Federation chronicles th.., p.3
Federation Chronicles: The Complete Series, page 3
Instead of climbing down one rung at a time, Quinton decided to let himself drop. Before he could gain too much velocity, he grabbed hold of a rung to slow his descent, and his body jerked to a halt. The agricultural unit was designed for climbing. Trimming tall trees was probably one of its duties. He didn’t know what he would do if his arms were torn out of their sockets, but he needed to reach the lower level—fast.
He soon came to the fifth level and made his way over to the door, forcing it open and climbing through. As he walked down the dark, quiet maintenance corridor, he noticed that the outside elements hadn’t penetrated there, and the corridor was untouched. The sensor data on his HUD showed that the power source was just up ahead in one of the side rooms.
Quinton hastened toward it and opened the door. A phalanx of workstations illuminated the area in an azure glow, and he walked to the nearest one. A holoscreen flickered on. The data displayed was slightly blurry from the aged projector hidden inside the workstation, but the status window showed the batch of commands that had been submitted by the last person who’d used the station. They’d initiated a shutdown protocol because of some kind of emergency. Given how things looked aboveground, Quinton was certain it was something catastrophic. As the system refreshed, a barrage of offline messages began spewing on the holoscreen. There was no info-net for him to connect to. He could only find the coordinates to an evacuation center. It must’ve been a broadcast emergency message that instructed the workers to go to a specific evacuation place. He brought up a map, and it highlighted a path for him to follow. There was a lot of open ground to cover, and with the hunter mechs coming for him, he wasn’t sure if he’d make it.
He still had access to local systems, and he tried to find a maintenance work area. He was hoping to find some kind of vehicle he could use. An alert appeared on his HUD. The power core in the agricultural unit was depleting, showing that he had less than 25 percent power remaining. Quinton had no idea what the longevity of the power core inside him was, but the unit must’ve been stored for quite some time, and it was probably well beyond its expected lifespan. He was running out of time.
“You should go to the evacuation center,” Radek said.
Quinton stepped away from the workstation. “Thanks for the tip,” he said bitterly.
He left the control center and shook his head. Radek was just trying to help keep him on task, and he had to focus. He had to do one thing at a time in order to escape. He couldn’t afford to dwell on what he didn’t know, but he couldn’t help but blame Radek for his current predicament. Rationally, he knew it wasn’t the VI’s fault. It, too, had been activated after the upload to the ESS, but given what was happening, he felt he was entitled to a bit of irrationality. It wasn’t as if Radek had feelings anyway.
There was no way for Quinton to call for help, and now he was thinking that there would be nobody to answer his call even if he was able to make one. He began making his way to the maintenance work area. Hopefully, there would be some kind of vehicle the groundskeepers used. Otherwise, he’d have to continue running from the hunter mechs. If there was a vehicle, and it was still connected to a charging station, perhaps it would be enough to get him to the evacuation center.
4
The maintenance area was located at the ground level. Rather than risk another encounter with the hunter mechs, who no doubt wanted to exact revenge for what Quinton had done to their sneaky comrade, he decided to find another way to reach the ground level. Making his way through the dark hallways of the building, he found a staircase and began climbing to the upper level. He kept expecting to feel the exertion of climbing the steps. It was natural to think that since he was exerting himself, he’d feel the results of those efforts regardless of how physically fit he’d been. At least, he thought he’d been in good physical condition before he’d been uploaded into an ESS, but he couldn’t know for sure. He just had a feeling that he had been. Something in the way he moved suggested a familiarity of movement, a familiarity that could only come from the habits formed in his brain, but what if he was wrong? There was no heavy breathing or burning thighs as he mounted the stairs. Instead, there was nothing but an efficiency of motion as he climbed as fast as he could. With his mechanical limbs, he was taking the steps two at a time. The hunter mech had damaged his shoulder, and whenever he lifted his left arm, he once again noted a clicking sound from the actuators. Raising his arm higher than shoulder level resulted in it dropping, as if it couldn’t support its own weight. The blade in his left forearm was only partially retracted because it was bent from his fight with the mech.
