Nanotroopers Episode 7: Hong Chui

by Philip Bosshardt

  ***ANAD recommends withdrawal, Base. Losing primary effector control…disrupters ineffective. Enzymatic knife and pyridine probes no longer operable. Replication failing…ANAD is being overwhelmed--***

  Johnny Winger didn’t want to fall back on the quantum collapse—no good atomgrabber ever did—but he was rapidly losing control of his own swarm.

  “Detachment, report in…status of swarm engagement. Can you hold out or outflank these bots?”

  Kip Detrick came back first. “Lieutenant, my part of ANAD’s about shot. This bugger’s all over me…I can’t maneuver, can’t rep fast enough—“

  “Me too, Skipper.” It was Sheila Reaves. “Effectors jammed…my core processor’s maxed out just trying to run the replication. Master’s shutting down…I’m about to be pulverized.”

  Then came Taj’s voice, a little more strained than usual for the Punjabi DPS tech. “Lieutenant Winger, my swarm disintegrates right in front of me. Whatever these bots are, they’re meaner and faster than my guys.”

  That settles it, Winger thought. We can’t fight these bastards with what we’ve got. It galled him to admit that, but the safety of the Detachment was always paramount. And that included the integrity of the ANAD master assembler.

  The quantum wave generator would have to wait. Symborg, if he was here, would have to wait. “Secure the prisoner,” he ordered. “Let’s disengage and get the hell out of here before we’re eaten alive. Retract swarms to personal defense mode. Anybody have a chance to corral one of these bots, grab it. Table Top’s eggheads will want something to analyze.” And Major Kraft would definitely want something to explain why we couldn’t shutdown this facility, he muttered to himself.

  The flickering fog began to subside as the two nanoscale armies separated. The remnants of the ANAD swarms were designed to commit atomic seppuku before they could be overrun. Only the ANAD master would be recovered.

  One by one, the nanotroopers regained their positions. The enemy bots pulled back too, perhaps sensing the engagement was over. That surprised Winger, who had figured Shavindra would continue the attack. Whoever or whatever was controlling the swarm had enough tactical smarts to save itself for another day.

  Reaves lifted a coilgun and sighted it at the platform. “Skipper, I could blast that mother to kingdom come with one good shot. I’ve still got a few rounds left. Give the word, sir and I’ll make that generator atom fluff.”

  “Disengage, soldier. Remember, Sheila…it’s a quantum device. What you’re blasting might only be one of many states the machine could be in. You could blast this one and a thousand more could collapse into being in other places. We’ve got to be smart about this.” He remembered dueling with Red Hammer’s sphere at the Engebbe dig site a few weeks before. It too was a quantum machine…you could never be sure of what you had hit.

  “Fall back to the big room!” Winger ordered.

  In ragged order, the Detachment pulled back to the Hall of a Thousand Pillars, regained their loose gear and exited the temple. Outside in bright, humid sunshine, Winger counted off the troops, while the crewtracs loaded up equipment and took the temple technician into custody.

  “Turbo’s still at the bridge,” said Mighty Mite Barnes. “Spite too, with that squad of local cops.”

  Winger remembered. “Get them on tacnet. See what’s shaking…maybe we can give them a hand.” He was already composing his after-action report in his mind…ANAD swarms engaged protective nanobotic disassemblers at the Shavindra temple complex outside Kolkata…got our asses kicked but good and were unable to fully penetrate far enough to disable the quantum generator at the center of the temple…Strong suspicion that Symborg was running the generator…maybe even was the generator. Detachment suffered minor casualties but combat conditions around the temple made continuing the engagement risky…too many matter engines going off all over the city…fabs out of control…the whole place was chaos….

  Winger stopped, realizing Barnes had been talking to him. “Yeah, Mite…what is it?”

  Barnes seemed to understand…the Detachment was exhausted. “Sorry, sir…you look like hell, begging the Lieutenant’s pardon. I was saying Kano’s bringing Turbo and Spite over in their crewtrac. Kano’s gotten on top of the problem at Howrath bridge. He says ‘thanks’ for the support. They can mop up the rest of the loose fab bots in this district.”

  “Good,” Winger said. “Thanks.” Now at least he had something positive for the after-action report. Major Kraft liked positive.

  “We going back to Table Top, Skipper?” Barnes wiped sweaty black wisps of hair from her forehead. She safed her coilgun and slung it over her shoulder.

  Winger was still mentally fighting the Shavindra bots with ANAD. “There has to be a way to get past those bots. What am I forgetting?”

  “Maybe it’s in the processor,” she suggested. “Those buggers were all effectors, fast as lightning. Maybe ANAD needs to be souped up to deal with these characters.”

  “Probably,” Winger agreed. He watched the loadout of the crewtracs for a few moments, ticking off everything and everyone going aboard. He didn’t want to leave any Quantum Corps stuff lying around for unscrupulous fab pirates to grab and make use of.

