Invasion (Vegetable Wars Book 1) Page 5

  A flash of gold shot past his face. With a growl worthy of a wolf, Duke sunk her teeth in the main stalk of the plant latched on his leg. To his immense, but welcomed surprise, the plant released him, recoiling to about half of its length.

  Colby jumped to his feet, grabbed Duke’s leash, and bolted for the vault door as the rest of the plants rallied to converge on him. He darted though the door, then slammed it shut, bolting it.

  Duke looked up at him, tail wagging.

  “I owe you, girl, big time,” he said as he tried to catch his breath, adrenaline flowing through him.

  He’d tried to create an egress route, but all it seemed to do was to piss the plants off, assuming they even had the capability for that emotion. The way they’d reacted, especially when several of them had tried to help the one on his leg, had convinced him they were not mindless automatons, much more than simple biological weapons. He’d bet on the fact that they were individuals of some sort, at least.

  “At least they’re not invincible,” he said. “We sure blew the crap out of some of them. Now I’ve just got to figure out how to do that again, but on a larger scale.”

  There was a thump from outside the vault. Duke growled as the hair on the back of Colby’s neck stood on end. He’d seen the plants starting to tear apart his house. There was a big difference between his home and the vault, however. The house was built from Mennyboard, which was essentially compressed cellulose. Cheap and easy to make, it was sturdy enough for most purposes and could stand up to routine weather, but the building was hardly a fortress. The vault, on the other hand, was built to withstand a possible explosion of any of the chemicals it contained, and it was a shelter from extreme weather conditions. It would take quite a bit more effort to tear it down. He turned his attention back to trying to make a bigger bomb—although not before finding a long-handled shovel to keep readily at hand.

  He went through the entire vault, comparing the ingredients and materials at hand to what his implant fed him about making explosives. Given six or seven hours, if the vault held up, he should be able to create a more powerful explosive, but would it be big enough to wipe out the plants? He didn’t think so. He could make a type of napalm, but he had no way to deliver it.

  Too bad. I bet they’d burn like old Christmas trees.

  The image of the thousands of meter-tall plants going up in flames was appealing, and while he searched for a response, his mind kept drifting back to that image. But there was no way to bring flames to them. The farm had the heaters, of course, to protect the crops from cold snaps, but while each heater put out about 600,000 BTU per hectare/hour, which was pretty hefty, it was hardly a conflagration. Unless he could convince the plants to march into each heater in turn, they wouldn’t do much. He couldn’t even let the methane that powered the heating units build up. The gas-activated sensors on the heater automatically fired the ignitors when the methane first reached them.

  But what if I could deactivate the sensors somehow?

  “Ralph, can I run methane through the lines but deactivate the heating units?”

  “Negative. Doing so would cause a dangerous buildup of gas with possible catastrophic consequences.”

  That’s what I’m trying to do, idiot.

  “I want to override that. Deactivate the heating units.”

  “I’m sorry, but Civil Code 4008.4.10 expressly forbids that while the system is online. Tampering with the heating units carries a 100,000 credit fine.”

  “So, it’s possible to do it?” he asked, his interest rising.

  “Affirmative. Each heating unit has a manual cut-off switch. The valve can then be opened to flush the system.”

  His excitement dropped off. In order to do that, he’d have to go out among the fields, something he doubted the plants would let him do.

  “So, there is no way to do it from here?”

  “Technically, yes, there is. But Civil Code 4008—”

  “Stop,” he ordered, not wanting to hear the AI continue.

  “Can you override the farm AI?” he subvocalized to his implant.

  A normal civilian implant wouldn’t be able to force an AI to break a law, but high-level military units had more capabilities.

  “Yes, that is possible,” it replied.

  “Do it. I want the heating units deactivated.”

  A moment later, his implant said, “Three of sixty-four units deactivated.”

  Colby’s heart fell.

  “Only three?”

