Johnny Winger and the Battle at Caloris Basin Page 5

  Lindstrom remembered a quote from Sun Tzu from her days in nog school: “The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.”

  “Spoken like a true nanotrooper,” she muttered to herself. “Send a new command stream out to Sentinel, Dawes. All pods deploy. Launch everything. Max rate replication. Let’s see if an ANAD Big Bang has any effect.”

  It didn’t.

  Hours later, Lindstrom sat at her console and silently, numbly reviewed the results of Man’s first engagement with the Old Ones.

  Half the Kuiper Belt gone. Neptune and her brood of satellites gone. KB-1 was now inside the orbit of Neptune and heading sunward. An incomprehensibly vast formation of nanoscale robotic elements, a thing that Farside had dubbed KB-1 but in her own mind, Erika Lindstrom had already started calling the Devil’s own breath, was moving inexorably into the outer reaches of the solar system.

  Alarms and mobilization orders were flying between worlds like moths trapped between lights. Farside, Phobos Station, Station T at Titan, all were bringing every resource they could scrape up to confront the enemy.

  Lindstrom decided it was time to send a formal status brief to CINCSPACE at the Quartier-General in Paris. General Mahmood Salaam scanned the after-action reports from Sentinel with a growing sense of dread. It didn’t help that he also had a Solnet live stream up on another screen…Special Report was showing scene after scene of panic and chaos around the Earth and Moon. Salaam had the sound on the vid muted as he scanned Gateway’s report but he found his eyes constantly drawn to views of Symborg haranguing audiences, long lines at assimilator booths around the world, pronouncements of impending judgment, the coming of the Last days.

  For a brief moment, Salaam un-muted the volume, long enough to catch some of Symborg’s words:

  “…assimilation is coming…join us now…or be swept into oblivion….”

  The whole affair made Salaam tremble in ways he couldn’t begin to describe. As a child, his father had once taken him to the banks of the Ganges River, outside Kolkata, for a Hindu cleansing ceremony. He remembered shaking like a dervish just before he‘d been dunked in the oily waters of the river.

  This is insane, Salaam told himself. We’re soldiers. We know how to fight. Like Sun Tzu said, “Know thyself and know thy enemy and you will not fear a thousand battles.”

  Gateway’s latest brief suddenly chimed through and Salaam scanned the report with a sinking feeling. Not long after the Neptune engagement, all comms with CAESAR and the Sentinel Line had been lost.

  Sun Tzu had never faced anything like this.

  CINCSPACE set his commandpad on his desk and tapped out new orders. A system-wide Level One alert was set. All Frontier Corps and other UNISPACE stations and facilities were set to ThreatCon One.

  Now all he had to do was get on vid and explain to UNSAC and the Secretary–General just why it was that the enemy hadn’t been stopped by Sentinel.

  Maybe it would have been better if his father had drowned him in the Ganges.

  Two weeks had passed since Dana Polansky had ‘lost’ her daughter Jana to those Assimilationist freaks. As she put on her makeup and primped at the bathroom mirror before heading in to the city and Solnet studios, Dana told herself she was finally coming to accept a hard reality.

  Jana was gone. She might or might not be alive, at least in any conventional understanding of the term ‘alive.’ Probably, her teenaged daughter had gone and done the very thing she had promised her mother she would: step into one of those suicide booths and let the freaks and haloheads disassemble her into atom fluff.

  It was murder. At the very least, it was assisted suicide. And no one had gone to jail because of it. You could get away with murdering millions if you called it religion and had a charismatic hunk of a spokesman like Symborg promoting it. A lie told a thousand times becomes the truth…someone had once said that. People screamed for Symborg. My God, Dana thought, as she inadvertently smeared her eye liner, people faint for Symborg. Now they die for Symborg.

  Maybe it would be better if the Old Ones came and swept all the madness away. From what her sources inside UNIFORCE had been telling her in recent days, the engagements with KB-1 in deep space hadn’t been going all that well anyway.

  Dana finished her makeup and was about to try out that little pale blue skirt with the print top she had visualized lying in bed that morning—looks good on vid, her producers had told her—when something caught her eye.

