Charioteer made her descent and touched down on the icy ski-way outside McMurdo City less than an hour later. Snow-covered mountains ringed the complex. Beyond the edge of Ross Island, the ice-choked McMurdo Sound was thick with calving ice cliffs and bergs. Decades of global warming had shrunk the summertime icepack to frozen patches of floating ice amid the deep blue of the Sound. Charioteer taxied to a waiting assembly of trucks and tractors, all of them bearing the blue shield of UNIFORCE.
Quite a welcoming party, Winger thought, as he counted up the assembled troops. According to Major Kraft, Security Corps had deployed a full company to the Antarctic to battle Amazon Vector. UNIFORCE troops wore white with blue piping, while scattered among the crowd were others, clad in varying shades of green and red. BioShield, Winger realized. They had engineers and technicians on hand as well, trying to contain the expanding enemy swarms.
Back in the cargo bay, Winger gave orders for Alpha Detachment to dismount and assemble in formation just off the hyperjet ramp.
“Full suits, Captain?” asked Gibbs.
“The works…but keep your helmets off,” Winger decided. “Inner caps only…it’s summer after all. The temperature’s a balmy 30 degrees out there.”
“Like a walk on the beach,” muttered Deeno, as she clanked toward the rampway.
Once outside, Johnny Winger introduced himself to the local UNIFORCE commander. He was a doughty Russian named Suvorov, heavy jowls and thick eyebrows and all. Suvorov saluted smartly.
“Welcome to the bottom of the world, Captain. I’ve got trucks and lifters for all your gear. May I inspect your Detachment?”
“Of course,” Winger stood aside. It was a formality, he knew, since Quantum Corps was part of UNIFORCE as well, but it made for good relations with the locals. He could tell that Suvorov was a gruff, by-the-book commander. He strode down the hypersuited ranks of Quantum Corps troopers like a squat little field marshal, scrutinizing every face. Twice, he paused to take a closer look at some piece of the powered exo-skeleton suits, fiddling critically with Sergeant M’Bela’s wristpad.
“Most impressive,” Suvorov growled. A wind devil kicked up, blowing loose powdery snow about the formation, but Suvorov didn’t flinch. “My men will help your Detachment with their gear.”
Johnny Winger agreed, and in less than ten minutes, a convoy of trucks and airlifts was moving down the connector road toward the complex of huts and hangars and buildings that made up McMurdo City.
Mac Town had been around for nearly a hundred and thirty years and over that time period, had grown from a research base to a full-service city for ten thousand iceheads that called the edge of the Ross Ice Shelf home. The newest part of the compound had been domed over, giving the place an alien, otherwordly ambience. Beneath the dome, parks and bike paths and occasional springs and fountains, along with two and three-story buildings, cabins, and other structures made the place almost like a normal town—it had a vaguely Scandinavian look—with its contemporary furnishings and monuments to early polar explorers like Shackleton and Scott and Amundsen.
Outside the dome, which had been completed in 2059, the older buildings of Mac Town were cruder and sometimes abandoned to the elements. Rows of silvery Quonset huts blackened over the decades ringed the site of the original settlements. Beyond the perimeter, on a slight rise in the ice shelf, lay Discovery Hut, where Amundsen himself had first set up camp early in the twentieth century…1902, Johnny Winger somehow dredged up from memory.
The convoy snaked through the suburbs of the abandoned cabins toward a port in the side of the dome. Once inside, Suvorov ordered the convoy stopped outside a gray slab-sided building fronting the circular road that circumscribed the dome…the Ring Road, a nearby sign indicated. Just above the snow piles banked up around the edge of the dome outside, the dim black cone of Mount Erebus was faintly visible in the distance, its summit encircled with mist and a shimmering ice haze. For the first time, Winger noticed unusual cloud formations around the peak of the mountain…then he saw a flickering seam of light across the clouds and understood.
Swarm activity, he realized. He swallowed hard. The atmosphere was convulsing outward, boiling like a pot of water on a stove.
