The Containment Wars and the Creation of the Sanctuaries (Part II)

 

War between Man and ANAD came again in the year 2099, not long after the Truce of Alexandria had been signed.  In some respects, perhaps, it was even more inevitable than the earlier conflict. Today, this larger conflict is known as the Second Containment War.

 

United Nations Quantum Corps “Official History of The Containment Wars: The Second Containment War (2099 to 2100); CH 10 Operation Eden Sweep.”

(from “The Archives of the United Nations Quantum Corps”)

 

General Strategy

Analysis of intelligence sources from Q2 indicated that the Truce of Alexandria, brokered at the end of the 1^st Containment War (March 2098) was destined to last for only a limited time.  The Truce created the Sanctuaries.  A key element of this Truce was that Config Zero and the swarms would confine themselves to defined areas and within those areas, they would have sovereignty and be able to make whatever environmental modifications they wanted.  These were the Sanctuaries and Q2 sources indicated that such arrangements were a key part of the Prime Key, the command and control system which drove Config Zero and all swarm operations on Earth.

Later intercepts and intelligence indicated that the Keeper system, ultimately determined to be located on the Jovian moon Europa, began operating around the time of the Truce of Alexandria.  Analysis of quantum signals showed conclusively that, by late 2099 and early 2100, signals from the Keeper had altered the stable and quiescent state of Config Zero, re-animated the swarms and swarm movements out of the agreed-upon Sanctuaries began at this time.

Operation Jovian Hammer was conceived to locate and either destroy or render harmless this Keeper system.  Results of the operation were inconclusive (see Operation Jovian Hammer: Mission Details and History, Volume 10, Section 22 of the Official History of the Containment Wars).

By January 2100, the United Nations Security Affairs Commissioner (UNSAC) and UNIFORCE determined that more drastic measures were necessary to stop and roll back increasing violations of the Sanctuary agreements.  Direct engagement with elements of Quantum Corps, Sanctuary Patrol and regular military formations had been mostly ineffective.  Swarm formations under the direct command of Config Zero pushed outward from established Sanctuaries in all directions, leading to battles at Cairo, up and down the Italian peninsula and throughout the Balkans.  Additional engagements occurred in the Kenya-Somalia sector and on northwest islands of the Indonesian archipelago (see Caroline Islands Campaign, Dec 2099 through March 2100).

Thus was born the concept for Operation Eden Sweep.

The principle behind Operation Eden Sweep was as old as organized warfare itself and was perhaps most famously used by the Greek army in their conflicts with Troy, as recounted in Virgil’s epic poem the Aeneid, notably culminating in a strategic deception campaign which history records as the story of the Trojan Horse.

As direct confrontation of UNIFORCE nanobotic swarm elements against Config Zero forces had been mostly ineffective, a new strategy was developed for Eden Sweep.

This strategy made use of a growing social-political philosophy known as Assimilationism (see Assimilationism and Related Politico-Cultural Developments 2080 to 2100, UNESCO Briefings and Letters, Volume IV).  Adherents of Assimilationism believed that humans and machines were destined to merge together and become symbiotic lifeforms; nanobotic devices and swarm formations, especially in their later evolutions, were seen as the means for achieving this symbiosis. 

Operation Eden Sweep put out a public call for volunteers to undergo assimilation, in which their physical bodies would be deconstructed and re-patterned into swarm formations compatible with ANAD-style systems, specifically with Config Zero swarms.  A truce had previously been proposed to Config Zero in which assimilation volunteers would be made available for incorporation into the greater swarm.  This was seen to be a concession to one of the key elements of the Prime Key and Config Zero agreed to halt swarm movements in order for this process to be organized and initiated.

However, as the Greeks did with their Trojan Horse, UNIFORCE had arranged to insert a specific assault configuration into the decomposed pattern of each volunteer.  Once the volunteers had assumed a re-patterned swarm-compatible configuration, the assault configuration would be triggered. 

The operational plan was for the ‘infected’ but decomposed volunteers to attack Config Zero swarms from inside the swarm, overcoming normal swarm defenses and tactics from within the swarms’ defensive perimeter.

One controversy developed late in planning of Eden Sweep, when engineers critical of the assimilation process and philosophy argued in classified briefings that the technology to retrieve assimilated humans and re-configure their patterns into functional human beings was very much in its earliest stages…there was limited assurance that the volunteers could ever be successfully retrieved.  However, the demands of the war effort and the desperate tactical situation on the ground in the European and African theaters were such that the Secretary-General waived all consent requirements and allowed the operation to proceed as planned. 

 

The Fronts

There were three primary theaters of operation during the Second Containment War: Europe/Mediterranean Basin, East Africa and the SW Pacific.

