Invasion (Vegetable Wars Book 1) Read online

  Duke had jumped at the mist, but as it didn’t seem to hurt her, she poked her nose forward, sniffing the sprayer.

  “No, you don’t want that,” he told her, holding it higher, out of her reach.

  All of the RU products were certified safe for animal life, but if it killed plants that easily, Colby wasn’t sure it was totally harmless. He grabbed a mask out of the dispenser by the door, put it on, then went forth to do battle.

  He didn’t have to go all the way to the perimeter fields. Field 2A, which was also a pyro berry field, was in the middle of the eastern sector. He thought he saw movement, so he stopped and crouched down. There, under the bushes, were close to a hundred of the small plants. He held the sprayer forward, close to them, and sprayed. A fine mist coated them and the nearest berry bushes. He hated to sacrifice the half-dozen bushes, but the invading plants gave him the creeps.

  Almost immediately, the plants reacted, as if trying to evade the spray. RU-22 worked quickly, but not that quickly. The berry bushes were already wilting as the spray broke down their cellular walls, but the small plants were writhing—actually writhing—as the spray touched them. Colby knew this had to be caused by their cellulose walls contracting unevenly, but it was still disconcerting.

  “Well, at least we know it works, huh Duke?”

  She barked in response, then pawed at the nearest of the plants. Colby had to jerk the dog back.

  The movement ceased, and the small plant bodies started to decompose. Within five minutes, there was nothing left of them, along with the six berry plants that the mist had touched. With a final nod, he stood and went back into the vault.

  RU-22 was an amazingly high-tech herbicide. It was designed to break down plant matter and let it seep back into the soil. This was far more efficient and timely, if more expensive, than the ancient method of plowing plants back into the ground. The problem with earlier versions of the herbicide was that it decomposed in a broad spectrum. Winter melon vines were alive for only one fruiting, and if the RU-20, the older version of the herbicide, was used to decompose the melon field drifted to, say his pyro berry field, where the bushes lasted two to three years before yields began to fail, then it would kill the berry bushes as well. Monsanto’s solution was to have genetic blockers mixed in with the RU-22 that made it harmless to targeted crops. If he’d targeted the RU-22 in his sprayer for pyro berries, then they wouldn’t have died when he’d sprayed the invading plants.

  Colby gave the instructions to his ag AI. He wanted his entire farm sprayed, but he didn’t want to lose his crops in the process. The AI gave him a price for the operation. He blanched at the cost, knowing it would more than eat up the bonus, and the next ten bonuses, for his bumper crop of pyro berries. He hesitated, then gave the go-ahead. The ag AI started its work, mixing the outgoing RU-22 with the correct genetic blocker for a given field, then sending the spray out. Colby waited for the 30 minutes, afraid the AI would make a mistake and wipe out a field of densuke melons. As usual, however, the AI did its job, and the entire farm was sprayed.

  Colby didn’t know why he bothered to open the door a crack and peek out first as if checking for an enemy lying in wait. Laughing at his caution, he sauntered down to 2A. The ground was littered with what was left of the tiny plants, the berry plants were untouched. He moved over to 2B, then 2C. It was the same there. He checked each and every field, and by the time he was done, all traces of the invading plant had disappeared into the soil.

  Breathing a huge sigh of relief, he turned to go back into the house. He needed to report this to the central office, 3000 klicks away in Freesome City. He knew he should have kept a sample of the plant, but if they wanted one, all he had to do was go outside his farm and gather a couple.

  “Well, girl, I think we did a good job,” he said as he plopped down into his kitchen chair. “Nobody, or I guess, nothing, is going to invade my farm.”

  **************

  Colby lay on his bed, Duke fast asleep and sprawled across his lap. The dog gently snored, a string of drool soaking through the light blanket and onto his thigh.

  “At least one of us can sleep, girl.”

