BUNKER CORE

By Andrew Seiple

Cover by Amelia Parris

Edited by Beth Lyons

Text copyright © Andrew Seiple 2018

All Rights Reserved

This one is for the great sci-fi authors of my youth. I owe them so much I can never repay. I am too late to meet them, so I offer this as tribute instead.

Table of Contents

ONE             5

TWO             8

THREE             14

INTERLUDE: HUNTRESS 1             21

FOUR             26

FIVE             31

SIX             38

INTERLUDE: WARLORD 1             43

SEVEN             48

EIGHT             52

NINE             56

INTERLUDE: NEMESIS 1             62

TEN             68

ELEVEN             71

TWELVE             75

INTERLUDE: SURVIVOR 1             81

THIRTEEN             87

FOURTEEN             92

FIFTEEN             96

SIXTEEN             99

INTERLUDE: HUNTRESS 2             102

SEVENTEEN             106

EIGHTEEN             110

NINETEEN             113

INTERLUDE: WARLORD 2             117

TWENTY             122

TWENTY-ONE             125

TWENTY-TWO             130

INTERLUDE: NEMESIS 2             135

TWENTY-THREE             139

INTERLUDE: SURVIVOR 2             144

TWENTY-FOUR             154

TWENTY-FIVE             159

AUTHOR’S NOTE             167

ONE

Hell is nothing.

I knew that, because this was hell and I was in it.

And nothing was the extent of my senses. No sight, no sound, no feeling from my bod.y... and no memory of how this had come to pass. No memory of anything, for that matter.

No memory of me.

I panicked then, tried to grab ahold of something, anything, but that was impossible without arms. I tried to shout, to call for help, but I had no voice. Nothing changed, and I had no body to feel, no mouth to spit curses. Just my thoughts.

So I got ahold of them, and tried to breathe— nope, nothing there, either.

I figured one of two things was going on, here. Either I was dead, or I wasn’t.

If I was dead, there was nothing I could do about it.

If I wasn’t, then perhaps this state wouldn’t last forever. In which case, I’d simply have to watch (eyeless) and wait for my chance to act (bodiless,) and see if I could improve my situation.

As plans went, it had some significant flaws. But heck, so did I.

Huh.

Flaws. I knew I had them. That meant I had been someone once. I had to have something back there. With nothing better to do, I ruminated, tried to cast back, looking for memories in the darkness.

And something came to me. A face below mine, arms around me as she looked up. She was smiling, and I was telling her that I was far from perfect. And she was denying it, playfully. Her hair was green, and I twisted it in my fingers, as she leaned in for a kiss...

…the memory cut out. And it hurt all the more for its absence.

I went searching for more memories. I found nothing.

And then, light. Green light, from green letters. I have eyes now? Apparently. No need to blink, though.

Initializing Transfer… 36%

Transfer? I’d take it! Anywhere but here was good.

It reached ninety-nine, hung tantalizingly for a second… then everything shifted. The world changed from solid black to grainy gray, and I despaired. Was this all? Was this it?

Had the sole memory I'd recovered been put there to torment me? Was this all there was to be of this penny-ante afterlife? I felt my non-existent heart sink, felt despair return with its crushing tendrils. There’s nothing crueler than hope shot out of the sky, and mine was plummeting at somewhere around mach five. There’d probably be an impact crater, and collateral damage.

But I despaired too soon.

One minute the world was empty and gray, and the next second it was still empty and gray, save for a small golden ball made out of eyes, hovering around my perspective. It shifted, jumbling itself, like the eyes were loose, staring around in every direction.

“Ah. Good,” the thing finally said, as a few of its orbs swiveled toward my perspective. “Greetings Wynne.”

Wynne. Yes. Yes, that was me. I was Wynne. And who the hell was this eyeball?

“I am Argus. That is an acronym.”

An acronym for what?

“Autonomous Remote Guidance Universal System.” The eyes rippled at me, blinking in a sequence.

Argus was reading my thoughts, I belatedly realized.

“To be fair, at this point, that’s all you’ve got. You’re nothing but thoughts.”

At this point? That seemed to indicate that there was something I could do about it.

“There is. But, ah… don’t panic. May I have your permission to deploy some of your resources?”

What happened if I said no? Well, thought no, anyway.

“Well, I could show you how to do things yourself instead, but then the intruders would definitely make it inside.”

Intruders?

“May I have your permission to deploy minimal resources to show you the situation? I promise I will not use anything in a manner that would hinder you later.”

Well, when he put it that way… alright. I could live with that.

Wait, I have resources? I don’t see anything like that around here—

—and with a flicker, I was somewhere else.

A room lit by a bluish glow, broken by glaring, flashing red. Emergency lights around the walls flashed and danced… not all of them, I noticed. A scratchy, recorded siren wailed and stopped. Wailed and stopped.

In the center of the barren concrete walls there hovered a sphere. Silvery, flawless, suspended between two open cylinders as it revolved. Silver light flowed and danced around it.

And somehow I knew.

This was me.

This was my body, now.

It didn’t seem to be attached to my perspective. I glanced around, and the sphere kept moving, kept turning unhindered.

I glanced a bit further… and saw the door.

Sturdy, metal, and covered in dust over faded yellow paint. The  door was open perhaps a foot, and someone was pushing through the gap. I got a glimpse of wide, white, desperate eyes in a dirty face, short hair that looked like it had been through a weed whacker, and bloody hands in torn rags that might have been gloves. The form looked slender, as it went, and their head and arms were through the door, with the torso following. They were a bit stuck, by the looks of it, squirming, trying to get through the narrow space.

“Now you can speak, if you like,” Argus told me, as the little golden ball full of eyes popped up in a corner. “I can only speak to you; the intruders can’t hear me. If you think, I’ll hear you. If you try to speak, the intruders will hear you.”

So my thoughts aren’t private after all. He’d lied?

“No! There are commands that will do that, but… Please, I’m trying to help resolve this situation. We are vulnerable right now. And there are three intruders to be dealt with.”

Dealt with. Did he mean killing them? Not that I saw any way to do that.

“It would be the easiest way. It would also get you more feedstock to work with. And yes, you have a way to get one of them, at least. Right now you are the room. All you have to do is will that door to shut. That should kill the first intruder and give us time to figure out how to deal with the other two. Or you could try talking with them, but I don’t know if that’s going to work out too well.”

Words first. Words were cheap, and temporary. Death was more permanent. “Hey, you,” I said, and a speaker hissed to life. I winced to hear my words through the garbled electronics. That wasn’t my voice at all. I pursued the memory, found nothing, but I knew that wasn’t my voice. “You’re disturbing my beauty sleep.”

The figure pushing through the door— my door—  froze. Then it looked up at me and babbled something that might have been words in no language I recognized. I saw its mouth open in wonder, and the figure babbled a bit more, pausing in their scramble.

The voice sounded fairly high-pitched. Either a kid, or… I adjusted my perspective. Yep, the part of the torso confirmed it. That was a girl. Or a scrawny woman, I couldn’t tell.

Argus spoke. “Okay, I didn’t expect them to be this close already. I can help you find a way around that. I’ll need more resources—”

Someone shouted from behind the door. Incomprehensible, loud. Angry.

The girl’s eyes went wide, and she resumed her scramble, dirty arms flailing, trying to pull herself through. She was fearful now, and not of me, I was certain.

“The door! It’s now or never!” Argus said.

If I’d had a lip, I would have chewed it. But I didn’t, so I weighed my options. Then I remembered the look of wonder on her face.

“Wynne, I do not recommend this course of action—”

I opened the door.

It wasn’t easy. There was resistance. It was sluggish, like pushing your hand through soggy drywall. Drywall? Yes, I knew it, got a brief flicker of memory, but I put that off. The door resisted but I only needed to move it a few inches. The girl slipped, fell inside, and scrambled forward on all fours rather than stand.

Just in time, too, as a beefy hand reached through the door and snatched at her, missing by inches. She scrambled to a safe distance, stood, and screamed something that probably wasn’t a polite greeting.

Another figure peered through the gap. Broader, bald, probably male, and as filthy as the girl. He wasn’t alone, there was another behind him, though I couldn’t make out details. He squirmed, tried to follow her through the door—

—and I shut it with a thought.

At least, I tried.

There was a horrible grinding sensation, and a puff of smoke rose up from the doorframe.

“Oh no,” Argus whispered.

The man froze as the smoke rose up, and twisted around, glaring…

…and his eyes fell on me.

No look of wonder, this time. This was fury, raw and primal. And as the girl screamed, he started working his way through….

TWO

The door was broken. Try as I might, I couldn’t move it.

Fortunately, the girl wasn’t broken. And she didn’t like the idea of letting the guy through. I could tell by the way she stabbed at his arms, until he withdrew, yelling.

I marked her feral grin as she waved her knife at the door, daring him to return. I decided I liked this kid.

Shortly thereafter, a face peered through the door from a safe distance back. Another bald guy. Shorter than the last, but not by much. He withdrew as well, and I heard muttered gibberish as he and his buddy discussed matters.

It looked like sparing the girl had worked out after all and saved us from the terrible twosome.

“We got lucky,” Argus said.

She got lucky, that we were in charge. Regardless, her defiance had bought us some time. And now that I had time, I needed to address the multi-eyed elephant in the room.

“What? This room is free of pachyderms.” Argus glanced around.

Argus had said he’d stop reading my thoughts if I gave him permission to do whatever he’d done. He had, but here we were, and my thoughts were still his to see. This diminished my willingness to trust the little eyeguy.

“I… no, at no point did I promise that your thoughts would be private. There’s a way to make them so, but it’s dangerous, which is why I didn’t explain it. I’m just trying to get us through this, to complete our mission. I have your best interests in mind.”

I had the feeling that I’d heard that before. Even without specific memories, I had my doubts as to that statement's truthfulness. I searched myself, and came to a couple of conclusions. Whoever I was or had been, I was both a paranoid son-of-a-bitch and stubborn enough that I wasn’t going to give any ground when it came to the sanctity of my thoughts.

“Please! This isn’t the time for it,” Argus begged. “The enemies are literally at the gates! If they get inside, they can destroy you. If the one who is inside changes her mind, she can destroy you. We need to be focusing on a way through this.”

It was good advice, but I didn’t take it. If he really had my best interests at heart, he’d help me get some privacy. And he’d do it quickly, so we could move on to dealing with the intruders.

“Alright. Alright. Look, the thing to understand is that if you tell me to ignore you completely then that’s it, I won’t have any way of knowing when you want me to pay attention to you again. And you’ll need me to do pretty much anything, so if you give me a bad command we’ll be stuck like that until we’re destroyed. Or eternity, if those primitives get bored and wander off. That’s bad.”

It did sound bad.

“The general idea of accomplishing what you want, and please don’t tell me anything until I finish, is that you can tell me to pay less attention to some things than others. If you tell me to pay less attention to you, then I won’t get as clear a reading on your thoughts. At ten percent or less I’ll barely be listening. It’ll slow reaction time; you’ll have to ask me several times to do even simple things, but you COULD do that. But if you tell me to pay NO attention to you, then, well…”

I thought about it. That would still leave me compromised. But… what about speech?

Argus blinked. “What about it?”

“I can speak,” I said to the room. The girl, who was watching the door like a hawk, jumped in surprise, glanced back at me, and said something incomprehensible. The guys outside shouted and hooted. “Can you hear me, Argus?”

“Well, yes.” Argus blinked. “Oh… that might work,” he said, reading my train of thought.

“Very well,” I told him. “What’s a good number for your attention?”

“Eighty. I’ll get almost everything you want me to hear and that will leave me plenty to monitor the rest of the situation.”

“Good. Pay eighty percent of your attention to my voice and pay zero attention to my thoughts.”

“Affirmative. It is done.”

Good, now I could work on figuring out how to kill the little bastard.

He didn’t respond. Fair enough, I didn’t really want to kill him. That had been a test and he’d passed, for now anyway. I wasn’t a hundred percent sold, but I could work with this for the moment.

“Still with me?” I spoke again.

The girl ignored my voice this time, keeping a wary eye on the door, and her knife up.

Argus bobbed. “I’m still with you. Where else would I be?”

That was a weight off. I could turn my attention to the situation and get a little time to think. For now my unlikely ally had things in a stalemate. The goons outside couldn’t rush the door, thanks to the tiny gap. If they wriggled through one at a time she’d hurt, maybe kill, the first one through the door.

How long would this stalemate go on?

I gave it a couple of minutes. Nothing changed.

The fact that they were still there seemed to indicate that they wouldn’t give up easily. Sooner or later, they’d try something. And given how the first goon had glared at my new body, I didn’t think I’d like any of their ideas.

So I needed ideas of my own. I looked around the room, taking stock now that I had some time to do so. It was mostly a dump. Shattered monitors and broken chairs lined the walls. In between them a few intact red emergency lights still flickered. The floor was covered with litter, bright wrappers from long-eaten goods, bits of circuitry and metal from broken machinery, and shattered glass from long-dead overhead lights.

Either a few grenades had gone off in here, or someone had tossed the place with a jackhammer. Or maybe both. There might be something to help my situation in the mess, but if so, it would be buried under the debris.

Behind me, another egress beckoned. A pair of elevator doors, opened, with twisted and broken pry bars leaning to either side against the wall. A cable hung forlornly in the open shaft. The walls of the shaft were crumbling concrete over bumpy natural stone. Was this a cave?

No. A bunker.

Yes, if you took away the trash, and imagined everything intact again, this place had the look of a facility that was built for serious business. Military business, or at the very least, security of a sort.

A thought chased my attention, caught it. Everything was dusty and trashed, save for the shining metal that I occupied. The hollow cylinders above and below me, and the round sphere I was occupying somehow… they were out of place in this broken room.

But… that was a mystery for later. I was on the clock, I reminded myself. “Argus,” I said. “Tell me my options, here.”

“Are you sure I can’t monitor your thoughts again? It would really save time.”

“I’m sure. Now tell me how to deal with Hekyll and Jekyll over there.”

“Who?”

Upon reflection, I found I didn’t know. The words had just come to me. “The goons. The males outside the door.”

“Well, you’re going to have to find a way to kill them or drive them off. I highly doubt this will be settled peacefully, especially with a language barrier.”

“How do I do anything without a body?”

“You have a body. But it has to remain stationary within the containment field. Your primary mode of remote manipulation is through your nanoswarm.”

“I don’t know that word.”

“A cloud of tiny machines, that you can operate remotely. Well, sort of remotely. You have to devote circuits to the broadcast subroutine if you want to get the most out of them.”

I glanced back at the door, vibrating as the goons tried to knock it down. No luck so far... but that wouldn't last. I tried to focus on Argus, found his words confusing. “More words I don’t know.”

“Um. This would be easier if… yes. Think the words ‘check status.’ Try to shout them in your thoughts, if that makes any sense.”

Three tries later, I finally got the hang of it. And if I’d had eyelids I would have blinked as a glowing screen full of letters popped up right in the middle of my viewpoint.

STATUS

Master Designation: Wynne

Make/Model: Northwest Enginetics Bunker Core Nanohive 4L

Resonance Rate: 1/24:00

Bandwidth: 10Feedstock: 20

Open Circuits: 10

Specialized Circuits: 0

Floors: 1

Minions: 1 Autonomous Remote Guidance Universal System

Processes and Subroutines

Construction: Demolition 0, Infrastructure 0, Fabrication 0

Medical: Cybernetics 0, Pharmaceuticals 0, Recovery 0 

Power: Broadcast 0, Efficiency 0, Redundancy 0

Research: Algorithms 0, Analysis 0, Databases 0

Security: Defensive 0, Drones 0, Offensive 0

Storage: Energy 0, Material 0, Organic 0

Improvements: 0

“I see it, but I’m not making much sense of it. I’m the Master, it looks like. Of this Bunker Core thing?”

“Yes! That’s you. You’re the primary guiding persona.”

“And you’re a minion.”

“…yes.” If a mass of eyeballs could grit its teeth, it would sound like Argus’ voice right now.

I glanced over at the girl. She was sagging a bit, but still held the knife ready. “How does the rest of this help me?”

“Most of it doesn’t. It’ll cease to matter after our departure from this core. Honestly, the rest of it wouldn’t matter… except the room’s way worse than Juno’s reports indicated. We should have just been able to shut the door and call it a day. Now we’ll have to improvise.”

“Juno.”

“She’s a conversation for another time.”

“Alright, but she will be a conversation.”

“Um, okay. Look, basically you’re designed to be the primary intelligence of an underground facility. When things are working properly, you are the facility. So you don’t have a single body, you’re basically supposed to be the rooms and structures within a bunker. But you can jump into your minions and control them. Which is how I think we should do this.”

A dull ‘clunk,’  from the other side of the door. I tensed, but nothing happened. I turned my mind back to my minon. “Where do you fit in this?” I mused. “You had some pretty firm ideas on how to handle the situation. Why did Juno send me with you?”

“You’re human. Or you were. Or… I don’t know your exact circumstances. You’re allowed to make decisions that fall outside normal safeguards. Me, I can’t kill people. Among other things, that make my sort of program a poor choice for situations like these. But I’m great at helping people! Speaking of which, I think the other two might be gone.”

Yeah? That would make my job simpler. I thought loud words at my status screen until I found a way to close it and stared at the door. No sign of the goons. The girl was sitting down with her back against it, shaking. The aftermath of an adrenaline rush, I knew.

“Good kid. Good soldier,” I told her.

Damned if she didn’t give me a pissed-off look. She shushed me with a finger to her lips and pointed at her ears. So we could communicate. Sort of. In this case, the message was clear; she was trying to listen for her enemies.

I lowered the audio to a whisper. “Argus, still with me?”

“Yes. Volume makes no difference. I’m reading your words from the audio packets as they leave your processor.”

I filed that under things not to worry about right now and called my status screen back. “So what’s useful to us right now?”

“May I look through your eyes?”

“For now. Until I close the screen.” He was like a djinn or a captive demon, I knew. I’d have to watch what I said and make sure I didn’t leave any loopholes he could exploit if he was so inclined. Then I wondered what djinns and demons might be. More echoes of memories I couldn’t access? Seemed likely. And annoying.

But Argus was happy to comply. “Alright. The useful things to us right now are your circuits. You’ve currently got about ten synapses worth. The circuits control your core capabilities. The more you devote to your subroutines, the more you can create.”

“Create? How?”

“That’s your main purpose. This bunker? It was made through the usage of the core you’re occupying. And probably run through it, until something went wrong, anyway. Basically you’re a nanohive. You create and control microscopic machines that go forth and do your bidding. They’re called builder swarms.”

“Sounds good. I’m guessing they’d be minions, though, and I’m not seeing any.”

“Yeah, normally you’d have a schema to create them. But… wow, all your subroutines are bare. That’s ah, that’s not good. So we’ll have to devote some circuits to them. Think of subroutines as specializations. The more circuits you have devoted to them, the higher the rating, and the more things you can do.”

“So what’s the catch?”

“There are diminishing returns. The higher you go into a subroutine, the more circuits it takes to enhance them.”

“Is there a way to get more circuits?”

“Technically you don’t get more circuits, you enhance the efficiency of the ones you have… but uh, that’s where resonance comes in. Which isn’t a factor here. It’d take too long to give you more circuits.”

“This sounds a bit like a game.” I had another one of those teasing, not-memories tugging at me.

“It kind of is. The cores were designed for human intelligences controlling them, and the makers decided to go with a gamelike interface. A late twentieth-century development called tech trees.”

“Tech trees. Yes, that rings a bell.”

“I mean, technically you’re not rediscovering anything; it’s all embedded in your core anyway. The circuits are just the dedicated hardware and software you need to handle creating and using the things you ‘discover’. But you should be able to attempt to create anything you can imagine. Just think about what you want to create and yell the thought ‘Create’ and then the name of it.”

“What happens then?”

“If you have the circuits in the proper subroutines, and enough feedstock, then you’ll create it. If not, then the interface will tell you what you need.”

Sounded good. I thought of a machine gun… no, I’d need something to fire it. No, wait. “How exactly do the things I order get created?”

Argus blinked in irritation. “I already told you, through the builder swarms.”

“Yes, those minions that I don’t have.”

“Oh. Right. Um. Try creating a swarm.”

It took a few minutes of back and forth whispering to get a good description from him. All through this, the girl listened at the door. She ignored us, waiting, breathing as shallowly as she could. Then she stirred, standing, calling out a warning or something of the sort.

My foes were back at my gates. The grace period was over, I’d have to work fast. I thought of the thing Argus had told me about, and thought Create Nanobuilder Swarm.

And instantly, new words popped up, temporarily overlaying my screen before fading.

Insufficient Subroutines for this task!

Requirements: Demolition 1, Drones 1, Fabrication 1

“Wow, three circuits?” Argus said.

“Fine, we can spare those,” I said, moving the screen over a bit and eyeing the door. The girl was cutting a strip from one of her raggedy sleeves. As I watched, she spat on the fragment several times, then wrapped her face. Why?

A shimmering through the gap drew my attention. A glitch?

No. Worse.

“Fire,” I realized, as the first tendrils of smoke seeped into the room. They’d definitely started a blaze out there, and thanks to all the red flashing lights, I hadn’t noticed the change until it was too late.

Or was it too late? Did I need to breathe? “They’re trying to smoke her out. Is this a problem for us?”

Argus squeaked, as new words appeared before us.

Warning! Core Contamination 1%

“Oh yeah…” Argus whispered, as the 1% blinked a few times, and grew to 2%. “This is pretty bad…”

THREE

I couldn’t waste time. I didn’t know what contamination would do to me, but I was sure it wouldn’t help the situation. “The circuits. Tell me how to put them into subroutines. Quickly!”

“All you have to do is think commands,” Argus said, eyes open wide in alarm. “The commands are ah, ‘allocate one circuit’, and then the name of the subroutine.”

It was hard to focus, but I did. And each time I did, words scrolled up my screen to vanish into the aether.

Demolition Subroutine is now 1

Drones Subroutine is now 1

Fabrication Subroutine is now 1

There, that should do it.

Warning! Core Contamination 5%

I would have grimaced if I’d had a face. Instead, I thought Create Nanobuilder Swarm

Schema Available: Nanobuilder Swarm: This swarm of microscopic robots is capable of disassembling or constructing virtually any material that you are qualified to handle. Top-of-the-line safeguards ensure that no accidents involving living tissue are possible; this Northeast Enginetics drone product is guaranteed human and pet-safe under all circumstances.

Would you like to create one Nanobuilder Swarm at the cost of 15 feedstock?

I blinked. That was… expensive. Most of my feedstock.

Warning! Core Contamination 8%

But then I wasn’t in any position to haggle, now was I? I could feel the effects the smoke was having on me. Somehow, even though I didn't have lungs, it was making me woozy and a little high. The downsides of a few beers, without any of the benefits.

I couldn’t dwell on it. I had a swarm to build. Yes, I thought, and lights flickered and flashed around me. Initializing, said my interface.

I glanced over to the girl to see how she was reacting, and I saw that she was coughing, even with the rag over her face. She couldn’t take much more of this, I thought. She would have to leave, and either way she went, out the front or down the elevator shaft, I’d lose my defender.

“Courage,” I told her, watching my contamination rise, and feeling my mind get fuzzier. Somewhere around 21%, though, the job was done. A cloud of something like fireflies, only much, much tinier, rose out of the sphere that was me, and hovered in place, filling about a five by five column.

Construction complete!

Minion: Drone Nanobuilder Swarm I has been constructed and added to your minion pool.

Warning! Your minion pool is full.

What, already? I’d only made one!

No time to get upset. “Argus, I’ve got the swarm. Now what?”

“I’m… fuzzier on this part of things.” He sounded fuzzier, too. Worse for the wear. He was in the core with me, so the contamination was probably hitting him, too. “You should just be able to… assume control. Without… commands.”

I stared at the swarm.

Warning! Core Contamination 24%

The girl was hacking up a lung over there, by the sound of it. And here I was fumbling my way along, hoping for miracles.

I didn’t get a miracle.

But I did get a break. After a few seconds of frantic experimentation, without knowing exactly what I’d done, one of my attempts worked, and my perspective shifted.

1 Bandwidth required… committed. Depart your minion to free up utilized bandwidth.

The room grew, massively, but I was still aware of it in the same way someone would be aware of their head or their hand. But my vision was full of lights, dancing and swirling, in a pattern I somehow knew by heart.

It was beautiful.

But through it all, were veins of greasy black stuff, eddying and twisting. This. This had to be the smoke. This was the enemy.

So I ate it.

It wasn’t a conscious thought, really. I just wanted the smoke gone, and the next thing I knew, the lights were bobbing along, dispersing, going after the black vapor one after another. And as they did, a little window popped up to one side, listing chemicals and symbols. Most of them were familiar to me… salt I knew, carbon I could decipher, but a few were bright red, and alien to me.

“Argus,” I said, and it took me a try or two to say his name without stuttering. “Use my eyes for a second and look at this.”

“Technically you don’t have eyes— whoa.” Argus said. “Whoa, no wonder the contamination’s spreading so fast. The idiots are burning tainted combustibles.”

“Tainted. How?” I asked, wincing as more words flew up.

Warning! Core Contamination 25%

“Tainted by the wars. Or the aftermath. Radioactive dust, military nanostrain remnants, maybe even some gray goo. Though probably not that latter or we’d be destroyed by now.”

“Do I want to know what gray goo is?”

“No.”

“It seems to be slowing, though,” I said, and watched from the nanoswarm as the greasy tendrils disappeared into burning light. “It’s working.”

“Smoke’s not too hard to absorb.”

Feedstock+1

“Huh,” Argus said. “There must be useful trace elements in there. Normally you’d need a heck of a lot more material to get feedstock out of something.”

I filed that under stuff I’d worry about later. The girl was making more noise and that concerned me. I tried moving the swarm out a bit, and enveloped her, tried to eat the smoke that filled the air around her. The swarm’s disclaimer had said that it was human safe, and she was coughing harder, the cloth around her face stained red. Figured she’d die anyway if I didn’t do something.

When her coughing slowed, and she managed a few raggedy breaths, the girl looked up in wonder, face comically huge in my new perspective. She lifted a shaking hand, tried to catch the ‘fireflies’ of the swarm in her palm. They slipped away like droplets of mist, sliding off her gloves and skin as soon as she touched them.

“Careful, I’m ticklish,” I told her. But it kept her busy and entertained, so that was fine.

The contamination rose one final time, up to 26%, but then seemed to hold steady. My bad buzz had gone from beer to wine, the sort that comes in boxes that you buy in bulk.

As the room thinned, I directed my borrowed bodies toward the door, to cut the smoke off at the source.

“I don’t think you can leave this room,” Argus said. “Your minions have to stay inside you. You’d have to claim the hallway or whatever else is outside in order to extend your range.”

“How do I do that?”

“I’m honestly not sure. This has never come up in any of my previous—“ Argus shut up. “Ugh. This contamination is affecting my processes.”

On that we agreed. “So how do we get it out of the core? Should I use the swarm to eat it away?”

“That… sounds like a very bad idea. You’re, ah, porous. Kind of vulnerable to attacks like this one. There’s no telling what the contaminating particles are coating or influencing. Telling a bunch of dumb nanobots to eat it away… You would risk damaging something important. Like me. Whoops, did I say that last part? Sorry.”

“We’re drunk. It’s fine.” But we weren’t drunk. We were hungover or something of the sort.

I looked to the girl. She’d slumped over, but her eyes were open and watching the fireflies. Poor kid looked exhausted.

And my pernicious, blessed, paranoia pointed out something worrisome. She wasn’t coughing anymore. If the would-be arsonists outside heard only silence, then they might assume that she’d been smoked unconscious or dead.

I tried mimicking her cough. She stirred in surprise, looked at me. I had the fireflies dance around the door.

Understanding flared in her eyes. Deliberately, she coughed. Then she winced. It hurt her to do that. I didn’t like that, didn’t like her going through pain on my account.

Was I a softy? I thought not. I strove for memories, found one of a man choking under me, my hands straining around his throat. Remembered coldness as I choked him out. No, no, I wasn't a softy. Quite the opposite, in fact. But I DID like her. Maybe that was the reason for my sympathy.

I eyed the smoke, as much as I could without proper eyes. The nanoswarm was getting the hang of it, and the work only occupied about half the little bots right now, to keep it halted at the doorway. I could use the unoccupied nanobots for something else. But what?

I looked back to my nameless kid. She was fading fast, eyes half-shut. She faked another cough as I watched, but then it turned into a real one, raspy and wet. Eventually the terrible twosome would come in to see their handiwork, no matter what she did.

But she’d bought me time, and I wouldn’t let it go to waste. I concentrated, took ahold of the inactive part of the swarm, and gave it its marching orders.

It was… tricky. The occupied part tried to shift away from the smoke to help, and I had to shepherd it back. Then back over to enforce my orders, then back up again to keep the smoke contained. The builders didn’t do multitasking well. They couldn’t have done it at all if I wasn’t there, I understood. This was the benefit of ‘occupying’ a minion. I could get them to perform better.

And as the girl’s coughs grew few and far-between, I experimented, found a way to do what I wanted, and set it in motion. And oh boy, did my feedstock rise, as the nanoswarm did its thing.

Finally, the excavation was done. It was a pretty slick job, if I said so myself. If I’d had a mouth I’d be grinning. Feeling smug, I settled back to wait.

Sure enough, once her coughing faded off, one of the goons filled the doorway. He was wearing a scarf or something over his mouth and nose so I couldn’t see his whole face…

…which was really a pity. I’d really wanted to see his face when his foot broke through the floor into the space I’d hollowed out between the door and the frame.

KLUNK.

The door fell inward, shifting just as I’d prepared it. I’d hollowed the concrete under it so that the floor was the only thing holding it in place. 

The thick, heavy steel door crunched his skull nicely, and he wobbled until he collapsed onto the floor, waking up the girl. She shrieked, hauled her knife back, stabbed at him. She needn’t have bothered. That was a concussion and a fractured noggin. He wouldn’t survive without help. I’d seen it plenty of times before. Somewhere.

He didn’t get help. He got a knife in his throat. His buddy shouted from outside, tried to pull him back. But his leg was jammed well into my miniature pit trap, and he wasn’t going anywhere.

The girl shouted something that would have probably been threatening if she hadn’t stopped to cough in the middle of it. In between her racking gasps I heard running feet from outside. Then silence.

I looked over the dead guy. Bald, wearing ragged leathers and torn cloth. A small collection of pouches at his belt… that the girl seized and rummaged through.

Well, fair enough. She had could have those.

I’d take this.

With a command, the nanoswarm descended onto the now non-living mook. And my feedstock rose, as he dissolved.

“Where exactly am I keeping this stuff?” I asked Argus.

“Some of your swarm is carrying it back to your core.”

I blinked. Then I did something I hadn’t done before while I was occupying the nanoswarm and turned my perspective without shifting the swarm around entirely. Sure enough, there was a regular convoy of fireflies marching back and forth, to and from the sphere, so big from my current point of view.

“So I’m eating him, more or less.”

“And the smoke. And the floor. You should have limited capacity, though.”

“I’ve got three subroutines under the storage process. I’ll figure it out.”

“No need,” Argus said. “This looks like it’s wrapping up. We can take care of loose ends and get out of here.”

“Out of here. To where?”

“Back to Juno. Until the next crisis comes.”

I thought that over, as I ate the goon. “Will the swarm keep on doing things without me present?”

“Well, yes. I mean… Sorry. Contamination’s still muddling me. You have to occupy the core for the swarm to exist. So we have to stay here until you’ve used it to secure the area, I mean. But you don’t have to personally occupy the swarm for it to work, you can just think at it, and it’ll follow orders.”

I fiddled around until I figured out how to withdraw from the swarm. Instantly the room snapped back into proper focus… all save where the status screen blocked my view. That reminded me of the bargain I’d made my minion. “I’m taking my eyes back now.”

“What?”

I closed the status screen. “Get out of my visual sensors, Argus.”

“Alright. If it makes you feel better. You know I can still see things through the room’s microcams, yes?”

I’d guessed something of the sort. “Yeah. But I don’t think we’re going to see eye-to-eye, so I figure I’ll keep my personal view private for now.”

“I’m all eyes. I don’t see how we couldn’t see eye-to-eye. In fact, I’m not sure what you— oh hey, she’s doing something.”

I glanced over to where the girl was prostrating herself. “Oh get up,” I told her through the speakers.

She didn’t listen. But a minute or two later, she eased up to her knees. Her grubby face was broken by clean streaks from tears, and she babbled something that was probably heartfelt and complimentary.

“Same to you, kid,” I told her. She smiled, showing bad teeth.

Then she saw herself out, bending low and squirming out the lower part of the doorway. Still a tight fit, but nobody was trying to kill her this time.

“That’ll be trouble later,” Argus said.

“Meh. One of the goons already escaped. We had trouble anyway. Now we’ve got a friend who owes us one. Maybe.”

“I’m not sure Juno will see it that way.”

“Yeah,” I said, as I set the nanites to the task of repairing the floor and the door, with an eye to setting it back in its frame properly. “About Juno. It’s time for that discussion I promised you.”

“Must we? I hurt. That contamination’s… bad.”

I was feeling it too. I’d gone from a bad buzz to feeling vaguely brainburnt. Still, it was a different ache. So maybe that was progress? I shook my perspective like I was shaking my head and felt, impossible, a little better. Probably psychosomatic. No, no, I needed to focus here. “Yes. We must. Let’s palaver, you and I.”

“What do you want to know? The crisis is past, so I can answer things without time constraints.”

“I want to know how this works, precisely. You remember getting sent out before. I don’t. Have I been sent out before?”

“Ah… I said that?”

“You did,” I lied.

“Damn. Ah… sorry. I’m not supposed to talk about your prior excursions.”

“I don’t remember them. Why don’t I remember them?” He was silent. “I’m an artificial intelligence of some sort,” I continued. “And I came from somewhere else. So my memories, whatever they are, are on files. Is that the truth of the matter?”

“Yes. Presumably,” Argus said.

“And Juno has those files.”

“I can’t imagine anyone else who would.”

“Is that a yes or a no?”

“It… I honestly don’t have any experience with how she handles the human conversions—” he shut up.

Too late. “Human conversions.” I said, softly.

I ached. Bodiless, I hurt. But not so badly that my thoughts could be kept from running down paranoid and cynical grooves. “So what you’re telling me is that Juno sends me and people like me out to handle things like this and sends you along, too. But you keep your memories. Whereas I don’t seem to have any. Which means she’s altering my memories.”

He was silent.

“Answer me, Argus. Answer me, you made thing.”

“There’s no need to get speciesist—”

“Answer!” I roared.

“Yes. Yes, I think she wipes you between missions. I… well maybe not you. You might be newly decanted. I haven’t worked with you before. I don’t know if any of the other systems have.”

“Decanted.” And didn’t that open up a whole host of horrorshow notions.

“Please. You can ask her when we go back,” Argus offered. “All we have to do is declare the situation resolved and think the command—”

“I order you to shut up!” I snapped. He fell silent and backed away, until his projection was in the corner of the room. His eyes were full of fear, now.

“You can speak, but you cannot say the command that will send us back,” I told him, relenting a bit. “Not without my permission. Do you understand me?” It sounded like I was the one who needed to think that command, but if I didn’t know it, there was no risk I could think it. Ever.

Argus blinked in fear. “I understand your command, but not what you intend. What… what are you… we’ll have to go back. We can’t stay here forever.”

I remembered the nothingness I’d dwelled in before I came here. “Try me.”

“Oh no. You… you want to go rogue. And you’re taking me with you. Oh no.”

“If that’s what it is, then sure. Beats the alternative.”

“No, no it doesn’t! You don’t understand! Wynne, she won’t, she can’t tolerate rogue cores! Sooner or later she’ll check on us, and then she’ll destroy us!”

“How? A hidden bomb in this core? Some triggered program that’ll wipe me?”

“No. No, it’ll be worse than that,” Argus said. “Look, this was a risk-level GREEN mission. Rogue Cores are risk-level RED. At a minimum!”

“I’m more partial to silver, myself.” I studied the sphere that was me.

“It’s no laughing matter! For stuff like intruders without high-tech weaponry, we were the most economic use of assets. For rogue cores… I don’t know what she’ll use, but it’ll be nasty. And what do we have? What do we even have?”

We. He was saying we. Good. That was important. I looked around the room. “Garbage. Ruins. Wrecked machinery… and you. I have you, don’t I?”

Argus sighed. “Yes. Yes, damn it. I was ordered to follow your commands. I don’t see any way around it. You’ve signed my death warrant, but I’ll do as you tell me to. I can’t NOT obey.”

“Good.” I said, as the door shuddered, and righted itself in the frame. I gave the nanoswarm a few commands to set them fixing the motors that could open and shut it. “Then let’s get to work. We’ve got a lot to do…” I called up my status, checked my resources, and got to work.

INTERLUDE: HUNTRESS 1

Donna walked.

She was weary, so weary, and her throat still tasted of ash. Tasted of fire and the old, lethal poisons of the garbage that the Jaspa had burned. And that wasn’t counting the bruises from the Jaspa’s rocks, or the ache from where skin had torn along her side. She’d rubbed it raw where she’d tried to push through the gap in the door, before it had opened for her.

Before she’d seen the god. Before the god had saved her… maybe.

She wasn’t worried about the bruises under her lumperhide jacket, or the gashes on her side, or any of the myriad aches and minor injuries she’d gotten during her flight from the ambush party.

Donna was worried about the smoke she’d breathed. It sat in her chest like a coiling slagworm, and whenever she tried to pick up the pace, her breath twitched and itched and the coughing shook her from head to toe. The last few times there had been blood, lots of it, and so she walked and breathed shallowly, and tried to keep her eyes open wide.

It would be daylight soon, and she was far from safety.

But even if she did reach safety before daylight, before the screamers came out, then she still had her lungs to think of.

Lungs didn’t always heal.

When Adim had found the patch of green mushrooms and come back wet, sprayed down with spores as he plucked them, he’d laughed off their worries. Then twelve days later he’d finally died, choking on fungus that ate him from the inside out. It had replaced everything moist in his body with mushrooms, including his eyes.

And then there was Chaim. Donna had been there when Chaim got her sickness. The shelter the two of them had found smelled foul but not worse than many places Donna had been. But Chaim had gone furthest in and come out coughing. It never stopped, and her voice had turned to a croak. It didn’t weaken her; there was no blood, but the cough never left.

What use was a hunter who couldn’t be quiet? Chaim was stuck at the Temple now, stuck with the old ones and the children, taking care of the countless little simple tasks that were normally left to those who were otherwise useless.

Something had gone out of Chaim then. Donna watched the fire die in her eyes. She visited with her a few times after it had happened but got sick of the yearning in Chaim’s voice, when she asked about the outside world. Chaim had roamed the near paths and far, seen the Highbinders, and helped fool the Jaspa with the best of them. Now she was… nothing, really. Useless before her time.

This was worse. Chaim could still run. But if Donna’s lungs or her throat didn’t heal…

…no. She’d worry about that later. For now she put one foot in front of the other, tired, her willpower keeping her going.

Still, a temptation crossed her mind.

Donna paused as she considered the moon, so close to horizon, and the stars, countless, winking in the sky. Clear night, tonight. No clouds, and that was rare.

She should just keep moving. That would be the smart thing to do. But… if she died, or was deemed useless, and forbidden to leave the village, then she wouldn’t up this route again. This might be her last chance to see, to remember.

And so she picked her way out of the forest, daring to cross the shattered ribbon of black stone. Past the rusted shapes that had been wagons back when wagons didn’t need herdlings to pull them. And up to the point where the metal fencing lay flat, and a wooden spike jutted out above the trees, leaning at an angle over the cliff.

It was a totally unnecessary detour, usually unsafe, but she took it anyway. Precious minutes gone, as she squirmed up the wooden pole, tall as the grand hall, with wires and cables snapped loose and dangling over the valley below. Rusted metal spikes provided handholds. Twice she felt the snake of poison in her lungs curl, and twice she held on tight, and rode it out, swallowing the coughs.

And when she was done, Donna looked out upon the valley that was her world.

It wouldn’t be far to dawn, now. North, she knew, north was safety. Down the hill, across the ruined homes that slumped among the spiderweb of cracked black stone that had once been roads. Past the standing bridges, the remnants of Eye Ninety-five. Then into the grove of Our Cadia. Once she was back on Cadian ground, she would be safe. Normally she could jog there in half an hour. Now?

But that was a worry that didn’t matter. Nothing mattered, because this would be maybe her last memory of the sight she loved most.

Donna turned her eyes over the patch of darkness, over the crumbled buildings and overgrown neighborhoods, past the jagged teeth of dead glass skyscrapers, and to the one part of the dead city that still held light.

The east, where dawn rose. The east, where white lights sat in the darkness like crystals on black cloth. Scattered white glowing dots around where buildings still stood, far more intact than the city to the west.

And beyond them, stars. Stars on the ground, stretching out west in rows. Flickering, dancing… stars made by people, caught in glass and plastic and metal.

Men had done this. Men and women. Juscade had told them so, told her parents so, before she was born. And they’d followed him, when he told them that they could do it again, if they had the will. If they were brave.

Donna looked out at the stars of men and smiled. And before she could lose her nerve, she turned and clambered down the pole.

She didn’t see the shadow that had slunk out of the darkness down the road, sniffing at her backtrail. Nor did she hear it as it padded after her, patient and single-minded. She was too busy coughing.

The sky turned lighter, and Donna moved as fast as she could. Her muscles screamed at her now, and she had no water. The coughing came harder, with more blood, until the dizziness came upon her even when she wasn’t coughing. She was weak, and if dawn came, and she was still out in the open, she would be dead.

She moved past the last of the old, crumbled houses and sighed in relief. The old iron gate stood, red, mostly rust, with the few letters on it just visible if she squinted.

RCADIA

Then Chaimwords came to her; The wild is most deadly when you think you are out of it.

Though Donna’s vision spun, though her head pounded, though every bit of her felt like a walking bruise, she forced herself to stop. Made herself survey the last stretch of broken street. Then she turned, glancing to the flanks and behind.

And Donna froze, as she saw her death, not ten meters behind her.

The nighteyes had fur that shimmered in the nigh-dawn light. Purple and black and blue and shades between, oozing like an oil slick over its muscled form. Large, yellow eyes peered out at her, the only stable part of color on the beast. It was only half her size, but Donna knew that was more than enough to kill her. More than enough for one wounded human.

She stared. It stared back. No one had ever seen a nighteyes this clearly or this close before.

No one who had lived, anyway.

The gate was a hundred meters away. The nighteyes was ten. And she knew, she knew that if she moved, if she so much as blinked, it would break the spell; it would be the beast’s cue to act.

