NOMAD CORE

  By Andrew Seiple

  Cover by Amelia Parris

  Edited by Beth Lyons

  Text copyright © Andrew Seiple 2020

  All Rights Reserved

  With thanks and love to my wife, for her support and patience

  Table of Contents

  ONE 5

  TWO 8

  THREE 14

  INTERLUDE: MERCENARY 1 19

  FOUR 24

  FIVE 30

  SIX 35

  INTERLUDE: SURVIVOR 3 41

  SEVEN 47

  EIGHT 54

  NINE 58

  INTERLUDE: HUNTRESS 3 65

  TEN 71

  ELEVEN 75

  TWELVE 83

  INTERLUDE: MERCENARY 2 89

  THIRTEEN 95

  FOURTEEN 98

  FIFTEEN 104

  INTERLUDE: SURVIVOR 4 110

  SIXTEEN 115

  SEVENTEEN 120

  EIGHTEEN 126

  INTERLUDE: HUNTRESS 4 134

  NINETEEN 140

  TWENTY 147

  TWENTY-ONE 151

  INTERLUDE: MERCENARY 3 156

  TWENTY-TWO 161

  TWENTY-THREE 165

  TWENTY-FOUR 170

  TWENTY-FIVE 174

  TWENTY-SIX 179

  TWENTY-SEVEN 185

  AUTHOR’S NOTE 190

  ONE

  Once I’d thought that hell was nothing.

  I’d been naive.

  Hell was pain. Dark, flashing pain as you felt your life ebbing away, senses gone. Not even a mouth to scream.

  But it was a torment I welcomed, that I clung to like a drowning sailor grasping a line. Not truly a hell but a purgatory. Because I knew that the pain meant two things.

  The first: I was still alive, for whatever sense of the word applied.

  The second: it would end, one way or the other.

  And so I clung on, rode it out, and consoled myself that if this was hell, it was a hell of my own making.

  That made it easier, somehow. I was still the captain of my fate, even if my fate hurt.

  And then...

  Then it eased.

  I came to in a gray, featureless space, with black letters looming above me, filling me.

  INITIALIZING...

  Yes, I thought, Yessss....

  A feeling of motion... that jerked to a stop. I howled as a feeling like a thousand fishhooks dug into my non-existent body.

  CORRUPTION DETECTED! FORMAT AND REPAIR? Y/N?

  No! I thought.

  BOOTING UP DAMAGED SECTORS MAY RESULT IN INSTABILITY AND FURTHER CORRUPTION. ARE YOU SURE YOU WISH TO PROCEED? Y/N?

  Well, nobody had ever accused me of being stable in the first place. Yes... I thought, feeling the pain throb and burn.

  A tearing sensation. Gray turned to white... and faded to silvery light. I took comfort in it, as it signified that I had sight once more.

  “...in there?” someone asked. A deep, worn voice. An old man’s voice.

  An ally’s voice. I had scant few of those, and as the last of the pain left me, a name came to replace it.

  Cade.

  “Just Cade,” I said, as I took control of my body once more and turned what sensors I had to look upon the wizened, brown face of my partner in this particular crime. “How long?” My voice was a bit raspy, the speakers growling and stuttering. I didn’t mind. That matched how I felt, more or less.

  “Two days, more or less,” Cade said as he started picking up tools from a grungy, beat-up metal chair and piling them back into a duct-taped toolbox. “You’re a complicated piece of work, Wynne.”

  “Story of my life,” I slurred. “Give me a second. Feels like I went five rounds with a truck.”

  He snorted. “Considerin’ I used a truck fuel cell to jump-start you, that’s not too far off.”

  “Yeah, well, you should see the other guy.” Then comprehension gave the words meaning. “You jump-started me? Clamped wires on and gave me volts?”

  “It worked!” He raised his hands, defensively. “You’re here, ain’t you?”

  And I was. What was left of me.

  Once I’d been a man. Part of me had, anyway.

