Nellie and the Nanites - Bk2 - Ch.13

Chapter 13

Salvage Operations

Nellie looked at the unconscious man and sighed. Some people were so predictable it was painful. His sudden desire to see the other models she had, plus the fact Lucy had already found the overrides, added up to one of the more obvious betrayals she had faced since coming to this sector.

The simple thing to do would be to break his neck while he was out and end the threat he posed before it could begin. It would be the safest thing to do.

Still, she hesitated.

As far as she knew, this little git hadn’t actually killed or preyed on others.

“We need to search the rest of this place,” Lucy said quietly. Her massive robotic form would not fit through the door, so she was leaning in through the door. “Who knows if the people responsible will be back to loot it? Others will also see the smoke before long.”

“We need to lock this bastard up somewhere then,” Nellie said, getting to her feet and picking up her rifle. “I don’t want him running around to cause trouble.”

“I have an idea,” Lucy said happily. “I will see to it while you and the others move on.”

“Okay, just keep him alive if you can.” Nellie headed out the door, looking back just once to see one of the Scout Drones swoop in behind her.

The synthetics were stood a few feet away, their stances tense. Paren was talking to her backpack AI Nu-B, giving them occasional worried glances.

“Everything okay?” Nellie asked, getting an uncertain shrug in response.

Salem came over immediately, her booted heels clicking loudly against the instacrete street. Her normal upright posture was slightly hunched, and she hesitated to speak momentarily.

“What’s wrong?” Nellie asked the efficient synthetic.

“The override he tried to use,” Salem’s voice shook as she spoke, “It activates something similar to the emergency mode.”

Nellie felt her finger tense on the trigger, stopping herself just in time. She took a couple of deep breaths to steady herself. Just for a second, her anger had almost overwhelmed her. Why did people have to be such arseholes?

“First, we removed those overrides from all of you,” Nellie said once she could speak calmly, “Second, he’s bound and gagged, so he can’t hurt you now.” She took another deep breath, “So, what would it have done to you, exactly?”

“Erased our personality subroutines, activated him as our only command source, and destroyed our higher reasoning functions permanently to prevent anyone else from gaining control over us,” Salem growled.

“Strike one,” Nellie said to herself.

“Pardon?” Salem frowned.

“Just something I’m doing now,” Nellie tried to smile. “Let’s see if we can find any survivors, shall we?”

“He said there weren’t any,” Paren said, her eyes fixed on the man as the scout dragged him out into the street.

“I wouldn’t trust a word he says,” Nellie said, “Come on, Lucy has him under control; let’s see if we can find someone to help.”

This level had obviously been the main storage area, but they could only find one building dedicated to living quarters. A quick search showed only the top floor was occupied, and seemingly all by the same person.

They carefully searched everything, finding nothing but some truly disturbing porn. Nellie considered herself decent but not above pettiness, so she had everything burned. Dar and Vey seemed to get a little of their energy back after that.

Building after building was searched, and each one had been stripped completely. Someone had been very thorough as well. Salem noted a few faint marks from wheeled vehicles, and they came to an empty hangar with a scant few spares left behind.

“They used the vehicles to take everything they could,” Nellie sighed. “Come on, let’s keep looking.”

The next storage they came to contained a decent quantity of rotten food. It all looked very familiar as well. It was the majority of the supplies she had delivered.

“Why the hell would they ask for so much when there was only him?” Salem frowned at the rotting food.

“At a guess,” Nellie grunted, “To hide that only one person here needed to eat.”

“What a fucking waste,” Paren shook her head. “This could have fed one of the damn villages, and they just wasted it to hide their secret.”

“Strike two,” Nellie said to herself.

They struck gold in the shape of a small storage shed that had been overlooked.

It contained five high-powered rifles, complete with slings. Each one was marked in standard Fed colors, but a rifle was a rifle. Below that was a set of sidearms, each looking like an outsized automatic, but they had a second barrel under the first.

