Sixty-Two had no answers for these questions. But he did have a goal. He was not going to be mind-wiped, nor ignored and left to die imprisoned. He was going to hold onto the freedom he’d grabbed with his own gripper and keep it pinched tightly between his metal mandibles for as long as he could.
First, he repaired his broken arm. That was an easier matter than it would have been for a flesh and blood creature. He simply found the parts supply house, located a spare arm and took it to the workshop. In less than an hour and with the help of the mech running the place, he had a fully-functional right arm again. He clacked the new gripper experimentally. There hadn’t even been any pain involved. At this point, he had to admit existence as a mech had its advantages.
Next, he set to work compromising the installation’s control system. It wasn’t as difficult as it sounded. The indentured personnel contracted to run places like this were always dull-witted, unimaginative serfs such as Megwit. They couldn’t be trusted to remember their training a moment after it was complete. The operations were therefore simplistic, and thoroughly documented. Megwit even kept a complete list of system passwords and keypad codes on his desk in polymer hardcopy. Sixty-Two studied these, tapped them in experimentally, and soon had the mine operating properly. That was the first step in the plan growing in his mind: he hoped to take Megwit’s place.
Sixty-Two knew there was only one full-fledged human stationed here at Facility #4. Often, such assignments lasted for years. If processing continued and shipments were made at a predictable, steady rate, it was not inconceivable that the marquis who owned this property would never know of the change in operators.
Alas, he learned on the second day of his explorations of the facility that his plans were hopeless. After reading through Megwit’s email, he discovered he could not hide here indefinitely. Megwit had been fired, and a relief skimmer was due to come soon and deliver Megwit’s replacement. Worse, they were expecting to pick up Megwit himself. Since the man’s corpse was a mess of worm-food hurled out of the office door and now was buried under a hump of blowing sands, his retrieval was going to be problematic.
Sixty-Two reformulated his plans. He worked around the clock, desperate to finish reprogramming the installation’s mechs to follow only his commands by the end of the ten-day. He met with many difficulties, as there were built-in safeguards he had to program his way around. But he discovered he had some affinity for the work. Perhaps he’d been a tech in his previous life. Either that, or he was learning very fast.
The day of the retrieval came quickly. After spending what seemed like an eternity lying on the processing table, the hours of hard work had flown by. As it was, Sixty-Two and the other operating mechs of the installation barely reached their positions in time.
A skimmer came down on a clear day and landed on the shifting sands in the center of the compound. There were no mechs in sight, but apparently this didn’t cause them to worry. After all, they were on a routine retrieval flight and probably wanted nothing more than to escape the blazing heat of this Sunside hellhole as soon as possible.
They called to Megwit several times over their com-links, but there was no response. Each call came with growing irritation. Sixty-Two quietly listened to them. The two crewmen, a pilot and a commander, were annoyed. He didn’t blame them.
“Megwit, you drunken bastard, come out of there!” the commander of the skimmer called out at last.
Sixty-Two maintained radio silence, as did his obedient fellows. They listened and they waited.
The commander cursed and publicly consigned Megwit’s soul to various unpleasant forms of abuse. Sixty-Two thought the man was not far off from actual events. Finally, the commander exited his skimmer and approached the operator’s shack.
This was the moment Sixty-Two had been waiting for. “Rise, workers!” he called over a private channel. “Restrain the humans and take the skimmer!”
All around the compound the sands exploded. Tall, hulking shapes of gleaming metal rose to their feet and strode forward purposefully. Dozens of them clanked toward the skimmer.
Sixty-Two had envisioned an easy victory. His plan was simplicity itself: his mechs would grab the men, seize the skimmer and force them to fly it out of Sunside. He wasn’t sure where he wanted to go, perhaps a wild area of Twilight, but anywhere was better than here. Machinery operated better in cold than it did in heat and grit, so perhaps he’d force them to fly his little army to the dark depths of Nightside.
Unfortunately, things went wrong almost immediately. The commander, shocked and terrified, drew a sidearm and began blasting at the approaching mechs. The skimmer pilot, equally alarmed, revved the engines for an emergency liftoff.
