Operation Sting (2 page)

Gradually, Chopper’s more powerful wings brought their flight under control and Sabre began to regain coordination of his sensors. Chopper stopped in mid-air, transmitted a stream of data
back to base, and spun round. He headed for HQ, Sabre dangling limply beneath him.

Back at SWARM headquarters, Queen Bee switched off the screens and angrily squeezed her hands into fists. She swung her chair around. The people behind her were all looking shocked.

Finally, the silence was broken. “Well, well, well,” said the head of MI5 with a sneer. “Better than normal agents, are they? I’m pretty sure my clumsy, obvious humans could have handled that rather more efficiently! Looks like your robots have let a dangerous weapon get into the wrong hands.”

CHAPTER TWO

Deep beneath the streets of London, the top-secret headquarters of SWARM housed a network of rooms and passageways. On the lowest level of HQ was a long, narrow room with a low ceiling. The floor was a series of panels which shone a bright, slightly blue-tinted light throughout the room. Around the walls were display screens, machinery, files and racks of scientific equipment. Along the centre was a line of raised workbenches, some of them covered in a jumble of electronic circuits and wires. This was SWARM’s laboratory.

At one of the benches, a young man was concentrating on his work. He was peering into a large, rectangular eyepiece, which stood out from a chunky machine in front of him. With each hand he manipulated what looked like an upside-down computer mouse. His expression was one of intense curiosity. Now and again, his hair flopped in front of his eyes and he flipped it clear.

Working opposite him was a much older man, tapping at the keys of a laptop. He wore a button-up cardigan and his hair was a wave of pure white.

The only sounds in the laboratory were the clicking of the keyboard and the low, gentle hum of power that pulsed through the machines.

When the young man spoke, his voice broke through the stillness of the room. “How’s it going, Alfred?”

The old man scratched at his chin. He spoke with a distinct northern accent. “I know it sounds crazy, but I’m sure they’ve been writing their own subroutines into their core directories.”

The young man didn’t take his eyes off his
work, but shrugged. “That would account for their unexpected behaviour,” he muttered.

Suddenly, the laboratory door opened and Professor Miller strode in. The Professor was a tall, thin man with a bald head. Behind him were a man and a woman, both smartly dressed.

“This is SWARM’s laboratory,” said the Professor in a gruff, no-nonsense tone. “I am in charge of the design and mechanics of our robots. I maintain their internal circuitry, perform upgrades and effect repairs.”

He led them over to the young man. “Simon Turing here is our Data Analyst. His main tasks are to download and collate the data collected by our micro-robots, and to keep all members of SWARM up to date on current mission information.”

The young man looked up and waved cheerily.

The Professor indicated the older man. “Alfred Berners is our Programmer,” he said. “He created and maintains the robots’ brain functions. He wrote the millions of lines of code which dictate the robots’ behaviour, and develops subroutines which enhance or modify their response patterns. Mr Berners is one of the world’s most
distinguished scientists in the field of computer control systems.”

“Hello,” smiled Alfred Berners. “Has anyone seen my SD card with the test results on it?”

“Yes, I had it earlier,” said Simon Turing, hopping off his stool.

Professor Miller tutted to himself when he noticed Simon’s superhero T-shirt. “Mr Turing, Mr Berners,” he said, introducing the man and woman he’d arrived with. “These people are our new field agents. Their role at SWARM is a small but important one. They will work alongside our robots, if and when required. At other times, they’ll act as support here at headquarters. Agent J has been moved over from administrative duties at MI6,” he explained, gesturing to the man standing with him, before turning to the woman and saying, “and this is Agent K, who comes to us from the CIA.”

“Wow,” said Simon, retrieving Alfred’s SD card from a slot on a sleek electron microscope behind him. “You must have some great stories to tell.”

“Nothing I can talk about,” smiled Agent K. “Actually, I was on desk work at CIA headquarters
in Langley, Virginia most of the time.”

“Simon, have you downloaded the mission data from Chopper?” said the Professor.

“I was just doing it when you arrived,” said Simon. “I think he got a look at one of those attackers, at least.” He handed the SD card to Alfred.

The Professor nodded sharply. “Good. Ms Maynard will need your report as soon as possible. She’s in the Home Secretary’s office right now.”

“After what happened this morning,” said Alfred, placing the SD card in his laptop, “I wonder how our Queen Bee’s getting on.”

“I’ve never seen such a shambles in all my life!” shouted the Home Secretary.

Queen Bee shifted uncomfortably in her seat. The head of the Secret Intelligence Agency, her boss, was sitting on the Home Secretary’s side of the huge oak desk, and was silent with red-faced embarrassment.

“Well?” cried the Home Secretary. “What are
you going to do about the situation? A top-secret weapon has been stolen by goodness-knows-who, I’ve got the Prime Minister demanding to know what’s happening, and I can’t even tell him exactly why it happened because SWARM doesn’t officially exist!” She looked back and forth between Queen Bee and the SIA head. “You people make my blood boil!”

Queen Bee cleared her throat. She was every bit as angry as anyone at the loss of Whiplash, but she wouldn’t let her emotions show. Especially now, when action was called for. She would never, she told herself, allow her feelings to cloud her judgement. She spoke as calmly as she could. “We’re analysing the data recorded by Chopper, our dragonfly. We’re confident of making a positive ID on one of the culprits soon.”

