Nanotroopers Episode 19: Mount Kipwezi, Page 3

Quantum Corps Base

  Mesa de Oro

  Yucatan State, Mexico

  October 13, 2049

  0350 hours (U.T.)

  For Major James Lofton, Quantum Corps Q2 director, the Ops Center at the new base was a far cry from what he’d worked with at Table Top Mountain. Still grumbling, he squirted his files and presentations to the 3-d display on Major Johnny Winger’s desk.

  “I hope SOFIE’s up and working soon,” he muttered. “Last time I did this on my own, dinosaurs roamed the Earth.”

  “It’s good practice,” Winger said, mildly amused as Lofton fumbled with the buttons on his wristpad. “Reminds us to appreciate what we have…or had.”

  The base at Mesa de Oro was still being completed and facilities still being furnished after the Corps had vacated its long-time home at Table Top Mountain. Geoplane ops and uncontrollable seismic tremors had made that place unstable and dangerous to occupy for something as critical as Quantum Corps’ Western Command base. Now they were ensconced in a new home, hard by the Kokul-Gol dig site in Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula.

  Lofton pointed to some data blocks scrolling in mid-air. “That’s the Bioshield signature that LA center picked up two days ago. At first, LA thought they were just seeing some loose nano, basically some ‘leakage’ from loose fabs in the area…you know how those archeologists are. Nano barriers everywhere and they don’t really know what they’re doing. But one of the techs noticed some unusual spikes in the signature and decided to look closer. He came up with this…ninety percent probable match.”

  A 3-d head appeared like a ghostly image in the middle of the display. It was the face of Dmitri Kulagin.

  Winger sat up abruptly in his chair and stared at the image. “Is that who I think it is, Lofton?”

  “It is…one Kulagin, Dmitri…Russian mafioso, Ruling Council of Red Hammer. He’s been lying low for years…we haven’t had a sighting or a signal anywhere. Notice, the difference in facial architecture too…biomorphing bots. He’s altered his appearance. But he couldn’t alter his halo…that’s hardwired in his brain. That’s what Bioshield LA picked up…faint, but you see the data. It’s a match.”

  Winger hmmpphed. “So what’s a Red Hammer Ruling Council member doing hanging around the Kokul-Gol dig site? Spying on us? Or is there something at Kokul-Gol?”

  Lofton shrugged. “We don’t really know. The Mexican Ministry of Antiquities runs the dig…they’re responsible for vetting all the diggers, technicians, cooks and bottle washers. We’ve spotted Kulagin at the dig; he seems to be masquerading either as an archeologist or some kind of graduate assistant. We’ve also hacked the Ministry’s files to see if any other known Red Hammer agents or operatives are on site.”

  “And?”

  Lofton shrugged again. “So far, nothing. Kulagin is officially attached to the research team of one Dr. Heinz Richter. Richter’s one of the big guys, right out of Oxford and Tubingen. Richter’s clean, so far as we can tell. And we can’t find any other obvious intel on his team members, though we have suspicions about one…Dr. Erika Volk. She used to be BioShield in fact, but had a bit of a falling out, several years ago. We’re keeping our eye on her but nothing’s come up that’s tripped any alarms.”

  Winger studied the rotating head of Kulagin. “This joker’s not in town for a vacation, that’s for sure. The only thing I can think of that would bring a Ruling Council member out of his rat hole into broad daylight is something like another Sphere.”

  Lofton grudgingly agreed with the Major’s assessment. “That had occurred to us. The cartel is known or suspected to possess a Sphere at Paryang and there was that one you found at Engebbe. Maybe there’s another one at Kokul-Gol.”

  Winger made a decision. It was one of the qualities he’d always most admired about Jurgen Kraft, the previous Battalion c/o, who’d died in all the quakes that had hit Table Top. When a decision was staring you in the face, waiting to be made, make it.

