Johnny Winger and the Hellas Enigma

by Philip Bosshardt

  “No doubt,” said Winger. “Half of Kolkata isn’t even human. It’s getting hard to tell the difference.”

  “Exactly,” beamed Barghan . “We have been most successful at this little niche business. Truthfully, we are now expanding into Muslim territory, re-creating ancient djinn and other great spirits.”

  Winger got a signal over his coupler circuit. It was ANAD. He motioned with his eyes for Dana Tallant to step in and keep the conversation going.

  Tallant understood. She bent closer to the viewer. “What are all these doodads here…some kind of new effectors?”

  Rakeesh Dhara was proud to show off his latest creation. “The peptide chains have unusually strong covalent bonds…here, let me show you—“

  While Tallant engaged with Dhara and Barghan looked on, Winger feigned attention and clicked in to the coupler circuit.

  ANAD, what is it? Where the hell are you?

  ***One level below and two hundred and twenty meters distant on a bearing one five five degrees***

  Fine. What’s up now?

  ***ANAD has detected entanglement pulses in the vicinity…ANAD investigated…ANAD discovered a miniature quantum generator under test at the base of this complex***

  Winger smiled faintly at Barghan’s inquisitive look. “Fascinating, really—“ he muttered, hoping the fab lord couldn’t detect coupler signals.

  ANAD, are you sure? A miniature quantum generator? Could it be part of the Shavindra temple machine?

  ***Unknown at this time…ANAD will investigate further…try to penetrate computer files***

  “—and the hydrogen abstractors are also a new design,” Dhara was saying. Tallant nodded, indicating great interest in the details while Barghan studied Winger curiously, wondering.

  “You have quite a complex,” Winger said. “We’re both impressed. Now we should talk business. Is there somewhere we could go?”

  Barghan pointed the way. “This way, please…I wish to know more about this Euro market.”

  They left the containment lab and came to a small conference room nearby. Winger pulled out a PDA and set it to project as he narrated a well-rehearsed cover story. The PDA’s recognizer received his voice signals and called files and images to go along with what Winger was saying. The entire presentation was a canned speech pulled together by Q2 from intel sources, designed to sound and look good and get any fab lord drooling over the possibilities.

  Winger had turned over the details to Dana Tallant and was simply studying the reactions of Barghan and his cronies when ANAD called again over the coupler circuit.

  What is it, ANAD? Jeez, I hope this transmission can’t be detected.

  ***Not to worry, Base…ANAD uses a random entanglement state switching algorithm…ANAD just penetrated master control system files for the quantum generator***

  Great, ANAD…super. What did you find? Anything we can use?

  ***ANAD has copied state vector files and control laws for generator operation…files are encrypted but ANAD has file copies stored in main core memory of master assembler…ANAD withdrawing now…Base, ANAD needs to download files…memory overload warning…memory overload could impair basic assembler functions***

  Winger could tell ANAD was in trouble. The coupler circuit always got staticky when something went wrong. The files he had copied from the generator computer were so big that his normal functions were being affected.

  ANAD, can you change config okay? Can you replicate?

  ***Config generator is slow…trying file compression now but encrypted files not in recognized format…ANAD does not wish to lose vital data***

  We’ve got what we came for, Winger thought. Time to get the hell out of here. He waited until the programmed presentation came to a convenient stopping point.

  “The Euro zone is the next great frontier for your kind of fabs,” Winger told them, picking up the sales pitch. “If we could work out a—“ but he stopped in mid-sentence. Barghan had a peculiar look on his face. Part grim concern, part deadly resolve, part something Winger had never seen before. He wondered if the fab lord’s face modifier bots had gone haywire.

  “It seems the situation has changed,” Barghan was saying. His face quickly returned to its normal impassive scowl, as if a Reset button had been pushed. “Now…I must really insist that you stay with us a bit longer—“ At Barghan’s command, a great swirl of dust motes in the air silently began gathering form behind Winger and Tallant.

  “Look out!” Tallant cried out. Instinctively, she tapped a concealed button on her wrist, intending to launch her own embedded ANAD swarm as a defensive shield but she was too late.

  The dust motes gathered quickly into a thickening, gelatinous mist and fell upon the nanotroopers like a strong wind. It was a MOB attack.

