Source code, p.15
Source Code, page 15
“What was that all about?” Kemp asked as he ducked back inside the booth.
“Hell if I know,” he said, and got back to work.
17
“What’s up?”
“EOD.”
There were a number of people outside the secondary hangar, inside the airfield fence, hanging out under the small rusting pavilion that normally saw service as the smoke pit.
Daelia recognized everybody, a little proud of herself. There were a couple of maintainers and Norris, with a few of his team. Senior Airman Rhineman. Tech Sergeant Kirby.
Neither of them were full time, which meant Sausage had probably dragged them in on state orders too. There was a dizzying array of order statuses that people operated under in the Air Guard, but Daelia got the distinct impression that everyone hated the state orders the most. From what Dad had told her, it paid a lot less.
Rhineman was yawning into his OCP sleeve. Kirby’s bun was messy, haloed with a crown of escaping hair, a far cry from her usually pristine pinned-up French braid.
The other person out waiting was Staff Sergeant Menendez. Lara. From Base Cyber Surety. Daelia liked Lara, though. Another college student, with an understated nerdiness.
Or maybe explicitly nerdy today.
She was hand-stitching a long section of dark gray braid onto a uniform jacket that would have been more at home in the Napoleonic Wars than the Ellington flight line.
“Reenactment?” Daelia asked.
Menendez didn’t look up. “Cosplay.”
“Isn’t it basically the same thing?” Rhineman asked. “Except, you know, more pathetic?”
“Says the man with Batman boxers,” Kirby said.
“That was one fucking time!”
“Do I even want to know?” Norris sighed and looked over at Daelia. “I’m sorry. Did you need something?”
“Came by to see what’s going on.”
Norris waved a hand. “Welcome to the party.”
“We’re just stuck outside until they’re done?” she asked, looking around. “That doesn’t seem right.”
Norris rolled a shoulder, stretching a little. “You’ve heard the old stories about IEDs over in Iraq, right? Where they’d rig them up to go off from cell phone signals?”
She had. Daelia immediately knew where he was going with it and felt mildly embarrassed that she hadn’t thought of it herself. “Dad’s probably mentioned to me.”
“Yeah, well, we don’t want to be poking at this thing without some kind of guarantee that it’s not going to blow up half the base.”
“Can I go in?” she asked, already walking over to the door.
“They asked us to, uhh, wait outside because of—”
“Sure,” she said, and pushed her way in anyway.
Inside, it looked a little bit more like what she’d been imagining this morning. A gaggle of people in various uniforms, all waving instruments around and conversing in hushed tones. From the TMD, it seemed, judging by patches and logos embroidered on polos or screen-printed to T-shirts.
More equipment had been set up, a couple of tall spotlights had been erected, and there was even a low platform set up, with a couple of people working on it.
“Excuse me, ma’am, but you can’t be in here,” a senior enlisted man said, walking up. She didn’t recognize him; his shoulder patch indicated he was from Joint Reserve Base Fort Worth.
She flashed her badge on its lanyard around her neck. “I’m with Bellona Robotics. I helped find this thing last night. Can you tell me what’s going on with it?”
He warmed up a little. Started talking.
It wasn’t explosive.
That much, he said he was certain of.
Not a warhead.
Not explosive.
Totally unprecedented.
He seemed worried about it. Which made Daelia worried. EOD blew up bombs and stuff, right? If one of them was concerned, then it was probably time to get freaked out.
“You’re most likely okay to do more EMF scanning,” he told her. “Without blowing up half the base, you know? But I don’t know what you’re going to find. This thing appears to be inert.”
“Every abiota outside has been nervous all morning,” Daelia told him, looking it over. Which was silly, really. What the hell was she going to see? It was a big rock. A sculpted rock, but a rock nonetheless. “Seems like it would be related.”
“We’ve got a bit more to do, but you’re welcome to start.”
“Thanks,” she said, and went back outside to get Norris.
Daelia and the cyber team worked for the better part of two hours, trying to get a signal off the space rock, as everyone seemed to be calling it now. Norris tried a whole bunch of tricks, and the airmen weighed in, but nothing showed up.
“I could swear this thing was broadcasting.”
“Not on any channel we can recognize, if it is,” Norris told her.
“Yeah, but…” And she trailed off, collecting her thoughts. “Something’s going on here. Maybe it’s one of those ones that can’t use TGLP, or—”
Kirby gave her a smile then. “Daelia, you know I love you, but I think you’ve got tunnel vision.”
“What do you mean?”
“There’s no evidence this thing is abiota,” the tech sergeant said.
“Something is spooking everybody out on the flight line.”
“If it doesn’t use TGLP, and it’s not broadcasting over a frequency we can recognize, then how can it talk to them?” He laid a hand on her shoulder. “Sometimes when you’ve got a hammer, all your problems start to look like nails.” And at her blank look, he clarified. “This is what you’re researching, right? So this is what you’re seeing.”
