Operation Sea Mink by Addison Gunn Page A

drip from his fingertips. It had to be over a hundred degrees, even at this hour. The air was so thick with fungus the stars were obscured. Even the moon looked red. “Payload on board?” he asked.
    She nodded. She didn’t appear to be any more thrilled to be there than he was, but at least she was talking to him again. When he’d informed Cobalt of Gray’s instructions, she’d protested, then gone quiet and hadn’t spoken to him since.
     
     
    “T HIS DOESN’T MAKE sense,” she’d said. “We’re missing pieces of the puzzle.”
    Miller looked away from the faces of his team, and around the break room, nodding. Sparse, dim, and filthy around the edges, the break room was hardly that anymore. Half the furniture had been commandeered and moved elsewhere. Even their silverware had gone missing. Miller would bet his rifle that one of the other security teams had raided the place, but not wanting to start a rivalry with no point to it, he’d kept that thought to himself. Although he was sure his team had had the same thought. “I know,” he said.
    “All we went through with the Charismatics, and now they want us to spread more bugs?” Morland piped in, visibly confused.
    Du Trieux mumbled something in French.
    Doyle, sitting in a lopsided folding chair, sipped his coffee-flavored water with a slurp. His feet were propped against a broken cabinet door he’d ripped from the wall and set on top of some old paint cans—their new table. “Does the right hand know what the left is doing?” he asked. He made an obscene gesture and Hsiung coughed.
    “Doubt it,” Miller said. He glanced at du Trieux and she frowned, deeply. “There’ll be five choppers in the air,” he explained to them. “One man each, aside from the pilot. We scout communes, drop payload, and come back in less than half an hour, which is about how long the fuel lines last before they clog with fungus. Any longer than that, payload or not, you bug out. We do this until the wasp samples run out. Rumor has it, that’ll take a few days. Any questions?”
    “Why are we dropping wasps on communes again?” Morland asked.
    “It’s a special breed. It’s supposed to stop the other wasps from laying eggs in the Infected’s brains, and interrupts their ‘genetic replicating.’ Don’t ask me how.”
    “I don’t get it,” Morland said, “are we helping the Infected now?”
    “No,” Miller answered, a little too quickly. “Well, sort of. Yes. But, no. It’s more to stop the parasite from spreading.”
    “Why stop the wasps at all?” Hsiung asked. “If they lay eggs in the Infected’s brain, and then the Infected go nuts and find ways to die, like with the swimming club”—she gestured at Doyle, who grunted in reply—“then why are we stopping them? The Infected are dying. They’re literally killing themselves. I say let them. Less for us to do.”
    “Now there’s an idea,” Doyle said.
    Du Trieux shook her head.
    “Look, I don’t make the orders,” Miller said. “I just relay them. Gray wants us to do this so he knows it’s done right, and quite frankly, I agree with him—at least on that point.”
    “Doesn’t makes sense to me,” Morland said.
    “No argument here,” Miller agreed. “Now, get loaded up and be ready. We lift off once these winds die down.”
    Doyle stood and slurped one last gulp of pseudo-coffee. “No rest for the wicked.”
    Miller didn’t bother to comment.
     
     
    T WO DAYS LATER, out on the helipad, du Trieux stood with her back against the breeze, her gas mask slung around her neck as she eyed the crews scooping fungus. “You sure this is a good idea?”
    Miller frowned. “Taking the choppers out or dropping the wasps on communes? Take your pick.”
    “Both.”
    “I don’t know,” he answered honestly. “Apparently, they’ve had success with this method in Boston. Those two doctors we picked up have the data to prove it. If this slows things down as they project, perhaps we can