Nellie and the Nanites - Bk5 - Ch.11 (Patreon)

Chapter Eleven

Processors

“Is this supposed to be funny?” TRV-4 asked as the four cargo pods cooled just beyond the landing bays. “I am not entirely sure I see the humor in it.”

“No, Tee,” Cheap sighed. “This is not any kind of joke. These are our supplies.”

“But I saw the list,” TRV-4 said. “It was looooong.” He gestured, his arms elongating comically as he spoke. 

“You can extend and contract your limbs?” Cheape asked, never having seen him do anything like that before.

“Of course, every part of me can be extended quite significantly,” TRV-4 said and began moving toward the first pod. 

Cheape stood there momentarily before deciding that he clearly didn’t mean what she thought he did.

“Are you coming?” TRV-4 asked.

“No! I mean, what?” Cheape was glad it was still too dark for it to be light enough for him to see her blushing. 

“The pods?” Tee said with a smile. “You want to inspect them with me, yes?”

“Oh, yes,” Cheape hurried forward. 

She punched in the lock code Queen Lucy had sent to her implant, and the pod hissed open. Inside was…

“It is a box,” TRV-4 said. “I mean, it is a large box, but it is a box.”

“That must be the Material Processor Unit that Queen Lucy designed for us,” Cheape said, stepping into the pod and looking around until she found the datapad with the user manual on it.

“Sorry! Are we late?” Marie came hurrying out, Vauban hurrying after her.

“Not at all,” TRV-4 said politely. “The pods have just cooled enough to open.”

“Did you have to wait long?” Vauban asked, looking into the pod. “Oh, is that it?”

“Apparently,” Cheape replied, looking through the manual quickly. It seemed simple enough.

“We had to wait about fifteen minutes,” TRV-4 said, “I shocked Emissary Cheap3 with my extendable parts.”

“Really?” Marie chuckled. 

“His arms!” Cheape called sharply. 

“Of course,” Vauban was smirking.

The Processors themselves each had a small generator inside them, but it was only enough to run the anti-grav used to move them around. The grav drives were needed because they were much heavier than expected, and Cheape soon found out why.

They set one up in the back corner of the third level of the Workshop, making sure to have five meters clear on each side as the manual suggested before Cheape activated the start-up process.

Much like the prefabs, the unit unfolded and expanded to become a large oblong with a wide hopper on one end and a conveyor belt on the other side.

“Impressive,” Vauban whistled. “We have three more of these?” 

“Two more,” Cheape replied. “The other pod is from Captain Barnes-Cha on the Sparklight.”

“What does it have? A power core?” Marie asked, looking excited.

“No, our power core will arrive later today,” Cheape shook her head. 

“Oh,” Marie looked a little crestfallen.

“The pod has three boost suits in it,” Cheape replied, examining the control panel on the Processor and going through the menu options. When she looked around, she saw just TRV-4.

“They left quite quickly, didn’t they?” TRV-4 said happily.

“Okay, I should have seen that coming,” Cheape laughed. “Come on, let’s give them a hand.”

Cheape yelped and dove aside as a beam of hissing yellow energy shot over her head.

“Shit! Sorry!” Vauban called. “There is more than just Boost Suits in here!”

“Leave the mining lasers alone!” Cheape yelled as she got to her feet, wiping mud from her front.  

“This one has a bit of a hair trigger,” Vauban said apologetically as he placed it down beside the pod.

“I can fix that!” Marie called from inside. “Mother of Skies! How do you put one of these things on?”

“You don’t,” Cheape said, stepping into the pod and seeing the suits secured to the walls. 

“Aww,” Marie sighed.

“First, you pair it with your implant,” Cheape activated one of the suits, and Marie nodded when it was done. “Next, place your hand on the back here. Now, push gently.”

A soft glow surrounded Marie’s hand as the suit learned her biological signature. Once it was done, the back of the suit opened like a mechanical flower.

“No way!” Marie climbed in.

“Okay, now go very gently—” 

The back of the suit closed up, and the arm wrenched free of the steel restraints.

“Oops?” Marie said.

“Slowly!” Cheape called. “It responds to your every movement!”

“So, this might take a bit of getting used to…” Marie said as one of the legs snapped free of the restraints when she staggered back a little. 

“Would you like to bond with one of the suits?” Cheape asked TRV-4 as Marie and Vauban stumbled around the base like overpowered toddlers.

“I would be unable to activate it,” TRV-4 replied. “It requires a biological signature to open, does it not?”

“I think so, yes,” Cheape said. “Why?”

“I am not organic. I have no biological signature.” TRV-4 said with a shrug.

“Oh. Right,” Cheape felt herself flushing again. She really should have remembered that. “An oversight, I suppose, on our part.”

“It is nothing,” TRV-4 said brightly, “I am strong enough to match one of the suits anyway.”

