Transmat World: Chapter 34, Episode 1
Section 27 on the Rim, 8:20 P.M., Thursday, December 9, 2145 A.D.
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“What was that?” asked Ferdinand.
“A power suppression field or a software virus to trick the suit or robot system into shutting down, or both,” offered Ookie.
“No, who was that? Strikemech? Forces of the Prime that Wundee mentioned?”
“Since the Prime is gone, I don’t know if strikemechs would make aggressive sorties without orders. It may be another brand of freemech, a rogue group with another agenda quite different from the ‘liberated freemechs,’” said Ookie.
“How long do they have?” asked Ferdinand.
“There are automatic vents in the Exoguards so they can breathe but without power to the Transmats they can’t eat or drink. And the suits will become very unpleasant inside. Five or six days max,” offered Rousseau, “but I’ll bet we have them out before then.”
The normally speculative hedbots did not take him up on the bet.
“Sorry, conflict of interest,” offered Ookie.
“It’s also a figure of speech, you ninny. Have you thought about Gamblers Anonymous … look, it’s the shiny pot of loot we scavenged off the freemech cruiser,” said Rousseau and dived toward the now abandoned “liberated freemech” camp.
Ferdinand joined him.
“I’ll keep an eye on where they’re going from up here,” said Ookie.
*****
The gravity sleds tilted, spilling captured robots and humans unceremoniously onto a conical heap of other such unfortunates. The robot marauders took off in another direction, gravity sleds in tow.
There was nothing to distinguish this place from any other across the vast expanse of Rim landscape except for the air lock sticking out of the ground. Mountains of robot parts and giant metallic umbrellas to protect against stray weather machines were not the norm either. The top few inches of earth had become a casserole of tiny robot parts, bits of circuit and wire, and little chunks of plastic mixed with dirt. Marinated in various lubricants until it was waterproof, it gave off the odor of a feral machine shop.
Being in the middle of a pile of incapacitated machinery Vince could see none of this, but he could hear his overburden being dragged off one by one. Pneumatic hammers, arc gougers, and grinders provided theme music. He was thirsty as hell, hungry to boot, and the smell coming from outside was almost welcome compared to that inside the suit. His jaw vibrated.
“Exoguard Strongback Ultimate Defender number 42,174 requesting permission to reactivate,” said the suit in husky feminine tones as though seducing its occupant.
“Not yet,” said Vince. “What is the time frame for the other suits’ antiviral software to take back control?”
“Point zero zero four one six seven hours with point zero zero four hours tolerance,” said the suit.
“So about fifteen seconds, give or take fifteen seconds?”
“A vague way to put it but yes,” replied the suit.
The rasp of plastic on plastic became louder as the pile got smaller. It would soon be his turn to be dragged off and processed by whatever machines made that god-awful noise. The sweat stinging his eyes disappeared. He was too dehydrated now to perspire.
“Suit, turn on,” said Vince.
The suit flexed a fraction of an inch just as Vince suspected it might. The helpless freemechs around him hid that motion from anyone watching. He tried communicating with the others.
“It’s about damn time,” said Maria.
“We’re just waiting on Julie,” said Enrique.
“ — course I want you to turn on, you friggin’ idiot suit. Holy crap!”
“Julie!”
“Oh, thank God you guys are here. I’m attached to this assembly line, and it’s taking me toward some scary-looking machines. It must be some kind of gravity latch mechanism. I can’t get up.”
She tilted her head to see where she was going. The moving belt had a dozen robot bodies ahead of her proceeding toward a machine with a hundred arms. Each arm ended in a screwdriver/extractor with a unique size and configuration. Several operated at one time, making dentist-drill noises as they extracted fasteners from an inert machine floating slowly through a gauntlet of spider arms. The robot levitated above the belt and rotated about its long axis for all its screws to be accessed.
“Death by screwdriver in about five minutes,” pronounced Julie.
“Hold on. We’ll save you,” assured Vince as he heaved against the burden of mechanisms while slurping water from a Transmat-fed tube. He spied the sling for his Atchisson AA-12 wrapped around an arm of plastic rods and gears and looped his hand through it.
Harbinger’s home galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud was so devoid of metal that 90 percent of the machine volume above him was enduraplast; the strong, lightweight plastic invented by the Kolpak hundreds of thousands of years ago. Mechanical appendages slid past each other without a fare-thee-well as an eruption occurred in the conical mound of inactive machines.
He saw the disassembly line with Julie moving inexorably toward an unscrewing. More than likely nothing would happen there because there were no fasteners visible on the Exoguards but something down the line would test the suit’s integrity.
“Let’s go!” shouted Vince. “Where are you guys?”
He looked around to assess the situation. Semi-autonomous machines latched on to unconscious freemechs, dragging them to an open spot in the moving belts, of which there were several. There the machines secured them with gravity generators built into the belt and activated by pressure sensors. They paid little attention to Vince. They were not programmed for problems they had never encountered.
Muffled sounds nearby on the mound heralded Enrique’s and Maria’s attempts to extricate themselves from the pile. Vince went to their assistance, grabbing strange appendages and flinging freemech zombies to another part of the pile until Enrique and Maria were both free. They teetered on the largest, most stable robot bodies they can find and took inventory. Their kidnappers had piled them on the gravity carts without stripping them of weapons. Maria did not have her anti-matter pistol. She left it in the See Lurchin’. Vince’s anti-matter pistol was empty but everyone possessed a similar gun with simple C4-tipped missiles and a Transmat-fed magazine in the custom-shaped cavity on their other hip. Maria managed to hold on to her shotgun as well. Enrique’s is lost somewhere in the pile. Eight hours after being more than a hundred feet from one of the Exoguards, the shotgun’s Transmat-fed magazine would no longer work, making it useless to anyone.
They took off together and soon spotted the disassembly lines and a reassembly shed in the distance with finished, unactivated machines standing around it in rows like a new and used robot dealership. Julie’s Exoguard was a Giorgio Armani among polyester leisure suits on the moving belt. The humans moved in her direction as the doors to the airlock flew open and a weaponized gravity platform slid out, guns on gimbals swinging in their direction. One of the semiautonomous worker bots must have had enough autonomy to snitch, or security cameras betrayed them. The two matte-gray mechanicals on board, obviously autonomous, were aware of their presence and determined to do something about it.
The bad robots were on the other side of Julie about the same distance away as the humans. The robots were on the move. It was a race. With their freedom and Julie as the prize, Maria’s assault shotgun spoke for it first. An exploding slug hit the platform. The damaged gravity generators caused it to spiral out of control as it climbed into the air. The robots could not hold on, and Maria picked them off like clay pigeons as they flew out of the vehicle. Pieces of plastic, servomechanisms, and circuitry rained down with a cloud of machine oil and hydraulic fluid to join the mélange of machine particles that passed for topsoil in the vicinity. The gravity sled did a spiral arc into the assembly line a hundred yards from where Julie was attached to it, halting forward movement. Gravity latches on the assembly line opened and suspended robots dropped to the surface of the belt.
