She tried reducing the suit boost to see if it had any effect on the scraping but it didn’t.
Guess I’m going to be a billiard ball when I get topside, she told herself. She wondered how long that would take. She would have given anything to know where she was, how close to the surface she was. This was worse than Kurabantu and being underwater. Pitch black, in a narrow tube the size of a coffin, with no idea where she was or where she was going.
It was enough to drive a girl to drink.
How long she had passed out, she didn’t know. But her mouth was bone dry and there wasn’t any liquid in the chin tube; she must have sucked it all dry. Her shoulders, neck and legs throbbed from the incessant banging and battering.
Maybe I’m not going anywhere, she thought. But that couldn’t be. How else to explain the steady thrummm at the soles of her feet—the liftjets pulsing on and off had made her feet go numb hours ago. They had never been designed for extended duty like this.
At least, ANAD’s tunnel seemed navigable, if a bit snug. She wondered where Wings was. Had he left right after her? Or was he still inside Gopher, trapped and suffocating, maybe dead?
She didn’t want to think about that at all.
Suddenly she felt like she was being accelerated forward. With a sudden surge, she was pushed upward, through loose soil…then light…blindingly bright light and before she realized what had happened, she was the surface, wallowing in deep snow like a beached whale.
Strong hands helped her upright and a blur of faces were just outside her helmet, but the visor was grimy and fogged and she couldn’t make out anything.
She was wobbly but all the hands and her own suit gyros kept her upright.; She felt the helmet quick disconnect go, then a stream of cold freezing air leaked in around her neck dam and the helmet came off with a jerk.
The first face she saw was Major Jurgen Kraft, scowling in at her bruised, sweaty face.
“Well, well,” Kraft said, “aren’t you a sight? Lieutenant Tallant, welcome back to the land of the living.”
With help from the rescue squad, her hypersuit was clamshelled open and Tallant lifted carefully out. She was quickly placed into a life-support pod and taken to a nearby lifter.
Kraft pulled General Kincade aside. “We’ll give her a good look-over, General. She’s been through quite an ordeal.”
Kincade nodded. “And the geoplane? That’s the prototype down there. How long does this set us back? UNSAC has given us until December 4 to mount an operation against Red Hammer.”
“We’ve got to recover Gopher’s data recorders and find out what happened. I’ve already issued orders for Murchison and the engineers to triple-shift construction of the second geoplane. Mole will be ready to test by the end of the week. But after we recover the data recorders, there may be more changes.”
A commotion interrupted the two officers. Kraft went back to the borehole opening. There in the pile of loose snow and dirt, another hypersuit was emerging from the ground, a giant egg being hatched by the earth.
Johnny Winger was nearly unconscious when he was pulled from the hard shell and laid into a life pod. Doc Frost and two Battalion medics scoped and examined him carefully.
“Dehydration…maybe a little hypercapnia,” Frost pronounced. “A little oxygen boost and some fluids should do the trick.” He backed off while the pod was littered to the lifter.
Kincade came over and Kraft saw the frown of concern on the General’s face. “Doc says he’ll be okay. The kid’s dehydrated and a little short of breath…the techs are checking out his hypersuit now.”
“I want a debriefing on the geoplane test at 0600 hours tomorrow morning, Kraft. I want to know what happened and why. I’ve got to give UNSAC an update later in the day.”
“You’ll have it, sir.”
Kincade was thoughtful. “We’d better review the op plan for Tectonic Strike one more time…go over all the details. And bring Murchison and your tactical group. I want to know if an underground assault is still a viable option, in light of what’s happened.”
Kincade left to board the second lifter, while Kraft joined Doc Frost at Johnny Winger’s life pod. The transparent doors of the pod were already shut. Inside, already hooked up to a forest of tubes, the atomgrabber was grimy and bruised on his face, his cheeks swollen and pale.
What kind of hell did you and Tallant go through, Captain? the Major wondered. The life pod was hoisted aboard the lifter and secured. Kraft climbed aboard as well.
No one seemed to notice the faint dimly illuminated wisp of fog that seeped in with the rest of the rescue squad and nestled out of sight between some storage racks.
