Invasion (Vegetable Wars Book 1) Read online

  As the RU-20 made its way down the lines to the fields, Colby tried Ag Central again. This time, he didn’t get the full bandwidth error message but rather the “cannot connect” message. He didn’t even want to contemplate what that meant, but his military mind wouldn’t let it go. The enemy, as he now thought of the plants, had seemingly begun a full-scale invasion. What he didn’t know was whether the plants themselves were doing the invading or if they were merely biological weapons employed by another species. Mankind had never yet encountered an intelligent life, but the universe was a vast place, and he was not willing to dismiss any possibility out of hand.

  I’ve got to see what’s happening. He opened the door to the vault.

  The enemy had cost him half his crops, and that would cripple any hope of profit for the year. He wanted, no, he needed to see them destroyed. Once he secured what remained of his farm, he could worry about the rest of the sector.

  Standing at the top of the hill, he could see crops disappear as the herbicide did its work. Colby had lost troops in battle. He’d lost friends. Watching his crops being destroyed wasn’t the same thing, but it was close. He knew that was a ridiculous sentiment, but he couldn’t help the feeling.

  Field 3C was the closest of the targeted fields to him, and he watched the hop-beans first shrivel before collapsing onto the dirt. As the beans dropped, they revealed 4C behind it, and hundreds of the enemy plants, each continuing the march forward, seemingly unaffected by Monsanto’s best.

  “Shit!” he shouted, rushing back into the vault.

  “I said maximum strength, Ralph,” he told the AI.

  “Affirmative. RU-20 was dispensed at the maximum legal strength.”

  “I don’t care about legal or not. I want the max possible.”

  “Civil Code 4002.3.12 expressly forbids any Class 4 herbicide to be applied above 40 percent concentration without a special use permit.”

  “I don’t give a fuck about Civil Code 4002-whatever. We’re under attack. I order you to dispense pure RU-20, no dilution!”

  “Your illegal command has been duly noted and forwarded to Ag Central.”

  “There is no Ag Central anymore, you idiot, Ralph” he yelled.

  Colby didn’t know if Ag Central still existed or not, but it seemed like a good guess that was the reason he could not connect with them. Not that his AI cared. It was programmed one way, and the end of the universe would not sway the stupid thing. He could scream and shout at it, but that would be beating his head against the wall.

  “Dispense RU-20 to all rows,” he ordered the AI. “Maximum strength.”

  “RU-20 will destroy all crops. Please confirm instructions.”

  You already told me that, he thought, but just before he gave the confirmation, another thought hit him, and he said, “Wait one.”

  Running back outside, he could see waves of the enemy crossing the now denuded Rows 3 and 4. As they reached Row 2, the invaders started to tear into his crops. Colby was sure that the things had killed his neighbors, and now they were marching towards him. If he cleared the way by destroying his own crops, they would get to him that much sooner.

  “You’ve got to get out of here, Edson,” he said aloud.

  He wanted to protect his farm, but it wasn’t worth his life. He ran to the house where Duke greeted him with a whomp of her tail on the bed.

  “Come on, girl. No time for this,” he said, snapping a leash around her neck.

  Duke resisted, pulling back, but Colby was having none of it. He dragged her to the door and grabbed his bugout bag, a holdover habit from his service days. He turned to give the small house a once over, then pulled the dog outside.

  “Pay attention, Duke! Don’t give me any shit!”

  He started to the west in a slow run, only speeding up when Duke gave into the inevitable and began to lope beside him. As he ran, he tried to think of his options. The local spaceport was 40 klicks away. He wasn’t in his fighting prime anymore, but he could make it in five hours at a steady jog. He wasn’t sure Duke could, though, and he wasn’t going to abandon her. If they had to stop and rest her, so be it.

  So engrossed in his calculations was he that he almost made a second lieutenant mistake—he lost track of the bigger picture. He rounded the bend in the middle path as it approached Row 8 where the bulk of the pyro berries were grown, and came to a dead stop. Ahead of him, was the Gustavsons’ farm, or more accurately, what was left of it. Their single-crop fields of corn were flattened, almost every stalk gone. Attacking the last few meters had to be thousands of the enemy plants. Within a few minutes, they would be crossing over into his property. Either these plants were larger cousins of the ones he’d seen on his property earlier or they had grown. These had to be a meter tall.

