Nanotroopers
Episode 4: ANAD
Copyright 2016 Philip Bosshardt
A few words about this series….
1.Nanotroopers is a series of 15,000- 20,000 word episodes detailing the adventures of Johnny Winger and his experiences as a nanotrooper with the United Nations Quantum Corps.
2.Each episode will be about 40-50 pages, approximately 20,000 words in length.
3.A new episode will be available and uploaded every 3 weeks.
4.There will be 22 episodes. The story will be completely serialized in about 14 months.
5.Each episode is a stand-alone story but will advance the greater theme and plot of the story arc.
6.The main plotline: U.N. Quantum Corps must defeat the criminal cartel Red Hammer’s efforts to steal or disable their new nanorobotic ANAD systems.
Episode # Title Approximate Upload Date
1 ‘Atomgrabbers’ 1-14-16
2 ‘Nog School’ 2-8-16
3 ‘Deeno and Mighty Mite’ 2-29-16
4 ‘ANAD’ 3-21-16
5 ‘Table Top Mountain’ 4-11-16
6 ‘I, Lieutenant John Winger…’ 5-2-16
7 ‘Hong Chui’ 5-23-16
8 ‘Doc Frost’ 6-13-16
9 ‘Demonios of Via Verde’ 7-5-16
10 ‘The Big Bang’ 7-25-16
11 ‘Engebbe’ 8-15-16
12 ‘The Symbiosis Project’ 9-5-16
13 ‘Small is All!’ 9-26-16
14 ‘’The HNRIV Factor’ 10-17-16
15 ‘A Black Hole’ 11-7-16
16 ‘ANAD on Ice’ 11-29-16
17 ‘Lions Rock’ 12-19-16
18 ‘Geoplanes’ 1-9-17
19 ‘Mount Kipwezi’ 1-30-17
20 ‘Doc II’ 2-20-17
21 ‘Paryang Monastery’ 3-13-17
22 ‘Epilogue’ 4-3-17
Chapter 1
“Breakout”
Hong Kong, Special Autonomous Region
People's Republic of China
October 16, 2048
2:00 am
Deeno D’Nunzio and Mighty Mite Barnes had been trapped in a ground floor Stores room inside the castle atop Lions Rock for several hours before either trooper dared take a peek out through the window grate.
“See anything?” Barnes said. She was trying to inventory what was left of her personal kit from the explosion and swarm attack on top of the mountain. There wasn’t much left.
“Just some smoldering wreckage. No humans…none that I can see. Nothing that looks like a swarm…but I can’t really tell. I guess we were the lucky ones…don’t know where the Lieutenant and the others are.”
“I thought I saw them MOB’ed and carted off inside…like prisoners,” Barnes said. She laid out her gear on the tile floor and ticked off what was serviceable…half a hypersuit, my wristpad, a HERF carbine with half a charge, some mess items, burned food bars, one MOB canister (status unknown), a dry canteen…. She looked around at their surroundings for the first time. “What the hell is this place, anyway?”
“Some kind of castle…probably a tourist trap,” D’Nunzio muttered. She hopped down from the crate she had been standing on to look out. “Too bad we couldn’t have fallen into the pantry…or some kind of galley. I’m starving. Let’s look around—“
The two of them poked and reconnoitered for a few minutes. They were on a ground floor, multiple rooms filled with lacquered screens, rattan mats and wall coverings, gazillions of vases, ceramics, bronzes, jade sculptures and other antiquities.
“Probably worth ten fortunes,” D’Nunzio muttered.
“And nothing to eat. I’d trade one of these vases for some peanut butter crackers right about now.”
“Shhh…we don’t know who’s around…back to the first room.”
They crept back to their original hideout. Barnes peered out again through the grate. It was getting darker as the burning wreckage of the lifter began to gutter and fizzle out into smoldering ash heaps. “Don’t see anybody, but there could still be swarms and bugs in the area. There’s got to be road down off this rock heap…maybe a driveway down into Kowloon. We can hike downhill and grab some chow there…a burger joint or a noodle shop.”
“Yeah, or a sushi bar.”
Barnes made a face. “Sushi…where I come from, that kind of stuff is called bait.”
