Nanomech by R. David King

Left behind by his childhood friend, Aiben ekes out his existence as a cybermancer acolyte and part-time starship mechanic on a backwater world. He leads an uncertain life, until one day, the Zenzani Protectorate invades his home and destroys everything he has ever known. Aiben soon learns that the molecule-sized machines, which augment his body and mind, have a centuries-old plan for him involving nanotechnology, genetic manipulation, and hyperspatial thought. Now, along with his companions, an old soldier and a sentient mechanoid, he takes his journey to a world of fabricated prophecies. There he navigates the treacheries of war and espionage to find an ancient weapon and a long-forgotten people that will bring his past crashing into his future and seal his destiny forever.

Bio:
I live with my family in the Pacific Northwest where I work for a large international software company by day and dream up stories by night to entertain myself and others.

Excerpt

Aiben communed with molecule-sized robots inhabiting his body. They protected him from infection and strengthened his bones and muscles. They heightened his vision, hearing, and sense of taste and smell. They enabled him to control devices with the proper interfaces by thought alone. He could use them to penetrate hyperspace with his mind and communicate with others of his kind. For the moment, though, he had silenced the machines. It would be much easier for him to concentrate without them cluttering his thoughts.

Aiben stood at the bottom of a giant well walled with rusty iron grid-work. Countless levels of habitation, caked in filth, had been stacked ever higher with each new decade. The honeycombed girders of overgrown city sprang up all around him, constructed weeds that hedged up his view on all sides for hundreds of feet. Between the slats and gangways that thatched together the ground, the depths stretched down into subterranean infinity and left to his imagination what his enhanced senses couldn’t perceive.

Industrial emissions, cotton balls of cloudy soot, rode breezes stewed up by pressure and temperature differentials of the urban canyons. The oils of morning sunlight had already spilled over the tops of the enormous buildings like a muddy waterfall. Random flashes echoed off the reflective windows that tiled the buildings and lit up the metallic carapaces of spidery mechanoids, robotic creatures that climbed along the edifices and polished off the dirt and grime. Aiben’s eyes followed them, waiting.

A dirty gust of wind hammered thick poly-fiber pants against his legs. He pulled the collarless charcoal button-up shirt, and the sleeveless black leather vest, so popular on human worlds, tighter around his broad shoulders. His black hair, short in some places, long in others, tinted with a hint of bronze, looked ragged as it thrashed back and forth in the filtered gray light of the industrial world. He rubbed at a week’s worth of beard sprouting on his jaw. Despite what was going on inside him, his outward appearance gave the impression he was just a normal citizen of any Seven Guilds world.

“Are you going to stand there all morning and just stare at those buildings? I don’t pay you to daydream, you know.”

The smooth baritone of the man’s voice intertwined with the perfect rhythm of tools striking metal. The constant cadence would have been enough to stir up movement in most beings, but to Aiben, the tempo simply framed his thoughts as they raced to keep time.

“I’m just waiting for them to get off,” Aiben said. He kept watch on the enormous structures planted across from them in centuries of built-up sod. “And I’m not daydreaming either.”

The tools ceased their beat.

“What are you talking about? Those little mechs are always up there, you know that. They’re not coming down any time soon with all this smog around.”

Links:

http://rdavidking.com

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