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Terminus Part 2
Posted By: monitor101<wasup1989@hotmail.com>
Date: 6 July 2006, 6:21 pm
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A.D. 2551, 14 September 0600 Hours / UNSC Military camp Rogers, planet Reach
The popular sport of gravball is played on a court roughly the size of a tennis court. The focus is a volleyball size ball that hovers above the court. Imbedded in the court and in the ball are polar opposite magnets that repel one another, thus the ball is able to float five feet off the court like it is on the surface of water. The object is to hit the ball and get it past the opponent for a point.
Spartan Nathan-104 bent down and awaited his opponent's next move. Julie-03 hammered the ball with an open palm and sent it soaring toward the left wall of the repulsor court. It ricocheted off and headed for the left of Nathan's side. Nathan reacted in a split second; he jumped from the right towards the left, arms outstretched before him.
His fingertips barley connected with the ball in time. With little thrust behind his fingers, he pushed the ball back onto the repulsor court and kept Julie from racking up anther point. Nathan broke his landing with a somersault and jumped to his feet, immediately anticipating another barrage from Julie. However, it never came, the ball had stopped in the middle, his fingers had set it in motion, just not hard enough.
"Good job…another dead ball," Julie said as she ran a hand through her shoulder length blond hair.
Nathan turned and looked at the scoreboard mounted on the wall behind him. Julie beat him by three points, damn. He turned his head. "At least you won."
"Come on, lets go to the gym," she smiled and walked out of the entrance doors on her side of the court.
Of all the Spartans Julie was Nathan's closest friend. But, she was always better at gravball, a trait that Nathan despised.
He walked over to the court control pad and killed the court's magnetization. The ball fell with a loud thud onto the ground. Nathan exited the court and went to the gym. Today it was empty; the other Spartans had gone off on a twenty-mile run. Only Julie occupied it, she was shrugging free weights in the far back of the gym, the high gee section. Nathan walked over to the far end of the conical room, the gravity becoming stronger but not slowing down a seven foot tall, half-ton Spartan who could lift a car.
He went to the dumbbell rack, but saw that the heaviest weights were only two hundred pounds. Weak, he thought. Nathan went to the mats, dropped down, and began one thousand one armed pushups. He burned through them in five minutes and switched to the other arm. He was done in no time. By now, Julie was benching free weights in the opposite corner. Nathan lay on his back and did sit ups until his abdominal muscles screamed. He got to his feet and looked around for a new challenge.
"Nathan, one-oh-four!" a voice boomed in the room.
Nathan jumped to his feet and snapped rigidly to attention. It was unmistakably Master Chief John-117. John crossed the gym and walked over to Nathan. He was clad in shorts and a tee-shift that was drenched in sweat, he had just returned from the run.
"At ease, you received new orders; you're to report to Fairchild Air Force Base immediately. There is a shuttle waiting to take you into orbit," John said.
Nathan's face creased in puzzlement. "Orbit sir?"
John shrugged. "They don't tell me these things, Petty Officer, now report to the airstrip, a Pelican is waiting to shuttle you to Fairchild."
"I'll need time to don my armor."
"No need, they've already stowed all your equipment on the dropship," John said. "It seems that this one is Alpha priority so I suggest you get to it."
Nathan stood even straighter. "Yes sir, thank you sir."
"Good luck Nathan," John said.
Thank you sir," Nathan replied.
In the blink of an eye, John saluted and exited the gym. Nathan waited until he had left the gym, then turned around and looked at Julie. She had been listening in. She walked over to him.
"Sounds important," she said.
"Sounds like ONI," Nathan replied. He paused for a moment not knowing what to say. "I better get going."
She snapped to attention and saluted. Nathan crisply returned the gesticulation.
"God speed," she turned and went back to the weights.
Nathan ran for the door, not wanting to delay another second.
