Nanotroopers Episode 17: Lions Rock

by Philip Bosshardt

Nanotroopers

  Episode 17: Lions Rock

  Copyright 2016 Philip Bosshardt

  A few words about this series….

  *** Nanotroopers is a series of 15,000- 20,000 word episodes detailing the adventures of Johnny Winger and his experiences as a nanotrooper with the United Nations Quantum Corps.

  *** Each episode will be about 40-50 pages, approximately 20,000 words in length.

  *** A new episode will be available and uploaded every 3 weeks.

  *** There will be 22 episodes. The story will be completely serialized in about 14 months.

  *** Each episode is a stand-alone story but will advance the greater theme and plot of the story arc.

  *** The main plotline: U.N. Quantum Corps must defeat the criminal cartel Red Hammer’s efforts to steal or disable their new nanorobotic ANAD systems.

  Episode #TitleApproximate Upload Date

  1‘Atomgrabbers’1-14-16

  2‘Nog School’2-8-16

  3‘Deeno and Mighty Mite’2-29-16

  4‘ANAD’3-21-16

  5‘Table Top Mountain’4-11-16

  6‘I, Lieutenant John Winger…’5-2-16

  7‘Hong Chui’5-23-16

  8‘Doc Barnes’6-13-16

  9‘Demonios of Via Verde’7-5-16

  10‘The Big Bang’7-25-16

  11‘Engebbe’8-15-16

  12‘The Symbiosis Project’9-5-16

  13‘Small is All!’9-26-16

  14‘’The HNRIV Factor’10-17-16

  15‘A Black Hole’11-7-16

  16‘ANAD on Ice’11-29-16

  17‘Lions Rock’12-19-16

  18‘Geoplanes’1-9-17

  19‘Mount Kipwezi’1-30-17

  20‘Doc II’2-20-17

  21‘Paryang Monastery’3-13-17

  22‘Epilogue’4-3-17

  Chapter 1

  “Buried”

  U.N. Quantum Corps Base

  Table Top, Idaho, USA

  July 20, 2049

  1630 hours U.T.

  Major Jurgen Kraft, with a glance toward Johnny Winger, spoke up. “General, we’ve engaged Red Hammer several times, with mixed results.” He pressed a few buttons on his control pad and SOFIE brought up 3-D imagery of the Red Hammer nanobot, at maximum resolution. “As you can see, the bugger’s studded with effectors. It’s big as a battleship and well armored. It’s able to maneuver surprisingly fast for its size and it can grow and swap effectors with great speed…Lieutenant Winger here has reported it’s hard for ANAD to keep up. And the enemy’s new pulser makes it even harder…especially to hold any battle configuration.”

  “It has one known weak spot, General,” Winger added, taking his cue from the Major. “Amidships, there’s some kind of cavity or cleft that opens through some phosphate clusters right through the outer membrane groups to the bot’s innards. If you can get by the grabbers and carbenes and radicals around the site, you can do a lot of damage inside. But getting inside…that’s the trick.”

  General Wolfus Linx was growing frustrated. “ANAD has recently been regenerated, has it not? You had to do a quantum collapse in your last engagement?”

  “That’s correct, sir,” Kraft said. “At Lake Vostok, in the Antarctic. We were being jammed…quantum interference with the swarm made it a bitch to control. The pulser waves kept messing up ANAD’s config. The only way Winger could escape was to leave him behind. We lost that one completely. The regenerated master now has changes that should make it more effective at engaging the enemy.”

  “Let’s hope so,” Linx said. “Now the biggest question is how to take down Lions Rock. I’ve studied your after-action reports. It’s a safe bet the place is thick with defenses, if not worse, now that we’ve already stirred them up. ”

  Gabrielle Galland spoke up. “General, Lieutenant Winger and I have been studying that problem. We have a tactical plan we think might work.”

  Linx nodded for her to proceed. With Kraft’s help, she hooked up to SOFIE to create a sim of her idea.

