“Reading lots of thermal, Captain,” Reaves noted right away. “Many sources, big sources, dead ahead—“
“I see it,” Winger said. “Get the HERF guns ready. Coilguns too…Detachment spread out and get down. There may be another swarm—“
Forms materialized in his eyepiece, human-like forms, dimly seen in the low light.
“What the hell are they--?” someone asked. The same imagery was on everyone’s eyepiece.
“Apes…maybe what’s left of the natives—“
Johnny Winger remembered something Dr. Del Compo had described in the briefing at Table Top.
“It’s vaguely humanoid,” del Compo narrated over the imagery. “It has radically modified lungs, and as you can see, extra appendages. We’ve scanned all of its internal structure as well, in some detail.” Ghostly images appeared, outlining the results of the scans. “There are the lungs, all four of them. Something that we’re calling a heart, or circulatory pump, and there are other organs we haven’t puzzled out yet. Interestingly, it has no brain or central cognitive-processing center that we can detect.”
“This may be what Del Compo was talking about,” Winger said.
The grotto seemed to be alive with them, dozens, maybe scores of the demonio, writhing and undulating like so many pieces and parts of bodies. Heads lay on the ground, waving in unseen currents like meadow grass. Arms and legs whipsawed along between the heads, like snakes. Torsos and parts of torsos vibrated like bees’ nests. Pools of water stirred with more creatures, and parts of creatures.
“Sir…are they…human…or what?”
Winger switched back to acoustic imagery, letting the ANAD swarm filter in deeper, closer.
“Human-like organisms. A colony of nanobots, that’s what Del Compo said. Only they’re not really human….more like bad copies of humans. Del Compo thought they were adapted for the atmospheric changes going on, extra lungs, low-pressure blood—that sort of thing.”
“What is this place?” asked Singh.
“It’s a nursery, from the looks of it,” said Gibbs.
Alpha Detachment had stumbled onto a colony of demonio in varying stages of formation.
“Look at them,” whistled D’Nunzio.
“Proto-humanoids,” said Mighty Mite Barnes. “Colonies of bots…being assembled by other bots. Is this what all those badass mechs have been protecting?”
Many of them were only partially formed. Winger knew of one creature already in captivity…the one Del Compo had brought back. It was a cinch Quantum Corps could learn more. What were they? Why were they here?
“I’m going to try an insertion,” Winger decided.
“Excuse me, sir--?” asked Gibbs, incredulously. “Without an ANAD master?”
Winger had made up his mind. Sure, there was a risk. What was left of ANAD’s master was now inside containment in his shoulder capsule. It took a week and specialized care at Table Top to regenerate a master assembler after a quantum collapse. A few trillions of ANAD’s replicants were left in a barebones swarm; that’s all there were to run an insertion into unknown territory like the demonio. What kind of resistance would they put up? The creatures were little more than colonies of nanobotic mechanisms in the shape of something vaguely human-like.
There’s only one way to find out, Winger decided. As Major Kraft was fond of saying, when you’re in command…command.
“Prepare for opposed entry,” Winger ordered.
The first step was to corral one of the demonio creatures, immobilize and contain it long enough to insert a small swarm to investigate.
“Sir, I have an idea,” said Calderon.
“I’m listening.”
Calderon trundled forward, his suit servos trying to keep him level on the uneven ground. The grotto interior was marshy, spotted with small pools, its limestone walls dripping wet.
“Sir, suppose we blast this place with HERF a few times, enough to stun the bugs into a stupor. Then, the DPS here—“ he indicated Sheila Reaves and ‘Taj’ Singh “—fires off a few rounds of MOB. Maybe that’ll hold enough of ‘em together to do a little recon…see what makes ‘em tick.”
The idea had merit. “We won’t have long,” Winger told them. “Sheila, give me three blasts inside this grotto…then keep HERF trained outside. What does ‘Fly see outside right now?”
The Superfly horde had been positioned just outside the grotto entrance, orbiting over the riverbank.
“Bots are re-forming now,” Reaves reported. “Small swarms…isolated elements at the moment. I give us about four to five minutes.”
