CHAPTER 3
"And the temple was filled with smoke from the glory of God and from His power, and no one could enter the temple until the seven plagues of the seven angels were completed."
Revelations, 15:8
Basel, Switzerland
Vivonex Corporation, Central Laboratory
August 21, 2062
Noon
Johnny Winger watched the snow-capped mountains of the Alps growing larger by the minute as Quantum Corps' hyperjet Charioteer descended through light chop toward the airport at Basel. It was a bright, sunny day in the foothills of the Neuer-alpen and the Lieutenant was restless, anxious to get going. A lot of questions had nagged at the back of his mind on the flight up from Nairobi. With any luck, Vivonex would be the start of getting some answers.
A little foggier and rockier, Winger thought, and it could pass for the Front Range. He spied a few lakes, nestled in the brow of craggy ridges overlooking the silvery gleam of the Rhine River. And that could Devil's Lake, with Dorado Canyon right beside it, and the cave me and Archie Hester got lost in.
Johnny Winger well remembered that freezing night so long time ago on his father's Colorado ranch, the North Bar Pass Ranch, it was called. He and Archie had been caving all day long and wound up in a dead end branch in the dark, unable to find their way back.
Thank God for Bailey, he smiled ruefully. His Dad, Jamison Winger, had sent out the microflyer that very evening and before dawn, Bailey had sniffed them out and led them back up to the surface.
Charioteer kissed the tarmac and roared to a stop. Before they had even finished rolling, Winger was already in motion, getting ANAD Detachment ready to deploy. They were making a surprise inspection visit to Vivonex today and the sooner they got underway, the better. Macalvey had come along too, and Winger found the Scottish virologist still strapped in his seat, snoring loudly.
"Come on, Doc." Winger was halfway down the ramp before Macalvey knew what had awakened him. He unstrapped and hustled after the convoy of trucks assembling on the ramp.
They sped along the outer ring road of the Grossbasel, passing the swarms of tourists thronging the Fastnachtplatz before turning onto the Rhine River bridge at Rheinfelderstrasse. Minutes later, the highway emerged past the ruins of the old Roman walls and switched back and forth through high meadowy passes splashed with open fields of yellow and red flowers. The road forked several kilometers east, and the convoy bore left, onto the Hohenkonig Road, climbing all the way through tunnels and narrow defiles, before topping out on a broad plateau fronting the snow-capped peaks of the Vogelhard Mountains.
A steel and glass complex lay nestled in the foreground of the rugged slopes, laid out in a rough quadrangle of buildings connected by glassed-in tube walkways. The Vivonex compound was home to one of Switzerland's largest pharmaceutical companies. Now it was an epicenter of controversy, as hundreds of thousands of HNRIV victims struggled with the effects of the Serengeti treatment that had been designed right here.
Now, 1st Nano's ANAD Detachment had come to pay a little visit, and get a few questions answered.
Inside the tile and flowerpot lobby of Building One, Winger, Macalvey and the Detachment ran into a small circle of grim, tight-lipped company officers.
The shorter man was nearly bald, a fringe of sparse black hair forming a halo around the back of his head. Dr. Alton Klegg smiled faintly, recognizing Macalvey.
"Stuart--" he extended a hand, feigned warmth and shook the Scot's hands. "An unexpected surprise. What brings you--and your colleagues--" he eyed the Quantum Corps' black and gold uniforms with thinly disguised irritation --"to Basel?"
Macalvey was noncommittal. "Official business, Dr. Klegg. This is a formal inspection, already approved by WHO. You were notified this morning?"
Klegg nodded. "When I came in. You didn't give us much time to prepare for your visit…by the way, this is Hammond Steejn. Hammond's director of security for Vivonex."
Steejn was tall and lean, steel-eyed, with a gray crew-cut. He glared with contempt at the Detachment filing into the lobby.
"An unseemly show of force, don't you think, Doctor?"
Macalvey smiled faintly. "Not at all." He served the official notice papers on Steejn. "This is WHO's Notice of Inspection. These gents are from Quantum Corps. They'd like a look at your records on Serengeti."
"I want to see the code itself," Johnny Winger told them. "And the design history…from the beginning."
Steejn and Klegg looked sourly at each other.
"Very well," Klegg muttered. "Let's get you scanned and suited up. What you want is in Building Six…Test and Containment."
An hour later, every member of the Detachment had gone through Vivonex's bio-security process, been scanned and blown and vacuumed and irradiated for micro-organisms, and re-suited to enter the Level Four Lab and the containment complex. Building Six was a small oblong structure attached by tube walkway to the rest of the compound, but surrounded by the same shimmering microgel mesh they had seen at Soweto's gravesite at Uliba. The bio-shield pulsated in the noonday sun like a faint whisper of fog backlit with strobes of colored light.
Steejn and Klegg led them inside.
