Xeno Mutations (Gene Soldiers Book 5) by James David Victor

Author:James David Victor [Victor, James David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Fairfield Publishing
Published: 2022-05-02T16:00:00+00:00

“What the frack?” Abrams said, looming behind Carl. “Why would the UTA bother to have a treaty with some unaligned frontier religion or cult?”

Carl barely registered his question as his eyes kept looking at the strange swirls in the world infected by the alien virus. It was creating its own atmosphere down there. It was terraforming, quietly, without fanfare, doing its own thing, as unstoppable as time itself.

“The frontier is full of quacks and cults,” Abrams continued, a fact that everyone here knew. It was just as full of smugglers and would-be bandit kings. “Why would the UTA bother to confer citizenship to this one if they didn’t even want to move their temples to main UTA space?”

“Exchange for long-range telemetry is my guess,” Abrams said. The small part of Carl that wasn’t intent on the alien virus agreed this made sense.

“The UTA needs sensors and radars out here on the frontier. If some whacked-out priests want to keep them running for us, then why not?” the technical specialist said.

Something flickered in the mutant haze before Carl’s eyes.

“Look!” the WarDog hissed, his voice a feral growl. Something was—changing—out there on the viral rocks.

There was an eddy in the cream-and-green haze, and something emerged from the surface of the planet.

“Specialist—magnify on that!” Abrams hissed for the screen to leap toward the distant movement, revealing a scatter of cloud-like droplets emerging from the mutant atmosphere. It was as if the rock itself was flinging droplets of itself, like the splashes from a puddle.

The screen zoomed again to catch the outlying bubble—a greenish, white, and off-yellow button with a frilled edge rising on its own plume of green-tinged vapors. It had been flung from its mother planet outwards, and they tracked it as it flew through the stars, looking as ephemeral as a soap bubble filled with smoke.

To then strike the neighboring dead piece of rock and seemingly disappear against its dark texture.

But it hadn’t disappeared, Carl knew. That was the xenovirus seeding itself. That was how it spread. How far could those pockets of virus-and-gas bodies travel before they collapsed in the void? Would they collapse at all? Could one of those baubles of biological warfare be traveling right now through the interstellar night straight for Earth Prime?

Home. Carl’s mind shook with such a sense of longing and fierce wonder that he almost gasped, unsure why he was feeling it or where it was even coming from.

“That’s how the virus took out that Palace ship!” Tucker breathed in agonized awe. “I thought it fired it as a weapon, but—it’s a colonization.”

“An invasion,” Abrams growled as the Pegasus roared forward.

Alert! Warning—incoming objects (unidentified) . . .

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