CHAPTER 20
Aboard Geoplane Prairie Dog (GP-10)
Sixty Two Kilometers Off the California Coast
January 15, 2111
2230 hours (UT)
An alarm sounded from the DPS console at the rear of the command deck. Corporal Hector Cruz was the Defense and Protective Systems tech (DPS1). He swallowed hard.
“Acoustic flag, Captain…some kind of swarm, for sure. Not sure whose bots I’m seeing…” his fingers flew over the board. “…but it’s a large mass, headed this way, bearing two nine two…I make the range at just under four thousand meters.”
Captain Annamaria Oliveira checked her own board. “What are we looking at, Linda? Profiler shows quartz, some shales, inclusion zones. Any serious seismics?”
The ship’s geotech, Sergeant Linda Haekon, massaged a keypad on her console, studying the waterfall display that showed rock layers surrounding Dog. “Pretty quiet right now, ma’am. Transform faults, the usual thermoclines dead ahead, nothing major at the moment. The ground’s stable around here…for once.”
Oliveira stroked her chin. “Then this may be our baby. DSO, steer right and stay on two zero five degrees. Maintain depth. Let’s get everything cocked, Hector.”
“Steering two zero five degrees…maintaining depth—“
Cruz brought the HERF batteries online. “Charging now, Captain. Coilguns and mags now up to full charge as well. HERF coming online.”
“Very well.”
The crew of Prairie Dog had been cruising on routine patrol for two days, deployed out of BPS Station 1, Santa Maria Island, off the California coast, when a signal came in from Dispatch. Some kind of Bioshield alert. The crew had scrambled and set out west, slipping beneath the ocean waves, heading for the Pacific seabed. They had coordinates for a target detected at a depth of ten kilometers below the seabed, a hundred kilometers from the coast, not far from the plate boundary itself, the grinding line of collision between the North American and Pacific plates.
It looked like Config Zero was at it again. According to Dispatch, the target displayed normal signal patterns for a subterranean swarm, chewing away at the plate boundaries, trying to fracture rock and create earthquakes and tremors.
Trying to pulverize towns and cities along the coast, Oliveira swore under her breath. She pushed a mental image of her mother’s house collapsing in ruins out of her mind. It had already happened before, four years ago in the Bay area. But not today, assholes. This time, Boundary Patrol’s gonna smash you creeps for good.
“How far to target, Will?”
The Sensors and Surveillance Tech (SST1) Corporal Will Bodle checked his display. “Under three thousand meters. Recommend course change to two zero eight…that should put us right at their mass centroid.”
“Execute course change to two zero eight,” Oliveira commanded.
Haekon scanned her panel. “Reading high thermals…I’m applying acoustic filtering…
picking up some seismic noise out there now…probably plate shifting. Looks like it’s a bot swarm all right…”
Time for ANAD again, Oliveira thought. Combat at a thousand meters underground was definitely not for the slow-witted. “DPS, listen up. I need configs for solid-phase, lattice transit…concealment protocols. We’re in a lot of young rock here, basaltic magma from what the profiler shows. Quartz and feldspar. I want ANAD to look like silicons, oxygens, molecules that blend in with the background.”
Cruz had a directory of configs already open. “Config eighty one should do the trick, Captain. Silicon dioxide…aluminum trioxide…some iron thrown in. I can make ANAD look just like the seabed.”
“Do it. And get ANAD ready to deploy. DSO, bring us to a position five hundred meters from the swarm centroid. SS1, any sign we’re being tracked? Any changes?”
Bodle studied the returns on his board. “Swarm aspect changes…he may be replicating…I’m seeing spikes in thermals, EMs…mass and density on the rise, Skipper.”
Oliveira knew they couldn’t wait. One thing geoplane ops had proven in recent weeks was that you struck first and you struck hard. You couldn’t give Config Zero swarms a chance to loosen rock strata, set off tremors or earthquakes. A thousand meters underground, if you hesitated, you were crushed.
“Prime ejectors A and B,” Oliveira commanded. ANAD masters would be launched from Prairie Dog’s forward tubes. “Set config eighty one.”