"We were concerned from the beginning--" Klegg was narrating, "--about the speed at which HNRIV mutated. Our first thoughts were that the genome couldn't survive…be viable, you understand, with that kind of mutability. Evolution is conservative…not too many changes all at once. But HNRIV was different somehow. You remember the early analysis, don't you, Stuart?"
"Indeed I do," Macalvey said. "Some of my colleagues at WCDC thought HNRIV had to be man-made, an engineered virus, souped up to run like a hot rod."
Klegg chuckled. "Yet all the time, the answer was staring us right in the face…ah, here we are." He led them through a maze of corridors, through several sets of heavy doors, hissing as air pressure equalized on both sides and through two more shimmering nets of bioshield. Finally, they arrived at a heavy, cast chamber built like a submarine hull, with portholes and hatch doors. "--Test and Containment. Birthplace of the Serengeti Factor."
"Why the name?" Lieutenant Dana Tallant asked. "What's with 'Serengeti?'"
Klegg was warming to the subject. "Part science, part marketing, I'm afraid. The HNRIV virus, you know, came from east Africa."
"Ancient viral genome," Macalvey acknowledged. "Pair of australopithecine children, wasn't it?"
"Exactly. The fossilized remains still had trace quantities of DNA. The sequence was extracted, hybridized and scanned. That's when we found out about HNRIV."
Johnny Winger had heard the story many times. Practically the entire dig site team had died horrible deaths within days of the excavation and sequencing of the fossil DNA. An ancient viral plague had killed the children. Traces of its genome were extracted and sequenced too. The virus had become active in the process, then exceedingly virulent. In less than a week, HNRIV had become airborne and infected dozens of people around the site. Most had died.
Klegg powered up an interface control panel outside the containment chamber. "We didn't know if we could beat it…the damn thing mutated faster than any known virus. It was unheard of, speeds like that. One of the nastiest strains we'd ever seen. Then Mueller and I had an idea--"
"Antidote assembler," Macalvey said. "Brilliant idea. But risky--"
"What choice did we have? Only a programmable antidote like Serengeti--we named it that because HNRIV came from an east African reservoir…mostly likely Ngongolo Hills--could keep up with that kind of mutability. Sure there was a risk. But we got it to work."
"Until now," Macalvey muttered. He watched as Klegg and Steejn played with the imager, zeroing in on the Serengeti master, securely confined inside the tank. Klegg tweaked the sensitivity controls of the quantum flux imager. In focus in the center of the screen was a rectangular grid, wavering in the aqueous solution in which the grid was submerged. In the exact center of the grid
, a mass of dark spherical shapes pulsated with some inner rhythm. The mass looked like a bunch of grapes, hanging on a trellis.
Klegg stiffened at the accusation. "That's completely uncalled for, Stuart and you know it. You of all people should know what we're up against here. HNRIV works by attacking the cells that make up the synaptic vesicles of the nervous system. The virus punctures cells full of chemicals - serotonin, dopamine, epinephrine. The stuff leaks out and there goes your nervous system control. The result is vomiting, seizures, paralysis, death in minutes. Gruesome way to go, if you ask me."
"You built a machine," Winger said. "To fight the virus."
"Not unlike your ANAD. We learned from Irwin Frost at Northgate University in the States. And from your own experience with nanoscale assemblers. It seemed like a good prospect. Serengeti's not so different. It's a device, basically a few billionths of a meter in size. Part mechanism, part organism. A programmable virus itself, if you will. Man-made with an embedded nanoprocessor chip…we did improve a bit on poor ANAD's design, I'll have to admit. But just like your ANAD, Serengeti can replicate itself or disassemble structures at the scale of single atoms. It can do this under complete human control or by stored program. It can build any structure you want. It can disassemble any structure too, atom by atom. Including viruses."
"But now it's running wild," Winger said.
Steejn looked sour. "Isolated malfunctions. Simple matter of quality control."
"I'd like to see the original code."
"We can do better than that," Klegg offered, glaring at Macalvey. "Since you're determined to bring the authorities into this matter…why not 'test-drive' the original Serengeti, right here. As you can see, I've got him powered up and initialized. We've even got all safety systems armed. We're not exactly neophytes at this, you know."
Winger wandered around the containment chamber, studying its features. Vivonex seemed to have spared no expense, unless this was all some kind of dog and pony show. Poised around the periphery of the insulated sphere in which the grid was suspended, were three rows of six electron beam injectors each. At the slightest hint of trouble during replication, an operator could quickly toggle the firing switch on the control panel. Several million electron volts of energy would flood the tank, stripping atoms from molecules, electrons from atoms. Only nucleus fragments would remain.
"Nobody's accusing you of anything," Winger said, though he knew that was a lie. He sat down where Klegg indicated, flexing his fingers. He was practically licking his lips at the prospect. My fingers are just itching to grab a few atoms with this joker. "You said you've improved a few things…taken Serengeti further than ANAD. What do you mean?"
Klegg pointed to fuzzy projections on the screen. "Along with a new processor, Serengeti has stiffer diamondoid effectors. More reactive or 'stickier' covalent bond ends too, basically carbenes and hydrogen radicals. That lets him grab atoms and move molecules more securely."
