"Blast 'em, Lieutenant! Blast the sonsofbitches to kingdom come!"
Winger needed no further encouragement. He checked with Reaves one last time.
"Weapons are enabled, sir!"
"Fire!" Winger yelled. "Fire all around, all units! Full bore! Let 'em have it!"
A series of sirens warbled across Table Top, warning everyone to take cover.
The whole mesa seemed to vibrate as the first pulse shot out, squeezing the air with a thunderclap of heat. A searing wave passed through the Mission Prep hall as the bubbles of radio waves expanded outward, pulverizing everything in their path.
The first pulse was quickly followed by several more, each discharge hammering the ground with an invisible fist of energy. Johnny Winger screamed at the top of his lungs, trying to equalize pressure inside his head. His eyes and lungs burned. His skin crawled with fire, then tingled and crackled….he struggled with his hypersuit as he climbed into the vessel and secured all fasteners, powering up the suit and checking all systems as fast as he could. Servos whirred and the suit pressurized as another thunderclap rocked the building. It was hot as hell inside but it was the only way he could survive outside.
The plan was to gain control of ANAD, replicate like mad and drive the swarm into engagement with the halo bots that had erupted out of the O Quarters. But first he had to find the master ANAD bot.
NOW! NOW was the moment….
He raced out of the hall and ran a swerving, zigzagging course across the open ground between the Mission Hall and the Ops Center. The air seemed alive, thick with mechs, and he waved his arms wildly over his head, beating through the swarm. All about him, droplets of something fell from the sky. He stumbled and nearly fell, then scrambled to his feet, plunging into the thickening mist, until alongside the road from the BOQ to East Gate, he felt he was near the center of the swarm. Mech debris clattered and fell from the sky, tickling, brushing, crawling at his hypersuit armor—he could have sworn he could hear them burrowing through the composite-- but he ignored it and tapped out commands on his wristpad furiously, trying to link up with ANAD.
"Come on, buddy, come on…come on…where the hell are you--"
Already, the effects of the HERF pulse were beginning to wear off, as the swarm began to recover from the blast, replicating new mechs to replace those the RF waves had shattered.
“Come on…come on…”in desperation, he opened a voicelink.
"Hub to ANAD…Hub to ANAD….is anybody there, anybody in charge out there…where the hell are you, buddy?--"
Just then, a staticky hiss in his ears formed a recognizable word.
"---emory register--"
"ANAD…is that you?"
The whisper grew marginally louder. Sirens nearly drowned out the words. "ANAD…ANAD to Hub…..it's…this is….controls are…I'm weakened….can't activate--"
"ANAD…is that you…ANAD…this is Hub…listen to me…ANAD, can you hear me?"
The whisper was weak, but there. Winger waved blindly, trying to get the sirens shut off, trying to stop the next HERF pulse. "ANAD…listen to me…command override…Excalibur alpha x-ray…command override…Excalibur alpha x-ray--" He hoped the old reset command would work. He'd just told ANAD to shutdown all comm links and effector controls…he hoped.
The swarm was reconstituting again, he could almost feel fiery pinpricks on his back and neck. Got to hurry now!
"ANAD…execute omega one…full shutdown…all links, all effectors, all sensors and probes…ANAD, I'm coming to you…I've taking over--"
He toggled a sequence of buttons on his wristpad, snapped his eyepiece into place and, to his surprise, ANAD had responded, giving him full control of his core processor and all functions.
The nanomech voice link was weakening. "ANAD…responds….comm one and comm two down…effec--disabled…main core idling…ANAD to Hub…please…hlp me--"
The eyepiece image was like driving a hundred miles an hour through an Idaho sleet storm. Polygons and spheres and snakes and cubes streamed past at high speed. For a moment, Johnny Winger was disoriented.
Where the hell am I?
Then he tickled the tiny joystick on his wrist and powered up ANAD's propulsors.
Just have to dead reckon my way back to the fight today, he mumbled to himself.
But he hadn't counted on Reaves firing off the HERF guns again. The halo swarm had partially reconstituted again, and the pulse, when it came, was like being caught in a tidal wave.
