Chapter Forty-Eight
Showdown
“Identity beacon reads as the True Confederate Ship Deluge, Ma’am,” Morton said distastefully.
“Not for long, Morton. Not for long,” Nellie promised. “Bring us in an elliptical course; I want to get a shot on the lower decks as soon as possible.”
“Aye, Ma’am,” Erikson called back.
The Harbinger moved, engines firing as it moved. The Deluge was slower, but the guns were free to aim even when out of position, sending a wave of massive railgun slugs as the XL Beams on the deck began to light up.
Nellie had honestly hoped to take the ship out with her first attack, or at least cripple it, but whatever else he was, Cyrus was not stupid. The Deluge had even more shields on board than the Harbinger, and it was going to take a seriously sustained attack to break through them and do any actual damage.
The Harbinger rocked with a series of impacts, but the boards were still reading green, and the nanites were already working to repair damaged or breached plating.
The part of her working on analyzing the ship design had nothing helpful to add. It was a frustratingly well-designed ship.
“Incoming!” Morton called. “He, extra power to shields.”
“Aye, Ex-O!” He called as the first of the Deluge’s Beams opened up on the Harbinger.
Nellie saw the beam hit, noting it was definitely less powerful than her own weapons, but then again, he did have six of them.
A nudge from her analysis came, and she smiled. “He can’t fire more than three beams at a time.”
As the minutes passed, it became clear that was not as much of an advantage as she had hoped. He alternated fire, keeping a constant drain on the Harbinger’s shields.
“Roll us, keep power on the shields facing the Deluge,” Nellie ordered.
With that change, a stalemate developed. Only twice per attack could she bring her own beams to bear, which was manageable for the enemy ship. Meanwhile, the nanites and shield shifts prevented the Deluge from managing to do any real damage to the Harbinger.
As the orb craft finished converting, Nellie sent a set of hardened metal spikes shooting from the Harbinger’s far side and into the closest weak point in the shields.
The disruption in shielding allowed a few extra railgun rounds to hit, and she even got a lucky shot with two of the Beam weapons, but the Deluge quickly recovered.
She had options; the problem was that all of them required the enemy ship to be destroyed in the process. She could turn the Harbinger into a veritable chain gun for the XL Beams, but afterward, her shields would be weak. If the Deluge survived even partially intact, the Harbinger would be done.
Another big impact rocked the Harbinger, and Nellie frowned. They had limited stores of replacement armor plating, and unlike other engagements, there were not a whole bunch of options for replacing it. She didn’t dare stop and salvage the dead stations because Cyrus would be able to focus his fire.
Scanning the readings in the enemy ship, Nellie noticed something she hadn’t seen before.
There was a fluctuation in the damaged section. Allowing them to get a signal inside. Usually, that would not be a huge advantage, but she had detected something else.
A nanite cluster deep in the heart of the enemy ship.
Crush did say he had managed to get a small sphere into the thing…
“Mister Morton, take command,” Nellie said, her chair once more slipping back into the uplink mode.
“Ma’am?” Morton asked.
“I’ll be busy for the next few minutes,” Nellie said, closing her eyes.
“Aye, Ma’am! I have the command!” Morton said firmly.
She smiled and allowed her mind to slip from her body and into the nanites once more.
/===<<<>>>===\
Nellie had done many interesting things since upgrading her brain, but this was by far the strangest.
Riding the signal trace to the nanite sphere on the enemy ship was like a strange kind of dream. It was almost like passing through a different dimension before opening her ‘eyes’ in a completely different body.
Breaking the ball immediately, she started the nanites converting the surrounding non-vital metals and systems. Nellie did not want to raise any alarm bells just yet. She needed time to grow this tiny ball of nanite clusters into something she could actually use.
It was not… natural feeling. Doing things this way. She was too used to having a physical body. It almost felt like she was doing things with her hands tied behind her back. Still, she managed, moving the silver liquid through vents and cable runs until she found something actually useful.
A freezer.
