***Just getting a tickle now…see those shadows up ahead…here…I’ll maneuver sideways…get a better angle…***
And then he saw it, materializing into view like a battleship in a fog bank.
Straight away, Johnny Winger knew in the pit of his stomach what he was staring at…Amazon Vector itself…the master nanobotic device, hove to like a menacing predator coiled to strike.
Roughly cylindrical, with pyramidal diamondoid bases, the bot was festooned with uncountable effectors, cilia, propulsor banks, peptide chains wavering in the currents, pyridine probes and bond disrupters lining every available space like so many cannon ports. The thing resembled a great dreadnought, primed for slaughter.
And ANAD was closing fast.
“Config One!” Winger ordered. But he didn’t have to. ANAD was already deploying to engage.
A furious combat ensued. Amazon Vector was one hell of a big bot but surprisingly nimble for so much mass. Surrounded by daughters, it grew and retracted appendages and surface structure with blazing speeds. Even as Winger watched, the master bot discarded an armful of carbon monoxide molecules it had been altering and prepared to engage.
***Closing now…five thousand microns…I am in Config One…bond disrupters are enabled…four thousand microns…***
For a brief moment, Winger clicked his eyepiece to external view. Just as he suspected, a faint green phosphorescent glow had just boiled off the top of the river, and was now sweeping shoreward, toward them.
“DPS…get your HERF guns spooled up and ready! We got company!”
Sheila Reaves was already on it. “Weapon is enabled, Captain. I’m sighting in now…what the hell is that?” She cycled the HERF weapon and boresighted on the target.
“I don’t know exactly, but ANAD’s view isn’t pretty. I’m guessing it’s the main pulse…the bots that are messing up the atmosphere. ANAD’s replicating now—I’ll detach a formation to screen us. Detachment, halt! Take cover…and for God’s sake, get small! This one’s big---and coming fast!”
As one, the rest of Alpha Detachment hunkered down along the edge of the river, wedging themselves into the sand and dirt as deep as their leg servos would drive them. Singh put Superfly in a defensive orbit while Calderon switched the sniffers to auto. With any luck, they could ride out the first assault and resume the engagement in a few minutes.
It all depended now on ANAD.
Winger switched back to ANAD view and tried to orient himself into the maelstrom of nanoscale combat.
Up close, the Amazon Vector master bot had one tough outer membrane. Crosslinked peptide chains, from the looks of it, Winger figured. The membrane seethed with motion, as atoms and clusters of atoms twisted, bonded, twisted again, rebonded, broke apart, recombined, straightened, undulated and whirled.
The gap between them vanished and ANAD grappled with the nearest bot. Others swarmed into the battlefield.
The imager screen shook with the collision, then careened sideways. And, linked in over the quantum circuit, Johnny Winger winced hard at the sting of the assault.
Jesus…that hurts…
***…come on, you atomic assholes, eat my carbenes, you jerks!...take that--***
ANAD swung a chain of bond disrupters forward, engaging the nearest bot. He cruised in at flank speed, propulsors whining and seized a phosphor group off the bot, twisting atoms until the bonds finally broke. Liberating thousands of electron volts, ANAD’s disrupter zapped the bot and shattered its outer shell, ripping off probes left and right. The enemy bot shuddered and spun with the pulse, then re-engaged to fight off another bond snap.
***gotcha, didn’t I… you want another piece of that, huh? Take this--***
ANAD closed again, intending another bond snap, but this time, the bot was ready. It whirled in a faster spin, wheeling about like a carrousel, making contact impossible. At the same time, something tough grappled him from behind—Winger felt the kick in his seat—he tried to turn but he was caught, pinioned in a vise-like grip…
***what the hell?...***
Whatever it was, the bot had grappled ANAD from the opposite side and was steadily reeling him in like a truculent fish on a line. He squirmed—Winger could feel the rubbery snare tightening like a ball of twine being wound up…squeezing hard, crushing the life out of him--
“ANAD, can’t you break out…get free?”
