Chapter 3
“Symbiosis”
UNQC Western Command
Table Top Mountain, Idaho, USA
January 28, 2049
0610 hours
Johnny Winger was still weak from his ordeal and was ordered to bed for several days of recovery and rehab. After about three days though, he was growing antsy and fidgety and occasionally sneaked out of the Officers’ Quarters for little side trips to the O Club or the Mission Prep bunker.
On one unauthorized trip, he ran into Oscar M’Bela and Mighty Mite Barnes in Mission Prep. Barnes had stripped a HERF carbine and was cleaning its parts, laid out on an oilcloth on a table. M’Bela was doing some kind of programming with the platoon’s Superfly entomopter.
Barnes gave Winger a cock-eyed grin. “Lieutenant…something tells me you’re not supposed to be here…how are you feeling these days?”
Winger gave them both a sheepish grin. “I’m restricted to quarters until the medics clear me. Deeno too. But nobody ever laid down a bioweb. Since you asked, I’m feeling better, like I just finished swimming the Atlantic.”
Barnes clucked. “That was some swarm attack you went through. I don’t ever remember going through anything like that in nog school…fighting off bots inside your own head.”
“I guess I was lucky. I was able to pilot ANAD directly, contain the bugs and hopefully grab the master. In fact, somehow, some way, I want to get into Containment and see just what ANAD grabbed.”
M’Bela finished programming Superfly. He pressed a button and instantly, the ‘mopter spun up and lifted away from the table. It cruised about the ready room for a minute, dipping and bobbing, before the CQE brought it back to a pinpoint landing. His smile showed his satisfaction.
“I don’t know about this Symbiosis Project,” M’Bela said. He expertly folded Superfly back into its tiny container and snapped it shut. “Seems to me there are too many risks and unknowns to make an embedded ANAD tactically useful. Can a trooper ever really have complete control over his ANAD unit? Can he trust it? If he can’t trust ANAD, no trooper’s ever going to launch in a dicey situation. If we have to go through what you did, I say you can have it.”
“Amen to that,” Barnes said.
Winger shrugged. “True enough. ANAD and me did have some issues in the beginning. There’s a definite learning curve. But look what you gain: the ability to counterswarm quickly. The ability to fab useful kit in the field, and not have to carry so much gear. Now, if you need a shovel to dig a trench, send the config and voila, you’ve got a shovel. Or even better, launch ANAD and let him do the digging. And we’ve got configs for everything but actual organic matter.”
“Yeah,” said Barnes, “and for that, we’ve got angels and swarm people coming out of our ears. Say, Lieutenant, do you really think that bot in your head was something left over from Engebbe? You don’t actually believe that was Lieutenant Tallant, do you?”
Winger had asked himself the same question a million times since he and ANAD had finally overcome the swarm and grabbed what he still hoped was the master bot.
“Mite, I don’t know. I really don’t and I’ve wondered the same thing.” He related to both of them what happened at the Custer Inn. “I haven’t told anyone else this, so keep it close.”
Barnes whistled. “An angel at the Cus? And it looked like Lieutenant Tallant? Skipper, don’t you think Doc Frost should know about this?”
Winger agreed. “Probably. I’m pretty sure that angel left a few bots on me when I left. That’s what got into Deeno…and me too. It corrupted ANAD during Doc Frost’s embed procedure. It may have corrupted all the ANADs. That’s what I plan to find out.”
“So what are you going to do?”
“Get myself over to Containment and do a little snooping. I will tell Doc eventually but I want to do a little personal recon before that.”
M’Bela seemed skeptical. “Is that a good idea, Skipper? I mean, sir, you’re the C/O but those bots in your head weren’t garden-variety ANADs either. We really don’t know what we’ve got in there. I hope you know what you’re doing, sir.”
“I don’t but that never stopped me before. Look, both of you keep this to yourself. Ironpants Kraft gets wind of this and he’ll eat me alive. And then he’ll have you two for dessert. I’m not sure what’s over there in Containment. It may be what’s left of Dana, hard as that is to believe. Or it may be something else, masquerading as Dana Tallant. Red Hammer’s still got a lot of tricks they can spring on us. I’ve encountered this—thing—before at Custer Inn. And for some reason, it seems to have a keen interest in me. Maybe I can get some intel on it that we can’t get any other way.”
Barnes took a deep breath. “Just be careful in there, Skipper. “
Winger was already on his way out of the ready room. “You can count on it. Small is all!”
