Nellie and the Nanites - Bk3 - Ch.16

Chapter 16

The Red Planet

Nellie's heart raced as the Resurgence pierced the upper atmosphere, plunging into a truly primordial world. The skies were a tumult of thick ash and smoke, their presence a stark reminder of the planet's volatile nature. The landscape, a vivid tableau of glowing red lava tracks and bubbling pools of acid, seemed to echo the very depths of hell.

Visibility shifted from miles to meters with very little warning as they dropped lower, and she brought up the mapping system, seeing a wireframe of the sensors reports overlaid, giving her a virtual representation of everything hidden by the clouds. 

“Dropping to clear this cloud cover,” Nellie told Lucy, and the resurgence drifted lower, coming out from the thick smoke and ash into a world of reds and silver. The silver came from literally millions of precious stones and mineral deposits that had been deposited on the surface like sequins on a ballgown. 

The allure of the precious stones and mineral deposits that adorned the surface was undeniable, but Nellie knew better than to succumb to their temptation. The black rock they saw was deceptively thin in places, with a seething mass of lava lurking just beneath. This was why their destination was the relatively safe stretch of black sand in the continent's center, a stable oasis shielded from the planet’s frequent quakes by its strategic location. 

“Scanning for any life form readings,” Lucy commented. “Broad spectrum.”

“With our luck, we’ll land and discover the place is overrun with sandworms or something,” Nellie said, only half-joking. Her two points of comparison, the moon, and the Hub world, were both seemingly packed with nightmares. With things like the Abomi-toads and Coral Striders on one and moss that bloody ate people on the other, Nellie had decided never to land anywhere without a massive amount of research ever again.  

The scans came back clear, and Nellie watched the mapping software Lucy had written, building a comprehensive knowledge of the area around their intended landing spot. Orbital scans were great, but there was nothing like first-hand experience with close-up scans. 

Once they had finished scanning a wide circle around the landing site, Nellie brought them into land. The black sand kicked up around the battle shuttle as they settled gently onto the soft surface, a thick stream of nanites pouring out onto the shifting sands from the drone ports and compressing a wide, solid platform for them to land on. Once it was thick enough to support the craft without sinking too far into the dunes, Nellie cut the engines slowly, ready to power up if the platform shifted or failed to hold the weight. 

“Down and stable,” Lucy confirmed as the engines started to cool. “I will oversee the nanites while you organize the unloading.”

“Stay nearby,” Nellie said anxiously. “I’m still not happy about this place.”

Lucy nodded and squeezed Nellie’s hand as she passed. 

For the next half hour, Nellie organized the unloading of the prefabs with the help of the Basic models and Centrums while Lucy supervised two large, silvery cubes that dissolved into the sands, the nanites processing the sand into solid rock even as they extracted any useful minerals. Slowly, three large circles formed around the central landing platform, thick stone beams and walkways joining them to the center as the sand flowed off the platforms like water rushing over falls. For each platform, the fleeing sand left behind ingots of minerals and large boxes of processed silicon, ready for use.

The nanites kept working deep beneath the new platforms, forming deep anchors that ended not in the volatile crust but in the sand itself. This created a large installation that effectively floated on the sea of enriched silicon and minerals around it. This would help insulate the facility from any quakes and enable it to be moved if the need arose. 

Nellie was crossing every finger that they wouldn’t need to.

Just once, could something please go right?

Pushing aside her anxiety, Nellie focused on the task in front of her. The first thing to be built would be the main shelter, which would protect any workers or valuable items from the toxic atmosphere. Outside of that, everyone would be in sealed suits at all times. Even if the air weren’t completely toxic to almost all forms of life, it would certainly kill anyone who was picky about air including something like oxygen. The large black boxes were brought into position, where they expanded, sliding apart into a large cube of about nine cubic feet. Then, another box was placed in the slot of the appropriate wall, and the process repeated. It was an ingenious method of building, allowing you to make whatever you needed, one room at a time. 

The basic units all wore ship suits, while subsurface nanites constantly repaired the modified Centrums’ thick shielding. It was one of several modifications to the base model that Paren called the ‘Hardened Shell’ design. The most visible of these changes were the legs; the bipedal model was replaced with a tripod-like design for extra stability, and the arms were shorter but much larger. She had clearly taken the design from Tiny, their massive lifter synth. He was just a touch too large for this place, and Nellie didn’t want to put anyone down here that she could not evacuate in a hurry if need be.

Nellie knew she was being paranoid about all of this, but with Last Chances back and a planet they knew very little about… she embraced her paranoia.  

A nanite cube about two feet across slid over the smoothed stone, sliding past her and tottering on the edge of the platform for a moment before it burst like a damn, spewing nanites into the surrounding sand. 

Nellie stopped and marveled for a moment at the sheer power of the things as the dune next to them began to flow toward the edge of the platform and gathered at the edge before a wall of stone, faced in a dull metal, rose a few inches above the expanding shelter. A few minutes later, just as Nellie was working on the third-story lookout and control rooms, the speed of the nanites accelerated as the stone gave way to Lucy’s reinforced glass design. 

