Nanotroopers Episode 7: Hong Chui

  ***ANAD has the greatest enthusiasm for our mission…executing commands in support of Corps objectives maximizes satisfaction vectors…neural net weighting converges most efficiently with your voice frequencies and harmonics***

  It wasn’t so much what he said as the way he said it that gave Winger pause. He decided he’d better be careful using ANAD in tactical situations until the Detachment could get back to Table Top and the little trooper could undergo a full-bore diagnostic inside of containment.

  It was just possible that Symborg had corrupted ANAD in ways hard to detect and in ways the self-check couldn’t flag.

  Hell, Winger thought, with all the angels around, I might not even have a real ANAD inside this capsule.

  He didn’t want to think very hard about that.

  The lifter flew on across the ocean for several hours, still following the massive decoherence wake disturbance that had left Mount Kipwezi.

  Winger and Nguyen studied the QPOD indications.

  “You’re sure this is the same thing we saw at Kipwezi?”

  Nguyen shrugged. “Sure as I can be, Skipper. The heading’s varied some, but not by much. If he stays on this heading, he’ll cross into India in about twenty hours, somewhere south of Mumbai. You know how deco is…first, it’s there, then it isn’t. But the general intensity’s been pretty consistent. I’d say what we’re tracking now is the same thing we tracked over Kipwezi, within the limits of QPOD.”

  Winger glared out the porthole. The sun had come up over the central Indian Ocean now and the lifter was slightly more than fifteen hundred kilometers northeast of the Seychelles. Already clouds were thickening to the southeast, as a morning storm front came boiling up from the tropics.

  “Menendez, what’s our fuel status?”

  The lifter jockey’s voice was clearly strained with worry. “Less than an hour at this power setting, Lieutenant. In about ten minutes, we’ll be bingo for diverting to the Seychelles. After that—“

  He didn’t have to say it. Beyond the islands was nothing but ocean. And the lifter didn’t have the fuel to make the Indian coastline.

  “Where’s that bastard going?” Winger asked, of no one in particular. “We’ve got a good track on what we think is the master bot of Symborg. But we have to break off or we’ll be swimming with the tuna in less than an hour. Damn frustrating—“

  It was ANAD who had the idea.