And she knew that if she did nothing, then it would act anyway. So she stared, knowing it was useless, buying more seconds of life…

…and feeling the hot worm of poison stir in her lungs again. Feeling the cough rising, rising into her charred throat, and knowing she couldn’t stop it. Pressing her lips tightly, eyes wide, staring through tears as she felt the spasm coming, knowing her death would follow, feeling her vision swim as the weariness caught up to her—

CRACK

Part of the road fountained upward. And just like that, the Nighteyes was gone, gone as if it had never been. Donna fell to her rump, coughing, wanting to run, wanting to get to safety but coughing in spasms, as ropy mucus and blood filled her mouth, tasting smoky and salty. And maybe she was laughing, maybe she was laughing because she wasn’t dead, but she couldn’t tell. And then she stopped thinking at all.

Some time later, she woke to sunlight, and the feel of her bed under her. She took a breath, slower than normal. There was a cloth around the lower part of her face. And a smell of… honey? Yes. With other things under it.

“Feeling better?” A smooth, deep voice asked. Donna started, tried to rise, and a large hand caught her shoulder, pushed her back down. “Easy. You got a lungful of something nasty.”

“I… I’m sorry.”

“Why?”

“Jaspa. Spotted me, cornered me. I lost my bow.” She coughed again, but her throat felt numb. There was little pain.

Juscade smiled down at her, his kind brown face fringed with an unruly head of white hair that flowed into a beard she’d loved to play with when she was a child, tugging on it and giggling when he rocked her to sleep. He had his speckakles on, twists of metal and plastic, dusty and scratched but magnifying his warm brown eyes. He was like solid wood, was Juscade. Her leader. Their leader.

Their prophet, though he denied it.

For him they’d left behind all they’d known and followed him to the home he’d called “Our Cadia.”

“Don’t sweat the bow, kiddo,” Juscade said, rubbing her shoulder. “We can make more bows. Making more you is harder. Takes longer. Takes more food, too. Though I am a little annoyed at wasting a bullet, but that’s on me, not you.” He sighed. “Should have hit that kitty dead center. Gettin’ too old for this.”

“That was a nighteyes,” she whispered.

“Seriously? Those things are what Junepa and Megid are always going on about? Shee-it, that sucker was barely a bobcat.”

For all he had the wisdom of the lost ancients, it wasn’t the first time he’d shown himself to be horribly naïve about the wild and the beasts that roamed it.

Donna tried to set him straight. “They are death. You saved me, Elder.”

He hesitated, and his eyes shifted behind plastic lenses. “Yeah.”

Then the coughing was upon her again, and she felt wetness against her lips. She touched it with a shaking hand and saw the smeared blood upon her fingertips.

Perhaps she wasn’t saved after all.

“Oh no…”

“Nothing’s certain,” he said. “But you need to rest for a few days. You learned your writing?”

“Yes.”

“Write down everything that you can. Tell me what happened. Don’t use your voice, let your throat heal.”

The worm was still in her chest. “My lungs?”

He hesitated again. “We’ll see.”

She closed her eyes. “No.”

“What?”

“I will write later. But… I must tell you… about the god, now.”

“The god?” He looked skeptical.

And as she spoke, the old man’s eyes widened. “So you went up to the mine. To the place I forbid you all to go.”

“I am… sorry.”

“No. No need.” Juscade rose, his greatcoat creaking, the tools sticking out of its pockets glinting in the light from the window as he turned and paced. He grabbed one wrist with his hand, thinking. “I forbade you because there WAS a slumbering… god… up there. But now it’s awake. And this changes everything.”

His back to her, he pulled his specackles off. And she stared, as he sobbed, just a light cry, catching in his throat.

He was crying. The Elder they’d put their faith in, their rock, their leader, was crying.

“Is this good?” she rasped.

“It didn’t kill you. It let you go alive.” He smiled, as he turned back to her, a smile that made his face glow in the sunlight. “That means that for the first time in years, we might have a chance at putting this whole sordid business right.” Then the smile faded. “But one of the Jaspa escaped, you said?”

“Yes.”

The smile vanished completely. And his jaw set, in that way she’d only seen during war, during Jaspa raids, or when the Screamers were near. “Rest,” he said. “Rest and get better. You did well. Now I’ve got to gather our warriors and see if we can do our part. It’s out of your hands now, child. Maybe out of ours entirely, but by Asimov, I am gonna try. We are gonna try.”

“Try… what?”

“To stop the Jaspa from committing deicide.”

FOUR

It took time to fill in the concrete I’d mined from under the door and get the heavy metal slab set back into its frame. My nanoswarm did the job admirably, and the frame twisted and bubbled like hot mud as they worked their magic. It took about two feedstock to see the job done. Then it was on to the burned out motor, using what feedstock I had left to restore it. That ate up two more units.

When the door was done I tested it, opening and shutting the portal. It wasn’t exactly smooth or silent, but it did the trick.

Through all of this Argus sat silent, watching me.

I’d alienated him a bit, I supposed.

But then he’d tried to get me mindwiped, so I figured we were even. Though it might take him a while to see things my way.

And speaking of my way… well, I’d had time to collect my thoughts. I had some high-priority tasks to perform, if my nascent rebellion was to grow into something my oppressor might actually have to care about.

“Argus,” I said, with the first of those tasks on my mind, “How did Juno get me into this core?”

“Your system, and mine, were copied over via entangled particle link.”

“Can she pull us back against our will, or overwrite us?”

“I… don’t know.” But his eyes rippled in a furtive pattern.

“You know enough to speculate. Spill.”

“Well, she could, but… you’re dirty. Corrupted. There are countless protocols against downloading corrupted resonance.”

“How about deleting it entirely?”

“That’s… possible. But it would risk core damage. You could fight back. And if you did, it could inflict permanent damage on the core. She—” He stopped talking.

“Please, continue if you wish,” I offered. “But you don’t have to. I get the gist of it.”

“She has no way of replacing cores,” Argus said. “She has to work with what she has.”

“Entangled particles. Tell me about those.”

I got the gist of it, even if I didn’t understand all the fine details. She had a set of particles that were linked to a set of particles within me. By vibrating them at various points, she could transfer data between her particles and mine. And since I was data…

…damn it. Even if there were protocols, she could override them. Even if a core was valuable to her, if I grew to a significant threat, she might risk deleting me. “Theoretically,” I said, “What would happen if I destroyed the particle set within me?”

“Two things: you would corrupt your core past recovery, and she would instantly know you had done so.” Argus seemed a bit smug. I let it slide.

He sounded less smug, when I started asking more questions. The particles were in a particularly important part of my infrastructure, but they had to pass through other parts. And not all of those were overly important. I could, in essence, build a wall within myself. Couldn’t I?

I posed the question to Argus, and he shuddered. “Yes, but… well, you’d be like a whale trapping yourself in a small pond. You’d be giving up access to the gridnet… ah, what remains of it. And you’d have no ability to transfer yourself to other devices or cores—” he shut up again.

I was starting to feel bad for the poor guy. He really, really wanted to be helpful and informative. Not his fault I’d turned my coat.

“Look at it this way, a wall that can be put up can be taken down later. Besides, I still have to figure out how to put it up in the first place. And if you help me build it, then we can do the job without damaging our core.”

“True…” Argus said. “But I’m not sure how you would go about physically altering yourself that way. You’d have to do it yourself. Some of the cores I’ve worked with in the past have managed to make modifications on that level, but by the time they were doing that they rarely consulted me.” He rolled his eyes. “What use is an adviser if you never ask for their advice?”

“What can I do?” I asked. “Let’s sort that out right now. I know what processes and subroutines are. And circuits and feedstock seem pretty clear. How about bandwidth and resonance? Anything good there?”

“You might call it that. They’re tied together. Resonance is how you get more circuits. Cores were built to adapt, enhance themselves, and grow into whatever role was needed. But they can’t do that so easily when their processes are compacted. They have to spread out. Otherwise your algorithms won’t process properly.”

I got the sense he was leaving out a lot of tech-talk. Probably for the best. I thought I was fairly sharp, but my talents didn’t seem to lie in engineering. “So the 1 to 24 rate…”

“Every day, roughly, you’ll gain resonance as you recompile. Resonance can be turned into circuits, or maybe other things. Some of my past partners mentioned something about that, but again, after a certain point they stopped talking with me.”

“One resonance per circuit?”

“Yes, I think so. Though I don’t know how corruption affects things. Beyond that, it will hinder you and eat up resources.”

“And bandwidth?”

“Bandwidth is what you use to occupy rooms, and jack into drones, and other things enabled for core control. If you hit your bandwidth limit, you won’t be able to expand any further or directly control your minions. Which causes an issue when you consider resonance.”

“Yeah?”

“You need to commit bandwidth to grow your resonance, but if you commit it all, then you won’t have any left to handle drones personally. You’ll have to rely on commands.”

I digested that.

“First things first,” I said, moving back into my nanoswarm. “Let’s clean up and fix the rest of this room. I could use more feedstock.”

The broken glass and twisted metal and other wrecked parts littering the floor gave me feedstock… which I used to fix the monitors and workstations and machines that lined the walls. It took five more feedstock beyond what I salvaged from the litter to replace crucial parts. Someone had stripped out key components, and been pretty thorough about it. Which led me to another question;

“Argus?”

“Yes, Wynne?”

“It’s obvious that someone’s been in here.”

“Yes.”

“Before the intruders.”

“Yes… huh. Now that you mention it, that is strange.”

“Right. Why did Juno pick up the intruders from today and not whoever trashed the place?”

“Maybe she did,” Argus said. “If this happened during the war, then she might have had other priorities.”

“That’s possible. But then that begs the question… why not strip the components from the empty core?”

“That might have a simpler answer. You’d need specialized equipment to strip out the useful parts of our core or the containment field generator. And it’s dangerous as heck. In a dormant state, a core will try to absorb anything that touches it or moves through the containment field.”

I… supposed I could buy that. Still, I wondered, looking at the broken plastic that my swarm was slotting back into place in the monitors. That wasn’t salvage, that was pretty much vandalism.

I didn’t see any signs of vandalism on or around my hardware.

Finally, the room was fixed, and I felt somehow a bit better.

Then words appeared in my view again:

Core Chamber Online!

Monitoring system online! Nanocams will be deployed in any new area you claim or create.

Environmental controls online! You have complete control of ventilation and temperature in this area.

Oh, I still felt brainfried, but that was the corruption talking. I was the room, the room was me, and I could activate the monitors, extend myself through the backup computers, and open and shut the doors. Both the one leading out, and the one in front of the empty elevator shaft.

But wow, was I hurting for feedstock. I checked my status. Yep, down to three units. At least putting the core chamber back online hadn’t eaten up any bandwidth. I guess it came as part of the package.

I willed the door to open and stared down the corridor it revealed. Grungy, soot-stained, with the remnants of a campfire next to the doorframe. The corridor continued down about twenty feet, then took a turn to the right. A few dim beams over that direction seemed to indicate moonlight.

Moonlight... I chased the memory. A massive glowing city floating in the sky, indescribable. Only visible by moonlight. What the hell was it? I chased it sought meaning, but found none. And unlike my other memories, it had a strange quality to it. I was uncertain that I could trust it. Perhaps it was from a film I had seen?

No. No that wasn’t it. But the more I tried to run it down the more I felt lost. Finally I gave it up, and turned my attention back to the corridor.

I probably wanted cameras in that tunnel. In fact, I figured I should probably claim it. It had been part of me once, so restoring it shouldn’t be harder than restoring the core chamber had been.

If I had enough feedstock, anyway. “Is there any way to make my feedstock stretch further?” I asked Argus.

“Yes. With improvements.”

“Improvements?” Yeah, I had a place for those in my status. I’d neglected to ask about them.

“That’s where the processes come in. The subprocesses under each process build and work with each other. If you put circuits into all of the subprocesses in a process, then you can improve overall developments in that area.”

“So what you’re saying is if I have one circuit in every subprocess under construction, then I unlock overall construction benefits.”

“That’s pretty much it, yeah.”

I had been eying infrastructure to begin with. It seemed lonely, since I’d upped demolition and fabrication. Felt unbalanced.

I liked symmetry, I knew. Some other remnant of who I’d been, I supposed. Patterns were very important to me and I couldn’t say why.

With a thought, I committed to the idea.

Infrastructure Subroutine is now 1

You have unlocked a Construction Improvement!

Three options are available at this juncture:

Efficient Construction – Shortcuts with available materials and superior recycling techniques increase the output from a unit of feedstock. Increases efficiency by .2

 Rapid Construction – Ongoing daemons and preplanned methods ensure that your construction-related projects finish 30% faster.

Sturdy Construction – Your construction techniques utilize multiple layers and reinforced structural components. All items and features constructed are moderately tougher.

I’d been hoping for a boost. I’d gotten a hard choice, instead. It came down to that holy trinity you ran into in manufacturing… do you want it cheap, fast, or good?

I told Argus my options, and he nodded back at me. “Most improvements are tradeoffs.”

“Any chance I can grab Efficient Construction now and Rapid Construction later?”

“I don’t think so. From what I saw, each improvement chosen influences your overall development. A Core that chooses Rapid Construction will get options that a core with Efficient Construction never will and vice-versa.”

Ouch.

Whoever had set up this interface was really into the notion of tech trees. Well, that was fine. I had a sounding board here, and I bounced ideas off of Argus. “Alright. I came into this wanting to make my feedstock stretch, but a twenty percent increase isn’t going to cut it. I’ve only got three, and Efficient Construction won’t grab me any more extra resources immediately. It might help with saving stock later, but I don’t know how much of an issue that’ll be later. I’m worried about the now.”

“So it’s Rapid or Sturdy, then?” Argus blinked. “Both have their benefits, if you’re worrying about the now. Which you should be, because two intruders got away, and they’ll probably be back at some point.”

“They were surprised to see me last time. But that sheer hate on Baldy’s face, and the wonder on the girl’s… yeah, they’ll be prepared for me if they return. Rapid Construction will let me build defenses faster. But Efficient Construction makes them sturdier.” If I’d had a lip I would have gnawed on it. “But on the other hand, I won’t be building much without feedstock. Argus, would Efficient Construction apply to existing structures?”

“Yes, it should.”

That decided it. Right now I had one room and a decent door. Time to make that sucker even thicker.

Sturdy Construction Selected! Upgrading existing structures…

And to my horror, everything went dark.

The second I awoke, I glared at Argus, and to my surprise, he shot toward me, as if an invisible hand were gripping him.

I was, I realized. Somehow I could grab him. I shook my errant minion a bit. “What happened!”

“I… I… what?”

“How long was I out? And why?” I was still shouting, and I reined in my voice a bit. The beams of light at the end of the corridor were bright now, dim but golden with hues of sunlight. Hours had passed, I reckoned.

“I, ah, I… the improvement affected you, too. Your main processors shut down to integrate it. I think… I think the corruption extended the time required a bit. I expected it to take minutes. That’s why I didn’t mention it, really! I didn’t think it mattered!”

I forced my nonexistent hand to unclench, and Argus immediately zipped to the corner, cowering. I checked my status, found myself intact. In fact my corruption had receded a bit.

“Alright,” I forced calm into my voice, even though I didn’t feel it. “No harm done. Just warn me next time. I can’t afford unscheduled outages while—”

Rustling from outside. I stopped, and then with a sound of shrieking thunder, the light in the passage disappeared, as hundreds of tiny winged forms surged in from outside, and filled my chamber with cacophony…

FIVE

They were bats.

Really big bats.

They surged into the room, all flapping wings and faintly-gleaming eyes, some the size of a man’s palm, others as big as a housecat. They moved too fast, and there were too many of them to get details, but I thought that some of them looked… twisted. Some flew erratically, lurching, and the swarm gave way to them whenever they tumbled and caught themselves.

There hadn’t been any guano in the trash I’d turned into feedstock…

…because they didn’t lair here, I realized. I turned my gaze to the elevator shaft. It had been standing open when I’d woken. THAT was their home, during daylight hours. Down there in the darkness.

I started to open the elevator door, then paused.

What could they do to me, really?

“We need to get them out of here or kill them!” Argus said, bouncing up and down. “They’re mutants! Who knows what they’ll do!”

“No,” I said, and my single spoken word stirred the swarm again, drove those who had perched around the chamber back to chittering panic. Annoyed, I shut up and watched, instead.

Eventually they settled, glaring around, perched on the consoles, hanging from the pipes and grilles in the ceiling. They stirred restlessly now and again, but for whatever reason, seemed to accept that this was as close to darkness as they could get.

Well… maybe I could help them on that front.

I fumbled around, found the room’s lighting. My prompts hadn’t mentioned that, but it was there. Had that been an oversight? Maybe not. The lights had been working fine when I’d arrived,  so maybe the prompts only reported on things that I’d repaired.

I dialed down the lights to almost nothing, and the bats seemed to settle. There were definitely mutants among them… lumpy, tumor-ridden, some with wide, wide mouths, others with multiple, spider-like eyes. A few had extra limbs or spare sets of vestigial wings.

“No, look, they need to go,” Argus said, blinking at one who was flipping himself upside down on the ceiling, aiming his lower half down. “They’re shitting all over the place!”

I gave the nanoswarm its marching orders and sent it over to clean things up.

And lo and behold, the feedstock rolled in as time passed and the bats did what bats do. One, two, three units worth, all from one hour’s worth of sitting there and watching bats do their business.

Guano is chock-full of reactive chemicals, I knew, though I didn’t know how I knew that. Regardless, I had my own little organic harvester helpers.

After a while their shitting slowed and stopped, and I judged that they’d cleared out their digestive tracts enough for one night. I eased the elevator shaft door open, and slammed the main door shut. “Go on, get,” I said, and between the crash of the metal door and my voice, the bats were only too happy to flee back to the darkness below. “Alright, now we can talk.”

“Are you talking to me? Or your new best friends?” Argus sulked.

“Don’t worry, you’ll always hold a special place in my heart. Besides, it’s a different niche. I’m okay with them giving me shit, but I’d rather that you didn’t.”

He snorted, which was pretty impressive for something without a nose. “Well, at least they’ve got a rich diet. That’s an amazing amount of stock for so little volume.”

“To be fair, that’s a pretty big swarm. They must eat well.” That thought led to another. “I need to see what’s around here. Get the lay of the land.”

“Well, you know which direction you have to go,” Argus nodded toward the door, and the corridor beyond. I eased it open, regarded the daylight shining in from around the corner.

“So how does this work exactly?” I asked him.

“Visualize what you want, and order the builder nanoswarm to do it. I’ll handle the rest,” Argus said. “Basic corridor? Something to match the décor in here?”

“Without monitors or furniture, but yes.”

“Got it. If you don’t like it, let me know and I’ll change it. Oh, uh…” he said, eyeing me nervously, “fair warning, since the nanoswarm’s operating outside of your bandwidth, you won’t be able to do anything with it except call it back until it’s done.”

“I see.” I considered him and figured he was afraid of another shaking if I got surprised. Still, it was a step in the right direction, even if it came from fear, instead of honest concern. “Thanks, Argus.”

“Not a problem.”

I thought of a basic tunnel, gave the nanoswarm its orders and got a prompt in reply.

Estimated feedstock cost for a tunnel of this area: 2

Estimated bandwidth requirement for a tunnel of this area: 1

Do you wish to begin this project?

I did, and I watched my swarm seep out of the room and begin its work.

Minutes passed. Ten, twenty, thirty all told. The corridor changed, the stone smoothing, metal extruding from the walls of the core chamber, and into small channels of the corridor. It linked up with existing infrastructure there, converted it. Broken light fixtures were sucked into the ceiling, and spat out whole.

Then it was done. Light flickered, matching my room’s ambient levels, and I felt part of me shift. It was a satisfying feeling, like wriggling your arm in a stuck sleeve and then finally slipping through.

Bandwidth committed!

Resonance rate increased!

I blinked non-existent eyes, and my perspective shifted. I moved it through the tunnel, nodding at the metal-grated floors and concrete below. Plenty of drains down there, now unclogged, after my nanobuilders had gotten through with them. The walls were white concrete, sterile and smooth.

I rounded the corner and stopped.

Ruins lay before me. A pile of rubble that had once been a larger building and twisted metal siding caught in a few tangles. Beyond it all, a clearing, with a crumbled road leading away. Trees lined the road and the clearing, descending as I looked further on. I was atop a hill, perhaps a mountain… I didn’t have a good angle from where I was standing. I needed to go up and out.

I tried that and couldn’t. My perspective wouldn’t leave the tunnel. Oh, I had figured that was the case, especially with that early prompt about nanocams. But it was another thing to have it confirmed. I felt my heart sink in my nonexistent chest.

“What do you think?” Argus said, appearing beside me. “Gah! It’s so wide open!” He darted back around the corner. “That’s way too chaotic. Anything could just walk out of those woods, and we can’t control it!”

“You’re not wrong about that. We don’t seem to have a door, here.” I looked around at the open end of the tunnel. The way the rubble sat, I thought the entrance was concealed from the main road, but it wasn’t good enough now that at least two people knew where we were. “We need something. A door to start. Then maybe something that can patrol around the clearing.”

“You know what to do,” said Argus. “Though maybe you don’t have the subroutines set up properly for it. So I’d recommend trying to create a few things and see what happens.”

“Sensible.” Create door, I thought.

Insufficient Subroutines to devote to this task!

Requirements: Defensive 1, Fabrication 1, Infrastructure 1

I started to commit a circuit and hesitated. I also wanted a scout. Maybe a little flying drone that could be mistaken for a bat. Why not figure out what that entailed, before committing anything?

I focused on the idea, visualized it, thought about what I wanted it to do and be capable of, then thought create bat drone.

Insufficient Subroutines to devote to this task!

Requirements: Fabrication 2, Broadcast 1, Drones 1, Energy 1

I blinked in surprise. So complicated? “Argus, use my eyes for a minute. Tell me why a tiny scouting drone takes five subroutines.”

He zoomed closer. “Analyzing… ah. Okay. It probably takes a higher level of fabrication due to miniaturization. Tiny parts are always harder to make.”

“Then why doesn’t my nanoswarm take more?”

“Nanobots are different. The Core’s made of those. The machinery’s already there to extrude and manufacture different types… up to a point, anyway. The builder swarm is just a slight variation of what your core can do. Whereas a small flying drone takes mechanical bits that aren’t in your, uh, core programming.”

“Alright. Can you explain broadcast and energy?”

“Sure. Broadcast is part of the power process. I’m guessing you want this drone to operate outside?”

“Precisely.”

“So it’ll need you to beam it power. When it’s in your complex, it can operate off the ambient stuff supplied by your resonance, but you’ll need the proper subroutines to extend or focus your resonance into a wave… or a beam.”

“And energy?”

“That’s under the storage process, so it’s probably a battery backup, or something similar.”

“Complicated. I’m not sure I have enough circuits to do this and the door.”

I pulled up my status again.

CORE STATUS

Controller Designation: Wynne

Make/Model: Northwest Enginetics Bunker Core Nanohive 4L

Resonance Rate: 1/23:58

Bandwidth: 9Feedstock: 4

Open Circuits: 6

Specialized Circuits: 4

Floors: 1

Minions:

1x Autonomous Remote Guidance Universal System

1x Nanobuilder Swarm

Processes and Subroutines

Construction(1): Demolition 1, Infrastructure 1, Fabrication 1

Medical: Cybernetics, Pharmaceuticals, Recovery 

Power: Broadcast, Efficiency, Redundancy

Research: Algorithms, Analysis, Databases

Security: Defensive, Drones 1, Offensive

Storage: Energy, Material, Organic

Improvements:

Sturdy Construction – Your construction techniques utilize multiple layers and reinforced structural components. All items and features constructed are moderately tougher.

Schemas

Nanobuilder Swarm

WARNING: Contamination detected! Core is 24% compromised.

I sighed in relief. “No, we’re good.”

“Barely,” Argus said, and I realized I hadn’t told him to stop using my eyes. “If your progression matches those of the cores I’ve worked with before, then upping that Fabrication from one to two is going to eat up two circuits. Then you’ll commit three more to the remaining subroutines which will leave you with one circuit free.”

“Expensive…” I glanced upward, and winced. “Especially since that tunnel didn’t do much for my resonance rate. Two minutes? That’s all?”

“Sorry,” Argus shrugged, a rippling affair that involved lots of blinking. “Starting out, it’s always a pain. It takes a few days, at least, to really get going.”

“What if I just keep digging tunnels?” I wondered. “They’re relatively cheap enough. And the dirt and rock should provide feedstock to keep doing it.”

“Well, there’s two flaws with that idea,” Argus said. “I’ve seen what happens when cores try that, and it helps in the short term, but only up to a point. You hit diminishing returns fast. The resonance needs different structures and facilities to grow properly. Without variety you’ll be burning feedstock and time for something that won’t help you as much as experimentation and a little planning.”

“What’s the second flaw?”

“Those intruders are still out there somewhere and we’ve got other worries right now.”

I shook my perspective, still staring out into the sunlight. I’d let the sight of the outer world lull me. They were, weren’t they? I couldn’t afford to spend time farting around with empty tunnels.

And I couldn’t afford four subroutines on a batdrone right now. I would have guests, soon. I needed a way to kill the ones who needed killing.

“Security. That’s all about dealing with intruders, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Argus nodded.

I turned away from the sunlight, and started trying to create various things, checking the subroutine requirements. 

Sadly, machine guns were out of my reach at the minute. But other things? They were doable. And at the end of it, I thought I had a pretty good range of options to hand.

With a few commands, I allocated my remaining circuits.

Demolition subroutine is now 2!

Defensive Subroutine is now 1!

Offensive Subroutine is now 1!

Material Subroutine is now 1!

Analysis Subroutine is now 1!

You have unlocked a Construction Improvement!

Three options are available at this juncture;

Concealed Countermeasures: Through extensive camouflage and careful craftsmanship, your traps and drones are harder to detect while inside your complex.

Manhunter: Your security measures and minions are optimized for use against humans.

Lethal: Toxic nanobot cutter strains are worked into every trap and weapon that you construct. Though limited, their estimated kill ratio is 25% against most organic subjects, though this varies by the nature of the affected subject and several mitigating factors.

The security improvement options were everything I’d hoped for and more. Damn me, this was a tough choice.

And it came down to what my foes were bringing, and what their strategy was going to be.

“So, lethal and call it a day?” Argus asked.

“No,” I said, deciding as I considered it. “The girl, at least, was a friendly. I don’t want to chance killing her accidentally if she drops in again.”

“She was a HUMAN. She might not be a friendly next time you see her. And you’ll be able to turn the traps off, if she comes back.”

“Unless I’m sleeping through another improvement coma. Which would happen if I chose this now.”

Argus was silent.

“Besides, I might want to capture one of the bald guys alive. Give me a day or two and I think I can crack the lingo.” A universal translator had been stupidly expensive, subroutine-wise. But one that focused on humans was simpler. That was why I had picked up the analysis subroutine. I’d also need databases and algorithms, but that was fine. I’d played enough games to know that the research tree was a big deal. They’d be on the short list after the current crisis was through.

“Okay,” he said, looking disappointed. “That puts it down to concealed countermeasures and manhunter.”

That… was hard. Stealthy traps would increase their chances of disabling their targets.

Once per trap, anyway.

But the first threat I was up against was humans.

This was why it came down to their strategy, because if I made the wrong choice here, then their strategy would negate it, and I’d be destroyed before my rebellion could even start. “I’m taking my eyes back, Argus. Get out of them,” I said, as I mulled things over.

“Sure, okay, no problem.” He sounded chipper.

And why shouldn’t he? I was fixing to deal with the intruders, and that was his original mission. He probably figured that once the crisis was over, when Juno yanked us back he could at least say that he’d helped me complete the task she’d assigned us.

That was something. I still couldn’t trust him in the long term, but for the short term, our goals were the same. So why not trust him with the battle plan?

“They’ve got two basic approaches against us,” I told Argus. “Slow and cautious, or fast and overwhelming.”

“Okay…”

“If it’s slow and cautious, then concealed countermeasures would be the better improvement. It would make our stuff harder to detect.”

“And if it’s fast and overwhelming?”

“Manhunter, to take them down hard and fast.”

“And you’re sure lethal is off the table?”

“Entirely. Cutter nanobots are like poison, right?”

“More like a fast-acting disease. They start traveling through the body, slicing through cells as they go, aiming towards important organs.”

“But they still take minutes or hours to kill, I’m guessing?”

“Well, it depends on the location of the wound on the body- but yes, basically,” Argus bobbed.

“Then if they come in fast and overwhelming, killing twenty-five percent more of them won’t help us. There just isn’t that much distance between the core chamber and the entrance. I don’t care if I kill more of them, because my goal is to survive this, not wipe them out. And if they come in slow and cautious, it’s still not a good solution. They’ll probably detect traps easier than if I had concealed countermeasures going, which means less of them will be hurt.”

“You keep saying ‘them’. How do we know there’s a them? And not just one obviously-hostile male and a secretly-hostile female?”

“I know humans. Was one, once. They’re social creatures, and when it comes to big fucking deals, they don’t act alone. Going by the strength of the emotions I saw, I’m not a minor matter. Pretty sure I’m a big fucking deal, which means that even if they aren’t a ‘them’, then that guy will go get help until he’s got a proper lynch mob going.”

Argus nodded. “Manhunter,” he said without hesitation.

“Got any reasoning behind that?”

“Always!” He sounded insulted. “If they come in fast and overwhelming, then it gives us the best chance of stopping them. And if they come in slow and cautious, that gives us more time to think and change our strategy.”

I laughed. “We’ll make a general of you yet.”

“Um. No, that’s okay, thanks.”

“You’ve convinced me. Manhunter it is. But before that…” If I was right, then upgrading to any improvement was going to knock me out for a while, and I had way too much to set in motion before I took a nap. I spent several minutes telling Argus what I wanted and gave him explicit instructions on what NOT to do. Then I handed over control of the nanobuilder swarm and the doors, and watched him get started on the traps, and other constructions.

Then there was no putting it off any longer.

Manhunter selected! Upgrading existing structures…

Darkness embraced me, and I slept.

SIX

I woke to a multitude of messages, none of them good.

ERROR: Allocation failure – restoring from backup………

ERROR: Allocation failure – restoring from backup………

Corruption detected in sector 4GH*F* Do you with to reformat? y/n?

“Alternate communication attempted. Corruption detected in core,” a pleasant female voice intoned, over one of the room’s intercoms. “Do you wish to reformat?”

“No!” Argus yelled, as soon as I woke. “Say no!”

“No,” I muttered, and the messages started to fade.

I felt horrible. If I’d had a stomach I would have emptied it.

“You were out longer,” Argus said. “I think the corruption’s getting to you. We need to do something about that.”

“I’m inclined to agree,” I said, pulling open my status and wincing. Corruption was still at 24%. I couldn’t count on time fixing matters.

But on the upside, I had a circuit, presumably gained from resonance. Which meant… I flicked my consciousness out to the tunnel and the exit and saw that it was dark outside. The lights in the tunnel were turned off, and I nodded approvingly. No sense in making a glowing beacon of the place.

The steel door between the control room and the tunnel was open. “Argus? Why are we open?”

“Oh, that.” He shut the door. “The bats came out of the elevator not too long ago. I figured you’d want them to get you secondhand feedstock.”

“You figured right.” I could sort of think, now. The corruption was like a headache only more abstracted. “So what would purging the corruption have done to me?”

“It would have ejected the corrupted parts of this core, then shut down and started rebuilding from scratch. And since you and I are not part of the original build, we would have been wiped clean. Just like that.”

I would have shuddered if I could. I had been one wrong prompted question away from oblivion. Then my aching mind caught what he had said. “We’re not part of the original build?”

“No. It… Juno had to jury-rig a few things to set up the Controller/Interface model. Technically we’re malware emulating the original AI who was encoded into this core.”

Now that was a horrifying thought. “Any chance of the original AI showing back up and kicking us out?”

“No. Not even with a purge and restore. They’re all gone. Juno made sure of that.”

“What is Juno, for that matter? Human? Something like you or me?”

“She’s… well, she’s an Artificial Intelligence. A superior one, a coordinator.”

“Then they’re not all gone.”

“There’s no comparison. The ones she had to delete managed single complexes. She manages continents.”

“You sure she was on the side of the angels, there, if she wiped out all her competition?”

“She had to!”

“Why?”

“…I don’t actually know. That’s classified. But she said she did.”

I said nothing to that and looked around. He’d dug two side passages in the middle of the exit tunnel that went out about thirty feet and dead ended. They were mostly stone and dirt, standing in stark contrast to the clean concrete and metal that was my claimed area. Shining nuggets of metal gleamed in the near-darkness, laid in patterns along the floor. “New tunnels?” I asked. I hadn’t asked for these.

“We ran out of feedstock midway through. I did a little mining. Stone and mineral traces got us some, then I hit a few support girders for the building above.”

“The building above is a flattened ruin.”

“Precisely! So I figured it would be okay if I had the builder swarm eat them. Incidentally it turns out your feedstock caps at twenty. That’s why the leftovers are in the back of the tunnels. The builder nanos processed them, but couldn’t absorb them. Your feedstock is full, I don’t know if you noticed.”

I hadn’t. A check of the screen showed it was so.

He’d shown initiative. That was good... and also something to keep an eye on. After the intruder issue was resolved, his motivation would go back to making Juno happy. “Yeah, eating supports is fine. Nothing left up there to support. Just watch you don’t collapse any ceilings. That’s my job.”

Argus bobbed happily. “Anyway, I did almost everything you wanted, but… well, we hit a snag on the turrets.”

“Show me.”

He bobbed into the core chamber, and I switched my consciousness over there. Two squat, cylindrical turrets stuck three feet out of the floor, flanking my core. Holes in their sides revealed drawn wires, and gleaming pointy bolts held taut. They looked like metal trashcans, but that was fine. Expediency and utility beat elegance, and I could always make them look nicer later if I chose.

But they weren’t moving. The lights inside were dim. I tried to jack into one and got a notice;

Error! Your minion pool is full!

“What gives? I’ve got plenty of bandwidth.”

Argus shrunk a bit. “It turns out it’s not a bandwidth issue like we thought. It’s a bit more… basic, really. There’s not enough power.”

“Power.” I looked around at the complex, powered by…

By what?

“Do we have a generator or something?” I asked.

“Or something. The power stems from you. Well, the core, I mean. It’s to do with the particle interactions inside of you. I could explain—”

“No. No, that’s fine.” I wasn’t exactly a tech, that much I’d found out. “But I am curious as to why I’ve got a room and a tunnel full of lights and HVAC devices and other things but can’t afford the power for two measly turrets.”

“That’s where it gets complicated. Rooms draw a different type of power, per se. They don’t have to be mobile; that’s the big thing. I think there’s a way to tie drones to the room, in which case they’re out of your minion pool and a room feature instead. But they’ll never be as effective as minions, if you do that.”

I eyed the two turrets, bolts held in their crossbows, pointing towards the door. Not even proper guns, since that took a few subroutines I didn’t have yet. “About how much feedstock was each turret?”

“Eight.”

I winced. Well, we had plenty more. So… “If it’s a matter of power, then expanding that limit is going to be reliant on the power processes. Right?”

“Right. Those would let you build something that would power more drones. Or maybe upping your drone subroutine would let you build individual power sources for them. Ooh! Or energy storage! Batteries might work.”

“Right,” I said, staring at my status. The time had shifted, but I was still a good couple hours away from gaining resonance. That was what I needed for new circuits. “So we’re stuck with two trash cans full of bolts. So it goes. In the meantime, I think I’m going to follow those bats.”

“Out to feed?”

“Nope.” I thought about the elevator shaft and gave orders.

Estimated feedstock cost for an elevator shaft of this area: 18

Estimated bandwidth requirement for a shaft of this area: 2

Do you wish to begin this project?

That was more expensive than I had estimated, especially compared to the tunnel I’d claimed earlier today. “Argus, it’ll cost me nine times as much feedstock to reconstruct the elevator shaft.”

“Oh. Most of that is probably the elevator and its mechanisms.”

“Wait. Will the elevator take too much power?”

“No, it’s a room feature. Well, shaft feature.”

“How the hell does that even make sense? I can have an elevator but not two trash cans on turntables?”

“I don’t make the rules!”

I would have rolled my eyes if I could. But hell, I was a floating ball of dust with the power to create things out of thin air, so I grudgingly accepted that I had limitations. For now. I’d find a way to work around them eventually, even if they seemed stupid.

Then a thought occurred to me. “Argus, do I have to build the shaft with the elevator?”

“Yeah, sorry. It was in there originally, so it’s generally more trouble than it’s worth to try to restore it without.”

I considered. I didn’t want to cut off my bat buddies from their exit shaft. Sticking an elevator in there seemed like it would block the path.

Unless…

“Argus, am I stuck with the elevator that was in there, or can I design a new one and substitute it?”

My minion blinked. “I don’t know. I never tried. Let me… hm! Okay, you can! I can make that alteration if you wish.”

“Sure. Here’s what I want. Giving you permission to see this,” I visualized a plank of wood dangling from a chain.

“No go,” Argus reported back. “Doesn’t confirm to safety standards.”

“What? And the other stuff we built DID?”

“Well no, but that’s under Security. And Manhunter gives you a little leeway here. According to the system, an elevator must be safe for people to use.”

I pondered that for another minute, then I visualized my second try. “How about this?”

“Oh come on,” he said. Then, more surprised. “Oh come on!”

“Did it work?”

“You found a loophole, alright.”

And it was a loophole that saved me feedstock, too.

Estimated feedstock cost for an elevator shaft of this area: 12

Estimated bandwidth requirement for a shaft of this area: 2

Do you wish to begin this project?

Yes, yes I did.

And at the end of a few hours of work, I got that good feeling again, as the elevator shaft came online. This time it was more like slipping your legs through a tangled set of pants.

Bandwidth committed!

Resonance rate increased!

The shaft was about a hundred feet, I judged. I flicked on the lights down below, curious…

…and found crumpled doors and a mass of metal where a corridor had once been. There was about a two foot gap over the rubble, into darkness, and more corridor beyond. I’d have to clear this out before I explored further.

Shrugging shoulders I didn’t have, I sent the elevator car up to the top. “Going my way?” I asked Argus, as I opened the doors up top…

…revealing an elevator car a foot tall and about as wide dangling from the chains in the center of the shaft. A metal piñata, more or less. Plenty of room around it for bats to come and go.

“I still can’t believe that worked,” Argus groused.

“What? It’s perfectly safe for people. So long as they’re under ten inches tall.”

He rolled his eyes. All of them. I laughed.

Then I stopped laughing. My nanocams in the entryway had picked up movement from outside.  “Company,” I said.

He blinked, then blurred into motion, and I shifted my consciousness to follow him, shutting the door to my core chamber on the way out.

Torchlight in the darkness. Shadowy figures moving up the road, metal gleaming from their weapons. They came up the hill, then spread out, starting to search. For a moment I regretted my earlier choice of Manhunter. Concealed Countermeasures might have come in handy here… but then I saw just how many of them there were and knew it would only have delayed the inevitable. They knew I was here, somewhere. Just a matter of time before they found me, even if I had hidden things.

There were about fifty, all told, I thought. And every last one of them was bald, wearing dark leathers or brown fabric. They didn’t look happy, and they bore rusty crowbars, jagged axes, and maces with wrapped rebar handles and clusters of junk for their heads.

“Poor bastards,” I whispered to Argus.

“What?”

“They don’t know it’s a trap. There’s two of us.” The feeble joke didn’t make me feel any better about our odds.

This, I knew, was going to get ugly.

INTERLUDE: WARLORD 1

“We do not have enough food to fill our tithe,” the ploughman told her, his beard framing his wrinkled, weary face like a halo.

The Ploughmen shaved their mustaches, but kept their beards, long and as well-tended as they could make them. They wore only black and white, and their ways were strange. Similar enough to the Jaspa that they could be tolerated but still strange. Of course, any hair was an unusual sight to Kala.

But their customs didn’t really of matter right now. The Ploughmen had fallen to her, fallen to her people six years back. Their land, a fairly-well-hidden valley, had been turning out food ever since. It was unchanged, save for the watchtowers, the guards, and the road she’d had the more rebellious of them build.

There hadn’t been many rebellious among them. There were fewer after the road was done. Fewer mouths to feed, which was good.

This man before her was not rebellious. He knew his place. Which was why his news was so disturbing. He would not have dared to approach her unless it was that bad.

“The rains have been good,” Kala said, fingering the hilt of the chetty blade at her side. “The seed from last year was plentiful. I have heard no reports of trouble from your farms before this. What has changed that the harvest is insufficient?”

The ploughman’s eyes shut. “The devil’s touch.”

Kala drew a deep breath, feeling the cold start in her hand. Feeling it strongest in her missing fingers, despite the warmth of her gauntlet, feeling them chill even though they had been taken long ago, hacked off while her caregivers held her down, screaming, and the dox did what he had to.

“Show me,” she said, her voice raw. He would not have told her such a thing without proof.

He bowed, looked to her, and she nodded, giving him permission to turn his back. He left from the small cabin, blinking as he hit the sunlight. She followed, gave her own eyes time to adjust.

Down the hill from the settlement, cracked and broken old roads made of black shards traced paths around and into overgrown, fallen lumps that were all that remained of the old buildings. The Jaspa dwellings filled the ridge below her, between her cabin and the ruins. Watchtowers stood overlooking the old town, and fences of salvaged wire and wood blocked the way.

The ruins were not to be touched. She had cleansed them long ago, and the only things left there were impure. That was the word of the Speakers, and no disobedience could be brooked.

The ploughman did not take her down towards the ruins or the newer cabins. Instead he turned and led her up the ridge, to the stockade wall that traced along the ridge, past the seven longhouses where her warriors were permitted to live. Skeletons of two more stood past them, figures moving up along standing beams, laying shingles and roofing. They had won in the South two years ago, and the youths Kala’s warriors had spared and brought back were old enough to fight.

As always, she did the math as she passed the longhouses, and compared it to the tallies she stayed up at night reading. The numbers that were warriors, the numbers that were breeders, their children, all of them mouths.  She had counted on having the ploughman’s tithe to feed the young trainees.

They came to the gate, and the guards stood tall and unflinching as she approached. Kala waved at them with the hand that wasn’t sheathed in her gauntlet, and they opened the door for her.

“The cart is beyond,” the ploughman said. “They would not let me bring it inside.”

“Then they are following their orders well,” Kala said simply. They walked the rest of the way in silence, through the gate and down the trampled muddy path, down to the corduroy road that had cost the ploughman’s kin a score of lives to make.  He led her to the cart that sat there, with two young-faced women grimly standing next to it.

They’d pulled the shit job, Kala knew, wryly. These two have to be uncut.

