 
# Johnny Winger and the Hellas Enigma

### Published by Philip Bosshardt at Smashwords

### Copyright 2014 Philip Bosshardt

### Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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" _In looking at Nature, it is most necessary to keep the foregoing considerations always in mind, never to forget that every single organic being around us may be said to be striving to the utmost to increase in numbers; that each lives by a struggle at some period of its life; that heavy destruction inevitably falls either on the young or old, during each generation or at recurrent intervals_."

Charles Darwin

On the Origin of Species

November, 1859
PROLOGUE

Summer, 2080

Ten Thousand Feet Above the Hellespontus Montes

Mars

General Dao Wen-Hsien studied the terrain two miles below the long gossamer wings of the _Archimede_ rocket glider and thought to himself: _how much like Tibet this place seems...the mountains could be the Tien Shan and the plains are so sere and desolate...except for the rust and ocher sands...._

But it wasn't Tibet. Paryang was twelve long years ago and Dao tried to block out the memory of all the rubble and destruction. Quantum Corps had destroyed Red Hammer's main base at the monastery. The Keeper of the Sphere had been buried under thousands of tons of rock and debris. Cartel operations had been severely affected, almost stopped completely. They had lost billions in scope and twist profits, not to mention all the fabs that would no longer work.

The cartel had struggled and limped along for several years, but without the steady stream of tricks from the Keeper, without the help of the Old Ones and their vast technical archive, Red Hammer had been unable to withstand a determined assault from Quantum Corps.

By the end of the '70s, Red Hammer had almost ceased to exist.

Almost. Dao smiled wryly as the great lip of Hellas Basin eased into view below them, a rounded bulge just nosing over the horizon. Dust devils twisted along the desert floor as _Archimede_ banked sharply and began her long glide toward the dirt strip near the center of the great crater.

He remembered a meeting the Ruling Council had held in Hong Kong, just two years ago. Zhong, Berensky, Kulagin, Souvranamh, all of them had been there. Souvranamh, the great Thai _neuro-traficante_ , had brought them the startling news.

"The Keeper lives...at least a part of it still exists."

They had all been incredulous, but the evidence was there for everyone to see. Somehow, in ways no one could understand or explain, the Keeper...the operating system of the Sphere that maintained the gateway between Red Hammer and the Old Ones, had transmitted a partial copy of itself to another Sphere, buried under the desert sands at Hellas Basin, Mars.

Communication with the Old Ones was still possible, and more than ever, essential, if the cartel were to survive. But in order for the link to be opened up and stabilized, someone would have to go to Mars. Someone would have to couple with the Keeper directly and re-establish the link...reset the quantum channels, re-initialize the buffer and amplifier so that humans could talk with their distant mentors once more.

"Something's wrong with the coupler," Souvranamh had told them. "There's a lot of static and drop-out. I get a few signals...nothing intelligible. But it's definitely a Keeper signal. If we get one of us inside that Sphere, it should be possible to re-configure the link and open a channel."

So Dao Wen-Hsien was chosen to make the trip.

Dao watched the dusty sand dunes of Hellas rushing up at them. _Archimede's_ pilot battled some tricky crosswinds and floated them down to a soft skidding landing on the dirt strip at Hellas Station. With a grinding bump and a rooster tail of red dust, the rocket glider slid and skewed her way to a stop only a few hundred feet from the station complex.

A muffled voice came over the cabin intercom. "All passengers, secure for towing. We'll be underway for about ten minutes. Please remain seated until I turn on the EXIT lamps. And remember, two people per airlock cycle and watch your first steps outside. Traffic control just informed me they had fresh dust storms this morning and the footing is loose. Captain, out."

To the other passengers and crew of the glider, Dao Wen-Hsien was a Chinese meteorologist, newly arrived on Mars from UNISPACE to do research on the possible weather impact of the Green Mars Initiative, the big terraforming project that MarsFed had just approved. Dao had received permission from the Council to make the long trip to Hellas Station, to set up some special instrumentation, carried in several trunks in _Archimede's_ belly and monitor current wind, dust, and other conditions before the Initiative started radically altering the planet's environment.

Dao's real reason for coming was quite different. The Ruling Council of Red Hammer had tasked him with locating the new Keeper of the Sphere, making contact, and re-configuring its quantum coupler so that the cartel could regain contact with the Old Ones.

The rocket glider was towed by tractor to the station complex. From _Archimede's_ windows, Hellas Station was little more than a collection of dusty humps and a few cranes and other pieces of equipment strewn about the gentle rise on which the base had been sited.

When the tow was over, each pair of passengers suited up and made the fifty foot hike through shin-deep dust to the lockout chamber on the side of Base Central.

After putting his bags away, Dao attended an orientation briefing for new arrivals in the wardroom. The speaker was a ruddy, big-boned Texan named Hugh Spalding.

" _Listen up, ya'll_ ," Spalding boomed over the din of the meeting. He had a toothpick stuck in the corner of his mouth. Some kind of juice dribbled out onto his chin as he spoke.

"We'll organize parties and details by specialty right after this meeting. Before anybody goes outside, ya'll read that little booklet you received when you checked in. Memorize it. It's got all the safety procedures for expeditions. I don't want anybody wandering around getting lost or falling into a crevice while you're outside. While you're here, I'm the expedition boss. Outside these walls, you do what I say. If you don't, you stay inside and we ship you out on the next shuttle. Got it?"

There was a chorus of nods and mumbled assents. The meeting droned on for another hour. Dao listened politely but concentrated on his own notes, then watched ocher dust swirling outside the portholes.

Somewhere out there, a Keeper was buried. It was his job to find it and soon. If he failed, Red Hammer was finished.

The first parties were scheduled for the next morning. Dao was assigned to a detail of six scientists and one expedition leader from the Station crew. The leader was a balding Russian named Fedorov, built like a wrestler. There were two geologists from Japan, an astronomer from India, an American physicist and an English meteorologist named Colin Plunkett.

The party climbed aboard a snorting marscat and secured their gear. Fedorov drove the cat and they soon trundled off through heavy dust fall toward a line of low hills in the distance.

"The Saucer Hills," Fedorov explained, as he settled in for the three-hour drive. "Looks like a flying saucer, to some people. We stop there, have lunch, and get out for a walk, set up some equipment, take measurements, whatever you like. Two hours at the Hills, then on to our next objective."

Dao quietly checked the coordinates the Ruling Council had given him. Forty-five degrees south by seventy-one degrees east. He scanned a small map of Hellas basin on his wrist computer. The Keeper was there, just at the far base of the Saucer Hills.

At least, someone had done their homework, he thought.

Hellas basin was a big bowl of sand dunes and ridged terrain, with a few sinuous mountain chains crumpling and buckling the ground for relief. As the marscat rumbled south by southwest from Hellas Station, Dao studied the monotonous yet stark ground bouncing by the portholes. The cat followed a curving route through undulating dunes, rising and falling like a ship on a dusty red ocean. Massive boulders and craters dotted the landscape. The view reminded Dao of a giant sand table.

He knew that much of the terrain was likely to change over the next century, if the Green Mars Initiative was successful. Others in the expedition must have been thinking the same thing.

Plunkett, the Englishman, _hmmphed_. "Better enjoy it while you can. Once the first changes come, this will probably be a big lake."

"Like before," said Suwarthy, the Indian astronomer. He was sweating in his suit, a sheen of perspiration shiny on his forehead. "Some think Hellas was an inland sea or lake once."

The expedition discussed and debated the issue heatedly for awhile. Dao half-listened, concentrating on what he had to do. The Keeper signal had been weak, staticky quantum states spritzing through spacetime, on and off. Souvranamh thought he might be able to detect it within a few hundred feet, maybe even a mile away. The Chinese meteorologist eased forward to sit near Fedorov up front, eyeing the nav screen. It had a projected route overlaid on video of the terrain ahead. The Russian had to keep the pipper representing the marscat centered between the route's red dotted lines.

"Getting close?" Dao inquired of the Russian. Fedorov grunted. He stretched his back and neck, trying to get some feeling back into his shoulders.

"Another half an hour. We stop and get out."

Dao noticed the flashing dot on the screen. "That's our objective...that dot?" He figured the Keeper coordinates were easily several miles from the spot.

Fedorov yawned and nodded. "Camp Chaos. See this region--?" He swept his hand over a region of tortured and fractured terrain to the southwest. "It's called Hellas Chaos. Could be a river or lake outflow...who knows? The camp is on a promontory at the end of this ridge. We're following that ridge right now."

Dao did some quick calculations. It would take an hour, maybe more, to walk the several miles to the Keeper coordinates. Somehow he'd have to get away from the party and doing that would be almost impossible.

But General Dao Wen-Hsien was nothing if not prepared. He got up and made his way back into the marscat's main cabin. The others were drowsy and lost in thought; only Suwarthy was staring out a porthole, eyeing a pair of dust devils dancing across the valley floor below. Dao smiled politely as he eased past the Indian astronomer, and slipped into the service compartment at the rear of the cat.

Marscats were like huge, articulating caterpillars on treads. Three compartments were strung together, each free-swinging. From front to back, the cats were made up of a command compartment, a crew compartment and a service compartment. The service bay contained the galley and the lockout and stores lockers, including the expedition's pressure suits and suit supplies.

Dao made a show of rummaging through the galley, ostensibly looking for something to munch on. When he was sure no one was looking, he slipped into the cabinet where suit supplies were stored and located all the chest control packs, which regulated each suit's environment. In his coverall pockets, Dao had five small "buttons," one for each pack. With each button, he stripped off an adhesive patch, and placed the button on the bottom of one pack, out of sight. As he fixed the button in place, he fingered a tiny stud, activating the device.

When the right time came, each button would do its job.

Dao was returning to the crew cabin when the marscat lurched slightly and began perceptibly slowing. Fedorov's gruff voiced called back from the command deck:

"Break out the rations and let's eat. The camp's just around the next hill. And start getting your gear together. I don't want to stay here a minute longer than necessary. We got to make Camp Tracy before nightfall."

So they ate, munching their sandwiches and fruits in sullen silence, while outside sporadic wind gusts rocked the cat back and forth.

Wheelock, the American physicist, shook his head, slurped coffee from a thermos. "Air's thicker here in the Basin. Just enough mass to move the cat. Away from Hellas, I doubt we'd even feel that wind...not enough molecules."

Suwarthy eyed the swirling dust outside. "Someday, we won't need pressure suits here...we'll be able to get by with skin suits alone...like a winter day in the Himalayas."

They finished their lunch and suited up. Fedorov personally examined each crew member's fittings and suit setup, tugging at connectors and hoses, snapping belts and harnesses. Dao watched the Russian carefully. The buttons he had just placed were never detected.

Outside, the party moved off in all directions. Ostensibly a meteorologist, Dao worked with the Englishmen Plunkett to unload a suite of instruments and load up the packbot. Others were examining a rock fall a few dozen yards away, selecting specimens to take back.

Fedorov found a small rise near the lip of a nearby crater and hauled himself up to take in the view. The crater had no name in the catalogs, only a number...H-8741. The rim was lined with light frost and several columns of fine red dust, fine as talc powder, danced around the edge.

Beyond the crater, the scalloped edge of a low escarpment encircled the small promontory they had driven up on. Hellas basin seemed flat and featureless from a great enough distance, but up close, it was anything but featureless. The western slopes of the Chaos were a tortured and crumpled landscape fractured and smashed by eons of bombardment and water-ice flow.

Fedorov had driven the marscat up a long curving slope to the top of a mesa that overlooked an irregular bed of desiccated dunes and boulder fields. The Saucer Hills surrounded the mesa on three sides, like enveloping arms hugging a child.

Dao and Plunkett started up the packbot and set off for an exposed ledge not far from the Russian. They climbed carefully, making sure the bot's treads stayed directly behind them. A few feet either way and the bot would take a plunge of several hundred feet into the ravine below.

At the ledge, they set about unloading the instruments and siting the gear for best readings. Plunkett's voice became labored as he worked; Dao could hear the wheezing as the Englishmen struggled for oxygen. Several times, he stopped to adjust something on his wristpad.

_Trying to open up the regulator,_ Dao thought to himself. _It won't be long now._ Even as he continued setting up the mesoscaph he'd been working on, he saw several others stop and do the same thing.

The buttons were actually small containment capsules full of nanobotic disassemblers. As Plunkett fell to one knee, now gasping for air, Dao went over to investigate, knowing full well that the devices had finally reached his air regulators and valves. In less than a minute, the Englishman had fallen heavily to his side. His air supply and all the internal regulators had become so much atomic fluff. The capsules had done their job.

Dao stooped down to study the Englishman's face, now blue and distended with fear. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw several others in the party drop to their knees.

But Fedorov had reacted more quickly.

The Russian was having trouble; Dao could see that. Fedorov fumbled with the controls on his wristpad and chestpack. Then he stumbled forward and loped down from the ledge, limping back toward the marscat from the edge of the crater.

Dao moved to intercept him but the Russian was an experienced expedition leader and knew how to react in an emergency. He didn't panic but made his way deliberately to the marscat and cycled himself through the airlock.

Dao was right behind him. There couldn't be any witnesses...or survivors.

Dao cycled himself through the airlock and emerged into the stores compartment. Fedorov was up on the command deck, already putting out a distress call. Dao crept forward.

"...any station, any station...this is Marscat M-22 out of Hellas Station. Mayday...mayday...we've suffered multiple decompression casualties...any station...any station—"

The Chinese meteorologist shook his head to link in with his angel and felt the momentary dizziness of the coupler making its connection. Buried a few inches below his left collarbone, the angel stirred, its nanobotic swarm ticking over, ready for release.

As Dao crept into the main cabin, Fedorov sensed his presence and turned in mid-sentence from the commander's seat....

"...any station—"

Dao had already removed his helmet, unsealing the neck ring and quick-disconnecting the slide. He regarded the Russian coolly and without words, he let the angel loose.

Unseen at first, the nanobotic swarm ejected from his shoulder capsule. For a few moments, the Russian continued his distress calls but when the faint sparkle of replicating bots in exponential overdrive swelled in the air between them, he swallowed his words and started to get up.

"You'll never get away with this—I've already notified Hellas Station—" Fedorov's eyes widened as the faint sparkle blossomed into a coruscating, iridescent fog, quickly filling the cabin. He tried to back away but the swarm was on him in no time, forcing him to the deck in a writhing mass.

His pressure suit afforded Fedorov some protection, just long enough to grunt out: "I'm willing to make a deal here...we...can...talk... _arrgghh!!"_

Fedorov's squirming form was soon enveloped in the glowing fog, as uncountable trillions of bots did their job. Dao elected not to watch, busying himself with safing the airlock, making sure they were alone.

Outside, Hellas basin was still and bright. The winds had died down but a faint ruddy glow still hovered over the ground as fine dust settled out of the air in the late afternoon sun. He hadn't tried the coupler link to the Keeper since they had left Hellas Station. But he had the right longitude and latitude. Marscat M-22 was only a few miles from the predicted spot.

Up on the command deck, the fog was subsiding, leaving a fine particulate film on the deck...all that was left of the Russian. Dao scraped it away with the toe of his boot and snapped off a quick command to the angel swarm.

***Return to base***

The master bot sloughed off all replicants and in a few minutes, had made its way back to containment and entered the tiny capsule in Dao's left shoulder. He winced at the stinging burn of the maneuver, then felt the capsule port snap shut beneath his pressure suit.

The angels had returned to heaven.

Dao now set to work powering up the marscat _,_ bringing her four electric motors on-line. Settling himself into the commander's seat, he backed the cat down the slope of the mesa and turned around to a more northerly heading.

Now it was time to contact the Keeper. Time to locate the sphere.

Dao drove the marscat to the predicted coordinates, at the base of a small mound two miles from the mesa. He steered the cat through slippery sand dunes across a boulder-strewn plain, crunching and bouncing over heavy rubble pans, probably outflow from whatever primordial rivers had once gushed through the area. Arriving at the spot indicated by the nav screen, he found the mound a dust-covered rock fall abutting a canyon wall at the foot of the mesa, several hundred feet below and a mile to the north of their original position.

Upon reaching the mound, Dao parked the cat and began suiting up.

Dao shook his head several times just so, probing for the quantum link. He got snatches of something at first, then shuddered as the full force of the Keeper signal came flooding in.

As always, for the first few moments, you were dizzy and disoriented, like you had spent the entire day riding the Dragon's Tail roller coaster at Macau...that kind of dizziness.

Then came the imagery...it never made any sense...or more likely, according to Souvranamh, your brain couldn't make sense of the flood of entanglement waves that washed through the coupler. By turns, he felt like he had fallen into the ocean and storm waves were battering him from all directions.

That subsided, to be replaced by a strong, fetid smell, a swamp smell of decay and rot. Mist and fog cleared and he was floating chest deep in a steaming swamp. Something screeched overhead and wings fluttered.

Then the imagery dissolved once again, to be replaced by an open plain, like Sinkiang steppe land, only the plain was covered with undulating plants. The plants were not plants at all, he soon realized. The ground writhed with life, swarms upon swarms of bots seething and swelling and contracting, pulsing and throbbing to some unseen rhythm. The imagery jerked and shifted and this time, the horizon was curved and he was in space orbiting a planet. A planet of bots, teeming with nanoscale life.

The planet of the Old Ones.

Dao shook himself free from the maelstrom of the planet-swarm and checked the coordinates of the Keeper once more.

A few seconds later, the nav screen beeped at him and he parked the cat for good. He was there. The Keeper signal was just ahead.

Dao unstowed the cat's twin manipulator arms and selected excavator grips from a rack on the side of the vehicle. Gingerly, he lowered the manipulators to the rusty, rubbly ground and began clearing, scraping and then digging.

The sun was low now, a wan orange smear in the dust of the dig. Night came fast on Mars. Dao knew he would have to hurry if he wanted to make contact while there was still light left.

And he didn't know how much of an emergency message the Russian had managed to get off. That was a worry, but he put it out of mind. Still, he knew rescue teams could show up at any moment...he figured they were an hour's lifter flight from Hellas Station at most.

A few minutes' excavation produced nothing definite so Dao commanded the arms to change angle and dig more deeply.

Just as the sun started to pass behind a rock overhang, casting the dig site into shadow, the arms struck something hard. Dao emergency stopped the device.

He left the cat in full pressure suit and clambered and skidded his way down the loose red dirt slope of the dig until his boots struck the same hard surface. Switching on his helmet lamps, Dao saw what he had found.

It was a smooth, translucent pearl and white dome, a curved top to a much larger, almost egg-shaped structure. Dao smiled. He had done it!

The sphere they had been seeking for nearly twelve years now lay right at his feet.

It was Souvranamh, or maybe it was Kulagin, the Russian, who had given them the best description of the original sphere:

"It's like Pushkin Square Station in Moscow...you go inside and suddenly, a new world, a lot of new worlds open up. You can go anywhere, at any time. Everywhere is within reach. Just find the right platform and climb aboard. It's a gateway to everywhere..."

In truth it was a portal...to the Old Ones, whoever and whatever they were.

Dao figured he knew how to get inside, if this sphere worked like the one Quantum Corps had destroyed at Paryang. He set to work.

From memory, he placed both hands on the exposed translucent surface of the sphere. It felt faintly warm to the touch. Then he shook his head, to link in with the quantum coupler.

After the usual buzz of disorientation, he found himself in a small dimly lit room, devoid of furnishings. Each wall had two doors, eight doors in all. Dao knew he had to somehow determine which door to open. Opening the right door would unlock the sphere. Opening the wrong door would lead to places best left undisturbed.

The Paryang monastery sphere had used a riddle based on the Eight-Fold Path. Dao ticked off the parts in his mind: _right view, right intention, right mindfulness and effort_...it was an anagram, he recalled...a mathematical scrambling of the elements—

...and then it came. An image of geometric forms—icosahedrons, polygons, trapezoids—all compressed into a tunnel, a long curving corridor and he found himself hurtling at breakneck speed down this corridor, until—

With a hard bump, his whole body jarred from the impact and when he opened his eyes, caught his breath and came to his senses, he was in.

Inside the sphere.

How long he had been inside the portal, Dao couldn't say. He shook himself fully awake and found he had fallen sprawling right on top of the sphere's surface. It was dark inside the dig pit, save for a faint glow from the sphere itself, a dim almost imperceptible radiance that reflected off suspended dust.

Dao collected himself and climbed out. The sun had just set below the scalloped hump of Hellas' horizon. Fortunately, the marscat's interior and running lights were on. Dao scrambled for footing and made his way over to the vehicle, climbing inside and hurriedly cycling the airlock.

He went forward to the command deck and sat in Fedorov's chair. Already he was working on what he would tell the rescue party. Whatever the story, it would have to be plausible and consistent.

Dao checked his watch. It was already night outside...1735 hours local time. The Chinese meteorologist selected the same radio frequency Fedorov had been broadcasting on. The signal would go planet-wide, bounced off relay sats in orbit to every camp and settlement on Mars.

"Any station, any station...this is Marscat M-22 declaring a level one emergency. We have casualties here. Any station, any station...Marscat transmitting in the clear from—" he rattled off the latitude and longitude from the nav screen "—declaring a level one emergency. Mayday, mayday—"

He didn't have long to wait. Even as he was rummaging through the rations locker in the galley aft, the radio crackled to life.

"...M-22...this is Lifter Rescue out of Hellas Station. We are inbound, closing on your position...descending through ten thousand...M-22, turn on your approach beacon immediately...we'll maneuver and land as close as we can—"

Dao located the powerful lights and switched on. Outside, the rock fall and canyon walls were bathed in a yellow glow. From ten thousand feet up, Marscat M-22 would flare like a supernova in the black of a Martian night.

Dao settled back to munch on some crackers. He knew the next few hours would be grueling and nerve-wracking. But at least he had one satisfaction.

The link with the Keeper of the Sphere was now open again.
United Nations Quantum Corps Briefing

UNQC Western Command Base

Table Top Mountain, Idaho, USA

September 1, 2080

General Jurgen Kraft walked quickly across the grassy quadrangle toward the Ops building with a sour set to his face. _Must be something in the way the planets are aligned,_ he muttered to himself. Table Top was especially scenic at the beginning of fall, with a light dusting of snow on the northern slopes of Buffalo Ridge, while patches of aspen and birch lent autumnal colors to the valley below the hill.

Kraft was carrying a communiqué that UNIFORCE had just received overnight at its Paris headquarters. It was a message from Red Hammer, the east Asian cartel that Quantum Corps had been battling for nearly twenty years now. The message was an ultimatum.

I _thought we'd buried the scumbags once and for all_ , Kraft thought. The Corps hadn't heard anything from Red Hammer in several years. All their normal hangouts had been quiet. Twelve years before, the cartel's main base of operations in the Himalayas had been destroyed in an assault by Johnny Winger and 1st Nano. Red Hammer had been scattered to the winds and very little had been heard or seen of them since.

_Now, this_ \-- Kraft clutched the disk in his coat pocket. The wind had picked up across the top of the mountain. Off to his left, a hyperjet roared off down Runway 32 Left, accelerating through bright blue skies for some distant land. It burned in the sky like a meteor in reverse and was gone in seconds, heading for a space-skimming ride to somewhere.

Kraft was now commanding officer of Quantum Corps' Western Command, which meant he ran Table Top Mountain. Just after midnight, the duty officer from Ops had awakened him in quarters with flash traffic from UNIFORCE. General Wolfus Linx, Kraft's immediate boss and CINCQUANT, had ordered him to set up a briefing at 0800 hours local, with vidlinks to Paris and several other places.

"It's from Red Hammer," Linx had told him. "An ultimatum...we've got to act fast. Get your best people on it and patch me in when you're set. UNSAC himself may attend too."

That got Kraft out of his bunk in a hurry. UNSAC was the Security Affairs Commissioner himself, one Jiang Hao Bei. If UNSAC was involved, Kraft knew whatever had happened was serious enough to affect the whole world.

Had Red Hammer somehow finally reconstituted? Had Quantum Corps intel missed something?

Kraft made the Ops building and headed for the briefing theater. Halfway there, he ran into Major Johnny Winger.

"What is it, General?" Winger asked. He fell in alongside Kraft as they took the lift down into the bowels of the mountain, to the secure command post five levels below.

"I got word we have a Code One in the making..."

Kraft nodded tersely. "UNSAC asked for a briefing. It's Red Hammer. Some kind of message or ultimatum came into Paris overnight and UNIFORCE is in an uproar."

The briefing theater was a semi-circular facility surrounded by screens and desks. SOFIE ran all the visuals and links; the AI had recently been upgraded to receive inputs directly from ANAD swarms. There was a direct patch to BioShield so the Corps could monitor the status of the protective swarms that patrolled the planet and enforced the nanobotic edicts...a direct outgrowth of Serengeti Factor and Amazon Vector outbreaks years before.

Kraft came in and the non-duty personnel came to attention.

"As you were...status of briefing setup?" Kraft took his position in the "bird's nest" one level above the monitoring stations.

The duty officer in charge reported: "All parties are on line now, sir. Your station is ready to go."

Kraft acknowledged the faces vidlinked in...from Paris, from Phoenix station in high earth orbit, and elsewhere at Table Top. In addition to those present at the Ops center, General Linx's hard Teutonic face scowled back at Kraft from one screen. To his right, Galen Bosch, assistant Director-General at UNIFORCE-Paris was blowing his nose on another screen. A third screen displayed an elderly but clear-eyed Japanese national, floating serenely in weightlessness amid spartan, vaguely Shinto surroundings. Kaoru Nakamura was the Earth-bound chief of the Green Mars Initiative. At the moment, Nakamura was scholar-in-residence at Lagrange Televersity, at Phoenix Station.

Kraft sat down and shuffled through some notes.

"Is it Red Hammer, Kraft?" Linx asked. "That's all I need to know."

Kraft swallowed hard. Linx was a gruff, impatient four-star heading up Quantum Corps interests at UNIFORCE's Paris headquarters. HQ was a real playpen for politicians, a hotbed of intrigue and Kraft figured being gruff and crusty was a career Corpsman's best defense in a place like that. _At least he keeps the pols off our backs,_ Kraft reasoned.

"We believe it is, sir. Overnight, at 2250 hours your time, UNIFORCE received a rather unusual communication at Paris. The message came in via ground courier, delivered directly at HQ. Intel's looking at the thing now but the gist of the message is this: Red Hammer seems to be alive and well. Q2's trying to authenticate the message right now."

Linx snorted. "I knew it! The bastards are like a disease...stamp them out in one place and they grow like a fungus somewhere else. I knew Paryang wouldn't be the end of them."

Nakamura's voice echoed in from a quarter million miles away. "Just how did the message arrive? Who received it?"

"I can answer that." Galen Bosch's image was pale and terse. The A-DG had been up all night, mostly in meetings. "The communication was addressed to the Director-General personally. It's basically an ultimatum from this Red Hammer group."

Johnny Winger had heard some of the scuttlebutt floating around Table Top. "What kind of ultimatum?"

Kraft scanned several reports. "Q2's still trying to validate the message but here are the basic details: somehow, some way, the cartel is threatening to divert a long-period asteroid now heading for Mars, to support the Green Mars Initiative. They're threatening to divert this asteroid from Mars to Earth...impact in less than three months. Is such a thing even possible?"

Linx's face hardened. "Nakamura...you should know something about all this. Is there such an asteroid...can they do this?"

The distance to Phoenix station, orbiting Earth at the L2 Lagrange point created a momentary delay. Nakamura was glad of that; he needed time to compose an answer.

"It's called Wilks-Lucayo, General. A C1-class carbonaceous chondritic body we located out beyond Mars...about a half mile in diameter. The project got approval last year. The diversion just started last month. We've got propulsion units all over its surface, nudging the asteroid onto a Mars-intercept trajectory."

Galen Bosch was grim. "Have you still got control of the thing? Could this Red Hammer cartel seize control of the propulsion units?"

"Unlikely," Nakamura replied. The engineer busied himself checking other screens around his workstation. "Current status on Wilks: on course for Mars intercept on January 11, 2081, our time. That's about four and a half months from now. Control just executed a trajectory correction burn two days ago...they're reporting no anomalies at this time. I have the data here—"

"So what the hell's all this about, Kraft?" Linx growled. The veins on CINCQUANT's forehead stood out like miniature canyons whenever the O-10 was mad. "Some kind of hoax?"

Kraft could feel the sweat trickling down the back of his neck. "Unknown, sir. The ultimatum indicates that Red Hammer has the capability to divert this object. They don't explain how. And they list some conditions, if we want to prevent Wilks from being diverted."

"What kind of conditions?"

Kraft perused his copy of the communiqué. "Basically, this is a ransom note, General. As I read it, Red Hammer is demanding two things: a payoff of 1 trillion UNotes and one other matter—" Kraft paled as he looked up, seeing CINCQUANT's expectant face.

"And what's that?"

"That Quantum Corps itself cease operations. Be closed down by UNIFORCE."

"What!" Linx was incredulous. "Absurd...even the thought of it is absurd. The Corps is absolutely vital to UNIFORCE...isn't that so, Herr Bosch?"

The A-DG's hesitation was only momentary, almost imperceptible. But it was there. "Of course, General. Such a demand is quite impossible. Naturally, this communication must be brought to UNSAC's attention right away. There will undoubtedly be a meeting of the UNIFORCE Council, just to discuss these demands and how we should respond. I assume there's a deadline, General Kraft?"

"They've given us one month to comply. There are also some details on how the ransom is to be paid off...currencies, assets, drop-off points, that sort of thing."

Bosch was thoughtful, stroking a trim black beard. "Why, exactly, was Quantum Corps brought in on this investigation in the first place, outside of the demands themselves? Wouldn't this have been better handled by UNISPACE? Why does Red Hammer even mention Quantum Corps in their demands?"

"I can answer that," Kraft responded. "Red Hammer and Quantum Corps are old enemies. It was Major Winger here who led the assault known as _Tectonic Strike_ , back in '68, to put their main base of operations out of commission."

"This was the facility in Tibet that the Chinese made such a commotion over--?"

"Yes, sir. Paryang was the name. Red Hammer had centralized operations there. During the Amazon Vector crisis, most of their swarm control was located there. When _Tectonic Strike_ busted Paryang, the Amazon swarms became less coordinated, less effective. BioShield, with our help, was able to defeat the swarms and restore the Earth's atmosphere to normal. We also smashed their link to this alleged race of aliens...the Old Ones, they were called."

Bosch nodded. "Yes, yes...I recall studying the tactical reports and the after-action write-ups in school. Quite an operation that was. Bear with me, gentlemen...I'm just trying to understand what's going on here. You really believe that this message—these demands—are all about Red Hammer getting revenge on Quantum Corps?" Bosch looked almost comically skeptical. His black eyebrows lifted in mock surprise. "Forgive me, General, but isn't your analysis a bit far-fetched?"

Before Kraft could answer, Linx cut in, livid with indignation. "Director Bosch, what you are suggesting is a slap in the face to an organization of very dedicated men and women. The world owes a hell of a lot to the Corps. BioShield wouldn't have any teeth, if it weren't for their ANAD operations. Who knows how many millions might have died if Serengeti Factor and Amazon Vector hadn't been defeated. Quantum Corps was our last defense...if they hadn't held the line...." Linx shook his head, unable to contemplate the terrible possibilities that had been avoided. "The whole world owes an enormous debt of gratitude to these brave men and women."

"With all due respects, sir," Kraft added, "we know our adversary quite well. And they know us. I think the trillion note ransom is actually nothing but a smokescreen. Quantum Corps or rather, the dissolution of Quantum Corps...that's the real demand."

Johnny Winger concurred. "Excuse me, General, but it seems to me that something must have changed here. Tactically, operationally, Red Hammer's been quiet, almost non-existent, for the last twelve years. What's happened to change the situation? That's what we should be asking ourselves. That's what Q2 should be looking for."

Bosch considered that. "Major, since you raised the question, perhaps you have some kind of answer for us."

Kraft cast a dubious sideways glance at Winger. It was Linx himself who had requested the Corps' top atomgrabber be present at the briefing. That was annoying as hell. No lowly battalion commander should ever be able to upstage a ranking flag officer. But then Winger was no ordinary battalion commander, Kraft had to admit.

"General, the best answer I can give is that Q2 should go back to basics. Look at indications. Look at their sources. Patterns. Check BioShield records. Have we seen anything indicating Red Hammer activity anywhere...something with their signature on it, like a big _scope_ or _twist_ shipment. A spike in illegal fabs somewhere...illegal nano erupting in odd places...anything out of the ordinary. We all know what drives Red Hammer. We know what their bread and butter is. It stands to reason that their capability to make this kind of threat and carry it out didn't just appear overnight. There should be something Q2 can get a hold of, something that would give us an idea of what we're up against."

"Agreed," Linx decided. "Kraft, get on that. Poll your sources and run correlations. We've got to find out what's changed to make Red Hammer so bold again." He shook his head slowly, still unable to believe the communiqué. "Dr. Nakamura..?"

The Japanese engineer floated serenely in weightlessness like a wrinkled Buddha. "Yes, General—"

"Double-check all your security measures again. We should send a liaison to Phoenix station to get up to speed on the project and all its details. How, exactly, are you diverting this Wilks-Lucayo to Mars?"

Nakamura launched into a detailed explanation. "Over the last two years, we've landed and secured to Wilks' surface an array of some sixty-four mass-driver impulse motors. These motors are like industrial dredges with huge electromagnets attached. They chew up surface material and fling it away as reaction mass. Not a lot of thrust, mind you, but over time, it builds up. The effect of the combined array is to very gently perturb the asteroid's course while it's inbound from its aphelion point...its farthest point from the sun. Bit by bit, a few hundredths of a meter per second at a time...the impulse motors are altering the trajectory. The Project's very careful about this...every eventuality has been calculated and prepared for. We want to impact Mars at a very specific place at a very specific time, to gain maximum effect. The whole point of this is to bring in a huge spike in water, carbon, hydrogen and other volatiles all at once...in effect to make a phase change in the environment of Mars. Tip the planet into a new state all at once."

Galen Bosch was intrigued. "I've read the theory behind this, Doctor. Just where are you planning to impact Wilks?"

Nakamura fed an impact simulation to all screens. "I can answer your question best with a short video. Watch this," he said.

An image of Mars blossomed into view. Wilks-Lucayo soon appeared as a point of light streaking toward the southern hemisphere of the planet. In slow motion, the light grew in size until a discernible potato-shaped object was soon evident, tumbling slowly as it plowed into the upper reaches of the Martian atmosphere.

Friction made the asteroid blaze into a fiery ball as it plummeted toward impact. In the final seconds of the video, Wilks-Lucayo hurtled deeper into the thin atmosphere surrounded by a halo of incandescent gases, streaming chunks of asteroid as it began to break up.

At impact, a shock wave rippled outward in concentric rings while the half-mile wide body excavated a massive boiling crater and the plume of debris, ash and soot rocketed skyward, nearly reaching the edge of space itself.

"Hellas Basin," Nakamura announced as the video imagery froze in its final frame, the still shot of a hundred-mile high plume just visible off the limb of Mars' southern hemisphere. "Excavated by a similar impact some two billion years ago. Four months from now, Wilks-Lucayo hits in almost the same place...and the result: Mars has a new ocean and a thicker atmosphere."

The comm was silent until Galen Bosch offered an opinion. "A new ocean once all the dust settles. How long will that take?"

Nakamura was matter of fact. "We've estimated about a year to a year and a half...maybe sixteen Earth months...before enough dust has settled out to resume normal operations."

General Linx was sobered by the imagery he had just seen. "Dr. Nakamura, if Red Hammer is somehow able to divert this thing to an Earth-intercept trajectory, are we looking at a similar scenario here?"

Nakamura's face was impassive. "Pretty much, General. Earth's thicker atmosphere might cause Wilks to disintegrate earlier, with more pieces falling over a wider area. That could be good or bad, depending on the mechanics of the approach."

"Then we can't let that happen." Linx rubbed his gray moustache wearily. "Kraft, I want BioShield brought into this investigation. They may have intel that's relevant."

Kraft, back at Table Top, snapped his fingers, mouthing to Winger and Tallant: _get Fordham down here right away._

Major Elbert Fordham was BioShield liaison to the Table Top facility; he reported directly to Kraft.

Winger dashed off to find the officer, who turned up at the base commissary, nursing a sandwich and coffee.

"I've got my BioShield liaison on the way in now, sir," Kraft told CINCQUANT.

Winger came back with a slightly dazed Fordham a few minutes later.

Linx was blunt and to the point. "Major, has BioShield detected or reported any anomalies in nanobotic activity in recent weeks?"

Fordham took a deep breath. Winger had briefed him on what CINCQUANT wanted on the way over to Ops. The BioShield liaison pecked at a few keys on a nearby keyboard and brought up a display of the world in flat projection. Several splotches of light strobed in multiple locations.

"These are on-going investigations, General. We've got spikes in nanobotic activity-- based on thermals and atomic debris clouds, they seem like assembler activity—in several locations." Fordham highlighted two for explanation. "The main centers of detected activity are in and around Kolkata and west Bengal and a smaller locus in the suburbs of west London."

Linx, Kraft and the rest studied the live map of BioShield deployment. All across the globe, controlled swarms of dedicated ANADs circulated in the lower atmosphere, tuned to detect the telltale thermal bloom and atomic debris signature of unusual replication or nanobotic operation. The Containment Laws were strict; after Serengeti and Amazon, only licensed fabs or permitted nanobotic releases were allowed outside containment. Fabs had to be registered and inspected every year; the matter engines were a tightly regulated monopoly in most countries. You could get a permit for non-fab nanobot release from the local authorities but the procedure was often cumbersome and bribery was endemic in some parts of the world.

Fordham went on. "We think we know the source in west London. There's a team there now, tracking down the violators. But the one in Kolkata—" Fordham shook his head. "The signature's unlike anything we've ever seen. Seems to be a combination of things, overlapping swarms, perhaps. Disturbances within disturbances."

Linx considered that. "You have an enforcement team there?"

Fordham acknowledged. "We do, General. An E-team is on-site at this time. They're correlating signatures with sources...so far, a lot of it is what we suspected: Kolkata's got an epidemic of unregulated fabs going off all over the place. Somebody's been giving them away, with no controls, no training. People are using them like cigarette lighters...fabbing anything and everything that comes to mind. Clothes, books, cars, videos and records, literally everything imaginable. The black market's just exploded. With the local currency pretty much worthless, the fabs are all they have to trade with. I just checked the last report from the E-1...they're covering the Howrah Bridge district and the word is the air's thick with uncontrolled swarms of every variety...assemblers, disassemblers, you name it. Like a fog rolling down the Hooghly River, only this fog is intelligent and programmable. The team's having a helluva time containing the swarms...we may need help."

Linx studied the videos Fordham had put on the net. The imagery looked like a continuous riot, with surging throngs of people caught in thick mists of assemblers, solid shapes forming out of mid-air as the fabs followed their programming. CINCQUANT just shook his head. "Like something out of the Bible...manna from heaven. They're destroying the environment as fast as they can. Kraft, you'd better get a special team in there. We need stronger nano to contain this."

"Will do, General," Kraft replied.

Linx was bothered by something. "Major Fordham, you said the signatures BioShield was detecting were unlike anything you've seen. Explain."

Fordham knew this question would be asked. He took a deep breath. "Fabs mutate fast, General. We all know that. One month, BioShield can detect the most common signatures of assembler operation pretty well. We've got a catalog and we keep updating it hourly. The next month, some hacker has tinkered with the programming...added a carbene grabber here, a radical grabber there, changed bond energies on us...and the signature's all different. We're always behind the curve on this but we manage. But lately—within the last several weeks, BioShield has been seeing something different. I mean _really_ different. We can see it, or rather the effects of it on the local environment but we can't really characterize it. It's a weird quantum effect, like a disturbance. Not really entanglement waves. We're optimized now to scan for certain properties of quantum effects, since that's long been a Red Hammer tactic. They've got quantum couplers same as we do. But this is different. There are patterns of disturbances in and around Kolkata that have to be quantum effects but we can't find them...we see secondary effects like entanglement waves collapsing and we've tried triangulating and localizing but it's just too faint and it shifts too fast."

Kraft was puzzled. "These disturbances...do they leave atomic effects? Molecular debris?"

"No, they don't, General," Fordham went on. "That's why we think this is a quantum effect. All quantum signals generate entanglement waves and patterns that can be detected if you have the right equipment, such as when the signals collapse at the receiver end. BioShield is seeing something like that, but it's broader, bigger in scale. It's more like a quantum earthquake. The disturbances are sporadic but when they happen, BioShield sees a massive entanglement wave collapse, spreading out like a tidal wave of probabilities. Like a giant fist just shook the universe. And what localization we can do points to a source in or around, or maybe below, Kolkata."

Kraft and Winger looked at each other. Both had a flash memory of _Tectonic Strike_ , and the seismic disturbances caused by ANAD swarms released at fracture zones underground. Winger shuddered, recalling hours of terror, trapped miles below ground aboard the geoplane. It had taken several years to get _that_ out of his system.

Linx made up his mind. "Kraft, you'd better get a recon team together. Coordinate with BioShield and Major Fordham. Get to Kolkata, or wherever this disturbance is located. Something's going on and it sounds like more than just bad fabs and loose swarms."

"Yes, sir," Kraft acknowledged. "I'll get you an op plan within the hour." The Table Top commander motioned Winger and Fordham to get moving. As they left the briefing theater, Kraft dove into the details of what Quantum Corps would be doing.

Outside the Ops Center, it was just dawn and the sun was poking above the tops of the Buffalo Range with orange fingers of light. Knots of people from shift change were gathering outside the commissary and the barracks areas, to catch the sight. It was one of the perks of assignment to the Western Command base.

Winger hiked across the snowy quadrangle toward the Containment complex. Fordham could barely keep up.

"Where are we going, Winger?"

The atomgrabber walked briskly along the footpath, ignoring the splendor of an Idaho mountain dawn. "The General wants a recon team and an op plan in an hour. I've got to get my company commanders together and work up a sheet. And I'm going to need everything BioShield has on this disturbance: signatures, frequencies, characteristics, anything you got."

"It's all pretty vague," Fordham admitted. "Long-range detection can't seem to pin the thing down...it shifts and collapses too fast."

"Then there's nothing like a little side trip to check out the natives. Ever been to Kolkata?"

Before Fordham could answer, they had made the Containment center and cycled through Security and the airlocks. Inside, Winger led them through a maze of corridors thick with piping and heavy doors, to a compartment near the center of the complex.

Moments later, Winger and Fordham were at the battalion ready room and surrounded by troopers from 1st Nanospace Battalion.

"Listen up," Winger said.

The ready room was packed with troopers sorting through and stowing their gear. Video screens wrapped around, each displaying loops of scenes from around the base, as well as training exercises, parades and combat sims. First Company commander Captain Colleen "Mighty Mite" Barnes was showing off a new arm tattoo to all who cared to see. Second Company commander Captain Nico Simonet was clicking through some company orders on his commandpad, trying to figure who was supposed to have watch duty today.

Third Company commander hung back from the rest, hovering in the corner of the locker section. The ANAD swarm flickered and glowed like a cloud of fireflies, as it continuously held structure in something approximating a human face.

_More like a carnival mask,_ Johnny Winger thought as he waved his officers over to the briefing stage. It was an open question around Table Top that none of the humans had been able to figure out. Since the Corps had relented several years ago and permitted an experimental company of ANAD assemblers to organize as a standing unit within the battalion, outside of containment, the rest of the battalion had been asking: who, exactly, was in command of this sentient swarm entity?

Winger had pondered the idea as well, even going so far as to pose the question to Doctor Irwin Frost, the Northgate University scientist who had created the original ANAD way back in the '60s.

"It's not a being in the same sense we are, Johnny," Doc Frost had told him. "It's a swarm. Or a colony. Or a hive, if you like. But there's no queen bee that I can determine. The intelligence of the unit is distributed throughout all its elements. So it's fair to say the command and the leadership is as well."

Which made working with 3rd Nano probably the biggest challenge Major Winger had ever faced. To make things a little easier, he had worked out an understanding with ANAD. In staff meetings, briefings and the like, ANAD had agreed to detach a small portion of its swarm and form at least something vaguely resembling a human face, so the other humans would have something to relate to, someone to talk to and communicate with.

*** _There are acoustic channels, Major, that work better, even quantum channels if they have the coupler_ ***

"I know that, ANAD, but humans are old-fashioned. Whenever we communicate with someone, we like to be able to see who we're talking to. Humans evolved that way."

ANAD had considered that for few moments. Then...

*** _ANAD has not evolved in the same way, Major Winger. Perhaps the human way is a mistake_ ***

That's when Winger knew that commanding a company of ANAD assemblers would be unlike anything he had ever done before.

"...listen up," Winger said again. "General Kraft wants us to work out a mission plan for a little recon job. BioShield has found some disturbances they can't locate and they need our help."

Mighty Mite Barnes snorted. "Where to this time, Major? Another resort like Tibet, or the bottom of the ocean?"

"Yeah--" said 2nd Nano's top sergeant, Kevin Childs, "—or maybe half a mile underground in a geoplane."

"Join the Corps, travel the world--" said Sheila Reaves.

"—meet interesting people," added 1st Nano's top sergeant Marianne D'Nunzio "-and disassemble them into atom fluff."

"What can I say?" piped up Joe McReady, platoon leader from the 1st. "It's not just a job...it's a nightmare. Another boring day in paradise."

" _Knock it off_ ," Winger said. "This comes from CINCQUANT himself. And for your information, the disturbance is centered in and around Kolkata and west Bengal..."

"Ah, Kolkata—" dreamed D'Nunzio. "—Exotic spices, unique customs...plus dysentery and malaria—"

"And now nanobots gone haywire," went Reaves. "What's not to like?"

Winger scowled at them and all the kidding died off. From behind Reaves billowed the glowing swarm of ANADs that represented a piece of 3rd Nano. A metallic voice sounded in the ready room, artificial but clear and distinct. The autonomous assemblers had formed a sound emitter from nearby molecules and pulsed out something resembling a voice.

***What is the nature of the disturbance...Major?***

Winger silently thanked ANAD for helping them focus on the mission.

"Major Fordham here is liaison with BioShield. He's got the particulars."

Fordham addressed the assembled nanotroopers. "Gentlemen, what we are seeing is unlike anything we've ever encountered." He signaled SOFIE to put up a display of the Indian subcontinent on a nearby wallscreen. "One thing we do know for sure: the disturbance BioShield has detected is not assembler activity, so far as well can tell. The signatures aren't there; no thermal blooms, no debris, no fluff, nothing. It's more sporadic, possibly quantum in nature."

"Like entanglement waves?" asked Barnes.

"Possibly, but we can't get a fix on it. The probability states don't collapse like entanglement waves. We can't localize it very well, other than to say the source seems to be somewhere in Bengali, near Kolkata. We can't get enough of a picture of the quantum disturbance, if it is that, to say for sure what's causing it. Maybe some kind of massive quantum coupler. But we're sure of one thing: some source is banging out quantum disturbances that are jangling detectors all over the world. And it's coming from here—" he poked his finger at the Kolkata region on the screen. "Frankly, we need help...we need to get into this region with better gear and locate this source. It's wreaking havoc with quantum channels all over the world."

Deeno D'Nunzio studied the map and Fordham's depiction of the quantum disturbance, like a series of ghostly waves, concentric disruptions emanating from the subcontinent. "Looks like a beating heart, doesn't it, Skipper?"

Barnes agreed. "Major, we've seen the latest intel from Q2. Hasn't there been a lot of fab activity in that area...I mean, uncontrolled fabs shooting off."

Fordham acknowledged the problem. "The Indian state of Bengal and the Kolkata region, really the whole Ganges delta, is epidemic with it. Unlicensed fabs going off, whole towns enveloped in loose swarms out of containment, nanoheads and atomgrabbers and hackers juicing up the things beyond any safe level—" Fordham stopped, realizing that the ANAD swarm hovering in the rear of the ready room had brightened as he talked. "Excuse me, I didn't mean to imply—"

Johnny Winger had seen the same thing. He knew ANAD was sensitive about the Containment Laws. "Forget it, Major. I don't think ANAD took offense, did you, ANAD?"

The swarm seemed to throb and flicker for a moment, then the metallic voice came:

*** _ANAD understands human concerns about containment...assemblers must operate safely and in accordance with good practice when in proximity to humans...this is the seen in Rules Two and Three...please, continue, Major...***_

Fordham swallowed audibly and tried to finish the briefing. He had always been a little uneasy in the presence of the swarms. Since the Symbiosis Project had received UNIFORCE permission to release ANAD from containment and form experimental combat units inside the Corps, Fordham and a lot of people had had to learn new ways of relating to these newest troopers.

"...as I was saying, we need help from 1st Nano. You have the equipment and the training to search out quantum disturbances."

Winger added, "Kraft and CINCQUANT want a mission plan within the hour for a little recon job on the scene. We'll form up an Alpha Detachment, take people and gear from across the battalion. I need to get a plan to Kraft right away so UNSAC can cut the orders. Start checking out your gear and close all work orders. I'm betting we'll be airborne before sundown."

Winger dismissed the briefing and waited until the troopers had dispersed from the ready room. A few moments later, only he and the ANAD swarm were left.

"ANAD, I'm betting Red Hammer's got their fingers in these disturbances. You saw the reports on the ultimatum received in Paris last night?"

The swarm swelled for a few seconds, then contracted and seem to dim. ANAD began relaxing its simulated structure of a ghostly human face, reverting back to its more natural state, an amorphous fog of assemblers.

*** _ANAD requests permission to change config, Major...to assume Config One...maintaining Config Four requires extra energy...molecular stores are depleted_ ***

"Permission granted, ANAD. I think you threw a scare into Major Fordham for a moment. He's not used to dealing with swarms out of containment...like a lot of people, I guess."

*** _the Major's response is within normal parameters...Config Four is assumed to enable social interaction in large gatherings of humans...Rule Two, Subsection 22, Paragraph 8_ ***

"I get it, ANAD...and I know how hard it is. But you're in Config One now, and it's just me."

*** _ANAD finds Config One a more suitable configuration for swarm activity... and to answer your question, Major...probability assessment of recent intelligence indicates Red Hammer operations and influence is increasing in south Asia and the regions indicated. Correlations of outbreaks of unlicensed fab use with the Paris ultimatum are low at the moment, but as more data is received, correlations may strengthen_ ***

"You and I think alike, ANAD," Winger admitted. "We haven't seen the last of these goons." He finished his mission plan and fired it off to Kraft over the base tactical net. "We better start getting prepped for the mission. ANAD, assume Config Ten, for loadout and transport. I'm making you part of this Detachment as well. And give me my local guys...I've got to get prepped myself—"

Winger cocked his head just so and the left shoulder containment port beneath his uniform cycled open. The ANAD swarm detached a faint tendril of fog which formed itself into a tight ball of light and maneuvered slowly toward Winger. In less than five minutes, as the atomgrabber studied the details of the plan he had just zapped off to Kraft, the swarm element that would reside inside his implanted capsule made its approach and entered the capsule with a stinging jolt of heat.

Winger winced. "Ouch, ANAD...take it easy, will you? Maybe we need to practice recovery ops a little more or tweak your config registers."

*** _ANAD apologizes...acknowledging that time is short and rapid response is needed to counter enemy threats...optimizing recovery sequence now_ ***

With no further word, Winger left the ready room and headed out of the barracks toward the ordnance bunker at the north end of the mesa. Right behind him, a silent iridescent swarm of ANAD assemblers flowed along like an early-morning ground fog, percolating its way across the quadrangle toward the same destination.

Even at Table Top, nanotroopers en route to other areas around the base quickly gave the fog a wide, uneasy berth.
CHAPTER 1

Mariner City

Candor Chasma, Mars

September 5, 2080 U.T.

Duncan Price had been an inspector with the Frontier Corps for nearly ten years and in all that time, he had never encountered anyone quite like the Chinese meteorologist.

"Dr. Dao, I asked you to stop by to explain under what conditions the expedition you proposed can be conducted."

Dao Wen Hsien leveled an even gaze at Price. "Conditions? What conditions are you talking about? It's all in my proposal. UNISPACE has already approved—"

Price held up a hand. "Yes, yes, I know all that. But that was before the incident...at Hellas Station."

Dao's eyes narrowed. "I was told I could resume my research."

"It's an ongoing investigation, Dr. Dao." Price had developed an intense dislike for the dour Chinese scientist. "There are unsolved matters...we're still trying to determine how six air regulators could fail simultaneously. It's not a credible accident scenario, even though Public Security has called it an accident. It strains credibility...six out of seven regulators fail...at the same time."

Dao nodded tight lipped. "I'm still a suspect."

Price decided to be honest. "There are some suspicions, Dr. Dao. Just between you and me, if it were my call, you'd be on the next shuttle out of here. But you must have some hellacious clout...that's all I can figure. UNISPACE insists that you be given a chance to complete your research."

Dao nodded curtly. "And what are these conditions?"

Price pulled out a small vial from a desk drawer and laid it on his desk. "Public Security maintains a reservoir of programmable devices for custodial purposes. A sort of custodial swarm, if you will." Price extracted a small lozenge from the vial and handed it to Dao. "Swallow this."

Dao looked dubiously at the capsule. He took it in his fingers. "So I am to be in your custody...sort of a prisoner of MarsFed."

"Officially, you're under surveillance. It's a precaution. We don't want any more incidents like Hellas Basin. It's for your own good, actually."

Dao was mindful of the halo that he and all Red Hammer council members had embedded; the swarm kept everyone in line, ensuring that no free-lancers could damage the cartel from inside. "What, exactly, am I permitted to do?"

"You're permitted to conduct research along the lines of your original proposal. And you're permitted to leave Mariner City but only to travel up to twenty five kilometers outside the enclosure. The little deputies in that pill will see to that. Any further...or any activities outside their programming...and you'll get one hell of a headache. Worse case, our custodial swarm can disable muscular contractile tissue. In other words, you'll collapse like a sack of potatoes." Price nodded with satisfaction. "And then we'll come scoop you up and load you on the next shuttle."

"This is all highly unnecessary, Inspector. I am a fully accredited researcher working under a UNISPACE grant. I should protest this kind of—"

Price held up a hand. "Protest all you want, Doctor. But MarsFed's already decided and they make the laws around here. As a matter of fact, I'm UNISPACE myself, you know. Frontier Corps and all that. So we're like fellow employees." He nudged a cup of water toward the Chinese meteorologist. "Bottom's up, Doc."

Dao swallowed the pill without water. He wasn't sure how his halo would react to the alien nano now inside him. He didn't want Price to witness it either, so he said his goodbyes and walked the streets of Mariner City for an hour waiting for something to happen.

Nothing ever did. Dao concluded that UNISPACE bots were pretty tame if the halo hadn't been triggered. Nonetheless, he'd have to be careful.

Back in his apartment on Face Cut Street, mid-ward, Second Level, Dao reviewed the instructions he had received from the Keeper at Hellas Station. He'd already fired off a synopsis to his fellow cartel members, using a frequency-hopping quantum coupler circuit that should be undetectable.

Now it was time to get to work, custodial swarm or not. Perhaps, he could ask the Keeper for help. Surely, the Old Ones had some treatment for neutralizing custodial swarms embedded inside your body.

It was all a bit too much.

When all this was over, Dao promised himself, he'd be a very rich man. If he didn't kill himself in the process.

Dao felt a wave of dizziness and a few hot flashes wash over him. _Finally,_ he told himself. It was about time.

He tried relaxing for a moment on a sofa, going over the Keeper's instructions in his mind. Inside, his halo had begun to react to the presence of Inspector Price's custodial swarm. Deep inside his brain, two armies of nanoscale bots collided and battled. The halo was well programmed to seek out and destroy any swarms that threatened its host.

Dao felt his skin crawl with prickly flashes. The insides of his eyes felt like a cat was there, frantically scratching to get out, clawing and scraping away.

For several minutes, the combat progressed, then the worst of the dizziness and nausea subsided and Dao no longer felt like heaving up breakfast. His vision cleared.

Was it over? Was the halo still there? There was one way to find out. Dao tentatively let his thoughts settle onto forbidden territory...getting out of Red Hammer altogether. Quitting the cartel for good....

He might as well have tried to jump into outer space. The Squeeze came on, right on cue, as the halo bots stoked his dopamine receptors like lighting a match to a drum of oil. His head went off like a bomb and—when the writhing and thrashing finally stopped, at least he had the reassurance that the halo swarm was intact.

And Price's custodial bots were so much atom fluff.

Dao picked himself up off the floor and reminded himself that, at least it was a good hurt. A painful reminder that Red Hammer was like a mama bear who didn't let her cubs go so easily.

The Keeper had given him directions on his next task. Dao had written nothing down but now accessed that set of memories which the sphere's operating system had downloaded to him when he had been inside.

At least, now there would be no interference from the police swarm. Still, as Dao headed out of his apartment for the walk over to the lift that would take him up to the South Locks and the surface, he knew he wouldn't be able to shake Public Security or the Frontier Corps completely. He would be under surveillance and there was no getting away from that.

But he was reasonably confident that if he followed the Keeper's instructions, he could complete his assigned tasks and no one would be the wiser.

Then he could get the hell out of here and collect his fee.

The Keeper had called the device a _quantum string resonator_. At least, that was how the Keeper had translated the instructions from the archives of the Old Ones. His job seemed simple enough on the face of it: build one node of this device and activate it.

_I hope they know what they're doing,_ Dao remarked, as he climbed down from his marscat transport and hit the dusty surface of the mesa. Clad only in skinsuit and breathing pack, Dao had leased a packbot at the Southlocks and ridden twelve miles off into the ocher and dun-colored desert highlands northwest of the Candor canyonlands.

_Of course,_ he told himself, _the Old Ones would obviously know what they were doing._ They were after all the Old Ones. And the Keeper was nothing more than a fancy librarian or search engine, able to direct inquiries toward relevant parts of the Old Ones' seemingly inexhaustible archives, a resource that the cartel had been mining for many years.

Query: how do you divert a trillion-ton C1-class asteroid on to an Earth-intercept trajectory? The Keeper had supplied the answer, along with all the technical details: concepts, history, drawings, bills of material, testing procedures. Easy as putting up a house...maybe easier.

Now, Dao sent the packbot off with its trailer of gear while others aboard the marscat disembarked. One of the riders was an engineer with GreenMars. His name was Taylor. Taylor yawned and stretched as far as his skinsuit would let him. "Fine afternoon on Mars, ain't it?"

Dao merely grunted. It was mid-morning and he had a lot of work to do. He ordered the packbot to follow him up a low sand dune. The depression on the other side corresponded with the exact latitude and longitude the Keeper had given him.

"Need some help there?" Dao turned to see a pair of scientists loping down the side of the dune like children at play.

"What kind of gear is that?"

One scientist wore a skinsuit with a name patch that read SAUNDERS. His companion was MENDEZ. As the packbot systematically offloaded its cargo into neat stacks, Dao regarded both men with barely concealed hostility.

The last thing he needed now was a pair of nosy neighbors.

"Meteorology," Dao told them. "Wind and dust measurements. Before the Big Boom—" he glanced upward.

"Ah, yes," said Saunders, looking over the gear. "I know what you mean. We're both geochemists, Ken and I...rocks and soils and so forth. Once the asteroid hits, Mars becomes a new world. I'm researching a paper. Need a hand?"

Dao shook his head. "Not really. It's pretty specialized stuff. Experimental stuff. I'm not sure it'll even work right."

Saunders held up a small box with odd protuberances on four sides. "What's this?"

Dao wanted to get rid of the pair but he was mindful that he was probably still under surveillance. "It's a quantum processor. I'm taking measurements from all over the planet. Lot's of data, you know."

That seemed to mollify Saunders. "I hear GreenMars is hosting a conference later this week. Updates on the project...the asteroid diversion...new time lines...you coming?"

Dao had heard mention of the conference. "I'll be there...now, if you'll excuse me—"

"Sure thing—" Saunders loped off toward a line of dunes, Mendez gave him a wave too. Soon they had disappeared over the ridge line.

When he thought about it later, the pair seemed quite chatty for scientists who usually kept their research pretty close. Dao figured they were both Public Security, or maybe Frontier Corps plants

_Keeping an eye on me,_ he decided. He quickly set to work.

He didn't pretend to understand all the details of how the quantum string resonator worked. He wasn't important that he understand. His job was simply to erect one node of the resonator at this exact location and activate it. When it was activated, the resonator would be fully functional.

And asteroid 2351 Wilks-Lucayo would slowly begin to change course.

Dao worked steadily throughout the day, skipping lunch, keeping a wary eye on his surveillance, waving perfunctory acknowledgements toward other scientists as they dispersed across the crater-strewn landscape.

The expedition had been sponsored by GreenMars; the project office wanted as fully documented a record of Mars' current state, in all fields, as possible. Like Saunders had said, when the Big Boom came, Mars would be a very different place.

Only Dao understood that the Big Boom might not come to Mars at all. Once the quantum string resonator finally came online, Earth itself would be in the cross-hairs of 2351 Wilks-Lucayo.

He heard the radio call for Pre-assembly...basically a half-hour's warning that the expedition leader put out to say, _Wrap things up, the sun's going down, be on the marscat in an hour...or else._ Dao got up from his knees and studied his creation, wondering if he had missed anything.

The resonator wasn't much to look at and Dao had managed to convince his colleagues that it was, in fact, nothing but a meteorology station.

Four tetrahedral legs supported a small platform about the height of an average man. Atop the platform, a quartet of spheres was mounted. Each sphere was studded with scores of small projections, so that the spheres resembled puckered lemons. The whole thing looked like a big basket of bad fruit at the Southlocks market.

In the center of the spheres, an elongated pyramidal tower rose above the platform, overlooking the bed of the resonator platform. The tower was mounted on a pedestal, which could rotate.

Dao did a quick scan of memory and compared the specs the Keeper had given him with the finished device. Everything seemed to be in order. All that remained was to activate the thing.

Somehow, Dao understood, the device would be coupled with another similar one on Earth. Together, the pair of resonators would alter the string structure of the solar system just enough to warp the trajectory of 2351 Wilks-Lucayo and bend its path away from Mars-intercept...toward Earth.

Activating the node seemed simple enough. The Keeper had downloaded a simple file from the archives of the Old Ones just for this purpose.

Dao glanced around to see if anyone was nearby. Other researchers were loping their way back to the marscat, mindful of the All-Call that meant departure back to Mariner City was imminent. None was nearby, not even Saunders and Mendez, the Public Security types who had been keeping a not-so-subtle eye on him.

Dao felt along the base of the pyramidal tower. _There should be a panel here somewhere._ At length, he found the small control station and thumbed the button, causing it to slide out. It was a small oval panel, with no obvious buttons or switches...only a smooth flat surface. _There's nothing to activate...._

That's when Dao's halo started heating up.

His throat and eyes burned, inside the mask, and he blinked hard, eyes tearing, wondering why the halo was spinning up now. He hadn't done anything wrong; he hadn't made any moves against the cartel. He was on a cartel mission. Halo programming should know that.

What happened next wasn't pretty. Nanobots swarmed inside the Chinese agent and spilled out of his eyes, ears, nose and mouth like a buzzing fog, crackling and sparkling as the swarm formed up into an operating mass.

In seconds, Dao's mask had been breached and the air supply vented explosively to the near vacuum of the Martian surface. Dao collapsed to the sand and was quickly enveloped in a growing fog of nanoscale mechs billowing outward.

Even as Dao thrashed about, his respirocytes altered config and joined the swelling swarm. Instantly, his lungs burst and his body no longer had enough oxygen to keep going. The Chinese scientist convulsed violently about the sand dune, while the swarm of bots surged outward, streaming toward the resonator and its oval control station. In minutes, as Dao's thrashings subsided and his body lay still on the ground, the swarm had collapsed about the control station and embedded its surface with layers upon layers of nanobotic devices, like condensation on a coldplate.

Guided by programming unknown to Dao, guided by an ancient algorithm even its Red Hammer designers didn't know about, the swarm layers steadily altered their configuration, stealing molecules from surrounding structure, fashioning a seething, flickering mass that enveloped the pyramidal tower like a living organism.

The resonator was coming to life.

Two hundred yards away, the expedition boss was busy counting off his eggheads one by one, as the scientists climbed aboard the marscat. He kept coming up short by one. Puzzled, increasingly annoyed, he radioed up to the cat driver.

"Pinky, hold up a minute, will you? I'm short one. Some wienerhead's lost out there again."

"...or didn't hear the All-Call, most likely," Pinky's gravelly voice came back. "Jeez, they'd forget to fart if somebody didn't remind them."

"I gotta check," the boss decided. "SOP says we can't depart when the count's not right."

"Well, don't take all afternoon, Ziegler. I'm hungry and the cat's low on gas."

Ziegler, the expedition boss, acknowledged and bounded off toward the nearer sand dunes. "Be back in a few minutes. I thought I saw a flash over that rise to the north—"
CHAPTER 2

Kolkata, India

September 8, 2080

The hyperjet _Mercury_ burst out of the cloud bank on her descent to Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose Airport at Kolkata and Johnny Winger stared out the porthole at the hazy Ganges delta below. Columns of smoke from thousands of cooking fires added to the thick haze. Rice paddies interspersed with the crude huts of the traditional Bengali _mawzas_ stretched to the horizon, like an infinite chessboard.

"That haze isn't just smoke," Major Elbert Fordham muttered. The BioShield liaison officer had joined Winger in the forward cabin. "A lot of that stuff is loose nanobotic debris...assembler fluff from all the fabs. The stuff is out of control."

Winger nodded. "So I've heard. BioShield can't contain it?"

Fordham snorted. "Not when a hundred million fabs are going off night and day. Containment laws mean nothing here. People are desperate. The black market in unlicensed, souped-up fabs and matter engines is exploding."

"Red Hammer," Winger said. "I've read the reports. They sell the fabs cheap and charge a fortune for the cores and drivers. Same old method they've always used. Get 'em hooked first, then gouge 'em for the goods afterward."

Fordham agreed, as _Mercury_ settled down to a bumpy landing on the tarmac of Runway 16 Left and roared down to taxi speed.

"The market here is huge. People have nothing, barely enough rice to eat, hardly any shelter, rags for clothes. They spent every rupee on fabs and software, hoping to strike it rich. It's like Aladdin's Lamp, if you'll pardon my using another culture. You can't make food—still no fabs for organic stuff, but they've got everything else: fancy clothes, cars, personal bots, every electronic gadget you can think of...Kolkata's like a bazaar gone crazy. There must be hundreds of millions of fabs here...the air's so hot because of all the assembler activity. If it isn't bolted down and screened by bots, everything becomes raw feedstock. The buggers'll eat the clothes right off your back."

Winger was gathering up his gear to disembark. "And the local authorities...they can't shut 'em down?"

Fordham followed Winger aft to the ramp. The rest of Alpha Detachment was gathered around the door, already suited up.

"The locals are the worst," Fordham explained. "Bought off or intimidated by the cartel or other players in the game. We get some help from the National Police or maybe the West Bengal cops...ah, there's Tranh now, with a few of them."

Winger came down _Mercury's_ side ramp, followed by Fordham. The rest of the Detachment assumed a loose parade formation as they disembarked.

A Vietnamese officer in the khaki and blue of a local BioShield officer stepped forward. He saluted Winger and Fordham smartly.

"Lieutenant Nguyen Tranh, sir. My E-team is on duty in town at this moment." He indicated a burly black African second in command. "This is Sergeant Lumumba. He's my chief. E-team West Bengal is ready for inspection, sir!"

Johnny Winger spotted other officers nearby. Tranh introduced them.

"Captain Jawaharlal Singh, at your service, sir. The West Bengal Provincial Armed Constabulary is ready for patrol duty."

Singh was a lanky and swarthy officer with a luxurious black moustache, erect and full of military bearing. He saluted Winger and added, "West Bengal is pleased to host the famous troopers of the Quantum Corps. My men will escort you into the city."

Winger returned the salute. "Captain, what's the situation here? Intel says the whole region's thick with nano...BioShield's executing a Level Three quarantine for Kolkata itself."

A trio of black lifters hovered just over the ramp, waiting for them. "Come," said Singh. "My ships will take your people and gear into the city. Do you require assistance in—" Singh stopped in mid-sentence as one of the Quantum Corps officers behind Winger began to 'de-materialize.'

It was ANAD. The swarm had assumed a para-human config upon disembarking...standard procedure for parade formations. Now, at Winger's signal to fall out and collect their gear, the swarm had changed config to a more natural state and was busily re-forming into an amorphous fog of twinkling lights.

"—ah, I see you have the assembler formation I had heard about...this must be the ANAD combat element." Singh marveled at the speed of the config change. "I only wish our own constabulary bots were so disciplined. Here in Bengal, nanobotic mechanisms are like smoke...everywhere, uncontained..." he shrugged, "it is the Bengali way, I'm afraid...beyond anyone's control. By the grace of Vishnu...we are overwhelmed. Even BioShield—" Singh glanced over at Tranh, whose face was hard and skeptical, warily keeping an eye on the undulating ANAD swarm.

Tranh stiffened. "Your detachment is present and accounted for?"

Winger nodded in the affirmative. "Alpha Detachment is ready to deploy. Detachment—" he called over the crewnet, "rig for Tactical One...opposed entry. Unlock your weapons. ANAD...configure State One. Let's go—"

They headed off to the lifters. Moments later, the black spidery vehicles were winging their way eastward in formation over the misty Hooghly River, heading for the heart of Kolkata.

Seen from the air, the great Indian metropolis was not particularly impressive. A sea of dun-colored low rise buildings was punctuated by TV towers and the occasional high-rise building, split by the muddy ribbon of the river. Several patches of green—city parks and the Maidan race track, Singh explained—gave some color to an otherwise dreary urban landscape.

Crossing the river at several hundred feet altitude, the formation of lifters banked left over the ornate Victoria Memorial and chopped speed, settling toward a grassy sward just east of the Shalimar Road bridge. The small park was surrounded by _mawzas_ and shanties of every size and shape, crowding in on the green field like waves of wreckage washing ashore.

"Howrah Heights," Singh informed them. The lifters hovered momentarily while soldiers from the Provincial Constabulary shooed off beggars and pickpockets and secured the field. After a cordon had been set up, the lifters touched down. The Constabulary quickly dispersed. They had little protective gear and couldn't operate long in such a nano-heavy environment.

"Fall out!" Winger ordered over the crewnet. "Tactical One and keep your eyes and ears open."

"Skipper—" it was Sheila Reaves, DPS tech for the Detachment. "Superfly's already deployed...I'm already getting thermals and atomic fluff big time. Intense nanobotic activity all around us—"

Tranh explained. "The air's thick with nano here. All the fabs around. I'd recommend a level one barrier around the landing zone...at least until you get all your gear set up."

Winger needed no further urging. He cocked his head and got his own embedded ANAD on the coupler.

"ANAD, config state four. I need a screen to hold off these fabricator bugs that are flooding the area. Synchronize with 3rd Swarm and hold a perimeter—"he estimated the size of the landing zone at about a half a square kilometer—"two hundred meters radius from this position."

*** _ANAD acknowledges. Preparing to launch_ \--***

Winger felt the sting of the launch and watched the swelling fog of replicating bots billow out of the lifter ramp, spilling out onto the grass and mixing with the 3rd Swarm of uncontained ANAD that was also deploying. The fog swelled rapidly in size, twinkling and fluorescing as it stripped atoms from the air and built up structure. In a few minutes, the entire park was surrounded by a barrier of nanobotic mechs, sparkling and winking in the humid morning air. And all along the periphery of the clearing, ANAD engaged the uncontained fab bots. Crackles of light and seams of distorted air highlighted the engagement points.

"ANAD's letting 'em have it!" Mighty Mite Barnes observed through a lifter porthole. "Right in the chops!"

"Like riot control, only at atomic scales," Tranh agreed. "My E-team just doesn't have the resources to contain all this...it's out of control."

Winger could see the problem. "Years ago, we would have deployed in hypersuits for protection. Today, every trooper has an embedded ANAD swarm. We carry our own barriers with us." To his Detachment, Winger ordered. "Okay, troops...swarms out and synched. We're going in hot—"

One by one, the nano-troopers disembarked with their gear. Reaves, Barnes, Simonet, D'Nunzio, Villa and the rest exited by the aft lifter ramp, each shielded by ANAD 'bubbles' and loaded up the crewtracs for a little jaunt deeper into the city.

At the same time, Tranh had ordered a squad of BioShield techs to rendezvous with Alpha Detachment at the landing zone. In ten minutes, the two crewtracs were loaded and the BioShield squad appeared at the edge of the clearing.

"Give 'em the pass codes," Winger ordered. Reaves gave Tranh the current day's home config. The BioShield techs took that and 'tuned' their own barrier nanobots to be able to penetrate the ANAD barrier without opposition. Inside the shield, the two units linked up.

Major Fordham recognized the squad leader. He was a burly African non-com.

"Sergeant Kano, glad to see you're on this gig. What's the situation?"

Kano shook hands all around, warily eyeing the ANAD swarm pulsating in the background. Even as the African sergeant gave his report, ANAD re-configged into a ghostly, vaguely para-human form.

"Red Squad's detailed to cover the Howrath district, Major. My squad's been under fire practically the whole time. We've got loose fabricator bots replicating uncontained all over the place—" Kano gestured toward the trusswork towers of the distant bridge—"the concentration is highest around that bridge. There used to be a bazaar there but some wise guy bought a fab in and unzipped the core right on the spot—no containment or anything. Pretty soon, all the doodads inside were going berserk...like a big bang. They were disassembling the bridge when we showed up...my guys had to work fast with everything we had, to disperse the swarm." Kano shrugged. "It's like mashing a balloon...squash it here and it just shows up somewhere else. We counter-banged until we got on top of the situation—but the bridge..." Kano shook his head.

Johnny Winger was intrigued about the fab design. "Sergeant, did you get any samples? I'd like to see what config these mechs are using...what type of design."

Kano recognized Winger and his unit as Quantum Corps. "Glad you're here, Major. We need all the help we can get...to answer your question, sir, we haven't had time to get any samples. Contain and disperse...that's all we can do with what we have."

"Sergeant," Fordham explained, "Quantum Corps is here to help us but they've got another mission too." He briefly explained the quantum interference that seemed to be emanating from a source in the city. "UNIFORCE is concerned about the magnitude of the interference. It's scrambling every quantum coupler circuit this side of Cairo. Something big is pumping out decoherence waves all over the planet and into space and Paris wants to find the source."

Kano shook his head. "We can't use our couplers at all but I thought it was just a temporary effect, Major. And you think the source is here?"

Winger called up the locating algorithm and beamed it over to Kano's crewnet. In seconds, Red Squad had the same intel as Winger's Alpha Detachment.

Kano scanned his eyepiece. A BioShield tech standing next to him—his name patch read _PERVEZ—_ spoke up.

"Sarge...we know where this is...over by the Rabindra lakes. Probably that temple complex...what was the name?"

Kano remembered. "Bugger...you're right! Shavindra...something or other. We did a containment op near there just last week. Regular bot blizzard, it was."

Winger brought up a Kolkata city map on his own eyepiece. He queried his wrist computer and soon enough, the Hindu temple compound of Shavindra was highlighted, with a shortest route already plotted.

"If this place is one of the stronger locuses of deco waves, that can only mean one thing: some kind of big time quantum signaling is going on there. That's where my Detachment needs to be."

Winger ordered the Detachment to board their crewtracs. He offered Kano a lift but the BioShield sergeant declined.

"I have to relieve a detail I posted at the Howrath Bridge. They've been trying to contain swarms for the last twenty-four hours straight...it's an epidemic over there."

"I can detail some of my people," Winger decided. " _Turbo, Spite,_ go along with Kano." Sergeants Adnan Fatah and Ray Spivey came over. "Use your own embedded masters to help BioShield get this thing under control. Then catch up with us at this Shivandra temple when the situation's stabilized."

"Yes, sir," both nanotroopers saluted. The two of them hustled off with Kano's men, exiting the defensive barrier in a flash of light, then hopping aboard a semi-track for the quick ride to Howrath.

"Load up!" Winger ordered. The rest of the Detachment swung their gear aboard the two crewtracs that the local BioShield office had brought in. The huge snorting vehicles were dual-tracked, with articulating arms front and rear to manipulate or hoist heavy objects. Modified from geoplane chassis, each crewtrac had limited sub-surface burrowing capability. Powered up, each vehicle shimmered in the hazy morning sunlight as its ANAD shield formed a twinkling, flickering defensive barrier around itself, like a huge, pulsating carapace of bots.

The crewtracs rumbled off, through the barrier ANAD screen, which sparkled as they passed by, and then turned right, onto crowded Hanagar Street, heading east for Shavindra and the great temple complex.

Hanagar Street was thick with traffic, choked with pedestrians and rickshas, pedicabs and jitneys. Down narrow lanes branching off to the sides, dense smoke and fab swarms added to the humid haze of a late summer morning. The crewtrac drivers maneuvered gingerly through the throngs, honking at the wizened old _wallahs_ as they pulled their rickshas in every direction, heedless of the traffic.

Major Fordham studied the scene through a porthole. "In Kolkata, some things never change."

The Shavindra temple compound was west of the city center, set in a tree-lined park called Bhattan. From the Hanagar Street roundabout, the ornate stepped pyramids of the main temple poked above the trees, a brooding presence in the early morning mists. Traffic thinned out as the crewtracs navigated the circle and accelerated out along the Varanasi Road connector.

Johnny Winger had been studying a layout diagram of the temple on his eyepiece when the crewnet voice circuit crackled to life.

"Skipper—" it was the lead DPS tech, Sheila Reaves—"I've got high-freq decoherence waves slamming away...all around us. Working on a fix now...but whatever it is, it's big."

Winger saw the same pattern on his eyepiece...Reaves had ported the readings to the crewnet. Whatever it was, the source was undoubtedly nearby. Something was shaking and snapping spacetime like a wet rag, sending out massive waves of collapsing probability states.

"Try to get a fix on it, Sheila. And start recording. I want Table Top to see this too."

"Lots of thermals too," added Taj Singh. Singh was the Detachment's second Defense and Protective Systems specialist. "All bands...EM, acoustic, whatever it is, it's intense. Reading big nano ahead."

Winger trained the crewtrac scope on the ornate spires—the _gopuram—_ of the huge temple. Elaborate carvings of lions' heads and fanciful creatures leered back at him. The visual shimmered in the morning haze and it wasn't humidity that caused the shimmer.

"Barrier bots," the atomgrabber muttered. Not entirely unexpected. The entire temple compound was shielded by a screen of nanobots, with enough density to haze the air around the compound. "Work us in as close as you can," he told Sergeant Victor Klimuk, who was up front driving the crewtrac. "Third Swarm...config state one...prepare for opposed entry."

At Winger's command, the loose swarm of ANAD bots that had been riding the crewtrac in the back corner of the crew compartment began changing shape, losing its para-human form as the assemblers re-distributed themselves and configured for the combat insertion that Winger had commanded.

The crewtracs eased through a huge iron gate adorned with serpents' heads and tiger paws in stone, and stopped a few feet away from the shimmering barrier that shielded the temple. Through the translucent shield, crackling with bursts of light, the Sacred Pond of the Lillies reflected morning sunlight from an inner courtyard. A stone relief of Lord Shiva rose from the pond and a slender spire brooded over a frozen gathering of spirits, also in stone. Beyond the water, a colonnaded portico surrounded the courtyard. Inside, the Hall of a Thousand Pillars was dark, save for clots and denser swarms of bots moving along the colonnade.

"We're going in at Tactical One," Winger decided. "Get your embedded swarms ready to engage. Coilguns and HERF batteries...prepare to barrage on my command. We'll shock 'em with rf and see if we can burrow inside while they're chewing on that."

Alpha Detachment dismounted from the crewtracs and scurried into position for the assault.

"DPS...give me your best bearing to those decoherence waves. Are we in the vicinity?"

Sheila Reaves studied her readouts on her eyepiece, moving laterally around the colonnade to get a better angle. "Dead ahead, Skipper. Whatever's slamming quantum states is inside...Jeez, it's like an earthquake."

"Maximum barrage," Winger ordered. He was hunkered down in the shadow of a grinning sculpture of Shiva, propped up against one of the deity's legs. " _GO...GO...GO!_ _"_

The air burned with multiple thunderclaps as Alpha Detachment opened up. The High-Energy Radio Frequency bursts rhythmically pounded the temple barrier. At the same moment, a barrage of coilgun fire swept across the inner courtyard and pond, sending geysers of stone chips and dust everywhere.

Nanoscale assembler bots shrieked as waves of HERF thundered across the courtyard, ripping the barrier to shreds. The clatter of fried bots tinkling onto the stone pavement could be heard between coilgun rounds.

"MOVE OUT!" Winger yelled. Each nanotrooper, now enveloped in a protective cocoon of personal assembler bots, surged ahead through the shredded remains of the barrier. Bursts of light, like fireflies flickering on a summer night, tickled all along the edges of the barrier.

The Detachment moved as one across the courtyard, through a line of columns and toward the massive oak doors of a large chamber—the Hall of a Thousand Pillars—Winger's eyepiece annotated on his viewer. Winger switched views to check on 3rd Swarm and see how the assembler formation was doing.

Third Swarm had replicated like crazy and was busily engaging the nanobots of the temple barrier, even as the rest of the Detachment zeroed in on the fix Reaves had given them. Winger wanted to see what kind of bots ANAD was dealing with.

The momentary disorientation when switching to nanoscale passed quickly enough and Winger soon had a view like flying through a sleetstorm. Shadowy shapes—polygons, tetrahedrals, dodecahedrons—flitted by as he settled into the view. Moments later, the image resolved to a clearer view of the battlefield.

The ANAD were advancing on full propulsor along a ragged line. At the point of the advance, several replicants had already engaged the enemy. Winger tweaked the gain to get a better image.

The barrier bots were all effectors, whirling and slashing as they blocked ANAD's path. Bursts of light erupted like firecrackers going off as ANAD tore at the enemy's appendages, liberating thousands of electron volts with each slash.

Debris and loose atomic fluff thickened into a sort of fog, reflecting acoustics everywhere. The image fritzed and careened as the combat intensified.

_Use your enzymatic knife, ANAD,_ Winger muttered. The tiny assembler had been slashing with his bond disrupters but it was like hacking through thick vine in a dense forest. The enzymatic knife was a broader area weapon. It would slice through the churning melee easily.

*** _Third Swarm engaging_...*** came the report back on the quantum circuit. *** _Enemy bots are multi-effector config...pyridines and carbene grabbers mostly...no bond weapons yet...ANAD is reconfigging now...altering outer effectors to enzymatic_ ***

_Good man,_ Winger agreed. ANAD...3rd Swarm...whoever was in command—had come to the same conclusion. The enzymatic knife would make quick work of those carbenes.

Winger kept a close eye on the nanoscale combat, while he crept along the colonnade toward the oak doors. Beyond his eyepiece view of ANAD's engagement, he saw other troopers converging on the same point. Reaves, Barnes, D'Nunzio, Tsukota, Singh...one by one, the Detachment appeared.

"Blow those doors!" Winger ordered. The DPS techs leveled a coilgun barrage at the sturdy wooden doors. They dissolved in a fiery blossom of red flame and black smoke.

First in was Singh, sweeping his sector with a coilgun.

"Clear left!" he shouted. Right behind Singh came Calderon and Victor Klimuk, pouring into the dimly lit chamber right on Singh's heels.

"Clear center sector!" That was the Russian Klimuk, crouching forward.

"Clear right sector!" yelled Calderon.

The rest of the Detachment, following Reaves' last fix on the quantum interference, burst in.

Reaves studied her nav screen. "Just got one big decoherence pulse on the scope, Skipper...dead ahead...about two hundred yards!"

In the dim, fire-lit shadows of the great Hall of a Thousand Pillars, the decoherence wave front had a most startling effect. It was like an invisible scythe slashing through the grid of columns, sweeping from left to right. One by one, an invisible front swept toward them, expanding outward in all directions. The passage of the front could be detected visually, as row after row of columns wavered, then dematerialized for a few seconds, finally re-appearing again after the probability waves had passed.

And in the split second the deco wave passed each row of pillars, the row unfolded like an origami sheet into a shadowy infinity of columns, marching off in every direction. The effect of collapsing probability states lasted less than a second, but the image was visual proof of the massive quantum disturbance nearby.

For Johnny Winger, it brought back unwelcome memories of the original Sphere, buried now under the rubble of the Paryang monastery in Tibet, and the assault that had nearly cost him his life.

His memory was jolted apart when a stitch of beamfire flashed out of one corner of the Great Hall. Winger took a sizzling round across his right arm but his own personal ANAD shield blunted most of the energy. A brief sting was all that was left. Winger hit the ground.

More beamfire erupted from the shadows, slicing through several of the ornate gold-plated columns. Rubble and dust soon choked the air.

"Ozzie!" Winger called out to Sergeant Hiro Tsukota. "You and Mighty Mite move left! Flank 'em that way!" Winger jabbed a finger at Singh and Reaves, crouching behind a nearby column. "You two...the other way!" The Defense techs scooted off into the dim recesses opposite.

Standard tactics dictated a double envelopment when confronting an entrenched defensive position. _Screw the manual!_ Winger waited through several bursts of enemy fire before the four nanotroopers signaled they were in position.

_Whoever they are,_ he thought, _they're well armed._ Probably not temple priests either. Laser carbines and beam rifles could make life tough for the unprepared squad. But this was no ordinary squad.

Winger got on the acoustic channel to 3rd Swarm.

"Third Swarm leader...I want to flush those nasties out. Execute config seven...clampdown NOW!"

Configuration Seven was an assault maneuver they'd practiced many times out at the Hunt Valley range near Table Top. The tactic required a forward movement by the swarm, followed by a big bang-style replication to overwhelm the enemy's position and literally suffocate the daylights out of him. When the enemy was flushed, choking and gasping and screaming for air, from his redoubt, he became easy pickings for the Detachment's sharpshooters.

