CHAPTER 21
Sentinel Base Station
Sedna
January 20, 2111 (U.T.)
2000 hours
Sammy Ng and Julie Grant stayed aboard Icarus, trying to repair what they could and get the base station module up and operating.
Sub-element B-1 set off to re-join the master swarm that was Commander Element B. “You’re with me, for backup and fire support,” Element B told Corporal Demetrious. “I still want to recon those red hillocks and see if any swarms remain. We should be thorough in sanitizing the neighborhood. I don’t want anything interfering with the base station.”
Demetrious indicated the MOBnet that still contained Stoltz. “What about him? We can’t just leave him out here, Commander.”
Element B considered that. It was true that the particle flux was intense at Sedna’s surface. “Roll him against the side of Icarus. We won’t be gone that long.” With that, the Element B swarm brightened momentarily, as the sub-element merged, then began drifting off across the dusty slopes to the north of Icarus, heading for a small group of reddish mounds, mounds that might still be residual enemy bots.
Demetrious kicked and shoved at the MOBnet ball. A muffled voice issued from inside.
“Hey watch it, bozo…that hurts. Why don’t you just drop kick me like a football…better yet, let me loose, you moron.”
Corporal Demetrious, when interviewed days later about why he had disobeyed a direct order from a superior officer, could only say he thought Stoltz might be suffocating…he had pity on the man…there was a radiation hazard…nobody should have to be scrunched up like that for so long…there were any number of reasons why he used his MOBnet key to start unzipping the mesh that seemed to be strangling Stoltz.
By the time the MOBnet had stopped rolling against Icarus' left rear wheel, the head and shoulders of Systems Tech Eddie Stoltz had already popped out of the opening and the two of them were busily de-meshing the rest of the net and peeling the damn thing off.
Stoltz took a deep breath and staggered to his feet, shaking his hypersuited head like a wet dog. Sheets of dust and de-meshed bots sloughed off and fell in slow motion to the dirt.
“Jeez, thanks, man…I couldn’t breathe in that bag…where the hell is everybody?”
Demetrious indicated Igloo. “Sammy and Julie are in there, bringing everything online. The Commander’s on recon…he still thinks those red hills need a look-see.”
“Oh, yeah—“ Stoltz stepped out to see the Element B swarm now drifting its way up the nearer slope. “Not for long, the asshole—“ Stoltz lunged for Demetrious’ HERF rifle and snatched it away.
“Hey…hey, what the--!”
Stoltz then kangaroo-hopped a few meters to clear Igloo’s landing leg and leveled aim at the twinkling, sparkling fog.
“Eddie, man, what the hell are you doing?” Demetrious went after the Systems Tech but before he could make it, Stoltz had already fired.
A hot wave of rf blew across the slopes and the swarm that was Element B was scattered, frying bots all over the place. Instantly, the faint swarm was gone, replaced by a gale of dust and dirt, swelling outward like a slow-motion bomb burst in Sedna’s low gravity.
“Take that, you friggin’ cloud of bugs!” Stoltz pumped round after round of HERF into the swarm, until Demetrious dove and knocked the tech to the ground. The carbine went cartwheeling into the distance.
“Sammy—Julie—get out here--!”
For a moment, Demetrious and Stoltz wrestled, as much as you could wrestle while clad in a garbage can like the hypersuit, crawling and scuffing their way toward the still-bouncing carbine.
“Get off me, you big ape!” Stoltz kicked and clawed at Demetrious, as they both lunged for the weapon. Stoltz got a gloved hand on the carbine stock and swung it around into Demetrious helmeted face.
At the same time, Sammy Ng had heard the commotion over the crewnet and slipped out of Igloo’s airlock, poking his head out to see what was happening. Right away, he saw Demetrious and Stoltz grappling in the dust for the HERF carbine.
When Stoltz grabbed the weapon and boosted upright, taking aim at where Element B had once been and was now reassembling, Ng knew what he had to do.
“Eddie…stand down, man! You can’t do this--!”
“The hell I can’t!” Stoltz cycled the carbine and let fly another round. But that was the last round he got off.