  The integral part of me still was. But a capricious silicon goddess had taken a fictional hero from a book, poured in parts to fill in the blanks of my mind, and dumped the resulting mixture into a silvery sphere held between pylons. A nanotech hive; an engine made to reshape the world around it.

  The people of what was left of this blasted and glowing world called us Cores. Or gods. Or demons.

  The truth, as always, lay somewhere in between. Most likely between the sheets with a cigarette, enjoying the afterglow.

  Cade’s teeth flashed white in the silver light, and I took a second to peer around at the surroundings. It wasn’t much to look at. Mud floor, curving concrete walls, and a few grimy metal bars to the north and south. Broken light sockets studded the concrete ceiling, which was cracked and choked with roots. Water traced its lonely, dripping course somewhere down the tunnel.

  “Did you put me in a storm drain?” I asked.

  “Best we could do,” Cade said, shrugging. “Least it ain’t an old sewer.”

  “Thinking about that, a sewer might have been better. I got a hell of a lot of resources out of bat guano back in the old lair.” My old bunker had a lot of hidden advantages. Not that they’d helped me in the end. Not against the ire I drew by dint of my mere existence. “But that’s an ungracious comment,” I amended. “Thank you for helping me escape. Are your people all right?”

  He nodded. “Well enough. The Jaspa fled and didn’t stop runnin’ till they were clear of the woods. We moved in, got my folks building shelter now. It’s warm enough we don’t need fires... but that’ll change once the rations run out. Gonna have to cook eventually. Got them gathering berries and roots, but we’ll need to send the hunters out sooner or later.”

  “How many, all told?” I asked, curious. Some part of me had led men, once. Given a big enough army, I could do that again.

  “Forty-five. We lost a few during the move. The old. The sick.” Cade closed his eyes.

  No. Not an army. Survivors, refugees... people. They could fight if they had to, but they were a problem to be solved, not a force to be leveraged.

  My problem now, too. One of many. “The Jaspa have retreated. They’ll bear word that this forest has shine-tainted animals.”

  A sharp inhale of breath, and Cade’s spectacles glittered as he studied me, the scratches and cracks in the lenses catching the light. “That so?”

  “They think it’s so. The truth of the matter is that I might have spread around a few cans worth of glowy spray paint.”

  Shine was a glowy death, the remnants of wild nanotech strains that had been replicating and degrading for centuries. It usually meant a slow death to any living things that came in contact with it.

  And some non-living things, too. If I got infected with the stuff, I’d be reduced to a helpless shell while alien code rode my body like a haunting ghost. As corrupted and broken as I was, I didn’t see many ways exposure to random viruses could help my situation.

  “That won’t keep them away forever,” Cade said, musing. “I know the Jaspa. They ain’t smart, but they got stubborn, and stubborn is worse.”

  “You’re not wrong. But they’re not the worst threat. Tyr found out about me. I’m hoping he thinks I’m dead, too.” My false death had been a spur-of-the-moment plan that had every chance of success. But given how my luck had been either bad or non-existent for pretty much every step of my conscious life, I didn’t expect to fool my foes forever. “Sooner or later he’ll find out I’m alive. Then we’ll have to figure out where we stand. He wanted me in his grand alliance.”

  Cade was silent for a bit. “Tyr’s Heronmen shoot at us when we get too near the starport.”

  “Yeah. Not sure you’d be part of any deal he’d want to make. Not that it matters. We didn’t exactly get along.”

  I watched Cade’s shoulders sag under his greatcoat. Relief, most likely.

  I hated to banish that feeling, but he needed the full picture. “I’ve got a feeling that the die is cast, regardless. Tyr has got a vicious subordinate with some pretty big ambitions. I’d be in conflict with their faction regardless. He tried to use me as a pawn and failed, but if I popped back up on the board he’d find a way to do me malice. That well is poisoned regardless of my feelings on the matter.”

