Nanotroopers Episode 17: Lions Rock

by Philip Bosshardt

  When everything was in readiness, the mission plan called for ANAD to bore a series of small pilot tunnels radiating out from the jump-off point, in an attempt to generate a severe earthquake at a tectonic focal point that had been identified below the base. If calculations made by SOFIE and the geos were correct, the energy from this artificially induced tremor would nearly destroy the Red Hammer installation and every other standing structure inside Lions Rock.

  The trick was to place Mole and the assault team where the seismic shock waves wouldn’t also destroy the geoplane. If the network of fracture zones and the pilot holes worked as calculated, a series of tremors up to magnitude 8.5 could be expected to roll through the surrounding valley. Some damage was expected south among the islands of Hong Kong, but the geos estimated that proper focusing of the seismic energy would minimize that.

  Winger had no intention of letting Mole be trapped in any sliding rock layers when that happened. In fact, contrary to the mission plan, he had already decided to surface the geoplane completely and try to ride out the tremors hunkered down somewhere in a nearby valley.

  “Approaching the surface now…” the DSO reported. Mole’s deck now angled upward sharply. “Twenty meters…now, ten meters—“

  Winger checked the time. “It’s just after midnight topside. According to the maps and sat views, we should be coming up in a ravine about half a klick southwest of the Rock.”

  Moments later, the geoplane lurched forward and her forward speed suddenly dropped off.

  “Surfacing…!” Tallant said.

  “All stop…secure the borer, secure the tread drive. All ANAD to containment—“ he turned to the flickering swarm hovering in a corner of the command deck. “That means you, pal.”

  ***ANAD requests permission to remain outside of containment…the tactical situation requires rapid response--***

  Winger had to admit the tiny assembler had a point. “Okay, ANAD, you win. But stay out of the way.”

  ***ANAD is a vital part of this mission…it’s my job to assist all team members with their duties…and to secure the perimeter of the detail***

  Winger snorted, climbing out of his seat. “I don’t need regulations quoted back to me, ANAD…even if you are right.”

  “What did you say?” Galland asked. She was unstrapping herself.

  “It was ANAD…I’m leaving him outside containment…for the time being.”

  “Is that a good idea?”

  “Probably not. But there are some sound tactical reasons to keep the swarm nearby…just in case.”

  Mole squatted like a black metal armadillo in the lee of a muddy cliff, huddled against the steep flanks of a rugged mountain known to the locals as Zapog. It was dark and windy, rain swirling about the surfaced geoplane in gusts and squalls, as Winger threw open the hatch and leaped to the ground. Right behind him, Barnes, Reaves, Gibby and Galland dropped to the mud and set up a quick defensive perimeter, quickly boresighting and registering HERF and mag weapons on nearby peaks barely visible in the storm.

  Winger took a hack off the navsats and pinpointed their position, which he ported to the crewnet. The entire crew soon saw the coordinates on their helmet eyepieces.

  “Okay, ANAD…I’m sending a new config. When it’s loaded, you’ll be optimized for solid-phase disassembly. You already have the coordinates of the fracture zone…where the ground is most sensitive to boring.”

  ***Affirmative, Control…from my position, the fracture zone centroid is three hours and twelve minutes away***

  “Very well, ANAD…prepare to launch…all effectors primed and ready?”

  ***Effectors are enabled…let me at ‘em***

  “ANAD…launch now!”

  As Winger and the others huddled in the lee of Mole’s hull, the translucent and iridescent shimmering blue globe settled into a nearby mud bank. In moments, it had disappeared beneath the mud, leaving only a backlit glow, like fireflies frozen in time, steadily dissipating. In time, it was gone.

  “What now, Skipper?” asked Mighty Mite Barnes. She was sighted in on her HERF gun, covering her assigned sector of the perimeter.

  “We wait. Any contacts? Any evidence we’ve been detected?”

  Galland checked with Mole’s systems. “Nothing. No EM, only background thermals, not even any quantum wake. Acoustics indicates the wind direction may be shifting…more to the southwest. Weathersats say there’s a front headed for the valley.”

  “No nano threats?”

  “Negative. The board is clean.”

  Winger said, “Then we may have achieved what we wanted….complete tactical surprise.”

