Winger trained his corneal viewer on the ornate spires—the gopuram—of the huge temple. Elaborate carvings of lions’ heads and fanciful creatures leered back at him. The visual shimmered in the late evening haze coming off the river and it wasn’t humidity that caused the shimmer.
“Barrier bots,” the atomgrabber muttered. Not entirely unexpected. The entire temple compound was still shielded by a screen of nanobots, with enough density to haze the air around the compound. “Work us in as close as you can,” he told Spite. “Third Swarm…config state one…prepare for opposed entry. We know how to handle these buggers now.”
Alpha Detachment closed on the barrier and with the help of upgraded ANAD effectors, some new tactics and a generous barrage of HERF and coilgun fire, they breached the shield in good order and moved inside the temple complex.
Nanoscale assembler bots shrieked as waves of HERF thundered across the courtyard, ripping the barrier to shreds. The clatter of fried bots tinkling onto the stone pavement could be heard between coilgun rounds.
“MOVE OUT!” Winger yelled. Each nanotrooper, now enveloped in a protective cocoon of personal assembler bots, surged ahead through the shredded remains of the barrier. Bursts of light, like fireflies flickering on a summer night, tickled all along the edges of the barrier.
The Detachment moved as one across the courtyard, through a line of columns and toward the massive oak doors of a large chamber—the Hall of a Thousand Pillars—Winger’s eyepiece annotated on his viewer.
Reaves studied her nav screen. “Just got one big decoherence pulse on the scope, Skipper…dead ahead…about two hundred meters!”
In the dim, fire-lit shadows of the great Hall of a Thousand Pillars, the decoherence wave front had a most startling effect. It was like an invisible scythe slashing through the grid of columns, sweeping from left to right. One by one, an invisible front swept toward them, expanding outward in all directions. The passage of the front could be detected visually, as row after row of columns wavered, then dematerialized for a few seconds, finally re-appearing again after the probability waves had passed.
And in the split second the deco wave passed each row of pillars, the row unfolded like an origami sheet into a shadowy infinity of columns, marching off in every direction. The effect of collapsing probability states lasted less than a second, but the image was visual proof of the massive quantum disturbance nearby.
“Blow those doors!” Winger commanded. Tsukota, Barnes and Detrick leveled their coilguns at the massive oaken doors to the inner courtyard. Seconds later, they dissolved in a fiery blossom of red flame and black smoke.
“Skipper—“ it was Reaves again. “Deco waves all over the place…dead ahead…bearing one five oh. That corner of the hall—“
More decoherence pulses slammed the hall and the pillars ahead wavered in and out of view like heat waves on a highway.
“Contacts?” Winger inquired.
Reaves and Singh scanned the vicinity. “Nothing living on this side,” Reaves came back.”
“All bands clear,” Singh concurred. “I’m getting high thermals on the other side of this wall ahead…probably nano…”
The Detachment came to the massive door they had encountered before, almost a gate in itself, carved from solid oak, with elaborate figures of Hindu gods and goddesses covering every square inch. The DPS techs examined the door closely. Singh put out a finger experimentally. The door gave slightly to the touch, then a small wave rippled outward from his touch. The door quivered and gave off a faint flickering glow.
“We know what to do with this one,” Winger said. “ANAD, front and center….”
The loose assembler formation of ANAD 3rd Swarm swelled to the front of the line.
***Swarm reports ready in all respects, Major…what is the nature of the mission?***
“Swarm master, I want you to scan this structure and assume a configuration to breach it. Config is pretty sophisticated but do what you can.”
***Swarm will comply…scanning now…***
Winger stepped back and motioned the others back too, as the swarm surged forward. In seconds, the massive door was blanketed in a thick, flickering mist. Small light bursts rippled up and down the length of the door, as the two swarms engaged.
