The resonator wasn’t much to look at and Dao had managed to convince his colleagues that it was, in fact, nothing but a meteorology station.
Four tetrahedral legs supported a small platform about the height of an average man. Atop the platform, a quartet of spheres was mounted. Each sphere was studded with scores of small projections, so that the spheres resembled puckered lemons. The whole thing looked like a big basket of bad fruit at the Southlocks market.
In the center of the spheres, an elongated pyramidal tower rose above the platform, overlooking the bed of the resonator platform. The tower was mounted on a pedestal, which could rotate.
Dao did a quick scan of memory and compared the specs the Keeper had given him with the finished device. Everything seemed to be in order. All that remained was to activate the thing.
Somehow, Dao understood, the device would be coupled with another similar one on Earth. Together, the pair of resonators would alter the string structure of the solar system just enough to warp the trajectory of 2351 Wilks-Lucayo and bend its path away from Mars-intercept…toward Earth.
Activating the node seemed simple enough. The Keeper had downloaded a simple file from the archives of the Old Ones just for this purpose.
Dao glanced around to see if anyone was nearby. Other researchers were loping their way back to the marscat, mindful of the All-Call that meant departure back to Mariner City was imminent. None was nearby, not even Saunders and Mendez, the Public Security types who had been keeping a not-so-subtle eye on him.
Dao felt along the base of the pyramidal tower. There should be a panel here somewhere. At length, he found the small control station and thumbed the button, causing it to slide out. It was a small oval panel, with no obvious buttons or switches…only a smooth flat surface. There’s nothing to activate….
That’s when Dao’s halo started heating up.
His throat and eyes burned, inside the mask, and he blinked hard, eyes tearing, wondering why the halo was spinning up now. He hadn’t done anything wrong; he hadn’t made any moves against the cartel. He was on a cartel mission. Halo programming should know that.
What happened next wasn’t pretty. Nanobots swarmed inside the Chinese agent and spilled out of his eyes, ears, nose and mouth like a buzzing fog, crackling and sparkling as the swarm formed up into an operating mass.
In seconds, Dao’s mask had been breached and the air supply vented explosively to the near vacuum of the Martian surface. Dao collapsed to the sand and was quickly enveloped in a growing fog of nanoscale mechs billowing outward.
Even as Dao thrashed about, his respirocytes altered config and joined the swelling swarm. Instantly, his lungs burst and his body no longer had enough oxygen to keep going. The Chinese scientist convulsed violently about the sand dune, while the swarm of bots surged outward, streaming toward the resonator and its oval control station. In minutes, as Dao’s thrashings subsided and his body lay still on the ground, the swarm had collapsed about the control station and embedded its surface with layers upon layers of nanobotic devices, like condensation on a coldplate.
Guided by programming unknown to Dao, guided by an ancient algorithm even its Red Hammer designers didn’t know about, the swarm layers steadily altered their configuration, stealing molecules from surrounding structure, fashioning a seething, flickering mass that enveloped the pyramidal tower like a living organism.
The resonator was coming to life.
Two hundred yards away, the expedition boss was busy counting off his eggheads one by one, as the scientists climbed aboard the marscat. He kept coming up short by one. Puzzled, increasingly annoyed, he radioed up to the cat driver.
“Pinky, hold up a minute, will you? I’m short one. Some wienerhead’s lost out there again.”
“…or didn’t hear the All-Call, most likely,” Pinky’s gravelly voice came back. “Jeez, they’d forget to fart if somebody didn’t remind them.”
“I gotta check,” the boss decided. “SOP says we can’t depart when the count’s not right.”
“Well, don’t take all afternoon, Ziegler. I’m hungry and the cat’s low on gas.”
Ziegler, the expedition boss, acknowledged and bounded off toward the nearer sand dunes. “Be back in a few minutes. I thought I saw a flash over that rise to the north—“
CHAPTER 2
Kolkata, India
September 8, 2080
The hyperjet Mercury burst out of the cloud bank on her descent to Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose Airport at Kolkata and Johnny Winger stared out the porthole at the hazy Ganges delta below. Columns of smoke from thousands of cooking fires added to the thick haze. Rice paddies interspersed with the crude huts of the traditional Bengali mawzas stretched to the horizon, like an infinite chessboard.
