Chapter Seven

  Scavengers

  Cheape saw the motion sensors on her rig flash a second before the Queen shouted for them to get out of the building. By the time the shout came through her speakers, she was already raising both arms into a firing position.

  The floor seemed to lurch as misshapen forms lurched towards her team.

  Cheape pulled the triggers on her weapons at the same time.

  Superheated plasma cut a flaming path through air that was suddenly full of metal. The recoil from her railgun shook the entire rig as she kept the trigger down, even as she shouted orders to her team.

  “Fall back! All Exos to the street! Rigs form a wall to cover!”

  The sound of the railguns and slugthrowers from her team was mixed with the hideous screeching of rusty metal and the roar of the plasma throwers in the suddenly packed building. Cheape could feel the mounting pressure on her eardrums as Sparks and Gas Tank formed up beside her.

  “Step!” Cheape called, and they took one step back.

  “Step!” She repeated, and they backed up again.

  “On the left,” Gas Tank warned, shifting his plasma stream wide to cut off a wave of the robots trying to run past the machines.

  Step by step, they fell back, and the numbers seemed to swell no matter how fast they fired.

  “Set arrays to movement targeting!” Cheape said, doing the same with her own.

  The snap and hiss of laser arrays joined the chaos.

  “Plasma’s running low!” Sparks warned.

  “Fall back. We’ll hold the door while you get distance,” Cheape said, seeing the rig on her right turn and duck out.

  Backed into the doorway, the two rigs managed to hold off the swarm of bots that pushed forward on all sides. The jets of plasma had melted even the huge machinery by the door, leaving a pool of superheated metal that was slowly spreading.

  Seeing an opportunity, Cheape changed channels and spoke directly to Gas Tank.

  “Tank, you got that spare plasma on you?” Cheape asked.

  “Always,” the man replied, proving how apt his nickname was.

  “On my mark, throw it toward the center of the cluster,” Cheape said, watching her own plasma level drop to twenty percent. The team was falling back behind her, but their signals were barely fifty meters away. They needed more time, and this was just about the only way Cheape could think of to get it.

  “Are you sure about—”

  “Now!” Cheape yelled and tracked the arc of the heavy metal barrel. Right as it hit the top of its arc, she fired, the railgun round slamming through it a split second before the line of burning plasma ignited the fuel inside.

  The cab windows flashed black as they blocked the sudden nova of light, but the blast wave hit them a moment later, pushing both Rigs back a step.

  As soon as the reinforced glass lightened again, Cheape scanned the area.

  Everything was burning, and the liquid metal pools were spreading fast; the swarm of junkyard robots was forced back as they merged.

  “Three percent left,” Cheape chuckled in relief. “That was close.”

  “We pulling out?” Gas Tank asked.

  “Yes,” Cheape nodded, flicking her coms back to the team channel. “All units, retreat to the iris. I repeat, all units return to the iris.”

  She took one deep breath and was just about to turn when Gas Tank called a warning…

  “Movement on the left, fifty meters!”

  Cheape turned and fired her thrusters, shooting forward instead of up as she rushed toward her team, hearing Gas Tank thundering along behind, but time seemed to slow; each second lasted an age as she watched the retreating team ahead of her turning to face the alley next to the factory.

  The Queens were yelling, the team coms were full of cries of surprise, and then the flash and roar of weapons, but it was nowhere near enough.

  The alley belched forth a wave of small droids, each one a horror show of mismatched parts. They washed over the two exo suits closest to them, and screams joined the chaos.

  Cheape was already firing, trigger held so tight her knuckles ached as Sparks leaped high into the air, thrusters burning before she crashed back down into the mouth of the alley.

  Before she could see anything else, Cheape was in the thick of it, crushing robots beneath the rig's powerful legs even as her shields flared and welding torches and cutting disks tried to work through her armor. Those she couldn’t kill, Cheape swept aside with wide sweeps of the rig's arms as she fought and kicked her way through to Sparks.

  She arrived just in time to see the shields fail as the plasma jet cut off.

  “Shit! Shit! Shit!” Sparks yelled as she was swarmed from all sides.

  “Thrusters!” Cheape yelled, “Fire your thrusters! Get out of there!”

  She saw a brief flare of light from the pile of metal, but it cut off almost immediately.

  Not daring to fire, in case she hit Sparks, Cheape shoulder-charged into the chaos, grabbing the cab handle and firing her thrusters to leap straight up.

  As the robots fell away below her, she breathed a sigh of relief to see Sparks face beneath the scarred and spiderwebbed glass.

  Then she saw it was just the cab she held.

  Everything below the waist was gone, including the rest of Sparks.

  Numb with shock, Cheape crashed back to the ground, still holding the cab in one metal hand.

  “Out of ammo!” Gas Tank yelled, sounding panicked.

  “Switch to alternate weapons!” Cheape said grimly. “Fighting retreat! Go!”

  “Ma’am!” Gas Tank replied, reaching to the back of his rig to grab a pair of weapons of his own make. Each one was an oversized, short-nosed slug thrower. Cheape remembered Queen Nellie called them shotguns.

