The last option was to build that flying scout drone I wanted. That would take four circuits, with a dip into energy storage, broadcast power, and a fabrication boost.
The thing that made the tough choice a slightly tastier pill to swallow was that all of these fed into each other, more or less. It came down to the fact that they had overlap in their requirements.
And when I looked at it that way, completing the broadcast node’s requirements first would knock a day off the resonance time requirements for the other two inventions. It would also bring an opportunity into tantalizing reach. If I aimed for the broadcast node and then devoted a circuit into Redundancy, on top of everything else, then I’d get a power improvement.
Improvements were game changers. I was pretty sure that my pits and ceilings had only been as effective as they had been because of my manhunter decision. And my sturdy construction had saved my core chamber from being breached.
That decided me. I slotted the circuit into the Broadcast subroutine. Then I hunkered down to wait. And hours later, well after night had fallen outside, I gained another free circuit and slid it into Efficiency.
My bats departed to do their thing, and I settled back to watch and wait. There was a chance of one of the factions showing up tonight, but I deemed it small. If they hadn’t come by now, I doubted they would.
So I was taken by surprise, when the rubble outside the tunnel shifted. Ready for another fight, I shifted my perspective to the nanocams in the entryway…
…and if I’d had a mouth, it would have fallen open.
“Argus?” I asked, as I focused cameras on the investigating, decidedly non-human form, “What the heck is that supposed to be?”
ELEVEN
Argus screamed and didn’t stop.
For my part, I stared at the monster and wondered why I didn’t fear it.
Long, longer than a man, all scales and armored body, it moved with the aid of two stubby little legs on its sides that pushed it along. It had jaws that were a quarter of its size and tiny ridges at the top of its jaws that might have been eyes, small and mean.
A human leg dangled from the side of the maw. It looked around the tunnel, turning its muzzle from side to side, then casually slurped down the dead meat. Blood coated its chin and lower belly and more slopped as the creature chewed.
And strangest of all, patches along one side glowed, with a whitish malevolence. Glowed and flickered, under its scales.
“I asked you a question, Argus,” I gently reminded my frantic helper.
“AAAAAAAHHHHHH— okay, I shut off my emotional processes,” Argus said, attitude changing like he’d flipped a switch. Hell, he had, come to think of it. “That’s a mutant. We should probably kill it fast.”
A mutant? I scrutinized it more closely, turned up the lights. It shifted a bit but stayed still, in that way reptiles had. Now that I studied it, I thought it had maybe been meant to be an alligator, before rogue forces twisted its DNA into its current configuration. Alligators… I wracked my brain for memories, got a few impressions of people chatting casually with alligators watching from riverbanks a few dozen feet away. Were alligators dangerous?
“Kill it?” I asked, as it smacked its lips and finished its grisly feast. “Why? It’s cleaning up the mess outside.”
Obvious, really, in hindsight. The raiders had made a big ruckus, lit a fire, and left plenty of their dead behind. Nature didn’t pass up that kind of feast willingly.
“Yes, but it’s in here now. It’s probably looking this place over to see if it’s suitable as a lair.”
“I’m not opposed to the idea. We could do with a guardian gator.”
Argus sighed, deflating. “Okay. Bad idea for two big reasons. One is that mutants are unpredictable, usually crazy from pain or whatever random twists their nano-exposure has inflicted upon them—”
“Nano-exposure?”
“—I’m getting to that. The second reason is that it’s hosting rogue nanostrains. Those glowing patches? Probably what mutated it in the first place. Radiation damaged the strands while it was in the egg, and nanos, accumulated from god knows where, finished the job. It’s been ripped up and reassembled, without an instruction book. And those nanobots are still contagious. They are literally viruses to you! Or anywhere else that they think might be a suitable host.”
Okay, that sounded fairly horrible. “Any way of getting a vaccine? Or a filter?”