  “Lofton, a Ruling Council member so close to the base, poking around an obscure archeological dig site makes me nervous. Kulagin being here can’t be a coincidence. There’s only one way to find out what he…and maybe this Erika Volk, are up to. We need to put some people inside Kokul-Gol.”

  Lofton said, “My thoughts exactly. I can work up some bona fides for your team…some backgrounds and bios and credentials that should pass close inspection. How big a team?”

  Winger was already staring out the window at the Ordnance/Mission Prep building across the grounds, visualizing the details. The upper pediments of the main temple at Kokul-Gol were just visible over the canopy of jungle in the distance. “Small…maybe four or five. I don’t want to arouse too much suspicion. We’d better let the Ministry know too…I don’t want an international incident, even though we are UNIFORCE.”

  “Who’ll be in command?”

  Winger turned back from the window. “Me.”

  Lofton said, “Is that such a good idea, Winger. I know you’re a field atomgrabber from way back but…you’re a battalion commander now. That’s a risk. Plus your face is known. Kulagin’s likely to mark you as soon as you show up at the dig.”

  Winger had a mischievous grin. “Red Hammer’s not the only one who can biomorph a face, Lofton.”

  A small recon team was quickly formed. The mission was to be known as Operation Quantum Dawn. Mulling over possibilities in the back of his mind, Winger dismissed Lofton and made his way across the quadrangle to the Mission Prep bunker. It was a hot, hazy, humid day in the tropics and Winger realized he missed the cool mountain air and long-range vistas of the Buffalo Range that had surrounded the base at Table Top.

  This is like working in a sauna, he told himself. But there was one redeeming quality about the new base at Mesa de Oro. With geoplanes now a part of the Corps’ standard equipment and a new geoplane hangar being built on base, Mesa de Oro’s proximity to the Gulf of Mexico was a strategic advantage. Even as he entered the Mission Prep bunker, Winger imagined he could feel the tunneling going on under his feet. A geoplane access corridor was being burned out of the limestone a hundred meters below the base, a tunnel from Mesa de Oro all the way to the Gulf. Geoplanes modified for subterranean and submarine ops would soon be able to enter and leave the Mesa with little or no chance of being noticed.

  That could come in handy, he realized.

  Inside the bunker, he went to the squad ready room. Several nanotroopers were inside, cleaning equipment and re-arranging web belts and field packs.

  Mighty Mite Barnes was field-stripping and cleaning a mag carbine. She was a short, muscular brunette with a disarmingly pixie-like face but she could kick ass in any mag carbine or HERF sniper competition from here to Singapore and she’d proven herself many times over on missions all over the world and off world.

  “Skipper, what brings the brass down here into the world of nuts and bolts? Scuttlebutt says there’s a new mission coming.”

  Winger had known Barnes for years. The veteran nanotrooper had recently passed her quals in quantum systems and containment ops and was angling for a promotion to Sergeant.

  “It’s true,” he admitted. “It’s called Quantum Dawn…Mite, we’re going to make you into an archeologist. Put you to work digging ditches.”

  Barnes rolled her eyes, as she slammed the mag carbine back together by feel alone. “Great, sir…anything for the Corps. Just as long as I can kick some atomic ass in the process.”

  “Oh, I suspect you’ll be getting your chance at that.” Winger went looking for Taj Singh and Lucy Hiroshi. With Barnes and himself, the four of them would constitute the recon team that would enter Kokul-Gol and scope out what the cartel was doing there.

  Winger gathered the others around him in front of Barnes’ table. She cleared off the rest of her gear and Winger used his wristpad to project a flat image of Kokul-Gol. He went over the details of the intel Lofton had just laid out.

  “Red
Hammer’s here in the Yucatan,” he explained. “In a big way…this guy—“ he indicated a projected face—“—is Dmitri Kulagin. Not your average Red Hammer drone. He’s Ruling Council. He’s here for a reason and it’s our job to find out what that is. It may be as simple as Red Hammer setting up a surveillance operation right on our doorstep. But there’s also intel that the cartel may have found another Keeper Sphere on site and that’s bad news…very bad news. Either way, it’s our job to find out and if it’s another Sphere, it’s our job to keep the nasties from getting their hands on it.”

