Nellie and the Nanites - Bk3 - Prologue

Prologue

Jump Transit

Crush ran for the door the moment he saw the bulkhead start to buckle, but it was still a very near thing. Even as he spun the wheel and sealed the compartment, the chaotic energy of Jump Transit filled the room. A shudder seemed to run through the ship, and loud groans and creaking sounded from all sides.

“Crush!” Vicky’s voice sounded loud as it came from a speaker beside his head. “Crush! Can you hear me?”

“I hear you, Vic,” Crush said, holding the call button down while he spoke. “Your quarters are gone.”

“No shit!” Vicky snapped. “That whole section is shaking itself apart. GET OUT OF THERE!”

“Which way?” Crush called back.

“What?”

“Shortest or safest route, Vicky,” Crush said calmly. “I need to know what my best chance is.”

“Head for the B section, and fucking go now!” Vicky screamed.

Crush was already running before she finished speaking. Section B was a short run, but he already doubted his chances. The hallway was visibly buckling in several places, complete with the telltale glow of the energy leaking through the joins.

So, that was out.

Instinct had always been a big part of Crush’s life. It was what had made him help a certain Captain, fake his death, and escape an occupied city. And all of that was only in the last year.

Hey, it had been a hell of a year.

Crush followed his instincts again, spinning away from the corridor and diving down an accessway. He could faintly hear Vicky yelling, but only for a second. His body crashed through the hatchway at the bottom of the accessway, and he used his feet to kick it shut. He spun the wheel with his feet only to feel the hatch warm slightly as the accessway filled with more of that damnable energy.

“No time to just lay here,” Crush told himself, scrambling down the new corridor. A loud creaking had him sprinting through the next compartment before leaping for the roof hatch, pulling himself up and sealing it once he was through. The maintenance tube he was in stretched away in both directions.

Maintenance tubes had two big advantages over the rest of a ship or station. First, they had many more hatches to put between you and the danger. The other important aspect was that they were designed to provide access in times of structural collapse or other disasters. In short, they were a lot tougher than the rest of the ship.

That wasn’t to say they didn’t have their drawbacks. For one thing, they didn’t have the shielding the hull did. There was supposed to either be a hull between them and everything when things were fine and when they weren’t, like now, you were supposed to wear a space suit in them.

Crush ran on all fours as he tried to pass another compromised area. The tube burned at his hands, even through the shirt he had wrapped them in. He had no idea how hot Transit Energy was, and he hoped never to find out; what he did know was that it was like being in an oven as he tried his best not to breathe. Scalded lungs would not improve the experience… at all.

He felt the cooler metal and stopped to slam down the emergency hatch behind him, sealing the heat in. Almost immediately, he saw frost forming on the walls and roof.

“There has to be fucking repair bay soon,” Crush swore and scrabbled on. He was either right, or he was going to either fry or freeze. Neither prospect was particularly attractive. Repair bays were supposed to be present every five bulkheads in case of emergency. Skimping on them was a very ‘Duke’ thing to do, just like skimping and saving a few pennies on jump shielding.

He finally saw the hatchway in the side of the tube that he had been searching for. A repair bay.

These little lockers were intended to help repair space suits damaged during maintenance. They would include emergency sealant tape, spare parts, air, and more. At least, they would in a normal ship. Based on the trip so far, Crush was expecting it to be empty. Instead, he opened the hatchway to see a little hope. It wasn’t much, but it was better than nothing.

Really, the fact they needed help to even get the ship out of the bay should have been a giant red flag for Crush. Who even built something without being a hundred percent sure they could launch it? From there, things had only gotten worse. The moment they launched, the Duke’s Hope struggled to hit escape velocity, not even being able to enter orbit in case they could not maintain it. An hour out from the planet, the first of the massive farming cylinders had failed, venting their contents to space in less than a second. They lost another the moment they entered transit, it being ripped off in the shift to Transit space.

And then, a few hours in, Crush headed to the quarters he shared with Vicky to take a shower. The shielding in the section must have failed somewhere, so that left Crush sprinting through the ship bare ass naked while it collapsed around him.

At least now he might die with some clothes on, or even…

“I might survive long enough to punch Duke after all,” Crush said with a grin as he pulled himself into the locker and slammed it shut behind him.

He quickly scrambled into a body suit from the emergency dispenser inside the repair bay. Then, he pulled on three more. It was not exactly comfortable, but it provided a little protection from what he was about to do.

According to popular opinion, survival is about preparation and knowledge of your environment. To a certain extent, Crush agreed. Of course, someone who prepared perfectly and knew everything could still die pretty easily if they lacked the last component necessary to survive.

The willingness to do whatever it took to survive.

A quick inventory showed that the spares were not exactly what he could have hoped for. He had a helmet, one glove, two mismatched boots, and a bunch of sealant tape. There was a full air tank but no rig or anything to mount it. The only air pipe was the wrong size for the helmet as well.

“At least I have a bunch of tape,” Crush sighed as he grabbed the first roll.

It took a long time to tape the tank to his back and even longer to put layers and layers of sealant tape over every inch of the exposed body suit. The joints were the worst. He needed to be able to move, but they still needed to be covered. In the end, he made a large half-sphere out of tape and then sealed that with even more tape.