“That haze isn’t just smoke,” Major Elbert Fordham muttered. The BioShield liaison officer had joined Winger in the forward cabin. “A lot of that stuff is loose nanobotic debris…assembler fluff from all the fabs. The stuff is out of control.”
Winger nodded. “So I’ve heard. BioShield can’t contain it?”
Fordham snorted. “Not when a hundred million fabs are going off night and day. Containment laws mean nothing here. People are desperate. The black market in unlicensed, souped-up fabs and matter engines is exploding.”
“Red Hammer,” Winger said. “I’ve read the reports. They sell the fabs cheap and charge a fortune for the cores and drivers. Same old method they’ve always used. Get ‘em hooked first, then gouge ‘em for the goods afterward.”
Fordham agreed, as Mercury settled down to a bumpy landing on the tarmac of Runway 16 Left and roared down to taxi speed.
“The market here is huge. People have nothing, barely enough rice to eat, hardly any shelter, rags for clothes. They spent every rupee on fabs and software, hoping to strike it rich. It’s like Aladdin’s Lamp, if you’ll pardon my using another culture. You can’t make food—still no fabs for organic stuff, but they’ve got everything else: fancy clothes, cars, personal bots, every electronic gadget you can think of...Kolkata’s like a bazaar gone crazy. There must be hundreds of millions of fabs here…the air’s so hot because of all the assembler activity. If it isn’t bolted down and screened by bots, everything becomes raw feedstock. The buggers’ll eat the clothes right off your back.”
Winger was gathering up his gear to disembark. “And the local authorities…they can’t shut ‘em down?”
Fordham followed Winger aft to the ramp. The rest of Alpha Detachment was gathered around the door, already suited up.
“The locals are the worst,” Fordham explained. “Bought off or intimidated by the cartel or other players in the game. We get some help from the National Police or maybe the West Bengal cops…ah, there’s Tranh now, with a few of them.”
Winger came down Mercury’s side ramp, followed by Fordham. The rest of the Detachment assumed a loose parade formation as they disembarked.
A Vietnamese officer in the khaki and blue of a local BioShield officer stepped forward. He saluted Winger and Fordham smartly.
“Lieutenant Nguyen Tranh, sir. My E-team is on duty in town at this moment.” He indicated a burly black African second in command. “This is Sergeant Lumumba. He’s my chief. E-team West Bengal is ready for inspection, sir!”
Johnny Winger spotted other officers nearby. Tranh introduced them.
“Captain Jawaharlal Singh, at your service, sir. The West Bengal Provincial Armed Constabulary is ready for patrol duty.”
Singh was a lanky and swarthy officer with a luxurious black moustache, erect and full of military bearing. He saluted Winger and added, “West Bengal is pleased to host the famous troopers of the Quantum Corps. My men will escort you into the city.”
Winger returned the salute. “Captain, what’s the situation here? Intel says the whole region’s thick with nano…BioShield’s executing a Level Three quarantine for Kolkata itself.”
A trio o
f black lifters hovered just over the ramp, waiting for them. “Come,” said Singh. “My ships will take your people and gear into the city. Do you require assistance in—“ Singh stopped in mid-sentence as one of the Quantum Corps officers behind Winger began to ‘de-materialize.’
It was ANAD. The swarm had assumed a para-human config upon disembarking…standard procedure for parade formations. Now, at Winger’s signal to fall out and collect their gear, the swarm had changed config to a more natural state and was busily re-forming into an amorphous fog of twinkling lights.
“—ah, I see you have the assembler formation I had heard about…this must be the ANAD combat element.” Singh marveled at the speed of the config change. “I only wish our own constabulary bots were so disciplined. Here in Bengal, nanobotic mechanisms are like smoke…everywhere, uncontained…” he shrugged, “it is the Bengali way, I’m afraid…beyond anyone’s control. By the grace of Vishnu…we are overwhelmed. Even BioShield—“ Singh glanced over at Tranh, whose face was hard and skeptical, warily keeping an eye on the undulating ANAD swarm.
Tranh stiffened. “Your detachment is present and accounted for?”