  Duke whined beside him as he lifted his gaze. He didn’t know the reclusive Gustavsons well, but their house was visible from his farm. It took him a moment to find it, or what was left of it. Half of a single wall still stood. The rest was a jumble of rubble.

  How the hell. . . ?

  The enemy plants, which were uprooting the Gustavsons’ corn, weren’t that big. If this was all there was to them, if they didn’t have some sort of tools, how could they have destroyed a house? It didn’t seem possible.

  Ever the practical soldier, Colby had to accept what his eyes told him, even if his mind protested the impossibility. Their house was gone. And if the enemy could destroy their house, it could destroy his.

  Colby started running back, this time with Duke pulling forward on her leash. At the corner of Row 6, he took a left and ran to the high point of the western half of the property. It didn’t give him a panoramic view, but in every direction he could see a mass of enemy plants advancing on him.

  “Looks like we’re surrounded, girl,” he said in a matter-of-fact voice.

  This wasn’t the first time this had happened to him. On Proclyn 301, his battalion had been surrounded by a division of the Gannon Imperial Army. It had taken the Marines 42 days and 73 percent casualties to break the siege, but break it they had.

  “And you’re no Imperial Cybotroopers,” he shouted out before turning to Duke and saying, “Let’s go see what we can do about this.”

  He ran back up to the compound. The enemy had already reached Row 3, some 400 or so meters away. He could hear them tearing into his crops.

  Bolting into the vault, he stopped and ordered his thoughts. He had to figure out a way to stage a breakout, to get beyond the line of advancing plants. As a commissioned officer, Colby had been infantry, but he’d also been prior-enlisted with a combat engineer Military Occupational Specialty. As a combat engineer, he knew how to blow things up.

  With his engineer kit, he had dozens of ways to pulp the enemy. Unfortunately, kits like that were not available to civilians, not even retired generals.

  No problem, Edson, you’ll just have to gyver it. OK, first what to make?

  Combat engineers used a variety of explosives on their missions. Low explosives were used to move thing like dirt, high explosives to shatter and destroy objects. Colby would like nothing better than to use HE to destroy all the enemy in an area, giving Duke and him a clear path, but as he looked around the vault, he didn’t have the time nor ready materials to create an HE bomb. What he did have, however, was fertilizer.

  An ANFO it is, then.

  The primary ingredient in an ANFO is ammonium nitrate, and that was also a main ingredient in fertilizer. He stepped up to the corn mixture and read the text under the red skull and crossbones on the side.

  There! Ammonium nitrate, his pulse raced with excitement until he read the rest of the ingredients. Fuck! Urea!

  Ammonium nitrate will not explode if it is mixed with common ingredients such as urea or ammonium sulfate, two typical additives to AN-based fertilizers for just that reason. He quickly checked the next cylinder, the one for pyro-berries. It wasn’t any good, either. Each mixture had the needed AN, but not in a high enough concentration or without
the additives that made it useless as an explosive.

  He stepped back, hands on his hips, trying to figure out a solution. Then, he remembered his two specialty fields, the ones in which he grew the winter melons, raspberries, and other rare foods for his own consumption and to trade for meats. He didn’t have one single cylinder for each of those—his fertilizer was mixed in the magnetic agitator and applied by a man-packed sprayer. He opened the pantry and pulled out a pack of Señor Fukimaru’s Wonder Grow. The ingredient list started off with aluminum nitrate salts—and without any of the other ingredients that would render them inert. With a thrill, Colby grabbed another 5kg pack and put them on his workbench.

  Now, he needed fuel and a detonator. Normally, the fuel would be a carbon-based liquid, such as gasoline or diesel. His farm, though, ran on electricity. He didn’t have liquid fuel.

