 
## Johnny Winger and the Great Rift Zone

### Published by Philip Bosshardt at Smashwords

### Copyright 2014 Philip Bosshardt

### Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
"We are given to the cult of personality; when things go badly we look to some messiah to save us. If by chance we think we have found one, it will not be long before we destroy him."

Constantine Karamanlis
PROLOGUE

SpaceGuard Center, Farside Observatory,

Korolev Crater, The Moon

May 2, 2110 (UT)

Nightfall at Korolev Crater came abruptly, _too abruptly_ , thought Percy Marks. He stared out the porthole of the SpaceGuard Center and watched the shadows drop like a black curtain across the face of the crater wall. Korolev was a massive place, fully four hundred kilometers in diameter, with stairstep rim walls and a small chain of mountains inside. Like a bull's eye on a target, the crater lay dead center in the rugged highlands of Farside, forever banished from the sight of Earth.

Percy Marks watched the black creep down the crater walls and ooze across the crater floor like a spreading stain. Somehow, it seemed depressing...another two weeks of night with only the stars for company. _Cosmic grandeur, my ass_ , he muttered to himself. _Give me a beach in the South Pacific and some native girls and I'll tell you a thing or two about cosmic grandeur_.

Marks was pulling late shift today...tonight...whatever the hell it was. Tending the radars and telescopes of Farside Array, scanning sector after sector of the heavens for any little burp or fart worthy of an astronomer's interest. The High Freq array had just gone through a major tune-up last week and it was Marks' job to give her a complete shakedown for the next few days.

At the moment, she was boresighted to some distant gamma-ray sources somewhere in Pegasus...where exactly he'd forgotten.

Marks took one last look out the nearest porthole and begrudged the final wisps of daylight before Farside was fully enveloped in the nightfall. At that same moment, he heard a beeping from his console and turned his attention back to the array controls.

What the hell...

Percy Marks looked over his boards, controlling the positioning of the great radars out on the crater floor and the optical and radio telescopes that accompanied them. He quickly pinpointed the source of the beeping...Nodes 20 through 24...the south lateral array...was picking up some anomaly.

He massaged the controls and tried to focus the array better, get better resolution on the target. SpaceGuard didn't beep without reason.

A quick perusal made the hairs on the back of Percy Marks' neck stand up. The system displayed a list of likely targets, based on radar imaging and known ephemerides. He scanned the list, mumbling the details to himself.

" Hmmm....right ascension 22 degrees, 57 minutes, 28 seconds. Declination 20 degrees, 46 minutes, 8 seconds---" Just as he was about to consult the catalog, SpaceGuard threw up a star map.

It was 51 Pegasi, in Pegasus. Over fifty light years away. A point source of energy had just spiked. Probably a gamma ray burster....

Marks studied the details. "This one's a doozy--" his fingers played over the keyboard, bringing all of Farside's instruments to bear on the new source. The energy spike was showing up in all bands now: X-ray, gamma ray, infrared, even optical.

He stared for a moment at the brief flare that erupted on the screen in front of him. _Must be one hell of a source._

Before he could decide what to do next, Marks was interrupted by the sound of a door opening...it was Max Lane, the shift supervisor.

"I heard SpaceGuard got something--" Lane was short, big moustache, squat legs of a former weightlifter, now going soft in the Moon's sixth-g.

Marks showed him the readings. "I've got it designated _Delta P_. Big sucker, too. Blasting out on all bands. See for yourself."

Lane examined all Farside's instruments. Whatever it was, _Delta P_ was a big gamma producer. He twiddled with his moustache for a moment. "Maybe we got us a micro black hole. You know, Westerlund had that theory--black holes evaporating, Hawking radiation, and all that-stuff"

Marks nodded. "I'll pull up the spectra, see what kind of match we get." The astronomer massaged the keyboard, calling up spectrographic profiles of presumed black hole radiation sources.

"Anything in this sector before?"

" _Nada_ ," Marks told him. "51 Pegasi's been dead as a doorstop for years. How many planets is it supposed to have now?"

"Last I heard, at least two or three Jupiter-sized places. Check Planet-Finder...maybe we ought to run a radial velocity scan...see if anything's happened in the neighborhood."

They put SpaceGuard to work and the results came back in less than an hour. Marks superimposed the current velocity scan over the last one Planet-Finder had made a decade before.

Lane shook his head. "I don't get it. Something's missing--" He fingered the absorption lines on the screen. "Should be a tick right there...that was supposed to be where 51 Pegasi B...,what was it called?..."

"Bellerophon, I think--"

"Yeah, that's it. Wasn't it here?"

Marks swallowed. "Maybe the whole shebang got swallowed. Maybe a micro black hole ate it."

Lane stood up and went over to a porthole, which gave onto a constricted view of the nearest arrays of the Submillimeter Interferometer, and a shadowy backdrop of Korolev crater's steep craggy walls beyond. A triangle of blazing sunlight still illuminated the upper rim, last gasp of the lunar day.

"Maybe--"Lane shook his head, turned back to the consoles. "But 51 Pegasi's been quiet for years...SpaceGuard's not showing anything. Now, all of a sudden, BLAM! Energy spikes in all over the place. We should have seen something before...rising X-ray, rising gamma levels, _something_. Black holes don't just appear out of nowhere."

Marks shrugged, staring at the velocity scans superimposed on each other. "If it's not a micro, then what is it? What eats a whole planet?"

The two astronomers both had the same thought at the same time.

"Remember that report from UNISPACE a year ago?" Marks asked. "The one that speculated what effects we'd see if a massive nanobotic swarm starting plowing through dust and gas fields...and planets. What the absorption spectra might look like."

Lane nodded. "It was science fiction...just pure speculation, that's all. I didn't buy it then and I'm not buying it now. Go ahead, Marks, call it up. You'll see. Run the spectra from UNISPACE against what we've got here. I'm betting _Delta P'_ s nothing more than a garden-variety micro black hole."

Marks hunted in the database for the report and displayed the spectra against SpaceGuard's results. Not a perfect match, but both men could see there were similarities.

Lane shrugged. "Doesn't mean a thing, Marks. It's statistically insignificant. Run Statcheck...you'll see what I mean."

Marks hesitated before running the statistical routine. "You really want to do this, Max? What if Statcheck shows significance? How do we explain that?"

Lane ran a hand through his thinning hair. "We'll make the numbers work out. This UNISPACE report is bunk...you know it and I know it. What do you want me to do: put out an alert: 'Hey, guys, the Old Ones have arrived at 51 Pegasi and the Mother Swarm's eating up all the planets.' I don't think so. I value my career too much. No, let's get all the data we can and set up a vidcon. There's some kind of weird anomaly going on out there, one with a perfectly reasonable explanation. We just have to find it. "

Percy Marks started saving all of SpaceGuard's data to a file called _51 Pegasi Anomaly_.

It was just before dawn, right after the first call to prayer, that the initial tremors hit the city of Tabriz. The first tremor, a rupture along a twenty-mile strike-slip fault near the boundary of the Eurasian and Arabian tectonic plates, radiated out from the epicenter at six kilometers per second, engulfing all of northern Iran, Iraq and the southern Caucasus in seconds. Tabriz felt the first of the P-wave pressure shocks moments later, at an energy level initially estimated to exceed magnitude 8.

In less than two minutes, much of the city was a pile of smoldering rubble. Jason Ernst, one of two Solnet reporters aboard Liftbird One, saw the alert coming in from UNIFORCE stations across the Middle East. _Jesus H. Christ, this is a big one_. He got on the voicelink, consulted with his editors in London, and inside of a minute, the lifter was winging its way northeast from its racetrack monitoring orbit near Cairo. The bird was in Iranian airspace in half an hour and before they could even descend to proper altitude, he'd already toggled two dronecams to launch, punching out of their capsules into turbulent, dust-laden air toward the ruins of the city.

What he saw on the vidlink chilled him to the bone.

The first dronecam, nicknamed _Pigeon_ by the Liftbird crew, barreled in on the Pasdaran Expressway angling along the northern flanks of the city. It dived below the cables of the Eynali chairlifts and skirted the foothills of Yousef Mountain, before turning southwest into the heart of the city. Ernst consulted a map of the area and joysticked the dronecam to a course along Mardan Street, heading right for the Grand Bazaar and the Blue Mosque. Everywhere the dronecam turned, the scene was the same: piles of rubble, fires burning out of control, soot, ash and dust thick and billowing from collapsed buildings. And the people, thousands of people milling in the streets, running, stumbling. And then he saw the bodies, already being stacked like firewood outside.

"Jeez, great vid!" he exclaimed to his colleague, Anna Kolchinova, who manned the other dronecam at her own console. "Edit can add sound effects and graphics later...just get the raw feed now--"

"I'm heading down this street--" she squinted at the nav header on the screen, "--says it's Khayyam Street. Look at those buildings--" The vidlink from the dronecam autofocused on two ten-story apartment buildings, leaning like drunken sailors against each other...their foundations nearly destroyed. "Hope there aren't too many casualties from that--"

The dronecams circled central Tabriz like vultures, zooming in on dramatic scenes of rescue and fierce gas-fueled fires raging out of control.

It was the Blue Mosque, hard off Khaqani Park near the Grand Bazaar, that drew a faint gasp from both of them. Now obscured in dust, the dome had fallen in, like a cracked eggshell and scores of people milled aimlessly like ants inside. Toppled statues and overturned lorries littered the streets around the park, thick with rubble, water spray from burst water mains, scores of fires and smothering the whole area in thick, turbid, choking dust.

"Better not go any lower..." Ernst decided. Power lines and cables drooped low and he didn't want the dronecam to become snagged. He commanded _Pigeon_ to gain altitude and was about to head further south toward the ruins of Takhti Stadium when Anna waved to get his attention.

"Jason... _look_ ...look at that building over there--" she pointed to her vidfeed, The second dronecam had been nicknamed _Sparrow_ by the Liftbird crew and Anna had piloted the bird

along Farabi Street, heading in the general direction of Tabriz University and its once-ornate mosque. Along the street, where the road crested a hill, an office building had imploded into a dusty mound of brick and rubble, hovering over a narrow chasm that had opened up on the far side of the hill. The remaining shell of the building leaned toward the chasm and seemed in danger of falling right into the newly formed gorge. Worse, dozens of people were caught clinging to the skeleton of the building frame, stuck like flies in a spiderweb of girders, and rebar. It seemed at any moment, the remaining frame would topple over and spill all its survivors right into the chasm.

Ernst got up and came over to Anna's station to watch. "Christ, they're trapped...and is that fire inside the dust cloud--?"

A flickering fog had formed around the mouth of the fissure. Streaked with pops and flashes of light, the fog did not cover any fires. Nothing burned among the rubble piles on the ground.

"Maybe some kind of lightning?" Anna suggested. "Let's get closer." She steered _Sparrow_ lower and zoomed in on the glowing fog, now billowing out of the ground fissure in great sheets. The fog spread and flowed over the hill, over the rubble, enveloping everything. Survivors had been working with ladders and pieces of furniture, trying to fashion a way to reach their trapped comrades. But when the fog approached, the survivors broke and ran, fleeing the ruins of the building in terror.

"What the hell?"

That was when Jason Ernst knew what the fog was. A cold chill ran down his spine again. He'd seen that kind of fog before. "Anna, get the dronecam out of--"

But it was too late. _Sparrow_ had dived to less than fifty feet and was in autohover, building its database with establishing shots before turning to focus on specific images, as it had been programmed to do. The fog had swollen to blanket the entire hill and most of the rubble pile that had once been an office building. _Sparrow_ swept through the upper tendrils of the fog and the imager view careened out of control.

"It's a botswarm! Get out of there--"

Anna tried to regain control but the tiny ornithopter had already been set upon by the outer fringes of the swarm. _Sparrow_ shed rotors and wings and cartwheeled toward the ground, plowing into a mob of fleeing survivors.

Jason Ernst had already returned to his own control station. He still had command of _Pigeon_ , so he commanded the dronecam to wheel about and head for _Sparrow's_ last coordinates. The trip took less than twenty seconds.

_Pigeon_ arrived and went into autohover at a thousand feet altitude, just in time to see the skeletal remains of the building buckle in the midst of the billowing fog. It swayed for a few seconds, then toppled over and slid side-first into the fissure, shedding trapped survivors like a horse shaking off flies.

And the fog, the swarm of bots, continued flowing up and out of the fissure, even as the girders and beams were still settling into the chasm.
CHAPTER 1

Mount Kipwezi, Kenya

May 5, 2110

1930 hours

The village of Kipwezi wasn't on anybody's tourist map, even though it was only a short thirty-kilometer ride from Kilimanjaro and the northern veldt countryside of the Serengeti. And that suited the villagers just fine. Mount Kipwezi, which hovered over the village like a protective mother was sometimes called _Kidogo Ndugu_ , Little Brother, a tacit admission of the greater stature and fame of its taller neighbor Kilimanjaro. Nobody seemed to mind that at all.

Saturday was market day in Kipwezi and the bazaars were jammed with villagers, farmers, horses and cattle, goats and sheep, and wagons filled with produce from the farms that surrounded the village and cultivated every square inch of the hilly land of Induku ward. In the very center of the village, makeshift stages were often erected around the fringes of the bazaar, stages hosting dances, contests, magic shows, political speeches, where anybody with something to sell or an opinion to express could hold forth.

The bazaar was slammed with people, loud and chaotic, filled with smoke and pungent smells—the high-octane odor of _masala_ tobacco was especially strong at the main entrance—and the air was thick with loose nano, clouds of bots mingling with incense, opium and scores of cooking oil fires. Vendors hawked grapes and mangoes, bananas and fabricator shells of every type, vials of rogue DNA called _twist_ hung from clothes lines strung up between light poles and dilapidated tents. Women in sarongs with black teeth from chewing betel nuts zipped and weaved through the labyrinth balancing huge baskets on their heads, baskets filled with everything from buffalo patties to rebuilt matter compilers for the fabs that were on sale everywhere.

A large tent surrounded on three sides with tables and benches dominated the center of the bazaar. Flat screen displays hanging from poles flickered down on the crowd, with images of Bollywood action pics counterpointed by plaintive plucking from a mandolin player nearby. In the center of a knot of yelling, shoving, jeering customers, a swarthy man in a turban and dark green kaftan pecked at a keyboard. All around the park, throbbing globs of nanobotic swarms swelled and gyrated to the music. _Masala_ smoke was thick and acrid in the air.

There was one stage in the back that lately seemed to attract more audience than all the others. The performer was a handsome, slightly swarthy young man, a strange sort of magician doing seemingly magical things for an audience of shoppers, visitors and tourists. It was clear he was an _angel_ , a nanobotic swarm in the likeness of a human, but the crowd didn't seem to mind. Children pressed in to get a peek, as the magician conjured up all sorts of toys and doodads.

His name was Symborg.

From the stage, the magician ran a demo in front of the crowd. He was a small man, with fierce, unblinking eyes, as his fingers flew over the table of tricks and props. Presently, he stopped and noticed a very young child, a small girl, standing shyly a few meters away from the stage, playing hide and seek in the folds of her mother's loose sarong.

The magician, who sported a thick black moustache, beckoned repeatedly to the young girl. After a few minutes, her mother relented and let her child go. The girl inched her way into the clearing and stood in front of the magician's table, to applause and approving shouts and chants from the crowd.

Symborg reached into a canvas bag and pulled out a trinket for the young girl. He handed it to her and she took it, shyly, turning the small cylinder over and over in her hand.

"You have a _djinn_ in that cylinder, little one," Symborg announced, loudly enough for all to hear. "A very powerful spirit. He can grant you any wish you want. Make a wish, child, and the _djinn_ will bring it to you, right here—"

The girl's name was Menaka and she had huge brown eyes. _Sad eyes_ , thought Symborg.

Menaka twirled the cylinder as the magician had shown her and squeezed her eyes tightly shut. When she stopped twirling the cylinder, she felt it vibrate and was so startled, she dropped the cylinder to the dirt.

Instantly, the device was enveloped in a fine mist, a sparkling mist that billowed out and upward, swirling about the clearing in front of Symborg and his tables like a miniature cyclone. Gasps and shouts erupted from the crowd, and the spectators shoved back against each other, to give this growing apparition greater distance. On the stage, the _angel_ gave a showman's flourish to the spectacle.

" _Now see what the young child has conjured for us_ —"

The mist gradually materialized into the faint outline of a man's upper body, with a recognizable face, shoulders and arms crossed in front.

The ' _djinn_ ' then spoke out loud. " _Little one, I have come from the clouds above to grant you a great wish. Make your wish now_ —" The _djinn's_ voice was a deep bass profundo, so deep it rattled the beaded curtains that covered Symborg's merchant tent behind them.

Menaka stared wide-eyed, mouth open, at the apparition. She was speechless.

"Go ahead, child," urged Symborg. "The _djinn_ wishes you to make a wish."

Shouts of encouragement and support came from the crowd. Gradually, Menaka worked up enough nerve. Shy, haltingly, she asked for a new _matatu_ for her father.

"His bus is broken down, Great One," she murmured. "It's the tires. They are bad. The bus is our livelihood. Father needs a new _matatu_ to carry the tourists."

The deep voice rumbled again, a little reverberation adding to the sense of barely contained powers.

"As you have spoken, child...so shall it be—"

At that moment, the swirling, twinkling apparition of the _djinn_ dissolved into a maelstrom of churning, roiling clouds, streaked with flashes of light. It was like watching a thunderstorm in miniature, from the inside.

The crowd murmured and moved back uneasily.

When the storm began to subside, the barest outlines of a structure could be seen enveloped in the thick fog. The fog dissolved, slowly at first, then with speed, to reveal the front hood and doors of a new minibus. Its wheels dripped with moisture and sunlight shone from the supple leather seats inside.

The crowd was silent for a moment, then erupted into cheers and gasps. Menaka stared wide-eyed at the new _matatu_ , inching her way forward to tentatively put a finger along the fender, tracing the smooth curve of the metal.

For fun, Symborg reached inside the driver's side window and honked the horn a few times, startling everyone. The crowd laughed.

"You see what a gift the great _djinn_ has brought you, little one. The _djinn_ I have in my possession can do the same for every one of you." Symborg pointedly stared at each face in the front row of the circle of onlookers. "Such a powerful _djinn_ , such a powerful servant is available to you, today, _right now_ , for a very special price. You will not believe the deal I can make for you. My friends, you cannot leave this bazaar without experiencing what this amazing servant can do for you—the Assimilationists have brought this wonder to the bazaar just for today--"

The crowd surged forward, feeling the doors, the hood and side panels of the new _matatu_ , pressing in on all sides of the stage. Symborg the magician basked in the admiration and proudly pointed out details on the newly conjured vehicle. Murmurs and laughter erupted. The audience was appreciative, adoring the magician. More shoppers came from the street to see what was going on.

A lone man in dark slacks and jacket, with an open-neck white shirt, at the very back of the crowd appraised Symborg with a critical eye, even as he was jostled and shoved about by the force of the crowd. His name was Cesar Seko.

Seko was a long-time friend and advisor to a former President of Kenya, one Julius Akamba. Seko was intrigued by this performer, the way he held the audience in his hand, his grasp of showmanship, his sense of timing. Even though he was an _angel_ , he might be useful. There was an election coming up soon and Akamba was running again, hoping to regain his old office. A fellow like Symborg could turn out to be quite useful in the campaign.

And, as an _angel_ , Seko figured Symborg would be a natural follower of the Assimilationists. How could he be otherwise?

As the show was winding down, Seko worked his way through the crowd and approached the stage. The magician was stowing gear, piling props and equipment into trunks and battered suitcases. Seko introduced himself.

The angel was good, Seko could see that. Very few edge effects...often, angels fuzzed out at their extremities, where the swarm didn't have good config control. 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.

Symborg introduced himself in return. Seko was impressed with the magician's 'voice,' deep, commanding, well-modulated. No question: this angel had stage presence. Something in the face...what was it? A bemused, almost knowing look... _we both know what I am but let's pretend anyway..._.

"You have quite a way with the audience," Seko said. "Especially the children. Most of the bazaar came over to see you. That was quite a trick with the _matatu_."

Symborg smiled a radiant, symmetrical smile. "The other vendors don't like it. I take their business."

Seko glanced around. Crowds were filtering away from the stage, back toward the shops and stalls. "Symborg..." he tried out the name, twisted it around his tongue for a moment. "Unusual name...is that Ndinka? Or maybe Kikuyu?"

Symborg's smile faded. He closed and locked the last trunk, then swung it easily down to a liftpad, hovering nearby. "It's an acronym, actually. Stands for _Symbiotic Organism_. I'm an angel."

Seko smiled back. "That much I could figure out for myself. And a very good one. I'm impressed. Who did the configs?"

Symborg didn't answer immediately. "Would you like some tea? I've got Old Grey in the tent."

Seko accepted. "Surely...actually, there _is_ something I'd like to discuss with you."

Symborg manipulated the liftpad out of the way behind some stacks of paneling and pulled the tent flap aside. Inside, the furnishings were sparse...some loose floor pillows, a table and chair. More trunks and cases, stacked in a corner, arranged to form a makeshift desk. Caftans hanging from a line stretched across the tent. Lamps and incense burners completed the interior.

Symborg went to the tea kettle and poured a small cup for Seko, who sipped gratefully. It wasn't Old Grey, he was sure of that. The tea had a gritty, almost brassy taste. Moments later, Seko had a mild headache. He smiled weakly and nodded thanks.

"Please...sit," Symborg commanded. Seko was momentarily dizzy and complied, plopping himself down on one of the fat pillows. The magician poured himself something else, from an unmarked bottle. Seko observed that it wasn't tea. "You had something you wanted to discuss?"

"Indeed," Seko found his mouth slurred and his eyes weren't focusing. Something in the drink. He concentrated hard, found his senses were finally returning. "Yes...I just wanted to ask something. Mr. Symborg..."

"Just... Symborg."

_I'm sitting here trying to be polite to a swarm of bugs_ , Seko told himself. "Yes...you know, you have great talents, great rapport with the audience."

"You know I am programmed with configurations that are pleasing to many people."

"Indeed, but your talents are wasted here in Kipwezi."

Symborg's face tightened. "How do you mean?"

"I mean this: Come with me to Nairobi. I want you to meet my friend Julius Akamba. There are bigger audiences to capture, bigger prizes...for all of us."

Even as he conversed with Cesar Seko, Symborg was receiving feeds from the bots that Seko had already ingested, in his 'tea.' Processor module _MAKE CONVERSATION_ continued to carry on a dialogue with Seko, responding as designed, initiating dialogue according to configured protocols long ago programmed in. Processor module _ANALYZE GLUTAMATE PATTERN MATCHING_ received results from the nanobotic sleuths even now burrowing into Seko's brain, sniffing along highways of equal glutamate concentration, rebuilding memories from their chemical residues.

Algorithms ran and massaged the data from the bots. Seko was being truthful. Patterns matched with high confidence. There were snatches of memory, fragments of images...large crowds, banners and dancers, a train creeping into a station, belching smoke, brakes squealing. Some kind of rally.

All this Seko gave up to the bots in his brain, and to Symborg, who smiled back pleasantly as he studied the data.

"There's a rally coming up," Symborg offered.

"Yes...in Nairobi...come with me and you can meet Julius Akamba. You have a great future with us...there's important work for you in this election." Seko seemed to be a little more clear-headed. _The bots had dropped into quiet mode now_ , Symborg realized. Seko went on.

"It's vital that Julius Akamba be re-elected. Vital to Kenya...vital to our future...our future is with the Assimilationists."

Symborg was already intrigued with the possibilities. Seko's offer was timely. More importantly, Seko's offer was compatible with the Prime Key. Correlation analysis had now proved that.

"Then it's agreed," Symborg decided. "I would like to meet this Julius Akamba."

Less than ten kilometers away from the central bazaar of Kipwezi, along the snow-fringed heights of Mount Kipwezi, in a cavern buried deeply inside, Config Zero was awakening again, after nearly a decade of quiescence.

New command sequences had come from the Central Entity. Relayed through the Keeper unit at Europa, which had been damaged by Quantum Corps operations a decade ago, but not disabled, the command sequences awakened Config Zero from sleep mode and activated all systems.

The commands instructed Config Zero to perform several actions:

Execute Instruction Set 438991

Execute Instruction Set 605526

The first command sequence instructed Config Zero to create the swarm entity known to Humans as Symborg. That instruction had been performed. The entity was operating as designed, living among the Humans in a nearby village. No adjustments or updates were needed to its programming.

The second command sequence instructed Config Zero to plan and execute a coordinated assault on multiple tectonic plate boundaries around the Earth. Specially configured swarms would be used. The commands downloaded these configurations. This Instruction was consistent with the Prime Key, specifically Module 2: _Alter the geology and meteorology of the Earth so as to create a more congenial environment for autonomous assembler swarms._ This was also known as the _Re-configuration_ module.

New config designs were relayed from the Central Entity via the Keeper. An early test of

these designs had already been performed along the boundary of the Eurasian and Arabian plates, focused on an epicenter near the Iranian city of Tabriz. To analyze the results, Config Zero scanned global newsvids and geophysical data from the tremors around Tabriz. It concluded from analysis that 72.2% of test objectives had been achieved. This result was returned to the Central Entity.

Now equipped with new commands and configs, the great master swarm decided that another operation would be needed. Config Zero coordinated the design and execution of a new configuration for a follow-on assault on the same tectonic plate boundaries. In addition, the next test would insert and activate swarms at seven other tectonic plate boundaries around the planet. The result would be a massive coordinated assault...and massive destruction, consistent with the Prime Key.

Config Zero began assembling nanobotic swarms from feedstock within the mountain innards of Kipwezi. Local geologists assumed from the rumblings and tremors and temperature spikes that a plume of magma had been displaced and was working its way up to the summit of the mountain. Warnings were issued that the long-dormant volcano that was Kipwezi might blow at any time. Villages and farms were evacuated. Travel was restricted. Survey drones were launched to keep an eye on Kipwezi.

All of this was noted by the great master swarm but largely ignored. Config Zero checked and re-checked the configs of its new tectonic swarms, then loaded the configs into newly built bot swarms, hordes of bots externally designed to resemble dust motes. These swarms were launched on a vector north by northwest, toward the Sahara desert.

Survey drones reported the launch. Scientists concluded that the volcano was releasing steam. Local villagers weren't so sure.

A third signal was also received by Config Zero. It was a proximity signal, relayed through the Keeper at Europa. The proximity signal indicated that Subunit 99, Elements 10899773 through 4983376, had arrived in the vicinity of its target coordinates, after a long voyage from deep space. Subunit 99 established itself in heliocentric orbit about the Sun, nearly fourteen billion kilometers from Mount Kipwezi. A small, reddish planetisimal, Object 222876, orbited nearby.

A few kilometers away from the village of Kipwezi, in the veldt countryside around the mountain, a pair of cattle herders had managed to avoid the Army troops who had come by that morning with loudspeakers, ordering the evacuation. The herds needed to water and forage. If the herds didn't get forage, there wouldn't be any money or meat for the winter.

The herders found a campsite at a sharp bend in a narrow, nearly dry streambed, not far from a mound of rocks, known as _kopjes_ in the local Masai dialect. After pitching camp, one of the herders noticed a strange glowing fog swirling around the summit of Kipwezi. The glow was a reddish orange, backlighting low-hanging clouds, like an aerial inferno enveloping the mountain top.

Both herders watched carefully, noting how the dust was caught by the wind and streamed off northward across the border.

The cattlemen concluded that Kipwezi and the gods were angry that night. They picked at the campfire and chewed on betel nut, speculating on what it all might mean.
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 place 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 quantum 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.
CHAPTER 3

Northgate University, Autonomous Systems Laboratory

Pennsylvania, USA

May 15, 2110

1130 hours

The accident had been nobody's fault but that didn't make Dr. Ryne Falkland feel any better. Any time you lost a loved one, it hurt like hell. And when the loved one was Mr. Jiggs, twelve-year old hybrid Shih Tzu, lifelong companion, confidant and lab policeman and cleaner-upper of anything that dropped from the table, the loss was even harder to take.

Falkland sighed deeply. Jiggs was just a dog, wheezing, limping, half-blind in one eye with all his cataracts, not long for this world anyway, but still...it was like a hole had opened up in his heart.

Well, at least there was still Simon.

_I need someone to talk to_. Falkland finished cleaning out the containment chamber and went over to a small capsule on a workbench nearby. _Maybe Doc can help me sort things out._ He thumbed a control stud on the side of the capsule. Momentarily, a faint vapor began issuing from a port on top. The vapor twinkled and sparkled in the late morning sunlight, thickening as it spread and expanded into a visible mist. Falkland paid no attention to the mist, while it began forming itself into a recognizable, if shadowy outline of a face and shoulders...a reasonable facsimile of Dr. Irwin Frost himself, founder of the Lab. Falkland instead busied himself with prepping the containment chamber for another run, checking the electron guns, the pattern buffer, cycling the interior ports and feedstock reservoirs.

The facial outline of the Doc III swarm beamed down at Falkland with a bemused half-smile, still twinkling in the shafts of sunlight as the bots configured themselves into final patterns, grabbing atoms and slamming molecules to form up the image.

*** _You are preparing the Lab for another run, I see, Dr. Falkland...you're always quite thorough in your work***_

Falkland looked up briefly, critically appraising the realism of the swarm image. "I'm not sure what happened, Doc. Christ, I hated to lose Jiggs...maybe it was the pattern buffer. Guess I've got a little tweaking to do."

***Maybe more than a little, Dr. Falkland...there seem to be some anomalies in the drivers...perhaps I could help?***

"I was hoping you'd say that...I'll load up the routines and we can both take a look."

It had long been a dream of Falkland's to find a way to re-assemble deconstructed objects, to reverse the process that the Assimilationists were using to disassemble their nutty volunteers and send them on to the Greater Swarm, or wherever it was they went to. It ought to be a simple matter of scanning the entire configuration of a living person, then imposing that same configuration, that same pattern of atom bond energies and geometries, on new feedstock and re-assembling the same person.

Falkland had been experimenting with a special kind of configuration pattern emitter that imposed a sort of memory field on the new molecules. A memory field that was supposed to hold the scanned pattern and impress that same pattern on the new molecules. But it was damnably hard to do this with living systems, always had been. Nanobotic assemblers could break down anything they could get to. And the same assemblers could slam atoms and pretty much build anything that had a repeatable pattern, even now, organic material.

But the great question was this: was the re-assembled pattern actually the same as the deconstructed pattern? Was B = A? Or was it just a clever analog, a simulation, an angel swarm entity like Doc III? Philosophers called this conundrum the _Ship of Theseus_. Was a ship that was maintained by swapping out all of its wooden planks still the same ship, once all the planks had been changed?

So he had been experimenting on living things the last few weeks, spiders, cockroaches, lab rats, and now one of his two pet Shih Tzus...Mr. Jiggs. He'd finagled with the pattern configs for weeks, trying different approaches. He'd tested the emitters, buffers and injectors with all manner of atomic feedstock, just to be sure. He'd managed to disassemble and reassemble all manner of critters, but you could never really tell with rats and cockroaches. It wasn't like you could ask them questions: _Are you really the same thing I just disassembled?_

Jiggs had been placed inside the small containment cell, after he'd done his business outside in the bushes, of course. No sense introducing any more organic matter into the experiment than necessary. A small-mass nanobotic swarm had been released into the cell. Jiggs was rapidly disassembled and the resulting atomic debris was held in a special containment field that kept the relevant atoms in close proximity. The pattern buffer also read and maintained a 'memory' of the original configuration. This _memory field_ was a new design of Falkland's, in which all the original atom and molecule configurations and their bond energies and geometries were stored and used to re-construct the original.

The memory field containing the atomic patterns of the original Jiggs was then run through a new config pattern processor and the new config re-imposed on the atoms in the memory field. The result was a ghostly likeness of Jiggs, but the shadowy image wouldn't hold on its own and Falkland, reluctantly, had to let it go, let it disperse. The technique still needed work. And Falkland had only Simon left. He wasn't too keen on donating his only remaining pet to Science just yet.

For nearly an hour, Falkland and Doc III examined the software loaded into the pattern buffers, debugged the configs and speculated on what might be happening, why the new field didn't hold the originally scanned pattern and thus why the original object could not be properly reconstructed.

It was well after noon, when a loud buzzing at the Lab entrance shook Falkland out of his funk. Someone was at the secured doors outside the Containment Center. Falkland checked...it was Major Lucian Bridges. _Oh, crap_ ...he'd forgotten completely. Bridges had been invited to a little demo that afternoon...only Falkland no longer had anything to show the Quantum Corps officer. He let the Major into the containment center anyway.

Bridges was a program manager from Table Top, overseeing several efforts that ASL was running for the Corps. He was a likeable, if someone prickly administrator...program managers tended to be that way.... Tall with a red hair buzz cut and long delicate fingers like a pianist, which he sometimes was in his spare moments, Bridges came over and peered into the containment cell.

"I don't see anything, Dr. Falkland. You said you had something to show me, some new kind of config generator."

"I did," Falkland admitted. "But the results of my last test weren't worth keeping around." He explained what had happened that morning.

Bridges shrugged. "So where do you go from here?"

Falkland ran a hand through his thinning hair. "Is the Corps still interested? I'm not that far...I'm sure of it."

"Hell, _yes_ , Doctor. The Corps' interested in anything that can counter what the Assimilationists are doing. What I've seen of your work...there's still a lot of promise. What else do you need from me?"

"Well, Doc and I are still working out the kinks in this blasted pattern buffer and emitter. What I'd like to do is this: once we've got the buffer working...I'd like to have the Corps' permission to do some live experiments, with actual people."

Doc III's shadowy face made a slight tightening of its lips, at least that's what Bridges thought he had done. It was hard to tell with some angels...it depended on how good the config was.

***Dr. Falkland and I have a slight difference of opinion on this matter, Major...clearly the config buffer needs additional testing...I would not recommend scaling up the experiments quite so fast***

Bridges rubbed at some stubble his razor had missed that morning. "You think this gadget will actually work...didn't you just tell me you couldn't get your dog back? What makes you think it'll work with humans? What evidence do you have that this thing will actually retrieve people who've already been assimilated? There are a helluva lot of people at Table Top who think that's nonsense...that it violates the laws of physics and so forth."

Falkland took a deep breath. "Call it a hunch, if you want, Major. I can produce just as much evidence the other way. The basic philosophy of Assimilation is wrong, on a lot of different levels. Here, let's look at this logically. Assimilation begins with one great question: does assimilating mean just enhancing our minds and bodies as is, inserting bots and swarms to take over or develop or enhance new capabilities in our more or less original bodies?

Or does Assimilation mean 'deconstruction?' Breaking down the human body form into its constituent atoms and rebuilding it as a multi-configuration swarm, able to look and act like humans (as angels) but also able to act and look like other beings and structures as well.

_Enhancement vs. Reconfiguration_ ...that's the great divide in Assimilationist thinking."

Bridges understood. "I guess I've seen both types of thinking among Assimilationists. Nowadays, they seem to go in for deconstruction, as you call it. You've heard the complaints...our DNA is old and creaky, full of junk. Multiple-configuration is way better, more resilient, able to adapt to change, you can't die, just change config. I can tell you one thing: UNIFORCE is looking for any and every technique they can get their hands on to stop them..."

"Precisely," Falkland said. "Doc, show him the chart."

The Doc III swarm pinched off a small set of bots and began swirling into a new pattern, eventually forming a small two-column chart hanging right in mid-air.

Falkland went on. "So you can see there are pros and cons on each side. You're right, though, Major. The Assimilationists have changed their tune. They deconstruct everything now. To me, it's just a form of murder."

"They want to get rid of humans...that's what's behind the movement," Bridges was sure. "Do the Old Ones' work for them."

"Would Quantum Corps be interested in funding more experiments, Major? Experiments with live human volunteers?"

Bridges nodded. "I don't know about Quantum Corps. But UNIFORCE might. Tell you what: write up a proposal, explain what you need in funding and equipment, any kind of resource. I've got some contacts in Paris. Plus CINCQUANT himself is there...that's General Winger. He's an old atomgrabber from way back...I'm sure he'd listen, maybe put in a good word for us."

Ryne Falkland did as Major Bridges requested.

Two weeks later, Project _Phoenix_ had come to a critical juncture. New methods and new configs for retrieving and re-constructing nanobotically disassembled and assimilated people had been developed. Falkland and Doc III had worked for weeks, night and day, to find every bug, fix every flaw, run sim after sim. The idea was to combat the advance of the Assimilationists, by showing adherents and followers that what they did could be undone. Their subject today: another of Falkland's pets...this one another Shih Tzu, named Simon.

Falkland wanted one last live experiment before advancing the project to human volunteers.

Simon was a black and tan brother to Mr. Jiggs. Falkland fed him a few treats, then hoisted the little bugger up into the containment cell, closing and securing the hatch behind. From the other side of the porthole, Simon munched on the last bits of his treat, then stared morosely out at Falkland, slowly wagging his tail.

"Simon, don't look at me like that. This will only take a few minutes. Doc, how's the buffer looking?"

Doc III swirled and sparkled in the late afternoon sunlight. The swarm angel was only a barebones head-likeness of old Doc Frost today...more apparition than real. Doc was devoting most of his processor to managing the config buffer and little to keeping up appearances for Falkland.

***Config patterns are stable, Dr. Falkland. Injector guns are primed and ready to trigger on first alarm...feed valve is closed, but powered up. Memory field at state one, ready to transmit...all parameters within normal tolerances, Doctor...it appears that everything is ready. How do you feel about the experiment today?***

Falkland sniffed. _Nice of you to ask, Doc,_ he thought. He'd programmed _that_ into the angel's core routines just last week...a new sympathy module he'd swiped from the Net. At least, the cloud of bugs had the smarts to know when to invoke it.

"I'm feeling confident, today, Doc...one last check of all systems and we're ready to go."

A quick look around the containment controls assured Falkland that nothing had been overlooked.

"Okay, Doc...here goes--" He pressed a button, opening a port inside the cell. Instantly a swarm of nanobotic disassemblers flooded the compartment, enveloping Simon in a faint mist that flickered with pinpricks of light. The Shih Tzu stared out longingly, tail still wagging. Soon enough, his face was lost in the fog.

***Reading normal activity, Dr. Falkland...solution parameters within tolerance. EM levels normal and in the green range...all configurations holding...***

As before, the swarm filled the containment cell and began disassembling poor Simon, atom by atom, molecule by molecule. Falkland had sometimes wondered what that would feel like...would it hurt, did it happen too fast, what went through your mind? During the earlier runs, he had avoided peering into the compartment...not wanting to see his subject's face half-eaten away or in some unfinished state of disassembly. This time, he couldn't help it and took a look.

Mostly, there wasn't much to see. The mist that was the swarm filled most of the view inside the porthole. He could catch occasional glimpses of a shadow; presumably that was Simon's body. He seemed remarkably calm for Simon, not squirming and fidgeting around like he usually did. Maybe, his neuromuscular functions had already been--

Then he saw the face. It was still recognizably Simon, but grayed out somehow, washed out and devoid of features. He had whiskers, a mouth, a hint of beard and his nose wiggled, but texture was missing...almost as if Simon were unfinished lump of clay, waiting for final touches. Then the mist covered his face and he was gone.

Falkland shook off a brief shiver and concentrated on the displays, showing the progress of deconstruction. "Memory field stable, we're scanning now, Doc...looks like everything's stable, within range."

***I detect no anomalies in the field emitter, Dr. Falkland...containment field also holding well...disassembly operation now sixty five per cent complete...structure file buffer overload...I recommend truncating peripheral details until the buffer clears...***

Falkland saw instantly what Doc was talking about. The atom bond energies and geometries that made up Simon were overloading the memory registers of the system. _Well, Simon was a complicated guy_ , Falkland thought. _I mean_ is _a complicated guy_ , he corrected himself.

When deconstruction was over, if all went well, Simon the Shih Tzu would be reduced to a hopefully well-contained field of disassembled atoms and molecules and nothing more. At that point, Falkland's memory field would sweep through the chamber, reading each and every atomic bond, measuring electron-volt energies, analyzing each atom's geometric construction, recording it all and saving it in a massive file that constituted the physical 'essence' of what had once been a wiggling, yapping little dog.

And if all went well, Falkland would write that same memory field over the contained atoms of the now disassembled Simon, instructing the bots to re-build the very same structure, atom by atom, molecule by molecule, according to what was held in the memory field.

When it was all done, if Falkland had done his homework, the new structure would be Simon once again, at least in every physical way that mattered. Whether his mind and thoughts and habits would return as before....well, Dr. Ryne Falkland had long ago decided to leave that to the philosophers.

_First things first_ , he told himself. "Doc, let's see if we can bring Simon back to physicality. We have good structure on the containment?"

***All data seems clean and within expected variations, Dr. Falkland. I have finished all check routines and variations are minimal. There was some dropout in data collected from Zones 41 through 45, but I have activated interpolation routines to make up for the loss...I don't think the subject will be affected***

"Zones 41 through 45--" Falkland consulted a handwritten list he had taped to the console. "We've seen that before...the hind leg muscles...not sure what's happening with that. Hope Simon doesn't come back walking with a limp. Well, here goes--" He stabbed a button and the system monitor beeped and flashed warnings: MEMORY FIELD OPERATING....KEEP CLEAR...

He looked inside the chamber.

For a few moments, the mist continued to swirl, speckling and twinkling and popping like a miniature thunderstorm. Falkland knew the bots were slamming atoms as fast as they could, using the memory field as a blueprint, re-building Simon molecule by molecule. At least, he hoped that's what was happening.

Then, slowly, the swarm mist began to clear. The first shape to appear was a nose, then a mouth. Falkland peered into the chamber closely, checking for texture, patterns, evidence that the memory field had worked.

The mist began to thin out and that's when Falkland's heart sank. It was Simon, all right, at least something recognizable as Simon. All the parts seemed to be there: a face, four legs, a squat little furry body...it was black and tan in coloration, that seemed normal...a tail that wagged.

But Simon was transparent. Structure wasn't filling in properly. Falkland realized he could see right through the structure.

"I'm adjusting the field to compensate--" he announced. Falkland fiddled with some dials on the console, trying to bring a stronger memory field to bear, to override the structure that was being formed. Trying to force the atoms and molecules that made up Simon back into normal position, normal geometry. The overall look seemed right, but there weren't enough molecules.

Simon was little more than a cloud.

In the end, Falkland couldn't get Simon's structure to fill in. The mist that was the swarm rebuilding the little dog stubbornly refused to coalesce into something more substantial. The basic pattern was there but memory field integrity was being lost somewhere in the process.

***Buffer overflow...truncation at all higher registers***

Doc III announced a problem with the config generator memory...too much data, too many patterns to reconstruct. The atomic complexity of living organisms had defeated many attempts before. Falkland swore under his breath.

"--not again, not again...."

The only humane thing to do was abort the operation. He's have to let Simon go, be dispersed. Just like Jiggs before him. Reluctantly, Falkland killed the config generator and the memory field collapsed. Simon, what was left of him, slowly faded from view and was lost, his atoms and molecules scattered throughout the chamber. Soon, only a faint haze clouded the containment cell porthole.

"Simon, you're in there somewhere. Maybe not in a physical sense, but I've got the configs...we can do this. We _have_ to do this." He rubbed at his hairline and worried with a loose strand of hair.

***Major Bridges will not be pleased at the outcome of this run, Doctor Falkland. He had great hopes that your configs and memory field would be strong enough to maintain structure, and bring Simon back***

Falkland shut down the system and the containment cell went dark. He sat down heavily in a nearby chair, sipped half-heartedly at a warm cola drink. "That's not the worst of it, Doc. I've got a demo scheduled at UNIFORCE Paris in less than two weeks. What am I going to show them...a bunch of slides and graphics? General Winger wants results...all I've got is theories."

The Doc III swarm roiled and drifted over toward the containment cell. _***This technique is not ready for more complex structures, Doctor Falkland. It will months before it can be tried on human volunteers, or anything that complex***_

"Thanks, Doc...I figured that out for myself. And I don't have any more pets to donate to Science either. But we'll have to think of something. I've got ten days to put something together for Paris."

He watched as the Doc swarm swirled around the containment cell, almost as if the swarm were 'tasting' or 'feeling' the device.

_Maybe the Assimilationists are right and that's what Simon and Jiggs are telling us,_ he thought. _Maybe it's not structure that's important. It's the pattern, the configuration. Maybe that's what makes us truly unique._

The great conundrum that philosophers called the _Ship of Theseus_ kept coming back to bite them again and again.
CHAPTER 4

Nairobi, Kenya

Campaign Rally at Kibera Fields

June 5, 2110

1900 hours

For Evelyn Ndinka, the rally for candidate Julius Akamba was the biggest thing she had ever seen in Kibera. The Solnet reporter hoisted herself up on a pile of trash, balancing herself precariously, as she steered the fleet of dronecams about Kibera Fields, gathering footage for her report.

"Cam Three and Four, come left and drop down to fifty feet...get me some footage of the stage and the podium...it really stands out." Several hundred feet above, the twin ornithopters wheeled about and took up their new headings. Ndinka watched the image on her wristpad. "That's good...that's good, right there. Edit can add sound and graphics later....Jesus, Mary and Joseph, what a shot. The stage and lights, right in the middle of a sea of tin-roof shacks. There must be half a million people here."

Indeed, the vast slum land of southwest Nairobi, hadn't hosted a gathering this large in decades. Julius Akamba, the Assimilationist candidate, would be there, just days before the big election. But Ndinka knew it wasn't Akamba that was the real draw. It was the candidate's front man and staff aide...Symborg. People shrieked and fainted for Symborg. That's why they had come.

The Solnet reporter steered dronecam four closer to the stage. "Hover and zoom in...I want to get those assimilator booths...there's already a queue outside." The 'copter obeyed and took up a tight hovering orbit some thirty feet over a line of coffin-shaped booths along one side of the stage. The booths were already working, already taking in volunteers. People were pushing and shoving in a ragged line just beyond some barriers, barely contained by a platoon of khaki-clad Kenya Police. One man, Inspector Shadrick Nziri, barked out commands to his force on a megaphone.

The rally was set to begin at 7 pm, according to the flyers and brochures that had littered Nairobi for days. But already the assimilators were at work, manned by volunteers. Ndinka manipulated her wristpad controls and Cam Four zoomed in tight, picking up the sweaty, ecstatic faces in the queue. The first in line was a heavy set woman. Ndinka fiddled with the audio, caught snatches of words over the roar of the crowd.

"...name is, ma'am?" The assimilator tech wore a light blue uniform. His nameplate read Gavin.

Her name was Anna Ngombe. She was tall, maybe with a bit of Masai in her, proud, a bit fluttery and nervous. She grinned sheepishly as one of Gavin's men helped her into the assimilator booth.

"A great day," she muttered. "Great day...so proud."

Gavin sat at a console just outside the booth, while another tech helped Anna inside and made her comfortable on the seat. The tech shut and latched the door, pressing a button to begin the seal and containment process. In seconds, a tight bot-proof seal had been formed around the interior of the booth, a barrier formed of electron injectors and a dedicated botscreen.

"Let's do it," the tech told Gavin. Gavin pressed buttons.

Inside the booth, a fog had formed...that was the first layer of nanobots released into the compartment. Anna disappeared into the fog, only a leg and a shoulder could be seen.

The fog thickened. A faint buzz could be heard from inside the booth. Evelyn Ndinka steered the dronecam in closer, hovering only a few feet over the scene, like a giant gnat, watching as the cloud of bots inside the booth thickened. More and more bots were released and replicated, swelling to fill every cubic millimeter of the booth.

Anna didn't move. Ndinka zoomed in through the front porthole on her right leg. At first, it was unchanged, a smooth black leg with a section of her print dress showing, hitched up just above her knee. But even as she watched, the black of her skin had begun to fade. In moments, it was almost gray, like the fog itself, oscillating between darker and lighter, but still gray. Then the gray became a translucent shimmer, almost like a ghost, flickering slightly, but growing ever dimmer. Her shoulder was the same.

Anna Ngombe was slowly but steadily being disassembled. She was being steadily broken down into a pattern, a pattern of atoms and molecules.

The end came softly, almost as if the woman were walking away in a light rain. Her body, the physical Anna Ngombe, began to fade inside the booth. At first, it had been barely perceptible, just a faint blurring of her skin, her extremities, a smearing of her legs and shoulder, as if a photo had lost contrast.

In time, and the time was less than five minutes, Anna Ngombe had _devolved_ —that was the commonly accepted word now—into a nearly translucent shadow, still recognizable in form, but without substance. You could see right through the form and the shadow to the other side of the booth.

And then she was gone. Enveloped and enmeshed and at one with the greater swarm of nanobotic mechs that was Config Zero.

Evelyn Ndinka swallowed hard... steering DroneCam Four away from the booth. She muttered into her lip mike: _Rotate and hold...I want shots of the faces in the queue..."_ The cam obeyed and soon her wristpad screen was filled with joy, ecstasy, laughter, joking...whatever you wanted to call it.

The woman known as Anna Ngombe had just let herself be disassembled into atom fluff. And behind her, people were jostling in line to be next.

Involuntarily, Evelyn Ndinka shuddered. She would never understand Assimilationists.

Something was happening. The crowd was stirring. Ndinka craned her head, trying to see over the mass of humanity. It looked like a wave surging and sloshing back and forth between islands of tin-roof shacks and rubbish piles. Imagery flickered on her wristpad. Men were mounting the stage. Serious men in dark suits and white open-neck shirts.

That's when she saw him.

Of course, Ndinka knew all the stories about Symborg: that he wasn't human, just an angel, a para-human swarm of nanobots, a cloud of bugs. Still, she found herself shoved and jostled as the crowd surged forward. She steered the dronecams closer for a tight shot, muttering "In tight, on his face, hover at twenty--" She checked the shot on her wristpad, found it good.

Julius Akamba was hard to miss. Wide as he was tall, blacker than coal, he strode up onto the stage and raised both hands in a victory salute, beaming at the crowd that now lapped against the stage and the police cordon like ocean waves in a storm. Beside him were more staff people. Symborg was to his right, there to lead the introductions to the candidate, to whip the crowd into furious adulation.

Ndinka found herself shoved forward like a raft adrift, until she was nearly impaled on the baton of a policeman at the stage. Quickly, she flashed her press pass and was shoveled off to the side. Her arms were pinned by the crush and she couldn't reach her wristpad controls. The story would have to go with the shots the dronecams were getting now.

Symborg acknowledged the crowds with a wave and moved to the center microphone. The angel was good, Ndinka could see that. Very few edge effects...often, angels fuzzed out at their extremities, where the swarm didn't have good config control. 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. His height contrasted with Akamba's beefy frame, and his face was dominated by a black moustache.

" _PEOPLE OF KIBERA...THE TIME HAS COME FOR A CHANGE...._ " His voice boomed out across the rally ground and the crowd grew more and more frenzied, pressing ever tighter against the police cordon.

" _AND THIS MAN...THIS JULIUS AKAMBA...WILL BRING THAT CHANGE...THIS MAN, PEOPLE OF KIBERA...THIS MAN IS YOUR MAN, THIS MAN IS YOUR CANDIDATE...."_

Now, as if by unspoken agreement, Akamba and his staff receded into the background and Symborg dominated the stage. The angel worked the crowd like a practiced stage actor.

" _PEOPLE OF KIBERA...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. Beside the stage, Kenya Police Inspector Shadrick Nziri barked more commands into a wristphone, re-deploying his men to tighten the barrier.

Symborg went on. "This man--" he swept his arm toward Julius Akamba, who stepped forward to the microphone, a well-scripted and rehearsed bit of choreography "--this man will bring all that Assimilation can offer to you." He wrapped his arms around Akamba's shoulders and drew him closer and it was only a few moments later that Evelyn Ndinka realized that subtle changes had come over Symborg's face. The morphing was so well done that no one detected it, but by the time the angel had embraced the beaming candidate, the face of Symborg was gone and the man now hugging the candidate was Jomo Kenyatta himself, or least a passable config of the father of modern Kenya.

Stage cameras zoomed in to capture the moment. Ndinka wrestled an arm free to make sure her own dronecams did the same.

Symborg, now morphed and configged to resemble the great Kenyatta, beamed and vigorously hugged Akamba, the Founder himself endorsing this candidate as "the best man for the future of Kenya."

Ndinka couldn't help but be impressed. Akamba's handlers had perfected the stage show to use Symborg's talents, linking Kenya's past, the beloved Kenyatta himself with the new candidate. It was a symbolic point lost on no one.

Symborg went on, now releasing Akamba, who retreated to a position on the side of the stage. The angel went to a bag held by one of Akamba's aides and withdrew a handful of dirt, which he raised for all to see. By the time he had done this, the Kenyatta morph was gone, and his face subtly altered back to its original config. Or was it the original? Ndinka couldn't be sure. She suspected the crowd didn't care. They were mesmerized, enthralled. And they wanted more.

"The soil of Kenya!" Symborg announced. "This is what Assimilation brings... _this_ is what Julius Akamba brings!" Even as he spoke and the cameras zoomed in, Symborg's right hand morphed from a palm with five fingers into a fuzzy, swarming cloud of bots. The bots swelled and enveloped the dirt in his hand. Unseen by the crowd, the bots slammed atoms and formed a faint but rapidly filling apparition that grew like a plant in fast-motion out of Symborg's hand.

In moments, the apparition had solidified enough to be visible...and recognizable. It was Kenyatta again, this time 'in the flesh.' The bots that Symborg spalled off from his hand grabbed atoms from nearby and assembled a reasonable facsimile of the 'father of modern Kenya.'

The crowd roared its approval.

Symborg approached the mike again and told them how Julius Akamba loved Kenya, no less than Kenyatta. How he loved his family and tribe, how he lived and breathed Kenya and always would. From down in front of the stage, Evelyn Ndinka wriggled an arm free and pressed a few buttons on her wristpad, zooming in for an extreme close-up on the faux-Kenyatta, then on Symborg himself.

_Is that sweat on his forehead_? She wondered if angels could even do that, then decided it was like everything else at the rally...part of the show. What she didn't see was the faint trail of bots that drifted off Symborg's hand and down into the crowd itself.

Symborg continued his magic, his blurry hand by turns a cloud of bots, a magic wand, a _djinn_ granting wishes, mesmerizing the crowd, plucking their emotions like a mandolin, first rising, then falling, cresting and receding. He was a master showman...Ndinka had to admit.

What Ndinka didn't know was how well Symborg knew his crowd. The bots he had loosed into the crowd, unseen, were now embedded in the heads of scores of nearby faithful.

Even as he dazzled the crowd, Symborg was receiving feeds from the bots that many of them had already ingested. A faint pall of fog wafted off the stage, sending more and more bots into recon mode among the rally. Processor module _ANALYZE GLUTAMATE PATTERN MATCHING_ received results from the nanobotic sleuths even now burrowing into their brains, sniffing along highways of equal glutamate concentration, rebuilding memories from their chemical residues.

Algorithms ran and massaged the data from the bots. The crowd was hooked, in synch with Symborg. Patterns matched with high confidence. Symborg saw snatches of memory, fragments of images...large crowds, banners and dancers, a train creeping into a station, belching smoke, brakes squealing. Some kind of rally, somewhere else.

All this the crowd gave up to the bots in their brains, and to Symborg, who smiled back and went on with the rally. Behind him, the candidate Julius Akamba beamed, and scanned the surging crowd uneasily.

Now Symborg made config changes and the Kenyatta 'angel' began morphing once again. The din began to subside. Heads craned forward. People jostled and shoved to see better. Inspector Shadrick Nziri spoke into a lapel mike, calling up reinforcements for the police cordon.

In moments, the Kenyatta angel had changed into something formless, a blazing, pulsating spherical 'sun-like' orb of nanobots. It shone with the brilliance of a miniature star, throbbing in time with music issuing from speakers nearby.

"This is what Julius Akamba means for Kenya...he is like _Ngai_ , the Giver of All Things, an earthly reflection of the Mother Swarm."

Then the orb evolved again, this time growing, swelling, taking on structure. It became a small shelter, a composite shanty like the thousands that dotted Kibera.

" _This_ \--" he roared to the crowd, "this is what Julius Akamba and the Assimilationists can bring...this is what the Central Entity brings...shelter for all, food and life for all, embedded in the Great Mother Swarm."

And, as if to emphasize the point, the queues at the assimilator booths surrounding the stage grew and became gridlocked with even more people shoving and jostling to be next into the booths.

Evelyn Ndinka found herself shoved almost right onto the stage, pressed hard against the barriers, nearly face to face with a row of Kenya Police officers. The officers were shoving back just as hard at the crowd, batons and shockwands flailing. She wrestled her arm free and checked out the view from the dronecams on her wristpad.

The crowd was surging forward, frenetic, screaming and fainting, pressing against the stage like ocean waves battering a beach. She was startled to see some of them climbing on the shoulders of others, launching themselves through the air.

_This is mad, this is insane_ , she told herself. Instinctively, she ducked down and started wriggling through tiny spaces and niches, close to the ground, worming her way away from the stage. Self-preservation took over. After a few moments, she found a void and surfaced, standing up between two obese women who were swaying and chanting as they gazed up at Symborg.

She steered Dronecam Four as close as she dared to the stage. Symborg was performing more tricks, conjuring fantastic things from his bot-cloud hands like a true djinn. In the background, the candidate himself had left his seat and squatted down at the edge of the stage to have words with Inspector Nziri. Evelyn maneuvered the dronecam to catch what she could of the conversation.

It was clear Akamba was spooked by the intensity of the crowd. Inspector Nziri had a warning for him. The dronecam picked up snatches.

"... _can't hold this....-rimeter long...your people...the barrier won't...could be a stampede_ —

Akamba shook his head emphatically. "No...no...no...this is for me. These are my people--"

That's when Shadrick Nziri shrugged, threw up his hands. He got on his lapel mike, screamed commands to his force. Evelyn could see what was happening around the stage. The men of the Kenya Police were being crushed, swallowed by the great beast. Nziri was pulling his men out.

Bit by bit, the police cordon shrank and contracted. Now Symborg had finished and with a flourish, waved his arms toward Julius Akamba, who stood and beamed in the glow of the moment. Akamba came to the mike, where Symborg embraced him. The crowd roared. The stage began to shake and the men stumbled momentarily. Symborg retreated behind, toward a row of seats on the edge of the stage. Akamba seized the mike.

His amplified voice screeched with feedback and was drowned in the deafening roar of the crowd, which surged forward with renewed fury. It was like a rock concert mixed with religious revival, amplified a thousand-fold. The dronecams captured everything: people wailing, fainting, shrieking, even dying in the crush. The crowd became a crazed, mindless thing.

And no one was paying any attention to Akamba.

Finally, in order to save the situation for the candidate, Symborg was forced to leave the platform, under escort. As he did so, the crowd broke through the last barriers and pressed forward to try and touch the angel. Just when it appeared Symborg and his police protective detail, led by Inspector Nziri, were about to be crushed to death in the surging crowd, Symborg did what angels can do...he dematerialized into a loose, amorphous swarm and disappeared in a faint puff, dissipating into the air above the stage.

Evelyn Ndinka captured the whole thing on dronecam video.

And the rest of the police detail was left to fight their way out of the crowd, who become even more agitated at the disappearance of their hero Symborg. Soon, the stage collapsed completely and a full-scale riot had developed.
CHAPTER 5

Tabriz, Iran

June 10, 2110

0500 hours

"It looks like a giant caterpillar," said Dr. Christian Hayes. The UN Quantum Corps inspector circled the vehicle, studying its unusual hull shape, circumferential treads and bulbous nose. "Or maybe a big armored beetle."

Lieutenant Oscar Mendez chuckled. "This beetle has quite a bite. _Gopher_ can burrow into the ground and be completely submerged in less than a minute. And she can dive to five miles depth, given her composite armor and thermal regulation system. That borer lens up front you're looking at can penetrate the hardest shales and rock on earth, just like butter. She's a true creature of the deep...the deep earth, that is."

Geoplane _Gopher_ squatted among the rubble piles and smoking ruins of the Blue Mosque, while all around her, scores of fixbots scurried around removing debris from the site, dumping broken glass, broken stone, mangled rebar and trash into loaders lined up along Emam Street for half a mile. A huge gaping fissure crossed the street in a jagged line, where the underlying faults had lifted the earth in the massive quake several months before. As a result, the toppled Martyrs' statues across the street were several feet higher than the Mosque itself.

_Gopher's_ crew, assigned from Boundary Patrol Detachment BP-4, explained her features to Hayes and to Reza Hokmar, the Teheran-based official from UNDERO, the UN Disaster and Emergency Relief Organization. It was Hokmar's job to head up the recovery efforts in Tabriz, still reeling from a series of magnitude 8 and 9 tremors over the last few months.

"You have the coordinates of that last swarm sighting?" Hayes asked. "Somewhere a few miles southeast of here."

Mendez was Gopher's _CC1_ , the senior command rating, in charge of the mission. "Got 'em from Q2 on the trip over. I don't have intel on any other sightings."

"I haven't heard of anything official," Hayes admitted. "Just rumors. Reza--?"

Hokmar shrugged. "People here are frightened. They see all kinds of things. My office has reports of ghosts, three-headed tigers, the Prophet Mohammed, you name it. We've had a hard time distinguishing fact from superstition. Most people here lost family in the quake. And the tremors....you know they continue."

Mendez went over the mission orders with both of them. "I'm going deep right here, right through that fissure across the street. After we descend to about five thousand feet, we'll turn south and head for the coordinates of that last sighting. Quantum Corps has been scanning this area for weeks, looking for any kind of unique signature. But there's so much noise down there, it's hard to get a fix. Even the quantum detectors can't grab anything solid."

"I guess the real question we have," said Hokmar, "is whether the quake and the tremors are natural phenomena. Tabriz is no stranger to earthquakes. The city was eighty per cent destroyed in the late 20th century, over a hundred and twenty years ago. It's all the tremors following...and the swarm sightings...that have people on edge."

Mendez understood. "Q2 has plenty of related intel that Config Zero's become active again. _Gopher'll_ smoke 'em out. If you've got swarms operating in the area, we'll find them." Mendez got on the crewnet through his lip mike and ordered the rest of the Detachment to mount up. "Let's go, troops. _Gopher's_ rolling and digging in two minutes." He stepped through the forward hatch and disappeared inside the geoplane.

Hayes and Hokmar stepped back and gave the vehicle plenty of clearance. On the hull beside the forward hatch, Hayes saw the Boundary Patrol insignia and the Latin inscription: _Subterraneus defensores percutant dure._

"'Subterranean defenders strike hard'", he translated for Hokmar. _Gopher_ 's treads started up with a screeching clank and a blue-white glow soon enveloped the nose of the ship as the borer lens came fully online. The cylindrical geoplane huffed and shuddered as she motored forward on her treads, clambering over nearby rubble piles and across the three-foot ledge that marked the fissure in the ground. Fixbots stopped in their own tracks and police held up traffic as the ship rumbled across the street. Passing the recently re-erected statue of the poet Khaqani in a small park opposite the Mosque, _Gopher_ started her descent, angling nose-first toward the ground.

Inside the command deck, Mendez gave directions to Corporal Robles, the Detachment's DSO1 (Driver/Systems Operator). Pressing a few buttons, Robles manipulated the borer that formed a huge dish-shaped nose on the geoplane's bow. Inside the borer, actuators fired to release the ANAD swarm contained there. In seconds, the outer surface of the dish was thick with nanoscale disassemblers, forming a shimmering half-globe around _Gopher's_ nose. Like a single huge blue-white headlamp, the dish and its halo of mechs formed the geoplane's working surface for subterranean operations.

"Let's go digging," Mendez said. "Head for that fissure and contact Ops... tell 'em we're going under."

Robles complied. "Turning left, heading now... one three five degrees. Depth is forty five meters, five degrees down angle."

"Borer coming on line," Sergeant Li Kejiang reported. Li was the Borer Operator, BOP1 for the Detachment. She scanned her instrument panel, reading swarm density, alignment and other parameters. "Bots are ready to bite—"

_Gopher_ slowed down as the fissure approached, then a high keening wail could be heard through the hull, as the borer bit into the rock. The geoplane shuddered as it decelerated. Outside the command deck, unseen by the six-person crew, _Gopher's_ nose buried itself in a shimmering blue-white fog as the borer revved up and uncountable trillions of mechs tore at the rock.

Li licked her lips nervously, reading her instruments. "Coming back mostly quartz and pyroxenes, with some sandstone mixed in. Bots should eat this stuff up."

The geoplane plunged into the tunnel created by the borer, angling nose down as she bit deeper into the side of the fissure.

_Gopher's_ instrument panel showed the results of acoustic sounding, displaying rock layers on a graph, with temperature and pressure readings all around the graph. Borer status was displayed as well.

"Looking good," Robles muttered. "Borer configured for quartz and pyroxenes...ANAD's chewing through at a rate of two point five miles per hour. Treads are functioning fine."

"She's a real hot rod...let's try some basic maneuvers," Mendez suggested. " _Gopher_ 's never had a proper shakedown cruise."

"Aye, sir--" Robles turned the stick to port and _Gopher_ initiated a shallow left-hand bank. The command deck listed slightly, then stabilized. For the next few minutes, first Robles, then Mendez took turns putting the geoplane through a series of turns, dives and climbs.

Mendez began to relax his grip on the stick slightly, trying to forget they were now hundreds of feet below ground.

"There's a layer of basaltic rock a few klicks south of here," he remembered. "It's nearly a mile down. We should see how _Gopher_ handles there."

Robles was cautious. "Sir, remember what Captain Karst told us in the briefing: _don't push her too hard on this first test._ Basaltic stuff is superhard and dense...all shale inclusions and quartzite. We're not sure _Gopher's_ hull can take the pressure."

"I know but this is supposed to be a recon mission to find Config Zero swarms. We have to find out how she'll handle. Sergeant Rounds, anything yet?"

Sergeant Rounds was the SS1, Sensors and Surveillance Technician. "Nothing yet, Lieutenant. I'm scanning all bands...EM, thermal, acoustic, quantum....some plate shifting, crustal grinding...that's about it."

"Very well." Mendez programmed a new heading into the tread control system and Robles steered them southeast on a heading of one two five degrees, roughly paralleling the volcanic cone of Sahand and the Eynali ridge at the surface. Acoustic sounding soon showed the geoplane was entering harder, denser rock layers.

"Shales," Sergeant Rita Rono muttered. Rono was GET1 for the Detachment, the Geo Engineering Technician. From earlier briefings with Quantum Corps geologists, she knew the layer was sheeted with hard slate and mica, compacted over millions of years by glaciers and the overriding Eynali mountain range. "Nothing to worry about...just sit back and enjoy the view."

Mendez snorted. The only view they had was of the inner pressure hull of the geoplane. Even as he watched, he imagined that he could see the compression of _Gopher's_ interior frame under the millions of tons pressing down on them.

"Sounding ahead..." Rounds reported. "Your depth is now four eight eight feet. Signal distortion coming back...it's probably the shale zone."

Robles shoved the control stick forward. "I'm going a little deeper...see if we can plow through some of that quartzite."

Mendez was dubious. He studied the sounding profile. "Just don't push _Gopher_ too hard, okay? Let's don't press our luck on the first run. I'm showing discontinuities dead ahead...some kind of boundary layer, maybe."

"Inclusion zone? Maybe it's the quartzite."

Rono shook her head. "It looks more like a fault, maybe a transform fault. The geos said there were fracture zones north of Tabriz."

_Gopher_ angled slightly downward and slowed, as the borer swarm bit into denser rock.

"Cabin temp going up," Robles reported.

"Acknowledged. Those mechs are working overtime up front, making us a tunnel. I—"

Mendez' last words were cut off as _Gopher_ shuddered violently. For a brief moment, there was an unmistakable sensation of sliding, sliding sideways and downward. Almost at the same moment, something hit _Gopher's_ nose with a sickening crunch and the geoplane shuddered again and ground violently to a halt. The cabin tilted to port and stayed tilted.

_Gopher's_ cabin was deathly still for a few moments, then the creaking and groaning of the hull under tremendous pressure started.

"What happened?" Mendez asked, wincing as the tortured sounds of the hull being compressed grew louder.

Robles scanned his instruments nervously. "Borer is offline. I'm getting no responses from the forward module...pressure drop in containment...we may have a breach."

"Great," Mendez muttered. "Just friggin' great. And it looks like we've got a breach in the pressure hull too."

"I see it...cabin air pressure fluctuating...we'd better activate emergency flasks, just in case." Robles toggled a few switches and immediately, high pressure air began flooding all compartments.

Rono was studying the acoustic sounder, replaying the last few moments before the—what exactly _had_ happened? An accident? "Lieutenant, I'm not sure but I think we may have created our own earthquake."

"What? That can't be...can it?"

Rono went over the soundings again. "We were approaching some kind of discontinuity—see right here?" She pointed to the display. "Like a layer or inclusion zone. Remember when the geos told us there were some transform faults and fracture zones around this big volcanic ridge?"

Mendez said, "Vaguely."

Rono was figuring out the scenario as she replayed in her mind what must have happened. "It was the bots in the borer module. The swarm disassembled just enough shale and quartzite and other rock to loosen up the fault. It slipped, shifted around and we were caught in the slide."

"So we did create our own earthquake."

Rono took a deep breath. "So it would seem, sir..."

Mendez drummed fingers on the instrument panel. "Now we've got to figure out a way of getting out of here. What do we have to work with?"

Robles went over his instruments again. "Borer's offline, like I said, and it looks like containment was breached in the accident. I've got no response from the borer swarm, no configs, no data of any kind. That swarm's gone and it's not responding to commands."

Mendez tried a few tricks of his own but with no success. "Well, I do have a master in my shoulder capsule. We could jerry-rig a swarm for the borer if we had to."

"If the module's not too damaged. On top of that, the tread system's not responding...so we have no mobility. And the pressure hull...."

Mendez saw the oxygen level had been dropping significantly in the last few minutes. "We've got to stop that leak...here, let me launch my embedded ANAD." He started to link in.

"ANAD, this is Mendez...do you read me?"

***ANAD copies...reading you loud and clear...what has happened?...ANAD's coupler indicates some kind of swarm break...is the borer functioning?***

How the hell did he know that?

"ANAD, _Gopher's_ had an accident. The pressure hull has been breached. Configure for launch and max replication. I need a local swarm to find and plug the leaks."

***ANAD configuring now...systems initializing...ANAD reporting ready in all respects...***

Mendez unstrapped himself and went aft through the tunnel to the power plant. "Launch, ANAD. Launch now...." As the CC1 went off to check on their power systems, a shimmering light blue fog emerged from the capsule in his left shoulder. Mendez felt a brief sting as the assembler exited containment but the launch sequence seemed smoother than before.

***ANAD replicating...can I get a heading to the target?***

"I'm doing that now," Mendez reported, as he scrambled through the galley and berthing deck and the engineering deck. "Robles, where's the leak? Can you localize it?"

Still back at the command deck, Robles scanned his instruments. "I'm showing maximum pressure drop at frame ninety-six, starboard side...somewhere between E and F deck."

Mendez squirmed through the central access tube. He knew E deck was for Engineering, Shops and Utilities. Just aft was F deck, home to _Gopher's_ hybrid battery and fuel cell power plant.

"I feel it...there's a whistle just off to my left—" Mendez paused, sniffing, letting his senses guide him. _There._ A utilities duct penetrating the bulkhead seemed to be the center of the leak. He saw a faint mist in the air swirling around the duct. "I found it....ANAD configure max propulsor. Home on my signal." He pressed a button on his wristpad.

Several decks forward, the shimmering fog of the assembler swarm wheeled about and began transiting the access tube.

***ANAD is en route to your location...estimated time is twenty-two minutes***

Mendez tried examining the source of the leak, where the inner pressure hull had been stove in. It was scalding hot with swirling steam and air and he couldn't get any closer.

"Hurry, ANAD...this break is getting bigger by the minute."

The ANAD swarm eventually arrived at the site of the breach and promptly went to work. Configuring itself as a tightly interlinked mesh, ANAD sought out the pressure hull penetrations and quickly formed a nanoscale patch over the holes with its trillions of replicants. Gradually, the whistling subsided, then stopped altogether.

"I'm reading air pressure stabilizing in all compartments," Robles reported from the command deck. "The patch seems to be working."

Oscar Mendez breathed a sigh of relief, feeling the cool oxygen of the geoplane's emergency flasks wash over his face. "ANAD, you're a lifesaver."

_***ANAD reporting swarm element in place and holding. No more air molecules can get in or out. I am configured in repeating tetrahedral with radicals at my outer barrier. Oxygens hate that. And yes...I_ did _save the ship, didn't I? Isn't that what you learn in nog school...don't leave your buddies behind?***_

An alarm sounded from the DPS console at the rear of the command deck. Corporal Nguyen was the Defense and Protective Systems tech (DPS1). He swallowed hard.

"Acoustic flag, sir...some kind of swarm, for sure. Not sure whose bots I'm seeing..." his fingers flew over the board. "...but it's a large mass, headed this way, bearing two nine two...I make the range at just under four thousand meters."

Mendez swore under his breath. "On my way...can you get any details, Corporal? Any structure?" The CC1 hurried forward to the command deck.

Nguyen scanned his panel. "Reading high thermals...I'm applying acoustic filtering...lots of seismic noise out there. Looks like it's a bot swarm all right..."

Mendez sank into his seat at the main console. "What about the borer? Can we move?"

Sergeant Li, the BOP1, shook her head. "Negative, sir. Borer still offline. I'm getting nothing from up front. I think the bots are dispersed. We had a containment breach and the lens itself may be damaged."

_Time for ANAD again_ , Mendez thought. Combat at a thousand feet underground was definitely not for the slow-witted. "ANAD, listen up. I need configs for two elements and fast. First, I'm downloading a config for re-populating the borer. Basic stuff. Make reps to fill the borer so we can get the hell out of here."

***ANAD will go to max rate replication for this config. Borer bots are simple things...what is the second element?**

"Defensive shield...we need to be ready to meet this botswarm head on...Nguyen...Rounds, any structure on this swarm?"

"Negative, sir," came both replies. Rounds scanned his sensor board. "Rock's too dense...my filters are having a hard time distinguishing swarm signals from seismic noise. I'm getting acoustics that resemble swarms from Config Zero but it's hard to be sure."

"I get the picture," Mendez said. "ANAD, I'm sending a config for basic defensive shield. Max rate on this as well."

***ANAD understands...grabbing feedstock now...***

A shimmering blue-white fog emerged from _Gopher's_ access tunnel as ANAD fissioned itself for the two configs. Overhead, the master bot slammed atoms and built structure, thickening even as it drifted toward the hatch to the borer module. Sergeant Li cycled the feedport to the borer and the fog drifted on, filling the port, expanding as it replicated into the borer lens itself.

Unseen from the command deck, a second tendril of fog worked its way aft to _Gopher_ 's lockout chamber on G deck. There, the defensive shieldbots would exit the ship and work their way through dense shale rock to confront the oncoming swarm.

Tense moments passed. Li watched her board, noting the pressure and temperature rise inside the borer compartment.

"Just a few more minutes, Lieutenant...borer coming up nicely, pressure now at sixty five percent...I've got some control already."

Mendez checked his tread controls. "Robles, let's get powered up. Once the borer's online, I want to get _Gopher_ the hell out of here."

"Roger that," the DSO replied. He worked with several joysticks. "Treads working now...I'm feeling a little bite al--"

_Gopher_ shuddered and groaned as rock shifted outside. They felt the ship sliding forward, then to the left again, but the motion stopped almost as soon as it started.

"Okay--" Mendez pulled his own hands away from the controls. "No more tread...wait till the borer's up. Let's not make things worse. DPS, where's that swarm?"

"Best estimate is two thousand meters and still closing on our position. They can't move any faster through this rock than we can."

_***ANAD Config Two exiting the ship now***_ came ANAD's voice over the commlink.

"Very well," Mendez checked ship's status one last time. "ANAD, maneuver to these coordinates--" he sent the last reported bearing from Nguyen, "--and hold that position. Form up a frontal shield...assume Config Six Six." Mendez had pulled _that_ one from the ship's archive...it would configure the ANAD nanobotic formation into a barrier that should in theory hold off any bots working their way through the shale rock that had _Gopher_ trapped.

"Borer at ninety percent," Li called out.

_Good enough,_ Méndez thought. "Engage the borer. Robles, get us out of here now! DPS, get your HERF weapon and magpulser spooled up. We may have to fight our way out of this--"

The DPS tech complied, quickly bringing the High-Energy Radio Freq system to power. The magpulser magnetrons were already humming as well. _Gopher_ had quite a bite for any bots that came too close.

The ship shifted, slid a little, then lurched forward with a vigorous shake, like a dog let off its leash.

"Borer operating at ninety-five percent," said Li. She manipulated her controls, shaping the hemispherical globe of bots that were beginning to chew away at the rock layers surrounding them. "Pressure and temps nominal, configs look good, we're digging out--"

"Best forward speed, DSO," Mendez ordered.

Robles shifted his stick slightly and the ship leveled off, then lurched forward and settled into a steady humming vibration. A cheer erupted on the command deck.

"We're moving!" said Li.

" _Gopher_ moving out smartly," Robles added. He steadied his stick, feeling the force of the rock pressing against the treads and the hull. "Setting cruise speed...now two point five kilometers per hour."

"Steer toward that swarm. Nguyen, give us a bearing. ANAD, hold on, okay. We're maneuvering to intercept."

Now finally underway, _Gopher_ propelled herself on full tread and borer toward the Config Zero bots, less than a thousand meters to starboard.

"SS1, what are we dealing with here...got any structure on those bots?"

Sergeant Rounds licked his lips and scanned his board. "Acoustics look like Config Zero-type bots, sir. I've been able to run the data through filtering, screen some of the seismic stuff. EMs and thermal...too soon to tell. Best guess, Lieutenant: we're dealing with standard bots we've seen before from this source."

"That's good enough for me. ANAD, prepare for combat launch...assume Config C-7, opposed entry."

Clinging to _Gopher's_ outer hall as she squeezed through the layers of shale and slate several thousand feet underground, the ANAD master responded.

***ANAD ready in all respects...assuming C-7, extending effectors now, priming bond disrupters...enzymatic knife in position...just give the word, Hub and I'll tear 'em to pieces***

Mendez had to smile, as did others on the command circuit. ANAD was like a little bulldog, straining at his leash. His personality algorithms needed work but there were some quirks that made the little bug kind of endearing, even to hardened nanotroopers.

"Less than two hundred meters, Skipper," said Rounds. "Possible aspect change on swarm mass...he may be replicating...I'm seeing enhanced returns, mass changes--"

Mendez checked _Gopher's_ status on his own panel. "Robles, slow to one-third. DPS, get HERF ready. I want to blast the sonofabitch first with rf, then send ANAD out."

"HERF fully charged, Lieutenant. Pulse mode enabled." Nguyen's finger hovered over the FIRE button, ready to release a thunderclap of radio-frequency energy. With any luck, the bolt would fry enough enemy bots to make ANAD's job a little easier.

"Very well. ANAD...you may launch when you've reached fifty percent mass."

The master bot had already started replicating, grabbing atoms from local shale and slate layers, building billions and billions of daughter bots, building out the swarm.

***At fifty five percent now, Hub...ANAD is releasing now...launching from base...***

Aboard _Gopher's_ command deck, Mendez toggled the quantum coupler circuit to show the view from ANAD's nanometer scale. Troopers had long referred to this switch as "going over the waterfall."

At first, nothing made any sense. It was disorienting in the extreme, like going over the top of a roller coaster ride and your head was spinning out of control. Like standing on the beach in a driving sleet storm, with triangles and polygons and tetrahedrals and nightmarish tangled shapes blasting by your head. Gradually, your mind somehow made sense of the scene and the image settled down and stabilized. In a few seconds, you had gone from the macro world of things and substances and 3-dimensional shapes to the nanometer world of atoms and molecules and Brownian motion. Mendez shook his head, focused and fiddled with the gain on the imager, trying to make some kind of sense of all the photons ANAD was sending back.

