***Those demonio creatures have me worried, Boss….colonies of nanoscale mechanisms…gives me the creeps…***
“ANAD’s right,” Winger added. “We’ve got to find out what’s behind these creatures Dr. del Compo found.”
“Lieutenant Winger,” Kraft looked curiously at the atomgrabber, “I know we approved implanting ANAD into containment in your shoulder, but hang it, it’s friggin’ bizarre when you get involved in one-way conversations.”
“Yeah, Wings,” said Tallant, “think you could clue us in once in awhile?”
Winger shrugged. “ANAD was just saying those creatures, demonio or whatever, that Dr. del Compo found give him the creeps.”
Kraft hmmpphhed and commanded SOFIE to put up the raw investigative files from the BioShield ‘bots that had detected the disturbances. “How can a device the size of a molecule get the creeps, for Chrissakes? It’s starting to act like my teen-aged daughter.”
Winger found himself defending the little assembler all the time. “Doc Frost says ANAD’s processor is that powerful…he’s got the cognitive abilities of a small child.”
“And the temperament too, sounds like,” Tallant said. “But what if you have to spank him?”
Winger reddened. “It’s not like that at all—“
“Never mind,” Kraft interrupted. He paced about the tank, studying the displays SOFIE had put up. Real-time feed from BioShield nanobots patrolling the Earth’s atmosphere showed up as undulating virtual cloud masses, as swarms of the nanoscale mechanisms probed and sniffed for illegal nanobotic activity, biohazards and environmental outlaws, all part of UNIFORCE’s new mandate. Isolated pockets of disturbances were highlighted, with the nature of threat attached as floating tags around dancing whirlpools. The whirlpools over central South America and the other places Camois had mentioned had no descriptive tags at all…only blank fields hovering nearby, as if BioShield couldn’t figure out what was going on.
“We’ve got to get a handle on this before it spreads too far,” the Battalion commander said. “Winger--?”
“Yes, sir?”
“You sit down with Tallant and put together a full ANAD team for insertion. People, equipment, tactics, the works. Pull from 1st Nano, and 1st Bio as well. We might just be looking at a counter-twist mission here and I want to be ready.”
Thinking of the demonios, and how severely the epidemic of twist, or pirated, rogue DNA had infected parts of the world, Winger nodded gravely. “You thinking these things could be a gene experiment gone bad, sir?”
“I don’t know what to think anymore. Red Hammer’s up to something and it’s big. All I know is what I can see: BioShield’s run into something it can’t figure out and it can’t stop and people are dying because of it. That’s all we need to know. CINCQUANT’s given us our orders…now we have to execute.” His stomach churned at the scenarios they’d already played out…none of them had a happy ending. “UNIFORCE has given this thing a UNICON Purple priority. That means we move fast. Lieutenant, I’m forming an ANAD detachment immediately. You’ll be in command but I’m pulling elements from anywhere I can. Get over to Mission Prep and get your gear ready for a little recon trip to Valencia. I’ll notify a hyperjet to stand by.”
“On my way,” Winger said. He and Tallant hustled out of Ops to head over to the Ready Room at Mission Prep, across the quadrangle, to go over personnel and gear.
On the sprint across the grassy expanse of the quad, Winger and Tallant ran headlong into Holt and Reinhart, from 1st Bio.
“Hey, Wings,” called Holt. “I hear you’re off to South America, with half my people. Sure you don’t need some help with all those creepy-crawly things?”
Winger was deep in thought, listening to ANAD chatter over his internal neural circuit.
Nanotroopers Episode 9: Demonios of Via Verde Page 4
