Chapter 3
“Shockwave Troopers”
U.N. Quantum Corps, Western Command
Table Top Mountain
Idaho, USA
September 10, 2049
0645 hours (U.T.)
Major Jurgen Kraft scowled at the display dominating the Ops center. It was a God’s eye view of the Mountain, showing roads, mountains, rivers and most importantly, known faults and fracture seams underground, radiating throughout the area. “You’re sure of this analysis?”
Dr. Furman Radko was Quantum Corps’ Table Top Labs director. He was not a geologist, and he licked his lips nervously as Kraft’s fierce eyes bored in on him. “Major, no analysis is a hundred percent certain. We deal in probabilities here. But we’ve been able to pick up snatches of pulser signals over the last week or so and after analysis and some inspired guesswork, the Lab thinks the signals are coalescing here, below Table Top.”
Kraft’s moustache twitched like a mouse sniffing for cheese. “Lofton, what does Q2 think?”
Major James Lofton was head of the Corps’ Intelligence Directorate, known as Q2.
“We’ve seen the same evidence, Kraft. Pulser signals emanating from somewhere on the other side of the world. It can’t be Lions Rock, but the source could well be in east Asia…Radko’s people are just picking up snatches of decoherence wakes…you know how quantum signals are. The source could be the cartel’s Paryang base, in Tibet. It’s hard to say.”
Kraft was skeptical but he couldn’t ignore facts. “And the focus—you think it’s here?”
Lofton nodded. He pointed out the stratigraphic map of the western U.S., expanding it to show the faults, seams and fracture zones below central Idaho. “The data doesn’t really support any definitive conclusions but my hunch is Red Hammer’s trying to create some swarms right below Table Top. Look at it from their point of view: if they could set off a series of tremors and quakes, they could damage operations here at Table Top for a long time. That’d give them a free hand elsewhere, like New York or Paris. We know those cities are primary targets.”
Kraft didn’t like to admit there was anything his nanotroopers couldn’t do. “We don’t have any geoplanes assigned to us, gentlemen. I’ve got the bots and the atomgrabbers but I can’t get at those subterranean bugs without Boundary Patrol. I need their planes.”
Lofton was serious. “Kraft, we haven’t detected any seismic or acoustic or thermal evidence of swarm activity below Table Top…yet. Red Hammer may just be conducting some kind of recon mission under our feet. But the truth is those swarms could expand at any moment and loosen enough rock to shake, rattle and roll this base. My gut feeling is we’ve caught something in its earliest stages, before they’re ready to commence any assault. We’ve got to move fast.”
Kraft said, “I agree. I don’t like it but I’ll put in a call to Boundary Patrol now. And UNSAC. We’ll need high-level orders to do anything joint with Chandrayaan’s rockheads. Whatever it takes, I need geoplanes and ANAD swarms to go digging and stop whatever the dirtbags are planning.”
With that, Kraft dismissed Lofton and Radko and made the call to UNSAC in Paris.
The mission was to be designated Tectonic Guard. In an extended talk with Major Kraft, General Kincade CINCQUANT and Ravi Chandrayaan of Boundary Patrol, UNSAC decided that two geoplanes would be made available for a force recon mission in the rock strata directly beneath Table Top Mountain. The ships, geoplanes Mongoose and Badger II, would be assigned from Boundary Patrol’s North American station near New York. The planes would have BP crews, but the DPS techs aboard each crew would come from Quantum Corps. The Defense and Protective Systems rating was a natural fit for an atomgrabber and the techs would handle all counterswarm operations once underway.
Kraft selected Johnny Winger to serve aboard geoplane Mongoose and Sheila Reaves to handle DPS duties aboard Badger II.
Before the planes arrived by cargo hyperjet, Kraft held a quick briefing with Winger and Reaves in his office in the Ops center.
“I know you both think BP rockheads are basically pricks with their precious geoplanes,” Kraft was saying, “but we need them to get ANAD into contact with the enemy’s swarms. So watch your manners and be good little crew people. Winger, you’ve been working on optimizing ANAD for better solid-phase ops. How’s that going?”
Winger had been practically living at the Containment center after the sonic lens tests with Ferret and Otter. “Doc II had some ideas so we tried them. We changed some of the effector algorithms and souped up his replication routine. The changes haven’t been fully tested but ANAD should be a regular rockhound now…able to buzz through rock like a real mole.”