The whole thing would be enclosed in less than a day, and a giant airlock was one of the things they would bring down on the next run. 

“This sand is absolutely packed with minerals and metals,” Lucy nodded to the landing pad, which was growing deck-plating like moss even as Nellie watched. “I think we might not need that second delivery of prefabs.”

“Gathering them is the point, not using them,” Nellie reminded her girlfriend. “How much time would we lose building from scratch?”

“From initial reedings?” Lucy asked. “If we use honeycomb stone and seal it with a skin, about a day and 2% yield.”

“Okay,” Nellie nodded. “We can deal with that.”

An hour later, the two women crowded around the Resurgence's scan console as the sensors built into the new mining base came online. A list of resources located within the sands was starting to generate as they watched and grew longer by the minute. Several were compounds Nellie had never even heard of, but Lucy was practically vibrating with excitement, which Nell took as a good sign for several reasons.

“Uh-oh,” Lucy said suddenly.

“What?” Nellie asked, feeling ice creep into her veins. 

“We have an anomalous reading, ten miles out,” Lucy noted the reading.

Nellie brought up the readings and frowned. “What is that?”

“I’m seeing signs of a structure of some form. Clearly made, not organic.” Lucy added. “It’s not huge, but it sure isn’t small.”

“No power readings, no lifeform readings,” Nellie noted. 

“We still should check it out,” Lucy noted.

“How long until the Resurgence is back?” Nellie said tensely.

They had decided to bring the remaining supplies down early in what was clearly a fit of unearned hope. It was currently loading up on the Rest with Lucy having flown it back remotely. 

“At least an hour,” Lucy said. “Less if we abandon loading, which seems premature.”

“Okay, mark its location, and we will monitor it,” Nellie said. “Let’s get the rest of this place up and running so we can take a look.

The initial mining plan was straightforward and took advantage of something they had in abundance. Nanites. Individual nanite clusters were small and slow, but getting enough of them in one place changed everything. 

They could simply drop them on the sand and leave, coming back in a few weeks to collect and load the metals and minerals. Which would be great, if they wanted to wait and hope everything went well. 

They didn’t.

The better plan was to build a base and funnel the sands through the factory. There, metals, minerals, and other useful components could be harvested by a series of specialized nanite nets before the sand was sent back out the other side and into the dunes again. The use of fewer nanites in the process, even including the numbers needed to shift the sands to and from the factory constantly ensured that they had a constant supply of the materials, with a daily shuttle flight to bring the primary ingots and such up to the Bly’s Rest for processing. 

The prefab blocks expanded and connected together, forming a skin over the honeycomb stone building, and the nanite-lined tube and associated collection trays and boxes grew up organically, extending to run for almost thirty feet along the side wall before it dove back through the floor and across to the final platform where the process repeated, only this time the pipe split into multiples within a series of switchbacks where silicates were collected and formed into everything from glass to digital chips. 

The remaining sand was fed into a larger pipe still forming beneath the sands, carrying it to the far end of the desert, where it would lie for years before the cycle began again. 

That part of the system would take months to complete as the nanites built the pipes inch by inch in the depths of the sand. 

The moment base construction was completed, all materials would begin to gather in the trays and be made ready for collection by the Resurgence. 

“So, we need to go and check out the anomaly,” Nellie said to Lucy as the Resurgence touched back down on the landing platform. “Any plans for that?”

“Funny you should mention that,” Lucy grinned. “I’ve just finished our rides.”

“Our what?” Nellie asked as Lucy gave a theatrical flourish and two prefab boxes crumpled, reforming into strangely touch-looking vehicles that reminded Nellie of nothing so much as Jet-Skis built by someone with a gothic-industrialist fetish.

“They work?” Nellie asked doubtfully. 

“Of course they work,” Lucy looked insulted. It’s basically just the base design with the actual base removed. Sand is pulled in the front, drawing it forward, and expelled from the back, pushing it forward.”

“Oh, okay,” Nellie shrugged. She had learned better than to argue the specifics with Lucy; the knowledge gap was just too large. “Any reason why we aren’t using the Resurgence?”

“We can then use these to move down to the anomaly, but I thought we could maybe have some fun,” Lucy asked, hopeful.

“You mean shamelessly waste time and bunk off while important things are happening?” Nellie asked with a grin. “You know me so well.”

Lucy laughed and waved her hand, the two sand-skis jerking onto the nearby dune.

“Race you there!” Nellie called, shamelessly throwing herself onto the vehicle and taking off while Lucy was still beaming at them.

“Hey!” Lucy laughed, taking off after her. 

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

Blasting over sand dunes in an experimental vehicle on an alien world, heading for an unknown and possibly dangerous anomaly while ignoring even fundamental safety concerns, should not be as much fun as it was; Nellie grinned as she found herself airborne again. 

Lucy was shrieking with delight as she followed her, the two almost at the anomaly site after only a few minutes. Honestly, Nellie considered pretending to get lost just to have more fun on the skis, but there was a limit to how much risk she was willing to take, and this was it. 

