the darkened hut at the edge of the clearing, set off with twine and rope from the rest. Bright red and blue majombe spirit faces had been fashioned out of straw and hung all around the hut.
Enkare called the procession to a halt. The villagers formed a ring around the abandoned hut. He pointed to a mound of rock and dirt behind. The mound was shrouded with a faintly visible gel, wispy as a spiderweb, secured to the ground, forming a ghostly dome over the site.
"Mortangi…Soweto enkilosa…dazo…dazo."
"The gravesite," Udinka announced. His face was ashen. The Territorial troops hung back, visibly disturbed, muttering among themselves.
Winger started forward but McTierney held him up. "Not just yet, chum. See that shimmering. UN bioweb. This is a Level Four isolation site. You'll need the UN codes to breach containment."
Winger swallowed hard. "Right. Sorry. I was just--"
McTierney nodded. "Anxious."
"DPS1…front and center!" Winger ordered.
Sergeant Sheila Reaves was a Defense and Protective Systems specialist. She was a chatterbox redhead with a sniper's rating in coil-gun competition. As DPS for the Detachment, she had responsibility for dealing with protective gear, even UN stuff. In seconds, she had worked her way up to the edge of the clearing and produced a small keypad.
"Got it, boss. I'm dialing up the UN codes now."
Winger circled the shimmering field of microgel mesh. "Corporal Nguyen, get everybody back at least twenty meters. I want to expand that bioweb far enough for five people to work inside it."
An Nguyen was DPS2. With Mighty Mite Barnes and Hoyt Gibbs, he pushed and cajoled the villagers further away from the gravesite, giving the bioweb room to expand. As that was being done, Reaves found the UN frequencies on her keypad and started sending.
"Uh oh--"
Winger came over. "What is it, Sergeant?"
Reaves showed the Lieutenant the screen. "We've had activity here…recent activity. See that--" she fingered some graphs. "Nanomech activity…right here…inside the web boundaries. The bioweb's been cycled several times, in the last few months. And here--signatures of nanomech. Molecule debris…heat fused soil…organic residue."
The hairs stood up on the back of Winger's neck. It was a feeling he had long ago learned to pay attention to. He summoned Chief Enkare, and Udinka.
"Does he know anything about this?"
Udinka translated. Enkare nodded gravely. Then he nodded more vigorously, gesticulating from Nalinka to the hut to the clearing.
"Chunya sumbawanga mpanda mpeke mawaru! Mpeke mawaru…dazu!"
Udinka nodded, translating, "He says a group of white men were here a month ago, working around the gravesite. They had guards. Wouldn't let anyone near."
"What were they doing?"
Udinka translated that and got a quick reply. "He doesn't know. They came one night and left the next day."
Winger rubbed his chin. "I don't like this. DPS?"
"Yes, sir?"
"You've got bioweb control now?"
"I'm into the UN channels. I can make the thing sing and dance, if you want, Lieutenant.”
"Expand the web perimeter, like I said." He turned to Dana Tallant, his CC2. "We need to push everybody back, way back. If there's been mech activity here, recent activity--"
Tallant was already hand waving the Detachment to push the villagers away. "I'm on it. Come on, move back…move back…." Udinka ordered some of his own troopers to form a perimeter, now twenty meters back.
"Get into your suits," Winger ordered. "I'm not sure what we've got here."
It took the Detachment half an hour to get into their suits and get powered up. Winger let the servos level him as he knelt at the edge of bioweb, looking through his 'scope for fibers, treads, any signs of recent human presence at the edge of the isolation zone. There was plenty.
"Okay, DPS, do it."
Reaves sent commands through her keypad to the bioweb controller. Instantly, the shimmering changed color, becoming more opaque as the web generator expanded the clean zone. In less than a minute, the web had grown to a faintly pulsating iridescence, washing over Winger and the rest of the Detachment, eventually growing to enclose most of the clearing. It was eerie and vaguely unsettling and Winger found himself subconsciously holding his breath, as if a great wall of water were crashing over them.
Now they were inside, inside the hot zone of containment, where HNRIV and UN antidotes had dueled inside the body of Soweto.
Winger knelt at the mound of rocks. "Open it up," he said and started pulling rocks away with his hands. Tallant, Winger and several others joined in.
Moments later, they stopped suddenly.
Lieutenant--" it was Reaves again, her eyepiece glowing red with warning icons. "--I got nano residue all over the place…Jesus, big spikes in carbon and silicon, assembler debris, molecule fragments all over the place, radicals galore…."
