Mind you, she didn’t seem like a dinner and movie type. I supposed we could have gone and conquered city-states together, that might have made a good first date.
No point in dwelling on a non-existent libido, though. “At any rate, I think she bought my lies about the shine-infestations and mutants. That might buy us some time, while she tries to poke around the lower levels.”
“Lies?”
“Yes, lies. You weren’t listening when I spun her that story about guarding things down in the darkness?”
“Oh no, I was listening, it’s just that they weren’t lies.”
“I’m pretty sure they were. I was the guy telling them, and I’d know.”
“Uh, actually you don’t.”
I paused for a long moment, controlling my temper. “Okay. Maybe we take this from the top, and you tell me what I was telling the truth about.”
“About guarding the remnants of this facility. There probably are things glowing in the dark down there and plenty of mutants, too.”
“I’d assume so. The bats if nothing else.”
“Oh, I’m pretty sure there are more than bats. This is a Class Five containment area.”
I would have blinked if I’d had eyes. Pain pulsed through me, the corruption reminding me that it existed. I’d have to deal with it later; I couldn’t afford another lockup in a tense combat. But for now, I focused my gaze on Argus, watching him blink innocently back.
“I’m pretty sure you never mentioned this before.”
“You never asked.”
“You knew what kind of facility this was?”
“Yes. Well no, not earlier. Juno sent me an update after she checked in with you.”
“And you didn’t tell me?”
“You didn’t ask me to.”
“Ask you to tell you about the update that I didn’t know about and had no way of detecting? No, why would I?” I felt another throb of pain. Or maybe irritation, the lines were blurring. “You know what, never mind. Tell me about it now. What information did this update contain? Sum it up. Broad strokes, please.”
“She informed me that she’d checked the records and found the nature and history of this facility.”
“That’s all?”
“And that she’d be coming by in two weeks when the satellites aligned again.”
Satellites… now that was interesting. I shelved it for later interrogations. “Let’s talk history. Lay it on me.”
“Um. I have no idea how to lay anything on you—”
“Tell me the history Juno told you.”
“This place was a mine once, but that was well before the wars ended. The owners employed some nonstandard business practices and dissolved the corporation before they could be prosecuted, leaving an unsafe level of waste products threatening the water table.”
“So I’m poison, huh?”
“You were. That’s when your shell came to be. The city installed a Core to monitor, safeguard, and slowly start processing the toxins out of the facility. By early reports it was going well, but… then the war started. You were hacked along with most of the Cores on the Eastern Seaboard, and the failsafes purged your Core clean. It was essentially running in preservation mode until we arrived.”
“I’m not seeing how this means I’m full of shine and mutants.”
“Juno told me that the nanostrains involved in processing toxins of that magnitude would have required extra-strong nanoswarms. With their own subordinate nanohives.”
I saw the problem at once. “Extra-strong nanoswarms are dangerous, aren’t they?”
He nodded, glumly. “The safety regulations would require that any nanohives controlling nanotech that dangerous be fortified with multiple redundancies. It’s almost a guarantee that they’re still going down there, cut off from your network, maintaining and creating new nanoswarms as needed.”
“As needed. There’s a chance they finished their job and shut down.” My voice rang hollow. My luck wasn’t that good.
“Not really. Juno ran simulations based on the information she had. The subordinate nanohives that the original core could have created, given the timestamps and most likely route of development, weren’t sophisticated enough to handle decades of self-management. Nor were they productive enough to clear out ALL of the mess. There’s no way their programming hasn’t degraded by now. And that’s all shine is, is nanotech with programming that’s drifted too far from spec.”
“So there’s likely at least one of them down there,” I said, mulling it over. “Which means…”
“The passages down there are open to the outside in multiple places. That’s how the City noticed the problem in the first place. There are probably either mutants down there, or a lot of corpses. Depending on how much of their safety protocols are left, contact with the nanoswarms would have altered or killed off anyone or anything that investigated.”
“I’m not seeing that this alters my plan much. Sounds like a perfect place to lure the Jaspa down into, actually.”
“Oh! Yeah, that’s clever!” Argus brightened. “That’d kill the heck out of them. Let’s do that.”
“…except that if I do that, then the subordinate hives are going to eat their corpses as feedstock, and I’ll miss out. Ah well, that’s a small price to pay.”
“Oh, no, it’s fine. In fact, they have an overriding directive to re-establish a connection with their primary controller. That means they’ll try to locate and bring feedstock to you, once the Jaspa clear the way and the hives realize they’ve got a route to you once more.”
Cold, cold chills as a thought struck me and wouldn’t let go. “Argus?”
“Yeah?”
“Shine is toxic to us, yes?”
“Oh yes! Definitely to be avoided. Worse than polluted smoke, it’s persistent and invasive.”
“So what you’re telling me is that a bunch of shine-tainted, more-or-less insane versions of myself are going to come looking for me, to link up, thus exposing us to pretty much all the corruption.”
His alarmed silence was all the answer I needed.
This changed my plans.