  “Aren’t we kind of exposed up here?” asked Gibby.

  “It’s a risk we’ll have to take. We’ve got about three hours before ANAD is in position. Reaves…let’s get SuperFly up and nosing about. Even in this weather, I’d like to keep a close eye on what’s happening.”

  “Roger that, Skipper.” The DPS1 went over to the geoplane’s tail pod and withdrew three small suitcase-sized containers. She opened the first container and fiddled with the contraption inside. Seconds later, like a dormant bird, it sat up and began articulating its wings and rotors. Warmed up and synched with its base station, the entomopter whirred and lifted off, heading off into the rainy night sky. Reaves did this three times, powering up and launching each device skyward.

  “SuperFly away, Skipper,” she reported. “As soon as they link up, we’ll be getting data back.”

  The Tectonic Sword mission had numerous objectives: (1) infiltrate the Red Hammer compound and render inoperable any pulser emitters and controls, (2) destroy the scope works, (3) destroy any Keeper portals, (4) use ANAD to create focused seismic tremors that would collapse the remaining caverns, voids and spaces inside the mountain, (5) and exfiltrate the area, rendezvousing later with a UNISEA submarine southwest of the Philippines.

  The plan was that, in the chaos of the artificial tremors ANAD would generate, 1st Nano would be able to get inside the compound and achieve these objectives with a minimum of defense and resistance from Red Hammer. Just to make sure, after the tremors began, the ANAD master would rendezvous with Mole at coordinates just outside the base perimeter to form a protective screen around the nanotroopers against the likely Red Hammer defensive nanobots they would encounter.

  For nearly two hours, Mole sat alone and motionless in a fog-shrouded, rainy valley a kilometer from the Red Hammer base. Aboard the surfaced geoplane, Johnny Winger waited tensely for the big show to begin.

  Finally, word came from the swarm of tiny assemblers.

  ***ANAD reporting swarm now in position at the following coordinates…*** the master rattled off a stream of numbers. Winger watched as Galland plotted the position of the swarm on the stratigraphic map displayed on the main console.

  “Very well, ANAD,” Winger reported back over the coupler circuit. He knew that nearly a kilometer of solid rock separated them from the swarm. “Stand by….” To Galland, “what’s the verdict?”

  The CC2 looked up. “Right on the button. He’s situated between these two faults, with a major fracture zone we plotted right below him. Red Hammer doesn’t know it but they’re sitting on a geological time bomb.”

  Winger smiled. “Then it’s time to light the fuse.” He ordered the Detachment to return from their defensive positions and climb back aboard Mole. “ANAD…commence the operation.”

  ***ANAD understands…commencing solid-phase destructive disassembly…hold on to your hats, folks***

  Moments later, a vast, deeply felt rumbling could be heard and felt up and down the valley. A great crashing roar occurred as landslides and avalanches pummeled the ground from the high slopes around the parked geoplane.

  For protection, Winger decided it was best to submerge Mole about fifty meters below ground.

  The geoplane’s treads were engaged and her nose angled slightly down as the borer plowed through the m
ud and bit into the hard, frozen ground. In moments, they were below the surface, crawling forward toward the rendezvous coordinates.

  The tremors had started, a continuous wave of tectonic plate motion and upheaval, shattering everything within a few kilometers of Lions Rock and its ancient castle.

  Soon, the battle at Red Hammer’s base would be joined.

  After a few minutes of quakes and tremors, Winger gave the assault order. He told the DSO: “Julie, bring us up to the bottom of the first level. Maximum speed. I want to crash through with the borer cooking like mad.”

  “Aye, sir,” Rice replied. She manipulated her controls and all aboard Mole felt the deck angled sharply upward.

  The plan was to breach the bottom floor of the first cavern level, crashing right into the cavern and begin the assault that way.

  “Ten meters, Skipper.”

  Winger got on the 1MC. “All hands, brace for impact. Breaching in sixty seconds. Squad order on exit…make sure all fire lanes are covered.”

  The impact, when it came, jarred the geoplane as if a giant fist had slammed into her nose. Loose gear was thrown violently about all the cabins. The ship’s hull creaked and groaned and Mole slowed nearly to a stop.