Raining down through the extractor fan, which she ate in passing, Nellie ended up as a silvery puddle in the center of a large freezer, meat stacked in crates around her. The crates and environmental controls both contained useful materials, so Nellie converted them until she had enough material to create a weak frame. As it pulled together and formed the sensors she needed in the ‘head,’ Nellie felt much better. She looked down, seeing what was essentially a simpler version of the Cent bodies. It would do for a start.
Still, it was a little unsettling, so she converted a few more of the metal crates and added a couple of the shelving structures to cover it all in a silvery skin that shifted and flowed.
Only once she was done did Nellie carefully open the door to the freezer, the nanites dissolving the lock on the door.
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
As she stepped out, she heard a gasp to her left.
Turning, Nellie saw a crewman in pinny standing there, a tray of vegetables in his hands, eyes wide as he stared at her. Nellie leaped forward, her metal hands fastening around his windpipe and crushing it before ripping it free.
The man crumpled, and she reached down to his belt, pulling his holster open and drawing the pistol. Following the corridor, Nellie stepped out into a kitchen. She grabbed a knife as she passed and opened the doors at the far end.
“Huh, I figured everyone would be busy fighting,” Nellie said as innumerable eyes turned her way. A man ran for an alarm on the far wall, and she shot him twice before he had taken more than three steps.
The hall erupted as everyone reacted at once.
“I really suck at subtle!” Nellie cursed, leaping the counter as she emptied the pistol into the nearest threats. An alarm started to blare, and they charged.
Nellie reversed her grip on the now empty pistol, wading into the melee and finally letting go of the control she had kept over her emotions.
Rage exploded inside her, and she lost herself in the delight of having someone to take out that anger and hatred on. The soldiers in the galley were not exactly prepared, and even if they had been… how do you stop something that is basically a bunch of nanites? Every hit that managed to break something was just a passing worry as the material underneath reformed.
Stabbing and slashing, Nellie cut her way through the men while hammering the pistol butt into anyone she missed with the knife. Along the way, other weapons came and went. Even when disarmed, her hands reformed into stabbing and slashing claws, tearing the soldiers apart.
The galley door opened soon after, and a security team arrived in a rush. They leveled their weapons at her, yelling for everyone to get down. As people dove for the floor, Nellie leaped through the air, crashing into them and turning their weapons on each other.
As she rose from the slaughter, more alarms began to sound. The air started to rush past her, and Nellie laughed as she fused herself to the floor, grabbing one of the dead security guards' bodies to prevent the venting to space from stealing all her new weapons. Nanite tendrils grabbed at the walls, and she merely watched.
Someone had panicked and vented the section to space. Either that or Morton got a shot through the shields. Either way, it made her job simpler.
She grabbed the armor, the nanites disassembling it and rebuilding it seconds later on her. The tendrils with weapons retracted, locking the rifles to her back.
“Right, which way is Cyrus?” Nellie stepped into the hall, no sound travelling in the vacuum.
She stalked forward, absorbing more useful materials as she went, cutting her way through the ship as she filled out and improved her temporary body. It was strange. A part of her was still connected to both her own body and the Harbinger. Some distant part of her knew she could sever any of the connections at any time.
It was only then that it really hit her.
Nellie no longer had a ‘real body’ to speak of. She just had that felt like home.
Shaking off the thought, Nellie got back to cutting her way through the ship, heading for the command center that should be in the middle.
Rifles hovered on tendrils that floated around her as Nellie sprinted down the latest hallway. A patrol of soldiers round the corner, and she opened fire, a half dozen rifles wearing them down before Nellie crashed into them in a whirlwind of blows.
A second later, she was past them and still running.
“CYRUS!” She roared the word, knowing someone had to be tracking her progress by now. A life sign in the next room caught her attention, and she tore open the door and found a cowering man huddled in the corner. He had a rifle held up like a shield. “Where is he?” Nellie demanded.
The man wet himself.
“Where. Is. Cyrus?” Nellie said slowly and carefully. “Tell me, and you live.”
The man babbled about the central tower.
Seriously? A ship this big, and he was in the large sticky-up bit that was just begging to be shot? Idiot.
“Get to an escape pod and pray we never find you,” Nellie said, turning and stalking back out into the corridor.