Sammy Ng was already pulling out his magpistol and flicking off the safety. Before Corporal Eddie Stoltz could hose down the Commander a third time, Ng fired. Loops of magnetic energy struck Stoltz in his hypersuit broadside. Instantly, the suit seals gave way and the force of the rounds knocked Stoltz flying. When he finally hit the ground, explosive decompression had already started. The venting O2 acted like a small rocket thruster and spun Stoltz sideways, spun him like a top before he landed.
Demetrious scrambled away from the dying Systems Tech, as much to get out of the line of fire as anything. “Hold your fire, Sammy! Cease fire!”
At the same moment, Grant joined Ng on Igloo’s lockout back porch. She already had her own weapon trained on the melee, but Ng grabbed the barrel before she could fire.
Demetrious boosted himself upright and slogged over to Stoltz. He could already see the fog from venting O2 forming small clouds around the neck seal. Stoltz was clutching at his face, at his throat, rolling and flailing as best he could.
“Steve…Sammy—“ his words were choking, filled with garbling and rasping, labored breathing. Then, everything went silent. A tone filled the crewnet…the death tone, troopers had long called it. Med sensors scattered around Stoltz’ suit registered what had happened. No pulse, no heart rate, no breathing, nothing. The fog at the neck seal dissipated.
Stoltz was dead.
Demetrious came up. With effort, he kneeled alongside, checking Stoltz’s suit, his faceplate. The helmet visor was fogged, but the tone said it all. Demetrious reached over to Stoltz’ wristpad and pressed a red button, killing the sound.
“He’s gone.”
Sammy Ng was already scrambling down from Igloo. “Christ, I had to do it, man. I had to stop him…where’s the Commander?”
“Master bot functioning at reduced capacity, but attempting to re-assemble config.”
Demetrious and Ng both looked up, beyond Igloo and the prostrate form of Eddie Stoltz. At the base of the low hill, what they had first taken for dust was now gathering itself together into a faint, phosphorescent cloud, twinkling through the dust tendrils that constantly swept the surface.
‘Commander, is that you…you’re not hurt are you?”
“It is difficult to kill a swarm…my replicants are scattered but the master assembler is intact…checking all systems…effectors now coming online…propulsors coming online…it seems that this master is functioning at somewhat reduced capacity…but operating nonetheless…”
Ng and Demetrious watched as a faint mist descended the dusty slope and drifted toward them. Just then, Julie Grant stepped down from Igloo’s porch.
“Is all the commotion over?” Then, she saw the fallen hypersuited form of Stoltz. “What the hell happened out here? Don’t ya’ll know we’ve got work to do?”
With Element B gathering itself back together, Ng and Demetrious did a quick check of Stoltz.
“What should we do with the body, Commander? I don’t want to leave him out here exposed like this.”
Once the swarm had arrived at Igloo, Commander Element B began to gather itself into a likeness of a face, a faint and shadowy outline of a generic, recruiting-poster face. There was a long-standing joke among Big Mike’s crew that Element B had taken a liking to certain faces and one of them was a recruiting poster at UNISPACE Phoenix Station at Earth’s L2 point. The face thickened and formed up, though it remained an outline, almost a cartoon, attached to basic shoulders and upper torso. You could see right through the formation to the terrain beyond.
“Use your trenching jets to dig a small grave, right below Igloo, below the equipment bay. Bury Corporal Stoltz there and make a berm around the grave as you finish.”
“Aye, sir,” Ng and Demetrious said at the same time. They dragged the hypersuited crewmen over to a position beneath Igloo and set to work.
Grant came down to the surface. “Commander, you’re sure you’re all right? I can do a scan now…I just can’t figure it, sir. We have angels…excuse me, sir…swarm formations throughout the Corps. But some people—“ she shook her head, though nobody could see that in a hypersuit. “I guess not all the dinosaurs are extinct, sir.”
Element B made some kind of facial gesture, though it was an imperfect rendition…maybe a shrug, it was hard to tell with angels.
“Single-config entities such as Corporal Stoltz are a mystery to multi-config formations such as myself, Sergeant Grant. We have physical differences, it is true. But like most angels, as you call us, I desire to be judged on the content of my character, not the nature of my configuration. Sergeant, what is the status of the Sentinel equipment?”
