Johnny Winger and the Great Rift Zone by Philip Bosshardt
CHAPTER 16
Northgate University, Autonomous Systems Lab
Pennsylvania, USA
December 20, 2110
1915 Hours (U.T.)
Two weeks after they had brought Rene home…or at least back to their hotel…Johnny Winger decided it was time to get out and see the town.
“We’ll drive around and look at the Christmas lights,” he decided. Both Dana Tallant and Rene looked dubious. “Come on…it’ll be fun.”
Winger ordered up a jiffycar and they set out to see the town square and surrounding neighborhoods and all the lights that Northgate had to offer. The car showed up a few minutes later, all decked out in holiday ornamentation and they climbed in. The driver-ai beeped and pulled them away from the hotel. Winger told the bot to take them into town.
The last few weeks at the ASL and in and around the town of Northgate had been like a dream. It was like Rene had been born again, as a 7-year old. The physical resemblance was startling…only minor edge effects showed up and Rene’s eyes were different in color, with a slight glassy look to them. Otherwise, minus all the memories, it was Rene. Dana decided she could live with the differences. For his part, Johnny decided this was a great chance to be a better Dad than he had been before…he committed himself to spending a lot more time with his daughter as she ‘grew up’ again and he resolved not to make the same mistakes he’d made before. He had a second chance as a Dad and it wasn’t many parents that got to re-live their child’s growing up all over again.
For all intents and purposes, Rene was an infant, in the body of a seven-year old. The config Dr. Falkland had used and the patterns he had downloaded from all the scans had created an angel that resembled Rene at seven years age. But she had few memories, only slices and snatches of impressions, like shadows. Winger and Tallant found that patience was what they most needed.
Every day, from breakfast to supper, they had shown Rene pictures and vids from their pads, pictures of her as a child, growing up, romping in the snow, horsing around with her brother Liam, her first faltering steps, the time she had fallen from her rocking horse and busted her chin. When she had been kidnapped by Config Zero a decade ago, Rene had been a rebellious thirteen-year old. There had once been thirteen years of memories, most of it captured in vids and photos and now-discarded toys stashed away in closets back at their apartment at La Tour St. Vincent.
Now she was an infant in a seven-year old body. Dana and Winger found it oddly exhilarating just sitting on the living room floor in their hotel suite, flipping through the memorabilia of thirteen years with a blank slate. You had a different perspective when you grew up with your child all over again.
The jiffycar circled Northgate’s town square as Winger pointed out all the ornate light displays. The courthouse was lit up with nativity scenes and trees festooned with drapes of light. Three-D holos danced across the street…Santa Claus and his sleigh, carolers in red robes, some animatronic reindeer.
Rene seemed dour and unimpressed. Some days were better than others.
“What’s wrong, honey? Are you not feeling well?”
“I want to go home,” she gritted out. She sunk back in the seat and wrapped her arms tightly around herself, closing her eyes.
Dana knew that look. Maybe they had been laying on the memories a little thick lately. A child’s mind could only absorb so much. Even if it was an angel’s master processor.
“Okay, honey…we’ll go back…driver…take us back to the hotel.”
The bot beeped its acknowledgement and the jiffycar sped off from the town square through light traffic. They were back at their hotel in five minutes.
Falkland had insisted on physical exams of Rene every third day and tomorrow was another one. “I just want to make sure the config’s holding up…sometimes, out in the real world, things get a little messy. We lose some atoms here, a molecule group there…before you know it, a hand’s out of whack or a nose looks askew. It’s mostly minor adjustments. We want Rene to look like Rene…that’s all.”
Winger snorted. How many parents could say that? Bring your daughter in for a tune-up and we’ll put everything back in place.
Every night, after they had put Rene to bed, Winger had vidlinked in with UNIFORCE in Paris to get updated on the latest developments.
UNSAC’s harried face filled the vid screen. Jeez, Steiner must live at his desk, Winger thought. What is it: two a.m. there?
UNSAC filled him in on the three ops UNIFORCE was running now: Sentinel, Tectonic Guard and Quantum Crusader.
“It’s making my hair fall out,” Steiner admitted. “The Kgani angel’s been tested at Table Top. Looks good. We’re sending Lieutenant Argo and his detachment to Balzano tonight. Looks like Symborg’s finishing up some rallies in Europe, then heading back to Nairobi. I want Argo ready to go with three hours’ notice.”
Winger described Falkland’s new memory field technique, and how well it had worked with Rene. “It’s uncanny, sir. Dana and I can hardly tell the difference. Her skin, the texture…edge effects are minimal, hardly noticeable…best config I’ve ever seen. I hope we can get that trick approved for use with Quantum Corps.”
UNSAC seemed unimpressed. “I’m sure we can. But it’s just another nail in the coffin, Winger. It’s already damned hard enough to tell the difference between angels and humans. Pretty soon, there won’t be any difference. I’m not sure how great an idea that is.”
“I suppose you’re right, sir. Look at Symborg. He’s nothing but a good-looking cloud of bots and nobody cares. It’s the message people care about. The promise, I guess you could say, of being part of something greater than themselves. What about Sentinel? I’ve heard Hawley’s crew has run into something.”
Steiner ran a hand through what was left of his hair. He reached for something off-screen, then came back. “CINCSPACE sends me a brief every day. Hawley and his crew have encountered something out there…something that shouldn’t be there. Looks like swarms and they’re definitely not ours. Could be the first definitive contact with these Old Ones, whatever the hell they are. They may be real after all. And there have been some glitches setting up their equipment…but it’s the distance, the time delay, that’s so frustrating. Hawley’s really on his own out there.”
Winger pondered that. “If it is the Old Ones, we’d better do everything we can to isolate and immobilize Config Zero.” He paused for a moment, as Rene padded across the room behind him, on her way somewhere, probably to the kitchen. She had her tablet with her, engrossed in some game, he figured. The housebot scuttled along behind her, picking up chips and crumbs. “It’s getting to the point where you don’t know what bots or swarms to trust. Config Zero’s probably got spies and saboteurs everywhere.”
“Amen to that,” Steiner agreed. “Maybe even underground. We’ve gotten most of Tectonic Guard deployed…your boy Jason Karst is doing a fine job with that. More geoplanes are getting into the field and being fitted out. Three of five planned Boundary Patrol stations have stood up and are sending patrols out. For the moment, at least, all the tremors and quakes have quieted down. Q2 thinks it has something to do with Sentinel and what Hawley’s doing.”
