Johnny Winger and the Amazon Vector

  Samoya nodded, then added, “I think she does, Skipper, but…we haven’t trained on extraction like that in a long time…”

  “I know, I know…but it’s an option,” Tallant said. And not one we want to use if we can help it, she said to herself. Yanking a trooper from a standing start off the ground and reeling him in like a fish wasn’t for the faint of heart. “Okay…Tony…if this works, we won’t have to fastcable…give me some suppressing fire…right on that cave entrance—“

  The cave was less than fifty meters away. The Detachment buried themselves in the grass as best they could.

  “On the way, Skipper,” Samoya said. He sent the signal and the coilgun microbots broke formation, sliding around the perimeter of the enemy swarm to get into position. The rain ‘bots buzzed in reaction, the swarm re-shaping itself to intervene. But the micros were faster, more maneuverable. “I’m bringing up the whole battery….”

  On Tallant’s hand signal, Samoya commanded the ‘bots to fire. Tallant crossed her fingers and prayed.

  Fifty meters ahead, the foot of Tuontavik volcano had a new kind of fire in its belly.

  The rock walls of the cave entrance cracked open, dissolving in a spray of flame and rubble.

  So much for covert entry, Tallant thought. Everybody knows we’re here now.

  At that same moment, Chen Liu raised his fist in a pre-arranged signal.

  “MOVE OUT!” Tallant ordered. “Head for the cave!”

  As one, the Detachment rose and kicked their hypersuits into high gear. At the same time, Chen toggled the ANAD swarm to flow down into a blocking position, forming a quick barrier screen between the rain ‘bots and the troopers.

  “GO…GO…GO…GO…GO…!”

  One after the other, the soldiers of Bravo Detachment lumbered toward the cave, sliding through the grass, skidding on rubble at the mouth, ducking under the arch and into the dim recess beyond.

  Behind them, still screening, ANAD poured into the cavern on their heels. Tallant ordered a portion of the swarm detached for perimeter guard, securing the entrance. As they gathered inside the entrance, more guards lay strewn about the rubbly floor, gasping for breath from the clampdown. Some wore breathing gear, some didn’t. Tallant didn’t have time to test the atmosphere.

  “Secure the entrance…as well as you can!” she ordered. She turned to face deeper into the cave, looking around the complex, nearly losing her footing on the downslope. “Form up and let’s go. Sammy…get your coilgun ‘bots back and bring ‘em inside. And make sure the MOB canisters are ready.”

  “Will do, Captain,” Samoya sent the commands.

  Beside Samoya, Chen Liu crossed his fingers, praying in the name of his honorable ancestors that ANAD could block the rain ‘bots from following.

  The place was a vast maze of tunnels, hewn right out of the bowels of the volcano. Tallant led the Detachment deeper, while Chen brought up the rear, monitoring the rain ‘bots approach. On his eyepiece, he could see the swollen shimmering blur as the ‘bots engaged the ANAD swarm, blocking the entrance. Crackles of light flickered on the cave walls.

  Jeff Collin was right behind Tallant. “Must be the mother lode, Skipper.” As they descended a curving ramp, they passed side caverns filled with equipment, consoles lit up and humming, and tanks surrounded by piping.

  “What the hell is this place?” said Samoya, nosing into one of the caverns with the muzzle of his mag gun.

  “Some kind of control center,” Tallant muttered. She switched scenes on her eyepiece, from the cave entrance, where ANAD was engaged in a ferocious firefight with the rain ‘bots, to infrared and EM signatures ahead of them. “Uh oh…we may have company….”

  Inside the next cavern, Samoya spotted a pocket of Red Hammer technicians, struggling to get up, still stunned and gasping for air from the clampdown.

  Samoya charged his weapon. “Enemy ahead…nine o’clock…I count four—“

  “Weapons?”

  “None that I can see, Skipper.”

  Tallant figured the enemy was fully aware of their presence. No need for stealth now. “Okay…MOB ‘em. Secure the cave. Let’s go hunting.”

  Samoya acknowledged the order. With his wristpad, he took control of a small portion of the ANAD force from Chen, accepting replicants as fast as the master could slam atoms together and churn them out. He detached the force and tapped out a command sequence…in seconds, the swarm under his control had reconfigured itself. A fine smoky mist formed overhead, oscillating in and out of view.

