Nanotroopers Episode 1: Atomgrabbers Read online

  ***ANAD complying…casting off hematite shield…grabbers to attack position…electron lens primed and ready…let me at ‘em!***

  Winger smiled as ANAD sped forward. Like a five-year old, heading for the playground. Over the last few training days, he’d developed a weird, almost brotherly relationship with ANAD. On the eyepiece imager, the enemy master grew and retracted appendages and surface structure with blazing speed. The outer membrane of the mech seethed with motion, as atoms and clusters of atoms twisted, bonded, twisted again, rebounded, broke apart, recombined, straightened, undulated and whirled.

  The gap between them vanished and ANAD grappled with the nearest mech. Other mechs swarmed to the battlefield. The imager screen shook with the collision, then careened sideways.

  After only two weeks at Table Top, combat at the scale of atoms and molecules seemed like second nature to Johnny Winger. From his first days as a nog, he’d had an uncanny ability to grab atoms and sling molecules. It was like he’d born to the world of van der Waals forces and peptide chains, like he was a natural. Now, with the quantum coupler, he no longer even needed an IC-man or keyboard to drive ANAD. He could do it by thought alone.

  “ANAD…change config now…go to prime three and extend all carbenes!”