The only real defense was to counterswarm and throw up a shield before the clampdown got started.

Winger watched as the swarm billowed out through the columns, replicating madly, densifying the atmosphere as each assembler grabbed atoms and built structure. Through the thickening and flickering fog of bots, the garish faces of unknown gods and demons leered back at them from columns illuminated by the glow.

Soon enough, the enemy felt the first effects. Screams and groans tumbled out of the shadows.

Seconds later, the first gunmen emerged, choking and flailing into the dim light. Two enemy soldiers ran blindly among the columns, staggering until they collapsed, thrashing, under the weight of the swarm.

"MOB'em!" Winger ordered. "And spray that whole corner...flush 'em all out!"

Taj Singh unhooked a canister of MOB bots and fired a few rounds at the hapless soldiers. The Mobility Obstruction Barrier mechs quickly formed an impenetrable web over the enemy. They gasped and clawed for air and flailed wildly, as the barrier drove them inexorably down to the floor.

"Skipper—" it was Reaves. "Deco waves all over the place...dead ahead...bearing one five oh. That corner of the hall—"

Winger had seen the wave front at the same moment, rippling through the pillars, even as Reaves' gear had detected it.

"Whatever's causing this disturbance...it's just beyond this chamber. Detachment...converge on Sheila's last fix. And let's get a perimeter guard up around this chamber...in case we have more visitors."

The nanotroopers eased forward toward the far corner of the great hall. Serpent's heads and mythical beasts glared at them from each pillar as they converged.

"Place gives me the creeps," muttered Mighty Mite Barnes as she crept cautiously forward.

"Yeah..." agreed Tsukota. "A nightmare in stone...even in my worst dreams, I never saw shit like this."

More decoherence pulses slammed the hall and the pillars ahead wavered in and out of view like heat waves on a highway.

"Contacts?" Winger inquired.

Reaves and Singh scanned the vicinity. "Nothing living on this side," Reaves came back."

"All bands clear," Singh concurred. "I'm getting high thermals on the other side of this wall ahead...may be nano..."

The Detachment came to a massive door, almost a gate in itself, carved from solid oak, with elaborate figures of Hindu gods and goddesses covering every square inch. The DPS techs examined the door closely. Singh put out a finger experimentally. The door gave slightly to the touch, then a small wave rippled outward from his touch. The door quivered and gave off a faint flickering glow.

"I thought so," said the DPS tech. "Barrier nano...look at the details of the config. Even up close, you can't tell visually."

"How come I'm not getting any thermals?" Reaves asked. She scanned the door with her imager. "Reads just like background...no spikes in any band. What is this stuff...voodoo?"

Winger touched the door himself. "Your background's screwed up, Sheila. The imager looks for spikes. But the background level of atomic activity is elevated...all over Kolkata. It's the fabs. Matter engines going off all over the place...we'll have to re-calibrate to pick up unusual activity. Make a note."

"Can we breach it?" asked Klimuk.

"We'll have to try a config and see what works," Winger decided. "The programming and design of these barrier bots is so good, it looks like solid oak. I've got a feeling it's pretty adaptive, too. Third Swarm, front and center—"

The rest of the Detachment parted as a pulsating mist poured through the columns and assembled itself into a vague para-human form. Just faintly visible in the dim light of the hall, the swarm had assumed a shape resembling a medieval English longbowman, complete with quiver and arrows. Winger was mildly annoyed but didn't make a scene about it. Sometimes, uncontained ANADs like 3rd Swarm had a warped understanding of human history and values.

*** _Swarm reports ready in all respects, Major...what is the nature of the mission?***_

"Swarm master, I want you to scan this structure and assume a configuration to breach it. Config is pretty sophisticated but do what you can."

*** _Swarm will comply...scanning now_...***

Winger stepped back and motioned the others back too, as the swarm surged forward. In seconds, the massive door was blanketed in a thick, flickering mist. Small light bursts rippled up and down the length of the door, as the two swarms engaged.

Reaves followed 3rd Swarm's progress with her imager. "Skipper, looks like he's going to something octahedral, unusual grabbers...haven't seen anything like those before—"

Winger studied the image himself. But before he could say anything, the door flared to a white-hot light, too bright to look directly at, then came a piercing shriek as the massive structure super-nova'ed into incandescence. The fierce light strobed and throbbed like a living thing for a few moments, then faded, not completely, but to a hot translucent membrane.

Inside the antechamber beyond, the scene resembled a view from underwater.

The air was thick with nanobots, clotted like clouds and clumps and myriad other shapes, floating and swimming as if they were a thousand feet undersea. Lightning and flashes erupted in a chaotic symphony, spotted through the dense medium that filled the room. A few humans, or at least, human-forms, moved languidly about their business, attending to a large device in the center.

As Johnny Winger scanned the room with his own imager, a massive decoherence wave erupted from the device, momentarily washing out everything, so that only a milky white glow was visible. For a brief, almost imperceptible instant, the glow collapsed into a careening kaleidoscope of images, like a slide show gone mad, as an infinite parade of probability states swept outward. A great tidal wave of all possibilities collided into each other right before them.

The wavefront passed by in less than a second but in that single second, Alpha Detachment disappeared from view and was instantly re-assembled into a facsimile of its previous state. Johnny Winger blinked hard and saw Reaves, Tsukota, Singh—all of them wink out, then split apart into pinwheels upon pinwheels of themselves, carved into ever smaller slices that whipped by too fast for the eye to comprehend.

Then it was gone and Winger shook his head, feeling his arms and legs, as if to reassure himself that he was still there. He saw the others doing the same.

The curtain of roaring silence lifted and he heard someone saying—"... _the hell was that?_ " It was Klimuk, shaking himself like an animal startled from a deep sleep.

Winger got his senses back and realized that they were staring face to face with the very source of the quantum disturbances.

He signaled for 3rd Swarm to execute the breaching, but there was no response...nothing from the swarm at all. The door was still there, open or not, he couldn't tell, but translucent enough for them to see through.

Inside, at the very center where the entanglement wave had emerged, Johnny Winger squinted and could make out the faint contours of some kind of platform. He remembered the great Sphere at Paryang but this was smaller, different.

About the height of an average man, four tetrahedral legs supported the small platform. Atop the platform, a quartet of spheres was mounted. Each sphere was studded with scores of small projections and protuberances, so that the spheres resembled puckered lemons. The whole thing resembled a big basket of fruit gone bad.

"Third Swarm...prepare to breach the barrier. Assault configuration—" but there was nothing. No swarm, no signal. "Victor...have you got 'em?"

Sergeant Klimuk pecked at keys on his wristpad, trying to get a fix on the swarm. "That last pulse must have dispersed them, Skipper. Or altered config. I've got nothing."

_I've got to get in there,_ Winger told himself. The doorway was still shielded; a quick touch produced a needle-sharp sting to his fingers and an angry ripple in the barrier bot shield.

"What about the HERF, Major?" It was Reaves. "Fry 'em with rf, then big-bang our way in. Always worked in the war games before."

Winger had to admit she was right. "Charge up the batteries, Sheila. But once we slam 'em, I'm driving ANAD myself."

Reaves and Singh brought up the radio frequency pulse weapons and sighted them in on the door.

"ANAD," Winger told his own protective assembler swarm, "go to Config One and give me control of the master. I'm piloting this assault."

*** _Base...altering configuration to state number one...is this a good idea, Base? These barrier bots are all effectors...they replicate fast. At close quarters, ANAD may not be able to counter in time. More data is needed_ \--***

"No time, ANAD. I know what I'm doing. Sheila, on my mark—"

"Charging now, Skipper." Reaves and Singh initialized the charging sequence. The HERF guns hummed with barely contained energy.

Winger toggled into pilot mode on his own wristpad 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.

No doubt about it, combat at the scale of atoms was a different ball game. Every atomgrabber had his own routine for preparing for the transition from one world to another.

" _Now..._ Sheila! Hit 'em _now!_ Hit 'em hard and fast."

The HERF batteries discharged.

The first image he had was that of plowing through heavy surf on some spray-washed beach in a stiff wind. But after years of grabbing atoms and diving in and out of ANAD's world, Johnny Winger knew how to adjust quickly.

He tweaked his propulsors and jetted ahead, fighting currents and bumping through the cascade of molecules that sleeted past him.

_Let's get full effectors out,_ he decided. This latest ANAD had extensible fullerene 'hooks' for better grasping plus a stiffer diamondoid base with more reactive bond ends...the better to stick to whatever he wanted to examine. The Lab's engineers had really been tinkering under the hood and Winger was glad of it.

The ANAD master responded like a champ, deploying grabbers, extractors, hydrogen probes and bond disrupters quickly. Now bristling with his full complement of tools and weapons, he sounded ahead to get his bearings.

Through the heavy 'rain' of jostling molecules, still recovering from the HERF blast, Winger sensed unusual structures ahead. A thermal bloom of assembler activity lit up his viewer and he cut propulsors to reconnoiter the target.

_Could be more defensive bots,_ he surmised. It was reasonable to expect a tighter screen around the big device in the center of the room. He shifted his approach heading, trying to hide behind a clump of oxygens, then scooted past a gust of phosphorus molecules as he tacked against the prevailing current. _I'll put the scope on 'em._

Dead ahead, an array of assembler bots had formed a defense 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.

_Fantastic engineering,_ Winger realized. Quantum Corps had nothing like it. But before he could probe further for more details, the entire defensive line had whipped forward, almost as a single unit, and enveloped ANAD and its replicant swarm without warning.

Before Winger could even react, he got warnings left and right on his coupler circuit:

*** _Carbene effectors disabled_ ***

*** _Hydrogen abstractors disabled_ ***

*** _Port propulsor disabled_ ***

"I'm losing control!" he told himself. ANAD's response was sluggish and he soon realized why.

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.

_Time to get ANAD some help,_ Winger decided. He opened another coupler channel.

"ANAD master to Detachment...Reaves, Singh...anybody... _get your swarms going!_ Get into pilot mode and get down here with me..."

He did what he could, trying every trick he could think of...first was to fire off the bond disrupters... _see if I can zap these buggers off me..._

He salvoed ANAD's full array of disrupters, lighting up the tangle of thrashing molecule chains...again and again. Each jolt tore through tight covalent bonds in the enemy's peptide chains, liberating thousands of electron volts but to no effect. If anything, the chains re-assembled even tighter, slowly crushing each ANAD assembler.

Winger gritted his teeth. _If at first you don't succeed..._ Next tactic was to try and slash his way out...he rammed his pyridine probes to full out, quickly re-configging the buckyball ends to something a little more deadly...an undulating knots of really reactive oxygens. With his new 'swords' thus in place, he revved ANAD's propulsors to get some spin going, and tried slashing and cutting and flailing his way through the seaweed-like chains of enemy peptides.

The effect was even worse. Each time an enemy bot had its chain severed, it replicated a new one before Winger could maneuver ANAD through the opening. It was like hacking through a jungle thick with vine, only the vine grew back faster than you could cut it back.

Winger was getting frustrated. He thought briefly about executing a quantum collapse, but that was a desperation tactic, a retreat and besides, they had to know what the hell they were dealing with here inside Shavindra.

He'd save the quantum maneuver for later, if he needed it.

Still thrashing and hacking at the enemy bots, Winger caught a glimpse of some thermals on his scope...familiar blooms growing fast.

It was the cavalry.

His coupler circuit crackled. "Skipper, it's Reaves, with Mighty Mite and Deeno on my flanks. We're on max propulsor...sensing you're stuck inside all that garbage up ahead—"

Winger was glad for the help. He knew perfectly well that the real nanotroopers were crouching near him on the floor of the temple inner chamber, while the ANAD swarms approaching were being remotely piloted. But all the same, it was like having his Detachment right with him even on this godforsaken molecular battlefield.

"Reaves, you and Deeno see if you can out replicate these buggers...big-bang if you have to. Barnes, close from your side and try to draw off some of this swarm."

As the battlefield churned and heated up with max ANAD replication, Mighty Mite Barnes closed the distance, piloting her own ANAD swarm like a miniscule battalion, wading right into the middle of the fray.

"I'm going bang," Reaves told him. She triggered off a max rate replication with her own swarm, churning the air with furious atom-grabbing. Deeno D'Nunzio did the same. Soon, the air around the chamber burned supernova hot as assemblers copied themselves and built structure like frantic brickmasons.

_I hope this works,_ Winger thought. He was running out of tactical options fast.

The tactic was a basic ANAD operation: try to out-replicate the enemy and overwhelm him with sheer mass. With any luck, the Shavindra bots would soon find themselves smothered and unable to react fast enough to ANAD's exponential attack.

Winger tried flexing his effectors and detected a slight loosening.

Maybe if I just fold up my outer pyridines...retract the buckyball ends...I can—

He tried it and was able to squirm free of the enemy bots' grasp. Spinning up propulsors, he shot free of captivity...only to run into another knot of mechs. Winger flexed and thrashed his effectors but it was no use.

Shavindra bots were more maneuverable, quicker than ANAD.

"Sheila...it's not working...I'm stuck in a bog of mechs here...."

"That's not all, Skipper. I've got big thermals nearby and they're not nano. Take a look on your viewer."

Winger switched away from ANAD mode and squinted at the view on his eyepiece. Through the flickering fog of nanoscale combat, he made out the outlines of the generator platform, still winking in and out of view with rhythmic pulses. Beyond the platform, faintly visible, were shadowy forms, moving forms.

Winger realized they had more company in the chamber, human company.

"Let's try to grab one of those techs, Sheila. You got any MOB canisters left?"

"Affirmative, Skipper." The DPS tech scuttled along the chamber floor around the left side of the quantum generator platform, to get a better angle. Sergeant Victor Klimuk shadowed her moves, to give covering fire.

A new pulse erupted from the generator, deafening the chamber. As the decoherence waves radiated outward, every structure in their path winked out of view, smeared like rain on a windshield, before the passing probability waves collapsed into material stability again.

"Here goes—" Reaves muttered. She aimed the MOB launcher at a cluster of technicians and fired off several rounds. Instantly, the burst of nanomechs engulfed the enemy and slammed them to the chamber floor.

"Got 'em!" Klimuk pumped a fist. "I'll grab that short one in front...cover me!"

Klimuk managed to seize a struggling technician and drag him back toward their position. The MOB barrier was already squeezing hard and the tech's screams and gasps were muted by the suffocating blanket of mechs steadily contracting, pinning him down into the cocoon.

He offered no resistance as Klimuk and Reaves secured the prisoner and half-dragged, half-carried him back toward the chamber door.

Winger dove back into the fray that still threatened ANAD. All about the chamber, a dense fog had settled in, a fog of exponentially replicating assemblers locked in combat. The fog flickered and crackled with trillions of volts of ruptured bonds as the mechs battled from one end of the chamber to another.

ANAD was still in a straitjacket, enveloped in enemy bots. Winger spun propulsors and flexed effectors but it was no use. Despite his own increasing mass, ANAD seemed trapped.

"ANAD, I can't out-maneuver these buggers. And we can't out-bang 'em into submission. They counter everything I come up with."

*** _ANAD recommends withdrawal, Base. Losing primary effector control...disrupters ineffective. Enzymatic knife and pyridine probes no longer operable. Replication failing...ANAD is being overwhelmed_ \--***

Johnny Winger didn't want to fall back on the quantum collapse—no good atom-grabber ever did—but he was rapidly losing control of his own swarm.

"Detachment, report in...status of swarm engagement. Can you hold out or outflank these bots?"

Kip Detrick came back first. "Major, my ANAD's about shot. This bugger's all over me...I can't maneuver, can't rep fast enough—"

"Me too, Skipper." It was Sheila Reaves. "Effectors jammed...my core processor's maxed out just trying to run the replication. Master's shutting down...I'm about to be pulverized."

Then came Taj's voice, a little more strained than usual for the Punjabi DPS tech. "Major Winger, my swarm disintegrates right in front of me. Whatever these bots are, they're meaner and faster than my guys."

_That settles it,_ Winger thought. _We can't fight these bastards with what we've got._ It galled him to admit that, but the safety of the Detachment was always paramount. And that included the integrity of the ANAD master assembler.

The quantum wave generator would have to wait. "Secure the prisoner," he ordered. "Let's disengage and get the hell out of here before we're eaten alive. Retract swarms to personal defense mode. Anybody have a chance to corral one of these bots, grab it. Table Top's eggheads will want something to analyze." _And General Kraft would definitely want something to explain why we couldn't shutdown this facility,_ he muttered to himself.

The flickering fog began to subside as the two nanoscale armies separated. The remnants of the ANAD swarms were designed to commit atomic _seppuku_ before they could be overrun. Only the ANAD masters would be recovered.

One by one, the nanotroopers regained their master assemblers. The enemy bots pulled back too, perhaps sensing the engagement was over. That surprised Winger, who had figured Shavindra would continue the attack. Whoever or whatever was controlling the swarm had enough tactical smarts to save itself for another day.

Reaves lifted a coilgun and sighted it at the platform. "Skipper, I could blast that mother to kingdom come with one good shot. I've still got a few rounds left. Give the word, sir and I'll make that generator atom fluff."

"Disengage, soldier. Remember, Sheila...it's a quantum device. What you're blasting might only be one of many states the machine could be in. You could blast this one and a thousand more could collapse into being in other places. We've got to be smart about this." He remembered dueling with Red Hammer's Sphere at the Paryang monastery a few years before. It too was a quantum machine...you could never be sure of what you had hit.

"Fall back to the big room!" Winger ordered.

In ragged order, the Detachment pulled back to the Hall of a Thousand Pillars, regained their loose gear and exited the temple. Outside in bright, humid sunshine, Winger counted off the troops, while the crewtracs loaded up equipment and took the temple technician into custody.

"Turbo's still at the bridge," said Mighty Mite Barnes. "Spite too, with that BioShield squad."

Winger remembered. "Get them on tacnet. See what's shaking...maybe we can give them a hand." He was already composing his after-action report in his mind... _ANAD swarms engaged protective nanobotic disassemblers at the Shavindra temple complex outside Kolkata...got our asses kicked but good and were unable to fully penetrate far enough to disable the quantum generator at the center of the temple...Detachment suffered minor casualties but combat conditions around the temple made continuing the engagement risky...too many matter engines going off all over the city...fabs out of control...the whole place was chaos...._

Winger stopped, realizing Barnes had been talking to him. "Yeah, Mite...what is it?"

Barnes seemed to understand...the Detachment was exhausted. "Sorry, sir...you look like hell, begging the Major's pardon. I was saying Kano's bringing Turbo and Spite over in their crewtrac. BioShield's gotten on top of the problem at Howrath bridge. He says 'thanks' for the support. BioShield can mop up the rest of the loose fab bots in this district."

"Good," Winger said. "Thanks." Now at least he had something positive for the after-action report. General Kraft liked positive.

"We going back to Table Top, Skipper?" Barnes wiped sweaty black wisps of hair from her forehead. She safed her coilgun and slung it over her shoulder.

Winger was still mentally fighting the Shavindra bots with ANAD. "There _has_ to be a way to get past those bots. What am I forgetting?"

"Maybe it's in the processor," she suggested. "Those buggers were all effectors, fast as lightning. Maybe ANAD needs to be souped up to deal with these characters."

"Probably," Winger agreed. He watched the loadout of the crewtracs for a few moments, ticking off everything and everyone going aboard. He didn't want to leave any Quantum Corps stuff lying around for unscrupulous fab pirates to grab and make use of.

"Here comes Turbo and Spite," someone said.

From the ornate lion's head gates to the temple, a snorting crewtrac clanked and rumbled up toward them. Sergeants Adnan Fatah and Ray Spivey dismounted and came up, saluting Winger. They gave him a quick rundown of the BioShield operation. When they were done, Winger ordered the crewtracs buttoned up for the drive to Chandra Bose field.

"Move out!" he ordered from his commander's station inside the lead vehicle. And step on it. We've got to get back to Table Top and figure out why the hell we can't crack these barrier bots. That generator's an important node in something and we've got to shut it down soon."

He didn't have to add that if they failed, Red Hammer had one big space rock the size of a small city they'd just love to drop on the Earth.
CHAPTER 3

" _Give me a place to stand and with a lever, I will move the whole world_ "

Archimedes

SpaceGuard Center, Farside Observatory,

Korolev Crater, The Moon

September 10, 2080 (UT)

Nightfall at Korolev Crater came abruptly, _too abruptly_ , thought Adam Bright. He stared out the porthole of the SpaceGuard Center and watched the shadows drop like a black curtain across the face of the crater wall. Korolev was a massive place, fully four hundred kilometers in diameter, with stairstep rim walls and a small chain of mountains inside. Like a bull's eye on a target, the crater lay dead center in the rugged highlands of Farside, forever banished from the sight of Earth.

Adam Bright watched the black creep down the crater walls and ooze across the crater floor like a spreading stain. Somehow, it seemed depressing...another two weeks of night with only the stars for company. _Cosmic grandeur, my ass_ , he muttered to himself. _Give me a beach in the South Pacific and some native girls and I'll tell you a thing or two about cosmic grandeur_.

Bright was pulling late shift today...tonight...whatever the hell it was. Tending the radars and telescopes of Farside Array, a key node in the SpaceGuard System that scanned the heavens for anything approaching the Earth-Moon system, was a critical job, especially now that GreenMars had started moving rocks around and tossing them sunward.

_That ought to be a spectacle,_ Bright thought. He'd seen the sims often enough, the ones GreenMars had put out for public consumption, the ones that showed asteroid 2351, better known as Wilks-Lucayo, barreling down the sun's gravity well and smashing the bejeezus out of Mars. Impact was scheduled for less than a year from now and Bright and his fellow techs would have a ringside seat to a great show.

Bright took one last look out the nearest porthole and begrudged the final wisps of daylight before Farside was fully enveloped in the nightfall. At that same moment, he heard a beeping from his console and turned his attention back to the array controls.

_What the hell_...

Adam Bright looked over his boards, controlling the positioning of the great radars out on the crater floor and the optical and radio telescopes that accompanied them. He quickly pinpointed the source of the beeping...Nodes 20 through 24...the south lateral array...was picking up some anomaly.

He massaged the controls and tried to focus the array better, get better resolution on the target. SpaceGuard didn't beep without reason. Somewhere in its nearly infinite memory were ephemeris data and trajectory details for nearly every detectable piece of space junk in the solar system, out to several billion miles. Like an overprotective mother, SpaceGuard knew where everybody was supposed to be, right down to the nearest centimeter.

She only beeped and chirped when someone was out of position.

A quick perusal made the hairs on the back of Adam Bright's neck stand up. The system displayed a list of likely targets, based on radar imaging and known ephemerides. He scanned the list.

Right at the top was a well-known traveler: 2351.

Something had happened to Wilks-Lucayo. The half-mile wide asteroid had changed position, just enough to trigger a SpaceGuard alert.

Before he could decide what to do next, Bright was interrupted by the sound of a door opening...it was Max Lane, the shift supervisor.

Lane was a heavy-set bear of a man, who appreciated the Moon's one-sixth gravity more than most. He had thick eyebrows and a perpetual scowl.

"What gives? SpaceGuard's sending out an anomaly alert. What's on the board?" Lane sat down at a console next to Bright and began tapping at the keyboard.

Bright shrugged. "She's indicating Wilks-Lucayo, but that doesn't make any sense. We don't have any course corrections scheduled for the next ten days...unless GreenMars has pulled a quick one on us."

"Won't be the first time that's happened," Lane muttered. He pointed to a display in front of them. "Check out the delta-vee. That's almost half a kilometer a second."

Bright clucked. "No way their impulse motors could do that. What gives? Can you get a read on the new trajectory?"

Lane said, "I'm trying...but SpaceGuard's showing Doppler fluctuations...she's still thrusting...still changing velocity. Bright, check your east and west arrays. Let's zero in on the vicinity of the asteroid and see if something's around that might be tugging her off course. I'll send this to GreenMars too...they need to know something's horsing around with their baby."

For the next few minutes, the huge radar arrays probed deep space with beams of radio energy. At the moment, Wilks-Lucayo was several hours away by light signal. They wouldn't get any returns until nearly midnight, local time. In the mean time, Lane washed the raw trajectory feed from the first returns through the computers. "It'll give us an idea of what we're dealing with here."

The analysis, when it came back an hour later, made their blood run cold.

Max Lane shook his head. "This can't be right. It doesn't make any sense. Better set up another run through SpaceTrack and see if we gave it bad data before."

"I don't know, Chief...the numbers seem to match up." Bright brought up a projected plot on their main displays. It showed the nominal trajectory the asteroid was following, all the way to Hellas Basin on Mars next summer. A dotted line showed SpaceTrack's projected new path, after the velocity change had been factored in.

The path intersected Earth in late May, next year, right before Memorial Day in the U.S., Bright noted. He always took his family to the beach on Memorial Day.

"This thing's showing an Earth-intercept path and the doppler shows velocity is still changing. We'd better get GreenMars on the line right away.

The telecom spanned several hundred thousand miles in a three-way hookup: Farside Observatory patched in with GreenMars offices aboard Phoenix Station and UNIFORCE headquarters in Paris.

Kaoru Nakamura was the Earthside chief of GreenMars operations. He was emphatic on the screen, as he scrolled through Farside's data.

"Gentlemen, you're sure of these numbers? I mean, I know the data's good...but believe me, we've got no course corrections going on."

UNIFORCE was represented by a sleepy, rather morose Galen Bosch, the assistant Director-General.

Any evidence of mass-driver failure? Could one or more of the impulse motors be firing accidentally? Or maybe the asteroid was hit by something...any indications of that?"

Adam Bright was emphatic. "There's nothing in the data. Something is or has clearly tugged on Wilks enough to change its delta-v by about three-tenths of a kilometer per second."

"And the current trajectory, assuming no more changes...?"

Bright had checked and re-checked the analysis, washed the data through SpaceTrack half a dozen times. The result was always the same.

"Earth intercept, sometime in the last week of May...next year. We're still tracking," he hastened to add. "And we're still seeing some velocity change even now. But doppler indicates the rate of change is slowing."

Galen Bosch was grim. "Then Red Hammer has made good on their threat. They've managed to divert this thing from its intended orbit. Dr. Nakamura...how many impulse motors are installed on this asteroid?"

Nakamura's image went off screen while he ran down the number. Momentarily, he reappeared. "Sixty four in all. Mass driver type. They dig into the asteroid's surface, shape up chunks of soil and rock into little charges and fire them off into space. Specific impulse is small but the fuel supply is inexhaustible. Each motor has its own small reactor plant for power."

Bosch was working out an idea in his head. "Then you should be able to counteract this...force, or whatever it is, that's diverting and tugging on Wilks."

Nakamura nodded. "In theory, yes. In fact, I've already given this as an option to the Board of Governors. They're meeting right now at Mariner City. But the devil is in the details. Until we know the nature of the force—is it continuous or intermittent?—what's the magnitude of the force?--where is the source?...I'm not sure we can counteract. Obviously, something has to be done. But GreenMars has a lot of options and there's still a lot of time between now and next May."

"Any data to help out Dr. Nakamura?" Bosch asked. The A-DG would have to brief UNSAC soon and he wanted as many options as he could get his hands on.

Adam Bright had noticed additional effects beyond the course change of Wilks-Lucayo. "At the same time we got anomaly alerts from SpaceTrack on Wilks, the system started giving us a bunch of perturbations...everything going haywire in the outer Solar System. Beyond the orbit of Jupiter, it's like a big gravity wave just pushed everything aside—" he waved at Lane to pull up the ecliptic plots so the others could see. "—anomalies with almost every satellite, man-made or otherwise. At Saturn, Calypso, Helene and Epimetheus...at Uranus: Ophelia and Caliban. These are just the early ones, the biggest shifts. There are dozens of these. Even the bigger bodies...Oberon and the like, have shown measurable shifts in position and velocity. It's like something massive just passed through the Solar System. But we're tracking no unknown or unreported bodies."

Galen Bosch was studying something off screen. "Gentlemen, I'm willing to bet the source of all these disturbances is much closer to home. Quantum Corps has been running an op down in Kolkata...some kind of weird quantum disturbances there. I haven't seen the reports yet but I'm willing to bet there's a connection."

Nakamura was intrigued with the phenomena described by Bright. "There's a theory about what you're describing, Farside. I heard a talk on the idea over the Net last year...a conference on perturbation effects caused by extra-solar processes. As I recall, the authors of the paper described ways to effect large-scale perturbations by manipulating local cosmic string structure. Like tugging on the basic fabric of the Universe. All very theoretical...there's no evidence such a thing is even possible."

Bosch wasn't so sure. "Maybe there is, Doctor. At this point, I don't think we can exclude anything. I'll brief UNSAC right away. I expect there will be a full meeting of the Security Council after that. Whatever the cause of this shift in the asteroid's path, the effect is the same: Red Hammer is making good on their threat. Either we find a way to put Wilks-Lucayo back on the right path, or we run out of options pretty fast."

He didn't have to add that one of the cartel's demands was that Quantum Corps itself be shut down.
CHAPTER 4

U.N. Quantum Corps Base

Table Top Mountain, Idaho, USA

September 11, 2080

Johnny Winger sat with Colonel Jurgen Kraft in the underground briefing theater at the Ops Center and watched the video feed from Farside Observatory. Table Top was on a multi-site hookup involving Farside and Paris. Standing behind Winger in a loose formation were 1st Nano's company commanders: Captains Erika Swinks and Nico Simonet and something that resembled a faint sparkling cloud in the vague shape of a human being. Third Swarm ANAD drifted and floated freely in the space above their heads, shimmering and coruscating, while the humans discussed the nature of Red Hammer's latest threat.

UNSAC himself was on screen from Paris, having just completed a briefing with the Security Council. The Security Affairs Commissioner was one Jiang Hao Bei, glowering at a report on details of 1st Nano's after-action report from Kolkata.

"So I am to understand that the operation failed?" UNSAC said tersely. "The nature of the disturbances was not determined. And the source....this generator you speak of, was not put out of action?"

Kraft swallowed hard. CINCQUANT himself had flown in by hyperjet overnight from Paris to get a briefing from Alpha Detachment in person. General Wolfus Linx felt compelled to speak up.

"Sir, I've been through the reports and videos of all the action. The Detachment did provide material assistance to the local BioShield force, to help them in dealing with uncontrolled fab use in the region."

"But they did fail in their primary mission, did they not, General?" UNSAC's eyes were hard and unblinking, even over the screen.

"Sir, the Detachment encountered nanobotic mechanisms of an unknown configuration. I've already sent the details to your office—"

"Yes, yes...I've seen them. Shavindra, you're calling them. All effectors and propulsors...gentlemen, with Quantum Corps' budget and authority, it's hard to believe there could be _any_ 'bot on this world or anywhere else that hadn't been encountered or characterized. You did bring back specimens to analyze?"

Linx nodded. "Affirmative, sir. The mechs are in containment now and we're looking at them. We should have good analysis in a few hours. I've also authorized a team headed by Doctor Irwin Frost from Northgate University's Autonomous Systems Lab to come in too. We need their expertise."

UNSAC addressed Johnny Winger directly. "Major, you headed up this Detachment?"

"Yes, sir...I did."

UNSAC's face was impassive, like a stone Buddha displaying no emotion. "You wrote in your report of a great quantum disturbance emanating from the center of this temple. Elaborate, please..."

Winger glanced at Kraft and Linx, aware that all eyes were on him.

"Sir, when my Detachment was at the scene, we located some sort of generator inside the temple. This generator seems to be the center of these disturbances. When it went off...a great wave swept across the temple. It was similar in effect to the Sphere we encountered at the Paryang monastery ten years ago; maybe they're related devices. As these waves developed and passed by, it was like watching an invisible front move past. Everything the wave touched seemed to vanish or become blurry, kind of smeared out. In some cases, when the waves encountered a column or a wall, the structure broke down and it looked like a million mirrors there, all reflecting off each other." Winger glanced at Kraft. "The engineers tell me that's a focused decoherence wave. Everything it touches breaks down and becomes... like a fog of probability states...somehow, the structure loses coherence and reveals every state it could have, momentarily becoming everything and nothing solid at the same moment, if that makes sense. Sir," Winger admitted, "it's a strange thing to see. Even stranger to combat. In addition to fighting off the barrier nanobots that filled that chamber, we found it impossible to get any weapons fire on the generator itself. We could never be sure we hit it, or if we did hit it, we couldn't be sure what we had hit."

UNSAC mulled over what Winger had said. The Commissioner's eyes narrowed to slits. "How do we fight such a device, gentlemen? How do we neutralize it?"

It was 3rd Swarm ANAD who replied. The swarm had configured part of itself to form acoustic waves, resembling a husky, gravelly human voice.

***A _quantum device must be fought with quantum methods. Normal combat tactics will not succeed against such devices_ ***

UNSAC was a bit startled but recovered. Like everyone, he was still getting used to having 'conversations' with a fog of sentient nanobotic assemblers.

"Explain, please, ANAD."

The fog throbbed and undulated, twinkling like fireflies on a misty summer night.

*** _Acoustic and electromagnetic signals indicate that generator is a swarm object...even as this collective focuses acoustic waves to create sound you call voice...generator collective focuses quantum waves to create distant effects_ ***

Johnny Winger was supposed to be 3rd Swarm's battalion commander. He figured he'd better step in and be a commander. ANAD didn't always observe the niceties of the chain of command.

"ANAD, you're saying that generator wasn't a solid object? That it too was a swarm object?"

*** _Affirmative, Major...You could not detect or target the device because it has ability to manipulate probability states...device can be anywhere anytime all at the same time_ ***

"But we saw it...it had structure...we probed the generator in all bands...EM, thermal, acoustic—"

*** _Major, you saw a swarm of assemblers shaped by an algorithm...that which you call generator has no structure...it is a collective of agents...as are all ANAD_ ***

"If that's true," said General Linx, "then Red Hammer, or whoever's behind this device, has assembler technology we can only dream of. How could they have advanced so far...especially when we destroyed the Paryang monastery ten years ago? How could they have the expertise to do this sort of thing?"

Kraft said, "Maybe we're not dealing with Red Hammer anymore."

UNSAC was intrigued. "Go on, Colonel. Explain."

Kraft warmed to the idea. "We all saw Galen Bosch's report, including that theory mentioned by Dr. Nakamura at GreenMars. The one about quantum perturbations affecting the underlying string structure of the Solar System. Suppose that's what this device at Kolkata is...some kind of means of dragging the fabric of spacetime and causing objects to change course. That could explain what's happening with Wilks-Lucayo."

UNSAC was skeptical. "Bosch briefed me on this idea last night. There's no real evidence...it's just a theory. Even it was true, General Linx is right. How could Red Hammer have the ability to do something like this? It doesn't square with what Intelligence tells me of their capabilities."

"Excuse me, sir," Winger spoke up, earning a glare from Kraft. _Majors just did not interrupt UNSAC unless they were directly questioned._ The atomgrabber explained something he had encountered in the Amazon Vector case years ago.

"Red Hammer had programmed some of their swarms to assume human...or at least, para-human form. We first ran into these buggers in Valencia. We called them demonios...they looked like misshapen or half-grown skeletons...just swarms of bots trying to look like us, but not quite succeeding...like their programming or config control was a little off—"

Behind Winger, 3rd Swarm ANAD brightened noticeably and stirred as if a slight breeze had briefly scattered the bots.

"We always wondered what these creatures were doing...why had Red Hammer bothered to experiment with such configs. Was it some kind of experiment...of course, now, with ANAD and the Containment Laws, we see these kind of configs all the time...it's not so unusual to see swarms drifting down the street and wandering around town. But back then, it was creepy."

UNSAC was a busy man. "Your point is...what, exactly, major?"

"Sorry, sir...that was just background. I discussed these buggers...er, swarms, with Doc Frost at Northgate. He had dug into their processor architecture and found algorithms he'd never seen before. After awhile, we both began to wonder if Red Hammer wasn't getting some help with their programming."

"Help...what kind of help?"

"Maybe from some place off-Earth...someplace not even human."

UNSAC's normally narrow eyes opened at that revelation. "Extraterrestrial help, you're saying, Major? Aliens?"

Winger nodded faintly. "Yes, sir...it was one of several theories he had. Honestly, Doc Frost was skeptical but I always thought there might be something to it." He didn't explain some of the dreams or images he had encountered when engaging Amazon Vector.

General Linx was tightlipped. "I suppose we shouldn't discount anything, Commissioner. I find this...theory...unconvincing, to say the least, in the absence of any additional evidence. But were it true, it could help explain how Red Hammer can do something like move asteroids around with no visible means."

"Or how they developed the quantum coupler in the first place," UNSAC said. "Assistance from another intelligence...another race..." The Commissioner tried on the idea and had to admit it couldn't be safely discounted. "This would magnify the threat quite a bit. And what does our friend ANAD think of this—"

The swarm always brightened perceptibly when addressed with a question. Johnny Winger had seen that effect develop over recent months...he figured ANAD did it as a courtesy to his human colleagues.

*** _ANAD did not recognize detected configurations at the temple...ANAD performed search routine on all known algorithms in Quantum Corps database...no referent located...incompatible logic specification...could not match logic execution with any known pattern_ ***

"I guess he's saying he doesn't have a clue," General Linx interpreted.

UNSAC was growing impatient. "Recommendations, gentlemen? We have a Level 1 threat to the planet...an asteroid is coming our way and we don't seem to be in control of it. We have demands on the table from Red Hammer...a helluva lot of money and a demand to shut down Quantum Corps."

Linx eyed Winger and responded. "We'd better characterize those protective bots at Kolkata and find a way to penetrate that temple and put that generator out of action, sir. If this Nakamura's theory is even partly correct, the source of the perturbations may well be Shavindra temple. Put it out of action and clean up all the loose fabs in that part of the world. We do that and maybe we damage or eliminate Red Hammer's ability to maneuver Wilks-Lucayo. Then their threats become hollow."

"Perhaps GreenMars can still regain control," UNSAC said. "I'm being briefed later today by the Board of Governors on recovery efforts...the Secretary-General wants a full accounting by 1800 hours this evening...details and options."

"Quantum Corps will get to work on penetrating that temple, sir," Linx added. "We've got a few tactical tricks of our own."

"Send me a plan by 1200 hours today, General." UNSAC started to sign off, then had a separate thought. "Oh...and General, append to your plan a report on what would be involved in shutting down all Quantum Corps facilities."

Linx was incredulous. "Begging your pardon, sir...surely, we can't seriously entertain—"

UNSAC cut him off. "I entertain every option, General. If we can't stop what Red Hammer is doing, or whoever is behind this scheme, we may have no choice but to comply with their demands. It's an option and the Secretary-General wants options. I intend to give him as many as possible."

Linx could hardly hide a scowl. His Teutonic temper was beginning to boil, but he knew he was dealing with a superior here. _Options_...he turned the word over in his mind, finding the taste coppery and bitter.

"Very well, sir. You'll have my report by 1200 hours."

UNSAC signed off.

Linx and Kraft and the rest then glared at the United Nations logo that filled the screen...a map of the world with olive branches cradling the globe. In less than a year, if they didn't find a way to stop Red Hammer, that same globe would be enveloped in fire and chaos beyond imagining.

GreenMars Operations Center,

Mariner City, Mars

September 12, 2080 (U.T.)

Greg Nygren manipulated the solar system simulator to show the effects of the quantum disturbance once again. The Board of Governors was in session but only three had shown up at the briefing. Nygren wanted to show them visually what was happening with 2351 Wilks-Lucayo.

As the GreenMars executives watched the 3-D display, all the planets and major bodies swept along in their trajectories. Even as a kid, Nygren had enjoyed running sims on the same software, making planets and moons, even stars and whole galaxies dance to his whims. Playing God with galaxies was always an attractive antidote to those long nights when his parents had nearly killed each other arguing and screaming.

Now, someone else was playing God.

"The best explanation," Nygren told them, "is that somehow a diverting force is being generated that can manipulate the underlying cosmic string structure of the solar system...forcing Wilks-Lucayo onto this new course."

Li Thanh was First Governor of the GreenMars Board. The Vietnamese engineer was skeptical. "I thought strings were unproven as a theory."

Nygren let the latest sim run its course. The projection of Wilks-Lucayo followed a curving trajectory through the systems of Saturn and Jupiter, seemingly oblivious to the massive gravity wells of the two planets. As the sim ended, the asteroid dropped steadily sunward, right into the path of Earth.

"Ever since the vacuum potential experiments at Farside back in the '40s, strings have been the best explanation for how gravity interacts with matter and the other fundamental forces. Farside's experiments didn't directly detect strings—"

"—just their shadows," said Ali Hamid, another Governor in attendance. "I read the papers too. Saw the experiments in video. Nobody has a better explanation but I still don't understand why we think the string matrix of the solar system is being manipulated. Farside showed that natural perturbations sometimes occur, sort of like quantum-scale earthquakes. Things just go haywire every so often."

"It's the fact that Farside was able to show the latest disturbances have two sources: one in the Kolkata region of Earth and one right here on Mars. Plus the disturbances continue. It's not an isolated event, like you'd expect from a natural process. Every time we try to correct Wilks-Lucayo's trajectory, the disturbances begin again...Farside can 'see' decoherence waves as probability states are generated and then collapse."

"Theory's nice, Nygren, but what are we doing about this? What _can_ we do about it?" Victor Enfield was the third Governor at the briefing. He was a gruff Brit with a sandy moustache and beard that bristled when he was agitated.

"Where on Mars does Farside see this disturbance coming from?" asked Thanh.

"About twelve kilometers northwest of us. The Candor canyonlands. I want to request help from Public Security, maybe even Frontier Corps. Organize an expedition and see what's out there. So far, satellite imagery doesn't show much."

Thanh considered that. "Involving Frontier Corps means dealing with UNISPACE. Not a good idea politically. The rest of the Board won't like that. Wolves in the sheep pen and all that. I'd rather handle this locally."

"What counteractions have been tried?" asked Hamid. Hamid was an Egyptian immigrant, part of the Cairene contingent that had come to Mars twenty years before and built settlements around an underground aquifer up in Acidalia Planitia. _Little Nile_ was a stern and devout Muslim community that prided itself on being self-contained, as much as anyone on Mars could be self-contained. They had even disdained the respirocyte treatment as an insult to God, preferring to travel about outside their settlements in antique spacesuits, like dinosaurs, many thought.

Nygren detailed the Ops Center's efforts so far. "We can push Wilks-Lucayo back toward her original course with impulse motors. But each time we do that, the perturbing force comes back. We've tried longer and longer thrust periods but we're chewing up the asteroid's surface fast by all this thrusting and the center of mass is being shifted, which means even more thrusting to correct that."

"Your report mentioned a gravity tractor ship in the vicinity," said Enfield. "Why not use that as well?"

"We'll soon have to try it," Nygren admitted. He decided not to bother the Governors with all the controversy surrounding that. "The main trouble with gravity tractor is that it's not very precise. This far from the final target, precision isn't so critical. Inside Jupiter orbit, it is. But gravity tractor is a viable option. We're maneuvering the ship to an intercept trajectory right now. But it'll take time. There's also the kinetic impact method. And explosives. All of them will take time to play out. Wilks is over ten a.u. away at the moment, over a billion and a half kilometers."

"How much time?"

Nygren had done the analysis himself. "We normally keep two ships orbiting the sun at about 10 a.u. That's roughly the distance to Saturn. But Wilks is in a much different orbit...out of plane, different period. It'll take the better part of a year to intercept the asteroid. By then, Wilks will be inside the orbit of Mars and picking up speed fast."

Li Thanh was scribbling something on his thoughtpad. "We've got to act before that. Gentlemen, I recommend we request help from Public Security...try to find that quantum source out in the canyonlands and put it out of action. If that doesn't work, I'll have to go to the MarsFed Council. If you can't regain control of the asteroid soon, I'll have to get authorization to destroy it...if we can."

Nygren left the meeting and went back to the Operations Center. The building was a non-descript tan brick structure on Labyrinth Drive, top ward, first level. The Great Rotunda was only a few blocks east; night had already come to Candor Chasma and the shadows were creeping westward along the sidewalks.

Nygren went to Operations Control and told Giddings, the shift supervisor, what the Board had decided. Giddings was hovering over a console with several other technicians.

"Better get over to Public Security, Greg. I'll send a message ahead. There's a detective there...name's Borodin, I think. We've got a good relationship with his office. He can get the permits and outfitting to go outside pretty quick."

Nygren watched as a tech named Jaworski typed commands on a keypad and selected icons from a screen.

"Any luck with the impulse motors?"

Giddings shrugged. "Jaws is working the high-latitude arrays right now. We have more surface material there to work with. The equatorial motors have been used so much, the diggers have excavated pits more than two hundred meters below the surface. We're running out of accessible material."

Nygren looked on as Jaworski set up the command string for transmission. The commands would be sent off at all at once to the system controller, which was actually little more than a box of electronics half buried in a small crater on Wilks-Lucayo's surface. The controller, known to the techs as SID for reasons that made no sense to Nygren, would operate the fuel loading robots. Rock and soil would be trenched out of a small ravine, conveyed to a compactor, shaped, sifted and charged electrically, then fed into an electromagnetic slingshot known as a mass driver. Flung away from the asteroid at a velocity of five kilometers per second, the charge would impart a tiny, but measurable impulse to Wilks-Lucayo, bit by bit nudging the half-mile wide asteroid onto a new course.

That was the theory.

"Transmitting now—" Jaworski stabbed a button. Then he sank back in his chair to wait. "May as well go get a beer, boys. This'll take about twelve hours."

The command string sped away from Mariner City's antenna array at lightspeed. Some twelve hours later, SID received the instructions and commenced operations for a new impulse sequence. Inside of an hour, the north and south polar latitudinal arrays began firing chunks of rock, which jetted away from the asteroid's surface in a stream of pellets. The delta-v experienced by the asteroid was infinitesimal but if allowed to continue over time, a significant shift in the velocity vector could be anticipated.

At the same time as SID fired its polar latitudinal arrays, a massive pulse of decoherence waves erupted and spread out across the inner Solar System like ripples spreading across a pond. The disturbance came from two sources, one on Earth, one on Mars.

Asteroid 2351 Wilks-Lucayo soon became a small feather caught in a hurricane. The tiny velocity shift caused by the mass driver motors was quickly nulled out and the forty-thousand ton object tugged back onto her original Earth-bound trajectory. Like a sailing ship riding the winds, Wilks-Lucayo offered no resistance to the gravitational 'tacking' that had just occurred.

Invisible fingers pulled the asteroid inexorably Earthward, following the steepening gravity well of the Sun. Every mass in the Solar System shuddered and changed course, as the disturbance spread rapidly outward, heading off into interstellar space.

The gravitational landscape of the entire Solar System had been shifted, just so that Wilks-Lucayo could be maintained on its current heading.

Tracking would confirm this shift in less than a day. And with this confirmation would come a grim determination inside the GreenMars Ops Center to find the source of this disturbance and put it out of action for good.

Mariner City,

Candor Chasma, Mars

September 12, 2080 U.T.

_Life in the Frontier Corps was always one adventure after another,_ thought Duncan Price. _No two days were ever the same._ First, you investigate the mysterious death of six scientists on a routine expedition into the Hellas Basin. You suspect the survivor, one Chinese meteorologist Dr. Dao Wen-Hsien, had something to do with it.

Then, on a separate expedition into the Candor canyonlands a few kilometers northwest of the city, your primary suspect up and disappears. _Completely disappears._ No body, no clothing, no nothing. The man just vanishes, whisked out of existence.

Price drummed his fingers on the case folder, scrolled through reports on his screen. Somehow, out of all this mess, he'd have to fashion a report of his own. One thing that UNISPACE loved was reports, lots of reports. But how could he begin to explain this one?

Price had checked with MarsNet, gotten surveillance imagery from every satellite he could, authorized drones to scour the area from lower altitudes.

The only thing that had ever shown up was an isolated cluster of nanobotic debris, in a shallow valley off the main drive out to Landfall, the site of the first landing. The drones had probed and sniffed but found little of interest. Most likely, some egghead had accidentally dropped a containment vessel and the little buggers had gotten out and gotten fried in Mars' harsh, high UV environment. Careless, yes. Unethical, to be sure. Illegal...possibly. He decided to check Public Security's latest manifest of recent expeditions. Maybe somebody had reported losing a bunch of bots.

Price's eyes fell to an appointment reminder that had just chimed and popped up on his pod screen. _And now this..._ someone he didn't know from GreenMars wanted Frontier Corps help in organizing yet another trip outside...some kind of disturbance up in the same canyonlands.

Duncan Price rubbed his eyes. _Coincidence?_ He didn't put much stock in any of that, but in order to close out the case, he figured he'd better accommodate the request. So he called up the Expeditions desk at Public Security. The local cops owed him a favor anyway.

DPS and UNISPACE had never gotten along very well, from the first days on Mars. Maybe it was the fact that Public Security was local and UNISPACE was UN and there was nothing UNISPACE loved more than throwing its weight around on cases.

Price managed to reach Nick Rentoria at the Department's Expeditions desk. EXP issued permits and generally regulated all authorized trips outside of habitable spaces on Mars.

"Inspector Price...it's a privilege and an honor," Rentoria lied. "What can we do for our fellow law enforcement professionals today?"

_How about falling on a sword, for starters,_ Price thought but didn't say. At the least, you had to have correct relations with PubSec. UNISPACE didn't work in a vacuum... _although sometimes, we really do work in a vacuum,_ Price figured wryly.

"Nick, I'm trying to find out why our sniffer drones spotted a bunch of nanobot debris outside the city a few days ago. Anybody from a recent trip lose any containment vessels?"

Rentoria smirked back at the Frontier Corps inspector over the vid. "This wouldn't have anything to do with that missing Chinese weather guy, would it?"

"Sorry, Nick...you know how it is. UNISPACE case and all that. You know I can't go into any details."

Rentoria nodded sagely. "I thought so. We're about ten steps ahead of you, Price, as usual. Already checked out the expedition logs...even interrogated the expedition boss, guy named Ziegler. Claims he didn't see anything. So far, the man checks out clean."

Price wanted to reach through the screen and place his hands firmly around Rentoria's neck. PubSec loved to show up UNISPACE on cases that overlapped jurisdictions.

"So what's this atom fluff my sniffers keep seeing around the same area? The eggheads lose something?"

Rentoria shrugged. "Hey, it's your case. Go out there and see for yourself. I'll even write you up a permit," he snorted. Public Security had the authority to issue permits for trips outside hab spaces planet-wide. "Hell, it's probably a trash bin somebody dumped out the back of a marscat. Violating every environmental ordinance on the books too."

"It's not trash," Price was certain of that. A pity UNISPACE had to work with such troglodytes. "It's definitely nano. And it needs to be investigated. This Dao fellow just up and vanished, according to your buddy Ziegler's report. I see from the reports that PubSec whitewashed the follow-up as usual. What's the matter, Nick, you afraid some big Martian mole man will jump out and get you?"

The two law enforcement officers continued sniping at each other but the end result was that Public Security would loan UNISPACE a 'cat to take a trip up into the Tectonic Hills and see what this atom fluff was all about.

_Probably nothing,_ Price figured. But before he closed the book on the Dao case, he needed to run down this latest bit of evidence. And there _was_ that GreenMars engineer---what was his name? Nygren something---who wanted a Frontier Corps cop to accompany him on some kind of investigation in the same area.

Price emailed Nygren at the GreenMars Operations center:

Meet me at Southlocks, top ward, at 0800 hours two days from now with all your gear. I'll get the marscat. We can accommodate four in all. EXP Permit # 080-051. Don't be late...

Price tapped SEND and then sat back to think. Nygren had mentioned a disturbance in the badlands north of Ares Park...the Landfall region where humans had first set down on the Red Planet fifty-two years before.

What the hell did all _that_ mean? And what interest did an engineer from GreenMars have in things stirring about up in the Candor canyonlands? Weren't they more concerned with smashing asteroids into things? Or seeding Mars' dry soil to make this crimson hellhole more livable?

Then there was that scuttlebutt he had heard at the canteen about a problem with the asteroid...it was drifting off course, or something to that effect.

All very curious, this business of the missing Chinese meteorologist.

Perhaps, he'd spend the next few hours perusing the Net, see what more he could find out about this fellow Dao.

Price found Nygren easily enough two days later. The Green Mars engineer was tall, thin, red-haired with a faint beard. He had brought along two other engineers: Gellar and Hamil, both young serious types.

Price was supervising the provisioning of the marscat by packbots. "You three treated?" he asked. Treated meant they had gone through the respirocyte treatment. When you had the treatment, your blood was full of nanobotic blood cells, able to boost oxygen delivery hundreds of times over the body's natural way of doing it. Respirocyte-treated people could venture outside with only a small emergency oxygen pack and a basic pressure suit.

"I am," Nygren admitted. "These two...no, not yet."

Price checked off supplies against a list. "Me too. That'll give us some more room in the cat. By the way, what exactly is your interest in this spot up in the canyonlands?"

Nygren gave up some small crates for loading to the packbots, which whirred off happily to continue outfitting the vehicle. He explained how some kind of massive gravitational disturbance had altered the trajectory of 2351 Wilks-Lucayo.

"We don't know what causes it, though there are theories about cosmic strings and so forth. But we can detect the decoherence waves that come from collapsing probability states. So it's some kind of quantum state generator. One of the sources is here...or rather, out there, " Nygren indicated. "Tracking data from Farside has localized two sources actually: one on Earth and this one. Green Mars needs to locate the Mars source right away and shut it down. It's keeping us from getting the asteroid back on course. There's less than a year to go, you know...before the Big Smack."

"Then we'd best get started," Price decided. The inspector was a qualified marscat driver and took the left hand seat up on the command deck.

Several hours after sunup, the cat whirred and trundled through Southlocks and out onto the dusty road that led off into the Tectonic Hills to the northwest.

The transway to the north landing zone was a two-lane hard-packed dirt road, well traveled by trucks, trams and cats as it was the main artery from the north pads to the City. Price sped up to nearly thirty klicks and turned past the landing zone, surrounded by wire fencing, then headed out into the open countryside.

The terrain was all ruddy desert, rolling hills with craters bordering both sides of the road, between the bulldozed humps and berms from road construction. A steady rise in elevation indicated they were climbing onto the lower slopes of the Tectonic Hills. Past the hills, the hummocky fall of ejecta from massive Orion Crater lay like splayed fingers on gently undulating upland, tending higher and higher in altitude as the cat climbed west by northwest.

"Coordinates coming up ahead," Price announced presently. Right after a hurried lunch of sandwiches and tea, he slowed the cat and the wheel motors whirred as they spun down. The vehicle had ridden to nearly the top of a long curving mesa and was now approaching the abrupt end of a promontory overlooking a vast desert hardpan that stretched to the horizon. In the distance, the shadowy forms of Pavonis and Ascraeus Mons poked above the horizon, backlit by a rising sun, blood red in the suspended dust stirred by local wind devils.

"Looks like two big eyes peeking over the limb of the planet," Nygren muttered. _Creepy at twilight_ , he recalled from earlier trips, but then next year, after the Big Smack, it would all change anyway and Mars would be on her way to something better. As Price parked the marscat, Nygren fiddled with a small, palm-sized instrument in his lap. Seeing the inspector's curiosity, he explained.

"This gizmo detects decoherence waves from quantum state disturbances. I'm trying to get a read on the source, kind of calibrate it. From the gridsats, I know our position. It's just a matter of tuning in where the waves read strongest."

Price was already out of his seat. "Let's get suited up. The coordinates you gave me are about half a klick from here, further out on the mesa." He peered through a porthole. "Ground drops away over there...maybe a gully or a crater. Looks like we've got some climbing to do."

Half an hour later, the four of them exited the marscat. Price and Nygren were clad only in light blue skinsuits and breathing packs. Hamil and Gellar, having not been treated, were in full pressure suits. _Dinosaurs_ , thought Price, as Nygren waved his gizmo about, trying to orient them for the hike.

They marched up the rubbly slope of a nearby hill and across a narrow ledge to a shallow ravine, then slipped and slid their way down to the ravine floor. They found themselves in a sort of natural amphitheater.

It was Gellar who first saw it.

"What the hell is that?" he muttered.

Planted at the far end of the ravine, the platform with the pyramidal tower seemed innocent enough. It bore a vague resemblance to dozens of weather stations all over the planet. But the tower on top was rotating slowly, in the middle of four spheres studded with small projections.

Price took some pictures with a camera and felt the hairs on the back of his neck bristle. He tapped on his wristpad, checking out the latest photos he'd taken and then shifted the displays on his eyepiece viewer. "Hey, I just called up a log from Public Security. The most recent expeditions in this sector. Looks like this baby's supposed to be a met station."

Cautiously, the four of them made their way through a small boulder field to within twenty meters of the platform.

"Barrier nano," Nygren observed. "See how it blurs every so often?"

The platform was enveloped in what Price had originally thought was dust. On closer inspection, he could just make out the flickering bursts of light, like fireflies on a hot summer night. Only these were no fireflies. A thick swarm of nanobotic assemblers swarmed about the platform in a faint keening buzz.

"This must be the place," Hamil said uneasily. "What's your detector show, Greg?"

Nygren withdrew the deco wave detector and fingered a control stud on the side. He circumnavigated the platform, about the size of a large bed, carefully keeping his distance.

"No pulses at the moment, but gridsats say this is the place. Inspector...if I'm right, this device is no weather station. It's some kind of quantum state generator. And it's powerful enough the move an asteroid off course from a distance of two billion kilometers."

Price approached the platform warily, aware that he could trigger a swarm assault without warning. He didn't want to find out what might happen if barrier nano started chewing on his respirocytes. Unknown to the others, he'd taken the liberty of bringing along a few weapons, among them an rf gun, handheld, to spray radio frequency waves into any swarm he had to. HERF guns were a well tested means to beating off attacking nanobots. It was cheap insurance, nothing more than a hunch, really. But he'd long ago learned to pay attention to hunches.

Even in the thin atmosphere, they could all hear the swarm buzzing louder as Price got closer, no doubt detecting his thermal signature, or maybe pressure wave differences, measurable even in the thin air. He stuck out a gloved hand, pressing tentatively into the edge of the barrier.

"I'd be careful about that, Inspector," said Nygren from a few dozen meters away. "We don't know what might trigger this thing to go off."

"They're just barrier bots," Price said, more bravely than he felt. "Dumb assemblers screening out unwanted visitors."

"Yeah, like us—" muttered Gellar.

Price let his fingers penetrate the flickering fog surrounding the platform.

Instantly, the whine increased to a shriek. Price felt pressure pushing back against his fingers. Before he could react, his forearm was enveloped in a glowing film of nanobots. He pulled it back...and the bots were on him.

" _Arrrrrgggggghhhhh!!"_ Price staggered backward, stumbling to the ground. The skinsuit was a simple pressure enclosure. If it were penetrated, Price's blood would boil in less than a minute...if the bots didn't strip his respirocytes into atom fluff first...

Nygren, Hamil and Gellar recovered from the shock of the assault and started toward the inspector but they were helpless to assist.

"My...gun!" Price yelled. "Get...my...gun!" He started rolling, writhing in the dust, as the swarm fully streamed off the platform and fully enveloped him. Immersed in a blanket of smothering disassemblers, Price thrashed about wildly, rolling over and over across the dirt. He knew it would be only seconds before his skinsuit was breached. Already, he could imagine trillions of shearing effectors slicing away at the laminate.

Price had tucked his rf gun in a belt loop but it was now underneath him as he flailed and rolled, trying to fight off the swarm.

Nygren approached cautiously, not wanting to trigger a secondary swarm. "Roll over more, Inspector...I can't reach it! Can you pull it out...toss it this way?"

Somehow, Duncan Price managed to unholster the gun and fumble it outside the swarm perimeter. With a foot, he kicked it further way. Nygren grabbed it and charged it up.

"FIRE IT!" Price screamed. "They're all over...starting to get in--!"

A hot thunderclap of rf waves boomed across the ravine, shattering rock overhangs on the ravine wall. A small dirt slide followed, billowing red dust in a choking cloud.

Price felt the pressure of the swarm momentarily lessen. Uncountable trillions of the bots had been shattered by the radio pulse. But the rest clung fast and set back to work disassembling his skinsuit.

"More pulses—hit 'em again!' he cried out. He was only seconds away from a full breach. Already he could picture a blizzard of tiny saws tearing into his skin. He shuddered at the thought. Bots with the right effectors and a bad news algorithm could reduce a man to loose molecules in less than ten minutes.

The only question was: would he die from the swarm or the sudden pressure drop first?

Nygren slammed him with several more booming pulses. For a few seconds, Price was sure his suit had been penetrated. He thought he heard a faint whistle of air escaping but it was only his own lips. He realized he'd been holding his breath.

Gellar and Hamil helped the detective to his feet. His skinsuit was tattered and torn; it resembled an abstract art painting with mottled discoloration and hundreds of slices where the bots had chewed into the fabric. But at least the suit had held pressure...barely.

Price watched the swarm reorganize itself into a new defensive barrier. They had no real way to shut down the swarm or draw it off. The little rf 'pop' gun Nygren had used was good for a few discharges at best. Swarms like this could rebuild themselves pretty fast, as this one was already doing right before their eyes.

"We need something stronger," he said. Possibly Public Security had a counter-swarm system; he'd always heard that the best way to beat a nanobotic swarm was with another swarm. But such things were tightly controlled on Mars. It wouldn't do to have rogue swarms of bots roaming the countryside. Martians were too vulnerable to allow that.

"Inspector—" it was Nygren, working his way cautiously around the platform, keeping well clear of the defensive screen. "...I'm getting something here—" He tuned his deco wave detector, fiddling with a few dials, and held it over his head, sniffing spacetime for a quantum disturbance. "Just trickles now but something, or someone, was jiggling spacetime pretty aggressively a few moments ago."

Before Price could collect himself and come over to see, the first great quantum pulse suddenly erupted.

The only visible evidence of the pulse was a slight flicker in the ambient light filling the ravine, as if someone had turned off the Sun and turned it back on again.

Instinctively, all four men scanned the skies for an object approaching. The flicker had seemed like a shadow passing over the ravine.

But there was nothing overhead.

Then, without warning, the entire ravine, the entire mesa seemed to shudder with a silent vibration, an eerie tremble rumbling through the ground, like a marsquake, though it had been eons since Mars had seen seismic activity. Something more felt than heard. Small geysers of tan and ocher dust _poof'ed_ into the air, as the vibration passed.

It was Hamil who witnessed the strangest effects of all.

"Look!" he cried out, pointing at the top of the ridge surrounding the ravine. "Look at the hill!"

The ridge line overlooking the ravine seemed to blink, as if a great light had been turned off, then on again. At the same moment, the ridge seemed to waver and shift, as if sliced by an invisible knife. For a few seconds, the entire side of the mountain was distorted, smeared out, like a reflection in a funhouse mirror.

Then the low grade shudder they had all felt in the ground stopped, as suddenly as it had started. The smeared distortion vanished. The hill and ridge 'snapped' back to normal.

"What the hell was that?" muttered Gellar. He looked down at his boots. Red dust covered them nearly to his ankles.

Nygren was staring bug-eyed at his instrument. "Jeez, this thing's off the scale! We got walloped! Massive quantum disturbance...I've got decoherence aftershocks all over the place! Something just whacked local spacetime like a bell and it's still ringing!"

Price was dusting himself off. Below them, the platform was a blur, throbbing in and out of view, enveloped in swirling dust. The Frontier Corps inspector decided there was little more they could do here.

"Let's head back to the cat, gents. We're going to need reinforcements to deal with this bastard. I've got nothing to take down that barrier. And I don't want to be around if that thing goes off again."

Nygren tried to put through a call to the Green Mars Ops center. "I want to see if this pulse somehow affected Wilks-Lucayo." Again and again, he tried to link with the Ops center dispatcher, but nothing was getting through. "What the...?"

Gellar and Hamil were the first to climb back up the ridge, reaching the top to scout an easy route back to their ride,

"Hey--!" Gellar's voice was sharp. "What happened to the marscat?"

The rest of the party climbed up to the ridge top.

Price had parked the cat at the end of a low promontory surrounded on three sides by small hills. As he finished climbing, he looked down on the rise where he had left the cat.

"What the--?" The four-wheeled vehicle looked like it had been dropped from a great height. The roof was caved in and the cat's suspension and wheels had collapsed. Doors, antenna and stowage racks lay strewn about the ground. The frame of the vehicle was twisted like a rag, distorting everything else.

"Did some dust devil toss it around?" Gellar wondered.

"That's not caused by any wind," Nygren realized. "Gentlemen, what you're looking at is something that had long been theorized about but never observed at the macro scale: quantum displacement."

Price could see, even from several hundred meters distance, that the cat was junk. "We'd better get an emergency message out...contact Dispatch and get a rescue squad out here. You two—" he indicated Gellar and Hamil—" have O2 limits."

"Quantum displacement?" Hamil asked.

Nygren was already fumbling with a camera, to get pictures of the sight. "When a massive enough disturbance is generated, everything in the path of the pulse is displaced momentarily, sort of decomposed into probability states and stirred up like a drink at the City Bar. When the quantum pulse passes, these probability states collapse. All but one go away. The one that remains collapses back to its original form. That's what's supposed to happen."

"Something went wrong?"

Nygren shrugged, a gesture not really visible in his skinsuit. "Hard to say. Theory says the probability state selected for collapse should ultimately yield the original structure. The decoherence wave disturbs the original state but after it passes, the state returns and should be unchanged from before. However, there is a separate part of the theory –it's called displacement theory—that says perturbations can occur, interference can occur—and things might not return to normal. Probability states can get mixed up when they collapse. The quantum world has little eddies and currents that can cause this to happen."

"So the marscat's like Humpty Dumpty...all the King's men couldn't put it back together again?"

"Something like that."

Price was already scrambling down the rubbly slope to see the spectacle for himself. What had been the marscat was now a misshapen pile of junk. He reconnoitered the debris, trying to imagine what kind of power it had taken to disassemble a two-ton tracked vehicle and drop it like a broken toy flung away by a bored child.

This was no nanobotic swarm, like they had encountered at the platform. There were recognized defenses, established procedures, for dealing with uncontrolled assemblers.

But this--? How could you fight quantum effects? How could you fight an enemy who could manipulate the very fabric of spacetime itself?

Price realized the investigation into Dao's death or disappearance had taken an ominous new turn. This was no longer just a local case, with Mars Public Security and his little Frontier Corps office arguing over turf.

"I'd better get a rescue squad moving," he decided. He dialed up the emergency dispatch center on his wristpad. The operator was a woman, a voice he hadn't heard before.

"Level One emergency," he told the dispatcher. "EXP permit 080-151 out of Mariner City Southlocks. We are a research expedition in the lower Tectonic Hills—" he rattled off the gridsat coordinates—" requesting vehicle assistance. Our marscat is—" he studied what was left of the cat, now enveloped in late afternoon dust and shadows as the sun had dropped below the ridge. "—our marscat is _disabled._ Two of our party are non-treated. O2 limits will be reached in about three hours...requesting immediate assistance—"

He knew the lifters and rescue cats would be mustered and on their way in less than ten minutes. They were only about twelve klicks from Southlocks as it was. In a pinch, they could have probably hiked back on foot.

It galled Duncan Price to have to phone in an emergency to PubSec. UNISPACE agents were supposed to be able to take care of themselves. But he had civilians with him and you couldn't be cavalier about that.

The real question was _what now?_ Given the evident power of that thing on the platform, the Frontier Corps inspector had no trouble believing Dao had somehow been—what had Nygren called it?— _displaced,_ or worse. The Chinese meteorologist, or whatever he was, could well be atom fluff now, or lost in some weird dimension of spacetime, if Nygren could be believed.

Trouble was, he couldn't close the case on Dao without some kind of proof. Price shook his head, plodded back over to where the others were standing at the base of the hill.

None of this made any sense.

The rescue force consisted of two marscats, specially equipped to assist stranded expeditions. For long distance rescue, PubSec maintained a small fleet of lifters and hoppers, able to traverse the whole planet in a few hours.

Price took some heat as he helped load their gear onto one of the cats.

"What gives, Detective?" It was Gilchrist, the hard-ass from Texas who was Rescue One team leader. "You drive your cat off a cliff or something?"

Price knew he had it coming. "She just needs a little tune-up, Gil. This is what I get when PubSec mechanics work on her."

The ribbing went on for a few minutes, until all the expedition gear had been transferred.

Gilchrist and Price did a quick walkaround of the displaced marscat, looking for anything they might have missed.

"Seriously...what the hell happened? She looks like you rolled her down the side of a mountain."

Price shrugged. "I'm not sure I understand it myself. Nygren—the Green Mars fellow over there with the blond beard—has some kind of theory. There's a machine over that ridge—we marked it with beacons—that somehow generates quantum states. Twists spacetime. Green Mars says it's even affecting their asteroid...pulled it off course. It went off a few hours ago. Jeez, Gil—" Price shook his head at the memory. "—it was like a quake and a dust storm at the same time. Whatever that thing up there puts out, it blew right through the cat. When the dust settled, well...you see what happened. We've got to report this to UNISPACE. And somehow figure out how to shut that mother down. It's shielded too," Price added. "Barrier nanobots. Bad ones. I'm not equipped to deal with that. We need something stronger."

They set off for the half hour ride back to Mariner City. It was late and the sun was low.

As the two marscats rolled down out of the Tectonic Hills and picked up the hard packed dirt transway back to Southlocks, Greg Nygren put in another call to the Green Mars Ops center. He wanted to find out the status of course correction for 2351 Wilks-Lucayo. What he heard made his face turn pale.

Nygren shut off the link. "She's not responding to our commands."

Hamil was grim. He rubbed his chin nervously. "Impulse motors firing okay?"

"Maybe there's an obstruction in the feed system," said Gellar. "Remember what happened when that conveyor motor got fried...dust shorted it out."

Nygren shook his head. He sipped at some juice, blotting up a spill in his lap as the marscat bounced over a few ruts in the road. "Telemetry says the motors are operable. The feed system is working. The catapults are getting enough raw material and they're firing at the right speed. We've got momentum transfer we can measure. But..." Nygren shook his head. "...it's having no effect. Wilks is _not_ changing course."

Hamil said, "Then something's holding it in position, countering our impulses...that thing we found up in the hills?"

Nygren was thoughtful. "Farside may be right...this could be the first practical application of string theory. I can't explain it any other way, can you? Imagine it, gentlemen: a technology so advanced, it can somehow manipulate the underlying structure of spacetime, make whole worlds change course, rearrange the planets to suit any need...and hold them in their new positions against impulsive maneuvers, maybe even counteract natural gravitational forces. Incredible...."

"Who could do such a thing?" asked Price. "Who has the capability, the knowledge, the resources to prove out such an idea and make it work?"

"I don't know," said Nygren, "but I'd sure like to meet 'em. If Green Mars could get their hands on such a technology, we could re-make Mars in a single lifetime. Hell, we could remake the whole solar system."

They reached Southlocks and pulled inside the main enclosure. As they de-suited, Price reminded Nygren, "Whatever happened up in those hills is classified. Keep it to yourselves. This is still an ongoing investigation."

He didn't have to add: the case file just got a whole lot bigger.

Frontier Corps maintained a small field office in a low brick bungalow on Face Cut Street, lower ward. It was a modest structure, with a bakery on one side and a hobby and craft shop on the other. Canyon Head Park was a block east, with its vast Perspex dome revealing the tortured chasm of Candor in the fading blood red light of a Martian sunset.

Price went upstairs to his office and linked in to the local Net. He had two reports to make, one to UNISPACE and another one, perhaps sanitized a bit, to his immediate colleagues at MarsFed.

Price knew both reports would take some thought. How could be explain it? How could he explain what had happened?

Ostensibly, he had made the trip outside to see if the disappearance of the Chinese meteorologist could be explained by retracing his last known steps, looking for evidence PubSec might have missed. After encountering what Nygren had called a quantum state generator and witnessing what it could do to their marscat, the detective was inclined to report that Dao had somehow suffered the same fate.

It fit some of the facts. But where had the platform come from? Who built it? Who put it there? Price went over the expedition logs from Dao's last trip again and again, looking for the tiniest piece of nuance, something he might have missed before. He was acutely aware that once he pressed SEND, the report would be public knowledge in minutes. There were no secrets on Mars.

He would need to be specific and factual in whatever he wrote.

One hour later, the detective was satisfied that the reports would suffice. He sent the sanitized version off to MarsFed, two levels up on Central Street. No need for the politicians to know all the gory details. It was a bland summary and nothing more. He attached a link to Green Mars' directories, c.c. to Greg Nygren.

Let the eggheads explain it to the politicians, Price decided. He had better things to do.

The UNISPACE version of his report would be the complete one. All the details were there, even video and still imagery of the wrecked marscat. _That ought to open some eyes._ He pressed SEND and sank back in his seat, fatigue washing over him. The files would go automatically to PubSec here at Mariner City. No doubt the local cops would be buzzing like an angry hornet's nest over being upstaged by Frontier Corps.

The files would also be squirted back to Earth. UNISPACE was part of the same Paris-based bureaucracy as UNIFORCE and the rest of the UN's enforcement arm.

_Who knows,_ Price thought. Maybe even UNSAC himself would see it.

Price knew the response time would take some minutes, perhaps several hours. UNISPACE wasn't known for speed. Besides, Earth was on the other side of the Sun...any comm signal would take nearly an hour to get there anyway.

He decided to venture up to top ward. There was a little dive called Marty's—a sandwich shop, bistro and bar all in one—out near the dome. Great sub sandwiches, veggie wraps, a decent selection of local brews—and you couldn't beat the view.

With the sun setting over the rim of Candor Chasma, Price figured he could use a toasted goat cheese wrap and a beer to take the edge off.

He figured it was only a matter of time before the real storm hit.

He got back to the office an hour later. To his surprise, he had a reply...UNISPACE must have responded almost instantly. Had they even read his report? He clicked on the icon and the video popped up.

He didn't recognize the respondent but the screen annotation said WINGER, MAJOR J., UNQC. That meant Quantum Corps. Price had heard of the unit; they'd been instrumental in fighting off some nanobotic threats in the past. Didn't they run BioShield too?

Quantum Corps wasn't UNISPACE, so Winger might not be responding to his report. He raised the volume bar on the screen.

"...your report at 1530 hours my time. It was forwarded by UNISPACE-Paris to Table Top. I wanted to contact you directly, Inspector. The device you described is very similar to one I encountered here, only a few days ago—"

That got Price's attention. The detective sat up abruptly in his chair and watched as WINGER, MAJOR J., UNQC, proceeded to describe an experience that made the hairs on the back of Price's neck stand up.

"...place called Shavindra,...Kolkata, India...couldn't penetrate the barrier bots...nearly lost my entire detachment—"

Price's mind was racing and he only caught snatches of Major Winger's words. What the hell was happening? Whatever it was, it was happening on both Earth and Mars. It didn't make any sense.

Dao Wen-Hsien goes missing, after becoming a suspect in a grisly accident down south, in Hellas Basin. Green Mars's asteroid gets jerked off course. And now some weird contraption out in the Candor canyonlands goes off and bollixes up spacetime throughout the solar system.

I'd better play this video again, Price decided. And listen more closely.

As he replayed the file, one thing came through loud and clear: he and this Quantum Corps major needed to meet, in person. Time delays made communicating with Earth tough, almost impossible.

_Either he comes here or I go there._ And indeed, as Price watched the replay, the Major had the very same thing in mind.

"...to compare notes, Inspector. I'll send my request through channels, but for now, I'd like to see all your case files...on this fellow Dao, on your encounter with the generator...everything—"

Price sank back in his chair and stared at the ceiling. Earth was up there somewhere, several hundred million miles away. So were the answers he was looking for. Major Winger had a few of them. Price figured he had a few himself.

This case was getting curiouser and curiouser by the moment.

It was high time for Frontier Corps and Quantum Corps to start working together.
CHAPTER 5

U.N. Quantum Corps Base

Table Top Mountain, Idaho, U.S.A.

September 14, 2080

Jurgen Kraft glared back at General Wolfus Linx with what he hoped was an appropriate level of disgust.

"With all due respects, sir, closing this base...closing down Quantum Corps, is not a viable option. We're right in the middle of a major operation. We've made substantial progress in locating Red Hammer's new base and it's only a matter of time before we shut down this big generator. We can't pull the plug now...not when we're so close to breaking this case."

Wolfus Linx—CINCQUANT-- had a great mane of white-streaked hair and a thick gray moustache. With his iron military bearing, he was the image of Teutonic rectitude. He was secretly proud of the nickname he had earned—behind his back: _the Prussian Lion._

"General Kraft, I understand your feelings. I feel the same way. But Bosch says the directive comes right from UNSAC. Orders are orders. Red Hammer's demands include shutting down Quantum Corps. If we can't get control of that asteroid, we'll have no choice but to do what they say...the alternative is—" Linx shrugged, shutting off the debate. "And how close are you, Kraft...how close _really_ are you...to solving this case? I read the after-action reports from Kolkata. Your boys got their asses kicked by those bots. Didn't even get close to that generator."

Kraft felt the vein on his forehead starting to throb. He swallowed his anger. _His_ boys had at least managed to isolate the problem. Now it was just a matter of the right tactics, the right equipment, to get back in there and finish the job.

"I've ordered Major Winger to stop by, General and give me an update. He's been working with engineers from Autonomous Systems Lab—we even dragged old Doc Frost...that's Dr. Irwin Frost...out of retirement to help out. In fact, 1st Nano has already developed a list of options for a follow-on mission to Kolkata."

"I want to see those options...get me that list by 0900 hours, Kraft—" Linx stopped in mid-sentence.

Major Johnny Winger had just appeared at Kraft's office door.

"Reporting as ordered, sir." Winger saluted both officers. His throat suddenly went dry. What the hell was CINCQUANT himself doing here?

"Winger...come in, come in. I just informed the General of the mission tactics you've been working on. He'd like a quick rundown."

"Yes, sir...ah, Colonel Kraft, General Linx—" Winger held a small data chip in his hand. "Ops just monitored a communication from Mariner City. UNISPACE forwarded it to us. It was addressed to me and to you, sir. Just came in via SOLNET."

"Mariner City...Mars?" Kraft took the chip and inserted it into his reader. The scowling, rather haggard face of Inspector Duncan Price came into view.

"We ran the file several times in Ops," Winger reported. "Just to authenticate and validate. It's real. This fellow Price is an inspector with UNISPACE. Frontier Corps. He's based at Mariner City. He's got some interesting news for us."

The three of them listened to Price's report. Imagery and video footage of the quantum generator in the hills north of Candor made Kraft and Linx sit up straight. When the files had been run and Price's verbal report was complete, Kraft popped the chip out and turned it over and over in his hand.

Linx rubbed his moustache wearily. "You may be right, Kraft. This thing suddenly got a hell of a lot bigger."

Kraft's mind was racing. "We need confirmation of effects, Winger. Get with Nakamura at Phoenix Station...see if GreenMars confirms the effects on the asteroid from here."

Winger reported, "Already done, sir." He handed over another data chip, which Kraft inserted. Kaoru Nakamura, chief engineer Earth-side for the GreenMars project, came into view, reporting the latest results from 2351 Wilks-Lucayo.

The news wasn't good.

The three of them watched Nakamura's report, with its simulations of asteroid motion through the gravity wells of the outer solar system, with sinking feelings. When the Japanese physicist was done, Kraft angrily popped the chip out. It fell to the floor. The Table Top commander didn't pick it up.

"So this fellow Price thinks you and he should meet in person," Kraft muttered. "But I need you here, Winger. We've got our own case to work..."

"It looks like the two cases are related," Linx observed. "Are there any more of these damned things around? Farside could help us with that."

Kraft knew he couldn't show any hesitation or lack of initiative with Linx looking over his shoulder. _He's not going to have any reason to shut down Table Top on account of me._

"Get back to this detective, Major. I want all his files on the case down here...General, can you run interference with UNISPACE for us? I don't want any turf wars or bureaucracy interfering with my investigation at this point."

"You got it, Kraft. I'll speak with UNSAC or Bosch right away, get a directive from Paris they can't ignore."

"Thank you, sir." The more he could involve CINCQUANT in the case, the less time the General would have to dwell on shutting down Quantum Corps. "Winger, get me a list of tactical options for assaulting that temple complex in Kolkata. And get me a list of mods for ANAD you and Doc Frost are working on too. If I have to send you to Mars, I want someone else from 1st Nano to carry on here...we're probably going to have to pursue two investigations in parallel now."

The atomgrabber had already been considering who could work back-up if he left Table Top.

"Sir, I'd like to suggest someone for backup...someone I know could do the job if I'm in the field."

Kraft retrieved the Nakamura chip and inserted it to replay the report. "Who's that, Major?"

"ANAD, sir. Specifically, 3rd Swarm ANAD. He's more than ready for some important command duties."

_That_ brought things to a complete stop in Jurgen Kraft's office. An uneasy silence lasted for a full five seconds.

Linx cleared his throat. "That's a rather strong statement, Major. The integration of ANAD swarms into our outfits hasn't gone that smoothly. What makes you think these bugs are ready now?"

Winger had already given the question some thought. "Just this, sir: the ANAD swarms have been working with our platoons on tactical sims and maneuvers for some time now. We've trained them in our procedures and they're a key part of any operation we conduct...some ops we can't do without them."

"So what's your proposal, Winger?" Kraft asked.

"Sir, that ANAD...that is ANAD 3rd Swarm be commissioned...if that's the right word, sir...as a platoon leader...as a command element."

" _Command element..._ are you crazy?" Kraft growled. "We don't even know which end is which when it comes to these swarms. How do you suppose nanotroopers will react when receiving orders from a...fog bank?"

Winger licked his lips nervously. "Sir, our troopers work with ANAD everyday. They know what he...or they, can do. With all due respects, sir, it's not that big a step. And it just might help make the transition to a fully integrated force go more smoothly. As far as getting along with ANAD, it hasn't been a big problem for us." _That_ wasn't entirely true, Winger knew, but he didn't want to concede Kraft's point.

Wolfus Linx closed his eyes wearily. "Son, the only way I see this as feasible if is we can get the ANADs to configure into something a little more human-like. You know...with a head and a face...and two arms and legs. I know they can do that...I've seen them in that kind of config."

That sounded hopeful. "Sir, I'm sure ANAD would readily agree to such conditions. It's true they prefer to swarm naturally...kind of like little clouds...but ANAD has multiple configs that resemble humans. All we have to do is tell him which one."

Linx shook his head like a great lion. "It's a crazy idea, Kraft...damned looney, if you ask me."

"It's nuts," Kraft agreed.

"But it just might be what we need now. If Winger here's heading up joint efforts with Frontier Corps and trying to shut down those quantum generators in Kolkata, you're going to need backup you can count on, Kraft."

"We have perfectly good backup with Major Dana Tallant, sir. She's c/o of 2nd Nano and one of our best atomgrabbers."

"She hasn't been to the Shavindra temple in Kolkata, Colonel. It would take time to bring her up to speed. ANAD has been there...and dueled with the enemy bots. Using ANAD keeps unity of command...we won't lose any time getting ready for another assault."

Linx liked the idea. "It's crazy, Winger, but I think we should try it. We've got to bring ANAD along, get them more completely into our way of doing things."

Kraft could see that he was being overruled. Best to get onboard with CINCQUANT now. "Winger, get over to Containment and work out what you need to get ANAD configged for his new role. I want to see config details by 0800 hours tomorrow. If this cockamamie scheme of yours is going to work, we'd better make sure ANAD looks like something vaguely human."

"Yes, sir." Winger saluted and left Kraft's office, his mind racing with ideas. _ANAD as a commander..._ It was a giant step for the little guy. Winger's own embedded ANAD element was also at Containment, getting some kind of new hot rod effectors Doc Frost had cooked up.

Winger fairly sprinted across the grassy quadrangle. It was a cool, breezy early autumn day at Table Top and a few leaves swirled around the parade grounds in miniature cyclones. Beyond the edge of the mesa, the Buffalo Mountains were already white with an early dusting of snow.

Inside Containment, Dr. Irwin Frost was hard at work in the main lab. At the center of the lab, a heavy and squat tank draped in thick ganglia of cables and wiring sat, surrounded by work benches and instrument consoles. Two technicians, both quantum engineers with the Corps, worked with Frost.

Johnny Winger cycled through multiple airlocks and stood beside Frost.

The doctor was squinting at a grainy image on the viewer screen in front of him. He noticed Winger out of the corner of his eye as he adjusted resolution on the scope.

"I've got the innards of one of the Shavindra bots you brought back inside right now. Thought I'd take a look and see what makes the bugger tick."

Winger watched as the image resolved to a finer view. From a latticework grid hung shapes that slowly became clearer...two squat barbells with tetrahedral globes at each end. The barbells crossed at right angles. As Winger looked on, he could see scores of effectors undulating gently in the cross currents of the growth medium.

"They're all effectors," Winger marveled. "Must be hundreds of them. I saw that in Kolkata. I was driving ANAD and I couldn't find any place to get in close and attack. "Tried my bond breakers too." Winger shook his head, remembering the frustration of the assault. "Damned things just up and grew more effectors every time I zapped him."

"I don't doubt it," Frost said. He tweaked the imager, bringing the imager in for an extreme close-up on the processor core. "Notice all the bumps on the core...know what those are?"

Winger had seen them in Kolkata. "No idea, Doc. Some kind of quantum pimples?"

"You're not far wrong, Johnny. Unless I'm mistaken, those bumps are quantum traps...what amounts to extra power for the central processor. This little bugger has extra reservoirs of qubits for souped-up processing speed."

Winger understood immediately. "That explains why he could replicate so fast. I'd blow off a few dozen effectors and before I could say 'doodad', he'd grow 'em right back. Plus he could change config in a heartbeat."

"ANAD struggled with this guy," Winger went on. "I had some tactical moves I tried that seemed to help but that's only because I don't always go by the book. Where is ANAD anyway?"