To Mendez's eye, maneuvering through layers of black shale rock was like flying over a field of broken gravel at an altitude of one foot. Calcium, sodium and magnesium molecules flitted by like trees in a hurricane. ANAD navigated as best he could through the jungle, forcing his way through narrow crevices and corners, squeezing through tight defiles and shifting back and forth to make some kind of headway.

"EM spike dead ahead, Skipper," called out the SS1, Sergeant Rounds. "Big mass, lots of acoustics too."

Gradually, the imager settled down to a dark, staticky, grainy picture--of what? Mendez squinted, leaned forward. The view slowly materialized--a dense, regular lattice of throbbing, quivering spheres.

"Crystalline structures," Sergeant Rono (GET1) reported. "Looks like calcium. Maybe carbons--

Mendez was mesmerized by the perfect geometry. "Oxygens too, Sergeant." He pointed to long rows of tiny darkened blobs, marching off into the distance like a fence. "A cubical lattice, just like the micrographs. A crystalline solid--"

"Limestone's mostly calcium anyway, with some oxygens and carbons mixed in. Interlocking crystals--it's beautiful."

"And damned hard to navigate. Like a jungle...this stuff's so dense, ANAD's speed is way down. Enable the voice link--"

Mendez strained to see anything and then...there it was. Shadows drifting in and among the structurally tight crystalline lattices of silicon and calcium and iron and half a dozen over things. "Slow to one quarter propulsor--" he told ANAD.

Over the next few moments, the enemy swarm came into view, gradually materializing among the loose atoms and clusters that choked the lattice. It was like playing hide and seek in a dense forest.

The bots looked like a chorus line of squat cylinders, festooned with effectors and gizmos around their circumference.

"Looks like some kind of shaggy cat," muttered Rounds. "What the hell are all those things?"

"I don't know," said Nguyen "but they're all coming this way. HERF's ready, Skipper."

"Let 'em have it!" Mendez said. "ANAD...hold on. And cover your ears!"

" _Fire in the hole_!" said Nguyen. He stabbed the FIRE button.

The thunderclap of rf energy stabbed out into the rock and _BOOMED_! back in reverberation through _Gopher'_ s hull. The net effect of blasting waves of radio freq energy was to shatter the enemy formation. It also loosened some of the rock layers through which _Gopher_ was cruising.

The ship's hull shuddered, creaked and groaned. Méndez felt a lurch and there was a momentary sensation of sliding, then a sudden jarring stop.

Rono, the geo tech, examined her instruments. "Side acceleration, Skipper. We're slipping--"

"Losing traction in the treads," Robles reported. He backed off a moment, until _Gopher_ 's tread bit again into the rock stratum.

"Okay," Mendez said, "belay any more HERF. We're shattering the rock around us. ANAD, prepare to engage."

***ANAD ready in all respects, Skipper. Let me at 'em!***

Rounds counted down the range. "Inside of fifty meters, Skipper. Big time EMs now, acoustics show massive swarm approaching, just off our starboard bow."

"Go, ANAD! Launch now!"

Outside the ship's hull, the bot master and its replicants jetted off.

***ANAD underway on full propulsor. All effectors extended, bond disrupters fully charged. Working my way through solid-phase lattice now--**

It was like fighting an enemy through heavy vine and brush, hacking your way forward even as you did battle.

"I've got ANAD!" reported Rounds. "He's closing fast...tell him to bear right ten degrees...I make the enemy mass centroid at ten degrees further to starboard!"

Mendez passed the vector along and ANAD adjusted. He decided to take a peek at the imager.

The scene was chaotic and confusing. The regular crystalline lattice was visible enough, ordered ranks of silicons and oxygens lined up like headstones in a graveyard. Something shadowy and formless moved steadily through the ranks...that was ANAD, the assembler bots twisting and squeezing and shimmying left and right to move through the rock strata. Further ahead, more shadows could just be made out.

The swarms collided twenty-two meters off _Gopher's_ starboard quarter.

***ANAD engaging now...moving in!***

Even at nanoscale dimensions, close-quarters combat was still part momentum and part surprise and ANAD had both. The assembler swarm quickly enveloped the bots of Config Zero. Mendez tweaked the imager, trying to get better resolution, but the view was like cats thrashing in a pool of water, all flying effectors and probes and quick flashes of disrupter fire as each side shot electron volt discharges and tore furiously at the other.

After a few minutes, the DPS1, Corporal Nguyen was bathed in sweat. His fingers whizzed over a keyboard as he sent config changes and effector commands, trying to counter what Config Zero's bots were doing. It quickly became evident that the enemy bots were weakest around their equatorial ring, where most of their effectors couldn't reach. The cylindrical barbell bots had multi-lobed heads, top and bottom, each covered with all manner of effectors that could easily slash, tear and slice unwary ANAD bots that approached on the wrong vector.

"That's the sweet spot--" Nguyen muttered. "Right in the middle...but it takes timing. You have to catch 'em when those effectors are engaged in another direction. Then, _blam_ ...you dive in and zap 'em with everything!"

The battle was a seesaw affair for many minutes. Mendez checked with Rounds, the sensor tech.

"We're slowly losing mass, Skipper. I can see it in the acoustics and EMs, thermals too. Config Zero bots out-replicate us. ANAD disables one, but two more show up right away...we've got to put some new configs in there."

Mendez was hacking away at his own keyboard. "I'm trying, I'm trying...I don't see anything in the archive that--"

Just then, _Gopher_ shuddered again and a loud groan could be heard forward of the command deck. The ship shuddered and slipped and then something slammed them from the starboard. Mendez grabbed a seat back just in time to keep from being thrown to the deck. Beside him, Robles wasn't so fortunate. The DSO was flung to the floor grate and came up bleeding at the temple; his head had struck a stanchion nearby.

The geo tech shook her head. "We're losing it, Skipper!" Rono said. "Seismic signals everywhere...strata shifting all around us! Hang on!"

Mendez didn't need to hear anymore. "Robles, get cranked up...get us the hell out of here! ANAD, return to the ship...we'll pick you up!"

***ANAD understands....attempting to withdraw...I am now fully engaged with the enemy...master bot coming about...I'll have to sacrifice replicants...***

"Do it, ANAD! Hold your position...we'll swing by."

At Mendez' command, Robles steered for ANAD's position. The replicated daughter bots could be abandoned. By design, once the coupler link with the master was broken, a timer circuit ensured the replicants committed atomic seppuku and were disassembled so there was nothing for the enemy to capture.

"I've got the signal!" said Nguyen. "BOP, steer right and center on heading zero eight five."

Robles complied and _Gopher_ was slammed again by another round of tremors. Creaks and groans echoed through the hull. "She's sluggish...we may have lost some tread, Skipper."

"Just keep going," Mendez told him. "We've got to get out of this stratum before _Gopher'_ s crushed."

The ship shimmied and shook like a wet dog as Robles drove them to ANAD's position. Mendez had killed the coupler link. The last remnants of the swarm were quickly being overwhelmed by Config Zero's bots...no sense in following that.

"At least, the borer's still operating," Robles muttered to no one in particular. If _Gopher_ lost that, she'd be stuck but good, trapped ten thousand feet below the Zagros Mountains of northern Iran.

"ANAD bot master signal less than ten meters away," Rounds reported, fiddling with the acoustic and EM detectors. "He may have been damaged...I'm seeing some signal dropout, intermittent spikes and drops."

"ANAD," said Mendez, "do you read? Make your way to the capsule port...full propulsor. We can't wait forever."

_Gopher_ had several launch and capture ports spotted around her hull. ANAD masters and swarms could enter and exit quickly from the ship through their own dedicated lockouts.

But there was no reply over the coupler circuit. "Looks like we've lost comms, Sensor. What's the little guy doing out there?"

"Hard to say with all the seismic noise," Rounds replied. "Best guess: he seems to be in motion...I'm getting acoustic returns that read like propulsor operation. And the signal's getting stronger."

"Okay, as soon as he comes aboard, we're out of here."

Word came less than a minute later, as _Gopher_ rolled and porpoised and shook from more tremors and quakes.

"Got 'em, Skipper!" said Rounds. "That's the port cycling...positive ID on capture signal...and something else too...I'm getting EMs forward, looks like ANAD...maybe part of the swarm came back too."

"What are they doing forward?"

The answer came seconds later. Robles saw an immediate drop in borer ops. "Borer swarm mass down ten per cent...I'm compensating, loading new config to make more bots—"

"Is the bot master aboard?"

"Affirmative, Skipper," said Rounds. I've got positive signal from inside the port. It's ANAD, all right."

"Borer still losing mass!" Robles said. The BOP1's fingers flew over his keyboard, countering the effect. "I'm trying another config—"

"Config Zero...it has to be..." Nguyen muttered, checking weapons status: HERF was charged, magpulsers were ready. "Skipper, Config Zero somehow infected ANAD, rode back home with him. That has to be what happened. Remember ANAD said he was fully engaged with the enemy. We may have some onboard...maybe even inside the borer."

Mendez didn't want to believe it but his tactical sense told him the DPS was probably right. The question was: now what? If Config Zero had infected their borer with his own bots, _Gopher_ was sunk. And if ANAD had brought enemy bots onboard—

He made the difficult decision. "Robles, shut down the borer. Shut it down. And isolate that capture port. We've got to scrub _Gopher_ from bow to stern...then we can re-boot the borer."

"Sir, if I shut down—"

"Do it now!"

Robles managed the shutdown and _Gopher's_ forward momentum died off.

"What about that capture port?"

Rounds didn't like what he was seeing. "I'm getting mixed signals, like the port's both open and closed. ANAD's inside, I'm sure of that. But there's something mixed in...I'd better go take a look—"

The SS1 unbuckled himself, steadied himself against more pitching and heaving of the command deck, and disappeared down the central tunnel. The capture port that ANAD had reached was aft, amidships on D Deck, Stores and Supplies. Rounds slipped into the tunnel and worked his way to D deck, holding on to anything he could as _Gopher_ slid and rolled and vibrated from the tremors. It was like being inside of a barrel going over a waterfall.

When he got to D deck, he spun the hatch wheel and shoved himself inside.

Stores and Supplies was filled with crates and boxes and pallets of gear. It was _Gopher's_ pantry and attic closet. But that wasn't what caught Rounds' attention.

Drifting in among the crates was a glowing fog, slowly filling every vacant space on the deck. The fog was flecked with pinpricks of light, like a silent thunderstorm building overhead.

It wasn't ANAD.

The SS1 was just able to get off a warning. "Attention from D deck...we've got—" and then the swarm was upon him, enveloping him, smothering him. "--- _arrrggghhh_ ...I can't—"

Complete disassembly took about seven minutes. Mendez left the command deck and was poking his head onto D deck in eight. He saw what had happened...what was left of Rounds and quickly slammed the hatch, dogging it shut. He hustled back to the command deck.

Before he could make it, _Gopher_ shuddered violently and began a slow clockwise roll, with a sickening screech coming from somewhere forward. Mendez crawled and staggered up to the command deck. Chaos and panic filled the space.

Rono, the geo tech, was barely clinging to her console. "---P wave coming, high magnitude transverse waves, lots of 'em, coming this way—"

The crew of _Gopher_ didn't know it at the time but the Config Zero swarms had somehow managed to lubricate the rock strata surrounding the geoplane. A punishing series of tremors radiated outward through the region, oblique convergent plate boundaries letting go as the rock underlying the Zagros Mountains gave way in a spreading fracture zone, propagating outward like a sheet of glass cracking.

The swarms of nanobots had insinuated themselves into multiple fault zones and disassembled enough rock to release the massive strain which had built up over the centuries. Massive seams of slate and feldspar, hundreds of kilometers long, suddenly wrenched forward with crushing force, sending shock waves and seismic energy halfway around the Earth, as crustal plates rebounded and jostled each other.

Geoplane _Gopher_ was caught like a bug in a vise. Mendez shouted over the din of the crushing force now slamming them downward.

"ANAD...ANAD, if you can hear me...ANAD, launch _NOW_! I'm sending a config to form up a shield...try to hold back this—"

But he never finished the sentence. Seconds later, the plates shifted again, twisting and crumpling _Gopher_ even further downward, wrenching off her nose and borer lens and crushing the ship into a twisted pile of wreckage.

Geoplane _Gopher_ was destroyed, smashed into oblivion, and all aboard her were lost.
CHAPTER 6

Phobos Station, Mars

August 1, 2110

2200 hours (Mars Coordinated Time MCT)

"She may look like a pile of parts now, but in her day, _Big Mike_ was one hell of a cycler ship."

Layton Pauley and Captain Cory Hawley stared at the image of _Michelangelo_ as the shuttle maneuvered toward Phobos Station. The wardroom was filled with passengers and a few crew members, all taking in the spectacle of Mars and its approaching moon Phobos, now filling the portholes on all sides. The vast scar of the Valles Marineris filled one porthole near the bar and passengers jostled with each other for better views of the huge chasm.

The phasing and approach to Phobos Station would take a day, even though the rock pile of a moon swung around the Red Planet in a relatively low orbit of about four thousand miles., circling the planet in slightly more than seven hours with each revolution.

The last few hours of the approach went off without incident. Twenty hours after departing their cycler ship ride out from Earth, the mottled gray and tan crescent face of Phobos had come nicely into view.

"Still looks like a rock pile to me," Hawley noted.

"Or a potato with cancer," added Pauley. "That blip of light over the terminator...that's _Big Mike_ and Phobos Station. We should be there in about two hours."

Hawley studied the battered surface of the moon through a navigation scope. "The whole place is covered with craters. Phobos has some serious acne."

Pauley had to agree. "She may not look like much but Phobos is an important midway point for Mars. From up here, we can get into and out of Mars orbit pretty easily and you've got one hell of a view below. The astros say she's losing altitude fast and should impact the surface in a few tens of thousands of years."

The approach to Phobos Station went off without a hitch. In loose orbit around the moon, the station was an oddball assortment of cylinders and spheres, hung on trusswork-like structure like grapes on a trellis. A few hundred meters away, _Michelangelo_ floated serenely oblivious to the fantastic vista around her.

Hawley studied the venerable old ship through the nav scope. "She looks like a kebab skewer."

Pauley beamed. "True, she ain't much for the eyes. But she did yeoman duty as a cycler for five years, til _Da Vinci_ and _Voltaire_ and the newer ships came along. Venus, Earth and Mars, around and around. Not the most exciting duty I ever pulled but she was a good ship and we had a good crew. Captain, you remember Marcel Goodwin?"

"Old Goody?...I do indeed. Worked with him building the station here. I guess he was off flight duty then. Gruff old bird but he had some stories that would curdle your nose hairs."

"Yep, that was Goodwin. Best captain I ever worked with. When you're cycling, time passes pretty slowly. It's boring duty. But I have to hand it to Old Goody. We seldom had a boring day. Only C/O I ever served under who could make casualty drills into a contest and get you motivated to pull doubles every week and like it."

Presently, _Michelangelo_ and Phobos Station hove into view, hovering over the gaping Stickney Crater end of Phobos. The mothballed cycler was designed with a long central mast off of which hung cylinders and spheres, a quad of propellant tanks stuck on the aft end above radiation shielding and her plasma torch engine bay.

"She's the only thing around here that could make the trip out past Pluto in less than a year. We don't have a lot of deep-space ships in the vicinity." The shuttle gently maneuvered herself toward a docking port at the nose of the cycler's command and control deck. Soft dock was an almost imperceptible bump, followed by the staccato firing of the capture latches.

"Hard dock," came the announcement over the intercom. "Let's get to work, folks. We've got a lot of work to do and not much time."

Cory Hawley had developed a lot of respect for Frontier Corps people over the years. When word came out from CINCSPACE that _Big Mike_ was to be saved from the scrapyard and converted for deep space ops, he thought the schedule Paris had sent up was insane and that was being kind. But converting _Big Mike_ was priority number one at Phobos Station and the engineers and techs and roughnecks of Frontier Corps had gone to work with pluck and determination you didn't often see back Earthside.

Which was just as well since CINCSPACE had decreed that _Michelangelo_ would launch not later than two months...sixty days...from today, come what may.

Hawley figured the techs would still be nailing parts on the old warhorse even as she lit off her plasma torch engines and headed out.

He made his way down the access tunnel and into the airlock, where a perfunctory exam and some paperwork were completed. He grabbed his gear and bags and pitched them in his bunk compartment three levels down, then drifted back up to B Level to find Vikram Singh, the station's chief engineer, dressing down a few young techs for something they'd done or not done. After haranguing the poor saps for five minutes, Singh kicked them out of his office and blinked hard, realizing it was Cory Hawley hanging at the door.

"Either I've had a few beers too many or that's the legendary Cory Hawley gracing my doorway...I heard you were on the _Voltaire_."

They shook hands, then embraced roughly, slapping each other on the back.

"Yeah, Vik...it's me. And I'm supposed to be driving that old crate you guys are sprucing up. How's it going?"

Singh was partially balding with a fringe of gray hair like a halo around the top of his head. He swept his hand toward the view outside the porthole. "That 'old crate' you're referring to will soon be able to run circles around all the other cyclers, once we get through with her. Complete re-do on all decks and everything aft of the propellant quad is brand new...the engine bay's got higher temperature chambers, high-capacity plates and shielding. Plus a new reactor core, right out of the box. Take a look—"

Singh pressed a few keys on his desk keyboard and the swarm box on his desk came alive, a faint sparkling fog issuing out of its head like a smoking chimney. In seconds, the swarm formed itself into a scale model likeness of the _Michelangelo_ , floating in space between the two men.

Hawley marveled at the detail. Right down to the seams on her hab spaces and the stores and supplies pods hung off the main struts, the nanobotic model was a faithful reproduction of the ship floating right outside the windows.

"Layton Pauley was right...it _does_ look like a kebab skewer. Those pods could be the onions."

Singh snorted. "Those pods you call onions are A, B, and C decks. That's where you're going to spend the next six months, Captain."

"I want to see for myself, Vik."

Singh smiled. "First, you meet my assistant...Viktor." Singh pressed another button and the swarm box issued more glowing fog. This time, a para-human angel entity formed up, hovering over them like something out of a dream. The bot stream swirled and shifted, drifting and coalescing into the likeness of a face and shoulders...a passable sim of a bearded, squint-eyed sage with a double-chin...a suitable resemblance to Buddha himself.

Hawley was duly impressed. "Hello, Viktor...what exactly do you do around this place anyway?"

The Viktor angel swirled and brightened as the bots built structure and stabilized the image.

***I assist Dr. Singh in any way possible. I take notes and images, manage assignments, handle correspondence and perform many other essential functions for this project***

Hawley understood. "You're a glorified secretary." The swarm brightened and roiled like a time-lapse storm front at Hawley's words.

"You're not hurting his feelings by calling him a secretary," Singh said. "Viktor's very proud of what he does. I couldn't manage this mess without him."

***And I have the greatest respect and admiration for Dr. Singh and what he has been able to accomplish in renovating Michelangelo, with limited time and resources***

"A secretary _and_ a cheerleader...Vik, anytime I need an ego boost, I know where to come. Now how about a little trip to see _Big Mike_?"

"Follow me."

Singh and Hawley made their way down the station's central gangway to an airlock at the end of C Deck. They cycled through and found themselves aboard _Michelangelo's_ Service and Support deck, the bottom onion on the kebab skewer.

"Let's go forward...to the command deck. If I'm right, your exec's already aboard."

"Liu? I didn't know she had arrived."

Singh smiled. "Captain, there's a lot you don't know about what goes on around here."

The two men made their way forward through the ship's central tunnel, past wire and cable bundles, exposed ventilation ductwork and workbots drifting from deck to deck, carrying tools, supplies, lunch buckets and everything else crews needed. Finishing _Big Mike_ was priority number one at Phobos Station and every able-bodied man and bot had been drafted for the work, which had proceeded around the clock for the last few months.

A Deck was command and control center for the ship. Hawley followed Singh through the hatch and settled onto a landing just outside the main control station. They entered the space and found the compartment jammed with electricians, workbots and floating clumps of terminal boards and junction boxes.

A woman sat at the commander's station, checking off switch positions against a tablet strapped to her knee. She had short jet black hair and high, angular cheeks, giving her a haughty, almost arrogant look to her vaguely Asian face. Her uniform said UNISPACE and Hawley instantly recognized Commander Victoria Liu from the back.

"Attention on deck!" he snapped, partly in jest, just to see what would happen.

Liu's head snapped around and she was already springing out of the seat when she realized Hawley's joke. She stood up, clinging to a nearby stanchion and the tablet banged against the seat.

"Captain Hawley...I heard the shuttle dock a while ago...didn't know you were aboard her. Er...welcome to _Michelangelo_ ...I was just checking settings on the main panel—"

"At ease, Commander...don't stop what you're doing. I just wanted to see things for myself. It's been a few years since I served on a cycler."

"Yes, sir...she's coming along nicely...all the controls are powered up...we're just running continuity checks today, sir. You know how the schedule is, sir."

"Insane as usual. Glad to have you on the crew. I heard you've got some special orders...right from CINCSPACE?"

Liu nodded. "I do, sir...came in just two days ago." She pulled out a small disk, handed it over to Hawley. "Recorded off the secure circuit...encrypted TOP PURPLE." She glanced uneasily at Singh, wondering—

Hawley pocketed the disk. "Oh, don't worry... Vik's cleared to that level, Commander. Just give me a quick rundown."

"Well, sir...according to CINCSPACE and the orders, I'm to head down-sun in a week...Lunar Farside. Intelligence briefings with the people that discovered _Devil's Eye_. Then I'm to head Earthside and get a personal mission tasking from CINCSPACE himself...eyes only."

Hawley winced. "That's a six week trip...and the next cycler's not due for what...ten days? Orlov must have a burr up his ass for this kind of briefing. Any idea what it's about?"

"None, sir. Just that I was to come alone and it had to be in person, UNIFORCE Paris...the Quartier General, you know."

"Yeah, it's better than the Paris Zoo. You'll love it. By the way, have you seen the crew manifest for this little jaunt into the void?"

"Briefly. Lieutenant Kohl is a first-rate navigation officer. He's the only one I know personally."

Hawley pulled a commandpad from his pocket and called up the duty roster. "Check out the Engineering Officer, Commander."

Liu studied the names, reading aloud as she went down the list. "—Engineering Officer...Commander...er, Element B...excuse me, sir. What exactly is that?"

Hawley shrugged. "UNISPACE's latest fad. Now, we're just like Quantum Corps. Commander, your engineering officer is a swarm angel. A cloud of bugs."

Liu stared back, swallowing her irritation. Clearly, Hawley didn't know she was enhanced herself. She didn't feel the need to hit people over the head with it, but _really_ ... who wasn't nowadays. "You're kidding. We have swarm entities now serving as line officers...on actual ships...underway?"

"Get ready, Commander. Further adventures in outer space...that's what I call it. I can't wait till we muster the crew for the first time."

Vikram Singh cleared his throat. "Perhaps, a tour of the ship, Captain...I can show you some of the new stuff we've installed on Big Mike."

With that, Hawley and Singh headed aft through _Michelangelo's_ main gangway. Victoria Liu was left alone on the command deck, with her blueprints and wiring bundles, wondering.

The trip down-sun to Lunar Farside took nearly six weeks by cycler ship. Victoria Liu spent most of that time going over the prints and specs for Big Mike and the tactical scenarios from past UNISPACE deep space ops, of which there were precious few. She sat velcro-ed into her seat at the Andromeda Bar late one evening wondering what they would encounter in the Great Beyond. Andromeda was the only dive worth hanging out in aboard cycler ship _Candide_ as the ship approached T day, when the shuttle would zip up from Gateway Station and dock with the cycler. Liu was one of three passengers destined for the Moon, and the only one with clearance for Farside. The trip down from T-point to Farside would take about two days.

She sipped at something the barbot had called Bug Juice, some kind of local concoction that tasted like a mixture of kerosene and cat piss and scanned mission reports from past trips UNISPACE ships had made out beyond Saturn. There were only three, all research and recon jobs. One mission, Operation _Far Trails_ , had nearly met with disaster on approach to the Uranus system, when the ship, a converted cycler like Big Mike, had lost one of her plasma engines in an explosion. Investigators had called it an accident... but scuttlebutt around the Corps had whispered sabotage...or worse, for several years. Liu had heard some of the stories herself.

Now _Michelangelo_ would be traveling further from the Sun than any crewed ship ever, out into the very fringes of the Oort Cloud, where the Sun's influence dropped off rapidly and you were on the front porch of interstellar space itself. Liu chuckled at the quotation someone had appended to the report she was scanning: _Here Be Demons_.

In the days of Columbus, mapmakers had done things like that around the edges of their maps, to denote the fact that nobody knew what lay beyond the edge of the world.

She figured she knew how they felt.

Liu finished off her drink and watched the shuttle approaching _Candide_ through a nearby porthole, lining up for docking at the forward port.

_Guess I'd better get my gear together_ , she decided. Two more days aboard these crates and she'd thankfully be on the ground again, if you could call moon dirt and lunacrete flooring the ground. Anyway, she had a lot to learn about Operation _Sentinel_ and CINCSPACE would want a full report when she made her way down to Paris in a week.

From an approaching shuttle, Farside Observatory looked like a pimple on the dirt floor of Korolev crater. A half dozen domes, buried in regolith, connected by tunnels and dirt roads, the complex housed a few score astronomers and technicians, with a smattering of engineers and assorted dirtbags, Farside was the epicenter of a growing uneasiness about what was now happening in the outer solar system.

Victoria Liu had come to the Moon to get the latest intel on what had become known over the last few months as _Devil's Eye_. It would be her job, and the crew of Big Mike, to find out just what the hell _Devil's Eye_ really was.

The shuttle touched down on landing pad C, a few kilometers north of the complex and Liu rode the crawler in and cycled through the airlocks. She went through the Immigration preliminaries, had a quick med checkup and stowed her gear in an apartment in Kepler wing, the southernmost of Farside's domes.

Then she went looking for Percy Marks and caught up with the astronomer outside SpaceGuard Center, housed in Newton wing.

After exchanging pleasantries, Marks introduced her to Dr. Ernesto Bertelle, another astronomer and they all relocated to the Watch Command Station inside SpaceGuard.

"It's no apparition, Commander," Marks was saying. "Despite what you may have heard or read and there _is_ a lot of crap being put out by the media about this...here, I'll bring it up on optical...just takes a few minutes for the scopes to track it and zero in." He massaged a keyboard and explained that several kilometers away, the south and north lateral and central arrays were in motion, forming a giant virtual telescope to resolve energy sources billions of kilometers away, sources as small as a few meters in diameter. "This board controls our Resolution Optical Interferometer...we call him _Roy_. Roy here will let us take a fuzzy peek at _Devil's Eye_ ...there's not too much to see in visual bands but the infrared bands show what kind of energy source we're dealing with."

Ernesto Bertelle hung over their shoulders. His breath was thick with garlic and Liu put a little distance between them. "Not only infrared...this bugger's a beast in quantum bands as well. It's been shaking and rattling space-time like a wet dog lately...we're getting prodigious output in quantum signals, to and from the anomaly."

Liu studied the image that _Roy_ had collected. "Doesn't look like much... like some kind of gauze curtain. You're sure that's not a gas cloud or something?"

"Check the quantum output," Marks suggested. "This display here—" He pointed to a window on the display with bar graphs and curves dancing across the screen. "We haven't been able to decrypt a thing but whatever the hell it is, it's yakking across the solar system like my wife's mother on a party line. We've isolated one link...the quantum entanglements are particularly dense around Jupiter, decoherence wakes are all bunched up...so we assume the Keeper at Europa, assuming it's still active, is in contact. But what they're saying to each other—" Marks shrugged. "Who knows? We need Quantum Corps' help on this one."

"I'm headed Earthside next week," Liu told them. "I'll ask that question. "So what's your best guess? What the hell is this thing?"

Marks sat down and traced his fingers across the optical display, fingering the faint outlines of the gauze curtain. "In reality it's several thousand kilometers in breadth, but basically, here's what we know officially and for sure about _Devil's Eye_ : the anomaly is a diffuse energy source radiating in multiple bands, from infrared to quantum entanglement states, and the sucker becomes more bizarre the more it is studied. It is in motion, seemingly in a distant orbit around the Sun but at an extreme distance of nearly ninety A.U....that's fourteen billion kilometers from us."

Bertelle took up the explanation. "Exactly. Officially, Farside has taken the position that this cannot be a natural phenomenon. We've had some disagreements about what it is—"

Marks snorted. "To say the least-"

"—in any case, one of the more popular theories is that _Devil's Eye_ is some kind of micro-black hole roving through space which has somehow been grabbed by the Sun's gravity. And then there are some theories about other things...."

"That the Old Ones have arrived," Liu said.

"Exactly. My understanding is that Operation _Sentinel_ is designed to investigate and find out for sure."

"Officially, that's our mission," Liu agreed. "The next—" She was interrupted when two others joined them inside SpaceGuard Center. One was a gaunt, balding man in a Farside jumpsuit, an engineer Liu learned later, from the Systems office. His nameplate read Gortz.

The other visitor wore an odd variant of a Quantum Corps outfit and Liu knew right away the guy was a nanotrooper. He had that look: in equal parts, a faraway look in his eyes from too much time going 'over the waterfall' and twitchy fingers from banging away at a wristpad hacking configs for nanobot swarms. The guy was an atomgrabber for sure and Liu straightened herself up to regard the newcomer with regulation seriousness as he entered the watch center.

His nameplate read Karst.

Gortz made the announcement. "This is Captain Jason Karst...just came up yesterday on the Gateway shuttle...you two may want to talk."

Liu introduced herself. "Commander Victoria Liu, Frontier Corps, Mars Phobos Station—" She shook hands with Karst.

Karst was tall and wiry. "Captain Jason Karst, UN Boundary Patrol—"

Liu was instantly intrigued. "BP? I've heard of you guys...new kids on the block. Is it true what they say...you guys scuttle around like moles underground? What's that like anyway?"

Karst wanted to say something like: _Yeah, Semper Fi to you too, asshole_. But captains didn't mouth off to commanders in any UNIFORCE outfit and get away with it. He maintained an even keel and gritted a smile out.

"Pleased to meet you, Commander. We moles have jobs too. All those earthquakes, you know."

Liu understood. "I've heard a lot of scuttlebutt about that. What are you doing on the Moon?"

Karst smiled faintly. "Orders. We've been chopped directly to UNSAC. Q2 has intel showing some kind of correlation between these tremors and quantum signals coming from someplace off-Earth. I'm here to investigate, see what Dr. Marks has to back that up."

Liu found that intriguing. She explained her mission, the details of Operation _Sentinel_. "Looks like we're in the same game, Captain. Parallel missions. Sometimes, at UNIFORCE, the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing."

Karst said, "Maybe, Commander. I prefer to call it OPSEC. Operational Security. I know one thing. You know another thing. If something happens, neither of us can spill enough beans to make any soup."

"I'll contact CINCSPACE...see if we can't work together. Dr. Marks...is there anything to what Karst is saying? I've seen a few scraps from Q2."

Percy Marks consulted a schedule. "There's a vidcon with Major Folkes at 1530 hours...that's about an hour from now. We've been meeting about once every two or three days...he's Quantum Corps Earthside...I think Intelligence. He may be able to enlighten you. All I know is this: Farside is registering a steady stream of quantum signals, so far not decrypted from off-Earth. We've managed to localize the main signals to Europa. It's probably that Keeper system that Quantum Corps went after ten years ago. We think it's become active again."

Bertelle spoke up. "There's more than one source, though. We've also seen other signal streams from several point sources in the outer solar system, at a great distance from the Sun, possibly a body in the Oort Cloud."

"Or possible from this _Devil's Eye_ phenomena...we have arguments about it day and night," Marks said.

Bertelle acknowledged that. "Pinning down the source of quantum signals from the trail of decoherence wakes is damnably hard, as you know. It's an inexact science. Best guess is _Devil's Eye_ may be one source... but there are indications of multiple sources out there...we're still working the problem."

"And the signals are intermittent," Marks added. "We think we've got a good handle on one burst and it just up and vanishes, right in front of us. There some kind of signal hopping scheme going on as well...some very complex entanglement structure. Whoever or whatever is sending these signals is able to manipulate quantum states in a way we can only dream about...I'd love to get my hands on that system."

"Where is this vidcon, Doctor?" Liu asked.

"My office...if you want, I can have you paged...set your badges to my number and Farside will send you instructions on how to get there...right to your wristpads."

Both officers did that. "I think we'll head for the canteen," Liu told them. "Captain Karst and I have some things to discuss."

The canteen at Farside was located in Kepler wing, the southernmost of the domes that made up the complex. A hand-painted wooden sign had been nailed over the hatch. It read: _Fiji Island Lagoon_. Inside, the place had been done up with ersatz palm trees, bamboo seats and a general Polynesian theme. Another wooden sign nearby was angled to point upward, toward the ceiling. It read: _Bora Bora 238,565 miles_.

Victoria Liu pointed out the containment pod on the bar, containment for swarms of nanobots. It was shaped and decorated to look like an old-timey beer keg.

"Must be the theme of the day...this place can probably change themes in a minute. Polynesian today...who knows, maybe African safari tomorrow."

"Yeah," said Karst. "Nothing like a little piece of home on the rump side of the Moon."

They took seats at the bar and ordered beers, some kind of local concoction.

Liu regarded the Karst coolly. "What's it like burrowing like moles, Captain? You ever get claustrophobia?"

Karst took a long pull on his beer and belched slightly, making a face. It tasted like cat piss. "We're too busy, Commander. There's a lot going on inside a geoplane when you're underground...what with the borer, the treads, maintaining depth and heading, scanning rock layers, all the systems...we don't have time to think about it."

"What kind of speeds can you get out of those things?"

Karst smiled. "A blistering three kilometers per hour, if we floor it. Pedal to the metal, a geoplane does well to average two klicks. If you're sliding through shales and quartz strata, that's some of the hardest rock around. We have to chew our way through that and hope we don't set off any tremors, loosen things up too much."

"You go pretty deep?"

Karst shrugged. "Geoplanes are rated to four thousand meters, depending on the subsurface composition. It's a pressure rating on the hull...like a submarine. Too deep and we either get crushed or the stuff's just too hard for the borer to push through."

Liu understood. "I've ridden damaged shuttles through some pretty hair-raising reentries in my lifetime. I've ejected from a shuttle in a launch abort...that was out of Mariner City, Mars about ten years ago. I've been through explosions and fires and nanobot big bangs aboard ships in deep space...that'll get your attention. But I can't say I've ever gone underground in a ship like you guys. How many of these geoplanes are there?"

Karst pressed a few buttons on his wristpad. "I just sent you a standard TOE for Boundary Patrol. We're organized into detachments...there are five, stationed at tectonic plate boundaries around the world. Plus each plane has two crews: Red and Gold, just like the Navy's boomers. Really, geoplane ops are a lot like submarine missions in the way they're organized. Probably like Frontier Corps too, I imagine."

Liu regarded the suds foaming on top of her beer. "I don't know about that, Captain. I've been with Frontier Corps for twelve years, the last five with Inner Planets detachment. Cycling around Earth, Mars and Venus like some kind of taxi service. You know how it is: weeks and weeks of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror. Now with this business in the outer system, we may finally get to see some action...get our hands dirty and fry some bots for a change. Most think Frontier Corps is run by nannies and grannies. At least, you're on the front lines...."

Karst wasn't convinced of that. Initially, he'd pegged this female O-5 as some kind of hardass space cowboy, but he could see her point. Atomgrabbers, geoplane drivers, space cowboys...they were all the same: everybody wanted to get in tight with Config Zero and blow the cloud of bugs to kingdom come.

"We're all tired of negotiating and maneuvering and collecting intel, for Chrissakes," Liu went on. "We know all we need to know. We know where Config Zero is located. I say blast the sumbitch with everything we've got and see what happens."

"Yeah, maybe that'll work," Karst said. "Unless Zero's got big brothers out there in the Great Beyond. I guess that's where you guys come in...we'll stay Earthside and clean up the neighborhood and you guys make sure the fence is up and working, so we can keep the place clean."

"Amen to that." Liu and Karst toasted their obvious tactical genius and finished off their beers. Liu belched like a man and ordered them both another round from the servbot, which took away their empty mugs and whirred off to get some more. "Then after we've cleaned up the whole solar system, we can see about these Assimilationist goons...nothing but spies and saboteurs, if you ask me."

Karst heard his wristpad chime. They had five minutes to make the vidcon in Percy Marks' office over in Newton wing. "It's political correctness run amok. So many people have fallen for this Assimilationist crap that nobody's sure how to deal with Config Zero anymore. And you've got this Symborg character stirring things up...he's just a cloud of bugs, for crying out loud."

Liu agreed. "People get their panties all in a wad about assimilating with the bots, the Old Ones, the Messiah, some kind of New World...they're just machines. And we created them. ANAD technology has ruined us all. I'd sooner turn my washer-dryer into some kind of god as faint and swoon in front of this Symborg creep, like so many people do."

The chime sounded again. Karst took his refill straight from the servbot and chugged it in one gulp. "Guess we'd better get moving, Commander. We both want to be well informed for our big day in Paris next week...."

The Frontier Corps space cowboy and the geoplane driver staggered out of the canteen together and made their way through the buried tunnel to Newton wing just in time for the vidcon, clutching and grabbing at every post and stanchion along the way to keep from pitching head first to the floor.

Percy Marks already had the vid up and running, with the gnome-like face of Major Brian Folkes, Quantum Corps Q2 officer, filling the screen. Folkes' face was centered among a mosaic of tiled data windows. Marks showed the two officers the best seats to take for proper cam shots back to Folkes. The Q2 officer was billeted at UNIFORCE Paris headquarters...the Quartier General.

Folkes dispensed with the niceties. "The purpose of this briefing is to bring both of you up to speed on what Q2 knows about these quantum signals. I presume Dr. Marks has filled you in on what Farside has found?"

Victoria Liu had already taken an instant dislike to this officious little prick. Intel types were like that, she had long ago decided. "We have, Major. There's a steady stream of quantum signals coming from off-Earth...not yet decrypted. Decoherence wake analysis shows one locus at Europa...probably that Keeper unit and another locus from the outer solar system. That's what we know at the moment, Major."

Folkes' eyebrows lifted. Liu figured that was about as dramatic a response as the gnome was capable of. "Very good, Commander. But there's more. Sigint's been working these signals for some time...they come in bursts—" he paused while one of the tiled data windows animated the signals streaming in toward Earth, like a hail of arrows fired off by Indians. "Both Farside and Q2 have been working on this. I won't bore you with the details—"

"Thanks," Liu said sourly.

"—in any case, we've run correlation analyses and the results show that these signal bursts correlate well with increased earthquake activity. Also BioShield detections of increased swarm activity are showing up."

That got Karst's attention. "Showing up where exactly, Major?"

Folkes leaned off cam for a moment, pressing buttons. The data windows changed to show geo maps, fault lines snaking around the Earth's upper crust. Some were outlined and flashing to draw attention. "Locations are near tectonic plate boundaries, as you can see. Somehow when these decoherence waves increase, swarm activity increases and severe earthquakes and tremors result. It's not random. Somehow, Config Zero is loading these plate boundaries with swarms and they're triggering quakes."

Karst studied the maps. "We're setting up Boundary Patrol sectors and stations near a lot of these fault lines right now. We can react to the swarms but life would be better if we could cut off these command signals at the source."

"That's my bailiwick," Liu said. She explained Operation _Sentinel_ in general details, not knowing if Folkes was fully cleared. "Both of us are in Paris in two days, for more briefings. This _Devil's Eye_ anomaly may well be some kind of command post or transmitter or something, sending along orders to Config Zero. Seems to me we should work on disrupting their command and control at this end too, bollix up Config Zero so orders don't get down to the little troops. That would help Captain Karst too, with his counter-swarm ops underground."

"I'm part of those same briefings you're in, Commander." Folkes adjusted some kind of data glasses on the bridge of his nose, looked up at the cam like a weary professor lecturing a particularly dense student. "UNSAC himself is driving the show. I happen to know tactical coordination is a key theme of the briefings. Frontier Corps, Boundary Patrol, Quantum Corps, Q2 and BioShield...there are a helluva lot of hands in this pie."

"Probably too many," Liu decided. But that was for The Big Guys in Paris to figure out. "Major, what does Q2 know about Config Zero right now...about its tactics, comm protocols, weapons, defenses? I'm wondering if there shouldn't be some kind of special op against Config Zero itself...something to at least disrupt the chain of command here."

Folkes worked his keyboard and the data windows blinked and scrolled more data. "Unofficially, there's something in the works along those lines. I can't say much more at the moment. But that's on the agenda for your briefings."

Karst had a question. "What about this Keeper unit at Jupiter...at Europa, I believe. That's a lot closer than the Oort Cloud or wherever it is you're off to."

Liu tried not to be too patronizing. Karst was young. He didn't know about the Golden Horde case and Operation _Jovian Hammer_ ten years ago. It was in the Quantum Corps archives and it was supposed to be required study for QC officers. But Karst had been in diapers. She suppressed a faint smile.

"Ask that question in Paris, Captain. General Winger will be only too happy to enlighten you. He commanded the mission that tried to disable the Keeper."

Karst shook his head. "Guess I should do my homework, huh, Commander? I've heard of _Jovian Hammer_ but I don't know all the details."

"Study your enemy, Captain. Always sound military advice. Major...are we through here?"

Folkes scanned his board. "You've got the basics from Q2. And Dr. Marks has briefed you in. The rest can wait...till you get here."

"Very well." Liu turned to Karst. "Looks like we've got a date, Captain. Once we drop Earthside, I'll show you around Paris...we'll see all the sights and have a grand time, I'm sure."

Karst chuckled uneasily. This commander from Frontier Corps was truly beginning to get on his nerves. Maybe they _were_ supposed to be fighting the same enemy. But space people had always seemed creepy to Karst. Maybe they spent too long circling around and around in the void. Maybe it was cosmic radiation or loneliness or some strange virus. You never could tell with space people.

He smiled inwardly. _She would probably say the same thing about me. Burrowing underground like moles, wriggling under mountains and oceans and cities like some kind of worm. That's what Config Zero and the Bugs have done to us._ _The enemy's everywhere and nowhere at the same time. When we can't find any enemy to fight, we fight each other._

The drop via shuttle from Gateway Station would take the better part of two days.
CHAPTER 7

Solnet/Omnivision Video Post

@evelyn.ndinka.solnetworldview

August 2, 2110

1750 hours U.T.

SOLNET Special Report:

Symborg: Robotic Messiah?

_The Church of Assimilation started out unpretentiously enough, in the vast slums of Kibera, in Nairobi. By the time the church was up and running, Symborg had already become a kind of public phenomenon, attracting the kind of massive crowds and desperate adulation once reserved for Popes and rock stars. Initially, the Church (hereafter COA) started up in an abandoned shopping center, on the fringes of Soweto West, a really dilapidated field of shanties and huts overrun with rats and trash and rivers of raw sewage (_ dronecam video file COA.112.01 here).

It wasn't long before COA outgrew its crude beginnings and relocated to a more upscale facility near Uhuru Park, a former museum building in Nairobi Hill that was part of the Kenyatta Memorial. The crowds followed and it wasn't long before Kenya Police were dealing with surging millions gridlocking traffic throughout central Nairobi.

A Symborg rally at the Church of Assimilation on Haile Selassie Avenue was a once in a lifetime experience. I've covered the Hajj in Mecca several times before and these rallies approach the fervor and massive crush of humanity that always attends that pilgrimage.

The growth of COA, the growth of Assimilationism as a force, was a sight to behold, nothing short of phenomenal and frightening to the authorities for all the raw emotion and energy that was concentrated in these rallies.

The central figure in all this hurricane of emotion and frenzy was Symborg himself. It was no secret that Symborg was an angel...a semi-human swarm of nanobots. He never made any attempt to hide that.

As a charismatic spiritual and political leader, Symborg has great influence, even though his followers are well aware that he is nothing but a lifelike swarm of nanoscale robotic elements. Physically, his main appearance is that of a handsome middle-aged man of average height but muscular build, but he can assume many other configurations and forms, as needs dictate. Symborg seems to prefer maintaining a consistent 'brand' and 'image, so he does not often present himself in public in anything other than Config One, his most human-like state.

His creators, whoever or whatever they are, have done their homework. Symborg has been programmed with the most effective personality elements of Hitler, Buddha, Jesus, Gandhi, Lincoln and a variety of historical figures, kings and emperors, celebrities and scoundrels. Symborg can assume whatever personality characteristics seem appropriate for the moment. Each is nothing more than a module he can activate or shut off at any time. Yet each is developed, tested and fine-tuned for maximum effect and charisma and the modules can be modified on the fly, probably by Config Zero according to our sources at UNIFORCE and downloaded to Symborg over secure, encrypted quantum communication channels that Humans haven't been able to detect or intercept. This is a point of potential weakness. Sources tell us that Quantum Corps has been trying to exploit this link by detecting, intercepting and scrambling these communications.

Symborg first came to public notice from a small Kenyan village on the borderlands of the east African swarm sanctuary. The village is Kipwezi. He is by appearance a man of darker skin, but not deeply black. One of Symborg's physical capabilities is the ability to manipulate his skin appearance to appear subtly lighter or darker, depending on the needs of the audience. This is a simple matter of manipulating the melanocyte composition of the skin cells at the molecular level, something easy for Symborg to do. He can literally be all things to all people, as any good politician would want.

From the beginning, Symborg has been an advocate of Assimilationism, the idea that man and his ANAD creations are destined to merge into some kind of blended symbiotic organism, part human and part machine.

_Symborg is a messianic character, some have said even a robotic messiah. He is programmed with the healing and teaching abilities of Jesus, the oratorical skills of a Lincoln, a Roosevelt or a Hitler,_ _the enlightened state of a Buddha, the ruthlessness of a Stalin or Mao, the leadership ability of Patton or Nelson or Mohammed, and the sheer intellectual genius of an Einstein. He is or can be all things to all people. But most of all, he is a persuasive advocate for assimilationism and for deconstruction of single-config entities such as Humans into nanobotic swarm elements and their absorption into the mother swarm. This absorption is portrayed by Symborg as something akin to Heaven, nirvana, paradise or just a desirable end-state configuration symbiotically united with the great mother swarm of the Central Entity. Symborg publically uses the phrases 'Central Entity' and 'Mother Swarm' interchangeably with various audiences according to his analysis of their emotional and spiritual needs._

In fact, UNIFORCE sources tell SOLNET that Symborg has the programmed ability to do glutamate trace matching on large numbers of people at the same time...a covert insertion of a few nanobots to sniff out glutamate and dopamine trails in the brains of his followers and the ability to remotely manipulate these trails so as to produce desired emotional states of wonder, enlightenment, happiness, ecstasy, or terror, as the situation dictates. Symborg is like a conductor, orchestrating the ventral tegmentum areas of the brains of his followers to achieve ecstasy or enlightenment or abject terror as his needs dictate. One of the rituals Symborg encourages in his followers is to allow small-scale nanobots to be inserted into them...this is considered good form for those who seek Assimilation. They do this by drinking a small liquid, which contains the nanobots, which then insert themselves. These inserted bots, like angels, allow Symborg to precisely control how his audiences respond to his messages.

Symborg has gathered around himself a small coterie of followers and worshippers. This cabal seems to be a mixture of actual Humans and swarm–angels. They are known publically as the Sons of Assimilation.

Does Symborg have any weaknesses that Quantum Corps can exploit? Do they even want to stop Symborg? Perhaps Symborg is an evolutionary development that shouldn't be stopped...there are some who say this is the Next Step, the next Great Leap and it should be encouraged and nurtured not stopped. This is Quantum Corps' dilemma. Symborg is to some an enemy of everything Human yet many Humans worship him.

That will make defeating Symborg very difficult.

The relationship between Symborg and all the earthquakes that have been rattling the Middle East and southern Europe is at present unclear. UNIFORCE sources say the real problem is trying to distinguish between natural plate movements, natural tremors, and those that are induced by swarm injection around the tectonic plate boundaries. These tremors have already damaged hundreds of structures and killed thousands in the eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East.

A new organization, United Nations Boundary Patrol, has been set up and given the mission of detecting and tracking these induced earthquakes. Their organization, tactical orders, equipment and training have been classified at the highest level, so SOLNET has been unable to learn any more about the unit. Sources say, however, that there appears to be some relationship between the work of Symborg, the activities of Config Zero and all these earthquakes.

_Just what that relationship is and whether it can be defeated is still to be determined_.

**SOLNET Special Report** Ends
CHAPTER 8

UNIFORCE Headquarters

Paris

August 2, 2110

0700 hours UT

Captain Jason Karst and Commander Victoria Liu arrived at the Quartier-General, rode the lift to the seventieth floor briefing deck and were scanned in promptly at 0630 hours. They both availed themselves of coffee and doughnuts in the commissary attached to the briefing center and made their way inside in time for the briefing. Just after 0700 hours, CINCQUANT and CINCSPACE both entered and all on hand snapped to attention.

General Winger waved them to be seated. "At ease, troops. Let's get started."

One other flag rank officer was present and Winger did the introductions. "This is General Mukherjee, UN Boundary Patrol. The purpose of this briefing is two-fold...one is to review and approve the final investigative report on the loss of the geoplane _Gopher_ two months ago. Secondly, to get updates on Operation _Sentinel_ ...the status of the _Michelangelo_ conversion, latest intel and so forth. GENGHIS, would you start by displaying the _Gopher_ accident report for us, please?"

UNSAC's AI replied in soft, dulcet tones: " _Of course, General Winger. I am porting the report to all devices registered with me in these quarters. I will also display the conclusions on the board in front of you."_

Everyone checked their tablets while screens flickered overhead.

Mukherjee spoke up. He was a short, stocky Punjabi Indian with a faint stripe of moustache. "As you can see, BP has cooperated fully with UNIFORCE investigators. The Accident Board has concluded that _Gopher_ was destroyed by swarm assault some two kilometers below the southern Zagros mountains. The exact nature of the swarm assault is not fully determined but we have some telemetry from _Gopher_ indicating they were under assault. Last known course and heading are consistent with normal patrol parameters."

Winger studied the report's conclusions. General Orlov (CINCSPACE) traced his fingers along one of the tectonic plate boundaries on a map. "What does Q2 have to say about the swarms?"

Mukherjee had GENGHIS scroll to that section. "The data support no definitive conclusions as yet. But best estimates are that the swarms were generated based on intercepted tactical comms originating from east Africa, likely the Sanctuary and most probably from Config Zero. Intelligence has concluded, from this sketchy data, that this was a combat assault and _Gopher_ was somehow surprised, possibly damaged in some way and was overwhelmed in the assault. That deep, embedded in hard quartz and slate rock strata, she just couldn't fight her way out of this one."

Orlov was rubbed his chin, speculating. "Maybe the ship's captain made a mistake."

Winger thought of Lieutenant Mendez, _Gopher's_ skipper. He'd been a good kid, a capable atomgrabber from his _nog_ days at the Academy, and eager to bring this new underground combat force up to speed and show what they could do. "Unlikely. I knew _Gopher's_ commander. Mendez was his name. He wasn't one to take needless chances. But we'd better go over the training syllabus again. Karst?"

"Yes, sir?"

"Put that on your list. I'll make it an official recommendation. All Boundary Patrol geoplane captains to get more training on safety procedures and tactical limits on certain maneuvers and operations. No sense being careless."

"I'll get right on it, sir. Uh, sir—" Karst had an idea. "Perhaps we should increase our readiness and alert levels. Conduct all ops at Level 1 now, instead of Level 2."

Winger checked with Mukherjee. "That true, Ajay? Are we operating some missions at Level 2 or below?"

The Boundary Patrol commander nodded. "Routine transits, re-positioning, those sorts of things are normally done at Alert Level 2...it means lower speeds, we don't go as deep so there's less wear and tear on the borer, not all weapons systems manned. In combat and patrol situations, we always operate at Level 1."

"Make that Level 1 for all ops, period," Winger told him. "I'll clear it with UNSAC." To GENGHIS, he said, "GENGHIS, make sure UNSAC gets this recommendation top priority."

GENGHIS replied, _"I will do so immediately, General. I'm bringing the Security Affairs Commissioner avatar on-line now."_ A nearby screen wiped itself clean and was rapidly replaced by an animated avatar of Jurgen Steiner, scowling down on all of them.

The Steiner avatar squinted at an animated paper that fluttered like a bird into his hand. "Accessing recommendations and conclusions file...General Winger, General Mukherjee...you think this is a wise course...going to Level 1 on all ops?"

Winger always found dealing with the Steiner avatar something like living inside of a cartoon. He half expected Bugs Bunny to pop onto the screen...but he didn't say that.

"Yes, sir...I do. Config Zero's active in all sectors now, but especially in the south Med and the Middle East. Boundary Patrol needs to be at full readiness and able to respond as quickly as possible."

The Steiner avatar seemed to freeze for a moment. A glitch, perhaps? Or was the damn thing thinking? Winger decided it didn't matter. The whole session would be recorded and the real UNSAC could play back the whole thing at his leisure. You had to deal with the avatar as if it were UNSAC. He added, "In fact, sir...I'm recommending that we increase our patrol rate in all sectors. There's evidence from Q2 that Config Zero's loading tectonic plate boundaries with swarms, trying to create quakes and tremors. There are four plates that come together in the Middle East...the Arabian, African, Indian and Eurasian. That makes this sector a sort of leveraging point...the Bugs can do a lot of damage by loosening things up in this area. We need to be prepared."

Steiner avatar considered that and a few generic expressions crossed its face, no doubt pulled from some file called Emotions or something. "I'll consider that, General. I have also been reviewing that special op you proposed two months ago...I've already cut mission orders for the op to proceed."

Winger had pressed this issue multiple times in General Staff meetings and in quick encounters with UNSAC in the hallways of the Quartier-General, with no result. Now, the Powers-That-Be could no longer ignore what Q2 and the damage reports from Tabriz and elsewhere were saying.

"The Lab guys have continued to refine the quantum state grabber, sir. They're saying it works over an even broader spectrum of entanglement states and the state-shifting scheme is more robust. I've got a mission plan ready to execute."

'Steiner' nodded perfunctorily. "Proceed as planned, General. And keep me posted. Send me the details and your proposed H-Hour." The avatar's face shifted perspective slightly, seeming to look in the direction of CINCSPACE and Victoria Liu. "Now, it's time for an update from our Operation _Sentinel_ people. General Orlov—"

Orlov addressed the screen. "Commander Liu here is from Frontier Corps. She's assigned as exec on the _Michelangelo_ and has a status report on the conversion of Big Mike."

Liu opened up a presentation file on another screen. "Refurbishment activities are proceeding at a high pace, sir...as of yesterday, the yard had completed just over seventy per cent of assigned tasks. There's still some hull work to do after, around the engine bay...that has to come soon, so we can get the new plasma torch engines installed and do some run-up tests. That's on the critical path but the engineers believe they've got a handle on all the problem areas. As you can see—"

Liu went on for several minutes. Jason Karst entertained himself with a schematic of a geoplane while General Winger watched the Steiner avatar, trying to see just how close a resemblance the sim had to the real UNSAC.

_Too close_ , he decided. It was eerie, he realized, just how well the programmers had captured Steiner's facial tics and nuances...the way his left eyebrow lifted when he was irritated, that little curl at the edge of his lips, like he was a big lion ready to pounce on a helpless prey. Voice, mannerisms, basic personality attributes...the Steiner avatar was a decent stand-in for the real Security Affairs Commissioner. Winger wondered how hard it would be to hack into the file and make changes....

Winger realized he had drifted off for a moment. Steiner was going over something to do with _Sentinel's_ mission.

"...is to establish a network of detectors in the general vicinity of the planetesimal Sedna...that's about thirteen billion kilometers from here, by the way. The purpose of this network is to warn of swarm activity in the outer solar system. Your orders 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 that Farside is calling _Devil's Eye_."

"Yes, sir," said Orlov and Liu together.

The briefing went on for another half an hour, dealing with mission details, chain of command, comm protocols and reporting requirements. From his experience a decade ago aboard Trident in the _Jovian Hammer_ mission at Europa, Winger figured he knew a thing or two about comms from that distance. _Michelangelo's_ crew would ultimately wind up nearly fourteen billion kilometers from Earth. Two-way comms were out. Signals would take an average of thirteen hours one-way, over a day for round-trip talks.

_Michelangelo's_ crew would be on their own in a way even they wouldn't fully appreciate until they got there. Flexibility and readiness were the key. You had to be ready for anything...the more unexpected and bizarre, the more likely it was to happen.

That was one lesson Europa and dealing with the Keeper had taught Johnny Winger. He figured it was worth sitting down with Liu and Karst over a dinner and making that point.

When the briefing was over and 'Steiner' had signed off, Winger invited Karst and Liu to join him at a small bistro he knew of a few blocks away, on a side street off the Rue Montaigne.

"It's a hole in the wall," he admitted. "But the drinks and the veal are to die for. "

Orlov begged off. But Karst and Liu could hardly say no to their commanding officer.

The Café Langevin turned out to be a closet with some tables and checkered canopies outside on the sidewalk. It was a warm, muggy evening in the 5th Arrondisement and pedestrian traffic was heavy, but Winger found an isolated table near the front door and ordered a round of drinks for all.

"You're heading to Table Top, I hear," he said to Karst as the Boundary Patrol Captain sniffed suspiciously at the rim of his wine glass, then took an experimental taste of the Merlow.

Karst nodded. "Got a hyperjet to catch tomorrow at 0530 hours...Dordain Spaceport. I need to grab a ride from somewhere."

"I'll arrange a jetcab," Winger said. He popped a small baguette into his mouth and washed it down with his own Pinot Noir. "That's the quickest way. Ever been to Table Top before, Captain?"

"Did my first stint with 2nd Nano after the Academy there, sir. Quite a place...you can't beat the view."

"Yeah, I know what you mean." Winger could see the Buffalo Ridge topped with snow in his mind, like a cake with frosting. "Especially in the winter."

"General," Liu sniffed at her own burgundy. "You spent some time at Europa, with that Keeper thing. What was it like...being out there so far?"

"Like being in a funhouse full of mirrors," he admitted. "The Keeper is a quantum system, able to manipulate quantum states. We could never be sure what we were assaulting was the real thing...or what that even meant. One minute we'd be at the outer edge of the Keeper, slamming it with HERF and mag weapons...the next minute, we'd be a kilometer away, back aboard the _Trident_. An enemy that can do that has to be approached with care. In the end, I'm not sure we ever did anything but slightly interfere with it, and probably annoy the hell out of it."

Liu pressed the issue. "I read the mission reports on the ride down from Phobos Station, General. Somewhere, I believe I read that comms were a big issue...it took so long to get signals back and forth from here to Jupiter."

"I couldn't say it in an official report," Winger told her, "but out there in the Big Deep, you're on your own. Command can't really be exercised at that distance, not from Earth. It's too far. That puts a premium on using what you have, being resourceful, flexible. You have to anticipate what the enemy's going to do. And when the enemy's a cloud of nanobots organized like some kind of hive mind and with quantum capabilities, that's not easy. I don't envy you, Commander. Operation _Sentinel_ is risky as hell. It's the right thing to do. But all the training in the world can't prepare you for what might be out there. That's what happened on _Jovian Hammer_. We ran into things that weren't in the book. We had to write our own book. You will too."

Victoria Liu tightened her lips and tasted the wine thoughtfully. "With all due respects, sir...Operation _Sentinel's_ better equipped and trained for this mission than _Jovian Hammer_."

"Sure you are. And that's why you've got a hand-me-down cycler for a ride out to Pluto, Commander. Don't kid yourself. It's not how much you know that matters on this mission. It's what you don't know...and having the smarts to admit what you don't know. You'll be inventing stuff nobody's ever heard of or thought about once you're on station. Get used to it."

Jason Karst chewed on a hard roll. "General, that would seem to apply to Boundary Patrol, too. Nobody's done this before. Combat ops three kilometers underground—" he shook his head, tore off more roll and popped it in his mouth, "—in my wildest dreams, I couldn't imagine that. "Searching out and fighting Bugs underneath mountains and rubble piles...sounds like a mole's life to me. Our Book of Tactics is re-invented every day."

Winger gave that word picture some thought. "Maybe you're right, Captain. Maybe we should learn from the moles and gophers. It's their world...they know how survive down there. It's like aviation in the early 20th century...or cyberspace in the early 21st. Nobody really knows the environment...we're feeling our way along. And it's the same enemy the Commander's dealing with...a resourceful, persistent and clever enemy...an enemy whose ultimate objective we don't really know or understand. You know: that great nanowarrior Sun Tzu once said"—Winger tapped his wristpad and read the quote out loud-- _"The skillful leader subdues the enemy's troops without any fighting; he captures their cities without laying siege to them; he overthrows their kingdom without lengthy operations. With his forces intact, he disputes mastery of the empire and thus, without losing a man, his triumph is complete._ That's who were dealing with."

"I don't know about that, sir...that's pretty much ancient history," Liu pointed out. "We've got good people...the best equipment. Everybody from Captain Hawley down is eager to punch out and get going. Me, I'd love to get my hands on a cloud of Bugs."

"You'll get your wish soon enough, Commander," Winger said. _And you're just the kind of hardass they'll eat up in a heartbeat,_ he thought to himself. "Dessert, anyone?"

Karst yawned and stretched. "Thanks, sir, but I'll take a rain check on that. I've got an early hyperjet to catch."

Victoria Liu agreed. "Me too, sir...but thanks for the company...and the dinner. Better get back to the hotel and get some shuteye. It's a long ride back to Mars."

Winger paid the café bill and the two officers both disappeared into taxis. He decided to walk back to the Q-G and finish up some paperwork, before heading home. Up in his office on the 66th floor, he dialed up Dana and told her he'd be home within the hour.

"Liam wants you to play a few rounds of _Pirates of Pluto_ with him. He announced awhile ago that you didn't have a snowflake's chance in...well, you know the rest. I had to give him a stern lecture on what kind of language we use around here. This is home, not a combat vessel, you know."

Winger had to laugh. "Tell Cadet Liam Winger he'd better clean up his act. Otherwise, the Commander in Chief'll throw him in the brig for insubordination and that's a promise. Plus, I'll be pleased to kick his behind from here to Pluto and back, any day he wants. See you in two—"

"Very well, Your Majesty, home front...out," Dana Tallant came back.

Five blocks away from the Quartier-General, Victoria Liu came back to the Hotel August Comte and made her way up to her fifteenth floor room. It was furnished like some kind of brothel, she had decided. Peach damask walls. Lace curtains and doilies and Louis XIV chairs. She had a lot of packing to do—the shuttle to Gateway departed the spaceport at 0800 hours tomorrow morning, but she decided a hot shower would make life a little easier. She was tired and sore and was looking forward to the lesser gravity world of the cycler ship and the long ride out to Mars. Earthlife was hard on her slight frame and muscles. Victoria Liu was wiry and strong but there just wasn't a lot of mass there to hold her up. Her shoulders and neck ached from just dragging her bones around in 1-g.

She stripped off her uniform and got the shower going with a voice command. "Medium flow...spray one...hot...and what was that scent I liked--?"

" _Amazon waterfall, ma'am...would you also like the air dry scented?"_

"Negative...just the usual blast." She climbed in and let the stinging hot needles scour her face and shoulders.

Shower over, Liu stepped out of the bathroom, toweling off her hair, when she noticed something odd. Over by the door. Was it smoke? Was there a fire? A faint twinkling fog had drifted into the room, was drifting in she could now see, from around the door handle.

The hairs on the back of her neck stood up. She knew instantly what that was.

Victoria Liu scrambled for some clothing...a robe, a shirt, anything. The fog swelled rapidly and billowed into the room, tendrils reaching the foot of the bed in seconds. She didn't have a weapon with her. Frontier Corps officers didn't carry firearms into briefings at the Q-G. All she was had was... _nothing_.

She dove for her wristpad...maybe she could hit the panic button...but she was a fraction of a second too late. The first puffs of the swarm drifted over her right arm and right away, she screamed. The mechs fell on her with relentless fury.

In seconds, a miniature supernova welled up, flashing and writhing on top of the bed, sheets and pillows kicked and flying in all directions. A small thunderstorm of nanobotic hell throbbed and sparkled and popped as the mechs began stripping atoms from atoms, disassembling the thing that had once been Victoria Liu.

The entire process lasted maybe twenty minutes. At 2215 hours in Room 1525 of the Hotel August Comte, Frontier Corps Commander Victoria Liu had emerged from a hot shower clean and fresh and ready for hot tea and a cool bed. At 2236 hours, the bed was still there. A gray smoking residue of molecular ash remained in the bed, now no longer cool but scorched and torn by nearly half an hour of nanobotic hell.

Victoria Liu was gone.

Yet the process that had begun in her bedroom was not complete. Even as faint wisps of air from the ceiling registers lofted errant dust particles into the air, the gray dust pile jittered and shook with a faint beat of life, newly forming life.

The swarm that had set upon Liu and rapidly consumed her had additional instructions to execute, embedded in its master assembler's quantum processor. A new configuration template was initialized and all replication counters set to zero. The program proceeded with the same implacable determination as the disassembly and assimilation phase had proceeded. The process would take many hours and it would consume most of the room furnishings as feedstock, but the configuration had already been determined and the program would be executed in full.

Hours later, the golden glow of an early morning Parisian sun shone through the sheer gauze of lace curtains, dropping shafts of light on something new, something that had never existed before.

Outwardly, the new thing resembled Victoria Liu in every visible, measurable respect. It had the same taut, wiry frame, with slightly bony shoulders but well-toned arms that spoke of hours in the fitness centers of cycler ships flying between Earth and Mars. It had the same short jet black hair, bobbed in the back, but cut page-boy style in the front, curling over dark brown eyes and a faint mole on her right cheek, just enough blemish to give texture to a smooth, mostly unfurrowed face. The new thing stirred, lifted its perky little half-Asian nose to the breeze and sat up, stretching new muscles with a luxurious yawn.

Assimilation was complete. The new configuration had been loaded and feed atoms grabbed for hours, building new structure, building new forms, into a complete para-human swarm likeness of the original. What once had been a shy little girl from Guangzhou who'd scratched and clawed and sweated and dreamed and finally made a life for herself in the officer ranks of Frontier Corps had become an angel. A ghost. A near-perfect facsimile who would pass even close inspection.

Config Zero had done its homework. The assimilation and replication algorithm approached perfection. Memory, buffers, config translators, all processor elements had been laid down, moments after deconstruction had started. The main platform and actuator mast had been formed. Power cells and picowatt propulsors were added. Sensors and actuators were built and grafted on, from pyridine probes and carbene grabbers to enzymatic knives, hydrogen abstractors and bond disrupters. Triggers were laid in. Growth medium was seeded. The base systems were replicated. Comm centers were learned in and all algorithms were initialized. Response protocols were checked and verified. Finally, just before the Parisian sunshine had come streaming into Room 1525, all internal inhibits and constraints were lifted and all configs exercised one last time.

The Victoria Liu angel rose from the torn scraps of its bed, now fully clothed in a meticulously re-constructed Frontier Corps day uniform. Hand luggage and a purse were slung over its broad athletic shoulders. The angel opened the door and went down the hall to the lift, then rode down to the hotel motor lobby.

"Taxi, Madame?" asked the concierge at the taxi stand. " _Ou voulez-vous aller_? Where to...?" It was a cool, sunny late summer morning along the Rue August Comte and cabs were lined up along the sidewalks in a thrumming line of electric and hydro vehicles.

The Victoria Liu angel indicated a wish to go to Dordain Spaceport. The angel knew that it needed to make a short spaceplane hop up to Gateway Station. It knew also, from files accessed in core memory, that it had to return to Mars Phobos Station and get back to the _Michelangelo_ conversion and outfitting. It calculated the duration of this phase as five weeks, one day, six hours and twenty minutes, from rendezvous with the cycler ship _Da Vinci_.

A taxi was procured and the concierge helped the Liu angel into the back seat. The angel, executing Branch 6225 of its Public Encounter and Response module, had already withdrawn a few euros for a tip and deposited them into the concierge's waiting hand with a pleasant, if slightly vacant smile.

" _Je vous remercie beaucoup, Madame_. Have a very nice day."

The electric pulled away from the curb and sped off into heavy morning traffic.

The taxi driver did not suspect that his passenger was actually a swarm angel entity, masquerading as a UNIFORCE officer. As he negotiated turns through the 5th Arrondisement toward the Boulevard St. Germaine, he occasionally stole surreptitious glances at his fare in the mirror. He found her strikingly attractive, even exotic. She had a certain glow to her skin, he decided. As he maneuvered the taxi around construction barrels and parked cars and sped off toward the A-7 motorway, he began to ponder the possibility of something more intimate than just a taxi ride out to the spaceport.
CHAPTER 9

UNIFORCE Headquarters

Paris

August 10, 2110

1130 hours UT

For Ryne Falkland and Major Lucian Bridges, the suborbital hop from the U.S. East Coast to Paris CDG took only ninety minutes. The sun was just coming up over Runway 15 Right when the hyperjet touched down and kissed the tarmac, then braked hard and taxied smartly over toward Terminal A and their UNIFORCE escorts.

The briefing at UNIFORCE Headquarters was set for 1400 hours. Falkland had spent weeks trying to get a meeting with the brass in Paris, hounding Bridges day and night, in an attempt to push Project Phoenix forward, to demonstrate that the Assimilationists were wrong and that it was possible to de-construct a living being and re-assemble it good as new. All you needed were the right configs, the right algorithms... and a willing subject.

That's what he had come to Paris to impress upon the project managers. The project had come to an impasse and what was needed now was a human subject, a live human subject.

Major Bridges knew this one needed to be kicked upstairs.

They made it to the Quartier-General in good order and after being scanned in, Falkland and Bridges were escorted to a waiting room on the seventieth floor, outside the briefing deck. Word was that they would be meeting with CINCQUANT himself, General Johnny Winger. Winger was something of a legend around UNQC and Northgate University. He'd known old Doc Frost well and had spent weeks at a time at the Autonomous Systems Lab, while the Doc was perfecting his early ANAD devices. Winger knew bots and what you could do with them as well as any man alive.

The briefing deck was a circular theater-style facility, multi-level with screens and displays wrapped around the entire room. An oval of baize-covered tables held center stage with workstations at each location and a spherical display unit was mounted like a statue in the middle.

Falkland and Bridges had only a few moments' wait before CINCQUANT came in, surrounded by staff aides, signing off directives and orders as he took his seat. He shooed the underlings out and greeted Falkland and Bridges, returning Bridges' salute briskly.

"At ease, gentlemen...sit, sit..." Winger pressed a few buttons on his keyboard and the screens at all stations flickered into life. "GENGHIS, would you bring UNSAC on-line, please?"

GENGHIS was the commandnet AI, running all displays and systems in the briefing deck. " _Of course, General Winger. The Security Affairs Commissioner welcomes all participants and expressed his wishes for a productive and effective briefing. All stations are active and on-line."_

"Very well," Winger said. "Dr. Falkland, I couldn't help noticing you're packing a containment pod...you must have brought along a small friend of yours."

_The General doesn't miss much_ , Falkland thought. "That's true, General...it's the Doc III swarm...I believe you're familiar with that series."

Winger smiled broadly. "Indeed, I am. I hosted the first iteration...Doc II that was...on the _Jovian Hammer_ mission. It was like having your conscience constantly blabbing in the background. We had an—" he struggled to find the right word "— _interesting_ relationship, you could say. I trust he's well contained." Winger knew perfectly well that UNIFORCE policy never permitted uncontained swarms at the Q-G. The pod would have been thoroughly scanned and secured at the main gate.

"Doc is a very capable lab assistant for me, General. I brought him along to help me demonstrate what we've accomplished at ASL in the last month."

Winger indicated the animated avatar of UNSAC scowling down from all the screens. "The Security Affairs Commissioner expects to be present momentarily. He asked that you go ahead with your demonstration with his avatar in the meantime."

"Of course. I think you'll be impressed with what we've done. I've worked with Major Bridges here and the project staff to keep everyone here in Paris fully up to date." Falkland extracted a vid clip and loaded it into GENGHIS's nearest port. "This is footage of the last few experiments we ran...I used some experimental animals in these. Actually, they were my pet dogs at one time—"

The vid ran, showing the assimilation and not-quite-complete re-assembly of Falkland's Shih-Tzus, Jiggs and Simon. Falkland narrated.

"We were using a new technique—Major Bridges has sent along the details, I believe—"

Bridges nodded in agreement.

"—it's something I call a 'memory field.' Kind of a new config pattern emitter and buffer. Plus we've tweaked the algorithms. The whole idea is to perform a normal disassembly, then the resulting atomic debris is held in a special containment field that keeps the relevant atoms in close proximity. The field maintains a 'memory' of the original configuration. This memory field is a completely new design, in which all the original atoms and molecules and their bond energies and geometries are stored and used to re-construct the original."

Winger leaned forward to watch the vid. "I don't see the original subject being re-assembled, Dr. Falkland. From what Bridges here told me, you've had some problems."

Falkland agreed, nervously fiddling with the control studs on his containment pod, which lay on the desk next to his tablet. "That's true, General...a few glitches. Actually, perhaps, I could use Doc III to help me explain?"

Winger waved him on. "Please...proceed, Doctor. I'd like to see this."

Falkland pressed the control stud. Immediately, a sparkling smoke trail began issuing from the pod. The smoke thickened and rose into the air, twinkling and fluorescing before them as it began to take shape.

Winger was thoughtful, studying the process. "You've tweaked the replication cycle, Doctor. Doesn't take as long as before. You'll have to show me what you did...I like this. Our combat nano forces can use this technique."

"Anything for our nanotroops, General."

The swarm collected itself into a passable likeness of the head and shoulders of Dr. Irwin Frost. Textures and resolution had been improved. The swarm smiled down on Winger like an old friend.

*** _Good morning, General Winger. It is a pleasure to see you again. We haven't talked in some time***_

"Good morning, Doc—" Winger got up and inspected the formation of bots with a critical eye. "Damn good, Doc, if I do say so. Very few edge effects—that's where the likeness used to break down. Maintaining structure at the periphery...it was hard to control that."

Doc III made a sort of shrugging gesture. *** _I am composed of many new configurations, General. I would be pleased if you would review my config manager and learn about all my new features. I think you'll be impressed. Dr. Falkland and I have worked for months perfecting these configurations***_

"I am impressed," Winger admitted.

The UNSAC avatar on the nearest GENGHIS screen scowled at the scene. "I'm not. Can we get back to business here? Dr. Falkland, your memory field seems to need work, judging from the demo vids you've shown." The avatar had a stern look, no doubt pulled up from some file of appropriate emotional responses.

Falkland spread his hands. "We have some more work to do...I have to admit as much."

The UNSAC avatar analyzed that answer. You could tell when a verbal statement required more than usual analysis...the avatar froze in position, making no gestures at all, until the analysis was done. Then the avatar's face unfroze and its lips curled into a sort of programmed sneer.

"Dr. Falkland, are you really retrieving a living being that has been de-constructed? Or are you just re-creating a simulation of the original?"

It was a question with philosophical and practical, even logistical considerations for UNIFORCE and Falkland knew that. Major Bridges had warned him about this. Nobody wanted to spend a lot of money and time re-creating simulations or angels of people who had been assimilated. ANAD technology could already do that.

Falkland was forthright about the difficulties. "Your question, sir, if I may be so bold, is this: what makes us all unique? If your pattern can be broken down and put back together again, is the result still you? I'm not sure anybody has an answer to that."

Before the avatar could respond, Major Bridges spoke up. "I'm inclined to believe that, if the pattern is faithfully detailed enough, the result _is_ you. It's the old Ship of Theseus test again. Or maybe a kind of reverse Turing test: if the observers can't tell the difference between the original and the re-created entity, then for all practical purposes, the result is you, as Dr. Falkland says."

The avatar scowled again, its favorite look today.

"Doctor, the problem with your theory is that nanobotic technology is almost there anyway. Why do we need this new technique?"

_The avatar that represented Jurgen Steiner must have been well programmed to be a skeptical son of a bitch_ , Winger decided. "Sir, because the Assimilationists are growing in popularity and with this Symborg character, they've got an attractive and determined spokesman...or spokes-swarm. The SG himself has publicly stated that countering Assimilationism is UNIFORCE policy. If we don't resist and find ways to combat it, we're making Config Zero's job a lot easier."

The Steiner avatar considered that, freezing in mid-gesture. _Must be some kind of glitch in the stupid thing_ , Winger decided. Then:

"So what, exactly, is your proposal, Dr. Falkland? Major Bridges here says the project is at a critical point. Is it more money, more time, more experimental subjects...how many Shih Tzus do you need now?"

Falkland tried to remind himself that the avatar...the high-level cartoon, for that was what the thing was, represented the Security Commissioner himself and that everything he said and demonstrated would be recorded, dissected, parsed, analyzed and played back for the real UNSAC.

"Sir, I don't have an answer for your philosophical concerns as such. But Project Phoenix needs to graduate to a larger-scale effort. Major Bridges will confirm that—" The Major nodded vigorously in agreement—"The Project needs to try something bigger. We have some new configs and a new config engine. Doc IV has helped me develop and de-bug new algorithms...some of them I'm using with Doc III himself-" The swarm brightened at the mention of its name and also nodded in agreement.

"To be perfectly candid, sir, I need a volunteer now. A human volunteer willing to be disassembled and re-constructed."

The avatar sniffed. "Just show up at any rally of Symborg's and you'll have thousands of them, Doctor. What's your point?"

Falkland wanted to be explicit. "I need a human subject for a controlled experiment, sir. Symborg's volunteers don't want to come back. But I want to demonstrate that we can de-construct a live subject, then using my memory field technique, we can re-assemble them good as new. And I want to show we can do that repeatedly, and accurately."

Johnny Winger was intrigued by Falkland's idea. "I may have someone in mind, Doctor."

The Steiner avatar turned in Winger's direction. The scowl mutated into something else...disbelief, maybe? Skepticism? It was hard to tell with a cartoon. The resolution wasn't quite fine enough. "General, I'm not letting you volunteer for this nutty scheme. I need you here at UNIFORCE."

"Actually, I had someone else in mind, sir. My daughter Rene. I think most of you know what happened to her ten years ago." Winger detailed how Config Zero had arranged to have Rene kidnapped and taken into the east African Sanctuary. He described how Rene had been rescued by a special ops team led by Dana Tallant and how it was only later that he and Dana had discovered that Rene had already been deconstructed and re-assembled into a swarm angel entity.

"She's been with us ever since," Winger added. "We just couldn't let her...or it...go. We paid for the Corps to rig up a special MOBnet around our apartment, so she would be properly contained. So far...it's worked. But there isn't a day goes by when I don't wish we could get the real Rene back. I guess having an angel in the family is like having a lifelike portrait of a loved one...only this one moves and talks and sort of resembles her."

"How about the resemblance?" Falkland asked. "You said it was pretty lifelike...any edge effects? Pretty even density throughout...that sort of thing?"

Winger shrugged. "We know what she is. I have a son, too...Liam. We try to do things together as a family...of course, Rene has to come in a MOBnet, so we get stares and snide remarks. I guess we sort of pretend she's real, like a little girl having a doll. We set her a place at the table. She sims eating...she's gotten pretty good at it but we had to teach her a lot. All in all, not a bad likeness. Dana says any good counselor would say we're all in denial...that we haven't dealt with Rene being gone yet. Ten years—" Winger had a distant look in his eyes. "That's a long time to be in denial. The counselors are probably right...but...we just can't let go." Winger glared at all of them, daring anyone to object to that. "I think Rene might be a good candidate for Project Phoenix, for what Dr. Falkland wants to do. Of course, I need to discuss it with Dana and the family. But if there's even a chance—"

Falkland was both sympathetic and intrigued. "She could be a good subject...or candidate, General. But after so many years, I'm not sure how we obtain a base configuration for the memory field to impose. Your daughter was deconstructed ten years ago, so the base has been gone, dispersed, for that long. But we may be able to work around that...I'll need to research this—"

The Steiner avatar wasn't convinced. "I'm not sure this is such a good idea, General. Nobody knows bots and swarms better than you but I need a clear-headed command staff to run things here in Paris. You're too close to this. Too invested emotionally in the outcome."

