Nellie and the Nanites - Bk2 - Ch.41

Chapter Forty-One

Molly-fied

Nellie slid back into the Captain’s chair with a feeling like coming home. To make the experience even better, she felt the chair adjust itself to her, becoming the most comfortable thing ever.

“I have sensors,” Lucy confirmed.

“This thing will handle like a dream,” Baz said with a grin as he hopped into the pilot seat with a shiver of pleasure.

“We haven’t even moved yet,” Nellie said with a grin.

“I can sense these things,” Baz said shamelessly.

“I guess I’ll take weapons then,” Paren said, running for the console.

“Comms?” Salem offered.

“Please,” Nellie nodded to the console, and Salem took her spot.

“I feel I have to say this… Paren, no shooting until I say, alright?”

“Yes, Mom,” Paren grinned.

“And we have a stowaway,” Lucy said with a sigh before raising her voice. “JoJo, get out here!”

“It’s not me!” JoJo shouted from the hold. “Honest?”

“Your implant is pinging the ship systems,” Lucy noted.

“Ah, shit!” JoJo stuck his head into the flight deck. “Umm, can I come? I can use the suits with my cybernetics. I checked.”

“When and how?” Nellie asked.

“You were talking to those farmers,” JoJo said with a grin. “I mean… I just had to have a little look.”

“Do we have a spare suit for him?” Nellie asked Lucy.

“Yes,” Lucy sighed heavily. “I have spares in case of catastrophic damage.”

“Go suit up and take one of the jump seats,” Nellie said to JoJo, “But let me be clear: we are possibly going into danger. Ignore one order or hesitate, and I will make you Remy’s personal chew toy.”

“Yes, Captain!” He whooped and dashed away.

“If we drone him, we could at least control him,” Lucy pointed out.

“I think that may be why he is trying to irritate us,” Nellie said. “Let’s give him some leeway.”

JoJo ran back into the room, still zipping and fastening the armor, and dashed to a jump seat. The foldout seats along the back wall were for any unexpected visitors or passengers, and they had just proven how needed they were.

“Set course for a flyover of the village,” Nellie said.

“Ready!” Baz said.

“Engage!” Nellie sat back in the chair as the Resurgence soared into the air without so much as a shudder.

“Shuttle Resurgence to Molly, come in,” Salem called. “Molly, are you there?”

“No power signatures in the village,” Lucy said. “They may not be able to answer.”

“Okay, Baz, slow and low over the village,” Nellie said. “Lucy, full scan.”

“Shields?” Paren asked. “I mean, they are dicks?”

“Might as well,” Nellie replied.

The shuttle dropped to just above the tallest building in the village; they only had a couple over three stories anyway, and Nellie winced as the sensor readings started to clear.

“Lights,” Nellie called, already knowing what they would show.

The Resurgence had floodlights on each side, and the moment they lit, the darkness gave way to a landscape dotted with bright red splashes; darker spots showed where old blood had already dried in the frigid air. The walls themselves were pretty much gone. It wasn’t so much a case of a breached wall as there being only a couple of sections still standing.

The lights glinted off several animals in the streets; Abomi-Toads crouched over motionless forms while Swamp Fox packs hissed and snarled at each other.

“Contact!” Lucy called. “I am getting a ping from some kind of emergency bunker.”

“This place had a bunker?” Nellie asked.

“Not that we knew of,” Salem said. “I am shifting through emergency frequencies to try and connect.” She concentrated as the comm lines clicked and hissed for a moment before a beeping emerged, loud and clear. “Confirmed!” Salem smiled, “Oh, this is a Fed frequency.”

“What the hell is a Fed bunker doing under this nowhere village?” Nellie wondered aloud.

“Not sure,” Salem said. “But it is reporting as occupied, at least a few people.”

“Not sure I like them being this close to our base,” Lucy said absently. “What were they even doing here?”

“Let’s go ask them,” Nellie said. “Paren, activate the suppression field. I don’t want anyone calling for help while we look into this. Baz, bring us in to land as close to the bunker as possible. Lucy, any idea where to find the entrance to this bunker?”