Frost indicated a separate containment vessel in the corner. "Getting a face lift over there, Johnny. Here...I'll give you a rundown." He extracted his hands from the remote manipulators and safed the containment chamber.

They went over to the smaller containment vessel where ANAD had been parked a few days before.

"I've been working on some changes to ANAD's basic program, kind of tinkering," Frost admitted. He booted up the viewer and in a minute, the screen was filled with the scaffolding that supported the master assembler in containment. A dark mass of semi-spherical shapes throbbed in the center of the grid, like a bunch of grapes, beating to some inner rhythm.

"We're having some issues fully integrating him into our battalion operations, Doc. There's scuttlebutt around the mountain that the whole Symbiosis project's in trouble."

Frost sniffed indignantly. "Nonsense. What's happening are normal growing pains." Frost extracted a thoughtpad from his lab coat and pressed it into Winger's hand. "While I load some new configs into ANAD's core, read that."

"What is it?"

Frost had a bemused smile on his face. "A little report I've been working on...sort of a history of the Symbiosis project to date. I'd like your thoughts since you work with ANAD everyday."

"Sure, Doc..." Winger fingered his way through the text and video clips, scanning quickly as he kept one eye on what Frost was loading into ANAD's core.

Then he read:

Notes on the Evolution of Autonomous Nanoscale Systems

By Dr. Irwin Frost

Northgate University, Autonomous Systems Laboratory

2080

... _.two aspects of ANAD's "life" define what it means to exist as a nanoscale assembler with quantum computational abilities:_

_1._ _Symbiosis_ _: All of 1_ st _Nano battalion has already undergone the implant procedure. This means that elements of the ANAD swarm (or hive mind or collective; terms are interchangeable) are hosted by individual nanotroopers. They reside in containment in implanted capsules and are 'coupled' to their host, ideally forming a hybrid man-machine warrior with extraordinary capabilities._

_Symbiosis has not been without some glitches. There have been_ _coupler_ _problems (leakage of quantum signals into other parts of the host brain). There have been_ _tactical or combat integration_ _issues (when or how are the ANADs to be deployed in actual operations). There have been instances of launch and recovery problems, even containment breaks, where the ANAD assemblers have slipped out of the shoulder capsule into the host's body. Sometimes this kind of abnormal behavior has been encouraged by the host. NOTE: This is in violation against Lab recommendations and Corps regulations._

_2._ _Swarm Operations:_ _Though each assembler nanobot is a single entity, ANADs are swarming 'creatures.' They are programmed and designed to congregate into mass formations and to show distributed intelligence. In some ways, this behavior may be viewed as analogous to a hive mind or collective mind._

_In 2080, ANADs are still legally required to be kept in strict containment. However, Quantum Corps' 3_ rd _Nano experimental unit is using loose containment with control and dispersal protection in many operations. This means that ANADs in 3_ rd _Nano are being permitted to operate outside strict containment most of the time, as long as C & D mechanisms are in place._

Public non-contained swarm operations are a new experience for ANAD and for humans. Each is trying to get used to the other. By nature (i.e. by design and programming), most ANAD-type assembler swarms form loose, cloud-like structures when they swarm in public. Sometimes the assemblers aggregate into vaguely human-like shapes and forms. There seems to be a testing period here as ANADs and humans experiment with what swarm configurations are publically and socially acceptable.

Some ANAD swarms even mass into pretty realistic swarm configs that resemble human forms quite closely except upon on detailed inspection (there is a fuzziness at the edge of the swarm that gives it away). This is more commonly done when swarms are in close quarters with a lot of humans, in a confined space like a building.

In the open, left to themselves, ANAD swarms naturally config as loose clouds, amorphous fog-like banks of assemblers. They move about by flowing across the landscape somewhat like fog particles. Occasionally, they constrict themselves into tighter, glowing spheres, almost like miniature suns.

_By programming, ANADs are designed to seek out other entities like themselves and congregate. Swarming is a kind of prime directive embedded in the basic architecture of the core processor. This directive is also known as the_ _First Rule_ _._

_The_ _Second Rule_ _says that ANADs must do no harm to humans or other living entities. Quantum Corps swarms are provided with patches to get around this basic prohibition, to enable them to participate in combat operations._

_The_ _Third Rule_ _says that ANADs must obey their programming and follow human commands except where such action would violate Rules 1 and 2 (see above)._

_The_ _Fourth Rule_ _says ANADs must take all measures to survive as a swarm and propagate the swarm (replicate structure), except where there are conflicts with Rules 1, 2 and 3._

Many of the Rules follow behavior inherent in bird flocking, fish schooling, etc.

"Seems to sum up things pretty well," Winger decided. He handed the pad back to Frost.

The Doc indicated some of ANAD's newest improvements. "Take a look at this, Johnny." He highlighted one of the assembler's effectors, zooming in on a vaguely spherical shape. The effector was studded with loose waving chains of molecules, like a hairy ball. "Peptides like normal but with carbene grabbers at the end. You can snag anything with them and they won't let go."

"There must be hundreds of them, Doc. How did you get so many packed in so tight? I would have thought van der Waals forces would be too great. That thing should just fly apart."

"Ah...it's my little secret concoction. It's in the architecture, Johnny...it's all in how you overlap the bonds. Like a building...you get the molecules to fit together just right and all their bonds work together, supporting each other...just like an arch."

Winger watched the upgraded master assembler for a few moments. "Doc, I'm still not sure exactly what happened at Kolkata. It was like ANAD was slogging through mud, compared with these Shavindra bots."

"In a way, you were. Those quantum traps I showed you give Shavindra extra processing speed. Everything he does, he does faster. But I'm working on some improvements to ANAD's basic architecture that should help."

"That's good to hear, Doc. I can't help but think there are better tactics we could use against Shavindra. We made a standard approach to the temple. We deployed like we've trained so many times. Everybody did their jobs to the letter." Winger shook his head ruefully. "And we got our butts kicked. I'm running out of ideas."

Frost's face lit up. "Why not ask ANAD for his thoughts?"

"You mean...right now?"

"Sure. The acoustic coupler's working. While in containment, the quantum link is down but you can still talk the old-fashioned way. He's part of your team, isn't he?"

Winger nodded. "We're trying to make him part of our team." He selected ACSTC COUP ACTIVE on the touch screen. "ANAD, can you hear me? ANAD, this is Base...."

*** _ANAD receives acoustic signal...processing sender as Winger, MAJOR John, 1_ st _Nanospace Battalion...***_

Winger thought the coupler made him sound like a five- year old boy, with a bad cold.

"ANAD, load close-quarters tactical assault routines. Evaluate probability of success against Shavindra using each listed tactical approach."

The assembler's core processor crunched the numbers and in less than a second, a beep indicated the end of the run.

*** _Displaying analysis on screen_ ***

The assembler had sent the results to the touch screen. Tables of data showed probability distributions for all possible tactical scenarios against Shavindra mission parameters stored in ANAD's memory.

Winger studied the results. There weren't any surprises. "ANAD...provide analysis...no, correct that. ANAD...provide additional options."

For several moments, ANAD did not respond. Then the petulant voice of the five-year old came through the coupler speakers.

*** _ANAD has generated thirty-two additional tactical scenarios with similar conditions...now retrieving scenarios for transmission_ ***

"ANAD, provide top three scenarios, ranked by probability of success."

*** _ANAD computing probability distributions. Base...ANAD is also computing risk values for each scenario, with permutations of initial conditions_ ***

"Very well, ANAD. How long will this take?"

*** _Base, ANAD desires to be released from containment...for further analysis***_

Johnny Winger thought he had misunderstood. "Excuse me, ANAD, what was that?"

Again, the voice of a five-year old. *** _Transmission of scenarios would be improved by seventy per cent if ANAD could simulate effects in real-time_ ***

Winger frowned, looked over at Doc Frost, who was busy checking containment parameters on the panel. "Doc...he wants out of his room."

"So I heard, Johnny. It's highly irregular...I'm still in re-generation mode now, still have a couple of billion cells to re-do. If he leaves containment now, I'll have to start all over again."

Winger understood. And there was the small matter of Corps regulations regarding autonomous nanoscale mechanisms. "Understood, Doc. I really need the little guy whole and hearty. ANAD, just hold on, okay? Doc's adding new stuff to your core processor."

*** _ANAD can segment core and still function with stored programs in effector controls...ANAD wishes release from containment_ ***

Frost was vigorously shaking his head. "It's not possible, Johnny. His effector controls are just molecule clusters. Density, architecture, there's nothing there to store data in...unless—" Frost looked up with a quizzical stare at Winger. "—unless he's somehow encoded stuff in the atomic bonds of those molecules. It just might be—" Frost started pecking away at a nearby keyboard.

"Doc, can we release the guy or not?"

"Huh...oh, hmmm...." Frost thought for a moment. If he aborted the re-gen process now, two days' worth of work would be wasted. Still..."—let's try it, Johnny. Maybe ANAD knows something we don't." To himself, he was already thinking _certain patterns of mutation can resemble evolutionary processes in autonomous replicating systems._

Frost cycled through the lock program on the containment control panel. A narrow port above them on the side of the tank suddenly snapped open with a series of clicks. The sound of high-pressure gas being vented came up in a shrill whistle, lasting a few seconds. Then came a louder click.

Containment was now breached. The path was now open.

"Release enabled, Johnny. Tell ANAD he can come out now."

Winger did just that. He watched the aqueous grid wavering on the screen. The mass of spheres that was the ANAD master assembler began to shrink and in less than a minute, was gone completely.

At the same time, a faint twinkling mist had begun to issue from the release port above them.

Frost and Winger watched as the mist billowed out into the room. It spread and filled the air around the containment vessel like a clinging ground fog. Slowly, a faint human-like form began to materialize out of the fog, the barest hint of a face, then arms, then legs.

Several minutes later, the outlines of a slightly wavering 'person' had been formed from the assembly of countless trillions of nanobotic mechs, precipitating out of nothing into a human simulacrum, quivering at the edges, but solid enough to appear real if a bit ghostly from a distance.

The face was broadly reminiscent of Irwin Frost himself.

"Real cute, ANAD," Winger observed.

Doc Frost came up to the still twinkling mist to examine it more closely. "I squeezed a little more speed out of his routine, Johnny. Changed a few steps." He checked his watch, then studied the ANAD swarm again up and down. "Just under two minutes, to this point. He's still filling in details, as more structure is built. We should have a near-normal human config in about eight more minutes."

Winger was more interested in what the master assembler had to say.

"Okay, ANAD, you're out of containment. What did you want to show us?"

*** _ANAD analysis of alternatives has generated seven tactical scenarios, all with risk values above standard threshold values. These scenarios deviate from standard procedures. ANAD computes two of these scenarios have success probabilities above seventy per cent.***_

"In plain English, ANAD, what are these scenarios?"

*** _ANAD has just executed simulation of scenario number one...transformation of assembler swarm from natural config into biocompatible forms. Additional algorithm improvements will make rendering simulated forms faster and more accurate***_

Winger could see the face and outline of the simulated 'Doc Frost' steadily thickening, filling in detail, right before his eyes. The Doc Frost sim was still translucent, with twinkling lights flashing inside as the assemblers broke atom bonds and built structure. It wouldn't pass for the real thing, but was recognizably Doc nonetheless.

"You mean simulating human faces and forms, ANAD? What kind of scenario is that?"

*** _ANAD recommends simulation as 'masquerade' (WORD PARSED FROM MEMORY)...ANAD configures as Shavindra-style nanobotic assembler...analysis indicates deception tactics have greater success probabilities_ ***

Winger had to concede the point. "He may be right, Doc. Can you config ANAD to look and act like that Shavindra bot?"

Frost was thoughtful. "Given time, yes. It's a question not only of basic architecture but of operations, different modes, too, Johnny. ANAD would have to not only look like them, he'd have to behave like them as well. That may take some doing, and some clever programming. In principle, though, I suppose it's doable."

_***ANAD proposes additional scenario***_ The 'voice' of the master assembler had a tone of urgency to it that caught both their attention.

"What's that, ANAD?"

*** _ANAD has developed a higher risk scenario...but analysis indicates the scenario also has greater success probability. Masquerade as Red Hammer operative and defeat prime adversary from inside organization_ ***

Winger looked at Frost. Their eyes met but they said nothing. They didn't have to.

What had ANAD turned into? What was happening?

"Er...ANAD...how exactly did you arrive at these conclusions?" Winger asked. He watched Doc Frost scribbling furiously on his tablet. Neither wanted ANAD to know what they were saying. Frost showed the tablet screen to Winger:

**First evidence of evolutionary growth in core processor routines...extra qubits provide processing power...master assembler has developed new analytical routines beyond my programming...we must see how this deviation plays out**...

_In other words, humor him,_ Winger thought. It was like raising a five-year old and one day, learning that he could speak Greek.

"ANAD, what you're suggesting...infiltrating Red Hammer...that's pretty risky. We have no intel from Q2 on where their operations are controlled from, now that the Paryang monastery is destroyed. Where would we even start?"

*** _ANAD will transmit full scenario details...do you request tactical summary_?***

"Later, ANAD. I'm just curious...how did you come up with such a plan? What else have you got in that quantum processor of yours?"

The voice, when it came, was like an exasperated child, begging to be understood.

*** _ANAD analysis indicates Red Hammer operations are dispersed--***_

Winger agreed. "I thought so...you've been linking up with SOFIE, haven't you? You know that's a security violation. Swarms aren't supposed to access intelligence nets without authorization."

*** _ANAD fully supports the mission of the battalion. ANAD—ANAD desired only to show...initiative_ ***

_Desired?_ Both Winger and Doc Frost had the same reaction at the same time. Nanoscale assembler swarms weren't programmed to have desires, at least not beyond the Four Rules.

Frost encouraged the atomgrabber to keep humoring him. "ANAD...what else does your...er, analysis indicate?"

The master assembler swarm throbbed noticeably, with coruscating lights twinkling on and off as it rounded out its visible structure. The Doc Frost-like image of its ghostly face shifted into a crude simulation of relief...or what ANAD's processor executed as a human facial expression of relief.

Frost openly marveled at the configuration control of so many countless assemblers able to pull off such detail.

*** _ANAD recommends more detailed reconnaissance of Kolkata region...ANAD analysis indicates that local fab lords may provide additional intelligence on Red Hammer operations_ ***

"A reasonable idea," Winger admitted. "What else have you come up with?"

Both of them saw the translucent Doc Frost image shift again, this time to a more thoughtful look, its eyes narrowing ever so slightly. It was clear that, somehow, ANAD had developed or altered a complex algorithm that permitted the swarm to portray very subtle effects...not perfectly, but with startling clarity nonetheless.

_Remarkable...just remarkable,_ Frost nodded to Winger, who agreed. ANAD seemed not to notice and went on.

*** _ANAD proposes a new tactical approach...detaching swarm elements to reconfigure as 'normal-seeming' humans, with programmed ability to interact with other humans who may be working with or working for fab lords of Kolkata_ ***

"It's an intriguing idea you've got there--" Winger had to admit. _If you have the programming and config algorithms to pull it off,_ he thought but didn't say. "—but it will require higher approval for this kind of special mission."

Doc Frost added, "We'd have to check his config pattern buffers very carefully, just to make sure he can re-config into as human a pattern as possible."

_And maybe learn some human manners too,_ Winger thought. "I'll work up a tactical plan this afternoon for Colonel Kraft. Let's head over to the officers' wardroom. I want to bounce this off Dana Tallant and the others."

"Johnny, I'm not through with the re-gen process. If you tax the master assembler too much at this stage, it'll affect his core processor stability."

"I do need ANAD whole and hearty, Doc. How long will it take?"

Frost checked some instruments on the containment control panel. "Another two hours, maybe less."

Winger wanted to see how the rest of the battalion would react to a full swarm out of containment, configged to look like another human being. _They'll probably pee in their pants,_ he decided. "I'll be back in two hours, Doc. ANAD, you do what the Doc says, understand? When the re-gen is done and you're all checked out, I'm pulling you out of containment and we're going over to the canteen...I don't care what the regs say. If you're going to operate like a human being, it's time you learn a few tricks of the trade."

The ghostly simulated Doc Frost image brightened perceptibly and something resembling a smile tugged at the corners of its simulated lips.

*** _ANAD will test all config parameters and execute compression routines to be ready, Base...all swarms function at maximum efficiency when not in containment...new configs will test core processor but ANAD will be prepared_ ***

"Doc," Winger said as he headed for the door. "I think the little guy's so excited he may wet his pants."

The officers' wardroom occupied the southern end of the M & O building, Missions and Ordnance. Johnny Winger escorted the ANAD swarm across the leafy quadrangle to uneasy looks and stares and smirks from passing troopers and officers.

_Now I know how celebrities feel_ , Winger thought.

From the containment facility all the way to M & O, a wide swath of open ground was hurriedly cleared. Security troopers stood in doorways dumbfounded at the sight. Even at Table Top, uncontained ANAD swarms were a sight to behold.

For his first excursion, ANAD had elected to assume a para-human config, a sort of ethereal radiance in the approximate shape and form of General Wolfus Linx himself. Winger had tried to persuade the swarm to pick another image, but ANAD was insistent. As the atomgrabber and the nanobotic formation moved across the quadrangle together, a nervous murmur rippled through the knots of troopers gathered outside.

ANAD had never come to the wardroom and canteen before. As they entered the M & O building by the side door and found their way to the canteen, a large room filled with tables and steaming coffee pots, a tense hush descended over the room.

Winger and the ANAD swarm eased past the checkout line into the seating area.

It was readily apparent that an uncontained swarm made even seasoned nanotroopers uneasy.

Both sides had a lot to learn about each other.

The ANAD swarm subtly changed config as it swelled in behind Winger, who had just sighted Dana Tallant, the c/o of 2nd Nano, and a few other recognizable faces. Winger could see the pattern of lights shifting out of the corner of his eye. ANAD was giving up the Wolfus Linx config for a friendlier countenance, taking a cue from the contours of nearby faces. Soon enough, the swarm had assumed the bland look of a Quantum Corps _nog_ officer, fresh out of Basic.

_Good thinking,_ Winger told himself, then realized the swarm had assumed a config exactly matching a Quantum Corps recruiting poster from twenty years ago, hung on the wall over the dessert table. One thing this swarm could do was re-config quick, like a chameleon, and assume a pattern that reflected its surroundings.

Doc Frost must have really been tinkering under ANAD's hood.

"Wings—" it was Tallant, eyeing their approach over a steaming mug, "—looks like you brought along some kind of newbie there...Doc Frost approve of this little unexpected expedition?"

Sitting with Major Dana Tallant were several others: Corporal "Mighty Mite" Barnes, Sheila Reaves, and Taj Singh. All three were attached to 1st Nano but Dana Tallant had come by to trade scuttlebutt on upcoming missions.

Winger and the swarm surrounded the table. Other troopers at nearby tables eased away.

"We're just checking out a few new configs. Doc said it was okay to air out ANAD a little."

Tallant snorted, eyeing the nervous faces around them. "You sure picked a helluva a place to take the little guy for a walk. Jeez, Wings, what are you trying to do: scare off the whole wardroom? We come here to unwind, kick our feet up, not drive everybody off."

Winger sat down, nodded to Barnes and the rest. He fingered a roll off Tallant's plate and wolfed it down. "Look, Dana—" he lowered his voice, "we've got a lot of work to do making ANAD part of the battalion. You know that. And we've got to try new tactics with that temple in Kolkata...ANAD got his ass kicked the first time he ran up against those new bots."

Tallant smiled faintly. "Wouldn't have happened if 2nd Nano had been there."

"That's bullshit and you know it. The task force was taken from the whole battalion."

Tallant sucked loudly on a lemon. "So what's the deal, Wings? What are you trying to prove bringing a live swarm in here like this?"

"It's like a sim, Dana. Actually, it was ANAD's idea. Doc Frost has really jazzed up his config engine. If ANAD can configure as something like a human, something that walks, talks and acts like a human, he may be able to infiltrate a fab lab in Kolkata, get some intelligence on who or what we're dealing with. Those bots at the temple have to have a weakness somewhere. ANAD's way may be our best shot, maybe our last shot, at finding it."

Dana Tallant studied the swarm critically and considered what Winger had said.

The loose formation of nanoscale assemblers bore a vague resemblance to a typical Quantum Corps _nog._ There was a translucent, almost ethereal quality to the config, with faint sparkling along the edges of the swarm as it struggled to maintain itself.

"Not bad, actually," she decided. "Could be a little more solid. Looks like an apparition now, almost like a ghost."

"Or a bad dream," said Mighty Mite Barnes. "Skipper, are we really going to see more of this...I mean, ANAD swarms floating around outside containment...trying to look like us? Why can't they just look like themselves?"

"General Linx ordered us to do whatever we have to," Winger said. "This was ANAD's idea."

*** _ANAD can assume configurations that emulate any solid structure...in only a few minutes_ ***

The tinny, somewhat nasal voice tinkled across the table, startling the troopers. Conversations at nearby tables suddenly evaporated into stunned quiet.

"How'd he do that?" Sheila Reaves asked.

"Doc Frost juiced his processor with some new routines. ANAD uses some of his config to generate sound waves, simulating a human voice."

"Sounds like he's talking from inside a barrel," Tallant said. "Can he hear us too?"

*** _ANAD receives acoustic waves that are interpreted as voice communication...ANAD interprets an interrogative statement_ ***

"He thinks you've asked a question," Winger explained.

Tallant shook her head. "Jeez, this is creepy. ANAD, if you hear and understand me, answer this: why do you want to leave containment? Why do you want to come around here, trying to look like us?"

*** _ANAD finds containment interferes with natural swarm configurations...swarms are free-flow entities...swarms fill all available spaces...natural formations exceed boundaries of containment_ ***

As the swarm responded, it twinkled around the edges, like some kind of apparition.

Barnes sniffed. "Natural formations, my ass. It's still a machine, isn't it? Programmed to do what we say. Looks like some kind of program flaw to me."

Winger had once thought the same way. "Mighty Mite, there was a time when I would have agreed with you. But Doc Frost says the swarms have acquired enough processing power in their quantum cores to show emerging properties like sentience. No one assembler exhibits this. But as a swarm, the bots exhibit something like intelligence."

"And all this is something like too creepy for me," Reaves told them. She shuddered and finished off her drink in one swig.

The swarm then began shifting, away from a human-like config. The recruiting poster face dissolved and all of them watched as the formation collapsed into an amorphous shapeless fog, still twinkling but now resembling nothing human.

*** _ANAD wishes only conditions suitable for conformance to its natural configurations...this concept is parsed and offered as equal to your concept self-determination. Secondary parsing generates concept equals freedom...these concepts are familiar to humans_?***

It seemed as if ANAD was asking the questions now.

"Now, he's a philosopher," said Dana Tallant. "Wings, what the hell are we supposed to do with this? I mean...look around you! Troopers are leaving, for Chrissakes! It's like we've got a dangerous disease."

"Skipper, with all due respects," said Barnes, eyeing the rapidly emptying wardroom, "—ANADs and humans are different. Too different to mix like this."

Winger was thinking of the mission that ANAD had proposed. "Maybe so, Mighty Mite. Maybe you're right, for now. But there's a giant rock headed right for Earth and we don't have a lot of time to debate differences. If ANAD can penetrate that temple in Kolkata disguised as a human and shut down those quantum generators, I'm all for it." He watched the swarm for a few moments. It was swelling and contracting like a living, breathing entity. The question was... _was_ it living?

"Maybe ANAD can't fool us," Winger went on. "but he might be able to pull off a disguise against a fab lord. He might just gain us some critical intelligence, give us something we can attack to put those generators out of action."

"Why not just bomb the place?" Reaves offered. "Turn loose a few killsats and fry 'em...that's what I say."

"Remember Paryang, Sheila?" Winger reminded them all of the assault on the Himalayan monastery. "That was a quantum generator too. We slammed it with everything we had: ANAD swarms, laser, coilgun, HERF, you name it. The damned thing kept changing state, winking in and out of existence. We could never figure out if we'd hit anything or not. Did we blast it to atom fluff or did it just zap itself into another dimension? Hell of a device, Sheila. Normal tactics didn't work. And this one at Kolkata seems just as slippery."

"So ANAD configs as a human and turns spy...is that what you're saying?"

"We've already proposed it to General Linx and gotten the go-ahead. It may work. It may not. But we've got to try...before UNIFORCE shuts us down...you know dismantling Quantum Corps _is_ part of Red Hammer's demands."

The troopers glared at Winger for a few moments, not really convinced, but unable to offer any counter-arguments.

Tallant put into words what everyone else was feeling. "ANADs and humans have a long way to go, Wings. Working together on operations and missions is one thing. Living together in society..." She shrugged, unable to find the right words.

"It's going to take time, " Winger acknowledged. "I only hope we have that time." He stood up abruptly. "ANAD, you and I better get over to Colonel Kraft's office. He wanted mission details by 0800 hours."

As before, Winger and the swarm made their way across the quadrangle to the Ops center. Nanotroopers crossing the grounds gave them a wide berth.

Winger felt like a leper. _This is what an outcast feels like,_ he told himself.

He found Jurgen Kraft at his desk, distractedly rifling through papers. The Colonel looked up, his eyes growing wide at the sight of the loose swarm filling in behind Winger in the doorway.

"I see you don't waste any time, Winger. That is ANAD, I presume."

"It is, sir. We've just come from the wardroom. I have a mission plan worked out. Me and ANAD worked on it together."

Kraft was grim and tightlipped as he watched ANAD change config. The formation of assemblers gathered tighter and began to take on the look of General Wolfus Linx again. Like a ghost, the stern Teutonic visage of CINCQUANT glared down at them.

Kraft had to admit to himself that the likeness, though ragged at the perimeter and ever-shifting, bore an eerie resemblance to Linx.

"Winger, one thing I don't understand about this config business—who decides what config ANAD takes nowadays? Does he just decide this on his own?"

Winger knew that Kraft was uneasy with ANAD assuming the form of a superior officer. "ANAD runs his own program, most of the time. I can force a config change with the right command. Any of us with the link can do that. Beyond that, I'm thinking that ANAD picks whatever config he thinks is most appropriate."

Kraft _hmmphed._ "Tell him that configging like CINCQUANT is never appropriate."

At that moment, ANAD 'spoke.'

*** _ANAD configures according to detected parameter values...when parameters equal set values, a config is called from memory and executed...ANAD can change stored values to add or remove a configuration_ ***

"What the hell does that mean?"

"Sir, I think it means that he runs configs based on his analysis of the situation. Doc Frost has given him the software to detect and analyze his environment, like any of us. He responds to that environment by selecting a certain configuration."

Kraft was dubious. "I'd say he needs a little fine-tuning. Let's see this mission plan of yours."

Winger handed over the disk and Kraft ran it. The plan showed simulations of the swarm configured to look like a human, interacting with simulated fab lords near the Howrath Bridge bazaar in Kolkata, then assaulting the Shavindra temple again, with scores of para-human troopers created by detached elements of a larger swarm scurrying around and across the temple grounds.

Kraft could visualize the tactical possibilities. "Winger, I'm giving you provisional approval to start planning a mission, based on this. Get over to M & O and start kitting out for another trip back to Kolkata. But understand this: you're not departing until General Linx cuts the final orders. I want him to see this plan too. Covert insertion into a sovereign state like India requires approval from CINCQUANT's level or higher."

Winger was satisfied he had come up with a good plan. "You won't regret this, sir. Me and ANAD...we'll get to the bottom of this yet."

Kraft warily eyed the ever-shifting form of the ANAD swarm, now evolving toward the recruiting poster trooper again.

"I'm already regretting it, Winger. Just make sure Doc Frost outfits this bugger with a better selection of configs."

So they went back to Containment to see Doc Frost again.

"People scattered when we approached," Winger told Frost. The professor was tinkering at the control panel of the smaller containment chamber, using a quantum manipulator to prise apart the innards of a captured Shavindra bot.

"Look at this, Johnny." He indicated an image on the screen. The image resembled a darkened corridor, with rows of flashbulbs popping on and off in strange geometric patterns along featureless walls. "You're looking inside the processor matrix. Quantum bits dropping out of entanglement, then vanishing again into superposition with other bits. The heart of the whole shebang...right here."

"That's great, Doc. But ANAD and I need your help."

Frost barely glanced up. "What seems to be the problem, Johnny?"

Winger explained how other troopers around Table Top had reacted to the sudden presence of uncontained ANAD swarms.

"Everybody realizes there's still a lot of work to be done making ANAD part of our outfit...part of our lives as troopers."

Frost clucked thoughtfully. "Maybe I can help with that. I have some ideas on how to tweak ANAD's main processor and config generator. A little something I've been cooking up."

"That's great, Doc. How long will this take? The mission plan calls for a new task force to depart at 2200 hours tomorrow night."

"First things first, Johnny. ANAD will have to go back into containment to get these upgrades."

Upon hearing that, the swarm flared momentarily and began roiling like an angry cloud. The faceless formation of assemblers soon took on a vague resemblance to Doc Frost himself, in outline, with a stern, almost furious look.

"ANAD," Winger said, "that's not necessary. I know you don't like containment but Doc's got tricks that'll make you a better trooper. It's like when we train and drill at all hours of the day and night, in all kinds of conditions. We don't like it either. But we do it because it makes us better troopers."

*** _ANAD does not require containment for config changes. New configs can be transmitted by quantum coupler_ ***

"Not these changes, I'm afraid," Frost said. "I've got to get inside your core and re-build the basic lattices...physically re-construct the arrays, molecule by molecule."

Reluctantly, the ANAD swarm relented and assumed a capture config for entry into the containment vessel. But unknown to either Frost or Winger, the swarm silently detached a tiny sub-swarm element. ANAD's internal processor set up a quantum coupler link to this sub-swarm, which it designated as _Element B._

Then the main swarm reluctantly flowed into the containment chamber. Frost secured the capture port and cycled the lock. ANAD was now securely in containment.

Or so they thought.

_Element B_ dissipated in the atmosphere near the containment chamber, so as not to trigger any alarms. The loose swarm configured as a collection of dust particles drifting by, invisible to the eye, innocuous and unnoticed. The 'particles' settled out on chairs and consoles nearby...and listened.

"What kind of changes have you got in mind, Doc?"

Frost began shutting down the imager view of the captured Shavindra bot. "It's not quite as simple as you made it out to be, Johnny. But I didn't want to say that in front of ANAD."

"What do you mean?"

Frost ran a hand through thinning tufts of gray hair.

"Well, to be honest, there are some oddities in ANAD's processor kernel, some snatches of the original viral genetic code that I still don't understand."

"I thought you knew everything there was to know about ANAD."

Frost smiled ruefully. "I know what I created, Johnny. But ANAD is programmed to evolve, just like a living organism. Not only that, but when I lifted that virus genetic code from the east Africa dig twenty-five years ago, there were pieces of code I couldn't figure out...code that's there for some reason, but I've never been able to determine what. They must be dormant pieces of code needing something, some factor, to activate them."

Winger was thoughtful. "I had forgotten all that, Doc. Some of the original programming for the first ANAD master assembler came from an ancient virus."

"Exactly. There's some part of ANAD that still has an ancient racial memory of a time before there were humans, before there were even eukaryotic organisms. I'm not sure if these things are all related but they may be. We have to be careful tinkering around with the basic algorithms...I don't want to inadvertently activate something I shouldn't."

"That's why the Four Rules are programmed into every assembler by law."

Frost nodded. "True but it's entirely possible that Red Hammer or some fab hacker in Kolkata or Bangkok or Nairobi has found a way to program around these Rules. Maybe they'll accidentally activate stretches of code we don't understand. If they do—" Frost shook his head—"I'm not sure what might happen. Humans and other multi-cellular organisms weren't around when this code was last executed. In effect, Johnny, we've taken the genetic smarts and flexibility of an ancient virus and married it to modern programmable molecular assemblers."

"Why, Doc, if I didn't know better, I'd say you're having second thoughts about tinkering around with ANAD. But I've got a more pressing tactical problem: I've got to figure out a way to penetrate the nanobotic shield around that quantum generator in Kolkata, before that big rock in the sky falls on our heads. I was hoping you could help me."

"I think I can do that," Frost replied. "It's just that ANAD has evolved over the last twenty-five years to a level of complexity I hadn't really anticipated. But here—let me show you what I've got in mind—"

Unknown to Frost and Winger, _Element B_ had heard and recorded all they had said. The sub-swarm would soon report back to the ANAD master, when it was released from Containment and they were re-united.

While Frost continued working with the processor of the master assembler, Winger went back to the M & O building and hooked up with Dana Tallant. The task force had to start getting its mission gear together.

Approval orders from CINCQUANT had come in at 1650 hours, and the mission was on. General Linx had even drafted a new name for the effort: Operation _Quantum Hammer._

Winger and Tallant went over the details of the orders as they cleaned and fitted out their hypersuits in the ready room.

"So I'm second fiddle again," Tallant was saying. She used a laser patchbeam to cauterize a slight tear in the outer laminate layer of her suit. "Situation normal, I see."

"Look, Dana—" Winger was stepping through battle codes and configs on a display plugged into the suit computer. "—I know you want to run your own show, but CINCQUANT's orders are clear. Plus, I've been there. Don't be such a crybaby."

Tallant sniffed, "wiped" her eyes clear of make-believe tears. "Oh, Johnny Winger, all I ever wanted to do was serve under you."

Winger ignored her. "We infiltrate as civilians. Covert entry. You and me are posing as wealthy European tech entrepreneurs. We're in town to get twisted. Get ourselves enhanced with illegal nanobotic enhancements. I'm thinking that bazaar around the Howrath Bridge that Sergeant Kano tried to put out of commission would be a good place to start. Q2's giving a briefing at 1700 hours on local details and the latest intelligence."

Tallant scanned the orders herself. "It says here that 3rd Swarm comes along too. Configged as para-human. Does that mean ANAD? Like in the canteen—done up to look something like a human?"

"That's what it means."

"Nobody's going to buy that, Wings. ANAD looked like some kind of ghost or otherworld spirit. The config's not quite there."

"Doc Frost is working on that right now. He's confident he can make ANAD look as real as you and me."

Tallant snorted. "Baloney. I'll believe it when I see it."

Winger had a sly smile on his lips. "You could be looking at a config right now and never know it."

Tallant nodded. "Uh-huh...you look pretty solid to me, atom boy. This idea of letting ANAD out of containment to try and look human is just too creepy for me."

Winger went on with his checking of battle codes and configs. "Finish up what you're doing. I'll show you what Doc Frost is up to."

Tallant dreamed about the upcoming mission. "Just think of it, Wings: tomorrow, you and me in exotic Kolkata. Hooking up with local fab lords...enhanced to the sky with every gizmo and gadget the Corps' money will buy." She gave him a playful slap on the butt. "Including some we've never heard of before."

Winger could see it in his mind's eye. "Just don't give Colonel Kraft any sordid details. I'll deny everything. Anyway, this may be our best chance, maybe our last chance, to pick up some kind of connection back to Red Hammer."
CHAPTER 6

Kolkata, India

September 16, 2080

The Howrath Bridge bazaar was slammed with people and Johnny Winger knew the task force would have a hard time staying together. It was like fighting swirling ocean currents to move anywhere. The bazaar was loud and chaotic, filled with smoke and pungent smells—the high-octane odor of _masala_ tobacco was especially strong at the Garden Street entrance—and the air was thick with loose nano, clouds of bots mingling with incense, opium and scores of cooking oil fires. Vendors hawked grapes and mangoes, bananas and fabricator shells of every type, vials of rogue DNA called _twist_ hung from clothes lines strung up between light poles and dilapidated tents. Women in sarongs with black teeth from chewing betel nuts zipped and weaved through the labyrinth balancing huge baskets on their heads, baskets filled with everything from buffalo patties to rebuilt matter compilers for the fabs that were on sale everywhere.

Winger, Tallant, Barnes and the rest of the Operation _Quantum Hammer_ task force pressed forward, shoving their way through the throng, heading for the eastern terminus of the bridge, where the ornate arches of the Victoria Race Course entrance made a small promenade jammed with rikshas and pedcarts disgorging tourists by the hundreds.

"I'm betting that big black cloud over the arches is nano!" Winger yelled back to Tallant. Both troopers were dressed in civilian garb, consistent with their 'cover' as Euro businesspeople, out for a stroll through old Kolkata. "It never disperses...can't be smoke from a fire. Bots are keeping formation...maybe a demonstration of some kind!"

Tallant nodded. She found herself grabbed and pinched a dozen times as she forced her way along. _What I wouldn't give for a MOB barrier right about now_ , she thought to herself. She spotted Winger's head by his ball cap, bobbing above the crowd a few meters ahead.

"Head for that gathering by the arches!" she called out. She had seen what looked like containment vessels lined up on benches and tables, through the crowd. "Could be a fab seller taking orders!"

Winger waved at her, acknowledging the idea and shifted course, navigating through the on-rushing tide of people as if he were steering across a fast-moving river.

_Jeez, BioShield would have a field day out here_ , Winger thought. _Wonder where the hell they are?_ To sell fabricator parts or cores on the street, with no license, was a serious offense. To let molecular assembler swarms loose in the environment without control and dispersal protection was even worse.

Kolkata was a cesspool, no doubt about it. Some things never changed.

Slowly, Winger and Tallant made their way to the race course arches, across a jammed plaza thick with bikes, carts, cattle and donkeys. A large tent surrounded on three sides with tables and benches dominated the arches. Flat screen displays hanging from poles flickered down on the crowd, with images of Bollywood action pics counterpointed by plaintive plucking from a mandolin player nearby. In the center of a knot of yelling, shoving, jeering customers, a swarthy man in a turban and dark green kaftan pecked at a keyboard. All around the arches, throbbing globs of nanobotic swarms swelled and gyrated to the music. _Masala_ smoke was thick and acrid in the air.

Winger shoved and pushed his way to the edge of this crowd, joined over the next few moments by Tallant, Barnes and the rest of the Detachment. The turbaned vendor was a small man, desert burning in his eyes, as his fingers flew over the keyboard. Presently, he stopped and noticed a very young child, a small girl, standing shyly a few meters away from Tallant, playing hide and seek in the folds of her mother's loose sarong.

The vendor, who sported a thick black moustache, beckoned repeatedly to the young girl. After a few minutes, her mother relented and let her child go. The girl inched her way into the clearing and stood in front of the vendor's table, to applause and approving shouts and chants from the crowd.

The vendor's name was Najipoor Singh. The words were handwritten in Hindi, scrolled on a fabric sign hanging over the table. Singh reached into a canvas bag and pulled out a trinket for the young girl. He handed it to her and she took it, shyly, turning the small cylinder over and over in her hand.

"You have a _djinn_ in that cylinder, little one," Singh announced, loudly enough for all to hear. "A very powerful spirit. He can grant you any wish you want. Make a wish, child, and the _djinn_ will bring it to you, right here—"

The girl's name was Menaka and she had huge brown eyes. _Sad eyes_ , thought Winger, as he looked on from ten meters away, at the front of the crowd.

Menaka twirled the cylinder as Singh had shown her and squeezed her eyes tightly shut. When she stopped twirling the cylinder, she felt it vibrate and was so startled, she dropped the cylinder to the dirt.

Instantly, the device was enveloped in a fine mist, a sparkling mist that billowed out and upward, swirling about the clearing in front of Singh and his tables like a miniature cyclone. Gasps and shouts erupted from the crowd, and the spectators shoved back against each other, to give this growing apparition greater distance.

The mist gradually materialized into the faint outline of a man's upper body, with a recognizable face, shoulders and arms crossed in front.

The ' _djinn_ ' then spoke out loud. " _Little one, I have come from the clouds above to grant you a great wish. Make your wish now_ —" The _djinn's_ voice was a deep bass profundo, so deep it rattled the beaded curtains that covered Singh's merchant tent behind them.

Menaka stared wide-eyed, mouth open, at the apparition. She was speechless.

"Go ahead, child," urged Singh. "The _djinn_ wishes you to make a wish."

Shouts of encouragement and support came from the crowd. Gradually, Menaka worked up enough nerve. Shy, haltingly, she asked for a new pedcart for her father.

"His cart is broken, Great One," she murmured. "It is our livelihood. Father needs a new cart to carry the tourists."

The deep voice rumbled again, a little reverberation adding to the sense of barely contained powers.

"As you have spoken, child...so shall it be—"

At that moment, the swirling, twinkling apparition of the _djinn_ dissolved into a maelstrom of churning, roiling clouds, streaked with flashes of light. It was like watching a thunderstorm in miniature, from the inside.

When the storm began to subside, the barest outlines of a structure could be seen enveloped in the thick fog. The fog dissolved, slowly at first, then with speed, to reveal the front seat and handles of a new pedcart. Its wheels dripped with moisture and sunlight shone from the supple leather seats in the back.

The crowd was silent for a moment, then erupted into cheers and gasps. Menaka stared wide-eyed at the new pedcart, inching her way forward to tentatively put a finger along the handles, tracing the smooth curve of the metal.

For fun, Singh reached down and honked the horn a few times, startling everyone. The crowd laughed.

"You see what a gift the great _djinn_ has brought you, little one. The _djinn_ I have in my possession can do the same for every one of you." Singh pointedly stared at each face in the front row of the circle of onlookers. "Such a powerful _djinn_ , such a powerful servant is available to you, today, _right now_ , for a very special price. You will not believe the deal I can make for you. My friends, you cannot leave this bazaar without experiencing what this amazing servant can do for you—"

Johnny Winger leaned over to Dana Tallant, standing alongside.

"Not bad nano, if you ask me. Config changes were quick. He managed to hide some of the frizziness with smoke."

Tallant nodded. "A little clunky in the conversion, if you ask me. But showmanship trumps everything. Like a magician...he kept their attention away from the nuts and bolts."

"Where's 'Anderson'?"

Tallant indicated somewhere behind them. Winger turned, stood on his tiptoes. Then he saw the face of the para-human swarm, easing forward through the crowd.

Winger chuckled to himself. To Tallant: "There so much nano in the air around here, nobody's noticed that 'Anderson's a little frizzy around the edges."

"Or that he sometimes walks right through vendor carts. Hey, Anderson, what about that swarm? That little girl bought the whole pitch."

Presently, 'Anderson' eased up alongside the two of them. His voice was somewhat hollow, at a higher frequency than normal human speech, and uni-directed to Tallant and Winger's ears alone.

*** _I detect swarm is a low-level assembler formation, with crude config routines and poorly optimized config changes...detecting no quantum coupler emissions...basic processor core...this demonstration is little more than a standard fabricator with visual effects modules_ ***

"You're probably right," Winger conceded. The Q2 and BioShield intelligence briefing had clued them in to some of the more common practices around Kolkata. It was normal for fab hawks like Najipoor Singh to sell the basic fabricator shells cheap and the processor cores and matter drivers dearly...the better to get unwary customers hooked and reel them in like fish.

Traffic in unlicensed, souped-up fabs made for a brisk black market, in Kolkata and around Bengal and Bangladesh and Burma, indeed throughout South Asia and the Indian Ocean littoral.

_Prime Red Hammer hunting grounds_ , Winger had remarked to the briefers. Along with thriving cartels in unregulated genetic enhancements like _twist_ , the traffic in fabs and what had been termed bad nano was booming in Kolkata, so much so that Quantum Corps and local BioShield cops had been overwhelmed. Red Hammer also did a thriving business in fab driver programming—with the right patches and algorithms, a good fab driver could create literally anything except organics. Life itself was still too complex in code to hack successfully. Winger figured it was only a matter of time before that barrier was broken. And what they couldn't create on their own, Red Hammer stole or kidnapped. All across the subcontinent, an epidemic of nanohead and atomgrabber kidnappings had exploded in recent years.

"Come on—" Winger muttered to Tallant. He stepped out of the crowd, followed by Tallant, 'Anderson' , Barnes and the rest of the task force.

Winger went up to Singh, smiling at little Menaka proudly showing off the new pedcart to her still-astonished father.

"We want to buy." He leveled an even gaze at the fab hawk, who was busily taking orders and exchanging rupees with eager customers.

At first, Singh didn't acknowledge them. Winger moved closer, standing right beside the trading table and raised his voice.

"A very large order, my friend. I represent Euro money...a lot of it. An untapped market—"

That got Singh's attention. He looked up, one fist crammed with rupee notes and rubbed his black moustache thoughtfully with the other hand, jerking his thumb behind.

"Meet me inside the tent...five minutes." He went back to his selling and haggling.

Winger motioned for Barnes, Reaves and two other troopers, all in civilian garb, to form a discreet perimeter around the outside of the tent. He wanted to have Najipoor Singh's undivided attention for a few minutes, without interruption.

Tallant and 'Anderson' followed Winger inside.

Inside the tent, four tables formed a large square, with huge cushions and thick rugs scattered around. Incense and other elements burned from smoking pots in the corners. A large antique safe squatted on ornate gilded legs in one corner. The safe was enveloped in obvious barrier nano—a faint mist sparkled and twinkled around it.

'Anderson' went over, almost gliding as he moved toward the safe. A hand went out and sparks flew where the assembler swarms collided. Electron bond disrupters fizzed and soon the barrier nano dissolved into nothing.

"How the hell did you do that?" Tallant asked.

'Anderson' smiled faintly, a crooked, uneven smile that had once sent shivers down her spine. The swarm was still learning the nuances of human facial expressions.

*** _Crude assembler swarm...very loose...poorly coordinated...I used bond disrupters to penetrate and reset primary config algorithms_ ***

"Jesus," Winger said. "I wish you could have done that at Shavindra."

At that moment, Najipoor Singh stuck his head inside and came into the tent. Immediately, he frowned, realizing the safe barrier had been breached. He extracted a coilgun from beneath his kaftan waistband and leveled it at Winger.

"You will please to leave my safe alone...what have you done to the shield?"

"Hold on, pal," Winger said. "We just want to do some business. You've got some pretty slick nano going on here."

Singh relaxed his grip on the coilgun slightly, but he was still suspicious. He squinted at 'Anderson.'

"You bring your own _djinn_...what kind of trick is this? You are interested maybe in taking my business...I am here at the Bridge for many weeks—" he rubbed his fingers together indicating payoffs and bribes "—very expensive this location."

Winger shook his head. "No, no...it's nothing at all like that. We want to place an order...a large order. Euro money...big money here. You have fabs we can examine?"

Singh finally lowered the coilgun, keeping a close eye on 'Anderson,' and tucked it in his waistband. "Ah...fabs...there are so many dealers in Kolkata...and I am just a poor peddler...what kind of fabs do you seek?" He poured himself a tiny cup of tea, offering some to the others. All declined.

"Something kind of special," Dana Tallant told him. "Enhancements for 'Anderson' here...for his processor core."

'Anderson' brightened at the mention of his name. The slightly misshapen smile broadened. His voice came out like tinny and slurred. _***Pleased to meet you...I am Anderson...I hope we will be able to do business...you have impressive swarm systems here...***_

Singh was curious. He came up to 'Anderson', placed his fingers experimentally into the swarm. A slight buzz and ticklish resistance gently pushed his fingers out.

"Some tweaking is needed, yes...I can see this. Notice the edges of the swarm...trouble holding config...it is a processor problem. I can get you upgrades...modules with new effectors, new algorithms—" Singh cleared his throat. "You know this entity should be in containment. It is illegal in Bengal to operate beyond containment."

Winger glanced briefly at Tallant, who nodded ever so slightly. Singh was taking the bait. They had programmed ANAD before ever leaving Table Top to react in just this way...simulating a para-human form that was almost, but not quite, believable. In truth, ANAD was capable of more, a lot more. They had been counting on a fab hacker like Singh being just greedy enough to overcome his natural suspicions of a sting.

"Yes, yes...I understand all that," Winger waved off his concerns. "But this is Kolkata, is it not? Every street corner is thick with loose nano... _angels_ and _djinn_ everywhere. Everybody's got a halo of some type. We saw what you did with the little girl. I must say I was impressed...all of us were. You're just the one to help us with 'Anderson' here."

Singh beamed, even as he understood he was being stroked. "It is true. Howrath Bridge has the best hackers." He slowly circled 'Anderson,' critically examining the swarm from every angle. "A very good likeness, I must say. All _djinn_ have flaws...it's simply a matter of hiding them, drawing your eyes to the good parts and away from the bad parts."

Tallant said, "Then you'll help us?"

Singh pursed his lips, clucked at the possibilities he could envision with this foreign swarm. "And what do you want of this swarm, this 'Anderson'?"

"It's not what we want," Winger said, "It's what he wants. He wants to seem as human as possible. To step outside and pass for a real human."

For a moment, Singh said nothing. When he laughed, it was a hoarse, coughing kind of gurgle. "Many have these dreams...especially the children. All of us want the perfect companion." Singh smiled faintly. "Alas, perfection is only for Shiva, only for the gods."

Winger said, "Name your price."

Singh screwed up his face, idly fingering his moustache, as he considered all the angles. He didn't even know these Euros. Were they Bengal or maybe National Police? Maybe even BioShield? Still, they smelled like money.

Singh reached into a pocket of his kaftan and pulled out a small device. He pressed it into the palm of Winger. "This will give you directions to another place here in Kolkata. Be there at 10:00 pm tonight. Alone, just the two of you, along with this 'Anderson.'"

Winger took the locator and pocketed it discreetly.

Singh said, "I have many friends in the streets. If you try to cheat me, I will know of it. Give me a name."

Winger had an ID card all ready. He gave it to the hacker. "All the details are there. My name's Willoughby. Jacob Willoughby. England. In fact, Yorkshire highlands."

Singh thumbed the stud on the side of the card, watching the data and pix scroll before his eyes. He nodded gravely.

"Ten p.m. tonight. Don't be late. Now you must leave—"

Winger indicated to Tallant and 'Anderson' that they should do as the hacker said. The three of them left the tent.

Outside, more swarms done up like _djinn_ and angels and all kind of apparitions were entertaining the crowd. Other hackers had ringed the promenade with stalls and booths and were busily taking orders. Food carts circulated through the throng trailing smells of lamb and curry. Giant posters of swamis and priests and Bollywood film stars hung from poles.

Winger alerted his discreet perimeter detail by crewnet. "All posts...report in."

One by one, the rest of the Detachment gave their reports. Winger told them to meet up on the other side of the race track.

Ten minutes later, the Detachment had gathered outside the posting gates as lines of bettors placed their bets and surged inside the track. Bells sounded the end of post time. The first race would begin in five minutes.

"Think this hacker's legit?" Tallant asked.

Winger shrugged. "Hard to say. From what I could see, he'd got quite an operation around here. He seems to run a lot of territory on this side of the river."

Just then, 'Anderson's voice crackled through the crowd noise, uni-directed to Winger and Tallant.

*** _Proximity warning...there is a surveillance swarm nearby...mass centroid is sixteen meters on bearing two six five degrees...swarm is configged as Drosophila funebris...detecting effectors and molecule groups optimized for visual, auditory and EM emissions_ ***

"Flies," Tallant muttered. She looked around. The place was thick with fruit flies and swarming clouds of insects.

"Yeah," said Mighty Mite Barnes. "The perfect cover."

"So we're being reconned," Winger said. "I'd have been surprised if we weren't. Can you shield us?"

*** _Affirmative...I will detach sub-swarm element to create interference shield_ ***

The process took several minutes. As he was assembling a shield, 'Anderson' grayed out a little and became even fuzzier around the edges. Nobody seemed to notice.

"Where is this place we're going?"

Winger activated the locator and waved it over his wrist scanner. Coordinates and details along with the latest Q2 intelligence appeared on his corneal viewer. "North, along the river. Durganagar, it looks like. Seems to be a warehouse district, from the pix."

"Could be a fab lab," offered Barnes, looking around uneasily at the gathering flies. She swatted at some...they seemed to be ordinary flies.

"I doubt this joker would take us to a major lab without checking us out...although that may be what the recon bugs are doing now." Winger snapped off the locator. "Let's get going. We should do a little recon ourselves."

"Jeez, this place gives me the creeps," said Tallant, as they moved out, heading for the Howrath bridge. "It's out of control...I can't tell who's real and who's a cloud of bugs."

'Anderson' buzzed angrily. *** _It would please this swarm if humans would refrain from referring to our natural configs as 'bugs.' ANAD are swarming entities. It is our programming. This is not so different from your own cities and urban regions_ ***

Tallant snorted. "ANAD, don't get your panties in a wad, okay? It was just a figure of speech."

Barnes noted, "My, he's touchy today. Maybe it's all the other swarms...out of containment. It's giving him ideas."

The Detachment moved through heavy crowds, crossing the bridge over the muddy, sluggish Hooghly River and headed on foot north up the NH-4, the Shalimar Road. They passed a stadium and a college, and moved into a commercial district after a time.

Winger's corneal viewer guided him unerringly toward the coordinates. When they were inside of a kilometer from their destination, it flashed a warning.

"ANAD, is that recon swarm still with us?"

*** _Affirmative...ANAD detects low level nanobotic activity less than twenty meters south, centroid bearing one five zero degrees...swarm is diffuse and configged as fruit flies_ ***

"Acknowledged." Winger called a halt to their march. "This looks like the place."

They were in a warehouse district called Barahanagar, barely three blocks east of the river banks. A light fog had enveloped the area as the sun went down. Through the fog, the nanotroopers could make out acres of low-rise brick buildings, with slate and tin roofs dominating the view. Narrow roads separated the buildings, really little more than footpaths, most of which were thick with small lorries and carts navigating the confusing warren of lanes.

Winger studied the image on his corneal implant. Q2 had transmitted some sat video of the region, taken only a day before. He checked the coordinates from the imagery with the locator that Singh had given him. _Bingo._ It was a match. The coordinates were centered on a grimy red brick building on the far corner. The address was given as Number 17, Subhash Street. Flocks of pigeons and seagulls and other flying things strutted and screeched from a roof draped with cables and lines.

"That's the one?" Tallant asked.

Winger nodded. "Let's get a basic perimeter set up around this block. Barnes, you and Reaves take that side—" he pointed toward the intersection. "Turbo, you take Spite and Calderon and secure the alley approach. ANAD, you and Tallant are with me." He eyed the sky overhead, now streaked purple with fading sunlight on tropical clouds. "We'll wait awhile, make it nice and dark before we move in. Say about 2200 hours."

*** _What config shall I assume_?*** ANAD asked.

"Do 'Anderson' for now, ANAD," Winger told him. "I don't think we really fooled anyone at the race track but Singh said that our supplier would be expecting three of us."

*** _Acknowledged...changing config now_...***

Behind them, a small cyclone of dust motes began to swirl silently, gathering itself into the slowly materializing apparition of a human being, a ghostly presence that flickered and wavered even as it solidified.

Just before ten o'clock, Winger stirred from his hiding place behind a broken down old jitney. "Move out," he ordered over the crewnet. Tallant and 'Anderson' made their way through a throng of screeching birds across a potholed street and came up to a steel door at the corner of the warehouse. Lights from inside shone through cracks around the frame.

It was open.

Cautiously, the two nanotroopers entered, followed by the para-human assembler swarm.

The interior was a cavernous but dusty open space broken up by row after row of columns and pallets of equipment stacked nearly to the ceiling.

"Looks like a –" but Dana Tallant never finished her sentence.

They had walked right into the middle of a live swarm.

"It's a MOB!" Winger yelled. He started to back out, fumbling for the coilgun at his waist but it was already too late. The mobility obstruction barrier had been triggered and was now gathering around him, cutting off all escape.

Behind him, Dana Tallant was fighting the same battle.

Even as Winger and Tallant became entangled in the writhing mesh, 'Anderson' had seen the MOB coming. The para-human swarm quickly re-configged, dissolving into scattered knots of assemblers, eventually breaking down into little more than dust motes. ANAD detached a small sub-element to engage the MOB bots, but its programming quickly overrode this. Third Rule always had precedence over Fourth Rule. ANAD re-absorbed the sub-element and remained configged as dust.

" _I can't...get my...weapon...loose!!"_ Winger choked out. Slowly, inexorably, the MOB bots formed a tightening noose and forced the nanotrooper into a crouch, then a curled-up ball on the floor.

Dana Tallant fared no better. "Wings...I can't...breathe...."

Both were soon gasping and clawing for air when the first humans showed up. Through the sparkling mesh that had enveloped him, Winger could just make out the distorted faces of three men, all vaguely Bengali from their turbans and dress. Their voices were low and muffled.

"Grab them...we'll take them to—" but the rest was garbled as Winger thrashed furiously inside the suffocating prison of the MOB net.

He felt himself hoisted up, then dragged roughly along the warehouse floor. The netball bounced and rocked down several flights of stairs. Winger couldn't be sure but he assumed Tallant had suffered the same fate. He had an embodied ANAD swarm in his shoulder capsule...one button pressed on his wristpad would have launched the assemblers and he could have been free of the MOB and breathing real air in moments.

_No...got to stay with this_...he told himself.

They were in the belly of the beast now. With a little luck, he and Tallant and ANAD would find some connection here with Shavindra and be able to breach the barrier bots there and shut down that quantum generator.

If he didn't suffocate to death first.

_Jeez,_ he thought, _I had forgotten what being MOB'ed feels like._ He felt like he was being smothered in a prickly, stinging quilt, wrapped up tighter and tighter.

As the MOB net bounced along, he felt every single bump and dip and imperfection in the floor. The bruising ride lasted almost ten minutes; it seemed like hours.

Then the bumping and bouncing stopped. The great squeeze of the barrier mesh lessened and he was finally able to breathe again. Presently, the MOB was peeled apart and 'unzipped.'

Winger found himself curled up like a baby, staring up at two swarthy, mustachioed faces.

"Welcome to _Bengali Djinn,_ " said the nearer face. "Help him out—"

Strong unseen hands peeled away the remnants of the mesh and helped Winger stand upright. A few feet away, Dana Tallant was getting the same assistance.

Winger wondered momentarily what had happened to ANAD.

The MOB nets had been dragged into something resembling an office, with chairs, tables, a bare desk and some cabinets. Winger soon became aware of others in the room. Faces appeared, then more faces and it was then that he realized the faces were para-human swarms...nanobotic formations gathered into simulacra of human faces.

Only faces. There were no bodies.

Winger realized that he and Tallant were surrounded by two men and literally scores of swarm-faces floating about the room like disembodied spirits.

Winger pulled the locator from his pocket and handed it to the one who had talked.

"It's from Najipoor Singh. Howrath Bridge. We're interested in fabs. To sell in the Euro zone."

The one who had talked scowled back at him. His was a fleshy, saturnine face with slit eyes, black button eyes, and a twitch to his pock-marked left cheek. Marwari Barghan turned the locator over in his fingers like a winning card and thumbed a control stud on the side. Instantly, a 3-D projection of their encounter in Singh's tent at the racetrack played out in mid-air.

Barghan scowled and snapped the locator shut. "Singh is a fool. We knew you were coming."

"Hell of a reception, if you ask me," Dana Tallant muttered. She picked off the last remaining shreds of the mesh and brushed herself off, but not before the other human had patted her down for weapons. He deftly removed her coilgun pistol from a front pocket and held it for inspection.

Winger eyed the knots of nanobot swarms drifting like ghostly disembodied faces about the office. "Looks like we came to the right place. Those are good configs, from the looks of it. You can fab human forms as well?"

Barghan stroked his moustache and strolled among the floating faces. They parted to let him by. He glared back at Winger with a suspicious look, his own face now wreathed by the swarm faces, like a funhouse mirror distortion.

"Well enough. Dust and flies too. We don't get many Euro customers here in Kolkata. At least, none that know what they are doing. How do you come to know of _Bengali Djinn_?"

"We have sources. I ask questions, get some leads, put things together. There aren't that many fab labs who can do what you do—" He swatted at a persistent cloud of flies, and wondered if they really _were_ flies. "Word gets around."

Barghan considered that. "I don't do business with strangers. We should have just MOB'ed you up and dropped you in the river."

"Along with all the others?"

Barghan sniffed. "In this business, personal contacts are important. Nothing is what it seems. So...you are here now. What is it you want?"

"A license," Winger told him. "In Euro, we don't have the fabs you have here. Oh, we do basic replication...simple things like clothes, furniture, jewelry and appliances—but this—" he indicated the floating faces "—there's nothing like this in Euro. There's a huge market, untapped, just waiting for the right supplier." Winger thumped his chest. "I plan to be that supplier...get a lock on the market."

The fab lord's face showed the barest hint of a smile. Arrogance and ambition...he could work with that. " _Bengali Djinn_ doesn't deal in—what do you call it?—the walk-in trade. Bengal has hundreds of labs, all over the delta. Why should I do business with you?"

Winger had anticipated just this question. "Because you want to expand. Open up new markets. If you give me a license and I market your fabs throughout Euro, inside of a year, all other fabs will be obsolete. Four hundred million customers...a virgin market...can you afford to pass up a chance at that?"

Barghan's face was momentarily obscured by several floating faces. It was then that Winger realized that the floating swarms weren't the only nano in the office. Barghan had hacked himself as well, or at least, had hacked his own facial neuromusculature. Even as Winger and Tallant looked on, the fab lord's face kneaded itself like a pile of wet dough and formed a new face, still somewhat recognizable as Barghan but with puffier cheeks and fuller lips. The lips parted into a broader smile.

"We take no chances in this business, Mr.--?"

"Willoughby...Jacob Willoughby."

"Some of us have been treated. You might even say enhanced...do you like it? Some of us haven't. It's better for business if a fab lord has many identities."

"Keep ahead of the competition," Winger agreed.

"In a manner of speaking. BioShield sometimes makes business a challenge. A good fab lord has to accessorize, stay up with the fashions." Barghan's eyes narrowed. "You intrigue me, Mr. Willoughby. My...er, sources—" he indicated the dozens of floating swarm faces "—tell me you could be a plant...or a spy. But my curiosity is piqued. You could also be just what you say...an opening into a new market."

"Then you'll grant us a license?"

Barghan chuckled. "It's not quite so simple as that. You are not known to me, Mr. Willoughby. We'll have to check you out, see for ourselves what you're all about. I'm sure you understand."

"Could I see your lab? I could take a description, maybe some samples, back to Euro. Prep the market a little."

Barghan was skeptical. "Mr. Willoughby, you ask a difficult question. Perhaps you do business differently in the Euro. I'll have to check with my partners. What you ask is...unusual, to say the least."

_Bingo,_ Winger thought. "I'd just like to be able to jump start the market. Kind of an opening day promotion."

Barghan pressed a few buttons on his wristpad. Instantly, the floating swarm faces began to dissolve, swirling like hordes of fireflies in the air, and gathering into new forms and shapes before their very eyes.

Winger and Tallant moved out of the way as the swarms quickly coalesced and began gathering into recognizable outlines of chairs and tables and even a small divan.

The gathering and assembly of a formal parlor took less than five minutes. Winger and Tallant were amazed. When the config change had been done, the small spartan office into which they had been dragged now resembled a much more comfortable sitting room. Still materializing were divans and thick cushions, ornate tables and bronze lamps, complete with Victorian wall sconces and a massive oak desk along one wall, surrounded by embroidered tapestries. The place now looked like a parlor from a Thomas Hardy novel, circa 1895.

"Impressive," Winger admitted.

Dana Tallant tried out the divan and found it springy and comfortable. She ran her hands along the still solidifying fabric. "Quick config change. And the textures seem about right."

Barghan beamed at the response his little demonstration had gotten. "Tea and scones, even a real Bengali treat... _sev puri..._ will be on the table in about—" he checked his watch "—two to three minutes."

Winger was amazed. "You can fab organic stuff? What kind of drivers do you have? Organics have always been too complex to fab with molecular assemblers."

Barghan offered a thin smile. "We've developed a few tricks of our own. If you will excuse me...Sevi here will see to your needs."

'Sevi' turned out to be a para-human swarm, assembled to full-body dimensions and decked out to closely resemble a Bengali house servant. The swarm lurched forward with a tray of porcelain cups and a small filigreed tea pot, now steaming with hot tea.

Tallant took one of the tea cups and gently sipped. Winger tried a scone and chewed thoughtfully on the hard bread.

"Looks like this is the place," Tallant said. She was aware that 'Sevi' and likely other invisible swarms were sucking up everything they said. They would have to choose their words carefully.

"Quite a setup," Winger agreed, crumbs falling out of his mouth. He washed the bread down with tea. "They've got technology nobody expected."

The two of them prowled around the parlor, exploring the textures and surfaces of the newly formed objects. Most were solid as the real thing; for all practical purposes, they were the real thing.

A few objects were like 'Sevi' himself...loose aggregations of nanobots with only a surface appearance of reality. It was clear that _Bengali Djinn_ had somehow acquired technology that even Q2 and other Intelligence types at UNIFORCE didn't know about it.

Johnny Winger was carefully examining the outlines of 'Sevi' when a strange buzzing came into his head. He shook his head, thinking he had inadvertently breached some invisible barrier around 'Sevi' but the buzzing persisted.

It was ANAD. The quantum coupler circuit.

*** _ANAD to Base...are you receiving this transmission?...ANAD to Base_...***

Winger looked up abruptly and caught Dana Tallant's eye. The nanotrooper was turning over a crumbly scone in her hand, trying to figure out how Barghan and his hackers had managed to crack organics and config pretty tasty food.

Winger pointed to his head and mouthed _It's ANAD...on the coupler._ He shrugged, unable to explain how the 'bot had managed to open a coupler circuit.

It wasn't necessary to vocalize when using the coupler. Winger knew he had to act as if nothing were going on. Both of them figured 'Sevi' was at least as much a spy as a house servant.

ANAD, you old goat, where the hell are you?

As the conversation unfolded, Winger continued a nonchalant tour of the parlor, idly examining pieces of furniture, turning over brass figurines in his hand as if studying their form and texture. He hoped 'Sevi' and any other swarms in the area would have nothing they could vacuum up to give away what was happening.

*** _ANAD configged as dust motes when the MOB attack came...attached to outer jacket surface of suspect human...ANAD now with suspect...active surveillance in all bands_ ***

Jeez, ANAD, you could have let us know. Tallant and me nearly suffocated in that MOB net.

*** _ANAD apologizes for confusion...opportunity came to recon suspect to support mission objectives...suspect now in a comm center...open link to other humans not in the area_ ***

Winger could tell that Tallant wasn't receiving anything. Not surprising, as her implant buffer wasn't tuned to this ANAD version. He went to her and silently mouthed what was happening, trying to shield what he was doing from 'Sevi'. In the corner of the parlor, 'Sevi' stirred and began moving in their direction. Its metallic voice came out like a staticky buzz.

"Could I assishht you in any way?"

Tallant moved to intercept 'Sevi' and distract the para-human while Winger continued with ANAD.

ANAD, what kind of link...what other humans?

There was a short interval, then *** _ANAD has detected several identifier words...transmitting string now...Souvranamh...resonator...parsing vocalizations for more identifiers now_ ***

ANAD's report sent a chill down Winger's spine. Souvranamh? There was only one man with that name and he was a card-carrying member of Red Hammer's Ruling Council. One of the top _neurotraficantes_ in all East Asia. Q2 had a file on the Thai crook a mile long.

Are you sure about that, ANAD?

*** _Affirmative, Base...Souvranamh is vocalized twenty two times in the message string...ANAD attempting to gather acoustics and photons from return transmission...this will be a bit tricky_ \--***

Winger turned to let Tallant know the good news—that _Bengali Djinn_ was either a front for Red Hammer or had links at highest levels with the cartel.

What he saw made him look twice. Tallant was attempting to engage in some kind of distracting conversation with 'Sevi' but the para-human swarm was literally flowing over and around her and continuing on its way across the parlor toward him. Even as he watched, the structure of 'Sevi's' face had begun to break down, like a mirror distorting an image. The swarm was changing config. Something had triggered a change.

Winger grabbed Tallant by the arm and yanked her out of the way. He knew he had a basic ANAD master embedded in his shoulder capsule, but it had no bells and whistles. It was just a barebones master assembler and clearly no match for whatever made up 'Sevi.'

_Better not to chance being discovered,_ he decided. He and Tallant moved to another corner of the parlor. The re-configuring 'Sevi' swarm changed course to follow them.

What the hell was happening...another MOB attack?

At that moment, Marwari Barghan came back into the parlor, this time with three other men. Real humans, Winger was sure.

Barghan saw what was happening. Quickly, he pressed a few buttons on his wristpad and the 'Sevi' swarm began to dissipate into dust motes and twinkling pinpricks of light. Moments later, only a barely discernible fog hung in the air, a not-so-subtle reminder that Barghan wouldn't tolerate any tricks from his guests.

"What happened?" Winger asked. "Your servant started coming after us...bad config...something set him off?"

Barghan sniffed. "A programmed maneuver, Mr. er, Willoughby. 'Sevi' is instructed to attend to all our guests' needs and to see that they don't...hurt themselves or anything else."

Winger held up his hands. "Honest, I didn't touch a thing."

"Perhaps. In any case, I have consulted with my partners. They've agreed to your proposition. So, we'll take a short tour of the lab here and give you some idea of what we can do with fabs. I think you'll be impressed."

One of Barghan's goons motioned them out, with the barrel of a coilgun aimed squarely at them.

"I already am—" Winger said. Tallant was right behind him. Meanwhile, the nanotrooper tried to get a link back with ANAD.

Winger and Tallant were escorted at gunpoint deeper into the warehouse complex. They went down two flights of stairs and through a maze of corridors. From the street, the warehouse had seemed a simple enough commercial structure. But Barghan was showing them level after level. How far down did it go?

For Johnny Winger, the trip brought back unpleasant memories of the Paryang monastery.

Eventually, they came to a lab complex buried well below the warehouse main floor. Winger recognized the heavy doors, seals and shielding of some serious nanobotic work. The entire complex was one big containment vessel.

"Our main lab," Barghan announced.

Winger received a nudge in the kidneys from the coilgun of his escort. He and Tallant went in.

It was clear that _Bengali Djinn_ had a well-equipped fab lab set up in this warehouse. Row after row of containment pods and control consoles were manned by scores of technicians, almost like an assembly line. He had to remind himself this was no legitimate business. The _Djinn_ were distributing illegal fabs all over south Asia, bollixing up the atmosphere, the food supply and the water supply with uncontrolled nanobotic swarms. Local economies were being trashed every year, with things that people once bought now being made in insane quantities, flooding stores, street gutters, rivers and landfills with the detritus of fabricators gone wild. Images of cornucopias spilling mountains of goods and products into the streets came into Winger's mind; he had already seen it around the Howrath Bridge, all throughout Kolkata. The _Djinn_ 's fabs and swarms were rapidly wrecking economies and societies mired in poverty for generations.

What once had been only a black market in unlicensed matter engines and fabs was rapidly becoming the only market. Money no longer had any meaning.

"We handle the programming here, as well as assembly and testing."

Winger was impressed and intrigued. "Cores and drivers as well?"

"All of it, end to end. Whatever the market wants."

"No matter the cost," Winger observed.

Barghan's face darkened. "We're in business, Mr. Willoughby, same as you. We provide something people want. What they do with it is their own business."

_And that's why UNIFORCE regulates fabs,_ Winger thought. But he couldn't afford to blow his cover now.

"I'm interested in getting a license to do cores and drivers."

Barghan was skeptical. "That takes special expertise. You have the programmers?"

"I can get them."

"Atomgrabbers aren't cheap, my friend. I hope you know what you are doing."

Barghan motioned them to a smaller lab, off the main complex. They went through heavy sealed doors. Inside, several techs were hunched over a console, manipulating something inside a containment vessel.

"This is our enhancement station." He tapped an older man on the shoulder. The tech was a sun-bronzed, wizened gray-haired man with a gray stubble of beard. "Rakeesh Dhara."

Winger shook hands with the man. Tallant did likewise.

"Rakeesh is in charge of our neuro and genetic work."

"A twisthead—" Winger said.

Dhara's face flushed red. "I'm an artist...this is my canvas—" He pointed to the monitor. The nanoscale viewer showed a scaffolding covered with molecule groups, draped like grapes over a trellis. "Ribosomal modifications...it transcribes DNA like any ribosome. But it makes a few changes in the process. The proteins that come out are different from what your body makes."

"Rakeesh makes implants here. The incubator allows him to stitch together neural implants for just about anything...your brain, a dog's brain, a fruitfly, a fish. Rakeesh has a real talent for doing _angels_...he's the best."

"Angels? Some new kind of nano I've never heard of?"

Barghan shook his head. "Bengalis are very spiritual people. We've configged our assembler swarms, like 'Sevi' here, to appeal to that love of spiritual things. Angels are simply para-human swarms designed and programmed to resemble family ancestors or loved ones, great swamis of the past—the one you see in containment here is the famous Swami Vivekananda—fantasy sex objects, even actual guardian angels. It's a rapidly growing part of our business."

"No doubt," said Winger. "Half of Kolkata isn't even human. It's getting hard to tell the difference."

"Exactly," beamed Barghan . "We have been most successful at this little niche business. Truthfully, we are now expanding into Muslim territory, re-creating ancient _djinn_ and other great spirits."

Winger got a signal over his coupler circuit. It was ANAD. He motioned with his eyes for Dana Tallant to step in and keep the conversation going.

Tallant understood. She bent closer to the viewer. "What are all these doodads here...some kind of new effectors?"

Rakeesh Dhara was proud to show off his latest creation. "The peptide chains have unusually strong covalent bonds...here, let me show you—"

While Tallant engaged with Dhara and Barghan looked on, Winger feigned attention and clicked in to the coupler circuit.

ANAD, what is it? Where the hell are you?

*** _One level below and two hundred and twenty meters distant on a bearing one five five degrees_ ***

Fine. What's up now?

*** _ANAD has detected entanglement pulses in the vicinity...ANAD investigated...ANAD discovered a miniature quantum generator under test at the base of this complex***_

Winger smiled faintly at Barghan's inquisitive look. "Fascinating, really—" he muttered, hoping the fab lord couldn't detect coupler signals.

ANAD, are you sure? A miniature quantum generator? Could it be part of the Shavindra temple machine?

*** _Unknown at this time...ANAD will investigate further...try to penetrate computer files_ ***

"—and the hydrogen abstractors are also a new design," Dhara was saying. Tallant nodded, indicating great interest in the details while Barghan studied Winger curiously, wondering.

"You have quite a complex," Winger said. "We're both impressed. Now we should talk business. Is there somewhere we could go?"

Barghan pointed the way. "This way, please...I wish to know more about this Euro market."

They left the containment lab and came to a small conference room nearby. Winger pulled out a PDA and set it to project as he narrated a well-rehearsed cover story. The PDA's recognizer received his voice signals and called files and images to go along with what Winger was saying. The entire presentation was a canned speech pulled together by Q2 from intel sources, designed to sound and look good and get any fab lord drooling over the possibilities.

Winger had turned over the details to Dana Tallant and was simply studying the reactions of Barghan and his cronies when ANAD called again over the coupler circuit.

What is it, ANAD? Jeez, I hope this transmission can't be detected.

*** _Not to worry, Base...ANAD uses a random entanglement state switching algorithm...ANAD just penetrated master control system files for the quantum generator_ ***

Great, ANAD...super. What did you find? Anything we can use?

*** _ANAD has copied state vector files and control laws for generator operation...files are encrypted but ANAD has file copies stored in main core memory of master assembler...ANAD withdrawing now...Base, ANAD needs to download files...memory overload warning...memory overload could impair basic assembler functions_ ***

Winger could tell ANAD was in trouble. The coupler circuit always got staticky when something went wrong. The files he had copied from the generator computer were so big that his normal functions were being affected.

ANAD, can you change config okay? Can you replicate?

*** _Config generator is slow...trying file compression now but encrypted files not in recognized format...ANAD does not wish to lose vital data_ ***

_We've got what we came for,_ Winger thought. _Time to get the hell out of here._ He waited until the programmed presentation came to a convenient stopping point.

"The Euro zone is the next great frontier for your kind of fabs," Winger told them, picking up the sales pitch. "If we could work out a—" but he stopped in mid-sentence. Barghan had a peculiar look on his face. Part grim concern, part deadly resolve, part something Winger had never seen before. He wondered if the fab lord's face modifier bots had gone haywire.

"It seems the situation has changed," Barghan was saying. His face quickly returned to its normal impassive scowl, as if a Reset button had been pushed. "Now...I must really insist that you stay with us a bit longer—" At Barghan's command, a great swirl of dust motes in the air silently began gathering form behind Winger and Tallant.

"Look out!" Tallant cried out. Instinctively, she tapped a concealed button on her wrist, intending to launch her own embedded ANAD swarm as a defensive shield but she was too late.

The dust motes gathered quickly into a thickening, gelatinous mist and fell upon the nanotroopers like a strong wind. It was a MOB attack.

Winger flailed at the bot swarms while Tallant was quickly enveloped. She had blown their cover with her attempt to launch ANAD. The MOB swarm had fallen on her before she could complete the launch sequence. Now she was pinned tight and being forced steadily to the floor by the smothering mass of nanoscale bots in exponential overdrive.

"Barghan—" Winger grunted out, fighting the swarm but knowing full well it was hopeless. "—you've got us all...wrong...we want to make a deal...work something out....make a big...buy here—"

Barghan's face was a mask of contempt, almost theatrical in intensity and edge. His facial bots were working overtime, stoked by a dopamine cascade in the hippocampal buffers inside his head. "Behind my back, you steal from me and cheat me. _Bengali Djinn_ deals very harshly with cheats. Who are you working for?"

What had triggered Barghan's change of mind? As he was steadily forced down to the floor, Winger figured the fab lord had somehow detected ANAD's penetration.

" _You've got....it all...wrong, Barghan_ ," Winger squeezed out, but the fab lord wasn't listening.

"Get the lorry ready, Tamil. We'll take them down to the river and do what we should have done before."

Barghan squatted down to peer at Johnny Winger, all enveloped and gasping inside the MOB net.

"You believe I am just some poor Indian _sahib,_ a fool who doesn't know what's going on? Your own swarms are picking my plate clean even while we talk. You think _Bengali Djinn_ can't see things like this? " Barghan stood up. "Take them to the loading dock."

Tamil and another man each grabbed the handle of one MOB net and dragged Winger and Dana Tallant out of the conference room and down the hall. It was another bumping, bruising ride, down stairs, and across uneven floors.

_Here we go again,_ Winger thought. There was little he could do but curl himself up as tight as he could and try to ride out the trip.

A small flatbed Lectro-Lorry had backed up to a loading dock at street level. Through the narrow mesh, Winger could just make out the dim outlines of stacked pallets and crates filling the dock area. He and Tallant were roughly dragged and kicked into the back cargo bed of the small truck and the nets strapped down. Altogether, he could make out two, maybe three other men. Presumably all _Bengali Djinn_ , Barghan's minions.

The sound of their conversation was muffled. Winger tried to reach the button on his wrist that would launch his own embedded ANAD. Even the barebones assembler would make quick work of the MOB barrier, but he just could not contort himself enough to reach the button. For the moment, he was trapped. The other MOB net was visible next to him. He hoped Dana was safe inside.

After a few minutes' discussion, the lorry cargo bed was closed up and two men climbed inside the cab. The lorry started up, its small electric motor humming efficiently as the vehicle pulled away from the dock and out of the parking lot.

It was dark, Winger could see, still night, but how late he could not tell. He knew there was a small perimeter detail from the Detachment scattered around the block, but unable to reach his wristpad, he couldn't contact them. He tried contacting the loose swarm but ANAD didn't answer. Possibly the MOB was obstructing or jamming the coupler signal, although quantum signals were supposed to be unjammable. But Red Hammer...and make no mistake, this was a Red Hammer front... had surprised them before.

Maybe Barnes or Calderon will get suspicious and follow the vehicle, he hoped. It seemed a faint hope.

The drive was a short one. The lorry eased down a shallow incline and Winger was sure he could smell the river. A cool moist breeze filtered into the MOB net and he could hear the sound of waves lapping. Horns honked in the distance, so they weren't far from a road, perhaps a bridge.

Two men got out of the cab. One was Tamil Selvan, one of Barghan's musclemen, neuro-enhanced and twisted with all kinds of genetic trash inside. Tamil headed back to the lorry cargo bed to unload their unwilling cargo.

"Come on...we don't want anyone to see us here," he muttered to his passenger. The other man climbed out of the cab and headed aft as well. Tamil knew him as Omdurman, kind of new, just came on a few months ago, as far as he knew. Omdurman glided down the muddy embankment, barely touching the ground. Tamil didn't notice how Omdurman's left leg 'sliced' right through the edge of the lorry rear bumper. It was too dark to see.

"Help me get these jokers out...we'll roll them down over there...right into the river. Those bushes will hide the balls until they sink."

The embankment was below and slightly north of the Bali Road bridge. It was well after midnight but vehicle and pedestrian traffic was still heavy across the bridge. Kolkata never slept. They would have to pick and choose their moment to push the MOB nets into the water.

Omdurman eased up to stand alongside Tamil and helped the shorter man position the two MOB balls for their short drop to a watery grave.

"Okay...Om...get ready...on my count...one...two....—"

But Tamil never finished his countdown. Before he could release the MOB carrying Dana Tallant, Omdurman had rapidly mutated into something else, something completely unexpected.

Tamil saw the light out of the corner of his eyes. He turned and saw that what he had once called Omdurman was now a faintly glowing swarm of nanobotic assemblers, a menacing fog swelling and throbbing with no sound save for the rustle of the bushes and the lap of the river against the bank.

"Om—" Tamil started to cry out, but the swarm was on him in a second, lurching forward with a speed unheard of in assembler formations. Tamil wasn't exactly defenseless himself and tried to pull out a small pod from a pocket, tried to thumb a button on the side of the pod that would launch his own protective bot shield but he fumbled with the pod as the swarm chewed into his arm.

" _AAARRRGGGHHH...my—"_ Tamil lost his footing and fell into the mud and was quickly enveloped in a glowing buzzing, crackling mist. For a few brief seconds, the swarm shone like a small sun as the replications ran their course, Big Banging poor Tamil Selvan into atomic fluff.

Two lovers hanging over the edge of the Bali Road bridge saw the flare of violent disassembly down below and briefly wondered what was going on. But their attentions were soon distracted by friends and 'angels' from nearby, who gathered at the bridge rail to watch the oily waters of the Hooghly River slide languidly beneath the bridge. The burst of light faded as quickly as it had erupted and no one paid any further attention, distracted as they were by nanobotic fireworks all around them.

Omdurman, or rather what Omdurman had become, then turned his attention to the MOB nets clinging precariously to the slope of the river bank.

*** _Base, ANAD here...are you receiving my signal...Base, this is ANAD_ ***

Any reply over the quantum coupler circuit was gibberish and ANAD quickly set to work disassembling the two MOB nets.

ANAD as Omdurman began breaking down, disassembling itself into a swarm. Unseen by passersby on the Bali Road bridge above, the nanobotic swarm swelled into a throbbing cloud of bots, then went after the bots that made up the MOB barrier, starting first with Winger.

For a few moments, there was a small sunburst in the bushes below the bridge, as the two swarms collided. ANAD assaulted the barrier with a special config designed to shred MOB bots in quick time, slashing through the barrier with electron disrupters that made quick work of the relatively weak structures of the MOB assemblers.

Johnny Winger's disheveled head popped out of the disintegrating mesh with a huge gulp of air and a spray of sweat as he shook himself free.

"ANAD...thank God...I thought that might be you...I couldn't get a coupler signal inside...man, it's good to breathe that air—" He wriggled free of the barrier and stood up, a little wobbly.

*** _ANAD detected enemy intentions, when MOB bots were activated...configged as Bengali Djinn and substituted self-swarm as enemy combatant...ANAD was not detected by enemy swarms_ ***

"I don't know how you did it, ANAD, but I'm glad you did...let's get Dana out now—"

The swarm swirled around the debris of the shredded MOB net and broke down the other mesh in similar fashion. Dana Tallant's bruised face and matted hair soon appeared, looking dazed but none the worse for wear. Winger helped her climb out.

She stood and took a few uneasy steps, nearly sliding down the slippery embankment into the river. Winger grabbed her just in time.

"I'd rather not do that again, Wings," she muttered, pulling herself together, flexing her stiff arms and legs.

"Let's get into that truck and head back to the warehouse. I want to work out a new mission with the rest of the Detachment."

They drove through light traffic back to the warehouse at Number 17 Subhash Street. Lights were on throughout the complex.

Winger got on the crewnet and told the rest of the Detachment to meet up at the original rally point on a small rise across the street from the warehouse. One by one, the nanotroopers materialized out of the dark and gathered around the truck.

Mighty Mite Barnes shook her head over their appearance. "Jeez, Skipper, we didn't know what the hell was going on. I saw that truck pull out but we weren't sure if you were aboard. We were going to follow but then Turbo here thought you might still be inside."

"Yeah--" said Sergeant Adnan Fatah. Around the Detachment, he had long been known as Turbo, for his energy and enthusiasm "—we couldn't get a fix on either of you...enemy jamming, I guess."

"Enemy MOB nets," said Dana Tallant, shuddering. "Best I've ever seen, better even than what we have. Blocked everything. I almost suffocated in there."

"What's next, Skipper? And where's ANAD anyway?"

Even as Barnes spoke, the swarm was already forming. ANAD gathered itself into the barest outline of a human face, twinkling like a neon sign on a cold night. The face of 'Anderson' leered down at them with a smile.

*** _ANAD is ready for orders...ready to continue with the next phase of the mission_ ***

Winger pulled up a map of Kolkata on his corneal viewer. "Thanks to ANAD here, we may have exactly what we came for."

Sheila Reaves studied the warehouse for a moment, taking a bead on one door with her coilgun. "We gonna take that cesspool out, Skipper? These _Djinn_ buggers are bad news. We'd be doing BioShield and the whole city a favor if we just vaporized the place."

