Johnny Winger and the Hellas Enigma

by Philip Bosshardt

  “Let ‘em have it! Winger shouted. “All positions…OPEN UP!”

  The ravine shook with repeated thunderclaps as hot rf waves washed across the ground and soon the air was thick with fried bots falling away from the generator in sheets.

  The barrage continued for nearly a minute, HERF mixed in with coilgun kinetic rounds, peppering the sand and dirt into geysers. Even magnetic loops from Turbo Fatah’s impulser shredded rock along the far walls into great gouts of dirt.

  “Cease fire!” Winger called.

  As the fusillade died off, the ANAD swarm swelled out into the ravine and the platform was quickly enveloped in a cloud of flickering light, like a summer thunderstorm in miniature. Bursts of light, like fireflies on a hot summer night, tickled all along the edges of the barrier.

  “ANAD’s giving them hell, Skipper!” yelled Kip Detrick.

  ANAD 3rd Swarm had now fully exited the tunnel and swollen to a great angry cloud of mechs, battling the barrier bots in a frenzied tornado of shrieks and light flashes. Winger wanted to toggle down to nanoscale on his viewer and see how the battle was going from ANAD’s perspective, but he knew he still had three troopers in the tunnel.

  “Spivey…Barnes…Singh…prepare to deploy on my command…we’ll drop our suppressing fire long enough for you to come up…!”

  A staticky voice came back over the crewnet. It was Mighty Mite Barnes.

  “Just tell us when ANAD’s done, Skipper…I don’t want to come up in the middle of a Big Bang and get chewed to pieces!”

  “Hang on, Barnes…ANAD’s blasting them now.”

  The battle surged back and forth for a minute, but ANAD had been tweaked and had the upper hand in replicating and maneuvering. Doc Frost’s been fiddling under the hood again, Winger thought. ANAD’s processor had been souped up with new rep routines and new configs. He even sported new carbene effectors that could fold up in new arrangements in a heartbeat.

  “Dana, all that recon from Kolkata is paying off.”

  Tallant was twenty yards away, with D’Nunzio and Detrick. She slammed a new cartridge of kinetic rounds into her coilgun. “ANAD’s making quick work of this barrier, Wings…you think it’s time to release local ANAD’s for support?”

  “Hold off another minute…I want 3rd Swarm to clear as much of that barrier as possible. Then I want to engage the generator swarm with full-bore ANAD, config ten. While he’s chewing on ‘em, we keep pumping HERF into the target to keep the barrier bots from reconstituting.”

  They waited another thirty seconds, then Winger decided it was time for the underground force to come out.

  “Launch your ANADs, Mite. All three of you get your swarms up and moving. Don’t stick your head up without a shield.”

  As 3rd Swarm ANAD steadily beat back the barrier bots, Winger could see the first faint haze of a trooper swarm spilling out of the breach in the ground. Seconds later, the helmeted head of Mighty Mite Barnes poked up above the ground.

  “Jeez, it’s like I’m inside of a tornado,” she muttered. Her skinsuit propulsors helped her out and she fell to the ground in a crouch, coilgun ready. Spivey and Singh were right on her heels. Moments later, all three troopers were out of the tunnel and spreading out, surrounding the platform.

  “MOVE OUT!” yelled Winger over the crewnet. “Launch swarms…config ten…get down there and get bots on that damned thing!”

  All troopers rose in unison from their defilade positions and scurried across the open ground of the ravine, kicking up clouds of ocher dust as they ran. The civilians, Price and the two PubSec agents, Wills and Purvis, came too, hanging behind as the Detachment closed on their target.

  “So far, she hasn’t gone off,” Tallant said, stopping short of a remnant cloud of barrier bots dueling with ANAD. Jagged streaks of light crackled in mid-air, all along the seam of a battle line. ANAD mechs were zapping the enemy with bond disrupters, liberating millions of electron volts in a set-piece battle right in front of her eyes.

  “Sheila…you got anything?” Winger asked.

  Reaves checked SuperFly and her sensor kit. “Nothing, all bands are clear. Nothing to indicate a pulse is coming…so far.”

  Winger had an uneasy feeling about that. At Kolkata, the assault team had been slammed with decoherence waves from the generator several times. It was too much to hope their luck would last much longer.