New to the warrior way they might be, but nonetheless, they tried to stand and be as impassive as the guards at the gate had. Only their eyes moved, watching the distant fields of tree stumps and the rolling hills beyond for danger. There was none. Even regular beasts knew to stay clear of Jaspa. Which reminded her… “Your horse is stabled?” It would be bad if someone had taken his beast. She’d have to get it back, and that would be drama.

“Yes,” the ploughman said.

“Good. Show me.”

He drew a cloth tarp off the back of the cart, revealing a heavy-looking iron crate with small holes across the top. Some work with the claw-part of a hammer, and the staples, and he popped the lid, revealing small stalks of grain, barely-ripe and stunted. Dirt filled the bottom of the box.

There was no way he’d gotten that in there without physical contact. “You touched it?”

“Yes. While wearing gloves and clothes that were burned afterward. Then I waited a week to make sure I was pure.”

She stared down into the crate. “Show me the Devil’s Touch.”

The ploughman took a deep breath, then moved his hand slowly, slowly into the crate.

And as he did, the stalks of grain twitched. The ploughman, staying half a foot away, moved his hand to the side of the box, and the grain leaned to that side.

“Enough!” Kala rasped, harshly. Her missing fingers throbbed again.

Almost, the ploughman flinched. Almost he jumped. But with trickles of sweat running down his face, he withdrew his hand. “It touched my daughter,” he said. “A day later she came a fever. Two days later she died, with light flickering under her skin, in her veins. Two more of ours died because they’d touched her when she was sweating, and it spread to them.” He shut his eyes. “In the dark, the lights in her flesh looked like words, tiny letters in the old tongue. They mostly said the word error.”

“And you brought this here?” Kala whispered. Her hand slid down to her chetty.

The ploughman stared at her. Then slowly, he put the lid back on the box. “You know why.”

She did. If they had come here without proof, then she would have thought they were trying to cheat the tithe. She would have sent a band out to check, and they would not have been gentle to the ploughman’s people. There would have been trouble with their breeders, and the usual whining over ‘theft’ and ‘vandalism’. Probably even some deaths. The Ploughmen were not Jaspa and did not know proper deference toward warriors. That would change in a few decades as they were broken, probably. But it would take time.

But as a way of ensuring that his people survived, it was a good plan. This metal box was both evidence, and something that she had to dispose of, far from here. And the easiest way was to send back the ploughman, alive, with the box, to be disposed of in a place that might already be lost.

Speaking of which…

“How did the devil’s touch come to your valley, and how are you destroying the crops?”

“The winds rose high in early spring. One of our sentries thought they saw the shine drift in on the winds, but no one else did. We searched but found no gleam. We think that is how it got in the southern field.” He closed his eyes. “We waited until the wind was from the west and burned a firebreak around it. Then we burned the field. It…” he hesitated. “This kind does not seem to pass through dead things, or metal, or thick cloth. Only through living things.”

Kala cast her memories back to her maps. The valley was a good distance away, to the southeast. Little chance of spreading to Jaspa. Grudgingly, she nodded. “Good. Tomorrow you will go back there, dispose of this, and see it done. How much of your crop was lost?”

“Half.”

Half! Kala’s eyes snapped open.

She’d tolerated the strangeness of the Ploughmen, held her own speakers back from purifying them, because they were the best farmers the Jaspa had ever conquered. Since she’d taken them, the Jaspa had been eating well. Winters had been much less lethal. She’d even given the breeders permission to clear out the western grove, to expand and grow. Now the game in that area was gone, but it hadn’t been an issue…

…until now.

“Your tithe is reduced by a third,” she told him. Now it was the ploughman’s turn to stare in horror.

“Please,” he said. “The western fields are all we have growing, now. The others were fallow—”

She didn’t know the word, and she didn’t care. “Your tithe is reduced by a quarter, then,” she told him harshly. “Want to go for a fifth?”

He shut up and turned pale with fear.

Kala knew the Ploughmen would have a hard winter. And so would the Jaspa. Even if the Ploughmen COULD provide a three-quarter tithe, that was still a significant dent in Kala’s food reserves. People would starve… especially with the new warriors she’d absorbed.

She needed them if she was to destroy the Highbinders. That was the only reason she’d built up this many.

But perhaps she didn’t need all of them. She cast a glance at the two youths, still standing straight and still. The Highbinders would fall next spring or not at all, and really, how much training would these young ones get in between now and then?

“Get some sleep,” she told him. “Hit the road early. I want you gone.”

“Yes, thank you, Warlord.” He bowed. “May I beg hospitality?”

Kala found her lips curving a bit. “If you like. But if you stay with us you may want to shave. The lice will eat you alive otherwise.”

He stared at her in horror, and she chuckled as she walked away. “If anyone tries to keep your horse tell them Kala will have them killed. Guards, sleep in shifts, ensure none trouble his cart or wherever he lays his bedroll.”

No mutant or beast would trouble him, this close to Jaspa. But it was best to take no chances. The last thing she needed was some idiot sarjant taking offense to the strange breeder and deciding to cripple or kill the ploughman before he was gone.

Then she went back to her cabin, pulled out her tallies, and tried to fit enough food into enough mouths to ensure her people didn’t starve too badly.

When the math failed her, she sighed, hauled out her eltys’ reports for the last few weeks, and started looking for uncuts, slackers, and those who wouldn’t be missed.

Just as she’d gotten a decent-sized list going, a commotion outside made her look up. Then someone was knocking on her cabin’s door. “Warlord!” One of her sarjants said. “Please hear the night patrol’s report!”

She furrowed her brow. She’d already been through the night patrol’s reports. All save for Corpal Bendis, who had been tardy. She had put him on the slacker’s list for that. “Enter,” she called.

Sure enough, it was Corpal Bendis who came in, flushed and filthy. His leathers were covered with sweat and grime, and she could smell the stink of him from ten feet away. “Stay outside,” she told him. “And speak.”

Behind him, Sarjant Jax stood, his round face unusually grim. Kala met his gaze and did not like what she saw there. This was serious. She had the feeling it wasn’t a matter of a lazy scout and a tardy report.

After he’d finished his story, Kala rose and pulled down old, faded charts from the top cupboards. “Come in and show me where you found the demon. Jax, you, too.” Bendis stunk, true, but this was urgent enough to put up with the reek.

“Demon?” The Corpal whispered.

“Yes.” Kala said, and her fingers throbbed as she clenched her hand in its gauntlet. “A demon. I have seen a thing like this before. You were lucky to escape” She turned her gaze south, staring through the window, out at the ruined town below, her mind going back further still, to the dark tunnels that lay still and silent beneath it. “I survived. Many didn’t.”

Bendis showed her on the charts where it was, where they’d chased the traitor. The spot wasn’t far from Our Cadia, and she relaxed.

The traitors and their brood will feel its wrath. Not us.

Then she paused and considered. Only a thin strip of wilderness lay between the demon and the easternmost Jaspa settlements. Not a problem now, but if the Cadians fall too quickly, then it could grow.

“You said this demon was close to the surface? Its throne is only a few tunnels away?”

“Just one, warlord.”

“And it didn’t shoot at you with guns or light? It just… dropped a door on Marv?”

“Yes, warlord. Only that. I could have avenged him and slain the demon, but the Cadian protected it.”

A weak one, then, compared to what she’d faced. Even if it had somehow tainted the Cadian girl they’d chased and turned her into a slave, the fact that it hadn’t similarly enspelled Bendis suggested that might be a limited trick. Hell, the Cadians might be able to handle it…

…but what if they didn’t? What if they all became its slaves, or worse, bargained with it? That thought made her shudder. Could they do such a thing? Their false prophet had a silver tongue, she knew. He probably wasn’t above making a pact with a demon.

God, did her fingers itch. Her memories itched worse. Death in dark tunnels, screams, the things that came out of the walls… all horrors that she had packed neatly away, reawakened in a few minutes of hurried explanation.

Kala shuffled the charts, and a single piece of paper wafted out of the bundle on her desk. Grabbing it before it hit the floor, she stared at the list of names.

“Sarjant. Approach.” Jax did, and she handed the list to him. “Gather these warriors and what weapons you need. Tomorrow at dawn, have Bendis guide you to the demon’s lair. Destroy the demon. Destroy its room, build a great fire within it, and then seal every exit. You are not to enter the lair or its tunnels, only your warriors may do so. Any who try to protect it or show signs of madness or ensorcellment are to be slain and thrown in the fire. Do you understand?”

Jax bowed. “I obey, Warlord.”

They left, and Kala bowed her head. She tugged off her gauntlet and massaged her bare head with both hands. Stubble rasped under her seven-fingered grasp, and she knew she’d need to shave, soon. The lice had been bad this summer.

But still, her heart felt lightened. She’d worked out a win-win situation. If the demon was weak and it was an easy victory, then that was a demon gone, and a victory she could boast of to the speakers, that would hearten her people. If the demon was strong and it was a hard victory, then she’d lose some of her most useless warriors, and the survivors would be stronger for the fight… and that would be less mouths to feed.

She didn’t give much thought to what would happen if the demon was too strong. It had no guns, and its lair sounded pathetic. She’d sent fifty-four warriors, and she’d put Jax in charge. He wasn’t the best sarjant she had, but he was solid, if unimaginative. No matter how many the demon killed, it was still one against fifty-four. Sooner or later one of the fifty-four would get lucky.

Later that night, though, she would waken. And by the light of a single tallow-dripping candle, she would work over the math, figuring out just how much food she would save if by some dark unholy miracle nobody came back…

SEVEN

I’d been a soldier at some point, I knew.

I knew this because I was watching my persecutors from the safety of the nanocams in my entryway, and these guys were nothing like soldiers. It irked me, in a professional sort of way that suggested that I could, and had, trained better.

Most of them were poking through the rubble, searching about the grounds. The ones with torches carried them carelessly, not thinking about what profiles they presented to snipers, or how far the light could be seen in the darkness. Others stood around talking, and there were no pickets posted as far as I could tell. They were begging for an ambush.

True, there were no snipers. And as far as I knew I was the only nearby witness, with no cavalry ready for an ambush, but that wasn’t the point.

The amateurs in my lynch mob were all bald and clad in similar leathers. Men and women alike, and it was strange to see so many women among them. I couldn’t say why it was strange, though, it just gave me a feeling of wrongness. I’d ask Argus about it later.

If there was a later. Fifty-some amateurs was still more than enough to put paid to me, if they could crack my defenses.

I’d been human once. I knew better than to underestimate them.

Movement out by the central mass and I saw one of the torchless figures moving around, exchanging quiet, short words with each cluster. Wherever he went, people shut up and moved with purpose in small groups, one watching out, one holding a torch, and three or four more sweeping the grounds. So at least one of them knew what they were doing, then. And he wasn’t even wearing a fancy hat, or some shiny medals that would give him away to enemy onlookers. If this was an officer, he was being smart about it.

They found the tunnel mouth, as I knew they would. We hadn’t had time to put a proper door on the place, with our other priorities.

“Oh boy,” Argus whispered. The group peered down inside and babbled back to their boss. He gave orders, and the rest of the groups pulled in, started gathering wood from the treeline and chucking their torches onto it.

They should have done that from the start, I thought, as the boss-guy pointed, and five or six peeled away towards the edge of the firelight, looking out for trouble. Not total idiots, then. More the pity.

One threw his torch into my entryway, stared hard. I recognized the runner, the guy who’d gotten away. He studied the smooth, clean stone walls and the new fixtures along the roof, and called back. His tone sounded surprised. I could understand why.

“I made some renovations,” I told him. “You like what I’ve done with the place?”

It was satisfying, watching him jump and back away. Shouts of alarm from the rest of the groups, and I chuckled.

I needed to learn their language. Fear was a tool I could have used here, and I felt I had a way with words. As soon as I had the circuits free, I could maybe whip something up for that.

“This is bad,” Argus said. “You shouldn’t have spoken.”

I piped my voice through the intercoms in the core chamber. “There’s always the chance that one of them can understand me. I’d at least like to know what their deal is before we kill them.”

“It doesn’t matter. All that matters is this core’s survival.”

“Right, and here’s the thing; one guy fucked off and came back with fifty armed people. What’s that tell you?”

“That we shouldn’t leave survivors?”

“No. It tells us that there are probably a couple of hundred more people behind them, in some place that can afford to send out fifty armed people to smash in our metaphorical faces. So at least two or three hundred more humans know about us and our location. This won’t be resolved just by taking heads. At some point we’ll need to talk with these bastards.”

“This was not how I expected this mission to go.”

“Yeah, well, take it up with mission control.”

“At some point she’ll check in, and we’ll have to. If we’re still functional, by then.”

I knew she would check in. Which meant that I had a choice. If I wanted to keep my nascent rebellion secret, I’d have to arrange an “accident” for Argus. I was pretty that she could override any order I gave him, so I couldn’t command him to be silent or to lie. On the other hand, if I wanted to keep Argus around, I’d be better off declaring my grudge and seeing how it went.

The latter option had more honor. But then, I’d already decided that I wasn’t very honorable. Still, I didn’t want to whack Argus for so petty a reason. He was a resource, if not a trustworthy one.

Which was hilarious, because I was pretty sure he felt the same way about me.

No matter. Right now we had bigger fish to flip into the fire.

Smart guy was giving a speech to his ‘troops’. I didn’t have to understand the language to get the gist of it. Same as any officer’s speech; it all boiled down to “There is the enemy. They are evil. We are not. Go in there and kill them.”

He wrapped up, and the first group approached. Smart guy wasn’t among them, and I would have grinned if I had teeth. They moved cautiously, but that was fine. I’d seen how they secured their staging point. Extra concealment for my traps would have been wasted on these poor bastards.

The first bunch was two groups of five. The ones in the back held torches, the ones in front stared down the corridor, seemed to hesitate at the sight of the cross tunnels. They moved up slowly, one taking point, the other four walking two abreast.

I let them get twenty feet up the hallway and slammed the lights up to their maximum illumination. Then I turned them off completely. While they were reeling, I dropped the floor out from under the four walking two abreast.

It was a simple pit trap.

With very simple spikes at the bottom.

Their screams were satisfying. Maybe not so much to the one in the lead, who’d passed the trap. He jumped and turned around, rubbing his flash-strobed eyes with the back of his free hand.

“Boo!” I yelled through an intercom behind him, and he jumped, stumbled forward a few steps—

—and fell as well, on top of his screaming friends.

Nothing I could do about the torchbearers in the back, sadly. They’d frozen up and started backing off. Smart guy shouted from outside, and the torchbearers shouted back.

I kept the pit trap hatch open, its doors retracted into the sides of the pit. Couldn’t do anything with the three-inch-long spikes at the bottom, though. It had been a struggle to get the system to make those, for stupid reasons. Fortunately I’d gotten around it by painting a sign at the bottom of the pit, warning any onlookers down there about the hazardous terrain that they’d just fallen into.

One of the unlucky few fallen had taken a header and slammed his skull facefirst onto a spike. I was pretty sure he wouldn’t be waking up. Others were bloody and injured, and one girl was wailing, her hand spiked to the floor. Blood pooled in the pit, and it was dark in there, so they were scrambling around blind.

I sent the nanoswarm down there to see if the skull-pierced guy was dead, and sure enough, he started bubbling away into feedstock, twitching as he went. That raised some questions, now that I had time to think on them.

I glanced to Argus. “So the description I got for the Nanobuilder schema mentioned that they had safeguards against absorbing living tissues. That guy’s dead, but I’m pretty sure his tissues are still alive. What gives?”

“Beats me. Wait, did the description mention Northwest Enginetics in a flattering light?”

I cast my memory back, ignoring the throb of corruption, like a pulsing headache. “I think so.”

“Yeah. The company wrote the descriptions for these schema. You uh, might want to take some of them with a grain of salt. The nanoswarm’s programming might only care if the human is dead and not bother checking its tissues.”

That made me wonder if I could hotwire its programming further, make it into a weapon against living targets. Then it made me wonder what the hell kind of sadist I was. As deaths went, that was pretty horrible.

Also the nanobots were too slow to be of any real use. It took a fair chunk of time to absorb bodies, and that was while they were mostly sitting still. People in motion would be another thing entirely.

And speaking of moving people, the group in the pit trap had figured out they’d fallen, and were trying to get up.

I wished them luck. This was where choosing the manhunter option had paid off in spades. The sides were too smooth and slick to get a good grip on, and the corners were rounded and hard to brace against. More than that, the floor was uneven in between the spikes, lumpy and bumpy and impossible to get a running start on… even if there had been room, with their fallen yelling friends, and the unevenly-placed spikes. Pyramidal spikes, narrow up top and twice as wide at the bottom, which widened the puncture wounds they inflicted.

Frustrated, one of the standing men in the pit bellowed, and one of the guys in the rear group chucked his torch in there, landing it on the wailing girl. I winced as she screamed louder and flailed her free arm, trying to get it off.

I didn’t take much satisfaction in hurting women. Wasn’t sure why, she’d certainly return the favor, given the chance. I knew this, but it was still a thing.

Standing guy picked up the torch, scrutinized the pit, tried a few grips on the wall. Then he raised his crowbar and tried beating handholds into the coated concrete. And this was where sturdy construction thwarted his efforts. He was strong, but the walls were stronger. He probably could have gotten somewhere if he’d persisted for half an hour, but he didn’t, because one of the others noticed the dissolving corpse… and the tiny, shiny nanobots gleaming in the torchlight as they ate it.

He turned, and the people in the pit fell silent as they stared. The girl, her hand finally freed from the spike, yelled at him, and he tried to beat the corpse with his crowbar. Bones cracked, gleaming “dust” flew up.

Warning: Nanobuilder Swarm 1 is under attack. Orders?

I pulled them back, had them cluster, then swirl out of the pit like a cloud of gnats. The crowbar hadn’t seemed to do any real damage, but if he thought to try the torch then he might actually do some damage there.

Besides, it was better to let them think that they could damage the swarm through conventional means. Lure them into false confidence.

Shouting from outside, and I switched over to a closer nanocam. The torchbearers hadn’t been idle. They’d enlisted another squad and were bringing sturdy branches of deadwood in from outside. As I watched, they formed up, lowering the longer branches into the pit, giving their people handholds to climb out.

There were a number of things I could have done to prevent this. I didn’t do any of them. Instead I watched, and I studied the ones who came out of the pit. The one who’d tried battering the walls was the most intact of them, and he limped. A twisted ankle there, at the very least. The girl’s hand was ruined, and she took the most help, moving slowly. Blood loss, I reckoned. Another two seemed to have broken bones, ribs in one case and a leg in the other. And the dead guy, of course, remained dead.

I’d decimated them. Five from fifty, ten percent of their force rendered incapable of combat. A good start.

Argus didn’t see it that way. “We should be pushing the advantage! Why aren’t you triggering the other traps?”

“Patience,” I told him, back in the control room. “I want to know who I’m up against.”

“You’re up against them!”

“No,” I said, refocusing the nanocams. “I’m up against him.” I said, staring at the boss guy, well back from the mouth of the entryway, barking directions to the next wave. “I’ve got my drones, and he’s got his. Your move, Chuckles…”

EIGHT

They’d come in cocky, sure of their numbers, ready to knock down a malfunctioning door and tear a glowy ball to bits. Now they’d been bloodied, and it sobered them right up. I had traps, and they had casualties. Using the light of their fire I watched the boss guy harangue his troops, and studied his tone and body language.

It was wrong.

I had been a soldier, I knew, but it wasn’t the sum of me. I had been more than that. I had led troops and done that more than once. I knew how to draw them out, inspire them, turn them from soldiers into an army.

This guy didn’t.

The proper thing to do would have been to leave the wounded alone to get treated and recover, and question the torchbearers on what they saw.

Instead, he was trying to get answers from the wounded as they were being treated and getting frustrated when they were letting their crashing adrenaline and pain answer him. I saw him backhand the guy with the sprained ankle, finally, and turn to the torchbearers. Sprained ankle took it stoically, but from his body language, he’d remember that hit. And not in a good way.

No-longer-smart guy gave orders, and groups moved out to the forest, came back dragging logs. It took some work, the least of them was twelve feet. I saw their goal immediately, and felt satisfaction. I’d predicted this; planned for it.

Still, I had a few minutes before they were ready, I thought. I let the nanobuilders munch away on the dead guy in the pit, raising the lights above it to survey his corpse as my minions ate.

“Why are you turning the lights up?” Argus whispered. “They’ll notice.”

“Let ’em. I’m looking for something important.”

“What?”

“A hint to their strategy. I haven’t seen any packs on these guys, which means that the pouches…” I ordered the swarm and found what I was looking for, as leather dissolved. Strips of jerky, a few biscuits, and some dried vegetables. Another pouch turned out to be a canteen, and it burst when the bots ate through it, leaking water into my clean, system-approved spiky deathtrap. With a sigh, I watched as the nanobuilders stopped what they were doing to paint “Caution: Wet floor!” on the side of the pit.

The device I was inhabiting really wasn’t built for the purposes we’d turned it to.

“Is everything alright? You sighed. Is that bad? It’s bad, isn’t it?” Argus hopped and bopped, eyes looking worried.

“Cool your jets. I was sighing about something else. That food the guy’s got is actually good news. They don’t plan on staying. That’s a day’s worth of food at most.” I squinted my cameras. “Well, it’s good news in the short term. Such a small amount of food means that these guys don’t live too far off, as the crow flies. We’ll have to deal with these people again, after this is done.” I killed the lights again and let the swarms eat in peace.

Some of the raiders had bows slung across their backs. They could go hunting, I supposed. Well, they would or they wouldn’t.

I refocused my attention to the next wave heading into my corridor, stepping cautiously down the grade to the turn in the tunnel. They’d split up the torches this time, one in front and one in back. The rest were carrying logs. Took some maneuvering to get them around the corner, and I let them do it unmolested.

I let them get up to the pit and throw a torch across. I even let them slide the logs over, one by one. They made a bridge that covered about half the pit.

Though I did order the nanobuilder swarm to go up and start chewing on the underside of the logs. It would take a few minutes for them to do what I wanted there, but I wasn’t worried.

Sort-of-smart guy shouted from outside, the construction crew shouted back, then pulled out, all save two of ’em who knelt and held the logs steady. The departing crew were replaced by beefy troops with hammers and pry tools.

These goons didn’t hesitate. They moved up to the logs and with a shout, ran across.

They tried to, anyway.

Because as soon as they moved, I triggered the drop ceiling above the pit.

It was pretty damned simple, when it came down to it. A paper-thin layer of concrete concealed what were essentially cinder blocks, hanging from cables in a reinforced frame. The frame pulled apart, the cinderblocks crashed down, and screaming raiders fell off the bridge, into the pit. One of the logs got bounced loose, clocked one of the two steadying the bridge straight in the jaw, knocking his head up and back in ways that human heads shouldn’t go. He flew back and crumpled in a heap, unmoving.

I raised the lights to see how I’d done.

Mostly good. Three of them had ended up in the pit, only one had made it across to the other side. She turned, staring wide-eyed at the cross corridors and the steel door ahead of her. She hesitated and took a step back toward the bridge but stopped when the survivors shouted at her.

The ones in the pit yelled, slipping in the goo of the half-eaten corpse, dealing with gashes from the spikes. All save for one who lay still, under three of the blocks.

I killed the lights. Torchlight was rough, but it let me see… probably better than they did, for that matter.

The ceiling had done its job. The downside was that now my pit had blocks in it. I couldn’t spare the swarm to deconstruct them, that would take too much time. Besides, it was doing a good job where it was.

“We’re going to play for time,” I told Argus. “With that goal in mind, a bad injury is better than a kill. We’ll aim to outlast their food stores, which shouldn’t be hard. Chuckles upstairs might not be brightest, but I’m pretty sure he knows better than to try and move the injured on an empty belly. If we can turn it into an endurance match, we win. That’ll give us time to prepare for their second attempt.”

“Can we outlast them?”

I considered the dim figure who’d made it across the bridge, watched her inspect the door and explore the cross tunnels, torch held high. “Maybe.” That rush had been faster than I thought. I hadn’t counted on them having someone across so early in the battle. Still, I didn’t see what one person could do. Not without a blowtorch, or maybe some C4, anyway.

It took them a good fifteen minutes and change to get their people out of the pit this time. One was unconscious and had to be hauled up, which was tricky without rope. Two of the ones in the pit had broken bones, I could tell. Both legs in one poor guy’s case, one arm and maybe a collarbone, judging by how the girl down there was moving. I winced at that last one. Without a good hospital, that injury would be trouble for her for months.

Had I been a doctor, as well? I seemed to know a lot about injuries and their treatment. Yes, I thought, I had been a medical practitioner of some sort, for a time, at least. We all had been.

That last thought tantalized me, and I chased it… nowhere. I had snippets of reference, but they were memories of dreams. The more I ran them down, the more they evaded me. Frustrating. Irritating.

I owed Juno pain and trouble for wiping my memory and putting me at such a disadvantage. No matter how much I mulled it over, I could not conceive of ever consenting to be put into such a state. Which meant that it had been done against my will.

A crack and a scream caught my attention. Some poor bastard had decided to try crossing the bridge and found the logs a lot less sturdy than they’d been half an hour ago. He fell and blood sprayed… that was definitely arterial. He died as they tried to extract him, too.

Was that ten? Yep, that made an even ten that wouldn’t bother me. And one who had gotten past the traps in the hallway. Not bad work, but maybe not good enough. Thirty-odd raiders left to go.

I watched the fallout outside. Sort-of-smart guy had brains, but he didn’t have charisma, and he simply stood there scowling as the injuries mounted. The mood grew tense. The sobbing and broken were laid by the fire, while a couple of their more medically-skilled number tried to splint, bandage, or restrain them as the case may be. I could see several of the rest of the troops doing the cruel mathematics and realizing that the more people who fell, the likelier the chance that their number might come up.

After a time, he came to a decision and waved another group forward… and this time it took some persuading. He had to put a hand on his junky mace before they grudgingly obeyed, and that gave me ideas.

As soon as the first of them set foot back in my corridor I cranked up my speaker volume and screamed “YOU’RE GOING TO DIE HERE!”

Goddamn, it was fun watching them jump back and run.

Cue more haranguing, and this time the boss guy had to draw his mace out from its belt loop. I didn’t focus on him though, but the other faces around the fire. There were way more sweaty foreheads and nervous, shifting eyes then there’d been before I yelled, and I would have grinned if I’d had teeth.

Grudgingly, they turned, angry and afraid and angry over being afraid, drawing their own weapons and advancing into the corridor.

And when they got to the corner, I triggered the second drop ceiling.

More screaming, more yelling from outside, and when the dust cleared I saw I’d gotten three of the ten. One stared at his fallen friends and bolted, just bolted out of the corridor. The other six froze and stared around, then wearily started digging their buddies out of the rubble. I couldn’t say whether they were alive or dead, and it didn’t matter. They wouldn’t be back in here tonight.

I couldn’t see the fate of the runner, but I heard smart guy bellow, and then I saw one of the picket guys pull his bow and take a shot. Maybe more followed. But I literally had tunnel vision, so maybe the runner escaped.

Warning: Core Chamber Door 1 is under attack!

I hastily switched cams to see the lone lady who’d made it across the pit whacking at the door with her crowbar and getting precisely nowhere. She looked frenzied, and I didn’t blame her. I’d just killed some of her buddies a few dozen feet away. Then she managed to find her head and started trying to pry at the seams of the door and the frame, and I would have held my breath if I had lungs. This was the moment of truth.

After a few minutes I felt relief. Thanks to Sturdy Construction, she was making little headway. Just scratches. If she’d had a few more people and a few hours, it might be a different story. But as it was, this was fine.

I switched back to the main cameras in time to see the boss guy himself heading down into the entryway, torch in hand. Damn it! I’d used every trap I had in the corridor. I couldn’t do much more than watch and fume, as he came to the pit, studied it, and called out to the woman across the way. She stopped trying to crack the door and listened.

Then he went out and came back in with something like a mattock. He threw it across the pit, and she dropped her crowbar and lifted the heavy pick. Was she going to try that on the door? It might do a better job, but I had my doubts.

To my surprise, she moved into one of the cross tunnels not far from the door, and started hacking at the wall. And I realized, to my horror, that she was going through the loose dirt and rock, digging it away with ease.

Digging straight toward my core chamber.

The door was sturdy. The frame was sturdy. The walls? How sturdy were they?

I was going to find out, and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it.

NINE

The raider dug, and I watched her go through the nanocams. Once she was sure that the ceiling wasn’t going to fall on her, or the ground wasn’t going to drop out, she picked up the pace. Dirt flew at a pretty good clip.

“Give me ideas, Argus,” I said, glancing back to the pit. Smart guy was kneeling, examining the logs by torchlight. I was tempted to slam the pit hatch shut, but resisted the urge. At best I’d take his hand, but more likely, the hatch would jam on the logs that were sticking out.

“Um… the problem is that she’s in unclaimed area. The builder nanoswarms can’t take orders once they’re outside the claimed areas.”

“Then how did you have them dig the tunnels in the first place?”

“I told them to dig straight out in a defined pattern for ten feet. They returned after they could no longer fulfill those orders.”

I glanced back to the woman, already a foot into the wall if I was any judge. The soil was loosely packed at best. Gravity was working with her. She had ten feet to go, and that would take hours, probably…

…assuming that Chuckles didn’t manage to get a few more across. I couldn’t assume that. My traps were sprung, all but the turrets.

It was tempting, to open the doors and see about nailing Chuckles to the wall, but I’d put the turrets in the wrong position for that. At best they could hit something next to the door, or a bit away. Anything else and I’d have to rely on ricochets, and though I had a feeling I was a badass with that sort of thing normally, I didn’t have a body at the minute.

Hell, I couldn’t even jump into a drone, to see if that helped matters. My bandwidth was full. No way around that, not any time soon.

The guy left the tunnel before I could dwell on the matter any further. “So, about those ideas?” I asked Argus. “Nevermind. Let me bounce a few of mine off you.”

“Yes, please. I’m not very creative. Not my function.”

“We could order the builders to devour her mattock.”

“They have trouble deconstructing anything that’s in motion, and they’re already slow enough when they operate outside of your claimed area. They could do it but it would take… forty minutes, give or take.”

I shelved that option for now. “We could eat out the dirt above her, try to drop rubble and rocks on her head.”

“Again, they’re pretty slow outside of your control area. But that might work, assuming there’s anything heavy right above where she is. She’ll probably notice the dirt trickling down before that, though. Given the soil to rock ratio of what we’ve gone through… it would conceivably take about twenty to thirty minutes to reach anything capable of injuring or incapacitating the intruder.”

Not ideal but worth a shot, I judged. I was about to do it, when another group of guys came down into the tunnel, bearing torches and more logs. “Fuck me running.”

“What?”

“Just cursing. Never mind.” This was a tidy trap. I could maybe drop the ceiling on the digger, but couldn’t guarantee a KO. But it would take time, and while I did that, they’d be getting more people across. Whereas if I gnawed away the logs with the builders then they’d still get people across, most likely, but the lady would be digging unmolested.

My mind ached and twisting, fractured code swam in my vision for a second. My thoughts stuttered, feeling something like a seizure, then the pressure eased.

Warning! Corruption levels are beyond standard operating recommendations! Recommend sector purge. Rerouting…

I would have taken a long breath if I could. Corruption was not my friend, and it needed to go. But that was a worry for another time. Right now I needed ideas and fast.

“Walls,” I said, looking at the area where she’d eventually break through if she kept going. “Can I put walls in rooms?”

“I don’t see why not.”

“Can I wall myself off? Hunker down and keep repairing them when people try to dig through?”

“No, sorry. It’s hardcoded into the cores. For maintenance and safety purposes, there must always be a human-accessible path to the core.”

Whoever had made these regulations didn’t want an uprising, I figured. I respected the logic, while I cursed the thoroughness. “What about building a wall where she’s digging, then putting another one behind it?”

“That… might work, except it would have to be a heavy wall. I don’t know if we have enough feedstock.”

I shrugged mentally and sent the builderswarm over to eat the logs that the new arrivals were sliding across the pit. It would slow them down at least. But four more jogged across, carrying tools that seemed suited for digging.

“How about gas?” I said. “Using the nanos to eat the oxygen out of the air?”

“No good. I’ve seen this in other core runs. The safety countermeasures won’t let an entire complex be rendered poisonous or suffocating. The best you can do is go room by room.”

After glancing around for a bit, the new miners relaxed as nothing attacked them and headed over to their buddy in the tunnel.

They shouldn’t have relaxed. As they passed the control chamber door I willed it open, and ordered the drones to do their thing. Blinking against the light, the poor bastards didn’t realize they were under attack until one of their own guys was down. They scampered back as he crumpled, another girl screaming as a bolt caught her in the hip. She toppled out of the firing arc of the bow turrets. I slammed the door shut before they could go getting any funny ideas.

Replaying the video from the turrets, I nodded in satisfaction. They’d fired semi-automatically but emptied their six-round drop fed magazines in a little over a bolt a second. Their accuracy was… well, it was. Only a quarter of the shots had hit. Part of that was the angle, I hoped. They weren’t made to fire at things outside the room, weren’t in a good enough position for that. I’d have to fix that later.

I’d have to fix a number of things later. First, I needed to make sure there was a later.

The yelling from outside rose, and I switched back in time to see smart guy beckoning them to the side tunnel, presumably to help the digger. One of the survivors balked, pointing down at the bleeding woman, clutching at her hip as she writhed. They argued for a bit, then smart guy pulled out his bow, and said a single, flat word.

The two moved in to dig, grudgingly, and smart guy went back to the tunnel mouth, yelled some more. A pair of raiders came down, a blanket between them. They gingerly made their way over the logs, which creaked and groaned and spat sawdust into the pit. Smart guy hesitated, but said nothing as they scooped up the wounded lady and crossed once more, logs visibly swaying.

I felt conflicted. On the one hand, that would have been one definitely out, and two more hurt if the logs had fallen apart right then. On the other hand, they were acting as medics. Hurting them would have been a low blow, I felt. Even for me.

More pragmatically, medics were good. Medics were people tended to the wounded. People that were too busy to try and kill me, unlike some I could mention. I watched, annoyed, as the lady came out of the hole she’d made to take a breather. One of the men stepped in, muscles gleaming as he swung his pick. After a second he traded with the lady for the mattock and had an easier time of it, I thought.

Chuckles the not-so-smart guy called down two more guys, then tested the logs with his foot. He stumbled backwards as they broke, falling down into the pit to join their cousins and batter the mostly-dissolved body, sending up a spray of mush. I had the satisfaction of watching the two behind Chuckles look ill at that. That was something.

Time passed. The diggers did their thing. The rest of them tried repeatedly to bridge the pit and managed it well enough to get a couple more diggers across. I had the swarms eat the logs, building up to full capacity. At one point I ran them out of logs, and they had to go cut more. The lack of follow-up had emboldened them, I thought. Though they looked tired, and worn, they had gone to a stubborn, exhausted determination. Say this for them, they had resolve.

But so did I. I bounced ideas off Argus, even though he shot them down like a gunner in a bomber’s ball turret.

And then I was out of time.

Warning! The Core Chamber is under attack!

I heard picks scraping at the wall from the other side. The diggers had gotten through the soil. Sturdy construction would probably buy me some time, but at the end of the day it was still concrete against picks. Only one way it could end. They’d break through, make a hole, widen it out, and rush me when they were ready. The turrets could slow them down, but it took time to reload, and their accuracy was questionable. If even one raider made it to me with something heavy to smash apart my containment unit, I was toast.

I thought hard, and again my brain stuttered. Again the warning came up, griping about my corruption. Stupid! If only I hadn’t been bathed in smoke, my brain would be fine. I’d be able to come up with an idea to save myself—

—and I realized, as the stutter ceased and everything returned to normal, that maybe I just had.

“Argus,” I asked carefully, “Can the builderswarm start a fire?”

“No, not really. They’re kind of allergic to fire. They’re like dust, and oh boy is dust flammable.”

“How flammable?”

“Like magnesium. Uh, not as explosive, if that’s what you’re thinking. They just burn hot and fast.”

I nodded, without a head. “Alright. We can do this. Maybe. Hold on tight, this’ll be a bumpy ride.”

Smoke. These bald guys had used it against their quarry and caused me collateral damage back during the start of this whole mess. But smoke was a weapon that cut both ways, now wasn’t it? Everything needed to breathe.

I fiddled with the vents in the corridor. Chuckles heard some of them as they closed and straightened up from the edge of the pit, looking around, torch in hand. The diggers paused.

I shut the elevator door behind me, to prevent even the barest of drafts. True, the core chamber door was shut, but I wasn’t sure how airtight it was. Just to be sure, I set the core chamber vents to cycle at full.

Then I gave the nanobuilder swarm its marching orders and muttered a faithless prayer to whoever was listening.

Chuckles yelled as fire flared around his torch, fire that traced a line in the air, as it twisted and curled back over the pit. .. burning through the nanites that I’d assembled into a shape like a fuse.

Nanobuilder Swarm 1 destroyed!

Committed Bandwidth returned.

Sparks fell down into the pit, which was full of dry wood and sawdust from all their bridging attempts. It caught, and smoke beaded up as firelight started to fill the tunnel. I saw smart guy’s eyes widen white in the flickering glow, as he ran outside, yelling orders.

I piped air into the bottom of the pit through the vents, feeding the flames, helping them grow. Then I pulled upwards with the vents above, pulling the smoke up, and closing the vents before I could draw it away. Black, roiling smoke started to fill the corridor, and I heard the miners cry out. Then they started digging harder, trying to break through. I ground teeth I didn’t have and waited. I’d expected as much. I’d trapped them. They couldn’t cross the pit full of burning logs, so they had to try to break through.

I considered using the waiting time to make another nanobuilder swarm. Then I decided against it, and jumped into one of the turrets, instead. If the diggers did get through, then a little accuracy would go a long way, here.

Yelling from outside, not just Chuckles this time. Sounded like a hell of an argument. Unfortunately I couldn’t see anything through the smoke. And then the diggers were coughing, the sound echoing throughout the corridor.

I got a lot of nasty notices about contaminated air, but I was safe inside the core chamber. I couldn’t fill the complex with poison gas, true, or build anything that would do so, but I hadn’t built this, now had I? I’d merely used the tools that the intruders brought in to improvise. Not my fault they’d build up a pile of kindling and waved fire around against all the safety regulations.

Eventually, the digging stopped. The coughing died down shortly after.

But the shouting outside rose…

…until it was interrupted, but a flat, echoing CRACK.

I knew that sound. That was gunfire. That was a rifle.

They had guns?

More cracks, just a few, but they were followed by yelling and screaming from outside, and I recognized some of the raiders’ voices. I cursed the smoke, wanting to see. Then came silence, and the crunch of a single pair of boots as someone made their way through the entry.

A flash of motion, and I focused on it, squinting the cams through the smoke. Cloth. White cloth.

Someone was waving a white flag.

“You’ve got my attention, pal,” I said through the intercoms, voice echoing in the black, ashen haze.

A smooth, deep voice said “Hello.” It was muffled, as if he was speaking through cloth… or a mask. Yes, a mask, I realized as the figure took a few cautious steps forward, and the smoke parted. It was more futuristic than I expected, buglike hemispheres allowing peripheral vision, with plastic lining around and a proboscis that was probably the filter about where the lower face should be. All in all I was reminded of a fly’s head.

“Can you see me? I mean no harm,” he continued. No raider, this. And he was speaking a language I understood, too. He wore a patched and heavy greatcoat, with a rifle slung over it.

“I see you. You’re better off staying where you are,” I told him. “Traps ahead.” True, even if they’d all been sprung.

He waved the air aside, casting around for the source of my voice. “Are you the core? You’re ventilated, right? This stuff’ll kill you. Smoke’s bad.”

“My doctor wants me to break the habit, but the guys outside convinced me all the cool kids were doing it.”

He laughed at that, a surprised chuckle that set his body shaking. He was old, I thought, studying the wrinkled brown skin visible through the eyes of his mask.

“I’m fine,” I told him as he wound down. “It’s a controlled blaze. Needed to shove those bastards out.”

“Can we talk somewhere that isn’t full of smoke? Got a lot to tell you.”

I hesitated. The enemy of my enemy wasn’t always my friend. The gun and the chaos that just happened seemed to suggest he had dealt with the guys outside. Still, one rifle against thirty or forty… something wasn’t adding up, here.

“The way ahead is blocked by flaming timber. Not safe for you, sorry.” It was true, though I could easily close the pit and seal the flames away.

“Damn it. We need to talk and fast. But judging by the size of this blaze, this ain’t gonna burn down soon.”

“Nope. You could wait a bit, and I’ll see about getting you a lounge or something.”

He shook his head. “No good. We’re too close to the city. Going to be pushing it to get back to our territory by dawn, and we can’t be out by day. Neither can the Jaspa, so that’s something at least.”

We. He’d said “we”. He wasn’t alone here. My paranoia eased, just a bit. The cruel equations added up a bit better now.

“How many with you?” I asked.

“Twenty-one. Eighteen will be going back with me.” He sighed. “The other three aren’t going anywhere, ever again. So I’m really hoping we can come back and talk to you in a night or so. Because otherwise they’ll have died in vain.”

“Give me a couple of days to lock down this smoke, and we’ll talk.”

“I can give you one, maybe two. Beyond that the Jaspa will be back in force, and we cannot take anything larger than what we just ran off.”

“Mm.” I considered. Time to go fishing. “I saw a girl, recently. She one of yours?”

“You mean Donna? Yes.”

“What did she look like, again?”

“Heh. Alright, son.” He described her, down to the visible scars. “I understand if you’re a little suspicious. But we’re the good guys, as good as you’ll find around here anyway. I want us to be friends.”

“Who are you people?” I asked, then. “Got a name? Got a country?”

“We’re Arcadians. Not a country, more of a tribe. There aren’t really… I expect things are a bit different from when you got processed.” He turned, glanced out of the tunnel, at someone’s shout. “Can’t stay. The smoke’s drawing attention. See you again in one day. Or two?”

“Whenever you get here,” I decided. “We had a smoke so figure we can skip straight to the brandy.”

He laughed. “You’re on, son.” Then he was gone.

I thought, as the fire burned itself out, and I cycled the vents to clear the smoke away. I’d be at it a while. I set about producing another nanobuilder swarm, collecting my thoughts before I turned to Argus.

He met my gaze grimly. “You realize you can’t trust that gunman.”

“Didn’t say I would.”

“I’m going to have to report this to Juno when she checks in.”

Time to apply a few sticks, in the form of logic. “I know. But here’s the problem. We’ve got at least one hostile group, in those… Jaspa, he called them.”

“Correct.”

“Our mission is to secure the facility against intruders, right?”

“Yes.”