Kraft asked, ”You didn’t by any chance purloin details from Boundary Patrol’s borer ANAD, did you? You know how sensitive the rockheads are about that.”
Winger tried to smother a grin. “No, sir, absolutely not, sir. The fact that our ANAD’s new effectors and processor contains exactly the same algorithms as the borer bots is purely coincidental. We have smart people on our side too and besides, sir, who better to jazz up an ANAD swarm than Quantum Corps?”
Kraft sniffed. “Well spoken, Lieutenant. I don’t believe a word of it, but well spoken. Reaves, any concerns about your role here? You’re DPS with the crew of Badger II.”
Reaves smirked over at Winger. “None, sir. I’m just anxious to get into action with our new and improved ANAD as soon as—“
Her words were cut off in mid-sentence as all of a sudden, Kraft’s office, in fact the whole Ops building begin shaking noticeably. It was a transverse wave, moving the floor, walls, Kraft’s desk, their own chairs and shelves along one wall in a distinct up and down motion, a series of felt waves that made Reaves think she was at sea. It stopped in less than ten seconds.
“Jeez!” Kraft bounded out of his seat and staggered and wobbled over to a window, just in time to see the control tower overlooking the hyperjet runways visibly swaying. For a brief moment, he was afraid the tower would topple over completely.
“The whole base is shaking!” Winger yelled, staring out the window with Kraft.
Reaves eyed a crack spreading across the ceiling. “Maybe we should take cover—“
But the shaking stopped almost as soon as it had started. Outside, troopers and technicians were running in all directions. Smoke rose from the canteen that adjoined the PX…something cooking had probably spilled and started a fire. Sirens warbled across the top of the mesa.
Kraft’s vid chirped. He answered. It was Field Control, the tower he had seen swaying. “Major, we had two jets inbound from New York. The geoplanes on their hyperjet carriers. I had to divert them immediately…the whole place was shaking so bad and one jet was on final. They’re headed to Boise International right now. I thought you’d like to know.”
Kraft growled. “Thanks, Sergeant. I’ll contact Boise. I guess our cartel friends decided to send us a little greeting card.”
Reaves watched the scene outside. More fires had erupted near Containment. “They’d better get those under control and fast. Any breaches there will send a lot more than flames shooting around the base.”
Winger had an idea. “Major, maybe I should get down to Boise and help BP get situated. If Table Top’s already under attack, this may not be the best place to bring the geoplanes and the detachments. We could launch from there if we had to.”
“Do it,” Kraft ordered. “I’ll squirt the mission details to you once UNSAC signs off. And I’ll send a convoy of crewtracs and lifters for logistics.”
“I’ll get ANAD contained for transport and take him myself,” Winger said. “The sooner we get going, the better.” His words were punctuated by another round of slight tremors, barely felt but there all the same. The vid display on Kraft’s desk wobbled and shifted several centimeters, nearly to the edge of the desk. Kraft caught it just in time.
“On my way, sir
.” Winger and Sheila raced out of Kraft’s office. On a dead run to Hangar A at the north end of the mesa, Winger got on his wristpad to requisition a lifter, under Kraft’s authority for Tectonic Guard.
“Sheila, get the rest of our mission gear loaded. I’ll swing by Containment and button up ANAD for the trip.”
“Right! Meet you on the ramp!” The two nanotroopers parted and Winger swerved back south to head for Containment. With Table Top already under seismic assault, every second was critical.
The two geoplanes were unloaded, checked out and got underway in less than two hours, burrowing into a wooded hill just beyond Runway 080 at Boise International. Winger boarded with the crew of Mongoose. Sheila Reaves climbed through the aft hatch of Badger II at the same time and both nanotroopers made quick introductions with their Boundary Patrol crewmates and settled in at their duty stations on the command decks, B deck on each ship.
Like Badger, Mongoose sported a full BP crew with Winger slotted in as DPS. Lieutenant Karla Jung was CC.
Jung was a severe brunette with a witch’s scowl, accentuated by high cheek bones and a malevolent smirk. “So, Winger, you up on sonic lens details? Mongoose has the latest mods and upgrades.”