They discussed other ops and some tactical ideas. Then Winger put in a request for some extended liberty, to spend more time in the States with his daughter and wife. “Rehab’s going pretty well, sir…but she needs more time. It’s like trying to take an infant and make her a seven-year old in a few days. It just takes time.”
Steiner was sympathetic. “I understand your concern, General, but frankly we need you here back at UNIFORCE. Running three ops like this is stretching the staff too far. Permission granted for three more days liberty. Then, you get your butt back here to Paris the day after Christmas.”
Winger acknowledged the order. “Will do, sir.”
UNSAC signed off and the vid went dark.
He went looking for Rene
and Dana and found them cuddled up on the floor in Rene’s bedroom. A vidpad was flashing some kind of vid and both of them were glued to the screen. Dana was talking to her daughter, all the while stroking and brushing her blond hair. Rene lay with her head on Dana’s lap.
“He’s just some kind of preacher, honey…” Dana was saying. “People flock to him…I don’t know why…come on, you’ve been looking at these vids for hours. Turn that thing off and I’ll show you more pix of when you were two years old. You fell off a chair in the kitchen that summer…busted your chin right there—“ she rubbed at a scar on Rene’s face that really wasn’t there “…remember, I told you about it.”
Rene pouted and turned away, burying her face. “I want to watch this, Mom. Why can’t I watch him?”
Dana sighed, taking the pad from Rene’s hands and putting it away. “Symborg’s just a cloud of bots, honey…nothing more. Just a swarm.”
Rene looked up at her mother. “But so am I…aren’t I?”
Dana brushed back a tear from the corner of her own eye. “You’re a very special child, Rene…you know that. Your Dad and I love you very much.”
“You’re not answering the question…”
Dana hugged her daughter tightly. “Oh, honey…you’ve been through so much…we all have…all we want…all I want…is for you to be normal. To have a normal life. Be like a kid.”
Rene reached for her pad again. The sound was off, but the image of Symborg gesturing and speaking to a huge crowd went on. Rene studied the image, turning the pad first one way, then another, trying out different perspectives. “He’s so riff…all the kids at school just love him…why can’t we go to one of the rallies….there’s one coming up in Paris—“
“Where’d you hear that?”
“Oh, Mom…it’s all over school…it’s all we talk about. You can get his schedule…here, I’ll show you—“ she started to finagle with the pad and call up another window, but Dana snatched it out of her hand.
“That’ll be enough of that, Rene Winger. It’s time for you to go to bed, young lady. Nobody’s going to Paris anytime soon…you’ve still got a lot of learning and rehab to go through. And tomorrow—“
“Actually—“ Johnny Winger interrupted, slipping into the room, “we are going back to Paris. Just got the word from UNSAC…I’m needed. We have three days here and then we’re on a hyperjet.” He came over to Rene and kissed her lightly on the forehead, still amazed after all these weeks that her skin seemed so lifelike. “And as for you, young lady, you do what your mother says. This Symborg character’s just a fad. He’s popular today. Tomorrow, who knows? He may just disassemble himself into something else. Then what’ll you do? One day he’s here…the next day…poof!”
“Oh, Daddy…you’re so dramatic…Symborg’s not like that at all. I just want to know all about him…everything about him.” Her eyes got dreamy. “There’s nobody like him.”
“You got that right, girl,” Winger said. If she only knew, he told himself. Then he looked at his daughter more critically. Maybe she does know….
“Can I go, Mom? Can I go to the rally at Montparnasse…it’s next Friday.”
Dana looked up at Winger. Her eyes said: Help me say no. But to Rene, she replied, “We’ll see, honey…we’ll see. Now go to bed. You got rehab tomorrow. And then I’ve got you all afternoon…more lessons.”
Rene made a gag gesture. “Ugh! I hate ‘em…how many vids did you make anyway? How much can a girl take?”
“She can take whatever her parents say,” Winger said. Dana tucked her in and they shut the bedroom door on their way out.
They wound up on the small patio outside the hotel suite’s family room, overlooking a parking lot and a highway. Light snow was falling.
“I don’t want her going to that rally, Wings. I don’t want her having anything to do with Symborg…or the Assimilationists…do you know what I found on her pad this afternoon…some literature about Symborg…stuff about deconstruction…assimilation—“ Dana choked back a sob. She fell into Winger’s arms and they hugged tightly. “I don’t want to lose her again, Wings…I can’t lose her. It’s just too much—“
“We’re not losing Rene,” he comforted her, rubbing her neck and the side of her face. “No way…not now. I shouldn’t be telling you this but UNIFORCE is running an op right now…against Symborg himself.” When she looked up, he put a finger to her lips and kissed them. “And that’s all you need to know. Let’s go back inside…it’s friggin’ cold out here.”
Three days later, the three of them packed up, left Northgate and the Lab and jetted across the Atlantic, touching down at Dordain Spaceport after a routine two hour suborbital hop.
Back in their apartment at La Tour St. Vincent, Dana took a few more days leave to get Rene settled in and headed back to school at the Academy Superieur. Her brother Liam was headed back to college…in his first semester at Cambridge University, he announced his intention to major in Robotic Ethics and Philosophy.
“Then maybe I can figure out what makes Rene tick,” he added sourly.
“That’ll be quite enough of that, young man,” Dana had told him. But secretly she was pleased that something like the normal sniping was coming back. She and Winger had talked with Liam before they had left for Northgate…about what was supposed to happen, about how Rene was coming home, a new Rene, but like the old Rene. Liam didn’t want to listen. Winger said it was because he didn’t know how to deal with it.
“Who does?” Dana blurted out. “Nobody knows how to deal with this.”
So Liam checked out Rene 2.0 when they arrived at La Tour St. Vincent, pronounced himself more or less satisfied with the results and then packed himself off to Cambridge. At least, they didn’t have to put up the containment field anymore. That had been like living in a prison. Winger and Dana had discussed the matter with Dr. Falkland and had come away from Northgate convinced that the new Rene had a stable enough config and she wouldn’t de-construct in front of them and vanish into thin air.
All the same, Johnny Winger had brought a fully charged HERF pistol home from the UNIFORCE center at the Quartier General. He never told Dana a thing about it.
The day of the great Assimilationist rally at the Place de la Concorde was fast approaching and Rene wouldn’t let up.
