Nanotroopers Episode 11: Engebbe

by Philip Bosshardt

  Operation Quantum Shadow had a hot date with a severe weather front just now moving across the Tibetan plateau from central Asia. Alpha Detachment would need to be in place in less than twenty-four hours. Bravo Detachment was destined for Engebbe and the dig site where the ancestors of ANAD had come to life three billion years ago.

  Both missions were deeply entangled, thought Winger, though not in the ways that Doc Frost ever imagined. If Quantum Corps were to have any chance of defeating Red Hammer, the link between the cartel and their offworld benefactors would have to be broken… broken for good.

  Johnny Winger didn’t want to think about what would happen if they failed.

  Chapter 3

  “Quantum Shadow – Alpha Detachment”

  Ghumhlang, Nepal

  January 22, 2049

  0230 hours

  The Lama Zohar hadn’t seen such a gathering since the day the monastery opened twenty five years ago. He stood on the stone parapets of the ancient dun-colored building, originally built during the days of Alexander the Great and watched a flock of black lifters streak by overhead, then settle to earth by the entrance to the abandoned Pura River ruby mine. At the same time the lifters came, a convoy of military trucks and transports roared through the village on their way up the meandering gravel road to the same Pura River mine entrance two kilometers away.

  All the trucks bore the blue earth logo of UNIFORCE. Decades after Pura River had been abandoned, the Army suddenly and without warning had acquired a keen interest in the old mine. Zohar wondered why.

  As he watched the assembling of military men and equipment at the head of the rugged valley, Lama Zohar carefully poured a small pouch of black seeds into a bowl on the edge of the parapet. He made a swirling pattern in the seeds with his fingers, mumbled a soft incantation to the Enlightened One, then poured the seeds back into his pouch, repeating the process several times.

  A nearby teacher, a rinpoche clad in saffron robes from a distant monastery, observed Zohar carefully. The Lama explained, over the racket of the lifters: “One must endure the boredom of repetition eight times, before the natural energy of the seeds will come forth. Only then will you free yourself from want.”

  The rinpoche, a bespectacled and wrinkled old skeleton, nodded wisely. It was true. All things possessed their own life energy. One had but to still one’s mind to hear the rhythm of nature’s frequency. The teacher closed his eyes and willed himself to utter silence, slowing his breathing and heart rate with fierce concentration.

  Only the distant hum of lifter jets and a growing sense of foreboding interrupted the rinpoche’s meditation. Soon enough, he would inform his colleagues across the border all the details of what he had seen.

  For Johnny Winger, the recon force now gathering along the hard, pebbly banks of the Pura River was also quite a sight. Alpha Detachment had veetolled in on a squadron of lifters from Quantum Corps East base at Singapore. All of their gear was now being offloaded by men and packbots, marshaled in neat rows outside the mine entrance.

  The trucks and tracks were UNIFORCE motorized units, specifically UNIFORCE 1st South Asian Brigade, 2nd Company, or 2/1 UNIFORCE South, as it was known to the soldiers who manned the column. The commanding officer was a small-boned Indian officer with a high forehead, sunburned skin and a toothy smile, Captain Vanilu.

  Vanilu loudly supervised the deployment of 2/1, spreading his men and their robot totes around the perimeter of the valley, cordoning off the Pura River at the monastery on the south end and at a narrow pass in the higher elevations to the north.

  “We make you a secure perimeter,” Vanilu explained. “Keep the villagers out, while you set up.”

  Villagers, yes, thought Winger. And nosy Red Hammer spies too…they were probably all around them. But 2/1 UNIFORCE had no nanobot swarm defense embedded with it. For that mission, Alpha Detachment would be on its own.

  Time to put ANAD to work.

  “Fall out!” Winger ordered and the nearest lifter disgorged its crew into combat formation. Winger counted them off, as the troopers scattered to their duties around the landing zone.

  Operation Quantum Shadow was about to get underway.

  “Full hypersuits!” Winger yelled over the crewnet. “Get those tin cans on and zipped up! Get the gear staged forward to the mine entrance. Buddha, you and Witchy help DPS with all their gear.”