“The sooner the better!” said the Home Secretary. “Didn’t this Whiplash thing even have a homing tracker on it?”

“The risk was assessed as low, and the private company that—”

“Low risk? This is a top-secret project! And yet a bunch of crooks in a BMW knew about it.
Come to that, how did SWARM get involved?”

“It’s our job to get involved, Home Secretary,” said Queen Bee.

The Home Secretary stared angrily at her. “That’s supposed to be an answer, is it?”

“It’s all I’m authorized to say.”

“To me?” cried the Home Secretary. “To me? I’m supposed to be in charge here! The intelligence agencies seem to think they have a right to—”

“Yes, but sometimes—” began Queen Bee.

“Don’t interrupt me!” cried the Home Secretary. She shuffled the papers on her desk and took a deep breath. There was a great deal more to be said, and she wanted to say it as clearly and forcefully as possible.

Back in the underground SWARM laboratory, Simon Turing was making adjustments on a touchscreen while Professor Miller ran through the laboratory protocol with the new recruits.

“Queen Bee’s probably got the Home
Secretary eating out of her hand,” he muttered. “Or something. I try to keep clear of the political stuff.” He turned to Agent J and Agent K. “Let me introduce you to the stars of our show.”

He flipped a switch on the machine he’d been working at. The top section hissed gently as it opened, revealing a complicated mass of circuits and mechanical rods. In the middle of it all was Chopper, held in a delicate cage of tiny pincers. His wings shone in a hundred colours.

“The insects are all offline at the moment,” said Simon, “so I can talk about them without them overhearing me and getting big-headed.”

“You make them sound like humans,” said Agent J.

Simon raised a finger. “Ah, hold that thought, we’ll get back to it.”

“That’s amazing,” gasped Agent K, leaning in for a closer look. “It looks like a real dragonfly.”

“Of the order Odonata,” said Alfred. “Beautiful creatures.”

“Packed into that tiny shell,” said Simon, “you’ve got telescopic-vision systems, scanning and recording units, even night vision and
thermal-imaging capabilities. Ideal for surveillance and gathering information.”

He pressed a button on the workbench, and a hatch beside it slid open. Inside was Sabre, hooked up to a set of miniature computers. “Sabre, our mosquito, got damaged on his recent mission. The Professor is in charge of mechanical and electronic components, he’ll get him repaired and back to normal later today. Sabre is one of the smallest in the team, but he packs an almighty punch. Just as real mozzies bite, he can perform a range of stings and extractions. Carbon-fibre injection mechanisms built into his head can be pre-loaded with micro-pellets or used, for example, to test a target’s blood.”

Simon turned and tapped a six-digit number into a box on the wall. With a series of hums and whirs, five metallic cages rose up from the workbench, one by one. An insectoid robot was held in the middle of each, surrounded by circuitry and switches.

“Hercules,” said Simon, indicating an oval-shaped stag beetle. “He’s a heavy-duty agent. That serrated mouthpart claw can cut through
solid metal, and he’s tough enough to withstand a direct hit from a sledgehammer. He has an exoskeleton built from the latest in nano-fibre polymers, harder than diamond. As has Nero, our scorpion. You see that sting? That can deliver whatever chemical we give him. And his pincers make him our engineer, able to tap into electronics and carry out mechanical tasks.”

Agent J and Agent K were staring at the robots with blank-faced astonishment. Simon smiled with pride and led them on to the next robot.

“Widow is our spider,” he said. “She can produce threads and webs stronger than steel, and there’s a communications array built into the abdomen that makes MI5 look like a satellite dish. Next, we have our centipede, Morph. He can dig, burrow and squeeze through spaces barely thicker than a sheet of paper, but his main attribute is his strength. Get him wrapped around your thumb and he could crush the bones inside it. Last, but certainly not least, we come to Sirena. She’s a butterfly designed around a super-sensitive set of sensors. She’s built as a kind of mobile analytical unit. She can detect all forms of
air contamination, build up a detailed map of her immediate area, and even monitor the internal workings of a human being.”

“You’re calling them ‘he’ and ‘she’,” said Agent J. “Surely you’re not going to tell me they have personalities?”

Simon grinned broadly. “They were only activated for the first time a matter of weeks ago, but they’re already developing as distinct characters. This is where we come back to that point about humans. I think the sheer complexity of their programming has allowed them to have minds not unlike our own.”

Professor Miller groaned loudly. “That’s pure speculation. A few unexpected responses doesn’t add up to a personality.”

“Just before you came in,” said Simon, “Fred was on to something, weren’t you?”

“I know it sounds unlikely,” said Alfred, running a hand through his white hair, “but I’m certain they’re adding sections of code to their own programs. It’s almost as if they’re … well, gaining memories, and experience.”

“They’re machines,” blustered Professor
Miller. “Nothing more.”

“They’re some of the most advanced machines ever built,” said Simon. “They’re designed to think for themselves, it makes sense that they’d develop personalities, doesn’t it? After all, we’ve given them names!”

“So, what are they like?” asked Agent K.

“Well,” said Simon, “Chopper is the sensible one. If they were humans I’d call him their leader. Widow is a loner, an observer. Sabre, as you can probably tell from the way he charged in on that mission, tends to be a bit reckless. Hercules is the joker of the pack, Nero can be positively sarcastic at times, and Morph’s a worrier, a bit unsure of himself. He’s the last one to suggest anything rash.”