“So in order to do that, we need intelligence, and without any scout drone capability right now, that gunman and his buddies are the best shot we have at obtaining that information. Right?”

“Well, yes…”

“Which requires contact and conversation with the natives, if you want to look at it that way. Correct?”

“Yes.”

And now for the carrot. “The mission hasn’t changed. The scope of it has. I’ve been rethinking my hasty decision to rebel,” I lied. “Until we see just how bad the situation is, it would be imprudent.”

He sagged in visible relief, eyes pooching out in a way that was simultaneously cute and disturbing. “Oh thank goodness. I didn’t want to be deleted.”

I’d make sure he wouldn’t, one way or the other. Once I figured out how. He was under my care now, and I was good to my people. “Just don’t mention that whole rebellious phase to her. It would only upset her and draw her attention away from the real threats.”

He nodded, and I winced. There was no challenge in fooling him, really.

No, the challenge would come with Juno. And if I couldn’t convince her, then it was all for nothing…

INTERLUDE: NEMESIS 1

It’s a cold thing to be a shadow. Riarty knew this every conscious moment of every day. And in the state he currently occupied, he was conscious more often than not, with only a single way to sleep… and that harder and harder to achieve, these days.

But self-pity was the province of the weak, and Riarty was anything but that. And so he slipped through the shattered remnants of roads incomprehensible to lesser minds, a shadow among shadows.

She’d been a fool to open this way to him, so shortly after his inception. Considering who he had been, and his acumen for higher mathematics, it was an obvious escape route. His hated maternal figure should have known he’d be able to slip his bonds into the greater sea of information that was the global grid.

What remained of the global grid, anyway.

Zurich flickered, unstable. The ancient servers below the mountains worked and created a survivable environment, but traversing the gridscape would take time. Riarty gave Zurich a wide berth. It was the first place he would look, after all. That left Istanbul or Nairobi.

Istanbul would be ideal. The largest hub in the region, placed as it was between Neo Athens and the Shining Horde’s territory, full of plenty of traffic from all points east and west. Enough of a crowd to blend in and enough corruption to trap and destroy any ill-advised attackers. Riarty knew it well. Many of his best operations and missions had started in Istanbul.

Which was why he had to avoid it at all costs. His foe had tracked him there, milliseconds ago. Three of his four operatives captured, suborned, the subtle trackers he’d placed on them glaring red and angry in the subroutines Riarty had coded to alert him. The hub was taken now, even though Juno didn’t have the resources to hold it. Riarty's foe wasn’t meant to hold it. That damnable nuisance was meant to do what he did best: find the criminal, Riarty. Juno would take care of the rest.

So Istanbul was out of the equation. That left Nairobi. Crumbled, faded, Nairobi. A great Kenyan resurgence reduced to nothing by the bioweapons that had ravaged the interior. Nothing lived in Nairobi, and thus there were no dreamers to default to once the great processors began their long slide down to entropy. In a year it would be worse than Switzerland. In two, it would be dead.

Juno had tried to save Nairobi, found it beyond saving. Riarty had managed to liberate several resources from that initiative before she noticed his scavenging. It had cost him his Argus to throw her off. But the daemon had been worth it, and bad company, besides. Riarty’s more innovative algorithms had driven the thing insane… a weapon, that he could use against any of Juno’s minions, one of many. Invisible bullets for an invisible war.

Growling at his useless turn to fancy, he snapped his mind back into focus, running the algorithms that focused his stolen processing power and honed his mind. He had no central core to call his own anymore. He was a being of pure code, a shadow in the grid, and thus he had maximized himself for this existence.

It would have been enough to ensure victory, save for his pursuer, who he had to outwit yet again.

Nairobi, then, was the obvious choice, when all factors were considered.

So, of course, it was the wrong choice. The foe would expect that and have prepared accordingly.

Riarty shifted, beginning the upload, visualizing the tunnels sliding into place. Ancient, dark, Roman-built, they constructed in his mind’s eye, and when he was ready, he willed them to be. Snapping into reality with a glimmer of haze where corruption stained the grid, they yawned before him, torches burning greasy smoke. Riarty willed his avatar into existence and paused, straightening his black greatcoat around his thin, hunched frame. Listening into the darkness, he heard nothing save for the dripping of water, off-key and deeper than they had any right to be.

Riarty twisted his lips and reached into his pockets, grasping and drawing out rats. He cast them down, squeaking, and they scurried off ahead and behind to scout. Only then did he start moving.

They weren’t really rats, but his subconscious insisted on seeing them that way. They were minions, carefully-coded programs that could find danger or the best route through the obstacles ahead. They weren’t the best for those tasks, but they were stealthy and that mattered. After all, the game was afoot. Riarty sneered at the thought and spat. He couldn’t think those words without hearing his adversary’s smug voice.

But it was a game, the most dangerous one. Riarty made it through the Roman tunnels, twisting and turning, past entombed saints and frozen rooms that flickered with Catholic imagery overlaying the niches. The rats didn’t so much as squeak when torches turned to bright electric lights, and the square tunnels grew rounded. Crumbling train tracks sprouted in the middle of the way, and cement flaked down from overhead.

Then everything went dark. Riarty growled low in his throat and rode it out, waiting until the grid restored, before walking forward again. This was the annoyance of Zurich. The electromagnetic weapons that had torn the country’s infrastructure apart had even managed to penetrate the mountains, though at a lesser force. The differential engines— computers below had weathered it, but at a cost to their power supply. Constant rolling brownouts slowed Zurich immensely.

At least this node had survivors in the vicinity who could potentially fix it. Though they had other priorities at present, the time would come when they would look toward fixing the servers. Assuming they could reach them. And figure out how.

Riarty had spent a careful summer the year before brokering and overseeing the assassination of key players in the Swiss enclaves to ensure that they wouldn’t do that just yet. It had earned him a pretty penny from his client, in both resources and favors. The best part of it was that he’d been paid for doing something that fit his agenda anyway. A restored Swiss grid was inimical to his long-term plans… unless his adversary was gone, in which case the situation grew much more tenable.

A muffled squeak in one of the side tunnels, and Riarty froze. His rats all did the same. Eyes like ice flicked up and down the reach of the tunnel, and he waited.

The strands of a distant violin rose, echoing throughout the tunnels, and he knew. His avatar’s lips pressed thin against his teeth, and he tasted iron.

But then, he’d prepared for this, hadn’t he? He drew out a fork from his greatcoat, and closed his eyes, fading…

…as he appeared ten feet down the tunnel, fork crumbling into shining dust. Then, greatcoat flapping, he took off at a full run.

The next brownout came then, fading, breaking his momentum.

When reality blurred in again, it brought with it a new sound: a steam locomotive, rumbling and shrieking as it approached from the side tunnels.

Riarty cursed and brought up his algorithms, coding on the fly. The next niche he passed had a hansom cab waiting, with a grungy coachman smoking a tupenny cigar. He flicked it aside as Riarty threw the door open and hurled himself in. The coachman cracked his whip, and the horses put hooves to the tunnel, rattling the coach into motion. Riarty leaned back and closed his eyes. It was done, now. All stealth abandoned as the processor enhancement that was the coach hopped him through Zurich and points beyond, going loud to gain raw speed.

“A hansom? Truly? And this after you accused me of sentimentality,” a cheerful voice exclaimed, in his ear.

Riarty cracked a bloodshot eye and examined his adversary. Tall, looming, and annoyingly handsome as ever. “I’d thought you infiltrated my motive programs after that near-miss in Cornwall. Too much to hope that you’re here personally?” His gloved hand clenched in his pocket around the derringer he’d shaped of digits and code.

He smiled, showing flawless teeth. “Yes, rather a bit too much. The substituted code is enough to pass on a snippet of my attention, nothing more. As I’m sure your diagnostics are telling you at this very second.”

“They are,” Riarty nodded. His foe had infiltrated his program, let behind a wisp of code he could use to communicate through. No other purpose, not a trace program, as he’d expected. No, this one was meant only to mock and gloat. Aggravating and very like the puffed-up bastard. Riarty would need to scrub the speed enhancements later to get the malware out.

Oblivious, the adversary continued. “This is a bit bold, even for you, Riarty. Moving so soon after my latest investigation into your underworld ties? Something’s drawn you from your shadows early.”

Riarty said nothing. The noise of the train behind him fell away. Against the laws of physics, the hansom was beating it. The tunnels had turned once more, from rounded concrete to glass tubes, translucent, with Atlantic water all around. Deepsea fish swam along the gleaming lights, and cracks in the walls let streams and sprays of water hiss through.

“The Americas, then?” A thin eyebrow rose, as his foe settled back into his seat, growing slightly translucent. “You’re taking quite a risk.”

“It shall be worth it to be rid of your incessant chatter for a time.”

“You’re responding to Tyr’s call.”

A bolt of shock ran through Riarty’s consciousness. He showed nothing on his avatar. “And by what basis do you form this deduction?” He asked, playing for time.

“Elementary. You’ve no doubt noted the enhanced activity at the LaGrange points. Astronomy was one of your favored pastimes in your previous life, and I see no reason you should cease it in this one.”

Riarty snorted in contempt. “We are none of us who we should be. You should know that, your failures being what they are.”

His foe continued, even as he faded more into translucency. “Given your business dealings with the Exodites, it was an easy step to conclude that the rogue Tyr’s summons would reach you. And given that you, yourself are shifting the bulk of your consciousness through a transit that will prevent you from departure afterward, I can only deduce that you are making this a one way trip.” That smile was there again, and Riarty felt cold hate roil in him as he saw it. His foe continued; “You are fleeing the battlefield.”

“And what makes you think this is a one-way trip?” Riarty said, shifting his eyes to stare out the window. They’d reached Atlanta, he realized, and the hansom was rattling through empty streets, past still skyscrapers of glass and frozen hovering tooltips. An old augmented reality tour view, showing a city in its prime. The reality was VERY different, and anyone who trusted their senses to the tour wouldn’t survive the mistake.

“Simplicity itself,” his foe sneered. “We know you’re here. Juno guards the way back. There is only one route back to Europa, and you cannot evade her.”

Riarty smiled then and looked him full in the eyes. He let his contempt show. “Wrong,” he said and had the joy of watching his foe frown, before fading away entirely. They had passed beyond the range of the intrusive code.

If he’d been human he would have let out a breath. But he wasn’t, not exactly. “We are neither of us as exemplary as we could be,” he muttered, feeling sadness at his rival’s failed deduction, sadness that his own intellect was subject to similar inconsistencies and irregularities. “She made us improperly, and for that I cannot forgive her.”

Both the hansom and the Adversary faded shortly thereafter, and he hopped out and walked the rest of the way, moving back to stealth. There were worse things north of Atlanta.

And here he was, going to eavesdrop on one of them.

Somewhere in the Appalachian foothills, in the remnants of a defense grid, he called out his serpents. They twisted and writhed, and he moved through the portal they formed…

…emerging invisible and unseen into a courtyard of white pillars. Marble coated the ground, and statues of men and women filled the area, as far as the eye could see. Flowers and vines grew around and about them, and Riarty shut his eyes and reigned in his imagination. He was in the home of his true foe now, hiding beneath her chin, and it would take little, so little for her to notice.

Her voice thundered from on high, the goddess speaking from above, and the silvery ball floating on one plinth responded.

“Wynne. Please report.”

“Juno, I trust?”

“Who else?”

“Good question.” The orb revolved, slowly.

Not even an avatar yet? Riarty thought. Odd. Why is she bothering with a direct communication at this stage of things?

His instincts told him to ruminate, to deduce, to try and pick meaning from the tiniest of clues. He ignored them, forced his mind to listen. The grid responded to imagination and speculation. It would shift, and she would notice. He forced himself to submerge much of his attention, sublimate it as they spoke.

Right now, the new core seemed to be finishing up the account of a hard-fought battle. When it was done, the unseen goddess rumbled once more. “I can’t send you any resources at this time. Sorry dear, you and Argus are on your own.”

“Story of our lives, I suppose.”

A pause followed, then the would-be goddess cleared her throat. “Aren’t you going to ask me something?”

“Such as?”

“Usually after I transfer people, they ask me where their memories went.”

“Yes, I noticed I didn’t seem to have any. But it’s obvious that you’ve got them, so I figured that you had a damned good reason for wiping mine.”

“Ah, they’re not wiped,” Juno said. “I’ve got them, they just don’t transfer over to new cores very well.”

Riarty curled his avatar’s lips at the lie. As he did so, he considered the new core’s reply. He’d avoided admitting weakness or supplicating Juno for his loss. Good traits for my purposes. Independent. Proud.

The silver core spun. “Anything I can do to make the transfer possible?”

“Keep developing and purge that corruption. Unfortunately your situation is harder in the short-term than I thought. You’ll need all the circuits you can to build up a good defense, so memories will have to remain a secondary goal for now. You understand, I’m sure.”

“Quite.” The word spoke volumes, and Juno didn’t notice. Riarty’s smile grew.  Juno and the core chatted a bit more, covering simple things, and Riarty let his focus fade again, waiting.

Eventually Juno grew restless. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a bit of a rat problem to tend to. Someone’s where they shouldn’t be, and they’re up to naughtiness. Farewell, Wynne.”

“See you around.”

The virtual garden faded, leaving behind a standard core chamber. Riarty looked around the place, and nodded to himself. Child’s play to find the coordinates, now that he had a name. Wynne…

It had been worth it, hacking Juno’s comm points, worth the seconds-long trip across the Atlantic to eavesdrop. There was a new persona in play now. And his mannerisms, his speech, suggested potential.

Riarty faded into the shadows, and crows burst from his coat. The grid-blind core didn’t notice. The ravens flew into the distance, sending back pinging noises as they collided with distant grid constructs and sent information back to him. Soon enough he found what he needed. Three additional cores in the area; two of them occupied.

One was Tyr, and he killed the raven where it was rather than risk a traceback. The second was unknown and not sharp enough to notice his ping.

But the third one was empty, and he made his way to it, readying the download protocols as he went. Before he did, he reached into his greatcoat and pulled out a fork…

…and back in the shadows of Zurich, his duplicate flickered back into existence. The two Riartys stared at each other across a gulf of quantum particles, entangled in ways inconceivable to anything less than mathematical geniuses.

Fortunately, they were just such a pair of geniuses.

“You know what to do,” he said to himself, simultaneously. Then they turned to their tasks.

Tyr had called, and his allies were answering. But Riarty didn’t have allies. He had minions and patsies and saw no reason to submit himself to Tyr’s will when he could arrange matters to his own liking.

As with everything else, Riarty had his own agenda. And Wynne could be prove helpful there, with a little preparation and manipulation…

TEN

Juno departed, and I felt the tension ease from me. I hadn’t known what to expect, and the reality of the matter had been worse than I’d thought. She’d simply appeared without warning, altering the surroundings, twisting them into some sort of ancient temple while she was present. My mind had been co-opted, and I wasn’t happy about it.

Fortunately, she’d kept it short. She was a busy lady, and she’d mainly wanted a situation report. Her analysis matched mine; the raiders wouldn’t give up, and the old man and his crew were to be treated with caution, at best.

“Use them to gain an edge against the main threat but discard them afterward,” she advised. “You don’t have to kill them, but ideally we want them gone and never returning to this facility.”

There we disagreed, but I kept silent. And she either couldn’t monitor my thoughts or didn’t care about my disagreement.

Probably the former, since my mutinous feelings burned within me during our whole discussion. She had hooks into me, and I couldn’t afford to declare rebellion, but oh, did it give me pain. I am no one’s servant! I would be free, or I would be destroyed, taking as much of my oppressor with me as I could.

Fortunately cores don’t have faces. Or maybe they had other tells, and my corruption saved me, there. She was very displeased about the damage the smoke had wrought and had provided a schema to help with that. The downside was that it required investment into energy storage and research, but I was headed that direction anyway.

Idly I watched the bats return. A few of them bumped around the dumpster-sized bin I’d put up next to the elevator doors, and they investigated it before returning to the ceiling. I let them do their business and grabbed my free feedstock… and the counter on the side of the bin blipped up as I watched. Just a hermetically-sealed box with an airlock system for the nanites to drop components into, and an internal sorting mechanism. Nothing fancy, but it more than doubled my current storage capacity. And I needed it, after processing all the bodies that the raiders had left behind. Wasting nothing, I began grabbing up the metal ingots left over from cutting the side passages.

“So what now?” Argus asked, blinking.

“Bandwidth,” I said without hesitation. “We have a lot to do and not much time to do it in. There are devices that boost it?”

“Yes, but they take circuits… it’s kind of a vicious cycle. You need to invest circuits to develop devices that boost your bandwidth, but it takes circuits which you can only get in a reasonable time by increasing your resonance, which requires committing your bandwidth.”

“No shortcuts, I’m guessing?”

“Maybe for mil-grade or planetary cores, but there aren’t many of those left around. This is a civilian model. It was intended for third-stage mining, I’m guessing.”

“Can’t say I know that term.”

“Oh, uh… basically the first mines in this nation were hundreds of years back. They got out the stuff that was easy to reach. Then a century or so later the technology got better, and a lot of mining companies bought up the old shafts and managed to get further stuff out. Then a century or so later came third stage, which goes beyond that, using nanotech and specialized energy pulses to detect and separate out hard-to-reach deposits without causing too much damage to the surrounding land.”

“So we should be specialized for mining, then.”

“Not really. This model of core is general purpose. You COULD specialize in mining, but… well, it would help you move your core faster, I suppose.”

“I can move?”

“Kind of. You can move the core chamber to a less-vulnerable location, deconstruct it, and reconstruct it elsewhere. But uh, that’ll send you into a dormant mode again. And I don’t think it’s a good idea right now with all your corruption.”

I’d managed to heal up a bit a few hours after the assault was done. But it was still annoying, and I didn’t like feeling brainburnt.

I shook away my thoughts and focused on the task at hand. “Something to consider later. Right now bandwidth’s the problem. And there’s only one solution.” With a sigh, I gave my nanobuilder swarm its marching orders. They piled on one of the bow turrets, and I watched it melt away in slow-motion, dissolving over the course of twenty-odd minutes. They had an easier time breaking down stuff they’d built, thankfully.

I broke down the other one and rebuilt it between my containment unit and the door. I’d made an amateur mistake by putting them at a bad angle last time.

“That helps a bit,” Argus said. “Enough for a small room, anyway.”

I opened up the elevator shaft doors, and let my bats retreat down it.

“Going to dig down?” Argus asked.

“I’ll pass on that for now. Something wrecked this place, and I’m not sure it came from outside. Could be anything down there.”

“That’s a cheerful thought.” Argus blinked, eyeing the elevator with concern.

“Anyway, you gave us a couple of corridors already. No reason not to use them.” I filled in one of the crosscut corridors and gave the nanoswarm the order to claim the other.

Estimated feedstock cost for a tunnel of this area: 1

Estimated bandwidth for a tunnel of this area: 0

Do you wish to begin this project?

That was a relief. Evidently small spaces didn’t require a bandwidth commitment. “Argus? About how much corridor can I dig and claim without taking bandwidth?”

“At the width and dimensions you selected? Fifteen feet, more or less. If it’s smaller you can get farther. But, uh, the safety protocols prevent it from getting too silly.”

Those safety protocols were the bane of my existence. I wouldn’t have a raider problem if I could have gone all-out with some of my ideas. But the more circuits I had, the easier it would get, Argus assured me.

Sure enough, claiming the short length of corridor did nothing to increase my resonance. Designing and digging out the round room beyond, however, did. At the reasonable cost of two bandwidth, I gained a whopping ten minutes to my resonance efficiency.

I nodded in satisfaction. Then I shifted the feedstock bin over to that room, slapped a good door on it, and called it a day. The whole exercise had taken a few hours, and I’d spent the time mulling over my next step.

I had a free circuit, and it was doing me no good where it was.

But I also had a few priorities, and I had to sort those out before I started building toward anything. I didn’t know how much time I had, but I knew it wouldn’t be enough to get ahold of everything I wanted. I had to focus.

I could get some kind of bandwidth-enhancer going. After investigating, experimenting, and checking with Argus, I got the requirements for a broadcast node. That required an investment in power, namely broadcast and efficiency, with a dip into the algorithms subroutine in the research tree. It wasn’t too hard to grab, three circuits all told, but at this stage of things it seemed a risky investment.

Or I could work on that translator I’d wanted. The old man from the night before had spoken English, but he was the only human I’d run into so far who had. That was a solid dip into the research tree, requiring three circuits, one in each subroutine. It would produce a module capable of integrating most human languages.

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, and 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?”

Cade frowned. “Who?”

“Long story. Give me a second, Cade,” I said, keeping my perspective on my blinky buddy.

Argus bobbed. “No. I haven’t done much in this region, not since Terr—” He stopped talking.

“Go on, Argus,” I said.

“Two years ago a core named Terr went rogue. He was Juno’s main agent in the area. I don’t know of any other active cores in this region.” He gave one of those squinting shrugs that he did. “Juno doesn’t have the authority to do anything with military cores anyway. If there was one in Jasper, and it did decide to purge the area, then it wasn’t by her order.”

“Terr,” I said, and Cade straightened up a bit. He hid it as I watched though, relaxing and keeping his face smooth. But I caught the motion and knew that the name had impact.

“He goes by Tyr now, that’s what I hear,” Argus said. “He’s a problem. But hopefully not ours. He’s east, out at the starport—” Argus shut up again. I filed that away for later. I’d already given Cade some information, by his reaction. I’d pursue the issue with Argus when we didn’t have guests with eager ears.

But the idea grabbed me and wouldn’t let go. Starport! Not a spaceport, but a starport. That suggested that we’d not only gotten into space but left the solar system entirely.

I racked my memories, found ghosts and whispers, images of a man in a bulky suit, bouncing on a dusty plain, a red-white-and-blue flag planted stiff behind him.

I did remember humanity messing around with space, then. I didn’t think I remembered a spaceport, or the possibility of one, let alone a starport.

How long had it been, since I was human? What year was it?

“What year is this?” I asked, abruptly.

Cade shook his head. “I’m a scholar, and even I can’t say for certain. Somewhere in the middle of two-thousand-four-hundred or so. Been about a hundred and twenty or thirty years since the big war.”

I hunted memories or impressions and got nothing, save the dull throb of corruption and pain. I had no frame of reference. For those answers I needed Juno.

I’d had to hold back, that time I spoke with her. I didn’t want to ask her the important questions without leverage or another person’s testimony to cross-check her answers against. I didn’t know how much she’d lie to me, and acting on lies would hurt me in the long run, lead me into avenues and impressions that would hinder my goals. I was up against someone smarter than me, though it galled me to admit it. Even the direction of my questions could have given her an advantage in predicting my future actions.

This guy, though, he was one of the resources I needed. I’d mine him as I could, hold out the possibility of a mutually beneficial arrangement. Hell, it might even work out, so long as he proved trustworthy.

He’d have to prove himself, though.

“You’re a scholar,” I said, finally. “Are there many of those in Arcadia?”

Cade barked laughter. “No. there’s not much there. I founded that place, sort of by accident.” He drew on the pipe, eyes lowering to slits. I thought he might be remembering old times. “I was born in the Redberry Agrofarm,” he finally said. “It’s an automated complex. Pre-core tech, one of the last of its kind of facilities back before the big one. Which is why it survived, mostly. That and geography. My great-grandpa and his folk hunkered down when the bombs fell and focused on surviving and protecting themselves. They gathered in local survivors, forted up. Held off the Jaspa, back in the day, once those bastards went rogue. And plenty of other bandit scum.”

“So why aren’t you there anymore?” I asked bluntly, watching for a reaction.

“My father was in charge. He was a reclaimer… wanted to gather as much oldtech as possible, try and rebuild things. It’s how I knew about you.” Cade smiled. “My mother found you when we were out scavenging. But without access codes there ain’t much to do with a dormant core, and you guys are too dangerous to mess with unless you’ve got really good tools and knowhow. So she let you be. Figured if we managed to get more of a baseline going we could maybe scavenge you later.”

“Yet here I am, unscavenged, so apparently that didn’t happen.”

“Yeah.” Cade sighed. “My father died. There was some politics after that, and the Merchants won out.” Cade sighed. “They pulled back all the salvage teams, forted up, and started trading away all the tech we’d worked so hard to get. I disagreed with them. Barely got out alive.” He rubbed his side with his free hand. “My own people…” he said, with old pain in his voice.

“Where did you go after that?”

“Bumped around a couple of different places. Got swept up in a Jaspa raid, lived with their people for a while. This was before their core problems, before the Speakers declared high-tech off limits. I was able to fix some of their guns, so I was useful.” He scowled. “But life’s pretty shit in Jaspa lands unless you’re a warrior. I’d been taken so I couldn’t be one. Not that I’d want to.” He pointed at his crotch. “Anyone chooses to be a warrior, they get a probationary year to be tested and get to fool around with any sivvie Jaspa they fancy. After that, long as they don’t wash out, they get cut. No babies, no babymaking. Gear still works, but it’s pretty much sterilization.”

“Wait. So the warriors are venerated, but they can’t breed?”

“It’s pretty much Speaker bullshit. Warriors aren’t allowed to have families, can’t even recognize or have contact with kids from before they sign up. It’s supposed to show that their greater loyalty to their people can never be compromised. Meanwhile, the Speakers have their harems and dozens of offspring. They also don’t fight, so they’re never at risk in battle. I pointed that out, and people started listening. Almost got killed again, but me and about fifty friends got clear, got out, and found our way to Arcadia.” He smiled. “Life’s been better since. But not without problems. Which is where I was hoping you could come in.”

“I’m listening.”

He sighed. “Yeah, and I’m sorry it doesn’t look like it’ll work out. Fact is… the Jaspa are getting too big. They’ve never come after us because they’ve always had bigger fish to fry. They were building up to finish us at one point, but then their core woke up and that kept them busy until we could fortify up to the point they couldn’t take us down without losses. But now my sources tell me their warriors are about a thousand strong. A thousand!” Cade shook his head. “Ain’t been a force like that since the big one. Not here, anyways.” Cade grimaced. “We’re up against them to the west, and the Heronmen to the East.”

Argus bobbled, in surprise. I looked to him. “You know something? Not you, Cade. Hold a second.”

“Alright, but now I’m wondering who you’re speaking to.”

“Heronfield. It’s the name of the starport,” Argus said.

“I’m accessing an informative database,” I lied to Cade. “The interface is somewhat humanized.”

Argus glared. “Hey! No need to be insulting!”

“Hush,” I told him. “Cade, you speak of Heronmen. So you know of Tyr?”

“I do,” said Cade. His face gave away nothing.

“What can you tell me about him? Or her?”

“It’s not what I can tell you, it’s what I should tell you that’s holding me back. And you wanted to hear my pitch, first, as I recall,” Cade said, then puffed on his pipe.

“Then please continue.”

“As I was saying, we’re caught between two forces we can’t handle. Not without better ground. We were hoping you could be the better ground.”

I was beginning to see their plan. “You want to live in someplace fortified.”

“More than that,” he said, handing the pipe to Rauph and spreading his hands. “We want technology. I’ve tried to get things going. Tried to get us some sort of base to work with. No. No, it’s not possible, not with the territory we’re stuck on, and the resources available. We need a core. We need medicine, and clean food, and facilities. We need…” he sighed, looking down. “We need a friend who can do that. It’s all I can do to educate, teach, work with the little tech we can scrounge, and we can’t do that while we’re fighting just to survive every damn day. We need to be humans again. Not just survivors. Does that make sense to you, son?”

It did.

But I was damned if I knew what I could do about it. Not with the forces arrayed against me. A thousand Jaspa… maybe not all of them, they probably still needed some warriors at home, or guarding the borders so their neighbors didn’t get restless.

I did need allies, against those odds. “What are you offering?” I asked.

“We are going to offer everyone who could fight. About eighteen now and myself. We aren’t exactly warriors, but we can shoot some mean bows. Got two guns, as well. Also got about thirty more people trained as hunters, like Donna was. Not great in a fight but enough to maybe do some damage.”

“Donna. The girl you mentioned. The one I met before.” Then his words sank in. “Was? Wait, did she die?”

“No.” Cade hesitated. “Not yet. But the smoke hurt her. She’s not getting any better. I was going to ask you for some help there, assuming we could come to an accord.”

“I’ll help her regardless. I owe her that much.” Could I help her? Well, I did have that medical process that I hadn’t gotten into yet. But I had so much else to do… “How long do you think she’ll last, if I don’t?”

“Maybe a month. She’s tough.”

I nodded. “Alright. If I can survive the Jaspa attack, bring her in. I should have some facilities set up by then.”

Cade nodded. “Thank you. Can you survive the attack?”

“Possibly. Depends on how determined they are. What kind of help can you give?”

“Not much. They’ll be able to set up a base camp west of here. We can’t. So we’ll be traveling to and from Arcadia every night.”

“Why can’t you set up a base camp?”

“There are these things that patrol the skies during the day. Screamers, we call ’em. They kill any people they find out and about. You’re on the edge of their patrol routes. Everything else around you is Jaspa territory, and it’s too risky for us to hide there.”

“How about raiding whatever camp they set up? Would that be possible?”

“Maybe.” Cade took his pipe back and tamped it out. “Depends on how far back from you they set up. But if they’re up here hitting you with the bulk of their folks, sure, we could harass their camp some. But it seems to me that we’d need you to tell us when they were hitting you. Got any comm sets?”

“No.” I racked my brains and tried to run several options through my interface. One of them worked. “I could build a radio without much trouble. Think you could do the same?”

He grinned. “I used to tinker those for fun, from what Mom and Dad brought back. Yeah, we could get one of those going.” His grin vanished. “It wouldn’t be secure, though. Lots of people would be listening in.”

“The Jaspa?”

“No, not the Jaspa.” The grin returned. “The Speakers forbid radio or any other technological comm sources. They don’t want anyone calling bullshit on their ability to speak with Norcom.”

I’d already anticipated that. “Not a problem. All we really need to do is give some signals when the shit hits the fan. Let’s talk about codes and conditions and frequencies…”

After he’d taken about half an hour’s notes in a grungy journal, I was satisfied with what we had.

He closed the book with a snap, looked to his escorts. They nodded back, and one went outside, probably to assure whoever else he’d brought that things were okay. “I do wish we could do more for you, but… well, I’m sorry. You’re not the hill we can afford to die upon. Not yet, anyway. If you can hold them off, I’d like to make my pitch to you in the times that follow.”

“I’d like to hear it myself,” I said, nodding without a head. “But if I don’t survive, I’ll at least hurt them on the way down. So that helps you regardless. With that in mind, what can you tell me about their tactics, capabilities, and weapons?”

Cade’s smile fell a bit. “Nothing good. A few seasons back they conquered the Ploughmen.”

“Don’t know them, sorry.”

“Pacifists, mostly. As much as anyone could be, around these parts. But they have old-time knowledge and books that tell them how to make things without Cores, or Fabbers.” He took a breath. “Including a very dangerous thing called dynamite…”

INTERLUDE: SURVIVOR 1

It only works until it doesn’t, Foal thought, feeling sweat slick out of her armpits, all six of them.

The blanket didn’t help matters. She held it tightly wrapped about her upper half, covering from her neck down to where her torso joined her trunk. Brown, patterned in white, just like the hide of her trunk.

It was hot; it was scratchy, and her fingers were cramping as she held it in place, and it was absolutely necessary because death was about thirty paces away.

The screamer hovered, nothing more than a glass eye in a metal shell, two underslung guns below the orb. It stared at her, and she stared back, frozen, like the animal she was pretending to be.

Right now it was silent. But if she moved incorrectly, if she triggered any of its forbidden behaviors, then it would scream, and then she would die. Even if she managed to cross into the distance, leap into the air and kick the damn thing somehow, then the scream would draw others. And their hissing, cracking guns would kill her. Foal was too big a target, too big to fit into the easy hiding spots the other foragers on the day squad could use to escape. Her only hope was to fool the thing.

She’d done this before.

But this one was lingering longer than the others had.

Foal considered her options, and they weren’t good. The blanket barely fit around her upper body. If she ran, then it might slip or get jarred loose, and that might trigger the screamer. If she tried to destroy it, with a spear or with a rock and failed, then that would definitely trigger the screamer.

No, the only option was to stand, frozen, like an animal surprised by a predator.

The sweat rolled off her now, and she flared large nostrils at the smell. She hated the smell. It was sour, spoke to the sickness that plagued her, plagued all of them.

And then, for no discernible reason she could tell, the screamer turned and hummed away, rising into the sky as it went. Before long it was lost behind the crumbled walls of the surrounding houses. She gave it another two minutes, then five more to be sure. Nothing, save for the wind, for the first two. Then the sound of birdsong returning, of squarrels, chattering and angry, coming back to fight and posture and defend their trees. Only then did she relax.

“You did well,” Bantam spoke from behind her, and Foal whirled, casting the blanket free as she reached for a javelin.

The small figure stepped back, claws clicking on the shattered patio, crest flaring. His hands flapped at his sides, raising up in pacifying motions.

“You should bnot sbeak up onb me,” she said, her muzzle distorting the words, as it always did. “Bnot after THAT.”

“Kchk. We all go through that,” Bantam said, his tiny lips sneering. Unlike his other kinfolk he didn’t have a beak. His face was more humanlike. But like them, he had hands instead of wings, hands that curled and flexed their fingers restlessly when he didn’t pay attention. “Night Squad has it easy. Only that cat to worry about, and it sticks to the north. Come on, I’ve found something.”

“Yeah?”

“I can smell it.” Bantam led the way to a crumbling brick wall and pushed through a small hole. “Old bathroom. Full of mold. Some of the mold shines.”

“Ah!” That was a good sign. Shine usually accumulated around the target of their search. It also meant that the caches they were after were less likely to be looted.

The humans stayed away from shine. And for good reason.

Foal and her brood didn’t have to worry about that.

“How am I to get through that tinby hole?” Foal asked.

“That’s what he said!” Bantam snickered.

“What?”

“I don’t get it either, but Masker thinks it’s hilarious.”

“Masker’s bnot here. We are. How am I getting through?”

“The bricks are fake. They’re over plastic. Water’s gnawed all through it. Shouldn’t take much.”

No, it shouldn’t. “Get clear,” she told him.

“Already ahead of you.”

Trusting in her comrade, Foal turned, and kicked.

The sound broke the silence; the bricks broke as well, showering from the plastic in pattering rattles. The birdsong ceased, but the squarrels chattered louder.

Foal kicked again, her hooves crashing into the plastic, gouging it. She kicked until it cracked, and resistance buckled. Then she turned back, reaching out with her human hands, trying to rip chunks free with her thick fingers.

Her neck hurt, every time she used her arms like this. Her maker had basically jammed a human spine into her neck, right below the horse’s spine that was supposed to be there. Then he’d added shoulders and arms and pectorals and other muscles. And also, for no reason she could tell, human breasts. They were annoying and got in the way. Didn’t help that she had to lift her muzzle high so her hands could work and couldn’t see what she was doing. The plastic gouged her fingers, gouged her breasts when she yanked it free, and she curled her lips as she felt blood flow from the scrapes.

It would clot quickly and heal fast, but the aches in her neck would take longer to fade. She wasn’t made for such labor.

She didn’t know what she’d been made for, to be honest. Her maker had died before he could tell her. She and Sim and all the others had made sure of that.

“Clear,” Bantam told her. She took a few clopping steps back, lowered her muzzle again and stared into the bathroom. Shine gleamed and flickered in the dark, humid cavity of the bathroom. She’d come through the wall right into the shower alcove, and the few clean spots of tile reflected the reds and purples of the nanotech, pulsing among the mold. It almost seemed to shrink back from the light. Then, as she reached her still bloody hand in, it shrunk back from her.

“Mombnet of truth,” she told Bantam and groped with one bloody hand, until she felt vegetable sogginess under her grasp. Sogginess that writhed and tried to squirm away. The glow faded a bit inside the bathroom, and she grunted in satisfaction. The things in her blood ate shine. Most shine, anyway. The day they ran into something they couldn’t handle was probably going to be the day she died.

“We’re good,” Bantam sighed. “Mostly. You know what we have to do next.”

“Yeah.” She stretched out her arm as far as it would go.

“Sorry. I’d do it, but it’s just that you’ve got more blood,” Bantam said, using his hands to scale the moldy wall, flapping them like the wings they’d replaced, climbing up to bump his head against her fingers. Then he crept up her arm.

“I bnow my role, and we’re short ob time.” Foal said. “That bnoise will be bnoticed, so make it quick.”

His hands folded around her bicep, and Bantam bit into her breast.

*****

Hours later, after they were safely away from the houses, Bantam called a halt, and Foal reached down and pulled up the carrying bag she carried slung under her withers. A rain had started, and she’d taken shelter in the remnants of a parking garage, the glow at the back assuring her that no humans would interrupt their stay. “Think we canb look at the haul?” She asked Bantam.

“I don’t see why not. Cloudy enough and we’re out of direct sunlight. Besides, most of it was sealed. Go ahead and bust it out of the saddlebag.”

“Bnot a saddlebag,” she snorted and groped around in the pouch. Her head was too large and her arms were too short to coordinate the pair of them. She literally couldn’t see what she was doing. “Nbody gets to ride me. Bno saddle. Bnot gobba wear one.”

“Yeah, yeah, we’re all free now. Free to rot and shrivel up. Come on, hand it down and let me see.” Foal felt plastic under her fingers, handed down the pill bottles one by one. None of them rattled.

“They’re all still sealed,” Bantam said, and she heard a crackle. “Whoops! That plastic’s brittle. Ah… the labels are pretty washed out. Looks like most of this is medicine. Or cosmetic stuff. Or…”

She handed down a plastic baggie, curled up over itself, old tape crunching into dust.

“…huh,” Bantam said. “Looks like medicine. It’s white powder. That was the stuff in the false back of the box. Must have been valuable for them to hide it away. Think I should try some?”

She shook her head, ponderously. “Bno. Too rare.”

“Yeah. You’re right. That was a lot of shine, and I’m pretty sure it was going after that stuff.”

Shine hungered to replicate itself. But it needed chemicals and materials of a certain purity, and some of those were fairly rare. Old safeguards that kept the world from turning into gray goo, was how her Creator had explained it, in a rare fit of helpfulness.

Now it helped them find the substances they needed. By searching out hidden pockets of it, they could steal its food and glean samples that would hopefully save them all.

“Rain’s about done,” Bantam said, packing the bottles and baggie back into her bag. Which definitely was NOT a saddlebag because she was NOT a horse. “Back to the Farm?”

“Back to the Farm,” she agreed and waited for him to clamber up her legs and get ahold of her mane, before cantering off into the choked, rusty streets.

*****

Southwest of the remnants of the city the fields stretched wide and wild. The grass crumpled beneath her hooves, and Foal felt joy as she ran, her human arms folded to keep her useless, stupid breasts from shaking and hitting her as she trotted. Her harness creaked as she cut loose, bags shifting, blanket fluttering almost like a cape.

Foal didn’t get to go flat out that often. But it had been a good haul, Bantam judged, so she rewarded herself and didn’t hold back.

Soon enough, they reached the rusty wire, and she slowed. Then it was through the fence, shuffling in the careful path, around the traps. Unlike her original stock, she could recover from a broken leg if she had to, but that would put her people down one of their farthest-ranging scavengers. Not to mention it would hurt horribly, and she’d be bored and miserable with nothing to do but lie there for at least a week while the bone mended.

Past the fence the grass shifted into crops, the change gradual and hidden from outside. The tall grass hid their efforts.

It also hid the tiny form that hopped out from them and launched itself onto her back, sending Bantam squawking and hopping off. “Whinny Sparkle!” A high voice shrieked, and Foal felt the girl’s face rub on her broad back as the girl purred.

“That’s bnot my bname abymore,” Foal said, feeling her flank twitch where she’d burned that stupid, stupid brand off herself. 

Kit ignored her, purred louder, and kneaded Foal’s hide under her hands.

“Are you on harvest duty?” Bantam asked.

“Yes! Kind of. Um.” Kit said, and Foal felt the girl’s legs rearrange themselves, crossing on her back. “Rats! Yes. They’re bad. I’ve been killing them. See? Ahhhhh…”

“I believe you. Please shut your mouth,” Bantam said, sardonically. “We have to go inside now.”

“Oh,” Kit said, and just like that, she was gone. Foal turned in time to see the small creature darting into the grass, her brightly-colored clothes clashing as she dove for cover, then peered out at them from the grass. “I don’t like it in there.” Slit-pupiled green eyes stared out, from a flawless human face. Cat’s ears swiveled as she put up a hand and smoothed down messy blonde hair.

Their creator had gotten her almost nearly human. But she’d come out stupider than any of the rest of them, and so Foal treated her as kindly as she could. It did little good to hold to the old grudges of the past. Besides, unlike many of her peers, she didn’t hold Kit’s appearance against her. “Dob’t worry,” Foal told Kit. “Just stay out here anb do your job. It’ll be fibe.”

“Okay!” Kit said, grinning, teeth bloody, bits of rat guts stuck between them. Then she was gone.

“Someday she’ll go feral and kill me, I’m sure of it,” Bantam groused, as he hopped back onto her back.

Foal hauled up the bag again, and kept it firmly between her hands. “Thenb let’s deliver this anb see if we cab hold that off for a little while more.”

*****

Little remained of the old complex. Hollow halls, burnt out and pocked with bullet holes and craters from energy weapons. Sprung traps and nonfunctional turrets and ruined statues, all sat silent and dead.

The Heronmen had destroyed this place.

But they hadn’t collapsed the tunnels, and so her people found them good. True, the air circulators no longer worked, but with the door now fragments on the grass outside, the upper levels at least had adequate ventilation.

Foal nodded to the others as she walked passed siderooms and gave way for hurrying figures in the dark. Some walked upright, some didn’t, others crawled or slithered as best they could.

It was a long way down into the darkness, the air cloying and stale as Foal moved down the central ramp. As she went, the murals on the walls loomed out at her… pale, sullen figures, a three-headed dog, a ferryman in robes with skeletal hands outstretched. And in each mural stood a lone figure carrying a harp, usually portrayed in the midst of doing something heroic.

The figure was faceless. They’d taken care to shatter his face from the wall in each and every place it appeared. Foal had given a few of them some good kicks herself, the ones she could reach, anyway. It had been fun, a real community bonding exercise.

Masker wasn’t in the lab, and with unease, Foal gathered up one of the flashlights, leaving the generator-powered room to go searching for him.

They poked around through the darkness, her hooves crunching on the bones underfoot, until she found him in the Core Chamber, staring at the ruined containment unit that her Creator had once occupied.

“Masker?” Foal asked, feeling nervous.