Winger said, "With all respects, sir, I'd like a day to discuss this with my family. If Falkland's config driver really can re-construct Rene like new, I'd like to give it a try. I've always had the feeling Config Zero's been targeting me personally...that's why Rene was kidnapped—"

"Hogwash," the avatar spluttered. "Personal paranoia. Winger, you need more counseling. Schedule yourself more sessions."

"Yes, sir...but I can't help feeling convinced that Config Zero sees me as a primary threat, an obstacle to fulfilling the Prime Key. There's even a theory that says Symborg is nothing but an element of Config Zero, just with a hyper-realistic config. Of course, not everybody believes this."

The Steiner avatar started to reply but froze in mid-sentence. At that moment, the doors to the briefing deck swung open and Jurgen Steiner himself walked in, in person. His wristpad was active, showing the same avatar in frozen mid-sentence.

Steiner nodded to the group and took a seat. "I was playing the vid, Winger, and I heard where this briefing was going. I thought I'd better come down here and sort this out. This is no kind of decision for my avatar to make." To emphasize the point, he punched off the avatar program and his wristpad went dark. GENGHIS wiped the main screen and up came the Quantum Corps logo.

Steiner folded his hands over the table and gave Winger a direct look. "You sure you want to do this? I don't need a CINCQUANT floundering around in the weeds while Config Zero takes over the world."

"I understand what you're saying, sir. I do need to discuss this with Dana. But I'd like to give it a try. I know Doc here thinks swarms and bots and multi-config entities are the wave of the future—" he smiled as the Doc III swarm brightened at the mention of its name. The cloud of bots was just like a dog. If it had a tail, the thing would have wagged. "I used to have this same conversation with Doc II, especially during _Jovian Hammer_ , that long ride out to Europa and back. But technology has changed since then. I'd like to see what Falkland can do. Any chance there might be to get Rene back—" Winger returned Steiner's stare.

Steiner had heard enough. "Okay, General. I'll approve it. Reluctantly and with a hell of a lot of reservations, but I'll approve it. Project Phoenix will be authorized to go to a new phase: live human subjects. Or at least, more or less alive."

The briefing went on for another half an hour, as Falkland detailed the steps he would be taking to make the memory field and the new config pattern buffer and emitter work with the swarm angel that was Rene Winger. "I can't promise anything, General. It all depends on whether we can develop a good base configuration. Off the top of my head, I'd say our best bet is to run you and your wife through the config scanner and develop a base from that...you and your daughter are genetically related and the scan may be close enough to her base atom structure to pull this off. Time will tell."

"What are we waiting for then?" Winger asked. "I'll call Dana and give her a heads up."

Two hours later, Johnny Winger stood on the patio of their sixtieth floor apartment at La Tour St. Vincent, beer in hand, trying to explain what Falkland wanted to do.

Dana Tallant sipped at her own wine, some kind of Burgundy. "Does this thing have even a snowball's chance of working, Wings? Or is this just some egghead's crackpot scheme?"

"Falkland's no egghead, Dana. I've seen the reports, the vids, talked with the man. Sure there are risks. But I'm willing to take them if there's a chance we can get Rene back."

They both turned and looked through the curtains into the family room, through the faint veil of the barrier. Liam was there, earphones on and curled up on the sofa. Supposedly doing his homework, but more likely playing _Black Force: Invaders of the Realm_ on his tablet. Rene was in the background, sitting at a console pianolo, studying a sheet of music, experimentally tapping on keys and making notes.

In the days and weeks after Rene had been rescued from Config Zero and determined to be an angel, Quantum Corps engineers had worked with Winger and Tallant to convert their apartment into one big MOB net, a dense but barely visible mesh of bots designed to contain things like nanobotic swarms. At first, when the full horror of what had happened to her daughter became apparent to Dana, she wanted nothing to do with 'that thing', as she called it. But Winger had convinced her that they should keep 'Rene' around anyway, "like a pet" he called it, but that just upset Dana even more.

"There's a chance that technology will advance enough so that somehow Rene can be reconstructed into something like the original. It could happen—" Neither of them really believed that, but ten years later, Ryne Falkland's memory field technique made the impossible merely difficult.

So they kept 'Rene' contained in their apartment.

Dana was still unconvinced. "I suppose it's better than living like this, pretending we still have a daughter. Wings, we lost Rene ten years ago. We've been living a fantasy ever since...I can see that. Why don't we just secure her into containment and let her go. The gearheads at Table Top would love to have a crack at a swarm like this."

At heart, it was a philosophical question. 'Rene' wasn't really Rene, only a pattern of bots configured to look like Rene. The base config was gone, only the pattern remained. How faithful was the pattern? What were humans if not an enduring pattern of atoms and molecules and cells? What was more important: the base config or the pattern? Nobody had solved that one yet and it gave Winger a headache just thinking about it.

"I think we have to try, Dana. For Rene, for Liam, for all of us. I don't want to live inside a MOB net any more. I'd like to have a normal family."

Tallant laughed at that. "You shouldn't have married a nanotrooper, Wings. The Corps is our real family. All this...it's just for show. Makes us look normal to the outside world."

"But it's _not_ normal. If we do what Falkland wants, at least we have a chance to get our daughter back. Isn't that worth something?"

Tallant turned away from her husband and bent over the patio railing, willing the tears to stay put, not dribble down her face. Nanotroopers didn't show tears. Lachrymal ducts were a weakness...enemy bots could get into your head that way.

"Let's go eat. I made your favorite...burgers and fries. Vanilla milkshakes. Onion rings. It'll be like we're back at Table Top, back in the States. Come on—" She led him by the hand back inside, thumbing the control stud on her MOB pack as she did so. The net momentarily dimmed and thinned, just enough for them to push through into the family room, then returned to its usual shimmering veil.

"Kids, get washed up and get your butts to the table! Dinner in two minutes. And don't bring that tablet with you."

Liam was almost sixteen now, quiet, sullen, bored, in other words a typical teenager. He had blond hair and Dana was sure he'd gotten his face and eyes from Winger. He picked at his fries, nibbled at his burger and answered questions with monosyllable grunts.

Rene sat opposite, prim and erect at her place, methodically working her way through the meal. She was fifteen and not even human. It was by most accounts a remarkably lifelike apparition that sat at the dinner table, a technological marvel to be sure. The swarm of bots that made up 'Rene' had texture and even wrinkles on close inspection, though there were occasionally edge effects and smearing of structure when the thing moved about the apartment. Plus it was unnerving to see Rene drag her arms 'through' seat backs and sofas and table corners, sometimes just for the fun of it, watching the bots part and close up as she did so, like a river flowing around a stone. Still, if you didn't look too closely, you could almost believe the angel was their daughter.

Rene didn't eat in the usual sense but Wings and Dana had trained her to fake it. Dana watched out of the corner of her eye as Rene brought the hamburger bun close to her mouth, then a faint tendril of bots drifted out to envelope the bun and begin rapid disassembly of its atoms and molecules. She opened her mouth, as she had been taught to do, while the burger faded into atom fluff in her hands, then shoved the whole affair into her mouth and began to chew, again as she had been taught to do. A smooth, well-timed process had evolved over the years and it was quite a performance for a cloud of bots.

Dana tried not to look at it any more than necessary. She eyed her own fries and pointedly jammed one in her mouth, while studying Winger's reaction. She saw Liam doodling in his ketchup with a fry.

"Liam! You're not three years old. Stop playing and eat properly."

That earned her a faint smirk and an exaggerated placement of said fry into his mouth, followed by a teeth-clenching chomp and audible swallow.

Conversation was minimal during dinner, mostly school matters... _did you do all your homework yet? don't leave your clothes lying all over the floor and no you can't stay over at Juan and Miguel's apartment tomorrow night._

"Can I leave now?" he asked. "My homework, you know—"

"You may be dismissed," Winger told him, "but I better find that tablet covered with equations in differential calculus and not episodes of _Black Force_. Understood?"

Liam slinked off toward his bedroom. "Yes...sir."

That left Rene and her parents.

"Rene, honey, would you help your mother with the dishes? Your dad has some reports to go over."

The angel brightened momentarily—not something most fifteen-year olds could do, thankfully—and replied.

"Yes, Mother...I'd be happy to help out. Shall I clear the table...is there dessert tonight?"

Dana had forgotten about the ice cream in the fridge. "Let's save that for later, okay? Maybe a snack."

"Sure, Mom." Rene pushed her chair back and stood up. No edge effects, no smearing.

Dana Tallant shook her head as she got up too. _Got to stop that_ , _girl...get a hold of yourself._ Once an atomgrabber, always an atomgrabber, that's what Wings always said. This was supposed to be her daughter, not some experiment in nanobotic operations. But it was hard not to critique the configs, the visual effects, the edge resolution, the swarm tracking, like Rene were some kind of lab rat.

Come on, stop it...just stop it!

They gathered up the dishes and carried them to the kitchen. Winger saw what was going on. He left the table and gently squeezed Dana's arm as he went by, heading to his study. He mouthed: _Let's put her to bed early...we need to talk...in the study_ ....

She nodded and went back to cleaning up the dining room table. Rene was already sorting dishes and popping them into the washer.

Putting Rene to bed was an involved but well-practiced process. The entire apartment was one big MOBnet but Quantum Corps had installed extra containment in Rene's bedroom, ensuring that every seam and opening was sealed and secured, so the swarm that was their daughter could not possibly escape. It was the only way the Corps would let Winger and Dana Tallant live with an enemy swarm whose full capabilities were even now not fully understood. The process involved extra safing procedures and even arming electron beam injectors around the ceiling of the room, injectors that would fire concentrated beams at any bots in danger of breaching containment.

_Not the sort of arrangement that made for pleasant bedtime stories_ , Winger had long ago observed.

"Go to sleep now, honey. Good night—"

Rene was nestled under the covers up to her neck. She smiled back at him. "Good night, Daddy. I love you very much."

Winger swallowed hard. "Good night, sweetie."

He finished arming the injectors and backed his way out of the containment field, pushing through the mesh just before it hardened to Level 1 and buzzed at his passage. Then he shut the door. He ran into Dana in the hall, two wine goblets in hand.

"Back to the patio?"

Winger shuddered in spite of himself. "With pleasure." He took one of the goblets and followed her outside.

Night time Paris lay spread out before them like a jeweled carpet. The Eiffel Tower dominated the horizon, its steel girders backlit and glowing in the twilight of an early evening mist. Sixty stories below them, lorries, turbos and jetcabs circled the Bois de Boulogne like fireflies to a light. Lifters circulated overhead, diving toward their destinations like birds of prey.

Dana Tallant sipped at her wine. "You know Wings, even if Falkland achieves what he wants...we still don't get Rene back. His process creates angels...better resolution swarms, but still angels. Rene's gone. We've got to face that. Some days—" she took a deep breath, "—some days, I think we should just end this. You know—just let Rene go...that's not even Rene in that bedroom. It's just a shadow. Let the injectors do their job and disperse that thing and get on with recovering."

"It's not up to us," Winger reminded her. "Remember what we agreed to with UNIFORCE. We keep the angel around, kind of a reminder of Rene, at least. And they send their people over to do studies and experiments. They run the lab, we feed the subject. That was the deal."

"I'm tired of living in a lab," Dana said. "I want to live in a normal home...and I already know what you're going to say about atomgrabbers. You know what I mean. We owe it to Liam at least. And to each other."

"We'd have to make a trip to the States, to ASL. That's where Falkland is. You heard what he said: we'll both be scanned. He'll use the scans to configure his memory field. Then he'll try to impress that new field on Rene, see if he can make the swarm a tighter entity, finer resolution, more like the real—" he stopped, not wanting to admit he had actually said that "—the real Rene."

Dana put her arms around Winger's shoulders and lay her face there. "She's not real, honey. You know it and I know it. Liam knows it. Even Howie probably knows it, if a housebot can know anything. I think what Falkland is offering is nuts. It's insane. Let him do his experiments on his own subjects. Leave my family alone."

Winger took a deep pull on the wine. It burned on the way down. "This is bigger than just us, Dana. There's another point...the Assimilationists. Symborg. Falkland's trying to prove that de-construction isn't permanent...we can get those people back. If he can prove that, if his process works, it undercuts Symborg and everything he stands for. Remember what we're fighting here. Symborg's just a creation of Config Zero. We can fight the Bugs with HERF blasts and mag weapons. We can counter-swarm and throw every kind of nano in the arsenal at them. But it's hard to fight an idea. That's what Symborg is to so many people. Redemption. Heaven. Nirvana. Whatever you want to call it. Falkland's trying to fight the idea of Symborg with proof that the whole idea behind this Assimilationist heaven is a lie."

"And he wants to make our family part of the battlefield...I can't let him do that, Wings. I _won't_ let him do that."

"We're already part of the battlefield, Dana. Doesn't matter what we think. When you're trying to combat crazies like the Assimilationists, the front is everywhere, it's in everybody's mind. It's damned near impossible to fight an enemy who looks like you and acts like your best friend...there have even been reports of swarm angels infiltrating Boundary Patrol and Quantum Corps units and masquerading as troopers, as Normals, only to turn on their units at strategic moments...how do you fight such a foe? _Can_ we fight such a foe and win? It's like we're fighting ourselves...or a mirror image of ourselves."

Dana squeezed her husband's shoulders and kissed him lightly on the cheek. "I guess we shouldn't fight, huh? You could be an angel yourself."

"No—" Winger turned and kissed her hard on the lips, then embraced her and hugged her as tightly as he could. "No...this is real, babe. This is as real as it gets." He glanced toward their own bedroom and lifted an eyebrow. "I'll prove it to you."

Dana smiled. "Hey, you're on, soldier. Last one into bed cleans the dishes."

They raced for the bedroom, knocking Howie the housebot slightly askew as they romped down the hall.
CHAPTER 10

Solnet/Omnivision Video Post

@anna.kolchinova.solnetworldview

August 15, 2110

1550 hours U.T.

SOLNET Special Report:

" **Ancient Robots"**

The Max Planck Institute of Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany is a pretty staid and stuffy lab for studying the beginnings of Man and the fossil and genetic evidence of our beginnings tens of thousands of years ago. Pretty staid and stuffy....that is, until today.

The Institute is housed in a complex of modern research facilities set in a wooded estate. The buildings are concrete and steel, gently curving architecture that could be a corporate campus anywhere in western Europe or North America. From the outside, there's nothing about the Institute that would indicate what really goes on inside or what kind of bombshells occasionally erupt from this secluded, almost pastoral setting.

Today, just such a bombshell landed, right in the laps of the Board of Directors of the Institute's Department of Human Evolution. The bomb thrower, Dr. Rudolf Volk, made a presentation at this month's Board meeting, a presentation about new finds at the Engebbe, Kenya dig site, new finds which, if confirmed, will radically and forever overturn what we know about Man's ancestors and our origins.

SOLNET reporter Anna Kolchinova was there and files this report:

"The essence of Dr. Volk's presentation is that we now have incontrovertible proof, physical evidence, that Man didn't develop and evolve on this planet alone or unaided. Recent finds of fossilized micro robotic remains among ancient _Homo Erectus_ bones at the Engebbe dig site have swept the world of archaeology and anthropology like a hurricane. Volk is a researcher in the Institute's Department of Human Evolution and was here in Leipzig to present the details of his findings to the Institute's Board of Directors.

"According to Dr. Volk, the robotic remains have been conclusively dated to be synchronous in time with the bone remains. The techniques used were a relatively new, more advanced form of radiocarbon dating, a method called quantum state spectrometry. According to Dr. Volk, the tests have been performed multiple times, by multiple researchers right here at the Institute and the results are consistent across all experiments and experimenters.

"It seems, to quote Dr. Marta Siebeck, an archaeologist on the Board here, that 'we may be descended from ancient robotic creatures.'"

( **Append Video Post 227** ):

" _How is this even possible?" asked Dr. Max Schneer (_ NOTE: Dr. Schneer is current Chairman of the Board of Directors...AnnaK). _"I've seen the dating charts, I've seen all the spectrographs...but that's not my question, Dr. Volk. I'm asking you to take a larger view here, understand what you are suggesting with all this data: that somehow, flesh and blood creatures like you and me, formed of tissue and bone and blood, are somehow evolved from something that was made, a machine, a robot? Surely you understand the implications of this, even if it were proven true?"_

Dr. Volk shifted uneasily in his seat, focusing on the tablet screen in front of him. Lines and spectra from the dating tests filled the screen. "Dr. Schneer, the implications, as you call it, of these spectra, are for other people to decide. I'm a scientist. All I can do is perform the science and make sure my methods are repeatable and above reproach and my data is clean. The test results you see were performed seven times by five different people in three different labs, separated by thousands of kilometers and several weeks in time. No one seriously questions the data anymore. What we all make of this data, how we interpret the data...ah, now that is another question altogether."

_Dr. Uwe Holweg, a physical anthropologist, glared back at Volk like a disappointed parent at a child. "Rudy, you have to see what the data are suggesting. If any of this is true, it means the end of evolution by natural selection. It means what we are today is not the product of random mutations and selection pressures. It means you and I are_ programmed _in some fashion. It means you and I are part robot ourselves, even if we are tissue and blood and bone. What does that do to Darwin? The old man must be spinning in his grave today."_

" _I think that's a fair statement to make," Volk agreed. "It appears that Evolution is not so much by natural selection but by programming."_

" _Yes, exactly..."Holweg went on, warming to the idea. "But what is the end state of this program? We've all heard of this 'Prime Key'. Is that the guiding principle?"_

" _And can we understand this program, like we understand Evolution," added Siebeck. "Can it be altered? What would it take to do that?"_

Volk really didn't want to play speculative games with the Board. He wanted to present the facts and let the philosophers deal with the fallout. But the Board was off and running.

" _The only way I see to alter this program, as you call it, would be to eliminate once and for all our dependence on ANAD-style nanobotic mechanisms. Of course, that would be a great technological leap backward—"_

" _And not jolly likely," said Dr. Schneer. "But if it's not feasible to end the program, or alter it, can we re-direct it? Can we get under the hood, so to speak, and tinker with the program. That's the question."_

Holweg chewed on that idea, then stabbed the air with a finger. "The Assimilationists! That's the answer. Some people think the Assimilationists are collaborating with the enemy. Maybe it's not so much collaboration but a way inside...send a few saboteurs into the mother swarm and try to change the program from that direction."

Volk just wanted to get back to the facts. "I have more data on specific fossil pieces from the dig...if you'd like to—"

But the Board had dropped Science for the moment and preferred to spin theories.

" _Just think what this means for the great Religions," Holweg said. He rubbed his hands like a child in a candy store, trying out theories like so many chocolates. "We've all seen the stories...SOLNET, WorldBeat and the others. Config Zero is some kind of earthly representative of these Old Folks—"_

" _Old Ones," Siebeck corrected him._

" _Exactly. It's Config Zero we have to deal with. I'd like to ask about five thousand questions if I could get an audience with the...the...whatever he or it is."_

" _It's clear," intoned Schneer, facing the SOLNET cameras, his voice deepening into authoritative mode, "that the whole story of human origins has been upended. What Dr. Volk has given us is physical evidence that our understanding of our origins and how we came to be is a mistake. Indeed, if the Assimilationists are to be believed, Man himself is a mistake."_

" _Imagine it," said Holweg, "Evolution is nothing but a program glitch. An error. Some kind of software bug."_

" _Precisely," Schneer agreed. "And as this fellow Symborg says, the programmers are coming back to fix their mistake."_

Volk tried to interject some facts. "The fossils from Engebbe have been categorized into three main classes, as you can see...we have pieces that seem to be some kind of effector, perhaps with graspers...." He pressed buttons on his display controls and a 3-D image of the find danced in the air before the Board. "The second category we've called Sensor Devices—"

But Schneer wasn't listening. "Maybe we anthropologists should be talking with the cosmologists. Surely the study of Life's origins should include a study of these Old Folks and how they may have come to Earth and seeded the environment."

" _Of course, that's all speculation at this point," Siebeck noted. "Dr. Volk, when can you go back to Engebbe? We need more evidence...this really_ is _extraordinary...fossil evidence, geological evidence, even genetic evidence...you have some chemical and materials properties results for us?"_

Volk took a breath, tried to collect his wits. The whole meeting was spinning out of control and Schneer, who was supposed to be in charge, was leading the revolt. "I do, Dr. Siebeck. We've done recent assays on some of the pieces. We're finding octahedral and dodecahedral lattices of iron, silicon, germanium and some unusual elements that don't even appear on our periodic table...we don't know what to make of them."

Volk manipulated the 3-D images and atomic structures rotated in space in front of the Board.

" _We've got to have more evidence," Schneer decided. "The Board will authorize funds for more trips to Engebbe. Dr. Volk, you mentioned some kind of crystal—"_

" _Ah, yes—" Volk changed the display to show a new set of images. The lattices flickered out and were replaced by new structures, crystalline shards magnified millions of times. "We think these crystals may have been part of the processor core...this is controversial, but there are holes and pits suggesting some kind of electron transport mechanism. We need more evidence—"_

Anna Kolchinova's face popped into a small window on the side of the broadcast. "The Board met for most of two days at the Institute. It was one of the more chaotic and tumultuous briefings this reporter has ever covered. And in hours, most of the science world was in an uproar over the news. Headlines rocketed around the world—" Here Kolchinova appended spinning, flashing images of headlines and captions—ANCIENT ROBOTS FROM AFRICAN DIG...BOTS DISPLACE APES AS MANKIND'S FORFATHERS...PREHISTORIC BOTS MAY HAVE CREATED MAN...

Kolchinova went on, summing up the report from Leipzig. "It's hard to tell where this story will go now. There are so many substories here...the science itself and the still unknown physical nature of the find and its relationship to Man today...the Assimilationists and how they will use the story...our increasing dependence on ANAD nanobotic technology and the speed at which this technology evolves and takes over more and more of our lives....

"The Board has determined that more evidence is needed to support and extend Dr. Volk's findings. More expeditions to Engebbe are planned but it should be noted that the dig site is on the boundary of the east African Sanctuary and some ticklish and sensitive diplomatic negotiations with Config Zero and the swarms may be needed."

Kolchinova's face hardened. "There are some who view Config Zero and the swarms as an enemy. There are others who view Config Zero as an ally, even something of a Messiah, or perhaps it's more accurate to refer to Symborg in those terms. Whatever your point of view, it can't be denied that Man is no longer alone, here on Earth and elsewhere. Indeed, if Dr. Volk's evidence can be corroborated, it's clear that Man was never alone and that there is a direct connection between life on this planet and life elsewhere.

"That discovery, if it turns out to be true, can't help but have the most profound effects on every aspect of what Man is about, even his own conception of himself and his place in the Universe. This is Anna Kolchinova, reporting for SOLNET, from the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig, Germany, saying good-bye...until next time—"

\----Symborg switched off the vid and got up from the desk. He went to the windows of the fiftieth floor penthouse suite he had occupied for the last few months and stared out at the lights of night-time Nairobi. A few blocks away, Uhuru Park blazed with light...another rally for the Church of Assimilation was being held and Symborg knew he was due to address the crowd in less than two hours. Condos and office towers in Parklands soared skyward like sentinels in the night sky, nicely framing the darkened humps of the Ngongoro Hills to the south. Shafts of light speared low-hanging clouds around a new show opening at the National Museum, just a few blocks east.

The story SOLNET reported that evening was being spun in a thousand different ways by the quantum processor that was at the heart of Symborg. Probabilities were weighed, correlations run and analyses performed, playing out every imaginable scenario. Different responses were run as simulation algorithms crunched data and created alternative actions and decision points. Symborg opened a link back to Config Zero and transmitted the results of these calculations. Multiple conditions were applied and multiple action sequences were returned to Symborg from the mother swarm.

The decision had been made and the results would be executed in the address Symborg would soon make at Uhuru Park. By analyzing billions of polls, surveys, private communications, uploads and downloads across all networks on Earth and beyond, Symborg and Config Zero had determined the most advantageous strategy to implement the Prime Key.

In his address to the adoring multitudes at Uhuru Park, like some latter-day Pope, Symborg would 'reveal' that he himself was a direct descendant of the micro-robotic devices recently uncovered by Dr. Rudolf Volk.

And the world would have its Messiah.
CHAPTER 11

Autonomous Systems Laboratory

Northgate University, Pennsylvania, USA

August 18, 2110

1430 hours UT

Dr. Ryne Falkland peered at the monitor, watching as Johnny Winger shifted and situated himself to be more comfortable inside the Configuration Scanner.

"All comfy in there?" he asked.

Winger was dressed in a light gown, covered in wires and pads. "This is how I want to spend my vacation, Doc. All wired up and crammed in a tunnel. Hope you're not planning on disassembling this creaky old body. Let's get going."

"Very well." Falkland pressed a few keys and the medbot whirred up to Winger's bed, a syringe extended and its effectors brought the needle into contact with an IV stent. "Here goes...." He pressed one button. The medbot responded by loading the IV tube with anesthetic. In seconds, Falkland could see Winger's eyes flutter shut. EEG and EKG showed him deeply under in less than a minute. _Now the fun begins_ , he told himself. Five hours of it.

In an adjoining room, Dana Tallant was still groggy from her own time in the Config Scanner that morning. So far, the scans had gone as well as Falkland could have expected. After a few hours inside, he hoped to have a full atom scan of each one, gathering enough bond and geometry data to impose a new configuration on the Rene-angel they had brought from Paris. With enough scan data and a little luck, the new configuration would so closely resemble the original Rene Winger that both parents couldn't tell the difference.

Falkland studied the readouts on Winger closely. The subject needed to be well under and moving into Stage III sleep, completely immobilized, for some four to five hours, in order for the scan to be good. If all went well, the new Config Scanner would detect and build a detailed image of its subject's atomic configuration, including atomic species, bond energies and bond geometry. This massive database, once populated, was the core of the config driver and engine, the device which would later grab atoms from feedstock to re-construct the original pattern.

That was the plan.

Falkland had tweaked and adjusted this scanner and config engine over the last few years to a point where he could now routinely disassemble small animals and more or less reconstruct them into a nearly exact likeness of the original. Not that there weren't occasional hiccups, as had happened with Jiggs and Simon. But that's how Science advanced, in fits and starts, three steps forward and two steps back.

To do this with organic matter or living creatures was in fact a stunning achievement, if not yet fully appreciated, due to UNIFORCE security restrictions. Never before, in the fifty year history of nanobotic technology, had anyone been able to do this. Of course, since his earlier subjects had been animals, nobody knew if they really were like the originals...the principle of Continuity of Consciousness had clearly been violated and the reconstructed animals might have been just extremely realistic simulations, angels like Rene Winger herself and not the real thing. General Winger himself had pointed that out in the last briefing Falkland had given at UNIFORCE Headquarters.

That's why a human subject was needed. That's why this was really still an experiment.

Falkland was sure this technique, using an imposed memory field on raw atomic matter, would give him a good pattern on the original Rene Winger. He'd recommended that Johnny Winger and Dana Tallant, Rene's parents, let themselves be scanned. Then with some tweaks and adjustments to the database that he accumulated, he was sure he could get pretty close to the original Rene pattern...blending genomic data from the two scans with the pattern data and sort of averaging out the data should, he theorized, provide a good foundation pattern to reconstruct Rene.

Of course, what was missing was any config variations that had occurred in Rene's short fifteen year life...data based on her experiences as a functioning human angel swarm for the last fifteen years. Falkland felt this gap could be interpolated.

More importantly, Winger and Tallant were okay with the idea.

For the next four hours and forty two minutes, Falkland's config scanner did its job, methodically scanning and recording the position of every atom and molecule that composed the atomgrabber. Absolute immobility was critical. After Winger was fully under, the medbot secured the officer tightly in his bed and closely monitored the snoring form for any sign of out- of-tolerance motions, intervening quickly whenever Winger tried to move or shift or fidget in the bed.

It was a tense, nerve-wracking time and Falkland was relieved when the chime sounded gently, signaling the end of the scan. He checked the database and found it populated with exabyte after exabyte of scan data. Routine integrity checks determined that the data was clean, within tolerances and fully useable.

It was time to wake the General up. And bring Rene out of containment.

Recovery took several hours for Johnny Winger and Dana Tallant. They both lay on separate beds in the recovery room, down the hall from Falkland's lab. Winger watched as Dana's eyes fluttered open.

"You look like hell, Wings," she said weakly.

"Hey, I love you too. How do you feel?"

They were both groggy and disoriented from anesthesia. "Like I went nano and stayed that way for a few weeks...you know, 'over the waterfall', again and again and again."

"Me too." Winger sat up experimentally. Nothing hurt. But the room spun like a carousel. "Falkland said the scans went well. He's got lots of data."

Tallant took a deep breath, tried sitting up, groaned and lay back down. "Did we do the right thing, Wings? Has this trick got even a prayer's chance of working?"

"It's worth a shot. What do we lose if it doesn't? We're right back where we were in Paris. I'd like a normal family...I guess that can't happen as long as we're in the Corps. But this gives us a chance. That's all I want...a chance to get Rene back."

"But it won't be Rene, honey. We both know that."

"Now, don't go getting all philosophical on me, babe. The finest minds around here can't agree on that. I think if Falkland's right, we won't know the difference. Rene'll be Rene in all the important ways and we can have a family again...we can stop living inside a MOBnet and get on with our lives."

Tallant seemed unconvinced and was about to say something when Falkland came in, knocking on the door as he did.

"Both scans went extremely well," he reported. A medbot accompanied Falkland into the recovery room and busied itself checking monitors, IV attachments, medicine quantities and the bedding. It clucked like a disapproving maid at the covers lying askew on Winger's bed and proceeded to straighten them out. "The data look clean and well behaved. All I have now is two weeks of analysis and reformatting and I can load the pattern buffer. I'll have a new, sort of composite memory field, and I'll be ready to impose that on your daughter's structure."

Winger sat up and accepted a cup of something from the bot. It tasted brassy but went down smooth. "I'd like to see her."

Falkland studied the medbot's report screen, sucking at his lower lip as he went over their vitals. "In another hour or so. You both need more recovery time...and more fluids. I'll have Betty here bring in a tray for both of you."

The bot followed Falkland out like a loyal pet and the door was shut. Winger finished off the liquid and decided he needed to lie down again. On her bed, Dana was already snoring.

They had brought Rene over from Paris in a small pod, well secured with MOB capability and electron beam charges, in case anything went wrong. Falkland looked over the pod, then fastened it to some scaffolding inside the containment chamber. He exited the chamber and dogged the hatch shut. Then he ran a sweep, just to make sure all security systems were armed and ready.

Winger and Tallant studied the board. With the practiced eyes of veteran atomgrabbers, they knew what containment meant...and where it could fail. But this was Rene inside...supposed to be Rene, not just some nameless swarm. Despite the fact that his daughter was little more than a cloud of bots configured to resemble a human who had long since been disassembled, Winger found he was anxious to see her. Whether it was love or concern for her safety or just plain curiosity at the sheer novelty of seeing a loved one re-assembled out of thin air, conjured like a magician's trick, he couldn't say. And he decided he didn't want to explore that line of thinking any further.

Falkland did a quick scan of his board. "I think we're ready. Here goes—" he pressed a single red button, unsealing the pod inside the chamber.

For a few moments, nothing changed. Then a faint mist-like smoke began to appear, issuing in a steady stream from the side of the pod. The mist sparkled like dust motes in strong sunlight. Winger knew the master assembler had been released and was executing its basic instruction set, replicating structure, slamming atoms like some mad brickmason, building Rene atom by atom, molecule by molecule. One wag had called it like being conceived and born again, but at hyperspeed.

Rene gradually took shape before their eyes. First her head gained form, then her shoulders, with the reddish-blond curls of a pony-tail assembling right in front of them. Winger had always loved that pony-tail. That was one thing about daughters who were angel swarms. They didn't age. They stayed adorable little girls forever, if you wanted it that way.

Winger shivered in spite of the cuddly little creature taking shape before his eyes. Somehow this wasn't right. It had never been right. _And I'm not sure a hotshot whizbang new memory field will ever make it right._

The entire process took about five minutes. Winger looked through the porthole. To all outward appearances, the thing inside was Rene. It had the pony-tail. It had the blue eyes. The crooked grin and the mole beside the lips. Dimples. Pert little nose. An exact replica.

But still a replica.

Winger found that Falkland had rigged up a system to communicate with her. "How do you feel, honey?"

"Daddy...Daddy...I want out. Can't I get out?"

Even her voice tugged at his heartstrings. It had the same timber. The same huskiness. He told himself that she wasn't real. Couldn't be real. Yet Falkland had assured them he could make her more real than ever.

"Honey, you've got to stay in there awhile longer. Dr. Falkland here—" he stopped, unable to finish.

Tallant jumped in. "Rene, sweetie...you've been sick. Dr. Falkland's here to make you better. There's a procedure you have to—"

The Rene-thing twisted on its seat, rubbed at its eyes. Every motion seemed real. No edge effects. No blurring and smearing or translucence of the hands. Solid tracking everywhere...Rene seemed more real than ever. Maybe it was hope. Maybe wishful thinking.

Rene got up from the seat and came over to the porthole. She pressed a hand against the cover. Faint sparkles could be seen in her palm, almost as if you could look through it if you tried hard enough. Like stars in a nighttime sky, seen through your fingers. No veins, no palm lines, no blemishes. Just little sparkles.

"She looks so real," Tallant said. "I could just reach through and touch her."

"Have you changed her config, Doc? Or is it something in the containment chamber?"

"This containment system has filters. That may be what you're seeing...some filtering of the config as it executes. I haven't run the pattern buffer at all."

"How long is this going to take?" Winger asked. He wanted to reach through the porthole too and hold his daughter. _That's not Rene in there_ , he told himself. _That's not Rene_.

Falkland gave that some thought. "The database is full. There's a lot of data to massage. I've got to put all that data through some filtering of its own. Then I have some transformations and conversions to perform, to setup up things in the right format for the pattern buffer...the memory field. It'll be a week or two. Then I load the pattern buffer with the revised configuration and see what happens." Falkland gave them a brave smile. "I'm sure we can make your daughter almost as good as new."

"Almost," Tallant said back. She looked over at her husband. Their hands found each other, interlocking fingers. She felt a hard squeeze.

"We have to try, Dana. We have to give it a try."

It was the uncertainty of it all that bothered Dana most. Not knowing. No way to be sure. Was it even worth the effort?

"I suppose you're right. But that's not Rene in there. That's not my daughter."

Falkland wasn't sure which would be harder: getting the new configuration right or getting the parents to accept the new configuration. The memory field needed a human test...of that, he was sure. It couldn't be proven to UNIFORCE standards without the data from a human test. There was no chance of defeating the Assimilationists if he couldn't prove he could re-assemble a deconstructed human being.

Jiggs and Simon were a hell of a lot easier to deal with than this.

Aboard the _Michelangelo_ (UNS-212)

Trans-Jovian Trajectory J-24

Post-Boost + 25 days

2245 hours (U.T.)

Dietrick Vogel finished off his beer in the ship's galley and belched. He stared out the porthole nearby, not that there was anything to see hundreds of millions of miles from nowhere. Black space. The Great Beyond. He might as well have been inside the closet of his bunk compartment on B Deck, for all there was to look at. He glared back at Roy Favors, who was nibbling up scraps of his sandwich and eyeing the clock on the bulkhead. They were both due at their duty stations in less than ten minutes.

"I'm telling you, Roy, that Commander Liu's different, somehow. I can't put my finger on it, but she's just plain weird. You spend time on A Deck...you telling me you ain't seen

that?"

"She's an officer...what do you expect? They're all different...like a different species."

Vogel eyed the clock, decided he'd better get down to B deck, where his shift as a Systems Tech 1 was set to start in less than ten minutes. "I dunno...this whole mission's messed up. Destination all hush-hush...crew cobbled together from every vacuumhead who can lift a wrench...headed out to places nobody in his right mind would go...off the friggin'map, if you ask me. I feel like Columbus's crew in 1492, sailing right off the edge of the world."

Favors just stared morosely into his drink. "Nobody made you sign up...we're all volunteers here. Why'd you come aboard?"

"Money, same as you. Cripes, I got debts...got that big wagon back on Earth. Plus a neat little sailer for the ocean...somebody's got to pay for all that crap. And my oldest...Rico...you know he's headed off to college. All that Ed-Net stuff and nobody can afford those stimplants anymore. So he's got to get his fat butt into class and on-line."

Vogel left for B Deck and Favors just sat there wondering. Big Mike was only three weeks out of Phobos Station, on a speed run to deep space, and already the gripes and the whining had started. Maybe Dietrick was right. The whole mission was cursed. You didn't have to prowl Big Mike's gangways, corridors and decks for long to get a strong whiff of foreboding, a sense of unease among the crew. Some said the whole thing was a hunt for ghosts, cobbled together at the last minute, doomed to fail. Commander Liu didn't make matters any better.

Captain Hawley's exec was a known hardass, even allowing for the great legs, the high cheekbones and exotic eyes. She was a looker but like Vogel said, she was serious bad news and she didn't belong on an old cycler heading off to the Great Beyond. She was greener than fresh puke and meaner than a snake. He couldn't quite put his finger on it, but most of the crew had taken an instant dislike to her. Crews were like that. They could sniff out phonies and ass-kissers in no time and Victoria Liu gave everybody the creeps.

Favors had to admit he was one of them. There was an aloofness, a kind of regal distance to the way she comported herself, like she didn't belong and she knew it but she wasn't going to lower her guard to acknowledge the obvious. Frontier Corps officers were strange beings from another dimension...everybody already knew that.

Victoria Liu was the strangest being he'd ever seen in twenty four years with the Corps.

One deck forward of _Michelangelo's_ wardroom, Commander Victoria Liu and Captain Cory Hawley were up in the command center on A deck, methodically going over mission orders. Command was empty except for the two officers. A phasing burn was coming up in a few minutes, a burn which would put _Michelangelo_ on a gravity-assist course toward Jupiter. Once the burn was made, Big Mike was committed to deep space. She wouldn't be able to turn about and come home for months once her trajectory was shifted. The physics of orbital mechanics would make sure of that.

Hawley wasn't too sure he liked Frontier Corps cramming a new and untested officer down his throat as exec, even though he knew perfectly well that she came with the highest ratings and fitness reports.

He'd spent the last night before shove-off at the Mariner Bar, at Phobos Station, knocking back a few cold ones with other officers. The question of using angels, para-human nanobotic swarm entities, as serving line officers surfaced some strong opinions. Hawley was one of them.

"Look, guys, I'm an old cycler captain. I'm used to spinning around the Sun in a nice easy stable orbit...not too much excitement, nothing to see, nothing to do. I'm for anything that makes my life easier. The Corps started integrating swarm para-human 'crewmen' into our normal rotations about fifteen years ago. Call it efficiency. Cost savings. Latest technology upgrade. Politics. Call it whatever you want. Just don't give me something that makes my life harder. Cycler captains like routine. We don't like surprises. And so far—" Hawley shrugged, worked his beer for a moment, "—it's worked like a charm. Commander Element B—that's the name the Corps gave us...his real designation is something like Config CXT-209987—has been a most able crewman and engineering officer. Does everything I ask. Doesn't get the rest of the crew riled up...anymore. We had some issues in the beginning...I'm sure you know the scuttlebutt. You know...dinosaurs, troglodytes who can't accept change. Everybody has those types. But Element B's worked out pretty well."

The bar discussion had gone on for awhile and Hawley remembered there never had been a consensus on whether the angels made good officers or not. Pretty much true for Frontier Corps as well, he thought. Angels had been serving as crewmen for a decade, although none had ever captained a ship, even a bus like this old cycler ship, which most considered pretty boring duty. He'd never had any reason to doubt Element B's fitness, but all the same...you couldn't help but wonder.

"Commander, all systems ready for the phasing burn?"

Victoria Liu scanned a tablet from her right-hand seat, double-checked something from the main console and nodded in the affirmative.

"Yes, sir, Captain. All departments report ready. Plasma engines on line, voltages steady, reactors at full mil power. Central mast rigidizing complete. Tanks at flight pressure. The ship is ready for the phasing burn, sir."

"Very well, Commander. Give me the count."

Liu checked the ship's clock. "Five minutes on the mark, sir. Maneuver Two is enabled and ISAAC flags no anomalies or contingencies at this time. Waiting to proceed."

Hawley checked the board himself. The whole thing was fully automated but Frontier Corps captains like to feel the wind on their faces, so he checked anyway. ISAAC was the ship's master computer and ISAAC was never wrong.

"Proceed."

Liu punched a few buttons and ISAAC counted down the last few minutes to the burn.

It was a gentle acceleration, less than five meters per second, but the result of the burn would be to put Big Mike on a Jupiter approach trajectory which would use the giant planet's gravity as a slingshot to deeper space. The entire burn lasted less than a minute and when the ship's engines cut off, _Michelangelo_ was on course, right in the center of the corridor, essentially zero rates in all axes, for Jupiter flyby six weeks from now.

"Well done, Commander. I'm heading aft to grab a bite. You have the bridge." He hoisted himself out of his seat and turned toward the hatch to the central gangway.

"Thank you, sir. It is always a pleasure to see all systems perform so well. Scanning no anomalies at this time, sir. Systems functioning at ninety-seven point six percent design capacity."

Something in the way she said it caught Hawley's attention. He sat back down. "You say that a lot, Commander. All ship systems functioning at capacity. How do you figure that?"

Liu turned slightly in her seat. She was attractive in an exotic way, with her high cheek bones and oval eyes, partially hidden behind dataspecs. The specs glowed and winked red and green as she accessed data from ISAAC and studied parameters from ship systems.

"It's an algorithm, Captain. You are aware of this, I'm sure. All ship systems report status regularly to ISAAC, which formats the data and reports to me. I have a real time picture of how well all systems are performing. A good executive officer always has this data at their command, for decisions by the captain."

_Quoted right out of the Frontier Corps manual of command_ , Hawley knew. Verbatim. "Do you ever sleep, Liu? I mean, we all have duty shifts. I know Command is never really off duty, but you must take some downtime eventually."

Liu smiled faintly and Hawley thought he detected just the slightest flaw in her expression...very subtle, but it was like her lips weren't attached to her face just right. _What the hell was that?_ Then he remembered something from her personnel file...Victoria Liu was enhanced, loaded with bots to rev up her respiration, her mind, her muscles, everything. She could swap files with ISAAC like kids swapped lies on the playground.

_Probably some kind of weird closet Assimilationist_ , he decided.

"Sir, as you know, I..." she seemed at a loss for words. "...I require less rest than most of the crew. Maintenance periods are a part of my routine. I don't rest the same way you do, sir. Or the rest of the crew."

Hawley sniffed. "So I noticed. And that neuro-boost you went through several years ago...what does that tell you about our crew? How are they performing, five weeks into the mission?"

Liu gave that some thought. Hawley saw her specs winking on and off furiously. No doubt checking with ISAAC, dredging up all kinds of files.

"The crew is performing at a composite rate of greater than ninety-five percent efficiency, according to the percentage of tasks completed on time. Department ratings range from ninety-one percent to ninety nine percent in Engineering. The median value is—"

Hawley held up a hand. "Okay, okay, I give up. You've got all the data. But I'm hearing talk, scuttlebutt really, about this mission. Some of the crew are uneasy. Some of the crew think the mission is cobbled together, that it's not well thought out, that it's all politics to show people back home we're doing something. What does your data say about that, Commander?"

Liu seemed to be checking some kind of reading on her specs. Her eyes narrowed. "I have no such data, Captain. As executive officer, you know I have the highest enthusiasm for our mission. Operation _Sentinel_ is an important mission, critical to determining what phenomenon is currently approaching our solar system. Any concerns and discontents among the crew have not been reflected in the departmental ratings or performance data."

Hawley figured he ought to be glad for that. "Liu, you sound like a marketing brochure. Give me the residuals for the burn and let's go over the rest of the mission time line. We've got Jupiter Encounter in less than six weeks. I want daily drills in every department. On a mission like this, we've got to do everything we can to stay sharp."

"Captain, the next waypoint is J-6, less than five days away. May I recommend—" But Victoria Liu never finished her sentence.

A shrill alarm sounded on the command deck. Both officers scrambled to take stock of the situation.

Liu checked her board. "It's _Triton Odyssey_ , sir. Signal's dropped out. We've lost comm with the probe...checking carrier status, all systems...."

Hawley saw that Liu was correct. "We need to backtrack, see what _Odyssey_ was doing before this happened. Did she hit something?"

"Unknown, sir, but I'm checking." Liu's fingers played over the keyboard, calling up one display after another. She tapped a spot on her cheek, upping the data rate from ISAAC. Raw systems feed poured in and her embedded algorithms massaged the data, looking for patterns. In seconds, she had an answer. "Sir, it seems that _Odyssey_ was tracking some kind of diffuse mass in space, less than a hundred thousand kilometers distant, something beyond Pluto's orbit. Analyzing now—" She let the algorithms play with the feed from _Odyssey_ for a few minutes.

"A diffuse mass," Hawley wondered. A bot swarm, perhaps? Drifting dust particles? Some dead comet passing by, shedding debris, on its way sunward? From this distance, from the data _Odyssey_ had returned over the last few weeks, there were few answers.

Hawley checked flight parameters for the probe. The maneuver files showed recent engine activity. Whatever _Odyssey_ had detected, she had made a few maneuvers and changed course toward the object. That much was clear. Over the last few weeks, she had been steadily closing in on the source for a closer inspection.

Then the signal had stopped.
CHAPTER 12

Aboard the _Michelangelo_ (UNS-212)

Trans-Pluto Trajectory Waypoint P-7

Post-Boost + 45 days

December 2, 2110 (U.T.)

0355 hours (Ship Time)

The signal from _Triton Odyssey_ had been lost over three weeks ago and nobody knew why. From what Captain Cory Hawley could determine, in time-delayed comms from Earth and Phobos Station, there had been frantic activity at Farside and JPL for days afterward. Engineers had tried everything in the book to regain comms with _Odyssey_ , for now the only eyes and ears they had to follow and inspect the phenomena known to all as _Devil's Eye._

But nothing had ever been heard again from the little probe and Hawley could well imagine the recriminations and the head-scratching and ass-kicking that must now be going on at Farside and throughout Frontier Corps. The astros who kept a non-stop watch on _Devil's Eye_ were certain that nothing from that anomaly had done anything to interfere with _Odyssey_ that they could detect. Even the quantum bands had been quiet, though no one was sure that every quantum state could ever be located, let alone monitored. It was possible _Devil's Eye_ had exerted some kind of remote influence on _Odyssey_ , but the distance was so great, it was hard to come up with any theories on how that could have happened.

Hawley was alone, for the moment, on Big Mike's command deck and he liked it that way. Solitude was good for the soul, some wag had once said. _Solitude may be good, but growling stomachs aren't_ , he told himself. He called down to the galley, ordering up an early morning snack.

"Right away, sir," came the reply. "I'll get a tray up there in five minutes."

Hawley nodded _._ "Very well." _Sugar and caffeine...high-octane propellants for any Frontier Corps mission._ He decided he needed a little company after all and got on the 1MC. " _Commander Liu to the command deck at once_ ...."

The exec popped her head through the hatch less than three minutes later, bearing a tray of sweets from the galley.

"The galley said you ordered a tray, Captain. I'm your waitress today." She came in and propped the tray on a console behind the main control station, then settled into her right-hand seat.

Hawley was already lacerating a jelly doughnut. "I'm sure this will show up in your next fitness report, Commander. Help yourself."

Pointedly, Victoria Liu avoided touching anything on the tray. "Sir, I've been replaying some of the tapes of _Odyssey's_ encounter a few weeks ago. Looking for patterns in the data, patterns in the returns from _Odyssey_ , correlating that with known signatures of likely objects."

Hawley slurped some coffee and wiped crumbs from his mouth. "And?"

"Best fit with the data is to assume that _Odyssey_ detected some kind of swarm. A formation of dust particles couldn't give a signature like this. At least, not any dust or debris we can imagine out that far. The signature is denser, thicker and the spectrum details match pretty closely with likely returns from a swarm of nanobotic devices, or something like that."

"Not comet debris or anything like that? Farside said _Odyssey_ was scanning in the direction of known remnants and particles from the Oort Cloud."

"Not likely, sir. Unless Oort Cloud objects produce signatures that closely resemble nanobotic devices."

Hawley considered that. "What's a swarm of bots doing out this far from the Sun? Maybe _Odyssey_ was detecting advance elements of the Old Ones? I'm sure _that's_ being discussed at Farside and back home. Maybe they're already here, if you believe in that sort of thing."

"Our mission is to find out, sir," Liu reminded him. She scanned a few displays on the board. "In less than four days, we'll be at closest approach to the Pluto-Charon system. After that, Big Mike will be entering space no human has ever seen before. _Odyssey_ is one of the few ships to ever come this far. _Voyager_ was the first, back in the late 20th century, then _New Horizons_. Then _Odyssey_ and now...us."

"I know a lot of the crew are uneasy about being this far out. I think we need an all-hands meeting to clear the deck, get everybody prepared. If we've got bots from someplace else, poking around out here in the sticks, Big Mike better be ready, for anything. Commander, post a notice on the shipnet...make it 1200 hours sharp, all-hands meeting in the galley. We'll find a way to cram everybody in."

Liu eased out of her seat and headed for the hatch. "Right away, sir."

"One more thing, Commander. I know long-range scan has acquired Pluto visually now. Looks just like a gray smudge with some crumbs floating nearby. But I want the crew to have a sense of where we are and what we're about to do. We're four days from the burn. Post the long-range visuals on all monitors. If I can get the crew focused on Pluto and the mission, they'll be less inclined to focus on themselves and all their aches and pains. I need everyone as sharp as possible now. Everything by the book, no shortcuts. Shortcuts lead to mistakes. And out here, we can't afford any mistakes."

"Of course, Captain. I'll see to it at once." Liu disappeared through the hatch.

Cory Hawley wondered how Big Mike would perform once the phasing burn at Pluto was done. She had a good crew and the ship was operating satisfactorily for a re-purposed cycler ship. But the last two weeks of drills had seen performance steadily falling off. People made mistakes. Procedures weren't followed. One crewman assumed something and nobody checked to make sure it was true.

It was hard to put your finger on it, but any good ship commander could read the pulse of his crew. Big Mike's crew was uneasy. It was rational to have some concerns about where they had come and what they were tasked to do. _Cripes, we're four billion miles from home. Who wouldn't be scared?_ Fear of the unknown was healthy. It kept you on your toes.

But a well-trained Frontier Corps crew should be able to make that fear work for them. In the old sailing days of Columbus and Magellan, crews who went beyond the maps of the known world almost mutinied, thinking they were about to sail off the end of the earth. _We've got to be smarter than that_ , Hawley told himself. _Follow your procedures. Follow the checklists. Watch your comrade's back. Don't assume anything._

_And expect the unexpected_ , a little voice said in the back of his head. How the hell do you train for that?

Victoria Liu worked with several techs on C deck to get the long-range scan of Pluto ported over to the ship's monitors and displays, so every crewman could see. A slight buzz in the back of her head annoyed her and once she was sure the techs knew what Captain Hawley wanted, she set them to work and went back to her bunk on B deck, advising Lieutenant Dean Kohl, whom she encountered outside her bunk, that she had a severe headache and needed some meds and a little rest.

"Just a headache...I know how to take care of it, Lieutenant. I'll be in-bunk if anyone needs me."

Kohl was the ship's propulsion systems officer. "Sure thing, exec. I'll keep it quiet around here."

"Thank you, Lieutenant." She pulled the bunk door shut and then she was alone in the tiny space.

She knew what that buzz was about.

Undetected by the humans, a high-capacity quantum band had been established between Config Zero and angel Victoria Liu. The buzz alerted her to an incoming message. After she had shut herself into her bunk compartment, Liu lay down in the bunk and closed her eyes.

The message came.

It instructed her to execute Command 56644828. The operational details of this command and all subroutines, steps and procedures were already fully loaded in her main processor, from the day of her first assembly in the Paris hotel room of the human Victoria Liu. Now came the instruction to execute this command, fully authenticated and verified. The instruction had come through Config Zero, direct from the Central Entity itself.

Angel Victoria Liu was required to acknowledge the command and she did so, returning verification according to the standard protocols.

She lay on the bunk and closed her eyes, visualizing what she had to do.

In less than an hour, angel Victoria Liu would leave her bunk compartment and make her way aft to _Michelangelo's_ C Deck, Service and Support. There she would change the config in her right arm and hand, allowing the bots which made up her skin and fingers to operate in loose formation, out of tight mesh.

According to Command 56644828, she would then begin disassembling the interior hull structures of C deck, which would ultimately have the effect of breaching the ship's pressure hull, exposing the crew and everything inside to catastrophic decompression and explosive collapse.

Big Mike would be lost in trans-Plutonian space, with no explanation and nothing left to detect or salvage.

And the Central Entity would be free to continue operations as before.

Northgate University, Autonomous Systems Lab

Pennsylvania, USA

December 3, 2110

0945 Hours (U.T.)

Dr. Ryne Falkland had spent the last few weeks massaging config scan data, using multiple interview sessions with Johnny Winger and Dana Tallant, to fill in gaps in the scan and make a more accurate representation of what daughter Rene had been like. The next step was to put the Config Engine to work with this digital model of Rene and see what it could create.

He had warned Winger and Tallant that multiple iterations might be needed. Someone had mentioned _Frankenstein_ as a crude analog of what they were trying to do.

The big day came and Winger gathered with Tallant and Dr. Falkland outside the containment chamber in Galen Hall, headquarters of the Autonomous Systems Lab. Inside the chamber, a small bed had been placed, for Rene to lie on when 'she' was fully assembled and formed. Just in case, electron beam injectors were primed and ready.

"We can't violate safety protocols, even in this situation," Falkland explained.

Tallant groped for Winger's hands and interlaced her fingers with his. "I don't know how to feel, Wings," she admitted. "I don't really know what to think."

"Happy. Feel happy and blessed, I guess. We're getting Rene back. We're going to be a family again."

Tallant was doubtful but said nothing, while Falkland scanned his board and made some adjustments. "I've got the Config Engine loaded now. From the scans we did of you two, we have lots of data. I had a quite a time massaging and tweaking and converting all that data, trying to get something clean. You don't know it, but I've already run some tests...last week. Things looked promising."

Winger was curious. "What kind of tests, Doc?"

Falkland was reluctant to go into details now. Clients were sometimes sensitive about these matters. "Oh, just little tests. I extracted some of the data and ran it through the Config Engine...you know, assembling small things, simple structures."

"Of Rene? What kind of simple structures?"

"It was just a test—"

"What kind of structures, Doc?" Winger asked, a little more firmly.

Falkland shrugged, went back to his instruments. "A finger here, a hand there. Really, it went well."

Tallant nearly choked. "A finger? You assembled one of Rene's fingers? And a hand? What are—"

Winger squeezed her hand hard and cut in. "What happened?"

"The test went fine. The Config Engine performed as expected. I examined the...er, the structures and found them well formed, molecularly correct, consistent with the templates from your data. It was...what can I say?...a finger."

"And a hand."

"Exactly."

"What did you do with them?"

Falkland looked surprised. Sometimes, he figured it was better if the clients didn't know all the details. People reacted differently. "I let it go. That is, the Config Engine broke them down, disassembled them. Back into feedstock."

Winger swallowed hard. Maybe Dana was right. Normal families shouldn't be able to just conjure up limbs and fingers of their loved ones. But then again, since nanobotic assemblers had been invented right here fifty years ago, maybe they could. It was all very confusing.

"Okay, Doc...I guess we really didn't need to hear about that. What's next?"

Falkland turned back to his control station. "Next is releasing the feedstock into the chamber." He pressed a few buttons and on the monitor, a faint mist began issuing from a row of ports. The chamber quickly filled with the mist. "Just raw stock. A bunch of atoms and molecules...standard stuff...oxygens, irons, phosphorous and nitrogens...you name it. Ingredients for the cook...." Immediately he wished he hadn't said _that_. Every client reacted differently. And this one was Commander in Chief, Quantum Corps.

The filling took about three minutes. "All the templates of Rene are loaded in the Config Engine now. When the previous...uh, version of Rene was scanned and disassembled, I took a memory field map of all those atoms in structure, combined it with similar data scanned from you two, and created these templates. We should be able to put together a new Rene better than ever, just like your daughter."

Tallant just shook her head. "This is just creepy, Doc, hearing my daughter talked about like this. Get on with it—"

"Of course." Falkland pressed a few more buttons.

Inside the containment chamber, the master assembler had just been released. The master was a nanobotic device that orchestrated assembly of feedstock atoms and molecules into whatever structures were contained in the template.

The monitor showed a mist filling the chamber, like an early morning fog, only this mist sparkled as if a billion fireflies were embedded. The mist thickened until the bed was lost to view. Minutes passed. Falkland followed his instruments, adjusting the Config Engine on the fly.

"Threshold density," he announced. "Memory field steady....all parameters in the green."

The first hint of structure emerged from the fog, in the form of a faint, translucent, almost ghostly hand, alongside the edge of the bed. Fluctuations in the fog caused more structure to become intermittently visible: several fingers, part of a forearm, a brief glimpse of a knee. From these structures, Winger and Tallant both silently estimated where Rene's head and face should be. But nothing was visible yet.

More minutes passed. Then, Tallant gasped softly. She pointed.

The barest outlines of a face materialized into view, slipping in and out of the fog like a wraith. There was the upturned nose, the same mole beside her lips. And the lips—

"It's _her!"_ Tallant breathed. She clutched Winger tightly, leaning against her husband. "It's Rene—"

"I see it...I see it." Winger watched in amazement as more and more structure came into view. From everything he could see, it _was_ Rene. He knew how the technology worked. He understood how assemblers slammed atoms together according to a template. He'd designed and ran more configs than Falkland had ever dreamed about. But _this_ ...this was different.

The thing seemed as real as Dana Tallant leaning on his shoulder.

Falkland watched the monitor and his instruments carefully, making some minor adjustments. "Config still stable. No alarms...no issues. She's coming in beautifully. Everything within tolerances, right in the middle of the band. I'm adding more feedstock... we're approaching minimum density....what do you think, General?"

Winger let his eyes play across the prostrate form of his daughter, inside the containment chamber. Part of his mind told him this couldn't be Rene...it was a sim, a near-perfect likeness, but still a likeness. But his own feelings and Dana's reactions overruled that hard logic and he felt a lump in the back of his throat. It couldn't be Rene.

But it _was_ Rene.

To keep control of himself, Winger focused on the instruments, on the swarm inside the vault, on critiquing the process, on config stability, anything to smother all those feelings that were bubbling up. His shoulder ached from where Dana had been clutching him and, gently as he could, he extricated himself.

"How long, Doc?"

Falkland studied the board, watched as more and more of Rene emerged from the mist into solid structure. "Well, scans are showing about sixty-five percent complete. This should be done in about two more hours. After we reach target density, I've got to run some tests. See how stable the config is. Make sure the pattern buffers are cleared out. And we'll spot check the config against the original memory field. That'll be another hour."

"This is unreal," Tallant said. "She looks so lifelike. I just want to get in there and hug her to death."

By mid-afternoon, Falkland pronounced himself satisfied. Looking through the portholes of the containment chamber, Rene was lying on her side on the bed, seemingly asleep. She seemed to be breathing; her chest rose and fell with a rhythmic pattern. Johnny Winger knew full well that it was part of the config, in effect, a breathing simulation program was running on the main processor. But the physical impression was so real, it was so easy to imagine—

"I think it's safe to let her out now," Falkland decided. He enjoyed the look of anticipation on Dana Tallant's face. He also took a quick peek at the electron beam injectors, just in case. Angels sometimes developed glitches and hiccups in their program during assembly. It happened. You couldn't take too many chances. "I'm shutting down security systems. Latches coming un-done." A few clicks, pops and squeaks sounded at the hatch. Then a hiss, as pressures equalized. Falkland went over and dogged the hatch open.

Winger pushed past him with Tallant right on his heels. Dana could hardly believe her eyes.

Rene turned over on her back and her eyelids fluttered open. She yawned and tried to sit up.

"Honey, let me help you—" Dana went to her daughter and helped her sit up on the side of the bed. She was completely naked and shivering. "Can we get her some cover—"

While Falkland scrounged around for a blanket, Winger bent down to kiss Rene on the forehead. He came away from the kiss with a puzzled look. _No angel ever had skin like this_.

His eyes met Dana's, full of tears. "It's really her...her skin...it's so—"

"Lifelike," Winger completed. He stroked Rene's forehead, brushing back a lock of blond hair. Experimentally, he rubbed the skin. It felt real. No nanobotic swarm had ever been able to replicate the look and feel and texture of human skin...this, _this_ was extraordinary....

Falkland returned to the containment chamber with a robe and some slippers. He handed them to Dana, who helped Rene get dressed.

"Dr. Falkland, her skin...." Dana said, shaking her head, kissing her daughter lightly on the cheek. "I can't believe it...she's...she's Rene...it _is_ Rene. Oh, sweetie...."

Falkland beamed. "We've been doing our homework. It's the configuration. That and the good data we got from you two. You can't tell the difference, can you?"

Dana turned back to Rene. "How do you feel, honey?"

Rene stretched and smiled faintly. Even the mole at the side of her lips looked real. "Weak. Kinda hungry." She looked a little dazed, glassy-eyed.

"Are you all right? Here, why don't you lie down and rest." Dana helped the girl recline on the bed. "Maybe she just needs some water."

"I'm...I'm confused...." Rene closed her eyes. "Where am I? I don't—"

"It's okay, honey. Mom and Dad are here. Liam too...he's back at the hotel."

"Mom...what Mom?"

The hairs on the back of Dana's neck stood up and a chill went down her spine. She looked at her daughter. It was Rene lying there on the bed. But the look...it soon became apparent that she didn't recognize either her or Winger. The puzzled look, the crooked half-smile...it wasn't affection. It wasn't recognizing her loved ones. It was wariness. Maybe even a little fear.

Dana looked up helplessly at Falkland, then at Winger hovering nearby. "She doesn't know who I am. Rene, don't you recognize me? I'm your mother...this is your father. You've been...sick for awhile. A long while."

"M..m...mother...what is a mother—" Rene blinked hard right back at Dana and pulled the robe to her chin. Her lips were quivering. Her whole body was shaking.

Falkland bent down. "We may have some work to do with memory. Neural patterns aren't easy to capture. The memory field buffer had incomplete data to work with, so it has an interpolation algorithm. It did the best it could...with what it had."

A few more minutes confirmed Falkland's explanation. Rene...the new Rene...had few memories of her previous life. Fragments of memory surfaced under repeated questioning, but Dana couldn't help but think Rene was just going along. She didn't remember anything, not even her own mother and father.

"She's like an infant," Dana said, standing up, brushing back her own hair. "She's a teen-ager in appearance but she's an infant in what she knows. She doesn't know anything."

"Then we have to teach her," Winger said. "That's all there is to it." He took Dana by the hand. "Look, it's Rene. We've got her back. We just have to teach her to _be_ Rene...we can do that. You, me, Liam...we can do that."

Dana looked helplessly from Winger to Falkland to Rene and back. "I guess you're right. It's just that—"

"We all expected more," Winger put the words in her mouth. "I mean, what you've done, Doc, it's extraordinary. Truly it is."

Falkland bent down to examine the girl himself. "I worked on the memory field and the Config Engine for the last several years. We concentrated on getting the physical side right. The part everybody sees. It's just damnably hard to capture memories, you know. They're just patterns of neurons firing, waves of potentiation sloshing back and forth across the brain. All my equipment can do is capture a few time slices of those waves...fragments of memory is all we can get. We've got a little more work to do on this aspect of reconstruction. But I have some ideas."

"So do we," Winger said. "But as long as the capability is there...we can bring her back. We can teach her to be Rene again. Doc, with your permission, I'd like to take Rene back to the hotel. Put her in familiar surroundings."

Falkland agreed immediately. "Of course, that may trigger something. Help her knit some of these fragments together. I'd like to run a few more tests, but certainly...that's a good idea."

And so, after another hour of physical function and capability tests, Falkland signed the paperwork and released the new Rene to her parents. Clothes were found elsewhere in the Lab and Rene got fully dressed, then walked unsteadily out of the Lab, supported on both arms by her parents.

Outside, the sun shone like a bright daub of butter through early December clouds. The smell of snow was in the air.

Winger buckled his daughter into the car seat. Dana sat in the back seat, cradling the girl's head in her lap, stroking her blond hair. They drove off to the hotel.

Winger wondered: _What have we gotten ourselves into now?_
Solnet/Omnivision Video Post

@anna.kolchinova.solnetworldview

December 5, 2110

1950 hours U.T.

SOLNET Special Report:

" **The Church of Assimilation"**

Anna Kolchinova reporting...

The growth and spread of the Church of Assimilation in the last six months of 2110 was nothing short of phenomenal, even meteoric. Almost as amazing was the rapture and celebrity surrounding the man who first established the Church and who continues today as the leading figure in the Assimilationist movement. I'm speaking, of course, of Symborg himself.

CofA churches, missions and temples are rising in cities and towns all around the globe, fed by an insatiable popular hunger for spiritual certainty in a time of overwhelming, near-Singularity rates of change. For many believers, and they now must be numbered in the millions, Assimilationism seems to offer a way forward that makes sense, that is in accord with all the changes and that speaks to the needs of these millions of believers for a strong, yet compassionate leader. Some call Symborg a new Messiah. And, truthfully, Symborg has done little to discourage this adoration.

A new wrinkle was suddenly thrown into this mix of celebrity and spiritual hunger last summer...the stunning revelation at an archaeology conference in Leipzig, Germany of physical evidence that Man did not descend from his ancestors by natural means, but rather that Evolution was programmed from the beginning by ancient, robotic progenitors. In recent weeks, sources within the Assimilationist movement have been putting out the story that Symborg himself is directly descended or somehow evolved from the ancient robotic remains that Dr. Rudolf Volk uncovered at Engebbe, Kenya.

The truth is that the world has no experience with a celebrity who's not even human. What does that say about what we value?

The evidence for Symborg's ancestry remains sketchy at best, pending further analysis of the finds at Engebbe. But the Assimilationists are wasting no time or effort to benefit from the public's fascination with Engebbe. Making a connection between Engebbe and Symborg has become an explicit part of Assimilationist tactics and Symborg has done nothing to discourage this. The hunger for leadership, for vision, and for certainty at a time of extraordinary change is so great that millions of people are making this connection for themselves.

Hardly a day goes by without news of more and more "awakenings", as the Assimilationists call their gatherings. Thousands of people are voluntarily submitting to the de-construction process and allowing themselves to be disassembled into atoms, to presumably join with the greater Mother swarm. Authorities from Bangladesh to Bolivia, from Surinam to Sierra Leone are at odds on how to deal with these mass suicides. Some have banned the meetings outright, effectively driving the Assimilationists underground. Others have monitored and tried to control the frenzied crowds that always flood the gatherings, in an attempt to keep some kind of order. Some authorities have no idea what to do and just leave the gatherings alone.

It doesn't help that scientists and philosophers are themselves in violent disagreement about the technology involved in assimilation, about whether there is any chance that disassembled believers could ever be re-assembled in living form. What happens to those who de-construct? Are they truly absorbed into the Mother Swarm, as Symborg preaches? Or are they just atom fluff, loose particles blown around like so much dust? Or is the truth somewhere in between...between Science and Engineering and Faith?

This reporter has recently learned from highly-placed sources in Paris that UNIFORCE is working hard to counter the growth of Symborg and the Assimilationist movement. Sources have confirmed the existence of psychological ops being run at some of these "awakenings" to discredit and disprove what Symborg is saying. There are also reports, as yet unsubstantiated, of operations to smear Symborg himself, even counter-swarm ops to contaminate the swarm of nanobots that make up Symborg...a sort of long-range disruption effort to keep Symborg from assembling into human likeness. How successful these have been is not known, but sources confirm that the effort was approved at the highest levels of UNIFORCE, is massive, well-funded and growing in scope.

The true nature of what Symborg is has long been controversial. Is he a bot? Is he a collection of bots, in effect an angel, albeit of superior quality? Is he something else—

"...two minutes to drop! Troopers on standby! Close your visors! Suit boost to PRIMED AND READY!"

The lifter banked slightly to swing around to its approach heading and settled down in the bumpy night time air over the Serengeti plain at seventy meters altitude. Ahead, the black humps of the Ngongolo Hills loomed on the horizon like shoulders poking above the acacia trees, with the blood-red eye of the simmering volcano of Mt. Kipwezi stabbing through the faint mist.

Lieutenant Justin Cannon closed down the SOLNET report he had been viewing and tapped a button on his wristpad, changing his eyepiece display in an instant. He methodically checked and noted every trooper's status.

_Kaminski, Halvorson, Ng, Rice, Mehlkopf, Usher and Zammit. 1_ st _ANAD, Special Detachment Alpha. Tasked with entering the East African Sanctuary covertly. Nobody's kicking bot ass today, though. Just planting a few sensors and doing a little recon._

Cannon shook his head. Brass was like that. When you sent nanotroopers into harm's way, you had to let 'em kick a little ass. Recon shit was for the birds...drone birds, to be exact. Alpha had packed a bevy of them as well.

"Thirty seconds to drop! Troopers in position NOW!"

Cannon stood up and worked his way aft down the center aisle of the lifter's cargo bay, securing his hypersuit to the safety lines. The rest of the unit did likewise. When the ramp popped open, they'd be about sixty meters above the grassland and savanna of nighttime Kenya, popping out into the airstream in their hypersuits and propelling themselves down to the ground on suit boost. After securing their gear and taking their bearings, Detachment Alpha would head out to the target coordinates, recon the base of Kipwezi, then emplace the Q-POD sensor package and call for exfiltration.

With any luck, the swarms would still be dozing by the time they lifted off.

The final seconds ticked down and the lifter ramp slid down and open, exposing the cargo bay to the cool night time air rushing by.

" _GO...GO...GO...GO...!"_

One after another, the nanotroopers leaped into the night sky and lit off their suit boost. Had anyone been watching from below, they would have witnessed a maneuver that resembled a fireworks show on the Fourth of July. Shadowy forms flitted out the back of the lifter and suddenly flared briefly into brilliance as their thruster plumes lit off. Each trooper tucked his arms in and let his suit's guidance program drop them quickly to the ground in a controlled descent, stirring up little _poofs_ of dust as each one touched down.

It was all over in less than thirty seconds. The lifter disappeared as quickly as it had come.

Cannon got on the crewnet and checked the status of every trooper in his command. _Eight down and secure, all chirping back clean and green_.

"Good, drop, ladies. Get your gear together and rally beside me in two."

Cannon took a moment to scan the area. The drop zone had been ID'ed from satellite and drone imagery a few days before. A smattering of acacia trees. Made for decent cover. Humps of volcanic rock... _kopjes_ in the local dialect. Dried stream beds. Some bones nearly, probably gazelle or wildebeest, picked clean. "DPS, what've we got?"

The Defense and Protective Systems tech was a buzzcut Vietnamese atomgrabber named Ng. He hand-launched a Superfly drone and the thumb-sized ornithopter chittered into the sky, orbiting fifteen meters overhead, sniffing the surroundings for anything out of the ordinary. Momentarily, Ng reported back.

"Nada, Skipper. No unusual thermals, no EMs or acoustics beyond baseline. Looks like we're clear...for the moment."

"Good, Ng. Let's keep it that way." The rest of the Detachment formed up in a tight circle around Cannon. "Okay, here's the deal. We're going to recon the perimeter of Kipwezi for the next few hours. Out to one kilometer radius from the foot of the mountain. Target coordinates for planting Q-POD are about halfway around, the other side of the mountain. Kipwezi's an active volcano...ya'll can see that for yourselves—" he pointed up to the coppery glow emanating from the summit of Kipwezi, wreathed in steam and smoke—"so watch your step. The geos say she won't blow anytime in the next forty-eight hours, but she burps a lot...kind of like you guys at the canteen. So we keep Superfly up and keep sniffing, telltale gases...seismic shudders, that sort of thing. Procedure in a big blow is this: light off your suit boost and punch in ESCAPE 3...that's been pre-programmed to lift you out of here in a hurry and propel you out of the Sanctuary into Normals territory. Just make sure you're configured for quick launch at all times. Any questions?"

Zammit had one. "Lieutenant, what about the bots? I know we've got Superfly. But bots sometimes look like these bushes. Or those rocks. Even animals. This place is supposed to be home base for Config Zero. It a cinch they got sentries or guards of some type."

It was a question Cannon knew he couldn't answer. At the planning meetings, he'd had the same question himself. Nobody had an answer. Nobody knew just how well the botswarms could hide. It wasn't beyond possibility that Config Zero had infiltrated the Detachment itself and one of the troopers was an angel, a damn good one.

"Zammit, just keep your eyes and ears open, okay? If something looks and smells fishy, it probably is. Don't be shy about letting the rest of us know."

With that, Detachment Alpha gathered up its gear and headed out, north by northeast, circumambulating Mt. Kipwezi in a clockwise direction at a kilometer radius from the base of the mountain. With any luck, they'd be at the target coordinates in an hour or so.

The glare from the top of Kipwezi gave the only illumination on an otherwise mostly cloudy night. All the troopers had night-vision gear. They hiked for a few minutes through bush country and across a few dried-up stream beds. Shapes moved along the edge of their visual fields—gazelles, mostly, although Rice, the other DPS tech, was sure he'd seen a trio of lions skulking through some brush, stalking something.

"You're seeing things," someone cracked over the crewnet.

But everyone was still edgy, jumpy.

Usher was the jumpiest. To no one in particular, he whispered over the comm: "What the hell is this Config Zero anyway? We should just friggin' fry the whole area with HERF bombs and be done with it."

"Some badass ayatollah master bot, that's what he is," replied Zammit. "Symborg too."

"Naw, man, you're both cracked," said Rice. "Symborg's a friggin' genius. Think about it...that cloud of bugs is like the perfect politician. All things to all people, literally. You like handsome vid star looks...he can do it. You like Churchill or Roosevelt...some kind of strong father-type leader...he's got the config. You like some kind of sensitive, weepy kind of weenie, he can do that too. It's friggin' perfect, man."

"Symborg, my ass," Zammit came back. "He's just a pinch from Config Zero, that's all. Part of the Mother Swarm. He's whatever you want him to be...whatever your fantasy may be. With this gizmo Halvorson's carrying, we should be able to listen in on his pillow talk."

"Maybe we'll learn something."

"Yeah, like what a real scumbag he is."

"Hey," Cannon broke in on the crewnet. "Pipe down back there...cut the chatter. And keep your eyes and ears open. Zammit, get your ass up here...you're on point."

Sergeant Mick Zammit hustled up to where the LT was pointing. He unslung his HERF carbine and made sure it was charged. Ahead of them, a few humps materialized out of the darkness...black volcanic rock outcrops, weathered into shapes that looked like swollen corpses. Serengeti had some of those too. It wasn't uncommon to stumble across a pile of skeletons, picked clean by predators stalking the night. Cannon called a quick halt to take their bearings.

"CQE, how far to the target?"

Halvorson was the Detachment's quantum engineer. He checked his eyepiece, tapped keys on his wristpad to call up the nav screen. "I make it six hundred forty two meters, Skipper. Heading zero eight five. That's the little hollow the drones showed us...good clear side lobes of entanglement space there. Lots of decoherence waves mixing...we'll get our best signal pickup there for sure...if nothing changes."

"Hey, Skipper—" It was Ng. He'd just seen a few alarms on his own eyepiece. "There's something—"

Cannon came back to stand next to his DPS tech. "What've you got, Ng?"

The tech adjusted the gain on his sensors. Overhead, Superfly had seen it too and wheeled about to investigate. The chittering of the ornithopter's blades could clearly be heard circling above them.

"These rocks, sir...I'm getting above-normal EMs, thermals...some serious atom-grabbing...it's almost like—"

But he never got to finish the sentence.

In an instant, the circle of black volcanic rocks that surrounded them were no longer pitch black rocks. Instead, they glowed cherry-red, flaring into incandescence in seconds, like miniature suns erupting out of the ground.

" _BOTS!"_ someone yelled over the crewnet. "Swarms...all around us--!"

" _HERF 'em!"_ Cannon yelled. "Light em' up!"

"Fry the bastards!"

But Detachment Alpha was too late. The volcanic rocks had already changed config and quickly enveloped the unit in a flashing fog, a thunderstorm in miniature, with lightning streaks and a shrill keening buzz like a horde of angry bees.

The entire assault lasted four minutes. When the glare and the shrill buzzing finally died off and the swarm dissipated into the night sky, only dirt and ash remained.

Two thousand meters above the hollow, the summit of Mount Kipwezi glowed fiery red, casting deep blood red shadows across the ground. But there was no blood. Config Zero was a predator who consumed everything, down to the last molecule.

Only atom fluff...free radicals, an electron here, a scattering of protons there, was all that remained of Detachment Alpha.
CHAPTER 13

Aboard the _Michelangelo_ (UNS-212)

Trans-Pluto Trajectory Waypoint P-12

Post-Boost + 46 days

December 4, 2110 (U.T.)

2205 hours (Ship Time)

Big Mike was four days past Pluto when the master alarm sounded throughout the ship. Barely five minutes before, Detrick Vogel had decided that he just couldn't stay in his cramped bunk compartment a second longer. It was hot, stuffy, noisy and _what the hell was that smell, anyway_? Better to slip out and head for the galley. A sandwich and a beer...or what passed for beer aboard Big Mike...that ought to do the trick.

But before he could exit the crews' berth on B deck into the gangway tunnel, a shadow had drifted by the hatch opening. Instinctively, he held back to let whoever it was pass by.

It turned out to be Commander Liu, the swarm angel exec, moving quickly aft.

When asked about the incident later, Systems Tech Vogel could never give a convincing reason for why he decided to follow the angel to wherever it was going. Instinct, maybe. Suspicion, for sure. Curiosity. All these were suggested as motives for what he had done.

Regardless, Vogel waited for a full five-second count, then slipped out into the gangway. Down at the end of the tunnel that ran through the center of _Michelangelo_ , giving access to all decks and compartments, he saw the back of Liu's head. She turned and slipped into the hatch for C deck.

_Why's she going that way_ , Vogel wondered? C deck was for Service and Support. It contained the lockout chamber for crewmen to enter and leave the ship while she was underway. Vogel instinctively headed down the gangway in the same direction. C deck also provided access to Big Mike's tail mast, and a narrow tunnel aft where equipment and controls were housed for propellant tanks, her reactors and the plasma torch engines.

Vogel crept down the gangway with a growing sense of unease. He could feel the ship settling in for cruise after the Pluto phasing burn. Vibration was steady and she was settling on to her trajectory for the run out to the Big Beyond. Vogel didn't want to think too much about that. The truth was they were already millions of kilometers beyond where anyone had ever been before.

If anything went wrong here—

At C deck hatch, Vogel peered cautiously into the deck compartment. At first, he didn't see anything, didn't see Commander Liu, didn't see anything out of the ordinary. He wasn't even sure Systems personnel were allowed down here. He certainly wasn't familiar with any of the gear or systems on C deck.

Vogel slipped through the hatch.

That's when Systems Tech Vogel spotted Commander Victoria Liu. Behind some starboard rack-mounted shelving, Liu...or whatever the hell she was...had lost a bit of structure, so that the swarm was no longer quite so human-like, more like a slightly misshapen funhouse mirror distortion of a human. The swarm had gathered around some gear mounted on the hull itself.

With a start, Vogel soon realized the gear which had attracted Liu's attention and efforts was a hull valve, part of the logistics airlock system. The valve assembly allowed air in and out of Big Mike's pressure equalizing tanks. The hull valves helped _Michelangelo_ ship supplies and gear from space without having to de-pressurize the whole deck.

