"Vests and helmets only. We need speed and flexibility. We'll use camou-fog, let Doc set up a screen to keep the 'flies' and mechs away. With luck, the camou will make us look like part of the mountain."
"I wonder how long that'll last?" Reaves muttered.
"Till you feel about a trillion mouths chewing on your ass, girl," said Mighty Mite Barnes.
They all leaned over as the lifter pilot swung them sharply toward the black hulk of Shih Ho Mountain. Ahead, in the video, Winger could see the dim outlines of the castle, crouching like a black vulture on top of the rock.
"Here's what we're going to do," Winger told them. He tapped buttons on his wristpad. Instantly, the crewnet beeped and dragged down a tactical map of Lions Rock and the top of the mountain, flashing with symbols in everybody's eyepiece. "See the cursor? I've put it on a service entrance…halfway down the front face. That's our way in. DPS?"
Reaves was scanning the crew bay's sensor bank. "I'm on it, sir. Just as expected…flies and mechs all over the place. Camou-fog generator already enabled. They're swarming…not random, and I'm getting EM pulses…they know someone's here…just not exactly where yet." She looked up. "We're good to go anytime, Lieutenant."
"We'll have company pretty soon if we don't move out. Okay…same assault plan we simmed. Sergeant Gibbs, launch Doc. Minimum reps. I want a perimeter guard around the unit while we get our gear set up on top of the mountain."
"Launching Doc II." Gibby was already setting up the interface controls. There was a subtle whoosh from the tubes, as the tiny swarm discharged into the air over the mountaintop. "What kind of config, sir?"
"Full engagement. The works."
The fastcabling ingress came off without incident. Even as the lifter settled onto the rocky escarpment beside them, 1st Nano was already setting out their gear, sighting in their weapons, dragging equipment to cover positions, while the faint keening hum of the camou-fog mechs swarmed less than thirty meters overhead. Even from the lifter cockpit, the outlines of the camp were only faintly visible, shimmering in a dark washed-out smear of light, blending in more and more with the shadowy crags and recesses of the mountaintop.
Below the cloak, the Detachment grimly set to work.
Ingress of the main swarm at the service entrance took less than a minute. Probing ahead for Doc, Reaves and Spivey ran a horde of Superflies down the mountainside for a last minute recon. Once the coast was clear, Gibby went to work, forming up the assembler group for quick and covert entrance through the door seals.
"No sign of any mechs," he muttered, as Winger hovered over his shoulders. "DPS must have given them something to chase." Seconds later, the first imagery fluttered into coherence on the viewer. Winger took a feed for his own eyepiece; he wanted to be able to move about the encampment as the situation dictated. "Seals are intact…just plain old garden variety polymer stuff. Big daddy molecules. I can squeeze through in a heartbeat, Lieutenant."
"Do it," Winger commanded. He swallowed hard, knowing full well they were in serious Indian country now.
Gibby did it. The Doc II assembler swarm dispersed and passed through the door seals like a faint breeze. Odd, he thought, that Red Hammer wouldn't secure such an entrance with a mech barrier of some kind. Maybe they aren't expecting company from this side. In less than five minutes, the entire formation was inside.
Winger checked his nanotroops' deployment all around him. Reaves and McReady were manning the HERF and mag guns, positioned at the perimeter of the camou field, ready to fry anything that popped up. Gibby and Simonet were grouped around the IC panel, piloting elements of the Doc horde. Mighty Mite and Ray Spivey were managing the camou generator itself. They needed the cover to last long enough to get inside Lions Rock, locate the pulser and put the damn thing out of commission…before the rogue killsats flash-fried more cities.
And just exiting the liftjet, Taj Singh was casting hexes on all the bad guys in the neighborhood.
"We're in," Gibby exulted. "Forming up visual lens--"
Winger let his eyepiece highlight the path ahead. Hundreds of meters below them, a portion of the Doc swarm formed itself into a rudimentary lens, snagging stray photons and other EM from the cave, fashioning a crude, sparkly sort of image. Winger studied the view, overlaid with SOFIE's schematic, trying to make some sense of where they were.
SOFIE laid in a red dotted line. Winger agreed. "That way, Gibby…move out! Squad order!"
The formation of autonomous nanoscale assemblers eased forward through darkened chambers, sliding past air molecules big as beach balls, pushed by picowatt propulsors, down and further down a spiraling path into the mountain.
