“Half.”
Half! Kala’s eyes snapped open.
She’d tolerated the strangeness of the Ploughmen, held her own speakers back from purifying them, because they were the best farmers the Jaspa had ever conquered. Since she’d taken them, the Jaspa had been eating well. Winters had been much less lethal. She’d even given the breeders permission to clear out the western grove, to expand and grow. Now the game in that area was gone, but it hadn’t been an issue…
…until now.
“Your tithe is reduced by a third,” she told him. Now it was the ploughman’s turn to stare in horror.
“Please,” he said. “The western fields are all we have growing, now. The others were fallow—”
She didn’t know the word, and she didn’t care. “Your tithe is reduced by a quarter, then,” she told him harshly. “Want to go for a fifth?”
He shut up and turned pale with fear.
Kala knew the Ploughmen would have a hard winter. And so would the Jaspa. Even if the Ploughmen COULD provide a three-quarter tithe, that was still a significant dent in Kala’s food reserves. People would starve… especially with the new warriors she’d absorbed.
She needed them if she was to destroy the Highbinders. That was the only reason she’d built up this many.
But perhaps she didn’t need all of them. She cast a glance at the two youths, still standing straight and still. The Highbinders would fall next spring or not at all, and really, how much training would these young ones get in between now and then?
“Get some sleep,” she told him. “Hit the road early. I want you gone.”
“Yes, thank you, Warlord.” He bowed. “May I beg hospitality?”
Kala found her lips curving a bit. “If you like. But if you stay with us you may want to shave. The lice will eat you alive otherwise.”
He stared at her in horror, and she chuckled as she walked away. “If anyone tries to keep your horse tell them Kala will have them killed. Guards, sleep in shifts, ensure none trouble his cart or wherever he lays his bedroll.”
No mutant or beast would trouble him, this close to Jaspa. But it was best to take no chances. The last thing she needed was some idiot sarjant taking offense to the strange breeder and deciding to cripple or kill the ploughman before he was gone.
Then she went back to her cabin, pulled out her tallies, and tried to fit enough food into enough mouths to ensure her people didn’t starve too badly.
When the math failed her, she sighed, hauled out her eltys’ reports for the last few weeks, and started looking for uncuts, slackers, and those who wouldn’t be missed.
Just as she’d gotten a decent-sized list going, a commotion outside made her look up. Then someone was knocking on her cabin’s door. “Warlord!” One of her sarjants said. “Please hear the night patrol’s report!”
She furrowed her brow. She’d already been through the night patrol’s reports. All save for Corpal Bendis, who had been tardy. She had put him on the slacker’s list for that. “Enter,” she called.
Sure enough, it was Corpal Bendis who came in, flushed and filthy. His leathers were covered with sweat and grime, and she could smell the stink of him from ten feet away. “Stay outside,” she told him. “And speak.”
Behind him, Sarjant Jax stood, his round face unusually grim. Kala met his gaze and did not like what she saw there. This was serious. She had the feeling it wasn’t a matter of a lazy scout and a tardy report.
After he’d finished his story, Kala rose and pulled down old, faded charts from the top cupboards. “Come in and show me where you found the demon. Jax, you, too.” Bendis stunk, true, but this was urgent enough to put up with the reek.
“Demon?” The Corpal whispered.
“Yes.” Kala said, and her fingers throbbed as she clenched her hand in its gauntlet. “A demon. I have seen a thing like this before. You were lucky to escape” She turned her gaze south, staring through the window, out at the ruined town below, her mind going back further still, to the dark tunnels that lay still and silent beneath it. “I survived. Many didn’t.”
Bendis showed her on the charts where it was, where they’d chased the traitor. The spot wasn’t far from Our Cadia, and she relaxed.
The traitors and their brood will feel its wrath. Not us.
Then she paused and considered. Only a thin strip of wilderness lay between the demon and the easternmost Jaspa settlements. Not a problem now, but if the Cadians fall too quickly, then it could grow.
