***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…***
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.
Gibbs couldn’t bear to watch the viewer in his eyepiece. Tiled along the edge of the swirling froth of combat, status icons were showing up red everywhere. They were losing ANAD in the face of the OpFor assault and somewhere deep inside Valleyville, Captain Dana Tallant was no doubt smirking with satisfaction.
Johnny Winger set grimly to work, now taking full command through his keypad of the master ANAD assembler. Somehow, he had to wriggle out of the encirclement and outflank the enemy formation.
Overhead, the air was electric with an impending thunderstorm, and with the shriek of nanomech combat, staticky pops and bursts danced like St Elmo’s fire across the heads of the half-buried cadets. A rolling, roaring gale of mechs swept across the ridgeline as the two armies tore at each other with ferocious momentum. Winger felt a few drops of rain on his arms. He looked up, saw low clouds scudding in from the west. Lightning flickered behind the clouds.
Dipole charges. Polarity columns. The wind was picking up. And it gave him the barest hint of an idea.
“Executing quantum collapse…NOW!” Come on baby, get small for me…get real small…
Enveloped by the swarming and smothering enemy formation, the ANAD master collapsed what was left of its structure in an explosive puff of atom fragments. Base, effectors, probes and grapplers, even the core shell surrounding its central processor, went hurtling off into the air in a big bang of spinning atom parts.
It was a desperate, drastic, last-chance maneuver. It wasn’t in the book. But he’d discussed the possibility with M’Bela one night over beers at the canteen and he figured he knew what he was doing.
Instantly, ANAD seemed to disappear. For all intents and purposes, ANAD had effectively vanished in a cloud of blurry quantum waves.
Less than three minutes later, making its way on quantum wave propulsors, ANAD straggled back toward the containment capsule, its nanoprocessor still dogging electron states to bring the nearly invisible device home.
“Not just yet, ANAD,” Winger muttered. He tapped out a few more commands on his wrist keypad. “You’re getting back into the fight…in disguise, this time.”
***ANAD to Base…there’s not much left…need a break here…need some time in containment to regroup***
“No can do, ANAD,” Winger said. Now he heard the rumble of thunder. The storm front was getting closer. He finished the command sequence and squirted it through the coupler. “ANAD, get ready to look like dust particles!”