That’s when Winger learned what had happened to Bravo Detachment at Kurabantu Island.
“…last word we had from Captain Tallant,” Kraft was saying, “they were under swarm assault near the central volcano. We’ve got scouts and sniffers combing the area now but there’s no sign of Bravo…nothing at all—“ Kraft’s frown deepened and he looked away from the vid. Losing an entire detachment made him sick but he couldn’t let Winger see that.
Winger was exhausted, even after a shower and a change. He shook his head, describing the engagement with Amazon.
“It was the damnedest thing, Major. It was like ANAD was moving through molasses. He was always a step behind, couldn’t react fast enough and when he grappled, the bots just shrugged him off like a gnat. Never saw grapplers like that—I tried to get structure on ‘em and we got some…but it may not be enough.” He had squirted the data take from ANAD to Table Top at the beginning of the session.
“I’ll have Doc Frost and his engineers take a look at it…maybe there’s something they can do under the hood, soup up ANAD for future action. We’ve got to get a hold of this menace now…UNIFORCE says BioShield can’t even slow ‘em down. These atmospheric perturbations are growing…and spreading. So far, no big population centers are affected yet, but it is just a matter of time, especially in central Africa. It’s worst of all in the Antarctic. The icepack’s melting like crazy and most of the world’s coastal cities will be flooded in weeks if we can’t stop it.”
Winger wasn’t sure whether he should tell Kraft about the strange probe into the core of one of the Amazon bots. What could he say, really?
“Get your ass back up here, Winger…” Kraft was saying, “we’ve got some tactics to work out. And we’ve got to know what happened to Bravo.”
“ETA is 1930 hours, your time, sir,” Winger told him. “And we’ll need to start regenerating another ANAD master. I lost this one.”
Kraft killed the vidlink and Winger went forward from the comm shack to the cockpit. Al Glance was there, on watch, but the ship was piloting herself. Beyond the forward windows, the curvature of the Earth was backlit by a setting sun, spreading a pool of molten gold and red all along the western horizon. Mercury was near the apogee of her suborbital arc, moments away from weightlessness, and her final plunge back into the atmosphere. In less than an hour, she’d be circling onto final approach and settling down on the north lift pad at Table Top Mountain.
“Bad news, Skipper? You look kinda pale. I can handle the ship, if you want to get some shuteye.”
“It’s okay, Al…just talked to the Major. Bravo Detachment’s missing…no word from Kurabantu Island. Singapore’s not sure what happened.” Winger related all he had just heard from Kraft.
Glance uttered a low whistle. “The whole Detachment…were they swarmed or what?”
“Apparently,” Winger said. “They were in contact, engaged in fighting off an assault, but nobody really knows what happened. Sniffers are up now…all assets air and space are looking, but so far—“ He shrugged.
The fatigued face of Sergeant Gibbs appeared in the door behind them. “Sorry, Skipper…didn’t know you were here. I was…just sort of –“
Winger understood. “Restless.”
“Yes, sir… kind of...” A puzzled frown came over his face. “--Just not sure what to make of…what we saw, sir. Inside the core of that bot…inside that creature—“
Winger shook his head. “Me neither, Gibby. I didn’t say anything to the Major. But it’ll come out in the debrief.”
“How do you explain it, sir.? It was like a nightmare…maybe we were living through a kind of dream those buggers have, if they even have minds.”
“I don’t know what to say. It’s more like a feeling. Somehow, this Amazon bot swarm, and the demonio creatures are related. And they’re part of something much larger. I don’t know what yet. I’d bet my atomgrabber’s license that Red Hammer’s involved. But I doubt they’re up to this kind of technology alone. Somebody else is helping out.”
“Another cartel, maybe? One we don’t know about?”
Winger thought about the odd sensation he’d had, just before the grotto roof collapsed, plugged in with ANAD into the core of that bot, of seeing imagery of an entire world of nanobots, a planet of mechs.
“Maybe something even bigger, Gibby. But let’s save it for the debrief. Kraft wants us in his office at 0600 hours tomorrow. Better get some rest now, while we can.”
“Sure, Skipper.” Gibby disappeared aft.
