Rudd appreciated the nanotrooper’s effort to involve all parties. “I’m sure we can provide them, Major. Gentlemen, are we agreed then: we’ll let Quantum Corps pursue their strategy and we’ll help them as much as we can?”
There were some long glances and murmurs of dissent, but no one objected.
“Then it’s decided,” Rudd said. “Major, what’s the next step?”
Winger said, “My detachment’s bivouacked at the armory. We need half a day to stage our equipment and check everything out, especially after that hard ride down.” He checked his watch. “Could you send someone over to the armory with any maps you have by 0500 hours tomorrow? I’d also like to have Detective Price and Mr. Benoit there as well, to help us with recon operations. They know the area better than us.”
The meeting was adjourned and Price buttonholed Winger outside the chamber.
“I’ve posted the footage of our last expedition on the local net. I’ll show you how to access it. You’ll see from that what you’re dealing with and some of the terrain as well. I also want to thank you for stepping up and smoothing over our local disputes. Benoit and I often have fireworks in these meetings. That’s how Chris Rudd got his white hair.”
“We need everybody’s help, Detective. Any intel you or he or anybody can provide can only help the operation. My experience with these quantum devices is that nothing is as simple as it seems. And we’ve been dealing with Red Hammer for years. They always have a few surprises for us.”
The convoy of Marscats pulled out of the city just after sunup, six vehicles in all whirring and trundling through Southlocks and out onto the dusty road that led off into the Tectonic Hills to the northwest. Aboard were Detachment Alpha, the Quantum Hammer task force with all their gear and weapons and three others: Duncan Price and two PubSec agents, Holden Wills and Oscar Purvis.
Winger figured the PubSec pair and Price would occupy each other with mutual suspicions.
The transway to the north landing zone was a two-lane hard-packed dirt road, well traveled by trucks, trams and cats as it was the main artery from the north pads to the City. The convoy sped up to nearly thirty klicks and turned past the landing zone, surrounded by wire fencing, then headed out into the open countryside.
The terrain was all ruddy desert, rolling hills with craters bordering both sides of the road, between the bulldozed humps and berms from road construction. A steady rise in elevation indicated they were climbing onto the lower slopes of the Tectonic Hills. Past the hills, the hummocky fall of ejecta from massive Orion Crater lay like splayed fingers on gently undulating upland, tending higher and higher in altitude as the cats climbed west by northwest.
“My plan is to set up camp here,” Winger told Price and the PubSec men. He showed them a tactical display as they wolfed down field rations behind the command deck in the lead cat. “There’s a small set of hills just south of that ravine, with good views in all directions, good for comms and surveillance. We’ll form up the convoy into a defensible perimeter and deploy all units, including ANAD. I’ve got my CQEs working up the right config now for underground assault.”
“CQEs?” asked Price.
“Containment and Quantum Engineers. The Detachment has two: Tech Sergeant D’Nunzio and Master Sergeant Tsukota, in the cat behind us. They know how to configure the swarms for any mission we engage in.”
“Most of the rock around here is ejecta from Orion,” offered Willis. “Not that I’m a geo but it’s pretty porous stuff, from what I hear. Your bots can deal with this stuff?”
Dana Tallant was strapping on a packbelt. “ANAD tunneled through the Himalayas back on Earth a few years ago. About fifty miles, as I recall. So, yeah, he can handle this stuff too.”
The Detachment’s IC1 (Interface Controller 1) was Sergeant Vic Klimuk. Klimuk was driving the lead cat.
“Coordinates coming up,” Klimuk announced presently. Right after a hurried check of maps and displays, he slowed the cat and the wheel motors whirred as they spun down. The convoy had ridden to nearly the top of a long curving mesa and was now approaching the abrupt end of a promontory overlooking a vast desert hardpan that stretched to the horizon. In the distance, the shadowy forms of Pavonis and Ascraeus Mons poked above the horizon, backlit by a rising sun, blood red in the suspended dust stirred by local wind devils.
“Looks like two big eyes peeking over the limb of the planet,” Tallant muttered. “Kind of creepy at sunrise.”