  Lucy Hiroshi was Japanese, but with red hair and deep set black eyes. She would be DPS tech for the mission, meaning she handled most of the defensive suite, the mags and HERFs that would fry the bad people. “Major, how are we getting in? Do we just walk in…won’t we sort of be recognized?”

  Winger smiled a malevolent grin. “Actually, that’s exactly what we do…after we’ve all been biomorphed. Sorry, Lucy, but that charming little porcelain doll’s face of yours is going to have to change. The dermal bots’ll make you look like a Mexican ama de casa.”

  Hiroshi made a face. “A housewife…ugh. What about these two?” She indicated Barnes and Singh.

  “Don’t worry…we’ll make them just as ugly.” Winger went over the details of their cover. “We’re all from the University of Colorado. Doing research on Mayan and Toltec burial customs and funerary objects. That should give us access to just about everywhere. The site director is a fellow named Richter. He’ll be in on the mission generally, but not all the details. All he knows is that Quantum Corps is running a surveillance op on site. That’s all he needs to know.”

  “Begging the Major’s pardon,” said Lucy Hiroshi, “but I don’t know a thing about Mayan burial customs. Can we pass muster with what little we know about this stuff?”

  Winger gave them all a quick smirk. “That’s the least of our worries. The eggheads in Quantum Systems have been working with Doc II to modify your embedded ANADs. While you’re going through the biomorphing, your brains will be upgraded too. You’ll each get a shiny new ANAD system, reconfigured to alter long-term potentiation waves and glutamate concentrations, just enough to give you some knowledge and motor skills to make Quantum Dawn work. You’ll each have some knowledge of Mayan burial customs and dig site procedures, just enough to make your cover work.” Winger held out his hand and opened his palm. A tiny capsule lay there. “One pill is all it takes. This baby is mine. It’s got the biomorphing bots and my upgraded ANAD master. The docs put me under for an hour and when I wake up, I look different and think I’m a world-class archeologist. It’ll be the same for all of you.”

  The team ran down the rules of engagement and their equipment, then reviewed the mission objectives.

  “Surveillance is the objective,” Winger reminded them. “Kulagin is on site for a reason. It’s our job to find out what it is. All the intel points to another Sphere or something equally important at Kokul-Gol…otherwise why send a Ruling Council member? If there is such a thing here, we have orders from UNSAC to take whatever measures are needed to prevent it from falling into Red Hammer’s hands. Up to and including terminating the target…with extreme prejudice. Is that clear?”

  “Perfectly, sir,” they all said in unison.

  Winger knew he had a good team with him. “This mission is different, even a little ticklish. We’ll be around civilians all the time…civilians who have no idea what’s going on or what’s at stake. So act accordingly. ROE says we use whatever force is necessary to accomplish the mission…and no more. Discrimination and judgment are the keys here. Now—“ he checked the time, “you’ve all got a date in one hour at the Infirmary for your procedures. Questions?”

  There were none. Singh, Barnes and Hiroshi were among the best nanotroopers in the whole Battalion. Winger knew he could count on each of them when the fat started frying.

  “Very, well, dismissed!”

  The nanotroopers gathered their gear and headed out.

  When Johnny Winger awakened from the procedure, he didn’t at first feel any different. The nurse handed him a mirror and he almost dropped it, so startled was he at his new appearance. Once he’d been proud of a lean face, with high cheeks and deep set eyes. Now his face looked like cookie dough that had been next to the stove too long. His appearance was that of a man decades older, heavier, with sallow cheeks and age spots on his forehead and chin. His nose was flatter, wider and his lips were thinner, topped with a heavy moustache that kept tickling his nose.