“You said this demon was close to the surface? Its throne is only a few tunnels away?”
“Just one, warlord.”
“And it didn’t shoot at you with guns or light? It just… dropped a door on Marv?”
“Yes, warlord. Only that. I could have avenged him and slain the demon, but the Cadian protected it.”
A weak one, then, compared to what she’d faced. Even if it had somehow tainted the Cadian girl they’d chased and turned her into a slave, the fact that it hadn’t similarly enspelled Bendis suggested that might be a limited trick. Hell, the Cadians might be able to handle it…
…but what if they didn’t? What if they all became its slaves, or worse, bargained with it? That thought made her shudder. Could they do such a thing? Their false prophet had a silver tongue, she knew. He probably wasn’t above making a pact with a demon.
God, did her fingers itch. Her memories itched worse. Death in dark tunnels, screams, the things that came out of the walls… all horrors that she had packed neatly away, reawakened in a few minutes of hurried explanation.
Kala shuffled the charts, and a single piece of paper wafted out of the bundle on her desk. Grabbing it before it hit the floor, she stared at the list of names.
“Sarjant. Approach.” Jax did, and she handed the list to him. “Gather these warriors and what weapons you need. Tomorrow at dawn, have Bendis guide you to the demon’s lair. Destroy the demon. Destroy its room, build a great fire within it, and then seal every exit. You are not to enter the lair or its tunnels, only your warriors may do so. Any who try to protect it or show signs of madness or ensorcellment are to be slain and thrown in the fire. Do you understand?”
Jax bowed. “I obey, Warlord.”
They left, and Kala bowed her head. She tugged off her gauntlet and massaged her bare head with both hands. Stubble rasped under her seven-fingered grasp, and she knew she’d need to shave, soon. The lice had been bad this summer.
But still, her heart felt lightened. She’d worked out a win-win situation. If the demon was weak and it was an easy victory, then that was a demon gone, and a victory she could boast of to the speakers, that would hearten her people. If the demon was strong and it was a hard victory, then she’d lose some of her most useless warriors, and the survivors would be stronger for the fight… and that would be less mouths to feed.
She didn’t give much thought to what would happen if the demon was too strong. It had no guns, and its lair sounded pathetic. She’d sent fifty-four warriors, and she’d put Jax in charge. He wasn’t the best sarjant she had, but he was solid, if unimaginative. No matter how many the demon killed, it was still one against fifty-four. Sooner or later one of the fifty-four would get lucky.
Later that night, though, she would waken. And by the light of a single tallow-dripping candle, she would work over the math, figuring out just how much food she would save if by some dark unholy miracle nobody came back…
SEVEN
I’d been a soldier at some point, I knew.
I knew this because I was watching my persecutors from the safety of the nanocams in my entryway, and these guys were nothing like soldiers. It irked me, in a professional sort of way that suggested that I could, and had, trained better.
Most of them were poking through the rubble, searching about the grounds. The ones with torches carried them carelessly, not thinking about what profiles they presented to snipers, or how far the light could be seen in the darkness. Others stood around talking, and there were no
pickets posted as far as I could tell. They were begging for an ambush.
True, there were no snipers. And as far as I knew I was the only nearby witness, with no cavalry ready for an ambush, but that wasn’t the point.
The amateurs in my lynch mob were all bald and clad in similar leathers. Men and women alike, and it was strange to see so many women among them. I couldn’t say why it was strange, though, it just gave me a feeling of wrongness. I’d ask Argus about it later.
If there was a later. Fifty-some amateurs was still more than enough to put paid to me, if they could crack my defenses.
I’d been human once. I knew better than to underestimate them.
Movement out by the central mass and I saw one of the torchless figures moving around, exchanging quiet, short words with each cluster. Wherever he went, people shut up and moved with purpose in small groups, one watching out, one holding a torch, and three or four more sweeping the grounds. So at least one of them knew what they were doing, then. And he wasn’t even wearing a fancy hat, or some shiny medals that would give him away to enemy onlookers. If this was an officer, he was being smart about it.
