Chapter 31
Surprises.
The security center was dark and silent when she arrived. The warning lights were out, and the messages had vanished from the walls themselves.
Improvisation was the name of the game, and Nellie attached a spare camera from her suit to a long metal pole, using it to scan the interior of the entranceway before easing herself inside, watching the turret slots for any sign of a fresh threat.
They had destroyed the ones out here, but Nellie was not going to take any further chances.
Nothing moved, and no lights came on.
The smiler crawler came in next, splitting open into a laser turret in the entrance to the second room. Again, nothing moved.
She motioned the crawler back, having it seal back up, just in case they got blasted by that energy wave, and stepped into the main room.
When everything stayed quiet, she clanked forward, hearing nothing but her own heavy steps and the sound of her anxious breath inside the suit.
Despite her anxiety, Nellie stayed methodical, searching the room for any threat as she moved deeper inside. The Crawler rumbled as it entered, clearly not a fan of the place either. Looking back, Nellie saw a glowing readout on the inside of the door.
“Shit,” Nellie hurried back over, reading the softly glowing letters.
Power discharged.
Recharging from Geo-Thermal Vent.
4%
Defenses will reactivate at 5% power.
Estimated time to 5%
11 minutes.
“Putain!” Nellie swore. Her eyes followed the cable from the box into the ceiling.
Grabbing a metal chair from one of the desks, she smashed the paneling away, revealing thick cables riddled with warning signs that vanished deeper into the center itself.
Eleven minutes until this place armed itself again.
“Find whatever made that energy wave, and eat it!” Nellie sent the command through the implant, and the crawler began to tear the roof apart, looking for the source of the wave.
Nellie kept smashing the paneling away, hoping to find the power source itself.
If she could take that out…
Beyond the main room, she found a set of empty cells and what looked like a medical bay. Christ, she hoped it was a medical bay. The other options were not pleasant.
She grabbed a large metal hatchet/saw from the equipment trays and kept moving.
Following the pipes and cables became much more manageable once she found the stairs. The paneling ended at the door, and Nellie could easily see the pipes on the slanted ceiling as she hurried down the stairs.
Two flights down, Nellie found a door just slightly ajar. It looked heavy and was clearly intended to be kept shut by some kind of magnetic lock. The lack of power had made it open under the sheer weight of the thing.
Looking inside, Nellie froze as she saw what had to be the largest suit of power armor she had ever seen. It was easily nine feet from boots to helmet, with shoulder pads the size of wheels. It was absolutely dripping with weaponry.
It was also, fortunately, completely empty.
The walls were lined with weaponry, most of it clearly integrated with some kind of computer. She avoided all that stuff like it had the plague.
Nellie was in no mood for another demonstration of the superiority of I.E.S. technology.
What she did find was a set of very basic weapons that seemed to fire metal slugs. They reminded her of shotguns but had a spinning chamber closer to the old handguns of Earth.
“Hello, my little lovely,” Nellie purred as she grabbed the largest one. “Why don’t you come with Aunty Nellie for a little while?”
She took a moment to jam several of the larger weapons in the door, hopefully enough to keep it open if the power came back on, and hooked some spare ammo to the arm of her suit before hurrying on down the stairs.
Two more flights down, Nellie found what had to be the control room.
Blank screens formed a half-ring around a single seat, which boasted a truly awe-inspiring number of buttons and toggles on the armrests.
The cabling from the chair ran over to a bank of industrial-looking towers that screamed ‘server’ to Nellie. She had never seen one in real life, but the ones on TV certainly looked a lot like that.
“If in doubt,” Nellie grinned and pumped a few rounds from her new toy into each one. The recoil on the thing was ridiculous, straining her improvised armor with each shot, but the results spoke for themselves. The towers shattered as massive holes were punched in them, with circuitry and other more arcane components flying in all directions.
It wasn’t much, but it made her feel a lot better anyway.
The other big find in the room was a small map taped onto the wall next to the door. It showed the security center and, more importantly, the two rooms at the bottom.
A small lightning bolt on one door suggested it was the power room, while the other had nothing but a large red ‘x’ on it.
Nellie marked it as something to be sorted out later and hurried off down the final set of stairs.
One corner of her implant's hud had a timer counting down, and it was just over a minute when she found the power room.
Heat was coming off the door in waves, and despite her suit’s best efforts, Nellie could feel it.
The door was locked but not that heavy-looking. It seemed designed to keep heat in more than people out. She lifted a metal-clad foot to kick it in when her Structural Analysis knowledge nudged her mind. It had been doing this for a while, but she had pushed it away until now.
Focusing on it, Nellie felt her eyes widen as she backed away.
Geo-Thermal Energy.
That meant the heat from lava or something else incredibly hot, deep underground. Did she really want to go and fuck with that?
Nellie shook her head in rejection of the idea.
The subsequent realization had her swearing and cursing to herself as she backed further up onto the stairs.
Fucking up the heat source would definitely stop the power, well, also being likely to cause further problems. That was option ‘D.’ D was for Dumbass. Who the hell shot up a Geo-Thermal generator for no reason?
