Gibbs couldn’t bear to watch the viewer in his eyepiece. Tiled along the edge of the swirling froth of combat, status icons were showing up red everywhere. They were losing ANAD in the face of the OpFor assault and somewhere deep inside Valleyville, Captain Dana Tallant was no doubt smirking with satisfaction.
Johnny Winger set grimly to work, now taking full command through his keypad of the master ANAD assembler. Somehow, he had to wriggle out of the encirclement and outflank the INDRA formation.
Overhead, the air was electric with an impending thunderstorm, and with the shriek of nanomech combat, staticky pops and bursts danced like St Elmo’s fire across the heads of the half-buried troopers. A rolling, roaring gale of mechs swept across the ridgeline as the two armies tore at each other with ferocious momentum. Winger felt a few drops of rain on his arms. He looked up, saw low clouds scudding in from the west. Lightning flickered behind the clouds.
Dipole charges. Polarity columns. The wind was picking up. And it gave him the barest hint of an idea.
“Executing quantum collapse…NOW!” Come on baby, get small for me…get real small…
Enveloped by the swarming and smothering INDRA formation, the ANAD master collapsed what was left of its structure in an explosive puff of atom fragments. Base, effectors, probes and grapplers, even the core shell surrounding its central processor, went hurtling off into the air in a big bang of spinning atom parts.
It was a desperate, drastic, last-chance maneuver. But Johnny Winger had used it before and he knew what he was doing.
Instantly, ANAD seemed to disappear. For all intents and purposes, ANAD had effectively vanished in a cloud of blurry quantum waves.
Less than three minutes later, making its way on quantum wave propulsors, ANAD straggled back toward the containment capsule, its nanoprocessor still dogging electron states to bring the nearly invisible device home.
“Not just yet, ANAD,” Winger muttered. He tapped out a few more commands on his wrist keypad. “You’re getting back into the fight…in disguise, this time.”
***ANAD to Base…there’s not much left…need a break here…need some time in containment to regroup***
“No can do, ANAD,” Winger said. Now he heard the rumble of thunder. The storm front was getting closer. He finished the command sequence and squirted it through the coupler. “ANAD, get ready to look like dust particles!”
***aw, c’mon, Boss…have a heart…I’m beat up and really hurting down here***
But Winger paid no attention. Receiving the command, ANAD executed new config changes, grabbing atoms as best he could to cloak his processor in the structure of a simple dust mote. Moments later, from Winger’s position just below the top of the ridgeline, an unearthly tornado of dust suddenly erupted into the very midst of the INDRA swarm. The tornado accelerated upward, expanding outward like an inverted funnel, filtering into the swollen clouds scudding over the mountains. Inside the clouds, water droplets began to grow.
For many minutes, nothing seemed to happen. The enemy mechs continued replicating, smothering the troopers caught at the top of the hill. But gradually, the pressure of the assault seemed to lessen. A fierce driving rain soon lashed the hills.
Soaked but finally able to breathe, Mighty Mite Barnes managed to drag herself to her feet, helping Sheila Reaves do the same. They both lifted their faces to the stinging rain.
“What the hell’s going on?” Reaves asked, shielding her eyes from the downpour. “Is there a front coming through?”
‘I don’t know,” Barnes said, looking around uneasily. She closed the faceplate of her helmet to keep dry. “But I got a feeling about this…something tells me Captain’s behind it.”
All along the tops of the range, the swirling squall line expanded outward, leaping amid crackles of lightning from one hilltop to another. The rainstorm soon collided with the swarm of INDRA mechs, joined moments later by a deluge from the skies. Seams of electrical discharge split the air like curtains of fire, showering sparks and pops everywhere.
One by one, the troopers of the Detachment rose up, squinted through the rain and stood dumbfounded at the scene.
Bit by bit, the INDRA swarm was enveloped and vaporized by the rolling thunder of the oncoming weather front.
And that was when Major Kraft and the referees decided to stop the wargame.
