Operation Sting (10 page)

“Ow! Aaargh!”

“Ten seconds … nine…”

Williams was no longer a threat, but the Whiplash countdown continued.

Dr Smith was standing, still in shock.

Nero got as close to her ear as he could. “Dr Smith, we’ve got to stop Whiplash.”

Dr Smith snapped back to the urgency of the situation. She knelt and fumbled with the catch at the back of the computer where the small device was docked. Freezing water rushed around her waist.

“Eight … seven…”

The hatch dropped down. Inside was a large circuit board with a whole range of chips and devices attached. “Which is it? Which is it?”

“The blue one,” said Nero calmly.

Dr Smith reached for it and pulled – but the weapon was held tightly in the port.

“Six … five…”

“I can’t free it!”

Nero scuttled along her arm and into the machine.

“Four…”

Nero pushed at the weapon with a pincer. One of Whiplash’s delicate connector pins was bent double and wedged into place.

“Three…”

Nero knocked it sharply with both pincers. Whiplash popped free and Dr Smith snatched it up.

The whole control room seemed to power down. Displays began to flicker and go blank. They’d done it!

But the alarm continued to wail and the water was steadily rising.

With Nero at her shoulder, and Sabre flying overhead, Dr Smith waded out into the corridor and followed the long slope leading up to the bunker’s entrance. The gang members were gathered there, yelling at Fraser to hurry up. Fraser was at the front of the group, turning the metal wheel to open the door.

At last, with a hiss, it swung open and daylight
shone in. Cool fresh air rushed around them. Behind Dr Smith, the flood swirled and crawled up the slope.

The gang pushed and barged their way outside. But their cries of relief quickly turned to despair as they saw the wide ring of armed police officers waiting for them.

Dr Smith staggered over to a sparse patch of grass and sat down. Suddenly, a stag beetle landed close to her feet. A scorpion and a mosquito joined it.

“What kept you?” asked Hercules. “I sent an emergency signal to SWARM fifteen minutes ago. Did it take you longer than expected to recover Whiplash?”

“You could say that,” replied Sabre. “What’s happened to Williams?” he added, his sensors scanning the area. Water was beginning to lap around the door they’d just emerged from. The bunker was now completed flooded.

Dr Smith felt a hand placed gently on her shoulder. She looked up to see SWARM’s human agents, Agent J and Agent K.

“Dr Smith?” said Agent J.

Agent K helped Dr Smith to her feet. “I think this is for you,” said Dr Smith, handing Whiplash over to Agent J. “All this trouble over such a small thing.”

Agent J beckoned to one of the nearby police officers.

“Yes, sir?” said the officer.

“This is Dr Madeleine Smith,” said Agent J. “She’ll be taking full credit for foiling the plot.”

“Of course, sir. This way, miss.”

It wasn’t until the officer had led her a few metres away that Dr Smith realized what Agent J had said. “Full credit? No, no, it wasn’t my idea to let in the river…”

She turned to speak to Agent J, but there was no sign of him, or Agent K, or any kind of robotic insects. She frowned and shook her head, as she was led to a waiting car.

CHAPTER TEN

“You’re sure she won’t talk about us?” said Professor Miller. “This was a serious breach of security.”

“Dr Smith is a very intelligent person, with an important job,” said Queen Bee. “We can trust her to know that claiming she was helped by robotic insects is probably not the sensible option.”

Professor Miller nodded. “Yes, I see your point.”

They arrived at the laboratory, deep inside SWARM headquarters.

Alfred Berners was debriefing the micro-robots before putting them offline.

“Well done, everyone,” said Queen Bee. “Our first full mission has been a success.”

The lab’s communicator bleeped, and Queen Bee pressed “Accept Call” on the large touchscreen fixed to the wall. The faces of the Home Secretary and the head of MI5 appeared.

“The Prime Minister has asked me to express his gratitude,” said the Home Secretary.

“I take it SWARM meets with official approval, then?” said Queen Bee.

“I still don’t understand why Williams and Haynes were planning to fire Whiplash and then do nothing,” said the Home Secretary.