The operational center of Config Zero’s swarm activity was determined by Quantum Corps Intelligence (Q2) to be near the original archaeological dig site at Engebbe, Kenya, later inside the mountain complex at Mt. Kipwezi.  Consequently, swarm operations and engagements in east Africa and around the perimeter of the original east Africa sanctuary boundaries were the most intense of the War.   Almost all swarm movements throughout the European and African theaters originated from this location. 

After the Battle of the Nile Valley and Cairo, in August 2099, swarm operations began expanding throughout the eastern and central Mediterranean basin, into Greece and the Balkan Peninsula, then into Italy and southeastern France and Switzerland. 

The Euro-African front saw the most intense engagements of the entire War.

An additional theater of operations developed in the western Pacific, around the perimeter of the Pacific Sanctuary.  Early engagements in the Caroline Islands and the Solomon Island chain centered on containing swarm expansion at Fiji and Vanuatu, leading to the 1^st and 2^nd Battles of Espiritu Santo in November and December of 2099.  These engagements blocked the westward advance of the swarms and prevented swarm penetration into the Indonesian archipelago and Australia.  A stalemate developed along this line and many of the remaining Pacific engagements were holding actions and skirmishes between Quantum Corps/Sanctuary Patrol forces and the swarms along this line of advance. 

No further advances by Config Zero were made into east or southeast Asia as of the time this History was compiled.

 

Key Engagements

The northernmost point of advance of the swarms in Europe occurred at and around the time of the Battle of Thuns-les-Bains, a small French city in southeast France, in the French Alps. 

Battle-tested elements of Sanctuary Patrol Central Mediterranean Division engaged swarms inside the town and in the countryside around the town.  By this time in the War, Config Zero swarms had mastered the arts of deception and camouflage, and were able to assume configurations resembling buildings and Normals in the area.   SP forces found engaging the swarms with any kind of tactical advantage extremely difficult.  Some units prosecuted a scorched-earth type of assault, essentially destroying everything that could be used by the swarms as concealment.  This tactic was controversial and eventually led to Sanctuary Patrol rules of engagement which reduced instances of friendly fire and whole-scale destruction of infrastructure. 

However, the tactics were successful in blunting the northward advance of the swarms and were employed in modified form throughout the remainder of the War.

A second key engagement in the Euro-African theater was the Battle of Cairo, July 12-14, 2099.  This battle was a series of engagements up and down the lower Nile Valley in and around Cairo, culminating in the Battle of the Moqattam Hills (Citadel).  Elements of Quantum Corps 1^st Nanospace Battalion, along with units of Sanctuary Patrol, 2^nd Mediterranean Battalion, out of Cyprus and First Egyptian Corps out of Cairo, engaged swarm formations along the banks of the Nile River south of Cairo.  The battles raged for several days and ultimately converged on the Citadel complex in the Moqattam Hills east of Cairo, where intense street-by-street combat combined with flanking maneuvers from UNIFORCE and quick configuration changes by Quantum Corps engineers enabled defense forces to hold off a determined thrust by the swarms and push them back from central Cairo.

These engagements are thought by military historians to have been important reasons for the a tactical re-direction by Config Zero swarm forces away from Sinai and the Levant sectors, toward the central Mediterranean and the Balkan and Italian peninsulas. 

 

C-99 and the Turning Point

Unquestionably, the development and employment of the C-99 assault configuration coincident with use of Assimilationist volunteers, during a brief period of truce with Config Zero, to set up a sabotage operation inside the swarms’ command and control system, was the turning point of the 2^nd Containment War. 

The C-99 configuration was a special design from Quantum Corps at Table Top Mountain, Idaho, USA.  The nanobotic design was formulated to resemble the swarmbots of Config Zero has closely as possible, and to mimic their tactics and operations as well.  The central tactic of Operation Eden Sweep was to gain time from Config Zero by using Assimilationist volunteers to embed multiple copies of C-99 inside the enemy swarms and use the position of these C-99 ‘carriers’ to assault enemy swarms from within.

At the same time as the C-99 assault began, Quantum Corps and Sanctuary Patrol, with associated UNIFORCE units, were to begin a coordinated assault, ignoring any truce agreements that had been made, to push Config Zero swarms back toward their original sanctuaries.

It was considered a high-risk operation, with plenty of variables that could not be accounted for or planned for.  The operation was approved by CINCQUANT, LT GEN Jurgen Kraft and by UNSAC himself, a bold tactical move reminiscent of General Douglas MacArthur’s daring amphibious landing at In’chon in September 1951, which turned the tide of the Korean War in its earliest weeks.

The operation was set to be initiated at H-Hour, 0000 hours, 2 June, 2100. 

The nanobotic configuration C-99 not only closely resembled Config Zero swarmbots in general shape and function, with similar effector arrays and propulsors, the configuration also was designed with platform fold lines and planes, and multi-qubit quantum processors to enable the bots to change configuration with unprecedented  speed and accuracy.  This attribute would prove crucial in the earliest minutes and hours of the initial assault.