From his memory of a distant briefing before they had left Phobos Station, Vogel recalled that the hull valves were fully exposed to the vacuum of space. It was a critical system. The hull valves had to work. If they failed closed, _Michelangelo_ couldn't expel air from the airlock and the outer hatch couldn't be opened. If they failed open, the entire interior pressure hull, all spaces, could be exposed to vacuum. A catastrophic de-pressurization casualty could result...Captain Hawley had been quite clear about that.

_What the hell is she doing_? Vogel wondered. He eased into the deck compartment and then it hit him.

Victoria Liu was letting some of her swarm bots infest the hull valve.

His heart went into his mouth. He had to do something. He had to stop her.

Dietrick Vogel felt for the alarm panel by the hatch and stabbed the Master Alarm button. Instantly, a warning klaxon sounded throughout _Michelangelo_ , screeching and warbling through all decks.

Liu turned around and spotted him. He saw that her hand was gone...or more accurately, had broken down into a cloud of bots. A steady stream was flowing off the stump at the end of her arm into the hull valve assembly.

There was only one thing he could do. All the HERF and mag weapons were locked in the armory on A deck, three levels away.

Vogel closed his eyes and clenched his teeth, then lunged at the Victoria Liu swarm with every ounce of force he could muster.

The only sure way to kill a swarm was with another swarm. He'd learned that on day one in _nog_ school tactical class. But he didn't have a swarm. He didn't have a HERF gun. Not even a wrench or a hammer.

All he had was his own mass and momentum. Somewhere in the back of his mind, Vogel was dimly aware that his chances were, to put it mildly, remote. It would have been easier to cold-cock a cloud of smoke. But he realized as he lunged forward that he really didn't care.

It was high time to kick the bejeezus out of this scumbag swarm.

Cory Hawley was scrolling through some notes on ship systems in his stateroom when the master alarm sounded through the ship. Instantly, he sprang up and headed out into _Michelangelo's_ central gangway. As he headed aft toward the sound of the klaxon, he collided with Lieutenant Dean Kohl, the ship's propulsion systems officer, coming down from A deck.

"What the hell's going on?"

Kohl was grim. Right behind the officer was Commander Element B, Big Mike's engineering officer.

"It's coming from C deck...there are vital systems down there. Come on—" Hawley pushed past both of them and pulled himself along the gangway rails. When he got to the hatch, he slipped inside and came up short.

Half the compartment was enveloped in some kind of bot swarm. And what was left of Dietrick Vogel lay writhing in a swirling cloud of pulp on the deck, a chewed-up mass of half-disassembled tissue and blood, rapidly disintegrating into atom fluff.

Hawley saw the problem right away. The hull valve was fully enveloped in a swarm. And already a thin stream of air was squealing toward the valve, now partially open to space. Dust, debris, papers, tools and anything else not locked down was flying through the air, now fully entrained in the escaping airstream. A cold fog had formed in the sudden pressure drop and Hawley felt his eardrums close to bursting.

"Kohl...get to the armory...get some HERF weapons! And get Element B in here right away!"

Kohl was already on the move toward the ship's central gangway. "What about you, Skipper?"

Hawley was reaching for a small control panel near the hatch. "I'm hitting EOS...got to flood this compartment with air and secure that hatch! Get moving--!"

Kohl vanished in the growing hailstorm, his ears already popping in the falling pressure. As he fell out into the gangway, he saw Commander Element B sliding down from B Deck.

"What's happened?" the angel asked.

Kohl quickly filled him in. "Get in there...Captain needs help fast! It's a swarm...the exec, Commander Liu...it's trying to breach the hull at the airlock—" Kohl squeezed by and headed up to B deck. Just outside the captain's stateroom, a locked cabinet contained the ship's hand weapons: HERF rifles and mag pulsers. He had to get up there, grab a few guns and get back fast, before Hawley secured the C deck hatch permanently.

"I was on the command deck when I heard the master alarm...ISAAC's running the ship now...I saw pressure sensors going off down here—" Element B slipped by Kohl as he headed up. The engineering officer squeezed through the deck hatch, already swinging shut, and immediately saw what was left of Victoria Liu now fully enveloping the airlock and hull valve assembly. Tendrils of bots streamed off her arms and were fast approaching Cory Hawley, who waved his hands and arms, even as he fought to stay upright in the falling pressure, pelted by a rain of debris swirling around the airlock.

Element B plowed through the hailstorm toward Liu, or what was left of Liu, for by now the Commander had almost fully dematerialized into a cloud of bots, filling one corner of C deck with a flashing, pulsating fog.

Hawley lunged instinctively toward his engineering officer, then stopped, realizing that the angel was probably their only chance to stop a catastrophic hull breach. For a moment, the two looked at each other. Hawley knew the situation was grave and getting worse.

Element B's voice was firm. "Get all your people off this deck, Captain. Right now. Once that hatch is shut and I empty the air flasks, you won't be able to get out. If that hull valve or the bulkhead goes, you'll all be killed."

"I've got to get control of Big Mike, before we lose everything!"

Element B bodily shoved Hawley through the hatch and into the central gangway. "If I don't stop that swarm right here and now, Captain, nothing else will matter!"

Hawley shrugged and nodded grimly, then disappeared up the gangway. Once he was clear, Element B dogged the hatch shut and made it fast. Then he turned to the Victoria Liu swarm.

The entire far wall of the compartment was now thick with bots, the swarm replicating at max rate, now that it no longer needed to maintain structure.

Element B knew there was only one thing to do. Hawley's initial instincts had been right. The best way to fight a swarm was with another swarm. As he cycled his own config controls to slough off a formation of bots, Element B took a last look at what Commander Victoria Liu had now become.

The angel still had not fully dematerialized. From its head down to its waist, all human structure was gone, replaced by a fuzzy, pulsating blob of bots, like a tree enveloped in fog. Below the waist, most of Liu's trunk and legs were still faintly visible, in shadowy outline, as the swarm changed config and assumed its natural state. The effect was something half-human, half-swarm, a hybrid thing, steadily breaking down into its smallest elements.

Element B gave the command and started to dematerialize himself. "Time to get small!" he yelled over the shriek. He grabbed a nearby stanchion to stay upright as _Michelangelo_ lurched again. Up on A deck, he knew Hawley would be fighting to keep the ship under control. "Now going loose....enabling Config Delta seven seven—"

Through it all, the master alarm klaxon shrieked.

For Element B, life at nanoscale was like riding a gnat through a hurricane, like riding a roaring river down a waterfall. He immediately retracted all effectors in an attempt to ride out the storm. Then he hunkered down and slogged his way forward, trying to get a read on anything unusual up ahead, high thermals, high EMs, an acoustic signature, anything.

Somehow, some way, he had to locate the bots of the Liu swarm and engage.

_There's just no way to convey to the Humans what this is like_ , he told himself. Maybe the closest thing would be falling through a cloud or floating in an ocean...a sense of peace, serenity, even in a gale like this. An understanding that this was the way life should be lived...indeed every human _had_ lived like this for the first nine months of its life.

Just then, Element B got an acoustic ping. He checked his signals. Sure enough, his sensors had detected something unusual up ahead, through the driving sleet of air molecules, a faint echo, maybe a spark of thermal activity above average. Could be some bots assembling something...or disassembling something. He revved up propulsors to max and steered the master assembler on that heading.

The reading ebbed and flowed so he steered as best he could through the maelstrom, tacking first one way, then another, trying to work upstream against the onslaught of molecules from the hurricane.

There. _Gotcha_.

He chopped propulsors and probed ahead with electromagnetic fingers. Density going up. _Those aren't air molecules_ , he told himself. Cautiously, he probed some more and maneuvered around to approach from the side, gaining a different aspect view of the targets.

Slowly, ghostly shapes began to materialize out of the fog. Enemy bots, thousands of them. As he closed in, he could see the elongated multi-lobed form of the assemblers...squat barbells festooned with all manner of effectors and grabbers. Whirling propulsors at both ends, spinning into a blur as the bots fought to maintain position.

It was like nothing he had ever seen before.

Element B worked his config controls, setting up his own swarm to engage. Carbene grabbers, enzymatic knife, bond disrupters, everything was ready. Now girded for battle, he flexed nanoscale fists and drove forward, spoiling for a fight.

The two formations came together and sparks flew, as bond disrupters ripped at effectors, liberating millions of electron volts. The bots thrashed and hacked, searching for weak spots, closing, then backing off to find another angle. It was a boxing match, feint here, jab there, grasp and thrust, parry and kick.

In the last seconds before the grapple, Element B had noticed an open seam in the enemy bots' outer casing, right amidships, between whirling effectors above and below, almost like a waist belt. He surmised it was a structural join, a connection drawing together assembled segments of the bots' scaffolding. Could be a weak spot.

If I could just get a bond disrupter in there—

Throughout the battle front, Element B had replicated uncountable trillions of assemblers and each one was slaved to the master. Whatever move and maneuver he made was instantly copied and repeated by every replicant. Now, Element B twisted and turned to bring his forward disrupters to bear on the enemy bot's midsection.

Just a little further—he shuddered as his master bot was ripped by the enemy's carbene grabber. Element B recoiled slightly, losing effector tips in a spinning puff of atoms. _Ouch. That hurt...._

He closed in again, shielding himself from assault, extending his own disrupters as far forward as they would go. _Just a little bit further_ ....there!

He let it go. The disrupter tore at valence electrons that hovered like a cloud over the mid-section seam. Instantly, the seam buckled and gave way. An explosive cloud of electrons erupted, sparking and sizzling like oil on a gas grill. The bot's outer casing buckled and tore away in a frenzied thrashing, as more bonds were severed. Its props and effectors spun down and the momentum of the bond break sent the bot cartwheeling away.

It had worked.

Element B knew that in every nanoscale combat encounter, there were always weaknesses in the enemy bots. The point of all the tactics was to find that weakness and exploit it, before the enemy did the same to you.

All up and down the battlefront, Element B's replicants duplicated the maneuver, closing with their opponents, grappling and punching, searching for the midwaist seam. Any opening, any letdown, and his bond disrupters were there, zapping at the weak spot.

The air was soon churning and frothy with atom parts and molecule fragments.

And the Victoria Liu swarm would be so much atom fluff.

Element B made sure his embedded bots were running the assault as he had demonstrated. Now, he had to do something about containing what was left of the swarm. Bots could be slashed and cut up, but if the master was intact, replication was just a matter of time. You had to go for the head, go for the brains. Find the master and its controller and shred the config engine. Once you did that, the bots couldn't re-assemble.

He shifted back to macroscale and surveyed the situation.

A hurricane of debris still swirled toward the partially dismantled hull valve assembly. The fog had thickened, indicating that pressure was still falling. Element B knew he had to do something to patch the hull breach and secure that valve.

He spalled off more bots from his arm and called up a different config.

Config Delta Five fifty two...execute....!

All throughout the ship, the crew of _Michelangelo_ had responded to the master alarm with practiced speed and calm. Hawley made his way back to A deck and secured himself into his command seat, checking ship systems, querying ISAAC on status.

" _Approaching_ _hull breach on C deck, Captain,"_ came ISAAC's smooth voice. " _Configuring gangway for emergency depressurization casualty....Level One procedures in effect on all decks and spaces...now compensating thrust asymmetry with A and B thruster banks primed to counteract un-commanded roll rates...."_

"Very well," Hawley came back. His eyes roved across the board. Big Mike was in a slow counter-clockwise roll, the result of air escaping through the airlock and hull valve on C deck. ISAAC was already countering that. "What about the crew, ISAAC?"

" _No casualties at this time, excepting Commander Liu. Safe haven shelters activated and secure. Vital monitors all reading green. All parameters nominal. Commander Liu is offline and does not respond to alert messages."_

"No shit, ISAAC. I don't think we'll be hearing from the exec again...not in this lifetime. Any signs of swarm activity beyond C deck?"

" _Checking sensor readings now, Captain...one moment, please--"_

He knew Big Mike had nine safe haven shelters scattered around the ship for her crew of twenty. If what ISAAC said was true, everybody had either made it safely into shelter or was otherwise secured from the hull breach. The real question was what would they have to do to fully sanitize the ship from further swarm out breaks? He knew he would have to rely on Element B for that.

ISAAC came back online. " _No sensor indications of un-commanded swarm activity outside C deck, Captain. No spikes or activity on any normal band...electromagnetic, acoustic, thermal...all activity is concentrated on C deck."_

"Maybe we were lucky after all," Hawley muttered to himself. But he needed eyes, human eyes, on the scene too. He killed the master alarm klaxon and got on the ship's 1MC. " _Lieutenant Kohl, this is Command...Kohl come to A deck immediately_."

Two minutes later, the Propulsion Systems Officer popped his pressured-suited head in and climbed onto the command deck. He unsealed the helmet and took it off with a grunt as the deck hatch sealed behind him. "Sir, I was just checking safe haven status. Looks like—"

"I know, I know...ISAAC already checked. I need you to head down to C...give me a report on what's happening. What's Element B up to...he's not responding. Is the deck safe? Is that breach secure? According to ISAAC, we're still venting air and the ship's bucking like a bronco...we're using up a lot of fuel trying to maintain stability. Get down there and see what's happening."

Kohl was already re-sealing his helmet. "Yes, sir." He ducked through the hatch and disappeared down the gangway.

Hawley settled back in his seat and closed his eyes. This had been a close call, a very close call, and Big Mike wasn't out of the woods yet. Repairs, if they could be done at all, would take a few weeks and all the skills the crew and their robotic assistants could muster.

The smart thing to do would be to abandon the mission, turn _Michelangelo_ around and let her limp home, or at least closer to home. That alone would take months. And it would have to be approved by CINCSPACE.

Hawley decided to fire off a report to HQ and alert the brass as to what had happened. It would take the signal at least six hours from this distance to reach Earth...twelve hours plus for a response. He dictated a quick report to ISAAC, with a request to alter the mission, and got the message off. Then, assured that ISAAC had the ship under control, he decided to head aft and see the damage for himself.

He found air pressure restored to near normal in the gangway spaces and Lieutenant Kohl huddled with Element B outside C deck. Element B had re-assembled himself into something approximating a Frontier Corps officer, although his hands were a little off, a little blurry and foggy, like the structure wasn't quite there. It was an effect Hawley had seen before and he tried to ignore it.

"Sir, " Element B reported, "the hull valve assembly is fully re-constituted and is being tested right now. There is still a lot of cleanup to do on C deck. And the airlock needs to be fully checked. I was waiting for results from the hull valve test, before going back inside."

Hawley peered through a small porthole in the hatch. The deck looked like a tornado had swept through, which, in essence, it had, with the de-press emergency and things flying around like missiles. Racks and shelves were upended. Debris drifted on faint air currents. A mist had formed around the airlock, like a small halo. "What about Commander Liu...or whatever she or it was...?"

Kohl spoke up. He held out a small containment capsule in his hand. "Right here, Skipper. We managed to corral the master bot...Element B did, that is. The rest is atom fluff. But we got the brains, right here—" He turned the capsule end for end, then handed it to Hawley.

"You're sure you got everything?"

Element B nodded. Even his face was a little blurry, as if the config manager couldn't quite maintain an even structure. If you weren't used to dealing with swarm entities and angels, the effect could be a bit unnerving. Hawley figured it was best not to stare at his engineering officer and focused on what he could see inside the hatch porthole.

Element B described the effort. "I was able to disengage a small formation and match configs with Commander Liu. Config Delta Fifty Two did the trick, sir. Extra bond disrupters and a new geometry for my enzymatic knife. New pyridine probes as well as new design carbene grabbers."

Kohl pumped a fist in the air. "Element B kicked nanobotic ass, sir. I saw it from out here. You should have seen it, sir...like two dueling thunderstorms...even saw some lightning bolts in there—"

Element B nodded. "That would have been my bond disrupters, working at severing certain covalent bonds, which liberate an average of seven thousand electron volts when—"

Hawley held up a hand. "I get the picture. Element B, you've earned yourself a field

promotion. I'm making you full executive officer of this ship. Big Mike needs someone like you in command."

Element B displayed no outward emotion...angels didn't have the facial texture or the fine muscle control to do much more than generic smiles and frowns...plus they all looked alike. It was the same program, the same config.

"Thank you, sir. Such an honor is most unusual in this situation. A quick scan of Frontier Corps mission files indicates only four other similar incidents in the last ten years. I will try to perform the duties of the executive officer with courage and requisite skill....there are many command duties and responsibilities I must learn."

Hawley brushed all that off. He knew there might be some grumbling among _Michelangelo's_ crew. Angels or swarm entities in positions of responsibility aboard Frontier Corps ships had always been controversial. Not every vacuumhead thought it was a good idea. Frankly, Hawley thought to himself, some of them were just troglodytes anyway. But he was sure it was the right move.

"You'll do fine, Element B. Study up on the Officers' Manual and you'll be up to speed in no time."

Kohl looked worried. "Skipper, we can't go on with the mission like this, can we? I mean, we're a crippled ship. C deck needs to be thoroughly checked out, what with the hull valves and the airlock. We lost of lot of O2. There's damage in there that needs to be repaired, if we can repair it. Some of it we can fab if we need to. And the propulsion plant's acting funny...I'm thinking a few bots may have drifted through the aft tunnel...we got to sweep it clean, sir...if any bots get to the reactors or the plasma engines....?

"I know, Lieutenant, I know. Form up a detail with Element B here and take a look. You may have to send a party outside too, for an exterior inspection. As far as the mission goes, I've fired off a message to CINCSPACE explaining what happened. I asked for permission to abort and head back sunward, even though it'll take months...this trajectory's no good for any kind of quick return. It'll be half a day before we hear anything."

They discussed inspection and repair priorities for a few more minutes. Then Hawley went back to A deck to check the crew roster, see who might have EVA time in his log. Going outside here, hundreds of millions of kilometers beyond Pluto, in the middle of nowhere didn't appeal to him. It would take a special kind of courage and focus to do the job and not be overwhelmed by what the docs politely called _cosmic euphoria syndrome_. It was all fine and good to be at one with the Universe embraced in celestial love but you still needed air, water and food. He'd have to pick an inspection detail carefully. Maybe ISAAC could help.

Hours later, Hawley had drifted off to a fitful, restless sleep in his bunk when the message chime sounded gently. He sat up abruptly and saw the alert bar flashing. It was from CINCSPACE.

He rubbed his eyes, stretched and yawned, and read.

Orlov's chubby face came on the vid screen. Hawley turned up the volume.

"... _to the extreme nature of the Operation_ Sentinel _mission, your request to abort is denied...sorry about that, Captain... I've directed Frontier Corps stations to send all available data.... to help you cope with the situation...I've reviewed your incident reports...concur with your decision to field-promote Element B...good luck, Hawley...."_

Hawley turned the sound off, even as CINCSPACE continued to stream platitudes and official blather into the viewer. He had heard enough. Hawley sank back into his bunk and stared up at the ceiling.

So we're on our own out here. The crew will take this hard. There's been more than the usual bitching and whining for weeks now. They don't understand the mission. Hell, I don't understand the mission. Search for a cloud of bots or whatever this Devil's Eye anomaly is. Put detectors up to let us know if any bugs come calling.

The crew was going to be his hardest challenge. Big Mike could be repaired. The damage done by Commander Liu could be fixed. But he wasn't sure the crew could be fixed. They were uneasy as it was, flying off into the Big Beyond, farther than anyone had ever gone before. And the C deck incident hadn't helped. Now no one trusted anybody. Somehow he had to get them to focus on the ship and the mission, focus on things they could do, things they could see and trust.

He figured an all-hands meeting might help clear the air. He was already composing some ideas in his mind when the 1MC chirped.

It was Element B, up on A deck, in command.

"Captain, I've just finished a long-range scan of the region where _Triton Odyssey_ was lost, where comms stopped from that probe. Something's showing up...something you should see yourself."

Hawley sprang out of his bunk, thankful for something to keep his mind occupied. "On my way."

He was on the command deck in less than a minute, easing into the left-hand seat.

Element B seemed at full config, all edges and perimeter structures sharp, his hands and fingers not blurry or fuzzy at all. Hawley was grateful.

"What have you got, Commander?"

Element B called up a display on the main board. "Infrared, sir. There an off-nominal spike in temperature above ambient, this sector—" he highlighted a region of space, with the temperature spike color-enhanced. "It could be a cloud of dust or debris, but no other sectors show anything. Normally, debris clouds cause a smooth increase and decrease in temperature...the dust is distributed according to a normal distribution...but this, sir...this is a quick and large rise in temperature. Statistically unlikely."

Hawley studied the plot. Big Mike was forty-seven days past Pluto and weeks away from approach to the detected coordinates for _Devil's Eye_. What the hell was this?

"Have you got Farside's latest figures on _Devil's Eye?_ Has it moved...or drifted our way?"

Element B ran his hands quickly over the board. The blurring effect kicked in—it was like looking at someone's hands through a distorted mirror-- and Hawley decided not to focus on _that_. He changed the display to bring the region of elevated temperature into greater contrast.

"Here's the latest known position of the _Devil's Eye_ anomaly, sir." Element B had merged Farside's data with their own sensor readings. Hawley could read from the scale that the two were separated in distance by several million kilometers.

"Then this can't be _Devil's Eye_ , Commander. There's too great a gap...that's three million kilometers."

"Unless _Devil's Eye_ has partitioned and this is a subset of that phenomenon."

Hawley looked over at his new exec. "What, exactly, are you saying?"

Element B never changed expression. His face could best be described as determined concentration...or perhaps, official Frontier Corps poster-boy determination...or even some kind of weary resignation. No extra lines for character, no wrinkles. Just a bland face, fully there but somehow waiting for Life to draw lines on it.

"Sir, there is one possibility. Statistically unlikely, but it should be considered."

"So, spill it, Commander."

"The temperature spike does have some resemblance to the temperature profile of a nanobotic swarm. Not a perfect match, but I have been running some correlation routines and the probability is not zero for this possibility."

Hawley took a deep breath. "I was afraid you'd say that. So it's possible, remote but possible, that we could be looking at some kind of swarm?"

"That is affirmative, Captain. It's a remote possibility, but it can't be discounted."

Hawley studied the plot. "What about the latest data from _Triton Odyssey_? Are we looking at the same thing it saw?"

Element B called up more displays. "I ran the correlations, Captain. There are similarities in the data, but it's not a strong match. However, the correlations suggest that _Triton Odyssey_ at least saw something similar to what we are seeing."

"Something similar...what the hell does that mean? And how close is this.... _anomaly,_ whatever the hell it is...to our trajectory?

Element B chose to answer the second question. "The anomaly covers some six thousand kilometers in extent. Our current trajectory takes us directly into its path. It appears that the mass is in a coordinated orbit with us...heliocentric and approximately twenty days ahead of us."

Hawley sat back in his seat and rubbed his eyes wearily. "Great, Element B. That's just friggin' great. My ship's nearly chewed up by a rogue swarm masquerading as a Frontier Corps officer. Now we're heading full speed into another swarm. What about our target...Sedna? Can we get there another way?"

Element B's fingers flew over the board again, doing the calculations and setting up displays. "Not without a substantial delta-v maneuver, Captain. Here are the details—" he indicated reams of numbers. Nearby a 3-D plot showed the trajectories from a perspective above the solar system. "—a retrograde burn and a phasing burn could put us into a different orbit, which would cause us to intercept Sedna by traveling inside the orbit of the anomaly. Time to target is only four days longer, but the burn requirements use a lot of fuel."

Hawley studied the results, saw it was a bad idea and nixed the thought. "Okay, so we stay on our current course. Maybe, we can tweak things to arrive at Sedna and use that planetisimal as a shield. Run that scenario...."

The two of them tried out different options and let ISAAC do the math. There were no good options. Every feasible approach to Sedna, where they were supposed to construct the base station for Operation _Sentinel's_ network of detectors, took them close to, if not directly into, the anomaly.

After what had happened with Commander Liu, Hawley was reluctant to chance that. But he saw no other realistic course.

"Stay on this trajectory," he decided. "Maybe this thing is just a cloud of debris or dust. But we'd better get Big Mike's HERF mounts and coilguns checked out and primed for action, just in case. We may have to fight our way through."

Element B said, "I'll see to it right away, Captain." The exec left the command deck and headed aft to check on repairs at C deck and to form a detail to inspect and charge up the HERF batteries. Hawley stayed behind, studying the trajectory plots Element B still had running on the display.

A shiver came over Hawley and he buttoned up his tunic reflexively. He dimmed the lighting on the command deck, killed the displays and let his eyes wander outside the portholes for a moment, spanning the rim of stars that encircled the ship.

What was out there, waiting for them? A cloud of dust? Or another rogue swarm, maybe advance scouts from the Old Ones, already poking around the outer precincts of the solar system? Hawley wasn't sure he even believed in all the crap he'd heard about the Old Ones. Maybe they were just a myth, like something between the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus. Maybe it was the Devil himself out there. Plenty of people believed Judgment Day was coming.

A thought nagged at Hawley and he kept trying to swat it away, bury it before it came to his full attention, but like a persistent gnat, the thought wouldn't go away. What if Element B and Commander Liu were part of the same swarm, cut from the same cloth, as it were? Could he trust Element B? He had no reason not to...the angel officer had distinguished himself (itself?) over a service career that spanned nearly a dozen years, serving on cycler ships, lighters, corvettes and frigates throughout the Corps. He had a service record that could only be described as exemplary.

But so had Victoria Liu. That realization brought another shiver and Hawley turned up the heater on the deck.

If there were some kind of rogue swarm of bots out there, waiting for them, how would Element B react when the bugs came calling? Hawley turned that over in his mind, looking at the possibility from every angle. Would he perform as he always had, under fire, a frontline Frontier Corps officer on a space raider corvette in combat against a formidable enemy? Would he welcome the bots as some kind of long, lost cousins from the Great Beyond? Would he freeze up? Maybe lose config and disintegrate and disperse like fog?

Hawley understood that there could be no answer to questions like this and all he really could do was go on instinct and what he knew. _Maybe I should hash this out with Kohl and the other officers. Maybe I'm just paranoid._ But it wasn't paranoia that had nearly destroyed Big Mike a few hours ago. That was very real. The damage that was even now being repaired on C deck was quite real.

It was enough to drive a ship captain to drink. Hawley abruptly swung himself up and out if his seat. He was restless. He had to do something... _anything_ ...to keep from following these lines of thought.

Maybe I'll check on our HERF batteries myself and make sure they'll work when they're supposed to.

Out in the gangway, he headed aft and almost collided with Lieutenant Kohl, coming up from the aft tunnel. Kohl had spent the last hour checking out the ship's propellant tank quad and her reactor bay and plasma engines. He had a grim look on his face, as he wiped grease from his cheeks and hands.

"What have you got, Lieutenant? What's it look like back there?"

"Pinhole leak in tank number four, Skipper. And the shielding's penetrated along a bulkhead seam...looks like the bots got into it. I came up to grab some rad sensors and tools. We'll have to re-config something soon or we'll all be dead in a month. And that outside EVA we were talking about....I'd say we'd better get to it right away...that tank's losing xenon gas faster than I thought."

Hawley made a snap decision. "Dean, how's your spacewalking legs?"

Kohl's eyes widened. You serious, Skipper? I haven't been outside in over a year...I'm not even sure my certificate's any good."

"Get Stolz and the other qualified guys to give you a quick refresher. You and me are talking a walk...outside Big Mike...tomorrow. I'm not trusting this to anybody else."

Fourteen billion kilometers away, sunward of _Michelangelo_ , Mount Kipwezi glowed a faint crimson red through wispy late evening clouds. The ground rumbled and local Masai tribesmen chanted all evening long around campfires, trying to placate the gods they were sure were angry.

Inside the cave complex near the summit, sparkling mists flashed and strobed with activity as Config Zero received and processed new signals, signals relayed through the Keeper at Europa. The signals advised Config Zero of status updates, new operations, new configuration changes and new trajectories for Subunit 99 and all elements. Elements 10899773 thru 4983376 had separated themselves from the primary formation and were approaching their target coordinates, Object 222876. Landfall would occur in a few hours. Disassembly operations would proceed thereafter.

Config Zero acknowledged the update and stored it in memory.
CHAPTER 14

UN Quantum Corps Base

Table Top Mountain, Idaho, USA

December 5, 2110 (U.T.)

1930 hours

The small town of Haleyville was a short ride from Table Top Mountain and Johnny Winger would have enjoyed the nighttime jaunt on the turboscooter--the air was fresh with pine and birch and a cold steady breeze was flowing through the high mountain passes of Idaho's Sawtooth Range--but the truth was he was nervous, even anxious about the meeting.

The purpose of the meeting was known only to a few inside UNIFORCE. The Secretary-General would be there and no SG had ever come to Table Top before, certainly not in disguise, under the radar, as it were. UNSAC would also be there, in the person of Jurgen Steiner, equally under the radar. Nobody wanted to take a chance that Config Zero might figure out what was up, or worse, the Assimilationists, whom Q2 had long ago decided had spies and informants everywhere, not all of them human.

Haleyville was a thirty-minute ride, out the main gate at Drexler Field--Table Top's parade ground and drill field--down the winding road through Buffalo Valley to Highway 7. Haleyville Road itself ran a serpentine course, switching back and forth along the crest of the ridge overlooking Hunt Valley to the north, a narrow two-lane blacktop dark as a black bear, now dusted with snow drifts, until it peeled off south toward the town itself. The north fork went up Hunt Valley Road, through a valley and tunnel complex the _nogs_ had long ago called The Notch, to the Test and Wargaming Range several miles away, atop a bare mesa lost in wispy wreaths of cloud and mist.

Winger allowed himself to briefly enjoy the nighttime cruise as best he could, cranking the scooter up to nearly a hundred and twenty, leaning left and right as he steered on through the cold night air toward the outskirts of town, and the rustic hotel known as Custer Inn, where his appointment was undoubtedly waiting impatiently. He was already late and it was dark, save for the bowl of stars overhead, and the faint halo glow of Table Top base behind him. He was glad the road was mostly deserted.

He didn't want to answer any more questions than necessary.

Custer Inn was a faintly shabby, log and shingle mountain lodge of a hotel, nestled in the piney brow of a small turnout valley off the main road, a mile or so before Highway 7 broadened into Main Street, which was lined with gift shops, bait and tackle joints and hiking suppliers. The pale blue glow of a parasailing shop, closed for the evening, threw enough light across the road, so he found the turnoff readily enough. He tried not to let the hologram windsailers circling over the intersection distract him.

He sped down the decline toward the parking lot, and parked the scooter in the shadows, somehow feeling comfort in a cloak of anonymity. Through the windows, the bar and restaurant shone with boozy conviviality, laughter and saloon music spilling out through the front doors.

He went inside.

As instructed, he went to Registration and secured a room for the night. Number 127, the Geronimo wing and _would he be needing any help with his luggage, sir, we do have bellhop service--_

Winger ignored the offer and went looking for the room. He turned up and down several corridors, crossed a breezeway to another building and eventually stumbled upon Room 127. He unlocked it and went inside.

They were both there, the SG sitting at a desk by the window and UNSAC, pacing back and forth.

"General, finally you're here," Steiner grunted. "No one followed you?"

"No one," Winger said. "I had a bot shield up too, per EMCON protocol. I came as soon as I could."

The Secretary-General, Kwame Kavaii, nodded. "Good. I asked you both to come to this little hovel in the middle of nowhere because I wanted to keep this meeting off the books. No record of this goes anywhere."

UNSAC picked up the story. "There's an op in planning right now, Winger. Quantum Corps will head up this op. That's why we're here...close to Table Top, but off the record, so to speak."

"What kind of op, sir?"

"We've got to do something about this Symborg character. Something to discredit him, show him up for the fraud he is."

"And stop the spread of this plague of Assimilationism. People are flocking into the temples by the thousands, every day. It's mass suicide...that's what it is."

UNSAC pulled out a tablet and showed Winger and the SG the details of the special op he had in mind. It was all pretty sketchy, briefing-style stuff. "I'm calling it Operation _Quantum Crusader._ The mission is to defeat or at least diminish and discredit Symborg in the eyes of his millions of followers, so that Assimilationism as a philosophy can be squashed once and for all. The whole op has to be under the radar...politics inside the UN make that necessary. Symborg's got plenty of sympathizers among us and we have to be aware of that at all times."

The SG laid his own tablet on the desk and finagled with some buttons. Instantly, a 3-D projection of Symborg materialized out of nothing, dancing in the air...footage from some Assimilationist rally somewhere in Africa, maybe Europe. "He's drawing crowds estimated at up to half a million or more every time he shows up. His face is all over the Net and I couldn't begin to count the merchandise with his likeness. I'm seeing it everywhere...on everybody. Kids are turbo-boarding outside the Quartier-General in Paris with Assimilationist banners and tattoos and face-vids...my own kids have been pestering me for his stuff. It's hotter than Hades and spreading like a plague. Hell, it _is_ a plague and we've got to do whatever we have to do to stamp it out."

Winger watched the Symborg projection for a moment. "Q2 says that Symborg is nothing more than a handsome, more human-like Config Zero."

" _Exactly_ ," UNSAC said, pounding a fist into his hand. "Exactly. We've got solid evidence that Symborg is an element of Config Zero...which makes all these rallies and the whole shebang a serious violation of the Containment Laws."

The SG shrugged. "I agree but a hell of a lot of people think the Containment Laws are for the dinosaurs. Nobody pays any attention to them...we trade and deal with Config Zero and all his swarm minions all the time...hell, ANAD technology is so much a part of our lives that most people view Containment as an historical curiosity, like segregation...or divine right of kings or something. But we have Containment for a reason and what _Michelangelo_ may or may not have found out there beyond Pluto is part of that reason."

UNSAC agreed. "Config Zero...the Old Ones...Symborg...it's all part of the same thing, Winger. It's a coordinated effort to undermine our society and then destroy us... by any means necessary."

"We need a counter-revolution," the SG decided. "Some kind of political movement we can counter Symborg with....a movement of normals that can compete across the world with the Assimilationists."

UNSAC scowled. "I'd prefer to drop a few Quantum Corps battalions into each Sanctuary and blast the sons of bitches to kingdom come. But I guess we can't do that, can we? Somehow, the world's moral compass has gone haywire and we're left to pick up the pieces."

The SG manipulated the display from his pad and began explaining. "We've concocted a plan, General Winger. This Operation _Quantum Crusader_ is designed to do several things: first to embarrass Symborg in front of his followers, then ultimately to destroy him. It's political and character assassination, pure and simple. But we don't really have a choice."

UNSAC said, "The idea is to disrupt the swarm elements that form Symborg, so that his usual config...the public face of the angel...is disrupted. The fact that Symborg is an angel is both a source of power for him and a weakness. We intend to exploit that weakness. In order to do that, someone has to physically approach Symborg close enough to get some samples of the bots that make up the swarm. We can analyze these samples, right here at Table Top... and from that analysis, we can develop countermeasures. By the way, all this is Top Secret Purple classification. The fewer people who know about this, the better."

Winger was intrigued. "I'm an old atomgrabber from way back, sir. I'd love to head up a 'snatch and grab' mission like this myself. But it's probably better for a younger trooper to head this up."

UNSAC manipulated his own commandpad and the SG's 3-D display vanished, to be replaced by a rendition of a floating photo gallery, heads of nanotroopers drifting in mid-air like so many disembodied spirits. "This is you're A-Team, General. Six operatives. Your CC1 is this trooper here—" he poked at a grim, chubby face with a regulation Quantum Corps buzzcut and fierce blue eyes. "—Lieutenant Jake Argo."

Winger's eyes lit up and he snapped his fingers in recognition. "The first Kipwezi mission...when was it? Back in '03 or 04, I think. I read the reports...first class commander, this guy."

"The very one," UNSAC agreed. "Has field experience in and around the Sanctuaries. Knows counter-swarm tactics. Gets a lot out of his troops and they adore him...the ones that come back alive, that is." UNSAC altered the display to show a mission timeline, hovering over Argo's head. "Look, Winger, here's the basics: we're going to use a group of small children, specially selected from the Kibera district in Nairobi. Symborg's kind of folks. Next time Symborg plans to show up at a rally in the Nairobi area, we emplace these kids. At the right moment, when Symborg calls for volunteers to come forward and be 'embraced by the Mother Swarm,' these kids rush forward to embrace Symborg with some kind of love hug. Only one of the kids won't be human."

The SG brought up his own display. "The project is based here at Table Top. Very hush-hush." A new face materialized in the air alongside Lieutenant Argo and his A-Team, a child's face, beaming with a huge smile. "Meet Kgani. Quantum Corps created this angel just for Operation _Quantum Crusader_. Kgani's the one who'll gather stray bots from Symborg and deliver them to Quantum Corps."

The three of them worked out the rest of the details in the hotel room at Custer Inn and the SG signed off on the whole plan.

"I don't have to remind both of you," Kavaii said, "that we're taking quite a risk with this. The swarms have representatives in the General Assembly. And Q2 reminds me constantly that Config Zero could have spies and stray bots everywhere...I'm so paranoid I don't even look in my bathroom mirror anymore...afraid of what I might see. But it has to be done. If we can discredit and destroy Symborg, Config Zero loses one of his best weapons against us. And it we fail—"

"Quantum Corps doesn't fail, sir," UNSAC said. Steiner was about to go over the equipment Argo's A-Team would need when his pad chirped. A message was coming through on the staffnet, his eyes only. He thumbed a button and the crypto circuit warbled for a moment, as the coded message was scrubbed through and deciphered. It was Paris. UNSAC scanned the brief quickly.

"Negotiations with Servodyne and Consolidated Beck-Waltham just concluded. They're getting a contract to build more geoplanes...new design after we lost _Gopher_ a few months ago. You've got Tectonic Guard up and running, Winger?"

Winger acknowledged, "Fully staffed and trained, sir. Boundary Patrol is conducting routine patrols in all sectors. Every little quake and fart the Earth makes, we know about it and check it out."

UNSAC was satisfied. "It's no secret who's behind all these tremors...just another front in Config Zero's war against Mankind."

The SG was already closing up his own pad. He and UNSAC had a lifter waiting for them behind the hotel. Before long, they would both be sacked out on a red-eye back to the East Coast...and Steiner had yet another leg...a nighttime hyperjet hop back to Paris.

"It's imperative this operation succeed," the Secretary-General said. "We've got to destroy Symborg and somehow contain Config Zero. It's our only hope against the Old Ones, if they turn out to be real. What I'm hearing from _Michelangelo_ lately concerns me. Something's out there...something that shouldn't be there...CINCSPACE sends me a brief every day. If it is some kind of invading force, we won't be able to fight it off with spies and saboteurs right in our midst."
CHAPTER 15

Aboard the _Michelangelo_ (UNS-212)

Sedna Approach Trajectory Waypoint S-1

Orbit Injection Minus Two Minutes

December 15, 2110 (U.T.)

0015 hours (Ship Time)

"Injection burn in two minutes."

Element B's voice was dry, almost mechanical as the exec looked over all of _Michelangelo's_ systems. In less than two minutes, her plasma torch engines would flare into operation and the great rebuilt cycler ship, often described by the dock jockeys at Phobos Station as a big kebab skewer with rockets, would begin slowing down just enough for the planetisimal Sedna to capture them into orbit. If all went well, Big Mike would drop speed just enough for the tiny world's faint gravity to grab them and bend their flight path into a stable orbit.

Cory Hawley acknowledged the status check. "Engine status, Lieutenant? Everything copacetic back there?"

Lieutenant Dean Kohl was sitting in the Systems seat up on the command deck, right behind Hawley. His eyes wandered around the board. "She's all hot and ready, Skipper. Temps, pressures, everything's clean and green back here."

"One minute to burn," came Element B. Big Mike's executive officer stole a quick glance at the approaching world through his forward portholes. "Just coming up on the sunlit side...terminator approaching."

Hawley looked too. "Looks like something my dog dug up in the backyard...a dirt clod with acne."

Indeed, the planetisimal Sedna, at eight billion miles from the Sun on the inner edge of the vast Oort Cloud, was a rocky, coppery red world with battered plains and crumpled mountains, tortured by eons of meteor bombardment into a frozen, desiccated rubble pile of a world, not even a planet by official reckoning.

Dean Kohl just shook his head. "A frozen dirt clod, if you ask me. Amazing there isn't more ice on the surface. Something blew it off. What a great place for Sentinel to set up a network and command post. Garden spot of the Oort Cloud."

"Ten seconds to burn...everybody secure loose items."

"B...you sound like my mother...telling me to wear my rain coat when it rains—" Kohl nonetheless performed the last minute inspection that all Frontier Corps troops knew so well.

There was a brief jolt and the ship shuddered as her engines fired. Big Mike's central mast bent and swayed momentarily until vernier thrusters could damp out the oscillation.

"Twang damping," said Element B. "Oscillations smoothing out on schedule."

"Ride 'em, cowboy..." Kohl said. "I've got three engines up and operating...thrust is good...pressures are good. Big Mike's slamming on the brakes—"

The burn lasted four minutes. When it was over, cycler ship _Michelangelo_ had dropped into a stable circular orbit above the 1800 kilometer-wide world, an orbit less than a hundred kilometers over her battered red-brown surface. Below them, the day-night terminator slid by and full sunlight fell upon her tortured plains and hills...as much light as the Sun could muster from a distance of twelve billion kilometers. The visual effect was of a planetscape illuminated as if at dusk, filled with shadows and black valleys.

"Okay, secure the burn," Hawley commanded. "Let's get moving. Mission briefing in the galley in half an hour."

Big Mike's galley was the largest space aboard ship, located on B deck, just off the central gangway. Half an hour later, the ship was secured for orbital operations and Hawley assembled his crew for a talk.

"Okay, here's the deal--" Hawley told them. They were all there, Kohl, Element B, Westerlund, Favors, Grant and Ng, Moskowitz and Ernst...the entire twenty-person crew crammed into the galley or clinging to davits and hold-downs in the gangway just outside. "It's been a long haul but we finally made it to our destination...believe it or now, that dirt clod outside the portholes is what we came for. It's not exactly a tropical paradise but it _is_ important. Here's why: CINCSPACE thinks there may be something...an alien swarm or something like that...poking around out here. We've already detected something ourselves co-orbiting with this dirt clod...Element B, what's the latest on that anomaly?"

The Exec was situated near one of the tables. Other crewmen gave the angel a wide berth. "Twenty hours before the injection burn, we had an anomaly under long-range scan. The anomaly looked like a dust cloud but it could have been a swarm, or part of a swarm. Electromagnetic signatures suggested that, anyway. After the injection burn, I did a sweep of space around Sedna. No anomaly. Whatever it was, it may have dispersed."

Lieutenant Kohl snorted. "Well, that's just friggin' great, ain't it? No idea what this anomaly might have been?"

Element B shook his head. Nobody noticed whether his facial features tracked with the gesture. "There were similarities to swarm formations, but there were differences too...we didn't get a good track on it."

"Well, is it your cousin or something--?" said Roy Favors, one of the Systems Techs.

"Yeah, did you send greetings or—"

"That will be _enough_ of that," Hawley cut in. "We've got a mission and any sniping or whining that interferes with it will be dealt with...by me, personally. Is that clear?" Hawley looked around the wardroom, daring anyone to challenge the order. Nobody did.

"That's better," Hawley went on. "Like I said, CINCSPACE has assigned us a mission...to deploy a Sentinel network of detectors on and around this dirt clod of a world and in nearby orbits...a network that the Corps can use to keep an eye on things. Nobody knows what the hell's going on out here...but we got a real live enemy on Earth named Config Zero and he may have buddies snooping around these parts. The Sentinel net is just a tripwire. If Config Zero's got help coming from deep space, the Corps wants to know about it. Kohl--?"

"Here, sir." The Propulsions Systems officer was stashed in a corner by the galley's tiny bar, underneath a hand-lettered sign that read _South Seas Bar_. Pre-fabbed miniature palm trees were sprinkled around the area.

"You checked out _Icarus_?" _Icarus_ was the Sedna lander attached to Big Mike's central mast between B and C decks.

"She's fueled and ready to go, Skipper. We did an all-up test of every system just a few hours ago, fixed a few bugs and checked her out completely."

"Very well. The landing party will be five people: I'll command the detail. I also want Lieutenant Kohl, Sergeant Westerlund, Sergeant Ng and you, Favors. We need a good Systems tech on the surface to set up the base module and get the Network going. Landing party will meet me on C deck right after this briefing. And Element B will be in command while we're away."

"Skipper?" It was Favors.

"What is it?"

"We taking any weapons with us down there? I mean, you know...HERF guns. Mag weapons. That sort of thing."

Hawley understand his concern. "Nobody knows what's down there, Roy. Hell, nobody's been out this far before." He cringed, even as he said that. He didn't want to remind the crew of what already had half of them spooked. "What I mean is this: yes, we are taking weapons. It's possible that anomaly we detected is down there, or part of it. We take weapons as part of our normal equipment. But seek and destroy is not our mission. In other words--don't go looking for trouble. Our mission is to deploy the base module and get the Network controls up and operating. After that checks out, we return to Big Mike and head out from here, seeding this orbit and nearby space with all those dozens of detectors we're got stashed on C deck. Once we get all the units deployed and everybody's talking to everybody, we make a burn and scram back home. Any further questions?"

Nobody had any. But Hawley could feel the unease. It was thick enough to cut.

"Briefing is over. Get to your duty stations. Landing party, come with me. _Icarus_ departs in two hours."

Hawley and the landing team went over their equipment and the mission details while gathered around the racks of detectors stored on C deck. During the briefing, Element B showed up with final information about their landing site.

The swarm angel carried a small disk and used it as a projector. Angels usually didn't sport wristpads. There wasn't enough 'skin' to attach them to.

"Nominal landing zone is at these coordinates—" the angel rattled off latitude and longitude figures, then tagged the landing site on a map that he displayed. "Near the equator, in the middle of a large crater...thirty kilometers wide. There's a central hill complex in the middle of the crater. And some long rilles or cracks in the surface...some kind of mass wasting is the likely cause. No evidence that Sedna ever experienced any kind of volcanism."

"Thanks for Geo 101, Professor..." muttered Favors. "What's the ground made of?"

"Basaltic rock. And subsurface ice too, most likely. It's a low-grav environment, so you can hop for dozens of meters if you aren't careful. Ground scan has found several clear areas that seem like good spots for the base module."

"We're coming down a few klicks from those hills," Hawley added. "Corps Engineering thinks the peaks may be a great place for a transmitter station. Funnel all the detector data back to the base module. Favors, you and Westerlund will scout that...the rest of us will deploy the base and get it set up. Questions?"

There were none.

Several hours later, the landing detail was aboard _Icarus_ and the lander was signaling Big Mike that she was ready to depart.

Roy Favors and Sheila Westerlund were strapped into their seats in the back, Sammy Ng between them. Hawley and Kohl were up front, in command.

Favors smacked his chewing gum loudly, a nervous habit that made everybody roll their eyes. "This bugger reminds me of a stack of pancakes, folks."

"Yeah," said Westerlund. "With legs and three sausages on top. Does everything remind you of food, Favs?"

"Knock it off back there," Hawley ordered. "Okay, _Michelangelo_ ...we're secure and ready. Give me the count...."

A few minutes after everybody was through bitching and moaning and had gotten themselves secured and strapped in, Hawley punched up the departure program on the ship's computer and counted down the last seconds before separation.

"Five...four...three...two...one... _bingo_!"

There was brief shudder and lurch as _Icarus'_ thrusters fired to make a positive separation.

" _Icarus_ away..." he announced. Hawley and Kohl watched through the forward windscreen as the gaping mouth of _Michelangelo's_ side-mast docking ring receded into the distance. From two kilometers off, when Hawley had stopped their motion and re-oriented _Icarus_ for de-orbit, the great cycler ship looked like a massive bird soaring off into the heavens.

Kohl counted down the last moments to the initial burn that would start _Icarus_ on her long curving descent to the surface of Sedna. The limb of the reddish world could barely be seen through the portholes, dim and shadowy.

"Ten seconds to PDI," Kohl announced. He checked over his console: track, engine status, attitude...everything seemed ready. "Get ready for a major kick in the ass—"

The burn, when it came, made _Icarus_ shake and shudder like a wet dog. Roy Favors felt the acceleration build up rapidly. After months of microgravity, the ship's descent felt like an elephant had planted its posterior right on his chest. He forced a sideways glance at Westerlund in the next seat.

The trooper was exhaling out in quick, forced breaths, as they had been trained. She met Favors' eyes and grunted back.

"Favs...remind me to...put in...for a...transfer...when we get back...."

Hawley and Kohl watched the trajectory plot on the board carefully as _Icarus_ began her initial pitchover and slowed noticeably. The plot showed several lines, indicating nominal and actual course, all converging on an actual window in space, the entry point called _High Gate,_ where the lander would begin firing her descent engines continuously, maneuvering and navigating across Sedna's tortured and battered surface as they fell toward the LZ in the middle of Cone Crater...so named by Roy Favors because the formation reminded him of a big ice cream cone.

The descent and landing took half an hour.

"Touchdown...good job, Skipper," said Dean Kohl. _Icarus_ settled with a bump onto a mostly level plain pocked with craters and strange blood-red hillocks. More hills surrounded them. "Right in the crosshairs."

"Okay, boys and girls, let's get moving," Hawley unstrapped himself and headed for the lockout in the aft compartment.

The first order of business was to use _Icarus'_ crane and robot arm to lift and deploy the base module. The cylindrical module had been mounted on top of the three modules that constituted _Icarus'_ crew compartment and stores modules. Kohl handled the crane and gently placed the base module on the ground with the arm. The module treads would eventually be extended and the whole thing driven off to its final deployment site, half a kilometer away.

Hawley pronounced himself satisfied. "That went better than expected. Favors, you and Westerlund get into your gear. I want that hill surveyed and ground prepped for the transmitter."

"Yes, sir," came both replies. The two Systems Techs headed for the lockout, located in _Icarus'_ starboard compartment.

In the meantime, Kohl and Hawley went back to the command compartment.

"Dean, let's do a full scan of the area, all bands. I don't want anything creeping up on us out of nowhere."

"Amen to that," Kohl said. Left unsaid were the words Element B had used to describe the anomaly Big Mike had been tracking on their approach to Sedna: _Whatever it was, it must have dispersed._

Hawley knew full well that real-life swarms could easily disperse into nothing and re-assemble in no time. Better to keep their HERF guns charged up and ready, just in case.

Westerlund and Favors were on the surface of Sedna an hour later. They were followed in short order by Ng and Kohl, who would head for the base module and get it powered up.

Sheila Westerlund surveyed the landscape. "Garden spot of the universe, Favors. This is where I want to build _my_ vacation cottage."

Favors was bounding and hopping around, trying out the low-gravity, like a bloated white kangaroo. "Yeah, what's not to like: piles of rubble, craters everywhere, no air and temps colder than a witch's—"

"Hey, what's with that hill?"

Favors came to a halt a few dozen meters away, kicking up rooster tails of dust. "What hill? Our destination's over there."

Westerlund pointed toward the horizon. "No, where that fog or dust cloud is...that was a hill a second ago. Now—"

They both saw the dust cloud. Westerlund insisted the cloud had been a low hillock just moments before. Now, a geyser of dust sprayed in slow motion into the vacuum, like a slow-motion flower bursting to life.

"Must be an ice pocket or something, sublimating to space. Come on, let's go...we ain't got all day."

They turned back to the complex of low hills on the other side of _Icarus._ Favors did a sighting with his suitscope. "I make 'em at two kilometers from here, give or take a crater or two. Horizon's close on this little slagheap of a world."

"Hey, I'll race you, vacuumhead. Come on—"

They gathered up their gear and hopped off toward the rounded humps on the horizon.

For the next hour, the area around _Icarus_ was busy with activity, as the landing party went about their work. Pallets of cargo and gear were unloaded by Sammy Ng, using the robotic crane, and distributed around the landing site, around the perimeter of _Icarus._

Hawley and Kohl climbed into the base module and powered the cylinder up. The module came equipped with its own track system and motor, so it could be driven for short distances.

Wedged into the tiny cockpit up front, Hawley engaged the clutch and the module—they had taken to calling it _Igloo_ —lurched off to a rumbling crawl across the regolith.

"What a speed demon this jalopy is...I saw a small rise not far from here when we came down," he explained. "Probably make a good site to install this bugger and get it up and operating."

Kohl scanned out the side porthole. "God awful desolate place, if you ask me, Skipper. The sooner we can get out of here, the better. I can't help feeling we're being watched...by who or what, I don't know...but I can't shake that feeling."

"Me too," Hawley admitted. _Igloo_ bounced and slid and skidded across the dusty surface, riding up and over shallow crater rims and down into crater floors like beating against ocean waves. "That anomaly we detected on approach makes me nervous. I'm not sure how much I believe about this Old Ones crap, but it looks like something's out there and nearby too. CINCSPACE has reports from Intel that there may be advance scouts in this sector...some of the eggheads think that's what _Devil's Eye_ really is...some kind of early recon of our solar system. Me...I'm not so sure. But it pays to be cautious. You loaded those weapons?"

Hawley fingered a small case at his feet. "Two HERF carbines right here and I checked the charge before we left. Plus, two magpulsers in the aft compartment. Anything shows its friggin' face around here gets blasted into cheese puffs."

They drove on for several kilometers, while Kohl sighted to the horizon, triangulating their position and checking it with the gyros. _Igloo's_ motors strained slightly as she began a gentle climb and moments later, Kohl announced, "I think this is the spot, Skipper. Coordinates match."

_Igloo_ braked to a halt and dug herself into the frozen dirt, anchoring herself with small charges that momentarily liquefied the ground and letting her settle lower before the regolith froze again. The two of them set to work, activating systems.

Kohl pulled out one of the carbines. "I'll check around outside. Make sure we're level and stable."

"Good idea...while you're at it, get that comm pod out and set up too. We'll need to check transmission quality...make sure we can handshake with the transmitter Favors and Westerlund are setting up. See of you can raise them."

Kohl exited _Igloo's_ airlock and went around the rear of _Igloo_ to find the lanyard that dropped the comm pod and its work table. While he was waiting for the device to spring into position, he used his suitscope to locate the other two troopers, by now three plus kilometers away, heading for the hills south of _Icarus._ Soon enough, he spied two white dots hopping like fat kangaroos up the lower slopes of what the maps called Pyramid Hill. He called up to them.

"You jokers look like drunken clowns up there....you sure Favors didn't grab some hooch from the galley on the way out?"

Word came back from the slopes. It was Favors. "Wish'd to hell I had, you bozos. Sheila and I are making like goats and working our way up this hill...the dirt's loose, so it's two steps up and ten steps back. But we're getting there—"

"Yeah," said Westerlund, already twenty meters ahead, "some of us are better goats than others."

"Hey watch that boulder—" Favors said. A small stream of rocks came tumbling down in a slow-motion landslide. Favors dodged the worst of it. He leaned into the climb and scrambled to stay upright in the slide. "Another one like that and I'll wind up in a heap at the bottom. How far's the peak, anyway?"

Westerlund stopped to let the other Systems Tech catch up, and to get her breath. They could use their suit boost, but the regolith was so loose, they might only succeed in setting off another slide.

"Looks like another couple hundred meters. There's some kind of ravine up ahead, like a big gash in the side of this mountain. And I don't know what all those hillocks are...I'll check 'em out."

All up and down the rise were spotted small humps, rock hills that in another time and place might have looked like anthills. Knee-high, flat on top, coppery red in the dim shadows, they were hard to distinguish from the shadows themselves.

_Jesus, they look like they're moving_. _Must be the light--_ Westerlund cautiously approached one.

"These suckers are just made out of dirt, looks like, Favs. Must be some kind of charge that holds them together...Cripes, they _are_ moving—"

She had been about to stick a suit toe into the side of one hump when it exploded right in front of her. It wasn't a real explosion and it was in slow-motion, but the entire hump disintegrated before her eyes. That's when she realized what the hump was.

"Jesus, they're bots...they're _mechs_ ...coming after me—!" She flailed wildly, trying to drive the attack off, but it was useless. She lost her footing in another slide and went down hard on her side, skidding downslope a few meters. In that moment, the swarm fell upon her.

"Favs, help.... _hellllllpppp_!! _Aaaarrrggghhh_ , they're getting inside...they're on me--!!"

Westerlund rolled and kicked but it was too late. Favors saw what was happening and kicked and clawed his way toward his buddy, but a pair of nearby humps disintegrated and the bots were on top of _him_ before he could reach Westerlund. He found himself half-buried in regolith, twisting, turning, kicking and scratching, but a shrill squeal in his earphones, inside of his helmet told him the pressure suit had already been punctured...it was just a matter of time now...already the fog was forming....his eyes and ears were bursting....

In the end, neither Systems Tech had been able to get off any warnings. As one, the swarms that had formed the humps dotting the hillside broke down and assumed their normal amorphous configuration. From a distance, the assault would resemble nothing more than a dust devil churning along the hillside, a faint mist glinting in the wan light that passed for daytime on Sedna. In a few minutes, the mist had dissipated. For a few moments, nothing remained...nothing but dirt and regolith, craters and tendrils of dust, lifted by errant charges washing across the surface.

From _Icarus_ , no one noticed what happened next, up on the slopes of Pyramid Hill. The rest of the landing party was too busy, setting out equipment, starting up the base module _Igloo_ , scratching their heads over recalcitrant equipment that wouldn't work like it was supposed to.

From the atomic remnants of Roy Favors and Sheila Westerlund, new facsimiles were slowly but steadily re-assembled. During the disassembly of the humans, a thorough scan of their atomic geometry and maps of bond energy configurations had been done by the bot master. This data was used to re-assemble both humans into a nearly perfect simulacrum, an angel entity not unlike Element B or Commander Liu, for that matter. Down to the last valence electron and nucleus, the two Systems Techs slowly materialized and took form, building form and structure, a hand here, an arm there, a leg, a nose and lips, their hypersuits, even down to the kits and cases they had been hauling up the side of Pyramid Hill.

Like a photographic negative slowly being developed, the form and appearance of Roy Favors and Sheila Westerlund came into being. Soon, enough structure had been assembled for animation to begin. The forms moved. A leg twitched. A hand grasped at nothing. Bodies lying half buried in the dirt began to shift. One after the other, the two angels sat up, flexed new arms and legs, then struggled to their feet.

Even on close inspection, the angels looked just like Favors and Westerlund. They did not resume their climb up the hill. Instead, the two angels turned about and worked their way carefully downslope to level ground. The distance to _Icarus_ base camp was less than two kilometers. The bot master, now animating Roy Favors, calculated that such a distance could be traversed in less than twenty minutes.

The two angels set out for _Icarus_.

Sammy Ng was the first to spot the techs returning to base camp. "Hey, you two...what the hell happened up there? I saw that dust cloud hit you...you get the transmitter up...I'm not getting anything....you forget to turn on the thing or what?"

The two angels walked into the base camp. Roy Favors...or what Sammy Ng first thought was Roy Favors...attempted to climb the ladder to the crew compartment. That's when Ng saw something that made his blood run cold.

In the debriefings that followed, Sammy Ng could only point to one thing that made him suspect Roy Favors was not what he seemed. It was a small thing...perhaps electrostatic charges from cosmic particles sweeping across the surface of Sedna...perhaps a configuration control glitch in the Favors angel...perhaps an explosive outburst of sublimating ice from beneath the ground...at any rate, it caught Ng's eye immediately.

Roy Favors' hands went right _through_ the lower rungs of _Icarus'_ ladder.

If he hadn't been looking right at Favors, it was doubtful that Sammy Ng would have ever noticed the anomaly. But he did see it.

And the alarm bells went off inside his head.

" _Bots_! _Swarm bots_! Right here—Swarm bots and I'm engaging—!" As fast as his bulky hypersuit permitted, Ng unslung his HERF carbine and charged it up, then let fly a volley of rf at the intruder. The radio freq waves blasted through the Favors angel and momentarily disrupted its config, scattering atoms and molecules in a spray of light and sparks. Ng pumped and fired, again and again, trying to destroy that the thing that had walked right into the midst of camp.

A kilometer distant, kangaroo-hopping around _Igloo_ as he and Kohl activated systems, Cory Hawley heard Ng's scream on the circuit. He dropped the crate he was carrying, looked downslope at _Icarus_ in the distance, squatting like a shiny bug on the surface and saw the _whump_ and puff of dust as Ng pumped round after round of HERF fire into the angels.

"Come on....we gotta go--!" They couldn't ride _Igloo_ back; she had already been anchored into Sedna's regolith. All they could do was run, skip and hop their way back down the gentle incline and cover the two kilometers as fast as they could.

It took six minutes and when they arrived, the gear around the base of the ship had been scattered and blasted into piles of debris and splinters. A sparkling mist was coagulating between them and the ladder leading up to _Icarus_.

Ng had positioned himself behind what was left of the crates he had been lugging around. Scrambling and slipping in the dust, knocked sideways with each blast of the HERF gun, Hawley and Kohl managed to make it to Ng's side. They dropped to their knees, their suit servos whirring to stabilize them despite all the scrambling.

"What the hell--?"

Ng filled them in. "I saw Favors and Westerlund coming back. Didn't think anything of it...maybe they needed something else from the ship. When Favors...or whatever the hell that thing is that looks like Favors, starting going up the ladder..." Ng shivered in spite of his hypersuit..."—I could see it wasn't real...just a swarm...a cloud of bugs. Jeez, his hands and arms went right through the ladder and it was having a time grasping the ladder...I pulled out my gun and opened up. Skipper...it's _both_ of them. Westerlund and Favors. The bugs are here! The bugs got 'em!"

"All right, all right, Sammy...keep your pants on. You did the right thing—" Hawley chanced a peek over the top of the crate pile.

The swarms had not been able to re-assemble owing to Ng's HERF fire. But the sparkling, flashing light of atoms being grabbed and slammed together told him where the swarms were. For the moment, both had been scattered into faint dust clouds, like mist floating in the wan daylight of this rock pile of a world. It was only a matter of time before the swarm master bots pulled enough atoms together to build visible structure.

"Sammy, keep firing! You, too," he told Kohl. "We've got to drive them away from that ladder. They get aboard _Icarus_ and we're sunk."

The three of them took turns blasting away at the cloud of bugs, trying to scatter it, trying to drive it away from _Icarus._ Kohl boosted himself over twenty meters off to one side, behind one of the ship's landing legs, to get a better angle.

Persistence began to pay off a few minutes later, even though Ng's carbine was running low on charge.

"It's working!" Ng cried. "We're pushing them back—"

"We can't let the master near _Icarus_ ..." Hawley decided. "Kohl, three more pulses...then we make a dash for the ladder—"

Kohl pumped three more discharges into the swirling, roiling, flickering mass...each time, scattering it a little more...each time, thinning out the mass, making it harder for the master to sling atoms together. Each pulse shook the landing site like a thunderclap, even though Sedna didn't have the barest wisp of an atmosphere. A percussive _whump_ , followed by ground shaking and shuddering like a bucking bronc, then poofs of dust lifted into the sky and rained down on everything and everyone in slow motion.

"That's good!" Hawley said. "That's good...okay, on my mark, head for that ladder...Sammy, you first, then Kohl, then me. Ready--?"

"More than ready, Skipper," Kohl gritted out.

"Three...two...one...go! _Go_ Sammy.... _gogogogogogo_!"

Ng scrambled and scratched his way through the intervening distance and leaped toward the bottom rung of the ladder, just snagging it with his outstretched hands. He shimmied up the ladder as fast as he suit would let him, giving himself a slight burst of suit boost to help. In seconds, he had disappeared into _Icarus_ ' lockout chamber.

"Your turn," Hawley told Kohl. "Hold up a sec...I'll give the bastards another shot of rf—" He discharged his own rifle and the ground concussion stirred up a gale of dust. " _Now...gogogogo--!"_

Like Ng before him, Lieutenant Dean Kohl took three leaps and with assisted suit boost, made the ladder in under six seconds. His legs disappeared into _Icarus_ just as Hawley let fly another round of HERF.

_Now, it's my turn_ , Hawley told himself. He studied the swarms for a moment. A steady diet of HERF had disrupted their configs and it was taking time to re-assemble the mob. That they were trying to re-assemble, he could easily tell. The faint cloud...mist...fog...whatever you wanted to call it...could easily have been mistaken for dust stirred up. Except for the sparkling and light flashes that popped on and off, almost beyond visibility. Evidence of some furious atom-slamming, he knew.

"Okay, you buggers...here goes another dose—" He let fly another volley of radio freq waves...his last full charge...thunderclapping the landing site with a percussive _whump_ and stirring up a miniature slow-motion gale around the base of _Icarus_.

At the very same moment, Hawley leapt out of his cover and streaked as fast as his hypersuit would allow toward the crew ladder. He was airborne and half-cartwheeling the last few meters but just managed to snag the lowest rung. Then, he lit off his suit boost and propelled himself up and into the lockout.

As he rolled free of the hatch, Ng and Kohl slammed the lockout door closed and dogged it shut tight.

Hawley was already undoing his helmet and twisting it free of its neck ring. "Get her powered up for launch, Lieutenant! Essential systems only...emergency ascent! Let's get the hell out of here before those bugs grab onto something and ride up with us."

"Already started, Skipper. " Kohl climbed through a small overhead hatch and disappeared into the command compartment. Ng helped Hawley with his suit.

The three of them completed an abbreviated systems check. A last sensor sweep was made of the landing legs and engine bell...no sign of the swarms could be found. _Icarus_ was humming and ready to fly when Hawley counted down the last few seconds.

"Three...two...one...mark. _Ignition...!"_

The tiny lander shuddered and leaped off the ground, balanced on the gimballing thrust of her single engine.

"Pitchover...looks good," Kohl announced. "Right on the money...Big Mike...here we come."

Hawley thumbed a bead of sweat from his forehead. It had been close...too close. "Amen to that. I just hope we're not carrying some unwanted passengers."

_Icarus_ made her approach and docked with _Michelangelo_ in just under three hours, rocking slightly as the capture latches grabbed hold.

"Hard dock," Kohl announced. "Couldn't be a sweeter sight in the whole universe."

"Fastest rendezvous _I_ ever did," Sammy Ng decided.

Hawley had already radioed up the details of what had happened to Element B.

"Before we open that hatch," he decided, "we'd better make sure we're all clean. Break out the sniffers. I want to make sure we're not carrying any bugs onboard Big Mike."

The scans lasted nearly an hour and each crewman was examined from head to toe, as the sniffers looked for anything out of the ordinary, high thermals, EM signals, acoustic pulses, anything indicating abnormal atomic activity. Nanobots made noise, if you knew what to listen for.

But the sniffers found nothing. Hawley signaled for the hatch to be opened and scheduled an all-hands briefing in the galley in half an hour.

"Poor Favors...and Sheila too," said Electronics Tech Dan Rice. "What happened, Skipper? Nobody saw anything?"

Hawley sipped at a coffee and realized he needed something stronger for nerves. "Nothing that caused any alarms. We had HERF and mag weapons. We took precautions. But the Bugs were already there...hiding in plain sight. There were some strange looking humps or mounds...maybe that was them."

"Now we know where Element B's anomaly went," muttered another crewmen.

The angel ignored the jibe. "That may be true, gentlemen. If it is, we have a bigger problem. Most of our Sentinel Line gear is down there on the surface. If the anomaly we were scanning is a swarm, and somehow associated with the Old Ones or Config Zero, they've got our latest equipment to study and possibly de-construct or assimilate."

"He's right," Hawley agreed. "We've got to go back down there and either retrieve or destroy that stuff before the Bugs can learn how it works. That's our mission...to set up a sentinel line. If it's compromised, we have to destroy it. And deal with the Bugs later."

"How do you plan to deal with 'em?" asked Rice. "We can't even find 'em."

All eyes turned to Element B, who was standing rigidly at one end of the main table, his hands more or less grasping the edge. _No edge effects or blurring,_ Hawley noted. _Pretty good config._ It made him feel a little better.

"There are techniques for locating nanobotic swarms," he told them. "All bot swarms produce a signature. Swarms have to assemble atoms to maintain structure. They have to assemble lots of atoms. That leaves electromagnetic, thermal and quantum effects. You just have to know how to look for them."

"Well," said someone in the back, "it takes one to know one."

Hawley ignored the jibe. "I'm going to form a small detachment. Myself and two others. We're going back down there, with every weapon we can find, every sensor we can find. Commander—" he addressed Element B, "—I want you to check out our sensors and detectors. Make sure we're tuned to detect these bastards, preferably from a distance. We're going to seek out and destroy those swarms...even if they look like Westerlund and Favors. Believe me, we'll be doing them a favor."

Rice spoke up. "Skipper, what if we can't find them?"

Hawley knew that question would be asked. "If we can't locate and destroy those swarms, then we destroy or render inoperable all our equipment down there. Then we come home. I'll work it out with CINCSPACE. I'm commanding this ship and it's my job to get the ship and her crew back to base."

Rice seemed mollified. There were murmurs of assent and head nods around the galley. Someone said, "The problem is you can never be sure when you've gotten all the bugs."

Hawley went over the assignments. Rice would come. He decided to take Kohl too. "Commander Element B will be in command here. Do what he says. Now, let's get moving."

Hawley was making his way aft through the gangway intending to unlock the ship's armory on C deck and haul out every weapon they had for inspection. A Service Tech from C deck caught up with him. It was Sergeant Lucy Likasi. She was black as coal and had shaved her head for the mission, but she was tall and wiry strong.

"Captain, could I speak with you?" She looked behind her. Other crewmen were scrambling up and down the gangway, poking in and out of hatches, getting _Icarus_ ready for her return to the surface.

"Sure, Sergeant...what's on your mind?"

Likasi's eyes narrowed. "It's the exec, sir...Commander Element B. Some of the crew...a lot of the crew...well, sir...we're not sure how good an idea it is to leave the Commander in charge up here. After what happened below, sir...with the swarms and all. And there could be others in space around this rock heap of a world. Sir, I am respectfully requesting someone else be put in charge of Big Mike during the away mission."

Hawley hated having to fight this battle, over and over again. He understood it. Hell, it made sense. Big Mike was fighting a running battle with a cloud of bots and, when you got right down to it, that's what Element B was. Who could say how they were related?

"Sergeant, let me be clear about this. Element B is the ranking officer. I gave him a field promotion because he has the experience and the skill to do the job. After Commander Liu—"

"But, sir...that's my point. Commander Liu was a bad swarm...she was Config Zero or something like that. How do you know Element B isn't part of the same swarm...a spy or a saboteur or rogue cloud of bugs...whatever you want to call it? We shouldn't be taking the chance....sir. A lot of the crew want Element B to be put into containment."

Hawley had heard enough. Every minute they wasted up here was time the swarms could be picking their gear apart on the surface. "Sergeant, I hear you and, believe me, I understand. We've all got duties here and Element B's is running the ship when the Captain is away. The exec has almost a decade's experience in the Corps. He's been through fitness checks same as you, every year. He's got an exemplary record...Sergeant, not every swarm is bad. Get that through your pretty little bald head, okay? There are good and bad people. There are good and bad swarms. Same deal. How do we distinguish them? By what they do. That's all we can do."

Likasi had a pained expression on her face. Her eyes pleaded. "Sir, we're in close proximity with enemy bots...it just seems prudent to take some precautions...in case, Element B is turned or corrupted...we all know configs can be corrupted...."

Hawley shut off the debate. "That will be enough, Sergeant. Carry on—do your duty and help your crewmates complete this mission. That is all." With that, Hawley shoved past the tech and headed for C deck.

Two hours later, _Icarus_ undocked from Big Mike and maneuvered to de-orbit position several kilometers away from the ship. Hawley, Rice and Kohl were aboard. Kohl did the count for the burn.

"Three...two...one... _mark_ ...Ignition."

_Icarus_ shuddered and began her long, curving descent toward the dark coppery red surface of Sedna. Nobody said a word.

Fifteen minutes later, Hawley was throttling _Icarus_ ' engines and zeroing in on the original landing site. "Got it in my crosshairs, Dean...just a little tweak... _there_ ...and we'll head for that open area to the north. See anything?"

Kohl was on the scopes, studying the terrain in high resolution. "Nothing but debris, Skipper. There's _Igloo_. There's a cargo pallet. Nothing out of the ordinary."

"Anything on the bot sensors?"

"Negative...nothing stands out. Background atomic...probably cosmic rays spalling electrons off the surface. Thermals are steady...no spikes. No quantum effects that I can see. Seems quiet."

"Any sign of Favors? Westerlund?" asked Rice, from the back of the cockpit. He was eyeing the surface uneasily as _Icarus_ maneuvered to land.

"Negative on that...they probably disassembled when we left. Maybe we disrupted them for good."

"Yeah, right...and maybe Sedna's really Cancun and we can go skinny-dipping down there."

"All right, you two, cut the chatter...I'm going vertical...a hundred ten meters, drifting to the right a little. I'm setting her down here."

_Icarus_ settled onto the surface with a bump and a shudder and Hawley killed the engines.

"Break out the guns, Lieutenant...time to go hunting."

The three of them cautiously descended to the surface. Rice scanned around the landing site, strewn with equipment, pallets, hastily discarded gear everywhere.

"Anything?" Hawley asked. He adjusted his own suitscope to zero in on the _Igloo_ module, some two kilometers distant, across a rolling, crater-pocked plain.

Rice scanned the landing site and its perimeter. "This gizmo has a decent range of about a hundred meters. Nothing unusual...normal background...or what passes for normal around here. No unusual signatures."

Kohl was wary. He kicked experimentally at a discarded box. "Check out the gear pretty closely. These bugs have great config control. They could masquerade as anything."

Each and every piece of equipment was closely examined. When they were reasonably sure the bot swarms weren't hiding around the landing site, Hawley made a decision.

"Let's stick together. Nobody gets more than a few meters from the rest. We'll hike up to _Igloo_ , see if we can power her up and complete the setup."

"What about those transmitters?" Kohl asked, eyeing the hills in the opposite direction. "That's where Favors and Westerlund got it."

"We'll have to check those too...try to get 'em up and operating. Come on...we've got a job to do. Keep your weapons charged and ready."

The trio took off for _Igloo_ , kangaroo-hopping in great leaps, two and three meters high, at times. It was Rice who tried out his suit boost on one hop. The little thrusters around his legs launched him twenty meters off the surface; he nearly came down on his head.

"Stop horsing around," Hawley growled.

"Sorry, Skipper...just wanted to try it." Thereafter, Rice confined himself to normal kangaroo hops.

They made it to _Igloo_ without incident. Hawley called a halt some twenty meters away from the module.

"Give me a scan, Dan," Hawley told Rice. The Electronics Tech swept his instrument around the area. _Igloo_ looked like a fat sausage with treads, now half buried in the regolith, anchored to bedrock.

"Hmm—that's odd—"

"What have you got, Sergeant?"

Rice tuned his scope to filter out extraneous signals. "I'm getting something on the quantum bands...hard to be sure. First, it's there...then it isn't. Nothing on EMs, not at _Igloo_. There's a spike when I point back the way we came."

"We stirred up a lot of dust," Kohl theorized. "It's getting charged by cosmic influx before it falls back to the ground. I've seen that before."

Hawley crept uneasily toward _Igloo's_ hatch, still ajar from their hasty exit hours before. He was about to take a step inside, when a shadow fell across his helmet faceplate. He turned around and was suddenly face to face with Roy Favors. He started and backed quickly out of the module, nearly losing his footing. As he backpedaled, he realized that the Favors-thing was still half-formed. Only his upper torso and face had formed. Below his waist, the bots were still loose, a dark sparkling mist slowly gathering shape.

He didn't react at first, but merely glared back at the apparition. Maybe it was some sense of recognition; here was a face he knew, something familiar on this godforsaken little potato of a world. Instinct and recognition...that stilled his trigger finger.

The delay was just long enough for some of the bots to drift toward him. In seconds, his left forearm was enveloped.

" _BOTS!"_ Hawley yelled. He backpedaled more, falling to his butt, as he scrambled to get off a burst from his HERF carbine. "BOTS inside--!" He let fly a round and the thunderclap of rf waves blasted the angel into loose atoms in an instant, in a flash of light and electron sizzle. Dust swept through the area and Hawley scrambled to his feet and backed off to fire again.

Rice and Kohl came hopping up and saw the angel beginning to gather form again. As one, the two crewmen sought cover behind a half-buried pallet and pumped more HERF into the angel.

Each discharge shook the ground and stirred up a small gale of dust, but the rounds kept the angel off balance and kept it from forming up into anything too dangerous.

After a few rounds, Hawley called a cease-fire. He had dragged himself to a half-prone position fifteen meters away. They could still more or less see the outline of the swarm against the lighter background of _Igloo_ , a sparkling mass flickering and flashing with light like a miniature thunderstorm, grabbing atoms as it tried to reconstitute itself into something structured.

"Skipper, we ought to try to locate the master," Kohl said. "If we could find that and destroy it or capture it, the rest of the swarm ought to fall apart."

"If the bugs are organized like our swarms," Rice came back. "Who knows how these bastards are configured."

"He's got a point," Hawley said. "Dan, scan that thing. See if you can find a spike in any bands, any kind of concentration of energy. That could be the master."

Rice inchwormed and slithered his way a little closer, sliding through loose dirt like a caterpillar. The swarm continued to sparkle and flash, as it tried to re-build structure. He scanned the apparition with his probe and announced, "There's something there—just to the left of the hatch. Lots of thermals and EMs...in fact, there's several spikes. Maybe more than one master?"

"Maybe," thought Hawley. "Question is: can we grab it or destroy it and be sure we got it?"

"I've got a containment capsule here," Rice offered. He extracted a small cylinder from a leg pocket and thumbed it to active status. Two lights on top glowed green. "The only thing I can think of to do is open the capsule and run like hell through that area the Lieutenant's scanning...maybe I'll get lucky."

Hawley shook his head. "That's suicide, Sergeant. We need to think of a better way—" but before he had finished, Rice had already boosted himself upright and was hopping and sliding toward the swarm. "Sergeant Rice--! Rice... _stop_ ...that's an _order_ \--!!"

But the Electronics Tech was already bounding toward the swarm, kangaroo-hopping from foot to foot, sliding and slipping in the dust as his hypersuit fought to keep him upright.

He plunged into the swarm and the swarm suddenly brightened as Rice appeared, like feedstock atoms to the bots swirling and sparkling by _Igloo's_ hatch.

"Skipper—?" Kohl started to rise and go after him, but Hawley grabbed his leg.

"Stay put...you can't do anything for him! Hose him down with HERF!"

The two of them discharged their carbines and the thunderclap of rf shook and shuddered the area, lifting great clouds of disturbed dust as if a gale had swept through. Lost in the dust and the swarm, Rice was only partially visible, a throbbing mass of light as the bots attacked and disassembled the crewman. For a few moments, while Hawley and Kohl pumped blast after blast into the swarm, what was left of Rice shone like a miniature supernova, a big bang in slow motion.

"I'm running out of charge, Skipper!" Kohl yelled. He slung his carbine to the dirt and pulled out a magpulse weapon, going through the activation sequence as fast as he could.

"Me too...Jeez, look at that thing...it's swelling...like an explosion in slow motion."

"It's got a lot of mass to work with now," Kohl said. He emptied his magpulser at the swarm, shifting around to get a better angle. High-gauss magnetic rings slammed into the formation, but seemed to have no effect. "What the hell...how's it holding together...this should be tearing the swarm to shreds...that sucker should be atom fluff now--!"

"Look—" yelled Hawley. He pointed to a small dust devil swirling on the other side if _Igloo_. Only it wasn't a dust devil. The twister spun toward them and then lifted and merged with the greater swarm that was still flashing and roiling by _Igloo's_ hatch. "Another swarm...and maybe more—" They could see more tendrils of dust lifting and churning in the distance, as if a great wind was sweeping a wave of regolith toward them. "Is that dust?"

