Chekwarthy stared at the imager display, then over to Skinner’s body, deathly still, and back again. “The poor sap’s pale…are you sure he’s alive?” He half expected to the see the guy twitch or move a leg or something. “He’s still as a corpse.”
Winger nodded. “Heart rate’s thirty-five, blood pressure at ninety-two over sixty…hey, it’s rising…what’s going on here--?”
***Base from ANAD…that’s why I’m trying to tell you…the little ‘bots in the bloodstream are pumping out oxygen molecules left and right***
Winger studied the display, ticked off vital signs as ANAD sent them back, shaking his head. “It doesn’t make any sense—he was slipping away a few minutes ago—“
Doc Frost leaned over Skinner’s face, fixed into a mask of pain. “It does if you look at what ANAD’s sensing. Tell ANAD to do a recon of one of those ‘bots in the bloodstream.”
Winger sent the command. He linked in the quantum coupler too, so they could converse with no one listening. ANAD, get a closer look at one of those weird ‘bots…structure, power source, effectors, whatever you can.
***Base, acknowledged…you want any pieces brought back?***
Negative…just take a look and keep sniffing glutamate traces. The brass is getting antsy.
***Understood…keep your hat on, Boss…I’ll see what makes ‘em tick***
Chekwarthy was talking to Winger. “So where is ANAD now?”
Winger linked out of the coupler connection. It wasn’t easy listening to ANAD and somebody else at the same time. “Here’s the vascular grid, General—“ he fingered the display to the side of the imager. The grid was a 3-D iconic image of Skinner’s skull. “—I’d say…right about here…basal hippocampal region. Most of the swarm’s about a hundred thousand microns anterior to the lateral septum. I’ve just detached a detail to probe into one of his arteries, see what these unknown ‘bots are doing there.”
Chekwarthy rubbed his chin uneasily. It wasn’t natural, commanding platoons and armies the size of a molecule. An entire battlefield inside a man’s skull…it wasn’t right, somehow. You couldn’t see what the buggers were doing. Wars could be won or lost at the level of atoms. The General shook his head.
“We’re picking up something,” Winger muttered. As Frost watched over his shoulder, Winger steered through a dense bog of dendrites. Thickets of axon fibers clouded the view, now slaved to ANAD’s electromagnetic sounder. “—strong trace…this one’s holding, looks like—“
“Stay with it,” Frost encouraged him.
Winger massaged the keyboard, souping up sensors, managing config for the hunt.
“I’m altering config now,” Winger said in a low voice. “It’ll help us sort out the traffic—lots of chem crap around here—“
Skinner stirred lightly on the gurney and everyone jumped, until M’Bela and another tech steadied his body. “This one’s coming back, now through Level 5, looks like,” Moby muttered. It was eerie, unearthly, watching someone rise from the near dead.
M’Bela adjusted several leads to Skinner’s chest and head, checked the IV drip.
***Base from ANAD…big spikes in activation…cereberal cortex…limbic tissues are lighting up like a meteor shower…subject is coming out of level 4, out of coma…and it looks like we’ve got some company in here…what the hell?...***
Winger shook his head, trying to shutdown the coupler link. Damn it, ANAD…be quiet, why don’t you?
M’Bela’s hands flew across Skinner’s chest and face, checking vital signs. “Got measurable EEG…got activity in the frontal lobes…metabolic spikes…this guy’s coming around, for Christ’s sake. We’d better hurry, if we’re going to get any more out of this----“
“I’m trying, I’m trying.” Winger glared at the imager. What the hell was ANAD talking about I’ve got company in here? More ‘bots? He had seen a brief thermal bloom when they’d transited into the man’s capillaries…a point heat source, maybe some chem activity, but he’d ignored it…with General Chekwarthy breathing down his neck, he hadn’t had time to take a look. Now…maybe…
Winger let ANAD finish changing config, noting that all the other trillion mechs slaved to the master had done likewise, all but a small detail reconnoitering the bloodstream, checking out the seawater ‘bots. How many mechs did the man have in him anyway ? Satisfied ANAD was ready, he maneuvered the device into the lee of a dendritic ‘breakwater’…sniffing for calcium, sodium, anything it could follow, grabbing molecules left and right, until at last, Winger cracked the barest hint of a smile. Deep inside the semi-conscious brain of Nigel Skinner, the Autonomous Nanoscale Assembler/Disassembler blazed away at incredible speed, spasmodically sorting and advancing along the barest whiff of a chemical highway.
