Nanotroopers Episode 1: Atomgrabbers

Nanotroopers

  Episode 1: Atomgrabbers

  Copyright 2016 Philip Bosshardt

  A few words about this series….

  1.Nanotroopers is a series of 15,000- 20,000 word episodes detailing the adventures of Johnny Winger and his experiences as a nanotrooper with the United Nations Quantum Corps.

  2.Each episode will be about 40-50 pages, approximately 20,000 words in length.

  3.A new episode will be available and uploaded every 3 weeks.

  4.There will be 22 episodes. The story will be completely serialized in about 14 months.

  5.Each episode is a stand-alone story but will advance the greater theme and plot of the story arc.

  6.The main plotline: U.N. Quantum Corps must defeat the criminal cartel Red Hammer’s efforts to steal or disable their new nanorobotic ANAD systems.

  Episode #TitleApproximate Upload Date

  1‘Atomgrabbers’1-18-16

  2‘Nog School’2-8-16

  3‘Deeno and Mighty Mite’2-29-16

  4‘ANAD’3-21-16

  5‘Table Top Mountain’4-11-16

  6‘I, Lieutenant John Winger…’5-2-16

  7‘Hong Chui’5-23-16

  8‘Doc Frost’6-13-16

  9‘Demonios of Via Verde’7-5-16

  10‘The Big Bang’7-25-16

  11‘Engebbe’8-15-16

  12‘The Symbiosis Project’9-5-16

  13‘Small is All!’9-26-16

  14‘’The Serengeti Factor’10-17-16

  15‘A Black Hole’11-7-16

  16‘ANAD on Ice’11-29-16

  17‘Lions Rock’12-19-16

  18‘Geoplanes’1-9-17

  19‘Mount Kipwezi’1-30-17

  20‘Doc II’2-20-17

  21‘Paryang Monastery’3-13-17

  22‘Epilogue’4-3-17

  “Colorado”

  Colorado Springs, Colorado

  August 2, 2047

  2:15 p.m.

  Johnny Winger was in Net School, working with Katie Gomez on some algebra problems, when he learned his mom had been killed in a car crash. The message was from a deputy at the El Paso County Sheriff’s office…one of the worst crashes we’ve seen in years, a deputy had said on the vidpost. Car went off a cliff, rolled down an embankment, burst into—your father’s at the hospital now--

  Johnny snapped the post off. He didn’t want to hear any more. He just wanted to go. Be there. See for himself.

  The school let him out without any questions. Principal Costner tried to be sympathetic. “Go on, son …get out of here. We’re praying for you—“ He swung his legs over his turbo and fired it up, gunning the engine angrily. Then he scratched off out of the parking lot and made his way screeching and sliding through several traffic lights to the autoway, heading north. Dad was alive, barely. In a hospital. Colorado Springs.

  He just had to be there. And he wasn’t going to give up control of his turbo to the autoway, not today of all days. He needed to be in control, feel the road vibrations and the wind, know for sure there was something he could control. Johnny Winger steered into the manual lane and cranked his bike up to just under a hundred. Cars and trucks and road signs flashed past.

  He made the Sisters of Mercy Hospital in about half an hour.

  The hospital was a Greco-Roman institutional brick pile, all fake columns and turrets and gables, some architect’s wet dream gone awry. The ten-story main building poked up above a small forest of aspen and birch trees, in a hundred-acre park-like setting out along Powers Avenue. Johnny skidded his turbobike to a halt and parked in a delivery van’s spot, then hustled inside.

  He found his sister Joanna in the CCU waiting room.

  Joanna was an inch shorter, short blond hair with some locks hanging over her right eye. “They just brought Mom in.” She held up her wristpad. “I was just talking with the funeral home…she died quickly, Sheriff’s deputy told me. They’re taking the body over there this afternoon.”

  Johnny felt a hard lump in his throat. His eyes were dry, for the moment. Joanna’s were red. He figured tears would come later.

  “What about Dad?”

  “Just out of surgery…skull fracture…he may have some brain trauma, the docs said. He also has a broken arm, some spinal contusions…Johnny, it’s a miracle he survived. From what that deputy said about the crash scene—“

  Johnny put both hands on her shoulders. “I heard. Let’s do details later—“he stopped when the door to the waiting room opened. A nurse in blue scrubs poked her head in.

  “You two can make a short visit now…very short, like five minutes. Your Dad’s semi-conscious, just coming out of sedation.” She held the door back and they went in.

  The Critical Care Unit was on the fifth floor, north wing. The waiting area had been half full, with small knots of people engaged in whispered conversation, two children joysticking remote action bots along the wall, and a wraparound active display showing live scenes from Vail and Aspen and Steamboat Springs. The nurse showed Johnny and Joanna down a hall to the Active Care Unit. Through the bioshield, a sort of containment zone inside of which active nanodevices were at work, Johnny came up to the bed where Jamison Winger lay enveloped in thick ganglia of wires and hoses. Joanna hung back, her hands to her mouth.

  A faint coruscating blue glow surrounded the bed, the inner containment field pulsating with active nano to protect the patient from further infection.

  A swarthy Egyptian doctor, Sethi Hassan, attended a small display, with imaging views showing what the bots were seeing. Two nurses also attended.

  Dr. Hassan sensed the presence of someone new, but did not at first look away from the screen. His right hand manipulated a tiny trackball and the view on the screen changed with each manipulation.

  “How’s he doing, Doc?” Johnny asked.

  “About as well as could be expected,” Hassan said. He had just finished some tests and scans, looking for peritumoral edema, any headaches, intracranial pressure, hemiparesis, tremors. Every test had turned up better than expected. “Frankly, Mr. Winger here’s doing a lot better than he should be. We still have some work to do, more surgery, basically repairs and reconstructive sessions. He’s suffered substantial trauma to the frontal and parietal lobes. After that, more tests…memory function, basic motor skills. You’ve got five minutes, no more.” With that Hassan retreated to a small control station by the door.

  Winger bent over the bed, pressing lightly against the field. A keening buzz changed pitch and invisible forces pressed back against his fingers, forcing his hand away. Standard mobility barrier, he told himself, almost without thinking. He’d read about bots like this on the Net just the other day. He moved aside to let Joanna come closer, then drifted toward Hassan’s station.

  “Doc, what do all these bots do?”

  Hassan sighed, flexed his fingers around the trackball at his panel and did some more manipulations, delicately driving the medbots under his command.

  “Two hours ago, we perfused his brain with a small formation of neurocytes…these neurocytes are working now. I detached a small element just an hour ago, got them into position to block a serotonin avalanche that was firing off inside his limbic system…some kind of seizure, that was. We got the convulsions mostly stopped…although there’s been some leakage into the hippocampal regions.”

  Winger studied his father’s face. His eyes were screwed shut, tension lines all converging along his forehead. He was clearly still in pain. His lips trembled and a rhythmic twitch made his fingers and feet move
in fits of shaking. His head was wrapped in bandages.

  Mr. Winger started to convulse—his arms and hands went rigid, then spasmed fluttering off into the air, brushing against the barrier. The mechs buzzed back. Beside the bed, Hassan busied himself driving the herd of neurocytes onward, tracking down the errant discharges. Seconds later, as he swarmed the ‘cytes toward the center of the convulsion, the spasm gradually died off. Mr. Winger’s arms dropped, his fists unclenched. The doctor looked up; his eyes saying that was too close.

  “We’re running the latest here at SOM…Mark III medical autonomous assemblers. AMADs. Most of the exterior trauma’s already stitched up…that went pretty well, I must say. But hunting down these spasms and figuring out the firing patterns, timing the cascades and the uptake rates…that’s taking time. I’ll get it figured out eventually…if we can keep him stable for the time being.”