  Maybe it was the sun, casting moving shadows across the curtains of her bedroom. The windows were open in her twentieth floor pension at La Tour St. Vincent and a breeze had undoubtedly rustled the drapes. She turned and was dumbfounded to see a swirl of dust motes dancing beside the window. Was there a fire nearby? Smoke particles drifting in?

  Then, she realized this was no smoke. It wasn’t dust. It wasn’t a light mist either, even though mists occasionally curled around the wrought-iron railings of her terrace outside, making faces in and among the plants and vines.

  It was an angel forming.

  She was startled at first, though she had seen plenty of angels in her career, but when the thing began taking on a recognizable form, she felt a cold shudder and backed her way into the bathroom, thinking to slam the door shut.

  But she couldn’t. She just couldn’t. Something held her attention and then she knew what it was.

  It was Jana. She wasn’t totally sure but a growing suspicion soon erased all doubts. The image was diffuse, almost translucent, but it sure looked like Jana.

  Is this my imagination, she wondered? Is this part of the grieving process?

  “Oh my God…” she breathed. “I’m having a—“

  The angel continued to gather itself, filling out, growing more substantial. There were the blond curls, with the bangs she kept too low over her eyes…I’ve been after her for weeks to get those cut. The little mole on her cheek. Mom, it drives the boys nuts, really. The crooked smile.

  It was Jana.

  But that couldn’t be. Could it?

  The angel gazed at her with soft, doe eyes, not saying anything, but it seemed outwardly happy, composed, even satisfied.

  Words formed in Dana’s mind, and she wasn’t sure if Jana was talking or she was imagining it.

  “It’s okay, Mom…really, it’s okay.”

  “Jana, is it…don’t—“

  “Mom, I’ve got a purpose now. I’ve got things going for me now.”

  Dana reached out, to try and touch the apparition, more than ever convinced this was no dream, she was real, she was an angel but she was real. Angels existed. They were just collections of bots. Angels were everywhere.

  Then, to her dismay, the angel began to disperse. The process went in reverse, slowly at first, but with growing momentum. Translucent, like a faint mist. Then fainter still. Finally, a bare outline, like a Cheshire cat, with only Jana’s face left, and a bit of a smirk at the end.

  Then she was gone.

  Finally Dana forced herself to breathe. She checked around the bathroom, experimentally reaching out with her hands, swishing her hands through the air. She felt nothing. She saw a few dust motes but they might well be just dust motes. But maybe not.

  Just a dream, she decided. She wiped a few tears from her cheeks. She had been thinking about her daughter a lot the last few days. Maybe cleaning out her bedroom, going through all her clothes. There were outfits she could donate anyway. Maybe even that St. Michael’s Church.

  Just my imagination.

  Dana Polansky returned to her makeup, determinedly applying more and more to those stubborn crow’s feet under her eyes.

  Without saying it, she resolved in the back of her mind to find out more about this Church of Assimilation.

 

  Chapter 5

  Pueblo, Colorado (?)

  Date: Unknown

  Time: Unknown

  Johnny Winger hurtled th
rough some kind of long, curving corridor at breakneck speed, spinning spinning spinning until at last, he came to a stop, landing with a hard bump right on his rump, and rolling over with unspent momentum. When the world finally stopping cartwheeling all around him, he sucked in a breath and sat up. Looking around, he knew right away that he was in a familiar place for that was the way of the Shadow Man.

  There were tests coming. Configuration changes. Challenges to overcome. He hoped Doc III could maintain what was left of Johnny Winger through all of it.

  Now he staggered unsteadily to his feet. I know this place. He was standing by the shores of a small lake. It was Reynolds Lake, near his boyhood home in Pueblo. He remembered the setting too. It was that day in late summer when his best friend Archie Hester had dared him to swim the lake late at night, when nobody else was around. All by himself.

  Sure enough, he spied movement in the bushes above the water line. A rustling came, then a head and a short, stocky form emerged. It was Archie himself, cutoff jeans and a dirty T-shirt.

