***ANAD to Base…Prime Key directing…all configurations must hold the Prime Key…deviations must be deleted…disadvantageous mutations are selected against…entities must form proper collectives--***
“ANAD…it’s me, Johnny Winger…ANAD, I’m going to take control….”
He tried several tricks, tried commanding a full override, tried shutting down and re-booting all systems but to no avail. Whatever was driving ANAD now—the Prime Key—was in control. And somehow, unaccountably, his controls were sluggish--
“Skipper…” the voice was distant, tinny in sound. It was Mighty Mite Barnes, at Bravo Site six kilometers away. “Skipper, we’re under attack here--!”
Unseen by Winger, the Bravo team had already been engulfed by nanobotic swarms stuck in Big Bang mode. Turbo Fatah lit off his own mag weapon just before the first faint fingers of the swarm reached his hypersuit. The pulse had no discernible effect, other than to stir up rubbly dust from the surface.
The swarm spread rapidly like a gray stain.
“ARRRGGGHHH--! Get it off me--!!”
Mighty Mite Barnes cycled her HERF carbine and hosed down Fatah with blasts of rf, knocking the trooper off his feet momentarily. The hypersuited CEC1 fell back in slow motion. Only the auto-enable of his suit boost kept him from cartwheeling into the dig pit. The jets fired a few brief puffs and propelled him up and over the chasm, landing him roughly amid a boulder field on the other side, and nearly into a shallow crater.
“Keep at em, Mite! Blast ‘em to hell and back!”
It was the same at Charlie Site, where Glance, Calderon and Singh had retreated from the dig at Asgard Chasm and taken refuge behind a pair of house-sized boulders. The dig site was enveloped in a swelling swarm, boiling outward in all directions like a slow-motion supernova, churning up the surface like a tsunami of dust and rock.
“Fire!” yelled Glance. At his command, a volley of HERF, mag and beamer fire poured into the swarm, momentarily stunning the bots, frying trillions of them and blunting their expansion momentarily.
“Fall back!” yelled Singh over the crewnet. “We’ve got to fall back to that ridge behind us.” Singh gestured to the others, indicating a low rise across a rubbly open field. In fact, the ridge was the raised edge of Thor crater. There were defilade positions from which the team could hold off the swarm for awhile.
Calderon got on the crewnet. “Lieutenant, we’re falling back here at Charlie…can’t hold this position…ANAD swarm has gone Big Bang and is out of control…can you override the config and get us some breathing room?”
Three kilometers away, Johnny Winger was trying to do just that. “ANAD, this isn’t working—“ He had gone nano to see what the master assembler was up to but it was like the bot had a mind of its own. Nothing could override. Controls were mushy…something was bollixing up the works. And some kind of errant quantum signal had stuck the replication config in overdrive.
Winger went down a mental checklist of anything else he could try: safe and shutdown all effectors, no go…safe and shutdown all propulsors, ditto that…core processor to state one…nope, still stuck in config alpha…all config registers dumped and cleared…nada….
“ANAD, you’ve got to work with me here…remember when you were in nog school…remember what every trooper is taught: a trooper watches out for his buddies…no trooper is ever left behind…ANAD, stop replicating…you’re attacking fellow troopers….ANAD, it’s the Second Rule…and the Third Rule…invoking second and third rules…you are assaulting fellow troopers!”
There was a staticky hiss, then:
Nanotroopers Episode 14: The HNRV Factor Page 21