An after-action review was held at the Ops center at Table Top. Captain Dana Tallant glared across the review board, actually a holographic model of the gaming range complete with Valleyville and all the terrain features. She glared at Johnny Winger with barely disguised fury.
“It wasn’t fair, Major. It was beyond the rules of engagement. OpFor…my detachment of 2nd Nano troopers, were blindsided.”
While the troopers bickered back and forth, Kraft read dryly from the official findings of the referees:
The dust storm seeded the nearby clouds, accelerating the formation of superheavy raindrops. Electrical discharges from breaking atomic bonds among the OpFor swarm enhanced the precipitation event, due to the bipolarity of water molecules. A rain event, basically a thunderstorm, was created by the well-timed replication of ANAD assemblers, assuming the structural form of molecules of silver nitrate and oxides of silicon…basic dust from the local terrain. The precipitation event and locally intense lightning discharges destroyed the OpFor swarm in minutes.
It was, in every respect, a tactically unique response to an enemy assault.
Major Kraft put the findings down and glared at Johnny Winger. “I suppose you can explain this, Captain?”
Winger cleared his throat. He averted his eyes from Dana Tallant. She didn’t like to lose any more than he did.
“I wasn’t sure what would happen, Major. We’ve experimented, me and ANAD, a little…seeding clouds to see what would happen. I didn’t think it was out of bounds. The rules of engagement—“
“—say nothing about this…I know, I know.” Kraft sighed. “Captain Winger, at least your solution to the Big Bang scenario has the virtue of never having been tried before. It was….how shall we put it: unique.”
“It was a stab in the back, Major,” Tallant insisted. She glared over at Winger. “To modify the weather in the middle of a wargame is like changing the rules in the middle of the game. Begging the Major’s pardon, but this invalidates the results of the exercise.”
“On the contrary—“ said Dr. Irwin Frost, who was also in attendance, “modifying weather using swarms of assemblers is quite interesting…a solution I would never have thought of. Johnny, how did you think of this?”
Winger shrugged. “Actually, it wasn’t me, Doc. It was ANAD. Like I said, we were just horsing around a few weeks ago, right after I got back from Northgate. ANAD likes to be out of containment and he started replicating near this low cloud and all of a sudden, there was rain. We tried it different ways, always looking for the right kind of cloud, and most of the time, he could seed the thing well enough to make it precipitate.” He looked over at Dana Tallant. “I honestly didn’t know what would happen when it started raining on the OpFor mechs. I figured it was worth a try.”
Kraft made a decision. “Captain Tallant, technically you’re right: modifying the weather during the wargame isn’t covered under the rules of engagement. The referees stopped the exercise because I ordered them to. The technique is unproven and unpredictable, it seems to me, despite the results today. But we need to explore it further. That’s why were here in the first place: to develop tactics and techniques to employ ANAD in our mandated missions.” He checked with Doc Frost. “I guess it’s your call, Doc. It seems that Captain Winger has demonstrated he can employ ANAD effectively in a combat scenario.”
Frost stroked his chin thoughtfully. “I concur, Major. Johnny, any difficulties in launching, controlling or recovering ANAD?”
Winger shook his head. After days of practice and a few late-night ‘conversations,’ he felt
he knew the little assembler as well as he knew any of the nogs in 1st Nano. “It was strange at first, not having to drive ANAD with the IC panel.” He flexed his fingers. “Me…I learned the old fashioned way…how to park an ANAD inside a benzene ring, how to snap a covalent bond…with my hands on a stick. Now, with the quantum coupler…you just think a command or a config change, and ANAD does the rest. It’s almost like we’re brothers…reading each other’s mind.” He smiled shyly. “Maybe reading too much at times—“
Kraft cleared his throat. “Then it seems the procedure has worked, Dr. Frost. If Captain Winger has effective control of the device through this new link, we ought to be able to deploy faster and deal with threats more quickly than ever before.” He re-read the sheet of findings, shaking his head at the novelty of Winger’s tactics. “Something tells me we’re going to need it.”
Doc Frost agreed. “I’ll have to sign off on the results as well. There is one caveat, however, Major.”