Grant indicated the Igloo module. “All systems checked out and operating, sir. We’re even talking to the transmitter up on that hill.”
“Very well, Sergeant. Good work.” Element B began flowing toward the ladder at Igloo’s base. “Start getting your gear together. When Captain Hawley calls and Big Mike is back in stable orbit, I want to be able to take off quickly.”
It was Ng who noticed what was missing on the hills nearby. “Commander, what happened to all those little red humps you were investigating?”
The dusty slopes that surrounded Igloo like the sides of a bowl now seemed devoid of any humps, or any features at all, save a few craters and depressions. Long shadows and the ever-present dust made visibility poor.
“After Corporal Stoltz opened fire, I aborted my reconnaissance effort. When I turned back, the hillocks were gone. I had been detecting some EMs, some atomic activity around those humps…but I couldn’t localize it. Now—“ Element B shrugged, or displayed what passed for a shrug by a para-human swarm entity. “—I’m not so sure. I detect only residual surface electron spalling, charged particle influx…natural effects. I see no high thermals, no abnormal EMs—“
Ng didn’t see anything on his viewer either. “It’s like they just disappeared.”
Grant shrugged. “Maybe they were just dust mounds after all.”
“I detect no obvious threat along any vector from this location. Sergeant Grant, your explanation is the most probable one. You and Corporal Ng, get the rest of your gear loaded into Igloo. Corporal Demetrious, you come with me. We’ll make Icarus ready for launch.”
“Aye, sir—“ came a chorus of replies.
An hour later, the hypersuited remains of Eddie Stoltz had been partially buried in a dust pan directly beneath Igloo. The module had been activated, then buttoned up and, just as Grant and Ng were about to kangaroo-hop their way the last kilometer down the slight grade toward Icarus, Captain Hawley’s voice sounded on their crewnet.
Commander Element B replied, from just outside Icarus’ hatch. He gave Hawley a rundown on what had happened with Stoltz and the status of Igloo and the Sentinel base station.
“Sentinel base station is now fully operational, sir. All elements check out and all systems operating normally. As I indicated, we have provided a small burial space for Corporal Stoltz beneath Igloo.”
Hawley was silent for a moment. “Commander, Big Mike’ll make orbit in about two hours. Bring Stoltz up with you. We’ll do a formal burial in space. The poor fellow deserves at least that much. And nobody was hurt in the fracas?”
“All members of the landing detail are functioning normally and able to complete their assigned duties, sir.
“Very well, Commander. We’d deployed the last group of sensor pods a few hours ago. Now all we have to do is check the whole system stem to stern. I want to get the hell out of here as fast as we can, but CINCSPACE will have my head if we leave before Sentinel’s up and running. We’ll have to coordinate with Farside and Mariner City, as well…make sure everybody can talk to everybody. By the way, we’ve seen no further signs of our swarm friends…it’s like they just vanished.”
Element B explained how the red humps distributed along the surface of Sedna seemed to have evaporated as well. “I can find no rational explanation, other than to assume that the mounds were dust clumps that were dispersed in the particle flux that bathes the surface here.”
“I’ll buy that, Commander. Be prepared to lift off as soon as we make orbit.”
Hawley went offline and Element B directed Grant, Demetrious and Ng to head back uphill to Igloo and retrieve Stoltz’ body. “Captain Hawley wishes to conduct a formal burial in space. Use the packbots to help you carry him…it’s more than a kilometer up there and back. We will secure the Corporal in Icarus’ stores locker…there should be enough room now.”
The three troopers headed out. When they arrived at Igloo, it was Ng who noticed some small signs of disturbance around the mound of dirt they had bermed up against Stoltz’ body.
‘What the hell—?“ Ng shoveled some of the dirt around with his boot and it flowed upward into the air almost like water, then back down to the ground in slow motion. “Did one of you jokers kick this pile?”
“I haven’t touched anything,” Grant said. “It’s just static charge, like everything else on this rock pile of a world.”
