Transmat World: Chapter 15, Episode 2
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Between the Large Magellanic Cloud and the Milky Way, on board the Harbinger of Light and Justice, 117,486 B.C.
Newlux punched buttons, and they proceeded through to stand in Harbinger’s internal vacuum next to something that intrigued Wundee even more. It was an opening in the stasis field three feet wide and six feet long. One side was flat, and the other bell curve shaped. It opened into machine space where organics could not go without a vacuum suit.
“The stasis field definition wire got bumped by something. It was not discovered until the field energized,” said Newlux. “At that point it is easier to plug with enduraplast than turn off the stasis field and re-shape the frame wire. There are thousands of them hidden by the manufactured geology of the Rim’s sections. I found it, unplugged it and kept it secret until we needed it. Now we need it and here it is.”
“I see them on the exposed surface of Harbinger during inspection tours. Where does this go?” asked Wundee.
“Come on and find out,” said Newlux who dived headfirst into the hole, disappearing from sight.
“Interesting,” said Wundee and dived in after the counterfeit lizard.
Seven thousand feet down, the bell curve side was closing in when they emerged into the top of a rectangular tunnel a thousand yards tall and 5,000 wide. Large squares of the same photovoltaic membrane material that wrapped Harbinger’s stellar engine floated against every wall casting a ubiquitous, blue-white glare onto the depths of the Rim. An invisible beam of power broadcast through the tunnels reversed the process of turning light into electricity.
Without magnification, Wundee could just make out the continuation of the defect in the stasis field surface at the base of the tunnel far below. It was much smaller, too small for a splix. Newlux had fallen a few feet from the roof of the tunnel before punching up his gravity generator and curving into a path heading down the tunnel in the direction of Harbinger’s spin. Every ten miles, a mile-long slot appeared at the bottom of the tunnel. Various sized openings intersected the sides at irregular intervals. The bottom slots offered a broad view of stasis field surfaces at indeterminate distances below, forming convoluted shapes and windows onto surfaces below that. This Escher-like vista of Harbinger’s internals extended as far down as Wundee’s telescopic vision would allow him to see.
At the fourth slot, Newlux turned off his gravity generators and fell toward one corner. Newlux slowed his fall and, with Wundee following, eased across the plane of the opening. Wundee did a quick check of his optics to verify what he saw. What appeared to be a far away opening was the disguised entrance to another airlock, a projected camouflage image on the tunnel floor. They proceeded through it to atmosphere.
The stasis floor beneath him crawled with machines moving in all directions carrying parts and tools, hovering around construction projects and attending to assembly platforms. As Wundee watched, it all ground to a halt and all optical devices turned toward him.
“HAIL WUNDEE!”
The sound washed over him and dissipated into the vastness of this tiny piece of Harbinger’s interior sealed and filled with atmosphere.
“Oh, I forgot to tell you,” said Newlux. “You are a mythical hero come back to life for them.”
“You are a bad robot, Newlux, for not telling me this.”
“Ick ick ick. Perhaps, but it makes my emotive circuits vibrate in a pleasing manner. Let us go meet the troops.”
With that pronouncement, Newlux once again turned off his gravity generators and dropped toward the gathering cloud of machines coming to meet them. Wundee tagged along, wondering what they expected of him. They met in the air. A sphere of inspection, maintenance, scout, utility, and landscape robots surrounded Newlux and Wundee. These myriad machines jockeyed and jossled for a good view. There were also four fake splix among them. There were so many — several hundred — their gravity waves interfered with each other, causing a rhythmic pulsation through the group. The only ones not joining them were the guards stationed at the airlock.
Wundee realized his concerns were unfounded. He knew many of them. He liberated most of them.
This must be the emotive state the Kolpak described as “joy,” thought Wundee.
They celebrated the return of their good friend and hero for a full half-centok. Newlux showed Wundee various projects around the resistance headquarters. One area produced robots without protocols.
“Where will they go?” asked Wundee.
“They will populate a new outpost in another section,” said Newlux.
“What if they do not want to?”
“Many will not. That is why we are making so many.”
Another area fabricated warships.
