Quantum Troopers Episode 7: Hong Chui

By Philip Bosshardt

Episode 7, Quantum Troopers. Johnny Winger barely escapes Symborg at Mt Kipwezi, Kenya, trying to rescue troopers missing from the Corps. The nanotroopers have to retreat and re-group. Kraft recalls the unit back to Table Top. They’ll have to engage Symborg and Red Hammer a different way. Now Red Hammer sets about on a new mission: to disassemble and replace as many key people in politics, business, sports, entertainment, and religion with their own angels as possible. And robotic messiah Symborg promotes this process, gaining more adherents every day. Somehow, Quantum Corps must stop Symborg and block what Red Hammer is doing. Symborg is tracked leaving Kipwezi and winds up in Kolkata, India. 1st Nano tries to follow Symborg but is defeated by a strange quantum device inside a Hindu temple. Meanwhile an unknown installation in Tibet has fired on Quantum Corps drones and satellites also trying to follow Symborg. Winger and 1st Nano are directed to reconnoiter the area, but come under attack and have to retreat. At Table Top, Quantum Corps Labs have developed a new weapon intended to permanently disperse angels and impede them from swarming together. The weapon is called a swarm inhibiter and it seems to work well in tests. A new operation is planned to insert this device inside the Symborg swarm, if Q2 can locate the base swarm and master assembler. But when the op begins, Johnny Winger finds that his embedded ANAD can’t be fully controlled...somehow Symborg or Red Hammer has compromised ANAD. Or maybe the inhibiter has unanticipated effects. One of the troopers turns out to be an angel and turns on the Detachment...and only Winger manages to escape. Watch for Episode 8 to see how Johnny Winger and Quantum Corps counter this latest threat.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Philip Bosshardt
• Release date: May 20, 2016
• ISBN: 9781310947377

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 7: Hong Chui

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 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’ 1-14-16

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 HNRIV 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

Chapter 1

Escape from Kipwezi

Mount Kipwezi, Kenya

November 8, 2048

19:30 hours

The hot waves of rf boomed around the cavern, loosening spouts of rock and ice, which shattered and cascaded down from the ceilings and walls. Reaves, Barnes, Winger and the rest of the Detachment ducked, covering themselves as rubble rained down on them.

Ahead, the Symborg swarm had been shredded, disintegrated. Loose bots twinkled in the dust, while Barnes pumped another few rounds of HERF fire into their enemy.

"Fallback!" Winger yelled over the crewnet. He stabbed a preset button on his wristpad: Romeo Tango Bravo. Fallback to the entrance!

Return to Base. The signal went out to the whole Detachment.

Behind them, the HERF rounds had shredded the swarms that had started to engulf them. Winger felt for his shoulder capsule. The port felt loose; he wasn’t sure whether ANAD had ever exited the capsule.

No time to worry about that now.

Winger ducked and crawled, as he backtracked out of the cavern, feeling with his feet and hands to stay on course, back up the shallow decline they had followed in. They passed steaming pools of water, slick ice patches, all the while working their way back out the way they had come in.

Jesus H. Christ!’ muttered Nguyen, as he whirled around with his magpulse carbine, ready to let loose on anything that moved. Look at that!"

The pools and rock landings were thick with half-formed angel swarms, some legless, some without arms. Disembodied heads and parts of heads drifted like phantasmagoric nightmares through the dust.

"That’s me!" cried out D’Nunzio. They passed a small knot of swarm globs, all of them bearing an uncanny resemblance to Deeno, all of them like half-eaten funhouse mirror distortions of the real thing.

Deeno pumped a few rounds into the cloud and the swarms were quickly shattered and dispersed.

Barnes shuddered, stumbling right behind her fellow troopers. Gives me the creeps…what the hell is this place?

A bad dream, decided Nguyen, as he crept alongside.

Detachment Alpha moved up and up, toward the cave entrance, feeling their way along, following a drifting mist of bots that wavered in and out of view. They ascended several levels, re-crossed the rock bridge across a deep chasm and maneuvered through more tunnels. Lighting was still created by a faint mist, a pulsing, flickering light that cast deep shadows on the gnarled veins of rock lining the cave. The floor was slick, patches of ice everywhere. Soon enough, they came to the narrow opening, barely waist high.

Hold your fire! Winger commanded. Get your boost going! We’ll drop back to the ground that way!

Look! a voice cried out. More swarms had followed them. As the light flickered and wavered, Winger saw the swarms were still angels, this time replicas of UNSAC himself, Jiang Hao Bei…dozens of them, some half-finished, some nearly complete. It was like staring back into an infinity of mirrors.

Winger wanted to unleash a barrage from his HERF rifle and scatter the bugs to hell and back but he resisted the impulse. Another round might well seal the cave and trap some of his own troopers.

Light off! he yelled.

One by one, the troopers of Detachment Alpha lit off their suit thrusters and leaped out into the air, flaring in the darkness as their boost lowered them several thousand meters, through fog and smoke, down to the ground below.

Winger went last. Sure hope ANAD’s okay, he muttered to himself. Truth was, he wasn’t even sure the little trooper will still in containment, or that he was even functional. Somehow, Symborg had been able to command the capsule port open. There was no telling what else he might have done to ANAD.

Winger stabbed a button on his wristpad and took a leap into the air. It was cold and windy but the boost guided him unerringly to the ground. Strong hands steadied him as he landed.

The troopers gathered around, a few of them eyeing the blood-red glow from the top of Kipwezi uneasily.

What’s next, Skipper?

Okay, here’s the deal. We’re going to recon the perimeter of this big rock for the next few hours. Out to one kilometer radius from the foot of the mountain. We’ve still got QPODs to plant. Q2 wants intel on Symborg, where he goes and what he does. Target coordinates for planting Q-PODs are about halfway around, the other side of the mountain. Kipwezi’s an active volcano…ya’ll can see that for yourselves, so watch your step. The geos say she won’t blow anytime in the next forty-eight hours, but she burps a lot…kind of like you guys at the canteen. So we keep Superfly up and keep sniffing, telltale gases, seismic shudders, that sort of thing. Procedure in a big blow is this: light off your suit boost and punch in ESCAPE 3…that’s been pre-programmed to lift you out of here in a hurry. Just make sure you’re configured for quick launch at all times. Any questions?

There were none.

The Detachment went about their task with grim efficiency, always keeping a close eye on Kipwezi and any swarms that might be gathering. D’Nunzio and Reaves tested the environment every few minutes; nothing could be trusted when a bush, a rock, a dead jackal carcass could be a cloud of bugs ginned up to resemble normal stuff. But they got nothing back…no thermals indicating atomic bonds breaking, no electromagnetic signatures, no acoustics. Only Kipwezi rumbling and spewing ash overhead kept them on their toes.

I’m wondering where our guys are? asked Mighty Mite Barnes, of no one in particular. They had planted two of the three QPOD devices—the things looked for quantum effects indicative of large ANAD-style swarms. Glance, Webb, all those guys. I saw angels of ‘em up in that cave…but nothing I’d trust in bed.

D’Nunzio was measuring distance to the installation point for the third QPOD. Overhead, they could hear the faint chittering of Superfly, sniffing the air for anything approaching.

Who knows? They may have already been assimilated…or whatever you want to call it. This whole place gives me the creeps. Here, help me with this gadget—

They placed the final QPOD and checked the instrument. An Nguyen bent down to make some adjustments, then uttered a hmmmm