  Winger flailed at the bot swarms while Tallant was quickly enveloped. She had blown their cover with her attempt to launch ANAD. The MOB swarm had fallen on her before she could complete the launch sequence. Now she was pinned tight and being forced steadily to the floor by the smothering mass of nanoscale bots in exponential overdrive.

  “Barghan—“ Winger grunted out, fighting the swarm but knowing full well it was hopeless. “—you’ve got us all…wrong…we want to make a deal…work something out….make a big…buy here—“

  Barghan’s face was a mask of contempt, almost theatrical in intensity and edge. His facial bots were working overtime, stoked by a dopamine cascade in the hippocampal buffers inside his head. “Behind my back, you steal from me and cheat me. Bengali Djinn deals very harshly with cheats. Who are you working for?”

  What had triggered Barghan’s change of mind? As he was steadily forced down to the floor, Winger figured the fab lord had somehow detected ANAD’s penetration.

  “You’ve got ….it all…wrong, Barghan,” Winger squeezed out, but the fab lord wasn’t listening.

  “Get the lorry ready, Tamil. We’ll take them down to the river and do what we should have done before.”

  Barghan squatted down to peer at Johnny Winger, all enveloped and gasping inside the MOB net.

  “You believe I am just some poor Indian sahib, a fool who doesn’t know what’s going on? Your own swarms are picking my plate clean even while we talk. You think Bengali Djinn can’t see things like this? “ Barghan stood up. “Take them to the loading dock.”

  Tamil and another man each grabbed the handle of one MOB net and dragged Winger and Dana Tallant out of the conference room and down the hall. It was another bumping, bruising ride, down stairs, and across uneven floors.

  Here we go again, Winger thought. There was little he could do but curl himself up as tight as he could and try to ride out the trip.

  A small flatbed Lectro-Lorry had backed up to a loading dock at street level. Through the narrow mesh, Winger could just make out the dim outlines of stacked pallets and crates filling the dock area. He and Tallant were roughly dragged and kicked into the back cargo bed of the small truck and the nets strapped down. Altogether, he could make out two, maybe three other men. Presumably all Bengali Djinn, Barghan’s minions.

  The sound of their conversation was muffled. Winger tried to reach the button on his wrist that would launch his own embedded ANAD. Even the barebones assembler would make quick work of the MOB barrier, but he just could not contort himself enough to reach the button. For the moment, he was trapped. The other MOB net was visible next to him. He hoped Dana was safe inside.

  After a few minutes’ discussion, the lorry cargo bed was closed up and two men climbed inside the cab. The lorry started up, its small electric motor humming efficiently as the vehicle pulled away from the dock and out of the parking lot.

  It was dark, Winger could see, still night, but how late he could not tell. He knew there was a small perimeter detail from the Detachment scattered around the block, but unable to reach his wristpad, he couldn’t contact them. He tried contacting the loose swarm but ANAD didn�
��t answer. Possibly the MOB was obstructing or jamming the coupler signal, although quantum signals were supposed to be unjammable. But Red Hammer…and make no mistake, this was a Red Hammer front… had surprised them before.

  Maybe Barnes or Calderon will get suspicious and follow the vehicle, he hoped. It seemed a faint hope.

  The drive was a short one. The lorry eased down a shallow incline and Winger was sure he could smell the river. A cool moist breeze filtered into the MOB net and he could hear the sound of waves lapping. Horns honked in the distance, so they weren’t far from a road, perhaps a bridge.

  Two men got out of the cab. One was Tamil Selvan, one of Barghan’s musclemen, neuro-enhanced and twisted with all kinds of genetic trash inside. Tamil headed back to the lorry cargo bed to unload their unwilling cargo.

  “Come on…we don’t want anyone to see us here,” he muttered to his passenger. The other man climbed out of the cab and headed aft as well. Tamil knew him as Omdurman, kind of new, just came on a few months ago, as far as he knew. Omdurman glided down the muddy embankment, barely touching the ground. Tamil didn’t notice how Omdurman’s left leg ‘sliced’ right through the edge of the lorry rear bumper. It was too dark to see.