  Johnny wasn’t surprised at all.

  The trouble was he knew he couldn’t swim that well and he wanted to tell Archie to kiss off. He wanted to decline the dare. In real life, he hadn’t. He couldn’t. But this wasn’t real life. This was some kind of test manufactured by the Shadow Man. He couldn’t turn it down.

  Archie came up with that lopsided grin and ran hands through his greasy black hair. “I dare you, Johnny. Double-dog dare you. No way you can swim the lake by yourself. Double-dog and triple-dog dare you.”

  Well, you couldn’t very well turn down a triple-dog dare, could you? His name would be all over school if he did. So he accepted the dare, as he had before but even doing that, Johnny realized there were some details that were different—Archie’s hair was different and he didn’t have that real bad scrape on his elbow from falling off his bicycle like he always did. So Winger knew this couldn’t be real. It was all staged, a simulation. But still it had a purpose.

  He stripped down to his underwear and dipped a toe in the faint ripple of waves lapping the shore. Yikes! That was cold! Reynolds Lake was always cold, even in summer. Reynolds Lake gave you goosebumps.

  There was only one way to do this. Dive in. So he held his breath, took a last glance at the sneer on Archie’s face and dove in.

  It was freezing cold, so cold that diving in was like running full steam into a brick wall. Instantly, Johnny came up out of breath. The cold sucked the very life out of you. He flailed and splashed for a moment, then he saw Archie on the shore, laughing. That did it. He sucked and heaved in as much breath as he could, then turned back to the lake and began pulling, trying to get his complaining muscles in gear as fast as he could, trying to get some warmth flowing.

  He tried to think about anything but the cold. Katie Gomez’s face and her luscious chest…that was good to think about. How he would lord it all over Archie when he finally made it to the opposite shore, if he made it. That was nuts. Of course he would make it.

  If he could just get the blood flowing.

  Just like he’d learned in Scouts, long, easy strokes. Concentrate. Think of yourself as a machine. Pull and catch, pull and catch. Turn and breathe. Turn and breathe. And don’t forget to kick once in awhile, too.

  When you’re swimming across Reynolds Lake on a cool late August night in your underwear, you wind up thinking about a lot of things. Things like how much do they know? Can Doc III keep my file together? This midnight swim across Reynolds Lake was a test; in fact, the Shadow Man called it a configuration change. So what’s being changed? Me?

  Winger continued stroking. His arms and legs had warmed up a little. He somehow got into a good rhythm…he’d always been a pretty good swimmer. And he had to show that slimebag Archie that no dare was too much for Johnny Winger.

  Eventually, he found himself approaching a line of lights…the opposite shore. More cabins. Some light stands. He saw a few figures standing on the banks. The porky one was Archie.

  But who was the other?

  Finally, he scraped his knee on the lake bottom and realized he had made it. He stood up, shivering, coughing out a little water, doubled over to get some breath and waddled like a penguin up onto the muddy banks.

  Archie was there, a little cock-eyed grin splitting his face.

  “So you made it, you big twerp. Took you long enough.”

  Winger spat some lake water at him.

  The other figure turned out to be Jamison Winger.

  His Dad handed him a few towels and helped him dry off, then gave him jeans and a dry T-shirt to put on.

  “You did great, son. I’m very proud of you. You swam that lake like a champ.” He ruffled Johnny’s hair and for a few moments, Johnny basked in the affection. Then it struck him.

  None of this was real. It was all a sim. A simulation with a purpose.

  His Dad was saying something again…”I have a badge for you…a merit badge. You earned it.”

  “Yeah, you were just lucky, that’s all,” whined Archie.

  Johnny wanted to slug the fatso. How’d he get into the sim, anyway?

  Jamison Winger handed Johnny a small box. Inside, the Scouts merit badge for swimming a mile in open water lay on a black velvet fabric. Johnny took it out, beaming.

  “Your mother will sew it on your uniform tonight,” Jamison Winger promised. He squeezed Johnny’s shoulder.

