CHAPTER 8
UNIFORCE Headquarters
Paris
August 2, 2110
0700 hours UT
Captain Jason Karst and Commander Victoria Liu arrived at the Quartier-General, rode the lift to the seventieth floor briefing deck and were scanned in promptly at 0630 hours. They both availed themselves of coffee and doughnuts in the commissary attached to the briefing center and made their way inside in time for the briefing. Just after 0700 hours, CINCQUANT and CINCSPACE both entered and all on hand snapped to attention.
General Winger waved them to be seated. “At ease, troops. Let’s get started.”
One other flag rank officer was present and Winger did the introductions. “This is General Mukherjee, UN Boundary Patrol. The purpose of this briefing is two-fold…one is to review and approve the final investigative report on the loss of the geoplane Gopher two months ago. Secondly, to get updates on Operation Sentinel…the status of the Michelangelo conversion, latest intel and so forth. GENGHIS, would you start by displaying the Gopher accident report for us, please?”
UNSAC’s AI replied in soft, dulcet tones: “Of course, General Winger. I am porting the report to all devices registered with me in these quarters. I will also display the conclusions on the board in front of you.”
Everyone checked their tablets while screens flickered overhead.
Mukherjee spoke up. He was a short, stocky Punjabi Indian with a faint stripe of moustache. “As you can see, BP has cooperated fully with UNIFORCE investigators. The Accident Board has concluded that Gopher was destroyed by swarm assault some two kilometers below the southern Zagros mountains. The exact nature of the swarm assault is not fully determined but we have some telemetry from Gopher indicating they were under assault. Last known course and heading are consistent with normal patrol parameters.”
Winger studied the report’s conclusions. General Orlov (CINCSPACE) traced his fingers along one of the tectonic plate boundaries on a map. “What does Q2 have to say about the swarms?”
Mukherjee had GENGHIS scroll to that section. “The data support no definitive conclusions as yet. But best estimates are that the swarms were generated based on intercepted tactical comms originating from east Africa, likely the Sanctuary and most probably from Config Zero. Intelligence has concluded, from this sketchy data, that this was a combat assault and Gopher was somehow surprised, possibly damaged in some way and was overwhelmed in the assault. That deep, embedded in hard quartz and slate rock strata, she just couldn’t fight her way out of this one.”
Orlov was rubbed his chin, speculating. “Maybe the ship’s captain made a mistake.”
Winger thought of Lieutenant Mendez, Gopher’s skipper. He’d been a good kid, a capable atomgrabber from his nog days at the Academy, and eager to bring this new underground combat force up to speed and show what they could do. “Unlikely. I knew Gopher’s commander. Mendez was his name. He wasn’t one to take needless chances. But we’d better go over the training syllabus again. Karst?”
“Yes, sir?”
“Put that on your list. I’ll make it an official recommendation. All Boundary Patrol geoplane captains to get more training on safety procedures and tactical limits on certain maneuvers and operations. No sense being careless.”
“I’ll get right on it, sir. Uh, sir—“ Karst had an idea. “Perhaps we should increase our readiness and alert levels. Conduct all ops at Level 1 now, instead of Level 2.”
Winger checked with Mukherjee. “That true, Ajay? Are we operating some missions at Level 2 or below?”
The Boundary Patrol commander nodded. “Routine transits, re-positioning, those sorts of things are normally done at Alert Level 2…it means lower speeds, we don’t go as deep so there’s less wear and tear on the borer, not all weapons systems manned. In combat and patrol situations, we always operate at Level 1.”
“Make that Level 1 for all ops, period,” Winger told him. “I’ll clear it with UNSAC.” To GENGHIS, he said, “GENGHIS, make sure UNSAC gets this recommendation top priority.”
GENGHIS replied, “I will do so immediately, General. I’m bringing the Security Affairs Commissioner avatar on-line now.” A nearby screen wiped itself clean and was rapidly replaced by an animated avatar of Jurgen Steiner, scowling down on all of them.
The Steiner avatar squinted at an animated paper that fluttered like a bird into his hand. “Accessing recommendations and conclusions file…General Winger, General Mukherjee…you think this is a wise course…going to Level 1 on all ops?”
Winger always found dealing with the Steiner avatar something like living inside of a cartoon. He half expected Bugs Bunny to pop onto the screen…but he didn’t say that.