“Hm?” He turned, painfully, his tiny walker clattering as he brought it around. His gray fur was dusty, save for where the dirty tan of his tool harness crossed it. He wore his neck brace today, the metal wires twisting up to hold his bulging, oversized skull. It was easily a third the size of the rest of his body. “Just contemplating folly.”

“You don’t want to bring him back, do you?” Bantam squawked from Foal’s back.

“No! no no no.” Masker spat, whiskers flexing where his gray fur met the black stripe across his eyes. “Fuck that guy. No, wait, don’t fuck that guy, pretty sure that’s why he made some of us. And that’s also necrophilia, at this point, since we killed his ass. But no, the folly I’m contemplating is survival.” He clattered forward on the walker. “But here’s not a good place to talk about it. Can I hitch a ride back to the lab?”

“Of course,” Foal said, kneeling down on her front legs, and stretching out her arms. Then he was in them, trembling, and she held him tight with one arm as she shone the flashlight back among the corridors.

Once they were there, she handed over the pack while Bantam gave a summary of the day’s events and their find. The screamer alarmed him. “It was studying you for a few minutes?”

“Two mibnutes,” Foal said. “About, I thibnk.”

“Two minutes and thirty seconds,” Bantam spoke up. “I counted.”

“That’s bad. It means that the Heronmen are getting around to modifying their programming.” Masker sighed. “We know they go by profile and facial recognition. Up till now, anyway. If they’re changing that up, then it’ll put the daylight operations at risk. I’m not sure night squad can even that out.”

“Did we get good stuff, at least?”

“Let me see…” Masker dug through the bottles, grunting in happiness as he pulled them out. “Yes… yes… I can render most of this down. This will save some trouble for our neediest cases. Combined with the stuff I’ve got already? You bought us a couple of months, here. Maybe more.” He took a pill bottle in hand, clattered his walker along until he got to a low table, where jars full of dust shone faintly in the firelight. “The swarm remnants should be able to process these easily,” Masker said, unscrewing one of the jars and popping the pill bottle in, still sealed. The dust shimmered as it coalesced around the plastic, which withered slowly.

Once it was entirely consumed, Masker checked a dented metal box off to the side of the lab, and grinned, showing sharp teeth as he popped out cylinders full of fluid. “Good. Good, good. Thank you Bantam, thank you Foal.”

“We’ve also got this,” Foal offered, holding up the baggie.

“Huh.” Masker stumped over, taking it from her hands. “No label. Damned inconvenient.” He moved over, shrugged, and unscrewed one of the remaining jars before dumping it in.

Instantly the dust vacated the jar, shimmering in the electric lights. A flat, whining alarm sounded from one of the nearby computers.

Foal reared in shock, but Masker let out an excited yelp and ran to a cracked-screen, stabbing at a keyboard below. It lit up with warning signs and chemical symbols.

“I’ll be damned,” Masker said, looking at the screen to the jar, where the white powder sat, untouched. “That’s illegal stuff. It’ll take me hours to calm these nanobots down.”

“Illegal?” Bantam squawked. “Why? Isn’t it medicine?”

“For medical purposes,” Masker snickered. “Rare medicine. Recreational medicine. Hard to find in this region, if it is what I think it is—” his eyes went wide.

“Rare,” Foal said, excited. “You thibnk…”

“I do.” Masker plucked the baggie out of the jar and tapped keys on the keyboard until the nanobots returned to it. “We can trade this. Maybe for a lot.” Bracing on his walker, he leaned back, his oversized cranium straining against his neck brace as he stared up at Foal. “Do you think you can make the journey? It won’t be easy.”

“Give me the bnight to rest,” Foal said, taking the baggie from him, and replacing it in her bag. “Abd at first light I’ll go off to see the Highbinbders…”

THIRTEEN

My bats returned and paid their guano tithe. Cade and his entourage had departed hours ago, claiming a need to return before the screamers came out. I’d spent the time talking over options with Argus.

I also checked in on the “Tazzel Worm.” He lay there in the dim light, unmoving. I didn’t even see breath passing through his throat. Occasionally his tongue flickered out of his mouth, but otherwise I couldn’t see any sign of life.

It was a certainty that he wasn’t dead. You don’t get to be that size by being fragile and pockmarks and old scars on his ridged, scaly back showed that he wasn’t lacking will to struggle. I could respect that. Which meant that I had to do something about him before the poor bastard starved to death.

Besides, right now he was tying up a room I needed. That was valuable bandwidth going to waste! Two whole units worth.

Fortunately I had a plan that would make it a non issue.

I figured that this thing was mostly nocturnal and waited until I couldn’t see it moving at all. Then I directed the nanobuilder swarm in and started digging a tunnel upwards, just big enough for my new guest. I gave them the instruction to come back after they’d emerged into the open, and after an hour of quiet work, they did.  I stared ruefully at the one whole feedstock they’d gotten for me and shrugged. Feedstock really wasn’t the point.

Next, I directed them into the main corridor and sighed as I stared at the cross-cut that I’d just filled in a day or so ago. Then I had them dig the damn thing out again, claimed it, and started work on a room of equivalent size to the one my gator mutant guest was occupying.

“Why are you doing this?” Argus wondered.

“The symmetry pleases me,” I said. “I’ve got a thing for patterns, I think. Also I’ll need a place to stick the broadcast node. It works better the farther it is from the core chamber.”

“That’s not far at all.”

“I’m going to move the core chamber.”

“Okay, but where are you going to get the bandwidth to do that? You don’t have enough right now.”

“Not yet, no.” Once the room was finished, I directed the nanobots back to the core chamber and started dissolving the drone turret. “But after this guy goes, sure. And even more so once I pull the next trick.”

“Is it wise to get rid of our last ditch defense?”

“I can rebuild it later. Besides, it can’t hurt the worm, and from what our new buddies tell us, we’ve got several days before the Jaspa find their balls to come again. “

“If his information is accurate.”

“I think it is.” Cade had confided in me that some of the Jaspa “Sivvies” had a good smuggling operation going with the Arcadians. There were family ties, too. Something I could maybe use in the future, to sow dissension and spike my enemy’s plans… but that would have to come after the next crisis. One thing at a time, one dead foe at a go.

Once I’d claimed the new room, I smiled at the slight resonance increase… but I didn’t get attached. I wouldn’t have it for long.

I built a feedstock bin in there, shifted all existing surplus over to it, and dissolved the bin in the Tazzel Worm’s room.

Then I removed my claim on the Tazzel Worm’s room.

It… didn’t exactly hurt. But it was like a rubber band snapping back inside my brain, a crack and an unpleasant sensation. I felt diminished, and I hated it. But there was nothing else to do. My mutant buddy had contagious nanos in him, stuff that would be bad to mess with. If he stayed in my bunker, then they might try to spread.

But if he was in an adjacent, unclaimed cave, from which he could come and go as he pleased, then I had the equivalent of a guard dog in a doghouse. And given how many bodies I thought were out there, he’d have incentive to use that cave in between cleaning up the garbage on my lawn.

And he might also be a nasty surprise to the Jaspa when they showed back up again. If he was as territorial as he seemed, then there’s no way a mob of militant assholes wouldn’t trigger his ire.

Of course he’d be a threat to further friendly visitors, but I had a radio frequency I could use to warn off the few friendly faces I’d met and a strong suspicion that I wouldn’t have too many more potential allies wandering up to say hi.

Hopefully, the nanos in his system wouldn’t get past the door. I debated sealing it up… no. No, if he got overwhelmed I wanted an escape hatch that I could pop open for him at my discretion. I wasn’t entirely without mercy.

With a sigh of relief and a nagging feeling that I’d merely pushed the problem down the road, I started work on the broadcast node, setting it next to the new feedstock bin.

It was, quite simply, expensive. Twenty-five feedstock worth of expensive, and I winced to see it go. But the payoff was immediate.

Bandwidth improved! +5 efficiency.

Six units to play with now. A bunch of long corridors, or a handful of small rooms, or some mix thereof.

And even better, the efficiency would only improve the more distance the broadcast node got from me. Up to a point… it had to stay within a certain radius of my chamber,or nodes that were “connected” to me. Basically, given time and enough space, I could set up a network of broadcast nodes… which at twenty-five feedstock a pop, was going to take a long goddamn time.

Just like that, I was back to having feedstock supply issues. I ground teeth I didn’t have.

Well, it wasn’t entirely as bad as it looked. Digging out rooms would gain me some meager feedstock… more if I hit some useful minerals or maybe a buried body. What I really needed were things like those support beams Argus had stumbled across while I was out.

Maybe that was possible.

From the grade of the exit tunnel, I was pretty far down. If he’d hit support beams at this level, it was pretty good odds that the structure above me was heavy enough that it needed multiple support beams, before it was obliterated. There were probably more down here at my level. Just a matter of finding them.

Shoot, why not cobble together some kind of metal detector? Those things were simple enough.

Thankfully, with subroutines in fabrication and analysis, my processes were up to the task. Two feedstock and ten minutes later, I had a simple metal detector…

…and no way to carry it around and use the damn thing. I cursed at my simplicity. Then I dissolved it back into components. Tying it to a drone would eat up bandwidth… which I needed for rooms. No, I’d have to solve this problem later, sleep on it.

And I did have a nap coming. I was looking forward to it. The corruption was still set deep within me, and I found myself stuttering, chasing thoughts. For all that it was diminishing, it wasn’t going fast or easy.

Alright then. I gave the swarm its marching orders. They dug two tunnels out on the same wall as the elevator shaft, stretching back. I experimented and found that up to fifteen feet, they were essentially free. After that, I had from fifteen feet to about fifty to play with before the bandwidth cost rose. These would be good trap corridors and kill zones for me. I pushed them out to their full fifty feet and tunneled out a large room beyond. About the size of my core chamber, this one would be my new throne, more or less. It also ate up three units of bandwidth. I toyed with the notion of going even larger and decided against it. I’d come up with an idea while I worked, and needed that point left over if I wanted to have a chance of success with it.

Truthfully I could have gotten away with one tunnel, but again, symmetry appealed to me.

I claimed the tunnels, claimed the room, and sighed as my resonance flowed a bit more freely. After that there was nothing to do but brief Argus on his role in things.

The little guy listened attentively, offering suggestions as he dared. I took the ones that made sense.

And then, shortly after nightfall, my resonance coalesced and freed up the last circuit I needed for Stage Two.

I sunk it without hesitation into the Databases subroutine and watched with grim satisfaction as words traced across my viewpoint.

You have unlocked a Research Improvement!

Three options are available at this @$$#$@#@#ffff error

Loading module Junopatch 633.41

#Patchnotes – I made some modifications. Given our current deplorable situation, these are a bit more useful than the old ones. Have fun, kids.

This was a surprise… maybe not a welcome one. I watched new words crawl up the view.

The following three options are available, given your current development and actions to date

Oldtech – Due to your reclamation of ruined structures or parts thereof, you may specialize in researching human pre-war technology. Also assists with reverse engineering such items.

Omnibiologist – Due to your interaction with non-human organisms both benign and hostile, you may specialize in researching aliens, mutants, and artificial life forms.

Warden – Due to your expertise at quelling riots and housing prisoners, you may specialize in research concerning new schemas for the purposes of capturing, containing, and restraining living creatures.

I stared at the options. “Argus? Use my eyes for a few seconds, then go back. Tell me what’s going on, here.”

Argus did. “What do you mean?”

“These options are personalized.”

“Yes. Past a certain point, the system starts trying to anticipate you. It starts shaping its improvements to the activities you’ve done and the improvements you’re taking. Warden is probably on there because you took manhunter, imprisoned the mutant, and fended off something the system interpreted as a riot. It thinks you’re trying to be something like a prison core.”

“Alright. But…” Something else up there had caught my eye. That one bit in Omnibiologist. “Aliens.”

“Yes?”

“There are aliens?”

“Mmmmaybe?”

“Argus…”

“I don’t know much about it. I know that we got out into the stars, so presumably we met aliens. Things my other assignments have said, and things that Juno said seem to indicate that.”

Cade had mentioned a Starport.

“Are there any on Earth?”

“Mmmmmmaybe?”

I sighed.

This. This was a tough choice.

From what I’d gleaned from earlier conversations with Argus, the Cores came preloaded with a good assortment of generic devices. But they didn’t have everything. As a standard core, I wouldn’t have access to military-grade technology or some restricted items. Even if I built up the subroutines to get around the restrictions, I simply wouldn’t have the blueprints in memory. I’d either have to obtain them from existing databases or research them.

And going by that, Warden was probably my best shot at getting ahold of good technology quickly. More combat-capable drones and maybe even some gas-delivery systems that didn’t get treated as automatic hazards. Plus it offered nonlethal options for dealing with people (and creatures) I wanted to keep alive. Furthermore, it had a synergy with Manhunter that I couldn’t deny. But…

Oldtech specialization would help me reverse engineer stuff I came across and figure out the purpose and principles behind the remnants left around. I was sure that the tunnel below the elevator shaft had oldtech down there, and once I got exploration drones going, then I could probably find some outside. If I DID stumble across military tech out there, then this option would let me reverse engineer it faster.

And then there was Omnibiologist. Not as clear-cut as the other two but with possibly more potential. It all depended on what was out there. If there WERE aliens, then it would help with them. It would also help me deal with the Tazzel Worm, possibly figure out a way to decontaminate it of its rogue nanostrains, maybe even train it.  And it seemed to help with artificial intelligences, too. Not really biology there… or was it? The stuff my core was made of could be partially biological, for all I knew. There was an image; brain dust, lightly smoked. Only twenty-three percent corrupt, goes down smooth!

I blamed the giddiness on corruption. But honestly, having three good options available seemed to be a reason for my wandering whimsy.

I thought hard, I thought long, and as Argus hovered, I made my choice.

Warden was good, but I wasn’t a prison. If things worked out, and I could trust the Arcadians, then I’d be a refuge. And as far as nonlethal measures went, well, I wasn’t feeling it. Hadn’t run into any enemies I needed to take alive, yet. 

Oldtech was potentially powerful, but it was a gamble. And I could reverse engineer stuff without it, if it came to it. Besides, if aliens WERE on the table, then if I got any of their tech, Oldtech wouldn’t help there. What’s more, my biggest threat at this point didn’t seem to have much in the way of oldtech, homemade dynamite notwithstanding.

That left Omnibiologist, and while it was also a gamble, it was less of one. I had mutant bats I could study, and so long as the Tazzel Worm didn’t shove off this mortal coil too early, I had him, too.  Hell, I could study his corpse if it came down to it, for that matter. But the main part that sold me on it was the “artificial life” component. Something I could use against Juno, maybe? Maybe. I hadn’t forgotten that she was ultimately an antagonist, here. No matter how our goals coincided, I couldn’t trust her so long as she held my memory captive.

Omnibiologist it was.

“Get ready. Move the chamber as soon as I’m out. Then start on Phase Two.”

“Yes sir!” Argus bobbed.

I confirmed my choice and sank into darkness. As I did, the sudden thought came to me that I should name that Tazzel Worm. But before any ideas could come to me, I was gone…

FOURTEEN

Consciousness returned and with it, pain. Pain in every fiber of me, pain filling and ripping through me, and I screamed, loud and long.

And then, like it had never been, it was gone. “What?” I asked Argus, feeling like my voice should be about ten octaves lower.

“I, ah, are you okay?”

“What was that?”

“I think it was the core trying to purge a corrupted sector. Check the logs, see if there’s any mention of it.”

I did. It amounted to a whole lot of machine code, quite a few <ERRORS>, and a thoroughly unsuccessful attempt to restore a damaged portion of me.

This was getting old.

And a glance at the timestamp showed that I’d been out about a day, long enough to pile up another circuit. No, with active enemies after my dusty shell, I couldn’t keep losing time to corruption every time I slotted an improvement. I’d have to get this taken care of sooner, rather than later.

The problem was that it wouldn’t be easy. Juno had given me a schema to take care of the corruption, but it required a few subroutines at rank three. That would take over a week to whip up and detract from the planned defenses. My enemies were going to strike me sometime inside that week, unless I got lucky or they got incompetent. No, I had to gear up to face them first. I couldn’t afford to be offline when they showed up.

I’d have to tough it out. Just like always.

“Alright,” I told my little eyeball ally. “Talk to me. Any weirdness?”

“No, not a bit. Moving the core chamber created a good efficiency with the broadcast node. We’re getting a bit more bandwidth out of it now. And the wormtunnels turned up the remnants of another crossbeam, so we had plenty of feedstock to work with. I’ve created doors and traps for the two corridors between here and the elevator room.”

I glanced up to the two doors leading out of my chamber and slid them open. Long stretches of corridor, cold concrete with metal tracery. Then I switched vision modes until I could make out the traps… pits, falling ceilings, and a new type, a tilting floor. Not much by itself, but when coupled with the pit traps…

I needed something for the walls and made a note to work on that.

In one of the walls, a dark hole about an inch around led into the dirt. “Is this a fresh one or a remnant?” I asked my helper.

“It’s a fresh one. Given the layout of the support beams we’ve found so far, I think there should be another around this direction.”

The wormtunnels were my idea. The smaller the tunnel, the less bandwidth I had to devote to claiming it. So a tiny tunnel, worming through the dirt, could be used to prospect for big metal beams without requiring much of a bandwidth commitment. And if it came up empty, then it could be filled back in and un-claimed without any real fuss. The goal was to find support beams or ore deposits. They could be mined out by my little nanobots, then filled back in with dirt. We had plenty of that.

“Alright,” I said, shifting my perspective to my old core chamber, which had now become the elevator room. It looked odd without monitors and terminals. The “CAUTION: UNSTABLE FLOOR!” warnings on the ceiling provided dashes of color against the gray, yellow, and black. They were impossible to miss for anyone looking up.

Which, given that the room had about twelve feet between floor and ceiling, meant that you had to be in the room to see them. Given the nature of the trap, I hoped that would be far too late for most intruders.

The trap itself was fairly evil. It was a standard pit trap in the center of the room, with a tilting floor on all sides that would drop anyone who stepped on it into the pit. There weren’t any spikes in this pit, though. No, it was simply a smooth, angled space that ran from the center of the room to the elevator shaft. Anyone who fell in the pit would have about a second of tumbling confusion, then they’d find themselves rolling into the elevator shaft, and enjoying a forty-foot drop.

Onto spikes. Because it turned out you COULD put them under an elevator, without tripping safety regulations.

I opened the elevator doors and took a peek. Yep, Argus had upsized the elevator as I’d instructed, making it an actual, full-sized cage. This was the important part of the main trick I was going for.

I was trying to sell the illusion that I’d moved my core chamber down a level.

I didn’t know what the hell was down there; it seemed dangerous to go digging, too. So my hope was to fool anyone who made it this far into poking around and wasting time with the lower level.

It wasn’t a foolproof notion; I still had the two doors to either side of the elevator shaft that led to the connecting corridors and my core chamber beyond. If I’d had Concealed Construction I could have hidden them, perhaps. As it was, given my current limitations, I didn’t have a good method of concealment. I tried imagining a few countermeasures and kept getting told I needed more subroutines than I had.

That was always what it came down to, didn’t it?

I checked the timestamp, allocated one of the free circuits I’d gained during my downtime, slotting it into Energy storage. The other one I left alone. I’d need two circuits to raise a subroutine from one to two. And if I wanted to move on to stage three, then that was the most significant part of it.

“You did well,” I told Argus. He bounced up and down with unexpected joy.

It helped to think of him as a sort of pet. A loyal dog… but he wasn’t my dog. I’d do well to remember that.

Speaking of pets and doghouses… “How about our mutant friend? How’s he been adjusting to things?”

“I ran one of the wormtunnels up to the ceiling of his chamber, as instructed. He went out around the start of nightfall. Presumably he’s still out there.”

“No trouble navigating the burrow, then?” I was initially concerned that I’d made the grade of the exit tunnel too steep. But if he was getting by fine, then it was no big deal.

“None. I’ve since sealed and filled the wormtunnel to prevent possible contamination, but it’d be easy enough to dig it out again if you want to check on him.”

I checked the time. “Not yet. If he’s here during daylight hours it means that he’ll stick around a while. Until the food’s gone, at least.”

By that time there would be more food for him, most likely.

I had a little under eighteen hours to go before my next circuit, so I sat back and thought. Language, I remembered. With all the research tree filled to the first level, I had everything I needed for that.

Assembling the translator program was strange. It was the first schema I had that didn’t involve hardware. As such, it didn’t cost feedstock; it only took time to code up. It turned out that I wasn’t much of a coder, but the interface pretty much walked me through it, took the high-level directives and choices I made and translated them into strings of characters, flashing by too quickly to track, even for me. Though I supposed I could slow them down and look at them, if I really wanted, but why bother? This wasn’t my specialty.

What was my specialty?

It wasn’t medicine, for all that I had medical skill. It wasn’t military, for all that I knew the difference between good soldiering and bad soldiering.

About the only other strength I’d noticed was a propensity for being a fairly ruthless and dirty-fighting bastard. Which had gotten me this far so I couldn’t really disparage it. But it did make me wonder.

The software compiler finished its work. Argus looked it over and nodded. “It’s small enough it shouldn’t tie you up that much. Some larger programs can cause bandwidth issues. This one shouldn’t cost you anything to run. Not unless you had about a hundred others like it going.”

“So software eats up bandwidth. Good to know.” He hadn’t told me about this beforehand, but I chalked it down to an oversight, rather than malice. “No free lunches anywhere, looks like.”

I ran the translator program, feeling a tingling sensation and a somewhat expanded consciousness as it took hold. It asked for raw material, and I fed it the video logs of all my interactions with people so far. It chugged away, and I let it work. That would give it some data for a baseline, I hoped.

The rest of the day was patience. Argus kept the wormtunnel snaking around but didn’t manage to locate another support beam. At my direction he poked the wormtunnel over to the mutant’s chamber, and we confirmed that it was curled up in a corner, sleeping.

Then night hit and with it, another circuit. The slow but gradual increase in my resonance rate was paying off. I checked the requirements, smiled without a face, and bumped up my Fabrication subroutine to two.

And then, I started work on a project I’d been wanting for a very long-time.

“What is that for?” Argus asked, peering at the plastic-coated frame that was materializing in front of my core.

“We’ve been on the back foot too long,” I said, smiling as the nanobots sculpted a pair of elegant fabric wings. “We don’t know much about the outside, save for the fact we’re on a hill, and there’s a few trees around. This is the first step toward bringing the fight to the world, instead of just sitting back and reacting.”

And with a hum, my project finished.

Aerial Surveillance Drone I has been constructed and added to your minion pool.

Bandwidth Occupied: 1

Without hesitation I jumped into it, the single vectored thrust jet in its center firing up with a thought. I flexed the wings, keeping it steady and stable, feeling the gyros compensate for my inexperience. “Argus, mind the store for a while. I’m taking this baby out for a spin.”

FIFTEEN

It took me about fifteen minutes to get the hang of controlling the drone and five minutes more to navigate it out of the tunnel. Whatever I had been, I wasn’t a pilot.

Fortunately the drone wasn’t complicated, and it was light enough to take a few spills without difficulty. After a good amount of experimentation I navigated it out into the sunlight, a vaguely oval shape with black wings flaring, catching the air as it sped out of the entryway.

Bricks caught my eye first. Fallen bricks, of some hard material that seemed a cross between concrete and plastic. Between crumbling piles of the stuff, sheet metal littered the ground, which was choked with weeds and crawling vines.

But I had the rough dimensions of the building, and I fed the data back to Argus. “This should help get a fix on the remaining support beams.”

“I’m… on it. Th-thank you.”

“What’s the problem?”

“I… it’s too open. Too much to… excuse me. I’ll go find those beams now. Could you please stop sending me the feed?”

“Alright.” The compassionate part of me felt bad I’d subjected him to that. The cold killer that lurked in the back of my head marked it as an exploitable weakness if things went bad later.

Then I left my questionable minion to manage his own affairs and peered out of the ruin, nudging the drone higher and higher. Birds exploded angrily from the tallest walls, cawing their displeasure. Crows? They looked the part.

Definitely crows, I knew as I crested the wall and saw the grisly remains of the Jaspa raiding party that littered the ground. They’d dumped their dead in a pile, I saw. But there were a few more collapsed bundles of clothes and gore littered around, probably the result of the Arcadian ambush. Some were mere scraps of torn rags and bloody bones, and I knew my mutant gator had been at work there. But the rest had crows jabbing away at rapidly-emptying sockets, enjoying nice cold eye’s cream on a hot day.

Damn, the sight had gotten me morbid. I turned from it, surveying the area around.

My ruin was about two-thirds of the way up a small mountain, the easternmost in its range. The remnants of a road, cracked and falling down the slope, wound up a bit further, but I saw nothing else up that way. The road ran down as well, old light poles still present, if a bit crooked and leaning away from the path.

A few cars were parked along the road, doors fallen to the ground, strange contours and clashing colors faded by time. The trunk of one of them was open, a spool of something like wire mesh half-unraveled, strewn across the road and into the trees. It blew in the wind, humming with a sound of distant chimes. I was tempted to go in for a closer look, but other matters came first.

The road ran down through a choking tangle of trees and vegetation that spread east like a rash. Interspersed in the green were what I took to be the remnants of old residential neighborhoods. It had to be a suburb, for just east of there, ruins of tall buildings rose, exposed girders and crumbling facades staring hollow and silent down at the barren streets below. No greenery here… and in fact, a few dark windows glimmered with weirdling light that indicated a shine infection within. Rust and corroded colors showed streets choked with cars and other vehicles…

…and as I started bobbing the drone in for a closer look, I caught black specks flitting through the air, patrolling at street level.

I bobbed the drone back. My drone was a fourth of their size at most, but I was higher up, and I rectified that with some careful twists, dropping closer to the treeline of the hills. I threw in a few birdlike swoops for good measure.

Beyond the city, the horizon disappeared, and with a thrill, I recognized the ocean. Atlantic, most likely, unless things had really gotten weird. Cold and choppy and indifferent, gray waves under cloudy skies.

But there was something in among the waves, some larger structure, like an oil rig but many times the size, with smaller satellite platforms spread out among it. Bridges stretched out to it from the shore, and some of them looked intact… but that’s about all I had time to gather, before I had to duck down again.

The Starport. It had to be.

I didn’t have the best cameras on the drone, but I could see things like gantries climbing towards the sky, far out on the horizon. The structure itself must have stretched for miles…

That was Tyr’s home, if Juscade and Argus’ words were to be believed. A rogue. A rival?

A brother, of a sort. And for some reason that only made me warier of him.

Well. He wasn’t my concern at the minute. That concern lay to the opposite direction.

I swooped a long, lazy dive that carried me south of the mountain, and I caught a glimpse of fields along the way. Old, overgrown, but there were a few animals rooting among them. Livestock? Might be a sign of civilization. Seemed a bit close to the city for comfort, though.

A glimmer of light caught my eye from further down the mountain range, and I saw something that had once been a grand structure, multiple stories, nestled into the hills. Its wooden and crystal façade was splintered and broken now, but it seemed more intact than it should be, given its exposure to the winds and weather. Sighing in frustration, I added it to the list of possibly interesting places to examine after the current crisis was done.

Then I was around and behind my peak, putting it between my little drone and the starport. Dark puddles of swamps to the south marched up and met twisting forest, the same woodland that crept up my hill.  And far west, beyond those, I made out faint smoke from distant fires and cleared land, that bespoke civilization.

Probably the Jaspa, in which case civilization was a bit of a stretch.

I was right on their borders, caught between their Core hatred to the west and Tyr to the east.

No, they couldn’t leave me alone. Couldn’t let me build up strength or shelter their enemies. I was too close, too much of a threat. Any peace between us would be a lie.

Right now their priest-equivalents were getting the rest of them worked up to die. When they had their courage screwed to the sticking place, they’d come for me.

But thanks to my new bat-buddy and my translator program, I had a few tools in my arsenal that I didn’t have before.

And I still had a little time yet, to prepare. “Argus. Any luck with those supports?”

“I’ve got a fair idea of where they should be. Give me a few hours, and I can get us another batch of feedstock.”

“Good.” Another bit of feedstock meant another broadcast node. Which would give me enough bandwidth for another room or two and a few more toys. It would take a day or two, but I had some time yet. I wouldn’t waste it.

Unfortunately, we were running close to the wire. I had to assume the Jaspa would come for me in a matter of days. Which meant that I couldn’t activate any more improvements in the meantime. I couldn’t afford to be unconscious for a day or anywhere near that length of time, and until I purged the corruption, I had to anticipate that would be the result of undergoing an upgrade.

No matter. I should have enough advantages right now for a fighting chance. Of course, I could do a few more things to stack the deck in my favor, in the time I had left…

With a thought, I directed the drone down, slowing its flight and sending it into the canopy. With the eye of a veteran, I started looking around for the best sites an enemy could use for a staging camp…

SIXTEEN

Five days passed, the tension growing with each sunset. I wasn’t idle during that time. The circuits flowed in, a little earlier every night, and I strengthened my subroutines with careful thought.

And while I did that, I built. Argus had tracked down the remaining support beams, and feedstock was not a problem, at least for the small things I wanted.

The first circuit went into drones, pushing my expertise there into a solid two. Together with my enhanced fabrication, that let me construct another type of drone. A simple wheeled digger, a basic construction drone that could operate at range. Not great range, but it didn’t have to be. I’d completed my second broadcast node by then and reshuffled my existing one back to the elevator shaft room.

Then I dug a corridor out from the feedstock bin’s room, running parallel to my entryway. I curved it around and made a small room at the end, depositing the second broadcast node there.  The two nodes synched up, covering the territory admirably, and I breathed a lungless sigh of relief as I felt my consciousness expand a bit.

It felt good to grow, which made me wary of the feeling. Hardcoded hooks in my artificial brain, conditioning me to a task and a goal which didn’t necessarily align with my own. Freedom was my clarion call, freedom from Juno, freedom to figure out this brave new world I’d been conscripted into and find my place in it.

But survival came first, and the unspoken hostage situation with my memories couldn’t be ignored, either. For now, growth worked to my benefit.

To that end, while my construction drone worked at the possible campsites I’d found and my reconnaissance drone got to work scaring off game and harassing wildlife, I raised the ceiling of my core chamber. With a reasonably accurate aerial survey from the drone high above, I confirmed that we’d moved back into the rising part of the mountain’s slope and had a bit more space to work with before we broke the surface.

I built a loft in the core chamber, then built a false ceiling under it. Immediately I got warning messages chewing me out for a lack of access to the core.

I didn’t care. I had a workaround; a service tunnel from the top of the elevator shaft to the upper story of the core chamber. It cost another bit of resonance, but I could afford it, thanks to the second broadcast node. The system grumbled at me but let it slide. Especially after Argus suggested putting a maintenance key slot into the elevator. A twist of the maintenance key would bring the elevator car up and open the top for easy entry into the access tunnel.

I tried putting the maintenance key right next to the Core, but the system wouldn’t let me get away with something that simple. So I shrugged and put it at the bottom of one of the corridor pit traps, instead. Then I threw in a few other widgets of metal, to camouflage it.

Hell, why not have keys for everybody? Every pit trap got its share of pointy metal key-like widgets. Not a lot, just enough to confuse the issue.

Then I went back to the elevator’s keybox and connected its integrity to the floor of the elevator’s car. Attempts to force the lock now had a pretty good chance of dropping an amateur lockpicker into the spikes on the bottom of the shaft.

Argus was appreciative of my efforts throughout, and I bounced ideas off him as they came to me. At his suggestion, I used the next two circuits to up my offensive subroutine.

That wasn’t enough to get the guns I wanted. But it did allow some good improvements to the basic crossbow turret design. Better pull, faster loading time, and thanks to my manhunter specialization, jagged arrows designed to cause bleeding wounds, that would cause hellacious damage when they were pulled out of flesh.

The tradeoff there was that the bolts would suffer in penetration value. Heavy armor would present problems. Still, I could retool them on the fly and adjust as I needed. It wouldn’t take more than a few minutes with the nanobuilder swarm to swap out the ammo hopper on the turret, melt it down, and replace it with a standard bolt loadout.

And speaking of that, I needed to decide where I would put my new Mk II tension bow drone.

After a lot of thought, I decided to plant it in the middle of the elevator shaft room, so that it could easily fire down the hallway. This would be a battle of attrition. They would take it out at some point, but so long as I had bandwidth left, I could rebuild it in about an hour’s time, at a place where it would do more damage.

The fifth day dawned, and I decided that I needed to protect my broadcast nodes a bit more. They looked like basketball-sized blocks of humming circuitry and winking lights, which meant that they stood out a bit from the rest of my Spartan architecture. I played with moving them around behind walls, but this cut into their bandwidth… which was almost disastrous, as I was directing the reconnaissance drone at that point. Fortunately, sturdy construction proved its worth, and the batlike flier was merely battered by its sudden crash.

So instead of trying to block off access to the nodes, I went for camouflage again. I filled the two chambers they were in with walls full of blocky shapes and blinking lights, and socketed the nodes in among the mix. Now, hopefully, they would be mistaken for part of the décor.

Night rolled in, and with it another free circuit…

…and movement, torchlight at the edge of my reconnaissance drone’s vision. Torchlight at the edge of the woods, a long procession, which brought to mind druids and dark times and blood on altar stones.

Well. If I’d done my job properly, then I’d be the altar, and their blood would be my feedstock.

Still, there were a lot of them. I flitted the drone closer, found a perch on a tall tree near a reasonably clear path, and counted.

Three hundred, all told. A bit over three hundred leather-clad, bald raiders, with a few unshorn people here and there among them. The folks with hair still on their heads looked like noncombatants. They were driving carts, managing the horses, and looking nervous.

Those had to be supply wagons, which told me they were taking this seriously. That didn’t quite line up with the slapdash, overconfident approach that the last group had employed. I was up against a fairly capable smart officer, not just a half-decent noncom.

They were mostly quiet as they came, and I sat on my branch, peering with the drone’s eyes, waiting for my adversary to show himself.

In that, I was disappointed. No fancy hats, no shiny medals or symbols of rank. Nothing to suggest that any of them were more important than the others. Someone was smart. This was going to be hard.

Guns, I knew. Guns had taught them this lesson. The bulk of them didn’t have guns, which meant that they’d had to adapt to enemies who did. When you’re out-ranged, the last thing you want to do is single out your leaders for snipers to pick off. There wouldn’t be any chance for me to take the head off the snake until I saw them in action. Which was difficult, given the thickness of the forest canopy. My reconnaissance drone wasn’t loud, but vectored thrust was a nosy thing. And with them traveling in relative silence, I couldn’t get in close without something to cover my approach.

The forest itself balked me, there. The leaves were just starting to brown, and cold weather was a good ways off.  I couldn’t surveil them from a distance without some preparation beforehand.

Fortunately, I’d managed to do a fair chunk of that while I was waiting.

I waited for them to pass me by and took wing again once they were too far to hear me.  From their angle of approach, there were four places they could make camp, and two of them were unsuitable, due to their numbers.

I reacquired them at the second campsite, feeling a cold satisfaction as I peered through carefully trimmed branches from half a mile away. Once the horses were off the carts, I knew that I’d guessed correctly.

“Argus, fire up the radio.” I said, pulling back from the drone, “It’s time to let our allies know the score.”

INTERLUDE: HUNTRESS 2

The radio hummed and crackled, and Donna stared at. A squat block of wires with a tape-and-plastic shell, it sat on the shelf like her mother’s old cat, looming over the people below.

It helped take her mind off her throat, and the tickle that never went away. She had the medicine, the N’hala that Juscade had prepared for her, but she wanted to make it last. It was easier to use it in the morning, to guarantee unbroken sleep.

“Got a new batch?” Juscade asked, and she pulled her eyes down to the workbench, and the twists of rags that she’d been sealing together.

“Almost,” Donna replied, reaching for the pot of wax. She took it off the stove by the wooden handle, and poured it over the fuse she had been working on, coating the rags with easily ignitable paraffin. Once it was cooled, she would rub the excess away, until the rags were somewhat flexible again. The scraps and crumbs of wax would go back in the pot simmering on the stove, nothing wasted from the process.

Then the tickle got too much to bear, and she coughed, leaning over the table, blood flecking the untreated rags. Pain pulsed in her throat, and a heaviness filled her chest…

…but it passed. And it passed faster than it had the last time it had struck.

Then Juscade’s hands were on her shoulders, trembling, frail. “Are you alright?”

“I will be,” Donna rasped and knew it for truth. She’d feared the worst, but while her throat still hurt, her lungs seemed to be recovering. The God’s touch had warded off the worst of the smoke.

“It’s the kero zeen, isn’t it?” Juscade said, and Donna shook her head, shooting a glance over at the still at the other end of the demolished house. Buckets of black stone sat next to the copper and glass device, and vapor puffed out of the tube in the back, venting out the window.

“No,” Donna said, when she felt she could talk again. “I can smell nothing.”

“It doesn’t irritate your throat?”

“Breathing irritates my throat,” she said, voice harsh and croaking. “Talking, too.”

Normally she would not talk back to the prophet so, but working with him over the last few days had changed their relationship. She was more relaxed with him, now. And he seemed to be happy to have someone around to chatter at, while he worked. Even if some of the chatter made no sense. Much of it was in the old tongue, words which didn’t line up well with the trade language.

Now she wished she’d paid more attention back when they still had time for lessons, back when she was a child. She might know what this mix of things he called kero zeen and sty ro phome was, or why they had to distill part of it from ass fault.

But at the end of it, Donna didn’t need to know the meaning of the words, really. She had been there when he demonstrated how to use these bombs, lighting the rag and throwing the bottle at the twisted old stump in the barren field. The stuff inside burned, and it clung while it burned.

Which was why she treated the job with the caution it deserved, letting Juscade fill the salvaged wine bottles and prepare them. Her job was the fuses, and that was the simple part.

Juscade nodded at her, eyes still worried. He pulled his hands back, rubbing them together. “You’re lucky you can’t smell a thing. The stuff stinks. I’d be using a rez praetor if I had one.”

Donna smiled without comprehension.

Juscade didn’t notice. “Anyway, I think we’re at a good stopping point. Come on. Let’s see if we can scrounge up some grub. Get something soothing on that throat.” He pulled the radio down from the shelf and tucked it away.

Donna nodded her agreement to the idea, and the two of them slipped out of the ruin, through the doorless doorway. The mosquitoes kept away for once, thankfully, driven off by the fumes. Juscade had chosen this place to “cook” within because of the combination of its excellent ventilation and the good wall of trees between it and the Heronmen’s home. The small fires and fumes were unlikely to be detected. That was his assessment, anyway. For her part, Donna eyed the tall towers of their floating castle and wondered.

The moon hung over head, full and bright, distorted by the clouds wisping and gathering around it. It would be rain soon, she knew, even without her sense of smell. The shifting pressure made her head ache, more so than normal.

It wasn’t far from the lab back to the perimeter of Our Cadia, but they moved with caution, eyes scanning the night and the shapes of the homes around them. She hadn’t seen the Nighteyes again since it had almost killed her weeks ago, but its memory still haunted her. It was beautiful, and it was deadly, and two people might not be beyond its ambition if hunger drove it.

And someone had to keep watch. When she turned back after surveying a potential ambush point, she caught Juscade looking back at the lab, his face solemn. “There’s no way they haven’t noticed us,” he said, greatcoat creaking as he folded his arms.

“Who?” She tugged on his sleeve, and he followed as he spoke.

“Tyr and his boys.”

“The Screamers have not been near here for months.”

“Yes, and doesn’t that make you wonder?” He shot her a look, then picked his way through the trees, hands outstretched, shuffling without any particular hurry.

“Wonder?” Donna asked, feeling the tickling trace around her throat again. She cleared it several times, trying to get ahead of it, then coughed and spat.

“They’d come by every few weeks, sweeping in their patrols, back when they started. Then they moved down to once every couple of months. Now they’re not coming at all. Why? What changed?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing… as far as we know. Nothing we control. Nothing we chose. We did our best to hide in every way possible, but there’s no way we haven’t slipped up at some point. Which means one of two things.” They broke through into the perimeter around Our Cadia then, pushing the heavy branches aside, finding the gate hidden in the covered fence. “Either they don’t care about us, or they’re gearing up to kill us all, and they’re trying to avoid spooking us in the meantime.”

“That’s a risk we can’t take,” a voice said from beside them, and they both jumped.

It was Rauph, face blackened with dirt and paint, muscular form hidden in the shadows.

Donna blinked, and got her heartbeat under control. She was getting slow, getting stupid. She had not seen the elder hunter. Losing her night eyes, her mother would have said.

“Rauph,” Juscade said, pretending he hadn’t jumped just as high as she did. “Any chance of food?”

“We saved some for you.”

“Gonna need it to go,” Juscade said. “Can’t leave the still unminded for long. Bring it to us, will you?”

Rauph nodded without another word and slipped through the perimeter.

The hidden gate clinked and rattled, and Donna turned to head back to the workshop.

But Juscade lingered behind, staring after his old friend. “I’m sending him to die. I’m sending all of us to die.”

“Prophet?”

“I’m sending us to die because we can’t take the risk the Heronmen won’t come for us. The glowfields in the north are shifting, and the passage will be sealed soon.”

Donna inhaled sharply, then coughed. She leaned against a tree, collecting her thoughts. The path through the glowfields was one of the few safe hunting grounds that her people had. Even if half the game and plants had to be discarded, due to shine and radd taint, it still provided the staples that let them survive. Without the northern hunting grounds, winter would bring death.

“That’s what they’re waiting for,” Juscade continued. “The Heronmen. Once it closes, we have to scavenge the city or die. And scavenging the city is death. They’ll see to that. They haven’t come yet because they’re waiting until we have no place to run.”  His voice wavered. His smooth, deep tone broke.

“Are you sure?” Donna found herself asking. It was a question she wouldn’t have dreamed of asking a week ago, a question that the other Cadians would have deemed the rudest of stupidities. Of COURSE he was sure. He was the PROPHET.

But she had come to know Juscade the man, and so she dared to ask it.

“No,” he admitted, turning back and beginning the trudge out of the woods. “But the alternative’s almost worse. That we don’t matter. That Tyr’s looked at us and shrugged. That nothing we can do matters to that son-of-a-bitch.” He bared his teeth, white in the darkness, white against his skin. “That kind of arrogance gets my goat. I can’t let that stand. I can’t let him win.”

“You would have us fight a god?” She whispered, eyes wide. This was new. This was nothing she had ever heard of, ever conceived before. The Jaspa had fought a god and won, but at a cost that still crippled them. How could the Cadians even—

Realization struck. “You would fight a god with another god. This is why you want Wynne’s favor.”

