over, hardcoding inside their quantum dot brains would send a final order to commit seppuku, and the remains of the force would quickly disassemble themselves into atomic fluff.
Johnny Winger looked a little pale and wobbly as he crawled to open the doors, hand motioning Nguyen to get ready for a combat insertion.
What was wrong? Had the Red Hammer mechs stung the Skipper? Nguyen started to help, but Winger waved him away.
"Soon as I yank this door open, you snatch ANAD! Got that?" He shook his head…something was wrong…his vision was blurring…his hands twitched uncontrollably--
Nguyen acknowledged. "TinyTown's ready, Skipper."
Winger checked his watch, kept an eye on Gibby at the panel, as he monitored ANAD's progress. The assembler was fighting its way through a horde of Red Hammer mechs, steadily closing on the convoy from above, hugging its precious intel data close, as war raged outside and above the trucks.
Winger followed Gibby's hand motions, mouthing the countdown--
Three….two….one…"NOW!"
Winger fought through dimming vision and willed his arms to obey, throwing open the rear doors of the van. Speeding down from a rocky escarpment, a faint green phosphorescent glow filled the air outside the door. The green light, partially ionized plasma from the HERF impulse, intensified to a white glow as ANAD battled the last few meters. The pressure pulse snapped the vacuum tube right out of Nguyen's hands.
In an instant, the Autonomous Nanoscale Assembler/Disassembler had transited the tube and plunged into the soothing home waters of the TinyTown cylinder.
Nguyen grabbed the end of the vacuum tube out of the air and stabbed a button, sealing the tank. "Got him! ANAD's sealed in and safe."
With his last ounce of strength, Johnny Winger slammed the doors shut. "Grab your gear--" he croaked out. "Get going…exfiltrate like hell! Get us out of here NOW!"
Johnny Winger knew, even before he pitched forward and slumped to the van floor, that he'd been swarmed. Red Hammer mechs had breached the van seals, breached the ANAD barrier Barnes had put up around the convoy, somehow survived the HERF blast, and filtered inside the command vehicle.
Delforza was already gone, twitching like a puppet in the front corner. Now, Winger slumped down beside Gibby's feet. His nerves had been fried, knives sliced through his head, as the mechs infiltrated his brain, replicating madly, seizing neural circuits in a silent blitzkrieg, stoking dopamine, lighting a fire in the back of his head. It was like a million Swarm Chambers.
"Wings--Cadet Winger--" he voice was muffled…it sounded like Gibby, could have been Deeno--
Winger bit right through his tongue and his head banged with violent spasms and contortions, as his body clenched and relaxed. The seizure grew more violent with each wave of pain. Blood poured out of his mouth and his back arched as the mechs burrowed deeper into his limbic tissue, grabbing axons, an occupying army terrorizing every nerve ending it could find.
"Skipper's been hit!"
It was Deeno D’Nunzio, scrambling over still-smoking equipment that had been fried by HERF. "Skipper's been swarmed--!" She straddled his chest, held his arms back and reached, grabbed, for something, anything, to stuff into his mouth, to keep him from biting through his own tongue. Finally, her fingers clawed at and found a twisted piece of bracket.
"We got more trouble--" Barnes’ voice crackled over the crewnet. "Vehicles approaching, a whole platoon of 'em, from the east. My scan's cutting out--but it looks like bad guys!"
Barnes took charge of the situation, the tough-talking, loud-mouthed human dynamo snapping off orders left and right.
"Buddha…get us out of here!" Nguyen squeezed by the fallen commander and made his way to the cockpit. "We're falling back…fall back to the city. We got to lose these bastards for good. Mighty Mite--?"
"I'm on it--" In the van behind, DPS Colleen “Mighty Mite” Barnes had already powered up a covey of coilgun bots. She armed the microflyers and, one by one, discharged them from the rooftop port. "Coilguns enabled and up…I'm setting up a spread shot. Give me some room, will you?"
"You got it!" Nguyen called back. He gunned the engine and the van moved smartly out onto the road, sliding on gravel and dust, as they accelerated down the hill off Banikaiyan Mountain. In seconds, the entire convoy was at full speed, clattering across a rickety bridge, then descending through a series of harrowing switchbacks toward the twisting, narrow alleys of Bamako some ten kilometers distant.
