Nellie and the Nanites - Bk3 - Ch.9

Chapter Nine

New starts

Nellie leaned against the airlock and marveled at the bustling activity on the main floor. It was quite something to see her own people as they managed the unloading of machinery and personnel from Bly’s Revenge. It was amazing. 

By far, the strangest sight was the large metallic cubes that walked in on their own. Those were nanite units in truly massive numbers produced from the massive Nanoforge on the Bly. They were being transferred over to the new station where they would manufacture the station a nano-forge of its own. 

The idea was to make the whole thing self-sufficient as soon as possible. They would use it as both a manufacturing base for the Centrum and other models, including the new ones that Paren was hard at work designing, as well as a planning and trading hub for her budding fleet.

Okay, so one ship and a really badass shuttle were not much of a fleet, but it was a start. 

“How are we doing?” Nellie sub-vocalized to Lucy.

“Almost ready to go,” Lucy replied. “Are you sure we don’t want anyone else on board?”

“There’s not really a need,” Nellie replied. “And they are all busy here anyway. This way, we can search for resources while they get things sorted out here.”

“The I.E.S. being here before us is really worrying you,” Lucy stated more than asked a question.

“It changes things,” Nellie admitted. “If they come back, I want to be able to defend us.”

“They are vastly more technologically advanced,” Lucy warned. “It is likely we could not close that gap quickly.”

“Then let’s hope they left a lot of goodies around for us to use,” Nellie said with a grim smile. “I want to be able to show them a little French hospitality.”

“Vive le vengeance,” Lucy laughed in her ear.

“Vive le vengeance,” Nellie said as her hands tightened into fists. “Let’s go get started, shall we?”

The Resurgence eased out of the dock with barely a whisper of tremor in the hull.

“Resurgence to Bly’s Rest. We are outbound.” Nellie called over the comm. 

“Roger Resurgence,” Vey’s voice came over the comm, “Cleared to marker, good hunting.”

“Cleared to marker,” Nellie called back. “Resurgence out.”

They made it about three seconds past the marker buoy before she spun the battle shuttle like a pinwheel and whooped. “Ostie, I missed that!”  

Lucy laughed from her position at the other terminal.

“Vectors for atmospheric entry,” Nellie requested.

“Sent,” Lucy flicked them directly to Nellie’s implant.

“Got them, adjusting for a small show,” Nellie laughed as the Resurgence left a trail of fire across the sky above the colony. 

“You know the Last Chance will be back soon,” Lucy added with an arched eyebrow, “Do we really need to aggravate the situation?”

“Need?” Nellie shook her head. “Want?” She nodded vigorously. 

“Still, do you think we will have problems?” Lucy asked, seeming more curious than judgemental.

“I think a light touch will just make Brenda more likely to attack us,” Nellie said.

Explorer integration raised to 1%

Unlocked - Structural Analysis!

“Wow!” Nellie and Lucy said in perfect time. 

“It really is like leveling,” Nellie said with a grin. “I wonder what I did?”

“I’m guessing it was something to do with diplomacy,” Lucy said thoughtfully. “Analysing Brena in the way you did would fit.”

“Nice,” Nellie smiled. “Let’s hope the rest is as easy to get.”

“Dropping to a thousand feet,” Nellie warned as the Resurgence drifted lower. “I want the deepest scan we can get.” She adjusted their airspeed until they were practically crawling along. Scanning the moon like this was going to take a while, but it meant they got good reads on any metals, ores, or other sources of materials to fuel their expansion. 

Getting out of the sectors was one thing. Getting set up with everything they would need was something else entirely. Nanites sounded like the cheat code to win in just about every situation, and they sort of were. The problem was that they were not magic or anything like it. Nanites were physical creations, and they needed to be built of materials, including rare metals. It was certainly possible to make them out of organic things, using the biomass and minerals all living creatures possessed, but that was a hell of a thing to do.

With the numbers they would need, it would mean carpet bombing the moon with nanites and letting them convert the entire biomass to nanites. Nellie wasn’t a hundred percent sure, but that sounded a lot like a war crime to her. The idea was to show that Nanites and Nanite AIs were safe, not repeat the very thing they were accused of. 

“First results are coming back,” Lucy said with a frown. “Are you seeing this?”

Nellie put the scan results up on her screen and felt herself start to frown. 

“This is not possible, right?” Nellie asked.

“Not in the slightest,” Lucy agreed.

The scan data showed a nice, fertile loam and occasional patches of sand in the few square smiles they had scanned. That wasn’t strange, but the scan said the loam and sand continued for almost a mile into the moon, which was as far as they could scan from this altitude. Now, Nellie dimly remembered her geology lessons from school. The topsoil was only a few inches deep, with at most ninety-plus feet of soil below that. Earth was a lot bigger than this moon, but if the scan results were correct… this moon was almost 25% topsoil.

That just wasn’t how planets and moons worked. 