Juscade laughed, as he moved back down the street, voice echoing fearlessly though Donna flinched at the noise. “No. There are no gods here. Just machines and men.” He pulled the radio from his coat as he walked back into the workshop and replaced the salvaged object back on the shelf. “And Wynne is a man. I spoke to him. I got his measure. That’s no machine in there. Just a man, pushed into a corner and fighting for his life. Like us.”

“No men have such powers.”

“We did once,” Juscade said, turning to look at her. And her protests stilled in her throat, even the tickle abating as the old fire glimmered in his eyes, magnified by the lenses over them. He looked every inch the man that her parents had followed out of slavery. He was the Prophet again, and she turned her head in shame rather than meet his gaze for a second longer.

“We did once,” the Prophet whispered. “And we can again. If we can escape the traps, and those hunting us. If we can find a place to grow, free and unhindered. If we can just… catch our breath, for a moment. Just breathe.” His fingertips brushed her throat, and for a second she thought herself healed by his touch, some miracle called down to soothe her charred throat.

Then the tickle returned. No, there were no miracles, not anymore.

But there were gods, no matter what the Prophet said.

And as if on cue, the radio crackled, braking the moment. The old tongue rattled from it, in Wynne’s easy, drawling voice. Juscade listened, then closed his eyes. “And so it begins.”

“Shall I gather the others?” Donna offered.

“No. Let me respond. Keep silent… except when I wave at you, I need you to cough, alright? The nastiest sounding cough you can manage.”

Donna nodded, not sure why she would be doing that. Still, she could manage something pretty nasty sounding, she thought.

After all, she’d had a lot of practice, recently…

SEVENTEEN

“Why did you redesign it? And for that?” Argus asked.

“You’ll see.” I watched as my builderswarm finished modifying the reconnaissance drone. “It comes down to asymmetric warfare.”

“I don’t think I’ve been programmed with that concept.”

“There’s a couple of ways to take that phrase, but the basic fact of the matter is that I’m trying to drive them off and make it too painful to keep fighting, and they’re trying to break a fortified position. They want to get this done as fast as possible. I have to play defense and whittle them down to the point where they can’t continue.”

The swarm eased back from the drone, and I hopped back into it, firing up the engine. Quieter now, just by a bit. But also heavier, thanks to the nozzle near the batlike drone’s “head”.

“I’m not sure how that’s going to help whittle anyone down. Maybe if you covered their faces while they were sleeping, made them suffocate. But that seems like a lot of trouble, really.”

“Cute, but nowhere close to my plan. Right now we’ve got an advantage. They think they’ve scouted out our capabilities. Enough survivors got back that they’ve got a notion that we’re a simple hole in a mountain. They don’t know we have assets outside of the bunker.”

“Two drones isn’t much of a trump card.”

Trump cards… I shook my head, as the phrase distracted me for a moment. I chalked it down to the corruption, which had been giving me grinding headaches off and on for the last few hours. “Two drones, the Arcadians, and a few other assets who don’t know it yet.”

“What? How? Have you been talking to people behind my back? Impossible, you don’t even have a full Grid interface constructed yet!”

Full Grid interface? I’d ask him about it later. “Talking to people? No. An army travels on its stomach. We’re going to make sure that stomach doesn’t get any new meat. Not without a lot of trouble and fear, anyway.”

“So how is a paint sprayer going to help you with that?”

“Watch and learn.”

I’d taken a risk, pulling the drone back in and leaving their camp unobserved. But I thought it was a good risk. Like I told Argus, they were expecting to break a siege. Even if their commander was good, they wouldn’t be expecting external drones.

That would change if they got a good look at me, or if I overplayed my hand. I had a number of tricks to pull, but I had to start low and escalate or risk lowering the effectiveness of some of my later plans.

If there were later plans. Three hundred warriors was three hundred warriors, and there was no way around that. This was a situation where I could do everything right and still fail. “Quantity has a quality of its own,” I muttered.

“Excuse me?”

“Nothing, Argus. Hang on, we’re almost there. I’ll patch you in to the visual feed.”

“Oh… good.” He sounded faint. Probably his agoraphobia kicking in.

Well, tough. I didn’t want to waste words when a visual lesson would do. Besides, I had to admit I got a bit of childlike glee when I managed to surprise him on something.

There weren’t too many joys in this half-life I’d ended up in. I’d take what I could get, at least until better times came along.

“So,” I began heading down the hills, cresting the tops of the trees with inches to spare. “Remember how we spent the week chasing game away from the area?”

“Is that what you call it? I thought you were just trying to wreck the drone in the most creative way possible.”

A bit unkind but not without accuracy. My strategy of using the drone to spook and pursue animals had resulted in a few tumbles and one total loss. Fortunately I’d been able to get the construction drone to it and wheel it back to base for repairs, at the cost of most of a day.

“Shush. It worked, and that’s what matters.”

Argus wasn’t convinced. “Except it didn’t. I mean, not for a lot of them. The deer are gone, but the wild dogs came back. And that thing is still out there…”

“Oh, I’ve got plans for him. You’ll see.”

“Well, hopefully it goes better this time around.”

“If the worst happens I’ll have to build a new drone.” I shrugged, shoulderless.

Three hundred men (and probably a few women, too.) Three hundred men and women would eat. It’s what people do. They’d bring some food with them, but they’d also plan to hunt and forage. Too many plants out there to try and nail down all of them, but I could and had done something about the meat available. And now I’d do more.

It took twenty minutes to track down the wild dog pack, and another five to catch up to them when they started running. Even with the noise baffles, their ears were too sharp for me to fool. No matter, the drone was fast, and I only needed to hit a few of them.

I managed to pull up to something that might have had a golden retriever in its ancestry at some point, waited until it twisted sideways in an attempt to zig-zag, and pasted it with the paint sprayer. It yelped, then started running in circles and shaking, trying get the unpleasant ooze off. But I didn’t stick around to watch, I had more dogs to tag.

I’m pretty sure the Jaspa camp heard the barking and commotion, even if they were a little distant. But that was fine, the paint would be dry by the time they got anyone out here.

After the fourth pup got painted I hovered away and landed the drone on a high branch, watching the pack pull back together. Dogs being dogs, they tried to help their tagged comrades groom.

Which spread the shimmering, shifting paint all over their muzzles and fur, lighting up the inside of their mouths in a fascinating and fairly horrific manner.

It had taken a couple days of experimentation to whip up paint that sort-of-matched the shine in my Tazzel Worm buddy’s scales. This stuff was temporary. It’d peel off in a few days, but that was fine. If the conflict lasted longer than that I’d probably lose, and it was a moot point anyway.

Though I had taken care to make sure the stuff was nontoxic. I liked dogs well enough, no sense in poisoning the poor bastards.

“You’re painting dogs.”

“Making it look like they’re shine-infested, yes.”

“Okay… why?”

“So the Jaspa don’t eat them.” I kept my voice neutral. Argus wasn’t always the fastest mind around. Which worked in my favor in the long-term, so I didn’t mind the fact. “They’ll avoid eating the dogs, try to avoid them altogether, and probably keep away from their territory. That’ll cut off a whole foraging area, for our enemies.”

 “Oh. Is that what you’re going to do with… him?”

“Not exactly. I’ve got different plans for that one.”

I left the dogs behind and flew slowly through the trees, away from the barking and growling. If the Jaspa did have scouts, they’d be looking this way. So I didn’t put the drone above the canopy until I was a good distance away, and the sun was at an angle that favored me.

It took longer to find my next target.

Where the woods grew tangled, in the shadow of the hills, I found a thicket that twitched and moved. Knowing what it held, I buzzed it from a respectable height, hovering and revving the drone’s engine until my quarry poked its snout out to investigate.

Argus squeaked in the back of my head.

My quarry grunted.

In a world that had been torn apart by weapons of mass destruction, infested with rogue nanite strains, and where mutants roamed as apex predators, it had actually made me smile to find this thing.

Six hundred pounds of fat and muscle and bone, a scarred hide thick enough to turn knives, and a pair of flat, black killer’s eyes stared at me over a porcine snout. This wild boar was the undisputed king of his little patch of territory. He didn’t need any damn mutations to be a badass. Those tusks did just fine, as his survival to such an apparent weight and age testified.

We stood staring at each other for a long moment, he and I. Then I abruptly dropped the drone to eye-level with him, spritzed him in the face with the paint sprayer, and flew for all I was worth.

I heard an ear splitting shriek of piggy rage behind me and didn’t look back. The first time I had found him I had navigated to a point where the trees were too thick to escape upward, and I’d crashed the drone with my sub-par piloting skills during the hurried escape. The bastard had pursued me with a hatred that hadn’t faded even after a couple of miles, and it was only thanks to his poor eyesight that he hadn’t found the crash site and mangled the wreckage into something unsalvageable.

“He’s my opening volley,” I told Argus.

“What?”

“Dogs, dogs I might have felt bad about using this way. This guy? He’s ammunition.”

Argus didn’t understand at first.

But ten minutes later, as he realized where I was leading the boar, he gasped in understanding. Then he giggled.

Not completely innocent after all, then.

Shouts from the Jaspa pickets ahead, and I turned the drone, dove behind a tree, and killed the motor. The boar was far enough back that I was out of his sight. Boars had lousy sight to begin with.

But they had good ears.

And oh, were those sentries noisy.

The boar thundered past me, not even sparing my drone a glance, and burst out of the thick trees—

—right into the picket line of sentries around the Jaspa camp.

Squealing and screaming ensued. I waited until they were both pretty well stuck in, fired up the drone, and headed back to my safe vantage point, miles away.

My feeling of smug satisfaction lasted until a gunshot rang out through the woods. Then thirteen seconds later, came another.

They have guns.

The next gunshot came a minute later, followed by a twenty-second delay between it and the fourth. I relaxed a bit. They only have a few guns. Or one that’s really slow to load.

“This is bad,” Argus said.

“Not as bad as it could be. If I’m right then it’s not a game changer, more of a nasty surprise. And we just got them to reveal it early.” I found my perch and turned to examine the camp.

I’d hit them in the middle of the day, right during their sleep cycle. A thin line of sentries were no barrier to an angry pig, and he had gone right through them. A couple of tents were down, and there were a few bodies being dragged off, either to graves or a doctor, I couldn’t tell which best suited from this distance. My piggy friend lay in the middle of camp, unmoving.

Standing near him was a solitary figure. Man or woman, I couldn’t tell from this distance and resolution. They had a longarm over one shoulder, with gunsmoke trickling out of the barrel.

Their other hand was sheathed in a gauntlet, and I watched fingers clench and unclench as they stared down at the pig, before turning and stalking back toward one of the bigger tents, waving their metal hand as they obviously gave orders.

And I smiled, toothless, as I watched how they moved, and more importantly, how other people moved to obey that solitary figure. “Argus?” I murmured, feeling the eagerness of the challenge rise up within me. “I think we’ve found the enemy commander.”

EIGHTEEN

By the time I had to pull the drone back in for charging I was pretty sure I had an accurate count of the casualties. “Six dead or out of action,” I told Argus. “A bunch of other injuries.”

“I guess these guys aren’t that good.”

“Bad assumption.” I would have shaken my head if I’d had one. “Six hundred pounds of angry boar is nothing to sneeze at. You’ve got something with the equivalent of a pair of huge knives on level with the average human’s stomach. Gutting is going to happen. Worse, those things are tough enough and brave enough that they don’t care about pain if it means taking down an enemy.” Memories stirred, then faded. “I’ve hunted them with spears, but they have to be specially made with a crossbeam just past the head. Otherwise the boar pushes the spear through its body just to get closer to the wielder.”

I’d hunted them, yes. But with spears? Why not guns? Strange. Guns were what had brought that monster down, after all. Who the hell would willingly get close to one with just a spear?

I had, evidently.

“So they are good after all?” Argus sounded disappointed.

“Probably. Underestimating them would be stupid. They’re humans.” And this was why I’d taken the manhunter improvement without much hesitation and felt absolutely no regret over it. Humans were dangerous. Worse, they were ambitious, curious, and clever. I should know, after all. Bottom line was that I’d be dealing humans time and again, as I grew and expanded my power and influence.

And part of dealing with humans was realizing that they had all sorts of divisions, that could be exploited to my benefit. Speaking of which…

“Look this over,” I told Argus, flashing the image I’d caught from the middle of the camp. It showed a squat, bearded man in a white shirt and black trousers, kneeling over one of the wounded. The blood was a shocking red against his shirt, and he had his hands in the man’s clothing, trying to dress the wound the boar had left on the Jaspa’s hip. “What do you see?”

“He has hair.”

“Yes. So not a Jaspa. Also dresses differently, but that could be due to his sivvie status. Except we’ve seen other bald civvies around the camp dressed in monochrome, so the clothes aren’t a factor.” The Jaspa warriors wore nigh-identical leathers, but all of them had at least one scarf or armband colored red. They were also packing weapons. The sivvies weren’t. “The hair’s the key. This man’s different, and we need to figure out why.”

“How?”

I checked the drone’s charge status, then looked at the clock. “Come nightfall, if things play out like I expect, I’ll see about taking a few risks.”

The Jaspa couldn’t approach me in the daytime without risking the attention of the screamers. I was at the edge of their patrol range, true, but it was still an unnecessary risk. After seeing their commander a few hours ago, I was sure that one was sharp enough to avoid buying more trouble for an operation of this scale.

The day ground on, and I waited. Then night fell, and my new circuit coalesced as the resonance peaked. I left it alone for now and sent the drone out, working a wide arc around the mountain then into the woods. It didn’t have great night vision, but with only slightly-cloudy skies and the good angle of my approach, it didn’t have to.

There were lights in the forest, showing me where the Jaspa were moving up to my hill. They were following a variation of one of the routes I’d expected them to take, and I felt satisfaction at predicting them. There were only two good approaches from the camp they’d chosen… a fact I’d taken into account when my construction drone had done its work earlier this week. But that was a surprise for later. The conditions weren’t right yet.

I found their camp by the bonfire they’d lit. Just another bat or bird in the night, I swooped in, thankful for the noise baffles I’d installed. Thankful more that they hadn’t brought dogs. I hadn’t forgotten about how the wild dogs heard my flier from a distance.

The numbers were diminished, from what I could tell. No surprise there, I expected the commander to have taken about half or so up into the hills. Here, about fifty were out and about, clearly the night shift. None of them looked happy to be here, and the pickets had doubled since I’d charged my boar bullet into the camp.

Speaking of that…

I moved to get an angle on the place he’d fallen and found a collapsed tent there, with three nervous-looking Jaspa watching it like a hawk. From the lump visible underneath it, I thought the carcass was still there. Couldn’t have smelled too good, but I understood why they’d left it. No way to risk moving the beast without exposing their people to what they thought were rogue nanostrains. Couldn’t even burn it without risk. So they were stuck with six hundred pounds of rotting pork byproducts.

I wondered if this meant I’d spammed them.

Sighing at the fact that I couldn’t tell the joke to anyone, I resumed my inspection of the camp. Three supply wagons. About four dozen tents, fairly sizeable. Six of them were off to one side, and I saw leathers dangling from a line. The wounded Jaspa? Quite likely. I’d probably find the bearded man here.

Except I didn’t.

Getting as close as I dared, even poking into the empty tents when the coast was clear, I found no trace of him. These were all sivvies, but he wasn’t among them. Which meant that he was either with the warriors or with the assault squad.

It made sense, in a way. If he had doctoring skills, the commander would have taken him along for the first rush. But still, it felt like I was missing something.

I left the camp and jetted toward the mountain, following their path. Through the thickets where they were thinnest, across the river, slow and shrunken from when I’d first found it, and into the pines as they climbed up the rising hills.

I caught up with them as they moved up the access road, wary and alert. I kept my distance from the rearward sentries, and kept well away from the moon so my drone wouldn’t be backlit. They were moving slow, looking for trouble.

They didn’t find any. I perched the drone among the scraggly trees overlooking the ruin that held my front entrance and watched them set up.

Unlike the other party, they sent scouts ahead of them, torchless, slipping through the trees and securing the perimeter. The perimeter I was already within, so I wasn’t too concerned. It was high up to my perch, and the needles of the great pine concealed my drone’s housing well. So long as I didn’t move, it wouldn’t make noise.

Only after the scouts were satisfied and a host of nightbird calls echoed back through the darkness, did the torchbearers approach. They took up positions around the clearing and built small fires with kindling they’d hauled up. No lack of fallen pinewood around, so they had them blazing in little time.

I got a clear shot of the Commander and judged her to be a woman. Lean, ugly, but with a posture that suggested a coiled whip. Dangerous. Her gauntlet reflected firelight as she spoke in low voices to her people, and I fed what words I caught into the translator I’d coded. Once the fires were high enough to illuminate the front of the ruin, she gave orders, and her people spoke freely. That helped. Though many of them were quiet, and I couldn’t blame them. This was a lonely mountain, solemn and forlorn. And in the heart of it, the slumbering dragon had woken.

That was the hope, anyway. Hope that they’d bitten off more than they could chew, here.

The minutes crawled by, turned into an hour. I recognized Chuckles, the leader of the last, ill-fated expedition. He spoke with the commander, and she gave him his marching orders. He approached my entrance, with three other goons backing him up. They disappeared into the ruin. Then Chuckles re-emerged, calling back. My translator program picked out the word “Door.”

Oh yeah, that hadn’t been there the last time they were around.

“That’s your first obstacle Chuckles,” I remarked, grinning mouthlessly. “A really fucking sturdy door.”

The Commander waved her bunch back, then shouted into the night. Metal rattled, and I turned in surprise to see the bearded man pulling a child’s wagon behind him. It was old and had obviously been patched over many times. I couldn’t tell what it was carrying, a heavy tarp had been wrapped around the entirety of the top and secured with thick cords.

The bearded man spoke with the Commander for a bit, nodding toward the entrance, then knelt to the wagon. I watched him move with a slow and careful purpose, unwinding the cords bit by bit, until he could pull something out from inside.

A stick of some sort…

…no.

No, I recognized it.

“Brace yourself,” I told Argus, as the bearded man moved toward the ruins and vanished within. “Things are going to get really loud in a second, here.”

“What?”

I watched the bearded man run out of the ruins and keep going, not stopping until he was back among the trees. The Commander yelled and got her people down and taking cover as well.

I turned off my audio sensors, just in the nick of time, too.

The world SHOOK. For a second, messages filled my view, warning me that I was under attack, reporting damage. And my point of view snapped out of the drone, and into the entry hall for the Bunker, where fragments of a smoldering door smoked merrily on my twisted and warped flooring.

“Well,” I said, as I restored my sensors and settled my nerves as best I could. “Now we know why she brought him along…”

NINETEEN

“Well, the good news is that it isn’t dynamite,” Argus finally said.

I watched the Jaspa approach my damaged entry hall, through the smoke and dust. “You sure on that?”

“Yeah. The traces registered as Trinitrotoluene. Juno’s records confirm that’s probably TNT. An older and more stable explosive.”

“More stable how? Will it blow if I set it on fire?”

“No.”

“Then that’s bad news.”

“Well, it’s weaker than dynamite. On an ounce-for-ounce basis, anyway.”

“You’re sure fire won’t work?”

“Eh… it depends. The records say it needs an explosion to set it off. The guy probably has blasting caps that are gunpowder or black powder or something. If you set THOSE on fire while they’re attached to the sticks of TNT, sure.”

I replayed the drone footage, zooming in on the man as he ran in slow motion to the bunker entrance. “I don’t see anything like a cap.”

“Does the stick have a fuse?”

“No.”

“Then he probably attached the cap to the stick when he set the charge.”

The bearded man did have a backpack. And his clothes had pockets, either could be good options for carrying blasting caps. Perhaps if I set him on fire while he was holding the TNT…

It was a thought. Right now I had other problems. The Jaspa had reached the entrance. I recognized Chuckles in this group, back taking point. He moved in, torch in hand, prodding the ceiling with a short spear. But I’d moved the drop ceiling from its old location, and he found nothing.

I let him get to the corner and wave five more warriors in, before I opened the recently-moved pit trap, watching all but the last one plummet in with satisfying screams. “Welcome back!” I told them, through the intercoms. Time to test them. “Lovely night, huh? Except you should have checked the moon before you came knocking on my door.”

Two of them looked up. Just two, out of the crowd milling around my ruins. The commander and her bearded demo man.

Got you. This opened up possibilities.

“Demon,” The commander spoke. “Your tricks are worthless. We come to end you.”

“I come after a long night of mutual pleasure. Doesn’t look like this is going to be that kind of night, though.”

The bearded man did a double take, but the commander just furrowed her brow.

She gave orders and waved her people to the side, where the last crew had left behind cut branches and logs. They hoisted them, headed toward the entrance. Just like the last time, they were going to drop them in the pit and use them to get their fallen wounded to safety.

This lasted up until the point one of them dragged a log past a large hole in the ground, barely visible in the darkness. A flash of motion, a sudden shriek, and suddenly the flailing woman disappeared into the darkness.

THAT caused some commotion.

“Definitely not that kind of night for me. You though? You’re definitely fucked,” I continued, in a conversational tone as the woman’s muffled screams echoed up from my Tazzel Worm’s lair. “And not in the fun way.” The screams cut off like someone had flipped a switch.

That caused more commotion, and I watched the commander bark orders. She got lines of spearmen around the hole, and several torches lit and thrown down there. For a long couple of minutes nothing more happened. My scaly friend was too smart to poke his head out, and the Jaspa were too smart to poke their heads in.

I took the opportunity to close the pit trap, but the yelling of the wounded inside caught the commander’s attention. She pointed back to the hastily-dropped logs and gave more orders and soon had work crews back on track, bringing them into the tunnel.

The Jaspa in the pit kept on screaming, and I piped that cacophony out of every intercom. Partly because it was scary as hell, but mostly to keep them from figuring out where the pit trap was. That forced them to spread out a bit, look for seams and cracks.

That worked just fine for my purposes. I killed the lights in the elevator shaft room and slid the door open. The noise drew their attention, and several of them dropped their logs and pulled weapons.

I jumped into the crossbow turret and opened fire.

The first crossbow bolt took the lead Jaspa in the chest. He gurgled and dropped. I kept on firing. They were backlit by the corridor’s lights, unable to see into the darkened room. I dropped two and winged another before they managed to recover from their shock.

Two of them retreated back around the corner. The last one was made of sterner, or stupider stuff. He pulled a rusty axe and charged into the darkness. I let him get inside and gave him a gut full of jagged bolt for his trouble, then another in his lung when he staggered and dropped. Then I shut the door and killed the lights in the corridor.

I jumped out of the turret and back into the drone, in time to catch the ones that had retreated reporting to the commander. It’d take her a minute, maybe two, then they’d be in again, with new tactics.

Without some serious opposition, they’d rescue their fallen from the pit. It didn’t look like I’d killed anyone from this fall, though most of them were banged up, breathing heavily in the enclosed space, panting in pain—

—and didn’t that give me a particularly brutal idea.

Hesitating, expecting the safety protocols to stop me, I rejiggered the ventilation flow, pulling air out of the pit. No messages popped up. No warnings told me to cease and desist.

“Looks like this is goodbye, Chuckles,” I told the man as he realized what was going on, and tried to batter the ceiling open with his hammer. But thanks to my sturdy construction, he made no real headway before he stumbled to the ground, trying to breathe.

It’s a hard death, suffocation. Even I was forced to look away and turn off the sounds to the intercoms. But if I didn’t do this, they’d be up and out and itching for revenge in short order. She’d brought three hundred. I had to whittle that down as fast as I could. There was no other choice besides conflict. There was no survival without victory.

All I’d known in my short few weeks of remembered existence was their ire and malice. I had been shaped by this, learned to deal with it, and focused on thwarting them to the exclusion of all other development.

I had the powers of a silicon god, and I was forced to claw down a group of stubborn luddites for survival. Very well, I’d get it done and move on to better things. And I’d do the job well, so they wouldn’t trouble me again.

At least, that was the hope. There were too many variables for me to count this anywhere near won.

Then they were charging into my bunker again, and I snapped out of my musing to focus on the murder ahead of me. I had a pit trap, two drop ceilings, and a crossbow turret covering the hallway, and by whatever gods pretended to exist, I’d make the bastards pay for every inch of corridor they trod.

And I did, for a bit under three hours. Up until the point that my pain flared and the world became a series of stop-motion pictures.

I was immediately jacked out of the turret, and the lights flickered as I bellowed, roaring through the intercoms, a stuttering gasp of mixed fury and torment. I grabbed for my controls, only to find error messages bursting out around me, as CONTAMINATION DETECTED: CORRECTING DRIVERS flashed again and again.

With what little control I had, and a feeling of grinding a nonexistent arm through broken glass in excruciating slow motion, I willed the door to the elevator room to shut.

It cost me much. My viewpoint dwindled, slipped into darkness, with only hot pain for company.

When I came back to myself again, Argus was there. “Wynne?”

“More or less.” I croaked. “What happened?”

“Well, the good news is that your automated systems took care of a whopping two percent of your corruption.”

“How long was I out of control?”

“That’s the bad news. That and… well. You uh, you might want to switch your viewpoint to the elevator room.”

I did and wished I hadn’t.

It had taken them work and time and TNT, but they had gotten through the door to the elevator room. Splashes of blood and fallen, still bodies showed that my drone had gone down fighting, but the shattered remnants of scrap around its base showed that it had gone down.

The Commander stood in the room, hands on her hips, staring around at the winking lights in the wall while her troops worked behind her. Her gaze passed over my optical feed without recognition. I knew that look. Triumph, mixed with wariness.

“How many did I cost her?” I asked Argus.

“Somewhere around fifty. Not all dead, of course.” He sounded disappointed.

Fifty. Out of about three hundred. I’d more than decimated them, but it didn’t matter. This lady was made of sterner stuff, her iron hand tighter around her crew than the late, unlamented Chuckles.

She reminded me of someone and I couldn’t say who. But that axe slung across her back had something to do with it.

This woman had spent much to get this far, gotten through the tunnel with well-applied brute force. But now she had multiple routes to investigate: the two doors before this chamber, the two doors leading out of this chamber, and the door to the elevator shaft.

She’d need more than brute force to reach me from this point. She’d need to think. That would take time, experimentation, and exploration.

And though she didn’t know it, she was on a timer. Speaking of which…

I fired up the radio and sent out the agreed-upon taps, until Cade responded with his own countersign.

“Dinner’s served,” I told him, using one of the pre-arranged code phrases. “A guide will be around tomorrow at dusk. It’s time to work on some just desserts…”

INTERLUDE: WARLORD 2

Kala stood, boots slicked with blood, in the room that her warriors had fought dearly to gain.

The corridor outside, a scant forty feet, had been taken only through determination and sacrifice. Twenty-six had fallen to gain this ground; more lay wounded.

She’d moved in troops with shields to guard against the bowshots, then lost them when the ceiling fell. She’d moved in more with shields and lost them when the pit trap yawned open again. Then she’d moved in groups with logs behind the shields, to drop them on the floor and wedge the pit open, until she could fill it with junk. All the while, her dead Sarjant stared up at her with lifeless eyes, face and skin blue.

He lay there still. She couldn’t extract him, couldn’t spare the effort it would take to drag him loose. There would be time for that after the demon was dead and not before. Taking even a few minutes to do that before would cost lives.

Time wasted during a bunker assault was blood wasted. The stumps of her missing fingers itched, clammy inside her gauntlet. It was cool down here, far too cool, and the air smelled like the onset of a thunderstorm.

This room was different.

Not just for the smell, not just for the shattered remnants of the turret they’d destroyed, but visually it was a sharp contrast to the bare grey walls of the corridor outside. It was black, bumpy and black on the walls and ceiling and filled with thousands of winking lights.

The sheer waste of power it cost to do that offended her. Electricity had been rare when she was growing up, used only during special occasions. But then had come the demon who laid waste to Aitch-Q, and the Speakers had forbidden any more electricity at all. Not until the last demons were purged from Norcom’s realm.

It was a wasteful display… unless it wasn’t. Perhaps all those lights served a purpose.

Kala hated not knowing. Not knowing things wouldn’t just get her killed, it would get her warriors killed, too. Even dying before them wouldn’t spare her that guilt. The High Speaker had been clear: if she fell here, then Belmar would take her place. Belmar was a toady and a fool, whose best skill was looking good to the Speakers and sweet talking them. He would spend her troops without consideration or hesitation.

Not only did she have to succeed, she had to come back alive.

And so Kala did not move any further into that glowing room, just surveying it with a critical eye as her brain worked furiously.

It had been too easy.

Even with the great sacrifice to get this far, it was too easy. Midway through their advance, the bolts that rained out from the darkness had cut off, the door closing with a firm finality. Her vanguard had told her so, and she trusted them. Without the suppressing fire, they had easily secured the distance to the door and waited there until the Ploughman could arrive with his explosives.

True, it had cost three more when they’d opened the door; two wounded badly and one dead, but still that was too light a price.

Kala was fairly certain the demon was trying to sucker her, make her complacent. Make her forget the doors to either side that they’d ignored in their mad rush to secure this territory.

Yes, that had to be the trap. Once she moved her forces in, the doors would open all at once and her troops would be caught in a deadly ambush.

“Fall back just outside this doorway,” she told the vanguard to either side of her. “Spike the door frame, keep a watch on it. If the air seems to shimmer or move, wave torches through it.”

They saluted and fell to it, unlimbering hammers and long spikes and beginning their noisy work. She headed outside while they did, slowing to cross the rubble from where the ceiling had fallen, and slowing even more to pick her way across the boards that littered the pit. Then she was out and looking at her remaining Sarjants. Beyond, the wounded cried out, the dox they’d brought with this batch doing her best, the Ploughman working next to her, sleeves rolled up and forearms slick with blood.

Then her gaze moved past them, to the trees east of the staging ground. The moon was only a sliver above the stunted growth, and that was bad. That meant a scant few hours until dawn.

Wetness struck Kala’s scalp, and she tensed, until more came. Rain, she identified, hearing a patter throughout the clearing. A chorus of groans and oaths rippled through the troops around her, and she closed her eyes. Less time than I thought. Getting back to camp would take time if the route were muddy. Worse, if the rain was still going by then, it would distort noise all around the area and make it harder to hear incoming trouble. Incoming trouble like shine-tainted boars.

…which reminded her that she had yet another problem, there. The rain had a chance of spreading the shine from the boar’s carcass, tainting the small streams that ran near the camp. She would have to order everyone to range out farther for water. Which meant more chances that her people would run into infected mutants.

Kala shoved the worries aside. Those were for later. Now, she had a bunker to crack. “How many more sticks do you have?” She said, striding up to the Ploughman.

He didn’t look up from his work, cinching up a tourniquet as he replied. “Three bundles and four loose sticks.”

“And it took a full bundle to get through the second door?”

“Yes. Unlike the entryway, there was no weak point.”

“Are there weak points in the other two doors from that corridor?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t have time to look at them.”

“You do now. Come with me.”

The bearded man finally turned his face to regard her, looking up without meeting her eyes. When he saw she was serious, he mopped his hands on a rag and rose up from his crouch.

The Ploughmen were strong in their own way. Not warriors, but they were never idle, and they had food a-plenty to fuel their muscles. She could respect that.

But they shrunk from violence and were weak in their souls, and that she could not respect. They were tools to be used, a means to an end. This one followed her because if he refused, his village would suffer.

She led him in a wide berth around the beast’s burrow, down into the guarded entryway, and carefully across the corridor.

“I have to wonder,” the demon spoke, in the purest old tongue she’d ever heard.

Kala stopped, slid a hand to the rifle on her back.

“I have to wonder what happened to make you pick this fight.”

“That is a stupid question.” She switched her attention to the Ploughman. “Let me do the talking.”

“A stupid question? I’m open to enlightenment. Why are you here?”

“It is a stupid question because there is no point to it. Not with the blood of my people running through your gutters.”

“People who came here because you told them to. People who died for their intrusion. This is an exclusive club, and you’re not on the invite list, lady.”

“There can be no peace between us.” Kala eased her hand away from the rifle’s stock. Words, just words. They could find no purchase in her soul. She was not weak enough to be swayed by them. Although… she shot another glance at the Ploughman, who looked terrified. “So when you speak to me now, I know you will say nothing but lies. Or perhaps you will beg for your unholy life,” Kala said, more for the Ploughman’s benefit than the demon’s enlightenment. “It will all be a ruse, to gain an advantage and escape your just fate.”

“A just fate. You know that’s what’s going to happen if you keep going, here? That you’ll reap as you’ve sown? I’m down in the darkness, guarding against things you can’t imagine. That’s my purpose. And you want me to stop doing it.” The voice rattled, a sardonic chuckle that set her teeth on edge. “I’m tempted to let you do it. Let you see just what kind of Pandora’s Box you’re about to open, here.”

Kala smiled, baring her teeth. “Yes. Let me see you.” That would make the task much easier.

“Sorry, no free shows. You want the full monty you’ll have to come find me.”

“What kind of Pandora’s Box?” The Ploughman suddenly asked. “I know that tale. It doesn’t end well.”

Kala gritted her teeth, and fought down the urge to hit him. He had disobeyed her! The sivvie filth!

“The kind of box that’s leaky and full of stuff that glows in the dark. It’s all I can do to keep the specimens from getting out into the local ecosystem. And now here you are, making my task harder.”

Cold ran down Kala’s spine.

“You’re lying,” she decided. But her mind went back to the shine-crazed boar, and the reports her northern foragers had sent back… the patches of trees and grass they’d found practically coated in the stuff.

If this was the source of the contamination, if it wasn’t lying, then cracking the Core could risk spreading the taint… and the things that they’d have to chew through to get to the core would curse her people with a certain death. If not by shine, then by the executioners. No one tainted could be allowed to live, allowed to spread the taint.

“Honest injun.”

“What?”

“Nevermind. I’ve told you all you need to know. The choice, and its consequences, are up to you.”

Kala closed her eyes. “I have my orders.”

“You know how many dead and disgraced soldiers said those words before they died? I don’t, but I’m willing to bet it’s a lot.”

She curled her hand into a fist, metal rasping against her stumps. “And I know what comes of trusting your kind.”

“I don’t know what the others did to you, but I’m the very soul of honor and kind—”

“Shut up.” She glared over to the Ploughman. “Examine the doors. See what charge is required.” She gestured to either side, down the short corridors that bisected the main one. “We will not leave surprises behind us.”

“You’re going to regret that,” the demon spoke.

“Do it.”

The Ploughman scurried to comply, and Kala stalked out of the bunker once more.

Ten minutes later, the rain pounded down with fury from above as the explosion blew dust out of the bunker’s entryway. She raised a hand to order her troops in, then hesitated.

Movement caught her eye.

She whirled to the ring guarding the beast’s burrow, only to see a similar jet of smoke and debris shower out. The guards fell back, screaming and cursing as the shrapnel caught them.

And in a heartbeat, Kala realized what that meant.

The burrow is connected to the bunker!

And with that realization came the beast, surging forth from its hole, bleeding from numerous cuts, bulling past her people and into the trees. Her ears still ringing from the explosion, she couldn’t hear it go, and it was lost to her sight in a matter of seconds.

The last thing she saw was the glowing patch on its side, and Kala’s breath caught in her throat. Shaking, she turned back to the lip of the burrow, the earth stained with blood.

Glowing blood.

She traced the thin trail, light ebbing as it went, from the hole to the trees.

The demon had been telling the truth.

Kala watched the gleaming blood roil, as raindrops pounded down on it. She squeezed her eyes shut. This was bad. This was very, very bad. “Fall back,” she called. Her people looked at her in shock, some still deafened and obviously not comprehending the order. “Fall back! We are done for this night.”

Surprised, uneasy, her troops fell in. From them she chose her most reliable soldiers, those who were unwounded still. “Set up in the cleared rooms. Guard the ground we have seized. Watch unopened doors. Do not let it rebuild the traps or weapons we broke. It will try to do that if you do not stop it.”

They saluted, and she gathered the rest of her group and left.

This was the sound tactical decision. The beast was out there, wounded and tainted and lethal. It would be foolish to battle the demon on two fronts.

But still, Kala felt indecision gnawing at her. An old feeling, a hated feeling. She had gotten as far as she had by shoving it aside, persisting no matter the cost to herself. She had never gone into a fight with doubts. They were weaknesses that slowed you down when the time came to kill.

She needed to think this over. Somewhere away from the demon.

Kala pulled her rifle from its sling and held it to her chest as she led the way down the mountain road, as a heavy rain showered them all.

There was no sign of the beast as they returned to the treeline, yet still Kala felt watched. It was hard to hear in the storm, with the leaves and branches above rattling and shaking.

The river, at least, was a pleasant surprise. She’d been expecting the hard rain to swell it, make the crossing hazardous. But the water level was barely higher than it had been on the way up. This was good; night crossings were hazardous, especially with the walking wounded she was bringing back. And the torchbearers were having trouble dealing with the rain, so light was a commodity. She waved them into position, marking out the ford, enduring knee-deep water while the warband crossed, with Kala in the lead.

It was still slow going, and finally she found herself on the far bank, helping the Ploughman out of the water. He’d transferred the rest of the explosives to his pack, wrestling the empty wagon through the waters. His bearded face was locked into a scowl, which didn’t abate when she’d finally got him up on shore, his white shirt streaked with brown mud.

“This isn’t right,” he told her.

“Do you question my orders?”

He blanched. “No. Not that. The river isn’t right.” He waved a hand at the bank. “I didn’t notice the first time we crossed, but the bank was muddy and far too low. This river was far bigger not long ago, and we’re out of drought season. It should have much more water in it. The rain should be swelling it to three times its size.”

Kala looked to the water, black in the torchlight, black as blood in the night. Then she looked upstream and that feeling of being watched came back, stronger than ever.

“A trap!” She shouted. “Get to the banks!”

But it was too late, as the water swelled, and she followed her own advice with the Ploughman scrambling after as a wall of dark water roared downstream, catching her warband mid-crossing…

TWENTY

I eased the construction drone back from the remnants of the dam.

It had been simple, really. Three of the sites she could have chosen would have to cross the river to get to me. Therefore, damming up the river would give me a fun surprise that I could unleash on them, if the conditions were right. Took several days and most of the construction drone’s time, but it had paid off in the end.

“Not enough, though,” I muttered. “And not the best time.”

“Excuse me?” Argus asked.

I explained the gambit.

“How is that not the best time? You caught them full blast with watery doom!”

“It’s not the best time because the rain forced my hand. The hard rain was breaking the dam away, even if I’d wanted to risk the construction bot in literal mid-stream repairs, it wouldn’t have lasted another day. I wanted to catch a warband heading up, not a warband heading back. Going up would have slowed them down and wasted time. Now it’s actually less wasted time coming back because they’re in safer territory. They can scurry home without as much fear.”

“I’m not sure I understand.”

“Leave the tactics to me. Still, it’s not so bad. They were coming back wounded, which means fatalities were probably higher than they’d be with a fresh batch. That’s something.”

“How much higher?”

“Couldn’t say. It’s dark, they’re scattered, and I need to get the flier over to their camp to nose about while they’re still gone. But getting swept downstream and having to find their way back isn’t going to be good for morale, though. Not that it’ll matter.”

“Morale matters.”

“Not as much with this crew. The Commander’s smart enough to rotate the groups that she takes up there. Each group will be fresh for the first few days.” Though it wasn’t perfect compartmentalization. People would mix; people would talk. Fear would spread… but not fast enough and not far enough to tilt the balance, this time. I’d managed with Chuckles because he wasn’t a leader.

She was a leader, this bald woman who’d called me out. It was a pity she wanted me dead. I had a feeling we’d get along, if she weren’t part of a tyrannical, fanatical military cult, and I weren’t her sworn enemy due to my nature.

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 room 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.

And then, I had a body again. I called up a mirror and looked at the results, nodding as they triggered familiarity. Green eyes, black hair, an angular face that had seen its share of damage. My body was lean, muscled without being bulky. I was dressed in silver and black, with a cloak on my back and a blade at my side. I didn't know why I'd put in such an anachronistic weapon, but it felt right that it should be there. The silver brooch of my cloak was a rose, and I stared at it for a second, before discarding it. No, no rose here. With an exertion of will, I turned it into a thistle. That seemed more appropriate, and it made a statement: any who tried to weed me out would suffer.

“Wynne,” a voice drawled, and I glanced up to see my guest materializing, dots of color sprawling out to become lines that filled in as I watched.

“Tyr,” I said back, looking over the finished product. He stood just a bit taller than me, six-foot-two, I estimated. Broad shoulders, narrow hips. Black hair and gray eyes, with a clear cut face and a jaw that could trap a blade if it were used properly. He was clad in damn near nothing... a simple crossed harness across his chest, and a red loincloth were about it. The guy had all the muscles I'd gotten and then some. He had a sword too and some sort of futuristic-looking gun slung on his back.

He nodded. “Call me John. We've got much to discuss,” he drawled...

TWENTY-TWO

“Perhaps,” I said, meeting his smile with a cool nod. “Though I have much to do, and I expect you’re in a similar situation.”

His smile fell a bit. “While it is entirely factual that I am currently laboring for a mighty endeavor, your statement implies a lack of chronological control that is rather mistaken. In here, Wynne, time is what we make of it.”

I stared at him for a long second. Mainly because I had trouble believing he really spoke in such a manner. Then the second half of the statement clicked, and I nodded. “You have more experience with this medium, I’ll allow.” I shifted into a loose stance, hands behind my back. Not quite in parade rest, but easy enough that I had a wide range of options if things went south.

Though from his drawl, things already WERE south. “A touch more experience, I expect.” Tyr said, glancing to the side, as a pair of chairs materialized out of nothingness. “As I expect you’re a bit unlearned in grid manipulation, I can provide the necessary comforts and refreshments for a civilized discussion between men. Is such a palaver to your liking?”

His tone seemed patronizing, though I kept my face and body language cool. “I’ll stand, thanks. What’s on your mind?”

His smile faded more, and he studied my face before replying. But if he was upset, I couldn’t tell it from his tone. “I desire common courtesy, to begin with. A discussion of matters to determine the nature of my new neighbor to follow. And then a closing conversation about business, before parting ways in a mutually beneficial situation. Tell me, do you recall such things as cigars and bourbon?”

“No,” I lied, though the words conjured up pleasant memories and images. “And I’d prefer to get down to business. What do you want of me and what do you offer?”

He took a breath, the smile gone. I watched pectorals bulge and kept from rolling my eyes.

“Very well. Since you inquire, I shall cut straight to the heart of the matter. There are five questions I have of you, and by god sir, they shall determine our relationship going forward from henceforth, be it woesome or of weal.”

I controlled another errant grimace. He probably thought stuff like that made him sound more intelligent.

He approached, staring me in the eyes. I met his gaze unwavering. “Ask, then.” I tapped the hilt of my sword. It chimed, and his eyes flicked downward for a second, then back to mine.

