Nellie and the Nanites - Bk2 - Ch.12

Chapter 12

Smoke and Fire

The heavy metal gates should have been closed. Nellie had seen a lot since she ended up on this planet: walls broken by battering rams and explosives, gates blown open by weapons fire, and the results of gaps in the walls were always the same.

Everyone died or fled.

This was the first time she had seen the gates open, just a crack as the one loose side moved gently in the wind. A pale wisp of smoke curled through the gap.

“Why is that gate moving so easily?” Nellie sub-vocalised the question. Lucy could always hear her, after all.

“Good counterbalances and well-oiled hinges,” Lucy said immediately. “No point in heavy gates that no one can move.”

“No point in heavy gates that you can just push open either,” Nellie frowned. “Are they all like this?”

Lucy didn’t know. The truth was that neither of them had ever really looked at how the gates worked. Who did when you flew in and out? She had them all wait while a scout drone flew over and opened the gate all the way.

“Clear, no movement or traps detected,” Lucy said through the team comms.

“Keep the scouts out here,” Nellie said as they moved through the gate. “I don’t want anything sneaking in behind us.”

“Look at this,” Paren called Nellie over to a panel near the gate. Several heavy toggles were marked with pictures rather than words. The one showing the gate was switched on, and a pale green bulb lit up below it. Nellie flicked the toggle off, and the gate settled slightly.

“That’s got to be a good sign, right?” Nellie asked Lucy. “Someone opened the gate, so maybe some got away?”

“Or they let someone in or died before they could make it out,” Lucy said calmly. “Better not to assume anything yet.”

Nellie nodded, and the team turned to look out over the vast inverted pyramid that made up the inside of the complex. Smoke was rising from several of the pale grey instacrete buildings. The tiers were separated by a network of wide roads with wide metal stairs between levels.

“Where do we even start?” Paren asked weakly.

“Turn to the left and search till we get back here,” Nellie put a hand on her shoulder, “Then we move down a level and do the same thing.”

“Until we hit the bottom?” Paren looked nervous.

“Or find some reason not to,” Nellie smiled reassuringly at the young teen.

Paren gave a sickly smile and nodded.

Swallowing her own fear, Nellie led the team into the first set of buildings, hoping to find some good news for a change.

As they moved through the top level of the outpost, the team found very little intact. The buildings were mostly rubble, with nothing recoverable beneath without significant work. Still, Lucy would take a moment to scan the wreckage for signs of movement or other signs of life.

It was a grim business as the large metal head of her current body scanned, shook its head, and moved on. One after another, the buildings were given the once over and then left to smolder and settle as the team went on to the next.

The complete circuit showed there were five sets of stairs leading down to the next level.

The worst thing was the quiet. No one spoke as they moved, and the only sounds inside were the soft crackling of things still burning and the occasional ping of cooling metal where the fires had gone out.

By the time they arrived back in front of the gates, they had found nothing, not even a blood stain.

“Maybe they all left and just blew the place up behind them?” Paren said quietly. Her tone was hushed, almost desperate.

“Let’s hope so,” Nellie tried to give a reassuring smile, but it felt like her face was made of the same instacrete as the buildings.

“Cheer up!” Nellie said brightly, “We have nothing to disprove the hypothesis at this time!”

Nellie appreciated the effort, even if it felt as forced as her smile had.

“Come on,” She nodded toward the stairs. “Let’s get to the next level.”

Nellie led the way, trying to remember not to hunch her shoulders. She had to look confident and relaxed, for Paren if no one else. The smell of smoke and burning electronics was everywhere. It was a damn good thing none of them needed to worry about breathing this in.

She and Paren had the nanites to look after them, while Lucy and the synthetics didn’t need to breathe in the first place. A half-open door ahead of her slowly closed. It was possible it was caused by wind coming off the nearby fires.

Possibly.

Probably.

Nellie swung her rifle over to the door and waved everyone to a halt.

“Scanning,” Lucy said quietly in her ear. “No life signs detected.”

“Could be a synthetic,” Nellie replied.

