Chapter 4
“The Coethi”
Aboard UNISPACE Submersible Trident
Europa Coordinate System: Lat. 25N, Long 72W
Stationkeeping 500 meters from the Keeper
December 14, 2050 (Earth U.T.)
“But the Lord sent a large fish that swallowed Jonah; and he remained in the belly of the fish three days and three nights;
“From the belly of the fish Jonah said his prayer to the Lord, his God,
“Then the Lord commanded the fish to spew Jonah upon the shore.”
Jonah 2:1-11
Johnny Winger stood with Al Glance in the airlock on Trident’s G deck and looked back at Francisco Stella through the porthole.
“All right, Captain…it’s time. Cycle the airlock.”
Stella’s leathery face appeared in the porthole, staring back at them. His voice was scratchy over the speaker. “Once you’re all clear of the ship, I’m backing Trident off at least two kilometers.”
“Understood,” said Winger grimly. “Just leave a light on for us.”
Winger and Spivey cycled out in their hypersuits and waited for Mighty Mite Barnes and Al Glance to exit the airlock after them. The egress of the nanotroopers went smoothly enough.
“Once more…into the drink,” said Barnes. She drifted several meters away like a pregnant whale in her hypersuit while Spivey took soundings.
“Boundary effects four hundred meters ahead, bearing zero five five…EMs, high thermals, normal atom-grabbing.”
“That’s our baby,” Winger said. He ordered the squad to form up on his lead, and move out at half-propulsor. The troopers jetted off into the murk.
Along with Doc II, now safely ensconced in Winger’s belt capsule, the squad was equipped with barebones ANAD masters, and the usual HERF and mag weapons. Al Glance watched the faint outlines of the sonar returns on his eyepiece with growing dread. It wasn’t smart to tickle the dragon’s tail too many times. Not smart at all. Beyond his helmet, the ocean was a black featureless void. He squashed a faint memory of being locked in a dark closet as a child.
Not going down that road, he told himself. No, sirreee. Not going that way. He tried thinking of something more pleasant, like imagining Barnes completely naked, muscles rippling with sweat, hot breath hovering in his face….now there was an image he could work with.
“Two hundred meters--” came Spivey’s voice over the crewnet.
A faint, almost invisible sparkling could be seen dead ahead.
“Slow to one-quarter,” said Winger. He chopped his jets. “No sense triggering anything we don’t have to.”
Winger studied the soundings. Normal EM effects, normal thermals. EUROTOP was simply drifting like the huge cloud of bots that it was, holding position, maintaining swarm integrity.
The squad closed the final hundred meters and found themselves enveloped in a storm of ‘fireflies’, right at the edge of the swarm.
“Halt and hold here,” Winger commanded. “Launch ANAD…let’s get some shielding up. Mite, you and Spivey power up HERF. Be ready to slam ‘em if I give the word.”
“Roger that, Skipper,” the DPS techs replied in unison.
The EUROTOP bots weren’t long in coming after them. Intruders always provoked the edge bots to swarm like bees.
Winger pressed a few buttons on his wristpad, cycling open his belt capsule port. “Okay, Doc, let’s see what you can do. Let’s see if Mighty Mite’s slam and grab trick works.” He felt the sting of the bot master exiting the capsule and saw immediately the growing flickering sphere of max rate replication, as the Doc II master built mass as fast as it could. Seconds later, the first EUROTOP bots had surrounded the swelling Doc II swarm and the battle was joined.
“I’m going small,” Winger announced. “Keep those bugs off me, will you?”
“Got it, Skipper,” said Spivey.
A few meters away, Barnes had already let fly a volley of HERF fire. The dull thud of the rf blast heated the ocean to a froth and blast waves momentarily turned the ocean into a turbulent maelstrom.
Winger reconfigged himself, exited his own hypersuit through a small port and dived headlong into the world of atoms and molecules and found himself tacking his way along through furious gusts of Brownian motion, until he sounded ahead and found himself face to face with a whole army of spinning EUROTOP bots, stretching as far as he could see in every direction. It was like flying over a field of cornstalks at five meters altitude.
Here goes, he muttered to himself.