  “Copy that…all troops, make sure your ANAD’s set at config ten…that’s the one Doc Frost loaded to deal with this bugger.”

  “I’m set,” Barnes came back. Cautiously, she circled the platform, coilgun at the ready, enveloped in a fine haze of ANAD shielding.

  The rest of the troops came back ready.

  Winger approached the device as close as he dared. ANAD was still beating down the barrier bots but through the murk, he could make out the outlines of the generator itself…a swarm of bots of complexity and sophistication he could only imagine. The four-legged tetrahedral platform that was the heart of the quantum generator throbbed and pulsed like a beating heart, surrounded by clots and clumps of other bots, floating and swimming like the whole construct was a thousand feet undersea.

  Winger had the distinct impression he was peering into another place and another time.

  Where the hell did you come from? he asked himself. Q2 had said in their final briefing that it was considered unlikely that Red Hammer had developed such a swarm by themselves. They had to have had help, from someone.

  But there was no time now to figure out the puzzle. The Detachment had a job to do. He toggled over to the quantum coupler circuit so he could talk with ANAD 3rd Swarm.

  “ANAD, how much longer with these barrier bots?”

  ***ANAD now altering config for final phase…target shifting and ANAD must re-config…***

  “I’m sending in local ANAD for support—“ He directed Spivey, Barnes and Singh to close with the generator and engage. “Use your own ANAD swarms. Third Swarm needs help…I want to get at that thing before it goes off again.”

  The three nanotroopers crept up to the device and each in turn launched embedded ANAD swarms from their shoulder capsules. As the swarms replicated and attacked, the three backed off and pumped sporadic HERF fire into the target. The generator was soon enveloped in a dense fog of crashing mechs, as the barrier shed nanobots in sheets under the withering assault.

  Winger had learned from Kolkata: fry the bastards good and don’t give ‘em time to regroup.

  ***ANAD reporting barrier swarm now retreating…engaged in final disruption now…full breach of barrier is possible…reconfigging for main assault on target***

  “Hold up a minute, ANAD,” Winger said. “I want to recon this baby before you go in. DPS…what are we looking at here? Is this the same thing as Kolkata?”

  Reaves and Taj Singh came forward, both scanning the platform.

  “Same signatures as before, Skipper,” Reaves said. “EM, acoustics, thermals…it’s a dense, highly sophisticated swarm config…what I’m reading is the same unique signature we saw at the temple. You can’t mistake it for anything else.”

  “Same here,” Singh added. He circled the platform cautiously, reading off scan after scan. “The buggers replicate so fast, I can’t get a fix on basic structure. It’s like they’re cycling through a routine, over and over again.”

  “Could be a buildup to a pulse, Skipper,” warned Deeno D’Nunzio. “Shouldn’t we secure the rest of the Detachment in case that thing goes off?”

  Winger was thoughtful. “No time, Deeno. We’ll have to take the chance. I want to smash that thing before it goes off. ANAD, assume Config State Ten. And keep this channel open…I’m coming with you.”

  He toggled into ‘pilot’ mode and let the nanoscale world of atoms and molecules and Brownian motion wash over him. It was like careening out of control down a waterfall but the sensation subsided in a few seconds.

  Unseen by Winger, D
ana Tallant had ordered everyone except the tunnel assault force back beyond the ravine walls.

  “No sense taking needless casualties,” she told them.

  Now only Johnny Winger stood beside the quantum generator, with Spivey, Barnes and Singh nearby, their HERF guns ready just in case the barrier bots came back.

  Johnny Winger and ANAD alone.

  Winger linked into the quantum coupler circuit. “Third Swarm ANAD, configure swarm state delta and prepare for insertion.”

  ***ANAD configuring state delta…configging propulsors…configging electron lens…configging enzymatic knife and bond disrupters…configging pyridine probes…beginning replication matching...ready for insertion*** There was a brief pause in the ‘voice’ stream, then ***analysis of enemy replication pattern underway…computing non-optimal parameters…probability of matching dropping, now below eighty percent***

  Johnny Winger cocked his head quizzically. Had he heard ANAD right? “ANAD, what’s up? Are you having second thoughts about the assault…you’ve got the rep pattern, don’t you? You can match it and block it, like you did at Kolkata?”