The link to ANAD stayed active and Johnny Winger felt himself scattered and tumbled and jostled and swept along in a great river, surging through, vast forces tearing at his limbs, punching him in the chest, ripping his head open. His own body's natural instincts forced him into a curled, face down position, as the thunderclap rolled across the base. But even as he was still and his helmeted face was buried in wet grass, the dizzying, caroming ride continued.
He was linked in with ANAD and seeing what the mech sensed as the RF wave expanded through the air above Table Top. For a few moments, he blacked out, then staggered back to semi-consciousness and stabilized himself with judicious pulses on his propulsors.
"ANAD," he muttered to himself, "let's go get in the fight." Momentarily, he backed out of the ANAD link and radioed back to the Mission Hall, telling Reaves to shut down the HERF guns. "I'm driving ANAD right now…and neither of us wants to go through that again!"
Gradually, the swirling, driving sleet of oxygen and hydrogen atoms slackened off and he felt he was making headway on half-propulsor power. Molecules of dust and debris thickened the air, making navigation dicey, but Winger quickly recovered his atomgrabber's instincts and piloted ANAD through reefs and shoals and rapids of whirling, churning atoms and molecules, feeling his way through the sleet, fighting stiff currents as he hacked his way back toward the O Quarters, homing on the coordinates of the halo master bot, the supernova of the big bang, the core of all the high thermals and acoustics and EMs indicating max rate replication.
It was doubly disorienting, when he physically stood up, peering outside his helmet eyepiece, stumbling through the remnants of the gray mist, tripping over half-eaten corpses in the grass, then looking back through the eyepiece at the cyclone of atoms ANAD was battling through. Two different worlds in the same view: macro and nano, humans and atoms, and the rules were different in both.
Johnny Winger wobbled and stumbled his way like a drunken sailor, with troopers and technicians giving him a wide berth everywhere along the zigzag track.
Back in ANAD’s world, he reached out with sensors and steadily closed on the epicenter of the maelstrom. Winger opened a comm link to Reaves back in the Mission Hall.
“I’ve got a big pulse of thermals dead ahead, Sheila. Got to be the master…it’s burning hotter than the sun. Sucker’s grabbing atoms like a cyclone.”
Reaves’ voice came back. “Kincade just ordered emergency evacuation of the mountain, Lieutenant. You’ll see the lifters skedaddling any moment now. Lots of casualties too, mostly respiratory, some physical trauma—flying objects and that sort of thing. You’re cleared hot to engage…need any more HERF?”
“We see him…closing now! No more HERF…let me and ANAD handle this one!”
“Roger that, Skipper. Good luck!”
Through the sleet of polygons and cubes and tetrahedrals, he could just make out the barest outlines of the front line of halo mechs.
“Jeez, now they look like stacks of cubes”, he muttered. Each bot resembled a child’s pile of blocks, stacked haphazardly, festooned with effectors and propulsors. He commanded ANAD to full stop. “Better check this out…ANAD, this is Hub. I don’t see a weakness. No obvious seam or joint…we’d better recon this. Prime bond disrupters and go to one-quarter propulsor.”
***Sounding ahead, Hub…those blocks are casing segments, but the joints are well defended. Recommending multi-fold configuration on my grabbers…add a few peptides and
reach out to slap the bastard***
It wasn’t what ANAD said so much as the way he said it that made Johnny Winger remember something he’d once done with Linda Lamont’s colt Misty. A rope trick she had shown him once, when she and Misty had come riding by the North Bar Pass Ranch one afternoon, just to show off. Something called the “Spinning Jenny,” where you did tricks with the rope and then lassoed a colt from behind.
“ANAD, set propulsors to slow spin…five rpm. I want to multi-fold your forward grabbers…add those peptide chains…I’ve got an idea.”
***Hub…is this a good idea?…I can’t engage while spinning like that…recommending changing tactics to a high-speed tangential approach, a glancing pass--***
Winger could see the Spinning Jenny in his mind’s eye…keep your wrist straight, your arms up, fingers twirling, thumb over thumb over thumb—“ANAD, just do it, okay? I know what I’m doing.”
His plan was to spin ANAD in such a way that the halo bots couldn’t capture anything, then reach out with his extended grabbers and slice off a few effectors. A few cuts and thrusts like that and, if he was right, ANAD’s Spinning Jenny could make quick work of the buggers.