“I suppose the Lieutenant and everybody else is inside. We both saw them MOB’ed and carted off. Prisoners inside the Rock. But where? I’m not having any luck with my wristpad.”
Barnes sat back against a column and sighed. “Me neither…not a chirp. Ten to one, Red Hammer took all their gear. They don’t have a way to contact anybody.”
“Except for the ELTs.” The Emergency Locator Transmitters were surgically embedded in every nanotrooper when they finished nog school. “But I’m getting nothing…either the mountain’s blocking the signal or Red Hammer is.”
Barnes suddenly sat up straight. Something furry scuttled between them and she kicked blindly at it. Whatever it was, it scuttled off into a dark corner. “Hey, here’s an idea. What if there were residual ANAD bots outside, you know…kind of drifting around. They might have survived the Red Hammer attack, the MOB, all of it. Just a few stray bots, maybe.”
“Yeah, what about it?”
“Well, this: if we could locate some of these stray ANAD bots, maybe one of us could download some control and config apps from either Table Top or Singapore. There is a satlink, you know.”
D’Nunzio’s face brightened. She snapped her finger. “You’re right, girl. Quantsat. Dedicated network in orbit. If I could get the right apps into my wristpad or yours, we might could work with any stray ANAD bots, maybe get something going. I’m no code and stick girl, that’s for sure.”
“Me neither. But we’ve all had some cross-training. I’m guessing we don’t have a master bot outside, just barebones ANAD, but even so—it’s worth a shot.”
“Try it.”
So, Mighty Mite Barnes unfastened her wristpad and tapped on a few keys. She sent out a basic interrogation signal on a broadband frequency—trusting that Red Hammer wasn’t listening or hadn’t yet broken the encryption—and a few moments later, there came a faint series of beeps and chimes. Someone was answering.
D’Nunzio and Barnes looked at each other. “It’s the right kind of signal,” Mighty Mite muttered. “Faint, scattered. Must be just a few bots out there, replicant bots, maybe damaged bots. But they’re answering back…verified and authenticated and all that.”
D’Nunzio looked at the wristpad screen…showing signals and comm link status. “Well, I’m not sure what good a few bots will do…you don’t have the ability to control them with what you’ve got.”
Barnes clucked in mock disappointment. “Of ye of little faith…I can get the apps. Quantsat. Watch this—“ She pecked more on her keyboard, touching icons on the screen. Presently, a graphic of two hands shaking came up. The Quantsat Primary Link. “From what I remember in class, we’re using an encrypted, burst transmission, frequency-hopping link here. See that red box…it wants me to authenticate myself.”
D’Nunzio shrugged. “Mite, I sure hope to hell you know what you’re doing. One wrong signal and we might have killsats burning holes in our heads with particle beams.”
Barnes scoffed. “Nah…I’m not that bright. But I think I can do this—“ She tapped icons and pecked on her keyboard for a few minutes, swearing a few times, then, all of a sudden, the screen morphed into a graphic of a stylized satellite, with beams coming out of it. “Now, if I can remember the latest codes….” A
fter a series of authentication steps, some additional security verifications and a retinal scan from the pad’s imager—here, Barnes held the thing up to her eye—she was in. She pumped the air with a fist. “Yessss! It works…just like advertised.”
D’Nunzio admired the effort. “At least one of us was awake that day in class—now what?”
Barnes started poking around in a series of directories, folders and files. “Don’t need that…don’t need that…don’t want that. Ah, here’s one: Primary Functional Control of ANAD 1.0 Systems…sounds promising. Now, I’ll see if it’ll let me download the files to my pad here.”
Ten minutes later, Barnes was all smiles. “Look what I got—“ she held up her wristpad so D’Nunzio could see in the dim light. The screen listed half a dozen files…Primary Functional Control…Configuration Manager…Config Expeditor…Replication Manager…and several more. “All right here in my little bracelet. I never dreamed this would work but—“
“Yeah, you’re a friggin’ genius all right. But what are you going do with all that? You’re not an IC.”
“Try to talk to any stray ANADs outside.” Even as she said it, Barnes was already sending out control signals. She went to the grate and peered out. “I don’t think there’s enough bots to show up visibly, but you never know. I just told any ANAD bots within range to replicate a thousand times and home on my signal. Now…we watch.”
