Nanotroopers Episode 7: Hong Chui
Page 7
Chapter 2
“Kolkata”
Kolkata, India
November 11, 2048
09:30 hours
The hyperjet Mercury burst out of the cloud bank on her descent to Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose Airport at Kolkata and Johnny Winger stared out the porthole at the hazy Ganges delta below. Columns of smoke from thousands of cooking fires added to the thick haze. Rice paddies interspersed with the crude huts of the traditional Bengali mawzas stretched to the horizon, like an infinite chessboard.
“That haze isn’t just smoke,” Lieutenant Elbert Fordham muttered. The Quantum Corps liaison officer from Singapore base had joined Winger in the forward cabin. “A lot of that stuff is loose nanobotic debris…assembler fluff from all the fabs. The stuff is out of control.”
Winger nodded. “So I’ve heard. You can’t contain it?”
Fordham snorted. “Not when a hundred million fabs are going off night and day. Containment laws mean nothing here. People are desperate. The black market in unlicensed, souped-up fabs and matter engines is exploding.”
“Red Hammer,” Winger said. “I’ve read the reports. They sell the fabs cheap and charge a fortune for the cores and drivers. Same old method they’ve always used. Get ‘em hooked first, then gouge ‘em for the goods afterward.”
Fordham agreed, as Mercury settled down to a bumpy landing on the tarmac of Runway 16 Left and roared down to taxi speed.
“The market here is huge. People have nothing, barely enough rice to eat, hardly any shelter, rags for clothes. They spent every rupee on fabs and software, hoping to strike it rich. It’s like Aladdin’s Lamp, if you’ll pardon my using another culture. You can’t make food—still no fabs for organic stuff, but they’ve got everything else: fancy clothes, cars, personal bots, every kind of gadget you can think of...Kolkata’s like a bazaar gone crazy. There must be hundreds of millions of fabs here…the air’s so hot because of all the assembler activity. If it isn’t bolted down and screened by bots, everything becomes raw feedstock. The buggers’ll eat the clothes right off your back.”
Winger was gathering up his gear to disembark. “And the local authorities…they can’t shut ‘em down?”
Fordham followed Winger aft to the ramp. The rest of Alpha Detachment was gathered around the door, already suited up.
“The locals are the worst,” Fordham explained. “Bought off or intimidated by the cartel or other players in the game. We get some help from the National Police or maybe the West Bengal cops…ah, there’s Tranh now, with a few of them.”
Winger came down Mercury’s side ramp, followed by Fordham. The rest of the Detachment assumed a loose parade formation as they disembarked.
A Vietnamese officer in the khaki and blue of a local Quantum Corps officer stepped forward. He saluted Winger and Fordham smartly.
“Lieutenant Nguyen Tranh, sir. My E-team is on duty in town at this moment.” He indicated a burly black African second in command. “This is Sergeant Lumumba. He’s my chief. E-team West Bengal is ready for inspection, sir!”
Johnny Winger spotted other officers nearby. Tranh introduced them.
“Captain Jawaharlal Singh, at your service, sir. The West Bengal Provincial Armed Constabulary is ready for patrol duty.”
Singh was a lanky and swarthy officer with a luxurious black moustache, erect and full of military bearing. He saluted Winger and added, “West Bengal is pleased to host the famous troopers of the Quantum Corps. My men will escort you into the city.”
Winger returned the salute. “Captain, what’s the situation here? Intel says the whole region’s thick with nano…in fact, satellites tracked a quantum disturbance we were chasing all the way from Africa…it could be Symborg himself. QC’s executing a Level Three quarantine for Kolkata itself.”
A trio of black lifters hovered just over the ramp, waiting for them. “Come,” said Singh. “My ships will take your people and gear into the city. Do you require assistance in—“ Singh stopped in mid-sentence as one of the Quantum Corps officers behind Winger began to ‘de-materialize.’
It was ANAD. Against all regulations, Winger had allowed part of the swarm to stay loose and it had assumed a para-human config upon disembarking…standard procedure for parade formations. Now, at Winger’s signal to fall out and collect their gear, the swarm had changed config to a more natural state and was busily re-forming into an amorphous fog of twinkling lights.
“—ah, I see you have the assembler formation I had heard about…this must be the famous ANAD combat element.” Singh marveled at the speed of the config change. “I only wish our own constabulary bots were so disciplined. Here in Bengal, nanobotic mechanisms are like smoke…everywhere, uncontained…” he shrugged, “it is the Bengali way, I’m afraid…beyond anyone’s control. By the grace of Vishnu…we are overwhelmed.” Singh glanced over at Tranh, whose face was hard and skeptical, warily keeping an eye on the undulating ANAD swarm.
Tranh stiffened. “Your detachment is present and accounted for?”
Winger nodded in the affirmative. “Alpha Detachment is ready to deploy. Detachment—“ he called over the crewnet, “rig for Tactical One…opposed entry. Nguyen, you have the decoherence wake coordinates?”
Corporal Nguyen said, “Affirmative, sir. Locked in and ready.”
“Very well…unlock your weapons. ANAD…configure State One. Let’s go—“
They headed off to the lifters. Moments later, the black spidery vehicles were winging their way eastward in formation over the misty Hooghly River, heading for the heart of Kolkata.
Seen from the air, the great Indian metropolis was not particularly impressive. A sea of dun-colored low rise buildings was punctuated by TV towers and the occasional high-rise building, split by the muddy ribbon of the river. Several patches of green—city parks and the Maidan race track, Singh explained—gave some color to an otherwise dreary urban landscape.
Crossing the river at several hundred meters altitude, the formation of lifters banked left over the ornate Victoria Memorial and chopped speed, settling toward a grassy sward just east of the Shalimar Road bridge. The small park was surrounded by mawzas and shanties of every size and shape, crowding in on the green field like waves of wreckage washing ashore.
“Howrah Heights,” Singh informed them. The lifters hovered momentarily while soldiers from the Provincial Constabulary shooed off beggars and pickpockets and secured the field. After a cordon had been set up, the lifters touched down. The Constabulary quickly dispersed. They had little protective gear and couldn’t operate long in such a nano-heavy environment.
“Fall out!” Winger ordered over the crewnet. “Tactical One and keep your eyes and ears open.”
“Skipper—“ it was Sheila Reaves, DPS tech for the Detachment. “Superfly’s already deployed…I’m already getting thermals and atomic fluff big time. Intense nanobotic activity all around us—“
Tranh explained. “The air’s thick with nano here. All the fabs around. I’d recommend a level one barrier around the landing zone…at least until you get all your gear set up.”
Winger needed no further urging. He cocked his head and got his own embedded ANAD master bot on the coupler.
“ANAD, config state four. I need a screen to hold off these fabricator bugs that are flooding the area. Synchronize with us and hold a perimeter—“he estimated the size of the landing zone at about a half a square kilometer—“two hundred meters radius from this position.”