Seconds later, a green light illuminated alongside the screen. The sparky haze began to part—ANAD sent back a signal indicating readiness—
Start Trace Matching…
Chandrigarh’s face hardens.
Chandrigarh has thick, bushy eyebrows that frame a cat’s face with ludicrous animation. He explains the Project is an effort to discredit UNIFORCE and the Quantum Corps by making BioShield ineffective, so UNIFORCE would have to use Red Hammer designs under license.
Skinner knows he has done his job well enough. By the end of the year, though, he becomes increasingly uneasy at the planned extent and depth of atmosphere modification being undertaken. He relates his concerns to Chandrigarh, his discomfort with the extent of the modifications, wondering if “we really need to go this far.”
Chandrigarh tells him not to worry.
Later, Skinner has an attack of conscience and tries to weaken the control links and blunt some of the worst effects of the Amazon Vector swarms.
That’s when his halo goes off.
(…again, the imager dissolves in a specular fog, white gauze pinpricked with flashes of light and then nothing…ANAD had lost the glutamate trail…)
Winger swore under his breath. “That one petered out fast…must be an old trace.”
M’Bela saw the first signs a moment later. “Ah…Captain, something seems to be—“
The monitors all spiked at the same time. Skinner’s body jerked like a million volts had suddenly surged through it, a back-snapping convulsion that cracked bones as his back arched into the air. A pressure pulse of angry fog erupted from his ears and eyes.
***Hey, Boss…there’s a big--***
But ANAD never got to finish the thought. Johnny Winger’s neck hairs had tickled just as he saw the swarm balloon into the room.
“LOOK OUT--!!” Sheehan’s scream filled the examining room.
No one was quite sure when the first effects of the halo attack were felt. The debriefs later seemed to converge on the two CQE’s, working hard to tweak ANAD for further memory tracing. Deeno D’Nunzio had been working on new configs for ANAD, with Ozzie Tsukota’s help.
Both engineers noticed it right away, a shrill, keening high-freq tone, almost beyond human hearing, yet irritating in a vaguely unsettling way. Deeno’s panicked distress call from the corner of the room as the nanomechs bored into her arms and legs would linger in everybody’s memory for a long time. The other CQE, Tsukota, reported a different effect—just as panicky—when he found he couldn’t squirm away along the floor as fast as he wanted to…by then, the enemy swarm was thick enough to form a barely visible fog, almost a blanket, muffling the examining theater with exponentially thickening mist. It was something you could barely see but every sensor and caution alarm was going off around the containment chamber and you sure as hell could feel the resistance to movement.
“Mass assault swarm!” somebody yelled over the commotion. It was Dana Tallant’s voice. The c/o of 2nd Nano was already on one knee, swatting madly at the whizzing, spinning cloud of assembler mechs that had engulfed her.
“Bond breakers!” yelled General Chekwarthy. He dove for the floor, swatt
ing and flailing at the air.
“They’ve gone airborne!” Johnny Winger recognized the scenario, too late. They’d wargamed it enough times at Table Top. Enemy booby-traps bodies with enveloped swarms and as soon as a detail investigates, the swarm erupts and smothers the lot of them. “Fall back…fall back! Go to TACREP 1! Dana, cover the General…and get those electron guns smoking!”
“Secure the doors!” came a gritted voice. It was Chekwarthy, already scrambling toward the controls of the containment chamber. He lifted a hand to the controls, groping blindly for the right button and stabbed it. Instantly, a warning klaxon went off, blaring its wail through the fog of mechs. “I’ll get the guns--!!” The General groped some more and found the toggle.
At that moment, several million electron volts crackled across the chamber as the guns discharged.
Tactical Response One was a well-drilled response to sudden swarms of enemy mechs. Winger pressed a few buttons on his wristpad and pushed through the spongy mist, struggling hard to make it to the General, who had slumped to the floor and was being steadily smothered under the accelerating mass. Nearby, Doc Frost lay on his side gasping for breath, his arms and hands swatting and swinging at assailants a billion times too small to be seen.