  “Help me get these jokers out…we’ll roll them down over there…right into the river. Those bushes will hide the balls until they sink.”

  The embankment was below and slightly north of the Bali Road bridge. It was well after midnight but vehicle and pedestrian traffic was still heavy across the bridge. Kolkata never slept. They would have to pick and choose their moment to push the MOB nets into the water.

  Omdurman eased up to stand alongside Tamil and helped the shorter man position the two MOB balls for their short drop to a watery grave.

  “Okay…Om…get ready…on my count…one…two….—“

  But Tamil never finished his countdown. Before he could release the MOB carrying Dana Tallant, Omdurman had rapidly mutated into something else, something completely unexpected.

  Tamil saw the light out of the corner of his eyes. He turned and saw that what he had once called Omdurman was now a faintly glowing swarm of nanobotic assemblers, a menacing fog swelling and throbbing with no sound save for the rustle of the bushes and the lap of the river against the bank.

  “Om—“ Tamil started to cry out, but the swarm was on him in a second, lurching forward with a speed unheard of in assembler formations. Tamil wasn’t exactly defenseless himself and tried to pull out a small pod from a pocket, tried to thumb a button on the side of the pod that would launch his own protective bot shield but he fumbled with the pod as the swarm chewed into his arm.

  “AAARRRGGGHHH…my—“ Tamil lost his footing and fell into the mud and was quickly enveloped in a glowing buzzing, crackling mist. For a few brief seconds, the swarm shone like a small sun as the replications ran their course, Big Banging poor Tamil Selvan into atomic fluff.

  Two lovers hanging over the edge of the Bali Road bridge saw the flare of violent disassembly down below and briefly wondered what was going on. But their attentions were soon distracted by friends and ‘angels’ from nearby, who gathered at the bridge rail to watch the oily waters of the Hooghly River slide languidly beneath the bridge. The burst of light faded as quickly as it had erupted and no one paid any further attention, distracted as they were by nanobotic fireworks all around them.

  Omdurman, or rather what Omdurman had become, then turned his attention to the MOB nets clinging precariously to the slope of the river bank.

  ***Base, ANAD here…are you receiving my signal…Base, this is ANAD***

  Any reply over the quantum coupler circuit was gibberish and ANAD quickly set to work disassembling the two MOB nets.

  ANAD as Omdurman began breaking down, disassembling itself into a swarm. Unseen by passersby on the Bali Road bridge above, the nanobotic swarm swelled into a throbbing cloud of bots, then went after the bots that made up the MOB barrier, starting first with Winger.

  For a few moments, there was a small sunburst in the bushes below the bridge, as the two swarms collided. ANAD assaulted the barrier with a special config designed to shred MOB bots in quick time, slashing through the barrier with electron disrupters that made quick work of the relatively weak structures of the MOB assemblers.

  Johnny Winger’s disheveled head popped out of the disintegrating mesh with a huge gulp of air and a spray of sweat as he shook himself free.

  “ANAD…thank God…I thought that might be you…I couldn’t get a coupler signal inside…man, it’s good to breathe that air—“ He wriggled free of the barrier and stood up, a little wobbly.

  ***ANAD detected enemy intentions, when MOB bots were activated…configged as Bengali Djinn and substituted self-swarm as enemy combatant…ANAD was not detected by enemy swarms***

  “I don’t know how you did it, ANAD, but I’m glad you did…let’s get Dana out now—“

  The swarm swirled around the debris of the shredded MOB net and broke down the other mesh in similar fashion. Dana Tallant’s bruised face and matted hair soon appeared, looking dazed but none the worse for wear. Winger helped her climb out.

  She stood and took a few uneasy steps, nearly sliding down the slippery embankment into the river. Winger grabbed her just in time.

  “I’d rather not do that again, Wings,” she muttered, pulling herself together, flexing her stiff arms and legs.

  “Let’s get into that truck and head back to the warehouse. I want to work out a new mission with the rest of the Detachment.”

  They drove through light traffic back to the warehouse at Number 17 Subhash Street. Lights were on throughout the complex.

  Winger got on the crewnet and told the rest of the Detachment to meet up at the original rally point on a small rise across the street from the warehouse. One by one, the nanotroopers materialized out of the dark and gathered around the truck.

