Dhungwana 2117: A captivating sci-fi novel: The Dhungwana Chronicles (2117-3451) Part 1 (9 page)

Dayla had no difficulty in contacting the meteorologist Roger Brickes, using the excuse of a survey concerning ENSO (El Niño-Southern Oscillation), the periodic climatic phenomenon that affected food production throughout Dhungwana.

Five days later she went to the man's house.

After a few tentative pleasantries, Dayla showed Brickes the novel
Brave New World
by Aldous Huxley inscribed with the eight figure code that she had extrapolated.

“Chungle... that’s Nathan Chungle’s code... ” said Brickes: “He blew himself up on the 395th floor of the BlueGray Corporation, killing four officers. The Corporation hushed the whole thing up by simulating a general evacuation test. Evidently, Nathan trusted you and he was right.”

Then Roger Brickes listened to Dayla’s story in silence, remaining seated with her at the work table of the small meteorological station in his home, continuously smoothing his mustache with his fingers, but without showing any emotion. Finally Dayla finished talking and looked at Brickes nervously waiting for a response.

After a few moments of reflection, he began to speak: “Everything is clear to me now! Yes, it is chilling, and I also see no other solution. But I have good news: I have already put together a team of people, all on your list, including cyber raiders, and we have been planning to attack the central nets. We’ve been preparing for a few months, but we couldn’t understand exactly what was happening. We wanted to find out and take back the freedom that they have been slowly taking from us these last decades. I know the right man to organize our guerrilla army. You know, many banned people have been waiting for this moment for a long time. I spent ten years of my life with these people. Everything else is just a matter of networking; everyone will carry out their part. I will need two months” said Brickes, cutting short the conversation, like a good ex-military official.

“Two months isn’t long but the delay will give an enormous advantage to the Federal Communities” Dayla remarked: “They are continuously developing the patches and, sooner or later, the recombinants will manage to break through our immunity. Waiting is very risky. They could also discover our plans and kill us all.”

“Certainly, but it's simply impossible to create a force that would have even a minimal chance of success in less than two months. Any idea how to solve the issue of the patch?” asked Brickes.

“Sheets of synthetic skin between wristsynks and the forearm” Dayla replied. “It works. It is a temporary solution, and perhaps seems simple, but it works. The sheet becomes saturated in two days and must be changed, this means we’ll need thousands of strips of synthetic skin.”

“That may not be a problem… we can recover synthetic skin from production waste.” Brickes said, and then summed up: “Okay, I'll get right to work. We will meet in a week with the main guerrilla leaders to define the details of the operation, then we will assign roles according to people’s skills. The cyber raiders have already created a shadow communication net; it has little autonomy because we need to hide ourselves. The system auto-destructs and then regenerates, creating small electromagnetic disturbances simulating daily interference from intense sunspot activity. We’ll contact you with further instructions.”

Dayla stood, shook his hand and said: “Good luck, Brickes, and... could you please send me an extract from your recently published ENSO study predicting its impact on food production, citing today’s meeting? Thanks!”

Roger Brickes nodded briskly and walked her to the exit of the building, thinking that if he was twenty years younger he would surely have wooed this woman.

“In an hour we may lose everything, and I want to stay close to you in the office until we receive the occupation order. We’re ready for this, aren’t we?” said Ian, walking beside Dayla in the street.

“I'm not afraid, Ian. Indeed, the very idea of regaining just a small part of our freedom fills me with adrenalin. Come on, let's go in. It’s funny… today still seems just like any other day.”

Ian and Dayla, two months after Dayla’s meeting with Brickes, and for the first time since they had known each other, arrived at the BlueGray Corporation building together, hand in hand. It was the day of the insurgency.

They entered Dayla’s office and nervously sat together at her desk, waiting for the agreed signal.

At 10.15 am, the cyber raiders attacked the virtual public central system that controlled all networks. Ian and Dayla watched the live stream of their friends’ daring attack. The cyber raiders were filming and posting their progress live on the network. The war had begun.

Dayla and Ian used their passcodes to open the building’s main entrance. All of the BlueGray Corporation’s buildings opened their doors simultaneously as guerilla employees used their passcodes. Platoons of armed guerillas thundered into the buildings, quickly taking control of the industrial giant.

The guerrillas began the assault on the government buildings. The Federal Communities were at first caught off guard, but immediately called in the army and Skyhunters, reconnaissance drones that had attack capabilities. It soon became a truly bloody battle.

Dayla and Ian, now lying on the floor of Dayla’s office, had only had brief training on the use of weapons. The leaders of the resistance, in fact, had been divided into three groups: white collar and cyber raiders having their own specific tasks, leaving armed combat to guerrillas who had been specifically trained for the mission.

Suddenly, Dayla noticed a drone hovering outside the windows of her office. It was aiming its laser at three guerrillas who manned an anti-aircraft gun out on the terrace of her office. She shouted at the top of her lungs to warn them, but they didn’t hear in time. The drone fired.

The burst of laser fire hit the ground like a thunderbolt, but instead of the smell of ozone, Dayla’s nose and throat were filled with the terrible smell of burning flesh and metal, almost choking her.

She got up onto her hands and knees to see what had happened: on the terrace she saw just two legs, completely charred, and two helmets so blackened and fused with the terrace that they looked like a mad sculptor’s horrific artwork.