“Next year, after the Big Smack, it’ll all change anyway,” Wills told them. “Mars won’t be Mars anymore…just a big lab experiment for GreenMars.”
Winger got on the crewnet. “Detachment, prepare to dismount. Execute Defense Condition One and configure for opposed entry. Make sure your skinsuits are tight.”
Defense One saw the convoy split up and circle like an Old West wagon train, eventually forming a tight cordon with sensors and weapons oriented outward in all directions, able to defend the convoy against any threat by land or air. As the marscats were jockeying for position on the narrow mesa, a small formation of ANAD bots was ejected from the last cat to form a barrier around the entire encampment. A small shimmering fog soon settled over the top of the promontory.
“Barrier in place and responding normally, Skipper,” reported Deeno D’Nunzio.
“Very well…exit your vehicles, all weapon safeties off. Get that borer in place quick!”
Winger, Tallant and the rest of the command marscat dismounted.
Standing outside on top of the hill, Winger could see for miles in all directions. As his skinsuit tightened to hold pressure, he took a deep breath. No problem with my ‘cytes, he thought. The embedded respirocyte bots were boosting oxygen exchange in his bloodstream several hundred times over his body’s natural rhythm. On Earth, at the Hunt Valley wargame range, he’d been able to jog for twenty miles without needing an extra breath. Here, in Mars’ lower gravity but still encumbered with a light skinsuit, he figured he could do even better.
Winger quickly checked the deployment, making sure the HERF cannon and coilguns were set up first. No sense taking any chances, he thought. Sensors had not detected any living creatures in the area, but Red Hammer was known for springing surprises on unsuspecting visitors.
Price was clad in a light blue skinsuit and breathing pack. The PubSec men, Wills and Purvis, had not been treated, and so were in full pressure suits. Dinosaurs, mouthed Price, as he watched the Detachment drag out the borer rig and set it up a few dozen yards away from the convoy. Winger had already explained that the borer would start a small pilot hole for the ANAD swarm to penetrate, then assist the nanobots in eating an underground path toward the quantum generator. “It’ll go faster that way,” Winger explained. “Each supports the other. Borer and ‘bots, working as a team, can push through dense rock at several feet per minute.”
A great chasm had been chewed out of the ground ahead of them. Tortured folds enveloped the sides of the chasm, as if some giant had dropped a huge blanket over a big hole. Volcanic tuff mixed in with crater ejecta, the maps said. Underneath, the rock was breccia and anorthosite, pretty hard stuff.
ANAD would need all the help he could get.
Ozzie Tsukota’s voice crackled over the crewnet. “ANAD reports ready in all respects, Skipper. Primed and ready to launch.”
Winger came over to the borer rig, being set up by Ray Spivey and ‘Turbo’ Fatah. Both men could be heard grunting with exertion. Even in Mars’ one-third gravity, the device was heavy and massive.
“She’s almost…ready…Skipper,” came Fatah’s voice. The borer rig was a square open frame with the power pack on one end of a squat cylinder and the borer head on the other. Getting the rig oriented and stable on the rubbly ground of the mesa was hard work. “There—!“
Winger inspected the installation and pronounced himself satisfied. “Let’s get ANAD in position to begin tunneling.”
Third Swarm emerged from one of the marscats as a glowing fog and flowed across the ground toward the borer. As the swarm approached, it formed up into the faint, ghostly likeness of Wolfus Linx, an ethereal head and shoulders bust of CINCQUANT glaring down at them.
***ANAD is configged for the operation and ready to begin…reporting no enemy activity in detectable range at this time…all bands are clear…reading no signatures or emissions of assembler activity***
ANAD had formed an acoustic lens and his ‘voice’ boomed across the promontory like the voice of God.
“ANAD,” said Winger, indicating the swarm’s choice of General Linx as a config “you have one hell of a flair for the dramatic. Config for entry. Let’s get that borer started up and going. DPS, anything showing in the area?”
Sheila Reaves scanned the threat displays on her wrist board. “Nothing, Skipper. No thermals, no EM or acoustics, no fluff…it’s quiet as a graveyard.”