“Changing course,” Nellie said with a grimace. 

“Where are we heading?” Lucy asked.

“Off to see Tw’ee,” Nellie said. “I think they are doing this.”

“How?” Lucy asked. 

“Let’s go ask them,” Nellie said. “If they aren’t fucking up our scans, maybe they know what is?”

===<<<>>>===

As the Resurgence touched down, Krr’ch was already waiting for them, his strange face bearing the same bored expression it had the day before. At least, Nellie assumed that was a bored expression. For all she knew, that was just how his face looked. The people of the Clutch were just so new to her that it was hard to judge. Still, the body language screamed ‘I’m so bored’ loudly enough that it was almost laughable.

“Tw’ee says wait here,” Krr’ch chirped at them as soon as their boots touched the floor. 

“Nice to see you again, Krr’ch,” Nellie said mildly.

“Is it?” Krr’ch looked startled. “That’s surprising.”

“Why?” Lucy asked with a smile. 

“Most people just tell me to fuck off,” Krr’ch shrugged. 

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Nellie said, fighting a smile.

“Why?” Krr’ch squinted, “I tell them to fuck off too.”

“Well, as long as you are happy.” Nellie rubbed absently at her arm, trying to figure out where the conversation had gone astray.

“Krr’ch, fuck off,” Tw’ee said as she approached in an easy skitter.

“See?” Krr’ch seemed pleased. “That’s more like it.”

“Strange man,” Lucy said with a confused smile. 

“He’s a massive asshole, actually,” Tw’ee said with a shrill chirp after the slowly moving guard. “We put him on guard duty as most people meet him once and never come back.”

“Nice to see you again, Tw’ee,” Lucy said with a slight nod. “Perhaps you could help us with a small problem we are having with our sensors?”

“No,” Tw’ee said promptly.

Nellie dialed up her senses, seeing the world turn into a rainbow of auras, some radio frequencies, some metallic signatures, some magnetic fields. The walls of the Clutch were radiating a thick, ultra-low frequency sound wave mixed with regular pulses of magnetic force of alternating polarity. 

“I can see it,” Nellie said simply.

“Really?” Tw’ee scratched the back of her head. “Good for you.”

“Any chance you could tell us why you are doing it?” Nellie asked.

“We don’t want our moon dug up,” Tw’ee said simply. “We share, but you not take.”

“Can you suggest a place that we can take from?” Nellie asked.

“As simple as that?” Tw’ee narrowed her eyes. “You aren’t going to negotiate?”

“No,” Nellie said with a smile. “You say we don’t take from the moon, so we will respect your wishes.”

“You take from the planet instead,” Tw’ee gestured to the planet the moon orbited. “It is of no use to the Clutch. And young, will recover.”

“No native life forms that might also object?” Nellie asked.

“No,” Tw’ee said. “Is a place just beginning to grow from dead to alive.”

“Understood,” Nellie smiled. “Thank you for your time; we will head to the planet instead.”

Nellie’s foot was just touching down on the ramp when Tw’ee called for them to wait.

“Is there some way we can help?” Nellie asked.

“There is a place,” Tw’ee said with a low chirp. “Last people that came. They went there, killed it.” She shrugged. “You can take from there; then you go to the planet.”

“Do you know what killed the area?” Nellie asked.

“No,” Tw’ee shook her head in rapid little jerks. “Far side of the moon, that way.” She pointed.

Nellie’s implant showed a pair of lines, an angle popping up, and then a third line from the Resurgence that intersected before merging into the first.

Heading calculated

“Got it,” Nellie said. “Thank you. We will not leave the affected area.”

“We will see.” Tw’ee nodded.

===<<<>>>===

“So this is a test,” Lucy said as she sat back in her chair. The Resurgence lifted off, and Nellie followed the marked route, heading for wherever it was that Tw’ee had pointed them towards. “If we do as they ask, they will help us more.”

“That would be my guess,” Nellie nodded. “But we have no idea how they think.”

“True,” Lucy said thoughtfully. “I wonder what killed this area they are talking about.”

“Chemicals, radiation, metal poisoning,” Nellie shook her head, “There are too many options. I guess we will have to find out.”

She eased the battle shuttle up higher, accelerating to close the distance faster. The Clutch Elder had said the other side of the moon, and Nellie was betting it was almost exactly that distance. Something about these people was always more than they showed.

“You see the field is still with us?” Lucy noted as she kept her scans on a narrow beam. “Even this far away?”

“I bet it’s the whole bloody moon,” Nellie said with a shake of her head. “A custom jamming field the size of a moon, and we still can’t detect a single power source.”

“The kind of tech they have,” Lucy said with a hungry look in her eyes, “It could help us.” 

“And this is a Clutch that doesn’t use technology,” Nellie shivered. “I wonder if they are why the I.E.S. left?”

“We’ll have to find out,” Lucy said as she leaned over her scanners again. “Also, let’s not fail any of their tests.”