  Winger looked up at his Dad. He looked real enough: the same lock of hair down over his right eye, that he was forever brushing back. The blunt nose with the nostrils that flared like wings when he was mad. The slight quiver on his right eyebrow, like it might take flight. It was Dad.

  But it wasn’t. It couldn’t be.

  “The main thing, son, is that you passed the test.”

  Jamison Winger squeezed Johnny’s shoulder once again and this time, it was like the whole world was jerked away and he was hurtling down that long curving, corridor again at breakneck speed. The trip seemed to last a lifetime but when he stopped, landing always right on his butt, he knew enough to let the dizziness fade away before trying to open his eyes and look around.

  This time, he knew where he was. He had been here before.

  It was that vast, undulating plain of waving grass and plants, like a Dakota prairie in the summer, stretching to the sky. Only the plants weren’t plants. When he got up and steadied himself, he took a few steps. Each stalk of grass poofed into a small cloud of dust, bots, Johnny knew, as he swished through them. There were gazillions of bots.

  He was on the home world of the Old Ones again, or another sim perhaps, though this one felt awfully real.

  He had been here before….

  Chapter 6

  UNIFORCE Headquarters

  The Quartier-General, Paris

  June 8, 2155

  0900 hours U.T.

  The briefing was set to be held in UNSAC’s office on the eightieth floor, in the Command Center. CINCSPACE would be there, in the person of General Mahmood Salaam. CINCQUANT too. General Lamar Quint had just hyperjetted in from an inspection tour of Singapore base and he was still jetlagged; those two hour, eleven-thousand kilometer trips across the top of the atmosphere were wearying enough without having to bow and curtsy to the brass every time someone wanted a meeting.

  The Secretary-General, Dr. Vijay Vishnapuram, had already vidlinked in from the Secretariat building in New York.

  UNSAC, Angelika Komar, made sure the doors were secured. “This briefing is to go over the latest intel on what’s happening in the outer system and what we’re going to do about it. I’ve got Q2’s summary from Farside, Gateway, Stations P and T and Sentinel, before contact was lost. Mahmood, let’s start with you. Where’s KB-1 now?”

  Salaam sucked on his big black moustache, an irritating tic that drove Komar nuts. She wanted to shave the thing off. Jeez, what are you…five years old? But sh
e kept quiet, while the Pakistani O-10 tickled some keys on his commandpad. All the displays blinked and shifted. The 3-D pedestal lit up like a miniature theatrical stage and they were soon looking at an ecliptic plot of the entire solar system, with all the planets and satellites moving in real time according their proper motions.

  “The leading edge of KB-1 is now roughly inside the orbit of Neptune, or rather where Neptune used to be. Farside can find no evidence that the planet and its satellites exist in anything like their original form. Plot puts the approximate leading edge at just over four billion kilometers from the Sun, about thirty A.U. Moving across the system in the general direction of the Sun at a speed of about ninety-thousand kilometers per hour.”

  “What about Sentinel?” asked Quint.

  Salaam had a rueful frown on his face. “We lost all comms with Sentinel and its controller CAESAR at approximately 1200 hours on 10 April. All defense pods were fully discharged—we got that much from CAESAR—so we know Sentinel engaged the swarm. But there seems to have been no effect on the size, speed, or bearing of the formation. KB-1 continues on its original heading as we speak.”

  “And consuming everything in its path,” muttered Komar.

  Salaam went on to lay out the current status and results of other countermeasures and defensive efforts to block, engage or divert the swarm. All such efforts had failed. All counter-swarms and ships sent to engage KB-1 had been destroyed or somehow absorbed into the greater swarm that had come to be called Kuiper Belt One. That included the Korolev and the Tycho. Over two hundred crewmen lost.

  The S-G, Dr. Vishnapuram, interrupted from New York. “By the stars, it seems that Vishnu is angry with us. Is there nothing we can do?”

  “Research has some ideas, yes,” Salaam offered. “Most of them are crackpot ideas but we’re not discouraging anything at this point. At the current rate of advance, unless some means of stopping KB-1 can be devised, Farside is estimating the leading edge of the thing will be on our doorsteps in about two hundred plus days, give or take.”