“Oh, look,” Lucy said drily. “It’s under the bar Molly worked at. Color me surprised.”

“Looks like we are headed for the landing bays,” Baz said. “Handy.”

“Paren, those turrets can tell friend from foe, right?” Nellie checked.

“Of course!” Paren sounded insulted.

“Set them to free fire once we are clear of the Resurgence,” Nellie said. “Everyone gear up. No one stays behind. That means you too, JoJo.”

The bay doors opened, ramps extending as the Centrum units marched out and started to fire in short bursts, driving back the surrounding animals. Nellie and Lucy led the others off the ramps, their rifles firing as the street ahead rapidly cleared.

“Stay close, don’t wander, and check your fire isn’t going to hit one of us,” Nellie advised Paren and JoJo. “If anything goes wrong, get back to the ship, seal in, and wait for us.” Both teens nodded mutely.

With Salem and Baz watching out for anything circling around, they moved into the near-silent village. Despite the blood, there wasn’t a body to be seen. Not a whole one, anyway. They saw a severed hand sticking out of a drain and a bit of a leg in the doorway of one house but very little else. There was plenty of blood. Even the air smelled of it despite the cold.

The walk was the same they had taken on their first day in the village, but there was no sense of deja vu or familiarity to it at all. The village might as well have been a nightmare version of the place they had entered. The animals were keeping away. The Centrum units killed anything that moved instantly, and they heard the deployment of the turrets on the Resurgence, but no sound of fire.

In short, it was eerie. Empty. Dead.

They left all but two of the Centrum at the door to the bar. The two they did take entered ahead of them, metal feet crunching over the broken glass of the windows. Nellie went next, rifle raised to her shoulder as she scanned the interior, seeing overturned tables and a half-eaten body against the far wall.

“Where?” Nellie asked Lucy.

Lucy pointed to a spot behind the bar where the cellar hatch would be. Nellie led the way, seeing an array of weapons hidden below the bar, all of them Fed designs.

“Who the hell are you, Molly?” Nellie whispered to herself as he flipped open the hatch with her foot.

A flash of movement was all the warning she got, diving to the side and over the bar just before an explosion rocked the small building. Her shields flared as she rolled upright, checking her HUD readouts on the others. They all looked fine, but JoJo’s heart rate was very high.

“All okay?” She asked, meaning JoJo.

“I’m good!” JoJo gave her a thumbs up.

Nellie noticed he had moved to shield Paren, which was so sweet but pointless. A shot that would kill him stone dead would be shaken off by her favorite drone in a matter of minutes. Still cute, though.

“Nice,” Lucy said, brushing a bit of bartop off her shoulder. “Set a distress call, then mine the entrance.”

“I’m gonna go ahead and dial my senses up,” Nellie said. “No more surprises.”

“Wouldn’t have helped,” Salem said, holding up a bit of twisted metal. “The bottom of the door was shielded to prevent scanning.”

“Fuck,” Nellie muttered. “I’m gonna kick Molly’s ass when we get to her.”

“I’ll take the lead,” Lucy said. “I’m less destructible than you are.”

Nellie wanted to argue but had to admit that Lucy was right. Her body was much tougher than Nellie's, at least so far. The more changes she underwent, the more she appreciated the tech. Just having survived an explosion, Nellie was surprised to find herself wishing she had even more upgrades than before. She stood back as the Centrum pair dropped into the hole, their sensors relaying information back to them.

“Clear,” Lucy said before jumping in after them.

“She’s better at this than you!” Paren stage whispered.

“She’s better than me at a lot of things,” Nellie said with a smile. “But I have her beat in one department.”

“What?” Paren asked.

“Better with my tongue,” Nellie winked as Paren started to make gagging noises. She followed Lucy down, finding a destroyed stock room. The racks and boxes had been cleared away in what might have been a hurry, revealing a hidden door set flush with the wall. It was hard to tell exactly what had happened, given the explosion that had just gone off in here.