“Operations,” the Russian announced. The Detachment went inside and powered down their hypersuits, falling out into a large open bullpen similar to the Ready Room at Table Top Mountain. Ordered to stand at ease, the Quantum Corps troopers and the rest of the UNIFORCE contingent mingled uneasily. Meanwhile, Winger and his CC2, Master Sergeant Al Glance, followed Suvorov to a nearby circular room ringed with displays and consoles.
It was the UNIFORCE Ops command post. Technicians and engineers bustled around the facility, tracking the movements and damage done by the Amazon Vector swarms. Ground, aerial and satellite imagery danced across the rings of screens, each tiled with rows of data.
Suvorov introduced Winger and Glance to a thin, harried man in a dark green uniform. A golden sunburst crest identified him as a BioShield tech.
“Leonard Stiles…” the Russian announced. “…in charge of the BioShield group here—“
Stiles nodded curtly. “Sorry to be so abrupt, Captain…” he swept his hand toward the banks of screens, “but we have a bit of a crisis here—“
Winger’s eyes narrowed. “What’s going on?”
Stiles shrugged, and motioned Winger to follow. He went to a console up front, overlooking a three-D virtual diorama of the entire Antarctic continent and surrounding seas. Lights popped and flashed inside the display like lightning bolts. But this was no summer thunderstorm.
“Swarms are pushing outward again…it seems to come in cycles. About once a day, roughly every twenty five hours on average, both sources begin replicating and expanding again. As you can see—“ Stiles had a pointer to put a dot of light on the subject—“ we’ve got sources at Mount Erebus, here—and at Lake Vostok on the East Antarctic Sheet, here—“
“Two separate swarms?” Winger asked.
“That’s correct. We’re engaging them in both places—probably you saw some of that when you came in—Erebus is practically invisible from the density of the swarm there—and we’re trying to keep them contained, keep them from linking up.”
“Already,” Suvorov explained, “the swarms are affecting the weather and conditions on the continent and the surrounding seas. You noticed the winds outside when you landed?”
Winger had felt the wind rocking his hypersuit, its gyros struggling to keep him upright in the gale. “It was a bit breezy when we left the hyperjet.”
Stiles smiled grimly. “The swarms have been replicating and moving so aggressively, especially around the Lake Vostok, that they’ve generated vortices in the atmosphere. That plus chemical changes in the atmosphere have started up high winds all across the ice cap, winds that are feeding into the south circum-polar jet stream now. The winds are affecting general atmospheric circulation everywhere below sixty five degrees south latitude.”
Suvorov confirmed what Stiles was saying. “Da, we’ve seen wind damage in Melbourne, Christchurch, New Zealand and parts of the Argentine pampas, even on isolated islands in the south Pacific. Sustained winds over a hundred miles an hour in places. It’s a disaster.”
Stiles went on. “Plus, swarm activity had generated significant quantities of local heat, accelerating melting at strategic points in the ice cap. You saw the bergs off McMurdo Sound?”
“Coming in, I saw them…yes,” Winger admitted. He watched one screen, an aerial display of the roiling clouds surrounding Mount Erebus.
The BioShield chief shook his head. “Ice cap melting is reaching critical levels. At the rate the swarms are generating heat, we’ll see melting fast enough to raise sea levels a meter a week…and so far, we haven’t even been able to slow it down. Every coastal city on Earth is at risk…hundreds of millions of people.
“And then there are the atmosphere changes th
emselves…spiking carbon dioxide—that doesn’t help ice cap melting either, spikes in hydrogen and nitrogen, oxygen levels dropping…it’s almost like evolution in reverse…like the Earth is relapsing to some primitive state, the way things were before life got started.”
Johnny Winger watched the virtual diorama of Antarctica. Flashes and pops of light went off like light bulbs. Frontal boundaries of swarms engaging, he knew. Real time data fed the diorama, causing it to shift and refresh every few seconds, a living, breathing simulacrum of a continent in agony. The entire display throbbed and writhed like a thing alive.
“What’s BioShield done so far?” he asked.
Stiles shrugged. “We’ve tried everything. Our swarms are ANAD clones…I’m sure you know that. We’ve engaged multiple times but we’re overrun each time. It’s numbers, Captain. The buggers can replicate faster than us, grapple from further away, and they’ve got stuff I’ve never seen…weird bond disrupters, for instance.”