Kraft’s lips tightened. Scientists were always gumming up the works with their theories. ‘And that is--?”
“ANAD is an autonomous system, we all know that. With the computational smarts of roughly a twelve-year old, to strain an analogy. The physical link through the quantum coupler is solid…all the tests are consistent and repeatable on that. The interface, the neural buffer, the pattern amplifier…everything works just like it should.”
“So what’s the problem then, Doc?”
Frost chose his words carefully. “One of the side effects, both of the quantum technology and of the way our brains are wired, is that there seems to be a form of ‘leakage,’ to coin a term.”
“Leakage?”
“Some of the entanglement waves induce signals outside of the coupler interface that is implanted in Johnny’s mind. We don’t always have the finest control of the process. In some tests—“ here Frost wanted to be especially careful, “there’s been evidence of spurious signals induced in Johnny’s limbic system tissue…that’s where the brain maps emotional state information onto sensory signals. It’s not totally unexpected…but we may have to do some fine-tuning of the coupler to, er…minimize the effect.” He studied Johnny cautiously.
Kraft wasn’t following. “You mean he might go crazy from the interface?”
Frost shook his head. “No, of course not. It’s just that there might be, from time to time, odd emotional reactions to varying sensory inputs…reactions and emotions not always appropriate but amplified or out of phase, so to speak.”
Kraft took a deep breath. “Very well, Doctor, your opinion is duly noted. But I’m not running a kindergarten here. This is a combat outfit and we’ve got missions to perform. If Captain Winger does anything to jeopardize the mission, he’ll be answering to me. Is that clear?”
Winger nodded quickly. “Perfectly, sir. We won’t let you down, Major.”
“We?”
Winger smiled tentatively. “Me and ANAD, sir.”
Kraft groaned and dismissed the briefing. Doc Frost stifled a smile.
He realized that the symbiotic integration of human and assembler was already further advanced than he’d ever thought possible.
CHAPTER 2
Kurabantu Island, the south Pacific
October 27, 2068
1100 hours
Nigel Skinner had worked at the Red Hammer compound on Kurabantu Island for nearly a year. His job was simple, relatively straightforward: to release, monitor and control small swarms of Amazon Vector nanobots into the air over the island. It was all part of the Project, always the Project, and Skinner had been diligent and reliable for the most of the year he had been there. Nobody could say otherwise.
Today was different. Skinner had been having second thoughts about the Project, about being part of Red Hammer, even being assigned to this lush tropical island, for quite some time. He kept his doubts to himself. Shao Hong Ser, or Red Hammer as it was more often known around the back alleys of East Asia, was notorious for secrecy and security. You opened your mouth at your own risk. Skinner wasn’t afraid of dying; on the contrary, he was afraid of living, living a single day longer in the belly of the beast that the Project had become.
The truth was that Skinner had been planning to defect for some time now. Just when the idea had formed in his mind, he wasn’t sure. You had to be careful when you had a halo, for even subversive thoughts could get you in trouble. He had worked out the rudiments of a plan to defect and contact UNIFORCE, to let them know what was going on deep within the bowels of a small island in the Marquesas chain of the south Pacific.
Why? Revenge, perhaps. Souvranamh and the Ruling Council wouldn’t allow him to transfer out, wouldn’t allow him up to the mountain in Tibet, where the real work was done, and where some of his questions could be answered. Conscience. Bad dreams, though that could have been the halo at work, snooping along trails of glutamate molecules inside his brain, hunting down thoughts and memories that shouldn’t have been there. Maybe a little fear too.
Unfortunately, Skinner had been prevented from pursuing any ideas about escape by the presence of Red Hammer’s halo…it was something every member of the organization hosted. An embedded nanobotic control system infesting his mind and body, a hammer that would keep him from disrupting the Project or performing acts disloyal to Red Hammer.
Everyone had a halo. It was a personal shield that went wherever you did. Made sure you did what you were supposed to do, that nothing and no one could interfere. Another member he had met once, an American Indian named Windsinger, had put it this way: “I think and my halo acts. Like the great spirit of the mountains, always watching over me. My shadow, my armor…even my soul.”