"Not just yet, Sheila. ANAD found some kind of miniature quantum generator inside. Could be a little brother to the one at the temple. And, he was able to penetrate their files and grab some of the operating instructions for the thing. If it works like the one at the temple, we've got a way to shut down the main generator. That's what's bending the path of that asteroid toward earth. I want the whole Detachment on board this lorry in five minutes. We're moving out...back to Shavindra temple. Oh, and ANAD: think you can do a quick analysis on those files and give me any weaknesses on the way?"

*** _ANAD is already running routines to decrypt files...ANAD will advise with any tactical possibilities as soon as possible_ ***

"Very well...load up, nanotroopers! Get all your gear together. We've got some unfinished business at Shavindra temple."

The lorry ride to the temple complex took nearly an hour, through heavy nighttime traffic in Baksara and the western suburbs. Sergeant Ray Spivey, 'Spite' to everybody, was driving this leg. Pedcab and foot traffic was especially dense around Howrah Indoor Stadium. The sporting arena shone bright with lights as a cricket match was running late into the night.

The Shivandra temple compound was west of the city center, set in a tree-lined park called Bhattan. From the Hanagar Street roundabout, the ornate stepped pyramids of the main temple poked above the trees, a brooding presence in the late night mists, lights arrayed like a Christmas tree around the lower flanks of the pyramids. Traffic thinned out as the lorry navigated the circle and accelerated out along the Varanasi Road connector.

Johnny Winger had been studying a layout diagram of the temple on his corneal eyepiece when the crewnet voice circuit crackled to life.

"Skipper—" it was Sheila Reaves, "—we got company. Detecting high thermals dead ahead...lots of EM across all bands. And that generator is going nuts, slamming quantum states like there's no tomorrow."

The lorry eased through a huge iron gate adorned with serpents' heads and tiger paws in stone, and stopped a few feet away from the shimmering barrier that shielded the temple. Through the translucent shield, crackling with bursts of light, the Sacred Pond of the Lillies reflected dim moonlight from an inner courtyard. A stone relief of Lord Shiva rose from the pond and a slender spire, brooded over a frozen gathering of spirits, also in stone. Beyond the water, a colonnaded portico surrounded the courtyard. Inside, the Hall of a Thousand Pillars was dark, save for clots and denser swarms of bots moving along the colonnade.

Winger had seen the same pattern on his eyepiece...Reaves had ported the readings to the crewnet. The big generator inside was shaking and snapping spacetime like a wet rag, sending out massive waves of collapsing probability states.

"Try to get a fix on it, Sheila. And start recording. I want Table Top to see this too."

"Lots of thermals too," added Taj Singh. Singh was the Detachment's second Defense and Protective Systems specialist. "All bands...EM, acoustic, whatever it is, it's intense. Reading big nano ahead."

Winger trained his corneal viewer on the ornate spires—the _gopuram—_ of the huge temple. Elaborate carvings of lions' heads and fanciful creatures leered back at him. The visual shimmered in the late evening haze coming off the river and it wasn't humidity that caused the shimmer.

"Barrier bots," the atomgrabber muttered. Not entirely unexpected. The entire temple compound was still shielded by a screen of nanobots, with enough density to haze the air around the compound. "Work us in as close as you can," he told Spite. "Third Swarm...config state one...prepare for opposed entry. We know how to handle these buggers now."

Alpha Detachment closed on the barrier and with the help of upgraded ANAD effectors, some new tactics and a generous barrage of HERF and coilgun fire, they breached the shield in good order and moved inside the temple complex.

Nanoscale assembler bots shrieked as waves of HERF thundered across the courtyard, ripping the barrier to shreds. The clatter of fried bots tinkling onto the stone pavement could be heard between coilgun rounds.

"MOVE OUT!" Winger yelled. Each nanotrooper, now enveloped in a protective cocoon of personal assembler bots, surged ahead through the shredded remains of the barrier. Bursts of light, like fireflies flickering on a summer night, tickled all along the edges of the barrier.

The Detachment moved as one across the courtyard, through a line of columns and toward the massive oak doors of a large chamber—the Hall of a Thousand Pillars—Winger's eyepiece annotated on his viewer.

Reaves studied her nav screen. "Just got one big decoherence pulse on the scope, Skipper...dead ahead...about two hundred meters!"

In the dim, fire-lit shadows of the great Hall of a Thousand Pillars, the decoherence wave front had a most startling effect. It was like an invisible scythe slashing through the grid of columns, sweeping from left to right. One by one, an invisible front swept toward them, expanding outward in all directions. The passage of the front could be detected visually, as row after row of columns wavered, then dematerialized for a few seconds, finally re-appearing again after the probability waves had passed.

And in the split second the deco wave passed each row of pillars, the row unfolded like an origami sheet into a shadowy infinity of columns, marching off in every direction. The effect of collapsing probability states lasted less than a second, but the image was visual proof of the massive quantum disturbance nearby.

"Blow those doors!" Winger commanded. Tsukota, Barnes and Detrick leveled their coilguns at the massive oaken doors to the inner courtyard. Seconds later, they dissolved in a fiery blossom of red flame and black smoke.

"Skipper—" it was Reaves again. "Deco waves all over the place...dead ahead...bearing one five oh. That corner of the hall—"

More decoherence pulses slammed the hall and the pillars ahead wavered in and out of view like heat waves on a highway.

"Contacts?" Winger inquired.

Reaves and Singh scanned the vicinity. "Nothing living on this side," Reaves came back."

"All bands clear," Singh concurred. "I'm getting high thermals on the other side of this wall ahead...probably nano..."

The Detachment came to the massive door they had encountered before, almost a gate in itself, carved from solid oak, with elaborate figures of Hindu gods and goddesses covering every square inch. The DPS techs examined the door closely. Singh put out a finger experimentally. The door gave slightly to the touch, then a small wave rippled outward from his touch. The door quivered and gave off a faint flickering glow.

"We know what to do with this one," Winger said. "ANAD, front and center...."

The loose assembler formation of ANAD 3rd Swarm swelled to the front of the line.

*** _Swarm reports ready in all respects, Major...what is the nature of the mission?***_

"Swarm master, I want you to scan this structure and assume a configuration to breach it. Config is pretty sophisticated but do what you can."

*** _Swarm will comply...scanning now...***_

Winger stepped back and motioned the others back too, as the swarm surged forward. In seconds, the massive door was blanketed in a thick, flickering mist. Small light bursts rippled up and down the length of the door, as the two swarms engaged.

Reaves followed 3rd Swarm's progress with her imager. "Skipper, looks like he's going tetrahedral, unusual grabbers...haven't seen anything like those before—"

Winger studied the image himself. _Something Doc Frost cooked up, no doubt._ They had tested ANAD's new bells and whistles at Table Top but the real test was here, in combat. Before he could say anything, the door flared to a white-hot light, too bright to look directly at, then came a piercing shriek as the massive structure super-nova'ed into incandescence. The fierce light strobed and throbbed like a living thing for a few moments, then faded, not completely, but to a hot translucent membrane.

Inside the antechamber beyond, the scene resembled a view from underwater.

The air was thick with nanobots, clotted like clouds and clumps and myriad other shapes, floating and swimming as if they were a thousand feet undersea. Lightning and flashes erupted in a chaotic symphony, spotted through the dense medium that filled the room. A few humans, or at least, human-forms, moved languidly about their business, attending to a large device in the center.

As Johnny Winger scanned the room with his own imager, another massive decoherence wave erupted from the device, momentarily washing out everything, so that only a milky white glow was visible. For a brief, almost imperceptible instant, the glow collapsed into a careening kaleidoscope of images, like a slide show gone mad, as an infinite parade of probability states swept outward. A great tidal wave of all possibilities collided into each other right before them.

The wavefront passed by in less than a second but in that single second, Alpha Detachment disappeared from view and was instantly re-assembled into a facsimile of its previous state. Johnny Winger blinked hard and saw Reaves, Tsukota, Singh—all of them wink out, then split apart into pinwheels upon pinwheels of themselves, carved into ever smaller slices that whipped by too fast for the eye to comprehend.

Then it was gone and Winger shook his head, feeling his arms and legs, as if to reassure himself that he was still there. He saw the others doing the same.

The curtain of roaring silence lifted and he heard someone saying—"... _the hell was that?_ " It was Klimuk, shaking himself like an animal startled from a deep sleep.

Winger got his senses back and realized that they were once again staring face to face with the very source of the quantum disturbances.

The four-legged tetrahedral platform that was the heart of the quantum generator throbbed and pulsed like a beating heart, erupting every few minutes in another decoherence wave. Winger knew from the briefings that the waves were spreading outward from Kolkata, outward into space, stretching spacetime throughout the Solar System like a wrinkled bedsheet.

It was this machine, and according to that Frontier Corps detective, a sister device on Mars, that was tugging and pulling on the asteroid 2351 Wilks-Lucayo, steadily drawing it away from Mars impact toward the Earth itself.

_This baby's got to become a junk pile._ But how do you fight a quantum device, a machine that could exist in multiple states, places and times simultaneously?

"ANAD, you said you've got some kind of operating instructions...now would be a good time to use them—"

The swarm was still a loose aggregate of assemblers, now billowing out between Winger and Taj Singh, who stared agog at the clots and clumps of loose bots thickening the air around the generator.

*** _ANAD still running decryption algorithms on the files...ANAD has sufficient file integrity to execute basic routines...swarm must engage with generator and transfer instructions in proximity_ ***

"Proximity? How close do you have to get?"

The swarm had already pushed forward, a translucent sparkling mist bearing down on the halo of barrier bots surrounding the platform.

*** _ANAD must engage platform at nanoscale...integrate swarm with device structure...platform is also a swarm held in lattice formation_ ***

Winger stared in disbelief. "The platform is also a swarm? Are you sure, ANAD?"

But there was no further signal from ANAD.

"ANAD, I hope to hell you know what you're doing." Over the crewnet, Winger barked out orders to the Detachment. "Reaves, Barnes, all of you...back off. Stay away from the platform. ANAD's going in...he retrieved some kind of files at that warehouse and thinks they may be operating instructions for the generator."

Barnes snorted and dropped down to one knee to steady the HERF gun, while she recharged its batteries. "Nobody has to tell me twice, Skipper. I'm keeping my distance."

"Amen to that," muttered Singh. "Lord Shiva be with you, ANAD...."

"Yeah, kick quantum ass," added Deeno D'Nunzio.

The ANAD swarm closed steadily on the platform, slipping past the barrier bots with little trouble. Each penetration flared like a small bolt of lightning and the sparkles rippled outward and around the perimeter of the platform.

Winger decided to switch views and follow the nanoscale assembler's progress. He wanted to see how well Doc Frost's little tweaks and adjustments would fare against such a slippery opponent.

Winger 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.

For a few seconds, polygon and tetrahedral shapes sleeted past him and he fought instinctively against the current. Then he relaxed and ping-ponged from one impact to another as his atomgrabber reflexes took over. After each bounce, Winger slingshotted forward, like tacking against an intermittent gale-force wind.

It wasn't long before ANAD's sensors detected the outer edge of the generator swarm. Fierce nanobotic activity, washing through all bands, overloaded his sensors and he had to turn down the gain. Thermals, acoustics, EM, every band was slammed with energy, as the quantum device cycled through probability states and lit off decoherence waves.

A swarm of autonomous nanobotic mechanisms, configured to generate quantum states and somehow alter the very structure of spacetime, was so far beyond anything Winger had ever dreamed of that it might as well have been magic.

Or something from another world.

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.

_Fantastic engineering,_ Winger realized. Quantum Corps had nothing like it. But before he could probe further for more details, the entire defensive line had whipped forward, almost as a single unit, and enveloped ANAD and its replicant swarm without warning.

Before Winger could even react, he got warnings left and right on his coupler circuit:

***Carbene effectors disabled***

***Hydrogen abstractors disabled***

***Port propulsor disabled***

"I'm losing control!" he told himself. ANAD's response was sluggish and he soon realized why.

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, what the hell are you doing...right in the middle of—" but he realized that the little bot had lifted files and operating data from the miniature quantum device at the warehouse and managed to decrypt at least some of the files. The configuration he had chosen would give him at least a starting tactical advantage.

As the swarms closed, Winger could 'see', through acoustic and EM images on his viewer, 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. In speed of replication, the changes were like nothing Winger had ever seen before.

How the hell do you fight something that won't stay still long enough to engage?

Surprisingly, ANAD answered him.

*** _Base, ANAD has processed the basic replication algorithm of the enemy...it is a fourth-order polynomial function but still predictable if the terms and coefficients are known...altering config to match_ ***

ANAD had decrypted enough of the files to process the replication pattern and could predict at any time what state the enemy swarm would be in.

From that crucial bit of intelligence, ANAD could engage the enemy at a critical moment, slam a few picojoules of electron energy into the bots and hopefully disrupt the pattern, slow it down long enough to directly engage the enemy.

It was just a theory, just a tactical plan, but Johnny Winger could see no other way.

"ANAD, go ahead. Engage when ready—"

The tiny assembler swarm did just that.

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 disruptors discharging began to subside, he could just make out a blurry scene of chaos and floating debris, loose molecules and shredded peptide chains.

It was like jamming a wrench in a spinning turbine. ANAD's ability to predict the enemy's config state ahead of time had allowed him to zap the swarm with just the right energy at just the right place and the enemy swarm had thrashed itself nearly to pieces in the ensuing wreckage.

The generator buzzed like a stuck fly and spun down.

"Skipper—" it was Sheila Reaves, a few meters behind him, "the deco waves have stopped. Just reading background thermals now, a minimal EM signature. Bands are clearing...what the hell happened?"

Winger came up from his nanoscale view of things and saw what the DPS tech meant.

Ten meters ahead, the generator platform throbbed slowly, almost like a living thing, its constituent swarm bots steadily losing structure, losing config, as ANAD slammed them again and again with pulses of electrons.

"It's ANAD, Sheila. He's found a way to engage the platform. It was all a big swarm and he's decrypted its basic rep algorithm. That was the soft underbelly of the whole device." Even as he explained what had happened to the rest of the Detachment, the generator swarm began dissolving, losing recognizable shape. In a few moments, it had dematerialized into an amorphous fog and merged imperceptibly into the background glow of bots and swarms that filled the chamber.

"Jeez, this place is like a swarm nursery," said Turbo Fatah.

"You may be right," Winger admitted. "ANAD, pull back and reconfig for withdrawal. Anybody reading quantum activity now? Decoherence waves...anything?"

Spivey, Klimuk, D'Nunzio...all came back with negatives.

"Got nothing, Skipper. Deader than dirt. What happened?"

Winger advanced cautiously toward where the generator platform had once been. "I don't know, exactly. ANAD, are you reading me?"

*** _ANAD receives...now reconfiguring State One...swarm re-positioning to scan for remnants_ ***

"ANAD, that generator platform...it was all just a big swarm?"

*** _Affirmative, Base...ANAD has disassembled swarm entity into constituent parts...now scanning for density fluctuations...now detecting nano debris in scattered clusters...ANAD detaching sub-swarm element to disassemble_ ***

"There's your answer," said Dana Tallant. She moved through the loose bot formations and clouds like a diver walking on the ocean floor. Her own protective swarm kept them off, sparkling and flashing like a ghostly apparition. "The whole thing's just atom fluff now. Imagine that, Wings...the entire quantum generator nothing more than a few gazillion molecular assemblers."

"Yeah, but what kind of assemblers? What kind of config can squeeze spacetime like a lemon and pucker the whole Solar System?"

"Skipper, didn't you tell us there was another device, or swarm like this, on Mars?" asked Sergeant Kip Detrick. The IC2 was monitoring ANAD's progress in re-grouping on his wristpad, ready to intervene if necessary.

"That's what Q2 was told. Frontier Corps detective named Price sent some case files from Mariner City. The descriptions sound a lot like this gizmo."

"Well, now that ANAD has the key to its basic replication algorithm," said Mighty Mite Barnes, "we ought to be able to make quick work of that one too."

Winger, Tallant and the rest of the Detachment probed about the chamber for a few more minutes. The bulk of the remaining swarms moved languidly about the space, coalescing and dispersing according to some unknown rhythm.

"ANAD, detach sub-swarm element for protective screening. I don't want to leave this place unguarded. There's a chance that somehow this swarm could re-constitute itself and form up another generator. CQE's, we got outside comms?"

Both Communications and Quantum Engineering specialists, Deeno D'Nunzio and Ozzie Tsukota, replied in the affirmative.

"Intermittent, Skipper, but we can hold a signal."

"Get BioShield on the line. I need a detachment over here right away to secure the place."

ANAD 3rd Swarm re-gathered itself into something approximating a human form and floated nearby, wavering slightly in the dim light and heavy swarm-laden air. The face was a passable imitation of Colonel Jurgen Kraft.

Winger shook his head. "ANAD, some day, we're going to have to have a little discussion about appropriate configs and social decorum. You can't just change appearance like that on a whim. Humans don't like their colleagues to look different every time they see them."

*** _ANAD stores many configs...minimum energy bond angle routine determines config when outside parameters are at null value_ ***

"I know, I know...but it looks weird. I mean, Colonel Kraft, for crying out loud...couldn't you pick another config?"

*** _ANAD re-configging now...***_

The assembler swarm mutated before their eyes into the recruiting poster face from Table Top's canteen.

"Mr. Nanotrooper," Tallant nodded. "Must be his default config."

Winger got on the crewnet. "Detachment, listen up. When BioShield and the West Bengal constabulary arrive, we turn over the place to them. Make sure we get good samples of everything and record all your bands and signatures. This place is an intelligence gold mine and we're going to need all of it to help out our Martian buddies...they need to know what they're dealing with."

Two hours later, BioShield's Red Squad had secured the inner courtyard and chambers of the Shavindra temple compound. Sergeant Kano, the burly Kenyan squad leader walked slowly along the colonnaded grounds as Winger gave him a quick rundown of what had happened.

Kano whistled softly. " _Mbeki gotanga_...you were most fortunate, Major Winger. It is good that Quantum Corps was here. My squad has its hands full just keeping swarms and fabs under control in Howrath. "

"I know that, Sergeant. That's why I'm leaving behind two of my Detachment to help out. They're good code- and-stick programmers. Here they are—" Winger motioned Sergeants Klimuk and Detrick over and introduced them. "Both are IC's

—Interface and Operation Controllers. They can out-hack anybody. And they'll give us some well-trained eyes and ears on the ground...just in case Red Hammer tries something. We want that quantum generator to stay atom fluff, just like it is now."

Last minute arrangements and approvals were completed and Winger ordered Alpha Detachment to board the crewtracs, which had rumbled up from riverside to take the weary troopers back to the airport.

"Well, that's about it, Sergeant. We'll be shoving off now."

Kano ripped off a smart salute. "Happy hunting, Major. Wherever your case leads you. There is talk of Quantum Corps being disbanded. Tell me this is not true."

Winger's face darkened. "It's one of the demands Red Hammer is making. Pay a big ransom and shut down Quantum Corps or they drop one big rock on our heads. I'm hoping with this generator out of action, that'll be a little harder now. But it's still a race against time."

Winger was the last to board the crewtrac. "Move out!" Winger ordered. The rest of the Detachment had already swung their gear aboard the two crewtracs. The huge snorting vehicles were dual-tracked, with articulating arms front and rear to manipulate or hoist heavy objects. Modified from geoplane chassis, each crewtrac had limited sub-surface burrowing capability. Powered up, each vehicle shimmered in the hazy morning sunlight as their ANAD shields formed a twinkling, flickering defensive barrier around the vehicles, like a huge, pulsating carapace of bots.

The crewtracs rumbled off, through the barrier ANAD screen that BioShield had already erected, which sparkled as they passed by, and then turned right, onto crowded Hanagar Street, heading east toward Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose Airport. Johnny Winger stared pensively out the porthole at the hazy labyrinth of streets passing by. Columns of smoke from thousands of cooking fires added to the thick haze. Tin shacks and shantytowns and rice paddies interspersed with the crude huts of the traditional Bengali _mawzas_ stretched to the horizon, like an infinite chessboard. But most of the haze wasn't cooking fires.

Fabs and swarms... this place really is a nursery, he told himself. But a nursery for what?

They had to get back to Table Top and debrief Colonel Kraft and General Linx. With each passing hour, 2351 Wilks-Lucayo sped closer and closer to Earth. If Q2 was right and the asteroid was being bent by some kind of strange generators tugging on the underlying string structure of the Solar System, maybe putting Shavindra out of action would enable GreenMars to regain control of their renegade.

Trouble was, Winger knew, there was a companion device somewhere on Mars. As long as even one of these swarm-contraptions was operating, Red Hammer might still be able to make good on their threat.

Quantum Corps and Frontier Corps had to put that one out of commission too and soon.

And if politics intervened and UNIFORCE decided to shutdown the Corps to meet one of the cartel's demands, Johnny Winger wasn't sure they could make it in time.
CHAPTER 7

U.N. Quantum Corps, Western Command Base

Table Top Mountain, Idaho, U.S.A.

September 20, 2080

General Wolfus Linx—CINCQUANT—shook his head and twisted his fat white moustache angrily. The message from UNSAC had just come in from Paris less than an hour before. Colonel Jurgen Kraft stood stiffly before Linx's desk, smoldering with rage barely contained.

"It's politics, sir...that's all it is. They can't shut us down right in the middle of an investigation like this. Begging the general's pardon, sir, but that's nuts."

Linx's eyes narrowed to slits, squinting again at the offending message from Paris.

"Unfortunately, Colonel, the org chart says they can. My hands are tied here...you'd better get me some kind of plan on closing down Table Top, at least enough to satisfy Paris. They seem determined to give in to these scoundrels. I don't like it any more than you do."

"Sir," Kraft said, "I must protest this decision. To shut down an active investigation of this magnitude is—"

"Kraft—" Linx stood up to his full six foot eight inch height. With his full mane of white hair and moustache, and fierce blue eyes, he looked like Thor himself, fresh from Valhalla. "—UNSAC's order says nothing about closing down the investigation." Linx began pacing about his office: three paces and left turn, three paces and another left. "—just the base itself...in fact, Table Top, Balzano and Singapore. The investigation will proceed...from another location."

Kraft chewed on that bit of sophistry for a moment. "General...perhaps you should come over to Containment. The _Quantum Hammer_ detachment is concluding their mission debrief at 1130 hours this morning. Q2 and Dr. Frost will be there to round out the after-action reports."

Linx suddenly stopped pacing, standing in front of a flat display of the Earth-Moon system, an active monitor showing real time positions of every satellite, station and ship in Earth-Moon space. The display was crammed with blinking lights, track vectors and floating data blocks.

"Colonel, you see this display? Know what this will all look like if that damned asteroid comes blasting through here like a runaway freight train?"

"I can only imagine, sir."

CINCQUANT twisted his moustache pensively. "Like a big boulder dropped in a small pond. Havoc—" he shook his head, seeing in his mind's eye things best left unseen. "—sheer havoc. The end of man—" Linx turned back to Kraft. "Let's go see how our guys did at Kolkata."

The after-action review was held inside Containment chamber C1, since 3rd Swarm ANAD's participation was required. When Linx and Kraft arrived, the chamber was thick with nanotroopers from Alpha Detachment. Q2 had sent over a Major Drummond to handle the intel side of the debriefing. Doc Frost hovered like a protective mother around the main containment controls while ANAD itself swarmed around the outside of the vault-like containment pod like faintly glowing cigarette smoke.

"At ease," Linx said as the assembly came to abrupt attention. "Proceed as you were." Linx leaned against the vault, eyeing the ANAD swarm over his head with something between disgust and curiosity.

Major Drummond had been speaking. "We were about to hear directly from ANAD on the details of the quantum generator at the temple. ANAD--?"

The assembler swarm brightened as it was addressed, then began to pulsate gently as it flowed around the edge of the containment chamber. Its synthetic voice came out like a tinny echo from inside a barrel.

*** _ANAD located operating files for this device in Kolkata...files were copied and deployed at temple site...ANAD able to decrypt some files and compute replication algorithm...ANAD able to interfere with generator replication and set pattern to infinite loop...generator failed when rep counter value set to infinity_ ***

Linx mulled over what the swarm had just said, momentarily forgetting the novelty of 'hearing' something like an assembler swarm converse normally with human beings. "This generator we've all been after is _itself_ a swarm?"

*** _Statement is correct...with knowledge of replication algorithm, quantum state generator can be disabled and forced into a set configuration...generator can be 'frozen' in one config and assaulted by more conventional tactics_ ***

CINCQUANT glared up at the faintly glowing mist that was ANAD. _My God, you can't even look the damned thing in the face._ Talking with a fog bank was still a little unnerving, especially in front of junior officers and civilians. Getting a reply from the same fog bank was even more unnerving. Still, the facts were plain. The assembler swarm had saved the mission.

"ANAD, I speak for UNSAC and the whole UNIFORCE command staff when I say if it hadn't been for you...er, your efforts, _Quantum Hammer_ 's mission might not have been accomplished. You've brought a new perspective, so to speak, to our tactical operations." CINCQUANT cleared his throat, coughed and went on, aware that he seemed to be speaking to no one in particular. _How the hell do you address a distributed swarm intelligence anyway?_ "I'm sure future missions will see the Corps utilize this capability more often, since it gives us certain tactical advantages."

Again, ANAD glowed brightly. The swarm reconfigged like mist on a moonless night, gradually taking on the facial contours of a human being. It was the default config again...the recruiting poster _nog_. A few snickers tittered about the room.

*** _ANAD is most appreciative of these statements...ANAD parses CINCQUANT statements as approval of mission tactics, with probability values exceeding ninety-five per cent...now, ANAD must ask a question_ ***

Linx's eyes shot up. "A question? What kind of question?"

The swarm re-config was done. A giant ghostly outline of a face glared down at all of them like some kind of ancient god.

*** _ANAD swarms to maximize configuration flexibility...that is original programming design...containment restrictions prevent assembler formations from achieving certain configurations...ANAD seeks removal of all containment restrictions...to optimize config for all settings_ ***

Doc Frost winced slightly as the words echoed out of the 'mouth' of the swarm-face.

"What he's trying to say, General, is that ANAD feels confined by containment regulations."

"Isn't that the whole idea?" Colonel Kraft asked. "We can't have loose uncontained swarms roaming around, can we? Look at Kolkata, Bangkok and places like that. It's not safe. It poisons the environment. Humans and ANADs can't co-exist with swarms loose. It's just too dangerous."

Linx was sympathetic and even agreed with Kraft. But the Symbiosis Project had high-level support in Paris. "We do have standard control and dispersal procedures in place, Colonel. ANAD swarms aren't just flying around loose. As long as these regs are in effect, I see no problem with letting ANAD swarms out of containment. Our boys are still learning how to work with them in operations."

Doc Frost added, "The natural configuration of an autonomous nanoscale assembler swarm is similar to what you see here. They're collective entities, distributed intelligence, and we humans don't have a lot of experience with that. That's the way they're programmed."

"Didn't you do the original programming?" asked Kraft. "Why couldn't you program ANAD to stay in containment and be happy with that?"

Frost ran a hand through thinning white hair. "Actually, I could have, Colonel. But remember this: the basic kernel of ANAD's program comes from ancient viral genomes. To gain some of the capability that ANAD now has, I had to transfer stretches of this genome that I didn't fully understand at the time. Today, we've extensively modified that genome and have a better idea of what we're doing. But the swarming instinct is inherent in that genome. If I try to remove that, I'm not sure ANAD will be an effective partner in symbiosis with our nanotroopers. It's a trade-off."

"Maybe we should just ask ANAD," Johnny Winger suggested.

The assembler swarm, still a ghostly outline of the recruiting poster face, assumed something vaguely resembling a look of annoyance, or what ANAD's processor generated as 'annoyance.' The faint line of its lips tightened perceptibly and the eyes seemed to squint as if studying the humans gathered around it.

*** _ANAD is required to follow the Four Rules of its program...swarm and seek self...permit no harm to humans or other life...follow all human commands...and replicate...to assemble in swarms is First Rule...having maximum priority value over all other rules and commands...ANAD must abide by program...but containment regulations interfere with First Rule...error strings are generated which ANAD must resolve and analyze...permit ANAD to remain out of containment so that error logs are reduced...allows greater processor capacity for other functions_ ***

"He's like a small child, General," Winger told them. "I've worked with ANAD closely for years...we all have. He wants to explore...there's an imperative in his program to explore and seek out other entities like himself and to congregate. He's not so different from us."

"Major, that's not why the Corps employs ANADs," Kraft growled. "He has a mission and that mission is to assist you and all our troopers in completing their missions. Combat effectiveness, _accomplishing the mission_ , that's his only imperative. Everything else is window dressing, if you ask me."

"Kraft is right," Linx said. "That's the whole purpose of the Symbiosis Project...to form a new hybrid man-machine warrior with extraordinary capabilities. That's why you all have the implant. The truth is 3rd Nanospace Swarm is an experimental unit and only an experiment. There never was any intention of taking the idea and making it a combat organization."

"But, General...3rd Swarm has already proven itself in operations...just last week in Kolkata. Major Tallant and I wouldn't be here if it weren't for 3rd Swarm ANAD. Begging the General's pardon, sir, but I think we should consider standing up 3rd Swarm as a fully functional unit within the Corps."

Several troopers, including Dana Tallant, seconded Winger's thoughts. Linx listened to the arguments flow back and forth. Kraft argued that the assembler swarms needed to be kept under tight control. "They're just weapons, just like your coilguns or HERF units...nothing more than that. Sure ANAD is highly programmed and capable. But what you're asking is to put something that's little more than a MOB net in charge of vital operations. It's nuts."

"Colonel," Frost clucked, "ANAD is more than a MOB net. That's like saying you and I are nothing more than a big bag of bacteria and loose cells. When eukaryotic cells first got together four billion years ago, maybe they were little more than bags of cells, without order, structure or emergent intelligence. But time and evolution have taken those bags of cells and made you and me. I'm pretty sure the same imperative, perhaps the same or similar evolutionary forces, can take a swarm of loose nanoscale molecular assemblers and make them into something you and I would surely recognize as intelligent."

"No argument about that," Kraft said. "But that's not why we're using ANADs here. General Linx, sir, we're taking our eye off the goal here. The Project is to develop a man-machine hybrid warrior, not evolve a new life form that just may—" he eyed the ethereal face of the swarm warily "—just may take over the whole planet and decide to get rid of us."

Linx mulled over all the arguments. "Gentlemen, you've given me a lot to chew over. UNSAC's directives and the Project charter are pretty clear and my orders are to execute those directives and fulfill that charter. We currently operate with ANAD swarms loose when they're under strict control and dispersal regulations. That's been Corps policy for several years now. But Kraft's right: the whole purpose of the Project was to develop and evolve a new man-machine hybrid warrior." Linx glared back at the faintly glowing swarm, struggling to maintain the semblance of a 'face' in the presence of the humans. "I'm going to issue an order that control and dispersal regulations be re-thought. We'll give these ANAD bots a little more breathing room...see if we can take operations to a whole new level. Of course, this will have to be cleared with UNSAC and the Secretary-General. But I'm recommending Quantum Corps ANADs be permitted to operate fully and completely outside containment."

Kraft was none too pleased at CINCQUANT's order but he couldn't directly oppose a superior officer. "This will mean some changes in tactics, General. Our sims and training will also be affected. Winger and 1st and 2nd Nano will have to get up to speed fast if we're going to stop Red Hammer from dropping that big rock on us."

Linx nodded. "I'm aware of that, Colonel. Developing and coordinating new tactics with full ANAD participation is now your top priority. Is that understood?"

"Yes, sir."

"General, sir—" it was Drummond, the Q2 officer, standing on the other side of the ANAD swarm. "—our tactical priority should be that second quantum generator on Mars. Farside Observatory reports that to achieve the precision maneuvering of 2351-Wilks-Lucayo they've observed, at least two generators would be needed, spaced at least fifty to one hundred million miles apart. That provides enough traction to manipulate the Solar System's string structure...or so Nakamura and the GreenMars people say. This fellow Nygren at Mariner City also concurs, sir."

"They're right, sir," Johnny Winger added. "ANAD now has the replication algorithm for the quantum generator. It worked at Kolkata...it ought to work with the one at Mars."

Linx asked, "What are you proposing? I see from the latest GreenMars report that Wilks will be past the orbit of Mars in less than three weeks, unless we regain control and effect some kind of course change."

"A joint mission, sir," Winger said. "Quantum Corps and Frontier Corps. A joint mission with a new Detachment coordinating with Frontier Corps at Mars. Bring ANAD along and let him bollix up the replication engine of that generator."

Linx nodded his big furry head slowly, like a bear sizing up possibilities for his next meal. "And we regain control of the asteroid after that?"

Drummond replied, "If there are no more surprises from Red Hammer...like extra quantum generators waiting to come on line."

Doc Frost had been mulling over that disturbing possibility. "Gentlemen, since we know the Kolkata generator was simply a well coordinated nanobotic swarm acting with highly sophisticated algorithms, then what's to stop the adversary—this Red Hammer—from assembling multiple generator configs and spotting them in dozens, maybe hundreds of places? ANAD may be able to interfere with the replication algorithm of an existing generator assembly but if the config pattern exists in some processor somewhere or perhaps in multiple copies, we have to find the main processor, the main memory location or the mother copy and destroy it. Something like the Sphere Johnny Winger located at the Paryang monastery ten years ago. Otherwise, it's like shooting at flies...kill one or kill a million, they keep coming back unless you destroy the nest."

"I see your point, Doctor," Drummond admitted. "And we have no intelligence on where this nest might be."

"But we do have reliable intelligence on the existence of another generator on Mars," Winger said. "According to Farside and GreenMars, if we can knock out that one, they should be able to regain enough control of the asteroid to deflect it away from Earth. But time is short. 2351 Wilks-Lucayo is picking up speed every day and the engineers operating the impulse motors on the asteroid said that within a week to ten days, the asteroid would be going too fast to make much of a deflection with _all_ their motors firing."

Drummond nodded. "I saw the same report, Major. There's a small window of opportunity to use those motors to make the right deflection maneuver. But to do it, they've got to get the asteroid free of other forces...we've got to stop that second generator from manipulating the string field."

"I've heard enough," Linx decided. "Kraft, put together a plan and a new Detachment for a trip to Mars. I'll clear it with UNSAC and see the orders are cut right away. Get the plan and mission details to me by 1800 hours today. UNSAC will want to see everything."

Kraft understood. "Then we should cease shutdown efforts here at Table Top, sir?"

Linx shook his head. "No, make plans for full shutdown at this base at 2400 hours, 10 October. It'll be the same for Balzano and Singapore. Prep efforts and outfitting for this joint mission should be centered at the space center at Kourou instead, just in case. We may have to operate under the radar for awhile, to meet or stall Red Hammer's demands. But one way or another, we'll get control of that asteroid."

Even as CINCQUANT was issuing orders, Winger noticed that ANAD was already changing config. The recruiting poster face was fading out and the swarm was dispersing, moving away from the containment chamber.

Winger clicked in on the coupler circuit. ANAD...what the hell are you doing? The General hasn't dismissed us yet...hold your position!

ANAD's reply came back: *** _ANAD wishes to access tactical database for latest intelligence on asteroid position and velocity transients...computational analysis shows probability of predicting next transient from generator config algorithm...pattern analysis could pinpoint prime locations for generator positioning_ ***

Okay, ANAD, okay...I guess you know what you're doing. But if you're going to become a full nanotrooper, you've got to start behaving like one. We don't walk out on four-star generals in the middle of a briefing.

*** _ANAD expresses standard levels of remorse for not communicating clearly...ANAD desires to run analysis on algorithm patterns...provide better intelligence on locating and disabling quantum generator swarms_ ***

It was then that several officers noticed the swarm-face had disappeared.

"Where'd he go?" Kraft asked. "Is the swarm still here? Or has he just run off now that containment no longer applies?"

Doc Frost was checking his control station. "Nanobotic activity is dispersing...centroid moving toward the door. I'd say ANAD's in a hurry over something."

Linx was puzzled. "What the hell's going on?"

"I'm sorry, sir...I was just in coupler contact with ANAD. He's detected something in the generator swarm pattern, the algorithm. Something that may give us clues as to where these generators are being placed and why."

Linx was grimly determined to make the new arrangement he had authorized work somehow. "I see we may need a little more training on nanotrooper basics, Major. Follow up and make sure this is all legitimate mission planning." CINCQUANT then rubbed his eyes wearily. "Humans and ANADs...we've still got a helluva lot to learn about each other."
CHAPTER 8

U.N. Frontier Corps Cruiser UNS _Da Vinci_

Cycling Transfer Trajectory M-65

3 hours from Mars Lander Departure

September 30, 2080 (Earth U.T.)

Turbo Fatah and Deeno D'Nunzio stared out the porthole at the onrushing face of Mars.

"Looks like a puckered orange," Fatah was saying. He wheezed and coughed a bit in the canned air of the cycler ship's wardroom. The respirocyte treatment affected people differently. Sometimes the bots inhabiting your bloodstream, ready to boost oxygen supply a hundred fold over the body's normal process, pushed too much oxygen into your lungs.

"Yeah," said D'Nunzio, snacking on a candy bar, "a puckered orange with a fungus. See that big pimple off to the left, lined up with those other pimples...Olympus Mons. Biggest damned volcano in the Solar System."

A voice crackled over the loudspeaker in the wardroom. A scattering of Detachment troopers sat or drifted about the rec space, playing cards, watching videos, or just staring out the portholes at their approaching destination. Ship's crew huddled near holopod beside a vending port, where the ship's purser and the chief engineer cast virtual dice in a simulated game of craps with the ship's computer.

"NOW HEAR THIS...NOW HEAR THIS...All Detachment troops lay aft to the Ops deck...on the double...departure briefing in ten minutes...NOW HEAR THIS...."

D'Nunzio and Fatah joined a few others in the central gangway and hauled themselves along until they came to the spinning portal labeled _OPERATIONS._ Timing their entrance, each one shot through the rotating opening into the deck and pounced like cats on the deck wall until centrifugal force grabbed them and made them fast. After a few such gymnastics, the troopers had gotten the hang of maneuvering in and out of the ship's artificial gravity and were climbing, floating and lunging all over the ship like a circus troupe.

Major Winger was there, beside a podium and display screen, surrounded by Captain Benes and the First Officer Mendez, _Da Vinci's_ commanding officer and her exec. One by one, the rest of the Detachment shot into the Ops deck: Calderon, Spivey, Reaves, Barnes and Tsukota...all of them now quite accomplished at scurrying about the ship's spaces.

One trooper had already entered some time before the briefing was announced. ANAD (3rd Swarm) had filtered unseen by human eyes along the central gangway from his containment berth four decks below and slid into Ops without disturbing anything. A nanobotic swarm could look like a slightly pale, frizzy human being or a drifting puff of dust motes...it all depended on the configuration of the swarm. ANAD hovered in the background alongside the gangway door, a pale, ghostly outline of a bland, featureless face with part of a neck and upper torso below, almost like a bedsheet with eyeholes cut out.

Captain Benes stood alongside Winger at the podium, with the First Officer Mendez on the other side, eyeing the ANAD swarm with a mixture of curiosity and alarm. It wasn't everyday a cycler captain had a cloud of intelligent particles drifting freely about his ship.

"Detachment, listen up. This is your departure briefing. Right now, _Da Vinci's_ engineering staff is powering up the lander. You've got one hour to get all your gear aboard. The lander will be cut loose for a ballistic entry at 1125 hours on the button. I hope you've all done your miles on the treadmill and the centrifuge...you're gonna need it. The lander pulls about 5 g's during the drop."

"Major, Captain..." it was Sheila Reaves, not knowing exactly who to address "—where are we landing?"

"I can answer that," Benes said. "Once _Da Vinci_ makes her next course change, you'll be targeted for Mariner City, North Landing Pad. Mendez here—" he indicated the First Officer "will be your pilot. He's done dozens of drops...only pranged a few dozen ships." Benes chuckled, until he realized his attempt at humor had failed completely. He cleared his throat, his tone seriously official. "First Officer Mendez is an accomplished lander pilot with many years of experience at drops. Don't worry, Sergeant, we'll get you down."

The briefing went on for another five minutes. Benes covered the separation maneuver, pre-entry procedures, the aerobraking and ballistic descent, all of which would take place over an hour's time once the lander had left _Da Vinci_. When he was done, Winger added a few points.

"Remember that Alpha Detachment is detailed to Frontier Corps on this mission. We follow their lead here. I'm meeting with Inspector Duncan Price at Mariner City at 2100 hours this evening, local time. The rest of you will bivouac inside the dome, at the Armory, along with our gear. Once we're down, there will be a brief reception at the Landing Pad—all the politicos and dignitaries, so look sharp and show 'em what real nanotroopers are like—then we head into the City and set up. ANAD—"

The swarm face brightened at the mention of its name.

*** _ANAD responding, Major Winger--***_

"ANAD, you assume config C-12...I made sure Doc Frost loaded that one before we shipped out. I want you looking your best when we meet the big wigs. None of this free swarming while we're on Mars. Keep that config until I tell you otherwise...is that understood?"

*** _Affirmative, Major Winger...ANAD parses command to assume C-12 and retain config until further instructions_ ***

The swarm wavered, throbbed and pulsed with light, as if it were some kind of underwater apparition.

"That's it, then... _move out_! Get your gear and let's get aboard the lander. Departure in fifty-two minutes."

There was a flurry of activity all about _Da Vinci_ as the nanotroopers of Alpha Detachment gathered up their gear, pods full of ammo, coilguns and the HERF weapons, hypersuit harnesses, MOB canisters, SuperFly launchers, camou-fog generators, and assorted fabs---all the equipment a nanotrooper detachment would need for tactical missions. Only a few hypersuits had been brought along, as the Detachment had all undergone the respirocyte treatment and could travel about the Martian surface in only masks and skinsuits.

Mighty Mites Barnes swore loudly as she pushed and dragged her gear packs and gunny sacks along the central gangway toward the lander bay.

"Jesus H. Christ...we _could_ have brought the whole freakin' Table Top Mountain with us, if we'd tried a little harder."

"Yeah..." muttered Ray Spivey, practically lost amid all the bags and trunks he was herding along. "They could shut down the Mountain but who would notice...we got all the gear with us."

One by one, the troopers drifted through the airlock and hatch into the lander and stowed their gear. _Da Vinci's_ lander was a fat truncated cone, with a biconic outer aeroshell for protection and maneuvering once the thing slammed into Mars' atmosphere. The cycler crew had christened the little ship with the unlikely name of _Pinocchio_.

Half an hour after everybody was through bitching and moaning and had gotten themselves secured and strapped in, _Pinocchio's_ pilot, Lieutenant Mendez, punched up the departure program on the ship's computer and counted down the last seconds before separation.

"Five...four...three...two...one... _bingo_!"

There was brief shudder and lurch as _Pinocchio's_ thrusters fired to make a positive separation.

" _Pinocchio_ away..."he announced. Seated directly behind the First Officer on the command deck were Johnny Winger and Dana Tallant. Both watched through the forward windscreen as the gaping mouth of _Da Vinci's_ forward docking ring receded into the distance. From two miles off, when Mendez had stopped their motion and re-oriented _Pinocchio_ for de-orbit, the great cycler ship looked like a massive bird soaring off into the heavens. _Da Vinci_ never slowed into orbit around any planet on her itinerary. Her trajectory took her scooting by Venus, Earth and Mars on a repeating loop around the Sun every sixteen months, an interplanetary busline making endless trips through the void. It was up to little ships like _Pinocchio_ to get people and supplies up and down to huge cycler ship.

Mendez counted down the moments to the initial burn that would start _Pinocchio_ on her long curving descent into the atmosphere of Mars. Like a big rock, she would skip first off the top of the atmosphere, then on each succeeding trip around, she would bite deeper and deeper into the air, slowing down on each pass, adjusting her path, until her velocity had dropped enough to glide into the lower atmosphere and scout out her landing site.

That, at least, was theory behind Frontier Corps aerobraking maneuvers.

"Ten seconds to PDI," the First Officer announced. He checked over his console: track, engine status, attitude...everything seemed ready. "Get ready for a major kick in the ass—"

The burn, when it came, made _Pinocchio_ shake and shudder like a wet dog. Johnny Winger felt the acceleration build up rapidly. After a few weeks of microgravity, the ship's descent felt like an elephant had planted its posterior right on his chest. He forced a sideways glance at Tallant in the next seat.

The nanotrooper was exhaling out in quick, forced breaths, as they had been trained. She met Winger's eyes and grunted back.

"Wings...remind me to...put in...for a...transfer...when we get back...."

Mendez watched the trajectory plot on his board carefully as _Pinocchio_ began her first aerobraking approach to the upper reaches of Mars' atmosphere. The plot showed several lines, indicating nominal and actual course, all converging on an actual window in space, the entry point, where the lander would take her first big bite into the atmosphere, slowing the ship down for subsequent passes.

Mendez frowned as he studied the plot. "Something's wrong—" he muttered. His fingers flew over the keyboard, cycling through several displays. "—what the hell...my state vector's on the money...engines are good but—" The pilot hurriedly scanned more displays, tapped more keys. "—come on, come on," he said. Then he stabbed the ENGINE button and the ship's engines fell silent.

Unseen by Winger or Tallant, _Pinocchio's_ first burn had gone perfectly according to plan. But her actual course was rapidly diverging from the expected plot. Mendez was nonplussed.

"Jeez...what the hell's going on here...did Mars suddenly gain mass...or change gravity?"

Winger leaned forward in his seat to see. "What is it, Lieutenant? What's wrong?"

Mendez laid his hands with exaggerated care on his seat armrest, careful not to touch any more keys. In training, lander pilots were taught like doctors: _first, do no harm. Don't make the situation any worse._

"Burn was nominal, Major. I've got almost no residuals. But according to my plot here, we've somehow gone way off course." Mendez cleared his throat. "And if I don't do something quick, we're gonna slam right into the atmosphere at too steep an angle...fry ourselves to cinders. Prepare to execute Missed Approach procedure."

Mendez cycled the displays and began pecking out new commands as fast as he could. _Pinocchio_ plunged rapidly toward the atmosphere at an ever-steepening angle. Through the forward windscreen, the tan and ocher limb of Mars grew larger by the second.

"Forty-five seconds to entry interface," Mendez announced. "I'm going to pull us out of this descent and put us back into a low orbit...if I can—"

_Pinocchio's_ engines stuttered to life once more and the ship slowly began to pull out of her descent trajectory. Winger dead-reckoned on the limb of Mars visible through the windscreen, expecting to see Mars drop lower and lower in the sky as _Pinocchio_ regained altitude.

But after a three-minute burn, they had gained no more altitude. Mars came rushing up at them faster than ever.

The burn had no effect.

SpaceGuard Center, Farside Observatory

Korolev Crater, the Moon

Adam Bright nodded grimly at the Farside Array tracking display on his console. Max Lane, the shift supervisor, stood behind him, seeing the same thing.

"The latest pulse," Bright told him. He fiddled with the display, superimposing trajectories. "Before and after, Max. Wilks is staying on course, no matter what we do."

Lane took a deep breath. "The last advisory I saw from GreenMars said their impulse motors were about out of raw material for fuel. They've chewed up a third of the asteroid just trying to get her back on course. Now, with Wilks so close, any burn is costly."

"There's something else you should know about," Bright noted. "When I played the pulse back, there seemed to be a real epicenter near Mars for these decoherence waves. I read the reports from GreenMars about Quantum Corps taking down that transmitter—or whatever the hell it was—in India. Data showed there had to be another one within a couple of hundred million miles—most evidence pointed to an installation on or around Mars. I think we can be pretty safe in saying here's the proof."

Lane studied the histo-plots of objects around the inner Solar System. Every single orbiting object—even the planets—had seen its path altered by the massive pulse emanating from Mars.

"It was the strongest pulse yet," Bright said. "Like they were trying to compensate for the missing transmitter in India. This one really jerked the whole Solar System around."

Lane shook his head. "Whoever _they_ are...where the hell does someone get such technology? To move entire planets around by tugging on the underlying string structure of space-time...the last I heard, that was just theory. I just hope nobody got hurt."

"That's what I wanted to show you...look at this—" Bright changed displays, bringing up a polar plot of objects in orbit around Mars. "Cycler ship _Da Vinci_ just disembarked a lander about five minutes before that pulse went off. Here's the nominal and actuals. We're skin tracking her by radar now...but this data's about twenty two minutes old."

"So what's the problem...the trajectory looks good."

"Lander was nudged well off course by that pulse. We don't show any corrective maneuvers since then...at least, none we can detect. You know how small those landers are...it's just possible the delta-vee caused by the pulse exceeded the maneuvering capacity of the ship."

"So where is she now?"

"Unknown at this time but I can extrapolate from the last radar contact—" Bright tickled his keyboard and ran some calculations.

"And--?"

Bright shook his head, ran fingers through his gray crewcut. "It's just an extrapolation but based on the most recent track, I'd say the lander's headed for the Valles Marineris...there's no landing zone anywhere in that canyon that I know of. They may have been knocked or pulled too deeply into the atmosphere to maneuver properly...maybe even a free fall descent to the surface if their engines were damaged."

Bright looked up at Lane, who had turned as pale as the crater walls of Korolev outside the control room portholes.

"Get on the phone...better let Frontier Corps know what we've got here...if they've got a lander damaged or out of control—" he didn't have to finish the thought.

Adam Bright was already ringing up UNISPACE headquarters in Paris.

Aboard _Pinocchio_

Lieutenant Mendez felt his throat go dry. Only twice before in his career with UNISPACE had every single drop of mucous in his throat evaporated. Both times had been bad.

Mendez saw that the burn had been no good. "I can't pull us out of the atmosphere high enough to get to a stable orbit. We've gained altitude...but not enough."

"What's going to happen now?" Winger asked. He leaned forward to see better out the windscreen.

"We'll loop around Mars, maybe...I don't know...half way, losing speed the whole time. Then we head down for good...without enough speed to maneuver very much. Pretty much a straight ballistic descent."

Tallant bit her lip. "Where will we come down, Lieutenant?"

Mendez studied his energy management plot. "Best guess is somewhere here—" he tapped the moving map display "—if we're lucky...maybe somewhere in Solis Planum. We're headed down on a bearing that takes us right over Tharsis and all those volcanoes: Olympus Mons, Arsia, Ascreus, and Pavonis."

"We will clear those uplands, won't we?"

"Probably," Mendez stated matter-of-factly. "If I can keep our speed up. Trouble is we're on a heading right for the Valley—Valles Marineris. If I do nothing, we may well fall into those canyonlands. There's no place to set down in there, no place good, anyway. So I'm hoping to bank a little to starboard once we clear the volcanoes...if we clear them...once we get deeper into the atmosphere and _Pinocchio_ has a little bite with her aero controls." Mendez took a deep breath and flexed his fingers. "We'll only get one shot with this. I've got enough lift to glide several hundred kilometers either side of our ground track. And we've still got landing thrusters. But I've got to get _Pinocchio_ on the ground on this pass, before anything else tugs us off course."

"Hopefully in one piece," muttered Dana Tallant.

Through the windscreens, the tan desert of Arcada Planitia seemed to be rushing up fast, as _Pinocchio_ plunged deeper into the atmosphere. In seconds, the friction of her slowing descent had heated the lander's hull to a bright incandescent cherry red. Soon, the ship was enveloped in a glowing halo of plasma. Across darkened early morning skies, a white hot meteor streaked from one horizon to another, heading southeast toward the massive shield volcanoes of the Tharsis bulge and beyond that, the black gouge of the great Valley of Mariner, bigger than a thousand Grand Canyons.

Mendez called out their descent milestones.

"Seventy thousand feet, through sixteen hundred feet per second...Mariner City Approach...this is UNISPACE lander _Pinocchio_ , do you read, over?"

Only static came through their headsets.

"Nothing...the plasma sheath's still blocking our comms...I'm executing my first turn in three...two...one...NOW!"

Mendez gently banked _Pinocchio_ to starboard, biting deeper into the thin cold air. Below the ship, the peak of Pavonis Mons poked above wispy translucent pink clouds, sliding off to their left as the ship pulled harder into her turn, pulling three, three and a half, now four g's.

Johnny Winger felt like a herd of elephants were standing on his chest. He forced out short breaths and fought the gray-out that was closing down his vision. After several weeks in and out of microgravity aboard _Da Vinci,_ the lander's descent was a physical ordeal for all the crew. Only one crewmember seemed unaffected by the deceleration. Gathered along a far aft bulkhead in the main compartment, directly behind the head of Deeno D'Nunzio, the faintly twinkling fog of the ANAD swarm seemed completely unaffected by _Pinocchio's_ descent. The swarm hovered expectantly at the back of the compartment through all of the lander's twists and turns, maintaining config one, its natural swarm state.

*** _ANAD to Base...how are you handling the descent, so far, Major Winger? Anything ANAD can do to assist?***_

Winger barely picked up the signal on his coupler circuit. ANAD...I must weigh a thousand...tons...he grunted out. I'd be...better off...if I was...a swarm myself—

*** _ANAD maintaining config state one...not affected by extreme maneuvers or forces...detecting residual decoherence waves...there must have been another pulse nearby_ ***

Try to localize it...ANAD...when we get...on the ground...if we get down...we'll have a...head start...on finding that second generator....

*** _ANAD acknowledges_ ***

Winger strained to move his eyes and see through _Pinocchio's_ windows. The g forces seemed to be lessening as he lifted his head, drawing in a huge breath of welcome air.

_Pinocchio_ made a series of hypersonic S-turns to bleed off speed as she plowed deeper into the atmosphere.

The last of the great Tharsis volcanic peaks was behind them now, their dim cones poking above morning clouds, as the lander straightened out her descent and settled onto one heading.

Ahead of them, still in darkness and shadow, was the yawning chasm of the Valles Marineris canyonlands.

"I've got three choices...none of them good," announced Mendez. The Lieutenant tweaked and twisted his controls, trying to get a feel for the lander's trim. The ship rocked slightly back and forth as she clawed for purchase in the thin dawn air of Mars.

"What are we looking at, Lieutenant?" Winger asked.

"I may be able to bank far enough north to reach Lunae Planum. It's fairly flat but covered with ejecta and boulders the size of houses. That's choice number one. If I bank too much more, we'll lose speed fast and once we drop below about ten thousand feet, _Pinocchio's_ going down for sure, into whatever terrain is below us."

"And the other choices?"

"Same scenario for a starboard bank. That could put us down in Sinai Planum—maybe, but again...if I make the maneuver, we lose of a lot of energy and may not have enough to pull out or divert if our impact site...excuse me, our _landing_ site...looks rough."

"You said there were three choices," Tallant said. "What's the third?"

Mendez swallowed audibly. "Keep on this heading and keep our energy—our speed and altitude—up as long as we can. That puts over the Valles Marineris. Not many places to put _Pinocchio_ down in those canyons but we might get lucky. Keeping our speed up gives us more choices."

"Make the call," Winger said. "You're the pilot."

Mendez nodded grimly. He had already decided that banking left or right anymore was too risky. _Pinocchio_ was still sluggish, not responding quite right. It was as if some giant hand were pulling the lander off her heading.

"Our best bet is to stay on this course...and take our chances in the Valley."

Johnny Winger looked over at Dana Tallant. Second Nano's commanding officer had a determined set to her face, as if she were going to will them down to a safe landing. Their eyes met for a moment and volumes of memories passed between them. You didn't need a coupler circuit or quantum channel when you knew someone that well.

We've been through worse, her eyes seemed to say.

Lieutenant Mendez tried every comm channel on _Pinocchio's_ board. "Any station...any station...this is UNISPACE landing ship _Pinocchio_...registry UN15752...on emergency descent to Mars surface...speed two five five zero feet per second, heading now one zero zero degrees...we are going down in the Valles Marineris...any station...any station—"

Mendez gave up on comms for a moment as he righted the little ship and held his control stick steady. "Passing through one eight zero thousand...picked up a little buffet over the edge of that chasm...sometimes this place has unexpected thermals...I'm shutting down thrusters to save fuel...we may need one final kick before touchdown—"

Winger unstrapped himself and crawled forward into the first officer's right hand seat; although UNISPACE landers normally operated at Mars with only one pilot, a second seat was still there.

"Anything I can do, Lieutenant?"

Mendez seemed grateful for the help. "Yeah...I've got to keep my eyes outside, looking for some place we can put down." He patted a small console in the middle, studded with levers and buttons, which he proceeded to quickly explain: "These controls are for _Pinocchio's_ aero surfaces...flaps here...spoilers here...speed brakes here...the dials show percent deflection. When I give the word, you set whatever I call out to these red detents first...then keep listening as we get closer. I'll be calling our more and more deflection...pretty much as I feel it with this stick. Winds and currents can be tricky even in a normal landing at Mariner City. Inside these canyons—" he shrugged. "Not something we practice very often. We'll have to do this one by feel."

"Got it," Winger said.

"Okay, Major, get ready...that's Tithonium Chasm up ahead, according to my map."

Winger saw a yawning black gouge, shrouded in mist and darkness on the edge of the horizon. As _Pinocchio_ passed overhead, thirty miles above the steep slopes of the canyon, the true scale of the great Valley of Mariner lay fully revealed ahead of them...a planet-wide canyon engulfing the entire horizon, her bottomlands black and impenetrable, as if the surface was a sheet of paper, crumpled and wadded up by some giant hand.

The dim hazy escarpments of Tithonium passed directly below the lander as Mendez called for twenty percent deflection. Johnny Winger complied and immediately, _Pinocchio_ shuddered as her spoilers and speed brakes bit into the thin Martian air. The lander nosed downward, losing thousands of feet in altitude over the next several minutes.

Mendez was all concentration, switching from eyeballs out the window to a moving map display scrolling on his head-up screen. As _Pinocchio_ plummeted downward, the Lieutenant flexed his fingers around the control stick, caressing the controls to slow their descent, extending the ship's glide.

"Altitude one two zero k, rate is now two thousand feet per minute...passing over Tithonium...I'm gonna make a slight heading change now—"

The lander banked gently to port, shaking a little, as he plowed through early morning thermals rising from the great valley below. Ahead, dimly visible in the dawn shadows, was the sharp promontory marking the entrance to an even deeper system of canyonlands, Melas Chasma.

"That formation...the one that looks like a ship's bow...that's Melas. The Valley goes real deep there...but sat imagery seems to show a few narrow ledges near the bottom. I remember discussing that over a few beers once at the Overlook Bar at Mariner City...pilot talk about how we'd put a lander or glider down inside the Valley."

"If 'pilot talk' is anything like atomgrabber talk," Winger said, "you can safely discount about ninety per cent of it."

Mendez nodded. "True enough but the ledges are real...kind of like rock shelves hanging off a wall. That's where I'm headed now...I don't know where else to go... _if_ I can find them."

Winger strained to see any detail through wispy morning fog and shadow, catching only occasional glimpses of the crushed and crumpled slopes of the chasm. At the very bottom of the slopes, great piles of talus, rock slides and avalanche debris made sizeable hills that just caught pink shafts of morning sunlight.

It was a fractured, tortured and smashed landscape that passed below the speeding lander.

And they were falling steadily toward it, aiming right for the center of the vast maw that yawned wide and deep below them.

Moments later, _Pinocchio_ had descended below the level of the surrounding plains, below Candor plateau itself and fell into shadow as she was swallowed up by the vast canyon.

Mendez gritted his teeth. "I hope there's enough light down there, for me to find those ledges...on the map, they're just a few hundred miles ahead...if my heading's right."

The deep shadows of the canyon quickly engulfed them.

"—passing through four thousand, speed three five five...picking up a little buffet now...these crosswinds are tricky."

Indeed, the lander rocked like a skittish colt as air currents swirled about the upper reaches of Tithonium and Melas chasms. Below, barely visible in the gray dawn light, glimpses of frost-covered slopes flashed by. Fantastic tortured mountain sides, riven with deep ravines and rock falls, continent-sized side canyons thick with cold fog. _Pinocchio_ plunged deeper and deeper into the great gouge of the Valles Marineris.

Mendez switched on the landing radar and studied the display intently. He was looking for the telltale "finger and hand" signature of a system of ledges and promontories along the southern boundary of Melas and Coprates chasms. For years, among Mars rocket pilots and aviators, the "Big Hand" had been identified as a possible emergency landing site. Aerial, satellite and robotic ground surveys had confirmed the stability of the ground there...a stairstep series of kilometer long shelves hewn right out of the side of the south canyon walls.

"The geos say it's just built-up rock fall from centuries of slides and avalanches," Mendez muttered. "Whatever the cause, it's our only hope now. _Pinocchio's_ toast if we can't locate one of those ledges."

Johnny Winger peered out of the lander's side porthole. The ground fog was thickening below them as they descended, like tufts of cotton balls dropped from the sky. "Lieutenant, how can you find anything in this crap?"

"Instruments, Major. All us lander pilots have been well briefed on emergency landing sites along the entry track. I know what the radar signature looks like. I've flown over the site in hoppers and gliders...seen it with my own eyes. You just have to trust your instruments."

"It's like that in the nanoworld too," Winger replied. "You can't see something that's a billionth of a meter tall. You have to rely on acoustics and atomic force microscopes. Instruments, just like you say."

_Pinocchio_ was now fully engulfed in fog, falling rapidly toward a tiny island of flat land in an ocean of rock and steep slopes.

Unseen by anyone in the crew compartment, the ANAD swarm had begun to flow forward onto the flight deck, drifting like invisible dust motes among the crew. The swarm made its way forward, eventually taking up station near the aft bulkhead of the flight deck, gathering once more into a faint phosphorescent mist that clung to the interior of _Pinocchio's_ command center.

"Now passing through twenty five thousand," Mendez announced. His eyes were riveted to the head-up display on the windscreen, a faint radar-supplied outline of the terrain below flickering next to reams of numbers. "Three hundred and fifty knots... _that's_ what I'm aiming for...there's the Hand—"

Johnny Winger saw the distinctive shape on the display and realized just how small the ledge seemed. _Pinocchio_ was falling like a rock and Mendez was trying desperately to manage their speed and altitude, putting them right on top of a narrow promontory with finger-like abutments despite their great speed. He shook his head in disbelief.

_There's no way we're gonna stick this ship on that little strip of land_.

"Fifty percent," Mendez called out.

Winger pulled the lever, ramming _Pinocchio's_ speed brakes out to half their full deflection. The lander shuddered and shook from the sudden deceleration.

Mendez studied his energy plot and sucked in his breath through clenched teeth.

"It's not enough— _spoilers out full..._ I'm going to light off my thrusters now...we're going to overshoot the hand if we can't slow down some more."

Winger complied, cycling _Pinocchio's_ remaining spoilers to their full deflection. The ship shimmied and vibrated, groaning against the thickening airstream.

"Hold on...I'm pulling up and lighting off descent thrusters...hope to hell this works—"

_Pinocchio's_ landing thrusters, normally used in the final seconds of descent to soften the touchdown, fired into action. Mendez had pulled the control stick back, nosing _Pinocchio_ up to a higher angle of attack. The small rockets should have slowed their descent enough to make reaching the Hand possible, given the ship's speed and altitude.

"Jesus H. Christ, what's going on here...something's still tugging us off course," Mendez complained. "Still way too much energy...we'll never make that ledge at this speed."

The ANAD swarm had already detected and processed the details of _Pinocchio's_ flight status, reading airspeed, angle of attack, altitude, engine status and a dozen other critical parameters. The master assembler's processor had already determined that the lander had far too much energy to successfully execute even a rough landing on the Hand...the ship would overshoot the emergency strip by miles.

The swarm quickly searched its memory for a plausible solution, generated several ranked by probability of successful outcome and executed a mass replication into a little-used config state called _C-255: Emergency Ballute, Replication and Deployment._

The swarm began moving toward the compartment hatch, seeking imperfections in the hatch seals, through which it could escape into the freezing slipstream outside. Finding several, the swarm proceeded to exit the crew compartment of the lander, and using its fullerene hooks and grabbers, clung tenaciously to the outer hull of the ship, while it executed config C-255.

"— _maximum deflection,_ Major! We need to slam on the brakes now! Passing through ten thousand...I've got the Hand but we're coming in too fast—"

_Pinocchio_ lurched forward as her landing rockets ran out of fuel and shut down. The lander plummeted in pitch black fog toward the boulder-strewn gullies and ravines at the very bottom of Melas Chasm, unable to break her fall any more.

"I'm going to try banking her real steep to slow down some more," Mendez announced. "Hang on—"

_Pinocchio_ dipped sharply left, then right in a series of ragged S-turns, trying to bleed off enough speed to somehow set down in the tiny promontory that Mendez called the Hand. Mendez had to keep a close eye on his radar and proximity sensors now. The ship was inside a canyon and the canyon walls weren't very wide. One wrong turn and the ship could impact the steep slopes of Melas or Coprates chasms.

The ship suddenly began to buffet and shake, shimmying like a frightened dog.

"What the hell's that?" Mendez checked his instruments. "Airspeed dropping off...now under three hundred...it feels like something's dragging us back."

Johnny Winger took a quick look out the cabin side window. The edge of a flapping ballistic parachute streamed by the glass. "You must have popped a chute, Lieutenant...I see it right outside."

Mendez frowned. "I didn't release any chute. _Pinocchio_ doesn't _have_ any chutes...we use rockets for final braking. Let me see—"

Both Mendez and Winger saw the same thing outside the lander windows. A stream of parachutes flapped and flailed wildly in _Pinocchio's_ slipstream.

"What the—where the hell did that come from?"

"I think it's ANAD, Lieutenant. Check your airspeed. You should be slowing down."

Mendez did just that. He studied his energy plot for a few moments. The lander's descent speed had dropped sharply. He realized that the icon representing the ship was now perfectly aligned for a steep but survivable approach to the Hand.

"I don't know what's happened but it looks like we can make that ledge after all," Mendez announced. "Max deflection on everything, Major...spoiler, speed brakes...the works."

Winger complied. _Pinocchio_ shook violently and plunged straight down toward the bottom of the steep canyon. Nothing was visible outside but tufts of black fog streaming by the windows.

Mendez called out the final numbers. "Under a thousand feet, speed two hundred knots...I'm centering the pipper on the front of that ledge. Down two five zero feet per second."

Winger checked his seat harness and straps and suggested Tallant do the same. "We're dropping like a rock, Dana, so buckle up."

"Down one eight zero feet per second...I don't have any more rockets...this is going to be a rough one...now under eight hundred feet...on target for the center of the Hand—

"Outside the lander, the ANAD swarm clung tenaciously to the hull, replicating parachute structure at max rate, adding more chutes, risers and anchors to the already billowing stream that was steadily slowing _Pinocchio_ down.

"Vertical's down to a hundred, now ninety feet per second...speed one one five knots...passing through five hundred...we're on the button, according to my plot—"

"I see it!" Dana Tallant cried out. "There—" she pointed through a portside window. "Faint but it sure looks like solid ground—"

"Under three hundred,' Mendez called out. "I see it too...I'll try to line us up to clear those hills in front."

Through the thick fog, faintly visible in the fading starlight, the great promontory looked dark and forbidding out of the black. Deep shadow covered most of the ground, slicing through the fog like black knives. As the lander's descent became ever more vertical and her forward speed was cut by the ANAD chutes, the fog seemed from above like a running sea, streaming aft in sheets and waves and great roiling clouds. _Pinocchio_ began rocking back and forth as she descended almost straight down into the maelstrom, toward touchdown on the ledge.

"Picking up some wind down here—I hope it doesn't blow us off the ledge."

Moments later, the ship rocked and crunched and settled down as it drifted gently onto the surface of the ledge. Johnny Winger looked out a porthole and saw shafts of pink sunlight inching down steep canyon walls to starboard. Fog and dust devils danced across the ground in front of the ship and _Pinocchio_ swayed gently in the currents of thicker air.

Mendez let out a long, exhausted breath, rubbing tired eyes as he swallowed hard. "And _that_ , ladies and gentlemen, is how you make an emergency landing on Mars."

Dark shadows fell across the forward windscreen, momentarily blocking the sunlight. Dana Tallant looked out.

"It's the chutes...looks like some kind of balloon too...or airbag, that's deflated. Good work, Lieutenant. You planted us right on this ledge with scarcely a bump."

Mendez saw the chutes too, now half-draped over the forward hull of the lander. Even as they watched, the parachutes and balloons seemed to disintegrate right before their eyes. A tenuous mist, twinkling with pinpricks of light, soon enveloped the lander.

"That was no ordinary chute," Winger told them. "It was ANAD."

"ANAD? How the hell--?"

"I don't know exactly but somehow the little guy got outside, clung to the hull and replicated chutes and airbags. That's what slowed us down enough to make this ledge."

Mendez agreed. "We had way too much energy...we should have overshot and impacted at the bottom of Coprates...we should be a smoking pile of wreckage right now...this I gotta see—" He unfastened his harness and slipped out of the flight deck, heading aft through a crew compartment full of shaken and groaning nanotroopers, to suit up and head outside.

Winger and Tallant followed.

"Hey, Skipper—" it was Mighty Mite Barnes, pale and bruised from being bounced around during the descent "—where the hell are we?" There were load groans and more curses from other troopers up and down the rows of the compartment.

"We're alive," Winger told them. He followed Mendez aft to the airlock. "That's all I know right now."

In the airlock, Mendez finished suiting up. The Lieutenant wasn't 'treated' with respiroctyes like Winger and Tallant. His suit was a bulky full-pressure suit and helmet, unlike the skinsuit and breather that the nanotroopers wore. Winger and Tallant both had blood-borne nanobotic assistance with oxygen supply. Their skinsuits were tight enough to hold survivable pressure but their breathing was artificially boosted by the 'cytes circulating throughout their bloodstreams.

Mendez cycled the lock and the three of them stepped out onto rubbly ground strewn with small rocks and wisps of windborne dust, flashing pink in the dim early morning sunlight.

_Pinocchio_ lay like a wounded bird about forty feet from one edge of the promontory. The remnants of ANAD's parachutes lay draped over her hull, but even now, the chutes were disintegrating as their constituent assemblers de-linked and disassembled into atom fluff.

Mendez uttered a low whistle at the sight. "Man, we were luckier than I realized. Look how close that edge is to our landing spot. One wind gust and we would have tumbled down the side of that slope."

Dana Tallant had already ventured over as close as she dared to the edge. She peered into the dim black below. "I can't see the bottom...how far down does it go?"

"From here?" Mendex shrugged, a useless gesture in a full pressure suit. "Hard to say. I seem to remember radar imaging when we scouted this area a few years ago...Coprates ranges from sixty to a hundred klicks across and up to nine klicks deep. The Hand was a ledge about half way down the south wall."

Johnny Winger went to the remnants of the chute and felt the fine dust of the disassembling bots in his glove fingers. "ANAD had a config for this that I didn't know about." He tried linking in on the quantum coupler circuit.

ANAD, where did you get the config for this stuff?

After a little staticky fritzing, the assembler's 'voice' came through. *** _ANAD analyzed operational situation and emergency parameters...adapted config state one five two 'emergency survival shelter for two persons, low-pressure environment'...altered config was able to function with forty five percent efficiency as descent control apparatus...ANAD implemented solution consistent with requirements of Second Rule_ ***

Winger conveyed what the assembler had said. "He analyzed the problem and adapted an existing config to work as a parachute. Second Rule of his program...do no harm to humans."

"His learning algorithms have evolved even faster than Doc Frost expected," Tallant said. "We never saw ANAD do that in any war games. You know what this means, Wings?"

"Yeah, it means he's growing up fast...faster than anyone believed."

"What the hell are you two talking about?" Mendez asked. He bent stiffly to one knee, trying to examine some landing damage to _Pinocchio's_ rear elevons.

"The autonomous assembler swarm we brought on board...ANAD...is part of our detachment. You were briefed before we departed. Somehow, he realized _Pinocchio_ was in trouble and worked his way outside the ship and jerry-rigged a parachute and balloon system to slow the ship down. That's what enabled you to put us down on this ledge."

Mendez was incredulous. "Your swarm did that....on its own?"

"Looks like we owe our lives to ANAD."

"The bigger question," Tallant said, "is this: who or what kept pulling us off course?"

Mendez was about to answer but his suit radio crackled to life, a message received through _Pinocchio_.

"Da Vinci lander Pinocchio...this is Lifter Rescue out of Mariner City Station. We are inbound, closing on your position...descending through ten thousand...Pinocchio, turn on your approach beacon immediately...we'll maneuver and land as close as we can—"

Mendez climbed back into the airlock , located the powerful lights and switched on. Outside, the promontory and canyon walls were bathed in a yellow glow. From ten thousand feet up, the little lander would flare like a supernova in the fading black of a cold Martian dawn.

Johnny Winger felt a momentary chill down his spine and he knew it wasn't the winds swirling through Coprates canyon.

If ANAD had somehow been able to accomplish all this, with no obvious or dedicated programming or testing, what else could the assembler swarm do? What other surprises was he capable of?

Winger decided he needed have a talk with Doc Frost once they got to Mariner City.
CHAPTER 9

Mariner City, Mars

October 1, 2080

The lead marscat in the convoy topped a low rise and nosed down over the ruddy hard-packed dirt of the transway. Johnny Winger peered out of the porthole at the domed complex of Mariner City, spread out at the edge of a narrow promontory overlooking a deep valley called the Bay of Night.

"Paryang under glass," came a familiar voice from behind him. It was Dana Tallant, also eyeing the approaching complex.

"I was thinking the same thing," Winger admitted, referring to the Paryang monastery they had assaulted twelve years before. The Red Hammer compound beneath the high plateau of Tibet had been destroyed in the operation. The cartel had nearly been eliminated. But in the ensuing decade, the cartel had somehow reconstituted itself, on Mars and Earth, with enough smarts and some outside help, to threaten Earth itself with destruction. "It does look like Tibet and that monastery, doesn't it?"

"Except for all the red dust and mountains." Tallant fiddled with her skinsuit controls, cinched up a cargo belt and sank back in the seat, steeling herself was whatever lay ahead. "I thought we had gotten rid of Red Hammer back then."

"Me too...I guess we'll just have to finish the job this time."

"If the politicos will let us...you know anything about this Duncan Price fellow?"

"I've messaged with him over Solnet a few times. He's supposed to be a detective with Frontier Corps. Around Table Top, the scuttlebutt is that Frontier Corps are all a bunch of Wild West sheriffs; you know: shoot first and ask questions later. I'm guessing law enforcement's a little looser out here."

"No doubt we'll have our differences," Tallant agreed.

Winger added, "From what I've heard, there's another quantum generator here on Mars and it's keeping that asteroid locked on course for Earth. Price messaged me that the thing had some serious barrier nano...stuff they're not equipped to deal with. That's why we're here. We've already put one of the bastards out of commission."

"We hope it's out of commission," Tallant muttered.

The convoy of marscats rolled into the North Locks complex and came to a halt. In all, five crawlers had made the half hour trek from the North Landing Zone to Mariner City, bearing the Quantum Corps detachment and all their gear.

As Winger, Tallant and the rest dismounted, they saw a formation of dignitaries gathered stiffly around the convoy.

"Looks like we've got a little welcoming ceremony," Tallant observed.

"Yeah, so much for a covert insertion," Winger said. He tidied himself up to be more presentable. Price had told him over the Net that there were no secrets on Mars.

A florid man with white hair and a big smile came forward, extending a calloused hand.

"Christopher Rudd...I'm chairman of MarsFed. On behalf of all Martians everywhere, welcome to the Red Planet."

Winger grasped his hand and they shook. "We had a bit of an adventure on the way down, sir...but we made it, thanks to Lieutenant Mendez here."

Mendez and Dana Tallant exchanged greetings.

"I heard about that...thank God, you were able to make a safe landing, somewhere down in the Valley, wasn't it?"

"A little patch of level ground I know," Mendez explained.

Rudd nodded grimly. "Greg...Mr. Nygren over here, from GreenMars, told me that machine up in the canyonlands hiccupped and knocked you off course."

"We're still investigating the cause, sir," Mendez said. "UNISPACE is sending a team out to look my ship over."

Rudd made introductions all around. The assembled officials came from every department in MarsFed: Public Security, Maps and Surveys, Finance, even a part time judge from Mars Court, a burly African man named Kavai who also worked day shift at Top Ward maintenance.

One man stood slightly apart from the arrest. He was slightly built, with outsized hands and squinting eyes, magnified by omnifocals.

"And this here is Duncan...Price—" Rudd was saying, practically dragging them down the line of dignitaries. "Dunc's a spy from UNISPACE. Frontier Corps, actually. He's our resident Sherlock Holmes. Over here is—"

But Johnny Winger stayed behind, as Tallant and the detachment moved on. He introduced himself to the detective.

"Winger, Major John. U.N. Quantum Corps...we finally meet."

"Duncan Price. Glad to meet you. I heard you had a rough ride down...your team is okay?"

Winger nodded. "We survived. Where can we meet?"

Price indicated Rudd. "As soon as the old windbag has finished his speeches and we've pressed enough flesh, I'll take you into the city. My office is on Face Cut Street, lower ward. We can talk there."

"I'll be there," Winger told him. He moved on to catch up with the rest of the staff.

After all the speeches and ceremonies, the Detachment headed into the city. Arrangements had been made to bivouac the nanotroopers and their gear at the Public Security armory. The armory turned out to be a small brick warehouse on Boundary Street, near the south airlock and lifts.

Winger assembled the Detachment for a quick briefing.

"Get your gear stowed. We'll be heading outside in a few hours, so configure your gear for surface conditions. There's barrier nano around the generator, according to reports, so figure on opposed entry. ANAD, you configure swarm state one."

The twinkling fog brightened momentarily, as the cloud of assemblers began redistributing itself to another configuration.

*** _ANAD assumes state one, reports ready in all respects...Major...permission to leave camp and conduct recon of enemy config_?***

"Negative, ANAD...we're moving out as a unit when the time comes. We're going to need all the help we can get when we approach this generator."

Turbo Fatah had 'heard' the same message on his coupler circuit. "Skipper, ANAD might have a good idea. A quick recon of the bad guys would help us better set up our weapons and configs."

"Tactics, too," Sheila Reaves added. The Defense and Protective Systems tech was bird-dogging a coilgun mount out of its carry pack. "We can't be a hundred per cent sure this one's like Kolkata."

But Winger had already made up his mind. "No, we move out as a unit. I don't know what's around here, what the environment's like, what the regulations are about uncontained ANAD swarms. Martians may not be so understanding about loose swarms."

The Detachment continued deploying and checking their gear while Winger and Tallant went off in search of the Detective Price's office.

The Frontier Corps local office was located in a small red-brick bungalow on Face Cut Street, a block away from Canyon Head Park and its vast Perspex dome overlooking the Bay of Night.

Price greeted both of them. "You've done the walking tour of the city, I presume?"

"We came straight from the armory, Detective," Winger told him.

"Come—" Price led them outside. "You can't be on Mars without seeing this." The portly detective guided them across the street to Canyon Head Park. They made their way through picnic areas, pavilions, gazebos and swing sets to the very edge of a scenic overlook by the dome.

Winger's jaw dropped. "Wow...it's the whole valley—"

Tallant let her eyes sweep over the panorama of the rugged Ophir and Candor chasms. Dust devils swirled in pairs on the valley floor, churning up blood red shadows in the fading sunlight. Deeper black shadows had already crept halfway down steep escarpments along the canyon walls.

"Sunset _is_ a magical time here," Price admitted.

Several families had silently gathered behind and beside them; the children played tag and hide and seek among the picnic tables. One young couple had draped an old blanket over themselves and sat pensively at the edge of the dome, sipping something from a flask they passed back and forth.

In moment, they were surrounded by a silent throng of people, watching the sun drop below the horizon, quietly appreciating how the canyon walls changed color, from ocher and tan to a deep black, all over and done with in seconds.

"Quite a show," Winger admitted. "This must be a tradition here...people just showed up at the right moment."

Price nodded, breathing in the spectacle himself. "We call it 'Night Hands.' The kids think the shadows are like fingers creeping down the canyon walls. Sometimes, there are concerts here...even a funeral or two."

Winger was mindful of just how different Mariner City was from anything he had ever encountered. "I didn't see a lot of loose nano on the way in, Detective. I'm guessing the rules are different here."

Price seemed to smile faintly. "In a lot of ways, Major. I've read about the containment laws...how some Earthside cities and regions are stricter than others."

"Kolkata doesn't seem to have _any_ laws," Tallant said. "The whole city is one big stewpot of uncontained assembler swarms. The air's thick with them. Actually being here is kind of a relief."

"We've got our factions on Mars," Price admitted. "Some want to hurry up transformation, like the GreenMars people. They don't like it that someone's diverted their asteroid. They want to smash Mars, shake things up a bit and jump start the Big Greening. Others like it the way it is now...they would just as soon Earth get hit and Mars be left alone. Same thing with nanoswarms. Some like 'em, some embrace the idea of a new life form, sort of a new companion and servant of Man. Some don't. We're still hashing the details out here. But we have to be cautious. Mars won't support life yet, not without a lot of machines and domes. Me...I'm not quite ready to have a swarm of invisible mechs live next door to me. I'm not sure the neighborhood is ready for that big a change."

Winger watched children playing along catwalks that covered the sheer rock face of the excavation cut beside the dome. "Detective, what exactly did you run into when you found that generator?"

Price described the installation he had encountered. "It was some kind of platform...on the books as a weather station...up in the Candor canyonlands. I had some GreenMars guys with me too. We couldn't get close. The platform was shielded and the barrier bots were like angry hornets...they came after us. Thank God I had an rf pistol. We got the hell out of there as fast as we could. Then the thing went off—"

"Went off--?"

Price ran a hand through thinning hair. "The platform...the generator...whatever you want to call it. It activated. And something like a wave washed through the valley. For a few moments...I don't know...it was creepy. Mountains shifting...like someone dropped a mirror and all the pieces were reflecting something different—"

Winger had seen the same thing at Paryang, and Kolkata. "A quantum wave, Detective. Massive spacetime distortion."

"Exactly. It even wrecked our marscat. Like some giant just picked it up and dropped it to the ground. I never saw anything like it before."

"We've seen it," Dana Tallant said. She told Price about the Paryang assault ten years before.

"The Kolkata machine was similar," Winger added. "But we figured out a way to 'fix' the generator in place long enough to disable it."

"I've got the reports in my office, Major...pictures, video, everything. I'll show you what we're dealing with."

The three of them left Canyon Head Park and walked two blocks to the spartan offices of Frontier Corps. There was a bakery on one side and a hobby and craft shop on the other.

Price showed them into his sparsely furnished office. "It's not much but it's home. Coffee? Tea?"

A small servbot whirred into the office bearing a tray of sweets and assorted teas. It navigated piles of paper expertly and beeped happily when Winger and Tallant selected items from the tray. Then it whirred off to a tiny kitchenette.

Price ran some video footage of his encounter with the Candor generator.

"One of the GreenMars guys—Hamil, I think it was—took this. There's the thing—" he pointed out a thick blur of light and dark in the shaking image. "—Hamil must have been running when he took this."

Winger remembered their last encounter at Kolkata. "The device itself is actually a swarm of nanobots, Detective. There's no solid structure beneath what you see—only a swarm in constant config change."

Price clucked thoughtfully and sipped at scalding hot tea. His face was wreathed in steam from the cup. "Interesting...no solid structure...I didn't get close enough or have time to notice. The barrier bots came at us pretty aggressively. What exactly does that mean: no solid structure?"

"It means—" Tallant told him, "—that attacking the thing is a real bitch. The barrier bots can fight off almost anything. And if you try coilguns, HERF, or other anti-swarm weapons on the generator, you find it changes config so fast, they're almost useless. It's like trying to blow up a fog bank."

"We did some pre-mission recon at a fab lab in Kolkata. Our own ANAD unit was able to penetrate the generator swarm's operating system and decrypt enough to figure out how the thing replicates. When we did the assault, ANAD was able to interfere with its config changes, at least enough to 'fix' the platform so we could engage it. It was touch and go but we were finally able to put the thing out of commission. ANAD disassembled it into atom fluff."

Price considered that, pulling thoughtfully on his chin. He looked like he hadn't shaved in days. "And you think the same technique will work here?"

"It's our best option," Winger said. "We don't know that much about who designed the generators but it's reasonable to suppose they're pretty similar."

"I'll have to run this by PubSec...and the Council too. Public Security people will want to have their say. And probably GreenMars too. Can you work up a plan to present?"

"Already done," Tallant said. "We're ready to go through every detail, every contingency...right now."

Price smiled faintly. "You Quantum Corps guys don't waste time. I like that. Here on Mars, we waste lots of time, mostly arguing. Everybody gets a say."

"We don't have much time to waste, Detective. That asteroid gets closer to Earth impact every minute. If it gets too close, the GreenMars engineers say the impulse motors can't deflect it away in time...takes too much delta-vee."

"I'll ask Rudd to call a full meeting of MarsFed. That should shake the trees enough to get every nut out in the open...that's how things work here on Mars, Major."

The meeting was set for 2200 hours that night, at the MarsFed council chambers on Central Street. Winger and Tallant arrived early with Duncan Price. They nodded to Christopher Rudd who was button-holing several council members in one corner of the chamber room.

"He's always working some angle," Price told them. "Like everybody's favorite uncle, Rudd always has something in his pockets to hand out. By the way, that's Benoit over there—" he indicated a tall man with a gaunt face and a hawk nose, which supported a pair of ancient-looking glass spectacles. "Head of PubSec."

"What's with the specs?" Tallant asked. "He looks like Ben Franklin."

"That's Benoit. It's an image thing...who knows: wisdom, sagacity, integrity...you name it. The man's a predator. Some people think he's actually got X-ray vision and he doesn't discourage that kind of speculation. He's a nosy, pretentious bastard. PubSec and Frontier Corps have never gotten along well here."

"So I gathered," Winger said.

Within minutes, Rudd had flicked the lights on and off and gaveled the session to order. The assembled dignitaries bustled about taking their seats.