"How'd you soup up the speed? Your processor only controls and directs."
Klegg smiled proudly. "A little technique we've patented. You're right, as far as it goes. But Serengeti's got new carbon group fold lines. Basically a new type of architecture more easily cleaved and collapsed. He could run circles around ANAD…I'm sure of it."
Winger tried out the control sticks on the panel. Don't be too sure, pal.
Klegg continued. "Makes for faster folding and unfolding. A very ingenious design…based on ribosomal proteins…nature's own assemblers of proteins from DNA instruction. Serengeti can break bonds much more rapidly, under quantum-scale control. Orders of magnitude faster than ANAD, I'm certain. And he's got new fullerene 'hooks' for more secure grasping and attaching, which makes for better accuracy."
Winger was growing annoyed with this officious prick. He'd lived and breathed nanoscale the last few years. It was a safe bet, if you'd asked Lieutenant Johnny Winger, that there wasn't a code and stick man anywhere in the Quantum Corps, maybe the world, who could make the little critters sing and dance the way he could. He hadn't lost a sim or exercise to an opfor platoon in over a year.
He was anxious to get started, get a feel for this wonderbread assembler Klegg was so proud of.
"Am I powered up?"
"Fully. Just select a mode--here--" Klegg fingered a side panel.
Winger settled into his seat, let his reflexes take over. It was a basic axiom in nanoscale work that you didn't so much 'fly' the buggers as 'feel' them. To a rookie, dodging molecules and groping van der Waals forces was like playing dodge ball with a sleet of sticky balls. It took timing and finesse, something that could only come with time.
"Layout's not so different from your ANAD," Klegg said. Like any good IC, Winger couldn't wait to drive the thing. "Operation controls you have your hands on are for the propulsors. Serengeti's beefed up to sixty picowatts power. Six degrees of freedom in attitude…that's your left hand plus translation control in your right."
"Feels jumpier," Winger reported. He twisted both sticks and the imager scene careened crazily. "The slightest touch and he's out of trim."
"I'm sure you'll get the hang of it, Lieutenant. I've got the gain boosted up high. Imager is acoustic feedback, just like ANAD. You can overlay heading, attitude and state data on the image." Even as he spoke, Winger had the imager screen tiled with shifting mosaics of information.
"Let's try to dock with something," he suggested, spying a few molecules drifting by. He tickled the imager for better resolution and clucked at the view. "Why that looks like an old friend of ours, Dr. Klegg. Mr. Acetylcholine Molecule. What say we scope him out for a parking place?"
"Suit yourself, Lieutenant." Since you're already practically there anyway. "That's a covalent bond, by the way--"
"Oh--!" Winger grunted sheepishly. The acetylcholine's carbon 'fingers' flicked Serengeti away. He'd approached on a poor vector and gotten bounced by the stiff bond forces. "I'll just--" Winger grimaced, trying to regain control of the device. "That's weird--molecule just up and spun me around…what gives? Usually, you can just barrel on in and squat between electrons."
Klegg sniffed. "That's something I'm sure you're not familiar with." He pressed a few buttons on the keyboard. "AUTO-RESET. Serengeti's different. With something like acetylcholine…dopamine--complicated structures like that--it's best to let Serengeti do the piloting. With ANAD, at least early ANAD, you could just fly right in close and probe bonds for a soft spot. Not anymore. Serengeti's fly-by-stick, electronically controlled. It seeks equilibrium and calculates resistance instantaneously. Let the computer and auto-maneuver system do the work now. Serengeti knows what to look for."
Winger frowned. "Hell, Doc…that takes all the fun out of it."
"Maybe so, but it also saves molecules from being smashed to bits by hotshot pilots. In any case, Serengeti's more sophisticated. Forget your smash and grab techniques. Now, with Serengeti, docking with a molecule is essentially automated."
"What other wonders are you going to show me?"
Klegg pressed a few more buttons to inject additional molecules into the solution. "You're in an alien medium. Parameters unknown. Try a basic replication cycle."
Winger scoped out the medium with Serengeti's sensors: pH, concentration gradient, pressure. He toggled the 'rep' pickle on the left stick, one cycle. In the blink of an eye, the imager screen jostled slightly.
"I'm waiting, Doc."
Klegg smiled. "You missed it, Lieutenant."
"What?"
"Serengeti's already replicated. Check your state vector…here--" he pointed to a screen of dials and columns on the left. "See what I mean?"
Winger was dumb-founded. "I'll be damned--this baby's a real hot rod. It feels a hell of a lot like early ANAD."
"I'll take that as a compliment. We based our original design on ANAD. Only we improved it…tinkered under the hood, as you would say."
&nb
sp; Macalvey was grim. "I'd say you tinkered with the wrong things, Dr. Klegg. The latest morbidity data from WCDC estimates Serengeti addicts now exceed a million globally. The cure for HNRIV is turning out to be worse than the disease."
