Pinocchio’s landing thrusters, normally used in the final seconds of descent to soften the touchdown, fired into action. Mendez had pulled the control stick back, nosing Pinocchio up to a higher angle of attack. The small rockets should have slowed their descent enough to make reaching the Hand possible, given the ship’s speed and altitude.
“Jesus H. Christ, what’s going on here…something’s still tugging us off course,” Mendez complained. “Still way too much energy…we’ll never make that ledge at this speed.”
The ANAD swarm had already detected and processed the details of Pinocchio’s flight status, reading airspeed, angle of attack, altitude, engine status and a dozen other critical parameters. The master assembler’s processor had already determined that the lander had far too much energy to successfully execute even a rough landing on the Hand…the ship would overshoot the emergency strip by miles.
The swarm quickly searched its memory for a plausible solution, generated several ranked by probability of successful outcome and executed a mass replication into a little-used config state called C-255: Emergency Ballute, Replication and Deployment.
The swarm began moving toward the compartment hatch, seeking imperfections in the hatch seals, through which it could escape into the freezing slipstream outside. Finding several, the swarm proceeded to exit the crew compartment of the lander, and using its fullerene hooks and grabbers, clung tenaciously to the outer hull of the ship, while it executed config C-255.
“—maximum deflection, Major! We need to slam on the brakes now! Passing through ten thousand…I’ve got the Hand but we’re coming in too fast—“
Pinocchio lurched forward as her landing rockets ran out of fuel and shut down. The lander plummeted in pitch black fog toward the boulder-strewn gullies and ravines at the very bottom of Melas Chasm, unable to break her fall any more.
“I’m going to try banking her real steep to slow down some more,” Mendez announced. “Hang on—“
Pinocchio dipped sharply left, then right in a series of ragged S-turns, trying to bleed off enough speed to somehow set down in the tiny promontory that Mendez called the Hand. Mendez had to keep a close eye on his radar and proximity sensors now. The ship was inside a canyon and the canyon walls weren’t very wide. One wrong turn and the ship could impact the steep slopes of Melas or Coprates chasms.
The ship suddenly began to buffet and shake, shimmying like a frightened dog.
“What the hell’s that?” Mendez checked his instruments. “Airspeed dropping off…now under three hundred…it feels like something’s dragging us back.”
Johnny Winger took a quick look out the cabin side window. The edge of a flapping ballistic parachute streamed by the glass. “You must have popped a chute, Lieutenant…I see it right outside.”
Mendez frowned. “I didn’t release any chute. Pinocchio doesn’t have any chutes…we use rockets for final braking. Let me see—“
Both Mendez and Winger saw the same thing outside the lander windows. A stream of parachutes flapped and flailed wildly in Pinocchio’s slipstream.
“What the—where the hell did that come from?”
“I think it’s ANAD, Lieutenant. Check your airspeed. You should be slowing down.”
Mendez did just that. He studied his energy plot for a few moments. The lander’s descent speed had dropped sharply. He realized that the icon representing the ship was now perfectly aligned for a steep but survivable approach to the Hand.
“I don’t know what’s happened but it looks like we can make that ledge after all,” Mendez announced. “Max deflection on everything, Major…spoiler, speed brakes…the works.”
Winger complied. Pinocchio shook violently and plunged straight down toward the bottom of the steep canyon. Nothing was visible outside but tufts of black fog streaming by the windows.
Mendez called out the final numbers. “Under a thousand feet, speed two hundred knots…I’m centering the pipper on the front of that ledge. Down two five zero feet per second.”
Winger checked his seat harness and straps and suggested Tallant do the same. “We’re dropping like a rock, Dana, so buckle up.”
“Down one eight zero feet per second…I don’t have any more rockets…this is going to be a rough one…now under eight hundred feet…on target for the center of the Hand—
“Outside the lander, the ANAD swarm clung tenaciously to the hull, replicating parachute structure at max rate, adding more chutes, risers and anchors to the already billowing stream that was steadily slowing Pinocchio down.