The field of bots came up fast. Winger jetted forward until his soundings could begin to discern the structure of the enemy…there they were: barbells festooned with effectors, writhing and churning in ceaseless motion. Somewhere in there along the waist was the seam Mighty Mite had found in the captured bot in Trident’s lab, a seam where, if you were quick enough, you could grab and hold the bot while you stung the bastard with your own disrupters.
Okay, Doc, let’s see if real life is like the lab. Bond disrupters to full charge, carbene grabbers out full, approach on this vector—
He drove on until the first line of bots was less than ten seconds away. Mighty Mite calls this trick a slam and grab…open wide, bugs…here comes the slam….
Winger triggered the bond disrupter and instantly, a trillion replicant bots duplicated the maneuver. The water flashed and sizzled with electron volts as the disrupters discharged.
At the same moment, Winger commanded full propulsor, sounding quickly to find that seam before EUROTOP could recover. He closed on the nearest bot, jostled and buffeted in the leftover turbulence of the disrupter blast and flexed his grabbers, feeling his way through the bot’s outer shielding of phosphates and sugar molecules. It was like diving headlong into a pit of beachballs.
There! Gotcha! He found the seam right where Mighty Mite said it would be. It was a ring of carbons and Winger piled into the middle of the atom ring and snapped the grabbers shut, holding on for dear life while the bot thrashed and bucked like a stubborn colt. Winger commanded his lateral disrupters around to zap the bug again and again, each time pinching off a cloud of atom fragments, spinning off into the distance.
Zap and hold on. Zap and hold on. Pinch and pull some more, then zap and hold on. That was the essence of the tactic. Somewhere beyond his imaging, a few trillion more bots were doing the same thing.
Must look like a sock hop at the high school, he imagined. He clung precariously to his grasp, while the EUROTOP bot flexed and folded, tried to collapse, and zap right back. Gradually, he was able to wear the bot down, pulling effectors left and right, until after a minute, the thing could only quiver and vibrate.
One last zap blew the whole stack and the bot disintegrated into a cloud of electrons spinning off into the distance, sparking and flashing like dying fireflies.
“I’m in!” Winger exulted over the crewnet. “Just like you said, Mite. Slam and grab. It’s like breaking a horse. You just have to sting the bejeezus out of it and hold on, keep zapping it and dismember the effectors one after another. Then it goes poof and it’s gone—“
Barnes’ voice crackled over the crewnet. She was a few tens of meters away, outside the boundary layer of bots, which were even now disintegrating before her eyes.
“Good show, Skipper…I knew it would work! Slam atoms and go for the throat, that’s what I say.”
Winger commanded all stop. “Better take our bearings here…see what’s what.”
It had been almost too easy.
“Now sounding ahead…detecting disturbance on bearing zero six eight…pinging now, pinging now…some kind of flow effects.”
Winger checked his imager. It looked like a small vortex, a series of vortices, lined up like fence posts, maybe twenty or thirty meters ahead. Some kind of low-pressure zone, like a sink.
How the hell can there be a sink down here?
“Vortex ahead,??
? Winger said. “We’d better investigate—“ He told Barnes, Spivey and Glance what was happening. “We’re going to approach on a tangent to this vortex…should take about half an hour. I’m not sounding any more defensive lines in between.” Winger decided to go macro and come back to the world of large objects. The dizziness lasted a few seconds. Nanotroopers called it ‘climbing the waterfall.’ He re-entered the capture port of his own hypersuit and slammed atoms to build out structure, looking vaguely human in seconds.
“Be careful, Skipper,” came Glance’s voice. “I can still sound you faintly but your image is fading. Don’t know if that’s some kind of weird quantum effect or not. Just remember where you are…don’t get too frisky in there.”
“You don’t have to worry about that,” Winger said. They were losing comm fast. Glance’s voice was fading, scratchy, some kind of interference blocking the signal. He was acutely aware that EUROTOP could spit them out in a quantum ‘belch’ anytime it wanted to. Then, just like that, comm was gone. The crewnet went quiet.
For some reason, everything seemed quiet. Too quiet.
“Okay, Doc…let’s see what this vortex is all about.”
The trip toward the line of whirlpools took half an hour.