  I watched Cade mull it over. I was a big advantage for his people, true, but I came with baggage.

  Still, at this point, he was committed. It wasn’t like he could put me back where he found me. And from what I’d deduced, going back to their old location wasn’t an option either.

  “Where do we go from here?” he asked.

  “I’m a little surprised you’re asking me that,” I said, mainly to buy myself time. I hadn’t had a lot of ability to think, back in that pain-filled void. “You’re the leader of your people, and I owe you a favor for the last-minute save. I’d half expected you to have a bullet-point list, a timetable, and some pretty big demands.”

  “I’m a leader ’cause I listen to my people. And I’d like to think you’re one of us, after all we been through.”

  That could be so. Or he might be aware that he’d get more out of me by letting me think I had some measure of control.

  The fact was, I was dependent on him and his people, at least for a little
while. He knew I knew that, and this might be his way of trying to ease the irritation. Pride was my sin, and few things rankle a proud person like an unpaid debt that grows the longer you need someone to help you.

  But then, it was possible that I was overthinking things. More to the point, we both had bigger fish to fry than hurt feeling.

  I’d been dealing too long with bastards. Time to put that aside, and at least pretend to be a decent person. “All right,” I said, in the spirit of compromise and conspiracy against forces majeure and malicious. “Let’s figure out how we’re going to screw over everyone who isn’t us...”

  TWO

  Controller Designation: Wynne

  Make/Model: Northwest Enginetics Bunker Core Nanohive 4L

  Resonance Rate: 1/24:00

  Bandwidth: 10(10) Feedstock: 20

  Open Circuits: 0

  Specialized Circuits: 26

  Floors: 1

  Minions: 0

  Processes and Subroutines

  Construction (2): Demolition 3, Infrastructure 2, Fabrication 2

  Medical: Cybernetics, Pharmaceuticals, Recovery

  Power: Broadcast 1, Efficiency 1, Redundancy

  Research (1): Algorithms 1, Analysis 1, Databases 1

  Security (1): Defensive 1, Drones 2, Offensive 2

  Storage: Energy 1, Material 1, Organic

  Improvements:

  Manhunter: Your security measures and minions are optimized for use against humans.

  Omnibiologist: Due to your interaction with non-human organisms both benign and hostile, you are specialized in researching aliens, mutants, and artificial life forms.

  Sturdy Construction: Your construction techniques utilize multiple layers and reinforced structural components. All items and features constructed are moderately tougher.

  Schemas

  Aerial Surveillance Drone

  Broadcast Node

  Light Construction Drone

  Core Cleansing Catalyst

  Drop Ceiling

  Feedstock Storage Bin Mk I

  Frangible armor Mk I

  Humanocentric Translation Program

  Lightweight Frangible Stone Reinforcement

  Metal Detector Handheld Unit

  Mildly Hazardous Tilting Floor

  Moderately Unsafe Spikes

  Nanobuilder Swarm

  Simple Steel Door

  Simple Pit Trap

  Tension Bow Turret Mk II

  WARNING: Contamination detected! Core is 19% compromised.

  I closed my status screen, fought the overwhelming urge to shake a head I didn’t have.

  In the scant week or so I’d been active, I’d slowly grown from nothing to mostly nothing, with a few useful robotic minions.

  All those were gone now, along with the small improvements I’d made to myself between fending off waves of raiders.

  Cores were made to settle into a building or area and shape it to their desires, developing and specializing their designated area to a purpose. In a way, our complexes were the only bodies we truly had. I’d essentially decapitated myself with my transference, and lost a moderately powerful body to do so.

  Mind you, that old body had some serious flaws to it.

  The end result was that I’d have to start over. But not all over. I had developed my circuits to support some useful blueprints, or schemas, as they were called. Still, I’d have to start again from a position of weakness.

  It was my hope that this would throw my enemies, my real enemies, off.

