Submantle- The Alpha Key

by Patrick Lane

  Nifty found it almost impossible to conceive that even this small amount of the valuable metal hadn’t been plundered eons ago. The thought brought to mind the body burnt into the console by the branders, and Nifty knew without question the man wasn’t the first of his kind to fall victim to the corrupted storage facility, and he doubted he would be the last.

  Of all shapes and sizes, he grabbed the three largest pieces first, each the size of a loaf of bread, wedging them into the front of his jacket, then quickly scooped and shoved as much of the bluish metal as he could into the large utility pockets, both inside and out, before filling his pouch to near bursting.

  He was hastily buttoning up the last of his pockets, feeling a mixture of guilt for taking selfish minute to load up while at the same time congratulating himself on his cleverness when, with only the slightest warning of the Dominion’s whirring motors, a large pincer snapped onto his boot and he found himself dangling in the air once again.

  Pulling the stinger from his belt, he attempted his jack knife maneuver, only to have it cut short as the Dominion, wise to his trick, used its other arms to secure his other boot and both arms, locking him into place.

  Pain seared through his stomach when a fifth arm appeared and a large needle was injected unceremoniously into his stomach then withdrawn with the same indifference, blood dripping from the tip.

  Wheeling around the Dominion raced between the racks, while examining its strange cargo, twisting Nifty this way and that, gauging, and evaluating, and no doubt considering the best way to rid the storage bays of such a destructive pest.

  Nifty had always known that, if he were to die in the field, it would be at the hands of the Jax virus or some Flux strangeness, but this particular scenario wasn’t quite what he’d pictured. He knew he should be terrified, yet he wasn’t. He managed to return to his training and kept his mind as calm as the circumstances would allow, relaxing his body, waiting for a lessening of pressure, waiting to explode.

  He didn’t explode, well, not in the conventional sense. He was…exploded. Exploded from the racks, like a piece of human refuse. The Dominion all but hurled him across the floor into the open boulevard in front of the engine room doors.

  Unprepared for this turn of events, he landed with an ungainly crash but still managed to scramble awkwardly to his feet, his airiron cargo jingling as it hindered his movements. He tore Riot from its holster and readied himself for a real fight, setting the auto loader to fifteen; the bat sent a low growl across the chamber.

  Ryder swooped down and attached itself to one of Dominion’s purple eyes, but the machine just spun its crowned head so one of its other eyes faced Nifty.

  Uncertain of his next move, Nifty began going over escape options when he was unexpectedly drawn into the world’s strangest staring contest with the giant robot. The glass dome he’d thought was one of the Dominion’s eyes, retracted down into its head.

  He almost couldn’t believe his eyes. Inside was tiny orange robot, small enough to fit into the palm of Nifty’s hand, with distinctly human characteristics. Its exoskeleton moved almost exactly like a person as it leaned outside the confines of its cockpit to allow it closer inspection of the Ranger and vice versa. Nifty felt a shiver of horror as he noted it had a single liquid leg made from the metallic repair fluid. It created the effect that it was balancing on an inverted fountain. The creatures name came to mind almost immediately, right out of the history books from the Ranger academy, Fluxbot.

  This machine, or creature, he didn’t quite know which label suited it best, should not exist. It was from another time, a time when it and its kind had done immeasurable damage to Submantle and its inhabitants as it birthed the Flux virus. Nifty knew it needed to be destroyed immediately. Well…not immediately. Nifty, said to himself. But as soon as he could talk to Scotty and the council and they could come back here with enough firepower to get the job done.

  Right now though, it would probably be best if he try to get out of here in one piece.

  As all these thoughts blazed through Nifty’s mind, he realized the Fluxbot still hadn’t moved – it just stayed where it was, waiting. Nifty slowly backed towards the control tower. Nothing happened. He advanced back towards the rack, and the Fluxbot retreated back inside its cockpit head and the discs on the sides of the head began flashing and half a dozen rack rats gathered behind it, like pint sized sentinels. Nifty backed away again, and the rats retreated.

  Nifty almost smiled as he puzzled out the Fluxbots logic: anyone entering the racks or touching the machines and their controls was to be dealt with. The simpler machines probably didn’t know the difference between metal and organics, and as such dealt with everything with the same indifference. In a weird way, Nifty was actually fortunate to have crossed paths with the Fluxbot. It had recognized a human, and obviously had enough intelligence to resist inflicting damage.

  He couldn’t have been more wrong.

  The Fluxbot was merely a distraction. Part of the repair solution from the courtyard had taken the precious seconds to slither up behind him and encase his calves before he even knew what was happening. Then, finding itself discovered, it washed up his torso and across his chest, locking his limbs into place while it continued to surge up onto his head, leaving only his mouth and nose uncovered.