  General Kincade came by a few minutes later. “According to your cover, Winger, your name is Professor Gerhard Schroeder, University of Colorado-Boulder. How do you feel, son?”

  Winger sat up and examined himself. Most of the morphing changes had been made to his face and neck, though there were more age spots on his arms and some unexpected wrinkles around his hands and wrists. “I feel okay, sir…it’s just that I look a hundred years old. I hope this can all be reversed when the mission is over.”

  Kincade sniffed. “Says sixty-eight here. Winger, I don’t have to remind you how important this mission is. You’ve got to find out what Kulagin’s here for. I’ve arranged for a ground ride to Merida airport, then you’ll board the lifter shuttle to Kokul-Gol…that maintains your cover as an archeological team coming to the site. The Mexicans know what we’re doing. So does the project director, Dr. Richter. Get inside the dig and snoop around. You’ve got secure encrypted couplers to communicate back…I want reports every day. You know the ROE. No direct action unless Red Hammer makes a move.”

  “Got it, sir.”

  The medics at the Infirmary discharged Winger after a thorough exam and he gathered his gear and met the Quantum Dawn team at the Main Gate, just a few dozen meters from the parade ground at Kraft Field. The entire base at Mesa de Oro was surrounded by barriers and fences, chain link and nano, and the base had been built on dredged-up spoil to form a ten-meter berm around the entire compound.

  He didn’t recognize any of them.

  Taj Singh could barely stifle a few chuckles when he saw Mighty Mite Barnes. Where once she had been almost cute, with dark brown curls and perky freckled cheeks, now she was older, sadder, with dog ears and lips too big for her face.

  “Looks like the bots went to town on those lips,” Singh said, still grinning. “Watch out you don’t hurt somebody when you turn around with those flappers.”

  Mighty Mite glared back at the Bengali CEC, the team’s containerization specialist. “Oh yeah…my sister’s pet dachshund looks better than you. Where’d you get those ears anyway…planning on flying a kite today?”

  And so it went. The detachment boarded a small utility trac and headed out of the gate. An hour later, after a bouncing, butt-numbing ride through the jungle on rutted, muddy roads, they pulled into the parking lot at Merida Airport. The Ministry’s lifter shuttle was already waiting for them.

  Initial screening and Intake went off without incident and the lifter cruised at several thousand meters altitude over the dense green canopy of the Yucatan selva. Below the tree tops, a muddy river meandered back and forth across the land, sunlight glinting off the water as they descended toward the brown scar of the dig site. Kokul-Gol itself was dominated by a trio of stepped stone pyramids, known locally as Hombros grandes…Big Shoulders.

  The lifter landed in a clearing just inside the fence.

  The team went through more screening and intake, received their bedding, toiletries, netting and shots and were assigned a pair of tents near the outer perimeter of the dig, downstream of a leaky latrine tent. A truckload of trunks ostensibly with Winger’s ‘research equipment’ arrived that afternoon and the team spent several hours unpacking for the next day. Cameras, shovels, sieves, spectrometers…all of it had been carefully chosen to support the cover story that the nanotroopers were just a team of archeologists who had come to Kokul-Gol for
research into Mayan burial customs. However, buried in the crates and boxes were some items that had nothing to do with archeology.

  “I could slap this thing together in my sleep,” said Barnes, fondling the barrel and magnetron of her carbine lovingly. “What I wouldn’t give to set up on that fence out there and pluck a couple of those howler monkeys…jeez, they give me the creeps.”

  “You probably give them the creeps too,” Singh came back. Buried in a roll of filters and sieves was his containment capsule and interface control pad. He removed everything from the box and made sure it was all there.

  “Mess tent at 0600 hours tomorrow morning,” Winger reminded them. “We’ve got two hours in the main burial chamber, assaying ceramic figurines. Photographing, documenting and cataloguing…that’s what we’re supposed to be doing, to anyone watching.”