  “A few months ago, at Kurabantu Island, sir, 1st Nano was faced with a similar problem: an underwater complex, where Dana Tallant was being held along with her CC2, Sergeant Collin, by Red Hammer. The complex was built into the side of an underwater escarpment and it was well defended from most approaches. Lieutenant Winger here used ANAD to bore a small tunnel from outside the swarm zone and assault the compound from inside the mountain, from a direction the enemy never expected. A small rescue force was able to achieve complete tactical surprise.”

  Linx was intrigued. “Go on.”

  “Well, sir, both Lieutenant Winger and myself believe the same tactic would be effective against the Lions Rock base. An assault from below ground, starting from a point well outside Chinese territory.”

  Linx altered the map to show the area in greater detail. “I scanned your reports from the Kurabantu operation on the trip over from Paris. ANAD is capable of tunneling fast enough to create an assault route?”

  “With some tweaking and adjusting,” Winger replied. “More than capable, sir. Doc II has helped us optimize his effectors and propulsors to make such operations work even better—“

  “ANAD’s processor has been upgraded. Doc II here has been tinkering under the hood again.”

  Linx glanced in the direction of the swarm, now gathered in a corner of Kraft’s office, its shadowy outline vaguely resembling Dr. Irwin Frost. The swarm brightened and drifted forward.

  ***I’ve taken steps to streamline the logic in ANAD’s central processor. After the Kurabantu mission, Lieutenant Winger asked me to speed up his molecular manipulation and sorting speeds…I’ve done that and tested it. ANAD now can break down solid phase structures at speeds orders of magnitude faster than before.***

  “Sir, if I may—“Galland cut in. She laid out the tactical plan she and Winger had developed in the commissary that morning. “An underground assault offers several advantages. We gain tactical surprise…I doubt they’ll be expecting an assault force to pop up right at their front door, from below ground. And, as with the Kurabantu complex, it’s more likely that Red Hammer defenses will be minimal to nonexistent along this axis. So far as we know, they have no real knowledge that ANAD can do this kind of tunneling.”

  Linx studied the maps. SOFIE annotated the views with additional data, depicting surface conditions, cities, topographic relief, even layering the diagrams with underground rock strata.

  “It’s a long distance to go underground, Lieutenant. We’re looking at…what?...several kilometers of tunnel, through hard shale rock, if I’m reading the diagrams right. Can ANAD create a tunnel of that length, sturdy enough for an assault force to transit in a reasonable time?”

  “General Linx, sir—“ it was Taj Singh. “Begging the General’s pardon, sir, but Sergeant Barnes and I have been working on that very detail.” He approached the console. “May I, sir?”

  Linx relinquished control of SOFIE and 1st Nano’s CQE1 took over the sim tank, pressing buttons to bring up a 3-D image of a strange-looking cylindrical craft with a large parabolic horn at its nose. “Sergeant Barnes and I started working on this idea after the Detachment got back from Lions Rock. Let me assure you, sir, I don’t have any great desire to go climbing through narrow tunnels underground any more than necessary.”

  Barnes picked up the story. “What you’re looking at is a new vehicle for transporting troops underground. We call it a geoplane. We’ve nicknamed this one Gopher.”

  “Gopher is designed to use ANAD boring and tunneling capabili
ties…” he put a laser pointer spot on the parabolic nose “…to create a path underground, to ferry troops and supplies covertly from one point to another. As you can see, the borer module up front uses ANAD swarms to create a path…a tunnel, if you like, using high-speed molecular disassembly. Gopher is propelled by her treads on these six ring tracks spaced around her circumference, through the tunnel created by the ANAD borer. She can carry a full squad of troopers, plus supplies, weapons, and munitions of any type.”

  Kraft was both impressed and a bit skeptical that a pair of noncom CQEs could think up such an idea. “What drives it, Sergeant? What’s the power source?”

  Singh cleared his throat while Barnes licked her lips. She knew they hadn’t brought the idea to Kraft for review before springing it at the staff meeting. The Major didn’t like surprises, especially when he couldn’t take some of the credit.

  “We’re figuring a hybrid power source…fuel cells and batteries. Nuclear’s too heavy; the shielding alone would make Gopher too cumbersome. Fuel cells are light and compact now. Sergeant Barnes here has even figured out a way to capture some of the energy that ANAD releases when he breaks atomic bonds in disassembly.”