Winger figured this was going to be one big headache of a mission if the whole BP crew was like Jung. Just smile and sit up straight. “Yes, Lieutenant, I am. In fact, I was at Banks Island for the first tests, on board Otter, in fact.”
That made Jung’s face harden. “Otter…you were damned lucky to get out of that alive. What makes you think you can just shoot bots into rock and not set off quakes? Don’t you atomgrabbers have any geo background?”
Winger could see the borer operator and the driver turn and, with their sneers, silently agree with Jung. Red Hammer wasn’t the only adversary out there, he realized.
“No, ma’am, geo isn’t part of our training. Don’t rockheads know how to employ combat swarms properly? It’s all in the config, you know.”
Jung glared back at Winger for a full ten seconds, silently willing the nanotrooper to up and vanish from her pristine Boundary Patrol crew. Finally, she thought better of what she wanted to say and, without taking her eyes off Winger, ordered Mongoose into action.
“BOP, bring the borer on line smartly. DSO, set treads for full revs…I want two klicks at least when we go under. Ten degrees down angle…on my mark—“
“Yes, Lieutenant,” came a chorus of replies.
Jung sniffed and settled herself in at her station, hooking up the four-point harness.
Through the hull, Winger could hear the clanking of the treads being initialized. Ahead of them on A deck, the white-hot swarm of ANAD borer bots swelled and surged out of containment, turning Mongoose’s nose into a brilliant half-globe of light. The ship shuddered and vibrated like an animal waking up and stretching its muscles.
Jung said, “Go!”
Treads were engaged. The borer bit into the soft, spongy ground atop of wooded hill a kilometer beyond Runway 080, melting its way into the dirt and underlying rock. The ship lurched forward, and the deck angled downward.
Outside, had anyone been near enough to watch, they would have seen two mole-like geoplanes burning their way into the ground, sliding slowly out of sight, as their black armored hulls disappeared into the ground. In seconds, both ships were gone, leaving only a black smoking tarry pile of dirt, mud, pine needles and fallen limbs.
“Ten meters depth,” called out Mongoose’s Geo, Sergeant Zhang. Zhang was Taiwanese, short, stocky, with jet black hair hanging in curls over his right eye. Dataspecs in that eye gleamed and flashed with geo data from the ship’s sensors, outlining rock layers, seams, suspected faults, stratigraphic details. “Quartz layers ahead, Skipper. Hard stuff. Sedimentary formations, undifferentiated metamorphics…looks like some basalts too.”
“Very well, Zhang…spare me the details. Just let me know if anything shows up that we should avoid. Sensors, anything on the scope yet?”
Sensors was Sergeant Smithers. She was a redhead, with big green eyes, which she covered with her own dataspecs. Her fingers flew across a panel like a classical pianist. “Faint seismics, Skipper. Lots of noise down here…we’re paralleling the Ridge fault line on this heading. Recommend we put some distance between us and the fault.” Smithers studied the waterfall display, noting faint spikes at the bottom. “Could be non-seismic, but it’s hard to be sure. I need a better aspect to get some resolution for SAPS.”
“Okay,” Jung decided. “Notify Badger. DSO, brings us to heading two five five…and angle down to a hundred meters. Those spikes may be worth investigating. Winger, your little bot buddies ready to rumble?”
“ANAD loaded with combat config C-53…ready in all respects.”
Jung nodded. “I doubt we’ll need him but I want to be ready for anything. SS1, anything yet?”
Smithers scratched her red hair for a second. “Not sure, Skipper. The signals I’m seeing don’t match any known seismics. They’re faint but offhand, I’d say we’re hearing narrowband stuff, heavy stuff.”
“Like a geoplane?”
Smithers nodded. “Yes, ma’am. And it’s not Badger…I’ve got that filtered out and accounted for.”
“Good enough for me. DSO, steer Mongoose toward Sensors’ target. Winger, get ANAD ready and power up the sonic lens.”
For the next few minutes, Mongoose prosecuted her target, closing steadily on the signal source. The geoplane’s approach was slowed by a steady rhythm of shakes, quakes and tremors as her borer sliced through the rock layers of hard basalt and slate. Nothing too dramatic but Jung ordered the ship slowed to one quarter speed.
All doubt was soon removed when Mongoose shuddered violently and began a slow counterclockwise roll.