“I have that,” Salem said as she ripped the recessed control panel out and started to work on the wiring. “Everyone back up. I’ll trigger the release on a short timer.”

This time, there was no explosion. Instead, the air filled with a potent toxin the second the door opened. Nellie immediately checked on JoJo, but his helmet had filtered it easily enough. If anyone other than them had opened this…

“I changed my mind,” Nellie said. “When I find Molly, I’m not gonna beat her ass.”

“Really?” Salem asked.

“Nope. Just gonna shoot the bitch instead.” Nellie said with a grin.

“As the only one here with lungs that aren’t full of nanites, I vote that I get to shoot her!” JoJo said angrily.

“No promises,” Nellie said. “I got history with her.”

After passing through the door, they found stairs wound deep into the ground. At the bottom of three flights, they came to a corridor lined and reinforced with metal.

“Hold,” Salem called when they came to the next door. “I want to try something.”

“What?” Lucy asked.

“We were intended to work with the Feds…” Salem said. “We must have something in a database somewhere… got it!” She smiled in satisfaction. “Fed ID codes.”

“Recognition codes?” Nellie asked. “This just gets weirder and weirder.”

“Putting them on transmit now,” Salem said.

“Same here,” Baz said.

“Analyzing,” Lucy added. “Okay, pretty simple stuff… okay, here we go, everyone.”

Nellie’s implant pinged, the packet containing a Fed recognition code for local broadcast. The moment they were all using them, the lights in the hall came up, and several noises in the walls suggested something nasty being disarmed.

“Some kind of receiver somewhere here,” Lucy said with a smile. “All I need is to find it.”

“Bet Newbie could find it,” Paren said proudly. She had left the little AI behind to help control the wall turrets for the yard, just in case.

“Got it,” Lucy said smugly. “Okay, one more second and…”

There were a series of clicks and clunks.

“Everything unlocked?” Nellie asked with a grin.

“Doors unlocked, traps disarmed, basically, I own this system now,” Lucy said as she led the way down the corridor.

The Centrum entered first, stepping to each side of the doorway the moment they entered. Lucy and Nellie went next, the others following behind. The large bunker at the end of the hall was barely a third full, with a family of four and a few couples all looking impatient for some reason.

Each one also had a small tag broadcasting a Fed identity code.

“At last!” A rotund-looking man strode forward, his face red. “We have been stuck in this hole for days! Days!”

“There was significant damage to the surrounding area. It is mostly chance we found your signal.” Nellie said calmly.

“You should have been searching!” The man insisted. “What unit are you from anyway?” He went on without waiting for an answer. “If we weren’t here for two years getting information on this shitty planet, the invasion would have failed! We deserve a little respect for that!”

“Two years?” Nellie asked.

“Exactly!” he huffed. “My family does not exactly like these scaly Brackta bastards, but they had to pretend! For two years!” He looked at the tails of Salem and Baz. “No offense.”

“None taken,” Baz said in a flat, emotionless voice.

“Where is Molly?” Nellie asked, not seeing her anywhere here. “I expected to find her here.”

“That bitch?” A woman sneered. “She went to the crash site to recover supplies with all of our guards!”

“What if someone other than Feds came?” Nellie asked.

“As if!” The woman laughed. “No one knows we are even here.”

“Unless they pick up the beacon on a wideband search.” Lucy offered brightly. “Which is what we did, by the way.”

“Without Federation Identity codes, the defenses would have killed you,” The man huffed. “Nothing gets past Federation technology.”

“We did,” Lucy added. “And by the way? Your defenses were terrible. The explosives barely tickled.”

“Oh, and your invasion has failed,” Nellie added helpfully. “The commanders are dead; one of those ‘scaly’ people you so dislike is in charge now. Your soldiers are either dead, turned to the resistance, or in hiding.”

Stunned faces stared at her.

“How do you know?” The man blustered. “How could…”

“Oh, sorry,” Nellie slapped the front of her helmet theatrically. “Allow me to clarify.” She punched the man very hard in the face, sending him sprawling. “We are not Feds. Now, let’s talk about why you’re all safe down here with so much free space and supplies while everyone else is dead, shall we?”

