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Chapter Two: Sunrise, Sunset


Acting quickly, Psi ordered the nanobots to build a Cave Scout for them. He got their attention simply by thinking it. Immediately, his sight and sound detection merged with theirs, giving him a almost a billion additional perspectives lined up beside his eyes. Selecting one, he designated it the leader and gave it the instruction. Gesturing with his hands made thinking the action easier. He pointed to the sea of solar panels and made a simple mime with his hand signifying that they bring as many of them as possible over here. He opened a link to the design office of the army and sent a schematic of a Cave Scout to his army of microbots.

They got to work instantly. Nanobots were the result of centuries of research and development by most of the empire’s finest scientists. They began their testing on the nano scale, but found it was too small for the kind of complexity and functionality that was expected. Moving up to the micro scale, they were capable of adding in tools such as lasers, flamethrowers, a complex AI, tentacles and several other devices that could be used for construction. Even though the robots were built on the micro scale, the name nanobots has never worn off. Nanobots were the most technologically advanced item in the universe. Capable of speeds up to 1100 kilometres per hour, able to lift weights that vastly exceed their own, able to kill a man faster than a gunshot, and capable of much, much more.

They flew to a particularly large pile of solar panels and with their combined strength, carried them over to an area another group of microbots had cleared for construction. Stripping the panels of useful materials and sorting them took several seconds. The steel was brought into an airtight bubble and compressed to unimaginable pressures, melting it. It was then shaped into a hull. Meanwhile, the panel glass was shaped into a windscreen and circuitry was reconfigured to suit the Cave Scout.

While waiting for the nanobots, the team reworked their plan.

“The Cave Scouts could make it if only for the solar panels…” Sigma said, taking a glance at them. Roughly a square metre in size each, and supported by stilts larger than most men, they would prove most troublesome to navigate.

“And the base will no doubt throw up a shield in preparation for the sunrise. Even their concrete buildings cannot withstand that heat,” Gamma added, while peering at the sprawl of facilities several kilometres forward of him.

“I have a solution,” Lambda said, “Why not use the anti-cyclone manoeuvre with the Cave Scouts?”

“Is that a built-in function?” Sigma asked, while receiving information on the manoeuvre from Lambda. He had a glazed expression in his eyes as he said this, his eyes unfocused as they stared blankly at the details on his vision.

“The nanobots should have little difficulty in pulling it off,” Lambda replied.

They turned to see the nanobots had completed. Sitting on the construction site were two identical Cave Scouts, a dull silver in colour. Shaped like an oval, slightly sharpened at the front. It was higher at the back than at the front. A small cockpit was located at the front, devoid of any visible controls. A small jet was located at the back, as well as two handholds and two grooves for feet, where a man could stoop quite comfortably.

They hastily clambered onto the crafts, one taking the pilot’s seat and the other begrudgingly taking the rear. The pilots set up an uplink with the Cave Scouts, allowing them to control by thought. They were powered up, and three small helicopter rotors silently slid out from underneath, one at each side and one at the front. They began to spin, and were soon supporting the vessels quite easily in the low gravity. A cloud of nanobots flew to each vehicle and began the anti-cyclone manoeuvre.

The anti-cyclone manoeuvre involved a swarm of nanobots spinning around an object at an extremely high speed. More nanobots would work in tandem with the object to suck air from outside the spinning swarm and move it inside the ring, creating a area of very high pressure inside the hoop and low pressure outside. This caused extremely fast clockwise winds, helped by the spinning nanobots. It was named after the weather phenomenon in which the same process occurred, albeit naturally.

The Cave Scouts accelerated and headed straight for the canopy of solar panels. Upon collision, the nanobots cut through the stilts like an electric saw and they were sucked into the anti-cyclone. The nanobots further abraded them until they were little more than razor-sharp blades of steel. The Cave Scouts picked up speed and continued through the sea. Solar panels fell before them and their volume added to the now already opaque hoop of killer metal. The steel further abraded itself until it was nothing but sand, razor-sand.

From above, the scene was ungraceful, but awe-inspiring. Amid the mirrors that stretched over the horizon, an endless slog of shiny monotony, there were two thin black lines carving their way across. There would be a millisecond of twitching, then the solar panels would fly into the mêlée, obliterated in seconds. Stray particles of steel would escape from the ring, and soar to nearby solar panels at several hundred kilometres and hour, shattering them instantly.

Progress was extremely quick. They had exited perimeter of the energy field within four minutes, leaving them with 90 seconds to cross the plain to the facility and enter the shield area before their brains were melted out of their skulls. True to Psi’s word, the targeting sensors of the perimeter cannons picked them out instantly, and fired a barrage of energy beams at them. True to Lambda’s word, the Cave Scouts and their pilots evaded the beams easily, leaving smoking scores on the rock behind them. Looking backward at them, Sigma couldn’t help but notice the thin halo behind Zianzo that was a star emerging.

With less than a minute left, three rapid-response Zhianzan fighters floated out of a docking port inside the facility, and turned like slow lifeboats towards them, picking up speed quickly. The twenty-metre wide trench surrounding the base loomed before them. With this, the approaching enemy fighters, the turrets and the impending sunrise, the anti-cyclone manoeuvre pulled off its most extraordinary feature.

Air-sucking nanobots discontinued their work, and, moving so fast, faster than it took the anti-cyclone to crumble, they flew above and below the Cave Scouts. Those below sucked air into their area and vice-versa. The effect was immediate. With low pressure above and high pressure below, the Cave Scouts jetted upwards much like an aeroplane wing and jumped the trench. While high in the air, the nanobots reversed the anti-cyclone effect. With low pressure inside and high pressure outside, the ring of sand-steel was flung in all directions.

Before the enemy fighters had even a chance to fire, they were pummelled with a considerable amount of steel. Enough of it pierced the hull near the fuel tanks to warrant an explosion in one of the fighters, destroying it and another near it instantly. The third swerved to avoid the fireball and flew off course, outside the perimeter.

Supported by nanobots, with engines struggling, the Cave Scouts and their crew managed to stay airborne long enough to pass into the facility campus. Behind them, the last remaining enemy fighter rotated on its axis, and started straight for them. Seconds later, the shield went up. Though not visible to the naked eye, it emitted a quantum-overlap signature apparent to SF-1’s visors. The enemy vessel could not stop quick enough and crashed into the shield, much as it would were the shield a brick wall.

Before the flames dissipated, the star was visible for a fraction of a second before the shield opaqued, blocking out the light of the star and the battle. It was pitch-black inside the shield for a time, then lights on the walls of the exteriors flickered, lighting the way.

Ahead of SF-1 was The Facility.


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1301 Words + 1363 Words = 2664 Words.

Good, I seem to maintaining a quota. Scrumptious.

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