“It’s all down to money,” said Queen Bee. “Greed. Once Whiplash had been fired, the whole world would be living in fear of a repeat disaster. With the weapon out of our hands, every electronic item on Earth would need protection from it. Gylbut Gadgets were ready and waiting to make that protection, in the form of their own special shielding. It seems that Williams himself invented the shielding. He held all the patents. Haynes, it turns out, was secretly the owner of Gylbut Gadgets.”

“He owned the main business rival of the company he worked for?” said the Home Secretary.

“That’s right,” said Queen Bee. “He and the Head of Projects at Techna-Stik, Marcus Oliphant, had run up enormous debts. They were fed up with seeing Techna-Stik make money from their ideas, so they financed a number of projects themselves but lost every penny. They were desperately looking for a way out. Haynes had bought Gylbut Gadgets in secret, without Oliphant’s knowledge, hoping to find his fortune and pay off his half of the debt that way.”

“Leaving Oliphant to sink or swim, I suppose,” said the Home Secretary. “So Oliphant didn’t know about Operation New Age, or Haynes’s link to Gylbut Gadgets?”

“No, he had no idea. Haynes was only concerned about himself. When Williams turned up at Gylbut Gadgets with the idea for EMP shielding, Haynes saw that it fitted perfectly with Techna-Stik’s latest development, Whiplash, so Haynes and Williams cooked up the whole Operation New Age plan together.”

“The police recovered Haynes’s body, I understand?” said the Home Secretary.

“Yes,” said Queen Bee, “but not Williams’s. His corpse might have been washed out into the Thames when the bunker was drained, but we can’t be sure. His true identity is still a complete mystery too.” Queen Bee paused, and smiled. “But, of course, tracing who he really was is MI5’s job.”

The head of MI5 looked daggers at her.

“It seems SWARM has proved its worth,” said the Home Secretary.

The communicator screen blinked out. Queen Bee turned to the robots. “We’re here to stay,” she said.

“Logged, Queen Bee,” replied the SWARM team in unison.

At that moment, Simon Turing hurried in. He paused for a moment to catch his breath, then handed Queen Bee a sheet of paper.

“I think you need to see this,” he gasped. “It’s just come in. If what it says is true, we could be in for big trouble.”

“Here we go again,” said Hercules.

SWARM suspect that a scientist at the country’s top research laboratory has gone rogue. They uncover a sinister underworld and a deadly poison that is about to be unleashed. Can SWARM foil the scientist’s evil plan before the world is changed forever?

Turn the page to read an extract…

CHAPTER ONE

London. 3 September, 3 a.m.

From above, the lights of the city looked like a concentrated cluster of stars. Towards the west, where the cluster began to thin out, the street lights glowed a hazy yellow along the main road. Even in the early hours of the morning, a few cars sped along. Their tyres hissed against the road, damp and shining from a recent shower of rain.

Set back from the road was a large, rectangular
building. It was plain and grey – just like the other factories and office blocks in the area. But this building was surrounded by a high fence.

The fence looked like it was made from ordinary steel, but it was actually constructed from the latest in smart materials, designed to identify even the slightest touch. Alarms would trigger if anyone tried to climb or cut it. At a gate close to the building’s main entrance, a security guard sipped a mug of tea in his brightly lit cabin. Across the gate was a swirly silver logo and the words:

High above, a dragonfly zipped over the gate and headed for the building. Held in its thin legs, was a scorpion. Close behind the dragonfly came a butterfly, carrying a curled-up centipede, then a stag beetle and a tiny buzzing mosquito. Meanwhile, a small spider had shot a line of web at the guard’s hut, and was swinging in a wide arc
up and over the fence, carried along on the chilly night breeze.

The sight of seven insects making their way towards a heavily guarded building would have been strange enough at the best of times. However, the truth about them was even more strange. All seven were miniature robots, each one an agent of the top-secret security organization SWARM, otherwise known as the Department of Micro-robotic Intelligence. The dragonfly, its iridescent wings shimmering in the glow from the street lights, was code-named Chopper. The scorpion he was carrying was called Nero. Sabre the mosquito and Hercules the stag beetle took up the rear, monitoring for signs that the robots had been followed or detected.

“We’ll enter through the exhaust vents on the roof.” Chopper’s voice registered in the computer brains of his companions.