“Vertical’s down to a hundred, now ninety feet per second…speed one one five knots…passing through five hundred…we’re on the button, according to my plot—“
“I see it!” Dana Tallant cried out. “There—“ she pointed through a portside window. “Faint but it sure looks like solid ground—“
“Under three hundred,’ Mendez called out. “I see it too…I’ll try to line us up to clear those hills in front.”
Through the thick fog, faintly visible in the fading starlight, the great promontory looked dark and forbidding out of the black. Deep shadow covered most of the ground, slicing through the fog like black knives. As the lander’s descent became ever more vertical and her forward speed was cut by the ANAD chutes, the fog seemed from above like a running sea, streaming aft in sheets and waves and great roiling clouds. Pinocchio began rocking back and forth as she descended almost straight down into the maelstrom, toward touchdown on the ledge.
“Picking up some wind down here—I hope it doesn’t blow us off the ledge.”
Moments later, the ship rocked and crunched and settled down as it drifted gently onto the surface of the ledge. Johnny Winger looked out a porthole and saw shafts of pink sunlight inching down steep canyon walls to starboard. Fog and dust devils danced across the ground in front of the ship and Pinocchio swayed gently in the currents of thicker air.
Mendez let out a long, exhausted breath, rubbing tired eyes as he swallowed hard. “And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how you make an emergency landing on Mars.”
Dark shadows fell across the forward windscreen, momentarily blocking the sunlight. Dana Tallant looked out.
“It’s the chutes…looks like some kind of balloon too…or airbag, that’s deflated. Good work, Lieutenant. You planted us right on this ledge with scarcely a bump.”
Mendez saw the chutes too, now half-draped over the forward hull of the lander. Even as they watched, the parachutes and balloons seemed to disintegrate right before their eyes. A tenuous mist, twinkling with pinpricks of light, soon enveloped the lander.
“That was no ordinary chute,” Winger told them. “It was ANAD.”
“ANAD? How the hell--?”
“I don’t know exactly but somehow the little guy got outside, clung to the hull and replicated chutes and airbags. That’s what slowed us down enough to make this ledge.”
Mendez agreed. “We had way too much energy…we should have overshot and impacted at the bottom of Coprates…we should be a smoking pile of wreckage right now…this I gotta see—“ He unfastened his harness and slipped out of the flight deck, heading aft through a crew compartment full of shaken and groaning nanotroopers, to suit up and head outside.
Winger and Tallant followed.
“Hey, Skipper—“ it was Mighty Mite Barnes, pale and bruised from being bounced around during the descent “—where the hell are we?” There were load groans and more curses from other troopers up and down the rows of the compartment.
“We’re alive,” Winger told them. He followed Mendez aft to the airlock. “That’s all I know right now.”
In the airlock, Mendez finished suiting up. The Lieutenant wasn’t ‘treated’ with respiroctyes like Winger and Tallant. His suit was a bulky full-pressure suit and helmet, unlike the skinsuit and breather that the nanotroopers wore. Winger and Tallant both had blood-borne nanobotic assistance with oxygen supply. Their skinsuit
s were tight enough to hold survivable pressure but their breathing was artificially boosted by the ‘cytes circulating throughout their bloodstreams.
Mendez cycled the lock and the three of them stepped out onto rubbly ground strewn with small rocks and wisps of windborne dust, flashing pink in the dim early morning sunlight.
Pinocchio lay like a wounded bird about forty feet from one edge of the promontory. The remnants of ANAD’s parachutes lay draped over her hull, but even now, the chutes were disintegrating as their constituent assemblers de-linked and disassembled into atom fluff.
Mendez uttered a low whistle at the sight. “Man, we were luckier than I realized. Look how close that edge is to our landing spot. One wind gust and we would have tumbled down the side of that slope.”
Dana Tallant had already ventured over as close as she dared to the edge. She peered into the dim black below. “I can’t see the bottom…how far down does it go?”
“From here?” Mendex shrugged, a useless gesture in a full pressure suit. “Hard to say. I seem to remember radar imaging when we scouted this area a few years ago…Coprates ranges from sixty to a hundred klicks across and up to nine klicks deep. The Hand was a ledge about half way down the south wall.”