"Get Superfly up…" Winger ordered. "Fast!"
Nguyen's hypersuit whirred as he tapped out commands on his wrist pad. Superfly was a swarm defense net for the detachment, a horde of micro-entomopters, that surrounded the unit and became its eyes and ears against nanomech assault. In seconds, the swarm had formed up, a throbbing gray blur filling the clearing like real flies. Nguyen dispersed the swarm to a mid-range surveillance distance, quickly forming a huge dome of nearly invisible sensors around the village of Banikaiyan.
The villagers dropped to their knees, eyes wide, as the swarm deployed.
"Superfly's up and in position, Lieutenant."
"Very well." Winger let the others finish knocking down the rock mound. When they were done, they found the grave empty.
"What the hell-?"
Winger whirred in his suit to a kneeling position, probing the soft ground. He'd seen a faint streak of white ashy particles under the last stone.
"I wouldn't do that, sir--" DPS1 Reaves came over, probing with her own sensors. "That's nanomech residue…organics, from what I'm seeing--"
"Soweto--?"
Tallant was kicking at the streaked dirt with the toe of her laminate boot. "Looks like it, Lieutenant."
"Mech assault…Jesus Christ--he's been--"
McTierney's face was visible against the outer shimmer of the web. "What is it, mates? What's happening in there?"
Winger stood up. "There's nobody here, Doctor. Soweto's gone. Nanomech disassembly, it looks like."
"What the devil--" McTierney's voice pinched. "Are you sure?"
"Quite sure," Winger said. "Someone's been here, and recently. We've got residue of nano activity, organic remnants. There was a human body here. But no more. Just a few stray atoms."
Through the faint veil of the bioweb, the Detachment could hear murmurs and raised voices, coming from the villagers. Winger slipped through the bioweb boundary and emerged into the dusty afternoon sunlight, squinting to see what was happening.
Enkare and Nalinka were engaged in heated argument, right in front of Soweto's hut. Other villagers were taking sides. There was shoving in the back, as more crowded in, jostling Udinka's troops, who wrestled and shoved back, trying to keep order.
"Mortange…mortange…kip wezi kananga!"
McTierney himself had been pushed to the outside of the melee, as Colonel Udinka waded in, shouting, three troopers wielding batons behind him. It took several moments for the Territorial soldiers to calm things down.
"What's going on?" Winger asked.
McTierney worked his way through the throng. "Enkare's upset. Nalinka too. Soweto's grave was robbed. They're afraid. Afraid of Banik, the spirit in the volcano. What did you find in there?"
Winger shook his head, powering down the hypersuit. He unlatched the helmet faceplate. "Nothing…that's the problem. Somebody got inside the bioweb and did a number on Soweto. Burned him down to atoms. Full disassembly. But they left organic residue…like they wanted us to fin
d it."
"Damned peculiar, if you ask me." McTierney stroked his red beard, batting away flies as he did so. "I saw the body. I was here at the burial. I watched the ceremony."
"Nobody around here could have done this," Winger said. "I don't know who did…but I've got an idea." He peered into the crowd, still roiling with shouts, jostling with Udinka's troops. "Where's the widow?"
"Nalinka?" McTierney pointed out the tall somber woman with the blue checkered akhebay scarf and bone necklace. "That's her. You want to talk to her?"
Winger ordered the Detachment to de-suit. "And Sheila--" he radioed to Reaves, "--secure the bioweb. Don't touch anything. Just get out of there." To McTierney: "Actually, I want to do a probe. Launch ANAD inside her and see what's going on."
McTierney swallowed hard, as he followed Winger over to Soweto's widow. "This should be interesting."
Johnny Winger introduced himself. Dana Tallant came to, figuring a woman's touch was surely needed here.
He explained what he wanted to do, as simply and gently as he could. Udinka tried to translate, but stopped when Nalinka's eyes grew wide. Enkare, the chief, was adamantly opposed. Nalinka simply stared in disbelief.
"She was treated with your antidote, wasn't she?" Winger asked.
McTierney nodded. "I treated her myself. An early version. It worked fairly well, but not without some complications. She had HNRIV same as her husband, virulent strain, from my tests. Nasty time, we had with her too…high fever, edemas all over her, tissue hemorrhaging, spasms, seizures and convulsions." The Scot shuddered at the memory. "It was a struggle, even so. She was lucky."