  “Skipper, anything on the whereabouts of Jupiter?” Jupiter was the surveillance target Kulagin.

  We’ve got spybots all around the camp. Configured to look like dust motes. Last report had him in his tent.” Winger checked his wristpad. “Logs say he’s been spending a lot of time in the burial chamber of the Snake King…likely tomorrow too. We’ll set our schedule by his…meet me in the mess tent at breakfast.”

  The team retired to their tents for the night. Singh bunked with Winger while Barnes and Hiroshi shared a tent to themselves.

  The next morning, as suspected, Winger waited until his ‘research assistants’ had filled their plates with bacon and eggs and come to his table. With a sketchy diagram of the burial chamber to cover their talk, he relayed the latest spybot feed.

  “Jupiter left ten minutes ago. Juno left earlier.” Juno was code for Dr. Erika Volk. “I’ve got the spybot feed up now—“ surreptitiously he checked the tiny display on his wrist. “Looks like the burial chamber again. Okay, we’ll bite on that. Grab your tools and kit and meet me at the entrance…it’s at the base of that big bird statue…it’s called Xbalanque, I think…something like that. Ten minutes.”

  The Quantum Dawn detachment appeared at the entrance right on schedule, looking to all around like a research team from the States, intending to descend into the burial chamber of the Snake King Yuknoom and catalogue funerary objects for later study. Between Singh, Barnes and Hiroshi, they bore cameras, spectrometers, scales, shovels, sieves and filters, pans and all manner of gear on their web belts and backpacks.

  They scanned through the security barrier, received a knowing nod from Dr. Heinz Richter, who was there pecking furiously on his own wristpad and entered the cathedral gloom of the chamber, cool, damp and well lit with spotlights and lamps.

  The walls were thick with colorful images of serpents and birds and snakes and jaguars in a profusion of color—blue, red, yellow. Many of the images were cordoned off with laser light grids or nanobotic barriers to keep them from being damaged by traffic from the outside.

  It was Singh who spotted Jupiter and Juno inside the tiny burial antechamber, kneeling together on the dirt, hovering over the single rope ladder that went down to the stone bier of the Snake King. He signaled Winger what he had found: J & J at chamber….

  Winger was beside him in less than thirty seconds. Hiroshi and Barnes were still outside, setting up a camera to document an array of jade figurines laid out on a gridded cloth.

  Winger and Singh hung back in the shadows of the anteroom entrance, hovering beside a lurid blood-red wall painting of serpents and monkeys.

  “They just arrived,” Singh whispered. “Staring down into that hole.”

  “The male is Kulagin,” Winger realized. He checked his wristpad. “Spybot says the female is Erika Volk. Both of them biomorphed.”

  As the nanotroopers watched, first Kulagin, then Volk descended the rope ladder into the burial vault of the Snake King and disappeared. Cautiously, Winger and Singh edged forward.

  Barnes and Hiroshi came up quickly, appearing right behind Singh. As Winger made hand gestures to describe what had happened, a flicker of light erupted out of the hole. It lasted only a second and was gone.

  Curious, Winger eased his way toward the hole. Behind him, Barnes shooed off some nosy diggers and technicians, working their way along the wall painting, engaged in some kind of restoration work.

  Above the hole, Winger peered down into the burial chamber. It was no bigger than a large closet. There was the stone bier, with the fractured skeletal remains of Yuknoom on top. Lamps cast long shadows across the bier.

  Jupiter and Juno were nowhere to be seen.

  Winger hand motioned Singh forward. The Bengali CEC crawled up.

  “We did see them go down the ladder, didn’t we?” Winger asked.

  Singh was puzzled. “Where the hell did they go?”

  Then, Winger spotted the Sphere. “Taj, I know what that is…come on—“ He planted his boots on the rickety ladder and went down. Singh followed.

  The two of them stood in the glare of the lamps, studying Yuknoom’s burial vault. The floor was littered with broken pieces of pottery, headless figurines, scores of jade and ceramic beads.

