mouth.'
As Sandwell fast-forwarded, the platoon seemed to speed through ribs of light. With each successive zone they entered, more lights snapped on, and the zone behind them went dark. It was like zebra stripes. The carefully woven combinations of light and other electromagnetic wavelengths were blinding and generally lethal to life-forms bred in darkness. As the subplanet was being pacified, choke points like this one had been outfitted with arrays of lights – infrared, ultraviolet, and other photon transmitters – plus sensor-guided lasers, to 'keep the genie bottled.' Evidence of the genie began to appear. Sandwell resumed normal speed.
Bones and bodies littered the deadly bright avenue, as if a vicious battle had been fought here. In full view, spotlit by the megawatt of electricity, the hadal remains were almost uninteresting. Few had any coloration to their skins and hides. Even their
hair lacked color. It was not white, even, just a dead, parched hue similar to lard.
As the patrol neared the tunnel's far end – what Sandwell had termed the mouth – attempts at sabotage became obvious. Lights had been broken, or blocked with primitive tools, or plugged with stones. The hadal sappers had paid a high price for their efforts. The SEALs came to a halt. Just ahead, where the tunnel mouth turned black, lay true wilderness.
January swallowed her suspense. Something bad was about to happen.
'Anybody see it?' Sandwell asked the room. No one replied. 'They walked right past it,' he said. 'Just the way they were supposed to.'
Again he fast-forwarded. At high speed, the troops took off their packs and began their janitorial duties, replacing parts and lightbulbs in the walls and ceiling, and lubricating equipment and recalibrating lasers. The on-screen clock raced through seven minutes.
'Here's where they find it,' Sandwell said. The video slowed.
A group of SEALs had clustered around a spur of rock, obviously discussing a curiosity. The radioman approached, and his lipstick video camera gave a view of a small cylinder the size of a little finger. It was lodged in a crevice in the rock. 'There it is,' Sandwell announced.
There was no soundtrack, no voices. One of the SEALs reached for the cylinder. A second tried to caution him. Abruptly, one man fell backward. The rest simply slumped to the ground. The lipstick camera spun madly, and came to rest – sideways
– upon a view of someone's boot. The boot twitched once, no more.
'We've timed it,' Sandwell said. 'It took less than two seconds – one-point-eight, to be exact – for seven men to die. Of course, it was in its concentrated form at release. But even weeks later and three miles away, after dispersing on the air current, it took just over two seconds – two-point-two – to kill our rapid response units. In other words, it is nearly instantaneous. With a one-hundred-percent mortality rate.'
'What is this?' Thomas hissed at January. 'What is this man talking about?'
'I have no idea,' she muttered.
'Here it is again, slower, with more detail.'
Frame by frame, Sandwell showed them the death scene from the cylinder onward. This time, the finger-length of metal tube revealed its parts: a main body, a small glass hood, a tiny light. Magnified, the SEAL's fingers reached in. The tiny light bead changed colors. The cylinder delivered the faintest burst of an aerosol spray. Men fell to the ground, as slowly as drowned sailors. This time, January was able to see evidence of the biological violence. One of the black kids twisted his face to the camera, mouth gulping, and his eyes were gone. A man's hand swept past the lens, blood whipping from the nails. Once again the boot twitched and something, a human liquid, seeped from the lace holes.
Gas, January recognized. Or germs. But so fast-acting?
The officers caught up with the information in a single leap. CBW – chemical and biological warfare – was the part of their training they least wanted to engage in the field. But here it was.
'Once more,' Sandwell said.
'Impossible, absolutely impossible,' an officer said. 'Haddie doesn't have anywhere near this kind of capability. They're Neolithic throwbacks. They barely have the sophistication to make fire. They acquire weaponry, they don't invent it. Spears and booby traps, that's their creative limit. You can't tell me they're manufacturing CBs.'
'Since then,' Sandwell continued, disregarding him, 'we've found three more capsules just like it. They have detonators designed to be triggered by a coded radio command. Once placed, they can only be neutralized with the proper signal. Tamper with it, and you saw what happens. And so we leave them untouched. Here's a video of the most recent cylinder. It was discovered five days ago.'
This time the players were dressed in biochem suits. They moved with the slowness of astronauts in zero gravity. The dateline was different. It said ClipGal/Rail/09-01/0732:12. The camera angle shifted to a fracture in the cave wall. One of the suited troops started to insert a shiny stick into the crack. It was a dental mirror, January saw.
The next angle focused on an image in the mirror. 'This is the backside of one of the capsules,' Sandwell said.
The lettering was complete this time, though upside down. There was a tiny bar code, and an identification in English script. Sandwell froze the image. 'Right side up,' he ordered. The camera angle pivoted. SP-9, the lettering said, followed by USDoD.
'It's one of ours?' a voice asked.
'The 'SP' designates a synthetic prion, manufactured in the laboratory. Nine is the generation number.'
'Is that supposed to be good news or bad news?' someone said. 'The hadals aren't manufacturing the contagion that's killing us. We are.'
'The Prion-9 model has an accelerant built in. On contact with the skin, it colonizes almost instantly. The lab director compared it to a supersonic black plague.' Sandwell paused. 'Prion-9 was tailored for the theater in case things got out of hand down below. But once they built the prion, it was decided that nothing could get so out of hand to ever use it. Simply put, it's too deadly to be deployed. Because it reproduces, small amounts have the potential to expand and fill an environmental niche. In this case, that niche is the entire subplanet.'
A hand closed on January's arm with the force of a trap. The pain of Thomas's grip traveled up her bone. He let go. 'I'm sorry,' he whispered, and took his hand away. January knew better than to interrupt a military briefing. She did it anyway. 'And what happens when this prion fills its niche and decides to jump to the next niche? What about our world?'
'Excellent question, Senator. There is some good news with the bad. Prion-9 was developed for use in the subplanet exclusively. It only lives – and only kills – in darkness. It dies in sunlight.'
'In other words, it can't jump its niche. That's the theory?' She let her skepticism hang.
Sandwell added, 'One other thing. The synthetic prion has been tested on captive hadals. Once exposed, they die twice as fast as we do.'
'Now there's an edge for you,' someone snorted. 'Nine-tenths of a second.' Captive hadals? Tests? January had never heard of these things.
'Last of all,' Sandwell said, 'all remaining stocks of this generation have been destroyed.'
'Are there other generations?'
'That's classified. Prion-9 was going to be destroyed anyway. The order arrived just days after the theft. Except for the contraband cylinders already in the subplanet, there are no more.'
A question came from the dark room. 'How did the hadals get their hands on our ordnance, General?'
'It's not the hadals who planted the prion in our ClipGal corridor,' Sandwell snapped.
'We have proof now. It was one of us.'
The video screen came on again. January was certain he was replaying the first tape. It looked to be the same black tunnel, disgorging the same disembodied heat signatures. The hot green amoebas became bipedal. She checked the dateline. The images came from Line station number 1492. But the