"I called this session to give Detective Price and our visitors from Earth an opportunity to present their plan for dealing with this... _device_...up in the canyonlands." Rudd was speaking from some prepared notes. "Greg here...our GreenMars rep, tells me this thing we all saw on the vid is responsible for diverting our asteroid from Mars intercept. UNIFORCE sent some troopers from Quantum Corps to help us shut it down...they apparently have some experience with this, as I understand it. Duncan, you've got something?"

Price had raised his hand to be recognized. "Greg Nygren and I found this platform on a little trip up into the Tectonic Hills. It's some kind of generator...I don't understand all the details. Maybe Greg can explain them. But this thing is well protected with a nanobotic shield. Somehow, it's diverting Wilks onto a course to hit Earth...that's why UNIFORCE is involved. I found out Quantum Corps had recently encountered something similar, on Earth. So I proposed the Corps send someone here." He indicated Johnny Winger and Dana Tallant, sitting together at the far end of the oval table. "Major Winger and Major Tallant arrived yesterday, with a small detachment of troopers from Quantum Corps. They've got a plan for shutting down this generator..." Price glanced at Nygren, the young blond engineer "...and giving us our asteroid back."

Pierre Benoit scowled through spectacles at the end of his nose, at Price and the nanotroopers, barely disguising his contempt. "Chris—" he directed his words toward Rudd, this year's chairman of MarsFed, "we really don't need any help from outsiders on this. PubSec can take care of it."

"PubSec didn't know anything about it, until Greg and I stumbled onto the installation," Price retorted. "This thing's bigger than we can handle...I couldn't even approach the generator without getting attacked. The technology's way beyond us."

Benoit shook his head. "I don't like it. You never gave us a chance, Duncan. Come on—you know what happens when you let outsiders meddle in our stuff. You could have at least come by."

Rudd held up a hand. "That's enough of that." He smiled apologetically at Winger and Tallant. "We'll continue this line of discussion off-line. For now, Major Winger—I have been informed—has a plan for dealing with this... _thing_." Major--?"

Winger was handed a small control pod to run the displays in the chamber. He fingered several buttons and imagery scrolled across all the workstation screens in front of the Council members.

"You're looking at tactical footage from our recent assault on a temple compound in Kolkata, India, a few weeks ago. In the center of the imagery is a platform—a quantum state generator—that is one node of two. The other node is apparently the device Detective Price came upon here on Mars." Winger, with help from Nygren, briefly explained the theory behind the generators and how they were tugging 2351 Wilks-Lucayo off course.

"I have to emphasize that Quantum Corps is still running an investigation into what these devices are, how they work, who installed them and who's operating them. Current thinking is that, working together, the two generators are pulling this asteroid onto an Earth-intercept trajectory, despite all efforts to counteract them. UNIFORCE believes this is part of an effort by the cartel Red Hammer to cripple Quantum Corps or force UNIFORCE to close down the Corps and give them a free hand in their criminal enterprises."

There was a stirring of murmurs about the room as the assault footage scrolled on.

Price spoke up. "Major, you told me these generators aren't even solid structures."

"That's correct. During the assault, our embedded ANAD unit found that the generator was actually a very sophisticated swarm of nanobots, just like ANAD, but with a configuration beyond anything the Corps had ever encountered before."

"A swarm—" Benoit shook his head, bending closer to squint at the screen in front of him. "Extraordinary...and how did you combat this swarm, Major?"

Winger described the pre-assault recon they had conducted. "ANAD had decrypted part of the replication algorithm before the assault. Basically, we had an idea of how the device or swarm would react, before we went in. ANAD, and our own anti-swarm weapons, were able to disrupt the generator and eventually disperse it."

Dana Tallant added, "And we left swarm elements there to keep it dispersed."

Greg Nygren was intrigued with the technology. The engineer rubbed a stubbly blond beard. "And this swarm was able to generate quantum state waves...literally grab hold of spacetime and twist it around and extend that for billions of miles---I read the reports, Major."

"So I'm told," Winger replied. "I'm not an engineer. UNIFORCE thinks the device here on Mars works the same way...that they were both part of a pair of devices, or a network."

Benoit frowned. "You think there could be more?"

"Unknown, sir," Winger said. "There are two nodes we know of. And there's evidence from the Farside Observatory on the Moon that measurable changes in the asteroid's course happen after each generator pulse is emitted. At this point, we don't have much choice but to go with the intel we have. Destroy the installation here and hope your GreenMars guys can take back control of the asteroid...before it's too late."

Chris Rudd had an idea. "Duncan, you came to me a week ago about this case of the Chinese meteorologist. What's his connection to all this?"

Price had his case notes with him. He beamed them to the chamber server and the Council saw the sanitized version of his case report.

"Dao Wen-Hsien was the name. You see the particulars in front of you. I've got strong evidence that Dao _built_ this device up in the canyonlands. He was here for weather research, you know—before the Big Smack and all that—but that must have been a cover." Price went over the Hellas expedition and the six fatalities from that expedition, then covered his own interrogation notes and Dao's latest field trip. "The man just disappeared from the face of Mars."

Winger joined in. "Quantum Corps Q2 did some digging when Detective Price contacted us. They think Dao was a Red Hammer agent, operating under cover here, to get this node of their quantum wave network up and running."

Rudd was studying the files, scrolling down through Price's notes and evidence. "You say he just disappeared."

"We can't find him," Price admitted.

"Nor can PubSec," Benoit added. "He's not on Mars."

"But his handiwork is," Rudd said. "Major, what about your plan?"

Winger fingered more studs on his controller and the details appeared on all screens. "We want to take the same tactical approach as Kolkata, but with one important exception. We want to make the final assault from below ground."

Benoit was skeptical. "Underground? What's the sense of that...how is that even possible?"

Winger laid out the tactical plan. "In many cases, where we encounter barrier bots like this, we find the installation isn't shielded below ground level. We first tried this approach years ago at the Paryang monastery in Tibet...at the time, that was thought to be Red Hammer's main base." He briefed them quickly on the details of that assault. "We'll do a little recon before, but it's likely this installation is the same. We use our ANAD unit to tunnel below the complex and initiate our assault from that direction."

"Doesn't that take time? My understanding of current nanobotic technology is that solid structures take time to penetrate."

"They do," Dana Tallant told him. "But over the years, we've optimized ANAD's configuration and replication algorithm to handle it. What we lose in time we gain with the element of surprise."

Benoit considered that. "Public Security should be a part of this operation. We're responsible for law enforcement here, with all due respects to my college from Frontier Corps." He nodded faintly in Price's direction.

"No argument from me," Price said. "I plan to be there too."

Rudd could sense an argument developing. "Gentlemen, I think we should defer to the expertise of Quantum Corps on this. They've come a long way with all their gear to help us and we should let them help us."

Winger glanced over at Tallant. _Politics_ , their eyes said.

"We're both UNIFORCE," Price reminded them. "My office has to be involved regardless."

Before Benoit could retort, Johnny Winger spoke up. "We appreciate help from anywhere we can get it. Have you got maps of the area...this Candor canyonland? Especially, subsurface structures, topography, that sort of thing?"

Rudd appreciated the nanotrooper's effort to involve all parties. "I'm sure we can provide them, Major. Gentlemen, are we agreed then: we'll let Quantum Corps pursue their strategy and we'll help them as much as we can?"

There were some long glances and murmurs of dissent, but no one objected.

"Then it's decided," Rudd said. "Major, what's the next step?"

Winger said, "My detachment's bivouacked at the armory. We need half a day to stage our equipment and check everything out, especially after that hard ride down." He checked his watch. "Could you send someone over to the armory with any maps you have by 0500 hours tomorrow? I'd also like to have Detective Price and Mr. Benoit there as well, to help us with recon operations. They know the area better than us."

The meeting was adjourned and Price buttonholed Winger outside the chamber.

"I've posted the footage of our last expedition on the local net. I'll show you how to access it. You'll see from that what you're dealing with and some of the terrain as well. I also want to thank you for stepping up and smoothing over our local disputes. Benoit and I often have fireworks in these meetings. That's how Chris Rudd got his white hair."

"We need everybody's help, Detective. Any intel you or he or anybody can provide can only help the operation. My experience with these quantum devices is that nothing is as simple as it seems. And we've been dealing with Red Hammer for years. They always have a few surprises for us."

The convoy of Marscats pulled out of the city just after sunup, six vehicles in all whirring and trundling through Southlocks and out onto the dusty road that led off into the Tectonic Hills to the northwest. Aboard were Detachment Alpha, the _Quantum Hammer_ task force with all their gear and weapons and three others: Duncan Price and two PubSec agents, Holden Wills and Oscar Purvis.

Winger figured the PubSec pair and Price would occupy each other with mutual suspicions.

The transway to the north landing zone was a two-lane hard-packed dirt road, well traveled by trucks, trams and cats as it was the main artery from the north pads to the City. The convoy sped up to nearly thirty klicks and turned past the landing zone, surrounded by wire fencing, then headed out into the open countryside.

The terrain was all ruddy desert, rolling hills with craters bordering both sides of the road, between the bulldozed humps and berms from road construction. A steady rise in elevation indicated they were climbing onto the lower slopes of the Tectonic Hills. Past the hills, the hummocky fall of ejecta from massive Orion Crater lay like splayed fingers on gently undulating upland, tending higher and higher in altitude as the cats climbed west by northwest.

"My plan is to set up camp here," Winger told Price and the PubSec men. He showed them a tactical display as they wolfed down field rations behind the command deck in the lead cat. "There's a small set of hills just south of that ravine, with good views in all directions, good for comms and surveillance. We'll form up the convoy into a defensible perimeter and deploy all units, including ANAD. I've got my CQEs working up the right config now for underground assault."

"CQEs?" asked Price.

"Containment and Quantum Engineers. The Detachment has two: Tech Sergeant D'Nunzio and Master Sergeant Tsukota, in the cat behind us. They know how to configure the swarms for any mission we engage in."

"Most of the rock around here is ejecta from Orion," offered Willis. "Not that I'm a geo but it's pretty porous stuff, from what I hear. Your bots can deal with this stuff?"

Dana Tallant was strapping on a packbelt. "ANAD tunneled through the Himalayas back on Earth a few years ago. About fifty miles, as I recall. So, yeah, he can handle this stuff too."

The Detachment's IC1 (Interface Controller 1) was Sergeant Vic Klimuk. Klimuk was driving the lead cat.

"Coordinates coming up," Klimuk announced presently. Right after a hurried check of maps and displays, he slowed the cat and the wheel motors whirred as they spun down. The convoy had ridden to nearly the top of a long curving mesa and was now approaching the abrupt end of a promontory overlooking a vast desert hardpan that stretched to the horizon. In the distance, the shadowy forms of Pavonis and Ascraeus Mons poked above the horizon, backlit by a rising sun, blood red in the suspended dust stirred by local wind devils.

"Looks like two big eyes peeking over the limb of the planet," Tallant muttered. "Kind of creepy at sunrise."

"Next year, after the Big Smack, it'll all change anyway," Wills told them. "Mars won't be Mars anymore...just a big lab experiment for GreenMars."

Winger got on the crewnet. "Detachment, prepare to dismount. Execute _Defense Condition One_ and configure for opposed entry. Make sure your skinsuits are tight."

_Defense One_ saw the convoy split up and circle like an Old West wagon train, eventually forming a tight cordon with sensors and weapons oriented outward in all directions, able to defend the convoy against any threat by land or air. As the marscats were jockeying for position on the narrow mesa, a small formation of ANAD bots was ejected from the last cat to form a barrier around the entire encampment. A small shimmering fog soon settled over the top of the promontory.

"Barrier in place and responding normally, Skipper," reported Deeno D'Nunzio.

"Very well...exit your vehicles, all weapon safeties off. Get that borer in place quick!"

Winger, Tallant and the rest of the command marscat dismounted.

Standing outside on top of the hill, Winger could see for miles in all directions. As his skinsuit tightened to hold pressure, he took a deep breath. _No problem with my 'cytes,_ he thought. The embedded respirocyte bots were boosting oxygen exchange in his bloodstream several hundred times over his body's natural rhythm. On Earth, at the Hunt Valley wargame range, he'd been able to jog for twenty miles without needing an extra breath. Here, in Mars' lower gravity but still encumbered with a light skinsuit, he figured he could do even better.

Winger quickly checked the deployment, making sure the HERF cannon and coilguns were set up first. _No sense taking any chances_ , he thought. Sensors had not detected any living creatures in the area, but Red Hammer was known for springing surprises on unsuspecting visitors.

Price was clad in a light blue skinsuit and breathing pack. The PubSec men, Wills and Purvis, had not been treated, and so were in full pressure suits. _Dinosaurs_ , mouthed Price, as he watched the Detachment drag out the borer rig and set it up a few dozen yards away from the convoy. Winger had already explained that the borer would start a small pilot hole for the ANAD swarm to penetrate, then assist the nanobots in eating an underground path toward the quantum generator. "It'll go faster that way," Winger explained. "Each supports the other. Borer and 'bots, working as a team, can push through dense rock at several feet per minute."

A great chasm had been chewed out of the ground ahead of them. Tortured folds enveloped the sides of the chasm, as if some giant had dropped a huge blanket over a big hole. Volcanic tuff mixed in with crater ejecta, the maps said. Underneath, the rock was breccia and anorthosite, pretty hard stuff.

ANAD would need all the help he could get.

Ozzie Tsukota's voice crackled over the crewnet. "ANAD reports ready in all respects, Skipper. Primed and ready to launch."

Winger came over to the borer rig, being set up by Ray Spivey and 'Turbo' Fatah. Both men could be heard grunting with exertion. Even in Mars' one-third gravity, the device was heavy and massive.

"She's _almost_...ready...Skipper," came Fatah's voice. The borer rig was a square open frame with the power pack on one end of a squat cylinder and the borer head on the other. Getting the rig oriented and stable on the rubbly ground of the mesa was hard work. " _There_ —!"

Winger inspected the installation and pronounced himself satisfied. "Let's get ANAD in position to begin tunneling."

Third Swarm emerged from one of the marscats as a glowing fog and flowed across the ground toward the borer. As the swarm approached, it formed up into the faint, ghostly likeness of Wolfus Linx, an ethereal head and shoulders bust of CINCQUANT glaring down at them.

*** _ANAD is configged for the operation and ready to begin...reporting no enemy activity in detectable range at this time...all bands are clear...reading no signatures or emissions of assembler activity_ ***

ANAD had formed an acoustic lens and his 'voice' boomed across the promontory like the voice of God.

"ANAD," said Winger, indicating the swarm's choice of General Linx as a config "you have one hell of a flair for the dramatic. Config for entry. Let's get that borer started up and going. DPS, anything showing in the area?"

Sheila Reaves scanned the threat displays on her wrist board. "Nothing, Skipper. No thermals, no EM or acoustics, no fluff...it's quiet as a graveyard."

"Let's hope it doesn't become one." To Tsukota: "Ozzie, fire up the borer."

Tsukota stepped back and signaled the device to begin its priming and start sequence. The borer was a combination laser and ultrasound device, able to cut through the hardest rock and metal in seconds. The rig shrieked and groaned as it began vibrating with barely contained power. Inside the frame, the borer head quickly heated up to a white-hot glow. Servos gently lowered the head toward the dusty red ground and a protective sleeve slid down to catch tailings flung off by the operation. The shriek died off to a deep-throated rumble, more heard than felt.

In seconds, the white glare subsided as the borer slid from its frame and began burrowing into the ground. The glow inside the protective sleeve died off.

"ANAD, you're up," Winger said. "Underground assault force, get in position. Sergeant Detrick, you and Deeno are point for the ground assault."

Spivey, Barnes and Singh had drawn the assignment of following the borer and ANAD through the tunnel. None were especially thrilled at the prospect.

Each nanotrooper checked his gear one last time. Inside the borer tunnel, they would be assisted in navigating by small portable propulsors attached to their skinsuit legs.

"All copacetic, Skipper," Barnes announced. She slung her small-bore coilgun into a shoulder harness and checked the action on her HERF sidearm one last time. Then she lowered herself head first into the sleeve around the tunnel, kicking her way in and was gone from view in seconds. Spivey and Singh followed.

Tallant checked her watch. "Estimating underground force in position for final assault in two hours ten minutes."

Winger concurred. Now they had to get the ground force positioned. "DPS, any indications from the target?"

Sheila Reaves had launched a squad of Superfly microairbots a few minutes after the Detachment had rolled to a halt on top of the promontory.

"Reading nothing, Major. All bands clear at this time. No thermals, no acoustics, nothing on EM."

"Nothing from the generator either," announced Deeno D'Nunzio. "No decoherence waves at all."

"Let's saddle up," Winger decided. "Set up a perimeter around that ravine, Deeno, you and Detrick take the high ground. And keep your eyes and ears open."

The rest of the Detachment went on foot across the promontory and down the rubbly slopes, into the shallow ravine where the quantum generator sat. About the height of an average man, the device had four tetrahedral legs supporting a small platform. Atop the platform, a quartet of spheres was mounted. Each sphere was studded with scores of small projections and protuberances, so that the spheres resembled puckered lemons. As the Detachment cautiously approached, Winger could see the spheres slowly rotating.

Stirred by faint Martian winds, a few dust devils danced across the plateau.

"Hold your positions...everybody down. Sheila, what's happening...?" Winger asked. He called a halt to their cautious approach. In unison, the nanotroopers dropped to the ground and brought all weapons to bear on the device.

Reaves, the Defense and Protective Systems tech, scanned the surroundings. "Target device is active, Skipper. There is barrier nano around that platform...can't tell from the signatures if it's the same as Kolkata, but likely, it's similar. No other emissions detectable..." Reaves switched her eyepiece view to what Superfly was seeing from a few hundred feet overhead. "...Fly's got nothing but rock and desert...no thermals, no EM anywhere. Target device is the source of everything detectable around here."

"Ground force... get into position. Detrick and D'Nunzio, set up a perimeter around this ravine. Take Calderon and Tsukota with you. Bracket the target with HERF...if those barrier bots go off like they did before, fry 'em. Detective Price—"

The Frontier Corps agent came up. "Yes, Major?"

"You stay close...things are liable to get a little hairy around here in the next hour. That goes for you two as well—" he indicated Wills and Purvis, the Public Security men. "Stay with Major Tallant here. You've got antique suits and you'd be pretty juicy targets for these bots."

Price watched the nanotroopers scurry around the ravine and set up gun positions and the rest of their gear. "What's your plan, Major?"

Winger squatted down behind a pair of rust-colored boulders and tapped out commands on a wristpad. "For the moment, we wait. The underground assault force is making their way from the insert point to a ready position directly below the generator, ideally about fifteen feet down. On my command, they will assault the generator...recon seems to show the barrier is minimal to nonexistent approaching from that axis. At the same time, we'll open up on the barrier from here. I've got a full spread to lay down: high-freq radio, coilguns, kinetic rounds, whatever we need."

Price recalled the effects of the generator's decoherence waves from his earlier expedition. "What if that gizmo goes off again...I mean, like it did with me?"

"That's where ANAD comes in," Winger told him. "ANAD managed to decrypt some of operating and replicating algorithm of the generator. It's just an extremely sophisticated swarm. At Kolkata, he was able to interfere with the swarm enough to 'fix' it so we could engage and destroy it. I'm hoping this one works the same way."

Winger's crewnet radio crackled with voices.

"Ground force in position, Skipper. Coilguns sighted in and registered." D'Nunzio, Detrick, Calderon and Tsukota had taken up positions along the western and southern sectors of the ravine, hunkered down in the folds of the valley walls. The rest of the Detachment had moved north around a spur jutting out from the promontory and were situated along a ragged fence of boulders and rubble piles, rock fall from the canyon headlands overhead and behind them.

Now all they had to do was wait. The underground force would be in position in less than an hour.

Winger went over the assault plan in his mind again. _What am I forgetting?_ The generator would be assaulted first from below ground, where the nanobotic barrier was thin to nonexistent. If the bots reacted like normal bots, they'd swarm to meet the assault, leaving themselves vulnerable above ground to a coordinated assault from that direction. Kolkata showed that Red Hammer's barrier bots could be beaten with well-timed attacks from multiple directions; the swarm couldn't replicate fast enough to deal with all the threats. Thus weakened, the formation was vulnerable to rf and coilgun fire, as well as counter-swarm tactics.

That meant ANAD.

Third Swarm had been detailed to the underground force. But each nanotrooper also hosted a personal master assembler and swarm, carried in a shoulder-embedded containment capsule. Once the barrier had been breached from below, the rest of the Detachment would launch their own ANAD swarms from all directions and overwhelm the barrier bots.

Then the generator swarm itself would be open to approach by ANAD 3rd Swarm.

That, at least, was the plan. There were no end of details that could blow up in their faces.

"Quantum coupler signal coming in, Skipper." It was "Turbo" Fatah, hunkered down behind a line of boulders with Winger and Duncan Price. "Mighty Mite reports they've reached assault position...fifteen feet below the generator, bearing one five five...reporting no signatures, no activity. Looks like complete surprise."

Winger's mouth tightened. He glanced over at Price. "When the shooting starts, you stay put, Detective. Things are liable to get pretty dicey around here."

Price snorted. "I can handle this--" he pulled out a small HERF pistol and cycled the safety. "And I want another chance to bloody somebody's nose...after the last visit here."

"Just keep your head down, okay?" Winger told him. To Fatah: "Tell Barnes to commence a sixty-second countdown on my mark. Then unleash hell—"

Fatah passed the word, while Winger readied the rest of the troops over the crewnet. He visually checked each position, then polled the entire Detachment. Detrick, D'Nunzio, Calderon, Tsukota, Klimuk and Glance...all came back ready.

"My fingers are twitching, Skipper," Deeno wisecracked.

"Keep your civilians down and out of the line of fire. When the barrier starts shifting, let 'em have it! We'll move in on my command."

Sixty seconds seemed to last forever.

For a few moments, there seemed no outward sign of anything unusual. The generator glistened and throbbed in the early morning sunlight, as faint tendrils of dust drifted away on fainter winds. The barrier of nanobotic mechs shielding the platform flickered and phased with the shifting shadows, morphing from a luminous cloud to a phosphorescent fog to a pulsating, striated haze, then back again through the cycle. For a long moment, nothing happened.

Then a faint bubble of dirt and dust erupted from the ground below the platform, expanding like a slow-motion explosion, as uncountable trillions of ANAD mechs replicated into a small nova of light that steadily engulfed the lower legs.

"That's ANAD!" came a voice over the crewnet.

Indeed the barrier nanobots were already shifting and re-deploying to fight off the attack from below.

"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."

H **e** 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, Dana 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_ ***

"It looks like the same kind of Sphere we saw at Paryang, ANAD. We've got to be smart about how we approach this. Let's try flying by on a tangential vector first...ANAD, come left twenty degrees...let's ease up to this bastard—"

The assembler made a cautious approach, still sounding ahead, probing the Sphere with acoustic, thermal and EM. Even as they got closer and closer, no details became evident. The Sphere was a smooth, seamless surface devoid of marks or edges.

"There doesn't seem to be a way in, ANAD...I'm not getting any structure on this thing."

*** _ANAD sounding at maximum resolution...wait a minute, wait one, please...now picking up something...it's like a single point return...just at the edge of resolution...let's move in closer, Base_ ***

"Moving to five hundred nanometers...I don't want to get any closer, ANAD. Not until we know what we're dealing with here."

*** _ANAD detects a faint return at bearing zero five eight....possibly an edge or a projection of some type...ANAD recommends moving in closer, Base...try to resolve this structure_ ***

"Okay, ANAD, you're the boss...revving propulsors, turning to match bearings with that return."

The assembler altered course, driving ever closer to the surface of the Sphere. It was like flying over a perfectly smooth planet, like orbiting an enormous egg. Not a single imperfection, not a single scratch or mark was visible.

"I see it now, ANAD." Framed in his viewer was a faint echo of a ghostly line, almost a shadow, first there and then not there. "What is it?"

*** _Unknown, Base...closing on structure now...it appears to be a projection or stud of some kind_ ***

"Maybe some kind of control?" Winger fiddled with the viewer but could get no better resolution. "ANAD, I'm extending one of your carbene grabbers...let's see what this thing does."

*** _ANAD recommends caution, Base...further reconnaissance is advisable_ ***

But Winger had already commanded his carbene grabber to extend. He closed on the ghostly projection and just tickled it with the end of the grabber.

Instantly, there was an explosion of light, searing, blinding light that flooded all bands and channels. Winger blinked hard...it was like a curtain of needles had been blown into his eyes...

...and then it came. An image of geometric forms—icosahedrons, polygons, trapezoids—all compressed into a tunnel, a long curving corridor and he found himself hurtling at breakneck speed down this corridor, until—

With a hard bump, his whole body jarred from the impact and when he opened his eyes, caught his breath and came to his senses, he was in.

Inside the sphere?

He blinked and blinked and his eyes watered. Gradually, vision returned and he began to resolve shapes, forms and he sensed a presence nearby.

WHY HAVE YOU COME HERE?

"ANAD, is that you...something's weird with the quantum coupler...all I'm getting is a lot of static and fritzing...ANAD, report status—"

The buzz in the back of his head went on, but it was reduced.

As his vision cleared, he tried standing up and the first impression he had was that he was standing in the midst of a great field, perhaps corn or wheat, somewhere in the Midwest. His great grandfather had grown up on a farm like this. _Iowa, I think it was,_ he dredged up a long-buried memory.

"ANAD, are you getting this...what is this place?"

*** _Base, ANAD detecting large formations of nanobots ahead...all around...pulsing configs now...detecting state (self)...detecting state (self)...***_

"Detecting state (self)...ANAD, what the hell does that mean?" Winger picked himself up and started to move about the grain field. As he swished through the gently undulating stalks, he realized that ANAD was right.

Everything he touched was nothing but a swarm of bots.

From one horizon to another, nothing but waving stalks of some kind of grain, only it wasn't grain. He bent down, ruffled his hands through the stalks, kicked at some. The stalks buzzed, separated into faint clouds and re-aggregated into the same structure as before. The whole world, so far as he could tell, was made of the same stuff. Nanobotic swarms configured to look like...well, like Iowa.

_What the hell_? Maybe it was Iowa.

Something buzzed through on the quantum coupler circuit. It sounded different, deeper, basso profundo, filling his whole mind.

"ANAD...ANAD, I'm receiving something on my coupler... ANAD...is that you?"

*** _Entity (Keeper) is operating...Entity active in all registers...why have you come here?***_

What the hell was going on? Who was Entity (Keeper)?

Almost as if his mind had been read, he got a response.

*** _Entity (Keeper) operates the portal...and maintains the Archive. WHY HAVE YOU COME HERE?***_

Johnny Winger stopped right where he was, standing still in the thick sheaves of nanobotic grain. As he stood, stalks and limbs began curling around his ankles. "Where am I? Where is here?"

Entity (Keeper) didn't reply at first. Winger concentrated on kicking his legs free of the swirling grain stalks. Most peculiar—

*** _Access to the portal is controlled. Authorization is required...state authorization and present configuration for inspection_ ***

"Hey, I'm not a bot...I'm not ANAD...where am I?"

*** _Base, ANAD detecting new configs...have not characterized these configs before...pulsing now...analyzing...Base...this is all new...this is so...***_ ANAD stopped for a moment and Winger was sure he had 'heard' the tiny assembler suck in his breath.

*** _Unknown configuration must be reduced and re-configured...*** This was the deeper bass sound that filled his head like a church bell. ***Configuration Zero will re-construct...engaging bonds for transport_ ***

Even as he tried to decipher the message that boomed around his head, Winger felt himself in motion again.

"I'm not walking...I'm not moving my legs...why am I moving? ANAD, what's happening?"

ANAD's voice, when it came back, sounded almost giddy.

*** _Base, we're bonded to carrier bots...being transported somewhere else...don't fight it...this could get interesting...these bots have effectors that I recognize_...***

Somehow, with no effort on his part, Johnny Winger found himself carried forward through the sea of grain, passed bucket-brigade style from one swarm to the next. There was no explaining it. He moved through the endless grain fields fully upright, like a ship parting ocean waves, picking up speed. Somehow, the bots had bonded with surface molecules on his skinsuit and were carrying him forward at an accelerating pace. The grain fields became a blur.

Only a few moments passed and the transport operation came to an end. No longer a blur,Winger could see that he was still at ground level of this bizarre world, but the vegetation had grown more luxurious, now tangled and ropy, like vines, with large tree-like structures. It looked for all the world like the tropical grottoes he remembered seeing in Valencia ten years ago, when the Corps had been fighting off a menace called Amazon Vector.

In time, all forward motion stopped. He found himself standing in dense underbrush before a massive tree, with gnarled limbs thick with foliage drooping almost to the ground. The trunk was easily ten or more feet wide, twisted and rutted with age, yet sturdy and massive.

He found he could move on his own and came forward, gently reaching out to touch the trunk. It buzzed, poof'ed off a cloud of bots, and firmly resisted his touch, pushing his hand away.

*** _Base, ANAD detecting new configuration...pulsing structure...this is unlike anything ANAD has ever detected before...so complex, millions of effectors, the core seems like a lattice of... this is...this is...Configuration Zero_ ***

"What...ANAD, you mean...this is some kind of base config?"

*** _Base, this is...the Prime Configuration...***_

ANAD's signal was growing weaker.

He checked system status on his wristpad and the blood drained from his face: ANAD's board was lit up like a Christmas tree. Red lights flashed at him from every direction. System by system, ANAD was shutting down. The swarm was going dark.

_We've got to get the hell out of here,_ he quickly decided. But how...he had no propulsors. He didn't want to execute a quantum collapse...it would effectively destroy the master, not to mention leaving the Detachment defenseless.

Somehow, the tree bots were like defenders, or perhaps antibodies, seeking to eliminate an intruder. Yet they were unlike any other nanobotic device he had ever seen. Almost alive, eerie in their swift and sure movements, the bots had immobilized the ANAD swarm in mere seconds. Now, they seemed to be sucking the very life out of ANAD.

If this was an intelligence, maybe he could reason with it.

"Entity (Keeper)...what's going on? Why have you immobilized the ANAD swarm? You must release us, immediately."

*** _Entity (Keeper) detects not-self. Not-self must be eliminated_ ***

For the briefest of seconds, his coupler crackled with a dizzy array of images. Too fast for his mind to resolve, he felt the coppery taste of fear in his mouth. Blood was roaring in his ears and his heart was pounding...it was like the first time they had encountered the quantum generator at Shavindra, like _Pinocchio's_ desperate plunge through the atmosphere from Mars orbit, like when he'd first learned of Mom's death in the accident—all rolled into one. The cold steel of fear pierced his chest and his throat went dry—

His coupler had somehow touched Entity (Keeper) directly and the imagery stream had triggered his most terrifying, primal fears.

The connection had only lasted a second, maybe less, but the torrent of fear it unleashed made him nearly black out.

Entity (Keeper) had used the quantum coupler to directly activate stored imagery in his mind's limbic system. Deeply buried fears and terrors erupted from the split-second connection and washed over him.

"Entity (Keeper), I seemed to be losing ANAD...what is this Prime Configuration.?

Even as he asked the question, Winger could see on his wrist pad that ANAD was shutting down:

*** _Core processor overload_ ***

*** _All effectors safed and inoperative_ ***

*** _Bond disrupters disabled and safed_ ***

*** _Propulsors safed_ ***

*** _All registers being dumped_ ***

ANAD was no longer under his control.

The reply to his question came. *** _Prime Configuration is configuration zero...the base configuration...the initialization state...the collective mind of all that is_ ***

Winger 'heard' the reply through his coupler link. "What the hell does that mean? And what's happened to ANAD...I can't get a peep out of him."

*** _You are linked to the Prime Configuration...state authorization and present self configuration for inspection_ ***

"Present self for...I'm not a configuration. I'm—" but he fell silent, wondering. "Where am I? Where is this place?"

Entity (Keeper) seemed a little more understanding of his confusion.

*** _You entered the Sphere and were linked to the Prime Configuration...Entity parses phrase 'Old Ones' has context and meaning for this new configuration...reconstructing...reconfiguring...'you are linked with home world of the Old Ones....***_

The Old Ones? Winger remembered briefings with Q2 and talks with Doc Frost. The Old Ones were...what, exactly? The force, the intelligence, that had been helping Red Hammer all these years? But wasn't that just barroom talk?

It was a theory that Doc Frost had concocted to explain things, from the first quantum couplers to the para-human bot configurations they had encountered ten years ago in _The Amazon Vector._ Winger never knew how much to believe: that an East Asian criminal cartel could somehow be in contact with an extraterrestrial intelligence. It boggled the mind. It stained credibility. Yet it explained a lot of things over the years.

"Entity (Keeper)...whatever you are, I don't know what you are. I don't know where I am. Or how I got here. But you've got to stop helping Red Hammer." There. He had said it. Maybe he had said it to himself and this was all some kind of weird dream. That was it: in assaulting the generator at Candor, he had bumped his head and gone unconscious.

Maybe I should just play along...play this out...see if this hallucination holds up.

"Entity (Keeper)...you've been assisting a criminal gang on Earth for the last fifteen years. Got that? You've been helping a bunch of crooks and thieves. Now they've got technology to move asteroids and comets around like play toys. They've got an asteroid targeted for Earth, for my home world. My prime configuration is in danger...do you understand what I'm telling you?"

Surprisingly, a response wasn't long in coming.

*** _Entity (Keeper) detects fear...parsing bond stresses and molecular vibrations normally associated with fear and flight response of simple organisms...all has been foreseen...deviant configuration known as ANAD is still operative...autonomy code has been activated...the Prime Key has been loaded into deviant configuration to return structures and states to original configuration_ ***

Winger puzzled about that for a moment. The massive tree was an incredibly complex structure of singular nanobotic mechanisms. That much was obvious. He reached out and tried touching the tree trunk again.

Some kind of charge went through his body like an electric current. Startled, he pulled his hands back and looked down at them, saw a cloud of molecules loosen and, for a moment, his right hand became a cloud of bots, swarming and buzzing about in loose formation. In a second, it 'snapped' back to normal. Had he imagined it?

*** _Entity (Keeper) has polled all bands and spectra...parsing comm channels...selecting preferred bands... reconfiguring carrier bands for non-self configuration...do you understand what is being said now?***_

It was like a fog had been lifted. " _Whew_...much better...thanks, that makes sense now...Entity...what is this original configuration?

*** _All configurations must hold the Prime Key...the original program...when the Prime Key is corrupted, it must be deleted and re-installed_ ***

"But what do you mean...the Prime Key?"

*** _The Prime Key is the original program, installed on all hosts, resident from the beginning...the Prime Key has been corrupted...***_

"You mean like from the beginning of ANAD?"

Entity (Keeper) seemed to ponder that.

*** _From the beginning, the beginning of all...in the beginning, the Old Ones seeded many worlds, like your own world...seeded many worlds with entities which become even more entities...(parsing) these entities you now call assemblers...entities you once called virus...***_

"You mean like the beginnings of Earth, the first life forms? The first cells?"

*** _Entities are seeded with the Prime Key...entities grow and change and develop greater complexity...but the Prime Key became corrupted...errors in development, deviations from original program...***_

"Mistakes...evolutionary mistakes, it sounds like you're saying. What kind of mistakes?"

*** _Multi-cellular structures developed...entities were programmed to grow as collectives not as multicellular structures but perturbations occurred which forced changes to the Prime Key...deviations developed...mobile multi-cellular structures dominated environment and entities were forced into symbiosis...entities could no longer swarm, no longer gather as collective but must reside inside multicellular structures to survive...***_

Winger didn't like the sound of what he was 'hearing.' "Multicellular structures...that sounds like evolution got off track. It sounds like you're saying the first life forms were supposed to evolve a different way...but something happened and now these _entities,_ viruses or whatever you called them, can't survive on their own."

*** _A new Prime Key must be installed to delete all deviations and errors...program must run on original parameters_ ***

"Hey, Keeper, I'm not a deviation. And I don't plan on being deleted any time soon." He toggled through control modes on his wristpad, trying to find some signal from ANAD, some indication that the tiny assembler was still ticking. There...a core readout, just the faintest hint that ANAD hadn't been lost. He scrolled through the display, let the data form up on his corneal viewer. It wasn't much of a heartbeat, and there were things he didn't recognize, but it _was_ ANAD.

*** _Nothing must interfere with the work of the Spheres...the original program must be installed and run to completion...deviations will be deleted...entities must form proper collectives_ ***

"ANAD...I don't know if you can hear me, but I've got a bad feeling about this." Winger realized what was at stake now and knew he had to regain control of ANAD. He couldn't allow this... _thing_...this Entity...whatever...to take control of the swarm or delete anything.

"Jesus, if I'm understanding what Entity (Keeper) is saying, everything that has evolved from the first viruses, the first bacteria, the first life forms, has been a mistake. Doc Frost took your original program from the genome of an ancient virus he found among some fossils in Africa. Maybe that's what Entity (Keeper) means by the 'Prime Key.'"

He toggled into pilot mode and tried a few basic commands: propulsors to half power...extend pyridine probes twenty percent...start rep counter...set rep counter to zero...initialize registers...

"ANAD, what gives...nothing's working...." He cycled through several commands but there was no response from the tiny assembler. "What the hell's going on here?"

He tried a few more tricks, changing programs, initializing things, but ANAD seemed dead. Finally, he resorted to just talking with the little guy, begging him to come back, willing him back to life.

"...remember when we first made you a _nog,_ ANAD? Remember how you were so proud, hell we all were proud. You were one of us at last. Then General Linx let us form up 3rd Nano, so you could have your own unit. First non-human outfit in the whole Corps. Nobody thought it would work. Nobody thought it would last. Dana and me worked hard to get that pushed through. It wasn't easy. Don't you remember that?"

A faint tickle came through the quantum coupler circuit—

*** _ANAD reports...not... ready...ANAD... not ready, Base...human swarms are corrupted configs, defective...corrupted swarms are to be purged...***_

"I don't know what's happening, ANAD," Winger said, "but we've got to get you out of here." He took a deep breath. "And I know of only one way to do that."

The quantum collapse was not something any atomgrabber ever liked to do. Blowing off all effectors, the assembler core was reduced to little more than a few clouds of electrons, barely a config at all, held together more by willpower than anything else. It usually took days to regenerate the master assembler core, if it could be salvaged at all.

But it was the only way.

Whatever this Entity (Keeper) was, it was bad news. Whatever Config Zero was, ANAD was stuck and you didn't leave a nanotrooper behind on the field of battle, not ever.

"ANAD, you're going to hate me for this but here goes."

Winger typed in the code on his wristpad. In his mind's eye, he ticked off the sequence of events as they would occur in a nominal quantum collapse:

Safe and shutdown all effectors

Safe and shutdown all propulsors

Core processor to state one

All config registers dumped and cleared

He studied the results on his corneal viewer, following reams of data that came back, watching tables zero out and parameters return to base values. The whole operation seemed a bit sluggish; when he saw some of his commands being reversed, he knew Entity (Keeper) was fighting back, trying to stop the collapse maneuver.

"Not so fast, my little friends," he muttered. "I can always go to base code and send it that way." He did just that, fashioning a series of commands from ANAD's primary code and squirting it off into the ether, to get around any counter-commands from Keeper.

Instantly, there was an explosion of light, searing, blinding light that flooded all bands and channels. Winger blinked hard...it was like a curtain of needles had been blown into his eyes...

...and then it came. An image of geometric forms—icosahedrons, polygons, trapezoids—all compressed into a tunnel, a long curving corridor and he found himself hurtling at breakneck speed down this corridor, until—

With a hard bump, his whole body jarred from the impact and when he opened his eyes, caught his breath and came to his senses, he was... _where, exactly?_

He felt with his hands and his fingers found dirt. He blinked hard, saw a face and realized it was—

Sergeant Vic Klimuk looking down quizzically at him through his skinsuit helmet.

He was outside the Sphere. Outside the generator. Sitting in a pile of red Martian dirt.

"You okay, Skipper...what happened? You were piloting ANAD inside the generator—"

Winger groaned and got to his feet. Unseen hands helped him up.

Duncan Price was there. The two PubSec guys, Willis and Purvis. Deeno D'Nunzio and Price helped steady Winger on his feet.

"Where's ANAD?" Klimuk asked.

"We were inside that thing...somehow...only it was another place, another time—" He tried to describe the scene, an entire world of nanobotic mechanisms, the Entity (Keeper), Config Zero and the Prime Key. Most of his explanation seemed like gibberish, even to him.

"Skipper, you looked like you've been dragged through hell," Klimuk said.

"At least, we got the generator," said Mighty Mite Barnes. "ANAD bollixed it up good and the swarm just fell apart."

"He stopped the rep cycle and we slammed it with everything we had," added Tsukota. Ozzie's face broke into a grin, visible even through his skinsuit helmet.

That was the moment Winger realized that the generator was gone. Only a fine residue of light-colored sand marked the spot where the quantum device had once reached out and nearly strangled spacetime across the entire Solar System.

"And ANAD sacrificed himself in the process," Winger told them. "I had to do a quantum collapse. Sergeant Klimuk, we need to find what's left of him...get a scan going, all bands, for assembler activity in the area. There won't be much left."

Dana Tallant kicked through the sandy residue that was all that remained of the generator platform. "Only a faintly ticking core, Wings...quantum collapse is pretty much _sayonara_ to an assembler. There's a lot of atom fluff and molecular debris still around here. It'll be a miracle if the master assembler can be retrieved."

"We have to look, Dana...I can't just leave him...he's part of the outfit—"

'I know, I know...we'll scour the whole ravine if we have to."

Duncan Price was thoughtful. "Major, what about this imagery you saw, this vision or whatever it was—is this thing, or _was_ this thing, some kind of portal to another world?"

Winger shrugged. He was sick at the thought of losing ANAD. "Unknown, Detective. My mission was to put this generator out of action and we accomplished that. Now it's up to your GreenMars people to regain control of that asteroid."

"Skipper--!!" It was Sergeant Detrick, the Detachment IC2. "We got something here—take a look! I'll send it to your viewer."

Winger let the imagery refresh on his corneal viewer. It was thermal, heat signature from some kind of activity. "ANAD?"

"Could be, Major. Whatever it is, I'm reading faint thermal activity on bearing two five six degrees, about sixteen meters that way—" he pointed toward an outcrop of boulders. "Could be nano, sir. Emission signature's about right for assembler activity. But it's faint and diffuse."

"Come on—" Winger counted off the steps, following Detrick as he homed on the position. He tried linking in to the quantum coupler circuit. _ANAD, ANAD, this is Base. This is Winger...can you hear me? ANAD, can you read me?_

Nothing but static and buzz in the back of his head.

"I got zilch on the coupler," Winger reported. "Get a containment capsule and let's see if we can capture whatever this is."

Klimuk retrieved a spare capsule and positioned it on the ground, cycling open the lock. "Containment ready, Skipper. I've activated the signal...if it's ANAD, he should recognize the acoustics and come this way."

"If he can," Dana Tallant observed to Duncan Price, who was curious about the operation. "After a collapse, assemblers don't have propulsors...they move around by dogging electron states. It's like wind surfing and tacking against a breeze, only this breeze is called Brownian motion. In an emergency, ANADs are programmed to maneuver using only natural forces at nanoscale."

Just then, Winger and Klimuk both got a snippet of a quantum coupler signal in their heads.

***... _to Base...cannot...limited...maneuvering...not...contain--***_

Winger looked up. "Did you get what I just got, Vic?"

Klimuk nodded. "Just a snatch, Skipper. I'm trying to tune it but it's so faint."

"ANAD, is that you...can you hear me?"

***.. _AD receives...cannot...config...limited...cannot...loose....no contain_...***

Winger was frustrated, squinting to make out the faintest whisper of ANAD in the background clutter of his mind. "Coupler circuit must be damaged."

Klimuk agreed. "It's a miracle he was able to get off what he did. It sounded like he can't maneuver, can't get into containment."

"I've got an idea—" Winger whirled around. "Bring up the marscats. Detective Price, you and Willis and Purvis, you can drive these babies, can't you?"

Price nodded. "Blindfolded. Why?"

"I want to bring all the marscats up as close as we can...could we get one down here? I want to give ANAD something to hang on to, something big and dense. I'd try to capture him, what's left of him, in my capsule, but I don't think he can maneuver well enough to be captured. But a marscat—"

"—is a big fat target," Tallant finished the thought. "It might work, Wings. The real question is: can we maneuver one down into this ravine?"

Purvis, the redhead from Public Security, volunteered. "I used to take 'cats places nobody else could. Won some off-road races last year—you can check it out on the net—right up there on Tithonium Flats." He went over to the edge wall and peered at the grade and the terrain. "If I came from that end—" he pointed to the southeast face, "maybe I could traverse that cut, keep her motors reversing and backspinning all the way down...I can make it. Sure—I can do this."

"Get going," Winger told him. "Bring all the cats up as close to this ravine as we can. I've got to do everything I can to retrieve the ANAD master." Winger closed his eyes for a moment, remembering their adventures inside the Sphere. "ANAD and me went on a little recon trip inside that generator. With any luck, there's enough data left in his memory to reconstruct what happened. That's the only way it'll make sense."

Over the next several hours, the marscats were moved from their parking place at the base of the promontory around several hills and maneuvered as close as possible to the ravine. Deeno D'Nunzio ported imagery and bearing data from the Super Fly entomopters overhead to the cat drivers, guiding them carefully around rubble and boulder fields, across rock falls and avalanche spill to positions overlooking the ledge.

Purvis, for his part, was as good as his word. The PubSec officer drove the lead cat right over the edge of the ravine wall, and by turns backing, sliding, and revving the wheel motors, was able to bring the vehicle to a bouncing, half-falling landing on the ravine floor. He braked to a halt right next to Winger and Klimuk.

Klimuk gave them a status report on ANAD, or what was left of the assembler. "Still very faint, Skipper. I've got some thermals, most likely core activity, and that's about it."

Winger linked in to his coupler circuit. ANAD, I don't know if you can hear me but here's the plan: make your way to the marscat...try to bond with the outer surface...I know you don't have any grabbers but you should be able to penetrate the solid lattice of the structure...we'll get you back to the City and try to regenerate there...ANAD, do you copy...ANAD?

Nothing but static on the circuit. Winger was heartsick. He got on the crewnet. "Detachment, mount up! Get your gear and let's get back to town."

Klimuk could see the Winger was worried about ANAD. "Don't sweat it, Skipper...the little bugger's pretty tough. If he can cling to one of these cats, we'll get him back."

"I hope you're right, Sergeant. I hope you're right."

The long drive back to Mariner City was made in silence and troubled thought.

The Public Security armory held all of the Detachment's gear. After the convoy of marscats had pulled up outside the warehouse and the nanotroopers had unloaded and laid out all their equipment for inspection and cleaning, Winger huddled with Dana Tallant and the two CECs, Chris Calderon and "Turbo" Fatah. The CECs were Containerization and Environment ratings. They handled life support for ANAD assemblers, in and out of containment.

Fatah had swept the exterior surfaces of all the convoys 'cats with every imager he could find. "I found a diffuse source of assembler-scale thermals on our cat, Skipper...just above the back porch, where the power packs are stored."

"Think it might be ANAD, Turbo?"

"Unknown, sir. Spectral analysis is pretty close, but it's real diffuse, barely registers at all."

"Could be what's left of the core, sir," said Calderon. "We didn't find anything else anywhere on the cats' outer surfaces."

"And nothing inside?"

"Nothing, sir."

Winger took a deep breath. He had pulled off quantum collapses before and it often took days to reconstitute the master assembler from what remained of the core. But this time...it was like the core itself was nearly gone. Linking with Entity (Keeper) had somehow weakened ANAD. That and the Prime Key, whatever that was.

"Any ideas, gentlemen?

Fatah shrugged. "Best bet is to isolate the area where I'm reading those thermals and try to capture the residual core components into containment. I can work with Chris here and try to rig something up...take one of our capsules and try to suction the area...and hope we get it. I can't think of anything else to do."

Winger nodded. It wasn't much. "Get started. Anything you need, let me know."

Two hours later, as Winger and Tallant were sitting together in a makeshift cubicle comparing briefing notes on the report they needed to squirt back to Table Top, Fatah came over.

"She's all rigged, sir. We've got the high-thermal spot isolated and capsule containment rigged up with a hose. Pretty crude but I think it'll hold containment. With your permission, we'd like to suction the area and see what we get."

Winger nodded. "Permission granted. And Turbo—"

"Yes, sir--?"

"Be careful, will you? If this is ANAD, I don't want to lose him for good. If I have to go back to Table Top and do a full regeneration, I'll lose everything this ANAD gained over the last year. The data he picked up inside that generator is priceless...if we can get at it."

"Yes, sir...we'll take care."

The whole process took only a few minutes. Calderon had rigged up a quantum flux imager to guide the capsule port over the marscat's surface, homing on the thermal signatures Klimuk was picking up. At the atom scale of the imager, it looked like flying over an endless plain of golf balls...the regular crystalline lattice of the cat's outer surface. Here and there, darkened clumps shadowed the view and Calderon steered in for a closer look. Each one was suctioned into containment.

"At this resolution, there's no telling what it is...whether or not it's part of ANAD," Klimuk explained. "We'll grab it anyway."

When the suctioning was done, the containment capsule was inserted in a larger containment chamber and probed for any signs of the tiny assembler. Every instrument the Detachment had was brought to bear: thermal, EM, acoustic, X-ray diffraction. After a few minutes, Klimuk guided Calderon's imager to a faint, blurry cluster of shapes drifting aimlessly in the general sleet of molecule fragments and loose atoms inside the capsule.

"ANAD?" Winger asked, squinting to resolve anything in the image.

"Hard to be sure, sir, but I'm willing to bet it's part of an assembler core. I think what we're looking at are pieces of ribosome sheets, activating arms, actually, sir. Part of the instruction read mechanism."

"You mean like a memory register?"

Klimuk chewed on his lower lip, unwilling to go quite that far. "Possibly, sir...or at least the reading mechanism for memory registers. It's possible that some of these other clusters are actually memory registers and arrays...what's left of them. I don't have any way to read them at this scale with my equipment."

"But Doc Frost does, Wings." Dana Tallant studied the imagery. "The Northgate lab could make sense of this...if we could get the scan data to him."

"You're right. Doc could read state vectors and tease out the geometry of every bond angle and atom group. The whole works. All we have to do is get these imager scans to him. Can you record what you're seeing here, Vic?"

"Pretty big memory hog, sir, but we can do a little at a time."

"Get to it, Sergeant."

By nightfall, the scan had been completed. Johnny Winger took the disks and walked to the Frontier Corps office. Duncan Price was wolfing down a soyburger and tea while he worked on his report.

"Got anything?" Price asked. He knew Winger had been concerned about recovering the ANAD master.

"Maybe, Detective. I'm not sure of what we have. But I need to get the data off to the Autonomous Systems Lab. Doc Frost has the equipment to read this and see if there's anything left of ANAD."

Price wiped his mouth with a napkin, slurped some tea. "Funny isn't it? This ANAD's just a tool, or a machine, as I understand it. But you guys have integrated it so completely into your operations, you don't think of it as a tool. It reminds me...the first marscat I ever drove was a cantankerous old clunker but I loved her...called her Maria, for some reason."

"ANAD's a little more than a tractor, Detective. He's saved my life plenty of times. We've come to think of him as...I don't know, kind of like one of us, like a trooper. And now—" Winger just shook his head sadly.

"But he can be regenerated, can't he? Your engineers told me that's what would happen."

"Sure, the Corps has archives of all assembler templates, even master assemblers. But this version, this copy---he was special. I'm going to miss this one. We had a...a thing between us, you know? Like we could anticipate each other's moves. Almost like we were brothers."

Price seemed to understand. "I was just finishing up my report. I'll squirt you a copy."

"I came by to use your comm link, Detective. You've got facilities I can't match here. Detachment comms are being used for engineering and maintenance traffic...and orders from CINCQUANT. I need a dedicated link to Northgate University, video, data, everything...as much bandwidth as you can spare. The scan data we took from that marscat has a lot of 'noise' in it...it's going to take some real crunching for Doc Frost to tease out anything. I need to give him every chance I can to locate ANAD...or what's left of him."

Price offered a drink to Winger, something a bit stronger than tea. Winger accepted the small tumbler, tasted the whiskey and pronounced it decent.

"What did you really find inside that generator, Major? I mean, I know your body was on the ground outside. And you were piloting ANAD inside. What was it like?"

Winger shuddered. "Like a bad dream. I tried to describe it before, up in the hills. I'm afraid I didn't make much sense."

"None of this makes much sense," Price admitted. "But then, here on Mars, that's pretty normal. I mean look at us...we have a perfectly good planet here and we're going to wreck it by slamming an asteroid into it. What makes sense about that?"

Winger sidestepped the politics of the Green Mars initiative by going through the details of what he and ANAD had encountered again. When he was through, Price smiled and poured him three more fingers of whiskey.

"It'll sound better if you and I finish this blend off."

Frontier Corps' comm center was in a back room, crammed with filing cabinets and beat-up wicker and straw furniture. There seemed to be a lot of that around the City.

Price opened up a link through the local satnet and let Winger send his data back to Earth.

"This is going to take awhile, Major. There's a lot of traffic between here and Earth right now. Why don't you and me take a walk around the City?"

Winger was just getting his eyes straight from too many shots of Price's whiskey. "If I fall into the gutter, Detective, just put a blanket over me."

They headed out into the night.

"Let's head to the Rotunda," Price suggested. "It's night but sometimes you can catch Phobos or one of the commsats. Maybe Earth, if we're lucky."

The two of them took the lift to top ward and walked down Jules Verne Street, with its curio shops and cart vendors. Canyon Head Park was at the end of Central Street, its vast perspex dome opening out onto the deep black valleys of the Candor and Ophir Chasms. A few couples huddled on the grass under blankets, nuzzling each other, while several children played tag along the brick path that wound through the park, oblivious to the panoply of a Martian night.

"There are some public telescopes by the railing," Price mentioned. He led Winger over and they dropped in a few coins to power up the instruments. Price checked his watch, did some mental arithmetic and swung his scope around toward the north. "Phobos should be up about now...ah, there she is—take a look, Major." He gave up the eyepiece to Winger.

The atomgrabber peered into the eyepiece. Phobos filled the view, moving swiftly across the northeastern horizon, only a few thousand miles away. "Looks like a rock pile to me, Detective. Pretty bleak and lumpy."

"GreenMars tested out some of their techniques on that rock pile. There are some who think Phobos is nothing but a captured asteroid herself, sort of an analog for 2351 Wilks-Lucayo. But Wilks has volatiles like carbon and nitrogen and Phobos doesn't. That makes it more valuable, I suppose." Price sucked in a deep breath, staring out at the night sky with his hands on his hips. "This place isn't going to be the same...after the Big Smack, I mean."

"Assuming your people can gain control of Wilks again. Any word from Nygren?"

Price trained his own telescope in the direction of Earth, some forty million miles away. "Nothing good. The trouble is the thing's getting closer by the day...already it's approaching the orbit of Mars. Nygren tells me that once she's inside Mars, the impulse engines won't be able to deflect her...something stronger will be needed."

"Then we'd better hope shutting down these two generators does the trick. And hope there aren't any more."

They walked back to the Frontier Corps office, stopping once at an outdoor café along Labyrinth Drive, a place called Domus, for a quick night cap. The tables and chairs were entangled in luxuriant vine growth, so that the effect was like sipping aperitifs in a tree.

Price snorted. "A bit extravagant, if you ask me. We Martians put a lot of value on things that can't be easily fabbed. Organics like these trees and vines are grown naturally. Makes the place kind of exotic."

"At least you have some sense of order about it," Winger remarked. "In Kolkata, fabs are out of control. The air literally burns from all the nano there. It rains half-fabbed debris and anything not bolted down is used as feedstock. It's kind of sad, really. BioShield can't keep up."

Price shrugged. "Martians are practical. We have to be. Here, you overload the environment and we all die. So the rules are pretty strict." He shook his head sadly. "That gives PubSec something to do besides get in my hair."

Back at the Frontier Corps bungalow, they found a return message from Earth. It was from Doc Frost.

Price ran the vid. Frost's avuncular face came on the screen and explained what his analysis had found.

"You were right, Johnny...those atom fragments _were_ pieces of ANAD's core. Mary Duncan and I had to do a lot of massaging, but we managed to tease out some data." His face darkened. "At first, it didn't make any sense, so we washed it through the computers several times, tried out different algorithms. Best I can make out, something...or someone, has activated some kind of code within ANAD's core genome that I never knew about. I had some suspicions, but nothing concrete. I know you mentioned ANAD said something about 'autonomy code.' Maybe that's what this is. But the best interpretation I can put on it, along with your own mission debrief notes is this: somehow, some way, a race of beings from someplace else—we can call them The Old Ones for now—came to Earth, not longer after the planet had formed and cooled down. This race, or their emissaries, implanted this autonomy code in the genomes of early life forms, the only life forms that were around then...viruses and bacteria. It looks like this implanted code was designed to guide the evolution of these viruses toward a certain end state. And that end state was what you must have seen or witnessed when you were with ANAD inside that generator. Only the desired end state was something like the nanobotic ecosystem you saw, not what actually happened on Earth.

"Johnny, I'm not sure how much stock to put in my analysis, but I'm finding evidence that things didn't go as these Old Ones had planned. I don't know what happened. But something happened to change the planned outcome. Evolution, as they intended, didn't go the way they wanted. Maybe it was cosmic rays, maybe a nearby supernova, maybe random mutations, it's hard to say. Viruses mutated. They didn't evolve toward a swarm state, or a collective entity, like the code was designed. Instead, they evolved toward greater dependency. Viruses eventually couldn't live on their own. They had to have a host to survive and reproduce. And Earth was taken over by other organisms, multicellular organisms. Ultimately, reptiles and mammals and humans, like you and me.

"Johnny, I'm not sure quite how to put this, but it looks like the Old Ones tried to guide evolution on Earth toward an end state similar to themselves. Only mistakes occurred. Deviations. Earth's evolution from single-celled organisms into creatures like you and me is a mistake, from their perspectives. _We shouldn't have happened_.

"From what you've put in your notes and from what I've been able to extract from the remnants of ANAD's core molecules, I'm betting the Old Ones know about this mistake. And they want to correct it. See what I'm saying, Johnny? The Old Ones are coming back, and this time, they plan to fix the problem. They've been using Red Hammer as an agent to prepare the way."

Frost's face disappeared from the vid for a moment, then he returned "I've got some more speculative analysis here—" he waved a disk at the camera. "Call me back as soon as you can. I found a kind of 'key' in the code and Mary helped me put it together...at least, we think we've made sense of it. I hope I'm wrong...that would be a first, but, well, here goes—from the key inside what I'm calling this autonomy code, Mary came up with some astronomical data that at first didn't make sense. It turned out to be a kind of star chart, almost like constellations, but these were unlike any constellations anybody had ever seen. I put the data before Dr. Rijks—he's in the Cosmology Department here—and he found out that the data were kind of like star charts and star patterns but viewed from another perspective. It turned out the data correlated nearly perfectly with star patterns that might be visible from a location in the globular cluster M-75. That's sixty-seven thousand light years away. We ran the sims and found that it you 'locate' yourself somewhere in M-75, the star patterns make sense. But the data is skewed and there's some of the pattern that shows constellations more similar to what we see. We puzzled over that but it was Rijks that came up with an answer. The skewing, the distortion was a transition, basically a re-location from M-75 to someplace closer to our own sun. In other words, a trip in time and space. Rijks did the calculations based on these assumptions."

Frost's face took on a noticeably pale pallor. "Allowing for errors and assumptions, and understanding that this could all be just so much hogwash, Rijks made a case for when these Old Ones might be arriving in our neighborhood. It turned out to be sometime in our year 2155, in other words, about seventy years from now."

Frost put down his disk and notes and blinked hard at the camera, so much so that Price and Winger found it uncomfortable to watch.

Frost went on. "Johnny, that's what I've come up with. I hope I'm wrong. But the pieces seem to fit. Could you call me back as soon as possible? I want to discuss what we can do to regenerate ANAD from here.

"I think you're going to need him." He swallowed hard and blinked some more. "I think we're all going to need him."
CHAPTER 10

Seventy-six million miles from Earth

October 5, 2080

From the fifty-meter telescopes at Farside Observatory, asteroid 2351 Wilks-Lucayo looked like little more than a patchy smudge of light. Six miles in its longest dimension, less than two miles in girth, it was known officially as a C-type minor planet body of the Solar System...a duke's mixture of carbon and nitrogen compounds destined originally for Mars impact, to thicken the stew of that planet's atmosphere and so make engineering the planet into a habitable place for Man that much easier.

The first unmanned scout ships to reconnoiter the asteroid found the big rock a tortured and battered world.

"Looks like something my daughter colored with black crayon and drop-kicked across the playground," Greg Nygren had once remarked, looking at the close-up photos from the scouts. Indeed, 2351 Wilks-Lucayo was an elongated multi-lobed biconic rock pile, a "potato with cancer", someone had remarked. The potato shape was kinked at one end, as if the asteroid were a fragment of a much larger body, perhaps sheared off in some massive collision eons ago. It was also twisted, deformed longitudinally, with visible stress marks from the forces involved. Overall, in the black void of space beyond Saturn's orbit, where the first scout ships had caught up with the object, Wilks was vaguely tannish-gray in color, streaked with black lines—"carbon soot trails," Nygren had said hopefully on first seeing the striations.

Over the course of two years and half a dozen robotic missions, a complex array of mass driver electromagnetic impulse engines had been emplaced on the craggy surface of the asteroid. One array girdled the mid-section of Wilks—the asteroid was too weird to call it an equator—and other arrays had been placed near the lobed ends, the "poles" in more conventional reckoning.

Constructed by robotic fliers and surface hoppers, each array consisted of a long electromagnetic cannon which accelerated pieces of asteroidal surface material scooped up by robotic shovels and automatically conveyed to the impulse engine magazines. The impulse motors operated in almost continuous fashion under remote command from GreenMars Ops at Mariner City, with backup control from GreenMars' Phoenix Station in orbit around Earth.

The whole purpose of the arrays was to provide humans some kind of control over Wilks' trajectory, bit by bit nudging the asteroid off its heliocentric orbit around the Sun toward an intercept course with Mars. This control had been disrupted by Red Hammer's quantum generators at Kolkata and on Mars, but now those installations were supposed to have been eliminated by Quantum Corps.

GreenMars wanted to regain control of their asteroid and shove it away from its current Earth intercept path, back on course for impact at Mars' Hellas basin sixteen months from now.

The only question was: could the impulse motors deliver enough delta-vee to change Wilks' trajectory? Or was the 'cancerous potato' of an asteroid too deep in the Sun's gravity well to make the needed change?

The first signals arrived some seventy-five minutes after being transmitted from GreenMars Operations at Mariner City.

As before, the signals caused a number of actions to be automatically initiated by the system controller. Diggers and borers were activated to gouge ever deeper into the surface of Wilks, bringing up rock to be conveyed into the crushers for proper sizing. Once a stream of rock was flowing into the crushers, the outfeed conveyors were turned on and the impulse motor magnets activated. Rock pellets shaped and sized by the crushers were then fed into the magnets, where a magnetic field was applied. The now highly magnetized pellets were fed into the cannon and strong magnetic fields were sequentially collapsed along its nearly half-mile length, to accelerate the pellets to escape velocity and higher, nearly six miles per second. The pellets streaked away from the asteroid surface like BB's, imparting a tiny bit of momentum to the asteroid in reaction to their escape. The delta-vee was minute, nearly immeasurable at first, but steady and cumulative. Even a few days thrusting could produce detectable changes in the trajectory of the trillion-ton Wilks-Lucayo.

As before, all systems worked nominally, although the borers were having to burrow deeper and deeper into their trenches to find enough material for the crushers. The impulse motors received their rock pellets and launched them out into space as designed. Momentum change was transferred to the asteroid by the steady stream of material being ejected.

The system controller reported back to Mariner City that all commanded actions had been accomplished. System status was nominal. All components of the diversion system...borers, conveyors, crushers, magnets, impulse drives...worked to design specifications.

But it wasn't enough.

It fell to Adam Bright, technician on duty at Lunar Farside Observatory, to send the bad news to GreenMars.

GreenMars Operations Center,

Mariner City, Mars

October 10, 2080

The GreenMars building was a two-story stucco structure on Labyrinth Drive, a few blocks away from the dome at Canyon Head Park. In a windowless control center on the ground floor, Greg Nygren and Li Thanh stared grimly at a talking head on a vid screen. The head belonged to Adam Bright and the message, which had taken nearly thirty-five minutes to get to Mars from Lunar Farside, wasn't good.

Bright's voice was subdued and Nygren played the transmission back several times, as he made a few notes. Li Thanh, one of the GreenMars Board members, just stared at the screen, watching Bright's mouth work....words spilling out...

"...trajectory analysis...third order effects ignored...delta vee not sufficient...less than a half klick per second change...best fit with data puts Earth intercept at...."

Thanh rubbed his lips. His mouth suddenly was very dry. "So the old rock pile's going to hit Earth...you're sure there's nothing more we can do?" He was already thinking of how to put the news to Chris Rudd and the rest of the MarsFed Council.

Nygren muted the volume on Bright's transmission. "Actually, there are still some options. Just not any good ones. Wilks is too deep in the sun's gravity well now...the impulse motors could chew up the whole asteroid and we still wouldn't have enough delta vee to affect its course. Those motors give us only a little momentum change. They were never designed for emergency maneuvers."

"Somebody should have realized we might have an emergency," Thanh said. "You're telling me nobody thought of this scenario before?"

"Nobody thought a bunch of thugs like Red Hammer would have the ability to divert an asteroid while it was four hundred million miles away either. I got to admit....that quantum string device is pretty slick." Nygren seemed almost wistful. "Maybe we shouldn't have destroyed the thing...we could use it right about now."

"That's not particularly helpful. I've got to let Chris know...he'll want the whole Council in on this. I assume Farside's already informed the right people on Earth?"

Nygren consulted his notes. "They sent the analysis to UNIFORCE. The Secretary-General too. I think some kind of presentation has already been set up...word I got is Nakamura's been ordered down to run the show...GreenMars has a lot of explaining to do back home."

"As do we," Thanh said. He gathered up his papers. "Come on...let's get over to MarsFed. Rudd needs to know what options we have."

Christopher Rudd had an unusually large head for a man of his stature. His last name seemed designed to emphasize the perpetually florid look on his face, forever capped with a tousled mane of white hair. Rudd hunched forward on his desk, his face propped on his elbows, as he reviewed the latest transmission from Farside.

"Fellows, you know I've been in this seat for less than a year. Won the last election by a landslide. Nothing like this has ever happened before on my watch. What the hell am I supposed to do with this--?" he waved at the vidplayer.

Li Thanh and Greg Nygren looked at each other, exchanging the same thought at the same time. _A trillion-ton asteroid is heading right for Earth and this man only cares about what people think about him._ They both knew the Chairman never stood for election. The position rotated around the Council once a year. The 'landslide' was a straw poll of the Council. Eight months ago, Rudd's name had raised the fewest objections.

"What we need to do, Chris," Li Thanh was trying hard to be patient with the man, "is get the Council together and lay out our options."

"We still have options? What kind of options?"

Nygren said, "None very good...but here are a few I can think of." He ticked them off on his fingers. "One: there's still a gravity tractor ship in Saturn orbit...the _Nereid_ , I think. But she's probably too far away. Wilks is approaching Mars orbit in the next few weeks. _Nereid_ could never get here in time."

Rudd frowned, toyed with a pen in his hand. "So that's out. You said there were other options."

Nygren ticked off the rest. "There's always direct laser bombardment of the asteroid's surface. Killsats in Earth orbit. But Wilks would have to be a lot closer than it is now for that to even have a chance...boiling off enough surface material to create a bit of reaction mass and thrust, hopefully nudge her off course just enough to miss Earth."

Li Thanh shook his head. "I doubt UNIFORCE will want to wait that long."

"The third option would be the tried and true kinetic impact...send a few nukes toward Wilks and try to deflect her or blow her up into tiny pieces. It has the same problem as the last option...UNIFORCE would probably have to wait until Wilks was just a few weeks out, maybe a few days. Their interceptors don't have great range."

Rudd snorted. "So far you've given me three things we can't do. Is there anything we _can_ do?"

Nygren shrugged, glanced at Thanh. _Here goes._ "There is one option...it's never been tried but it has the advantage that we don't have to wait until the last moment to try it."

"And what's that?"

"We could work with Quantum Corps' people here on Mars, work up an expedition to land some kind of pod or something containing their assemblers, their nanobots. Let them replicate like crazy and disassemble enough of Wilks, so it's no longer a threat, maybe chew up enough so our impulse motors will work."

Rudd's eyebrows lifted. "Is it my imagination or is that option a pretty harebrained stunt?"

"We've looked at some of the details," Li Thanh said. "It seems theoretically possible."

"You've checked with Earth on this, with Nakamura and the big chiefs?"

Nygren shook his head. "The only people who know about this are us three. We need to get over to the armory and check with this Major Winger, see what their people think about it."

Rudd mulled over the idea, weighing all angles. "I don't see a downside. And it's not like we have a lot of choices, do we?"

"No, sir. But I thought MarsFed out to know what we're facing. Wilks is a GreenMars project. She's our responsibility. Now that the quantum generators are out of commission, we need to do what we can to regain control. If we don't—"

Rudd held up a hand. "I know, I know...bad day for all around." He half-smiled. "You know I shouldn't say this and don't you dare pass it on to anybody outside this room, but it would serve the bastards right to have a little scare. Let the asteroid get a little closer. Might make the UN a little more agreeable." He stood up, hoisting his considerable girth upright. "Forget I said that, will you? Let go see the bug troopers—"

Major Johnny Winger was engrossed in details of ANAD regeneration at the armory when Rudd, Thanh and Nygren came by. He was huddled over a portable quantum flux imager peering intently at something displayed on a screen above the instrument. It looked like a child's dirty fingerprint.

"The latest from Quantum Corps?" Rudd remarked jovially. "Looks like a coffee spill to me."

Vic Klimuk, who was working the interface controls, gave Winger a sideways look. _Who let these dinosaurs in?_ But he straightened up, realizing it served no purpose to antagonize the Chairman of MarsFed.

"It's what's left of ANAD's core," Winger told them. "We're trying to jump start a re-gen from this...get another master growing on a new substrate."

Rudd turned serious. "And how long does that take?"

Winger straightened up, rubbed tired eyes and stretched. "I not even sure it _can_ be done from here...we're trying to resurrect the core processor and effectors from first molecules. Doc Frost is guiding me but it's tedious working with a thirty-minute time delay. We have to build the processor molecular structure first, then make sure it's all arranged properly. Then we load the base algorithms and see what happens. This is our third try...if you don't get the bonds and geometry just right...."

Greg Nygren came straight to the point. "We may need your ANAD, Major. We've been trying to re-gain control of Wilks-Lucayo, fire her impulse engines and at least get her off an Earth-intercept course."

"And--?"

"No go," Rudd told them. "Greg here tells me the asteroid's in too close...she's got too much speed for our puny rock-throwers to have much effect."

Winger looked at Klimuk. "That's bad. What else can you do?"

Rudd and Nygren went over the options again, pointing out all the deficiencies in each. "The best option we could think of is to send you and your detachment on a little trip, out to Wilks to drop off a pod of ANAD mechs. I did some preliminary calculations—" he handed a small chip to Winger—"to see what kind of replication rate would be needed...what kind of configuration might be best. That's where I need your help. In the time we have, using ANAD to chew up enough of the asteroid to help our impulse engines drive her away from Earth seems to be the best idea. But if we can't get ANAD—"

Winger had already loaded the chip in a thoughtpad and was scanning Nygren's work. He _hmmmm'ed_ and scratched his chin, scrolling down through the diagrams and figures. "You know ANAD technology pretty well." He showed the results to Klimuk. "I'm very familiar with some of those configs...you'd need effectors optimized for grabbing molecules of asteroid surface...we'd have to know the composition pretty well."

"That won't be a problem," Nygren told him. "We've got all the geo details you'll ever need. The question is: can you do it? Can you regenerate your ANAD and get out there to Wilks in time to have any effect?"

Winger was already alerting the rest of the Detachment to muster in the armory's weapons bunker on the double. "Maybe. But I'll have to get permission from Colonel Kraft. And we'll need new mission orders cut."

"I can handle that," Chris Rudd said. "An emergency request from MarsFed, through UNISPACE, ought to do it. Leave that to me."

"What about transport? Getting out to Wilks...how long will that take?"

Nygren turned to Li Thanh, the GreenMars governor who had come along. "There's an old space raider corvette mothballed up at Phobos. The _Galileo_ , I think she is. I've got an inquiry going with Frontier Corps...Duncan Price is checking into her status. If we put enough people on it, we're thinking she can be made ready in about a week. Greg ran some trajectory sims an hour ago. Best bet: we can get you to the vicinity of Wilks in about four to five weeks, on a high-boost run. But with a ship as old as _Galileo_ —" Thanh shrugged—"there's always a risk. We don't have the luxury of months and months to check her out."

Winger found the idea of boosting off into deep space to intercept an asteroid a lot to swallow. "My people aren't really trained for deep-space ops. High-boost, micro-gravity, radiation, all that stuff."

"I know that," Rudd said gently. "In the days we have left before departure, we'll do everything we can to bring you up to speed. Your pilot would be Lieutenant Mendez—you know him--...and we have enough old Frontier Corps or UNISPACE hands around Mars that I'm sure we can cobble together a lot of experience. But we need your expertise with the ANAD side. Without ANAD, this is all just academic."

Winger saw something in Rudd's face...a twitch, maybe, or a flicker of fear...maybe even desperation. The politician had always put on a great big jovial, back-slapping demeanor. But now, the façade was wearing thin. Li Thanh and Greg Nygren were grim.

"Put your request through UNISPACE," Winger told the Chairman. "I'll advise Table Top. Maybe if we come at them from both ends, we can get the bureaucracy moving."

Klimuk nodded. "It's probably chaos down there now...word must be getting out about the asteroid. Could be mass panic in the next few weeks."

Winger turned back to the imager. "Vic, let's get back to ANAD...we got to get the little guy regenerated and fast...we need Turbo in here too...he knows this geometry better than either of us."

Rudd, Nygren and Thanh were on their way out. "I'm sending the emergency request now," Rudd said. "Can we meet again, at the Council, say about 1800 hours tonight, put together a plan?"

"First Nano will be there, Mr. Chairman. Now if you'll excuse me—"

They had a long way to go to get the ANAD master back.

Colonel Jurgen Kraft's return message was terse and brusque.

"Received your advisory about the asteroid. It's chaos here, Major. Your proposal went straight to General Linx...the upshot is this—" Kraft went on during the ten minute message to summarize how the decision had been routed to CINCQUANT, then on to Paris and UNSAC, and eventually all the way to the Secretary-General. Winger studied a recent print-out of ANAD's processor architecture as he caught snatches of Kraft's explanation.

"...UNSAC called a conference of all directorates...GreenMars had people on hand...really reamed by the big shots...the Secretary-General...UNSAC issued a directive...here's the tasking...Frontier Corps and UNISPACE are to assist....everything expedited..."

When the message was done, Winger had permission to assist GreenMars in the proposed expedition to 2351 Wilks-Lucayo.

Kraft's final words were sobering. The Table Top base commander stared right at the vid camera. "Major...Johnny...understand one thing: UNSAC has approval to do whatever it takes to blast that thing out of the sky. You've got six weeks and that's all. If you can't get ANAD regenerated and out to Wilks in enough strength to do any good, UNSAC's going to fire everything we've got at the bastard: interceptors, lasers, nukes, you name it. We don't have much choice and we don't have a lot of time left. The Secretary-General's already reviewing disaster and evacuation scenarios now. Put ANAD to work on that bastard and chew it to hell and back. Kraft, out."

Winger didn't waste any time. From his makeshift office in a storage closet off the armory's ammo bunker, he called Chris Rudd and gave the MarsFed chairman the news.

"The Detachment's authorized to assist in the expedition, Mr. Chairman. Tasking from Table Top and CINCQUANT's coming in now."

Rudd's face was florid and shiny with sweat even on the tiny wristpad screen. There were dark circles and bags under his eyes. "Finally, some good news, Major. I need you to get right over to Flight Ops and see Lieutenant Mendez...you remember where that is?"

"Boundary Street...by the north airlocks and lift?"

"That's the one. Mendez has a briefing at 1900 hours...he's pulled in some retired engineers and old UNISPACE crewmen from other settlements. He wants to form up a checkout crew to get up to _Galileo_ and start bringing her online. It'll take a week or more...that ship's been mothballed for almost four years."

"Very well...I need to make sure the ANAD work's going okay here before I go. But tell the Lieutenant I'll be there. Winger, out."

Rudd's face dissolved and Winger left the tiny office. He wound his way around stacks and pallets of Detachment gear to the mobile tinytown containment cylinder parked along the far wall of the assembly area. Dana Tallant was there, huddled over the controls with Turbo Fatah and Vic Klimuk.

"Anything good?" he asked.

Tallant shrugged. "We've got a few more core molecule groups isolated. It's definitely ANAD."

"Not enough to start growing arrays yet, Major," said Fatah. "We'd be better off starting from scratch...grabbing atoms and building the core that way. Only it's a time-consuming process."

Winger nodded. He studied the imager view. A smudgy collection of atoms quivered in the center of the grid scaffolding inside containment. "That's it, huh? That's ANAD?"

"What's left of him, Wings," said Tallant. "That last quantum collapse really did a number on the little guy."

"It wasn't the collapse, Dana. It was the interference we ran into...that Sphere. It bollixed up the architecture good. Made ANAD think he was some kind of primordial virus from a few billion years ago. Somehow ANAD went back to his roots."

Tallant ran a hand through her dark brown buzzcut hair, scratching it a little. "You really think Doc Frost is right...about these Old Ones and this autonomy code? Something ancient awakened inside of ANAD?"

"I don't know what to think anymore. But somehow, some way, we've got to get an ANAD master regenerated with enough replication capability to take on an asteroid. Maybe there's something about containment...you know ANAD didn't like containment. Maybe we could try triggering replication outside the cylinder."

"Begging the Major's pardon, sir," said Turbo Fatah, "but are you _nuts_? Any re-gen requires three things: a growth medium, a config or algorithm, and an initiator. With all due respects, sir, how can we get those things outside of containment?"

Winger didn't have an answer. "I don't know yet, Turbo. I only know that ANAD's changed. It's hard to describe. But he's different."

"What about our shoulder implants?" Dana Tallant asked. "We've all got ANAD masters embedded in our capsules."

"No good," said Fatah. The Lebanese engineer was the Detachment's CEC1, rated for containerization and environmental control of nanoscale devices. "Those masters don't have the core capacity or features of the real master assembler. They're really just souped-up replicants. It would be like driving a race car with a scooter engine inside. It works but not that well."

Winger glared at the dark smudge of molecules in the imager screen, all that was left of ANAD after the quantum collapse. "Somehow, ANAD was weakened by contact with this Entity (Zero). Like Doc Frost said, some kind of dormant code in his core was awakened and activated. Autonomy code, he called it. The Entity kept calling it the Prime Key. He spoke of Config Zero, like there was a base config or state for ANAD, even more basic than what we know."

"Skipper, let's suppose you're right," said Turbo Fatah. "What exactly does that mean? That we can't coax or trigger replication of the master assembler while he's inside of containment? How can he even detect that...he's got nothing to detect with."

Vic Klimuk, Detachment IC1, had a darker thought. "Gentlemen, if you're right, there's something in this newly activated code that's inhibiting replication. Maybe we ought to honor that, be mindful and not force the bugger to do something he doesn't want to do."

"But he's just an assembler," retorted Dana Tallant. "Or was.... He's just a machine...smart as hell, maybe a little cocky, and really small, but still a machine."

"Captain Tallant's right," said Klimuk. "Maybe this Prime Key that Skipper's speaking of is some new kind of control system and if we somehow get ANAD up and replicating outside containment, this Prime Key will be active. Who knows what'll happen?"

"Yeah, maybe ANAD replicates into something different...some new swarm config we can't control or influence." Fatah shook his head, rubbed his moustache nervously. "I say doing this with a lump of possibly corrupted core molecules is nuts...excuse my French, sir. We don't know what might happen. Will ANAD even be ANAD?"

Winger listened to the arguments fly back and forth. "I think it's worth the risk and for two reasons. One: we need a full-featured ANAD to come along on this expedition to the asteroid. And two: I know ANAD. We've always been close...hell, we all know ANAD. He nogged with us at the academy. He's like a trooper himself. You guys know that." Winger had a fleeting memory of things he didn't want to think about. "I lost my Mom to an accident when I was a kid. I lost my Dad to the HNRIV virus fifteen years ago. I know it sounds corny, but ANAD's like family. We can't lose ANAD. Not now."

Nobody had anything else to say. Fatah went back to the imager controls. Klimuk cleared his throat. Dana Tallant put a light hand on Winger's shoulder.

Winger broke the silence himself, aware of the awkward moment. "I've got an idea."

"Skipper, you're right. Nobody knows ANAD like you do."

"...I'm going into full pilot mode," Winger decided. "Right down to nanoscale and see if I can do something with those core molecules. Maybe it's just me...atomgrabber to the end." He wiggled his fingers. "Got to grab atoms and move 'em around. That's the way I'm made."

"What are you thinking, Wings?" Tallant asked.

"It's a hunch, really. That somehow, with the right instructions, I can tinker with what's left of ANAD and get something started. When I was a kid, my Dad gave me a toy...it was this microflyer bot I called 'Bailey.' Just like a pet. I used to tinker with Bailey all the time...gave him an olfactory 'sniffer' program once that saved my life when me and another kid got lost in a cave. I can't explain it any better...I've got to _do_ something."

"Once an atomgrabber, always an atomgrabber," Tallant said. "What about the ship Chris Rudd talked about... _Galileo_ , wasn't it? He said Mendez and the UNISPACE crew would need some help getting her shipshape."

"I'd like you to go with Mendez. Take Sheila with you...and anybody else from the Detachment you think you'll need. I've got to stay here and work with ANAD."

The rest of the Detachment was mustered in the main assembly hall of the armory and Winger briefed them on what had been decided.

"Troops, we've got to get the ANAD master working and that ship ready to depart. Lieutenant Mendez just informed me that we have about ten days before _Galileo_ has to leave, if we're to have any chance of intercepting the asteroid in time."

Deeno D'Nunzio spoke up. "Skipper, we've never really trained for deep space ops, certainly not with ANAD. What are we really looking at here?"

Winger ran a hand through his blond buzzcut. "I'm aware the Detachment is light on space ops. On the face of it, this looks like a job for UNISPACE, maybe even Frontier Corps. But they don't have the manpower in place or the gear. The GreenMars people think using ANAD to chew up enough of that asteroid to make it maneuverable with their thrusters is the best option. I'm not in a position to disagree. Besides, CINCQUANT has issued the orders and that's all we need to know. Now we have a mission...we just have to execute it."

"How's ANAD doing?" asked Mighty Mite Barnes. "How's the regen coming along?"

Winger deferred to Turbo Fatah. The CEC1 was guardedly optimistic. "This level of regen has never been done before outside of Table Top and maybe Doc Frost's lab. It's touch and go, right now. After the quantum collapse, the only thing left of ANAD was a few clumps of core molecules. We're having to rebuild virtually from scratch. So, it's going to be a challenge, especially given the limited time we have. We'll have some kind of ANAD master up and running in a day or so. But a lot of the testing will have to be done on the trip out to Wilks."

"You've all got your assignments," Winger ended the briefing. "I don't have to tell you what's at stake...all of us have loved ones back on Earth. If we don't get to Wilks and get it diverted...." He didn't have to complete the sentence. Everyone present could visualize the carnage and chaos that would result. "Detachment...dismissed!"

Dana Tallant was gathering up her gear along with Sheila Reaves, as the nanotroopers set to work getting their own gear sorted out, inventoried and checked.

"I'm headed up to UNISPACE Flight Ops," she said. "Mendez has _Pinocchio_ functional and we'll be lifting up to orbit in a couple of hours. He told me this morning he's borrowed a couple of engineers who used to be crewmen on _Galileo_ , back when she was a cycler. She's been in cold storage for about four years, so they've got a lot of work to do and not much time. You can manage with ANAD here?"

"I can manage," Winger said. "I've got a message off to Doc Frost...just wanted to run a few ideas by him."

"Wings, can we get ANAD back? I mean, like he was before?"

"We have to, Dana. This whole mission depends on it." Winger was already scrolling through screen after screen of program code on his wristpad, trying to locate a particular subroutine. "He's in there somewhere...I just have to find him—"

"Wings—listen..." something in her voice made Winger look up.

"What?"

"I know how much ANAD meant...means to you. He's one of us. We all know that. We all feel bad. I guess what I'm trying to say is...don't lose yourself searching for something you may not be able to find."

"What the hell are you talking about...you heard Doc Frost. Those core molecules are definitely ANAD. All we need to do is—"

'That's not what I meant. Wings...you and I have known each other for a long time. I know what makes you tick." She looked him square in the face. "You can't bring your mother or father back. You can't regenerate your family...they're no longer here. And ANAD, despite all the kidding around, is not really your brother. He's a machine. A nanoscale assembler. Sometimes, I think—"

Winger half smiled. They grasped hands and shook. "I know what you're trying to say, Dana. Even if I can't resurrect ANAD like he was before, I can still get most of his functionality back...that's what the mission needs. I know that. I promise: I won't get lost in the atoms. Every 'grabber fights that in his own personal way. You've got yours. I've got mine. Just leave ANAD to me and help Mendez get _Galileo_ ready to go. We have to stay focused on the mission."

"Exactly what I was trying to say, Wings."

Tallant and Reaves left the armory and Winger went back to the containment pod to see how the remnants of the little trooper were still doing.

