***Effectors are enabled…let me at ‘em***
“ANAD…launch now!”
As Barnes and the others huddled in the lee of Gopher’s hull, the translucent and iridescent shimmering blue globe settled into a nearby snow drift. In moments, it had disappeared beneath the snow, leaving only a backlit glow, like fireflies frozen in time, steadily dissipating. In time, it was gone.
“What now, Skipper?” asked Swanson. She was sighted in on her HERF gun, covering her assigned sector of the perimeter.
“We wait. Any contacts? Any evidence we’ve been detected?”
Swanson checked with Gopher’s systems. “Nothing. No EM, only background thermals, not even any quantum wake. Acoustics indicates the wind direction may be shifting…more to the southwest. Weathersats say there’s a front headed for the valley.”
“No nano threats?”
“Negative. The board is clean.”
Barnes said, “Then we may have achieved what we wanted….complete tactical surprise.”
“Aren’t we kind of exposed up here?” asked Gibby.
“It’s a risk we’ll have to take. We’ve got about three hours before ANAD is in position. Timeline says Major Winger should be in position an hour after that. Bodle…let’s get SuperFly up and nosing about. Even in this weather, I’d like to keep a close eye on what’s happening.”
“Roger that, Skipper.” The DPS1 went over to the geoplane’s tail pod and withdrew three small suitcase-sized containers. He opened the first container and fiddled with the contraption inside. Seconds later, like a dormant bird, it sat up and began articulating its wings and rotors. Warmed up and synched with its base station, the entomopter whirred and lifted off, heading off into the snowy night sky. Bodle did this three times, powering up and launching each device skyward.
“SuperFly away, Skipper,” he reported. “As soon as they link up, we’ll be getting data back.”
The Himalaya Strike mission was four-fold: (1) to disable the comm links between Config Zero and its offworld benefactors, (2) destroy Config Zero itself using the INDRA virus that Winger would insert (3) render the base inoperable for future Red Hammer operations and (4) locate the source of Red Hammer’s archive, the master Sphere that some intel specialists at Q2 believed had to exist, an archive likely in contact with the alien race that had taken over the cartel years before and was now using it to achieve their own ends.
The plan was that, in the chaos of the artificial tremors ANAD would generate, 1st Nano would be able to get inside the compound and achieve these objectives with a minimum of defense and resistance from Red Hammer. Just to make sure, after the tremors began, the ANAD master would rendezvous with Gopher at coordinates just outside the base perimeter to form a protective screen around the nanotroopers against the likely Red Hammer defensive nanobots they would encounter.
For nearly three hours, Gopher and Mole sat alone and motionless in a fog-shrouded, snowy valley three kilometers from the central Red Hammer base. Aboard the surfaced geoplane, Barnes waited tensely for the big show to begin.
Finally, word came from the swarm of tiny assemblers.