Johnny Winger went to the remnants of the chute and felt the fine dust of the disassembling bots in his glove fingers. “ANAD had a config for this that I didn’t know about.” He tried linking in on the quantum coupler circuit.
ANAD, where did you get the config for this stuff?
After a little staticky fritzing, the assembler’s ‘voice’ came through. ***ANAD analyzed operational situation and emergency parameters…adapted config state one five two ‘emergency survival shelter for two persons, low-pressure environment’…altered config was able to function with forty five percent efficiency as descent control apparatus…ANAD implemented solution consistent with requirements of Second Rule***
Winger conveyed what the assembler had said. “He analyzed the problem and adapted an existing config to work as a parachute. Second Rule of his program…do no harm to humans.”
“His learning algorithms have evolved even faster than Doc Frost expected,” Tallant said. “We never saw ANAD do that in any war games. You know what this means, Wings?”
“Yeah, it means he’s growing up fast…faster than anyone believed.”
“What the hell are you two talking about?” Mendez asked. He bent stiffly to one knee, trying to examine some landing damage to Pinocchio’s rear elevons.
“The autonomous assembler swarm we brought on board…ANAD…is part of our detachment. You were briefed before we departed. Somehow, he realized Pinocchio was in trouble and worked his way outside the ship and jerry-rigged a parachute and balloon system to slow the ship down. That’s what enabled you to put us down on this ledge.”
Mendez was incredulous. “Your swarm did that….on its own?”
“Looks like we owe our lives to ANAD.”
“The bigger question,” Tallant said, “is this: who or what kept pulling us off course?”
Mendez was about to answer but his suit radio crackled to life, a message received through Pinocchio.
“Da Vinci lander Pinocchio…this is Lifter Rescue out of Mariner City Station. We are inbound, closing on your position…descending through ten thousand…Pinocchio, turn on your approach beacon immediately…we’ll maneuver and land as close as we can—“
Mendez climbed back into the airlock , located the powerful lights and switched on. Outside, the promontory and canyon walls were bathed in a yellow glow. From ten thousand feet up, the little lander would flare like a supernova in the fading black of a cold Martian dawn.
Johnny Winger felt a momentary chill down his spine and he knew it wasn’t the winds swirling through Coprates canyon.
If ANAD had somehow been able to accomplish all this, with no obvious or dedicated programming or testing, what else could the assembler swarm do? What other surprises was he capable of?
Winger decided he needed have a talk with Doc Frost once they got to Mariner City.
CHAPTER 9
Mariner City, Mars
October 1, 2080
The lead marscat in the convoy topped a low rise and nosed down over the ruddy hard-packed dirt of the transway. Johnny Winger peered out of the porthole at the domed complex of Mariner City, spread out at the edge of a narrow promontory overlooking a deep valley called the Bay of Night.
“Paryang under glass,” came a familiar voice from behind him. It was Dana Tallant, also eyeing the approaching complex.
“I was thinking the same thing,” Winger admitted, referring to the Paryang monastery they had assaulted twelve years before. The Red Hammer compound beneath the high plateau of Tibet had been destroyed in the operation. The cartel had nearly been eliminated. But in the ensuing decade, the cartel had somehow reconstituted itself, on Mars and Earth, with enough smarts and some outside help, to threaten Earth itself with destruction. “It does look like Tibet and that monastery, doesn’t it?”
“Except for all the red dust and mountains.” Tallant fiddled with her skinsuit controls, cinched up a cargo belt and sank back in the seat, steeling herself was whatever lay ahead. “I thought we had gotten rid of Red Hammer back then.”
“Me too…I guess we’ll just have to finish the job this time.”
“If the politicos will let us…you know anything about this Duncan Price fellow?”
“I’ve messaged with him over Solnet a few times. He’s supposed to be a detective with Frontier Corps. Around Table Top, the scuttlebutt is that Frontier Corps are all a bunch of Wild West sheriffs; you know: shoot first and ask questions later. I’m guessing law enforcement’s a little looser out here.”
“No doubt we’ll have our differences,” Tallant agreed.