As the trailing truck approached the bridge, Barnes triggered her coilgun bots. Thirty meters over the bridge, an arc of fire flashed out of the night sky as the bots discharged their pulses. Lightning ripped the air as millions of volts incinerated the edge of the cliff and the lead vehicles of the attackers. Rubble streamed onto the road. The lead vehicle swerved back and forth, erupted into a ball of orange and black flame, and flipped onto its side. As the chase reached the Pont des Martyrs Bridge, it skidded toward a bridge abutment, flinging wreckage and fuel everywhere, caromed off the tower, and pitched over the cliff into the dark languid waters of the Niger River itself.
Behind the inferno, the following vehicles slammed to a halt.
Just for good measure, Barnes triggered her bots one more time, this time at small building on the other side of the bridge. A geyser of rock and debris rained down on the hapless pursuers as the discharge ate jagged chunks out of the adobe walls of the structure.
Barnes grinned at the viewer image of the carnage she had created.
"Not bad for a night's work, if I do say so myself."
Inside the command vehicle, D’Nunzio told Nguyen to head for the airport. She bent down with a worried frown to look at Johnny Winger's contorted face.
"How's he doing?"
Gibbs held a cold compress to Winger’s sweating forehead. "Not good. But he's better off than… him--" Gibby nodded in the direction of the prostrate form of Lieutenant Delforza, crumpled in a heap by the rear door. Deeno D'Nunzio was alongside, checking vital signs. There weren't any.
"Maybe…maybe not," D’Nunzio muttered. "Anything we can do here?"
Gibby took a deep breath. "He's been swarmed, Deeno. Mechs are inside him, crawling all over his brain. I don't have the gear--I'd like to-- but we don't--"
"--don't what?"
Gibby swallowed hard. "I want to go inside, try to engage those damn mechs…before it's too late."
"Inside…you mean with ANAD?"
Gibby nodded, feeling the flash of heat on Winger's forehead. His eyelids and fingers still trembled and twitched, silent battles raging back and forth inside his skull.
"I don't know exactly what we're dealing with here…but with most swarms, most mechs, there's a period of time, an hour…maybe more, maybe less. In that time, with what we know about HNRIV--if that's what this is--the mechs are still moving in, still consolidating, still positioning themselves. I want to do an insert…right now. Send ANAD in and root 'em out before they replicate too far, before they get established."
D’Nunzio shrugged. "So why don't you?"
"I'm not sure it'll work. It could kill him. And, what the hell, I’m just a nog school cadet anyway…what the hell do I know?" He looked around at a circle of anxious faces: Deeno and Buddha Nguyen. "And we don't have the right equipment…not here. Back at the jet, we do."
"But he can't wait…isn't that true?" Deeno asked. She ran shaky hands through short black hair. Her face was bruised from a close escape with the mechs herself.
"No…" Gibby felt gingerly along the contours of Johnny Winger's skull, trying to imagine the desperate battles raging inside. "No, he can't."
They leaned left and right in unison as Nguyen negotiated the narrow streets of outer Bamako. Behind them, Barnes was driving the trailing van. Outside, in the soft glow of streetlamps, a film of mist had drifted up from the river, making the streets slick and shiny. Rows of dun-colored, dusty buildings raced by…they were speeding qu
ickly into the heart of the city, into the bazaar district of the Zone Artisanal, with its jammed stalls, jewelry stands, food carts, camels and donkeys and pennants and flags snapping in early evening breezes. Traffic was mercifully light, save for knots of mosque goers clustering around several intersections, heading for evening prayers.
The Quantum Corps convoy swerved and sped through, ignoring all stop signs and traffic lights. Moments later, a pair of police minis lit up their lights and started off in pursuit.
"I say we go in," Gibby decided.
"It's not your decision," Deeno said. "Lieutenant Delforza’s in command….or was." The Italian officer was already dead.
Gibby turned to D’Nunzio. "Look, we can’t argue about this…we don’t have time. Wings doesn’t have time. Go up front and switch off driving this rig with Nguyen. I need him back here."
A few moments later, the CEC re-appeared alongside the trembling form of Johnny Winger.
"What's up?"
Gibby was already over at his interface control, perusing possible configs to use against the enemy mechs inside Winger. "Prep ANAD for deploy, Buddha. We're going in…right now."
"In? In where?"
"Inside his brain. I'm gonna grab me some Red Hammer mechs and fry 'em up for breakfast."
Ten minutes later, the assembler master was ready. Gibby sat at the IC panel, and grasped the joystick, flexing his fingers. "Launch ANAD," he said quietly.
The insertion went smoothly enough. A