“Okay…keep ‘em dispersed with HERF, coilguns, whatever you can. Give me just five minutes of protection,” Winger said. “Then we’ve got to get the hell out of Dodge.”
“Will do, sir. HERF’s enabled now—“
Winger ordered the rest of the Detachment to take cover. As one, ten hypersuits lowered their occupants to the ground, assuming minimum profile.
“Fire the weapon!” Winger commanded.
“Weapon is charging…charging…charging…fire in the hole!”
Riding out a bolt from HERF was like sticking your head in an oven. Twice…three times, Reaves discharged the high energy radio frequency weapon into the grotto. Like a thunderclap, the sound exploded all around them, echoing off the walls, loosing seams of rock and flash-frying pools of water into steam columns.
As expected, the RF blasts scattered the demonio into loose swarms and knots of mechs, buzzing around like so many disoriented hornets. At the very moment Reaves wheeled the HERF gun back to cover the grotto entrance, Johnny Winger switched his eyepiece viewer back to nanoscale and signaled his own small swarm of bots to move forward, revving their propulsors to max, bearing down on a nearby horde of mechs.
“Okay, Taj…MOB’em!”
Taj Singh fired off several canisters of Mobility Obstruction Barrier. The clouds of dumb bots were probably no match for the mechs making up the creatures, but at least, it would keep them occupied while ANAD probed.
The switchover to acoustic always made Winger dizzy but he recovered soon enough. As always, piloting nanoscale bots through any medium, especially one that had just been HERF’ed was like flying in a sleet storm.
He finagled with the scale on his viewer until he found one that was comfortable, then tickled the stick, pecking out a few commands. In unison, the swarm extended all effectors, primed bond breakers and enabled grapplers and enzymatic knives. He didn’t have time to try a replication…they had maybe five minutes, maybe less, before the Amazon bots re-formed outside the grotto in numbers sufficient to overwhelm Superfly.
When that happened, Alpha Detachment would have to fall back to the lifter…or be eaten alive.
Gibby was monitoring the command circuit as well. Qualified as an interface controller, the IC2 was an invaluable second set of eyes for swarm maneuvers and tactics.
“Reading fifteen thousand microns…nearest formation,” Gibby muttered. “Our guys enabled, sir?”
“Primed and ready,” Winger said, concentrating on the image, trying to make out anything he could recognize. Atomgrabbers spent a lot of time studying atomic configurations; the best of them could spot a peptide or a fullerene a long way off and knew instinctively how to counter it. When you fought wars and skirmishes at this scale, long-range sounding and recognition was crucial.
“—picking up some heat ahead,” Winger noticed from the swarm’s sounding. “-small thermals, point sources…pretty spread out.”
“I don’t recognize the signature,” Gibby said.
The assembler swarm was in all respects ANAD in design and capability. Same effectors, same construction and abilities. Only the nanoprocessor core was missing, the brains of the master assembler. Johnny Winger would have to provide the brains, trusting his instincts to react properly to moves and feints and maneuvers of the enemy.
“Me neither?
??but that’s not surprising…I’m slowing to half speed, spreading out a bit…maybe I can get better resolution—“
He sent the commands. As a single body, trillions of ANAD assemblers responded by cutting back propulsor rpms to half. Spreading them further apart gave him a better angle to sound ahead, a sharper image on the acoustic to discern what lay before them.
“—there!” Gibby’s voice was exultant. Although both Winger and Gibbs lay prone inside their hypersuits on the dank floor of the grotto, their eyes and minds were elsewhere, speeding along through a hail of loose atoms, homing on a distinct mass dead ahead, a mass emitting lots of heat and loose radicals….a sure sign of nanobotic activity.
“I think we got one—“ Winger switched momentarily from acoustic to macro and peered over the top of his eyepiece, out through his helmet. Sure enough, a form loosely resembling half a human was bobbing in a small pool of water about six meters away. Its head and shoulders were above the surface of the water, its still-forming arms and hands flailing away, splashing and thrashing about. Mesmerized, Johnny Winger had to tear his eyes away from the scene, back to the world of atoms.
