Johnny Winger and the Great Rift Zone by Philip Bosshardt
CHAPTER 14
UN Quantum Corps Base
Table Top Mountain, Idaho, USA
December 5, 2110 (U.T.)
1930 hours
The small town of Haleyville was a short ride from Table Top Mountain and Johnny Winger would have enjoyed the nighttime jaunt on the turboscooter--the air was fresh with pine and birch and a cold steady breeze was flowing through the high mountain passes of Idaho's Sawtooth Range--but the truth was he was nervous, even anxious about the meeting.
The purpose of the meeting was known only to a few inside UNIFORCE. The Secretary-General would be there and no SG had ever come to Table Top before, certainly not in disguise, under the radar, as it were. UNSAC would also be there, in the person of Jurgen Steiner, equally under the radar. Nobody wanted to take a chance that Config Zero might figure out what was up, or worse, the Assimilationists, whom Q2 had long ago decided had spies and informants everywhere, not all of them human.
Haleyville was a thirty-minute ride, out the main gate at Drexler Field--Table Top's parade ground and drill field--down the winding road through Buffalo Valley to Highway 7. Haleyville Road itself ran a serpentine course, switching back and forth along the crest of the ridge overlooking Hunt Valley to the north, a narrow two-lane blacktop dark as a black bear, now dusted with snow drifts, until it peeled off south toward the town itself. The north fork went up Hunt Valley Road, through a valley and tunnel complex the nogs had long ago called The Notch, to the Test and Wargaming Range several miles away, atop a bare mesa lost in wispy wreaths of cloud and mist.
Winger allowed himself to briefly enjoy the nighttime cruise as best he could, cranking the scooter up to nearly a hundred and twenty, leaning left and right as he steered on through the cold night air toward the outskirts of town, and the rustic hotel known as Custer Inn, where his appointment was undoubtedly waiting impatiently. He was already late and it was dark, save for the bowl of stars overhead, and the faint halo glow of Table Top base behind him. He was glad the road was mostly deserted.
He didn't want to answer any more questions than necessary.
Custer Inn was a faintly shabby, log and shingle mountain lodge of a hotel, nestled in the piney brow of a small turnout valley off the main road, a mile or so before Highway 7 broadened into Main Street, which was lined with gift shops, bait and tackle joints and hiking suppliers. The pale blue glow of a parasailing shop, closed for the evening, threw enough light across the road, so he found the turnoff readily enough. He tried not to let the hologram windsailers circling over the intersection distract him.
He sped down the decline toward the parking lot, and parked the scooter in the shadows, somehow feeling comfort in a cloak of anonymity. Through the windows, the bar and restaurant shone with boozy conviviality, laughter and saloon music spilling out through the front doors.
He went inside.
As instructed, he went to Registration and secured a room for the night. Number 127, the Geronimo wing and would he be needing any help with his luggage, sir, we do have bellhop service--
Winger ignored the offer and went looking for the room. He turned up and down several corridors, crossed a breezeway to another building and eventually stumbled upon Room 127. He unlocked it and went inside.
They were both there, the SG sitting at a desk by the window and UNSAC, pacing back and forth.
“General, finally you’re here,” Steiner grunted. “No one followed you?”
“No one,” Winger said. “I had a bot shield up too, per EMCON protocol. I came as soon as I could.”
The Secretary-General, Kwame Kavaii, nodded. “Good. I asked you both to come to this little hovel in the middle of nowhere because I wanted to keep this meeting off the books. No record of this goes anywhere.”
UNSAC picked up the story. “There’s an op in planning right now, Winger. Quantum Corps will head up this op. That’s why we’re here…close to Table Top, but off the record, so to speak.”
“What kind of op, sir?”
“We’ve got to do something about this Symborg character. Something to discredit him, show him up for the fraud he is.”
“And stop the spread of this plague of Assimilationism. People are flocking into the temples by the thousands, every day. It’s mass suicide…that’s what it is.”
UNSAC pulled out a tablet and showed Winger and the SG the details of the special op he had in mind. It was all pretty sketchy, briefing-style stuff. “I’m calling it Operation Quantum Crusader. The mission is to defeat or at least diminish and discredit Symborg in the eyes of his millions of followers, so that Assimilationism as a philosophy can be squashed once and for all. The whole op has to be under the radar…politics inside the UN make that necessary. Symborg’s got plenty of sympathizers among us and we have to be aware of that at all times.”
