Johnny Winger and the Amazon Vector
Kraft was following his own copy of the assault course on a screen at his desk at Table Top. “Exactly…Then from there, you cross the Tibetan border at one thousand feet depth, roughly paralleling the Gangdise Shan range—should be some tougher boring there, from what the geos tell me…lots of igneous stuff, quartzite and so forth. You’ll have to slow down. And there are subduction zones all along that range. The base of the mountains is being driven northward by the Indian tectonic plate, so there are tremors and shifting all the time. Watch yourself.”
“Don’t worry about that, Major.” Winger patted the main console. “Murchison says this Gopher should take real good care of us. From the Gangdise Shan, it should be a fairly straight shot into the Paryang Valley.”
“Watch your densitometer closely, Captain,” Kraft warned. “Follow the course profile as precisely as possible. UNIFORCE mapped these strata pretty well the last few weeks. With all that plate subduction going on west of Paryang, you could set off some seismic activity without meaning to. We don’t want to give Red Hammer—of the Chinese—any warning at all.”
“Understood, sir.”
Kraft looked up. His eyes narrowed on the screen. “Get in and get out, Winger. Get up there and turn that base into rubble. Then get the hell out of there. With any luck, that’ll sever all the control links to the Amazon swarms. Once they’re cut off from control and from each other, BioShield thinks they can be engaged and defeated individually.”
“We’ll be nearly a week getting into position, Major. But we’ve got ELF and the quantum coupler circuits to stay in touch with the surface. I’ll check in once every twenty-four hours, give you an update.”
“Good luck, Captain,” Kraft nodded. “And good hunting. Smash the bastards for good.”
Winger signed off just as Gibby poked his head up between the command deck consoles.
“Status report, Captain. The lifter loadmasters say we’ve got everything on board.” He handed over a thoughtpad with all the items checked off.
Winger scrolled the pages. “Weapons…” he muttered, mouthing the gear the packbots had loaded aboard the geoplanes: HERF guns, mag weapons, coilgun bots and twenty-two thousand kinetic rounds. “That should be enough to blow up a small city. Hypersuit support gear…Mission support—“ He let the thoughtpad detail the location, status and quantity of every piece of gear they had aboard. Containment systems for borer and tactical ANAD, ANAD interface control boxes, SuperFly recon bots (two squads), Camou-fog generators (four canisters), MOBnet canisters (eight).
“Looks like it’s a wrap, Gibby. Everything squared away outside?”
The IC2 nodded. “Pilots are itching to get the hell out of here. Apparently, there’s a lot of townspeople and monastery folk gathering at the south end of the valley. That Indian officer—“
“Captain Vanilu, I believe.”
“Yes, sir…Captain Vanilu is having quite a time holding the perimeter.”
“Just as long as nobody sees what happens to Gopher and Mole. We don’t want any spies reporting two geoplanes disappearing inside the ruby mine. Get Reaves and Singh out there, to give Vanilu some backbone.”
“On my way, Captain.” Gibbs disappeared belowdecks.
Half an hour later, the lifters were ready for departure. At Singh’s suggestion, Winger had agreed to coordinate the first movements of the geoplanes with the takeoff of the lifters. Both pilots had agreed to apply maximum power at takeoff, to stir up plenty of dust around the landing zone. Camouflaged by such a gale, Winger then planned to push the geoplanes forward into the ruby mine. Once out of view, their borers would be activated and the vehicles would begin burrowing into the underside of the mountain, beginning their long descent below ground.
Dana Tallant heard the go signal over her headset. All five lifters were churning up a small hurricane outside. Both of them could hear the staccato ping of pebbles and rocks against Gopher’s hull.
“Let’s go,” Winger ordered. “That’s our cue to get out of here.”
“Engaging tread drive now,” Tallant reported. With a jerk, 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 Al Glance.
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,” Tallant announced. She indicated the profile on Gopher’s acoustic sounder. “Solid rock dead ahead.”
“Borer on line?” Winger asked.
“Up and swarming. All parameters normal. ANAD reporting ready in all respects.”
