CHAPTER 22
The Hotel Metropol, Berlin
January 25, 2111
1820 hours (U.T.)
The unmarked van crept slowly down the alley off Unter den Linden as crowds streaming toward the Brandenburg Gate began to thicken. Ahead, less than a block away, were the gothic columns of the Hotel Metropole.
Q Detachment would enter the hotel by the service door behind the hotel, dressed as utility workers.
Lieutenant Justin Cannon eyed the vast hordes of people surging westward, toward the stages and the lighting stands and the assimilation booths that defined the grounds of the great rally, due to start promptly at seven that night.
All these people…just to see and be near a cloud of robotic mechs.
Cannon shook his head and looked back inside, appraising each trooper in his six-man squad. Helms, Lukasc, Jung, Bedard and Livio. And himself, the c/o. All hand-picked for this little venture into Indian country. The Detachment had one and only one mission: locate the master assembler bot that ‘ran’ the Symborg swarm and insert the replication blocker that Table Top labs had developed.
If all went well and the blocker worked as advertised, Symborg—whoever or whatever it was—would be unable to replicate copies of its basic structure. Unable to maintain integrity. Unable to appear before throngs of people as some kind of savior or rock star.
With any luck, the scumbag would eventually disperse and fade away.
That was the plan and it was up to Cannon and Q Detachment to carry it out.
“Hotel coming up, Skipper.” Helms, the Defense Systems tech, hoisted up his HERF carbine and, pressing a few hidden switches, collapsed the weapon down to something the size of an umbrella. He stroked the barrel lovingly. “Me and Sweetness here…we’re ready to light ‘em up. Fried or extra crispy…makes no difference to us.”
“Just keep that trigger-happy finger under control, Helms. We don’t want to be waking up the neighborhood if we don’t have to.” That was the problem with Defense System Tech Helms, Cannon thought to himself. Anything not labeled Quantum Corps was just like raw meat to be grilled.
The van pulled up to the service entrance and Q Detachment disembarked. Disguised as a utility crew, the troopers got through the security scan and made their way inside.
Intel from Q2 placed Symborg and his entourage at the hotel a few hours before the huge rally, which was to be held on a stage in front of the Brandenberg Gate. All the troopers were embedded with ANAD masters, carried in their shoulder capsules. Additional weapons and gear, standard issue HERF and mag carbines, were carried in innocent-looking tool boxes.
As a unit, the troopers rode a service elevator to the tenth floor. The door hissed open and right away, a nanobotic security barrier made getting off a hassle. Lukasc jammed the door open, while Jung launched his own embed. They didn’t use HERF or mag on the barrier, since the noise would likely wake up the entire hotel.
“ANAD launched,” Jung reported. A faint sparkling mist issued from the trooper’s shoulder capsule. Immediately, a spider-web of light brightened at the elevator door, as the ANAD master slammed atoms to build out its swarm and engage the barrier bots.
The entrance was momentarily bathed in an eerie blue-white glow as the bot swarms collided. Moments later, the barrier flashed and went dark.
They were in.
Cannon led the way. According to intel, Symborg was holed up in a suite of rooms around the corner, rooms 1015 through 1018. Cautiously, Cannon crept down the hall, flanked on either side by Jung and Helms. The rest of the Detachment stayed back, to cover the elevator and make a path for their escape.
Cannon’s embed carried the replication blocker and would do the basic insert. The Lieutenant knew that the first order of business would be to establish the exact location of the target, though in this case, the target was a collection of bots that could be dispersed just about anywhere.
They reached Room 1015 and found another barrier, pulsating over ornate doors gilded in gold leaf trim.
Don’t want to alert the target, Cannon thought. He called a halt to their approach and the troopers hung back at the other end of the corridor.
“Jung, what’s it look like inside? Is the target on-site?”
Corporal Jung was the other DPS tech. He scanned through the walls. “Reading elevated thermals and EMs, Lieutenant. Probably the target but he may be dispersed. I’m not seeing any high concentrations of atomic activity.”
Cannon considered that. “We expected that. I don’t want to breach that door barrier. We’ll wake up the whole place. Lukasc, is your solid-phase config ready? My little guys are going to need a little recon.”