“Yes, sir…I do. Config Zero’s active in all sectors now, but especially in the south Med and the Middle East. Boundary Patrol needs to be at full readiness and able to respond as quickly as possible.”
The Steiner avatar seemed to freeze for a moment. A glitch, perhaps? Or was the damn thing thinking? Winger decided it didn’t matter. The whole session would be recorded and the real UNSAC could play back the whole thing at his leisure. You had to deal with the avatar as if it were UNSAC. He added, “In fact, sir…I’m recommending that we increase our patrol rate in all sectors. There’s evidence from Q2 that Config Zero’s loading tectonic plate boundaries with swarms, trying to create quakes and tremors. There are four plates that come together in the Middle East…the Arabian, African, Indian and Eurasian. That makes this sector a sort of leveraging point…the Bugs can do a lot of damage by loosening things up in this area. We need to be prepared.”
Steiner avatar considered that and a few generic expressions crossed its face, no doubt pulled from some file called Emotions or something. “I’ll consider that, General. I have also been reviewing that special op you proposed two months ago…I’ve already cut mission orders for the op to proceed.”
Winger had pressed this issue multiple times in General Staff meetings and in quick encounters with UNSAC in the hallways of the Quartier-General, with no result. Now, the Powers-That-Be could no longer ignore what Q2 and the damage reports from Tabriz and elsewhere were saying.
“The Lab guys have continued to refine the quantum state grabber, sir. They’re saying it works over an even broader spectrum of entanglement states and the state-shifting scheme is more robust. I’ve got a mission plan ready to execute.”
‘Steiner’ nodded perfunctorily. “Proceed as planned, General. And keep me posted. Send me the details and your proposed H-Hour.” The avatar’s face shifted perspective slightly, seeming to look in the direction of CINCSPACE and Victoria Liu. “Now, it’s time for an update from our Operation Sentinel people. General Orlov—“
Orlov addressed the screen. “Commander Liu here is from Frontier Corps. She’s assigned as exec on the Michelangelo and has a status report on the conversion of Big Mike.”
Liu opened up a presentation file on another screen. “Refurbishment activities are proceeding at a high pace, sir…as of yesterday, the yard had completed just over seventy per cent of assigned tasks. There’s still some hull work to do after, around the engine bay…that has to come soon, so we can get the new plasma torch engines installed and do some run-up tests. That’s on the critical path but the engineers believe they’ve got a handle on all the problem areas. As you can see—“
Liu went on for several minutes. Jason Karst entertained himself with a schematic of a geoplane while General Winger watched the Steiner avatar, trying to see just how close a resemblance the sim had to the real UNSAC.
Too close, he decided. It was eerie, he realized, just how well the programmers had captured Steiner’s facial tics and nuances…the way his left eyebrow lifted when he was irritated, that little curl at the edge of his lips, like he was a big lion ready to pounce on a helpless prey. Voice, mannerisms, basic personality attributes…the Steiner avatar was a decent stand-in for the real Security Affai
rs Commissioner. Winger wondered how hard it would be to hack into the file and make changes….
Winger realized he had drifted off for a moment. Steiner was going over something to do with Sentinel’s mission.
“…is to establish a network of detectors in the general vicinity of the planetesimal Sedna…that’s about thirteen billion kilometers from here, by the way. The purpose of this network is to warn of swarm activity in the outer solar system. Your orders are to deploy a network of robotic sentries and stations in space around Sedna and a large part of its orbital arc to provide warning of the approach of any swarms or anything unusual entering the outer solar system. The Sentinel Net is oriented to be particularly sensitive to any phenomena coming from the direction of 51 Pegasi, from the direction of the constellation Pegasus. And to approach and survey this anomaly that Farside is calling Devil’s Eye.”
“Yes, sir,” said Orlov and Liu together.
The briefing went on for another half an hour, dealing with mission details, chain of command, comm protocols and reporting requirements. From his experience a decade ago aboard Trident in the Jovian Hammer mission at Europa, Winger figured he knew a thing or two about comms from that distance. Michelangelo’s crew would ultimately wind up nearly fourteen billion kilometers from Earth. Two-way comms were out. Signals would take an average of thirteen hours one-way, over a day for round-trip talks.
Michelangelo’s crew would be on their own in a way even they wouldn’t fully appreciate until they got there. Flexibility and readiness were the key. You had to be ready for anything…the more unexpected and bizarre, the more likely it was to happen.