  Samoya took a fix on the Red Hammer techs and fed the coordinates to his brood. The smoke pulsed and throbbed like a thing alive, then floated over and descended on the enemy, forming a Mobility Obstruction Barrier around the helpless group. ANAD assemblers interlocked into an amorphous gel, cordoning off the technicians in a flexible prison cell of tightly bound assemblers. Several techs clawed at the MOB, to no avail. They were steadily forced down to the cavern floor and immovably secured there by the ANAD screen.

  “MOB in place, Captain.”

  “Very well…Richter, what’s up?”

  The SDC1 had caught sight of something, a twitch in one of ANAD’s sensors. “Sounding pressure change. Uh-oh…sounding heat pulse, big time heat pulse…looks like the cavalry’s coming—“

  Light flashed through the cavern and a resounding BOOM!echoed off the walls. Gouts of flame and rock erupted from the explosion, forcing the Detachment to take cover.

  “Spread out!” yelled Tallant. She hand-signaled Collin to move right, further right, and take Samoya with him. Try to outflank ‘em, she mouthed.

  There were voices ahead, and heavy footfalls. A Red Hammer detail, heavily armed, had emerged from deeper in the cavern.

  Immediately, Tallant understood the nature of their predicament. Behind them, the rain ‘bots were straining at the barrier ANAD had formed at the cave entrance. They couldn’t go back, not without risking a full swarm attack.

  They couldn’t go forward, not easily, without dealing with the enemy ahead.

  More light flashed---coilgun rounds, she realized…hypervelocity bolts of condensed matter—and the concussion was deafening. Rock and rubble sprayed from the walls, pelting the Detachment.

  Trouble was there was no real way to outflank the enemy force. Red Hammer techs blocked the main passage and they had to know the caves better. Tallant got on the crewnet to Chen.

  “Chen…give me part of your swarm…I need recon…I need something to find out what we’re up against.”

  “Can’t do it, Skipper…” Chen came back. He was several dozen yards behind the Detachment, still in line of sight contact with the main swarm. “If I detach any more, ANAD can’t hold. And I can’t replicate much when we’re engaged like this—“

  “Never mind,” Tallant said. They couldn’t afford to weaken their rear. The only way was to move forward. “Samoya…Richter…when I give the word…give me as much suppressing fire as you can…a full spread across the cave ahead—“

  “I’ll have to retrieve the coilgun ‘bots, Skipper…they’re still outside. And coming through that swarm at the entrance—“

  Tallant knew all that. “It’s a chance we’ll have to take. Get the ‘bots in here and lay down a screen….that’s the only chance we have to break through. We’re in a fix here…we might as well go forward and see what damage we can do.”

  Samoya finagled with his wristpad, sending commands to the small squadron of dust mote-sized coilgun fliers orbiting over the cave entrance outside. If he worked the approach right…and coordinated with Chen…he might just be able to sneak enough ‘bots into the cave without getting shredded by the mechs duking it out at the entrance.

  Outside the cave, a small, nearly invisible cloud of microbots formed up to enter the complex.

  Samoya waited for Chen to give him the signal. At the right moment, ANAD would disengage momentarily from the attack, leaving th
e entrance to the rain ‘bots. Samoya would signal his coilgun fliers to max speed and stream them as fast as they could go through the very middle of the swarm. If their luck held, the rain ‘bots would swell to occupy the space momentarily vacated by ANAD, and in re-deploying forward, would thin out enough to let Samoya’s force through with minimal casualties.

  It was the only chance the Detachment had to move forward and keep from being pounded into rubble by the Red Hammer force inside.

  “Disengaging…NOW!” yelled Chen. His fingers stabbed a button and the ANAD swarm began to pull back.

  At the very same moment, Samoya squirted a command to the coilgun ‘bots and as one, the tiny squadron sped down from altitude and slammed into the mechs screening the cave entrance. He knew he’d lose some to the maneuver…that couldn’t be helped. The Detachment needed their fire inside, to open a path ahead.

  “Force approaching--” he announced over the crewnet. His eyepiece showed him the results…not too bad. About a third of the fliers had been shredded by the rain ‘bots as they surged forward. “Weapons are charging…charging…charging…weapons are enabled, Skipper! Where do you want fire?”

