***ANAD launching…all effectors primed…propulsors at full…I’m coming to the rescue, Base…who are all these characters?***

  Doing a combat insert on another trooper was something they’d practiced a few times in nog school, under controlled conditions, with plenty of safety features engaged, using a de-natured ANAD that really couldn’t hurt a flea. But this was completely different.

  Now tightly lashed to her bed, but still thrashing and convulsing, Deeno D’Nunzio wasn’t the kind of battlefield any nanotrooper expected to encounter. When he’d joined the Corps, the recruiters had regaled Winger with visions of mass swarm assaults across deserts, snowy fields, mountains, even the ocean. And yet, since he’d graduated nog school, the bulk of 1st Nano’s ops had been inside swarmed and squirming human beings. The battlefield was now five feet six inches long, weighed a hundred and twenty pounds and was fighting him like an enraged tigress, straining so hard at the straps that Winger figured she might just burst.

  “Deeno…Deeno, hold still, will you? ANAD, config C-22. Steer heading—“ he estimated a bearing to her bobbing head, to the lachrymal ducts around her eyes “—one five oh degrees, set propulsor to half.”