“Yes, but it is also armor.” Cheape shook her head. “I want to make sure you don’t get hurt.”

“Thank you,” TRV-4 beamed. “I have made a friend. I really am doing well as a transfer unit.”

“More than one friend,” Cheape waved to the two idiots trying to lift each other’s suits off the floor.

“Yes!” TRV-4 nodded. “That is good, but you were my first. My first organic friend.”

“I just had the benefit of meeting you first, Tee,” Cheape said with a smile. “You are a very likable person.” She looked at his eyes like finely carved crystals that shone with subtle inner light and chuckled to break the sudden tension. “It never hurts to be friends with the boss. I guess that is your benefit.”

“Yes,” TRV-4 smiled, and she noticed how nice a smile it was.

“Hey! What are you two doing just sitting there?” Marie laughed.

“Emissary Cheape was telling me about being friends with benefits!” TRV-4 called back.

“Really?” Marie laughed. “What kind—”

“Shut it, or I’ll weld that suit closed with you inside it!” Cheape yelled, getting dirty laughs in return. 

While they waited for the arrival of their power core, they continued with the cleanup of the town. Cheape had been getting a fair bit done with her own suit, but now that two more mechanical marvels were wandering around, the work accelerated. 

The townsfolk had been working for two days straight, and the stress was showing on their bodies already, so this was their mandatory day off. Everyone was told to rest, eat, and relax. Most of them still turned out to watch the three Boost suits tearing down the ruined buildings and clearing the lots, ready for new buildings to be erected. Only about three-quarters of the town was actually occupied as the population had declined in recent years. That left plenty of space for new buildings to be put up. 

Once the lots were cleared, the local builders gave the three a crash course in digging out new foundations, beaming with pride the whole time. Cheape and TRV-4 cut free the old foundations with mining lasers, but Marie and Vauban were still banned from using them. Cheape insisted on at least one night's sleep between near-death experiences. 

By the time Cheape’s implant pinged to tell her the Power Plant had broken the atmosphere, they had dug out three plots. She left the others to continue the work while she chose a good spot for it to land. 

At least, that had been the plan.

As the information filtered through her implant, Cheape had to double-check that she was reading it right.

“A floating power station?”

Cheape - 

I made a few changes to the design of this power core. Placing it too far from town would only have increased the difficulty of accessing it. As such, I have included passive Anti-Gravity drives that will keep it in the air. It makes it a lot more practical and removes the worry of energy leakage poisoning the surrounding ground. 

Lucy.

Cheape arrived in time to see the power plant level out and slow to a stop several stories above the ground. It hung there like an elongated metal balloon—a massive grey and black balloon with yellow hash marks. 

“What am I supposed to do with that?” Cheape groaned as her implant dinged with a connection to the… whatever it was. 

Readings appeared on her HUD, all well with safety margins. Did this thing even need to be floating? It looked completely fine to her. Still, Queen Lucy must know better, Cheape decided. 

There were movement controls included in the setup, apparently, but Cheape was not inclined to touch them. She was no pilot, and that looked like it would do a lot of damage if it hit something. Looking through the menus, she found a function where it would move to a locator signal. 

A quick look around and the only place she could think to place it was over the Workshop. She quickly climbed up onto the flat part of the roof and sent the signal. 

Slowly, the power plant turned and moved towards the spot, arriving above the Workshop but still well out of reach. She adjusted its floating height and swallowed as the shadow covered her, lowering until it was just above the helmet of her suit.

Cheape resisted the urge to crouch down or run away, but only just. This close to the exterior plating, she could feel a slight thrumming in the air.

Grapple Points Available.

Secure to Pre Fab structure?

She chose yes and then yelped as four heavy metal plates dropped from the power plant, clanging against the metal roof and sealing tight. Thick cables now connected the floating core to the Workshop, and a section of the roof retracted slightly. A thick bundle of insulated cabling was lowered into the hole, and the gap was sealed around it. 

Power Plant Installed.

Building Designation - Workshop - Integrated

Adding Exterior power couplings.

Cheape headed downstairs, seeing lights coming on throughout the structure and the Processors beeping as they were supplied with power. It was quite a sight, really, but still. That floating power plant was just a little creepy for her tastes. 

Where did Queen Lucy even get that idea from anyway?

“It is common in my home world,” TRV-4 said a little later when Cheape and her team were working on connecting up the other buildings to the power. “We are very aware of the risk of energy contamination in our society. The protection of organic life, in all forms, is crucial to us.”

“It just makes me nervous to have something that crucial floating up there in the sky. What if there is a storm? Or it gets hit by lightning?” Cheape asked,

“It is quite immovable by winds; I assure you,” TRV-4 said confidently. “And that shielding could take several direct hits from a capital ship. I think an occasional lightning strike will be safe.” He smiled.

His relaxed attitude was infectious, and Cheape felt herself starting to relax.

