Nanotroopers Episode 1: Atomgrabbers

  ***deployment complete…all effectors in launch position…my processor is updating now...config state is combat-ready***

  “That’s…affirmative, ANAD…” Winger grunted, as he ducked and scrambled forward. “Max rate rep…give ‘em hell, ANAD! Launch now…launch and engage!!”

  The force of the launch momentarily caught Winger off balance and he stumbled and fell to his side. The sudden whoosh of the pressure drop and the sting of the torque against his waist made him wince, but it couldn’t be helped. The ANAD master rocketed out of containment and immediately set to work replicating.

  Moments later, the two swarms collided head-on across the top of the ridge, in pulsating rhythms of iridescent blue, as vast, unseen armies engaged overhead.

  Another drone-snap of radio frequency waves rolled across the hills as the HERF gun discharged. Winger got on the crewnet…he had to warn the DPS techs to keep the air clear for ANAD.

  “Sheila! DPS1…kill the HERF! Kill the HERF! ANAD needs a free hand to fight—“:

  Reaves’ voice was strained…she was being ‘consumed’ with mechs even as she burrowed ever deeper into the dirt behind the liftjet skids. They started to tickle, then burn a little. Emasculated bots but they could still bite….

  “Sorry…we’re being…eaten…alive…up here!!”

  Winger pressed a button on his wrist keypad and instantly, soundings from ANAD filled his helmet eyepiece. The view was surreal, swirls of motion embedded in bubbles and polygons and octahedral lattices as the assemblers collided and grappled.

  “Gibby, I’ve got ANAD on viewer…I’m taking command, changing config--!”

  “Got it!” Gibby came back. Gibbs was fully qualified to run the interface controls and immediately dialed up the same view. But ANAD was Winger’s baby now, he figured. Better to let the two of them duke it out with the enemy ‘bots.

  I sure hope they know what they’re doing, Gibby thought. He raised his head up and got a mouth full of mech debris, stinging sleet against his face. He shielded his face and squinted into his eyepiece, the same view Winger had.

  Funny how combat looked when you were the size of a few atoms. Gibby remembered seeing some old vid…a movie they used to call them—of the U.S. Navy fighting in the Big War…the Second Big One. Frogmen fighting underwater. That’s what nano-combat looked like on his eyepiece viewer. Nothing but foam and bubbles, only it wasn’t bubbles he was seeing. It was stringy chains of atoms that looked like tree ornaments…bulbs on a filament whipping through space, cleaved by things that looked like spiky maces and octahedral balls and weird pyramids and every shape imaginable, all careening along as if blown by a hurricane.

  Even as he watched, he heard Winger’s voice over the crewnet. “…looks just like an ANAD clone, Gibby…I’m closing in—“

  “Easy…it could be a diversion.” He watched as the image steadied. Several dozen feet away, perched below the precipice of a ledge, Johnny Winger was driving ANAD toward the nearest of the enemy mechs. Even as ANAD surged forward, Gibby saw the enemy maneuvering to strike. “Look out! He’s changing position…all of ‘em, coming at us—“

  “I see it!” Winger yelled. His fingers flexed but there was no need…no keyboard was needed with quantum coupling. “ANAD…move all defensive systems to attack position!”