Nanotroopers Episode 17: Lions Rock

by Philip Bosshardt

  “You mean burrowing underground like a…gopher?” Winger chuckled. “Her name fits, doesn’t it?” He thought back to the tunnel at Kurabantu, how claustrophobic and hot that had been, like being trapped in a coffin that went on forever. And rescuing Buddha Nguyen from Lions Rock on their first ‘visit’ hadn’t been any easier.

  “The way I look at it, maneuvering through solid rock is no different than maneuvering through air or water,” he lied. Or, for that matter, atoms and molecules. “It’s just another medium. First Nano has to stay focused on the mission, on the target.” He squeezed the control stick affectionately. “Gopher’s just our ride to the show.”

  Murchison was already climbing down from the command deck, off to check on some parts in the shop.

  “I’ll make sure she’s a good ride, Lieutenant. Don’t you and the guys worry none about that.”

  Test day came a week later. It was a muggy, humid morning in Hunt Valley when Winger and Galland boarded the geoplane and strapped themselves in.

  Winger looked over at Galland. “Let’s fire this jalopy up and see what she can do.”

  Gopher was started up, her treads spinning as Winger throttled up the electric motors. With a jerk, the geoplane trundled off through foot-deep snow, a plume of powder making rooster tails behind her. She plowed ahead at a stately three kilometers an hour, while her crew tested controls and systems.

  “A real race car,” Galland observed dryly. Gopher rocked back and forth as she clawed her way around the valley floor, following a pre-determined course that had been laid out at the test range.

  “Yeah,” said Winger, as he steered left and right, getting a feel for Gopher’s handling. “Let’s enter her in the Indy 500.”

  “We’ll be the first to cross the finish line…under the track. But we’ll never see the checkered flag.”

  For the next half hour, Winger put the geoplane through her paces.

  “Handles pretty well on the surface,” he noted. “Steering is stiff…not a lot of pickup.” He saw the snow-streaked lower flanks of Signal Mountain dead ahead on their monitor—Gopher had no windows or portholes—and steered in that direction. “Gabby, light up the borer. Let’s put Gopher in her real element.”

  Pressing a few buttons, Galland activated the borer that formed a huge dish-shaped nose on the geoplane’s bow. Inside the borer, actuators fired to release the ANAD swarm contained there. In seconds, the outer surface of the dish was thick with nanoscale disassemblers, forming a shimmering half-globe around Gopher’s nose. Like a single huge blue-white headlamp, the dish and its halo of mechs formed the geoplane’s working surface for subterranean operations.

  “Approaching the mountain…” Winger said. “Contact Test Ops and tell ‘em we’re going under.”

  Galland complied.

  “Good luck,” came back the voice of Murchison. “Don’t you be stopping at no bordellos down there,” he added.

  “Borer coming on line,” Galland reported. She scanned her instrument panel, reading swarm density, alignment and other parameters. “ANAD’s ready to bite—“

  Winger absent-mindedly patted his left shoulder, feeling the capsule port embedded there. He linked in and tried to raise ANAD, knowing full well the frustration the tiny assembler felt in containment inside the capsule while a distant cousin hummed with activity at the geoplane’s nose.

  “ANAD, sorry for this…the borer swarm is optimized for disassembly in solid-phase structures. I need you here with me, up here on the command deck.”

  ***ANAD isn’t liking this, Boss. I should be in that borer…you know that…those mechs up there are just rubes…they barely have the brains to disassemble rock. Put me up front, Boss…I can do so much more. You and me, we’ve always been a team, haven’t we?***

  Winger suppressed a smile. ANAD sounded like a teenager begging for the car keys. He was glad Galland couldn’t hear any of it. He stole a glance over at his co-pilot…she was preoccupied calibrating the borer, paying no attention to anything beyond her instruments.

  You’re lucky, he thought. You don’t have whiny voices in the back of your head.

  Gopher slowed down as the mountain approached, then a high keening wail could be heard through the hull, as the borer bit into the rock. The geoplane shuddered as it decelerated. Outside the command deck, unseen by Winger and Galland, Gopher’s nose buried itself in a shimmering blue-white fog as the borer revved up and uncountable trillions of mechs tore at the rock.