“Do you have a tight hold on me?” said the coiled centipede. His code name was Morph.

“Don’t worry,” said the butterfly, Sirena. “I’ve got you. We’re nearly there.”

The spider stayed silent. She usually did.
Her code name was Widow, and the micro-fibre threads she spun were stronger than steel. She zipped up on to the flat roof of the building ahead of the others.

Chopper and Sirena landed beside a large metal vent which ended in a flat grille, and Nero and Morph scuttled free. Sabre and Hercules maintained surveillance.

Chopper examined the closed grille using his night vision.

“Entrance blocked,” he said. “Morph, bottom left corner shows a gap of 0.8 millimetres.”

“Logged,” replied Morph. The centipede scurried over. The flexible, gelatinous material of his body allowed him to squeeze through the tiny gap. Inside, he reformed into his normal shape. He found the mechanism and opened the grille, gripping it tightly with his tail. The others quickly entered and Morph let it close behind them.

“Our target could be anywhere in this building,” said Chopper. “Mission priority is to locate any high-security storage bays and search them. The target is likely to be small and well hidden. Morph, take over surveillance, watch for movement up
here. We must make sure that our exit route is clear. The rest of you, follow me.”

Six miniature robots made their way along the ventilation pipe. They met a succession of mesh filters – Hercules the stag beetle cut each one using his serrated claw. After descending for several metres, they entered a high-tech chemistry lab.

The only light came from the distant street lamps visible through the broad, bullet-proof windows. Within the room, LEDs blinked red and green on various pieces of equipment. Plastic biohazard suits were dangling on hooks beside signs:

Chopper sent a coded transmission back to SWARM headquarters. “Hive 1 to SWARM.”

SWARM’s human leader, Beatrice Maynard, code-named Queen Bee, replied instantly.

“I hear you, Chopper, go ahead.”

“We’re in, Queen Bee,” said Chopper. “Operation commencing.”

“Begin recording,” said Queen Bee. “And be careful.”

“Logged, Queen Bee,” said Chopper. He scanned the room. Data and images appeared back at HQ on the monitors in front of Queen Bee.

“The target’s not here,” said Sirena, whose antennae contained SWARM’s most sensitive environmental data-gathering systems. “They run tests and experiments in this lab, but there’s no secure storage.”

“Hack into their computer system, see what you can find,” said Chopper.

“Logged,” said Sirena. She fluttered to the nearest PC.

Nero hurried over to the laboratory’s airtight metal door to unlock it and gain them access to the rest of the building. Tiny probes flicked out from his pincers. They burrowed into a keycode
panel. Seconds later, the panel bleeped and the door clunked as it unlocked and opened.

The robots moved out into the corridor beyond. Nero resealed the lab behind them.

“Human twelve metres south,” said Chopper.

The robots kept to the shadows. A security guard wandered past the end of the corridor, whistling quietly to himself. Motion-sensitive lights in the walls blinked on as he approached, and off as he went on his way.

“We’re too small to set those off,” said Chopper.

“But not so small that we can ignore the laser grid,” said Hercules.

Halfway down the corridor, a thin red line of light circled walls, ceiling and floor. The beams emitted from it were invisible to humans, but the robots saw them as a flat, moving grid. Each laser beam was powerful enough to slice through them instantly.

“This grid guards the lab,” said Chopper. “There are probably more outside other restricted areas.”

They watched the grid shifting back and forth for a moment. No human could have calculated
a way through it, but within seconds the robots began to dart and jump. They timed their movements precisely, twisting in mid-air to avoid the beams, and landed safely on the other side.

Slowly, they made their way around the building, working downwards from floor to floor. Between them, they recorded every detail of the place.

Nero made a thorough scan of electrical systems. “I’m getting readings of high power usage in the basement,” said Nero. “I suspect the bio-storage for holding live viruses and other dangerous substances is down there.”

A laser grid outside the basement entrance confirmed that there was something important in there. The robots scuttled and darted past the grid, avoiding the powerful lasers once more.

“Coded alarm system detected in vault door,” said Chopper. “Hercules, bypass defences.”