  Joanna leaned over the bioweb and sighed with sadness. “Brad’s flying in from Frisco tonight. One of us needs to pick him up at the airport.” Brad was the oldest of the Winger kids, now a resident at Stanford Medical.

  “I just have my bike…Brad won’t want to ride that.”

  “I can go,” Joanna offered. “If you’ll stay here with him…you’ll have to sign some paperwork when they bring Mom in. And Dr. Hassan may have questions about further treatment.”

  That’s how it was decided. Joanna and Johnny ate a quick and tasteless meal at the commissary, consoled each other for a few moments over cake and coffee and then Joanna was off.

  Johnny went back to CCU. Slouching on a beat-up vinyl couch, he googled ‘AMAD’ on his wristpad and studied the images and the reports, browsing and skipping quickly through the details. At any moment, he expected to get another five-minute visit with his Dad and he had a few questions for Hassan and the second shift surgeon, Dr. Morse. He kept one eye on the double-doors to the trauma suite and one eye on his screen….

  ‘Autonomous nanoscale assemblers…the bots sport quantum processors…unique operating parameters…surgeons need special skills to run the bots…working at the scale of atoms takes a different mindset…it’s like a carnival ride down there, with van der Waals forces and Brownian motion….’

  Winger watched a small snippet of video, taken from a bot’s acoustic sounder inside a living brain. Someone was narrating….

  “Right now, Dr. Volk is steering AMAD into the vascular cleft of the membrane. He’s twisting his right hand controller, pulsing a carbene grabber to twist the cleft molecules just so, now releasing the membrane lipids, slingshotting himself forward. Now, AMAD seems to be floating in a plasma bath…there are dark, viny shapes barely visible off in the distance. The plasma is a heavy viscous fluid. Dr. Volk is tweaking up the propulsor to a higher power setting and taking a navigation hack off the vascular grid….”

  Johnny found himself mesmerized by the scene. That would be so cool to do that, he told himself. Just a few weeks ago, he’d met with the guidance counselor at Pueblo Net School, Mr. Holley.

  To say that Mr. Holley was fat was like saying Mt. Everest was tall. He squinted through folds of fat around his puffy eyes at a small tablet. “It says here on your forms that you’re interested in Engineering. Mr. Winger, I’m sure others have told you that to get into Engineering school, some place like Stanford, Cal Tech, Michigan and so forth, you’ll have to get those marks up. To be honest, Mr. Winger, most of the basketball team has higher marks than this…especially in Math…what is it with Math anyway? Don’t you like numbers? Your whole ten years at Net School, you’ve struggled.”

  Well, he had only heard that about a million times. He’d developed a set litany of responses. “Numbers don’t like me, Mr. Holley.” That was Number Fourteen. He had dozens more.

  Now, watching the video on his wrist, watching some surgeon whose name he couldn’t even pronounce, joystick his way through a living brain, riding heard on a platoon of nanoscale bots like really small cattle, Johnny Winger had a moment’s inspiration, a vision handed down from the future he would tell himself later, of doing the same thing. Grabbing atoms and fighting off viruses and disassembling oligodendrogliomas like the U.S. Cavalry…that he actually could see himself doing. Numbers…shmumbers…maybe this was something he ought to look into. After all, Dad had been beating on his head that he had to start thinking about his future after Net School. Maybe this….

  Dr. Morse, the late-shift surgeon, cleared his throat.

  “Ahem…Mr. Winger….”

  Johnny jumped a foot. He didn’t even realize someone had been standing next to him.

  “Huh--?”

  “You can visit your Dad for several minutes, if you want. He’s resting now…”

  Johnny went in.

  The bioweb was still up, flickering a faint white-blue. Johnny knew he couldn’t physically touch his Dad. Jamison Winger’s head was half-covered in a sort of helmet-like device. Johnny looked up questioningly.

  “A docking station for medbots,” Dr. Morse explained. He stepped away from a rolling console that was positioned next to the bed. “We’ll be doing an insert in another hour, trying to hunt down and fix neural pathways that were damaged… imagery shows some pretty serious peritumoral edemas in several regions. We’re going to try and fix them tonight.”

  Winger leaned over to look at Morse’s console. “I was just watching a vid about bots like this. This is pretty new stuff.”

  “State of the art,” Morse told him. “We’ve been using medical nano-robots for surgeries for several months now. It’s cleaner than invasive, more accurate that endoscopic. In fact, we’re still training our staff…there’s an artificial body just down the hall…in the training suite.”

  Winger looked over his Dad. His face seemed at rest. No more tension lines, no more tightened lips or strained cheeks. There was really nothing he could do at the moment anyway…but pray. And hope Morse and his staff knew what they were doing.

  “You expect to be using these bots more and more.”

  “Sure,” said Morse. He went back to his console. “Once we get all the kinks worked out…oh, don’t worry…we’re not doing anything unusual tonight. We’ve used bots to repair neural damage dozens of times now. In fact,” Morse kind of half smiled, “Sisters of Mercy knows more about these bots than just about anybody…and that includes Quantum Corps.”

  Johnny’s eyebrows went up. “Quantum Corps…I’ve heard of them. Some kind of UN agency?”

  “Exactly. They use bots all the time…in fact, that’s their mission, from what I hear. But we’ve got way more experience with this kind of stuff than they do. In fact, I just saw an ad the other day…they’re looking for applicants now.”

  “Really.” Johnny stood up and went to take a closer look at Morse’s console. “Can you show me what these little buggers can do?”

  Morse studied the teenager closely. “I can do better than that. There’s a training session scheduled for second shift tonight…around 2100 hours, I think. If you’re around CCU, come down to room 5125. I’ll give you a temporary password. We can do a little demo for you…show you what’s happening with your Dad later. It’s really quite extraordinary.”

  Johnny looked at his Dad. Recovery would take weeks, maybe months, and that was if Morse could make his repairs. Then would come months of rehab. “I’ll be around most of the night. My sister’s picking up my older brother at the airport tonight. They’re coming straight here but it’ll be several hours.”

  Morse deftly shoo’ed Johnny out of the room. “Go get something to eat. Then come to 5125. I think you’ll be impressed. Your Dad’s getting the best care we can provide…come watch. It’ll put your mind at ease.”

  Johnny promised to do just that.

  The training suite was down the hall and around the corner from CCU Critical Surgery. Johnny got through the security barriers with Morse’s temporary password with no trouble. He came into a
room dominated by a large hemispherical tank, draped with thick ganglia of cables and tubes, surrounded by control panels and consoles. Overhead, a tray of strange gun-like devices hovered over one end of the tank.

  “Electron beam injectors,” said a voice from behind him.

  It turned out to be a white-jacketed technician. His name plate read Stefans. He was a burly and bearded fellow, clad in latex gloves and a white cap as well. He was built like a lineman, which he had once been eons ago. Now there was a substantial paunch around his belly; what had once been muscle was now sagging into middle age.

  “You were wondering what that was,” Stefans went on. “Protective measures…in case the little critters get loose…and start multiplying.” Stefans stuck out his hand and formally introduced himself. “Dr. Morse told me you might show up…sorry….about your Dad, I mean. But he’s in great hands down the hall.”

  Johnny looked around. “This is all for training…on these bots?”

  Stefans nodded proudly. “Want to give him a test drive?”

  Johnny looked over the console. “Can I? For real?”

  “For real. Sit there. I’ll go over the basics.” Stefans explained that the tank was a containment structure and inside was a device called an Autonomous Medical Assembler/Disassembler. “AMAD for short. Here, I’ll show you—“

  "I don't see anything." Johnny stared intently at the imager screen.

