“We’re kicking ‘em!” Gibby exulted, studying his viewer. “Your maneuver’s working, Skipper…we’ve got ‘em by the cojones!”
Scant yards ahead of the defiladed assault team, the front courtyard of the Paryang monastery was a snowy lightshow, as auroras collided overhead and a pulsating cloud of tiny pops and flashes growing more intense by the moment, billowed outward. Furious combat erupted between nanoscale armies, a throbbing blue-white flickering fog caught like a strobe in the falling snow, with the gargoyled front columns of Paryang lending a grotesque air to the battle.
“How’s it looking now, Gibby?” Winger asked.
The IC2 slithered forward a few more yards to get a better reading, scaling a snow bank scarcely a dozen yards from the monastery’s front steps. He let his suit burrow him into the snow for protection.
He never saw the shadows of the Red Hammer squad skulking along behind the nearby columns, settling into ambush position below the steps. The blizzard had picked up and with all sensors trained on the swarms, the enemy troops had infiltrated the grounds unseen.
Just a momentary thermal spike on Reaves’ viewer—
“Watch out!”
A volley of pulse rounds erupted from the columns. Gibbs was caught in the middle of the fusillade.
As the Detachment came under fire, the IC2 disappeared in a bright flash of rubble and fire, his hypersuited body pulverized in crisscrossing bolts of high-mag flux.
Sergeant Hoyt Gibbs never had a chance.
“Let ‘em have it!” Winger yelled over the crewnet, but he didn’t have to. The Detachment opened up on the enemy squad with everything they had.
“Light ‘em up…do it for Gibby!” came D’Nunzio’s voice.
The front portico and gargoyled columns vanished in flame and smoke, as coilgun rounds slammed into the front of the monastery.
1st Nano poured on the fire, coilguns and HERF, mag pulses and kinetic rounds, until the monastery was lost to view behind a heavy veil of smoke and swirling snow. Red gouts of flame burped from the columns…a few die hard Red Hammer holding out to the end.
“Execute clampdown!” Winger told ANAD. Even as he cautiously crept forward, an element of the assembler swarm detached itself and streamed earthward , the bots replicating furiously as they smothered the Red Hammer stragglers.
Moments later, two Nepalese Sherpa defenders staggered out of their redoubt and fell into the deep snow, clutching their faces and throats, pinned by a glowing ball of light as the swarm crushed them into the snow and held them there.
“Move out!” Winger ordered. “Detachment…into the monastery…in squad order…Deeno, you and Taj take the point!”
The two Defense and Protective Systems techs boosted forward, lifting themselves a few feet over the driving snow drifts and landed like crouching cats on the monastery portico. They made quick work of the door, lighting off a few particle beam rounds to enter the compound. The massive wooden doors dissolved in a spray of flame and smoke.
“ANAD overhead,” Winger announced. He lit off his own suit boost and drifted on lift over the writhing bodies of the smothered enemy troops, alighting at the top step. He looked around to make sure of their deployment.
The main ANAD swarm was billowing outward, steadily taking up position as top cover for their advance. That was standard tactics: a bot swarm overhead gave you eyes and ears for approaching threats and put your swarm in position to respond along any vector.
Behind the flickering fog of the ANAD swarm came the rest of the Detachment: Reaves, Tsukota, D’Nunzio and Barnes and the rest. All dropped onto the landing and shut down their suit boost, then moved through the portal into a vast multi-storied hall inside, its perimeter lined with stone statuary and pediments. Above them, at the top of a broad curving staircase, a gray stone Buddha beamed down with an enigmatic smile, while the hall was surrounded by vats and pots and urns in dizzying variety, every size and shape imaginable. Some of the urns steamed and smoked with pungent incense, or scented candles, lending a smoky, acrid taste to the air.
“The grand entrance,” muttered Sheila Reaves, as she looked around, kicking at some of the pots and urns. She eased forward deeper into the hall, her coilgun carbine poised to fire, suit servos whirring as she clanked across the stone floor.
Shadows danced along the walls dead ahead, and Reaves saw that the hall opened into a great rotunda through a shimmering veil that stretched across one end of the room.
