Pointing at the Logo, the bartender continued gingerly, “That one. Y’know?... You weren’t yourself at all. Really out of sorts. Talking a lot, but not making any sense. Your mind seemed torn up even worse than your body. Eventually, you passed out, then your buddies took you somewhere to heal up. I heard that you’d survived, but that was the last time I’d actually seen you until now... Anything else, Brennan?”
With a sigh, the Peacekeeper palmed his forehead. Harvey had neglected to mention that the first Marshal had accused him of removing her arm, but Brennan decided that he would rather tell the new Marshal himself. Leaning in over the table, he asked seriously, “Did you say that Frank’s been back here since the crater?”
“Yeah,” Harvey said casually, taking another long sip of his drink. “Twice. I told you that. And it was in my reports. The first time was just as things were starting to cool down, he came in asking what I told the official investigators. Then, a month or so later, he came in asking about the bounty on that monster that I shouldn’t have mentioned.”
“You did not tell me that,” Brennan said assuredly. “I read those reports, and I would have remembered if Frank’s ID was on one... He and Morton are both supposed to be dead...”
“Naw,” Harvey said dismissively, “I’ve seen Frank. Gotta assume Morton’s alive too. They’re just laying low.”
Brennan sighed exasperatedly into his drink as Harvey continued just as casually as before, “Yeah, Morton’s story is ridiculous. The fact that he was able to survive so many encounters with you is just hard to believe.”
The Marshal was livid again but didn’t let it show—Harvey was glossing over a lot of information and it was casting a bad light on both himself and the Peacekeeper. “Have you seen a lot of Officer Brennan since the crater?”
“Yeah, I told you, he’s in here all the time,” Harvey replied calmly. “There was a little lull there while all the investigations were going on, but his routine picked back up around the same time business did.” Looking at Brennan questioningly, he asked, “Actually, I think you’ve died once or twice since then, didn’t you?”
The Peacekeeper held up two fingers.
“Yeah, twice... He’s not like you, it only takes him four or five days to get respawned.” Harvey raised his mug for another toast but didn’t wait before finishing his drink.
“Okay,” the Marshal said ominously. “If you had to guess as to why my previous incarnation didn’t tear this whole place down to the ground, what would you say?”
With a chuckle, Harvey replied bluntly, “Because you had no reason to? That’s what I was saying earlier, regardless of their legal status, these are good people. You wanted Morton, or maybe even his–” The bartender stopped and squinted as it finally occurred to him that the Marshal might not be as similar to her previous incarnation as he had assumed. “Wait, is this a trick question?”
Staring back at him with their steely blue-grey eyes, the Marshal just waited, as if he should already know the answer.
Harvey gulped again and said sheepishly, “This is a town built by the government specifically for migrant laborers. They have to move around a lot because their work isn’t legal, but at the end of the day, it’s all paid for with tax dollars. None of the services they provide benefit them directly, it all goes back to either Mechanicsburg or NYC. They’re born into those jobs and then they die in them. It’s an unofficial yet distinct class system. They work more hours of the day than they have to themselves, and they don’t even complain about it! Except when a bastard like Mister Morton tries to take advantage, most of them are happy just to have jobs. I said your previous incarnation wasn’t interested in labor laws, but she fought hard to protect those people.”
Officially, anyone with a personal CBi was eligible for summary execution, and just to gauge the government response, the Marshal was seriously considering killing everyone inside the mini-mall. However, Harvey’s reasoning was sound, and they liked the idea of their predecessor being a champion of the little guys. Hoping to find evidence to support the bartender’s assertions, the Marshal started analyzing financial data through the Logo while they listened.
Harvey pointed to a nearby table of patrons. “The money that bought their lives came straight out of discretionary funds from New York. Life’s not cheap anywhere on Earth, but the people who can afford to live there can also afford entire towns like this–” He gestured vaguely to everyone around them. “–full of little people to make their gadgets and gizmos. The laborers aren’t the problem here, it’s the city folk providing all the work.” He stopped, sounding so sure of what he had just said but then added hastily, “And the poachers. And the smugglers, I guess. Obviously, the guys like Morton who are running the sweatshops, but the people here tonight are practically slaves.”