  Nifty now felt real panic. He fought in vain to move against the blackness as, the solution effortlessly pried his Riot from his hands. He was completely at the mercy of the scourge addled mind of whatever was controlling the thing.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Nifty struggled for a way out, only thing keeping him even partially under control was the realization that if the repair solution hadn’t killed him yet then there had to be a reason. He felt the sensation moving forward and thought he could make out the sounds of several metal doors opening and closing behind him as they moved, but he couldn’t be certain with the invasive solution flooding his ears.

  The feeling of sliding this way and that continued on for some time before he was bought to a sudden halt. In the same moment the metal sluiced from his face like a hood being ripped away, revealing a brightly lit space.

  He blinked furiously as his eyes adjusted to his new surroundings, hungry for any insight that may gain him an advantage. The chamber was easily a mile long and bordered on all sides by broad tubes and the terraforming engines of Terraport. He knew immediately that he was deep inside the machine room.

  Yet some part of him felt slightly disappointed as he studied the hexagonal manmade lake of purple repair solution that dominated his field of view. Millions of gallons, if he were to guess. He had always hoped to go down with shatter bat in hand, fighting a worthy foe. The ignominy of a death at the hands of a semi sentient repair solution, who was originally designed to maintain the machines of an engine room, left him with a hollow feeling in the pit of his stomach.

  His disappointment didn’t last long.

  “JAX?” Reverberated through the space, sending a ripple across the lake.

  Nifty struggled to find the source of the voice but his head was held firmly in place by the liquid metal.

  How would the name of the Jax virus be known here?

  “JAX?”

  This time Nifty realized that it was the lake itself that was producing the voice and the question was directed at him.

  “JAX?”

  “I am not Jax? Jax is the virus.” Nifty shouted boldly, hoping beyond hope he was giving the right answer.

  “JAX? NO?”

  “No,” Nifty replied.

  The lake began to roil angrily and a wave formed at its center. If Nifty hadn’t witnessed what happened next he would never have believed it. The wave rushed towards him and as it crested he could see a vague human body emerge from deep inside, until only its feet remained submerged in the wash. The wave landed with a crash on the shore and sluiced around the solution that held Nifty, making itself whole once again. From where he was held prisoner the details of the form clarif
ied and a man like face stopped mere inches from his own.

  Despite its mechanical nature, the face looked worn, ancient even. An old man with a flowing beard and robes, everything about him shades of purple and black, with the exception of his eyes, they glowed blue with hidden power.

  “NO JAX? THEN YOU MUST PREPARE YOUSELF TO DIE AT THE HANDS OF QUAGE.” Said a voice that sounded like metal scraping across stone.

  Slagg, wrong answer, Nifty thought furiously. What the scrap is going on here?

  Quage raised an arm and his hand morphed itself to form a long serrated blade.

  “Wait, wait. What do you want with Jax? Maybe I can help.”

  “NO HELP FROM YOU…RANGER.”

  “You know the Ranger corps? Then you must know that we only mean to help.”

  “BY ENTERING INTO MY STORAGE BAYS AND STEALING FROM ME EVEN AS I PLAYED WITH YOU OUTSIDE?”

  Behind Quage a tower of solution surged upward and the image of Scotty taking the Key and Nifty pilfering the airiron appeared briefly across its surface. Quage raised his blade.

  “Why did you bring me here then? To kill me? You could have done that with the Fluxbot.”

  That stopped Quage, briefly. The image of Nifty getting stabbed in the stomach by the Dominion’s needle flashed across the screen.

  “THE DOMINION WAS MISTAKEN, YOUR GENETIC CODING INDICATES A JAX LINEAGE. YOUR WORDS HAVE CORRECTED THAT PRESUMPTION.”

  Nifty’s mind went numb at those words. The machine thought he was a descendent of Rion Jax? Even the utterance of such a thing could mean a death sentence in some regions of Submantle. The machine had to be wrong, it had to be.

  His bewilderment nearly cost him his life. Quage brought the blade to his throat and his eyes flared, waking Nifty from his stupor.

  “Wait,” Nifty blurted, “test me again. Properly this time.”

  “TOO LATE, RANGER.”

  “Too late? You kill a possible Jax because you can’t be bothered retesting? I could be wrong, maybe I am a Jax.”

  That caused a shudder through Quage. His head quivered this way and that as he processed this variable. The lake behind him mirrored his confusion, and a random pattern of spikes speared up across the surface.

  “A JAX IS NEVER WRONG.”

  Nifty’s mind raced and he managed to latch onto a flaw in the solutions logic.

  “Who designed the test for a Jax?

  “RION JAX!” Boomed Quage proudly.

  “But the test was wrong, it said I was a Jax.”

  “A JAX IS NEVER WRONG, BY EXTENSION THE JAX TEST IS NEVER WRONG.”

  “Well either I’m wrong, and I am a descendent of Rion Jax or the test is wrong? Which is it?”

  The lake behind Quage transformed into a volcano of emotion, smashing its way across the chamber, emptying itself from the pool as it ran riot across the space.

