Transmat World: Chapter 34, Episode 2
Section 27 on the Rim, 2145 A.D.
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“I thought you couldn’t hit the broad side of a fat barn,” said Enrique.
“What would be the fun in shooting at that?” replied Maria, the suit hiding her smirk. “Clay pigeons with my dad at the country club since I was eight are different.”
Julie now stood on the disassembly belt, jumped off, and began running toward the trio of humans. The elevator that disappeared into the depths of the Rim was now replaced with a three-story version. Each floor was packed with machines, veritable clown elevators for bad robots. They exited swiftly on gravity platforms and moved toward the humans.
Maria and Vince opened fire on the platforms with assault shotguns. Enrique drew his anti-matter pistol and was about to fire.
“No, Enrique, save that!” shouted Vince over the din of gunfire. “Use the other one and target the robots.”
Enrique opened fire on the individual robots with a conventional C4-tipped missile pistol, and so did Julie, turning every few yards to squeeze off a couple of shots. They were holding their own, but another multi-story elevator was dumping its load of mad, miscreant machines. As soon as the elevator doors opened, the newcomers were hosed with high-velocity rock. A cloud of pulverized stone powder formed around the reinforcements.
Vince looked up to see the hedbots manning a gravity platform cobbled together from scraps and parts. On that platform was a hopper that looked suspiciously like a robot torso. The hopper fed a tube that once was a support column for a pavilion cover at the “liberated” freemech’s camp. This tube had gravity accelerators along its length, shoving gravel out the end at supersonic velocities. Ferdinand and Ookie moved the end of the tube around to aim it and fire while Rousseau controlled the platform. The fusillade of rock came to a halt as the platform landed in Julie’s path. She jumped aboard, and the platform took off. Rock throwing resumed along with Julie’s now full-time firing of her pistol. She was careful to give the pistol the .15 seconds it needed to lock onto a target before pulling the trigger. She never missed. Before a robot recovered from having its platform shot out from under it, a disabling thimble-full of C4 struck it. The platform rose to join Vince, Enrique, and Maria hovering above a mound of robot parts.
From this vantage, they spied an opening forming in the Rim almost half a mile away.
“You guys see what I’m seeing?” questioned Maria.
The opening was huge, and swarms of machines drifted up from it.
“Somebody poked a stick in the hornet’s nest,” said Enrique.
“I think it’s time to take our sticks and move along,” said Vince.
They turned and fled in the opposite direction of the opening. The platform followed them with the gravity gun pointed out the back, Ookie and Ferdinand spraying anything that gets too close. Julie targeted anything behind that. The platform flew at forty miles per hour, the air friction on the ammunition hopper limiting their speed. Julie trained her binocular vision on the newly formed hole and spotted ordnance floating into the Rim atmosphere.
“Guys, they’re bringing out the big guns,” said Julie.
A feathery white line began at the hole in the Rim and arced over their heads, exploding several hundred yards above them.
“Trajectory 101 apparently is not a required chip installation in their current combat models and I, for one, am glad,” Enrique said.
A fleet of stasis cruisers appeared above his head, one occupying the exact spot where the shell had just exploded.
“It’s Timing 101, and that trajectory chip is probably installed but was lied to,” said Maria.
The fleet returned fire.
“Let’s get out of the way,” said Vince and turned 90 degrees to the left.
Other structures were now rising from the surface of the Rim, sloughing dirt and greenery, revealing their military nature. More holes appeared with clouds of mechanicals pouring from them.
“Anybody see Wizard of Oz — doesn’t that remind you of the flying monkeys?” Rousseau wondered out loud.
A flotilla of stasis battleships appeared in the sky from a different direction than the cruisers. Tendrils of robots from the ground, like tentacles of a sea creature, reached toward the humans. They exchanged fire with the ships, which also moved in their direction. Every flare of light from an exploded shell or muzzle flash or rocket exhaust or laser strike reflected on every mirrored stasis ship in the sky. The din was horrendous and getting worse by the second. Even with an endless supply of ammunition, Vince knew they were in big trouble. Assuming the stasis ships were manned by friendlies, it would be iffy getting to one, and what if they were wrong?
A giant black pincushion appeared 400 yards in front of them. The hatch to the See Lurchin’ was open and pointed at them. Maria and Enrique grabbed Julie off the gravity platform, threw her into the opening and followed. They let the platform fall away, smashing several robots before reaching the surface of the Rim. Enrique headed straight for the captain’s seat, usurping Furboten and taking over the ship.
“Furboten, I just want to kiss your furry little face,” said Julie.
“Get your cold speaker grill away from me. It was nothing. I just plugged into the ship’s computer for a little one-on-one, found a back-up inertial guidance system that locked on the largest object around and kept all local jump coordinates. After that it was a simple — “
“Might I suggest we jump NOW!” said Julie.
“Well, so much for the hero fantasy,” said the furry hedbot, swishing its tipless tail in mimicry of a real cat’s agitation.
“We should use thrusters to gain altitude and get away from the Rim before we jump,” said Enrique.
“I just thought there would be more accolades and — ”
“I agree about using thrusters,” added Vince. “If something hits See Lurchin’ we jump automatically anyway, but I don’t think we should jump. We should watch and see what happens. Besides, we need to contact Wundee. He might have technology to help us change the quantum entanglement frequency.”
Everyone buckled in, and Enrique moved away at the highest acceleration a heated compressed gas could give him, about 3 gs. They were soon above the massive military confrontation taking place below, watching through the magnified 360 degree organic LED panorama of See Lurchin’s interior. Half an hour into the battle every discontinuity opening on the Rim’s stasis surface in a 10-mile radius erupted in a geyser of fire 1000 feet tall. When that died down, it becomes a parking lot for stasis battleships and cruisers as the aerial invaders had obviously obtained the upper hand and were mopping up.
KNOCK! KNOCK! KNOCK!
If they hadn’t been strapped in, they would have bounced all over the ship. As it was, they gave the restraints the best consumer test so far. They turned to observe a large, one-armed lizard with part of its head missing floating beyond the hatch door.
“It’s Wundee,” claimed the fake alien zombie.
They all looked at one another.
“Well, don’t just lie there staring. Let him in,” said Vince.
“You let him in,” said Maria.
With slow, deliberate movements Vince undid his chair harness, “I’m coming!”