Unaffected by Harvey’s speech, the Marshal asked, “With no hardline to USinet, how do you file reports?”
“Automated courier comes through once a week or so to pick it up,” the bartender explained.
The thought of such an unreliable system made the Marshal’s lip curl involuntarily, but they nodded in understanding. They gestured towards the arcade at the opposite end of the mini-mall and asked, “What are all those people doing?”
Warily, Harvey replied, “Oh. Um. Playing Air Assault I think. Unless they’ve changed the game without telling me. We can’t charge money for it because it requires a CBi, so I don’t check up on it much. I’ve never been able to play myself–” He chuckled and tapped his temple to indicate his lack of Computer-Brain interface. “–but it’s supposed to be fun. I just go over every now and then to sweep up.”
“There’s no external connection?” the Marshal asked skeptically.
“Naw,” Harvey said, “Local area network. Totally closed-circuit for sure. There are a few applications you can access outside of the game if you have administrator privileges. People from USi have come to inspect it before, but it’s been a while.”
“Is the client end connected to the network you use behind the bar? Or any of the other vendors?”
“No ma’am,” he said assuredly. “Well...” He had to think. “The vendors have their own dedicated network for transactions and I can’t check them from my terminal, but they get picked up by the same courier, so there might be a physical connection somewhere. I’ve heard them talk about using the game’s overflow storage, so those two are definitely linked. Shoots. I guess I never really thought about it. But still, there’s nothing going out without the courier.”
Officer Brennan had been staring off into space but a heated glare from the Marshal brought him back. Still sounding far away he said, “Huh? Yeah, sorry. You gonna go check it out?” He stood up. “You go ahead, I’m still kind of shook up about the whole ‘Morton being alive’ thing... I cannot believe I missed that.” Gradually, his eyes came into focus and locked with the Marshal’s. “Are you getting the same funny feeling I am? You might remember things differently, but we used to make a pretty good team. I hope we can still trust each other.”
The Marshal was still excited about interviewing the Peacekeeper, as well as potentially having him as a partner, but there was something strange about the way he had said that. They were having mixed feelings about whether he was trustworthy but didn’t have time to make up their mind before Brennan continued.
“Nevermind. You go check out the arcade. I’m going to get another drink.” Brennan turned away, muttering something about not being able to log onto the damned game anyway, and the Marshal let him go.
The bartender noticed a slightly sour look on the Marshal’s face and said, “He didn’t mean to be rude, he just gets self-conscious sometimes. He worries that he might not be doing the best job, y’know? Not that he’s jealous of you or anything. You’re the best and everyone knows it. While he was waiting for you to show up, he was going on and on about how you two were going to fix everything...” Harvey shot the Marshal a sly smile. “Well, I should get back to work. You gonna g
o check out Air Assault?”
After looking down at their untouched drink, the Marshal downed it in one long draught. “Guess so.” They gave the bartender a little nod of thanks before walking over to the opposite end of the mall. It was tempting to stop and investigate the shops they passed on the way, but the arcade was the bigger priority. From a distance, they could see that most of the arcade patrons were sitting or standing quietly, but some were doing Tai Chi and other light calisthenics. Must be automated movements designed to keep their bodies active while playing. Smart.
As they got closer though, the Marshal noticed a number of them standing in awkward positions, as if they hadn’t paid any attention to where they logged on. Disgusting. Why would anyone spend their leisure time that way? They must be thoroughly addicted if they’re that desperate to play. Suddenly, as if they had walked through a physical barrier, the Logo was bombarded with requests from a local area network. Between the Marshal’s natural mental defenses and hardware inside the Logo, the risks associated with granting security permissions to the server were minor, so they allowed the ones necessary for minimum functionality. As soon as they had, the Marshal found herself standing on an invisible platform floating in the middle of a clear blue sky—it was no longer they, just her.
