Chapter 5
“INDRA”
Paryang Valley
Tibet, Peoples Republic of China
December 5, 2049
0130 hours
Now underway, Gopher surged forward, crawling along the riverbank and into the mine shaft opening. Right behind her, Mole followed like a huge caterpillar. The second geoplane was piloted by Hoyt Gibbs.
The two vehicles trundled out of view, their movements well concealed in the maelstrom of dust, heading deeper into the ruby mine, down a narrow side branch that had been widened just enough to accommodate them.
Outside, the squadron of lifters leaped into the sky and wheeled about in formation, heading up and away from Puranpur and its clear, cold, foaming mountain river and its ancient monastery, heading back to waiting hyperjets at Singapore base.
“Here’s the end of the mine shaft,” Nicole Simonet announced. She indicated the profile on Gopher’s acoustic sounder. “Solid rock dead ahead.”
“Borer on line?” Mighty Mite Barnes asked.
“Up and swarming. All parameters normal. ANAD reporting ready in all respects.”
Barnes took a deep breath. The two geoplanes were about to commit to the underground phase of the assault. She glanced over at her co-pilot; both of them exchanged knowing looks. They both understood the risks they were about to take.
“Let’s do it,” Barnes ordered.
One compartment behind them, Sergeant Mary Swanson was nervously stroking a handful of amulets and talismans, clinking them in a staccato rhythm. The Sensors and Surveillance tech (SS1) mumbled incantations in her native Ibo dialect, imploring the spirits of earth to watch over the small assault force.
Vance Jung, the geotech, was annoyed. “Mary, you’re going to wear the finish right off those trinkets. Give it a rest, how about it? You’re driving us all nuts with all that witch doctor stuff.”
Swanson never opened her eyes, only muttering, “The spirits of earth are unhappy. Many rumblings…kipwesi sends fire…I try to calm them.”
“Yeah? Well those spirits aren’t the only ones unhappy. Stuff those beads before I stuff them down your throat.”
Mike Bodle was right behind them, scrolling a copy of the Bhagavad Gita on his wristpad monitor. “Joey’s right…it can’t hurt to placate the spirits. We’re in their world now…Vishnu is angry…I sense it too. There are forces about us that we don’t understand.”
Jung was about to reply but all talk ceased aboard Gopher’s C deck, as the high wail of nanobotic activity came through the hull. At the same moment, the geoplane slowed noticeably and a pronounced shudder rolled through the hull.
“That’s it, then,” said Mighty Mite Barnes. She forced herself to remain calm, eyeing the hull frames warily. “We’re headed below ground.” The whole of C deck suddenly fell quiet.
An unmistakable creaking could be heard as the borer bit into the hard rock and Gopher angled down into the earth.
The assault plan called for Gopher to take the lead position in boring and Mole to follow behind. The first twenty hours of boring took the two geoplanes down from the Puranpur ruby mine into hard basaltic rock layers, to an ultimate depth of one thousand meters below the surface. Seismic charts had indicated a broad layer of the black volcanic rock underlay most of India’s Uttar Pradesh state and gave the geoplanes a solid structure to tunnel through for nearly a hundred kilometers north.
Somewhere inside the Nepalese border, a few kilometers southwest of the Namse Pass, the geos had determined that the basaltic layer thinned out, abutting inclusions of quartzite and shale, with magma channels embedded in the rock.
It was this transition zone, a subduction zone according to the geos, that posed the greatest risk to transit by the geoplanes. The entire region was crisscrossed with fragile lava tubes and fracture faults in the rock, evidence (said the analysis) of billions of years of strain brought on by the collision of the Indian and Asian tectonic plates.
It was there that Gopher and Mole would have to slow down and sound carefully ahead, taking extreme care not to let their borers loosen too much rock.
Even the slightest weakening could lead to a complete rupture and a cascade of rock plates shifting.
Mighty Mite Barnes had no wish to tempt Fate again.
“Borer on line at nearly one hundred percent,” Sergeant Al Glance reported. Glance was BOP1, the borer operator. “We’re chewing through this rock like it was butter…a blistering three kilometers an hour.”
Barnes acknowledged the report. “Tread system status?”
Simonet checked the drive. “Tread drive engaged and operating fine…no anomalies.”