The two lifters took off together, in a tornado of snow and dirt, and turned southwest, heading back across Hunt Valley toward Table Top Mountain.
“It’s obvious the geoplane design needs more work,” Kraft was saying to the assembled briefing. “And equally obvious that coordinated subterranean operations with ANAD needs more practice.”
The briefing room at the underground Ops Center was packed. Kraft had the floor and SOFIE was running visuals. General Kincade was there, too, scowling and rubbing his moustache, along with Winger and Tallant and the rest of the Battalion. Doc Frost sat in the back.
“We can’t afford to practice much more, Major,” Winger said. “Amazon Vector’s on the loose again. Doc Frost just took the latest results from BioShield.”
Kraft recognized the doctor from Northgate, granted temporary clearance to be at the classified meeting.
Frost was grim. “The bubbles of modified air are expanding again, as swarms begin to link up. There’s a growing supercolony aggregating across the entire Southern Hemisphere, from South Africa, through the Indonesian archipelago, to the coast of Chile. Johannesburg and Djakarta have reported tens of thousands dead, probably millions are fleeing north, by boat, on foot, any way they can. Whole swaths of the southern Indian and Pacific Oceans—“ Frost ticked off the list and SOFIE highlighted the affected areas in red on a 3-D globe—“the Seychelles Islands, the Andamans, the Gilberts, the list goes on and on, showing areas now essentially uninhabitable. BioShield is reporting mass casualties on Borneo and Fiji, thousands of corpses offshore, floating like rafts in the ocean swells. With the changes in the atmosphere effected by Amazon, deaths from increased ultraviolet radiation, exposure, asphyxiation, hypercapnia and other related causes are soaring.”
“This may be the final push,” said Tallant. “The last offensive.”
Kincade had heard enough. “Don’t forget the flooding, caused by icecap melting. Sat video has shown almost every berg off the Antarctic coast calving at two and three times the normal rate. Coastal cities will be underwater in several weeks…we’re talking New York, Miami, Buenos Aires, Tokyo, Mumbai.” Kincade abruptly stood up. “We can’t wait any longer. Murchison--?”
The project engineer replied, “Here, General—“
“What is the status on Mole, the second geoplane?”
Murchison consulted a thoughtpad he had clipped to his belt, scrolling down through the outstanding items. “Tread system and controllers have been installed this morning. The borer went on-line yesterday; we’ve tested it with a small denatured swarm but a full-up test isn’t scheduled for another three days. Power plant, controls, environmental systems are all operational and tested.”
Kincade prowled the briefing room like a caged animal. “UNSAC wants to know when Tectonic Strike can get underway. We’re behind—several weeks behind—and every hour’s delay—“ he indicated SOFIE’s globe—“well, I don’t have to remind you of the cost. BioShield is engaging the Amazon swarms at dozens of places around the Southern Hemisphere but it’s just a holding action. BioShield doesn’t have the nano we have. Unless we can put Red Hammer’s base out of action, Amazon Vector will continue to expand. In time, it may affect the Northern Hemisphere, then the whole planet. Casualty figures then become
…who can say?”
“An extinction-level event,” said Frost, for him. “Given enough time. Another mass extinction. Earth has seen it a number of times.”
Murchison shook his head. “We’ve been selected for extinction. Evolution rolled the dice and the human race has come up snake eyes.”
“Not quite yet,” Kincade said. “The Red Hammer base must be put out of action. What’s the status on Gopher?”
“Gopher is not recoverable, General,” Murchison admitted. “She’s too deep and too badly damaged. We’re building a second Gopher, but the frame’s just been laid down. We’re weeks from having a testable vehicle.”
“Listen to what I’m saying, gentlemen,” Kincade growled. “We don’t have weeks. At best, we have only days. If we allow these swarms to continue to coalesce, by the end of the year, the entire planet will be enveloped. We won’t be able to engage and defeat Amazon with anything we have, with any conceivable ANAD technology, if that happens. We’ve got to stop it now!”
“What are you suggesting, General?” Kraft asked.