The SG laid his own tablet on the desk and finagled with some buttons. Instantly, a 3-D projection of Symborg materialized out of nothing, dancing in the air…footage from some Assimilationist rally somewhere in Africa, maybe Europe. “He’s drawing crowds estimated at up to half a million or more every time he shows up. His face is all over the Net and I couldn’t begin to count the merchandise with his likeness. I’m seeing it everywhere…on everybody. Kids are turbo-boarding outside the Quartier-General in Paris with Assimilationist banners and tattoos and face-vids…my own kids have been pestering me for his stuff. It’s hotter than Hades and spreading like a plague. Hell, it is a plague and we’ve got to do whatever we have to do to stamp it out.”
Winger watched the Symborg projection for a moment. “Q2 says that Symborg is nothing more than a handsome, more human-like Config Zero.”
“Exactly,” UNSAC said, pounding a fist into his hand. “Exactly. We’ve got solid evidence that Symborg is an element of Config Zero…which makes all these rallies and the whole shebang a serious violation of the Containment Laws.”
The SG shrugged. “I agree but a hell of a lot of people think the Containment Laws are for the dinosaurs. Nobody pays any attention to them…we trade and deal with Config Zero and all his swarm minions all the time…hell, ANAD technology is so much a part of our lives that most people view Containment as an historical curiosity, like segregation…or divine right of kings or something. But we have Containment for a reason and what Michelangelo may or may not have found out there beyond Pluto is part of that reason.”
UNSAC agreed. “Config Zero…the Old Ones…Symborg…it’s all part of the same thing, Winger. It’s a coordinated effort to undermine our society and then destroy us… by any means necessary.”
“We need a counter-revolution,” the SG decided. “Some kind of political movement we can counter Symborg with….a movement of normals that can compete across the world with the Assimilationists.”
UNSAC scowled. “I’d prefer to drop a few Quantum Corps battalions into each Sanctuary and blast the sons of bitches to kingdom come. But I guess we can’t do that, can we? Somehow, the world’s moral compass has gone haywire and we’re left to pick up the pieces.”
The SG manipulated the display from his pad and began explaining. “We’ve concocted a plan, General Winger. This Operation Quantum Crusader is designed to do several things: first to embarrass Symborg in front of his followers, then ultimately to destroy him. It’s political and character assassination, pure and simple. But we don’t really have a choice.”
UNSAC said, “The idea is to disrupt the swarm elements that form Symborg, so that his usual config…the public face of the angel…is disrupted. The fact that Symborg is an angel is both a source of power for him and a weakness. We intend to exploit that weakness. In order to do that, someone has to physically approach Symborg close enough to get some samples of the bots that make up the swarm. We can analyze these samples, right here at Table Top… and from that analysis, we can develop countermeasures. By the way, all this is Top Secret Purple classification. The fewer people who know about this, the better.”
Winger was intrigued. “I’m an old atomgrabber from way back, sir. I’d love to head up a ‘snatch and grab’ mission like this myself. But it’s probably better for a younger trooper to head this up.”
UNSAC manipulated his own commandpad and the SG’s 3-D display vanished, to be replaced by a rendition of a floating photo gallery, heads of nanotroopers drifting in mid-air like so many disembodied spirits. “This is you’re A-Team, General. Six operatives. Your CC1 is this trooper here—“ he poked at a grim, chubby face with a regulation Quantum Corps buzzcut and fierce blue eyes. “—Lieutenant Jake Argo.”
Winger’s eyes lit up and he snapped his fingers in recognition. “The first Kipwezi mission…when was it? Back in ’03 or 04, I think. I read the reports…first class commander, this guy.”
“The very one,” UNSAC agreed. “Has field experience in and around the Sanctuaries. Knows counter-swarm tactics. Gets a lot out of his troops and they adore him…the ones that come back alive, that is.” UNSAC altered the display to show a mission timeline, hovering over Argo’s head. “Look, Winger, here’s the basics: we’re going to use a group of small children, specially selected from the Kibera district in Nairobi. Symborg’s kind of folks. Next time Symborg plans to show up at a rally in the Nairobi area, we emplace these kids. At the right moment, when Symborg calls for volunteers to come forward and be ‘embraced by the Mother Swarm,’ these kids rush forward to embrace Symborg with some kind of love hug. Only one of the kids won’t be human.”
