Target silverclaw, p.1
Target Silverclaw, page 1
CONTENTS
Title Page
MEET THE SWARM TEAM
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
About the Author
Copyright
DEPARTMENT OF
MICRO-ROBOTIC INTELLIGENCE
SPECIALISTS IN NANOTECHNOLOGY AMD BIOMIMICRY
HEAD OF DEPARTMENT
Beatrice Maynard: Code name QUEEN BEE
HUMAN OPERATIVES
Prof. Thomas Miller: TECHNICIAN
Alfred Berners: PROGRAMMER
Simon Turing: DATA ANALYST
SWARM OPERATIVES
WIDOW
DIVISION: Spider
LENGTH: 1.5 cm
WEIGHT: 1 gram
FEATURES:
• 360º vision and recording function
• Produces silk threads and webs stronger than steel
• Extremely venomous bite
• Can walk on any surface – horizontal, vertical or upside down
CHOPPER
DIVISION: Dragonfly
LENGTH: 12 cm
WEIGHT: 0.8 grams
FEATURES:
• Telescopic vision with zoom, scanning and recording functions
• Night vision and thermal imaging abilities
• High-speed flight with super control and rapid directional change
NERO
DIVISION: Scorpion
LENGTH: 12 cm
WEIGHT: 30 grams
FEATURES:
• Strong, impact-resistant exoskeleton
• Pincers to grab and hold, with high dexterity
• Venomous sting in tail
• Capable of high-speed attack movements
HERCULES
DIVISION: Stag beetle
LENGTH: 5 cm
WEIGHT: 50 grams
FEATURES:
• Extra-tough membrane on wing shells to withstand extreme force and pressure
• Serrated claw for sawing through any material
• Can lay surveillance ‘eggs’ for tracking and data analysis
SIRENA
DIVISION: Butterfly
LENGTH: 7 cm
WEIGHT: 0.3 grams
FEATURES:
• Uses beauty rather than stealth for protection
• Expert in reconnaissance missions – can gather environmental data through high-sensitivity antennae
SABRE
DIVISION: Mosquito
LENGTH: 2 cm
WEIGHT: 2.5 milligrams
FEATURES:
• Long proboscis (mouthparts) for extracting DNA and injecting tracking technology and liquids to cause paralysis or memory loss
• Specialist in stealth movement without detection
• Capable of recording low frequency, low-volume sound
MORPH
DIVISION: Centipede
LENGTH: 5 cm (10 cm when
fully extended)
WEIGHT: 100 milligrams
FEATURES:
• Flexible, gelatinous body with super-strong grip
• Ability to dig and burrow
• Laser-mapping sensory functions
The large grandfather clock chimed eleven. Although it was late in the evening, the fifth-floor hallway of the UK’s Ministry of Defence building was brightly lit.
The chimes were all that could be heard in the hallway. A thick carpet allowed a tall figure, carrying a large suitcase, to move without a sound. The figure’s smart polished shoes moved past the clock, walking slowly towards a closed door a little further along the corridor.
Behind that door was an expensively furnished office. Sir Godfrey Kite, Secretary of State for Defence, sat at a wide desk, checking through some official papers. Open in front of him was a bright red despatch box, one of the official cases used by British ministers to carry documents. The only light in the room was the white glow from a reading lamp, shining on the desk’s surface. Beyond this pool of light, the office was dark and shadowy.
Sir Godfrey was a short, middle-aged man with grey hair and a square jaw. He wore a pair of half-moon spectacles perched on his nose. He sat back, stretched and yawned, then glanced at his chunky wristwatch.
“Is that really the time?” he muttered quietly to himself. He’d been concentrating so hard on his work, he hadn’t even noticed the chiming of the grandfather clock.
He placed his spectacles on the desk and rubbed his eyes. He checked through some of the papers in front of him and dropped them back into his despatch box. He’d deal with them in the morning, he decided. He was too tired to give them proper attention now.
He paused. He thought he’d heard… What was that? It sounded like someone had brushed against the outside of his door.
He sat still and silent for a moment, then called out, “Is that you, Havelock? I thought everyone had gone home hours ago!”
Silence.
After a few seconds, Sir Godfrey shook his head and smiled to himself. “I need a good night’s sleep, that’s all,” he mumbled.
There it was again! A rustling sound, as if someone was listening at his door. There was no mistaking it this time.
“Who’s there?” barked Sir Godfrey. He flushed with anger. “I’m in no mood for pranks, I warn you! Havelock, if you think this is—”
He stopped mid-sentence. He shielded the light from the lamp with a hand and peered into the gloom.
The handle of the door was turning, very slowly.
For a moment, Sir Godfrey felt a flash of fear. Then his anger returned. “Right! That’s quite enough of this!”
He jumped to his feet, marched to the door and flung it wide open. The figure carrying the large suitcase stood absolutely still in the doorway.
Sir Godfrey took a step back, and then another. His eyes widened. His mind struggled to make sense of what he was seeing.
“W-what’s going on?” he cried in a trembling voice. “If this is a joke, it’s in very poor taste!”
