Nellie and the Nanites - Bk3 - Ch.3

Chapter Three

Landfall

There was no plan for what she would say when she saw Crush again for the first time. Part of her was sure she would slap him, while another part wanted to hug him. There was no way to tell how it would go before she saw him again. The scans from the shuttle had clearly shown he was in trouble, so she hadn’t exactly had time to think it over before they jumped. 

“Are you Doing a little gardening, Crush?” She winced internally when the words came out of her mouth. It had seemed like such a good idea when she had thought of it, but now that she had actually said it, it sounded so ‘action hero cliche.’

“Captain?” Crush seemed frozen for a second, the two just staring at each other blankly.

“I’m so sorry,” They both said at the same time, leading to more silence followed by awkward laughter.

“Anyone want to help this one?” Lucy asked with a grin as she took over, pulling the injured Duke’s Hope crewmember over toward the crashed compartment. “No? I’ll just deal with it then.” She winked at Crush.

“I had no choice about Tor-Am,” Nellie said eventually. “I didn’t want to do it.”

“I never should have even reported what I found without talking to you,” Crush countered.

“They would have killed me if she reported me,” Nellie replied, having missed what Crush said as she tried to explain. “I just couldn’t take the risk.”

“There was this thing with a person I trusted,” Crush went on, similarly missing Nellie’s comment as he tried to explain his side of things. “He did something just like that, but for no reason. I just reacted, I just… I regretted it immediately.”

They both stopped and replayed the conversation while processing what the other one had said.

“Wait, you saw someone shoot a person in the head twice?” Nellie asked. “What are the odds?”

“Pretty good for a soldier,” Crush admitted. “I mean, you just sort of…”

“Aim for the head,” Nellie nodded. 

“This isn’t awkward at all,” Paren said as she wandered by. “I’ll just be over here getting a sample of that moss stuff.”

“Wait, it’s danger–” Crush cut off when Paren's gauntletted fingers split into multiple tendrils, which she jabbed into the writhing mass. The few mossy green tendrils that reached past the gauntlet she slapped away like flies. “Never mind.”

“Yeah, have you two met?” Nellie asked. “Crush, you remember Paren-Far, right?”

“Paren was a brackta?” Crush asked.

“My tail fell off when they were torturing me,” Paren said dramatically. “You remember when they did that, and no one objected, right?”

“I-I-I,” Crush paled. “I thought they were just doing tests?”

“Really?” Paren snorted as she ripped off a section of the moss and placed it on her shoulder. “And they think I was gullible.”

“I really am sorry,” Crush bowed in front of Paren.

“Eh, I’m over it,” Paren patted him on the shoulder as she went over and sat down with her new toy. 

There was a lot of talking to do for Crush and the crew, but time was not exactly on their side. In short order, the whole lot was herded on board the Resurgence, including the people in the crashed compartment. They were more than happy to leave, although everyone gave Paren a wide berth when she walked through the bay, draped in a rapidly growing patch of slightly discolored moss.

“Do I want to know what that is?” Nellie asked her.

“Probably not,” Paren grinned, “But it tickles.”

“Just don’t let it eat anyone,” Nellie said with a sigh. “At least, no one we like.”

“Sure,” Paren shrugged. And returned to petting the strange plant. 

If it was a plant. Oh, how Nellie hoped it was a plant. 

One planet full of horrific creatures was more than enough for one lifetime. 

“I have another compartment located,” Dar called. “This one seems to be holding, but it might be worth heading over to look.”

The Resurgence took off again, flying a good few feet above the trees this time. The moss had reminded Nellie that a new planet, or moon in this case, meant new risks to deal with. A little caution couldn’t hurt.

The landscape that passed below them was like night and day compared to the world of the Hub. Everywhere she looked, she wanted to go and explore. Large curving arches of rock rose from the grass and trees before joining back into the landscape, sometimes miles from where they started. The structural strength of the rock must be off the charts. From what little she could remember from school, not even steel would have that kind of strength.

Nellie felt a slight flash of remorse. They hadn’t been here for two hours yet, and she was already weighing up the natural resources. It was not a good look.

Oh, damn, she even brought a colony with her. 

Still, she had choices. Choice one would be to make sure she behaved better than the people from her planet had done.

The new rescue site was out in an open area of rich red sand. The compartment had come to rest on what appeared to be a stretch of beach around a large body of water. The people from it were clustered around a series of doorways that led into the compartment, trying to keep the creatures from making their way inside.

The creatures themselves were strangely familiar-looking. Their back legs were stock, short things, while the front legs were still strongly muscled but slightly longer. They had thick bodies and short, stubby heads. They almost looked like bulldogs, just bigger and with long, pointed ears standing straight up from their heads. She flew low over the landing site, circling once and sending the creatures running in the process as she blared a loud horn through the exterior shuttle. 