Steejn stirred uneasily, standing behind them. He didn't see Lieutenant Nathan Caden and Sergeant Al Glance steal away, out of the containment facility. In seconds, the two of them were out of sight, off on a little recon of their own. They cycled back through the bioshields and headed toward the glass walkway to Building 5.
The Security Director was anxious to get rid of these cops as soon as possible. Klegg was way too ingratiating.
"As I said," Klegg was going on, "Vivonex is fully aware of all the reported Serengeti malfunctions. We're working very hard with WHO and WCDC to either recall all the defective devices or locate affected people and administer an override treatment, a patch if you will, that renders the malfunctioning swarms ineffective. I'd be happy to show you the override."
"We ought to take a look," Winger admitted. He saw Steejn suddenly turn and leave the containment facility in a hurry, a worried look on his face.
"Simple technique, really. When inserted into the patient, it seeks out Serengeti mechs and disassembles them into harmless molecular fragments. We've been testing it thoroughly the last two days, right here." Klegg was at pains to convince Winger and Macalvey that Vivonex was doing everything it could to deal with the growing problem of Serengeti failures.
Away from the containment facility, Hammond Steejn was practically running toward the outer bioshield. He hadn't seen the two Quantum Corps troopers slip away; only a quick count of the assembled detachment had shown the whole force wasn't there.
Where the hell were they? The whole matter of testing out Serengeti was nothing more than a diversion. Why hadn't he seen that right away? It was a question that gave Steejn no end of indigestion. He had to find them…fast.
Through the bioshield, Steejn exited Building 6 and practically ran toward the glass walkway. Which way? He paused for a moment, then got on his wristpad, summoning plant security.
"Go through every closet, every corner," he growled. "Every building, room by room. Find those bastards now!"
He tapped out a call number on his wristpad.
The balding head and thick eyebrows of Mikel Wirkloss appeared on the tiny screen. Wirkloss was deputy security director.
"What's the status on that hyperjet at Basel airport?" Steejn growled.
"It's still on the ramp, Herr Steejn. Surrounded by a guard detail. Being refueled."
"Indeed--" Steejn remembered a little matter he had almost forgotten. "We should give them a taste of our Swiss hospitality. You know what to do."
"Yes, Herr Steejn." Wirkloss' face dissolved.
Unknown to Steejn, Caden and Glance had managed to duck into Building 5, the 'back wall' of the quadrangle of buildings making up the Vivonex complex. Both men were conscious of how much they stood out in their black and gold Quantum Corps field uniforms, but that couldn't be helped. Vivonex was used to inspections and official conferences, and had been since the outbreak of the HNRIV pandemic. Two troopers in full QC gear caused no particular concern among the technicians scurrying along the tiled corridors.
"Hey, Lieutenant--" Glance spied a security barrier at the end of one hall, the faint luminescence of its nanomech screen shimmering with ghostly speckles in the pale light. "Lookeee here--"
Caden ducked down the hall and followed Master Sergeant Al Glance, the Detachment's dour and tenacious IC2.
"Whatever's behind that door is important enough to put up a serious screen," Caden said.
"That's makes me kind of interested, Lieutenant."
"Me too." Caden studied the barrier arrangement, eyeing the dimensions and density of the barrier. Carefully, he felt along the perimeter, where the mech screen contacted the walls. "Appears to be dumb mechs, no obvious EM or acoustic sensing--"
Glance agreed. "Loose formation…see how I can mash it?" The IC2 pressed the palm of his hand against the barrier. It gave with gentle pressure--a high-pitched keening sound could be heard--then as the swarm congregated to the intrusion, applied pressure back, holding his hand at the edge.
"Might just be a pressure barrier," Caden offered. "Like our MOBnet. Maybe it works the same way." MOBnet was a mobility obstruction barrier, a nanomech restraint system the Detachment used to secure small spaces or crowds. He tapped out a few experimental commands on his wristpad, trying different tactics. The barrier remained unchanged. Caden hmmpphed, tried something else. "Sergeant, crosslink your pad with mine…maybe we'll get lucky…dig up a frequency or confuse it--"
Glance complied. A second later, the nanobarrier began a deep throbbing hum, then promptly collapsed in a rush of light.
"Voila! We're in--"
Caden cycled the door and pushed through, finding several startled technicians behind flickering monitors.
As they barged into the secured control room, one of the technicians called out.
"Hey…you can't come in here! You need special authori--"
Caden unholstered his mag pulser. "Is that so? Quantum Corps, pal…" he tapped his holster with two fingers. "--this is my invitation."
The technician was a lanky, black-bearded man, with a black crewcut. His name plate read Johansen. He had risen partly to confront Caden and Glance, then stopped in mid-rise.
It was a small room, filled with banks of screens and wall displays. Glance went immediately to one screen, a giant wall display showing video of two men floating in weightlessness, apparently aboard a spacecraft, tending a rack of instruments. Glance studied the image, watching the men for a few moments. One of them looked faintly familiar. Schematics filled nearby screens.
