Johnny Winger and the Great Rift Zone, Page 3

CHAPTER 2

  UNIFORCE Headquarters, Paris

  May 10, 2110

  0500 hours

  CINCQUANT stood at the window of his office on the 66th floor of the Quartier General and stared out at the early morning sun rising over a timeless Parisian cityscape.

  The Eiffel Tower dominated the northwest view, now covered with fixbots as it was nearing completion of the structural upgrade ordered by UNSAC a few months before. There was the Place Vendome and the low hill of Montmartre, thick with pedestrians and aircabs. UNIFORCE had been built forty years before on the Rue des Jardins, at a busy intersection off the Luxembourg Gardens, deep in the heart of the 5th Arrondisement. The mansard roofline of the Palais du Luxembourg filled his northeast windows.

  A deep sense of foreboding washed over the Commander in Chief of Quantum Corps. He’d seen the intel boards earlier that morning and the signs were there for all to see. After nearly ten years of inactivity, it was evident that Config Zero was active again. An inexplicable series of earthquakes. Unexplained astronomical phenomena. More and more skirmishes with Sanctuary Patrols, especially in east Africa.

  Lt. Gen Johnny Winger gathered his command tablet and headed up four floors, to UNSAC’s briefing room. On the lift, he ran into General Evgeny Orlov, head of UNISPACE. The two 09s rode up together.

  Orlov was bald as an egg, his forehead creased with worry and lack of sleep.

  “UNSAC wants answers,” Orlov mumbled, as the lift jerked to a halt. “I’m not sure I have any to give him.”

  “Me neither,” Winger agreed. “I want to see what Chekwarthy’s got. Sanctuary Patrol detectors seem to indicate a spike in quantum signals coming from somewhere off-Earth. I’m betting it’s the Keeper again. You know, we’ll never did completely disable the blasted thing ten years ago. It just went dormant somehow and we congratulated ourselves on a successful mission.”

  Orlov recalled Quantum Hammer and he knew Winger had led a months-long expedition to Jupiter’s moon Europa in an attempt to put the Keeper unit out of commission. “It’s the intel from Farside that has me worried.”

  The officers reached UNSAC’s suite and were scanned in. A pair of servbots scurried around the suite, bearing trays of pasties and coffee, straightening chairs, setting up work stations. The UN Security Affairs Commissioner was deep in some kind of intense vidcon and waved the CINCs to some chairs beside his curving work console. Jurgen Steiner was the very picture of Prussian military bearing, with a thick head of silver hair and moustache to boot. Steiner was nominally a civilian advisor to the Secretary-General, but the S-G had plucked him from the ranks of the General Staff two years before. Formerly chief of UNIFORCE Ground Forces, Steiner was a stern, by-the-book commander and he ran the UNSAC shop the same way.

  “--just get me that report by 0900…not a second later. Squirt me the raw feed if you have to…but get me that report. Is that understood?”

  Steiner evidently got the response he wanted and closed down the vidcon with an angry wave of his hand. “Sorry, gentlemen…bit of a flap over command jurisdiction. That was Chekwarthy…he’s on a lifter heading down to Africa now…trying to get some eyeballs on the situation in Kenya. What have you got for me?” UNSAC grabbed a muffin and coffee off a passing servbot before the bot could even stop and unload its goodies.

  “Intel and analysis from Farside, sir,” Orlov waved a cube and UNSAC pointed to a nearby slot.

  “Let GENGHIS have it. He can break it down for us, set up the maps and details.”

  Orlov popped the cube into a port. GENGHIS was UNSAC’s tactical AI, running all the displays and visuals on the briefing deck. Moments later, all the wallscreens flickered to life, detailing views of the Earth-Moon system, the Solar System in ecliptic projection and

  grid plots of the earth’s surface itself.

  “What about all these earthquakes?” UNSAC asked. He sucked loudly at the scalding hot coffee, his face wreathed in steam. “The geos say the odds of this pattern of tremors being a natural phenomenon are a gazillion to one.”

  Johnny Winger said, “We have the same intel, sir. There’s sigint from our quantum signals people that seems to indicate Config Zero is active again. Not fully decrypted yet…just snatches of decoherence waves, but a definite spike. I’m proposing a covert recon mission into the east Africa Sanctuary to insert better equipment, a new gizmo the lab boys just developed…try to grab more signals, see if we can pin down some entanglement states.”