And to their surprise, a faint blue-white glow had formed midway between their position and the lifter wreckage. The wreckage still smoldered a dull red, so it was hard to be sure. But when the blue faintly glowing ball appeared right outside the window grate, Barnes let out a whoop.
“Hot damn…will you look at that! ANAD to the rescue….”
Somehow, some way, Mighty Mite Barnes had been able to signal, control, command replication and steer a small horde of slightly used ANAD nanobots to maneuver right to their window.
D’Nunzio just shook her head. “Old Ironpants’ll never believe this. Can you make the swarm bigger? And by the way, since there’s probably no master bot out there, how do you plan on controlling this motley crew of used bots?”
Barnes held up her hands. “With these. Manual piloting. Lieutenant Winger’s not the only atomgrabber around here…although he’s a damn sight better than me. Look, here’s my idea…we grow the swarm, see. I think I can do that. I got Config Manager with me. Give ‘em some weapons…bond disrupters, enzymatic knife, probes, you name it. Plus a special config—if I can do it—so they can drill through rock. Bore right into that old mountain. That’s how we go after the Lieutenant and Gibby and Nguyen. Red Hammer won’t be expecting a visit from that axis.”
“Are you out of your mind, Mite? You can’t pilot a swarm with your wristpad. And boring through solid rock…that’ll take days.”
“You got a better idea, Deeno?”
She didn’t. So they set to work making Barnes into a full-fledged atomgrabber.
While the download and the config changes were being made, D’Nunzio decided she would reconnoiter the castle a little further, try to find them something to eat and drink. “If I don’t get something into this finely chiseled tummy of mine pretty soon, I may have to eat you, Mite.”
She came back half an hour later with some cans of water and semi-edible packs of dry noodles.
The water tasted rusty and the noodles tasted like wood chips.
“We’ll probably get the runs but I don’t care,” said D’Nunzio between bites.
Finally, after several hours of expletives, a short nap, several pee and poop runs to a far corner and a lot of finger-crossing, Barnes announced she was ready. “I’ve given my boys certain weapons, really maxed out on propulsors and configged them for solid-phase transit. I’ve got three basic apps: control, replication and config manager. And I’ve got these stupid little cursors for control…that should be fun. You ready to go digging?”
“Ready as I’ll ever be. At least, Ironpants can’t say we didn’t try.”
Barnes sent her commands. Outside the grate, the now larger faint blue fog began to move away. Barnes had chosen a spot on the ground well outside the perimeter of the wreckage, tending more toward the side of the mountain where the Detachment had first fast-cabled down to a hatch or door. “I have no idea what heading to start on, so I’m going straight down. After a few meters, I’ll try to execute a turn, then spiral down further and hope to God ANAD can pick up some kind of ELT signal. Here goes—“
“Fire in the hole—“ D’Nunzio prayed. “Kick atomic ass down there, little guys.”
The blue shimmer descended on a small promontory at the far end of the mountain top. It settled onto the ground like a late-night fog—not uncommon in this part of Hong Kong—and lit up the mountain top like a guttering candle for a few moments. Soon enough, the rubble and dirt blazed with a fierce blue-white radiance as the swarm filtered into Shih Ho Mountain and attacked the hard frozen ground below. In minutes, the entire clearing was bathed in a white hot incandescence, as the globe of light gradually subsided into the earth, like a miniature sun setting over Kowloon City.
The biggest question was whether ANAD would be able to detect any ELT signals through the hard granitic rock of Shih Ho Mountain. Time would tell.
Mighty Mite Barnes did the piloting, studying densitometer readings as they came back from ANAD. D’Nunzio managed configs and sensors. Both worked off D’Nunzio’s wristpad. Bit by bit, the rock melted until the ground was no longer solid rock. Instead, it boiled and billowed like a mirage speckled with a billion tiny explosions going off all at once, as ANAD bots broke atomic bonds and burned their way into the molecular lattice of the rock.
There was little the troopers could do now but wait. Wait and hope. Acoustic pulses came back to them on the coupler circuit, along with system status and overall borehole conditions.
Seven hours and sixteen minutes later, a faint signal was detected.
Barnes had zoned out to a light sleep when the chime sounded. Instantly alert, she got D’Nunzio up.