"Take a look, Lieutenant…seems like we got something in orbit here. And that guy there--" he indicated the moustachioed man in the background—“isn’t that—?“
Caden saw what he meant. “I believe it is, Sergeant—“ The words Pharmex Video Feed and Comm/Swarm Interface scrolled across the top of the image. Mustafa Gaidar…the Defender of the Purity of Greater Balkistan…in space? The Lieutenant didn't see Johansen tap an alert pad on his belt. The technician stood beside Caden.
"You Quantum Corps people enjoy throwing your weight around, don't you? Busting through doors and showing off your weapons…this is a research lab, you know. There's a reason for that security barrier you broke through. Good thing this isn't a Level Four area. I figured Quantum Corps goons had better sense than that."
Johansen was beginning to grate on Caden's nerves. "We got business here, friend. Just what goes on in here, anyway?"
Johansen shrugged, jammed his hands in his pockets. Stall…hold them here just a few minutes longer…. "Like I said, we're a research lab."
Caden indicated the weightless men caroming around the orbiting deck. "And the playboys?"
Johansen had wandered back to his own console. The other technicians followed him with their eyes. "I think you'd better show me some authorization, Lieutenant. This is private property. Vivonex is fully authorized to conduct research on--"
"--assembler containment?" Glance put in. The sergeant sat down at one of the consoles beside another technician, studying the contents of a thoughtpad, fiddling with the image to scroll through pages of data. "Says here this Pharmex lab is running tests on nano-assembler containment today."
"It's perfectly legitimate," Johansen said. "We're just trying to improve Serengeti, work through some software patches. WHO's already sanctioned the experiments."
"Regulations say all your assembler work is supposed to be under positive containment, right here," Caden remembered. "What's this stuff doing on an orbiting lab?"
"There are no assemblers in orbit. It's just a test."
Glance and Caden's eyes met. Distract him, the sergeant said with his eyes. Caden nodded imperceptibly. He took Johansen
by the shoulder, steered him away from Glance, toward another wall screen. "Show me what's going on here--" Another video feed, apparently from Pharmex. "And how can you run tests on containment without full-bore assemblers, anyway?"
While Johansen mumbled excuses, Glance pulled the blond technician's thoughtpad close enough to run a remote copy with his own vest recorder. One tap on the vest and most of the pad's contents were copied over. It was over in less than two seconds.
"Looks to me kinda like you're running unauthorized experiments up there," Caden was saying. "Outside positive containment, without WHO permission. I assume you've got documents. Or maybe we should just take a few of you into custody, charge you with violating quarantine statutes."
Johansen's lips tightened. "Don't get your nose out of joint. It's all official and fully authorized."
At that moment, the door to the room was flung open. Hammond Steejn filled the doorway, flanked by three security officers from Vivonex.
"Off on a little sightseeing trip, are you?"
Caden saw Glance had his copy. "Reconnaissance, Mr. Steejn. This little corner of your plant doesn't seem to show up on any of our records. We saw the security barrier--" he indicated Sergeant Glance, "and decided to check it out. I see you're testing assembler containment outside authorized facilities. I suppose you can explain that."
Steejn had developed a visceral dislike for all Quantum Corps types, especially this one. "No explanation is needed, Lieutenant. I just handle security. And you're in a prohibited area. Both of you must come with me immediately."
The Vivonex security men made themselves more visible, slipping by Steejn into the room.
"The inspection's not over yet," Caden told them. "Not until you account for what's going on in here…this place doesn't show up on any of the plans."
"One final warning, Lieutenant--don't force me to take drastic action."
Sergeant Glance had already unholstered his mag weapon when Caden received a chirp on his wristpad. It was the CC1, Lieutenant Winger.
"What gives?" Winger's face materialized with an impatient look. "I'm assembling the Detachment in the lobby."
"Lieutenant, we've stumbled across a facility not on any plans, an assembler control and testing facility, back of Building 5. We're checking it out now."
"Already noted. I got the particulars from Klegg. Get back here on the double."
Steejn scowled at Caden as Glance re-pocketed his mag weapon. "Looks like the dance is over, Mr. Steejn."
Steejn regarded the Quantum Corps troopers coldly. "It's not a good idea to go wandering off around this lab, Lieutenant. There are things that can bite you, behind some of these doors. Come…I'll show you out."
Ten minutes later, the ANAD Detachment had mustered in front of the main building.
Klegg and Steejn looked on sourly.
"I trust you found what you were looking for, Lieutenant. Having to deal with endless inspections from WHO and Quantum Corps is a tiresome burden on my staff. It keeps us away from our main job…working out repairs to Serengeti so we can keep the problem from getting any worse. Every day's delay means more lives."
Macalvey was unimpressed. "Only because of sloppy work from the start, Dr. Klegg. You're fixing bugs that shouldn't have happened in the first place. We're just trying to make sure the fixes do what they're supposed to…and don't aggravate the problem."