“Lucy, get a scan of those things, okay?” She asked.

“On your screen now,” Lucy called back.

A small window popped up in the corner of vision. It was a rotating view, and the front of the things quickly destroyed the bulldog illusion. The jaws were strong, bone or beak-like things that merged into a central bone ridge that protected the nose and spread before meeting the brows. It gave the creatures a distinctly alien look that was matched by their strange-looking back eyes with odd pupils that looked like swirls of color tightening toward the pupil. It was, by far, the strangest set of eyes she had ever seen. 

“I think my people are here,” Crush called from the Jump seats. “That’s One, so the rest should be nearby.”

Nellie saw Dar’s shoulders tense slightly, but only for a second. This was bound to happen eventually, but she would have rather it not happen this soon. A bit of time for them all to get used to the idea of each other would have been better.

The woman that Crush called One ran up to him and saluted the moment that he cleared the bay. Nellie recognized the entire squad from when they had traded supplies with them back in the other world.

Better now than never, she supposed. 

“I have Two and Five with me, Boss,” One said as Nellie approached with Dar and Lucy. Three and Four are missing; they were gone when we woke up.”

“Woke up?” 

Nellie noticed that Crush’s tone was completely different when he spoke to his people. 

“We lost pressure on approach; no suits in the compartment,” One frowned. “The lockers were empty.”

“We’ll search for them,” Crush promised. “Captain?” He turned to Nellie. “Allow me to introduce One, Two, and Five.”

“Numbers?” Nellie asked.

“We gave up our names to fight the war,” One replied proudly.

“War’s over,” Nellie noted.

“Uh,” One shot a look at Crush, who smiled and nodded.

“Cara,” She introduced herself.

“And-Aran,” Two piped up immediately. “Feels good to say that again.”

“Bil-Tor,” Five said with a yawn. 

“Nellie Bonne Chance,” Nellie didn’t add that it was nice to meet them. Things were not quite at that point yet. “This is Dar-Ken and Lucy,” She added. “Paren is… where the fuck is Paren?” She growled.

Lucy pointed to the right, where Paren was crouched over a downed not-a-bulldog that Nellie assumed had been injured in the defense of the compartment.

“That’s dangerous, Captain,” Cara said immediately. “I’d advise getting your younger crewmate away from it.”

“She’ll be fine,” Dar-Ken said as they watched the crewmate in question jab a pair of nanotubes into the dying creature.

Nellie wasn’t as calm as Dar. The synthetics, with the exception of Salem, all had an almost awed reaction to Paren. The ‘Prime Drone’ tag meant a lot to them. Nellie didn’t see that when she looked at Paren. She saw a young girl forced to grow up too fast. The truth was probably somewhere in the middle. 

What happened next happened so fast that the old Nellie wouldn’t have had time to react. The dog thing twitched and leaped to its feet as the process was completed, much to Paren’s delight. 

Cara and her two squadmates did not take the sudden movement to be friendly, however. Assuming that Paren was in danger, they all moved to kill the creature as soon as possible. Unfortunately for them, that involved moving aggressively in Paren’s direction. 

Paren moved to protect her new sub-drone, putting herself directly between the charging soldiers and their target, which was when Dar reacted. The big man leaped over her head and charged into the three soldiers, sending them to the floor in a truly epic shoulder charge. Before they even hit the ground, he had his weapon on them.

Attacking soldiers, especially ones just out of a war, tends to trigger their instinctual fight responses, and this is where everything would have gone very wrong indeed.

If she was the old Nellie.

Now?

Nellie blurred as she moved, kicking off the ground and shooting forward as Lucy and Dar moved in perfect sink with her. In less than a second, the three of them had the soldiers pinned to the ground.

“Everybody calm the fuck down,” Nellie growled. “Soldiers, that is Paren, my Prime Drone. The creature is hers now; it is no threat. Dar, thank you for acting, but they were merely attempting to protect Paren from a perceived threat.”

Dar nodded, but his rifle remained pressed against the back of Cara’s head.

“Everybody, take a deep breath and relax.” Nellie released the boy formerly known as Two and watched as Lucy and Dar released their captives and stepped back. “Great. Now, let’s all respect the fact that we are all professionals and know what we are doing.”

“I understand,” Cara said stiffly. “Sorry for the misunderstanding.” 

Nellie nodded to her.

“Why tackle us?” Bil-Tor protested. “We’re the good guys.”

“Crush,” Nellie said coldly. “Fill them in on who my crew is.”

“Yes, Captain,” Crush sighed as he informed the soldiers that Dar and other members of Nellie’s crew were the synthetics they did not manage to kill in their attack.

