by J. S. Morin
Mid-stride, he dug in one of his pockets and pulled out his portable computer again. His tapping at the screen was inaccurate on the move, and he had to correct mistakes along the way. Eventually, he found schematics for the refinery in the public archive.
When he directed the computer to overlay his current location in real time, it appeared as if he had entered a simulation. The drone control feed wasn’t a quick hack, and he didn’t have time to crack secure links while on the move, but he was able to find a monitoring feed that was unsecured and tapped into it. He dropped the live locations of the drones into the simulation, and the result was a snapshot of an original-era computer game.
“Well, more of you punks out there than I’d hoped for. Glad I don’t need to kill every last one of you.”
With the ability to see the drones on his computer screen, Plato was able to navigate the refinery and plot a course to keep ahead of them.
This mission was a bust.
Plato’s trap for the pursuing robot was sprung, and the bait was gone, but he hadn’t caught anything. If Plato were lucky, he would be able to find another exit and get back to Betty-Lou.
The refinery shook.
Plato stumbled. The computer fell to the catwalk floor as he grabbed hold of a railing to avoid falling over the edge.
Somewhere nearby, the ore ship was dumping its load.
Plato reached down to grab the computer. He fought against the shaking floor to keep his hold. If he didn’t stop it in time, the computer would plummet into the depths of the facility. If he lost his grip, he was liable to follow it down. Plato reached to place at least a finger on the computer, to hold it in place until the earthquake abated.
The noise was horrendous, but Plato had no free hand to shield his ears. The tip of his middle finger came to rest on the edge of the computer just before the vibrations shook it over the side of the catwalk.
Gritting his teeth, he knew he just had to hold out long enough for the mining ship to finish emptying. He could hold completely still for a little while if that’s what it took.
A bare shoulder, slick with sweat, was no fit place for the strap of a rifle to lie idle. As Plato strained and stretched, the fabric began a slow slide over the straining deltoid muscle of Plato’s right arm.
“No,” Plato said through gritted teeth. “Don’t you dare.”
Despite the chiding, no part of the rifle responded to voice commands, least of all the synthetic fabric strap. It continued slipping despite Plato’s protest. Once clear of the shoulder, it was the first peak of a roller coaster ride. The strap slowed just shy of stopping an instant before it plummeted.
There was no decision to make. Plato reacted by instinct.
He snatched at the barrel of the rifle and grabbed hold. Plato saved the weapon.
The computer slid over the edge and vanished into the abyss.
A soft moan of dismay escaped Plato’s lips as he realized that he could have hooked the strap on a finger if he’d only taken a fraction of a second to think. Maybe the jolt would have broken his tenuous hold on the computer’s slick glass surface; maybe it wouldn’t have. But by letting it go, he consigned himself to navigating the refinery by memory.
Plus, he was no longer able to track the drones in real time.
The ore dump finally ceased, and the facility returned to normalcy. A high-pitched whine droned on like a dog whistle for human. Plato pressed a palm to his ear in a vain attempt to stop the noise, but it was just an aftereffect of damaging his hearing.
There was no time to collect himself.
All Plato could do was get moving as the drones tightened their noose around his neck.
Chapter Fifty
James187 lurked in the lower depths of the refinery. It had taken him half an hour to circumvent the chase and come around below the fracas taking place on the catwalks high overhead.
A small object bounced off railings and catwalks, pipes and conduits. Each impact echoed through the facility as an undertone to the general din of industrial ore processing. The robotic hunter followed the sound and caught sight of a portable computer tumbling by.
Ducking under a low-hanging coolant line, James187 caught a glimpse of a human silhouette retreating from the edge of one of the upper-level catwalks. It was the larger one—the bodyguard, the pilot. The troublemaker.
It seemed the refinery’s automatons were giving the brute all he could handle.
James187 smiled as he looked on.
Every animal had its own form of cleverness. Birds knew every breeze and updraft; they thought in three dimensions. Hares ran erratic patterns to evade predators faster than them. James187 had even dealt with an escaped chimpanzee that knew to throw rocks to make it sound like she was somewhere she wasn’t. But for all their instinct and crude guile, there wasn’t an animal alive that posed a threat to robots.
Playing hide-and-seek with a human was legitimately dangerous.
Any hunter who underestimated his prey was in for a nasty surprise. James187 was in no hurry to make such a mistake. Instead of heading up to join the chase, he found the nearest stairwell to delve farther down and retrieve the computer.
Far above, he could still hear the sounds of automaton feet on the steel mesh flooring. Why Jason266 hadn’t adopted a more modern design for the refinery, James187 couldn’t imagine. But it allowed sound to travel a greater distance and cut down somewhat on errant echoes. Two crashes from above drove home the point. The sounds pinpointed the location of another pair of defunct automatons, even before James187 received the facility update.
UNIT 2888901 LOST.
UNIT 2888903 LOST.
The human was armed with a weapon that made short work of three-hundred-kilo automatons built to work with molten metals and jagged chunks of unprocessed ore. A gauss rifle or charged plasma cannon could inflict the damage required, but surely James would have heard evidence of that sort of weapon firing. The human had to have been using an EMP weapon. Since it was only taking out automatons in pairs, it had to have been a focused field, possibly using a monopole electromagnet.