"Then we have the same goals, Stuart."
"Perhaps," said Macalvey. "Time will tell."
Johnny Winger ended the formal inspection and called for the Detachment to board the convoy. The trucks would take them back to the airport, where the Corps' hyperjet was parked, ready to go. Charioteer would drop Macalvey off in Paris; he had a conference to attend, something called HNRIV Mutability and Evolved Co-Pathogens. After the conference, the Scottish virologist would make his own way back to WCDC in Atlanta.
The rest of the Detachment would jet back across the stratosphere to Table Top Mountain.
Charioteer lifted off Runway 26 Left in a swirl of dust and banked low over the red tile roofs of the Kleinbasel, heading northwest toward Paris. Snow capped mountains surrounded the city on three sides, with the silvery glint of the lower Rhine River soon lost to a light haze filling the valley. The hyperjet accelerated across the tops of the Neuer-alpen and into French airspace.
Caden found Johnny Winger at the CC1's desk in the forward cabin, deep in thought, scanning reams of code from the Serengeti lab.
"We grabbed a copy of a technician's notes from that lab we found," Caden told him. He gave the disk to Winger, who looked up puzzled, his mind on the code before him. “And you’ll never guess whose face we saw on the screen, right up there in orbit.”
"Sorry, Caden. I was trying to figure out just what Serengeti's supposed to be doing inside an infected victim." He frowned at the scrolling code. "I'm not following the logic."
Caden popped the disk in a viewer. "Maybe this will help. That lab's not on any plans of the facility. They're running an orbiting facility from there. Running assembler containment studies, for one thing. Maybe other tests too."
They watched as the disk copy scrolled, revealing notes and snippets of thoughts and test results, all in the barely legible scrawl of the tech's handwriting. Windows of video winked in and out, adding to the text. What they found was chilling enough: a separate lab facility called Pharmex, a place not fully disclosed to the WHO inspectors before. A place in Earth orbit, doing undisclosed work on the Serengeti mech. And sure enough, it was Mustafa Gaidar in the background, aboard the Pharmex station.
"What the hell's going on?" Winger asked. “I thought we left that joker on the run, headed into Russia, after we ran him out of Balkistan.”
"I don't know," Caden said, "but this place was never shown to WHO before. Vivonex has done production testing up there for a long time. As far as anyone knew, this Pharmex was just an orbiting drug factory. Now--" Caden shrugged.
Winger watched the rest of the tech's notes scroll down. "We'd better plan on taking a look. I'll get word to Major Kraft. We'll have to work with UNISPACE on--"
He stopped in mid-sentence as Charioteer suddenly shuddered. A series of pops and bangs sounded through the hull. The hyperjet's speed slackened noticeably.
Winger called up the cockpit. "What is it…what happened?"
Charioteer's pilot, Captain Harkness, was struggling with the controls. "I'm not sure…we've got shutdown on Engine number four…she just quit. Negative on fuel flow too. My instruments show zero fuel quantity…but that's impossible! We just refueled at Basel--" there was some commotion from the cockpit, then --" now Number Three's quitting…what the hell…?"
Charioteer's speed had by now fallen off noticeably. The hyperjet's nose angled downward, through puffy clouds. Snow-covered peaks loomed on both sides; they were heading down in a valley.
Winger got on the intercom to the rest of the Detachment, sacked out in the cargo bay. "Attention all hands…secure for rough landing! Secure for rough landing…we've got engine problems--"
In the cargo bay, the nanotroopers of ANAD Detachment scrambled to ready themselves for a hard landing. Nathan Caden dashed back to his own seat, while Winger tightened his shoulder harness. He didn't like the looks of the terrain outside the porthole.
Up forward in Charioteer's cockpit, Harkness was running out of options. Something had starved all the engines of fuel. Every gauge registered zero. The jet's Number One and Two engines coughed, spurted flame and died off into silence. The huge jet was now a glider, nosing over toward a narrow mountain valley in the French Alps.
Winger tucked his head and arms into crash position.
The impact, when it came, jarred every bone in his body, rattling his teeth, as Charioteer careened sideways down the length of a green meadowed valley, gouging up furrows and ridges of dirt, rock and soil, for what seemed like miles.
The fuselage
groaned as skin sheet tore away, flipping them over and over. Both wings were quickly sheared off and Charioteer skidded and rolled until her momentum was finally spent. She came to rest against an earthen berm surrounding wheat fields on a narrow plateau overlooking a picturesque valley, a smoking hulk shredded and charred from impact.
Inside the crumpled hull, Charioteer's crew and the Detachment she was carrying groaned and stirred from the impact of the crash and slowly began extricating themselves from the smoldering wreckage.
