***ANAD receiving C-48A, Base…replicating new effectors now…hydrogen abstractors at maximum angle now…I will have to re-configure***
Slowly, gradually, bit by bit, Winger and Singh hunted down every area of tissue damage ANAD could detect, suturing where they could, replicating new axonal fiber where they had to, joining and fusing dendritic branches that had been torn away or truncated by the mag loop fire.
Winger was making a last minute cruise around Hiroshi’s cerebellar nodes when a thunderous crashing sound blasted by overhead of the clearing.
Singh and Barnes looked up alarmed and saw a stream of meteors streaking low across the treetops, white and red contrails burning the air behind them. The sound was like heavy cloth being ripped apart.
“Jesus!” Barnes cried. “Meteors…and they’re low—“
At that moment, something struck the earth a few kilometers away, and the ground shook and shimmied with a deafening impact. A strong gale of hot air blew through the trees, and small fires were quickly ignited in the heavy canopy overhead. In seconds, flames leaped from tree to tree, scorching and bursting into more flames. A wall of fire came streaking toward them from above.
Barnes cried out, “Look out…take cover--!” By instinct, she killed the barrier nano and helped wrestle the still-unconscious Hiroshi off her makeshift bed into the arms of Winger and Taj Singh. Ducking falling limbs and burning branches, they scattered along the swamp edge just as the flaming vegetation came crashing to the ground. Fiery leaves and embers exploded from the impact.
The squad struggled with Hiroshi’s limp body as they sought some kind of cover. By instinct, they dove deeper into the forest, stumbling blindly through acrid smoke, while beyond the hills ahead, more impacts jarred the ground. Trees and huge limbs came crashing to earth all around them, sounding like gunfire in the air as they snapped.
They ran into a shallow bog and lost control of Hiroshi who went flying right into the muddy water. She regained consciousness with the impact and sat up flailing and choking as the nanotroopers dove to pull her out.
Dragged up onto drier ground, Lucy Hiroshi spat dirt, mud and water and blinked at her surroundings. “Gaaa--! What is this place?”
“Hell on Earth!” Barnes answered, wiping Lucy’s face with a compress. “How do you feel, girl?”
Hiroshi’s face was cut and bleeding and her vision was blurred, but she managed to sit up. “Like I ran into a big saw blade. What happened?”
Barnes explained it as she helped the DPS tech to her feet. “You took fire from our targets…got clipped by mag. Skipper did a medbot insert to repair tissues…but we had to stop when those friggin’ meteors came down.”
Crouching nearby, Winger surveyed the area. The fires ignited by the meteor impact were growing. They couldn’t stay there much longer.
“Let’s circle the swamp…maybe the water’ll keep the fires from moving further.” He coughed, waved at the thickening smoke. “Lucy, can you move on your own? I left ANAD inside your head.”
Hiroshi staggered to her feet. Her digger’s tunic was half blown away in tatters by the mag loops, but she seemed stronger on her feet. “I think so…just give me a second. What about our embeds?”
Winger spent a few minutes recovering his own ANAD, patting his shoulder to massage the sting when the port slammed shut. “Leave ‘em. Now I’ve got mine. We’ve got to get away from that flame front.”
The squad gathered itself and moved out skirting the edge of the swamp, clawing through dense smoke, coughing, gagging and hacking their way blindly through the brush. Twice, Singh stepped into a sinkhole and lost his balance. Both times, it took the other three troopers to pull him out.
Twenty minutes later, they stopped for a few moments to catch their breath, heaving in great gulps of stale, smoky air. Winger briefly wondered if he should config and launch ANAD to replicate respirocytes. That would help their breathing. Normally, a nanotrooper on a mission would carry capsules of the ‘cytes for just this purpose, but the capsules hadn’t been included in their mission kit.
It was Barnes who saw them first. “Hey! Hey, isn’t that Jupiter and Juno over there?” She pointed through the dense growth and trees. Barely visible were two moving forms, clearly out of place.
It was Kulagin and Volk. They were returning to the swamp.
The Red Hammer agents spotted them first. In seconds, mag fire erupted through the trees, shredding leaves and bark, blasting sizzling holes in the trunk of a nearby screw pine.
“Get down!” someone yelled.
Both Singh and Barnes hit the dirt, rolled and came up firing back, pumping their own mag fire onto the enemy.
For the next few minutes, the nanotroopers fought a running series of skirmishes along the perimeter of the swamp. Ducking and firing, Winger and the squad returned fire, then plunged deeper into the jungle, trying to keep the cartel agents in sight, trying to flank them and force them out into the open, not easy to do in the jungle. It was Barnes who realized they were making a big circle. Half an hour later, they had come right back to the edge of the swamp.
“Look!” she cried out. ”There they are,” as Jupiter and Juno waded out into the water. Kulagin fired off more shots, making the nanotroopers duck for cover, then when they were waist deep, both agents ducked below the water’s surface.
Winger stopped short at the water’s edge, holding the others back. The barest hint of a suspicion came to mind. “Wait here,” he ordered. “They’ll have to come back up for air. And find some cover. They may be using the swamp to get behind us.”
Winger sent Taj in one direction, Barnes in the other, circling the edge of the swamp in case the Red Hammer agents surfaced somewhere else. He kept Lucy Hiroshi nearby; she was still recovering from her injuries and was none too steady on her feet.
“Where’d they go?” she asked. She checked her mag carbine, ejected a cartridge and slammed a fresh one in until it clicked.
“They went in, but I haven’t seen them since,” Winger said.
After a few minutes, it was evident that they had somehow lost Kulagin and Volk. A ripple disturbance in the center of the water caught Winger’s eye.
“Skipper, there must be a way out of here in that swamp. They haven’t come up.”
Winger’s dawning suspicion hit home. “There is, Lucy. The other Sphere…it must be in the swamp. Somehow, they found it…they may have already left this place.”
“You mean…where would they go?”
Winger shrugged, increasingly dejected. “Who knows…maybe back to Kokul-Gol.” He got on the crewnet and recalled Singh and Barnes, who returned moments later.
“Our mission is surveillance but we’ve lost the targets. I’m sure there’s another Sphere in that water. But I have to be sure…you stay here.”
“What’s in that feverish mind of yours, Skipper?” asked Barnes.
Winger had already launched his own embedded ANAD again, which issued from his shoulder capsule like a faint mist. “I’m going in the water…” He quickly hacked out a new config on his wristpad for the swelling mass of the swarm. “ANAD…assume config C-85—it’s a respiratory mask.”
Nanotroopers Episode 19: Mount Kipwezi Page 9