“ANAD’s heard something…I’m putting him on a new heading…now steering zero seven five degrees. What’s my config status?”
D’Nunzio checked the wristpad. “Still showing half folded, Config C-77, effectors in solid phase setup, bond breakers at one hundred percent…looks like propulsors have lost a little oomph and he’s lost a few grabbers too.”
“ANAD’s wearing out, working his way through all those crystalline lattices. It’s like fighting against a crowd in the airport. Signal’s getting a bit stronger…we’re onto something, Deeno…and getting closer.”
“About time.”
It was An Nguyen, curled up in a fetal position on the cell floor, who first sensed a presence around him. He sat up, felt the increase in heat, shook himself into a groggy sort of consciousness and spotted the faint aura of a shimmering smoke billowing out from the solid rock wall.
He smelled it too. Something was burning. A fire?
“Lieutenant…Lieutenant!—“ he yelled. Staggering to his knees, he peered under the hard metal frame of this bunk. “Lieutenant...we got a fire! Get over here—“ He groped around in the failing light, breathing hard, sucking for air, feeling for a fire extinguisher that wasn’t there. Then, he remembered where they were.
Johnny Winger stirred himself awake and saw Nguyen frantically rummaging about the cell.
“What is it? What’s --?”
“There’s smoke…right there under the bunk! We must have a fire!”
Before he could respond, a faint idea had materialized in Winger’s mind. It was ANAD…it had to be. The tiny assembler had returned!
“ANAD!” Winger swung himself down from his own bunk, coughing in the stale, stagnant air. “It’s ANAD!
Beneath Nguyen’s bunk, a bright light shone, growing brighter by the moment. Winger peered below the mattress.
Nguyen sat down he
avily as he realized Winger was right. Semi-conscious and exhausted, he had mistaken the faint blue mist for a fire. Gibbs was awake now too, pulling the bunk and frame away from the rock wall, exposing the light.
The rock seemed to be melting, heaving and boiling. Presently, gouts and chunks of rock fell away. A yawning hole, wide as a man’s shoulder, opened up.
“They’ve come for us!” Gibbs cried. “About damn time.”
Winger became concerned the guards might come by at any moment. “Watch the door…make sure nobody’s coming.”
Gibbs took up a position where he could see through the narrow iron grate down the corridor. “Nobody at the moment, Lieutenant.”
They let the ANAD swarm finish its borehole. After a few minutes, a translucent blue white spherical cloud hung over their heads…the remnants of the ANAD swarm, still flickering from the fires of atomic bonds being broken.
“I don’t have a wristpad,” Winger said. “None of us do. No way to talk to ANAD.”
Nguyen peered cautiously into the still smoldering borehole. “It’s wide enough…maybe.”
“Wide enough for what?” asked Gibbs, still watching the hall outside.
“For a man, for us—“ Winger decided. “Somebody—maybe Barnes or Deeno or somebody topside—sent ANAD down here, right through the mountain. Must have homed on our ELTs. I didn’t think that was even possible inside the mountain.”
Nguyen poked his head up inside the hole. It was still too hot to touch. “You must be right, Lieutenant. This is the way out…there are even something like little ledges in the tunnel. ANAD bored an escape tunnel and even carved something for us to hold on to.”
Gibbs wasn’t sold on the idea. “We don’t know how far it is to the other end…maybe it’s a Red Hammer trap.”
Winger thought that unlikely. “No, they’d just come in the door…why bother with tunneling through solid rock. Jeez, this must have taken hours…let’s get lined up. Buddha, you’re first in the hole. Then you, Gibby. I’ll bring up the rear. I just hope the guards don’t pay us a visit until we’re well up that hole—“
“We’ll have to let it cool off a bit, from the boring,” Nguyen told them.
So they waited…ten minutes, impatiently. Then Winger told them to take off their boots and use their socks as hand cloths. “We’ve got to get the hell out of here while we can.”
One by one, Nguyen, Gibbs and Winger wriggled into the tunnel opening, head first.
The guards didn’t come by to check on their unwilling guests for another hour.
An hour later, the three of them were grunting and panting, trying to contort themselves up ANAD’s tunnel. With effort and a lot of shoving, Winger was able to force Gibbs, now stuck in a slight kink in the tunnel, further up into the shaft.