The ANAD swarm was bearing down directly for the center of the creature’s still-forming head.
“Slowing to one-quarter speed,” Winger announced.
“Extend your carbenes, Skipper….see if you can grab one of those appendages—“
Dead ahead, a tight flock of devices whirred and vibrated like mad dervishes, grabbing atoms left and right, building structure and emitting furious heat.
“They’re replicating—“ Winger said.
“Like crazy, Skipper…look at those effectors…”
Indeed, as the swarm closed, the motions of the demonio mechs were almost a blur, so fast did they move. The small horde grabbed and positioned atoms like a frantic crew of brickmasons. In seconds, each bot had grabbed enough atoms to fashion a complete replica, which it topped off with a tetrahedral base, attached with crosslinked peptide chains and an undulating backbone of phosphates.
“Amazing…unbelievable…this is one souped-up bug,” Gibby breathed.
“The bastard’s optimized for replication…that’s all it’s doing…not much of a core, that I can see.”
“Just a mindless nanobotic baby-maker,” Gibby said.
“I’m going in….this we got to investigate—“
“Careful, Skipper….those carbenes look nasty to me…I wouldn’t get too close…he could pick us apart in no time.”
On command, the ANAD swarm eased forward.
“Skipper…watch out! Soundings are going haywire…thermals all over the place—“
Before Winger could react, the ANAD swarm found itself enveloped in a cloud of churning babymakers, drawing closer and closer.
“Where’d the hell they all come from?”
“I don’t know, Skipper, but we better get out while we can.”
Winger spun up the swarm’s propulsors and ran head-on into a horde of babymakers.
“All stop!” Winger yelled. “Effectors out max…Jesus, those bonds are strong—“
Gibby could see ANAD was quickly becoming enmeshed in a web of effectors, like a fly in a spider’s web. Its own momentum had helped spring the trap.
“Trying backing out, Skipper!”
“I’m trying just to get loose…these are covalent bonds…I ought to be able to break ‘em, but—“
Trillions of ANAD assemblers squirmed and fought hard against the entrapment, but the babymakers were doubly bonded, their effectors sharing multiple electrons in strong, rigid loops.
Johnny Winger tried every combination of kick and feint he could think of, just trying to squirm free of the mesh of ever tightening mechs. No matter what he did—flipping carbene grabbers, firing his bond breakers, slashing enzymatic knives—nothing worked. The babymakers were too strong.
He couldn’t do a quantum collapse, again…the swarm would cease to exist. Unlike the master assembler, there wasn’t enough core to regenerate.
Winger gritted his teeth. “Maybe I can power my way out…”
He revved up the propulsors to max, flexing every effector at the same time. Slowly, grudgingly, the babymakers gave way, a little at a time, then more and more.
“Come on, ANAD…come on….come on—“
“Kick ass, Skipper….give ‘em hell!”
The last flex did the trick. Almost in unison, the ANAD assemblers sprung free and shot forward on max propulsors. Half their grabbers were ripped off and most had platform damage, but the bots were intact and the worst damage could be repaired quickly enough.
The ANAD swarm catapulted beyond the first screen of babymakers and soon enough, found themselves approaching another dark, formless mass dead ahead. The hailstorm of babymakers slipped steadily behind them.
“Thermals are high…but it’s a different signature, Skipper.”
Winger was puzzled for a few minutes, as he slowed and tried to regain some kind of control over the swarm. Then it came to him.
“Gibby…it’s a brain.”
“A what?”
“It makes sense…instead of each mech having a core like ANAD, they’re grouped together into a single mass…like our brains. Like one big mass of tissue and neurons, only these cells are individual nanobots.”
Gibby couldn’t believe it. “Del Compo was right then, wasn’t he? These creatures really are nothing more than colonies of bots.”
Winger knew he’d heard that before. ANAD had once said the very same thing to him.
“We’ve got to go in there—“
“Skipper—“
“Captain—“ it was Reaves on the crewnet circuit. “—Amazon swarms approaching…I think this is it for ‘Fly…permission to engage with HERF?”
