“This is Dana Polansky, reporting from Langata House in Nairobi, Kenya for Special Report. Until tomorrow, stay tuned for the latest updates and remember…you can depend on Solnet to bring you the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Good bye and God bless.”
Dana signaled it was a wrap and helped Vogt and Leland secure their gear. They piled into their rental truck and went back to the Westlands Hotel. Vogt and Leland headed down to the bar. Dana begged off.
“Got to make a few calls and finish my notes for tomorrow. See you for dinner.”
In her eighth floor room, Dana stared out at the dun-colored metropolis of Nairobi, now darkening in the twilight of an approaching east African evening. Dust from a windstorm out on the veldt could be seen between skyscrapers.
Dana stared for many minutes at the city and the cloud-draped summit of Kilimanjaro beyond. Now, more than ever, she wanted Jana to come back, to make another visitation. She silently prayed and pleaded for Jana to appear. But she didn’t appear. Not yet.
Dana Polansky had made up her mind and threw on another outfit as quickly as she could…slacks, flats, a windbreaker and ball cap. Mosely had indicated that Symborg had showed up at the negotiating table. She exited her room in a hurry.
If I could just find Symborg, she told herself, waiting impatiently on an elevator. Finally, she gave up on the damned thing and chose the staircase, taking the stairs two at a time.
Symborg can help. Symborg can help me find Jana and get her back.
Dana hailed a colorful matatu taxi and instructed the driverbot to take her back to Langata House.
Chapter 16
“It is better to conquer yourself than to win a thousand battles. Then the victory is yours. It cannot be taken from you, not by angels or by demons, heaven or hell.”
Buddha
The Surface of Mercury
Latitude 31 North; Longitude 190 West
Caloris Basin
November 20, 2155 (Earth U.T.)
Once he had been released from Ford’s Creek, and the homeworld sim, the Johnny Winger entity went back to Caloris Basin, to continue overseeing the buildup of the base there and the deployment of the Sun Ring.
On Earth, UNISPACE continued its preparations for what had come to be known as Operation Mercury Hammer. Intelligence from visits by the Winger entity played a role in getting the operation approved, to be sure. But it was telescopic and spectroscopic analysis from Farside and a squadron of sun-observing satellites that gave UNISPACE unambiguous proof that something was going on in and around the Caloris Basin region of Mercury.
The decision to dispatch a small armada of ships to investigate and, if necessary, degrade, defeat and destroy the base and its associated Sun Ring, came quickly after that.
Johnny Winger knew the expedition was coming. He’d done everything he could think of to carry intel back to UNIFORCE and nudge the blockheads to realize what was staring them right in the face: the Big Swarm was coming and an advance base was being constructed on Mercury to facilitate its arrival. He’d made appearances in front of Quint and Komar and practically danced on his head—although he didn’t really have a head now—to show them the threat. Now, the brass had finally bestirred themselves, gotten off their fat butts and organized an expedition to do something about it.
Jeez.
So the Normals were sending some ships to snoop around Mercury and blast the base if they could. What Johnny Winger didn’t know yet was what else he should do about it, how he should respond. On his last ‘trip’ to Ford’s Creek, Doc III had reminded him that he had to be careful what he thought about, that the Shadow Man might well already know about everything he had done, about how he had been a bad boy. He’d disappointed his own father, Jamison Winger, plenty of times and he felt guilty enough about that but when the Shadow Man looked like his father and used the same words and had the same look, it was damned hard to know what to do…or who knew what.
It was all very confusing. But one thing he did know: while he was still able, he and Doc would be doing everything in their power to put Caloris Basin out of commission. Mercury Hammer was coming and it was likely that the crews didn’t realize they had their own agent of destruction inside.
Nanotroopers always did their duty…it was in the Code.
His next decision on what to sabotage and how to do it would require some serious thinking. Now that he and Doc were back, drifting between craters across the floor of the great impact basin, appointed as a sort of construction expeditor by the Shadow Man himself, Winger had to determine where to start…where were the most vulnerable points? The base plans were in his memory, even as the structures were rapidly being fabricated and erected by dedicated knots of swarms. He called up Doc to discuss some possibilities.
“Doc, you’ve scanned the schematics. There’s a Sun Ring Operations center. A couple of energy management sites, connected to the rectenna fields. We know about the Quantum Coupler Array. I’m thinking the excavator and processor might be the key to this whole place. Bollix that place up and the Bugs have no materials to work with.”
***A perceptive analysis, Johnny…I calculate that more than sixty percent of local swarm elements are dedicated to building out that facility…the excavator scoops up regolith from the surface, sends it to the processor where the loose soil is shaped and compacted and magnetized into pellets…some percentage of the collection is carried off by fab bots to build here, but most of it is loaded into catapults and accelerated via magnetic collapse to the Sun Ring. If the excavator is damaged, no material is available for the base or the Sun Ring…an excellent tactical decision…***
“Thanks. You sound just like my Dad. After that last trip to Ford’s Creek, I think I needed a little pat on the head.”