They didn’t have long to act. TACREP called for the unit to do an emergency opposed-force setup of the ANAD system. Retrieve the master, get containment going, re-establish comm links, and counter-program like hell to beat back the assault before it consumed everything.
The worst thing was that Doc Frost wasn’t trained in swarm survival. It was always bad when civilians got involved.
Winger knew full well they had only a few minutes at best. He didn’t know what kind of mechs they were dealing with, only that they had swarmed out of Skinner’s body with virtually no warning…even ANAD had been taken by surprise. What kind of ‘bot could do that?
In wargames and sims, ANAD had demonstrated bond-breaking, molecule-disassembling speeds up to a hundred thousand nanometers per second, about a tenth of a meter every second, blown away as just so much atomic debris. Whatever this swarm was, it was undoubtedly just as fast, if not faster. If they didn’t get countermeasures going quick, the containment center at Singapore base would soon end up as little more than errant atoms and molecular fluff.
The electrons guns crackled and zapped, frying everything in sight. In theory, they were tuned to wavelengths that could tear a nanoscale device to shreds, but in practice, it was like using a club to swat a fly. The best ‘bots were too quick and sometimes, all you could hope for was to slow down a swarm and keep it occupied while you hunted for something better.
“Re-configging ANAD!” Winger yelled. He worked with several others to get Doc Frost away from the worst of the swarm, at the same time, plugging away at his wristpad. It was like swimming in oily water, trying to exert any effort against the mechs.
Deep inside the body of Nigel Skinner, the ANAD master was steering its way topside, hunting for a way out of the capillary network, battering its way through lipid walls until at last it was free and speeding along on max propulsor through cartilage and epithelial tissue. Once the master assembler was free, a new configuration could be sent and ANAD armored to beat back the enemy swarm.
***almost there, Base…I’m doing the best I can, but it’s a tight squeeze in here…these walls are full of radicals and I’m losing effectors right and left***
For a brief moment, Winger considered a quantum collapse as a way of extricating ANAD faster, but gave up on the idea.
“We’ve got to get out of here!” someone yelled. It was Tsukota, crawling and slashing wildly along the floor as the mechs bore into him.
“Negative!” yelled Chekwarthy. “Too dangerous…we’ll expose the whole base…get those guns dialed up higher--!”
***ANAD exiting…I’m out and free…give me a new config, NOW***
A small shimmer formed around Skinner’s mouth as ANAD and a small brood of replicants erupted into the air.
“Sending config!” Winger stabbed a button on his wristpad, then hunkered down on the floor, covering himself as best he could, punching out more commands. Beneath his knees, the floor itself writhed and hummed like a thing alive. He could feel the high-freq vibration through his field boot. It wouldn’t be long before he’d have to forget the wristpad and leave ANAD to fight alone.
But he’d be damned if he was going to leave ANAD behind. They were squadmates and they’d been through too much together. It was the strongest dictum in the Corps…you watched your buddy’s ass and he watched yours. Nobody got left behind. No matter what the cost, you put everything on the line for the guys in the unit.
Winger flailed at the swarm with one hand while he punched buttons, trying to help ANAD get ready to be slammed: Comm link to SELECT…Program to FBS—Fly-by-Stick. Launch would be opposed insertion. Active defense…ISR mode. That stood for Intelligence-Surveillance-Reconnaissance. Electron lens primed and enzymatic knife out to engage—
At last, he was done.
“ANAD master away!” he called out. “Primed to go! Active defense Alpha!”
“About damn time!” gritted Chekwarthy, through hands that were shielding his face.
With an audible whoosh, the master formed up in the air over Skinner’s prostrate body, and swept into the midst of the enemy swarm. The collision of invisible armies produced crackles and a shimmering arc of light all along the battle front.
“Do it, ANAD!” yelled Dana Tallant, hunkered down beside Deeno D’Nunzio, trying to shield the CQE1 from any more assaults. “Give ‘em the works!” D’Nunzio had taken the brunt of the initial swarm and her face was bruised and bleeding.
A thermal bloom erupted in mid air like a miniature nova, as the ANAD swarm defaulted to maximum-rate replication.