  The Sphere glowed with some kind of inner radiance, though it had no visible source of power.

  “Another one?” Singh asked. He reached out with the toe of his boot, but Winger kicked him back.

  “Don’t touch it, Taj! If it works like the others, it’s some kind of entanglement device, a quantum system. You make contact with the surface and you wind up somewhere else, even some time else.”

  Singh moved aside as first Barnes, then Hiroshi came down the ladder, squeezing in between Winger and Singh.

  “What’s going on? What happened to our targets?”

  Winger pointed to the Sphere. It was the size of a basketball, perfectly featureless, eggshell white and glowing with a faint sheen.

  “I guess they made contact with the Sphere. It must be like the one Reaves and I encountered at Engebbe.” He looked around the cramped space, noting more painted figures on the walls…jaguars leaping, snakes snapping, strange hieroglyphics. The flicker of the lamps made the figures seem to move, even breathe. “Unless there’s an exit somewhere around here we didn’t see.”

  Barnes felt around with her feet, easing figurines and pottery shards with the toe of her boot. “I see nothing. You mean, they just touched this—“

  “Don’t!” Winger warned her. “These Spheres are bad news. We’ve got one at the base, in the Lab. The eggheads still can’t figure it out…what powers it, how it works. What it’s made of. If you touch the surface, you go on a roller-coaster ride for a few seconds and wind up some place else.”

  Singh was serious. “If our targets did that and went someplace else, where did they go?”

  Winger said,” As far as I know, there’s no way to tell from here. I’m not even sure Jupiter and Juno did touch this thing. But Taj and I both saw them come down here and now—“

  Barnes said, “Major, is this part of the mission? Using this gadget to go God knows where and when? Is this within the rules of engagement…aren’t we supposed to be just surveillance and no direct action?”

  Winger took a deep breath. “Officially, yes. But our orders are also to do whatever is necessary to keep this Sphere from falling into Red Hammer’s hands. I’d say that’s already happened.”

  “Maybe they know how to control this device,” suggested Singh. He squatted down, keeping his distance, to study the Sphere from all angles. “Maybe they went hunting for something…something to bring back from wherever they went.”

  “Well that’s just great,” said Barnes. “How the hell do you know that?”

  “I don’t. It’s just a theory, okay?”

  “Can it,” Winger ordered them. He knew a decision had to be made. What would Major Kraft have done? When a decision is staring you in the face, waiting to be made, make it. When you’re in command, command.

  How many times had heard Jurgen Kraft say ju
st that?

  “Okay, troops, we’re taking a little trip.”

  Now Barnes was really exercised. The squad was so close in the vault that her sweat was rolling down Hiroshi’s cheeks. “Skipper, let’s think about this for a minute. We touch that gizmo and we have no idea where it’ll send us. You’re always telling us follow your training. We haven’t trained on this. We don’t know what it’ll do. Shouldn’t we study the Sphere first? Take pictures? Grab emissions? Get back to UNIFORCE on what to do? What if we just remove the Sphere and take it back to the Mesa. Then we’ve fulfilled our orders…we’ve prevented Red Hammer from grabbing the Sphere…we’re in control of it.”

  Winger admitted, “Mite, you’ve got a point, but you’re not in command. I’m not sure anyone is ever actually in control of one of these things. The only sure way to keep the nasties from using the Sphere is to find out what they want from it. And the only way I know to do that is to find out where our targets went and what they’re after.”

  Barnes looked sour. “I’m guessing there’s no way you’re going to change your mind, is there, Skipper?”

  “You know me better than that. The way these Spheres seem to work is you make surface contact with the outer cover and whoosh…off you go. Only problem is I’m not sure we’ll go where Jupiter and Juno went.”

