Submantle- The Alpha Key

by Patrick Lane

  Nifty quickly returned his attention to his partner and the surrounding machines. Most of the undamaged branders seemed to have recovered and circled back around towards them, dead machines and various body parts hindering their progress. However, it was the units that were mindlessly stamping the floor that caught Nifty’s attention. His eyes widened when he realized what was actually going on: the heat of the explosion had partially wiped out a twenty-foot circle of lettering from the floor, and they were frantically re-stamping it.

  With that observation came a flash of insight – he had an idea. Holding out his bat, he activated the auto loader to level nine, and twisted one of the control rings on the haft, engaging a long spike that thrust out from its tip. A low whine signaled Riot was ready. With practiced ease, Nifty took aim and launched the bat in a high arc through the air towards the control tower. Turning back, he grabbed Scotty’s power pick, and leapt to the first brander smashing its axle with a single rock shock.

  Meanwhile, Riot buried itself in the floor, spike first, releasing its charge. Ripples spread across the surface, like grease hitting a hot frying pan, searing as it went, obliterating everything etched on the floor within a thirty-foot diameter.

  Reaching down, Nifty grabbed his semi-conscious companion by the scruff of his jacket, and with a heavy grunt, he began hauling him between the downed machines, making straight towards his pick.

  With Surge in one hand, and the seven-hundred-and fifty pound-or-so Scotty in the other, Nifty fought through a maze of machines and cargo containers. It was a short yet awkward flight to the blasted space, and several times he had to dump the heavy Ranger to deal with one or more of the branders.

  Despite the difficulty, Nifty found that he was enjoying one aspect of the flight – Scotty’s pick. For all its weight, and his inability to Link with another Ranger’s weapon, it was a joy to work with. While not as quick or as powerful as Nifty's shatter bat, its handling and balance were exceptional, gliding through the air with a controlled precision that left Nifty feeling a little envious, wondering how it must handle when one could feel it through the Link. Even without a auto loader shaft, it still managed to deliver stunning, one-handed slate slashes that, with a single crank, finished off nearly a dozen machines before they’d reached the area of the floor devoid of lettering.

  Like whip-wasps around a rock rose patch, the branders gathered at the edges of the freshly charred ring, jostling with one another to claim space for stamping, and began slowly working their way inward.

  Half-lifting, half-dragging the senior Ranger to where Riot was embedded in the floor, Nifty settled him beside the bat. Kneeling down, he removed the water canister from his hip and gently poured some on Scotty’s face, before letting him take a long drink.

  “Thanks, lad,” he croaked, sitting upright and reaching up to gingerly touch the side of his face.

  “Leave it be!” Nifty ordered. “It’s just small fragments and we can deal with it once we’re safe. Besides, if anything, they improve your looks.” Nifty took a long drink of water. “Where’s the body?”

  “On the stairs. I didn’t think he would be much help in a brawl,” Scotty answered wryly, signaling Nifty to help him up. “Improve my looks,” Scotty mumbled under his breath.

  Nifty clasped Scotty’s hand and pulled him to his feet. There was strength in Scotty’s grip, and Nifty was glad that the senior Ranger seemed to have already shaken off the worst of the explosion’s effects.

  Placing Surge at Scotty’s feet, he leaned over to recover Riot with a quick yank. He recharged the bat and sent it out again and again, cauterizing half a dozen intersecting circles of blank floor, and leaving hours of work to keep the branders busy.

  While the faster machines were occupied with branding, dozens of the larger units milled around behind. Their smaller work mates forming an effective barrier between them and the Rangers. Further back he could see the repair solution still busy at work, none of the machines in its embrace looked fully repaired yet, but he couldn’t afford to spend much more time fighting what could potentially be an inexhaustible army of machines.

  Nifty considered their options – fighting these things all the way back to the gates with a wounded Scotty was simply not one of them. He was scanning the room for other ideas when he spied Ryder gliding gracefully to their position.

  Tool she signaled unexpectedly. Tool right close her front legs were waving towards the storage racks.

  Of all the damnable luck. He almost yelled in frustration, while yet being impressed that the mantis had remembered the code word for the metal. How in slaggstone was he going to go on a hunt for airiron with all this going on?

  “You need to get us back to the stairwell and then lead them into the racks, son,” Scotty said from his side, leaving Nifty wondering if the explosion had somehow allowed the senior Ranger to read minds.

  “I could fight off a few stragglers as I run to the gates, but I won’t be able to deal with this lot,” he added, gesturing to the larger Trussing machines. “You should be able to outpace them once in the racks, and if you set up a commotion they should follow you like a trail of ants.”

  Nifty’s already pounding heart skipped a beat. Dreadnaughts, branders, and now finally a bit of luck. He fought to come up with a strategy that would allow him to retrieve the metal while sending the machines on a…what was that Topsider saying?--A wild goose chase.

  Flexing his hands around the bats haft, he nodded to the bloodied Ranger and led the way to the stairs.

