Chapter 7
Aboard the Francis Bacon (UNS-225)
Cycling Trajectory C-77
Heliocentric Orbit Beyond Mars
January 25, 2121
0950 Hours (ship time)
Captain Oscar Amirante always hated it when anyone labeled his ship “Porky,” especially if it was a crewmember. He got the bacon part all right, but all the same, the Francis Bacon was a dedicated, worthy and decorated veteran of Frontier Corps’ cycler squadron, faithfully carving her way through inner solar system space like the rattling old bus that she was. The Bacon had served the Corps with distinction for years and Amirante like to think of her as an old horse, perhaps a little past her prime but still with strong legs, a good kick and enough sense to know when and where to go, which was generally where Sir Isaac Newton determined she would go.
Cyclers never veered from their course, not without good reason and not without a lot of thrust from their engines.
Amirante had been ordered by Frontier Corps to make just such a course change. The order had come from CINCSPACE himself and Amirante knew he couldn’t question that. Farside had seen something they were calling MARTOP and the Bacon had been ordered to divert from the well-worn tracks of trajectory C-77 to investigate. He was none too happy about the change in plans and neither were the crew.
Amirante knew his crew had been looking forward to their next pass by Gateway Station, due in less than a month, where a shuttle would drop by the huge cycler for a crew exchange. The crew of the Bacon was tired and had been looking forward to going home. Now they had a new mission: investigate a dust cloud.
Swell.
Ship’s Engineer Sergei Simonets was the first to react to the contact alarm. An insistent beeping announced that something was ahead of them, on a direct intercept course.
“Long range scan, Captain,” he announced. “Diffuse mass…probably MARTOP.”
Amirante studied the return. “Can you increase resolution?”
Simonets pecked at a few keys. “I can try. But we’re at the limits of our sensors here. All I can say for sure is that it’s not a solid object. It’s a lot of objects, small dimensions. Maybe a dust cloud, like Farside suspects.”
Amirante sniffed. “Farside doesn’t know a dust cloud from a diamond ring. Smithers, do we need a course adjustment? I don’t want Bacon plowing into something without knowing what it is.”
Lieutenant Winston Smithers manned the nav console on the command deck. Smithers was an angel. A damn good one too, Amirante like to brag. The ship’s executive officer was a swarm formation of nanobotic elements. It was long-standing Frontier Corps practice to staff cyclers with angels where possible. They were loyal. They were smart, having constantly upgraded quantum processors. They were flexible, driven by their config engines…angels could morph into anything they had a config for. Perfect crew members, reasoned the Corps in its wisdom.
They’re a bag of bugs, said some of the crew. They’re all smoke and no substance, said others. Amirante had to lay down the law on Corps regulations at least once a week, if not more often.
“Angels are here to stay. Get used to it. Think of them as a new type of equipment. Nobody likes change. Nobody likes to be knocked out of their comfort zone. And nobody likes people who are different. But its Corps policy and that’s that.”
Which didn’t stop the grumbling.
Winston Smithers studied Bacon’s course plot for a moment. “Current course will bring us alongside the main arm of the formation in forty two minutes,” he announced. “We’re on a tangential approach at the moment. Recommending maintain this course and slow to one-third.”
Amirante ordered the slowdown. Simonets confirmed the signal back from Propulsion. Bacon’s plasma torch engines banked thrust and her forward thrusters fired in response to the Captain’s orders. “Answering one third, Captain.”
“Very well.”
“Matching velocity nicely,” Smithers’ reported.
“Bring us alongside,” Amirante said, “but not too close. Maintain ten kilometers distance. I don’t want Bacon poking her head into that cloud until we know what the hell we’re dealing with. Anything on radar? Anything on spectrum…or ranging?”
Smithers made some adjustments to the ship’s scan systems, cycling between different instruments: visual cameras, mass spectrometers, neutron flux devices, radiometers.
“Optical seems to be showing regular structure and pattern inside MARTOP, Captain. Whatever it is, it’s not dust. Dust particles would be more random in size, shape, and major dimensions.”
Amirante ran over CINCSPACE’s orders in his mind for the hundredth time: approach phenomenon as closely as safe and practical…resolve structure and report…take samples and return to base C-77 trajectory…bring the samples home….