“Come on, Mom…it’ll be fun…we’ll have a great time…get to see Symborg…isn’t he just so riff…and watch all the freaks get vaporized…it’ll be a great day—“
Dana told her daughter to watch her mouth. “That’s not funny. And they’re not freaks…just terribly misguided. This is a serious thing, Rene…you know that. Your Dad and I have tried to explain what Assimilationists think and believe…the whole thing’s a serious threat and I don’t want to encourage them by showing up.”
“We’ll be two people out of a million, Mom…nobody’ll notice. Come on…I want to go see Symborg…in person. I want to see if he can really change shape right in front of everybody—“
That was when Dana wondered just how stable the new Rene really was.
So they went to the rally.
The whole affair was set to start at eight that night, in the Place de la Concorde, with stages and lighting set up around the great Obelisk at the center of the plaza. Even as they exited the Metro station at Concorde, Dana Tallant and Rene were crushed by the surging waves of the crowds, with hundreds of thousands moving up the Champs Elysees from Tuilerie Gardens en masse. For Tallant, it felt like she was going small for a moment, jostled by a billion atoms and molecules in a Brownian motion cascade. She bulled and shoved and clawed their way through and fought to keep upright in the river of people.
News drones and aerial porters circled low overhead like black crows, and bright stage lighting had been erected all around the Place, focusing attention on the huge Obelisk at the center—a long ago gift from Egypt—and the theatrical stage built up around it.
A cordon of gendarmes formed a tight security perimeter around the stage and clustered in knots up and down the boulevard, trying to keep some kind of order.
The crowd pushed forward, a single organism with a single thought: get as close to Symborg as possible. As they were carried along, Dana spotted a row of assimilator booths just this side of the stage. Manned by uniformed technicians, draped with bunting, banners and flags from the Church of Assimilation, seeing the booths send a chill down her spine and automatically, she began steering a course away from them, back toward the center of the crowd.
No way I’m letting Rene anywhere near those death traps.
Near on to eight o’clock, they had parked themselves alongside the entrance to Rue Royale and the Hotel Crillon beyond. Stage lighting started to strobe and the crowd surged forth in anticipation. Music from somewhere blasted across the promenade, a fanfare fit for a king. Dana half expected to see a horse-drawn carriage with imperial guards trotting alongside. Instead, a single man mounted the platform and the lighting changed again, narrowing down to the single bright beam of a spotlight.
In spite of herself, Dana felt a lump in her throat. Assimilationists knew how to put on a show.
It was Symborg. And the crowd, which had been jostling and vibrating like a stirred pot, suddenly came alive.
Symborg acknowledged the crowds with a wave and moved to the center microphone. The angel was good, Tallant could see that. This one was tight and dense over its entire surface…only an occasional pop or flash in the torso area, one or two in the face, gave away the fact that the angel was a para-human, a swarm of nanobots configged to look human. In stature, he was a smallish man, dark of color but that could be easily enough changed. In fact, Tallant realized, it had changed. Now Symborg had acquired a lighter skin tone. Subtly lighter, to better blend in with the crowd.
“PEOPLE OF PARIS…THE TIME HAS COME FOR A CHANGE….” His voice boomed out across the plaza and the crowd grew more and more frenzied, pressing ever tighter against the police cordon.
The angel worked the crowd like a practiced stage actor.
“PEOPLE OF PARIS…WHAT IS IT THAT ASSIMILATION BRINGS?”
The response roared up out of the crowd like a thing alive.
“PEJERU…PEJERU…PEJERU!!”
A radiant smile came to Symborg’s face, beamed by cameras to screens throughout the rally ground.
“Peace. Ecstasy. Joy. Enlightenment. Rapture. Unity with the Mother Swarm. You are right!”
The crowd roiled and throbbed like a frenetic horde, as one, surging again and again against the stage and the police barricade. Dana Tallant watched her own daughter with growing alarm. Rene chanted in unison with the crowd…PEJERU! PEJERU! It was a nonsense phrase, an acronym, but it hypnotized Rene. Tallant could see it in her face: the glazed eyes, the smile frozen in place, her hands punching the air in syncopated rhythm.
It gave her a chill. Her own daughter was caught up in this madness.
The rally went on, with Symborg calling for witnesses to come forth and soon long lines had formed at the assimilator booths, lines of people waiting to die, to be de-constructed and absorbed into the mother swarm. Despite the jostling and shoving of the crowd, Tallant stayed close to her daughter. Rene squirmed and squealed like a teen-ager at a concert, bit by bit pushing her way ever forward toward the stage. Dana tried to stay close. Surrounding the plaza, giant screens, even 3-D renderings of Symborg’s face, lent an Olympian grandeur to the gathering.
Dana paid little attention to Symborg’s words. She was more concerned with Rene’s reaction. In between following Solnet coverage of the rally on her pad, she studied her daughter with growing dread and alarm.
“…TAKE…AND DRINK…AND YOU WILL KNOW THE LOVE OF THE MOTHER SWARM…”
For a moment, Dana wasn’t sure what Symborg was referring to but then she saw the drones circling overhead, aerial porters with trays of some kind of drink. En masse, they swooped down to drop off paper cups to a sea of outstretched hands.
Rene seemed to know what was going on. “It’s a custom, Mom…all of us take the drink…it puts in touch with the mother swarm…”
She swiped a cup from the grippers of one drone and downed it in one gulp before Dana could even react. All around them, hundreds of others were doing the same, while the drones swooped and dove and bore cups to every outstretched hand. A moment later, Dana had managed to snag one herself.
She sniffed at the drink cautiously. It had a brassy odor, almost metallic. All around her, people were downing the drink in quick gulps.
“What the hell is this stuff?” Tallant tasted it by dipping a finger in and licking the residue.
“Come on, Mom, drink up…get with the program!” Rene finished off her drink and tossed the crumpled cup in the air. Hundreds around them did the same. “It’s all part of the show--“
As Dana took an experimental swig, she saw out of the corner of her eye that somehow Rene’s config had momentarily fuzzed out. Her daughter distorted and lost a bit of structure, as if a mirror had slipped in between them, smearing out the image of her body. A chill went down her spine…the config pattern was breaking down…losing coherence.
Then it was over and nobody seemed any wiser. Maybe she had imagined it.
Symborg’s voice boomed out across the plaza.
“PEOPLE OF PARIS…THE MOTHER SWARM WELCOMES YOU—“
But Dana didn’t hear the rest. The tiny sip she had already taken began to work.
“Crap, Rene…it’s full of bots—“ Her head swam and she felt her legs give way, but Rene grabbed her by the shoulder and held her up.
“Mom…Mom, what’s wrong…what’s the matter…you look--?”