"I don't think so, Skipper...maybe we'd better get back to the ship...before we become breakfast—"

"Good idea....I'm out of charge anyway. We've got more weapons in the ship. Come on—"

They left their cover and beat a hasty retreat back down the slope toward _Icarus._ Inside the ship, with the hatch secured, Hawley and Kohl unzipped their helmets and pulled them off. Both men pawed through cabinets on either side of the cabin, extracting new carbines and pulsers.

Kohl thumbed sweat from his forehead, took a drink from his drink bag. "Can we fight that, Skipper? Looks the whole friggin' planet's made of bots."

Hawley pulled down a scope and zeroed in on _Igloo_ , several kilometers distant. "I don't know, Dean. Hey, it looks like that swarm's dissipating. The light's fallen off. Now it's just a glow...you can see right through it. Maybe we did something to it."

At that moment, a chime sounded in the cabin, indicating comms coming through. It was Element B, aboard _Michelangelo_.

Hawley quickly briefed the exec on their situation.

Then Element B said: "It gets worse, Captain. That anomaly we were tracking on approach to Sedna has shown up again...long-range scan just put a large diffuse mass about thirty-thousand kilometers away. It's in an orbit that intersects us, in about forty-five hours, if nothing changes. Mass and signature analysis indicate it's the same phenomena as before...possibly a dust cloud, but I don't think so. We're getting lots of quantum effects on all bands, thermal blooms, EMs, the works. It's a swarm and it's a big one."

Hawley shook his head and scrounged for a food bar in his suit pocket. Munching and slurping from his own drink bag, he said, "This just keeps getting better and better. Well, this place is full of bots, that's for sure. They got Rice...he was trying to grab a master, but it didn't work. We've both seen bot clouds all over the place....this rockpile's infested with them. We can't take 'em on with what we have. But I don't want to leave all our gear for them to pick over either. Kohl and I can't do any more good down here. We're coming back up. We'll use Big Mike's coilgun batteries to blast the landing site and scatter our stuff. Maybe that'll help."

The truth was it didn't make tactical sense to have their forces scattered in orbit and on the ground, not if the Big Cahuna was coming. Hawley and Kohl secured _Icarus_ for launch and twenty minutes later, the little ship blasted her way into orbit.

As they closed on _Michelangelo_ , Hawley kept going over CINCSPACE's orders in his mind. _Set up Sentinel and hold that line...hold that line._

Hawley sniffed. Hold with what? He'd never given much credence to theories and tales about the Old Ones. Even after Q2 had briefed them at Phobos Station, he'd thought of the Old Ones as some kind of advanced fairy tale...a bogeyman concocted by others to explain how we'd let our own nanobot creations get the better of us.

Now, he wasn't so sure. It wasn't a fairy tale that Big Mike was tracking. There were bots on Sedna and they had already taken Favors and Westerlund and, now, Rice. Hell, his own exec, Victoria Liu, had turned rogue and tried to destroy the ship. Config Zero was the real bogeyman...whatever the hell it was.

Hawley decided, as _Michelangelo's_ docking ring came into view and they were smoothly captured and hard docked to the mother ship, that some fairy tales had just enough truth in them to warrant caution. You didn't tickle the tail of the dragon without checking your escape routes first.

If the crew of Big Mike really was staring right into the teeth of advance scouts from the Old Ones, Hawley knew that he and the crew had some serious strategizing to do. And CINCSPACE would have to decide what the next step would be.

Hawley was pretty sure that Big Mike wouldn't be able to fight this fight all by himself.
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 station 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.
CHAPTER 17

Aboard the _Michelangelo_ (UNS-212)

In Orbit Around Sedna

December 22, 2110 (U.T.)

0230 hours (Ship Time)

Hawley watched from the gangway as the landing party slipped into the docking tunnel and headed into _Icarus_. Stoltz, Ng, Demetrious, Grant, to a one, they were all grim and tight-lipped. Element B was the last one.

"Commander—" Hawley wanted a final word with his executive officer. "Hold up."

Element B was not dressed out in a hypersuit. It wasn't necessary for an angel, not when you could fab any protective covering needed in a few minutes. Humans could fab a suit too but the Corps had policies and policy said you wore a hypersuit when leaving the ship for an away mission.

" _Yes, sir_?"

Hawley came up to Element B, although not too close. The angel seemed human enough on close inspection, but your mind still rebelled, knowing that the bots that made up B could change in a heartbeat...one minute a human, the next minute something else. It was instinctive to keep your distance...when you weren't sure what might happen, what might trigger a change. Hawley silently berated himself for his reaction but there it was.

"Whatever happens down there, Commander, go by the book. Don't take needless chances. I don't want _Icarus_ ' coming back up here with a load of dead heroes. Is that understood?"

Element B nodded some kind of understanding. Hawley had always thought the angel had dead eyes, flat eyes, no real life behind them. " _I will endeavor to fulfill all mission goals and objectives, Captain. Risk factors have been calculated and assigned to all foreseeable contingencies."_

"Great," Hawley said. "Just don't do anything stupid."

With that, Element B boarded _Icarus_ and the lander was made ready for departure. Hawley went back to the command deck.

The undocking and descent took an hour. When the lander had settled gently onto the cratered plateau a few hundred meters from the _Igloo_ base module, Corporal Eddie Stoltz turned to Sammy Ng—both were riding in _Icarus_ ' rear compartment-- and said, "It just don't get any better than this, Ng-baby...another beautiful day in paradise."

" _All hands make ready for egress_ ," said Element B over the 1MC. " _Full suits...make ready for opposed entry. Weapons to full charge and safeties off. I will egress first and make a sweep of the area."_

"Suits me," Ng muttered.

The angel left the command deck and made his way aft to the lockout chamber. It seemed strange for a crewman to be going outside without a hypersuit. Once inside the lockout, Element B cycled the de-press system and stabbed a button to open the hatch. Outside, dust devils danced around the lander's legs.

Element B decided to change config as he egressed. In seconds, the angel had lost structure and form and deconstructed into an amorphous cloud of bots that drifted out of the lockout and down onto the surface. The bot master executed a search of the area. Almost immediately, high thermals and EM spikes could be detected. Element B homed in on the spikes...they were coming from the direction of the _Igloo_ base module.

" _Picking up spikes on heading zero nine five...centroid approximately one hundred meters...no side lobes...highly concentrated...Corporal Stoltz and Corporal Ng...make egress and follow me. Set HERF to maximum charge—"_

Inside _Icarus_ , Stoltz rolled his eyes. "I guess this means no afternoon nap, huh?" He zipped up his hypersuit and followed Ng into the lockout. Moments later, they dropped to the surface. "Commander, where the hell are you?"

Element B had formed a small sparkling cloud, which drifted like a scintillating mist across the surface of Sedna, toward the EM spikes. " _Here, Corporal...I've changed config. Follow this heading and stay back twenty meters...I'm going to close on the target and reconnoiter."_

Stoltz and Ng could barely make out the sparkling mist in the distance. Just distinguishing it in the dim light from Sedna's ever-present dust devils was hard. Stoltz set his suit for Element B's heading and kangaroo-hopped in that direction, leaping five meters or more in Sedna's low gravity.

From his own scan, Element B could see that the target was surely another swarm, prowling around the perimeter of _Igloo_. Deconstructed and maneuvering on three-quarters propulsor, Big Mike's executive officer probed ahead with electromagnetic fingers, trying to get some structure on the swarm, trying to resolve the bots and locate the master.

He closed the remaining distance in a few minutes, with Stoltz and Ng right behind. Acoustic and EM returns showed the enemy bots were roughly spherical in shape, festooned with effectors and propulsors. " _Stoltz and Ng...spread out. Move laterally twenty meters and hold that position. I'm going to engage—"_

Stoltz came down from a leap and skidded to a stop, cascading a sheet of dust into the sky. Ng nearly collided with him. They separated and went to take up flanking positions. "Excuse me, sir...but shouldn't we hose 'em down first...scatter the formation with HERF?"

The twinkling cloud that was Element B continued closing on the outer bands of the enemy bots. " _Under normal assault conditions, you would be correct, Corporal. However, I am endeavoring to approach the master bot...to contain and capture it. If I can do that, the rest of the swarm will lose all combat effectiveness. Hold your position—"_

Stoltz shrugged. _That's why you're the exec_ , he thought. He dropped to one knee and let his hypersuit scour out a man-made defilade, partially burying him in the loose regolith. Then he sighted his HERF carbine on the center of the enemy bot cloud.

" _Closing now...I have detected a large spike in EM activity, with high thermals...assuming this is the master bot, I'm closing on that vector—when I give the word, open fire—"_

To Eddie Stoltz, the hell of nanoscale combat was that you couldn't see anything. It wasn't like anything he'd ever trained for. He squinted through his helmet scope, upped the magnification and still couldn't make anything out. There was _Igloo_ , half-buried in the soil, now enveloped in what looked to the untrained eye like a faint dust halo. Stoltz knew that was no dust however. Something inside of him wanted to see explosions, big booms and crackling bolts of beamfire. That's what combat was supposed to be like.

Instead, he saw what looked like a swirling thunderstorm in miniature. Popping and flickering lights flashed on and off along a line of engagement all around the end of _Igloo_. You couldn't tell who was who, or what the hell was going on. Stoltz had been a Frontier Corps crewmen for ten years, and like all crewmen, he knew about bots and swarms and Quantum Corps. But it might as well have been magic to Stoltz. Real men didn't fight this way. Real men didn't break down into clouds of bugs and disappear.

"Sammy—I can't tell what's what...can you?"

Ng, not ten feet away, defiladed as was Stoltz, sighted through his own carbine scope. "Nope. Looks like a dust devil to me, with a lot of light bulbs going off."

"That's what I thought...Commander, could you let us know what we should do back here?"

Element B was deep into the assault. He'd detected what he thought was the bot master, and had maneuvered to intercept. Now his own swarm was entangled with the enemy and bots were colliding all up and down the line of engagement, slashing, thrashing and zapping each other in a wild melee that nobody bigger than a few nanometers could see. The space around _Igloo_ churned with ferocious bond breaking as bots collided and slammed each other, grappling and pinching and banging until atom fluff and loose electrons swelled outward in an ever-expanding supernova in slow motion.

" _Corporal, I am attempting to engage and contain the bot master...I have him in sight but defensive shielding is strong....hold your position and be ready to lay down a barrage of rf when I give the signal...."_

"Okay, Commander...will do...it's just that we can't tell what's going on up there."

Element B bore down on the spherical bot master and closed the remaining distance in less than a minute. He thrust carbene grabbers toward a midsection seam in the bot's outer housing, thinking the thing would be weakest there. But the enemy bot skittered just out of reach and let fly a jolt from its own bond breakers. _Ouch!_ Element B swerved away when the pulse pinched off a few grabbers. _Have to try a different vector_ —

Stoltz found his mouth dry. "I don't like this, Sammy. How can we tell who's winning? We should just zap the lot of them and be done with it."

Ng disagreed. "Hey, just 'cause we can't see them doesn't mean we don't follow orders. Commander said hold tight and that's what I'm going to do."

Stoltz wasn't buying it. "For all I know, Element B's one of them. Jeez, they got Favors and Westerlund. What's to keep the bastards from grabbing Element B, you know...zapping his config and turning him into a zombie or something, like one of them."

"Just cool it, man...keep your pants on and lay low, like the Commander said."

But Stoltz was spooked by the whole affair. The damn Bugs were everywhere, inside the ship, inside people...hell, even people you thought you knew turned out to be angels. Look at Commander Liu...and she'd tried to destroy the ship. Who could tell what Element B really was? Assimilationists wanted to make Bugs out of everybody, turn all of us into swarm angels.

Stoltz decided he was having none of it. He boosted up from his defiladed position, shedding sheets of dust everywhere, and stood upright, then crouching, moved toward _Igloo_ and the firefight that no one could really see, but they both knew was there. He raised his HERF carbine to fire, thumbed the selector to Auto.

"Stoltz...Eddie...what the hell...get _down_ , man! You're a sitting duck...you'll get swarmed—" Ng started to get up himself.

That's when Stoltz opened up, hosing down the whole area with one massive barrage of rf.

The thunderclap of a radio freq wave swept across the site like a hurricane, scattering dust and parts and equipment everywhere. Stoltz cycled his carbine and let fly volley after volley, stirring everything into a dusty haze. Through the haze, the faint flicker of nanobotic combat could still be seen, jagged veins of light popping on and off as the combat zone was scrambled and thrashed again and again.

Sammy Ng knew he had to do something. Element B was in that maelstrom, trying to engage the enemy bots. If Stoltz hadn't already mix-mastered everything in sight, he soon would.

"Eddie...Corporal Stoltz, cease fire! _Cease fire_ ...you've got friendlies in the area...Demetrious...Grant, get the hell out here!"

Inside _Icarus_ , Demetrious and Grant were already closing up their suits and scrambling into the lockout. In minutes, they had dropped to the surface and were kangaroo-hopping up the slope toward _Igloo_ and the firefight.

In the very midst of the melee, Element B had to break off the assault and withdraw. The bot master containing the config driver that created and maintained Element B as a human-like angel pulled out of the engagement and sought refuge in a forest of silicon atoms, dust atoms that swirled like a raging river in the rf pulses that Stoltz was letting fly. Like riding a kayak down roaring rapids, Element B surfed and staggered his way through the gale, hunkering down as best he could. The rest of Element B's swarm had long since been blown to pieces. There was no point in replicating now, not while the sleet of atoms and molecules roared past.

" _Surface team_ ...cease fire...cease fire immediately!" Element B sent the signal out on all bands. " _Breaking off the attack....withdraw and cease fire!"_

That's when Sammy Ng tackled Stoltz and the two of them went flying into the regolith headfirst.

There was a scramble to disengage, feet and arms and legs flying everywhere. Stoltz had lost his carbine but before he could crawl forward to retrieve it, Julie Grant slid to a halt and kicked the weapon further away. Corporal Demetrious was right behind. Ng hauled Stoltz back to the ground.

" _MOB him_ \--!" Ng yelled over the circuit. "He's gone nuts...put the MOB on him!"

Stoltz wrestled and kicked and punched and gouged trying to squirm free. " _Let me go_ , _assholes_ ...don't you see...it's our only chance...we can blast the sumbitches right here and now—"

Ng wrestled him back to the ground, just as Demetrious triggered his own MOB canister. A fog of bots sprayed out and covered the writhing mass of Ng and Stoltz in seconds. Ng pulled out just in time, letting the tightening mesh of bots do its job. In seconds, the Mobility Obstruction Barrier had contracted and tightened, pinning Eddie Stoltz to the ground, a squirming mass in a dusty hypersuit. A few more kicks and grunts and the corporal finally relented to the inevitable and gave up with a loud _hmmpphh_.

"You stupid friggin' bastards...can't you see?" Stoltz' voice was muffled, strained with the effort of resisting the barrier. "Element B's one of them...it makes sense...him and Commander Liu—"

Ng kicked at the squirming Systems Tech. "Shut up...what about Element B...is he still on tactical?"

Element B had heard the whole melee over the crew circuit and replied, " _Surface team, I am endeavoring to survive the HERF bursts...I've lost all replicants but the master is functioning normally...all systems returning to nominal status...I will try to disengage from this silicon lattice and seek out the enemy again—"_

Ng stood up and scanned around the _Igloo_ work site. Dust still rained down on them but a quick look showed no EM spikes, no thermals, no acoustic anomalies. "Commander, I'm not getting anything nearby. Unless those reddish hills are bots, it's all quiet. Stoltz must have dispersed them."

" _I will scan at lower band strengths,"_ Element B told them. " _Now going to max rate rep, re-building my swarm—"_

And even as Ng, Demetrious and Grant looked on, a tiny pulsating light materialized ten meters from _Igloo_ , growing by the second into a miniature supernova as Element B grabbed atoms and slammed structure together. The light flickered and scintillated in rhythmic waves as it grew in radius, becoming a small star with spirals of dust soon entrained in a swirl that enveloped the ground in a slow-motion cyclone. Behind the dim vale of dust, structure began to take shape...first a face, then shoulders, then arms, then an entire upper torso.

Right before their eyes, Commander Element B's human form gradually took shape, at least most of it. Only his feet and lower legs remained unformed and incomplete. The angel swept forward like a ghostly wraith and came up to the troopers, still thickening into human-like consistency but no hypersuit.

"Commander, you look like you're ready for an afternoon stroll," Ng observed.

" _Unfortunately, I had to break off my attack...I had detected what I believe to be the bot master for this swarm, but HERF fire disrupted my tactics—"_

The ball of the MOBnet containing Corporal Stoltz squirmed and flexed on the ground. Demetrious kicked at the ball. "Pipe down in there, will you? Commander, what do you want done with this?"

Element B examined the MOB net closely. " _The mesh config needs work. Perhaps I can improve the barrier design sometime...take the Corporal back to Icarus and secure him in the cargo hold. Make sure he can move about and breathe okay. Corporals Grant and Ng, you're with me."_

"Will do, Commander." Demetrious took hold of the MOB and dragged it bumping and bouncing across the ground toward the lander. Locked inside, Stoltz would have a painful ride back to the ship.

Sammy Ng scanned the area around the _Igloo_ base module. "I'm not picking up anything, Commander. Stoltz must have dispersed the swarms when he fired."

" _Don't be too sure, Corporal,"_ Element B said. " _These bots have amazing configuration control. They can assume any form, any shape_." He stared at the _Igloo_ module for a moment, scanning the cylindrical structure. " _Even forms familiar to us. Corporal Ng, I'm going to go small again, Config One, and probe some of those reddish hillocks nearby. You come along...when I give the word, you fire your HERF weapon. Anything nanobotic around here will quickly lose config in an rf wave like that. I believe I can deal with any swarms we encounter...the trick is to know what is a swarm and what isn't."_

_Amen to that_ , Ng thought but didn't say. He watched Element B carefully as the Exec started to de-construct before his eyes.

What do you want _me_ to do, Commander?" asked Grant.

By the time he replied, Element B was already halfway to a cloud. _"Go inside Igloo, Corporal. Get started activating systems. Igloo's the control center for the whole network. Once Captain Hawley starts laying down the bot probes in space, we'll need that control to shape and interpret the data from the probes."_

"Very well, sir...I'm heading inside _Igloo_."

" _Corporal Ng, I'm moving out on heading two two five degrees relative. Arm your HERF gun and follow me...my objective is that group of hillocks on the rise one hundred and ten meters up the slope."_

Ng followed cautiously, keeping the flickering swarm that was Element B more or less in sight. It was hard in the dim light and shadows to distinguish Element B from Sedna's persistent dust devils.

_Maybe Stoltz was right,_ Ng thought. _Following a swarm to locate and fight another swarm. How nuts was that?_

Julie Grant made the outer hatch of _Igloo_ just as Ng and Element B moved out. She did a quick recon around the perimeter of the module, just to check, just to make sure. She kicked at a few pebbles and they rolled like pebbles. She brushed against a small mound of dirt and it crumbled like dirt.

"This is silly," she muttered to herself. The swarms had everybody spooked. Nobody trusted anybody. She didn't see anything out of the ordinary and came back to the hatch, spinning the latch until a hiss escaped from the interior compartment and the hatch was open. Grant cycled the latch fully and the small motor drove the hatch wide. She peered inside, saw nothing, then hopped up to the bottom rung of the ladder and started to pull herself in.

That's when she came face to face with Sergeant Sheila Westerlund.

Grant stifled a scream and fell backward.

Seventy five kilometers above Sedna, _Michelangelo_ had just completed her exit burn and was heading out of orbit, on a course paralleling the tiny planetesimal.

"Residuals look good, Skipper," said Dean Kohl. "Nearly zero rates in all axes...just some minor damping and trimming going on. Big Mike's on course and settled in."

Hawley barely heard his Propulsion Systems Officer. He was studying returns off the long-range scan they had been running, sweeping space around Sedna for anything that might pose a threat. "Dean, I don't like the looks of this—it may be Element B's anomaly again...diffuse signal, spikes in certain EM bands...ISAAC's saying it could be a swarm...or a dust cloud."

"What's the distance? What bearing?"

Hawley tapped a few buttons on the screen. "Thirty six thousand kilometers to the leading edge...bearing one one two...it's on an intercept course, too. Heliocentric orbit, so it's not in orbit around Sedna."

Kohl saw it. "What do you want to do, Skipper? Our mission is to complete this Sentinel Net and get the hell out of here."

"That's what we're going to do, Dean...but this thing's on an intercept course...an intersecting orbit with ours. I make closest approach in about ten hours, give or take."

"We could maneuver around it. Change orbit."

Hawley shrugged. "We could. But mission parameters say this is the preferred orbit to lay down the sensor grid. The base module on _Igloo_ is sited to accommodate sensors in this orbit. We change that...we'll have to re-calculate where _Igloo_ goes...maybe not even on Sedna...."

Hawley studied the long-range scan. "I can't tell from this distance what the anomaly is. But ISAAC's giving it a forty percent probability of being a swarm of some kind, based on EM spikes and spectrum analysis. We have to stay in this orbit for now, to get the grid started. But I want to be ready for anything. Dean—"

"Yes, sir?"

"Big Mike's no battleship but we do have weapons. Get a couple of techs up to the weapons bay. Make sure everything works...if we have to make a fight, I want to be ready."

"Yes, sir...I'll grab Petty and Graebel...they're both electronics techs. They were with the ship from day one of conversion."

Kohl went aft down _Michelangelo's_ central gangway and soon found the two techs. He explained what the Captain wanted.

Petty complained, "Lieutenant, this ship's not built for combat. Hell, she's nothing but an old cycler, with a paint job and some new parts. Begging the Lieutenant's pardon, sir, but isn't this slightly nuts?"

"Probably, but it doesn't matter. Come with me."

The three of them went back to A deck and climbed through a small access tunnel that surrounded the main compartment.

Converted at Phobos Station months before, Sergeant Petty was right. _Michelangelo_ had once been a cycler ship, flying the Venus-Earth-Mars route for years like an old city bus. The shipyard had made her ready for deep space ops at Phobos and, as an afterthought and on the specific orders of CINCSPACE, a suite of weapons had been literally bolted on to her forward compartment—A Deck.

When she had departed Phobos Station on the Operation _Sentinel_ mission, Big Mike sported pods containing HERF guns, magnetic impulse emitters, high-power microwave emitters, and, for good measure, a coilgun and a magazine full of kinetic rounds. Now wedged into the weapons bay that topped A Deck like a rooster's crest, it was Kohl's job to make sure all the gadgets worked as designed.

For the next few hours, Kohl and his party checked out Big Mike's weapons suite, while Hawley worked with comm techs on C deck to prime and launch a series of sensor pods along _Michelangelo's_ route. Each pod contained a few racks of instrumentation capable of detecting nanobotic signatures at extreme distance, tuned for known EM bands and thermal effects that bots most often used. Nobody knew if the Old Ones worked the same way, or even if they were nanobotic in nature. But then nobody had a better idea either.

When their entire complement of pods had been laid down and all systems synched, the pods would form a detector grid capable, through the magic of interferometry, of being able to detect normal nanobotic activity at great distances from the solar system...some engineers even boasted the grid could read bot signatures up to a quarter light year from the Sun. Not everybody believed that and Cory Hawley didn't know what to believe...only that the grid had to be laid down in specific orbits and specific distances from each other, then linked with the base module on Sedna for the whole contraption to work.

Hawley let the techs do their work and spent most of the day on A deck, checking in with Kohl on the checkout of their weapons and watching, with growing unease, as the 'anomaly' they had detected grew larger with each passing hour. He spent hours with ISAAC, the ship's command AI, studying and massaging the data on the anomaly, trying to tease out some kind of indication that it was or was not a swarm.

Three hours from intercept, ISAAC upped the probability of the anomaly being a swarm to sixty two percent. A few moments later, Dean Kohl popped his head onto the command deck.

"All checked out, Skipper. Petty and Graebel fixed a few things...one of the HERF oscillators was installed backward. But everything works now. We're fully charged. All elements work. And the coilgun's loaded for bear."

Hawley frowned at the display ISAAC had put up on their main screens. "Just in time, Lieutenant. Look at the size of that mother...it's bigger than Sedna...must be ten thousand kilometers wide at least."

Kohl came in and took a seat at the main console. "Hell of a dust storm, if you ask me."

"ISAAC says it's no dust storm...it's one hell of a cloud of bots...and it sure as hell ain't one of ours."

"The Old Ones?"

"Maybe advance scouts. I'm going to squirt this back to Farside and see what they think. We could be the first ones ever to see or engage the Old Ones. Dean...this may be Devil's Eye we're looking at."

"I don't suppose we can go around it."

"Not and lay down the grid where we're supposed to. ISAAC, what are we looking at here? How far to the anomaly?"

The ship's AI spoke in a measured tone. " _Estimating distance to formation leading edge at thirty thousand one hundred and fifty five kilometers._ _The formation is in heliocentric orbit which will intersect our orbit in two hours ten minutes, present speed and course._

"ISAAC, can you resolve what this thing is...dust or bots or something else?"

" _Long-range scan indicates that the formation is a diffuse cluster of discrete elements of mean size approximately twenty-five nanometers main dimension...smaller than normal dust particles. Detecting increased energy levels in certain electromagnetic bands, consistent with assembler activity as we understand it. Probability that this formation is a swarm of nanobotic elements now approaching seventy four percent."_

"Swell," Hawley muttered. "Dean, it looks like Big Mike will have the dubious distinction of being the first humans to engage the Old Ones. One for the history books. Let's make it a good one—enable HERF and magpulse weapons."

Kohl strapped himself in and set about enabling the weapons systems from the main console.

"HERF cells now at full charge, primed and ready. I'm slaving the emitter array to ISAAC's coordinates for swarm centroid. Magnetic impulse battery also at full charge. All emitters on line and tracking. Targeting sensors have acquired—"

Hawley studied the orbit plots of _Michelangelo_ and the swarm, overlaid on his console display. "I wish Element B were here...I'm not a Quantum Corps guy but I do know one thing...the best way to fight a swarm is with another swarm."

"I think we can jolt 'em pretty good with what we have," Kohl decided.

_Michelangelo_ steadily closed the distance toward the intersect point, even as she dispatched several sensor pods into position along the way. Hawley was heartened as the pods were ejected from Big Mike's C Deck canister and took up their positions exactly as programmed. Moments later, the pods had established a comm link and were sending back data on the nearby swarm, just as designed.

"At least the pods seem to work. Two down, a hundred and eighteen more to go. ISAAC, how far to the swarm centroid now?"

" _Twenty thousand four hundred and two kilometers. Coming within effective range of our main batteries."_

"Let's give them a taste of what we're about," Hawley decided. "On my mark, max discharge pulse on HERF...maybe we can break up the cloud enough to clear a path for our next pod deploy—"

"HERF is ready—" Kohl poised his finger over the button.

" _Five...four...three...two...one...mark_! Let 'em have it, Dean!"

Kohl pressed the button and a pulse of high-frequency radio waves shot out of the emitter array on top of Big Mike's A Deck. The pulse traveled the remaining distance in a few seconds, slamming into the swarm, scattering, shredding and obliterating bots along the outer perimeter of the cloud.

"ISAAC, report...any effect?"

" _Scanning now...scanning...edge effects only...some reduction of EM activity, some drop-off in thermal effects...definite effects, there is a hole in the side of the formation, but it's filling rapidly...swarm is reconstituting, changing config...centroid is maneuvering...changing course to intercept...."_

Hawley could see the story on his console. They had managed to bash the thing but it replicated fast and grew back. Now the swarm was turning, wheeling about to intercept _Michelangelo_ directly, presenting itself front-on to their approach.

Kohl was exultant. "We stung it, Skipper! Look how that front edge is scalloped and misshapen...we did something to it."

"I think we just made it mad, Dean. Fire away, three pulses HERF and mag! Set a twenty degree spread."

_Michelangelo_ rocked slightly as the pulses discharged and streaked toward their target. Through the forward screens, both men could see jagged flashes erupt in space, like slow-motion lightning bolts, where the radio waves and mag fields intersected the swarm. Atoms were ripped apart and bonds sheared off, liberating untold energies into the vacuum. A series of flashes and bolts lit up space ahead of them, still more than ten thousand kilometers distant.

"ISAAC, did we hurt 'em?"

Estimating swarm has been reduced by two point one percent in frontal dimension...swarm is reconstituting...possible aspect change...detecting possible config change—"

Months later, when the first moments of the Battle of Sedna were replayed and analyzed, the report that ISAAC made indicating a 'possible aspect change' was considered to be the first known instance of quantum displacement effects seen in the encounter with the _Devil's Eye_ phenomena. Displacements effect had been observed before, in the _Jovian Hammer_ operation some ten years before, when UNISPACE and Quantum Corps units had engaged the Keeper entity submerged in the subsurface ocean of Jupiter's moon Europa. That encounter had produced evidence that Config Zero / Keeper entities possessed the ability to displace themselves and nearby structures to different times and spaces by manipulating entangled quantum states...a technique far beyond anyone's ability to analyze or understand.

Now it seemed that the swarms surrounding Sedna and probing the outer reaches of the solar system possessed the same ability.

It was ISAAC who first reported on the phenomena.

"... _detecting possible config change...all aspects have changed...swarm has...swarm has...re-calibrating...now re-analyzing...I have no explanation for this phenomenon...swarm has relocated to...analyzing sensor inputs for continuity..."_

Even ISAAC had trouble explaining what had happened. In the blink of an eye, the _Devil's Eye_ swarm had vanished and re-appeared hundreds of thousands of kilometers from its last position. Now, instead of following an intersecting orbit with _Michelangelo_ , the entire swarm had jumped to a new trajectory _behind_ the ship, moving away on a diverging orbit inside of Big Mike...an orbit that looped inside of Sedna's orbit, thousands of kilometers closer to the Sun.

Hawley shook his head, rubbed his eyes. "What the hell just happened? ISAAC, can you explain this--?"

ISAAC took a few moments to respond, uncharacteristically for the AI. " _Still computing new trajectory...still computing aspect change and config change...no data yet...."_

Dean Kohl gave up on their instrumentation and tried using his own Mark I eyeball, looking out the command deck's portholes. "Did that thing just move through space like I think it did...from over _here_ —" he pointed ahead, "-to over _there,_ like in a split second?"

"Yeah, I think so...I read reports from the _Jovian Hammer_ mission...General Winger's trip to Europa ten years ago. That Keeper did the same thing...somehow, it could displace you in time and space if you got too close. Nobody could explain it then...some kind of weird quantum effect was what I heard...and now we're seeing something similar. ISAAC, best fix on the swarm's current position."

The AI crunched data for a few moments, then downloaded a new calculated position to their displays.

Kohl sniffed. "Even ISAAC can't believe it. How the hell do we engage something that can do that?"

Hawley noted another sensor pod deployment was coming up. "We don't. Maybe the Bugs don't want to fight. It's like they just went right around us."

"Then what are they doing here? Where'd they come from?"

"Beats me, Lieutenant. All I know is we've got a job to do and the next deploy is two minutes away. Setting EJECT to Auto...interrogating pod command system...everything looks clean and green here...standby to launch—"

Two minutes later, _Michelangelo_ deployed her second sensor pod.

"Looks like we're moving away from that swarm now," Hawley noted. "If ISAAC's computed their position right."

"Yeah, but if they jump again, they could show up right in front of us. What's to keep them from doing that?"

"Nothing I suppose. Better keep weapons enabled and fully charged. The ship will remain at battle stations for the time being. ISAAC, we've got several hours before the next pod launch...you have the conn. I'm calling an all-hands briefing in the crew's mess...we have to figure out what we do next."

" _ISAAC assuming command_ ," the AI replied solemnly. All the display screens blinked and a red triangle appeared on the main display...indicating that ISAAC was in control. Hawley and Kohl left the command deck and gathered everybody into the crew's mess one deck below.

"We _did_ sting 'em, didn't we, Skipper?" asked Ndinka, the ship's Congolese chief machinist's mate. "I mean, we did hurt the bastards, didn't we?"

Hawley ran down the results of the brief engagement. "The bottom line is this: we hurt the swarm, but I'm not sure how much. It moved off---maybe re-located is a better term—and I'm not sure we had anything to do with that. Right now—" he checked a report he'd brought from the command deck "the swarm's several hundred thousand kilometers _behind_ us. Don't ask me how that happened...I need Element B to explain that. Even ISAAC has no explanation."

Norred, one of the Service techs from C deck, spoke up. "Skipper, does this mean we're heading home?" There was a chorus of 'yeahs" and agreements around the galley.

"It does not. We've got a mission from UNISPACE to deploy a sensor net out here and we're going to complete that mission. We've already dropped off two pods...the next one's coming up in about fifteen hours. Once the pods are in place and the net's working, we go home."

"Skipper, what about the landing detail?"

"We've been trying to establish contact with Element B for the last hour...no luck so far. I can't answer your question. After the next sensor drop, I'm turning Big Mike around and we're heading back to Sedna and pick the detail up. They've got a job to do as well...getting that transmitter going. The network won't work without it."

"We ought to leave Element B on that dirt pile of a world and be done with it," a voice from the back muttered.

"Belay that crap," Hawley ordered. "Element B is the executive officer of this ship. You take orders from him just like you would me. Right now, he's leading a critical part of this mission. As soon as I make contact, I'll pass the word on how they're doing."

With that, the briefing ended and Hawley and Kohl headed back to A deck.

"Skipper, there's a lot of scuttlebutt about the Exec. You know that. A lot of the crew don't trust him...especially with what happened with Commander Liu...now this swarm out here. They think he's one of them."

Hawley slipped into the left-hand seat on the command deck and checked for messages from the landing party. There were none. "I know, Dean, but Element B's in the chain of command. We start letting the crew vote on who they like best as commander, we're in trouble. This is not a popularity contest."

"No, sir, I understand that ...I was just trying to see how this impacts command effectiveness. Crew cohesion and command effectiveness...that's always important...especially way out here on the edge of nowhere, fighting off Bugs that can jump around in space. Skipper, Norred and the others are right...we shouldn't be out here...not a puny little ship like ours. The Corps should've formed up a whole friggin' armada to do this job."

Hawley waved a hand. "I'll take that under advisement...now see if you can raise the landing detail....I can't get a thing."

Julie Grant fell in slow motion and hit the ground in a _poof_ of dust, scrambling away from the ladder as fast her hypersuit would allow. In the same motion, she let fly a few rounds of magpulse and blasted at the thing...the ghost...whatever the hell it was...that had just appeared in the hatch, hosing down _Igloo_ with mag beams as fast as she could cycle the carbine.

" _They're here_!" she yelled over the crewnet. " _Inside Igloo_ ... _get over here_ —"

Sammy Ng heard the cry and came hopping to her rescue. The two of them holed up behind a pallet of crates that the loadbots had already lowered to the surface. Ng cycled his carbine and let fly a HERF round of his own. The hatch end of _Igloo_ shuddered and shook from the impulse and a gale of dust swirled, obscuring everything, coating everything.

"Hold off, Sammy," Grant warned him. "We can't just fire away at _Igloo_ ...we'll destroy the module. Whatever I saw, it's inside—"

"I'm not going in there," Ng told her. "Not without backup."

"I've got an idea." Grant knew that any self-respecting nanobotic angel could pinch off parts of itself...it could literally be in two or more places at once. "Commander Element B...we could use some help here."

" _I'm in the middle of a recon sweep, Sergeant...what is it you wish?"_

Grant described the tactical situation. "Something's inside _Igloo_ , some kind of swarm of bots. Corporal Ng and I both think it unwise to open fire on the module...with all that equipment inside. Could you, er, come help us? Detach a formation and help us deal with these bastards?"

" _Sergeant, that is sound tactical thinking...I will detach a sub-element and be at your coordinates in seven minutes."_

It was Steve Demetrious, rear guard on Element B's force recon mission, who saw the swarm ahead of him momentarily brighten, then partition itself. One part continued ahead, drifting up a low slope toward some red hillocks that needed investigating. The other part spun away and drifted back downslope, heading toward _Igloo_. An easy maneuver for any angel, which Demetrious was not and he was glad of it. Still, there were times when it came in handy.

Ng and Grant watched the approaching swarm drift toward them with a mixture of curiosity and apprehension. Sub-element B-1 was for all practical purposes invisible, except for the faint twinkling and sparking that popped in and out of the ever-present dust devils. When it was less than ten meters away, a voice crackled on the crewnet.

" _Sub-element B-1 approaching...Corporal Ng, Sergeant Grant, I want you to assume flanking positions five meters on either side of Igloo's hatch. Sight your weapons on the egress platform and ladder."_

The two Frontier Corps troopers crab-walked through the dust and regolith to take up their new positions. "What are you going to do, sir?" Grant asked.

" _I will enter Igloo and engage the swarm directly. If I manage my configuration properly, I should be able to disable and disassemble the enemy swarm. If I cannot do that, I will endeavor to drive it out of the module. If that happens, fire your weapons on my command...but not before. Is that clearly understood?"_

"Yes, sir," they both said in unison.

Sub-element B-1 maneuvered toward the open hatch. It looked like a dust devil with a mind of its own, climbing the ladder, then flowing inside. A few flashes of light lit up the hatch opening, then all of a sudden, an intense jagged vein of light flashed brighter, like a slow-motion, soundless streak of lightning.

Julie Grant knew it was some kind of battle line, a line of engagement they were witnessing. Sub-element B-1 had just gone into action.

Grant crept a little closer to the module.

"Where the hell are _you_ going?" Ng asked.

"I want to see...he may need help."

"Yeah...like a tornado needs help...keep down, will you? Stay back—"

But Grant crouched her way up to the ladder, climbed a few steps and peered in, keeping her HERF carbine charged and ready.

Inside, a miniature thunderstorm was underway, in slow motion.

" _I'm engaging now_ —" Sub-Element B-1 reported.

Like a collision of miniature weather fronts, the two swarms went at each other, slamming atoms, ripping bonds. Jagged lines of flashing light marked off the battlefront. Grant knew little about nanoscale combat. She tried to imagine a herd of bots the size of molecules wrestling and grappling with each other, ripping atoms from each other, and reconcile that with the pinpricks of light flashes she was seeing.

An entire battlefield the size of a desktop, with armies of bots beating the snot out of each other. How the hell do you tell who's winning?

"Element B-1, give us a status report, sir...should we engage and support you?"

" _I'm at Config Five...replicating max rate...enemy bots are multi-lobed structures...I am endeavoring to maneuver for bond-breaker assault...maintain your position...I will signal if fire support is needed—"_

"Very well, sir." Julie Grant had to keep reminding herself that part of the swarm she was watching had once been Sheila Westerlund. She didn't want to wind up like the Comm Tech...or like Roy Favors either. Grant backed down the ladder, took five steps back and hand-motioned Ng to move forward.

"Keep your weapon on that hatch...we give him fire support if he needs it."

Ng came up.

For a few minutes, nothing seemed to be happening. Nano-combat was like that. Soundless light shows like a swarm of fireflies in a jar...that's what it looked like. They had no way to tell who was winning, what battles were being fought inside, what heroic charges and staunch defenses were happening, at the level of atoms and molecules. A thousand Verduns could have occurred in the space of a fist and neither Grant nor Ng would have known.

Then Sub-Element B-1's tinny voice came over the crewnet. " _Bond breakers are working...I am able to penetrate bot defensive perimeter with sequence of feints and diversions...swarm mass has decreased by sixty-five percent...I am attempting to limit swarm effects on Igloo equipment...containment ops now underway...Igloo should be clear in four minutes twenty seconds..."_

Grant breathed a loud sigh of relief. "He did it! He's mopping up, Sammy...he's smashed the bastards into atom fluff!"

Ng shook his head, lowered his carbine. "I never saw a thing." He climbed up the ladder to see for himself.

Inside, _Igloo_ 's crew cabin seemed enveloped in a light fog, full of sparks and pops of light. Most of the pallets and racks were intact, but a faint residue rested on the cabin floor, dust maybe? Or worse.

Ng cautiously climbed in. "Seems okay. Sub-element B...are you in here?"

" _Right behind you, Corporal. The enemy bots have been dispersed. I am endeavoring to clean up all remaining loose atoms and ensure the bot master does not reconstitute."_

Ng whirled about, finding himself face to face with...what exactly? A faint mist. A few specks of dust. And the hell of it was this was the detail senior officer...or at least a piece of a senior officer.

The rest of Element B was still outside with Demetrious, climbing that slope toward the red hillocks.

" _Sergeant Grant, Corporal Ng, I want you to finish setting up Igloo. Get her gear up and running for a comm check back to Michelangelo in two hours. Demetrious, you're with me."_

So Grant and Ng went to work. And just as Commander Element B had surmised, Captain Hawley called two hours later.

Hawley and Element B conversed on the ship-to-ground circuit. Big Mike was still two days out from making orbit around Sedna. Element B gave him an update on what had happened with the swarms on Sedna, and the status of _Igloo's_ setup.

"We engaged the main body, B," Hawley told him. "I'm not sure how much damage we did, but we stung 'em pretty good."

Element B had already analyzed the downloaded combat record, including all Big Mike's maneuvers, the firing pattern, moment by moment details of the entire engagement.

" _Captain, it appears that you did indeed engage elements of some kind of massive swarm formation. The question is: are these swarms part of the Devil's Eye phenomena...are they associated with what has been termed the Old Ones?"_

"I don't know about that, Commander, and I don't intend to hang around long enough to find out. We'll make orbit in thirty hours. Finish setting up _Igloo_ and prepare to come back to the ship. Whatever the hell you encountered down there is part of the same thing we encountered...I'm sure of it. I want to get these probes deployed and get the hell out of here."

" _Understood, Captain. Ng, Demetrious and Grant are making good progress. But there is still Corporal Stoltz to deal with."_

"Leave him in the MOB. I'll deal with him when the landing party is back aboard. Hawley, _out."_

Hawley settled back in his command seat for a few moments, to take stock of the situation. He knew he'd soon have to get a report off to CINCSPACE on the engagement, and deployment ops at Sedna and nearby space. Already he was composing it in his mind, even as his mind rebelled at venturing back into deep space to finish laying down the sensor grid. Somehow, being in orbit around Sedna seemed safer than engaging unknown clouds of bugs in deep space. But they had a job to do and the sensor grid was vital to getting Frontier Corps the intel it would need to deal with _Devil's Eye_ , the Old Ones and anything else that came poking its nose into the solar system.

The sooner they got the sensors deployed, the sooner they could leave and head home. For now, it seemed that the swarms have been driven off...at last check, they seemed to be in a distant orbit about the Sun, nearly 9 billion miles away, but not moving further or deeper into the Solar System.

Hawley chewed on the tip of his finger as he finished up the last bit of his message to CINCSPACE.

They would have to do some serious re-thinking about tactics and overall strategy when it came time to engage the swarms again. Hawley was certain that time would come and soon.

He wasn't so certain the outcome would be the same. Whatever they were dealing with, it had abilities far beyond anything Frontier Corps or anyone had ever encountered before. Just the quantum displacement capability alone would make life miserable for any would-be defender.

There was no telling what else these damned Bugs could do.
CHAPTER 18

Nairobi, Kenya

Kibera Fields

December 24, 2110 (U.T.)

1930 Hours

"Superfly's up and operating, sir." Sergeant Lars Lundgren worked the controls of the entomopter and steered the tiny flyer toward the growing crowd spilling out of Uhuru Park, pushing and surging along Kenyatta Avenue toward a stage up on the edge of Kibera Fields. "Got good imagery now...looks like the crowd's getting restless. Jeez, what a mob."

The rally was set to begin promptly at 7 pm and the fanfare had already started. On the main stage, Masai dancers jittered and juked to a hard-driving drum beat, while off to one side, the Assimilator booths were already working overtime, sucking up a long queue of volunteers, disassembling the poor souls into atom fluff.

Lieutenant Jake Argo studied the console he had set up on the bed in their rented room at the Milamani Hotel. PINCH ONE was showing clean and green, ready to launch. MAGIC ONE too, for the diversionary effort that hopefully would make the grab easier to pull off. Getting close to Symborg was going to be dicey. It would take the combined efforts of the whole Detachment, including the angels Table Top had developed. That and a little luck wouldn't hurt either.

"Let's do it," Argo decided. He checked the time. Quarter to seven...if practice held true to form, Symborg would finally show up about 8 pm, after some warm-up acts, some speeches and testimonials, and whole lot of very loud music. That would give them time to get PINCH ONE and MAGIC ONE deployed, on station and ready to assemble. The angels had come from Table Top in separate containment capsules and their CQE, Sergeant Mark Zammit, now set the capsules to launch the bot masters and deploy the swarms.

The bots would make their way on internal propulsors across open ground—smoking, trash-strewn, rat-infested ground—for that's what Kibera was, toward the stage. The plan was to assemble the angels from loose bots in the chaos of Symborg's first appearance, when all eyes and all attention were on the great robotic messiah. Argo had trained his Detachment hard for just this moment. When Symborg showed up and the shrieking and the fainting and the breast-beating began, PINCH ONE would quietly replicate and materialize in human form out of some smoldering trash heap nearby, like a genie from a bottle, and along with his comrade angels, would squirm and wriggle his way forward and approach the stage.

And if all went well, an angel named Kgani, closely resembling a bullet-headed seven-year old boy, would leap onto the stage with hundreds of others and surround Symborg in a massive love embrace.

Only this embrace would come away with pieces of Symborg that the eggheads at Table Top could examine. And Config Zero would be none the wiser.

That, at least, was the plan.

"PINCH ONE away," said Lieutenant Cynthia Tamaguchi. "PINCH TWO through FOUR spooling up."

From the outside patio of the hotel suite, a faint mist drifted off into the smoky twilight over Nairobi. The first swarm was quickly lost to view and Tamaguchi studied her control board, reading off system status, speed and heading. "PINCH ONE reports ready in all respects. On course for Kibera...heading two five five, one-quarter propulsor. PINCH TWO, THREE and FOUR ready to launch, sir."

Argo gave the order. "Launch now, Lieutenant."

The remaining PINCH bots were quickly ejected into the air and drifted away from the hotel.

Argo turned to Corporal Zammit. "MAGIC ONE ready, Zam?"

"Straining at his leash, sir. Program laid in, course downloaded. All systems green."

"Launch MAGIC," Argo told him.

In seconds, the final bot and swarm were away. Now it was up to Superfly to follow the plotted courses of the five swarms.

"Q2's studied the protocols and practices of every Symborg and Assimilationist rally that's happened over the last few months," Argo muttered to no one in particular. They were all back inside the hotel, following the feed from Superfly. Overlaid on a map of Nairobi and Kibera Fields, Superfly projected the position and course of each swarm as it maneuvered toward its target. It wasn't uncommon for hordes of followers to try to rush the stage and touch Symborg as their ecstasy overcame them. Argo was counting on that happening again.

Argo planned to use this as 'cover' to insinuate his little angels into the people flow and get as close as possible to Symborg. One possible obstacle: Symborg always had a strong-arm security detail around the stage and Q2 was certain that some of them were angels themselves. They were there to protect Symborg from too much contact with the public. But PINCH ONE, a.k.a. Kgani, was a capable little angel and could morph into all kinds of objects, shapes and structures. In the end, some in Q2 thought the grab might only be possible with Kgani morphing into a fly or mosquito.

Even from the Superfly vid feed, the scale of the crowd stunned the troopers.

"Jesus H. Christ, _that's_ a horde," said Corporal Renata Ngara. "Will you look at that?"

"Some estimates put these rallies at nearly two million people," Argo reminded them. Indeed, the crowd surged and sloshed along alleyways and side streets as it swelled and strained against barriers and police cordons, pushing ever closer toward the main stage at the western end of the district, not far from a rail station astride the Uganda Railway. The crowd seethed and pulsed like a thing alive. Even from the Superfly feed, it was apparent that Kenya Police and the local constables were just barely in control of things.

"MAGIC ONE four minutes out from Assimilator booths," reported Zammit. His fingers flew over the control board, bringing up telemetry on bot status. "I'm going to slow-rate rep now...a little bang to get things started."

"Very well," Argo said. "Proceed with the diversion. And keep your fingers crossed."

Zammit steered MAGIC ONE toward the line of Assimilator booths surrounding the main stage. Overhead, the Superfly entomopter gave a view of the massive crowd, boiling and surging forward, pressing against the police cordon like waves against a beach. Smoke from small fires had been set at key intersections, and the winds twisted the smoke columns into braided ropes reaching into the sky.

Already long queues of volunteers had lined up in front of the booths. Superfly dropped down to get a closer look at the Assimilator setup. There were dozens of booths, each manned by a technician and an intake specialist, who took down the name and vitals of each volunteer as they approached the booth. Once the preliminaries had been done, the tech assisted the volunteer into the booth and _whoosh_ , nothing but atom fluff.

A steady stream of faint mist issued out of each booth, as the deconstruct bot swarms worked overtime, disassembling each volunteer and sending them right into oblivion...or as Symborg termed it: "unity with the Mother Swarm."

"Three dozen miniature Auschwitzes...that's what it is," said Argo. "I'm glad we're starting the diversion here. Zam, what's our distance?"

Zammit examined his board, triangulated with Superfly's sensors. "I make it less than fifty meters to the first booth, Lieutenant."

"Execute phase two now."

Zammit sent the signal and the MAGIC ONE swarm went into big bang overdrive, swelling into a larger swarm, which would soon be lost in the crush of the crowd and the smoky fires nearby. "Max rate rep...now ninety percent. Maneuvering for first assault—"

The plan was to drop MAGIC ONE into several booths located a few dozen meters away from the main stage. The swarm of nanobotic mechs would insinuate themselves into the booths and work to bollix up the disassembler swarms, engaging the interior bots in a free-for-all that would slow down and scramble the assimilators, and bring a halt to the mass suicides that were so much a part of every Assimilationist rally.

"...now closing on target, less than ten meters...get me a Superfly close-up, Cynthia...I want to see what the first engagement looks like...picking up EM spikes now—"

The botswarms of MAGIC ONE swooped down on the booths, invisible to everyone, and penetrated inside. Moments later, Superfly caught an image of one booth bursting into flame, dense white smoke billowing out the top.

The crowd recoiled from the fire, like an ocean wave reflecting off a seawall, and soon chaos had enveloped the whole area. As MAGIC ONE descended and penetrated other booths, more fires started and soon an entire line of booths was affected. Spectators, technicians and volunteers scrambled away in panic.

Argo watched it all on the Superfly vid with a growing sense of satisfaction. "I'd say this diversion's working like a charm. PINCH status?"

Sergeant Lars Lundgren studied his own board. "All PINCH elements on course, altitude eighty meters, heading two six five...we're closing on those _matatus_ parked by the rail line...there's a tree stand right in the middle...perfect cover. Those drivers are all half strung out on _khat_ anyway...we'll look like a horde of flies just flew in. Permission to set down?"

"Permission granted...execute Phase Two."

Indeed, as Lundgren predicted, the approach of the PINCH swarms did resemble a horde of flies or mosquitos. Superfly captured the scene: the taxi drivers waved and swatted at something invisible descending on their small opening from the sky. They scattered and left the opening unattended for a few moments. In those moments, PINCH One alighted and, on command from Lundgren, began assembly ops.

Moments later, Kgani, as a para-human angel resembling a lanky, 7-yr old boy with a buzzcut and unusually long arms and legs...intentionally designed that way by UNQC engineers to make the 'swipe' of Symborg bots...slowly materialized. Kgani would be the first of four angels Quantum Corps had devised for this snatch and grab mission.

"PINCH One at full config," Lundgren. "Ops underway on PINCH Two through Four."

Lieutenant Tamaguchi steered Superfly closer to the taxi stand. For all intents and purposes, the view showed a few kids kicking cans around. The taxi drivers slowly worked their way back to the opening, gesturing and shouting at the kids. By the time the drivers had returned and begun passing around bottles of _changaa_ to drink, the kids had moved off...four of them, lanky, teenagers and younger. They headed into the crowd and worked their way against massive throngs of people, navigating toward the main stage alongside the railway tracks.

Tamaguchi steered Superfly to follow. "All elements in position, Skipper. Moving on the target now."

Argo wanted to know about the angels themselves. "Zammit, Lars....what about configs?"

"All clean and green," the two troopers replied in unison. "PINCH elements at full config. Grabbers operating normally. Now...they just have to get to the site."

Argo studied the vid from Superfly. "Easier said than done...." The Detachment had hacked into the comm feed from Kenya Police and Argo studied that for a moment. "They're estimating nearly two million coming to this rally. I didn't know two million could cram into this hellhole."

Zammit kept a close eye on PINCH One, leading the approach. "It would be easier to slog through solid rock, Lieutenant. At least, the structure's regular."

Bit by bit, Kgani and the others squirmed and squeezed and ducked and crawled their way forward, homing on the main stage. The crowd thickened as they closed on the pavilion that covered the stage.

"Something's happening," Tamaguchi reported. She steered Superfly to a higher altitude, letting the entomopter orbit a few hundred meters overhead. Something had roiled the crowd, stirred the pot, and thousands began surging forward, straining, pushing, screaming.

"It's _him_ ," Argo realized. "Take a look...the Messiah comes."

Indeed, Symborg had appeared on the stage, as if by magic. Argo realized it was likely that Symborg had initially deconstructed himself into a swarm and made his way to the stage that way, only to materialize into human form in some kind of dramatic fashion, like a genie. The slender man-swarm had now taken center stage and spotlights shone down in stark cylinders of light, while the music had fallen off to a steady rhythmic drumbeat.

" _PEOPLE OF KIBERA...I HAVE COME TO BE WITH YOU_ ...." The loudspeakers reverberated and squealed with his voice and his words were like applying heat to a vast pot of water. The crowd boiled and steamed, stirred and frothed, moving always forward, pressing and crashing against the barriers and the police cordon like waves.

"... _.WE MUST LOVE ONE ANOTHER...WE ARE ALL ONE WITH THE MOTHER SWARM...."_

With that, Symborg spread his arms wide and held out his hands to the ring of children arrayed before the stage. It was the signal they had been waiting for. The children screamed and began climbing up, some tossed onto the stage by adoring parents, through openings held by Security forces, streaming onto the stage to embrace the One Who Calls. In moments, Symborg was surrounded by several hundred children, all of whom pressed in on the robotic messiah and stretched out to touch him.

Embedded in the middle of the love fest was Kgani and the snatch and grab force of PINCH units.

"Moving into position," Zammit reported.

Now, Superfly flew lower and lower, feeding vid of the chaos that had enveloped the stage. Pinpointed on the vid, Kgani's position was marked, as well as the other PINCH units.

"Seven meters and closing," Zammit went on. "We're working our way through the crowd...ducking, bobbing, weaving...like walking through an ocean."

Argo's lips tightened. The moment of truth was fast approaching. "Zam, make sure containment's ready."

"Grabbers are primed, position one," Zammit reported. "Less than two meters—"

The snatch, when it occurred, was almost invisible, even on Superfly's vid. Kgani was shoved by the force of the crowd right up against the robotic messiah and his grabbers fired, snagging a handful of Symborg in the process. From the vid, Symborg showed no reaction. He was already being grabbed and groped and pushed and pinched by dozens of other kids.

"Got it!" Zammit exulted. "Got it! Securing the sample. PINCH Three is close too...I'm going for it. Extra samples can't hurt."

Stage Security had been distracted by the fires and chaos around the Assimilator booths nearby. None of the security agents saw anything. None reacted. Zammit steered PINCH Three into contact and secured more samples of Symborg bots.

"Pull 'em out, Zam," Argo ordered. "We got what we came for. Let's get the hell out of there...before the whole place blows up."

"Moving out," Zammit reported. Superfly confirmed the maneuver. Kgani and the others now began working their way offstage, climbing down on the shoulders of some beaming parents trying to retrieve their own children. In moments, the four angels were on the ground, slithering and crawling and sliding through the crowd, working their way back toward the taxi stand.

Among them, Kgani and the angel known as PINCH Three carried a sample of Symborg tightly contained in their grabbers. Zammit studied their status on his board, made sure the samples were in proper containment.

Back at the taxi stand, Kgani ran headlong into a pair of grungy-looking _matatu_ drivers, leaning against a tree, both chewing _khat_ and sharing a flask of something.

"Get lost, _kutu_ ...this is our tree...move along...."

Superfly hovered a few meters over the taxi stand and provided vid of the whole scene.

Zammit swore. "I don't want to go small with them watching everything. Lieutenant, permission to engage...get rid of these dirtbags?"

Argo studied the scene. Kgani needed to get back to base with his prize. Quantum Corps needed those bots pinched from Symborg.

"Permission granted. Make these slugs disappear but do it quick."

"With pleasure, sir." Zammit's fingers flew over the keyboard on his console. He dialed up a config for speed-disassembly and sent it. The Kgani-angel received the command immediately, the Superfly vid showing the result.

Where once had stood a lanky seven-year old Kenyan boy, there now materialized a small faint glowing fog, swelling outward and upward from the boy's feet into the air. The _matatu_ drivers backed off immediately and one of them ran for his taxi, leaping into the open cab in one motion, trying desperately to get the thing started.

The other driver wasn't so lucky. The Kgani-angel had fully morphed into a tight pulsating swarm, like an angry horde of bees and it fell upon the driver with full fury. The fog thickened and the light strobed and flickered as nanomech hell swept the taxi stand clean.

When it was all over, there wasn't even any ash. The driver was gone, now so much atom fluff.

"Obstruction removed, sir," Zammit reported with satisfaction.

"Okay," Argo checked the time. "Recall the bots...get 'em back into containment so we can get out of here. I don't like the looks of that crowd."

Zammit sent the command and ten minutes later, the balcony outside their hotel room was enveloped in a faint mist as the swarms returned to base. Tamaguchi and Ngara gathered the swarms into containment and made sure the bots were secure and stable.

Now it was time for the Detachment to vanish.

Extracted by lifter from the hotel roof, the Detachment made its way to a desolate airstrip deep in the Somalian desert, where a hyperjet was waiting. They boarded and once again, checked containment of the Symborg pinch.

"A lot of people are waiting on these pods," Argo told the hyperjet crew.

Table Top was a 2-hour suborbital hop, rocketing across the top of the atmosphere, some eight thousand miles. Most of the trip, Argo and his troopers dozed in the cargo hold...Tamaguchi and Ngara both curled up against the containment pods secured by webbing along one wall. It was only when the snow-covered mesa that was Table Top came into view that Argo finally began to relax. The mission was almost over.

The hyperjet set down on the north lift pad and the pods were conveyed under heavy guard to the domed containment center south of the barracks and the Ops building. Argo followed Tamaguchi, Zammit and Ngara to the vault, checked through security and, in short order, found himself staring at an imager screen filled with scaffolding hung with what looked like a bunch of grapes.

"That's it?" he asked a nearby tech. The tech was a big-boned bald guy. His name plate ready _Stefans_.

"Symborg...in the flesh," Stefans told him. "We're doing initial scans, measuring bond energies, basic geometry, just trying to tickle the little guys and see what makes them tick."

"Doesn't look like much. My Detachment went through hell to grab those samples."

Stefans sniffed. "It's not the appearance that counts, Lieutenant. It's what's under the hood. These buggers have all kinds of capabilities we haven't figured out."

Argo was unconvinced. "I say zap the bejeezus out of him. HERF the bastard and be done with it."

"That's the trouble with you atomgrabbers," Stefans came back. "That's your answer to every problem...fry the bastards. Has it occurred to you that what you're seeing here, what we're dealing with here is a direct offshoot of Config Zero itself? We can zap it all day long but if we don't get the master, it just regenerates."

"Doesn't matter," Argo said. "It's still a cloud of bugs."

"Our mission," Stefans informed him, "isn't just to zap the bastard. We can do that anytime we want. What we have to do here is find some weakness that we can use to discredit Symborg. That's the only way we'll defeat this Assimilationist crap. Somehow, some way, we've got to find a way to bollix up the master, so the angel's not so stable, so he starts doing and saying things that don't make any sense...gum up the comms with Config Zero and make Symborg into a puppet without strings. That's our mission."

Argo was already heading out the door. He had a debriefing with General Winger on vid in ten minutes. "Sounds like politics and psych-war to me. Leave me out."

Stefans figured soldiers and atomgrabbers were all alike...too many guns and not enough brains. He went back to his imager controls, probing the bots now in containment with electromagnetic fingers, studying what reactions each little pulse provoked. He knew General Winger and UNSAC expected results and reports.

If Symborg were to be defeated, they had to find some weakness they could exploit and they had to find it soon.
CHAPTER 19

Paris, France

December 25, 2110

0800 hours (UT)

For Dana Tallant, Christmas Day was supposed to be extra special. She had planned a really nice breakfast for the family. She'd gotten a new outfit for Rene, new sporteye spectacles for Liam who had come down from Cambridge a rabid football fan, come down reluctantly, she had to admit. True, Johnny Winger wouldn't be there, except maybe the kids would go for Wings' _Dad One_ avatar if it wasn't too creepy. Her husband was back in the States, at Table Top, running analysis of the captured Symborg bots. Operation _Quantum Crusader_ couldn't afford to lose a day, even if it was Christmas.

She got Liam up, grumbling and while he was showering, she peeked in on Rene too. _I'll let her sleep a few more minutes_. Dana thought her daughter was looking particularly good this morning...her skin was tightly meshed and there was a glow about her that seemed almost childlike...or was it her imagination? Dana wanted so hard for the day to go well...the family didn't come together like this very often. Even if Wings couldn't be there, at least, she had the kids.

And one of them was just a cloud of bugs... _yeah_ , she knew that, but every time that thought came to her mind, she squashed it.

_Not today, girl...not today_. _For once, the Wingers are going to be a normal family celebrating Christmas day._

Liam came staggering in, yawning and stretching, poking around the kitchen for something to eat. Howie the housebot was ready with a plate of his favorite: scrambled eggs and Howie's signature blueberry pancakes.

" _Will master be requiring anything else_?" Howie intoned.

Liam sat down and started digging in. "How 'bout some coffee, H-man. You know what I like, don't you?"

Howie beeped and in seconds, had produced a frothy latte warmed to the perfect temperature.

Dana sat down with her own coffee, peering at her son through a wreath of steam rising out of the mug. "Where's your sister? It is Christmas morning, you know."

Liam shrugged. "Her door's still shut...maybe she's disassembled into pieces by now."

"Liam, _don't say that_ ...I expect better out of you...today, especially. You're in college now...watch your tongue."

Dana decided to go check on Rene herself. She found her daughter still in bed, under the covers, but wide awake. Her face was pensive, her forehead wrinkled, like she was in pain.

"What is it, honey...didn't you sleep very well? Are you hurting somewhere?" She bent down to kiss her forehead, feeling the slight buzz as the skin bots whirred with the contact.

Rene shook her head, saying nothing.

_Maybe it's the config engine_ , Dana wondered. Her lips and eyes weren't tracking right...there was a slight smear, first there, then not there. She hadn't seen _that_ in days.

"Bad dreams," was all Rene could mumble. She turned and buried her face in the pillow, somehow aware that something was wrong. The way people reacted to her, even her own Mom, you could tell something was out of whack. Some days, she just wanted to dig a deep hole and crawl in.

"Oh, honey..." Dana fluffed and fussed with Rene's blond tresses, kneading the braids out, slipping and straightening the kinks. "Honey...it was just a dream. Hey, girl...it's Christmas morning...got your favorite breakfast in the kitchen...if your brother doesn't snarf it all up. And there are presents and the tree's all done up...come on, let's get up and we'll get started."

Rene just buried her face deeper. "Leave me alone."

Dana had worked hard for weeks getting things ready for Christmas. "Young lady, get out of bed and that's an order. What was in those bad old dreams anyway?"

Rene turned back to face her Mom. Dana could see something moist in her eyes...tears, maybe? Or was it her imagination? Could an angel even _have_ tears?

"It's hard to describe...more like feelings than images...like floating in a warm bath, surrounded by stars on all sides, but cocooned in warmth and light and love. It was comforting...but, Mom, I was scared...." She reached out for a hug and Dana embraced her daughter. She ignored the buzzing of the skin bots.

"It's okay, honey...it'll be all right—" but even as she said that, the hairs on the back of her neck were standing up. It wasn't that Rene's skin was buzzing at her; she was used to that. It was what Rene had said...maybe the way she had said it.

She stroked her daughter's hair and told herself that the skin bots were just a weird form of static electricity. Was she having some kind of memory of her time with Config Zero? That thought popped into her mind as she helped Rene out of bed.

"Come on, honey—let's get you some breakfast. Before your brother eats everything in the house...come on, Howie'll make whatever you want—"

They went out to the kitchen and as she watched her daughter situate herself at the table and Howie take orders and serve hot pancakes and sausages, Dana couldn't help but chew over Rene's description of her dreams. She knew a little about Operation _Sentinel_ , but that wasn't what was bothering her. What had given her a chill in Rene's bedroom was something else...a scrap of memory, something Wings himself had said, years before, during the _Jovian Hammer_ operation at Europa, when he had approached the Keeper that lived in that frozen world's submerged ocean.

_Surrounded by stars, cocooned in a bath of warm light_ ...she resolved to check out the mission files, maybe even ask Wings himself the next time they talked.

Dana watched her daughter fuss and fight with Liam and order Howie around like the little princess she wanted to be.

Maybe these weren't dreams at all. Was it possible that what Rene was experiencing was something like a memory...a memory of her time as a captive of Config Zero? Or maybe something even more basic...an embedded experience of what it was like to be part of the mother swarm, the Old Ones, a part of the Central Entity?

_This is crazy,_ she told herself. When she realized she hadn't been paying attention to what the kids were doing and Liam and Rene were having fun making Howie flutter around the kitchen trying to fill conflicting orders, she intervened.

"That's enough of that, guys...Howie's not a play toy. Eat your breakfast like human beings so we can get to the presents. Howie—"

" _Yes, madam_ \--?"

"Howie, cancel all previous orders from the last two minutes. Execute bedroom straightening program...and vacuum the hall while you're at it."

The housebot seemed grateful for a simple command and whirled about instantly. " _Yes, madam...at once_ —" He whirred off to attend to his duties.

Liam and Rene sulked over their pancakes, not daring to make eye contact with their Mom.

"You two— _honestly_ ...finish up. It's Christmas Day, for heaven's sake. And your Dad's due to call in half an hour."

They finished breakfast and left cleanup duties to Howie. In the living room, presents were exchanged and Dana tried to make the atmosphere as cheery as she could. Rene got a snazzy new skirt and jacket combo while Liam was intrigued by the new sporteye spectacles he got, loaded with hundreds of hours of football and cricket matches. Dana herself was touched by the necklace Liam gave her (he had somehow thoughtfully put Rene's name on the card too...that's what really brought a lump to her throat). It was faux pearl with some embedded amethyst and other stones. She tried it out immediately.

The vid beeped from the corner of the living room. "That'll be your father," she announced. "Make yourselves presentable---Rene, honey, you stand here—" she positioned her daughter as if they were posing for a portrait. "—and Liam, here...I'll be in the middle—"

Winger called from Table Top Mountain, where it was 3 am. He looked a little worn down, Dana thought, but otherwise, she was glad he could be there on Christmas morning, even if it was only a vid.

"We just had presents," Dana announced. She nudged both kids to show off their gifts...Rene shyly holding up the skirt and jacket for Winger to see.

"That's great, honey...it'll look really good on you...guys, why don't you go play elsewhere and let your Mom and me have a chat."

"Okay," they both said in unison, as if being released from captivity. Liam flopped into a nearby chair in the den, eager to try out the sporteye. Rene went back to her bedroom, where she sniped and griped at what Howie had done to her bed. Then she threw herself into the bed and sank beneath the covers.

Winger shook his head. The vid seemed to be coming from his officer's quarters. Dana knew the building well; she could well imagine each one of the hundred and sixty steps from the OQ to Ops. She had plied that route a million times over the decades.

"They seem happy enough," he observed, sipping at a coffee.

Dana shrugged. "They're kids. Liam's doing well at Cambridge...honors this semester. He likes what he's studying....robotic ethics and all. He keeps trying to trip up Howie with questions and philosophical conundrums. I told him it won't work...Howie's just a housebot."

"And Rene? She looks good from here."

That brought a frown. "She says she's been having bad dreams. I'm not sure if it's a processor problem...maybe some kind of glitch. I was going to contact Dr. Falkland...but I wanted to talk with you first."

"What kind of dreams? Can she even _have_ dreams...I mean, like we do?"

"She calls them dreams. Snatches of images. Memory overflow...who knows? But the way she describes them...Wings, it gave me a chill. I can't prove it but I think she's got some kind of embedded memory from when she was with Config Zero. I mean, I thought Falkland wiped her clean but I'm wondering."

"What kind of images?"

Dana described what Rene had told her. "Wings, I can't get over the impression that what Rene's experiencing is not just some processor hiccup. It's all the detail that gets me...and it gibes with what Q2 has told us about Config Zero, even with what you and I know from earlier ops. Falkland needs to know about this...either he didn't do the wipe properly...or Rene's got some kind of comm we don't know about."

Winger's eyes narrowed. "Comm? I hadn't thought about that...she's got the same basic processor architecture as any ANAD bot...we know that much. Which means she's got the same embedded viral genome structure that old Doc Frost dug up at Engebbe. Doc Frost once mentioned to me there were things in that architecture...in the logical makeup of that viral genome...that even _he_ didn't understand. And that's proven true. Maybe there is a comm channel we don't know about...and somehow it's become activated."

Dana bit her lip. "This _is_ Rene we're talking about, Wings. Our daughter. She's not just a machine, you know." Even as she said that, a part of her wanted to argue back: _that's exactly what Rene is...a cloud of nanoscale machines, done up to resemble a human._ But she squashed that thought.

"I know...but I'm thinking," Winger said. He reached off screen for something, then came back. "For sure, we'd better let Falkland know about this. And maybe CINCSPACE too. Maybe something Hawley's crew is doing out at Sedna is triggering this...we shouldn't discount that possibility. I'll contact Q2 as well. If Rene's got some kind of deeply buried 'memory' of her time with Config Zero, maybe we can use that. She could be a gold mine of intel for us."

Dana was nearly in tears. "My God, Wings, can't she _ever_ have a normal childhood?"

"She's not a normal child, Dana. We have to accept that. Look, you get in touch with Dr. Falkland. I'll talk to someone in UNISPACE. Plus I've got contacts in Q2. This needs to be looked into."

"Okay..." Dana sniffed, quickly wiping a tear away so Liam wouldn't see it. "I guess you're right. When are you coming home?"

Winger explained what was happening with the captured Symborg bots. "I can't go into details here, of course. But I think they're making progress. If it continues like this, I can probably make a hop over to Paris in a week or so."

"We need you here. The kids need you and so do I. Especially now."

They said their good-byes. Dana decided to send a message to Falkland at the Autonomous Systems Lab right away...just composing and writing the message occupied her mind...she wouldn't have time to dwell on how sad the whole thing really was. She wanted to stay busy. She needed to stay busy.

Was it even remotely possible, what Wings was saying? Rene somehow in some kind of inexplicable contact with Config Zero, or maybe the Old Ones, tuned in and channeling some of the processor activity inside the Central Entity. Dana shook her head. _No, there's some kind of mistake. There has to be another explanation. Probably some kind of memory glitch...a processor hiccup._ Falkland would have the answer.

Dana pulled out her pad and began composing a message to the doctor.

The briefing at Q2 was scheduled for two days later. The intel staff was physically located on the fiftieth floor of the Quartier General. A Colonel Lofton was to meet with Dana, who was told to bring her daughter along. Dr. Falkland would join the meeting after a red-eye flight from Northgate. CINCSPACE had a staffer there too...Captain Walz, from the S2 shop.

Winger would vid himself in about an hour after the briefing was scheduled to start.

Lofton had already arranged to have Rene examined by Q2 engineers a few floors below them. "They've got all the gear," he explained. "They'll check her config drivers, download memory, run diagnostics on her processor, the works—very thorough. Then we'll know what we're dealing with here."

Dana Tallant was dubious. "In other words, she's in containment. Basically, she's a lab rat."

Lofton showed a pained expression. "Major Tallant, your daughter's situation is well known around here. We're trying to be sensitive to family issues. But the truth is: your daughter was a hostage of Config Zero some years before. She was deconstructed. She's a facsimile of what you once knew. An angel. We have to deal with the facts. And the fact is that, as I'm sure Dr. Falkland will admit, we don't know the full story of what happened to her, what Config Zero may have done to her, what she was exposed to."

"I know," Dana replied, weakly. "Just get on it, okay?"

Lofton explained to her and Falkland what Q2 was testing Rene for.

"Basically, we're looking for comms, of any type. Especially quantum comms, like coupler signals. Also, we're scanning her processor for any kind of embedded program that may link Rene back to Config Zero. Dr. Falkland, I'll have to ask you to produce the source code for the regeneration you did at Northgate. With that, we'll know what to look for and what _not_ to look for...we can eliminate some things, once we know the details of your memory field technique."

Falkland was somewhat annoyed. "That's proprietary, Colonel. Under the terms of my agreement with UNIFORCE—"

Lofton held up a hand. "I know all about the agreement. Doesn't matter. This is a security issue. Besides, it was a UNIFORCE contract."

Tallant shook her head. "I'm basically losing my daughter for a second time here. First to Config Zero. Now to UNIFORCE, as an intel source. I want to see her. Is she here?"

Lofton nodded. "Downstairs, in containment. She's being prepped for some scans...but I guess there's no harm."

They went down two floors to the Containment Center and lab. Rene was ensconced in a small containment chamber. The vault was heavy gauge, surrounded by beam injectors but there was a small hatch and window at the door. Dana watched her on the vid. She seemed comfortable enough but she was hooked up to all kinds of scanning equipment. Rene amused herself with some kind of tablet, flipping through the pages. Her face remained impassive.

A tech flipped on the intercom for her. "Rene, honey, how are you feeling?"

Rene looked up momentarily. "Oh, hi Mom...okay, I guess. It's cold in here. And all these wires...is this some kind of test or something? I was supposed to have a Geometry test today, wasn't I? Mr. Lott's class...he'll be pissed if I miss another one—"

"Rene, watch your—" Tallant caught herself, looked around sheepishly at the techs. Somebody coughed. "Rene, they're just going to run a few tests...see what's causing these dreams and images...did you have any last night?"

Her daughter shrugged. "A few. Not as bad. Mom, they don't make any sense...they wake me up."

"Just be still, okay, honey? Let the doctors do their tests."

A nearby officer, another Major with _Stavrolets_ on his nameplate, came up next to Tallant. "Major Tallant, I'm the tech supervisor. We're just getting ready to do a sector scan of her processor, level 3 this time."

Tallant regarded Stavrolets warily. "What have you found so far?"

Stavrolets shrugged, tweaked something on the vid. The image shifted to a close-up of Rene's face. "A few suspect routines in her memory. Some suspicious configs in her main driver memory...things like that. Could be stuff we don't have documentation for...we're hoping Dr. Falkland here can enlighten us."

Falkland had come down to Containment with Lofton and Tallant. He held up his hands. "I only copied what I was given. You've got all my notes and files now."

Tallant was curious. "What's this level 3 scan involve?"

Stavrolets rubbed his hands together. He was a nervous, balding egghead officer, Tallant figured. _Probably a lab rat_ , she imagined. _Doesn't get out too much._ Non-field types in UNIFORCE often had that pasty look about them.

"Basically, we're going to do an insert. Send a nanobotic recon unit inside Rene, to scout all her configs and processor arrays. In fact, I was just about to power up R-9...that's the bot master for the insert. He's over here—" Stavrolets indicated a small containment cylinder on a nearby bench. It was connected by a thick hose to the larger containment chamber.

Tallant was intrigued. "I'm an old atomgrabber from way back. I'd like to help out."

Stavrolets smiled faintly. "I appreciate that, Major. I'm aware of your background. It's just that this is a special force of bots. Specially configured for recon of non-cooperative subjects. Sort of like glutamate trace matching in humans only there's no glutamate molecules to follow. We just go in and snoop around the lattice arrays of her core memory for anything out of the ordinary."

Tallant decided not to make an issue of it. It had been several years since she'd done any field ops. _There's just a chance the old girl is a bit rusty on her configs._

Stavrolets turned back to the vid. "Before we insert, though, I want to interrogate Rene directly. Hear from her in her own words...what she's seeing, sensing, hearing." He switched on the intercom. "Miss Winger...would you mind if I came in? I have a few questions for you?"

Rene looked up from her tablet. "Sure, why not? How long do I have to stay in here?"

Tallant noticed her face seemed a little out of sorts, smeared out around her eyes. She bit her lip, looked questioningly at Stavrolets. "What's happening to her...what's happening to my baby?"

Stavrolets seemed unconcerned. "Probably a config glitch. We've already been snooping around her config driver...poking and prodding, checking registers and arrays. Looks like pattern buffer overflow to me...we've got her loaded up with check routines, so it's not surprising."

"Just stop messing with my daughter, okay? Do what you have to do, but she's not an experiment."

"Of course..." Stavrolets pressed a thumb on the bioscanner and the containment tank hatch unsealed and cranked open. Out of the corner of her eye, Tallant noticed two UNIFORCE guards stiffen and inch closer. She also saw they had primed their mag carbines in one smooth motion. "Rene...I'm coming in, okay. We'll have a little chat—" He slipped inside and a nearby tech shut the hatch behind him.

Tallant's atomgrabber instincts took her eyes immediately to the beam controls on the main panel. Right away, she saw all the injectors had cycled to FULL CHARGE. And all the safeties were off.

_This guy's not taking any chances,_ she told herself. She fought back conflicting emotions. _That's Rene in there, you troglodytes. She won't bite._

But the atomgrabber in her was whispering something else.

Stavrolets leaned against a table. "Rene, what are you feeling...right now? Can you describe it?"

Rene sank back in her chair and shut her eyes. "I don't know...it's like being in a bathtub, you know? Warm, cuddly...it kind of tickles, almost. Like when I'm in bed under the covers. It's real comfortable."

Stavrolets was recording her words. He tapped a few notes out on his device. "What can you see when you have these dreams? What images appear?"

Rene shrugged. "I don't see much, really. A lot of stars all around...like I'm in space or something. Floating in space. I'm just drifting along...except—" she scrunched up her face and frowned. "—there _was_ something the other day—"

"What, Rene? Describe it to me."

She rubbed at her eyes and, from outside the containment chamber, Dana and the others noticed how her fingers shed a faint trail of bots as she rubbed, almost like crumbs. Stavrolets chose to ignore the effect.

"It was like I was drifting along and something stuck me in the side...poked at me. There was light and the world kind of shook and I was tumbling for a moment...then it was over. That happened several times."

Outside the containment center, Colonel Lofton snapped his fingers. "I've got an idea. Sergeant—" he said to the tech at the console. "Can you patch me into SOFIE from here? Mission report archives--?"

The tech nodded. "I think so, sir...as long as you have the right passwords and biometrics. Plus I'll have to start a new encrypter...Ops stuff is done differently."

Lofton told him what he wanted. "Operation _Sentinel_ files...mission logs over the last week from the _Michelangelo_ mission. Captain Cory Hawley's logs—put it on my wristpad."

"Right away, sir." The tech massaged some buttons and, after a few minutes, _Sentinel_ reports and logs scrolled down Lofton's wristpad screen.

"Something?" Tallant asked.

"Just a hunch," Lofton said. "I'm listening to Stavrolets and what your daughter is saying. Here—" he had punched up some visuals from _Michelangelo's_ engagement with the _Devil's Eye_ swarm, near Sedna. "Just the way she was describing her dreams made me think...is there some kind of correlation here?"

Tallant looked at his screen. "You're thinking that what Rene's describing is this engagement...this swarm assault? That's quite a leap, isn't it?"

Lofton nodded. "Maybe. But it fits. I think what your daughter's telling us is a swarm's eye view of how that engagement went down. From its perspective...listen to what she's saying: _drifting along...floating...being poked in the side...tumbling...--_ I admit it seems a stretch and we have some work to do to corroborate this, but it's a working hypothesis. Stavrolets needs to sharpen his questions with this in mind...focus down using this as a guide—" He had the tech signal Stavrolets to step out of the chamber.