Reaves followed 3rd Swarm’s progress with her imager. “Skipper, looks like he’s going tetrahedral, unusual grabbers…haven’t seen anything like those before—“
Winger studied the image himself. Something Doc Frost cooked up, no doubt. They had tested ANAD’s new bells and whistles at Table Top but the real test was here, in combat. Before he could say anything, the door flared to a white-hot light, too bright to look directly at, then came a piercing shriek as the massive structure super-nova’ed into incandescence. The fierce light strobed and throbbed like a living thing for a few moments, then faded, not completely, but to a hot translucent membrane.
Inside the antechamber beyond, the scene resembled a view from underwater.
The air was thick with nanobots, clotted like clouds and clumps and myriad other shapes, floating and swimming as if they were a thousand feet undersea. Lightning and flashes erupted in a chaotic symphony, spotted through the dense medium that filled the room. A few humans, or at least, human-forms, moved languidly about their business, attending to a large device in the center.
As Johnny Winger scanned the room with his own imager, another massive decoherence wave erupted from the device, momentarily washing out everything, so that only a milky white glow was visible. For a brief, almost imperceptible instant, the glow collapsed into a careening kaleidoscope of images, like a slide show gone mad, as an infinite parade of probability states swept outward. A great tidal wave of all possibilities collided into each other right before them.
The wavefront passed by in less than a second but in that single second, Alpha Detachment disappeared from view and was instantly re-assembled into a facsimile of its previous state. Johnny Winger blinked hard and saw Reaves, Tsukota, Singh—all of them wink out, then split apart into pinwheels upon pinwheels of themselves, carved into ever smaller slices that whipped by too fast for the eye to comprehend.
Then it was gone and Winger shook his head, feeling his arms and legs, as if to reassure himself that he was still there. He saw the others doing the same.
The curtain of roaring silence lifted and he heard someone saying—“…the hell was that?” It was Klimuk, shaking himself like an animal startled from a deep sleep.
Winger got his senses back and realized that they were once again staring face to face with the very source of the quantum disturbances.
The four-legged tetrahedral platform that was the heart of the quantum generator throbbed and pulsed like a beating heart, erupting every few minutes in another decoherence wave. Winger knew from the briefings that the waves were spreading outward from Kolkata, outward into space, stretching spacetime throughout the Solar System like a wrinkled bedsheet.
It was this machine, and according to that Frontier Corps detective, a sister device on Mars, that was tugging and pulling on the asteroid 2351 Wilks-Lucayo, steadily drawing it away from Mars impact toward the Earth itself.
This baby’s got to become a junk pile. But how do you fight a quantum device, a machine that could exist in multiple states, places and times simultaneously?
“ANAD, you said you’ve got some kind of operating instructions…now would be a good time to use them—“
The swarm was still a loose aggregate of assemblers, now billowing out between Winger and Taj Singh, who stared agog at the clots and clumps of loose bots thickening the air around the generator.
***ANAD still running decryption algorithms on the files…ANAD has sufficient file integrity to execute basic routines…swarm must engage with generator and transfer instructions in proximity***
“Proximity? How close do you have to get?”
The swarm had already pushed forward, a translucen
t sparkling mist bearing down on the halo of barrier bots surrounding the platform.
***ANAD must engage platform at nanoscale…integrate swarm with device structure…platform is also a swarm held in lattice formation***
Winger stared in disbelief. “The platform is also a swarm? Are you sure, ANAD?”
But there was no further signal from ANAD.
“ANAD, I hope to hell you know what you’re doing.” Over the crewnet, Winger barked out orders to the Detachment. “Reaves, Barnes, all of you…back off. Stay away from the platform. ANAD’s going in…he retrieved some kind of files at that warehouse and thinks they may be operating instructions for the generator.”
Barnes snorted and dropped down to one knee to steady the HERF gun, while she recharged its batteries. “Nobody has to tell me twice, Skipper. I’m keeping my distance.”
“Amen to that,” muttered Singh. “Lord Shiva be with you, ANAD….”
“Yeah, kick quantum ass,” added Deeno D’Nunzio.
The ANAD swarm closed steadily on the platform, slipping past the barrier bots with little trouble. Each penetration flared like a small bolt of lightning and the sparkles rippled outward and around the perimeter of the platform.