“Don’t forget the propulsors,” Suvorov mentioned. “Each mech is covered over its entire surface with propulsors I’ve never seen before. The bastards can run circles around our mechs.”
Winger’s eyes met Al Glance’s. “We’ve got to work on tactics, gentlemen. I’ve just spent the last few days working with Autonomous Systems Lab, tweaking ANAD. We’ve simmed against known Amazon Vector capabilities but that’s a long way from engaging in combat. How about UNIFORCE, Colonel Suvorov? What’s worked and what hasn’t?”
The Russian used the diorama to illustrate. “Our best results have been here at Mount Erebus. Yesterday, we engaged that swarm from a different bearing, from out of the Ross Sea at a very low angle. Mag cannon on lifters, coilgun bots, everything we had. BioShield engaged with mechs from the opposite bearing as a diversion.” The Russian shook his head slowly.
“What happened?”
Stiles answered. “Amazon blunted BioShield’s mechs with no problem. It was like running into a wall. The swarms engaged and then we were swallowed whole, like we had no defenses at all. And we were the diversion—“
“The buggers can be shattered by mag impulses, just like any swarm,” Suvorov went on. “Slam them with a few pulses and they lose their formation, cohesion…the swarm seems to fall apart.”
“But they recover so damn fast it’s unbelievable,” Stiles added. “One minute, the swarm seems shattered and half an hour later, it’s back up to strength and pushing outward again. There doesn’t seem to be anything we can do.”
“Current status?”
Suvorov indicated the diorama. “We engage around the clock…both swarms. BioShield replicates as fast as they can and engages…just trying to keep some pressure on them and interfere with them. We pulse them with sonic and magnetic weapons day and night…” the Russian shrugged in frustration, “it barely slows them down.”
Al Glance asked, “You said you had better results with this swarm…the one at Mount Erebus. What’s different about the other one?”
Stiles gave that some thought. “The Vostok swarm has different characteristics. It’s bigger, for one…the thing averages over twenty square miles in extent at times. We’ve captured and analyzed pieces of some of the mechs…they’re configured differently, different effectors, somehow optimized for grabbing and altering oxygen molecules. This swarm has created a region near the South Pole that’s like conditions on Mars or Venus. It was centered at the South geomagnetic pole initially, but now it seems to be moving this way.”
“We think the swarms are trying to link up…form a superswarm over the continent. The same behavior has been seen in other targeted areas…the Congo River basin, for example. Multiple swarms forming, then coalescing into larger swarms.”
“And everywhere they operate,” Suvorov said, “the same effects: hurricane winds, atmospheric alterations, extremes of temperature. Whoever’s programmed them must have a death wish…for all of us.”
“It’s like they’re trying to alter the whole planet,” Glance said.
“Maybe they are,” Winger said. He remembered the imagery ANAD had detected inside the demonio’s brain at Via Verde…a world of nanobotic devices, a planet of mechs. “Quantum Corp intelligence is convinced that Red Hammer is behind this operation. But they also feel the cartel’s getting help.”
“Help? From where? From who?”
“Unknown at this time.” Winger turned to Glance. “Sergeant, we’d best get the Detachment deployed. I’d like to go after the Lake Vostok swarm first. You haven’t had as much success there.”
Suvorov concurred. “I’ll arrange a tactical briefing for 1600 hours. Just tell us what you want us to do to support.”
“I will,” Winger said, as he headed out of the Ops center, “as soon as I figure it out myself.”
Alpha Detachment loaded all its gear on airskids and lifters, for the short hop east toward Lake Vostok. Suvorov dedicated a four-ship unit of lifters for air support and top cover, to keep anybody else from interfering while Quantum Corps engaged the Amazon swarm.
Winger huddled with the Detachment in the cavernous Ready Room.
“All the gear ready?”
A chorus of nods and affirmatives circled the group.
“Hey, Captain,” Sheila Reaves called out. She was buttoning up the HERF gun enclosure, turning the skid over to a packbot to load aboard. “UNIFORCE has big guns like these too, don’t they?”
“Different freqs, different caliber…but basically the same, yes. Mag impulse stuff for short range.”