“Let’s hope it doesn’t become one.” To Tsukota: “Ozzie, fire up the borer.”
Tsukota stepped back and signaled the device to begin its priming and start sequence. The borer was a combination laser and ultrasound device, able to cut through the hardest rock and metal in seconds. The rig shrieked and groaned as it began vibrating with barely contained power. Inside the frame, the borer head quickly heated up to a white-hot glow. Servos gently lowered the head toward the dusty red ground and a protective sleeve slid down to catch tailings flung off by the operation. The shriek died off to a deep-throated rumble, more heard than felt.
In seconds, the white glare subsided as the borer slid from its frame and began burrowing into the ground. The glow inside the protective sleeve died off.
“ANAD, you’re up,” Winger said. “Underground assault force, get in position. Sergeant Detrick, you and Deeno are point for the ground assault.”
Spivey, Barnes and Singh had drawn the assignment of following the borer and ANAD through the tunnel. None were especially thrilled at the prospect.
Each nanotrooper checked his gear one last time. Inside the borer tunnel, they would be assisted in navigating by small portable propulsors attached to their skinsuit legs.
“All copacetic, Skipper,” Barnes announced. She slung her small-bore coilgun into a shoulder harness and checked the action on her HERF sidearm one last time. Then she lowered herself head first into the sleeve around the tunnel, kicking her way in and was gone from view in seconds. Spivey and Singh followed.
Tallant checked her watch. “Estimating underground force in position for final assault in two hours ten minutes.”
Winger concurred. Now they had to get the ground force positioned. “DPS, any indications from the target?”
Sheila Reaves had launched a squad of Superfly microairbots a few minutes after the Detachment had rolled to a halt on top of the promontory.
“Reading nothing, Major. All bands clear at this time. No thermals, no acoustics, nothing on EM.”
“Nothing from the generator either,” announced Deeno D’Nunzio. “No decoherence waves at all.”
“Let’s saddle up,” Winger decided. “Set up a perimeter around that ravine, Deeno, you and Detrick take the high ground. And keep your eyes and ears open.”
The rest of the Detachment went on foot across the promontory and down the rubbly slopes, into the shallow ravine where the quantum generator sat. About the height of an average man, the device had four tetrahedral legs supporting a small platform. Atop the platform, a quartet of spheres was mounted. Each sphere was studded with scores of small projections and protuberances, so that the spheres resembled puckered lemons. As the Detachment cautiously approached, Winger could see the spheres slowly rotating.
Stirred by faint Martian winds, a few dust devils danced across the plateau.
“Hold your positions…everybody down. Sheila, what’s happening…?” Winger asked. He called a halt to their cautious approach. In unison, the nanotroopers dropped to the ground and brought all weapons to bear on the device.
Reaves, the Defense and Protective Systems tech, scanned the surroundings. “Target device is active, Skipper. There is barrier nano around that platform…can’t tell from the signatures if it’s the same as Kolkata, but likely, it’s similar. No other emissions detectable…” Reaves switched her eyepiece view to what Superfly was seeing from a few hundred feet overhead. “…Fly’s got nothing but rock and desert…no thermals, no EM anywhere. Target device is the source of everything detectable around here.”
“Ground force… get into position. Detrick and D’Nunzio, set up a perimeter around this ravine. Take Calderon and Tsukota with you. Bracket the target with HERF…if those barrier bots go off like they did before, fry ‘em. Detective Price—“
The Frontier Corps agent came up. “Yes, Major?”
“You stay close…things are liable to get a little hairy around here in the next hour. That goes for you two as well—“ he indicated Wills and Purvis, the Public Security men. “Stay with Major Tallant here. You’ve got antique suits and you’d be pretty juicy targets for these bots.”
Price watched the nanotroopers scurry around the ravine and set up gun positions and the rest of their gear. “What’s your plan, Major?”
Winger squatted down behind a pair of rust-colored boulders and tapped out commands on a wristpad. “For the moment, we wait. The underground assault force is making their way from the insert point to a ready position directly below the generator, ideally about fifteen feet down. On my command, they will assault the generator…recon seems to show the barrier is minimal to nonexistent approaching from that axis. At the same time, we’ll open up on the barrier from here. I’ve got a full spread to lay down: high-freq radio, coilguns, kinetic rounds, whatever we need.”
