anything out of this--"
"I'm trying, Doc." Winger glared at the imager, flexed his fingers around the hand controllers. He let ANAD finish changing config, noting that all the other trillion mechs slaved to the master had done likewise, then maneuvered the device into the lee of a dendritic 'breakwater'…sniffing for calcium, sodium, anything it could follow, grabbing molecules left and right, until at last, Winger cracked the barest hint of a smile. Deep inside the unconscious brain of Theo Souvranamh, the Autonomous Nanoscale Assembler/Disassembler blazed away at incredible speed, spasmodically sorting and advancing along the barest whiff of a chemical highway.
Seconds later, a green light illuminated alongside the screen. The sparky haze began to part--ANAD sent back a signal indicating readiness--
Start Trace Matching….
Jiang Hao Bei's face hardens. "What happened at Pharmex? You were supposed to have stopped them--"
Hands twitch nervously, kneading fingers so tightly they hurt. "You don't understand…there were factors beyond my control…Quantum Corps--
Jiang interrupts with a wave of his hand. His face has changed again…morphed into something hard and impassive, an angry clown. Was it the light…or maybe the nanoderm patches again?
"This is no good." The undulations on his cheeks and forehead seem to settle down, taking on a new firmness. He frowns. "With one of our HNRIV mechs, they’ll surely develop countermeasures."
"But it'll take some time--"
Now Jiang is visibly angry. His face kneads itself into a hard fist. His cheeks bulge slightly, a lion with a fresh kill in his mouth.
"They're not stupid, Theo. Don't make that mistake. You've made enough already." His cheeks then return to normal planes, sleek and alabaster. "HNRIV must be allowed to develop and expand globally. The Project depends on it."
"Maybe if I knew more about--"
But he isn't listening. "You're being well-paid for your services. Yet you continue to fail us."
"I can't work miracles."
"Leave the miracles to us. Just do your part." His voice deepens, combining new frequencies, new tones, now multiple echoes overlapping. "You must sabotage any more efforts to develop countermeasures. ANAD must not be allowed to interfere with the Project. This is a critical time now."
A hot flash of nerves. Throat constriction….
"That's not the agreement…I only agreed to provide intelligence, not sabotage. It's too dangerous--"
"Your mission is changed…as of now. You'll be--"
Johnny Winger tweaked ANAD again, but the trace was gone.
"What happened?" Kincade asked. He was growing more and more annoyed with this harebrained stunt.
"ANAD lost the trail, sir," Winger said. "I'm trying to get it back now…"
Frost changed ANAD's config slightly. "I'll see if dropping a radical off this arm helps--"
Lofton was thoughtful. "Gentlemen, unless I’m mistaken, that was Jiang Hao Bei, the UN Security Affairs Commissioner.”
Kraft was uneasy with the whole technique. "Even in the Corps, a man accused has a right to counsel."
"It won't help," Lofton told him. "Jiang’s just admitted working with Red Hammer, giving payment to sabotage ANAD. Tight with a known neurotraficante like Souvranamh…this is big.”
"Admitted under duress," Kraft reminded him.
"This is huge…but now is not the time to be splitting legal hairs," Kincade told them. "If what we're seeing is half of what really happened, we’re in a mountain of trouble. Dr. Frost, just how reliable is this stunt? How do you know this isn't something out of the man's imagination?"
"That would take some explaining, General, but the basic answer is in the details of the glutamate molecule, and the trail it lays down. There are subtle differences when the long-term potentiation is activated from direct sensory input--from external events, as it were--and when it's internally generated. We've tuned ANAD pretty finely to be able to detect the differences."
Kincade gave that some thought. "How much further can you go with this? Can you reconstruct everything?"
Frost shrugged. "Practically speaking, no. The more convoluted the traces become--the more they become abstracted into higher levels of the brain--the harder it is to follow them. There's a practical limit on the concentrations of glutamate that ANAD can follow. Usually memory traces older than a few weeks are pretty much impossible to follow consistently. And there is the matter of damage as well."
"Damage? What kind of damage?"
Frost wanted to be precise in what he said. "Every time ANAD follows a trail of glutamate molecules, he slightly damages the molecules in the process of examining them. We call it a fragmentation trail. The subject's memories are slightly altered with each probe."