That was one lesson Europa and dealing with the Keeper had taught Johnny Winger. He figured it was worth sitting down with Liu and Karst over a dinner and making that point.
When the briefing was over and ‘Steiner’ had signed off, Winger invited Karst and Liu to join him at a small bistro he knew of a few blocks away, on a side street off the Rue Montaigne.
“It’s a hole in the wall,” he admitted. “But the drinks and the veal are to die for. “
Orlov begged off. But Karst and Liu could hardly say no to their commanding officer.
The Café Langevin turned out to be a closet with some tables and checkered canopies outside on the sidewalk. It was a warm, muggy evening in the 5th Arrondisement and pedestrian traffic was heavy, but Winger found an isolated table near the front door and ordered a round of drinks for all.
“You’re heading to Table Top, I hear,” he said to Karst as the Boundary Patrol Captain sniffed suspiciously at the rim of his wine glass, then took an experimental taste of the Merlow.
Karst nodded. “Got a hyperjet to catch tomorrow at 0530 hours…Dordain Spaceport. I need to grab a ride from somewhere.”
“I’ll arrange a jetcab,” Winger said. He popped a small baguette into his mouth and washed it down with his own Pinot Noir. “That’s the quickest way. Ever been to Table Top before, Captain?”
“Did my first stint with 2nd Nano after the Academy there, sir. Quite a place…you can’t beat the view.”
“Yeah, I know what you mean.” Winger could see the Buffalo Ridge topped with snow in his mind, like a cake with frosting. “Especially in the winter.”
“General,” Liu sniffed at her own burgundy. “You spent some time at Europa, with that Keeper thing. What was it like…being out there so far?”
“Like being in a funhouse full of mirrors,” he admitted. “The Keeper is a quantum system, able to manipulate quantum states. We could never be sure what we were assaulting was the real thing…or what that even meant. One minute we’d be at the outer edge of the Keeper, slamming it with HERF and mag weapons…the next minute, we’d be a kilometer away, back aboard the Trident. An enemy that can do that has to be approached with care. In the end, I’m not sure we ever did anything but slightly interfere with it, and probably annoy the hell out of it.”
Liu pressed the issue. “I read the mission reports on the ride down from Phobos Station, General. Somewhere, I believe I read that comms were a big issue…it took so long to get signals back and forth from here to Jupiter.”
“I couldn’t say it in an official report,” Winger told her, “but out there in the Big Deep, you’re on your own. Command can’t really be exercised at that distance, not from Earth. It’s too far. That puts a premium on using what you have, being resourceful, flexible. You have to anticipate what the enemy’s going to do. And when the enemy’s a cloud of nanobots organized like some kind of hive mind and with quantum capabilities, that’s not easy. I don’t envy you, Commander. Operation Sentinel is risky as hell. It’s the right thing to do. But all the training in the world can’t prepare you for what might be out there. That’s what happened on Jovian Hammer. We ran into things that weren’t in the book. We had to write our own book. You will too.”
Victoria Liu tightened her lips and tasted the wine thoughtfully. “With all due respects, sir…Operation Sentinel’s better equipped and trained for this mission than Jovian Hammer.”
“Sure you are. And that’s why you’ve got a hand-me-down cycler for a ride out to Pluto, Commander. Don’t kid yourself. It’s not how much you know that matters on this mission. It’s what you don’t know…and having the smarts to admit what you don’t know. You’ll be inventing stuff nobody’s ever heard of or thought about once you’re on station. Get used to it.”
Jason Karst chewed on a hard roll. “General, that would seem to apply to Boundary Patrol, too. Nobody’s done this before. Combat ops three kilometers underground—“ he shook his head, tore off more roll and popped it in his mouth, “—in my wildest dreams, I couldn’t imagine that. “Searching out and fighting Bugs underneath mountains and rubble piles…sounds like a mole’s life to me. Our Book of Tactics is re-invented every day.”