  “Oh, boy,” muttered Deeno D’Nunzio, as she snapped her helmet down and secured her own suit. Servos whirred as she flexed her limbs. “I just can’t wait to climb into my garbage can.”

  “It’s for your own good,” said Sheila Reaves, as she struggled with the HERF guns, rocking one back and forth until it could be hoisted onto a packbot for transfer. “You want to crawl like a worm through that old mine without one?”

  D’Nunzio wisecracked, “I don’t want to crawl through anything. And the only worm I want to see is in a tall cool glass of tequila.”

  For the next several hours, Alpha Detachment deployed its equipment around the entrance to the mine and checked out all their gear.

  Winger decided to launch ANAD before they got underway. It was against all regs, but he didn’t care. The tiny assembler seemed to behave better when it was allowed out of containment, congregating in flickering translucent swarms in odd corners of the LZ.

  ***It’s good to be out, Hub…ANAD currently in State 1 config, receiving signals on all channels…how do you read me?***

  “I read you just fine, ANAD,” Winger said, as he climbed onto a small open-frame railcar. The car would travel on rickety tracks to a small cave deep inside the mine, where the Detachment would set up their control center. “Just stay out of the way and don’t touch anything, okay?”

  ***ANAD is fully prepared to support the mission…all effectors are primed and ready…propulsors are at full charge…processor core initialized and set at zero state…just let me at ‘em***

  The Pura River ruby mine, abandoned years ago, had been chosen to host the Detachment’s command post while the op into Tibet was underway. It was well away from prying eyes, airborne and satellite, and access and defense were easier managed than an above-ground structure.

  The Detachment just managed to offload all its gear and scurry inside, before the lifters had to take off. A strong weather front was moving in from the northwest, across the Annapurna range.

  Storms and howling winds would soon be dancing across the tops of the mountains. One of them would serve well as ANAD’s ticket into Indian country.

  Time to get in the game, Winger told himself. He opened up his coupler circuit to ANAD, now hovering just outside the mine entrance.

  “ANAD, steer heading one five five, and go to max propulsor.” He eyed the approaching storm, just now boiling over the peaks of the nearest mountains. Already sleet was falling and the wind was picking up. “Your ride is here.”

  ***ANAD steering onto specified heading…configured for transit…folding all effectors…requesting replication values…***

  Winger gave that some thought, as he watched the Detachment load up their gear onto rickety rail cars. The cars would slide down old mine rail tracks to their makeshift command post deep inside. “ANAD, replicate small swarm…let’s say, one-tenth standard mass. That should give you enough friends to survive the trip and be ready to go at the target.”

  ***ANAD copies…replicating now…***

  Even as he watched, the master bot slammed atoms and built structure enough to be barely visible as a faint, flickering mist. The mist drifted upward and was soon caught up in the winds scouring down from the mountain peaks.

  “Safe ride, little guy,” muttered An Nguyen. The DPS2 fingered some beads around his neck, silently praying to his esteemed ancestors to watch over the bot.

  “Yeah…and kick ass when you get there,” Deeno D’Nunzio barked.

  Winger checked his wristpad, tuning the coupler a little. He felt more than heard a
little staticky fritzing in the back of his head. But finally, ANAD’s signal came through loud and clear. A quick check of all indicators showed ANAD was drifting up into the crosswinds mean and green.

  Now, as long as the met reports and the wind direction and about a thousand other things held up, ANAD would be over their target, disguised as snowflakes, in a matter of an hour.

  “ANAD, go ahead and configure C-22 and make sure everything’s buttoned up. I don’t want Red Hammer to be seeing any nanobotic thermals or EMs when you arrive. You’re a cloud of snowflakes, remember?”

  ANAD came back on the coupler, ***Configuring C-22…don’t worry, Base…ANAD will show up ninety-nine and forty-four one hundredths per cent pure as snow***

  Winger wondered where he had learned that. Sometimes, more often than he cared to admit, the bot’s neural net and deep learning algorithms surprised him.

  No surprises today, ANAD, he thought, as he finished helping D’Nunzio, Reaves and M’Bela load up the rail cars.

