Chapter 22
Europa
Inside the Keeper
Time: Unknown
Location: Unknown
On first inspection, the alien bot showed no hint of unusual capabilities, at least not in its outer structure and effectors. Johnny Winger tried to remember the details of the Serengeti devices he had seen so many years ago; from memory, they were outwardly simple things…a few grabbers and maybe an enzymatic knife or two. Nothing like bond disrupters or anything like that.
This ought to be a piece of cake, he told himself. But, even as he drove the master ANAD bot closer, warning bells were going off in the back of his mind.
This is your father you’re dealing with here. You’re inside the brain of your own Dad, trying to fight off this Serengeti infestation. No room for error or miscalculation here.
Or was he?
Johnny Winger could only be sure of one thing. Whether this was a simulation, or a dream or a nightmare, he had one choice: go forward. Finish what he should have done sixty years ago. He’d been living with that for far too long.
He pulsed around with ANAD’s sounder. Tissue structures came back, but nothing else. Only a single bot lay ahead. That in itself was odd. Normally, Serengeti would have replicated like crazy. There should be zillions of bots churning and pumping along the neural pathways of his Dad’s brain. But there was only one.
Okay, so it’s mano y mano…if that’s what you want. Winger stoked ANAD’s propulsors and jetted forward, closing the remaining distance rapidly. The Serengeti bot seemed oblivious to his approach. It seemed to be engaged in re-building a small network of dendrites and making some kind of new junction. Re-wiring Jamison Winger’s brain. We’ll see about that.
He primed ANAD’s bond disrupters and when he was at a good range, let fly a few blasts. The crack of the disrupters seemed to ignite something…all of a sudden, Winger felt himself spinning, thrashing, he was back in the endless tunnel and the lights went out completely and he found himself hurtling down some kind of curving corridor at breakneck speed. He was tumbling end for end, getting dizzier by the second until the corridor came to an abrupt end and he found himself hitting some kind of solid ground with the rump of his suit, a hard landing right on his bottom. The suit servos whined and squealed down and the corridor collapsed in a spray of light, crushing him into unconsciousness.
When he came to, he saw faces…there was Metcalf and Yamato and crewman Starnes all peering down at him. Mouths were moving, yes, something was coming through his earpiece….
“—all right, sir? You took quite a spill there?”
Groggy and dazed, Winger let hands pull him up to a sitting position. His suit servos whirred, helping him up. “I don’t…what happened? Where am I?”
“Right where we left you, sir,” Metcalf checked over Winger’s suit carefully…seals good, no flags on the display, everything in the green.
“It was some kind of icequake,” Yamato told him. “We were maneuvering to open fire on the Keeper, but then—“ you could almost see the shrug of Yamato’s shoulders inside his suit. “—all hell broke loose. The ground moved, there were ice slides, everybody got scattered.” He looked up. “Seems like the Keeper’s expanded a little…it’s gotten closer. We’d better back off and go at this again.”
“I concur,” said Metcalf. “Maybe we should rethink our tactics.”
Winger punched a button on his wristpad and his leg servos hoisted him immediately to a standing position. He was still a little dizzy, but the servos steadied him.
“That was no ice quake. It was a quantum displacement event. I went somewhere…back in time and space…back to a place I hadn’t been in decades. The same thing must have happened to all of us.”
Yamato glanced over at Metcalf. “I don’t think so, General. After we picked ourselves up from that quake, we couldn’t find you. We searched for a few minutes, and there you were…right outside this cave.”
Cave?
Winger hadn’t noticed the cave before, but Yamato was right. The landing party had assembled at the entrance to a small cave, an opening barely two meters across, which bore more than a passing resemblance to something else Winger had once encountered…the cave at Mount Kipwezi. Config Zero’s home. That had to be coincidence. Somehow, Winger had been displaced in time and space to the Denver hospital where his Dad lay dying from Serengeti, then displaced again back to his original time and space. But that made no sense. Maybe this was some kind of defense mechanism the Keeper used….like a buffalo’s horns or a bee’s stinger. But why displace back to the original time and space…or was Yamato right: had he never really left in the first place?
Winger shook his head. This kind of thinking always gave him a headache. The Keeper could do that.
“Captain—“ it was Starnes, standing on a small outcrop a few meters away. “Sensors show activity in there…nanobotic activity. High thermals, EMs, acoustics. Maybe some of the Keeper’s inside.”
The appearance of the Keeper seemed unchanged, although it seemed to have expanded in breadth. A veil of mist from all the ice geysers partially obscured the sparkling, twinkling fog that any swarm of bots generated. From their distance, the thing resembled a fat tornado in slow motion, churning and burning across the tortured icescape of the Europan surface.
“Maybe the master bot,” Winger surmised. He checked Starnes’ readings with his own sensors. “The core of the thing. Tactically, we’d be smart to recon this cave and make sure we’re not leaving something that could come at us from behind.”
“Is that wise, General?” asked Metcalf. “That thing out there looks like the main show. Maybe there’s a small branch inside the cave, but we can seal the cave if we have to. I vote we MOBnet the cave opening and have a go at the main body out there.”
Metcalf’s idea made sense so Winger and Yamato discussed it with the landing party. In the end, Yamato told Winger it was his decision.
“You know the Keeper better than any of us, General.”
Winger decided that he would enter the cave with Starnes, while Metcalf, Yamato, Kwan and Singh stayed on the surface and continued their advance on the main body of the Keeper. It was agreed they would take no action other than positioning themselves for the final assault, setting up HERF batteries and prepping the MOBnet canisters for deployment until Winger and Starnes returned from the cave with the all-clear.
The two parties split up and Starnes followed Winger into the cave. The ground dropped steeply just after they squeezed through and both men had to use their servos to stay upright and keep their balance.
Winger turned on his helmet lamp and picked his way deeper into the cave, Starnes so close behind that they occasionally bumped into each other.
“Still got those readings, Starnes?” Winger asked.
“Yes, sir,” said the Comms tech. “Dead ahead…forty plus meters and below our level, maybe about twenty meters below us.”
Winger took a deep breath and cautiously lowered himself along icy walls veined with dark red and brown streaks. “Lieutenant, I’m sure this is why I came out of retirement. I just needed more adventure in my life.”
Starnes grunted as his foot momentarily lost traction. He slid a few meters, but ran right into Winger, who helped him stay upright. “I think you’re about to get your wish, General.”
Johnny Winger and the Europa Quandary Page 38