  “The remaining units are no longer receiving signals. The probability is high that they no longer have unit integrity.”

  “You mean they’re destroyed?”

  “Yes.”

  Colby could ask his implant for more details, but it was programmed to give them only when queried. If it said the probability was “high,” then that was good enough for him. And it was good news. If the units were destroyed, then they couldn’t set off the gas before enough had built up to be effective. With only three units still intact, his plan, half-formed as it was, might have a chance at success.

  The real question in his mind now was if the methane could actually be concentrated enough to take the farm up in flames. He checked the weather outside. With winds at 5 kph, that might be enough to blow the methane off the property before it could build up. He needed to somehow transform the gas into something “stickier,” for lack of a better term.

  He queried his implant, not expecting a solution, but one popped up, something far easier than he’d expected: magnesium stearate. The substance was essentially a soap, the same thing that caused soap scum in his tub. The farm used it to coat the inside of all the cylinders and tubing to ensure the ingredients, especially the powders, didn’t stick to the containers. It was also a general lubricant for much of the farm’s pieces of equipment.

  If the stearate kept materials separated, it didn’t make sense that he could mix it with a gas, but his implant instructed him to run it through the agitator, giving him the percentages of each substance. With more than a little trepidation, he put in the commands to run the methane and magnesium stearate through the agitator and out through the lines to flood the farm.

  “Distribution lines are not intact,” the AI informed him.

  “Pull up a diagram.”

  He leaned forward to study the schematic. The bulk of the lines were still in place, but all were damaged to some extent or the other. Some indicated leaks while others had huge chunks of line torn out.

  “The bastards have been busy,” he muttered before asking his AI, “Ralph, how can I achieve the most coverage?”

  A moment later, the schematic changed with the selected lines highlighted in blue. The AI had bypassed several lines that had been torn out close to the compound while leaving others in the distribution plan. The resultant coverage was complete, even if the concentration varied.

  A large cracking sound filled the vault, and Colby grabbed the shovel, holding it aloft as Duke let out a throaty growl. There was another crack coming from the east wall, but nothing penetrated into the building.

  Yet.

  Still holding the shovel, he ordered the AI to start the distribution, half-expecting to hear another protest that doing so violated some civil code, but Ralph acknowledged the order. He looked back to make sure the flow of both methane and magnesium stearate had begun, and the readouts on the control suite confirmed that. A green feed light indicated the mixture was being pushed down the lines.

  Colby had learned more than he’d wanted to about explosions over the last half-an-hour. He’d never heard of the term “stoichiometric proportion,” which was the concentration of the flammable material in the air at a given temperature and pressure that gave the most bang-for-the-buck. What he did know was that he wasn’t going to achieve that with his gyvered system. He needed to reach the LEL, or Lower Explosive limit. For methane, that was 5 percent. Despite the huge repository of data in his implant, he couldn’t find what the LEL was for a methane-stearat
e mix. He didn’t even understand what the 5 percent LEL meant; it was not something as simple as meaning 5 percent of the atmosphere. He tried to follow the math before giving up. He didn’t need to know what it meant. If the sensors on the remaining three heating units worked, all he had to know was when the meters read 5 percent. Or in this case, 10 percent, the buffer he was giving himself to take into consideration the addition of the magnesium stearate.

  There were more cracking sounds from the walls. The plants were making progress even on the vault. Colby just hoped the building could hold out.

  “There we go, Duke. It’s working,” he said when Unit 14 indicated a jump in methane. It was only at .5 percent, but it was a start.

  Duke whomped her tail on the floor.

  More to keep busy than anything else, Colby gathered the materials to make a Molotov Cocktail, something he could have done in his sleep. He intended on using the three heating units to set off the explosion, but it was always a good idea to have a back-up.

  Slowly, the methane concentration started to rise. Unit 14 hit 5 percent within ten minutes, with 23 at 3 percent. There was no feedback at all from Unit 33. With 14 and 23 covering a third of the farm at best, he wouldn’t know how well the coverage was getting to be on the rest of the property.