  Linx nodded to Kraft. “Your people have done good work here, Major. Top notch work.”

  Kraft smiled a hesitant smile. “Yes, sir. I always encourage initiative in my staff.”

  “I assume this is just a design. How long before we can have an operational vehicle?”

  Taj checked with Barnes.

  “General…let me run the sim of Gopher in operation while the Sergeant and I do some figuring.”

  “Proceed.”

  Singh toggled some switches and the 3-D image of the tiny geoplane whirred to life. As the sim advanced, the geoplane approached a steep mountain and its front end borer grew white hot. The craft nosed down at the base of the mountain and plunged below ground. But below the mountain, the strata of rock had been stripped away to reveal Gopher busily at work, like a carpenter bee, pushing its way deeper and deeper into the simulated crust.

  As the sim proceeded, Linx, Kraft and the rest watched Gopher chewing its way through a series of maneuvers…first descending, then climbing and turning, its circumferential treads propelling it steadily along tunnels created by its ANAD borer. Mounted on a parabolic horn at the nose of the craft, the borer was a white-hot ball, as trillions of nanomechs disassembled molecules of rock at high speed. Gopher plowed through varying layers of strata with ease, then began nosing its way upward, eventually breaching the surface in an eruption of dirt and rock. The sim came to an end and SOFIE darkened the Sim Tank.

  “Impressive,” Linx admitted. “I assume this is only a conceptual design? How long would it take to field a prototype?”

  Singh had worked out a preliminary schedule while Linx was watching the sim. “Based on availability of certain resources…time with SOFIE, designWeb, and so forth, we can be ready to cut metal in about two weeks. We’re proposing the geoplane project have priority access to Table Top’s fabs, priority on purchasing, expedited design reviews and all the engineering and machine shop people we need. Given that, Gopher could be underway on her shakedown runs in about four weeks.”

  Kraft asked, “Have you got the molecular configuration detailed enough for the fabs to take it now?”

  “Only a few sections have been detailed, Major,” said Singh. “The borer module, the tread system and the power plant and lockout spaces have been structurally detailed. With a little help from Doc II, we could load the configs into an ANAD processor in a day or so and have complete assemblies by the end of the week.”

  “It’s a hell of a lot of nano,” Linx agreed, “but time is short.” He motioned to Kraft. “See that the geoplane project gets what it needs to expedite final assembly. Gentlemen, I’m approving this contraption right here and now. Have you worked out the tactics to use it for assaulting Lions Rock?”

  “Working on it now, sir,” Winger replied. “That’s where the sim you just saw comes in. Tactically, we feel any assault force will need two of these vehicles. Each one can carry a squad of about six to eight troopers. That allows us to put a platoon-sized force on the enemy’s doorstep with no warning.”

  “There is another aspect to this concept, sir” Singh added. “With an ANAD-driven borer mounted on her nose, our sims show that a geoplane also has the capacity to induce seismic shocks…earthquakes, if you will…at least over a limited area. Injecting streams of specially configured ANADs from the borer ring, a geoplane positioned properly can cause enough slippage or fracture in nearby tectonic structures to pretty much generate earthquakes on demand.” Singh started to switch SOFIE to a new sim. “Sir, we’ve done the initial analysis, if you’d like to—“

  Linx held up a hand. “Later, Sergeant. I’m sure the physics is sound. Gentlemen, the geoplane project is approved, both of them. I’m forwarding my report to UNSAC tonight, along with recommendations that the assault on Lions Rock commence four weeks from today.” He consulted a calendar. “A-Day will be August 10th. A complete tactical plan should be on my screen by August 1. Is that understood?”

  A chorus of Yes, sirs came back. Linx looked around the room at the assembled staff.

  “Quantum Corps is the tip of the spear, gentlemen. UNSAC is counting on you to succeed. Hell, the whole planet’s counting on you. I don’t have to remind you of what’s at stake here. Major—“ he turned to Kraft, “we need to give this operation a name.”

  Barnes spoke up. “Tectonic Sword, sir. Operation Tectonic Sword.”