  Mighty Mite Barnes shook her head over their appearance. “Jeez, Skipper, we didn’t know what the hell was going on. I saw that truck pull out but we weren’t sure if you were aboard. We were going to follow but then Turbo here thought you might still be inside.”

  “Yeah--” said Sergeant Adnan Fatah. Around the Detachment, he had long been known as Turbo, for his energy and enthusiasm “—we couldn’t get a fix on either of you…enemy jamming, I guess.”

  “Enemy MOB nets,” said Dana Tallant, shuddering. “Best I’ve ever seen, better even than what we have. Blocked everything. I almost suffocated in there.”

  “What’s next, Skipper? And where’s ANAD anyway?”

  Even as Barnes spoke, the swarm was already forming. ANAD gathered itself into the barest outline of a human face, twinkling like a neon sign on a cold night. The face of ‘Anderson’ leered down at them with a smile.

  ***ANAD is ready for orders…ready to continue with the next phase of the mission***

  Winger pulled up a map of Kolkata on his corneal viewer. “Thanks to ANAD here, we may have exactly what we came for.”

  Sheila Reaves studied the warehouse for a moment, taking a bead on one door with her coilgun. “We gonna take that cesspool out, Skipper? These Djinn buggers are bad news. We’d be doing BioShield and the whole city a favor if we just vaporized the place.”

  “Not just yet, Sheila. ANAD found some kind of miniature quantum generator inside. Could be a little brother to the one at the temple. And, he was able to penetrate their files and grab some of the operating instructions for the thing. If it works like the one at the temple, we’ve got a way to shut down the main generator. That’s what’s bending the path of that asteroid toward earth. I want the whole Detachment on board this lorry in five minutes. We’re moving out…back to Shavindra temple. Oh, and ANAD: think you can do a quick analysis on those files and give me any weaknesses on the way?”

  ***ANAD is already running routines to decrypt files…ANAD will advise with any tactical possibilities as soon as possible***
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br />   “Very well…load up, nanotroopers! Get all your gear together. We’ve got some unfinished business at Shavindra temple.”

  The lorry ride to the temple complex took nearly an hour, through heavy nighttime traffic in Baksara and the western suburbs. Sergeant Ray Spivey, ‘Spite’ to everybody, was driving this leg. Pedcab and foot traffic was especially dense around Howrah Indoor Stadium. The sporting arena shone bright with lights as a cricket match was running late into the night.

  The Shivandra temple compound was west of the city center, set in a tree-lined park called Bhattan. From the Hanagar Street roundabout, the ornate stepped pyramids of the main temple poked above the trees, a brooding presence in the late night mists, lights arrayed like a Christmas tree around the lower flanks of the pyramids. Traffic thinned out as the lorry navigated the circle and accelerated out along the Varanasi Road connector.

  Johnny Winger had been studying a layout diagram of the temple on his corneal eyepiece when the crewnet voice circuit crackled to life.

  “Skipper—“ it was Sheila Reaves, “—we got company. Detecting high thermals dead ahead…lots of EM across all bands. And that generator is going nuts, slamming quantum states like there’s no tomorrow.”

  The lorry eased through a huge iron gate adorned with serpents’ heads and tiger paws in stone, and stopped a few feet away from the shimmering barrier that shielded the temple. Through the translucent shield, crackling with bursts of light, the Sacred Pond of the Lillies reflected dim moonlight from an inner courtyard. A stone relief of Lord Shiva rose from the pond and a slender spire, brooded over a frozen gathering of spirits, also in stone. Beyond the water, a colonnaded portico surrounded the courtyard. Inside, the Hall of a Thousand Pillars was dark, save for clots and denser swarms of bots moving along the colonnade.

  Winger had seen the same pattern on his eyepiece…Reaves had ported the readings to the crewnet. The big generator inside was shaking and snapping spacetime like a wet rag, sending out massive waves of collapsing probability states.

  “Try to get a fix on it, Sheila. And start recording. I want Table Top to see this too.”

  “Lots of thermals too,” added Taj Singh. Singh was the Detachment’s second Defense and Protective Systems specialist. “All bands…EM, acoustic, whatever it is, it’s intense. Reading big nano ahead.”