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

“Can’t believe we left them alive,” JoJo said as they walked back to the Resurgence.

“I’m not killing people for no reason,” Nellie said. “Besides, there were kids in there.”

“They spied on us, helped an invasion, and even bloody well took supplies they didn’t even need!” JoJo insisted. “And let people almost starve just to cover up they had a separate supply!”

“Yeah, so they get to stay right there until Prit sends someone to come and get them,” Nellie said. “She can play judge and jury; I’m done with that.”

“They can’t hurt anyone now,” Lucy added. “So, no need to kill them. I doubt being stuck down there alone and waiting to be arrested will do wonders for their personality issues as well.”

“Exactly,” Nellie nodded. “At least we know now why Molly was being such a bitch all the damn time.”

“She had quite the low-key operation right up until we started dropping refugees on top of her secret little spy base.” Lucy laughed. “Ooh, she must have been pulling her hair out for some excuse to get rid of us!”

“Why keep it secret even after the invasion?” Paren asked. “I mean, the job’s done, right?”

“They must have had more planned,” Nellie added. “It’s the only way it makes sense.”

“They may even have been involved in the synthetics project,” Salem noted. “Would explain why she was so curious about your robots and sudden crew.”

“More importantly,” Baz noted as they entered the shuttle. “They are trying to steal our loot.”

“Good point,” Nellie laughed. “So let’s go take it back.”

“With any luck, they will have done some of the work for us,” Lucy added as the shuttle lifted off.

“Sending info packet to the Hub,” Salem said, “Shall I mark it a priority?”

“We better,” Nellie nodded. “The kids there need to be fed, and I don’t know if Molly and her lot are going to be coming back.”

The trip to the crash site was short, but they were still forced to take several detours. The blastwave from the crash and resulting explosion had left a lot of dead bodies on the ground, and any carrion attracted attention. In this case, it was Coral Striders, Toads, and worse.

The planet of endless nightmare creatures seemed to still have some cards to play; the worst was some kind of centipede-type thing. They moved in large groups, rolling over the carrion like piranha. Even the Coral Striders seemed to keep away from those swarms.

At least the massive ship was not difficult to find. It was the size of a small mountain, after all, and even partly buried by the crash, the tops still easily cleared the crater it had made. Their scans showed at least sixty people in the crater or ship, and there were several gun emplacements.

“Someone has been busy,” Nellie noted as they slipped slowly toward the outer perimeter. The suppression field they were giving off stopped sensors from picking them up while the dark skies worked to their advantage, keeping them hidden as they eased forward, trying to get as many readings as possible.

“I’m picking up over two dozen modified grav sleds in the pit. I would guess that was how they got here.” Lucy said, highlighting the readings for everyone.

“All the way here on grav sleds?” Nellie shivered. “No thanks.”

“Where did all the troopers come from?” Paren asked. “I didn’t think there were any out here anymore.”

“They aren’t troopers,” Salem answered. “They move wrong. Not like trained soldiers at all.” She put a close-up of several troopers on the main display. The armor was right, but the movements were awkward and clumsy, as if they had never worn it before.

“She’s right,” Lucy said. “Nice catch.”

“So, what?” Paren asked. “She just gave ‘em armor and weapons? Why?”

“I’m guessing these are people she recruited from the refugees,” Nellie told her. “Weapons, equipment, and shelter in exchange for their loyalty.”

“She better have offered more than that to get them out here in all this,” JoJo piped up. “I mean, shit.”

“A way off the planet is my bet,” Nellie said. “Either way, I doubt they will just stand aside while we take what we need.”

“Should we ask?” Salem hovered her hand over the comm button.

Nellie thought about it; she really did. The problem was the village. All the dead that Molly had allowed, all the chaos, all the people she had willingly left to die while she had so much empty space in the bunker. Only the Feds were allowed in; everyone else she simply left to die.

“No, let’s get some more readings, then we hit them hard and fast. If they run, great. If not?” She carefully kept the anger she felt off her face and out of her voice. “Then, they made their choice.”