  “Work up a mission plan, the usual stuff,” UNSAC said. “What about Farside, Orlov? Some kind of weird anomaly, I heard.”

  CINCSPACE went over the details surrounding the discovery of the Delta P anomaly at 51 Pegasi. “There’s something new, sir. Just picked up yesterday by the Gamma Ray detectors at Farside. Not only do we have energy spikes in multiple bands at 51 Pegasi…some of the astros are saying it’s a micro black hole…nothing more. We’re also picking up less intense activity of similar spectra right on our own doorstep…something like ten billion miles from the Sun. There may be another Delta P out there, whatever that is…a little brother, so to speak. Farside’s refining their instrumentation now…we should have better data today.”

  “Another micro black hole?”

  “Possibly, sir. Not everyone’s convinced by that theory. But nobody has a better explanation at the moment.”

  UNSAC munched on a muffin, dribbling crumbs into his coffee. “Speculation, gentlemen? Is this something astronomical…or something else?”

  Winger conveyed his own thoughts about the Keeper at Europa. “Sir, if we can get better quantum signal detection near Kipwezi, we might just have an answer. If Q2 can prove that Config Zero’s talking to the Keeper again, I’m willing to bet these anomalies are something besides cosmic burps.”

  UNSAC leveled an even gaze at CINCQUANT. “You’re talking about the Old Ones…or whatever we’re calling them today. That they’re real and they’re headed this way, if that kind of bedtime story can be believed.”

  Orlov and Winger had discussed this very point, knowing that UNSAC had never put much stock in the stories.

  “With all due respects, sir…I don’t believe we should discount any possibility.”

  UNSAC picked at his teeth with his fingers. “Suppose there is something to this Old Ones’ crap. Suppose the Mother Swarm has sent advance scouts and these buggers are poking around Pluto and the outer solar system…just for argument’s sake. Mind you, I don’t buy it, but just suppose--“

  “Yes, sir,” Orlov and Winger said in unison.

  “--what exactly would we do about it?”

  Orlov figured that was his cue. He manipulated the displays that GENGHIS had brought up to show an overhead view of the Solar System, from the Sun to the Oort Cloud at the very edge of the system. A floating icon called Operation Sentinel hovered near the top of the display.

  “Sentinel is what I’m calling our response, sir.” Orlov guided the displays. “We have to assume, as General Winger has said, that Config Zero’s active again. And we can’t ignore the possibility that someone…or something…is preparing a move against us in the outer solar system. There has been a lot of debate about the Old Ones: are they real? Are they out there? Are they some kind of mass hallucination? With what Farside has found and what’s happening here, sir, I think we need to take positive steps to defend ourselves.”

  “So what is this Sentinel?”

  “Sir, a line of detectors beyond the orbit of Pluto…detectors to search for unusual nanobotic swarm activity, unusual energy sources, gravitational disturbances, things we can’t explain but that could be early warnings of some kind of approaching force. We can’t completely discount the possibility that the Old Ones, whatever they are, are very real and headed this way.”

  UNSAC watched the diagrams as they unfolded. “That’s a long way from here, General. It would take months, probably years, to put some kind of network in plac
e that far out.”

  “That’s why I’m proposing a probe right away, sir. There are several exploratory assets already cruising the outer solar system. I checked with UNISPACE Ops just yesterday. One of them, Triton Odyssey, is in orbit around Neptune, with a mission to detach a lander to that moon. With your permission, sir, I could order a change in mission for Triton Odyssey: leave Neptune space and depart for the outer solar system on a speed course to investigate this anomaly Farside has labeled Devil’s Eye, the one that is showing up several billion miles beyond the Pluto-Charon system. Farside thinks Delta P and Devil’s Eye, at 51 Pegasi, are similar phenomena. Their spectra are very close. And there are no known astronomical phenomena that can account for these anomalies.”

  “Not even micro black holes?”

  “That’s just a cover story Farside and UNISPACE put out to the media. No one that I’ve talked to at Farside really believes that. Sir--“ Orlov directed UNSAC’s attention to the mission details on the display, “Operation Sentinel is designed to reconnoiter the vicinity of the planetisimal Sedna, and the space between it and the Pluto system. They are to deploy a network of robotic sentries and stations in space around Sedna and a large part of its orbital arc to provide warning of the approach of any swarms or anything unusual entering the outer solar system. The Sentinel Net is oriented to be particularly sensitive to any phenomena coming from the direction of 51 Pegasi, from the direction of the constellation Pegasus. And to approach and survey this anomaly Farside is calling Devil’s Eye.”