“Ejectors primed,” reported Cruz.
“Launch ANAD.”
There was no audible swoosh or lurch in the ship’s position or anything quite so dramatic. But Cruz reported that ANADs were away.
“Masters reporting all systems normal…effectors set for solid-phase transit. Bond disrupters charged and ready.”
“Target less than a thousand meters,” came Bodle.
That’s when the real lurch slammed Prairie Dog. A jarring shudder vibrated throughout Dog’s hull and there was a distinct feeling they were sliding, sliding down and to the left. Outside, rock plates wrenched and crumpled and Dog was pressed down, down, down, her hull plates screeching in protest.
“Keep the borer online!” Oliveira yelled. “Keep the treads moving….we can’t get stuck down here…”
Prairie Dog righted herself as the tremor died off. “P waves approaching,” said the GET1, Linda Haekon. “Source dead ahead, less than five hundred meters…must have been the target…hold on--!”
A massive shock wave slammed Dog and the geoplane lurched sideways, then shimmied like a wet dog as her borer and treads finally stabilized her. More waves followed, pounding the geoplane like a teacup in ocean surf.
Bodle saw the target thermals rapidly rising on his scope. “Hell of a lot of seismics, Skipper, but I think the target’s—“
That’s when the first hull breach hit them.
Disrud, the DSO, saw it first. “Breach in the pressure hull, Skipper. Looks like somewhere on D deck…or further aft.”
Oliveira groaned inwardly. What else could happen? “I see it…cabin air pressure fluctuating…we’d better activate emergency flasks, just in case.”
Disrud toggled a few switches and immediately, high pressure air began flooding all compartments.
“Can you localize the breach?”
Disrud checked ship’s layout on his board. “Looks like somewhere on D deck, Skipper, judging from the pressure change. Forward of E bulkhead and to the starboard side.”
D deck was Stores and Supplies for Prairie Dog’s crew.
“Release damage control bots,” Oliveira told him. “Get a patch over that breach pronto.”
Disrud’s fingers flew over his controls. In seconds, a small damage control swarm of bots had been released and loaded with coordinates. “Bots released.”
Oliveira was more concerned about the tactical situation. Things were starting to pile up…situation normal for geoplane ops, she figured. “SS1, time to engage target. I don’t want those bugs to make any more tremors for us…”
Sergeant Bodle did some quick figuring. “At current speed, less than two minutes.”
Cruz called out ANAD status. “Still in config eighty one…beginning max reps now.”
Several hundred meters ahead, the ANAD master was sliding through dense shale rock on half propulsor, with effectors folded but bond disrupters fully charged. At Cruz’ command, the master began full replication, slamming atoms to build structure as fast as possible, filling out the assault swarm to engage the Config Zero enemy at the right moment.
“Very well,” Oliveira noted.
Dog had already deployed her HERF and mag weapons, but using them in close proximity to ANAD ran the risk of cannibalizing your own swarms. Better to wait for the first engagement, study the results and then make adjustments. Oliveira had worked with combat swarms for years; she’d once served under Colonel John Winger himself on a task force in Africa, a special op along the sanctuary zone boundary. But comba
t swarms underground, below millions of tons of rock and crustal plate…that was a different animal. Detection was the problem in geoplane ops. With all the seismic noise and plates grinding and shifting about, Oliveira figured it was a miracle if anybody could detect anything. And since detection was so iffy, you had to be alert all the time. Nasties could pop out of a seam or a fissure at any time with almost no warning. Worse, they could approach nearby but beyond detection range and set off a few tremors by loosening rock strata. You could be crushed into oblivion and never knew what hit you.
The truth was that Boundary Patrol was making up tactics as it went along. Nobody had any great ideas and the only thing that mattered was keeping Config Zero from setting off enough earthquakes and tremors to destroy cities and whole nations.
“ANAD seems to be engaging,” Bodle announced. “EM spikes, high thermals. I’ve got acoustics from effector activity…ANAD reports bond disrupters firing all across the line of engagement.”
