The Styx Strikers

by Thor Zollinger

  Dan grinned, “Yah that’s the beast.”

  “Whoh! That thing’s massive!” Jake exclaimed. “It’s as tall as a mech!”

  Bjorn and Sven chuckled and exchanged a wink.

  Picture Pack: Giagantor

  “And it’s just been sitting here doing nothing?”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t say that.” Dan interjected. “We used to use it as a power plant for the shops until we got the new Nickel Hydrogen fusion plant a few years ago. We use it every now and then out in the field for big jobs when a piece of equipment breaks down and can’t be moved in here to get fixed. It has lifting cranes on it and everything! There’s an entire machine shop in the lower bay under the cargo deck in back.”

  “Wow! This thing’s perfect! Exactly what we need to go exploring and find those bases on the map.”

  “Say what?” Dan asked. “You want to use Giagantor to do what? I thought you guys were here to see about salvaging the pirate mechs.”

  “Oh, we are.” Bjorn answered, glaring at Jake. “Jake has some wild idea we should go off exploring and find the other bases marked on the map in the wardroom in the mech base. He thinks we could make a zillion credits salvaging stuff from the other bases.”

  “Hey, it’s not THAT crazy of an idea.” Jake looked indignant, as the guys began walking up the ramp up into the rear cargo bay of Giagantor. “Look at all the mechs and stuff we found in our River Styx base? If the other bases are anything like ours, we’ll all be zillionaires! Just think about how much FUN it would be.”

  “Hmmm.” Sven muttered. “He might have a point there.”

  Dan’s mouth was open and he had a quizzical expression on his face. “I could ask my Dad about it, but I don’t think he’d let us take it. He doesn’t let me take ANY of the machines out for anything fun.”

  “What if he was a part of the expedition? I’ll bet he’d do it if it was profitable.” Jake was doing everything he could to talk Dan into it. He really wanted to go out exploring.

  “Well, maybe. I’d have to tell him about the map though. I thought we were keeping that a secret.”

  “I had to tell my Dad about it already.” Sven added in glumly. “We could invite your Dad out to the base and give him a briefing on it, then maybe he’d go for it. Your Dad isn’t a stick in the mud like Ariel’s father is. Mr. Touchard wanted our Dad to give the mechs and everything away to the military.”

  “Yah, that stunk big time. I wanted to strangle him after he said that.” Bjorn stated flatly with his fist in the air. “It’s our base on our land. He had no right to say that. He’s just a nasty ole…”

  Just then Bjorn’s zipPhone chimed. “Hello?”

  “Hey, handsome. Where did you guys go? Tarra and I are looking for yah.”

  Bjorn’s expression softened as he heard Ariel’s voice on the line. “Oh. We’re out back behind the building, down below in the storage yard. Walk out back and look down the hill and you’ll see the biggest truck in the world. We’re in the back of that truck.”

  “Ok, we’ll be right down. I knew you hadn’t gone too far away.”

  Dan decided to start the grand tour and led the guys down a set of narrow stairs into the machine shop under the main truck bed. By the time they were done in the machine shop and came back up into the cargo bay the girls had arrived. Dan was sure the girls wouldn’t want to see the greasy machine shop anyway. He was right.

  “And if you look up there you can see the rails on the top edges of the truck bay the gantry crane runs on. The gantry can be operated manually from the driver’s seat way up there, or by using the remote control. This is the remote over here.” Dan said pointing at the button pad in it’s holder mounted on the front wall of the cargo bay. “It’s a swing-free crane. The software controls the accelerations of the load to keep it stable while it’s moving, and prevents the load from swinging when it stops.”

  “Hey, I thought you said this thing was full of junk. I don’t see any junk in here, the cargo bay is empty.” Jake asked.

  “Yah, it was up until a few days ago. My Dad had the guys off load all of the storage cabinets into the new cargo containers outside when he heard you guys wanted to rent it, to do some mech salvaging and stuff.

