Chapter 2
“The Briefing”
U.N. Quantum Corps
Table Top Mountain
January 2, 2049
0645 hours
For Major Jurgen Kraft, the commanding officer of 1st Nanospace Battalion, briefings at Table Top were always a royal pain in the ass. It wasn’t so much the formality and the time involved in ‘putting on a show’, as it was all the little things you had to do whenever the brass linked in from remote sites…the special details like side presentations to expand on certain points, enhanced video and animation, sim packages from SOFIE to help with decisions.
At least, nobody’s figured out how to do coffee and doughnuts over the Net yet, he told himself.
If anything, today’s briefing would be worse…half the command leadership of UNIFORCE was vidlinked in to the briefing theater. Whatever it was, it was big.
CINCQUANT himself, in the person of General Wolfus Linx was on one screen, linked in from Paris. The Commander in Chief was a bearded, fierce-eyed Teutonic warrior whose name carried the merest hint of ferocity barely contained. Linx had a withering glare that no amount of distance could dissipate.
Kraft involuntarily shuddered every time he glanced over at the screen.
Also linked in from UNIFORCE Headquarters on the Rue du Montaigne was Rene Camois, an Assistant Deputy to the Director General. Camois was to Kraft an unknown quantity, though he was highly enough placed to be obnoxious if he wanted to be. Camois was on hand to represent the office of the DG himself, and thus spoke with the absolute authority of the top commander. Even Linx had to defer to the DG.
One other vidlink completed the trio of screens that lined one wall of the briefing theater. His name was Hector del Compo, and from what Kraft had read of the précis’, del Compo was Valencian, said to be the chief inspector of the Ministry of Public Health in that landlocked South American country. Del Compo had data from some kind of environmental ‘disturbance’ in the upper Amazon River basin that was the official impetus for the briefing.
Assembled in the briefing theater along with the vidlinked participants were several others.
Lieutenant Johnny Winger, 1st Nanospace Company, the Battalion’s top code and stick man and for nearly a year now, Kraft’s personal project in building an effective commander for nanoscale combat operations. Winger was the wonder boy of the Corps, and Kraft took a perverse delight in both showing off his prize commander to the brass and roughly reminding the kid who was really in charge.
Also on hand was Lieutenant Dana Tallant,, 2nd Nanospace Company, and every bit the equal of Winger in raw ability, though she didn’t have Winger’s charisma or guts.
Kraft brought the briefing to order and acknowledged all the participants.
“Quantum Corps got tasking at 0430 hours this morning from CINCQUANT to convene a briefing for the purpose of determining what tripped BioShield yesterday. Shortly before noon local time in Valencia, BioShield Ops received several alerts from remote swarms patrolling the atmosphere over the Amazon Basin. The alerts indicated nanobotic activity over and above the lawful amount was occurring in northwest Valencia, some—“ here Kraft checked his notes—“ fifty kilometers upriver from the capital city of Afalamos. BioShield contacted the Valencian Ministry of Public Health and the Interior Ministry. Dr. Del Compo here led the first expedition to investigate. Doctor—“ Kraft yielded to the Valencian official.
Del Compo was a compact, dark-haired man, with steel-rim glasses. He consulted some notes off-screen.
“The results of our inspection were surprising,” del Compo noted. “I’m sending the compiled data now.” A new squirt off the satellite refreshed all screens and several plots and graphs materialized into view.
“BioShield data showed the center of this perturbation was in the vicinity of a small Indian village called Via Verde. The territory is along the Yemanha River in upper Valencia. This territory is home to a small tribe called Xotetli…or, I should say, was. The Xotetli were a protected tribe, basically Bronze Age forest-dwellers which our government was trying to protect from ranchers and loggers.”
General Linx cut in gruffly. “Doctor, BioShield has a mandate to search for airborne nanobotic mechanisms and that’s all. If BioShield was tripped, some kind of nanoscale mechanism was in play, replicating in the area.”
