“I hope so, ANAD,” Winger muttered in a low voice, closing his eyes. “I really do. This is a big step…for both of us.” In a strange, almost fatherly way, he felt somehow responsible for seeing to it that ANAD didn’t screw up.
The sim tank was a large spherical chamber where all the wargaming scenarios were laid out, before adjourning to the outdoor range twenty-five miles north of Table Top, a place called Hunt Valley. It was also where all the raw recruits, called nogs in Quantum Corps parlance, went through SODS training. SODS stood for Spacial Orientation and Discrimination Training.
The SODS tank was thirty feet in diameter, filled with water and a host of infinitesimal predators and bogeymen, enough to get any unsuspecting nog’s attention when he tried to pilot an ANAD through the medium. It was where Johnny Winger had first caught Major Kraft’s attention ten years before, with a string of uncanny performances against any opponent SOFIE and the sim techs could think up.
SODS was a prerequisite for any nog to get out of Basic and stand for officer status in 1st Nanospace Battalion. From the beginning, Jurgen Kraft had to admit, one cadet stood out above all the rest…Johnny Winger. He’d shown extraordinary skill at the sims, an unusually adept talent at visualizing and manipulating micron or nanometer scale objects in space. Hands down, the kid was destined to be the top code and stick man in the whole battalion…an intuition Kraft occasionally congratulated himself on since it had come true. You just couldn’t make raw talent like that.
“Okay, troopers, here’s the situation.” Kraft diagrammed the wargame on a board. “A large city is threatened by an enemy force, basically held hostage to their demands. Quantum Corps gets the call and an ANAD Detachment is formed. If the enemy’s demands aren’t met, the enemy will execute a Big Bang and destroy the city and all the inhabitants. ANAD Detachment is tasked with penetrating the city, conducting recon on enemy dispositions and preventing the Big Bang from playing out.”
“What about rules of engagement, Major?” asked Winger.
“I’m getting to that. In this wargame, which is called ‘Nanowarrior I,’ ANAD Detachment will test the new trooper-embedded ANAD system. That means launch, deployment, engagement and recovery tactics. We all know that Captain Winger here has just returned from having an ANAD containment capsule implanted. This scenario is designed to test how well that works. As far as rules of engagement go, close-quarters combat is permitted, including all swarm tactics of evasion, deception, swarming attack and so forth. But no body penetration is allowed.”
“Too bad,” said Deeno D’Nunzio. “I was looking forward to grabbing somebody’s gizzard and shaking it down.”
“To help the simulation, we’ve had ANAD swarms at work out at the Hunt Valley range for the last several days, assembling fake buildings and other urban infrastructure. By now, it ought to look pretty real.” With a few taps on his wrist keypad, Kraft sent the scenario details and rules of engagement to every trooper’s crewnet. “There…now you’ve got the facts. Questions?”
“Just one, Major.” It was Sergeant Chris Calderon, the unit CEC2. “What the hell do I do now that ANAD’s contained inside Captain Winger? I mean…do we really need Containerization and Environment Control ratings now?”
Kraft look annoyed but figured the question had merit. “Good question, Sergeant. Now you know why we run wargames. Work out tactics and duties with Captain Winger and we’ll deal with it in the after-action review.”
For years, Table Top Mountain had been portrayed as looking like the palm of a hand. If that were so, then the ridges of mountains radiating out from Table Top were the fingers. Following the same analogy, Hunt Valley was a narrow plateau surrounded by steep cliffs roughly between the thumb and index finger of the hand that was Table Top.
The Valley was home to the outdoor wargame and test range, where nanoscale assemblers could be let loose in the wild, under some semblance of control. Indeed, one of the advantages of having a valley as the test range was the ability to throw a simple containment shield over the grounds, in the form of electron guns and even crude but effective nanobotic barriers, able to blunt the effects of all but the worst types of accidents.
Winger led his detachment of twelve troopers from the belly of the liftjet and hiked up a short cliff to a ledge overlooking the sim city below, affectionately known as “Valleyville.”
“DPS…” he called over to Sheila Reaves. “We’d better do a little recon here so we know what we’re dealing with. Get Superfly up and sniffing around…perimeter of five hundred yards radius.”