Winger took a deep breath. The two geoplanes were about to commit to the underground phase of the assault. He glanced over at his co-pilot; both of them exchanged knowing looks. They both understood the risks they were about to take.
“Let’s do it,” Winger ordered.
One compartment behind them, Sergeant “Moby” M’bela was nervously stroking a handful of amulets and talismans, clinking them in a staccato rhythm. The CEC1 mumbled incantations in his native Ibo dialect, imploring the spirits of earth to watch over the small assault force.
Deeno D’Nunzio was annoyed. “Moby, 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.”
M’bela never opened his 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.”
Taj Singh was right behind them, scrolling a copy of the Bhagavad Gita on his wristpad monitor. “Moby’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.”
D’Nunzio 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 three thousand feet 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 miles north.
Somewhere inside the Nepalese border, a few miles 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.
Johnny Winger had no wish to tempt Fate again.
“Borer on line at nearly one hundred percent,” Tallant reported. “We’re chewing through this rock like it was butter…a blistering three miles an hour.”
Winger acknowledged the report. “Tread system status?”
Tallant checked the drive. “Tread drive engaged and operating fine…no anomalies.”
“Clear sailing from here,” Winger said. Only the slightest vibration from the treads came through Gopher’s hull. “Anything from Mole?” Their sister geoplane was trundling along several hundred feet 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, Al Glance requested permission to max out the borer and speed up a little. He says his crew’s getting antsy.”
Winger 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. Winger eyed the densitometer on the main panel. It read fourteen hundred feet, nearly a quarter of a mile 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, Tallant 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 miles ahead and fifteen hundred feet above us.”
Winger yawned and stretched. “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,” Winger said as he ducked down through the access tube. “You want anything from the fridge?”
“Negative. Just get back up here as soon as you can, Wings. 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 Tallant, “but ANAD’s been just ornery enough lately to make me feel a little uneasy.”
Winger disappeared down the access tube. He decided to check out the rest of the detail, sacked out in varying stages of sleep and undress on C deck.
“Welcome to the nursery, Captain.” Mighty Mite Barnes had a drop cloth out on the deck; she was oiling and cleaning a disassembled coilgun carbine while behind her, Deeno D’Nunzio grunted through several hundred crunches. “Want to play with us?”
Winger surveyed the berthing deck. Half of Tectonic Strike’s assault force was here: D’Nunzio and Barnes, M’bela and Reaves, Singh and Ozzie Tsukota. The Japanese CQE2 was potting a miniature bonsai plant below his bunk, lovingly tending its leaves and branches.
“Maybe later, kids. Your gear all checked out?”
M’bela sat in a semi-circle of wooden talismans and figurines, casting spells and hexes. “Kimumba is not happy, Captain. Spirits are troubled…see how the light falls on his face…see the shadows? Omens…very bad omens….”
“Hey, that’s why they issue us coilguns, Witchy,” said Barnes. She held up the just-oiled barrel of the coilgun, its magnetic head gleaming. “This is what we do to bad omens.”
“Atomize the bastards…that’s all I got to say,” snarled D’Nunzio, toweling off after her three hundredth rep. Sweat rolled down her cheeks. “Hey, Cap’n…how long we gotta live in this bug coffin? Gives me the creeps. What are we, ants or something?”
Winger smiled. At least, his troopers were in good spirits. “Just Quantum Corps troopers on a mission, Deeno. Get as much shuteye as you can. In about—“ he checked the chronometer on his wristpad—“ forty-five hours and thirty minutes, Gopher and Mole will surface. That’s when the real fun begins.”
“Do you think we can really surprise ‘em?” asked Reaves, the red-haired DPS tech. She had her hypersuit helmet off, trying to re-position the padding inside for a better fit.
Winger shrugged. “Intel says Red Hammer won’t be defending an approach from underground. Me…I’m not so sure. Q2 thinks they don’t know we’ve optimized ANAD for boring. But I’d be willing to bet they’ve got a few surprises in store for us. But they don’t have ANAD and they don’t know when or where we’re—“
Winger stopped in mid-sentence. A perceptible shudder had shaken the normally smooth thrummm of the geoplane’s treads. Before he could continue, the rolling shudders grew to a sudden jerk, as Gopher ground to a halt. The treads went silent, but only for a few seconds.