“P-wave!” announced the geotech Zhang. “Transverse P-wave…high amplitude, multiple waves--!”
“Hang on!” someone yelled.
Mongoose slid sideways, her hull creaking and groaning from the stress. A series of waves slammed her hull from the starboard quarter and there was an unmistakable sensation of sliding, sliding left and downward.
“Steer into the wave!” Jung ordered.
“She’s not responding!” the DSO came back. “Helm is sluggish…I’m losing traction in my right tread—“
“It’s multiple waves!” Zhang said. “We’re slipping…feel it?”
Slowly, Mongoose righted herself and steadied out, her treads biting into the rock, her borer burning their way forward.
Smithers called out, “Swarm signals dead ahead, Skipper! Swarm acoustics, strong returns now…we must be right on top of them!”
Jung wasted no time. “DPS, fire the sonic lens. Five bursts—Sensors, get me a bearing!”
Smithers studied her display. “Best bearing one eight zero…centroid at one eight zero!”
Winger stabbed a button on his panel and the acoustic blast of the sonic lens boomed out through the hull, reverberating as if the ship were a gong. One after another, Winger pulsed out blasts of the lens, shattering rock ahead of them, and hopefully enemy swarms as well.
“Now launch ANAD!” Jung ordered.
Winger cycled the containment port on Mongoose’s outer hull and the bot master squeezed its way out. “Sending max rate reps now,” Winger reported. “Combat config…he’s building mass…moving out on reported bearing.”
“Okay, belay the sonic lens…let ANAD do his thing.”
For half an hour, Mongoose and her sister ship Badger II stalked the enemy target. SS1 reported broadband returns ahead less than one kilometer, scattered returns with acoustics of a swarm. “Diffuse signal, Skipper…I think the lens damaged them…the signal is scattered, not as tight.”
“Time to ANAD intercept?”
Winger counted down from the launch. “Less than five minutes, Lieutenant.”
The sonic lens had indeed scattered the Red Hammer swarms but in so doing, the
pulses shattered enough rock along an unsuspected fissure to set two plate segments in motion. The resulting tremors would later be measured by geologists at greater than magnitude 7.0.
Topside, several kilometers north of the underground battle, Table Top was in a world of hurt. As the subterranean plate segments unlocked and shifted suddenly, a series of devastating compression waves rolled through Buffalo Valley and slammed the mountain like a fist, hammering the flanks of Table Top mesa with untold gigawatts of released energy.
The first structure to fail completely was the control tower overlooking the hyperjet runways, which toppled like a bowling pin and crashed over onto the north end of Runway 32 Right. Seconds later, Hangar A to the east of the tower foundation lost its cantilevered roof and one wall and soon lay in smoking piles of rubble.
The Ops center took longer but in the end, the glass and steel edifice was shifted too far off its foundations by the seismic waves and settled unevenly to the ground, loosening several load-bearing walls, which promptly imploded and caved in.
Inside the Ops center, Major Jurgen Kraft had been hustling with much of his staff and officers down flight after flight of emergency stairs when the walls buckled. Most of the staff was flung from the stairs into the cascade of girders, rebar and foundation blocks which rained down on them from above.
Many sustained serious injuries. Several died instantly in the collapse.
Jurgen Kraft never made it to the bunker underground. The stairs gave way and the outer walls disintegrated in an explosion of brick and mortar. From the beginning, the Ops center had been designed to withstand near hurricane force winds and heavy snowpack on its roof. But it had never been designed to withstand the magnitude 7.0 compression waves that rolled through central Idaho that afternoon, the result of a fierce battle going on hundreds of meters belowground.
Jurgen Kraft was crushed in a cascading pile of rubble that imploded on top of the fleeing staff.
At the very same time the Ops center and much of the Table Top base was sustaining major damage, ANAD was engaging the enemy swarms. Winger studied the sporadic acoustic and thermal returns from the swarms and finally ‘went over the waterfall’ to get a nanoscale view of what ANAD had encountered. He let the initial wave of nausea pass and focused on making some kind of sense of what he was ‘seeing.’
It was like flying at Mach 1 at an altitude of two centimeters. Solid-phase ops always made him dizzy. The rock structures were mostly feldspar and quartz, according to Zhang, formed in a tight crystalline lattice. He could almost imagine himself as ANAD climbing some kind of ladder that never seemed to end.