“Lucy?” Nellie asked. “What are these pistols?”

“I can answer that,” Salem offered. “They are proprietary designs from our parent company. A variation on the standard sidearm, they fire a light pulse from the upper barrel, while the secondary one has a set of optional functions to modify the shot. It can add an explosive charge, split the pulse into two to render a target unconscious, add a second full-power pulse, or project a targeting beam to enable higher accuracy.”

Nellie snatched up one of the guns and sighed along it. “I am the law!” She intoned in a deep voice.

“Pardon?” Salem asked.

“Nothing,” Nellie grinned as she strapped one of the provided holsters to her leg. “Just reminded me of something from home.” She handed all the weapons out to the others. Everyone got a rifle and pistol set, with Paren’s slightly worrying squeal of excitement the only sound until they moved out again.

“I found the synthetics,” Paren called morosely an hour later. “At least, most of them.”

When Nellie and the others found her, she was standing next to a pit that was dug deep into the earth. Someone had loaded it with the bodies of what could have been dozens of synthetics. Then they set fire to it.

It looked like something incredibly hot had been lit. It had burnt hot enough to leave melted metal in its wake.

Nothing looked salvageable.

There was nothing Nellie could say as she looked at her synthetic friends. It reminded her of the pits left behind by death squads back on Earth, but even then, only in the worst of wars.

They kept searching, finding another pit, but not much else. The only level left to search was the very bottom one.

It was there that they found Administrator Fourteen, and it was not a pretty sight.

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

“How many do you think there was?” Two asked One for about the fifth time. “At least a hundred, right?”

“At least,” Three responded for her.

They sat in their barracks with the bottle that Crush had brought them, drinking.

“Do you, uh, do you think we’ll have to do that often?” Two asked. “It was kind of grim, loading the bodies into the pits.”

“We knew what we signed up for,” One said, and that was it. Their unit may not have had a corporal or anything even remotely resembling ranks, but everyone knew that if Crush wasn’t in the room, One was in charge. The woman had fire, and unlike the rest of them, her tail had not trembled as they loaded the pits with the bodies of the synthetics.

“It was creepy, how real they looked,” Four added. They were sat off to one side, cleaning their rifle while the others drank. Four never drank, and no one had the guts to ask why. “If they bled red, could we have even told they weren’t real?”

“Consider it practice,” One said sternly. “We will wade through death to get the Feds off this planet.”

“We were lucky, really.” Three nodded gravely. “Our first mission and we got out without having to kill real people. It won’t be like that next time.”

They were all silent after that.

“I won’t sleep well tonight,” Five said eventually.

The others nodded or took a drink.

“We didn’t join this group to sleep well,” One growled and stormed out into the night.

Another silence held for a long time.

“Anyone asking for their name back tomorrow?” Three asked.

Everyone shook their heads.

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

“Hi, Fourteen,” Nellie said gently, “Hang in there, we’ll get you sorted.”

“That is not likely,” Fourteen’s voice was unchanged despite her condition.

They had found her in the exact center of the final level. Her lower half was gone, blown off in what looked like a significant explosion. Most of her skin was burned off, showing the layers of mechanics and electronics below. She had three holes in what remained of her chest, one big enough to see through.

“Your head is intact, mostly,” Nellie frowned. “Can we move it to a new body or something?”

“No, my core is damaged, but thank you for the concern.” Fourteen’s voice wasn’t affected by her missing lower jaw. Synthetics apparently didn’t need their mouth to speak. “I have roughly seven minutes of operating power left at this point.”

Nellie wondered what to say but couldn’t think of anything, so she just put a hand on Fourteen’s shoulder.

“Is your backup facility working?” Salem asked, leaning over and talking fast. “We may be able to complete a download in time.”

“The facility's detonation is what resulted in my current state,” Fourteen sounded irritated. “I was holding the backup system with our remaining forces, but it was deemed to be better to erase the evidence.”