Winger gave that word picture some thought. “Maybe you’re right, Captain. Maybe we should learn from the moles and gophers. It’s their world…they know how survive down there. It’s like aviation in the early 20th century…or cyberspace in the early 21st. Nobody really knows the environment…we’re feeling our way along. And it’s the same enemy the Commander’s dealing with…a resourceful, persistent and clever enemy…an enemy whose ultimate objective we don’t really know or understand. You know: that great nanowarrior Sun Tzu once said”—Winger tapped his wristpad and read the quote out loud-- "The skillful leader subdues the enemy's troops without any fighting; he captures their cities without laying siege to them; he overthrows their kingdom without lengthy operations. With his forces intact, he disputes mastery of the empire and thus, without losing a man, his triumph is complete. That’s who were dealing with.”
“I don’t know about that, sir…that’s pretty much ancient history,” Liu pointed out. “We’ve got good people…the best equipment. Everybody from Captain Hawley down is eager to punch out and get going. Me, I’d love to get my hands on a cloud of Bugs.”
“You’ll get your wish soon enough, Commander,” Winger said. And you’re just the kind of hardass they’ll eat up in a heartbeat, he thought to himself. “Dessert, anyone?”
Karst yawned and stretched. “Thanks, sir, but I’ll take a rain check on that. I’ve got an early hyperjet to catch.”
Victoria Liu agreed. “Me too, sir…but thanks for the company…and the dinner. Better get back to the hotel and get some shuteye. It’s a long ride back to Mars.”
Winger paid the café bill and the two officers both disappeared into taxis. He decided to walk back to the Q-G and finish up some paperwork, before heading home. Up in his office on the 66th floor, he dialed up Dana and told her he’d be home within the hour.
“Liam wants you to play a few rounds of Pirates of Pluto with him. He announced awhile ago that you didn’t have a snowflake’s chance in…well, you know the rest. I had to give him a stern lecture on what kind of language we use around here. This is hom
e, not a combat vessel, you know.”
Winger had to laugh. “Tell Cadet Liam Winger he’d better clean up his act. Otherwise, the Commander in Chief’ll throw him in the brig for insubordination and that’s a promise. Plus, I’ll be pleased to kick his behind from here to Pluto and back, any day he wants. See you in two—“
“Very well, Your Majesty, home front…out,” Dana Tallant came back.
Five blocks away from the Quartier-General, Victoria Liu came back to the Hotel August Comte and made her way up to her fifteenth floor room. It was furnished like some kind of brothel, she had decided. Peach damask walls. Lace curtains and doilies and Louis XIV chairs. She had a lot of packing to do—the shuttle to Gateway departed the spaceport at 0800 hours tomorrow morning, but she decided a hot shower would make life a little easier. She was tired and sore and was looking forward to the lesser gravity world of the cycler ship and the long ride out to Mars. Earthlife was hard on her slight frame and muscles. Victoria Liu was wiry and strong but there just wasn’t a lot of mass there to hold her up. Her shoulders and neck ached from just dragging her bones around in 1-g.
She stripped off her uniform and got the shower going with a voice command. “Medium flow…spray one…hot…and what was that scent I liked--?”
“Amazon waterfall, ma’am…would you also like the air dry scented?”
“Negative…just the usual blast.” She climbed in and let the stinging hot needles scour her face and shoulders.
Shower over, Liu stepped out of the bathroom, toweling off her hair, when she noticed something odd. Over by the door. Was it smoke? Was there a fire? A faint twinkling fog had drifted into the room, was drifting in she could now see, from around the door handle.
The hairs on the back of her neck stood up. She knew instantly what that was.
Victoria Liu scrambled for some clothing…a robe, a shirt, anything. The fog swelled rapidly and billowed into the room, tendrils reaching the foot of the bed in seconds. She didn’t have a weapon with her. Frontier Corps officers didn’t carry firearms into briefings at the Q-G. All she was had was…nothing.
She dove for her wristpad…maybe she could hit the panic button…but she was a fraction of a second too late. The first puffs of the swarm drifted over her right arm and right away, she screamed. The mechs fell on her with relentless fury.
In seconds, a miniature supernova welled up, flashing and writhing on top of the bed, sheets and pillows kicked and flying in all directions. A small thunderstorm of nanobotic hell throbbed and sparkled and popped as the mechs began stripping atoms from atoms, disassembling the thing that had once been Victoria Liu.
The entire process lasted maybe twenty minutes. At 2215 hours in Room 1525 of the Hotel August Comte, Frontier Corps Commander Victoria Liu had emerged from a hot shower clean and fresh and ready for hot tea and a cool bed. At 2236 hours, the bed was still there. A gray smoking residue of molecular ash remained in the bed, now no longer cool but scorched and torn by nearly half an hour of nanobotic hell.