  Inside Level One of the cartel’s compound, the floor of the cavern suddenly erupted in an explosion of dirt, tile and furniture. Bodies went flying and shouts and confusion and chaos enveloped the huge cave. The geoplane came to a halt with her nose and front decks jutting above the floor, like a giant mole had burrowed up from below and stopped to look around.

  Hatches swung back and the nanotroopers of Tectonic Sword leapt out into the smoke and debris still raining down from above.

  McReady was first to drop out. He swung his mag carbine around in an arc, letting its sensors display any likely targets. There were three crossing his sector. “Clearing left…I’ve got three!” he yelled. He cycled the carbine and let fly a controlled burst of magnetic loops. Two targets went down. The third scuttled away into the far recesses of the cave.

  Hiroshi was next. She leaped out and came up scanning. “Clear center!’ she yelled.

  “Clear right!” came Reaves’ voice, next out of the geoplane.

  The rest of the assault force quickly piled out and started probing through thick dust.

  Mole had breached right through the ground floor of the Red Hammer complex, with a third of her hull showing in the gloom. It was apparent to all the troopers that the tremors and quakes generated by ANAD before ingress had done considerable damage. Wall partitions had crumpled into heaps. Furniture and shelves and platforms had collapsed. Equipment and cabling was strewn across the floor of the vast cavern at the very base of Lions Rock. Chunks of rock and rubble rained down on the troopers as they spread out and reconnoitered the floor.

  In seconds, they came to a stone staircase hewn out of the rock walls.

  "Main ingress route, looks like," Gibby muttered. He was monitoring ANAD status from his wristpad, ready to toggle to a new config at a moment's notice.

  "Same as the schematic…" Winger said. "SOFIE's right on target, so far."

  According to the plans, the staircase tunneled down deep into the bowels of Lion's Rock, connecting five levels with a vast open complex in the very heart of Shih Ho Mountain.

  "Where is everybody?" Gibby asked. "I'd have figured Red Hammer would be shielding every possible entrance."

  "Maybe it's a trap," Reaves said, uneasily.

  "Let's go--" Winger gave the order. "Up the stairs."

  A moment later, Reaves saw an instrument twitch on her wristpad. "Uh oh--pressure pulse. Somebody…or something's ahead."

  "I see it…"Winger was steering the ANAD formation ahead cautiously. "Big spike…moving a lot of air molecules. People, most likely. More than one--"

  "Disperse, sir?" Gibby asked.

  Winger shook his head. "Guard detail, most likely."

  "They may have detected us…" Reaves suggested.

  And they had, for at that very moment, the visual lens ANAD had created was disrupted and the view was lost. Four guards had swept down the stairs, mag guns drawn, scattering the formation for a moment, notified of a breach at Level 1. If they got there--if they saw the MOBnet--the whole place might come alive--

  "Execute a clampdown!" Winger yelled. "Smother 'em so they can't breathe!" He signaled DPS to get ready in case they came under fire. "Replicate max rate…carbenes and radicals at the ends…blanket the place!"

  In seconds, the air itself burned with the pressure of exponentially dividing ANAD replicants; a heavy, searing weight pressing down on everything in sight.

  Deeper in the tunnel, a small force of Red Hammer guards tried to scream.

  The defenders, unable to react, clawed at their lungs and faces and staggered back from the stairs, pitching backward, ears and eyes bleeding from the pressure, suffocated by ANAD.

  It was all over in less than a minute.

  Winger waited until the clampdown was lifted and, on command, ANAD began to disperse. "Put the MOB on 'em," he told Mighty Mite. "Keep 'em secure right there. I don't want any more alarms going off."

  Corporal Barnes tapped the commands on her own wristpad. "Done, sir.” At that moment, as she approached the writhing guards, her recognizer chirped. Faces and data tags came up on her eyepiece. “Target match, sir! I’ve got a recog match….” She scooted over to a squirming form by the wall. “This one…recog says it’s R-6.”

  Winger came up. “R-6? That’s Souvranamh… Theo Souvranamh. Member of the Ruling Council…we couldn’t be that lucky. Open it up.”

  Barnes unzipped the top of the MOBnet. A haggard, pale face, framed with a black goatee and tousled black hair, glared up at them. It was Souvranamh.