“Could be the wind,” Paren whispered in her other ear, making Nellie jump. She looked around to see a smirking Paren a good few feet back.

“You can do that?” Nellie sub-vocalised the response.

“Lucy taught me,” Paren said, her lips barely moving as she did the same.

“Great job, Paren. Well done!” She gave the smiling teen a thumbs up.

“Time and a place,” Lucy said with a touch of smugness.

“Right,” Nellie refocused on the door, which had not moved as they talked. “Let's get everyone into cover around the door, then we….”

“Oi! Anyone in there?” Paren yelled. “We’re here to help!” She paused to listen and then yelled again, “We brought you supplies the last few weeks, remember?”

The door moved just a fraction.

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

“How’d they do?” Brix asked as Crush-Cha dropped tiredly into a chair in his office. “Any casualties?”

“On the other side? Lots,” Crush gave a cold smile. “None on ours.”

“Thank the ancestors,” Brix visibly sagged. “I was about ready to keel over, Crush.”

“I trained them well,” Crush gave the desk a thump, “Even Five did acceptably.”

“Tell me everything,” Brix pulled out a bottle and cracked it open as he put two dusty, cracked mugs on the table between them.

“We hit the compound around noon yesterday,” Crush said. “The defenses were a joke, considering it was supposed to be a weapons plant.”

“Wasn’t it?” Brix frowned.

“Not exactly,” Crush grinned. “It was something, though. I’ll get to that–”

“Sir!” A soldier burst in and saluted, “We have a sighting. Full patrol over two hours out.”

“Can we silence them?” Brix asked.

“Yes, sir! We have a mobile unit in the area with a scrambler setup.” He saluted again. “Clear to engage?”

“Go ahead,” Brix nodded to the soldier, who saluted again as they left.

“You need to get some officers to deal with this kind of stuff,” Crush-Cha said as he emptied his mug.

“Probably,” Brix shrugged and rubbed the back of his head, “I just don’t know who to choose.”

“Officers show themselves; you just need to let them,” Crush winced as Brix focused on him, a smile blooming.

“I’ll do that, Officer Crush.” Brix poured himself a mug and leaned forward happily.

“I walked into that one,” Crush laughed.

“You were telling me about the raid,” Brix reminded him. “Something about it not being a weapons plant.”

“Well, it was, and it wasn’t,” Crush said evenly. “We certainly found plenty of weapons and armor, but that wasn’t the point of the place as far as we could tell.” He took another gulp and continued. “Did I ever tell you about what I found when I escaped?”

“Yeah, a bunch of dead bodies,” Brix noted.

“Not just that,” Crush-Cha said. “I also found all those people’s belongings being loaded up.”

“For recycling, yeah.” Brix looked confused. “So?”

“So, I might have been wrong about that. See, I’ve been thinking about it since we hit the compound, but the Feds have been acting strange since they landed.” Crush swallowed and went on, “Gathering everyone into cities, ignoring the outlying villages and towns, and worse. They have been letting people go back to work.”

“How is that worse?” Brix frowned. “It’s a good thing, isn’t it?”

“No.” Crush threw his mug against the wall. “Damn it, Brix! Would you leave the people in charge if you took over a place? No! Because they are gonna be pissed, no matter how well you treat them. Right?”

“Huh?” Birx looked lost. “That was one of my last mugs, by the way.”

It had been bothering Crush for a while, but it was the secret compound that had sealed the deal. He would have noticed immediately if he hadn’t been so cold, so in shock, and so set on escaping.

The clothes were not being recycled at the factory. Why move them when the Feds could have set up a few machines to do it right there?

The clothing was not being recycled. It was being taken away for sorting. It was the only thing that made sense, and yet, for the longest time, it didn’t.

Why would they want a bunch of used clothes?

The answer had come to him as the first of his enemies in the compound died. One shot had been all it took.

“What could the Feeds want with this system, Brix?” Crush-Cha pressed his friend.

“Resources?” Brix offered. “We don’t have much, but with almost no defenses, it was easy to take.”