Winger added, “From what I’ve heard, there’s another quantum generator here on Mars and it’s keeping that asteroid locked on course for Earth. Price messaged me that the thing had some serious barrier nano…stuff they’re not equipped to deal with. That’s why we’re here. We’ve already put one of the bastards out of commission.”
“We hope it’s out of commission,” Tallant muttered.
The convoy of marscats rolled into the North Locks complex and came to a halt. In all, five crawlers had made the half hour trek from the North Landing Zone to Mariner City, bearing the Quantum Corps detachment and all their gear.
As Winger, Tallant and the rest dismounted, they saw a formation of dignitaries gathered stiffly around the convoy.
“Looks like we’ve got a little welcoming ceremony,” Tallant observed.
“Yeah, so much for a covert insertion,” Winger said. He tidied himself up to be more presentable. Price had told him over the Net that there were no secrets on Mars.
A florid man with white hair and a big smile came forward, extending a calloused hand.
“Christopher Rudd…I’m chairman of MarsFed. On behalf of all Martians everywhere, welcome to the Red Planet.”
Winger grasped his hand and they shook. “We had a bit of an adventure on the way down, sir…but we made it, thanks to Lieutenant Mendez here.”
Mendez and Dana Tallant exchanged greetings.
“I heard about that…thank God, you were able to make a safe landing, somewhere down in the Valley, wasn’t it?”
“A little patch of level ground I know,” Mendez explained.
Rudd nodded grimly. “Greg…Mr. Nygren over here, from GreenMars, told me that machine up in the canyonlands hiccupped and knocked you off course.”
“We’re still investigating the cause, sir,” Mendez said. “UNISPACE is sending a team out to look my ship over.”
Rudd made introductions all around. The assembled officials came from every department in MarsFed: Public Security, Maps and Surveys, Finance, even a part time judge from Mars Court, a burly African man named Kavai who also worked day shift at Top Ward maintenance.
&
nbsp; One man stood slightly apart from the arrest. He was slightly built, with outsized hands and squinting eyes, magnified by omnifocals.
“And this here is Duncan…Price—“ Rudd was saying, practically dragging them down the line of dignitaries. “Dunc’s a spy from UNISPACE. Frontier Corps, actually. He’s our resident Sherlock Holmes. Over here is—“
But Johnny Winger stayed behind, as Tallant and the detachment moved on. He introduced himself to the detective.
“Winger, Major John. U.N. Quantum Corps…we finally meet.”
“Duncan Price. Glad to meet you. I heard you had a rough ride down…your team is okay?”
Winger nodded. “We survived. Where can we meet?”
Price indicated Rudd. “As soon as the old windbag has finished his speeches and we’ve pressed enough flesh, I’ll take you into the city. My office is on Face Cut Street, lower ward. We can talk there.”
“I’ll be there,” Winger told him. He moved on to catch up with the rest of the staff.
After all the speeches and ceremonies, the Detachment headed into the city. Arrangements had been made to bivouac the nanotroopers and their gear at the Public Security armory. The armory turned out to be a small brick warehouse on Boundary Street, near the south airlock and lifts.
Winger assembled the Detachment for a quick briefing.
“Get your gear stowed. We’ll be heading outside in a few hours, so configure your gear for surface conditions. There’s barrier nano around the generator, according to reports, so figure on opposed entry. ANAD, you configure swarm state one.”
The twinkling fog brightened momentarily, as the cloud of assemblers began redistributing itself to another configuration.
***ANAD assumes state one, reports ready in all respects…Major…permission to leave camp and conduct recon of enemy config?***
“Negative, ANAD…we’re moving out as a unit when the time comes. We’re going to need all the help we can get when we approach this generator.”
Turbo Fatah had ‘heard’ the same message on his coupler circuit. “Skipper, ANAD might have a good idea. A quick recon of the bad guys would help us better set up our weapons and configs.”
“Tactics, too,” Sheila Reaves added. The Defense and Protective Systems tech was bird-dogging a coilgun mount out of its carry pack. “We can’t be a hundred per cent sure this one’s like Kolkata.”
Johnny Winger and the Hellas Enigma Page 22