Thanks, Linda Lamont, Winger muttered, watching his wristpad as it detailed ANAD’s config changes. When it was done, Winger drove ANAD forward.
The first pass worked like a charm and the halo bots wound up losing a dozen effectors—their own grabbers, probes, enzymatic knives, all manner of atom debris soon choked the air.
Up and down the line of engagement, ANAD’s daughter replicants duplicated the Spinning Jenny. The air over the quadrangle was soon bright with flickering lines of engagement, writhing and whipping through the air like illuminated snakes.
After a few minutes, Winger opened a comm link back to Mission Hall. “Sheila, Major Kraft, it works. I’ve got the rep cycle stopped…the bang’s snuffed out. ANAD and I worked out some new tactics. Now, it’s just a matter of mopping up.”
Reaves heaved a sigh of relief. She also noticed the little red vein on Major Kraft’s forehead had subsided, no longer swollen and throbbing. That meant Ironpants was feeling better about the whole situation.
“Lieutenant, Bioshield’s got a squadron of lifters bearing down on us…full swarm load. Once you have the bang contained, upload your tactical configs to them—I’ll get their comm freqs in a minute—and they’ll launch their own swarms to help restore the atmosphere. This bubble of bad air’s spreading fast…the Governor’s already ordered mandatory evacuation of ten counties around Table Top.”
Kraft came on the line. “Winger, get that bang under control the best way you can. Give the word and I’ll order a HERF barrage, if it’ll help.”
“No HERF yet, sir…let me and ANAD handle it. These new tactics aren’t in the manual…they’re something we cooked up out here. Then I’ve got to get back to the Infirmary. This may work on the bots inside Doc Frost as well.”
Kraft knew when to leave well enough alone. He didn’t like it when Johnny Winger went around free-lancing with ANAD; that was how people got hurt. But he had to admit, if only to himself, that the young atomgrabber had a way with ANAD that no other nanotrooper could match. We’ll deal with regulations and standard procedures in the after-action brief, if we ever get there, he told himself.
Outside Mission Hall, the night sky was aflame with a molecular firefight. The air was still unbreathable, but Winger was buttoned up inside his hypersuit. He tried to avoid stumbling over corpses and bodies that littered the grounds between O Quarters and Mission Hall. The poor bastards never had a chance, he muttered. They had collapsed in the cyclone of the big bang, overcome with toxic air, smothered and asphyxiated in the swelling Armageddon the halo bots had brought to the Mountain.
And they all came out of Doc’s halo, he told himself. The bang had erupted like an explosion, detonating at a speed no nanotrooper had ever seen or wargamed against. Now the worst of it seemed contained, as long as ANAD could execute the Spinning Jenny and slice through halo bots faster than they could config. It was touch and go for many minutes, but Winger was relieved when he saw the whippy lines of light overhead beginning to fade and disappear. The halo bots were going dark.
Slowly but surely, ANAD was winning the battle.
“ANAD, maintain Config Thirty—“ that was the name he had given to the maneuver “—maintain spin rate and prime all bond disrupters. Partition command: detach ten percent all bots and form up on me. I’ve got to get back to the Infirmary and see about Doc Frost.”
***ANAD to Hub, still in Config Thirty…partitioning now…Hub, recommend executing MOB containment maneuver with remaining enemy…grab ‘em and stuff ‘em in a sack, Hub***
Winger figured that was a good idea. ANAD was like a small child, still making mistakes but learning fast. “Do a systematic sweep, ANAD…rectangular grid, the entire mountain top. Corral all the buggers and put ‘em away. I’ll talk to Bioshield and see how their doing…they may need config help to counter the atmosphere mods these bastards have made.”
Winger waited until a small, faintly visible, fist-sized force of ANAD clones had formed up over his head. The formation was a translucent oblong mass of flickers and pops, barely seen in the fog of nano combat that had engulfed Table Top, more shadow than substance. Winger linked in through his coupler, noted these were all barebones ANAD assemblers, with the master bot still doing Config Thirty’s on what was left of the halo bots.
“Come on, guys, “Winger said, though he knew the bots couldn’t really ‘hear’ his orders. He checked his wristpad, saw green lights on the coupler link and knew he was in command of the force. The link was solid. “Let’s go do some Spinning Jennys inside Doc Frost.”