By the time Crush was done, he looked… well.

The helmet met an expanse of silver sealant tape that completely covered his body, while one hand -the one without a glove- was just a basic mitten, and the other was an actual working hand. At least the massive bulges at each joint went well with the boots. One was a good fit; the other was a fucking clown shoe.

All of this, and it probably wouldn’t even work.

Still, it was better than nothing…

Crush left the repair bay carefully, trying very hard not to tear any tape. He had brought three reels of the stuff with him, but he would probably die before he got a chance to use the stuff.

The maintenance tube was intact, but he had no idea if it led anywhere better than where he had already been. No radio in his homemade suit.

With a sigh, Crush moved off, continuing his careful way through the ship. It was not a quick trip, with continuous turns and changes of direction. His every step was as careful as could be. A single tear, and he could be exposed to something deadly. For all he knew, they were out of Jump Transit now, and radiation was slowly cooking him from the inside out. Each exit hatch he checked was either too hot or freezing. How much of the ship had failed?

He was beginning to worry he was on a ship of the dead, with more failed than intact, stuck in Transit until it finally gave way completely when he found a hatch that felt almost normal, at least as much as he could tell through the layers of tape.

He opened it and saw a pair of people running past below. The running wasn’t a good sign, but it was better than this fucking tube. He dropped out of the maintenance tube and heard a muffled scream. Someone smashed into him, and he was sent sprawling.

“Stop, you stupid bastard!” Someone snarled and pulled his attacker off him.

He saw a man briefly, his face twisted in panic before he shook himself free of the woman and bolted past Crush.

“Come on!” The woman yanked Crush upright. “We have to get out of here; Duke’s putting a pressure seal in place in two minutes!”

A little under two minutes later, they stumbled through a hatchway that was sealed and welded behind them. A tense few seconds later, the all-clear signal blasted through the ship.

“All hands, all hands,” Duke’s voice came over the ship-wide comm, “The last pressure seal is in place. The ship is safe!”

Crush ripped the tape off the helmet and freed himself from it while the people around him cheered.

“Where are you going?” The woman who had helped him called as Crush walked hurriedly away.

“Looking for a real spacesuit,” Crush called back.

“Why?” She seemed confused. “The seals are holding!”

“We still have to down-jump,” Crush called back. “I plan to be in a suit before that.”

“Shit!” The woman swore, “Hold up, I’m coming with you!”

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

Captain Brenda Da’Vore sat in the command chair of the Last Chance and frowned at the red lights on her board. Their ship had taken a heavy impact just before they entered jump, and it was all her brother’s fault.

“Captain,” Her second saluted and presented a report, “We have lost all the fore compartments on the port side.”

“Losses?” Brenda asked.

“Ten so far,” Her second was a serious man. A hard man, but he looked pale and shaken now. “All to the Transit Energy.”

“Ah,” Brenda winced. The thing about ‘Transit Energy’ was that no one was quite sure what it was. Hell, no one even knew where ships went during Transit. They just went… somewhere. The Energy -and it earned that capital E- was pure chaos. No one knew exactly what it felt like to get hit by it; all they did know was what the bodies looked like afterward.

They had lessons on it.

Brenda was a massively cold-hearted bitch. She was aware and even proud of that fact. While everyone else had seen it as her being ‘broken,’ she had taken it as a source of strength. Even so, the first time she had seen a dead body, all she had felt was curiosity. Sure, it was gross, and it smelled, but it was also fascinating.

The bodies of those who died from Transit Energy were completely different. They gave her nightmares. They were nightmares. Twisted, melted, horrific things. To look at them was to glimpse something not of their universe. It was… wrong. On some instinctive level, everyone who saw it felt that.

“Ten lost out of a crew of forty,” Brenda sighed. She knew them all, everyone as loyal to her as her own hands or limbs. “I’m gonna kick the shit out of my brother when we down-jump.”

“Uh,” Her second held out a second pad.

“Fuuuuck,” Brenda glanced at the report and threw it away. The chance of the Duke’s Hope surviving was at less than thirty percent.

“I’ll have emergency stations ready to render assistance,” Her second nodded to her. That was his gift. Gifts. Knowing what she wanted before she had to say it and knowing when to fuck the fuck off.

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

“All systems normal,” Lucy said with a sigh as she dropped into bed next to Nellie.

“I expected no less,” Nellie grinned as she started to pull off Lucy’s ship suit.

“Lair,” Lucy laughed. “You were terrified when we jumped.”

“Well, I’d never done it before,” Nellie winked. “Plus, no one said it was so pretty.”

A screen on one wall showed the exterior camera feeds. An endlessly shifting riot of colors blurred past, the screens bathing the room in a soft, shifting glow.

“Huh,” Lucy said, shifting to let Nellie continue. “I’m told most people find it very uncomfortable to look at,”

“Can’t they see the patterns?” Nellie asked, distracted for a moment as she gazed at the screen.

“I don’t think so,” Lucy admitted. “At least, no one ever wrote about them.”

“Poor them,” Nellie said with a wide smile. “Now, enough stalling, missy! We down-jump in two hours.”

“Yes, Captain,” Lucy laughed as she pulled Nellie back to face her.