***Closing now…five thousand microns…I am in Config One…bond disrupters are enabled…four thousand microns…***
For a brief moment, Winger clicked his eyepiece to external view. Just as he suspected, a faint green phosphorescent glow had just boiled off the top of the river, and was now sweeping shoreward, toward them.
“DPS…get your HERF guns spooled up and ready! We got company!”
Sheila Reaves was already on it. “Weapon is enabled, Lieutenant. I’m sighting in now…what the hell is that?” She cycled the HERF weapon and boresighted on the target.
“I don’t know exactly, but ANAD’s view isn’t pretty. I’m guessing it’s the main pulse…the bots that are messing up the atmosphere. ANAD’s replicating now—I’ll detach a formation to screen us. Detachment, halt! Take cover…and for God’s sake, get small! This one’s big---and coming fast!”
As one, the rest of Alpha Detachment hunkered down along the edge of the river, wedging themselves into the sand and dirt as deep as their leg servos would drive them. Singh put Superfly in a defensive orbit while Calderon switched the sniffers to auto. With any luck, they could ride out the first assault and resume the engagement in a few minutes.
It all depended now on ANAD.
Winger switched back to ANAD view and tried to orient himself into the maelstrom of nanoscale combat.
Up close, the master bot had one tough outer membrane. Crosslinked peptide chains, from the looks of it, Winger figured. The membrane seethed with motion, as atoms and clusters of atoms twisted, bonded, twisted again, rebonded, broke apart, recombined, straightened, undulated and whirled.
The gap between them vanished and ANAD grappled with the nearest bot. Others swarmed into the battlefield.
The imager screen shook with the collision, then careened sideways. And, linked in over the quantum circuit, Johnny Winger winced hard at the sting of the assault.
Jesus…that hurts…
Nanotroopers Episode 9: Demonios of Via Verde Page 13