“I’m on it, Captain.” Reaves and the DPS2, Corporal Chandra Singh, unloaded two of the micro air vehicles and fired them off. Moments later, the twin entomopters were airborne at altitude, cruising on picowatt power cells, their articulating wings spinning at thousands of rpm. They careened across the valley and the rooftops of Valleyville while Winger directed the rest of the deployment.
“Full hypersuits, Captain?” The CC1, Al Glance, didn’t relish the prospect of getting in to the heavy, boosted exo-skeletons, but they did offer the best protection if things went downhill.
Winger thought. “We should, Sergeant, given the threat. But I’d like to know more about what the enemy’s up to.” Winger was like that…going on hunches, ignoring the book when the situation seemed ripe. It drove Kraft crazy but more often than not, Winger’s hunches had been right. The hairs on the back of his neck were his warning system. At the moment, they were behaving. “Get the suits powered up but leave ‘em off…for now.”
“You smell something fishy, Captain?” asked Mighty Mite Barnes. The SDC1 was unstowing the HERF gun mounts, getting the radio-freq weapons ready to go.
“Maybe…” Winger said, scanning the terrain around Valleyville with his binocs. A faint shimmer pulsated and flickered around the nearer buildings of the fake city. “Get those HERF guns spooled up right away…and site them along axes parallel to the main streets. Oh, and Mite, put one up there, sited away from the ‘Ville.”
“Away from the city?” Barnes asked. “Are you--?”
“Yeah…I’m not forgetting who the OpFor is today….if I know Dana Tallant, she’ll have 2nd Nano all bug-eyed and ready to slam us from behind before we know what’s what. That’d be just like her.”
“What about ANAD?” asked Glance. “Think we ought to wake him up, get him going?”
Winger held up a hand, for silence. The hairs on the back of his neck had begun to prickle. “Al, you and Gibby and the two CECs come with me…we’re going to check out something down there. I think that shield’s just for show and the enemy wants us to come that way. The rest of you stay put…and keep your eyes open. You get any kind of tickle or whiff from Superfly, blast away with HERF. That’ll buy you some time.”
“But, Captain—“ Reaves was uneasy with the maneuver. “Begging the Captain’s pardon, sir, but if we get fragged with ‘bots here, we’ve got no defense beyond HERF and some coil-gun rounds. You’ve got the, er, the ANAD master, sir….with you.”
“I’ll only be gone a few minutes and we’ll be in contact. With ANAD right here—“ he patted his left shoulder, “we can deploy and engage faster now. You’ll be covered, no matter what.”
Reaves looked doubtful. It was against all doctrine to split up the detachment like this. Normally, ANAD would be contained in a TinyTown pod with the detachment as it deployed, not off following some wild hunch.
“If you say so, sir.”
Winger took a small detail and left the ledge, creeping down a rutted gully until they were flatfooted on level ground just beyond the city buildings. The shimmer of a nanobotic shield flickered like summer fireflies a scant fifty feet away….supposedly the OpFor’s barrier to any probing from this sector.
You had to think like the enemy, know your enemy and what they liked to do. In this case, the enemy was Dana Tallant’s 2nd Nanospace Company. Winger smiled as they positioned t
hemselves to do a little more reconnoitering around the edges of the shield.
He knew Dana Tallant like a kid sister.
Valleyville was essentially a shell of a town, literally. Over the last few days, Major Kraft had seen to it that swarms of nanoscale assemblers had put together a small group of buildings and streets, enough to resemble a small town. Only the exteriors had been assembled. Inside their shells, the buildings were empty space.
“Captain, we going to breach this thing…or just check the perimeter?” It was Gibby, the unit’s IC1.
But Winger didn’t reply. Instead, he held up a hand and the detail halted, right outside the keening whine of the nanomech barrier. Something had tickled the hairs on the back of his neck. He spoke into his helmet mike.
“DPS, you got anything from Superfly yet?”
Sheila Reaves’ voice crackled back. “Funny you asked, Captain…right when you called up, ‘Fly gave me a tickle of something…I don’t know what it is…maybe nothing—“
Winger froze. With hand signals, he ordered the small detail to about-face and head back up to the ledge.
Gibby was curious. “What is it, Captain?”