"Doc, I want to send ANAD inside Nalinka's brain, exploratory expedition. She was infected with early HNRIV, you said. But she hasn't suffered any of the post-treatment symptoms you told us about. Neural impairment…limbic system trauma?"
"Not that I'm aware of." He asked Udinka to interrogate Nalinka about her recovery.
The woman listened, shaking with fear, then shook her head vigorously.
"Nalombe…ni mortange!"
McTierney got the translation. "She insists she's fine. And she doesn't want to do this."
Winger was frustrated. "Tell her we can help find the body of her husband…it's the best way."
Translations were done. Nalinka was still reluctant, her eyes wide, pleading, looking from Udinka to Enkare to Winger.
But bit by bit, her resistance was worn down. McTierney's idea that the spirit of Banik be invoked overcame her remaining objections. Forlorn and spent, her eyes lingered on Chief Enkare with dread. Her daughters and neighbors consoled her, hugging and murmuring in her ear. Nalinka finally relented, convinced she was soon join her dead husband in the infernal fires of Banik.
At length, Enkare decided Johnny Winger could do what he was asking.
"But enkasa will guide you…protect Nalinka from evil. Enkasa will lead you in this."
McTierney whispered in Winger's ear, as the Lieutenant acknowledged the chief's help. "That's the spirit doctor. The enkasa is the village's shaman and medicine man. That's him over there." He indicated an older, portly man with an elaborate black and white headband and clinking bone necklaces. "I don't know his name."
Enkare and Nalinka and the enkasa went inside their mud and thatch hut and came out a few moments later. Nalinka was draped with ritual necklaces and beads and colored mud had been daubed around her face. She seemed more at ease.
The enkasa motioned Winger over, took hold of the Lieutenant's hand and firmly placed his fingers in a wad of colored mud on Nalinka's forehead.
"Ni mortange…kulu Nalinka eskina somoru."
Colonel Udinka translated. "He says now you are the same soil. Dirt to dirt. Now your hands are protected too."
Winger was touched but anxious to get started. He smiled at Nalinka, took her trembling hands in his own. "We'll be in and out in no time. Don't you worry. Okay, IC's, let's get her prepped and ready. Deeno, break out TinyTown. We'll set up inside her hut. Prepare to launch ANAD."
Nalinka's hut was a round twig and branch affair, draped with a facing of mixed mud, water and cow dung. The pungent smell took some getting used to. There was a hard-packed mud floor and a small fire pit for cooking. Wood slats partitioned the place into zones for children and small animals. A bed of tanned hide dominated one zone.
"Set up there," Winger ordered. He helped Nalinka lie down. She was already sleepy, her eyes heavy from sedation. She was unconscious a few moments later, unaware of the TinyTown mobile containment cart being wheeled in beside the bed.
The oddity of doing an ANAD insertion in a Tuareg hut in a tiny west African village wasn't lost on the Lieutenant.
It was a whole new way of fighting a war and Johnny Winger knew that half the time, they were inventing tactics as they went along.
"Okay, Lieutenant," Dana Tallant patted down the incision she had just made in the side of Nalinka's skull. "Subject's prepped and ready."
Winger handed Deeno D’Nunzio the injector tube, attached by hose to the containment chamber. Deeno was the detachment's CQE1. "Steady even suction, Deeno. ANAD ready to fly?"
The IC1, Hoyt Gibbs, came back, "Ready in all respects, Lieutenant."
"Vascular grid?"
"Tracking now. We'll be able to follow the master just fine. I'll replicate once we're through the blood-brain barrier."
"Watch for capillary flow," said Winger. "When her capillaries narrow, your speed will increase. And viscosity will stay up."
"Like slogging through molasses. ANAD's inerted and stable…ready for insertion."
The insertion went smoothly enough. A slug of plasma forced the replicant master into Nalinka's capillary network at high pressure. Winger got an acoustic pulse seconds later and selected Fly-by-Stick to navigate the system. A few minutes' run on its propulsors brought the Autonomous Nanoscale Assembler/Disassembler to a dense fibrous mat of capillary tissues. The image soon appeared on Winger's IC panel.
"Ready for transit," he told Gibbs. "Cytometric probing now. I can force these cell membranes open any time."
Gibbs used ANAD's acoustic coupler to sound the tissue dam ahead, probing for weak spots. "There, Lieutenant, right to starboard of those reticular lumps…that's a lipid duct, I'd bet a hundred bucks. Try there."