In seconds, they came to a stone staircase hewn out of the rock walls.
"Main ingress route, looks like," Gibby muttered. He was monitoring Doc’s status from his wristpad, ready to toggle to a new config at a moment's notice.
"Same as the schematic…" Winger said. "SOFIE's right on target, so far."
According to the plans, the staircase tunneled down deep into the bowels of Lions Rock, connecting five levels with a vast open complex in the very heart of Shih Ho Mountain.
"Where is everybody?" Gibby asked. "I'd have figured Red Hammer would be shielding every possible entrance."
"Maybe it's a trap," Reaves said, uneasily.
"Let's go--" Winger gave the order. "Down the stairs."
A moment later, Reaves saw an instrument twitch on her wristpad. "Uh oh--pressure pulse. Somebody…or something's ahead."
"I see it…"Winger steered the formation ahead cautiously. "Big spike…moving a lot of air molecules. People, most likely. More than one--"
"Disperse, sir?" Gibby asked.
Winger shook his head. "Guard detail, most likely."
"They may have detected us…" Reaves suggested.
And they had, for at that very moment, the visual lens was disrupted and the view was lost. Four guards had swept up the stairs, mag guns drawn, scattering the formation for a moment, notified of a breach at the northwest service entrance. If they got there--if they saw the MOBnet--the whole place could be alerted--
"Execute a clampdown!" Winger yelled. "Smother 'em so they can't breathe!" He signaled DPS to get ready in case the camp came under fire. "Replicate max rate…carbenes and radicals at the ends…blanket the place!"
Gibbs was manning the config controls. He sent the command, silently praying this version of Doc would perform the clampdown properly. Doc II wasn’t really designed for combat; they’d slammed some configs together for the mission on the ride down from Gateway. In seconds, the air itself burned with the pressure of exponentially dividing replicants; a heavy, searing weight pressing down on everything in sight.
Deeper in the tunnel, a small force of Red Hammer guards tried to scream.
The defenders, unable to react, clawed at their lungs and faces and staggered back from the service entrance, pitching backward, ears and eyes bleeding from the pressure, suffocated by Doc.
It was all over in less than a minute.
Winger waited until the clampdown was lifted and, on command, Doc began to disperse. "Put the MOB on 'em," he told Mighty Mite. "Keep 'em secure right there. I don't want any more alarms going off."
Corporal Barnes tapped the commands on her own wristpad. "Done, sir.”
"Form up again," Winger told Gibby. The sergeant commanded trillions of assemblers to swarm into formation again, a faint coruscating iridescence pulsating through the air. "Let's move on--"
"Transiting, sir…transiting in motion. I have the formation…visual element up…" he squinted at the grainy image on the viewer, tweaked it a bit--"…looks like big doors ahead…"
"Very well." Winger checked his eyepiece. "SOFIE says it’s the growth complex. The scope works. If she's right, we could be in for a scrum, right here. DPS, SDCs, front and center!" And here's my chance to duke it out with enemy mechs. He had
to remind himself they had come to scramble the pulser, not create general mayhem. "Where are my coil-guns?"
"On the way, sir," Barnes said. She was running her own defense force behind and around the Doc group…a team of coil-gun microbots hovering all around the assembler swarm. "I'm bringing up a whole battery…."
On her hand signal, Winger commanded the bots to fire. Barnes crossed her fingers and prayed.
Deep below them, Shih Ho Mountain had a fire in its belly.
The riveted polysteel doors ahead cracked open, dissolving in a spray of flame and splinters. Inside the huge cavern, sporadic small arms fire erupted but Winger had done his tactical homework. The shooters had nothing material to shoot at.
Reaves pursed her lips. "So much for a covert entry. I guess the neighborhood is awake now." She felt her neck hairs tingle. Combat did that to people, even when the enemy was a billion times smaller than a human being.
Doc poured into the cavern. Winger ordered a portion of the swarm detached for perimeter guard, securing all ways in and out. "Let's you and me part company, Gibby."
Gibby acknowledged. "Executing swarm division now, sir." With a few commands, the bot horde divided itself into two groups, one piloted by Gibby, the other by Winger. The Lieutenant took a seat next to the sergeant, flexed his fingers, ready to joystick the troops into battle. He massaged the visual element a hair, taking a look around the complex.