Somehow, the Quantum Corps halo inside her head had been activated. Every trooper had a protective bot shield embedded inside their head. It was there to guard troopers against swarms, which could appear quickly, without warning.
“Rene…that drink…it’s full of bugs…full of bots…” Now a battle had been joined inside her skull and it felt like her head was caught in a vise. The drink contained bots Symborg released into his crowds, to measure their response, to conduct the orchestra and guide the faithful to glory, to the assimilator booths, to unity with the Mother Swarm. “…got to…got to…get out…the hell out of here—“
She staggered to her feet, half blinded, dizzy, her head bursting with the gathering combat breaking out inside her brain. The bot master in her halo was going big bang, replicating millions of bots to fight off the ingested swarm. Two armies, no bigger than a speck, collided on the battlefield and the battlefield was her head.
With the halo activated, Dana didn’t notice how much Rene herself had changed. The bots in the drinks they had taken were working on her config, breaking down structure, interfering with the bot master that created and “ran” Rene as a coherent entity. All around them, people were pushing back, scrambling to get away, pushing and shoving and stumbling to carve out a small space, not sure what was happening to the Dana and Rene. A clearing opened up and rippled outward through the nearby crowd, even as Symborg’s voice boomed on and more drones chittered by overhead, handing out more drinks.
“PEOPLE OF PARIS…THE MOTHER SWARM AWAITS YOU…LET OUR LOVE EMBRACE YOU…COME ALL OF YOU…COME TO THE BOOTHS AND BE ONE WITH US….”
Still dizzy and half-blinded, Dana grabbed Rene’s hand—she could feel the tremor, the buzz of bots losing formation, losing config control—but she didn’t care. They had to get out of there. She dragged Rene through the crowd…at least, she hoped it was Rene. They banged into people, bounced and careened and caromed from one gap to another, Dana working against the current, working away from the stage and the great Obelisk, homing on instinct back toward the Metro station and safety.
It took half an hour, but when they burst through the last outer bands of people into the clear, the escalator down to Concorde stati
on was in sight. Dana turned around and saw Rene—what was left of Rene, now beginning to re-gather into a tighter form, swirling and knitting herself back together and the hell of it was she didn’t think twice about it, just accepted it as something completely normal. Her own head was clearing…the halo had made quick work of the alien bots and the effect seemed to be wearing off Rene as well.
But all around them, a steady stream of faithful were winding their way in queues toward the booths.
Zombies, Dana thought. That what that drink does. Takes over your head and hijacks your resistance and willpower. She stopped for a moment, to get a breath, to straighten herself up and in that time, Rene started to look like Rene again. The config manager was back in control. Falkland’s bot master was running the show again.
Rene was Rene once more. At least, she could pretend that.
“Come on, honey…we’re getting out of this zoo.”
“Mom--!”
She dragged her unwilling daughter, Rene resisting and pulling back all the way, toward the Metro station. They scurried down the escalator even as Symborg’s voice boomed out again across the plaza. They caught the first train and were back at La Tour St. Vincent inside of an hour.
That’s when Dana noticed Rene looked a little different.
Aboard the Michelangelo (UNS-212)
In Orbit Around Sedna
December 21, 2110 (U.T.)
2230 hours (Ship Time)
The decision, when it came at last from CINCSPACE across twelve billion kilometers of space, made no sense and Hawley thought: this is going to get us all killed. But orders were orders. One crewman had even suggested that CINCSPACE had been assimilated, as if Orlov were nothing but an angel masquerading as a human. Hawley scoffed at that, but inwardly, you couldn’t be so sure these days.
Hawley had been up on Big Mike’s command deck when the message came through. He read it over and over, then decided he had to get off the deck and go somewhere, anywhere. He slipped out into the gangway and immediately spotted Dean Kohl, heading into the galley a deck down.
“Lieutenant, hold up---I need you for a sec.”
Kohl stopped. “Sure, Skipper…what’s up?”
Hawley motioned to the docking tunnel amidships. “Something in Icarus…I want you to see it. In the command module—“
The two of them squeezed through the docking tunnel and emerged into the lander’s tiny flight deck.
“Sit. I want to show you something.”
Kohl took the right hand seat. Hawley gave him the message from CINCSPACE. Kohl scanned it with a growing look of dismay on his face.
“Skipper, this is insane. We got bots down on the surface. We got something big coming this way, probably the mother swarm. How the hell does CINCSPACE get off issuing orders like this…it violates just about every tactic in the book…not to mention military common sense. You don’t divide your forces when bad guys are in the neighborhood.” He handed the message back to Hawley.
“My thoughts exactly. He’s even ordering me to put Element B in charge of the landing party—“ Hawley searched for and found CINCSPACE’s words “…provides the mission with new set of eyes…Element B can bring new approach to dealing with surface swarms…am I imagining something or is this Headquarters bullshit? I need my exec here on Big Mike to deal with the big swarm…if that’s what it is.”
Kohl stared out Icarus’ forward windows, at the central mast and docking ring of Big Mike, to which they were attached. “Excuse me for saying this, sir, but a lot of the crew don’t exactly trust the Exec. It’s not what’s he done, sir…it’s what he is. Can we afford to take a chance that any onboard angel won’t be turned or go rogue when we’re near that swarm? Look at what happened to Favors…and Westerlund?”
“I know, I know…I haven’t made up my mind on this one. CINCSPACE wants one detail to go down the surface, hunt down that bot master and get rid of it, then finish building out the base module and transmitter. The second unit is authorized to recon that swarm and engage if necessary. But that swarm is the bigger threat, in my book. I want all hands on deck when the crap hits the fan.”
“So what are you going to do, Skipper?”
“What I want to do is reply back to CINCSPACE something like: your last message garbled in transmission…please re-send. But I’ll never get away with it. For damn sure I don’t want to send a landing party back down to the surface until we know what we’re dealing with up here.”
“What about Element B, sir? At the end of the day, he’s a swarm angel…a collection bots. Same as what’s on the surface. Can he be trusted…sorry to put it like that, sir, but that’s what a lot of us think.”
Hawley shrugged. “Can anybody be trusted? How do I know you’re not an angel, or me, for that matter? I guess we have to go by what we do, not by what we are. Anyway, orders are orders. I’m going to call an all-hands meeting. But before I do, I want to get the latest intel on that swarm…where is it, where’s it going, can we resolve any details, enough to know what we’re dealing with.”
“Okay, Skipper. I think that’s a decent plan.”