Winger steered ANAD into the vascular cleft of the membrane. He twisted his right hand controller, pulsing a carbene grabber to twist the cleft molecules just so, then released the membrane lipids and slingshot himself forward. Seconds later, ANAD was floating in a plasma bath, dark, viny shapes barely visible off in the distance. The plasma was a heavy viscous fluid. Winger tweaked up the propulsor to a higher power setting and took a navigation hack off the vascular grid.
"Ventral tegmentum, Lieutenant. Just past the mesoencephalic nucleus. Looks like we're in."
Winger navigated ANAD through the interstices of Nalinka's brain for the better part of an hour. He had programmed the assembler to send an alarm when it encountered any kind of unnatural activity…especially assembler maneuvering or replication. If there were any remnants of HNRIV left in her brain, he wanted to be ready.
"Hopefully, the last treatment finished them off," he muttered to himself.
At 1824 hours, ANAD sent the alarm.
The imager screen was at first murky, crowded with the spikes and cubes of dissolved molecules. Lumpy, multi-lobed sodium molecules darted across their view like shadowy ping-pong balls. Winger studied readouts from ANAD's sounder…something was there, hidden in the data traces on the scope. He fiddled with the gain on the imager, tweaking it, subtracting foreground clutter.
Something approximately sixty nanometers in one dimension, narrow with a globe structure at one end…and scores of probes, effectors, cilia, whatever. Incredible mobility…triple propulsors beat an idling rhythm as ANAD closed in….
Gibbs let out a whoop. "Will you look at tha
t?"
McTierney came closer, squinted at the vague, fuzzy outlines on the screen. "Human Neuro-Receptor Inhibiting Virus, mates. A whole colony of them. A welcoming committee, it would appear. Come to see what we're about."
Winger's fingers flew over the interface controls. "We're about to check this joker out…" Quickly, he signaled ANAD to prime its defensive mechanisms, and slowed its approach to a crawl.
Reconnoiter first. He remembered a line from Sun Tzu, the Hunt Valley wargames last spring….
He who is skilled hides in the most secret recesses of the earth.
Under Winger's guidance, ANAD maneuvered among the jostling molecules of chlorine and sodium and potassium. A huge kinked snakelike cluster of hematite molecules drifted by. Winger had an idea. He signaled ANAD to grab a few hematites as a shield. Seizing oxygen atoms with its effectors, ANAD clutched several molecules.
Gradually, the shape and size of the HNRIV device became clearer. Bristling with effectors and arms, it looked like a miniature Apollo Lunar Module. The head was a multi-lobed cluster of spheres and hexagons; inside the churning electron cloud dimmed out any detail.
Below the head was a cylindrical sheath, covered with pyramidal facets and undulating beads of proteins - the assembler's probes and effectors. Winger was frankly awed at the sight.
"Hell of a lot of gear for this bastard," he said
"So many different kinds of effectors," Tallant marveled.
Indeed, the horde of enemy assemblers were rigged out like battleships, with devices for every conceivable mechanical or chemical action. A flatplane baseplate capped one end of the sheathed body. The tail structure was a dense thicket of fibers, each tipped with penetrator clusters. The penetrators enabled the virus to attach to and enter any structure.
Winger brought ANAD to a complete stop. The hairs on the back of his neck bristled. Something wasn't quite right, but he couldn't put his finger on it.
"Dr. McTierney…what do you make of this?"
The Scottish virologist was amazed at the images ANAD was returning. "It's the basic viral structure we've seen before with HNRIV. But it's enhanced, somehow. Changed or evolved. I've never seen so many effectors. Amazing. That probe for instance--" he fingered a dark, indistinct structure to one side of the nearest device--"looks just like a saw. And that--I believe I recognize…I'll be damned--"
Winger had seen it too. "Sorting rotor?"
"That's what it looks like." At McTierney's request, Winger fiddled with the resolution, managed to tweak the view even sharper. Dim outlines became clearer. "A segment of a sorting rotor. Cam-driven with carbene grabbers and--" he squinted down at the imager, adjusted his glasses "--looks like--yep, diamondoid follower rods. "Probably process upwards of several hundred thousand molecules per cycle." McTierney shook his head with grudging respect. "Neat workmanship. But I'd bet my aunt Emma's life savings that bugger's not part of the original template. This is new."
Dana Tallant was growing uneasy. A small crowd had entered the hut, gathered around the prostrate body of Nalinka, now draped with the mesh of the vascular grid. Enkare fidgeted with beads