“Up and operating, Skipper,” said the CQE (Containerization and Quantum Engineering). “My ANAD embed reports ready in all respects.”
“Very well.” Cannon knew they had simmed and wargamed this aspect of the mission scores of times. Knowing how tight security was around Symborg, the geniuses at the Corps had decided solid-phase penetration was the way to go…get inside the compound right through the wall. “Take your position and launch embedded ANAD—“
Sergeant Lukasc slipped to the front of the squad and squared himself to the wall, pressing a recessed button on his shoulder capsule. In seconds, a twinkling mist had filtered out and formed a spherical cloud of bots hovering over his head.
“ANAD away, Skipper…I need a navigation hack.”
“Squirting it now,” called out Bedard. “Steer left one five zero degrees.”
With that, the recon swarm began to shrink and fade slightly, as the bots disappeared into the wall, maneuvering through a crystalline lattice of atoms, squirming between row after row of silicon and oxygen and aluminum molecules.
“Penetrating nicely, Skipper. I’m going small…try to get a view of what’s happening.” Lukasc went “over the waterfall” in trooper-speak, letting the master bot feed him an acoustic return on what the swarm was encountering. “Looks like standard lattice structure…nothing unusual here. Anticipating lattice boundary in four minutes….we should be inside at that point.”
‘Understood. I’m launching my guys now.” Cannon’s embedded ANAD master carried the replication blocker they were tasked with trying to insert into the Symborg swarm.
But just as he set his own shoulder capsule for launch, something out of the corner of Cannon’s eye caught his attention.
Sergeant Helms, Q Detachment’s DPS1, was beginning to de-construct, right before their very eyes.
It wasn’t possible. With security at Table Top tighter than a drumhead, with the Physical Security Verification…but there it was.
Helms was an angel.
“Watch out…!”
“It’s a swarm--!”
“He’s breaking down…!”
Before the rest of the Detachment could react, the cloud of bots that had once been Sergeant Helms was already disassembling right in front of them.
Lukasc was the first to get it. The Helms swarm swelled rapidly, filling out the corridor and falling on the CQE like a desert dust storm.
“AAARRRGGGHHH…get it off…get it off me!!” He was quickly enveloped by the bots. In seconds, only the top of his head and hands were visible.
Already Cannon and Bedard were unslinging their HERF carbines. “Fry em! Light ‘em up!”
Barrage after barrage of rf waves boomed and echoed around the hall. Somewhere behind them, a mirror crashed to the floor, splintering into a million pieces.
It was a trap, Cannon realized. An ambush. Somehow, some way, in some manner he couldn’t explain, Sergeant Leslie Helms wasn’t Sergeant Leslie Helms, but an angel, and a damn good one at that.
Jesus H. Christ, they’re just like Normals now. You can’t tell ‘em apart.
How long the Helms-thing had been part of the Detachment, he couldn’t say. Not that it mattered. They were outgunned, outswarmed, and the target for sure would not be
hanging around after all the commotion outside its suite.
Cannon let fly more volleys of HERF, shattering the swarm and everything else in the hall. Doors rattled, walls creaked and debris swirled in the gusts of rf like a miniature gale. Someone lit off a few mag pulses for good measure. The magnetic loops slammed into the Helms swarm and fried bots tinkled off the walls and floor like hail stones. But it came back, reconstituted. They always did.
This isn’t gonna work, Cannon realized. The swarm was expanding like a supernova in slow motion, burning everything, slurping up all the air in the corridor, pressing ever-outward.
“FALL BACK! Fall back…it’s a trap…fallback to the elevator…!!” he yelled over the concussive booms of HERF discharge.
That was when one arm of the swarm, a limb of bots he hadn’t seen, came at him from behind. In seconds, Lieutenant Justin Cannon was smothered and choking, falling heavily to the floor, flailing and swatting and kicking and screaming.
In the end, only Corporal Livio managed to get away.
The IC1 barely managed to squeeze through the emergency doors at the end of the hall, setting off alarms as he did so. He half scrambled, half fell down the stairs, flinging his carbine away, as he burst into the alley and leaped aboard the van, still parked in the shadows of the utility entrance.