  Stefans sat at a console next to the tank. “We call it TinyTown.” He tweaked the sensitivity controls of the quantum flux imager.

  "Keep watching, son…you will, soon--"

  The image on the monitor sharpened slightly. In focus in the center of the screen was a rectangular grid, wavering in the aqueous solution in which the grid was submerged. Johnny studied the image carefully.

  "Deflection at the probe tip is steady," Stefans muttered. "That's about as close as we can get. The grid is ready. Let me check a few things…solution parameters are normal. Pressure is twenty point two bars. Temperature right on the curve. PH normal. Concentration gradient is what we expected. You ready for the ride of your life?”

  Johnny nodded.

  Stefans rubbed his gray moustache. "Activation instructions are coded and set for transmission. Replication factor set for the template that's loaded. Safety systems armed."

  Stefans scanned the panel displays. Poised around the periphery of the insulated tank in which the grid was suspended, were three rows of six electron beam injectors each. At the slightest hint of trouble during operation, Stefans would quickly toggle the firing switch on the control panel. Several million electron volts of energy would flood the tank, stripping atoms from molecules, and electrons from atoms. Only a cloud of nucleus fragments would remain.

  "Now we’re set…injectors are ready,” Stefans said. He pointed to a small joystick. “You drive AMAD with that.”

  Johnny wrapped his fingers around the small stick. He indicated the device on the screen, clinging to a scaffolding like grapes on a trellis. “I’m driving that?”

  “You will be a moment.”

  Johnny flexed his fingers. He was practically licking his lips at the prospect of playing with this thing. "You said you've improved a few things. What exactly do you mean?"

  Stefans pointed to fuzzy projections on the screen. "Along with a new processor, AMAD has stiffer diamondoid effectors. More reactive or 'stickier' covalent bond ends too, basically carbenes and hydrogen radicals. That lets him grab atoms and move molecules more securely."

  "I can actually grab atoms with this thing…like sling ‘em around?”

  Stefans smiled proudly. "A little trick we've patented. You can grab atoms and put them wherever you want. You can also replicate…make as many copies of yourself as you want. AMAD’s got new carbon group fold lines. Basically a new type of architecture more easily cleaved and collapsed. For patients like your Dad, it makes tracking down and removing damaged cells, tumor cells, whatever, much easier.”

  Winger tried out the control sticks on the panel.

  Stefans continued. "This guy’s a real hot rod…optimized for faster folding and unfolding. A very ingenious design, I should add…based on ribosomal proteins…nature's own assemblers of proteins from DNA instruction. AMAD can break bonds much more rapidly, under quantum-scale control. Orders of magnitude faster than ribosomes, I'm certain. And he's got new fullerene 'hooks' for more secure grasping and attaching, which makes for better accuracy."

  Johnny was anxious to get started, get a feel for this wonderbread gadget Stefans was so proud of.

  "Am I powered up? How do I start this thing?”

  "Fully powered. Just select a mode--here--" Stefans fingered a side panel.

  Johnny settled into his seat, let his reflexes take over. Though he didn’t know it, it was a basic axiom in nanoscale work that you didn't so much 'fly' the buggers as 'feel' them. Stefans knew that to a rookie, dodging molecules and groping van der Waals forces was like playing dodge ball with a sleet of sticky balls. It took timing and finesse, something that could only come with time.

  "Layout's pretty straight-forward," Stefans went on. "Operation controls you have your hands on are for the propulsors. AMAD’s beefed up to sixty picowatts power. Six degrees of freedom in attitude…that's your left hand plus translation control in your right."

  "Feels jumpy," Johnny reported. He twisted both sticks and the imager scene careened crazily. "The slightest touch and he just takes off."

  "I'm sure you'll get the hang of it. I've got the gain boosted up high. Imager is acoustic feedback. You can overlay heading, attitude and state data on the image." Even as he spoke, Johnny already had the imager screen tiled with shifting mosaics of information.

  "You seem like a natural at this,” Stefans observed. “Let's try to dock with something," he suggested, spying a few molecules drifting by.

  Johnny tickled the imager for better resolution and clucked at the view. “There’s some kind of molecule floating by—“

  "Why that looks like an old friend of ours. Mr. Acetylcholine Molecule. What say we scope him out for a parking place? Go for it, son. Give it a try. By the way, that's a covalent bond--"

  "Oh--!" Johnny grunted sheepishly. The acetylcholine's carbon 'fingers' flicked AMAD away. He'd approached on a poor vector and gotten bounced by the stiff bond forces. "I'll just try--" Johnny grimaced, trying to regain control of the device. "That's weird--molecule just up and spun me around…what gives?”

  Stefans sniffed. "Something new." He pressed a few buttons on the keyboard. "AUTO-RESET. With something like acetylcholine, dopamine--complicated structures like that--it's best to let AMAD do the piloting. This is fly-by-stick, electronically controlled. It seeks equilibrium and calculates resistance instantaneously. Let the computer and auto-maneuver system do the work now. AMAD knows what to look for. You sure you haven’t done this before? It’s like you’re born to this.”

  Johnny frowned. "It seems easy…just twist here and it does that—“

  On the imager, AMAD careened around like a beach ball.

  "It’s not easy but some trainees just have a better feel for the forces involved. Frankly, what you’re doing right now is pretty amazing. And working AMAD this way saves molecules from being smashed to bits by hotshot doctors. Before, doctors would just fly in and smash and grab molecules. Bust up everything in sight. Trust me, molecules don’t like that. Now, with AMAD, docking with a molecule is essentially automated."

  "What else can this thing do?"

  Stefans pressed a few more buttons to inject additional molecules into the solution. "Say you're in an alien medium. Parameters unknown. Try a basic replication cycle."

  When Johnny looked puzzled, Stefans pointed out the right buttons and switches.

  Then, with Stefans’ help, Johnny scoped out the medium with AMAD's sensors: pH, concentration gradient, pressure. He toggled the 'rep' pickle o
n the left stick, one cycle. In the blink of an eye, the imager screen jostled slightly.

  "I'm waiting…nothing seems to be happening."

  Stefans smiled. "You missed it, son."

  "What?"

  "AMAD’s already replicated. Check your state vector…here--" he pointed to a screen of dials and columns on the left. "See what I mean?"

  Johnny was dumb-founded. "I'll be damned--this baby's a real hot rod. And Dr. Hassan’s using this on my Dad…?”

  “As we speak…he’s more experienced than you, of course. But you’ve got talent…that much I can see right now. You seem to be a natural at working with atoms and molecules. It takes a special touch…not every doc or intern can come here and do what you’re doing right off.”

  The thought had been forming in the back of Johnny’s mind for a few minutes. “You mentioned that UN agency—“

  “Quantum Corps? Sure, they use the same technology. I’m not sure exactly what they use it for…we sometimes run demos and seminars for them, advise them on things we’re doing here.”

  Johnny studied the little device now caroming around the imager. “I need to find out more about them.”

  Stefans went over to a desk and pulled out a small disk. “Here’s a little training vid we did for them…I think there’s some contact info on it. It should run on your wristpad.”

  Johnny pocketed the disk. He would definitely check this out. Maybe this Quantum Corps was the answer to all the questions that hippopotamus Mr. Holley had been throwing at him: you’ve got to make some decisions soon, son, about what you want to do with the rest of your life…Jeez. Really, Mr. Holley?

  A month later, Jamison Winger had been discharged from Sisters of Mercy and was back home again at the North Bar Pass ranch a few miles outside Pueblo. And Johnny Winger had applied for an interview and a test at Quantum Corps.