Pulling back on the throttle, she wound her senses up to full, the black desert sand starting to shimmer like it was made of opals.

Lucy came skidding in beside her, laughing and spraying her with sand before activating her own scans. Between the two of them, they could almost see through the sand and down into the depths.

Almost.

There was a complete dead zone down there, and it was shaped uncomfortably close to that of an egg.

“Fucking sandworms,” Nellie said, only half joking. 

“If it is, Paren can’t have one,” Lucy said with a smile. “But I don’t think eggs are shielded from scans.”

“So, how are we digging it out of the sand?” Nellie asked. 

“We aren’t,” Lucy said with a wink. “Trust me?”

“Of course,” Nellie said with a smirk. “Nothing bad ever happened after someone said that.”

Still, despite her distrust of the way Lucy was smiling, she stepped off the sand-ski.

Lucy clicked her fingers, and nanites flowed out of the engine compartment, if they even had such a thing, forming a pool around each of them.

“Wait, what is the plan?” Nellie asked as Lucy started to laugh. “OSTIE!” The silver leaped up, covering them both… and Nellie felt herself pulled beneath the sands.

At first, all she could sense was pressure; all she could hear was her own swearing as she cursed Lucy out in both of her languages. Her improved senses adjusted to the nanites surrounding her, and she gulped as the magnetic fields that she guessed were the sand skis got further and further above her as they approached the anomaly. 

Suddenly, the pressure vanished, and Nellie found herself standing in a bubble of stone, one side of which butted up against a strange-looking wall of an alloy she had never seen before. 

Her improved senses went haywire, trying to insist that the wall was not, in fact, there. Lucy landed next to her in a small shower of sand.

“Creative use of the word fuck,” Lucy nodded. “And I am, in fact, capable of doing most of those things,” She grinned. 

“I’ll get back at you later,” Nellie said, fascinated with what she was seeing, or rather not seeing. “No magnetic field, metal signature, energy reading, nothing.”

Lucy approached the slightly curved wall and pushed her hand against it.

“I think this is some superdense alloy,” Lucy remarked. “I can’t dent it, and the nanites can’t seem to either.”

“Something a nanite can’t effect?” Nellie asked. “Not sure I like that.”

“Nanoblades?” Lucy asked. 

“Is there any chance it will try to kill us if we open it?” Nellie looked at the wall suspiciously. 

“Probably,” Lucy admitted. “Throw the knives from the far end of the bubble?”

“Yeah,” Nellie said, backing up, “And get the nanites ready to evacuate us if something attacks.”

“Done,” Lucy said as the silver crept back up their legs, hovering just about waist height.

“On three,” Nellie said, feeling herself tensing, “One, two, three!”

The nano blades bounced off the wall, embedding themselves deeply in the floor.

“That should not be possible,” Lucy said, frowning at the wall. “Nanoblades literally cut anything.”

“And yet,” Nellie cautiously approached, finding only a slight nick from each blade in the smooth surface of the wall. “We scratched it, at least.”

“Where?” Lucy ran forward, “I don’t see it.”

“It’s right there.” Nellie pointed and frowned at the smooth, undamaged wall. “It’s gone,” she said lamely. “I swear, it was there.”

“So, it healed itself?” Lucy asked.

“Shit!” Nellie yelled, and the next second, she was encased in silver, headed for the surface.

Bursting out of the sand, she jumped onto the sand ski, the silvery nanite pool flowing back into it as they both gunned their vehicles, shooting for the top of the nearest dune. 

Ten miles away, the workers scrambled out of the way as the Resurgence suddenly flared into life and rocketed off into the skies. 

Nellie, meanwhile, was focusing all of her attention over her shoulder even as she shot off the top of the dune, with Lucy close behind her. The dead zone was growing, and it was already twice the size of the original readings.

“Fuck!” Nellie swore, “How far out is the ship?” 

“Thirty seconds,” Lucy pointed, and they turned, flying across the sand and leaped another dune, the Resurgence swooping down and catching them in mid-air. 

Only her improved reflexes save Nellie from smashing into the wall of the cargo bay as her sand ski slammed into it.

“Status?” Nellie asked as gravity seemed to double suddenly. 

“Taking us up!” Lucy called back. “Its growth is slowing, but I’d rather see it from a distance.”

“What the hell even is it?” Nellie called as she scrambled up the ladder and onto the flight deck.

“It’s stopped,” Lucy called suddenly. “About five times original size.”

Nellie slid into the command chair and took control of the shuttle, bringing it around to look down on the sand; she noticed the smooth, egg-like shape of the anomaly sticking out of the sand, which was already working to buddy it again. 

Nothing else seemed to have changed. 

“We need to keep an eye on that thing,” Nellie said as she watched the tip buried again. 

“I’m putting in a change of plans,” Lucy said, punching buttons on her console. “No one and nothing even gets within a two-mile radius of that thing.”

“Agreed,” Nellie frowned at the large empty spot in her readings and wondered if that would be enough. “And I want a sensor buoy at two miles out, constant feed to the factory.”

“Good idea,” Lucy said. “Let’s hope it’s enough.”