  “Tally ho, Skipper,” Deeno called out, from her perch on top of one car. “All aboard--!”

  The ancient train descended slowly, zigzagging on wobbly, unsteady tracks through the upper mine shaft and after pushing through clouds of dust, found its way down to a small cavern near the bottom, some one hundred meters below ground. There the Detachment set up their command post. The whole operation took less than half an hour.

  Straight away, Winger linked in with ANAD. After a few anxious moments, he managed to make contact. Satellite triangulation showed the storm front moving north as predicted, bearing directly toward the Paryang Valley. If the weather weenies were right, ANAD and his brood would be over the valley in an hour, looking for all the world like a small mass of snowflakes caught up in a low-pressure front barreling across the Tibetan plateau.

  “He’s just passing over the Tsangpo River, east of Shigatse,” Witchy M’Bela remarked, studying the figures on his own wristpad. “I make Paryang about thirty kilometers north by north east.”

  “If that front stays on course,” said Reaves. “That’s the big unknown.”

  “Hell of a thing,” D’Nunzio said, flexing her fingers absent-mindedly around the trigger of her HERF carbine. “I know it’s a recon mission, but I’d sure like to smash something good…gives those bastards some hot rf pancakes for breakfast.”

  Reaves snorted. “That’s the trouble with you, girl. You like to break things. Here you are a full-fledged nanotrooper, fresh out of nog school, and you’ve already forgotten your homework. Deception and diversion…remember how Major Walston kept pounding that into our heads in the classroom? Molecular Ops…make your bots look like something else…that’s how you win battles in the world of atoms and molecules.”

  “Yeah,” added Nguyen, “Even Sun Tzu knew that. He was the first nanotrooper… ‘…that general is skillful in attack whose opponent does not know what to defend, and he is skillful in defense whose opponent does not know what to attack.’”

  “You guys just kill me,” D’Nunzio said. “How about a little help with this gear—“

  They finished setting up their command post and took a brief break. M’Bela and D’Nunzio decided to explore a bit more of the cavern, while Winger kept his eyes glued to his wristpad, noting every few minutes the triangulated position of the swarm inside the storm front. Presently, he announced, “Paryang should be over the next range...unless I’m mistaken, that’s the Gangdise Shan right there—“

  When he was sure, he sent the command for ANAD to drop out of the storm front and began its descent toward the monastery. “And make a photon lens, too, ANAD…I want visuals on the target before we try to infiltrate.”

  ANAD came back, ***Changing heading to zero five oh, Base…revving my propulsors to kick out of this soup…going to be a bit choppy for awhile…forming up photon lens now***

  A few moments later, they had visuals over the Paryang Valley, dark and cloud-choked from the passing snow showers. Through the gloom, as ANAD grabbed more photons to sharpen resolution, the faint outlines of the monastery began to materialize. First, a slender pagoda came into view, then another. Then as ANAD descended and approached its target, the steeply swept angles of its slate roof became visible, gray and packed with snow. Orange lights shone through lotus blossom-shaped windows around the periphery of the main compound. Nothing moved in the courtyard. All was silent and heavy snow veiled the scene further as ANAD changed heading once again.

  Their initial target for infiltration was a pagoda at the southeast corner of the monastery.

  Winger ported the view ANAD was sending back to the local crewnet so the whole of Alpha Detachment would watch.

  Reaves asked, “Skipper, how far to the last known position of the big sphere?”

  The Detachment had met with Doc Frost and gotten a late briefing from Major Lofton at Q2 just before they had left Table Top. Winger consulted some notes. “It’s supposed to be mounted on a platform below ground. We’ll be using deco wakes to home on its location. Now, though, I’ve got to get ANAD reconfigged for entry…Deeno?”

  “Got it, Skipper. Use C-38…it’s got extra carbene effectors and a hardened main casing.”

  “You’ve got the disentangler template too?”

  D’Nunzio checked her own wristpad. “Loaded and checked, Lieutenant. Just say when.”

  The plan was to replicate the full disentangler from a config template, rather than try to carry the device into the enemy’s midst. They’d tested the template dozens of times at Table Top, fine-tuned it and debugged it and swore over it for many sleepless nights.