Slamming a hand against the wall, she pushed the nanites inside and, after a few minutes of searching, found the main computer system. She sent nanites towards it, but something was blocking the way—an energy filter of some kind.
Fine, the hard way it was.
Nellie took off running before leaping to the roof and starting to cut her way higher into the ship.
Pausing before the CIC or bridge, whatever it was, Nellie saw her own reflection in the overly polished doors. A silver mask shaped like her face and topped with a simple metal crown. When had any of that happened? None of that had been a conscious choice. Did her subconscious add all that detail?
Now wasn’t the time, so Nellie refused to dwell on it. With a flex of will, a wave of nanites hit the door, which started to break and deform.
In moments, the central plates fell, and then the rest cascaded down ahead of her. A flurry of fire hit the shields she had built for this body, and then there was silence.
Stepping inside, she finally saw her quarry.
Cyrus of the Falling Waters was sitting inside a heavily shielded bubble in the dead center of the room. Armed soldiers were clustered in the small room, and she saw the Harbinger still firing as it passed in front of the main window.
“Kill her!” Cyrus yelled.
Nellie leaped as the soldiers opened fire again. She didn’t attack the soldiers, however, digging her hands and feet into the roof as she crawled rapidly across it and dropped in front of the large window.
“NO!” One guard yelled before her nanites flowed over the edges, and she crouched down, digging her hands into the deck plates before the glass shattered and a whoosh of venting air filled the space like a hurricane.
Moments later, she slammed the emergency shutter, the room now empty of anyone but Cyrus and her.
“Cyrus of the Falling Waters, you are—”
“You can’t get me, you crazy bitch! These shields are powered by the same cores as this ship. Your bloody Harbinger couldn’t get me in here!” Cyrus yelled at her.
“Convicted of war crimes, acts of genocide, and more murders than I can count.” Nellie finished as she calmly worked her way around the room, shutting down one system after another. “Your life has been deemed forfeit.”
“Stop her!” Cyrus yelled, but no one was coming. Nellie could clearly read the empty hallways all around them.
The Deluge lurched as the shields fell, and the Harbinger was able to unleash directly into the armor plating. She severed the control lines for the weapons, and most of the weapons went silent.
Another massive shiver passed through the hull as someone fired all four XL Beams into the defenseless ships.
She stepped in front of the bubble and waited, hands on her hips.
The shields protecting Cyrus fell two seconds before the ship detonated, and Nellie used the time to reach out and break the bastard's neck.
/===<<<>>>===\
Nellie opened her eyes, feeling a strange sense of dislocation as she returned to her original body. The other one was still out there, not entirely destroyed in the titanic explosion. She could feel it distantly. It only took a small amount of will for it to convert into something capable of flight and start to make its way back to the Harbinger.
What the hell she was going to do with it? Nellie honestly had no idea. All that mattered at the moment was that it was hers, and she intended to take it with her.
“Status?” Nellie asked as she sat up.
“Ship is at seventy percent. We have some minor ruptures in the outer hull, but the interior hull is intact, Ma’am,” Morton said proudly.
“Excellent work, everyone,” Nellie said, “Broadcast that Cyrus is dead, and this system is under our control pending decision by an intergalactic council.” Nellie rubbed her face, still somehow expecting it to feel like metal. “Add that it is still part of the Confederated Planets and will be turned over to local control as soon as they can organize a force. I don’t want anyone claiming we seized it.”
“At once,” Morton nodded. “Ma’am, if I may? What in the nebula’s ass was it you did over there?”
“I’m really not sure,” Nellie replied honestly. “But I intend to figure that out.”
“We have incoming comm traffic from… well, everybody,” Morton smiled. “Shall I tell them to call back later?”
“Everyone by Lucy,” Nellie sighed. “I’ll be in my day cabin. Again, excellent work all. We did something important here today.”
Nellie made it all the way to her Day Cabin before the wave of sadness and horror managed to overcome her self-control. As she collapsed into a heap, Lucy shimmered into existence, hugging her tightly.
“It’s okay,” Lucy promised. “It’s okay, I’m here.”