“Oh, shit—“
“We’re moving…feel it? We’re sliding, left…left and downward—“
Just then, Gopher’s hull was slammed hard as if they had hit something and the screech of tortured metal sounded from somewhere aft. The geoplane shook violently, knocking Winger to his knees.
“Cover yourselves…it’s a fault!” He crawled on hand and knees, back into the access tube, and scrambled forward to the command deck, as the pitching and shaking grew more violent, as if the geoplane were caught in an underground landslide. Hard bangs slammed the hull as the tremor amplitude increased. Gopher was taking a hell of a beating and Winger hauled himself up the tube as fast as the pitching deck would allow. He burst onto B deck and was immediately thrown against the bulkhead.
“Secure the borer!” he yelled out.
“Already done!” Tallant came back. “Treads are off line too—“
They both held on for a few seconds as Gopher shimmied and shook like a wet dog. Then, as suddenly as it had started, the violent tremor stopped. The compartment was silent, the air thick with dust, as the geoplane hull creaked and groaned under renewed stress.
“Contact Mole…see how she fared.” Winger hauled himself up to the main console while Tallant put out the call.
A few seconds later, Al Glance’s scratchy voice spluttered over the comm circuit.
“…’porting a lot of damage…our borer’s smashed…treads off line…we may have a hull breach—“
“Al….Al, this is Gopher…repeat your last damage report.”
“It’s bad, Skipper…we’re smashed up here pretty good…must have hit a fault or something.” Glance listed the damage to Mole, compartment by compartment. It was bad, and they were losing air too.
“Just like what happened to us,” Winger muttered.
“We’d better get them out of there,” said Tallant. She checked their position. “Surface coordinates put us somewhere between Talkot and Silgarhi, inside…or rather beneath Nepal. We’re forty miles from Leg Number Two, the turn at Namse Pass.”
Winger was just glad there were two geoplanes. “There’s only one thing to do…get ANAD out to bore an escape path…and put all Mole’s crew aboard Gopher.”
“We can’t abort,” Tallant agreed. “But is there enough room?”
“We’ll have to make room…and quick.
” He was already linking in, to talk with ANAD, explain what had happened and what had to be done. The nanoscale assembler had reluctantly agreed to return to containment, inside Winger’s shoulder capsule. “We can’t afford to get too far behind our mission timeline.”
***ANAD responding…ANAD is detecting a problem…what is the nature of the problem?***
“ANAD—“ Winger explained what had happened. “I need you to bore an escape path---wide enough for troopers in hypersuits…from Mole to Gopher.”
***ANAD is not currently optimized for solid-phase disassembly. My effectors configs are set for general molecular manipulation***
“ANAD…prepare for launch on my command.” He hacked at the buttons on his wristpad. “I’m sending the configs now…just get out and get going!”
He felt the brief sting of the launch and saw the translucent pale blue fog issue from his shoulder capsule. The swarm formed up directly over the main console.
“I want you to bore a path from their lockout chamber to ours…come on….” Winger got up and crawled aft through the access tube toward G deck. The fog swirled and twinkled in the command deck’s fluorescent lighting, then flowed behind the atomgrabber like some ghostly pet.
The ANAD swarm departed Gopher from the Ingress/Egress chamber on G deck and immediately began boring through the hard lattice of basaltic rock. A swelling globe of light throbbed just outside the lockout, as the swarm commenced operations.
***ANAD estimating boring rate at two point five meter per hour…give me a heading, please***
Winger had returned to the command deck, after ascertaining that Gopher had sustained only minimal damage. “Acoustic sounding puts Mole on a heading of one six five degrees…estimated range is one hundred and five meters.”
***ANAD acknowledges…increasing my disassembly speed to one hundred percent allowable***
Dana Tallant’s face was grim when Winger replayed ANAD’s reports. “At that rate, it’ll take two days to reach Mole. Can Al and the others hold out that long?”