“Come on, you clowns, grab the body and get him up. I’ll go find the packbots.”
Once the packbots had been retrieved, Demetrious linked them together with some rope and did a quick program change to synch their movements. The three of them hoisted the hypersuited body of Eddie Stoltz upright and laid him face-up in the arms of the linked packbots.
“Seems lighter than I thought,” Ng noticed. “Or else I’ve developed a lot more muscle slogging around down here.”
“Hey, quit yapping…let’s go,” Grant told them. “Commander wants us back in ten minutes.”
They covered the distance with the packbots in eight minutes.
With a lot of grunting and bitching, Ng and Demetrious managed to load Stoltz’ body aboard Icarus.
“Secure him in the Stores locker,” Element B told them.
Icarus was quickly made ready for launch. When Michelangelo had achieved orbit and positions were aligned, the ship took off and rocketed into space. Two hours later, the great kebab skewer that was Big Mike came slowly into view. Element B was at the controls and guided them into contact with the mother ship’s docking ring.
A staccato hammering of the capture latches sounded through Icarus’ hull.
“Hard dock,” Element B announced. “Let’s get to work unloading.”
Other crewmen came to help and the lander was quickly emptied of her gear. When it came time to unload Stoltz’ body, Captain Hawley appeared at the hatch.
“Let me take a look—“ he ordered. Ng and Demetrious lay the hypersuited crewman down on the deck. Hawley peered into the faceplate of the helmet. “Did you guys leave a light on in there…I see something…kind of flashing—“
“No, sir,” Ng replied. “Unless something got inside through the neck seals…that’s what failed down on the surface.”
“Hey, it’s moving—“ someone said.
Hawley backed off. He saw it too, out of the corner of his eye. Maybe a twitch. A finger flexed. Then a foot.
“What the—“
“Hey…watch out, the face is—“
At that moment, the hypersuit that had failed Corporal Eddie Stoltz began to dissolve right before their eyes. A bright light shone through the faceplate, like a sunburst coming up.
A steady stream of particles began issuing out of the failed neck dam…sparkling, twinkling particles…already they were exploding outward in slow motion, like an eruption….
&n
bsp; “BOTS!” someone yelled.
Arms flailed. Feet kicked and bodies fell backward, as crewmen scrambled to escape.
“Big Bang…it’s on the ship--!”
“Get the HERF…fry the bastards--!”
In seconds, Corporal Eddie Stoltz no longer existed…if he had ever existed. In his place, a throbbing ball of light, like a miniature supernova, had emerged from the shredded remains of the hypersuit.
And the crew of Michelangelo quickly had a desperate battle on their hands.
DIRECTIVE
UNITED NATIONS COMMISSIONER OF SECURITY AFFAIRS
Control: 17430
Received: 25 JAN 2111, 1500Z
FROM: UNSAC
TO: CINCQUANT and all subordinate commands
NO: 12511 January (UNIFORCE Message)
PRIORITY: Elite Purple
ACTION: CINQUANT, CINCSPACE, CINCSANC, DIRBIOSHIELD
UNSAC 6887 from UNSAC
Pursuant to THREATCON 2 guidelines, UNSAC directs all subordinate commands to implement immediately Physical Security Verification Protocol Alpha 22 (PSVP A-22). Q2 Intelligence reports indicate with high probability Config Zero penetration / infiltration ops underway in all sectors and theaters of operation. PSVP A-22 requires all personnel be scanned and validated non-angel or better configuration by not later than 1 Feb 2011, 0000 hours.
Commander’s Directive:
By order of CINCQUANT (UNSAC 6887), you are hereby directed to appear at the Physical Security Verification office at your command or base Personnel Center at the time indicated above. The details of this appearance are to be kept confidential. Examinations will require approximately one-half hour per person. Failure to appear at the indicated time will be considered a Class A Security Code violation. Non-appearees will be subject to Uniform Code disciplinary action at the discretion of the facility commanding officer.
KEA: 2
NOTE: Advance copies not distributed per UNSAC 4458.
FOUO: REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED UNLESS REVIEWED BY UNOSG-021
Johnny Winger and the Great Rift Zone Page 44
