Quantum Troopers Episode 1: Atomgrabbers

By Philip Bosshardt

Johnny Winger has just lost his mother in a terrible accident. His father was gravely injured. Watching the hospital techs work with medbots inside his Dad to repair the injuries, Winger is intrigued. A sympathetic tech lets him try it out. He seems to be a natural at operating nanoscale bots. The tech mentions a new UN agency called Quantum Corps. They develop tactics and fight enemies in this new realm.
Johnny is intrigued enough to apply.
At Quantum Corps’ main base at Table Top Mountain, Idaho, Johnny learns that to be accepted, he has to pass a qualifying test. He’s in competition with other applicants too, one of whom is a saboteur working for the criminal cartel Red Hammer, sworn to smash the Corps so they can pursue their criminal enterprises free of interference.
The test is tough but Johnny does well, until the saboteur unleashes an uncontrolled bot that expands out of control and threatens to engulf and destroy Table Top. Using his newly discovered talents, Johnny is able to work with troopers to contain the menace, identify the saboteur and save Table Top.
The base commander is so impressed with Johnny’s natural talents that he’s offered a medal and a commission in the Corps, if he wants it. Johnny accepts and finds himself headed into Basic Training (nog school) the very next morning...and into a new world of incredible adventures that he can scarcely imagine...adventures around the globe, across the Solar System and inside the world of atoms and molecules.
First episode in the Quantum Troopers serial.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Philip Bosshardt
• Release date: Jan 14, 2016
• ISBN: 9781310926723

Philip Bosshardt

Philip Bosshardt is a native of Atlanta, Georgia. He works for a large company that makes products everyone uses...just check out the drinks aisle at your grocery store. He’s been happily married for over 20 years. He’s also a Georgia Tech graduate in Industrial Engineering. He loves water sports in any form and swims 3-4 miles a week in anything resembling water. He and his wife have no children. They do, however, have one terribly spoiled Keeshond dog named Kelsey.For details on his series Tales of the Quantum Corps, visit his blog at qcorpstimes.blogspot.com or his website at http://philbosshardt.wix.com/philip-bosshardt.

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Quantum Troopers

Episode 1: Atomgrabbers

Published by Philip Bosshardt at Smashwords

Copyright 2016 Philip Bosshardt

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

A few words about this series….

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Uploads will be made towww.smashwords.comon approximately the schedule below:

Episode # Title Approximate 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