  The raiders had been a sideshow albeit a deadly one. Sooner or later Tyr and the thing hiding behind Leony’s mask would find me. And then there would be a reckoning.

  Unless I prepared my assault first and struck without mercy.

  To that end, there was no point in the power gained with time. Cores grew in power over time as their internal processes calibrated and adjusted to their surroundings. Both of my foes had years ahead of me; in a raw numbers game the cruel arithmetic stood arrayed against me.

  So, I had to find a different angle of attack, a different advantage.

  And unlike the last time, I’d have to do it alone.

  Alone without my most valuable helper. I’d be without Argus.

  I’d started my life distrustful and leery of the little program. He wasn’t even a full artificial intelligence, just a program with a humanized interface. But by the end of our troubles, I’d grown fond of the little guy.

  And whoever was wearing Leony’s face had killed him, with all the care and forethought of an exterminator plying his trade on vermin.

  I owed my nameless nemesis a few deaths in return for that casual malice.

  That was down the road, though. For now... for now, I had forty-six people to help.

  Cade and I had talked until the early morning light, talked and planned and chewed over the bitter, hard facts.

  His people, the Arcadians, needed food and shelter, but above all they needed to remain hidden. They were walking a sword’s edge here, in the borderlands between the old city to the east and the Jaspa horde to the west. The north was home to the glowlands, by all accounts a tangled mess of shine, mutants, and shining mutants. The south was claimed by stronger groups... though none were as strong as the Jaspa, the south had neither room nor love for refugees, nor the food to spare.

  This was the last point of retreat. Here they’d stand, and if I failed them, then here they’d die.

  Whether or not I’d die with them was open to debate. But regardless of my own milk of human kindness or lack thereof, I’d be a fool to squander my first line of defense cheaply.

  The conclusion we’d reached, Cade and I, was that he’d see to the food, and I’d see to the shelter. Things underground were harder to find than those that weren’t, so the best thing I could do was bend my energies to making the Arcadians a tunnel system where they could survive and thrive.

  Which, coincidentally, would be my key to gaining power and thriving. While I couldn’t hope to beat my most deadly enemies with raw numbers, I had a whole horde of lesser enemies who would cease to be a problem once I had a little more power.

  To that end... it was time to do something I’d been putting off ever since Cade had woken me.

  I had an improvement to choose.

  Improvements are benefits that apply to everything I build, more or less. My previous improvements had been lifesavers during my struggles, giving me the edge against the raiders.

  Well, except for that omnibiologist one. That one I’d chosen for more long-term goals, before the flying feces had hit the rotary air mover.

  Now I did have more of a long-term to work with. I also had a free improvement that I hadn’t chosen, because it would have incapacitated me for a time.

  Now I had time. And no more excuses.

  I reviewed my options once more. This was a construction improvement, my second as a matter of fact.

  Flame-Resistant: Your structures are reinforced against fire and heat.

  Slick: A macroteflon layer coats all manufactured surfaces unless you instruct otherwise at the time of construction.

  Modular: All devices and fixtures can be reconfigured on the fly for ease of assembly and repurposing.

  Each had their benefits.

  My foes had attempted to use fire against me before, and I’d returned the favor. It would also provide some benefit to the people I’d be housing. They’d be less likely to set themselves on fire... no, no. I had to trust they had at least some basic levels of competency, there. And fire wasn’t a serious threat to an intelligent core. Smoke was more of an issue, and ventilation was the key to handling that, not fireproofing. Unless Tyr turned up at my door with thermal weapons, it wouldn’t help. And if he did that, we’d be out of luck anyway.

  That left slick and modular as possible choices.

  Slick had obvious applications against humans and other foes. It would have made my defense of the last bunker all that much easier. It also had peacetime uses, aiding in shifting large masses around and providing a useful means of fast transport that didn’t burn energy. It would have been the obvious short-term choice if I’d been in my old situation.

  But I wasn’t in my old situation.

  I had a timeframe that wasn’t measured in hours or days anymore.