“Clear sailing from here,” Barnes said. Only the slightest vibration from the treads came through Gopher’s hull. “Anything from Mole?” Their sister geoplane was trundling along several hundred meters behind, following in the same tunnel already bored out by Gopher.
“Mole reported all systems on line and nominal, at last check-in.” Mission rules required a comm check and status report every hour between the two geoplanes. “In fact, Gibby requested permission to max out their borer and speed up a little. He says his crew’s getting antsy.”
Barnes snorted. “Tell them to take some pills. I can’t exceed the recommended boring speed…the bots can’t remove debris any faster. We’d just wind up spinning our treads for no reason.”
They both fell silent for a few minutes. Barnes eyed the densitometer on the main panel. It read fourteen hundred meters, nearly a kilometer and a half below the surface. According to the profiler, Gopher was traversing layers of extremely hard igneous rock, richly veined with inclusions of iron and magnesium. The layers formed a dense mass of some of the hardest rock on earth, in a zone of tremendous pressure caused by the northward movement of the Indian Ocean plate against the Asian plate, a zone of grinding force and constant shifting and slipping.
It was also a zone of near constant seismic activity.
Gopher and Mole plowed ahead for hours, making steady progress along the first leg of their course. Four hours after the two geoplanes had entered the abandoned ruby mine, Barnes announced a new navigation hack off the quantum coupler signal coming from Singapore base.
“We’re across the border now,” she reported. “Or rather underneath it. Inside Nepal…and on course. Closest town is Silgarhi, fifteen kilometers ahead and fifteen hundred meters above us.”
Barnes yawned and stretched. To her driver/system operator Nicole Simonet, she said, “Take over, will you? I’m heading aft to see what’s in the Stores lockers. When’s our first turn?”
“At Namse Pass…seven hours and twenty minutes away, if we stay on course at this speed. Profiler says we’ve got hard basalt all the way.”
“Good for tunneling,” Barnes said as she ducked down through the access tube. “You want anything from the fridge?”
“Negative. Just get back up here as soon as you can, Sergeant. I like having extra eyes on the densitometer and the profiler. We may yet have to slam on the brakes before we get to the target… maybe alter course.”
“Maybe I’ve got more faith in ANAD than you. If there are any voids or faults out there, the borer bots are programmed to stop boring immediately. We’ve got fail-safe cutoffs this time.”
“Maybe,” said Barnes, “but ANAD’s been just ornery enough lately to make me feel a little uneasy. And as we get closer to this Config Zero thing—“ She shrugged and headed aft for a little refreshment.
Half an hour later, Barnes was back on B deck. Jung announced their current position.
“Heading change at Namse Pass in one hour and twelve minutes. Course is plotted and laid in.”
It was a sobering realization that Barnes had next. “That means we’ll be in Chinese territory in about three hours…or rather, under it.”
“Injun country,” agreed Jung.
Their part of Operation Himalaya Strike was about to enter its
final approach phase.
The heading change came off without a glitch. Gopher tunneled ahead on a course of zero seven five degrees, heading north by northeast through hard igneous rock layers, at an average depth of two thousand meters.
After the course change, the geoplanes would traverse a dense inclusion of extremely hard basaltic rock directly below the rugged Valley of Flowers, a region of steep ravines and snow-capped peaks dotted with monasteries, tent camps and goat herds, a land roamed by hardy Nepalese and Tibetan peasants for centuries. Once they crossed the sere and desolate borderland of Tibet, the approach course took them in a straight line across the foothills of the Gangdise Shan range directly under the Paryang valley, some ninety kilometers inside Chinese territory.
The stratigraphic and topo maps all indicated the same underground terrain for Gopher’s borer to chew through: amorphous basaltic lava smashed northward and compressed over hundreds of millions of years along the margins of the great Australian and Eurasian plates. Extremely hard and dense, composed of a geochemical stew of magnesium and calcium oxides, the rock layers made perfect tunneling material, save for the fault and fracture zones, which were unstable enough to try and avoid.
Forty hours after making the course change at Namse Pass, Nicole Simonet took a navigation hack off the quantum signal grid broadcast by Singapore base and announced her findings.
“Paryang valley dead ahead, Sergeant. Ten kilometers and some change.”
Mighty Mite Barnes had been drifting in and out of a light doze in her commander’s seat, sporadically field-stripping and cleaning a small coilgun on a drop cloth in her lap. She startled awake at Simonet’s announcement.