Blindly, he threw the van into gear and screeched off down the alley, nearly colliding with a crowd surging along Unter den Linden toward the rally. Livio made a screeching, sliding, two-wheel turn onto the Kochstrasse, heading into Kreuzberg, flying past knots of people, sideswiping vendor carts, riding up onto the sidewalks at times. The Tactical Ops center was nearby, holed up in an apartment the Corps had rented for some time, just for Q Detachment’s mission and Livio had to get there, had to let Gutierrez know what had happened…that they had a spy, a mole inside the Corps. The whole mission had been compromised.
The friggin’ angels are just like Normals, he kept muttering to himself, as he hunted up one street and down another, looking for the apartment. You can’t tell ‘em apart…hell, he’d bunked with Helms a dozen times in training for the mission. They’d played poker together, chugged too many beers together, played Rocket Commander on their tablets synched together.
Livio wiped sweat from his eyes and slowed the van down. It’s got to be around here somewhere. He felt a prickly crawling feeling all over his neck and back and briefly wondered: did some of the bugs cling to me, did they get aboard? He tried to get a hold of himself, take deep breaths. It’s just adrenalin, he told himself. Just the shakes. Bugs could do that to people.
There…up ahead…that’s it. That has to be it. He slowed the van down outside a three-story brownstone, fronted with immaculate little gardens and landscaping. A nearby sign read: Hochschule fur Musik 1 Km. Got to be the place.
The thing was: you just couldn’t tell anymore. You didn’t know anymore. Who could you trust now? Hell, maybe even Gutierrez was an angel. How would you know? Maybe the newsvids were right…recently, there had been talk of setting containment camps and small-scale sanctuaries for those who couldn’t pass the PSV tests, the ‘normality’ tests, some commentators were calling them.
That’s what Symborg kept hammering on at all the rallies, all the speeches and interviews. Normals. Who the hell knew what normal was anymore? Us versus them. Bugs against the Normals. But if Bugs could look like Normals, if they could pass for Normals even on close inspection….
Livio slammed on the brakes. He fell out of the van and stumbled up the steps to the apartment.
U.N. Quantum Corps Western Command
Table Top Mountain, Idaho, USA
January 26, 2111
0530 hours (U.T.)
CINCQUANT replayed the vid of Corporal Livio’s statement again, for the eleventh time, at least.
Major Lofton, out of the Q2 shop, was there with Winger. “Painful to watch, sir, if you ask me.”
Johnny Winger rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Very painful. I keep replaying in my mind what he said: ‘We can’t tell the normals from the angels anymore.’ How in the name of hell did an angel get into Table Top…and assigned to a special detachment on top of it?”
Lofton sipped at some coffee. The Corps ran on caffeine. “Probably ‘cause he’s right, sir. The tech behind nanobotic swarms is so good now—“
“Good for the economy. Bad for us. That replication blocker was our best shot. Now Symborg’s got a free hand.”
“What do we do, sir? What can we do?”
The truth was that Winger didn’t have a clue. “We still have tasking from UNSAC. We’ve got to do whatever it takes to get rid of this Symborg character. Hell, I’d love to just put together a special ops team and do a targeted hit…direct action…terminate with extreme prejudice. But—“ Winger shrugged “—it won’t work with a cloud of bugs. You can’t take out something you can’t hit. And the worst thing is, as an angel, the slimebag can be anywhere, in multiple places, at the same time. Just replicate and send ‘em off. Of all the villains Mankind has suffered in history…Genghis Khan, Julius Caesar, Hitler, Osama bin Laden…at least they eventually died. Or you could put a bullet in their head and have some hope they’d expire. Symborg—“ Winger shook his head. “Lofton, we just have to keep at it.”
“I suppose you’re right, sir. But Q2’s backtracking Detachment personnel files now. I’m trying to see if there’s anything about Sergeant Helms that would have tipped us off. Family history, previous billets, psych workups, fitness reports.”
“And?”
Lofton dropped a mem-button into the slot on Winger’s deskpad. Files and reports came up on his screen. “Nothing. Nothing out of the ordinary. You’d think a physical would have shown something…I’m thinking the physicals are fakes. Sergeant Eddie Helms never went through a real-life physical here at Table Top. Same with the PSV’s…no way an angel should be able to pass a normality test…that’s what they’re supposed to detect.”