The Red Hammer bots were clearly ANAD clones. Same processor head and main casing that looked like stacked pancakes. Effectors out the wazoo with all-axis joints controlling picowatt thrusters. In nearly every respect that he could see, the enemy bots were ANAD.
We know what to do with this, he muttered to himself. Time to show these rockheads how real nanotroopers go to war.
He let ANAD handle the initial engagement. The swarm closed and grappled with the enemy bots and the resulting furball was a street fight at the level of atoms and molecules.
Sort of like ballroom dancing, with fists, someone had once said.
“ANAD now engaged,” Winger reported. “He’s grappling but the bugs have a hell of a lot of effectors. I’m going to back off and try disrupters.”
The rockheads could see pixelated snatches of images of the fight on Winger’s display.
“Looks like the inside of a tornado,” murmured Nolan, the borer operator.
“Or a cat fight,” someone else said.
Moment by moment, as Winger steadily modified configs and joysticked ANAD into new configs to give him the advantage, a grudging sort of respect developed among the crew of Mongoose. Tremors and waves continued to batter Mongoose and Badger as the ships pressed the attack.
In the end, a combination of ANAD engaging, interspersed with occasional bursts of sonic lens, convinced the enemy that he couldn’t succeed. It was Smithers who reported that the Red Hammer geoplane was backing off, pulling out.
“Possible aspect change on signal,” Smithers said, studying her waterfall display. “Return strength dropping…he may be moving off.”
“ANAD’s finishing off the swarm,” Winger added. “Just mopping up now…sporadic swarm outbreaks can be contained. I’m sending an abort command to the master…he’ll slough off most of the bots and return to the ship.”
“Very well,” Jung said. “DSO, turn us to capture heading so ANAD can come home. Secure the sonic lens. How’s Badger doing out there?”
Some discussion went back and forth between the two geoplanes. Badger had fared much the same as Mongoose. Her CC1 was Lieutenant Jeff Stefans.
Stefans’ voice crackled over the ship-to-ship circuit, scratchy and strained, as the tremors began to settle down into minor aftershocks. “We really did a number on the rock plates around here, Karla. I’m not sure what happened topside.”
Jung replied, “We’ll find out soon enough. This one was like a roller-coaster. Any more contacts? I think we drove ours off…maybe even damaged him.”
“For a while, our SS1 was sure there were two enemy geoplanes. We had two signals. Later, he thought maybe one was a reflection. We engaged swarms, same as you, and the configs Sheila Reaves hacked out worked like a charm. We chewed their buggers up and spat ‘em out in no time. Nice to think we still have an edge somewhere.”
“Let’s go up and see what’s happened topside.”
Stefans agreed and the two geoplanes angled toward the surface, finally breaching within half a kilometer of each other at the south end of Buffalo Valley. It was dusk outside when Mongoose finally burst from the ground like a hungry gopher and clanked down to a halt, her armored hull shedding dirt, rock chips and snow like a shivering animal. She sat steaming and hissing for a few moments, then Jung ordered the DSO to engage treads.
Like a drunken sailor, Mongoose trundled through light snowpack toward the base of Table Top Mountain, then climbed the steep flanks of the mesa, eventually reaching the summit and coming to rest just outside the gates of Drexler Field, the parade and rally grounds at the east end of the mountain.
Jung was first out of the hatch and she clung to the hatch hinges for a few seconds, numb with shock and dismay at the scene before her.
Table Top base was in ruins.
Johnny Winger popped his head out next and sucked in his breath at the sight.
“Jesus. H. Christ—I—“
“Fall out!” Jung ordered her crew. “And grab your medpacks. We’re going to need ‘em.”
The Containment dome was one of the lesser damaged structures on the base. That alone made many nanotroopers breathe a little easier, knowing none of the bots and swarms held within had escaped into the air.
The dome had been re-purposed into a combination command center, clinic and canteen. With the Barracks and O Quarters nearly leveled, bunking quickly became an issue. Temporary facilities were soon assembled by dedicated botswarms inside the one still-standing hangar, Hangar C.