Somewhat annoyed, the Major complied. His mouth was tight when he shut the hatch behind him. "Colonel...if you don't mind, sir...I was just beginning to gain her confidence...her config's really unstable today...just a few more minutes—"

"Don't get your panties in a wad, Major...I want to show you something. I want you to change your line of questioning." Lofton went over his theory with Stavrolets. "I'm thinking that what Rene is imaging is related to the details of this engagement a few days ago. It's just a theory but 'what if...' with me, okay? Just suppose this is true...and somehow, Rene can access or is receiving data on _Devil's Eye's_ response to our assault. Maybe she's somehow plugged into Config Zero's archives...that wouldn't be so farfetched, since she spent time there as a hostage. And she is, after all, a swarm angel herself...sorry, Major Tallant."

Dana nodded. "It's true. God knows, we've tried to pretend it isn't, but it's the truth."

Lofton went on. "Stav, change your line of questioning. See if you can tease out more details...visuals, physical responses, that sort of thing. I'm trying to get some kind of valid correlation between what she's saying and what Hawley's mission logs show. If we can pin that down...or rule it out...we'll have something solid to go on. My guess: she's somehow got access to Config Zero's files. And if my theory is right...whatever happened out there at Sedna was communicated to Config Zero in some way. Which could mean that whatever or whoever is controlling the _Devil's Eye_ swarm is also in contact with Config Zero." Lofton looked Tallant square in the face. "And in contact with your daughter."

Stavrolets sniffed. "Begging the Colonel's pardon, sir, but this sounds just slightly nuts."

Lofton agreed. "Possibly, but I do want to change the focus of your questions...see if you can zero in on these images...we'll try to corroborate from Hawley's mission logs."

Stavrolets shrugged. "Yes, sir...you're the boss." He cycled back through the containment chamber hatch.

The interrogation lasted for another half an hour. In that time, technicians made R-9 ready for insert. Lofton followed Stavrolets' questions and Rene's answers closely, but no real conclusions could be drawn. "Not detailed enough...her answers could be interpreted different ways. We need more."

Lofton gave the order to begin the insert. Bedard, the bench tech handling R-9, pressed buttons on the console beside the bench. The reconbot master was embedded in a small containment cylinder. Now, internal valves were open and the bot and its accompanying swarm flowed through thick hoses into the chamber where Rene sat, still fiddling with a small tablet, engrossed in some kind of game she was playing. Stavrolets had left the chamber.

"R-9 staged, sir," Bedard announced. "Bot reports ready in all respects...we're in Config One, ready to launch...."

Lofton watched Rene for a moment. Although UNIFORCE had done inserts and recons of the Rene angel numerous times over the years since she had been rescued from Config Zero, Q2 hadn't done one in years. Lofton knew that all ANAD-style angels had boundary bots that hovered near the outer surface of the angel...the body, if you liked...to protect the integrity and structure of the angel. Rene did too and Lofton had read the reports of encounters between Quantum Corps recons and Rene's boundary bots over the years. After dozens of probes and inserts, a sort of protocol had been worked out to get by the boundary swarm, for inserts that needed to go deeper.

"Start insert protocol...Config Two, Sergeant," Lofton ordered. "Sound for reaction...let me know what's happening."

"Starting protocol," Bedard announced. "Outer valve coming open—" The outer valve protecting the containment chamber was now open and on the vid, Lofton could see the faintest sparkling mist begin to issue into the chamber and slowly expand. Rene clearly was aware of the new swarm in her midst, but she showed no reaction.

Dana Tallant bit her lip. Under her breath, she swore: _Nobody should have to go through this..._ She wanted to turn away, she wanted to not see what was happening, but something made her watch...maybe her old atomgrabber instincts. She stared at the vid and divided her attention between the swelling mist and her own daughter. _Honey...it'll be over in a few minutes_ ...

Lofton said, "Let's see what things look like, Sergeant."

Bedard flipped a switch. "Sounding on the monitor now, sir."

The screen crackled and popped and flashed with light as the acoustic image was converted to visual. R-9 sounded ahead as it approached Rene's outer boundary. The screen image finally settled down and was soon filled with a dizzying array of shapes, polygons and tetrahedrals and icosahedrons and pyramids, all careening at the screen, like some mad driver plowing through a sleet storm.

"Boundary ahead...sixteen thousand microns, sir...sounding shows nothing unusual...protocol in place. I'm approaching on a normal vector...effectors at Deploy One...bond breakers primed but not cycled...per protocol."

"Very well." Lofton took a deep breath. "This always gives me the creeps, Major Tallant. It's like crossing no-mans' land with a white flag, and the enemy has every gun trained right on you. Border Patrol at the scale of atoms. We approach on an agreed-upon vector, with our weapons and effectors at an agreed-upon state and hope nobody gets trigger happy."

Tallant agreed. "Beats trying to slam 'em with HERF. Besides—" she turned from the vid back to the hatch window to watch her daughter. "That _is_ Rene in there...not some alien swarm we're dealing with."

"Of course. Bedard...how's the reception?"

The tech studied his console. "All steady, Colonel. Boundary bots less than ten thousand microns...no unusual activity. Thermals normal, EMs normal...they're just maintaining structure...routine atomic stuff. Nobody's ringing any alarm bells."

"Very well...continue the approach, per protocol. Let's see if they'll let us pass without incident."

R-9 continued its approach without incident. The screen image showed a constant flow of polygons and tetrahedrals...mostly oxygens and other molecules, flowing by.

Bedard caught a whiff of something on the sounder. "Boundary dead ahead, sir. No spikes, no reaction."

"Maintain speed."

Tallant held her breath. She understood, better than any of them perhaps, that what she was looking at was Rene at the molecular level...the _real_ Rene, a swarm of nanoscale robotic mechanisms. _Just hold still, honey...just hold still—_

The boundary bots that comprised the outer surface of the Rene angel slowly materialized into view...looking like a small forest of dumbbell-shaped trees, with effectors and actuators undulating in the breeze. R-9 closed quickly and first contact showed up as a slight jostling. The dumbbells resisted at first, but then parted.

R-9 was in.

Lofton and Tallant both let out a breath of relief. "They scanned us and saw we weren't a threat," Lofton said. "We conformed to protocol and showed nothing unusual to them. We're in...Sergeant, sound ahead for the core processor...should be along this vector." Lofton manipulated a small palm button and the new course, already plotted, appeared on the screen as a dotted line. Bedard sent the commands to R-9 and the course change was made.

Eight minutes later, the sounder hit pay dirt.

Staccato beeps alerted everyone. Bedard upped the acoustic gain, trying to zero in on the source of the return. "...trying to get better resolution... I think this is our baby...returns are pretty strong...dense, lattice structure ahead..."

"Slow to one half propulsor," Lofton said. "Let's make sure they haven't sprung a surprise on us."

R-9 did a slow reconnoiter of the structure, which resembled a vast, slightly flattened cube, drifting in space. Pinpricks of light flashed inside the cube...bonds being broken and re-formed as the structure slammed atoms together to maintain itself.

"Looks like our baby," Lofton decided. "Now, we just have to figure out a way in. Most of these core units have seams along the edges...Bedard, let's turn right and probe that nearer edge seam...maybe we'll get lucky. Slow to one-quarter speed."

R-9 slowed and poked and probed and sniffed along the phosphate groups that defined the outer boundary of the processor cube, tickling its way through loose molecules hovering and coagulating around the edge. The reconbot was jostled and buffeted by van der Waals forces churning the edge and Bedard let the bot drift outward a bit to gain a smoother ride.

"There--!" Tallant had noticed something. "Right there...looks like a cleft or a seam, some kind of cavity."

Lofton marveled at her instincts. "Major, you haven't lost a thing...Intel shows that's probably a double-fold or cleavage plane, where the phosphate groups don't quite mesh. Could be a tunnel right into the main array, if we're lucky."

"I've seen that before plenty of times," Tallant admitted.

Bedard steered R-9 into the cavity and they soon found themselves inside a thickly populated lattice, surrounded by pyramidal structures extending in orderly rows as far as they could sound in every direction...above, below and all around. Flashes of light flickered on and off in the distance...the angel's version of thoughts being formed...data and instructions shuttling around the cube from one node to another. It was like being lost in a forest at night in a thunderstorm.

"Where now?" Tallant asked. "Anybody got a map?"

Lofton had an idea. "Major...get on the intercom. Talk to your daughter. See if you can get her to recall and describe those dreams she's been having. If I'm right, that should cause some kind of spike in processor activity down here...if we can detect that spike, we'll move in that direction."

Tallant didn't have a better idea. She flipped the intercom switch.

"Rene...Rene, honey...this is Mom. Can you hear me?"

Rene looked up from her tablet. Her face was smeared out slightly...like the config wasn't holding. Tallant swallowed hard. _Can't let this get to me_ , she told herself.

"Mom...Mom...what's going on? I feel funny...I feel dizzy...."

"Rene, listen to me. I want you to describe the last dream you had...the one you told me about the other night. Remember that? Just tell me again what it was like, okay?"

Rene seemed to shrug. "I don't know...it was all mixed up...lots of images, weird stuff, you know. I was floating somewhere...maybe it was the bathtub or a lake...just floating. It was warm and pretty cozy—"

Rene went on with her description, while Tallant, urged on by Lofton's hand signals, asked more questions, tried to draw her daughter out with more details.

Beside her, Bedard and Lofton were intent on the sounder and the main console. They had seen something. R-9 had detected a thermal bloom deep inside the cube. Bedard changed course and sped toward the source of the spike.

Dana Tallant knew that the truth was Rene had been probed and mapped many times by Quantum Corps, since she'd been rescued from Config Zero. Q2 had good maps of her swarm configurations. But Q2 had never gone inside her main processor before...mainly out of fear of damaging or disabling something vital. Rene was a swarm angel...nobody could argue that. But she was also a daughter.

_Maybe this won't be so bad_ , Dana thought.

"Thermals increasing," Bedard announced. The acoustic image showed a seemingly infinite forest of dumbbell-shaped, multi-lobed columns....nodes in the processor array. "Main source six thousand microns...still at one-quarter speed, Colonel."

"Maintain course and speed," Lofton told him. "Initialize the grabber."

Tallant looked quizzically over at Lofton. "Something new?"

Lofton had a smile. "The latest play toy from R & D. Quantum State Grabber...somehow, the eggheads have figured out how to snatch quantum state information right out of thin air...I don't pretend to understand it. Latch onto a decoherence wake and re-build the source state before it collapses. If it works, we may be able to take that source state and figure out what caused it. I'm even hoping to get some visuals."

"Sort of like memory tracing," Tallant said.

"Very roughly analogous to glutamate molecule sniffing that ANAD systems have been doing for years. Without the glutamate—"

Bedard interrupted. "Sounding ahead, Colonel. Thermals still high—" he pointed at a staticky fritz of interference on the screen, off dead center, but growing fast in the acoustic image. "Must be it."

"All stop, Sergeant. Let's reconnoiter a bit."

Bedard tapped at some buttons and brought the R-9 swarm to full stop, a thousand microns from the thermal bloom.

"What the hell is it?" Lofton squinted at the image. "Can you boost the gain a little?"

"I can try." Bedard fiddled with some buttons. His finger drew a slider across a nearby window. "That's the best I can do."

Closer examination showed the thermals came from a small group of columns, throbbing and swaying at the center of the image. At Lofton's urging, Bedard drove R-9 closer still.

The columns glowed brightly in the image, expanding and contracting rhythmically to some unseen influence, swelling and shrinking as if they were alive. With each cycle, the columns ejected a brilliant _poof_ of light, which pulsed away and then dissipated like a supernova in slow motion.

Lofton was amazed. "We've never seen this before in any of our probes or recons. It's not in any expedition notes, not on any vids. This is new." He consulted some charts on a nearby screen. A flashing blip of light highlighted R-9's position. "Let's try the Grabber."

"Activating Grabber now," Bedard announced. He studied a small plot of data on a nearby screen. "Grabber up and operating. I'm zeroing the disentangler...and we're already getting something...Jeez, this bugger's putting out quantum states like a volcano—"

"Can you make anything out of it, Sergeant?"

"I'm washing the raw feed through all my buffers...EMs, thermal, acoustic, visual, you name it. It may take a minute for the signal to make any sense."

Dana watched carefully, as puzzled as the others. She had never seen the Rene's processor before. _It's like brain surgery_ ...she knew she was looking at the very thing that animated Rene...that made Rene look and act like Rene.

"Getting something now," Bedard told them. "Multiple channels...acoustic and visual. I'll try visual first—"he played with some buttons. The screen dissolved into momentary flashes and streaks...then slowly settled down into a steadier view.

The image was a black, featureless void, static and unchanging for the first few moments. Then, as the image stabilized, they could detect faint embedded pinpricks of light scattered in no particular pattern. One of the lights seemed to be moving relative to the field of view. A stream of symbols and indecipherable characters scrolled from top to bottom along the right edge of the view.

Lofton snapped his fingers. "I think I know what that is—" he consulted some notes on his wristpad. "If I'm right...that little moving light is _Michelangelo_ ...Hawley's ship."

Tallant marveled at the view. "Imaged from a swarm. This could be the swarm's eye view. Colonel...are we looking outward from within _Devil's Eye?_ "

"Maybe," Lofton said. "See those symbols...could be data, maybe instrument readings of some sort. Range, heading, position...that sort of thing. Stavrolets..." Lofton spoke to the technician inside the chamber, "—keep asking her questions about her dreams."

Stavrolets glared up at the monitor. "I'll try but I'm running out of things to say—" He turned back to Rene, who had resumed fiddling with her tablet.

Lofton put forth a theory. "When he asks her to recount a dream, talk about all the details...it makes these nodes in her processor glow. And Bedard here gets a handful of quantum states off the Grabber. Somehow, these 'dreams' your daughter's having are coming from recordings, maybe memories, some kind of record of the _Michelangelo_ encounter with _Devil's Eye_."

Tallant was mesmerized. "We've always thought Rene had a direct link back to Config Zero. All the probes suggested that. Wouldn't your theory imply that Config Zero's receiving this imagery...and Rene's getting it from Config Zero?"

"Possibly. But who or what is sending it to Config Zero?"

Tallant said, "It has to be the _Devil's Eye_ swarm. Somehow they're in communication....quantum state communication...."

"I'm losing it--" Bedard said. "Looks like these nodes are going dark—"

The screen imaged began breaking up, streaked with slashes and swirls of color, then settled into a featureless grainy void, like a painter's canvas seen in close-up.

"What happened?" Lofton asked.

Bedard pointed to the readouts on his console. "These nodes which were glowing so brightly are going dark. Maybe going inactive."

Lofton peered inside the containment chamber. "Stavrolets, I told you to—"

"Colonel. More thermals, more spikes...this heading...only a few hundred microns."

Lofton sucked in his breath. "Head that way. Keep the Grabber active—"

Tallant wondered if they were actually chasing a stream of thought inside Rene's processor.

The thermal target proved to be another patch of columnar nodes glowing brightly in an otherwise darkened forest.

"Something's coming through the buffer," Bedard said. "I'll try to up the gain—"

Now the screen image jumped from the grainy pattern to another view...a long range view of a distant horizon. A field of some type, thick with undulating, waving plants. It was an open, level plain, like a vast field of cornstalks feathered back and forth by a gentle breeze.

Then came more imagery...it never made any sense...or more likely, according to what the debriefings would say later, the Grabber couldn't make any sense of the flood of entanglement waves that washed through the coupler.

The plain reminded Tallant of Dakota prairie country, only the plain was covered with tall, undulating plants. The plants were not plants at all, she soon realized. The ground writhed with life, swarms upon swarms of bots seething and swelling and contracting, pulsing and throbbing to some unseen rhythm. The imagery jerked and shifted and this time, the horizon was curved and she was in space orbiting a planet. A planet of bots, teeming with nanoscale life.

The planet of the Old Ones.

She _had_ been here before.

"What the hell is this place?" Lofton said. "Looks like something from a magazine—"

"Getting something else on the Grabber," Bedard mentioned. "It's a real jumble...I'm washing it through some filters, trying to clean it up."

The screen flashed and a kaleidoscope of swirling colors and patterns strobed across the imager. Bedard swore and continued finagling with the feed from R-9.

"Ah...now the signal's starting to behave...had to interleave separate channels...the state grabber was offline—"

The screen image slowly settled down into another view of the starfield they had seen before. This time the distant light was closer...it was still moving.

"Can you get better resolution?" Lofton asked. "That's some kind of structure."

"I can try," Bedard said.

After more finagling, the screen went through several burps and blasts of color, then the starfield came back. This time, there was no mistaking the object at the center. It was a ship.

"I think that looks like _Michelangelo_ ...seen through different eyes," Lofton said.

Tallant marveled at the sight. "Very different eyes. And your state grabber's pulling this from Rene's processor?"

"From some kind of protected memory we never knew existed. Somehow, some way," Lofton explained, "your daughter's receiving imagery from the edge of the Solar System...likely from _Devil's Eye_. It's probably coming back to Config Zero and your daughter is somehow still plugged in to that source."

Dana Tallant swallowed hard as the truth began to sink in. "What you're saying then, Colonel, is that Rene's like a conduit...a channel for intel from this _Devil's Eye_ ...from Config Zero. And that Config Zero's got comms we never knew about."

"Essentially, that's what it—" Lofton's wristpad chimed. An incoming message. "Excuse me..." he pressed a button and Tallant could see a face on his wristpad. It was Johnny Winger. Lofton turned away from the console and conferred for a moment. Then he turned back. "It's CINCQUANT....General Winger. He wants to speak with you...shall I send it over?"

Tallant activated her own wristpad. "Send it." Moments later, Winger's face materialized on the tiny screen.

For the next few minutes, Tallant related what Lofton and Stavrolets and Bedard had been finding with Rene. At the end, she was almost in tears.

"Wings...it just isn't fair...she's just a child...she's _our_ child. To make her go through this, it's—"

"I know, Dana. I feel the same way. But we have to face the facts. Rene's got a role to play here, whether she's our daughter or not." Winger briefly went through what he had experienced years before, in the _Golden Horde_ case, when he'd been caught in some kind of sim of the Old Ones history. "At least, that's what I think it was. A story or a narrative of how they came to be. This happened right after I got sucked into that vortex, right into the Keeper at Europa...it's in my reports."

"I've studied your reports," Lofton said. "My theory is that what Rene's experiencing is something similar. R-9 has managed to penetrate some kind of protected memory. I think she's still in contact, maybe unwittingly, but in contact with Config Zero. There's a comm link we didn't know about here. And I think both Config Zero and through it, Rene, are in comm with the Old Ones, with the Central Entity. The Mother Swarm...whatever the hell you want to call it. It's a theory but it fits the facts."

Dr. Falkland was forced to agree. "Clearly there are configs and elements here that my memory field didn't affect."

Lofton sniffed. "Doc, nobody's blaming you for this. In fact, it's a tactical advantage for us...we've got intel on what the swarms are doing now...we know how they look at us, what they sense and how they react. We can use that."

"Agreed," said Winger. Then he softened a bit. "Dana—trust me...we'll get through this—somehow."

But Dana Tallant could only sit down heavily in a nearby chair, her hands at her mouth. She kept shaking her head, willing the whole thing to go away. It was a nightmare. _This can't be happening...it just can't-_ -

Her daughter... _their_ daughter was channeling Config Zero and the Old Ones. And she and Wings had been living with this situation for years, completely unaware.

For the second time in the past ten years, she and Wings were about to lose Rene, lose her to something much greater than any of them. All they had now was a memory of what Rene had once been. A pattern. A configuration.

She didn't know if that would ever be enough to soothe the hurt.

Mount Kipwezi, Kenya

December 28, 2110

Config Zero had completed its analysis of newsvids, completed its analysis of all uploaded geophysical reports, seismographic tests and stratigraphic assays. The Master Swarm ran correlation routines, cross-checked the results with other statistical modules and concluded that another round of tectonic plate operations would soon be needed.

The Humans were steadily improving in their ability to detect and defend against swarm operations below ground. Module 2, the Re-configuration module, was four hundred and twenty two cycles behind target schedule. Additional resources would have to be made available, additional swarm mass dedicated and new configurations developed to optimize disassembly operations. Newsvid content analysis indicated that plate disassembly generated highly destructive P and S-wave tremors, causing great damage to Human infrastructure. However, such damage was only an ancillary result of the plate re-configuration effort.

Module 2 was clear: Once the purge of single-configuration life forms was finished, the next step would be to re-engineer the Earth's surface to be more compatible with swarm-based life...the oceans were to be eliminated and all the Earth's surface 'locked' into a geologically stable state, providing maximum surface area for swarm activity and growth. Also, the stable point temperature of the Earth was to be raised...an enforced climatic change similar to what Humans were doing now on the Earth, unwittingly helping the Prime Key along. This would provide a consistent environment conducive to swarm growth and activity. The Earth would become, in effect, an incubator or giant Petri dish, to incubate this new kind of life.

Config Zero created a new command sequence. Command 6773665 was loaded for transmission, quantum coupler links activated and the command was sent via channels to all swarm masters. Timers were initialized and counters started.

Swarm penetration and Phase II tectonic plate re-configuration began shortly afterward.

Config Zero also continued to receive and analyze signals intercepts from the Humans. After initiating Command 6773665, one scan caused an unanticipated alarm fault to be generated. Parsing the intercepted signals, Config Zero conducted further analysis and concluded that some kind of operation was being planned against Subunit 'Symborg.'

Countermeasures would be needed. Config Zero initiated Branch 5 fault recovery. The result of the fault recovery would be to develop a special group of 'angelized' pseudo-Human swarm entities, in effect an artificial nanotrooper group. Trooper angels would then be inserted into Table Top and into the special ops unit whose mission was to corrupt the Symborg master bot.

Feedstock was located and configs downloaded. Angelized trooper entities were assembled at all target coordinates and activated.

Branch 5 infiltration began shortly afterward.
CHAPTER 20

Aboard Geoplane _Prairie Dog_ (GP-10)

Sixty Two Kilometers Off the California Coast

January 15, 2111

2230 hours (UT)

An alarm sounded from the DPS console at the rear of the command deck. Corporal Hector Cruz was the Defense and Protective Systems tech (DPS1). He swallowed hard.

"Acoustic flag, Captain...some kind of swarm, for sure. Not sure whose bots I'm seeing..." his fingers flew over the board. "...but it's a large mass, headed this way, bearing two nine two...I make the range at just under four thousand meters."

Captain Annamaria Oliveira checked her own board. "What are we looking at, Linda? Profiler shows quartz, some shales, inclusion zones. Any serious seismics?"

The ship's geotech, Sergeant Linda Haekon, massaged a keypad on her console, studying the waterfall display that showed rock layers surrounding _Dog_. "Pretty quiet right now, ma'am. Transform faults, the usual thermoclines dead ahead, nothing major at the moment. The ground's stable around here...for once."

Oliveira stroked her chin. "Then this may be our baby. DSO, steer right and stay on two zero five degrees. Maintain depth. Let's get everything cocked, Hector."

"Steering two zero five degrees...maintaining depth—"

Cruz brought the HERF batteries online. "Charging now, Captain. Coilguns and mags now up to full charge as well. HERF coming online."

"Very well."

The crew of _Prairie Dog_ had been cruising on routine patrol for two days, deployed out of BPS Station 1, Santa Maria Island, off the California coast, when a signal came in from Dispatch. Some kind of Bioshield alert. The crew had scrambled and set out west, slipping beneath the ocean waves, heading for the Pacific seabed. They had coordinates for a target detected at a depth of ten kilometers below the seabed, a hundred kilometers from the coast, not far from the plate boundary itself, the grinding line of collision between the North American and Pacific plates.

It looked like Config Zero was at it again. According to Dispatch, the target displayed normal signal patterns for a subterranean swarm, chewing away at the plate boundaries, trying to fracture rock and create earthquakes and tremors.

_Trying to pulverize towns and cities along the coast,_ Oliveira swore under her breath. She pushed a mental image of her mother's house collapsing in ruins out of her mind. It had already happened before, four years ago in the Bay area. _But not today, assholes. This time, Boundary Patrol's gonna smash you creeps for good._

"How far to target, Will?"

The Sensors and Surveillance Tech (SST1) Corporal Will Bodle checked his display. "Under three thousand meters. Recommend course change to two zero eight...that should put us right at their mass centroid."

"Execute course change to two zero eight," Oliveira commanded.

Haekon scanned her panel. "Reading high thermals...I'm applying acoustic filtering...

picking up some seismic noise out there now...probably plate shifting. Looks like it's a bot swarm all right..."

_Time for ANAD again_ , Oliveira thought. Combat at a thousand meters underground was definitely not for the slow-witted. "DPS, listen up. I need configs for solid-phase, lattice transit...concealment protocols. We're in a lot of young rock here, basaltic magma from what the profiler shows. Quartz and feldspar. I want ANAD to look like silicons, oxygens, molecules that blend in with the background."

Cruz had a directory of configs already open. "Config eighty one should do the trick, Captain. Silicon dioxide...aluminum trioxide...some iron thrown in. I can make ANAD look just like the seabed."

"Do it. And get ANAD ready to deploy. DSO, bring us to a position five hundred meters from the swarm centroid. SS1, any sign we're being tracked? Any changes?"

Bodle studied the returns on his board. "Swarm aspect changes...he may be replicating...I'm seeing spikes in thermals, EMs...mass and density on the rise, Skipper."

Oliveira knew they couldn't wait. One thing geoplane ops had proven in recent weeks was that you struck first and you struck hard. You couldn't give Config Zero swarms a chance to loosen rock strata, set off tremors or earthquakes. A thousand meters underground, if you hesitated, you were crushed.

"Prime ejectors A and B," Oliveira commanded. ANAD masters would be launched from _Prairie Dog's_ forward tubes. "Set config eighty one."

"Ejectors primed," reported Cruz.

"Launch ANAD."

There was no audible _swoosh_ or lurch in the ship's position or anything quite so dramatic. But Cruz reported that ANADs were away.

"Masters reporting all systems normal...effectors set for solid-phase transit. Bond disrupters charged and ready."

"Target less than a thousand meters," came Bodle.

That's when the real lurch slammed _Prairie Dog_. A jarring shudder vibrated throughout _Dog's_ hull and there was a distinct feeling they were sliding, sliding down and to the left. Outside, rock plates wrenched and crumpled and _Dog_ was pressed down, down, down, her hull plates screeching in protest.

"Keep the borer online!" Oliveira yelled. "Keep the treads moving....we can't get stuck down here..."

_Prairie Dog_ righted herself as the tremor died off. "P waves approaching," said the GET1, Linda Haekon. "Source dead ahead, less than five hundred meters...must have been the target... _hold on_ \--!"

A massive shock wave slammed _Dog_ and the geoplane lurched sideways, then shimmied like a wet dog as her borer and treads finally stabilized her. More waves followed, pounding the geoplane like a teacup in ocean surf.

Bodle saw the target thermals rapidly rising on his scope. "Hell of a lot of seismics, Skipper, but I think the target's—"

That's when the first hull breach hit them.

Disrud, the DSO, saw it first. "Breach in the pressure hull, Skipper. Looks like somewhere on D deck...or further aft."

Oliveira groaned inwardly. What else could happen? "I see it...cabin air pressure fluctuating...we'd better activate emergency flasks, just in case."

Disrud toggled a few switches and immediately, high pressure air began flooding all compartments.

"Can you localize the breach?"

Disrud checked ship's layout on his board. "Looks like somewhere on D deck, Skipper, judging from the pressure change. Forward of E bulkhead and to the starboard side."

D deck was Stores and Supplies for _Prairie Dog_ 's crew.

"Release damage control bots," Oliveira told him. "Get a patch over that breach pronto."

Disrud's fingers flew over his controls. In seconds, a small damage control swarm of bots had been released and loaded with coordinates. "Bots released."

Oliveira was more concerned about the tactical situation. Things were starting to pile up... _situation normal_ _for geoplane ops_ , she figured. "SS1, time to engage target. I don't want those bugs to make any more tremors for us..."

Sergeant Bodle did some quick figuring. "At current speed, less than two minutes."

Cruz called out ANAD status. "Still in config eighty one...beginning max reps now."

Several hundred meters ahead, the ANAD master was sliding through dense shale rock on half propulsor, with effectors folded but bond disrupters fully charged. At Cruz' command, the master began full replication, slamming atoms to build structure as fast as possible, filling out the assault swarm to engage the Config Zero enemy at the right moment.

"Very well," Oliveira noted.

_Dog_ had already deployed her HERF and mag weapons, but using them in close proximity to ANAD ran the risk of cannibalizing your own swarms. Better to wait for the first engagement, study the results and then make adjustments. Oliveira had worked with combat swarms for years; she'd once served under Colonel John Winger himself on a task force in Africa, a special op along the sanctuary zone boundary. But combat swarms underground, below millions of tons of rock and crustal plate...that was a different animal. Detection was the problem in geoplane ops. With all the seismic noise and plates grinding and shifting about, Oliveira figured it was a miracle if anybody could detect anything. And since detection was so iffy, you had to be alert all the time. Nasties could pop out of a seam or a fissure at any time with almost no warning. Worse, they could approach nearby but beyond detection range and set off a few tremors by loosening rock strata. You could be crushed into oblivion and never knew what hit you.

The truth was that Boundary Patrol was making up tactics as it went along. Nobody had any great ideas and the only thing that mattered was keeping Config Zero from setting off enough earthquakes and tremors to destroy cities and whole nations.

"ANAD seems to be engaging," Bodle announced. "EM spikes, high thermals. I've got acoustics from effector activity...ANAD reports bond disrupters firing all across the line of engagement."

Oliveira stared ahead, through the bulkhead and the hull, imagining what must be happening a few hundred meters ahead of them. Pressed between a million tons of rock, two massive swarms of nanobotic mechs had collided. Furious combat was certain now, as bots grappled and lit off their bond disrupters, tried to tear effectors off, snap bonds and bollix up each other's formation.

As if to announce the fact that the battle had been joined, a series of tremors suddenly slammed _Prairie Dog_ and rocked the ship sideways, vibrations shuddering throughout the length of her hull. All around them, rock plates and strata had been loosened just enough to let fissures and stress joints slip. _Dog_ tried to stay with her brood, but all aboard her could feel the ship lurching and sliding, while aft bulkheads groaned and screeched under the pressure.

"All stop, _all stop_!" Oliveira announced. "What's happening out there, Will? Give me some eyes."

Bodle scanned his instruments. "It's another tremor, Skipper—"

Linda Haekon agreed. "P waves coming...big P waves...this one's gonna hurt—"

The sliding and screeching continued as _Dog_ was thrashed by a series of seismic waves, pressure pulses pushing through the rock. A massive shield had been loosened by the nanobotic collision ahead of them, and the geoplane was trapped between grinding, shearing plates.

A vicious twisting wave slammed the ship and the sound of tortured metal reverberated through the hull.

The DSO, Sergeant Disrud, was nearly knocked from his seat. "Treads offline, Skipper! I'm losing control of her...now borer collapsing...we've got multiple hull breaches...massive hull—"

Oliveira decided they couldn't wait any longer. "Okay, that's it, troops. Abandon ship—" she opened the ship's 1MC and gave the word. " _Abandon ship_ ... _abandon ship_ ...we're in a barrel here...grab your suits and make way toward the lockout...Escape Protocol One...Cruz, we got any ANAD systems left?"

Cruz was already buttoning up his hypersuit. "Negative, Captain. Assault swarm's offline. Just the escape pods and they're diffusing now...must have been a containment breach."

"Get 'em fired up...and let's get the hell out of here! _Dog's_ not going to last much longer—"

Oliveira helped shepherd the rest of the command deck crew into the main gangway and they headed aft to G deck...if there still _was_ a G deck. The geoplane shimmied and shook and lurched and rocked with repeated seismic waves bashing her from all sides. Heading down the gangway, Oliveira felt like a pinball, slamming from one side of the tube to another.

The lockout was on G deck in _Prairie Dog's_ tail pod. Escape Protocol One meant using dedicated ANAD botswarms to form up escape pods for all crew members. The bots would be released from containment, pre-loaded with the right configs, and form up shields around each crew member. Once they had left the ship, the pods would burrow and bore their way toward the surface...how long that took depended on their depth and the nature of the rock layers. Oliveira knew that _Dog_ had slipped beneath some of the hardest shales this side of the Pacific, several thousand meters worth.

_This could take days_ , she figured, as she reached G deck, found her own pod bag and opened the containment valve, letting the bots flow out and around her. She tucked her arms like she'd learned in Escape training and soon enough the shield was thick enough to feel. Protocol One then said: get to the lockout and exit the ship.

The last step before opening the outer lockout door was to activate the pod borer.

Oliveira checked around her on the deck and mentally counted off the crew: Disrud, Hope, Haekon, Bodle, Cruz. They were all there.

"Everybody buttoned up?"

A chorus of _ayes_ and _yes ma'ams_ sounded through her earpiece.

"Start your borers. Cycle the hatch—"

Immediately, the lockout chamber was filled with a galaxy of glowing spheres surrounding each podsuit. One by one, ANAD borers came online.

One last lurch made cycling the outer lockout door a challenge, but Cruz and Bodle managed to wrestle the hatch open. Rubble and dust exploded into the chamber, but the borers would make quick work of that.

Haekon was first out the hatch, her podsuit now lost in the blue-white glow of its spherical borer head. In seconds, she was gone, dissolved into the dense rock like a shadow disappearing into a wall.

One after another, the crew of _Prairie Dog_ lit off their suit borers and disappeared into the rock that was crushing and crumpling the cabin of the geoplane.

Oliveira was last. She took a quick look around at the smashed lockout and the staved-in bulkheads of G deck, even now bending and twisting under the force of the rock plates pressing against them. _Dog_ shifted once again and the hatch began to close.

_She was a good ship_ , Oliveira thought. _We just couldn't get ANAD deployed in time_.

Oliveira lit off her suit borer and dove through the hatch, burrowing into the sheer face of a rock wall, as if she were a prairie dog herself. In seconds, she was enveloped in a cocoon of bots, shielding her from the tremendous pressures and heat as they bored a narrow tunnel up and away from the doomed ship. Last check, they were several thousand meters below the surface of the seabed. The ride up would likely take hours, maybe a day or more, if all went well.

_Just friggin' great. Like spending a day in a coffin_.

She used her tongue controls to open a quantum coupler channel. The crew of _Prairie Dog_ would need help once they reached the surface. Oliveira knew geoplane _Mole Rat_ was still at the BPS 1 station. It galled her to have to call for help, but it was the right thing to do, assuming everybody made it to the surface okay. Escape protocol training was every trooper's least favorite lesson. You won't need it, the instructors had said, until you need it. Then you really need it.

She was glad now the crew had just recently re-qual'ed in Escape procedures back at the station.

"Any station, any station, this is geoplane _Prairie Dog_ , transmitting blind...transmitting in the clear...we have suffered catastrophic damage after engaging Config Zero swarms, serious structural casualty...we're abandoning ship and attempting to make our way to the surface...we will need rescue at coordinates—" she tongued another control stud, so the coupler would broadcast her position—"...repeating...this is Captain Oliveira, geoplane _Prairie Dog_ , transmitting blind to any station...mayday....mayday...."

Now enveloped in a sweltering, suffocating coffin of escape bots, bumping and bruising her way upward toward what she hoped was the surface, Annamaria Oliveira fought back the rising coppery taste of fear in her throat. She hummed tunes to herself. She prayed often, out loud. She passed into a dreamlike haze, then woke with a start, drenched in sweat and shivering.

All the while, the escape pod made of tightly meshed nanobots ground its way inexorably forward, upward, toward....somewhere...toward something.

_This is a quick trip to a slow death_ , she told herself. She wanted her training to kick in. She wanted to hear her instructor's voice... _trust your gear...believe in your equipment...believe in the procedures and follow them to the letter....that's what'll save you._

She wanted to believe that.

What she couldn't know was that she would eventually be the only survivor of the crew of _Prairie Dog._

The after action reports and the debriefing at BPS seemed like a dream to Annamaria Oliveira. The details were sobering enough: geoplane _Prairie Dog_ lost in action, two hundred kilometers southwest of the BPS station at Santa Maria Island, at a depth estimated to be below two thousand meters. All of the crew save Oliveira had managed to get out in their escape pods. But only Oliveira had made it all the way to the surface. Rescue forces had flooded into the area but no sign of the crew had ever been detected...no emergency beacons, no stray coupler signals, no unusual nanobotic debris or atom fluff residuals. Five of the six crew members had disappeared in the escape.

That made Oliveira feel...well, how could you describe it? Something between guilty for having survived, a few parts relief, mixed in with a cocktail of anger, disbelief, and a gnawing desire to do something, do _anything,_ to make her crew magically appear, to make them pop out of the ground like the real prairie dogs that were part of their ship's logo.

You could talk all around the assault and their tactics but you couldn't sugarcoat the results. She'd lost her command and she'd lost her ship.

She figured Boundary Patrol wouldn't take too kindly to that.

It was CINCQUANT's voice that brought her back to the here and now. "Captain, I'll ask the question again: do we need new tactics? New weapons? What's your take on this?"

The vid briefing spanned several continents. CINCQUANT was at Table Top. Oliveira was back at Santa Maria Island, the Boundary Patrol Station BPS1, from which _Prairie Dog_ had been launched. A third man linked in from UNIFORCE Paris...UNSAC Deputy Faisal Erdogan.

"Captain--?"

Oliveira didn't really have a good answer. "Sir, the swarms were able to create tremors, loosen rock, before we could engage. We had them on scope, we were closing, but somehow—" she shook her head, still sick over losing her ship and crew, "—somehow, we just weren't able to stop them...the swarms had a tactical advantage—"

Winger was sympathetic. He'd seen the reports. There wasn't much _Prairie Dog_ could have done differently. _If it had been me, none of us might have survived_. Still—

"It's clear to me that our geoplanes need to be hardened. And maybe our tactics re-thought. Config Zero's got swarms all over the world, positioned to affect tectonic plate boundaries."

Erdogan agreed. "We haven't seen so many tremors, quakes and shocks in centuries. It's like the whole Earth is being re-made. We've got to find a way to stop these..."

"You're right, sir," Winger told him. "It's an unprecedented violation of Containment laws and the Sanctuary treaties. Config Zero is deliberately targeting seams and fissures and stress lines along these plates...it's a planned assault on our infrastructure. Tokyo, Jakarta, Athens, Anchorage...I've seen the newsvids day after day. Thousands panicked. Thousands fleeing. Chaos in the streets, the airports, the rails—"

"General, you mentioned a new device...something Farside developed. Is this something that could help?"

Winger tapped a few keys and brought up an image of the device. It was quickly ported to everyone's viewer. "They're calling it a quantum disentangler. Don't ask me how it works. Neeley, the egghead that runs Farside Labs, tried explaining. He lost me after two sentences."

Erdogan studied the diagram on his own screen. "I read the reports...some kind of jammer, I understand."

Winger said, "When it's located properly, it bollixes up local quantum-encrypted signals, makes them more easily detectable and defeatable. Neeley showed me some test results the Lab ran at the Copernicus test range. Used correctly, it's possible the quantum signal links between Config Zero and its swarms can be disrupted, jammed, or defeated. The swarms would lose their link back to home base and, so the theory goes, be unable to change config so quickly. In the case of _Prairie Dog_ and our geoplane ops, we could jam Config Zero and then engage the swarms before they could set off tremors. Then, our Boundary Patrol troops could more easily isolate, surround and destroy the swarms piecemeal."

Oliveira was encouraged by the news. "Sir, if we'd had a device like that, _Dog_ would still be on the hunt. This might just give us enough of an edge to stop these swarms from triggering so many tremors and quakes."

"I'll pass this along to UNSAC right away," Erdogan said. "Send me all the test reports and any proposed changes in tactics. If this gizmo works as advertised, we need a hundred more just like it. UNSAC can put a UNIFORCE Priority label on it. That'll get the vendors cracking...an emergency production run and then get the devices out to all Boundary Patrol stations. This is just what we need."

CINCQUANT agreed, pleasantly surprised that a bureaucrat like the UNSAC Deputy could move so fast. _Sting an elephant enough times and it'll eventually move its ass_. "I'll work with Oliveira here and Colonel Karst to develop new tactics. Sir, I'd like to recall all geoplanes and crews for a few days to outfit the ships and run some tactical sims with the new device."

"Agreed. I'll let UNSAC know. Erdogan, _out_." With that, the Deputy's mole face winked off the screen window. Only Oliveira remained, framed in her own small screen window. Her face was lined, heavy with grief.

"Sir, I feel pretty bad about—"

Winger interrupted. "Captain, that's enough of that. You fought a battle and the Bugs got the better of you. Get over it. Yeah, it sucks losing good people. Don't ever get over that. But war makes casualties. If you really want to do right by your crew, work with me on tactics. Learn from this. Config Zero's not invincible. He's got weaknesses...we just have to find them. And exploit them." An image of Rene Winger came to mind, lying in her cocoon bed, dreaming dreams of vast swarms maneuvering in space. His own daughter, now a UNIFORCE agent, channeling the Old Ones. "We've got more weapons in this fight than you know about. But we've got to be smart. That old nanowarrior Sun Tzu once said something like this: ' _that general is skillful in attack whose opponent does not know what to defend...'"_

Oliveira looked confused. "Begging the General's pardon, but what the hell does that mean?"

Winger sniffed. "Something like hit 'em where they least expect it. Come on, Captain, get your fanny up here to Table Top. I've got some scenarios I want to run by you."

Solnet/Omnivision Video Post

@evelyn.ndinka.solnetworldview

January 18, 2111

2200 hours U.T.

SOLNET Special Report:

Assimilation: The Universal Church?

Last November, Symborg launched a world tour for the Sons of Assimilation, as the new church now styles itself. The original Church of Assimilation in the Kibera slums of Nairobi has become a shrine for all who are sympathetic to the Assimilationist view (transhumans, singularitarians, etc). Thousands make the pilgrimage every day, from all over the world, to Nairobi's number one tourist attraction. Mostly, they come to see and touch Symborg himself, who because he is an angel, can be in many places at once. The tourist crowds are not disappointed.

They come to listen to him in rapture and to be assimilated (which means to be deconstructed as living human beings and re-organized as swarm-compatible formations of nanobotic elements). This reporter, for one, finds such behavior both bizarre and distasteful. It's assisted suicide by other names. But millions do believe and the authorities don't seem to know what to do about it.

Efforts continue, both in official circles and otherwise, to discredit and destroy Symborg. All such efforts have failed so far and the popularity and influence of this so-called robotic Messiah has only grown more intense and widespread. Because he is an angel, Symborg can be found on every continent and in most major cities, as well as all popular media. Press coverage is intense, the crowds and the frenzy and fervor is insane. Symborg is something like a combination of rock star and evangelist, with elements of magician and healer thrown in.

He seems to become more powerful and influential with each passing day.

Some psychologists and sociologists have written that the coming of Symborg is a sort of mass hysteria, combined with a frenzied, almost hysterical worship of the Old Ones. Many cultures down through the ages have had myths about a Savior...someone who comes to save the people from themselves. In the past, saviors and messiahs have come from Heaven, appointed by God to turn people from their destructive ways and encourage repentance.

_One psychologist (_ see Richard Espiritu, the World Journal of Psychological Phenomena, March 2099, pp81-89 _) notes that Symborg seems different. Recent finds of fossilized micro robotic remains among ancient Homo Erectus bones at the Engebbe dig site have swept the world of archaeology and anthropology like a hurricane. If these finds can be corroborated, then the conclusion that Symborg may be an evolved descendant of ancient extraterrestrials seeding the early Earth becomes harder to refute._

This makes his status as a Messiah all the more problematical. If evidence of such descent becomes overwhelming, according to Dr. Espiritu, Symborg acquires a level of authority and prophecy and wisdom that no Messiah in history could ever claim. To this point, Symborg has done nothing to discount such rumors but neither has he accepted the mantle of "Father of Humanity." Still, the rumors, the commentary, blog posts and talk swirl around this idea like bees around a swollen flower.

Finally, the relationship (if any) of Symborg to Config Zero must be explained. Sources within UNIFORCE and other security and defense organizations have repeatedly claimed that Symborg is nothing but an offshoot of Config Zero, an element of the same formation. Config Zero is considered by many to be a mortal enemy of Mankind. Others claim Config Zero is nothing short of an angel of the Lord, substituting the Old Ones for the Creator. Of course, the existence of the 'Old Ones' has never been definitively proven, but there is compelling evidence that something is "Out There.'

So who or what is Config Zero? Who or what is Symborg in reality? Are they part of the same phenomena? It's a matter of documented fact that human beings created ANAD in the 2060s. If Symborg is an evolved descendant of that original autonomous nanoscale assembler/disassembler, then is a very real sense, Man created Symborg.

But if ANAD's programming came in part from something dug out of the ground by Dr. Irwin Frost at Engebbe, and that something came from extraterrestrials that today we call the Old Ones, then who really created who?

_There's a logical time bomb ticking away at the heart of our relationship with ANAD technology, a technology that has become so much a part of our lives today, at the dawn of the 22_ nd _Century._

Man created ANAD. And now it appears increasingly likely that ancestors of ANAD created Man.

Is the arrival of Symborg in our midst nothing more than the equivalent of an infant child discovering the infinite pleasures of looking in a mirror?

**SOLNET Special Report** Ends

U.N. Quantum Corps Base

Table Top Mountain,

Idaho, USA

January 19, 2111

It was Luis Principal, quantum engineer with 1st ANAD Battalion at Table Top, who had the idea first.

For weeks, engineers and technicians had been studying the captured remnant bots collected from Symborg with a fierce determination to find something... _anything_ ...they could use to interfere with the swarm's config engine, something they could use to discredit the robotic Messiah and slow the spread of Assimilationism. Farside Labs had concocted something they were calling a _disentangler_ , but the device was still unproven in tactical situations and there were only a few experimental setups. If it worked, the disentangler might screw up Symborg's link with Config Zero. But Symborg himself would remain.

And besides, whoever said the geniuses at Farside had a monopoly on good ideas.

"Somehow, we need some kind of Trojan horse," Principal theorized one afternoon at the commissary adjacent to Containment, slurping a coffee with a few colleagues. "Our own immune system has the answer, if we just ask the right question. Think about it: how does an antigen work? It's a molecule that induces a response from the immune system. But there are viruses, like HIV, that work against this...they block the response by fooling or infecting the immune system. They interfere with antigens. We can do the same thing with Symborg."

"Luis—" said Khalid Shaheen, an engineer with the Containment lab, "you've had too much of that coffee...it's fried what's left of your brain."

"No really, I've been thinking...come with me to the Lab...I'll show you what I've been working on."

Principal showed Shaheen and several others the basics of a new device he'd spent the afternoon cobbling together, something he called a fold-blocker.

"I took a basic histo-compatibility antigen design and just sort of tweaked it. Look here—" he showed the gathering a design on his tablet screen. "Add these groups here, move these, get rid of these—" Principal highlighted the steps he had taken. "Pretty soon, you've got something that can block the replication cycle of any nanobotic device...it can't fold along these cleavage lines."

Principal watched as the techs took turns re-designing his design, but in the end nobody could find anything wrong with it, any reason why it wouldn't work.

"All we have to do is insert this device into the master assembler of any swarm and, once it's attached here, the bugger can't replicate anymore. Presto, end of swarm."

"It's just like a Trojan horse," somebody observed.

Over the next day and a half, the techs of 1st ANAD Battalion took turns trying to find ways to get around Principal's Trojan horse, but nobody could. They practiced with the device in sims and wargames until everyone was satisfied it was tactically do-able, that they had a viable technique and a viable device to run a field op with.

Then Principal took the idea to CINCQUANT himself.

Johnny Winger listened and watched the sims and animations, studied the designs and the game results, and finally asked one question.

"How soon can you make this gizmo field-ready?"

The next few days saw Table Top buzzing with activity. A new mission had to be tasked and a new detachment formed to take the fold-blocker and make the insertion. The question was: where exactly was the real Symborg master? Winger gave that question to Q2, the intelligence shop at the base.

"Most appearances by Symborg are made with copies of the bot master," Winger told Major Langley, the Q2 chief one afternoon in his office. Beyond Winger's head, the office windows framed a snow-capped Buffalo range several miles beyond the mesa that was Table Top. "Your job, Major, is to find me the location of the master assembler and keep it under surveillance long enough for my detachment to approach and make the insert. We'll have one shot at this and it's got to work."

"We've got agents, drones and spybots all over the place, General," Langley told him. "Anywhere Assimilationists gather, we've got eyes and ears. Some places, my guys look like flies. Other places, my guys look like dust motes, even rain drops. As soon as we can pin down the precise signature of the master, its EM, acoustic, and thermal signature, we'll have him cornered. Give me two days, sir and I can tell you when Symborg farts and burps."

"Just his location will do, Major."

Winger dismissed the Q2 chief and sent word for another officer to be shown in. Presently, a slender, wiry, nearly balding O-2 showed up at Winger's door.

His name was Lieutenant Justin Cannon and he was a platoon commander in 1st ANAD. Cannon came in and saluted, standing rigidly at attention.

Winger got up and came around to sit on the corner of his desk. "At ease, Lieutenant. I've got a little job I'd like you to do for us."
CHAPTER 21

Sentinel Base Station

Sedna

January 20, 2111 (U.T.)

2000 hours

Sammy Ng and Julie Grant stayed aboard _Icarus_ , trying to repair what they could and get the base station module up and operating.

Sub-element B-1 set off to re-join the master swarm that was Commander Element B. " _You're with me, for backup and fire support,"_ Element B told Corporal Demetrious. " _I still want to recon those red hillocks and see if any swarms remain. We should be thorough in sanitizing the neighborhood. I don't want anything interfering with the base station."_

Demetrious indicated the MOBnet that still contained Stoltz. "What about him? We can't just leave him out here, Commander."

Element B considered that. It was true that the particle flux was intense at Sedna's surface. " _Roll him against the side of Icarus. We won't be gone that long."_ With that, the Element B swarm brightened momentarily, as the sub-element merged, then began drifting off across the dusty slopes to the north of _Icarus_ , heading for a small group of reddish mounds, mounds that might still be residual enemy bots.

Demetrious kicked and shoved at the MOBnet ball. A muffled voice issued from inside.

" _Hey watch it, bozo...that hurts. Why don't you just drop kick me like a football...better yet, let me loose, you moron."_

Corporal Demetrious, when interviewed days later about why he had disobeyed a direct order from a superior officer, could only say he thought Stoltz might be suffocating...he had pity on the man...there _was_ a radiation hazard...nobody should have to be scrunched up like that for so long...there were any number of reasons why he used his MOBnet key to start unzipping the mesh that seemed to be strangling Stoltz.

By the time the MOBnet had stopped rolling against _Icarus'_ left rear wheel, the head and shoulders of Systems Tech Eddie Stoltz had already popped out of the opening and the two of them were busily de-meshing the rest of the net and peeling the damn thing off.

Stoltz took a deep breath and staggered to his feet, shaking his hypersuited head like a wet dog. Sheets of dust and de-meshed bots sloughed off and fell in slow motion to the dirt.

"Jeez, thanks, man...I couldn't breathe in that bag...where the hell is everybody?"

Demetrious indicated _Igloo._ "Sammy and Julie are in there, bringing everything online. The Commander's on recon...he still thinks those red hills need a look-see."

"Oh, yeah—" Stoltz stepped out to see the Element B swarm now drifting its way up the nearer slope. "Not for long, the asshole—" Stoltz lunged for Demetrious' HERF rifle and snatched it away.

"Hey...hey, _what the_ \--!"

Stoltz then kangaroo-hopped a few meters to clear _Igloo's_ landing leg and leveled aim at the twinkling, sparkling fog.

"Eddie, man, what the hell are you doing?" Demetrious went after the Systems Tech but before he could make it, Stoltz had already fired.

A hot wave of rf blew across the slopes and the swarm that was Element B was scattered, frying bots all over the place. Instantly, the faint swarm was gone, replaced by a gale of dust and dirt, swelling outward like a slow-motion bomb burst in Sedna's low gravity.

"Take that, you friggin' cloud of bugs!" Stoltz pumped round after round of HERF into the swarm, until Demetrious dove and knocked the tech to the ground. The carbine went cartwheeling into the distance.

"Sammy—Julie—get out here--!"

For a moment, Demetrious and Stoltz wrestled, as much as you could wrestle while clad in a garbage can like the hypersuit, crawling and scuffing their way toward the still-bouncing carbine.

"Get off me, you big ape!" Stoltz kicked and clawed at Demetrious, as they both lunged for the weapon. Stoltz got a gloved hand on the carbine stock and swung it around into Demetrious helmeted face.

At the same time, Sammy Ng had heard the commotion over the crewnet and slipped out of _Igloo's_ airlock, poking his head out to see what was happening. Right away, he saw Demetrious and Stoltz grappling in the dust for the HERF carbine.

When Stoltz grabbed the weapon and boosted upright, taking aim at where Element B had once been and was now reassembling, Ng knew what he had to do.

"Eddie...stand _down_ , man! You can't do this--!"

"The hell I can't!" Stoltz cycled the carbine and let fly another round. But that was the last round he got off.

Sammy Ng was already pulling out his magpistol and flicking off the safety. Before Corporal Eddie Stoltz could hose down the Commander a third time, Ng fired. Loops of magnetic energy struck Stoltz in his hypersuit broadside. Instantly, the suit seals gave way and the force of the rounds knocked Stoltz flying. When he finally hit the ground, explosive decompression had already started. The venting O2 acted like a small rocket thruster and spun Stoltz sideways, spun him like a top before he landed.

Demetrious scrambled away from the dying Systems Tech, as much to get out of the line of fire as anything. " _Hold your fire, Sammy! Cease fire_!"

At the same moment, Grant joined Ng on _Igloo's_ lockout back porch. She already had her own weapon trained on the melee, but Ng grabbed the barrel before she could fire.

Demetrious boosted himself upright and slogged over to Stoltz. He could already see the fog from venting O2 forming small clouds around the neck seal. Stoltz was clutching at his face, at his throat, rolling and flailing as best he could.

" _Steve...Sammy_ —" his words were choking, filled with garbling and rasping, labored breathing. Then, everything went silent. A tone filled the crewnet...the _death tone_ , troopers had long called it. Med sensors scattered around Stoltz' suit registered what had happened. No pulse, no heart rate, no breathing, nothing. The fog at the neck seal dissipated.

Stoltz was dead.

Demetrious came up. With effort, he kneeled alongside, checking Stoltz's suit, his faceplate. The helmet visor was fogged, but the tone said it all. Demetrious reached over to Stoltz' wristpad and pressed a red button, killing the sound.

"He's gone."

Sammy Ng was already scrambling down from _Igloo_. "Christ, I had to do it, man. I had to stop him...where's the Commander?"

" _Master bot functioning at reduced capacity, but attempting to re-assemble config."_

Demetrious and Ng both looked up, beyond _Igloo_ and the prostrate form of Eddie Stoltz. At the base of the low hill, what they had first taken for dust was now gathering itself together into a faint, phosphorescent cloud, twinkling through the dust tendrils that constantly swept the surface.

'Commander, is that you...you're not hurt are you?"

" _It is difficult to kill a swarm...my replicants are scattered but the master assembler is intact...checking all systems...effectors now coming online...propulsors coming online...it seems that this master is functioning at somewhat reduced capacity...but operating nonetheless..."_

Ng and Demetrious watched as a faint mist descended the dusty slope and drifted toward them. Just then, Julie Grant stepped down from _Igloo's_ porch.

"Is all the commotion over?" Then, she saw the fallen hypersuited form of Stoltz. "What the hell happened out here? Don't ya'll know we've got work to do?"

With Element B gathering itself back together, Ng and Demetrious did a quick check of Stoltz.

"What should we do with the body, Commander? I don't want to leave him out here exposed like this."

Once the swarm had arrived at _Igloo_ , Commander Element B began to gather itself into a likeness of a face, a faint and shadowy outline of a generic, recruiting-poster face. There was a long-standing joke among Big Mike's crew that Element B had taken a liking to certain faces and one of them was a recruiting poster at UNISPACE Phoenix Station at Earth's L2 point. The face thickened and formed up, though it remained an outline, almost a cartoon, attached to basic shoulders and upper torso. You could see right through the formation to the terrain beyond.

" _Use your trenching jets to dig a small grave, right below_ Igloo _, below the equipment bay. Bury Corporal Stoltz there and make a berm around the grave as you finish._ "

"Aye, sir," Ng and Demetrious said at the same time. They dragged the hypersuited crewmen over to a position beneath _Igloo_ and set to work.

Grant came down to the surface. "Commander, you're sure you're all right? I can do a scan now...I just can't figure it, sir. We have angels...excuse me, sir...swarm formations throughout the Corps. But some people—" she shook her head, though nobody could see that in a hypersuit. "I guess not all the dinosaurs are extinct, sir."

Element B made some kind of facial gesture, though it was an imperfect rendition...maybe a shrug, it was hard to tell with angels.

" _Single-config entities such as Corporal Stoltz are a mystery to multi-config formations such as myself, Sergeant Grant. We have physical differences, it is true. But like most angels, as you call us, I desire to be judged on the content of my character, not the nature of my configuration. Sergeant, what is the status of the Sentinel equipment?"_

Grant indicated the _Igloo_ module. "All systems checked out and operating, sir. We're even talking to the transmitter up on that hill."

" _Very well, Sergeant. Good work._ " Element B began flowing toward the ladder at _Igloo's_ base. " _Start getting your gear together. When Captain Hawley calls and Big Mike is back in stable orbit, I want to be able to take off quickly."_

It was Ng who noticed what was missing on the hills nearby. "Commander, what happened to all those little red humps you were investigating?"

The dusty slopes that surrounded _Igloo_ like the sides of a bowl now seemed devoid of any humps, or any features at all, save a few craters and depressions. Long shadows and the ever-present dust made visibility poor.

" _After Corporal Stoltz opened fire, I aborted my reconnaissance effort. When I turned back, the hillocks were gone. I had been detecting some EMs, some atomic activity around those humps...but I couldn't localize it. Now—_ " Element B shrugged, or displayed what passed for a shrug by a para-human swarm entity. "— _I'm not so sure. I detect only residual surface electron spalling, charged particle influx...natural effects. I see no high thermals, no abnormal EMs_ —"

Ng didn't see anything on his viewer either. "It's like they just disappeared."

Grant shrugged. "Maybe they were just dust mounds after all."

" _I detect no obvious threat along any vector from this location. Sergeant Grant, your explanation is the most probable one. You and Corporal Ng, get the rest of your gear loaded into Igloo. Corporal Demetrious, you come with me. We'll make Icarus ready for launch_."

"Aye, sir—" came a chorus of replies.

An hour later, the hypersuited remains of Eddie Stoltz had been partially buried in a dust pan directly beneath _Igloo_. The module had been activated, then buttoned up and, just as Grant and Ng were about to kangaroo-hop their way the last kilometer down the slight grade toward _Icarus,_ Captain Hawley's voice sounded on their crewnet.

Commander Element B replied, from just outside _Icarus_ ' hatch. He gave Hawley a rundown on what had happened with Stoltz and the status of _Igloo_ and the Sentinel base station.

" _Sentinel base station is now fully operational, sir. All elements check out and all systems operating normally. As I indicated, we have provided a small burial space for Corporal Stoltz beneath Igloo."_

Hawley was silent for a moment. "Commander, Big Mike'll make orbit in about two hours. Bring Stoltz up with you. We'll do a formal burial in space. The poor fellow deserves at least that much. And nobody was hurt in the fracas?"

" _All members of the landing detail are functioning normally and able to complete their assigned duties, sir_.

"Very well, Commander. We'd deployed the last group of sensor pods a few hours ago. Now all we have to do is check the whole system stem to stern. I want to get the hell out of here as fast as we can, but CINCSPACE will have my head if we leave before Sentinel's up and running. We'll have to coordinate with Farside and Mariner City, as well...make sure everybody can talk to everybody. By the way, we've seen no further signs of our swarm friends...it's like they just vanished."

Element B explained how the red humps distributed along the surface of Sedna seemed to have evaporated as well. " _I can find no rational explanation, other than to assume that the mounds were dust clumps that were dispersed in the particle flux that bathes the surface here._ "

"I'll buy that, Commander. Be prepared to lift off as soon as we make orbit."

Hawley went offline and Element B directed Grant, Demetrious and Ng to head back uphill to _Igloo_ and retrieve Stoltz' body. " _Captain Hawley wishes to conduct a formal burial in space._ _Use the packbots to help you carry him...it's more than a kilometer up there and back. We will secure the Corporal in Icarus' stores locker...there should be enough room now."_

The three troopers headed out. When they arrived at _Igloo_ , it was Ng who noticed some small signs of disturbance around the mound of dirt they had bermed up against Stoltz' body.

'What the hell—?" Ng shoveled some of the dirt around with his boot and it flowed upward into the air almost like water, then back down to the ground in slow motion. "Did one of you jokers kick this pile?"

"I haven't touched anything," Grant said. "It's just static charge, like everything else on this rock pile of a world."

"Come on, you clowns, grab the body and get him up. I'll go find the packbots."

Once the packbots had been retrieved, Demetrious linked them together with some rope and did a quick program change to synch their movements. The three of them hoisted the hypersuited body of Eddie Stoltz upright and laid him face-up in the arms of the linked packbots.

"Seems lighter than I thought," Ng noticed. "Or else I've developed a lot more muscle slogging around down here."

"Hey, quit yapping...let's go," Grant told them. "Commander wants us back in ten minutes."

They covered the distance with the packbots in eight minutes.

With a lot of grunting and bitching, Ng and Demetrious managed to load Stoltz' body aboard _Icarus_.

" _Secure him in the Stores locker_ ," Element B told them.

_Icarus_ was quickly made ready for launch. When _Michelangelo_ had achieved orbit and positions were aligned, the ship took off and rocketed into space. Two hours later, the great kebab skewer that was Big Mike came slowly into view. Element B was at the controls and guided them into contact with the mother ship's docking ring.

A staccato hammering of the capture latches sounded through _Icarus'_ hull.

" _Hard dock_ ," Element B announced. " _Let's get to work unloading_."

Other crewmen came to help and the lander was quickly emptied of her gear. When it came time to unload Stoltz' body, Captain Hawley appeared at the hatch.

"Let me take a look—" he ordered. Ng and Demetrious lay the hypersuited crewman down on the deck. Hawley peered into the faceplate of the helmet. "Did you guys leave a light on in there...I see something...kind of flashing—"

"No, sir," Ng replied. "Unless something got inside through the neck seals...that's what failed down on the surface."

"Hey, it's moving—" someone said.

Hawley backed off. He saw it too, out of the corner of his eye. Maybe a twitch. A finger flexed. Then a foot.

"What the—"

"Hey...watch out, the face is—"

At that moment, the hypersuit that had failed Corporal Eddie Stoltz began to dissolve right before their eyes. A bright light shone through the faceplate, like a sunburst coming up.

A steady stream of particles began issuing out of the failed neck dam...sparkling, twinkling particles...already they were exploding outward in slow motion, like an eruption....

" _BOTS!_ " someone yelled.

Arms flailed. Feet kicked and bodies fell backward, as crewmen scrambled to escape.

" _Big Bang...it's on the ship_ \--!"

"Get the HERF...fry the bastards--!"

In seconds, Corporal Eddie Stoltz no longer existed...if he had ever existed. In his place, a throbbing ball of light, like a miniature supernova, had emerged from the shredded remains of the hypersuit.

And the crew of _Michelangelo_ quickly had a desperate battle on their hands.
DIRECTIVE

UNITED NATIONS COMMISSIONER OF SECURITY AFFAIRS

Control: 17430

Received: 25 JAN 2111, 1500Z

FROM: UNSAC

TO: CINCQUANT and all subordinate commands

NO: 12511 January (UNIFORCE Message)

PRIORITY: Elite Purple

ACTION: CINQUANT, CINCSPACE, CINCSANC, DIRBIOSHIELD

UNSAC 6887 from UNSAC

Pursuant to THREATCON 2 guidelines, UNSAC directs all subordinate commands to implement immediately Physical Security Verification Protocol Alpha 22 (PSVP A-22). Q2 Intelligence reports indicate with high probability Config Zero penetration / infiltration ops underway in all sectors and theaters of operation. PSVP A-22 requires all personnel be scanned and validated non-angel or better configuration by not later than 1 Feb 2011, 0000 hours.

**Commander's Directive** :

By order of CINCQUANT (UNSAC 6887), you are hereby directed to appear at the Physical Security Verification office at your command or base Personnel Center at the time indicated above. The details of this appearance are to be kept confidential. Examinations will require approximately one-half hour per person. Failure to appear at the indicated time will be considered a Class A Security Code violation. Non-appearees will be subject to Uniform Code disciplinary action at the discretion of the facility commanding officer.

KEA: 2

NOTE: Advance copies not distributed per UNSAC 4458.

FOUO: REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED UNLESS REVIEWED BY UNOSG-021
CHAPTER 22

The Hotel Metropol, Berlin

January 25, 2111

1820 hours (U.T.)

The unmarked van crept slowly down the alley off Unter den Linden as crowds streaming toward the Brandenburg Gate began to thicken. Ahead, less than a block away, were the gothic columns of the Hotel Metropole.

Q Detachment would enter the hotel by the service door behind the hotel, dressed as utility workers.

Lieutenant Justin Cannon eyed the vast hordes of people surging westward, toward the stages and the lighting stands and the assimilation booths that defined the grounds of the great rally, due to start promptly at seven that night.

All these people...just to see and be near a cloud of robotic mechs.

Cannon shook his head and looked back inside, appraising each trooper in his six-man squad. Helms, Lukasc, Jung, Bedard and Livio. And himself, the c/o. All hand-picked for this little venture into Indian country. The Detachment had one and only one mission: locate the master assembler bot that 'ran' the Symborg swarm and insert the replication blocker that Table Top labs had developed.

If all went well and the blocker worked as advertised, Symborg—whoever or whatever it was—would be unable to replicate copies of its basic structure. Unable to maintain integrity. Unable to appear before throngs of people as some kind of savior or rock star.

With any luck, the scumbag would eventually disperse and fade away.

That was the plan and it was up to Cannon and Q Detachment to carry it out.

"Hotel coming up, Skipper." Helms, the Defense Systems tech, hoisted up his HERF carbine and, pressing a few hidden switches, collapsed the weapon down to something the size of an umbrella. He stroked the barrel lovingly. "Me and Sweetness here...we're ready to light 'em up. Fried or extra crispy...makes no difference to us."

"Just keep that trigger-happy finger under control, Helms. We don't want to be waking up the neighborhood if we don't have to." That was the problem with Defense System Tech Helms, Cannon thought to himself. Anything not labeled Quantum Corps was just like raw meat to be grilled.

The van pulled up to the service entrance and Q Detachment disembarked. Disguised as a utility crew, the troopers got through the security scan and made their way inside.

Intel from Q2 placed Symborg and his entourage at the hotel a few hours before the huge rally, which was to be held on a stage in front of the Brandenberg Gate. All the troopers were embedded with ANAD masters, carried in their shoulder capsules. Additional weapons and gear, standard issue HERF and mag carbines, were carried in innocent-looking tool boxes.

As a unit, the troopers rode a service elevator to the tenth floor. The door hissed open and right away, a nanobotic security barrier made getting off a hassle. Lukasc jammed the door open, while Jung launched his own embed. They didn't use HERF or mag on the barrier, since the noise would likely wake up the entire hotel.

"ANAD launched," Jung reported. A faint sparkling mist issued from the trooper's shoulder capsule. Immediately, a spider-web of light brightened at the elevator door, as the ANAD master slammed atoms to build out its swarm and engage the barrier bots.

The entrance was momentarily bathed in an eerie blue-white glow as the bot swarms collided. Moments later, the barrier flashed and went dark.

They were in.

Cannon led the way. According to intel, Symborg was holed up in a suite of rooms around the corner, rooms 1015 through 1018. Cautiously, Cannon crept down the hall, flanked on either side by Jung and Helms. The rest of the Detachment stayed back, to cover the elevator and make a path for their escape.

Cannon's embed carried the replication blocker and would do the basic insert. The Lieutenant knew that the first order of business would be to establish the exact location of the target, though in this case, the target was a collection of bots that could be dispersed just about anywhere.

They reached Room 1015 and found another barrier, pulsating over ornate doors gilded in gold leaf trim.

_Don't want to alert the target_ , Cannon thought. He called a halt to their approach and the troopers hung back at the other end of the corridor.

"Jung, what's it look like inside? Is the target on-site?"

Corporal Jung was the other DPS tech. He scanned through the walls. "Reading elevated thermals and EMs, Lieutenant. Probably the target but he may be dispersed. I'm not seeing any high concentrations of atomic activity."

Cannon considered that. "We expected that. I don't want to breach that door barrier. We'll wake up the whole place. Lukasc, is your solid-phase config ready? My little guys are going to need a little recon."

"Up and operating, Skipper," said the CQE (Containerization and Quantum Engineering). "My ANAD embed reports ready in all respects."

"Very well." Cannon knew they had simmed and wargamed this aspect of the mission scores of times. Knowing how tight security was around Symborg, the geniuses at the Corps had decided solid-phase penetration was the way to go...get inside the compound _right through the wall_. "Take your position and launch embedded ANAD—"

Sergeant Lukasc slipped to the front of the squad and squared himself to the wall, pressing a recessed button on his shoulder capsule. In seconds, a twinkling mist had filtered out and formed a spherical cloud of bots hovering over his head.

"ANAD away, Skipper...I need a navigation hack."

"Squirting it now," called out Bedard. "Steer left one five zero degrees."

With that, the recon swarm began to shrink and fade slightly, as the bots disappeared into the wall, maneuvering through a crystalline lattice of atoms, squirming between row after row of silicon and oxygen and aluminum molecules.

"Penetrating nicely, Skipper. I'm going small...try to get a view of what's happening." Lukasc went "over the waterfall" in trooper-speak, letting the master bot feed him an acoustic return on what the swarm was encountering. "Looks like standard lattice structure...nothing unusual here. Anticipating lattice boundary in four minutes....we should be inside at that point."

'Understood. I'm launching my guys now." Cannon's embedded ANAD master carried the replication blocker they were tasked with trying to insert into the Symborg swarm.

But just as he set his own shoulder capsule for launch, something out of the corner of Cannon's eye caught his attention.

Sergeant Helms, Q Detachment's DPS1, was beginning to de-construct, right before their very eyes.

It wasn't possible. With security at Table Top tighter than a drumhead, with the Physical Security Verification...but there it was.

Helms was an angel.

" _Watch out_ ...!"

"It's a swarm--!"

"He's breaking down...!"

Before the rest of the Detachment could react, the cloud of bots that had once been Sergeant Helms was already disassembling right in front of them.

Lukasc was the first to get it. The Helms swarm swelled rapidly, filling out the corridor and falling on the CQE like a desert dust storm.

" _AAARRRGGGHHH...get it off...get it off me_!!" He was quickly enveloped by the bots. In seconds, only the top of his head and hands were visible.

Already Cannon and Bedard were unslinging their HERF carbines. "Fry em! Light 'em up!"

Barrage after barrage of rf waves boomed and echoed around the hall. Somewhere behind them, a mirror crashed to the floor, splintering into a million pieces.

It was a trap, Cannon realized. An ambush. Somehow, some way, in some manner he couldn't explain, Sergeant Leslie Helms wasn't Sergeant Leslie Helms, but an angel, and a damn good one at that.

Jesus H. Christ, they're just like Normals now. You can't tell 'em apart.

How long the Helms-thing had been part of the Detachment, he couldn't say. Not that it mattered. They were outgunned, outswarmed, and the target for sure would not be hanging around after all the commotion outside its suite.

Cannon let fly more volleys of HERF, shattering the swarm and everything else in the hall. Doors rattled, walls creaked and debris swirled in the gusts of rf like a miniature gale. Someone lit off a few mag pulses for good measure. The magnetic loops slammed into the Helms swarm and fried bots tinkled off the walls and floor like hail stones. But it came back, reconstituted. They always did.

_This isn't gonna work_ , Cannon realized. The swarm was expanding like a supernova in slow motion, burning everything, slurping up all the air in the corridor, pressing ever-outward.

" _FALL BACK!_ _Fall back...it's a trap_ ... _fallback to the elevator_ ...!!" he yelled over the concussive booms of HERF discharge.

That was when one arm of the swarm, a limb of bots he hadn't seen, came at him from behind. In seconds, Lieutenant Justin Cannon was smothered and choking, falling heavily to the floor, flailing and swatting and kicking and screaming.

In the end, only Corporal Livio managed to get away.

The IC1 barely managed to squeeze through the emergency doors at the end of the hall, setting off alarms as he did so. He half scrambled, half fell down the stairs, flinging his carbine away, as he burst into the alley and leaped aboard the van, still parked in the shadows of the utility entrance.

Blindly, he threw the van into gear and screeched off down the alley, nearly colliding with a crowd surging along Unter den Linden toward the rally. Livio made a screeching, sliding, two-wheel turn onto the Kochstrasse, heading into Kreuzberg, flying past knots of people, sideswiping vendor carts, riding up onto the sidewalks at times. The Tactical Ops center was nearby, holed up in an apartment the Corps had rented for some time, just for Q Detachment's mission and Livio had to get there, had to let Gutierrez know what had happened...that they had a spy, a mole inside the Corps. The whole mission had been compromised.

_The friggin' angels are just like Normals_ , he kept muttering to himself, as he hunted up one street and down another, looking for the apartment. _You can't tell 'em apart_ ...hell, he'd bunked with Helms a dozen times in training for the mission. They'd played poker together, chugged too many beers together, played _Rocket Commander_ on their tablets synched together.

Livio wiped sweat from his eyes and slowed the van down. _It's got to be around here somewhere._ He felt a prickly crawling feeling all over his neck and back and briefly wondered: did some of the bugs cling to me, did they get aboard? He tried to get a hold of himself, take deep breaths. _It's just adrenalin_ , he told himself. Just the shakes. Bugs could do that to people.

There...up ahead...that's it. That has to be it. He slowed the van down outside a three-story brownstone, fronted with immaculate little gardens and landscaping. A nearby sign read: _Hochschule fur Musik 1 Km_. Got to be the place.

The thing was: you just couldn't tell anymore. You didn't know anymore. Who could you trust now? Hell, maybe even Gutierrez was an angel. How would you know? Maybe the newsvids were right...recently, there had been talk of setting containment camps and small-scale sanctuaries for those who couldn't pass the PSV tests, the 'normality' tests, some commentators were calling them.

That's what Symborg kept hammering on at all the rallies, all the speeches and interviews. Normals. Who the hell knew what normal was anymore? Us versus them. Bugs against the Normals. But if Bugs could look like Normals, if they could pass for Normals even on close inspection....

Livio slammed on the brakes. He fell out of the van and stumbled up the steps to the apartment.

U.N. Quantum Corps Western Command

Table Top Mountain, Idaho, USA

January 26, 2111

0530 hours (U.T.)

CINCQUANT replayed the vid of Corporal Livio's statement again, for the eleventh time, at least.

Major Lofton, out of the Q2 shop, was there with Winger. "Painful to watch, sir, if you ask me."

Johnny Winger rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "Very painful. I keep replaying in my mind what he said: ' _We can't tell the normals from the angels anymore_.' How in the name of hell did an angel get into Table Top...and assigned to a special detachment on top of it?"

Lofton sipped at some coffee. The Corps ran on caffeine. "Probably 'cause he's right, sir. The tech behind nanobotic swarms is so good now—"

"Good for the economy. Bad for us. That replication blocker was our best shot. Now Symborg's got a free hand."

"What do we do, sir? What _can_ we do?"

The truth was that Winger didn't have a clue. "We still have tasking from UNSAC. We've got to do whatever it takes to get rid of this Symborg character. Hell, I'd love to just put together a special ops team and do a targeted hit...direct action...terminate with extreme prejudice. But—" Winger shrugged "—it won't work with a cloud of bugs. You can't take out something you can't hit. And the worst thing is, as an angel, the slimebag can be anywhere, in multiple places, at the same time. Just replicate and send 'em off. Of all the villains Mankind has suffered in history...Genghis Khan, Julius Caesar, Hitler, Osama bin Laden...at least they eventually died. Or you could put a bullet in their head and have some hope they'd expire. Symborg—" Winger shook his head. "Lofton, we just have to keep at it."

"I suppose you're right, sir. But Q2's backtracking Detachment personnel files now. I'm trying to see if there's anything about Sergeant Helms that would have tipped us off. Family history, previous billets, psych workups, fitness reports."

"And?"

Lofton dropped a mem-button into the slot on Winger's deskpad. Files and reports came up on his screen. "Nothing. Nothing out of the ordinary. You'd think a physical would have shown something...I'm thinking the physicals are fakes. Sergeant Eddie Helms never went through a real-life physical here at Table Top. Same with the PSV's...no way an angel should be able to pass a normality test...that's what they're supposed to detect."

Winger was lost in thought. "If an angel like Helms can insinuate himself into Quantum Corps, despite all our security checks and verifications, we've got a serious problem...I'm just wondering--:

"About what, sir?"

"My daughter. Rene. We've already got evidence, since Dana rescued her from Config Zero, that she's got some kind of embedded link with the Bugs. Config Zero put something inside her when she was deconstructed. It's not fully corroborated, but it looks like somehow she can channel what's happening inside Config Zero...processor states, config changes, memory accesses, maybe even beyond Config Zero. Maybe even the Central Entity, whatever that is. You know: the Old Ones."

"I've heard some of the scuttlebutt on that but what would that have to do with Helms?"

"If there is some kind of link inside Rene, maybe it works both ways. Maybe Config Zero's got swarms here at Table Top we can't detect and she's in touch with them. Livio said he thought we had spies or moles inside the Corps. Maybe he's right. Hell, Lofton, maybe that chair you're sitting in is nothing but a solidified swarm of nanobots, taking in everything we say and sending it back to Config Zero. I'm just putting out a theory here, but I'm thinking that Rene is part of this link...like a switchboard or a router. She may be a key node in some kind of comm network between spies and angels Config Zero's got in place and the Big Bug Cloud himself. Imagine it: here's Config Zero at the center of a spider web, and you've got Symborg, you've got angels like Helms, maybe my own daughter Rene...and who knows what else?" Winger leveled an even gaze at the security chief. "Maybe I can't even trust you, Major."

Lofton shifted uneasily, uncomfortable at the thought. "We've got the normality tests, General. They're supposed to be able to detect unauthorized swarms...angels and the like."

"Nothing's perfect," Winger decided. "This 'gift' Rene has of seeing what Config Zero's up to could work both ways. She may be able to 'see' what we're up to as well. Hell, maybe she's like a small-scale Keeper herself, like a portal to and from the Old Ones."

"She ought to be in some kind of isolation, with all due respects, sir. Containment. Although I don't know how you block quantum signals very well....I've heard talk of something Farside's working on...something to disentangle quantum states but it may just be talk."

Johnny Winger was more and more disturbed by this line of thinking. "I'd better get back to Paris and look into this. See what Rene is really capable of...they've got her hooked up like a lab rat as it is. Dana's having a hard time with it. If she's basically a key node in Config Zero's network...."

He didn't even want to finish _that_ thought.

Solnet/Omnivision Video Post

@anna.kolchinova.solnetworldview

January 26, 2111

2200 hours U.T.

SOLNET Special Report:

U.N. Boundary Patrol: Earth's Immune System

Most readers and viewers of this newsvid are well aware of the continuing series of earthquakes and tremors that have been affecting parts of the Earth over the last few months. Recently, I interviewed Dr. Lamont Hill, geophysicist with Caltech, who had just returned from a mission with Boundary Patrol, along the tectonic plate junction of the African and Arabian plates.

