Binary Storm

by Christopher Hinz

  Bel acknowledged a stab of disappointment. Witherstone had probably finished the vodka before he’d had the opportunity to dispatch the BA for a new bottle, which meant her theory was probably wrong.

  Nick wasn’t as quick to give up. “Were there any items associated with that bottle that Director Witherstone kept?”

  The BA didn’t answer. Nick wasn’t on the short list of individuals it was programmed to respond to. Bel repeated his question.

  “Yes,” it said. “He kept the vodka.”

  She shook her head, confused. “I don’t understand.”

  Again, the android didn’t respond. Her comment wasn’t within its purview.

  Modern battle androids had a reputation for being unhelpful and obtuse, shortcomings that were deliberately instilled. They were manufactured with limited intelligence after it was found that earlier models with higher IQs could be defeated by sweet talkers – drone-mounted enemy bots capable of disabling sophisticated processing systems by entangling them in convoluted logic loops. Armaments firms now proudly advertised their androids as being big, dumb and secure.

  “Elaborate,” she ordered.

  “The contents of the discarded bottle were transferred to another bottle.”

  “And where is that bottle?”

  The BA aimed a steely finger at the bar. “Fifth shelf up from the floor, fifteenth container in from the left.”

  Nick stood on a chair to reach the designated position. He retrieved a clear decanter from the shelf. It was half full.

  “Vodka, according to the label,” he said. “A lower-priced brand, pretty far down the quality ladder.”

  He popped the cap, took a whiff. “Bingo! It’s WeBoys all right. Distinctive cinnamon smell. Nothing quite like it.”

  “Hidden in plain sight,” Bel said. “Anything attached to the bottle? A hyperlink marble? Handwritten note?”

  Nick examined the decanter. “Nothing so obvious. But he could’ve used a nanodat, embedded it in the glass.” He extended the bottle to the android. “Tell Sergeant Rock here to check it out.”

  Bel gave the order. The BA positioned the bottle in front of its chest and ran a scan.

  “One nanodat detected. Double quantum encryption.”

  “Retrieve and decode.”

  She handed over her pad. The android transferred the information from the nanodat.

  “Dismissed,” she said.

  It rumbled out of the office. Bel unrolled the pad to its max dimensions and opened the program. Nick stood beside her and they read silently.

  It was indeed the missing intel. Witherstone’s mysterious source was a woman, a gifted molecular geneticist. She and the director had had an affair back in their college days and had kept in touch over the decades. The message explained why she hadn’t contacted him in more than a year.

  Fourteen months ago, the woman had answered an ad for a lucrative job in South America. She didn’t realize until too late that the job offer was a front. She’d been kidnapped and forced to work on a secret genetic research project at Thi Maloca, the Paratwa secret base.

  The morning of the attack on E-Tech headquarters, she’d escaped from the lab on a stolen turbocycle. She’d known her bid for freedom was doomed. The Ash Ock had arranged for her to be injected with a poison that required a complex antidote every three hours, an antidote that could only be administered by her jailers.

  Against all odds, she’d made it through the dense jungle and reached a village in a secured area. Procuring a room in a dingy hostel, she’d borrowed a satellite uplink from another lodger.

  A servitor patrol dispatched from the base tracked her to the village. Moments before they entered the hostel, she transmitted a message to Witherstone, who was in his limo on the way to the office. The message described what had happened to her and everything she knew about the research and the secret base. The last lines of the message revealed that the patrol was right outside her door and that she intended to make a final stand.

  Vowing not to live the rest of her life as a prisoner forced to perform research for the Paratwa, she’d outlined to Witherstone her ultimate act of defiance. Having rigged herself with a makeshift bomb before escaping, she told him she planned to detonate it the moment her captors broke through the door.

  Bel was moved by the woman’s tale. “It’s so sad.”

  “Yeah. I just hope she took every one of those servitor bastards with her.”

  An addendum contained the details of the research project. Bel’s excitement built as she recognized the impact of the information. Yet as astonishing as the goal of the research was – what the Royals hoped to accomplish – it paled beside the final riveting piece of information.