“What kind of clearance do you have?”
Gibbs bit his lip. He was not going to succumb to claustrophobia now.
“Maybe an inch around my head. It’s a tight fit.”
“Can you see anything above you?”
“I can see a wall of rock screened off by bots. It’s like the wall is bubbling and heaving. But I can reach out and touch it with my hand. It’s still steaming hot too. Above me, it’s black as night. Can’t see a thing.”
“It’s probably going to be a bumpy ride. Close your eyes and think of something more pleasant—“
“Yeah…like what? Deeno and Mighty Mite running naked down a beach.”
“Right…whatever turns you on. Just get going. It’s a long way to the surface.”
Amen to that, he thought. Maybe a little prayer would help too. He took a deep breath, counted to three and started hauling and pulling. Already his arms and legs ached from fatigue.
Then, unstuck at last, he started to move upward, smacking the side of his head on the hard rock walls.
Winger and the other two troopers continued their painstaking ascent for what seemed like hours, maybe days. They soon lost all track of time and space.
Only the labored sound of his own breathing—his face was getting pretty banged up from flying dirt and rock chips—and the bang and crunch of his hands scraping along the tunnel walls gave him any sense of motion.
He tried slowing down a little to see if it had any effect on the scraping but it didn’t.
Guess I’m going to be a billiard ball when I get topside, he told herself. He wondered how long that would take. He would have given anything to know where he was, how close to the surface he was. This was worse than Banikaiyan. Pitch black, in a narrow tube the size of a coffin, with no idea where he was or where he was going.
It was enough to drive an atomgrabber to drink.
How long he had zoned out, he didn’t know. Climbing on automatic, hand over hand, leg over leg, he had entered some kind of gray zone of semi-consciousness. His mouth was bone dry and there wasn’t any liquid in the chin tube left over from their hypersuits; he must have sucked it all dry. His shoulders, neck and legs throbbed from the incessant banging and battering.
Maybe I’m not going anywhere, he thought. But that couldn’t be. How else to explain the throbbing ache in his arms and shoulders? They had been climbing hours, maybe days.
At least, ANAD’s tunnel seemed navigable, if a bit snug. He wondered where Gibbs was. And Nguyen too…he listened for the scraping and scuffling of their feet, hearing nothing. There was nobody directly above him. Had Gibbs moved further ahead? He couldn’t have fallen back…there was no room.
He didn’t want to think about that at all.
Suddenly he felt like he was being accelerated forward. With a sudden surge, he was pushed upward, through loose soil…then light…blindingly bright light and before he realized what had happened, he was at the surface, wallowing in dust and pebbles like a beached whale.
Strong hands helped him upright and a blur of faces were just beyond his vision, but his eyes were stuck half shut and his face was grimy and fogged and he couldn’t make out anything.
He was wobbly but all the hands kept him upright; he stumbled a bit but someone caught him, then a stream of cold freezing air smacked him in the face and suddenly things became clearer.
The first face he saw was Deeno D’Nunzio, scowling in at his bruised, sweaty face.
“Well, well,” Deeno clucked, “aren’t you a sight? Lieutenant Winger, welcome back to the land of the living.”
Winger half smiled weakly. “Worse caving experience I ever had. Except I made it to the end.” He looked around.
It was night. The wreckage of the lifter was a cold, gray heap of debris. The ANAD swarm hovered nearby, a faint flickering ground fog lit from within with flashes and pinpricks of light, a silent thunderstorm in miniature.
“Come on, Lieutenant….” said Mighty Mite Barnes. She slung one of his half-dead arms around her shoulder. Mite was surprisingly strong for a small female. “Let’s get you out of sight…back to our cubbyhole. The castle.” The two of them limped all the way to the Stores room that had been their home for most of the night.
“Home sweet home,” Barnes told them, as she and Mighty Mite helped the Lieutenant and the others inside. Straight away, she gave them all water and noodles. Nobody complained.
“How’d you get ANAD through all that rock?” Winger asked. He made a face at the rusty water, but said nothing.
Barnes explained what they had done. “I was able to grab control and config apps off Quantsat…and turn my wristpad into a control device. It was ticklish, pretty much jerry-rigged, but it seemed to work.”