  Dan lead the way through a heavy steel door in the forward wall of the cargo bay.” After everyone was inside the cramped aisle way in the next compartment amid whining machinery, Dan pointed out the power plant. “This is where the fusion power plant is located.” He yelled over the noise. “It boils the working fluid in the system which turns into high pressure vapor to run a turbine generator located on the left side of the compartment. All the insulated piping over here feeds superheated vapor into the turbine. The gas condenses in the cavity under the turbine down there and flows into the bottom of the condenser, then it’s pumped back into the boiler where the process starts over again. The working fluid is some kind of liquid metal. I used to know what the compound was, but you forget those kinds of things after a while. We just buy it in barrels now, we don’t have to make it from scratch anymore.”

  Ariel was squinting and fanning her face from the heat. The high pitched whine of the turbine, compressors, and pumps was too much for Tarra, who was plugging her ears with her fingers and staring at the floor. Bjorn waved Dan on and they left the noisy whine of the turbine behind as they passed into the quiet of the next compartment and shut the heavy sealed door with a thump. It was markedly cold in this compartment.

  “That’s better.” Tarra commented. “The whine of that turbine thingy drills right into your brain.” Jake smiled, but kept his funny comments to himself. “It’s a little cold in here, though.” She said with a shiver, hugging her arms to her body.

  Dan went on, “All of the electrical plant controls are in this compartment. You can see all of the switchgear and breakers to all of the systems on the truck are in here. I forgot to point out the big electrical generator on the front of the turbine in the last compartment. Under your feet is the battery compartment, where we store all of the excess power from the generator, to use in restarting the plant if it ever gets shut down. It’s been operating steadily for the last two years with no problems. We don’t ever shut it down if we don’t have too.”

  The guys just nodded and followed Dan up the narrow stairs out of the compartment and up into the next equipment compartment. This one was more interesting, it looked an awful lot like the communications center back at the base. The walls were lined with racks and racks of equipment, interspersed with storage compartments full of spare gear. “Back there is where all of the crew sleeps.” Dan pointed out the bunkroom. The hall was too narrow for more than one person at a time, so the guys went into the compartment one at a time. Jake could see about eight bunks stacked two high on both sides of the compartment, with small closets and fold down desks. A tiny bathroom with shower and facilities was through an open door at the near end of the bunkroom.

  “Kinda small, isn’t it?” Tarra asked.

  “There are two larger state rooms right behind you.” Sven commented more hopefully with a grin. He’d been in Giagantor lots over the last few years, messing around with Dan and the guys. “Just open one of those two side doors and you’ll see for yourself. The middle one goes to another bathroom.”

  Tarra and Ariel stuck their heads inside. Even without the lights turned on, the small windows let in enough light that Tara could see around the room. “Not as big as I’d hoped for, but I guess if that’s all you’ve got…” Tarra said with a smile. “That looks better, but show me MY room, one fit for a queen, not one of these peasant bunks.”

  “Yes, your highness.” Dan said with a grin. He’d always liked Tarra a little too much, but he knew she didn’t see him that way. She was Jake’s girl now and he respected that. “Up this way.” He said leading the way up the rear stairs to the top level.

  At the top of the stairs the interior of the truck opened up into a larger common room, with a dining table an
d padded benches at the back end in front of a large view screen. In the middle on one side Jake could see a place to prepare food with a sink, a hot plate, and a small oven and a refrigerator. Cupboards were above, running the entire length of the compartment above the narrow windows. He could also see what looked like gun ports along the windows on both sides. “Hey, is this thing set up for defense? I see places to shoot out of.”

  “Yup. We can lock everything down and defend ourselves from inside if we have too. The early settlers didn’t have any idea what they’d run into and designed the trucks to be a fortress they could defend. The windows are ten centimeters thick. Bulletproof.”

  “Wow, this is So Rad! Where do you drive this thing from?” Jake asked excitedly.