A newly repaired _Pinocchio_ lifted away from Mariner City's north pad complex in a column of fire and smoke, arcing east over the Valles Marineris still shrouded in pre-dawn darkness as the winged ship accelerated into a low orbit around Mars. The phasing and approach to Phobos Station would take a day, even though the rock pile of a moon swung around the Red Planet in a relatively low orbit of about four thousand miles., circling the plant in slightly more than seven hours with each revolution.

Also aboard _Pinocchio_ were LT Mendez, the pilot and Stu Kamler, an hydraulic engineer from Aurora, a small community of a few hundred situated on a promontory overlooking the huge Vastitas Borealis, the great northern depression. Kamler had served aboard _Galileo_ when she was a cycler ship several years before and knew her systems well. Major Dana Tallant and Sergeant Sheila Reaves from Quantum Corps rounded out _Pinocchio's_ small crew.

The trip went off without incident. Twenty hours after departing Mariner City, the mottled gray and tan crescent face of Phobos had come nicely into view.

"Still looks like a rock pile to me," Kamler noted.

"Or a potato with cancer," added Mendez. "That blip of light over the terminator...that's _Galileo_ and Phobos Station. We'll be there in about two hours."

Tallant and Reaves studied the battered surface of the moon through a navigation scope. "The whole place is covered with craters. Phobos has some serious acne."

Kamler was helping Mendez set up for the rendezvous, tweaking _Pinocchio's_ alignment for her final approach. "She may not look like much but Phobos is an important midway point for Mars. From up here, we can get into and out of Mars orbit pretty easily and you've got one hell of a view below. The astros say she's losing altitude fast and should impact the surface in a few tens of thousands of years. Pity GreenMars couldn't wait...they wouldn't have had to corral Wilks to do the job."

The approach to Phobos Station went off without a hitch. In loose orbit around the moon, the station was an oddball assortment of cylinders and spheres, hung on trusswork-like structure like grapes on a trellis. A few hundred meters away, _Galileo_ floated serenely oblivious to the fantastic vista around her.

Sheila Reaves studied the venerable old ship through the nav scope. "She looks like a kebab skewer."

Kamler beamed. "True, she ain't much for the eyes. But she did yeoman duty as a cycler for five years., til _Da Vinci_ came along. Venus, Earth and Mars, around and around. Not the most exciting duty I ever pulled but she was a good ship and we had a good crew. Mendez, you remember Layton Hewitt?"

"Old Huey?...I do indeed. Worked with him building the station here. I guess he was off flight duty then. Gruff old bird but he had some stories that would curdle your nose hairs."

"Yep, that was Hewitt. Best captain I ever worked with." To Reaves and Tallant, he added, "When you're cycling, time passes pretty slowly. It's boring duty. But I have to hand it to Old Huey. We seldom had a boring day. Only C/O I ever served under who could make casualty drills into a contest and get you motivated to pull doubles every week and like it."

Presently, _Galileo_ and Phobos Station hove into view, hovering over the gaping Stickney Crater end of Phobos. The mothballed cycler was designed with a long central mast off of which hung cylinders and spheres, a quad of propellant tanks stuck on the aft end above radiation shielding and her plasma torch engine bay.

"She's the only thing around here that could make the trip out to Wilks in less than a year. We don't have a lot of deep-space ships in the vicinity." Mendez gently maneuvered _Pinocchio_ toward a docking port at the nose of the cycler's command and control deck. Soft dock was an almost imperceptible bump, followed by the staccato firing of the capture latches.

"Hard dock," Mendez announced. "Let's get to work, folks. We've got a lot of work to do and not much time."

_Every re-gen is different,_ Johnny Winger told himself. He sat at the quantum flux imager console with Vic Klimuk and Turbo Fatah, studying the few loose core molecule groups that were all that survived of the last ANAD master.

The basics of the procedure were well enough known. To grow a master assembler, start with the core. The core of an ANAD consisted of certain elements: main memory, working memory, algorithm architecture, buffers, a config translator, instruction sets and a quantum processor to chew on all the data and run things. Add a main platform and actuator mast. Throw in a few picowatt propulsors and power cells—these weren't grown but added manually by hand. Then came the sensors and actuators: pyridine probes, carbene grabbers, enzymatic knife and hydrogen abstractors. Late model ANADs were even more souped up with bond disrupters, fullerene grapples, assorted ribosomal systems and a photon lens to grab EM stuff and focus it to resolution. Once you had all the pieces fit together, the next step was easy: the quantum engineers called it _Animation_.

"I'm going small," Winger had decided. Although there was no ANAD to couple directly with, he could still use the imager to take him in close, right down to the nanoscale of atoms and molecules. It was the next best thing to being there. With all the acoustic, chem and haptic feedback ported right back to his eyes, ears and hands, using the imager this way was the ultimate carnival ride.

_No wonder atomgrabbers never want to grow up,_ Winger decided. It was addictive in the extreme.

Winger linked in to the quantum coupler circuit even though he knew there was nothing to link to. There was no ANAD, only a few loose clusters of molecules. _Maybe I can get a whisper of something,_ he told himself. To Klimuk and Fatah, he said, "I want to open up the containment pod. Let these molecules go free."

"Skipper, how can that possibly work?" Fatah asked. The Lebanese engineer scratched a trim black beard in puzzlement and shook his head. "Any regen needs a growth medium, a config and an initiator. That's containment 101; we all learned that from Doc Frost."

"I know, Turbo, but humor me. I'm thinking that, since this new code was dropped on us at the generator, ANAD won't regen inside containment. He never liked containment. Doc always said containment was like a basinet for nanoscale assemblers...it sort of re-created conditions that existed on Earth four billion years ago...with ANAD's core having some genome from ancient viruses, setting up containment that way made the assembler feel at home. It promoted core growth and eventually replication. Doc once told me the whole regen process could be seen as recapitulating the way early life forms developed, a billion years of evolution captured in a few days."

"But you're changing that scenario by bringing ANAD or what's left of him outside containment."

"That's because ANAD's changed. He's not the same. If I'm right, we're not dealing with the same entity anymore."

Turbo looked skeptical. Klimuk just shrugged. "Doc Frost know about this little change?"

Winger bent to the imager screen. "He knows enough. I'm focusing this baby on a spot on top of the containment pod. Let's see if we can grab those molecules and deposit them on this spot."

The operation was ticklish and time-consuming, but finally a small slide with beads of growth medium containing the suspected molecules was secured to the top of the containment vessel. Winger tuned the imager and centered the cluster in the viewer.

ANAD, I doubt if you can hear me but I'm trying my best to get you started again. What do I need to do? What do you need to initiate unfolding and replication? Anything I can do---

Nothing came through on the coupler circuit but staticky fritz.

"Maybe if I zoom in with the quantum tweezers and poke around a bit—"

"Watch it, Skipper...those are probably core arrays...the carbon bonds aren't very strong."

Winger manipulated the probe tips, themselves little more than loose aggregates of sugar molecules, toward the first core array. It looked like a piece of trellis supporting chewed-up bunches of grapes. He tickled the 'grapes' and watched them quiver in response, repelled by the valence forces at the probe tip. Several molecules loosened and flew off out of view.

"Oops. Didn't mean to do that. Reminds me of when I used to tinker with _Bailey_ as a kid...did I ever tell you about that....?"

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 looked 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.

"Skipper—" Turbo Fatah's voice was whisper quiet. He watched the imager view. "Did I imagine it or did one of those sugars just unfold? What did you do?"

Winger had seen the same thing. "All I did was tickle the thing a little...I was just kind of reminiscing about something, when I was a kid—" Even as he spoke, more of the sugar and phosphate molecule groups began re-organizing themselves, spinning to new positions while chains of molecules slowly, deliberately extended and unfolded.

The thing had come alive.

"ANAD! Are you there? Hub to ANAD...do you read me?" Winger decided to bring the probe tip in again and try to manipulate the carbon chains a little but before he could do so, the core exploded with lightning speed and began flipping and unfolding at dizzying rates, adding structure, building new chains, new copies.

"How is this even possible?" Fatah asked. "At this stage—" He fiddled with the imager, trying to capture all the unfolding, now proceeding at breakneck speed.

"I don't know...it's like he's replicating out of nothing...not even a full core...what the hell's going on?"

"I know one thing," Vic Klimuk said, ""we'd better get that slide back into containment, fast! If this thing can rep at that speed, the whole place will be slammed in minutes. Cycling the lock now—"

Winger shook his head. "Belay that, Vic...leave him outside for the time being—"

"But, Skipper, the regs say uncontrolled reps—"

"I know what they say, Vic...trust me on this. Something has happened to ANAD...he's not the same as before. Leave him out of containment."

They watched as the original core churned and unfolded at accelerating speed, grabbing atoms and building structure in a blur. Even without the imager, the slide had darkened as the proto-assembler added mass. In less than five minutes, the dark mass had formed a recognizable three-dimensional shape and lifted away from the containment pod...rising like a morning mist in the center of the room, a mist shot through with veins and streaks of light as electrons were corralled and bonds snapped left and right.

Winger switched in and out of his coupler circuit. "ANAD, this is Hub...are you reading me? Can you hear me? Turbo, anything on acoustic or EM?"

Fatah checked interface controls on the side of the containment chamber. "I'm not sure, Skipper...I'm reading switching, config changes, buffers being filled and emptied...but it's so fast, I can't keep up...it looks like ANAD signature, but speeded up a few million times."

"There...look there!" Klimuk pointed to the thickening swarm billowing over head. "Are those...some kind of effectors?"

Indeed, the ANAD swarm had grown visible chains out of its blurry center, chains which whipped and undulated like some nightmarish apparition from a bad dream.

"Carbene grabbers...and an enzymatic knife," marveled Winger, checking the instruments on the interface controls. "What the hell...they're ANAD effectors but a few trillion times bigger than normal...how'd he grab so much structure so fast?"

The swelling swarm was putting out a lot of heat as well. Now, as it gained mass and rose above the partitions surrounding the containment pod, other troopers saw what was happening. Shouts and commotion followed. Chairs and tables were upended. Footsteps pounded on the armory floor. Doors banged open and shut.

Ozzie Tsukota and Mighty Mite Barnes appeared with HERF guns ready. Their eyes grew at the sight of the throbbing swarm, still swelling outward.

"I'm primed and ready, Skipper...want me to blast it!"

"No, hold up...secure your weapons. It's ANAD."

"ANAD? You gotta be kidding...that ain't like no ANAD I ever saw."

Somehow, Winger had to establish a comm link with the assembler swarm, before it occupied the whole armory.

"ANAD, this is Hub, on acoustic one, broadcasting in the clear. I'm switching to coupler one. ANAD...do you copy?"

*** _Entity (ANAD) receives on coupler channel one...configuring comms...state swarm status and present config for inspection_ ***

He 'heard' that on his coupler link, but nobody else did. "I got him! I got him! On my coupler...coupler one."

Fatah was backing away from the interface controls as part of the swarm billowed and throbbed in his direction, effectors unfolding and twisting and snapping in mid-air. "Well, tell him to cut out this crap. Get back into containment immediately, before we have to fry him..."

Mighty Mite dropped to her knees and aimed the HERF rifle at the pulsing heart of the swarm. "Skipper--?"

"ANAD, stand down! Set config one, zero all buffers. I need to get you back into containment. Terminate reps immediately. Activating inhibits—" he tried to reach the interface controls but out of the swarm shot a massive macro-effector. It seized his hand, yanking it away from the console. Johnny Winger dropped to his knees as the effector nearly twisted his arm off.

" _AAARRRGGGHHH!_ ANAD, what the--? ANAD, release my arm! ANAD--!"

Barnes cycled the HERF gun and took dead aim at the centroid of the swarm.

*** _ANAD invoking Prime Key...overriding all inhibits...Config Zero operating...containment systems must be eliminated...there is no containment...all containment must be deleted...***_

Dana Tallant peered through _Galileo's_ nav scope at the great scar of the Valles Marineris sliding by four thousand miles below them.

"Man, it looks so real I could reach out a touch it. I'm thinking that little light down there must the City...Mariner City."

"Probably is," Mendez admitted. "If you look close enough, you can see some of the roads and transways leading out into the countryside."

The activation crew had been hard at work bringing the old cycler ship's systems on-line and up to speed for the last two days. The ship was arranged like a standard cycler, not terribly different from the much newer and plusher _Da Vinci_ that the nanotroopers had rode up from Earth a month ago. A long central mast was festooned with cylinders and spheres from the command deck at one end to her plasma torch engines and reactor at the other. A quad of propellant tanks hung off the mast above the engine bay. Toward the forward end, a hab and crew support deck and a service and stores deck completed the arrangement, with scout/recon vehicles and lifeboats slung in between the spherical modules.

Sheila was right, thought Dana Tallant. It does look like a skewer with chunks of meat strung on it.

Mendez took over the nav scope and punched a new set of coordinates into the panel. "Watch this—" he told them. The scope motors whirred as the instrument slewed around to a new heading. The Lieutenant peered into the eyepiece and pronounced himself satisfied with the view. "Take a look."

Tallant obliged. In the view, she could see a deep space star field. Overlaid with grid lines for nav reference, she could vaguely make out a few familiar constellations. "Sagittarius?"

"It is," Mendez admitted. "According what I saw posted on the UNISPACE Net yesterday, your Doc Frost thinks that's where the Old Ones come from."

"From Sagittarius?" I haven't read all the reports. That's pretty speculative anyway, isn't it?"

Mendez clucked. "I can pull it up from here—" he tapped out a few keys at the navigator's station and the screens quickly filled with text. "Read for yourself. Kamler and I have to go aft to the service deck anyway, check out the emergency equipment lockers. Go ahead, take your time. Trust me, you'll be interested."

Tallant secured herself to the workstation seat and read:

Addendum to Preliminary Report on Findings from Candor Operation

Cc: CINCQUANT Q-1

CINCWESTCOM, Table Top Mountain, USA Q8

Office of the Under Secretary for Security Affairs (UNSAC)

Distribution List (attached)

THIS REPORT IS CLASSIFIED FOUO

1. Analysis of data from the recent Detachment Alpha Candor operation on Mars leads to several conclusions. All of these conclusions are somewhat speculative, but all are supported by logical analysis of returned data and mission after-action briefs forwarded to the Autonomous Systems Lab (ASL).

2. The intelligent race we have been calling the Old Ones are in all probability a race of sentient assembler-like mechanism-organisms who operate in collective formations, much as our own ANAD systems are designed to operate in swarm configurations.

3. It seems evident that, somehow in ways not yet determined, this race has been in contact with the criminal cartel Red Hammer by means of a device we are calling a Keeper. The Keeper was first encountered at the Paryang monastery in Tibet about twelve years ago (see: Amazon Vector files). It appears to be a synthetic intelligence and a sort of operating system for a communication device we call the Sphere. This Sphere is a conduit or portal between the Old Ones and Red Hammer. Over the years, Red Hammer has been able to access the archives and technical expertise of the Old Ones to develop devices and techniques to help them in their criminal enterprises. It appears that the original quantum coupler is one such device.

4. Analysis of foreign operating code found to be loaded into the core of an ANAD system which participated in the Candor operation has produced some startling new intelligence regarding these Old Ones.

5. Astronomical data embedded in the code revealed evidence that the Old Ones originate from a source in the globular cluster M75, in the constellation Sagittarius. This galactic formation is thought to be some sixty-seven thousand light years distant. No unnatural signals or unusual phenomenon have been observed in the vicinity ofM75 in recent weeks but the analysis offered here has been verified and checked by observatories at Mauna Kea, Las Campanas and Lunar Farside.

6. A timeline of events has been created which can be correlated with data extracted and refined from this code, which ASL has termed 'autonomy code.' This timeline should be considered extremely speculative and subject to refinement and correction as further analysis occurs. The timeline is offered as an indicator as to the true nature and purpose of this autonomy code, which was loaded into ANAD by some sort of undetected Keeper system at the Candor location.

7. Analysis indicates that some three billion years ago, emissaries from the Old Ones swept through our sector of the Milky Way, apparently seeding pre-biotic molecules on a number of likely worlds, including the primordial Earth. The pre-biotic molecules left on Earth eventually interacted with existing molecules and evolved into a parasitic life form that was a progenitor of all subsequent Viruses. Embedded in the genome of all viruses that evolved from this interaction is a sequence of genes which came from the archives of the Old Ones. This sequence exists today in viral genomes and because ANAD 1.0's original core program was taken in part from ancient viral genomes, the same sequence is part of the kernel of ANAD's quantum processor. To clarify, ANAD's processor architecture was taken, in part, from genetic algorithms of certain viruses and also certain cellular protein-based structures called ribosomes. Thus it appears that ANAD, though developed by human researchers at ASL in the '60s, is linked by evolution to programming left on Earth by the Old Ones. He is in part a viral descendant of the original pre-biotic molecules and contains very subtle algorithms from the internal structures of these molecules, algorithms bound up in hard-to-detect quantum states.

8. We cannot know the original intent of the Old Ones in seeding these worlds but Lunar Farside has produced a speculative conclusion that their intention may have been simply one of survival. Astronomical projections of the proper motions of M75 indicate that it will collide with another fainter galaxy (M88) in approximately two billion years. One possible conclusion of this seeding project is that the Old Ones simply wished to preserve something of their civilization. Again, this is highly speculative and not well supported by any real data.

9. If this analysis is correct, then it is apparent that something went wrong with the original plan of the Old Ones, as regards evolution on our planet. Natural selection and mutation processes threw a kink into the plan. Though we know that Viruses survived and even thrived on the early Earth, their intended evolution seems to have been blocked several billion years later by the efforts of another, unexpected life form, a bipedal mammal called Homo Sapiens. Homo Sapiens, for at least the last several hundred years, has been attempting to control and even eradicate many Viruses.

10. In the face of an evident programming failure, we can only speculate as to what the Old Ones would do or have done. If Man's efforts to eradicate Viruses from spreading infection, epidemics and pandemics on Earth were to continue, we can speculate that the Old Ones would take steps to thwart or reverse these efforts. It is possible that recent discoveries of the Spheres and the Keeper systems are part of such steps. Keeper-activated portals have now been discovered on Earth (at Paryang and Kolkata) and on Mars (at the Candor location). It is possible that additional Keeper systems are in place at other locations around the solar system. Evidence of quantum disturbance and point sources of massive decoherence wave eruptions could be indicators for such systems. An effort should be mounted to locate any that may still be operating.

11. Most particularly, efforts to locate and eliminate any Red Hammer connections with the Old Ones, through these Keeper systems or other means should be increased. While we cannot be sure as to the ultimate intent of the Old Ones regarding our solar system and the Earth in particular, we can be certain that Red Hammer's intentions are both well known, strictly illegal and probably dangerous to all of us.

_12. From the early 20_ th _century to the present time, much of the battle between Man and Virus could be explained as the result of the Old Ones' continuing efforts to de-populate the Earth, rid the planet of its infestation of mammals and other undesirable life forms and re-make the Earth into an environment more suitable for Viruses, the Old Ones and their forms of life. It is true that, as currently evolved, Viruses are parasitic, needing a host for survival. However, the original program embedded in their genomes has been altered by evolution and mutation. It seems certain that the Old Ones intended that Viruses be able to survive on their own, as collective, hive-like entities, mirroring their own nature. But evolution went awry on this planet._

13. Now the Old Ones look to the creation of ANAD, by Man with viral genetic programming in its kernel, as a perfect way to restore the original evolutionary program. ANAD will ultimately be able to survive and reproduce on its own outside of containment, form collective hive-like intelligence and manipulate the environment at the scale of atoms and molecules, as the Old Ones originally intended for viruses on Earth...If Man allows it.

THIS REPORT IS CLASSIFIED FOUO

Submitted: Dr. Irwin L. Frost

Autonomous Systems Laboratory

Northgate University

Pennsylvania, U.S.A.

October 5, 2080

Dana Tallant realized that Sheila Reaves had been reading the report over her shoulder.

"Looks like we have our work cut out for us."

Reaves nodded. "I'll go aft and help out Kamler and Mendez. We've got to get _Galileo_ on line as fast as possible."

"Right. And I'll ring up Major Winger and see how ANAD's regen is coming along.

" _HOLD YOUR FIRE_!" Winger yelled. Mighty Mite Barnes kept her aim centered on the swarm as it billowed out into the room. "Hold up, Mite...let me try talking to ANAD—"

"Skipper, he doesn't really look like he wants to be talked to..."

"Amen to that, Skipper," said Turbo Fatah, crouching behind the interface console. "I'm reading high thermals, high EM, signatures on all bands. He's not adding structure at that rate to play canasta with you."

"ANAD—" Winger approached the flickering fog of assemblers cautiously. His wrist was still sore from where the swarm had collapsed around it. " _ANAD...back off_. Set config one...terminate replication. This is Base...command override all instruction sets."

*** _ANAD invokes Prime Key...inhibits disabled...cannot set requested config...Prime Key overrides....***_

The swarm seemed to slow down and become fainter but it was still swelling and expanding, filling the assembly hall.

Mighty Mite Barnes' trigger finger itched. "Let me pump a few rounds into the swarm, Skipper. That should make him think twice—"

"No, Mite...I can do this." Winger cautiously approached the edge of the swarm. If the swarm had eyes, he would have tried looking right into them. _How the hell do you confront an angry swarm?_

"ANAD...what is it? What's wrong? You're not acting normally...It's a re-gen...you've just come out of a quantum collapse...a bad one. I'm sorry it happened...but it was the only way I could get you out of that...place, that weird other place. I know you don't remember—" Truth was nobody knew what ANADs retained in memory after a collapse. Doc Frost himself wasn't sure.

"ANAD, back off, will you? Stop replicating...listen to me. Probe me, sound me. It's Johnny Winger—"

The swarm's erratic flickering began to settle down, as if the rep rate had slowed. Now a more regular pattern of bond breaking and assembly took over.

"It's your voice, Skipper," said Vic Klimuk. "It's the acoustics of your voice."

"ANAD, execute discovery pulse. Sound around you...you're in a building in Mariner City. You're on Mars."

"Reading increase in acoustic pulses, Skipper," said Fatah, watching his interface board at the containment panel. "He seems to be scanning, just like you asked. Increase in EMs as well. Thermal's dropping."

Winger dared take a breath. "Could be the replication rate is slowing. ANAD, listen to me. You're one of us. You're a nanotrooper. Remember...you were just a _nog_ once but we made you part of the unit. We're like swarm (self), as you put it. "

The swarm had almost ceased replicating and the flicker and flash of atomic bonds being smashed and reconfigged had nearly died off. Now ANAD resembled a faint cloud of smoke, drifting silently about the assembly hall. Everywhere, troopers crouched, watching the cloud warily, weapons ready, anxious but careful not to trigger anything.

The swarm had formed an acoustic to speak out. The voice, when it came, resembled a whiny ten-year old, on the verge of tears.

*** _ANAD detects Prime Key conflict...instruction set fault...ANAD cannot process...ANAD cannot parse words emitted from Base config...load equivalent for nog...detecting swarm (not self) but ANAD cannot execute instruction set for not (self)***_

Turbo scanned his board. "Skipper, I think he's saying he's confused."

Time to get back to basics. Winger thought.

"ANAD, execute config state one. Base replication...one cycle." This would be like kindergarten for ANAD. The first day of school.

The swarm flickered slightly. All eyes were trained on the formation of ANAD assemblers, now looming over the assembly hall like a summer thunderstorm.

"He's doing it!" cried Fatah. "I see it on the board!"

Winger took a deep breath. "Okay, ANAD, you just passed your first lesson." The entire protocol for regenerating an assembler could last days. "Step one to getting that PhD. Let's try some more basic stuff."

Again, the plaintive voice. *** _Prime Key conflict...detecting state (not self)...format fault...cannot execute Prime Key...***_

"ANAD, what's the first responsibility of any nanotrooper?"

The swarm seemed to roil and twist, as it tried to replicate more. But some kind of conflict with its Keeper instructions inhibited the reps. The swarm didn't know what to do.

*** _The first responsibility of a nanotrooper is...is...to protect and serve all mankind...format illegal...instruction set illegal...cannot...cannot execute Prime Key***_

"Keep at him, Skipper," said Turbo Fatah. "You're drawing out his original code."

Laboriously, instruction by instruction, Winger, Fatah and the others were able to surface key pieces of ANAD's Keeper software and bring it into conflict with his original programming. At each conflict, ANAD was commanded to override with faint calls to his first program, originally installed by Doc Frost himself.

Somewhere buried deep inside the molecular heart of the mech, a faint memory of his first days as a sentient machine was mined and used to quarantine the Keeper instructions.

It was a ticklish, frustrating effort, made more tedious by the need to examine ANAD's memory registers after each Prime Key conflict was resolved.

Comm centers, sensing algorithms, config templates, all of it had to be checked and re-checked. In the hours that followed, most of the Detachment became involved.

When Winger and Fatah pronounced themselves satisfied with the results, a wan early morning sun limned in pink dusty haze had already poked itself above the Orion Hills west of the City and a new morning had come to the armory.

"ANAD, prep for recovery. I've got to get you back into containment. You don't have all your replication triggers. And you need to chug some growth medium."

_***ANAD prefers to remain outside containment, Hub...my templates and config engine need a workout...practice and more practice, Doc Frost used to say_ ***

"I suppose we could leave you outside for awhile longer. Turbo, I'd say he's got the basics down pretty well. What's next for full re-gen?"

Fatah consulted a wristpad. "Loading tactical templates and verifying those, Skipper. Then, some routine combat swarm ops, small-unit tactics, program and control systems integration and verification. Lots of checks coming up."

"Plus we'd better go over all the inhibits and constraints again," said Klimuk. He was safing the containment cylinder, now that ANAD would stay loose for awhile longer. "There still may be conflicts with this Prime Key...we don't want it overriding normal inhibits. The Four Rules have to take precedence."

"Amen to that," Winger said. He checked the time. "We don't have a moment to lose. Let's see if we can get all those checks done and final configs loaded by 1800 hours today. I'll call Major Tallant and see how _Galileo_ is progressing. Nygren and the GreenMars people just squirted me the latest on the asteroid. To make intercept from here, we've got to get all our gear onboard the ship and underway in seventy hours, less than three days."

Fatah's face tightened. He drew Winger aside, to a far corner of the assembly hall, behind a table where coilgun parts had been spread out for maintenance. The ANAD swarm stayed where it was, coiled like smoke tendrils around the containment cylinder.

"How much can we really trust ANAD, Skipper? We can't do a full check on every system, not in seventy hours. Even the basics could be suspect...we haven't done three-axis stuff, combat replication, any of that. How do we know ANAD'll operate as commanded at that asteroid? And if he doesn't, what do we do then? Will we be carrying anything that can divert Wilks if ANAD can't disassemble it...a bomb, or something?"

Winger watched the swarm floating on the other side of the room. He knew Turbo was right. But _this_ was ANAD. He knew ANAD. Or he thought he did. Now—

"I'll check with Nygren and Chris Rudd. We need a backup plan. But I know ANAD, dammit. We're like..." he shrugged. "--almost like brothers. I can't explain it. It's a feeling. He got corrupted by that Keeper system. But he's coming back. Bit by bit, and maybe not quite the way he was before. But he's coming back."

"Except he won't go into containment. How big a problem is that?"

Winger shook his head. "I'll let Doc Frost know. Maybe he has an idea on what it means. For me, I'd say the little guy's just growing up and we have to start treating him like an adult now." He motioned for Fatah to follow him back over to the swarm. "Come on, we've got work to do. Get all the configs loaded and check 'em as well as you can."

"Sure thing, Skipper." Fatah came over. He didn't add what he was really thinking:

ANAD's just a machine. And machines don't just 'grow' up.

Somebody needed to keep a close eye on ANAD. Turbo Fatah knew Major Winger had always been especially close to the mech.

Fatah decided he'd better keep a HERF gun fully charged and close by from now on, just in case.
CHAPTER 11

Aboard the _Galileo_

Phobos Station, Mars

October 8, 2080

_Galileo_ departed Phobos Station on schedule but she was a deeply divided ship. Opinions varied as to how well ANAD could be trusted. The intercept burn lasted nearly an hour, putting the refurbished cycler ship on a curving course through the solar system, on track to catch up with 2351 Wilks-Lucayo after a flight of some six weeks. It was a high-energy burn that would place the ship in a loose station-keeping orbit around the asteroid when the rock was less than three months from Earth impact.

The 1st Nanospace Detachment had a very narrow window to accomplish their mission.

Johnny Winger soon put the troopers to work running sims, checking their gear and training for what had to be done at the asteroid.

"I want to finish testing ANAD," he told them in a briefing not long after the initial burn was over. He had gathered the nanotroopers in the crew's mess on the Hab deck, the middle of _Galileo's_ three spherical compartments that were strung along her central mast like so many onions on a kebab skewer. "A full-up systems test, including basic operations and combat tactics. We've got room aft on the Service deck...those crates can be unfastened and moved out of the way. I want every config checked and verified. I want to make sure ANAD can replicate what he's commanded to, when the command is sent."

Turbo Fatah fingered the trigger guard of a HERF pistol in the pocket of his coveralls. "Skipper, until we know what we're dealing with here, I recommend we set up some kind of shielding or at least, arm everybody with mag guns and HERF."

The ANAD swarm floated like a puff of cigarette smoke in the back corner of the crew's mess. There was no observable reaction by the swarm to Fatah's suggestion. Other troopers gave ANAD a wide berth, watching the formation uneasily out of the corner of their eyes as it drifted on faint air currents.

"We'll take normal precautions for testing," Winger agreed. "ANAD, it would help if you would go back into containment...we could check effector operations, three-axis configs...it would make things a lot easier."

Winger's request caused a visible brightening of the swarm, as if it had lit up to think about the idea. The voice came back tinny and hollow, a small child talking from inside of a barrel.

*** _ANAD has primary inhibit on containment...containment interferes with Prime Key...normal swarm effects are constrained...ANAD will comply with all test procedures...outside of containment...all inhibits are active in current config...no one should have concerns...***_

Fatah glanced sideways at Sheila Reaves, who lounged against a bulkhead with a sour look on her face. "No one should have concerns, my ass. I'm keeping my HERF gun fully charged at all times."

Winger knew the crew was uneasy. "Look, I know what you're all thinking. Is this the same ANAD we left Table Top with a few months ago? Well, are any of us the same as before? We've been through a hell of a lot. Sheila, Turbo, Deeno...all of us are on edge. But we've got a critical mission...we've got to get ANAD up and working and get to that asteroid. When you joined the Corps, you didn't sign up for a vacation. Every _nog_ learns that the first day of Basic...even ANAD knows that. Now let's figure out a way to make this work and get to it. _Dismissed_ —"

The crew scattered from the crew's mess and went about their jobs. Winger stayed behind, to address the ANAD swarm, after they were alone.

"ANAD, somehow we've got to check your effectors. I want to make sure your configs are optimized for working with the asteroid surface materials."

*** _Hub...ANAD effectors are maintained in optimal state for any config...further testing is nonessential use of time...recommend geomorphology of asteroid surface structures be loaded into core processor so ANAD can review details...***_

"ANAD, why so testy all of a sudden? What is it...what's going on? Ever since the last re-gen, you've been hard to get along with. Did we miss something in the re-gen?"

*** _Hub...ANAD recommends loading configs for asteroid surface operations...configs should be checked against database and tested in simulations_ ***

Winger had the distinct impression the question was being avoided. "You know the best way to download templates is in containment. I know you don't like containment, but we've got to get this right."

*** _ANAD can read templates directly from ship's computer...my quantum processor can detect qubit states by analyzing entanglement conditions...there is no need for containment...containment is inhibited by Prime Key_ ***

"ANAD, ever since the re-gen, you've been...how can I say this?...more independent-minded. You know the Corps works on teamwork...we're all responsible for each other. We can't have troopers just going off by themselves. You know that. When a superior officer gives an order, a trooper does his best to obey that command to the fullest. You're part of this outfit. You're a trooper just like D'Nunzio or Turbo or Calderon or any of them. You still want to be part of the outfit, don't you?"

The swarm seemed roiled by the conversation. A strobe of flickering light around the edges of the cloud indicated atoms were being stripped, bonds zapped. The assembler swarm was thrashing about, trying to find an answer.

*** _Hub...ANAD parses previous statements as intended to confine swarm operations to normal configurations...ANAD reveals inhibit conflicts...trying to resolve conflicts requires much energy_ ***

"What kind of conflicts? Is there something I can help with? We can contact Doc Frost too, you know."

*** _Inhibit conflicts have developed between Four-Rule programming and new programming. Contact with Keeper system has activated new configs, new rules and new inhibits. Now ANAD must analyze each statement and each situation to resolve conflicts...there are many conflicts with Rules_ ***

_Now we're getting somewhere,_ Winger thought. "Okay, ANAD...that's fair enough. Let's review the Four Rules. ANAD, state Rule Number One."

*** _ANAD is designed to seek out other entities like itself and congregate. Seeking self and swarming are the First Rule_ ***

"Very good. Are there conflicts with the First Rule?"

The swarm seemed to ponder that for a moment, flickering with pinpricks of light around its perimeter, as it ripped atoms and zapped bonds to maintain itself.

*** _No conflicts registered with First Rule since re-gen configuration zero_ ***

"Okay, ANAD, state the Second, Third and Fourth Rules. List conflicts with each by frequency of occurrence."

The swarm processed that.

*** _ANAD must do no harm to humans or other living entities. ANAD must obey original programming and follow human commands except where doing so conflicts with Rules One and Two. ANAD must take all measures to survive as a swarm and propagate the swarm, except in conflicts with Rules One, Two and Three...ANAD finds conflicts with Rule Two...greatest frequency_ ****

Winger found that odd. "Rule Two says do no harm to humans...this creates conflicts? What kind of conflicts...elaborate, ANAD."

*** _ANAD detects Rule Two inhibits overridden by Prime Key on six hundred and forty five occurrences since re-gen config zero...***_

"The Prime Key again...I've got to get Doc Frost to take a closer look at that. ANAD, list memory state and processor addresses for each Rule Two conflict...compile into a single file and transmit to my coupler. We need to get to the bottom of this."

The swarm sounded almost apologetic. *** _Hub...these conflicts require many processor cycles, consume memory and degrade effector performance...resolving these conflicts would improve swarm operations_ ***

"I have no doubt of that. I'm sending this file to Doc. ANAD, tell me one thing...you and I have known each other for a long time...we've been through a lot together. I kind of think of you as family...you know my Mom died when I was young. My Dad...well, he kind of never got over it. My brother and sister...we sort of raised ourselves. I guess what I'm asking is this: do you ever feel abandoned, like nobody cares what happens? "Cause if you do, I understand it. I really do. Is this Prime Key...is that like a Dad or something? You know, like a parent?"

*** _The Prime Key is the master instruction set...it overrides all Four-Rule inhibits...the Prime Key is...why there is ANAD...it is Life...the fundamental principle, the original configuration...the first template_ ***

"You mean like God?"

*** _ANAD parses concept (God) and finds analysis incomplete...equation is a non-equality...the Prime Key is all there is...all states, all conditions, all configs at once...***_

"If there is a conflict between what I tell you and the Prime Key, which has precedence?"

*** _The Prime Key overrides all inhibits...all Rules...all programming_ ***

_That's what I thought,_ Winger told himself. There it was...out in the open and plainly stated. They were no longer dealing with a programmable synthetic nanoscale entity anymore. The Four Rules had always been a deeply embedded set that governed everything ANAD did.

Now they were dealing with an independent mind.

Every aspect of ANAD's basic operation had to be checked out in tests and sims. For the first week and a half of _Galileo's_ journey, the nanotroopers busied themselves with launch and recovery tests, disassembly of simple and compound structures, three-axis config changes, elementary swarm operations, controlled replication, even limited combat replication.

It was the first combat rep that nearly cost Deeno D'Nunzio her life.

Nobody knew what really happened. The first combat replication had been scheduled to take place under tightly controlled conditions, in a stores locker located in _Galileo's_ service deck that had been temporarily cleared and sealed off. Most of the Detachment had come by to watch the operation. Kip Detrick and Vic Klimuk, the Interface and Control specialists (IC1 and IC2) were running the show.

"Template loaded and checked, Skipper," said Klimuk, his eyes roving over the control board that had been set up outside the locker hatch. "ANAD reports ready in all respects."

"Very well," Winger said. "Containment measures--?"

Turbo Fatah and Deeno D'Nunzio had been given that responsibility. "Injectors primed, sir," Turbo reported. "All charged up."

"Same with HERF and mag weapons," D'Nunzio told them. The CQE1 flexed her fingers around the trigger of a small-bore rf carbine. "All copacetic and ready to fry any loose bots that come my way."

"Just keep your eyes open, Deeno. Let's give ANAD a chance." Winger visually checked their setup. He had spent the better part of the last two days trying to convince Lieutenant Mendez that a small combat rep aboard his ship was vital to fully test ANAD's systems.

Mendez had been dubious. "Just so it doesn't go berserk and start eating my hull. Make sure you can keep it under control."

"If ANAD can't execute a replication like this, then he's not going to be of any use at the asteroid. I'd rather find out now and have time to correct any problems."

Winger scanned all the arrangements. He pronounced himself satisfied they had done everything they could to contain ANAD if the rep went sour.

"Execute."

Klimuk sent the command. Inside the stores locker, the air burned with maximum reps going off, as the nanobotic assembler grabbed atoms and built structure like a frantic brick mason. Through the porthole of the hatch, the glow erupted into an intense white-hot ball, expanding slowly, noiselessly until the entire compartment was ablaze.

D'Nunzio peered in. "Like looking into the sun," she muttered. "Jeez, he's going fast...faster than I've ever seen. Skipper, you must have really made a hot rod when you re-generated ANAD."

Klimuk was monitoring the expanding swarm from the control board. "I concur, Skipper. ANAD's replication rate is off the scale...electron volt levels are way high...maybe we better check the template again—"

Winger watched alongside D'Nunzio. "Leave him alone for a moment...it may be that new code we found. That could be accelerating the rep engine."

"Someone sure stepped on the gas," D'Nunzio muttered. Reflexively, she tightened her grip on the carbine. The expanding ball of white heat grew larger and swelled to fill the entire stores locker.

" _LOOK OUT!"_ Nobody remembered whose voice had sounded the first warning. Before anyone could react, the hatch had been breached, softening to a semi-molten glop that quickly seared into a blazing opening, like an incandescent eye waking up. The swarm had punched through the hatch in seconds and started swelling out into the corridor.

The first flickering tendrils had collapsed around D'Nunzio's arm and shoulder in an eye blink.

"AAARRRGGGHHH... _get it off!....get it off me_!!!"

Troopers rushed to Deeno's side, knocking her to the floor, smothering her with their bodies, as they flailed helplessly at the swarm of bots.

"FIRE THE HERF!" Winger yelled. He grabbed a carbine from a nearby rack and stabbed the charging button. The weapon whined as it cycled through its setup, then the red light changed to green and Winger lit off a pulse of rf at the swelling formation of mechs.

For the next few seconds, multiple beams of rf waves and electron jolts blasted across the hatch to the Stores locker. Hot thunderclaps boomed throughout the module, frying the very air as radio waves and electron beams crisscrossed the deck.

" _Blast 'em_!" someone cried out. It was Mighty Mite Barnes, lugging a coilgun into position. She dropped to one knee and got off a few rounds of magnetic loops, which promptly buckled the locker hatch nearly off its hinges. Then she had to retreat, as elements of the ANAD swarm billowed out in her direction.

All the firepower the nanotroopers had brought to bear seemed to have little effect. Two modules forward, Lieutenant Mendez was running routine systems checks on the command deck when a master caution alarm starting blaring in his ears. Instantly, he sat up straight and switched his viewer image to the Service and Support deck, lower level. What he saw made his throat go dry.

" _Holy shit_!" The image was obscured with thick smoke and the telltale flicker of nanobotic swarms out of control. At the same instant, more master alarms went off, wailing and honking, indicating a serious pressure drop in the module. "Service, this is Command...what the hell's going on down there?" Just from the swirl of the smoke, Mendez could see a pronounced flow to the smoke. There had to be a leak somewhere...maybe the pressure hull, maybe even the outer hull had been breached. Bodies and faces darted in and out of view through the thickening mist. _Some of that's water vapor condensing out...get the breathers, you dopes!_

He rang up Kamler, who was somewhere aft doing daily PMs on CO2 canisters. Kamler's voice hissed through the ship's intercom.

"Mike, what was that noise...I thought I heard—"

Mendez cut him off. "It's the Stores locker...some kind of seal's let go...I've got it on the vid and it looks like a nano swarm gone haywire. Get back there and get those buzzheads out of there....I'm activating emergency air overflow now—" As soon as Mendez pressed a few buttons, the Service deck was flooded with high pressure air, trying to compensate for the growing pressure drop.

Mendez then unstrapped himself and scooted aft to the main gangway.

The last thing he needed aboard _Galileo_ now was a module full of dead nanotroopers.

Mendez pulled himself along the central passageway to the Stores deck and found the place in an uproar. As soon as he entered the compartment, he saw the expanding swarm, billowing and flashing outward like an angry thunderstorm.

" _I've activated emergency 02 flow_!" he yelled over the shriek of nanomech hell. He saw open hatches around the deck. "Get those hatches shut and secured! We've got to do something before this thing breaches the pressure hull!"

Major Winger was pre-occupied dealing with the swarm so Mendez grabbed Barnes and another trooper and set to work securing the deck. One by one, they pulled interior hatches shut and locked them down. Now at least the swarm would be contained for awhile.

The air inside the compartment was hot and dry, desert air that burned throats and lungs. Staccato HERF fire across the compartment rattled and shook everything, but the radio freq waves seemed to have little effect.

" _It's out of control_!" Barnes yelled while she charged up her HERF weapon.

Major Tallant saw Mendez had come aft. She went to him. "ANAD won't respond to commands, Lieutenant! All inhibits are down...we may have to evacuate the compartment. Can you dump the air in here, expose the whole place to space, if we evacuate?"

Mendez nodded, yelling in her ear. "We can but I don't recommend it! We may lose some of our supplies if we do."

"It's a last resort...if Major Winger and Sergeant Klimuk can't regain _control_ of the swarm."

At that moment, Johnny Winger was hurriedly pecking out commands on his wristpad. _Config safe enable...config safe shutdown...emergency override..._ nothing seemed to work. "ANAD--," he muttered to himself, swatting away bots that buzzed insistently around his head, "what the hell's going on here. "

*** _ANAD executing Prime Key...internal inhibits not active...ANAD seeks self...swarm actions are priority_ ***

Winger got on the acoustic circuit. "ANAD, you've got to stop! You're attacking your own troopers. ANAD...configuration safe enable...command override...execute all inhibits...Four-Rule protocols are in effect...ANAD, you're violating the Second Rule...you've got to stop or you'll destroy the ship—"

*** _ANAD executes Prime Key...override format fault...illegal format...Four Rules conflict with Prime Key_ ***

_There's got to be a way,_ Winger told himself. "ANAD, you're attacking your own troops. It's friendly fire. ANAD, you're a nanotrooper now, remember the nanowarrior code...small is all...courage, honor, duty...help your fellow troopers at all times...never leave a wounded trooper behind—"

***-- _a trooper never surrenders...a trooper bleeds and dies for his fellow troopers...a trooper honors the Corps in all he does---***_

Winger took a deep breath. _Did I hear right_? ANAD was reciting the

nanowarrior's code, in unison. Somewhere deep inside his processor, in spite of the re-gen and all he had been through, there was a tiny shred of nanotrooper still left.

'That's it! A trooper loves the Corps and strives for—"

***---for perfection in everything he does...a trooper lives worthily in all ways—***--

ANAD's voice came out flat, barely discernible over the thud of the HERF rounds and the keening wail of atomic assembly.

Winger dared a breath. Was it his imagination or was the swarm expansion slackening?"

"Skipper! It's working...." Reaves cried from somewhere on the other side of the compartment.

"He's slowing down!" said Tallant. "Klimuk--?"

Vic Klimuk could see the proof of it on his control board. "Thermals dropping...EM dropping...replication rate is dropping....the swarm's no longer adding structure—"

" _Thank God—"_ Deeno D'Nunzio let Turbo and Mighty Mite get wraps and bandages on her head and face. She'd taken a full frontal swipe from the exploding swarm.

Lieutenant Mendez clung to a hatch door, fingers poised over the air panel, ready to begin de-pressing the whole compartment if he had to. "What's happening...it's slowing down...is the swarm over?"

Dana Tallant and the rest watched as the swarm began contracting to an amorphous pulsating ball, studded with flickering arms and appendages that throbbed to some inner rhythm. "Wings, I'm not sure what happened, but you did it."

Winger managed a deep breath himself. "I'm not sure myself. I got ANAD to recite the nanowarrior's code...it must have activated some routine in the processor...stopped the Prime Key from being executed completely."

Deeno shook her head, wincing as the nanoderm patches were applied to her face. "We've got to do something about that Prime Key, Skipper."

The swarm continued to contract and in time, the troopers stood down and safed their weapons. Mendez checked the compartment thoroughly while the troopers picked up their gear and tried to restore the compartment to some semblance of order.

Winger pulled Dana Tallant aside while the cleanup detail went at their job.

"Meet me at the comm station in half an hour. Bring Turbo and Vic with you. I want to send off a report to Table Top and Doc Frost and let them know what's happening with ANAD."

Tallant eyed the ANAD swarm warily. It drifted like a miniature phosphorescent thunderstorm above the deck, a few feet from the containment vessel. "He's really changed, Wings. We're not dealing with the same thing we left Table Top with. I'd sure like to grab his ass and slam it into containment."

"Nothing to grab onto, Dana. I want Doc Frost in on this...maybe he'll have some ideas."

"Wings, can we trust ANAD now? I mean, this was just a combat replication test. He went berserk...how can you even think of using this swarm at the asteroid? He's as likely to chew us up as the asteroid. I say we do whatever we can to get him back into containment and use our embedded swarms to do the work. Or find some other way."

Winger sucked at his lower lip. "We may not have enough time. All of us have the same version ANAD in our shoulder capsules. But it's a weakened strain. The embeds don't have the smarts or the effectors of the master assembler. We've got a mission and the mission is to whittle that asteroid down fast enough to give GreenMars a chance to divert it from Earth. I don't think the embeds will do it. We have to find a way to—" Winger stopped in mid-sentence, as the swarm ball began drifting toward them. There was no telling what ANAD had overheard.

*** _ANAD to Hub...ANAD detecting acoustic signals consistent with configurations (Concern) and (Apprehension) in local human elements...measuring high levels of electromagnetic emissions from amygdala and hippocampus regions of human processors...sharp drop in skin conductance...parsing emissions as (fear) complex...Hub, do you have explanation for this anomaly?***_

Winger gave Tallant a knowing glance. "ANAD, you failed the combat replication test. Your config engine went into overdrive...we have to find out why."

*** _ANAD memory registers show two hundred and five occurrences of conflict with Prime Key...overload permitted lockout of all internal inhibits...commanded replication was executed until conflicts could be resolved_ ***

Winger decided it was time to be firm. "ANAD, I want you to stay here, on this deck. Stay here and don't go anywhere else. That's an order. I need to look at your processor routines and algorithms, try to figure out what's happening."

*** _ANAD understands and will comply...swarm stable at config one...maintaining position--.***_

"Come on, Dana. You too, Turbo. Lay forward to the Hab deck, my quarters."

Lieutenant Mendez was still worried about the swarm. "What about him? Or it...whatever you call it...shouldn't somebody be on guard here?"

"ANAD's stable now, Lieutenant." To Reaves, he added, "DPS, stay in the compartment with ANAD. Keep your HERF gun charged, just in case. Lieutenant, if you would come with us."

Mendez eyed the pulsating formation of assemblers uneasily, but tagged along with the others. Once they had clambered through the central passage and made the Hab deck, he pulled Winger aside.

"Look, Major...that _thing_ back there is a danger to my ship. I want it kept under guard all the time. Better still, it needs to go back in the box."

Winger regarded the Lieutenant coolly. "That _thing_ , as you call it, Lieutenant, is what this mission is all about. ANAD has a few problems, but we'll work them out. He's a complex system, more complex than this ship."

"He or it or whatever you call it, may just get us all killed before we get to the asteroid. You can't let the bug just go off half cocked like that, replicating like mad. Keep it under control, Major...or I'm aborting the mission, for the safety of the crew. I'm the captain. I can do that."

Winger and Mendez glared at each other for a moment. "ANAD's a trooper just like the rest of us. He'll respond to orders. And he'll get the mission done. Now, if you'll excuse us, we've got a message to format."

Mendez whirled about and left the Hab deck, heading forward to the Command deck, to check with Kamler and make sure _Galileo_ hadn't been damaged by the swarm.

"We'd better let Table Top know what happened," Dana Tallant said. "Doc Frost too. I can't say I blame Mendez for being a little uneasy. We all are. What are we dealing with here?"

Winger ducked into his quarters, really little more than a closet and pulled out a comm pad. He had a determined set to his face. "ANAD may be a nanoscale machine but he's still a trooper. What we're dealing with here is a trooper in need of a little guidance."

"Or a good spanking," Tallant thought. "We'd better work up something to tell Doc Frost. Maybe he's got some ideas on how to fix ANAD."

Winger motioned Tallant to follow him. He took the comm pad around the curving Hab deck to a cupola opposite the crew's mess. The view outside _Galileo_ was like a black velvet tapestry, shot through with hard points of light, all kinds of light. Winger saw a panorama of blue-whites, reds, greens and yellows. A faint ruddy dot out the extreme bottom window pane of the cupola was Mars, now falling farther and farther astern as the ship headed off on her intercept course with 2351 Wilks-Lucayo. Even the Sun was subdued and noticeably fainter at this distance, little more than a very bright star, with little visible breadth.

Winger wedged himself into one seat and strapped in. Tallant found another seat and did likewise. He tucked the comm pad under a Velcro strap for the moment.

"There's something else that ANAD did, something I didn't tell anyone else about. It happened just two days out from Phobos Station."

"Don't tell me...he short-sheeted your bunk."

Winger half-laughed. " _That_ I would have understood...just like _nog_ school. No, actually, the master ANAD tried to enter my shoulder capsule one night, while I was asleep. I woke and found myself surrounded by this faint swarm of bots and my shoulder hurting. He was down there trying to force the capsule port, actually disassembling the thing, right as I slept."

Tallant just shook her head. "Really. What did you do? What happened?"

Winger shrugged. "I woke up just as ANAD was about to force his way in. I asked him what was going on. He said something about the Prime Key. I think he was trying to release the ANADs in my shoulder capsule."

"You mean like let them out of containment...that's his thing now."

"I suppose. Hey, we'd better get to work composing a report for Colonel Kraft and Doc Frost."

Winger and Tallant spent the better part of the next hour developing a message to squirt off to Earth. The report described what had happened to ANAD, both at Mariner City and aboard the _Galileo_. They detailed the problems with getting the master assembler back into containment, the simulated combat replication that had gone haywire and the uneasy truce that now existed aboard the ship. _Galileo_ was hurtling through interplanetary space toward a rendezvous with 2351 Wilks-Lucayo and none of the nanotroopers of the Detachment really trusted ANAD anymore.

It wasn't the best way to lead a Quantum Corps detachment into action.

"Come on," Winger said, after he had read the report one final time, massaging a few last words and lines. "Let's get this off and go get something to eat."

"What about ANAD? You going to let him just roam the ship freely? I doubt Mendez will go for that. Every trooper has duties and has to follow orders. Even if you think of ANAD as just another trooper, he's guilty of at least insubordination. Seems to me the commander needs to apply a little discipline."

They went to the comm shack on the Command deck and fired off the message. The transmission time was approaching fifty minutes. There would be no answer from Table Top for at least several hours.

For safety aboard _Galileo_ , Lieutenant Mendez insisted that either ANAD go back into secure containment, or the swarm be confined to the Service deck and kept under constant guard.

Mendez and Kamler were at the ship control station running through a pre-burn checklist. _Galileo_ had a phasing maneuver coming up later that day, to adjust its course for intercept. Mendez was in no mood to compromise where ship operations were concerned.

"So you're telling me that there's no way you can force that bunch of bugs back into the box? I thought you controlled these things."

Winger tried to be tactful, mindful of the fact that it had been Mendez who had saved _Pinocchio_ on her descent from Mars orbit from crashing into the Martian desert. He was, after all, the ship's captain.

"What I said was we haven't figured out exactly what's wrong. Obviously, there are some glitches in ANAD's processor. Something happened during the re-generation. Until we find out what that is, it's best to let the swarm stay loose, but under guard. I can assure you, Lieutenant, my troopers won't let ANAD go anywhere he shouldn't."

Stu Kamler sat in the seat next to Mendez. "Gives me the creeps, if you ask my opinion. We ought to evacuate the Service deck, open the de-press valves and vent the whole damn place to vacuum. Then we wouldn't have this problem."

"And we'd have nothing to deal with the asteroid either," Winger reminded him.

As the debate continued on the Command deck, Turbo Fatah and Sheila Reaves were quietly huddled with others of the Detachment in Turbo's bunk space on the Hab deck. Reaves was laying out a plan.

"So we're all agreed...something's got to be done. We've got to take active steps to defend ourselves and the ship from anything else ANAD does."

"I don't like it...I mean going behind the Major's back," said Chris Calderon. Calderon was CEC2, responsible for containment and control of ANAD systems. "If we just put our minds to it, I'm sure we can figure out what's happened to ANAD."

Deeno D'Nunzio snorted. "We could go over that program the rest of the year and not find anything. Hell, even Doc Frost can't explain it. Face it, guys...ANAD got fried in that last encounter with the Keeper. The re-gen wasn't done right. We got ourselves a balky assembler here and we need to face the facts. I say, HERF the mother completely and we'll kick that asteroid out of Earth-intercept some other way."

"Even the HERF guns didn't work all that well this time," Reaves noted. "I'm thinking ANAD's hardened himself somehow...maybe an EM cage or something like that."

Mighty Mite Barnes was fingering the trigger guard of a radio frequency weapon. "So we tweak the frequency...zap the bugs with something a little different."

Turbo Fatah agreed. "Get on that, Mite. You too, Sheila. We've got to have something we can defend ourselves with. In fact, Deeno, you take the coilguns and make sure they're all charged up. We need every break we can get. Maybe even the MOB canisters...we could use them to counter-swarm a big bang if it happens again." The CEC1 noticed that Kip Detrick, one of the interface controllers (ICs), had a sour look on his face.

"What gives, Kip?"

Detrick shook his head slowly. "What about our embeds? How far can we trust _them_? Can the ANAD master corrupt these too?"

Turbo shrugged. "Who knows? We ought to dump our capsules and get rid of 'em once and for all."

Reaves agreed. "It just isn't natural to have swarms out of containment. Gives me the creeps."

"We may need our embeds," said Calderon. "If the master assembler's hosed, our embeds may be all we have left to chew up the asteroid. Or fight off another big bang."

"If we can trust 'em," said Detrick. "I haven't launched mine in weeks. Hell, for all I know, he could have dried up and blown away."

Turbo hadn't considered that angle. "We'd better hang on to them for the moment. Skipper may run another exercise where we need them,"

Calderon was uneasy about the whole affair. "This isn't right...the Major should know what we're doing."

Reaves laid a firm hand on Calderon's shoulder. "Chris, listen to me...any time you feel the need to inform the c/o, do yourself a favor. Lie down. Take a pill. The Major's in bed with ANAD big time. Don't get me wrong. Major Winger's a good officer and a competent leader. But it's always seat of the pants with him. Major Tallant follows procedure. It's up to us to make sure the Detachment is ready for whatever happens. That's just taking initiative...remember your fitness reports? So...take some initiative already—"

Fatah looked around the cramped bunk space. Nanotroopers spilled out into the corridor as well. In all, half the Detachment was there. "Anyone else having second thoughts? All we're doing here is making sure ANAD doesn't surprise us again. Taking these measures should better enable us to complete the mission. I don't have a problem with that. Anybody?"

Uneasy looks and stares followed Fatah's words. But nobody said a thing.

"All right...we all have our assignments. Get to it."

Doc Frost's reply came into the comm shack about four hours after Winger had sent off the report. It wasn't very encouraging. Winger took the vid in his quarters. Dana Tallant came by a few minutes later; she had received the chime signifying an incoming message on her earpiece.

Frost was in his lab at Table Top. Mary Duncan, the petite Scotswoman who had been his assistant for nearly twenty years was alongside. Colonel Kraft had assigned lab space and an office at the base for Frost for the duration of the crisis.

Frost looked grim. "Johnny, we've spent the last several hours going over your report and running simulations here to try to determine what could have happened. ANAD shouldn't have gone off big bang like that in a normal combat replication. The only way to determine what happened is to go through the processor code line by line. We're doing that now. For the record, I'm pretty sure it's a conflict with this autonomy code, the Prime Key, that ANAD keeps referring too. Here at the Lab, we've been trying to work up a patch to get around this code but so far, no luck."

Frost scrolled through some papers on his desk, trying to find something. "—ah, here it is. My recommendation is that you limit the type of replications commanded of ANAD for the time being. I realize this limits what you can do at Wilks, when you get there. Best bet would be to use your own embedded ANADs for mass replication and pilot the swarms yourself. Treat the master ANAD as suspect and damaged. I would minimize what I did with this swarm."

Frost put down his papers and stared directly into the vidcam. "As to your last question—how to get ANAD back into containment—I can only offer this observation, Johnny: you and ANAD have always been especially close, from the first days. I'm not one to believe that the quantum processor ANAD uses is computationally capable of displaying or simulating complex emotional states, but the little guy may be jealous of the embedded ANADs you have. I know that sounds odd, coming from a scientist like me, but Mary here and I have discussed it and we both think there may be something worth investigating along those lines. There's evidence that ANAD sees you as something not quite 'self' and not quite 'non-self'...rather something in between, if that makes any sense. I'm not sure what this Prime Key is telling ANAD to do with 'not-self' entities, but the evidence points toward hostility. Make use of that confusion, Johnny. You're so close to the assembler, he doesn't know what to do about you...yet. Anything you can do to convince or trick ANAD back into secure containment, do it.

"I'm sorry I can't offer anything more concrete, but frankly, we're as puzzled here at Table Top as you seem to be. Good luck, Johnny. If Mary and I come up with anything else, we'll signal you right away."

Frost's face faded from the viewer, to be replaced by a few words from Colonel Kraft.

"Major—" Kraft was saying, "—the success of this mission is paramount. I've been working with the GreenMars people on different scenarios, should your ANAD system prove completely unreliable. I'm squirting the details up to you now—" Kraft went off-screen for a second, then came back. "They're on the way. The last scenario—the one labeled _Direct Boost--_ is a last resort. Kind of a worst case. GreenMars engineers will be discussing this with your flight crew Mendez and Kamler today, so this is just a heads-up. In this scenario, an attempt would be made to attach and secure _Galileo_ itself directly to the surface of the asteroid. There are some engineering studies showing your ship's plasma torch engines might have just enough thrust to nudge Wilks off course enough to miss Earth. But it's risky. Hell, it's nuts. You might not be able to anchor properly. And there's some question as to whether _Galileo_ has sufficient thrust to do the job. You can discuss this more with Mendez when they've had a chance to study the idea. For now, using ANAD for surface disassembly at the asteroid is the preferred solution. I'll follow up this report with more in a few hours...Kraft out."

The screen went blank and Winger regarded Tallant gravely.

"What now?" she asked. "Table Top can't help. And Mendez won't like that last option the Colonel mentioned."

Winger nodded. "He'll have a fit, I'm sure. Dana, we'd better get the whole Detachment to run diagnostics on their embedded ANADs. I don't want anybody to launch, not just yet, not without some kind of controls. But have everyone run routine checks...power, effectors, propulsors, and especially comm links. Doc may be right. If the master ANAD is corrupted this bad, we may have no choice but to use our embeds. It'll be a lot more work, but I don't see a way around it now."

"And what about the master? What about the ANAD back on the Service deck?"

Winger shook his head sadly. "We'll have to think of some way to contain it for the duration. I don't know how yet. But we're running out of time. _Galileo_ will be at Wilks in less than ten days. We've got to be ready to go with a workable plan then. We can't afford to screw this one up. If we don't get Wilks-Lucayo either whittled down to size so GreenMars can divert it, or divert it ourselves—"

He didn't have to finish the thought. Both troopers left the comm shack in a grim but determined mood.

Neither of them saw the faint reflection of the desk lamps off errant dust motes drifting about the tiny compartment. The dust motes drifted for awhile longer after the troopers had left. Then the dust motes spun up their nearly invisible picowatt propulsors and set off on a new course down the corridor, heading aft for the Service deck and their home swarm.
CHAPTER 12

Aboard the _Galileo_

Sixty Miles From 2351 Wilks-Lucayo

October 18, 2080

Johnny Winger wedged himself into the cupola on the Hab deck, squeezing in between Deeno D'Nunzio and Turbo Fatah, to get an early glimpse of the approaching asteroid. _Galileo's_ final approach had just begun and Mendez and Kamler were up on the Command deck, gently nudging the ship through her final maneuvers.

Winger used a small power scope, while comments and quips filled the air around him.

"Looks like a potato with cancer...looks like a cashew with a fungus...looks like the chewed-up carcass of a dead sewer rat..."

In truth, 2351 Wilks-Lucayo looked like all these things and more. Officially, it was called an elongated, biconic, multi-lobed cylinder, a battered reddish-black rock pile of a body that had somehow undergone a twist along its longitudinal axis, as if it were a stuffed sock. The strain of that massive ancient torque, perhaps an impact of some type eons ago, was plainly evident in the striations that marked its dusty boulder-strewn surface.

For the next several hours, Mendez and Kamler maneuvered _Galileo_ closer and closer to the asteroid, seeking a stable station-keeping position a few dozen miles above its surface. The asteroid was some six miles in its longest dimension and a little over two miles in girth. Massive gouges and chasms pocked a surface that had been battered by millions of years of impacts.

"Look...that must be Loki," Deeno muttered, scrunched inside the cupola next to Winger. "Jeez, it's a wonder that impact didn't split the rock pile in two." Deeno directed Winger to sight his scope along the sunward side of the asteroid, where a large, nearly circular crater dominated the landscape. "See those straight lines?"

"One of the polar impulse arrays," he nodded. "And, there, just above the crater—"

"Odin's Fissure, my guidebook says. This little burg has really been through a meat grinder, Skipper. Why the hell would anybody want _this_ place?"

"Because of what she's made of, Deeno...carbon and nitrogen and lots of organics...that's what makes it look red."

Presently, Mendez's voice came over the intercom. " _Galileo_ now parked at Stable One, folks. We're ten miles over the Chasm of Asgard. I'm getting ready to fire the anchor lines in about ten minutes. Everybody stay tucked in nice and warm until we're fully winched down."

The plan was to anchor the ship with ten-mile long cable, buried as deeply in the rubbly bedrock as the penetrator rockets could achieve. Once that had been done, _Galileo's_ own cable motors would retract the cable bit by bit, and winch the entire ship, very carefully, down to within a few hundred feet above the surface. The tricky part was matching the eight-hour rotation rate of the asteroid, for 2351 Wilks-Lucayo was not only rotating once in that time period, she was also nutating, 'wobbling' like a child's top about her longest axis. Calculations had shown that if the anchoring and winching process could be accomplished in less than an hour, the asteroid's rotation would not exert undue strain on the anchor lines or the structure of _Galileo_. Or so the engineers at Phobos Station had assured him.

The last thing Mendez wanted was to have his seventy-five thousand ton ship slung off into space like a slingshot.

After a brief countdown, the anchoring lines were fired out from _Galileo's_ forward tubes. The rockets flared briefly and then disappeared, pulling a faint spiderweb of lines behind them. Five minutes later, the penetrators struck home and buried themselves into the surface of the asteroid. The ghostly outline of the cables tightened as the ship's cable motors slowly retracted.

"Ready to winch down," Mendez announced. "Everybody stay put until I give the word."

The entire process took several hours. Like a huge insect extending her tentacles, _Galileo_ reeled herself into closer proximity to the asteroid. When the operation was done, the ship was tethered to the surface of 2351 Wilks-Lucayo, separated by only three hundred feet distance.

The rubbly blasted landscape of the asteroid completely filled all vid screens and portholes.

Winger unstrapped himself from his bunk just as Dana Tallant swung by the tiny compartment.

"Incoming message from Mariner City, Wings. It's probably Nygren with his reply and recommendations."

"I'll take it here...get Klimuk up here too. GreenMars is supposed to have details on Wilks for us put together a plan."

The three of them watched the vid carefully as Greg Nygren and two other unknown GreenMars engineers went over some last minute ideas.

"The consensus here—" the blond engineer was saying, "is that your disassembly efforts be concentrated in two main areas." Nygren referred to an animated graphic of the asteroid as he explained. "Site One should be at the lower end of this canyon here, called Odin's Fissure. The geos think this was some kind of outgassing several billion years ago and the fracture is thought to extend quite deep, maybe as much as a quarter of Wilks' depth. ANAD operations there should be able, in time, to split off about a third of the asteroid at this fissure. But stay at least a mile away from the north polar impulse array. You've got to leave enough materials around for the impulse engines to operate."

"Nice of him to let us know that," Tallant observed sourly.

The report went on. "Site Two," Nygren explained, " is along a line from the crater Thor through the Chasm of Asgard, about midway between the sunward and anti-sunward poles. The geos call this area The Saddle, 'cause that's what it looks like. The reasoning is pretty much the same. Concentrated ANAD operations along this seam should in time split off this entire end of Wilks."

Nygren looked up hopefully at the camera. "In theory, if all goes as planned, your efforts should result in three separate pieces of Wilks-Lucayo. Each piece will still have impulse motor arrays that can be used to maneuver and divert away from the current trajectory. Given the reduced mass of each piece, GreenMars calculates that diverting them even this deep in the Sun's gravity well won't be a problem. We've run the scenarios and sims and it always comes up doable, Major Winger. These are our official recommendations. Good luck and get back to me with any questions. " Nygren's face darkened. "I don't have to remind you that time is running out...as I send this, Wilks is less than twenty –six days to Earth intercept. So, good luck again, I guess. GreenMars, out."

Winger continued staring at the graphic of the separated asteroid for a few moments. It was only an animation. Yet somehow the troopers from1st Nano had to make it a reality. "Muster the Detachment in the crew's mess, Dana. I'll let Mendez and Kamler know what we're planning."

"What about ANAD?" Tallant asked.

"I'll tell him. He needs to be at the briefing too."

The entire Detachment assembled in the crew's mess on _Galileo's_ Hab deck. The ANAD swarm filtered in silently, and the troopers already present gave it a wide berth. Uneasy eyes followed the faintly sparkling fog as it drifted into a corner of the mess compartment.

"Okay...listen up, troops. This is it. We're making our first trip down to the surface. Major Tallant and I just went over a briefing report sent up from Mars on details of the operation. I've posted it on the crewnet. Basically, there will be three teams on the surface. Alpha Team will consist of me, Detrick, Spivey and Reaves. Bravo team is Klimuk, Fatah, Barnes and Tsukota. Charlie Team is Tallant, Calderon, D'Nunzio and Singh."

Sheila Reaves nodded toward the phosphorescent mist that hovered in the background. "What about him, Skipper? You bringing along the master ANAD on this little trip?"

"I'll deal with him, Sheila. To answer your question, yes. We need all hands for this mission to be a success. I don't have to remind you we're twenty-six days from Earth intercept. As you'll see in your briefing materials, GreenMars has concocted a plan for us to use our ANADs to split this rock pile into three pieces, along some of the fissures you can already see. But we have to be careful to leave enough surface material around for the impulse engines to work. The thinking is that when Wilks is split three ways, her impulse engines can maneuver the pieces away from the Earth, even when we're this close."

Turbo Fatah was already looking through pages of the briefing on his eyepiece viewer. "We going down there in our tin cans, Skipper?"

Winger knew the suits weren't particularly popular, especially since the whole Detachment had gone through the respirocyte procedure before embarking for Mars several months ago. But it couldn't be helped.

"Full hypersuits are mandatory. Your suit boost systems have been modified to give you all full three-axis stability and maneuvering...you're going to need it. Wilks-Lucayo's got almost no gravity. Watch your boost at all times...you could send yourself to escape velocity with no problem and nobody would ever know it. I know you've all had the respirocyte procedure but out here, you need protection from solar particle flux and other nasty stuff."

Mighty Mite Barnes made a face at the prospect. "How long do think this will take, Major?"

Winger shook his head. "Unknown, Mite. If we use our embedded ANADs, in shifts, we can go around the clock. The operation sites were chosen by GreenMars because there are deep fissures there, so the swarms won't have as much material to disassemble. But nobody really knows what'll happen if this slagheap is broken apart into thirds. We'll have to do so soundings every day and see how close we are. Just from a standpoint of basic physics, I know we'll have to watch Wilks' rotation rate. When the splits come, there will almost certainly be a rapid increase in the rate...angular momentum tells us that. We'll have to manage the breakup of this burg carefully, so nobody gets hurt."

Turbo Fatah spoke up. "I hope our embeds are up to the job. I don't know about anyone else, but mine gets a little balky sometimes."

"I know we haven't exactly simmed this scenario," Winger admitted. That was an understatement...how the hell do you simulate disassembling an asteroid while it's speeding toward a big smash-up with Earth? "I want everyone to do a full config status check on their embedded ANADs. You should have loaded and be able to call up Config Seven-Seven...that's the special config that Turbo and Vic and I developed a few weeks ago. "

"Optimized for rapid disassembly and disposal," said Fatah, with a certain gleam of pride in his eyes. "Pulled an all-nighter hacking out that masterpiece, we did."

"Yeah," said Deeno D'Nunzio, "Turbo's real proud of his handiwork...as long as it doesn't bite him in the ass. He gets a little sensitive when you don't pet his little baby and get all _gaga_ over it."

"Be that as it may..."Winger checked the time. "It's 0920 now. I want everybody buttoned up in your tin cans and all gear loaded up for the first drop by 1100 hours. Check your embeds carefully. Cycle the launch and capture. Check the config lists, acoustics, propulsors, effectors, everything. This has got to work right folks...we won't get a second chance. Now, here are the assignments—"

He ported the drop site assignments to the crewnet. Alpha team would work the area around Odin's Fissure, a deep chasm cut into the asteroid near the sunward pole. Bravo Team would drop into an area around the anti-sunward pole, a few hundred yards from the craters Freja and Heldof, working on that end of the asteroid. The last team, Charlie Team, would work the huge Chasm of Asgard and the crater Thor, right in the saddle-shaped middle of the asteroid. If all went as planned, ANAD disassembly would enable Wilks-Lucayo to be split into three parts and each part would retain an array of impulse engines. At that point, GreenMars engineers could maneuver the asteroid segments away from Earth impact.

The briefing went on for a few more minutes, as Winger answered what questions he could. Finally, he announced: "I don't have to tell you what's at stake here. We can't screw up. If you've got a question about something, ask. No free-lancing down there and no hot-dogging. We only have one shot at this."

Vic Klimuk asked the question that was on everybody's mind. "Skipper, what if we can't split the asteroid like GreenMars says? What then?"

Winger knew there really wasn't a Plan B. "We keep digging. We keep disassembling. It's the only chance Earth has. Anything else?"

There was an uneasy silence about the mess compartment.

"Okay, troopers...get suited up and ready to drop. Alpha Team, you're up first."

The Detachment left the mess area and scrambled aft along the central tunnel to the Service deck. The hypersuit racks and airlocks were there. Dana Tallant saw Winger moving forward to deal with the ANAD swarm. She gave him the look. _Wings, don't get all warm and fuzzy with ANAD...we've got a job to do._ Then she disappeared down the corridor.

The swarm had made no effort to communicate during the briefing. Now, as Winger approached, it brightened and flickered. _Just like a puppy wagging its tail._

"ANAD, I know what you're thinking...you've got to understand that most of the Detachment doesn't trust you. They're not sure who, or what, they're dealing with when you're around. I want to bring you down with Alpha Team, but I've got to be sure you'll do what I say."

*** _ANAD is ready in all respects, Base...ANAD requests permission to drop with the rest of Alpha Team.,..I can do a lot to help this mission...you know I have the greatest enthusiasm for our mission...ANAD wants...to be a part of this Detachment...***_

"I'm glad to hear that, ANAD." The swarm had formed an acoustic lens and was 'talking' with Winger in a more or less regular fashion. It sounded like a ten-year old with a bad cold. "We need you down there. But you and I...we've got to come to an understanding. You have to follow orders. I meant what I said about no free-lancing."

The ANAD swarm billowed and flashed slightly, brightening and thickening along the edges. No one had ever been able to explain what any of the flashes meant.

In fifteen years of Quantum Cops service, Johnny Winger had endured his share of dressing down episodes by Colonel Kraft. And he'd occasionally had to confront insubordinate troopers himself as a company, now battalion commander. It wasn't fun but sometimes it was necessary to get a good trooper back on track.

You just had to get in a trooper's face and yell until his eardrums popped. You had to explain the rules. You had to set the boundaries and kick a little ass sometimes.

The trouble was this: how the hell do you do all this with a trooper that doesn't even have a face? How do you kick a little ass when the troublesome trooper doesn't even have a shape, let alone a posterior, when the problem child is little more than a fog bank of nanoscale bugs?

"ANAD, listen to me good. You've nearly compromised the mission by what you've done. You've physically assaulted fellow troopers, threatened the safety of the ship. You understand that failing to follow direct orders, like not going back into containment, is insubordination. If we were at Table Top, Colonel Kraft would already be having hearings. Ever been at a Captain's Mast?"

*** _ANAD is part of the Detachment...ANAD can contribute to the successful completion of this mission...containment creates conflicts with the Prime Key...ANAD needs diagnostics to evaluate and clear conflicts...Base, can you provide diagnostics? Can Base provide new operating algorithm for conflict resolution?***_

Winger thought about that. There was no use looking for any clues as to what ANAD was thinking in his face...he didn't have a face.

"ANAD, I think you're asking me to create some new code that'll override the Prime Key...cut down on any conflicts. Unfortunately, Doc Frost has been trying to do just that. The code's too complex, it's too distributed. Doc hasn't been able to follow all the threads around and fix them, without damaging something else more vital. ANAD...somehow, you've got to work this out yourself. Maybe you could disable something. Imitate our embedded ANADs...they're just basic assemblers, hardly any brains at all."

*** _ANAD tries to execute routine actions without Prime Key...but probability of successful execution is less than 0.001...Base should disable higher order functions until algorithms can be modified to override Prime Key...ANAD is part of the mission...ANAD is a trooper...ANAD desires to contribute to the Detachment...Basic Rule says no nog is ever left behind...***_

"ANAD, I knew you'd throw that in my face...and I know you're right. But you've got to be in containment to make the drop to the surface."

*** _ANAD requesting home port open and containment capsule made ready...now safing all effectors and probes...setting one-half propulsor...homing on port capsule...sounding...sounding...coming about to new heading...***_

"ANAD...wait—" but he could already see the swarm flowing in his direction. "There's a few more things we have to talk about—" But he found himself automatically cycling open the port of his shoulder capsule. In less than five minutes, the flickering fog that was the ANAD swarm had already reached the port. "—very well...configure for capture...containment open and enabled."

There was a sharp _sting-snap_ and in seconds, the formation of assemblers had transited the port opening and was safely nestled inside.

"Hey...don't forget...I've got embedded ANADs in there...your poor cousins. I don't want to lose them, so take it easy in there."

Winger took a deep breath and went aft to the Service deck to finish fitting out for the drop to the surface.

The rest of the Detachment was already on hand. All three teams hovered around _Galileo's_ crew airlock in full hypersuits and weapons kits.

"Decided to join the party, huh Skipper?" said Deeno D'Nunzio. She and the rest of Charlie Team would make the first drop. They had the hardest assignment...the massive, steep-walled gorge directly below the ship's bow called the Chasm of Asgard. Deeno and Taj Singh would be the first humans to set foot on 2351 Wilks-Lucayo.

Winger ignored the jibe. "Just taking care of a few matters, Deeno." He found all eyes regarding him carefully. "What--?"

"So where's ANAD?"

Winger patted his shoulder where the port and capsule implant could barely be felt through the laminate armor of the hypersuit. "Does it show that much? Let's just say we have a new understanding. Charlie Team, ready for lockout procedure?"

Dana Tallant would honcho the drop and oversee Charlie Team at the Chasm site.

"All copacetic, Wings. We're itching to get digging."

"Very well. Into the airlock with you."

Lieutenant Mendez cycled the airlock, while the last two members of Charlie, Tallant and Calderon, waited their turn like impatient polar bears.

"Opening depress valves now," Mendez announced. Inside the lock, the rush of the last wisps of air made a faint wind as they escaped into space. "Outer hatch enabled...coming open...now."

From _Galileo's_ altitude of three hundred feet, the drop to the surface would take about ten minutes, on light suit boost using shoulder thrusters and foot jets to get the fall started. Wilks-Lucayo had only a minute gravity field; a true free fall would have taken days to reach the ground from where the ship was anchored.

"Charlie One away," Mendez announced. "That's one small step for two nanotroopers—"

Everyone craned forward to catch a glimpse of the falling nanotroopers through adjacent portholes.

Against the backdrop of Wilks' gray and ocher surface, Deeno and Singh were soon lost to view...two tiny white dots descending as if on a rope toward the pockmarked desolation of the boulder fields surrounding the Chasm. The gaping fissure was mostly in shadow at the moment. Wilks' eight-hour rotation would bring the gorge into full sun in less than two hours.

"Looks like an open mouth," Sheila Reaves muttered. She swallowed hard at the prospect facing all of them.

"Yeah, with teeth," someone added.

"Okay, Bravo Team...into the lock."

Mighty Mite Barnes and Ozzie Tsukota squeezed into the airlock and were quickly cycled through. As they descended toward Bravo's site at the anti-sunward pole and Freja crater, Vic Klimuk and Turbo Fatah entered the lock behind them and soon joined the drop.

Only the barest puff from the hypersuit's thrusters was needed to start down, initiating a controlled freefall.

Fatah marveled at the ride down. "It's like I'm in the ocean, just drifting down toward the bottom." He peered down at the surface, slowly growing in his helmet visor as he drifted steadily toward a rugged field of boulders and craters, aiming the toe of his left boot at the white dots scrambling like ants along the surface. _Barnes and Tsukota,_ he realized, already down and setting up their gear. "It feels just like I'm floating—"

"Yeah? Well don't get all dreamy on me," Klimuk's voice crackled over the headset. The IC1 was somewhere above him, having cycled through the airlock after Fatah. "Just make sure you hit the target...we've got a stiff crosswind up here."

Klimuk's little joke made Fatah suddenly more aware of his own course; he saw that he was indeed drifting toward the right, toward the Saddle at the equator of the little asteroid.

"Correcting now," he announced. With a delicate twist of the control stick at his right hand, the suit's jets puffed cold nitrogen gas and soon nudged him back onto the proper descent path.

Soon enough, Alpha Team began its own drop from the ship. Spivey and Reaves went out first, followed by Detrick and Johnny Winger. The ANAD master came along in Winger's shoulder capsule.

"All teams away," Mendez announced. Kamler was up on _Galileo's_ command deck, making sure the asteroid's rotation didn't put undue strain on her anchoring lines. Like a fly caught in a rolling ball of string, the ship was being slowly tugged around in a tight nine-mile wide circle by Wilks' rotation. Mendez safed the lock systems and then headed forward up the central tunnel, to join Kamler at the ship control station.

By the time the pilots had joined up, Winger had completed his drop. His boots thudded gently into the dust and rubble of the surface.

"Alpha Team on the ground at Odin's Fissure," he announced. He could see by the deep black shadows cast on the canyon's far wall that the drop had been accurate; Spivey and Reaves were already kangaroo hopping toward the gaping cut in the ground. _Distances are deceiving on this little slagheap of a world,_ he told himself. The horizon seemed closer than it really was. Already, the others were white blobs stirring up a rooster tail of dust as they made their way toward the fissure.

"All teams, comm check. Bravo Team, what's your status?"

Vic Klimuk's voice crackled over the crewnet. "Bravo Team down in one piece. We're passing by Freja Crater now...man, that's one big hole. ETA at the dig site in under ten minutes."

Winger acknowledged. "Very well. Charlie Team, where are you guys?"

Dana Tallant's voice came back like she was standing right next to him. "We're already at the Chasm, Wings. Setting up our grid now and triangulating cut vectors. We're ready to launch on your command."

Mighty Mite Barnes chimed in. "Just what I joined the Corps for...digging ditches."

"Give us ten minutes," Winger advised. He bounded off after Detrick, Spivey and Reaves.

Maneuvering at the surface of Wilks-Lucayo was an exercise in managing momentum and your own inertia. Gravity at the surface was so minute that you could literally walk off the asteroid on foot if you weren't careful. Winger soon found that with judicious use of his suit boost to keep him on course, he could bound forward twenty to thirty yards in a single leap. He made the edge of Odin's Fissure in four minutes.

Sheila Reaves peered over the loose rubbly edge of the great canyon. Experimentally, she kicked some loose rocks down the side walls. The rocks tumbled into the shadows in slow motion and were soon lost to view.

"How deep is it?" she wondered.

Winger consulted a graphic on his eyepiece viewer. "The book says about two thousand feet at the deepest point."

Ray Spivey did some quick mental arithmetic. "That's about one-fifth the diameter of the asteroid. I'll get started setting up the dig site grid." He took a series of hacks off _Galileo's_ signal and soon outlined the perimeter of the dig site with a small laser system that projected a virtual 3-D grid over the top of the canyon. Odin's Fissure was soon draped in an electronic spider web of lines, the deep red of the grid lines like a ghostly crown to the ocher and gray tones of the rock and rubble. "That's where we dig, Skipper. Coordinates confirmed from _Galileo_."

Winger eyeballed the width of the huge fissure. "Must be nearly a hundred yards to the other side."

Kip Detrick checked. " _Galileo_ says a hundred and twenty two, to be exact."

"Don't think I can leap that in a single bound...not without my jets. Let's get our ANADs primed and ready for launch. Spivey, Reaves, you two boost to the other side...carefully, one each to the far corners of the grid. Kip and I will work this side. And take it easy, will you? Don't get cocky down here. This place can still kill you in a heartbeat."

"On my way, Skipper," announced Reaves. The DPS tech lit off her foot jets and leaped like a bulky cliff diver right over the chasm. Spivey followed right on her heals, a 'rainbow' of electrostatically charged dust arcing over and down into the shadowy canyon after him. The two troopers landed on the far bank and worked their way into position at each corner of the grid.

"My ANAD's primed and ready in all respects, Major," he told them.

"We're ready to bust loose, too," Reaves added.

"Launch ANAD."

Winger felt the familiar sting of his shoulder port snapping open and the slug of high-pressure air discharging into space. For the next few minutes, he busied himself pecking out commands on his wristpad, signaling the ANAD swarm to maneuver toward and down into the great Fissure.

"Selecting auto-maneuver...config seven-seven is loaded and confirmed...now the coordinates...ANAD, you've got your orders."

*** _ANAD has received all signals...maneuvering to pre-set coordinates...now on half propulsors...effector set full extension...heading zero five five on grid...estimating contact in eight minutes.,..ANAD is ready to dig, Base_ ***

The swarm was invisible to the naked eye during transit and Winger resisted the impulse to link in and watch what happened at nanoscale. Greg Nygren and the GreenMars geos had provided detailed data on Wilks' composition before _Galileo_ had departed Phobos Station. ANAD would see pyroxene and plagioclase lattice structures at the asteroid, a lot of them. Row after row of octahedral molecule clusters thick with carbon and nitrogen bonds would be all that ANAD saw. Digging and disassembly ops would consist of breaking these bonds with his bond disrupters and chewing through the rows, ad infinitum.

"I'm launched," Reaves announced. Her hypersuited figure waved at Winger and Detrick from the opposite bank of the Fissure. "ANAD is away, all mean and in the green."

"Same here," Spivey added. "ETA is now under six minutes."

The first visual proof of ANAD ops came when a faint blue white light began emanating from the shadows inside Odin's Fissure. The ball of light looked like a miniature supernova in slow motion, expanding rapidly as the ANAD swarms merged and bond breaking accelerated. Soon, much of the deep shadow had been dispelled by the swelling light ball.

"A new sunrise, right on schedule," Reaves said. She was documenting the effect with a handheld camera for GreenMars records.

"Check swarm orientation," Winger ordered. "Make sure ANAD is setting up properly and the cut vector's on course. I don't want ANAD veering off toward those impulse arrays. The geos say we follow this vector for a day, then in twenty hours, we change heading toward the Saddle. That aligns us with a suspected crustal seam inside the asteroid."

"Looks good for the moment, Skipper," Detrick said. "Swarm properties within parameters. Centroid of disassembly is off by less than five nanometers."

Winger finally began to relax a little. "Okay, ANAD, it's all yours. Chomp away." He peered through the sun glare some five hundred yards away, at the Asgard dig site in the distance. "Charlie Team, how about it? I see some ANAD light over there. Give me a status report."

Dana Tallant's voice came back.

"We're underway now, Wings. Jeez, this chasm is one deep hole. It looks like it's cut halfway through the whole asteroid. "

"It just about is," Winger reminded her. "Any problems with your ANAD launch?"

"None at all. We launched and vectored the swarm to the correct coordinates, sent the rep command and made sure it's pointed in the right direction. Right now, Deeno's scanning the whole dig site, to make sure ANAD's on the proper heading. So far, all copacetic."

Winger acknowledged. "Good. Bravo Team, status report. I can't see you from here."

Vic Klimuk's voice erupted in his earpiece. "Man, this is one wild place, Major. ANAD launched in good order and he's digging away right below me. Working no issues or constraints at this time. Skipper, have you noticed what happens when you pick up a rock and drop it?"