  Singh had an idea. “Major, this is just speculation, but bear with me: if two Red Hammer agents, including a Ruling Council member, know enough about this device to use it and go off somewhere, doesn’t it stand to reason that they’ve figured some way to control it, to manage its settings? Would they use it to go somewhere if they couldn’t get back here? That alone tells me they’ve got some kind of basic understanding of how the Sphere works.”

  Nobody could argue with that, though all understood it was just a guess.

  When you’re in command, command.

  “We’re wasting time,” Winger decided. “On my mark, put your hands on the outer surface of the Sphere. We’ve got to synchronize our contacts.”

  The four nanotroopers shifted and squeezed and slid about the tiny chamber until all could reach the surface of the Sphere.

  “Ready?”

  Barnes took a deep breath. “And I thought I joined the Corps for the money—“

  “Ready as I’ll ever be,” said Hiroshi. She closed her eyes, her fingers hovering just millimeters from the Sphere. It felt warm, even from a distance.

  “One…two…three…NOW!”

  Three years before he was catapulted into the Sphere, Johnny Winger had been riding his turbobike along the Denver Highway, coming back from a visit with his recovering Dad at Creekside Hospital, when the bike hit a pothole in the highway. Johnny lost control and somersaulted over the handlebars. When he thought about this later, he realized just how much time had slowed down in those few airborne seconds. Like his Dad always said: “It’s not the fall that hurts, it’s the sudden stop at the end.”

  So he had been airborne and basically weightless for a few seconds—not uncomfortably so—then his tumbling body had slammed into the ground inside a culvert adjoining the highway.

  Days later, when he and Mighty Mite Barnes talked about the experience, Winger mentioned that going through the Sphere was like that: moments of peaceful weightlessness, almost a dreamlike quality, except for the bright strobing lights all around you and then the sudden stop.

  It was like having a horse kick the crap out of you. Or maybe driving your bike headfirst into a brick wall at eighty miles an hour.

  They had come through the entanglement to a swamp of some kind. Lightning veined in sharp bursts across purple and rose-colored clouds, thick and steaming overhead. The ground trembled and through the trees, Winger could see the red glow of a volcano, simmering and smoking. It seemed about to blow.

  The swamp was extensive, filled with moss-covered trees, low-hanging branches and mossy patches on rocks surrounding the edge of the water. Cypress knees looked vaguely menacing in the twilight. A faint mist hovered over the water’s surface, which burbled and foamed from some kind of recent disturbance.

  Nothing moved. No screeches, no howler monkeys. No birds cawing in the air. Steam and smoke and shuddering ground were all that gave movement to the swamp.

  “I’d say we’re not in Kokul-Gol anymore,” Winger muttered to himself.

  The other nanotroopers were there as well. Barnes was half in the swamp, just now trudging painfully up out of the muck, mud and silt clinging to her pants and shirt.

  Hiroshi had come to upside down, wedged against the base of a cypress tree, flinging and clawing veils of moss and spider webs away from her face.

  Singh was next to Winger, groggy but alive, his face half buried in the sand.

  “Whew!” declared Barnes, dropping to her knees. “That’s was better than anything I ever did in Scouts.”

  They gathered themselves together and took stock of their surroundings. Barnes scouted along the swamp banks for a few dozen meters in both directions. “I don’t see a way around this bog, Skipper. Where the hell are we?”

  “Or when are we?” Singh said.

  “Look!” Hiroshi pointed to a low-hanging branch of a nearby screw pine tree. Even as she pointed, the branch dissolved into a swarm of tiny bots, all buzzing and swirling around the surface of the swamp. Then the entire tree dissolved the same way.

  “Jeez, the whole place is nothing but bots.”

  Winger decided a little defense was in order. “Launch your embedded ANADs now. Let’s get a barrier up so we don’t get eaten alive here.”

  All four troopers launched. The air around them was soon thick with flickering mist as the bots were discharged.

  Winger commanded max rate reps and hacked out a config for his own embedded ANAD to form up a barrier around them.

  “ANAD, go to config C-53, full effector spread, charge all disrupters and standby—“