He tore through a half-eaten hedge of hibiscus bushes at the corner of O Quarters and stomped off west in his hypersuit, suit servos whining, heading toward the Infirmary.
Chapter 2
“The Archive”
U.N. Quantum Corps Western Command
Table Top Mountain, Idaho, USA
January 14, 2049
0230 hours
Once inside Doc Frost’s brain, Winger found the ‘Spinning Jenny’ was an effective tactic against the halo bots that were left. Again and again, he drove his cannibalized ANAD squad into the midst of the enemy, slashing and slicing and dicing. It wasn’t long before the Doc’s ventral tegmentum looked like an atom trash dump.
“It won’t take long for glial cells to make quick work of that crap,” observed Sergeant Gibbs. “Scanning nothing but debris now, Skipper. Looks like you put the halo out of commission.”
Winger was already pulling his nanoscale bot army out of the engagement zone, heading for a quick exit along the Doc’s optic nerve and the lachrymal ducts at his eyelids. “Now, for Dr. Duncan…Dana…get her prepped right away. I don’t want any more halos exploding out of here again.”
Over the next few hours, Winger performed an insert on Duncan and found the ‘Spinning Jenny’ maneuver equally effective against the Red Hammer bots of her halo. When he was done, it was near dawn and a pale winter sun was rising over Table Top.
Duncan and Frost were both pronounced free of their halos at last, then removed from Containment and littered to the Infirmary, to a recovery room where they could be monitored.
After a quick breakfast of eggs and bacon at the Commissary, Johnny Winger and Dana Tallant visited their patients.
Mary Duncan was still groggy from anesthesia. Doc Frost was awake and growing more alert by the hour.
Winger stood by. “Doc, how do you feel?”
Frost ran a hand through his sparse white hair. “Like I just fell out of a hyperjet and dropped fifty miles to the ground. You got the blasted things out of our heads?”
Winger nodded. “ANAD did yeoman duty. Hunted down the last bots and smashed them into atom fluff. Of course, I had to invent some new maneuvers to do it….stuff that’s not in the manual. Doc, yo
ur halo bots were ANAD clones but souped up like hot rods. Somebody’s really been tinkering under the hood.”
Frost was intrigued. “I hope you saved a few…I’d like to take a look. See if we can figure out what makes them tick.”
“In Containment now, Level Four. Major Kraft wants to know if you and Mary feel up to a little debriefing this afternoon. Q2 wants to do a memory trace as well.”
Frost shrugged meekly. “I figured that was coming. Anything to help out. We’ve both seen and heard a lot.”
Tallant said, “Doc, you both need to rest for now. We’ll come back after lunch, see how you’re feeling. We don’t want to try anything too strenuous too soon. You’ve both been through hell and it’ll take time to regain full functionality…plus the doctors want to do a full battery of tests.”
Frost chuckled. “To see if I’m sane, in my right mind, is that it? No, we want to talk and explain what we encountered. After you’ve heard what we have to say, you’ll be wondering if we’ve completely lost our marbles. Johnny, the threat’s even worse than you know. And halo bots that can re-configure and big bang a military base in minutes aren’t even the worst of it.”
Tallant and Winger left them to continue their recovery. “We’ll see you later today.”
After they had left, Frost saw Duncan stirring in her bed next to his. She tried to sit up, and sank back wearily into the pillows. “Irwin, do you really think they’ll believe what we have to tell them?”
Frost sat a bit unsteadily on the side of his own bed, pressing a button on a nearby control box. The bioshield that had surrounded his bed collapsed in a flash as the botscreen dispersed. Pops and flashes of light died off, like summer fireflies at sunup. Frost reached out, felt nothing, and struggled to his feet. He went to the window, parted the blinds and looked out. Snow flurries were falling in a steady mountaintop breeze.
“I don’t know, Mary. I’m not sure I believe it myself. But it’s the truth. Red Hammer is the least of our worries.”
An initial briefing was arranged to start at 1730 hours, in Major Kraft’s office. Major Lofton, intel chief out of Q2 would also be there, along with Johnny Winger and Dana Tallant. The corpsmen at the Infirmary had reluctantly given permission for Frost and Duncan to attend. But a full memory trace was out for the time being. The doctors wanted no part of any bots inside of Frost or Duncan’s head until a full neuro scan and test panel could be done.