Winger was already halfway up a gully, hauling himself as fast as he could. “Just a hunch…come on, troops—“
And that’s when all hell broke loose.
The scream of Sheila Reaves was the first thing everybody heard over the crewnet.
“AAAAARRRRGGGGHHHHH!.....Get the HERF gun!!!—“
Though he was still fifty feet below the level of the ledge, Johnny Winger could feel the swelling thermal bloom of a Big Bang attack long before he could see it. Overhead, sparks and crackles of phosphorescent blue and green stitched across the tops of the hills, as a swarm of nanobots descended on the detail, replicating madly, mindlessly, replicating in exponential overdrive, swelling and rolling and smothering like a slow-motion fireball of an explosion.
The sheer suffocating weight of the ‘bots as they divided and expanded made the air tingly and alive with pinpricks of flame.
“Come ON!” Winger yelled. Gibby and M’Bela and the rest of the detail scrambled after the captain as he hauled and kicked and hoisted himself across ravines and clefts, climbing furiously toward the epicenter of the attack.
At the top of the ridge, Sheila Reaves managed to get the HERF gun turned around and boresighted into the teeth of the nanomech gale, cycling the action, as she motioned the others to get down.
“Cover yourselves…I’m gonna fry these suckers!”
The rest of the detachment took cover immediately and Reaves gritted her teeth, wincing and gasping for air as the ‘bots smothered her from every direction. With her last ounce of strength, she lit off the radio-freq cannon and dove headlong to the dirt. She buried her face and screamed at the top of her lungs to equalize pressure in her head, trying to ignore the stings and bites of the ‘bots on her back.
The thunderclap deafened the hillside as a pulse of rf hurtled through the air. Winger waited a second for the wave of heat to wash over him, then he heard it: the clattering of nanomechs, momentarily stunned, falling to the ground like dead leaves in a stiff wind.
“Let’s GO!” he yelled, as he bolted up the hill. ANAD, get yourself ready…we’re going into action ‘soon as I get to the top…prep for deploy, safe all effectors, spool up propulsors, and orient yourself for launch…
Deep inside the containment capsule in his left shoulder, the Autonomous Nanoscale Assembler/Disassembler was readying itself for combat.
***deployment complete…all effectors in launch position…my processor is updating now...config state is combat-ready***
“That’s…affirmative, ANAD…” Winger grunted, as he ducked and scrambled forward. “Max rate rep…give ‘em hell, ANAD! Launch now…launch and engage!!”
The force of the launch momentarily caught Winger off balance and he stumbled and fell to his side. The sudden whoosh of the pressure drop and the sting of the torque against his shoulder made him wince, but it couldn’t be helped. The ANAD master rocketed out of containment and immediately set to work replicating.
Moments later, the two swarms collided head-on across the top of the ridge, in pulsating rhythms of iridescent blue, as vast, unseen armies engaged overhead.
Another drone-snap of radio frequency waves rolled across the hills as the HERF gun discharged. Winger got on the crewnet…he had to warn the DPS techs to keep the air clear for ANAD.
“Sheila! DPS1…kill the HERF! Kill the HERF! ANAD needs a free hand to fight—“:
Reaves’ voice was strained…she was being consumed with mechs even as she burrowed ever deeper into the dirt behind the liftjet skids.
“Sorry…Captain…we’re being…eaten…alive…up here!!”
Winger pressed a button on his wrist keypad and instantly, soundings from ANAD filled his helmet eyepiece. The view was surreal, swirls of motion embedded in bubbles and polygons and octahedral lattices as the assemblers collided and grappled.
“Gibby, I’ve got ANAD on viewer…I’m taking command, changing config--!”
“Got it!” Gibby came back. The IC1 was fully qualified to run the interface controls and immediately dialed up the same view. But ANAD was Captain’s baby now, he figured. Better to let the two of them duke it out with the enemy ‘bots.
I sure hope they know what they’re doing, Gibby thought. He raised his head up and got a mouth full of mech debris, stinging sleet against his face. He shielded his face and squinted into his eyepiece, the same view Winger had.