“Maybe. With research facilities you don’t have yet. For now I’d recommend against getting your nanobuilders anywhere near it. If any of those strains get out of it, then they could try to hitch a ride.”
”That raises another problem, then,” I said, thinking ahead. “Presumably the stuff is in its blood, right?”
“Probably, yeah.”
“So how am I supposed to kill it without contaminating the area?”
“Uh. Oh. Oh dear. Maybe we can scare it off? Without too much contamination?”
“Maybe.” I dialed up the intercoms to their maximum setting. “GET OUT!” It scampered a few feet, then stopped. “GO!” I shouted again.
This time it didn’t budge. I flicked the lights on and off. Nothing.
Casting caution to the winds I opened the door and ordered the turret to fire a bolt at it, wing it—
—and the thing moved.
Charging with a coughing roar, it leaped…
…hit the ceiling, rebounded, and fell back onto the corridor, dazed. A bolt hit it, skittered away, and I would have blinked if I had eyes. Then I shut the door, quickly.
“That bow has about a two hundred pound pull,” I remarked to Argus.
“Yeah, but the bolts are optimized against humans. That’s not their favored target.”
“Point.” Not too long ago I’d been thrilled with my manhunter upgrade. Now the bloom was fading from the vine, in the face of this new problem.
I debated dropping it in the pit, since it was in about the right section of the corridor, but decided against it. I couldn’t guarantee getting it down there, and if I did, then I wouldn’t be able to use the pit trap again for fear of the thing escaping. And if it died down there, I’d have a contagious corpse that I couldn’t eat.
The agony of it was that I wasn’t sure I wanted it gone. I thought it would do a good job outside, cleaning up the remnants of the battle and keeping other things away. I just couldn’t have it in here.
“Mental note,” I told Argus. “After this is all done, remind me to put a door on the entryway. We could have averted this whole mess.”
While we discussed, the mutant seemed to recover from its momentary daze. It ambled up and down the hall, casting about, probably looking for whoever had attacked it. I gave it a few minutes, hoping it would get bored and wander off, but no such luck. This wasn’t going to go away. I had to figure out what to do with it.
The pit trap probably wouldn’t be useful. I doubted the now-reset drop ceilings would do more than spook it. The bow turret wouldn’t pierce its hide. Might get a lucky shot if I aimed for the face, but that would require jacking in to the thing, and I couldn’t do that and operate the doors. It was too quick, too. I’d get one shot at most, then it’d be inside the core chamber.
But I had another room, didn’t I? Nothing useful in there, though. Just some securely-stored feedstock.
Then again, maybe I was looking at it the wrong way.
“Here goes nothing,” I told Argus and triggered the middle drop ceiling trap while the gator was on the far side of the pit.
It froze—
—then its head whipped to the side, as I slid the door to the storage room open and flickered the lights enticingly.
The thing loped, pounced through the door, and I slammed it shut the second its tail was clear.
It froze again, cold eyes studying the room. As soon as it realized it was trapped, it turned, scratching, biting at the door. But the room was round and the door was sturdy. Nothing there to get ahold of.
It
turned its attention to worrying the storage bin instead, and I winced as it cracked under the pressure, damage warnings flickering in my field of view. But it left off after a while and slunk around the room, looking for a way out.
“That bought us some time,” I told Argus. “I should probably use that feedstock in storage before it decides to go after a midnight snack.”
“Okay. I’m switching my emotions back on… oh, that was scary. Oh, oh, that was scary. Let’s not do that again, please.”
“Works for me. Just have to make sure we don’t get any more wandering monsters…” I wouldn’t make the same mistake again. I gathered my swarm and built a door in the entryway. It took a couple of hours, and I watched it like a hawk until it was done, only breaking my vigil to check back in on the mutant from time to time.
The alligator-thing had settled down and was watching, still and patient. A small mound in one side of the room showed where it had decided to contribute to my feedstock stores in its own organic way. But it might be contaminated; I couldn’t take the chance.