Meanwhile the Skyhunter was directing its weapon systems at another group of guerrillas on a neighboring terrace. The guerrillas were firing on the regular army’s armored H12 Platforms down at street level. The H12 Platforms had already surrounded the neighboring buildings.

Dayla crawled on her belly out to the now abandoned anti-aircraft cannon. Mentally she reviewed what little she remembered of her training: ‘Turn on the system, the safety is at the base, press the green button, enter the code sky0407’. She heard the dull sound of the Skyhunter’s laser again but this time she didn’t want to see the carnage.

Seconds later she reached the anti-aircraft gun, released the safety block, pressed the green button, quickly inserted the code and straightened up ready to fire, but the drone had been faster than her: it had reloaded its laser system and, in that moment, was aiming at her.

Ian saw what was going on and, keeping his composure, stood up and walked to Dayla’s desk shouting out the access codes to the laboratory data of the project he was working on. Ian couldn’t quantify how long the drone’s algorithm alfa45 would take to calculate two potential threats, but that moment of indecision gave Dayla time to activate the anti-aircraft gun. She aimed and fired. A flash of energy concentrated on the Skyhunter and in a split second, it turned into a ball of fire, rapidly losing altitude and smashing to pieces on the street below.

Ian sank down on the chair with a sigh of relief, while Dayla watched as the 3D synthetic-aperture radar unit of her aircraft-gun signaled movement from four H12 Platforms below her in the street.

Driven only by adrenalin, she turned the gun, inserted the laser spot tracker and the 3D image viewer, and, aiming down toward the road, fired on the H12 Platforms, lightly hitting one of the four.

She then looked up at the sky and saw several groups of drones in the distance that were definitely converging on the corporation buildings.

Meanwhile guerrilla groups, despite heavy losses, had managed to install aircraft-gun platforms on the towers of all the buildings and had begun firing, filling the sky with blue flashes and dense smoke.

Dayla refocused her attention on the H12 Platforms below, and tried to shoot as accurately as possible, when the 3D viewer projected the image of a group of guerrillas that had become trapped between fire coming from two directions: four H12 Platforms had occupied two intersections.

The guerrillas split up, running and firing in the direction of both platforms. At that point Dayla fired on one of the H12 Platforms, watching as it exploded in a spray of incandescent metal.

The other three H12 Platforms simultaneously opened fire on the rebels. The first burst of laser struck the group leaders and tore them to shreds in front of Dayla eyes, leaving only charred pieces of leg and arm.

Suddenly a guerrilla armed with a portable antitank gun, who had been sheltering behind a wall, ran forward into the street and scored a direct hit on one H12 Platform, just before being shot dead by a BlueGray Corporation security guard.

Dayla, by now exhausted, fired on the last armored vehicle in range and her shot hit the Platform’s front armor, melting and burning its control systems. She realized too late that a Skyhunter, using flight system antigravity invisible to her radar, had localized her position and had already fired a blast that just grazed her, cutting the tip of her shoe and burning her first three toes.

“Ian, get out of there! They have localized my position, we have to go!” she shouted, crawling on the ground towards the terrace exit. “I’m free! You can move now! Come on!”

Ian saw Dayla crawling across to the exit, rushed out, and reaching her, grabbed her into his arms. Running, he carried her across to the exit and they took refuge in a gap between the wall and the fire escape ladders.

Three hours later, 01:35 am Dhungwana time, agent K02007, part of the KYO7990 Intergalactic Army, sent an unexpected emergency communication to headquarters, interrupting a meeting of the strategic task force of the generals and admirals of Ikhals, taking place about 15 light years from Gliese 436.

“Gentlemen, Dhungwana is in total chaos: an armed rebellion against the system is taking place. Humans are attacking their recombined counterparts” said undercover agent K02007.

“Consequences?” asked the Grand Admiral of KYO7990.

“The system has been hacked, government buildings and ministries have been occupied, some of them have suffered extensive damage. The army and the skyhunters opened fire on the demonstrators and the guerrillas have reacted, unleashing a chain reaction with results, at this time, unpredictable and impossible to stop without our intervention. We need instructions, sir. This is a real battle, many are now dying.”

The Grand Admiral looked at the Ikhal notables one by one, and replied, finally sure of having an absolute majority vote: “Use the set frequencies to destroy all humanoids. I repeat, all the recombinants. You’ll receive the access keys for launch within two minutes. We will immediately send a support ship with reinforcements and clean up workers.”

The Grand Admiral waited until the communication with planet Earth had ended, and then turned back to his fellow Ikhals, shaking his head: “This is the fifth stochastic living model that we have organized and that has collapsed in on itself... Years of study and development thrown away because of inferior and belligerent laboratory life forms. We can make one last attempt by placing the humans in another testing area... but this time we will use a deterministic model, simpler and more predictable, after resetting their memories. Sure, it is not the best solution and the experiment will be less adherent to our reality, but these humans have neural networks that are evidently too primitive to withstand such a quantum leap. I’m beginning to wonder if we'll ever be able to educate and integrate them into the production chains of our corporations without creating inefficiency in production cycles. And finally, gentlemen, if the new test should eventually function, how long do you think we should wait before moving the experimental model and all its populace from Earth to KYO7990?”

*****

Let the adventure continue!

Coming Soon:

Teiresias Centaurus 3047

THE DHUNGWANA CHRONICLES (2117 - 3451)
.
PART II.

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