In the second book in the FIRE Team Alpha Series Douglas Carter and his team must infiltrate a corporate exclusion zone to and rescue a family that holds the key to stopping a global pandemic.
In 2108 the First Sovereignty War is in its final stage. The World Central Authority has disintegrated after the destruction of its European command centres at the hands of the six allied F.I.R.E. Teams. American-led allied armies are marching across Western Europe; bringing sovereignty and self-determination back to formerly enslaved nations. While the Pan-Asian Homogeny watches the fighting and waits for the Allies and Europeans to slaughter each other, the Corporate Consortium profits by financing all sides. With the planet already devastated by fourteen years of global war, a cabal of scientists plans to enslave a remnant of mankind in a Utopian oligarchy after unleashing a plague that would kill most of the world’s population.
Without official sanction, F.I.R.E Team Alpha is sent into the corporate exclusion zone in Frankfurt, Germany to stop the scientist’s plot. The team becomes entangled in a web of deceit, conflicting political agendas, and genocidal eugenics. Operating without outside support, and able to trust only in one another, the operators of F.I.R.E. Team Alpha must not only accomplish their mission, but also discover what forces in their own government are working against them
Excerpt
D’Avella rose from his own seat and began to pace. “I was part of a network of scientists from all over the globe which worked secretly to further human evolution, both genetic and social, through targeted intervention.”
“Targeted intervention,” Carter replied. “That’s just doublespeak for screwing around with nature.”
D’Avella cast an annoyed glance at Carter. “One could see it in such narrow terms. What the group intended, however, was to accelerate mankind’s evolution by limiting the influence of less-developed individuals and increasing the available resources for the more developed elements of the population.”
“Eugenics,” Carter said. “Selective breeding and forced sterilisation. It’s not exactly a new concept, Doctor. The German people were especially familiar with it in the mid-twentieth century. It didn’t end well for them.”
“Eugenics is a rather antiquated term and does not adequately explain what my associates and I intended,” D’Avella retorted, his Italian accent growing thicker as he grew more annoyed. “While selective breeding would have been a part of our program for accelerated evolution, it would only one component. The first step would have been to eliminate much of the existing gene pool. Once that was accomplished, then selective breeding, whether by force or by consent of the subjects involved, would only be needed occasionally.”
“Because the ‘undesirables’ would already be dead,” Carter concluded
“Precisely,” D’Avella agreed; “although a small portion of the less-desirable population would have to be retained. This would maintain a genetic base by which beneficial natural mutations would occur over time. These beneficial mutations would later be integrated into the population at large. The remnant of the genetically-inferior subjects would also perform the menial but necessary tasks that maintain a society.”
“A slave state where there is a genetic hierarchy instead of a political ruling class,” Carter concluded. Carter stood and moved toward D’Avella. “And who would be at the top of that hierarchy?”
“Why, paranormals, of course,” D’Avella said. “They are immune to the pathogenic agent that we have developed.”
“Are you a paranormal?” Carter asked.
D’Avella shook his head. “No, but I acknowledge their superiority over me.”
“So your plan is to wipe out most of humanity with a bio-weapon and leave only paranormals to be in charge?” Carter asked, not hiding his incredulity.
“Essentially, yes,” D’Avella replied. “My colleagues and I have an antidote for ourselves and our immediate families.”
“Of course,” Sains snorted, breaking his silence. “You’re passing judgment on the rest of the human race and exempting yourselves. The only difference between you and every other world-ruler wannabes are higher I.Q.s and your Ph.D’s. Boss, I think we can eliminate one undesirable from the gene-pool right now.”
“Take it down a notch, Brains.” Carter said; “we may need him.” Carter turned back toward D’Avella. “So after you and your friends kill off most of mankind, you’re just going to give power over to the paranormals, even if they decide to kill you all for wiping out billions of people, many of whom would have been their family and friends?”
“If that is their decision, yes,” D’Avella said. “But we believe that, were our plan to come to fruition, their superior intelligence would win out over your emotional attachment to those would have been killed. My associates and I have many valuable skills and knowledge that would be useful to any new society that would arise.”
“You did hear me say that I wanted to kill you now, just for talking about this little plan of yours, right?” Sains asked.
“Yes,” the doctor replied, “and I believe that you would have killed me if you had been permitted to. However, if the plan in question had been implemented, the circumstances would have been quite different. There would, of course, be anger and grief over dead acquaintances, but there would also be many reasons to rejoice.”
“You are out of you fucking mind!” Sains almost shouted. “You’re talking about destroying the whole world and expecting the few survivors to rejoice over it?”
“We would not be destroying the world,” D’Avella said. “We would be cleansing it, relieving it of its excess burden.”
He turned toward Carter; leery of provoking Sains any further. “Think, sir. The Earth would have less than a hundred million people living upon it. Land and resources would be abundant, there would be no more cause or need for war. Paranormals like yourself would no longer have their talents wasted in military occupations.”
“I have never considered being a soldier to be a waste,” Price injected.
“Perhaps ‘waste’ was the wrong word,” D’Avella admitted. “But even the most intellectually-lacking active paranormals have intelligence quotients fifty points above the human average. You all have eidetic memories that are retroactive and allow you to access memories acquired before your paragenes were activated. Your natural life spans are expected to be at least three hundred years. Imagine what could be accomplished if you were freed from the necessity of military service and could work as scientists, artists or philosophers? Think what all of you could do with such intellectual gifts and inordinately long life spans. Think what could be accomplished by your whole species. The mind truly boggles.”
“Doctor, your entire premise is flawed,” Carter stated. D’Avella simply raised an eyebrow. “You’re completely ignoring human nature,” Carter said. “Paranormals may have enhanced abilities, but we’re still just human beings. Even if there were abundant living space and resources, there would always be someone who liked the other person’s piece of ground better than his own. We’d still be fighting over religion, better farm land or the best mates. Scarcity of resources is only one of the factors that cause war. Destroying most of the people on the planet won’t change the primal drives to compete and covet what the next man has. Even if one person has nothing more than his own shiny rock, he’ll still see the next person’s rock as being shinier than his.”
“Once the population has been sufficiently reduced, such aggressive tendencies would diminish over time as the each new generation of paranormals is born, each generation progressively more intelligent than the last.’
Carter shook his head. “Doctor, you’re assuming a correlation between intelligence and wisdom. History doesn’t support that; quite the opposite, in fact. Intelligence doesn’t guarantee moral or ethical behavior. Some of the worst despots in history have been highly intelligent, but that didn’t stop them from committing all manner of atrocities.”
D’Avella bristled. “Historical allegories are no longer valid. The arrival of paranormals on the scene makes all prior human history irrelevant.”
“Doctor, I’ll tell you again. Paranormals are still human beings, as flawed as anyone else,” Carter repeated.
“Even if that were true,” D’Avella said, “Your offspring will certainly be a new species. They will be born with their paragenes activated. They will be ruled by logic, by reason.”
Carter stood. “Doctor, it sounds as though you worship paranormals. You talk about us though we’re gods.”
“Perhaps you are,” D’Avella said. “You are superior to the rest of the human race in every way, and, whether or not my associates’ plan is implemented, you will replace the current version of humanity as the dominant race on this planet. Assuming, of course, that mankind does not destroy its self before evolution can come fruition.”
Utterly Fantastic Occurrences is a collection of 20 science fiction short story novellas existing in hardcover, in paperback and in Kindle and Nook e-book formats.