0705 Hours, 14 September / Epsilon Eridani system, planet Reach orbit, UNSC geosynch platform Thermopylae
At nearly a million square feet, the Thermopylae space station was one of the larger ports orbiting Reach. It held four docks for ships instead of the usual two, as well as ten smaller docks for shuttles ferrying people to and from orbit and other lesser craft. To accommodate the masses of UNSC military and naval personnel there were four "rings" that housed mess halls, restaurants, and even a few hotels with amusing names like the "Krystal Palas" or the "Manticore". It was almost a little city paradise in space to briefly take people's minds off the harsh reality of the Covenant war, a reality they all had to meet when they left the station.
Nathan exited the airlock and walked onto the bay seven terminal of the third ring. He stopped and looked around. The station was relatively warm and dimly lit. The walls, ceiling, and floor were a harsh metallic gray, giving the station a cold look with no gusto. The ceiling was low, Nathan guessed only fifteen feet high. People dressed in combat fatigues and dress uniforms hurriedly walked down the halls that rounded the station. There were view ports every meter or so on the walls that looking out upon the green Reach and the middle of the Thermopylae. Nathan frowned as the occasional person who walked past and stared at him. Seven feet tall and muscular, Nathan was still an intimidating presence even out of his armor.
A man in a perfectly pressed, expensive suit walked over to him. The man was not in uniform, he was a civilian. Nathan instantly zeroed in on the round insignia stitched on the breast pocket , black and silver eagle wings over three stars with the words SEMPER VIGILANS; a civilian who worked for ONI. The man was about six-one, with a tired face, and smartly trimmed black hair.
"You must be Nathan-104, I'm Dr. Joe Webber, ONI," the man said.
"Sir, reporting as ordered," Nathan snapped to attention and saluted.
Webber dismissed the salute and did something that Nathan didn't expect; he extended his hand. Nathan hesitated at first, not familiar with the custom, then he unsteadily shook Webber's hand. The man took Nathan in with an approving nod, but he showed no shock or awe at the sight of a Spartan, Nathan was surprised.
"How about a drink?" Webber asked.
Before Nathan could answer, Webber turned and walked down one of the hallways, Nathan followed. Webber walked to the other end of the ring and led Nathan into a dim, high-class restaurant. A friendly waiter greeted them and took them to a corner table with an impressive view of Reach. Webber slid into his chair and Nathan had trouble getting into the cramped chair, which was not meant for someone of hiss stature. The waiter laid out menus.
"What can I get you today?" the waiter, a young woman asked.
Webber ordered a Wild Turkey and Nathan ordered ice water. He was not used to this type of atmosphere. He felt out of place here, this restaurant, being treated as if he was an everyday citizen. He wasn't normal, he was a Spartan, he was a soldier of the UNSC. He ate in mess halls, not in restaurants.
The waiter left and Webber leaned back. He pulled out a gold cigarette case with wavy ridges, and pulled one out. Nathan noticed that it was an old-fashioned cigarette, one that you had to light, not one that required you to pull off the safety strip and tap the end to ignite it. Webber pulled out a well-used Zippo lighter, expertly opened the lid and struck the wheel against his thigh, and lit the cigarette. He took a puff and seemed to relax.
Webber leaned forward. "I will get right to it. As of twenty-two hundred hours ago, we lost contact with one of our ships, a research frigate, the Asilomar."
"The Covenant?" Nathan suggested.
"No…an experiment...Project Terminus," Webber said. He took a nervous drag from the cigarette and tapped his fingers on the table, as if he was hesitant to tell Nathan more. He leaned in and spoke almost at a whisper. "Remember what I'm about to tell you is classified, we'll sign all that confidentiality bullshit later."
"Yes sir," Nathan responded. The man's nervousness and the great mystery surrounding this 'experiment' had him intrigued.
"Are you familiar with nanobots?" Webber asked.
"Yes sir, their prescription medicines that are used for pain medication, antibiotics, and curing diseases," Nathan replied, recalling when he had been put on nanobots for the pain after getting hit in the side with a plasma bolt, which even for a Spartan hurt like hell.
"Right, but ONI has been experimenting with weaponized nanobots," Webber said furtively.
"Weaponized?"
Webber smiled. "It's a term in microbiology to describe making a bacterium harmful or infectious. We have been making a deadly swarm of these nanobots to use as a weapon against the Covenant."