“Easy, Sheila,” said Dana Tallant, as she swung her own beam weapon around to cover their advance. “Let’s get ANAD down here to take a look.”
“Any threats?” Winger asked. Reaves and Singh were the DPS ratings…Detachment defense was their specialty. Reaves halted at the shimmering veil and let her suit servos scan ahead while ANAD moved into position.
“Looks like low-level nano, Skipper.” Experimentally, she reached out with a finger and poked at the veil. A high-freq whine went out and the resistance of the bots pushed her finger back with an insistent buzz. “We can punch through it with no problem.”
“Very well…clear ‘em out,” Winger said. “Taj--?”
The DPS2 studied his own readings…they had lost distance recon from Superfly because of the snowstorm. All distance recon came from ANAD.
“Reading high thermals ahead…a broad front and its not the fire in there—“ A roaring fire burned in an ornate bowl-shaped pit beneath the apex of the rotunda. “EM and atomic debris on all bands…lots of nano around here…but nothing within a hundred feet… it’s all around us, Skipper.”
Winger took stock of the situation. Their mission orders were straightforward. Find the links between this base and the Amazon superswarms now modifying Earth’s atmosphere and render them inoperative.
“Can you triangulate decoherence waves from here?” Winger asked. “We need some kind of bearing; there’s got to be some kind of quantum state generator around here…that’s how Red Hammer controls Amazon.”
Singh scrolled through images on his helmet viewer, selecting one called Quantum Signals.
“It’s faint, Skipper…intermittent captures right now. There seems to be a fix about two hundred and six meters ahead, bearing zero five five degrees my position. It’s not much but all the decoherence waves seem to converge there…when we can grab them.” Singh marked the position and Winger saw it on the crewnet.
“Very well…we’ll mark that as objective number one. Detachment, listen up—“ he took over the comms for a moment “—Taj has a fix that may be the master control source for the Amazon swarms. It’s ahead and deeper in the complex. We’re moving on that objective…Reaves, are we cleared to advance?”
The DPS2 had paused at a shimmering veil blocking entrance to the great rotunda. “Give me a moment, Skipper—“ She took control of a small element from the main ANAD swarm and vectored the formation toward the veil of low-level nano guarding the portal. The swarms collided in a shower of sparks and light flashes. There was a brief, almost inaudible screech, as ANAD made quick work of the enemy bots.
The portal then went dark and the faint phosphorescent mist that was the ANAD element moved ahead into the rotunda.
“Open sesame,” muttered Deeno D’Nunzio, from behind a balustrade.
“Door is clear, Skipper,” Reaves announced.
Winger ordered the master ANAD swarm to follow. “Okay…move out. And keep your eyes and ears open…we got nasties all around us itching to take a bite.”
One by one, the assault team crept into the rotunda, surrounding the firepit and its crackling flames. Other corridors branched off from the great room, like spokes from a Base.
“Where the hell is everybody?” Witchy M’Bela asked. His left hand fondled a clutch of amulets, massaging them for good luck even though he couldn’t feel them very well through his hypersuit gloves.
“It’s a trap,” decided Reaves. “It’s got to be…they’re trying to pull us int
o some kind of free-fire zone.”
“Which way to the last fix, Taj?”
Singh checked signals. “Best bearing to the convergence is still zero five five, less than two hundred meters…and below our elevation, about fifty meters.”
Winger calibrated the direction. Singh’s bearing seemed to point toward one corridor branching off from the rotunda.
“That seems to be the way to go. Detachment, move out—“ Winger indicated the passageway.
“Skipper, I don’t like this,” said Reaves. “It’s a confined space…only one way in or out. It could be an ambush.”
“Duly noted,” Winger said. The possibility had occurred to him but they had little choice. Singh’s convergence fix was probably some kind of quantum device, possibly even the master control for the Amazon swarms. That had to be put out of commission. “Let’s get an ANAD screen ahead of and behind us, before we go down that corridor. Other contacts and threats?”
Reaves checked her threat status, letting her eyepiece viewer cycle through all bands that ANAD was feeding them. “Still reading fairly high thermals and EM ahead, all azimuth.”
