Fragment by Warren Fahy

Author:Warren Fahy
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Mystery, Mystery And Suspense Fiction, Life Sciences, Reality television programs, Action & Adventure, Fiction - Espionage, Evolution (Biology), Evolution, Fiction, Biologists, Suspense, Adventure fiction, Island animals, Botanists, Suspense fiction, Thriller, science
ISBN: 9780553807530
Publisher: Random House, Inc.
Published: 2009-06-16T11:21:04+00:00

12:33 P.M.

The rumble of the rover vibrated the rock and sand, waking the hives.

The low-frequency vibrations triggered pheromone signals inside the purple honeycombed towers that lined the flat bottom of the ravine.

The pheromones stimulated hundreds of drones.

Budlike panels under the drones’ heads popped open. Three translucent wings expanded like blue flowers.

The fanged lamprey-mouths flexed on their abdomens, ready to latch onto passing prey to suck its blood and feed their colonies.

The towering hives were the nurseries of drill-worms. These half-worms were their juvenile form. When they matured, the vampire drones would double in size by growing a new segment shaped like a drill bit with three legs and a second brain and mouth. Then they would leave the hive to hunt in the jungle, drilling through the hard sheaths of the trees.

A mature drill-worm bitten in half could regenerate its other half. Either segment could mate and give birth to polyplike eggs— eggs that multiplied into new hives that budded vampire drones.

The XATV-9 throttled forward across the canyon’s flat bottom, which cut directly across the island’s arid core.

The men observed a gallery of urchinlike cacti, yuccalike trees, and bloated purple towers lining the canyon walls to either side of the rover. The towers reminded Zero of termite mounds or pillar coral.

The driver turned on the outboard mikes again and as the rover passed the men inside heard the sibilant buzz of the purple hives coming to life. Blue swarms emerged, attacking the rover’s windows then retreating to their hives.

The silent men gazed through the rover’s windows down the lush green slope on the far side of the island’s core. The lake in the distance lay still and dark inside the outer ring of the jungle.

“There it is.” Quentin pointed over the driver’s shoulder as they roared down to the green plain at sixty miles an hour, headed straight for the lake.

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