The figure remained still and silent.
Sir Godfrey backed away, his eyes fixed on the stranger, and collided with his desk. The desk lamp shuddered momentarily, then toppled over. A bright glare now shone directly at the mysterious figure.
“O-oh my…” stammered Sir Godfrey. “W-who are you?”
The figure took a step forward. He had the face of Sir Godfrey Kite, Secretary of State for Defence.
“Who are you?” demanded the real Sir Godfrey loudly.
“Surely you know your own reflection?” said the stranger. He had Sir Godfrey’s voice, too. He was even wearing an identical suit.
“I’m going mad!” cried Sir Godfrey. His eyes bulged and sweat broke out on his forehead. “I’m going completely mad!”
“No,” smiled the stranger. “You’re going to sleep.”
He raised his hand and fired a tiny dart from a small device. It hit Sir Godfrey in the neck and the politician slowly crumpled to the floor, unconscious.
The fake Sir Godfrey went to work. He didn’t bother shutting the office door, because he knew for certain that there was nobody else in the building except the two security guards at the main entrance. He sat at the desk, picked up the lamp and set it back in its place, then sorted through the papers in the despatch box, locating the one he’d come for. It was marked “Top Secret”.
He picked up the landline phone and tapped in a number from the secret document. The call was answered almost immediately.
“Call location confirmed,” said the government officer at the other end. “Ministry of Defence, London. Please establish ID.”
“This is Sir Godfrey Kite,” said the imposter.
There was a short pause. “Voice-print ID confirmed,” said the officer.
The imposter read a code number from the secret document. “Shipment AE-X-4567-beta is to be re-routed. It will now be picked up by aircraft at Location 11-88 on the north-west coast.”
“Are you sure, sir?”
“Of course I’m sure!”
“Sorry, sir, but my records show that shipment is a consignment of weaponry. It’s not usual for—”
“This is a security measure,” interrupted the imposter. “A last-minute, unannounced change to fool the terrorists!”
“Of course, sir,” spluttered the officer.
“See to it,” said the imposter. Without waiting for a reply, he put down the phone.
He slipped a smartphone from his jacket pocket and sent a text:
The imposter stood up and opened the large suitcase he’d brought with him. He placed the unconscious Sir Godfrey into it, in a curled-up position, and locked it. He glanced around the office to check that everything looked normal, then picked up the case and walked away down the hall. He carried the suitcase as if it was no heavier than when it had been empty.
Downstairs at the main entrance, one of the guards came out of the small security station to meet him.
“Did you get what you needed, sir?” said the guard.
The imposter tapped the suitcase. “I did indeed, thank you. So many papers! I know I ought to use the despatch boxes, but one big case is so much easier to manage.”
“I quite understand, sir,” smiled the guard. “Oh, by the way…”
“Yes?”
“When you came in, sir, half an hour ago. When I said I thought you were still
“Yes?”
“The thing is, sir, we hadn’t checked you out of the building. According to the log, you hadn’t left, but now we’ve logged you as coming in and going again, when we didn’t know you’d gone in the first place, if you see what I mean?”
The imposter shrugged. “Well, as you can see, I must have left earlier, or I couldn’t have returned now, could I?” He laughed, and the guard chuckled along with him.
“It’s just that we have to stick to the rules, sir,” said the guard, squirming slightly, “and these days one tiny security slip up can get people like me into a whole world of trouble, sir.”
The imposter leaned closer to the guard and spoke in a whisper. “Mistakes happen, old chap. I tell you what, you say nothing about me not using the proper despatch boxes, and I won’t say anything about the log slip up, how’s that? If anyone gives you any trouble, send them to me. I’ll back you up.”
The guard gave him a wobbly grin. “That’s very good of you, sir, really.”
“No problem. Now, could you call my car round? I’ll go straight to my flat.”
“Right away!” smiled the guard.
A few moments later, a sleek black ministerial car glided to a halt outside the gate. The imposter got into the back, pulling the suitcase in beside him.
The car sped away into the night.
“8:58 a.m. Two minutes to bomb detonation. Move in!”
The electronic voice buzzed across an encrypted communications network. It was answered by six others. “Logged,” said each of them. “I’m live!”
The scene outside the Palace of Westminster seemed totally normal. Streams of traffic crawled and honked along Westminster Bridge, past Big Ben and around Parliament Square. Hundreds of people crowded the streets; Londoners hurrying to work and tourists snapping selfies.
“Target ahead. Sensors at maximum sweep.”
Nobody paid any attention to a large white van parked close to the Palace of Westminster, near the lawns of Abington Street Gardens. It was an old, rather rusty vehicle, with “D, G & I Plumbing Solutions Ltd” painted in large letters along the side beneath a smiling cartoon dog holding a sink plunger.
People walking by had no idea that the three men sitting on the front seats were heavily armed terrorists. Between them, they were keeping a close watch on the area around the van. In the compartment behind them, sealed off from normal electronic scans and the noses of sniffer dogs, were cardboard crates packed floor to ceiling. They contained enough concentrated explosive to reduce everything within a half-mile radius to rubble and dust. A trigger was held gingerly by the terrorist at the steering wheel.