  It was weird remembering that right now. Sparks had laughed.

  The shock lifted as Cheape reached up and hooked what remained of the cab to the back of her rig, pulling her own backup weapons.

  Just seeing the oversized chainsaws in each of her rig’s metal hands made her feel calmer. Once they spun up, she felt the pain of Sparks’ death. As the plasma-tipped chains began to glow, so did her anger.

  It wasn’t a hot, burning rage. No, it was cold. It poured ice into her veins, and Cheape turned into the storm of scrap bots, carving a path out for her people as they fell in around the maelstrom of destruction from the two surviving rigs.

  Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.

  Meter by meter, they fought their way clear of the bots. Finally, they were running in the clear… with nothing but empty streets and the ghosts of the fallen between them and the iris that would get them clear of the segment.

  The team was quiet as they walked down the corridor towards the iris, none of them ready to talk just yet. Cheape didn’t blame them; she was currently dealing with the guilt of failing to protect her team. They had been her people in every way. They were all from the original occupants of the capital on Haven.

  She had worked alongside them every day for months, pulling the place up from the rubble to make something they were all proud of.

  “Ma’am, we have a problem,” Gas Tank called, shaking Cheape out of her thoughts.

  Looking ahead, she saw the exo suits pushing against an invisible barrier, blocking them from approaching the iris.

  Pulling the others back, Cheape tried to force her rig through, but even at twenty percent over max power, she couldn’t get a single step closer to the exit.

  She reached back, pulling the remains of Sparks’ cab free of her rig, and tossed it toward the barrier. It sailed through, and the iris even opened to let it pass.

  “Ma’am?” Gas Tank asked, sounding horrified.

  “Our dead can get out; we can’t,” Cheape growled. “Send them through. They deserve to go back home, not end up in this fucking segment.”

  “What about us?” Andy J asked, her face pale and sweaty.

  “I’m working on it,” Cheape replied grimly. “One second.”

  /====<<<>>>====\

  Nellie ground her teeth, feeling a couple of them crack, only to be instantly repaired by the nanites in her system.

  “Cheape, we’ll get you out of there; just hold on,” Lucy called.

  “No, we won’t,” Nellie said, shaking her head. “That’s the point, isn’t it?”

  “Then we send reinforcements,” Lucy insisted. “Let’s get some materials down here and make some robots of our own.”

  “Won’t work,” Nellie shook her head.

  “How do you know?” Lucy asked angrily.

  Nellie just pointed to where a group of Cheape’s people were already banging on the iris, outfitted in the three Model One T-Rigs.

  “Fuck!” Lucy kicked a chair, sending it flying into the prefab wall hard enough to dent it.

  “We are locked in, aren’t we?” Cheape called over a private comm line to Nellie and Lucy.

  “It looks that way,” Nellie replied, unwilling to lie to the woman. “We can’t even get the iris to open for the Model Ones.”

  “I guessed that as soon as the iris was blocked from this side,” Cheape admitted. “I think this is a pass/fail kind of test.”

  “We won’t stop trying,” Nellie promised. “You can wait there—”

  “For exactly five days before we run out of water,” Cheape countered.

  “It’s your call, Cheape,” Lucy said, sounding calmer than she looked.

  “I think the only way out is through,” Cheape said, her voice flat and emotionless.

  “I’m sorry if that helps,” Nellie replied honestly. “We—”

  “We knew this could be dangerous, Ma’am,” Cheape replied. “Give me a moment to talk to my people.”

  Nellie closed the line, giving Cheape some privacy with her people. Then, she turned to the map they had built of the areas they had seen so far. It included everything they could guess at, as well as what they had actually seen.

  “What the hell were those things?” Nellie muttered to herself.

  “From the scans, I think they are some kind of automated maintenance system,” Lucy said, coming to stand beside her.

  “They didn’t look like they were maintaining much,” Nellie shook her head.

  “If I had to guess,” Lucy pulled up the holograms of several individual bots, “They had a self-repair function intended to keep them running until someone came here. I think, over time, that became more than a subroutine. All it takes then is a small corruption in a file that propagates through the system as a whole.”

  “And suddenly, the janitors start killing everyone,” Nellie rubbed her forehead. “Great.”

  “She’s alive!”

  The call came from over by the Yellow Iris, and Nellie found herself moving before she even thought about it. Her feet flew over the cold marble, moving fast enough to blur to the eyes of the un-upgraded members of the team.

  Cheape’s people gasped as Nellie slid to a stop, crouching over the dented and busted cab. Inside, in the far corner, was a health readout. It was all flatlined.

  “Who said that?” Nellie looked around angrily.

  “She moved, your Highness,” A man said, shaking despite the determination in his voice.

  Focusing hard on the still form inside the cab, filtering out all the damage to the hardened glass, Nellie saw the faintest twitch in the pale woman's cheek muscle.

  “I see it.”

  “Quick, get cutting tools; we need to get her out!” Someone in the back turned to run, but Nellie didn’t hesitate.

  She punched through the hardened glass before ripping it away a piece at a time. In less than a second, the glass was gone, giving her access to the interior.

  “Wait!”