***yahoo!...***
Active defense Alpha was a set program they had run scores of times at Table Top. It called for the ANAD swarm to replicate basic structure at the fastest possible rate, then seek and destroy all non-self devices it could detect. ANAD’s disassembly speed was set at the best possible rate for fighting through van der Waals forces and cleaving atom bonds.
“Got an image!” Winger struggled to see his eyepiece through the dust churned up by the furious enemy swarm. “I’m porting it to the net now…EMs are shaky…interference from the chamber guns, looks like—“
Chekwarthy scrambled back to the control stand. “Turning chamber guns off!” He stabbed a button and the electron guns that ringed the containment chamber died off. Now the battlefield was clear and it was all up to ANAD. “Hope that bugger can do the job, Captain!”
Eyepieces were useless. The thermal bloom and dust exploded into a ball of fire, as ANAD swelled rapidly in an enveloping cloud, engaging the enemy swarm in a set piece battle of ionizing electrons and atom groups. The white-hot heat expanded like a small sunburst, almost pulsating as the front lines churned back and forth, ANAD’s exponential armies rallying to the assault, tangling with uncounted trillions of enemy mechs.
Winger gave up on the eyepiece. It was time to try the quantum coupler, get a direct read from what ANAD was seeing, if the link could be made to work.
ANAD…let me see what’s happening… He linked in, trying to find and stabilize a visual image.
It startled him when it came through, like sticking your head in front of a floodlight when it came on. He blinked and blinked, and his eyes watered. And for a long moment, he couldn’t make out a thing, only daubs of color and swirls and a driving sleet of weird shapes—
Then, as the image settled in, he began to resolve things through a churning frothy mess. The view was thick and black with molecular debris.
“Need to grab one of those critters,” Winger muttered to himself. What the hell kind of weird ‘bot was it that had infested Skinner and burst out like a grenade going off?
***I don’t know, Boss…but whatever they ar
e, they’re vicious little jobbies…and fast too…I can barely keep my effectors out***
Winger pressed a few keys—noting the pressure of the enemy swarm against his skin seemed to have slacked off a bit—ANAD was giving the bastards something to think about—and he took direct control by stick of a small platoon of replicants.
If I can just surround one…damn…like trying to corral a herd of bees
He used the control stud on his wristpad to zero in on a detached group of enemy mechs, scooting away from the main axis of attack, swirling near a corner of the room. What the hell are they up to? Were they under some kind of remote control? Was there some controller miles away joysticking the swarm through the assault? There was no way to tell.
“ANAD,” he muttered to himself, “somehow we’ve got to get some data on these bugs, see what they’re made of—“
***They appear to be some kind of crude jalopy kind of mechs, Boss…put together in a hurry…loose structures, effectors barely hanging on…but they’re quick and simple…and they replicate like crazy***
“That’s probably the key to it, ANAD. Sweet and simple. Slap together a few carbenes and stick ‘em in a shell and you’ve got a nanomech. They had this poor slob infested from head to toe.”
Winger drove ANAD at the enemy swarm and executed a perfect entrapment maneuver, neatly bracketing the enemy ‘bots in a classic octahedral lattice. The ‘bots pressed outward, buzzing angrily, trying to break out of the lattice, probing for weak spots, but Winger had quickly reinforced his scout group with extra ANADs.
“Gotcha!” he exulted. Now they’d have something to take a look at. “ANAD, let’s take this bugger to TinyTown. I don’t think I want a ‘bot like this in my capsule.”
***Understood, Boss…heading for Tinytown now…I’m on max propulsors, bearing two five oh to containment***
But his triumph was short-lived. Even as he commanded the ANAD lattice to propel itself back toward containment, sheparding the trapped mechs, fending off steady probes of the bond breakers, one of the enemy devices separated itself from the main body. In the imager view on his eyepiece, Winger stared in horror as the nanomech suddenly shed all its outer atom group armament in a puff of molecular debris and executed a daring fold/collapse, imploding in on itself in a flurry of segment cleavage and destruction. Whirling on picowatt propulsors like a mad dervish, a blurry core of atoms exploded out of the sleet of fragments and rocketed through the lattice like a bullet. In a fraction of a second, it was through the lattice and gone, out of the field of view.