The passers-by had no idea that this threat was about to be dealt with by a team of undercover agents unlike any other. The agents were closing in on the van.
“Ninety seconds until the prime minister’s car passes the van. Move in!”
“Scans show driver has a manual detonator. Proceed with caution!”
“Logged.”
The seven undercover agents were micro-robots, each taking the outward form of a bug. Chopper the dragonfly circled the area, coordinating the mission and relaying instructions; Hercules the stag beetle flew at speed towards the van, carrying Nero the scorpion in his metal legs; Sabre the tiny mosquito flew beside them; Widow the spider swung across the road, from car bumper to car bumper, on thin web-wires; Morph the centipede scuttled up through a drain cover and approached the van from underneath; and high above them fluttered Sirena the butterfly, her ultra-sensitive probes scanning every detail of the activity below.
These robots were part of SWARM, an organization so secret that only a handful of people knew it existed. The robots’ advanced brains processed data about the van, the terrorists inside it and everything nearby faster than any human could. Their circuits streamed information back to SWARM headquarters, hidden deep beneath the streets of London.
“Hercules, get Nero inside,” transmitted Chopper. “Priority one: disable the bomb.”
“OK,” signalled Hercules the stag beetle.
“The correct response is ‘logged’,” tutted Nero as he scurried to one side of the van.
Hercules landed on its roof and quickly cut a small, perfectly round hole in the metal surface using the sharp pincer that jutted forward from his toughened exoskeleton.
Inside the van, the driver held up a hand for silence. “Shh! Can you hear something? It sounds like scratching…”
All three terrorists were in a state of nervous dread.
“What?” cried another. “No, I can’t! Keep watching what’s going on outside!”
All three had machine guns hidden just out of view. The third man gripped his gun tightly to stop his hands from shaking. “The prime minister’s car will be here any minute…” he muttered to himself. “This is it…”
“Fifty-eight seconds and counting,” signalled Chopper. “Sirena, what’s Sabre’s best route in?”
“Both windows firmly shut,” reported Sirena, her sensors analyzing everything from the chemical composition of the glass to the body temperature of the three terrorists. “He needs to go up through the air vents.”
“Logged,” said Sabre. Darting in swift, buzzing movements like a real mosquito, he flew through the grille at the front of the van and along the inside surface of the bonnet.
“Morph, Widow,” said Chopper. “Disable the van.”
“Logged.”
Widow whipped around the van’s exhaust pipe and swung beneath the wheel arch. She leaped from wheel to wheel, binding them into fixed positions with threads stronger than steel cable. If the terrorists tried to move the van, the wheels would be completely immobilized, thanks to Widow’s web.
Meanwhile, Morph the centipede flattened his gelatinous body until he was thin enough to slip inside the van’s engine. He curled around whatever moving parts he could find and squeezed them until they cracked.
“We’d better hurry,” he said. “If they suspect they’re being attacked they’ll detonate the bomb early.”
“Forty seconds,” said Chopper.
“Scanning…” said Sirena. “They’re watching the street. Sabre, you’re safe to proceed.”
“Logged,” said Sabre.
He darted out of one of the air vents set into the van’s dashboard. Before any of the terrorists had time to notice a little insect buzzing around their heads, Sabre had loaded a microscopic pellet into his needle-like proboscis. He shot forward and injected it into the neck of the terrorist holding the bomb’s detonator.
“Stinger delivered,” he said.
The man suddenly let out a squeal and lurched upright.
“What is it?” cried the man sitting next to him.
Sabre buzzed through a semicircle in mid-air and injected a sting behind the second man’s ear. He too yelped. Then both of them slumped over.
The third terrorist cried out in alarm. He looked outside in a panic, wondering what was going on.
“Thirty seconds,” said Chopper.
By now, Nero had crawled in through the hole in the roof and was scuttling upside down, close to the windscreen.
“Better knock this one out fast,” he transmitted. “Humans act in irrational ways when scared.”
Sabre zipped past the two unconscious terrorists. The third was reaching out for the timer, to set off the bomb, when Sabre swooped down and stung the back of the man’s hand. He snatched it back, yelling in pain. Then he twitched violently in his seat and drooped against the windscreen, his face squashed into an ugly twist against the glass.
“I’ve detected a booby trap!” said Sirena. “A second detonator deep inside the van’s rear compartment. It was set off when Hercules cut his way in. Timer is at twenty-three … twenty-two seconds. Transmitting coordinates.”
“Nero, you have twenty seconds,” said Chopper calmly.
Without a word, Nero the scorpion scurried around the packing boxes in the rear of the van until he reached the timer. Thin fibre-optic probes shot out of his pincers and dug into the timer’s electronic mechanism.
“Ten seconds,” said Chopper.
The probes tested the timer’s circuits. The mathematical subroutines in Nero’s programming worked out how to send a stop signal into the bomb without triggering any more traps or anti-tampering devices.
