Nanotroopers Episode 7: Hong Chui

by Philip Bosshardt

  ***ANAD engaging…*** came the report back on the quantum circuit. ***Enemy bots are multi-effector config…pyridines and carbene grabbers mostly…no bond weapons yet…ANAD is reconfigging now…altering outer effectors to enzymatic***

  Good man, Winger agreed. ANAD…whoever or whatever was in command—had come to the same conclusion. The enzymatic knife would make quick work of those carbenes.

  Winger kept a close eye on the nanoscale combat, while he crept along the colonnade toward the oak doors. Beyond his eyepiece view of ANAD’s engagement, he saw other troopers converging on the same point. Reaves, Barnes, D’Nunzio, Tsukota, Singh…one by one, the Detachment appeared.

  “Blow those doors!” Winger ordered. The DPS techs leveled a coilgun barrage at the sturdy wooden doors. They dissolved in a fiery blossom of red flame and black smoke.

  First in was Singh, sweeping his sector with a coilgun.

  “Clear left!” he shouted. Right behind Singh came Calderon and Victor Klimuk, pouring into the dimly lit chamber right on Singh’s heels.

  “Clear center sector!” That was the Russian Klimuk, crouching forward.

  “Clear right sector!” yelled Calderon.

  The rest of the Detachment, following Reaves’ last fix on the quantum interference, burst in.

  Reaves studied her nav screen. “Just got one big decoherence pulse on the scope, Skipper…dead ahead…about two hundred meters!”

  In the dim, fire-lit shadows of the great Hall of a Thousand Pillars, the decoherence wave front had a most startling effect. It was like an invisible scythe slashing through the grid of columns, sweeping from left to right. One by one, an invisible front swept toward them, expanding outward in all directions. The passage of the front could be detected visually, as row after row of columns wavered, then dematerialized for a few seconds, finally re-appearing again after the probability waves had passed.

  And in the split second the deco wave passed each row of pillars, the row unfolded like an origami sheet into a shadowy infinity of columns, marching off in every direction. The effect of collapsing probability states lasted less than a second, but the image was visual proof of the massive quantum disturbance nearby.

  For Johnny Winger, it brought back unwelcome memories of the original sphere, buried now under the rubble of the Engebbe dig site, and the cave-in that had nearly cost him and Reaves their lives.

  His memory was jolted apart when a stitch of beamfire flashed out of one corner of the Great Hall. Winger took a sizzling round across his right arm but the ANAD shield blunted most of the energy. A brief sting was all that was left. Winger hit the ground.

  More beamfire erupted from the shadows, slicing through several of the ornate gold-plated columns. Rubble and dust soon choked the air.

  “Ozzie!” Winger called out to Sergeant Hiro Tsukota. “You and Mighty Mite move left! Flank ‘em that way!” Winger jabbed a finger at Singh and Reaves, crouching behind a nearby column. “You two…the other way!” The Defense techs scooted off into the dim recesses opposite.

  Standard tactics dictated a double envelopment when confronting an entrenched defensive position. Screw the manual! Winger waited through several more bursts of enemy fire before the four nanotroopers signaled they were in position.

  Whoever they are, he thought, they’re well armed. Probably not temple priests either. Laser carbines and beam rifles could make life tough for the unprepared squad. But this was no ordinary squad.

  Winger got on the coupler channel to ANAD.

  “ANAD…I want to flush those nasties out. Execute config seven…clampdown NOW!”

  Configuration Seven was an assault maneuver they’d practiced many times out at the Hunt Valley range near Table Top. The tactic required a forward movement by the swarm, followed by a big bang-style replication to overwhelm the enemy’s position and literally suffocate the daylights out of him. When the enemy was flushed, choking and gasping and screaming for air, from his redoubt, he became easy pickings for the Detachment’s sharpshooters.

  The only real defense was to counterswarm and throw up a shield before the clampdown got started.

  Winger watched as the swarm billowed out through the columns, replicating madly, densifying the atmosphere as each assembler grabbed atoms and built structure. Through the thickening and flickering fog of bots, the garish faces of unknown gods and demons leered back at them from columns illuminated by the glow.

  Soon enough, the enemy felt the first effects. Screams and groans tumbled out of the shadows.

  Seconds later, the first gunmen emerged, choking and flailing into the dim light. Two enemy soldiers ran blindly among the columns, staggering until they collapsed, thrashing, under the weight of the swarm.

  “MOB’em!” Winger ordered. “And spray that whole corner…flush ‘em all out!”

  Taj Singh unhooked a canister of MOB bots and fired a few rounds at the hapless soldiers. The Mobility Obstruction Barrier mechs quickly formed an impenetrable web over the enemy. They gasped and clawed for air and flailed wildly, as the barrier drove them inexorably down to the floor.

  “Skipper—“ it was Reaves. “Deco waves all over the place…dead ahead…bearing one five oh. That corner of the hall—“

  Winger had seen the wave front at the same moment, rippling through the pillars, even as Reaves’ gear had detected it.

  “Whatever’s causing this disturbance…it’s just beyond this chamber. Detachment…converge on Sheila’s last fix. And let’s get a perimeter guard up around this chamber…in case we have more visitors.”

  The nanotroopers eased forward toward the far corner of the great hall. Serpent’s heads and mythical beasts glared at them from each pillar as they converged.

  “Place gives me the creeps,” muttered Mighty Mite Barnes as she crept cautiously forward.

  “Yeah…” agreed Tsukota. “A nightmare in stone…even in my worst dreams, I never saw shit like this.”

  More decoherence pulses slammed the hall and the pillars ahead wavered in and out of view like heat waves on a highway.

  “Contacts?” Winger inquired.

  Reaves and Singh scanned the vicinity. “Nothing living on this side,” Reaves came back.

  “All bands clear,” Singh concurred. “I’m getting high thermals on the other side of this wall ahead…may be nano…”

  The Detachment came to a massive door, almost a gate in itself, carved from solid oak, with elaborate figures of Hindu gods and goddesses covering every square centimeter. The DPS techs examined the door closely. Singh put out a finger experimentally. The door gave slightly to the touch, then a small wave rippled outward from his touch. The door quivered and gave off a faint flickering glow.

  “I thought so,” said the DPS tech. “Barrier nano…look at the details of the config. Even up close, you can’t tell visually.”

  “How come I’m not getting any thermals?” Reaves asked. She scanned the door with her imager. “Reads just like background…no spikes in any band. What is this stuff…voodoo?”

  Winger touched the door himself. “Your background’s screwed up, Sheila. The imager looks for spikes. But the background level of atomic activity is elevated…all over Kolkata. It’s the fabs. Matter engines going off all over the place…we’ll have to re-calibrate to pick up unusual activity. Make a note.”

  “Can we breach it?” asked Klimuk.

  “We’ll have to try a config and see what works,” Winger decided. “The programming and design of these barrier bots is so good, it looks like solid oak. I’ve got a feeling it’s pretty adaptive, too. ANAD, front and center—“

  The rest of the Detachment parted as a pulsating mist poured through the columns and assembled itself into a vague para-human form. Just faintly visible in the dim light of the hall, the swarm had assumed a shape resembling a medieval English longbowman, complete with quiver and arrows. Winger was mildly annoyed but didn’t make a scene about it. Sometimes
, uncontained ANADs had a warped understanding of human history and values.

  ***Swarm reports ready in all respects, Lieutenant…what is the nature of the mission?***

  “Swarm master, I want you to scan this structure and assume a configuration to breach it. Config is pretty sophisticated but do what you can.”