Oliveira stared ahead, through the bulkhead and the hull, imagining what must be happening a few hundred meters ahead of them. Pressed between a million tons of rock, two massive swarms of nanobotic mechs had collided. Furious combat was certain now, as bots grappled and lit off their bond disrupters, tried to tear effectors off, snap bonds and bollix up each other’s formation.
As if to announce the fact that the battle had been joined, a series of tremors suddenly slammed Prairie Dog and rocked the ship sideways, vibrations shuddering throughout the length of her hull. All around them, rock plates and strata had been loosened just enough to let fissures and stress joints slip. Dog tried to stay with her brood, but all aboard her could feel the ship lurching and sliding, while aft bulkheads groaned and screeched under the pressure.
“All stop, all stop!” Oliveira announced. “What’s happening out there, Will? Give me some eyes.”
Bodle scanned his instruments. “It’s another tremor, Skipper—“
Linda Haekon agreed. “P waves coming…big P waves…this one’s gonna hurt—“
The sliding and screeching continued as Dog was thrashed by a series of seismic waves, pressure pulses pushing through the rock. A massive shield had been loosened by the nanobotic collision ahead of them, and the geoplane was trapped between grinding, shearing plates.
A vicious twisting wave slammed the ship and the sound of tortured metal reverberated through the hull.
The DSO, Sergeant Disrud, was nearly knocked from his seat. “Treads offline, Skipper! I’m losing control of her…now borer collapsing…we’ve got multiple hull breaches…massive hull—“
Oliveira decided they couldn’t wait any longer. “Okay, that’s it, troops. Abandon ship—“ she opened the ship’s 1MC and gave the word. “Abandon ship…abandon ship…we’re in a barrel here…grab your suits and make way toward the lockout…Escape Protocol One…Cruz, we got any ANAD systems left?”
Cruz was already buttoning up his hypersuit. “Negative, Captain. Assault swarm’s offline. Just the escape pods and they’re diffusing now…must have been a containment breach.”
“Get ‘em fired up…and let’s get the hell out of here! Dog’s not going to last much longer—“
Oliveira helped shepherd the rest of the command deck crew into the main gangway and they headed aft to G deck…if there still was a G deck. The geoplane shimmied and shook and lurched and rocked with repeated seismic waves bashing her from all sides. Heading down the gangway, Oliveira felt like a pinball, slamming from one side of the tube to another.
The lockout was on G deck in Prairie Dog’s tail pod. Escape Protocol One meant using dedicated ANAD botswarms to form up escape pods for all crew members. The bots would be released from containment, pre-loaded with the right configs, and form up shields around each crew member. Once they had left the ship, the pods would burrow and bore their way toward the surface…how long that took depended on their depth and the nature of the rock layers. Oliveira knew that Dog had slipped beneath some of the hardest shales this side of the Pacific, several thousand meters worth.
This could take days, she figured, as she reached G deck, found her own pod bag and opened the containment valve, letting the bots flow out and around her. She tucked her arms like she’d learned in Escape training and soon enough the shield was thick enough to feel. Protocol One then said: get to the lockout and exit the ship.
The last step before opening the outer lockout door was to activate the pod borer.
Oliveira checked around her on the deck and mentally counted off the crew: Disrud, Hope, Haekon, Bodle, Cruz. They were all there.
“Everybody buttoned up?”
A chorus of ayes and yes ma’ams sounded through her earpiece.
“Start your borers. Cycle the hatch—“
Immediately, the lockout chamber was filled with a galaxy of glowing spheres surrounding each podsuit. One by one, ANAD borers came online.
One last lurch made cycling the outer lockout door a challenge, but Cruz and Bodle managed to wrestle the hatch open. Rubble and dust exploded into the chamber, but the borers would make quick work of that.
Haekon was first out the hatch, her podsuit now lost in the blue-white glow of its spherical borer head. In seconds, she was gone, dissolved into the dense rock like a shadow disappearing into a wall.
One after another, the crew of Prairie Dog lit off their suit borers and disappeared into the rock that was crushing and crumpling the cabin of the geoplane.
Oliveira was last. She took a quick look around at the smashed lockout and the staved-in bulkheads of G deck, even now bending and twisting under the force of the rock plates pressing against them. Dog shifted once again and the hatch began to close.