Funny how combat looked when you were the size of a few atoms. Gibby remembered seeing some old vid…a movie they used to call them—of the U.S. Navy fighting in the Big War…the Second Big One. Frogmen fighting underwater. That’s what nano-combat looked like on his eyepiece viewer. Nothing but foam and bubbles, only it wasn’t bubbles he was seeing. It was stringy chains of atoms that looked like tree ornaments…bulbs on a filament whipping through space, cleaved by things that looked like spiky maces and octahedral balls and weird pyramids and every shape imaginable, all careening along as if blown by a hurricane.
Even as he watched, he heard Winger’s voice over the crewnet. “…looks just like an INDRA clone, Gibby…I’m closing in—“
“Easy, Skipper…it could be a diversion.” He watched as the image steadied. Several dozen feet away, perched below the precipice of a ledge, Johnny Winger was driving ANAD toward the nearest of the enemy mechs. Even as ANAD surged forward, Gibby saw the enemy maneuvering to strike. “Look out! He’s changing position…all of ‘em, coming at us—“
“I see it!” Winger yelled. His fingers flexed but there was no need…no keyboard was needed with quantum coupling. It was hard to get used to that. “ANAD…move all defensive systems to attack position!”
***ANAD complying…casting off my hematite shield…grabbers to attack position…electron lens primed and ready…let me at ‘em!***
Winger smiled as ANAD sped forward. Like a five-year old, heading for the playground. On the eyepiece imager, the enemy master grew and retracted appendages and surface structure with blazing speed. The outer membrane of the mech seethed with motion, as atoms and clusters of atoms twisted, bonded, twisted again, rebounded, broke apart, recombined, straightened, undulated and whirled.
The gap between them vanished and ANAD grappled with the nearest mech. Other mechs swarmed to the battlefield. The imager screen shook with the collision, then careened sideways.
Combat at the scale of atoms and molecules had always been second nature to Johnny Winger. From his first days as a nog, he’d had an uncanny ability to grab atoms and sling molecules. It was like he’d born to the world of van der Waals forces and peptide chains, like he was a natural. Now, with the quantum coupler, he no longer even needed an IC-man or keyboard to drive ANAD. He could do it by thought alone.
“ANAD…change config now…go to prime three and extend all
carbenes!”
***ANAD changing config now…going to prime three…hope you know what you’re doing, Boss***
A few moments passed, as the new instructions were executed by the ANAD master and all daughter assemblers. Gibby watched the imager view as it vibrated with the ferocity of the attack. Chains of oxygen molecules, pressed into service as makeshift weapons, whipped across the screen. The air was soon choked with cellular debris. Even as Gibby hunkered down against the lee of the hillside and watched, the enemy mechs replicated several times in response, adding new molecule strings. In unison, they stripped off electrons to make an armor shield of highly reactive chlorine atoms.
Gibby had seen the tactic before. In seconds, ANAD was nearly immobilized by the chlorine sheath.
***I’m losing structure, Boss…reconfiguring…shutting down peripheral systems…before it’s too late***
Sergeant Gibbs crawled on his belly along the hillside, until he had reached Winger. Over the shriek of nanomech hell, he yelled in the Captain’s ear: “Got to disengage, Skipper…emergency truncation! Everything not critical…we’ve got to get ANAD out of there before we lose him!”
“I’m not giving up yet!” Winger yelled back. “ANAD…execute config change…prime five!” He was damned if he was going to let Dana Tallant and any swarm of two-bit INDRA knock-offs beat ANAD.
***trying to comply, Base…but internal bonds on main body structure are weakening…I’m losing all grappling capability***
Johnny Winger gritted his teeth and lifted his head up into the swirling maelstrom of swarming ‘bots, letting the sleet sting his face with a million razor cuts. He squinted into the teeth of the gale, shaking his fist. “Not this time, Tallant! Not this time…ANAD, I’m taking over…I’m taking command—“ He tapped a few strokes on his wrist keypad and moments later, the ANAD master was in his hands.
***I’m all yours, Base…but I’m losing it…losing it fast…now fine motor control down to half, attitude and orientation, propulsors, sensors, molecule analysis, replication…***
Somehow, the enemy had managed to tweak the INDRA mech. With ruthless efficiency, the enemy master whirred and chopped every device ANAD could generate. ANAD had tried to counter, replicating probes, inserters, jaws, cilia, pumps, blowers—but it was no use.