I’d taken a chance with the bats, I realized. Some of them were mutated as well. But none of them had been glowing. It had been the right decision, I thought. Argus would have spoken up if they were contaminated.
Still, if they got into some bad stuff I’d be at risk. I would need a filter or some sort of protective measures. I tried a few options and got nothing but errors from my interface. That was bizarre.
“Argus? Why aren’t nano protections showing up as buildable options?”
“All available schemas are based on pre-apocalyptic needs, problems, and practices. Nobody anticipated that you’d be dealing with fragmented nano-strains, not on this scale.”
“Well we are, so what’s the solution?”
“This is where research comes in. It should let you discover new schemas and devices to deal with things like that.”
Research would have to be a priority then, sooner than expected. Fortunately, it looked like the same circuits that would let me develop a translator would mesh with my existing subprocesses, enough to build a simple laboratory.
That simplified my second choice, then. After I’d tended to matters with the broadcast node, it was time to fill out the circuits to enable the translator.
I settled back to watch and wait. My pal, the gator, slept as well, I thought. There was a membrane over his eyes that hadn’t been there before, so sleep seemed the likeliest explanation. The day passed, and when night came, he stirred, started snooping around again, looking for a way out. He gnawed the door again, and I knew I couldn’t keep him here. Bad enough he’d crapped in the room, if he died here, that’d be about four hundred pounds of contagious mutant to dispose of.
I mulled on the matter, then sighed as resonance brought me another completed circuit. I slotted it into algorithms without hesitation, readied to build my broadcast node … and stopped.
The gator was occupying the room I’d planned to put the node into. There was no way he wouldn’t try to mess up the node, if I built it while he was antsy and confined in there. I’d have to deal with the guy, and sooner, rather than later. But how?
My plotting was interrupted by a knock on the entrance door.
I paused, to make sure I’d heard it right, and the knock came again. Shrugging mentally, I slid it open to see a white flag poke through and wave around.
“Come on in,” I said, and the old man I’d been expecting entered followed by two more folks I hadn’t seen before, a man and a woman. Lean, rangy, and awestruck, they stared at the lights set into the ceiling, and touched the walls almost reverently. They spoke to the old man, and he waved at them, eyes flicking around as he came forward. He was smiling but tense. His gas mask was off his face, and I marked the deep lines in his leather-colored cheeks and brow. He had a lot riding on this, I was sure.
In his room, the mutant thumped and bumped against the walls, and the old man froze. “Did we come at a bad time?”
“Not at all. Just had a visitor earlier who’s getting used to his new digs.”
“If it’s one of the Jaspa it’s a bad idea to hold them captive. They think you’re the devil, son.” The man rumbled, in a deep, deep voice for someone so old.
“No. Just a mutant, up to scavenge the bodies your folks left behind. Some sort of alligator thing.” I didn’t mind telling him this. If our meeting went south, I’d unleash my gator buddy on them and hope they all ran outside.
“Alligator thing…” The man considered, then talked rapid-fire with his two escorts. One of them held their hands at their hips, and wiggled them, not unlike how the mutant moved.
“Yeah, two stubby legs, tail, mouth that could swallow your head whole. Sound familiar?” I asked.
“Tazzel Worm,” the old man nodded. “You get those out of the swamps down south sometimes; they move into the forests for better hunting. Don’t usually climb up this high in the hills, though. Nasty business. Territorial scavengers.”
“I’m thinking of keeping him. I could use a pet.”
“I could get you a dog if you’re that hard up for a pet. Probably be less hassle. Anyway, I’m getting off track. My name’s Cade, just Cade. Who’re you?”
“Wynne.”
“I’m pleased to meet you. Though I was hoping it’d be under better circumstances.”
“Sorry, I sent out for snacks and beer, but the delivery guy hasn’t arrived yet.”