The two of them exited Icarus’ command module and headed back into Big Mike. Neither of them was aware of the small formation of nanobots drifting like dust motes aboard Icarus. The bots had recorded everything Hawley and Kohl had said and done. Once the two men had left Icarus, the bots fired up their propulsors and followed. In less than an hour, the small recon detail would find Element B and be re-absorbed into the main body.
And Element B, executive officer of the Michelangelo, would know exactly what Hawley’s thoughts and plans were.
Northgate University, Autonomous Systems Lab
Pennsylvania, USA
December 20, 2110
1915 Hours (U.T.)
Two weeks after they had brought Rene home…or at least back to their hotel…Johnny Winger decided it was time to get out and see the town.
“We’ll drive around and look at the Christmas lights,” he decided. Both Dana Tallant and Rene looked dubious. “Come on…it’ll be fun.”
Winger ordered up a jiffycar and they set out to see the town square and surrounding neighborhoods and all the lights that Northgate had to offer. The car showed up a few minutes later, all decked out in holiday ornamentation and they climbed in. The driver-ai beeped and pulled them away from the hotel. Winger told the bot to take them into town.
The last few weeks at the ASL and in and around the town of Northgate had been like a dream. It was like Rene had been born again, as a 7-year old. The physical resemblance was startling…only minor edge effects showed up and Rene’s eyes were different in color, with a slight glassy look to them. Otherwise, minus all the memories, it was Rene. Dana decided she could live with the differences. For his part, Johnny decided this was a great chance to be a better Dad than he had been before…he committed himself to spending a lot more time with his daughter as she ‘grew up’ again and he resolved not to make the same mistakes he’d made before. He had a second chance as a Dad and it wasn’t many parents that got to re-live their child’s growing up all over again.
For all intents and purposes, Rene was an infant, in the body of a seven-year old. The config Dr. Falkland had used and the patterns he had downloaded from all the scans had created an angel that resembled Rene at seven years age. But she had few memories, only slices and snatches of impressions, like shadows. Winger and Tallant found that patience was what they most needed.
Every day, from breakfast to supper, they had shown Rene pictures and vids from their pads, pictures of her as a child, growing up, romping in the snow, horsing around with her brother Liam, her first faltering steps, the time she had fallen from her rocking horse and busted her chin. When she had been kidnapped by Config Zero a decade ago, Rene had been a rebellious thirteen-year old. There had once been thirteen years of memories, most of it captured in vids and photos and now-discarded toys stashed away in closets back at their apartment at La Tour St. Vincent.
Now she was an infant in a seven-year old body. Dana and Winger found it oddly exhilarating just sitting on the living room floor in their hotel suite, flipping through the memorabilia of thirteen years with a blank slate. You had a different perspective when you grew up with your child all over again.
The jiffycar circled Northgate’s town square as Winger pointed out all the ornate light displays. The courthouse was lit up with nativity scenes and trees festooned with drapes of light. Three-D holos danced across the street…Santa Claus and his sleigh, carolers in red robes, some animatronic reindeer.
Rene seemed dour and unimpressed. Some days were better than others.
“What’s wrong, honey? Are you not feeling well?”
“I want to go home,” she gritted out. She sunk back in the seat and wrapped her arms tightly around herself, closing her eyes.
Dana knew that look. Maybe they had been laying on the memories a little thick lately. A child’s mind could only absorb so much. Even if it was an angel’s master processor.
“Okay, honey…we’ll go back…driver…take us back to the hotel.”
The bot beeped its acknowledgement and the jiffycar sped off from the town square through light traffic. They were back at their hotel in five minutes.
Falkland had insisted on physical exams of Rene every third day and tomorrow was another one. “I just want to make sure the config’s holding up…sometimes, out in the real world, things get a little messy. We lose some atoms here, a molecule group there…before you know it, a hand’s out of whack or a nose looks askew. It’s mostly minor adjustments. We want Rene to look like Rene…that’s all.”
Winger snorted. How many parents could say that? Bring your daughter in for a tune-up and we’ll put everything back in place.
Every night, after they had put Rene to bed, Winger had vidlinked in with UNIFORCE in Paris to get updated on the latest developments.
UNSAC’s harried face filled the vid screen. Jeez, Steiner must live at his desk, Winger thought. What is it: two a.m. there?
UNSAC filled him in on the three ops UNIFORCE was running now: Sentinel, Tectonic Guard and Quantum Crusader.
“It’s making my hair fall out,” Steiner admitted. “The Kgani angel’s been tested at Table Top. Looks good. We’re sending Lieutenant Argo and his detachment to Balzano tonight. Looks like Symborg’s finishing up some rallies in Europe, then heading back to Nairobi. I want Argo ready to go with three hours’ notice.”
Winger described Falkland’s new memory field technique, and how well it had worked with Rene. “It’s uncanny, sir. Dana and I can hardly tell the difference. Her skin, the texture…edge effects are minimal, hardly noticeable…best config I’ve ever seen. I hope we can get that trick approved for use with Quantum Corps.”
UNSAC seemed unimpressed. “I’m sure we can. But it’s just another nail in the coffin, Winger. It’s already damned hard enough to tell the difference between angels and humans. Pretty soon, there won’t be any difference. I’m not sure how great an idea that is.”
“I suppose you’re right, sir. Look at Symborg. He’s nothing but a good-looking cloud of bots and nobody cares. It’s the message people care about. The promise, I guess you could say, of being part of something greater than themselves. What about Sentinel? I’ve heard Hawley’s crew has run into something.”
Steiner ran a hand through what was left of his hair. He reached for something off-screen, then came back. “CINCSPACE sends me a brief every day. Hawley and his crew have encountered something out there…something that shouldn’t be there. Looks like swarms and they’re definitely not ours. Could be the first definitive contact with these Old Ones, whatever the hell they are. They may be real after all. And there have been some glitches setting up their equipment…but it’s the distance, the time delay, that’s so frustrating. Hawley’s really on his own out there.”
Winger pondered that. “If it is the Old Ones, we’d better do everything we can to isolate and immobilize Config Zero.” He paused for a moment, as Rene padded across the room behind him, on her way somewhere, probably to the kitchen. She had her tablet with her, engrossed in some game, he figured. The housebot scuttled along behind her, picking up chips and crumbs. “It’s getting to the point where you don’t know what bots or swarms to trust. Config Zero’s probably got spies and saboteurs everywhere.”
