Transmat World: Chapter 25, Episode 1
Approaching Forward Spoke Seven of Harbinger, 15 degrees above the centerline of the equator, 7:16 P.M., Monday, December 6, 2145 A.D.
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Wundee dived away from the See Lurchin’, gravity generators maxed. His ass-end, pointed toward the ship, presented a circular profile the size of an orange. Within seconds he was indistinguishable from the visual clutter of landscape on the inner surface of Harbinger’s gargantuan Rim.
Out of the corner of his optical sensor he saw movement and did a quick turn. Now he witnessed the battle evolving between strikemechs and freemechs. Devolving was a more appropriate description with rebel robots retreating, their gravity missiles depleted. Strikemechs backed away after losing several members to the self-propelled bombs, leaving stasis mines in their wake, several of which had tripped. Glittery clouds of exploded strikemech could still be seen falling below, freed robots catching up fast, hugging the spoke wall. The small opening they exited lit up with laser fire. The view down that tunnel into the interior of the spoke was a peek into hell.
With great agitation to his emotive circuits, he saw See Lurchin’ go from 30,000 miles per hour to zero as it tripped a mine and became another silver ball drifting through Harbinger space. A missile struck the stasis sphere and exploded. It jerked like a balloon poked by a child’s finger and continued its inexorable motion, angling slightly upwards.
An accumulator moved in from the direction of Spoke Six. A guppy-shaped machine the size of an aircraft carrier, it fed on stasis fields; hoovered the giant mirrored gum balls into a rapacious, expandable net stomach. With the last one packed away, the mines would be hauled off to be deactivated and the contents examined by the Prime.
The vast machine that was Harbinger of Light and Justice was determined to take the best and brightest from Earth and turn them into chaff. Wundee was just as determined to not let that happen. He had spent too much time saving the planet to let mankind’s first incursion of Harbinger destroy Earth’s greatest hope.
In all this time Wundee had never been without his personal entity transfer equipment. Newlux installed it with the promise of a shiny new warrior robot body at the end of the transmission. It was useless all of those rotations on Earth. Now back at Harbinger, he was about to make the connection, but decided it was not the right time. This was a golden opportunity to find the lair of the Prime Mechanical and set free the humans. Besides, if Maxlux got hold of Transmat technology, the whole universe would be unsafe for organic and inorganic intelligence.
Wundee attempted to contact Newlux but failed. Gone for thousands of rotations, something had changed. Technological advance, security―for whatever reason, they used another type of communication device.
Like an appendix in humans, the cellular relay and receiver were vestigial devices in Harbinger robots. It was a holdover from the time Maxlux took over the planet Nebule and the Kolpak. Handed down as part of the standard functional circuitry of a “Here-For-You” robot to a spacefaring, slave robot to a protocol-free, inorganic entity — a freemech; all robots had cell phones. Wundee used the device now, hoping the fleeing Committee members were close enough to make a relay that would reach Newlux.
“Newlux?”
“Mother Machine! Wundee, is that you?”
“Yes, Newlux, I just arrived. There is now a vibrant race of organics inhabiting the target planet. They are advancing in technology much faster than the Kolpak ever did. I hitched a ride here on their ship as a stowaway. We could make the trip from Ear … the planet to Harbinger in less than ten minutes, um, centuks if we had been in a hurry. There is much to explain that will have to wait. That ship has technology to turn the conflict to the Prime’s favor and spread his madness throughout the entire universe within a few thousand rotations. Now that very ship is trapped in a stasis mine. It was set by strikemechs in a battle with freemechs at a stasis fault on Spoke Seven and is now being towed back to the Supreme Arbiter in an accumulator.”
“I know of that conflict. How many made it out?”
“Quite a few; some were snared in mines. The rest are in an accelerated fall toward the base of the spoke. I need help. I put a locator beacon on the human ship, but the stasis field is blocking it, so I will have to track the accumulator. We can find the Prime’s headquarters and put an end to this. I need modern communications and weapons. What I really need is a decent body. I am in the form of a rod as big around as your visual port and ten times as long as a splix. There is not enough time to transmit to the new body and make the trip back to this location.”
“About that body, Wundee, I had to use it in an emergency, and I have not gotten around to replacing it yet.”
“There was no spare body to transmit to?!”
“That is absolutely not the case. There is something for you to transmit to. It is my old splix body — minus an arm and part of the head. There is a perfectly good eye left, and it does have pockets if you remember.”
Four centiks, the equivalent of four seconds, is an eternity to a machine mind, giving Newlux plenty of time to come up with a work-around and Wundee to discover the robot equivalent of Zen to keep his emotive circuits from shorting out.
“This is what we must do. There is a squadron of stasis cruisers near the base of Spoke Seven. They have the equipment to track the accumulator from a distance. Stay where you are. They will pick up the remnants of the platoon and catch up with you in about a centok. One of the platoon members will transmit to his replacement body, and you will transfer from your current embodiment into his. It will have weapons and up-to-date comm gear built in. You will continue with the squadron as Field Commander Wundee.”
“Tell them utmost haste is required, and you take care of that body you are in,” said Wundee, breaking the connection.
