***ANAD…mission…deviations must be deleted…initializing--***
Reluctantly, angrily, Winger snapped the coupler circuit off. He couldn’t afford to be distracted now.
Bit by bit, the Bearhug maneuver seemed to be working. At each dig site, the glow of the Big Bang subsided to a dim flickering mass, visibly shrinking every moment. The master assembler had been blocked by Winger’s tactic. The embed had grappled with the bot and hung on, defeating every attempt to throw it off. Now, all the replicants had suffered the same fate.
“You did it, Skipper!” crowed Sheila Reaves. “You shut it down!”
Winger examined his handiwork, studying the embed’s positioning and ANAD’s response.
Sorry to do this, old fellow, but I had to. We’ve got a mission—
He swallowed his feelings for the moment and got on the crewnet. “All sites, give me a status report. Progress on your dig, how much further to go, any orientation and alignment problems.” He glanced up into the black sky above the surface. Already, the blue-white marble of Earth was a visible disk, growing larger every moment.
They were less than four days to impact.
The reports streamed in over the next few minutes. All sites reported much the same. The dig was seventy to eighty percent complete, alignment was good but the Big Bang had brought everything to a halt.
Nicole Simonet, at the opposite pole of the asteroid, chimed in over the crewnet. “Skipper, I don’t think we can trust ANAD to continue the boring now. To make sure of his processor, we’d have to run full diagnostics. We don’t have the time. And that Prime Key—whatever the hell it is—could still be active.”
“Agreed,” Winger said. “I’ve been doing some figuring…every dig site is close to its objective. And the embeds aren’t capable of autonomous operation in a way that will help us split this rock pile apart.”
“Plus they don’t have the right effectors or configs,” added Al Glance. Glance was still at Charlie Site, slowly working his way back to the edge of the Asgard chasm, studying the projected grid over the dig, trying to see how far down he could see into the asteroid’s innards. Nothing but shadow, now that the Bang is over….
“Exactly,” Winger agreed. “We’re going to abandon ANAD in place….leave the swarms on the surface here…and boost back to the ship. I’ve checked before with Mendez and Kamler. Both think there’s a chance we can finish the job with Galileo’s coilguns. And it’ll be safer as well.”
“Halleluiah,” said Mighty Mite Barnes. “I can’t wait to leave this slagheap.”
“Secure all your gear and make ready to boost,” Winger ordered. “We lift off in thirty minutes.”
Winger, Spivey, Calderon and Reaves did a quick hop around Alpha site, gathering up any loose equipment they wanted to take back. A nearby packbot was activated and quickly loaded down with gear. It whirred across the dusty ground, picking up tools.
At Charlie site, Taj Singh kept a close eye on Sergeant Glance, while they gathered their gear together. I don’t know what you did, Sarge, but somehow this is your mess. He resolved to let the Lieutenant know his suspicions as soon as they got back to Galileo.
Winger decided to call up Mendez aboard the ship.
“We’re boosting back to the ship within the hour. How’s our patient?”
Lucy Hiroshi was still semi-conscious and battling infections in the ship’s tiny sickbay. Medbots were slowly stitching several bone breaks back together. Mendez took the call just outside sickbay.
“We’ve still got the bioshield up, Lieutenant. Trooper Hiroshi is recovering, slowly. She sustained severe facial lacerations, a broken collarbone and several broken bones in her arms and legs. Plus she may have spinal damage…I’m waiting on the scan results. But we’ve got the bots hard at work and she’s coming along.”
Winger described his plan. “I want to use the ship’s coilguns on this rock pile, Lieutenant. ANAD’s so bollixed up, we can’t trust him again to bore through without doing full diagnostics. We don’t have the time.”
“You’re telling me,” Mendez replied. “That planet up ahead isn’t getting any smaller. UNISPACE estimates atmosphere contact and entry in ninety-one hours, twenty two minutes.”
“We’re boosting in less than half an hour. Get the coilguns powered up and checked out. It’s our last hope.”