“Amen to that,” Steiner agreed. “Maybe even underground. We’ve gotten most of Tectonic Guard deployed…your boy Jason Karst is doing a fine job with that. More geoplanes are getting into the field and being fitted out. Three of five planned Boundary Patrol stations have stood up and are sending patrols out. For the moment, at least, all the tremors and quakes have quieted down. Q2 thinks it has something to do with Sentinel and what Hawley’s doing.”
They discussed other ops and some tactical ideas. Then Winger put in a request for some extended liberty, to spend more time in the States with his daughter and wife. “Rehab’s going pretty well, sir…but she needs more time. It’s like trying to take an infant and make her a seven-year old in a few days. It just takes time.”
Steiner was sympathetic. “I understand your concern, General, but frankly we need you here back at UNIFORCE. Running three ops like this is stretching the staff too far. Permission granted for three more days liberty. Then, you get your butt back here to Paris the day after Christmas.”
Winger acknowledged the order. “Will do, sir.”
UNSAC signed off and the vid went dark.
He went looking for Rene
“He’s just some kind of preacher, honey…” Dana was saying. “People flock to him…I don’t know why…come on, you’ve been looking at these vids for hours. Turn that thing off and I’ll show you more pix of when you were two years old. You fell off a chair in the kitchen that summer…busted your chin right there—“ she rubbed at a scar on Rene’s face that really wasn’t there “…remember, I told you about it.”
Rene pouted and turned away, burying her face. “I want to watch this, Mom. Why can’t I watch him?”
Dana sighed, taking the pad from Rene’s hands and putting it away. “Symborg’s just a cloud of bots, honey…nothing more. Just a swarm.”
Rene looked up at her mother. “But so am I…aren’t I?”
Dana brushed back a tear from the corner of her own eye. “You’re a very special child, Rene…you know that. Your Dad and I love you very much.”
“You’re not answering the question…”
Dana hugged her daughter tightly. “Oh, honey…you’ve been through so much…we all have…all we want…all I want…is for you to be normal. To have a normal life. Be like a kid.”
Rene reached for her pad again. The sound was off, but the image of Symborg gesturing and speaking to a huge crowd went on. Rene studied the image, turning the pad first one way, then another, trying out different perspectives. “He’s so riff…all the kids at school just love him…why can’t we go to one of the rallies….there’s one coming up in Paris—“
“Where’d you hear that?”
“Oh, Mom…it’s all over school…it’s all we talk about. You can get his schedule…here, I’ll show you—“ she started to finagle with the pad and call up another window, but Dana snatched it out of her hand.
“That’ll be enough of that, Rene Winger. It’s time for you to go to bed, young lady. Nobody’s going to Paris anytime soon…you’ve still got a lot of learning and rehab to go through. And tomorrow—“
“Actually—“ Johnny Winger interrupted, slipping into the room, “we are going back to Paris. Just got the word from UNSAC…I’m needed. We have three days here and then we’re on a hyperjet.” He came over to Rene and kissed her lightly on the forehead, still amazed after all these weeks that her skin seemed so lifelike. “And as for you, young lady, you do what your mother says. This Symborg character’s just a fad. He’s popular today. Tomorrow, who knows? He may just disassemble himself into something else. Then what’ll you do? One day he’s here…the next day…poof!”
“Oh, Daddy…you’re so dramatic…Symborg’s not like that at all. I just want to know all about him…everything about him.” Her eyes got dreamy. “There’s nobody like him.”
“You got that right, girl,” Winger said. If she only knew, he told himself. Then he looked at his daughter more critically. Maybe she does know….
“Can I go, Mom? Can I go to the rally at Montparnasse…it’s next Friday.”
Dana looked up at Winger. Her eyes said: Help me say no. But to Rene, she replied, “We’ll see, honey…we’ll see. Now go to bed. You got rehab tomorrow. And then I’ve got you all afternoon…more lessons.”
Rene made a gag gesture. “Ugh! I hate ‘em…how many vids did you make anyway? How much can a girl take?”
“She can take whatever her parents say,” Winger said. Dana tucked her in and they shut the bedroom door on their way out.
They wound up on the small patio outside the hotel suite’s family room, overlooking a parking lot and a highway. Light snow was falling.
“I don’t want her going to that rally, Wings. I don’t want her having anything to do with Symborg…or the Assimilationists…do you know what I found on her pad this afternoon…some literature about Symborg…stuff about deconstruction…assimilation—“ Dana choked back a sob. She fell into Winger’s arms and they hugged tightly. “I don’t want to lose her again, Wings…I can’t lose her. It’s just too much—“
“We’re not losing Rene,” he comforted her, rubbing her neck and the side of her face. “No way…not now. I shouldn’t be telling you this but UNIFORCE is running an op right now…against Symborg himself.” When she looked up, he put a finger to her lips and kissed them. “And that’s all you need to know. Let’s go back inside…it’s friggin’ cold out here.”
Three days later, the three of them packed up, left Northgate and the Lab and jetted across the Atlantic, touching down at Dordain Spaceport after a routine two hour suborbital hop.
Back in their apartment at La Tour St. Vincent, Dana took a few more days leave to get Rene settled in and headed back to school at the Academy Superieur. Her brother Liam was headed back to college…in his first semester at Cambridge University, he announced his intention to major in Robotic Ethics and Philosophy.
“Then maybe I can figure out what makes Rene tick,” he added sourly.
“That’ll be quite enough of that, young man,” Dana had told him. But secretly she was pleased that something like the normal sniping was coming back. She and Winger had talked with Liam before they had left for Northgate…about what was supposed to happen, about how Rene was coming home, a new Rene, but like the old Rene. Liam didn’t want to listen. Winger said it was because he didn’t know how to deal with it.
“Who does?” Dana blurted out. “Nobody knows how to deal with this.”
So Liam checked out Rene 2.0 when they arrived at La Tour St. Vincent, pronounced himself more or less satisfied with the results and then packed himself off to Cambridge. At least, they didn’t have to put up the containment field anymore. That had been like living in a prison. Winger and Dana had discussed the matter with Dr. Falkland and had come away from Northgate convinced that the new Rene had a stable enough config and she wouldn’t de-construct in front of them and vanish into thin air.
All the same, Johnny Winger had brought a fully charged HERF pistol home from the UNIFORCE center at the Quartier General. He never told Dana a thing about it.
The day of the great Assimilationist rally at the Place de la Concorde was fast approaching and Rene wouldn’t let up.