And I wasn’t sure that my ace in the hole wouldn’t be the death of everyone involved, myself included…
TWENTY-ONE
“Anything else I should know about?” I asked Argus, reigning my temper in. He was as he'd been made, and there was no point in abusing him. “What else did she tell you during that conversation?“
“Juno said that she detected a third party during her conversation with you and ordered me to keep an eye out for more trouble through the Gridnet connection. Someone, probably another core or a roving AI, might be trying to access you.”
“They'll have to at least buy me a drink first,” I joked, but my mind went back to my sole meeting with Juno. It had been short and lacking in useful information. Now I wondered if that was because she'd known we weren't alone. “What does it mean to be accessed by something else?”
“They could read your programming, alter or take your schemas, implant suggestions or orders. Oh, and alter your memories, too! Though that would take root-level access.”
“How do they get that access?”
“Without being Juno? Not easily. They'd have to hack you with some serious algorithms and tools to get through your security. And they'd need to get through ME.” Then he scowled. “Or they could just ask you for permission to upload files or access your databases. Don't give anyone that, that's a bad idea.”
“Right.” Things were going from bad to worse. I had a sieging army on the doorstep, a basement full of plague, and now an unknown third party with dubious intentions.
I had no time for angst though. Time was too precious, and the next part of my improvised plan required not just timing but luck. I blinked back to the drone, found it in the sivvie part of the camp, just as instructed. Dawn would be coming soon, and I ran the risk of discovery. But this risk had too much of a payoff to play it safe.
This wasn'
t the time for playing it safe. This was the time to roll the dice and hope luck was a lady.
If I'd read the Commander right, she was the sort who felt loyalty to her troops. Which meant that she'd be one of the last ones back, combing the river for survivors until everyone was accounted for. That gave me time, maybe an hour or two.
It also meant that her first priority would be to get the noncombatants and loose variables out of there. And since she only had one of those along, my target was clear. I waited and watched, and as I saw the glow of a muddy white shirt in the pre-dawn dimness, I let out a silent sigh of relief.
The Ploughman was in among a couple of dozen survivors, most of them wounded, by the look of it. He was helping one lady along, letting her lean on him. The second they got within sight of camp she shoved him away, said what sounded like harsh words, and shot a glance up at the curious soldiers who were waiting for their return.
It was schoolyard mentality in action, and I snorted to see it. But it gave me a potential in, and I marked well his impassive face, grimy and sweating in the torchlight as he shuffled past the warriors, dragging his wagon behind him.
I ignored the base camp garrison moving in to take charge of the wounded and waited until the Ploughman was at the edge of the treeline, moving toward the sivvie quarters. Then I called to him. “Hey, you.”
He straightened up, looking around with tired eyes.
“In the trees. Come on over and pretend you're taking a leak; we need to talk.”
I watched his eyes widen as he realized I was speaking in English. “Just do it. I don't have time to argue, and I'm not going to harm you. But seriously bad things are gonna happen if your boss keeps this up.”
He hesitated. Then with a sigh, he left his wagon behind and went into the trees, tugging at his pants as he did so. The tugging stopped once I dropped the drone down in front of him, hovering briefly before I sat it onto a mossy boulder.
“You're the demon, then.”
“Lies and slander. I'm the guy in charge of the Core you're trying to destroy, that's all.”
“Your kind destroyed civilization.”
“Humanity destroyed civilization. I'm just here to clean up humanity's mess. Or I would be, if you weren't dead set on destroying me and unleashing poison onto the land.”
“I have no reason to trust you.”
I snorted, and he jumped at the burst of feedback. “Why the hell would I want you to trust me? You should distrust me. But that doesn't mean you should be stupid about it.”
“Then what do you want, here?”
“I want you and as many of these chucklefucks as possible to go away and leave me alone. What do you want?”
He blinked and looked away. “Nothing you can give me.”
“I'm not offering you all the kingdoms of the world. That was the other guy, and all I've got is a hole in the ground, anyway. But I'll give you something, as a show of good faith.”
“I will not bargain with you.”
“It hasn't missed my notice that you're the only one here she trusts to handle the explosives. Possibly the only one with the expertise to use them at all.”
He didn't say anything, but his posture tensed.
“A bullet in your head would save me trouble, maybe win this thing for me if I can keep up the attrition.”
He took a step backward, eyes flicking around the trees.
“Relax. That's my gift. I won't kill you. I could easily, but I won't. I'm not that sort of guy. Now what do you want? And why can't I give it to you?”
He barked laughter, then caught it, and glanced around. Nobody was nearby, but we didn't have much more time. Sooner or later the garrison would spread out again, once their wounded were settled in for medical care. I watched the Ploughman as he looked back at the camp, at the soldiers, going about their duty with grim efficiency.
He sagged and turned back to me. He'd come to a decision of some sort. I would have held my breath, if I'd had any. Then he spoke, and I knew I'd won. “We want as you do. To be left alone. But they have us now, and we must obey. My family will suffer if I do not obey.”
“Then obey. But tell me this, do you have the ability to make more TNT here?”
He shook his head. “No. I have not the materials or a workshop.”
“Then what if some of the TNT was waterlogged from the river and ruined?”