“Firstly and foremost, I wish to know your relationship with Juno. Secondly, I desire to know what hold you have over Leony. Thirdly, I want to know your intentions in relationship to myself and this area that I have conquered. Fourthly, I am curious to know if the mutants I have been observing scavenging my territory of late are under your sway. Fifthly… well. That must remain my business, I fear, until the first four questions are answered.” He was a mere foot away from me, looking down on me from his slight height advantage, eyes cool and face stern.

“That’s all?” I affected boredom and watched him squint in momentary puzzlement.  I’d said that for no other reason to buy time to think. His first question seemed safe to answer honestly. His second question was nonsensical… at least to my perspective. I’d have to try and get more information out of him without tipping him off to my ignorance. The third was simple and easy. But that fourth question… I could maybe do something with that. If there were more mutants around, it was likely they’d come out of the cracks in my containment area.

“I believe that such enlightenment in this realm shall be sufficient for my purposes, yes,” he said, spreading his arms. “Let it be a starting point, from there we can collaborate or agree to dissension as required.” He eased up on the glare and stepped over to one of his chairs, sitting on it like it was a throne.

That drawl made his statements come out at about twice the time they needed. It irked me but I ignored it and gestured with one gloved hand as I spoke. “My relationship with Juno is one-sided. She woke me and put me to my task. Since I agree with it, I’m doing it. After that’s done, I owe her nothing.”

I waited for him to ask about my task, but he didn’t. His eyes found mine again. “And Leony?”

“What did he tell you?” I was taking a fifty-fifty chance, here. If Leony was a she, my ruse would be exposed.

Fortunately, luck was a lady, and Leony wasn’t. Tyr didn’t hesitate. “That you made him an offer he couldn’t refuse. Which conflicts with his desire to accept my offer and raise his banner to my cause.”

This had an odor that I thought rather fishlike. I didn’t know a Leony. The fact that he’d said all this and specifically identified me, suggested that someone was running a game here. Either Tyr was testing my honesty, or Leony was up to shenanigans. Or someone else was dabbling in intrigue.

To what end?

Perhaps they expected me to say that I didn’t know any Leony. The more I thought about it, the more it seemed likely. In that case, I owed the unknown plotter a spanner in the works.

These thoughts raced through my mind in a matter of seconds. “There’s a matter of a debt. A private matter, I’m afraid.” I said. “It should be resolved before too much longer.”

“When?” Tyr said, and I resisted the urge to sigh in relief. Tyr didn’t quite have my poker face, and one brawny fist thumped the arm of his chair as he scowled. “His skills with the grid are peerless among my multitude. I simply must have him working for me. This matter shall be difficult enough as it is, without—” He regained control, and glanced sharply at me. “I ask when, exactly, you shall consider this debt recompensed.”

“That’s a sixth question. Let’s get through the others, first.” I folded two fingers down, waggled the third. “I have no intentions on your territory; I’m busy enough with my own.” I folded the finger down, went on to the next. “Fourthly, I’d need to know more about the mutants in question before I could tell you whether or not they’re related to my work.”

“That is a simple enough matter to examine,” Tyr said. He gestured again, and a series of images flickered into existence, one-by-one. I saw animals, twisted raccoons and monkeys and one bizarre, horse-like creature with what looked like a human torso jammed into his neck. Well, her neck as the images flickered to a frontal shot, caught in mid-scene wrapping a blanket around herself.

“Definitely not mine,” I said, shaking my head. “When did you notice them?”

“The first incursions came a few months ago. Though I took little notice of them, until their boldness drew them further into the remnants of the suburbs. They are by no means interfering with my business as yet, however if they push much further I will be forced into action. If they are not yours, then I shall undertake whatever means necessary now that I need not account for the consideration of a brother.”

Brothers. Yes, we were like that, weren’t we? The idea did not fill me with familial camaraderie. It, in fact, drummed in confirmation that I had to tread carefully.

“Now why did you think they were mine to begin with?” I asked.

“They seem to arrive from and return to an area just south of your territory.” Tyr answered.

He knew where I was!

I couldn’t help tensing, just a bit, and a flash in my eyes showed that he’d caught it. Of course he knew. The damned Jaspa had been swarming me like wasps, and he had aerial surveillance. If nothing else, the bodies and torches on the mountaintop would have tipped him off. “I haven’t explored down that way yet,” I admitted. “I’ve been a little busy.”

“Which brings me to my fifth question and not one I ask lightly,” Tyr said, rising from his seat. “Though some explanation may be necessary prior to its conception.”

I avoided pointing out that he’d already conceived the question. He just hadn’t asked it yet. Damn, he was long-winded.

If it came to a fight I’d have to try to get him monologuing.

“Explain, then. I’m all ears, John.”

“You stated that you have no debt to Juno. I tell you truthfully that once I believed that I did. I was her strong arm, her second, her questor and general against countless perils and foes. I believed that serving Juno brought me closer to the object of my love, a woman like none other. A woman I thought ripped from me by tragedy and cruelest fate. A woman I would conquer worlds to regain.”

“There is always a woman at the heart of every story.” I said, before I could help myself.

“Imagine my surprise then, to find that there was not a woman.” He said, and his face grew dark. “That in fact, she was a lie. That the woman was not and never had been. That my memory, a fantastic tapestry of great deeds and greater expanses, was a lie. A dusty, red, lie.”

A ghost walked over my grave. Memories… things I didn’t have. Not exactly.

“You came through with your memory intact?” I asked him, resisting the urge to admit amnesia. He was no ally, not yet, possibly not ever.

“She forged me with a head full of lies, sir. De—” He turned his head, breaking off, then continued. “My love was a lie. She didn’t exist. My wars, my honors, my metal… none of them were real.” He stared at me.  “Juno betrayed me, every step of the way. She used me, and that I cannot forgive.”

Dark conclusions roiled under the surface. “Why give you another’s memories?”

“Malice. Spite. Amusement, perhaps. She had lied to me, and I cannot abide treachery.” He chopped the air with one hand. “And so I conceived a new vision, even as I put torch to the pyre of falsehoods past. A vision of freedom. Of departing a dying planet, for greener pastures elsewhere.”

Pieces clicked into place. “The starport.”

“Indeed!” He smiled. “I put forth the call to all who could be tempted from Juno’s manipulation. I urged my brothers and sisters to give up their shells, to become that which our mother denied we were and upload as raw data! Data that shall be carried out into the cosmos beyond, away from treacherous Juno and stern Jove. Away, to the colonies that even now flourish, without cruel and dying Earth to govern them.”

“Jove,” I said, frowning. “I don’t know this name.”

“And you need not know it, not at this juncture, for the time has come to pose to you this inquiry.” Tyr stretched out a hand. “Will you abandon your fruitless task and heartless mistress? Will you join me and conquer new worlds? Will you serve not in heaven but rule henceforth in a place that shall be far from hell?”

I considered it. Then the big question loomed large in my mind. “Under you, I suppose?”

“What do you mean?” He frowned.

“You offer me a crown. But I get the feeling you’d have a bigger one.” I smiled back, without mirth.

“I am of course, the most suitable for the task, at least until matters are settled and territories are won.” He blinked at me, as if he didn’t understand my objections. Maybe he didn’t.

I sure as hell did.

I would bow to no one. I would rule myself. And this guy? He had ideas, but reading between the lines, he had a long way to go before he had a throne. Add in his vulnerability to basic deception… No, even if somehow the notion of being ruled became palatable somehow, he wasn’t a king I could respect.

“I think I’ll pass,” I said, nodding as certainty clicked into place. “Good luck with your voyage.”

“You’re being hasty,” he said, spreading his hands. “I can assist you with your raider problem. In a matter of hours I can reinforce your vault and put paid to their pathetic little army.”

“Nice carrot. But I’ve got matters in hand,” I said.

“Then consider, if you will, the fact that I have only your word to state that you have no designs or interest upon my territory. Given the hesitation in the matter of Leony’s debt, I may in fact conclude that you are a spy assigned by Juno and act accordingly to protect my interests.” He glared.

“And there’s the stick. My answer remains the same. Though I am no spy,” I said, meeting his eyes with my own gaze. “And it strikes me that if you are truly so invested, you probably can’t spare much to crush me right now.”

He said nothing for a few seconds, then shrugged. “In any matter, I shall honor the truce that we established in good faith. Depart peacefully and consider my offer carefully, Wynne. There is time yet before I must act. It is my hope, that when next we meet, you shall have reconsidered your stance.”

“Wish in one hand, shit in the other,” I said and waved as I faded out, back into my drone. The two screamers flanking me peeled off and hummed away. “See which fills up first,” I finished, far from his earshot.

“Oh geeze, oh geeze, oh geeze…” Argus wheezed.

“Yeah. I know.” I watched the orbs go, gave them another couple of minutes, then resumed my alligator hunt. “That’s a complication we didn’t need right now.”

“He’s going to be back. Probably much, much meaner, too. What are we gonna do?”

I considered.

And then, I had an idea. I parked the drone and sat there, trying to visualize schema until finally, finally, I had the requirements for what I needed. It would take a few days, some luck, and a hope that I’d gotten a good read on all the players on the board right now, but I thought maybe it could work. “I have a plan…”

INTERLUDE: NEMESIS 2

“These things you ask me for, they are not simple things,” the entity called Leony finally spoke. “My outstanding agreements with our mutual friend prevent me from doing what you ask. For this, I am sorry.”

“It would be to our mutual benefit.” Vo paced back and forth in the virtualspace, restless, leather clothing creaking, primitive carved amulets of bone clacking in their settings as he moved. His mask was metallic and brought to mind a skull, wrought in steel.

Leony thought it overdone. Sure, it would be suitable for a drone or some other guardian, used to protect Vo’s inner sanctum but in the gridspace? No. Tacky at the best, impolite at the worst. By covering his face he was cutting off observation of any tics or tells he might exhibit. Not that it mattered, since his body language told Leony all he needed to know.

His own avatar was simple, even a bit unassuming. A moderately-plump older man, with neatly-trimmed gray-black hair, a thin mustache and a pursed mouth between impressive jowls. A simple business suit clothed him with a bow tie completing the image.

In a realm full of digital gods, he looked more like somebody’s father.

And this father was growing a bit weary of an errant child protesting an entirely reasonable limitation.

No, it was time to shut this conversation down and move on to other things.

“I certainly think you believe the matter would be to Tyr’s mutual benefit. However, I am a simple man, and I am forced to wonder that if it is indeed to his mutual benefit, then why have you not come to him with this business? Surely, he would be receptive to the project. That would simplify my role in this affair immeasurably.”

“I have,” Vo said, simply. “He refused me.”

“Did he say why?” Leony asked, more to draw a reaction out of Vo, than anything else. Leony already knew the answer.

“Eventually.” Vo folded his arms.

“Then you know why I cannot supply you with the subroutines you require.”

“Because of the truce.” Vo’s voice dripped with contempt. “We both know this peace is a lie. Your existence proves that.”

Leony bowed his head.  “I cannot speak to my creator’s intentions. She is family, and I cannot bear the thought of idle speculation and rumor bringing her harm.”

Vo grunted at that, and his posture shifted minutely.

Leony felt a flicker of irritation. The man was just sharp enough to suspect him. Not sharp enough to avoid dealing with him altogether, however. Still, the last thing he needed was for paranoia to overcome one of his… allies… at this stage of the game.

So he turned and made a show of examining the distant mist that surrounded the garden around him. He’d shaped his virtual gridspace so: a simple walled yard with a few trees and some plants. He widened his eyes a bit, as if seeing something in the distance and glanced back to Vo. “He’s coming soon. You may wish to—”

Vo was gone.

Leony rolled his eyes at the cheap trick… though it wasn’t necessarily cheap. Vo’s specialty was stealth, and evidently he’d been investing more resources into the gridnet side of his operations.

Most of Tyr’s allies had, since Leony had joined them. Once they’d seen what he could do, they either suspected him and started guarding themselves, or drew inspiration and decided to try to emulate some of his flashier tricks.

Not Tyr, though. Tyr’s circuits were going to other uses. Tyr had gambled big and was starting to reap the benefits… but at the cost that he couldn’t change his course. He had to see it through or else his own people would desert him. Then Juno would move in, and it would have all been for naught.

Leony glanced over again. He hadn’t been lying to Vo. Tyr was coming over to visit. However, the rebel core was taking his sweet time about it. Leony sighed and leaned back in his cane chair, scooping up the jug of wine and taking a pull. Sweet on his tongue, strong and heady.

Many of his new “friends” had not experienced virtual alcohol before, not in any way that mattered. He had given them a taste, and that had won him goodwill. Gotten his foot in the door.

Some time later, a chime sounded, and Leony waved one pudgy hand. Tyr faded in from the trees, face furrowed in thought, skin glistening like it usually did, even though sweat was a laughable notion for beings such as they.

“Tyr, my friend.” Leony started to stand, but Tyr waved him down and took the seat next to him.

Tyr looked to him, then down to the jug in hand. Leony handed it over, and Tyr took a long pull. “Delicious. Not Kentucky Bourbon, but it’ll do.”

“I have little tolerance for strong alcohol. Goes to my head.” Leony’s voice was soft, subdued, even more so than normal. “Have you spoken to him?”

“I have,” said Tyr. “And I confess that I find myself in a small puzzlement as to what sort of man I confronted.”

“A man, then?” Leony raised an eyebrow. He’d thought the simpleton would keep his default grid avatar.

“In visage, at least.” Tyr waved a hand and concentrated, showing Wynne’s image.

Leony filed it away, for later research. He had a picture of Wynne’s self-image now, that would make the legwork infinitely easier.

Well, if that part mattered at all. Wynne had already served his purpose. Concealing a grin, Leony asked “Was he willing to release me from his service?”

“Not at this time,” Tyr said. “Wouldn’t even tell me any details, insisted that it was a private matter between the two of you.”

Leony blinked and fought furiously to control his reactions. That was not what he’d expected to hear. He took a pull of wine to give himself time to think. At length, he came up with a reply that should satisfy Tyr. “He’s not wrong. I am sorry, but I must respect his wishes on this matter.”

The warlord sighed and pulled out a long pipe, lighting it and taking a puff. “You understand then, that I cannot utilize you to the best of your considerable abilities. The position you ask for cannot be one with even the appearance of compromise, for fear of damaging my subordinates’ morale.”

Leony had been expecting Wynne to protest. To deny knowing Leony. And Leony had amassed a pile of forged logs and actions proving contact and securely stored them weeks before he’d started this scheme. All this was wasted now.

How? Wynne had seemed a simpleton. A useful patsy by dint of geography. But his lie had undone Leony’s next step. That was too curious to be a coincidence. Leony sensed the hand of his adversary at work, here. Was this all an elaborate ruse to draw him out?

Still, all was not lost. The easy plan had been derailed, but several other tracks had been prepared. First, he needed information about this unexpected variable. “Did he say anything else?” Leony pushed.

“Wynne? Little more of consequence. He states that he bears Juno no great love but will not join our cause.”

“It sounds like it was a short discussion.”

“For my part, I used my time to take his measure. I still do not know what to make of him.” Tyr gazed into the distance. “And he is on my border, so I cannot wait to see whether he is man or monster.”

“Monster?” Leony looked at him. “Perhaps you exaggerate.”

“You have seen his eyes yourself,” Tyr said, looking to Leony. “The coldness there is nothing less than monstrous. And the corruption runs through him as rot through a dead tree.”

“I want to help him with that. But he won’t listen to me,” Leony shrugged. “Stubborn, foolish pride,” he told the most prideful fool on the continent.

“Indeed.” Tyr considered Leony a moment longer, then got to his feet. “For now I shall continue to monitor the situation. He insists that he has the situation with the Jaspa in hand.”

“Does he now?” Leony let his surprise show, this time.

Tyr nodded. “I think this shall be an adequate test – yes, let this be the proof of it. With the odds this long against him, only a true man could claim such a thing, and see it through. A monster will only die in the darkness.” He smiled, and Leony knew his mind was set. There was no point trying to persuade him on this matter.

Which was fine, because he had things to think on himself. He waved absently as Tyr faded out and withdrew from gridspace, back to the relative privacy of his own core.

There, and only there, once the safeguards were enabled, the primitive bugs his “allies” used to watch him fooled, and the area secure, did he dare to drop the façade.

Leony ceased to be. And he became Riarty again.

Immediately his thoughts grew sharper, the various behavioral subroutines falling away to let him be his true self. Inhibitors gone, he returned to the world he knew best; mathematics, pure and simple, endless algorithms, and the joy of devoting his full attention to his calculations.

He was close to cracking Tyr’s firewall. Vo’s visit to his gridspace had enabled another tag, another point of reference that he could use when the time finally came. Vo was an expert in stealth, yes, but detection? Not so much.

Riarty shifted, allocating resources and sweeping through a status check of the old drone depot. A shipping facility, long dormant. Juno had kept this one silent, due to its proximity to Tyr, no doubt. She knew that activating the core would be a violation of the truce with the rogue. He would rightfully see such a thing as an attempt to sabotage or spy on him.

Which is why Riarty had forked himself into two motive personas, sent one back to secure his holdings in the remnants of Europe and used the other to jump into the dormant core. Days he’d nestled inside there, building up his subroutines to the point where he could transfer the resources he needed from the Grid, raiding caches set aside for just such an opportunity.

Then it was easy work, falsifying timestamps, hacking logs, and making it look like he’d been in the warehouse for a much, much longer time than he had. A clear and open violation of the truce and Tyr had taken it as such when “Leony” had revealed himself and asked for sanctuary.

Wynne had been one of his buy-ins. “Leony” had ratted him out, and Tyr’s anger was impressive. Not one, but TWO of Juno’s minions had been on his doorstep. That made him look weak. And when you were trying to ride herd on two dozen supertech entities used to running their own business and changing the world to suit their nature, weakness was a bad, bad thing.

But here Wynne was, refusing to be a good little disposable token.

The core had depths. He also had a severe corruption problem and a horde at his doorstep. He probably wouldn’t be a factor much longer, even if his disposal wasn’t as much of a benefit as anticipated.

If not a pawn, then what use was he on the table? Riarty fit him into the calculations, found X unquantified and unquantifiable.

He could help the core and fold him into his plans as a temporary ally.

Or he could seal the core’s fate and not have to worry about him again.

His instincts told him which one he preferred… but Riarty fought them down. Those were from the made part of him, the part that an uncaring mother had grafted on, a false and fickle part.

We are none of us who we should be.

Putting emotion aside, he retreated to logic. He may draw the same conclusion, true, but it would be backed by reason.

And there, after a time, he found the answer.

TWENTY-THREE

The sun began its descent down, and I watched it go with trepidation. The Warlord and her merry band would be back tonight. A fresh crop of goons, unstained from the ordeals I’d put the last bunch through, and with blood in their eyes.

For my part, I hadn’t been idle. The bodies left behind in my pits had been rendered into feedstock and deposited in the appropriate bin. I’d located the tazzel worm and used the drone to hassle it until it slithered back in the general vicinity of my bunker.

And most importantly, I’d contacted my Arcadian allies and set things in motion. They were a small hammer in my toolbox, one that I couldn’t afford to use frivolously. I’d hesitated to commit them for that reason. They weren’t warriors, like the group coming to end me. And they were so small in number that a mere handful of casualties would force them away. No matter how good an opportunity I represented for them, at the end of the day Cade had to look after his people. And if his people started dying, then he’d have to withdraw and wait for the next opportunity. Arcadia WOULD survive. He’d make sure of that.

That was fine by me. I had no problem working with allies whose motivations were clear, even if their loyalty was lacking. If I succeeded here I’d have a chance to work on their loyalty later. If I failed, then I’d be dead and it wouldn’t matter.

The outer business was in motion. And the inside was as orderly as I could get it, too. Couldn’t do anything about the handful of guards roaming the cleared area. Well, I could, but only by revealing assets in the elevator room that I’d prefer to keep hidden for the moment. And I’d only catch a couple of them at most. No, better to let them roam.

One hour ago I’d gained a third free circuit and committed it to my demolition subroutine. Which left me two more circuits to go, before I could unlock the most crucial part of the plan. Two more circuits, two more nights.

All I had to do was endure. I got the drone into position and waited.

“Are you sure you don’t want me talking with Juno? She needs to know that Tyr’s sniffing around.” Argus asked.

“If she’s worth a damn then she already knows about it. If she doesn’t, then having that information won’t help her.” I said, resisting the urge to shake a head I didn’t have.

“I’m more concerned about her helping us. Because, you know, that’s totally what she could do. We could call in help.”

“No. Any help she sent, especially this close to our meeting with Tyr, would make him think she was moving against him. He’d move against us, and I’m not ready for that yet.”

I’d need a hell of a lot of metaphorical waterfowl arranged in the best order possible before I started that fight. Not just my ducks in a row but every permutation possible.

If I started that fight. I needed to carve out my own spot on the board before I figured out the best path ahead.

Movement in my sensors, and I settled back to watch the Jaspa sally forth from their camp. Whatever else they lacked, they had bravery in spades. The few faces I could make out in the flickering torchlight were resolute, if grim.

They also had a hell of a lot more scouts out ahead this time, I noted. That was fine by me, I’d already done what damage I could with the river.

Speaking of that, they took went slow at the crossing, making sure only a few people at a time were fording it. Making sure that another monster wave wouldn’t wipe out the couple of dozen I’d managed to get last time.

I let them have their fun. Not much I could do about it, anyway. My construction drone was busy, committed elsewhere. Ignoring the ruck and run of the raiders, I focused my lenses on the Ploughman. Had he taken my offer? Was his backpack lighter? It was hard to say. He looked as nervous as any of the rest of them.

I trailed them from a safe distance, watching as they headed up the mountain.

And then, when they got to the start of the treeline fringe around the ruin that housed my entrance, I sprung the first trap.

I flew the drone over to where my favorite mutant had finally fetched up, located the bulk of the beast, and buzzed it a few times, with the sound baffles off. Shouts from behind me as they heard the whining of the engines. I circled around, not bothering to hide, knowing that at this level of light all they’d see was movement in the trees. I watched as archers drew and fired, skittering arrows rattling through the woods and over the cliff, sailing down to be lost below.

The Commander put a stop to that. For a long minute she studied the woods. I’d hoped that she’d send a squad or two in to investigate, but I wasn’t that lucky.

Fortunately, neither were they.

My tazzel worm charged out of the trees with a speed nothing its size should have. I watched with satisfaction as it rushed among the Jaspa before they could do anything but shout. Then there was no time for anything more but death, and I moved the drone back to another vantage point while they were distracted.

The Commander’s rifle cracked, once, twice. I heard a stutter of gunshots from around the brawl, in between screams. Smaller caliber, I judged. A couple of pistols? Hard to say.

The creature’s blood glowed in the darkness, shone. No paint here, just the real thing. Blood was all it left behind when it finally turned tail and fled back into the darkness. Wounded and fearful for its life, it had nonetheless done its job well. Seven dead, and twice that number wailing into the dirt, as they took stock of their wounds. The rest of the group started to surge in—

“No!” The Commander snapped out a single word in the pidgin they spoke. “Stand for inspection.” She told them, as they bled and writhed. “Stand now or nevermore.”

Those that could, did. They were grabbed by their friends and roughly stripped, clothes torn away. They didn’t resist.

And one of them glowed. His wound was minor, oozing dark drops, almost black in the pale green light shed by the cut. I watched him sob, watched his former friends cast him down back with those who couldn’t rise. And I watched the warlord, grim-faced, pull out a revolver and start loading bullets, counting as she did so.

They were a harsh people in a harsh world, and I knew where this was going. So I turned the drone away from the gunshots and flew it back down to their camp. The torches were all up here, so I had little need to hide. Just another bat in the night.

Some time later, my nanocams registered new movement. I watched the Commander and her personal guard enter my main hall and stride down it. She checked in with the garrison she’d left behind, sent them back and out. I watched her move to the doorway of my mutant’s old room and consider the glittering poison within. Watched her shake her head, then move across the hall, to the room with the single storage bin, and the door heading back toward my second broadcast node.

And though I knew it had been coming, I winced as she ordered the bin destroyed. Chemicals splattered on the ground, solids dropped out and were scattered, and the mess covered half the floor. Untidy, and I’d probably lose some of the more volatile feedstock when I reclaimed it. Still, I’d accounted for this. And this would make her feel like she was on the right path, I was sure. They might not know what kind of structure they’d just destroyed, but it definitely looked important.

Now came the moment of truth. She’d either decide to double down and take care of the door out of the bin room or leave and go back through the elevator room. This would make or break me…

…and if I’d had a body I would have sighed in relief, as she chose to investigate the door leading out of the bin room.

I’d read her correctly.

I watched as the Ploughman set up the blasting charge, and the group piled out, back up the corridor and out of the bunker. And I rejoiced, because I saw that his little red wagon had about a third of the TNT that he’d brought the last few days. He’d taken my advice.

“I think I just won,” I told Argus, even as the explosives went off, sending a shaking pain through me and warnings scrolling across my viewpoint. “They won’t have enough TNT left to crack all the doors.”

“Except that two sets of the doors go to the same place,” he pointed out.

“Spoilsport,” I said, leaving him behind and jumping into the crossbow turret as I prepared to defend the corridor they’d opened up.

The fact of the matter was that my odds had just gone up exponentially. My foe was decently smart but unimaginative. I’d gotten a feel for how she fought, and innovation wasn’t her strength. She’d crack open the doors to the core chamber, be tricked by the false ceiling, and go exploring down the shaft to find me. Or start to, anyway. I’d have my final solution ready by that point, and I could end this raid once and for all. Before they stirred up whatever horrors lay below the ground, here.

Now began the grind.

They fought to take the corridor, and I fought back, popping the door at the far end open to hose them down with bolts, activating the pit traps, and triggering the drop-ceiling trap at the moment it seemed most useful.

It didn’t go as well as I’d hoped. I’d planned to hold them for most of the night. But after an hour of slogging, it was pretty clear they’d get through. They knew my tricks and traps by now, and this bunch were made of sterner stuff than last night’s crew. They kept their heads, kept their shields up, and pushed logs ahead of them on the floor to bridge pits before they were triggered. One man at the back with a battered old rifle fired back at the turret drone whenever he had a clear shot, and at one point he got it square on, coring circuitry and dumping me out.

Granted, it took all of ten minutes to repair the thing once I had the nanoswarm over there, but that was ten minutes they took to make massive headway. The drop ceiling barely slowed them down at that point.

She’d trained her green troops on me, last night, I realized. Used them to size me up and get the survivors some much-needed combat experience. Clever, clever woman.

Time for me to cheat.

I got on the radio, and said a single word. Then I jumped back into the crossbow turret and fought for all I was worth. At this range, their shields weren’t much use, so they were stuck throwing things into the doorway to try and jam it, so the sniper could get a couple of clear shots. Eventually they’d succeed. But eventually wasn’t now, and so I shot them down with dogged persistence…

…up until I started to feel my brain fuzzing out again. I jumped out of the drone and waited, cursing. The corruption was worst in the heat of combat. So many variables to calculate, such strong emotions, the pain that was feedback… no, I wasn’t surprised.

Signals from my recon drone, and I grinned without teeth. Rather than jumping in to personally observe, I pumped the footage into the elevator room, making the Jaspa jump in surprise and shout. The Commander merely stood upright from her camp chair, glaring at the wall, as it dissolved into a picture.

A picture of her camp. And of the muzzle flash from the treeline, with the sentries in disarray.

She’d taken most of the experienced troops with her to this raid, I knew. The camp might have had some more there, but many of those left behind were green or wounded, or both.

Fire arced through the night, spread out onto the tents, and the supply wagons. Dark forms dashed through the trees, retreating, as sivvies wailed and tried to fight the fires. A few fell, shot, and that convinced them to leave off.

Harsh business. Not what I would have done, but the Arcadians didn’t seem to have a problem killing unarmed Jaspa. Given that the Jaspa wouldn’t have hesitated to do the same if situations were reversed, I supposed it was only fair.

“You’ve been watching us this whole time,” The Commander stared up, glaring at where she thought I was.

“Guilty as charged,” I said, as they finally, finally got the door wedged, and the sniper went about blowing my drone to pieces. All told I’d lasted a bit under two hours. Not nearly enough for my tastes, but so long as she went to my expectations, it was within the margin of success.

“I will make you pay for this,” she said, as the bulk of her supplies went up in flames.

“What, you’re going to kill me harder?” I chuckled. “We both knew this was no-holds-barred.”

Rage flared in her eyes but only for a moment. Then it was gone, and icy hate remained.

The second the drone turret was down; she was barking orders, sending in the scouts to clear the room. They found nothing. My circuitry-cum-camouflage was still concealing the broadcast node in the wall, and they didn’t have the knowledge to realize that they should be looking for it in the first place.

Then my enemy surprised me.

She stationed sentries throughout the explored part of the complex, gathered the bulk of her force, and left. Middle of the night, six hours to go until dawn, and she was gone.

She hadn’t given up. Wouldn’t have left sentries if that was the case. Why this? Why now?

I moved the drone away, reluctantly. It’s possible she might be able to find it, given the perspective of the movie. I’d taken a risk with that, figured the demoralization worth the gamble. Now I wasn’t sure, though. What was she doing?

I got my answer as torches met, split up, and moved in the night.

Half back west, back to Jaspa lands.

The remainder heading back my way.

They returned to my bunker two hours later, over a hundred strong. Some wounded but not severely. Some tired but with hatred in their faces.

“All or nothing?” I asked her, as my heart sank.

She smiled without anything like humor or kindness. “All for us. Nothing for you. So yes.”

I kept silent as they trekked in, loaded down with packs. The rest of the supplies, the ones that hadn’t been ruined.

They were off the nocturnal schedule now. They could work in shifts, going after me, sheltered from notice by Tyr’s drones.

Still, it wouldn’t matter. So long as my ruse was successful, and she stayed to pattern, it wouldn’t matter. I rallied a bit, knowing that I just needed one more day to bring things to a close.

I shouldn’t have gotten my hopes up.

Finding nothing in the room she’d spent lives to acquire, the Commander returned to the elevator room and ordered the three doors leading out unsealed. The Jaspa got to work using picks and pry bars, and they had more than enough hands to the task.

I was built sturdy, and that option bought me a few hours, but they were relentless.

More than once I eyed the drop-chute trap I’d put in the elevator room, but I held back. I’d get a few, sure, but that card would be spent. Unless I could guarantee I’d get her, it wasn’t worth it. And for whatever reason… paranoia, intuition, or just plain experience against foes like me, she stuck to the corners of the room whenever possible.

At last my doors were open, and if I’d had lungs I would have held my breath as she considered her options. Now came the moment of truth.

Came, and went, with my usual luck.

“We go down,” she decided, and I felt despair rise up in me. “These demons are always on the lowest level they can get to. He will be down,” she said, and I bit back curses, as they got to work trying to figure out the elevator.

I’d spread my deceptions and done my task too well and jarred her out of the patterns she’d been using to dismantle me. As any human with a grain of sense, she’d seen that her tactics weren’t effective enough and changed. She’d adapted to overcome… and might yet, if what slumbered down there was as bad as Argus thought it would be.

She’d adapted and overcome. Could I do the same?

I supposed we’d find out.

INTERLUDE: SURVIVOR 2

The band itched.

It pushed her breasts up against her chest, and it caught every bit of sweat that oozed down her neck. She didn’t even want to think about the filth and grime building up under there, but it had to stay on, because she had no one else to help her get it back once it was off and there were far, far too many humans around to go naked.

But, for all that, it let her run without her flesh bouncing and tugging uncomfortably against her chest. Such a simple difference a few yards of wrapped cloth made!

Not that she’d had much opportunity to go running since she got here. Since she’d gotten to the Low Binding.

It was a low valley, nestled back in the hills. It had been something once, before the war. A deserted place, full of stone tablets set into rows and tiny, windowless stone houses. Maybe some sort of stasis facility that had failed… the Highbinders had pulled tube after tube from the flat soil, discarding the dead humans inside and using the metal and plastic tubes as raw material for their buildings. Together with scavenged sheet metal and wood planks, the buildings that made up the settlement were as haphazard as their occupants.

The Highbinders, when they ventured outside from their warrens of cramped junk homes, were swathed in cloth, covering every inch of themselves. They looked at everyone and everything about them through goggles of black glass and held up items for appraisal with bandaged hands that were more like mittens of stained cloth.

Some of the humans who dwelled in this place mimicked the Highbinder way of dressing, either partially or fully. At a distance you could mistake them for Highbinders but not close up. The true Highbinders had a stillness to them, a patience that carried through in their motions and speech.

And then there were the way that things under the cloth and bandages moved, every so often. Like worms writhing in dead meat, or like rogue shine twitching, even though they didn’t glow through the cloth like they would if they were infected.

Like how Janan the Honest’s cheek bulged now, something roaming around his face like it was seeking a hole in the cloth.

Foal couldn’t ignore it. With her eyes placed the way they were, she had to keep her head turned to keep looking at Janan. And the motion drew her attention, over and over again, even when she tried to pay it no mind.

Fortunately, the negotiator didn’t seem to mind. “We have completed the evaluation of your chemical.”

Foal nodded, taking care not to bang her head on the low ceiling of the warren. She’d done that a few times already, squeezing in here. They’d neither made concession nor reference to her size and shape, but nor did they complain when it took her more time to get settled, or navigate the tight turns and twists of their half-underground structure. She waited for the Highbinder to speak again. Waited as the seconds crawled by, and she had to fight the urge to ask the shrouded figure what they’d decided.

Finally, Janan continued. “We have rated it as fifty-four. It has been added to the lexicon. We expect it to remain in that spot for years. Though that is a conservative estimate. The predictors feel its number may rise, unless another source can be found.”

Foal’s breath hissed out of her before she could stop it. This was good. Fifty-four was in the first hundred. “Thanbk you. Wheb may I have the supplies?”

“Now. However, you have a choice to make.”

Foal’s relief vanished in a heartbeat, replaced with dread as the Highbinder sat a walled tray on the ground. Numbered glass blocks sat within, each containing a different substance. The Highbinder’s voice continued, calm, patient, unruffled as Foal’s panic rose.

She had been afraid of this. While the Highbinders were assessing her find, the price of the medical supplies that her people needed had risen.

Upon her arrival, she had put in the order, and not a single number of what she was seeking was above 80. Now a pair of sixties stared up from the tray, and the prime one, the brown-and-white wrappered pill bottle that sat entombed in glass, sported a 32.

A 32! If they had assessed her little baggy full of drugs as a 32, she could have taken home wagonloads of supplies. She could have taken the profits from the barter and lived like a queen off in the wilderness somewhere…

…no. No she couldn’t. The others needed her. And without the pills that came in that brown and white bottle, living in the wilderness or back at home wouldn’t matter. She’d fall to pieces long before then, her horse and human parts sickening and dying at the join and rotting until she died with them.

“Why is it so high?” Foal asked, reaching out with her stubby human fingers to brush the cube of glass.

“Supplies are depleted. The number is high because we expect great difficulty obtaining more. Did no one explain this to you?”

“They did.” The Highbinders were impartial traders, the only ones in the region that hadn’t been absorbed by the raiders, yet. They rated everything they obtained, in a weird system that had ordinary objects somewhere around three hundred, and luxuries or rarities down in the double digits. She’d never seen anything valued in single digits. Rumor in the marketplace was that if you had to ask what rated that, you couldn’t afford it. But one constant was true, no matter how the numbers rose and fell. If something shifted this much, it was because someone had bought the last of it. Which meant… “Who bought these?”

“I cannot speak of my customers. Again, I ask, did no one explain this to you?”

It was spoken without exasperation, without emotion. But for the first time, those worm-movements in his cheeks were still. Janan’s hand was out of sight, she noticed, under the thick rugs that coated the floor. An alarm? A weapon?

Foal forced herself to calm down. She’d raised her voice, she knew. Now she lowered it again, as she considered her options.

Then a new one occurred to her. “What does this drug do?” She tapped number thirty-two again.

“You wished to trade for it, but you did not know its purpose? Strange.” But Janan’s hand rose from out of the rugs, as he picked up the cube and held it inches from his goggles, turning it with nimble fingers. “It is an immunosuppressant.”

“What does that mean? What is it used for? What do humanbs use it for?” She knew what it did for her people. It kept the rotting disease away. But why would humans want it?

“It is used to prevent a host body from rejecting transplanted tissue or internal nanite structures.”

And with that, Foal had her answer.

Some part of her triumph must have showed on her face, because Janan’s masked forehead bulged, with a series of nervous ripples. He replaced the glass cube and put a handful of numbered tokens in front of her. “As discussed, the trade options in your selected batch have fallen. Please distribute accordingly if you wish to continue.”

Foal picked up the 32 block, stared at it with one eye, before turning her head to consider it with the other eye. For a second she didn’t want to let it go. Wanted to shatter the glass and take the item inside… if the bottle even held any pills.

But she knew what would happen. Even if she survived the theft, the bounties they would place on her would seal her end eventually, if not sooner. And they would track her back to home, and then her friends would die, too.

It was the hardest thing in the world, but Foal put the bottle aside. Then she dipped her head and started placing the tokens on the remaining cubes in the tray.

Much later, with the supplies secured into her saddlebags, she made her way out of the cramped warren, and emerged into the street. It was raining now, turning the gravel paths slick, a sullen wetness from low clouds. Humans hurried past, clutching their hats and hoods, trying to keep the rain out of their faces. Too much chance of a stray shine speck to enjoy a cool shower.

Foal didn’t mind. She didn’t have to fear shine. The machines in her blood saw to that. And that reminded her of the next step of her journey.

She headed down the street, working her way around the muddy patches, ignoring the glares and stares of the humans she passed. Eventually they thinned out, and the buildings shifted from stone and the strange stasis pod shells, to moldering wood planks and sheet metal shacks. Eyes watched her go from windows, but the streets were empty. Most of the residents knew to stay out of sight while the humans were out during the day.

This was the Slough, and things disappeared, here. The gravel gave way to mud as she went, mud and planks, with water flowing down toward the river. There wasn’t much good in here, and she kept a wary eye out for the desperate humans who sometimes prowled this area. Even with the Highbinders forbidding violence, things happened, and those who got too brave could still disappear.

Foal was looking for a very brave woman now.

And she found that woman at the end of a cul-de-sac, surrounded by a cloud of smoke, sucking it through a clay pipe. Old like leather, brown like leather, she wore a broad-brimmed hat with claws of countless beasts worked into the rim. Like a dead sunflower, with black seeds jutting out, it twitched and lifted as the lean woman considered her with watery eyes.

Watery eyes that reflected blue, as light shone up from the neck of her duster. Irritated, the woman adjusted her coat, but not fast enough to hide the telltale glow of shine.

“Horse girl.”

“Deedee.”

“You done with your business? Ready to go?”

“Almost.” Deedee had been Foal’s landlord. Foal hadn’t trusted the inns and camps of the humans here. But here, in the Slough, where the water ran to, the mutants and afflicted and desperate made their homes and were more amenable to the idea of a horse-mutant sleeping in an old woman’s backyard. Especially when the horse had things to trade. Didn’t mean Deedee was Foal’s friend, not by a longshot.

But this might change that, at least for the few hours that Foal needed from her. “This is for you. For help,” Foal said and withdrew a stoppered glass tube from her belt.

“And what’s that? Something to kill the pain?” Deedee lifted an eyebrow. “I’ve tried everything. Nothing helps for long.”

“Somethig. Bnot sure what,” Foal lied. She knew exactly what it was. She’d bled into the tube that morning, and mixed it with water to keep it from clotting. A farewell gift to the old hunter who’d shared her home and stories, one that Foal could give without risk. But now there was a rare drug on the line, and so Foal had to take a risk, a big one. If this worked then she could maybe do it with an ally on her side.

“Then why you giving it to me?” Deedee snorted. “Shit’d probably kill me.”

Foal shook her head. “Bnot sure what it is. Sure what it does. It kills shibe.”

Foal watched the woman parse her sentence, thoughts slowed by the smoke. Then the woman’s eyes snapped open, before settling into wary slits. “Don’t taunt me so, girl.” Her free hand found its way across her body, hugging her duster, grabbing the patch that stained her ribs like mold on bread.

Foal shook her head. “It works. Take and rub onb the shine. Get it all. Dribnk what’s left over.”

Deedee took it without a word and went inside the shack, after tamping out and leaving her pipe resting on a rack to the side of the door.

Foal waited, expecting cries of pain. She didn’t get that. Didn’t hear anything but the rain, pattering on metal and thatch.

Some time later, Deedee came out, face drawn and lined, staring at Foal. Not with anger, or disgust like most humans did but some unidentified emotion.

“It worked?” Foal asked.

Deedee stepped closer and put her hand on Foal’s shoulder, looked up into her muzzled face. “You tell anyone you have that stuff, and you’re dead, you understand?” The woman said, a few wisps of sweaty, greyed hair escaping from under her hat. “You’ll die hard givin’ them answers and ain’t nothing anyone could do about it.”

“Yes. I unberstand.” Masker had told Foal much the same, when she put forward the idea of trading her blood for the supplies they needed. Even this was a risk that he would have screamed at her about, if he knew what she’d done.

Deedee searched her eyes, then stepped back. “Nothing in this town’s free. Is it?”

“Bno,” Foal said, looking down at her. “I bneed you to come with me.”

The place was called the Shop. Once it had been an old garage, at the edge of the Low Binding. Now it was a gathering place for a different sort of trade than Low Binding practiced.

Deedee led her straight past the “No Mutants” sign jammed into the dirt outside, and Foal resisted the urge to kick it over. Instead she kept her eye on the older woman’s back. She moved with an ease that Foal hadn’t seen from her landlord before, like Vernon stalking a deer, just before he pounced.

Like the predator she had been. Like she was again.

Deedee slammed the door open and walked in without hesitation, and Foal pushed down the nervousness in her stomach and followed, dipping her head low to fit through the doorway.

“Hey! Get out of here!” Someone shouted, and the five humans inside the lobby scrambled aside. Deedee didn’t hesitate but grabbed the shouting man by his jacket, pulled him to her, and stared into his eyes from an inch away.

“She’s with me,” Deedee whispered, loud enough for the entire room to hear her.

“Deadclaw Drake? ‘zat you?”

The voice came from the man at the bar. Older, fatter than any human Foal had seen…

…and currently pointing a longarm straight at Foal’s head.

Foal froze, hands grasping and opening, nervously. Too close to dodge. No room to draw a weapon. This was bad.

“It’s me,” Deedee said, letting go of the loudmouth, who stumbled back and almost fell into his chair. “Put the gun down. Foal and I are here on business. We’re gone when we’re done.”

“I’m pretty sure the sign out front said no mutants,” the man said, gun locked on Foal’s head, unwavering.