General Winston Kincade was CINCQUANT and Table Top base commander. A makeshift office had been setup for Kincade and his staff inside Containment. Winger and Sheila Reaves were ordered to report as soon as the geoplanes arrived.
Dodging repair bots and troopers hustling crates and packs of materials back and forth across the walkways, Winger and Reaves made their way to Kincade’s closet-sized office. In fact, it had once been a storage hall, but walls had been knocked out and office furniture moved in.
Kincade rose to greet the troopers with a heartfelt handshake. “You heard about Major Kraft, I suppose?”
Winger had gotten the news that Kraft had been killed upon arriving at the Containment center. “Just heard, sir. I’m having a hard time with it. First Nano…without Jurgen Kraft--” He shook his head. Reaves struggled to fight back
a few tears.
Kincade waved them to nearby seats. “It’s hard to imagine. Kraft built 1st Nano, from the ground up.”
“He was a like a father to us,” Reaves admitted. “Sometimes gruff and often stern, but he wanted the best for the unit…for all of us.”
Kincade wasted no time. “Winger, thanks to you and the Boundary Patrol crews, Table Top---what’s left of it—is still operating. There’s talk coming down from UNIFORCE that we may be re-locating…to a new base. That’s unofficial for now and you keep that to yourselves. The geos say all the combat you engaged in has made the ground underneath us unstable. They say more shocks and tremors are likely. Obviously, we can run Western Command when the ground under our feet isn’t stable.”
“A new base?” Winger looked at Reaves. Their whole lives as nanotroopers had been centered at Table Top. The mountain was home, in all senses of the word. “Where, sir?”
Kincade smiled faintly. “Scuttlebutt out of the Quartier-General is somewhere in Mexico, maybe the Yucatan. More centrally located. But as I said, that’s unofficial…for now. In the meantime, 1st Nano needs a new skipper. Winger-“ Kincade pulled out a small box, which he opened up to reveal a small insignia…a gold cross-orbital, lying on a bed of black felt. “—I’m bumping you up two grades to Major. You’re assuming command of the battalion immediately.” He indicated Winger and Reaves should stand, then he came around the desk, pinning the insignia on Winger’s sweat-stained tunic at the lapels. When he was done, Kincade back off and stood up straight.
Winger swallowed hard. Major? Me? He saluted as smartly as he could. “Yes, sir—“ Kincade snapped off a return salute.
“I know this seems kind of sudden, but we’ve got a determined enemy out there and 1st Nano is the tip of the spear. We’ve driven them off for now but they smacked us hard here at Table Top. The coming months will be a test for all of us. Red Hammer can still inflict serious damage without warning and we need to deal with that. And I need my best people to step up and do their jobs.” He stuck out a hand. “Congratulations, Major John Winger.”
Two days later, a memorial service was held outside at Drexler Field, for all troopers and staff killed in the quakes and for Major Jurgen Kraft. The whole of 1st Nano was there, dressed as best they could in clean dress uniforms, though some of the outfits were torn and patched.
It was a cloudless, late summer day, a windy day on the Mountain. Caskets were lined up in front of the stands, draped in blue and white UN flags, surrounded by an explosion of chrysanthemums and lilies and garlands of greenery everywhere.
General Kincade spoke of the sacrifice of good men and women. Others spoke of duty and honor and the battles yet to come. It was Mighty Mite Barnes, in a tear-streaked eulogy, who said it best.
“’Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil’…that’s what the Psalm says. All these people weren’t superheroes. They were nanotroopers. Atomgrabbers. They had fears and dreams, just like the rest of us. What makes…excuse me, what made them… different from you and me, better than you and me, is why they walked through that valley. They didn’t do it for money or honor or glory or anything like that. They did it for you and me. Sacrifice is what some people call it. I call it love. They loved you and me, loved us better than life itself. They loved what they did. The way we honor people like that is to love each other and even more, to love what we do and love serving people. That’s what an atomgrabber…a real atomgrabber’s made of…love of serving others.”
There wasn’t a dry eye in the stands after that.
At the end of the service, a squadron of lifters streaked over the Mountain, in missing-man formation.
Johnny Winger left the stands at Drexler Field for a little walk. He needed time to think. Barnes and Sheila Reaves joined him. They walked the perimeter fence of the compound, all the way around the mesa.
Reaves whistled at the extensive damage the base had suffered.