  But I do have photovoltaic cells, though. And what do I paint on the back of the new ones? Aluminum powder paste! Aluminum powder and aluminum nitrate makes ammonal. Boom!

  The cells that produced electricity were pretty foolproof, but they could be damaged by weather. Because he was a long way from a tech he had a small stock of the cells on hand for repairs. They’d been ready to go before he took over the property, so he hoped he still had the paste that had been used to paint the backs. He returned to the house and rummaged around the pantry shelves, trying to find some. He’d just about given up when he found a stained can which had obviously been opened previously. He carefully pried up the lid, and to his relief, there was at least half a can of the powder remaining.

  Better still, he could use the can as a body for his bomb. What he didn’t know was the proper percentage of AN to aluminum powder. He automatically tried pulling up the information on the net, but it was still down. His implant, however, contained some 10 terabytes of information, everything for the Marine seeking to perform almost any mission. Within moments, not only did he have the numbers, but a nice recording on how to mix the two. Minutes later, he had what he hoped was a working ammonal bomb.

  Except for a detonator. This won’t go off without one.

  That might be a little more difficult, he realized. His farm had long been terrascaped to maximize productivity, so there wasn’t a need for construction equipment. But the fuel and explosive needed something to set them off. He searched the vault, racking his brain for a solution, all the time noting that time was running out. He considered running out to the silos; grain silos have been known to explode and had dampening systems installed to prevent that. but he had no idea as to what mechanism in them set them off.

  There’s got to be something here I can use, but what?

  He queried his implant, scanning through a list of military detonators until he came to field expedient measures. There were at least twenty, but all took time to prepare, time he didn’t have. Finally, one caught his eye. If the tolerances were not too tight, it might work. He grabbed a small glass bottle of sulfuric acid, his half-made bomb, and bolted out the door. . .

  . . . and came to a stop. To the east, the enemy plants had almost reached his house.

  “Come on, Duke! No time to waste.”

  Duke whined, then ran back into the vault while Colby bolted back to the house and to the kitchen.

  Please, please, be enough, he begged as he reached for the matches he kept above the stove.

  The power in the house was electric, but he’d grown fond of grilling meat outside, and for that, he needed old fashioned matches—and friction matches used potassium chlorate to ignite. He had about 30 left in the box.

  I hope it’s enough.

  Snapping off the heads, he placed them in a small plastic bag before dumping a cup of sugar in as well, shaking it up. It was crude, and it probably wouldn’t work, but he was running out of options.

  Turning to his liquor cabinet, he carefully removed a highly polished wooden box, flipping open the lid. Nestled in a form-fitting silk-covered pad was a small 250ml flask of 2402 Martell Cognac. The bottle had cost him three weeks salary, and he’d been saving it for a special occasion. Without hesitation, he opened the flask and dumped the golden liquid down his sink. It was the flask he wanted. Handblown by retro-craftsmen in Iberia back on Earth, it was delicate, almost insubstantial, crystal. He carefully filled the flask one quarter of the way with the sulfuric acid, then started to place it in his bomb, intending to surround it with the sugar-potassium chlorate mixture. Despite how fragile the flask was, however, it was possible that the aluminum nitrate and aluminum powder mixture would cushion it after he threw it. He needed to make sure the flask broke, causing the sugar mixture to explode, thereby setting off the rest of the bomb.

  He opened the cabinet with his kitchenware and spotted his small salad bowl. It looked about right, and it just fit inside the aluminum powder can. Colby put in the sugar and match heads next, then lay the flask with the acid on top. The bowl was hard, the sides of the can were hard. He was sure that when it hit the ground, the flask would break. Whether the match heads would ignite and explode was another story, but this was the best he could do. He carefully closed the can, sealing the ingredients inside.

  Colby ran back outside. The plants were in the compound, a dozen or so up against the east wall of his house, their leafy branches hugging the walls like nature-lovers communing with trees. He ran to the north side of the compound, ready to blast a hole in the incoming horde, but stopped. Duke had left him to run back to the vault, but he couldn’t leave her. With a sigh, he ran back. The dog was cowering behind the cylinders, and he had to drag her out using the still attached leach. She put up a fight, but he simply overpowered her.