She was a good ship, Oliveira thought. We just couldn’t get ANAD deployed in time.
Oliveira lit off her suit borer and dove through the hatch, burrowing into the sheer face of a rock wall, as if she were a prairie dog herself. In seconds, she was enveloped in a cocoon of bots, shielding her from the tremendous pressures and heat as they bored a narrow tunnel up and away from the doomed ship. Last check, they were several thousand meters below the surface of the seabed. The ride up would likely take hours, maybe a day or more, if all went well.
Just friggin’ great. Like spending a day in a coffin.
She used her tongue controls to open a quantum coupler channel. The crew of Prairie Dog would need help once they reached the surface. Oliveira knew geoplane Mole Rat was still at the BPS 1 station. It galled her to have to call for help, but it was the right thing to do, assuming everybody made it to the surface okay. Escape protocol training was every trooper’s least favorite lesson. You won’t need it, the instructors had said, until you need it. Then you really need it.
She was glad now the crew had just recently re-qual’ed in Escape procedures back at the station.
“Any station, any station, this is geoplane Prairie Dog , transmitting blind…transmitting in the clear…we have suffered catastrophic damage after engaging Config Zero swarms, serious structural casualty…we’re abandoning ship and attempting to make our way to the surface…we will need rescue at coordinates—“ she tongued another control stud, so the coupler would broadcast her position—“…repeating…this is Captain Oliveira, geoplane Prairie Dog, transmitting blind to any station…mayday….mayday….”
Now enveloped in a sweltering, suffocating coffin of escape bots, bumping and bruising her way upward toward what she hoped was the surface, Annamaria Oliveira fought back the rising coppery taste of fear in her throat. She hummed tunes to herself. She prayed often, out loud. She passed into a dreamlike haze, then woke with a start, drenched in sweat and shivering.
All the while, the escape pod made of tightly meshed nanobots ground its way inexorably forward, upward, toward….somewhere…toward something.
This is a quick trip to a slow death, she told herself. She wanted her training to kick in. She wanted to hear he
r instructor’s voice…trust your gear…believe in your equipment…believe in the procedures and follow them to the letter….that’s what’ll save you.
She wanted to believe that.
What she couldn’t know was that she would eventually be the only survivor of the crew of Prairie Dog.
The after action reports and the debriefing at BPS seemed like a dream to Annamaria Oliveira. The details were sobering enough: geoplane Prairie Dog lost in action, two hundred kilometers southwest of the BPS station at Santa Maria Island, at a depth estimated to be below two thousand meters. All of the crew save Oliveira had managed to get out in their escape pods. But only Oliveira had made it all the way to the surface. Rescue forces had flooded into the area but no sign of the crew had ever been detected…no emergency beacons, no stray coupler signals, no unusual nanobotic debris or atom fluff residuals. Five of the six crew members had disappeared in the escape.
That made Oliveira feel…well, how could you describe it? Something between guilty for having survived, a few parts relief, mixed in with a cocktail of anger, disbelief, and a gnawing desire to do something, do anything, to make her crew magically appear, to make them pop out of the ground like the real prairie dogs that were part of their ship’s logo.
You could talk all around the assault and their tactics but you couldn’t sugarcoat the results. She’d lost her command and she’d lost her ship.
She figured Boundary Patrol wouldn’t take too kindly to that.
It was CINCQUANT’s voice that brought her back to the here and now. “Captain, I’ll ask the question again: do we need new tactics? New weapons? What’s your take on this?”
The vid briefing spanned several continents. CINCQUANT was at Table Top. Oliveira was back at Santa Maria Island, the Boundary Patrol Station BPS1, from which Prairie Dog had been launched. A third man linked in from UNIFORCE Paris…UNSAC Deputy Faisal Erdogan.
“Captain--?”