The SG brought up his own display. “The project is based here at Table Top. Very hush-hush.” A new face materialized in the air alongside Lieutenant Argo and his A-Team, a child’s face, beaming with a huge smile. “Meet Kgani. Quantum Corps created this angel just for Operation Quantum Crusader. Kgani’s the one who’ll gather stray bots from Symborg and deliver them to Quantum Corps.”
The three of them worked out the rest of the details in the hotel room at Custer Inn and the SG signed off on the whole plan.
“I don’t have to remind both of you,” Kavaii said, “that we’re taking quite a risk with this. The swarms have representatives in the General Assembly. And Q2 reminds me constantly that Config Zero could have spies and stray bots everywhere…I’m so paranoid I don’t even look in my bathroom mirror anymore…afraid of what I might see. But it has to be done. If we can discredit and destroy Symborg, Config Zero loses one of his best weapons against us. And it we fail—“
“Quantum Corps doesn’t fail, sir,” UNSAC said. Steiner was about to go over the equipment Argo’s A-Team would need when his pad chirped. A message was coming through on the staffnet, his eyes only. He thumbed a button and the crypto circuit warbled for a moment, as the coded message was scrubbed through and deciphered. It was Paris. UNSAC scanned the brief quickly.
“Negotiations with Servodyne and Consolidated Beck-Waltham just concluded. They’re getting a contract to build more geoplanes…new design after we lost Gopher a few months ago. You’ve got Tectonic Guard up and running, Winger?”
Winger acknowledged, “Fully staffed and trained, sir. Boundary Patrol is conducting routine patrols in all sectors. Every little quake and fart the Earth makes, we know about it and check it out.”
UNSAC was satisfied. “It’s no secret who’s behind all these tremors…just another front in Config Zero’s war against Mankind.”
The SG was already closing up his own pad. He and UNSAC had a lifter waiting for them behind the hotel. Before long, they would both be sacked out on a red-eye back to the East Coast…and Steiner had yet another leg…a nighttime hyperjet hop back to Paris.
“It’s imperative this operation succeed,” the Secretary-General said. “We’ve got to destroy Symborg and somehow contain Config Zero. It’s our only hope against the Old Ones, if they turn out to be real. What I’m hearing from Michelangelo lately concerns me. Something’s out there…something that shouldn’t be there…CINCSPACE sends me a brief every day. If it is some kind of invading force, we won’t be able to fight it off with spies and saboteurs right in our midst.”
UN Quantum Corps Base
Table Top Mountain, Idaho, USA
December 5, 2110 (U.T.)
1930 hours
The small town of Haleyville was a short ride from Table Top Mountain and Johnny Winger would have enjoyed the nighttime jaunt on the turboscooter--the air was fresh with pine and birch and a cold steady breeze was flowing through the high mountain passes of Idaho's Sawtooth Range--but the truth was he was nervous, even anxious about the meeting.
The purpose of the meeting was known only to a few inside UNIFORCE. The Secretary-General would be there and no SG had ever come to Table Top before, certainly not in disguise, under the radar, as it were. UNSAC would also be there, in the person of Jurgen Steiner, equally under the radar. Nobody wanted to take a chance that Config Zero might figure out what was up, or worse, the Assimilationists, whom Q2 had long ago decided had spies and informants everywhere, not all of them human.
Haleyville was a thirty-minute ride, out the main gate at Drexler Field--Table Top's parade ground and drill field--down the winding road through Buffalo Valley to Highway 7. Haleyville Road itself ran a serpentine course, switching back and forth along the crest of the ridge overlooking Hunt Valley to the north, a narrow two-lane blacktop dark as a black bear, now dusted with snow drifts, until it peeled off south toward the town itself. The north fork went up Hunt Valley Road, through a valley and tunnel complex the nogs had long ago called The Notch, to the Test and Wargaming Range several miles away, atop a bare mesa lost in wispy wreaths of cloud and mist.
Winger allowed himself to briefly enjoy the nighttime cruise as best he could, cranking the scooter up to nearly a hundred and twenty, leaning left and right as he steered on through the cold night air toward the outskirts of town, and the rustic hotel known as Custer Inn, where his appointment was undoubtedly waiting impatiently. He was already late and it was dark, save for the bowl of stars overhead, and the faint halo glow of Table Top base behind him. He was glad the road was mostly deserted.
He didn't want to answer any more questions than necessary.