  Mr. Winger sat a bit unsteadily on a stool in the barn he had converted into a lab and workshop. The bench and surrounding tables and shelves were crammed with parts, pieces of parts, loose wiring, circuit boards, and assorted actuators, motors and things that looked like disembodied legs and arms. There were even a few robot heads stashed around, leering down at them like Halloween masks. Jamison Winger was forever a tinkerer, even when he was supposed to be in rehab.

  “I want you to do whatever your heart tells you to do, son… but Quantum Corps? Really? Do you even know what they do?”

  “Sure I do…they operate the same bots that the doctors used on you…the ones that fixed all your injuries.”

  Mr. Winger went back to a circuit board he was soldering. “Not quite all of them…but I know you always liked bots. You realize what this means…Quantum Corps is a military outfit. You apply and get accepted and you’re committed for several years, at least. Is this what you want to do? Your Mom and I always figured you’d go to engineering school, maybe Stanford, like your brother…or Cal Tech.”

  Johnny sniffed at that idea. He’d fight to do anything other than what Brad had done. They were always comparing him with Brad. “I can get my schooling with the Corps…Dad, I can go to the Academy. I’d be an officer. I’d travel around, see things. Work with bots. Grab atoms and fight off viruses, things like that. It’s way better than—“

  Mr. Winger put down his soldering gun, flipped up his safety glasses—you could still see a scar where the melanocytes hadn’t quite finished their work on his face—and said, “Than what, son…than this? Working like a dog on the ranch—“

  “Dad—“

  But they were both interrupted by the clatter of hooves outside the barn door. Soon enough, Misty, their brown and white Arabian poked her big snout in, guided by Joanna. His sister had taken Misty out for a short ride along the lower passes.

  Jamison Winger motioned his daughter over, after she had secured Misty and set her up with water and oats. He explained what Johnny wanted to do.

  Joanna just rolled her eyes. “So what is this, some kind of glorified Cub Scouts? Do you run around in uniforms and play shoot-em-up with the bad guys?”

  Mr. Winger held up a hand. “Jo…that’ll be enough of that. It’s what he wants to do. I just wanted to let you know…I’ll email Brad…he’s still stuck in residency at Stanford Medical. If John here wants to join Quantum Corps, hey, I think that’s great. I just want to make sure he knows what he’s getting into.”

  Joanna wasn’t convinced. “Mom would never go for this.”

  Johnny came back, “How do you know?”

  “Kids, kids…no more, okay. The Old Man needs some peace around the barn…I’m working on a new flyer design…it’s no bigger than a fly. John, go do your application.” He turned to Joanna. “And as for you, young lady, how about finishing what I told you to do...clean up the kitchen and the living room. Then you can groom Misty and Marcy. I might even go riding with you after lunch.”

  Joanna agreed with that and Johnny sprinted back to the house. An hour later, he had finished his online application to Quantum Corps and submitted it. By supper time that evening—over beef barley soup and sandwiches—Johnny reported that the Corps had responded back.

  He read the reply over the dinner table. “It says ‘Report by 0800 hours on 22 June, 2048 to the Recruit Processing Center, Table Top Mountain, Idaho. Bring all applicable identicards listed below, including a current healthchip and a week’s clothes. Your contact will be Lieutenant Jeremy Wormer.’ Dad, can I take my bike, huh… what about it, huh?”

  Jamison Winger sopped up some soup he’d dribbled on his chin. He crammed a square of cornbread in his mouth and chewed, thinking. You knew he was thinking when his eyebrows started canting down toward each other.

  “You’ve finished all your projects for Ms. Gomez? Net School’s done?”

  “All done. My certificate’s already posted on their web site. I can print it—“

  Mr. Winger took another bite and sighed. “No need. I just wish your Mom were here. You know she’d give you a big hug and a kiss.”

  “Yeah, a big wet kiss.”

  Joanna could just imagine it. “Like Misty gives you, all tongue and teeth—“

  “Okay, that’s enough. Johnny, this is serious business. You’re sure about this? You’re sure you don’t want to shovel hay the rest of your life. Or tear up all my inventions?”

  Johnny knew a gotcha from his Dad when one came. There was a kind of twinkle in his eye, a slight smirky lift to his lips.

  “I’m sure, Dad. I know what I’m doing.”

  Jamison Winger put his spoon down and arranged the utensils just so. He’d always been a neat freak but after Ellen had died—well, it was one of a lot of things that had changed around the place. “Then, don’t forget to write, son. If they give recruits the time to do things like that.”

  “I won ‘t, sir.”

  The next day, Johnny cinched up a bag to the back of his turbo and sped off down the twisting gravel drive of the ranch. He picked up I-70 a few minutes later and headed north for Denver. And no autoway this time either. He wanted to be in control of something…he’d always liked to be in control of things.

  Idaho was two states west, up through the Front Range and one state north. The trip would take the better part of two days. But he had his gear and he didn’t plan on sleeping any longer than necessary, just enough to rest up from the road.

  Table Top Mountain, here I come. He throttled up the bike nearly to redline rpms and sped off toward the mountains, still snow-capped even in summer and silent, now beckoning him on to new and unknown places.

  “Table Top Mountain”

  Table Top Mountain, Idaho

  June 21, 2048

  6:45 p.m.

  Johnny Winger watched as the snow-capped peaks of the Sawtooth Range drew closer. Somewhere up there, past the front range, was Table Top Mountain. He thumbed a button on his wristpad and the image popped onto his visor…there it was… at least a virtual
image. The mesa did look like a giant table, poking up above the surrounding countryside like a craggy high chair. His head-up map labeled nearby mountains as the Buffalo range. There was a place called Hunt Valley. Restricted Access, the map warned him. And one town, Haleyville.

  Highway 21 snaked its way back and forth toward the mesa and soon he was climbing up a series of switchbacks to the summit, slightly obscured by a passing fog.

  When he got to the top, he stopped at the Main Gate and two security officers came out to check credentials and sign him in.

  He was ordered to follow directions displayed for him by a palm chip the guards gave him, a chip he fixed to his handle bars…the chip would display the route to the Recruit Processing Center, which turned out to be near the center of the base, part of the Officers’ Quarters compound. He passed a sign labeled Containment Center. That gave him a little chill. This is really for real, he told himself.

  There was a line outside the Recruit Center. Johnny grabbed his bags and found his way, with the help of two sergeants barking out orders, to the end of the queue.

  “Single file and keep your yaps shut, nogs!” That was all they knew how to say, and they said it over and over again. The orders grew louder and louder and the line grew longer and longer.

  Table Top was a compact base. There was only so much room on top of the mesa so space was scarce and everything had to fit there.

  The Recruit Center was in a building adjacent to the Barracks, a short walk from the PX and the commissary. Winger waited in line with several hundred others. After an hour, the doors were opened and all filed into a large assembly hall.

  Winger sat between a short, loud-mouthed female applicant whose name badge said D’Nunzio and a fellow named Nathan Caden.

  Winger introduced himself. Caden had owlish features and a black buzz cut. He was lanky, wiry and pretty much a sourpuss to judge from his expression. Johnny asked Caden where he was from.

  Caden had a pained look on his face. “Bellevue, Washington,” he said. What Johnny couldn’t see was the halo that Caden had inside his skull. It was something Red Hammer required of all its agents. The nanobotic insert was in place to make sure Caden didn’t do anything detrimental to the cartel. The pain on his face was real, too, but Johnny didn’t know that. The halo was there to pump the neural gaps with dopamine, and suck them dry just as fast. Each cycle was just a little reminder…spasm or ecstasy, all you had to do was say the wrong thing.