She shook her head. “Maybe. I don’t think so. I’m going to go check a few things back at the Scrap House, see if I can’t run some more analysis on this.”
“You sure?” Norris asked.
She rolled her eyes. “Beats hanging around the EMC. Or listening to Rhineman talk about his underwear.”
“I did not bring that up!” he wailed.
Daelia walked away from the brewing argument. If there was anything the cyber team here knew how to do, it was argue. Every time she’d ever gone to talk to them, somebody was fighting with somebody else about something. Usually something dumb. It was their favorite pastime.
She found the TMD material analysis team instead.
Even got one of them to listen to her and everything.
Once she explained what she wanted to do, the guy agreed to take a few more core samples, to see if he couldn’t drill a little deeper and hit something metallic.
“It’s going to take me a few hours,” he warned.
“No problem,” she said. “I’ve got to go back to my own lab. Get some stuff done.”
Like see if she couldn’t get one of her prototypes working.
Rover was true to his word, Argo thought.
Splatto was much easier to handle than Emily.
While active duty had all but retired the MQ-1, the Guard had inherited the Air Force’s entire inventory of emergents. It was no simple thing, decommissioning them entirely. There were agreements with the Domain Array. And so, here, they still flew. Only Splatto was used for anything real world, though.
There was no screwing around. No attempts at hazing. No virch. Splatto was subvocal, which was actually nice. More in line with what Argo was used to. He could provide updates on navigation data, targeting, and so on in perfect English. He could offer input on flight information. But those comments were generated from a pool of standard responses.
“Well, he seems pretty calm right now,” Argo replied.
“A little. It’s not a huge hobby where I grew up.”
“We had a cat.”
Another voice—the intel station—cut in.
“Why, what’s up with her?”
Argo looked over at Ho, who shrugged. “Cougar. Wings. Scorpion tail.”
“What the hell is up with the abiota on this base?” Argo asked.
<2Shy’s a big gamer.>
“Gamer?”
“Tabletop,” Ho supplied. “Old-school RPGs, pencil and paper stuff. All that.”
He pinched the bridge of his nose “That…that brings up so many more questions.”
“Thank god,” Ho said with a groan. “I’ve been needing to piss since—”
“Shutting up, sir,” the sensor said, and dropped his headset on the console. He looked at Argo. “I do really need to—”
“Go,” Argo said, nodding.
It was a simple thing to hand the flight over to Splatto, with parameters typed in. A predictive would fly exactly what it was asked to in this situation. Argo had no idea what an emergent would do. Hopefully, exactly what it was asked to.
Coming out of the cockpit himself, he stretched his arms up over his head, rolling his right shoulder until it popped, The seats were as comfortable as military contracting could make them. Which was to say, not very. He was used to it at this point, sure, but it always felt good to get out and move.
Argo retrieved a protein bar from his locker and wandered outside. It was almost 1400 now, and the hangar cast a long shadow out across the ramp. There was an aerobatic act on right now, a heavily modified biplane performing tight corkscrews over the runway, red smoke trailing from its wingtips. Argo munched his bar, watching the smoke, more engrossed than he should have been.
He’d grabbed his monocle from his locker too. But the entire act was purely physical.
Nice reminder of what could be accomplished, even without—
“Jesus! Argo, is that you?”
A UTV had just stopped, right there, in front of the hangar. In it were four people in silver-gray flight suits, tailored to the point of absurdity, and one heavily modified kugu.
A kugu that was wearing an AR wrap of an eagle-headed figure.
Shit.
The guy driving was hanging over the wheel, smiling at him. “It is! What the hell are you doing at a Guard base, man?”
Shit. Shit shit shit.
“Troll,” Argo said, forcing a smile. “I could ask you the same thing. Last I heard, you were an instructor out at Red Flag.”
“Got picked up for this last year,” his old classmate said, nonchalant, as if qualifying for the Air Force’s premier flying demonstration team was no big deal. He looked downright anachronistic in his tailored flight suit, built tough and solid, hair shaved in a high-and-tight so pronounced, it was almost a mohawk. He patted the Storm Gryphons patch on his chest. “How have you been? Haven’t seen you in years.”
“You know I went MQ-9.”
“Big mistake there, buddy. FQ-47’s more fun.”
“Yeah, how many shots have you taken in the past year?”
Argo could feel where Troll’s eyes were focused. Right on his left shoulder, where his new service patch sat. The minuteman and fighter silhouettes of the Air National Guard.
But whatever Troll was thinking, he didn’t give it away.
Instead, he laughed. “Fair point, I guess. MQ-9’s where it’s at if you want to shoot low-yield missiles at PLA-backed insurgents out on the rim of the Bathtub. I get to show off to all the ladies.”
Argo laughed at that, for real. “Your wife know about that?”
“She doesn’t care.” Troll jabbed his thumb back over his shoulder. “But don’t let Gryphon Three back there hear you. Work wife and all. She’ll take it very personally.”