Winger looked around. There was Deeno and Mighty Mite. Gibbs. Nguyen. “Where’s Reaves?”
“She wasn’t with you?”
“Red Hammer must have put her someplace else. We’ll have to go back for her…nanotroopers don’t leave anyone behind. Let me see your pad—“ Barnes took the pad off and handed it over. Winger clucked and h’mmmed for a minute, obviously impressed at Mite’s
ingenuity. “Old Ironpants will find this interesting, I’m sure. Speaking of which—“ He pecked at a few buttons and icons on the screen, and after awhile, was able to raise a duty officer at Quantum Corps’ Singapore base.
Winger explained what had happened to Delta Helix and the Detachment. “We need lifter and troop support asap. One trooper’s still inside the Rock and I want an exfil as soon as it can be organized.”
Inside of ten minutes, a flight of two lifters with a small detachment had been chopped to Delta Helix and was winging its way north to Hong Kong.
The next step was to contact Major Kraft. Winger worked Barnes’ wristpad to make the connection through Quantsat. Kraft’s scowling face soon appeared on the tiny screen.
Winger squirted a basic after-action report on the Detachment’s mission to Table Top. “They overwhelmed ANAD, sir,” he told the Major. “I tried to grab some samples but the Red Hammer mechs out-replicated, out-maneuvered, and out-engaged us from the beginning. Whatever they’ve got under the hood, it’s really souped up their bots. I’d like to get something we can bring back…right now, we’ve got nothing…except one missing trooper. Request permission to stay on-site and get her out, after Singapore arrives. It’s Trooper Sheila Reaves, Major. I need her…she’s one of my best DPS techs.”
With its quivering moustache and furry eyebrows, Kraft’s face looked like an angry cat about to pounce. “Negative, Winger. I need you back here. You’re chopped to Northgate University…special assignment. Doc Frost at the Autonomous Systems Lab has some experiments he wants to run…new stuff for ANAD. You’re the designated lab rat. Get back here on the double.”
“But sir…Corporal Reaves—“
But Kraft would listen to no further objections. “On the double, Winger. Take a lifter back to Singapore and get on their hyperjet. I expect you in my office at 0600 hours tomorrow morning…unless you need medical help.”
“No, sir…I’m good to go.” With that, Kraft killed the link and the screen went dark.
Barnes just shook her head. “We can’t just leave Sheila to the pukes from Singapore…they don’t know beans about running ANAD through a mountain…I cobbled this arrangement together off the top of my head….who knows if it’ll even work again. Lieutenant, request permission to stay behind with the relief force…I can drive ANAD through that rock pile once more. I can find Reaves.”
Winger didn’t think long about it. Kraft had said nothing about Barnes or D’Nunzio returning to Table Top. “Do it, Mite. You and Deeno. Get Reaves out of there, as fast as you can, anyway you can. Singapore gives you any static, we’ll sick old Ironpants on ‘em.”
The lifters from Singapore base, Quantum Corps Eastern Command, were overhead in two hours, circling in light morning fog and dawn light while their pilots scoped out the LZ. Aside from residual ANAD bots and the now-cold wreckage of the first lifter, the twin birds saw no sign of Red Hammer activity on top of Lions Rock. One lifter set down near the front of the castle and disgorged a small contingent of troopers. The second lifter orbited overhead, top cover for the assistance mission.
Winger discussed details with the force commander, one Lieutenant Panang, a stocky, olive-skinned officer with squinty eyes and bad teeth. He replayed Kraft’s orders and Panang’s eyebrows arched.
“Assigning a lifter for you to go back to Singapore violates our mission tasking,” Panang growled. “We’re here to relieve your people…best to let the real atomgrabbers take over now.”
Winger resisted the urge to plant a fist into Panang’s pigface and settled for re-playing Major Kraft’s direct orders on Panang’s wristpad. The Singapore officer’s scowl grew deeper and deeper as Kraft explained Winger’s new assignment.
“Very well, Lieutenant Winger…I’ll have my top cover drop a quickrope down and you can scoot right up. Meanwhile, who’s in command on site?”