James187 wanted no part of that. Let the human run his power supply dry or slip up and fall victim to one of the automatons before he could destroy its control system.
The human’s computer lay face down on the facility’s concrete bottom floor. James187 picked it up. The screen was cracked, but the display still functioned. It was showing a fully rendered map of the facility in wireframe, complete with automaton movements.
Neither James187 nor the human appeared on the simulation, but from the shifting patterns in the automatons’ movements, he could narrow down the human’s location. With this tactical feed, he could keep the human hemmed in and be sure he wasn’t escaping. At the same time, James187 could remain safe from the horrific EMP weapon cutting down automatons two by two.
WHAT’S GOING ON, JAMES? DOES THIS BEAR OF YOURS EAT AUTOMATONS? I’M LOSING WORKERS.
That was no message from the system.
Jason266 had been getting the same updates about the continuing losses among the workforce. The last thing James187 needed was Jason266 showing up to investigate.
A momentary spitefulness suggested that maybe if the human bagged Jason266, he would let his guard down, thinking he had ended the hunt. After all, what were the odds that a human could tell two robots apart by chassis?
“Hold tight, Jason. I’m not entirely sure it’s a bear you’ve got. Stay advised. I’m sure Kanto can make up for your losses.”
The Kanto facility wouldn’t like shifting production for a bunch of Earth-side replacement automatons, but they couldn’t afford to let production slip on the ore refineries, either.
There would be no strike, no contest of wills over who would give in. Kanto would make the automatons for Jason266, production would continue, and everyone would forget the matter. Any other result would lead to months of committee hearings, followed by new management at one or both facilities.
GET MY RE
FINERY CLEARED OUT. STOP LETTING WHATEVER’S IN THERE DESTROY MY WORKERS. SO HELP ME, JAMES, IF YOU DELAY MY PRODUCTION SCHEDULE I’LL MAKE SURE NO ONE EVER CONTRACTS YOU FOR ANIMAL REMOVAL AGAIN.
OK. There was the threat.
James187 could have done any number of jobs. He’d been a miner when mining off-world still held some interest and excitement. He had done stints as an environmental engineer, an urban reclamation supervisor, and an algae farmer.
But ever since breeding populations of animals had been let loose in the wilds, James187 hunted down aberrations, mutants, and general troublemakers. He’d be damned if this human was going to get him blacklisted for doing the best job he’d had in centuries.
“No worries, Jason. I’ll handle it.”
With the human’s computer in one hand and the dart gun in the other, James187 set off to trail this latest troublemaker from a safe distance until he could get his shot.
Chapter Fifty-One
Plato was running out of space. The protocol programmed into these drones directed them to herd him deeper and deeper into the bowels of the refinery. Every split-second choice left him a step farther from escape. Every “lesser of two evils” pointed him down instead of up.
The robots didn’t care if they let him run, so long as they didn’t give him a way out. Or, he corrected himself, whoever was controlling them didn’t care how long he ran. The drones even lacked the capacity not to care.
Blasting a path out wasn’t going to be an option. Plato needed a plan. His rifle’s charge was running low. Plato’s last resort was the EMP grenades that he’d never actually gotten around to testing. Setting one off might take out half a dozen automatons, allowing him to escape. Or it could take the refinery offline and kill Betty-Lou’s onboard computer.
The sack slung over his shoulder had all the trick gadgets he’d brought from his hideout. This had to turn into more than running a maze and evading drones, or Plato would never get out.
He needed to buy time.
One pair of automatons blocked a catwalk that branched off to his left. With the squeeze of a trigger, the first robot slumped over as the rifle emitted a gentle hum.
Another quick squeeze, and nothing happened.
Indicator lights went dead. The automaton was only three meters away and closing. Plato let go of the rifle; it dropped to dangle limp from the strap across his shoulder. With both hands free, the burly giant rushed the automaton.
Man and machine were nearly the same height, but Plato’s apparent bulk was insignificant compared to the automaton’s alloy steel construction. It outweighed him twice over.
But it wasn’t angry.
With an inarticulate roar, Plato slammed into the automaton shoulder first, ducking to get below its center of mass.
The thing wasn’t programmed to grab onto its attacker, or it would have at that moment. Plato was easily within its reach.
It also wasn’t programmed to grab onto safety railings if it was hoisted bodily from the ground because it didn’t do that either.
And some poor, unimaginative programmer had never thought to tell the automaton what to do in freefall. Plato knew it was his imagination—because drones can’t think or feel—but the look on the drone’s impassive face struck him as surprised as it plummeted to a landing some fifty meters down and shattered.
Plato set off at a jog.
It wouldn’t be long before the automatons hemmed him in once more. There were thousands of them throughout the facility, and he was only bothering the ones within a few hundred meters. They’d have reinforcements as long as they needed—far longer than Plato could hope to evade them, especially since his EMP rifle was dry. That was mission number one.
