the idea of using it to clean out Sa’arm lairs, but there might still be a use for it. I’d have to send it to the weapons development groups and see what they could come up with.

“Are we safe to continue scanning? I want as much information as we can get on what happened here. Maybe Doctor Morris can figure out what caused his formula to explode and make some adjustments so it’s less volatile.”

<No Sa’arm ships detected. I will continue scanning.>

“What’s going on?”

Cindy shook her head and pointed at the table. “I don’t speak scientist, but that happened. He read it, started swearing, then yelled for Kate and Riley when he finished and threw it on the table. They were hot on his heels as he ran out the door yelling for us not to hold dinner.”

“I got that part,” I told her. “He sent me a message that they were going to the plant and probably wouldn’t be back until late. I tried calling him, but the AI said his com is locked out. Then I tried to call Riley and Kate, but they’re both locked out as well. The AI won’t give me more than status updates on any of them.”

“He’s livid, whatever it is. I don’t think I’ve ever heard him swear like that.”

“At least he wasn’t beating the tabletops,” I sighed as I sat down and picked up the pile of papers. I didn’t speak scientist or military all that well myself, so I just skimmed through it until I hit the actual test transcription. “That’s not possible...”

“Helen?”

I glanced up at Cindy and shook my head. “It’s the report from the field test at Bosun. They’re claiming Virgil’s formula somehow exploded, cracked the planet’s crust, and unleashed a supervolcano, basically causing an extinction-level event that wiped out all life on the planet. There’s only one problem with that scenario. Virgil’s formula doesn’t burn. The gas form, which is what it was when it allegedly exploded, will actually smother flames. He’s probably got Kate and Riley pulling up every quality test report they’ve ever run to verify there were no contaminants in the final product.”

After reading the rest of the report, I shook my head in disgust. “That explains why Virgil is so pissed. The AIs are blocking further large-scale testing because they claim it’s too dangerous. If he can’t find a way to prove the formula didn’t cause the explosion, they’re basically going to scrub the project beyond the tactical weapons usage.”

“How is that going to affect us?”

Something in her voice made me look up and see the fear in her eyes. Moving around the table, I wrapped her in my arms. “It’s not going to affect us at all. Virgil’s a scientist. If they do scrub this project, he’ll head back to his lab and dream up the next big way to kill a shit ton of bugs. Hell, he’d probably be happier if he were back in the lab. The engineering is his least favorite part of the job.”

“Sorry,” she sighed. “I just freaked out a little when I thought he might have to go do something else. The idea of losing him scares me.”

“Trust me, they’re not going to put Virgil anywhere near the front lines,” I laughed. “He’s far too valuable a resource. The closest he’ll get might be a trip to Tulak to monitor a field test, but they’ve got a fleet there blockading the system, so he wouldn’t be in any danger. That won’t be any time soon, especially if they scrub this project.”

“Well, if he’s going back into the lab, can we ask him to do a chemical analysis on the replicated wine and figure out how to fix it? I could really use a glass.”

“He’d tell us the same thing the AI does, ‘it’s an exact molecular equivalent’,” I snorted. “I’m sure he knows how to build a still though. Maybe we can talk him into building us one, so we can make our own.”

Cindy grinned. “That’s probably the best idea I’ve heard all day. We could make a fortune making and selling liquor out here, assuming we had any kind of currency.”

I just laughed, knowing she was right but happy we didn’t have any kind of currency now. The replicators could provide anything we needed, and the power for them was provided by the colony, courtesy of aliens who needed us to fight a war that they were incapable of fighting. It was a good thing too, as I couldn’t imagine trying to provide for a family our size on Earth.

Still, I could have done with a glass of wine myself as I moved into the adult living room and tried to decipher the rest of this damn report from the Admiral. Andrew was a nice substitute though, as he came in and started rubbing my feet as I worked my way through the report. He was pretty good at it by now, but that was to be expected. Riley had decided that since he couldn’t get pregnant, he should help take care of the pregnant women in the house by making sure they all got a foot rub every day. The girls who weren’t pregnant encouraged him to practice by making a good foot rub mandatory before he got any pussy, so he was very motivated.

“Thanks, sweetie, I needed that.”

“I could tell,” he said, grinning up at me. “Did you want me to bring your dinner in? Cindy was rounding up the kids when I came in and told me to ask when you were finished working. She wasn’t sure if you were up to dealing with the mob.”

“Dealing with the mob is probably the best thing for me right now,” I sighed. “We blew up a fucking planet for fuck’s sake. Virgil’s trying to figure out how, but he may have to go back to the drawing board at this point and try something completely different. Spending time with the kids is probably the best distraction I can think of until he gets back.”

It was. The kids were always a wonderful distraction and kept my mind off my worries until Virgil got home. He, Kate, and Riley walked in right at eight o’clock, just in time for him to help get the kids in bed. Once they were all tucked in, he said he needed a shower first and vanished into the master bathroom, so I looked over at Kate.

“How bad is it?”

“I have no idea,” she sighed as we walked into the adult living area. “We went through everything, from the initial chemical purity tests to the final quality control checks, and they were all perfect. He even had us recheck the containment system tests and there were no contaminants anywhere. We just need to let him think.”

Not what I wanted to hear, but I knew she was right. We waited as Virgil finished his shower and came out to join us. He was wearing a house-robe, and everyone sighed when he reached up to scratch Sakara’s ears as she crawled into his lap, because we’d all learned to recognize their nonverbal cues. She slipped down between his legs, opened his robe, and started licking his cock and balls as he zoned out.

This wasn’t about getting him to climax. It wasn’t even really sexual. We didn’t know how he discovered it, but her gentle attentions helped put his mind in that overdrive state that let him make intuitive leaps that baffled the rest of us. It was almost half an hour later when his eyes popped open and he started laughing. After another ten minutes of his laughing maniacally and gasping for air, he finally calmed and reached down to stroke Sakara’s head. She just shook her head and took his cock in her mouth before giving him a pleading look. Virgil smiled before looking around at the rest of us.

“I’ve figured it out. It’s crazy, but the only thing that makes sense,” he chuckled. “My formula turns the Sa’arm into giant torches.”

We were all looking at him like he was nuts. “Um, explain please?”

“You know the formula is designed to bond with the phosphorus ions in their bodies to block nerve transmissions? I won’t try to explain how it works, but I think I underestimated the amount of phosphorus in their bodies. My research showed they were using it as a neurotransmitter, but I think they’re using it far more extensively than that. You’ve heard the stories about how they survive without breathing for hours at a time? I think they’re using phosphorus to store extra oxygen as phosphorus pentoxide and can break it down to tetraphosphorus hexaoxide when needed.”