CHAPTER 5
"In war, practice dissimulation and you will succeed. Ponder and deliberate before you make a move. He will conquer who has learned the artifice of deviation."
Sun Tzu
Hong Kong, Special Autonomous Region
People's Republic of China
August 24, 2062
5:00 pm
ANAD Detachment hyperjetted into Hong Kong's Chek Lap Kok Airport just at sundown, circling the harbor several times to set up a proper approach. The bejeweled panoply of night time Hong Kong lay before them…Victoria Peak lit up like a Christmas tree, the ancient Star Ferry plying the harbor like some glittering sea serpent.
Johnny Winger directed off-loading of their mission gear onto trucks supplied by Quantum Corps' eastern base in Singapore, then the unit headed out from the airport, eventually winding up in a maze of narrow streets in the old walled confines of Kowloon City, trying to locate the People's Clinic of the Four Winds of Peace and Harmony.
Dr. Stuart Macalvey and Dr Kip Keino would be meeting them there.
With any luck, Winger thought, they'd be able to secure a few addicts off the street and set up probes for Serengeti mechs. Macalvey had said Hong Kong was the hottest of the hot zones for S Factor addiction, the epicenter of a spreading wave that threatened to engulf most of Asia in weeks.
Just shy of dinner time, the convoy made a left turn from Prince Edwards Road up Namkok Road and found the place. All decked out in red and white bunting with neon tubes blazing brightly in the gloom of early evening sea fog, Winger hopped out of the truck and went in.
The clinic was thick with addicts and pulser victims, stabbing cases and hit and run injuries, attempted suicides and domestic arguments. Khaki-clad Peoples Militia roamed the admissions floor, scowling, trying to keep some semblance of order. Winger and Caden slipped inside, instantly assaulted by a raucous din of wailing, screaming, kicking, bleeding and wrestling humanity.
It was in all respects, a completely normal evening at the Clinic of the Four Winds.
"Stay here," Winger told Caden. "Get Reaves and Buddha too. Set up a perimeter around that door. We may need a little crowd control before long."
While the rest of the Detachment bivouacked alongside Namkok Road at the base of Kowloon's ancient walls, Winger pushed and squeezed through the throng, looking up and down several halls for Macalvey and Keino.
The Scottish virologist and the WHO inspector were in a back room, already in scrubs and shields, as four People's Militiamen struggled with a black-haired man, greasy beard and tong tattoos up and down both arms.
Macalvey was chipper. "Good to see you again, Lieutenant. Hope you had a nice flight. We’ve just found us a suitable candidate."
Greasy Beard was almost too much for the militiamen, who bent, kicked and twisted the fellow into a restraining bed, where he was strapped down and quickly administered a sedative. Keino did the honors, deftly inserting the needle in their unwilling patient's neck.
"It's just neuropyrmidine," Keino explained, dabbing off the tip of the injector. "Locals call it glasseye. Freezes you like a statue. Totally unconscious. Paralyzes the central nervous system for a few hours. You're out like a sack of rocks. But it wears off fast enough."
"No lasting effects on the subject?" Winger asked. He was mindful of the Corps' rules of engagement regarding civilians.
Keino shrugged. "You wake up feeling like you just fell off Victoria Peak. But you get over it. It won't bias our probe."
And sure enough, Greasy Beard's struggles and writhing died off. In less than minute, the patient was pale and still.
Macalvey was scrolling through an admin tablet brought in by the chief of the Militia detail. He tapped out his encrypted signature and handed the tablet back. The Chief bowed faintly and exited the examining room. Macalvey entered data into his own tablet.
"Name's Bilbao," the Scotsman said, studying the tablet. "Macao, I'd say. Got all the classic symptoms of S Factor." He squinted at the tablet, refreshed everything in a larger font, and stroked his red beard with his other hand. "Episodic seizures, convulsions, periods of paralysis followed by manic outbursts."
Keino was already examining Bilbao's face and eyes. "Dilated pupils," the WHO inspector added. "Clammy skin--" Keino studied the man's vitals on an overhead monitor, where the bed had transmitted several dozen parameters after the patient had been secured in. "--uprated metabolism, looks like. I'll lay odds the blood workup will show traces of HNRIV too. A perfect subject, from what I can see."
Winger studied the patient. His face was stiff, with a tense look. If he only knew what was coming, the Lieutenant thought. "I'll get our gear ready. Looks like we have enough room in here."
Winger radioed instructions back to Caden and the Detachment. In less than half an hour, Bilbao was fully prepped and secured in a mobile isopod. TinyTown was carried in and set up. ANAD was readied for launch.
"Very well," Winger said. "Lieutenant Caden--"
The CC2 was in a corner of the room, readying the interface controls. "Already powering up main IC. Config enabled, templates loaded."