  “This way.” Dan gestured towards the door in the center of the forward bulkhead. Heading through the door, Jake could see there were seats for a driver surrounded by low table-mounted video monitors, to his right was the navigation station with a large touch screen for maps, and two more operators sat behind. One operator handled the status boards for all of the systems within the truck and could operate the cranes, the other seat was a tactical station with most of the weapons controls.

  “Hey, check this out! Weapons!” Jake jumped into the right rear seat and started flicking power switches on… screens came on and started to light up as the systems booted up.”

  “Hey, cut that out!” Dan yelled grabbing Jake’s left arm. “Do you want to get me in trouble, or what? Leave those alone!”

  “Ahh, man! Can’t I just look through the camera sights?”

  Dan was visibly angry and threatening Jake with a big fist. “Ok, Ok. I get the point.” Jake flipped off the switches he’d messed with and stopped touching the controls. “Sorrrrrryyyyy!” Jake noticed that most of the weapons were energy weapons, lasers, particle beams, a gauss rifle, weapons he was familiar with from the mechs. Small weapons, but it was good to know you had something to work with if you got into trouble somewhere.

  Dan glared at Jake, but he let go of Jake’s arm and started explaining the driver’s control station. Jake could see the driver was surrounded with monitors so he could see all the way around the big truck, but the main controls were no different than any other land vehicle. It had pedals for the throttle and brakes, a steering wheel, and a key switch next to the big green start button. The throttles had a cruise control on them so the driver could give his leg a break on long drives.

  Dan then explained the navigation station, which also had the collision avoidance laser scanners. “The truck has an AI autopilot built in which stops the truck if you drive it towards an obstacle, like a big ditch or a steep cliff. It cuts the throttle and stops the truck if it thinks you’re going to crash. The original settlers used to pick way points on the navigation map, cut in the autopilot, then go eat lunch or take a nap. The truck would stop automatically if anything came up.”

  “Nice!” Jake commented. “Can we take it out for a test drive?”

  Dan just glared at Jake and shook his head. “Maniac. We’d have to move all of those rigs down there first.” He said pointing out the front window. There were about twenty big pieces of construction equipment in between Giagantor and the big back gate out of the compound. “We haven’t taken this thing out in a while, sometime last year I think.”

  Jake looked down out of the front observation window and nodded. “This thing is really big. Does it even fit on a normal road?”

  “Only on the big main roads, it’s over four lanes wide. Cross country works best. You just have to plan out your route so you don’t drive over the top on anyone’s fences. Dad doesn’t like it when he has to pay to fix stuff the truck runs over. Don’t run into any power lines either, or the electrical grid goes down and people get mad at you.”

  “Right.” Jake commented. “I’ll bet there aren’t any power lines out across the Al Barasque Desert. Nothin’ out there but sand as far as the eye can see.”

  “Yah, but getting to the mechs for salvaging will be trickier. We have to cross Port Canaveral to get to ‘em, and past it again when we drag stuff back to the ranch to work on it.” Bjorn added in. “I don’t think you’ll be doing any of the driving, Jake.” He said with a smirk.

  Jake just frowned at Bjorn. He was too busy thinking about an expedition out across the desert. Somehow he had to convince Dan’s Dad to go along with it. Heck, he’d have to convince Uncle Helmut as well, he thought to himself. Hmmmm, I need to get to work on this.

  Tarra sidled up to Jake from behind and wrapped her arms around his waist and whispered into his ear. “Hi there” she said softly.

  Jake lost his train of thought and smiled. He liked it here on Wayfarer, it had everything a young guy would want, a girlfriend, guys to hang out with, adventures beyond his wildest dreams. And he had another adventure in mind, if he could only remember what it was again… Tarra was too warm and soft to ignore, and she smelled so good, kind of like fruit and candy mixed together. Jake sighed and gave up, his mind was too distracted to work on anything serious right now. He’d work on that later on the way back to the ranch.

  –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––