CHAPTER 8
You need not fear the terror by night,
Nor the arrow that flies by day,
Nor the plague that stalks in the darkness.
91st Psalm
Vivonex Labs
Basel, Switzerland
September 5, 2062
8:45 p.m.
Three panel trucks pulled over the ornate wrought iron Konig's Bridge and crossed the Rhine River into the Rheinfelder district of Basel. A few hundred meters beyond the end of the bridge, the trucks pulled off into a turnout on the Hohenkonig Road and stopped. Several men got out and opened the engine hood of the lead truck, gesturing and pointing at some problem inside.
For the light early evening traffic along the Hohenkonig, the trucks seemed nothing more that a small convoy of delivery vans, whose drivers were engaged in animated conversation, doubtless troubleshooting some mechanical problem along the side of the road. No one paid any attention to the incident. High above the road, in the craggy ramparts of the Vogelhard Mountains, several offices could be seen, tucked into the folds and crevices of the ancient hills. One of them was Vivonex, the Central Laboratory. Lights shone inside the complex through early evening mists rising off the Rhine. Intense, feverish work was going on inside.
Two hours later, no one noticed the trio of vans was still parked near the bridge below.
"Launch ANAD," Johnny Winger commanded. 1st Nano's TinyTown was secreted inside the middle of the three vans. The launch tube extended from the containment pod through the floor of the van into a small six-inch hole that had been drilled into the hard limestone cliff alongside the road. The leading and trailing vans made up the rest of the Detachment.
There was an audible swoosh as the vacuum system pulsed and discharged the small swarm with the ANAD master into the ground. The drone-snap of the discharge was followed by a momentary rumble as the horde transited the surface of the cliff and flew down the borehole they had drilled shortly before.
Moby M'Bela softly muttered a hex on their enemies as he secured TinyTown for ANAD's return. "Master away, Lieutenant."
"ANAD reports transiting….ready in all respects, sir," said Sergeant Gibbs, almost at the same time.
Winger studied the IC panel. "Very well…this is going to be ticklish for awhile. Time to reach the end of the borehole?"
Gibby checked ANAD's progress, a few other gauges. "About twenty minutes, Lieutenant. After that, he's on his own."
Winger knew that. He was making a huge gamble, but it seemed the only way. The plan was to insert a small reconswarm inside the Vivonex compound, and do a little snooping. They had to find out how the Serengeti airborne swarms were being controlled. They had to find a way to break that control link. The evidence pointed to Vivonex Central Lab as a key node, if not the control center. Until 1st Nano could locate and take on Red Hammer directly, Vivonex would have to be the soft underbelly.
"If we can get inside and find out how they run those swarms, how they program and control the bastards," Winger had told them at the briefing not twelve hours before, "we can put 'em out of business. Or at least, shut down operations from here. If we don't find those links, millions of more people are going to become addicts. We've got to get in there, somehow, and pull the plug."
The trick was, Winger had told them, getting inside the Vivonex compound. On their last visit, a formal inspection sanctioned by WHO, Nathan Caden and Sergeant Al Glance, a CC2 who'd been detailed to 1st Nano, reconnoitered the compound, scoping out Vivonex security and defense systems. It was a cinch, even though no outward evidence existed, that the place was crawling with nano--barriers and screens and filters and hunter-killer swarms, ready to make quick work of any intruders. Vivonex was a long-time player in nanomech development, and the pace of their work had picked up when HNRIV had burst on the scene. Vivonex had been part of the WHO/WCDC effort to develop a treatment. The fact that their proprietary treatment involved programmable nanobotic assemblers and no other company's did, spoke volumes about where their expertise lay.
Now, 1st Nano had come calling without an invitation and the real target was intelligence: just what level of collaboration existed between Vivonex and Red Hammer? Had the Serengeti Factor been intentionally designed to create remote-controlled addictions in its patients? Who or what was in control of this man-made plague?
Johnny Winger had worked out a penetration strategy with Caden and the rest of the battalion and wargamed it with SOFIE. It might just work. They hoped it would work.
It had to work.
"More than likely," Caden had offered, "the compound is secured floor to ceiling with nanomech screens. Like that bioweb Glance and I saw. If I were designing a security system, I'd tune my mechs to blanket the seals and locks, the doors and windows, and set up an airborne barrier overhead, just in case any intruders tried to slip in that way."
"What about coming in from below?" Gibby had asked.
"Below--how do you mean?"
Gibby stood next to Caden and Winger at the sim tank, watching simulated hordes of mechs flow over the diorama of the Vivonex compound. "I mean from underground. Look, sir, we know the place is tight from all angles up top. But there's a chance Vivo's got little or no nanomech barrier protecting an underground approach."
"You're talking…through the mountain?" Winger had asked.
Gibby ran his fist through the hologram of the sim tank. "Right through the rock, sir. We assemble a small group of replicants outside, bore a hole, and let 'em filter into the rock of the mountainside. Make their way toward the complex. At the right time, we rep a larger swarm and start filtering in from below…I'll bet you good money they're not configged to detect or react from an underground penetration. Maybe we can 'stream' ANAD in…you know, a few mechs at a time--and not even be noticed. Config ourselves as dust motes, or gnats or something innocent like that. Once we're in, we form up into reconswarms and go about our business."
Winger shook his head. It was a truly crackpot idea. "It might just work."
Caden was skeptical. "It's a tactical nightmare. How the hell do we communicate with ANAD--through solid rock? How does he navigate? We're talking big density problems here…pressure and temperature alone might even keep us from replicating. Nobody's ever tried to run an assembler underground, not at any depth."
Gibby smiled his best little maverick smile. "Exactly, sir. I know that. You know that. Probably Vivo knows that. Nobody will expect it. Nobody'll be looking for a nano breach from below ground."
Winger had gotten a warm, cuddly feeling about the idea. "It'll take some work. But I like it."
Nathan Caden could only think of problems. He fingered the tiny disk Wei Ming had given him at the hotel in Haleyville. Big problems. If he couldn't talk them out of it--
"Get to work, Gibby. Let's do a run…we'll let SOFIE tell us what's possible and what's not. We don't have a lot of time. The Major wants us on that transjet in eight hours."
The sims had been tweaked and ANAD re-programmed and it looked like it might work. Major Kraft reviewed the results of the wargame and gave his okay. Nathan Caden was desperate. While the rest of the Detachment was sorting out and loading their gear outside Missions Ops, he found a way to spend a few minutes alone inside Containment and loaded the bug on the disk. For good measure, he did a little programming of his own…pecking out commands as fast as he could, swearing under his breath, wishing to hell he were better at this program business.
Ever since he'd met Mustafa Gaidar in Paris two years ago, he'd learned a few things about living two lives, things he hadn't bargained for. Now the payoff was at hand and he felt the pressure of too many promises weighing on his chest like a lead jacket.
Two years of planning and promises and prevarication and now it came down to this: a few hours of sweat and blood in a place called Vivonex. He had to put a dent in ANAD and Quantum Corps' pursuit of the Serengeti menace or his life wouldn't be worth a puddle of
protoplasm. Operation Quantum Warrior was a bust, pure and simple. It was Caden's job to make sure the bust went south and the Project, whatever that was, stayed on track. Wei Ming had been pretty explicit about that.
Caden dabbed perspiration from his eyes as he powered up the TinyTown interface controls. He knew the CECs would be back in a few moments; he had to get this done before he had company.
He booted up ANAD's voice coupler and let the self-check proceed. All in all, it would be a nice day's work, worth a hell of a lot to Red Hammer and Nathan Caden. If it worked. And if he lived to enjoy it.
The IC panel showed green across the board. Inside the containment chamber, ANAD enabled its voice link. The nanoscale device, now a newly minted replicant master copy, clung to a scaffolding bathed in a liquid fluorine bath, its CPU ticking over, sensing the environment. Sixty-five nanometers long, the Autonomous Nanoscale Assembler/Disassembler returned status checks to its human master.
The voice synthesizer made ANAD sound like a petulant six-year old. It was a little touch the CECs had added when the master was regenerated.
Caden quickly scanned the board.
"Containment Level One," ANAD's voice blurted through the speaker. "Config safe condition. No templates received. CPU monitoring…."
Caden had always been annoyed by Lieutenant Winger's selection of a voice for ANAD. Why not a Parisian whore instead? Maybe a sultry voice, beckoning its listener on, promising unparalleled delights? It didn't matter.
Caden checked the configuration status himself, fumbling with the commands--damn it to hell…Gibby and Winger were a hell of a lot better at this--verifying that the control program loaded was the right one. Then he loaded the small disk with the bug in the reader and let Wei Ming's virus do its work.