Custer Inn was a faintly shabby, log and shingle mountain lodge of a hotel, nestled in the piney brow of a small turnout valley off the main road, a mile or so before Highway 7 broadened into Main Street, which was lined with gift shops, bait and tackle joints and hiking suppliers. The pale blue glow of a parasailing shop, closed for the evening, threw enough light across the road, so he found the turnoff readily enough. He tried not to let the hologram windsailers circling over the intersection distract him.
He sped down the decline toward the parking lot, and parked the scooter in the shadows, somehow feeling comfort in a cloak of anonymity. Through the windows, the bar and restaurant shone with boozy conviviality, laughter and saloon music spilling out through the front doors.
He went inside.
As instructed, he went to Registration and secured a room for the night. Number 127, the Geronimo wing and would he be needing any help with his luggage, sir, we do have bellhop service--
Winger ignored the offer and went looking for the room. He turned up and down several corridors, crossed a breezeway to another building and eventually stumbled upon Room 127. He unlocked it and went inside.
They were both there, the SG sitting at a desk by the window and UNSAC, pacing back and forth.
“General, finally you’re here,” Steiner grunted. “No one followed you?”
“No one,” Winger said. “I had a bot shield up too, per EMCON protocol. I came as soon as I could.”
The Secretary-General, Kwame Kavaii, nodded. “Good. I asked you both to come to this little hovel in the middle of nowhere because I wanted to keep this meeting off the books. No record of this goes anywhere.”
UNSAC picked up the story. “There’s an op in planning right now, Winger. Quantum Corps will head up this op. That’s why we’re here…close to Table Top, but off the record, so to speak.”
“What kind of op, sir?”
“We’ve got to do something about this Symborg character. Something to discredit him, show him up for the fraud he is.”
“And stop the spread of this plague of Assimilationism. People are flocking into the temples by the thousands, every day. It’s mass suicide…that’s what it is.”
UNSAC pulled out a tablet and showed Winger and the SG the details of the special op he had in mind. It was all pretty sketchy, briefing-style stuff. “I’m calling it Operation Quantum Crusader. The mission is to defeat or at least diminish and discredit Symborg in the eyes of his millions of followers, so that Assimilationism as a philosophy can be squashed once and for all. The whole op has to be under the radar…politics inside the UN make that necessary. Symborg’s got plenty of sympathizers among us and we have to be aware of that at all times.”
The SG laid his own tablet on the desk and finagled with some buttons. Instantly, a 3-D projection of Symborg materialized out of nothing, dancing in the air…footage from some Assimilationist rally somewhere in Africa, maybe Europe. “He’s drawing crowds estimated at up to half a million or more every time he shows up. His face is all over the Net and I couldn’t begin to count the merchandise with his likeness. I’m seeing it everywhere…on everybody. Kids are turbo-boarding outside the Quartier-General in Paris with Assimilationist banners and tattoos and face-vids…my own kids have been pestering me for his stuff. It’s hotter than Hades and spreading like a plague. Hell, it is a plague and we’ve got to do whatever we have to do to stamp it out.”
Winger watched the Symborg projection for a moment. “Q2 says that Symborg is nothing more than a handsome, more human-like Config Zero.”
“Exactly,” UNSAC said, pounding a fist into his hand. “Exactly. We’ve got solid evidence that Symborg is an element of Config Zero…which makes all these rallies and the whole shebang a serious violation of the Containment Laws.”
The SG shrugged. “I agree but a hell of a lot of people think the Containment Laws are for the dinosaurs. Nobody pays any attention to them…we trade and deal with Config Zero and all his swarm minions all the time…hell, ANAD technology is so much a part of our lives that most people view Containment as an historical curiosity, like segregation…or divine right of kings or something. But we have Containment for a reason and what Michelangelo may or may not have found out there beyond Pluto is part of that reason.”
UNSAC agreed. “Config Zero…the Old Ones…Symborg…it’s all part of the same thing, Winger. It’s a coordinated effort to undermine our society and then destroy us… by any means necessary.”
“We need a counter-revolution,” the SG decided. “Some kind of political movement we can counter Symborg with….a movement of normals that can compete across the world with the Assimilationists.”
UNSAC scowled. “I’d prefer to drop a few Quantum Corps battalions into each Sanctuary and blast the sons of bitches to kingdom come. But I guess we can’t do that, can we? Somehow, the world’s moral compass has gone haywire and we’re left to pick up the pieces.”