  He hadn’t been able to drop off, and he’d ended up binge-watching the final five episodes of “The Beltov Boys.” He hated the show. In typical Hollybolly fashion, the writers had just about everything wrong about the military and warfare. Despite this, and despite the fact that he kept pointing out all of the mistakes to the uncaring Duke, he watched every episode. And while he’d deny it until the end of time, he’d had a tear or two form when Anton slipped into death’s embrace.

  He checked the time. Dawn had just broken, and while he could pull up the next season, his day would begin soon enough. He might as well get a start on things. Carefully sliding Duke off his lap, he got out of bed and dialed up a coffee. Taking the steaming mug, he stood over his display, checking the readouts. As usual, nothing was out of the ordinary. Every reading was within standards.

  Colby had lived an eventful life with no less than seven combat tours. Sure, most of his career had not been as exciting, either in desk jobs or in training for combat. But even then, there was always the potential for combat that made the training relevant and gripping. Those days were over, however. Nothing exciting was ever going to happen to him again. Every day, for the rest of his life, he’d check his readouts to see them the same as the day before, the year before, the decade before. Sometimes, he wished that something new would happen, anything to break the monotony.

  The gods of war, farms, and just about everything else, are a capricious lot, and as if listening to his thoughts, they chose that moment for one of his motion sensors to go off. Colby’s farm was a long way from any of the ranches in the district, too far for a wandering cow to happen by and eye his crops, and this was the first time the alarm had been activated. He tapped the screen a few times, but it remained on. Frowning, he stepped out onto his porch, clad in only his boxers, and looked out towards field 4D at the far eastern edge of his property. He couldn’t see anything, not that he expected to. The alarm had to be a bug in the system, which meant his AI could be acting up in more ways than just false motion detector alarms.

  That could be catastrophic, and he felt a surge of, well not panic, but concern. For all that he wanted to be in control of the decisions made to run his farm, the thought of actually being forced to make those decisions left him apprehensive.

  He looked back through the open door to Duke, still happily asleep, leg twitching as she chased dream rabbits. With a shrug, Colby walked off the porch, barefoot and still in only his underwear, and down one of the paths to 4D. He was sure there wasn’t anything there and that this was a glitch, but his military mind wanted to confirm that before he put in a priority call for a tech to check out his AI.

  4D was a good 900 meters from the farmhouse, and as he walked, the exertion, coupled with the morning sun, caused him to sweat. Vasquez’ sun, a relatively old star as stars go, was heavy in the red-to-blue wavelengths, which made the planet such a good place to grow Earth crops. The standing joke was that a farmer could plant a seed but would have to jump back before the plant sprang out of the ground and hit him in the face.

  The morning’s rays felt good on his skin. Like all Marines, Colby was extremely self-conscious about letting the sun, any sun, shine on his unprotected skin. On Poulson’s World, he’d been terribly burned by the planet’s young sun. It hadn’t seemed to be generating much heat, but its ultraviolet output had been more than enough to crisp his bare chest and back and land him in the hospital for regeneration for two full weeks. Here on Vasquez, however, the sun put out relatively little ultraviolet light, which was good for plants and human skin alike.

  He reached 4D, and as he expected, there wasn’t a lone cow on a walkabout eyeing his corn. He was just about to return to the house when something else caught his attention. The plot of land to the east of his was still owned by the government, and it had been planted with sawgrass as a means
of erosion control as well as providing ethanol for vehicles. It looked to him as if the sawgrass moved. Except there was no wind at the moment to account for any movement. He took a couple of steps farther down the path, and things came into focus. It wasn’t the sawgrass that was moving, but rather something else, something that looked like larger versions of the plant he’d eradicated the night before. About half-a-meter high now, they were definitely moving—slowly to be sure, but moving.

  Colby hadn’t imagined that the only place the invasive species had landed was on his farm, of course, but seeing as how large the things had grown in the last 15 hours, he was glad he’d killed each of the pests on his property. He wasn’t even sure they would harm his crops, but something had his nerves itching much as he used to have before going into battle. He just knew they were bad news.