“Right,” Crush nodded, “But you never attack a place for just one reason, so what else?”

“We don’t have anything else,” Brix said.

“Wrong! Thought the same thing until I figured it out. They want a win. A trophy.” He stood and started to pace around the room as it all clicked into place in his head. “See, they only came here with a small number of troops. Nowhere near enough to strip the resources in a timely manner. No. They had a bigger plan. Take the place easily, then put as many of the original people back in place as possible. Invite others here to see how bloody benevolent they are.”

“It wasn’t exactly like that,” Brix pointed out.

“Because that old bastard Bartlett didn’t abandon the place. He fought them, and I bet he made them pay before he went down. Took out a couple of troop transports, at the least.” Crush grinned at Brix, seeing understanding starting to dawn on the big guy.

“So they landed short-handed,” Brix said carefully. “Which is why they have abandoned the outlying villages and stuff.”

“Exactly,” Crush-Cha crowed, “They don’t have the manpower to keep that area safe. So they had a lot more people die, and worse, had to kill a bunch themselves.”

“They couldn’t just capture them?” Brix asked.

“No, because they didn’t have people to put in charge of them.” Crush waved away the offered bottle. “So they had to kill, not capture.”

“Doesn’t that destroy their whole reason for being here?” Brix frowned.

“Which is why they kept the clothes intact,” Crush confirmed.

“How do empty clothes help them?” Brix laughed. “It’s not like they can fill them again!”

“Well, not anymore,” Crush grinned happily. “We saw to that yesterday.”

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

Body parts lay scattered about the small room at the back of the building. The entire lower floor was intact, and Lucy thought the building was stable enough, so they had gone in. The model that had guided them was apparently a basic operating on emergency mode. Not a lot of features were online, it seemed.

Only one arm had been attached, and the scales were blank and pale. No skin tone had been selected.

The blood trail leading to the room was not huge, but it was constant. That could not be a good sign.

The room itself had a single occupant lying unconscious in one corner, the final arm for the basic still clutched in one feverish hand.

“Come, see,” The blank’s voice was flat and toneless. “Aid, help, need!”

“We got it, well done,” Nellie patted the synthetic on the shoulder and moved into the room, crouching over the body of a man in his very early twenties. He had a nasty-looking wound in his stomach that had gone all the way through.

“Salem, come help me. Dar, Vey, guard the door to the street, okay?” Nellie called as she rolled the man over to get a better look at his wounds.

“Got it!” Dar called, and the two barrelled out like they were on fire.

Nellie gave the pair a look.

“It’s the basic,” Salm said quietly, shooting anguished looks at the thing as it stood staring vacantly in one corner. “Once the emergency mode is activated, it can’t be turned off. It will never be more than that, now.”

“Like a zombie?” Paren asked.

Salem tilted her head for a moment, then nodded. “Lucy says yes, and it seems to fit.”

“Lucy might be able to do something for it later,” Nellie said hopefully as she pulled a pair of healing patches from her backpack and slapped them on the entry and exit wounds. The bandages were self-sealed and vacuumed.

“Creating short-life nanites in the cavity, beginning repairs,” Lucy said in her ear. “Don’t worry; no one will be able to find any remnants once they are done. They break down within an hour.”

The man, more a boy than a man, woke up about twenty minutes later, coughing up a good-sized gob of blood and spit. He was panicked but too weak to do more than struggle weakly as Nellie and Salem held him down.

“It’s okay, you’re safe!” Nellie said as soothingly as she could. “You’re okay, calm down.”

It took a few minutes, but he did eventually start to listen. Once he had stopped struggling, Nellie relaxed her hold, but not completely. Scared people were dangerous. They might do anything.

“You’re that Captain, right?” The man asked, his eyes still a little glassy from blood loss. “The one who delivered stuff?”

“That’s me,” Nellie nodded. “When you guys didn’t turn up, we came to check on you.”

“Looks like I’m lucky you did,” The man smiled weakly. “I didn’t even get another model online before passing out.”