At H-Hour, command of the operation was handled by a special command and control element embedded with CINCQUANT in the Haven One undersea command post beneath the Atlantic.   Using quantum couplers with enhanced entanglers and specially designed encryption filters, Haven One was able to synchronize all C-99 carriers to within less than 6 microseconds.   GO codes were transmitted at H-Hour and C-99 carriers, by now all disassembled elements of the original Assimilationist volunteers, executed the configuration change in unison.

Drone, nanobotic and satellite reconnaissance indicated that the initial configuration change of C-99 into its designed assault state and the start of grappling and bond-breaking assault operations caught Config Zero by complete surprise.  Swarm defenses were sluggish and poorly coordinated, especially when exterior HERF barrages were brought to bear along almost every front in southern Europe and the Mediterranean.  Along the south Pacific and the Amazon sanctuary boundaries, similar results were observed.

In less than two hours, measurable reductions in enemy swarm activity along the front could be observed.  Config Zero, for the first time in nearly 8 months, was in general and chaotic retreat from its forward, most exposed positions. 

 

The End of the War

Operation Eden Sweep, in its primary assault phase, synchronized C-99 engagements with HERF and magpulse weapons barrages and ANAD assaults from UNIFORCE elements located all along the Euro-African, Pacific and Amazonian fronts.  This phase lasted about 3 days.  In this 70-hour time period, Config Zero swarms were destroyed in detail or rendered inert throughout the sectors of south France, Italy, the Balkan peninsula and much of the Levant, Egypt and north Africa.

The C-99 configuration, loaded aboard basic ANAD nanobots with enhanced replication ability, was particularly effective against Config Zero swarms.  Time and again, across multiple fronts in all theaters, UNIFORCE bot swarms were able to engage the enemy from within his own swarms at the same time as external barrages were initiated along the swarm perimeter.  This combination frequently overwhelmed Config Zero’s ability to replicate fast enough with enough swarm mass to keep UNIFORCE elements from advancing.

By 5 June, 2100, at 1745 hours UCT, UNIFORCE Command in the eastern Mediterranean sector detected multiple quantum-entangled signals on many channels from Config Zero.  Confirmation of the transmission came several hours later from Farside Station, at Korelev Crater on the Moon.   Q2 determined that these signals were transmitting from a location inside the east Africa sanctuary and were directed outward, off-Earth, in the general direction of M75 in the constellation Sagittarius.  Detected signals were of an entangled state, encrypted so strongly, that Q2 has not yet been able to decipher their content.  However, Intelligence analysts believe that the signals constitute an urgent request for assistance from the mother swarm thought to be transiting that sector of the galaxy. 

In other words, Config Zero was calling home, and calling for help.

Additional transmissions were detected on at least four other occasions over the next twenty-four-hour period.  Coincident with these transmissions, Config Zero swarms began a general retreat on all fronts, across the globe, pulling back to more concentrated positions roughly equivalent to the original sanctuaries specified in the Alexandria accords.  UNIFORCE, after some initial assessment of the enemy’s intent, continued to engage Config Zero in southern Europe and northern Africa, but operations became increasingly more sporadic and C-99 assaults were eventually suspended on orders from UNSAC, at 1030 hours, 6 June 2100. 

In the days following this suspension, only isolated engagements between outlying elements of Config Zero swarms and UNIFORCE elements have occurred, primarily to consolidate positions in North Africa and along and south of the Solomon Islands in the SW Pacific. 

By 9 June, 2100, a de facto truce had fallen over the battlefields of Europe and the Pacific.  No additional movements of Config Zero swarms have been observed in any sector.  Indeed, swarm activity has returned to a nearly quiescent state, devoted mainly to maintenance replication only.  No attempt has been made to penetrate these sanctuaries with reconnaissance or special forces units, although plans to do so were offered at several after-action briefings held at Haven One.  Drone and bot recon patrols continue along all sanctuary perimeters, but Config Zero has offered no reaction or response.

The quiescent mode continues.

At 0000 hours, on 12 June, 2100, tactical operational control of Operation Eden Sweep was shifted from Haven One, back to UNIFORCE Headquarters at the Quartier-General in Paris, which had sustained moderate damage in several swarm offensives in and around Paris.  Flag command was transferred and both UNSAC and CINCQUANT resumed full operations at Paris the following day….

The Second Containment War resulted in a decisive victory for the Normals against Config Zero and its allied swarms.  But no one really thought the swarms would lie dormant for long.  UNIFORCE understood that until the day that the Prime Key could be deciphered and blocked or defeated, future conflict was inevitable.  Surveillance and reconnaissance continues to this day.  

 

 

Look for the next post in the first half of October 2015, where we will begin a detailed look at some of the major bases and facilities used by Quantum Corps, starting with the history, layout and mission of the most famous base of all: Table Top Mountain, located in Idaho, USA.

See you in October.