  “I’m blocking now—“ Chen Liu cut in. He commanded the ANAD swarm to intercept the rain ‘bots, cutting off their move into the cave.

  “Bearing…two five niner!” Tallant said. “Right below that overhang ahead—“ she put a cueing mark on the track and instantly, Samoya saw the rock shelf. Dim shadowy figures moved below it. Flashes of return fire from the Red Hammer techs briefly illuminated the enemy force. A full battle of coilgun rounds and magnetic impulse fire raged across the cavern. Behind Tallant, an explosion knocked her suit servos silly and she staggered, letting the system right itself, while a seam of rock and rubble pelted her.

  That was close, she realized. If they didn’t get suppressing fire on the enemy’s position soon, they could pretty well pick their own poison: get creamed by increasingly effective coilgun fire from the Red Hammer detail or get swarmed from the rear by rain ‘bots.

  Neither alternative appealed to her.

  “Let ‘em have it, Sammy!” she called out.

  The staccato bbrrrppp of the coilgun fliers letting fly their programmable rounds ripped the air. Across the cavern, the microfliers sprayed death like a horde of angry bees.

  The concussion of detonating rounds reverberated around the cavern and part of the cavern roof collapsed on the Red Hammer techs. There was a grinding crash of tons of rock and debris, punctuated by screams of pain.

  Samoya deployed his fliers closer and they let loose another volley of rounds, peppering the enemy’s position with a deafening discharge. The entire far wall of the cavern erupted in a blossom of smoke and flame, and moments later, the floor gave way, crashing out of sight amid a thick pall of smoke.

  “GO…GO…GO!” yelled Tallant. “Move out!”

  The Detachment struggled forward cautiously, checking for life signs ahead. Tallant switched her viewer to thermal, but saw only the speckles of smoking rubble, nothing else moving. A gaping chasm, where there had once been a rock wall led down through smoldering seams of rock to a curving ramp. The ramp spiraled down deeper into the bowels of Tuontavik.

  “Skipper, you figure this is some kind of control center?” asked Richter. His face was lost in the opacity of his hypersuit helmet, but Tallant could well imagine his red freckles inside the blank faceplate. Richter was a young stud and one hell of an SDC.

  “Got to be,” Tallant decided. They crept cautiously down the curving ramp, everybody on thermal to see in the thick smoke, noting another side cave filled with equipment. The stuff seemed to be running by itself, quietly humming. “Chen…get up here and take a look. What do you make of this place?”

  Chen Liu came forward and squeezed into the opening. He switched view scenes, scanning the room in all EM wavelengths, before announcing, “It’s a nursery, Captain. Or a hatchery.”

  “A nursery?”

  “For nanobots. Look at the hull plating on that chamber—“he pointed toward a squat semi-spherical structure that looked like an inverted bowl. “—see the beam injectors. Recognize anything?”

  Samoya had squeezed in beside him. “Containment chamber…it’s has to be. So what are they containing?”

  “Ten to one it’s the same ‘bots that are screwing up the atmosphere. Red Hammer’s growing them right here,” said Jeff Collin. “We need to get samples—“ he started into the chamber but Chen grabbed his arm.

  “Hold on—I wouldn’t get too close—see that mist in the center?”

  Collin halted two steps inside the cave, standing on a small ledge that overlooked the oblong space. Bright lights on tracks beamed down from the ceiling. The room was actually a small cave with ledges on multiple levels, like shelves. Containment tanks lined the ledges all around them. Huge spherical tanks with intricate piping occupied the lower levels. Control consoles and displays were interspersed with the tanks, mounted on stanchions supporting the ceiling of the cave. What had seemed at first like steam in the air wasn’t steam at all. The mist throbbed and speckled with pinpricks of light…the telltale signature of nanobotic action…replicators revving up.

  “Swarm?” he asked

  Chen nodded silently, though no one could see it inside his suit. “Most likely…looks like it’s seen us, too.”

  “Fall back,” Tallant ordered. “Fall back…Chen…where the hell’s ANAD?”

  Warily, the Detachment retreated out of the cave.

  The swarm thickened and flowed after them, boiling out of the shadows like a thing alive, sweeping forward, closing fast to engage the intruders.

  “On the way,” the IC1 said, “but it’ll take a few minutes. I’m still engaged at the cave entrance.”