His job was to make damn good and sure ANAD never left containment with the right program
In the months since he had first met Mustafa Gaidar in Paris--he'd been TDY'ed to UNIFORCE Headquarters for a two-year stint--Lieutenant Nathan Caden had convinced himself he was neither greedy, nor larcenous, nor a traitor or collaborator, though a halfway diligent Quantum Corps investigator might have seen things a bit differently. The truth was a lot more mundane: ANAD technology was cutting edge stuff and it was just plain wrong for Quantum Corps to keep it out of the marketplace, even for security reasons. Already, just dealing with Red Hammer and Gaidar over the last few months, it was plain that the Other Side had taken nanoscale assemblers to a new level of sophistication. Quantum Corps was behind the curve, as they had found out both at Lion's Rock and Uliba.
Somebody had to take autonomous, programmable, nanoscale systems before the public. Somebody had to get in on the ground floor of the revolution. Somebody had to take the risks…and win the rewards.
It was just these same thoughts that led Nathan Caden to a venture capital outfit called Archimedes Fund/Creative Partners. And to ArchFund's leading benefactor…the one time Defender of the Purity of Greater Balkistan, His Excellency Mustafa Gaidar.
It didn't take Caden long to understand the truth. ArchFund/CP was a front, pure and simple. A playtoy for Gaidar and few other Russian mafiya types. Nathan Caden knew about ANAD. He'd been in on the early tests at Northgate University in the States. He'd seen the medical marvels, the manufacturing miracles that intelligent, autonomous programmable systems the size of a virus could bring. He'd had the dreams. Gaidar and ArchFund/CP had the money.
It was a natural marriage, consummated in the only way such a union could be: with threats and hints of a violent future. And when Nathan Caden was finally re-assigned to U.N. Quantum Corps' Western Command base at Table Top Mountain, the marriage took on a decidedly one-sided character.
Informant sounded so sleazy. Saboteur sounded too dramatic. Businessman sounded better. Maybe entrepreneur. Or even visionary. Caden decided he liked the sound of that.
He managed to convince himself that money--plain and simply ArchFund's offer to help finance his own startup company--was the real reason he had agreed to work for Mustafa Gaidar--and by extension Red Hammer--inside Table Top Mountain. Behind the velvet glove full of riches however, was an unmistakably iron fist. Caden strongly suspected he would meet a particularly unpleasant end if he didn't cooperate.
He took up his new posting at Quantum Corps' Idaho base with more than a little apprehension. Gold-digger, fortune-seeker or visionary, Caden understood the risk he had taken. He had told himself every dreamer, every visionary and every hero had to dance with the dragon to reach the magic sword. Caden was a dreamer in a soldier's fatigues, stuck inside Quantum Corps.
And sometimes, it seemed Johnny Winger could see right through him.
Gaidar had convinced him that only by damaging the Corps and its monopoly on ANAD technology, could he ever realize his dreams. He wasn't so dense that he didn't realize that damaging the Corps would also help Red Hammer too.
It was a dangerous dance, indeed, and he'd come now to the point where he couldn't refuse to go on.
The bug was in and the IC panel beeped to indicate the copy was done. ANAD's plaintive little voice sounded through the speaker. "Format fault. Illegal version fault. You are attempting to load an incompatible version. Do you really want to do this?"
Caden bypassed the voice link and selected OK on the operations screen.
ANAD complained again, programmed to detect faults that affected its core capabilities. "Illegal version fault. Continuing this operation will affect all processor functions. Continuing this operation will affect all effector--"
Angrily, Caden killed the voice link. "Why the hell do you think I'm doing this?" He didn’t know the precise effect the Red Hammer bug would have; Wei Ming had said it would corrupt ANAD at the level of its very kernel. Quantum Warrior would be castrated before it ever left Table Top.
And Nathan Caden would have fulfilled his obligation to the Glorious Defender of Balkistan, and to Red Hammer.
He saw the config status display indicate the download was done. He popped the disk out (he'd have to ditch that quick, before they left for Europe) and began prepping the corrupted ANAD for transfer out to the airfield.
Lieutenant Winger had ordered muster for boarding the transjet in less than two hours. Caden didn't want to draw any more attention to himself.
It was all done in half an hour, just before M'Bela came back to get the containment pod and roll it out to the ramp.
"Here…" Caden powered down the IC quickly, "--I'll help. Let's get this baby buggy out to the ship and loaded pronto."
M'Bela seemed to be lost in his own thoughts. His field jacket was clanking with spirit icons and buttons. He was always that way before an op…muttering curses and incantations, communing with the dead, with The Other, hexing enemies and fixing ANAD up with his own brew of special powers. Ordinarily, Caden would have dinged him for wearing non-reg gear, but he didn't. He was just glad M'Bela hadn't caught him messing around with ANAD's program.
Johnny Winger studied the imager screen on his interface control panel, silently willing an image, something, to show up. SOFIE had predicted intermittent comm. The limestone cliff they had bored into was dense rock, structurally tight crystalline lattices of silicon and calcium and iron and half a dozen over things, with little room even for nanoscale bots to maneuver. Getting through the rock plates, let alone sending an acoustic or EM signal back, was dicey, and there were even bets around the Detachment on when comm would drop out altogether.
When it did, if it did, ANAD would be completely on his own, until he breached the floor seals of the Vivonex compound.
"Getting something--" Gibby announced. He tweaked a dial, boosted the gain, and waved his hands around the imager, imploring a signal to come back--"--come on, baby…come on…give me a peek, just one little peek--"
Gradually, the imager settled down to a dark, staticky, grainy picture--of what? Winger squinted, leaned forward. The view slowly materialized
--a dense, regular lattice of throbbing, quivering spheres.
"Crystalline structures," Gibby reported. "Looks like calcium. Maybe carbons—
Winger was mesmerized by the perfect geometry. "Oxygens too, Sergeant." He pointed to long rows of tiny darkened blobs, marching off into the distance like a fence. "A cubical lattice, just like the micrographs. A crystalline solid--"
"Limestone's mostly calcium anyway, with some oxygens and carbons mixed in. Interlocking crystals--it's beautiful."
"And damned hard to navigate. Like a jungle…this stuff's so dense, ANAD's speed is way down. Enable the voice link--"
Gibby tapped a few keys. "--to Hub…ANAD to Hub…ANAD is inside, pushing through some zone of crystalline cubes--" the voice was almost a whine, an impatient six-year old. "--very thick structure…getting jostled a bit…the atoms here are highly charged--probably covalent bonds…lots of electrons being swapped around--"
Winger opened the voice link. "ANAD, this is Hub…can you go any faster? We're behind the mission timeline."
There was a pause and the imager view jostled a bit. "Negative, Hub. ANAD at twenty percent propulsor…packing too tight here…high specific gravity…got many walls of lattice ahead…have to navigate each one…van der Waals forces are tricky--"
"How deep is he?" Winger asked.
Gibby checked the sounding return from the borehole. "Forty feet now…we should level off and turn northeast. The Vivonex compound's on a bearing of 072 degrees."
Winger studied the grid layout of the mountain, a 3-D projection of the limestone cliffs of Vogelhard Mountain, with the Vivonex lab sited in. ANAD's projected path was also laid in, a dotted line to the subsurface foundations of Building 5, the Level 4 lab and presumed operations center for Pharmex, the orbiting drug factory.
"I agree. ANAD…steer right to heading 072 degrees. Maintain depth if you can. And increase propulsor power to forty percent."
Sounding showed ANAD had complied. The child's voice crackled over the speaker. "Steering right to 072…sedimentary layers getting smaller…almost no voids now…pressure rising, temperature too…ANAD safing outer effectors…can't squeeze between calciums otherwise…commands sent to all daughters--"
"Good idea," Winger muttered. He hadn't thought of that. ANAD had retracted its outer layer of effectors, stowing them for the journey. That should reduce interference with the ionic forces buffeting the tiny swarm. "He's learning, Gibby…"
"Learning fast, sir. Like a precocious child--"
"--propulsor power increased to forty percent…ANAD recommends safing effectors to stage one--density increases ahead--"
"He's right," Gibby saw. "Must be a concentration of heavier rock."
ANAD had asked permission to retract all effectors inside its body, leaving only its structural shell exposed.
"Permission granted--" Winger sent. Precocious, indeed. Doc Frost had said the assembler probably had the cognitive ability of a six-year old. I wonder if he has tantrums.
Gibby and Winger studied the soundings, following the progress of the swarm as it wound its way laboriously through denser rock, climbing slightly to negotiate a nearly impenetrable outcropping of black-streaked breccia. On the imager, the acoustic return revealed a solid wall of atoms, pressed together like layers of a pie. The image buffeted and quivered in a maelstrom of atomic forces and Brownian motion.
"Like swimming in molasses," said Deeno D'Nunzio. She was behind the IC panel, biting her fingernails.
"Molasses mixed with chunks of rubber," said Nathan Caden. He wasn't sure how well ANAD would perform filtering through the interstices of solid rock. Time would tell. So far, the program flaw he'd inserted hadn't shown up.
"Just squeezing through--" added Nguyen.