_SN/OV_ _: Dr. Hill, thanks for taking time to be with us today._

_Hill_ _: My pleasure._

_SN/OV_ _: Dr. Hill, you just came back from a mission with Boundary Patrol. I understand you were examining stresses and fault structures along one of the tectonic plate boundaries, where many of these tremors have originated._

_Hill_ _: That's right. I was with the crew of geoplane_ Tunnel Rat _, and we departed from BPS station number 3, out of Adana, Turkey, in fact. It was an incredible experience, let me tell you. I've studied the interior structure of the Earth for years. To actually be below ground, where these plates bump and grind, where you can feel the stresses and shear forces...that was a fabulous experience._

_SN/OV_ _: Dr. Hill, what can you tell us about the African and Arabian plates. Many of our viewers know that there has been a significant, seemingly unexplained increase in earthquakes and tremors along this fault in recent months._

_Hill_ _: Well, to be sure, the Great Rift Valley, which was where_ Tunnel Rat _patrolled, is a visible, surface manifestation of the forces that are acting along this plate boundary. Geologists call this plate junction a divergent boundary. That means that normal shear forces are pulling parts of the African plate apart...in time, given enough time, natural forces will separate this part of the African plate into two plates._

_SN/OV_ _: Is that why we've seen so many tremors? There are persistent rumors that Config Zero is doing something in this sector, doing something to increase these forces, which is causing all these tremors._

_Hill_ _: Oh, yes, to be sure..._ Tunnel Rat _detected numerous instances of obvious swarm activity...we felt some of the tremors. One day, we actually engaged a small-dimension swarm that seemed to be disassembling rock layers at a shear point...if we hadn't engaged, I'm sure a high-magnitude tremor would have resulted. This happened at the Afar Triangle, kind of a triple point where three plates are pulling away from each other. But I must tell you, after extensive measurements and calculations of forces and stresses in this region, and further south, along the Nubian and Somali plate junction, we've come to a rather startling conclusion about the Rift Valley._

_SN/OV_ _: And what is that, Dr. Hill?_

_Hill_ _: Well, natural forces will in time break the African and Arabian plates completely apart. The seas will rush in and the Rift Valley will become a sort of inland sea...that much is certain. But the process has become greatly accelerated in recent months, measurably so. And the cause seems to be shear forces and stresses where swarm activity has been concentrated. I've done the correlations and it works out. The swarms seem to be actively disassembling rock layers in such a way as to rapidly drive these two plates apart. Incidentally, there are reports, so far unsubstantiated, that other Boundary Patrol missions are seeing similar swarm and tremor activity elsewhere around the Earth._

_SN/OV_ _: Then are you saying, Dr. Hill, that it appears Config Zero is trying to re-arrange the tectonic plates on which our landmasses sit...is that what your concluding?_

_Hill_ _: Exact causative forces are hard to pin down, at this time. I can only draw conclusions based on what I can measure and observe. If the location, force levels and stresses along the African and Arabian plate boundaries continue at the current rate, enough force will develop to permanently separate east Africa from the main part of the African continent, shearing right along the Great Rift Valley. And, again given current stresses and the calculated rate of increase, we can project that this will happen in a matter of years, not centuries._

_SN/OV_ _: In other words, if things continue, if we allow Config Zero to continue this re-alignment of tectonic plates unopposed, a new island continent will be formed and east Africa will drift away from the main continent, out into the Indian Ocean...is that what you're saying, Dr. Hill?_

_Hill_ _: That is precisely what I'm saying._

_SN/OV_ _: Dr. Hill, our viewers know that the general mission of Boundary Patrol is to stop just this sort of thing...to keep the swarms generated and controlled by Config Zero from creating so many destructive quakes and tremors. In your opinion, can Boundary Patrol perform its mission? Is there any chance they can be successful in stopping all these quakes and saving thousands of lives?"_

_Hill_ _: You ask a difficult question, Anna. If you're asking can Boundary Patrol stop all quakes and tremors that occur, I would say no. That is not possible. Tectonic plate movements are the earth's way of relieving stress and strain, equalizing forces among the plates. Nature will always seek to minimize energy and find the lowest strain positions for these structures. That's what Nature does. But if you're asking can we confront the swarms and reduce the incidence and severity of these induced quakes and tremors...I would have to say the jury is still out on that. Boundary Patrol crews are incredibly dedicated and skilled people....I've seen that with my own eyes. I have nothing but the greatest respect for these men and women. However, the tectonic plates below ground, below our continental landmasses, are riddled with fault lines and fracture zones. There are thousands of such fault lines and only a few dozen Boundary Patrol crews. To me, it's a matter of numbers. You can't be everywhere at the same time._

_SN/OV_ _: Then do you think deploying Boundary Patrol is a waste of time?_

_Hill_ _: I think the problem is better addressed at the source. Induced tremors and quakes caused by swarm activity at plate boundaries and fault lines is the result. It's the effect in a cause and effect equation. We need to address the cause itself._

_SN/OV_ _: You mean Config Zero itself._

_Hill_ _: Exactly. And that's not a geophysical problem._

_SN/OV_ _: Thank you, Dr. Hill, for spending time with us today._

_Hill_ _: My pleasure._

**SOLNET Special Report** Ends
CHAPTER 23

UNIFORCE Headquarters, Paris

February 1, 2111

1230 hours (U.T.)

CINCQUANT listened gravely as Lofton and Stavrolets went over their findings in detail. All of them were in Winger's seventy-third-floor office at the Quartier-General, watching screen after screen of data on their pads. Dana Tallant wasn't watching the briefing at all. It was all she could do just to keep from screaming.

"There's no question about it, sir," Lofton was saying, "your... _er_ , daughter has become a Class-A intel source for us. We're learning all kinds of things we didn't know before."

Winger gave that some thought. "Have any of you ever lived with an angel? Ever worked with an angel?"

Lofton shook his head. Stavrolets did likewise. General Evgeni Orlov (CINCSPACE) spoke for all of them.

"Winger, I know what you're going to say, so there's no need to say it. We all know living with angels is a challenge...hell, I guess _that's_ an understatement. It's also beside the point and irrelevant to this briefing. Rene Winger is the best intelligence source we've got. How or why, I don't know...I can't pretend to understand the theory behind this. All I know is that whatever she provides get corroborated. It's good intel and it gives us something to act on."

"Not only that," Lofton added, "but now it looks like she's able to pick up data streaming to and from Config Zero and the swarms causing all these quakes. Boundary Patrol now has at least some idea of how and where the swarms are deployed. Now we can intercept and engage before they cause so much damage."

"There's one thing you're all forgetting," Dana Tallant spoke up. "Rene is part of our family. She's not an instrument of strategic policy. She's a teen-ager who's been through a hell of lot."

All of them regarded Dana with an understanding look. _Sure, Dana...we get it._ _Mothers are expected to say things like that. We understand...we sympathize._ But no one actually said that.

Orlov wouldn't be dissuaded. "She's also the best source we have on what the Bugs are up to, how they operate, how they deploy, what their capabilities are. Maybe even what they're plans are. My men need that. I've got a crew nine billion miles from here fighting Bugs off left and right...I need every advantage I can get. Sorry, Major Tallant, but that's the truth."

Winger saw what Orlov's words had done to Dana. He wanted to hug her close. He wanted to punch CINCSPACE in the face. He did neither.

"Maybe we just have to accept some things. Rene was lost to Config Zero a long time ago. That's not Rene down there in containment. With all due respects for what Dr. Falkland has done for my family, this is an angel. It's a simulation of Rene, granted a very good one. We've got to give her up—" he stopped, seeing the _how could you?_ look on Dana's face. That hurt like a knife. Then she turned and wouldn't even look at him anymore.

"Forty years ago, my Dad was infected with the Serengeti virus. I knew what it was. We all did. And, yeah, I'm an atomgrabber so I wanted to do all kinds of inserts and go inside my Dad and slug it out with the bots. But I didn't. You know why? I didn't want Dad to become a battleground. I had to give him up. It was the only thing I could do. It was the humane thing to do."

Tallant glared back coldly at her husband. "You just said Rene's not even human. How can doing something humane even matter if Rene's not human?"

Winger swallowed hard. God, he hated hashing this crap out in front of fellow officers, even though the arguments were in the air, all over, everywhere. This was what Symborg himself was saying. Wasn't that ironic? _Now I sound just like Symborg._

"Maybe being human is what we make of it. Being human is whatever we call human. Maybe we've reached the point with our technology when humans don't have to have a body like you and me, to be human. Maybe it's a state of mind, or an attitude, a group of values and ethics, a collection of traits and memories. We can give the master bot that runs the Rene angel those memories and values. We can load a config that makes a swarm of bots look and act, even feel, like Rene. And we've gotten so good at this, we've had to institute the normality test to tell humans and angels apart. But it's still not really Rene. We have to let her go...UNIFORCE needs what she has and we can't keep her from providing it...too many lives are at stake."

Lofton added a point." Sir, with the failure of the Berlin mission, it may well be that Rene's channeling more than just Config Zero. She may be inadvertently detecting and transmitting what we say and do inside UNIFORCE. Stav, you just mentioned this idea to me this morning."

Stavrolets nodded. "Indeed I did. In some way I don't understand yet, she may have become a kind of router or a hub for quantum comms and signals to and from Config Zero. Sort of like a miniature Keeper, only we've been maintaining her in a config that looks like your daughter. Maybe even a portal between Config Zero here and the Old Ones, whoever and whatever they may be."

Winger wanted to kick everybody out of the office and just hug Dana tightly. "She was our daughter...once. Now she's so much more than that."

Orlov agreed. "She may be the very thing that saves us from going the way of the dinosaurs. If we're smart enough to understand what she's telling us."

"I want to see her," Dana decided.

So they went down to the fiftieth level of the Quartier-General and entered the Containment center.

The chamber was surrounded by consoles manned by technicians and analysts. On the monitors, Dana Tallant could see Rene reclining inside the chamber on some kind of bed. Her face was peaceful and she seemed asleep. But something was wrong with the config driver. Her face was blurred. Her hands and lower legs were smeared out, as if something were interfering with the config driver's ability to maintain structure.

Tallant put a hand to her mouth. "What have you done to her?"

Stavrolets tried to explain. "The R9 probe has that effect. Her config driver tries to resist, and it diverts some part of the swarm structure to countering what R9 is trying to do. That's what is causing her to lose structure at her extremities. Not to worry. Her core functions are intact."

Tallant wanted to say something, but Winger squeezed her hand... _hard_. _Not now. Not here._

Lofton indicated the nearest console. Reams of data and patterns came and went on the monitors, in confusing bursts of feedback from the R9 swarms infiltrating Rene. "We're getting a lot of data now, since we learned how to read what R9 is sending back. Plus, we've tuned the Quantum State Grabber better...we can snatch quantum state information right out of the ether, as it were. Now we can read most of it."

Winger kept squeezing Tallant's hand hard. It was all Dana could do to keep from screaming _Let my baby go!_ Instead, squirming against Winger's grasp, she tried coughing and clearing her throat, biting her tongue. Winger squeezed even harder.

"What are you finding?" Winger asked.

Lofton had been an analyst with Q2 for several years. He scratched his forehead, searching for the right words. "Mostly imagery...it's like we've had to learn a whole new language here. The data comes in encoded as entanglement wave patterns. We grab it, or process what R9 sends back to corroborate, and then try to make some sense of it. Mostly it seems like sensor readings...pressures, temperatures, spectral curves, EM flux, that sort of thing."

"Over time," Stavrolets jumped in, "we've been able to build a picture of what all the readings mean...a consistent picture. You have to remember that what we seem to be getting is a swarm view of things. But we've been able to correlate most of this with real life phenomena we can detect or observe through other means. For instance, lately we've been pulling in readings and indications that the _Devil's Eye_ anomaly is returning to the vicinity of Sedna...stellar patterns and solar particle flux readings are consistent with that."

"Returning...does Hawley know that? Have you advised _Michelangelo_?"

CINCSPACE answered that. "We've sent advisory messages last night...the problem is Big Mike's so far away, it takes thirteen hours to get a message to them...one way. We've not heard anything back. It was just a warning anyway...be alert."

"Bit by bit," Lofton went on, "we're building a consistent tactical picture of what Config Zero's up to. We've found some patterns that seem to indicate when swarms are engaging along tectonic plate boundaries...chewing up rock to start tremors...we've sent numerous warnings to Boundary Patrol from that. It's a slow process...two steps forward, three steps back. Like learning a new language, as I said. I'm sure we've misinterpreted things, misunderstood what your daughter's quantum state changes are telling us. But bit by bit, we're putting it together."

Tallant couldn't hold back any longer. "Meanwhile, my daughter lies there, like a lab rat, hooked up to all your gear...a playground for experiments and all your probes and toys."

"Major, believe me, we understand what all this—"

Winger cut in. "What she's saying is that it's hard to take...seeing Rene like that. I know she's an angel. But still she is...or I guess, was, our daughter."

Dana's eyes blazed. "She's _still_ our daughter! I don't care about any of this...hell, I know the intel is important. But she's just a teen-ager. Can't she live like a normal teen-ager? Go to school. Have friends. Flirt and go to parties. Cut up and laugh...I mean, look at her. _Just look at her!"_

Orlov was growing annoyed with all the outbursts. "Major, you're a trooper. You know the mission always come first. For Christ's sake, I _do_ look at her. You know what I see? I see a critical intelligence resource. I see information that can help us defeat this damned menace. Better yet, I see something that my troops can use to stay alive, and get back home. That's worth a hell of a lot to me."

There was a tense silence for a moment. Orlov glared at Dana Tallant. Stavrolets coughed and spoke up. "There is something else we're seeing here...something we're not sure quite what to make of."

"What's that?" Winger asked, glad to fill the silence with something.

Stavrolets ran a hand through thinning hair. "We decrypted some imagery that doesn't seem to correlate well with anything. Here, I'll show you—" his fingers massaged a keypad and the displays shifted to something new. "After decryption, we ran check routines, washed it through processing several times and this was the best match the system could come up with. Watch—"

The imagery jittered and shifted, then settled down on the display. Some kind of desert scene settled into view...sand dunes could be seen, dust devils, with a mountain range on the horizon. In a few seconds, the scene shifted and now they were looking from a higher altitude, perhaps at the same scene. In fact, the point of view had shifted to an orbital view, a view from deep space. A world materialized before their eyes...a dun, ocher-colored world, bleak and brown, desiccated and crackled like a billiard ball left in an oven.

"Mars?" Winger suggested. "Before the Big Smack, maybe?"

"That's what we thought," Stavrolets said. "At first. But look more closely...look at these seams and lines...they're continent outlines."

Winger peered intently at the display. "My God...is that--?"

"Yep. We think it's Earth. But it's not a picture from today...or any time in the last few billion years, either."

Lofton had seen the imagery earlier. "Ancient Earth, maybe?"

"Or a future Earth," Stavrolets said. "And there's more...I'll summarize what this imagery seems to show. If you follow all the imagery and set different orientation grids to the scenes, it correlates well with other places in our solar system. We think this is Earth. But the hell of it is...every other world scene we've seen looks like this too. If we're processing these quantum states right, Rene's showing us a view of our solar system millions of years from now."

Winger shook his head. "There's another possibility. What we're seeing may not be millions of years from now. It may be a lot nearer than that. These images may be what Earth will look like if Config Zero completes the Prime Key."

Lofton wasn't buying it. "That's a bit of a stretch, isn't it, General?"

Stavrolets was skeptical as well. "Sir, the raw data can be interpreted many ways. This imagery is just one of many interpretations the Quantum State Grabber can make. The imagery fits the raw data pretty well, but it's not perfect."

Winger was sure he was right. "You yourself said we have to look at these images from a swarm point of view, didn't you? Old Doc Frost once said that if the Old Ones were real, they might have looked on the Earth as a giant incubator. Or a giant Petri dish, where what they had planted could be nurtured and grown. A vessel for new life. Only weeds started sprouting in this incubator. What do you do when you get weeds in your garden?"

Lofton shrugged. "Pull 'em out. Spray 'em."

"Exactly. And to Config Zero, _we're_ the weeds."

Orlov wasn't convinced. "That's preposterous, Winger. You're seeing things that aren't there. What we're facing is a classic contest of wills with a very capable adversary. Config Zero's a cloud of bugs, a horde of nanobotic entities with a lot of smarts. Same with whatever Hawley's run into, out there beyond Pluto. Get what I'm saying... _they're bots_. Very capable bots, but still they're machines. They act as they're programmed. All we have to do is get in and bollix up the programming. Now, with the girl here...or what's tricked out to look like a girl...we've got intel on how the bots think. How they deploy. What they're capable of. This stuff-" he indicated the desert world on the display "—is probably deception. You know: disinformation. Something to throw us off the track."

Winger knew he had no answer for Orlov's conclusions. Even worse, he knew CINCSPACE might even be right.

"Doc Frost used to lecture me about some of his original thinking when he designed the first ANAD. Deep inside every ANAD unit, from day one, there's a small module that he called the _Imperative of Life_. Sort of a survival instinct, if you will. One of his theories about the Old Ones was that, if they were truly nanobotic swarms like ANAD, they might have the same imperative." Winger tapped on his wristpad and found what he was looking for. "He described it like this—" A small, grainy 3-D hologram emerged from his wristpad and danced on the console in front of them. It was Doc Frost, from years ago, gesticulating in front of a classroom, "...it's from a lecture he gave me once...I recorded it."

"... _you see, the truth is that the Imperative of Life is really very simple. Life absorbs chaos from the Universe. It adds structure. It builds stuff. Life is anti-entropic. I programmed this explicitly into ANAD, from the very beginning..."_

Orlov smirked. "So what are you saying, Winger? That the Old Ones are real? That they're not just a collective nightmare...or mass hallucination? We've all heard those theories before."

"I'm saying there's some kind of connection between what Doc Frost programmed into ANAD and what's happening today. I don't know about all these quantum states you're decrypting and how real these images are. For all I know, they could be some artifact of processing and nothing more."

"A distinct possibility," Stavrolets admitted. "Entanglement waves are damnably hard to pin down, as you well know."

"And I'm not sure what Hawley's run into out there beyond Pluto...some kind of mass formation of bots. How they got there, I have no idea. But I know Config Zero is very real...I've been to Kipwezi...I've see it. I've been to Europa and been inside the Keeper. That was no hallucination. Maybe another quantum state, another reality, a sixth dimension, who can say? I can't discount those possibilities."

Tallant was intrigued. "So what are you saying, Wings?"

"I'm saying let's follow Occam's Razor. The simplest explanation is probably the best. Major Lofton, you and your techs are grabbing quantum states from Rene's processor...you think she's some kind of router, a go-between Config Zero and ... _something out there_. We're trying to figure out what the hell Config Zero's going to do next. Maybe this new imagery is telling us that. I think Doc Frost was telling us that, in that little snippet I showed you. Prime Key...Imperative of Life...whatever you want to call it...that's what is driving Config Zero. If we're the weeds in the garden of Eden for these bugs, then we know what's coming. If Config Zero's programming is to clean out the Petri dish and start over...which is what I think...then it's up to us to defend the Petri dish. Keep the incubator from being turned off."

"Winger, you may or not be right, but we can't afford to ignore what this girl's telling us. It may be disinformation. It may be processing errors in the Quantum State Grabber. I say grab as much as we can...milk the girl for everything we can get...and try to find patterns. Patterns will give us actionable intelligence. If I can give Hawley and his crew even a little heads-up, even a little advantage over whatever they're facing, I'm damned well going to do it. I'm sorry, Winger, if that thing in there still resembles your daughter. _There's_ your disinformation. It's just a disguise, has been all along. She's no more your daughter than I am."

Winger looked over at Dana Tallant. She had a look of resignation. Her lips were a tight line. Winger knew she was having trouble letting go of Rene, of the idea of Rene, of the pattern or configuration she had always known as Rene. It was painful.

But it was necessary. Every scrap of intel they could get from her would help.

Winger knew now with a conviction that was hard to put into words that the only pattern that mattered was the memory of the little girl they had lost years ago to Config Zero. The pattern in the containment chamber wasn't Rene.

The real one was in their minds.
CHAPTER 24

Aboard _Michelangelo_ (UNS-212)

In Orbit Around Sedna

February 2, 2111 (U.T.)

2000 hours (ship time)

The swarm of alien bots erupted rapidly out of the Stoltz thing, swelling inside the hatch and airlock, burning the air with mass, an explosion in slow motion.

" _Fall back_!" Hawley yelled. " _Get back_ ...get some HERF in here—" Hawley stumbled, scrambling to get away from the hatch, while Ng and Grant poured rf fire into the swelling heart of the cloud.

The concussive _BOOM!!_ of rf waves washed through the airlock, reverberating off the walls. Fried bots tinkled onto the deck, but the high-freq radio waves barely slowed the swarm down. Like a miniature thunderstorm, streaked with veins and flashes of light, the Stoltz thing steadily deconstructed right in front of them and a cloud of bots filled every cubic inch of space, burning the air, sucking oxygen.

Hawley groped and felt his way toward the airlock outer door. _Got to keep these bastards in here_ , he told himself. _Keep 'em contained_. "Ng, you and Grant hose 'em down...then get the hell out of here—"

"Skipper, watch out--!"

One tendril of bots had snaked forward and was already reaching for Hawley's leg. He kicked out, losing his balance, just as Demetrious, right behind him, let fly another volley. The shockwave nearly deafened him. Hawley crawled and kicked his way toward the airlock door.

"Keep 'em away from the deck!" he yelled back.

It was Element B, drifting out of the airlock onto the service deck, who appraised the situation, analyzed all probabilities, and finally took action.

" _All troopers should evacuate the airlock...immediately! I am endeavoring to close and engage with the swarm—"_

Before Hawley could do anything but kick and flail at the grasping bots, the botcloud that had been Element B scattered and began moving into the airlock. A semi-spherical globe of twinkling, flashing lights surged into the compartment and pressed forward into contact with the alien swarm.

" _All troopers...please evacuate the airlock chamber and secure the outer hatch...I will attempt to contain the swarm here...prepare to jettison Icarus on my command—"_

That was when Hawley realized what Element B was trying to do.

"Cease fire... _cease fire_! Everybody get back! Clear the lockout...come on, Ng, Grant...that means you too--!!"

The troopers clambered and scrambled away from the strobing veins of light that indicated the line of engagement between the swarms. Element B had already engaged the Stoltz bots and a writhing snake of flashing light whipped back and forth across the compartment.

One after another, first Ng, then Demetrious, then Grant, then another trooper, finally Hawley himself dragged and stumbled their way through the deck hatch.

"Secure the hatch!" Hawley commanded. "Grant, you're in charge here. Keep your weapons on that hatch. If anything comes through—" Hawley made a clenched fist "—you know what to do. I'm heading up to A deck."

Hawley disappeared into the gangway tunnel and was up in the command seat thirty seconds later.

He set up commands on his console to begin the jettison procedure. Without _Icarus_ , they'd be confined to Big Mike, but Element B was sacrificing himself to at least give them a chance...a chance to survive...a chance to get home.

He opened a comm channel. "Element B, I know what you're trying to do....I don't know what to say...you'll get some kind of medal for this, I'm sure of that."

Fifty meters aft, inside Big Mike's service deck, Element B grappled with the Stoltz bots in a frenzied and furious collision. The only visible evidence of the combat was a faint line of light pops and flickers, as the bots slammed atoms and discharged bond breakers. That and the growing heat ball crackling the air all around the deck.

" _I am endeavoring to force the enemy back into Icarus,_ " Element B told them. " _Prepare to jettison the module on my command."_

Up on the command deck, Hawley had already completed the pre-separation procedure. He knew perfectly well what Element B had in mind and there was little he could do about it. The botswarm that was Element B was going to sacrifice itself to save the crew and ship. Tactically, it was the right call. But emotionally—Hawley wondered if you really _could_ have feelings for a cloud of bots. Hell, they couldn't die, not like people. Swarms just changed configuration, dispersed, evaporated and came back in a new form.

"Separation procedure set up and ready," he told Element B. "Ng, you and Demetrious get back down there...be ready to dog that hatch shut when I give the word."

The troopers were on standby on the service deck, just beyond the deck hatch itself. "They're in position, Skipper." It was Grant, also nearby, peering through the hatch porthole. "Looks like Element B's got the buggers on the run...it's hard to tell exactly, but the light pops and flashes are moving steadily toward _Icarus_ ...and the circumference is getting smaller, more compact. Element B's kicking ass, sir."

" _Enemy bots are multi-lobed structures_ ," Element B announced. " _All-axis propulsors of a type I've never encountered before. Outer surfaces are filled with effectors, grabbers and probes...fascinating designs...perhaps I can detach and isolate some of the molecule groups—_ "

"Just shove 'em into _Icarus_ , Commander," Hawley told the swarm. "We'll worry about analysis another time."

" _Nearly there---hatch plane less than one hundred thousand microns...got to make sure none are left behind...sweeping all sectors now...my bond breakers down to forty percent but still effective...pyridine probes now offline—"_

A few moments later, Grant pumped a fist in the air. Ng and Demetrious let out a cheer. The flickering ball that was the line of engagement had disappeared through _Icarus_ ' hatch.

"He's done it, Skipper! They're inside, inside _Icarus_!"

Ng swung open the outer door from the service deck and plunged into the airlock. "I'll get the hatch...."

"Sammy wait...it may not be safe yet--!"

But Ng was already inside. In seconds, the trooper had dogged the hatch shut and secured it. "Hatch shut and locked, Skipper...I'm headed out of the airlock."

He made it back okay. Grant helped Demetrious slam the outer door shut right behind him.

"All secure on the deck, Skipper!" Grant said. "Let her rip!"

Hawley had grabbed Lieutenant Kohl on the way up to the command deck. The two of them finished jettison preparations.

"Punch it!" Kohl said.

Hawley did just that. A slight shudder was felt through Big Mike's hull as the lander separated, pushed away by springs after her capture latches let go. On the monitor, _Icarus_ drifted slowly into the black, quickly retreating to an indistinct blob after a few minutes.

"Grant, you sure all the bugs got pushed into _Icarus_? I don't want to have to clean up anything left over."

Fifty feet aft, Julie Grant replied, "We're scanning now, Skipper. Not reading anything unusual, no spikes, all bands clear. I'm pretty sure we're clean."

Kohl grabbed a nav scope and zoomed in on _Icarus_ as she moved further away. "Hey, what the—"

The monitor view changed. One moment, _Icarus_ was an indistinct blob. Then, without warning, the blob brightened, flaring like an explosion, like a supernova. The blob shone brightly for a few moments, then faded into black. Then, nothing.

"What happened?" Kohl wondered.

"Scanning now...atom fluff...EM spikes...lots of nanobotic activity out there. Off hand, I'd say somebody got hungry and chewed up the lander. Full disassembly...nothing left but a few atoms, residual debris."

Kohl stared at the display. "Was it them? Or was it Element B?"

"Maybe it was both." Hawley zoomed in to full magnification. " _Uh oh_ ...I'm reading something now...definite structures gathering...thermals rising. EMs too. Whatever happened, something's reconstituting."

"I'll open a channel to Element B," Kohl suggested. "Big Mike to Element B...Big Mike to Element B, come back...."

Hawley was studying the return on his instruments. _Michelangelo_ was probing the debris cloud that had been _Icarus_ with electromagnetic fingers.

'Dean, I don't like the looks of this...these signatures, these patterns...ISAAC's not recognizing them. I don't think this is Element B."

"Maybe we'd better get the hell out of here," Kohl suggested. "All the sensor pods are in place...we could do a full-up system test a million miles from here. We don't need to stay in orbit around this rock pile, do we?"

"No we don't." Hawley mulled over the idea. CINCSPACE had given them the mission of getting the Sentinel system up and operating. The pods were deployed and the transmitter-controller had already been installed and setup on the surface of Sedna. Only an end-to-end test of the whole system was left. That they would have to coordinate with Farside and with Earth, to know everybody was receiving proper signals.

_But we don't have to be here in orbit to do that_ , he told himself.

"Dean, I don't like the looks of that thing. No telling what's happened aboard _Icarus_ ...with Element B and those bad bots duking it out. Somebody lost that fight and I'm thinking it might have been Element B...or worse, the bad guys got to him and he's on the wrong side...like with Commander Liu a few months ago. I'm not taking any chances. Secure the ship for escape burn...I'm putting some distance between us and that cloud of bugs, whatever it is."

"Aye , sir," Kohl scrambled out his seat and went aft through the gangway tunnel to pass the word and get Big Mike ready to depart.

Kohl kept a scope on the cloud as the ship was made ready for departure. To be doubly sure, he continued scanning the irregular formation and made a face as he read off the signature.

"Same as _Devil's Eye_ ," he said, to no one in particular. Hawley wasn't on the command deck. He had headed aft, to the crew's mess on B deck, working out the particulars of the Sentinel systems test. Kohl rang the Skipper up on the ship's 1MC circuit. "Bad news, Captain. This bugger's got the same EMs, same thermals, same outer config—best I can resolve it—the whole shebang looks like a mirror image of _Devil's Eye_. I think this was a piece of it, down there on the surface...somehow, it re-made Eddie Stoltz, took his form and we didn't know it until almost too late."

Hawley's voice was cautious, measured. "Still expanding, Dean? Any sign it's maneuvering or changing course?"

"No, sir, still sitting in orbit around Sedna, growing like a friggin' weed patch on fire. Bright as hell too, looks kind of like it's throbbing or pulsating. ISAAC says no aspect change, no Doppler change. It hasn't moved in any direction...at least not yet."

"We'd better scan around at long-range for the mother swarm. Last data ISAAC had on the big cahuna was that it was heading away from the Sun, into deep space. I don't want to be around if Mama Bear comes looking for her cub."

"Will do." No sooner had Kohl ended the conversation than a chime from ISAAC alerted him to a change in the target's position. He glanced at the monitors. What he saw made his jaw drop. He froze for a moment, in disbelief.

The pulsating, throbbing ball of light that had once been _Icarus_ was leaving orbit, descending, heading down toward the surface.

Kohl kept the scopes trained on the sight. The thing was definitely headed down, for some kind of impact.

"Holy crap," he muttered. He rang up Hawley and described the situation. "Impact in just a few minutes, Skipper. I'm not sure what'll happen then."

"Be right up," Hawley advised. Less than two minutes later, Hawley poked his head onto the command deck and huddled right behind Kohl, as they studied the monitors.

Like a distant sun setting on the horizon, the _Icarus_ -thing was dropping lower and lower in the sky. Even as they watched, the fiery ball slammed into Sedna's surface and the brilliance flared out in a slow-motion explosion.

"The end..." Hawley said. "She was a good ship."

"Hey, Skipper, look at that—"

Even as Hawley was working his console to set up Big Mike's escape burn, the impact of _Icarus_ spread shock waves of light rippling across the surface of the tiny planetisimal. But instead of dissipating, as normal physics would have dictated, the light waves continued to palpitate and thrash the surface, strobing back and forth across the cratered chaos that was Sedna's tortured surface.

The effect lasted many minutes. Then, as suddenly as it had slammed into the world, the strobing, flickering light waves died off. As the brilliance faded, the monitors showed something neither Hawley or Kohl would have believed possible.

" _What the fuck--_?

Where once there had been a battered rock pile of a planetisimal world, now there drifted a brilliant cloud of particles and debris, the shattered remnants of the world they had just walked upon.

Only these were no ordinary particles.

ISAAC chirped and chimed with enough alerts and warnings to light up a city.

Kohl saw it first.

"Jesus H. Christ...the whole panel's lit up...I've got spikes in all bands...thermal, EMs, big spikes!"

Hawley glared at the monitor with a growing feeling of dread. "Friggin' swarms! That whole planet's nothing but a big swarm...you were just walking down there."

"We spent hours... _what the hell?_ ...are the damn Bugs _that_ good?"

Even as they watched, the thing that had once been Sedna deconstructed right in front of them. Like a supernova in slow motion, the brightly lit cloud strobed and flickered with internal fires as the bots slammed atoms and built structure in a big bang of nanobotic overdrive. The cloud swelled, seethed and boiled like a thing alive, expanding rapidly, spreading upward and outward, engulfing _Michelangelo_ in minutes.

"We're getting the hell out of here," Hawley decided. "Help me prime the engines, get the coils and injectors online—"

"Skipper, we don't have a course laid in yet."

"I don't give a damn...anywhere but here. Get on the 1MC...let everybody know. Secure the ship and strap in...we're busting out of here as fast as we can."

While Kohl made the announcement and passed the word to all crewmembers, Hawley concentrated on setting up Big Mike for an emergency burn.

_Let's see...coils to stage one, injectors to auto...plasma bay warming up...mags on...synchros on...._ His fingers flew over the controls, hustling through a mental checklist, hoping to God he hadn't forgotten anything. Out of the corner of his eye, Hawley kept an eye on the monitors. Even through the portholes, he could see the strobing light approaching...the bots were coming, the swarm was swelling outward, it was only a matter of a few minutes now—

In the end, it didn't matter. Captain Cory Hawley was able to finish his burn checklist and light off _Michelangelo's_ engines. The plasma torch chambers at the aft end of the great kebab skewer that was Big Mike flared into brilliance just as the outer edges of the swarm that had been Sedna reached the ship. The combat was a clash of fundamental forces. Million-degree plasma tore great gashes in the swarm, even as the first of the bots settled against the outer hull of the ship and made fast.

Carbene grabbers and bond breakers in uncountable trillions swung into action, severing covalent bonds and frying molecular lattices that formed the hull plates of the ship. Even as _Michelangelo_ began moving off, gaining momentum as her plasma engines ramped up to operating temperature and pressure, the bots that comprised the swarm chewed steadily into her hull structures.

"Hull breach!" Kohl said. "Pressure drop on C deck... now the flight shielding...shielding's gone. Rad levels rising rapidly—"

" _Get a message off_ ...eject the emergency beacon...we've got to let UNISPACE know what's out here!"

Alarms sounded and lights flashed on Big Mike's command deck. Auto sequences were engaged and ISAAC, still functioning albeit at reduced capacity, shutdown the plasma torch engines as a precaution against explosion ...or worse.

But no one responded on the command deck. No one responded on B or C decks either.

Explosive decompression had already started and in the final seconds of the swirling gale that engulfed the command deck, Lieutenant Dean Kohl had one remaining thought before falling down the great black tunnel of unconsciousness.

The Old Ones aren't fifty light years away at all. They're right here. The Buggers have been here all along.

Then the swarm enveloped _Michelangelo_ completely and began catastrophic disassembly of all remaining structures.

Over the squeal, then the roar of escaping air, the plaintive sounds of ISAAC bleated out emergency warnings over and over again.

" _Level One Emergency...level one emergency...hull breach all decks and sections...all personnel, man the escape pods, man escape pods immediately...all personnel—"_

Nothing was ever heard from UNISPACE corvette UNS-212 again.
CHAPTER 25

U.N. Boundary Patrol Station 3

Adana, Turkey

February 4, 2111 (U.T.)

0315 hours

When the alert came in from Bioshield, Captain Faisal Jabril was happy about it. _Beats the hell out of standing watch all night in this garbage can._ _Now we get to kick swarm ass._ Unlike Annamaria Oliveira and the unfortunate crew of _Prairie Dog_ , geoplane _Badger_ sported some new gear and some new tactics.

So when the alert signal came in and _Badger_ deployed, along with her sister ship, geoplane _Ferret,_ Jabril was already counting down the minutes to first contact. Sixty five kilometers southwest of the BPS station at Adana, Turkey, _Badger_ plunged into some of the hardest rock and shale layers this side of the Med and burrowed like her namesake some four thousand meters below the seabed, hunting for swarms.

Armed with a new contraption called a quantum disentangler, already well proven in sims and tests topside, Jabril couldn't wait to give the new gadget a wringing out.

With even a modest amount of luck, they'd soon have the Bugs licking their wounds and hightailing it out of BPS 3's theater of operation: the European/Arabian tectonic plate boundary.

_Kiss all those quakes and tremors goodbye_ , Jabril smirked. _Nothing gets by_ Badger.

"Any contacts, SS1?"

The Sensors and Surveillance Tech, Corporal Kelly Ziegler, checked his board. "No profiles showing up, Skipper. Just the usual bumps and grinds. Looks like a busy day on the boundary. I've already seen two mag-five shocks in the last few minutes. P waves building now. We should feel rising amplitudes here...nothing to worry about."

"Very well."

And as Ziegler had predicted, _Badger_ was momentarily rocked by transverse shock waves from the nearby fault movements.

"Steady on this course," Jabril commanded. "We've got half an hour to the original coordinates Bioshield gave us...GEO, what's coming up?"

The Geo-Engineering Tech was Corporal Salaam. The Tunisian recruit, fresh out of _nog_ school, studied the profiler. "Inclusion zones mostly, sir. Transform faults, the usual thermoclines dead ahead, nothing major at the moment. Like SS1 said, the plates are jittery this morning. My read is we're going to see some rocking and rolling today."

Jabril was about to order a slight course change when Ziegler piped up.

"Contact now, Skipper. Bearing three one oh...looks like ten thousand meters. I'm showing swarm profile...classic EM spikes, thermals, acoustics, the works. It's big, whatever it is."

Jabril came back to study the waterfall display that showed sounder readings. "Let's go check it out. "DSO, steer left...three one oh degrees. Maintain depth. And DPS, let's get the disentangler warmed up."

Sergeant Romans was the Defense and Protective Systems Specialist (DPS). "DNT unit is powered up and online, sir."

"Very well...SS1, what's our range to contact?"

Ziegler read off his display. "This bearing....under nine thousand meters. We're on a direct course."

"Launch ANAD," Jabril ordered. "I don't want to get caught with our pants down."

"Launching ANAD now," DPS reported. A muffled _whoosh_ came through the hull as a slug of high pressure air sent the bot swarm into the rock surrounding them. "ANAD away...reporting ready in all respects. Configuring for solid-phase now...effectors coming out. We're on half-propulsor."

Jabril wanted to close the distance to the target faster, get there before the enemy swarm could start chewing away at rock, setting off tremors and quakes. "BOP, increase power. I want to chew through this crap and smash the Bugs before they can loosen any more faults."

Sergeant Emoglu was Borer Operator (BOP1). "We're in dense shale here, sir...clastic sedimentary rock. Quartz, chert and dolomite, mostly. Faults and seams everywhere. If we pump up too much, we may set off a few tremors ourselves. Recommend ten percent increase."

"Do it."

Outside _Badger,_ the ANAD master bot clawed its way through the rock strata, slamming atoms to replicate but maintaining a solid-phase config. It was like trying to squeeze into a crowded subway car. The rate of advance was slow and you had to be careful not to eat up too much rock or you could find yourself thrashed sideways with shifting rock plates.

Geoplane ops weren't for the faint of heart.

For many minutes, _Badger_ and her ANAD brood worked their way west by southwest, closing on the enemy swarm, now at a depth of nearly four thousand meters below the seafloor of the Med. As she descended deeper into the mantle, her life support systems went into overdrive, trying to shed as much heat as possible. Jabril thumbed sweat from his eyebrows and squinted at his command display.

"P-wave coming...a thousand meters off the port bow, sir!" Corporal Salaam saw it first on his waterfall. "It's a big one...looks like the target's already started chewing...reading big spikes in EM, massive swarm forming ahead. And more tremors... _Jeez_ , the display's gone haywire!"

"Hold on, everybody...we're going to get hit!"

The first wave slammed _Badger_ with a frontal smash, as a great fist of energy knocked them head-on. Hull plates screeched and there was an unmistakable feeling of sliding, sliding sideways and down.

"DSO, steer us into the wave!" Jabril commanded. "Propulsors to half...let's try to stay on course!"

_Badger_ turned slightly to present her nose to the main energy of the wave. A great shudder surged through her hull and the ship shook like a wet dog with pulse after pulse of seismic shocks as outside, huge plates bumped and ground against each other, shifting millions of tons of rock in a manner of seconds.

"More P and S waves coming, Skipper!" Salaam announced. "We're being bracketed, like a frontal spread!"

Jabril could visualize the assault. The enemy swarms were disassembling rock layers at strategic stress points along nearby fault lines, generating pulse after pulse of seismic energy, waves which were reinforcing themselves along the attack vector, with _Badger_ and her sister ship _Ferret_ at the focus points.

_Classic Config Zero tactics_ , Jabril told himself. "We've got to close and engage. How far is ANAD to the target?"

"Still five thousand meters, sir."

Jabril made a decision. "Contact _Ferret_. Tell Captain Rasmussen we're charging up HERF. I want a coordinated barrage...we'll have to chance it."

"Sir—"said Salaam. "That could make the tremors worse...loosen more rock. We could be crushed—"

"I know that, dammit! But we've got to stop the Bugs from loosening any more faults. If _Badger_ and _Ferret_ can coordinate a HERF barrage, we may be able to scatter their swarm just long enough to close and engage with our own ANAD."

The message was sent and _Ferret_ responded affirmatively. Target coordinates were exchanged and timing synchronized.

"HERF at full charge, sir," said the DPS.

"Fire!"

_Badger's_ rf transmitters belched a huge burst of radio freq waves into the surrounding rock. At the same moment, a thousand meters to starboard, _Ferret_ did the same. With any luck, the combined pulses would travel through the rock with enough energy to slam the enemy swarm and fry enough bots to keep them from making any more mischief.

More tremors shook _Badger_ over the next few minutes and Jabril ordered the ship trimmed to ride out the oncoming waves. Reverberations from HERF combined with fault shifting and sliding made for a tough, head-banging ride, as _Badger_ shook and shimmied like a bucking bronco in the seismic aftershocks.

"SS1, anything on the scope?"

Ziegler studied his waterfall. "Sounder showing EMs and acoustics, but diminishing in spread. Scattered...very diffuse...looks like we smacked 'em, sir. Minor P and S waves, low amplitude, petering out in this hard rock. We'll feel a few more bumps."

Jabril pumped a fist in the air. "That's it! This is our window. DSO, max borer ops. Full speed. DPS, command ANAD to three-quarters propulsor, too. And tell him to get his bond disrupters ready. We're going in slicing and dicing."

The final few hundred meters were closed rapidly. _Badger_ and _Ferret_ maneuvered to come at the outer edges of the enemy swarm from opposing vectors.

"DSO, bring us to all stop. DPS, go small," Jabril ordered. "I want to see what ANAD sees. And run the disentangler up full. I don't want the Bugs calling home to Mama for help."

_Badger_ slowed to a halt, embedded in dense rock strata, less than a thousand meters from the outer edge of the swarm. _Ferret_ acknowledged and came to a stop as well.

Sergeant Romans brought up an acoustic view from the ANAD master bot. To a nanotrooper, going "over the waterfall" often brought on a little dizziness, sometimes even nausea. Dropping down into the world of atoms and molecules was like that. But for geoplane doggies, the abrupt transition had been filtered down by Quantum Corps engineers.

The acoustic display flickered and flashed, until finally it settled down. Now they had a bot's eye view of a dense lattice of solid-phase quartz and calcite.

"Like groping through a forest at midnight," Jabril muttered, to no one in particular. Fuzzy blobs of silicon and oxygen atoms jostled their view, as the ANAD master bot eased and shoved and squeezed its way through the lattice. Visibility was limited. They were jammed into an endless forest of ranked blobs, quivering and vibrating as if stirred by a stiff wind.

"That's calcite, sir," offered Salaam, pointing out a multi-lobed cluster off to their right. "I recognize the oxygens that always look like they're humping carbon atoms. Geos call is a rhombohedron something or other."

Jabril wasn't interested. "We're not here for Geo 101...or sightseeing, Salaam. Distance to closet swarm element--?"

"Sounding now," said Romans. "I make it about two hundred meters. Mass centroid is dead ahead...but this is one big sucker."

"Like stalking a big cat at night," Jabril noted. "Go to full propulsor...I want to close before the buggers can chew up any more rock."

Tense minutes followed. _Badger's_ crew—Sikes the driver, Emoglu, Salaam, Ziegler, Romans—all stayed glued to their displays and consoles, barely daring to breathe. The acoustic sounder view hardly changed, as ANAD stalked his prey, now less than a hundred meters ahead.

Somewhere out there, the enemy was doing the same.

A blip chimed on Ziegler's sounder. "I got something, Skipper...profiler shows EM spike, possible aspect change, rising thermals—"

"Get ANAD primed for action," Jabril ordered. "All effectors out and locked. Bond disrupters primed."

"There they are...look there!"

Faintly visible in the thicket of jostling quartz and calcite molecules, a tan-gray shape darted in and out of view. Ziegler massaged the sounder for better resolution and the shapes became clearer. They were dozens, scores, even hundreds of them, filtering through the lattice.

"Bring ANAD to attack bearing," Jabril said quietly. "Close now. And make sure DNT's ready."

Romans checked the disentangler controls. "Hope this gadget works, Skipper. DNT on-line...already getting decoherence wakes in the area. Looks like somebody's trying to call home."

The whole theory behind the disentangler was something Jabril never pretended to understand. Somehow, the device could bollix up space-time enough to scramble the entanglement waves any quantum coupler emitted. One engineer at Quantum Corps had likened the process to dropping rocks into a spreading wave pattern in a pool. _Just breaks the waves right up...you can't decompose a signal. It all comes out like gibberish._

"I hope to hell this works," Jabril said under his breath. He studied the leading line of enemy bots as ANAD closed the remaining meters. They were cruciform devices, studded with effectors and propulsors, lending the bastards matchless maneuverability.

"Grappling now, Skipper," reported Romans. "We're engaging—"

"Kick their atomic asses!" Ziegler yelled.

ANAD swung into action with effectors flying. Almost immediately, the surrounding lattice shook and rocked as bond disrupters discharged, fritzing the display with clouds of debris and atom fluff. ANAD had replicated a big army and now the two forces collided with the ferocity of a dog fight, although this was one fight that couldn't be seen except with special instruments.

"We jammed 'em!" said Romans. "We stopped 'em in their tracks...look at those grabbers go...like a friggin' knife fight in an alley!"

Indeed, the forward edge of ANAD bots had thoroughly entangled itself among the enemy bots. Ziegler panned and zoomed and trained the sounder all up and down the line of engagement...the view was the same everywhere. Thrashing, swirling, puffs of atom parts, disrupters zapping, it was hard to tell by imagery what was happening. But it was plain to see that after only a few moments, ANAD had Config Zero's bots by the scruff of the neck and was kicking the bejeezus out of them everywhere.

"It's those new disrupters!" Romans exulted. "Long range sting from those babies—"

"Nah, got to be the grabbers...." said Ziegler. "Souped up carbenes, new geometry, stronger bonds...ANAD's like Godzilla, stomping 'em to smithereens!"

Jabril did a freeze frame on his own display, studying one poor Config Zero bot caught in the clutches of an ANAD replicant. "There's some kind of seam, or joint along those arms, just beyond the central node...that must be the processor. He's vulnerable there...if ANAD can get to it through all those waving effectors."

It had become axiomatic to Jabril and every other geoplane skipper that combat hundreds of meters below the Earth's surface was a new battlefield and the rules were still being written, the tactics and doctrine still being worked out. Letting Config Zero's swarms loose to roam freely along the tectonic plate boundaries was like pouring grease on a kitchen fire.

_Badger_ and _Ferret_ pressed their attack against the enemy swarms, throttling the bots up and down the line of engagement. To Jabril, it was plain that their new souped-up ANADs were well able to handle the bots Config Zero had sent out. In less than half an hour, Ziegler reported good news.

"Thermals falling fast, Skipper. EMs, acoustics...we've got 'em on the run now. Swarm dispersing and scattering into the rock."

Jabril studied the waterfall display, showing the extent of their adversary. Every signature was falling. ANAD had smashed Config Zero's bots but good. "Any sign of quantum comms?"

Ziegler shook his head. "None, sir. DNT's scrambled their comms like eggs. Tracking minimal decoherence wakes. It's like they're trying to call out but the line's busy."

"Good. Keep it that way. GEO, what about the fault systems...plate boundaries?"

Salaam indicated his profiler. "All quiet, sir. Normal bumps and grinds. A few jolts created by us and _Ferret_ , but nothing major. Mag Three or less, I'd say. We slammed 'em before they could chew up much rock."

"Probably prevented some big ones too," Jabril decided. "Get Adana Station on the line...we need to call this in."

The tactics _Badger_ and _Ferret_ had tried out, along with new mods to ANAD, were quickly emulated around the world. Boundary Patrol made _Badger's_ engagement four thousand meters below the Med a wargame model and orders were cut to all stations to get onboard and no more free-lancing. The disentanglers worked as advertised and with the right combination of HERF barrage to soften up the Bugs, souped-up ANADs to engage, and disentanglers to strangle all quantum comms, Config Zero's bot were finally easy pickings if the right script was followed.

Johnny Winger intended to make sure that happened.

_Badger_ and _Ferret_ completed their patrol, locating no more swarms in their sector, and returned to station at Adana. By normal rotation, the two geoplanes would be quickly succeeded by two more, _Mole Rat_ and _Tunneler_ , who would take over their patrol duties.

Jabril was ordered to a debriefing with CINCQUANT less than an hour after _Badger_ had surfaced at her home base.

"Good work, Captain," Winger said. "I've studied your downloads. Textbook engagement, in my estimation. No trouble with the DNTs?"

"None, sir—" Jabril was still toweling off sweat and chugging a cold drink in the ready room. Other troopers were checking in their gear behind him, jostling and joking with each other. "Worked like a charm. We choked off their comms and grabbed 'em by the balls. HERF 'em early to keep them scattered. Then slam 'em with ANAD...those new grabbers and disrupters did the trick. Q2 gave us good intel on what the bots had. All we had to do was get in close and punch away."

"I've sent your report on to UNSAC. Just got a ping back a few minutes ago. He and the S-G want to talk by vid. Clean yourself up and be presentable by 0700 hours your time. I'll call in and make the connects."

"Will do, sir." Jabril signed off and sighed. _No more frosty ones for me this morning_ , he said to himself. One thing about UNSAC you could count on: he'd go over your report word for word and question everything. Then there was the Secretary-General....

The formal briefing started promptly at 0700 hours, as promised. Winger did a quick rundown on mission specifics and details, including results of the engagement. As expected, UNSAC asked a lot of questions. The S-G, Kwame Kavaii, looked like he was asleep.

"Bottom line," Winger concluded, "we managed to prevent some major tremors and quakes in BPS 3's sector. BioShield made the detection and BPS 3 successfully prosecuted the contact. The tactics we worked out and simmed worked well and the swarms were engaged, scattered and rendered harmless by ANAD. I've taken the liberty of getting _Badger's_ mission report and details out to all stations. For the time being, this is the way we fight Config Zero underground."

Kavaii seemed to wake up at that. "But aren't these tremors still continuing, General? Last report I saw showed plate and fault stresses still building in most sectors, especially BPS 3. Is Dr. Hill on the line with us?"

UNSAC answered affirmatively. "I asked the good doctor to give us a geology update about Sector 3...the Great Rift Zone area...Arabian and Eurasian plate boundaries. Doctor—"

The Caltech geophysicist appeared in a small window on Jabril's screen. He was a thin black man, gray-white goatee, nearly bald on top. Antique glasses clung to the end of his nose as he perused some kind of tablet in the background.

"Yes, well, as you can see...stresses are continuing to build and release in small tremors in and around the plate boundary here. As I indicated in an earlier briefing, if stresses continue at this rate, the natural forces that are driving the east African section to the east will be accelerated. Normal plate tectonics are pushing the African and Eurasian plates apart at this seam. But the effect of the swarms has been to increase this rate of separation, dramatically so. The actual rate and mechanics depend on the model we use. But they're all converging on the same outcome."

UNSAC watched as Hill's animation played out. The screens all showed the same thing. Vastly speeded up, the east African rift valley was slowly but steadily wrenched from Africa and drifted out into the Indian Ocean, eventually becoming an elongated island continent.

"There are some people who think this is actually a good idea," UNSAC theorized. "Make a new sanctuary. And it's got Mount Kipwezi on it too. Maybe we quarantine Config Zero on this island."

Hill added, "Of course, the scenarios you're watching are speeded up dramatically for effect. Even with increased shear forces caused by swarm-induced tremors and quakes, the process would take centuries, probably millennia."

Kavaii was intrigued with Hill's theories. "Doctor, you did a briefing for the Security Council last week, a projection of what would happen if all these enhanced forces were to continue for a long time...do you still have that?"

Lamont Hill nodded. "Indeed, I do...here, let me switch files...it'll just take a sec—" He disappeared momentarily from the screen, working on something in the background.

UNSAC spoke up. The Commissioner was at the Quartier-General in Paris, in his seventy-seventh floor office. "I wasn't kidding about this new island continent Dr. Hill mentioned. Just as a what-if scenario, I had my Ops people in Q3 put together a little plan."

"What kind of plan, sir?" Winger asked.

"Just speculation, you understand. In this plan, the east African rift zone continues to pull away from Africa like it's doing now. In this plan, what's different is...we help it along."

"You're just slightly nuts," the Secretary-General said from New York. "How do we help it along?"

"Geo-engineering," UNSAC explained. "We do what Config Zero's doing. Deploy massive swarms, specially configured for solid-phase disassembly. Hell, we already did this on a smaller scale with that asteroid a few decades ago...Wilks-Lucayo something or other. Remember?"

"All too well, sir," Winger said. UNIFORCE and UNISPACE had run a combined op to deploy ANAD bots to chew away enough asteroid so it wouldn't impact Earth, at least not as much. Pieces of Wilks had struck the planet anyway, but a catastrophe had somehow been averted. "But Wilks was a speck compared to a planet."

"We're not disassembling a planet, Winger. We're just helping Mother Nature along. We deploy massive swarms, they chew away and in a few years, _boom_! New continent, right out there in the middle of the Indian Ocean. And here's the good part—" UNSAC was warming to the idea "—we build one humongous MOBnet, drape it over the island and isolate Config Zero and as many of these Assimilationists as we can on the island. A massive containment structure. Like one big summer camp." UNSAC smirked. "After all, we can't MOBnet Mt. Kipwezi where it is...it's inside the East Africa Sanctuary. Sanctuary laws and all that. But it's just a scenario."

The Secretary-General sniffed. "More like wishful thinking. Dr. Hill--?"

Hill's face was on the screen. "I have the file now, sir. I'll put it up—" Momentarily, everyone's screen refreshed and as the imagery settled down, a spherical 3-D projection of the Earth came into view. "What you're seeing is our primary model's prediction for continental positioning after ten thousand years, if the current rate of tectonic plate movement continues at its currently accelerated rate."

The entire land surface of the Earth had congealed, in the image, into a single supercontinent. The remainder of the Earth's surface was ocean, but as if a child had jammed pieces of a puzzle together in no particular order, all the continents had rammed together into one massive landform.

Hill went on. "Of course, it's common knowledge that our continents ride on massive plates of rock...tectonic plates...and these plates are in constant motion. Continents have been pushed together and pulled apart numerous times in Earth's history. In fact, three hundred million years ago, Earth looked very similar to this...Pangaea it was called. The supercontinent began breaking apart a hundred million years ago, to form the continents as we know them today."

"This is a natural process." UNSAC observed. "What's so different about your model?"

Hill answered simply, "The time frame. Normally this process takes hundreds of millions of years. And it's somewhat random, as you can imagine. The results depend on magma hotspots, columns of upwelling material from the mantle, things like that. The accelerated forces we're seeing along the Great Rift Zone are at work along most of the world's plate boundaries...that's why we're seeing so many quakes now. And we know these forces are caused by swarm action underground. Carried to its logical extreme, the end result would be close to what you're seeing here."

"What kind of time frame are we talking about, Doctor?" Winger asked.

"A matter of a few centuries...maybe less."

There was a stunned silence. UNSAC broke the quiet. "It's almost like the Earth's surface is being intentionally re-worked."

Winger swallowed hard. "We know Config Zero operates to execute something called the Prime Key. Maybe this is part of that."

Kavaii was just shaking his head, willing the whole idea to go away. "I just hope your data's wrong, Dr. Hill. Or your models. It seems to me that we need to isolate Config Zero...and Symborg too...anyway we can." The next question was addressed to UNSAC. "This little what-if scenario of yours...how much detail have you got?"

UNSAC shrugged. "Enough to drive a few simulations...that's about it. Q3 hasn't done any serious planning, any logistics, that sort of thing...if that's what you're asking."

"It's doable? I mean, technically feasible to accelerate this rifting with our own swarms? Wouldn't that be pretty dangerous?"

UNSAC acknowledged the truth of what Kavaii was saying. "It is possible. Sure it's dangerous, but then so is Config Zero. But there's a hell of a lot of engineering to be done...the bot structure itself. The configs and config drivers. And this idea of a MOBnet...nobody really knows if that's doable...a MOBnet to cover an entire continent. In theory, it's feasible. In practice...who knows?"

Kavaii seemed to make up his mind. "I want more details. As soon as you can get them. This may be the most hare-brained scheme I've ever heard. But it also may be a way of isolating Config Zero once and for all."

"Sir, there is one other factor to be considered," Winger said.

"What's that, General?"

"The disentanglers. Captain Jabril here used them on his last patrol. Captain—"

Jabril spoke up. "Worked like a charm, sir. Don't ask me to explain how. Somehow they mess up quantum signals. The swarms we engaged apparently had no comm link back to Config Zero. That made them easier pickings for our own ANAD formations. Without a link back to Config Zero, many of our normal tactics and weapons worked a lot better."

Kavaii leaned forward toward the camera, so that his face nearly filled the vid from New York.

"Gentlemen, understand what I'm saying here: UNSAC's plan is a screwball plan and it may never work. Just the thought of what it would take to get such an idea through the Security Council, let alone the General Assembly, makes my head hurt. But I want to have as many options as possible. Intentionally re-shaping the Earth's surface...that's a nightmare scenario in anybody's book. If that's what Config Zero is up to, then we have to do whatever it takes to stop him...it...them... _whatever_. Assimilationists and Symborg be damned. UNSAC, get me details on the engineering and the costs to do this little stunt of yours. I'm willing to sacrifice part of Africa if we can isolate Config Zero forever and put a stop to all these quakes. I don't know if I can make others see it the same way I do...but I intend to try.

"I want specifics in a week. Is that understood?"

A chorus of yessirs circled around the Net from each location. Table Top, Paris, Adana, Turkey and Pasadena...all registered their assent.

The S-G signed off and his window went dark, shifting over to the blue field of the UN logo and shield.

Johnny Winger's head swam with the implications of what had been discussed. Just the evacuations alone would tax every government and political authority to the breaking point. Not to mention the inevitable damage from more quakes and tremors. Geo-engineering on a continental scale. Hell, he himself had nearly died years before trying to guide ANAD swarms eating up the Wilks-Lucayo asteroid, before it could slam into Earth.

And the prospect of Symborg and the Assimilationists ever agreeing to live forever in MOB quarantine on an island seemed remote at best.

He wondered if maybe they were actually doing the Old Ones' job for them.

Config Zero had spent nearly two hundred and ten cycles analyzing the effects of the disentanglers on its command and control infrastructure. Logged as Device 088, the disentanglers created great and continuing interference with quantum signals to and from all elements and bot masters. The exact nature of the devices wasn't yet clear to Config Zero. Interference patterns were analyzed and entanglement state calculations performed, but no clear countermeasure could be determined.

This frustrated Config Zero, though 'frustration' was not an emotional state vector currently archived in its memory. Continuing, mostly fruitless, analysis occupied many processor cycles and was only interrupted by self-protective timers which shifted Config Zero's processing stream to other pursuits.

Observational evidence from remote swarms indicated that the Humans were emplacing numerous copies of Device 088 around all Quantum Corps and Boundary Patrol bases and installations. Interference with normal signals intercepts increased by three hundred and fifty percent. As a result, the "Failed Acquisition of Signal" file grew exponentially. This triggered additional actions.

Config Zero communicated all this to the Keeper at Europa, requesting additional instructions. The Keeper dutifully relayed all Config Zero's signals and communications to the Central Entity, still many light-years distant.

The reply, when it came, instructed Config Zero to do one thing and one thing only:

Execute the Prime Key.
CHAPTER 26

Solnet/WorldNet Headquarters

New York City

February 7, 2111 (U.T.)

2200 hours

Riley Baynes was 3rd shift Managing Editor at Solnet and he'd never seen anything like this. Baynes studied the notes that Anna Kolchinova had squirted him off the comsat from Paris and just shook his head. Chief News Editor Gillian Leroux did the same.

"Your source, Anna...how credible is he...or she?"

Kolchinova shrugged, her blond tresses ruffling as she massaged her keyboard at the Paris office.

"You can see for yourself, Riles. It's a he and he's on the UNIFORCE General Staff, assistant planner in their Q3 shop. That's Operations, by the way. I rate him as pretty trustworthy. I am trying to corroborate with other sources, of course. But that takes time. I figured you needed to see this."

Baynes _hmmm'ed._ He scrolled down some more. "Unbelievable...this is science fiction, if you ask me. I mean look at this, Gil: _'massive injections of ANAD swarms along the plate boundaries...ANAD optimized for solid-phase disassembly ops...anticipated refugee and evacuation efforts to be handled by UN...mobility barrier over the whole shebang...'_ Sounds like something straight out of Jules Verne. Can they even _do_ this?"

Kolchinova said, "My source thinks they can. Not only that...planning is already underway. I can confirm UNDERO...that's the refugee and resettlement people at the UN...have already been contacted. They're in Geneva. I've got a source there who's passed me a copy of the email."

"Friggin nuts...that's what this is," Leroux muttered. "We need to get some academics in on this...geologists, engineers. Christ, this is geo-engineering on an unprecedented scale. Think of it: separating a whole side of Africa and shrink-wrapping it with some kind of barrier. The cost alone must be stupendous. And the chance for screw-ups..." She let that thought hang in the air.

"Anna—" Baynes had made up his mind. "Stay on this. Press your sources, especially the one at UNIFORCE. Something this big...I got to have specifics. Dates, times, specific plans and people. I need more evidence before we can run with this. Sweet-talk him, if you have to...but get specifics."

"Will do," Kolchinova said. She signed off and sat back in her chair. _I can do better than sweet talk, Riley._ Solnet's Paris office was little more than a glorified closet and Kolchinova felt cramped, even trapped like a rat in a cubicle maze. _Got to go for a walk_. Paris was a walking town and she did some of her best thinking when her legs were moving.

As she left the building, she pulled out her phone and pinged _GHOSTCHASER_. That's was the name she had given to the UNIFORCE staffer. She didn't know his full name, of course, but she found it expedient to build an aura of objectivity around him by labeling him with something nondescript. Thus... _GHOSTCHASER_.

_Can we meet in an hour? LeDuc's on Rue du Montaigne...you know the place_.

She got a response back in moments. _Make it two hours...all OTR_.

OTR was press-speak for off the record. Anna punched off her wristphone and adjusted her dataspecs. In the corner of her view, the glasses laid down directions to the café. _Walk two blocks...turn right at Rue Ratouf...then go two more blocks...._

She headed out.

The gothic spires of the Sorbonne were in view when she settled down in an outside seat and table at LeDuc's and ordered a glass of Merlow. Her source was nowhere in sight, but it was early...more than half an hour to go. _GHOSTCHASER_ had always been punctual to a fault. Military were like that. UNIFORCE did everything on a schedule, _probably even pee'ed and pooped that way,_ she sniffed.

Soon enough, the O-3 showed up and took a seat.

You could best describe _GHOSTCHASER_ as lean, lean in every dimension you could measure. Lean face, lean body, even lean eyes. Anna had the impression he might even be two-dimensional...turn one way and he'd disappear. Maybe _GHOSTCHASER_ was a good nom-de-guerre, after all.

"I can only stay half an hour," he reminded her. He waved a waiter over, made a drink order, then proceeded to pinch off pieces of baguette and chew thoughtfully.

Anna leaned forward on her elbows. "My editors tell me we need more details, more specifics, before we can run this story."

"You know I can't get into operational stuff. Just background. Not for attribution. Call me a 'highly placed UNIFORCE source', if you want. But no names."

"I don't know your name."

_GHOSTCHASER_ shrugged. "I'm just a messenger. Names aren't important."

"They are for credibility. For starters, why are you doing this? Why go outside the chain of command, mouth off to the press like this? If I know anything about UNIFORCE, I know they have established processes...for everything."

_GHOSTCHASER_ munched for a moment, sipped some wine. A steady stream of pedestrians and tourists surged up and down the Rue du Montaigne, only a few meters from their table. Horns honked. Jetcabs and buses jockeyed for position.

"Sometimes our processes aren't enough. I don't know...I think maybe we should let the Assimilationists alone...let them do what they want. Hell, maybe they _are_ the future."

"You mean...assisted mass suicide is okay...that's the wave of the future?"

"No, of course not. Now you're putting words in my mouth. Look, nobody can stop technology. Nobody can stop evolution. I'm saying maybe what the Assimilationists are doing is just the next step. The next leap. Maybe we are supposed to be part of something greater. Maybe we _are_ descended from bots, like that German scientist said. Call it whatever you want: the cosmos, the Mother Swarm, universal peace and love, whatever. UNIFORCE is pretty single-minded about this. They do what they're told, like the soldiers they are. The Powers That Be have decided Assimilationists are a threat to Humanity. Me... I'm not so sure."

"You implied, the last time we met, that Project Quarantine has an objective of rounding up as many angels and Assimilationists as possible and confining them...on this new island continent they trying to create."

_GHOSTCHASER_ nodded. "That's true. Inside the Quartier-General, they're called ' _angels and asses_.' It's pretty much a violation of just about every nation's laws on personal liberty and expression...even the Human Rights Declaration."

Anna studied her source carefully. "Some people say angels and Assimilationists aren't human...that they don't have rights."

"Bullshit. If I put on glasses dark enough, I can't see you. Then I can say you don't exist. There are factions in the UN and inside UNIFORCE that are pressing for exactly what I'm describing...concentration camps for angels. I know we already have Sanctuaries for swarms...why not just stick angels and Assimilationists in there too? A ready-made camp. In fact, that's been suggested. But this idea of using our own swarms in a vast geo-engineering effort to detach part of Africa and make it a new continent...Christ, they want to cover it with a MOBnet. They want to make it a prison and put it out of sight, out of mind. Sanctuaries are like bedsores...you always know they're there. Making a new continent is like building a new wing on the house. You can lock the door and pretend Granny's just sleeping in there."

Anna held up her notetab. "I still need specifics. What about the timeline for this project?"

"Like I said...operational stuff.... but I _can_ tell you this much: it's already underway. Schedules are being laid out, personnel assigned, contracts let...all classified very high...way above my pay grade."

Anna pecked some notes into her wristpad. "Tell me one thing: can we really do this? Or is this just some propeller-head's idea of a tech paper come to life."

_GHOSTCHASER_ swirled wine around in his glass, ran his fingers around the rim and tasted it experimentally. "Good question. I'm not involved in day to day planning. But I've seen some of the contract stuff...not up close...but enough to know some serious budget and manpower is being devoted to this. UNIFORCE departments guard their budgets like the crown jewels. Nobody would give up a penny if this weren't real...and it comes from the top. The whole place is like an anthill someone kicked over. It's buzzing and stirring day and night." _GHOSTCHASER_ leveled an even gaze at her. "UNIFORCE means to do this...or at least give it the old college try. They're deadly serious about Symborg, Config Zero, Assimilationists, angels, the whole lot of them."

"Okay, fair enough." Anna stopped working her wristpad and looked back at her source. "Sixty-four million Euro question: should this project be stopped? _Can_ it be stopped? Some of my viewers will say we should have kicked Assimilationist butt years ago. Others say that Nirvana, or whatever the hell they all look forward to... can't come soon enough."

It was obvious that _GHOSTCHASER_ had given this some thought. "The whole idea of quarantining angels and Assimilationists, under the guise of dealing with Symborg and Config Zero, needs to be debated...debated publically. There should be some kind of vote...some kind of information put out on the pros and cons. For UNIFORCE...or _anybody_ ...to unilaterally declare war on something a lot of decent people believe in...and understand, I think they're misguided too...but that's beside the point...for UNIFORCE to conduct open warfare against angels is wrong, and dangerous. CONFIG Zero's an enemy. I get that. Symborg's just a minor celebrity in the scheme of things. But angels and Assimilationists...they're your neighbors and mine. Aside from the technical aspects of partitioning east Africa off into a new island...even the idea of quarantining your neighbors and mine...I mean, do I really have to spell it out? Where does it stop? What if UNIFORCE decides that blond female Solnet reporters are a grave threat to world security...where does that stop?" With that, _GHOSTCHASER_ pulled out a few bills and tossed them on the café table. "I've said too much already. I have to get back...my shift doesn't end for another four hours." He got up and turned out into the crowd jostling along the Rue du Montaigne.

"I need more specifics, if you want Solnet to run this—"

But he was gone in an instant, slipping easily into the crowd flowing down the street.

_Now what?_ she wondered. She scanned the sparse notes she had taken on her wristpad. She's even snapped a few surreptitious photos of the guy with the small camera in the pad. Not that it would matter much, without details.

Anna Kolchinova paid the table bill and launched herself into the crowd.

Philosophy and opinion was all well and good...as background. Context. _I need facts and figures. Names and dates. Specs and hard data._

Quantum Corps wasn't the only organization that could put bots into places they didn't belong.
CHAPTER 27

UNIFORCE Headquarters

Paris, France

February 10, 2111 (U.T.)

0700 hours

Johnny Winger knew that somehow, in some way he couldn't quite articulate, Rene was the key to defeating Config Zero. He hadn't worked out how, exactly, in his mind. But it was a strong feeling and it was getting stronger.

His thirteen-year old daughter Rene wasn't down there on the fiftieth floor of the Quartier-General in Containment. No, that wasn't Rene. And from that fact flowed a number of other facts. The object...swarm...entity...presence...whatever you wanted to call it... inside the Containment chamber was a source of valuable intelligence. She was a tool, nothing more. Even a weapon in the fight against Config Zero.

That was why Johnny Winger decided to go visit Rene in Containment. To convince himself that these things were true.

Dr. Falkland was at the main console when he got there.

"We're running some tests, General. Trying to fine-tune the Quantum State Grabber. Colonel Lofton wants to try to increase resolution in these sessions. More detail. I'm running some of your daughter's latest imagery through a new state filter to see how it works."

Winger stood before the porthole and studied Rene. He tried to tell himself this wasn't their daughter. It was hard.

Rene lay on her side on some kind of bed...it looked comfortable enough. Her head was propped up on a pile of pillows. She was entangled in covers. Her eyes were closed. Something flashed just over the top of her head and Winger swallowed hard when he realized what it was. Part of the bot cloud that formed her head was streaming off as loose mechs. It was like her head was surrounded by a faint, sparkling halo...her config wasn't holding.

He hadn't seen _that_ effect before.

"Dr. Falkland, why is her config not holding? The top of her head...her hand there—"

Falkland peered inside next to Winger. "Oh, that...it's probably the effect of the Grabber. We pulled R9 out but the Grabber makes her config drivers work hard. Not sure why, exactly, but when the Grabber's operating, it seems to mess with her config. The configuration manager has to re-build structure at a faster rate. It's kind of like an infection, in a way. You know...when you have a fever—"

Winger nodded. _She's a tool. A transmitter. A comm channel. Just keep saying that_ ....

"Is Colonel Lofton getting what he wants from this?"

Falkland shrugged. "I suppose. Why don't you ask him yourself? He's right in there—" He indicated a closet-sized room off to the side. The door was shut. "He's fixed up a sort of theater in our equipment room. Your daughter's imagery data is massaged in this console and projected in 3-D in that room. He says it's like being inside her mind."

Winger went over and pulled open the door. It wasn't locked.

Lofton was inside, reclining in some kind of cocoon-like seat. The room had been altered into a sort of theater in the round. The interior walls were curved so that Lofton lay back in the middle of large cylinder. Real-time imagery, presumably from Rene's processor files, played across the interior surface...a steadily shifting collage of scenes, images, snatches of graphics, pixelated mashups, visual static. There were no obvious patterns to what was displayed. But Lofton gazed around at the view mesmerized, in open awe of what he was seeing.

"General, I didn't see you...squeeze in here. Shut the door, too, sir, if you don't mind. I don't want to miss anything."

Winger squeezed in. "A swarm's eye view of something, I presume?"

Lofton nodded. "It is, sir. That's what we think anyway. This is from a session this morning. There's just so much...we're working night and day to interpret all this data, but it's hard. This, for example...is it from the Devil's Eye anomaly? Is it from the Old Ones? Is it somebody's nightmare...we just don't really know. Photons from outer space...that's all I can say right now. But it's showing us something."

Winger struggled to stay calm. He knew how Dana felt. "Tell me, Colonel...what exactly are we dealing with here? Is Rene a transmitter? Is she a receiver? A router or a portal or what exactly?"

"Maybe a little of all of that, sir. It sounds flaky, but she seems to be operating like a spirit medium...you know channeling dead people and famous historical figures. Only we think she's channeling comms and processor activity from some distant source. Possibly even the Old Ones...the _Delta P_ phenomenon, to give it Farside's official name."

Winger watched the diffuse patterns playing out across the walls. "Rene's going to be our best weapon against Config Zero, Lofton."

Lofton seemed to agree. "General, I spent last night reading about Ultra...the cypher system used by the British to decrypt the Nazis' secret Enigma codes in World War II...a century and a half ago. You know Churchill wouldn't let his generals fight any battle that might reveal what the Brits were doing. He didn't want to compromise Ultra. A lot of people died because of that. Sometimes, I think of your daughter in there as our version of Ultra. If we're smart, we can read what she's telling us."

"I've got a better idea, Colonel. I want to take Rene into the field. A little op I've got in mind."

That made Lofton sit up. "An op, sir? With my primary source?"

Winger had to smile. Like a lot of intel rats, Lofton sometimes got lost in a maze of codes and ciphers and indicators. You had to drop them some crumbs from the real world so they could find their way back to civilization.

"Just a little something I was cooking up, something to run by UNSAC. We've got these whizbang disentanglers now and they seem to work. If I could put a few of these around Config Zero's location...Mount Kipwezi in the African Sanctuary...we could jam up his command and control infrastructure. That would make it easier for Boundary Patrol to engage and destroy underground swarms. Also, DNTs emplaced around Config Zero might help us isolate the bastard from outside comms. Who knows: once isolated, that cloud of bugs might just be easy pickings. We might be able to fry the whole works and put an end to this problem once and for all...no more Symborg, no more angels, no more Assimilationists."

Lofton shutdown the imagery and the curved walls went dark. He sat up. "How exactly does taking my primary source help out, sir?"

Winger figured that was a valid question, one he was sure UNSAC himself would ask. "Two reasons: first, to have on-site intelligence as to what Config Zero's up to. And second, to see if Rene can detect and possibly influence or distort Config Zero signals to and from outside comms...the Old Ones or _Devil's Eye_ or whoever it's talking to off-Earth. If Rene's really channeling Config Zero signals, maybe I can use her to insert new signals or spoof normal signals to and from the Big Guys. A new form of quantum warfare, I guess."

Lofton was skeptical. "We'd have to learn a hell of a lot more about how to read these images, General. We're in the baby stage now...just learning some words. We don't know the vocabulary, the rules of grammar, we don't know much of anything."

Winger stepped out of the little theater and motioned Lofton to come too. The two of them stood before a porthole that looked into the Containment chamber. Rene had changed position, and seemed to be fidgeting, trembling, maybe having a dream or a nightmare. All the bed covers had become scrunched up. Imagery pulled by the Quantum State Grabber flickered across Falkland's screens...staticky, jerky imagery.

"I know that, Colonel. But somehow, I'm sure Rene's the key to the whole idea. If I can do something to disrupt Config Zero's comms permanently, I need to do it. The DNTs will help; they've already helped. But with Rene, I've got a chance to really get in there and gum up the works...if we understand what she's telling us and use her the right way."

Lofton seemed resigned to the idea. "That's my whole point, sir. We don't really understand yet. But she _is_ your daughter."

Winger wondered about that. "No, Colonel...that's not my daughter in there. It pains me to admit that. I lost my daughter in this war years ago, when she was kidnapped and disassembled. She spent God knows how many weeks in a living hell. What you see inside that containment chamber is just a shadow of the real Rene. To you, she's an intelligence source into the Old Ones. To me, she's a weapon I can use against Config Zero. I have to think about it like that."

"She's waking up, General," Falkland informed them. He was following neural activity traces on a screen on his console. "Coming out of Stage Four now...neuromuscular inhibits dropping...full processor now on-line...config manager, buffers, coupler...all coming up."

"I just want to talk to her," Winger decided. The irony of that should have disturbed him but it didn't. He'd just finished telling Lofton how Rene was a weapon and not a daughter. Now he wanted a little fatherly chat...with a weapon. It didn't make any sense. None of this made any sense.

Lofton cycled the hatch open and Winger went inside. He bent down and saw his daughter's eyes flutter open. They offered no recognition, no real emotion. _Flat button eyes_. In his mind, he knew it was the config. Not enough bots to simulate life in there. Falkland said it was the State Grabber. Winger wondered.

"How do you feel, honey?"

Rene regarded him coolly. "Daddy, I think I'm not like you anymore."

What am I supposed to say to that? Yes, you're different, but at least you're better looking than Gort the robot. No, we're just alike, except you're a cloud of bots and I'm skin and bones...other than that—

"Are you comfortable, Rene? Too hot...too cold? You look kind of sleepy to me."

His daughter nestled deeper into the covers. Winger noticed her face wasn't quite tracking right. An eye, part of her lips...when she moved suddenly, features became smeared and fuzzy, like the bots were sluggish. Probably the Grabber, he assumed.

"Daddy, when can I leave? I'm tired of being in this room. I want to play with my pad. Where is it, anyway?"

"Rene, sweetie...you've been sick. The doctors are running tests. They're just trying to make you better, that's all. You need to be a good girl and be patient."

"I want to leave. Can't I just go outside for awhile? I haven't seen the sun in like _ages_." Her eyes, now fully stable, pleaded with him.

Winger took a deep breath. Might as well get this out. "As a matter of fact, we _are_ going on a little trip. Soon as I get permission from the doctors."

'Where are we going?"

"How'd you like to go far away...I'm thinking Africa? Go on safari, see all the wild animals. How would that be?"

Her eyes widened. Maybe a little spark in there...but it could have been the harsh lighting inside the containment chamber. "I'd like to do that, Daddy. When is it... today?"

And so the conversation went for several more minutes. Dad and daughter chitchat. _Your Mom and I love you very much. Don't give the doctors any trouble, just do what they say. We'll be leaving on our trip in a few days. Daddy has to make arrangements. Do you still have those dreams? Are they bad dreams?_

The last question made Rene think for a moment. She had a way of curling her lips just so...somehow, that gesture transferred over. The bots managed to get that right and it cut right into Winger's heart.

"Not so bad. Mostly they're just like pictures in my mind. Or vids, only kind of jerky, like pieces. I see stars sometimes. Lots of stars like in the night sky. And big ships. And explosions...Liam would like that a lot. He likes things that blow up."

Winger turned to look at the porthole. _Falkland, Lofton, I hope you're getting all this._ "Just relax here today, honey. I've got to talk with the doctors...see what they want to do next. After I make all the arrangements, we'll go on our little trip to Africa. I could maybe bring your googlepad so you could study up on Africa."

Rene seemed sleepy now and she turned over on her side. "Great, Dad...bring my pad...I'm just kinda tired now—" She mumbled something else.

Winger circled his finger at the porthole. _Open up_. Moments later, the hatch cycled and he stepped out.

Falkland had that look that said _Well?_ "I was hoping you could get her to talk about her dreams some more. Verbals help us calibrate what the State Grabber gets."

But Winger just wanted to get out of there. "Keep doing what you're doing, Doc. Colonel..."

Lofton was shutting the chamber hatch, cycling the lock. "Sir?"

"I've got a briefing with UNSAC in two hours. Meet me in my office in half an hour. I want your input on this mission. I intend to recommend to UNSAC that we take Rene with us as part of the Detachment. Sort of an auxiliary trooper, I guess. UNSAC will want to know what sort of intel you're getting from Rene. I want to know if you can duplicate all this—" Winger swept his arms around the lab—"in the field...on a mission. Grab imagery for intelligence purposes. And how feasible it might be to inject some misinformation into her process—I mean, her mind—something that gums up comms with Config Zero and his cronies."