“Hold up, Sheila…we’re right in the middle of something here—“ If DPS let fly with another round of HERF, even aimed away from the grotto, the impulse could shred the demonio again…scatter its nanobotic parts and make it impossible to probe the thing’s ‘brain.’
“Captain—“
“Give me three minutes, DPS,” Winger ordered. He needed the time to probe ahead, see what the dark mass was. “But keep HERF charged and ready. When I give the word, light the bastards up.”
Back at the grotto entrance, Reaves swore under her breath. Skipper’s right, they needed the data…she knew that, but that swarm was growing fast and Superfly wouldn’t be able to handle it much longer.
She peeked out across the river, warily eyeing the thickening mist that had descended over the waters. The surface stirred, freshened not by a breeze but by furious nanobotic activity, as the Amazon bots replicated into a swelling horde. In seconds, her view of the opposite bank had dimmed. All she could see now was a patch of sky through gaps in the swarm, through gaps in the dense canopy of tree cover. A dense flickering fog was rapidly descending on the grotto and Reaves didn’t like the looks of it.
She checked on Fly…the squadron of entomopters had already engaged the swarm along its perimeter and the results were predictable. A fourth of the unit had been shredded in less than a minute.
At this rate, Skipper won’t have even three minutes, she realized. She felt the warm, throbbing barrel of the HERF gun, wondering how much charge she had left. A few shots at best. After that—
Johnny Winger bored in on the dark mass ahead. Looks like a bunch of grapes, hanging on a trellis, he thought.
For all intents and purposes, the demonio were nothing more than colonies of nanoscale mechs.
“Sounding ahead…” Winger muttered. ANAD pinged the mass for distance.
“I make it as three thousand microns,” Gibby read off the result. “You planning on engaging, Skipper? We may not have time. With the swarm outside, and HERF wearing off here—“
More and more of the demonio had re-assembled themselves into forms vaguely resembling humans. Heads and arms and pieces of torso scuttled arou
nd the pools and the stone floor like disembodied wraiths. Another blast would give them more time, but it might also scatter the colonies into loose atoms as well.
“I want to engage the outer mechs in that mass, see if we can sniff out anything we could use…a weakness, something. These buggers are being formed for a reason. I want to know what it is.”
“Two thousand microns, Skipper,” Gibby read off the sounding.
“I am in tactical three…defensive grapplers extended. My bond breakers are active. Maybe we’ll get lucky…find us a glutamate trail.”
Gibby was skeptical but said nothing. Several years ago, Doc Frost had added a new capability to ANAD, the ability to shuttle around inside someone’s brain like a bunch of bees, sniffing out calcium sinks in every neuron, looking for concentrations of glutamate molecules. Everywhere there was a certain level of glutamate was a pathway, burned in, a crude trace of memory. Doc Frost had tweaked ANAD’s hydrogen probes to search out these traces, sending back data on whatever it found—calcium levels, sodium levels, activation times. With new algorithms in its processor, ANAD was able to re-construct a very crude version of what originally laid down the trace.
“Sort of like painting somebody’s portrait from their shadow,” Frost had explained. Kind of an echo of a memory, if you like.”
It had always given Gibby the creeps.
But there was no reason to think the demonio were wired the same way.
Movement to contact took another minute. Outside the grotto, Sheila Reaves was increasingly nervous.
“ANAD sounding less than one hundred microns, Skipper.”
“I see it. I’m slowing to one quarter—grapplers primed…got my sticky radicals out…carbenes and pyridines too,” Winger piloted the small swarm on a tangent toward the first humps of the mass. Closing in, he saw that the formation of bots were tightly linked in a rigid lattice, each unit grappled with the next, in a vast undulating plain of
nanobots. The plain rippled like the surface of a lake stirred by breezes.
As ANAD approached, the outer bots clicked defensive arms into view. The lattice quickly grew spiky bristles.
“Those are bond disrupters,” Gibby announced. “Pretty crude but—“
“They could zap me if I’m not careful—all stop—“ Winger brought the ANAD swarm alongside the lattice, hovering only a few microns away. The bots made no move to contact or repel, simply spread their disrupters outward to ward off any attempts at contact.