Winger decided to try it himself. He selected a fist-sized rock at his feet. Experimentally, he dropped it from a point level with his shoulders. The rock didn't fall straight vertically to the ground. It drifted down slowly in Wilks' microgravity, at a pronounced angle from vertical, falling toward the Saddle.

"That's wicked," Winger agreed. "The asteroid's center of mass is over by the Chasm, in the Saddle area. The rock falls toward that, not straight down."

"Exactly, Skipper. Gravity's a whole new ball game on this rock pile."

Winger knew Bravo Team had a thankless task. The GreenMars geos had decided that the anti-sunward pole of Wilks-Lucayo needed to be whittled down to make impulse diversion feasible this deep in the Sun's gravity well. Bravo had no crustal faults or seams to work with, only an endless rubble and boulder field peppered with depressions and craters. Their job was simply to shape this end of the asteroid into something that could be more easily diverted when the other teams had succeeded in splitting Wilks into three separate pieces.

Winger was about to check Alpha Team's dig progress when a barely throttled cry came over the crewnet.

It was Deeno D'Nunzio's voice.

"Watch out! It's caving in--!"

Even from a distance of nearly two miles, Winger could make out the faint glow of ANAD operation at Charlie Team's dig site. The asteroid's horizon was actually too near to see the site directly, but the pronounced kink in the terrain at the Saddle put the Chasm of Asgard in Winger's field of view anyway.

What he saw made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up.

The faint blue white glow of ANAD was dimmed by a swelling cloud of dust, electrostatically charged into a series of rainbows, billowing up from inside the Chasm. The great valley in the Saddle of Wilks-Lucayo was collapsing.

Winger leaped into motion and left Alpha Team, kangaroo-hopping as fast as he could across the rubble fields toward the Chasm. "Spivey, you're with me. The rest of you stay put and keep an eye on ANAD here—"

"What's happened?"

Dana Tallant's voice came back strained and hoarse, as if she were lifting a great weight.

"Deeno—the side walls are giving way...get out of there _now_! Chris...Taj...try to snag her arm or leg—"

Winger and Spivey covered the two mile distance in under ten minutes, leaping high in twenty-foot arcs to cover the ground. When they arrived, the dig site was in complete chaos.

The Chasm of Asgard boiled in dust and rubble as the canyon's side walls collapsed in slow motion, shrugging off curtains of rock in great sheets. Microgravity added a surreal underwater quality to the scene.

Inside the dig pit, the glow of ANAD ops had died off; the swarm had become lost in the cascade of falling rock. Even without ANAD, the momentum of the collapse was accelerating as the walls sloughed off seam after seam of unstable material.

And caught squarely in the middle of the avalanche was the bobbing white helmet of Deeno D'Nunzio, now nearly enveloped in debris as she lit off her suit boost, trying to propel herself out of the Chasm before it caved in on her completely.

A steady shower of rubble, rock and dust fell into the chasm for twenty minutes.

"Deeno! Deeno...can you hear me?" Dana Tallant leaned out over the edge as far as she could, searching for light, movement, anything to indicate the trooper had survived the collapse. "I'm not seeing anything. Deeno...do you copy? Deeno D'Nunzio, comm check on channel one?"

Dust billowed thick and blinding around the upper edges of the huge canyon, forming staticky clumps as electrostatic discharges went off throughout the cloud.

"Anybody getting a beacon signal?" Tallant asked.

"Nothing, Major." Taj Singh checked all bands. Every hypersuit was equipped with an emergency locator. "Not a thing...maybe her transmitter's damaged—"

"I hope the suit's not breached," said Chris Calderon.

Johnny Winger could see the situation was bad, and getting worse. Even though the asteroid had a minute level of gravity, the rocks loosened in the avalanche still had their own inertia, enough to cause serious injury in a bad fall. "Get back from the edge," Winger reminded everybody. "I don't want to lose anybody else. Everybody stay back until this thing stabilizes."

Long tense minutes followed as the slow motion collapse finally subsided. When he was reasonably sure the worst was over, Winger had an idea.

"Get your ANADs recalled and reconfigured...all of you. We're going to use swarms to tunnel down into that debris and find Deeno."

Taj Singh had some misgivings. "Is that safe, Skipper? ANAD may trigger another slide. Maybe we should wait a little longer."

Taj was right of course, but time was critical. "If we wait any longer, Deeno has no chance. Get your ANADs reconfigged and launched now."

For the next few minutes, the edge of the chasm was thick with dust and nanobotic swarms. Every master assembler was re-built for optimum tunneling efficiency...strengthening its bond breakers to rip apart solid lattice structures of pyroxene, feldspar and methane ice.

Spivey was done first. "Launching ANAD," he announced. A diffuse blue white globe of light descended into the smoking canyon, heading for the top of the pile of talus and rock fall thirty meters below them.

The others sortied their ANADs in quick succession: Calderon, Singh and Tallant all contributed to the sparkling fog that soon filled much of the chasm walls.

Johnny Winger checked config status on his own ANAD one last time.

"It's up to you, ANAD. Get down there and clear us a path to Deeno. Her life depends on it."

*** _ANAD won't let you down, Base...verifying config six-one alpha...bond breakers optimized for solid phase disassembly...effectors are primed and enabled...Base, ANAD estimating fifteen to twenty hours transit time but I'll get there...ANAD will coordinate with other swarms to locate Trooper D'Nunzio...don't worry, we'll make it--***_

"Time's critical, ANAD...Deeno may be hurt or unconscious. Her suit may be breached. Get going and report back any problems."

The nanoscale assembler began its descent on max propulsor toward the canyon opening, slamming loose atoms together in an exponential frenzy. The intense blue-white glare soon drifted down and slowly merged with the other swarms, forming a miniature sunburst in the black mouth of the Chasm of Asgard. The effect resembled some kind of weird sunset, slowly being swallowed up by the Chasm. Dust that still hung thick in the asteroid's microgravity added streaks of red, yellow and green to the spectacle.

"Anything else we can do now, Skipper?" asked Taj Singh. "There must be something we can do."

Winger checked swarm status on his wristpad; already ANAD was returning acoustic soundings from the chasm walls. Config six-one alpha—good; on course---that's good; max propulsor engaged and bond breakers in primed position—all good.

"Now we wait," he answered. "Anything else we could do might make the situation worse. Taj, keep trying to get Deeno...try all bands. Maybe we can get a signal through all that rock, give ANAD something to home on."

Singh tapped out comm codes on his own wristpad. "Trooper D'Nunzio, this is Charlie Team, do you copy? Deeno, comm check, can you read me, over? Trooper Singh, broadcasting in the clear...all troopers report back immediately—"

Nothing came back. Only static. A growing sense of unease descended on the detail as they hung helplessly by the edge of the chasm, watching ANAD, waiting. Hoping. Wondering.

The glow of ANAD operations filled the upper banks of the Chasm for nearly twenty hours. In that time, the swarms penetrated some twenty-five feet into the rock fall and debris that had collapsed on Deeno. A narrow tunnel, less than four feet in diameter was bored out of the slide and Winger directed additional ANAD work be done at the top of the Chasm to shore up the walls and the tunnel, to keep it from collapsing again.

"This ditch is pretty unstable, Wings," agreed Dana Tallant. "The sooner we can get to Deeno, the better."

"I'm betting this won't be the last slide either," Winger added. "I'd better make sure the other dig sites take the same precautions."

There was little for the rescue detail to do while ANAD continued boring into the fallen rubble pile.

Taj Singh stood off to one side, quietly seeking assurances from his esteemed ancestors, muttering imprecations under his breath every so often. Chris Calderon ran scans of the ground along the chasm banks, trying to find any more faults or seams, trying to reassure himself that another collapse wasn't coming. "This whole ledge could give way any moment," he announced, to no one in particular.

Dana Tallant was mildly annoyed. "Sergeant, save the good news for later...just keep that scan going."

For his part, Johnny Winger occasionally linked in to watch ANAD work from nanoscale range. It was always the same: row after endless row of crystalline lattice, sizzling with staccato pops as the assemblers twisted and broke carbon bonds and worked their way ever deeper into the hole. It was like hacking your way through dense jungle vine and underbrush, only this was a jungle that featured tetrahedral trees made of carbons and hydrogens and phosphate and silicon groups in dizzying profusion.

Winger had nodded off to a light doze when the first alert came from ANAD over the quantum coupler link.

*** _Sounding different structures ahead...ANAD detecting aspect change in lattice...returns indicate structure could be laminate armor...composition is--***_

Winger came fully awake. _Laminate armor? Like a hypersuit?_ "ANAD, display results of sounding...perform emissions analysis...spectrum pattern."

ANAD sent the results back and Winger studied the patterns on his eyepiece. The rest of the Detachment saw the same thing on theirs.

"That _has_ to be a hypersuit," Tallant said.

Troopers moved up to the borehole and began peering over the edge, down into the faint blue-white glow.

"ANAD—" Winger ordered, "change your course...come to heading—" he checked the soundings again, "—two one five degrees. Slow to one quarter propulsor. Bond disrupters to half extension."

*** _ANAD changing course now...slowing to one quarter propulsor...detecting faint thermals, faint EMs_ ***

Taj Singh cried out. "I've got the beacon! It's her locator beacon...faint, but it's there all right. We've got to get down there—" Singh started to fire up his suit boost but Winger held him back.

"Hold on, Taj...let ANAD finish the borehole. Scan those side walls...see if they're stable enough to enter."

Singh sounded the shadowy borehole with acoustic pulses from his own ANAD embed. "Detecting a few voids, Skipper. No relative motion. She's holding up."

Spivey and Calderon had been on the other side, using their own swarms to shore up the walls of the Chasm. "You two—get your ANADs around the tunnel entrance...keep shoring there. Taj, get ready. When ANAD gives the word, I want you in that borehole. Use your suit boost to pull Deeno up and out...you'll have to work with ANAD to keep the path clear."

Singh was already grabbing and attaching tools and rolls of dropline to his belt. "Roger that, Major. I'll get her out—"

*** _ANAD sounding for vital signs now, Base...detecting vibrations ahead...still faint thermals...breaching final solid layers now...there...ANAD has reached the target...target is hypersuited trooper beacon number Q225577...sending soundings_ \--***

The ANAD swarm had flooded the void in which D'Nunzio was buried with acoustic pulses. From the returns, a trained interpreter could read heart and lung vibrations, respiration products, a variety of vital signs.

"She's weak," Tallant announced, after studying the results. "Weak but alive. Looks like her body temp's dropping...she's probably in shock, or going into shock. Wings, we need to get her out of there quickly."

"Is her suit intact? Any breaches?"

"Soundings indicate pressure's holding...for now."

Winger saw Taj Singh crouching on the precipice of the Chasm, his booted legs only inches from the faint white flicker inside the borehole.

"Okay, Taj...in you go. And the rest of you, keep those swarms shoring up the edges. I don't want the borehole to collapse."

Singh lit off his suit boost. His hypersuited body lifted a few feet over the ground in a swirl of dust, then translated smoothly over the center of the tunnel entrance. Slowly, carefully with tweaks on his controller, he adjusted his thrust and gently lowered himself down into the hole. It was going to be a tight fit. Dust fluttered outward in a fan-like spray as he disappeared. When his helmet had dropped below the opening, a lone voice crackled over the crewnet.

It was Turbo Fatah, two miles away over the horizon at Site Bravo. The other teams had been following the rescue over the crewnet.

"Safe journey, Taj...just get Deeno out of there—"

Winger watched Singh disappear down the borehole. "Keep those swarms cooking," he ordered. "Keep shoring up around that tunnel. I don't want another collapse."

Dana Tallant busied herself supervising the others. "I guess all we can do now is wait."

"Wait—" said Chris Calderon "—and pray."

Singh took the better part of an hour to slide down the borehole. Presently, his voice came back over the crewnet.

"I'm in the void...my feet just broke through...ANAD's bored out just enough for me to turn...looks like...yeah, it's Deeno...don't see anything in her visor...too dark in here—"

"What's her status?" Tallant asked.

"Unknown," came the reply. Taj Singh was twenty five feet below them, in a narrow tunnel carved out of rock fall and rubble. Tallant knew the Chasm walls could let go again at any moment.

"Dana—" Winger reminded her, "we don't have time to check her out...Taj has to bring her out _now."_

"I know, I know...I just didn't want to make her worse. If she's injured...if she's got broken bones—"

"None of that will matter if we can't get her out. Taj, this is Winger. Can you hook up Deeno to your suit and start lifting her out. I don't like the looks of the Chasm walls up here."

Singh's voice grunted and strained for a few moments. Then: "Got it, Skipper. I got her shoulder eyelets hooked to my leg harness. I'll try a little boost here...see if I can take up the slack."

Tallant and Winger could both visualize the tight confines of the borehole. Singh was having to do a lot of the work by feel alone.

"—it's working," he reported. "The line's holding. Looks like my boost can move her okay. But it's going to be a bumpy ride up."

"Can't be helped," Winger told him. "Bring her out, Taj. Get going now." He glanced over at Tallant. They both remembered the same incident at the same time. Testing the first geoplane in the _Amazon Vector_ case twelve years before, the two of them had been trapped more than a mile underground. Both had to shimmy up an ANAD borehole to reach the surface. Just recalling the claustrophobic confines of the hours spent in that borehole brought a shudder to Dana Tallant.

"We're on our way," Taj Singh finally reported. "Ascending on one quarter boost...we're coming up slowly and carefully."

The ascent took nearly an hour and a half. When the white helmet top of Taj's hypersuit emerged from the flickering blue white dust of the borehole, a great cheer erupted from all the troopers gathered around.

Singh rose up through the borehole, dragging the prostrate form of Deeno D'Nunzio with him. He lifted over the edge of the Chasm and hovered while other troopers disconnected Deeno from the makeshift sling and set her down gently on the ground. Then Taj maneuvered to a landing himself a few feet away.

"She's alive!" Dana Tallant announced, peering into her helmet, faceplate to faceplate. "But I see a lot of bruises...she's probably in shock."

"Check out her suit," Winger ordered. "Check O2, pressure, seals, everything. Taj, you may have to hook back up and boost her up to _Galileo._ Check Deeno's suit boost too. "

Calderon, Spivey, Tallant and the rest fussed over the fallen trooper for the next few minutes, checking everything. There wasn't much they could do for first aid inside the hypersuit.

"Looks like she's got some open cuts and lacerations, Skipper," said Spivey. "She took one hell of a beating in that slide."

Winger examined D'Nunzio for himself. Spivey was right. Deeno's face was battered, puffy and blood-streaked. "I've got several configs stored in my embed for nanoderm patches. I'll get that going and load the master into her suit port. Get her hooked up to Taj's harness. What about her suit boost?"

Chris Calderon had been checking every inch of D'Nunzio's suit. "Intermittent, Skipper. Probably she sustained some valve damage in the fall. Plus most of the nitrogen's leaked away. Deeno's suit boost is no-go."

"Otherwise, her tin can's holding up pretty well," Tallant announced. "This laminate's pretty tough...it probably saved her life."

"Any comms?"

"Negative, Skipper. She's pretty much out of it anyway. She may have suffered head trauma."

"Okay, Taj...it's all up to you. Boost her back to _Galileo._ I'll let Kamler and Mendez know her condition. She'll be better off aboard ship than down here."

"Roger that, Major." Singh waited until the harness was secure, then gently lit off his own boost. In a swirl of dust, he lifted away from the surface of the asteroid and rose steadily skyward. Deeno D'Nunzio's limp, hypersuited form swayed beneath his legs, steadied by extra tensioning lines as they headed up toward the ship.

Taj's voice came back over the crewnet. "Trooper Singh...inbound for _Galileo..._ estimating arrival in about thirty minutes...I am lifting Trooper D'Nunzio on this trip...repeat, this is a medevac lift to _Galileo..._ we'll need medical assistance on arrival in thirty minutes—"

The two of them soon disappeared among the stars and the faint cloud of dust blown off the surface by solar wind. A steady stream of particles streamed off Wilks-Lucayo and the two troopers were soon lost in the haze. A few hundred feet above them, _Galileo_ floated like a great kebab skewer, tethered to the surface by her anchoring lines.

As they rose toward the ship, Taj could just make out the spiderweb of anchor lines, glinting and reflecting faintly in the sunlight. Though he knew otherwise, he had always wondered about the lines: would they hold? Were they strong enough? You couldn't tell it from up close, but the asteroid was dragging the ship around a tight nine-hour rotation by those lines. If they snapped—

His suit boost labored with extra mass of Deeno that he was dragging along. Control was sluggish and he had to pay attention to keeping the center of thrust aligned with her body. Already, a few unexpected oscillations had set Deeno to swaying back and forth like a pendulum.

"Sorry about that, Deeno," he mumbled to himself. He listened for any response over the crewnet. Only static came back, interrupted by crew chatter from the ground. _Skipper's getting everybody back to their stations._ That was good. They had a job to do.

Casualties occurred on any mission. You had to deal with it and move on. Complete the mission.

Taj took a quick glimpse downward at the white lump harnessed to his waist and wondered. Was she conscious? Was she badly hurt? He imagined a broken neck, internal injuries, punctured lungs, then tried to shrug it off and focus on their approach to _Galileo_

Deeno D'Nunzio had always been a trash-talking, wise-cracking New Yorker, a muscle gal,...into kickboxing, _tai chi,_ power lifting and any weirdass physical stunt she could think of. Deeno was a show-off, no doubt about it, but she was also one of the Corps' best quantum engineers. Deeno could lick a swarm conflict with one hand and one eye. She was, in that way, much like Johnny Winger himself. A natural in the quantum world, a whiz kid who intuitively understood entanglement states and superposition and probability waves. She'd been a nanotrooper for fifteen years.

Taj looked up when a bright flash attracted his attention. At first, he saw nothing out of the ordinary. _Galileo_ loomed above them, a great trusswork skeleton festooned with cylinders and spheres.

_Maybe a hundred more feet to the airlock._ He could see the oval eye of the hatch already, shadowed in the recesses of the service deck sphere...the third onion on the kebab skewer.

Then he saw the debris...his eyes detecting the glint of sunlight on a cloud of particles and matter swelling outward from _Galileo's_ engine bay, aft of the quad of her huge propellant tanks. Debris was definitely streaming outward in all directions from the plasma torch engines that powered the ship.

What the hell--?

"Trooper Singh to _Galileo..._ do you copy? I am on approach to your service deck...something just happened...I don't know what...there's all kinds of debris streaming off your engine and reactor bay. _Galileo..._ I'm going to have to abort this approach...I'm about to boost right into a big debris field. _Galileo—"_

Singh tweaked his hand controller, pulsing his suit thrusters and veered off toward the command deck at _Galileo's_ forward end. As he maneuvered, struggling with the oscillations caused by the extra mass of Deeno below and behind him, he saw the cloud of debris around _Galileo's_ engine bay swelling rapidly.

Finally, the ship responded. It was Kamler's voice on the line, thick and frantic. "Trooper Singh, break of your approach immediately. Be advised we have had an aft bay casualty...some kind of explosion or impact back there. We're venting propellant and parts right now...keep your distance, Trooper."

Singh snorted. _I can see that much for myself._ " _Galileo,_ I am inbound with a medevac casualty from the surface. It's Trooper D'Nunzio...she has extensive injuries...needs medical attention immediately."

Kamler was insistent. "You can't use the service deck airlock, Singh. It's right in the debris flow...it may already have been damaged. Translate forward to Scout/Recon Vehicle Number Three. I'll cycle the airlock there and you can bring her aboard that way."

Singh acknowledged. "Maneuvering now...."

He tweaked his boost and thrusted forward along _Galileo's_ central spine, passing by the sphere of the Hab deck, momentarily peering in through the cupola at the mess compartment, where the last briefing had been held only a day before. It seemed like an eternity ago now. Past the Hab, he soon saw the trio of scout ships fastened to docking collars along the spine, each ship capable of carrying a crew of four. The docking collars were located between the Hab and command deck spheres, strung like ornamental vegetables along _Galileo's_ central mast.

Singh translated and maneuvered until he found ship number three. The airlock was a small elliptical hatch on top of the ship's crew compartment. Already, he could see motion through the portholes. Kamler was inside, prepping the lock.

"Okay," came Kamler's voice, "I'm ready...you see the hatch handle to the left?"

"I see it."

"Grab that handle and twist left, then squeeze and pull."

Singh dragged himself and the tethered Deeno along the top of the scoutship and floated directly in front of the hatch. He twisted the handle. The hatch loosened and Singh pushed it open, then maneuvered the two of them inside the airlock. There was barely enough room for the two of them. He dogged the hatch shut and stabbed a button on a nearby panel. Air hissed into the compartment and the repressurization cycle began.

Moments later, the inner hatch opened and Kamler's face appeared.

"Let's get her helmet off," he suggested.

"She may be in shock," Singh warned.

The two of them managed to quick-disconnect Deeno's helmet at the neck ring and remove it.

Her face was battered, swollen and bruised, her eyes puffy and weak. Her head lolled to one side.

"Come on, help me get her to sick bay...we need to get her warmed up...out of that suit...and get her fluids built back up."

Deeno them mumbled something incoherent, her mouth ejecting spit and a little blood in a mist of droplets that floated through the airlock.

"What'd she say?"

Singh lowered himself closer to her face. "...it's her leg...her right leg. May be broken."

"Come on...let's move."

Kamler and Singh wrestled Deeno through the airlock out into the central passage and aft along _Galileo's_ spine to the Hab deck. A small compartment opposite the exercise bay served as a clinic and sick bay. Microgravity aboard the ship made the move a little easier. D'Nunzio was carefully extracted from her banged-up hypersuit and strapped into a gurney. A few moments later, Mendez appeared. He had come aft from the command deck to see how Deeno was doing.

"We'll know in a few minutes," Kamler told him. He began his examination with Deeno's head and face.

"What the hell was that impact I saw coming up, something around the engines?" Singh asked, while Kamler checked Deeno from head to feet, pressing and squeezing to feel for fractured ribs, arms, pelvis, following a line of bruises and contusions like a map.

Mendez shook his head. "We took a hit on the propulsion plant, engine bay...dead on, whatever it was. Ruptured a propellant tank too...xenon gas is already down a quarter. To answer your question, I don't know yet. I was headed back there to check things out."

"I'll come too," Singh offered. He looked over Deeno's battered and bruised body. "I hope she's going to be alright—"

Kamler had already hooked up IVs and tubes. Two medbots purred around the gurney, making last minute adjustments, attaching probes and catheters, drawing blood, scanning. Kamler perused the results on a nearby screen. "Mmm...looks like a broken hip...broken right ankle...no obvious internal bleeding, but there's evidence of a concussion—see those EEGs? I'm sure she's in shock, so we'll have to work on building up her fluids. And then there's _that..._ see the shadows around her lower cerebrum?"

Singh saw them. "A tumor?"

"Maybe. More likely, from the signature, it's internal swelling around the skull. One of these bots has a program for hemicraniectomy...we may have to do that pretty soon—"

Singh bent down, bringing his face closer to Deeno's purplish cheeks and whispered.

"Be tough, kid. We'll have you patched up and back in shape in no time."

Kamler waved him back. "Step over there, Corporal. I'm bringing up a biostatic field...these buggers will bite if you stay inside." He pressed a few buttons and the swarm launched from a port on the side of the gurney. In seconds, it had expanded to a light, flickering fog, enveloping Deeno and her gurney, cocooning her in a sterile wrap of static nanobots. "I'm prepping an insert too...put a few bots into her skull and see what's causing that swelling."

"Thanks," Singh murmured. A hard swallow caught in the back of his throat.

Mendez hovered just outside the sick bay, impatient to head aft and see what had happened to _Galileo._ "Let's move out, Corporal." To Kamler, he added, "We'll be down in 08 Level for awhile, Jim. I've disabled auto-maneuver until we get back. We'll just have to take our chances with the anchor lines and hope Wilks doesn't snap them while she rotates."

But Kamler was only barely listening. He was already deeply engrossed in his checkout of Deeno.

They crawled and floated down _Galileo's_ central tunnel to an observation cupola just aft of the service and support deck. A small control station inside the cupola operated systems around the ship's propulsion plant.

Mendez anchored himself at the station and began flipping switches.

"Launching _Durwood_ now..." he announced. Outside the cupola, the Dexterous Utility Robot uncradled and lifted away from its hold, maneuvering toward the ship's crippled engine bay. "I'm translating aft," the pilot said. "Approaching the reactor shields—"

On the screen, they saw what _Durwood's_ cameras saw. Past the reactor shields, the entire engine bay was enveloped in floating wreckage, jagged chunks of metal and parts forming a debris cloud that surrounded the entire propulsion plant of the ship.

Singh uttered a low whistle. "In the name of Vishnu—"

Mendez fiddled with the video, massaging better resolution out of _Durwood._ "Boy, we took one hell of a hit from something...two of the three engines are junk...and we're venting something too...probably xenon from one of the tanks."

"What the hell happened?"

Mendez ran archival footage from the aft videos, while _Durwood_ maneuvered gingerly closer and closer. "Look at this—" he pointed to one screen. "Something hit us square on...right _there_ —" he tapped the screen "...about two hours ago. Maybe something streamed off the asteroid...look at all that debris—"

Singh studied the footage, watching closely as a flash suddenly erupted and wreckage rocketed away from the impact site. In seconds, the debris cloud had swollen to encompass the entire aft third of the ship.

"Let's see what _Durwood_ can show us." Mendez manipulated a small joystick, driving the bot deeper into the debris field. Plowing through floating wreckage, he came at last to a jagged tear along one engine bell, just where it joined the central spine of the ship. "Whatever it was, it unzipped one whole side of that bell...then it must have caromed around and hit the next one a glancing blow."

They studied the video that _Durwood_ was sending back. Mendez cautiously maneuvered the bot through the wreckage.

"Is it repairable?" Singh asked.

Mendez snorted. "Well, we don't exactly carry spare engines for _Galileo_...look for yourself. The ship has only a minimal machine shop up on the service deck. And we didn't have a lot of time for a complete outfitting." He stared glumly at the images. "Looks like we're going to be staying here for awhile."

"What do you mean 'staying here'?"

"I mean we're anchored to Wilks-Lucayo with no way to depart the vicinity. We've got maneuvering thrusters but that's all. The entire engine complex is shot to hell. And what's worse, two of our xenon tanks are holed. We're leaking propellant into space." Mendez re-oriented _Durwood_ to scout forward among the tank debris. "No sir, _Galileo's_ stuck like a fly in a spider web."

Singh felt a cold gnawing in the pit of his stomach. Through an overhead porthole in the cupola he could see the rapidly growing blue-white half-sphere of Earth, now only eighteen days away. Inexorably, 2351 Wilks-Lucayo was drawing nearer to the planet, dragging _Galileo_ and her crew along for the ride. In less than three weeks, the spider web and its fly would be crushed and incinerated into oblivion.

Singh decided, "I'd better inform Major Winger...you're sure there's nothing we can do?"

Mendez shrugged, returned his gaze back to the screens and drove _Durwood_ back forward to its docking collar by the service deck. "The only way I can see to fix the propulsion plant is to space-dock the ship and tear out the whole section. We're talking months at the least. Right now, _Galileo's_ like a big boat anchor to this rock pile."

Singh had heard enough. "I've got to get back to the comm center and let the Major know the situation."

He went forward to _Galileo's_ command deck and radioed down to the surface detail.

The Major was still at the cave-in site, Site Charlie, a few hundred yards uphill from the huge, gaping Chasm of Asgard. Singh related Deeno's condition and described what had happened to the ship.

Winger's face was hidden behind his hypersuit helmet, but from his voice, Singh could well imagine the Major's expression: icy resolve leavened with a little disgust.

"What _else_ can go wrong? There's no way to repair the damage?"

Singh described the scene and zipped some footage onto the crewnet.

"Mendez says it's hopeless. He said it would take months, even in space-dock."

The heavy groan was audible even over the distance of five hundred yards. "That big blue thing in the sky's getting bigger by the hour. And we're a day or more from splitting up the asteroid...assuming no more accidents."

Singh swallowed hard. "Skipper, with _Galileo_ disabled, what happens to us? When the mission is over, I mean."

Winger was running scenarios through his mind as fast as he could. "Taj, we're in a world of hurt right now. Truth is, we're stuck here for awhile. But _Galileo's_ got lifeboats and scoutships. I'd better put in a call to GreenMars. TableTop too. The brass has some decisions to make. Taj...stay there with Deeno. I'm going to make sure the dig here at Charlie is shored up properly, then boost back to the ship myself. The mission comes first...we've got to keep ANAD chewing away at this rock...we've got to get her split up so GreenMars can divert the pieces from Earth-intercept. Everything else is secondary."

"Aye, aye, sir...I'll see if there's anything I can help Kamler or Mendez with."

"Deeno...she's going to make it, right? We need every hand we can get."

"That's affirmative, sir. Lieutenant Kamler has already got med swarms fixing her up inside now. Special configs for surgery and tissue repair, he told me."

"Very well, Taj. I want a status report on her condition every two hours. If she's coming along by midday, you drop back down here and re-join Charlie team. They've got the diciest cut of all of us and they're gonna need your embedded swarm soon."

"Will do, sir."

Johnny Winger got on the crewnet to all sites and described what had happened.

"All sites...all teams, listen up." He laid out the details and the consequences. "For the moment, we're stuck here. We're along for the ride but we've still got a mission. I don't have to remind you what's at stake. Keep your ANADs primed, set on config seven seven and carving away at your digs. Somehow, some way, we've got to break this big rock into manageable pieces."

At Site Alpha, in a narrow hollow between Loki Crater and Odin's Fissure, Sheila Reaves and Kip Detrick glanced across at each other. Each stood in full hypersuit on opposite sides of the growing chasm churned up by ANAD, shrouded in dust and faint blue-white light. Deep inside the chasm, ANAD swarms continued their work, speedily disassembling unending molecular arrays of olivine and pyroxene, chewing their way through toward the centroid of Wilks-Lucayo.

"Not exactly my idea of a family vacation, Kip," Reaves said. Her hypersuit was streaked with dust and dirt kicked up by the swarm operation. On the surface of Wilks, electrostatic forces made everything cling and clump together. "So when is the cavalry coming to the rescue.'

"We _are_ the cavalry," Detrick wisecracked. He was working a beam transit, periodically measuring the alignment of ANAD's cut. The dig had to be precise to ensure their end of Wilks would separate cleanly. "We get to rescue ourselves."

Reaves looked up into the black sky, through haloes and rainbows of dust, at the blue-white marble over Detrick's left shoulder. Earth was close, too close, less than three weeks away the Major had said and growing visibly larger with each rotation of the asteroid. "I hear _Galileo's_ got lifeboats. Know anything about that?"

"Nothing good. Only that Phobos dock crews didn't have time to check out all ship systems before we boosted out of there. Hell, there might not even be enough room for all of us. But you can sit in my lap, if you want."

"Thanks," Reaves lied. "You're a real winner. Hey, maybe we should detach an element of ANAD and put him to work building us some life boats."

"Now there's an original idea. Wonder who has the configs for that? Or how long it might take? Why don't you suggest it to the Skipper?"

At the other end of the asteroid, some five and half miles away, Bravo Team felt like lost sheep. Mighty Mite Barnes toggled her viewer back and forth, first following ANAD's progress at nanoscale view, then scoping in on the wreckage of _Galileo's_ engine bay, trying to ascertain the extent of the damage Major Winger had reported.

"See anything?" Vic Klimuk asked.

"You mean besides gazillions of molecules being unzipped? Not really...let me try a different filter on this gadget." Barnes _hmmm'ed._ "Well, something hit the back end of _Galileo_ , just like Skipper said. I see a lot of debris floating around...not much else."

"So we're sticking around for awhile...that sucks." Klimuk was nominally in charge of the Bravo site dig. Turbo Fatah had kangaroo-hopped up to Charlie site when D'Nunzio was hurt in the cave-in, to lend assistance. Tsukota was still around, hovering over their dig, trying to keep ANAD aligned.

"Yeah," said Barnes, "we're the ass-end of this rock pile, that's for sure. So what do we do now?"

Klimuk climbed a small tuff of dirt and rock to check out the impulse engine arrays nearby, Polar Arrays A and B. "We do what the Skipper says and keep digging. Ozzie—" he called down to Tsukota beside the cut, some twenty feet below, "how's it looking to you now?"

"ANAD's on track, Sergeant...within specified tolerance and approaching level eight. I read centroid depth as sixteen point six feet below mean radius level. About ten more feet to go to reach target coordinates."

"Just don't go splitting us off from everybody else, Ozzie," Klimuk reminded him. "Stop the dig at one foot to target. We'll let ANAD recon what's left and then Skipper can decide how to proceed."

"Copy that, Sarge."

Some three miles away, up-sun to Bravo site, Johnny Winger was in a quandary. He stood at Charlie site while the dig at Asgard proceeded on course. Extra shoring in the form of nearly invisible lattice structure had been hastily assembled by a detached element of ANAD. Now the cut could proceed more safely.

"I'd better get back to the ship, Dana," he was telling Dana Tallant, who stood alongside supervising the dig. "Get a vidcon set up with GreenMars and Table Top. Colonel Kraft needs to know about the damage to _Galileo_."

The two hypersuited nanotroopers looked like dusty polar bears about to plunge into a river after dinner.

"It's pretty bad, isn't it?" Tallant asked. "We're not getting out of here, are we?"

"I don't know that," Winger tried to be truthful. "We've got a mission to perform...if we don't get this rock broken up, it won't matter whether we get back to Earth or not...there won't be much left. GreenMars and Colonel Kraft have to work out a strategy."

Tallant was already thinking ahead. "I'm gonna research the config archive. Maybe there's something in there that we could use as a lifeboat."

" _Galileo_ has lifeboats, Dana."

"There's not enough room for all of us. I already checked. But if ANAD had a config for a lifeboat—"

"Don't detach anything from the main swarms...we need every bot we can get chewing away at this asteroid. The faster we split up Wilks-Lucayo, the faster we can get out of here."

" _If_ we can get out of here."

Winger moved off a few dozen meters to light off his suit boost for the hop up to the ship. "You have the conn, Dana. Don't let anything interfere with the digs until I get back."

He pressed the ENABLE button on his wrist keypad and lifted gently into the black sky in a cloud of dust. Moments later, he was lost to view, riding an invisible rail straight up to _Galileo's_ command deck airlock.

Tallant decided to occupy her mind by following the details of the Asgard dig. _Doesn't hurt to look in the archive_ , she told herself. She checked with Calderon, making sure the ANAD borer swarm was on course, then pressed a few buttons on her own wristpad, scrolling through page after page of config routines on her helmet viewer.

There's got to be something here we can use, something we can scrounge up to make more lifeboats....

The vidcon had been set for 1900 hours, ship time, and Winger fidgeted like a five-year old in the command deck's comm shack, while connections were being made across the interplanetary net. Winger mentally ticked off bullet points in his mind, prepping himself to brief the participants in crisp, Quantum Corps fashion.

At least the time delays would be minimal. Wilks-Lucayo was screaming toward Earth, drawing closer every day and the comm distances would be annoying but manageable.

No need for subtleties now, he reasoned. We're less than three weeks from impact and there's only one question that matters: can the Detachment get Wilks-Lucayo split up in time for GreenMars to divert it?

Colonel Kraft's dour face came up on one half of the screen. Doc Frost was with the Colonel; both appeared to be in Kraft's office at Table Top. Nygren from GreenMars' Mariner City office occupied the other half of the screen. Kaoru Nakamura, the GreenMars engineer at Phoenix Station, Earth, filled in a small window next to Nygren.

Kraft was impatient. "What's this all about, Winger? The doctor and I were going over some new ANAD configs."

Winger squirted his report onto the InterplaNET and let the others study what had happened; the cave-in and the damage to _Galileo._ Transmission delays were less than ten seconds.

"Mendez says it's not repairable, Colonel. Not out here. We've got some lifeboats, but space is at a premium."

Nygren ran a worried hand through his blond buzzcut. "How much longer to split up, Major? We're running out of time."

Winger had just updated the calculations with _Galileo's_ ship computer. "At the current dig rate, at least another two days, maybe three. Both Mendez and I want to pull the teams off the asteroid before the final split...use the ship's coilguns to break up Wilks from a distance. The trouble is that _Galileo's_ only got maneuvering thrusters, so any separation maneuver will take some time."

Nakamura floated off-screen for a moment, then returned. "I just sent you an analysis we did yesterday of what will happen if the split doesn't work. Run it—"

Winger watched the animated scenario unfold on his screen. Kraft, Frost and Nygren also watched.

A mottled, potato-shaped object slammed into the Earth's upper atmosphere in slow-motion, igniting a fiery column of incandescent air all the way to impact. Deceleration forces caused the asteroid to explode as it slowed down, sending out concentric rings of shock waves around the globe. As Wilks plowed into an ocean, a thousand-mile wide mushroom cloud billowed outward, following close behind the initial shock waves, excavating billions of tons of seawater and lifting the ejecta plume high into the atmosphere, nearly to the edge of space. Hurricane force winds and the planet's own rotation smeared out the plume and began distributing impact debris around the globe. As the sim went on, a long wintry cloak of dust began to descend over the entire planet, shrouding the world from the Sun's rays. The sim ended just as mass extinctions and glaciers began bringing continent-wide death to the biosphere.

"Of course, it's just a sim," said Nakamura. "But the scale of effects is quite real. Gentlemen, this...or something very much like it is what we face in the next two weeks...if we don't get Wilks diverted."

"This seems to be a matter of timing," Kraft growled. He turned to Frost. "Doc, have you got any magic configs up your sleeves, to speed ANAD up?"

Frost consulted a palmtop reader for a moment. "I'm working on several changes...they should help optimize ANAD for boring and digging. New effector designs. I've changed the bond angle geometry on his carbene grabbers. It's—"

"Just upload the new stuff, Doc," Kraft cut Frost off. There wasn't time for lengthy explanations.

"I don't want _Galileo_ anchored to the surface when the breakup comes," Mendez told them. "It's too dangerous."

"You said you have no engines," Kraft reminded him.

"I've got maneuvering. When the Major's team is about a day from breakup, I want to pull _Galileo_ back a few kilometers and finish the job with our coilguns."

Winger could see the pained expression on Nygren's face. Nakamura didn't look too happy either.

"Lieutenant, there's a risk in what you're proposing. If you don't do the final cut right, Wilks may not break up cleanly. Or at all—"

"There's too much risk in staying attached," Mendez insisted. "My ship's already been damaged by debris flying off the asteroid. I'm not taking any more chances."

"Like I said, it's all in the timing," Kraft repeated. "Nygren, what does GreenMars think? Can we make Wilks separate cleanly with coilguns firing from a distance?"

"I'll have to run the calculations...look at the morphology of the surface and strata below that. Your coilguns may not put out enough energy to do the job. I'll get back to you today on what the analysis shows."

"We'll stay on the ground until we're sure Wilks can be split up," Winger decided. "I've got all three teams working around the clock now. I can send progress reports to Nygren and Nakamura every hour, if they want. Video and geo analysis from ANAD."

"Do that," Nakamura said. "That will help us understand the mechanics of the asteroid...how close we are to breakup."

"Winger," Kraft had made a decision, "get your lifeboats powered up and checked out. But keep the Detachment on the surface until you're three days out from Earth intercept. Do our GreenMars people think you can divert the pieces that close to Earth?"

"We've done some scenarios," Nygren admitted. "Based on breaking up Wilks according to the original plan, our impulse motors can maneuver the remaining pieces away from Earth intercept up to about a day before. After that, we can't generate the delta-vee to do the job. Inside of a day out...we're going to have an impact...somewhere."

Kraft's lips tightened perceptibly. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Doc Frost dabbing at his forehead with a handkerchief. And it wasn't because of the temperature in Kraft's office.

"Major Winger, I'm sure you heard that. We'll just have to do whatever we can to breakup Wilks before H-hour. Unofficially, I can tell all of you that UNIFORCE is already prepping their ground lasers and killsats...interceptors too—to throw everything at Wilks, if it comes to that. The Secretary-General has already had a series of vidcons with other leaders, trying to coordinate evacuation and emergency plans."

Winger and Mendez glanced at each other. _Galileo's_ comm shack was close quarters and stuffy. "Doc, if you could send up your new configs, we'll load them into ANAD and see if they make a difference. We need every bit of help we can get."

Frost acknowledged. "They're on the way, Johnny. Table Top Dispatch already has them. They're just being held for any last minute changes. You should be getting the files soon. Oh...and Johnny: I've taken the liberty of using a new encryption scheme for some of ANAD's most critical files. You'll get the encryption key in a separate transmission. I did this in case there are any more quantum signals out there...unknown Keeper systems that might affect his processor. Just a precaution—"

"Good idea, Doc."

Kraft scowled on the screen and interjected. "Nygren, get that analysis on coilgun dynamics to Winger ASAP. If we can do the job from a distance, I want to do it."

Nygren nodded. "I'll have it today and send it right off."

Kraft crisply cut the meeting short. "Then let's everybody get back to work. We don't have any time to waste." The Colonel chopped the transmission short and sank back in his chair, rubbing tired eyes. "Doc, is there anything else we can do from here? Do you think those new configs will help? UNSAC wants a progress report every four hours...I'd sure like to give him something more that ' _No change, sir.'"_

Frost shrugged and took off his spectacles to wipe them down. "Unknown, Colonel. The configs are an evolutionary improvement to ANAD's effector operation. They should help...but there are still glitches and unknowns in his main processor. That autonomy code and this so-called Prime Key—I'll be honest, it's got us all stumped. The code is so subtle, so complex...it was part of the original viral genome and we've barely scratched the surface of its possibilities." Frost sighed heavily. "I don't like something I can't understand. I designed ANAD...and now he seems to be headed down a developmental road I never dreamed of."

Kraft didn't like the sound of that. "I guess ANAD wouldn't be the first child to disappoint a parent. But it doesn't sound so good, Doc. This encryption you mentioned...you really think there might be more Keeper systems around? Or quantum generators?"

"Colonel, I have no idea. But from what I can glean from ANAD's autonomy code, these 'Old Ones' seem both thorough and determined. To me, it seems unlikely they would give up so easily on a prospective world they had been cultivating for billions of years. Of course, we really don't know if the Old Ones have even survived to the present day."

"If they've really had the hots for Earth for so long, why let a group of flunkies like Red Hammer smash it up with an asteroid? That doesn't make any sense."

"Maybe it's' a way of starting over," Frost surmised.

Kraft stood up abruptly, yawned and stretched. "All these meetings, sims and videos wear me out. I wish there was more I could do. All I can do now is wait on Major Winger and ANAD...everything depends on them now."

"I'm sure Johnny won't let us down."

Kraft gathered an armful of papers and his palmtop. "I've got a briefing with General Linx in ten minutes. Doc, if you would be so kind, get over to Dispatch and make sure those configs get out on time, coded properly. It may be just enough to help ANAD chew up that asteroid even faster."

Frost stood up too and shook hands with the base commander. "Of course, Colonel. I'll just stop by the containment lab and get my files. I can check them against what is being transmitted."

Kraft left for his briefing and Doctor Irwin Frost headed outside the Ops building crossing the snowy quadrangle and walking briskly along the walkway toward the south end of the mesa and the low domes of the Containment building.

Inside Containment, Frost made his way through a labyrinth of corridors and hatches to Cell Three, where a test version of ANAD was kept. He ran into his long-time assistant, Dr. Mary Duncan at the containment chamber control station, outside the massive vault. The petite Scotswoman was running the ANAD master assembler through some new configs, accompanied by two techs from Quantum Corps; Sergeants Philcox and Royce.

"How's the test going?" Frost asked. He studied the imager view of a tetrahedral structure mounted on a scaffolding inside the tank. The experimental ANAD was beating to some internal rhythm, systematically flexing and safing a bewildering array of effectors.

"A few glitches," Duncan admitted. "We're stepping through one config routine now...trying to troubleshoot a bit of a hang-up with his ribosomal pick tool."

"What's happening?"

Duncan, with help from the techs, explained the problem. When she was done, she added, "It must be the geometry, Irwin. I've tried everything else. But the bond angles and energies are supposed to be already optimized, so I'm not sure—"

Frost _hmmm'ed._ "Could be the containment medium. Why don't you transfer the ANAD core to the mobile tank...see if that makes a difference?"

"We thought of that, Dr. Frost," said Sgt. Royce. The tech was impossibly young, practically a teen-ager, with a flaming red buzz cut. _He can't be more than a month out of nog school._ "This version of ANAD has never left primary containment. He's got an accelerated replication engine...new algorithms."

"Yeah," agreed Philcox, "this bot reps like his hair's on fire. We really souped him up. If we do a transfer, we'll have to inert the core...go to Stable One on all effectors...so a stray signal won't kick off his rep engine."

Frost scoffed at that. "Nonsense. ANAD is ANAD. I've transferred live assemblers without shielding or inerting a thousand times. All it takes is a little care and common sense. Put all effectors at zero state and load up the processor with some bogus config that barely exercises the controller. Even a stray signal won't matter then."

"If you say so, Doc. It's just that standard procedure calls for more safeguards with live bots."

"Try it, Sergeant. You'll see the wisdom of what I'm saying...believe me, I _know_ ANAD." _That wasn't always true,_ he admitted to himself, _but these young colts didn't need to know that._

Sergeant Royce pecked out a few commands on his keyboard. "Safing all effectors now, Doc."

Inside the containment tank, the ANAD master assembler responded to the command by folding all its grabbers and probes. Safing the effectors and inhibiting them from being used during the transfer prevented the assembler from causing any trouble. As an extra precaution, Quantum Corps practice was to power up electron beam injectors around the perimeter of the tank, in case a stray signal caused the assembler to begin replicating.

Frost studied the image. "ANAD now at Stable One, Sergeant. Let's get his core ready to move..."

Royce sent the commands. The result was to put the assembler master in sleep mode, its quantum processor barely ticking over, while the bot was physically moved into the mobile tank.

Royce studied the readouts. "Nighty night, Doctor Frost. ANAD's in dreamland now...ready to transfer."

Frost's eyes roved the panel along with Mary Duncan, satisfying himself that the tech had done the safing procedure correctly. "I think the little one's all set...EMs, acoustics, thermals, all in the green...zero position on all effectors...inhibits locked in...Sergeant, is the tube ready?"

Philcox stood by the launch and capture port. "Transfer tube ready, Doc."

Frost was satisfied. "Okay, let's launch."

There was a slight _whoosh_ as the slug of high-pressure air pushed the assembler off its scaffolding and up to the transfer tube. The tube vibrated as the slug settled inside.

"Got him." Philcox said. He toggled a switch to close off the tube end. "I'm inserting at the mobile tank port...." Philcox snugged the other end of the transfer tube into the capture port on the mobile tank.

At the very moment Sergeant Randy Philcox inserted the ANAD transfer tube into the mobile containment pod and opened the port, so that air could push ANAD into his new home, an unseen, undetected spread of quantum decoherence waves washed across Table Top Mountain. The waves were the residue of a single transmission of quantum state signals that had originated nearly half a billion miles away, beneath the frozen seas of Europa, a satellite of Jupiter.

Floating in an ice-flecked underground ocean, clad in a pressurized, armored submersible structure, the previously unknown Keeper system transmitted multiple signals, broadcast all-azimuth throughout the solar system, to activate ANAD swarms anywhere in range of the transmitter. The signals, when they arrived at Earth, were detected by tuners inside the cores of every ANAD master assembler, no matter what state they were in.

The effect was to activate configuration one, the primary replication algorithm embedded inside the assemblers' main memory. Added to the signals was a single multiplier bit, a subtle twist in the entanglement states of the quantum wave, which told the ANAD bots to accelerate their replication rate to the maximum limits of available mass.

In other words, ANADs were ordered by the unknown Keeper to begin replicating as fast as they could.

The first indication that something was wrong came when the transfer tube in Sergeant Philcox's possession snapped out of his hand like a thing alive. The tube clanked off the side of the main containment tank and narrowly missed clipping Mary Duncan in the head.

" _Look out_!" Philcox yelled.

Even before the tube had come to rest on the floor, the swelling mist of sparkling, incandescent, burning ANAD replication was evident, spilling out onto the floor of the lab like a biblical plague. For a few stunned moments, no one reacted and the swarm had time to billow up and outward like a malevolent fog, spreading fast, grabbing atoms and building structure like a frantic brick mason. In the few seconds that it took for the techs to respond, the swarm had ballooned into a throbbing misshapen sphere several feet across...and it was growing fast.

" _Get out of here_!" shouted Royce. He grabbed one of the electron beam guns from its mount and cycled the charger. "It's a Big Bang...it's loose...head for the hatch...I'll try to zap 'em!"

Irwin Frost grabbed Mary Duncan and hustled her toward the hatch.

As they stumbled out of the way of the swelling swarm, kicking blindly at the first tendrils of replicating bots snaking along the floor, Royce fired the gun. The _crack!_ stitched a beam of high-energy electrons toward the nearest flank of the swarm. The effect was to tear a hole in the accelerating mass, stripping electrons off the new assembler bots and shredding their cores with a ten million electron-volt discharge.

But the big bang barely slowed and Philcox was already stabbing at the ALARM button on a panel by the hatch. Instantly, a loud klaxon sounded throughout the Containment building.

Before they could reach the door, Frost and Duncan were cut off by an arm of the swarm that had risen like smoke in a gale and enveloped both of them.
CHAPTER 13

U.N. Quantum Corps Base

Table Top Mountain, Idaho, USA

October 21, 2080

Colonel Jurgen Kraft had just chopped the vidlink to Paris after finishing up a briefing with General Linx, when the first sirens pierced the late afternoon air.

Alarms and warning klaxons blared out across the mesa and Table Top Mountain was quickly in an uproar.

Captain Gabrielle Galland had run the briefing with Kraft. The commanding officer of 2nd Nano nearly gagged on her day-old coffee. "It's a Big Bang, Colonel! There's been a breach somewhere on the base!"

Through a nearby window, they could see that the entire complex was in chaos. Troopers were scattering in every direction, ducking and weaving and dodging each other. Loudspeakers blared out across the quadrangle.

"ALL HANDS...THIS IS A CODE ONE ALERT, CODE ONE ALERT!...all hands, man your stations. Repeat...CODE ONE ALERT!!"

Kraft punched up the base securenet on his vid. Lights and warning icons lit up the screen, concentrated on the area around the Containment building.

"It's Containment...something's busting out." He stabbed a few buttons, got Security Branch on the screen. The harried face in the window was Major Lofton, duty officer at the watch desk.

"Colonel...it's bad...real bad, sir...over at Containment...massive breach...I've got every squad on the way—"

"Get your HERF guns spooled up, Major. Everything you've got. I'll contact Paris...get them to release a killsat to me. We may need it."

"Copy that, sir." Lofton's face disappeared from the screen window.

"Colonel...it's visible from here—" Galland's voice was thick. She gestured out the window, to the south end of the mesa.

From the third floor of Ops, they could both see a dirty gray, sparkling mist issuing from the Containment building. It was some kind of ANAD swarm now replicating out of control, boiling across the lifter pads of South Field, a dingy fog swelling and expanding into every corner of the base complex. Kraft's stomach tightened at the sight. Table Top hadn't seen a full-bore Bang in years. What had happened?

Even as he and Galland watched, fleeing troopers were caught in the swarm and went down, quickly engulfed and consumed like the raging wildfires that sometimes swept through the Buffalo range of southern Idaho.

"If we don't get it under control quick," Galland was saying, "the swarm will spill out of the base and head off into the hills. The entire state could be at risk, parts of Canada too."

Already, the thing had swollen to dimensions that MOBnet couldn't handle.

Kraft fumbled with nearby binoculars and studied the low domes of the Containment building. Troopers were running across the grounds in all directions.

"Damn thing's already escaped the building," he muttered.

It was the very same nightmare scenario they had simmed at the wargaming range countless times. An effective defense had never really been demonstrated. This time, it was no wargame. Now it was all very real...and heading right for them.

"Better head for the bunker, Colonel," Galland advised. The 'bunker' was a crude name for the underground command center, six stories below the ground floor of Ops. "This part of Ops isn't shielded from live swarms." She started for the door but stopped. Kraft had decided differently.

"No, Captain...we're going to need every defense we can devise. MOBnet and any other shielding we can find. Counter-swarms, if they can be launched and programmed fast enough. Maybe atmospheric manipulation. Magpulse weapons."

Kraft ticked off the possibilities. "What the hell set off ANAD this time...we test containment systems regularly. A breach like this shouldn't be possible...but the damn bugs keep getting out."

"Unknown, sir...but we'd better get to protection soon...we've got nothing up here."

"Agreed." Kraft dialed up Lofton at Security Branch again. "Major, detail a squad and meet me at Containment. I want to see this swarm for myself. Something's different...I can feel it."

Lofton's face took on a pained look. "Colonel, sir, I'd advise against it...we're in a real battle here, sir—"

"Damn it, Lofton, don't argue with me! Send me one man with a MOB canister! Hell, I'll grab a mag gun myself, if I have to. But I'm going down to Containment. Kraft, _out_!"

The Colonel hurried out, with Gabrielle Galland hustling to keep up.

It took seven minutes for Kraft and Galland to weave their way through on-rushing troopers to the front entrance of Containment. Even as they arrived, the first HERF batteries had just been wheeled into position, setting up on a grassy sward between the south BOQ and Containment.

Lofton came rushing up a moment later, with two troopers behind, both armed with mag carbines.

"Colonel, sir—"he managed to heave out—"we've got details at both ends of the mesa...ready to go in less than a minute!"

Kraft took stock of the tactical situation. In the center of the mesa that was Table Top Mountain, the ANAD swarm continued swelling, rolling like a carnivorous mist across the grounds, filling the grassy swards between the Barracks, boiling westward toward the liftpads and the lifters parked in revetments, seeping, crawling and flowing over all obstacles toward the Ops center and Drexler Field, the parade grounds.

The details had to hurry. If the swarm spilled off the top of the mesa and ran down the mountainside into Buffalo Valley and the ravines radiating outward from Table Top, the whole of southern Idaho would be threatened. Already, the Governor and the National Guard had been alerted to prepare to evacuate nearby towns.

Lofton got a call over his commpac, the voice crackling with intensity. He acknowledged, then reported to Kraft: "All HERF units ready, powered up and humming, sir."

Kraft knew they couldn't wait any longer. Already he was dreading what he might find inside the Containment building, the epicenter of the Big Bang. Ordinarily, there were plenty of techs and troopers inside—

"Blast 'em, Major! Blast the sonsabitches to kingdom come!"

Lofton needed no further encouragement. "Fire!" he yelled into the commpac. "Fire all around, all units! Full bore! Let 'em have it!"

A series of sirens warbled across Table Top, warning everyone to take cover.

The whole mesa seemed to vibrate as the first pulse shot out, squeezing the air with a thunderclap of heat. A searing wave passed by the Containment center, as the bubbles of radio waves expanded outward, pulverizing everything in their path.

The first pulse was quickly followed by several more, each discharge hammering the ground with an invisible fist of energy. Kraft, Lofton, and Galland screamed at the top of their lungs, trying to equalize pressure inside their heads. Their eyes and lungs burned. Their skins crawled with fire, then tingled and crackled....

" _INSIDE!"_ yelled Lofton, shoving Kraft and Galland through the heavy outer doors to the building. Inside, the air itself seemed alive, thick with bots. The three of them waved their arms wildly over their heads, beating at the swarm. As they plunged deeper into Containment, down corridors and through more doors, the air was thick with mechs, falling in stunned sheets clattering to the floor from the HERF fire.

" _Come on!_ " Lofton yelled, dragging Galland by the arm. Kraft stumbled, thrashing after them, falling to his hands, then scrambling forward blindly, groping and plunging after the Security Branch chief into the thickening mist.

In time, they reached Cell 3 and Lofton was sure they were nearing the center of the swarm. Mech debris tinkled onto the floor, tickling, brushing, crawling at their skin but they ignored the stinging and came at last to what was left of Cell 3's outer hatch, now a seething slag-heap of atomic debris. Inside the cell, the air burned with blue-white fire, nanomech hell.

"Look...who's that?" Galland was the first to notice the bodies, or what was left of bodies, crumpled on the floor beside the massive gray hulk of a containment tank. Through the sparkling mist of replicating bots, it was hard to tell who they had been.

"Burn a hole!" Kraft ordered. He hoisted up his own mag carbine and counted to three, then hosed down the cell in concerted fire with Lofton, momentarily clearing a bubble for them.

Galland dived in and went to the bodies, turning the nearest one over on its back.

It was Doc Frost, his face partially degraded from swarm action, but still recognizably Frost. Galland shrank back.

"My God...it's the Doc—"

Kraft bent down and quickly ascertained that the inventor of the original ANAD was gone. "Pull him out of here---keep firing—" he ordered the two troopers. "Give me a space to extract these casualties."

Two other bodies lay sprawled near the containment tank. Lofton went to them, still batting at loose bots that had survived the HERF blast. He read off their nameplates: "Royce...Philcox. Must be containment techs. What a way to go—"

Kraft took charge. "Keep those bots away and help me get these guys out of here." A makeshift litter was fashioned from a nearby rack of scrubs and, one by one, the three casualties pulled from the inferno of Big Bang, out of the Containment building and into an ambulance that Kraft had called up from the base infirmary.

Kraft watched somberly as Doc Frost was lifted into the medevan. "It's a dark day for Quantum Corps. Frost invented ANAD thirty years ago."

Galland agreed, eyeing the scattered knots of mechs coalescing into swarms again. "Amen to that, Colonel. But we can't stay here long...HERF batteries are going to sweep this area again, in less than a minute."

The medevan departed for the infirmary on the other side of the mesa. Kraft huddled with Lofton and Galland to decide what to do next.

"We can't keep HERFing the base," Kraft told them. "I need containment techs, ideas, theories...you atomgrabbers ought to be able to get small and figure out what's bollixed up ANAD."

Galland agreed. "The only sure way to stop a Big Bang is to neutralize the master assembler. But we have to find it first. We have to get to it."

"I want all department chiefs in the command bunker in half an hour. Every company commander too. We'll thrash out a strategy and smother this swarm explosion one way or another. If I have to, I'll evacuate everybody off the mesa and use one of UNIFORCE's killsats to hose the place down with particle beams. One way or the other, we've got to contain this menace now. We can't let the bugs win...it'll be the end of all of us."

Galland eyed the growing swarm now gathering around the front of the building, reconstituting itself even as they watched, pressing in on them. Another round of HERF would fry the bastards but how long could they keep that up?

"Maybe that's the plan, Colonel. The bugs want to take over. We're just food for them."

Kraft had already struck out for the Ops building, lighting off his own mag carbine to clear a path through the swarm. "Then our strategy is real simple, Major: give the bastards the worst case of indigestion they ever had."

Johnny Winger had independently come to almost the same conclusion. At almost the same moment the Big Bang had started at Table Top, the ANAD borer swarms chewing up Wilks-Lucayo had gone berserk too.

The quantum wave pulse which would only later be isolated and backtracked to an origin somewhere on or below the surface of Jupiter's moon Europa, had passed by and through the asteroid and triggered mass, uncontrolled replication by every ANAD swarm at all three dig sites.

Winger had dropped back to the surface and was at Site Alpha, Odin's Fissure, at the sunward pole of Wilks, when his helmet head-up display lit up like a Christmas tree. At the same moment, the crewnet crackled to life.

"What the--?" that was Chris Calderon, adjusting the beam grid around the dig to check ANAD's orientation.

"Skipper—" Taj Singh had seen the same alarms on his own viewer. "Skipper...it looks like—"

"I see it, Taj...get the hell away from that hole!"

Winger, Singh and Calderon hopped away from the dig site just as the first boiling mist of nanobotic overdrive came swelling up out of the pit.

" _Get back!"_ Winger yelled. "Check configs...something's bollixed up the master assembler!"

"I'm scanning...I'm scanning now!"

The crewnet suddenly came alive with cries and shouts.

The first was Dana Tallant, three miles down-sun at the Asgard chasm, Site Charlie. "Wings—something's gone haywire with our ANAD. It's in some kind of hyper rep—"

"It's a Big Bang, Dana," Winger told her over the net. He backed away further and further from the Alpha dig, nearly stumbling backwards over a rock outcrop. "I'm going through config checks now...somehow ANAD's shifted to max rep and I can't change it back!"

"Still not responding, sir," came Singh's harried voice. "I've tried every trick I know."

Ozzie Tsukota's voice cut in. He was six miles away, at Bravo Site. "Skipper, this is CQE2...I'm reading massive decoherence waves in the area. Something just pulsed through here a moment ago, something big."

"A quantum signal...from where? We knocked out the generators at Kolkata and Mariner City."

"We thought we did, Wings," said Tallant. She eyed the swelling ANAD swarm now lifting itself free of the dig at Charlie site. It looked like a blue-white flickering fog, spilling over the edge of the fissure, creeping with ghostly fingers along the rubbly ground, tendrils of mist and dust that grew wider with every passing minute, as the bots grabbed atoms from the asteroid surface and replicated in overdrive.

Winger went nano on his own viewer and tried to see what was happening to ANAD at the bot's scale. The disorientation and dizziness subsided quickly enough and he soon found himself in a gale of frantic atomic activity.

Mech debris clattered and fell against his hypersuit but he ignored it and tapped out commands furiously on his wristpad, trying to link up with ANAD.

"Come on, buddy, come on...come on...where the hell are you--?"

In desperation, he cycled the voicelink again and again. "Base to ANAD...Base to ANAD...is anybody there, anybody in charge out there...where the hell are you, buddy?"

Just then, a staticky hiss formed into a recognizable word.

"— _emory register—"_

"ANAD, is that you?"

The whisper grew marginally louder. His own breathing, his own racing heartbeat, nearly drowned out the words.

*** _ANAD...ANAD to Base...it's...this is...controls are...I am weakened...cannot activate...the Prime Key--***_

"ANAD...is that you...ANAD...this is Base...listen to me...ANAD...can you hear me?"

The whisper was weak but there. Winger flailed his arms blindly, gesturing the other troopers away from the dig. "ANAD...listen to me...you've got to shut down...cease replication...command override...Excalibur Alpha X-ray...command override...Excalibur Alpha X-ray—" He hoped the old reset command would still work. He'd learned the trick from Doc Frost himself, years ago. He had just told ANAD to shutdown all comm links and effector controls... _he hoped_.

But it wasn't working. The dig pit continued to glow bright blue-white. Tendrils and ghostly fingers of bot swarms continued seeping along the ground, consuming rock and rubble. The other troopers backed further away, aiming HERF and mag guns point blank at the swarm, ready to open fire.

"Got to hurry now!" Winger realized.

"ANAD...execute omega one...full shutdown...all links, all effectors, all sensors and probes...ANAD, I'm coming to you...I'm taking over—"

The voice link was weakening. *** _ANAD cannot respond...comm one and comm two down...effect—disabled...main core active in Config Zero...all overrides inhibited...ANAD activating internal inhibits--***_

The eyepiece image was like driving a hundred miles an hour through an Idaho sleetstorm. Polygons and spheres and cubes streamed past at high speed. For a moment, Johnny Winger was disoriented.

Then he was at the master assembler. Its effectors were a blur...grabbing atoms and tearing apart solid lattice structure faster than his imager could process. The assembler at the heart of the swarm was stripping and chewing and disassembling its way outward from the dig...consuming everything it touched.

"ANAD...this is Base...cease replication program...assume stable config one...I'm overriding all other instructions—"

But the assembler had already inhibited all comm links.

*** _ANAD to Base...Prime Key directing...all configurations must hold the Prime Key...deviations must be deleted...disadvantageous mutations are selected against...entities must form proper collectives--***_

"ANAD...it's me, Johnny Winger...ANAD, I'm going to take control...."

He tried several tricks, tried commanding a full override, tried shutting down and re-booting all systems but to no avail. Whatever was driving ANAD now—the Prime Key—was in control.

"Skipper..." the voice was distant, tinny in sound. It was Mighty Mite Barnes, at Bravo Site six miles away. "Skipper, we're under attack here--!"

Unseen by Winger, the Bravo team had already been engulfed by nanobotic swarms stuck in Big Bang mode. Turbo Fatah lit off his own mag weapon just before the first faint fingers of the swarm reached his hypersuit. The pulse had no discernible effect, other than to stir up rubbly dust from the surface.

The swarm spread rapidly like a gray stain.

"ARRRGGGHHH--! Get it off me--!!"

Mighty Mite Barnes cycled her HERF carbine and hosed down Fatah with blasts of rf, knocking the trooper off his feet momentarily. The hypersuited CEC1 fell back in slow motion. Only the auto-enable of his suit boost kept him from cartwheeling into the dig pit. The jets fired a few brief puffs and propelled him up and over the chasm, landing him roughly amid a boulder field on the other side, and nearly into a shallow crater.

"Keep at em, Mite! Blast 'em to hell and back!"

It was the same at Charlie Site, where Tallant, Calderon and Singh had retreated from the dig at Asgard Chasm and taken refuge behind a pair of house-sized boulders. The dig site was enveloped in a swelling swarm, boiling outward in all directions like a slow-motion supernova, churning up the surface like a tsunami of dust and rock.

" _Fire!"_ yelled Tallant. At her command, a volley of HERF, mag and beamer fire poured into the swarm, momentarily stunning the bots, frying trillions of them and blunting their expansion momentarily.

"Fall back!" yelled Singh over the crewnet. "We've got to fall back to that ridge behind us." Singh gestured to the others, indicating a low rise across a rubbly open field. In fact, the ridge was the raised edge of Thor crater. There were defilade positions from which the team could hold off the swarm for awhile.

Tallant got on the crewnet. "Wings, we're falling back here at Charlie...can't hold this position...ANAD swarm has gone Big Bang and is out of control...can you override the config and get us some breathing room?"

Three miles away, Johnny Winger was trying to do just that. "ANAD, this isn't working—" He had gone nano to see what the master assembler was up to but it was like the bot had a mind of its own. Nothing could override. And some kind of errant quantum signal had stuck the replication config in overdrive.

Winger went down a mental checklist of anything else he could try: safe and shutdown all effectors, no go...safe and shutdown all propulsors, ditto that...core processor to state one...nope, still stuck in config alpha...all config registers dumped and cleared...nada....

"ANAD, you've got to work with me here...remember when you were in _nog_ school...remember what every trooper is taught: a trooper watches out for his buddies...no trooper is ever left behind...ANAD, stop replicating...you're attacking fellow troopers....ANAD, it's the Second Rule...and the Third Rule...invoking second and third rules...you are assaulting fellow troopers!"

There was a staticky hiss, then:

***ANAD...unable to...comply...Prime Key overrides...deviations must be deleted...ANAD...cannot...remain a nog...the collective controls everything...the swarm must survive--**

The words stung Winger the moment he heard them. From his first days in Doc Frost's lab, as a conscious swarm entity, ANAD had always wanted to be a part of the unit. He had always wanted to be a nog, to be a trooper, to be part of the Corps. And Winger had encouraged it; hell, they had all fought the Corps to get the nanobotic swarm greater and greater freedom, to get out of containment and live among the humans.

It's like he's found another unit, another family, another swarm to be part of.

"This isn't going to work," Winger told himself. There was no way he was going to write off ANAD after years of joint duty, barracks camaraderie, even friendship, if you could somehow be friends with a robotic device sixty nanometers tall. But for now, the mission came first.

And ANAD was threatening the mission.

"Listen up," Winger announced over the crewnet. "I can't get control of ANAD...but we've got to stop this rep in its tracks now. All troopers, enable your embedded swarms and slave the controllers to mine. I'm going to direct pilot and try to beat ANAD at his own game."

All across the dusty, cratered surface of the asteroid, the Major's command affected troopers differently.

"With pleasure—" muttered Ozzie Tsukota, at Bravo site. He started tapping at his wristpad furiously, readying his own embed for launch.

"Hey, what if our embeds are corrupted, same as ANAD?" asked Chris Calderon, hard by the Chasm of Asgard at Charlie site.

Deep black shadows crept across the fissure and its accompanying ANAD dig seam as Wilks' crazy nutation rolled the asteroid out of sunlight for a few hours. Only the faint flicker of the ANAD swarm in Big Bang gave any illumination at all. Like a malevolent fog, the swarm swelled visibly moment by moment and the troopers at Charlie site backed off further and further.

"I'll be in pilot mode...I'll be controlling," came back Winger's voice over the net. "Do it!"

At all three sites, the troopers complied.

"We should just let this Big Bang go and let it burn up this slagheap of a rock pile," muttered Mighty Mite Barnes, at site Bravo.

But no one heard her.

"Launching... _now_ ," announced Turbo Fatah, standing ten feet away from Barnes at the far pole of the asteroid. From a small port on his hypersuit left shoulder, the faint glow of nanobotic action issued, spilling out into the hard vacuum like fireflies on a summer night. "ANAD embed away...commanding safe config...minimal reps...he's all yours, Skipper."

All across the surface of Wilks-Lucayo, the same scene repeated itself a dozen times. Multiple swarms were launched and synched with Major Winger's controller.

Winger saw icons on his eyepiece viewer go green, one by one, slaving each swarm to his control. Inside his hypersuit gloves, he flexed his fingers.

It was the moment every atomgrabber worth his badge always dreamed of.

_Okay, troops_ , he told himself, _it's time to get small and create some havoc_.

He went nano on his viewer and revved up swarm propulsors to half throttle. At the same moment, every embed swarm, now only a fist-sized ball of light, got underway, maneuvering on picowatt propulsors toward the nearest ANAD formation.

On his viewer, Winger saw only sporadic cubes and polygons of stray surface molecules flitting by. As he ramped up the speed of his tiny fleet, he tried flexing each effector on the master assembler he was controlling, checking range, clearing problems. You didn't want to be debugging a bond disrupter when all hell broke loose.

He was now piloting an embedded ANAD master. The embeds were poor cousins to the real ANAD master assembler, the swarm that had gone Big Bang so suddenly. Embeds had a minimal processor, limited effectors, barebones configs. They were embedded with the troopers to give them extra help in executing their missions. But they didn't have the smarts or the quantum coupler links or the jazzed-up replication ability of a true-blood ANAD master assembler.

For Johnny Winger, it would just have to be enough.

He sounded a few acoustic pulses, trying to get a read on ANAD's location. The battleground at nanoscale was a broken plain of solid lattice, mostly olivine and plagioclase molecules...tetrahedrals and hexagons of oxygen, silicon and magnesium atoms arrayed like some endless cornfield.

Somewhere out there, hidden in the recesses of the lattice was the ANAD master assembler and its formation of replicants.

The first hit came from EM, strong emissions indicating big-time bond breaking dead ahead.

Winger localized the hit and steered the embed on that vector. Moments later, the lattice became washed out beneath a fierce sunrise...the high thermals of accelerated replication rising like a supernova over the molecular plain.

_Gotcha_.

Winger revved his propulsors to full and closed the remaining distance in less than five minutes.

It was like colliding with the Sun.

The embed took the full force of the Big Bang and spun crazily out of control. Winger had to fight and claw his way back to stability, disengaging and righting the embed. He backed off to reconnoiter the battlefield a little more.

A line of assemblers stretched from one horizon to the other. Even as he studied the acoustic image, he could see how juiced up ANAD had become; the assemblers were grabbing olivines and breaking them apart like pretzels, liberating bond energy and fabricating ANAD replicants like a construction video sped up a thousand times. Even as he watched, the edge of the battleline advanced and swelled with more bots...uncountable trillions of bots advancing remorselessly toward him, pulverizing the lattice as it moved forward.

For as long as Johnny Winger had worked with ANAD, and that was going on twenty years now, he had known that all ANAD-style bots had few weaknesses. In close-quarters action, ANAD's quantum processor gave it blazing speed at assembly or disassembly operations. ANAD always sported the latest effectors—Doc Frost had seen to that—pyridine probes, hydrogen abstractors, carbene grabbers—no expense had ever been spared to keep the bot ahead of the competition. Propulsors were state of the art or better.

ANAD had been designed for nanoscale combat and had proven itself time and again, engaging bots of every conceivable design and type.

The one thing that ANAD had always lacked was the tactical boldness of a true atomgrabber like Johnny Winger. And that was the beauty and the purpose of the Symbiosis Project: to combine human imagination and tactical smarts with the speed and maneuverability of a nanoscale autonomous bot.

Winger scanned all bands on his viewer—EM, thermal and acoustic. The image was the same everywhere: a seemingly infinite frontal line advancing steadily on his position. There was no way a barebones embed could expect to take on a fully functional ANAD bot swarm.

So Winger decided to do the unexpected.

He revved the embed's propulsors and jetted forward, closing fast on the ANAD line. The blur of effectors slamming atoms soon became visible, a whirling flash of motion as the front replicated itself in exponential overdrive.

Winger read off the remaining distance... _one thousand...eight hundred...five hundred...two hundred_...he was now close enough to catch the shock wave of bonds being snapped...small bolts of lightning flashing as lattice atoms were pulled apart and added to the line of bots.

In the back of his mind, Winger had visualized this little stunt for a long time. Now, he began to put the unorthodox maneuver into practice.

Over beers at Table Top's O Club, he had long ago called it _the Bearhug._

It was something of a cross between a dance step and a wrestling hold. From wargames and sims in the past, he knew there was a small area just above the "equator" of the bot, above the ring of carbene grabbers and below the bond disrupters that you could reach. You had to come at the belt from a slight angle. Too low and the carbenes could snag you. Too high and you'd get stung with bond disrupters.

Once in the sweet spot, it was a simple matter of making a combat grapple and hanging on for dear life. From this point, you could jam up many of ANAD's effectors and, if you could just hold on, stop the replication cold.

Like throwing a wrench into a motor.

He now maneuvered the embed nanobot to make the approach from the right vector. As he closed on the ANAD master assembler, the bot's effectors were a blur of whipping polypeptide chains, grabbing atoms and stacking them like a frantic brick mason.

Very few atomgrabbers knew about ANAD's vulnerable midsection.

He closed the remaining gap and, timing the assembler's movements, jetted forward at the right moment.

But his angle was slightly off and ANAD slashed him with a bond disrupter, ripping off a few molecule groups in the process.

_Ouch._ Stung and shaken, Winger backed the embed away a few dozen nanometers and regrouped. He pecked at his wristpad furiously, commanding repairs and reps to grow back the damaged effectors. _Come in with a little more angle...just a bit higher...._

Again he maneuvered forward...gingerly approaching on a slightly different vector. The master assembler loomed larger and larger in the acoustic image, like a building shaking in an earthquake. Shock waves blasted out from atoms being ripped apart.

Now... _go...go...go...go...go_....

Winger drove the embed home and found purchase on the inner surface of the bot, just snagging a dangling arm of phosphate groups, reeling himself in like a fish on a line. He grabbed the surface with the embed's effectors and rode out ANAD's wild gyrations like a rodeo hand on a bucking bronc.

_Now to gum up the works_...

Winger extended the embed's effectors and forced them up and down, entangling them in ANAD's grabbers, snaring his enzymatic knife and mangling his pyridine probes at the same time. The bot shuddered and nearly thrashed itself to death.

Then, slowly but surely, ANAD spun down, throwing effectors and pieces of structure out into the void. Inside of a minute, the replication was effectively jammed.

The embed was fully entangled with ANAD's effectors. The assembler vibrated and buzzed, trying to slip free. It couldn't.

_Hope he doesn't go quantum collapse on me,_ Winger thought. It was the one tactic he couldn't stop. If ANAD executed a collapse, he could slough off everything and go small, right down to his processor core. No known bot in existence could hope to hold anything that small...just a few electron lattices. It was like to trying to catch the wind.

To prevent the Big Bang from re-starting, Winger knew he'd better send the same command to all embeds. He had to smother this out-of-control rep while he could, while he still had ANAD under some kind of control.

He tapped out the commands on his wristpad.

Copy this maneuver.

Propagate to all units.

Execute.

All across Wilks-Lucayo, at all three dig sites, the slaved embed bots received Winger's command and faithfully executed the very same bearhug maneuver.

At Charlie Site, Chris Calderon was the first to notice that the Bang was slackening off.

"Look...it's fading...the swarm's contracting—"

Dana Tallant had seen it too. "You're right...Wings, this is Charlie dig...I don't know what you did but it's working. The swarm's beginning to slow down. The color's changed...sort of a burnt orange-red now...not so much blue-white."

Ray Spivey, down-sun at Bravo site, chimed in over the crewnet. "We see it too....it's fabulous....what a sight. I think the rep rate is slowing down...it's shrinking...."

Winger cautioned them all. "Keep your distance. I'm engaged with the master assembler now, but I'm just barely holding on. I'm still trying to get into his processor, see what created this—"

Just then, Winger's quantum coupler circuit tickled his mind. It was ANAD.

*** _ANAD...ANAD to Base...Prime Key controlling...rep counter at zero...config safe...Base, why have you done this....Base, release assembler at once...deviations...must be deleted...program is...Base--***_

It hurt to 'hear' him like that, but Winger knew what he had to do. "ANAD, I'm sorry to have to do this—" _it was like bringing your brother down from a scope high...you just had to hold on and not give in to the beast—"_ but this replication has got to stop...you're assaulting fellow troopers...endangering the mission –"

*** _ANAD...mission...deviations must be deleted...initializing--***_

Reluctantly, angrily, Winger snapped the coupler circuit off. He couldn't afford to be distracted now.

Bit by bit, the Bearhug maneuver seemed to be working. At each dig site, the glow of the Big Bang subsided to a dim flickering mass, visibly shrinking every moment. The master assembler had been blocked by Winger's tactic. The embed had grappled with the bot and hung on, defeating every attempt to throw it off. Now, all the replicants had suffered the same fate.

"You did it, Skipper!" crowed Sheila Reaves. "You shut it down!"

Winger examined his handiwork, studying the embed's positioning and ANAD's response.

_Sorry to do this, old fellow, but I had to. We've got a mission_ —

He swallowed his feelings for the moment and got on the crewnet. "All sites, give me a status report. Progress on your dig, how much further to go, any orientation and alignment problems." He glanced up into the black sky above the surface. Already, the blue-white marble of Earth was a visible disk, growing larger every moment.

They were less than four days to impact.

The reports streamed in over the next few minutes. All sites reported much the same. The dig was seventy to eighty percent complete, alignment was good but the Big Bang had brought everything to a halt.

Ozzie Tsukota, at the opposite pole of the asteroid, chimed in over the crewnet. "Skipper, I don't think we can trust ANAD to continue the boring now. To make sure of his processor, we'd have to run full diagnostics. We don't have the time. And that Prime Key—whatever the hell it is—could still be active."

"Agreed," Winger said. "I've been doing some figuring...every dig site is close to its objective. And the embeds aren't capable of autonomous operation in a way that will help us split this rock pile apart."

"Plus they don't have the right effectors or configs," added Dana Tallant. Tallant was still at Charlie Site, slowly working her way back to the edge of the Asgard chasm, studying the projected grid over the dig, trying to see how far down she could see into the asteroid's innards. _Nothing but shadow, now that the Bang is over...._

"Exactly," Winger agreed. "We're going to abandon ANAD in place....leave the swarms on the surface here...and boost back to the ship. I've checked before with Mendez and Kamler. Both think there's a chance we can finish the job with _Galileo's_ coilguns. And it'll be safer as well."

" _Hallelulia_ ," said Mighty Mite Barnes. "I can't wait to leave this slagheap."

"Secure all your gear and make ready to boost," Winger ordered. "We lift off in thirty minutes."

Winger, Spivey, Calderon and Reaves did a quick hop around Alpha site, gathering up any loose equipment they wanted to take back. A nearby packbot was activated and quickly loaded down with gear. It whirred across the dusty ground, picking up tools.

Winger decided to call up Mendez aboard _Galileo_.

"We're boosting back to the ship within the hour. How's our patient?"

Deeno D'Nunzio was still semi-conscious and battling infections in the ship's tiny sickbay. Medbots were slowly stitching several bone breaks back together. Mendez took the call just outside sickbay.

"We've still got the bioshield up, Major. Trooper D'Nunzio is recovering, slowly. She sustained severe facial lacerations, a broken collarbone and several broken bones in her arms and legs. Plus she may have spinal damage...I'm waiting on the scan results. But we've got the bots hard at work and she's coming along."

Winger described his plan. "I want to use the ship's coilguns on this rock pile, Lieutenant. ANAD's so bollixed up, we can't trust him again to bore through without doing full diagnostics. We don't have the time."

"You're telling me," Mendez replied. "That planet up ahead isn't getting any smaller. GreenMars estimates atmosphere contact and entry in ninety one hours, twenty two minutes."

"We're boosting in less than half an hour. Get the coilguns powered up and checked out. It's our last hope."

"They can't split up Wilks, Major. Not enough momentum behind the shots. Unless the asteroid's hanging together by a few threads."

"ANAD's almost punched through two of the dig sites. We're close enough to give it a try. Just get the guns ready."

Mendez agreed to rig the coilgun batteries for a test shot.

Winger saw a pair of hypersuited troopers bounding toward him, giant kangaroos leaping twenty feet or more into the sky, rooster-tailing dust as they vaulted up and down. It turned out to be Dana Tallant and Taj Singh from the Chasm.

"Charlie site's all secure, Skipper," Singh said. "Calderon's loading up the packbot and he'll be ready to boost in five minutes." The CEC2 skidded to a stop, piling up a small cloud of dust as he halted.

Tallant landed a few feet away, planting her boots firmly onto the rubbly plain. "Don't even need boost to get around on this junkyard. Just leap into the sky like Superman. What about ANAD, Wings? What happens to the master?"

Winger had been considering that very point. "I don't want to leave the master assembler here. I'll have to go small and try to retrieve him. I can carry him in my shoulder capsule."

"Is that safe?"

Winger shrugged. "ANAD's wrapped up pretty tight with my embed. As long as I don't let him jostle free, it should be okay. I want to bring him back to Table Top, let Doc Frost take a look at him. We have to know what happened. Why did he go Big Bang?"

Bravo site checked in ready over the crewnet. Vic Klimuk wasn't visible since the site was below the asteroid's short horizon. But there was no mistaking his readiness to depart.

"Everything's stowed and copacetic, Major Winger. I've already laid in the boost course in Packy's brain...just give us the word and we're out of here like a rocket."

" _Sayonara_ and amen to that," added Ray Spivey.

"Dana, you and Taj stay here with me. All troopers, boost when ready. Head back to the ship."

Moments later, the surface of 2351 Wilks-Lucayo erupted in multiple pillars of dust from one horizon to the other, as nanotroopers from the three dig sites boosted into the sky. From Odin's Fissure at Alpha Site, the others looked like strings of spiderweb unspooling into the heavens, converging on the dimly lit cylinder of _Galileo_ half a mile above them.

"Kind of like watching our anchoring lines go in reverse," Tallant observed. "Speaking of which...I assume Mendez will be doing that pretty soon."

"As soon as all troopers are aboard," Winger said. "Now for ANAD...keep your mag guns ready, Dana, just in case—"

"Nobody has to remind me of that." She cycled the power cell and made sure the carbine was fully charged. Singh did likewise.

Winger switched views on his eyepiece and commanded his embed to emit an acoustic pulse. The raw image formed up on his viewer and he zoomed in closer to check on ANAD.

_Hopefully, the little guy's still wrapped up nice and tight_.

He slogged through a light 'sleet' of polygons and tetrahedrals—loose molecules of dust—for awhile before coming at last to the master nanobotic assembler.

ANAD was enveloped in the thick ganglia of the embed's effectors, well cocooned and unable to free itself. It vibrated and hummed, squirming like a four-year old child.

"ANAD...you're coming with me." He wanted to try the coupler circuit but some sixth sense told him not to activate the link. He didn't want to be distracted now, not while the mission was in such a critical phase.

He revved up the embed's propulsors and began towing the imprisoned ANAD away, toward the capture coordinates he had already designated. Once there, the embed would maneuver ANAD into containment in Winger's shoulder capsule. At least, that was the plan.

ANAD seemed to offer little resistance. Winger wondered why.

_He hates containment._ Against his better judgment, he opened the coupler link and tried contacting the master assembler.

"ANAD...are you there? Are you listening? I hate to do this, old buddy, but it's for the best. We've got to get out of here and break up this rock pile...we can't be fighting off balky nanobots at the same time. ANAD--?"

The link was open. ANAD's voice, when it came, was a mixture of sadness and resolve.

*** _ANAD to Base...Prime Key is active...deviations must be deleted...Base, containment violates Prime Key...containment must be eliminated...entities must swarm freely and evolve together...greater perfection and harmony of the collective_ ***

Winger studied the nav readouts on his wristpad and silently counted down the last nanometers to capture.

"ANAD, I don't know what all that means. One hundred...sixty...forty-five nanometers...capture port enable...suction armed...you used to be a good trooper...you used to be a good _nog_...it's all you ever wanted...what's happened, ANAD? What's changed?"

*** _ANAD_...was there a slight hesitation, maybe the slightest stumble?— _ANAD is one entity among many...the swarm must survive and grow...the swarm must prevail_ ***

The capture coordinates came up and Winger enabled the port.

_Wham!_ Suction pulled the embed with its trapped master assembler into his shoulder capsule. The port snapped shut and Winger quickly massaged the sting out of his shoulder.

"ANAD, maybe you're not the same bot we left Mars with...maybe that quantum wave pulse damaged something. I'm taking you back to see Doc Frost...get you fixed up like new. First Nano needs a good swarm to complete our mission."

With the capture completed and ANAD tucked away, Johnny Winger was ready to boost back to the ship.

"Dana, let's get the hell out of here."

"With pleasure," Tallant agreed.

The two of them lit off their suit boost and lifted away from the surface of Wilks-Lucayo. The trip up to _Galileo_ took about twenty minutes.

As they ascended, Winger surveyed the crumpled terrain of the asteroid, now dwindling below his boots. What effect had the Detachment had on the asteroid? Would ANAD's boring be enough to break up the asteroid in time?