  A voice interrupted Johnny’s puzzlement. “Marianne D’Nunzio,” came the voice. “Everybody calls me Deeno…if they know what’s good for them.” It was the female on the other side of Winger.

  “Johnny Winger...Pueblo, Colorado.”

  D’Nunzio was a trash-talking New York wisecracker, a muscle gal, into kick boxing, Tai Chi, and a lot of stretching, flexing and strutting. She cracked knuckles every time her mouth opened. “Hey, Winger from Pueblo, Colorado…what gives with Constipated Cal next door? He looks like he just ate a whole hen.”

  Winger shrugged. “The quiet type, I guess. Hey, look, the show’s finally getting on the road….”

  A tall officer in a black and gold uniform bounded up to a mike on the stage. He said his name was Lieutenant Jeremy Wormer. The way he said it sounded like “Wormy.” Naturally, that’s what Deeno D’Nunzio called him from then on.

  “Wormy” went over the day’s agenda. “After some words from General Kincade, the base C/O and Major Kraft, you’ll line up outside in the lobby, by name. That’s where you’ll draw your quarters assignments, schedules, rules and regs book and uniforms and other gear. Then you grab a bite at the commissary, stow your gear and get ready…for a full afternoon of tests, sims and checkups. Questions?”

  Nobody had any. General Kincade made a few perfunctory remarks, followed by Major Jurgen Kraft. Kraft was head of 1st Nanospace Battalion. He was brusque, to the point and a voice somewhere behind Winger joked that he looked like a lion about to pounce, with his big moustache and animal glare. The recruits didn’t know it yet, but Kraft was German by birth, detached to Quantum Corps from a previous billet with UNIFORCE Security – II EuroCorps and was a strict, no-nonsense, by-the-book, expect-the-impossible-everyday kind of c/o.

  Kraft didn’t speak or make an address. He growled like a lion over fresh meat.

  “Recruits…there’s one rule when I’m around. Don’t waste my time. Give your all every minute…no less. Nobody free-lances and becomes an atomgrabber in my unit. If I give you a problem, work the problem. Don’t just react. Here at Table Top, you’ll hear the rally cry a lot…’small is all!’ You know what that means? It means the mission comes first, before everything, even before your life. I won’t have any atomgrabbers in my outfit telling me something can’t be done. I don’t give a damn about laws of physics or what your Mommy told you when you were six. I’m not your Mommy…forget Mommy. You come into my outfit, you will be an atomgrabber in all respects, all the time. If I kick your ass, it’s not because I love your pretty little ass…it’s because you need proper motivation. And with me, if it comes down to ass-kicking, you’re already halfway out the door. That is all.”

  There was dead silence for several minutes. Then Wormy came up to the mike and said, “Fall out…to the lobby. Line up and keep your yaps shut. You’re nogs here. Nog stands for noggin…as in what I’ll be beating on if you don’t act right. Move out…!”

  So they lined up, drew their gear and went on to the commissary.

  Caden and D’Nunzio sat with Johnny Winger for a quick lunch of something vaguely resembling a sandwich and chips. Caden was quiet, which wasn’t a problem for D’Nunzio. The New York muscle gal could talk enough to silence a battalion.

  “What’s with jarhead over there?” she mused out loud, sticking her pinky in the general direction of Caden. She wiped a dollop of mustard off her cheeks. “Still constipated?”

  “It’s sticker shock,” Winger surmised. “Didn’t you tell me you came out of some geek place in the Bay Area?”

  “Yeah,” Caden murmured. “Place called Cytek…I was a bot engineer.”

  “Bots?” D’Nunzio said. “This place should be right up your alley then. Except these buggers are pretty small…think you can handle this?”

  Caden shrugged. He wasn’t going to give the halo anything to chew on today. You had to watch it when others were around. The halo sometimes got antsy and started slurping dopamine, just to make sure everything worked right.

  “We’ll see,” was all he would say. He took a big bite of the turkey and Swiss and made sure his mouth was crammed so he couldn’t say anything out of line. The shivers stayed away…for the moment.

  D’Nunzio turned to Winger. “Colorado, huh? You ski?”

  “I ski. What about you? What gets your motor running?”

  D’Nunzio got a dreamy look on her face. “Kicking ass. I mean, seriously, I kickbox, all types. I just love burying my feet in someone’s derriere.”

  Winger figured talking with D’Nunzio was like talking to one of those toy bots that always broke down…no matter what you asked it, the damn thing always spit out the same reply.

  “You’ll do well around here.”

  Then a bell rang. Lunch was over. It was time for physical exams and tests.

  Major Jurgen Kraft rubbed his jaw uneasily as the simulation continued. Johnny Winger had been inside the SODS tank for better than an hour now; that was unheard of and even the sim techs stirred nervously as the rookie atomgrabber barreled on. The last time a cadet or a recruit had spent more than forty minutes navigating the tank and not crawled out a screaming lunatic had been several years ago and that poor fellow had washed out at the end of Basic.

  Putting a nog into the SODS tank at this point in an atomgrabber’s training was like giving a snorkel and fins to a ten-year old and telling him to swim the Atlantic. Endurance and tenacity like this just wasn’t the norm inside th
e training battalion.

  Kraft studied the monitor image of Winger’s determined face and wondered. Just what the hell have I got on my hands here?

  The senior sim tech was a corporal named Givens, short, chunky, with an annoying rapid-fire blink to his eyes. He looked up at Kraft.

  “Major, you want I should pull him out now…he’s already made it to the other side, beat through every obstacle I can throw at him. He’s done the standard course…and then some.”

  “Where’s he now?”

  Givens checked the grid on his display. The SODS tank was a sphere thirty feet in diameter, filled with water, and a host of infinitesimal predators and bogeymen, enough to get any unsuspecting nog’s attention when he tried to pilot an ANAD through the medium. An electronic 3-D grid pinpointed the position of the nanoscale assembler as the pilot steered it through the obstacle course.

  “—I make him about two point one meters this side of the far wall…he’s slogging through the whirlpool…having some trouble keeping on course, looks like. Already transited the carbene forest.”

  “Hmmpphh…” was all Kraft could say. The carbene forest was a sleet of reactive radicals and molecule clumps that usually ate up rookie atomgrabbers for lunch…it took some serious stick work and guts to slip through the torrent of molecules that were trying to tear off your effectors left and right. “Carbenes usually do a number on most pilots. What’s his trick?”

  “I don’t know, sir…Cadet Winger’s just got a knack for ANAD driving, I guess. I’ve never seen anything like it. Should I let him go on…or pull the plug?”

  Kraft’s eyes went from the ANAD image to Winger’s face—a tight mask of concentration…hell, the kid had his eyes closed, for God’s sake…he was driving ANAD by feel alone, tickling his joysticks and changing config by instinct. It was uncanny—

  “No…let him be, Givens…let’s see what the kid can do.” A small crowd of techs and nogs had begun to gather around the control console outside the tank. Glances and murmurs were exchanged…and a few ten-notes as well.

  SODS stood for Spatial Orientation and Discrimination Simulator. Cadet Johnny Winger wasn’t physically inside the sphere at all. Instead, he was in an enclosed booth on the other side of the tank, plugged into everything the ANAD master was sensing. A sleet of water molecules rushed by the assembler as it cruised on picowatt propulsors back across the water inside the tank. Once in awhile, the sim techs threw a curve at the trainee: dropped a few million bacterial spores in front of him, stirred the water into a whirlpool, discharged electron guns, zapped the tank with UV and X-rays…anything their diabolical minds and the simulation protocols could come up with. So far, Cadet Johnny Winger had fought off every predator and obstacle, even a malfunctioning horde of ANAD replicants that had materialized seemingly out of nowhere right in the middle of the tank. Winger had fought off banzai charges and flanking maneuvers and double envelopment tactics like a seasoned veteran, grappling with the herd in close combat and using his own ANAD’s bond disrupters to break the back of the enemy formation.