Fortunately, Charioteer's hard landing in the Orleans valley caused no fatalities, only a few injuries. Master Sergeant Hiro Tsukota ("Ozzie" to most of the Detachment) was the worst, suffering a fractured leg and severe facial and chest lacerations. As a precaution, Orleans firefighters littered all crewmembers and Detachment personnel to the emergency room at the town's Le Joffre Hospital, where they were checked out and kept overnight for observation.
The next morning, Inspector Claude LeMonde, with the French Bureau de Enforcement Accidentique (BEA), appeared in the doorway to Johnny Winger's room. The Lieutenant had been chafing all morning with bandages the emergency room teams had applied the day before. To take his mind off all the aches and scrapes, he had buried himself in Serengeti's original code again, trying to determine why the mech could have malfunctioned.
LeMonde was tall and bald, a trim black moustache setting off an olive face with animated eyebrows that curled into crescents when he spoke. LeMonde inquired delicately as to Winger's condition. Assured that the Detachment had suffered no permanent injuries on French soil, he seemed mollified.
Then he offered a chilling assessment of BEA's accident investigation.
"I'm afraid your hyperjet engines didn't fail accidentally, Lieutenant. We've uncovered residue from the fuel tanks…most unsettling evidence, I might add."
Winger winced in bed as he turned, then disgusted, got up and peered impatiently out the window. Red tile roofs and church steeples dominated the town skyline. The Gothic spires of a cathedral were hazy before the mountains to the west. He was restless, anxious to get going, to get after Serengeti and end the menace of a rogue nanobot swarm.
"What kind of evidence?"
LeMonde rubbed his bald head uneasily. "Our tests show residue from nanoscale mechanisms inside the fuel tanks. Molecular debris…a signature, if you will, that's common to devices of this type."
"An assembler?"
"More like a disassembler, Monsieur. We haven't been able to identify the source, the mother strain of the mech yet. It's not French, I can assure you of that much. Somehow, a master replicant was inserted into your fuel tanks. Either by remote control or by program, it replicated and converted the jet's fuel into something resembling porridge. Charioteer's engines died because they were starved of fuel."
Winger had stopped pacing. He stared at LeMonde. "A replicant. Can I look at the residue? We've got equipment to characterize any kind of nanomech."
LeMonde shrugged, half smiling. "Alas, no, that will not be possible. It's a state investigation. Security of evidence and all that. I'm sure you understand."
Winger expected as much. Somehow, he needed to get a sample of that residue. With a proper sample, odds were excellent that Table Top could put the finger on the manufacturer.
And he didn't need a BEA inspector to see the full import of what LeMonde was saying: Someone had deliberately tried to cause the hyperjet accident. Someone wanted the Quantum Corps off the case of investigating the Serengeti problem.
Later that afternoon, Johnny Winger and the ANAD Detachment were cleared for release from Le Joffre and driven to Orleans' small airport. A French government Mistral liftjet came to take them to Paris Chirac Field, where the Corps had sent another hyperjet to bring them home.
Dr. Macalvey sat with Winger aboard the Mistral as she winged her way north over the French countryside.
"The inspector offered no further evidence that nanomechs converted the fuel?"
Winger shrugged. "He described the debris they left behind…showed me some analysis…it could easily have been mechs."
"The question is who? And why?"
"Who is pretty obvious," Winger said. He explained how their old friend Mustafa Gaidar had turned up aboard Vivonex’s orbiting drug lab. Winger dialed up the Battalion headquarters at Table Top on his wristpad, waiting for the chirp of the crypto circuit to kick in. "Why I don't know yet. But I can guess. The real question is: can Vivonex be doing all this themselves?"
Major Kraft's scowling face materialized on the tiny display.
"Major, it's Winger. The Detachment was just released from the hospital. We're on our way to Paris right now."
"All hands accounted for?"
Winger gave him the rundown. Ozzie Tsukota would be on disability leave for a few weeks, until the Corps' med group could do their own gene analysis and fashion an injectable bone growth template to knit his multiple leg fractures back together.
"Other than that," Winger was saying, "we came through in pretty good shape."
"You were lucky." Kraft's face canted down; he was examining something offscreen. "What's this file you squirted me earlier?"
"BEA Inspector's report, sir. It seems someone tampered with Charioteer's fuel cells. Someone with nano-smarts. A replicant master was inserted somehow, even though the guard detail was posted, and turned the fuel into mush. The French found it quickly enough. What's peculiar is that whoever did it, didn't go to any great lengths to try and hide it. It's like they wanted us to find it."
Kraft snorted. "More likely they wanted you dead. You figuring Vivonex?"
Winger chanced a sideways glance at Macalvey. "That's my starting point, sir. Have you had a chance to study what Caden and Glance found?"
Kraft nodded. "Got it when you sent it this morning. Vivonex running a drug lab in orbit is not in itself a containment violation. But Mustafa Gaidar is another matter altogether. The question is: what are they—and he--really doing up there? Is it drug production? Some kind of research? Or are they really doing assembler work off-earth? That's an issue for UNSAC to decide. I've prettied up the report and forwarded it on the Security Commissioner. Seeing Gaidar’s face should remind him we have outstanding warrants on the scumbag.”