  “I’m still concerned about equipment, General. What assets, beyond this Triton Odyssey, are available that could make this trip in a reasonable time?”

  Orlov called up a new display, showing Mars Phobos Station. “And old cycler ship, sir, the Michelangelo, is docked at Phobos. She was scheduled to be mothballed, possibly scrapped a year from now. But I checked with the Frontier Corps detachment handling her decommissioning and they report she could be made ready for deep-space ops in sixty days, maybe less with enough men and material. She’s our best hope.”

  UNSAC fiddled with his moustache, sipped experimentally at his coffee. “I’ll have to run this by the SG and the Security Council. I’ll write provisional orders now, but nothing happens until the SG approves….got that?”

  “Yes, sir.

  “Now, I’ve got a meeting online with the Security Council. My eyes only…General Winger, I’ll send my avatar through GENGHIS to you. He’ll stand in for me during the next part of your briefing. I’ve already pre-loaded GENGHIS with some questions I have about these earthquakes. He’ll capture all the data you’ve got and I can review it later. Just answer his questions like you would mine. Understood?”

  “Yes, sir,” Winger and Orlov both stood up and saluted. UNSAC nodded and waved them out. CINCQUANT and CINCSPACE departed UNSAC’s suite together and headed downstairs on the lift.

  “You’ve dealt with GENGHIS before, I take it?” Orlov said as the lift stopped. The 66th floor was CINCQUANT’s office complex. Winger got out.

  “Not one on one…just larger briefings. Why?”

  Orlov smirked. As the lift doors were closing, he said, “He’s worse than UNSAC in person. Not even a shred of humanity.”

  The lift doors snapped shut and Orlov was gone. Winger went back to his office.

  The briefing began an hour later. Winger ran the show from his office. As indicated, UNSAC’s avatar…Winger had decided to call it Steiner 2.0…materialized on one display, which Winger minimized.

  Not a bad likeness, Winger thought. For a cartoon. The thing even had the same Germanic scowl and expressive eyebrows. Just super.

  Other participants included Orlov himself, from his own suite of offices a few floors above.

  Two other remote participants filled out the rest of the display, tiled into windows. Lieutenant Jason Karst was a nanotrooper based at Table Top, nominally a liaison officer with Sanctuary Patrol. Winger had seen his bio and reports and was impressed with the young O2’s resume. The other window revealed Dr. Christian Hayes, a Quantum Corps inspector aboard a lifter orbiting Tabriz, Iran. Hayes was heading up a detail to investigate reports of intense nanobotic activity in and around the epicenter of the Tabriz quake and tremors.

  It was Hayes to whom CINCQUANT directed the first question. “Dr. Hayes, you got the data from those Solnet reporters?”

  “Porting to your system now,” Hayes said. The doctor leaned out of camera view for a moment. “It’s the raw feed.”

  Winger watched as a new window opened up on his display and dronecam video flickered into life. The entire report lasted seven minutes, including the collapsing buildings and the grainy imagery of a nanobotic swarm. Winger paused and re-played that part several times.

  “Looks like nano to me,” he decided. “Doc, what are we dealing with here…you’ve talked with the geos.”

  Hayes nodded. “I’ve appended their report as well. Basically, this whole area is underlain with several strike-slip faults…we’re on the boundary of two tectonic plates here. Tabriz has had quakes and tremors for centuries…that’s not new. What is new is the intensity and the proximity of high-magnitude tremors in close succession. To put it in physics terms: once a fault slips and the earth moves, equilibrium effects should stabilize the area after a few hours. Sure, there are smaller tremors as the faults settle down, but there shouldn’t be high-mag tremors in quick succession, one right after the other. It just doesn’t happen. The Earth doesn’t work that way.”

  “So, what’s the explanation?”

  Hayes shrugged. “Either there are undetected fault lines associated with the main fault structure that we don’t know about. That’s possible, but not likely. The geos feel they’ve got a pretty good handle on the crustal makeup in the region…and the dynamics of how plates move…subduction zones and all that.”

  “You said there were several explanations.”

  Hayes nodded. “The other possibility is that the quakes and tremors are being helped, artificially enhanced. Possibly by nanobotic swarms.”

