Mozari Arrival Read online

  The twidgets—the technicians who looked after the Mozari artifacts—had returned from DARPA, though this time General Carver hadn’t accompanied them. Professor Kurtz had, however, and both Hammond and Daniel were glaring evilly at him, making sure he kept his distance. When Kurtz finally worked up the courage to come over, he carried a tablet computer encased in a thick rubber case, and a black cube which was about six inches square.

  “And what’ve you brought us today?” Hammond asked. “A Rubik’s cube?”

  “Watch,” Kurtz said. He went a couple of yards out into the field, which was just an expanse of hard-packed earth, with a few pieces of rocky ground here and there, and placed the cube on the ground. “Stand back, please, just in case.”

  “That inspires confidence,” Hammond muttered, voicing Daniel’s thoughts. Daniel glanced at him, startled by that. Kurtz made a few motions on the tablet with his fingertips, and then stepped back to join them.

  The black cube blurred and flew apart into a fine mist like soot or flour. Oddly, rather than fly off to their left, in the direction of the breeze, the fine cloud settled in a circle around where the cube had been, and then vanished into the soil. Daniel didn’t think it was much of a bomb; perhaps it was a training simunition for explosives in exercises? Then, before he could say anything, the surface of the soil began to grow higher and darker, in an even line three yards long and a couple of inches thick. In a minute or so, it was five feet high, and there it stopped growing. The wall seemed to be made of the same material as the cube had been; it had a slightly unreal sheen to it, as the Exo-suits did.

  Kurtz looked at Hammond and Daniel as if expecting applause. Daniel gazed at the wall suspiciously, half-expecting it to melt away.

  “You’ve finally got the Army a 3D printer?” Hammond grouched. “I suppose it’s better late than never.”

  Kurtz grimaced. “Very funny.”

  Hammond folded his arms and nodded towards the growing wall. “Well, that does seem to be what this is, isn’t it?”

  “Not exactly. At least, that’s only half of it.”

  “Half?” Hammond asked.

  Kurtz smiled nastily, and Daniel worried that the man had just been given an opening to baffle a grunt with high-tech talk. “A 3D printer uses liquid polymer or thermoplastic—or equivalent—to build up layers of the chosen object that’s been designed in a CAD program. It needs a supply of the appropriate material from which the layers are to be built up.”

  “And this doesn’t?”

  “Nope. It doesn’t need a special supply of a single particular material, or a mechanistic framework to apply layers. Instead, the instruction is spread among self-replicating nanites which can assemble the required material on a molecular level, and which create their own resource supply for breaking down unneeded material on an atomic level and reassembling it into the molecules required for the structure being built.” He brandished the tablet. “We’ve managed to adapt the nanotechnology’s control interface with our own computer operating systems, so we can actually give the nanites their orders.”

  If he’d been hoping for Hammond to respond with confusion or amazement, he was disappointed, Daniel was glad to see.

  “There’s an app for everything, you mean,” Hammond commented.

  “Pretty much,” Kurtz sighed.

  “So, what exactly do these nanites use for raw materials?” Daniel asked, thinking that it sounded pretty cool.

  “We’ve set the defaults to use materials in the soil and air. These are very basic particles, but they can build extremely dense protective structures if necessary. Or lighter-weight ones if not. Whichever is most suitable for the local conditions.”

  Hammond nodded. “What about stability? A wall’s no good if it’s likely to fall over.”

  “While the structure grows above ground, the nanites are also burrowing underground to convert subsurface layers, or even bedrock, into a foundation structure. Our modelling shows that we can build stable walls capable of withstanding almost anything that the Richter scale has to offer. Bunkers are an easy fix, and now programmed into the nanite defaults.”

  Hammond walked over and gave the wall an experimental kick. “How long do these constructions last?”

  Kurtz gave a breezy wave. “As long as any structure built of comparable materials. Brick, reinforced concrete, or even stone.”

  “Sounds pretty permanent,” Daniel said, unsure whether to be impressed or horrified.

  “That’s our hope,” Kurtz admitted. “Of course, if a structure has been generated for tactical reasons in an area where a permanent building isn’t desirable, the nanites can disassemble it and turn it back into fresh loam, or whatever else you might want. Or, if you decide to keep it, they can even furnish the damn thing.”

  “And what about durability under fire?” Hammond asked.

  “That’s why we need two Exo-suit-equipped soldiers: to find out.”

  “Well,” Hammond said, “you got the most and least experienced soldiers on-base. I guess that should cover the whole gamut.”

  Within seconds, they were trotting back to the firing line, and Kurtz indicated a parked Humvee that had a .50 Cal mounted on the roof. Hammond and Daniel exchanged a glance, and then Hammond gallantly waved a hand towards the Humvee. “West.”

  “Thank you, Chief,” Daniel said, and with that he hopped nimbly up and into the gunner’s hatch. He put on some ear defenders, loaded and cocked the .50 Cal, braced himself, and opened up on the black wall that the nanites had built.