  SODS was a prerequisite for any nog to get into the Corps, and stand for officer status in the newly forming 1st Nanospace Battalion. The whole world of nanoscale combat was so new that Kraft and the Corps general staff were making up tactics as they went along. SODS was supposed to measure a prospective atomgrabber’s ability to discriminate and manipulate objects via remote control at infinitesimal micron or even smaller scales.

  From the beginning, Jurgen Kraft had to admit, one cadet stood above all the rest…Johnny Winger. He’d shown extraordinary skill at the sim, an unusually adept talent at visualizing and manipulating micron or nanometer scale objects in space. Hands down, the kid was destined to be the top code and stick man in the whole battalion. You couldn’t make raw talent like that.

  If he could pass the Atomgrabbers’ Qualifying Test, that was.

  And raw is what it is, Kraft kept reminding himself. Even as he and the others watched with amazement and grudging admiration, ANAD powered its way through the ‘waterfall’ obstacle that Givens had programmed in—dodging loose polypeptides and radicals with aplomb—and Winger’s eyes were still closed. The kid wasn’t even watching his readouts. He was letting the stick talk back to him, somehow feeling ANAD through the haptic feedback and driving across the course on instinct.

  It’d be easier to navigate Manhattan on a tricycle blindfolded, Kraft told himself.

  “Let him head for the launch point,” Kraft ordered. “I want to see what this fellow’s made of.”

  “Two big ones say he’ll never make it,” a voice called from behind.

  “Three says he does—“ someone countered.

  “Warm beer for everyone if he splats at the ‘Wall’,” another one chimed in.

  The wall was a solid chunk of metal dividing the tank in two. The trick was to config ANAD for denser medium, change his form so you could transit a world of crystalline planes and rigid lattices. All the while fighting off deranged nanobots programmed to chew up your effectors while you dived through. Most nogs would have rather run naked through a pack of lions.

  But Winger managed to fend off the attack, whirling ANAD like a mad dervish, ripping the water with jolts of electron discharges, forming a protective bubble just long enough to fold himself for the denser wall. He squeezed the assembler down to barely a core and base, and slid sideways, twisting and turning, one step ahead of the bots nipping at his heels.

  In the end, the race got everybody in the sim room cheering him on. A few moments later, ANAD sounded ahead and followed the acoustic returns right to the vacuum tube at the near wall of the tank, letting the containment chamber suck him up and put him to bed in his homeworld.

  Kraft watched Winger’s eyes pop open on the monitor…the first time the kid had looked up since the carbene forest. Not a drop of sweat on him, Kraft observed. The barest hint of a smile crossed his young face.

  “ANAD secured in containment,” Winger reported. “I’ll be ready for another run at the course as soon as he’s regenerated and stable—“

  Kraft leaned forward to the mike. “Uh, that won’t be necessary, Cadet Winger. You’ve made your point. Secure the sim and extract. See you at the debrief in ten minutes.”

  Winger nodded at the unseen voice. “Copy that, sir.” He started unhooking himself from the booth.

  It had only been a few months after Johnny’s father, Jamison Winger, had taken the patch treatment for depression that Johnny had seen the first WorldNet stories about the Quantum Corps, only it wasn’t called that back then. United Special Operations Force or USOF was the original name of the group at the time, but it would soon evolve with a broad new mandate from the United Nations and with its new mandate, USOF gained a new name.

  Winger had been looking for a way out for a long time. Quantum Corps was offering scholarships, some kickass new learning patches, even technical training for cadets who applied, qualified, got accepted and could get through basic training. Winger was intrigued; he damn well had no desire to stay on at the North Bar Pass Ranch and herd cattle for the rest of his life, even if he did get to tinker with Bailey and his dad’s other flying gizmos.

  So Quantum Corps had been his ticket out of ranch work, and away from the deadening weight of family responsibility since his mother had died. In exchange for a six-year commitment, Johnny Winger had showed up at nog camp in a place called Table Top Mountain, Idaho, ready to see just what this new business of nanoscale warfare was all about.

  It was late ’48 and the first medical nanobots were just hitting the news. Jamison Winger himself had tinkered in his barn-cum-shop-and-laboratory with personal nano back in the ‘40s, not very successfully Johnny remembered, but enough to be intriguing, really just some jalopy barebones matter compilers he’d put together from a kit, the kind you saw in midnight specials on the Net.

  Johnny had been intrigued enough to check it out an
d when he found Quantum Corps looking for suitable candidates to get some schooling in nano theory and techniques, he didn’t think long before applying.

  Nog camp had been an eye-opener, even for an athlete like Johnny. Discipline was tough but his outdoors orientation and caving experience made him physically fit enough and he managed to ace the physical exams and the obstacle courses in PT.

  But it was inside the SODS tank, working through problems at micron scales, manipulating simple assemblers, nudging atoms around like he was driving a ‘dozer that Johnny really shined. Somehow, it was like he’d been born to it. Driving ANAD and grabbing atoms came naturally to him. It was like he could see all the pyramids and polygons and cones and spheres ping-ponging around in his mind’s eye, like he just had a feel for van der Waals forces and bond strengths; intuitively, he knew what it took to snap a carbon ring in half and boot up an autonomous assembler and go off careening around inside a speck of matter like it was some kind of disneyland or something. Some people played the piano. Some people could throw a football seventy yards on a rope. Johnny Winger was a born atomdriver.

  And after a few legendary turns in the SODS tank, he had come to the attention of Major Jurgen Kraft.

  Kraft was the newly appointed commanding officer of Quantum Corps’ 1st Nanospace Battalion. It was his job to take the raw talent of people like Johnny Winger and Nathan Caden and Deeno D’Nunzio and shape it into a functioning combat unit, then marry their training to the technology that ANAD brought. Originally, Kraft had been a program manager for autonomous assemblers at Northgate University, where ANAD had been born at the Autonomous Systems Lab. Kraft was an early mover in the world of nanoscale mechanisms married to autonomous-agent quantum computing. He’d done several stints at Northgate and Quantum Corps had tapped him early on for field command. He’d been instrumental after that, getting ANAD technology weaponized and tactics developed enough to be combat ready. There was some urgency to this business too, as UNIFORCE intelligence had learned in early ’48 that Balkistan and several other rogue nations as well as certain criminal groups were hard at work dealing in weaponized nano themselves.

  Kraft knew it wouldn’t be long before ANAD and its new crop of nanowarriors would be put to the test.

  In June 2048, Jurgen Kraft had met Johnny Winger for the first time. It was not a match made in heaven.

  Cadet Winger knocked gently on the door jamb. Major Kraft was at his desk, his shiny balding head was bent to some paperwork he’d neglected. He didn’t look up, merely mumbled a raspy “Come” while he swore softly at the commandpad, trying to tidy up a report for the 1600 hours squirt to Division.

  “Cadet Johnny Winger, sir…reporting as ordered.” Winger hung a salute, holding his arm stiff until Kraft responded perfunctorily.

  “Cadet Winger—“ Kraft folded up the c-pad and tucked it in his shirt pocket, then leaned back in his squeaky chair. “--that was one hell of a display of ANAD-piloting this afternoon in the tank. You navigate like that all the time, son?”

  Winger gave it some thought. “That was my first time, but I’ve played with nano before. Most of the time, I’m a little smoother with the insert and capture, sorry, sir….”