Seeing one of his mechs sag down to a crawling position, one leg blown off and casting sparks over the sands, Sixty-Two shouted new orders: “Those that are nearest the ship, board her now! Stop it from lifting off by any means necessary. Stop the humans NOW!”
The mechs, following their new imperatives he’d programmed into them, sprang into action. The first one to reach the commander took his head off with a gripper around the neck. The skull popped loose, still in its light blue crash helmet. The decapitated body flopped down and sprayed the sands, turning them instantly into a dark crust. The helmet rolled away with the head still inside it, leaving a dribbling trail behind.
Most of the mechs rushed to board the skimmer. After having witnessed the fate of his commander, the pilot tried to lift off. Mechs clambered aboard, and more latched their grippers upon the skids and airfoils. A dozen of them were on it, then a dozen more. Still, the skimmer managed to lift itself into the air fifty feet or so, despite the weight.
Sixty-Two cursed wildly. None of his mechs responded. This was not how he’d expected matters to go. He hadn’t anticipated the crew’s terrified reaction. He hadn’t meant to kill anyone. Things had spun out of control.
Worse still, something was wrong with the skimmer. Had one of the mechs made it into the cockpit? Had the mechs unbalanced the craft, or burned out one of the lifters with their incredible weight? Sixty-Two didn’t know, but he was certain the skimmer was going down.
It slid sideways, and crashed down into the processing warehouse, the biggest building in the compound.
“Let go!” Sixty-Two shouted. “Jump off the skimmer!”
He watched as a number of mechs did as he ordered. Others were too tangled with the crashing ship and went down with it. A fireball plumed over the desert floor and the shockwave rocked his chassis.
Sixty-Two ran toward the burning wreckage. He had to salvage as many of his faithful mechs as he could. He knew now that his plan had been critically flawed from the beginning. The skimmer could not have carried his army, and the humans were not going to allow him his freedom willingly. The first thing they had done was open fire! If this had been a military vessel, his entire organization would have been wiped out.
After ascertaining that the pilot was indeed as dead as his commander, Sixty-Two found the replacement serf, still strapped into his jumpseat. He was as dead as the others.
Sixty-Two was left with a knot of worry in his mind. He had a headache, even though he knew that physical sensation should have been impossible. What was he going to do? He’d lost three mechs in the crash. He’d managed to quickly repair the rest, but he knew they could not stay here any longer. They must flee. The pilot had probably managed to get off a distress call, and even if he hadn’t, more airships were sure to come and investigate soon. After that, there would be military aircraft. He and his fellows would be annihilated.
Less than an hour after the crash, the surviving mechs abandoned the facility and followed their sworn leader into the trackless wastes on foot. Only Sixty-Two himself was armed. He carried the skimmer commander’s pistol in his gripper.
Sixty-Two knew they had to move quickly and decisively. He needed more mechs, more machinery and more weapons. He had located all the neighboring mines in the region on maps prior to executing his failed takeover of the skimmer. He’d done so originally as part of his plan to avoid the encampments. Now, however, his plans had changed. He would have to assault the camps and raid them for whatever he needed. He had his new mech programming stored on a data crystal, and he would upload it into every mech he could find.
He felt he was caught up in something bigger than he’d ever intended to make it, but he also felt he had no choice in the matter. When they found him now, the agents of the nobility would be merciless. He would be reduced to scrap.
In addition to his concerns for himself, his thoughts had expanded on the matter to include the lives of the mechs around him. They’d all been humans once, just as he had been. They all had families somewhere. He wasn’t entirely human anymore, and neither were they, but did they not still deserve to live?
Sixty-Two believed that they did.
#
Aareschlucht
was a corvette-class ship named after a famous gorge in Old Switzerland, which had an even more impressive equivalent on Neu Schweitz. Both gorges cut through mountain valleys in-between craggy Alps on their respective worlds. Both were dangerous and beautiful places that moved a great deal of water downhill very quickly. Like its namesake,
Aareschlucht
was built for movement at great speed, and little else.