  “Fall back and head down the ramp!” Tallant announced. “Chen…anytime you want to block that swarm….would be good for me!”

  Chen concentrated on his viewer, trying to scope out the newest threat and get a scan, letting his hypersuit follow the tactical retreat program, sensing and feeling its way along, as it followed the rest of the Detachment on automaneuver. Outside the side cave, he realized they had just run out of time.

  “Oh, Captain…looks…like…WE…GOT…MECHS!” The IC1’s fingers flew over his wristpad keyboard and joysticks. “ANAD replicating…I’ve got a few ANADs but not nearly enough…ANAD replicating at full rate…making a cage…all effectors out max…I am in automaneuver…” He stumbled down the ramp after the Detachment, deeper into the bowels of the volcano, letting his suit servos keep him upright as best they could.

  “Get down!” Tallant commanded. “Get small…and cover yourselves!”

  As ordered, what was left of Detachment Bravo hunkered down to the ground, each soldier forming a hump of laminate armor, trying to protect vital seals and ports from the oncoming swarm as long as possible.

  “Sammy?” Tallant yelled. “Can we—“

  But Samoya already knew the answer to the question. “Coilgun fliers are lost, Skipper. No link…no comms…I don’t know what’s happened.”

  Great….just friggin’ great, Tallant muttered to herself. They never should have set down in the lagoon without adequate backup. They had no coilgun support, no HERF left and only a scattering of smaller arms…some mag guns and a few rounds of kinetic stuff. ANAD was their best chance to get the hell out alive. But Chen was fighting on two fronts at the same time, still blocking the rain ‘bots at the cave entrance and now dealing with the newest threat.

  The IC1 punched out commands, setting up his small but expanding group of assemblers with full shields of fullerene arms, each one bristling with sticky molecules, juiced with torqued bonds, ready to zap all comers. Even as he configged the swarm, Jeff Collin took control of a small element of ANADs himself, as fast as they could be replicated, piloting them away from the melee, trying to flank the enemy, pinch off the assault from bot
h sides, a pincer movement at atomic scales.

  The boiling swarm of mechs from the nursery closed with ANAD and flung themselves with fury against Chen’s hastily erected shield. The controller prayed silently to his esteemed ancestors for guidance, maybe even a miracle.

  Chen’s fingers flew over the controls, managing config, pulling more atoms to add shielding, all the while fighting off thrusts and slashes from the enemy mechs.

  “Change config!” Tallant yelled. “We’re getting slammed from the rear…do it now…Tactical Two—“

  Chen sent the command, ANAD trying to confuse the enemy swarm by shedding outer atoms in one big puff. They’d wargamed it before…it didn’t always work—

  Twenty feet in the air, trillions of ANAD assemblers received the same instructions: alter configuration to this design…grab atoms…cleave this group…fold here…build lattice here…the air churned with furious activity. The cavern was suddenly bathed in an unearthly pale blue light as vast but unseen armies collided. The gotterdammerung pulsed like a flickering aurora as the swarms clashed head-on.

  But the newest swarm was something ANAD had never encountered before.

  “What the hell?” Chen frowned as he fought the controls, tickling propulsors, spinning ANAD, managing effectors…”I can’t grapple the damn things!”

  Jeff Collin, on the other side of the cave, had found the same thing. Sweat broke out on the CC2’s forehead, in spite of the cool damp air. “It’s like I’m too short! Sluggish. Chen…check my config…what’s wrong with my effectors…what the hell am I doing wrong here? I’ve got no probes, grapples, it’s like my pyridines are minus a few atoms--!”

  Chen was in the midst of his own predicament. If he grabbed more assemblers from the cave entrance, he weakened their defense against the rain ‘bots, already pressing in everywhere from outside. If he didn’t, the bigger swarm inside would soon overwhelm them.

  Chen was more frustrated by the moment. He was losing it—an agonized scream pierced the crewnet and out of the corner of his eyes, he saw someone—was it Richter?—go down, his suit breached.

  “GET THEM OFF….JEEZ, GOD…GET THEM OFF…!!!!”

  But he couldn’t watch. Collin needed help, hell he needed help…both their defensive screens of ANAD assemblers were falling apart faster than he could react. “I can’t explain it either,” he gritted through clenched teeth. “No electron lens…no enzymatic knife…no effector control. It’s like ANAD’s crippled.”