Winger reconnoitered the isopod, visualizing how best to insert ANAD. They didn't have a lot of time. Bilbao's brain was the target, specifically the ventral tegmentum above the brain stem. Joe McReady, the Detachment's CEC2, ran the grid and launch tube, nestling the gear against the base of Bilbao's skull.
"Grid and tube in place, sir. Launcher primed."
"Very well…Witchy, how about it?"
Sergeant M'bela was prepping the TinyTown cylinder for duty. Witchy was CEC1, Containerization and Environmental Control specialist. He'd gotten the nickname from the way he always mothered ANAD, always testing out new hexes and 'spirit talk' on the assembler. Witchy hauled TinyTown into position and ran the launch tube McReady handed him back to the unit. It was his job to get ANAD back home, ready to recover when the job was done.
Winger knew how critical this probe was. They needed data on Serengeti, and fast, more than they'd gotten from the Masai woman at Uliba village. It was a sure bet Red Hammer knew the Corps was in town, running an operation. Only a matter of time before they sent their own scouts snooping around Kowloon, nano or otherwise.
Winger donned his eyepiece, let the lens focus down to micro-scale, and studied the epidermal pattern of lipids that made up Bilbao's skin. Witchy's injection route had already been stented off, looking like an eight-lane highway in the lens crosshairs.
ANAD's way in. But to what?
Winger studied the scene. "I don't like it." It was just a feeling. A sixth sense he had long ago learned to pay attention to tickled the back of his head. "Something's not right…but I can't put my finger on it."
Caden held his breath. Had he seen something with ANAD…something that might tip him off? He and Winger had had their encounters lately. His own reputation had been pretty brittle around the Detachment lately.
"The time, Lieutenant. Red Hammer will be on us…."
"I know, I know." Winger shook off the feeling. Maybe it was nothing. Caden was right but he didn't like to admit it. He got on the crewnet. "DPS, get Superfly up and form a perimeter around the whole area." They didn't have the firepower to hold off a determined assault. It was a cinch the enemy would not take kindly to strangers mucking up their territory. "If a gnat farts, I want to know about it."
Reaves' voice came back. "Already deployed, sir. Nothing unusual on the scopes. The usual flies and smog particles. We haven't been probed yet."
"Very well." Winger shrugged off the feeling. You had to trust your people. Train 'em right and trust 'em in a fight. "Containment and IC, go ahead and prep for deploy now. I've just got a gut feeling about this--"
Macalvey and Keino patched their own eyepieces into ANAD's interface controls. In seconds, everybody had a molecule's view of Bilbao's skin.
With practiced hands, Caden's hands flew over the keypad on t
he interface controller. In short order ANAD was re-configured for insertion.
"Config complete, Lieutenant. ANAD reports ready in all respects."
"Launch ANAD," Winger gave the order.
Silently, the ANAD master and its brood infiltrated Bilbao's epidermal layer, parting lipid molecules, burrowing through the outer tissues, heading for the nearest capillary network, powering itself down toward the carotid artery itself, the fast track to the brain, on picowatt propulsors.
"Transiting--" Caden reported. "I'm sounding now--density going up dead ahead…eighty thousand microns. Closing now--"
"The carotid…" Winger figured. His eyepiece showed a diagram overlaying interior imagery from the bed scanner…a line of red dots leading to an indistinct, elongated mass. Ten feet away, Caden's own imager showed the same. An annotation on the image gave the dark mass a more specific name. "--carotid cell walls…coming up."
"I see it." Gibby was piloting now, Winger right on his shoulder. Several others had come into the isopod room, gathering around the IC, their duties done. Deeno D'Nunzio licked her lips…they were chapped dry. Nguyen stood beside her…still as a Buddha, silently willing ANAD onward. They were about to enter Indian country. Every nog in the Detachment felt the tension. It had always been here, in all the sims and wargames and ops, that trouble had come.
"Kick ass…" Deeno muttered, chewing on her lips. "Get small and kick big ass…so we can get the hell out of here."
"Safe journey, my little friend," Nguyen added.
ANAD slipped through the carotid wall in good order, parting a dark curtain puckered with spheres and polygons. Johnny Winger shifted his eyepiece with a nod, overlaying a tactical map on the image.
"Probing now," Caden announced.
Winger shook his head. He was itching to engage Serengeti, if the mech was present. "Belay that…let's just punch through and get our butts up to the limbic cortex and see what's happening there. All replicants responding?"
"Normal signals, Lieutenant."
Winger watched as Gibby piloted ANAD through a bog of hemoglobins, swollen sacs of oxygenated blood born on infinitesimal currents toward Bilbao's brain. Long tendrils of plasma proteins undulated in the currents with the ANAD swarm. Gibby steered for the center of the arterial highway, driving ANAD ever deeper, aiming for a narrow declivity in the distance.
Several minutes passed, as ANAD coursed its way closer and closer to the blood-brain barrier. On his eyepiece, Winger saw a split screen. One side showed the acoustic image from ANAD's sounding. The other side showed the grid position inside Bilbao's arterial network, a moving dot of light inching its way toward the cranium.