Nellie went for the second option instead.
She shot out the large junction box just outside the door.
Yellow lights began to flash as the words ‘Power Failure’ scrolled across the top of the walls.
Nellie grinned and turned to head back up to the main room. There had to be lots of goodies here to steal.
===<<<>>>===
When Nellie returned to the main room, she found the crawler had excavated a massive hole in the back wall. Inside, a hidden room contained the remains of the device that emitted the energy wave.
There was not much left, just bits and a full-looking heavy crawler.
She sent the ‘Well Done’ command and headed straight over to the glowing pad, seeing the message had changed.
Total Power Failure.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
Contact Maintenance Immediately.
Remaining Power…3%
Time to complete failure at current usage…
2 hours.
Nellie supposed something, somewhere was still on.
The thought was not encouraging.
Dialing up her senses to maximum power, Nellie started to search the rooms and walls, looking for anything emitting a power signature. Mostly, things were showing as dead or at least inert and drained. That continued right up until she was three flights of stairs down.
A small energy signature was showing from behind the wall of the stairwell. It was extremely faint, so it was either very deep into the ground or shielded.
“Let’s find out, shall we?” Nellie asked the smiler, who was patiently following her.
Nellie hammered her fists into the hardened concrete until it cracked, revealing a metal plate.
She hesitated for a moment but decided to risk using her nanoblade. Pulling it from the dampened sheath, Nellie began to cut through.
After three inches of solid metal, she finally cut an opening and pushed through a camera to check it out.
A server, like the ones in the control room she found, was ticking over happily inside.
“Found the power drain,” Nellie grinned to herself. “Emergency backup?” It was a guess, and just in case… the heavy metal slugs tore the thing apart.
When she got back upstairs, the panel was completely dark.
“Right,” Nellie put her hands on her hips. “We got the place; let’s see what we can find, shall we?”
First, she went back down the stairs and pulled that massive bit of power armor apart, taking it upstairs piece by piece and laying it out in front of the building. Then, she did the same with most of the guns.
Just as Nellie had thought, most of them carried some kind of computerized components, which meant they were off-limits for now. Still, she took detailed scans of each piece's components just in case they could learn anything from them. The only thing she did not scan was anything that looked like it might have code on it. You never knew about computer code, and it was way above Nellie’s knowledge base anyway.
Next, she stripped out every computer component and fed them directly into the waiting crawler, who seemed quite happy to crunch anything she needed crunched. Occasionally, it moved aside, leaving behind a pile of spheres of different metals, but Nellie ignored that.
Only once every spec of computer circuitry had been removed from everything did Nellie order the crawler to start ferrying it back to the Garage.
She was using that as a storehouse for now, given that it had kept the vehicle safe for years.
It would do until the Indomitable was powered enough to automatically open and close the bay for the crawler.
Looking back at the security center, Nellie wanted nothing more than to blow it up. There were bound to be explosives in their somewhere. The mental image of her walking away from the thing as it was blown to smithereens had a satisfying cinematic quality to it, but only an idiot set of explosives on top of a volcano.
She decided to do it from the Indomitable once she was clear of this place instead.
===<<<>>>===
N.S.S. Indomitable
Power systems online -
Current output - 15%
…
System Scan Complete.
Hull Integrity - 100%
Internal Controls - 18%
Flight Systems - 5%
Life Support - 46%
Shields - 0%
Weapons - 0%
Sensors - 0%
…
Interior sensors missing or damaged in several sections.
…
…
Activating repair nanites…
Repair nanites not found…
…
Repair nanite request sent to Nano-forge.
…
…
…
Receiving commands…
Prioritizing repairs to Life Support.
Time to full repair…
1 week, standard time.
Receiving commands…
Backup Nano Forge connections fused…
Time to full repair…
4 days, standard time.
…
…
Receiving injection of new nanites…
Assigning as Repair Nanites.
…
…
Life support online.
Nellie collapsed back against the bulkhead as the interior lights flickered on. That injection had cost her a lot of the nanites she had replenished in the last few hours, leaving her feeling weak again.
Still, it was worth it just to feel the metal cooling slightly.
In an hour or so, she would be able to get out of this suit for a couple of hours.
Nellie lowered her head onto her arms and just sat there, waiting for the time to pass.
When she woke several hours later, Nellie was feeling a lot better. More to the point her suit sensors showed the internal atmosphere of the ship had normalised.
It took her a few minutes to work the improvised exo suit off and then another few to clamber out of the shielded space suit. When she was finally free, the first thing to hit her was the smell.
The suit was almost as bad as she was.
She activated nano-cleaning on both of them while shrugging off her ship suit and making her way into the galley area.
The can of HyperDrive was just exactly what Nellie wanted, and she sat at the table, naked, with her feet up on the crawler as she drank and planned what to do next.
She had four days until she could leave the planet, and hopefully, it wouldn’t be too much longer before Lucy woke up. Once the other systems started to come online again, Nellie planned to get the crawler working on bringing their haul from the security center into the cargo bay.
That massive armor suit had to have some useful components she could use to improve the Exo suit.