"--but picking up some speed," Winger told them. "ANAD pulled in all his effectors. Lattice forces were dragging on his little pyridines and fullerenes. He's just a big ball of carbons now, the whole swarm. They should be able to get back on track."
Caden stirred uneasily, not certain what kind of defenses Vivonex had for a subterranean approach. He'd have to rely on the bug Wei Ming had given him.
"Distance to the compound?" Winger asked.
Gibby did some quick checking. "About a hundred meters now, Skipper. ANAD's turned to an east by northeast tangent, skirting that dense outcrop. He's in some kind of clastic rock now…zone of sandstone and shale, mostly. Easier going."
Winger nodded. ANAD had made the maneuver on his own, determining from onboard sounding the density ahead, and made an adjustment.
"ANAD, this is Hub…report status--"
There was a slight delay, then the child's voice came back, muffled and scratchy, sounding tinny through the speaker. "ANAD at forty percent propulsor…density dropped off a third…ANAD cruising through brecciated shale…larger lattice, atom forces reduced--"
And it was true. The imager view had lightened considerably. Dimly seen in the murk, the acoustic image vibrated with row upon row of tangled, irregular dark blobs, undulating and weaving back and forth in unseen currents of electron force. The shale was an amorphous solid, a loose agglomeration of atoms rather than a regimented crystalline structure. ANAD had probed and found an easier route up to the Vivonex complex.
The traverse through the innards of Vogelhard Mountain took another hour. Winger ordered the assembler to rise closer to the surface, and, after an uneasy delay, ANAD complied, eventually locating a loose sandy stratum of rock and soil where he could navigate even faster. Comm was getting difficult, as had been expected. Propulsor power was raised to fifty percent. Just shy of 2200 hours, ANAD reported his position.
"ANAD to Hub…ANAD detects foundation materials ahead…distance 7 x 10 exp 12 micrometers…slowing to twenty percent…daughter swarm re-grouping for penetration--"
Winger and Gibby had already seen the acoustic image darken again, indicating denser material ahead.
"ANAD…all stop…" Winger commanded. "Hold your position--"
"What's up, Skipper?" Gibby looked up, puzzled.
Winger pursed his lips. "Just thinking, that's all." He studied the grid view of the complex, fingering several approaches into Building 5. "ANAD needs to look for a seam in the foundation. And he'd better probe for any guards too. I don't expect a barrier of nano, but we'd better be sure. No sense waking everybody up if we don't have to."
Gibby was tuning the acoustic sounder, sampling reflected echoes from the subsurface structures a mile above the convoy of vans. "Mmmm…don't see any breaks in the thing…nothing like a seam, Lieutenant. If ANAD has to filter himself through the foundation--"
"--I know, I know. It'll take forever." Winger glared at Caden, then Deeno and Joe McReady, seeking answers. "We may have no choice though."
"He'll have to get real small to squeeze through this," Gibby reported. "Look--" he pointed to a pattern of echoes on the screen. "Sounder says minimum lattice size is around seventy nanometers. That's about the size of ANAD's outer shell."
"Pulling in effectors may not be enough," Winger understood the dilemma. "I hate to do a quantum collapse now…it's risky and we might not get all the structure back…before we're detected. ANAD could traverse even that solid a material if he chopped off all effectors and folded in to his processor dot."
"But would he be able to find enough atoms of the right type, fast enough, on the other side?" asked Deeno. "It's dicey."
"And all the atom-grabbing would surely get somebody's attention," Nguyen added.
Winger had made up his mind. "We're going in like we are, even if it slows us down. ANAD'll just have to squeeze through. I'd better let him know. Hub to ANAD, report status--"
The voice was hollow, as if deep inside a tunnel, which in effect it was. "ANAD to Hub…ANAD group stable…stationkeeping seven minutes from foundation outer surface…ANAD embedded in chalk stratum now…effectors partially extended…feels much better--"
Johnny Winger's eyebrows went up at ANAD's last statement. Wonder what the little guy's feeling--"Hub to ANAD, config down to outer shell…fold in all effectors. Transit the foundation structure in this config."
The message went through the link. Comm was spotty through the mountain of solid rock. It took nearly a minute for ANAD to reply. The signal was weak.
"ANAD to Hub…config to outer shell…collapsing effectors now, collapsing all outer structures…enzymatic knife, pyridine probes, electron lens…folding in planes…standby, Hub…standby a minute--"
The tenor of the assembler's voicelink changed. "What's happening?" Johnny Winger studied the IC, wondering.
Gibby had noticed it. "Right here, Skipper." He pointed to the Config Status display. "ANAD didn't collapse all the way…still got a few carbon arms sticking out…a few others too, it looks like."
"Hub to ANAD, what's going on?"
The delay had increased to over a minute. "ANAD to Hub…unable to comply with last instruction…illegal version fault…unable to comply with last instruction…unable to fold to stable shell…outer carbenes not responding…format fault--"
"What the hell?"
Nathan Caden moved closer, eyeing the others, as he scanned the display too. For the first time, the Red Hammer bug had shown up. ANAD was stuck in disassembly, unable to get small enough.
Gibby saw the problem at the same time. "Lieutenant, if ANAD can't collapse those carbenes, he won't be able to squeeze through the foundation structure. Look at the dimensions…he'll be too big."
Winger studied the same data, reluctantly agreeing. "Send an override. Re-command to collapse to stable shell config. I've got to be able to slip between those lattice planes, somehow."
Gibby sent the command. A minute later, ANAD responded.
"ANAD to Hub…unable to comply with override…unable to--what is happening to me?--unable to collapse outer carbene groups--illegal instruction set…trying to execute illegal instruction--"
"Illegal instruction--" Winger tried the command keys himself, but without success. He jiggled the joysticks, tapped out more commands, fighting, tickling config, spinning ANAD, extending and retracting effectors. It was like ANAD was stuck in a middle configuration. "This is weird…I can't get these damn carbene groups to fold." Sweat broke out on his forehead. "It's like the buggers are stuck…or sluggish. Sergeant, check config again…recycle the entire disassembly one more time…what is wrong with my effectors? I've got no probes, grapples, it’s like my pyridines are minus a few atoms!"
That's because they are, Lieutenant. Caden busied himself helping Moby ready TinyTown in case ANAD had to return.
Gibby was getting frustrated too. "Lieutenant, we may have to go quantum."
Winger was still fighting the controls. "I hope not. If we have to collapse to squeeze through the foundation of that building, it'll take nearly an hour to grab enough atoms to reconfig on the other side. Somebody's bound to notice ANAD. We'd be lucky to get half of ANAD back before they jumped him."
"Lieutenant, if we can't get those last effectors in, ANAD won't fit through the lattice atoms. None of the swarm will. The mission's over--"
Winger banged his hand on the keypad. "The mission's not over, dammit!" He wiped sweat from his eyes, watched the imager screen for a moment. The dense, dark regularity of crystalline planes dimmed the view, extending to infinity. An impenetrable woods. An impassable barrier?
Not just yet.
Winger made up his mind. "We're going quantum, fellas. There's no other way. We'll just have to chance it. Gibby, send the command."
Sergeant Gibbs checked config status and sent the instruction, holding his breath that this one wasn't corrupted. As a check, he requested voicelink confirmation from ANAD. It came two minutes later.
"ANAD to Hub…attempting to comply with command…format fault…severing outer shell lattices and groups now…format fault…illegal instruction format…breaking all bonds…severing covalent groups…severing poly groups…ending--"
The voicelink cut out in midsentence. Gibby reset the link but ANAD was quiet.
"That does it, Skipper. No voicelink."
"Status, Gibby? What's ANAD doing now?"
"Unknown, sir. There's no signal at all. Either the mountain's too solid for commlink or--"
"We've lost another master," said Buddha Nguyen, glumly.
"Maybe not...maybe not…give him time, fellas." Winger waited impatiently, pacing about the tiny van, rubbing his hands together. He tried to visualize what the autonomous assembler was doing, more than a mile away, a few feet below the foundation underside of the Vivonex lab.
Deep inside the heart of Vogelhard Mountain, the ANAD master had managed to overcome the format faults. Executing the quantum collapse command, it rapidly folded its own outer shell inward, imploding in a puff of atom fragments. Base lattice, effectors, probes and grapplers, even the core shell surrounding its nanoprocessor, went hurtling off into the minute voids of the dense shale layers below the foundation, ricocheting like bullets from one atom cluster to another, a spreading big bang of spinning atom parts.
Instantly, ANAD disappeared. To intents and purposes, ANAD had effectively vanished in a cloud of blurry quantum waves. Only the singular dot of its nanoprocessor, the kernel of the assembler, remained. The dot was the heart and mind of the assembler.
Less than an hour later, making its way on quantum wave propulsors, ANAD traversed the foundation structure like a fly in a forest. Silently, with the barest ripple of probability waves, the kernel of ANAD emerged into darkened storage vault in the basement of the Vivonex lab, its nanoprocessor still dogging electron states to bring the nearly invisible device through.
