Chapter 36: Chapter 36: Rogues.

“How’s it looking out there, Z?” Sam’s voice came over the com as I jerked my gauntlet away from the module with a hiss. My colony destroyed the invading nanites swiftly.

But that left me with a bigger problem.

“Everything alright Doctor Zolnikov?” That was the woman from the Maggi’es Pride. Doctor Delveccio must have given them access to our intercom. Or maybe I had, inadvertently.

“Rogue nanites are present in the docking module.”

“What does that mean for the time line?” That sounded like Magnus.

“I am not certain. My colony is limited, but the rogue nanites can reproduce themselves as long as they have access to power. Overcoming them may prove difficult.”

“That doesn’t sound good.”

“Is there some other way we can get free of the station without wrecking the ship?”

“Not and have enough time.”

The crew of the Pride and my companions began arguing and talking over each other. I tried to tune out the voices.

When I used nanites to analyze something they essentially looked like strings if one could look closely enough at them. This was because each nanite only holds a part of the total instruction set. They need to maintain contact with each other.

Spreading them through an object tended to look more like a net the more nanites I used. This gave me a better idea of what I was looking at and kept redundant links with the whole colony. The rogues, as far as I could tell, did not do this.

They seemed to clump together. They still kept links back to their power source, but those were a messy, haphazard affair. The connection maintenance routine was hard coded into all nanites. Somehow, this rule had been corrupted.

This gave me an idea. The beginning of one, rather.

I place my gauntlet back on the module. This time, I focused my colony as tightly as I could in one area, while maintaining a buffer to keep the rogues out as well as I could. And I pushed.

This time my nanites were pushed back where they held the line, but the concentrated arrowhead I made punched through. Immediately, I hooked them around. Pressure built along both sides of the arrowhead momentarily.

Then the pressure abruptly ceased on the side closest to me. The arrowhead formed a new line within the module that started to get pushed back.

The rogues that had been forcing their way into my body abruptly weakened. My colony annihilated them in seconds. I formed a new arrowhead and did it twice more before the density of the rogues started pushing my nanites back faster than I could advance.

My heart rate increased as I kept trying to cut off more of the rogues at a time. The battle within the module repeatedly jumped forward and was pushed back, chunks of rogues being annihilated as they were cut off from their source and my own badly understrength colony slowly being whittled away.

I knew the direction the rogues were coming from. Repeated cutouts had made that clear.

“His vital monitor has his body temperature and heart rate increasing. He’s still alive, but not responding at the moment. Probably busy doing whatever it is he does with those nanites of his.” Doctor Delveccio’s voice came to me as a vicious assault forced my colony back once again.

“What happens if he fails? Can you go out and get him?” Someone from Maggie’s Pride asked.

“He’s got the only working space suit we know of at the moment.”

My colony kept getting pushed back. I couldn’t replace my losses quickly, but the rogues just kept coming no matter how many I cut off and destroyed. In desperation, I sliced an arrowhead as deep into the module as I could.

The power node was close. The pressure on my colony eased slightly as the rogues tried to push the tight concentration of invaders away from the power node. There was less resistance than I expected this close. My colony was practically touching the node and the rogues acted with frantic haste, closing in rapidly.

Then my connection was cut to the arrowhead.

I did the only thing that was left for me to do. My colony returned to me. It began replicating itself as my stamina cratered to new lows. The Wampus Cat began licking my face and I cursed the setback in my own mind.

We could have cleared the debt while we were still at the Headquarters terminal, but none of us had thought to do so. I certainly hadn’t. There was probably even an option to manually eject the ship from the station.

But we had not done any of that. I hadn’t mentioned anything, and it was my idea. Now it was coming back to bite us.

“Z? Are you doing okay now? That looked... stressful, from what your suit monitor was telling us.” Doctor Delveccio asked kindly.

“I remain functional, Doctor. There was a setback in trying to invest the module that would allow us to undock. In a moment, I will have to try again.”

“Maybe we can find another way. The stress whatever it is you are doing puts on your body is not something to simply shrug off.” She scolded. “You could fly up to the Headquarters terminal and release the hold order there.”

“That might take up too much time. I will try once more in a moment.”

“Alright, but if it is too tough this time you need to stop before it drains you completely. The continued stress could cause problems with your health,” she added.

I did not reply this time.

My eyes felt itchy and my stomach growled. My breathing was back to normal at least. I was as prepared as possible, so I pressed my gauntlet against the module once more.

The rogues tried to force their way inside once more, but this time the pressure seemed less. Almost half what it had been before. My nanites cut away their support and the battle line crushed these now powerless foes and advanced.

