Nanotroopers Episode 14: The HNRV Factor Read online

  ***---for perfection in everything he does…a trooper lives worthily in all ways—***--

  ANAD’s voice came out flat, barely discernible over the thud of the HERF rounds and the keening wail of atomic assembly.

  Winger dared a breath. Was it his imagination or was the swarm expansion slackening?”

  “Skipper! It’s working….” Reaves cried from somewhere on the other side of the compartment.

  “He’s slowing down!” said Tallant. “Klimuk--?”

  Vic Klimuk could see the proof of it on his control board. “Thermals dropping…EM dropping…replication rate is dropping….the swarm’s no longer adding structure—“

  “Thank God—“ Sheila Reaves let Turbo and Mighty Mite get wraps and bandages on her head and face. She’d taken a full frontal swipe from the exploding swarm.

  Lieutenant Mendez clung to a hatch door, fingers poised over the air panel, ready to begin de-pressing the whole compartment if he had to. “What’s happening…it’s slowing down…is the swarm over?”

  Nicole Simonet and the rest watched as the swarm began contracting to an amorphous pulsating ball, studded with flickering arms and appendages that throbbed to some inner rhythm. “Skipper, I’m not sure what happened, but you did it.”

  Winger managed a deep breath himself. “I’m not sure myself. I got ANAD to recite the nanowarrior’s code…it must have activated some routine in the processor…stopped this Prime Key thing from being executed completely.”

  Reaves shook her head, wincing as the nanoderm patches were applied to her face. “We’ve got to do something about that Prime Key, Skipper…whatever it is.”

  The swarm continued to contract and in time, the troopers stood down and safed their weapons. Mendez checked the compartment thoroughly while the troopers picked up their gear and tried to restore the compartment to some semblance of order.

  Winger pulled Barnes aside while the cleanup detail went at their job.

  “Meet me at the comm station in half an hour. Bring Turbo and Vic with you. I want to send off a report to Table Top and Doc Frost and let them know what’s happening with ANAD.”

  Barnes eyed the ANAD swarm warily. It drifted like a miniature phosphorescent thunderstorm above the deck, a few meters from the containment vessel. “He’s really changed, Lieutenant. We’re not dealing with the same thing we left Table Top with. I’d sure like to grab his ass and slam it into containment.”

  “Nothing to grab onto, Mite. I want Doc Frost in on this…maybe he’ll have some ideas.”

  “Lieutenant, can we trust ANAD now? I mean, this was just a combat replication test. He went berserk…how can we even think of using this swarm at the asteroid? He’s as likely to chew us up as the asteroid. I say we do whatever we can to get him back into containment and use our embedded swarms to do the work. Or find some other way.”

  Winger sucked at his lower lip. “We may not have enough time. All of us have the same version ANAD in our shoulder capsules. But it’s a weakened strain. The embeds don’t have the smarts or the effectors of the master assembler. We’ve got a mission and the mission is to whittle that asteroid down fast enough to give UNISPACE a chance to divert it from Earth. I don’t think the embeds will do it. We have to find a way to—“ Winger stopped in mid-sentence, as the swarm ball began drifting toward them. There was no telling what ANAD had overheard.