  Galland licked her lips nervously, reading her instruments. “Coming back mostly quartz and pyroxenes, with some sandstone mixed in. ANAD should eat this stuff up.”

  The geoplane plunged into the tunnel created by the ANAD borer, angling nose down as it bit deeper into the side of the mountain.

  Gopher’s instrument panel showed the results of acoustic sounding, displaying rock layers on a graph, with temperature and pressure readings all around the graph. Borer status was displayed as well.

  “Looking good,” Winger muttered. “Borer configured for quartz and pyroxenes…ANAD’s chewing through at a rate of two point five kilometers per hour. Treads are functioning fine.”

  “Let’s try some basic maneuvers,” Galland suggested.

  Winger turned the stick to port and Gopher initiated a shallow left-hand bank. The command deck listed slightly, then stabilized. For the next few minutes, first Winger, then Galland took turns putting the geoplane through a series of turns, dives and climbs.

  Winger began to relax his grip on the stick slightly, trying to forget they were now hundreds of meters below ground.

  “There’s a layer of basaltic rock a few kilometers north of here,” he remembered. “It’s nearly a kilometer down. We should see how Gopher handles there.”

  Galland was cautious. “Remember what Murchison told us in the briefing: don’t push her too hard on this first test. Basaltic stuff is superhard and dense…all shale inclusions and quartzite. We’re not sure Gopher’s hull can take the pressure.”

  “I know but we’re eventually taking her to Lions Rock. Most of the approach corridors into that place go through similar stuff. We have to find out how she’ll handle.”

  Galland took a deep breath. “Just be careful. Stay above five hundred meters. If the borer goes on the fritz and something fails, the test crew can still dig us out.”

  “Agreed.” Winger programmed a new heading into the tread control system and steered northwest on a heading of three ten degrees, roughly paralleling the Buffalo Ridge at the surface. Acoustic sounding soon showed the geoplane was entering harder, denser rock layers.

  “Shales,” Winger muttered. From earlier briefings with Quantum Corps geologists, he knew the layer was sheeted with hard slate and mica, compacted over millions of years by glaciers and the overriding Buffalo mountain range. ANAD, he linked in, I hope to hell your cousins are up to this. If we get stuck down here….

  ***Not to worry, Boss, ANAD mechs can handle this stuff with ease…just relax and enjoy the view***

  Winger snorted. The only view they had was of the inner pressure hull of the geoplane. Even as Winger watched, he imagined that he could see the compression of Gopher’s interior frame under the millions of tons pressing down on them.

  “Sounding ahead…” Galland reported. “Your depth is now four eight eight meters. Signal distortion coming back…it’s probably the shale zone.”

  Winger shoved the control stick forward. “I’m going a little deeper…see if we can plow through some of that quartzite.”

  Galland was dubious. She studied the sounding profile. “Just don’t push Gopher too hard, okay? Let’s don’t press our luck on the first run. I’m showing discontinuities dead ahead…some kind of boundary layer, maybe.”

  “Inclusion zone? Maybe it’s the quartzite.”

  Galland shook her head. “It looks more like a fault, maybe a transform fault. The geos said there were fracture zones nort
h of Hunt Valley.”

  Gopher angled slightly downward and slowed, as the borer swarm bit into denser rock.

  “Cabin temp going up,” Galland reported.

  “Acknowledged. Those mechs are working overtime up front, making us a tunnel. I—“

  Winger’s last words were cut off as Gopher shuddered violently. For a brief moment, there was an unmistakable sensation of sliding, sliding sideways and downward. Almost at the same moment, something hit Gopher’s nose with a sickening crunch and the geoplane shuddered again and ground violently to a halt. The cabin tilted to port and stayed tilted.

  Gopher’s cabin was deathly still for a few moments, then the creaking and groaning of the hull under tremendous pressure started.

  “What happened?” Winger asked, wincing as the tortured sounds of the hull being compressed grew louder.

  Galland scanned her instruments nervously. “Borer is offline. I’m getting no responses from ANAD in the forward module…pressure drop in containment…we may have a breach.”