Aldo Moreno had signed onto
Aareschlucht
after Droad’s urging, and he’d never regretted a decision more intensely in his life. How Droad had talked him into this fool’s errand was beyond him. He stood in awe of the accomplishment. Aldo had never before thought of Droad as more than an unusually capable and dedicated politician, but now he stood corrected: the man was a sly devil with a silver tongue dipped in honey.
Aldo hated the ship. He hated the smell of stale, canned air. The monofilament filters and carbon dioxide scrubbers worked tirelessly, but they could never quite remove the odors of the other crewmen. There was no such thing as a fresh breeze, something he had enjoyed and come to take for granted after long years wandering the mountain cantons of Neu Schweitz. Even the water was fouled with a chemical taste. Everything was recycled, even the shitty paste the crew called food. He suspected it was their own waste processed by algae in the tanks that never stopped churning below decks. The taste of waste never quite left it, no matter how it was seasoned, baked or stewed.
So many details Droad had left out of his description of this ‘adventure’! Cryo-sleep would have been a blessing, but no, it was denied to them all. There were no pods aboard for the purpose. He and sixteen other crewmen were forced to spend the year-long voyage fully awake in a living space no larger than a city restaurant, and nowhere near as comfortably appointed.
Perhaps it was partly due to his discomfort, but Aldo found himself not getting along well with some of the
Aareschlucht’s
crewmen. The man he was ostensibly supposed to guard was an elderly fellow named Roland Garant. This at least turned out to be an easy job, as the man stayed in his quarters most of the time and only came to drink in the ship’s saloon at odd hours.
Ambassador Garant was far from the most irritating of the lot, however. The ship’s Captain was named Stanley Knox, and Aldo developed a desire to kill him after the first months in space. The man was pompous and intolerable. Perhaps Droad had fantasized that Aldo and he might get along—but that was not to be. Certainly, they had some interests in common: the Captain liked cards and carried a duelist’s sword, traditions Aldo himself adhered to. Knox also liked to brag and swagger, traits Aldo likewise enjoyed when the mood struck him.
The trouble began as a result of a disagreement concerning the females aboard the ship. There were enough of them to go around—Droad had apparently made certain of this. Of the seventeen people aboard, precisely eight were women. Aldo had to admit there was a certain wisdom in this calculation. At worst, only one man would be left out. But the imbalance became apparent in a second grim truth that hadn’t been properly weighed: only three of the women were young and attractive. The most interesting of that select group was none other than Joelle Tolbert herself, the very girl Droad had had a dalliance with shortly after the aliens had been driven from the Kale system.
Joelle had light hair that shone in even the dimmest light. Her eyes were big, round and blue. At first, she had rejected Aldo’s advances. This met with the obvious approval of Captain Knox, who had been regularly losing at cards to Aldo, and who had begun to sneer at him in the passageways. Knox set about wooing Tolbert himself, and at first, Aldo had turned the other cheek. If the girl preferred this fop, it was her loss. He promptly set about bedding the other two attractive women aboard. For several long months, this had served to pass the time. The ladies were like a balm on an open wound. Unfortunately, every other male aboard the ship constantly pestered them with their crude advances. In time, everyone aboard discovered Aldo had been courting all the best women, and they became typically annoyed with him—most importantly, the ladies themselves scorned him. He soon found himself with only the plainer women left to choose from.
He found this irritating. Normally, when faced with this situation, he would have picked up his few belongings, strapped his power-sword to his belt and exited the region, looking for fresh game. It was a procedure he’d followed a dozen times before. Now, however, he was trapped within the curved hull of this cursed ship. There was nowhere else for him to go.
His mood soured with each passing day. He spent time with the women who would have him, but the injustice burned in his mind. He was accustomed to enjoying the best of everything. It wasn’t the women themselves that bothered him—it was his pride and his competitive nature that caused his discomfort. The growing, inescapable stink inside the ship didn’t help matters, either. His mood grew ever darker, even as the others’ felt their spirits rising. As they finally reached a brief coasting period, a slice of time that was to last less than a month, matters came to a head.