  He waited, one hand on Duke’s back and chewing the fingernails of the other, trying to will the readouts of the two working sensors to rise faster, but after reaching 8 percent, Unit 14 seemed stuck. Unit 23 kept rising, but at a glacially slow pace.

  There was a louder crack in the wall, and pieces of the inner wall broke free. Colby jumped to his feet while Duke stood beside him, her head held low while she fiercely growled. He slowly stalked forward, shovel held out, until he stood before the wall. Poking it, he knocked away the inner wall covering. He was now staring at the structural body of the wall, a solid-looking piece of some metallic alloy. As he watched, it warped, twisting before his eyes. He wasn’t an engineer, but that had to be a tremendous amount of force to actually warp it. Suddenly, whatever feeling of security he had vanished. He knew that if he merely tried to wait the enemy out, he’d fail. They would break into his fortress. His plan had to work if he and Duke were going to get out alive.

  He went back to the display. Unit 14 was still stuck on 8 percent, but 23 was at 7 percent. Unit 23 was at the third highest piece of property on the farm, a good 15 meters higher than the lowest point. Even “thickened” gas would tend to flow downhill, so common sense told him that the concentrations were probably higher at the other points.

  But the Gustavsons’ farm is lower than mine, he realized in a flash. I bet I’m losing methane to them.

  He checked his methane supply. He was down to 23 percent. The methane was produced in-house in the digestion tank behind the vault. It was still being fermented, but it was draining at a far greater rate. He’d be out soon.

  A rending screech filled the vault, and the entire building shook. Colby ran back to the east wall, tearing away the inner coverings. At the northeast corner, behind the racks of cylinders, four rivets had popped out. He couldn’t see daylight, but it was only a matter of time now, a very short time.

  Shit. I’ve got to give it a shot now.

  He took a deep breath, then said, “Ralph, turn on the heater ignitors.”

  His AI might have had a problem with turning the ignitors off, but it didn’t have one with turning them on.

  “Confirm,” it said as Colby held his breath, drawing Duke into his arms.

  And nothing happened.

  There was no explosion, no anything.

  “Ralph, did you initiate the ignition.”

  “Affirmative. There was no confirmation return to indicate compliance.”

  “So, they didn’t go off?”

  “That is a possibility. Another possibility is that the confirmation circuits are down.”

  “What’s the probability that it was the ignitors that malfunctioned rather than there being a problem with the circuits?”

  “There isn’t enough data to calculate an acceptable figure.”

  The noise coming in from the outside grew louder, but he pushed it out of his mind. He had to make a decision. There had been no explosion of fire. That could be because his plan was faulty, because it was a good plan but the concentration of methane was not great enough, or because the ignitor failed to set off the initial explosion. He had two options: wait until the concentration increased (or he ran out of methane) or try his Molotov Cocktail. He checked the display; he was at 19 percent of his methane supply. As the supply decreased, so would the flow out the lines. Too slow, and the methane hugging the ground out there would flow or be blown off the property faster than it was being replenished.

  “Molotov it is, girl,” he said.

  He picked up the bomb, checking it over one more time. It seemed to be in order. The wick, which was a twisted rag, should burn long enough for the bomb to hit the ground and burst open. If there was enough methane out there, it would ignite. It was that simple.

  With it in one hand, the shovel in the other, he walked up to the door, leaning the shovel up against the wall and placing that hand’s palm against the door itself. He could feel vibrations. He didn’t know whether that meant the plants were attacking the door or the vibrations were transmitted from the attacks on the east and north side of the building.

  “Only one way to find out, girl,” he said, placing the Molotov Cocktail on the ground at his feet and putting his shoulder to the door.

  One. . . two. . . three, he counted to himself before hitting the latch and pushing with all his might.