  He squatted right at the edge of his property, peering into the sawgrass at the hundreds, if not thousands, of the plants. He could have sworn that the nearest of them swiveled to him, although if to face him or turn away, he sure couldn’t tell.

  If these were an invasive species, he really had to report them. He activated the record function on his implant, which pulled the images from his optic nerve. On impulse, he reached over and grabbed one of the plants, expecting to pull its roots out of the ground so he could get a clear recording of it. Two surprising things happened. First, the roots were barely attached into the dirt, if at all. Second, a searing pain shot through his hand and up his arm. He dropped the plant and jumped back. This time, there was no mistake about it; the plant dragged itself back to the sawgrass, its leaves acting as arms.

  Colby instinctively started to stomp on the plant, but he pulled back at the last moment as he realized he was still barefoot, almost naked, in fact. His hand was still burning, and suddenly, he felt very vulnerable. He stumbled back five meters, then stood there, watching the plant join the others, then pull itself upright.

  I’ve got to report this.

  He tried to connect to Central Ag, but his call wouldn’t go through. The channels were jammed. He queued up his recording and left a message, knowing that the call would be received when there was some available bandwidth.

  4D was just on the west side of a slight rise on the government land. As Colby stood there, wondering what he should do next, the sun’s rays rose enough to illuminate the ground. Almost immediately, there was an increase in activity among the invading plants. He felt an ominous foreboding that something bad was about to happen.

  After a few moments of direct sunlight, the plants started walking across the boundary path, their “roots” working like octopus tentacles to move them along. At the edge of the field, the first few plants stopped, leafy arms reaching out to touch the stalks of corn, almost tentatively.

  “Got you now, you bastards,” he muttered.

  He’d sprayed the field with RU-22, which had a two-day period of efficacy. The herbicide would still be more than powerful enough to manage the invasion. A squad of the things was now on the path, but not pushing forward into the corn.

  Until they were.

  With a sudden surge, the entire mass pushed forward. Leafy green arms reached forward to pull down the corn stalks.

  “Oh, no, you don’t!” Colby yelled, taking a step forward before common sense again took over.

  He was still standing in his underwear, after all, and the things had proven that they had a bite to them. He spun and bolted back up the path, not bothering to watch his field laid to waste. Three minutes later, he burst into the vault.

  Evidently, the RU-22 had weakened enough overnight so that the plants could stand up to it. But he’d wiped out the baby plants before, so he was pretty sure he could take care of their bigger siblings. He gave his AI direct orders to initiate the same herbicide sequence as the day before, but starting with 4D. A few moments later, RU-22 was being dispensed.

  With a huge sigh of relief, Colby went back to the door and looked down the slope in the direction of the field. He couldn’t see much, but he knew the plants would be disintegrating. He wondered if they were screaming tiny plant screams as their plans were foiled. If they were, he didn’t care.

  It was obvious by now that these were no ordinary plants, but whether the products of some ag lab gone mad or an alien species, he hadn’t a clue. Nor did he really care. If they wanted to take his farm, they’d suffer the consequences.

  He checked his message, but it was still in the queue. He couldn’t be sure, of course, but he had the sinking suspicion that this invasion was not something isolated to the local region.

  Colby was not the most sociable neighbor, but on sparsely-populated planets, people helped each other. He gave Gabrielle and Tonsor, his nearest neighbors, a call to warn them. The local nets were not jammed, and the call went through, the visuals opening up to show what had to be their living room in the background. He waited patiently for either of the two to appear. Neither did. He guessed they could be asleep, but farm folk tended to wake up early, and it was already past 7:30 in the morning. If they were out in their vault, their implants would patch them through.

  If they were asleep, he had no way to wake them, so he left a message for when they woke up. Hopefully, they’d still have crops by that time. He was about to cut the connection when movement on the screen caught his eye.