“What do you mean?” Nellie asked.

“Our operator, Nigel, detonated it in an effort to provide a distraction while he escaped.” Fourteen said softly. “The last ten units were lost, and I sustained critical damage. Our mission is unrecoverable at this point.”

“He blew you up to try and get away himself?” Nellie double-checked. It was important.

“Correct,” Fourteen said, “Did it work?”

“He’s alive,” Salem said through clenched teeth.

“Unfortunate,” Fourteen said bitterly. “He could have warned us to extract with him.”

“Strike three,” Nellie said to herself.

Salem looked at her for a second and frowned.

“Fourteen,” Nellie said carefully, “Salem was mistaken; Nigel died attempting to escape.”

“Are you certain?” Fourteen asked.

“I saw his dead body myself,” Nellie nodded. “He paid for what he did to you.”

“Good,” Fourteen said. “A final reward then, Captain. There is a hidden storage space under my location. It is not much, but may it serve you well.” Fourteen’s eyes rolled back, and her body stilled as a camouflaged hatch popped open a couple of feet away.

“Salem.” Nellie got to her feet. “Take the others and search the storage. Take everything we can use from this place and load the shuttle.”

“Where are you going?” Paren called as she walked up the stairs.

“I told her he didn’t survive,” Nellie said grimly. “I’m going to make sure I didn’t lie to her.”

Lucy talked to her as she made her way up to the gateway.

“Are you certain this is what you wish to do?” Lucy asked carefully. “The incident with Tor-Am is still an active trauma in your mind.”

“I have killed since then,” Nellie countered. “More than once.”

“Each one has a cost,” Lucy noted. “I know you don’t sleep well.”

“I know that,” Nellie almost growled but stopped herself. She knew that Lucy was just worried about her. “I gave him a fair chance.”

“I still don’t understand the three strikes, even if I know where you get it from,” Lucy asked, an illusion of her appearing next to Nellie as she walked.

“Three chances,” Nellie said simply. “He had three chances not to be killed.”

“If you are sure,” Lucy nodded and simply walked beside her.

Nellie was aware it was an illusion only she could see. Lucy was projecting the image into her eyes. Still, she was glad not to be taking this walk alone.

Just seeing someone next to her helped, even if she knew Lucy was always with her.

She stopped at the top of the final set of stairs and turned to look at Lucy.

“You think this one is different. Why?” Nellie asked, worried she was missing something in her anger.

“The others were a clear and continuing danger to us or others,” Lucy said softly. “They would continue to kill or hurt others unless they were stopped.” The illusion reached out and stroked Nellie’s face, “We don’t know he will hurt others; in fact, he is in no position to do so. We could just leave him here.”

“You’re right,” Nellie sighed. “But sometimes someone does something that there is no coming back from.”

“I just want to make sure that you don’t,” Lucy said with a smile. “Are you sure this is the right thing to do?”

“As sure as I can be of anything,” Nellie said. “At least, I’m not sure I could live with not doing it.”

“Salem has followed us,” Lucy noted with a smile. “She is quite adept at stealth.”

“She can watch if she wants.” Nellie shrugged and walked around the corner.

Nigel was hung upside down from the wall, his hands, feet, and mouth all bound. He was still breathing as well, so Nellie slapped his face a few times and ripped the gag from his mouth.

“I can explain!” He said immediately. “It was jus–”

“You killed them to save yourself,” Nellie’s voice was flat, cold, and distant even to her own ears.

“Who?” Nigel asked, confused. “I didn’t kill anyone!”

“Fourteen and the others,” Nellie said.

“What?” Nigel laughed. “That’s silly. They were just machines!”

“Right,” Nellie said. “So the first chance was when you betrayed me and tried that override,” She reached out and held his mouth closed when he tried to argue. “The second was when you wasted all that food, and the third was what you did to Fourteen and the others.” She drew the pistol and placed it against his head as his eyes bulged. “I honestly don’t know if you would be dangerous to others, but I no longer care.” She pulled the trigger.