Reaves smirked. “Me and Taj here—“ she indicated Chandra Singh, the other DPS tech, “we been thinking. Kind of tinkering with the HERF. What if we messed around with the fluxtrons and sort of souped up the impulse carrier? Taj has figured out a way to put more power into the pulse, cover more frequencies. It might be more effective.”
Winger was crawling back into his hypersuit. It was like climbing into a small vehicle. Inside, he popped his head above the neck ring. “That true, Taj? You can put more punch into the primary?”
Singh’s white turban seemed incongruous bobbing above the shoulders of a hypersuit, but he nodded. “Yes, Captain. We tried it out on the test range at Table Top. It worked pretty well.”
“Pretty well,” snorted Reaves. “Skipper, after Taj modified our HERF, we fired a few pulses and damned near fried the top off Buffalo Ridge. Started a rockslide, we did.”
Winger liked the idea. “We’re going to need every advantage we can get. Battalion engineering sign off on this little mod of yours?”
Taj looked sheepish. “No, sir…not exactly. We didn’t really tell anybody what we had done.”
Winger nodded. “I figured as much. But it works?”
“Oh, yes, sir…it works…works real well.”
“There are some, er… control issues, Captain,” Reaves admitted.
“Really. Well, put the module in and make it work,” Winger ordered. “We’ll try it out at Vostok. Just be sure we don’t lose the HERF altogether. I got a feeling we’re going to need the whole arsenal against these buggers.”
Winger finished suiting up. Outside the Ops building, the lifters were waiting. He locked his helmet in place, fired up suit boost and got a ping in the back of his head from ANAD.
He clicked open the coupler circuit. “What’s up, ANAD?”
***Skipper…I’m pulsing that you’re pretty worried about this one***
Winger let his suit take him out of the Ready Room and aboard the nearest lifter, hovering off the dock at one end of the Ops center. He climbed aboard, stood aside while the rest of Alpha Detachment ingressed and quickly checked off their equipment…everything tied down, powered down and safed.
“Yeah, ANAD, I guess you could say that. Amazon’s nasty—hell, you know about that. I’m not sure what’s going to happen.”
***You know I have the latest upgrades and mods from Doctor Frost. What could go wrong??
?the enemy’s just a herd of mechs, same as me…it’s just a matter of executing the mission***
If only that were true. “ANAD, I know perfectly well what Doc Frost did to you. I also know you’re a re-gen…you’re not the same master assembler I had before Via Verde. You’re supposed to have the same programs and configs but still—“ He didn’t want to voice the real concern: that somehow, the relationship he’d developed with the last master had been lost in regenerating.
But ANAD seemed able to read his mind anyway.
The convoy of lifters left McMurdo City for Vostok Station, or what was left of it, a half-hour trip. The plan was to fly in low, from the south, crossing the vast Wilkes basin and the East Antarctic ice cap, a sea of ice frozen in white that stretched for nearly a thousand kilometers. Forward elements of UNIFORCE and BioShield were still in contact with the swarm at Vostok, latitude 78 degrees south, and had been for several weeks now. But theirs was a hopeless task, it seemed.
Suvorov had explained it: “The best we’ve been able to do is slow it down. The zone of disturbance grows by several square miles every day. We’ve been able to keep the two swarms from linking up, so far. But it’s only a matter of time.”
The formation of lifters took off and turned southeast, crossing the perimeter of the Ross Ice Shelf and paralleling the Transantarctic Range for half an hour, before turning back east toward the desolate polar cap.
Johnny Winger watched the terrain slide by a few thousand feet below them. Even from such a low altitude, it was apparent that the Transantarctic range was merely a vast rocky dike, holding back the ceaseless flow of the ice cap toward the sea. With the swarm so active, temperatures and winds had risen and the glacial tongues that had carved the valleys over millennia had sped up.
It was a Dutchman’s nightmare: against the south side of the range, pressed a sea of white ice, submerging the range nearly to its full height. Directly on the other side lay the Ross Sea itself, ten thousand feet lower and at every dip in the range, the ice was pouring down to the sea, ripping away rock like water tearing open breaks in a levee, until some of the gaps in the range were huge floods of ice, rivers ten and twenty and thirty miles wide.