They found the tunnel mouth, as I knew they would. We hadn’t had time to put a proper door on the place, with our other priorities.
“Oh boy,” Argus whispered. The group peered down inside and babbled back to their boss. He gave orders, and the rest of the groups pulled in, started gathering wood from the treeline and chucking their torches onto it.
They should have done that from the start, I thought, as the boss-guy pointed, and five or six peeled away towards the edge of the firelight, looking out for trouble. Not total idiots, then. More the pity.
One threw his torch into my entryway, stared hard. I recognized the runner, the guy who’d gotten away. He studied the smooth, clean stone walls and the new fixtures along the roof, and called back. His tone sounded surprised. I could understand why.
“I made some renovations,” I told him. “You like what I’ve done with the place?”
It was satisfying, watching him jump and back away. Shouts of alarm from the rest of the groups, and I chuckled.
I needed to learn their language. Fear was a tool I could have used here, and I felt I had a way with words. As soon as I had the circuits free, I could maybe whip something up for that.
“This is bad,” Argus said. “You shouldn’t have spoken.”
I piped my voice through the intercoms in the core chamber. “There’s always the chance that one of them can understand me. I’d at least like to know what their deal is before we kill them.”
“It doesn’t matter. All that matters is this core’s survival.”
“Right, and here’s the thing; one guy fucked off and came back with fifty armed people. What’s that tell you?”
“That we shouldn’t leave survivors?”
“No. It tells us that there are probably a couple of hundred more people behind them, in some place that can afford to send out fifty armed people to smash in our metaphorical faces. So at least two or three hundred more humans know about us and our location. This won’t be resolved just by taking heads. At some point we’ll need to talk with these bastards.”
“This was not how I expected this mission to go.”
“Yeah, well, take it up with mission control.”
“At some point she’ll check in, and we’ll have to. If we’re still functional, by then.”
I knew she would check in. Which meant that I had a choice. If I wanted to keep my nascent rebellion secret, I’d have to arrange an “accident” for Argus. I was pretty that she could override any order I gave him, so I couldn’t command him to be silent or to lie. On the other hand, if I wanted to keep Argus around, I’d be better off declaring my grudge and seeing how it went.
The latter option had more honor. But then, I’d already decided that I wasn’t very honorable. Still, I didn’t want to whack Argus for so petty a reason. He was a resource, if not a trustworthy one.
Which was hilarious, because I was pretty sure he felt the same way about me.
No matter. Right now we had bigger fish to flip into the fire.
Smart guy was giving a speech to his ‘troops’. I didn’t have to understand the language to get the gist of it. Same as any officer’s speech; it all boiled down to “There is the enemy. They are evil. We are not. Go in there and kill them.”
He wrapped up, and the first group approached. Smart guy wasn’t among them, and I would have grinned if I had teeth. They moved cautiously, but that was fine. I’d seen how they secured their staging point. Extra concealment for my traps would have been wasted on these poor bastards.
The first bunch was two groups of five. The ones in the back held torches, the ones in front stared down the corridor, seemed to hesitate at the sight of the cross tunnels. They moved up slowly, one taking point, the other four walking two abreast.
I let them get twenty feet up the hallway and slammed the lights up to their maximum illumination. Then I turned them off completely. While they were reeling, I dropped the floor out from under the four walking two abreast.
It was a simple pit trap.
With very simple spikes at the bottom.
Their screams were satisfying. Maybe not so much to the one in the lead, who’d passed the trap. He jumped and turned around, rubbing his flash-strobed eyes with the back of his free hand.
“Boo!” I yelled through an intercom behind him, and he jumped, stumbled forward a few steps—
—and fell as well, on top of his screaming friends.
Nothing I could do about the torchbearers in the back, sadly. They’d frozen up and started backing off. Smart guy shouted from outside, and the torchbearers shouted back.