“Match course and speed,” he told Simonets. “Lieutenant Smithers, lay aft to C deck. Get Frankie ready for a little side trip.”
Smithers slaved his instruments to ISAAC, the ship’s computer and headed for the aft gangway. “Aye, sir. What about crew?”
Amirante thought. “I want you to drive Frankie. Take Gurstenss and Pham too…they’re good with the shuttle and they’ve done away missions before. But don’t do anything stupid. My orders are to pinch a sample of that mess and get the hell out of here.”
Smithers sported a thin, goateed look in his regulation config. Jet black “hair.” Long, almost feminine fingers. Fine facial features. An artist look, maybe a pianist. Amirante wondered just who had approved that config. Maybe CINCSPACE himself. It was a bit unnerving to realize that Smithers could completely change appearance in a few minutes. Under Corps policy, angels serving as crew members had to maintain a primary config and it couldn’t be altered without approval of the commanding officer. Crew members tended not to be too comfortable with crew mates who could like pianists one moment and a sack of potatoes the next.
“Understood, sir.” Smithers vanished into the gangway and was gone.
Amirante heard ISAAC chiming and took a look. The analysis Smithers had been doing was still underway and the ship’s computer had reached some conclusions about their target.
“What do you have now, ISAAC?”
The AI’s voice was calm and soothing, almost like a therapist. Some crewmembers had taken to calling the AI Sigmund instead of ISAAC.
“Target resolution has improved sixty four hundred times in the last five minutes, Captain. The best fit with scan data supports a conclusion that individual elements of the MARTOP phenomenon are nanoscale in dimension, regular in structure and form, and likely are programmable entities. Element maneuvers and signatures correlate well with archived nanobotic signatures from Jovian Hammer expedition undertaken in September through December 2099.”
“Mechs?” Amirante shook his head. “Jovian Hammer…wasn’t that the Keeper system that Quantum Corps went after?”
“That is affirmative, sir. The Keeper system was a swarm of nanobotic elements that was found to be submerged in the ocean of Europa. Quantum Corps conducted a mission to reconnoiter and neutralize the swarm…intelligence suggested that the Keeper was coordinating operations of Config Zero on Earth.”
“That was General Winger, if I remember right,” Amirante thought. Jovian Hammer had ended before the Keeper could be neutralized. The crew had been recalled to Earth to continue the fight against Config Zero there. “MARTOP looks like the same thing, is that right, ISAAC?”
“Affirmative, sir. There are similarities in electromagnetic signature to Keeper elements.”
Amirante passed the word on to Smithers and his crew aboard Frankie. They had just undocked from Bacon and were setting course to intercept the dust cloud.
“It’s not dust, Smithers,” Amirante told them. “ISAAC says it’s like that Keeper at Europa…nanobots… lots of them.”
“Understood, sir,” Smithers’ voice came back. “We will take
appropriate precautions while obtaining samples.”
“You do that, Lieutenant. No heroics today.”
Frankie soon was visible out Bacon’s forward portholes on the command deck, a smaller version of the cycler ship itself, with her twin spheres strung on a long latticework truss. Aft thrusters flared brightly as Smithers swung the shuttle onto an intercept course. Twenty kilometers away, a faint smudge could be seen drifting among the stars, the MARTOP cloud heading in its heliocentric orbit toward the inner solar system. Bacon had matched speed and course and was now station-keeping twenty kilometers away.
Frankie closed the distance in less than an hour.
Sergeant Nina Pham was Frankie’s pilot, while Will Gurstenss ran ship systems and handled nav chores. Gurstenss studied the plot.
“Coming up on two kilometers now…” Gurstenss’ fingers played over his console, calling up different displays. “Mass centroid on heading two five five, come left ten degrees, Nina—“
“Roger that,” said Pham. She swung Frankie’s nose onto the new course.
Smithers, in command of the sampling mission, studied his own displays: radiometers, mass spectrometers, radar, EM activity. “Hold this position, Sergeant Pham…I want to run this analysis first before we get any closer.”
“What is it, sir?” asked Gurstenss, taking a peek out the forward porthole.