  By the time they reached the tower, Scotty had roused himself enough for his legendary stubbornness to surface. He insisted on carrying the body to the gates. “If you do what you’re supposed to, they won’t be bothering me much,” he grumbled, looping the bundled body across his back. He tossed Nifty one of the punch-picks and a heavy pouch that contained several tip attachments for the tool. “It could be tight work in the racks,” he replied to the unasked question.

  “Thanks,” Nifty replied; then, impulsively, he disengaged the launcher from his bat and handed Scotty his remaining nine cartridges. Scotty merely nodded as he took the proffered rounds. The look on his face conveyed what Nifty already knew, he needed to get the job done and return as soon as he was able or he and Scotty may not get out of this to tell the tale.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Taking a few deep breaths Nifty refocused his Ranger training on the task ahead, pushing away potential airiron modifications for Riot that insisted on invading his ßthoughts. Finally, almost calmly he nodded to Scotty, and turned to face the ring of machines between him and the storage racks.

  He pulled out the arc-shot from and hurled a dozen rounds at the surrounding machines to better gain their focus, then returned it to it’s holster. With a running start he jumped on atop of the nearest brander, his chosen route sending him across the backs of the machines as they leaned over to stamp the floor.

  The sounds of snapping branding arms as his weight drove the machines into the ground brought him an extreme sense of satisfaction and an involuntary smile crept across his face. He leapt as high as his boots would allow, and attacked a Wrapper. Landing on one of its long binding arms, he swung Riot in a tight arc, driving the tip into its sensor disc. The machine let out a low whine, its optics sizzling and sparkling as Nifty jumped off, hitting the floor at a dead run. The whine turned into that familiar high-pitch whistle, but Nifty was already halfway to the storage racks when the enormous machine exploded behind him.

  Ryder appeared ahead of him, flashing green, before disappearing over a dozen aisles away.

  Weaving through the slower machines, and clanging his weapon on anything that looked like it could make noise, Nifty was relieved to see that Scotty’s plan was working and many of the machines were indeed following his antics.

  He ducked into the racks and was again amazed at the true enormity of the storage area. Pillars supported the massive shelves that climbed for hundreds of feet, and mounted to each were the sel
f-same blue light globes they’d seen in the Gears. The aisles, wide enough to fit two delve-trains, went on for well over two miles from the entry bay.

  Nifty’s earlier enthusiasm quickly evaporated as it became increasingly difficult to elude the slower Wrappers. And it wasn’t the Wrappers fault, it was the smaller rack rat units that were creating the problem. He’d somehow managed to insert himself into their pre-set patterns.

  They started popping up in droves with the express purpose of driving him towards the larger machines. Much faster and more elusive than the branders, they forced him against the racks, driving him this way and that, snapping at his legs and ankles with their scissored hands.

  His initial adrenalin rush began to wear off, and the leaping about between racks was beginning to tax his already waning energy. Thoughts of abandoning the retrieval of the airiron entered his mind, but a vision of Lulu’s fiery eyes and their kiss, steeled his will once again and kept him running, climbing and dodging.

  Finally managing to execute a couple of clever jumps he was granted a precious few moments to catch his breath. He perched himself on a shelf sixty feet above the milling machines to consider his options. He needed a different tactic for retrieving the airiron. Smashing and breaking all the machines would take forever not to mention the repair solution ready to fix any damage he might do.

  Before he could come up with any kind of cohesive plan, a pair of rats spotted him and began climbing up the framework at full speed. Nifty stood and held his bat at the ready, waiting. He scarcely had a moment to react when, without warning a sneaky rat dropped down from above, locking its pincers around Riot’s haft. The surprise of the silent attack and the weight of the heavy little bastard ripped the bat from Nifty’s hands. The rat managed to land on the rack below, and wasted no time in bolting towards the floor.

  “Slagg.” bellowed Nifty. How am I going to explain this to Scotty? Nifty thought in a panic as he watched the retreating rat. Losing one’s weapon simply wasn’t an option for a Ranger.

  Reaching into his pouch, he pulled out the punch-pick, threading his fingers through the hand grip so that the blade protruded from his knuckles. Removing the concussion wedge with a loud hiss of released energy, he opted instead for the stinger, a long spike that, while lacking the brute crushing power of the wedge, would at least give him more range. In his other hand the arc-shot.

  Dropping to the floor, he cushioned his landing on a pair of unfortunate stragglers. For the next few minutes Nifty engaged in a desperate chase that took him over a half mile into the racks. A chase only made remotely possible because the bat’s weight slowed down the typically nimble machine.

  Several times, Nifty managed ricochet the arc-shots rounds off the diminutive rack rat but never landed a kill shot.

  As Nifty quickly found out, running from a band of rogue machines while at the same time chasing one of them, trying to get a clean throw with an arc-shot was nearly impossible. So Nifty reluctantly decided to holster the weapon.

  Several times he managed to get so close he could almost feel the bat’s Link but as he reached out to grab the frustratingly elusive rat, it would usually double back and duck under the protective swaths of trailing Trussing machines or loop back to merge with a sea of rack rats still trying to corral Nifty.

  Finally, frustrated, Nifty plunged the punch-pick into a particularly persistent rat chasing him, and with a flash of inspiration, scooped it up and drop kicked it with deadly accuracy into the pick-toting rat, sending them both scuttling along the aisle.