  This has to work, Winger said to himself. Otherwise, Quantum Shadow’s toast.

  It was a hell of a way to fight an enemy.

  ANAD, with its brood of bots, now configured as a few dust motes, approached the outer wall of the pagoda. Winger had decided to keep the photon lens going, so he could do a visual recon of the area.

  At the pagoda, ANAD found a tiny seam along the base of one window and, in no time, slid inside.

  Winger asked Sheila Reaves, functioning as DPS1: “Sheila, any sign we’ve been detected?”

  Reaves was nearby, working her own indicators on her wristpad. She had set up a small panel by the cave wall to take the wristpad feed and enlarge it. Now she studied the readouts: acoustic, thermal, electromagnetic. “Nothing, Skipper. It’s kind of eerie. I would have expected Red Hammer to have this place buttoned up tighter than a whore’s ass, but there’s nothing—I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”

  “Keep watching,” Winger told her. “It’s just possible we’ve done the impossible and gotten inside the cartel’s headquarters.”

  The visuals were grainy but Winger didn’t want to take any more bots for the photon lens…more bond breaking and atom grabbing would surely give ANAD away. Slow and steady, that was their ticket in.

  The pagoda interior was dimly lit, wood planks and lacquer screens everywhere, austere, with a small wooden pedestal in the center and incense candles everywhere. One entire wall was covered with shelves stacked five deep with golden Buddha heads. At ninety degree angles about the room, small shrines represented earth, air, fire and water. The Table of Many Wisdoms dominated the center.

  “Deeno, get your decoherence wake detector config ready…I want to take a reading here, give us a direction to go.”

  “Loaded now, Skipper,” the CQE said. “Ready to transmit.”

  “Send it.”

  D’Nunzio pecked a few keys on her wristpad. Moments later, ANAD reported back.

  ***Receiving new configs…label C-98 ‘Decoherence Wake Detection’…now loading into memory…Base, insufficient mass warning… I will have to minimize photon lens or replicate another round to form the detector***

  Winger spoke to ANAD through his coupler. “Negative on reps, ANAD. I don’t want do anything to attract attention. Minimize photon lens and use the bots to form up the wake detector
. And engage bond breaking damper when you do it…any thermal spike could set off alarms.”

  ***ANAD copies…pinching lens replicants for decoherence wake detection now***

  The Detachment held its breath, knowing full well that any config change could trigger some kind of defensive reaction. But nothing happened.

  “It may be a trap,” Reaves suggested. “Do nothing and let us in deeper and deeper…Skipper, recommending ANAD keep at least one quarter effector capacity for grabbers and probes…bond disrupters too.”

  Winger shook his head. “Negative, Sheila. We’ve got to get to wherever they’re keeping that big sphere. We have to save our reps for the disentangler, when it really counts.”

  Reaves shrugged. “Just trying to do my job, Lieutenant. I just hope ANAD makes it that far.”

  The first pings of deco wakes sounded on the crewnet.

  “Got a hit,” M’Bela announced. “It’s faint, but definite deco wakes. Steer left one two five degrees. And down. Below our level, at least fifty or sixty meters—“

  Winger sent the new heading. ANAD altered course, descending almost to floor level and found a tiny grate along one wall. The visuals were faint, but the opening could still be made out.

  “Looks like that’s our way in,” Winger decided. “ANAD, steer that heading and go to half propulsor. Deeno, load the disentangler template and get ready to send it.”

  “Copy that, Skipper.”

  The Detachment watched as the visuals took them from the pagoda floor through a small winding duct—could be ventilation, M’Bela suggested—and after nearly an hour’s traverse, ANAD emerged into a larger, cavern-like chamber…drifting out into the air like so many dust motes. No alarms sounded. No alerts were triggered.

  Johnny Winger held his breath, scarcely believing their luck.

  “Can you triangulate decoherence waves from here?” Winger asked. “We need some kind of bearing; there’s got to be some kind of quantum state generator around here…that’s how Red Hammer accesses the archives.”

  M’Bela scrolled through images on his helmet viewer, selecting one called Quantum Signals.