***ANAD configuring, setting Defense One…all power shunted to disrupters--***
You could tell when the disrupters fired for a pinprick of light flared in mid-air as millions of volts were discharged. The flares popped and died off by the thousands like a herd of fireflies as the two bot swarms grappled.
Barnes swung her HERF gun around, but thought better of it, when Singh warned her off. “Send your ANAD, Mite…merge the swarms!”
She did just that, commanding her own small but growing army of bots to swell at max rate and steer toward Winger’s own swarm. Singh and Hiroshi did likewise and soon the swarm that had once been a tree was overwhelmed, pushed back, slammed again and again and soon crushed.
Winger decided to see what ANAD saw. “I’m going small!” he told them. Even as he did so, more trees and brush began dissolving all around them. The entire jungle seemed to be coming apart, as every bush and vine and tree exploded into darkening clouds of bots. “Keep me clear—“
The other troopers steered their own ANAD swarms to form a tight bubble around the squad, pushing back at the enveloping swarm that fell upon them. Protected at least for the moment, Winger went ‘over the waterfall’ and let the momentary wave of nausea pass as he tried to focus on the molecular sleet flashing by. Transitioning from macro to nano worlds always jarred your senses and it took a few moments for any atomgrabber to regain his senses.
Seeing what ANAD ‘saw,’ he seemed to be flying over a vast plane, with streaks of light passing by all around, as if he were a fly stuck on a car’s headlight speeding along at night. Gradually, he became more accustomed to the jerky motion and felt the buffeting of Brownian motion as if he were wading out into the ocean. He chopped propulsors to half, slowing a bit and then he saw the enemy…straight ahead, a wave of popping, flashing lights, already engaged with the forward edge of his own ANAD army.
Close-up, he was amazed at the crazy profusion of shapes before him: truncated globes, barbells with whiskers, inverted pyramids, things that looked like squashed child’s toys, spinning cylinders. “Jeez, it looks like a nanobot zoo. What the hell is all this?”