  He almost let out a cheer as they finally skidded to a halt, but he was cut short by a looming shadow that gave Nifty only the briefest warning. The Dominion glided almost silently out of an adjoining aisle and placed itself between Nifty and the downed machines.

  Nifty pulled up, cautiously studying the machine, watching for any movement, but the Dominion didn’t budge. Instead, the three dark purple eyes Nifty could see started flashing communications, and Nifty could hear the machines behind him slowing down and then stop completely. The fourth eye, on the far side of its head, must have been inspecting the downed rack rats because it finally extended three of its four pincers and picked up both damaged rats and Nifty’s bat.

  Turning, the Dominion tossed the load to three of the assembled machines. With more flashed instructions they disappeared behind it, and Nifty was once again left bat-less. But that turned out to be the least of his worries when in the blink of an eye the Dominion lunged forward with shocking speed, closing on him, snatching him up by a boot to dangle him upside down for inspection.

  A brief look was all that the Dominion was to be allowed. Nifty feinted at the facing eye with the stinger and the pincer holding his ankle reflexively jerked him away from the Dominion’s head, allowing him to jack knife his body and punch the stinger into the pincer joint, causing the mechanism to spasm and release its prey.

  Now free, Nifty flipped his body and landed softly on the ground and bolted through the access aisle and sprinted for all he was worth. Choosing a completely random path, he began to climb the racks, leaping back and forth across the shelving.

  Caught up in his desperation to get away, it took him several minutes to realize that he wasn’t being pursued. In fact, looking back down along the aisles, he saw no movement whatsoever.

  Breathing heavily, he took a moment to take stock of where he was and assess his options. Checking his watch, he realized what had felt like a dragged-out fight and flight had transpired over mere minutes, and although he knew his perception was doubtless a testament to his fatigue, he was beginning to lose hope in retrieving his weapon...let alone the airiron.

  Ryder’s wings to his right caught his attention.

  Silly mans, Ryder signaled from across the aisle, her front, raptorial legs slicing the air. Tool not this way. Stop play with machines. Follow.

  “Ryder, stop,” Nifty ordered as the Duster crouched for launch. “Did you see where my tool went?” he asked, signaling the shape of the bat with his hands.

  Leaping from the thermosilk-covered gear she’d been perched on, Ryder fluttered across to land on Nifty’s arm, and after cocking her head several times asked, you want tool or tool?

  Blaze it all, Nifty thought. I don’t have time for this.

  With a sigh, he tried to cut down what could quite easily become a lengthy process. “Did you see the machine that carried away my tool, the bat?”

  No, she signaled. Me only saw tool being carried away.

  “Yes,” Nifty said, despite the absurdity of the miscommunication. “Where is the tool you saw being carried away?’

  I fly high, I see mans, I see tool and tool together. She popped and flailed, pointing to the roof over a mile above.

  Deciding against asking more questions and wasting precious time, he took a gamble. “Take me there please.”

  Flitting through the racks, Ryder guided Nifty to an unusual section of the storage bays not far away. Her route forced him to skirt a massive crater, probably caused by some bygone Flux distortion that had left just a blank space devoid of racking and cargo. Unlike the rest of the bays, the next section differed from the other racks: each storage location contained random piles of odds and ends. One pile had ruined gyrocasters, another pile had a jumbled assortment of metal work boots, and yet another smaller pile had, of all things, nail trimmers.

  Passing by a shelf filled with shovels, he knew they were close, and with a brilliant flash of green and silver, Ryder flew up several shelving tiers, signaling success. Following, Nifty found an intertwined stack of shatter bats. Dozens of them filled the cargo slot to overflowing. As he pried Riot from where she’d been wedged, his gaze crawled across the rest, hungrily eating up all the details. Ranging in size from an almost childlike version of his own weapon to devastating monsters with hafts taller than Nifty himself, they all just lay there, abandoned or lost by un-named warriors from millennia’s past, each one a tempting trophy to show off upon his return to Rocktower.


  A high-pitched whistle from far below shook Nifty out of his reverie, and he saw a rack rat rolling out from between the stock piles. Nifty scrambled down, anticipating an attack, but the machine simply stared at him for a brief moment with its single dead orb, and then spun around and fled down the aisle, its whistle slowly fading as it disappeared.

  Surprised by the odd behavior and his good luck, he turned to Ryder. “Where is other tool?”

  Tool on back. She motioned, hovering in front of him.

  “What else was I looking for?”

  Tool?

  “Yes, where is it?”

  Ryder pointed one of her raptor like front limbs in the same direction Nifty had entered the racks. Perfect, Nifty thought, knowing full well he could hardly justify a trip in the opposite direction, no matter how badly he wanted the metal.

  Leaving the way they came, the duster eventually entered a larger, more open row of racks containing enormous piles of both heat-stoked and non-heat-stoked metals and composites. Nifty actually remembered running right past this section on the way in. I really need to get my eyes checked. He thought to himself as Ryder finally landed on a rather modest mound of what could only be airiron.