“Skipper…” it was M’Bela. The CEC1 had already crossed the rotunda and was examining the opening to the corridor they were about to enter. “This is odd…the corridor isn’t solid-phase at all—“ He pressed a hypersuited hand into the wall. It gave with a high-pitched wail, rippled like an underwater wave, and pushed back. “I thought so…it’s a nanobotic mesh…the whole corridor’s that way.”
Winger and several others came over to see for themselves. D’Nunzio tried pressing her hand into the mesh. It resisted, squealed and pushed back. “Hey, maybe this whole place is like this…nothing but bots holding it together.”
Reaves peered down the tunnel. “Maybe Red Hammer’s using bots to tunnel underground like we do. This whole corridor could collapse in a heartbeat…bots get the signal to de-link or change config and— smash-o…” she crumpled her hand into a fist.
“We’ve got no choice,” Winger decided. “The objective is this direction. If we have to, we can make a tunnel ourselves. Just to be on the safe side, I’m pre-loading a config for that in the ANAD master.”
He pressed a few buttons on his wristpad.
***ANAD receiving new config…acknowledging new config…will pre-set effector positions for rapid cycling***
“ANAD, this nanomesh corridor could be a trap…I’m loading a blocking config I just hacked out. When you’ve got it, execute a reverse clampdown. Expand swarm to engage the corridor bots and make sure they don’t change config on us. This corridor is the fastest way to our objective….I don’t want it collapsing on us.”
***ANAD receives and is complying…I am maneuvering to intercept shielding nanoscreen bots and holding current config…you can count on me, Base***
Good ,Winger thought. Overhead, the swarm spread like a cool fog until it had filled the corridor and swollen to envelop the walls. Strings and crackles of light strobed up and down the length of the corridor as ANAD imposed a fixed config on the resistant enemy bots.
***ANAD encountering some resistance, Base…these buggers don’t like being told what to do…but ANAD can manage the problem…a few bonds broken and a little carbene grabber muscle and they fall in line***
Winger smiled. ANAD, the drill sergeant…
“Okay…move out…down the corridor…and keep your weapons ready, especially the HERF. We may need to blast these suckers if ANAD can’t hold ‘em.”
The assault team went deeper down the side branch, uneasily aware that the corridor itself was nothing but a nanobotic construction, a swarm of unfriendly bots in the shape of a tunnel. If ANAD couldn’t force them to hold config, the nanotroopers would be crushed or worse in seconds.
“Triangulating on the convergence now, Skipper,” said Taj Singh. The hypersuited DPS tech was now in the lead of their advance, his suit sensors slaved to a satlink back to Singapore and Table Top. Decoherence waves were faintly detected and their paths plotted at the Quantum Corps bases and the resulting vector beamed off the sats back down to Singh. It was a jerry-rigged operation, but then quantum effects were like that…ghostly, sporadic and damnably hard to pin down. “We’re still headed in the right direction…I make the convergence as under two hundred meters, still below our elevation.”
Winger considered that. “Must be buried deeper, maybe under the mountain. Keep your eyes open.”
A faint tremor shook the ground, residual tectonic stresses causing rock layers to slide and shift under their feet. A few seconds later, the faint hum of the bots battling ANAD changed pitch, shifting to a higher-frequency tone, a stress tone.
M’Bela saw the trouble just as it erupted. He’d been monitoring ANAD status on his viewer and had seen half his board light up like a Christmas tree when the next tremor hit.
Only this tremor wasn’t the ground shifting. The Detachment halted and gaped, stunned, in amazement as the corridor walls seemed to dissolve right before their eyes. One moment, the corridor was a smooth, slightly blurry wall curving down into the earth. The next moment, the blur had increased, as if the bots forming the corridor had suddenly begun vibrating at dizzying speeds.
M’Bela knew what it was right away. “Quantum collapse, Skipper? They’re going small…winking out—“
Even as M’Bela’s words went out over the crewnet, the corridor walls dissolved like lifting fog and the underlying rock into which the corridor had been bored was no longer held back by nanobotic swarms. Unimaginable stresses were suddenly let loose as thousands of tons of rock gave way.
“ANAD…ANAD…can you hold--?”
