The controller was thin like a smart phone, though just a bit too long and thin to be comfortably used as one. It was beaten up, old and dented slightly. But it responded to her touch, coming alive and displaying in perfect English. A necessity for her. Since she learned Standard by listening, she hadn’t had a chance to learn how to read. Fortunately, the subnet was translatable not just between Standard and all the native tongues of the Coalition planets, but there were also a few non-Coalition world tonguesand even a few human languages. Once she figured out how to translate everything, it made her life a lot easier. And after messing with this device and its programming, she’d managed to create the ultimate shield for her life.
Vytln watched her screen, unable to read it but involved in the process, as she brought up the homemade program. It was still operating exactly as she’d set it. It hadn’t been hiding her face or voice from Alred anymore, but all the other programs were still running.
One by one, she began turning them off. Vytln’s head cocked in curiosity, but he wouldn’t notice any difference. Not while he was this close to her. He wouldn’t understand all the things she was altering, changing, turning off.
Until she just began playing with it. With a few touches of the screen, she began playing music through the comm system hooked up in Vytln’s workroom. The familiar human song made her head bob as she set the lights to flash and dance in time with the beat.
“You’ve hacked into the computer systems of the ship,” Vytln said, his tone impressed as he looked around. “How did you manage to do that without alerting Alred?”
Haven laughed. “You are being close. I not hacking the ship’s computer. I am hacking theship.”
Vytln frowned, and she knew he didn’t understand what she meant.
With a wicked laugh, she began summoning her mites. Bringing them all back to her. If they weren’t needed to obscure her, they didn’t need to hide either. They moved quickly, gathering like a building storm. She knew the moment Vytln sawthem moving around the rim of the trap’s hole. He stiffened and sat up, frowning as he squinted.
“Is that…” He breathed, blinking.
It was hard to see them. It was only because they were actively moving that he even could. Haven laughed as she reached her hand out. Obligingly, her little mites gathered over her hand. Gathering, building, coalescing until they formed a silvery ball, undulating in her palm.
“Those are nanobots,” he breathed, looking up at her, then down to the ball.
“Close,” she said, closing her hand. She squeezed and played with the little ball like it was slime. The tiny bots were metal, but they were so small that holding them all together was like liquid. They were smooth and cool against her skin as she squished and pulled them. She’d gotten them so precisely programmed, it was like they moved to her will rather than her command.
“They are being older microbots,” she said. “Bigger than the nano used now. Most be considering them useless anymore. Too big. Not working well with most modern tech. But that is what is making them perfect for me. I don’t wanting them to integrate into the system like a nanobot is supposed to being. I want them to controlling it.”
Beaming, absurdly proud of herself, she held up the ball for Vytln to exam. The surface was smooth, but the tiny, almost imperceptible motion of the bots constantly moving in and around each other was still detectable.
As he watched, she used her tablet to set it into one of its pre-set shapes. A not-wrench small enough for her hand to hold but big enough for the large bolts used in the Coalition. A tool thatcouldn’t easily be found, because aliens didn’t come in her size. But by having the microbots interlock their cilia and freeze in place, she made a tool that was just as strong and immobile as any other. But one that was perfect for her, and one that could actually help her add more force to her torque.
“These are my mites,” she said affectionately, holding the tool to her face and smiling at the coolness of it on her skin.
Chapter 17
Vytln
Nanobots were standard kit on starships. They were incredibly tiny robots that, individually, could do practically nothing. They were too small, too simple. Their only real use and strength came when an entire army of them were gathered together. However, even then, they were too small to really do much. They could usually only be programed to do one thing per bot. And it was an incredibly simple thing. Usually, it was something like feeling electricity, detecting abnormalities, or locking together to form ‘patches’ on the sides of starships that were meant for temporary fixes until it could reach a repair station.
Outside of military uses, that was essentially all nanobots were used for. They were vital but they were simple and unimpressive.
Microbots, the machines that preceded them, were similar. They were decades old at this point, and practically obsolete. They did the same things nanobots could do, but the patches they made on broken starship hulls were weaker and more prone to leakage and sometimes simply couldn’t last long enough to get a starship to a station.
It was old technology. Replaced technology. He wasn’t even sure where Haven would have found microbots in this day and age.
Or how she figured out how to make them form a wrench.
“That’s not strong enough to be used,” he said, eyeing the tool critically. Just because it was shaped like a wrench didn’t mean it could function like one.
“Here,” Haven said, handing it over to him.
He started, surprised. Slowly, keeping an eye on the thing, he took it from her. Absolutely sure that it would fall apart once he held it.
One of the flaws of nanobots – and their predecessors, the microbots – was that they couldn’t work remotely. The tiny robots needed constant contact with their home controller. Without the constant contact, the fraction of delays in each individual bot receiving a message would mean they weren’t capable of moving together properly.
He assumed the tablet in Haven’s hand was the controller. Maybe there was even a secondary terminal somewhere on the ship. So long as that terminal was on the ship and the bots were attached to the ship, that would count as direct contact.
But he didn’t have such a thing, and the signals wouldn’t move through his body properly. So, in taking the wrench, the bots should have started to warble and have difficulty maintaining their shape.
However, when he held it in his hand, it remained firm. It moved normally. It didn’t lag as he turned it in the air.