“Come on, Mom…it’ll be fun…we’ll have a great time…get to see Symborg…isn’t he just so riff…and watch all the freaks get vaporized…it’ll be a great day—“
Dana told her daughter to watch her mouth. “That’s not funny. And they’re not freaks…just terribly misguided. This is a serious thing, Rene…you know that. Your Dad and I have tried to explain what Assimilationists think and believe…the whole thing’s a serious threat and I don’t want to encourage them by showing up.”
“We’ll be two people out of a million, Mom…nobody’ll notice. Come on…I want to go see Symborg…in person. I want to see if he can really change shape right in front of everybody—“
That was when Dana wondered just how stable the new Rene really was.
So they went to the rally.
The whole affair was set to start at eight that night, in the Place de la Concorde, with stages and lighting set up around the great Obelisk at the center of the plaza. Even as they exited the Metro station at Concorde, Dana Tallant and Rene were crushed by the surging waves of the crowds, with hundreds of thousands moving up the Champs Elysees from Tuilerie Gardens en masse. For Tallant, it felt like she was going small for a moment, jostled by a billion atoms and molecules in a Brownian motion cascade. She bulled and shoved and clawed their way through and fought to keep upright in the river of people.
News drones and aerial porters circled low overhead like black crows, and bright stage lighting had been erected all around the Place, focusing attention on the huge Obelisk at the center—a long ago gift from Egypt—and the theatrical stage built up around it.
The crowd pushed forward, a single organism with a single thought: get as close to Symborg as possible. As they were carried along, Dana spotted a row of assimilator booths just this side of the stage. Manned by uniformed technicians, draped with bunting, banners and flags from the Church of Assimilation, seeing the booths send a chill down her spine and automatically, she began steering a course away from them, back toward the center of the crowd.
No way I’m letting Rene anywhere near those death traps.
Near on to eight o’clock, they had parked themselves alongside the entrance to Rue Royale and the Hotel Crillon beyond. Stage lighting started to strobe and the crowd surged forth in anticipation. Music from somewhere blasted across the promenade, a fanfare fit for a king. Dana half expected to see a horse-drawn carriage with imperial guards trotting alongside. Instead, a single man mounted the platform and the lighting changed again, narrowing down to the single bright beam of a spotlight.
In spite of herself, Dana felt a lump in her throat. Assimilationists knew how to put on a show.
It was Symborg. And the crowd, which had been jostling and vibrating like a stirred pot, suddenly came alive.
Symborg acknowledged the crowds with a wave and moved to the center microphone. The angel was good, Tallant could see that. This one was tight and dense over its entire surface…only an occasional pop or flash in the torso area, one or two in the face, gave away the fact that the angel was a para-human, a swarm of nanobots configged to look human. In stature, he was a smallish man, dark of color but that could be easily enough changed. In fact, Tallant realized, it had changed. Now Symborg had acquired a lighter skin tone. Subtly lighter, to better blend in with the crowd.
“PEOPLE OF PARIS…THE TIME HAS COME FOR A CHANGE….” His voice boomed out across the plaza and the crowd grew more and more frenzied, pressing ever tighter against the police cordon.
The angel worked the crowd like a practiced stage actor.
“PEOPLE OF PARIS…WHAT IS IT THAT ASSIMILATION BRINGS?”
The response roared up out of the crowd like a thing alive.
“PEJERU…PEJERU…PEJERU!!”
A radiant smile came to Symborg’s face, beamed by cameras to screens throughout the rally ground.
“Peace. Ecstasy. Joy. Enlightenment. Rapture. Unity with the Mother Swarm. You are right!”
The crowd roiled and throbbed like a frenetic horde, as one, surging again and again against the stage and the police barricade. Dana Tallant watched her own daughter with growing alarm. Rene chanted in unison with the crowd…PEJERU! PEJERU! It was a nonsense phrase, an acronym, but it hypnotized Rene. Tallant could see it in her face: the glazed eyes, the smile frozen in place, her hands punching the air in syncopated rhythm.
It gave her a chill. Her own daughter was caught up in this madness.
The rally went on, with Symborg calling for witnesses to come forth and soon long lines had formed at the assimilator booths, lines of people waiting to die, to be de-constructed and absorbed into the mother swarm. Despite the jostling and shoving of the crowd, Tallant stayed close to her daughter. Rene squirmed and squealed like a teen-ager at a concert, bit by bit pushing her way ever forward toward the stage. Dana tried to stay close. Surrounding the plaza, giant screens, even 3-D renderings of Symborg’s face, lent an Olympian grandeur to the gathering.
Dana paid little attention to Symborg’s words. She was more concerned with Rene’s reaction. In between following Solnet coverage of the rally on her pad, she studied her daughter with growing dread and alarm.
“…TAKE…AND DRINK…AND YOU WILL KNOW THE LOVE OF THE MOTHER SWARM…”
For a moment, Dana wasn’t sure what Symborg was referring to but then she saw the drones circling overhead, aerial porters with trays of some kind of drink. En masse, they swooped down to drop off paper cups to a sea of outstretched hands.
Rene seemed to know what was going on. “It’s a custom, Mom…all of us take the drink…it puts in touch with the mother swarm…”
She swiped a cup from the grippers of one drone and downed it in one gulp before Dana could even react. All around them, hundreds of others were doing the same, while the drones swooped and dove and bore cups to every outstretched hand. A moment later, Dana had managed to snag one herself.
She sniffed at the drink cautiously. It had a brassy odor, almost metallic. All around her, people were downing the drink in quick gulps.
“What the hell is this stuff?” Tallant tasted it by dipping a finger in and licking the residue.
“Come on, Mom, drink up…get with the program!” Rene finished off her drink and tossed the crumpled cup in the air. Hundreds around them did the same. “It’s all part of the show--“
As Dana took an experimental swig, she saw out of the corner of her eye that somehow Rene’s config had momentarily fuzzed out. Her daughter distorted and lost a bit of structure, as if a mirror had slipped in between them, smearing out the image of her body. A chill went down her spine…the config pattern was breaking down…losing coherence.
Then it was over and nobody seemed any wiser. Maybe she had imagined it.
Symborg’s voice boomed out across the plaza.
“PEOPLE OF PARIS…THE MOTHER SWARM WELCOMES YOU—“
But Dana didn’t hear the rest. The tiny sip she had already taken began to work.
“Crap, Rene…it’s full of bots—“ Her head swam and she felt her legs give way, but Rene grabbed her by the shoulder and held her up.
“Mom…Mom, what’s wrong…what’s the matter…you look--?”
Somehow, the Quantum Corps halo inside her head had been activated. Every trooper had a protective bot shield embedded inside their head. It was there to guard troopers against swarms, which could appear quickly, without warning.
