Quantum Troopers Return Episode 2: Free Fall

By Philip Bosshardt

A big conference of heads of state on the Moon is the setting. Unsuspected by UNIFORCE, the criminal cartel Red Harmony has targeted the Moon-farers assembly and intends to kidnap key leaders for ransom and a role in Lunar development. Copernicus City is assaulted by mysterious quakes and tremors and a hitherto unknown vehicle breaches the compound and makes good on their threat. Four leaders are abducted, including the American President.
Tasked with planning and executing a daring rescue mission, Johnny Winger and his quantum troopers don’t suspect they have a mole in their midst, a trooper working for the cartel. Everything they do is communicated back to the enemy. Worse, Red Harmony’s base on Far Side is near enough to a Chinese base for the Corps to suspect the Chinese are helping or protecting the cartel.
The rescue mission must be executed in such a way as to preserve diplomatic niceties and Chinese sovereignty. That means geoplanes and an underground assault. When Winger realizes all their plans are already known, he and Quantum Corps must find a way to mask their intentions and complete the rescue covertly.
The result is a daring operation making good use of Winger’s own ability to transform himself into an amazing variety of configurations. The cartel has no answer for what Quantum Corps seems able to do. But they do have the ability to spring last-minute surprises on the hostage rescue force.
Second episode in the Quantum Troopers Return serial.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Philip Bosshardt
• Release date: Mar 6, 2020
• ISBN: 9780463603901

Philip Bosshardt

Philip Bosshardt is a native of Atlanta, Georgia. He works for a large company that makes products everyone uses...just check out the drinks aisle at your grocery store. He’s been happily married for over 20 years. He’s also a Georgia Tech graduate in Industrial Engineering. He loves water sports in any form and swims 3-4 miles a week in anything resembling water. He and his wife have no children. They do, however, have one terribly spoiled Keeshond dog named Kelsey.For details on his series Tales of the Quantum Corps, visit his blog at qcorpstimes.blogspot.com or his website at http://philbosshardt.wix.com/philip-bosshardt.

Book preview

Quantum Troopers Return

Episode 2: Free Fall

Published by Philip Bosshardt at Smashwords

Copyright 2020 Philip Bosshardt

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

A few words about this series….

Quantum Troopers Return is a series of 25,000-30,000-word episodes detailing the adventures of Johnny Winger and his experiences as a quantum trooper with the United Nations Quantum Corps. This series continues the original serial stories of Quantum Troopers, Episodes 1-22 (formerly Nanotroopers).

Each episode will be about 40-60 pages, approximately 30,000 words in length.

A new episode will be available and uploaded every 4 weeks.

There will be 10 episodes. The story will be completely serialized in about 12 months.

Each episode is a stand-alone story but will advance the greater theme and plot of the story arc.

The main plotline: U.N. Quantum Corps must defeat the criminal cartel Red Harmony’s efforts to use their nanorobotic ANAD systems for the cartel’s own nefarious and illegal purposes.

Uploads will be made to www.smashwords.com on approximately the schedule below:

Episode # (*) Title Approximate Upload Date

1 (23) ‘Fab Lords’ 2-7-20

2 (24) "Free Fall’ 3-6-20

3 (25) Forbidden City 4-3-20

4 (26) Deep Encounter 5-8-20

5 (27) HAVOC 6-12-20

6 (28) The Empty Quarter 7-10-20

7 (29) The Hellas Paradox 8-14-20

8 (30) Twist Pirates 9-11-20

9 (31) The Better Angels 10-9-20

10 (32) The Ship of Theseus 11-13-20

(Note *: Episode numbers start with Episode 1 in this new series but the continuation of episode numbers from Quantum Troopers is also provided)

Chapter 1: The Copernicus Gambit

Copernicus City, the Moon

December 2, 2063

2350 hours Earth Universal Time (EUT)

The Moon-farers conference and the treaty to be signed at the UN Pavilion was the biggest thing to hit Copernicus City since Closure Day, nearly fifty years ago, when the surface domes were closed over the city in the crater.

Leaders of all the major Moon-faring nations were there, Presidents, Prime Ministers, monarchs, general secretaries, first lords, everybody who had any kind of interest in occupying, developing or defending something on the lunar surface. The Treaty was to set up ground rules and assign rights and responsibilities for what was to come and avoid a chaotic land rush for prime sites, ice and water holes and mineral deposits that covered much of the Moon’s harsh terrain.

The Moon was the ultimate high ground and any player that could put a satellite in orbit wanted to be there.

The American President was there in the person of Dr. LaTonya Kendrick, resplendent in a radiant silver gown, her bone and ivory hairpieces clicking as she glided across the plaza, whirling to greet anyone and everyone.

The Russian President, one beef-faced Vasily Ovchenin in the flesh, pressed hands and slapped backs, reminding all who would listen that the first snapshots of the Moon from close up had indeed been those taken by that venerable Russian craft Luna 1.