Unknown to anyone, ANAD had made it.
For another few minutes, ANAD ran its internal program, replicating structure, grabbing atoms left and right like some frantic brickmason, rebuilding itself from the inside out. Base, core shell, working grapplers, probes and hooks, atom by atom, cluster by cluster, the master replicant fashioned a new body for itself and, following its stored survival program, finally enabled a commlink and called out for its human handlers.
The speaker erupted with a staticky crackle. "--AD to Hub, ANAD to Hub…ANAD is through the foundation…ANAD has replicated to Level 1, standing by inside the target...ANAD senses inert structures nearby...replicating swarm now...replicating swarm to Level 1...ANAD detects no disturbance in range--"
A great cheer erupted through the van. Johnny Winger sprang to his feet and enabled voicelink.
"ANAD, you old goat…good work! Good work! Hub to ANAD, where are you? Can you broadcast a signal we can fix?"
Moments later, the acoustic return materialized on the display. "Bingo!" cried Gibby. Deeno slapped him on the back so hard, he nearly choked. "Just inside the basement of the Level Four Lab. Good old ANAD--"
Winger waved everyone quiet. "We're inside and replicating…let's get that layout of the target up. I want to see what's what. Caden?"
Nathan Caden swallowed his disappointment. He fingered the map Winger had just called up. "Sergeant Glance and I found that drug lab control center back here--" he indicated a facility in the rear of the building. "There was a security web around the place. I'm sure ANAD won't be able to breach that."
"We'll see," Winger said. "Let's finish replicating the swarm, Gibby, and form up. Make a formation to penetrate the floors underneath that secure room. It's a cinch the doors and seals are protected. Maybe we can filter through the floor and catch 'em looking elsewhere."
"Got it, Lieutenant." Gibby sent the commands.
A short time later, the ANAD group was fully formed and in position.
"ANAD reporting position…sixty two micrometers below first atom planes of target…barrier ahead…detecting barrier ahead--"
Winger shot to the controls. "ANAD, start filtering through the floors now! Penetrate the fl
oor before the mechs engage!"
He sent the commands to get ANAD inside the solid lattices of the floor, hoping the enemy mechs of the security barrier could never find him in such a tangle. Even if they do, he reasoned to himself, engaging another swarm wouldn't be easy in close confines like that. Like trying to turn a horse around in his stall--
The enemy mechs closed and pressed through the floor tiles of the control room, but ANAD had already dispersed and spread out. Deep inside the atomic structure of the floor, two armies of nanomechs stalked each other, sliding through tight corridors of crystalline lattices, probing and sounding and listening in the echo chamber for any hint of the other.
Winger held his breath.
After a few minutes, he began to relax. The enemy mechs couldn't detect ANAD. The assemblers were dispersed too widely.
Gibby studied the nav display. "ANAD approaching upper floor plane…outer lattice."
Winger was already thinking ahead. "Once he reaches the floor surface, I want to split the formation. Two reconswarms, you and me controlling. Configure for all-scan…EM, acoustic, the works. I want to see what's going on in that room Caden found. You take the second swarm and filter out into rest of the building…see what you can find."
"Understood." Gibby pulled up the proper swarm template and got ready to send the command.
ANAD's whiny voice crackled through the speakers. "ANAD to Hub…ANAD at upper plane…twenty percent propulsor…effectors stowed and safed…detecting reduced density ahead…crystal packing density dropping off--"
"Hub to ANAD," Johnny Winger bent to the voice pickup, "Get ready to replicate and divide. Reconswarm template. Configure for max bandwidth…send everything back as fast as you get it!"
The delay was only a few seconds now…"ANAD to Hub, acknowledging formation command…still detecting slight disturbances in lattice…maneuvering to avoid…that was quite a ride through the mountain--"
Winger and Gibby looked at each other. "He sounds just like a kid, Lieutenant."
"Too much like a kid. I need him to stay focused." Winger perused the IC panel. The imager screen was still dim, shadowy walls and ramparts of crystalline planes still evident, lined up into the distance. Config status showed ANAD's current setup. The reconswarm template had been sent. In moments, ANAD would start grabbing atoms from the top layer of the floor, replicating himself with blazing speed. When the swarm reached the commanded size, the master would split the formation and begin shaping each group into virtual lenses and detectors, infinitesimal instruments able to capture photons of any energy and funnel the patterns back along the comm link to the vans a mile down Hohenkonig Road.
With any luck, dividing the swarms and silently capturing photons from inside the control room wouldn't arouse any Vivonex defenses.
"It's just a matter of time before that swarm of mechs under the floor re-groups," Winger muttered.
"ANAD'll kick ass," Deeno shot back. The CQE1 was slouching against the far wall of the van, propped up on the edge of the TinyTown cylinder, much to Moby's disgust. Firmly, he nudged her away.
"TinyTown is a delicate environment, Deeno. Not a sofa bed."
D'Nunzio growled at him, as both watched Winger and Gibby work the controls.
Deep inside the Vivonex compound, an invisible mist of nanoscale mechs rose silently from the floor tiles into the Pharmex control room.
Seconds later, the first visual image, grainy and patchy, jerking with interference, but discernible filled the imager screen.
"We're in," Winger breathed. He hardly dared believe their luck.
For his part, Gibby steered his own horde through the door seals, briefly pausing at the inner boundary of the security web. "Forgot about that," he said. "Hub to ANAD2, disperse and re-enter the floor structure. Filter along the upper plane until this security web is bypassed."
"ANAD2 to Hub…acknowledging…dispersing for solid entry now…I get claustrophobia down there, you know…it's awfully crowded inside those lattices…Brownian motion's a bitch…entering floor upper plane now--" the signal sputtered and died off as the second reconswarm distributed itself inside the floor and laboriously filtered its way forward, bypassing the security web that made a barrier around the control room. Gibby kept his eyes glued to ANAD's return…any disturbance in the signal could mean trouble.
They didn't want to stir up the hornet's nest just yet.
"DPS1," Winger shouted out, "get Superfly up and running. I want some kind of perimeter around these vans. Now that we're inside the beehive, I want protection for the convoy. Vivonex may send someone snooping down here."
Sheila Reaves was in the trailing van, with the rest of the defense and countermeasures gear. Her voice came back over the commlink.
"Right away, Lieutenant. Superfly's already powered up, ready to rock and roll. You want bots and HERF ready too?"
"Do it. But make it quiet. Let's don't disturb the neighborhood any more than necessary."
Deeno was keeping an eye on the imager. "Skipper, ANAD's focusing--"
The screen was settling down as the nanoscale swarm shaped itself for a few moments into a virtual camera lens, grabbing enough photons to form up a visual image. Shadowy forms moved about the room, now filled with consoles and flickering video feeds. A featureless head drifted across the view--someone moving in front of the nearly invisible swarm--and Deeno caught a glimpse of a name patch on a lab coat.
It read Johansen.
Caden snorted. "That's the joker me and Glance ran into. Had some kind of burr up his ass. Tech leader or manager-type, I'd guess."
Johansen was bending over a console, peering at something. Video screens flashed beyond them, changing displays. Winger tiled the image, splitting ANAD's take into visual, acoustic, EM and other inputs, gulping data from patterns ANAD made out of the photons he was grabbing.
"ANAD to Hub…are you receiving?…are you getting any of this?…ANAD scanning now--ANAD detecting signal drop--boosting power--ANAD doesn't know where that drain is coming from…investigating now…"
Only Nathan Caden had any inkling what had happened. The bug he had planted inside ANAD's processor caused a small portion of any photons he captured to be diverted away, in effect broadcast into the air. Without realizing it, ANAD was signaling his own presence and position with every scan sweep.
"Hub to ANAD…focus in on that video feed to the right…swing bore sight right to bearing zero six zero degrees and hold--" Winger worked the gain, trying to get a clearer picture.
"See something, Skipper?"
"Maybe--just, maybe--" The Lieutenant waited a second, then settled back as ANAD focused on the video screen. The flickering images came into sharper resolution.
"What the hell--look, Moby, Deeno, is that what I think it is?"
The video screen bore a clear resemblance to their own IC panel. As the gain was further boosted--ANAD changing the shape of its virtual lens on the fly--individual graphics on the screen became barely legible--
Pharmex Video Feed - Comm/Swarm Interface -
Gibby squinted, mouthing the words. "Skipper, that's an interface control setup. Just like this one--"
'I know it. And see that--" he swept his fingers to the far left side of the imager view. "A map…grid coordinates…what are those lights on the map?"
Mighty Mite came closer. "Positions, Lieutenant. You can see the outline of Africa…there's the Red Sea…there, that's India, isn't it? Australia, the Persian Gulf--" her finger traced north, then back and forth. "All Asia, even some of Europe."
"We're getting audio feed," Deeno told them. "Listen--"
Scratchy voices issued from the speaker.