  “Here comes Turbo and Spite,” someone said.

  From the ornate lion’s head gates to the temple, a snorting crewtrac clanked and rumbled up toward them. Sergeants Adnan Fatah and Ray Spivey dismounted and came up, saluting Winger. They gave him a quick rundown of the BioShield operation. When they were done, Winger ordered the crewtracs buttoned up for the drive to Chandra Bose field.

  “Move out!” he ordered from his commander’s station inside the lead vehicle. And step on it. We’ve got to get in touch with Table Top and figure out why the hell we can’t crack these barrier bots. That generator’s an important node in something and we’ve got to shut it down soon.”

  Inside hyperjet Mercury, Winger took the call from Major Kraft. The vid on his wristpad showed he was in an office, though not his own. It turned out to be Major Lofton’s office…the Q2 intel shop.

  Winger explained what had happened at the Shavindra temple, squirting the details of his after-action report to Table Top.

  “I don’t know what that platform was, Major,” he replied, to Kraft’s obvious question. “It was a quantum device for sure, maybe a signaling device. Maybe a communications node—“

  Lofton cut in. “We’ve had intel that Red Hammer has some newfangled way of sending encrypted comms, sort of like the coupler.”

  “Maybe it’s a monitoring station, for surveillance,” Kraft suggested. “And your CQEs tracked the decoherence waves from Kenya to Kolkata, to that temple?”

  Winger replied, “Affirmative, sir. Best fix put the source at that location. But then we lost the track. Symborg’s trail seems to have gone cold. That platform, whatever it is, is snapping spacetime like there’s no tomorrow, putting out deco waves that scrambled everything else. Maybe Symborg was somehow absorbed into that thing.”

  Kraft studied Winger’s report. “Your guys got their asses kicked at that temple, Winger. What the hell happened?”

  Winger knew Kraft chewed on failed ops like an old cigar. “I don’t understand it, sir. I think our ANAD may be corrupted. It started at Kipwezi, when we first ran into Symborg. ANAD started to launch, uncommanded. I had no control. Then at the temple, the same thing. I’d hack out a config and send it and ANAD would do something else. Either we’ve got a bad bot or—“

  Lofton cut in. “Or Red Hammer’s got a way of bollixing up your comms. I don’t like this quantum crap…too dicey. Too hard to control. You both might be interested to know something else is happening in your neighborhood, up by the Nepal-China border.”

  Kraft had seen the boards at that morning’s briefing from Q2. “Red Hammer’s got something big up there, not just in Kolkata. Looks like they’re trying to protect it from prying ey
es.”

  Winger had seen nothing. “What’s going on?”

  Lofton did a quick summary of the briefing, sanitizing it for Winger’s lower-level clearance. “Routine UNIFORCE recon, satellite and sniffer birds, just poking around, following some decoherence wakes, just like you. But someone fired on both, laser barrage, from just inside the border with China. Damaged the satellite. Vaporized a couple of birds. UNIFORCE brought some killsats over the area, but geolocation put the source inside Chinese territory, Tibet, in fact. Whatever’s up there, it’s important enough to be well-defended. Kraft, can you detach a recon force from Winger’s group and get up there, take a look-see?”

  Kraft nodded. “Winger, pick three of your best. I still want to keep some eyes in Kolkata. Best evidence is Symborg ‘s holed up somewhere in that city. If he shows up again, we’re going to do our damnedest to smoke him out. I’ve got a mission proposal before UNIFORCE to tag him, insert some corrupt malware into his master bot. Plus the Lab has some wacko gadget called a swarm inhibitor…keeps the bastard from even replicating. As soon as I get tasking and we locate that bag of bugs, we move.”

  Thinking of his new orders, Winger asked, “Have I got a target in Nepal…some kind of coordinates, details on what I’m reconning, sir?”

  “We’ll squirt it to you within the hour. Along with the rules of engagement. This is ticklish, Winger. Red Hammer’s in tight with elements of the Peoples’ Liberation Army. We don’t know how far their tentacles reach. You’ve got to have a light footprint around the border….I don’t want anything that could blow up in our face. Is that understood?”

  Winger said, “Yes, sir…it’s just that we need a fully functional ANAD and I’m not sure how far we can trust the one we have.”

  Kraft growled back. “That’s your call, Lieutenant. Use ANAD where you’re comfortable and it doesn’t compromise the mission. Otherwise, you may have to get your hands dirty and do this the old-fashioned way, like a good soldier. That’ll be all.”

  Kraft and Lofton signed off and Winger’s wristpad went dark.

  Swell. Now I’ve got two missions, Nepal borderlands and Kolkata, with a small detachment and a suspect ANAD. He stepped out of the crewtrac to round up the Detachment.

  I guess that’s why they say no guts, no glory.