Plato hopped a railing and dropped ten meters to a catwalk two levels down. The impact sent a jolt through his spine. After a few stiff, painful steps, Plato walked off the injury.
Overhead, the drone swarm was reorganizing. Pathing calculations wouldn’t take them long. They probably already had a simple solution to get to him. That wasn’t the problem. They still needed to take the long way around, and that bought him time, even if it had cost Plato delving ever deeper into the facility’s belly.
One of the tricks Plato had brought along was a collection of frequency jammers. Odds were that the drones only needed occasional instruction. They’d be autonomous unless their programming required updates. Just seeing him would be enough for them to maintain pursuit. But if he could disrupt any feedback their robot boss was getting, it might take them time to realize what he was up to.
Plato activated one of the jammers, set it to the broadest bandwidth available, and stuck it to the wall by the magnet in its base.
Access panels were easy to come by. This whole facility was a maintenance worker’s dream. There wasn’t even a security lockout on the panel, just a quick-release that kept it from popping off due to the extreme vibrations the refinery regularly experienced.
Plato was inside the panel in seconds.
From one of his pockets, Plato pulled out a pair of insulated gloves before taking a knife to the end of a set of two-millimeter cables.
It was always nice dealing with low-tech when it was an unfamiliar system. The EMP rifle hardly cared how it got its power; Plato had built it with its own safeguards against voltage mismatches, over-currents, and power surges. All it required was enough power, and when a bank of lights went dark as his knife severed the wires, Plato suspected this circuit had plenty.
It had taken him all of thirty seconds by the time the EMP rifle was propped against the open panel, sucking electrons from the refinery like a leech.
“There you are, you mutant masterpiece,” a robotic voice shouted. “What are you without that rifle of yours, huh?”
Plato saw him. The robot from the woods.
One EMP grenade could kill him, then Plato would be at the mercy of anything that survived. The mindless masses would overrun him.
Plato couldn’t do it. He was too young to die. For the first time in his life, Plato had a real friend. Plenty of heroes died saving the day, but there was still hope for this hero to have his cake and share it with Eve—and maybe even Charie7.
Without activating it, Plato took one EMP grenade and lobbed it as a distraction.
While the robot’s attention was focused on diving for cover behind the nearest solid steel wall, Plato took his chance. With just a quick check to see there was someplace to land, he rolled over a safety rail and dropped down.
Chapter Fifty-Two
James187 dove for cover.
That crazy human had some sort of EMP bomb. The panicked hunter tore a cover off the nearest access panel and found a warren of valves and regulators for the coolant systems.
With a quick prayer to whichever saint preserved sentient robotic minds, he thrust his head inside. He might lose his internal computer and probably all servomotor controls. But with any luck, the shielding around the conduit would protect his crystalline brain from the electromagnetic blast wave.
Seconds ticked by.
A minute passed.
James187 cursed himself for a fool as he crawled out on hands and knees and examined the grenade. It was inert.
With infinite care, James187 popped open the dented, irregular sphere at a seam and disconnected the supercapacitor from the magnetic coils. He’d have held his breath if he still had lungs and would have sighed in relief as well. But instead, he settled for flinging the supercapacitor through the refinery as far as he could.
The useless remains of the grenade sprinkled to the floor with a clatter.
It wasn’t all bad news. The human wasn’t trying too hard to kill him.
The grenade had appeared to be functional and intact; it merely hadn’t been activated. James187 attempted to run a quick calculation on the magnetic yield from such a small device, but his onboard computer didn’t have all the data it needed.
James187 scowled and scanned the vicinity.
Normally this was the sor
t of detail that didn’t warrant conscious thought. The computer would link up to the planetary archive, find the relevant information, and resume the calculation in milliseconds.
But he had no connection to the planetary archive. A quick check confirmed that the Social was unavailable as well. He tried sending a test message to Jason266—just a quick status update that the bear was trapped.
Nothing happened.
“Sneaky devil,” James187 muttered. “You’re jamming me.”
They were well and truly alone. The drones were on the move, but they were mere distractions. Even if they caught the human, they wouldn’t harm him, and based on the sprawled chassis he’d seen, the human was able to lift them over the guardrails anyway.
An EMP rifle leaned casually against a wall beside an open electrical panel. The human had tapped into the refinery’s power to attempt a recharge. Reaching into the panel, James187 ripped the wires out. The blinking charge indicator on the rifle faded out.
“None of that, now.”
Not far from the rifle was an inconspicuous device affixed to the wall. Plucking it free, James187 examined it for a moment before crushing it in his fingers. To check his theory that this was the jamming device, he tried the Social—just a quick check of the news feeds. But there was still nothing. This human had set up more than one jammer.
Emitting a growl from his vocal processor, James187 leveled his dart gun and headed to the nearest stairwell down. He heard footsteps below and continued to the very bottom floor of the refinery. Those steps led into a world reddened by the glow of molten iron in crater-sized crucibles.
Support pillars and the concrete walls of the crucibles provided adequate cover for a sneaking human, but the brute was too large to be silent, even with the ambient noise.
A voice echoed from the distant shadows. “You’re a persistent bugger, aren’t you?”