"--second colony almost on target, Sven…Sicily's clear--we should have--XXXXXXXXX-- to lower them into position--"
"Very well." It was Johansen speaking. His mouth moved in time with the audio. "Change format now…send the safing command…and bring them t
o a stop, right over the middle of the island."
"Let 'em drift down?"
Johansen's head made a jerky sort of nod. "More natural that way…mimics real airborne particles…they'll be dispersed…look like a viral infection from natural contaminants."
The other voice belonged a stocky, bearded man in the foreground. "Pharmex…you have control. Here's the starting vector."
On the video screen over their heads, a face floated into view. The face was speaking. ANAD re-tuned and compensated to pick up the pressure waves of the new voice…it came from the speaker on the screen.
"Got it. I'm ready to re-format the swarm. Soon as I've got detectable entries on the ground, I'll format for seizures--good old neurobuzz--then dig in and set up shop. By tonight, we'll have some new customers--"
Johansen seemed satisfied. "Go easy at first, Dieter. A few tickles, give 'em the jazz and make 'em happy. We'll hose 'em with dopamine tomorrow."
"Understood. Salerno will be one hopping town by the end of the week--"
A faint smile crossed Johansen's face. "Yeah…that puts another node in Uncle's hands. We should be about due for another payment too."
Winger fiddled with the take from ANAD, re-shaping the virtual lens into infrared, acoustic, EM, and other detectors, studying the results as they came in. A mile away, inside the Level 4 Lab, ANAD complied, re-forming the swarm of nanomechs into different instruments, grabbing photons, pressure waves, anything "Hub" wanted.
"Gibby…what about you? Anything interesting?"
Sergeant Gibbs had filtered his own brood of mechs outside the Lab and steered them across walls and through seals and locks to a sealed chamber in the front of the building. Another security web screened the entrance and Gibby ordered his own reconswarm to disperse and hold position.
"Indirect stuff, Lieutenant. I'd like to go back across to the Containment building…see what's cooking inside that pod they showed us before."
"Negative…" Winger vetoed the idea. "Too much exposure…we'll trip something for sure. We've been lucky so far."
"Lieutenant," Deeno said. "It sure looks like Vivo's controlling some kind of airborne swarm through that lab in orbit."
"Pretty damning," Winger agreed. "We've got audio, video and EM intelligence from ANAD all on tape. That ought to give UNIFORCE enough to make a case, shut this place down. But we still have to stop those links. We've still got to contain and defeat those swarms."
"That map seems to be the key," Moby M'Bela observed. "Maybe the colonies' positions are monitored there. If we can get coordinates and config status--"
"--we'll know where to strike." Winger liked the idea. "Hub to ANAD, re-form for extreme close-up. Detach a small force…I'm going inside that computer and grab the data right off the drive--"
"Isn't that risky?" Caden asked. "You start mucking around with molecule-sized bits and somebody'll notice for sure."
"We've got no choice," Winger said. "This is our best chance to get exact information on the locations of those superswarms."
Unseen by ANAD, the Vivo mechs had emerged from the floor of the lab and dispersed themselves, flitting about the room as so many loose molecules, hiding behind dust motes, errant carbon radicals, anything they could find. Controlled remotely by Hammond Steejn, who ran the horde from an interface controller in his office in Building 1 at the front of the compound, the mechs stalked ANAD relentlessly, tasting a trail of stray photons that the Quantum Corps nanowarrior left each time it signaled back to the vans.
For several minutes, as Johnny Winger insinuated a tiny element of ANAD replicants inside the hard drives of the computer, the Vivonex mechs closed on their target, an infinitesimal predator seeking infinitesimal prey. Johansen and the rest of the crew in the Pharmex room seemed completely unaware of the battle about to be joined.
So was Johnny Winger.
But the battle never came. Instead of engaging ANAD, the Vivo mechs cruised in hiding on stray air molecules, right to the source of the stray photons and held off at a distance of several billion microns, like a squad of lions waiting to pounce. Silently, stealthily, one at a time, the mechs seized single ANAD assemblers and throttled them, ripping atoms from atoms, until the assemblers had been dismembered into atomic fluff and set adrift. Then, with no further command, the mechs re-configured themselves into replicas of the dismembered ANADs and drifted forward, a squadron of Trojan Horses the size of carbon atoms, filling in and reacting as its fellow assemblers did when commanded from the Hub.
By the time ANAD had finished reading the molecular dots of data on the computer drive, the Vivo mechs had thoroughly infiltrated the swarm and insinuated themselves deep and undetected into the very heart of the formation.
A mile below, completely unaware of what had just happened, Johnny Winger breathed a sigh of relief.
"Looks like we're done. Moby, you got all that?"
M'Bela had been running the recorders. "Every single nanobit of it, Skipper."
"Very well. I'm recalling ANAD. Gibby, get your guys ready. Let's get the hell out of here."
The exfiltration process lasted several hours. Winger didn't want to leave any atomic trails for the enemy to follow, so he commanded ANAD to re-configure for transit back through the mountain again.
ANAD seemed less than thrilled by the prospect. "ANAD to Hub…ANAD squeezed awfully tight in those lattices…ANAD requests permission to return above ground…more room to maneuver--ANAD gets bounced around by calcium ions in that underground limestone rock--"
Winger and Gibby looked at each. "Is he about to be naughty?" the Lieutenant asked.
"I don't know, sir, but you'll have a hell of time spanking this child."
Winger ordered the assembler, now becoming a bit too autonomous, to transit the mountain. "Hub to ANAD, return below ground…that's an order. I don't want to take a chance on triggering a defensive response."
"Lieutenant--" the voice was Reaves', from the rear van, on the tactical circuit. "--we may have already triggered something--I'm porting it to your eyepiece on the crewnet--" She was already tuning the Superfly seeker to a new band. Static fuzzed the eyepiece and Winger momentarily shutdown the link. "--I'm reading acoustic disturbance…ground level or a few meters overhead, under ten decibels, but something's definitely there."
"EM, Sergeant? Thermal?"
"Just tickling Superfly's seeker, sir. First it's there…then it isn't--"
Winger had a bad feeling. His neck hairs were standing up. And he had just ordered ANAD to return through Vogelhard Mountain.
"Hub to ANAD! Hub to ANAD…belay that last order! Get the hell out of that building, anyway you can. Get going right now!"
Gibby was uneasy, studying the IC. "What is it, Skipper?"
"Just a gut feeling…somehow…I don't know how--we've been discovered. Somebody--or some thing's tipped Vivo off--"
The IC2 was monitoring ANAD on his panel. "--ANAD's away, sir…just regrouped and exited Building 5…airborne and en route bearing zero eight five. ETA…" he did some quick calculating…"--nine minutes."
"Max rep," Winger ordered. "I've got a bad feeling--" He moved over to Gibby's station.
"Lieutenant--" It was Reaves again. Her voice was thick. "--whatever they are--here they come!"
It was too late to get into their hypersuits. And there wasn't enough room. "DPS, bring Superfly in tighter. Make a screen…head 'em off. ANAD's still eight minutes away, replicating like crazy. Maybe we can hold 'em off long enough--" He looked around the van. "Everybody get down and cover yourself with something NOW! We may get a breach--"
Winger worked with Gibby, massaging controls, tapping keys, managing ANAD's approach, making the assembler swarm ready to confront the enemy nano.
"Come on…come on…come on!--"Winger breathed, willing the swarm to close the distance. It was a race now: Vivo mechs swooping down off the mountain, flowing around the convoy of vans still pa
rked on the side of the road and the ANAD swarm streaking from the Vivonex compound as fast as their picowatt propulsors could move them.
"--getting confirmation now!" Gibby yelled. "ANAD's blowing up--template T-1--coming in hot and hard…less than fifty meters. Must've picked up a tailwind." Twenty feet over their heads, drifting in like dust in a faint mountain breeze, ANAD was multiplying, bagging atoms and making replicas, accelerating mass at an exponential rate.
Gibby was already crouching down in his seat. "This one's gonna be close--"
Winger was already helping Deeno and Mighty Mite and Nguyen grab some protection, a seat cover, a cushion, cargo webbing--anything. "Make yourselves small, guys. Small as you can."
From below a console, Deeno's black eyes narrowed. "Just let me at 'em…let me kick some nano ass, sir--"
"Later---DPS, what's up?"
Reaves was already tracking the swarm filling in around the convoy. "Enemy nano, sir! I was tracking with Superfly, engaging, but they got him. Shredded the whole force--just like that. I'm reading about a hundred meters north, toward that cliff we saw driving up, bearing two-five-oh degrees, tight formation, closing at about a meter per second. Can't tell what config yet--"
Winger did another quick mental calculation…at a meter per second, they had about six minutes to intercept with ANAD. And hunker down for the assault.
"DPS," he called out over the circuit. "Are we probing? I need some idea of what we're dealing with here."