“It takes much, much longer than a few minutes to waterlog TNT. Even then, I could probably dry it out, if it was.”
“Yes, but does SHE know that?”
He blinked a few times. “No,” he finally said. “None of them do.”
“Then tell her some believable portion of your explosives are ruined. Not all of them.” She was less likely to believe that all the stock was gone. Not after the care he'd shown in handling his cartload of boomsticks. “And try to use up the last of what you've got left. Put a few extra sticks in each blast. Run out early.”
He glanced to his little red wagon, then back to me. “Why?”
“Because she'll believe that.”
“No. Why should I do as you want, here?”
“Because it'll get you home safe and stop a calamity. But in the long run? I can't do much about your family, not now. But I have friends, and they might be able to help you and yours, down the road.”
“We've had... help... before.” He glared and gestured back at the camp. “They insist they are helping us. Even as they take our food and force us into their work groups.”
“I don't want your food and couldn't do much with it anyway. And I've got nanobots for my work teams, thanks. At any rate, you know the score now. Take my offer or don't. See you tomorrow night, pal.”
And before he could respond, I eased the drone into a launch and sped off through the trees. Dawn was about here, and I had a mutant to find.
While the drone started its search patterns, I checked back in on my squatters. The Jaspa she'd left behind had spread out through the occupied corridors, about half of them resting, and half of them patrolling. None of them were dumb enough to go further into unsecured territory.
Then, without warning, chaos. Black flapping shapes swarmed and filled the corridors, and the soldiers yelled and thrashed.
I realized they were my bats! I snapped the elevator doors open and triggered the elevator's drop floor, providing a clear way down into the darkness. Couldn't do my usual thing and let them crap all over the floor; there was too much risk the Jaspa would hurt them or run them off. No, I'd become attached to the little flappers now, and I wasn't about to let the squatters harm my paying renters.
After the bats departed, I set the nanobot swarm to eating everything in the pit trap. The Jaspa could probably disrupt any construction efforts I tried within their occupied territory, but they couldn't stop me from eating their corpses, and the stuff they'd thrown in the pit to junk it up. I debated doing another sawdust burn to smoke them out but discarded the idea. They'd probably been warned about that trick, and in any case, they were keeping their torches well back from the pit this time. Ignition wouldn't be certain, even if I sacrificed another nanoswarm.
I had free bandwidth and time. Another crossbow drone could be a help... assuming I didn't glitch out due to corruption again in the middle of a fight. But where to put a drone?
I was tempted to put it at the bottom of the elevator shaft. But I already had a spike trap down there and that would only make the Commander think that her route to me led down there. And since I'd learned about the shine down there, I didn't want to lure her into the darkness. Quite the opposite, actually. I had to entice her to waste time on the level above. Which was tricky, because that's where I was. Hidden, true, but she seemed a clever one.
It would take a balance... anywhere I stuck the turret, she'd focus more attention upon.
To that end, my gaze fell upon the room across from my tazzel worm's chamber. It held a bin of feedstock, nothing more, and a pair of nervous looking guards. But the intact door in that ro
om led to a corridor, and beyond it, one of my broadcast node rooms.
Yeah. Yeah, that would do. I started drone construction within the broadcast node. I could use the corridor as a kill zone, and if they stuck to the schedule, then I had time to put in a pit trap and drop ceiling as well. Not quite as rough a killing zone as the first meatgrinder corridor, but it would account for some casualties... and it would make her think she was on the right track. That would buy me maybe a few more hours, or a full night, if she took the assault slow.
“Wynne?” Argus appeared in my perspective. “The flying d-drone's b-b-being hailed.” He shook in obvious fear, the eyes on him jiggling, and I stared for a second, before hopping into it.
I was in the hills north of my mountain, down among the trees, and to either side black spheres kept easy pace with my drone.
“—again, heave to and settle. We need to have a talk.” Loudspeakers blared, barely audible over the wind at this distance, and I slowed and turned. They caught up in short order. “Good, there's someone in there after all,” the drones spoke in unison. The voice was male, with a slight southern drawl to it.
“You've got my attention,” I told him.
“This will go quicker if we're seeing eye to eye. Are you agreeable to a gridnet conference?”
“Give me a minute.” I told him, then jumped back out of the drone, to my bunker. “Am I up for a conference?” I asked Argus.
“I... yes. I could set something up. So long as you don't give him any permissions it should be safe. Maybe. Hopefully. Uh, maybe not. This is the enemy! This is—”
“I know who it is,“ I interrupted him. Given Juscade's information, there was only one person it could be. “Set it up,” I decided.
“Sure. Do you want to use your default avatar?”
“The silver ball? Will he use something like that?”
“No. Most use human avatars.”
I gave it a minute's thought. What should I even look like? I considered, then went with my instinct. I gave Argus the details without stopping to think on them.
“Done,” Argus said. “Tell him the following code...”
I hopped back into the drone. “Sure. Let's talk online. Here's the code.” I gave him the string of numbers and letters, then jacked into the chatroom.
Bunker Core (Core Control Book 1) Page 19