  ***ANAD detecting altered parameters…config variations are presented…something different here, Base…ANAD analyzing now, scanning target formations…Base, this doesn’t look so good***

  “ANAD, you’re like my little buddy…don’t get cold feet now. Show me—“

  It took a few moments for his senses to adjust to the Brownian motion. He skated through a sleetstorm of polygon and tetrahedral shapes, fighting upstream against the current. His atomgrabber instincts soon took over and he relaxed, ping-ponging from one impact to another, tacking against the current like a 17th century galleon. Presently, he came to a line of winking lights ahead, looking like a city seen at night from a hilltop.

  It was the outer edge of the generator swarm.

  “ANAD, what’s the problem…you’ve got new replication matching algorithms from Doc Frost…engage algorithms and let’s go…move out.”

  ***ANAD detecting config variations, Base…advising caution…advising more analysis to determine nature of variations…ANAD not prepared to engage target at this time***

  Something was wrong. ANAD had never displayed…what could you call it?...fear, anxiety, anything less than maximum devotion to the mission at hand.

  “ANAD, display core register checksum contents….let’s see if something’s gotten into you….” He dialed up Victor Klimuk on the coupler circuit. Klimuk was Detachment IC1, interface controller for ANAD operations. “Sergeant, I’ve got ANAD doing a core dump…run integrity routines and see if ANAD’s all right…for some reason, he doesn’t want to engage.”

  Klimuk was physically located some thirty meters away, near the boulder field that surrounded the platform.

  “I’m analyzing now, Skipper….” Klimuk checked displays on his wrist pad, watched as ANAD’s self-check proceeded. “Running all routines…all I’m seeing is some bad registers, bad qubits, no pattern I can detect…unless, wait a second…wait one, Skipper…now I’m seeing something.” Klimuk cycled through the displays, scanning ANAD’s output. “Some new files…holy shit, what the hell’s all this stuff…something called Entity…haven’t seen that before. Did Doc Frost mess with the config engine?”

  Johnny Winger remembered his last encounter with Entity, in the assault on the Paryang monastery.

  Entity (state: self).

  It was like the nanoscale assembler was detecting a mirror image of himself.

  “I don’t think so, Vic. ANAD’s a little reluctant to engage the generator swarm bots. Somehow, their config is triggering internal inhibits inside ANAD, programmed to keep nanobotic swarms from consuming themselves. Standard stuff—“

  “Sure, Boss…they’re in all swarms now. But they don’t look like this, do they? None that I’ve ever seen.”

  “This is something different. But I’ve got an idea.” ANAD was like a little brother to Winger. When your little brother was sick, you did whatever you could to help him. “I’m going to full ‘pilot’ mode, selecting Fly-by-Stick. Come on, ANAD…we’ve got a little housecleaning to do—“

  ***ANAD switching to pilot mode…all autonomy routines disabled…Base, is this such a good idea…detecting daughter replicants ahead…inhibits active…cannot engage daughter replicants…ANAD invoking Fourth Rule constraints…propulsors inhibited…all effectors safed and inhibited…***

  “It’s a mirage, ANAD,” Winger said. “Command override all inhibits…I’m taking control of propulsors and effectors.”

  He revved the nanoscale motors with every picowatt ANAD’s power cell could supply, then commanded full action on every effector. One by one, the appendages came back online: bond disrupters, carbene grabbers, hydrogen abstractors…the board lit up all mean and green.

  “Fourth Rule, my ass,” he muttered to himself. He knew perfectly well the Fourth Rule didn’t apply. Doc Frost had programmed into every master assembler the drive to survive as a swarm and to replicate and propagate except where such a drive conflicted with the other three Rules. But the daughter replicants ANAD had detected ahead, lurking among the generator swarm, were fakes. They had to be….

  “Vic, I’m going in…cover me, will you?” Winger commanded half-thrust on ANAD’s propulsors. The master jetted forward, toward the distant line of enemy bots. “Replicating now…config ten…I want a lot of bots around me here—“

  The line of bots looked like a seam of light from the visuals Winger got back. Dead ahead, an array of assembler bots had formed a defensive line and was quickly closing the gap. Winger swallowed hard as the first acoustic image of the mechs settled into view.