Johnny Winger left the cockpit and lay aft to his own compartment. He settled wearily into the bunk but sleep wouldn’t come. He could feel Mercury maneuvering down through the denser layers of the atmosphere, visualizing her turns and descents toward Table Top. But he was restless and it wasn’t a vision of other worlds that kept him awake.
It was ANAD. And what had happened.
Johnny Winger tossed and turned in a cold sweat, frustrated that ANAD had been bested by the Amazon bots.
Little fellow…I let you down…and that stinks.
In a way, he’d let the whole damn Detachment down. Sure, they’d gotten a little data on the Amazon bots, but it wasn’t much. Would it be enough?
Hell, maybe it’s this friggin’ quantum link.
Ever since Doc Frost had linked him in with the assembler, he’d had periods of confusion, indecision, just plain fog…like he was somebody else, somewhere else. It was crazy, despite what the Doc said. And Johnny Winger wasn’t buying any of this signal leakage or combat symbiosis crap.
The fog--or whatever the hell it was--had nearly cost him and the Detachment their lives. ANAD too…and that was the crux of the matter, wasn’t it?
He had some apologizing to do but ANAD was mute, what was left of his core having barely enough atoms to keep the processor going.
His own Dad—Jamison Winger—had been like that too, when Johnny’s Mom had died in the auto accident. The Year of Hell, that was. Way back in ’47, but it seemed like yesterday. Cold and silent as a stone wall. Jamison Winger hadn’t said ten words the whole year. Then, the next year, they gave him the patch for depression and at least he was better.
When you had something you wanted to get off your chest and you just couldn’t, all you could do was swallow it and keep going.
Nanotroopers learned real well how to keep going. They learned that practically from day one in nog school. Maybe too well.
Sometimes nanotroopers kept going until they crashed head on into a stone wall.
CHAPTER 6
Table Top Mountain
Idaho, USA
November 3, 2068
0600 hours
Johnny Winger knocked softly on the door to Major Kraft’s office. The Major was inside, pecking away at a commandpad, cutting orders for ANAD to be given priority at the Containment center. 1st Nanospace Battalion would be deploying again soon and he wanted a fresh, fully-capable ANAD master assembler ready and checked out.
“Come.”
Winger went in, followed by Master Sergeant Al Glance, Sergeant Hoyt Gibbs and Sergeant Sheila Reaves. I want an eyeballs report as well as the usual paperwork, Kraft had told Winger on the trip back to Table Top.
Kraft put away the commandpad. “ANAD’ll be ready in about three days, so the boys at Containment tell me. You roughed him up pretty good down there, Winger. What the hell happened?”
Winger shook his head. “Alpha Detachment got its butt kicked good, this time, Major.” He described the engagement with Amazon bots outside and inside the grotto at Via Verde. “I could grapple with the buggers, sort of, but I couldn’t hold ‘em. Somehow, they could just spin around and throw me off.”
Gibby nodded, “It was the damndest thing, Major. Right in the middle of the engagement, while we were grappling, the bots could grow extra effectors in a few seconds and grab you from behind. One effect
or was like a tentacle, long with some kind of badass bond disrupter at the end. It could come out of nowhere—“
Kraft listened with growing concern to the descriptions, his forehead lines deepening. “Looks like these Amazon bugs have extra capabilities—“
“That would imply a bigger processor,” said Al Glance. “There must be a lot of horsepower inside that core.”
Kraft had long considered Johnny Winger his number one project. Sure the kid’s got talent, but it needs polishing. You don’t shine a pair of boots by just looking at them. “So what’s your analysis, Captain? You got a little data we can work with?”
“Very little,” Winger admitted. “I gave it to Containment on the way in. Sergeants M’Bela and Calderon are there now, trying to make sense of it. All ANAD could get was a few gigabytes on bond energies, a little config mapping, that’s about it.”
Kraft nodded. “Captain, you know how important it is to config the enemy. Short of capturing an actual bot, that’s the only way we can know what we’re up against. Don’t tell me: you got carried away and tried to slam the bastards with everything at once.”