Kincade consulted a calendar. “December 4 is only two weeks away. When this briefing is over, I’m sending UNSAC a reply to his question. Tectonic Strike will commence operations on December 4. That means you will engage Red Hammer at their base on the Tibet/Nepal border with whatever you have in hand at the time. Geoplane transports, weapons, tactics, personnel, and training, ANAD swarms…Kraft, you and your people have two weeks to pull it all together.”
The small vein on the Major’s forehead was red and swollen, a sure sign Kraft was about to blow. He glared at Murchison, Winger, Tallant and Frost. Then, grimly, he acknowledged the General’s order.
“First Nano will be ready and in position, General. All we need is your H-hour signal to go.”
“I’ll get that to you as soon as UNSAC issues final approval and the operational orders are cut. There are still a few little diplomatic niceties to observe with the Chinese at the UN before that happen.”
“General, what about the underlying geology of the target area? Uttar Pradesh state and southwest Tibet are similar to this area, from what the geos tell me. Basaltic rock crisscrossed with fault lines, not all of them mapped very well. There’s a good chance an underground assault may cause more slippage, more seismic shifting. Worst case…we could lose the assault team before the assault begins.”
Kincade’s lips tightened and his moustache bristled. “I’m well aware of that, Murchison. We’ll just have to take the chance…or find another way to get at that base.”
Winger swallowed hard and stole a glance at Tallant. She kept her eyes focused on the 3-D globe, with its swelling splotches of red indicating the growth of the Amazon swarms. It was an infestation on a planetary scale, nearly half a world consumed and so far, they’d done little to even slow it down.
“We’ll make it work, General,” she said. “Look at the globe, sir. It’s like a cancer spreading.”
Like evolution speeded up, thought Frost. Or evolution in reverse, re-creating the conditions of the primordial Earth. But he didn’t say any of that. He had no proof. Only faint traces from the core processors of a captured demonio and a few theories to try and make sense of them.
“A pretty apt analogy, Captain. And we can no longer afford the luxury of half measures to deal with it. This is one disease that’s going to take radical surgery to root out.”
CHAPTER 11
Puranpur, India
December 1, 2068
0530 hours
The Lama Zohar hadn’t seen such a gathering since the day the monastery opened twenty five years ago. He stood on the stone parapets of the ancient dun-colored building, originally built during the days of Alexander the Great and watched a flock of black lifters streak by overhead, then settle to earth by the entrance to the abandoned Pura River ruby mine. At the same time the lifters came, a convoy of military trucks and transports roared through the village on their way up the meandering gravel road to the same Pura River mine entrance two miles away.
All the trucks bore the blue earth logo of UNICORPS. Decades after Pura River had been abandoned, the Army suddenly and without warning had acquired a keen interest in the old mine. Zohar wondered why.
As he watched the assembling of military men and equipment at the head of the rugged valley, Lama Zohar carefully poured a small pouch of black seeds into a bowl on the edge of the parapet. He made a swirling pattern in the seeds with his fingers, mumbled a soft incantation to the Enlightened One, then poured the seeds back into his pouch, repeating the process several times.
A nearby teacher, a rinpoche clad in saffron robes from a distant monastery, observed Zohar carefully. The Lama explained, over the racket of the lifters: “One must endure the boredom of repetition eight times, before the natural energy of the seeds will come forth. Only then will you free yourself from want.”
The rinpoche, a bespectacled and wrinkled old skeleton, nodded wisely. It was true. All things possessed their own life energy. One had but to still one’s mind to hear the rhythm of nature’s frequency. The teacher closed his eyes and willed himself to utter silence, slowing his breathing and heart rate with fierce concentration.
Only the distant hum of lifter jets and a growing sense of foreboding interrupted the rinpoche’s meditation.
For Johnny Winger, the assault force now gathering along the hard, pebbly banks of the Pura River was also quite a sight. First Nano had veetolled in on a squadron of lifters from Table Top and Quantum Corps East at Singapore. All of their gear was now being offloaded by men and packbots, marshaled in neat rows outside the mine entrance.
