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Chapter 35
Vaughn’s Island
Ezra Vaughn walked across the circular platform to the screens at the front of the control room. He was staring at a satellite image that showed a bright white object in the middle of a dark field.
“And what am I looking at?” he asked TAU.
“Several million of our sea locusts covering a research ship out of Reunion,” TAU replied. “Its occupants include the NUMA team that was looking for the cause of the whale stranding.”
“Well, I’d say they found it,” Vaughn said smugly.
This wasn’t the first ship to have been swarmed by the sea locusts, at least a dozen small vessels had been attacked so far. The encounters had all ended in one of three ways. Either the people on board were killed and consumed and the chewed-up ship left adrift. Or the ship itself caught fire when the engines overheated, resulting in the same complete abandonment and mortality. A few of the smaller boats had simply foundered from the weight of hundreds of thousands of the sea locusts pressing down on them.
“This ship is larger than the trawlers and pleasure craft that havebeen taken before,” TAU said. “And it seems to have avoided catching fire. This presents a danger to us. And an opportunity.”
“The danger is obvious,” Vaughn said. “What is the opportunity?”
“Gamay Trout is on board this vessel. My examination of the NUMA database indicates that she and her husband were pulled off a malaria study in South Africa to join the investigation on Reunion.”
“Why is this important to us?” Vaughn asked.
“A review of the database indicates she entered a report and then deleted it, following it up with obviously falsified information,” TAU said. “The deleted information can’t be fully reconstructed, but what I was able to find shows that she requested the malaria study be terminated immediately due to a discovery contrary to its initial purpose. And as its initial purpose was to prevent the spread of disease…”
Vaughn didn’t need TAU to spell it out for him. “They found a way to make the mosquitoes more effective at spreading contagions. And she didn’t want that information to fall into the ‘wrong’ hands.”
“Considering the parts of the mosquito genome they were working with, the outcome you suggest is highly likely.”
“An ability like that could come in very handy,” Vaughn said. “Can you find out how it was done?”
“That information is not in the database,” TAU replied. “Considering the deleted report and the falsified records, I would expect it exists in only one place: Gamay Trout’s mind.”
Now Vaughn saw the opportunity. “Can we get to this ship before it goes down?”
“If we send him immediately, the Overseer should be able to reach it by dawn,” TAU said.
“Send him,” Vaughn ordered. “If the Trouts have been killed, have him sink the ship—no survivors. If they’re alive, have him bring them here, where we can interrogate them properly. I would very much like to know what they know.”
Chapter 36
Dawn came unnoticed to anyone inside theIsabella. The foot-deep layer of insects prevented even the smallest beam of sunlight from reaching a window. Still, the watches and phones and clocks of the survivors told them morning had arrived.
In the ship’s mess, Gamay and the other crewmen waited nervously, one of them tapping a foot and cracking his knuckles over and over. The sound grated on Gamay’s nerves, but she was smart enough to know the man was using the movement to process the stress, and she was strong enough not to hit him with a shoe, because that wouldn’t have helped no matter how good it would have felt.
For what seemed like the hundredth time, she wiped the sweat from her face, folded up the paper towel, and slid it along the back of her neck.
“How will we know?” the other sailor asked. “Should we go look?”
“It won’t happen instantly,” Gamay said. “The sun has to warm them up.”
“But how long will that take?”
She had no idea, and the ship’s mess had no exterior window, so the only way to know what was happening on the outside was to make their way forward to the bridge or back to the crew’s quarters.
After waiting through the night, she wasn’t about to leave the relative safety of the mess five minutes early. “Paul and Chantel have windows to look through. They’ll see it happen and they’ll come and get us. Just hang in there. It can’t be long now.”
—
In the science bay, Paul had taken a position near the door. After somehow finding it possible to sleep for a few minutes here and there, he was as anxious as any member of the crew to get out of what felt like a heated metal box.