Winger hung his head. “Major…it wasn’t like that at all—“
Glance came to his Skipper’s rescue. “We were under full swarm assault, sir. Captain was trying to give us some room to maneuver.”
But Kraft wasn’t buying it. “The objective, Captain Winger, was to determine who or what is causing these atmospheric disturbances. Not prove what a hotshot atomgrabber you are—“
“Yes, sir—“
Kraft felt his anger boiling and forced himself to cap it. He steepled his fingers on the desk, squeezing them so hard that the knuckles turned white. Winger had talent, that was for sure…but he had a lot to learn about command.
“Captain,” Kraft continued, “Containment informs me that the ANAD master assembler has survived, no thanks to you. It seems it can be regenerated like new and re-inserted into your capsule. They said the core had been severely compromised and—to quote them exactly: we’ve never seen so much damage to basic processor functions…regenerating required us to go back to bare molecular templates and almost start from scratch--. You were lucky, this time.”
“Begging the Major’s pardon, sir, but I like to think it was more than just luck.”
“—anyway…you’d better get over to the Sim tank and work out some new tactics. 1st Nano’s been tasked by UNIFORCE to stop this menace. We’ve got to find a way to engage these bots and destroy them.”
Winger had an idea. “Sir, request permission to take a small detail to Northgate University. Visit with Doc Frost—once ANAD’s fully regenerated—and work out new tactics with the Lab. The Doc’s usually got some new tricks up his sleeve.”
Kraft grudgingly assented. “Good thinking, Winger. There’s hope for you yet. Now, I’ve got to finish this report to General Linx…get over to Containment, and help Willis get ANAD up to snuff.”
Winger saluted. “Yes, sir.” He turned to leave, but stopped. “Sir, any more word from Bravo Detachment?”
Kraft was already finagling with the commandpad. He looked up. “UNIFORCE Search and Rescue reports some faint signals in the vicinity of the central volcano. Hypersuit emergency emitter. It could be nothing, but they’re investigating.”
Winger knew that when a hypersuit was breached, it emitted a continuous signal, uniquely identifying its wearer. “Whose signal, sir?”
Kraft had been toying with the idea of forming a special search and rescue detachment out of 1st Nano. Not that he didn’t trust UNIFORCE. But with the BioShield problem and the atmospheric disturbances, UNIFORCE had a lot on its plate. He told Winger none of this.
“The search team commander indicated the emitters matched the signatures of Captain Tallant and Sergeant Collin. But they were faint and intermittent. They’re looking into it, but it’s probably just a hiccup from the emitters somewhere.”
“Or an ambush,” Al Glance observed.
“There’s no sign of what happened?” Winger asked.
Kraft didn’t look up from the commandpad. He didn’t want Winger to see his concern.
“UNIFORCE reports residual heat flux and atomic debris. There was one hell of a battle down there around that volcano…we know that much for sure. Until they can get some eyes and ears on the ground, we won’t know anymore.”
Kraft dismissed them and settled in to make his report to General Linx. Losing an entire detachment would have to be part of that report, the hardest part. Combat was like that and no commander could shy away from an objective just because there might be casualties. How many times had he beaten that very idea into Johnny Winger’s head?
Still, it hurt like hell to lose good men and women. A whole detachment…consumed just like that. Kraft put the commandpad down and rubbed his eyes.
That was the problem with this new business of nanowar. All wars produced casualties. You could always dissect a battle, collect the corpses and work out a new strategy for the next day. But with nanobots, the only thing left after battle was a cloud of loose atoms. Whole cities, armies, who could say?…maybe even planets could be deconstructed overnight, with no warning and only their basic molecular constituents left. An entire campaign could be won or lost in a space the size of your fist.
It was enough to make you nostalgic for an atom bomb.
Johnny Winger went over to Containment to see about ANAD. Corporal Willis was the CEC tech on duty.
“How’s the baby coming along?”
Willis was red-haired, thin and nervous. He sat at a console, monitoring the process of regenerating the ANAD master. Beyond the console was a semi-spherical tank, insulated and surrounded by thick ganglion of cords and piping. Willis tweaked the sensitivity controls of the quark flux imager.