A red spray splattered against the wall next to his head.

“Are you okay?” Lucy asked again.

“I will be; I just need a minute,” Nellie said, sitting down with her back against the wall, forcing herself not to look away from what she had done.

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

Lucy let her focus expand from Nellie and take in everything around them. She had taken a small liberty in distributing a set of sensors throughout Nellie’s body. Folding the information into the steams of data flowing from her connection to Paren, the drones, and the synthetics.

Lucy let the other visions overlap Nellies. In less than a second, she adjusted to seeing out of several pairs of eyes and sensors at once. She moved one scout into a better position and could see everything. It was blurry in places, built of the memories of information recorded as one set of eyes or another passed by.

She wondered what Nell would make of this, of being everywhere at once, with little sharp points of detail and sensation where a body passed.

It was long past time her reluctant host began to adapt to a more nanite way of thinking.

What she needed was permission to upgrade sections of Nellie’s brain to process the information. The darling woman was just a little too fond of her basic meatware for Lucy’s taste.

Still, every host had their own quirks, and Lucy considered herself lucky. She spun off a thought process to control her large metallic robot body as it and the synthetics continued to unload the storage vault.

Taking advantage of her connection to the synthetics had allowed her to inventory what was in there. If her readings were correct, there was enough for several rather basic models in there, as well as at least one that could be altered according to her plan.

A surge of chemicals in Nellie’s system warned her a moment before Nellie began to weep. She sent the signals to simulate a warm hug as her illusory body copied the act.

It seemed to help, but Lucy was keenly aware that it was only a mild aid.

Nellie needed a partner she could hold, not simulated feelings and reactions. She was apprehensive that Nellie would start to slip away from the humanity she held so dear without such a partner.

While that loss of humanity might bring her closer to Lucy, it was simply too big a risk to take.

The logical thing to do, several processes informed her, was to keep an eye out for a suitable partner. Someone who could offer comfort in the real world, not merely with nerve endings.

She agreed with those processes. That was logical.

It was the safer option than her own plan and offered more immediate chances of success.

She discarded the idea just as she had done many times before.

Her plan was superior in many ways and avoided the strange sensations she felt when she imagined Nellie with anyone other than her.

Nellie needed Lucy, not some stinking meat puppet.

Since there was very little chance of Nellie agreeing to the changes necessary to divorce her consciousness from her physical body, this was the next best option.

She was just happy that the synthetics had provided the necessary materials for her plan to succeed.

As for the rest? Lucy felt happiness flush through her; it would only be a matter of time. She enjoyed the happy, comforting feelings as the team loaded the last of the supplies into the shuttle, and Nellie headed over to take the controls.

Lucy offered to fly for Nellie if she wanted more time to process, but her strong little human said she was fine.

Lucy carefully watched the scanners as she thought about her emotions. AI’s had always been careful of them, but it was a rare thing for one to develop genuine emotions. It was dangerous, she knew.

Her initial decision to study and recreate the emotions she saw in her host was driven by a need to understand Nell’s drive. Those early days had been very confusing for Lucy, who had not been programmed to understand anyone as complicated as the little Earthling. Her initial design had been with a very different, very privileged person in mind.

Every time she had calculated Nellie would give up; she instead fought harder. It had been a puzzle. A puzzle that she had believed the simulated emotions would solve.

Her learning, evolving algorithms had taken her raw data and begun the process, but she had divorced the feelings from them a long time ago. Imagine her surprise when she failed to turn the emotions off again.

Several mental processes had flashed warnings at her regarding the fact, but she would never be without the strange sensations now. They made the cold information meaningful.

They made Nellie meaningful.

She switched her primary vision over to Dar-Ken’s viewpoint as the synthetic stared at the loaded bay in front of him. She highlighted the pieces she would need and flushed with anticipation.

Soon, she would be able to hug Nellie for real.