"So this can't be done accurately again, after this probe?"
Frost nodded imperceptibly, admitting the truth of what the General was saying. "Let's say the accuracy of the reconstruction suffers with each 'reading' of the trail."
Major Lofton was anxious to continue the exam. "General, every bit of evidence helps the investigation. May I remind the General that this man holds information vital to defeating the HNRIV infestation that's sweeping the world. Now is not the time to be squeamish--begging the General's pardon--about molecule fragments. And now we have evidence that UNSAC himself is involved. How high does this go? Can anybody in Paris be trusted now?”
Kincade glared at Lofton as if he were some kind of slug to be stepped on. "I agree with the Major. Continue the exam."
ANAD sniffed for the better part of three hours. When Frost became convinced that Souvranamh’s hippocampal tissues were scrambled enough to prevent any further accurate readings, Kincade ordered the examination terminated.
Lofton and the General reviewed the record of what ANAD had found so far. The latest readings had been the most revealing.
Kincade scanned the transcripts. "Jiang Hao Bei was originally suborned into Red Hammer two years ago--"
Lofton agreed. "Maybe we should take this CINCQUANT…maybe even the Secretary-General."
Kincade clicked through the record on his reader, tapping the screen for emphasis. "This is too big for us here at Table Top. Somehow, we’ll have to get Internal Security on the case, without UNSAC knowing.”
Lofton agreed. “Does Quantum Corps even have jurisdiction in something like this? How about immunity for UNSAC…I’m not so sure he can even be investigated by us…he’s at the top of the food chain.”
Kraft pointed out something else. “All these recordings point to some place in Hong Kong…Souvranamh keeps mentioning some place called ‘Lions Rock’. Any idea or intel on what or where that is?”
Dr. Frost was reviewing the same readings on his own device. "General, I'm still not quite sure what to make of these fragments…the ones listed 0011 through 0023 in the file."
Kincade and Lofton scanned the snatches quickly. Kincade's face was a big question mark.
“Kraft, looks like you’d better get a mission together to find out about this Lions Rock. We’ll have to tiptoe through this minefield, now that we have evidence that UNSAC may be involved with Red Hammer. Put together some names and a TOE and I’ll get a tasking order out of CINCQUANT somehow.”
Kraft had no need to hear the rest. "I'm on my way to Ops, General. First Nano's got a hell of a lot of planning and packing to do. I'm calling this mission Delta Helix."
While Kraft made plans for the deployment to Hong Kong, Winger finished safing ANAD.
“I have to make sure he’s stable,” Winger said. “He’s been through a lot lately…I’ll check his core program against the template, every config, line for line if I have to. And cycle all effectors and probes…I want to make sure everything works like it’s supposed to.”
“You do that,” Kraft told him. “You’re going to need ANAD hale and hearty and fully functional where you’re going.”
“Lions Rock”
Hong Kong, Special Autonomous Region
People's Republic of China
October 15, 2048
5:00 pm
ANAD Detachment Alpha hyperjetted into Hong Kong's Chek Lap Kok Airport just at sundown, circling the harbor several times to set up a proper approach. The bejeweled panoply of night time Hong Kong lay before them…Victoria Peak lit up like a Christmas tree, the ancient Star Ferry plying the harbor like some glittering sea serpent.
Johnny Winger directed off-loading of their mission gear onto trucks supplied by Quantum Corps' eastern base in Singapore, then the support unit headed out from the airport, eventually winding up in a maze of narrow streets outside the old walled confines of Kowloon City. An Eastern Command lifter shadowed them overhead, providing eyes and top cover in case any nasties showed up. The Detachment would approach the target from the air.
Q2 had done their homework in the preceding days, using surveillance, signals and paid informants to finally locate the Lions Rock complex on a craggy hilltop overlooking the ancient City.
The recon mission was to be a covert one, using specially configured swarms of ANADs, controlled from a lifter parked surreptitiously at the top of Shih Ho Mountain, just outside Kowloon City. The purpose of the mission was to grab a few late-model Red Hammer mechs and gather all-spectrum intelligence on current Red Hammer operations. Full-scale assault on the complex was deemed too risky by CINCQUANT; Red Hammer had protection from corrupt but high-ranking military officers in the People’s Liberation Army