Oliveira didn’t really have a good answer. “Sir, the swarms were able to create tremors, loosen rock, before we could engage. We had them on scope, we were closing, but somehow—“ she shook her head, still sick over losing her ship and crew, “—somehow, we just weren’t able to stop them…the swarms had a tactical advantage—“
Winger was sympathetic. He’d seen the reports. There wasn’t much Prairie Dog could have done differently. If it had been me, none of us might have survived. Still—
“It’s clear to me that our geoplanes need to be hardened. And maybe our tactics re-thought. Config Zero’s got swarms all over the world, positioned to affect tectonic plate boundaries.”
Erdogan agreed. “We haven’t seen so many tremors, quakes and shocks in centuries. It’s like the whole Earth is being re-made. We’ve got to find a way to stop these…”
“You’re right, sir,” Winger told him. “It’s an unprecedented violation of Containment laws and the Sanctuary treaties. Config Zero is deliberately targeting seams and fissures and stress lines along these plates…it’s a planned assault on our infrastructure. Tokyo, Jakarta, Athens, Anchorage…I’ve seen the newsvids day after day. Thousands panicked. Thousands fleeing. Chaos in the streets, the airports, the rails—“
“General, you mentioned a new device…something Farside developed. Is this something that could help?”
Winger tapped a few keys and brought up an image of the device. It was quickly ported to everyone’s viewer. “They’re calling it a quantum disentangler. Don’t ask me how it works. Neeley, the egghead that runs Farside Labs, tried explaining. He lost me after two sentences.”
Erdogan studied the diagram on his own screen. “I read the reports…some kind of jammer, I understand.”
Winger said, “When it’s located properly, it bollixes up local quantum-encrypted signals, makes them more easily detectable and defeatable. Neeley showed me some test results the Lab ran at the Copernicus test range. Used correctly, it’s possible the quantum signal links between Config Zero and its swarms can be disrupted, jammed, or defeated. The swarms would lose their link back to home base and, so the theory goes, be unable to change config so quickly. In the case of Prairie Dog and our geoplane ops, we could jam Config Zero and then engage the swarms before they could set off tremors. Then, our Boundary Patrol troops could more easily isolate, surround and destroy the swarms piecemeal.”
Oliveira was encouraged by the news. “Sir, if we’d had a device like that, Dog would still be on the hunt. This might just give us enough of an edge to stop these swarms from triggering so many tremors and quakes.”
“I’ll pass this along to UNSAC right away,” Erdogan said. “Send me all the test reports and any proposed changes in tactics. If this gizmo works as advertised, we need a hundred more just like it. UNSAC can put a UNIFORCE Priority label on it. That’ll get the vendors cracking…an emergency production run and then get the devices out to all Boundary Patrol stations. This is just what we need.”
CINCQUANT agreed, pleasantly surprised that a bureaucrat like the UNSAC Deputy could move so fast. Sting an elephant enough times and it’ll eventually move its ass. “I’ll work with Oliveira here and Colonel Karst to develop new tactics. Sir, I’d like to recall all geoplanes and crews for a few days to outfit the ships and run some tactical sims with the new device.”
“Agreed. I’ll let UNSAC know. Erdogan, out.” With that, the Deputy’s mole face winked off the screen window. Only Oliveira remained, framed in her own small screen window. Her face was lined, heavy with grief.
“Sir, I feel pretty bad about—“
Winger interrupted. “Captain, that’s enough of that. You fought a battle and the Bugs got the better of you. Get over it. Yeah, it sucks losing good people. Don’t ever get over that. But war makes casualties. If you really want to do right by your crew, work with me on tactics. Learn from this. Config Zero’s not invincible. He’s got weaknesses…we just have to find them. And exploit them.” An image of Rene Winger came to mind, lying in her cocoon bed, dreaming dreams of vast swarms maneuvering in space. His own daughter, now a UNIFORCE agent, channeling the Old Ones. “We’ve got more weapons in this fight than you know about. But we’ve got to be smart. That old nanowarrior Sun Tzu once said something like this: ‘that general is skillful in attack whose opponent does not know what to defend…’”
Oliveira looked confused. “Begging the General’s pardon, but what the hell does that mean?”
Winger sniffed. “Something like hit ‘em where they least expect it. Come on, Captain, get your fanny up here to Table Top. I’ve got some scenarios I want to run by you.”