  The woman had pinpointed the coordinates of the base. Thi Maloca was located deep in one of the remaining sections of the Brazilian rainforest.

  “The Ash Ock must have learned she’d transmitted this message to Witherstone,” Bel said. “The timeline indicates that he received it right here in this office, less than an hour before the attack.”

  Nick shared her excitement. “This fits with what Ektor Fang told us. And I’ve wondered from the beginning why the Royals used such a low-end breed, an Energía, as the decoy. But now it all makes sense. The Energía was probably the only binary available for that role on such short notice. They had better luck with the primary assassin. That Shonto Prong, Yiska, must have already been in Philly-sec on another mission or nearby.”

  “So they retasked Yiska for the assault on headquarters, which needed to happen lightning fast.”

  “Yeah. No way could the Ash Ock take the chance of Witherstone distributing this intel.”

  Bel sighed. “Too bad we didn’t learn all this sooner. The Royals certainly would have abandoned their base by now.”

  “Not necessarily,” Nick said, his excitement palpable. “Ektor Fang said there are spies everywhere. Let’s assume for a moment that one of those spies is indeed a high-level sleeper agent, maybe even an E-Tech associate director. It was pandemonium in here right after the attack, people swarming everywhere. For something as vital as this intel, the sleeper would have been activated and ordered to search Witherstone’s files to see if he’d hidden the intel. Having never made the WeBoys connection, the sleeper would have told his masters that no such information had been found.”

  “That’s a lot of assumptions,” Bel said.

  “Yeah. But if I’m right…”

  There was no need for him to finish the thought. If Nick was right, the Ash Ock would feel secure in the knowledge that Thi Maloca’s location hadn’t been compromised. An attack could catch them by surprise.

  “E-Tech can’t be seen as having anything to do with this,” she warned.

  “Of course not. It’ll have to be an EPF operation all the way.”

  “Will they go for it?”

  “Are you kidding? A chance to stick a dagger in the Royal Caste’s heart, maybe even kill one or more of those pricks? And if that’s not incentive enough, I’ve got some cash lying around that at the moment has nothing better to do with itself than collect interest. I’ll offer to fund the whole shebang, including bonuses for all the troops who take part in the raid.”

  Bel could no longer contain her curiosity. “Just how rich are you?”

  “I don’t like to boast.”

  “Oh, come on. Boast.”

  “Last time I checked, I’m the ninth wealthiest person.”

  “In Philadelphia.”

  “In the world.”

  Thirty

  Had the assault on Thi Maloca not been shrouded in the utmost secrecy, it would have been deemed one of the most important missions in the annals of the Earth Patrol Forces. But it was a mission that Nick suspected would never be fully documented in the formal history texts. Its purpose and details were likely destined to be known only by rumor.

  To prevent information about the assault leaking to the Paratwa, only the EPF’s top officers, each one vetted by Nick and Bel, kn
ew the target in advance. The soldiers, numbering in the thousands, weren’t told what they were attacking until their suborbital troop carriers and auxiliary assault craft were moments away from dropping out of the noonday skies into the jungle clearing.

  The EPF had lobbied for a simpler plan, one that would spare their troops from harm. They’d wanted to use nukes to destroy Thi Maloca. Fortunately, the mission planners succumbed to Nick’s logic, given due weight thanks to his generous underwriting, that vaporizing the site wasn’t in humanity’s best interests. The potential for capturing servitors or other high-level servants of the Royal Caste and retrieving valuable intel outweighed the nuke option.

  It was ten in the morning in Philadelphia. Nick and Bel sat in his apartment, waiting for the attack to begin. Although Thi Maloca and most of the surrounding region were unsec territory and riddled with jamscram, an EPF tech battalion had saturated the area’s upper troposphere with special com nets just prior to zero hour. For the duration, standard communication feeds would function, albeit on a limited basis. But it would be enough for the soldiers to talk to one another and to their mobile command center circling overhead in the stratosphere, and for an orbital spy cam to allow Nick and Bel to observe the assault via a channel routed through Sosoome.