“Show me,” she said, wiping sleep from her eyes.
Simonet pointed to the profiler. It showed a simulated elevation view of the rock layers surrounding the geoplanes overlaid on a live, high-resolution sat image of the terrain seen from space. Gopher’s position was indicated with a flashing star, Mole scant meters behind her.
“We’re here—“she pointed with her finger. She scrolled the view more to the northeast. A dun-colored grid of low buildings came into view, their roofs bright with recent snowfall. “That’s the monastery at Paryang valley, dead center of all the entanglement waves that Q2 triangulated. Red Hammer Incorporated. I make the distance at about ten kilometers.”
Barnes nodded. “Alert the crew. Sound battle stations, too. Let’s start ascending. Take us up to about two hundred meters. Rock layers?”
Vance Jung checked the stratigraphy maps. “Pyroxene and feldspar, mostly. Same stuff ANAD’s been boring though for the last six hours. There is a small fracture in one plate…looks harmless enough.”
“Give it a wide berth,” Barnes ordered. “I don’t want any tremors now...at least, not until we’re in place and ready.”
The DSO complied and steered the geoplane upward toward the surface. B deck inclined ever so slightly, while Barnes made the announcement to the crew over the CMQ.
“This is CC1…listen up…we’re ten kilometers from our surface objective. We’re going to full battle stations on my command…button up your tin cans and load up your weapons. We’ll be at the jump-off point in two hours and ten minutes.” She sounded the alarm klaxon, which echoed through Gopher’s hull…three sharp blasts on the horn. Once in position, Barnes knew the two geoplanes would then await the go signal from Johnny Winger, who would hopefully have already penetrated the monastery compound from above.
Soon, bodies were stirring and scurrying through all seven decks.
“Come on!” yelled the DPS, Mike Bodle. “Get your fat asses in gear! We’ve got atomic butt to kick!”
“Small is all!” someone yelled from inside the access tube.
“I can’t wait to get the hell out of this big friggin’ metal condom!” shouted Mary Swanson, the Sensors tech as she snapped down her hypersuit helmet.
“Yeah, Sarge…we’ll squirt you out like you know what—hey! Gimme another MOB canister…I’m going in with everything I can hang on this tin can.”
The next phase of the mission would be the riskiest. Once the geoplanes had reached the jump-off point, near the surface and several kilometers from Paryang valley, Barnes would command the borer to cease operation. From this point, ANAD would be re-configged and commanded to exit the hull and form a protective barrier around Gopher, in an attempt to shield the assault team from what would come next. Mole would do likewise.
When everything was in readiness, the mission plan called for ANAD to bore a series of small pilot tunnels radiating out from the jump-off point, in an attempt to generate a severe earthquake at a tectonic focal point that had been identified near the base. If calculations made by SOFIE and the geos were correct, the energy from this artificially induced tremor would nearly destroy the Red Hammer installation and every other standing structure inside Paryang valley.
The trick was to place Gopher, Mole and the assault teams where the seismic shock waves wouldn’t also destroy the geoplanes. If the network of fracture zones and the pilot holes worked as calculated, a series of tremors up to magnitude 8.5 could be expected to roll through the valley.
And all of this was contingent on signals from Johnny Winger inside Paryang that the INDRA virus was in place and ready to launch.
Barnes had no intention of letting Gopher be trapped in any sliding rock layers when that happened. In fact, contrary to the mission plan, she had already decided to order the surfacing of both geoplanes completely and try to ride out the tremors hunkered down somewhere in the snow-covered valley overnight.
“Approaching the surface now…” the DSO reported. Gopher’s deck had angled upward sharply. “Sixty meters…now, fifty meters—“
Barnes checked the time. “It’s just after midnight topside. According to the maps and sat views, we should be coming up in a ravine about ten kilometers southwest of Paryang valley.”
Moments later, the geoplane lurched forward and her forward speed suddenly dropped off.
“Surfacing…!” Simonet said.
“All stop…secure the borer, secure the tread drive. All ANAD to containment—“ Barnes turned to the flickering swarm hovering in a corner of the command deck. “That means you, too, pal.”
***ANAD requests permission to remain outside of containment…the tactical situation requires rapid response--***
Barnes had to admit the tiny assembler had a point. “Okay, ANAD, you win. But stay out of the way.”