***Approaching target structures now…fifteen thousand nanometers…slowing to one-quarter propulsor…I have my pyridines and fullerenes at full extension…arming bond disrupters***
“Good idea,” Winger said. “These bots may be a little ticklish.”
For the next half hour, the Doc II swarm probed and prodded and sniffed the captured bots from Lieutenant Freeman. Reams of data on bond angles and energies flooded back into the shop computer. Winger, Spivey, and Barnes studied the structures and layout of the bots with growing interest…and a sense of unease. It was clear that the bots which made up Lieutenant Freeman were several generations ahead of anything ANAD or Doc II could offer. Winger wondered how his own configs and bots compared and didn’t like the uneasy feeling that followed.
“Where did this stuff come from?” he wondered. “Quantum Corps has always been on the cutting edge of nanobotic technology. But I’m seeing effectors and architecture no one ever dreamed of before. How long has UNISPACE employed angels like Freeman…I need to have another talk with Stella. Spite, you may have just pinched us a piece of Config Zero itself…or something close.”
Spivey shook his head at the imager and all the data they had gathered. “What we don’t know is what’s inside that processor, Skipper. That’s where the real magic is.”
Winger had decided to pay Stella a courtesy call and have a little commander to commander chat. “Keep this under wraps. Both of you. I’m not sure what to make of this Lieutenant Freeman…the bots have capabilities that seem to be a lot more than any angel needs, even a damn good angel. It’s like the Lieutenant is designed for something a little bigger than just UNISPACE cycler ship duty.”
“Will do, Skipper,” Barnes and Spivey said in unison.
Winger left the shop and made his way back down the gangway toward the berthing spaces on C deck, hanging on to side rails as Trident lurched again. The angle on the deck was still around twenty degrees. She was heading down into the ice, boring her way through Europa’s crust toward the subsurface ocean at a stately three kilometers per hour, according to the last update. A steady thrumming vibration could felt throughout the hull. Winger wanted to check on their position and status.
And question Stella a little further on this strange creature called Lieutenant Freeman.
For the next several hours, little changed aboard the sub. The Detachment had settled into their bunks for some shuteye, ordered by Winger, since once they made the ocean and got underway toward their target, there would be plenty to do, checking gear and reviewing tactics for the upcoming mission.
Winger decided to make his way forward to the command deck. He found Captain Stella there, studying surface maps of Europa and plotting their course once the sub emerged from the ice.
Stella looked up when Winger slipped into the right hand seat.
“Got any idea where we are?” Winger asked.
Stella nodded. “Still in the ice. Actually, I just did some soundings. Ice density’s falling off steadily. It looks like we’ll be coming to the bottom edge in a few hours. After that, we’re a true submarine. And we can get after that Chinese ship.”
Winger studied the charts for himself. “The mission plan calls for a three-day trip to the target coordinates.”
“Based on the most recent data, that sounds about right.” Stella pointed out the navigation waypoints. “We landed here…Minos Linea, the eastern terminus, according to this map. Best triangulated position for our objective is here, right below Rathmore Chaos, possibly at a depth of five hundred meters below the ice. The distance between the two is about a little more than three thousand kilometers. At a steady speed of thirty knots, that makes it about three days, give or take.”
Winger tried to imagine what they would be seeing. “I just hope the objective’s there when we get to those coordinates. If it’s like previous Spheres, it’s nothing but a big swarm anyway. What’s to keep it from dispersing and moving somewhere else?”
“We’ll find out soon enough,” Stella said.
“I ran into Lieutenant Freeman a few minutes ago. He was headed aft for some kind of maintenance inspection.”
Stella folded up his maps and studied his instruments, noting the ice density chart. “The Lieutenant can affect people different ways. It’s okay if you feel creepy about him. I still do, now and then. You, for some reason, I don’t—“
Winger watched the borer console, providing displays of swarm status at Trident’s front end borer lens, along with conditions in the tunnel they were sliding through. “I’ll take that as a compliment. Personally, I don’t trust Freeman, Captain. None of my troopers do. You said before you’d got solid background on the Lieutenant?”