“I thought the same,” del Compo admitted. “When we arrived at the site, our investigators noticed right away a sort of aires toxico, a kind of bubble or zone of toxic air had developed. In and around Via Verde, the Xotetli tribe had all died, of asphyxiation. Scores of them. We did auto-autopsy on several and discovered the symptoms you see on your screens…hypercapnia, blue lips and cheeks, excessive concentrations of CO2 and other toxic gases in their blood and lungs.”
“Excuse me, Doctor…” It was Rene Camois. “You said the entire tribe had died?”
“We found no survivors. The air in and around the village and along the riverbanks for several kilometers up and downstream was composed of gases in the concentrations I have displayed here…as you can see, toxic levels of fluorine and chlorine, carbon dioxide and reduced levels of oxygen and nitrogen.”
“This doesn’t make any sense,” Kraft studied the data. “Normal air is seventy-eight percent nitrogen and twenty-one percent oxygen. This is all cock-eyed…are you sure your instruments are calibrated, Doctor?”
“Perfectly,” del Compo said. “The air even affected me and my inspectors. We had to vacate the area…it was too dangerous for us there. No, the data are real, gentlemen. There is a bubble or zone of toxic air over Via Verde and the surrounding jungle and it’s expanding outward. We’re not sure where the source is, though some evidence suggests it’s in or around a grotto of caves further upriver, a place called Sulpeda. We tried to go there but we couldn’t—“
Linx raised a bushy eyebrow. “You suspect what, exactly, Doctor…an illegal nanobotic reservoir?”
“Possibly, General. Whatever it is, it’s changing the air in that whole area, and every living thing, Xotetli Indians, jungle life, everything, is being affected. Mass casualties are piling up along the riverbanks. Several villages downstream have already reported floating corpses in the water.”
Linx checked with someone behind him and returned to the screen. “UNIFORCE confirms that atmospheric perturbations were detected in the area you’re talking about, Doctor. Satellite and aerial ‘bot inspection have characterized the phenomena as a ‘toxic cloud’ spreading outward from Via Verde, altering the composition of the atmosphere, breaking down ozone and other molecules. “So far, it’s said to be a relatively small scale event, but whatever it is, it’s resistant to nanobotic intervention to this point. BioShield has deployed enforcement nano into the area with no effect.”
“General,” asked Johnny Winger, “are we dealing with a natural outbreak or some kind of rogue ‘bots somebody let loose?”
“That’s unknown at this time, Lieutenant. Perhaps, Deputy Camois has something to add.”
The UNIFORCE official was a precise, almost effeminate bureaucrat. “UNIFORCE has been receiving reports for several days now, actually reports, data, even imagery from multiple locations around the world. We’re getting reports of similar atmospheric disturbances, in places like Tibet, the south Pacific, the Antarctic, the Congo basin in central Africa.”
“What kind of disturbances?” Linx asked.
“Similar to what’s being reported here,” Camois consulted some background material, squirted it off the satellite to Table Top. The master display showed a map of the world, with the areas mentioned highlighted. “Constituent gas concentrations all mixed up, oxygen and ozone levels dropping, carbon dioxide levels rising, pressure fluctuations…BioShield is reporting nanobotic activity in or near all spots, so we think that’s the cause. Who or what’s behind it—“ Camois looked up and shrugged, visibly frustrated even on the screen. “The Director General’s meetin
g with UNSAC this evening, 1900 hours our time. We have intelligence that indicates the Red Hammer cartel has undertaken a rather extensive effort that sources are calling The Project. We don’t know what this means exactly, but there are correlations with the growth of angel technology, and the appearance of Symborg. All of this may be related.”
Johnny Winger studied the displays, trying to make sense of it all. “There’s no obvious pattern. What makes all these places so special?”