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It was quickly apparent that the resistance was less intense. My nanites forged a path ahead over the broken remains of the rogues, reaching deep into the module. They reached the area around the node moments later.

It wasn’t held by the rogues.

My nanites, the colony that had been cut off, had somehow invested the node and were defending it against waves of enemies that swarmed in from all sides save one. They were few, in comparison to the foe.

Their losses were being replaced, but at the rate things were going, the node would fall in seconds. If the rest of my colony did not intervene, that is.

I split my attackers in two, one reinforcing the node while the other slashed into the rogues. The defenders abruptly surged forth with my reinforcements backing them. A large chunk fell as their link was cut. My nanites absorbed the remains, pulling them back to the node.

There assault came from two different directions. The one I had attacked seemed to be lesser in intensity, so I sent probing attacks in that direction while defending the node with everything else.

The rogue nanites attempted to lead my attackers into ambushes. This was not new, and my colony had been trained not to follow blindly into high powered regions that would burn them.

The mental strain of monitoring the attack and defending the node mounted. I had practice in keeping my attention split and rapidly going between the two, though. Composing my thesis in my head while I worked the night shift at the waste processing plant had prepared me well.

The second node was off in a remote part of the module. I didn’t waste time sightseeing, but set my colony to invest the node and grow once it was claimed, then send support to the first.

Even with the second being weaker, cutting my way through the enemy proceeded swiftly after that. There were two nodes in close proximity, both sending out forces to reclaim the lost nodes and come after me as well.

That would not be happening.

I drove a dense spike of nanites into the first node, compromising its ability to reinforce the battle. From there on, the conclusion was inevitable. The last node fell.

Strangely, there were still rogues entering the domain of the module once I claimed all four nodes. They trickled in, small threads but persistent. None survived. But they kept coming.

I frowned. There probably wasn’t time to track down the source of the rogues. The implications were troubling. Rogue nanites could be found in other places than close to large power sources.

And they could spread.

The release command bundle was simple enough to trigger once I had full control of the module. The nanites that I left behind could remain and defend the module as well. At least, I hoped that they could. Time would tell.

“You should be seeing the docking clamps release any moment now. I have completed my task here, but there are complications.”

“Looks good on our end. Pulsing thrust to undock.” Doctor Delveccio replied.

The massive ship drifted away from the station gently. I released my connection to the station and flew over to the airlock that had just been connected to the dock.

“I am coming back aboard. What else do we have to do to get the ship back in shape?”

“Well, first off-”

“First the good doctor needs to rest. By the look of his vitals, he’s about to drop from fatigue and is probably starving,” Doctor Delveccio countered. “There’s a few meals in the mess that can be quickly reheated. I will get them started.

“Sam, you can begin taking care of what’s most critical and organize a task list for us to attend to underway. We’ll do eight hour shifts rotating out so someone is always awake and able to respond to any issues.”

“Uh, yes ma’am. Doctor, I mean.”

“That will do, Sam. And thank you.”

Weariness settled in as I made my way up the stairs to the mess hall. The smell of hot food drew me in. I’d finished off the last of the meal bars I had brought. The Wampus Cat still had a few bottles left, somehow.

“Sit down and eat. I brought the formula recipe with me, so we can synthesize more formula for the little miss. Have you figured out a name for her yet?”

“I haven’t,” I replied. The bowl of rice and chicken was messy, but I needed the fuel. The silver haired catgirl frowned at me.

“You need to do that sooner rather than later. A cute and adorable little ball of fluff like that needs a name, you know.”

I nodded. When I finished off the first bowl, she handed me another. This one had chunks of what looked like beef rather than chicken in it. I ate it mechanically, trying not to faceplant into the bowl.

“You’re tired. Go snag one of the cabins and rest. My shift is after Sam’s, so I’ll wake you if you’re still asleep when it is time to change shifts. You can help out when you’re not on shift of course,” she added.

“But I want you to get a good night’s sleep before then. By the look of things you’ve been running yourself ragged for too long anyway. Take some downtime when you can.”

I finished off the second bowl and stood. The messy cabin where I’d started the clothing refresher would do.

“Did you even taste the food? You practically inhaled it,” she said with a smile. “Go on, sleep. It’ll do you some good.”

I slept like a log. It had been a long time since I had slept properly in gravity, excepting the time I’d passed out on the other ship and spent time recovering from my wounds. In my dreams I was running away from zombies, then fighting them, then running away again.

I was carrying a backpack that I knew I couldn’t drop, the straps cutting into my flesh with the weight and slowing me so that the zombies always caught me. Every attack stripped flesh from my bones until I was running away as a skeleton, afraid they’d take my bones as well.

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