“See for yourself, Captain.” He indicated an image on the monitor. In focus in the center of the screen was a rectangular grid, wavering in the aqueous solution in which the grid was suspended. “Solution parameters are normal. Pressure is twenty point two bars. Temperature right on the curve. PH normal.”
“Core functions enabled?”
“Core is operating at eighty percent capacity. ANAD’s doing just fine. I was just about to test the coupler link. Care to stick around, sir? It’ll speed up the calibration if I can use your end of the link too.”
“Sure.” Winger scanned the panel displays. Regenerating an ANAD master assembler was a tedious process of assembling atoms and molecules, managing their configurations, then seeding the configs with the quantum kernels that contained the processors. A million things could go wrong. It was as much art as science and Willis had trained with Doc Frost himself. He was one of the best CEC techs at Table Top. Winger was glad he was on duty.
Poised around the periphery of the tank in which the grid was suspended were three rows of six electron beam injectors each. At the slightest hint of trouble during regeneration, Willis could quickly toggle the firing switch on the control panel. Several million electron volts of energy would flood the tank, stripping atoms from molecules, and electrons from atoms. Only a cloud of nucleus fragments would remain.
“So how’s our little friend doing?” Winger slid a chair up closer to the monitor.
“I think he’s a little anxious,” Willis said. “Quivering with anticipation, if you know what I mean.”
Winger laughed. In the exact center of the grid, a mass of spherical shapes pulsated with some inner rhythm. The mass looked like grapes hanging from a trellis.
“I’m opening the link, enabling the state generator—“ Willis pressed a few buttons.
Winger clicked his own link on. Doc Frost had taught him how to shake his head just so, activating the coupler implanted in the back of his head. He was momentarily dizzy—the coupler had been dead for nearly a week—but shook it off.
Willis studied the Captain closely. “Got anything yet, sir?”<
br />
Winger closed his eyes. “Maybe.” The dizziness came and went, mixed in with fragments of imagery and thought, things he had seen before: the snowstorm, the smell of his Mother’s cookies, the way Bailey’s red eye winked at him from the foot of his bed when he was growing up, the humid breath of Linda Lamont’s Arabian mare huffing on a cold winter morning. Snatches and pieces of imagery. Leakage, Doc Frost called it, but to Johnny Winger, it wasn’t unpleasant at all, more like the serene drowsiness you felt first waking up in the morning.
The fragments swirled past, one after another, finally settling into one persistent feeling…a feeling like he was waist-deep in a running surf at the beach, with tides and waves and currents pushing and pulling him every direction.
***Is that you, Boss…? Is that really you?***
Johnny Winger smiled at the thought string. “Put the link on audio, Willis.”
The CEC tech complied, switching the coupler stream through another processor. “Done. Are you guys talking yet?”
“I think so…ANAD…this is Base…this is Boss…can you hear me?”
The speaker squealed, then a faint high-pitched voice came through the static.
***I feel so strange…like I’ve been asleep for a long time…what happened to me…***
Winger sighed. “It’s a long story, ANAD.” He related the events at the grotto at Via Verde. Willis coached him on filling in more details, telling him that ANAD’s memory hasn’t been fully loaded yet. “I had to do a quantum collapse…it was the only way we were going to get you out of there—“
ANAD seemed to think about that. ***Isn’t that pretty drastic, Boss…executing a quantum collapse is like—losing all my effectors, my probes, my whole structure…there’s nothing left--***
“That’s right, ANAD. Just a few kernels inside your core…that’s all that’s left. You’ve done this before. It was a tactical decision.”
The assembler’s voice was an artifact of the processor, but it sounded annoyed. ***Wasn’t there some other way…to collapse everything like that…put me through this again…you wouldn’t like it if someone did that to you***
It was Winger’s turn to be annoyed. “ANAD, nobody wanted to do it. The tactical situation demanded it…you were struggling with those bots. I couldn’t spring you loose and we were under attack from the rear…we could have been cut off.” He got up, starting pacing around the tank, trying to explain the decision, as much to himself as to ANAD, reliving the moment. “I couldn’t just leave you…we had to fall back. It was the only way we could get you free.”