“Unknown, Lieutenant,” said Camois. “We running routines now to try and match a pattern, possibly predict any further outbreaks. So far, the public’s unaware of the disturbances, except in the affected areas…the media haven’t sniffed this one out yet. But the problem seems to be growing.”
“Maybe it is Red Hammer again,” Major Kraft suggested, hoping someone had evidence to the contrary. But nobody disagreed. “We think two of our top scientists, Dr. Irwin Frost and Dr. Mary Duncan, may have been taken by the cartel…we tracked a beeper into Hong Kong, but now we’ve lost it. There’s a possibility that the two are inside China…Red Hammer has known operations in the Tibet region.”
“A distinct possibility,” Camois agreed. “General, would Quantum Corps like the threat condition from UNIFORCE raised? Do we need to raise the alert level here? The Director General will undoubtedly ask the same question.”
Linx was reluctant to admit there was something the Corps couldn’t handle, especially when a mandated mission like atmospheric patrol was involved, but he agreed.
“It would be best,” he admitted. “I’m thinking we may need to go beyond BioShield and send in a special ops team…an ANAD unit. I’m not sure BioShield can handle this.”
Camois took that grimly. “Very well. I’ll recommend to the Director General that we go to UNICON Purple.”
Del Compo spoke up. “The Ministry’s team encountered more than just atmospheric perturbations, gentlemen. We also ran into some kind of strange organism…the men have taken to calling them demonio…in the river near Via Verde.”
“What kind of organism?” Linx asked.
Del Compo was physically located in a conference studio at the Ministry’s headquarters in Afalamos, the capital of Valencia. He turned from the screen a moment, then synched a video stream into the data feed. Moments later, all screens were refreshed with new imagery, this time of one of the riverine creatures the expedition had captured.
“”It’s vaguely humanoid,” del Compo narrated over the imagery. “It has radically modified lungs, and as you can see, extra appendages. We’ve scanned all of its internal structures as well, in some detail.” Ghostly images appeared, outlining the results of the scans. “There are the lungs, all four of them. Something that we’re calling a heart, or circulatory pump, and there are other organs we haven’t puzzled out yet. Interestingly, it has no brain or central cognitive-processing center that we can detect.”
“Demonio…” Linx mulled over the word. “Little devil. And no brain…what the hell is it? An animal of some type?”
Del Compo chose his words carefully. “I want to be precise in what I am saying here: the demonio is not an organism in the conventional sense. In the sense, General, that you and I are organisms. Properly speaking, it is a colony.”
“A colony--?”
“A colony of endosymbiotic structures, somewhat similar in appearance, external structure and apparent function to our ANAD mechanisms.”
Johnny Winger’s mouth dropped open. “ANAD? You mean—“
Kraft finished the thought. “This bugger’s a bunch of nanoscale mechanisms? Like assemblers? Like angels?”
Del Compo nodded. “A very advanced colony of apparently designed and programmable mechanisms, small as a virus, but with extraordinary capability—here, I’ll show you what I mean.” The doctor directed someone off screen with a flurry of Spanish. “I’ve got imagery…this is a Quark Flux image of one of the devices here.”
The screens flickered and the grainy image of a polyhedral structure filled the view. The structure was festooned with grapplers, hooks, extended chains of polypeptides, bristling with molecular tools.
“I’ll be damned,” Kraft muttered. “What on God’s green earth are all these doodads?” He squinted at the image, measuring a fuzzy protuberance on the screen using his fingers as a caliper.
“Off hand, I’d say something like a fullerene hook,” Winger said. “Same as ANAD, only it’s got a lot more complicated set of radicals at every end. How the dickens does it stay like that?”
“We don’t know,” del Compo admitted. “I had the same question. Bond energies should make this structure fly apart, but it doesn’t.”
“We’re looking at some very advanced nanoscale engineering here,” Linx said.
“Red Hammer?” thought Camois.