Sergeant Reaves no longer had aerial imagery from Superfly. The microflyer swarm had already been shredded by the oncoming enemy force. Instead, she used the steerable sideband pulser, sweeping electromagnetic fingers around the convoy. The pulser swept through the cloud of Vivonex nanomechs and returned a rough structural outlines of the devices.
"Coming in, now, sir. I'll patch it through to the IC…." She touched a few icons on her wristpad and the data was squirted over to the lead van.
Winger studied the signal. The pulse had come back with a rough image of the enemy force disposition, as well as a few details. Could be Serengeti…maybe even an INDRA clone…he fed the details to the config and started tapping out commands to fill in some gaps in ANAD's structure, modifying his own config on the fly. Inside of a minute, he'd hacked out a design for ANAD that would do. It would have to do. Once the enemy closed on their position, ANAD wouldn't get a second chance.
"Change config," he told Gibby. "Do it now!"
Sergeant Gibbs sent the command. Twenty feet over their heads, trillions of ANAD replicants received the same instructions: alter configuration to this design…grab atoms…cleave this group…fold here…build lattice there…the air churned with furious activity.
Winger knew it was time to ring the bell. "Disperse the swarm. Prepare to engage," he said quietly.
Less than fifty yards away, directly over a moss-draped cliff on the front slopes of Vogelhard Mountain, the hillside was suddenly bathed in an unearthly pale blue light as vast but unseen armies clashed. The gotterdammerung pulsed like a flickering aurora as the swarms collided head-on.
The entire battle lasted four minutes.
From the beginning, Winger and Gibby saw that ANAD had been weakened somehow. Perhaps it was the trip through the solid rock of the mountain. Perhaps it was the config Winger had hurriedly hacked out. Perhaps it was something else.
Gibbs was the first to report enemy mechs inside their defensive perimeter.
A small segment of the Vivonex force had detached and surrounded the lead van, almost as if the mechs were under remote human control. Gibbs and Winger both felt the air crackle like a million stinging needles had fallen on them.
"Here they come!" Gibbs yelled.
"Fold up!" Winger ordered to everyone in the van. "Make yourself as small as possible!"
It was a self-defense tactic they had tried with ANAD but it seldom worked. Vivonex had found them, caught them unprepared, trying to recover the reconswarm. Winger squeezed as tightly into the space below the IC panel as he could. It had been his decision to recover ANAD back through the mountain. Maintain operational security--that was the rationale. Now it looked like a terrifically bad decision.
Vivonex had been waiting in the folds and crags of the mountaintop all the time. He could easily lose the whole unit if ANAD couldn't fight them off.
Joe McReady's voice did the trick. He screamed in agony as enemy mechs filtered inside the van and fell on his position, forward at the mobile TinyTown bay.
"arrrggghhh!…HELP--HELP ME!!…THEY'RE BURNING--!" McReady couldn't take it any longer; he clawed at his face and arms, then burst out of the van, and tore off down Hohenkonig Road toward the bridge, arms flailing at invisible tormentors. He didn't even make it to the other side. In the mist and the shadows, they heard him stumble…the splash came ten seconds later. He'd dived from the bridge headfirst, sixty feet, into the swirling waters of the Rhine River.
Winger had had enough. This was his fault. He was damned if he'd let the Detachment be chewed up on his watch…he'd already done it to Dana Tallant--
"DPS! Sergeant Reaves…get your HERF guns set up! Full power…all azimuth…blanket this whole area!"
"Inside the vans, sir?" She was already hustling to get the radio-frequency weapon ready. "Sir, we don't have protective gear…HERF'll fry every living thing to ashes…inside these vans--"
"Do it!" Winger knew full well the weapon could permanently damage their hearing, even collapse a man's central nervous system at full power. But he had no choice. HERF would shatter the Vivo formation too. They needed some kind of shield and fast.
Once HERF was up, they could re-capture ANAD and get the hell out of Dodge.
Seconds later, Reaves had the HERF gun powered up. "Weapon is enabled, sir!"
"Fire!" Winger yelled. Already, he was feeling tongues of invisible fire, lapping at his neck and head. "Fire all around! Full bore! Let 'em have it!"
The entire van shook like a giant hand had slapped it, vibrating as the first pulse shot out, squeezing the air with a thunderclap of heat. A searing wave washed through the interior, as the bubble of radio waves expanded outward, frying and pulverizing everything in its path.
The first pulse was quickly followed by several more, each discharge hammering the convoy of vans with an invisible fist of energy. Johnny Winger screamed at the top of his lungs, trying to equalize pressure inside his head. His eyes and lungs burned. His skin crawled with fire, then tingled and crackled….
At best, he figured the HERF gun had bought them a few minutes.
"Detachment--!" he croaked out. "Secure the convoy! Get ANAD back into containment…Let's get the hell out of here!"
Even as Gibby was steering the ANAD force back toward the van, M'Bela was prepping TinyTown for capture. He initialized the cylinder, moved the vacuum tube into position by the rear door, while Gibby readied the master assembler for its harrowing trip off the mountain. Winger had already sent commands for all the remaining replicants to stay engaged with the Vivo force, sacrificing themselves so the humans could get away. Once the battle was over, hardcoding inside their quantum dot brains would send a final order to commit seppuku, and the remains of the force would quickly disassemble themselves into atomic fluff.
Lieutenant Winger looked a little pale and wobbly as he crawled to open the doors, handmotioning M'Bela to get ready for a combat insertion.
What was wrong? Had the Vivo mechs stung the Skipper? M'Bela started to help the Lieutenant, but Winger waved him away.
"Soon as I yank this door open, you snatch ANAD, Moby! Got that!" He shook his head…something was wrong…his vision was blurring…his hands twitched uncontrollably--
M'Bela acknowledged. "TinyTown's ready, Skipper."
Winger checked his watch, kept an eye on Gibby at the panel, as he monitored ANAD's progress. The assembler was fighting its way through a horde of Vivo mechs, steadily closing on the c
onvoy from above, hugging its precious intel data close, as war raged outside and above the trucks.
Winger followed Gibby's handmotions, mouthing the countdown--
Three….two….one…"NOW!"
Winger fought through dimming vision and willed his arms to obey, throwing open the rear doors of the van. Speeding down from a rocky escarpment, a faint green phosphorescent glow filled the air outside the door. The green light, partially ionized plasma from the HERF impulse, intensified to a white glow as ANAD battled the last few meters. The pressure pulse snapped the vacuum tube right out of M'Bela's hands.
In an instant, the Autonomous Nanoscale Assembler/Disassembler had transited the tube and plunged into the soothing homewaters of the TinyTown cylinder.
M'Bela grabbed the end of the vacuum tube out of the air and stabbed a button, sealing the tank. "Got him, Lieutenant! ANAD's sealed in and safe."
With his last ounce of strength, Johnny Winger slammed the doors shut. "Grab your gear--" he croaked out. "Get going…exfiltrate like hell! Get us out of here NOW!"
Lieutenant Johnny Winger knew, even before he pitched forward and slumped to the van floor, that he'd been swarmed. Vivo mechs had breached the van seals, breached the ANAD barrier Reaves had put up around the convoy, somehow survived the HERF blast, and filtered inside the command vehicle.
Villa was already gone, twitching like a puppet in the front corner. Now, Winger slumped down beside Gibby's feet. His nerves had been fried, knives sliced through his head, as the mechs infiltrated his brain, replicating madly, seizing neural circuits in a silent blitzkrieg, stoking dopamine, lighting a fire in the back of his head.
"Lieutenant--Lieutenant Winger--" he voice was muffled…it sounded like Moby, could have been Deeno--
Winger bit right through his tongue and his head banged with violent spasms and contortions, as his body clenched and relaxed. The seizure grew more violent with each wave of pain. Blood poured out of his mouth and his back arched as the mechs burrowed deeper into his limbic tissue, grabbing axons, an occupying army terrorizing every nerve ending it could find.
"Lieutenant's been hit!"
It was Mighty Mite Barnes, scrambling over still-smoking equipment that had been fried by HERF. "Lieutenant's been swarmed--!" She straddled his chest, held his arms back and reached, grabbed, for something, anything, to stuff into his mouth, to keep him from biting through his own tongue. Finally, her fingers clawed at and found a twisted piece of bracket.
"We got more trouble--" Reaves's voice crackled over the crewnet. "Vehicles approaching, a whole platoon of 'em, from the east. My scan's cutting out--but it looks like bad guys!"
Barnes took charge of the situation, the tough-talking, loud-mouthed human dynamo snapping off orders left and right.
"Moby…get us out of here!" M'Bela squeezed by the fallen Lieutenant and made his way to the cockpit. "We're falling back…fall back to the city. We got to lose these bastards for good. Sheila--?"
"I'm on it--" In the van behind, DPS Sheila Reaves had already powered up a covey of coilgun bots. She armed the microflyers and, one by one, discharged them from the rooftop port. "Coilguns enabled and up…I'm setting up a spread shot. Give me some room, will you?"