The place was a vast cave, hewn right out of the bowels of the mountain. Rows of growth tanks lined the floor, wall to wall, with huge leafy plants suspended in each tank. It was the scope works, all right. The mother lode and Red Hammer's main bank, all in one. At the far end of the cavern, a pocket of Red Hammer technicians struggled to get up, stunned and gasping for air from the clampdown.
Gibby saw them first. "Enemy ahead…three o'clock…I count four--"
"Weapons?"
"None that I can see, sir."
Winger checked the time. Fifteen minutes. They'd made better progress than he'd hoped for. "Taj, give me a bearing to that pulser.”
Singh studied his instrument pack, trying to make sense of the ghostly decoherence waves. “Bearing zero five zero…that way, Skipper. Best I can do at the moment—“
“Mighty Mite, MOB all of 'em. Secure the whole cave. Let's go hunting.”
From her station behind the ICs, Barnes acknowledged the order. With her own wristpad, she took control of a small portion of the Doc force, accepting replicants as fast as the master could slam atoms together and churn them out. She detached the force and tapped out a command sequence…in seconds, the swarm under her control had reconfigured itself. A fine smoky mist formed overhead, oscillating in and out of view. Barnes took a fix on the Red Hammer techs and fed the coordinates to her brood. The smoke pulsed and throbbed like a thing alive, then floated over and descended on the enemy, forming a Mobility Obstruction Barrier around the helpless group. Doc assemblers interlocked into an amorphous gel, cordoning off the technicians in a flexible prison cell of tightly bound assemblers. Several techs clawed at the MOB, to no avail. They were steadily forced down to the cavern floor and immovably secured there by the Doc screen.
"MOB in place, Lieutenant."
"Very well…Taj, what's up?"
Singh had caught sight of something, a twitch in one of his sensors. "Sounding pressure change. Uh-oh…sounding heat pulse, big time heat pulse…looks like the cavalry's coming—deco waves all over the place now, Skipper."
Even on the grainy image of the visual element, the throbbing mass forming in one corner of the cavern was evident. It boiled out of the shadows like a thing alive and swept forward, closing fast to engage the Doc swarm, Gibby's swarm.
"Stay with 'em! Hold your position--"
Gibby's force took the full brunt of the assault.
"Oh, Lieutenant….looks…like…I…GOT…MECHS!" The sergeant's fingers flew over the keyboard and control sticks. "Making a cage…all effectors out max…I am in automaneuver…" He punched out commands, setting up his group of assemblers with full shields of fullerene arms, each one bristling with sticky molecules, juiced with torqued bonds, ready to zap all comers. Even as he configged the swarm, Winger piloted his own group away from the melee, trying to flank the enemy, pinch off the assault from both sides, a pincer movement at atomic scale.
The boiling swarm of Red Hammer mechs closed with Doc and flung themselves with fury against Gibby's shield.
Gibby's fingers flew over the controls, managing config, pulling more atoms to add shielding, all the while fighting off thrusts and slashes from the enemy mechs.
"Change config!" Winger yelled. "Do it now…Tactical Two--"
Gibbs sent the command, Doc trying to confuse the enemy swarm by shedding outer atoms in one big puff. They'd wargamed it before…it didn't always work--
Ten meters in the air, trillions of Doc assemblers received the same instructions: alter configuration to this design…grab atoms…cleave this group…fold here…build lattice here…the air churned with furious activity. The cavern was suddenly bathed in an unearthly pale blue light as vast but unseen armies collided. The Gotterdammerung pulsed like a flickering aurora as the swarms clashed head-on.
“Big pulse coming through!” Taj Singh bellowed. “A series of tidal waves--!”
"What the hell?" Gibby frowned as he fought the controls, tickling propulsors, spinning Doc, managing effectors…"I can't grapple the damn things!" Sweat broke out on his forehead, in spite of the cool night-time air rolling up the mountain side from Victoria harbor. "It's like I'm too short! Sluggish. Lieutenant, check my config…what's wrong with my effectors…what the hell am I doing wrong here! I've got no probes, grapples, it's like my pyridines are minus a few atoms--!"
Instead of the Doc swarm speeding forward into engagement with the Red Hammer mechs, the swarm had bucked and shimmied like a baby colt.