Quinton reached the ground floor and slowly opened the door. He stepped into the dark corridor and peered toward a wide doorway that led to a maintenance garage. Pale light from the outside cast shadows beyond the doorway, and he froze. The hunter mechs would be searching for him. The shadows stirred in the pallid light, and a gust of wind moaned in the distance.
Quinton raised the sensitivity of the bot’s auditory sensors. Rain splattering the roof high above him registered in stunning clarity of sound, as if time had slowed to a crawl. A soft groan came from the upper floors that were exposed to the elements. He remained still and logged the sounds, carefully cataloging them and minimizing their impact so he could listen for the mechs. He waited there, alone in the darkened corridor, hoping the mechs weren’t nearby. Several minutes passed with nothing but the quiet cadence of a stream of rainwater splashing the ground inside the maintenance garage. He crept toward the door.
Satisfied that there were no mechs waiting to ambush him, Quinton reduced the auditory system sensitivity to normal levels. Inside the garage were vehicles and other bots in charging stations along the walls. He detected faint power signatures from some of the bots and vehicles, but he’d need to inspect them to determine whether they had enough power to be of use.
Rainwater streamed through a jagged opening in the roof of the garage toward the outer wall. It looked as if the roof had been peeled away in order to see inside. Something must have crashed and bounced off the structure with sufficient velocity to cause that kind of damage. If the hunter mechs had a giant older brother, something from a military arsenal, then he was as good as dead.
A steady stream of water made its way toward the main doors. Lightning flickered brightly, pushing the shadows back into sudden retreat, and Quinton headed toward the outer doors. There were several large vehicles off to his right that looked as if they were meant for hauling heavy things. Their thick wheels were nearly as tall as he was. The lack of counter-grav vehicles meant that this estate or museum was a throwback to a historical time before the advent of the current tech, or he might be on a fringe planet that had limited resources. It could be both, but Quinton wouldn’t find that out by staying in this garage.
He headed to the door control panel and saw that it still had power. The maintenance area must have been on its own backup power after it had been cut off from the main building. The bots and vehicles in the garage weren’t what he considered cutting edge, but they were built to be relatively self-sustaining—at least under normal circumstances. Given the state of things outside, he wondered how long things had been so bad here. Power cores being what they were, they would take tens of years to deplete and maybe more, even without proper maintenance.
Next to the main doors was a smaller door where workers entered. Quinton walked over to it and pulled it open. Outside, he could see what had once been a sprawling garden, with paths he could just barely see under the slushy ash. Map markers, pulled from the agricultural bot’s memory core, appeared on his HUD. There were several paths across the vast estate that he could take to the evacuation center. The ash-covered fields had the appearance of dingy gray snow, and Quinton’s sensors detected high levels of sulfur. Such high concentrations indicated that not only did the air smell like rotten eggs and decay, but he’d have a strong aftertaste in his mouth if he were in his body.
He doubted anything was left alive in the region. In addition to looking like a hellish landscape of a dying world, the atmosphere was slowly poisoning anything left alive. He couldn’t wait to get out of there.
Streaks of gray and black stretched across the way, and even though the remnants of tree-covered paths were only a short distance away, he’d be way too exposed if he tried to make a run for it.
“Quinton, you must hurry. You need to cross the field to reach the evacuation center,” Radek advised.
“I don’t think so,” Quinton replied.
“I don’t understand. Staying here doesn’t bring us any closer to our objective.”
“You’re supposed to help me, Radek. I can’t just go running blindly out there. Can you tell me if any hunter mechs are waiting to ambush us? That’s where I’d be if I were them. I’d be keeping watch, and as soon as my target left the building, I’d pounce,” he said and shook his head. “For a virtual intelligence that’s supposed to help me, you’re not being very helpful. Now, just give me a few seconds to think.”