"You got it!" Moby called back. He gunned the engine and the van moved smartly out onto the road, sliding on gravel and dust, as they accelerated through the pale yellow glare of the streetlamps fronting the Rheinfelder Bridge. In seconds, the entire convoy was at full speed, clattering across the iron bridge, then descending through a series of harrowing switchbacks into the twisting, cobblestoned streets of Grossbasel.
As the trailing truck approached the bridge, Reaves triggered her coilgun bots. Fifty feet over the bridge, an arc of fire flashed out of the night sky as the bots discharged their pulses. Lightning ripped the air as millions of volts incinerated the edge of the cliff and the lead vehicles of the attackers. Rubble streamed onto the road. The lead vehicle swerved back and forth, erupted into a ball of orange and black flame, and flipped onto its side. It skidded toward the bridge abutment, flinging wreckage and fuel everywhere, caromed off the tower, and pitched over the cliff into the dark waters of the Rhine River itself.
Behind the inferno, the following vehicles slammed to a halt.
Just for good measure, Reaves triggered her bots one more time, this time at the side of Vogelhard Mountain. A geyser of rock and debris rained down on the hapless pursuers as the discharge ate jagged chunks out of the cliff.
Reaves grinned at the viewer image of the carnage she had created.
"Not bad for a night's work, if I do say so myself."
Inside the command vehicle, Barnes told M'Bela to head for the airport. She bent down with a worried frown to look at Johnny Winger's contorted face.
"How's he doing?"
Sergeant Gibbs held a cold compress to the sweating forehead of the Lieutenant. "Not good. But he's better off than Lu--" Gibby nodded in the direction of the prostrate form of Sergeant Luis Villa, crumpled in a heap by the rear door. Deeno D'Nunzio was alongside the CEC2, checking vitals signs. There weren't any.
"Maybe…maybe not," Barnes muttered. "Anything we can do here?"
Gibby took a deep breath. "He's been swarmed, Mite. Mechs are inside him, crawling all over his brain. I don't have the gear--I'd like to-- but we don't--"
"--don't what?"
Gibby swallowed hard. "I want to go inside, try to engage those damn mechs…before it's too late."
"Inside…you mean with ANAD?"
Gibby nodded, feeling the flash of heat on Winger's forehead. His eyelids and fingers still trembled and twitched, silent battles raging back and forth inside his skull.
"I don't know exactly what we're dealing with here…but with most swarms, most mechs, there's a period of time, an hour…maybe more, maybe less. In that time, with what we know about Serengeti--if that's what this is--the mechs are still moving in, still consolidating, still positioning themselves. I want to do an insert…right now. Send ANAD in and root 'em out before they replicate too far, before they get established."
Barnes shrugged. "So why don't you?"
"I'm not sure it'll work. It could kill the Lieutenant." He looked around at a circle of anxious faces: Barnes, Deeno, Buddha Nguyen. "And we don't have the right equipment…not here. Back at the jet, we do."
"But he can't wait…isn't that true?" Deeno asked. She ran shaky hands through short black hair. Her face was bruised from a close escape with the mechs herself.
"No…" Gibby felt gingerly along the contours of Johnny Winger's skull, trying to imagine the desperate battles raging inside. "No, he can't."
They leaned left and right in unison as M'Bela negotiated the narrow streets of inner Basel. Behind them, Reaves was driving the trailing van. The lead vehicle was driven by 'Ozzie' Tsukota, their CQE2. Outside, in the soft glow of streetlamps, a film of mist had drifted up from the river, making the streets slick and shiny. Rows of gothic and turreted and gabled buildings raced by…they were speeding quickly into the heart of the city, into the fair district of the Fasnachtplatz, with its glockenspiels and mediaeval towers and crumbling Roman walls. Traffic was mercifully light, save for knots of drunken revelers clustering around several beer halls.
The Quantum Corps convoy swerved and sped through, ignoring all stop signs and traffic lights. Moments later, a pair of police minis lit up their lights and started off in pursuit.
"I say we go in," Barnes decided.
"It's not your decision," Deeno said. "Lieutenant Caden's in command." Caden was in the trailing vehicle.
"Then we'll get permission." Barnes radioed the situation to Nathan Caden. There was some hesitation from the CC2, but Caden relented and gave permission.
"You think ANAD can deal with these mechs?" Caden radioed back.
Gibby was thoughtful. "Lieutenant Winger's got a better grasp of the tactics needed. But, yes, sir, I thin
k we have to try it. By the time we get to the airport, it may be too late. If we can engage the mechs before they establish themselves, we have a chance."
Again, Caden hesitated. "I just want to be sure you don't make the situation any worse."
"Couldn't be much worse now, Lieutenant."
Caden agreed. His voice was quiet. "Go ahead. And keep me posted."
Gibby turned to Barnes. "Go up front and switch off driving this rig with Moby. I need him back here."
A few moments later, Moby re-appeared alongside the trembling form of Lieutenant Winger.
"What's up, Sarge?"
Gibby was already over at his interface control, perusing possible configs to use against the enemy mechs inside Winger. "Prep ANAD for deploy, Moby. We're going in…right now."
"In? In where?"
"Inside the Lieutenant's brain. I'm gonna grab me some Vivo mechs and fry 'em up for breakfast."
Ten minutes later, the assembler master was ready. Gibby sat at the IC panel, and grasped the joystick, flexing his fingers. "Launch ANAD," he said quietly.
The insertion went smoothly enough. A slug of plasma forced ANAD into Johnny Winger's carotid artery at high pressure. Gibby got an acoustic pulse seconds later. A half-hour run on its propulsors brought ANAD to a dense branching mat of capillary tissues: the blood brain barrier.
"So far, so good," Gibby muttered. Mighty Mite Barnes and Deeno D'Nunzio stood alongside the IC panel, ready to help with anything. The van swerved slightly as M'Bela took another turn through Basel's narrow, rain-slick streets. In the lead van, Lieutenant Nathan Caden was patched in too, able to monitor the operation from a distance.
"Reticular lumps," Gibby pointed out on the imager. "I'm transiting…now--" With a deft touch on the controls, Gibby squeezed the ANAD master through a cleft in the capillary barrier, shoving aside a curtain of lipid molecules, and entered the bloodstream of the brain. "We're in…going to half power on propulsors…give me a navigation hack."
They hadn't had time to put up the tracking grid. Barnes scanned the Lieutenant's brain with a low-power quantum flux scope, got a rough fix and gave it to Gibbs.
"I'm picking up density at about two hundred microns anterior to the minor mesostriatal projection…right about here--" she fingered an approximate location on a chart the IC was displaying. "It's probably ANAD."
Dark viny shapes and dense fiber growth clouded the view. "--must be approaching a duct…could be projections to the nucleus accumbens."
"Follow that," Deeno suggested, studying the cortical chart as well. "Looks like it traces down into the ventral tegmentum. That's where you want to be--" she stopped in mid-sentence, as the van sped up. M'Bela's voice crackled over the intercom.
"Sorry about the rough ride, guys but Lieutenant Caden ordered a speed-up…we've got police in pursuit. He wants to lose 'em in the city, before we head to the airport. Hang on--"
"Great," said Barnes, rolling her eyes. "Just great--"
"I'm heading down this fiber--" Gibby pointed out a sinuous projection from the medial forebrain deeper into the limbic tissues of the midbrain. "It eventually ends up inside the ventral tegmentum. Loading templates now--I'm replicating a small force, just in case our buddy's set up an ambush."
The imager view careened slightly as ANAD maneuvered through heavy fiber mats, swinging first to port, then to starboard, as Gibby drove the assembler deeper into Winger's brain. The Lieutenant's face was pale and dry. Only minor tremors tickled the ends of his fingers. He was secured with makeshift straps to a foldout chart table, breathing shallowly. His lips moved in barely perceptible quivers…he seemed to be trying to say something--
Neural discharges roiled the image, as flickering projections lit off nerve signals from one synapse to another. Each discharge set off cascades of other discharges, a lightning display inside the mind. Maybe a thought, perhaps a dream image, there was no way to know for sure. ANAD navigated the mindstorm carefully, flitting from one branch to another, always careful to sound ahead for non-fiber returns, for density too high, evidence of something other than nerve cells drifting in the dim shadows ahead.
"Nothing yet--"Barnes said quietly. She took another reading with the flux scope, and estimated ANAD's position. "You're about here--" she tapped the point with nervous fingers. A large irregular patch of nerve fiber bundles lit up on the chart. "Anterior convergence, it's called. Kind of like a big train station for axon fibers. Entorhinal cortex, lateral septum, central amygdala and prefrontal striatum…they're all here. It's a big switchyard."
Gibby was barely breathing. He watched the rep counter carefully. Not too big a force yet…don't want to give us away. Deep inside the anguished brain of Johnny Winger, the Autonomous Nanoscale Assembler/Disassembler blazed away at incredible speed, grabbing loose molecules and atom fragments from the plasma and building exact copies of itself like some frantic brickmason.