  Linx snorted. “Odd but damned appropriate, if you ask me. Tectonic Sword it is. I’ll see to it that UNIFORCE fully supports the assault in whatever way is necessary. You’ll have combat engineers, the latest intelligence, air, ground, and space support, diplomatic cover as needed. Tectonic Strike must be kept from the Chinese though. The whole thing is politically very touchy.”

  Kraft had a determined cast to his face. “My people will have a geoplane design and assault plans ready in one week, General.”

  That earned the Major a few raised eyebrows and sideways glances. Johnny Winger’s eyes met Gabrielle Galland’s.

  The Major has an awfully big mouth, making promises like that.

  Galland just nodded faintly.

  “Very well, gentlemen…I’ll leave you to your work.” With that, Wolfus Linx and his two staff assistants left the Sim Tank.

  Kraft glared at the rest of them. “Don’t just stand there, people. Let’s get to it!”

  Two weeks of twenty-four hours days followed. Table Top Mountain was a beehive of activity as Ops, Engineering, Munitions, and other departments bent to the task of fleshing out the geoplane’s design and the details of the assault plan that would employ it. Johnny Winger himself routinely put in eighteen and twenty hour days, working at times in the Sim Tank wargaming every possible detail of the assault, studying topographic detail of the ground and subsurface structure around Lions Rock, arguing with engineers and machinists in the shops over Gopher’s design and fittings and working with Doc II at the Containment center to optimize ANAD for tunnel-boring and for final combat against the Red Hammer base at Lions Rock.

  As July rolled into August, Major Kraft’s promised deadline evaporated as surely as the last winter snows on Table Top’s mesa but the Major made no further mention of his promise to CINCQUANT. Through daily briefings and unannounced strolls through the labs and shops, Kraft could see that the whole compound was mobilized to support 1st Nano’s mission.

  They’re good kids, he told himself after one late afternoon inspection of the geoplane prototype, now encased in scaffolding and catwalks on the ground floor of Table Top’s Hangar C. They’ll get the mission accomplished, one way or another.

  He thought grimly as he walked the grassy quadrangle back to the glass cube of the Ops building. They have to. There’s too much at stake to fail now.

  Bit by
bit, beams and spars and panels and struts and framing came together and Gopher gradually took shape inside the hangar. By the second week of August, she was powered up for the first time and Winger and a select crew tested her for fit and function, exercising her treads, grapplers and cycling the borer on and off.

  The lead engineer was a ruddy-cheeked sunburned Texan named Murchison, with scarred hands and a booming voice. He climbed up onto the command deck and sat beside Winger in the cockpit, while a trio of electricians pulled wiring bundles through the forward consoles.

  “She’ll be ready for maneuvering exercises next Monday, Lieutenant. We’re hauling her out to Hunt Valley over the weekend. You got a test crew ready?”

  Winger was checking off switches and buttons against a diagram he had spread across his knees. “Me and Lieutenant Galland will be the test crew, Murch. I just have to clear it with the Major. Are you going to load live ANAD in the borer?”

  Murchison nodded. “Soon as Containment okays a test batch, we’ll load her up and put her to work. The test range has already laid out a course for you…some above ground and some below.” He handed over a map of the range to Winger.

  The atomgrabber studied the test course for a few moments, following the track through the still snow-covered hills with his finger. The route would take the geoplane prototype from a launch point at the eastern end of Hunt Valley, near the “Notch” along a serpentine path across central Idaho, eventually diving below ground south of Buffalo Ridge. The test then had Gopher circling the Table Top mesa below the surface, tunneling its way north across the Snake River canyon at a depth of two kilometers before circling back toward the war game range at Hunt Valley.

  “This should put Gopher through her paces, Murch. How’s she coming along?”

  Murchison shrugged, consulted his wristpad and checked files. “Power plant full-up test this afternoon, Lieutenant. We’re still tracking down a current leak in the batteries, but that should be fixable. Tomorrow, we hang her treads and motors on; they’re powered up in two days. It’s tight but we’re getting there.” The Texan shook his head ruefully, patted Gopher’s instrument panel and played with her controls like a child. “I don’t mind telling you, Lieutenant…up until a week ago, I never thought this contraption would work. I mean…look at her…it ain’t natural doing what she’s doing, going where she’s going.”