I kept the pit trap hatch open, its doors retracted into the sides of the pit. Couldn’t do anything with the three-inch-long spikes at the bottom, though. It had been a struggle to get the system to make those, for stupid reasons. Fortunately I’d gotten around it by painting a sign at the bottom of the pit, warning any onlookers down there about the hazardous terrain that they’d just fallen into.
One of the unlucky few fallen had taken a header and slammed his skull facefirst onto a spike. I was pretty sure he wouldn’t be waking up. Others were bloody and injured, and one girl was wailing, her hand spiked to the floor. Blood pooled in the pit, and it was dark in there, so they were scrambling around blind.
I sent the nanoswarm down there to see if the skull-pierced guy was dead, and sure enough, he started bubbling away into feedstock, twitching as he went. That raised some questions, now that I had time to think on them.
I glanced to Argus. “So the description I got for the Nanobuilder schema mentioned that they had safeguards against absorbing living tissues. That guy’s dead, but I’m pretty sure his tissues are still alive. What gives?”
“Beats me. Wait, did the description mention Northwest Enginetics in a flattering light?”
I cast my memory back, ignoring the throb of corruption, like a pulsing headache. “I think so.”
“Yeah. The company wrote the descriptions for these schema. You uh, might want to take some of them with a grain of salt. The nanoswarm’s programming might only care if the human is dead and not bother checking its tissues.”
That made me wonder if I could hotwire its programming further, make it into a weapon against living targets. Then it made me wonder what the hell kind of sadist I was. As deaths went, that was pretty horrible.
Also the nanobots were too slow to be of any real use. It took a fair chunk of time to absorb bodies, and that was while they were mostly sitting still. People in motion would be another thing entirely.
And speaking of moving people, the group in the pit trap had figured out they’d fallen, and were trying to get up.
I wished them luck. This was where choosing the manhunter option had paid off in spades. The sides were too smooth and slick to get a good grip on, and the corners were rounded and hard to brace against. More than that
, the floor was uneven in between the spikes, lumpy and bumpy and impossible to get a running start on… even if there had been room, with their fallen yelling friends, and the unevenly-placed spikes. Pyramidal spikes, narrow up top and twice as wide at the bottom, which widened the puncture wounds they inflicted.
Frustrated, one of the standing men in the pit bellowed, and one of the guys in the rear group chucked his torch in there, landing it on the wailing girl. I winced as she screamed louder and flailed her free arm, trying to get it off.
I didn’t take much satisfaction in hurting women. Wasn’t sure why, she’d certainly return the favor, given the chance. I knew this, but it was still a thing.
Standing guy picked up the torch, scrutinized the pit, tried a few grips on the wall. Then he raised his crowbar and tried beating handholds into the coated concrete. And this was where sturdy construction thwarted his efforts. He was strong, but the walls were stronger. He probably could have gotten somewhere if he’d persisted for half an hour, but he didn’t, because one of the others noticed the dissolving corpse… and the tiny, shiny nanobots gleaming in the torchlight as they ate it.
He turned, and the people in the pit fell silent as they stared. The girl, her hand finally freed from the spike, yelled at him, and he tried to beat the corpse with his crowbar. Bones cracked, gleaming “dust” flew up.
Warning: Nanobuilder Swarm 1 is under attack. Orders?
I pulled them back, had them cluster, then swirl out of the pit like a cloud of gnats. The crowbar hadn’t seemed to do any real damage, but if he thought to try the torch then he might actually do some damage there.
Besides, it was better to let them think that they could damage the swarm through conventional means. Lure them into false confidence.
Shouting from outside, and I switched over to a closer nanocam. The torchbearers hadn’t been idle. They’d enlisted another squad and were bringing sturdy branches of deadwood in from outside. As I watched, they formed up, lowering the longer branches into the pit, giving their people handholds to climb out.
Bunker Core (Core Control Book 1) Page 7