As if someone were talking directly into her ear, the dual-tone voice from the hospital said, “Looks like we’re flying solo.”
Chapter Ten
Tried and Tested
Morton took two lumbering steps before stopping again to check his tether. He had tripped over the power cord for his new exosuit twice already, and even though Frank had now rigged it to a dolly arm hanging down from a track on the ceiling, the bossman still felt a little insecure walking around on his new mechanical legs. Despite having felt unwell all morning, Morton had promised that he would help Frank test progress on the giant mechanical armor, and he was a man of his word. His henchman kept saying that he was going to get the thing running on thermal energy converters, but apparently that was pretty far down the line.
Strapped inside the battle chassis, Morton stood roughly four meters tall and had nearly the same wingspan. Because it was so top-heavy, Frank had given the work-in-progress wide paddle feet and a roll cage so they could test the new knee and ankle joints. The motion actuators weren’t sufficiently responsive yet, so Frank had pre-programmed a number of movement combinations that could be executed from his terminal. Morton was using dual foot pedals and joysticks laden with confusing toggles and buttons, and he was examining them for the umpteenth time.
“Okay, big man! Let’s see what she can do!” Frank shouted excitedly.
Morton took two more awkward steps towards some large metal barrels that Frank had set up, when the mech’s upper torso spun hard to the left and stopped with a resounding CLANG before spinning back in the other direction and coming to another halt just as loudly.
“Whoa!” Frank yelled, noticing that one of the restraining bars was severely bent. Before he could say anything else, Morton spun back the other way. “Stop!” Frank screamed with more alarm in his voice, and then started to chuckle a little as he ran up to help. “Stop, don’t touch anything! The motor’s too strong. See those bent bars? If either one of those had failed completely, the whole upper half would’ve spun around and torn you apart at the waist.”
Frustrated, Morton yelled, “Why is it doing that?! You said the joystick moved the arms!”
“Just stop for a second,” Frank replied calmly as he climbed up onto the rig to show him. “It’s fine. You have both sticks set to ‘torso’. Hit that little black and white toggle on the top down two more and that’ll switch them back to arms. Yup, you got it.” He hopped back down.
“I don’t even know why we’re testing this so early,” Morton groaned. “This hunk of junk isn’t ready.”
“I don’t know why you’re using that tone with me,” Frank replied flatly. “There’s no point in designing anything else until we establish core mobility. And honestly, you should be more excited. This time, when the Marshal gets here, I want you to be out there in the fight with me. Not hiding behind a terminal pressing buttons.” Morton was about to concede because he wanted the same thing, but Frank didn’t give him enough time. Taking control of the suit through its tethered connection, he said, “Actually, now that you’re strapped in, let me show you something.”
Morton roared with delight as the mechanized warrior got up to full speed in just three steps, launched into a beautiful diving leap, and landed with an elegant somersault roll. Trying to catch his breath, Morton started to say, “Well tha–” but the words were pulled from his mouth as the suit dropped into a kneeling spring dive. With a forward left-hand slash that went clean through one of the prototype models that had become a training dummy, Morton and his suit transitioned into a sideways recovery roll before skidding to a halt. “Whoa!”
Frank called the suit’s right hand weapon ‘Rock-Paper-Scissors’, inspired by the classic hand game. The rock element was basically a metal plate on one side that could be used as a shield or mallet, paper was a giant cleaver on the other, and scissors were two long, flat, metal bars in the middle that could separate and slam back together like a loaded press. Manually, Morton turned around and chopped the blade into his lifeless opponent’s shoulder, wedging it there. He tried to twist and lift the blade back out but didn’t have enough leverage.
“Try to jump,” Frank suggested, but then reconsidered. “No, that’s too hard. Hold on.” With a few keystrokes, the robot puppet did a little hop up and landed with both of his feet on the exoskeleton’s thighs. Leaning back dislodged Rock-Paper-Scissors, sending the dummy suit tumbling to the ground, and launching Morton into a neat backflip with a graceful landing. “Hold on,” Frank said calmly. The power cord had wrapped itself under the suit’s leg and he went to fix it. “Okay, one more thing. Go and crush some of those.”