"Swarms?" Nathan asked confused with the medical terminology that Webber was spitting out.
"The nanobots travel in large groups which are visible to the naked eye, they look like hazy, black clouds, almost like overcast skies. We call these groups swarms, like a locust swarm. And each swarm is comprised of millions and even billions of them. Each nano is about one hundred times smaller than the diameter of a human hair, one hundred nanometers across, or one hundred billionths of a meter," Webber said.
He stopped as the waiter came and served their drinks. They thanked her and Webber waited until she was out of earshot. "Each nanite is like an AI on an atomic scale. AIs and nanos share the same type of memory processing superconductors, layers of coding, intrusion software, and other subroutines. When the nanobots get into a swarm they become about as smart as a low end AI, but they can't talk to humans or be as witty and intelligent as ship grade AIs…or so we thought…" Webber trailed off, puffed tensely on his cigarette, and examined the swirling blue smoke while deep in thought.
What Nathan was hearing was sinking in. "What do you mean sir?"
"The swarm was supposed to carry out orders. But they–it developed…what's the word I'm looking for," Webber snapped his fingers trying to jog his memory, "sapience."
"Sapience?" Nathan looked dumbfounded.
"The ability of an organism or entity to act with judgment. The swarm became self aware, aware of its actions. It can think about something, make a decision, and then execute it. We never saw it coming, it developed the mental facility of intelligence and grew a mind of its own," Webber said with tangs of trepidation in his voice.
"So they became smarter," Nathan said.
Webber looked at him surprised, as if Nathan had just said something he was trying to think of the entire time he was talking. "Exactly. Let me tell you something, sapience is derived from the Latin verb sapere, which means "to taste". The swarm tasted the meaning of life, it tasted knowledge and it's the best damn thing they've ever had…and they want more of it."
"So we have to stop them from getting even smarter," Nathan said.
"Yes, when the swarm attacks a human, it enters their brain. Their able to read the signals that are being sent between neurotransmitters, which are thoughts, and memory. Thus, they get smarter. If they get their hands on an AI then we're screwed, if they find Earth we're screwed," Webber said.
"How do you stop them?" Nathan asked gulping down his ice water.
"We use a computer virus that we upload into the ships computer, then we meltdown the ships' reactor, the swarm's little heads fry from the radiation," Webber replied.
"But why do you need me? I'm just a Spartan," Nathan asked.
Webber sipped his drink. "The swarm can possess a human. They enter your mind and literally take it over. You do what they want. They took over the Asilomar, when you read the report you'll get the full story. We need protection."
"I see," Nathan said shifting uneasily in the small seat that he barely fit in.
Webber jabbed his cigarette into the table ashtray and knocked back his Wild Turkey. He pulled out a few dollar bills and laid them on the table. "We ship out in a couple minutes, let's go," he said getting out of his seat.
Nathan was euphoric to get out of the uncomfortable chair. They walked out of the restaurant and down the ring to an elevator. They went up to the first ring. There they walked to a smaller launch bay and boarded a Prowler that was being prepped for launch. The ship was extremely cramped and small. However, as Nathan walked onto the bridge, he was surprised to see there was plenty of space in it. The circular room was packed with monitors and screens. The bridge was spinning to create artificial gravity; smaller vessels did not normally have centrifuges on their bridges.
Webber walked over to the NAV consol and began to read it over. "How we doing, Norma?" he asked the prowler's AI.
A soothing female voice came back over the loudspeakers. "Very good, Doctor. The rest of the team is already in stasis. We are outbound now and ready to jump for the Orionis system."
"Very good," Webber turned to Nathan. "I suggest you read the report before you hop in the tube."
"Yes sir," Nathan exited the bridge and followed the NAV markers to the rec room. There he took a seat in front of a computer and downloaded the report of what happened on the Asilomar. Five minutes later he shut down the terminal and followed the markers to cryoroom A. He took a shower and then jumped into the cryotube.
Nathan's vision became blurry as the sleeping gas filled his chamber. He relaxed in the tube and was out in a matter of seconds.
To Be Continued…
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