“Jeez, Lieutenant…I mean, Major, look at this—it’s incredible.”
Barnes agreed. “A wonder more weren’t hurt…or killed.”
Every building, right down to the guard shacks, had suffered damage. Debris still littered the runways, along with jagged surface fissures that made one of the runways unusable. The hangars, the barracks and O club, the Ops center, the sim/training complex—all of them were missing roofs, windows, front facades, or whole walls.
“Magnitude 7.0 was what I heard,” Winger said. “And we’re still feeling it…aftershocks and tremors every hour.”
“It’s a shame we can’t just re-build all this,” Barnes said wistfully. “Table Top has always been like home to me…how can we be nanotroopers if there’s no Table Top?”
Winger agreed. “Too unstable now, the geos say. All that maneuvering and fighting underground has loosened tectonic plates and seams enough to cause a hell of a lot of shifting. Geoplane ops are just too dangerous and I don’t mind telling my rockhead friends that. Maybe the whole idea behind Boundary Patrol should be re-thought.”
“Tell that to Red Hammer,” Barnes said. “As long as the cartel has geoplanes and can threaten cities from below, there’ll be a Boundary Patrol. And Quantum Corps will have to work with them. Rockheads and atomgrabbers…what a combination.”
The three of them walked along the north slope of the Mountain for a while and stopped at a craggy overlook just inside the security barrier, only a few dozen meters from the end of the damaged Runway 32 Right. Lifters came and went right over their heads, vee-tolling into the north and south liftpads and hoisting gear, supplies and equipment off to a staging area near Boise. Transferring operations from Table Top to the new Western Command base in Mexico would take several weeks. Shutting down Table Top and turning the facility over to the U.S. National Park Service would take even longer…a lot of ‘sanitizing’ still had to be done.
Reaves admired the early fall color of the aspens lining the slopes of the Buffalo ridge to their north. The flanks of the mountains were resplendent with gold and red in full bloom.
“Major, what do you know about this new place? I hear it’s not far from the ocean.”
Winger had studied the layout in Kincade’s office earlier that morning, helping plan 1st Nano’s ready room layout and the battalion offices.
“Ten kilometers to the Gulf,” he told them. “And it’s right in the middle of a rain forest too. Built up on a ten-meter berm. Locals call the forest La Selva. Creepy-crawly things all over the place; you’ll love it. The best part is Kokul-gol, twenty kilometers northwest.”
Reaves said, “Kokul—what? What the hell is that?”
“Kokul-gol. Ancient Mayan temple and ruins. It’s said to be infested with all kinds of ghosts and ancient spirits.”
Barnes rolled her eyes. “Oh, great… Taj Singh will go apeshit over that…all the spirits and hexes and curses and mummies.”
“I don’t know if it has mummies or not,” Winger said. “But it is an active excavation site, sort of like Engebbe in Kenya.”
“That’s just friggin’ great,” muttered Barnes. “More archeologists to coddle. Who picked this place anyway?”
“I heard it was UNSAC himself. Mesa de Oro is more centrally located. I even heard scuttlebutt that there’s an underground tunnel from the base right out to the sea….but that could be just talk.”
The three of them headed back toward the commissary, now a makeshift tent erected near the rubble pile that had once been the PX. The smell of something being grilled outside had wafted across the Mountain and nanotroopers were streaming in from every direction. Lines were already forming.
The troopers of 1st Nano could not yet know that a little known secret about their new soon-to-be home base at Mesa de Oro would lead them on yet another adventure to the desolate countryside and prehistoric ruins near Mount Kipwezi, Kenya in the days and weeks ahead.
END
About the Author
Philip Bosshardt is a native of Atlanta, Georgia. He works for a large company that makes products everyone uses…just check out the drinks aisle at your grocery store. He’s been happily married for 25 years. He’s also a Georgia Tech graduate in Industrial Engineering. He loves water sports in any form and swims 3-4 miles a week in anything resembling water. He and his wife have no children. They do, however, have one terribly spoiled Keeshond dog named Kelsey.
To get a peek at Philip Bosshardt’s upcoming work, recent reviews, excerpts and general updates on the writing life, visit his blog The Word Shed at: https://thewdshed.blogspot.com.
Nanotroopers Episode 18: Geoplanes Page 18