“I can’t control it!” Gibby yelled. “I’ve lost all my configs…something’s—“
“Massive pulser blast,” Singh repeated. “We’re being hosed down—“
A voice behind them--"Lieutenant Winger, we got trouble." Reaves had jogged back to the interface control station. "MOB net's wearing off. DPS1 just has enough for one more discharge. I'm out."
Winger looked at Reaves. "What the hell…those canisters were loaded full before we embarked. Spivey…get over there…see what's going on?"
Spivey's eyes met Winger's. The Lieutenant seemed confused, perplexed. "Right away, sir." He bounded off toward the edge of the camou field, and dived into the lifter, rummaging for fresh MOB charges.
"And we got company," added Mighty Mite. Corporal Barnes was tweaking a grainy image on her eyepiece, taking a feed from the scout mechs circling the top of the mountain. "Superfly says enemy force is outside the Rock, on the mountain top, closing on our position."
Just friggin' wonderful. "How many?" Winger asked, swearing as he fought the stick to free Doc from entrapment.
"At least a platoon, sir. Moving across the top of Shih Ho from the southwest. Must be an exit we didn't map."
"Bots and HERF guns?"
"Already moving up, sir. We're strengthening our behinds too, just in case."
"Very well…stand by." Winger glanced over at Gibby. "Sergeant, any replicants working?"
Gibbs threw up his hands. "I sent the right command. Enemy caught me right in the middle of a rep. It's a friggin slaughter, sir…I'm losing signals everywhere--red across the board! Most of 'em didn't get fully assembled!"
Winger was growing more frustrated by the moment. Gibby needed help…but his swarm was falling apart faster than he could close the pincer. "I can't explain it either. No electron lens…no enzymatic knife…hardly any effector control. It's like Doc's become crippled. Must be that pulser…it’s shredded all of Doc’s configs!"
"Lobotomized, sir. I can't hold at all. I'm showing propulsor failure, major b
ond breaks, shielding's gone…main structure being disassembled…we've got to withdraw now--"
"Not yet!" Winger was determined, his face set in grim concentration, fingers flying over the keyboard. "Gotta close the trap…got to get in and get data…probe the bugger, get some structure on him…if I can just get my own embed launched…I could go direct-mode--"
"Lieutenant, look out!"
Across the base camp, a squad of Red Hammer guards had breached the camou field, slicing through the mesh in a flurry of arms and legs and shouts. The muzzles of laser carbines flashed in the faint light. Beam fire erupted across the ground.
Winger and Gibbs ducked as the first volley narrowly missed the IC station, carving out a seam in a boulder field behind them. Rock and debris exploded, flying everywhere.
Sheila Reaves and Taj Singh dove for cover behind the boulders. Reaves rolled, found an opening between the rocks and squeezed off a few coil-gun rounds. The programmable kinetic slugs slammed into the lead Red Hammer guards before detonating. The concussion was deafening as smoke and body parts scattered.
"Keep 'em pinned down!" Winger shouted. "I'm trying to help Gibby out--"
"Nothing left to pin down, Lieutenant," Reaves called back. Her aim had been true, sighting in the rounds after slaving the slugs to her tracker.
"Superfly's got nasties all over the place," Taj Singh watched the remote infrared take on his own eyepiece. "All over the top of the mountain…they'll be on our perimeter in no time, unless we get some help quick."
"Doc's toast, Corporal." Winger told him. He slapped a button on his wristpad, opening the port of his shoulder capsule, launching his own embedded ANAD. “Come on, little guy, don’t go belly up on me now.” He knew the embeds weren’t that reliable. They didn’t have even minimal pulser protection but he had to do something…Doc had somehow been turned by the pulser and was coming at them now.
The first wisps of his embedded ANAD drifted out and Winger commanded max rate rep right away. The swarm boiled and throbbed like a miniature thunderstorm, gaining mass, building structure and forming a basic shield against the oncoming swarm.
Somehow, the pulser waves Taj had seen had bollixed up Doc real bad--
He brushed himself off, climbed back to the IC station and grabbed a joystick, maneuvering his minimal ANAD force closer to what was left of Gibby's. The sergeant was still skirmishing with the remnants of the force. Good man…hang in just a few more seconds…."--got to map this sucker and fast, before he chews up ANAD for good. Just keep those Red Hammer scumbags off my back, will you?"