  The heavy machine gun rounds hammered into the wall, making sparks and smoke and a hell of a lot of noise. Dirt was kicked up all along the front of the wall as the bullets ricocheted and bounced away. Nothing seemed to get through it. After ten seconds or so, Daniel stopped firing. His thumbs still quivered from the vibration of the machine gun. As the haze cleared, they could all see that the structure seemed completely unblemished.

  “Seems fair enough,” Kurtz said, “I think you’ll agree.”

  “It does, doesn’t it?” Hammond agreed. “But so do Ponzi scams if the con man’s good enough.” He looked up at Daniel in the turret ring. “Let’s grab ourselves some XRs, West.”

  While Daniel and Chief Hammond outfitted themselves with Mozari railguns, Kurtz and his scientists packed themselves up into their Humvee and rumbled off down the dirt track, following their own tracks back to where they could get a safer view.

  Daniel and Hammond, meanwhile, found themselves a good spot a thousand yards or so east, where they would have a straight line of sight to the wall, but with a low hill beyond it into which their railgun bolts could safely embed themselves in case of overpenetration.

  Both men aimed at the wall and sent five bolts each, single-fire, into the wall. Immediately after, they ran across to check out the results, arriving at the same time as Kurtz’s Jeep. This time, there were some pitted areas on the matte-black surface of the wall, perhaps a quarter-inch deep at the most. They looked like the effects of a regular bullet on a regular wall, Daniel thought, reaching out to run his fingers across one, as if that would feel more real than just the sight.

  “Nothing seems to have gotten through,” Kurtz pointed out.

  “You’re right, nothing has. But I think the hits were deeper than we’re seeing right now. Look.” Hammond pointed to a large, wide indentation, which was slowly but visibly shrinking and filling itself in. “The stuff’s self-repairing. I think it had done some fixing before we got here.”

  Daniel nodded. Hammond’s assessment looked pretty accurate to him. “It’s some badass wall.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Not convinced, Chief?” Kurtz asked.

  “Totally convinced. But I’m also convinced it has a limit.”

  “Why?”

  Hammond snorted. “Everything has a limit. Everything.” Daniel had no urge to disagree. “So, now I want to find out what that limit is.”

  Again, Kurtz evacuated to the outer perimeter of th
e range while Daniel and Hammond returned to their firing positions. Selecting standard power, both men let rip with the railguns on full auto. For several seconds, a haze of glittering metallic pieces converged on the wall, hiding much of it from view.

  Then, they all returned to view the damage.

  This time, the black wall had clearly taken some hefty punishment. It was cratered and pitted almost as much as the dark side of the moon. For a moment, Daniel didn’t understand why there were some lighter specks in the wall, and then he realized, with a shock that felt like ice water down his back, that there were actual holes in the wall, the dust of the range’s sloping backstop showing through them.

  “Some rounds got through, I guess,” Daniel said. “Looks like maybe one in ten.”

  “Around that,” Hammond agreed. “Especially if we assume a couple of the holes filled up already.”

  “Yeah, we haven’t killed it.”

  “How do you kill a wall?” Hammond asked rhetorically. “Especially one that rebuilds itself.” He tapped the wall.

  “You know, Chief, I think that if it had just been a little bit thicker,” Daniel suggested, “even the railgun rounds wouldn’t have gotten through. A couple of inches would probably have done it. Not bad for something that fits in a hipster’s rucksack.”

  “Probably,” Hammond agreed, “and the Brain Trust here could probably just alter the structure’s dimensions with a swipe of their fingers on that armored tablet.” He straightened and glanced around, shielding his eyes against the sun. “You up for participating in a little experiment, West?”

  “The day does seem to be going that way, Chief.”

  “I figured you’d say that.” He frowned at the chunky armored tablet held by Kurtz. “Can I borrow that?” Reluctantly, Kurtz handed it over. Hammond studied the screen for a moment, then tapped on it. Immediately, the wall imploded in slow motion, deflating in a haze of particles that drained back into the mass of the nano-construction until, in less than a minute, it was a loaf-sized block once again. Hammond picked it up, shoved it in a pouch, draped that over Daniel’s shoulder, and then handed Daniel the tablet. He pointed to a flat area of rock sticking out of the slope about half a kilometer away. “Run this over to that exposed zone, and set up a curved emplacement.”

  “Curved?”

  “Curved gives cover more structural strength; no corners to act as weak points, and a less flat surface to be pushed on by outside force.” That made sense to Daniel. “Hop to it, assuming you’re under combat conditions.” Daniel nodded and started running across the range, keeping low and weaving slightly as if he was being fired upon. Thanks to the influence of both the Exo-suit and training on his fitness, he wasn’t even out of breath when he reached the flattened outcropping of rock. Immediately, he slapped the nano-block onto the ground and woke up the tablet computer.

  On the tablet screen were a few icons for options regarding the size and shape of construction, as well as the surface conditions. It was the work of a couple of seconds to select a curved emplacement four feet high to be built on rock. When he tapped the activate button, the block began to become unfocused in his eyes, even though he knew his vision was fine. As it seemed to blur and dissolve, the rock under it also blurred, softening and floating upwards like early morning mist, and stretching out in curving arms around him.