Winger nodded in the affirmative. “Alpha Detachment is ready to deploy. Detachment—“ he called over the crewnet, “rig for Tactical One…opposed entry. Unlock your weapons. ANAD…configure State One. Let’s go—“
They headed off to the lifters. Moments later, the black spidery vehicles were winging their way eastward in formation over the misty Hooghly River, heading for the heart of Kolkata.
Seen from the air, the great Indian metropolis was not particularly impressive. A sea of dun-colored low rise buildings was punctuated by TV towers and the occasional high-rise building, split by the muddy ribbon of the river. Several patches of green—city parks and the Maidan race track, Singh explained—gave some color to an otherwise dreary urban landscape.
Crossing the river at several hundred feet altitude, the formation of lifters banked left over the ornate Victoria Memorial and chopped speed, settling toward a grassy sward just east of the Shalimar Road bridge. The small park was surrounded by mawzas and shanties of every size and shape, crowding in on the green field like waves of wreckage washing ashore.
“Howrah Heights,” Singh informed them. The lifters hovered momentarily while soldiers from the Provincial Constabulary shooed off beggars and pickpockets and secured the field. After a cordon had been set up, the lifters touched down. The Constabulary quickly dispersed. They had little protective gear and couldn’t operate long in such a nano-heavy environment.
“Fall out!” Winger ordered over the crewnet. “Tactical One and keep your eyes and ears open.”
“Skipper—“ it was Sheila Reaves, DPS tech for the Detachment. “Superfly’s already deployed…I’m already getting thermals and atomic fluff big time. Intense nanobotic activity all around us—“
Tranh explained. “The air’s thick with nano here. All the fabs around. I’d recommend a level one barrier around the landing zone…at least until you get all your gear set up.”
Winger needed no further urging. He cocked his head and got his own embedded ANAD on the coupler.
“ANAD, config state four. I need a screen to hold off these fabricator bugs that are flooding the area. Synchronize with 3rd Swarm and hold a perimeter—“he estimated the size of the landing zone at about a half a square kilometer—“two hundred meters radius from this position.”
***ANAD acknowledges. Preparing to launch--***
Winger felt the sting of the launch and watched the swelling fog of replicating bots billow out of the lifter ramp, spilling out onto the grass and mixing with the 3rd Swarm of uncontained ANAD that was also deploying. The fog swelled rapidly in size, twinkling and fluorescing as it stripped atoms from the air and built up structure. In a few minutes, the entire park was surrounded by a barrier of nanobotic mechs, sparkling and winking in the humid morning air. And all along the periphery of the clearing, ANAD engaged the uncontained fab bots. Crackles of light and seams of distorted air highlighted the engagement points.
“ANAD’s letting ‘em have it!” Mighty Mite Barnes observed through a lifter porthole. “Right in the chops!”
“Like riot control, only at atomic scales,” Tranh agreed. “My E-team just doesn’t have the resources to contain all this…it’s out of control.”
Winger could see the problem. “Years ago, we would have deployed in hypersuits for protection. Today, every trooper has an embedded ANAD swarm. We carry our own barriers with us.” To his Detachment, Winger ordered. “Okay, troops…swarms out and synched. We’re going in hot—“
One by one, the nano-troopers disembarked with their gear. Reaves, Barnes, Simonet, D’Nunzio, Villa and the rest exited by the aft lifter ramp, each shielded by ANAD ‘bubbles’ and loaded up the crewtracs for a little jaunt deeper into the city.
At the same time, Tranh had ordered a squad of BioShield techs to rendezvous with Alpha Detachment at the landing zone. In ten minutes, the two crewtracs were loaded and the BioShield squad appeared at the edge of the clearing.
“Give ‘em the pass codes,” Winger ordered. Reaves gave Tranh the current day’s home config. The BioShield techs took that and ‘tuned’ their own barrier nanobots to be able to penetrate the ANAD barrier without opposition. Inside the shield, the two units linked up.
Major Fordham recognized the squad leader. He was a burly African non-com.
“Sergeant Kano, glad to see you’re on this gig. What’s the situation?”
Kano shook hands all around, warily eyeing the ANAD swarm pulsating in the background. Even as the African sergeant gave his report, ANAD re-configged into a ghostly, vaguely para-human form.
