Transmat World: Chapter 32, Episode 3
Between the Membrane and the Rim of Harbinger in the vicinity of the arrows, Wednesday, December 8, 2145 A.D.
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As he pulled the trigger on the last missile, he realized he should have saved it to lock onto an exposed area of the rampaging machine. As he watched, a piece of leg armor and two pieces of shiny torso disappeared, revealing the Prime’s vital components. Vince looked on helplessly as Maxlux moved swiftly toward See Lurchin’.
See Lurchin’ vanished before Maxlux could make contact, reappearing 200 yards closer to the hovering humans. Maxlux reversed course and was nearly on the spiny sphere when it disappeared again, but not before something dropped out of the hatch. It was Julie. She lost a precarious purchase on the railing and dropped straight through the open hatch. Rousseau let go of the grating and followed her out. Maxlux dipped, grabbed the human, and came back up, facing the three humans suspended in front of him on Transmat thrusters. Maxlux was examining the odd-looking freemech, determining a novel way to dispatch it in front of its traitorous mechanical comrades. It did not ponder long as Rousseau began circling the giant machine in ever tightening circles. Maxlux thrashed and swatted at the pesky hedbot with his three free arms but to no avail. Rousseau found an opening provided by the antimatter missile. Maxlux dropped Julie to dig for the interloper with tenticular extremities made for power, not close work. Furboten dived out of See Lurchin’s hatch after Julie. Enrique was so busy punching jump instructions he had just this second registered that he now had no passengers.
“Where’s Rousseau?’ exclaimed Enrique. “Julie, where are you? WHERE’S JULIE!?” He spun around in his captain’s chair with his vision lenses bobbing up and down to locate her.
“I had a little accident — ”
“You didn’t wet your pants! You fell out of the fucking ship!” said Enrique, finally locating the fourth Exoguard falling away from the group.
“Actually, I think I may have wet my — “
“And Rousseau, what the hell do you think you’re doing!?” said Enrique.
“Spraying aqua regia all over Mr. McGoon’s innards. I’m being careful not to get any on me this time.”
“My back thrusters aren’t working!” exclaimed Julie. “He must have damaged them when he grabbed me.”
Furboten caught up and latched on to Julie, thrusting upward as hard as the little hedbot could. It made but a small dent in the acceleration of Julie’s mass to the Rim surface.
Bullets and missiles once again started hitting Maxlux. Lieutenant Circuit Breaker and Chrome Dome had come back from the stasis cruiser 3n46 with weapons. Maxlux grabbed the gamma ray laser and took aim. The beam itself was invisible, but air around it glowed as ropes of electricity writhed along its length. Chrome Dome’s body turned transparent and vanished in a puff of hot, gaseous circuitry and enduraplast. Landscape for miles along the path of the ray gun exploded and burst into flames. There was a tremendous thunderclap as air rushed in to fill the long tubular vacuum created by the weapon.
“Shit!” said Enrique. “Rousseau, stay hidden behind the silver parts until the firing dies down. Vince, tell your robot pals to hold their fire for a minute to let Rousseau escape.”
“Wundee! Cease firing!” yelled Vince as he watched See Lurchin’ dive after Julie.
The din of weapons fire died as the gamma ray laser swept across Lieutenant Breaker, but Maxlux hung in the air as though dazed. Wundee bobbed and weaved, moving away to keep from meeting the same fate as his freemech companions. It was for naught. The briefest encounter with the beam created a glowing cloud of vapor. The surrounding landscape was a destruction porn movie.
A little green head with big black eyes poked out of the cavity in Maxlux’s torso. Rousseau dropped from his hidey hole and thrust away from the monster. Maxlux made a last swipe at the fleeing intruder and missed.
Enrique outraced Julie to get as close to the Rim surface as possible, stopping the See Lurchin’ mere yards from impact. He launched himself from the pilot’s chair sailing headfirst through the hatch, arcing up toward Julie. Just before he got to her, he cut his suit thruster and began falling. As Julie caught up, he latched on with powerful mechanical arms and tured the thrusters to full power. Enrique, Julie and Furboten struck the ground going 10 miles per hour; nothing the suits or the hedbot couldn’t handle.
The Prime Mechanical’s attention now focused on See Lurchin’. He was listing to one side, and his weapon arm was twitching to the rhythm of a timing circuit caught in a feedback loop. Some of his exposed machinery was dented and scratched, but nothing looked punctured. Hydraulic fluid dripped from the lower lip of a stasis field section at the gap in one of his arms. He was bringing up the laser in the general direction of See Lurchin’.
“No!” yelled Vince as he realized what the demented machine was about to do. “Use your antimatter pistols. Shoot him!”
Maria and Ernesto, like the scholarly dorks they were, absent-mindedly left their antimatter pistols in the ship on the workbench after an animated discussion about how to improve them.
Furboten realized the situation and headed at maximum acceleration for the hatch of the See Lurchin’.
“Run, Julie!” shouted Enrique as he gave her a shove away from the ship and brought his pistol up to aim.
Maxlux, with a raking blast from the gun, made See Lurchin’ disappear a billion miles to Jesus. Eruptions of dirt knocked Enrique off his feet before he could squeeze the trigger. Maxlux raised the barrel of the laser toward Vince, Maria, and Ernesto when Ernesto headed straight for Maxlux speaking in a loud, clear tone, “Mode one.”
“Ernesto, don’t do this,” said Vince. “How did you know I was lying about mode one being disabled?” implored Vince.
“Easy. I helped write the software.”
As he said that, Ernesto’s Exoguard made contact. It struck the laser with such kinetic force the weapon sputtered and died. The force spun Maxlux partially around. The monster recovered, and stabbed at the air, trying to make contact with a whirling dervish of a machine. The suit moved with inhuman speed to deal with an inhuman foe. A huge stasis-armored hand closed on Ernesto and did not let go. It was over before they could do anything. Indestructible limbs with the power to tear down buildings began to rip the suit apart. Maxlux seemed startled as blood dripped from the suit’s interior. He stopped his destruction of Ernesto’s Exoguard and gave the humans his full attention. He hung in the air as though making a decision when a flash-pop and swarm of sparks erupted from the robot’s open torso. Losing altitude, it clung to what was left of Ernesto and his Exoguard. It was a tumbling mass of rotating fireworks mirrored and magnified by flopping appendages like a giant, mutated dance hall glitter ball. It struck the ground a couple of hundred yards from the 3n46. What was left of Maxlux and Ernesto lay in a shallow crater. The fusion reactor of the robot dutifully supplied electricity to shorted circuits that spit fire and melted into pools of viscous sludge. Limbs continued to move, drooping toward their least level of potential energy as hydraulic fluid flowed from acid-etched leaks to feed the flames.