Victoria Liu was gone.
Yet the process that had begun in her bedroom was not complete. Even as faint wisps of air from the ceiling registers lofted errant dust particles into the air, the gray dust pile jittered and shook with a faint beat of life, newly forming life.
The swarm that had set upon Liu and rapidly consumed her had additional instructions to execute, embedded in its master assembler’s quantum processor. A new configuration template was initialized and all replication counters set to zero. The program proceeded with the same implacable determination as the disassembly and assimilation phase had proceeded. The process would take many hours and it would consume most of the room furnishings as feedstock, but the configuration had already been determined and the program would be executed in full.
Hours later, the golden glow of an early morning Parisian sun shone through the sheer gauze of lace curtains, dropping shafts of light on something new, something that had never existed before.
Outwardly, the new thing resembled Victoria Liu in every visible, measurable respect. It had the same taut, wiry frame, with slightly bony shoulders but well-toned arms that spoke of hours in the fitness centers of cycler ships flying between Earth and Mars. It had the same short jet black hair, bobbed in the back, but cut page-boy style in the front, curling over dark brown eyes and a faint mole on her right cheek, just enough blemish to give texture to a smooth, mostly unfurrowed face. The new thing stirred, lifted its perky little half-Asian nose to the breeze and sat up, stretching new muscles with a luxurious yawn.
Assimilation was complete. The new configuration had been loaded and feed atoms grabbed for hours, building new structure, building new forms, into a complete para-human swarm likeness of the original. What once had been a shy little girl from Guangzhou who’d scratched and clawed and sweated and dreamed and finally made a life for herself in the officer ranks of Frontier Corps had become an angel. A ghost. A near-perfect facsimile who would pass even close inspection.
Config Zero had done its homework. The assimilation and replication algorithm approached perfection. Memory, buffers, config translators, all processor elements had been laid down, moments after deconstruction had started. The main platform and actuator mast had been formed. Power cells and picowatt propulsors were added. Sensors and actuators were built and grafted on, from pyridine probes and carbene grabbers to enzymatic knives, hydrogen abstractors and bond disrupters. Triggers were laid in. Growth medium was seeded. The base systems were replicated. Comm centers were learned in and all algorithms were initialized. Response protocols were checked and verified. Finally, just before the Parisian sunshine had come streaming into Room 1525, all internal inhibits and constraints were lifted and all configs exercised one last time.
The Victoria Liu angel rose from the torn scraps of its bed, now fully clothed in a meticulously re-constructed Frontier Corps day uniform. Hand luggage and a purse were slung over its broad athletic shoulders. The angel opened the door and went down the hall to the lift, then rode down to the hotel motor lobby.
“Taxi, Madame?” asked the concierge at the taxi stand. "Ou voulez-vous aller? Where to…?” It was a cool, sunny late summer morning along the Rue August Comte and cabs were lined up along the sidewalks in a thrumming line of electric and hydro vehicles.
The Victoria Liu angel indicated a wish to go to Dordain Spaceport. The angel knew that it needed to make a short spaceplane hop up to Gateway Station. It knew also, from files accessed in core memory, that it had to return to Mars Phobos Station and get back to the Michelangelo conversion and outfitting. It calculated the duration of this phase as five weeks, one day, six hours and twenty minutes, from rendezvous with the cycler ship Da Vinci.
A taxi was procured and the concierge helped the Liu angel into the back seat. The angel, executing Branch 6225 of its Public Encounter and Response module, had already withdrawn a few euros for a tip and deposited them into the concierge’s waiting hand with a pleasant, if slightly vacant smile.
“Je vous remercie beaucoup, Madame. Have a very nice day.”
The electric pulled away from the curb and sped off into heavy morning traffic.
The taxi driver did not suspect that his passenger was actually a swarm angel entity, masquerading as a UNIFORCE officer. As he negotiated turns through the 5th Arrondisement toward the Boulevard St. Germaine, he occasionally stole surreptitious glances at his fare in the mirror. He found her strikingly attractive, even exotic. She had a certain glow to her skin, he decided. As he maneuvered the taxi around construction barrels and parked cars and sped off toward the A-7 motorway, he began to ponder the possibility of something more intimate than just a taxi ride out to the spaceport.
Johnny Winger and the Great Rift Zone Page 30