Price recalled the effects of the generator’s decoherence waves from his earlier expedition. “What if that gizmo goes off again…I mean, like it did with me?”
“That’s where ANAD comes in,” Winger told him. “ANAD managed to decrypt some of operating and replicating algorithm of the generator. It’s just an extremely sophisticated swarm. At Kolkata, he was able to interfere with the swarm enough to ‘fix’ it so we could engage and destroy it. I’m hoping this one works the same way.”
Winger’s crewnet radio crackled with voices.
“Ground force in position, Skipper. Coilguns sighted in and registered.” D’Nunzio, Detrick, Calderon and Tsukota had taken up positions along the western and southern sectors of the ravine, hunkered down in the folds of the valley walls. The rest of the Detachment had moved north around a spur jutting out from the promontory and were situated along a ragged fence of boulders and rubble piles, rock fall from the canyon headlands overhead and behind them.
Now all they had to do was wait. The underground force would be in position in less than an hour.
Winger went over the assault plan in his mind again. What am I forgetting? The generator would be assaulted first from below ground, where the nanobotic barrier was thin to nonexistent. If the bots reacted like normal bots, they’d swarm to meet the assault, leaving themselves vulnerable above ground to a coordinated assault from that direction. Kolkata showed that Red Hammer’s barrier bots could be beaten with well-timed attacks from multiple directions; the swarm couldn’t replicate fast enough to deal with all the threats. Thus weakened, the formation was vulnerable to rf and coilgun fire, as well as counter-swarm tactics.
That meant ANAD.
Third Swarm had been detailed to the underground force. But each nanotrooper also hosted a personal master assembler and swarm, carried in a shoulder-embedded containment capsule. Once the barrier had been breached from below, the rest of the Detachment would launch their own ANAD swarms from all directions and overwhelm the barrier bots.
Then the generator swarm itself would be open to approach by ANAD 3rd Swarm.
That, at least, was the plan. There were no end o
f details that could blow up in their faces.
“Quantum coupler signal coming in, Skipper.” It was “Turbo” Fatah, hunkered down behind a line of boulders with Winger and Duncan Price. “Mighty Mite reports they’ve reached assault position…fifteen feet below the generator, bearing one five five…reporting no signatures, no activity. Looks like complete surprise.”
Winger’s mouth tightened. He glanced over at Price. “When the shooting starts, you stay put, Detective. Things are liable to get pretty dicey around here.”
Price snorted. “I can handle this--“ he pulled out a small HERF pistol and cycled the safety. “And I want another chance to bloody somebody’s nose…after the last visit here.”
“Just keep your head down, okay?” Winger told him. To Fatah: “Tell Barnes to commence a sixty-second countdown on my mark. Then unleash hell—“
Fatah passed the word, while Winger readied the rest of the troops over the crewnet. He visually checked each position, then polled the entire Detachment. Detrick, D’Nunzio, Calderon, Tsukota, Klimuk and Glance…all came back ready.
“My fingers are twitching, Skipper,” Deeno wisecracked.
“Keep your civilians down and out of the line of fire. When the barrier starts shifting, let ‘em have it! We’ll move in on my command.”
Sixty seconds seemed to last forever.
For a few moments, there seemed no outward sign of anything unusual. The generator glistened and throbbed in the early morning sunlight, as faint tendrils of dust drifted away on fainter winds. The barrier of nanobotic mechs shielding the platform flickered and phased with the shifting shadows, morphing from a luminous cloud to a phosphorescent fog to a pulsating, striated haze, then back again through the cycle. For a long moment, nothing happened.
Then a faint bubble of dirt and dust erupted from the ground below the platform, expanding like a slow-motion explosion, as uncountable trillions of ANAD mechs replicated into a small nova of light that steadily engulfed the lower legs.
“That’s ANAD!” came a voice over the crewnet.
Indeed the barrier nanobots were already shifting and re-deploying to fight off the attack from below.
Johnny Winger and the Hellas Enigma Page 24