Solnet/Omnivision Video Post
@evelyn.ndinka.solnetworldview
January 18, 2111
2200 hours U.T.
SOLNET Special Report:
Assimilation: The Universal Church?
Last November, Symborg launched a world tour for the Sons of Assimilation, as the new church now styles itself. The original Church of Assimilation in the Kibera slums of Nairobi has become a shrine for all who are sympathetic to the Assimilationist view (transhumans, singularitarians, etc). Thousands make the pilgrimage every day, from all over the world, to Nairobi’s number one tourist attraction. Mostly, they come to see and touch Symborg himself, who because he is an angel, can be in many places at once. The tourist crowds are not disappointed.
They come to listen to him in rapture and to be assimilated (which means to be deconstructed as living human beings and re-organized as swarm-compatible formations of nanobotic elements). This reporter, for one, finds such behavior both bizarre and distasteful. It’s assisted suicide by other names. But millions do believe and the authorities don’t seem to know what to do about it.
Efforts continue, both in official circles and otherwise, to discredit and destroy Symborg. All such efforts have failed so far and the popularity and influence of this so-called robotic Messiah has only grown more intense and widespread.
Because he is an angel, Symborg can be found on every continent and in most major cities, as well as all popular media. Press coverage is intense, the crowds and the frenzy and fervor is insane. Symborg is something like a combination of rock star and evangelist, with elements of magician and healer thrown in.
He seems to become more powerful and influential with each passing day.
Some psychologists and sociologists have written that the coming of Symborg is a sort of mass hysteria, combined with a frenzied, almost hysterical worship of the Old Ones. Many cultures down through the ages have had myths about a Savior…someone who comes to save the people from themselves. In the past, saviors and messiahs have come from Heaven, appointed by God to turn people from their destructive ways and encourage repentance.
One psychologist (see Richard Espiritu, the World Journal of Psychological Phenomena, March 2099, pp81-89) notes that Symborg seems different. Recent finds of fossilized micro robotic remains among ancient Homo Erectus bones at the Engebbe dig site have swept the world of archaeology and anthropology like a hurricane. If these finds can be corroborated, then the conclusion that Symborg may be an evolved descendant of ancient extraterrestrials seeding the early Earth becomes harder to refute.
This makes his status as a Messiah all the more problematical. If evidence of such descent becomes overwhelming, according to Dr. Espiritu, Symborg acquires a level of authority and prophecy and wisdom that no Messiah in history could ever claim. To this point, Symborg has done nothing to discount such rumors but neither has he accepted the mantle of “Father of Humanity.” Still, the rumors, the commentary, blog posts and talk swirl around this idea like bees around a swollen flower.
Finally, the relationship (if any) of Symborg to Config Zero must be explained. Sources within UNIFORCE and other security and defense organizations have repeatedly claimed that Symborg is nothing but an offshoot of Config Zero, an element of the same formation. Config Zero is considered by many to be a mortal enemy of Mankind. Others claim Config Zero is nothing short of an angel of the Lord, substituting the Old Ones for the Creator. Of course, the existence of the ‘Old Ones’ has never been definitively proven, but there is compelling evidence that something is “Out There.’
So who or what is Config Zero? Who or what is Symborg in reality? Are they part of the same phenomena? It’s a matter of documented fact that human beings created ANAD in the 2060s. If Symborg is an evolved descendant of that original autonomous nanoscale assembler/disassembler, then is a very real sense, Man created Symborg.
But if ANAD’s programming came in part from something dug out of the ground by Dr. Irwin Frost at Engebbe, and that something came from extraterrestrials that today we call the Old Ones, then who really created who?
There’s a logical time bomb ticking away at the heart of our relationship with ANAD technology, a technology that has become so much a part of our lives today, at the dawn of the 22nd Century.
Man created ANAD. And now it appears increasingly likely that ancestors of ANAD created Man.
Is the arrival of Symborg in our midst nothing more than the equivalent of an infant child discovering the infinite pleasures of looking in a mirror?
SOLNET Special Report Ends
U.N. Quantum Corps Base
Table Top Mountain,
Idaho, USA
January 19, 2111
It was Luis Principal, quantum engineer with 1st ANAD Battalion at Table Top, who had the idea first.