"I'm moving forward…now--" He tweaked the propulsors down to twenty percent, and steered ANAD through the dark undulating forest of fibers, pressing through curtains and showers of dendritic branches, easing forward, slowly forward--
It was Deeno who saw the first blip on the imager screen. "Sounding something, Gibby. You've got a return…something ahead, through that jungle right there--"
ANAD eased forward, his small brood of replicants hovering and maneuvering in unison nearby. Sheer translucent mats parted as the assembler steered ahead. Through the convergence, the density of fiber dropped off and vast, elliptical shapes loomed out of the mist ahead.
"Ventral tegmentum," breathed Barnes. "Six thousand microns ahead…my God…look at them…they're everywhere--"
Just ahead, dark oblong globes hung from a vaulted ceiling. Each globe was enveloped with axon fiber, as if confetti and streamers had been strewn about light fixtures in some mad New Year's Eve party. Flashes and flickers pulsed along the streamers, all converging on the globes, which periodically erupted in a brilliant burst discharge, before sending the signal further along different sets of streamers.
And there dimly seen in the shadows, hovering about each globe like so many whaleboats dismembering a prize catch, a fleet of Serengeti mechs scuttled back and forth, steadily insinuating themselves in and among the fibers. Steadily diverting the discharges and signals, patching in, snipping off, splicing themselves in between the globes to control the direction and strength of each signal.
The mechs were slowly but surely seizing control of the entire region.
Gibby gritted his teeth and pulsed the joystick. ANAD maneuvered into position.
"ANAD defenses up and armed…enzymatic knife, electron bond disrupter, grabbers and effectors--"
Deeno checked the board for the IC2. "Green and mean, Gibby. Go get the bastards."
"I'm engaging…right now."
ANAD and the small force of assemblers jetted forward.
It was Archie Hester who'd gotten them both into this fix…Archie and nobody else. He was always daring Johnny Winger, daring him to do stuff. "Betcha can't do this, huh? See if you can top this, wise guy."
Johnny had gotten sick of it, but he couldn't very well back down, now could he? A boy's got to stand up for himself. Got a reputation to protect.
So that's how come they wound up lost that cold winter afternoon in the cramped and clammy dead end branch of a tunnel they'd found in the back of Dorado Canyon. Johnny liked caving--only wise guys and smartfaces called it spelunking, for God's sake. He liked it a lot. You could go places nobody had ever seen before. You could be by yourself, except that was a bad idea. You always went caving with a buddy, so if one of you got hurt, the other could help out or go get help.
It was after school, and Archie had dared him to go into their favorite cave at the back of Dorado Canyon, down there where the streambed petered out, go into that last unexplored branch that they'd named Yawning Mouth a few years ago, because that's what it l
ooked like.
Johnny didn't really want to but then Archie was good at pestering and whining and making a scene. So they went.
Inside Yawning Mouth, they took the dark branch and traveled down, down, down, deeper into the earth, through dripping stalactites and slippery limestone, playing their flashlights back and forth, making funny faces at each other in the dim yellow light, or shadow puppets on the veined walls.
They'd been going down for a good hour, when Johnny figured Yawning Mouth was a bit deeper than either one had bargained for. So they stopped. They tried to get their bearings. They tried to backtrack and see the path they had followed.
But they couldn't see anything. Then the flashlight died.
That's when they knew they were lost.
Archie Hester, because he was Archie Hester, started whining.
"Now what, wise guy? Now what are we going to do?"
"Shut up," Johnny said. "I'm trying to think."
There was about five minutes of silence, broken only by the drip-drip-drip of water from somewhere above them. The air was cold, kind of raw and damp, and the stone ledge where they had stopped was slippery. It dropped further down ahead of them, but without the light, neither boy wanted to move an inch forward.
"Johnny--?"
"What?"
"I think there's a cliff ahead of us. This ledge seems to slope down pretty fast."
"Yeah…I know."
"Are you still thinking?"
"Trying to." Archie had the slightest stutter to his voice. He was growing up; sometimes, he squeaked and sounded like a bird.
"What are we going to do?"
"I don't know yet." Johnny Winger probed the nearest wall with his hands, running his fingers along its damp glassy surface. He swung further and managed to knock Archie in the side of the face. "Sorry…I was just trying to get a feel for what's around us."
"We're stuck here, aren't we?"
"Maybe. You're the turdwipe that caused all this. If you hadn't dared me, we wouldn't be here."
"I'm afraid…didn't you bring your squawker?"
"Me? I thought you did." Squawkers took a hack off the locator sats in orbit. You carried them in your pocket and they chirped out where you were, right down to a few feet.
"Jesus…what are we going to do?"
Johnny was increasingly aware of the quaver in Archie's voice. It wasn't puberty or anything like that now. It was fear, probably panic. But cavers never panicked. You got hurt when you panicked.
Cavers thought things through.
"I got an idea-" Johnny Winger said. "It might not work--"
"What is it?"
He'd been tinkering with Bailey the last few weeks. Dad didn't know about it; Mr. Jamison Winger would have been furious if he had. You didn't go tinkering with stuff without Dad's permission. Jamison Winger was the best damned inventor Pueblo, Colorado had ever seen. The barn out back was full of inventions…you could hardly get in the door without stepping on one.
Bailey was Johnny's favorite. A microflyer--they'd called it u..a..v a long time ago. That stood for unmanned air vehicle. Powered by the sun. No bigger than a hummingbird, with a quantum brain, all kinds of attachments--wings that could flap so fast they were a blur, a real-life jet, some small props--man, Bailey was a hot rod, no doubt about it.
Late at night, when Dad had gone to bed and the house was real quiet, Johnny Winger would fling open his second-floor window and summon Bailey from the top of the barn. He had a nest or a docking station up there. He'd taught Bailey to respond to some whistles, some basic voice commands. Lately, he'd found an olfactory program on the WorldNet, picked up some gizmos around the barn, paid or filched the rest from the store, and cobbled up a basic sniffer nose for the dude. He trained it to search out and home on certain smells, especially his own. Wasn't that a hoot? Bailey trained to sniff him out like a bloodhound, ferret out his own bad breath and body odor.
He figured, after some tests, the dude could sniff him out from as far away as several miles.
Not bad for a kid inventor. Dad would have been proud. Dad would also have whipped him to Denver and back for messing around with Bailey too. But Bailey had become his best friend, especially after Mom had died. Late at night, hours after he called Bailey into his room for a chat, he'd drift off to sleep, then awaken just enough to catch the micro-uav hovering gently in the corner with his big red eye winking on and off softly, or maybe just perched on the old Navy trunk at the end of the bed, quietly whirring in sleep mode.
Johnny told Archie about Bailey and his new sniffer. "I don't know if it'll work this far underground. I really don't know what his maximum range is. But we have to try it."
"Sure, man, sure, try it. Let's try anything."
So he shouted out the magic words--he'd programmed Bailey the Dude to switch the sniffer on and off by voice command, and then winced as the echo cascaded all around them like an amplified drunk, finally dying off into distant whispers of his words.
"BAILEY…BIG NOSE…big nose…big nose…b-I-g…n-o-s-e…b…i…g…n…o…s…e…"
After that, they waited. And as they waited, Johnny Winger learned just how big a crybaby Archie Hester really was. If they ever got out of there, he was for sure going to put some distance between himself and Archie Hester. By the time an hour had passed, Archie's sniffing and sniveling was about to drive Johnny mad.
They lost track of time. Maybe two hours had passed, maybe five or six. Both boys had drifted in and out of a semi-conscious daze. It was Johnny who heard it first…
In between creaks and groans of the mountain, and the steady drip of water, a faint buzzing could gradually be made out. More like a whirring, like a blender. Johnny suddenly came to, and sat up, straining to make out the sound. Slowly, infinitesimally, it grew more audible, though at first the whirring faded in and out.
Then, the buzz grew quite distinct and he was sure. It was the Dude. Bailey the Flying Dude had been systematically searching up and down tunnels and branches, homing on the distinctive aroma of Johnny Winger's bad breath and body odor. Before he could scramble to his feet and call out, a dim but familiar red light came winking out of the gloom, materializing in mid-air like a ghostly apparition.
Bailey hovered ten feet above them, winking like a firefly, his props and motor whirring with satisfaction. If he'd been a dog, his tail would have been wagging.
"Bailey…you old dude," Johnny laughed out loud. He wanted to hug the bot.
From that point on, it was a simple matter of following the winking red light, up and up and up and finally out of Dorado Canyon's Lost Tunnel. An hour later, when Archie and Johnny had emerged into the cold sweet-smelling night air, they silently hugged each other.
Johnny Winger was glad he'd disobeyed his Dad and inserted that olfactory program after all.
Johnny Winger and the Serengeti Factor Page 10