  “Great,” Winger muttered. “Just friggin’ great. And it looks like we’ve got a breach in the pressure hull too.”

  “I see it…cabin air pressure fluctuating…we’d better activate emergency flasks, just in case.” Galland toggled a few switches and immediately, high pressure air began flooding all compartments.

  Winger was studying the acoustic sounder, replaying the last few moments before the—what had happened? An accident. “Gabby, I’m not sure but I think we may have created our own earthquake.”

  “What? That can’t be…can it?”

  Winger went over the soundings again. “We were approaching some kind of discontinuity—see right here?” He pointed to the display. “Like a layer or inclusion zone. Remember when the geos told us there were some transform faults and fracture zones around Hunt Valley?”

  Galland said, “Vaguely.”

  Winger was figuring out the scenario as he replayed in his mind what must have happened. “It was ANAD in the borer module. The swarm disassembled just enough shale and quartzite and other rock to loosen up the fault. It slipped, shifted around and we were caught in the slide.”

  “So we did create our own earthquake.”

  Winger took a deep breath. “So it would seem…now we’ve got to figure out a way of getting out of here. What do we have to work with?”

  Galland went over her instruments again. “Borer’s offline, like I said, and it looks like containment was breached in the accident. I’ve got no response from the borer swarm, no configs, no data of any kind. That swarm’s gone and it’s not responding to commands.”

  Winger tried a few tricks of his own but with no success. “Well, I do have a master in my shoulder capsule. We could jerry-rig a swarm for the borer if we had to.”

  “If the module’s not too damaged. On top of that, the tread system’s not responding…so we have no mobility. And the pressure hull….”

  Winger saw the oxygen level had been dropping significantly in the last few minutes. “We’ve got to stop that leak…here, let me contact ANAD.” He linked in. “ANAD, this is Winger…do you read me?”

  ***ANAD copies…reading you loud and clear…what has happened?...ANAD’s coupler indicates some kind of swarm break…is the borer functioning?***

  How the hell did he know that?

  “ANAD, Gopher’s had an accident. The pressure hull has been breached. Configure for launch and max replication. I need a local swarm to find and plug the leaks.”

  ***ANAD configuring now…systems initializing…ANAD reporting ready in all respects…***

  Winger unstrapped himself and went aft through the tunnel to the power plant. “Launch, ANAD. Launch now….” As the atomgrabber went off to check on their power systems, a shimmering light blue fog emerged from the capsule in his left shoulder. Winger felt a brief sting as the assembler exited containment but the launch sequence seemed smoother than before.

  ***ANAD replicating…can I get a heading to the target?***

  “I’m doing that now,” Winger reported, as he scrambled through the galley and berthing deck and the engineering deck. “Gabby, where’s the leak? Can you localize it?”

  Still back at the command deck, Gabby Galland scanned her instruments. “I’m showing maximum pressure drop at frame ninety-six, starboard side…somewhere between E and F deck.”

  Winger squirmed through the central access tube. He knew E deck was for Engineering, Shops and Utilities. Murchison had called it the ESU deck. Just aft was F deck, home to Gopher’s hybrid battery and fuel cell power plant.

  “I feel it…there’s a whistle just off to my left—“ Winger paused, sniffing, letting his senses guide him. There. A utilities duct penetrating the bulkhead seemed to be the center of the leak. He saw a faint mist in the air swirling around the duct. “I found it….ANAD configure max propulsor. Home on my signal.” He pressed a button on his wristpad.

  Several decks forward, the shimmering fog of the assembler swarm wheeled about and began transiting the access tube.

  ***ANAD is en route to your location…estimated time is twenty-two minutes***

  Winger tried examining the source of the leak, where the inner pressure hull had been stove in. It was scalding hot with swirling steam and air and he couldn’t get any closer.

  “Hurry, ANAD…this break is getting bigger by the minute.”

  The ANAD swarm arrived at the site of the breach and promptly went to work. Configuring itself as a tightly interlinked mesh, ANAD sought out the pressure hull penetrations and quickly formed a nanoscale patch over the holes with its trillions of replicants. Gradually, the whistling subsided, then stopped altogether.

