Notes on Red Hammer – Hong Chui 

My new serial Nanotroopers has as the principal enemy an Asian cartel called Red Hammer.  Red Hammer’s main goal in this series of stories is to steal or copy as much ANAD technology from Quantum Corps as possible, in order to further their cartel enterprises and defeat Johnny Winger and his nanotroopers once and for all.  Below is a more detailed description of this adversary….

1.     Red Hammer is a criminal enterprise formed in the late 2030s in Hong Kong and Southeast and southern Asia.  The first base of operations was at Lions Rock, in Hong Kong.

2.     Two ex-PLA generals—Zhang Ru Ji and Dao Li, were instrumental in forming Red Hammer.

3.     The current headquarters base is a Buddhist llamassary at the Paryang Monastery in Tibet.

4.     Red Hammer is an outgrowth of Chinese and Vietnamese criminal gangs, similar to Macau and Hong Kong-based tong societies. 

5.     Red Hammer is run by a Ruling Council, or Council of Rulers.  There are rumors that one or more members of the RC are artificial intelligences, even robots.  The current leader is unknown but may be an individual called the Keeper. (In reality, the Keeper is a device buried under the Paryang Monastery, uncovered by Red Hammer, which is a portal and communication device to a race of extraterrestrials that Red Hammer refers to as the Old Ones).

6.     One of the more visible members of the RC is the former Thai neurotraficante Theo Souvranamh.  Other members are Luis Escorial, General Zhang, General Dao, Vladimir Berensky, Dmitri Kulagin, and Andreas Echeverria.  They meet once a week, either at Paryang or connected in to Paryang.

7.     All Ruling Council members and most all Red Hammer agents are, upon joining the cartel, ‘infected’ with a small ANAD-like swarm of nanoscale bots, known as a Halo.  It resides inside their brains. This Halo is how Red Hammer controls its people.  It protects them from counter-swarms from Quantum Corps and other sources and helps keep them in line or keeps them from doing anything that might harm Red Hammer’s interests.  Once installed, it cannot be removed.  And under certain circumstances, the Halo can kill its host.  It’s a near-perfect, remotely programmable control device.

8.     Principal Red Hammer businesses are scope (an addictive drug), illegal fabs for rogue nanobotic devices, twist (pirated and rogue DNA or other genetic sequences), HNRIV (a hemorrhagic virus that kills and could easily become a global pandemic), Serengeti (an addictive antidote to HNRIV), and various extortion and protection rackets throughout Asia and Africa. 

9.     UN Quantum Corps and their new ANAD nanobotic systems are a direct threat to the fab and rogue nano businesses of Red Hammer.  The Ruling Council has issued a ‘main directive’ (zhiling touhao) to combat UNQC and eliminate the threat from ANAD.

10.  The Main Directive requires all Red Hammer stations and personnel to work “ceaselessly” toward frustrating Quantum Corps.  More importantly, Red Hammer wants to steal the configuration engine and software that animates ANAD.  If they can achieve this difficult goal, they believe they can neuter Quantum Corps and give themselves a virtually unassailable weapon to continue and extend their criminal enterprises into the Americas and Europe.   

11.  The Keeper is an advanced artificial intelligence (in swarm configuration) left behind on Earth by an extraterrestrial race known as the Old Ones several billion years ago. 

12.  The Keeper is a gateway to the Old Ones as well as an AI.  It is part gateway, part oracle, part deterrent and patrol, part computer/monitor and many other things as well.  It does not normally exist in physical form, but can configure into many forms. 

13.  The Keeper is the nominal head of Red Hammer.  All members of the Ruling Council are aware that the Keeper is not a human being in any normal sense.  Yet major decisions and directives for the criminal cartel are always handed down from the Keeper.  No one knows whether the Keeper generates these directives itself or whether it is somehow in touch with the Old Ones.

14.  The reason that Red Hammer occasionally has access to technology considerably more advanced than Quantum Corps is that the Keeper periodically provides new technology from the archives of the Old Ones.  This is not known outside of Red Hammer’s Ruling Council.  It is sobering to realize the menace and the threat that exists to the world from a cartel that can monopolize access to advanced technology from an alien race.  Were this to become known, Quantum Corps and most of the advanced nations of the world would take whatever steps needed to crush Red Hammer.  Therefore, this is Red Hammer’s most closely guarded secret.

15.  Because Red Hammer’s main base is in a derelict and abandoned llamassary in the Tibetan high country, there are some within Red Hammer, notably the Thai druglord Souvranamh, who think that Buddha himself, the Enlightened One, was (is?) in fact a composite representation of the Old Ones.  There is no proof of this. 

 

This introduction to Red Hammer will help you understand what will be coming as Nanotroopers unfolds.  It’s a vicious, mortal battle between Quantum Corps and Red Hammer. 

Let’s hope the good guys win…and remain good guys in the process. 

 

The next post, on February 29 (Leap Day) will be concerned with the role of action and character in the Nanotroopers series…i.e., where do these crazy ideas come from (think Tom Swift, Jr.).

 

See you on February 29.

Phil B.