“Right?” Nellie chuckled. “Let’s hope the colonists don’t either.”

Despite how peaceful things had been so far, Nellie was not optimistic about the colony. Neither the Brackta's subversive approach nor the Fed's overt ones suggested empires not strictly at home with the idea of sharing. In short, they were conquerors. The colony might have left those empires behind, but not the instincts and behaviors that they fostered in their people. 

All of that was without the influence of the Last Chance and her Captain, who was more pirate than peacekeeper if Nellie was any judge. 

The Resurgence took what readings it could via visual cues. From what they could see, the jamming field really did cover the entire moon. There were a lot of hopeful signs, none of which mattered if they intended to remain peaceful with the Clutch, which seemed to become more and more important with every mile they covered. The terrifying thing was when she flew beneath one of the large arches of stone, finding it read as 100% topsoil. 

That should not even have been possible from a jamming field. Lucy turned the scanners on the Resurgence itself… and it was normal. 

Anything else they looked at? Topsoil. 

So, a massive jamming field could be tuned to show anything while excluding a set of things. For a little while, they assumed the jamming field was in a bubble around them, like a magic trick—kind of a ‘they do it with mirrors’ type of thing. 

Nope.

“Dropping to a thousand feet,” Nellie said as she decelerated the shuttle sharply enough to kill a normal human.

“Wide scans active,” Lucy replied as the Resurgence dove like a hawk towards the terrain.

Gone were the rolling forests, lakes, and life. The area ahead of them was dead, the dirt and sand both looking grey while the plants were nothing but withered husks. Even from far above, the scar on the surface of the moon was visible, but up close? It was so much worse.

“Dialing up radiation shielding, just in case,” Lucy said as she ran her hands over the controls. 

I’m going to seal into a suit; you should as well.” Nellie advised. “I like that body of yours as it is.”

“Let’s go,” Lucy nodded.

The two of them went straight for the lockers and got into suits. The Resurgence continued to fly and scan, both women easily capable of doing both things remotely via their implants. Truthfully, their ships didn’t even need controls. The only reason they even had them was that there was a tactile pleasure from actually using them that the implant just didn’t give. 

They checked each other's helmets were closed, again something the implants already did, and headed back to the flight deck of the battle shuttle.

“We have a possible explanation,” Lucy said, flicking her far scan onto the main screen. 

“Color me surprised,” Nellie shook her head as the scan data resolved into the image of a building with a familiar logo over the entrance. “The I.E.S.”

They circled the area three times. It was about a three-mile radius of dead ground around the facility. The facility itself was shielded, with much of it being underground, so they could not get a read on it exactly, but the data from around it was very clear. The topsoil readings disappeared at the exact point the dead zone started, to the inch. Beyond the field, they got clear readings. 

None of them looked great.

“Makeup of the mantle is strange,” Lucy noted. “I’m reading a crystal layer like I have never seen before.”

“More crystals,” Nellie muttered. “How would that even form on that scale?

“Short answer?” Lucy asked. “Heat. A lot of heat and some kind of super-dense liquid would be my guess in this case.”

“A liquid that covered the upper mantle entirely?” Nellie asked.

“That’s what I’m seeing here, anyway,” Lucy sighed. “Honestly, this is a bit beyond my knowledge base.”

“Then let’s focus on what we can understand for now,” Nellie nodded to the rest of the scan date. “Like figuring out what killed everything and if it is safe to go down there.”

The next hour or so they spent working on detailed scans, everything that they could get from the soil, rock, or air in the area. They even hovered a few feet above the ground to take samples of the area itself.

“It should be safe,” Lucy declared eventually. “I just wish we had discovered what the mechanism was that caused all this.”

“You think it might still be active?” Nellie asked.

“There is nothing in the soil, rock, or air,” Lucy shrugged. Nothing was right. Every ounce of nutrient, mineral, or organic matter had been sucked out of the soil as if it had never existed. The rocks themselves were more crustal, thin husks of their former selves. The elements themselves were seemingly removed, with only the base matter left behind. No poison, chemical, or radiation of any kind was coming from the area around the facility, which sat like a squat hexagonal boil in the dead center of the area with nothing but peeling paint and dust left to explain what had happened. 

“We did find the occasional seed or bit of dirt that had blown in from outside the area,” Nellie noted. “Some were dried out and desiccated, right?” 

“Yes,” Lucy confirmed. 

“If whatever it was periodically flared again, wouldn’t they have been affected?” Nellie asked.

“Possibly,” Lucy hesitated. “Yet that doesn’t mean it won’t react to our presence.”

“Let’s test it then,” Nellie said. “We’ll deploy a pair of Centrum units, let them open the place up while we watch from above.”

“Makes sense,” Lucy smiled. 

“Once we know it is clear, we can find out if they left anything behind,” Nellie noted. 

“I’ll let the Bly’s Rest know what is happening,” Lucy added. “Just in case.”