Winger decided to switch views and follow the nanoscale assembler’s progress. He wanted to see how well Doc Frost’s little tweaks and adjustments would fare against such a slippery opponent.
Winger toggled into pilot mode and let the nanoscale world of atoms and molecules and Brownian motion wash over him. It was like careening out of control down a waterfall but the sensation subsided in a few seconds.
For a few seconds, polygon and tetrahedral shapes sleeted past him and he fought instinctively against the current. Then he relaxed and ping-ponged from one impact to another as his atomgrabber reflexes took over. After each bounce, Winger slingshotted forward, like tacking against an intermittent gale-force wind.
It wasn’t long before ANAD’s sensors detected the outer edge of the generator swarm. Fierce nanobotic activity, washing through all bands, overloaded his sensors and he had to turn down the gain. Thermals, acoustics, EM, every band was slammed with energy, as the quantum device cycled through probability states and lit off decoherence waves.
A swarm of autonomous nanobotic mechanisms, configured to generate quantum states and somehow alter the very structure of spacetime, was so far beyond anything Winger had ever dreamed of that it might as well have been magic.
Or something from another world.
The line of bots looked like a seam of light from the visuals Winger got back. Dead ahead, an array of assembler bots had formed a defensive line and was quickly closing the gap. Winger swallowed hard as the first acoustic image of the mechs settled into view.
Each assembler was shaped like a squat barbell, with top and bottom spheres of pulsating molecule groups bristling with effectors of every conceivable shape and type. The connecting columns were themselves multi-stranded chains of peptides, able to extend and contract the whole structure with lightning speed. The barbells rotated in unison, whirling like tiny motors. Whiplike propulsors churned at either end, lending the bot matchless maneuverability.
Fantastic engineering, Winger realized. Quantum Corps had nothing like it. But before he could probe further for more details, the entire defensive line had whipped forward, almost as a single unit, and enveloped ANAD and its replicant swarm without warning.
Before Winger could even react, he got warnings left and right on his coupler circuit:
***Carbene effectors disabled***
***Hydrogen abstractors disabled***
***Port propulsor disabled***
“I’m losing control!” he told himself. ANAD’s response was sluggish and he soon realized why.
All along the line of engagement, the enemy bots had unraveled their multi-stranded peptides and wrapped themselves tightly around each ANAD assembler, hugging the assemblers with arms of collapsing molecules.
Soon the entire line was a tangled snare of peptide chains, like balls of twine hopelessly knotted together.
But this time, ANAD had come with one great tactical advantage.
***ANAD altering config to match…reconfigging propulsors…reconfigging electron lens…reconfigging enzymatic knife and bond disruptors…reconfigging pyridine probes…ANAD closing for attack***
Winger watched dumbfounded as what he had once known as ANAD, the Autonomous Nanoscale Assembler/Disassembler, completely reconfigured itself into a new structure, something he had never seen before.
“ANAD, what the hell are you doing…right in the middle of—“ but he realized that the little bot had lifted files and operating data from the miniature quantum device at the warehouse and managed to decrypt at least some of the files. The configuration he had chosen would give him at least a starting tactical advantage.
As the swarms closed, Winger could ‘see’, through acoustic and EM images on his viewer, that the alien swarm was changing config even faster. A dizzying array of configs came and went as the alien bots cycled through their program. In speed of replication, the changes were like nothing Winger had ever seen before.
How the hell do you fight something that won’t stay still long enough to engage?
Surprisingly, ANAD answered him.
***Base, ANAD has processed the basic replication algorithm of the enemy…it is a fourth-order polynomial function but still predictable if the terms and coefficients are known…altering config to match***
ANAD had decrypted enough of the files to process the replication pattern and could predict at any time what state the enemy swarm would be in.
From that crucial bit of intelligence, ANAD could engage the enemy at a critical moment, slam a few picojoules of electron energy into the bots and hopefully disrupt the pattern, slow it down long enough to directly engage the enemy.