  Kraft snorted. “Most of the time?—hell, son, most of the time, the sim operators chew up nogs and spit ‘em out for dirt. Where’d you learn to grab atoms like that?”

  “Sisters of Mercy Hospital in Colorado Springs, sir.” He explained about the crash, the medical bots, the surreptitious sessions in the lab. “I guess I had a knack, sir. Kind of took to it real quick.”

  Kraft was suspicious of the kid right from the start. What was Johnny Winger doing that all the rest weren’t? “Cadet Winger, it’s my job to get this outfit into shape and combat-ready. I want you to be my top sergeant in the training platoon. Assuming you pass all the other tests, of course. You work with the SODS pukes, work out some routines, tests and scenarios. I want you to teach the other code and stick men how to drive like you do. Got that?”

  That was when Johnny knew he was in trouble. The truth was he couldn’t really explain the talent he had. He had no words to describe how you parked ANAD on the ‘back porch’ of a benzene ring and used its covalent bonds to swing yourself through a sleet of water molecules like Tarzan hurtling through the trees. Nobody had taught him harebrained maneuvers like that; it certainly wasn’t in Dr. Morse’s book at the hospital. You just felt it and tried it and made it work.

  But he couldn’t very well say no to Major Kraft, could he?

  Kraft studied Winger for a few moments. “Colorado…you say you worked on a ranch too? Like a cowboy?”

  “More like slave labor, sir…we’re just barely holding on. The Corps’ my ticket out. I want to make the Corps a career.”

  Kraft hmmmed at that. He rubbed the back of his bald head, then fiddled with his moustache. “There are more tests, son. And the big one at the end. Atomgrabbers Qualifying Test…AQT. Keep your nose clean and study hard. The Corps needs someone like you…badly. That’ll be all.”

  “Sir…yes, sir.” Winger fired off his best salute and hightailed it out of officers’ country, finding himself outside the Ops building, fighting a stiff wind blowing across the mesa.

  He pumped a fist and allowed himself a smile. This kid’s got one foot in the door. Then he headed for the Recruit Quarters, stuck down at the ass-end of the BOQ. Deeno D’Nunzio and that propeller- head Caden were never going to believe this.

  He found Caden stuffing socks and shoes in a small bag. His bed was made, the covers cinched up tighter than a drumhead.

  “Where are you going?” Winger asked. He slung his own rucksack onto his bunk. “You should be studying your brains out…we’ve still got more classes and tests, you know…” he checked his agenda, carefully pronounced the upcoming attraction at 1700 hours…Basic Maneuvers in Molecular Combat…”better read up on the text they gave us.”

  Caden wasn’t real talkative. Which wasn’t unusual for him. He was acutely aware that the rest of the training battalion felt a nog’s place was with his unit. But it couldn’t be helped—he had to be on time.

  “Just getting my stuff squared away. Scuttlebutt says there might be an inspection before chow tonight…I wanted to be ready.”

  Winger plopped onto his bunk. “Guess where I just came from?”

  Caden thought of Johnny Winger as some rube from the hills, a cowboy more at home in a haystack than a special ops outfit like the Corps. “Don’t tell me…the far side of the Moon.”

  “Nope.” Winger described his test run at the SODS tank. “Major Kraft said I was a natural…it was easy. I felt like I’d been doing it all my life.”

  “So you want me to kiss you or what?”

  “No, I’ll settle for letting you kiss my ass…I perfumed it real good this morning…just for you.”

  With that, Caden snorted and left the bunk room. He had already scoped out a small utility room just out the back door of the recruit quarters. He ducked into the utility room and, after making sure no one had seen him, pulled out the nanoderm kit.

  First thing was to swallow the pill. It tasted like a piece of dirty sponge.

  Though the process occurred inside him and thus was initially invisible, Caden kept remembering stretches of a text he’d read not long ago: “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.” He chuckled at the idea. Robert Louis Stevenson could never have imagined this.

  Caden emerged from the utility room after about ten minutes. His face was different. His whole identity was different. Outwardly, he was no longer Nathan Caden. Now, he was a young Quantum Corps lieutenant named Dirk Melhkopf, complete with a spiffy new black and gold uniform, consistent right down to the atom-and-sunburst Corps emblem on his lapels and newly minted silver bars on his shoulders.

  He stuffed his old cadet paraphernalia into a small bag and left it under a drain grate in the room. Then he walked quickly, purposef
ully, like he knew where he was going, right to the Security shack at the Main Gate, just the other side of Drexler Field.

  There was a moment’s hesitation as the security guards examined his ID and checked against their records. But the guard who’d taken his ID returned it with no comment and no visible reaction that Caden could detect.

  “Thank you, sir. Watch the hill…the rain this morning makes those turns pretty slick.”

  “Sure,” Caden, now ‘Lieutenant Mehlkopf’, said. He held his breath and didn’t breathe until he was headed down the narrow twisting road from the mesa that led to Highway 7.

  Caden realized that his relatively uneventful exit from Table Top meant that Red Hammer’s swipebot had worked perfectly, as advertised. Where the real Mehlkopf was at that moment, Caden didn’t know. Probably sacked out in his bunk wholly unaware that his whole ID right down to his fingerprints, DNA and any measurable biometric had been purloined by something the size of a virus with the morals of a bank robber. He decided he didn’t really care.

  He was out, on time, and he needed now to make tracks. Nathan Caden had an important rendezvous that afternoon.

  The small town of Haleyville was a short ride from Table Top Mountain and Caden would have enjoyed the afternoon jaunt on the turboscooter--the air was fresh with pine and birch and a steady breeze was flowing through the high mountain passes of Idaho's Sawtooth Range--but the truth was he was nervous, even anxious about the meeting.

  He hadn't done exactly as the agreement called for and he knew there would be questions. He just hoped the inquiry stopped with questions. He figured he'd use the ride down to the town to come up with some answers.

  Haleyville was a thirty-minute ride, out the main gate at Drexler Field--Table Top's parade ground and drill field--down the winding road through Buffalo Valley to Highway 7. Haleyville Road itself ran a serpentine course, switching back and forth along the crest of the ridge overlooking Hunt Valley to the north, a narrow two-lane blacktop dark as a black bear, until it peeled off south toward the town itself. The north fork went up Hunt Valley Road, through a valley and tunnel complex the nogs had long ago called The Notch, to the Test and Wargaming Range several miles away, atop a bare mesa lost in wispy wreaths of cloud and mist.

  Caden enjoyed the ride on his bike as best he could, cranking the scooter up to nearly a hundred and twenty, leaning left and right as he steered on through the cool afternoon air toward the outskirts of town, and the rustic hotel known as Custer Inn, where his appointment was undoubtedly waiting impatiently. He was already late and it was getting dark, save for the bowl of stars just coming out overhead, and the faint halo glow of Table Top base behind him. He was glad the road was mostly deserted.

  He didn't want to answer any more questions than necessary.

  Custer Inn was a faintly shabby, log and shingle mountain lodge of a hotel, nestled in the piney brow of a small turnout valley off the main road, a mile or so before Highway 7 broadened into Main Street, which was lined with gift shops, bait and tackle joints and hiking suppliers. The pale blue glow of a parasailing shop, closed for the evening, threw enough light across the road, so he found the turnoff readily enough. He tried not to let the hologram windsailers circling over the intersection distract him.

  He sped down the decline toward the parking lot, and parked the scooter in the shadows, somehow feeling comfort in a cloak of anonymity. Through the windows, the bar and restaurant shone with boozy conviviality, laughter and saloon music spilling out through the front doors.