  “Wake me when it’s over,” the mech drawled from his place on the top bookcase. Sosoome was in lounge mode, sprawled face down, content to function as a passive conduit.

  Nick’s monitor displayed a panoramic aerial view as the assault began. Five massive troop carriers swooped in and touched down. The landing force’s robotic contingent disembarked first: battle androids, autotanks, booby-trap defusers and other specialized units.

  Resistance was light: only sporadic thruster and projectile weapons fire from half a dozen low buildings that constituted the above-ground portion of the Ash Ock’s secret base. The fact that anyone was shooting back at all constituted the final proof that the kidnapped researcher’s intel was valid. The complex was not what its map ID and documentation with the Brazilian government signified: a peaceful musicians’ commune dedicated to melodic explorations that incorporated the rhythms of the rainforest.

  The battle androids and autotanks swarmed the buildings where the resistance originated, riddling them with machine gun fire and energy blasts. One of the structures must have housed munitions. It exploded into a massive fireball that engulfed the nearest troop carrier.

  The aircraft tried to lift off but couldn’t get free of the conflagration. Its left engine failed, sending the carrier into a violent series of spins before plowing into the thick base of a towering kapok tree at the jungle’s edge.

  As the carrier disintegrated, dooming its troops and crew, flaming shards sailed back into the clearing. Half a dozen robots were maimed or destroyed.

  Delta-A squads and combat platoons sprinted down the gangways of the remaining carriers, resolute despite the unexpected loss. More troops swept in from the surrounding jungles, having been dropped from hovercraft or having touched down on skyboards. The soldiers converged on the buildings, blowing open doors and storming inside. Distant gunfire and the wailing of thrusters filled the air.

  Witherstone’s source had revealed that the majority of the complex, including the labs, was deep underground. That’s where the inevitable counterattack came from.

  Three massive cylindrical structures sprouted from beneath the forest just beyond the clearing’s perimeter. The rising cylinders, in triangular formation, uprooted foliage and ancient trees to pierce the canopy hundreds of meters overhead. Like medieval towers defending their castle, a barrage of gunfire and anti-personnel missiles was unleashed from the pinnacles of the towers.

  Dozens of soldiers were cut down in an instant. And then the streaking blue beams from multiport range lasers ignited. In seconds, the clearing was littered with the bodies of more than a hundred troops.

  Heavier weaponry erupted against the carriers, a barrage of rockets. Two carriers blew up as the concentrated fire pierced their shielding, killing the crews and any soldiers on the ground within close proximity. The onslaught continued from the range lasers, one of the few weapons capable of burning through the soldiers’ crescent webs.

  Hundreds of additional troops fell. In less than a minute, three quarters of the assault wave and nearly the entire robot contingent had been wiped out. It appeared as if the attack was going to end in defeat.

  “Launch the second wave,” Nick muttered, wishing he had authority to issue battle orders through the mobile command center. But in spite of the money he’d spent to support the operation, the EPF weren’t willing to turn tactical functions over to someone they viewed as a military amateur.

  The barrage from the three towers escalated. Most of the remaining soldiers were cut down. A fourth carrier was lost, imploding into a clump of orange flame as its shielding collapsed. The battle noises grew so intense that it sounded as if a raging thunderstorm had come alive inside Nick’s apartment.

  “This is terrible,” Bel whispered, appalled by the carnage.

  Nick had suspected the assault would suffer brutal losses, although not to this extreme. He’d tried to persuade Bel from witnessing it firsthand but she’d been undeterred.

  The second wave of carriers appeared high in the skies, gleaming speckles of light hovering well out of range. Flying in beneath them came the EPF’s mightiest airborne assault craft: a squadron of stormlacers. Thirty strong, they swooped down upon the towers from all angles like ferocious birds of prey. Swept-winged, single-piloted, each carried enough firepower to destroy an unshielded city.