The Chinese leader, Hu Jining, seemed positively circumspect by comparison, but held court among a bevy of adoring admirers and press, as he laid out a five-hundred-year plan for China’s conquest of near-Earth space.

And there were lesser lights from India, the European Union and Japan, along with the Secretary-General of the UN, one Achmed bin Aswan, all circulating with drinks and hors d’oeuvres in hand, clustering and gesturing and shouting and laughing as the reception got fully underway.

The pre-conference reception was to be held in the main promenade of Copernicus Plaza, the domed surface level of CC, as Copernicus City was known to the locals. Situated nearly dead center in the floor of the crater, the Plaza was the topmost level of a city buried in regolith, some eleven levels deep, and anchored in lunar crust nearly four hundred meters below the surface. From orbit, CC appeared to be a winking eye set among the central peaks of the crater. Inside the dome, with its spectacular views of Mount Rathmore to the west and Mount Prospect to the east, the funiculars arrowing off toward the peaks like spiderwebs, the shopping district known as the Blocks sloped down to the Galileo Fountains, and was jammed with throngs of gawkers and sightseers and press surging forward against the barriers toward the gaiety swirling about the Fountains and pool.

The reception was scheduled to conclude with an address by the Sec-Gen to all delegates, followed by a lavish dinner. The plenary sessions would begin the next day among the lower levels of CC, where the only view would be that of delegates and their ministers, and the beige walls of the conference rooms themselves. The delegates wanted to avail themselves of one last view from the surface before burrowing belowground like moles.

They could not have known, as the reception got underway, that there were others below ground as well, not inside the city at all, but approaching on a stealthy vector, visitors who did not have official invitations from the UN at all.

The first tremors came when the first course had just been served. Delegates and their spouses and ministers were seated at lavishly decorated tables spotted across the Plaza, all of them clustered under the baleful gaze of Galileo himself, who gazed heavenward with a crude tubular telescope in one hand.

Look! someone cried out. "Look out--!"

Galileo himself wobbled and soon toppled backward into a reflecting pool, his head and arms shearing off on impact. Just beyond the statues and fountains, the lifts which would take delegates down into the bowels of CC began listing to one side and one lift tube detached from its moorings and toppled over on top of Galileo himself.

A strong series of tremors and quakes had struck CC.

The waters of Lake Dundee abutting the Apollo Terraces stirred as if a freshening breeze had blown in. Stones from the Rock Citadel above the Lake ran down the terraced hills and splashed into the Lake, as if a giant child had upended one entire end of the Plaza.

Screams and shouts erupted and the dining tables were tossed and kicked as delegates fled the lower promenade and climbed or scrambled through the Blocks, choking Ravine and Cube Streets as they sought the safety of higher ground.

Bin Aswan, the Secretary-General, tried to corral those panicked delegates who sought refuge at the foot of the Slope Houses, on the other side of the Plaza.

This way…come on! Head up…go up…higher…Triangle Street, the Observatory…head for the Plumes— he pointed southeast toward the famed Quarter of man-made fumaroles that hissed and belched in musical patterns just below the dome foundations. Like rats fleeing, many delegates followed him, scratching and clawing their way between the Slope Houses, while great sheets of glass and plaster rained down on them.

In all, the tremors seemed to last forever, but later seismic analysis showed the main pulses occurred over a four-minute interval. It was also only in that later analysis that the regularity and constant magnitude of the pulses could be seen for what they were: man-made bursts of energy injected into the surrounding basaltic crust, in effect a sonic lens deployed as a weapon to shake CC to its very foundations and create a maximum level of panic and chaos throughout the huge complex.

It was Vasily Ovchenin, the Russian President, who first saw the two ships appear as if they were huge metal gophers, breaching up through the inlaid tile and stone of the Plaza floor near the Galileo Fountains, their snouts glistening and shedding dust and regolith in great sheets as they came to rest in the shadow of the fallen statue.

"Gospodi! Chto za chert! What the hell…?" The great Russian vozhd stopped his frantic climbing and turned about to look and point. What kind of monster…they look like geoplanes, no?

Matteo Bari, head of the European Union, was out of breath, cut from falling glass and nursing scraped hands and arms. He stopped, sat back to look for himself.

"Some kind of craft…si? Underground ship, si?"

Indeed, the two craft resembled huge, fat watermelons albeit of metal and composite. Three rows of treads lined their hulls, equally spaced around the circumference of the ships. A lens-shaped nose glowed a subdued blue-white, surrounded by a shimmering ball of light.

Even as the two men watched in amazement, hatches opened on the sides of both ships. Crewmen in hypersuits emerged, bearing odd-looking weapons, which they trained and fired upon knots of fleeing delegates.

Ovchenin scowled. He knew those weapons. Suppressors, Bari. Those are suppressors, sound and stun weapons.

Even as he spoke, victims fell before the advancing squads, who circled the Fountains clearing a path for others who poured out of the ships behind them. Neither Bari nor Ovchenin initially saw