  There was a cracking sound as he dragged Duke back to the north side of the compound. A chunk of his house broke off under the assault of the plants. They might be much slower than him, but like a tree buckling pavement with their roots, they evidently had immense power.

  More had entered the compound, but for the moment, they seemed to be ignoring Duke and him. He wasn’t going to test them, however, and stayed as far away as he could as he got into position, ready to blast a path to freedom.

  As he took in the sheer numbers of the enemy, though, he began having second thoughts. His little homemade bomb didn’t seem like enough. But it was all he had.

  Duke was jerking wildly at her leash, whining and barking. Colby jerked back, almost knocking her off her feet. He didn’t need a panicking dog while he had a homemade bomb in his hands.

  “He who will not risk, cannot win,” he said, quoting an ancient wet-water navy hero, one of the many quotes that adorned the walls of the Officer Training School auditorium back on New Mars.

  There was one more thing he could do. His Marine Corps utilities were sturdy, able to take a lot of punishment in addition to normal wear and tear. When the bullets were flying, however, they needed the body armor that was intertwined with the uniform’s cloth. With a quick command, a tiny current activated that caused the armor fibers to align, making them impenetrable to small arms fire. He felt a little foolish activating the armor when faced with plants, but he was of the better-safe-than-sorry school of thinking.

  He shifted the leash to his left hand, transferring the handle of the bomb to his right. He swung it around, building momentum until he released it to arc up in the air. Like an idiot, he stood there, feeling elation as it flew straight for the densest concentration of the plants he could see. He really didn’t think it would work, and so was surprised that as it hit, there was a huge explosion, strong enough to blow him back on his ass.

  “Ooh-rah!” he shouted, scrambling back up to his feet, ears ringing, but none the worse for the shock wave.

  Below him, pieces of green littered the area around a 15-meter-wide hole in what had been hop-beans. Chunks of the enemy had reached him, torn apart by the blast. His little bomb might not have the brisance of a military HE bomb, but it had packed a lot of power. As strong as the enemy seemed to be, they couldn’t stand up to pure brute force.
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br />   “Let’s go,” he shouted at Duke, pulling at her and starting down into the blast zone.

  He didn’t get far, pulling up into a stop as beyond the zone, enemy plants were rising from where they’d been blown flat. Colby had once seen a time-lapse video of sunflowers back on Earth following the sun, turning to keep their faces oriented to it. This was what he was seeing right then. The plants didn’t have a flower, but there was no doubt in his military mind that they were turning to face him. If they had been ignoring him before, he was certainly the center of their attention now. As they started converging on him, he knew he wasn’t about to break through to the north—or to any direction.

  “Shit, Duke, back to the vault!”

  The dog didn’t need any encouragement. She bolted, almost pulling him along with her. They passed the silos, but as they approached the vault, the plants surged forward to cut them off. Colby let go of the leash, and Duke darted ahead, just out of reach of the forward edge of the plants. A couple of steps behind her, he wasn’t going to be so lucky.

  He wasn’t going down without a fight, however. As the first plant moved to block him, he leveled a kick that sent the plant flying ten meters. He felt his warrior take over as he leveled a second kick, breaking leafy branches off another.

  “I’m going to make it,” he said as he broke through, and darted just ahead of the advancing line.

  Ten meters away from the door, something tripped him, and he ate a facefull of dirt. He twisted around, and one of the plants had wrapped its arm-like branches around his left ankle. He tried to kick it off him, but the branches started squeezing. Colby immediately understood how the things had started to take apart his house. It was like being caught in a compression vice. Without his body armor, he was sure his leg would be crushed, and whatever the first tiny plant had done to his hand when he’d picked it up would be repeated. He pushed with his right leg and managed to scoot forward, dragging his attacker with him as the pain mounted. He pushed off again, then four or five of the plants grabbed his attacker. Their combined effort started to pull him back. Colby clawed the ground for purchase, but he was being overpowered.