“Doesn’t look like any dust cloud I’ve ever seen,” added Pham. She halted Frankie’s forward motion and the shuttle hung off half a klick, co-orbiting with MARTOP while Smithers took a closer look.
“Individual elements are in motion…that’s what is causing all that speckling you’re seeing,” Smithers announced. “Long range scan is confirmed. These are not dust particles…they’re almost like tiny spaceships. Each one is a self-contained element…they can maneuver, they can replicate, they have effectors I’ve never seen before—“
“Bots,” said Pham. “It’s a swarm, out here in the middle of nowhere—“
“In formation and heading toward Earth,” Smithers agreed. “Now, we need to get our samplers ready and make a scooping run. Corporal Gurstenss, deploy samplers now.”
Gurstenss pressed a few buttons. Outside the cabin, Frankie’s sampling tubes swung out and into position, their containment capsules opening up in the process. The plan was to drive Frankie on a tangential course, barely skirting the outer perimeter of the swarm and pinch off a few samples on the pass. They would make multiple passes to ensure the samplers had a good handful of the bots. Then Frankie would turn about and head back to the mother ship.
“Tubes coming open, Lieutenant. Full deploy and capture enabled. Filters and containment in Prime One.”
Smithers uttered a string of expletives…neither Pham nor Gurstenss could quite make out what the Lieutenant had said.
“Excuse me, sir, did you—“
Smithers quickly stabbed several buttons. “The swarm is coming apart…there’s a sub-element breaking off from the main swarm—Pham, break off the run. Put us on—“ Smithers checked his instruments “—a new heading…come left to one six eight degrees…increase speed to flank…I want to intercept that batch. Unless I’m mistaken—“
Pham had already laid in the new course. Frankie healed hard to port and her aft and quarter thrusters fired in staccato bursts. The shuttle shimmied like a wet dog, then surged forward.
“Lieutenant, what is it?”
Smithers was frantically working his instruments. “A sub-element of the MARTOP formation has broken off from the main swarm. It’s taken up a new course…right now, it’s on an intercept course for the Bacon…I’ll advise the Captain—“ Smithers put through the call and got Amirante on the line, explaining what they were seeing. ‘Captain, we’re trying to get between you and the swarm…recommend you pull Bacon back ten kilometers, quickly, sir. These bots have tremendous maneuverability.”
Amirante’s voice was strained. His rapid-fire orders to Maneuvering could be heard in the background. “Understood, Lieutenant. Get yourself away from there. Get back to the ship if you can….no heroics, is that understood?”
Smithers acknowledged. “We’re trying to intercept the element, sir. But they’ve got quite a head start…I’m not sure—“
It was a simple matter of mechanics. The MARTOP swarm was over fifty kilometers in length, several dozen more in breadth. A small batch of the swarm had detached itself, peeling off and turning about, streaming off like a cloud sheared apart in high winds, heading directly for the Francis Bacon. The separation had occurred behind Frankie. Smithers was trying to get the shuttle turned around and headed back to block the swarm’s approach, but the shuttle’s momentum was in the opposite direction. Maneuvering took time and the laws of orbital mechanics had to be observed.
Smithers’ own internal processor had already given him the bad news, even before Nina Pham had announced it. There was no way Frankie could get there in time.
“Estimating contact in less than a minute,” the pilot said. “That cloud of bugs will be on top of the Bacon in no time.”
“Come on…come on…” muttered Gurstenss. “Come on, Bacon, move, damn you, move!”
The laws of physics dictated that the swarm element would intercept and envelop Bacon while Frankie was still a quarter klick away, though they were closing fast. Smithers studied the tactical geometry and made a decision.
“Pham, Gurstenss, take over up here—“ Smithers moved toward the aft hatch.
“Sir, where are you going?”
“To the airlock, Sergeant. You’ve got the conn.” The angel disappeared down the gangway.
Smithers reached the airlock and slipped inside, starting the de-press cycle. As air was being vented to space, he began disassembling himself. By the time the cycle was done and the outer door swung open, Winston Smithers was an amorphous cloud of twinkling, sparkling bots.
Johnny Winger and the Europa Quandary Page 12