The beetle’s dark carbon-fibre body would have been invisible to the human eye in the gloom. He scurried up the wall and cut into a small hatch above the basement’s entrance. The others swiftly followed him. They crawled into a
pipe used for running cables, and moved along it until they reached the room itself.

The vault they looked out on to was low and narrow. Walls, floor and ceiling were all polished metal. At the back was a large glass case labelled with a sign:

The case was filled with rows of coloured bottles and cylinders.

“Nero,” said Chopper, “cut a tiny hole in the glass, on the side of the case where it won’t be noticed. Sabre, go inside and confirm the target.”

“Wait!” said Nero. “I can detect electrical activity in the floor. The area between us and the glass case is sensitive to touch. If it’s triggered, the alarm will go off.”

“We were small enough not to activate the corridor lights,” said Chopper.

“This is different,” said Nero. “I’m picking up readings from pressure pads all over the room. If
even one of us lands on any connected surface, the alarm will trip. We’re very slightly heavier than real insects. The difference is tiny, but it’s enough.”

“Is the glass case itself wired up?” said Chopper.

“Scanning,” said Nero. “No, it isn’t.”

Widow scuttled forward. Taking careful aim, she fired a thread at the glass case, which stuck neatly at its exact centre.

“A zip line,” she said quietly.

Hanging beneath the line by his pincers, Nero slid across to the case. The grippers in his feet engaged with the vertical glass and held him firmly in place. He scuttled around to the side of the case, a miniaturized cutter emerging from a tiny hatch in one pincer, a small suction cup from the other.

He cut a circle in the glass with the cutter, and pulled it free using the suction cup. Then he hurried back along Widow’s thread, dangling by his legs.

Sabre buzzed across to the case, keeping well clear of the metal surfaces all around him.
Folding back his mechanical wings, he wriggled through the hole.

“Anything?” transmitted Chopper.

Sabre’s needle-like proboscis jutted forward from his mechanical mouthparts. One by one he directed wireless high-frequency probes towards the many glass bottles and Petri dishes around him. “There are various things here. Some of these dishes contain live cell cultures of bacteria, viruses, or other disease pathogens. Some are simply toxic to organic life.”

He crawled around the different bottles, each of them covered in printed and handwritten labels, his proboscis scanning and analysing. At last, he approached a small glass phial, set apart from the others. It contained a red liquid which emitted a slight glow. Unlike the others in the case, this container was not marked in any way.

“I’ve found it,” he said.

Chopper signalled SWARM headquarters. “Target located, Queen Bee,”

“Good work,” said the voice of Queen Bee. “Sabre, what’s your analysis?”

Sabre’s sensors processed the data he’d
gathered. “It’s a mixture of extracted DNA, viral organisms and poisonous chemicals. It’s molecular structure suggests that it affects mammals, birds and fish, some insect species and some reptiles. It kills almost instantly, either by contact or inhalation. There’s more information to be retrieved from this data, I’m transmitting it all to you now.”

Nero’s advanced CPU ran through the necessary calculations in less than a millisecond. “If our analysis so far is correct,” he said, “this substance is the most dangerous ever created. An adult human would be dead if exposed to no more than two nanolitres of it. That phial contains 4.93 millilitres. That’s enough to kill thirty-eight million people.”

There was silence on the line to SWARM headquarters. At last, Queen Bee said “So the information we intercepted last week is correct. But we still don’t know if that phial is the only sample of the poison. Or how and why it was made.”

“Should we remove this phial?” said Chopper.

“Should we destroy it?” said Nero.

“Negative,” said Queen Bee. “Destroying it might make me feel a little safer, but since we don’t know if this is all that exists, or whether more can be made easily, that might be a pointless move. We’re working on the theory that this is the creation of a single, rogue scientist. However, we have yet to prove that theory. It might be part of a larger project. Removing the phial would alert whoever knows about it to the fact that we’d paid their lab a visit.”

“Should I take a small amount of it for further study?” asked Sabre.

“Absolutely not,” said Queen Bee. “We can’t risk even an atom of that stuff getting loose. No, leave it where it is for now, safely locked away. You’ve accomplished your mission, and located it. We’ll proceed with our original plan: Widow, you stay in the building and shadow the man we suspect. The rest, return to HQ. Good work, all of you.”