  And he hit resistance. He got the door opened halfway, shoving several of the plants to the side. He knew nothing of the enemy’s physiology, but he could have sworn that the things registered surprise for a moment before they reacted.

  Colby reacted quicker, though. He grabbed the shovel and stepped forward, swinging it like the Grim Reaper’s scythe. He cut down two of the plant creatures, toppling them, and knocked back several more, clearing a small space for himself. He lunged back for the Molotov Cocktail, lit the wick, and with two hops forward, launched it towards the west, trying for the lowest section of the farm he could reach. As the bomb arched up in the air, the rotten egg smell of the odorant added to methane registered in his brain. He hadn’t purposefully released any methane around the house, but enough had flowed in for him to smell it. If it had been above the LEL right there, he’d have just blown himself up.

  If he could smell it, then a big enough explosion could ignite the compound. He jumped back and grabbed the door, hoping to slam it shut, but several of the plants had other ideas. Green branches reached forward to hold the edge of the door. One branch latched onto his arm while Duke started to dart forward, teeth bared.

  And the world exploded. A huge fist hit the door, slamming it shut and sending Colby flying across the floor on his ass. He hit the base of the first cylinder rack and lay there, stunned. The door to the outside started to swing open a crack as heat and smoke poured into the vault. Still dazed, he managed to get to his feet and stumble to the door, pulling it shut and locking it. Bits and pieces of plant arms, cut off when the door shut, lay on the floor. One larger chunk was slowly moving. Without much thought, he picked up the shovel, put the blade against the meatier part of the plant, and stepped on it, cutting the piece in two. Green goo squirted out, but it lay still.

  “You OK, girl?” he asked, his voice sounding as if he was underwater.

  Duke gave out a plaintive whine, but thumped her tail on the floor.

  Colby knew that his plan had worked, but to what extent? He had no eyes on the farm, and given the temperatures being recorded from the vault’s roof sensors, the entire place was on fire. He and Duke weren’t going anywhere for the time being.

  Ever the pragmatist, and still somewhat dazed, he lay down for a nap, Duke’s head across his stomach. He knew people who’d had concussions weren’t supposed to sleep, but there
wasn’t anyone around to scold him for that. He awoke a few hours later, his mind feeling much clearer. Immediately, he tried the net again, but once more, he couldn’t connect. For all he knew, the planet could be razed and he and Duke the only survivors.

  He stood up and checked the temperature outside. While still a few degrees higher than normal, he knew he could survive. With Duke on his heels, he went back to the door, kicking the pieces of enemy plants to the side. He put an ear to the door, not knowing what to expect, but he heard nothing.

  “Might as well get this over,” he told Duke as he pushed open the door.

  “Son-of-a-bitch,” he said as he surveyed the charred landscape.

  The entire compound was blackened and covered with what had to be plant corpses. He shifted his gaze over to what were the remains of his house. He couldn’t tell if the plants had destroyed it or the fire, but it was definitely gone. With Duke following, he walked down the line of silos, the twisted remains telling him the plant creatures had destroyed them before the fires had done their work.

  The enemy remains became less substantial as he wandered to the western side of the compound where utterly devastated fields stretched below him, the ashes of enemy plants and pyro berry bushes indistinguishable from each other. The destruction didn’t end at his property line. Flames had made their way across the Gustavsons’ fields to their house, which still smoked. Beyond that, black smoke of an active fire rose into the air.

  Colby knew that his methane mixture couldn’t have flowed that far, and if it had, the LEL would have been too small to ignite. But sometimes wildfires grew from the tiniest of sparks, and if each farm’s firefighting system was knocked out, then they could grow unchecked.

  Without a word, Colby turned and walked back to the rubble that had been his house. He paused for a moment at what had been the front door, then with a sigh, stepped over the jam. There was nothing left. Duke bounded past him and started nosing around what had been the kitchen. He started to call her back, but then stopped. If she found something to eat, all the more power to her, and she was smart enough to avoid anything hot enough to burn her.