He laughed, but just a chuckle. “Naw. The hospitality’s fine. But Wynne, I got to tell you, there’s a whole storm of trouble coming, and I’m sorry son, but I’m thinking you’re doomed…”
TWELVE
“That’s been the story of my life, so far. How swift a doom are we talking?”
“Week or two, maybe.”
“Then I’ll worry about it when it gets here. In the meantime I’ve got questions.”
Cade adjusted his greatcoat, pulled out a camp chair. “Sure. I’ll trade you for info on your plans.”
His people set up the chair and helped him ease into it. He really was old, I could tell. His clothes were raggedy but well-maintained, patched with careful stitches. A few fingers on his left hand moved stiffly, and the arm shook as he settled into the chair… old breaks, I was pretty certain.
The man and woman had different skin tones from Cade, but they had their own share of scars, too. I put them in their thirties, hard-lived thirties.
“Who are you people?” I asked.
“I’m Cade. This is Marga. Fella over there is Rauph, her first husband. We’re from a place called Arcadia.”
“Can’t say I’m familiar with it.”
“Be surprised if you had. It was an old church and compound back in the day. Now it’s a ruin that mostly got ignored. We settled in there a few decades back, after these people split from the Jaspa.”
“The Jaspa. Those raiders from two nights ago…”
“They’re bad news. And they’re working up their courage to come for you. That’s the doom.”
“They already did. I won.”
“That… wasn’t even the tip of the spear.” He sighed. “And next time they’ll bring more serious weapons and a lot more people to use’em.”
That wasn’t entirely unexpected. They’d pushed hard, despite the casualties I’d inflicted. I respected determination, even in my enemies. Though I wasn’t sure exactly why they were my enemies, in the first place. I asked Cade that question, and he chuckled.
“It’s them, not you,” he said, pulling out a pipe. “Mind if I smoke?”
“Not at all. I’ll crank up the vents, fair warning.”
“I wish you would. Smells like charred meat down here.”
“That’s probably what drew the mutant in here,” Argus pointed out.
I made a mental note to get a sense of smell at some point. I could do that, right? A few thoughts confirmed that I’d need to beef up my database subprocess. Well that was fine, I was heading there anyway. But Cade was talking again, a
nd I focused on him.
“So. After the big one, this region was a shattered mess. Close enough to the nukes to get fallout, but the shine did us worse.”
“Shine?”
“The nanotech. Some bioweapons, some dangerous stuff that was never meant to be released into the general ecosystem. Worse, the controller cores for the local towns and cities got hacked. They did serious damage before someone up the chain wiped ’em.”
I remembered the destruction that had been my surroundings when I “woke.” Had the core I was occupying been the cause of it? Food for thought. I’d mull it over after I dealt with the more pressing problem.
“So how do the Jaspa figure into this?”
Cade sucked on the pipe, breathed smoke from his nose. “Once there was a little town called Jasper. Mining town. Had a military facility under it. Not really a secret, the base was the main employer in the area, from the records I read. When the big one hit, the officer in charge declared martial law. They decided to hunker down and wait for orders. They never came. Decades passed, and humans did what humans do. Troops got old, second generation got restless after a while, there were a couple of coups, and some nasty folks ended up in charge. Said they’d gotten secret orders, and they could speak for Norcom.”
“Norcom?”
“One of the power blocs back before the big one. They humanized it to a god figure now. The Speakers are full of shit, of course. They raise up their warriors as heroes and call everyone they raid sivvies. Means lessers, weakers that are only good for breeding and working.”
That stirred my temper. My memories weren’t worth a fart in a windstorm, but I was pretty damn certain that wasn’t how it should work. Still, I had a more pressing question.
“So why the hard-on to take me down?”
“About a dozen years ago the Jasper military core woke up. It decided it didn’t like them. They waged a bloody war to take it down. The Jaspa Speakers declared all cores demons and decreed them abomination to Norcom.”
I glanced over to Argus. “Argus, does this ring any bells?”
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