  “I’m reading air pressure stabilizing in all compartments,” Galland reported from the command deck. “The patch seems to be working.”

  Johnny Winger breathed a sigh of relief, feeling the cool oxygen of the geoplane’s emergency flasks wash over his face. “ANAD, you’re a lifesaver.”

  ***ANAD reporting swarm element in place and holding. No more air molecules can get in or out. I am configured in repeating tetrahedral with radicals at my outer barrier. Oxygens hate that. And yes…I did save the ship, didn’t I? Isn’t that what you learn in nog school…don’t leave your buddies behind?***

  Winger decided to return to the command deck. “You’re right about that, ANAD…but who told you that? You were never a nog.”

  ***I could have been, Lieutenant. I’ve had a lot of the training already…Doctor Frost programmed my processor with all relevant operational routines, including standard search and rescue algorithms. Isn’t that the same thing?***

  Winger gave the question some thought, as he hauled himself forward up the narrow access tunnel.

  “ANAD, you can’t be a nog. You didn’t have the same experiences as the rest of us…like twenty kilometer runs in the snow around Hunt Valley. Or the SODS tank or all the hazing.”

  Winger reached the command deck, while ANAD was silent for a few moments.

  ***So why is your experience any better than mine? You don’t know what it’s really like to snap a bond. Or park a carbon atom on the front porch of a benzene ring. Or surf van der Waals forces through a red blood cell***

  Winger climbed into his commander’s seat. “Forget it, ANAD…we’ve got work to do. We’ve got to find a way out of here.”

  “Did you say something?” Galland asked. Second Nano’s CC1 had been half buried inside an electrical cabinet, trying to troubleshoot Gopher’s tread drive.

  “Just talking to ANAD…what’s our status up here?”

  Galland sat back and wiped sweat off her face. “Tread drive’s shot. Something overloaded the controller. I’m getting no response anywhere…either we’re jammed or there’s a hard mechanical failure. I think I’ve got it isolated to somewhere between E and F decks. I got power up to that frame and zilch aft of that point.” She shook her head. “Eit
her way, the tread drive’s offline. We have no mobility. You get the leaks stopped?”

  Winger checked Gopher’s instrument panels. “For the moment. ANAD replicated a patch of dumb bots. It seems to be holding.”

  Galland sighed. “Then it looks like we’re stuck here, Wings.”

  Winger wasn’t one to accept defeat easily. “Maybe, maybe not. We don’t know what the problem is with the borer. I want to send ANAD out there to do a little recon, see if we can get the borer working again.”

  “The master doesn’t have the same config as the borer bots. Have you got the right program?”

  Winger was already pecking out commands on a nearby keypad. “I think I can gin up something from here…it’s really just a matter of optimizing his effector setup. I studied Doc’s work close enough to get a feel for the geometry.”

  Winger hacked out a configuration and fired it off to the ANAD master. Above and behind the main console, the faint blue fog pulsated and flickered like a mist in the air…the assembler seemed to prefer to exist in small-scale swarms whenever it was left outside containment…like it was a natural state. As ANAD received and processed the commands, the fog roiled and billowed with unseen currents, a ghostly radiance barely visible but for the tiny bursts of light popping on and off embedded within.

  ***ANAD processing commands now…I will replicate a small formation, config for solid-phase disassembly and exit the vehicle***

  “We need information, ANAD,” Winger explained. Sometimes you could say better in English things you couldn’t express in configuration commands. ANAD’s natural language processor made that possible but it was a two-sided sword. “Do a recon of the entire borer module. I want config status, visuals, EM, acoustics, everything. I want to know what condition the module is in. Is it functional at all? What happened to the swarm inside? And could you replicate a replacement if needed?”

  ***ANAD understands…now on eighty percent propulsor…en route to borer containment port***

  Galland was apprehensive, as she watched the blue fog slowly pass over them and insinuate itself behind the main console. Forward of the command deck was Gopher’s containment vessel, swarm controls and loading ports. The borer itself was a horn-shaped dish outside the pressure hull, through which borer ANAD bots emerged into active formation for tunneling.