***No…I’m caught…like a net…the harder I move…the tighter it gets…what the hell is this…***
The imager view vibrated with the ferocity of the attack. Chains of oxygen molecules, pressed into service as makeshift weapons, whipped across the screen. The enemy’s master bot still seethed with rapid motion, churning up a storm of debris as it whirled and vibrated. All around, trillions of daughter replicants duplicated the same maneuver, an entire fleet turning and re-deploying. Everywhere at the same time, the Amazon bot fleet added new strings of molecules, building structure to make an armor shield of highly reactive chlorine atoms, reaching out to grasp the ANAD swarm with stinging tentacles of atoms that quickly immobilized them.
***…Base, I can’t hold structure…it’s these blasted chlorines…got to reconfig…shutdown peripheral systems!...***
Gibby was watching the engagement on his own eyepiece, an acoustic image from ANAD itself. He didn’t like what he was seeing.
“He’s got to disengage, Skipper…emergency truncation. Everything not critical. We’ve got to get ANAD out of there before we lose him!”
Winger knew he was right. Hell, he could feel the snare tightening with each turn of the enemy bot, a great fist slowly closing. It was almost like a MOB net in miniature…an impossibly long chain of atoms wrapping up the assembler like a spool. Everywhere around them, Amazon Vector bots were duplicating the same tactic.
“I know, I know…just keep trying, Jesus…internal bonds on main body structure weakening…I’ve lost all grappling capability…he had to focus, dammit! The pressure was enormous, atoms stripped from atoms, bonds snapping with a crackle…Winger swore and clicked out of the quantum circuit, out of the ANAD view. He couldn’t take it, couldn’t take the intensity, the squeeze, the overwhelming smothering—
Dammit!
Angrily, Winger clicked back to acoustic view. As he watched, Amazon systematically dismantled ANAD, molecule by molecule. The enemy was strong, more flexible than any structure that size had a right to be, with some kind of grappler that could extend impossibly far and sting like a tentacle. With ruthless efficiency, Amazon bots whirred and chopped every device ANAD could generate, all the while, squeezing ever tighter. ANAD tried to counter, replicating probes, inserters, jaws, cilia, pumps, blowers—but it was no use.
Amazon was too strong. Somehow, the master bot seemed to anticipate ANAD’s every move.
Winger was awed by Amazon’s combat capabilities. “Incredible,” he whispered. “The perfect warrior. Must have one hell of a processor.” And he kicked himself for not being there with ANAD…somehow Doc Frost had to dial down the quantum circuit, cut down the intensity of the feed.
They had no choice but to disengage. The top atomgrabber in the Corps hated to admit he was beaten, but he had a responsibility, to ANAD, to the Detachment, to the mission. He had to pull ANAD out—any way he could—before it was too late.
“We’re losing signal strength, Captain!” Gibbs yelled.
“I see it! Amazon’s got his fingers in the matrix now. Main processing functions in danger…I’m counterprogramming….” Winger pecked madly at the keyboard, dimly aware of a shrill keening whine outside his suit helmet.
With ANAD down, they were defenseless against the Amazon swarm.
“DPS1…get that HERF gun ready…ANAD’s got to pull back…when I give the word…slam ‘em! Fry the bastards!”
“On your mark, sir—“
ANAD couldn’t hold. The only hope looked to be a quantum collapse…but the timing had to be right. If ANAD collap
sed and the HERF fired before ANAD’s core was safely contained, they’d lose everything: master assembler and all. Then they would really be in a hurt.
Gibby shook a fist at the image on his eyepiece, now a dark, swirling mass of shapes and forms. “Come on, damn it! Come on….”
But it was no use. ANAD was outgunned. Every move was countered by the enemy swarm. Amazon’s response was swift and sure. Winger, Gibbs and the others watched in their eyepieces in amazement and horror, as one by one, ANAD’s capabilities—fine motor control, attitude and orientation, propulsors, sensors, molecule analysis, replication—were rendered inert or completely lost.
ANAD was helpless.
“Got to get the hell out of Dodge,” Winger muttered, sick with anger at how little help he had been to the assembler. You didn’t abandon a buddy on the battlefield, no matter what…that had been drummed into every Quantum Corps trooper from the first day of nog school. No matter what it took…you got your buddies out. Even if they died in the effort.