"Lipid ducts ahead, Lieutenant."
Macalvey saw them at the same time. "Endothelial cells in the brain capillaries. We're almost in. The blood brain barrier's right there. One of the tightest squeezes in the whole human body. Only two ways in: squeeze between the lipid cell walls. Or hitchhike on another molecule of the right type."
Winger saw it too. He checked ANAD's config status and ordered Gibby to send a command to add another length to his forward grapplers. "Better leverage. I've seen that kind of twisted peptide chain before. Pulse through here--?" He looked over at Macalvey for approval.
The Scotsman nodded, satisfied. "Minimum permeability, looks like. Give her a shot." He indicated a seam between throbbing cell walls.
ANAD and its swarm went through the duct in no time, revving its propulsors in heavy plasma.
A dotted line to the tegmentum appeared on the grid image.
"Neuron city," Winger breathed. "That's where we want to go."
The cloudy pulp of the tegmentum loomed ahead, crisscrossed with spidery stitching of dendrites and axon fibers.
"Looks like the Black Forest," Deeno muttered.
"In we go," Nguyen said.
Winger was impatient. He decided to do a little piloting himself and kicked Gibby off the IC controls. He pulled up a seat and flexed his fingers, grasping the side stick controllers. Gibby backed away.
"Give her a spin, Lieutenant. Just watch those synapses over there. Suckers are sparking like loose wires."
A few minutes later, the dark mass of the tegmentum materialized into view. The pulpy mass beat in cytoplasmic fluid to some inner rhythm.
"That's our target, Lieutenant. Dead ahead--" Macalvey could scarcely contain himself.
"Closing…eight thousand microns…" Winger breathed. "I'm aiming for that cliff between the lobes, okay? After transit, send the rep command. I don’t want to get caught short if I run into bad guys."
Caden acknowledged, manning the template controls. "Replication starts just after transit."
ANAD grabbed a phosphor group and pulled it aside, then squirted through into the tegmentum. At once, the imager was filled with long whippy chains of molecules.
"Axons--the place is thick with them--" came a voice behind Winger. It was 'Buddha' Nguyen.
"Exactly," Winger said. He tweaked a stick controller, sending ANAD hurtling toward the fibers.
Behind Winger, Caden twitched slightly, a facial tic creasing his cheek. He wasn't sure if Winger had seen the blip…something was spinning up inside the forest of axons. A pressure disturbance, detected by ANAD.
"Sounding pressure change," Winger said. Hello? What the hell was that? "We may have company…Gibby, ready defenses."
The assault convulsed out of the axon forest in a frothy blur. An army of Serengeti assemblers fell on ANAD with little warning.
"Mechs!"
"I see 'em!" Johnny Winger cut ANAD's speed in half; instinctively, he lunged for the config controls. "Make a cage…effectors out max!"
"I'm sending it!" Gibby shouted. On a side panel of the IC control, he punched out commands to reconfigure ANAD, with a shield of fullerene arms, bristling like a porcupine.
"That should do the trick." Winger had replayed the Serengeti assault inside the mind of Nalinka over and over again, looking for some way of defeating the enemy mechs. He'd wargamed possibilities with SOFIE, talked tactics with Tallant and others. Come on, baby…come to the dance now….come dance with your Mama….
A single command to ANAD would multiply the swarm in seconds. He was probing by feel alone, eyes fixed on the imager, his fingers twitching over the keyboard, eager to grab a stick but not just yet. He forced himself to be still, let the situation evolve. Beside him, Gibby smiled in spite of himself. Code and stick men were all alike. Trigger-happy by nature.
Come closer to my web….only a little bit closer…I've got a big surprise for you buggers this time….
ANAD had to win this round. He'd been embarrassed at Uliba, caught off guard by Serengeti's tactics, but not this time. This time, he'd be ready. If 1st Nano couldn't defeat Serengeti in its chosen battleground of addicts' brains, blocking the devices and clearing its victims of programmed stimulant mechs, there was little hope they could defeat it anywhere.
Like Sun Tzu said, know the enemy and know yourself; then you shall not fear even a hundred battles.
Like a dog sniffing fear, Johnny Winger chose that very moment to trigger the ANAD attack.
"Replicate now!" he yelled.
Gibby toggled the rep switch and the imager screen careened and shook with the ferocity of a trillion trillion assemblers grabbing atoms.
Three meters away, moving toward battle on picowatt propulsors, ANAD detected the instruction. The entire operation took only a few seconds. In that time, the rep cycle was executed one quadrillion times.
*** Sever perimeter covalent bonds***
*** Unfold lattice atom chains***
***Re-position carbon groups***
***Extract valence electron and attach to last carbon group***
***Assemble hydrogen group at attached valence electron***
***Position carbon group at hydrogen atom***
Johnny Winger and the Serengeti Factor Page 6