Stella nodded. “Config CXT-209987 was assigned to this expedition by order of UNISPACE Headquarters. In fact, when I learned I was getting an angel for a second-in-command, I did do a little checking. The config was created at Copernicus Lab, on the moon, about a year ago. UNISPACE project. Went through the usual versions and updates. I even read the test reports. Freeman checks out as top notch, highly capable. He can handle all assigned duties aboard any of our ships, cyclers, landers, shuttles, you name it. His processor is state of the art, loaded with all the latest stuff. “Stella shrugged, settled back in his seat and closed his eyes, rubbing them. “Officially, I have no reason to complain. His fitness reports have been damn near a hundred per cent on everything. And as you can see, he holds structure pretty well…”
“Just don’t shake his hand,” Winger said. “Feels like rubberized dog poop.”
Stella laughed. “That’s one description I hadn’t heard. But I know what you mean. Is the botswarm that makes up Freeman a perfect likeness in every way? No…of course not. His skin feels like…er, dog poop, as you put it. His eyes are little flat…they don’t quite look at you so much as look through you. Like he can see inside you. And of course, when he walks, he can walk through objects if he’s not careful…the swarm just parts and refills on the other side. The first time I saw that…Julian Freeman walking right through the edge of a mess table on the old Galileo cycler, I nearly flipped. But that’s a stability and orientation issue, the engineers say. Freeman’s gotten better just since I met him. Did you know his configs and algorithms get regular updates? You and I can’t say that about ourselves, can we, Major?”
“Actually, I can.”
“Uh…right. Well, I try to be open-minded about this,” Stella went on. “Angels and botswarms are everywhere, on Earth and out here as well. We can create just about anything out of the bots. True, organics are still dicey, but when you’ve got a sim like Freeman, who cares? And we both know these angels are just going to get better and better, more and more lifelike. The way I hear it, there are angel spouses and lovers on Earth…don’t know how well that works yet. People will try anything…ANAD technology can assemble anything, disassemble anything, even resemble anything. They are the future, whether we like it or not.”
Winger shook his head. “That’s what I’m afraid of. And I still don’t trust your Lieutenant. Bots and angels are no longer predictable. They can be controlled and organized into entities that threaten everything. They’re not just bots anymore. Now they’re like plagues sweeping across whole countries… sure, we use ANAD technology everywhere now. But we’re no longer in control of it…if we ever were.”
Stella started to reply, but an insistent beep interrupted. “Fathometer sounding…it’s programmed to go off when ice density drops below a certain threshold.” Stella manipulated a small dial, then his fingers flew over a keyboard. “I’m cutting back the borer to half power…and dropping our track speed. Look at the plot…density’s dropping fast. The edge must be just ahead.”
The hum which had pervaded Trident for most of the past day now slackened to a muted vibration. Just as Stella dropped speed a little more, a shuddering lurch rattled through the ship’s hull and hi
gh-pitched scraping and squealing could be heard just outside.
“Going to forward vid—“Stella announced. The screen went from dark to crazy bouncing and careening, speckled with lights, then the luminescent globe of the borer lens materialized into view. Beyond the glare of the borer head, a deep black swelled into view.
“The ocean—“Winger said. “There it is.”
“Dead ahead…dropping tracks to one quarter. I’m shutting the borer down now.”
Trident scraped and bumped and ground against the last of ice as she slid down to the end of tunnel. There was a heavy shudder, then she was free and underway in the ocean.
The grinding tailed off. Stella worked his control board. “I’m securing the borer …starting up the hydrojets. MHD plant now on line. I’m bringing her around to target heading. Lieutenant Freeman to the command deck…Lieutenant Freeman to the command deck—“
The sub heeled slightly to starboard and settled onto her new course. A steady thrum emerged from the aft end of the boat as her jets engaged. Trident was now in her true element. Stella checked his instruments.
“Showing thirty meters below the ice surface. I’m setting us up for an operating depth of three hundred meters. Planing down now—“Her stern planes shifted and the sub nosed smoothly downward, heading deeper into Europa’s ocean of night.
“Next stop…the Sphere,” Winger muttered to himself. He stared out the forward portholes. Europa’s ocean was black as the darkest night. No light whatsoever. Nothing fluorescing or flashing, no shafts of sunlight here. It was like they had fallen into a black hole.
At the exact same moment that Captain Stella’s voice had sounded throughout the ship “—Lieutenant Freeman to the command deck, Lieutenant Freeman to the command deck—“, Mighty Mite Barnes had been lying in her bunk, trying to get a little shuteye, going over in her mind’s eye an idea she had been working on to re-design the ship’s ANAD containment system. It was a crazy idea, probably wouldn’t work anyway, but she couldn’t relax, couldn’t get any sleep, so she had gotten up and was headed toward the gangway hatch.