Nellie was wondering whether to go ahead with the plan to explore the main facility. If her reckoning was correct, the worst of the danger was behind her. Anything in the facility should be no match for the things she had scavenged from security. Once she had it working, or rather her version of it, the actual exploration should be safe enough.
After the drink, Nellie went and grabbed a new ship suit, zipped it up, and started the process of repairing and upgrading another of the armor sets. Just in case Lucy was able to get her body working again quickly.
She was well aware it was mostly busy work. Something to keep her busy and focused. Something to take her mind off the growing panic at the silence inside her own head.
Knowing that didn’t make it any less effective, however, so she did it anyway.
The moment the internal controls were fixed, Nellie sent the crawler to start ferrying the components from the garage.
While she waited for it to finish, Nellie sat on the flight deck and stared out the window. What light there was had returned, and with it, the intimidating form of the main facility was once again visible through the main window.
Part of Nellie wanted nothing more than to crack it open and see what was inside, but she was still hesitant. It had been her decision to go into the security center first.
Right now, trapped on a volcanic nightmare of a planet, with an acidic, boiling atmosphere pressing against the hull and cut off from everything, Nellie had to ask herself if it had been a mistake.
Over and over again, Nellie considered it from all angles. Yet, she could find no other choice that would have worked out any better.
Whatever the outcome was, at least they knew the weapon existed now. The Crawler’s sensors had gotten a full scan of it, and Nellie had her own readings of the energy wave. It should be more than enough to come up with a counter, even if it was just the shielding in the suits and ships.
“NELLIE!” A shriek sounded from every speaker at once, not to mention inside her own ears. Still, despite the shock and the spanner she had sent flying when she jumped, Nellie felt nothing but relief.
“Lucy!” Nellie felt like her body was melting as the warmth swept through her. “Are you okay?”
“I think so,” Lucy sounded almost panicked. “But I can’t see or hear anything yet. Whatever that thing was, it scrambled the outer layers of my core.”
“What about your memory?” Nellie asked, crossing her fingers.
“No affected areas,” Lucy reported, sounding slightly calmer. “But I can’t connect to my nanites. It’s like something has me in a dampening field.”
“You can’t connect to them because there aren’t any in my body anymore,” Nellie said soothingly. “That energy wiped out every nanite we had.”
“WHAT!” Lucy screamed in panic. “Nellie, you need those to live!”
“I noticed,” Nellie said sharply. “I have my own nanites now; I had no other choice.”
“Wait, you can make and control your own swarm?” Lucy seemed to be knocked out of her panic again. “Congratulations!”
“Thanks,” Nellie said. “I just wish it had happened without having to nearly die first. I got your body back to the ship; it is slowly coming back from the edge. The nanoforge is online and working to make repairs. Try not to worry, okay?”
“I’m trying,” Lucy said softly. “But I have never felt anything like that before. It was like being forced into a box and shoved deep, deep underground.”
“I’m so sorry,” Nellie wished she could hug the shaken AI. “But it is going to be okay, alright?”
“We need to leave!” Lucy cried suddenly. “It might fire again.”
“It won’t,” Nellie replied. “I went back once I figured out how to shield us from it, destroyed the power relays, and had the crawler eat the machine itself.”
“There might be more; please, let’s go!” Lucy was in a panic again.
“We can’t; the ship was damaged,” Nellie said calmly. “But I promise you, we are safe. Okay?”
“Okay. Okay. Okay.” Lucy repeated the word over and over again. “I think I will feel better once the outer layer is fully repaired. It should take another few hours, but then I will be interfaced with you fully again. Not being able to see or hear anything is just… wrong.”
“You can hear me, so that is something,” Nellie replied.
“I can’t, actually,” Lucy replied angrily. “All I have is the relay from the implant. I’m alone in here!”
“Can I relay other things through the implant?” Nellie wondered aloud. “Wait a minute,” The implant could send audio and video, right? A few settings were changed, and she started to transmit the information to the AI core.
“Oh, that’s so much better,” Lucy sighed. “I can’t do that again. Please, don’t stop sending the information.”
“I won’t,” Nellie reassured her.
“It feels so good to hear your voice again, Nellie,” Lucy said quietly. “I was almost sure you were not really there, and I was only hearing an echo of my own memories. I’ve heard that can happen sometimes to an AI when their person dies.”
“Well, I’m not dead,” Nellie said. “And neither of us is going to die anytime soon. You hear me?”
“I do,” Lucy said, her voice steadier. “What about the I.E.S.?”
“Baise-les tous,” Nellie spat.
“Nellie!” Lucy laughed.
“They have an anti-nanite weapon, Lucy,” Nellie said simply.
“So what?” Lucy asked. “We will find a way to block it.”
“No, you don’t get it,” Nellie smiled. “They have a weapon to kill nanites.”
“I get that,” Lucy said.
“You don’t make a weapon to kill one AI, Lucy.” Nellie felt herself smile.
“No, of course, you—” Lucy cut off.
“You’re not the last, Lucy,” Nellie grinned. “They’re out there. And the I.E.S. is afraid of them.”