Winger was lost in thought. “If an angel like Helms can insinuate himself into Quantum Corps, despite all our security checks and verifications, we’ve got a serious problem…I’m just wondering--:
“About what, sir?”
“My daughter. Rene. We’ve already got evidence, since Dana rescued her from Config Zero, that she’s got some kind of embedded link with the Bugs. Config Zero put something inside her when she was deconstructed. It’s not fully corroborated, but it looks like somehow she can channel what’s happening inside Config Zero…processor states, config changes, memory accesses, maybe even beyond Config Zero. Maybe even the Central Entity, whatever that is. You know: the Old Ones.”
“I’ve heard some of the scuttlebutt on that but what would that have to do with Helms?”
“If there is some kind of link inside Rene, maybe it works both ways. Maybe Config Zero’s got swarms here at Table Top we can’t detect and she’s in touch with them. Livio said he thought we had spies or moles inside the Corps. Maybe he’s right. Hell, Lofton, maybe that chair you’re sitting in is nothing but a solidified swarm of nanobots, taking in everything we say and sending it back to Config Zero. I’m just putting out a theory here, but I’m thinking that Rene is part of this link…like a switchboard or a router. She may be a key node in some kind of comm network between spies and angels Config Zero’s got in place and the Big Bug Cloud himself. Imagine it: here’s Config Zero at the center of a spider web, and you’ve got Symborg, you’ve got angels like Helms, maybe my own daughter Rene…and who knows what else?” Winger leveled an even gaze at the security chief. “Maybe I can’t even trust you, Major.”
Lofton shifted uneasily, uncomfortable at the thought. “We’ve got the normality tests, General. They’re supposed to be able to detect unauthorized swarms…angels and the like.”
“Nothing’s perfect,” Winger decided. “This ‘gift’ Rene has of seeing what Config Zero’s up to could work both w
ays. She may be able to ‘see’ what we’re up to as well. Hell, maybe she’s like a small-scale Keeper herself, like a portal to and from the Old Ones.”
“She ought to be in some kind of isolation, with all due respects, sir. Containment. Although I don’t know how you block quantum signals very well….I’ve heard talk of something Farside’s working on…something to disentangle quantum states but it may just be talk.”
Johnny Winger was more and more disturbed by this line of thinking. “I’d better get back to Paris and look into this. See what Rene is really capable of…they’ve got her hooked up like a lab rat as it is. Dana’s having a hard time with it. If she’s basically a key node in Config Zero’s network….”
He didn’t even want to finish that thought.
Solnet/Omnivision Video Post
@anna.kolchinova.solnetworldview
January 26, 2111
2200 hours U.T.
SOLNET Special Report:
U.N. Boundary Patrol: Earth’s Immune System
Most readers and viewers of this newsvid are well aware of the continuing series of earthquakes and tremors that have been affecting parts of the Earth over the last few months. Recently, I interviewed Dr. Lamont Hill, geophysicist with Caltech, who had just returned from a mission with Boundary Patrol, along the tectonic plate junction of the African and Arabian plates.
SN/OV: Dr. Hill, thanks for taking time to be with us today.
Hill: My pleasure.
SN/OV: Dr. Hill, you just came back from a mission with Boundary Patrol. I understand you were examining stresses and fault structures along one of the tectonic plate boundaries, where many of these tremors have originated.
Hill: That’s right. I was with the crew of geoplane Tunnel Rat, and we departed from BPS station number 3, out of Adana, Turkey, in fact. It was an incredible experience, let me tell you. I’ve studied the interior structure of the Earth for years. To actually be below ground, where these plates bump and grind, where you can feel the stresses and shear forces…that was a fabulous experience.
SN/OV: Dr. Hill, what can you tell us about the African and Arabian plates. Many of our viewers know that there has been a significant, seemingly unexplained increase in earthquakes and tremors along this fault in recent months.