Maybe something to drink and munch on in the mess compartment would help. Plus it would get her away from that insane snoring of Ray Spivey. Jeez, CEC1 sounds like a herd of elephants in heat.
But before she could exit the crews’ berth on C deck into the gangway tunnel, a shadow had drifted by the hatch opening. Instinctively, she held back to let whoever it was pass by.
It turned out to be Lieutenant Freeman, the swarm angel, moving quickly aft.
When asked about the incident later, Trooper Barnes could never give a convincing reason for why she decided to follow the angel to wherever he was going. Instinct, maybe. Suspicion, for sure. Curiosity. All these were suggested as motives for what she had done.
Regardless, Barnes waited for a full five-second count, then slipped out into the gangway. Down at the end of the tunnel that ran through the center of Trident, giving access to all decks and compartments, she saw the back of Freeman’s head. He turned and slipped into the hatch for G deck.
Why’s he going that way, she wondered. Didn’t he hear Stella on the crewcomm? G deck was for Ingress/Egress. It contained the lockout chamber for crewmen to enter and leave the ship while she was underwater. Barnes instinctively headed down the gangway in the same direction. G deck also provided access to Trident’s tail pod, where equipment and controls were housed for buoyancy control, the hydrojets, the magnetohydrodynamic power plant and her stern plane and rudder systems.
Barnes crept down the gangway with a growing sense of unease. She could feel the ship settling down for cruise. Vibration was steady and she was leveling out at her cruise depth. The CQE1 didn’t want to think too much about that. The truth was they were thirty kilometers below the surface of this cracked billiard-ball of a world. They were well below the ice crust now and heading deeper into this subterranean ocean.
If anything went wrong here—
At G deck hatch, Barnes peered cautiously into the deck compartment. At first, she didn’t see anything, didn’t see Freeman, didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. She wasn’t even sure Detachment personnel were allowed down here. She certainly wasn’t familiar with any of the gear or systems on G deck.
She slipped through the hatch.
That’s when Quantum Sergeant Mighty Mite Barnes spotted Lieutenant Julian Freeman. Behind the starboard stern plane mount, Freeman…or whatever the hell he was…had lost a bit of structure, so that the swarm was no longer quite so human-like, more like a slightly misshapen funhouse mirror distortion of a human. The swarm had gathered around some gear mounted on the hull itself.
With a start, Barnes soon realized the gear which had attracted Freeman’s attention and efforts was a hull valve, part of the buoyancy control system. The valve assembly allowed water in and out of Trident’s trim and buoyancy tanks. The hull valves helped Trident stay in trim, and both ascend and descend.
From her memory of a distant briefing before they had left Phobos Station, Barnes recalled that the hull valves were fully exposed to the water. It was a critical system. The hull valves had to work. If they failed closed, Trident couldn’t expel water with her high-pressure air and ascend to the surface. If they failed open, the entire interior pressure hull, all spaces, would be exposed to water. A catastrophic flooding casualty could result…Captain Stella had been quite clear about that.
What the hell is he doing? Barnes wondered. She eased into the deck compartment and then it hit her.
Julian Freeman was letting some of his swarm bots infest the hull valve.
Her heart went into her mouth. She had to do something. She had to stop him.
Mighty Mite Barnes felt for the alarm panel by the hatch and stabbed the Master Alarm button. Instantly, a warning klaxon sounded throughout Trident, screeching and warbling through all decks.
Freeman turned around and spotted her. She saw that his hand was gone…or more accurately, had broken down into a cloud of bots. A steady stream was flowing off the stump at the end of his arm into the hull valve assembly.
There was only one thing she could do. All the HERF and mag weapons were locked in the armory on D deck, three levels away.
Mighty Mite slapped her shoulder capsule open and the embedded ANAD swarm inside was released. A small stream of bots, looking like a fine mist, flowed out, filling the hatch.
She shook her head just so and the quantum coupler circuit was open.
“Assume config eight…max reps…all effectors enabled—“ she commanded. Then she flipped open her wristpad viewer and went small, preparing to engage the Freeman swarm at the only scale where it mattered: nanoscale.
Marianne “Mighty Mite” Barnes went over the ‘waterfall’ and quickly found herself in a sleet of polygons and tetrahedrals. ANAD’s propulsors spun up to full power and she sounded ahead, hunting for the signatures she knew had to be there.
The only sure way to kill a swarm was with another swarm. She’d learned that on day one in nog school tactical class.
It was high time to kick the bejeezus out of this scumbag Freeman swarm.