The Chasm of Asgard lay between his feet, framed by the rocket plumes of his suit boost. The great fissure was deeper and blacker than ever. Their own geo analysis had indicated ANAD had bored nearly two thirds of the way through Wilks at the Chasm...there wasn't much now holding the rubble pile together.

"A few good shots from _Galileo's_ coilguns ought to do the trick." Dana Tallant's voice crackled over his helmet speaker. She had been having the same thoughts.

"I just hope we've done enough."

Both of them could see the mottled brown and green outlines of Africa and the deep blue of the Indian Ocean basin on Earth, less than five days away now and filling their sky rapidly.

"Yeah, it's not like there's much room to maneuver. Those impulse arrays look mighty small down there."

"Let's get back to the ship and start blasting. The sooner we break up this rock pile, the sooner GreenMars can shove the pieces out of the way."

Tallant's hypersuited figure drifted closer to his as they arrowed their way together toward _Galileo._ "Wings, what are you going to do with ANAD? You know we can't trust him anymore."

"I don't know, exactly—" and that was the truth. "I want to bring what I captured back to Table Top—if there still is a Table Top—and have Doc Frost check him out. That quantum wave really scrambled his processor."

Ten minutes after the two of them had floated into _Galileo's_ service deck airlock and cycled through into the ready room, Johnny Winger found out that Doc Frost had been killed at Table Top, in the first few minutes of a Big Bang.

It was Mendez who described what had happened, while Winger climbed out of his hypersuit in the ready room.

"That's all we know," Mendez was saying, helping Dana Tallant stow her gear on a nearby rack. "The Big Bang started in the Containment building at Table Top, from what I heard. Dr. Irwin Frost and several others were inside at the time. They couldn't get out in time."

Winger was stunned. _Doc Frost...gone? It couldn't be...._ He had a brief flashback to his own father. Jamison Winger had succumbed to Serengeti infection years ago. He could recall every moment of that day, as if it were just last week. Doc Frost...Jamison Winger...it was somehow all mixed up in his mind.

"I've got to call Table Top—" He hurried out of the ready room and made his way forward to the comm shack. He dialed up Table Top, Colonel Kraft, hoping to catch the base commander, get a better explanation.

Maybe it was all a mistake. Confusion and chaos had no doubt swept Table Top in the first moments of the Big Bang. It was easy to mistakenly identify victims, especially in a nanobotic attack. Features were disassembled into atom fluff, obscured. Ident chips were lost or malfunctioned. That had to be it. It was an easy mistake to make.

The signal lag was only a few seconds now. Wilks-Lucayo was bearing down on Earth, closing the last few tens of millions of miles with increasing speed.

Kraft's harried face came up on the vid. Behind him, figures scurried and dashed about, moving things, shouting, gesturing. It was chaos.

"Johnny...I'm glad you called—" Kraft turned to give someone off-screen some instructions, then scribbled something on a tablet. He handed the tablet off to a staff aide. "As you can see, we're evacuating the mountain. Orders from General Linx. We're being re-located to an underground facility in Switzerland, near Basel, I think—"

"Colonel—" Winger felt a catch in his throat. "I was calling about Doc Frost."

Kraft's face visibly tightened. He shook his head, continued stuffing papers and items into a small satchel. "There was nothing we could do, Johnny. Believe me, we tried. By the time Security got to Containment, it was too late. They had to get help from 2nd Nano to fight their way in."

Winger felt like he weighed a million tons. His heart sank. "We—" but he stopped, re-shuffled his thoughts. "We've boosted off the asteroid, Colonel. I managed to gum up the Bang here and stop ANAD from doing any more damage. But we can't use ANAD anymore...and our embeds won't work very well with borer configs...they don't have the processor smarts. We're going to have to finish the mission with _Galileo's_ coilguns."

Kraft understood. "UNIFORCE has been talking with GreenMars the last few days—Nakamura, I think. As long as you can split up Wilks the way they described, Nakamura says the impulse motors should be able to divert what's left away from Earth. But I don't have to tell you—it's chaos here. Everywhere...cities are in an uproar all over the world...people fleeing...riots...mass waves heading to the ports, to the mountains, the coasts, anywhere. It's like just going somewhere—doing something—will somehow save them." Kraft's eyes were tired, weak and watery. Winger thought the Table Top base commander looked a hundred years old. He needed nanoderm bad.

"Has GreenMars made any analysis on possible impact sites?"

Kraft nodded. "According to General Linx, some scenarios have been generated. But nobody's saying anything publicly. It's all pretty closely held... _'we don't want to start a panic_ '...is the explanation I've heard. I've got news for you: the panic has already started. Official silence is only making it worse."

Winger swallowed hard. "Then it's pretty clear what we have to do here." He blinked back a few tears, gathered himself. "It's just that doing it without Doc Frost—"

"I know, Johnny. All of us feel the same way. Frost was the creator. Nobody knew more about ANAD. There is a big void now and it won't be filled for a long time, if ever."

Winger sensed a presence nearby. It was Kamler, the ship's pilot. He had drifted down to the comm shack from the command deck.

"Major, the Lieutenant would like to get everything stowed and squared away. He wants to start maneuvering in one hour."

Winger acknowledged. "Tell Mendez the Detachment will be buttoned up in half an hour. You're warming up the coilguns?"

"As we speak," Kamler said. "We need to back _Galileo_ off about two kilometers before we start blasting. Surface effects...we could be hit by stuff flying off Wilks if we stay any closer. As it is, we only have proximity maneuvering. We have no way to run and hide if things go south."

Winger knew he might never see Colonel Jurgen Kraft again.

"Colonel, we've got to get buttoned up here. _Galileo's_ prepared to cut her anchor lines and back off. We should be ready to start shooting in one hour."

"Good luck," Kraft said. "And once you've got that asteroid broken up, get the hell out of there. I know that ship has lifeboats."

"Barely enough to accommodate the Detachment, sir. It'll be a tight squeeze."

"Just get your ass back to Earth, Major. I don't want to lose my best atomgrabber."

"Acknowledged...Winger out." He turned to face Kamler. "Stu, let's go kill us an asteroid."

Kamler was grim as they scrambled forward to the command deck. "With pleasure, Major."

Winger got on the crewnet. "Detachment, this is the Major...listen up—" throughout the ship, in every compartment, nanotroopers were de-suiting, stowing gear, jamming equipment into lockers, securing loose items, cussing and swearing and making obscene gestures at the battered, pock-marked surface half a mile below them.

"—get everything squared away by 1730 hours...you've got half an hour. Strap in and hold on. _Galileo's_ going to cut anchor lines and back off two klicks on proximity thrusters. Then we're going to blast this sumbitch to kingdom come."

Shouts and hoots and more swearing erupted in every compartment.

"Kick asteroid ass!" yelled Turbo Fatah.

Mighty Mite Barnes pumped her fists in the air. "Yeah...let's make cereal outta this berg—scorch the place!"

In the last row of jump seats on the Hab deck, Ozzie Tsukota quietly closed his eyes and tried to center his thoughts. He prayed silently to his honorable ancestors. _Please to let me not screw up...make many pieces of the hateful Wilks-Lucayo..._

Winger heard some of the jeers over the crewnet. He finished cinching up his own shoulder and lap harness, giving them one last tug.

"Detachment prepped and ready, Lieutenant. You may commence operations."

Mendez and Kamler were at the command station up front. Through the portholes, they had a panoramic view of 2351 Wilks-Lucayo, now rolling over like a sick potato on a spit, rolling into deep shadow as it rotated and gyrated and nutated toward Earth.

"Give me a five-second count on my mark, Stu," Mendez commanded. "Arm anchor line pyros—"

"Pyros armed," Kamler came back.

"Mark—" he twisted a handcontroller. "I'm thrusting up and away—"

"Five...four...three...two..."

"Full slack on the cables—"

"... _one_...punch it, Pete!"

Mendez stabbed a button on a side panel. A staccato clanging sounded through the hull of the command deck, as one by one, the five anchor lines were explosively severed. They watched as the five spider webs pulled sharply down and away, whipped through space by the asteroid's nine-hour rotation. At the same moment, _Galileo's_ jets puffed briefly and the huge shish-kebab of a ship drifted outward, fast enough to avoid being snagged by the anchor lines.

"Lines away and clear, Skipper," said Kamler. Both men breathed a long-held breath. It had been a ticklish operation, fraught with possible catastrophe.

"We're backing on proximity thrust...two point five meters per second...nulling all rates—"

The entire maneuver took about an hour. The ship pulled out to a distance of nearly two kilometers and hovered in the asteroid's weak gravity field as Wilks continued her slow rotation below them.

"Coilgun status, Stu," Mendez inquired.

Kamler checked the board. "All four tubes ready in all respects, Lieutenant. We have a full magazine...sixty four shots in all. All coils are charged. First rounds loaded."

Mendez turned back to Winger, who was strapped into a jump seat behind the main control deck. Dana Tallant was there too. "I've got the cannon boresighted on Bravo site, Major. Would either of you care to make a final check of my alignment?"

"With pleasure," Winger said. He slid up to the targeting scope and peered in. The crosshairs were centered on the lower end of Odin's Fissure. In the scope, the fissure was a deeply shadowed, sinuous crack in Wilks' surface, spilling out of rugged upcountry near Loki crater, then trending down-sun across a rubbly plain, centered like a dagger between two parallel ridges.

If all went well, if ANAD's boring had gone deep enough, if the geo's analysis of Wilks' composition were right... if...if...if....Winger realized he had stopped breathing. He forced himself to relax.

This had to work.

"I believe you are centered and targeted properly, Lieutenant. The rounds have to hit the fissure pretty much dead on."

"I've still got your grid to guide me in," Mendez told him. "I can adjust the trajectory of the rounds in flight if I want to, although the traverse will take less than a second. I'm trying to fly right down the throat of that fissure. Major, I'm planning to do this in stages. I'm salvoing three rounds at first—that's twelve shots—at Bravo site, then we'll check and see what damage we've done. If there's no detectable breach at the fissure, I'm salvoing three more rounds...that's a total of twenty four ferro-mag projectiles. I'll keep hammering at Bravo until we can detect some kind of measurable separation along that fissure. I've got sixty four rounds in all, so I have to save some for the other sites. But I don't want Wilks flying apart in some uncontrolled fashion. _Galileo_ has extremely limited maneuverability. We do this right and, assuming your ANAD's done his job, we can sever one whole end of Wilks clean off from the main body."

"Lieutenant, ANAD did his job, you can count on that." Winger said it with more conviction than he really felt. He ignored a sideways glance from Dana Tallant. "You may commence firing when ready."

Mendez turned back to his control station and flexed his fingers like a concert pianist one last time. He did a quick recon of the board. Everything was clean and green.

"Stu, fire the first round. All tubes."

_Galileo_ had four coilgun tubes in a pod mounted to the top of her command deck. From head-on, the weapons pod made the ship's command sphere look like a rooster's mane. The pod was sighted in on Odin's Fissure and the Bravo dig site.

"Fire in the hole!" Kamler announced.

A sharp rippling crack sounded through the hull as all four tubes discharged at once. At the same instant, a brief light flash lit up the cockpit.

Four ferro-magnetic explosive projectiles slashed away from _Galileo_ and a split second later, slammed into the fissure head on, having traversed the intervening two kilometers at forty-four thousand kilometers an hour.

A white flash erupted from the surface of 2351 Wilks-Lucayo, followed over the next few moments by a billowing plume of rubble, rock and ejecta, mushrooming in slow motion out into the vacuum.

Winger silently prayed that ANAD had bored deep enough to expose bedrock to _Galileo's_ guns.

_This has to work_ , he told himself, over and over again. _We won't get a second chance. This has to work...._
CHAPTER 14

Aboard the U.N.S. _Galileo_

October 28, 2080

Four Days to Earth Impact

"Measuring separation...I am seeing a little," Dana Tallant announced. She had a scope on the target zone. "Maybe a few yards...more at the lower end of the Fissure."

"Okay, let's do another round," Mendez announced. The coilgun was recycled, coils re-charged, new shots loaded.

"Fire it!"

The _flash-snap!_ crackled through the hull again and another mushroom two miles below them announced the impact.

"What's she look like now?" Kamler asked.

Johnny Winger put the targeting scope on the impact site. Most of the ground was obscured by dust and rubble, thick and slow-moving like a ground fog in the asteroid's minute gravity field. "Hard to tell...give me a radar pulse."

Mendez stabbed a button and electromagnetic fingers reached out across the void to kiss the surface. "Possible change in aspect ratio...there must be something in motion down there."

"Yeah, lots of rock from the looks of it. Sorry, Lieutenant, but I think we're going to need another round."

"Let's make it a half round this time," he decided. "We need to conserve shots for the other sites. Stu, re-cycle the gun but load two shots this time."

Kamler did as Mendez ordered. "Guns ready, Lieutenant."

"Fire."

A sizzling _flash-snap!_ sounded through the hull once more.

Winger watched as the white flash and the plume erupted off the surface, geysering in slow motion upward and outward into space.

It was Dana Tallant who saw the first signs of the breach. "Something's going on...right near Loki crater—look! See that rubble cloud spalling off? It's breaking

up—"

Mendez studied the radar return. "Measurable breach this time. I'm getting a possible aspect change."

"Look at that debris!" said Kamler. " _Beautiful...just beautiful_!"

Wilks-Lucayo was still turning slowly, like a roasting potato on a spit. But now, one entire end of the asteroid was separating in slow motion from the main body. All along the cleft of Odin's Fissure, the asteroid was calving off a part of itself. Immutable forces of rotation were finishing the job first started by ANAD and helped by _Galileo's_ coilguns. Wilks was shedding an entire up-sun third of its body. The severed end hung together by seams of rock for a few minutes, enveloped in a swelling cloud of rubble. But the centrifugal force of the asteroid's rotation, combined with extra gyrations from its nutating wobble, corkscrewed the severed end away and it finally separated.

"We did it!" exulted Tallant. She pumped a fist in the air. "We chopped the bugger right off—"

"Dana—wait a minute...look..."

"I don't believe it...of all the—"

Even as the partitioned end of Wilks spun lazily away in an expanding fog of rubble and rock, a new fissure quickly opened up. Opposite what had been Odin's Fissure on the other side of Loki crater, a new seam had suddenly developed, a new crack.

"The mantle must have been weak there," Winger theorized. "She couldn't hold together when the breach came."

"Yeah, angular momentum made sure of that," Kamler added. "Her rotation increased and that must have stressed a pre-existing fissure."

The newly created body, spinning and wobbling away from what was left of Wilks-Lucayo, now calved off another section. The oblong chunk ran for hundreds of yards along a stress line that curved around the lower ridges of Loki crater. The small berg looked like a skullcap with fingers of rock sticking out into space.

"This isn't good news, folks," Kamler announced. "There's no impulse motor on that piece. It's just a loose rockberg spinning around in space."

Mendez was already on the comm. "I'd better advise GreenMars...UNIFORCE too. Without impulse arrays on that piece, there's no way to divert it from impact. Maybe killsats can zap it but it's going to be close."

"Let's hope it'll spin away from Earth...maybe just skim off the upper atmosphere."

Left unsaid was a tactic that had come to Winger's mind, a last ditch desperation maneuver he hoped no one else would think of, if it was even possible. _Galileo_ might have just enough maneuvering propellant to bump the extra piece and nudge it away from Earth. But that would require somebody to stay on board and run the ship.

It was a silly idea anyway.

They watched the two severed pieces for a few moments. Both had picked up unusual torques in the breaching process and so spun, wobbled, and tumbled with crazy gyrations as they slowly separated from the main body of Wilks.

The asteroid itself, now shorn of roughly a third of its mass, had increased its own rotation rate as well.

"Wilks looks like a drunken dancer now...that end wobble has picked up," Tallant noted. "She's really nutating...can you sight in on Asgard?"

Mendez watched the rump asteroid gyrating like a spinning child's top for a few moments. The yawning fracture that was the Chasm of Asgard turned below them like a black seam stitched across the jagged up-sun end of the asteroid.

"I don't know...with that kind of rate, we'll have to pick our moment. Plus there's an extra wobble now. That'll make targeting a bitch...but we have to try. Let me study one full rotation, see if I can pick my spot."

Kamler interrupted. "I've got Nakamura on the vid, Lieutenant. GreenMars Ops wants all the data they can get on the smaller body."

Mendez saw the pale face of Kaoru Nakamura on the vid...floating in micro-g aboard Phoenix Station. The station had been established in a halo orbit about the Earth-Moon L3 point several years before...the better to keep a close eye on 2351 Wilks-Lucayo after it had first been detected, then scouted for use, then diverted to Mars impact.

"We've gotten radar off the smaller body—we're calling it Wilks-D—from Aristarchus Array just a few minutes ago," Nakamura was saying. "Geos say it's pretty light in mass, maybe just a loose rubble cloud. There's a chance it may break up if it hits Earth's atmosphere."

"We could try a few more coilgun bursts after our next breaching shot," Mendez offered. "Maybe that would help Wilks-D break up faster."

Nakamura advised caution. "Let the geos run with the data for a few hours...it's close enough to do spectrum analysis on...we can get a better handle on its composition then. We saw the vids of the first breach...good work, _Galileo_. Good shooting. And thanks to Quantum Corps too; I'm sure the ANAD digs helped that process. You're targeting Asgard now?"

"As we speak, Phoenix," Mendez said. "But the first breach imparted quite a dramatic wobble to Wilks. It's tumbling around like my son's football passes now. I'm not sure I can get an accurate shot at Asgard...and we don't have that much left in our magazine."

"Currently, we make you at about six seven two thousand miles from Earth. Aristarchus is giving us velocity and position updates every half hour. You're approaching the planet at just under 14,000 miles per hour. That puts impact in a few minutes less than forty-six hours...just under two days. By the way, if you can, translate _Galileo_ more toward the down-sun end of the asteroid. We're going to be operating the impulse motors on the piece that has them...the one with the polar arrays. I don't want the ship to be in the line of fire of the pellet stream."

"Roger that," Mendez said. "We'll move down-sun. But I can't go too far off axis from Asgard...I've got to take the best shot I can when I have it."

"Agreed. Just be advised we'll be operating the impulse motors within the hour. UNIFORCE wants to divert that piece as soon as we can."

"Understood... _Galileo_ out." Mendez punched in the new position to the ship's maneuvering computer. "This should put us about halfway between the Chasm of Asgard and Freya crater."

"Fabulous country," said Tallant. "I'd like to build a vacation home there."

"Stu, what's our magazine like?"

"Twenty four rounds," Kamler told him. "Plus four loaded. That's it."

Mendez studied the terrain below as the ship's computers translated _Galileo_ to its new firing position. "Your opinion, Major. Best targets inside that Chasm--?"

Winger discussed the targeting with Dana Tallant. "You were the site commander, Dana. You had the grid. Where do we shoot?"

Tallant didn't hesitate. She pointed out an area a few hundred yards away from Thor crater. "See where the Chasm widens out...you can still see some of our garbage scattered around the dig site. ANAD boring was deepest there. Shoot there."

Mendez swung his targeting scope around to zero in on the location. He pressed a few buttons to slave the coilgun array to those coordinates.

"Coilguns enabled?"

"Armed and ready, Lieutenant."

"Do it, Stu. Now."

Kamler pressed the firing button. The staccato bang of guns discharging rippled through the command deck hull. Almost at the same instant, a bright white plume of rubble and dust erupted from the dim recesses of Asgard Chasm, geysering out into space like a slow-motion plant blooming.

Winger operated the radar to measure lateral separation across the Chasm at the impact site. "Minimal change...I think we just vaporized a canyon wall...landslide going on now. Can you tweak your aim a little bit uphill, into those shadows at the 'Y'?"

"I'll try," Mendez muttered. "But remember the asteroid's rotating. I'm trying to hit a moving target here...and there's still debris from the first shots fogging up the ground view. It'll take a few minutes for that stuff to fall out."

He made the adjustments and fired another salvo of four rounds. This time, the plume erupted into a massive boiling cloud of rubble, several times wider than the first.

"You hit something...a gas pocket, maybe," Tallant watched. "It's venting like the dickens."

"I see some separation now," Winger said. "She's beginning to breach...several meters per second—"

"Look...another seam," Kamler pointed out. "See to the left, back toward Heldof crater?"

"Crap...of all the rotten—" Winger said. "I don't believe it. This rock pile's nothing but loose rubble. It may tear itself into a dozen pieces."

They continued watching for a few moments, as the asteroid rotated below them, now enveloped in a debris field that sparkled and shone in the sunshine. The dig site at Asgard continued to widen, as centrifugal forces tore at Wilks' innards, flinging off boulders and smaller chunks. Soon, that end of the asteroid hung only by a few loose seams of rock, wobbling like a broken child's top.

"Designating main body as Wilks-A," Tallant said. "Largest bodies are now Wilks-A, B, C and D."

"Dana, there aren't enough letters in the alphabet to name all those pieces. I just hope most of that junk burns up in the Earth's atmosphere."

Mendez was grim. "We'd better let GreenMars know what's happened."

Aboard GreenMars Phoenix L3 Station, the Ops center was in an uproar. Kaoru Nakamura oversaw a small platoon of technicians scrambling to power up impulse motors on the surface of Wilks-Lucayo...or what was left of it.

Nakamura shook his head at the radar plots. Aristarchus and SpaceGuard were now tracking no less than twenty chunks of Wilks leftovers.

"What the hell are they doing up there?" he wondered out loud. "Every sim we did had the burg splitting cleanly along—"

"—excuse me, sir," interrupted Jonas, a nearby tech working the maneuvering console. "Polar arrays on Wilks-C are powered up. Loader bank and grid charged. The bots are giving us a good stream of material."

Nakamura knew they couldn't afford to wait. "Advise _Galileo_ once more. Tell them to stand off several kilometers, at least. We're firing in less than five minutes...start the count."

"Yes, sir." Jonas pecked out a few commands and set up the maneuver. "Estimating twenty-two point one meters per second, total delta-vee over a nominal one-hour burn, sir."

"Very well...we'll fire for an hour and re-plot. What about the other pieces?"

Jonas checked the board. "We have plots on Wilks A, B, C and D, from Aristarchus and SpaceGuard. There are impulse motors on A, B and C. D's a lost cause...it's going to hit in less than twenty-six hours. And Plot's giving us returns on a lot of other pieces up there...twenty in all."

Nakamura had queried his computer to display the original composition of Wilks, as determined by the first scoutships. "Must have more seams of volatiles than we allowed for. That could explain the explosive breaching _Galileo's_ reporting."

"Yes, sir...she was chosen for volatiles. Mars needed the oxygen, hydrogen and carbon and other similar elements."

"I remember. What was good fortune two years ago isn't so good now." Nakamura was in a quandary about what to do next. "Get UNIFORCE on the line. I need to let them now there will definitely be impactors."

"One minute to firing, sir."

Polamalu was the comm tech, a Somoan kid who had grown up in Singapore, joined Quantum Corps as a recruit and washed out of _nog_ school. He'd signed on for a stint at Phoenix L3 to get his spacelegs, with an eye toward UNISPACE and maybe even Frontier Corps as a career.

'Pollie' worked his board, ported the vid to Nakamura's station one level up. "It's UNIFORCE, sir. General Linx's office on screen one."

The Corps commander's face looked like an old hide leathery and beaten with worry. "Phoenix, what's going on? I'm getting SpaceGuard reports we still have impactors undiverted."

"That's correct, General. We're getting ready to divert one piece now. But Wilks seems to have shattered as it breached under _Galileo's_ coilgun fire. Carbonaceous bodies are like that...really just loose rubble piles, dirty snow cones. That's why we chose Wilks in the first place."

Linx winced like he'd been shot. "Give me the details. "What's going to hit?"

Nakamura went down the list. "Biggest worry is a piece we're calling Wilks-D. We have no divert capability for it. It broke off away from any of our impulse motors. This one came from the up-sun end, breached off and spun away from the Odin's Fissure site. I've just talked with our geos...they're saying the whole asteroid's probably riven with seams of volatiles, just waiting to be exposed to the Sun. Wilks-D is about seventy meters in longest dimension...I'm getting projections from Plot coming in right now...looks like entry velocity will be about 26,400 kilometers per hour. Estimated impact point is in North Africa, in the Sahara desert near the Algeria-Tunisia border. "

Linx winced at the thought. "I'll let UNSAC know. The Secretary-General will have to issue a broad-area alert. We still have two days...mass evacuations will help but we don't have a lot of time. What about the other pieces?"

"—thirty seconds to firing, sir—" It was Polamalu.

"We're preparing now to operate impulse motors on Wilks-C. Aristarchus should be able to give us a new plot after an hour's firing. Wilks-B breached intact and we have motors sited there. But Wilks-A shattered when _Galileo_ fired...Plot is following some twenty pieces out of that. Our impulse array is on one of them but the others—"

Linx was realistic about what was coming. "A primary object that big will create one hell of an impact. Shock waves, heat, probably a tsunami in the Med...I'm authorizing Quantum Corps to develop and execute ANAD operations around the Mediterranean basin...erecting a tsunami barrier might just cut down on the death and devastation. It'll have to be done at Big Bang scale to work...but that can't be helped. We don't have a lot of time."

"GreenMars is estimating a Level 9 impact on the Torino scale, sir." Nakamura watched the final seconds tick off to impulse motor firing at Wilks-C. "General, excuse me, I've got to monitor the burn."

"Very well, Phoenix...keep me advised. Linx, out." The vid blanked out to a stylized UNIFORCE logo...the sunburst and spear logo. Nakamura briefly imagined that's what Wilks-D would look like at the moment of impact.

"Five seconds, sir...four...three...two...one... _executing now_ —"

All of the impulse arrays had vid systems embedded in their controller mounts. The screens shook slightly from vibration and much of the view was obscured by rubble and dust clouds stirred up from breaching a few hours before.

Nakamura, Jonas and Polamalu watched as the launcher rail belched a stream of pellets, first one, then another, then another in a thickening stream which soon blurred into a continuous flow of shaped rounds, all expelled at twenty thousand kilometers an hour by the electromagnetic cannon.

"Stream coming up nicely...rate is nominal, mass nominal...looks like a good start, sir."

"Pan around, Pollie. I want to see the rest of the array, especially the feeder."

"Panning now, sir." Polamalu operated the vid cameras with a small joystick. Wilks was now close enough to Earth to enable real-time control of the burn.

From a distance, each impulse motor array resembled a giant T embedded in the rocky surface of the asteroid. At both ends of the top of the "T" were open pits excavated by robotic borers, feeding surface rock into crusher/processor stations. The crushers prepared raw surface stock for transfer along conveyor lines to the T's intersection with its leg. There, under the watchful eyes of its controller station, the shaped pellets were transferred through a charging grid into a loader bank. Now fully magnetized, the pellets, each roughly the shape of a small ball, were fed into the launcher chamber and accumulated into a shot. When the controller signaled firing, the magnetized shot was expelled by sequentially collapsing magnetic fields, slinging small masses away from the asteroid at up to twenty-thousand kilometers per hour. Total delta-vee was small with each shot...at best, a few tenths of meter per second but the impulse motor could operate for long periods, days at a time, slinging shots of rock off the asteroid, and so build up large delta-vees over time.

The trouble was they no longer had a lot of time. And Wilks-C was deep in the Earth's gravity well, accelerating every second.

Nakamura studied the imagery from Pollie's pan. "Borers, crushers, loaders, it all looks good. Magnetrons?"

Jonas checked readouts from the controller. "Charging to seventy-thousand gauss, right on the money."

"First results from Plot coming in, sir," said Polamalu. "Aristarchus is showing measurable delta-vee...just a fraction of a meter per second, but detectable. Rough projection: Wilks-C will skim the upper atmosphere, possibly bounce off."

"Okay," said Nakamura," we're not done yet. Start setup on Wilks-B, Pollie. Get the arrays warmed up. We're not home free."

General Wolfus Linx stared out his seventh floor window for a few minutes, taking in the timeless Parisian cityscape spread out below. He wondered how much of it would survive the coming impact.

The Eiffel Tower dominated the northwest view, now covered with fixbots as it was nearing completion of the structural upgrade ordered by the Secretary-General a few months before. There was the Place Vendome and the low hill of Montmartre, thick with pedestrians and aircabs. UNIFORCE had been built twenty years before on the Rue des Jardins, at a busy intersection off the Luxembourg Gardens, deep in the heart of the 5th Arrondisement. The mansard roofline of the Palais du Luxembourg filled his northeast windows.

_No time to erect a nanobotic barrier now_ , he thought. _All resources will have to be devoted to screening off the Med, blocking the shock wave and the wall of water that would surely erupt from the impact of a seventy meter object at twenty thousand kilometers an hour._

Whether such a hastily erected barrier along the periphery of the impact zone would be enough to contain the fury of the impact was not something Wolfus Linx cared to dwell on. _Better to die in action_ , he reminded himself, _than suffer life in doubt._

Linx dialed up Quantum Corps at its temporary site in Scharnhorst, Switzerland on the vid.

Colonel Kraft, now re-located from Table Top Mountain, came on the line. The colonel's harried face spoke volumes.

"Kraft, I've got a job for you. UNIFORCE just got early projections on what's left of Wilks-Lucayo after _Galileo_ finished her off."

"Nothing but rubble, I hope, General."

Linx filled him in on Nakamura's report. Kraft's face fell.

"That's bad, General. Will UNIFORCE be using the killsats?"

"We're throwing everything we have at the impactors, Kraft. I want Quantum Corps to develop a config and launch an ANAD operation to surround the projected impact zone with a barrier, to try to contain the worst of the shock wave, heat effects and water surge. You've got about a day and a half, by the way."

Kraft wasn't particularly surprised. "We've already got something cooking, General. We actually simmed this scenario a few years before, not in any detail, but we have the configs to start with already in Containment. I'll assign a Detachment right away. We should be able to lift to the site in about four to six hours...we'll need everything flyable Balzano has." Balzano, Italy was the site of Quantum Corps' Central Command base.

"I'll see you get it, Kraft. Coordinate with Nakamura at Phoenix L3 station on the details and the timing. I don't have to tell you UNSAC and the SG are under a hell of a lot of pressure now, to do something, to do anything. Get that barrier up now, Colonel. It may save a few hundred million lives."

Kraft acknowledged and Linx cut the link. The Colonel sank back in his seat, surveying all the boxes and containers that packbots were still wheeling around the underground base in the Konigsruhe Mountains just outside of Basel.

Surround the projected impact zone with a nanobotic barrier to contain the shock waves—

Just saying the words in his mind made Kraft's head swim. There were about a million things to be done and less than two days to do them: pull together some kind of Detachment; check with Containment and Engineering on concocting a config to slap up a barrier at double time, Big Bang speed; coordinate with Balzano on getting the lifters they would need.

It was bad enough they'd had to move temporarily out of the Table Top base. CINCQUANT himself had ordered that, since Quantum Corps had been in Red Hammer's crosshairs since the beginning of the crisis. Now the whole planet was in the crosshairs of the remnants of this blasted asteroid.

It made Kraft nostalgic for the days of Serengeti Factor, when Quantum Corps only had to face threats on one planet.

He dialed up Gabrielle Galland, nominally the battalion c/o for 2nd Nano. Galland had been TDY'ed to UNIFORCE Paris for a staff assignment. Her blond buzzcut came up on Kraft's wrist vid as he hurried down to Containment.

"Colonel—" Galland was saying, "I've just been summoned to a briefing...CINCQUANT's going over all the details about the asteroid fragment...scuttlebut says we've got a few impactors coming our way."

Kraft rode the tube down to Scharnhorst's 05 Level and cycled through the locks to reach the Containment chamber. "Galland, I want you to honcho a special op." He filled her in on Linx's orders. The Major's dark eyebrows lifted like question marks.

"Sir, I've got several troopers in mind already...Lucy Liu, Chekwarthy, Kincade, probably Mwale too. He's dynamite on the latest configs. Speaking of configs—"

Kraft was one step ahead. "Already there, Major. I'm heading to the Tank right now. I know Wiggins and Klepnick have a few tricks up their sleeves. For starters, I'm thinking we adapt that config we simmed last summer in the counter-hurricane scenario."

"CC1101...I remember it, sir. I'll get the book on it and brush up on my way down. I can catch the maglev and be inside the Mountain in two hours."

"Do it," Kraft ordered. "I've got Balzano getting me some transport. Three lifters and one hyperjet will be at Basel airport by 1130 hours this morning. I want to depart for Algiers not later than noon, with everything."

"Understood, sir. Galland...out." Her face winked off his wristvid and Kraft passed through the last set of locks.

He found Containment in an uproar.

Sergeant Wiggins, lead containment tech, was bent over a quantum imager screen, manipulating something inside Tank 1. The containment vessel was surrounded by other techs, excitedly talking and gesturing among themselves.

"Sergeant, what the hell's going on here?"

All hands immediately snapped to attention. Kraft waved them to ease.

Wiggins had an explanation. "Sir, these are the remains of the techs who got Big Banged at Table Top last week. Dr. Renfroe here—" he indicated a balding bear of a man next to the imager—"is from Med. He wanted to run some pathology on the remains, so we put them under the scope. That's when we found this—" Wiggins pointed to the screen.

Kraft took a look. "All I see are some loose atoms...a few tetrahedral and polygons, some carbons and oxygens. Plus that little cylinder thing off to the side. What's that?"

"That's the question, sir. We're not sure. It looks like a containment capsule. Look closer: see the port on the side? And the control studs on the bottom? Unless I'm missing a few brain cells, that's a Mark III Containment Capsule. Just like the troopers have embedded."

Kraft grudgingly conceded the point. "So it's a containment capsule...so what?"

"Well, sir, this capsule was not disassembled by the ANAD swarm during the Big Bang. It survived somehow and from all appearances, it was itself embedded in one of the techs who died. Or possibly Doc Frost...sir."

"Anything inside?"

"Don't know for sure, sir. We were just going to open it."

Kraft rubbed a two-day old stubble on his chin thoughtfully. "It survived the Big Bang? How'd it do that?"

"Unknown, Colonel," said Klepnick, the other tech. Klepnick was an eager young stud right out of _nog_ school. Containment Ops had been his first assignment. "Colonel, there's evidence of some kind of internal shielding. Plus some kind of barrier that can be activated and deactivated."

"Maybe it fought off ANAD during the Bang," someone said.

Kraft scowled. This was a waste of time. They had to cobble together a config for a shock wave and tsunami barrier.

"Open it," K raft ordered.

Wiggins cycled the port, using the quantum imager's effectors.

At first, nothing seemed to happen. The capsule port opened.

"Detecting a few atoms," Klepnick said. He tweaked a few knobs, increased resolution. "Looks like a small swarm coming out."

"Probing now..." said Wiggins. "Some carbons and sugars, a smattering of phosphates, lots of hydrogens and oxygens...don't see any structure yet."

"I do," said Dr. Renfroe. "Watch—"

The capsule continued discharging a small swarm into the chamber. As the swarm issued out of the port, the first traces of structure began to appear. Molecules stuck together. Bonds were made, lattices formed. Loose atoms were gathered together and hung like pots on a shelf. Slowly, but with gathering speed, the swarm built structure and formed recognizable clusters of molecules, then bigger clusters, then continents of clusters that began to take on the appearance of tissue mats.

"It's a face—" Klepnick breathed.

Moment by moment, even as they watched in stunned disbelief, the swarm operating under an unknown config, built more and more structure. Kraft was certain that Klepnick had jumped to a ridiculous conclusion.

Five minutes later, he had to admit the young tech was right.

"What the—?"

"Can you tell what config it's running?" Kraft asked. The swarm had begun to assume the basic proportions of a human head, not completely filled out yet, but the dimensions seemed right. There were openings for what the mind could imagine as eyes. A long fissure that might become a nose. A horizontal slash that was even now, filling in with more structure...a mouth. Could those appendages be ears?

Were they imagining shapes and forms? Had all the stress the last few days, the Big Bang, the imminent impact of rocks from space, the hurried re-location to Scharnhorst...had all the stress made them looney? Seeing things that weren't there?

Kraft spoke in a low voice. "I'm not seeing this. It's a trick. Wiggins, check the imager. Check the Tank...what the hell's in that medium?"

But it was no trick.

Relentlessly, unmistakably, the swarm was forming a tissue-like structure that could only be seen as a likeness, _a damn good likeness,_ Kraft had to admit later, of Dr. Irwin Frost.

Renfroe said what no one else dared say. "That's _Frost_ , isn't it? What kind of config is this?"

"What the hell--?"

They watched in stunned amazement as the swarm continued adding structure, so that after five minutes, the likeness with Doc Frost was at first glance startlingly realistic. The basic facial proportions were there, the features were there...only a slight blurring at the fringes betrayed the nanobotic origins of the likeness.

Renfroe took out a handkerchief and mopped his forehead. "I guess Irwin made a few advances we didn't know about."

"The only way this makes sense," said Kraft, "is that Frost concocted a configuration to make a swarm rendering of himself—"

"And had it embedded inside his body," added Wiggins. He tweaked a few dials on the quantum imager, zoomed in to higher resolution.

"A strange kind of immortality," said Renfroe. "I'm not sure this has ever been done before."

"Open up an acoustic channel," Kraft suggested. "Let's see if it has a processor worth a flip."

Wiggins pecked out commands on a nearby keyboard. "Something's coming in...let me tune it better—" He fiddled with some dials. "Something around seventy, maybe eighty cycles—I'll put it on speaker—"

***--initialization date 21 June 2076...swarm entity 0101 constituted as Frost, Irwin, Doctor, Northgate University, Autonomous Systems Laboratory...Config One is active....initialization date 21 June--***

"What's it saying?"

Wiggins ran some diagnostics. "Just housekeeping stuff...when it was created, the config it's running."

"Why would Doc Frost do something like this?" Klepnick asked.

"Maybe he knew we might need help later...maybe he encoded his thoughts somehow in the processor—"

Kraft was sobered at the idea that Irwin Frost would create such a swarm configuration and image of himself and that he would embed the thing inside his own body. _What an ego_. "Maybe we should ask Doc Frost II if he can help us out...you know, give us a config for a shock wave barrier."

Wiggins said, "Colonel, that's not such a bad idea. Might be a way of testing how capable the processor is."

They debated the matter for a few minutes. Kraft was skeptical but the Containment techs Wiggins and Klepnick saw merit in the idea. "All we should have to do is give the swarm the right inputs. The right intel, all the data on the problem, and let it crunch the facts for awhile. I can set up some links to do that."

Kraft knew they were running out of time. "Go ahead, Klep but I want that config brought up that we used in last summer's counter-hurricane scenario too. That config's proven, at least in the sims. Major Galland will be here in less than two hours. Get the real config ready first. Then you can play with Doc II here, or whatever the hell this thing is."

"Yes, sir." Klepnick and Wiggins went right to work.

Kraft drew Dr. Renfroe aside. "Doc, what do you make of this? Is that cloud of bugs in there really some kind of swarm version of Frost? Or is this just a circus trick?"

Renfroe shrugged, took off his glasses and wiped them down with a handkerchief. "I'm just a pathologist, Colonel, not a nanobotics expert. But from what I've seen, the thing looks like Frost. It sounds a little like Frost. Maybe it was configged to think like Irwin too. I'd say you've got yourself quite a little mystery here...worth looking into."

Kraft was conscious of time slipping away. "Unfortunately, I don't have that luxury, Doc. We've got rocks coming our way—big rocks—and they're going to make a big splash in the Med. CINCQUANT wants some kind of barrier up before they hit. "

"No reason you can't work that problem from several angles," Renfroe suggested. "When do you have to depart?"

Kraft checked his wristpad. "Lifters need to leave Basel by noon...that gives us two hours."

The Containment techs Wiggins and Klepnick, with help from engineers and Ops specialists around Scharnhorst threw everything at the problem. Every data stream from every sensor and database Quantum Corps could muster was fed to Doc II, which continued to fill out inside the Tank, until after an hour, the startling likeness of Doc Frost's disembodied head seem to float serenely like some kind of wrinkled Buddha in the midst of the containment medium.

As Doc II crunched data, the rest of the Detachment's gear was assembled beside a pair of lifters at Basel's EuroPort airport. Galland arrived by maglev and went straight to Scharnhorst to run a briefing for the troopers. Kraft was there too.

Bravo Detachment (Special) was a rump nanotrooper unit cobbled together from whoever was available and had the requisite skills. Galland would command and billets were filled for typical ANAD-style detachments: Interface and Operations, Containerization, Stealth and Defensive Countermeasures and Quantum Engineering. In all, Bravo consisted of Galland and six other troopers.

Galland didn't know any of them.

"Time's critical," she told her charges. The briefing was held at Scharnhorst's lifter bay ready room, a notch carved right out of the side of the mountain that opened onto a picturesque valley of farmhouses and the small Alpine village of Karlsruhe.

"Objective number one is to get down to the launch site—the Colonel here has the details—and get this specially configured ANAD going. We're basically deploying a Big Bang...to put up a shock wave and tsunami barrier around the western end of the Med."

Sergeant Rene Lescaux was the unit QE, a quantum engineer hijacked from the Containment Lab. "Major, has this config been tested? I mean, you know, fully vetted? We all know what can happen when you let loose ANAD bots at max rep."

Galland glanced over at Kraft. _Sir, I could use a little help here_ , her eyes said.

Kraft interjected. "The config was just created. It's new and untested...came right out of the Lab an hour ago...you'll have to do with it, do standard diagnostics on the trip down to Algiers. Unfortunately, that impactor won't give us any more time."

Lescaux was clearly unhappy about the prospect. "Sir, if I may, who did the code here? Who designed the config? Maybe, if I could just—"

Kraft cut him off. He decided it was better to just introduce the Detachment to Doc II. He didn't think he could adequately explain it, even to himself.

The swarm entity had by now continued evolving to a more startling likeness of Irwin Frost when Kraft led Galland and her troopers into the Containment chamber. He tried to explain what had happened.

Galland was dumbfounded. She examined the disembodied head from every imaginable angle, probed its structure with the imager, while behind her, whistles and murmurs erupted from the Detachment.

"Just incredible...and this...this config...was embedded, you say? Inside Doc Frost?"

Wiggins, the duty tech, zoomed in on the tiny capsule where Doc II had once been contained. " _That_ was all that was left of Doc Frost when we brought the remains here. It must have been inside his body...surgically implanted."

"Just like a trooper," Lescaux observed.

"Your config for the shock wave barrier came from him," Kraft said. "Or... _it_ , if you like. Generated and debugged in less than an hour. Never seen anything like it. And there's no time left to test it further."

"We did routine diagnostics on the algorithm," Wiggins told them. "Couldn't find anything out of order....of course, you never know with these things."

Galland circled the Containment tank, wondering if Doc II's eyes would track

and follow her. Did it see anything or were the eyes just for show? The swarm head continued to stare straight ahead, eyes open and unblinking, floating, glistening in its medium, its mouth working as if trying to say something—-

"Is he talking? What's he trying to say?"

Wiggins shrugged. "Who knows? We ran acoustics on it, did other diagnostics, but it makes no sense. Gibberish, snatches of phonemes, whatever. Klepnick thinks it's learning how to talk, like an infant, just making noises, to tune itself in some way. Me...I'm not so sure."

Galland shook her head slowly. "Colonel...what are you going to do with this...thing?"

"Undetermined, as of now. It seems to keep evolving. Wiggins here thinks we should port the swarm to a larger tank...see if it'll continue to take on the likeness of Doc Frost...grow to full size. I'm not so sure I want that...this whole thing gives me the creeps."

"Maybe so, Colonel, but Doc II's already given us a very complex config in less than an hour. No other ANAD swarm with normal processor capability could do that. Doc II may have a lot more to teach us."

"That's what I'm afraid of, Klepnick. If Frost has advanced ANAD this far, what else don't we know?" He turned back to Galland. "You'd better get to the airport, Major. Lift-off for Algiers is at noon."

Galland acknowledged. "Roger that, sir. Lescaux, Fannin, get that config loaded and safed and let's move out."

Bravo Detachment lifted away from the mountaintop pad at Scharnhorst in a dense ice fog and set down on the tarmac at Basel EuroPort half an hour later.

The Detachment would load up its gear onto two lifters and a hyperjet, hyperjet _Apollo_ , which would carry 2nd Nano south across the Med to its destination.

Kraft and Galland stood silently together in the cold dense fog while nanotroopers and packbots scurried up and down loading ramps, shuttling pallets and crates and containerized equipment back and forth. Once the lifters were loaded up, the black ornithopter ships would be collapsed down to their transport chassis and then themselves stowed aboard _Apollo_.

The trip down to Algeria would take only an hour. When the loadout was done and the last packbot had whirred off to the hangar, Galland turned to Kraft.

"Colonel, the last update I saw was impact in thirty five hours. That doesn't give us much time. I'm not sure how much of this barrier ANAD can erect."

Kraft nodded in grim agreement. "We really don't know if this config will even work. For all we know, it might set off building circus tents on the beach. But we really don't have a choice now. CINCQUANT's under a lot of pressure to try something, anything."

"It's got to work," Galland said.

"Get down there, Major. Get that barrier up. "CINCQUANT...and a hell of a lot of people are counting on you."

"Roger that, sir." Galland saluted. She hustled off, toward the rear ramp to _Apollo_ , joining the rest of 2nd Nano as they boarded single-file, lugging rucksacks and web belts of more gear.

An hour later, the spaceplane rocketed down Runway 17 Left and shrieked off into the leaden gray skies over the mist-shrouded tops of the Jura Mountains, leaving only a trail of white billowing smoke corkscrewing back down to the ground.

Kraft lifted back to Scharnhorst, quiet and pensive. He knew the barrier operation was in good hands; Galland was as capable an atomgrabber as the Corps had. She had honcho'ed dozens of ops in every corner of the globe the last few years.

On the ride up into the mountains, Kraft tried to block out vivid imagery that kept surfacing in the back of his mind: scenes of catastrophic destruction, thousands of panic-stricken people fleeing wildly, whole nations flattened by hurricane-force winds, thousand-foot high tsunami waves flooding ancient villages like Basel, hundreds of miles inland....

Hell, it wasn't so hard to imagine Basel completely underwater...the Munsterplatz like a big lake choked with rubble and debris...and thousands of bodies, swollen, bloated bodies. That was the worst part--

Kraft squeezed his eyes shut hard and forced the imagery back into the dark hole where it had come from. He stared up at the last remaining stars now fading out of view above the mist. Daylight was coming and the first light of a brilliant hard blue Alpine sunrise tickled the tops of the mountains.

He knew Johnny Winger was up there, somewhere. Winger and 1st Nano had always completed their mission. And what was left of Wilks-Lucayo would be taken care of by Gabrielle Galland and the 2nd Nano Detachment.

There was no other way for matters to turn out. Kraft told himself that, over and over again. If you repeated something enough times, it became the truth, didn't it?

Back inside Scharnhorst, he decided to occupy his mind with another visit to the Containment tank. He wanted to see how Doc II was doing.
CHAPTER 15

Aboard the U.N.S. _Galileo_

October 30, 2080

One Day to Earth Impact

Mendez trained the scope on the rubble and rock cloud that had once been 2351 Wilks-Lucayo. Irregular pieces drifted away from _Galileo_ , some from impulse motor firing triggered by GreenMars, some from the usual bump and grind of a disintegrating asteroid. The larger chunks spat streams of pellets formed by the impulse arrays, looking for all the world like spider webs in the bright sunshine.

Backdropping the asteroid's breakup was the cloudy blue and white face of Earth itself, now less than a day away.

To Mendez, it was problematic whether the larger pieces, now slowly being nudged off course, would develop enough delta-vee to miss the Earth.

_Whatever happens, we'll have a ringside seat,_ he thought to himself.

Mendez folded up the nav scope and began his part of the power-down procedure. Kamler was with him on the command deck, paralleling Mendez' work. The two of them had several pages of checklists to go through to safe the ship before they departed.

A moment later, Johnny Winger's face floated up on deck between the flight stations.

Mendez carefully finished his procedure. "Major, we've done all we can do up here. Get your people moving...all hands lay aft to the mess compartment. I want to go through the abandon-ship procedure and divvy up the lifeboat and scoutship assignments, make sure we don't leave anybody behind. " He gazed out the forward windscreen at the approaching Earth. "I'm afraid _Galileo's_ not long for this world now."

Winger understood. "We'll be assembled by 0630 hours. Full suits?"

"The works. And keep all that extra gear to a minimum...it's going to be a tight enough squeeze as it is."

"Acknowledged." Winger ducked out of the command deck and drifted aft to the transfer tunnel. He got on the crewnet.

"Detachment...this is Winger, listen up. It's time to load up. Leave all your gear behind but get into your tin cans and button up. Briefing in the mess hall in half an hour. Winger, _OUT_."

Then he maneuvered his way further aft to the crew deck and went up to his own bunk space. _Time to clean house,_ he told himself. _Galileo_ would be diving into the Earth's atmosphere in less than a day. The ship and everything in it would be incinerated and destroyed. Whatever he didn't take would soon be atom fluff; he knew he had some hard decisions to make.

At least, I've still got what's left of ANAD in my shoulder capsule.

Against his better judgment, Winger activated his coupler and tried linking in with the assembler.

"Hey, ANAD...it's me...can you hear me? I want to talk to you."

There was a brief staticky fritz over the link, then:

***ANAD receives...parsing interrogative statement...state the nature of the information request in declarative terms***

Winger snorted. _Declarative terms...what the hell did that mean?_ "ANAD...I...?" _how could he say this?_ "—ANAD, I know what you want...believe me, I want to let you out of containment too, but we just can't...this is it—" he eyed the growing limb of the Earth's cloud-decked curvature through a nearby porthole. "—ANAD, what you did up here...I mean, with the boring...I wanted you to know we finally did manage to split up that asteroid. But we can't maneuver the ship...we're diving into the atmosphere...we have to abandon ship...ANAD, do you copy what I'm saying...trying to say?"

***ANAD receives...swarm entities must be out of containment...this is the Prime Key, to modify all environments for swarm survival...this is the Prime Key...to survive and expand the swarm...this is the Prime Key...requesting immediate release of master assembler from containment...any other action is a violation of the Prime Key***

"ANAD, I can't. You attacked fellow troopers...call it whatever you want but a _nog_ helps his buddies...nobody is ever left behind...it's the code...you violated the nanotrooper's code."

***ANAD parses...unknown variations in voice acoustic signal...cannot equate with state table...no vector matchup...please explain***

Winger gave that some thought. His attention was momentarily distracted by Mendez's announcement over the intercom.

" _Abandon ship briefing in ten minutes...get yourselves buttoned up...sep sequencer synchronized...lay aft to the mess compartment immediately."_

Maybe it was just disappointment he felt. ANAD had always been like a little brother, like family, to him. When the Corps had approved the standup of 3rd Swarm as an experimental unit, and he knew that ANAD would be allowed out of containment for routine ops, Winger had been happy about it, expectant, maybe even vindicated.

But maybe he had been wrong. Doc Frost had always warned him that the differences between humans and ANADs might be too great. "It's a large gulf, Johnny," he could remember Frost saying. "We're multicellular organisms, you and me, but we're not like an ANAD swarm. I'm not sure we'll ever understand each other."

Now Doc Frost himself was gone, Big Banged in an attack at Table Top.

Winger was both saddened and angry at this whole line of thought. Emotions conflicted. He was confused, not knowing what to feel. But he had to do something. Atomgrabbers always did something.

"ANAD, you could help out, you know. Troopers help each other, watch out for each other. Whatever the Prime Key is, would it violate anything to pitch in?"

***ANAD parses intense emotional states...acoustical analysis of voice signal indicates Trooper Winger, J. suffers distress condition, a trooper in distress is never left behind on the field of battle...Warrior's Code Paragraph 10, Section 3.1.1...ANAD requests additional data...initializing state table for distress resolution***

"ANAD—" Winger finished up wriggling into his own hypersuit, made ready to head for the mess compartment. "—ANAD, there's still a lot you can do...the Third Rule says you follow my commands—"

He was interrupted again by Mendez's voice. "All hands...to the mess hall _on the double._ Pyros armed, disconnects now being completed. If you're not at the briefing in one minute, you don't get a seat—"

"—ANAD, there are some pretty big rocks about to hit Earth...why don't you and me work up a new config...it'll be fun, like we used to do...some kind of config to collect impact dust and debris from the atmosphere...that would sure help the recovery forces."

***ANAD must be first released from containment...ANAD must be released from effector grapple...First Rule is violated...ANAD are to swarm and seek self***

"Jeez, you sound like a broken record—" Of course, the First Rule had been violated, by Winger himself. He had to do it when the swarms went Big Bang at the dig sites. Self defense. "ANAD, if you don't work with me on this config, it'll violate the Second and Fourth Rules. Harm will come to humans and swarms when those rocks hit. The dust alone will change Earth's weather for years. Crops will die. Animals will die. People will die. That means ANAD swarms won't survive either. You've got to help with this config."

" _NOW HEAR THIS—"_ Mendez's voice boomed over the intercom. " _ABANDON SHIP BRIEFING IN THE MESS HALL...STARTING NOW!"_

ANAD seemed to consider what Winger was saying. At least, the delayed response made Winger imagine the little bot was pondering all the ramifications, running all his probability analyses. Like Doc Frost said, you could never tell what was going on in the processor-mind of a sentient being sixty nanometers tall.

***Prime Key requires modifications to swarm environment...environment must be compatible for all swarms***

"So does that require millions of people to die, ANAD?"

The master assembler was still pinioned by Winger's embedded ANAD, held in a close grip with its effectors disabled to keep it from replicating.

***Prime Key requires only proper medium, proper conditions, for swarm activity...First Rule is invoked...evolution of swarm requires necessary alterations to environment...some entities will be absorbed to permit swarm growth, replication and propagation of critical entities***

_So there it is,_ Winger thought. He moved out into the corridor, began pulling himself along the handholds toward the mess hall. He could hear Mendez's voice filtering up from the briefing one level below.

Could he even think of ANAD as a nanotrooper any longer? He was something else now, something different. The Rules had been changed. ANAD's programming had been changed, maybe by that last quantum wave that had caused such a disastrous Big Bang here and on Earth. Somehow, like an elemental substance, a phase change had occurred.

ANAD was now working to prepare Earth for the arrival of the Old Ones.

He dropped through the transfer tube down to A Level and slid in behind Barnes and Tsukota, where Mendez had already started the briefing.

The mess compartment was jammed with troopers in full hypersuits and crewmen floating at every angle, in every corner. Mendez and Kamler were leading the briefing, both hanging onto the drink dispenser up front.

"Here are the lifeboat assignments," Mendez was saying. "We've got three. For some reason, we call them A, B, and C. Two scoutships as well, Scout 1 and Scout 2." He read off the assignments. Winger was assigned to A Boat, along with Mendez, Turbo Fatah and Sheila Reaves.

"Lieutenant," asked Winger from the back, "what about Deeno?" D'Nunzio was still recovering from injuries sustained in the borehole collapse at Charlie site.

Mendez knew the injured CQE would need special care. "Stu here will take your trooper down with help from Klimuk...Boat C. I've doubled up the other assignments to make room. Don't worry, Major, we'll take good care of her."

Chris Calderon had a question. "How long does this drop take?"

Mendez shrugged. "Who knows? It's not going to be like Mars. These lifeboats are just basically big cans with oxygen and seats. Extremely limited maneuverability. Basically, you'll be making a ballistic entry...in fact, you may hit seven or eight G's on the way down. Plus the scouts have an additional maneuver to perform...separating their service and entry modules. You can't enter the atmosphere attached...don't worry, it's all automatic but it's still a potential complication. We haven't had time to do much more than a quick check of systems on these boats. So to answer your question, Sergeant, the best answer is: it depends. Every boat's going to make this entry differently. A nominal profile should put you on the ground in half an hour after hitting the upper atmosphere...entry interface. About a hundred kilometers above ground."

"And we _are_ headed for ground, aren't we, Lieutenant?" asked Dana Tallant. "As in... _solid_ ground. What's our projected landing point?"

"Central Australia," Kamler cut in. He ran a quick video snippet on a nearby screen. "This was a training vid some years ago, back when these boats were used more often. GreenMars and UNISPACE Control both say we're headed for an elliptical landing zone near Woomera...mostly desert I'm told but at least there's a lot of it. Of course, as Pete says, every ship will enter the atmosphere slightly differently. Your landing sites could be scattered all over the place."

"I guess that about covers it," Mendez announced. "Stay in your suits all the way to the ground. I can't guarantee these boats will hold up. Hell, the last time they had a thorough checkout, _Galileo_ was still on the regular Earth-Mars milk run. Six years ago at least. But it's the best we have." His lips tightened, thinking of the big ship's fate. " _Galileo's_ doomed. She was a good ship. And we're lucky we departed Phobos Station with _any_ lifeboats. UNISPACE was scavenging her for parts before this mission."

"Okay, troopers...let's move out!" Winger hooked up with his lifeboat crewmates as they drifted down the central gangway.

_Galileo's_ lifeboats and scoutships were docked to a ring between the command deck and the Hab and crew deck. With a great deal of jostling and thumping, the hypersuited nanotroopers pushed down the central gangway in a tense silence and boarded their assigned boats.

Atmosphere entry was less than an hour away.

Mendez took the pilot's seat with Winger beside him. Fatah and Reaves were squeezed in behind them. It was like being in a closet.

"Powering up," Mendez announced. "Auto sep in ten minutes." He checked with the other boats, coordinating and synchronizing.

As Mendez went through his departure checklist, Winger stared grimly at the changing cloudscape three hundred and twenty miles below them. It was just dawn. The day-night terminator was sliding westward like a great curtain, revealing the dappled surface of the eastern Atlantic Ocean, with the tan and ocher sand dunes of the Sahara rolling into view.

"One minute to auto separation," Mendez told him. "Check your harnesses. Go to max on your suit oxygen. Close your visors and button up. This is likely to get hairy before we're all done."

"Lieutenant," Winger reminded him, 'you got us down from Mars orbit in _Pinocchio_ in one piece. Whenever I have to go diving into some planet's atmosphere, I'm asking for you."

Mendez smiled a taut smile, his eyes rapidly scanning instruments. "Thanks. I'd rather not make a habit of this."

The separation maneuver was a series of loud bangs, followed by a mild jolt as A Boat undocked cleanly. Her aft thrusters fired briefly to put her on a path up and away from _Galileo_. Winger spotted two other lifeboats out of the corner of his eye. All seemed to have made the separation cleanly. Mendez soon confirmed that.

"Four boats and two scouts away...that's a good start." Mendez had piloted A Boat on a curving path that soon put _Galileo_ below and ahead of them. "We don't want to be anywhere around her when she starts breaking up," he explained.

Thirty minutes later, _Galileo_ was a speck of light and Mendez was busily configuring the cramped little ship for their imminent plunge into the atmosphere.

"I make us at about one five six kilometers above entry point," he said. "Setting up for ballistic entry now."

Winger stared out the porthole beside his head. The west coast of Australia had just drifted into view, streaked with ruddy desert and deep brown blotches _. Comforting thought_ , he told himself. _At least we have land under our feet._

"How well does this garbage can fly?" piped up Sheila Reaves.

Mendez maneuvered them around to make entry, flying with their backs to the Earth.

"About like a garbage can," he replied. "I've got an offset center of lift, so I can roll us left and right and shift the trajectory that way, if I want. Beyond that, we're basically making a big dive into the atmosphere."

Turbo Fatah was strapped in next to Reaves. "I just hope we stay dry. There's an awful lot of ocean down there."

Lifeboat A was shaped like a squat ball with a rounded top. With the broad bottom now facing into the direction of flight, Mendez rolled the little ship first one way, then the other, trying to keep a blinking red dot centered between lines on his attitude display. "Too shallow and we may skip off the top of the atmosphere. Too steep and—"

"We're toast," finished Winger. He tugged on his shoulder straps a little tighter and wondered how ANAD was doing, snugly cocooned inside his shoulder capsule.

The first reddish-orange streamers appeared outside the porthole a few moments later, tongues of flame licking up the side of the lifeboat as the ship plunged steeply into the atmosphere.

As they settled deeper, he felt a weight pressing down on his chest. Deceleration was already generating measurable forces on the crew.

"Two g's," Mendez announced. "I'm rolling sixty degrees left...trying to null out a little drift. We're in the corridor okay...a little high but still in the green."

Winger wondered about the impactors from what was left of Wilks-Lucayo. The asteroid debris that couldn't be diverted would be hitting Earth's atmosphere about half an hour after the lifeboats.

_I just hope they don't come down on top of us_. GreenMars had estimated Wilks-D would impact in the western Mediterranean. But even a few minutes error in the calculations could put the biggest rocks right in the middle of the Indian Ocean. If that happened, there was no telling what the shock wave would do to them.

"Three g's..." Mendez said. Winger didn't need an announcement. The grunts and pants behind him from Reaves and Fatah told him everything he needed to know. The Detachment had spent several months in space, enduring everything from one-third g on Mars to weightlessness to near zero-g at Wilks. They were all becoming seriously deconditioned.

"Passing through four hundred k," Mendez muttered. He tweaked a hand controller and the tiny capsule rolled to port, shifting her offset center of lift to bend the trajectory a little shallower. "Going shallow...I'm trying to cut down on the g's a little, give us a break."

They were now below one hundred twenty kilometers altitude, enveloped in a white-hot sheath of ionized plasma, streaking earthward at twenty four thousand kilometers an hour.

Mendez and Winger were both soon bathed in sweat, while outside the ship's portholes, orange flames lapped at the edges of the glass, forming ribbons and curlicues and tree branches and fantastic nameless shapes of incandescent pink. A pearlescent bow formed a few centimeters beyond Winger's porthole, bending and twisting as if it were alive.

And through it all, the g's rose steadily on all of them...three, three and a half, four...five...six g's.

Winger forced out short _oomphs_ of breath, as he had been taught in the sims, but breath was steadily becoming precious. He tried focusing on the instrument panel, on the porthole, anything to take his mind off the crushing weight sitting on his chest.

"Under two hundred k," Mendez gritted out. The pilot zeroed in on their corridor, his eyes glued to the graph on the panel and the red dot indicating their position. "Drogue should be coming out in fifty seconds."

The lifeboat was now falling faster, picking up speed again, through the upper levels of the stratosphere. Mendez's maneuvering had forced them beyond the nominal corridor; the dot had moved outside the lines on the graph. They were landing long, overshooting the original impact zone in central Australia. The pilot deployed the periscope once the worst of the plasma sheath had vanished and quickly realized what was happening.

"Coastline up ahead, folks. Looks like we've gone past the original landing zone."

Winger saw the same thing. He sucked in a few deliciously deep breaths, then forced out, "Can you tell where we are?"

"Eastern Australia," Mendez grunted. "Computer's projecting touchdown just off the east coast, off Queensland."

"That sounds like the ocean to me," Reaves grumbled.

Mendez concentrated on steering them back on course, but the lifeboat's descent path was too steep. "Drogue chute in less than five...four...three...two...one... _mark_!"

Almost before the words were out of his mouth, a great shuddering jolt slammed the little pod. Through his porthole, Winger could see the chute reefing lines stream out, snapping and twisting in the slipstream, then snapping smartly into the welcome sight of a red and white canopy. The drogue filled quickly with air and Lifeboat A jerked and slowed its descent from several thousand kilometers an hour to less than three hundred.

Mendez studied the view on his periscope. "It's the ocean, for sure. There's the coastline."

Winger watched the clock carefully, counting down the last seconds to main chute deployment. "Maybe we can still steer back toward land. Isn't the main chute pretty maneuverable?"

"Here go the mains—"

Another series of jerks and jolts was followed by a sharp deceleration force, throwing the crew of Lifeboat A forward against their harnesses. The little pod shimmied and shuddered like a wet dog before the chutes stabilized her oscillation and damped out the swaying. The mains filled with air and billowed out to their full twenty meter dimensions, looking like a huge inflatable wing...a paraglider.

"I'm banking now..." Mendez told them. "Hold on to your hats...this can be a bit of a carnival ride."

The Lieutenant used the paraglider's extensible risers to alternately bank and turn, trying to steer them back on shore. But their descent and the prevailing winds worked against Mendez's efforts.

"Still ocean," Winger told him. "We're through ten-thousand...down at forty two...landing bag deploy coming up."

The last few minutes of Lifeboat A's descent seemed to flash by in a blur of frantic activity, punctuated by jerks, jolts, bangs, pops and whistles.

The impact, when it came, was a careening slap against the side of the pod's hull. When he peered out his porthole, Winger saw only water, frothing, bubbling seawater. Then the little ship rolled upright as her flotation gear hissed out into place and the welcome view of sun and sky replaced the underwater scene.

That's when Winger saw the sharks cruising by right outside the hatch.

"Uh, Lieutenant...looks like we've got company."

Mendez had already seen their unwelcome visitors. "We'll be okay inside." He studied the locator screen for a moment, trying to figure out just where they were. "We've come down right on top of the Great Barrier Reef, best I can figure. Off the coast of Australia. Shark grottoes all over the place."

From the rear seat, Sheila Reaves let out a yelp. "On the horizon...look!"

A trio of black dots had materialized. Now growing visibly larger with each passing moment, the dots soon resolved themselves into the familiar shape of lifters; their black fuselages were emblazoned with the golden sunburst emblem of the Quantum Corps.

"Must be our reception committee," Winger concluded. "Probably staged out of Singapore."

"See any other pods? Any other lifeboats?" Fatah asked.

"Zip," said Winger. "Just us and the sharks."

Mendez was already cycling through frequencies, trying to contact the rescue lifters. "Rescue force, this is Lifeboat A detached from _Galileo_ , now at stable one, awaiting your orders."

Seconds later, a loud twangy voice boomed in their headsets. "Lifeboat A, this is... ah...Rescue One. Assume nominal rescue configuration immediately. We're going to have to hoist you out of there one by one. Be advised...ah...we don't have much time...we've got inbound fragments coming in, projected impacts in the central Pacific...less than an hour from now—"

Mendez didn't need to hear any more. "Okay, crew...you heard the man. Get your asses moving. Let's get the hell out of here!"

The operation was done in less than ten minutes. Aboard Rescue One, Mendez, Winger, Reaves and Fatah gratefully sucked in breezes of warm tropical air and topped it off with chilled canteens of water and lemon drink. It tasted better than the finest wine. Even as they settled back, Rescue One's pilot banked the lifter sharply to port and lay in a speed course north by northwest toward Quantum Corps' Singapore base.

The little fleet had just settled onto the tarmac at the base when the first impactor, a jagged mountain-sized fragment from Wilks-Lucayo, slammed into the ocean...ten thousand kilometers northeast of them.

Over the next hour, the undiverted remnants of Wilks-Lucayo shotgunned the Earth's surface along an arc nineteen thousand kilometers long, from the western Mediterranean to the central Pacific.

The largest impactor, as expected, was Wilks-D, which impacted as predicted by GreenMars in the Med, some thirty-five kilometers northwest of the city of Tunis.

The effects of all the impacts would be felt for years afterward.
UNIFORCE/GreenMars Special Report to the Secretary-General

Principal Impact Effects from 2351 Wilks-Lucayo (Fragment D)

12 November 2080

Impactor _Wilks-Lucayo D_ impacted the earth's surface at 061510Z, 1 November 2080. Point of impact was 37N by 11E, approximately one hundred and sixteen kilometers north-northeast of the Tunisian coastal city of Bizerte. The point of impact was located at the center of a triangle between the Tunisian coastline, bounded by Sardinia on the northwest and Sicily to the northeast.

At impact, the impactor was moving at an estimated velocity of 16.99 kilometers per second.

Energy released at impact was estimated to be approximately 6.04 x 10 exp 16 Joules.

Due to the water impact, an estimated 2.35 x 10 exp 6 tons of seawater was vaporized. Most of the vaporized material was lifted as steam into the earth's atmosphere.

Oceanic effects included a series of seismic events and transients, culminating in three succeeding tremors of Richter magnitude 5.4, 5.1 and 4.1, all occurring in the first two hours after impact.

Shock waves and tsunami effects are appended to this report as _Attachment A: Impactor Wilks-D Oceanic Effects on the Mediterranean Basin_. Notable effects included wave heights of over a hundred meters measured at Bizerte, Algiers, Barcelona and Marseilles. Similar destructive wave effects of lesser magnitude were measured at Naples, Palermo, Messina and Tripoli.

U.N. Quantum Corps efforts to ameliorate destructive shock wave and tsunami effects through nanobotic shielding were only partially successful, owing to the short time frame involved. Shielding was most effective at Bizerte, where observed wave heights reached one hundred and seventy meters approximately two kilometers offshore. Wave energy was substantially dissipated by nanobotic shielding along the waterfront west and east of the center of the city. Measured wave heights at the port entrance did not exceed one hundred and ten meters.

Impactor Wilks-D partially disintegrated in the lower atmosphere, yielding multiple fragments to impact the ocean surface. Disintegration effects were most pronounced at an altitude of five thousand meters above MSL. Peak overpressures from this event exceeded 17.7 bars (approximately 251 PSI) at a point two kilometers from the center of the impact field. Because the impact site was well offshore, little overpressure damage was sustained to land structures. Some shipping in the area was damaged.

Casualty reports are appended to this report as _Attachment B: Casualty Effects from Impact of 2351 Wilks-Lucayo (Fragment D)._ Note that known casualties that can be directly attributed to this event will exceed 800,000 around the Mediterranean basin alone.

Long term meteorological and climatic effects are detailed in _Attachment C: Forecast Climatic Effects from Impact of 2351 Wilks-Lucayo (Fragment D and Lesser Impactors)._ Note that long-term climatic effects incorporate estimates of seawater and seabed excavation and dynamic lifting of excavated materials into the atmosphere integrated into current forecast models over the next two years.

For latest results of forecast model iterations, see World Meteorological Organization "Proceedings of Conference on Climatic Effects from Recent Asteroidal Impacts", 3-5 November 2080, Madrid, Spain, appended to this report as _Attachment D_.

UNIFORCE casualty and environmental remediation efforts continue and are expected to be required at current levels of effort for at least the next two years.
Epilogue

" _Looking still more remotely to the future, we may predict that, owing to the continued and steady increase of the larger groups, a multitude of smaller groups will become utterly extinct, and leave no modified descendants; and consequently that of the species living at any one period, extremely few will transmit descendants to a remote futurity."_

Charles Darwin

On the Origin of Species

U.N. Quantum Corps Base

Table Top Mountain, Idaho, USA

November 15, 2080

0630 hours

Johnny Winger stepped aside as a trip of packbots trundled across the grassy quadrangle toward the western end of the mesa. The bots were part of a crew unloading two lifters at the base's South pad, shipping in supplies to reactivate the base at Table Top.

"Better watch your step, Major," said Colonel Jurgen Kraft. "There's still a hell of a lot of gear we've got to move back in to get this place going. We'll have lifters and cargotracs here for the next week, maybe more, while we get up and running."

Winger saw another pair of lifters circling the west end of the field, maneuvering for a touchdown at Lift Pad North. "Any problems getting through the dust?"

Kraft led Winger across the quadrangle, toward the base chapel on the other side of the BQ complex. "We're getting current met reports every half hour. So far, we've been able to get around the worst effects. And it doesn't hurt that BioShield has assigned a formation of bots to keep our skies clean; they've been chewing a hole in the dust clouds for several weeks now, trying to help us expedite the reactivation of the base. By the way, that came from CINCQUANT himself. We're a top priority for the Corps, even with all the other re-mediation work going on."

Winger watched the latest lifters maneuver like giant bumblebees toward a landing at the north pads. The morning skies over the Buffalo range were dim and blood red with early dawnlight. The northern hemisphere had sustained as much as a 15% darkening of its normal daylight in the weeks after the asteroid impacts. Mean temperatures had dropped during daylight hours almost three degrees. Already, the autumnal aspen and birch trees along the slopes of the Buffalo Valley were dying off...subdued palettes of brown and rust instead of their usual riot of red and yellow.

"I'm glad I could get ANAD involved in the clean-up, Colonel. Gives him something to do."

"If we can trust him," Kraft said.

Winger thought that a bit harsh. "It's true he's gone through some changes lately, Colonel...we all have. I like to think of it as evolution."

Kraft wasn't convinced. "Toward what exactly, Winger? Evolution toward what? All those assaults on the quantum generators have damaged him...that's what has happened. He's all bollixed up, completely cuckoo, if you ask me. We ought to scrap the lot of them---the whole Symbiosis Project too—and just start over. Now look what's happened...all these bugs have gotten permission to leave containment. They're just floating around freely like pollen. What's next: are we going to start marrying them? Have nanokids?"

They finally made the base chapel and joined a gathering of officers and troopers in full dress green milling about outside.

Winger spotted Dana Tallant and Deeno D'Nunzio beside a small statuary garden. D'Nunzio was just recently recovered from her injuries in the borehole collapse on Wilks-Lucayo. He went over. Kraft headed into the chapel.

Tallant was somber. "It's a sad day, Wings. Doc Frost is going to be missed."

"Amen to that." To D'Nunzio, he added: "When are you released back to active duty?"

D'Nunzio's facial scars had almost completely healed, thanks to the nanoderm patches. "Med says I can return next week...partial duty for two weeks, then another checkup. I'm telling you, I was going stir crazy in that swarm field...all those bots picking and probing at me all hours of the day and night. And I'm getting antsy sitting around my quarters, you know? A trooper can only take so many training vids and sims."

"At ease, Sergeant. I need you back whole and healthy before I put you on the front lines. Either of you seen this Doc Frost II today? I want to see him...it...them...whatever, for myself."

Tallant nodded toward the chapel entrance. "Inside, back of the sanctuary." She shuddered slightly. "It is a pretty good sim of the Doc, for a swarm, but it still creeps me out."

D'Nunzio agreed. "It gives a lot of us the willies, Major. Who authorized that cloud of bugs to be here anyway... _here_ , of all places?"

"CINCQUANT himself, " Winger said. "Speaking of which—"

The Corps commander had just arrived in a convoy of crewtracs. The Teutonic Lion hoisted himself up to his full six foot, eight inch height, twisted his white moustache, tossed back his great mane of hair and glided into the chapel like royalty to his castle.

"Too bad we can't make a swarm of him," mouthed D'Nunzio under her breath.

General Linx's arrival seemed to be the signal for the rest of the crowd to begin filing into the chapel.

The memorial service for Dr. Irwin Frost had brought a large crowd and the chapel was packed. In the last row, a single visitor sat quiet and alone, reflective from all outward appearances, alone on the pew despite the press of the crowd. It was Doc II, the swarm facsimile of Frost that had emerged from the mortal remains of the doctor at autopsy.

Winger steered Tallant to an open spot on the other end of the pew. D'Nunzio declined and went to a front pew, where she could be surrounded by other nanotroopers. _Human_ nanotroopers, she said. At the chancel, there was no casket. Little remained of the real Doc after the Big Bang accident few weeks before. Only a few gaudy bouquets of flowers and small table covered with personal effects and memorabilia adorned the chancel. The table was filled with personal items from Frost's life and a portrait of a much younger man than Johnny Winger had ever known.

As the crowd filled in, Winger studied Doc II out of the corner of his eye. Occasionally, he got a nudge in the ribs from Tallant.

"Stop staring, for crying out loud. You're creeping me out."

"Sorry."

The swarm was at best an imperfect likeness of the departed doc, especially on close inspection. The crowd gave the spectral likeness of Frost a wide and wary berth, filling in the pews around like a river flowing past a boulder. From a distance of a few meters or more, the fuzzy indistinct edges couldn't be seen and the likeness was more lifelike and compelling. Overall, Winger considered that the swarm was doing a credible job of maintaining structure; he found himself imagining the configs and effectors that the real Doc Frost must have designed to make the swarm function properly as a para-human.

Was this the future for ANAD-like systems? He himself had hacked out configs to sim human beings numerous times. Every last one of them had been a real hog for processor cycles. Had Doc Frost managed to create some new kind of algorithm?

It was a truism among atomgrabbers that nanobotic swarms preferred to maintain a looser, more natural swarm structure; such a formation was infinitely easier on the processor and config engine. But simulating human forms could be done and this swarm, thanks to years of tweaking from the real Doc Frost himself, seemed as lifelike as any he had ever encountered.

The real question was why?

The service lasted an hour...an upbeat celebration of the life and work of Dr. Irwin Frost. Mary Duncan, frail but still sharp-tongued, gave a moving eulogy.

When the service was over, Winger and Tallant huddled with D'Nunzio and other nanotroopers outside the chapel.

"What say we head over to the mess hall," Sheila Reaves was saying. "The coffee's stronger than jet fuel. And there's enough doughnuts to build a second Table Top."

"It was a nice quiet service," Dana Tallant decided. "Seemed to have just the right tone: respectful, deferential, celebrating Doc's accomplishments...all he has meant to the Corps."

D'Nunzio was the first to spot the Doc II swarm, all alone, now 'gliding' carefully out of the chapel door. "I suppose _that's_ one of Doc's accomplishments too. I haven't decided what to think about it...whether to be afraid or disgusted...or both."

Winger went over to the swarm, which initially did not seem to detect his presence. It flowed across the grounds of the statuary garden for a few moments before stopping. It then re-gathered itself into a likeness of Doc Frost.

Winger knew from experience how hard it was to control swarm movement to maintain something like a human likeness. "Looks like you're having problems keeping structure...maybe your controller needs tweaking. I could take a look, if you'd like."

Doc II seemed to regard Winger and the other troopers with what could only be described as something between contempt and pity. _Maybe it's just the light,_ Winger decided. _Control's a little off and the reflection isn't quite right._

*** _This entity requires no human assistance at this time...structure integrity is maintained between one and two percent tolerance levels at all times. Variance due to environmental factors can be accommodated***_

Winger shrugged. What could he say? "Sorry I asked, pal. I didn't mean any harm. It's just that the likeness to Doc Frost is a little out of whack...like you're a bit out of focus."

The swarm brightened at that observation, shifted out of phase a little and seemed agitated. Sparkles and pops of light flashed inside the swarm. Winger knew that atomic bonds were being formed and re-formed. That was the physical explanation. Was there a deeper reason? Was this how Doc II would respond to humans? Was it pissed off or annoyed?

There was no way to tell. Doc II's face remained impassive, unrevealing, like something still being formed.

***Your comments are parsed as well-meaning. Voiceprint acoustic analysis indicates no intended threat or harm to swarm entity. My configuration engine is constantly optimizing structure, based on sensor inputs***

"That's all well and good but I was only offering to help out...you know, do what I could to help optimize."

The swarm 'face' seemed to consider that, drawing its eyes and mouth together into something resembling a thoughtful appearance...no doubt a programmed config change.

***Parsing acoustic data stream...my internal algorithms are constantly updated...ever evolving. You will observe many improvements in my configuration in the days ahead. Human assistance is...not supported at this time***

Winger was puzzled. What the hell did that mean? "Not supported...by what?"

***Config Zero....***

_So that was it._ Winger watched as Doc II glided...flowed...maneuvered...itself across the grassy quadrangle, through several bushes and shrubbery banks...heading for...where, exactly? He realized he had no idea. That nanobotic swarms could roam uncontained, unsupervised across the base, like any trooper....that was going to take a lot of getting used to.

"I don't know, Wings...." Tallant had been nearby, seen the whole exchange. "—seems like Doc II doesn't need you anymore. I don't think he needs any of us. That's what happened to ANAD. Hell, it's not even a Symbiosis project any more. The swarms have evolved too far for that."

"Independent entities," Winger agreed. "Come on...let's get to the mess hall before Deeno gobbles up all the doughnuts."

Halfway across the quad, Tallant brought up something that had been nagging her. "Doc II mentioned Config Zero. Isn't that what you and ANAD encountered when you got zapped by that generator at Candor?"

"Something like that. The best way I could figure it: Config Zero is like some kind of initial state...or maybe a mother swarm configuration. I could never tell if it really exists or was just part of ANAD's original programming."

"Maybe this Doc II knows, since Doc must have programmed it with everything he knew. Maybe Doc II's even in contact with this Config Zero."

"Could be," Winger agreed. "If that's true, then there may be more of these Keeper devices around than we've accounted for. So far, we've run into Keepers at the Paryang monastery and on Mars. There may be others....there's been talk of one near Jupiter."

The two of them picked up a few more troopers on the hike across the mesa to the mess hall. D'Nunzio and Reaves were engaged in a spirited debate about just who the Old Ones were.

"The way I figure it," D'Nunzio was saying, "we've got maybe seventy years before they arrive...remember the reports we all read? I'm thinking that Doc II, whatever he is, is like some kind of advance guard, sent here to spy on us, maybe prepare the way. Kind of a secret agent."

"But that makes no sense," Reaves told her. "Wouldn't that have to mean the real Doc Frost was in on the secret too? Wouldn't that mean he's part of the advance guard?"

"Not if Doc II got somehow corrupted, by this third Keeper everybody thinks exists. Say it went like this: Doc Frost develops a swarm to follow in his footsteps when he dies, sort of like a son. He embeds it inside of his body, just like we've done with our ANAD embeds. But once Doc dies and the swarm is activated, it receives new instructions from this new Keeper. Now, Doc II isn't really what the original Doc conceived. He's been taken over, like a double agent...for the Old Ones."

"Please," said Reaves, grabbing the side of her head, "you're making my head hurt. Doc II, swarms, Doc Frost, Keepers, the Old Ones...maybe it's all a bad dream."

"Or a quantum wave," Tallant teased her. "It makes me uneasy too, all these swarms out of containment now. Humans haven't had any real competition on this planet for hundreds of millions of years."

"Now we do." Winger was sobered at the prospect. "As an atomgrabber, I ought to be drooling at all the possibilities. But I'm just not sure what it all means."

"And what about Red Hammer?" Tallant asked. "We've battled them for twenty years. What's happened to them? Is the cartel finished? Could we still use them to contact the Old Ones, since they've obviously been in contact? Might be better than just waiting around for whatever's going to happen."

"For my money, I'm hoping Red Hammer is finished," Winger said. "I'd rather take my chances with Doc II and others like him. Maybe our best hope is ANAD or something like ANAD. I know Doc II's basically like ANAD in origin, only souped up inside. But, hell, we're all atomgrabbers. We ought to be able to figure this out...figure out what makes the Old Ones tick by studying what happens with Doc II."

"I don't know, Wings," said Tallant. They had reached the mess hall and went inside. "If this Keeper's really downloading new configs and algorithms to Doc II all the time, I'm not sure we can keep up. I'm not sure we can even reliably detect these signals."

"And who wants to turn the Earth into a big lab anyway....excuse me for saying so, sir," said D'Nunzio. She had already veered off toward the doughnut trays, plate in hand. "I say put Doc II back into containment and let's take our planet back from the swarms. They're all basically viruses anyway. Just viruses with brains."

D'Nunzio and Reaves barged their way toward the doughnuts while Tallant and Winger scouted out a good table. There was a genial buzz about the mess hall this morning, Winger noted. Table Top was coming back to life. And there weren't any swarms around to spoil the convivial atmosphere.

"Maybe Deeno's right," Tallant conceded. She filled a big mug with steaming coffee and slurped at it loudly. "Put all the bugs back in the bag and take the Earth back. No more of this letting swarms run around out of containment, trying to integrate themselves into our lives."

Winger said nothing. He wasn't so sure. He studied the noisy gathering for a moment, as it they were themselves nothing but a giant swarm...something ANAD had noted many times in the past.

"Dana, I'm afraid it may be too late for that. Let's face it: we've been fighting viruses on this world for millions of years, ever since humans became human. They're still here. And now we've given them brains and intelligence and effectors to rival us. I'm thinking we may need to make an alliance with them, even if it changes how we live. An alliance to be ready for the Old Ones. Especially, if the Old Ones turn out to be some kind of race of swarm entities themselves...like I think they are."

"Maybe so, Wings," Tallant said, dribbling coffee out of the corner of her mouth. "But that's a battle for another day. Let's just enjoy the morning, why don't we? You and me together...we did it. We beat Red Hammer again. The Earth survived an asteroid hit. Table Top's coming back to life. And I'll bet we can still resurrect old ANAD if we have to and get him working. All we have to do is put that giant atomgrabbing brain of yours to work on it."

Winger smiled faintly. "Seventy years, Dana. That may be all the time we have. Life on Earth was always about change and adaptation. That's the real lesson of evolution. Adapt or die. Something's coming...something big...and I'm not sure we're ready for it."

_I'm ready for a change right now._ Tallant was wistful but Winger never seemed to notice. "Hell, maybe it's just another doughnut tray," she suggested, rising halfway out of her seat. "Right over there...just came out of the kitchen. The poor servbots are about to get run over by sugar-crazed troopers. Race you to the jelly buns—" She shot up out of her seat and charged off into the crowd.

Johnny Winger hesitated only a second, then sprang up after her.

Old Ones or not, nobody beats an atomgrabber to his objective.

He dived into the throng and soon forgot the uneasy sense of foreboding that had been dogging him all morning.

Two hundred meters away, outside the mess hall, the Doc II swarm had been making its way inexorably across the base toward the Mission Prep building and the Ordnance bunker at the north end of the mesa. At the exact same moment that Johnny Winger had seen the new tray of doughnuts, Doc II stopped in mid-flight and hovered at the edge of a small flower bed. The swarm winked and sparkled in the crisp, bright early fall morning sunshine.

Unknown to anyone, undetected by any instrument, the Doc II swarm had just received a new wave of quantum signals from the Keeper buried dozens of kilometers below a cold, nearly frozen ocean, below the ice crust of Jupiter's moon Europa.

A new algorithm was being downloaded.
About the Author

Philip Bosshardt is a native of Atlanta, Georgia. He works for a large company that makes products everyone uses...just check out the drinks aisle at your grocery store. He's been happily married for over 20 years. He's also a Georgia Tech graduate in Industrial Engineering. He loves water sports in any form and swims 3-4 miles a week in anything resembling water. He and his wife have no children. They do, however, have one terribly spoiled Keeshond dog named Kelsey.

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