When he was done, Cara looked at Dar and said only one thing: “It was war.”

Oh boy, did that ever make the following few hours awkward. The Resurgence flew back and forward, collecting the lost and scattered colonists and bringing them back to the main camp while Remy relayed information from the Bly in orbit of the moon. 

The camp itself was slowly coming together, Duke apparently restoring order quickly once he had snapped out of his depression and shock. Sending the Resurgence off without her, Nellie headed into the new command compartment and found Duke in a meeting with a large group of pissed-off people. It seemed everybody had a laundry list of complaints, missing people, and lost equipment. All of them wanted their problem dealt with immediately, and all considered their interests more important than those around them. It was enough to remind Nellie of everything that she hated about the normal life she had stolen from her by the I.E.S.  

A military command structure was certainly not the type of government she would ever have chosen in her old life, but it was the closest to what she had with her crew. A ship needed to run that way, and it seemed that the drone structure created by Conversion naturally followed that as well. 

Ultimately, all that mattered was who the person at the top was. An important thing to remember now that she was that person. People would follow her lead, at least on her crew. This lot? They had their own thing going on, but at the end of the day, there were things that needed doing, and too much arguing got in the way.

“Duke, we need to talk,” Nellie said in a momentarily lul in the complaints. “Urgently.”

“Everything is urgent,” Duke said with a sigh.

“This is more urgent,” Nellie said sternly. “Get all your leaders together for this, okay?”

That seemed to stall everyone. They may be arguing, but they were all here for the same reason, at least. It meant that there was hope for the colony. From her experience, the two things that a society needed were people who knew when to speak up and people who knew when to shut up and listen. 

“There seems to be a native population on this moon,” Nellie said once a good twenty people had gathered.

“I thought it was uninhabited,” Duke frowned. 

“They didn’t show up on scans. It seems they likely have a pre-technological civilization, at least from what we have seen.” Nellie answered. “No power readings, simple hand-made dwellings, no sign of industry that we have seen.”

“Then what’s the problem?” A woman asked. “They are no threat.”

“We don’t know that,” Nellie said simply. “They know this moon; you don’t. They know the plants and animals; you don’t.”

“Can’t we just move them away?” Another person asked. 

It was the question that she had been dreading.

“I think that would be a bad idea,” Nellie replied. “On my homeworld the larger, more advanced, or just stronger groups did that repeatedly. In the end, it always ended badly for them or their descendants.”

“What do you advise?” Duke asked, but she could tell he was just being polite. 

“No contact if possible,” Nellie replied. “If you do come into contact, your technological superiority should mean they pose no threat while you withdraw.”

“So we just run from a bunch of savages?” a man laughed. “It's not happening.”

Nellie let them argue for a while. The arguments varied, but they were definitely trending one way. The people here felt they had given up too much already just to get here. They were reacting to that loss and fear by trying to grip as tightly as possible to anything they still had. 

Some argued for moving the native population, some argued for attacking them, and only a couple argued to leave them alone, and Nellie noted who those people were. They were the ones she could work with, who knew what it was like to go somewhere with almost nothing and work to improve things. 

They also weren’t afraid to argue their point, which was even better. 

The good people who stayed quiet helped no one, least of all themselves. They too often ended up living in a society they despised when they could have changed it for the better.

“No decision needs to be made now,” Duke said loudly, talking over the arguing council as he tried to calm things down.

“I think it does.” The man who spoke was calling for the early and permanent removal of anyone living nearby. “We can not have a threat right next to us without addressing it.”

“You will leave them alone,” Nellie said coldly. “That is the decision.”

“You are not a member of this group,” the man sniffed. “What gives you the right to pronounce these things?”

“A shit ton of firepower in orbit, a small army, and a willingness to use all of it,” Nellie said with a smile. “Or the fact that without me, you would all be dying in the vacuum of space. Your choice.”

Duke just gaped at her.

“Look, my people on Earth fucked a lot of things up. I can’t change that. I can make sure you lot don’t do the same shit.” Nellie said with a shrug. “You have plenty of space here, and in time, maybe we can make peaceful contact with the native population. See?” 

The same stunned faces.

“You lot owe me for saving you all,” Nellie tried. “This is how you pay me back.”

“Fine,” Duke said. “But this was not the way to do this.”

“I’ll take effective over polite,” Nellie admitted. “But you are probably right.”

Nellie walked out of the camp a short while later, meeting the Resurgence as it dropped off its last load of recovered colonists. The meeting could have gone a lot better, but at the end of the day, she got her point across. As long as she had the upper hand, they would behave. 

She hoped.

Once the Last Chances made its way back here?

Well, she would just have to see.