It was the price of membership in Red Hammer.
But Skinner had discovered a fatal weakness in the halo and the time had come to take advantage of it.
Earlier that night, after the sun had gone down, he had slipped out of the residential quarter tucked into the foothills of the island’s great volcano Tuontavik, and made his way through steep forested ravines and narrow dirt paths to a headland of rocky cliffs overlooking an isolated beach on the northwest flanks of the island. With him, he carried a small pod, not much bigger than a loaf of bread. It was a portable containment cylinder, filled with nanobotic organisms, well secured inside the cylinder.
Skinner was, of course, well aware of the existence of UNIFORCE’s BioShield nanobots circulating in the lower troposphere of the Earth’s atmosphere. He knew as well that BioShield was especially sensitive to the presence of Serengeti Factor ‘bots, as the global pandemic of six years ago had brought the protective swarm into being. Knowing that, it was a small matter of concocting a batch of the mechs inside the lab, not enough to warrant concern but sufficient to trigger a reaction from BioShield and bring unwanted attention to what was going on at Kurabantu Island.
He had worked out the plan in scraps and pieces, so far successfully compartmentalizing the details enough to avoid intervention from the halo. There had been probes and jabs, to be sure, often coming late at night when he was trying to sleep—he could feel them—but so far, nothing serious had happened. The halo, if it had detected anything, hadn’t found a pattern to interpret.
Skinner prided himself on knowing how the blasted thing worked, knowing how the ‘bots sniffed out residual trails of glutamate molecules, the freight carriers of memory, and constructed crude renditions of memory traces inside a brain, even up to fifteen days after the trail had been laid down. He knew the halo ‘bots were designed to shuttle around inside your head like a bunch of bees, sniffing out calcium sinks in every neuron, looking for equal concentrations, down to the parts per trillion. He knew that everywhere the concentrations were equal was a pathway, burned in, a sort of memory trace, like an echo. The ‘bots looked for that, sent back data on whatever they found—calcium levels, sodium levels, activation times, lots of data. In the master ‘bot’s proc
essor, all that data could be re-constructed into a very crude version of what had originally laid down the trail.
He knew all that, but knowing it and defeating it were different things. Still, he had to try.
Only a year and a half had passed since Skinner had been sponsored into Red Hammer membership and allowed himself to be halo’ed. He’d signed on with Red Hammer, South Asia division, only in the fall of ’66, sponsored by none other than Souvranamh himself, the neurotraficante of the Ruling Council. He’d been put to work on something known only as the Project; with talents in environmental engineering, nanoswarm control algorithms and meteorological engineering, Skinner figured he’d be a worthy addition to the effort.
Assigned duties at Kurabantu station, Skinner plunged into the details of his work: generating and maintaining nanobotic master assemblers, improving their capabilities, initiating and maintaining swarm dispersion for atmosphere modification. He had no other life anyway. He was rootless Brit, like so many of his ancestors had been in the Colonial Service of the Empire. Born in Birmingham (ca. 2033). Something of a child prodigy in school. Honors and letters from Cambridge in Chemistry and Environmental Sciences.
He had lived in India most of his life. Both parents had died in a lifter crash in 2050. For the last ten years, he had lived in a New Delhi high-rise, worked for the Interior Ministry in freshwater remediation, met engineering and nanobotic pollution abatement.
He’d joined BioShield in 2066 after the Serengeti plague, worked on swarm communications and controls, and had been released in ’66 on suspicion of embezzlement and misuse of agency resources (even now, Skinner could hear his own voice rising in anger at the hearing: “this charge of unauthorized tampering with core ANAD BioShield algorithms without approval is patently ridiculous…nothing but a witch hunt—“)
But he was out on the street, nonetheless, and he thirsted for a way to embarrass BioShield and get back at the pinheads who had thrown him out on some kind of technicality. That was when Skinner learned through the New Delhi underground of something called Shao Hong Ser.