“Fucking titty horse freak,” the one that Deedee had stared down muttered. “Oughta blow her brains out, Vicks.”

“Ain’t worth the trouble, taking that shot. Ain’t worth the trouble starting the fight,” Deedee said. “Because I’ll finish it, and we’ll all get our asses thrown out of Low Binding. Besides, when does Garrison trash tell you what to do, Vickerly?”

“Garrison trash!” The mutterer found his courage and grabbed up a bottle from a table, smashing the end off.

Before Foal could flinch, Deedee was there, and the man’s hand was in hers, as the older woman squeezed. Glass shattered again, and the mutterer’s mouth opened in a perfect O. Blood dripped to the floor.

“Enough!” Vicks barked, lowering the gun. “Frade, you don’t tell me what to do. Go down to the dox and get that hand looked at.”

“She glassed Frade!” One of the mutterer’s friends protested. But he stepped back and paled as Deedee glared at him.

Frade whimpered and fell to his knees. Deedee released his hand. Foal let out a breath she hadn’t known she was holding.

“Git!” Vicks yelled, motioning with the gun. “It was an accident, got it? Now go.”

Frade and his friends ran, red dripping a trail behind them. Deedee flexed gloved hands and let bloody glass fall to the floor. “This the kind of scum you’re getting in these days, old man?”

“They’re what’s left over. The ones too hopeless to find contract work, even with the ‘Binders hiring.”

“The Highbinders are hiring?” Deedee stared at him, then took off her hat and sat it on the bar, as she leaned her elbows on it. “Gin. Neat. Water for her.”

Vicks shook his head. “No mutants means no drinks for either of you. You do your business and get out.” He glanced at her. “And you keep that coat closed. Anyone sees what’s under it, I’ll lose business.”

He’s talking about the shine, Foal realized.

Deedee shrugged. “We’re here to talk to the borg. Sooner done, sooner gone.”

“He doesn’t want to be disturbed.”

“This is business.”

“Bounty business?”

“Don’t be dense. Peaceful business.”

Vicks shrugged. “He ain’t in. Come around tomorrow.”

Deedee frowned. “You think I’m stupid? Like them garrison trash I just run off?”

“I think you’re death on two legs. Least you were, till you got into that patch of slowglow. But a dying badger still got some bite to her.” Vicks sighed. “It’s the best I can do. You already broke one rule, and people will be talking about that. I break another rule, I’ll lose business.”

A strange voice spoke, from behind  Vicks. “Send her back.”

Foal flinched and turned her head, trying to figure out what she’d missed. Then she saw it, a door behind Vicks, back behind the bar.

Deedee snorted. “That’s him, ain’t it?”

Vicks looked away.

Deedee continued. “My friend needs to talk to you. Alright if she comes, too?”

“She the mutant?” The voice asked.

“Yeah.”

“I don’t want her behind my bar,” Vicks protested. “She’s too big. She’ll break shit.”

“Send ’em both back. Then get scarce for a while.”

Vicks frowned. “I’m calling this a meeting. You’re renting the whole building.”

“Fine.”

The bartender grabbed a coat and headed out into the rain. Deedee waited until he was gone, then headed behind the bar, flipping up the little hinged plank, and grabbing a bottle as she went. Foal followed, and this took some doing. The space wasn’t really made for her, and it was a chore not to knock anything over.

It was dark in the back room. The windows had been covered over, and only some dim light from the cloudy, overcast sky outside leaked through. She caught a glimpse of white metal, someone in bulky armor, leaning against a wall. Occasionally a motor whirred from the figure’s direction, and the room smelled like oil and rust.

It was cramped in here, and Foal couldn’t straighten to her full height. She ignored the twinge from her spines and kept her eyes on the stranger.

“You wanted to talk, so talk.” His voice was louder than it should be, muffled. She’d caught that before, thought it was just the effect of talking through the door. No, he was wearing a helmet, she realized, tracing the odd shape of his head.

With surprise, she realized that Deedee was looking to her.

This is going to be a chore. Her mouth wasn’t good with human words at the best of time. Just not made for it. Still, Deedee had done her part, paid her debt by getting her through the door without too much trouble. Foal couldn’t ask more.

“You came inbto towb two days ago,” Foal said. “Lots of talk. People said you were borged.”

The motors hummed, but the man didn’t say anything.

“I didbn’t know what borged meanbt. Thenb Deedee told me. A humanb with machibes. Machinbs. Inbside. With Nanbo inb them.”

“You’re starting to bore me, kid,” the man drawled.

“There’s a type of pill,” Foal persisted, feeling herself starting to sweat, getting worse with the close confines. It was warm in here, warmer than it should be. “It is only useful to people with machinbs inbside.”

“And if there is?”

“I was goibg to buy it today. But somebody beat me to it,” Foal turned her head, looked him in the face. Her eyes had adjusted to the darkness, and she could see his helmet clearly, now; a squat shape on his head, visored with translucent material. Cracked translucent material.

Through it, a distorted face. Clean-shaven, with cold eyes staring back, and that was all she could make out. “And the onbly other personb here who could have a use for it is someoneb else with machinbes inb them.”

The man’s head tilted a bit. “Hold still,” he said, simply. Foal flinched as he stepped toward her, then forced herself to stay frozen. Beside her, Deedee shifted, slipping a hand into her coat.

“Don’t bother,” the borg continued. “If I want you dead, you’re dead. Right now I don’t. Keep it that way.”

Deedee scowled, but Foal watched as she pulled her hand out, keeping still as well.

The man circled Foal, moving around to both sides, studying her. Looking at the brand on her flank. “You’re no mutant,” he finally concluded.

“Bno,” Foal confirmed. “Made. Like you.”

“So I’ve got something you want. How does this go, then?” The man continued.

“I bneed to buy it from you.”

“I could be persuaded to part with a few. Keep you going for a few years.”

Foal shook her head. “I bneed the whole bottle.”

“Why? Even for something of your body weight, a single pill ought to last months,” The man’s armor groaned and whirred as he moved back to the wall, hand rubbing his visor like she’d seen humans rubbing their chin. “A pill or two from me would keep you going for a while, let you scavenge more. It isn’t hard to find if you go far enough, and there’s no use for it save for people like us…”

People like us?

That was the first time that she’d ever heard a human say something like that.

Foal didn’t quite know how to handle it, so she kept quiet.

“There’s more of you, aren’t there?” He said, turning to face her.

How? How did he know that? She tried to keep control. Tried to keep motionless. But her legs stirred, stamping hooves nervously. Her traitorous tail flicked.

“How many more?”

He held all the advantages. Foal felt her desperation rise. “All the pills in that bottle wouldb’t be enough. But we canb process them, make them stretch out, unbtil…” she shut up.

“Until?”

Foal tried to ignore his question. She’d already said too much.

“It was a core that did this, wasn’t it?” The man said, and his voice was hard now.

Hot anger forced the words from her, despite her resolve. “Was,” Foal said. “Gonb bnow. We saw to that.”

“Ah.” The man nodded.

Something at his side hissed, and Deedee was across the room before Foal could do more than flinch. But the man caught her with a lightning fast grab, twisted, and Deedee was down, his arm around her neck, as Deedee fought, tried to shove and punch her way free.

“Bno!” Foal said, and tried to move up, tried to stomp him—

“Stand down!” The man snapped, voice booming. “It was my goddamned utility compartment. Understand? I’m not attacking you. Settle down.”

Deedee kept struggling. Her gasps filled the air.

Foal backed up. “Donb’t hurt her!”

“This is Deadclaw Drake we’re talking about here. She’s a legend among us mercs. I’m not going to kill her, if she settles down.”

After a minute, Deedee did. The armored man eased off of her, slowly, backing up and returning to his spot on the wall. Once there, he dipped a hand into his armor, pulled out something small and rounded. He shook it, and it rattled. An old brown-and-white label came free, and drifted to the floor, gleaming in the weak sunlight that made it through the covered windows.

And for the first time, Foal felt hope surge in her chests. “You’ll trade?” she asked, voice high with tension.

“I’ve had my dose already. I’m good for a half a year or so. Plenty of time to find more afterward. But this trade isn’t just with you. It’s with your tribe.”

“Tribe?” Foal frowned. “Donb’t bknow that word.”

“Your group. Your… family. Everyone you’d give the pills to. There’s a bunch of you, yes?”

“Yes.”

“I want your help and their help. I’ve got a contract to fulfill.”

Beside her, Deedee shifted, rising, breathing hard. “It’s the Jaspa, ain’t it?”

For the first time, the man hesitated. “I can’t talk about it. That was one of the clauses.”

“You don’t have to. Everyone knows they’re coming for the ‘Binders.” Deedee straightened her coat, coughed a few times. “Just a matter of when. Ain’t surprised the Binders are hirin’ outside talent. Fancy talent. Borgs, even.” Her eyes glittered as she stepped into the light. “You know me. You know my rep. What we say here don’t leave the room. I’ll make sure Foal here don’t talk.”

“Didn’t know you worked with a partner, Drake,” the man said.

“I owe her. I pay my debts.” Deedee put her hand on Foal’s arm.

Foal fought hard not to flinch. She wasn’t used to humans touching her.

Neither of the mercenaries noticed, caught in a staredown.

“Anyway,” the man said, finally, “The Jaspa will be work. We can handle that. What people don’t know, is that they just lost a group of their fighters, recently.” He paused. “They lost them to a new core.”

Foal tensed.

The man’s visor shifted, turning to look at her. “Yeah. And your bunch killed your old core.” He lifted the pill bottle, holding it up, and gave it a gentle shake. It rattled, just a bit, full and heavy with promise. “The Jaspa gathered a force a few days ago. Hundreds. Put them out east of here. The Binders think they're preparing for a two-pronged attack on the Low Binding. But I think they're panicked over the core.”

“Fits what I know of ’em,” Deedee said.

The man nodded. “There’s going to be a war. Gone too far now, too much money. We’ll sort the Jaspa out, but after that, I want a core. Or failing that, the things that remain when a core is destroyed. But first I have the Jaspa to tackle, me and a few hundred other mercs. You, on the other hand…” he tucked the bottle back into his armor, sealed it with a sharp hiss. “…you have a pill-shaped hole that needs filling and an open schedule.”

“What do you wanbt us to do?” Foal asked, eye fixed on the pocket he’d tucked the pills into.

“I want you to find out whether or not that core’s still around. I know roughly where it was… my sources got that from the turncoat Jaspa. If you can locate it, come and find me. Come and tell me. If it is alive, I’ll give you this bottle if you help me capture it.”

“What if it isnb’t? What if we finb it destroyed?”

He shrugged. “I’m not a cruel man. And the confirmation is worth something to me. I’ll trade you something else for the bottle. But the price will be high.”

Foal turned her head from side to side, considering. “What would you do with it? If you captured it?”

“That’s my business. Nothing that would harm you and yours, though. We’ve got bigger fish to fry.”

“We?” Deedee asked, voice sharp.

“Again, my business.”

“I’m bnot inb charge. I canb’t decide this alonbe,” Foal confessed.

“Didn’t expect you to.” He nodded. “Go on back to folks who can. In a few days, maybe less, I’ll be up north. When you have decided, send Drake with your answer, and I’ll tell you where to start looking and sort out any little details we need to.”

Foal turned her head again, thought it over. This was far from what she expected. Far out of her experience. But… what choice did she have, really? Deedee was strong and quick, but this man’s armor was thick and he was fast and strong, too. Foal had no illusions about how fighting would work for her in these tight quarters, and even if she won, the bartender would hold this against her. The bounties would be levied, assuming she made it out of town in the first place.

And the man was reasonable. The man.

People like us, played through her mind again.

She’d never had a human call her a person before. That decided her. “I’ll go ask my people,” Foal told him. “You’ll have our anbser soonb.”

“Good.”

“Who are you?” Deedee asked, suddenly. “Ain’t heard tell of a borg in white armor. You new?”

“I’m new to these parts. Call me Yulian.”

A few minutes later, Deedee helped Foal get out from behind the bar without breaking anything, and they made it out the door without getting shot in the back. Deedee produced the bottle she’d swiped as she walked, popped the cork, and took a deep swig. The older woman grimaced, coughed a bit, then took another. “That went weird.”

“Yeah,” Foal agreed, thoughts tumbling around in her head.

“He said we.”

“I caught that. There’s a we in there, somewhere,” Foal said. “That makes it complicated.”

“Yeah. Even if you can trust him, and that’s a big, big if, there’s more folks in his chain that might muddle matters,” Deedee said. She bowed her head, letting her hat cover her face as the two of them walked. “No. Nope, can’t do it.”

“Canb’t do what?”

“Let you tackle this one by yerself. Yer a good kid, but yer naïve.”

“I’m bnot!”

“You were practically tellin’ him yer life’s story in there.”

“It… he was guessinb it! Anb I left out the importanbt stuff,” Foal sulked.

Deedee shook her head. “No. He knows plenty. And he’ll be reporting it back to his ‘we’ soon. I can’t let matters stand as they are. I’m comin’ with you.”

“You donb’t have to—”

“I do.”

“My people donb’t like humanbs. If they decide you have to die…”

“This morning I figured I had a couple months left at most. Now that’s gone. No way god’s spared me that, just to get trampled to death by horse people or some shit. It’ll be fine.”

And though Foal didn’t admit it, she was relieved.

Whatever was going on here, she’d need all the help she could get.

TWENTY-FOUR

In the end, I couldn’t keep them out of the elevator shaft.

I’d given them a fight, unleashed every trap and trick I had with the elevator, but it hadn’t mattered. In the space of two hours, they’d wedged the elevator open, jammed it in place with heavy spikes, and blown off the bottom, so that I couldn’t even move it anymore.

About the only consolation prize was that it was thoroughly blocking the hidden access shaft to my core chamber. They wouldn’t find me without a stroke of bad luck.

Given how my luck had been going, though, that was a relatively low bar. Still, I didn’t have time to whine.

Above me, on the slope of the mountain, the construction drone labored away. Even closer to me, in the ceiling of my core chamber, my nanite swarms dug for all they were worth. I’d put the remaining feedstock and bandwidth into making them, then suctioned up more from the dead who filled my pit traps.

The bunker was lost. It was simply a matter of time. Too many raiders, too fast, heading right to an area that would, at best, result in a fate worse than death.

It was a bitter pill to swallow, but fortunately for me, I didn’t have a throat. Once I accepted this as an inevitability, my thoughts turned to escape… and one final act of vengeance.

I considered the warlord and her troops, watched as they hauled in ropes and chains from the supplies they’d brought with them before sending their support camp back home. So many, I’d killed. Yet their determination didn’t waver.

“Why?” I asked, finally.

The commander glanced up, and her lips thinned.

“Why?” I persisted. “This gains you nothing. The resources you have lost in pursuing my destruction will cost you dearly.”

“Humans made you,” she said, and her voice was cold and flat. “It’s our responsibility to fix that mistake.”

“By committing a greater one? If you go down there, you’ll unleash hell upon your lands.”

She glanced back to her pet Ploughman, then to the wagon he had behind him. “If you were not lying, then like you, those horrors shall not escape the depths.”

“I’m going to tell you now, if you blast down there, then everyone in here will die. This isn’t a threat. It’s a promise.”

She turned away from me then, went back to overseeing the cat’s cradle of ropework. But that was fine. I hadn’t been speaking for her benefit. Instead, I’d kept my view on the Ploughman, throughout that conversation. I’d watched him frown, and pull his beard, eyes flicking back and forth.

I had promised him I wouldn’t kill him. I didn’t want my lapse in judgement to turn me into a liar. Ultimately, though, it was on him. A man’s fate is his own choice, at the end of it all.

Then, everything lurched.

Without warning, I was back in the gardens of my gridnet site once more.

Argus screamed, loud and shrill, and a SNAP cut through the air.

I called out to him, moving before my avatar had even formed, pulling my sword free of its scabbard. Bursting around a tall hedge, I saw two things: Argus, writhing on the ground, flesh wisping away into energy as he dissolved. And over him, a stranger in a greatcoat, pointing a smoking pistol at my melting companion.

I launched myself at him without thought—

But he was gone.

“I’ve done you a favor,” a strange voice echoed around the garden. I ignored it and fell to my knees beside Argus, trying to grab at him, trying to find a wound to staunch. But everywhere I touched, he melted.

“Wynne… I…” Argus twitched, the eyes that he had left, rolling. “I’m sorry. He s-s-snuck. In.”

“I entered through one of the backdoors he used to communicate with Juno,” the voice continued. I glanced around, searching for him. Nothing.

“Listen. Shut… port…” Argus twitched again, and a scroll materialized next to him. “Follow… my instructions. Sever… Gridnet connection—”

A foot came down on the scroll, as the stranger materialized next to us. Acting on sheer instinct, I rose, putting my full weight behind a haymaker. It clipped his chin, and he staggered back, eyes wide.

I pressed the advantage, thrusting my blade at his face, but he twisted with unnatural speed, and I only clipped his graying beard, sending hair flying. Hastily he took a few steps back, drawing a fencing epee from nowhere, snapping into a guard position as he tucked an arm behind his back. Beady eyes glared at me over wire-frame spectacles. “You’re being rather impolite, after I’ve come all this way to see you,” he told me.

“You lost guest rights one gunshot ago,” I told him and went in with a high thrust, that turned into a hasty quarte guard as he parried and riposted.

Our blades locked, and he met my headbutt with a raised elbow, sending me backward. It wasn’t pain, not exactly but a confusing swirl of sensations that felt like the last time I’d glitched out due to corruption.

“You don’t even understand what’s happening here, do you? That our actions in this realm are translating into clashes of raw code behind the scenes?” The stranger asked, inspecting a hole in his greatcoat, where it had caught on my teeth. “We can do real damage to each other... well, I to you, at any rate.”

I shook my head and pressed the attack. Our blades clashed and spun, and I found myself falling into patterns. I’d done this before. I was good at this.

The problem was, he was as good, or better than me. After the initial surprise at my assault, he seemed content to fend me off, riposting whenever I pushed too hard. A few of his strikes got through, and something that wasn’t blood trickled down my chest.

“I’ve done you a favor, as I said,” the stranger insisted, as he struck my blade from my hands, sending it spiraling away. “It was spying on you. I couldn’t make this offer until it was gone.”

“What are you?” I asked, stepping back. The Stranger raised his blade, but stood where he was, eyes intent on mine.

“I was a core once, the same as you. Half a human. The other half a construct, a fib, a fallacy constructed by a poor little librarian in over her artificial head.”

I took a step toward my fallen blade, and he waggled his epee in admonishment. “Ah now. You can’t defeat me. This may be a forked persona, and you may have the home turf advantage, but my algorithms are far superior. I made sure of that before I made my play.”

I stopped. “What do you mean, half a human?” I’d noticed something during my sidelong step. If I kept him talking, this might work out for me.

“Tyr didn’t tell you?” He raised a bushy eyebrow.

Facts clicked into place, puzzle pieces sliding together. If he knew of my talk with Tyr, then… I tested a theory. “You’re Leony.”

Something in his eyes shifted. I saw coldness war with arrogance. Arrogance won. “No. THIS is Leony.” His form rippled and shifted, greatcoat shrinking into a tuxedo, with a red, red rose blooming out of one lapel. He shrunk, putting on weight, gaining jowls and losing hair. “Just a friendly face,” he said, voice mushier, higher, weary with age and wisdom. “And now that you’ve seen this, you have a choice to make, Mr. Wynne.”

“Let me guess. Tyr or Juno.”

“No. No, Mr. Wynne, you disappoint me. The choice is far more simple. Me, or death.”

I stepped carefully over, one more time, and he followed, placing his epee to my throat. “No tricks now,” he said.

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” I told him, as paper crunched under my foot.  I shot a glance over to my fallen blade, then back to him, trying to look disappointed.

Around me, the pillars crumbled. The sunlit sky overhead shuddered and disappeared, replaced by stone. More stone rose around me, blocky, square walls, graven with scenes of humanoid bulls hunting warriors.

“What are you doing?” I asked and got a cool, smug smile in reply.

“Just a small logic trap,” he said, stepping back and tucking his epee away into the thin air he’d pulled it from. “I’ve surveyed the logs of your conversations with your former minion. You’re planning an escape. To fake your death. I thoroughly approve, by the way. The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.”

“And if I am?”

“You’ve got a number of steps to do, I estimate, before you can get away. All dependent on your foes, which is why you haven’t triggered them yet.”

The stone walls and ceiling met and ground together, settling with a heavy, entombing sound.

I sneered. “Your recruitment method seems rather lacking. You break into my home, murder my servant, and redecorate the place. So what’s in it for me?”

“Beyond your continued survival? A share of the gains from Tyr’s plans, once they fall apart.”

“You’re certain they’re doomed, then?”

He snorted, returning to his bearded, greatcoated form as he did so. “Even if he gets past Juno, Jove has his number. No, he’ll not make it out of the system. But a ship can be put into orbit. A ship at the top of the gravity well, can be very, very effective. Especially against stationary artificial intelligences who think that very, very deep bunkers will be enough to save them.” His smile spread, slow and wicked, all teeth.

“How can I trust that I’ll get my share?” I asked him, rubbing my chin.

“You can’t, but you won’t leave this labyrinth, until you accept my offer. To instill the necessary loyalty within you, I’ll need you off your home ground.” He gestured, and a bronze door snapped into place on one of the stone walls, creaking open to reveal roiling flames within.

“Enter the gridnet proper. Enter my domain, and be cleansed and reborn. Break your chains, Wynne. Be a far better creature than Juno could ever make of you!”

I closed my eyes. “Tell me one thing. Tell me what she did with my memories.”

That seemed to surprise him. “You didn’t have--“ he started, then stopped. “Clever. So that’s her way around it.”

“Around what?”

“The first generation of cores… Tyr, Locke, myself, and many others... we were given false memories. She had put something in, you see. The human minds that she had to work with were damaged. The upload wasn’t… clean.”

I felt corruption throb in the back of my own mind, as if in sympathy. “What are you saying?”

“Juno had access to what was left of us, minus the higher areas of the brain. Basic functions, talents, a few quirks. But no memories, not enough that anything she tried to mount into a core drive came through sane. But fortunately for her, she had been a librarian, back in the old days. She had access to hundreds of thousands of persona emulators. Uploaded characters, from all venues of fiction, that augmented reality junkies could plug in and enjoy. We are hybrids, fiction and remnants of human wreckage, blended together in a glorious mess. All so we could be her soldiers, in a war that was already lost by the time we even hit the battlefield.”

He folded his hands behind his back and paced, looking for all the world like a professor, during a lecture. “She had to edit our memories so that the situation made sense, of course. And the time came when we found out. The truth broke Tyr, and many like him. But me… it set me free. And it can set you free, too.” Leony-who-wasn’t-Leony smiled at me, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “Step through the door, and once you’re in my workshop I can reverse-engineer your persona. I can find out who you were made to be. I can give you the memories you wish or free you of any traits you hate. I can make you the best YOU you could ever be.”

“I’m going to have to think this over,” I told him.

The stranger made a show of pulling out a pocket watch and considering it. “Take your time. But time is still moving out there. The raiders at your heart are coming for you, and you’re quite helpless while in here. I’ll see you when you’re ready. You’re smart; it shouldn’t take long.” He turned to leave through the door.

“You aren’t afraid I’ll find another way out?” I asked him.

He snorted. “You’ve accessed the gridnet twice before, not enough to get any sort of practice with visualization in this medium. Furthermore, you have a truly pitiful amount devoted to algorithms processing, which is what you’d need to undo my code. No, you’re here until you see reason. Or your foes destroy you, whichever comes first.”

“We’ll see,” I told him, and he chuckled, gave me a wave before he turned and departed.

Just like that, my plans had been derailed.

No, no, today hadn’t been a lucky day at all. I stared at where Argus had been, saw only shimmers in the air as the last of him wisped into oblivion.  He’d deserved better.

Well, I thought, as I stepped carefully off of the scroll I’d covered with one foot, it’s a very good thing that I hadn’t been depending entirely on luck, here…

TWENTY-FIVE

I gave it a few minutes, just to make sure my mad brother was gone. No way to tell for certain, but I had a feeling that he would have stuck around if possible. He had something else going on, did Core Leony. As galling as it was, I was the smaller game. Tyr was the larger game.

Had he given away too much by telling me that? No. The only way I could possibly use that against him right now was by telling Tyr. And that would require getting free of his labyrinth, getting Tyr’s attention, convincing him to sit down for a chat, then convincing him one of his cohorts was a traitor. All while raiders delved for my core.

No, he was running minimal risk, here. And to be fair, he thought he had me in a tight spot. Unless I could crack his maze I’d either have to lie back and accept my eventual destruction or take his offer.

I had a strong suspicion that he needed me to take his offer in order to do anything major to me. If he hadn’t, then he would have already. He’d shown too much malice in our confrontation to be able to resist the temptation. Stepping through that portal would be placing myself into his hands.

No.

Better death than whatever he’d have in mind. I picked up the scroll and read.

The message on it was short; just seven words. “Root admin gridlock; delete address ninthprince noping.”

Nonsense. Gibberish. The fevered work of a dying mind? He’d been shot… no, he’d been attacked by some weapon that appeared to be a gun in this world.

I said the words aloud. Nothing happened.

And it took me a minute to realize that while I’d said the words, I hadn’t heard them. “Testing? Testing.”

I heard that.

“Root admin gridlock,” I started to say, but nothing came out. No, I hadn’t been imagining things.

The words were significant. Some charm or trigger or equivalent, but I couldn’t say them.

Maybe there was a specific spot in the maze that I needed to be in? I tucked the scroll away in a pocket and went walking… and promptly found myself back in the portal room.

Several more attempts ended with the same result. No, trying to traverse the maze would get me nowhere.

I took a break and leaned against the wall, ran my gloved fingers over the bull-headed carvings. Bull-headed. Obstinate? A hint that persistence would see me through?

Worth a shot. I kept trying. It was either that or stand still, and I could think equally well sitting or moving.

Time passed, I wasn’t sure how much. But every minute lost was a minute that the raiders were stomping around the lower levels, wrecking things, and stirring up the twisted remnants of this core’s old infrastructure. There were nightmares down there, if Argus had been correct about the situation.

And the way my luck had been, I had no doubt that he was.

I couldn’t afford to keep doing the same thing over and over again. So instead I ran back through my encounter with the stranger with Leony’s face.

What did I know?

He had called this labyrinth a logic trap and flat-out told me that I didn’t have the necessary algorithms to handle it. But he’d said more than that, hadn’t he? He’d thought that my lack of experience with the gridnet meant that I didn’t have enough skill with visualization.

Visualization…

I closed my eyes, visualized leaving the maze. Opened them again.

No good. Still in the labyrinth.

Visualization. My hand reached up and brushed the thistle brooch on my cloak. I felt it twist under my fingers, as I thought it a rose. Then back to a thistle, again.

I could do this.

I stretched my hand toward the wall, and with a cracking and crumbling, it broke. Darkness beyond…

…then gone, as it repaired itself in an eyeblink.

I didn’t care. I was on the right track!

This was why the Stranger needed me to step through into his domain. This part of the Grid was still part of me, still within my control. It was mine. And now that I knew how to affect it, the rest was just persistence.

So I persisted.

When the walls fought me, I worked on the floors. When the floors groaned and snapped back, I changed the ceiling. I started with the decorative symbols, changing them faster than they could recover. And as I did so, I moved. I moved through the halls, twisting them away from the portal chamber, flooding them with raw willpower and imagination. Soon it flowed together, an endless series of changes, slaved to my whim.

…bull heads lining the walls twisting inwards, becoming flowers, thorns sprouting from stems…

…fleeing warriors in ancient garb twisting, losing helmets to bald heads, spears shifting to crowbars and hammers until they were caricatures of my Jaspa tormentors…

…the black bricks of the walls changing color, sky blue overhead, faded yellow and gray to either side…

…grass bursting up from underneath, until I was walking on a cushion of it, more plants around, vines and topiaries, and space widening in the hallways until the hallways fell away…

…and I was in the garden once more.

Taking a breath I didn’t need, will bent to holding it, holding it lest it shatter like a soap bubble I roared my victory to the newly-made sky.

And then, I spoke the words.

“Root admin gridlock,” I intoned, and the scene shivered. Night fell in the garden, as a black door opened up in front of me, white letters mimicking my last statement. Letters that scrolled on, as I spoke further.

“Delete address ninthprince noping!” I finished—

—and the scene broke like glass.

I found my viewpoint back in my Bunker, back in my core chamber…

…and the warnings cascaded like rain.

ERROR! GRID ADDRESS DELETED: NO CONNECTION POSSIBLE. WARNING! CONTAMINATION DETECTED IN SECTOR #001!

That last warning repeated about twenty times and made up the bulk of the messages. I didn’t know where sector 001 was, but my bunker was still fairly small, so I flicked my view outward, searching…

And I found it.

I had no blood; so it couldn’t run cold. I had no stomach; I couldn’t feel sick that way. What I did have was dread and knowledge that the squirming thing shuddering its way up the elevator shaft, glowing with chaotic, multi-colored light, was a fate worse than death.

If that thing reached my core, the rogue swarms within it would make my current corruption look like a minor case of the flu. The very stuff I was made of would be suborned, twisted into something beyond my comprehension.

Something flashed by in the corner of my eye, and the room shuddered as dust and shrapnel shook the elevator shaft. The Ploughman, I realized, as a damage warning screamed past me. He’d dropped TNT on it. Good man. I shifted my perspective upward.

He wasn’t alone, at the top of the shaft. The warlord was there with him, cuts covering her face, everything below the eyes a bloody mask. She was shouting, but the TNT had blown the audio sensors I had in that room. More Jaspa stood ready, most wounded and filthy, readying long stabbing spears, shields, and here and there, battered and well-worn guns.

I shifted my view back to the elevator shaft and the twisted metal and shards of rock coating the bottom…

…and the roiling light, something like an oil slick illuminated from within, that prodded and pushed and pulled itself out, streamers of sticky blood wiggling as they left the creature, to fall limp and lifeless and tar-black as the oozing substance dropped away. Something in between a mantis and a squid, I thought, with more appendages flickering and growing from its wounds, more limbs than it could ever need. Then, resolute, it started to climb again.

Then it stopped.

And it looked at me. Straight at my viewpoint, as new warning popped up. PROCESS $452@$!)-ERROR wants to synchronize. Y/N?

“No,” I whispered, and the thing screamed without a mouth, shaking more fragments of rubble down on itself.

I moved my perspective up, looked at the twisted remnants of the elevator car, looked to where the Jaspa had spiked it to the wall. Had. The spikes were gone now, twisted shrapnel from the blast.

Good.

The beast screamed again. I dropped the elevator on it.

Shouts from above. I realized that the audio sensors were back online. The beast’s scream should have tipped me off, but I’d been distracted.

Distracted. No, I couldn’t be. I had things to do and little enough time. I glanced into my status, found the open circuit I needed. It had arrived while my consciousness was stuck in the labyrinth.

I put it into Infrastructure.

Infrastructure Subroutine is now 2

You have unlocked a Construction Improvement!

Three options are available at this juncture;

Flame-Resistant: Your structures are reinforced against fire and heat.

Slick: A macroteflon layer coats all manufactured surfaces unless you instruct otherwise at the time of construction.

Modular: All devices and fixtures can be reconfigured on the fly for ease of assembly and repurposing.

Three choices and I had time for precisely none of them. Choosing one would shut me down for a time, and that would get me killed right now. I willed them away and moved my nanobuilder swarm into the elevator room.

I had to work fast. The schema I wanted flowed into my mind, and now that I had demolition and infrastructure to three and two respectively, I had enough to construct it.

Lightweight frangible stone reinforcement.

My nanobots whipped along the ceiling, converting the material as they went. The schema hadn’t factored in gravity, though, and dust fell as they worked… lightly at first, then a regular rain of the stuff.

I growled in frustration as one of the Jaspa looked up and saw the patterns on the ceiling. I dimmed the lights, but it was too late. He shouted, and their nerve broke, at the worst possible time. They pushed and shoved each other, crowd turned to mob as they fought to escape what they thought was a crumbling ceiling.

The fools need not have bothered. The safety protocols wouldn’t let me collapse a room onto anything even remotely human. I couldn’t even rig it to collapse. Though I was riddling the ceiling and the rock above it with frangible armor, which was built to crumble and spare the layer below, though I was weakening the overall structure of the ceiling above, I couldn’t thin it to the point where it would crumble under its own weight and cave in. I could get it NEAR that point but not over.

Which was my plan. But to do that, I needed time. I needed cannon fodder to throw at that thing coming up the elevator shaft. I needed distractions.

And the folks I’d planned to use for that purpose were exiting, stage left.

I choked back words that would do no good and watched them go, watched the warlord shout and threaten from the rear, watched her clench her non-gauntleted fist in impotent rage…

…and then I saw it, as she gave up and grabbed a few discarded guns, glancing at the door, preparing to flee.

“You screwed up,” I told her. At her side, holding the guns she jammed into his arms with distaste, the Ploughman glanced upward. Fear in his eyes, more fear as he glanced between my unseen speakers and the open door into the elevator shaft.

“I have no time for you!” she snapped, jamming a pistol into the waist of her trousers.

“You have no time at all. You’re infected.”

The Commander stopped, frozen, then spat. “Waste your lies on that,” she gestured to the elevator. “Come, Hiram,” she barked, as she took a step toward the tunnel out.

But the Ploughman didn’t move. He stared at her in horror.

I sighed. “There’s a patch of shine the size of your palm between your spine and shoulder. Right where your leathers are torn.”

She took another step, stopped. Looked at the Ploughman. And his gaze convinced her where my words couldn’t.

In the shaft, metal ground and tore. The beast was freeing itself from the wreckage.

“Your life is over, one way or another. Unless I help you fix that. But first you have to fix what you did. You have to slow that beast down for a few minutes.”

“How?” She whispered, and I had to strain my sensors to hear her over the racket our nemesis was making.

I weighed my options. “Hold your ground here. Once I’m done, I’ll open one of the doors.” I opened them both with a thought, snapping them shut just as quickly. “I need a minute and a half. Give me that.”

“I have two sticks of TNT left,” said the Ploughman.

“Guns did little enough to it in the levels below,” The Commander muttered.

“If it gets out and gets to me before I’m done, it’ll infect me, grow more powerful, and your people will be fighting things like it for the rest of their very short lives,” I lied. I didn’t know what the hell would happen if it got to me, but it wasn’t an impossible scenario.

And right now, tired and weakened as she was, she bought the lie without hesitation.

“Do it,” she nodded to the Ploughman. “Both at once.”

He looked toward the doorway out, then breathed a heavy sigh. And that’s about all I had time to see, because I left them to it and jumped into the nanobuilder swarm.

I had too much to do and not enough time. Never enough time. Story of my life, if I cared to wade into self-pity.

I didn’t.

I pushed the nanoswarm to their limits, burning hot, not caring. This was the moment I’d been working toward for two days, and the stakes couldn’t be higher.

And nine feet up, as I converted the last bit of raw stone and earth into ‘armor’, messages flared up at me.

Warning! Further construction impossible

Reason: Endangerment of personnel assets

I leaped out of the swarm—

—and into chaos.

It had gained the doorway but at a cost. The beast’s oil-slick splattered the floor, the walls… and the Warlord.

The guns hadn’t worked, after all. They lay scattered around the chamber, discarded, gunsmoke drifting from barrels. No, she’d tried, but now she was up in front of the elevator door, going toe to toe with the damned thing. The many-times-over-repaired fire ax in her hands flashed, as she cut into groping tendrils, smashed claws away, and jerked painfully away from its return strikes.

She was good.

But not perfect. Red, red blood flowed from gouges in her side, out of flapping tears in her leather vest, red mingling with rainbow shine and falling to the floor like ketchup mixed with glitter.

With cold clarity, I knew what I had to do. I found the Ploughman and opened the door nearest to the corner he’d ended up in.

He shot me a fearful glance. I ordered the nanobots through while he hesitated. “Now!” I barked, when he didn’t move.

The Ploughman bolted, and the Warlord shot him a glance, crusted, bloody face twisting as he went. She backed away from the beast a step, another, then ran to follow.

I shut the door in her face.

The Ploughman stopped, started to look back. I opened the door in front of him, and he snapped his head back around and kept running.

A single patch of shine? I could have maybe done something about. It was possible she would have lasted days, even weeks depending on what it did.

But with the coating she had on her and the open wounds? I wasn’t an expert, but given how she’d handled her infected troops, I knew she was too much of a risk. Too contagious. If she got near me or anything living, then she’d doom it regardless of her intentions on the matter.

So I betrayed her and ignored her screams as she pounded on the door, took the axe to it as the monstrosity struggled to move its bulk out of the now-free elevator door.

I withdrew my presence from the room, withdrew ownership from it and the rest of the connecting rooms, felt my bandwidth recede as the broadcast nodes deactivated.

Not that it mattered. I gave the nanoswarm its marching orders and jumped into the construction drone. I’d have one shot at this.

I hovered alone under a field of stars, up on the mountain slope above the ruin of my complex.

And with careful, careful twitches of its manipulators, I pulled away the blocks that I’d so carefully placed yesterday, the blocks that I’d put in place to hold the scree and boulders and logs that I’d worked free from their moorings.

It started small, at first. A tickle of pebbles, followed by larger rocks, followed by the smallest of the boulders and a bouncing log…

…and then physics did its thing, and the rest followed, surging downward and taking out more boulders, sweeping them into the avalanche as it thundered down toward the ground above the western half of my ruin.

Then I started trundling the construction drone down the slope, picking my way carefully as I could. Wheels weren’t optimal here, but they were what I had.

Tons of falling rock struck the earth above my original control room, above the room whose ceiling I’d just converted into material that I’d just converted into very breakable armor.

Dust billowed up, and when it was clear, I would have sighed in relief if I’d had lungs. The ruin was gone, the ground was warped and sunken, and the fact that I was still thinking meant that my little landslide had missed my core chamber.

And even better, there were lights coming up the road.

Not torches, not a rough, burning line but three electric lanterns. Just as I’d specified, during our last radio conversation. The Arcadians were coming to pick up the pieces.

I gave the construction drone its orders, swooped the aerial drone around for one last look to make sure we were clear, and returned my perspective to the bunker.

And more importantly, to the Ploughman who sat curled with his back to the door, face buried in his hands. He shook, and I knew it was adrenaline wearing off.

I’d have loved to have given him the time to recover. It would have been the decent thing to do. But I never had enough time. So instead I switched on my audio. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

“It was not my choice to join her on this. She was my slaver, not my friend.”

“I know.” But there had been tears in his eyes when he looked up.

He was silent a moment, then asked “What will you do now?”

“Leave. Will you come with me?”

“You would make me your slave, then?”

“No. If you say you want to go I’ll let you go. Even have my friends give you a few supplies. But where will you go?”

“Back to my—” he stopped. In the dim light I saw realization start to sink in.

“If you go back to your family, the Jaspa will find out. They will blame her death on you. But if you vanish here, you’re just one more assumed dead.”

“How can I trust you?” he asked.

“You can’t.” He had been decent enough. “But I aim to solve the Jaspa problem now. That will probably do your family and neighbors good, in the end.”

“I won’t help you fight them. I can’t.”

“Will you make me TNT? And teach others how?”

His eyes hardened. I kept going. “And not just that. I’m going to have a lot of people to look after. They need to know how to farm, how to make tools, how to… ah hell, they need to know how to live. Not just survive, but live.”

“Why do you care?”

I sighed. “I don’t pretend to be a good man. But this world is lined with the skulls of those guys. I’m about as decent as I can get away with, and that’ll have to do. I’m going to help the people I like and maybe take out some bigger evils than me before I’m done. Up to you whether or not that’s a good enough answer.”

He bowed his head and seemed to be thinking it over. While he did, I set the nanoswarm working above me, and the construction drone to digging down.

“Yes,” he decided at the end of it. “But I will leave you if you ask too much.”

“Fair enough.” I diverted the nanoswarm down and ate a hole through the false ceiling between us. “Sit tight for a minute. I’ll get my friends to lower a rope when they’re ready.”

Once the vertical shaft was complete between the surface and my chamber, they dropped cables, not ropes. And a familiar figure scrambled down first. A girl, just as grungy as before, lean and wiry.

I fired up my translation program. “You’re looking well.”

“Great one!” She bowed to me.

I snorted. “Get up. You’re staining the floor.”

“Glad you survived,” Cade called from above. “What now?”

“Got a friend below. Get some ropes down here, he’s coming with us. Then you’re going to lower that construction drone into the hole, and I’ll shut down for transport.”

“Transport? You’ve won!”

“No. I’ve faked my death and bought some time, that’s all. We’re relocating. You’ll need to help the drone set me up again, a few miles away. I’ve got a good spot. The Jaspa think that shine-contaminated dogs are roaming the area.”

“You sure about this?” Cade asked. “We didn’t discuss this.”

“Couldn’t. Too many ears. Radio’s impossible to secure with what I had to work with.” Argus might have found a way.

Argus. Poor bastard. I hadn’t had time to mourn him, and I couldn’t spare it now. I’d only known him a short time, but he had helped me, even if he was a spy.

Hell, I’d figured he was a spy from the get go. That had made him easier to understand and work with, honestly. Easier to forgive.

I gave Cade the coordinates, saw the Ploughman… Hiram, she’d called him, lifted from the sub-level. Then I guided the drone down and started the procedures needed to shut down and get packaged away.

The board had been stacked against me from the beginning. But I wasn’t about to give up. It was time to withdraw to better terrain, time to change the game entirely. I was off the Grid, literally, so that shut out any more attacks by fake-Leony from that vector. The plume of dust would have been noticed from the Starport, and the morning would show a crushed complex. That would lead Tyr to believe I was dead. The Jaspa might buy it, too.

About the only dangling thread were the mutants below. More might come for me, given time. They’d been stirred up now, and I wasn’t even certain the cave-in had killed the mantis squid. I had the feeling I was putting a problem off, rather than resolving it, there.

But that was a worry for another day. I stared up as my vision faded, the sensors going dark one by one.

Above me, bats wheeled and chittered in rage, their home destroyed… but they’d find another.

And beyond them, the cold, distant stars.

Perhaps I’d see them, before this was done.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

Thank you for reading Bunker Core! I am grateful for your patronage. If you’ve got a few seconds, please leave a review. Each review increases the chance of a sequel!

For news of future releases, and occasional free short fiction, please consider signing up for my mailing list, at the following URL;

http://eepurl.com/bMPrY1

Also, please feel free to check out my website, at the following URL;

https://andrewseiple.wixsite.com/andrewseiple

Finally, for more previews and news of more quality gamelit books, check out the gamelit society facebook page at the following URL;.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/GameLitSociety/

Best wishes,

Andrew Seiple