He watched the open field. There was some cover from the trees that hadn’t toppled over, but they were leaning to their sides under the heavy weight of the ash, ensuring their eventual demise. He tried to calculate how long it would take him to reach that area, and he didn’t like his chances. Radek was right about one thing. He couldn’t stay here, but that didn’t mean he should make a mad dash across an open field, begging for the hunter mechs to run him down. He had to be smarter than that. He needed cover . . . or a distraction. Quinton glanced behind him at all the vehicles and the maintenance bots. Some of them still had power. They wouldn’t last long, but they might last long enough for what he was planning.
He glanced at the main doors where ice glistened on the gray metallic surface in frozen rivulets. It wasn’t enough to prevent the doors from opening, but he doubted they’d open quietly, which meant they’d draw the mechs’ attention.
He crossed to the other side of the garage and brought up a control terminal. The main screen showed the status of the machines in the charging stations. Almost half of them were without power, but there were multiple outdoor maintenance bots for which he was able to bring up the startup sequence. These bots were less sophisticated than the unit he was in. No doubt, they were meant for working away from the view of the patrons who visited this place. The medium-sized maintenance bots had four mechanical arms, as well as a continuous tread system at the base. As they went through their startup sequences, they did a system check. Their mechanical arms went through a range of motion to test their mobility and the continuous tread systems clustered together, raising the bots up several feet. All twelve of them bobbed up and down as they went through their checks.
Only four large autonomous vehicles still had power. Quinton accessed their control systems next and began activating them. One of them quickly came online but failed during its startup sequence and became unresponsive. He accessed another one, and it lasted a whole thirty seconds longer than the first one had before it failed. Quinton swore in frustration. Thankfully, the remaining two passed their systems startup test and waited for orders. He passed the control protocol from the control terminal over to his own systems so he wouldn’t need to stay at the physical terminal, then stepped back and turned to survey his squad of decoy bots. Dim amber light gleamed through the crust-covered, multi-sensored heads of the maintenance bots. A soft hum came from each one as they waited for him to command them.
Quinton walked over to the main doors and used the controls to open them. The door mechanism struggled for a few moments before the actuators were able to pull the two massive doors to the side, and rain and wind gusted in a soft howl through the opening. The door tracks screeched in a protest loud enough to be heard over the storm.
There’s no going back now.
He scanned the area outside for a few moments and then accessed the medium-sized bot control interface. He tasked half the bots to perform a general maintenance patrol mode, and they quickly sped outside, heading away from the maintenance garage. Quinton waited a few moments and then ordered one of the large haulers to head to the western side of the vast estate. The large metallic wheels adjusted the treads to give it traction, and the hauler drove away at a leisurely speed at first, gradually increasing its velocity.
The rest of the medium-sized bots came to the doorway and waited, followed by the remaining large hauler. Quinton climbed up the side of the hauler and glanced inside the open storage bed. Pieces of scrap metal were piled inside.
He scrambled over the side and onto the bed. The scrap metal was partially covered, and he squatted down toward the front. He ordered his small squad of robot henchmen out into the storm, and he followed.
Radek had updated Quinton’s HUD to show where the other bots had gone. The coordinates he’d given this group were to take them directly across the field as fast as they could. He hoped it would confuse the hunter mechs.
The large hauler jostled back and forth as it crossed onto the rugged path. Quinton turned around and glanced behind them, seeing two shapes appear on the roof of the museum. The hunter mechs quickly surveyed the scene of the fleeing robots and then leaped to the ground. They split off, each mech heading toward different groups of maintenance bots, but neither was heading toward him. His distraction had worked.
The hauler was running with minimal power, and its systems were throwing up warnings about the depleting charge. Quinton increased the vehicle’s speed, knowing it would cut the life of the hauler’s power cell to little more than a handful of minutes, but he needed more speed than endurance. The hunter mechs were able to quickly traverse the rough terrain, galloping on all of their limbs.