“Red Squad’s detailed to cover the Howrath district, Major. My squad’s been under fire practically the whole time. We’ve got loose fabricator bots replicating uncontained all over the place—“ Kano gestured toward the trusswork towers of the distant bridge—“the concentration is highest around that bridge. There used to be a bazaar there but some wise guy bought a fab in and unzipped the core right on the spot—no containment or anything. Pretty soon, all the doodads inside were going berserk…like a big bang. They were disassembling the bridge when we showed up…my guys had to work fast with everything we had, to disperse the swarm.” Kano shrugged. “It’s like mashing a balloon…squash it here and it just shows up somewhere else. We counter-banged until we got on top of the situation—but the bridge...” Kano shook his head.
Johnny Winger was intrigued about the fab design. “Sergeant, did you get any samples? I’d like to see what config these mechs are using…what type of design.”
Kano recognized Winger and his unit as Quantum Corps. “Glad you’re here, Major. We need all the help we can get…to answer your question, sir, we haven’t had time to get any samples. Contain and disperse…that’s all we can do with what we have.”
“Sergeant,” Fordham explained, “Quantum Corps is here to help us but they’ve got another mission too.” He briefly explained the quantum interference that seemed to be emanating from a source in the city. “UNIFORCE is concerned about the magnitude of the interference. It’s scrambling every quantum coupler circuit this side of Cairo. Something big is pumping out decoherence waves all over the planet and into space and Paris wants to find the source.”
Kano shook his head. “We can’t use our couplers at all but I thought it was just a temporary effect, Major. And you think the source is here?”
Winger called up the locating algorithm and beamed it over to Kano’s crewnet. In seconds, Red Squad had the same intel as Winger’s Alpha Detachment.
Kano scanned his eyepiece. A BioShield tech standing next to him—his name patch read PERVEZ—spoke up.
“Sarge…we know where this is…over by the Rabindra lakes. Probably that temple complex…what was the name?”
Kano remembered. “Bugger…you’re right! Sha
vindra…something or other. We did a containment op near there just last week. Regular bot blizzard, it was.”
Winger brought up a Kolkata city map on his own eyepiece. He queried his wrist computer and soon enough, the Hindu temple compound of Shavindra was highlighted, with a shortest route already plotted.
“If this place is one of the stronger locuses of deco waves, that can only mean one thing: some kind of big time quantum signaling is going on there. That’s where my Detachment needs to be.”
Winger ordered the Detachment to board their crewtracs. He offered Kano a lift but the BioShield sergeant declined.
“I have to relieve a detail I posted at the Howrath Bridge. They’ve been trying to contain swarms for the last twenty-four hours straight…it’s an epidemic over there.”
“I can detail some of my people,” Winger decided. “Turbo, Spite, go along with Kano.” Sergeants Adnan Fatah and Ray Spivey came over. “Use your own embedded masters to help BioShield get this thing under control. Then catch up with us at this Shivandra temple when the situation’s stabilized.”
“Yes, sir,” both nanotroopers saluted. The two of them hustled off with Kano’s men, exiting the defensive barrier in a flash of light, then hopping aboard a semi-track for the quick ride to Howrath.
“Load up!” Winger ordered. The rest of the Detachment swung their gear aboard the two crewtracs that the local BioShield office had brought in. The huge snorting vehicles were dual-tracked, with articulating arms front and rear to manipulate or hoist heavy objects. Modified from geoplane chassis, each crewtrac had limited sub-surface burrowing capability. Powered up, each vehicle shimmered in the hazy morning sunlight as its ANAD shield formed a twinkling, flickering defensive barrier around itself, like a huge, pulsating carapace of bots.
The crewtracs rumbled off, through the barrier ANAD screen, which sparkled as they passed by, and then turned right, onto crowded Hanagar Street, heading east for Shavindra and the great temple complex.
Hanagar Street was thick with traffic, choked with pedestrians and rickshas, pedicabs and jitneys. Down narrow lanes branching off to the sides, dense smoke and fab swarms added to the humid haze of a late summer morning. The crewtrac drivers maneuvered gingerly through the throngs, honking at the wizened old wallahs as they pulled their rickshas in every direction, heedless of the traffic.
Johnny Winger and the Hellas Enigma Page 5