Winger introduced Panang to Deeno and Mighty Mite. He enjoyed the facial expression that came over the Singaporean officer when the two Table Top atomgrabbers saluted and shook hands.
Too bad I can’t stay around. This should be interesting.
Winger made a few last minute decisions and changed a few of Mighty Mite’s ANAD configs before he left. “Might help the little bugger scoot through solid rock more efficiently. Just make sure Lieutenant Pigface here does his job…top cover and perimeter defense. You drive ANAD, Mite. Let Panang’s men handle Red Hammer outside.”
“No sweat, Skipper.” Barnes saluted. “We’ll get Sheila out…if we can find her ELT.”
With that, Winger quickroped up to the orbiting lifter and was off to the Eastern Command base.
The suborbital hop to Table Top, across the entire breadth of the Pacific, took an hour and a half. Hyperjet Mercury burned a hole in the sky as she roared off Runway Eight Five Right and rocketed skyward into purple morning thunderstorm clouds boiling up from the tropics. She skirted the tenuous upper wisps of the atmosphere and was already decelerating and slamming back into the air over western North America before Johnny Winger could even finish his breakfast wrap and coffee.
He hightailed it to Kraft’s office in the glass-fronted Ops Center and knocked lightly on the Major’s door.
“Come—“came a gruff voice. Winger went in, found the Major pecking out orders on his commandpad at the same time he was patched in through Quantsat to the ground situation at Lions Rock. A small 3-d iconic view of the mountain and its relief force engaged in some kind of firefight with Red Hammer occupied a corner of Kraft’s desk.
“Looks like your friends have company this morning,” Kraft noted. “Red Hammer began an assault just at sun-up. The works…bots, troops, beam weapons. The place is a circus but Panang’s giving a good account of himself. They’re holding a perimeter around that castle…just got word from Corporal Barnes that they’ve located Corporal Reaves’ ELT…they’re closing in now. If Panang can just hold them off—“
Winger watched the holorama for a few moments, until Kraft minimized the show and put down his pad. He leaned back, crossed his body-builder’s arms over a belly just beginning to show some age and sag, and regarded Winger.
“We’ve got to give ANAD some real chops, Lieutenant. That’s why I sending you to Northgate. If half of what Doc Frost has promised us is true, you could have made quick work of Red Hammer’s bots inside Lions Rock. As it was, you and ANAD got your ass kicked and you were lucky to get out alive. I don’t want to hear any more reports of ‘ANAD being out-replicated, outmaneuvered, getting his atomic ass kicked.’ In this outfit, ANAD isn’t holding his position. He’s attacking and moving forward all the time. When it comes to Red Hammer, ANAD’s going to hold ‘em by the nose and kick ‘em in the butt. In fact, to quote my good friend General George S. Patton, ANAD’s going to go through Red Hammer like crap through a goose. That’s why I’m sending you to see Doc Frost. He’s got some truly crackpot ideas that no sane commander would ever seriously entertain. But you don’t outflank Red Hammer by just following the book. You’re going civilian on this one, Winger. In fact, you’re booked on the next commercial flight out of Boise tomorrow morning.”
Winger was intrigued, in spite of his concern over the Detachment he had just left at Lions Rock. “What kind of ideas, Major?”
Kraft’s face broke in a mischievous grin. Winger thought he looked like a malevolent Santa Claus, about to repossess all the world’s toys. “Let’s just say that, if it works, ANAD will have new capabilities…capabilities that even Red Hammer could never conceive of. And ANAD will be closer to you, Lieutenant, than your own ass hairs.”
Kraft dismissed Winger. Winger went to the commissary for a little chow, then spent the rest of the day, sorting out civvie clothes and what to take to the University. Winger figured it would be a nice change of pace to go somewhere that other people weren’t trying to kill you, or swarm you.
The following morning, after a short lifter ride down to BO
I, just south of the center of Boise, Johnny Winger boarded a Transair flight to Philadelphia. The trip would take three hours. He had decided to take his notes from nog school classes on ANAD systems, figuring he would study up on the history and development of autonomous nanoscale systems. But ten minutes after wheels-up, Winger had drifted off to sleep. Lions Rock had taken more out of him than he realized and he didn’t want any stim crap jazzing up his system while he was at Northgate.
He slept the entire trip.