“What do you mean, ‘detour?'” asked Gina, shaking off her grogginess. She divided her attention between Henry and the heavy black-and-yellow thunderclouds on the horizon, brooding, pregnant with evil. It was the biggest dust storm she’d ever seen. Swirls of old fallout whirled at the edges while polluted lightning flashed orange and green in its murky depths. It hung there like a big...

     A video recording played over and over on Rat’s screen. It was the last transmission from Tango Two, the Sichuan strike team. Blurry image of a nano-press, partly in ruins, its entire right side shredded by shrapnel. What remained of it leaned to one side, and only a small trickle of silver dripped from one of the nozzles. Just enough to be dangerous.      She’d muted the...

     It was a tense, uncomfortable ride to the Marine base at Quantico. The Land Rover was built to accommodate four people, but in this case, an entire continent might not have been enough room for everybody’s satisfaction.      Major Hawthorn drove under protest. Every tendon in his body was strained to breaking point in an effort to keep himself under control. His gun holster stayed...

     The first atomic warhead to hit the Sichuan nano-cloud was a small one. A bunker buster of barely two kilotons. It flashed into life over an abandoned residential neighbourhood of the City, and then it was gone, a fading impression of impossible brightness. The explosion ate a tiny, ragged hole out of the cloud; one which was filled again while everyone watched.      What little...

     Bomber and Gabriel shared a look over a shivering, miserable Gina. One was so far into shock he could barely form words. The other burned with deep resentment, fingers clenched to keep on top of the urge to strike while he had the element of surprise. This was neither the time nor the place. Bomber knew that, even though he might never get a better chance.      “Who–”...

     The bar got really old really fast.      The aroma of defeat and despair grew as the nanobots closed on Laputa. News reports became gloomy. Words like ‘hope’ quickly vanished from the line-up. The tide of nanobots was all but unstoppable, and there were cameras on the island’s western beaches observing their distant, slithering approach. Water slowed them for a time,...