Sergeant Gavin was on duty at Containment Bay 1 when Winger showed up the next morning, early. Gavin was running a routine series of scans on the bot now securely held in a small containment pod inside the larger chamber. He made doubly sure the beam injectors were primed and ready with each scan series.
“Just a precaution, sir,” he told Winger, when he spied the Lieutenant cycling through the lockout hatch. “Orders from Dr. Frost and Major Kraft. No scans or any inputs to that pod without having all defenses set to fire.”
“Where’s ANAD now?” Winger asked.
Gavin checked on of his displays. “Containment Bay 2, Cell A. We got it extracted from here last night—that was damned ticklish—and slammed him into Bay 2. Doc Frost started a re-gen program right away…it just initialized an hour ago.”
Winger studied the imager display on Gavin’s console. The Engebbe bot—the Dana Tallant bot, he told himself—was secured to a small scaffolding inside the cell. It seemed inert, but there was a definite pulsing motion, almost a quiver, to its outer casing, as if the thing were beating to some inner rhythm.
Is this really Dana Tallant, he wondered. Or what’s left of her?
An insane idea came to him at that moment. It was against all regulations. Against every operating protocol. Even against common sense.
“I want to go inside, Sergeant.”
Gavin looked up, his eyes blinking incomprehension. “I’m sorry, sir, I thought you said you wanted to go inside the chamber.”
Winger didn’t make eye contact with the tech. “I did say that, Sergeant. Cycle open the door. I want to go inside.”
Now Gavin’s face screwed up into a mask of pain, as if he were about to lose his breakfast. “Uh, sir, you know the rules. I can’t open that door without authorization from Dr. Frost or Major Kraft. It’s Level One in there. The injectors are primed. I’d have to take them offline to allow a human being inside and that’s a serious violation, sir.” His eyes said please don’t ask me this again, please, please….
“Sergeant, trust me…I know exactly what I’m asking. I just want to do a little close-up recon, that’s all. I brought my own scanpod—“ he held out the device so Gavin could see. “The bot’s still in the cell…I’m not asking you to breach that. I just want to go inside the main chamber.”
Gavin took an exceptionally long and deep breath. His face turned a scarlet color. Winger was afraid the poor sap would hyperventilate and pass out. “You’ll sign the logs…sign all the authorizations, sir?”
“Give them to me now and I’ll sign anything. Gavin, I’ll sign your freakin’birth certificate, if you want. I do know what I’m doing.”
Gavin had to concede the point. It was against all regs, he told himself, but this was Lieutenant John Winger. This was the top code and stick man in the whole Corps. The very first atomgrabber.
If you couldn’t trust Lieutenant John Winger, who could you trust?
Sergeant Wesley Gavin was a trooper who always followed the rules, all of them, to the letter. That’s how you kept your
nose clean and your ass out of trouble at Table Top. He handed a small tablet to Winger.
“Just initial the flashing areas, sir. I’ll get started.” His fingers flew over his keyboard, bypassing some systems, disabling others, safing the injectors. The process of readying Containment Bay 1 for a human visitor took about five minutes. When all the lights on his board lit up green, Gavin nodded to Winger.
“Okay, sir, the outer hatch is unsealed. You can go in.”
Winger didn’t look at him. He knew just how dangerous this could be. The bot inside was the same bastard that had played a rugby match inside his own head a few days ago. It might even be the same angel that had sat across from him in a smoky booth at the Custer Inn.
He swung the heavy hatch wide and went inside. It shut and sealed behind him. The thing was still contained in a small pod on a pedestal in the center of the bay, draped with thick ganglia of tubes and wires, as other systems managed the pod’s interior environment and kept constant watch on the bot, measuring every micro-twitch, every emission, every infinitesimal tremor.
For a few moments, Johnny Winger studied the pod and the imager screen above it, showing the bot pinned to its scaffolding inside.
He had to know. He had to be sure. He didn’t have an embedded ANAD in his shoulder capsule at the moment. ANAD was in Bay 2, Cell A, being re-generated even as he stood there. But he did have a coupler inside his skull, the link he used to talk with ANAD over secure quantum-encrypted channels.
Maybe it would work.
He flicked his head just so, the way Mary Duncan had taught him, to open the coupler link.
“Anybody there? Dana, can you hear me…are you receiving?”
For a moment, he got only static and buzz on the link. But some kind of connection was being made. He heard, or maybe he felt, chirps and pops and whistles. Then….
***Johnny Winger…Wings…I do hear you? This link is very crude…I’ll try to clean it up***
“Dana, is that you? Lieutenant Dana Tallant, report at once!”