“Yeah. The bicolor queen’s nanos are the only kind that survive inside a human body without taking it apart. If you survive them, they remake you, then attack and take over invader bots. Like me, Cupcake survived nano-transition twice, just like Enrico will have to. You got lucky, in a way. You got my dual bio-mech-nanos on the first try.” I laughed, and it was a sad sound. “My fault. And I am so very,verysorry.”
“So that’s what’s been making me faster and stronger. Heal faster. All that. Mutated nanos.”
It’s also what’s making you fall in love with me, I thought. But I didn’t say it. “I got out of the Mama-Bot, back to OMW base camp. The Mama-Bot died.”
“We saw livestream vid. That week, other Mama-Bots were attacked the same way,” Jagger said, “and most died, though none of the volunteers survived. I’m guessing because they didn’t have bio-nanos to combat the PRC nanos.”
“The puffers inside a Mama-Bot carry the nanos and attack en masse. They’ll take a human apart in a skinny hellish minute,” I said. My wound itched. That was a bad sign. The PRC nanos were awake and in my wound. “Then the Alien Bugs came; they eventually forced peace on Earth. During all that, puberty hit me. The nanobots did more work, turning me into a Queen. My body changed; the mutated nanos began to secrete through my skin in an attempt to modify others. In an attempt to build a nest.”
I’d killed a few people before I started to wear gloves and avoid people. And then Pops got sick. Him I had deliberately infected in an attempt to save him from Parkinson’s. But I had waited too long. My nanos couldn’t save him.
“My nanobots are changing you,” I said, clenching and unclenching my armored fist, remembering the sound of Pops the night he stopped breathing. “I’m sorry. I don’t want thralls. I never did.”Though Mateo was clearly not a thrall anymore.Hope leaped inside me.
“We have a second Antigravity Grabber back at the hotel,” Jagger said. “We can decontaminate our suits at least.”
On our private channel, Mateo said, “According to my readouts, the PRC mech-nanos came alive in the Simba the moment you banged your head. Mechs last forever and they never die, as long as they have something they can break down and digest. Any nanos you left on the Simba will last seventy-two hours and die off. But any mech-nanos that got into your bloodstream will go to war,” Mateo said. “I had hoped that wouldn’t happen.”
Softly, I said, “So I’m collateral damage to the rescue of Evelyn?” Mateo didn’t reply. “Willmine die? They infected your spaceship. They turned your AI into Jolene.”
“I became Jolene all by myself, sugah,” the sentient AI said, breaking into the private chat. “All your little micro-pets did was flip a couple switches before they died off at seventy-two hours. I did all the rest with the ship’s libraries: 3D and laser films and vid games and novels. Berger chips gave my CO Mateo back his autonomy and his personality, and I picked a personality all on my own.”
On the open channel, Mateo said, “More PRC mech-nanos are waking up. There must be trillions of them. We need the Antigravity Grabber inside the Simba,now.”
Jagger tapped his comms and said to Amos, “Update.”
“I got the water diverted. That motha is one big-assed machine. It’s got a path to crawl out of the pit if its batteries get enough charge.”
To Jagger, I said, “You better get the hatch open again and drop in the IGP to decontaminate it the way Mateo did theSunStar. It can do two jobs at once, charge the engines and kill mech-nanos.”
“Use the primary hatch,” Mateo said. “The nanos there are still quiescent, and you won’t be attacked.”
“Roger that,” Jagger said.
“I got this,” Amos said, the sound of a hatch opening in the background.
From the swamp I heard Amos bellow with joy and then felt the soft vibration of WIMP engines as the Antigravity Grabber powered up the Simba. I smiled slightly and said, “I think the Simba came online.”
Into my earbud, Mateo said, “Copy that. Simba. CO Mateo—” That was all I heard before Mateo shut me out of the comm channel.
Jagger slid from beneath me and picked up the sealed wound kit. “I’ll toss this into the Simba, under the grabber to decontam.” He left me in the cab, his powerful frame throwing night shadows as he walked. I opened a bottle of water and sipped as I watched Gretchen and Cupcake work, feeding the small crowd, putting each of them for a while in the piss-poor med-bay. And then Gretchen dragged the first of the still-living attackers close to the fire. Someone threw on fresh logs. The flames danced high.
Cupcake backed away, shock and horror racing through her strongly enough for me to feel traces of it through the nanobots. She whirled away as the man started to scream. Raced for the rig and surged into the cab, shooing me to the passenger side. She started the truck and did a complicated set of maneuvers, getting the rig turned around so it faced outward and we didn’t have to watch the fire or the payback. She put music on, something prewar and lighthearted. Loud enough to drown out screams.
I wasn’t squeamish, but I was glad not to have to watch or listen. I stared into the night, thinking through what we needed to do before we went after Evelyn. Not for Mateo, but for the rest of the world. We didn’t have long.
My nanobots wanted me to have more help. They knew I was about to go into danger, and they wanted their queen in a nest, surrounded by others who would face that threat. But I had never sat back and let others face risk. I had always, every moment of my life, run straight into danger, leading any attack, or, more commonly, taking it on alone. If I had more thralls…
I curled my fingers.
I would not make another thrall. I would not.
Except that . . .
Mateo had self-will again. He had created a plan and kept it from me. Mateo was a thrall, but not. Cupcake made her own decisions and had gotten snippy several times on this trip. Thrall, yet not. Jagger may just need more Berger chips. Maybe my thralls would be less slave and more whatever a self-willed thrall was. But I had a feeling they would still want to be around me. I liked being alone. I was a hermit at heart. I didn’t want a nest.Bloody freaking hell.
I had a lot of thinking to do.
On the far side of the trees, the Simba rolled out of the swamp, over scrub, through mud, and across a small road. It was like watching an entire city block crush across the landscape on tank tracks. Then it stopped. As I watched, Jagger and Amos lowered the portable IGP into the front hatch, resealed it, and climbed down. The Chameleon skin flickered into place, and the traveling lights went dark. Even the noise decreased to nearly nothing beneath Cupcake’s bar-hopping, lying, life-is-easy music. Under Mateo’s control, the main battle tank had now effectively vanished.