  “What’s wrong?” Nellie looked around.

  “She wouldn’t want to be a drone. Ma’am. With respect.”

  Looking around at the anxious, frightened faces, Nellie felt her temper rising but pushed it down. Ignorant or not, she could understand their fear. A lot of people were like that. Hell, Nellie would have been if she had a choice.

  She was tempted to drone the woman anyway, doubting she could be saved any other way, but Sec’s face flashed into her mind. This was the trap, wasn’t it? She was trying to save a life, but it was a slippery slope.

  Even if this woman would die, she had to accept her choice.

  “Fine, no droning, but nanites can help keep her alive, right?” Nellie asked.

  “If you could, Ma’am, thank you,” the defacto leader nodded.

  A flood of nanites burst from Nellie’s hands, flowing over the outside of the dying Sparks and sealing torn arteries and veins. They numbed nerves and released nutrients directly into the blood.

  “She needs a lot of help,” Nellie warned.

  “Med pods and docs are on the way from the Emissary and Sparklight,” Lucy called over. “The first pod will be here in ten minutes.”

  “I can keep her alive that long,” Nellie nodded. “But without anything to stabilize her organs… there are no problems.”

  “Can you not do that, Ma’am?” Someone asked, leaning over Nellie’s shoulder.

  “I thought you didn’t want nanites inside her?” Nellie frowned.

  “Oh, no, Ma’am. It’s not that.” They assured her. “It’s the conversion we wish to avoid.”

  “Are you sure?” Nellie asked, just to be clear.

  “Yes, Your Highness,” they bowed.

  “Good,” Nellie breathed a sigh of relief, pushing nanites into the wounds and organs to stabilize the woman. A minute later, Sparks took a deep breath, color slightly off as a large amount of her blood was currently nanites.

  “How were her oxygen levels?” Lucy asked, coming over. “If her brain was without oxygen for too long…”

  “Fine, the mask kept a small flow of pure O2 going in. It looks like it was just enough, as her levels never dropped below sixty. She got lucky.”

  “I’ll let Cheape know,” Lucy replied with a smile.

  /====<<<>>>====\

  “We aren’t leaving, are we?” Gas Tank asked.

  “Doesn’t look like it,” Cheape said, hoping no one noticed the trembling in her voice. “It looks like we can’t leave until we get to the end, or at least further in.”

  “Ammo check,” Gas Tank yelled loudly.

  Everyone stopped and checked their weapons and gear, counting up what supplies they still had. It took a depressingly short time for them to finish up.

  “We have about thirty slugs each in the Exo units. I’m at zero on both arms, but my suit charge is still on eighty.” Gas Tank reported back.

  “I’m out on both as well, and my charge is at sixty thanks to running those saws for so long.” Cheape shook her head.

  “Not the best loadout for the remaining, what? Seventy percent of this place? Maybe eighty?” Gas Tank chuckled ruefully. “Who knew a can-do attitude and a talent for making do would lead us here, eh, Ma’am?”

  “You’re not wrong,” Cheape sighed, but Tank’s words kept circling in her head as she moved to look back up the corridor toward the factories. Her people did have a can-do attitude. She’d worked damn hard to ensure they did. Flexing the metal hand of her rig, Cheape thought that, just maybe, there was a way out of this.

  “Ma’am?” Andy J asked, coming to stand next to the rig. “What are we going to do?”

  Looking down at Andy's battered exosuit, Cheape was torn between action and safety. After all, there was a slight chance the Queens would think of something, right? It was kind of what they did.

  “The same thing we do every day, Andy,” Cheape said, coming to a decision. “We’re going to find what we need and put it to use.”

  Turning, Cheape wound the volume on her Rig’s speakers up a little louder.

  “Listen up! We are stuck in here for now, so let’s not waste time wishing it wasn’t so. Instead, we are going to do exactly what the people of Haven are known for.” She turned, pointing out into the segment. “Everything we need is right there, just waiting for us to come along and take it!”

  “What about those junkbots?”

  “You mean the rolling spare parts?” Cheape faked a little confidence, “We’re going to sort that lot out for good. For the fallen.”

  “For the fallen!” Gas Tank yelled.

  “This place wants to lock us in here? Fine! Let it! Your people have faced worse odds for generations, and look at you now! On an alien moon, dripping in gear, and fucking up the enemy come what may!” She let that settle in for them before continuing a moment later. “The only way out is through. Well, if we are going through, let’s go through. We’ll build as we go. We’ll find new weapons, new armor, new tech, and then bring it all back home and build a star-damned statue. And when people ask who it is for, what will we say?”

  “For the Fallen!” Gas Tank stomped his rig’s foot.

  “For the Fallen!” They cried in return.

  “Now, ready up! We’re going scavenging!” Cheape snapped off the speakers as her external commline lit. “Yes, Ma’am?”

  “Cheape, I just wanted to let you know Nellie was able to stabilize Sparks, and we are loading her into a medbay shortly,” Lucy said quickly. “She was not droned, and we will do everything we can to restore her.”

  “Thank you for letting us know, Ma’am,” Cheape replied. “I’ll inform my people immediately.”