Quantum Troopers Episode 11: Engebbe

By Philip Bosshardt

Episode 11, Quantum Troopers. Johnny Winger and Dana Tallant escape entanglement at Engebbe from 3 billion years ago by driving ANAD into direct physical engagement with Config Zero. This physical interaction breaks their entanglement state and collapses them back the Containment lab at Table Top. They are none the worse for wear but sobered by the experience. And they owe their lives to ANAD.
However, now they know that Red Hammer may be in contact with Config Zero and its extraterrestrial masters. The key is Engebbe. At a briefing, Majors Kraft and Lofton decide the dig site needs to be monitored, then shut down. Plus the entangler sphere Red Hammer has in its possession has to be disabled. The sphere seems to be at the Paryang monastery...the cartel’s main base.
What is needed is a disentangler. This device would force decoherence by physically engaging and interacting with entangled objects and systems. This would block any Red Hammer archival access.
An 2-part op plan is worked out: (1) Detachment Bravo (commanded by Dana Tallant), is sent to Engebbe to scout for Red Hammer operatives and to reconnoiter what the cartel’s ultimate goal is in being there and (2) an attempted infiltration by ANAD (Detachment Alpha, commanded by Johnny Winger) will be made into Paryang to put a disentangler in place to block the cartel’s archive access.
The op gets underway and ANAD makes its way into the monastery. A site is located in the back of the same chamber as the sphere, deep underground and below the monastery. The disentangler is replicated but as it is forming, ANAD is detected and a battle ensues. Paryang bots are tough and have unexpected quantum abilities (such as superposition...they can be in multiple places at once). There is something called a Keeper handling Paryang’s defenses. And ANAD’s decoherence tactics no longer seem to work...the entangled threats are somehow shielded. ANAD is eventually overwhelmed by Red Hammer’s defenses and vanishes. All comms are lost. Winger knows it’s against orders and all doctrine, but he knows that nanotroopers don’t leave their buddies behind. It’s part of the Nanotroopers’ Code. He makes a command decision: “I’m going in after ANAD.” Several others...M’bela, D’Nunzio and Barnes decide to come too.
They board their lifter, program it for nap-of-the-earth flight and cross into Chinese territory, heading for Paryang...on their own. It’s a combat search and rescue mission with a difference...trying to locate a nanoscale robot and its small replicated swarm, among the forbidding peaks and valleys of Tibet’s Gangdise Shan mountains. At the same time, Dana Tallant and Bravo Detachment have encountered an ancient menace at the Engebbe dig site and they have a battle on their hands.
What both detachments encounter will change the nanotroopers forever.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Philip Bosshardt
• Release date: Aug 12, 2016
• ISBN: 9781370199129

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.

Book preview

Quantum Troopers

Episode 11: Engebbe

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 Troopers is 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 to www.smashwords.com on 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

Decoherence

Inside the sphere

Time: 3 billion years ago (?)

Place: Engebbe, Kenya

For Johnny Winger, the swamp water soon became unbearably hot as volcanic ash sifted down through the trees. Leaves and branches caught fire and floated on top of the water. Flames licked the edges of the swamp.

We can’t stay here much longer, he realized, or we’ll be boiled alive.

Wings! We got to get out of here! Tallant yelled. She groped in the water, found Doc Frost, who was already sliding under. She hoisted the Doc up by the shirt collar and the three of them scrambled out of the scalding swamp water, scurrying on all fours through heavy brush. Fiery embers rained down on them from the sky and they could see trees being flash-fried in tongues of hot lava, smell the sulfurous fumes rolling toward them and feel the ground trembling.

They dropped behind a rotted-out tree trunk and caught their breath.

Johnny-- Frost breathed and coughed out, Johnny…get ANAD…going. Try to engage that big swarm. Physical interaction….may break the entanglement—

I’m trying…I’m trying…but there’s no master here…got to launch manually— Winger got on his coupler circuit and, from memory, commanded max rate replication. He cycled open his shoulder capsule port and was gratified to see the first faint wisps of a swarm forming up overhead. Come on, boys…come on…come on…we haven’t got all day— There was plenty of feedstock around; the only question was the config. Was it right? Was it corrupted? And there was no ANAD master.

ANAD slammed atoms and built structure as fast as it could. Winger could see the swarm growing and had an idea. I’ll partition the force, he told them. I think I can hack out a config for some kind of cover, so we don’t get boiled alive here. The other part I can steer toward the big swarm.

Tallant was covering herself up with wet leaves and rotten branches. Whatever you do, do it fast!

When he felt there was enough mass to work, Winger partitioned the swarm. He pecked at his wristpad, trying different configs out from memory. Some kind of cover. Some kind of shelter. In moments, the small subset of ANAD had thickened noticeably, forming up a barrier over their heads, a sort of poor-man’s MOBnet. It didn’t stop all the flying and flaming debris but it helped. The light level dropped off and the barrier seemed to be working. They were protected for the moment. Winger didn’t figure it would last long. And there was still the approaching lava.

Now for the main event, Winger told himself. Driving an ANAD swarm without a master was like driving a car without a steering wheel. Back to atomgrabbing basics. They didn’t exactly teach this in nog school. He decided to go ‘over the waterfall’ and try out ANAD’s view of things.

Switching from macro to nano was a dizzying, sometimes nauseating experience. He let the images come, let the sleet of polygons and spheres and cubes and pyramids stream past, felt the bruising and bumping of Brownian motion as molecules jostled and slammed him left and right. Presently, things settled down and he was in the pilot’s seat.

Now, to get a heading. He scanned ahead, sounding for high thermals, high electromagnetics, forces indicating bots at work, breaking bonds and grabbing atoms. There. That had to be it. The return came back strong and loud. Two five five degrees. Winger commanded his tiny bot army to full propulsor and steered in the direction of the source.

Doc had said the quantum world was different. Physical interactions with the environment collapsed entanglement states. With any luck, if he could use ANAD to engage Configuration Zero, they’d get yanked out of his hellhole and wind up somewhere else, maybe even back at Table Top, if you could believe that.

We’re still there, Frost insisted. And at Paryang. And here at Engebbe. We’re in all three places at the same time, superimposed. That’s what quantum mechanics allows.

For Johnny Winger, it was all too weird.

The great mass of bots that