For a time period that he could never quite explain—though Doc noted that seven thousand two hundred and ten cycles had elapsed—Winger drifted around the growing base and studied its layout, the assigned fab swarms, the steady accomplishment of goals and sub-goals according to the build plan, and in the process, worked as surreptitiously as he could to sabotage everything he could get his little nanobotic hands on.
He assisted other elements in the completion of their tasks, helping at the same time to both construct the Caloris Basin complex and at the very same time, sabotage key parts of it so that the place would never work as designed. He did this with excavators, the catapult, the Sun Ring operations center, the rectenna fields and energy management complex. And everywhere he went, Winger grabbed photons and any other intelligence data he could, which Doc helped him store internally as vid, photo, text and other file types.
He planned to bring all this back to UNSAC, as he had promised, on his next visit to Earth.
If the Bugs let him leave.
At Doc’s suggestion, Winger found the most effective way to sabotage the excavator/catapult system was to infect the thing with a sort of virus…some bots from his own angel formation that he hoped would damage circuits inside the catapult control system. He managed to do this in the guise of checking circuits for continuity. The Shadow Man had given him all sorts of configs as a sort of troubleshooter and expediter. He had the authority, the programming, to go to many places and probe many installations about the Basin, as dedicated swarms of bots continued building the facility. With Doc’s help, he had figured that the excavator and the catapult were the critical points in getting the Sun Ring up and operating. The material excavated to build the Sun Ring and the energy collected from the Sun Ring seemed to be vital to the plans of the Central Entity, plans that included swallowing up the whole solar system.
Johnny Winger and Doc intended to do whatever it took to prevent that.
The Winger swarm eventually made its way to the site of the excavator, several kilometers away from the operations area. As a disembodied cloud of nanoscale robots, he found there were radiation and electrostatic fields sweeping Mercury’s surface that m
ade movement a challenge. At Doc’s suggestion, Winger re-configured himself into a more human-like form, something that resembled a shadowy bipedal from a distance. He didn’t need a protective suit, but the bipedal form worked better in navigating the loose dirt and gusting electrostatic fields of the basin floor.
In time, he located the excavator control pods, half buried in regolith beneath a shallow hill, surrounded by cabling and open panel segments. Doc helped him navigate the confusing maze of circuits and cables until they found what Doc analyzed to be the catapult control system.
That’s when another swarm, Config C-2238A1B2, appeared.
Winger had gotten used to seeing knots and small clusters of bots circulating around the base, looking like dust devils and gauzy curtains and veils populating the area. It was Doc who chimed in on their coupler circuit.
***Approaching swarm, Johnny…be alert…you’re testing circuits…I don’t recognize the configuration of this one…could be programmed supervisory or loaded with executive algorithms…***
The swarm surrounded them and began billowing out, grabbing local dirt as feedstock to grow structure. It soon completely enveloped Winger and the control pods.
No words were spoken. Swarms of nanobots didn’t speak like Normals spoke. Instead, Winger felt a pulse of interrogation signals slice through his command net. Identifying signals were followed by interrogation signals and analytic signals…C2238 was studying everything they were doing.
Somehow, without understanding how, Winger learned that Config C-2238A1B2 functioned as a sort of police or investigator angel, created and empowered by the Shadow Man to patrol the installation and construction site and weed out bad bots, ineffective swarms and damaged or defective angels. A sort of immune system for local assembly swarms.
Winger hadn’t known about the patrol angels before. This particular one, C-2238, seemed to have special powers and privileges, increased sensing and analysis algorithms, to detect rogue bots.
Winger decided to call the thing Sherlock.
Winger tried to deflect the interrogation signals as best he could. “Doc…help…I feel like I’m being violated…I can’t stop—“
Sherlock took only one minute to determine that the functions the Winger swarm was performing were outside the programmed boundaries of its assigned function. When Sherlock attempted to quarantine and disable the small Config Buffer Status Check file, the very file that contained the essential memories and personality elements of the original Johnny Winger, Doc decided it was time to take action.
Sherlock was able to send an alert signal to the master controller, to the Shadow Man, but the signal was truncated by the swift maneuver Winger performed to grapple with Sherlock and throttle the life out of the master bot.
He closed on the master and snagged its effectors with carbene grabbers of his own, while at the same time discharging a few bond disrupters right into Sherlock’s main body. The patroller was caught unprepared and one whole side of his casing came unzipped. Winger’s daughter bots did the same and the swarm that had once been C-2238A1B2 was quickly reduced to loose atom fluff.
“That was close, Doc.”
***Johnny, I detected an alert signal sent out from the master before you engaged…I can’t be certain of how much signal got out…best to assume other elements have been alerted…***
Winger tried kicking a ‘leg’ at the opened control pod, its interior wiring spilling out over the opening, before realizing his ‘leg’ was a shadowy form only. Instinct, he realized. Old habits die hard. “Doc, let’s finish this and get out of here…maybe we can make it to the coupler array and beam the hell out of here—“
He siphoned off a small group of bots from his ‘arm,’ and let the bugs infest the wiring inside the pod. With any luck, Doc’s virus program would turn the little buggers into really nasty bastards and the excavator control system would be hosed long enough to give the UNIFORCE expedition a chance.