  Winger could hardly believe their good fortune. A member of Red Hammer’s Ruling Council would be an intelligence gold mine. “Okay…it’s a match. Somehow, we bagged R-6. Take him into custody and get this bag back to Mole.”

  Two troopers hustled and dragged the protesting Thai neurotraficante aboard the geoplane.

  ANAD chirped in Winger’s coupler.

  ***Boss…signals analysis indicates pulser controls are at this level, heading one five five…thirty meters***

  Winger peered through the thick dust. The remnants of a small enclosure were barely visible. “Reaves, Hiroshi, Lukacs…come with me.”

  They zigzagged their way across the vast cavern, dodging falling rock and boiling dust, even as the floor rumbled. Tremors continued to shake the complex as underlying rock plates settled and shifted.

  Outside the control center…what was left of it, Winger halted their advance. “ANAD, is this it? Pulser control?”

  ***Affirmative, Skipper…detecting residual decoherence wake signals emanating from sources inside***

  “That’s good enough for me.” Winger swung his HERF carbine around. “Pulverize it to dust!”

  Winger, Hirsohi, and Reaves lit off their HERF and mag weapons, hosing down the wreckage and anything inside with thunderclaps of rf and magnetic loops. The bursts boomed and reverberated off the cavern walls. In seconds, the pulser control room was a pile of smoking rubble.

  “Let’s go!” Winger ordered. “We’ve got to get topside and kill the pulser arrays too. Q2 says they’re on top of the mountain…part of that castle.”

  They headed cautiously up the rock stairs along the far side of the cavern and came to another cavern one level above.

  The place was a vast cave, hewn right out of the bowels of the mountain. Rows of growth tanks lined the floor, wall to wall, with huge leafy plants suspended in each tank. It was the scope works, all right. The mother lode and Red Hammer's main bank, all in one. At the far end of the cavern, a pocket of Red Hammer technicians struggled to get up, stunned and gasping for air from the clampdown.

  Gibby saw them first. "Enemy ahead…three o'clock…I count four--"

  "Weap
ons?"

  "None that I can see, sir."

  Winger checked the time. Fifteen minutes. They'd made better progress than he'd hoped for. "MOB 'em. Secure the whole cave. Let's go hunting."

  From her position behind the rest, Barnes acknowledged the order. With her own wristpad, she took control of a small portion of the ANAD force, accepting replicants as fast as the master could slam atoms together and churn them out. She detached the force and tapped out a command sequence…in seconds, the swarm under her control had reconfigured itself. A fine smoky mist formed overhead, oscillating in and out of view. Barnes took a fix on the Red Hammer techs and fed the coordinates to her brood. The smoke pulsed and throbbed like a thing alive, then floated over and descended on the enemy, forming a Mobility Obstruction Barrier around the helpless group. ANAD assemblers interlocked into an amorphous gel, cordoning off the technicians in a flexible prison cell of tightly bound assemblers. Several techs clawed at the MOB, to no avail. They were steadily forced down to the cavern floor and immovably secured there by the ANAD screen.

  "MOB in place, Lieutenant."

  "Very well…Gibby, what's up?"

  Gibbs had caught sight of something, a twitch in one of ANAD's sensors. "Sounding pressure change. Uh-oh…sounding heat pulse, big time heat pulse…looks like the cavalry's coming--"

  Even on the grainy image of ANAD’s visual element, the throbbing mass forming in one corner of the cavern was evident. It boiled out of the shadows and swept forward, closing fast to engage the ANAD swarm, Gibby's swarm.

  "Stay with 'em! Hold your position--"

  Gibby's force took the full brunt of the assault.

  "Oh, Lieutenant….looks…like…I…GOT…MECHS!" The sergeant's fingers flew over the keyboard and control sticks. "Making a cage…all effectors out max…I am in automaneuver…" He punched out commands, setting up his group of assemblers with full shields of fullerene arms, each one bristling with sticky molecules, juiced with torqued bonds, ready to zap all comers. Even as he configged the swarm, Winger piloted his own group away from the melee, trying to flank the enemy, pinch off the assault from both sides, a pincer movement at atomic scale.