  Each assembler was shaped like a squat barbell, with top and bottom spheres of pulsating molecule groups bristling with effectors of every conceivable shape and type. The connecting columns were themselves multi-stranded chains of peptides, able to extend and contract the whole structure with lightning speed. The barbells rotated in unison, whirling like tiny motors. Whiplike propulsors churned at either end, lending the bot matchless maneuverability.

  This time we’re ready for you, bastards….

  All along the line of engagement, the enemy bots had unraveled their multi-stranded peptides and wrapped themselves tightly around each ANAD assembler, hugging the assemblers with arms of collapsing molecules.

  Soon the entire line was a tangled snare of peptide chains, like balls of twine hopelessly knotted together.

  But this time, ANAD had come with one great tactical advantage.

  ***ANAD altering config to match…reconfigging propulsors…reconfigging electron lens…reconfigging enzymatic knife and bond disruptors…reconfigging pyridine probes…ANAD closing for attack***

  Winger watched dumbfounded as what he had once known as ANAD, the Autonomous Nanoscale Assembler/Disassembler, completely reconfigured itself into a new structure, something he had never seen before.

  ***ANAD engaging now….yipppeee!***

  “Hey, ANAD, I thought I was piloting—“

  As the swarms closed, Winger could see through acoustic and EM images that the alien swarm was changing config even faster. A dizzying array of configs came and went as the alien bots cycled through their program.

  But ANAD had the base algorithm ready. At just the right moment, the tiny assembler would engage the generator swarm in its cycle, slam a few picojoules of electron energy into the bots and hopefully disrupt the pattern, slow it down long enough to directly grapple with the enemy.

  Winger decided to leave the driving to ANAD. This man-machine symbiosis business is a bunch of malarkey, he decided. ANAD knew what to do.

  At the precise moment where its effect would be greatest, ANAD discharged all his bond disrupters at once into the swarm. Winger’s viewer image careened crazily and the image lit up like a supernova had just gone off. When the intense light of countless trillions of bond disrupters discharging began to subside
, he could just make out a blurry scene of chaos and floating debris, loose molecules and shredded peptide chains.

  The enemy swarm had begun thrashing itself nearly to pieces as it spun down from its dizzying config changes.

  “I’m going in NOW!” Winger yelled. He extended carbene grabbers and steered directly for a knot of swarm bots, slashing and hacking his way through the formation like a scythe in a wheat field. The generator bots seemed dazed and disorganized; ANAD’s disrupters had severed comms with their master and the formation was easy pickings now.

  Like swatting bees in a barrel, he thought. Thank goodness, these bees had lost some of their sting.

  “Generator swarm losing stability,” Vic Klimuk announced. “I’m seeing atom fluff and debris all over the place. “Losing configs fast…my ANADs are sounding something ahead…something more solid…this one’s no swarm—“

  Winger had just noticed the same thing. Acoustic returns showed a dense structure dead ahead.

  “I’m moving forward, half propulsor…cover me, Vic. I don’t want to be blindsided by any of the generator bots.”

  “I’m on it, Skipper.” Klimuk deployed swarm elements to seek out and round up stragglers that hadn’t been cornered yet.

  Winger drove the ANAD master on for a few moments, hunting through thick clouds of nanobotic debris, probing ahead with electromagnetic fingers for the structure.

  As they drew closer to the source of the returns, a growing sense of unease came over him.

  Returns came back stronger with each passing moment. “I’ve got something, Vic…sounding solid mass dead ahead…slowing to one quarter propulsor—“

  The first view of the object made the hairs stand up on the back of Johnny Winger’s neck. Through a light sleet of polygons and tetrahedrals, the curving pearlescent edge of a spherical surface came into view, at this resolution, throbbing with barely contained energy.

  I was afraid of this, he told himself.

  “It’s a Sphere, Vic…just like the one we saw at Paryang. I’m sounding now…ANAD, prepare config state delta…we’ve got to recon this one real good.”

  ***ANAD configuring state delta…what is this thing, Base? ANAD detects no details in the return…no lattice structure, nothing, solid mass even down to the subatomic level***