“They can’t split up Hicks, Major. Not enough momentum behind the shots. Unless the asteroid’s hanging together by a few threads.”
“ANAD’s almost punched through two of the dig sites. We’re close enough to give it a try. Just get the guns ready.”
Mendez agreed to rig the coilgun batteries for a test shot.
Winger saw a pair of hypersuited troopers bounding toward him, giant kangaroos leaping ten meters or more into the sky, rooster-tailing dust as they vaulted up and down. It turned out to be Al Glance and Taj Singh from the Chasm.
“Charlie site’s all secure, Skipper,” Singh said. “Calderon’s loading up the packbot and he’ll be ready to boost in five minutes.” The CEC2 skidded to a stop, piling up a small cloud of dust as he halted.
Glance landed a few meters away, planting his boots firmly onto the rubbly plain. “Don’t even need boost to get around on this junkyard. Just leap into the sky like Superman. What about ANAD, Lieutenant? What happens to the master?”
Winger had been considering that very point. “I don’t want to leave the master assembler here. I’ll have to go small and try to retrieve him. I can carry him in my shoulder capsule.”
“Is that safe?”
Winger shrugged. “ANAD’s wrapped up pretty tight with my embed. As long as I don’t let him jostle free, it should be okay. I want to bring him back to Table Top, let Doc Frost take a look at him. We have to know what happened. Why did he go Big Bang?”
Bravo site checked in ready over the crewnet. Vic Klimuk wasn’t visible since the site was below the asteroid’s short horizon. But there was no mistaking his readiness to depart.
“Everything’s stowed and copacetic, Lieutenant Winger. I’ve already laid in the boost course in Packy’s brain…just give us the word and we’re out of here like a rocket.”
“Sayonara and amen to that,” added Ray Spivey.
“Al, you and Taj stay here with me. All troopers, boost when ready. Head back to the ship.”
Moments later, the surface of 23998 Hicks-Newman erupted in multiple pillars of dust from one horizon to the other, as nanotroopers from the three dig sites boosted into the sky. From Odin’s Fissure at Alpha Site, the others looked like strings of spiderweb unspooling into the heavens, converging on the dimly lit cylinder of Galileo half a kilometer above them.
“Kind of like watching our anchoring lines go in reverse,” Glance observed. “Speaking of which…I assume Mendez will be doing that pretty soon.”
“As soon as all troopers are aboard,” Winger said. “Now for ANAD…keep your mag guns ready, Al, just in case—“
“Nobody has to remind me of that.” He cycled the power cell and made sure the carbine was fully charged. Singh did likewise, keeping his eyes on Glance at all times.
Winger switched views on his eyepiece and commanded his embed to emit an acoustic pulse. The raw image formed up on his viewer and he zoomed in closer to check on ANAD.
Hopefully, the little guy’s still wrapped up nice and tight.
He slogged through a light ‘sleet’ of polygons and tetrahedrals—loose molecules of dust—for awhile before coming at last to the master nanobotic assembler.
ANAD was enveloped in the thick ganglia of the embed’s effectors, well cocooned and unable to free itself. It vibrated and hummed, squirming like a four-year old child.
“ANAD…you’re coming with me.” He wanted to try the coupler circuit but some sixth sense told him not to activate the link. He didn’t want to be distracted now, not while the mission was in such a critical phase.
He revved up the embed’s propulsors and began towing the imprisoned ANAD away, toward the capture coordinates he had already designated. Once there, the embed would maneuver ANAD into containment in Winger’s shoulder capsule. At least, that was the plan.
ANAD seemed to offer little resistance. Winger wondered why.
He hates containment. It’s like he’s sick. Or injured. Against his better judgment, he opened the coupler link and tried contacting the master assembler.
“ANAD…are you there? Are you listening? I hate to do this, old buddy, but it’s for the best. We’ve got to get out of here and break up this rock pile…we can’t be fighting off balky nanobots at the same time. ANAD--?”
The link was open. ANAD’s voice, when it came, was a mixture of sadness and resolve.