"I did get something else from the inspector, Major. His report was pretty bland, but one of the diagrams of the residue particles got me curious. This morning, I got on the crewnet and pulled up diagrams of the old INDRA mechs we faced several years ago. Just a hunch."
"And?"
"Close enough match in structure to make me even more suspicious."
Kraft remembered the Third Kurganian War back in '55. Quantum Corps had been tasked to help the Kurganians fight off an infiltration by nanomechs designed and made in neighboring Balkistan. Mustafa Gaidar had been the Balki dictator at the time, bent on fashioning himself another Golden Horde, this time of nanoscale warriors. Gaidar had long fancied himself a literal descendant of Genghis Khan. Only quick work by the Corps, with ANAD leading the way, had run Gaidar out of Balkistan and kept Kurgania from succumbing to what had become known as The Seven-Minute Plague.
"Any kind of resemblance to INDRA, or to any work done for Mustafa Gaidar, is cause for worry." Kraft rubbed his chin. Even on the tiny screen, he seemed fatigued, his eyes heavily lidded. "Lieutenant, when you get back to Table Top, work that angle. I want to know what the hell’s Gaidar doing with Vivonex…and is anyone else involved."
"I thought he had escaped into Russia after the War," Macalvey said.
"Intel said that's what happened," Winger explained. "But there's even more good news. Last intel we had on the dirtbag was that he had joined up with Red Hammer. There's credible intelligence that says Gaidar has been seen in and around Hong Kong."
"Bad news," Kraft agreed. "Very bad news."
Winger had an idea. "Major, after we run the analysis on what downed Charioteer, I'd like pe
rmission to form up a special reconnaissance team."
"For what purpose, Lieutenant?"
"Just this sir. 1st Nano's dealt with both Red Hammer and Mustafa Gaidar before. Just separately. If they're now in bed together, we need to know how much. And fast. A special recon team, with a covert insertion into Lion's Rock in Hong Kong might well get us those answers."
Kraft grudgingly saw the value in the Lieutenant's proposal. "Hong Kong is a notorious base of operations for Red Hammer. All kinds of twist dealing and funny business going on."
Macalvey was intrigued. "Hong Kong's a hotbed of Serengeti addicts too. That can't be a coincidence. You think Red Hammer could be involved in all this?"
Kraft answered that from Winger's wristpad. "Easily, Doctor. Red Hammer's the most sophisticated adversary we've faced since Gaidar and Balkistan. Biggest and best financed cartel in East Asia, maybe the world…they've got their paws into everything."
Macalvey was grim, mulling over the news. "I don't see how even a well-funded criminal group could have made Serengeti into the malfunctioning menace we're seeing. It takes extraordinarily sensitive technology to work things at such scales."
Kraft explained. "You don't know Red Hammer like we do. Shao Hong Ser--Red Hammer--is a like an octopus. Their biggest revenue sources are extortion and kidnapping, that and the twist monopoly. We share intelligence with law enforcement agencies all over the world on a daily basis. Right now, word is that they're targeting gene designers and nano programmers in Japan. Nobody really knows why…maybe it's just supply and demand. Tokyo Metro and Nihon Keisatsu are working several dozen cases. Plus Red Hammer's got its own business going in pirated DNA sequences too. It's epidemic in Bangkok, Djakarta, Bangladesh. 'Snatch and slice' operations are netting them billions. You get enough rich people wanted designer genes and trendy broadband implants and pretty soon, you got yourself a paying market."
Winger added, "There are other pies they've got their claws into as well: WORLDNET gaming and porn, illicit nano and the newest scam: trafficking in unlicensed, unregulated nandies. That'll be huge, unless we can cut them off. Backyard matter engines are spreading faster than Serengeti addicts these days; Red Hammer's already built a major distribution source in Hong Kong. Pretty soon, they'll be spreading out."
Macalvey nodded. "Perhaps making Serengeti an addictive antidote to HNRIV virus is how they plan to do that. This Lion's Rock--"
"The mother nest," Winger said. "That's where we have to go next. I'll lay odds, Major, if we can get inside Lion's Rock and snoop around, we'll find out what's really driving this Serengeti pandemic." He held up a thoughtpad screen filled with lines of programming Vivonex had given them. "And it won't be bad code either. These jokers know exactly what they're doing."
Major Kraft's face looked pained at the prospect of another encounter with the cartel. "Very well, Lieutenant. Get your ass back to Table Top on the double. I'll get with UNSAC, see if we can get tasking for a covert mission inside Lion's Rock." He shook his head sadly. "We did it before during Delta Helix and managed to get out of there with our cojones intact. If we have to go sticking our head inside the hornet's nest again, I'm not sure we'll be so lucky."
"Maybe so, Major, but what choice do we have? The evidence points to Red Hammer being involved."
Major Jurgen Kraft had no answer for that.
Johnny Winger and the Serengeti Factor Page 4