“Rene…that drink…it’s full of bugs…full of bots…” Now a battle had been joined inside her skull and it felt like her head was caught in a vise. The drink contained bots Symborg released into his crowds, to measure their response, to conduct the orchestra and guide the faithful to glory, to the assimilator booths, to unity with the Mother Swarm. “…got to…got to…get out…the hell out of here—“
She staggered to her feet, half blinded, dizzy, her head bursting with the gathering combat breaking out inside her brain. The bot master in her halo was going big bang, replicating millions of bots to fight off the ingested swarm. Two armies, no bigger than a speck, collided on the battlefield and the battlefield was her head.
With the halo activated, Dana didn’t notice how much Rene herself had changed. The bots in the drinks they had taken were working on her config, breaking down structure, interfering with the bot master that created and “ran” Rene as a coherent entity. All around them, people were pushing back, scrambling to get away, pushing and shoving and stumbling to carve out a small space, not sure what was happening to the Dana and Rene. A clearing opened up and rippled outward through the nearby crowd, even as Symborg’s voice boomed on and more drones chittered by overhead, handing out more drinks.
“PEOPLE OF PARIS…THE MOTHER SWARM AWAITS YOU…LET OUR LOVE EMBRACE YOU…COME ALL OF YOU…COME TO THE BOOTHS AND BE ONE WITH US….”
Still dizzy and half-blinded, Dana grabbed Rene’s hand—she could feel the tremor, the buzz of bots losing formation, losing config control—but she didn’t care. They had to get out of there. She dragged Rene through the crowd…at least, she hoped it was Rene. They banged into people, bounced and careened and caromed from one gap to another, Dana working against the current, working away from the stage and the great Obelisk, homing on instinct back toward the Metro station and safety.
It took half an hour, but when they burst through the last outer bands of people into the clear, the escalator down to Concorde stati
But all around them, a steady stream of faithful were winding their way in queues toward the booths.
Zombies, Dana thought. That what that drink does. Takes over your head and hijacks your resistance and willpower. She stopped for a moment, to get a breath, to straighten herself up and in that time, Rene started to look like Rene again. The config manager was back in control. Falkland’s bot master was running the show again.
Rene was Rene once more. At least, she could pretend that.
“Come on, honey…we’re getting out of this zoo.”
“Mom--!”
She dragged her unwilling daughter, Rene resisting and pulling back all the way, toward the Metro station. They scurried down the escalator even as Symborg’s voice boomed out again across the plaza. They caught the first train and were back at La Tour St. Vincent inside of an hour.
That’s when Dana noticed Rene looked a little different.
Aboard the Michelangelo (UNS-212)
In Orbit Around Sedna
December 21, 2110 (U.T.)
2230 hours (Ship Time)
The decision, when it came at last from CINCSPACE across twelve billion kilometers of space, made no sense and Hawley thought: this is going to get us all killed. But orders were orders. One crewman had even suggested that CINCSPACE had been assimilated, as if Orlov were nothing but an angel masquerading as a human. Hawley scoffed at that, but inwardly, you couldn’t be so sure these days.
Hawley had been up on Big Mike’s command deck when the message came through. He read it over and over, then decided he had to get off the deck and go somewhere, anywhere. He slipped out into the gangway and immediately spotted Dean Kohl, heading into the galley a deck down.
“Lieutenant, hold up---I need you for a sec.”
Kohl stopped. “Sure, Skipper…what’s up?”
Hawley motioned to the docking tunnel amidships. “Something in Icarus…I want you to see it. In the command module—“
The two of them squeezed through the docking tunnel and emerged into the lander’s tiny flight deck.
“Sit. I want to show you something.”
Kohl took the right hand seat. Hawley gave him the message from CINCSPACE. Kohl scanned it with a growing look of dismay on his face.
“Skipper, this is insane. We got bots down on the surface. We got something big coming this way, probably the mother swarm. How the hell does CINCSPACE get off issuing orders like this…it violates just about every tactic in the book…not to mention military common sense. You don’t divide your forces when bad guys are in the neighborhood.” He handed the message back to Hawley.
“My thoughts exactly. He’s even ordering me to put Element B in charge of the landing party—“ Hawley searched for and found CINCSPACE’s words “…provides the mission with new set of eyes…Element B can bring new approach to dealing with surface swarms…am I imagining something or is this Headquarters bullshit? I need my exec here on Big Mike to deal with the big swarm…if that’s what it is.”
Kohl stared out Icarus’ forward windows, at the central mast and docking ring of Big Mike, to which they were attached. “Excuse me for saying this, sir, but a lot of the crew don’t exactly trust the Exec. It’s not what’s he done, sir…it’s what he is. Can we afford to take a chance that any onboard angel won’t be turned or go rogue when we’re near that swarm? Look at what happened to Favors…and Westerlund?”
“I know, I know…I haven’t made up my mind on this one. CINCSPACE wants one detail to go down the surface, hunt down that bot master and get rid of it, then finish building out the base module and transmitter. The second unit is authorized to recon that swarm and engage if necessary. But that swarm is the bigger threat, in my book. I want all hands on deck when the crap hits the fan.”
“So what are you going to do, Skipper?”
“What I want to do is reply back to CINCSPACE something like: your last message garbled in transmission…please re-send. But I’ll never get away with it. For damn sure I don’t want to send a landing party back down to the surface until we know what we’re dealing with up here.”
“What about Element B, sir? At the end of the day, he’s a swarm angel…a collection bots. Same as what’s on the surface. Can he be trusted…sorry to put it like that, sir, but that’s what a lot of us think.”
Hawley shrugged. “Can anybody be trusted? How do I know you’re not an angel, or me, for that matter? I guess we have to go by what we do, not by what we are. Anyway, orders are orders. I’m going to call an all-hands meeting. But before I do, I want to get the latest intel on that swarm…where is it, where’s it going, can we resolve any details, enough to know what we’re dealing with.”
“Okay, Skipper. I think that’s a decent plan.”
The two of them exited Icarus’ command module and headed back into Big Mike. Neither of them was aware of the small formation of nanobots drifting like dust motes aboard Icarus. The bots had recorded everything Hawley and Kohl had said and done. Once the two men had left Icarus, the bots fired up their propulsors and followed. In less than an hour, the small recon detail would find Element B and be re-absorbed into the main body.
And Element B, executive officer of the Michelangelo, would know exactly what Hawley’s thoughts and plans were.