  The stormlacers unleashed a thousand missiles in tandem. The tower gunners directed their range lasers and geo cannons upward, managed to shoot down a few hundred of the missiles and take out nearly half the squadron. But in the end, the towers were no match for the dense bombardment.

  One by one, the towers’ shields were breached; one by one, their supporting foundations were incinerated by missile strikes. Like monstrous trees hewn by the axes of nineteenth century lumberjacks, the towers tipped over. They crashed down into the jungle in a trifecta of blistering roars. Swarms of birds raced for the heavens as their avian habitats were crushed.

  The second wave of carriers touched down in the few areas of the clearing not littered with bodies and debris. Fifteen hundred more troops and a support contingent of sixty robots raced down the gangways.

  More than a hundred enemy soldiers crawled from the wreckage of the towers. Dozens of them, likely fanatical servitors who knew their doom was at hand, opened fire on the mass of troops and machines streaming toward them. They weren’t outfitted with crescent webs like the ground troops and stood no chance. In an instant, they were shredded by concentrated thruster and projectile attack.

  The rest of the survivors realized fighting back was futile and raised their hands in surrender. But the men and women of the EPF, seeing more than a thousand mutilated bodies of their fellow soldiers scattered across the clearing, were in no mood to take prisoners. The remaining survivors were cut down, exterminated without mercy.

  “Son of a bitch,” Nick hissed. “They don’t need to do that.”

  He didn’t give a damn about the lives of servitors. They’d chosen their fates by betraying their own species. But he did care about taking some of them alive, grilling them for potentially valuable information.

  It appeared as though the EPF troops had been overcome by bloodlust and would kill on sight. If not brought under control, they might end up slaying more than just enemy soldiers. In their fury, they could eliminate the scientists, lab workers and auxiliary personnel still underground, all of whom were potentially rich sources of intel. And among those individuals would be a number of true innocents, scientists who’d suffered the same fate as Director Witherstone’s friend, captured and forced into servitude.

  Nick, although denied tactical control of the battle, had been granted an audio channel into the mobile command center. He signaled Sosoome
, who activated the link. Nick reached one of the EPF generals and expressed his concerns.

  “We’re a little busy at the moment,” the woman said testily. Like her troops on the ground, she was no doubt trying to manage raw anger at the slaughter of almost the entire first wave.

  “General, I realize you’ve had sizable losses. But please don’t lose sight of an important mission goal here. We need intel. What we learn from prisoners could go a long way toward determining our future success against the Paratwa. Please consider what I’m saying.”

  The line went dead. Nick glanced at Sosoome.

  “Don’t look at me, I didn’t hang up on you,” the mech grumbled. “Call was terminated from their end.”

  Nick turned back to the monitor. At least above ground, the EPF troops appeared to have the situation well in hand. Overhead, three stormlacers crisscrossed the area beyond the clearing, seeking pockets of enemy resistance or hidden escape routes. The other surviving stormlacers had headed back to their airborne platforms for rearming and refueling.

  In the clearing, the autotanks began attaching themselves to one another to form pairs, and extruding wide shovels from their front ends. Transformed into makeshift bulldozers, they plowed the debris from the exploded carriers and the bodies of the fallen off to one side of the clearing.

  The military tradition of bringing soldiers’ bodies back home for funerals had never been an EPF priority. When the battle was over, the slain would be given their due honors. Fast-growing veggie clones from prepackaged DNA samples would provide loved ones faces to mourn. But right now, the landing zones needed to be cleared for the third and final wave of carriers, which would bring more troops, supplies and field hospitals to care for the wounded. Also touching down would be the EPF’s notorious inquisition modules, filled with ruthless interrogators known to employ any means necessary to extract information from prisoners.

  The bulk of the troops who’d landed in the second wave and the few survivors from the first wave poured into the buildings that remained standing. Judging by the relatively small size of the structures and the large numbers of soldiers flowing into them, access shafts leading to the subterranean portions of Thi Maloca had been found.