  Winger remembered using an old ANAD swarm to destroy the first Keeper Quantum Corps had ever faced. It was the Amazon Vector case, back in ’68, over forty years ago. Geoplane ops had been run below the Himalaya Mountains against a Tibetan monastery, the Paryang Monastery, which housed the Red Hammer cartel’s main base and, as it turned out, the first Keeper unit they had ever encountered Involuntarily, he shivered.

  “We’ve seen that before. And this video seems to prove swarms were in the area.”

  Hayes added, “We’ve probed the whole area with everything we’ve got, General. All bands: radar, sonar, thermal, acoustic, EMs. It’s a pretty active and noisy area….these plate boundaries are like that. Giant sheets of the Earth’s crust grinding against each other. We’ve gotten intermittent returns that seem to show nano signatures, but it’s hard to be sure. We need more data.”

  “And that’s why I’ve called this briefing,” Winger said. “With UNSAC’s approval--“ he nodded at the window with the scowling Steiner avatar “--I’m setting up a new detachment inside Quantum Corps. It’s to be headed up by Lieutenant Karst, who’s at Table Top.”

  Karst was a stony-faced blond kid with thin lips and a faint scar below his left eye, the result of a Quantum Corps op that hadn’t gone so well a year ago. “General, I’ve reviewed all the data and vids you sent me. You mentioned geoplanes…when do we get a test ride?”

  “In time, Lieutenant,” Winger said. “In time. We’ve got Engineering updating the designs now…the hulls are being formed next week. You should have your new ride in a month or so…after shakedown tests and training. I’m not throwing a completely green crew into the fire without some training. We don’t know what we’re dealing with here yet. I need more from Q2…and from you, Dr. Hayes.”

  The Steiner avatar spoke up. “General, Q2’s already reporting a spike in quantu
m signals coming from off-Earth. Farside has been monitoring that for several days now. You mentioned that Config Zero may be active again.”

  “Yes, sir. That is a distinct possibility. The best way I know to confirm this is to run a special forces op inside the east Africa Sanctuary…I need to coordinate with Sanctuary Patrol on that. Put some new detectors in place around Mount Kipwezi. Karst, you may know something about this.”

  Karst brightened. “I do, indeed, sir. General Chekwarthy put out a bulletin just the other day…the lab’s got some new whizbang detectors that are hyper-sensitive to decoherence waves of the type we’ve historically seen with Keeper systems and with Config Zero. They’re tuned to a particular pattern of entanglement state hopping. The techs swear they can sniff out quantum wakes from almost nothing and they’ve got new algorithms that can shift right along with the deco wakes, stick to ‘em like glue. That gives the decryption suites a better chance to work…and we get a better idea of what sort of commands and data are being passed back and forth. But the unit has to be placed close by, either close to the transmitter or the receiver.”

  “The transmitter is fifty light years away,” Winger said. “With an amplifier at Europa…that’s the Keeper we tried to disable ten years ago.”

  Steiner 2.0 said, “And the presumed receiver is at Kipwezi. I’ll run this by the SG…I’m sure he’ll approve the op. But we have to be careful…treaty violations along the Sanctuary boundaries are serious business. If Config Zero’s not fully active yet, we don’t want to do anything to stir the bastard up again.”

  Winger said, “Understood, sir. Lieutenant, I’m detailing you to Farside for a quick look at what the astros have. Get your gear together…I want you on the Gateway shuttle at the end of the week. I’ll send along the specs on the new geoplanes from Engineering…you can study them on the trip. Plus I’ll get a Table of Organization and Equipment ready for this new detachment. Can’t go fight the bad guys without a proper TOE.”

  “No, sir.”

  The Steiner avatar chimed in. “I’m with the SG at noon. General Winger, put all this together into a concise report…Hayes’ stuff from Tabriz, the sigint intercepts, Farside’s report and your TOE for a geoplane detachment. With any luck, you’ll have orders cut by 1500 hours my time.”

  “Yes, sir,” The Steiner 2.0 avatar screen dissolved into an official UNIFORCE logo, as GENGHIS signed him off.

  “General--“ It was Karst.

  “Yes, Lieutenant?”

  “Sir, have you got names already assigned to this new detachment? If not, I have a few suggestions.”

  Winger was intrigued. “I’m all ears, Karst. What have you got for me?”

  CINCQUANT and Lieutenant Karst spent the next half hour going over the composition and outfitting of a detachment that would soon stand up for subterranean operations in central Asia.

  In his own mind, Winger had already taken to calling the new outfit United Nations Boundary Patrol. That seemed to have a nice official ring to it.