  He went in.

  As instructed, he went to Registration and secured a room for the night. Number 127, the Geronimo wing and would he be needing any help with his luggage, sir, we do have bellhop service--

  Caden ignored the offer and went looking for the room. He turned up and down several corridors, crossed a breezeway to another building and eventually stumbled upon Room 127. He unlocked it and went inside.

  He waited, uneasily, for about half an hour.

  As before, the knock, when it came, was soft, almost inaudible.

  "Housekeeping--" purred an accented voice.

  Caden let the woman in, shutting the door quickly behind him. The lights were low in the room, only a single lamp over the bed lit. The staff woman was Oriental. Chinese, perhaps, from the look of her.

  Caden hadn't seen her before. She was short, petite, straight black hair tied in a severe bun. Her maid's outfit was impeccable: white skirt and apron, white shoes, black and white blouse and latex gloves.

  She glared coldly at Caden. "You're late."

  The cadet attempted a shrug, but realized it wasn't visible in the shadows. "Couldn't be helped…I had classes, tests, then a briefing, with the Major. I can’t stay long…there are more tests tonight.”

  Her real name was Wei Ming, but Caden didn't know this. Nor did he ask. It was understood that identities weren't important. Only results were important. That much was understood quite well.

  Wei Ming pursed her lips, paced deeper into the black of the room. She drew the shades aside, scanned outside, satisfied, she came back, partially into the light. Her face was a half moon, pale and unblemished as a ceramic figurine. "It goes well?"

  Caden watched her, hoping to detect something, some inkling of where he stood with them. Maybe a twitch, a clench of her fist, but there was nothing. "Well enough. I’m doing the best I can. Some of these guys are really well qualified…there’s one fellow, named Winger…he’s a shoo-in. I’m not really sure where I stand today…I’m trying to find out where the cut-off is on applicants. I just need more time.”

  "Mmm." A question or a statement? He wasn't sure.

  Caden found the silences uncomfortable. "Really, I think the mission is on track—“

  "You’ve had long enough." Wei Ming's face hardened. "You were supposed to have stopped them before now--"

  Caden knew that was coming. It was true that he was slightly behind the agreed-on schedule. He tried to put a spin on the story, a certain inevitability, factors beyond my control, I wasn't prepared for--but she brushed him off and went pacing again, this time more abruptly.

  When she came back into the light, her face was no longer a half moon. It had morphed into a hard, impassive mask, a carnival mask, an angry clown. Was it the light…maybe nanoderm patches changing with her mood? He'd heard of the trick--

  "This is no good," she told him. The undulations on her cheeks and forehead seemed to settle down, take on a firmness. "You should have taken steps by now…it was agreed. You agreed. Now we’ll have to speed things up.”

  "It will take some time--"

  Now she was visibly angry. The skin kneaded itself into a hard fist, making her cheeks bulge slightly like a lioness with fresh kill in her mouth. "They're not stupid, Caden. Don't make that mistake. You've made enough already." She was thinking, her cheeks returning to normal planes, sleek and alabaster. "Our efforts must be allowed to develop and expand globally. The Project depends on it."

  Caden had heard of The Project before. He wanted to ask, but he decided against it. But he was curious.

  "Maybe if I knew more about--"

  But Wei Ming wasn't listening. She had new instructions from Red Hammer. "You're being paid well for your services, Caden. Yet you continue to fail us."

  "I can't work miracles."

  "Leave the miracles to us. Just do your part." There was an unmistakable menace--had her voice changed timbre? An echo, a frequency shift, multiple tones superimposed. He shook his head. Had Red Hammer mastered that too?

  She went on. "You must sabotage any more efforts to develop countermeasures. ANAD must not be allowed to interfere with the Project. This is a critical time now."

  Caden's throat constricted. No…that was a normal reflex. He told himself that, reassured himself he still controlled his own throat muscles. "That's not the agreement. I agreed only to provide intelligence, not perform sabotag
e. It's too dangerous."

  Wei Ming was stern. Nanoderm rolled across her face, an earthquake of skin, reflecting her emotions. "Your mission is changed. You'll be paid well for your work…if it is successful. We've always paid well, have we not?"

  Caden nodded glumly.

  She reached into her apron, withdrew a small disk. She placed it in Caden's hand. He willed his palm to remain still.

  "It is a small bug. Load it into ANAD's kernel. It will weaken ANAD, subtly, a little at a time. This will make it harder for Quantum Corps to counter us. Install this at the right time--you will be signaled when. And keep sending intelligence back…the usual way."

  She vanished from the room almost before Caden realized she was gone, blending into the shadows. He stayed a few minutes more, breathing rhythmically, testing arms, legs, facial muscles. Making sure he still had control of himself. Red Hammer did that to people. And the halo hadn’t done anything. He was grateful for that much.

  Then he left the Custer Inn and sped back to Table Top Mountain.

  It was near midnight when he parked the turbo outside the Recruit barracks. He’d missed several classes. He walked through stiff breezes across the quadrangle to the Barracks, right in the center of the base. Ten minutes in the utility room and he was Nathan Caden again, right down to the uniform and the owlish face and the bushy eyebrows. Outside his quarters, he ran into Mighty Mite Barnes, having a smoke with another female he didn’t know, huddled together to shield themselves from the wind, beneath the overhang.

  Barnes was contemptuous. "What happened, Caden? Hot water with the Major again? Or was this a little love trip? Bitch wouldn't put out for you?"

  Her smoking companion just snickered.

  The hard drive along Highway 7 had helped Caden clear his mind. He snorted. "I left her panting…for more. She couldn't get enough of what I had."

  "Right," said Barnes. Whatever the hell that was.

  Nathan Caden threw himself into his bunk, left the lights off and tried to close his eyes and think. After a minute of enforced stillness, he got up and stood by the parted curtains of his quarters, gazing out across the lighted quadrangle of the Ops Center. A few guards patrolled the walkways. A few techs were straggling in, reporting for day shift inside the Tank. If he stood to one side of the window, Caden could see the low floodlit dome of the Containment Facility, a few hundred meters south from the barracks compound. More security. In the distance, perched on an outcrop of the mesa that overhung Buffalo Valley, was the parade ground and Drexler Field. He checked his watch, noted the time and date. In less than two weeks, the next round of nogs--Corps cadets--would be tossing their tasseled caps into the air, finishing Basic training and feeling like prisoners let out on furlough. But Caden didn’t know that.

  Caden snorted, remembering every sweaty minute of the last few weeks. Atomgrabbing 101 and all the quantum physics you could ever want. Not to mention Phys Ed and the obstacle course every afternoon. Thirty-mile hikes through the snow and sleet of the Buffalo Mountains. Survival training. Escape and evasion tactics. Molecular fencing and the Sim Tank, where malevolent instructors fitted you out with gizmos that repelled and attracted just like real-life atoms. You bounced around like a tennis ball for several hours, usually knocking yourself senseless in the process. He shook his head. Maybe it had been a big mistake after all.

  Nathan Caden stood at the window, fidgeting with the frayed ends of the curtain draw. He knew he had to act. He knew he had to do something.

  Disable Quantum Corps for three more days.

  There was only one possibility and Caden recoiled from it. But he didn't really have a choice. He was in tight with Red Hammer, too tight by now, and if he politely declined, he'd be terminated faster than he could say quantum.

  The only sure way to bollix up Table Top Mountain for three days, maybe longer, was to get inside the Containment building and release ANAD. Config the bugger for max replication and let the swarm loose on Table Top Mountain.

  The Big Bang scenario they'd simmed so many times…this time, played out in real life.

  With any luck, he might not even survive the onslaught.