Hill: Well, to be sure, the Great Rift Valley, which was where Tunnel Rat patrolled, is a visible, surface manifestation of the forces that are acting along this plate boundary. Geologists call this plate junction a divergent boundary. That means that normal shear forces are pulling parts of the African plate apart…in time, given enough time, natural forces will separate this part of the African plate into two plates.
SN/OV: Is that why we’ve seen so many tremors? There are persistent rumors that Config Zero is doing something in this sector, doing something to increase these forces, which is causing all these tremors.
Hill: Oh, yes, to be sure…Tunnel Rat detected numerous instances of obvious swarm activity…we felt some of the tremors. One day, we actually engaged a small-dimension swarm that seemed to be disassembling rock layers at a shear point…if we hadn’t engaged, I’m sure a high-magnitude tremor would have resulted. This happened at the Afar Triangle, kind of a triple point where three plates are pulling away from each other. But I must tell you, after extensive measurements and calculations of forces and stresses in this region, and further south, along the Nubian and Somali plate junction, we’ve come to a rather startling conclusion about the Rift Valley.
SN/OV: And what is that, Dr. Hill?
Hill: Well, natural forces will in time break the African and Arabian plates completely apart. The seas will rush in and the Rift Valley will become a sort of inland sea…that much is certain. But the process has become greatly accelerated in recent months, measurably so. And the cause seems to be shear forces and stresses where swarm activity has been concentrated. I’ve done the correlations and it works out. The swarms seem to be actively disassembling rock layers in such a way as to rapidly drive these two plates apart. Incidentally, there are reports, so far unsubstantiated, that other Boundary Patrol missions are seeing similar swarm and tremor activity elsewhere around the Earth.
SN/OV: Then are you saying, Dr. Hill, that it appears Config Zero is trying to re-arrange the tectonic plates on which our landmasses sit…is that what your concluding?
Hill: Exact causative forces are hard to pin down, at this time. I can only draw conclusions based on what I can measure and observe. If the location, force levels and stresses along the African and Arabian plate boundaries continue at the current rate, enough force will develop to permanently separate east Africa from the main part of the African continent, shearing right along the Great Rift Valley. And, again given current stresses and the calculated rate of increase, we can project that this will happen in a matter of years, not centuries.
SN/OV: In other words, if things continue, if we allow Config Zero to continue this re-alignment of tectonic plates unopposed, a new island continent will be formed and east Africa will drift away from the main continent, out into the Indian Ocean…is that what you’re saying, Dr. Hill?
Hill: That is precisely what I’m saying.
SN/OV: Dr. Hill, our viewers know that the general mission of Boundary Patrol is to stop just this sort of thing…to keep the swarms generated and controlled by Config Zero from creating so many destructive quakes and tremors. In your opinion, can Boundary Patrol perform its mission? Is there any chance they can be successful in stopping all these quakes and saving thousands of lives?”
Hill: You ask a difficult question, Anna. If you’re asking can Boundary Patrol stop all quakes and tremors that occur, I would say no. That is not possible. Tectonic plate movements are the earth’s way of relieving stress and strain, equalizing forces among the plates. Nature will always seek to minimize energy and find the lowest strain positions for these structures. That’s what Nature does. But if you’re asking can we confront the swarms and reduce the incidence and severity of these induced quakes and tremors…I would have to say the jury is still out on that. Boundary Patrol crews are incredibly dedicated and skilled people….I’ve seen that with my own eyes. I have nothing but the greatest respect for these men and women. However, the tectonic plates below ground, below our continental landmasses, are riddled with fault lines and fracture zones. There are thousands of such fault lines and only a few dozen Boundary Patrol crews. To me, it’s a matter of numbers. You can’t be everywhere at the same time.
SN/OV: Then do you think deploying Boundary Patrol is a waste of time?
Hill: I think the problem is better addressed at the source. Induced tremors and quakes caused by swarm activity at plate boundaries and fault lines is the result. It’s the effect in a cause and effect equation. We need to address the cause itself.
SN/OV: You mean Config Zero itself.
Hill: Exactly. And that’s not a geophysical problem.
SN/OV: Thank you, Dr. Hill, for spending time with us today.
Hill: My pleasure.
SOLNET Special Report Ends
Johnny Winger and the Great Rift Zone Page 45