“Come on, Doc…let’s move.”
The Winger swarm departed the excavator control pod and headed toward the coupler array, located in a shallow ravine beyond some low hills. To go faster, Winger cranked up his propulsors to max, then chafed at the ‘slow’ speed it produced.
It’s faster to walk, he told himself. Solid people move faster than collections of nanobots. But it was all he could do.
Winger and Doc drifted on a heading that would take them to the coupler, dodging electrostatic fields, dust devils and sun glare off the surface of the crater.
Finally, they swept around a small knob of a hill and homed on the source of the coupler signals.
As before, the structure was a huge dish, with the mount and swivel atop of a low dome. Underground wireway trenches snaked out in several directions, the trench fillings still lightly packed on top of the trenches, so that from above, the installation resembled a bulls-eye, with the dish antenna at the center.
“I hope to hell this works,” Winger said. “I hope we can get away before someone discovers the excavator’s not working.”
***Johnny, I’m detecting elevated thermals and atomic activity along a heading of two five zero degrees…that’s over the hill behind us…the Sun Ring Operations center. It appears we will soon have company***
“Then let’s make tracks, Doc. Come on—“
The swarms closed on the antenna compound.
The coupler array was laid out in a roughly triangular fashion. A platform dominated the center of the complex, situated on a low rise. Dish and horn antennas were mounted on top of the platform. Surrounding the antenna farm were half a dozen small egg-shaped structures, almost like small containment pods.
***Johnny, decoherence wake analysis indicates that the pod farthest to your right is the correct one…it’s homed on a receiver located at the Earth-Moon L2 point***
“Got to be Gateway Station, Doc. Let’s go.”
Winger and Doc paused momentarily just outside the circle of pods. In the harsh glare of sunlight, the swarms resembled faint dust clouds drifting on electrostatic currents across the cratered surface. Initially unseen by either of them, a faint veil of dust was billowing up from beyond the low hills behind them. The veil spread out across the shallow ravine housing the coupler pods and blanketed most of the sky above them.
“Hey, Doc…you know all that special knowledge I’m supposed to have…that the Shadow Man loaded?”
***The Central Entity has downloaded petabytes of files into your processor, Johnny…you have a great deal of knowledge about how this Caloris Basin site is to be built***
“Well, my giant brain tells me that that this isn’t going to work too well. Look up-“
Above them, the hazy veil shimmered and flickered and seemed to be descending on top of them. To Winger, it resembled nothing so much as a MOBnet, a Mobility Obstruction Barrier, a mesh of bots designed to prevent a target from moving or escaping.
Time was running out.
There was no comment from Doc and the two swarms merged and cruised as fast as they could on their trillions of picowatt propulsors in the direction of the right-hand pod.
The pod was no bigger than waste basket and was attached to a base partially buried in the regolith. Strands of multi-colored cable snaked out of the pod base toward one of the antennas, several dozen meters away.
They found a port at the top of the pod and gained access that way.
Inside, they followed Doc’s deco wake analysis and Winger’s crude navigation until they came to a small chamber, resembling an assimilator booth in miniature.
“This is it,” Doc,” Winger announced. “I’m sure of it.”
Both swarms were able to penetrate the scanning chamber in good order. Inside the chamber, they were surrounded by bulb-like projections pointing at them from all directions.
***I am analyzing the layout now, Johnny…trying to ensure that the scanners are still functional…and to verify that our patterns will be t
ransmitted along the proper heading…***
Even as he gathered photons to make a visual impression, Johnny Winger somehow ‘knew’ what to do. From somewhere deep in memory, the same file named Initial State Pattern Scan and Buffering surfaced and was loaded into his attention module.
“Doc, I think we just sort of hang around in the center here…see the lights…that’s a positioning guide. I think it’s mostly automatic, once we do that.”
In the center of the chamber, a spherical grid of lights was now projected. The two swarms re-located themselves into the middle of the grid.
That’s when things started to happen.
There came a series of light flashes but he felt nothing at first. A faint breeze stirred and he felt himself being steadily pulled apart, dispersed into whispers, echoes, reflections and shadows, then there was nothing.
Thirty seconds later, the signal bearing the patterns of Johnny Winger and Doc III still had not departed Caloris Basin.
The veil had formed an impenetrable shield over the entire Caloris Basin complex. Nothing could get out. Nothing could escape, not even quantum coupler signals.
The barrier had been programmed into being by the Central Entity, orchestrated by police swarms circulating around the base, triggered into action by unauthorized access of the coupler system.
Johnny Winger and Doc III were trapped on Mercury. And the angels of Caloris Basin were even then mobilizing to hunt them down and destroy them.