Chock-full of adrenaline, Morton lumbered towards a pyramid of industrial waste barrels the henchman had set up. Winding up like he was about to break bricks in some kind of martial arts tournament, he slammed down on them with the rock part of the weapon. One of them was smashed flat, while others shot out the sides to crash and roll around messily. “Yes!” they both cheered.
“Now use scissors!” Frank yelled.
“What?” Morton asked, confused.
“The scissor part of the RPS!” Frank clarified.
“What’s the RPS?” Morton still sounded confused but now he was laughing.
“Rock-Paper-Scissors!” Frank said, almost frustrated, “The weapon on your right hand... The middle part opens up so you can crush things. Use the little...”
Morton found the toggle for the weapon and it opened with a satisfying gasp. “Ohhh,” he gasped himself. “I like that!” He grabbed one of the unbroken barrels and picked it up carefully. “Very nice indeed.” With a snap, the jaws closed and crushed a stripe through the middle of the cylinder. Morton hollered with excitement, but then, realizing that liquid waste had shot out and splashed all over Frank, he said with concern, “Oh shit! Are you okay?”
Wiping his eyes and face clean, Frank said with just as much enthusiasm as before, “Yeah! That was awesome! I’m still not sure if it will be able to crush the Marshal’s Logo, but grab another one and try out the blue button!” Designed specifically to counter the Marshal’s robotic limb, the interior plating of the ‘scissors’ was made of a super conductive material that was jimmied up to some powerful thermal energy converters. It would never draw enough energy to power the suit, but Frank hoped that it would be enough to sap and disable the Marshal’s LGO.
Morton grabbed another barrel but didn’t squeeze. Slowly at first, it started to change color as the thermal energy was sucked out of it. Then, they both heard a soft crackling sound. Once nothing else seemed to be happening, Morton snapped the scissors shut. The frozen metal exploded into countless shards, but before celebrating, he turned to see that his henchman was covered in t
hem.
Frank laughed as he plucked bloody slivers from his arms and face. “Nice!” he said, a little less enthusiastically than before. “It froze pretty fast, I think it might work.”
Enthusiasm in Morton’s mechanical step as he hopped around the workshop in search of things to destroy made him look like a toy soldier bouncing across a tabletop. The exosuit was already proving to have been a good decision, but Frank was already worrying about his master’s pending adrenaline crash. He wished he could help with the emotional transition, but knowing he had to let the man run out of steam naturally, he just watched and tried to savor every moment. As predicted, Morton went from soaring through the air, feeling invincible inside his fantastic fighting machine, to flattened as soon as he got back on his own two feet. He punched the suit a melancholy farewell before walking back to sit at his desk, where he tried to catch up on business he might have missed as he fell into one of the deeper troughs of his manic cycle.
Trying to read messages on his terminal through the glare of tears in his eyes, Mister Morton found his mind too clouded with rage to understand any of it. He wasn’t ashamed to admit that he had been traumatized at the crater. Even though his physical wounds hadn’t even been that bad, he still felt broken in many ways. It was his daily struggle, and during times like these, he wondered whether any of their preparatory projects were worth their while. As Frank cleaned the remnants of their tests from the workshop, he considered dismantling his entire operation.
Slamming his fists into the familiar grooves in his desk, Morton tried to retain control of his body by muttering profanity and a long hobbled litany of self-blame. “Fighting a Marshal, you dope... What are you thinking?... You should have just high-tailed it for the ocean.” He felt his body locking up with every word he spoke. He tried to psych himself up. “You draw a lot of water down on Earth. Don’t you forget it, just because the law is breathing down your neck.” The smuggler king managed to bite into his bottom lip and take one deep calming breath, but beyond that, he couldn’t move. He tried to close his eyes as he imagined sailing across the desert safely inside the train, but he was stuck staring at his blurry terminal screen.
Under the Shadow of the Plateau: Frontier Forever Page 10