Gibbs was checking status. “It’s bad, Captain. No electron lens. No enzymatic knife. Hardly any effector control. ANAD’s crippled. We can’t let ‘em get to the core…can’t let the enemy rob the bank—“
Johnny Winger gritted his teeth. “Not just yet…” His fingers flew over the keypad. “Gotta get some data on this bastard…got to probe that bugger and get some structure…know what we’re dealing with…if I can just get stabilized—“
“Captain—there’s nothing left to stabilize—“
Despite the risk, the mission demanded something more. Earth’s very atmosphere was under threat…who knew what could stop these bots, if anything could? They had to get data on what Amazon Vector nanobots were like…and who was behind them. If it meant sacrificing ANAD—
Sorry little buddy, but the mission has to come first.
Grimly determined, he piloted what was left of the ANAD horde back for another wrestling match with the enemy
“Whatever this thing is,” he swore to himself, “it reacts like ANAD itself, only supercharged a thousand times.” He worked the config controller stick, while Gibby managed status, crossing his fingers that the ANAD master would hold together just a little longer.
And that the Detachment could fend off the Amazon swarm now descending on them beside the river.
While Sheila Reaves kept the HERF gun sighted in, and her fingers poised above the firing button, Winger ‘wriggled’ ANAD a bit more vigorously in its tentacle embrace. Managing to move a few nanometers, he siphoned off some of the grappler’s outer electrons until the charge had built up enough to send a zap down the length of the chain.
Like being stung by a bee, the grappler loosened just a bit, and Winger was ready, commanding another squirming fit by ANAD. Reams of bond energy data and config details burst onto the imager. The enemy bot’s grappler had given up vitals on structure and ANAD’s core snatched the info right out from under him, storing it, pulsing it back to its human controllers.
“Now, I gotcha, you little bastard—“
It was time to get the hell out of Indian country.
“Executing quantum collapse…NOW!” Come on baby, get small for me…get real small….
Deep inside the crushing embrace of the grappler, the ANAD master collapsed what was left of his own structure in an explosive puff of atom fragments. Base, effectors, probes and grapplers, even the core shell surrounding its main processor, went hurtling off into the air in a big bang of spinning atom parts.
ANAD…at least, the barest whiff of what had once been ANAD…was finally free.
And the Amazon bot’s grappler was left holding…nothing…nothing but a ghostly afterthought…an entangled quantum shadow of its once squirming captive.
Instantly, ANAD disappeared. To all intents and purposes, ANAD had effectively vanished in a cloud of blurry quantum waves.
Less than two minutes later, making its way on quantum wave propulsors, ANAD was finally captured in the embedded containment capsule in Johnny Winger’s shoulder, its processor still dogging electron states to bring the nearly invisible device home.
That’s when Winger told Sheila Reaves to fire the HERF gun.
A series of hot thundering waves of RF washed over the Detachment, hunkered down in wet riverbank sand below a swarming horde of nanobots.
Winger squeezed his eyes shut, waiting for the pulse to pass. He felt the tinkle of dying bots clattering against his helmet.
“DPS…give ‘em more! Keep slamming ‘em!”
With the ANAD master now little more than a quantum dot, he could only pray the HERF gun would destroy enough enemy bots to give them some room.
More searing hot waves thunderclapped past the Detachment, shaking the earth and the river like a giant fist. The Yemanha’s oily waters stirred with restless waves.
When the third pulse was done, Winger commanded his suit servos to set him upright. “Secure the HERF. Move out…Sergeant Calderon…anything from the sniffers?”
The rest of the Detachment struggled to unsure footing, while Calderon checked his airborne brood.
“Got a strong reading, Captain…dead ahead, bearing zero five zero. Those caves up ahead—“
Winger steered the Detachment toward a steep cliff of limestone, riddled with caves and grottoes. Del Compo had mentioned something about a grotto off the river.
He could only pray they’d damaged the Amazon bots enough to clear a path. With ANAD in containment, licking his wounds, collapsed down to practically nothing, Winger felt bare and defenseless. Still, there was a chance some of ANAD’s replicants had survived the HERF pulse.