But even as he blurted out the question, Johnny Winger knew the answer. A flash of light filled the collapsing corridor as the ANAD swarm cycled into a Big Bang replication, but it was too late.
With an unearthly roar, the walls crumbled into rock and dust and imploded with newly released fury.
CHAPTER 13
Paryang Valley, Tibet, China
December 4, 2068
2300 hours
There were groans and moans as the dust finally settled. Johnny Winger stirred and tried to move, realizing he was trapped in a near-fetal position by crushing tons of rock and rubble. He flicked out a tongue and reached a nearby control stud inside his helmet, running his suit servos up to max power. There was a whine and grinding whir, then the rock began to fall way as the servos strained against the weight of the rubble. A few bursts of suit boost and he was free and more or less upright, sheets of dust falling off his back as he wobbled around.
An incredible scene was dimly visible in the flicker of his helmet lamp.
The hypersuits had saved them. With Witchy’s warning and ANAD’s quick work, the worst effects of the collapse had been averted. A pale glowing fog licked at the perimeter of the tiny clearing into which the troopers had been shoved…ANAD steadily widening the life-giving zone, boring and eating away at the edges of their rock prison.
“ANAD…good man…keep on boring…I’ll see if Taj can give you a bearing to that convergence zone.—“
***ANAD replicating at best rate, Base…I’ll have a path cleared in a few hours…is everybody okay down there?***
“I think so, ANAD…give me a few minutes, will you?” Winger picked and shoved his way through tall piles of broken rock and rubble, as the Detachment dug out and staggered upright. Servos whined and strained and a few gave out, necessitating assistance from others…Mighty Mite Barnes was the worst off. The SDC2 was pinned nearly to her waist beneath some particularly large boulders. Her suit servos had failed and she was trapped, possibly injured.
Levering their own suit thrusters against the boulders, Winger, Tallant and Chris Calderon managed to extricate Barnes. Her boost was dead, servos out, she could barely stand on her own. The hypersuit was shot.
“I think my ankle’s broken, Skipper,” Barnes said, sheepishly
. Her eyes teared up with disappointment. “Leave me here…I can defend myself…” She pulled out the broken butt of her coilgun carbine and stared dumbfounded at it. “…somehow—“
“Stow that,” Winger ordered. “Help her up. We’re not leaving anybody behind. I can detach ANAD to re-config a bone patch…we’ll do an insert and get you squared away in no time…we just have to get to a stable place. ANAD…?” Calderon and Tallant helped the trash-talking little dynamo to her feet, where she swayed a bit with the hypersuit now powered down and unsupported.
***ANAD here, Base…***
“ANAD compute best time for boring a path to the convergence…you’ve got the vector? Plus I have a little repair job I’d like you to do…on Trooper Barnes here.”
Taj Singh was across the tiny clearing. “Negative, Skipper…I don’t have anything to give ANAD yet. I’ve lost the convergence…signal’s still good to the satlink…they’ve just lost it. No more decoherence waves.”
“So what the hell happened?”
“Unknown, Captain,” Singh admitted. Winger could see the Indian DPS tech inside his helmet, frantically trying to regain something, anything. “ANAD couldn’t hold the corridor bots in config when they went small—“
“It was a true quantum collapse, Captain,” added M’Bela. “The enemy bots sloughed off everything…effectors, core components, everything…just a processor dot was all that was left. They slid out of ANAD’s grasp like water through a sieve.”
“And vanished.” Winger muttered. “I should have seen that one coming. What the hell are we dealing with here?”
“I think the whole damn complex is nothing but bots,” Tallant said. “That could explain a lot.”
“But the links to the Amazon swarms are still active?”
M’Bela nodded. “Singapore and Table Top say yes. There’s been no detectable diminishing of swarm activity.”
“It’s not possible,” Winger shook his head, kicking in frustration at a small pile of rubble. He forgot his feet were still boosted…the rocks went flying across the clearing, narrowly missing Barnes and Calderon, who had to duck. “Sorry about that guys…Q2 says the swarm links are quantum coupled…it is a quantum link, right? There should be deco waves…how can the links still be active and there not be quantum decoherence waves?”