The lights coming on in the buildings helped with that, as did the possibility of a hot shower once they got a reliable supply of water. 

The town’s water source was acceptable, but they had yet to connect their own living quarters to the system. There was just always something else to do.

With everything fully powered, they could free up the shuttle. That would significantly speed up collecting resources and allow them to move out and see how other towns were doing. 

For the moment, however, Cheape was focused on sorting out this one.

The capital would make a good test case, and doing a good job here would show everyone in the other towns her people could be trusted. 

At least, that was the plan.

The following day, things got moving a lot faster. The Processors were miracle workers, reworking anything from rusted metals and broken machines to the stone of collapsed buildings into useful materials. 

The parts from an old harvester became sets of tools, while the stone chunks were reformed into reinforced bricks. The bricks were another thing taken from the Silicate worlds and featured a strange interlocking system that allowed them to bind to each other. It meant they didn’t need any mortar to fix them in place.

Even better, they could be made in several different sizes. 

Broken and forgotten machines were remade into whatever was needed to complete the building currently being erected in the town.

Everyone worked together, from the townsfolk to the walkers to Cheape’s people. There was a constant flow of materials into and out of the Workshop, as people took turns loading scrap into the processors and never failed to emerge beaming from the building with a fresh load of bricks or other goods.

Marls and the other leaders organized everything, and even Cheape felt herself blown away by the sheer speed of construction. 

The first building was completed just as night started to fall. It was only a small house, with just the bare rooms, but it was two stories tall and had ten rooms in total. And they had built it from the bare earth in an afternoon.

As the last brick clicked into place, the townsfolk cheered loudly. Over a hundred people had worked together to make it happen, and it showed. 

Marls made a short speech about it symbolizing a new beginning, and the cheers turned into an hour-long party. It would have lasted longer, but everyone wanted to get to bed. 

They had work to do tomorrow.

The next day started bright and early, with Cheape and the others waking to find that several teams of twenty men and women were already waiting to make a start on other buildings.

Marls greeted them with a beaming smile and explained his plans. They involved building several more buildings over the next few days, which would take up the last of their recovered stone, but he had a plan for that.

Even while these buildings were being built, other teams were working to connect the houses to the water and sewage systems. In short, they would complete the houses, and when people moved into them, their old houses would be torn down to build new ones for other people.

“The problem is that we need at least two of the old buildings, or more, to make a single one of the new ones,” Cheape explained. “The Processors compress and condense the stone to make it stronger.”

“I had a thought about that,” Marls pulled out an old map. “We used to have a quarry near here; it should provide plenty of stone if we can get it out and get it back here.”

“How long has it been since you used it?” Cheape asked.

“This was in my grandad’s day,” Marls said, “We used to have vehicles back then.”

“We can use the shuttle,” TRV-4 said. “I am able to fly it if needed.”

“Excellent,” Cheape nodded. “So, we have a plan.”

While the townsfolk got started, Cheape noticed something interesting. They were working with the Walkers. Not just with them, but WITH them. They talked to them, even seeming to joke with them. Walkers mixed with them, even having to push through the locals sometimes to get where they were going.

The fear they had engendered had been replaced with a strange kind of fondness.

“I found some manuals,” Vauban said, coming to find Cheape in the workshop office area. She had been staring out the window in wonder at the work going on so smoothly. 

“Manuals?” Cheape forced her mind to focus.

“I found manuals on all kinds of things,” Vauban said excitedly. “In the shuttle memory banks. I think we might be able to use them to start on more advanced things. There is stuff on lighting, electronics, and so much more. It isn’t exactly a training module, but it’s better than nothing, right?”

Cheape looked over what he found. Some of it was a bit random, but there were definitely possibilities. 

“We’ll need a lot of different materials to make any of this,” Cheape said thoughtfully.

“Trev did say he found lots of minerals in the area, right?” Vauban asked.

“Trev?” 

“Tee Are Vee Four,” Vauban said. “Trevor or Trev.” He raised his eyebrows. “He seems to like it.”

Cheape shrugged; as long as Tee was happy, that was all that mattered, she supposed. “Anyway, that’s right. Lots of minerals around here.”

“We should look into starting to collect them, even if only in a small way. The sooner we can make actual technology, the better.”

“Sure, I’ll add it to the list,” Cheape chuckled. “So far, it is forty-two items, all marked very urgent.”

“What’s number one?” Vauban asked.

“The health situati—”

“MUSHROOMS!” Marie burst into the office.

Cheape felt her mind jump its track. Again. “What?”

“The townsfolk need a good source of protein. The only way I can think of doing it is with mushrooms! I talked to the healers, and they have several types of mushrooms they use for exhaustion. At least one of them must be high in protein.”

“What do you need for mushrooms?” Cheape asked. “Do they grow in fields, or?”

Marie explained, and Cheape decided she no longer ate mushrooms.