  “Hey, about time—” he started, before he realized that he hadn’t seen Gabrielle or Tonsor.

  A plant invader, followed by two more, moved past the pickup. There was a crashing sound, then more of the plants passed into view before the pickup was knocked to the floor, and the connection was cut.

  “Holy shit,” he said quietly as what he’d seen sunk in.

  This was getting serious.

  He checked the status of the spraying. 4D and E were completed with five more fields commencing. His entire farm would be covered within 20 minutes. He doubted the plants would be able to reach the farmhouse by then, given what he’d seen.

  Suddenly, he felt very vulnerable standing there in his underwear. Ancient warriors might have girded their loins before battle in what was their version of Bryson Mills boxers, but this wasn’t then. He bolted for the house and to his closet, pulling out his old Marine Corps camouflaged utilities. He hadn’t worn them since his resignation, but they now gave him a sense of purpose. Out came his boots, and as the wraparounds tightened on his feet, it was as if he’d never left. His hand strayed to the armor activation, but that was too much. The RU-22 was killing off the invaders, so it wasn’t as if he was going into battle against the Borealis Pact.

  “Wake up, Duke,” he yelled as he started out the door again. “I said, come, girl,” he added while the dog whumped her tail on the bed, but not getting up.

  He rolled his eyes and ran to the vault, eager to check the progress. About a third of the farm was sprayed. The motion sensors were still screaming their warnings.

  Let them come. As soon as they step on my property, it’s mush for them, and I’ll grow my crops on their dead bodies.

  Satisfied that everything was going according to plan, he tried to call Ag Central one more time, but there was still no connection. Hesitating more than a combat vet should, he tried to get ahold of Gabrielle and Tonsor, but that connection was dead. He knew he should have called them yesterday when he’d first noticed the baby invaders. If he had, they might have had a chance.

  He stepped to the doorway and looked out down the slope. It was almost a klick to 4D, so he couldn’t be sure, but it looked as if more of his corn was on the ground and the vast swath of sawgrass on the next plot was flattened. The sawgrass made sense. If these things were attacking Earth vegetation, then the sawgrass had no protection. But his fields were being sprayed. They should be stopped in their tracks.

  I need to get a closer look.

  He may not have the X55 carbine he’d favored while on active duty, but simply being in his utilities gave him a sense of confidence. The plants weren’t very large, after all, and his b
oots made for good stomping if it came to that.

  Colby didn’t get far. Halfway there, he could see the last of his corn topple to the ground. The RU-22 should be working, but the evidence was right there before his eyes. He turned around and ran back up the hill and into the vault. Checking the readings, he confirmed that the herbicide had indeed been dispensed. He switched the display, and four of his fields were now essentially dead, the numbers showing zero growth.

  “Son-of-a-bitch!”

  He wasn’t sure what to do, so he queried the AI. It recommended increasing the concentration of the RU-22. He hesitated. The first spraying didn’t work, so he wasn’t sure a second one would, either. But he had nothing else, so he approved the course of action. Within moments, the higher-strength herbicide was being dispensed. Colby watched the readouts, but the damage continued to mount. Eighteen percent of his crops had been destroyed so far, and the damage showed no signs of slowing down. He had to do something.

  “Ralph, dispense RU-20 to rows three and four,” he ordered the AI, using the name assigned to it when he’d taken over the farm. “Maximum strength.”

  “RU-20 will destroy all crops,” the AI responded. “Please confirm instructions.”

  No one wanted to employ slash and burn as a strategy, but it was becoming clear that he was fighting a losing battle, and the only thing that made any sense was that somehow the invading plants were being protected by the same genetic blockers that kept his crops safe from the RU-22. It was better to lose half of his crops than all of them. Not just crops, either. The image of the invaders inside Gabrielle and Tonsor’s home was gnawing at him. RU-20 was a merciless herbicide, and it would stop the bastards in their tracks.