The SG manipulated the display from his pad and began explaining. “We’ve concocted a plan, General Winger. This Operation Quantum Crusader is designed to do several things: first to embarrass Symborg in front of his followers, then ultimately to destroy him. It’s political and character assassination, pure and simple. But we don’t really have a choice.”
UNSAC said, “The idea is to disrupt the swarm elements that form Symborg, so that his usual config…the public face of the angel…is disrupted. The fact that Symborg is an angel is both a source of power for him and a weakness. We intend to exploit that weakness. In order to do that, someone has to physically approach Symborg close enough to get some samples of the bots that make up the swarm. We can analyze these samples, right here at Table Top… and from that analysis, we can develop countermeasures. By the way, all this is Top Secret Purple classification. The fewer people who know about this, the better.”
UNSAC manipulated his own commandpad and the SG’s 3-D display vanished, to be replaced by a rendition of a floating photo gallery, heads of nanotroopers drifting in mid-air like so many disembodied spirits. “This is you’re A-Team, General. Six operatives. Your CC1 is this trooper here—“ he poked at a grim, chubby face with a regulation Quantum Corps buzzcut and fierce blue eyes. “—Lieutenant Jake Argo.”
Winger’s eyes lit up and he snapped his fingers in recognition. “The first Kipwezi mission…when was it? Back in ’03 or 04, I think. I read the reports…first class commander, this guy.”
“The very one,” UNSAC agreed. “Has field experience in and around the Sanctuaries. Knows counter-swarm tactics. Gets a lot out of his troops and they adore him…the ones that come back alive, that is.” UNSAC altered the display to show a mission timeline, hovering over Argo’s head. “Look, Winger, here’s the basics: we’re going to use a group of small children, specially selected from the Kibera district in Nairobi. Symborg’s kind of folks. Next time Symborg plans to show up at a rally in the Nairobi area, we emplace these kids. At the right moment, when Symborg calls for volunteers to come forward and be ‘embraced by the Mother Swarm,’ these kids rush forward to embrace Symborg with some kind of love hug. Only one of the kids won’t be human.”
The SG brought up his own display. “The project is based here at Table Top. Very hush-hush.” A new face materialized in the air alongside Lieutenant Argo and his A-Team, a child’s face, beaming with a huge smile. “Meet Kgani. Quantum Corps created this angel just for Operation Quantum Crusader. Kgani’s the one who’ll gather stray bots from Symborg and deliver them to Quantum Corps.”
The three of them worked out the rest of the details in the hotel room at Custer Inn and the SG signed off on the whole plan.
“I don’t have to remind both of you,” Kavaii said, “that we’re taking quite a risk with this. The swarms have representatives in the General Assembly. And Q2 reminds me constantly that Config Zero could have spies and stray bots everywhere…I’m so paranoid I don’t even look in my bathroom mirror anymore…afraid of what I might see. But it has to be done. If we can discredit and destroy Symborg, Config Zero loses one of his best weapons against us. And it we fail—“
“Quantum Corps doesn’t fail, sir,” UNSAC said. Steiner was about to go over the equipment Argo’s A-Team would need when his pad chirped. A message was coming through on the staffnet, his eyes only. He thumbed a button and the crypto circuit warbled for a moment, as the coded message was scrubbed through and deciphered. It was Paris. UNSAC scanned the brief quickly.
“Negotiations with Servodyne and Consolidated Beck-Waltham just concluded. They’re getting a contract to build more geoplanes…new design after we lost Gopher a few months ago. You’ve got Tectonic Guard up and running, Winger?”
Winger acknowledged, “Fully staffed and trained, sir. Boundary Patrol is conducting routine patrols in all sectors. Every little quake and fart the Earth makes, we know about it and check it out.”
UNSAC was satisfied. “It’s no secret who’s behind all these tremors…just another front in Config Zero’s war against Mankind.”
The SG was already closing up his own pad. He and UNSAC had a lifter waiting for them behind the hotel. Before long, they would both be sacked out on a red-eye back to the East Coast…and Steiner had yet another leg…a nighttime hyperjet hop back to Paris.
“It’s imperative this operation succeed,” the Secretary-General said. “We’ve got to destroy Symborg and somehow contain Config Zero. It’s our only hope against the Old Ones, if they turn out to be real. What I’m hearing from Michelangelo lately concerns me. Something’s out there…something that shouldn’t be there…CINCSPACE sends me a brief every day. If it is some kind of invading force, we won’t be able to fight it off with spies and saboteurs right in our midst.”