Quinton was about to turn around when he saw a third mech appear on the rooftop. Its dome-shaped head had a jagged puncture where one of its eyes had been. A few fleeting sparks burst from the opening. It scanned the area and seemed to focus on him. He sank down, trying to hide behind the pile of scrap metal. Just then, one of the hauler's wheels slipped, and the vehicle began to slide for a few moments before regaining traction. The storage bed jerked to the side, and Quinton was jostled out from cover. He looked back at the roof in alarm, hoping the mech hadn’t seen him.
He was wrong.
The mech leaped off the roof and hit the ground at a run.
Quinton commanded two medium-size bots to circle back and intercept the mech. There was a bright flash off to the side, and then a squeal sounded from a maintenance bot as one of the hunter mechs tore it apart. Sparks burst from its power core, and the mech darted toward its next victim.
Quinton took control of the large hauler, overriding the autonomous drive systems. He jerked the steering controls toward the tree-lined path, and the entire vehicle tilted to the side as it swerved. The hauler bounced wildly for a few moments, and he clutched onto the handrail inside the storage bed. The adaptive wheels quickly engaged deformation protocols, and the ride smoothed out as the vehicle continued over rough terrain.
He looked to the left and saw a mech chasing the maintenance bots. They didn’t look anything like Quinton’s agricultural unit, which made him wonder just how sophisticated the targeting systems of the hunter mechs actually were. They seemed to be chasing almost anything that moved, and his only option was to get away from them as fast as possible.
He ordered the four remaining bots in front of them to form a phalanx behind the large hauler. The mech he’d fought inside the museum had made quick work of the medium bots he’d sent over to it. Their remains littered the ground in pieces. The mech’s one good eye gleamed hatefully in stark contrast to the greenish fluid that had splattered over its chassis.
Quinton made it to the forest path, and the hauler bludgeoned through the lower tree branches that splintered apart on impact. He saw small dark shapes scampering among trees, keeping pace with him. Something big slammed into the side of the hauler. It lurched, jostling his hold on the handrail, and he slipped back onto the pile of scrap. An armored, metallic claw reached over the side. The mech had finally caught up to him.
He extended the blade from his forearm and slammed down on the mech's hand with all his might. The hand severed at the wrist, and the mech dropped and rolled away, but Quinton’s blade was wedged into the side of the storage bed. He yanked his hand back, trying to free the blade, and it snapped at the base of the tang.
The vehicle leveled off, and he peered around. Eight sets of amber-colored eyes gleamed menacingly in the darkness. Reinforcements had arrived, and their heads bobbed slightly as they raced toward him. Quinton recalled all the maintenance bots, but their numbers had diminished rapidly. He overrode their crash-avoidance systems, and they threw themselves at the mechs. Several mechs went down in a tangle, and Quinton lost sight of them.
“Obstruction ahead. Secure your position,” Radek warned.
Quinton spun and saw that the corpse of a thick tree was blocking part of the path. He grabbed onto the handrail and increased the speed. Several dark, furry shapes leaped from the nearby trees and landed inside the hauler’s storage bed. The creatures’ fur was matted and dirty, but their wide eyes gleamed in the dim light.
The hauler slammed into the obstructing tree, causing it to jerk violently, and it bounced off another fallen tree on the other side of the path. The furry little critters screeched as they scrambled to grab hold of something. One of them flew through the air and disappeared from view. Quinton watched as one of the larger animals helped the others climb the scrap pile near the rear of the vehicle. They hadn’t paid any attention to him at all.
Quinton heard two mechs close in behind the hauler. They sprang up and yanked the rear hatch, hard. The hinges bent and the hatch flung open, causing the pile of scrap to start spilling out of the bed. Several of the furry creatures tumbled down despite the efforts of the larger male trying to help them. One of the mechs snatched at the scrap, pulling it, along with the creature, toward him. Quinton lurched forward and flung a metallic shaft at the mech. The shaft slammed into its chest, knocking it off balance.