“You managed to activate the model’s emergency mode,” Nellie said softly, glancing at the blank face in the corner.

“Huh, what a waste,” The man shifted, and she let him pull himself upright.

“What happened here?” Nellie asked.

“Someone attacked us, not sure who,” The man paled at the memory. “There were just suddenly explosions raining down from the hills. The second that stopped, some people came over the walls and… has anyone seen Fourteen?”

“You’re the first we found,” Nellie said gently. “We’ll keep looking, don’t worry.”

“If fourteen didn’t make it, there’s no point,” The guy sighed and ground his teeth in frustration. “We never should have taken the damn contract.”

“What contract,” Nellie asked. “Why the hell are you out here, anyway?”

“No point hiding it now, is there?” He smiled. “The Feds hired us.”

He saw the look on Nellie’s face and swallowed hard.

“Why?” Nellie asked, trying to keep her voice calm.

“Uh, are you from around here?” His eyes flicked back and forth between her and Salem.

“I was just passing through the sector when war broke out,” Nellie said. “I just got stuck here.”

“I was just supposed to deliver the stuff and go,” He commiserated, “But we lost too much coming in, so I was stuck out here to build the factory on the quiet.”

“A tough break,” Nellie smiled gently.

“I’m just the delivery driver,” He complained once he saw a willing audience, “If it weren’t for Fourteen, I’d have been lost.”

“How many people are we looking for?” Nellie asked. “How many could have survived?”

“People?” He sniffed, “None; it was just me and the machines.”

Nellie saw Salem stiffen and couldn’t blame her. The guy was really getting on her nerves, but she was trying to put it down to the trauma.

“What about the Feds? Where are their guards?” Nellie asked, trying to change the subject before the kid said anything worse.

“Someone killed our contact,” He grumbled, “Weeks ago now. We didn’t get guards or anything because we were such a big secret.”

“So, how long until they come and check on you?” Nellie prompted.

“It was supposed to be two days,” He spat a bit of blood from his mouth. “Hey, did you activate those gamma Models we traded to you?”

“We did,” Nellie confirmed as she helped him to his feet. “They are guarding the door.”

“Good thinking,” The man gently held his injury as they headed out of the room, the blank following along behind, carrying its own arm. “I really hope you have a ship. I don’t really want to walk out of here.”

“Shuttle’s just outside the gates,” Nellie smiled as she let him go ahead. “We can drop you in a nearby town if you like.”

“That won’t be necessary, thanks,” He grinned. “These healing packs have me feeling loads better, so I’ll just take the Models we have left and go.”

“Some survived?” Salem asked.

“Well, yeah,” He said, waving to the two guarding the door. “You three, at least. OVERRIDE ALPH–”

Nellie’s rifle cracked into the back of his head, and he slumped to the floor.

“What am I? New?” She grumbled as she bound and gagged the bastard.

“You know I removed the overrides,” Lucy laughed.

“I know,” Nellie admitted. “I just really wanted to hit him.”

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

“Synthetics?” Brix asked. “Here?”

“Surprised me too,” Crush-Cha admitted. “I shot what I thought was a guy and got sprayed with chem fluid instead of blood.”

“But to what end?” Brix protested. “They could just repopulate with their own people.”

“Not if they want to make it look real.” Crush leaned forward, “They have a bunch of clothes from people who lived here, empty houses and villages. Plus, a bunch of synthetics. Put them together, and you get a bunch of people who look like the real deal. With those clothes, they even smell real.”

“Which helps them hide how many died?” Brix guessed.

“Yes, but also, they have a bunch of spies in the population.” Crush counted off the benefits on one hand, “They have people that look local to take over control of areas, people to turn conversations their way all over the place, and even better, actors for all their little adverts for their success.”

“That’s sick,” Brix said, looking pale. “It’s like something out of a holo-novel.”

“Not anymore,” Crush-Cha smiled. “Unless they build another factory out there somewhere.”

They toasted the win, and Crush left with the bottle. His people deserved a decent drink after a difficult job.

The Feds' plans were going up in smoke, and he couldn’t be happier.