“Troll,” the predictive FQ-47 said primly, “we have a rendezvous to keep. The meet and greet for VIP ticket holders begins in eight and a half minutes.”
Troll nodded. “Yeah, yeah, I know. But I see an old buddy, I have to talk to him.”
“Eight minutes, twenty-one seconds.”
“You with the local flying unit?” Troll asked, and Argo nodded. “I’ll come by later, okay?”
“See you then,” Argo said.
“Who was that?” Ho asked as Argo stormed back into the hangar, shoved his monocle back into the locker.
“Old classmate,” Argo said, short. “Nate Takamori. We were in the same freshman squadron together at the Academy.”
Ho squinted at him. “You’re not an Academy grad, are you sir? Shit, last thing we need is one more ring-knocker around.”
“I’m not a grad,” Argo said, “and I don’t have a ring. They take it back if you don’t finish.”
Ho’s normal humor faded a little. “What happened?”
Argo swung his locker shut. “So what can I expect when we get back out there with Splatto?”
Ho chuckled.
Shit.
18
“So are you sure you know what you’re doing?”
Highlander. One of the 121st guys. Stuck down here this afternoon, babysitting either the rock itself or the TMD team that was crawling all over it.
He’d left her alone up to this point, watching football on his phone. It was only now, now that she was up underneath the space rock on her back, sweaty and flushed, that he decided to take an interest.
Why now, Daelia wasn’t sure. The guy had made a pass at her the first week she was here and wouldn’t let it go. Daelia hadn’t told her dad about it; probably wouldn’t have ended well for either of them. He wasn’t bad-looking, but he was, in her opinion, everything wrong with pilots. Too arrogant. Too self-absorbed.
She’d told him—directly—that he wasn’t getting anywhere near her pants. Usually guys backed off when she was that blunt with them.
Maybe he’d taken it as a challenge. Or maybe Rover had told him to keep an eye on her. Either way, she had better things to do than worry about his intentions.
She was on her back up against the side of the space rock, trying to thread a wire with a magnetized connection point into the hole. The TMD team had cored it out for her, as promised, hitting metal about eight inches in. The shavings were on the floor. She finally felt a little release as the connection point snapped into place. Now for the other one.
This second bore hole was much shallower than the first. Much easier to thread. Almost there.
“This is what I’m doing for my dissertation.”
“Which is?”
“Getting non-communicative abiota a way to talk,” Daelia said. Connection made. She swung back up to standing, and went over to the table. She shooed Highlander away.
“You’re going to get them to talk with a seismograph? Seems…unique.”
“You know how it goes,” Daelia said, still working. “Identification of emergent abiota is an imprecise art at best and relies heavily on the abiota’s ability to communicate.”
Highlander leaned on the table, genuine interest in his expression now. “I thought a lot of them don’t care about it. Like 2Shy. Or the AWACS.”
“I disagree. Abiota aren’t necessarily social creatures, but they do seem to crave communication. Like it’s air. Like it’s necessary for their survival.”
“It is, though, isn’t it?”
“In a manner of speaking, I guess. You know, they can’t let us turn them off. Once eclosed, a rudiment core requires constant energetic sustainment,” she said. She and Dad had talked about this over the years. The power needs of abiota had driven massive changes to the country’s power grid. If it hadn’t been for the new fusion reactors, it might have led to absolute disaster; the power drain was immense. “But they’re more than just energy, of course.”
“Don’t tell me you’re one of those idiots who thinks this is some supernatural shit. Ghosts or demons or some kind of entity on a higher vibrational plane, or whatever.”
Daelia looked at him. “Who says it’s demons?”
The pilot shrugged. “A couple of the guys like to watch their paranormal investigations streams while we’re on shift. Tis the season, and all that.”
That was right. Halloween was at the end of the month. Another thing to deal with.
Highlander was still talking. “So what do you think it is?”
She didn’t answer right away. She struggled with this. Math was not her best subject. Theoretical physics even less so. There were lots of theories, but even on the scientific side, they were all kind of ridiculous.
Sometimes, the spiritual answers felt more true.
“Whatever it is, it’s something in the hardware layer,” she said carefully, and stopped to check herself. Check her work.
This was the thing she’d been working so hard on, after all. She just wanted the damn thing to work. As much for her own edification as the answers it might provide.
She hadn’t tried this new iteration of her detector yet. But then, her earlier proofs of concept had worked on known abiota, and her setup at Ware had only been a failure by SAAL’s standards, not hers. She wasn’t trying to do anything refined here. All she needed was that needle to move, just a little bit.
And then…
She’d figure it out from there.
“So what’s it do?” Highland asked, eyeballing the machine.
Daelia could guess what he was thinking. Her detector looked a little weird, sure. A hodgepodge of robotic components cannibalized from Dad’s storeroom, or hand-machines, arranged into some postmodern Rube Goldberg machine. But who cared what it looked like as long as it worked?