“Possibly, but this…this is so far beyond what we’ve ever seen of their work. Indra, Serengeti, none of them looked like this. And the lot of them…they’re organized…not a swarm but—“
“Exactly, General. Organized and held together somehow in a colony that vaguely resembles something humanoid. These demonio, as we call them, are nothing more than a collection of autonomous nanoscale assemblers, ANADs, if you will. And here’s what’s really strange: all the internal structures you see in the internal scan are perfectly designed, if I can use that word, to adapt this creature to living inside these zones of altered atmosphere.”
Del Compo’s words hung in the air for a few moments, until the full import of what he had said sunk in.
“Is this a new species,” Camois asked. “Some branch off the human evolutionary line. Or some kind of experiment?”
“Or are we being invaded…maybe colonized ourselves?” Kraft said.
“It reminds me of what we saw at Kurabantu Island,” Winger realized. “This may be one of Red Hammer’s angel nurseries. A hatchery of some kind. All the angels that are showing up have to originate from somewhere.”
Del Compo shook his head. “Unknown at this time. It’s my belief, however, that these atmospheric alterations, whatever their source, and the existence of the demonio, are related.”
“Did one cause the other?” Linx asked.
“We don’t know, General. That’ll require more investigation.”
Deputy Camois had heard enough. “This tells me we’ve got a crisis on our hands and it’s growing fast. If what happened at Via Verde spawned or was somehow created by these…creatures…or by Red Hammer, then what the hell is happening at all the other sites BioShield has detected?”
“This could explain why BioShield is detecting heightened nanobotic activity,” Johnny Winger said. “Maybe they’re detecting these creatures.”
“I’ll get tasking from the DG and UNSAC, before the night is over,” Camois promised. The investigation mission will be assigned to Quantum Corps and your ANAD units.”
Linx was satisfied with that. “Thank you, Deputy. We won’t let UNIFORCE down. Major Kraft--?”
“Sir?”
Linx ticked off what he wanted done on his fingers. “Work up a tactical plan, every scenario you can think of, and whatever resources you’ll need. Work SOFIE until she’s smoking. Get it to me by 2200 hours tonight. I’ll see the orders are written and scoped to make it all work.”
Jurgen Kraft was already halfway out the door and Johnny Winger was right behind him.
Table Top Mountain was situated on a high mesa in the Snake Mountains of southern Idaho, like the palm of a hand with ridges and valleys fanning out in all directions. Hunt Valley and Buffalo Valley swept away in a steep incline to the east and northeast, buttressed by snow-capped mountains. Desolate ravines folded over the land to the south and west. The mesa was an isolated, windswept escarpment kilometers from any town or settlement. The closest town was Haleyville, some thirty kilometers to the east along the twisting, turning Highway 7.
It was in all respects a perfect
location for Quantum Corps’ Western Command base.
The Ops center was a glass and earth building half-buried along the mesa’s eastern limb, surrounded by a grassy quadrangle and connected by enclosed tube and walkway with A Barracks and the dome of the Containment Facility directly to the south.
Inside Ops, the sim tank was the center of activity as the new UNIFORCE tasking came through. The tank was a small theater run by SOFIE, the Special Operations Force Information Environment, where scenarios and missions could be simulated and rehearsed ahead of time.
Johnny Winger was there, along with Dana Tallant, Major Kraft and a select team of planners from 1st Nano.
They discussed possibilities, and how to put the tasking into effect.
“We’ve got to send a team into Valencia,” Winger was saying. “Covertly, in case the Valencians are behind this.”
Kraft was inclined to agree. “I think it’s significant that BioShield ‘bots have had no impact on what’s going on. Whatever’s modifying the atmosphere down there is tougher than BioShield can deal with.”
“And they’re using ANAD 2.0 as a base, aren’t they?” asked Dana Tallant. “Doesn’t that just scream Red Hammer? Maybe Doc Frost is working for the cartel now.”
“Two point two, to be exact,” Winger recalled. He felt a buzzing in the back of his head, it was the ANAD master, on the neural circuit.