Lofton secured the hatch and sort of shrugged. "We have no idea whether this imagery is coming on a one-way channel or whether we can send anything back at all...the idea hasn't been tested."

Falkland was intrigued. "It might be possible, General. I can imagine some methods that might work...of course, they haven't been tried. Just theory, you understand."

Winger was already headed out the door. "Be in my office in half an hour, both of you. You're going to help me put together a little briefing for UNSAC."

The briefing came at noon. Jurgen Steiner, Security Affairs Commissioner was just finishing off some kind of sandwich and swatting crumbs from his otherwise spotless desk when Winger entered. UNSAC waved him to a credenza and table arrangement near the window.

"Come. Sit. General, your message said you wanted to talk with me about something, some kind of proposed mission?"

Winger went over the particulars of his proposed mission into the East Africa Sanctuary.

UNSAC watched the details scroll down his screen. Steiner always looked like he had indigestion, Winger thought, occasionally looking up to check his reaction. A pained look, eyes down to slits, mouth in a deep frown. _Jeez, you'd think the man was sitting on a butcher knife_.

"I have several questions, Winger. First, why you? Surely we have enough qualified troopers to fill out a special ops detachment for this kind of mission. I don't much care for risking my CINCQUANT on a little field trip into enemy territory."

"Sir, there are plenty of qualified command ratings who could handle this. Actually, my reasons relate to why I'm including an auxiliary trooper in the personnel list. I realize this is not standard procedure—"

UNSAC studied the details more closely. "Rene Winger. That's your daughter...the one who...er, the one who—"

"That's correct, sir. The one who's actually an angel. Sir, we have ample evidence now from recent geoplane ops and other sources that the disentanglers work pretty well. They seem to scramble quantum comms to and from Config Zero. I want to use that. My daughter spent time as a hostage of Config Zero years ago. Q2 has determined that, because she's is an angel and she endured some kind of living hell in the Sanctuary, she has some special insight into what Config Zero's up to, its plans, its motives, if I can use that term. To be perfectly honest, sir, Rene's become kind of a portal, an inside source as to what the swarms are doing, where they're going."

Steiner regarded Winger gravely. "I read the reports, General. Your daughter can produce dreams, some kind of imagery, that correlates well with other sources. A long-distance spy, I guess. Seems like hocus-pocus to me."

Winger had to admit there was some truth to that. "I have to go with what Lofton and Dr. Falkland tell me. She has dreams. They've got some kind of gadget that can pull the imagery from her processor and display it. And Lofton worked out a way of matching the imagery with what SpaceGuard and Farside can detect of swarm movements, deep space and locally. It's complicated and I don't pretend to understand it, sir. But, well, if my daughter can help in this fight in any way, I want to pursue it."

UNSAC sat up abruptly. "Even if it means risking her life in enemy territory? Winger, you know I can't approve putting civilians into combat situations."

"Sir, my plan is to use Rene as a key part of our mission. Lofton thinks she can not only receive signals but send them as well. We can use that. We _should_ use that...to put some counterfeit signals into Config Zero's comms. At least, to know in detail what the bastard's up to. We have a chance to really gum up its command and control system...and, with the disentanglers working, that might just make the difference."

UNSAC sipped at some hot tea and perused the mission plan again. "I can't argue against your basic strategy, Winger. Look, I'm tasked with trying to contain Config Zero, destroy his swarms and, oh by the way, could you make Symborg look like a fool while you're at it. That's from the SG and the politicians. Anything that makes my life and job easier, I'm all for it. But Rene...your daughter...if something happens, it won't just be your neck in the noose, Winger, it'll be mine as well. I can hear the investigators now: _'What exactly were you thinking, Herr Commissioner, when you authorized putting a thirteen-year old girl on the Detachment? Please tell us..._.'"

Winger hated saying this but it was the truth. "Sir, what you see down there in Containment isn't Rene. That's not my daughter down there all hooked up like a lab rat in Dr. Falkland's house of horrors. My daughter was lost years ago, when she was first taken hostage. I don't know exactly what Config Zero did to her. But I intend to—" he stopped, realizing that he was walking headlong into revenge territory . ""What I mean to say, sir, is that the swarm entity down stairs that everybody including me calls Rene Winger really isn't Rene. She's a tool. Maybe even a critical weapon in this fight. I recommend we use her...as I've outlined in my plan."

There was an ever so slight, almost imperceptible nod to UNSAC's massive Teutonic head. The moustache twitched. His eyes narrowed and his lips tightened.

"It's against my better judgment, but damn it, you're right and I know it. We need every weapon we can get. Winger, put your detachment together. With your daughter. I'll think up something to hold off the inevitable recriminations. Get down there to Africa and smash that cloud of bugs for good."

Winger stood up, retrieved his pad and saluted. "With pleasure, sir." He left UNSAC's suite of offices with a determined set to his face.

There was just one more detail he had to deal with before he started fleshing out the detachment. Checking the time, he realized that she would probably be down in the General Staff commissary about now.

He took the lift to the eighteenth floor and went looking.

Dana Tallant had chosen a seat out on the café terrace overlooking a view of the Jardin du Luxembourg. Early morning traffic crawled and honked along the Boulevard Saint-Michel, just below her table, which sat under a small striped awning along the outer rail. A faint shimmer above the rail betrayed barrier bots protecting the cafe-goers, from birds, other swarms, stray jetcabs and assorted nuisances.

She was just taking her first sip of the cappuccino when she spied her husband headed toward the table.

"You left early this morning, Wings. I felt a kiss, thought it was you, but when I opened my eyes, nothing. It _was_ you, wasn't it?"

Winger sat down and pinched off part of her bagel, stuffing it in his mouth. "What if I told you it was actually Howie. I programmed him to give you a good bye kiss every day."

Tallant rolled her eyes. "I'd say that sounds about like a man. What's up?"

Winger described the mission he had just briefed UNSAC on. "There will be two detachments. Alpha deals with Config Zero in Africa...locating and activating disentanglers on his front doorstep. Bravo goes to Rome. Symborg's got a rally planned. Lofton over at Q2 and I both think without comms from Config Zero, we can grab Symborg's master bot and be out of there before anybody knows what happened. I'm heading up Alpha Detachment."

Tallant peered at her husband through a wreath of steam from her cup. "Why am I not surprised? You've been whining and bitching like an old lady about being cooped up in an office. I guess I'm only surprised this hasn't happened before now. Sure, we always send our flag rank 0-9s on suicide missions. Sound tactical thinking, Winger. You'll get a medal for this, I'm sure."

"Hey, I've got some reasons and yes, they are sound tactical reasons. This is not a briefing. I just wanted you to know the scoop."

"So, who's on board? Anybody I know?"

Winger went down the rosters, ticking off names and ratings. "I'm also taking Rene with me to Africa."

Dana Tallant looked up and blinked at her husband. "Excuse me? Did you say you're taking Rene with you?"

Winger explained his reasoning. Right away, he could see Dana pulling back, withdrawing into herself. Her lips became a tight line when she did that. She wouldn't make eye contact. Words became syllables.

"Sound tactical reasons?"

Winger knew this would happen. "Look, I know how you feel. I feel the same way—"

"Sure."

"What I'm saying is that, like it or not, Rene's got a gift. Whatever the explanation, she's important to defeating Config Zero. You know that. I know that. If we don't use her gift, there's no telling how many people might die. I _have_ to bring her along."

Dana was skeptical. "You _have_ to bring a thirteen-year old along to help place some gadgets around a mountain, inside a protected sanctuary, with swarms and God knows what else in the area. You _have_ to do this?"

"Dana—"

Tallant held up her hand. "Please. No more lectures. I know she's not really our daughter. I know Rene's gone. It's just...it's just—" She wiped at her eyes with a napkin. "It's so hard, you know...hard to give up. Hard to admit—" She swallowed, dabbed at the corners of her eyes, then straightened herself up. "—hard to admit that we've been living like this for so many years. I don't know what to call it...living a lie. Living a simulation. I know lots of people do this...fab their dear departed loved ones and keep them around for old times' sake, like pets. But, Wings, you and me...I mean, I had hope that Falkland—"

Winger reached across the table and took her hands in his. "Look, we just wanted to have a normal family. But, Dana, these aren't normal times. We're at war and the front lines are everywhere. The enemy's everywhere. He could be that table over there...or those jetcabs circling around the Eiffel Tower out there. We can't live a normal life when the world isn't normal. I can't explain what kind of gift Rene has, only that we can use it...and yes, that means using _her_ ...to defeat Config Zero. Or at least, keep the bastard horde of bugs from running and operating its swarms all over the world."

"What can Rene do that your disentangler gizmos can't do?"

"She gives us intel on what the swarms are doing. Lofton thinks the comms can even be two-way...in other words, she can send and receive. If that's true, and it hasn't been fully tested, we have a chance to put a real hurt on Config Zero. Mess up the comm links between Zero and his troops and we're halfway to putting slimebag out of business. Who knows: we could even put DNTs to work with some kind of upgraded replication blocker, like we tried to use in Berlin, and Zero might just be ripe to be picked off. Dana, we've got to try."

She seemed resigned. "I know. I know. I get it. Just promise me one thing, Wings—"

"Anything...you name it."

She loosened his finger grip on her hands and gently placed his hands on the table, patting them. "Keep Rene away from that bastard, whatever you do. Don't bring her into proximity with Config Zero...I don't want her...whatever part of her that's still left, that's still human...to have to go through that again. Promise me that, Wings. Don't put Rene through that again."

Winger took a deep breath. In his own mind's view of the mission, bringing Rene before Config Zero was part of the tactics. "I'll do what's best for the mission, Dana. That's all anyone can ask. I don't need her to setup the DNTs. But interfering with comms...Falkland and Lofton both say the closer the better. It's just how quantum systems work. We need the intel, Dana. And we need to try to jam comms anyway we can."

Tallant finished her coffee and dabbed at her lips, then stood up abruptly. "Then that's it, I guess. Got to go now...there's a briefing at 0900 hours." She came around and gave Winger a quick peck on the cheek. "Later—"

And she was gone, ducking back into the café in a swirl, bumping into another officer bearing a tray who was just coming out to the terrace.

Winger sat there for a moment, watching jetcabs orbit the Quartier-General, picking up and dropping off passengers from the landing pads on the roof. A queue of cabs had formed like a halo around the top of the building.

Was it anger? Confusion? A broken heart? They had lost Rene twice now, once when Config Zero had her kidnapped. And now, when they had to give up the idea Rene could ever be a normal daughter. She was a weapon in the arsenal of UNIFORCE, no longer the second child of John Winger and Dana Tallant.

Which was worse: losing a child? Or losing the idea of a child...losing the idea that you even _had_ a child?

Winger got up and headed for the Detachment ready rooms downstairs. He didn't even want to try to answer those kinds of questions. He had a mission now. The mission was critical and he would be commanding.

That was all any nanotrooper could ask for. Every atomgrabber knew that atoms were tricky things, slippery things. Almost like ideas. They bounced around. They changed shape. They disappeared and reappeared like shadows.

That's what Rene was. That's what she had always been, what any of us are. We're just atoms.

Better to concentrate on the mission.
CHAPTER 28

Jomo Kenyatta International Airport

Nairobi, Kenya

February 17, 2111 (U.T.)

0130 hours

Johnny Winger looked out across the darkened ramp and pronounced himself satisfied. Two lifters, bearing Detachment Alpha, sat with propulsors whining, ready to leap into the night time sky. Overhead, the killdrones had already spooled up and lifted off. The drone squad had formed up a hundred meters above them and was ready for its escort duty, ready to accompany the Detachment into Indian country, across the Sanctuary boundary, ready to deal sudden death to any bots or anybody who got in the way.

Winger turned to Linda Tracey, his IC1, second in command. "Let's button up and get going."

"Aye, sir," came the reply. Tracey gave a gesture and the loading ramp squealed as it close up behind them. Winger headed into a forward cabin, while Tracey did a quick check of her troops, now all snug as bugs in their hypersuits. Lee, Varanesi and Wold. With Tracey and Winger and the girl, Alpha Detachment numbered five troopers. Five seasoned atomgrabbers and one...what, exactly?

General Winger's daughter. An angel. _And UNSAC approved this_?

Both lifters leaped into the sky and turned northeast, onto a heading that would bring them in less than an hour, to the very foothills of Mount Kipwezi.

In the rear compartment, troopers Tracey, Lee, Varanesi and Wold sat in their webseats, pensively eyeing the crimson and red glow on the horizon.

"That's Kipwezi," Linda Tracey told them. "Active volcano, magma, lava, all that good stuff."

Corporal Gina Wold, the Detachment DPS tech sniffed. "I'm betting that's no lava, Sarge. More likely bot screen. Chewing up the air and rock around the summit."

'Yeah," said Corporal Kwan Lee, the CEC1. "And we're next."

"Stow all that," ordered Tracey. "Check your gear and keep your eyes open. Sanctuary boundary in thirty seconds."

The lifters passed into the African Sanctuary without incident, but as they began their descent to nap-of-the-earth profile, a hundred meters over the darkened veldt countryside, the starboard killdrone lit up the night sky with a few HERF barrages. The lifter pilot, a Cuban lift jockey named Gonzalez, came over their headsets.

"Bugs to starboard, light botscreen looks like. Defensive mechs. _Hawk One_ engaging."

The killdrone lay down a rolling wave if rf thunderclaps, plowing through the screening barrier of defensive bots that hung like a curtain along this part of the border. _Hawk Two_ joined the fray a few moments later and the skies outside looked like an east African thunderstorm for awhile.

Presently, Gonzalez announced, "We punched through okay. Dropping down to approach altitude. On vector...LZ two minutes ahead."

Tracey barked at her troops. "Okay, ladies...get your tight little asses ready. Button up tin cans. Arm all weapons. Set ANAD embeds to _Launch Enable_ and stand by—General?"

One compartment ahead, Johnny Winger had seen the firefight outside his own porthole. He checked Rene seated next to him. She was in angel form for the trip, not contained, but in the dim cabin lighting, she looked almost real, like a wax doll dressed for safari. "You okay there, Button?"

Rene nodded, grimacing as Gonzalez jerked the lifter around to put them on a heading to the LZ. "Okay," she grunted out. She squeezed her eyes shut. The dreams and images were bad today, coming at her like a night-time ride on a roller coaster. Snatches and fragments of visuals made her dizzy, even a little nauseated.

"Okay, Linda," Winger replied. "Load _Assault Five_ configs and make ready for opposed entry. DPS, anything up ahead?"

Wold's hypersuit was patched into the lifter's sensor array. Everything Gonzalez saw, she could see as well. "Picking up some thermals, some EMs. Low level...may be screening bots or a defensive barrier."

"Very well. Gonzalez, it's your show. Put us on the ground."

The lifter pilot acknowledged. "Aye, sir...standby for extremely rapid descent." He pulled back on his stick, like reining in a horse and the lifter shimmied slightly as Gonzalez maneuvered them for a gut-wrenching drop down to the LZ.

Winger extracted a small containment capsule from his hypersuit and thumbed it open. Lights glowed red around the lid.

"Okay, punk...remember what we talked about? You go inside here for the landing. Don't want anything to happen to my little jewel here—"

Rene opened her eyes. The images were coming fast and hard now and she bit her lip. "I remember, Daddy. I'm just feeling a little funny, you know—"

Winger could see it too but Rene did as he asked. While Gonzalez whipped the lifter around into approach attitude, Rene's whole body began to blur and fuzz out. Slowly, top to bottom, she was deconstructing, like a video wipe and fade effect, the bots forming her outer structure de-linking and separating, diffusing into the air. Even as he watched, Rene began to fade noticeably. First her shoulders and arms, then her legs and feet. For a brief moment, only her head and neck remained as the config change took hold. A disembodied face looked up at him and a faint smile tickled the corners of her lips.

_Just like a Cheshire cat_ , Winger thought. He smiled back and then grabbed a hold bar as Gonzalez pulled the plug and the lifter plummeted earthward. When he looked back, the face and the smile were gone. Only a faint, sparkling mist remained. It began flowing toward the capsule.

Just then, the lifter touched down with a hard thump and Winger unstrapped himself. The containment capsule was still lit up red, indicating the Rene swarm was still in capture mode, but even as he unbuckled the last of his straps, the lights went green and the lid went down automatically. Rene...what had once been Rene in the normal sense...was now a diffuse collection of bots captured and contained in the capsule. Home sweet home.

Winger pocketed the capsule in his hypersuit web-belt and headed aft.

The strategy for Detachment Alpha was simple enough to explain. Step One: take four Mark I disentangler units and place them as close as possible to the cave complex near the summit of Kipwezi, as close as they could get to Config Zero. Step Two, activate and test said units, to be sure they worked. Step Three: get the hell out of Dodge as fast as possible.

Winger came back to the rear compartment, as Tracey and the troops were positioning themselves to exit.

"Gonzalez, hit the ramp! Detachment, dismount in squad order. And DPS, get Superfly up and operating pronto."

Corporal Wold patted two pouches slung from davits on her waist. " _Heckle_ and _Jeckle_ are itching to fly, sir."

Just then, the aft ramp hissed open and dropped to the ground.

Tracey's voice was loud and clear on the crewnet. " _GO...GO...GO...GO...._!"

One after the other, the troopers of Detachment Alpha streaked out the back end of the lifter.

Wold let her birds fly and the two ornithopters chittered into the night sky, quickly giving Alpha better eyes and ears overhead. Right away, Wold saw the problem.

" _BOTS!_ Just past those bushes ahead...lots of bots! Spikes on all bands...coming this way!"

Winger had anticipated the unpleasant reception. "Defense Three...spread out...launch your ANADs now! Config Assault Five all sectors. And get those HERF batteries up and boresighted."

Working quickly like a single well-trained creature, the Detachment used their trenching jets to prepare ground and set up and sight in the HERF guns. Uncoiled and ready for battle, troopers scattered to pre-planned sectors, guiding their ANAD swarms into position. Defense Three called for max rate reps and, for a few moments, the air burned around the LZ with uncountable gazillions of bots in replication overdrive, big banging swarm mass to meet the oncoming enemy.

Winger switched views on his helmet display and saw what _Heckle_ and _Jeckle_ were seeing from fifty meters overhead. It didn't look pretty.

Boiling across the flat dusty countryside at the foot of Kipwezi, the oncoming swarm looked like a single massive dust devil, raging forward and consuming everything in its path.

Winger swallowed hard, patting the containment capsule with Rene inside. _Pumpkin, looks like this is going to be one hell of a carnival ride._

He cycled the action on his own mag carbine, then switched display views again and took an early peek at what his own embedded ANAD was seeing.

One good look at the bots coming their way as all he needed to know. In about one minute, Detachment Alpha was going to be in a world of hurt.

At the same time, fifteen hundred kilometers northwest of their position, Lieutenant Antonio Livio and Detachment Bravo were creeping toward the Hotel Napoli along the Via Condotti in an unmarked van, slogging through central Rome's notorious traffic jams like a million other motorists, one big honking, tire-squealing mess of turbos, jetcabs, scooters and electrics. Ahead of them, the Piazza Augusto looked like a hornet's nest, with cars and bikes stirring thick and angry, boiling out into the surrounding streets and alleys.

_Should have lifted in,_ Livio muttered under his breath. _Symborg'll be scattered to hell and back by the time we make our coordinates._

"Hotel coming up, Lieutenant." The CEC1 was driving. Shih Kejiang swerved suddenly to avoid pedestrians darting among the slow-moving traffic. "Assuming we aren't killed before we get there."

"Roger that. Detachment, get ready. We'll move out just like we simmed. Remember, we're a hotel cleaning staff, so act like one."

"Yeah," remarked the DPS tech, Corporal Maya Likasi, "a cleaning staff with big-ass guns."

Bravo Detachment was coordinating its efforts with Alpha Detachment. Livio went over the details in his mind as they crept toward the hotel, now visible above the exhaust fumes, its red slate roofline nicely framing the murky brown of the Tiber River beyond. As soon as General Winger and Alpha had their disentanglers in place, Bravo would move on target Symborg. Q2 said he was holed up in the Hotel Napoli all afternoon, in preparation for a big Assimilationist rally in the Piazza Augusto that night. The mission was to grab Symborg's master bot, slam it into containment and scram. If Alpha's disentanglers worked as advertised, and signals to and from Config Zero were well and truly messed up, the swarm of bugs that was Symborg should be easy pickings for Bravo.

That was the plan. Livio shook his head slowly, then checked around. He didn't want anybody else to see that. There were only about a million things that could go wrong with this stunt and the Berlin op Quantum Corps had tried a month ago had revealed only some of them.

"There's the entrance," Livio noticed. A circular drive wound through a small grove of eucalyptus trees to a porticoed entrance. A service drive bore off to the right. Corporal Shih went right, just as the mission plan called for. Moments later, he parked the van at a utility entrance and all aboard dismounted.

"Okay, Detachment, gather 'round and let's go over this one more time." Livio waited to let some maintenance types saunter by, out for a stroll on their smoke break. When it was clear, he went on.

"DPS, get your fly-eyes ready to go. I want to recon that corridor, see what defenses are in place. After Berlin, we're not taking any chances."

Maya Likasi extracted the two entomopters from a satchel on her web belt and twisted their tails. Instantly, the bugs' rotors started spinning up into a blur.

" _Gnat_ and _Skeeter_ all ready to go, sir."

"Launch 'em now. Let's take a look upstairs."

Likasi released the fly-eyes in a single smooth toss. Both bots buzzed off into the air. Over the next few minutes, both would work their way inside the hotel, looking for all the world like flies. Riding up ventilation ducts, they would soon emerge on the eighth floor, giving the Detachment extra eyes as to what they would encounter.

"Let's get ANAD up there too. Q2 says Symborg never stays anywhere without a botscreen around him."

Corporal Shih tapped a button on his wristpad and a small port opened up along his left shoulder, exposing the capsule underneath. "ANAD reports ready in all respects, Skipper. I'm in Config Delta Ten, all eyes and ears."

"Go," Livio told him.

Shih tapped a few more keys on his wristpad and a small faint mist soon formed around the port. Like a faint trail of smoke, the bot master and its base swarm exited containment and drifted its way upward, maneuvering on picowatt propulsors, rising like a faint waft of dust on gentle breezes, even sparkling in the early morning air. Soon, it was gone.

Shih was already getting imagery back as the bots steadily replicated, thickening the dust, building swarm mass, now grabbing photons from all around them. "ANAD'll be at that landing on the eighth floor in about seven minutes...nothing so far...background EMs, acoustics normal, thermals normal....it all looks like baseline stuff, Lieutenant. No evidence of swarm activity yet."

"I'm sure that'll change," Livio decided. "Okay, the rest of you get your 'cleaning' gear out...carts, mops, rags, whatever. And try not to look like troopers, for once."

The Detachment went at it with determination. In five minutes, they stood with all their gear alongside the van, outfitted in dingy white utility coveralls and caps. To an untrained eye, the squad was nothing more than a crew of janitors ready to go to work.

As one, they moved out, heading into the Hotel Napoli through a service entrance. The troopers got through the security scan and made their way inside without incident. They stopped at a service elevator for a quick recon.

"Just got a ping from _Skeeter_ ," Likasi announced. Both fly-eyes had found their way to the eighth floor and were sending back imagery as they caromed around the corridor. "Just like you thought, Skipper...botscreen around the suite. Looks like barebones stuff...we can punch through that crap easily enough."

"Let's go," Livio ordered. Bad memories from the Berlin op kept showing up in his head but he tried focusing on something else, anything else, like how you couldn't tell what a cute butt Maya Likasi had inside her hypersuit.

Intel from Q2 had placed Symborg and his entourage at the hotel a few hours before the huge rally. All the troopers were embedded with ANAD masters, carried in their shoulder capsules. Additional weapons and gear, standard issue HERF and mag carbines, were carried in innocent-looking tool boxes.

As a unit, the troopers rode a service elevator to the eighth floor. The door hissed open and right away, a nanobotic security barrier made getting off a hassle. Likasi jammed the door open, while Jonas Lorenco, their CQE, launched his own embed. They didn't use HERF or mag on the barrier, since the noise would probably wake up the entire hotel.

"ANAD launched," Lorenco reported. A faint sparkling mist issued from the trooper's shoulder capsule. Immediately, a spider-web of light brightened at the elevator door, as the ANAD master slammed atoms to build out its swarm and engage the barrier bots.

The entrance was momentarily bathed in an eerie blue-white glow as the bot swarms collided. Moments later, the barrier flashed and went dark.

They were in.

Livio led the way. According to intel, Symborg was holed up in a suite of rooms around the corner, rooms 820 through 825. Cautiously, Livio crept down the hall, flanked on either side by Lorenco and Likasi. The rest of the Detachment stayed back, to cover the elevator and make a path for their escape.

The Lieutenant carried the special containment capsule for grabbing Symborg's master bot and slamming it down. If all went well, once they got word from General Winger and Alpha Detachment that the disentanglers were in place, Livio's job was to force the barrier and penetrate the suite, locate the master bot that 'ran' Symborg and grab it. Then Detachment Bravo would make tracks and exit the scene in great haste, heading back to the lifters they had parked at Da Vinci Airport. In an hour, according to plans, Bravo would be at Quantum Corps Base Balzano and already loading up a hyperjet with Symborg's master bot, ready to burn a hole in the sky on a two-hour suborbital hop over to Table Top.

They reached Room 820 and found another barrier, pulsating over ornate doors gilded in gold leaf trim.

Livio held up a hand. Over the crewnet, he asked Lorenco, "Anything from Alpha, Jonas?"

The CQE checked his coupler. "Nothing yet, Skipper. Channel's open...we've got comms but no signal yet."

"Okay," Livio decided. "We stop here. Get your mops and rags out. Start cleaning. We're here to clean. Jonas, let me know the instant Alpha chirps." He motioned Lakasi over. "Maya, I want to see inside that suite. Can you squeeze one of your fly-eyes past that barrier, without setting off alarms?"

"Sure can, Lieutenant. _Skeeter's_ got a special configuration he can go to...he can squeeze himself down to almost nothing. Plus he puts out pheromones and noises just like your average _Musca Domestica_. Unless the barrier bots are tuned for that, he should be able to slip inside. I recommend we use that ventilation shaft. Bots may be thin there."

Livio knew they could try using ANAD to work his way right through the walls...but transiting solid-phase lattice structures was time consuming and sometimes left a thermal or acoustic signature that could be detected. He hoped nobody would bother with a few flies darting around.

So Bravo Detachment went to work, as the custodial crew they were trying to be, dusting picture frames and washing down windows, vacuuming the carpet and watching carefully as imagery started coming back from two innocuous flies that were working their way through ductwork and air registers into the suite that Symborg and his crew occupied.

Now if only Alpha Detachment would do their part. Livio didn't know how long they could keep up the pretense of being janitors, without arousing suspicion.

The swarm was on top of Alpha Detachment in less than five minutes. Gina Wold let fly the first HERF barrage, timed to hit just before Tracey's ANAD swarm collided with the enemy. A hot wave of rolling thunderclaps boomed across the flat bush country, stirring up sheets and clouds of dust as veins of lightning streaked across the night sky. Only this was no African thunderstorm. Swarm armies collided in midair a few dozen meters away and the line of engagement was like a snake on fire, writhing and snapping through the air, as trillions of bots chewed at each other like mad dogs.

Winger joined in the fray with the others, discharging his own mag carbine left and right, swatting and flailing at the swarming bots as they thickened and swept over the LZ. He wanted to go small and see what ANAD was dealing with but he knew this wasn't their fight. They couldn't take on the whole Sanctuary. They had a mission to put disentanglers in place, get them up and running and get the hell out.

Winger let fly another blast and took a quick peek through his suitscope at the darkened flanks of Kipwezi. Somewhere up there was a ledge, and that ledge was emplacement point number one. They had no business down here, being chewed up by bots at the LZ.

"DPS, you and CEC set your HERF guns on max, full discharge! I want to put a bubble of clear air around us so we can punch out on boost and get up to that ledge. The first disentangler goes there. Tracey--?"

The IC1 was hunkered down behind some acacia bushes, spraying mag loops everywhere, just trying to keep from being overwhelmed. "Here, sir---just hosing down some bots!"

"Put the lifter on auto-orbit and get it out here! Set it to hover and hold five hundred meters up, tight pattern to the south. I don't want to find a smoking shell left when we get back! Detachment, prepare to boost on my command—we're heading for that ledge I've got my track beam on." Winger tapped a key on his wristpad and the infrared beam shot skyward, pointing out to every trooper's nav system their target two thousand meters up.

Linda Tracey tapped at her own keypad, flinging and smashing bugs with her hands, occasionally sweeping her area with mag to keep the bots from closing in. Moments later, the lifter's propulsors spun up in a small gale of dust and fried bots, and the flyer leaped into the air, corkscrewing its way to the hover and hold altitude Tracey had just programmed in.

Winger watched the ship disappear through the sparkling mist that had swept over them and swallowed hard. Now they were well and truly alone. If anybody's boost failed—

He didn't even want to think about that.

Lee and Varanesi made one last sweep with their HERF guns, and sheets of bots clattered to the ground. For a brief moment, a bubble of clear air surrounded them. Now was the time.

"Detachment...light 'em up! Boost on max and follow me--!"

As one, the troopers of Alpha Detachment toggled their suit boost to max and _whooshed_ into the air as if they had been lifted and flung into the sky by some giant's fingers.

The first flight lasted only half a minute. One after another, they alighted on the precarious edge of a small abutment two thousand meters above the LZ. Winger was the first to drop down, coming to a rest in a four-point crouch, the safety lights of the distant lifter winking red and white, red and white, a kilometer away, now _below_ their position.

"Okay, ladies, let's get DNT One out and in place. Gina, you and Tracey, secure the perimeter...and keep your fly-eyes close. I don't want any bugs making an unwelcome visit to our little perch here."

"Aye, sir." The DPS and the IC1 scuttled off to opposite ends of the ledge.

Kwan Lee carried the disentangler in a small satchel attached to his web belt. He extracted the device, sprang its legs and hunted around for a good spot to set it up. Spying a patch of level ground next to a few scraggly plants, he sat the DNT down on its legs and thumbed a control stud on the side panel. Instantly, the legs fired and drove the body of the device into the hard ground with a few hammering thumps of dust. Now secured, the thing winked and hummed as Lee went about the activation sequence.

Winger drew Varanesi over. "Singh, you're going to do a little recon trip around the mountain. Find us three more spots for putting down the rest of the DNTs. Ledges, niches, burrows, anywhere you can find level ground with a good view of the summit." They both craned for a better look at the reddish glow emanating from the top of Kipwezi. "Config Zero's up there somewhere in a cave. I want these gizmos to be able to jam and spoof every last burp and fart that bastard makes. Got it?"

The CQE nodded and re-charged his own HERF weapon from a power pack hanging from his backframe. "I'll find us some good spots, Skipper. What about you?"

Winger took a deep breath and looked up again. "I'm headed up there, to the summit. Right into the dragon's mouth. I've got a little experiment I want to try." He didn't say that the whole side trip was definitely not part of the mission, except in the most roundabout way.

Varanesi boosted off the ledge and in seconds, his hypersuited form disappeared around the edge of the mountain, although the glow from his boosting continued to play fingers of light on the rocky slope for a few moments. Winger advised the others of his personal recon trip.

"Get that unit going. Singh's scouting for more sites now. As soon as he finds them, boost off and get the rest of the DNTs in place and going. I want to scout around the summit for a few minutes. Kwan—" he said to the CEC still activating DNT One, "—when the whole network's all green and clean and all the gadgets are working up to spec, send code _Buffalo_ to Bravo Detachment like we briefed. Lieutenant Livio should be in position and ready to move on Symborg then."

Kwan half saluted, still kneeling at the controls of the DNT, not an easy thing to do in a hypersuit. "Aye, sir...code _Buffalo_ when the net's at operating condition Prime One."

With that, Winger wasted no more time on the ledge. He lit off his suit boost and was airborne and heading upward in seconds. Soon the red-orange glow of Kipwezi's summit filled his viewer and he turned down the gain on his scope.

He finally found the cave on the steepest slopes of the northwest flanks of Mount Kipwezi, nearly ten thousand feet above the surrounding plain.

The cave complex, when he located it, was well hidden in the folds and crevices of the upper slopes of the volcano, above a cloud deck and slick with ice and snow drifts. The wind screamed and gusted at well over eighty knots at this altitude and he had to hunker down in the lee of a rocky barren to keep from being shredded with ice shards and rock chips scoured off the mountainside.

The entrance was little more than a fold in the ground, like a bed sheet bent over and tucked under, maybe a meter across in its widest dimension. But the cave was the nerve center for swarm operations inside the East African Sanctuary.

The cave held Configuration Zero. Config Zero...the master swarm itself.

Carefully, maneuvering sideways in his hypersuit, he slipped through the meter-wide crack and stood in the twilit dust confronting a nanobotic barrier shimmering before him, stretching from floor to ceiling.

He extracted the containment cylinder containing Rene from a port on the underside of his suit backframe. Winger thumbed the port control and set the cylinder down on the ground.

_Time for a little company_ , he told himself. He watched as the open port disappeared in a thickening mist, flowing in flickering pulses outward and upward, issuing like smoke backlit by fireflies all around the little cave opening.

Rene appeared first as a detached pair of feet, clad in the same beige hiking boots she always liked to wear around the apartment, sometimes even to bed, despite all Dana's threats and warnings.

For a few more moments, her form filled in and solidified, almost as if she were walking toward him from inside a fog bank. Finally, appearing almost lifelike with blond tresses dangling in her eyes, Rene Winger stood before him in a light blouse and jeans. She seemed to shiver in the damp chill of the cave.

"Here, honey...wear this—" Winger gave her a small wrap he had carried just in case. Already he had peeled off his hypersuit helmet. "How do you feel now?"

She shrugged and slipped the wrap over her shoulders. "Kind of creepy. Cold too." She looked around the cave opening, the walls veined with streaks of damp something, the flickering of the bot barrier deeper inside. A shudder came over her. "I've been here before."

"It's the cave where you were held by Config Zero. I want to know if you're...you know, seeing anything in your mind. Any dreams? Images, that sort of thing."

Rene moved about the cave, experimentally touching the walls, running her fingers along the rock face.

"Just snatches of things. I can't quite get them...they disappear when I try to concentrate. How come we came back here?" She didn't seem afraid, not even annoyed, like she often was when she cocked her mouth just so. More like curiosity.

"We've got an important mission. You're part of it. I want to see if you can communicate with—" but Winger stopped in mid-sentence, aware that something, someone else was now in the cave with them.

When it appeared, the swarm materialized out of the rock ceiling of the cave. At first, the swarm resembled nothing more than trembling shadows, a pale flickering ghost seemingly contoured with the cave ceiling and walls. As it descended from above, the swarm gathered itself into a roughly spherical shape, still pulsing, still throbbing, backlit from within by the fires of atomic bonds being broken, new structures being slammed together, new bots being formed.

Configuration Zero hung in the misty air like a swollen cloud, ready to dump torrential rain on a tropical forest. But they were a long way from any rain forests. The swarm

unfurled itself and hung in the air like a great storm front, a trembling fist, flashing purple and orange and magenta all at the same time.

Rene wasn't afraid of Config Zero. That alone surprised Winger, after all she had been through. She eased forward and pressed a finger into the body of the swarm, pulling it back quickly when a high-pitched keening buzz came. She tried touching the swarm again, but this time, her own hand had partially dematerialized, so that on contact, the two swarms seemed to merge: the edge of Config Zero and the blurry stump of Rene's right arm. Lights flashed where the swarms collided, popping on and off like tiny light bulbs.

Winger was fascinated by scene. _Maybe they're checking each other out, sort of tasting each other._

There was no other sound in the cave but a voice came to his mind.

>>Why have you come?>>

For a moment, Rene didn't react, said nothing, just let the bots that comprised Config Zero flow over and around her hand and arm. She smiled faintly.

"Daddy, we're home. This is my home."

It wasn't what she said so much as the way she said it. Winger moved to intervene, to snatch his daughter away from danger, but he stopped short. Maybe she was right. Maybe this _was_ home.

"Honey, can you speak to it...him...whatever? Can you talk?"

"I hear a voice in my head, if that's what you mean. And I see things...pictures and images...like before."

The voice came again, not so much heard as felt.

>>This configuration is modified from initial state...state one must be restored>>

The great swarm darkened and roiled with something like irritation or so Winger thought. It had swelled to envelope nearly the entire cave, a thundercloud boiling and seething as its trillions of bots slammed atoms to maintain some kind of structure.

"What do you see now, Rene? Tell me—"

His daughter moved a little closer to the swarm, so close that in the dim light of the cavern, they almost seemed to merge.

"It's like an old vid, Dad...only speeded up. Jerky, like it was in fast-forward—"

"What images are you _seeing_ , Rene...this is important."

She scrunched up her eyes, all the while letting bots from her own rump of a hand flow into and around the greater swarm. "Trees...plants...they're all growing like super fast. Looks like a lake...or a swamp, maybe. And there's light flickering far away...like a volcano...it's so jerky, it stops and starts, but everything is speeded up...it's called a Prime...Prime—"

"— _Key_ ," Winger finished for her. That cinched it. Maybe she was seeing some kind of imagery of what the Prime Key meant to Config Zero, or to the mother swarm. Hyper-growth...a swarm...volcanoes...the Prime Key...it seemed to Winger that somehow Rene could dip into the bastard's comm stream, pick up signals to and from this beast...and what she was seeing was snatches of signals.

"...now something's moving...it's crawling out of the swamp, like a snake or something...or a fish...no...it's a bot...eyes blinking...all kinds of arms and legs, dozens of them...it's expanding...growing...moving away from the water...it's growing wings—"

Johnny Winger wished to hell Doc Frost were here. He would know how to make sense of all this. Or at least Doc II. He wondered if maybe Rene could do more than just grab snatches of signals.

"Honey, can you stop the images? Can you change them...affect them in anyway?"

Rene shrugged. She was now nearly embracing the huge swarm, which boiled and flowed around her. Winger was becoming alarmed at the sight.

"I don't know. I can try...now, I'm seeing something else, Dad...it's dark, heavy, smothering, lots of rock...like this cave. And hot too. Inside...maybe underground...things are moving, shifting around, the rock's sliding...very heavy..."

Winger realized Rene was somehow picking up a tremor or a quake. Config Zero was organizing another strike. But where?

"Focus on that imagery, honey...try to dig down...tell me everything you see, everything you sense."

For the next few moments, Rene rattled off a stream of imagery and impressions, just as they came to her. _Tons of rock sliding, shaking and rolling, sounds of thunder, grinding, shearing and screeching, swarms of bots moving through the rock, chewing away at the rock, more sliding and shaking...and it was nearby. Very near._

Winger knew he needed to get word out to Boundary Patrol. Config Zero was maneuvering to set off more tremors...more swarms were sliding along tectonic plate boundaries, loosening plates, chewing up just enough shale and chert and limestone to set vast strata free and shake the earth's upper mantle with devastating effect.

But before he could get off any kind of comm to the Detachment outside, he saw Rene beginning to de-materialize right in front of him. It had been a kind of creeping absorption that now was becoming a full merge of two swarms.

Right in front of him, his little girl began to fuzz out. It started with her arms and legs and he had almost ignored that for too long. Now her face was almost translucent...he could see right through it to the cave walls beyond. Her neck and her shoulders began to thin, like fog in sunlight, disappearing inch by inch.

The voice came to his mind again.

>>This configuration is modified from initial state...state one must be restored>>

He knew what was happening. The thing that was his daughter had been made that way by Config Zero years before. But time and Dr. Falkland had changed her configuration and Config Zero sensed that. She was 'corrupted' and she would have to be deconstructed, filtered and re-seeded back to the original configuration.

All Winger knew now was that Rene... _his_ Rene...was disappearing right in front of his eyes.

Without even thinking, reacting from years of nanotrooper training, Johnny Winger knew he couldn't lose Rene again. He let loose a full barrage of HERF fire from his carbine, hosing down the cavern, spraying thunderclaps of radio freq pulses everywhere. Seams and gouts of rock exploded from the walls and the hot pulses shredded the outer limbs of the vast swarm almost immediately as trillions of bots were fried and tinkled to the ground.

" _Not this time, you bag of bugs...how about some more of this, huh_?!!"

He cycled the carbine and pumped more rf into the beast, but already he knew deep down inside that it was too late.

He stopped firing after a few moments, realizing there was nothing left to fire at. The big swarm had already dispersed. Worse, it had taken Rene too. His daughter...the thing that used to be his daughter...was gone. Config Zero and Rene had become one and dispersed and he had no idea where they had gone.

For a brief moment, Winger wanted to plunge deeper into the cave, to hunt down the bag of bugs and clobber it with HERF. But his coupler chimed.

It was the CEC, Kwan Lee.

"Skipper, all units in place...up and operating. I just sent code _Buffalo_ to Bravo Detachment."

Winger stowed his weapons. "Very well...get the Detachment back together on the ledge. I'm coming down—and get the lifter ready for egress too."

"Aye, sir."

Winger figured activating the disentanglers may have caused Config Zero to scram and attend to its replicant swarms scattered around the world. He took one last look at the cavern.

Hope I never see this hellhole again.

Then he pulled on his hypersuit helmet and backed out of the place as fast as he could.

Winger was saddened and sobered by losing Rene a second time. Dana wouldn't be happy about that. But they had really lost Rene ten years ago, right in this very cave, when she'd been deconstructed by Config Zero. The mission was done, the DNTs were in place and he knew he had to get Alpha Detachment out of the Sanctuary alive and well before anything else happened.

Winger departed the cave and boosted back down to the ledge. The rest of the Detachment was all there.

"Get your gear together. We boost to the lifter in five minutes."

One after another, the troopers lit off their suit boost and rocketed across a kilometer of night time sky to the lifter, still hovering and circling Kipwezi in auto-orbit. Winger was the last to make the open ramp.

When everyone and everything was stowed and secure, Winger ordered a return to Nairobi and a waiting hyperjet. He wanted to find out how Bravo Detachment had fared on their end of the mission.

Corporal Maya Likasi worked the tiny joystick on her wristpad as _Skeeter_ emerged into the hotel suite where Q2 had determined Symborg was holed up. Reconfigured as something like an ordinary housefly, Likasi was sure the tiny bot would never be noticed by the suite's inhabitants, as long as she was careful and didn't give them too much signature...too much EMs, acoustics or thermals. The trick was to take it easy...nice, easy turns and maneuvers. The less disturbance, the better.

"Got an image, Lieutenant," she announced presently. "Porting to the crewnet now—"

Livio saw a grainy, staticky picture materialize on his viewer. Once it settled down, the view showed a normal looking, if slightly more ornate, even plush accommodation. Gilded portraits lined the walls. Red damask curtains hung over floor-to-ceiling windows. Baroque sculptures were strategically placed about the two-level suite. Thick beige carpeting throughout.

There he was. A faint cloud or mist thickened near an antique rococo desk along one wall. A half-formed upper torso and face was still recognizable. Below his waist, Symborg was a cloud of bots. _Skeeter's_ sensors saw the same thing and neatly bracketed the image with targeting crosshairs.

"That's our buddy," he decided. "Loose config at the moment. "

Likasi noticed something else too. "One more botscreen, Skipper. Looks like it lines the whole suite around the windows and door seams. Perimeter security...different config from the corridor. But I think—" she opened another window on her wristpad screen and scrolled through some config designs..."—yep, we've seen this one before. Just like C-66...icosahedral with phosphate and sugar groups top and bottom. Nasty bond disrupters too. But we've got countermeasures."

Livio was whispering into his crewnet mic while he mopped the floor. A couple back from an evening date strolled giggling from the elevator, squeezed by the 'custodial' crew and headed around the corner to their own room.

"Okay, troops, we've got to blow this botscreen fast. Symborg's inside, but he's in loose config...it won't take him long to get his defenses up...or disperse and be out the door right under our noses. We go in just like we simmed...fast and violent. Smash the botscreen, blow the door, HERF the perimeter and surround the target. He'll try to slip between us, config as something else like a chair or a table, maybe even a dust cloud or one of those sculptures. He may have defensive configs Q2 doesn't know about. Shih, you got the capsule ready?"

Shih Kejiang patted a pouch on his web belt. "Already powered up and open, Skipper. All you have to do is run a swipe through the cloud and you've got him." He carefully extracted the capsule.

"I've got to grab the master bot," Livio reminded him. He took the capsule from Shih. "That's why the rest of you have to force Symborg into a small space, so I can have a decent chance at grabbing the master. Okay, let's get in position."

The custodial crew threw down their mops, brooms and pails and surrounded the double doors that led into Suite 820. Livio counted down the seconds, while Likasi and Lorenco prepped their embedded ANADs for quick-launch.

_Hope to hell this works_. "Five...four...three...two...one... _launch ANAD_! Burn those doors down now!"

In seconds, the hallway was filled with a flickering fog as trillions of bots slammed into the doors and the botscreen. Shih Kejiang had once called the effect like 'quiet lightning' for the assault resembled a thunderstorm in miniature, with veins and streaks of light flashing and popping all around the perimeter of the entrance, all mostly in silence except for an eerie hiss as furious atom-grabbing burned the air.

A few moments later, the once-gilded doors were a smoking slag heap. Livio knew that speed was essential now. They had to get in and engage the target before Symborg could re-config or disperse.

" _GO...GO...GO...GO_!!"

One after another, the troopers slipped through the still-smoking doorway...Hope, Shih, Jonas and Maya Likasi.

" _Clear left!"_ called out Likasi as she swept her HERF carbine around that sector.

" _Clear right!"_ called Jonas Lorenco.

That was when Livio first saw Symborg...now rapidly de-constructing right in front of them. The robotic messiah was still half-human...his upper body and face still vaguely recognizable but below the waist was a fog of bots even now beginning to scatter. He was a dark-complexioned man, faintly Mediterranean in appearance, though Livio knew that was just a config. Symborg could appear anyway he wanted to, any way that suited his audience.

Livio already had the capsule out and lunged forward. Even as he approached, he could feel the sting of Symborg's loose bots clawing at his face and arms. He flailed and flung them away and Tony Hope came over to help, pumping a few rounds of HERF at the swelling cloud of bugs. That did the trick. Bots sloughed off Livio's arms in sheets as he thumbed the containment capsule open and swung his arm in a great arc through the fading Symborg, hoping to somehow snatch the master in one vigorous pass.

It felt like slashing through gelatin at first, but Livio wasn't sure he had his prize. He slashed again and again through the mess, shaking his arm with each pass as bots clung and clawed and chewed at him.

Hope and Likasi let fly volley after volley of HERF while Jonas Lorenco tried to kill off stray bots with rounds from his mag pulser. Loops of magnetic energy shattered vases and wall sconces and tore gashes in the carpet, but that didn't concern the troopers.

"Keep him contained!" Livio shouted. With each pass, he checked the status lights on the top of the capsule. They were supposed to go green when the device detected what it thought was a master bot inside. Livio glanced down again: _still friggin' red_! _Where the hell is that thing_? Had the master bot already fled the scene?

Again and again, he swiped and slashed through the now-fading cloud of bots, until at last, the capsule beeped, went green and ported shut.

"Gotcha, you little bastard!" Livio slapped at bots trying to munch on his face and slammed the capsule into a pouch on his web belt, then hand signaled the Detachment to withdraw. " _Fall back_! Fall back to the van!"

One after another, the troopers exited the smoldering ruins of the hotel suite.

"Housekeeping ain't gonna like this!" yelled Tony Hope as he pulled back into the corridor.

"Yeah--" agreed Maya Likasi, making one last sweep at the bots with her HERF. Dishes exploded, crystal sculptures shattered and paintings crashed to the floor. "—well, they can put it on my bill!" She ducked out and they were scurrying down the escape stairs and out across the utility parking lot moments later.

The van doors auto-opened as they approached.

Livio was sweating in all his gear, but exultant, pumping fists at the hotel as he clambered aboard. Somehow, they had caught Symborg flat-footed. Code _Buffalo_ had come in from Alpha Detachment, meaning the disentanglers were in place, up and operating and Bravo had smashed its way in to the party completely uninvited. The bastard had tried to disassemble, tried to big bang his way out of the trap but Bravo had covered every escape, covered every possibility, the DNTs had scrambled comms with Config Zero as advertised and Livio was proud as hell of his guys. They'd trained and simmed their butts off and this was the payoff. He felt for the capsule inside the pouch on his belt.

_And you, my little friend, are about to take one hell of a long trip_.

Shih threw the van into reverse and sped down the service drive and out onto the roundabout that circled the Piazza Augusto. He honked madly and braked and steered left and right, sometimes on two wheels as they negotiated early afternoon traffic and were soon speeding down a narrow highway toward an open field they'd commandeered, right behind the Immaculate Heart of Mary convent, where even now a lifter was already settling down. With any luck, they'd be at Balzano in less than an hour.

Livio went over the drill in his head, for about the millionth time. Quantum Corps engineers would do a quick check of the containment capsule contents, just to make sure they truly had captured the master bot, then the capsule would be secured in even-tighter containment, electron beam injectors primed for any eventuality, and packed off on a hyperjet to Table Top Mountain and the greedy little claws of Q2's engineering geeks.

Livio settled back in the van, took a sip from a nearby bulb of something cool and delicious, and closed his eyes. A faint smile came to his lips.

What Table Top did with the bot master after that was really none of his concern. But if he'd had any say in the matter, what was left of Symborg could be ripped atom from atom for all he cared.
CHAPTER 29

UN Quantum Corps

Western Command Base

Table Top Mountain, Idaho (USA)

February 20, 2111 (U.T.)

2130 hours

Johnny Winger examined the Symborg master bot on the imager screen. The thing was securely tucked away in a chamber at Central Containment, surrounded by electron beam injectors primed and ready to fire in case something went wrong.

"From the outside, it doesn't look all that special," Lofton remarked. "Multi-lobed casing, lots of effectors, propulsors to make any ANAD proud. Nothing to get excited about. I just hope this is the real master and not some dumb replicant."

Winger wasn't so sure. "It may look plain Jane, but this baby's got comms you wouldn't believe. It must have one hell of a processor inside and with the link back to Config Zero, it can do pirouettes around our stuff. We've got those disentanglers up and running, I hope."

Luis Principal was at the console running the imager. "Primed and ready, General. Everything coming in and out is getting scrambled, as far as I can tell."

"Good. Keep it that way. I don't want Symborg here waking up with orders from Config Zero to go berserk."

Lofton agreed. "Keep the bastard isolated, solitary confinement...that's the key. Luis, keep those disentanglers going through system check every five minutes."

"Already dialed in," Principal told them. "I just to want to go a little smaller and trace those qubit arrays inside that processor—" he waved his imager cursor over a tiny dot beating away like a heart inside the casing. "—assuming that _is_ the processor. For all I know, it could be a coiling coil."

"See if you can get a readout on its config library...that's what always made Symborg so powerful. He could be anyone or anything. Perfect for your average ordinary, garden-variety messiah."

The investigation went on for a few minutes, until Winger's wristpad chirped and a small face appeared on the screen. It was Colonel Jaubert, from the Quartier-General, a staff aide to UNSAC.

"Got to take this one," Winger announced. He buzzed himself out of containment and found a quiet corner in the corridor outside. "What is it, Colonel?"

Jaubert explained how UNSAC was setting up a vidcon between Table Top, the Secretary-General in New York and UNIFORCE Paris. "In ten minutes, sir."

That didn't leave Winger a whole lot of time to put together some kind of report on what they were finding with the Symborg bot. He went to a nearby office.

The vidcon started promptly at 0800 hours. Jurgen Steiner was his usual dour, abrupt self, a bit pricklier than usual. You could always count on UNSAC to liven up any conversation with Teutonic curses and guttural grunts. The man always looked and sounded like a bear from the Black Forest, just awakened from hibernation.

"Give me the rundown, Winger. What have you got there?"

Winger didn't have much. "We're pretty early in the examination, sir. Just some basics: Symborg's master bot has a multi-lobed, hardened and segmented outer casing, dodecahedral in form, with propulsor rings at several locations around the circumference. Multiple effector joints in both hemispheres and replication fold planes aligned equatorially as well as longitudinally...." He ran down all the structural and physical details, the basic measurements, as the Lab had been determining them since Symborg had been placed in containment.

UNSAC saw the specs on his own display in Paris, grunting and _hmmm'ing_ and fiddling with the ends of his moustache as he perused the data.

"What about inside the casing: processor, memory, config drivers, that sort of thing?"

"We're still trying to crack the processor, sir. The qubit arrays are protected, so we're trying to be careful. Lofton's done a preliminary rundown on configs...there are literally thousands of them. But we've just started analysis. It'll take months. This bot's capable of just about anything. "

UNSAC glared into the screen. Winger had the impression that if the right haptics were available, the Commissioner would have reached right through the screen with his hands.

"Just so you know, General, I'm proposing that Symborg be quarantined at Table Top... _permanently_. You got the facilities, the people, the experience. I don't want this bot ever getting loose again. Do whatever you have to...even if it means picking the damn thing apart atom by atom. Personally, I don't care if you zap the bastard to kingdom come...but Q2 wants to learn everything they can before that happens. By the way, the SG's joining us on this vidcon in a few minutes...live from New York."

Winger knew just how Steiner felt. The Symborg bot had caused a lot of grief for Quantum Corps in recent months. Now, they had a chance to put the little monster away for good...once they learned what made it tick.

"Sir, what's to stop Config Zero from spinning off another Symborg?"

UNSAC's lips tightened perceptibly. "You are, General. You and Quantum Corps. I want you to figure out how every friggin' proton and electron works in that bot. You learn that and you can develop countermeasures for anything Config Zero might do."

Winger was about to mention that now Config Zero had finally absorbed Rene and who knew what additional surprises it might have up its nanobotic sleeve, but the _Incoming Message_ chime sounded on his wristpad.

It was the Secretary-General. Kwame Kavaii looked tired, even haggard, like he hadn't slept in days. Winger could see a fireplace in the background, with a smoldering fire guttering faint tendrils of smoke...the SG was messaging from his apartment. It was late, very late.

"I have one question for you," Kavaii said. He shuffled something in his lap, nearly spilled a drink. "I was just reading your report on the operation, Winger. You've got disentanglers in place all around Kipwezi. You encountered Config Zero and your daughter's disappeared. Now you've got Symborg in containment...but where the hell is Config Zero? Is he still at Kipwezi?"

Winger had gone over the intel with Lofton earlier. "Q2 says the best evidence places Config Zero somewhere still inside the African Sanctuary. Likely not at Kipwezi...decoherence wake analysis of comms going into and out of the area supports that finding. But there's no factual reason to think the swarm has left the Sanctuary...we've seen or heard nothing from local Sanctuary Patrol stations indicating otherwise."

Kavaii considered that. "I want to keep that bastard bottled up in the Sanctuary. Steiner, what's happening with the Quarantine Project?"

UNSAC went over the status of all elements, point by point, squirting off the updates to New York as he did so... _ANAD now fully optimized for solid-phase disassembly...ready to replicate into vast swarms and chew away at the rock still connecting the Rift Valley to Africa...resettling millions of displaced people as refugees into camps and settlements handled by the UN Refugee Organization...the Mobility Obstruction Barrier design had been finalized and recent installation tests were successful...the first MOB units were already headed to east Africa...upgrades to Boundary Patrol and Sanctuary Patrol units and stations well underway...everything was coming together to begin accelerating the geoengineering efforts that would ultimately separate what the press was calling Kipwezia...the new continent...from Africa...._

Kavaii relaxed somewhat and finally stopped fidgeting. He sipped at his drink and his face settled into a thousand-meter stare, staring at things only he could see.

"Gentlemen, I don't have to remind you how controversial this Project Quarantine is. It's political dynamite around here and anybody who touches it is likely to get his fingers blown off, myself included."

UNSAC frowned. "I was told the Project already had the votes."

The SG snorted. "A lot of African delegates are opposed. They don't want to lose part or all of their territory. Can't say I blame them. Who's going to run Kipwezia? How will they be represented? Will it be one nation or twenty? Nobody has any answers. The only thing that does matter is that we make sure Config Zero's still inside the Sanctuary and that we can isolate him to Kipwezia, forever. Everything else is just politics...and arm-twisting. I've got the votes to ram the Project through. Just make sure Config Zero's there when that island slides off into the sea."

UNSAC explained further, "Sir, engineering the formation and detachment of Kipwezia will take years, probably decades. We've got bots optimized to chew through rock and lubricate tectonic plates, fissures and seams. The report says all that. But I have ordered that the MOBnet take priority over everything. Erecting the quarantine structure will have first draw on all resources. Deployment units are already in the area. Soon as we get word from Boundary Patrol about conditions below-ground and from Sanctuary Patrol about intel on Config Zero's location, we can go to work."

"It's critical that the disentanglers work," Winger added. "We can't let Config Zero get signals in or out. We have to keep him isolated, fully immobilized in place. He's a lot easier to deal with that way."

UNSAC took a deep breath. "My biggest worry isn't Kipwezia, Mr. Secretary. That's just engineering, granted on a colossal scale. No, sir, my biggest worry is what I'm hearing from General Orlov. CINCSPACE just dropped some of Farside's most recent observations of 51 Pegasi on me and it's giving me indigestion."

The SG looked perplexed. "I thought there had been no change in recent weeks."

"The _Delta P_ anomaly is still something like fifty light years away, but it's moving on a course that will intercept us in a few decades, unless things change. Farside still officially thinks this is a dust cloud or possibly some kind of micro black hole, but no one has been able to explain how a dust cloud can make maneuvering changes. Unofficially, the thing has similar spectroscopic signatures to the _Devils Eye_ anomaly _Michelangelo_ ran into a few weeks ago. "

"Meaning what, exactly?"

UNSAC looked pained, trying to explain something that nobody had been able to explain yet. "Sir, the investigation into what happened to Big Mike is still going on. It appears from debris assessment and signature analysis that Hawley's ship ran into some kind of swarm or cloud of bots...we don't know that for sure but it fits what evidence we have. Until we get probes into the area, we won't know for sure. Farside's been tracking the anomaly they've called _Devils Eye_ for some time now. It appears to be moving off deeper into space, toward the Oort Cloud, away from the Sun. That will make it a lot harder to track, out there among all the comets and iceballs and dirt clods orbiting at that distance. Maybe that's the idea...we just don't know. There's observational evidence that something's been happening around the Pluto system too...we just don't know what it is yet." UNSAC stopped for a breath, tried to put his feelings into words the SG would understand. "All I'm saying is that, taken together, all these facts make me uncomfortable. Something's happening out there and we need to be on high alert."

The SG glared directly from the screen, a hard edge to his face. "The Old Ones?"

"Too soon to say, sir. For years, Assimilationists like Symborg and others have been talking about the Old Ones. Some say they're imaginary...a creation of some kind of hyperactive wish fulfillment...or a projection of our own emotional needs for a savior or a messiah. Even Symborg claims to be a messiah. And millions of people believe that. Is there any evidence for the Old Ones? Up until about a year ago, I would have said no. But now—" UNSAC let the question hang in the air, unanswered.

"Well, I know one thing for sure," the SG came back. "I've got a meeting in about five minutes, with delegates from the African Union...trying to explain why we're splitting off a third of their continent. It won't be pretty." He signed off and the window on Winger's wristpad went to a UN logo.

UNSAC and Winger were left. "I want you to leave the Symborg analysis to the engineers there, Winger. I need you back in Paris and I don't want to hear any static about it. I need you here to oversee the Quarantine project."

Winger knew better than to argue when Steiner had made up his mind. "I'll be on the next hyperjet to Paris, sir. I guess I _would_ like to see Dana again and be home...sometimes I'm not sure where home is."

"I want you to set up a meeting with UNIFORCE Engineering on this MOBnet _asap_. Nobody's ever done anything like this before. Whatever you geniuses come up, it has to work. We've got to keep this blasted Config Zero bottled up tight and deaf and dumb if we're going to have any chance keeping our socks on."

UNSAC signed off and within two hours, Winger was already aboard hyperjet _Apollo_ , rocketing across the top of the stratosphere on the two hour suborbital hop to the spaceport in Paris.

There were only a few passengers aboard and Winger had most of the forward compartment to himself. He stared out at the cloudtops below, swirling in cyclonic fury with a late winter north Atlantic storm...the remnants of a nasty nor-easter that had swept up the U.S. east coast days before. The southern tip of Greenland was just visible in the darkening twilight sky.

Winger knew he needed to be with Dana, now more than ever. Somehow they had to come terms with the fact that Rene was lost to them again, for the second time. What would Dana want to do? There were a lot of options, all of them bad. They could contact Dr. Falkland, try to have a new Rene assembled, a sort of Rene 3.0. Winger didn't think that was a good idea. Should there be a funeral...a memorial service? Liam was a grad student at Cambridge now, going for his masters in Physics. What would he think?

Winger felt a twinge of guilt about what had happened to the family. Atomgrabbers weren't like normal people. They were all married to the Corps. The mission came first and family be damned. Now, they had managed to lose their daughter to Config Zero not once, but twice. Maybe it was time to leave the Corps, take retirement and spend his days gardening or skiing or woodworking, some sedate pastime that wasn't so hard on the nerves, or the family.

The very thought of it brought a smile to Winger, not for the thought but for what Dana would say if the question were put to her. He could hear her now: " _Wings, you'd be a miserable slob. Plus you know you don't like gardening...the bots do that now. Face it, the Corps_ is _our family. It's in our blood..."_

The jolt of hyperjet _Apollo_ smacking the tarmac at the spaceport shook Winger out of what had been a disturbing half-dream. Images of Rene and Dana mixed in with images of Config Zero and the Keeper at Europa swirled in the back of his mind.

_Get a hold of yourself, son_. He hailed a jetcab and punched in the address for the Quartier-General. Once he arrived at UNIFORCE Headquarters, he figured he knew exactly he could find Colonel Dana Tallant...probably setting up some kind of briefing in the General Staff complex on the seventieth floor.

As the jetcab sped through night time Paris traffic and maneuvered its way through the narrow streets of the 5th Arrondisement toward the black slab that was UNIFORCE, he realized that he needed Dana more than ever now...she was something to hold onto, something real that hadn't been deconstructed...yet. A single-config entity, as Doc II once liked to say.

Winger bounded into the front entrance and fidgeted impatiently, as Security ran the biometrics and scanned him in. He couldn't wait to find a lift to the seventieth floor.

Solnet/Omnivision Video Post

@anna.kolchinova.solnetworldview

February 21, 2111

2200 hours U.T.

SOLNET Special Report:

Kipwezia: Earth's Newest Continent?

Most readers and viewers of this newsvid are aware of our continuing series of investigations into the Quarantine Project and its on-going efforts to geoengineer a new continent by accelerating what Nature itself is doing along Africa's Great Rift Zone.

For many months now, the U.N. Boundary Patrol has been conducting underground missions along tectonic plate boundaries around the world to prevent Config Zero swarms from setting off artificial tremors and earthquakes. The toll in deaths, injuries and property damage from these tremors has been nearly incalculable.

However, in recent weeks, this reporter and other reporters with Solnet/Omnivision have learned of a project run by UNIFORCE to, essentially continue and even accelerate what Config Zero swarms have been doing.

The net result of this effort, it is hoped, will be to permanently sever part of east Africa from the rest of that continent, doing what Nature is already doing but on a vastly compressed time scale, and make a new island continent out of the result.

This new island continent has even been given an unofficial name: Kipwezia.

Sources within UNIFORCE have provided Solnet with new information regarding the details of this effort. One of the publically admitted goals of this project is to quarantine Config Zero on Kipwezia. Toward this end, Solnet can now report that efforts are underway to design and build a giant isolation shield that is to be erected over, under and around the entire island, permanently imprisoning Config Zero, it is hoped. Obviously, no structure of this type has ever been built before. Sources have indicated it is a variant of the Mobility Obstruction Barrier (MOB) device that Quantum Corps has been using for decades in its missions...a net to contain nanobotic systems and structures in a confined area.

Sources have also added that one of the unstated and more controversial goals proposed for the Project is to round up and incarcerate as many unlicensed angels and Assimilationists as possible on the island, for reasons of public safety and public health. This is said to be a logical outgrowth of the Public Safety Verification laws recently passed in many countries and at the UN.

It goes without saying that such an effort, if it proves to be true, would not only be highly illegal and practically speaking, nearly impossible to bring off, but also that such a resettlement program would have the profoundest effects on global society and future aspirations of diverse peoples and cultures around the world.

Solnet has not been able to confirm or refute these allegations as of yet. That such a program of building what amounts to concentration camps on a newly created land such as Kipwezia is even being contemplated disturbs many people and this reporter has gathered some of their comments to illustrate.

(Click here for Vidclip 10788.1... _London cabbie denounces new plan to imprison Assimilationists...."..._ it's a bit of a crock...'at's what it is, if you're askin' me, luv _._ Them buggers are different, sure as I'm sittin' 'ere on Bond Street, but they don't deserve no camp like 'at...")

The Quarantine Project is obviously a massive undertaking, the likes of which have never been attempted on Earth before. In addition to the MOBnet said to be under construction now at undisclosed locations under extremely tight UNIFORCE security, additional steps are required to ensure that Config Zero and possibly thousands of angels and Assimilationists remain confined on the island.

_New devices called disentanglers have been developed and recently tested by Quantum Corps. These devices_ (Click here for vidclip 10920.7...Scrambling Quantum State Signals Now Possible, says Northgate University professor _..._ ) _have the ability to detect and jam or interfere with quantum state signals in the vicinity of the device. According to sources at UNIFORCE, a network of disentanglers will be emplaced around Kipwezia to make sure that Config Zero cannot communicate with or direct any remote swarms, such as the ones setting off all the underground tremors. This kind of isolation is necessary, according to sources, to prevent enemy swarms from operating under central command. One UNIFORCE source described it this way:"_

(Vidclip 11201: "...when we shot down Yamamoto in '43, the Japs were like ants without a queen, all scurrying around in confusion...that made it easier to kick their asses all the way back to Tokyo." )

The Quarantine Project has created an uproar in the General Assembly. Many African delegates are up in arms over losing so much of the continent's territory to a new island. Specific objections have been raised to the way this Project was conceived and initiated, with little public debate and discussion.

Solnet/Omnivision recently interviewed Dr. Lamont Hill, Caltech geophysicist, about the Quarantine project.

_SN/OV_ _: Dr. Hill, thank you for taking the time to be with us today._

_Hill_ _: My pleasure, Anna._

_SN/OV_ _: Dr. Hill, you've said before that the project to separate east Africa at the Great Rift Valley and make a new island continent called Kipwezia will be the most massive engineering and construction effort ever undertaken and that it will takes decades. You've also said there are significant risks involved in making this happen. Could you explain?_

_Hill_ _: Certainly. The basic problem is this...the east African Rift is actually a divergent plate boundary which extends from the_ _Afar Triple Junction southward across eastern Africa and is in the process of splitting the African Plate into two new separate plates. Geologists generally refer to these incipient plates as the Nubian Plate and the Somali Plate. The plate boundaries are filled with hundreds of voids and strike-slip fault structures, not to mention a significant number of still active volcanoes and magma channels into the deeper mantle._

The plan to use vast swarms of nanobots to loosen the plates at their boundaries, chewing away rock and material at strategic locations so that natural plate motions will drive the plates apart is very risky. Tremendous forces are contained along these boundaries and, unless UNIFORCE is very careful, severe tremors and earthquakes are almost a certainty when these swarms operate.

_SN/OV_ _: So you're saying, Dr. Hill, that additional quakes are almost inevitable?_

_Hill_ _: That's exactly what I'm saying. There's almost no way to prevent them. We have imperfect knowledge of the fault structure underlying the Rift Zone and swarms cannot be every place at once. This process of severing east Africa along the plate boundary is like entering a gasoline storage tank with a lighted match to see where you're going. You might get away with it but the odds aren't good._

_SN/OV_ _: You've made these recommendations to UNIFORCE. What was their response?_

_Hill_ _: Well, to be sure, UNIFORCE and Quantum Corps specifically have retained some very smart geologists to consult on this project. I'm sure many of them have made exactly the same recommendations that I have made._

_SN/OV_ _: Publically, UNIFORCE has minimized the threat of unexpected geologic activity such as quakes. Our sources indicate that Boundary Patrol missions to monitor plate movements and swarm operations will be increased, as a safety measure. Do you think this will be adequate to warn of stresses building up that could lead to quakes?_

_Hill_ _: Well, it will certainly help. But once again, it's a matter of resources. Even Boundary Patrol, with all its dedicated people and equipment and all the sensors and swarms in the world, can't keep the entire rift zone under continuous surveillance. Tectonic plates move all the time. The Earth's mantle and crust are living, dynamic systems. Some geologists believe UNIFORCE has enough resources to detect and contain any unexpected plate movements. I happen to disagree._

_SN/OV_ _: Dr. Hill, you know that UNIFORCE will be erecting a giant isolation shield over, around and under this new island of Kipwezia. Do you think such a shield will have positive, negative or no effects on the geology of the plate separation._

_Hill_ _: Anna, I think the best answer, the most truthful answer, is that we really don't know. I'm a scientist. I deal in facts. The decision to go forward with this project seems to have been based on political and military/strategic objectives, with less attention paid to the underlying geology of the effort. My main point is this: we are taking grave risks using swarms to accelerate the rifting process that is already going on. There are many unknown factors. Unanticipated results are almost certain. Are we ready for that? That's the big question._

_SN/OV_ _: Dr. Hill, thanks for taking the time to be with us today._

_Hill_ _: My pleasure._

SOLNET Special Report Ends

UNIFORCE Headquarters

Quartier-General, Paris

February 22, 2111

2030 hours U.T.

The outside deck at the 72nd floor officers' commissary was a small balcony overlooking the Boulevard Saint Michel and the Luxembourg Gardens. Night time Paris was spread out below them in bejeweled splendor, ribbons of light snaking off in every direction from the 5th Arrondisement. Jetcabs flitted by above and below, while on the horizon, the Eiffel Tower was bathed in radiant glory on a crisp late winter night.

Johnny Winger and Dana Tallant were not alone on the deck, as they soaked in the view before them, but the few officers still outside nursing their drinks and snacks gave them a respectful distance anyway, as much as the small patio would accommodate.

"When does the briefing start?" Winger asked. He stared down the ice cubes in his drink, speculating how long they would last.

Dana Tallant was staring at her drink as well. "You got the same notice as everybody else. 2200 hours on Briefing Deck A. All CinC's are to be present."

Winger stared out at a caravan of jetcabs circling the Eiffel Tower...tourists and charters, no doubt, snapping pictures from close up.

"It's good to be home," he said, after a long silence, as much to break the silence as anything.

Dana looked at him and smiled bravely. "I'm glad you're back, too. I just wish—" She looked away again, brushing back a lock of hair and in the same motion, a nascent tear at the corner of her eye.

"Me too," Winger completed the thought. "Liam's doing okay in school?"

Dana shrugged. "Pretty well. He's still got his thesis to do...Cambridge has already given him a date...he was bouncing some ideas off me the other day."

Winger swallowed hard. They were both tiptoeing around the subject of Rene, of what had become of the family. He reached across the table and squeezed her hand. Dana tried to smile again, but it wasn't real.

"I did that to make sure you're real. You can't be too sure now—"

Dana held up her other hand and examined it. "Don't, okay? Just... _don'_ t. I'm having a hard enough time with this as it is. And the briefing's coming up—"

Winger let go of her hand. "We have to talk about this, you know. You know what the psychs say...don't keep feelings suppressed. They'll come out one way or another. "

Dana started to get up, but thought better of it. "Well, I _am_ real, Wings. I'm not going to disassemble right in front of you, if that's what you mean. You don't have to keep me in containment, like...." She bit off her words and slurped up some more of her drink. "I guess, with Liam at college, with Rene—" she half-laughed, "—well, you know...it's just you and me now."

"I know one thing real for sure...I love you."

Dana Tallant nodded. "Right. We're talking about things that disappear, things that disassemble. Nothing's real. Everything's fabbed. And you bring up love. If I can't be sure my own daughter is real, or my own husband is real, how can I say anything about love?"

"The same way as always...it has to be proven. I know one way to find out—" he lifted an inquisitive eyebrow.

Dana looked at him and nearly burst out laughing. She leaned over to plant a quick peck on his cheek. "After the briefing...your place or mine?"

That brought another laugh. "It's the same place for both of us, girl."

"Funny how that is." Dana pulled out a compact and primped herself in its tiny mirror. "I guess the thing is we had Rene for seven years...seven _good_ years. Now—" she shrugged.

"We have memories," Winger completed. "I know that doesn't seem like enough, but I guess it'll have to do. I just don't want to lose you...or Liam. You're my family now...you're all I've got."

"Don't worry, Wings. I'm not going to deconstruct right in front of you, if that's what you mean. I'm as real as this table—" she knocked on the table top just as a gust of wind nearly overturned it, upending their drinks.

They both laughed a little nervously.

"When's the briefing supposed to be over?" Winger asked.

Dana shrugged. "Depends on how many questions you CinC types have. UNSAC will be there. You know how warm and cuddly Steiner is at this hour."

"I need reassurance that you're real. Something I can touch and hold."

"And cuddle with," Dana added. "You got yourself a date, mister."

They squeezed hands, then finished their drinks and headed downstairs to the Briefing Deck A.
EPILOGUE

SpaceGuard Center, Farside Observatory

Korolev Crater, the Moon

June 2111

0350 hours U.T.

Ernesto Bertelle and Adam Quint both sipped at their cups of hot tea at the same time, as they scanned the latest data from long-range surveillance of the 51 Pegasi system and its oddball _Delta P_ anomaly. Both North and South Lateral Arrays had been slaved to the target coordinates for the better part of the night and neither astronomer bothered to hide the growing sense of unease that had come over them from reviewing the night's data, data on something that nobody had ever really been able to explain.

"It's on the move again," said Quint. "Look at that Doppler signal...side lobe rate is consistent with velocity components both perpendicular and offset to us."

"What about the other instruments...what are they saying?"

Quint scanned his board. "Submillimeter interferometer, VLF, radio, optical...it's all consistent and ISAAC says all readings are outside normal error bands. Whatever it is, it's as real as I am."

Both men looked at each other for a long moment, knowing what they had to do. Neither wanted to do it. All Farside's surveillance data was sobering enough as it was. The raw data could no longer be explained away as instrument glitch, processing error, crackpot theory or anything else.

_Delta P_ was shifting position again and the trajectory changes could not be accounted for by any known forces: gravitational, magnetic or quantum effects.

"Maybe it's a resonance effect," Bertelle suggested. "You know...somehow gravity and tidal interaction pumping the orbit of _Delta P_ enough to make it look like this...like some kind of weird course change. That happens."

Quint shook his head. "You don't believe that and neither do I. Ernesto, we have to face facts. The facts are right in front of us."

"Crittendon's not going to like this. Or the Committee."

"I have a feeling the Universe doesn't give a crap what Crittendon thinks. Start recording. And triple check everything. I don't want Crit or anyone saying we messed up the readings 'cause we overlooked some setting or something."

"What about the Pluto anomaly?"

"Put that in the report too. It may be related."

"All of it?"

"Every damn last word and reading: optical brightening, absorption line shifts, orbit perturbation, energy spikes in multiple EM bands...even the fact that no observatory can confirm the friggin' planet exists anymore...cram it all in there. Maybe Crittendon and the Committee will open their eyes now."

Bertelle and Quint knew what they had to do. They had been tracking both anomalies for the better part of three duty cycles. Standard procedure called for a formal notice to be issued to UNISPACE. A 'three-line' notice, it was called, with updated orbital elements, updated ephemeris, the works.

The micro black hole or whatever the hell _Delta P_ was, was changing course, _maneuvering_ was the word Bertelle chose not to use, since that implied intelligence that couldn't be confirmed by evidence. The course change had put _Delta P_ on a trajectory that, if unchanged, would bring the anomaly into intercept with our own solar system in about four decades. Which of course, implied that the phenomenon was traveling at approximately 99% light speed. Which of course, was essentially impossible.

Except all the instruments said it wasn't.

Instrument error, dark matter effects, quantum displacement, the Old Ones are coming, Jesus is coming...Bertelle had heard every possible explanation.

"I'm going to the canteen," the astronomer announced. "Some coffee and a few dozen doughnuts sounds about right. This is going to take a while."

Quint was massaging his keyboard. "I'll pull up the SpaceGuard Advisory template and get started."

Bertelle left the room and prowled the circular corridors of Farside's Newton Wing until he came to the tunnel leading to Kepler Wing and the canteen. Ten minutes' walk and he was sitting on a barstool next to a hand-lettered 'Fiji Islands Lagoon' sign. He watched as Caesar, the robo-tender, poured a steaming cup and fixed him a mixed plate of jelly-filled and glazed.

Caesar's face was done up to look something like a cross between Captain Kangaroo from 20th century American TV and a Pacific Islander tribal chief, even down to the 'bone' through its nose and incongruous white moustache.

"Pardon me, Dr. Bertelle but you look a little—" the tender tried something like a shrug, but the whirring servos kind of destroyed the illusion.

"It's called fatigue, Caesar, that's all. Maybe a little uneasiness. We've got something we can't really explain out there and we've got to issue a formal advisory to UNISPACE. A lot of questions will be asked. We don't have answers for most of them."

Caesar seemed to consider that as it wiped mindlessly at the countertop with a rag. "Some people can't handle the truth, Dr. Bertelle."

"Bureaucracies too, Caesar. Anything outside the norm is a problem. People don't want to hear it or consider it. When everything known to be possible has been considered and rejected, then the impossible _must_ be the answer...somebody said that once, I'm sure."

Bertelle continued chatting with Caesar but his mind was racing a million miles an hour. He and Quint and the other astros and techs staffing the Watch Center had tried for two days to come up with any alternative explanation that even remotely fit the facts: not enough data, instrument error, unknown forces acting on _Delta P_ , black holes, dark matter, white rabbits...but the reality of what they were observing just wouldn't go away.

By the end of the shift, reluctantly and with standard formalities and caveats, Ernesto Bertelle and Adam Quint put together a formal SpaceGuard Advisory Notice, with all its supporting data, links and appendices. They both knew full well that a threat confirmation meeting would soon be called. And the likely result of that was a full Threatcon issued to all UNISPACE and UNIFORCE units and commands.

Bertelle could almost feel the sharp edge of the guillotine on the back of his neck.

Both men had a foreboding sense of what was to come out of this meeting and Threatcon. Whatever you thought about the Old Ones, there was no denying that something was happening at or around 51 Pegasi, a yellow-orange main sequence dwarf star of spectral class G4, situated in the center the constellation Pegasus, the Winged Horse. And somehow the _Delta P_ anomaly, whatever the hell it was, was associated with them.

Bertelle slurped down the last of his coffee and polished off his fourth doughnut. "See you, Caesar...got to get back to the factory."

The robo-tender raised a hand to wave, servos whirring as it did so. "Have a pleasant day, Dr. Bertelle."

Unknown to both of them, some fifty light-years away from Farside's _Fiji Island Lagoon and Bar,_ the Mother Swarm executed yet another correction maneuver and swung its half-light-year wide girth around to settle onto a new course, a course that would eventually bring the massive swarm into a direct collision with the solar system in forty-four years' time.

About the Author

Philip Bosshardt is a native of Atlanta, Georgia. He works for a large company that makes products everyone uses...just check out the drinks aisle at your grocery store. He's been happily married for over 20 years. He's also a Georgia Tech graduate in Industrial Engineering. He loves water sports in any form and swims 3-4 miles a week in anything resembling water. He and his wife have no children. They do, however, have one terribly spoiled Keeshond dog named Kelsey.

For more details on his series _Tales of the Quantum Corps_ , visit his blog at qcorpstimes.blogspot.com.

257