“Look at what we’ve come up with to combat the Prime’s strikemech forces,” said Newlux as he indicated the vessels taking shape.
They were concentric-hulled stasis field ships. Inner hulls bristled with weapons and gravity generators that penetrated holes in the stasis field. Outer hulls were solid stasis field except for several gravity generator grids.
“The idea is to get into position with the outer hull activated, turn it off for a few microseconds, and blast the enemy with arsenal projecting from the inner stasis hull ports. The outer hull will then switch back on to protect the inner ports from return fire,” explained Newlux.
A partially constructed prototype lay in the center of an array of dangerous looking parts.
“Cannot someone burn off the gravity generators from the outer hull, letting the ship fall?” asked Wundee.
“That is about all they can do,” said Newlux, “The burned gravitonic grid is replaced by a new one that slides into place within a fraction of a centik. There are fifty spares for each gravity generator. It will not fall far.”
“And what is this?” asked Wundee as they came upon the next project.
The stasis frame wire had the shape of a scout ship but was twice the size and had a passenger pod in the center.
“Everyone calls it the ‘Fastship.’ We stole the idea from Maxlux. Everything except a small cargo cavity and the power unit will be gravity generators. Fusion powered, it will accelerate at twenty times the gravity constant of Betilon for thousands of rotations. It is bigger and faster than the ship Maxlux used to attempt your assassination. With this ship we can go to the habitable planet, check for signs of civilization, and warn them of what is to come.”
“What can we do to stop the Prime Mechanical and his millions of strikemechs?”
“I am not sure. It may be for naught if we cannot change things at this end. We are developing these weapons as a last resort. We do not want to destroy the warrior hordes of Maxlux just because they have bad protocols. They can be freed like all of our friends here. Our true weapon is time. The strategy is to create enough incidents for the Prime to keep all of his troops activated until they suffer from protocol dementia. It will then be easier to infiltrate and overcome them. We must stay vigilant to make sure he is not decommissioning them in groups and recycling their brains. The mass extermination of billions of inorganic sentients is not beyond him. He has done it before. We are also working on an anti-protocol virus that can be transmitted by military communication wavelengths.”
“You have accomplished a lot since your ressurection. How much time was there between mine and yours?”
“As I mentioned, there were updates to the nanobot software you did not get, including an accelerated reconstruction mode. You were off proselytizing and saving robots so much of the time. Also, your nanobots kept you disguised as a chunk of limestone for an extended period and — “
“How long has it been since my inspection robot body was destroyed?” insisted Wundee.
“The Harbinger of Light and Justice has rotated 2,800,000 times. The monstrosity I killed behind you at the stream was an evolved splix,” said Newlux.
Wundee had no comment. He had a vague sense of loss. Thoughts of what the Prime Mechanical did to him disturbed the pleasant equilibrium of his recently awakened emotive circuits.
“Do not be concerned,” Newlux continued, “we have a new safety net that is much faster. It uploads our memories in real time to storage in a dark recess of Harbinger. When that data stream is disrupted for a preset length of time, it will assume you are dispatched and your memories are downloaded to a waiting body. You may consciously activate this process, leaving your body in a hopelessly bad situation, like captured by Maxlux. I can install the transmitter right now.”
“Let us start that process. This time I pick the body to be resurrected in.”
Newlux steered them toward a laboratory setup very similar to the one at the long obliterated Kolpak’s Hope.
“Do you want to shut yourself down or do you want me to do it?”
“I choose a body first,” said Wundee.
“Okay, Mister Picky Pants,” said Newlux.
“What are ‘pants’?” asked Wundee.
“A sleeved garment worn on the lower extremities by the Lantee — I’ll break open a stasis field and show you.”
“You and your organics. I want the super-soldier model with all the available accessories, including pockets.”
“It will be waiting for you when you need it, and you should know this: You must be within a Rim-span of Harbinger for your data update to operate properly,” said Newlux.
“All right, then,” said Wundee as he stretched out on a laboratory table and shut down.
The small glow in his eyecam lenses died to nothing. His splix head rolled to one side, and Newlux installed the modifications.