“Gibby, check your interface…see if any of our guys made it through the HERF blast—“
Gibbs slogged through wet sand on automaneuver, just like the rest of the Detachment, wobbly but upright. He pecked out a few commands. “Good idea, Captain…if enough made it—“
“I could pilot the survivors myself,” Winger finished the thought. “Maybe even rep a few trillion bots to help out.” If I could remember the commands, he thought.
The Detachment followed the bend of the river, angling forward toward the limestone cliffs. The bank narrowed to a tiny shelf of sand, barely one man wide. They went in single file, with Superfly watching carefully from overhead, circling like a horde of flies. Something screeched and fluttered in the trees overhead, ten thousand bat wings heard but not seen. Winger paid no attention.
Instead, he concentrated on contacting ANAD, now deep inside the containment capsule in his shoulder. He felt bad about the quantum collapse---it usually took a week to regenerate an ANAD master after such a drastic maneuver, but it was the only way.
“ANAD…are you there…can you hear me…?”
He tried several times, not expecting an answer but figuring it was worth a try. The assembler was now little more than a few atoms of processor core, held together with tenuous quantum waves. There weren’t enough atoms to send a reply…just enough to keep the processor barely ticking over until he could be extracted and regenerated.
Sorry, little buddy….I had to do it…I had to get you out of there…
He wondered what it felt like.
“Skipper…got something—“ It was Gibby. He’d been probing the air, trying to locate remnants of the ANAD swarm. “Looks like a few stragglers survived…maybe enough to regroup-“
“I’m on it,” Winger said, grateful for the interruption. He switched his eyepiece to acoustic sounding, signaled all surviving assemblers to form up overhead. Moments later, he sent a basic replication command. He’d have to monitor this one personally. The ANAD master normally controlled basic operations of the swarm, like a top sergeant, but ANAD was contained, barely alive.
Have to do this the old-fashioned way, Winger told himself. As the remaining assemblers grabbed atoms and rebuilt the swarm, he watched through the faceplate of his helmet. A faint shimmer through the tree limbs told
him the replication was underway, though it was subdued and tediously slow-going without the master.
“Must be the entrance to that grotto,” came a voice over the circuit. It was Reaves, driving the Superfly horde ahead of them. Imagery speckled on everyone’s eyepiece, imagery of a dark recess in the limestone cliffs.
“Hold up,” Winger commanded. “Hold your position…let’s get a basic swarm up and ready to go in. I don’t like the looks of this. Calderon, what do your sniffers say?”
Calderon was watching the readouts. “CO2 up another fifteen per cent. O2 down ten…looks like nitrogen’s dropping…trace amounts of chlorine, methane, neon…all screwed up, Skipper. Air’s bad inside, not breathable at all. Basically, toxic stuff coming out of that grotto and overhead too, venting from the cliff. Whatever’s going on, this is the epicenter.”
Something splashed in the river, and Superfly caught a glimpse of glistening dark limbs breaching the water. The light was low but whatever it was, it was definitely alive. Reaves tweaked Fly’s sensors, got some infrared from the source, before it submerged.
“Some kind of croc…or a snake, maybe?” muttered Deeno D’Nunzio. The CQE1 was at the rear of the Detachment, running the packbots that carried their supplies.
“Hard to say,” Reaves muttered. “Readout says it’s not a point source…more diffuse.”
“Like a swarm,” Winger thought. Del Compo had run into that here too.
“Swarm’s ready, Captain,” Gibbs said. “You driving or me?”
“I’d better do it,” Winger decided. Gibby was a decent atomgrabber, but Winger was the top code and stick man in the whole battalion and knew he could handle the basics. “Give me control.”
Gibbs passed the swarm interface to the Captain. Winger tapped out a few commands and watched as the shimmering ball flowed around the tree trunks and penetrated the grotto. “Reaves, detach an element of Fly and send them in right after the swarm. I want eyes and ears and I want to leave the ANADs for defense, if we need ‘em.”
“Detaching now—“ Reaves announced. On her command, a small portion of the Superfly horde peeled off and followed the ANAD swarm inside the grotto.
Acoustic imagery from the swarm filled Winger’s eyepiece. He switched to Superfly’s visual and infrared, then checked EM wavelengths, before switching back.