For weeks, engineers and technicians had been studying the captured remnant bots collected from Symborg with a fierce determination to find something…anything…they could use to interfere with the swarm’s config engine, something they could use to discredit the robotic Messiah and slow the spread of Assimilationism. Farside Labs had concocted something they were calling a disentangler, but the device was still unproven in tactical situations and there were only a few experimental setups. If it worked, the disentangler might screw up Symborg’s link with Config Zero. But Symborg himself would remain.
And besides, whoever said the geniuses at Farside had a monopoly on good ideas.
“Somehow, we need some kind of Trojan horse,” Principal theorized one afternoon at the commissary adjacent to Containment, slurping a coffee with a few colleagues. “Our own immune system has the answer, if we just ask the right question. Think about it: how does an antigen work? It’s a molecule that induces a response from the immune system. But there are viruses, like HIV, that work against this…they block the response by fooling or infecting the immune system. They interfere with antigens. We can do the same thing with Symborg.”
“Luis—“ said Khalid Shaheen, an engineer with the Containment lab, “you’ve had too much of that coffee…it’s fried what’s left of your brain.”
“No really, I’ve been thinking…come with me to the Lab…I’ll show you what I’ve been working on.”
Principal showed Shaheen and several others the basics of a new device he’d spent the afternoon cobbling together, something he called a fold-blocker.
“I took a basic histo-compatibility antigen design and just sort of tweaked it. Look here—“ he showed the gathering a design on his tablet screen. “Add these groups here, move these, get rid of these—“ Principal highlighted the steps he had taken. “Pretty soon, you’ve got something that can block the replication cycle of any nanobotic device…it can’t fold along these cleavage lines.”
Principal watched as the techs took turns re-designing his design, but in the end nobody could find anything wrong with it, any reason why it wouldn’t work.
“All we have to do is insert this device into the master assembler of any swarm and, once it’s attached here, the bugger can’t replicate anymore. Presto, end of swarm.”
“It’s just like a Trojan horse,” somebody observed.
Over the next day and a half, the techs of 1st ANAD Battalion took turns trying to find ways to get around Principal’s Trojan horse, but nobody could. They practiced with the device in sims and wargames until everyone was satisfied it was tactically do-able, that they had a viable technique and a viable device to run a field op with.
Then Principal took the idea to CINCQUANT himself.
Johnny Winger listened and watched the sims and animations, studied the designs and the game results, and finally asked one question.
“How soon can you make this gizmo field-ready?”
The next few days saw Table Top buzzing with activity. A new mission had to be tasked and a new detachment formed to take the fold-blocker and make the insertion. The question was: where exactly was the real Symborg master? Winger gave that question to Q2, the intelligence shop at the base.
“Most appearances by Symborg are made with copies of the bot master,” Winger told Major Langley, the Q2 chief one afternoon in his office. Beyond Winger’s head, the office windows framed a snow-capped Buffalo range several miles beyond the mesa that was Table Top. “Your job, Major, is to find me the location of the master assembler and keep it under surveillance long enough for my detachment to approach and make the insert. We’ll have one shot at this and it’s got to work.”
“We’ve got agents, drones and spybots all over the place, General,” Langley told him. “Anywhere Assimilationists gather, we’ve got eyes and ears. Some places, my guys look like flies. Other places, my guys look like dust motes, even rain drops. As soon as we can pin down the precise signature of the master, its EM, acoustic, and thermal signature, we’ll have him cornered. Give me two days, sir and I can tell you when Symborg farts and burps.”
“Just his location will do, Major.”
Winger dismissed the Q2 chief and sent word for another officer to be shown in. Presently, a slender, wiry, nearly balding O-2 showed up at Winger’s door.
His name was Lieutenant Justin Cannon and he was a platoon commander in 1st ANAD. Cannon came in and saluted, standing rigidly at attention.
Wi
nger got up and came around to sit on the corner of his desk. “At ease, Lieutenant. I’ve got a little job I’d like you to do for us.”
Johnny Winger and the Great Rift Zone Page 43