The trucks and tracks were UNICORPS motorized units, specifically UNICORPS 1st South Asian Brigade, 2nd Company, or 2/1 UNICORPS South, as it was known to the soldiers who manned the column. The commanding officer was a small-boned Indian officer with a high forehead, sunburned skin and a toothy smile, Captain Vanilu.
Vanilu loudly supervised the deployment of 2/1, spreading his men and their robot totes around the perimeter of the valley, cordoning off the Pura River at the monastery on the south end and at a narrow pass in the higher elevations to the north.
“We make you a secure perimeter,” Vanilu explained. “Keep the villagers out, while you set up.”
Villagers, yes, thought Winger. But 2/1 UNICORPS had no nanobot swarm defense embedded with it. For that mission, 1st Nano would be on its own.
Time to put ANAD to work.
“Fall out!” Winger ordered and the three nearest lifters disgorged their crews into combat formation. Winger counted them off, as the troopers scattered to their duties around the landing zone.
Operation Tectonic Strike was about to get underway.
“Full hypersuits!” Winger yelled over the crewnet. “Get those tin cans on and zipped up! Get the gear staged forward to the mine entrance. Al, you and Gibby help Captain Tallant with the geoplanes.” Winger headed off from the landing zone to see about the offloading of Gopher and Mole from the cargo lifters. It was a ticklish operation, looking for all the world like huge black spiders hatching long, cylindrical eggs.
“Oh, boy,” muttered Deeno D’Nunzio, as she snapped her helmet down and secured her own suit. Servos whirred as she flexed her limbs. “I just can’t wait to climb into my garbage can.”
“It’s for your own good,” said Sheila Reaves, as she struggled with the HERF guns, rocking one back and forth until it could be hoisted onto a packbot for transfer. The HERF would be loaded into Mole’s tail pod, where most of their equipment and munitions were stored for the mission. “You want to crawl like a worm underground for two hundred miles without one?”
D’Nunzio wisecracked, “I don’t want to crawl underground for two hundred nanometers. And the only worm I want to see is in a tall cool glass of tequila.”
For the next several hours, 1st Nano deployed its equipment around the entrance to
the mine and checked out the two geoplanes. Squatting on the river banks, Mole and the newest Gopher looked like huge caterpillars, their circumferential treads squealing in the crisp early morning air. Dana Tallant was already on the command deck of Gopher, flexing its articulating grapple arms and wearing in the treads, readying the geoplane for its critical mission. Winger had chosen Al Glance, the detachment’s CC2, to pilot Mole.
Winger decided to launch ANAD before they got underway. It was against all regs, but he didn’t care. The tiny assembler seemed to behave better when it was allowed out of containment, congregating in flickering translucent swarms in odd corners of the geoplanes.
***it’s good to be out, Control…ANAD is currently in State 1 config, receiving signals on all channels…how do you read me?***
“I read you just fine, ANAD,” Winger said, as he climbed up the ladder and into Gopher. “Just stay out of the way and don’t touch anything, okay?”
***ANAD is fully prepared to support the mission…all effectors are primed and ready…propulsors are at full charge…processor core initialized and set at zero state…just let me at ‘em***
As Winger boarded the geoplane, the assembler swarm filtered and flowed right behind him, like a faithful pet following its master.
Winger spent a few minutes checking the new Gopher’s outfitting and gear from bow to stern, then he consulted with Tallant and the rest of the crew on mission details and comm protocols. After a last minute briefing on geological formations along the traverse route, Winger received a message off the satlink from Table Top base. It was Major Kraft. The Major’s face appeared haggard and tired on the screen.
“General Kincade just squirted me the final orders, Captain,” Kraft was saying. “I’m sending them along…don’t go without a hard copy onboard. UNSAC has approved Tectonic Strike in full, all details and constraints as we discussed before. Have you got your course set?”
“Plotted and laid in,” Winger reported. He sat in the mission commander’s seat alongside Tallant, who was still checking systems off a checklist. “We’re descending to two thousand feet a few miles north of the Pura River to get below the hardest basaltic layers…and to slip around a transverse fault the geos say is there. We head out north by northeast for about fifty miles, cross below the Nepalese border and rise to one thousand feet below the Namse Pass, where the shales are little better for boring. Fewer inclusions to deal with.”