It was just a theory, just a tactical plan, but Johnny Winger could see no other way.
“ANAD, go ahead. Engage when ready—“
The tiny assembler swarm did just that.
Winger’s viewer image careened crazily and the image lit up like a supernova had just gone off. When the intense light of countless trillions of bond disruptors discharging began to subside, he could just make out a blurry scene of chaos and floating debris, loose molecules and shredded peptide chains.
It was like jamming a wrench in a spinning turbine. ANAD’s ability to predict the enemy’s config state ahead of time had allowed him to zap the swarm with just the right energy at just the right place and the enemy swarm had thrashed itself nearly to pieces in the ensuing wreckage.
The generator buzzed like a stuck fly and spun down.
“Skipper—“ it was Sheila Reaves, a few meters behind him, “the deco waves have stopped. Just reading background thermals now, a minimal EM signature. Bands are clearing…what the hell happened?”
Winger came up from his nanoscale view of things and saw what the DPS tech meant.
Ten meters ahead, the generator platform throbbed slowly, almost like a living thing, its constituent swarm bots steadily losing structure, losing config, as ANAD slammed them again and again with pulses of electrons.
“It’s ANAD, Sheila. He’s found a way to engage the platform. It was all a big swarm and he’s decrypted its basic rep algorithm. That was the soft underbelly of the whole device.” Even as he explained what had happened to the rest of the Detachment, the generator swarm began dissolving, losing recognizable shape. In a few moments, it had dematerialized into an amorphous fog and merged imperceptibly into the background glow of bots and swarms that filled the chamber.
“Jeez, this place is like a swarm nursery,” said Turbo Fatah.
“You may be right,” Winger admitted. “ANAD, pull back and reconfig for withdrawal. Anybody reading quantum activity now? Decoherence waves…anything?”
Spivey, Klimuk, D’Nunzio...all came back with negatives.
“Got nothing, Skipper. Deader than dirt. What happened?”
Winger advanced cautiously toward where the generator platform had once been. “I don’t know, exactly. ANAD, are you reading me?”
***ANAD receives…now reconfiguring State One…swarm re-positioning to scan for remnants***
“ANAD, that generator platform…it was all just a big swarm?”
***Affirmative, Base…ANAD has disassembled swarm entity into constituent parts…now scanning for density fluctuations…now detecting nano debris in scattered clusters…ANAD detaching sub-swarm element to disassemble***
“There’s your answer,” said Dana Tallant. She moved through the loose bot formations and clouds like a diver walking on the ocean floor. Her own protective swarm kept them off, sparkling and flashing like a ghostly apparition. “The whole thing’s just atom fluff now. Imagine that, Wings…the entire quantum generator nothing more than a few gazillion molecular assemblers.”
“Yeah, but what kind of assemblers? What kind of config can squeeze spacetime like a lemon and pucker the whole Solar System?”
“Skipper, didn’t you tell us there was another device, or swarm like this, on Mars?” asked Sergeant Kip Detrick. The IC2 was monitoring ANAD’s progress in re-grouping on his wristpad, ready to intervene if necessary.
“That’s what Q2 was told. Frontier Corps detective named Price sent some case files from Mariner City. The descriptions sound a lot like this gizmo.”
“Well, now that ANAD has the key to its basic replication algorithm,” said Mighty Mite Barnes, “we ought to be able to make quick work of that one too.”
Winger, Tallant and the rest of the Detachment probed about the chamber for a few more minutes. The bulk of the remaining swarms moved languidly about the space, coalescing and dispersing according to some unknown rhythm.
“ANAD, detach sub-swarm element for protective screening. I don’t want to leave this place unguarded. There’s a chance that somehow this swarm could re-constitute itself and form up another generator. CQE’s, we got outside comms?”
Both Communications and Quantum Engineering specialists, Deeno D’Nunzio and Ozzie Tsukota, replied in the affirmative.
Johnny Winger and the Hellas Enigma Page 18