  Daniel kept low, crouching over the tablet computer that had been so simple to operate. In a minute or so, the wall was the shape of a boxer’s gumshield, and about eighteen inches high. It was, Daniel thought, pretty damned amazing. And that was when something stinging and painful knocked the wind from him with a pummeling to his chest that a boxer would have been proud of.

  Chief Hammond watched West set off, then loped back towards where he and West had originally set up their gear. Their rifles were still there, and Hammond put down the railgun and picked up his weightless-by-comparison M16A4. He checked that it was loaded, cocked it, and selected three-round burst.

  Taking his time, he raised the rifle, sighted upon West’s crouching form behind the developing wall, and squeezed the trigger. He was rewarded with the sight of West losing balance and tumbling over. Then, as the echo of the shots died away, he looked for and beckoned to the watching twidgets.

  Their Humvee ground to a halt next to him at just about the same time as Daniel West reached him, his expression shocked and flushed with anger rather than exertion. “What the fuck, Chief?” West demanded, and Hammond couldn’t really blame him.

  “You’re bullet-proof, remember?”

  “It still... stung.” Hammond merely smiled, though he doubted he would have retained his own composure so well. “You could have warned me.”

  “In the field, people tend not to warn you that they’re going to shoot you. I told you combat conditions; you should have laid prone.” Hammond tossed the rifle to him and turned back to the scientists. “Well, guys, it’s a pretty nice toy you’ve got there, and good fun to play with. But it needs work; it’s too damn slow for use in any zone of operations we’re likely to find ourselves in. Cover needs to be available pretty much instantly, whether found or carried in. Otherwise, it’s not cover.”

  Twenty-One

  Boston, MA.

  “Are you ready?”

  “Always, Archimandrite,” the voice came back over the burner phone.

  Charles Kebbell smiled, though he knew his acolyte couldn’t see the expression. He also knew, however, that a smile or a grimace could be heard in the spoken word. The muscles around the mouth always affected the sound it produced. His acolyte would hear his pleasure. “Good, Brian. You’ve always been someone I can rely on. I don’t think I could have trusted anyone else with this.”

  “Thanks, sir.”

  “Please, never mind the formalities. There’ll be plenty of those afterwards, when the responses and replies—of whatever kind—bring the issues at hand out into the open for proper debate and... I guess I can say education.”

  “I guess you can.”

  “Then there’s no more to be said for the moment. You know what to do, and when. All that’s left is to wish you success.”

  “And luck?”

  “If the Mozari have taught us anything, it’s that we must learn how to make our own luck, together.”

  “Of course.”

  “That said, yes; go make some luck, Brian.” With that, Kebbell ended the call and put the cellphone down on the workshop’s thick bench. He could have simply removed the SIM card and burned it, of course, but somehow it always felt more satisfying to pick up a good solid hammer and smash such a phone. It was some measure of exercise, if nothing else.

  On the other end of the line, Brian Dene tossed his own burner phone into a drain below his pickup’s window. He looked at the two men sitting beside him. “For the Mozari.”

  “For the Mozari,” they echoed.

  All three exited the pickup, pulling AK-47s from the cargo bed and checking the weapons’ action. Then, as one, they crossed the road and walked between two parked Crown school buses that had arrived early to pick up their charges, and moved on into the Glen Darroch Elementary School.

  There was a uniformed security guard in the entrance hall, of course, so Brian shot him in the head first. That was when the screaming started. The trio waited a moment until the other two armed guards came running into a hail of lead at head-height. Then they split up as an alarm sounded.

  And then the screams began to be silenced.

  The first responders on the scene were four National Guardsmen in a Humvee. This wasn’t a situation they normally trained for. There were scattered children running and hiding, and the occasional teachers, too. When a masked man in a tac-vest carrying an AK came out into the parking lot, they yelled at him. His response was a short burst of bullets that sent them scurrying for cover.

  Their corporal returned fire, and that drew the attention of two more masked gunmen.

  Soon, there was a gun battle raging in the parking lot.
And that was when the news chopper showed up.

  Palmer’s voice came over Daniel and Chief Hammond’s tactical comms as they were packing up after their exercise with the nano-constructor block. “All members of the Exo-unit report to the briefing room ASAP.” His voice seemed to falter as he added, “Right now, guys, Jeebus.”

  Daniel and Hammond didn’t wait for another word from the scientists, who were still packing up. They just started running. They reached the briefing room in five minutes and skidded to a halt just inside the door. The rest of the unit, and Gray and other members of the Camp staff, were looking in horror at a TV screen.

  On the screen, a guy in tac-vest and ski-mask was crouching next to a fallen child covered in broken glass and letting off bursts from an AK. The news camera zoomed back in time to catch Guardsman returning fire, sending the gunman sprawling.

  “What the fuck?” Hammond breathed out. Daniel couldn’t begin to answer; there was a little girl unmoving at the feet of a gunman, and he knew this was no movie. He couldn’t see the child’s face, couldn’t see that it wasn’t Elizabeth. His brain knew it wasn’t, of course, as she had died long ago, but his heart kept trying to project her face there. Every child in there, at this moment, was Elizabeth to Daniel, and he was finding it difficult to keep breathing or standing right now.