  “A JAX IS NEVER WRONG…A WRONG JAX IS RIGHT? A JAX IS NEVER WRONG WHEN IT’S RIGHT?” Quage raged as it fought with its own undeniable logic.

  As quickly as they started the convulsions ceased, the lake was as calm as a sheet of ice and Nifty felt the solution melt away from his body and he was lowered to the floor.

  He took a quick moment to assess his surrounding and to his surprise the Fluxbot was still in the Dominion’’s head, the pair waiting patiently behind him, holding Riot. Ryder was nowhere to be see.

  He turned to face Quage, the solution had settled itself to the floor and only tendrils of the man’s robes remained attached to the pool behind. Nifty caught himself at that, reminding himself that the form before him was just some kind of corrupted repair solution and not a man, not by a long stretch.

  “An agile mind young ranger.” Quage commented in a tone bordering on indifference.

  With the selfsame silence that allowed it to sneak up on Nifty earlier the Dominion glided past Nifty and placed the vial of Nifty’s blood into Quage’s outstretched hand. The vial melted into the surface of his palm and Quage’s eyes shut for several seconds, as he processed its contents.

  “It seems certain adjustments need to be made regarding the records on the Jax legacy. I have been in contact with my Paramour and she has convinced me that the truth has obviously remained hidden from you for your own protection.” Quage said, opening his eyes. “You are undeniably a descendent of Rion Jax. A lineage that has crossed paths with other lines with surprising frequency.

  “She?”

  “Yes, she will be joining us shortly and your fate shall be decided then.”

  “What about my partner Scotty? Is he still safe?” Nifty asked anxiously.

  A wall of purple surged around Quage and several perspectives of the entry courtyard appeared. Nifty watched in horror and a good measure of guilt as images of machines closing around the wounded Ranger flashed across the surfaces. Defunct bots littered the ground but it hardly seemed to make a dent in their numbers. Quage waved a hand and suddenly all hostilities ceased. Even from here Nifty could make out the exhausted confusion registering on his friends face as he began to cautiously make his way around the frozen machines.

  “All conflict will cease until this matter has been resolved.” Quage finally said. A seat of liquid metal forming at Nifty’s feet.

  Seeing little else to do Nifty sat. What would they do when they realized he wasn’t a Jax? He couldn’t be could he?

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  For more than an hour Nifty sat waiting. With nothing else to do he had begun to plumb the depths of Quage’s reasoning pre-sets and was more than a little alarmed at what he had found.

  “No, no, no. You have it all wrong. I am a Linker. I link with almost all of my Ranger gear on a genetic level. The Flux acts as a conduit that allows this to happen.” Nifty said to Quage as the second hour of his confinement began.

  “So you are no more special than your ancestors?” Quage replied, “They were Linking far before Core War Five, Rion Jax included. These Ascendant fellows sound far more interesting to me. By your descriptions I think I may have wrung the life out of a good many of them that intruded on my domain these past millennia. If I had been aware of the schism from old Submantle I perhaps would have put them to question before executing them. What a shame. Perhaps my profiles regarding these matters may have to be reviewed.”

  The indifference with which the machine discussed matters of life and death was appalling to Nifty, especially when coming from the mouth of a machine that had a decidedly grandfatherly look to it.

  “Reviewed would be an understatement. You can’t just go around murdering people…” He said, searching for a way to circumvent his own certain death once they discovered his true identity.

  “My Paramour is here.” Quage said, cutting him off.

  Quage seemed to grow where he stood, his robes folding this way and that, becoming at once more formal and shimmering with purple light along the seams. He, it, Nifty corrected, began dry washing its hands as if nervous.

  Impossible. Nifty thought to himself. This thing can’t be nervous, it’s just a machine.

  To the either side of the lake were broad transport tubes that fanned out from the pool, allowing the solution an unencumbered route to the distant corners of the machine room. From one of these tubes a bright purple light appeared and moments later a tiny figure, riding a small wave of its own repair solution, entered the chamber.

  As it neared Nifty could see it was a nearly perfectly formed woman, scarcely six feet tall, garbed in a form fitting body armor, or maybe it was skin, it was hard to tell. Long undefined purple tresses framed her face and undulated hypnotically around her shoulders, like waves on a pond. He shook his head, she wasn’t a woman, she was like Quage, only a machine that looked like a person. But his eyes betrayed his convictions as she came closer and her eyes met with his. She wasn’t a machine, or rather she wasn’t just a machine, she was something more, a marvel.

  Quage bowed as she neared and indicated that Nifty should do the same.

  Dropping to a knee he
saluted, minus his bat and bowed his head.

  “Rise Niftmire Orediten so that I might see you more clearly.” Her crystalline voice announced.

  Nifty rose to full height and stood at attention.

  The pool of solution elevated the tiny woman until they were at eye level and he met her gaze unflinchingly.

  “Well met Niftmire, my name is Ink and I am the repair solution for Hellstamp Helix.”

  “Well met…err….Ink.” He said, her compelling gaze robbing him momentarily of the ability to speak.