"We could keep moving," the AI suggested. "The supplies you packed will not last for long, but I have detailed files on how to survive Outside that should prove most useful. Repairs of the mech were given the highest priority, but there is data on the collection of plants and animals that are safe to eat and how to prepare them as well as building a fire and temporary sanctuaries to protect you from the Skyfall. Those are mostly how to be safe and avoid the impact radius since it is highly unlikely that someone might actually survive being struck by debris coming down from orbit."
"But there is a chance, right?"
He paused a second. "An infinitesimal chance does exist, only slightly improved if the victim is wearing a mech. Your chances of surviving Skyfall are zero-point-zero-zero-zero-zero-zero—"
"How many zeroes are there before another number is reached?" Jessica13 asked as she climbed into the mech.
"Three hundred and forty-seven. That is based on an analysis of a direct impact by way of the calculated average size of debris falling from orbit. Of course, the smaller the piece of debris, the greater odds you have of surviving impact."
"That makes sense, I suppose." Once inside, she closed the mech behind her as she called up the data Mini used to the HUD. "I still don't know how likely it is for something falling from the sky to hit you, though."
"I do have those numbers available if you require them," Mini said. "I'm afraid they are a few decades out of date, though."
Jessica13 shrugged and studied the data displayed. "Well, I guess it's better than no data at all. And we wouldn't want anything out there to…hit us…"
She paused and stared into the distance for a moment. Something was out there but from their high vantage point, it was hard to tell exactly what it was. Not a building, certainly, but it was high in the sky.
Mini noted her interest and quickly zoomed the HUD in on it.
It wasn’t a building, as she had determined already, but rather a pillar of billowing smoke that spiraled ever higher into the sky.
"What kind of smoke is that?" she asked and called up the databases. "It’s not a mushroom cloud from an explosive device. I’d say it seems to be from a steady fire."
"Agreed. It would appear that something is burning."
She nodded thoughtfully. "Maybe we should see if there's anyone who needs our help. There can't be too many people Outside and if there's a fire, it could mean there's a camp or something. It's only fifteen klicks from our position."
"A camp is unlikely," Mini pointed out as Jessica13 took control of the mech and began to maneuver them around the edge of the small decline they faced and in the direction of the smoke. "I do note, however, that there are records of one of the bunkers being built in that area, based on what used to be a iron ore mine a few hundred years ago."
"Another bunker?”
Whether there was any truth to those stories remained to be seen. She’d developed a healthy cynicism about stories and their veracity.
"It appears to be in the same rough area, although it's difficult to tell with outdated maps," Mini said.
"Well, I'm not sure we'll get a heroes' welcome," Jessica13 said as they moved across the rough landscape. "If they are anything like Sanctuary, the chances are they heard the stories of how sometimes, bunkers would send raiding parties to neighboring bunkers for supplies. Breaching the sealed environment supposedly led to mass deaths from poison and radiation, so visitors are rarely—if ever—allowed anywhere near the doors."
"How did you conduct trades if that's the case?" the AI asked.
"There are a handful of caravans that travel between the bunkers,” she explained. “Some originate from the bunkers themselves and are sent out when they need some kind of resource and have another to trade for it. Others are peddlers who scavenge whatever they can find in the Cities-that-Were and come to trade. Either way, there’s not too much trust so when they arrive, they’re still kept under the watchful eye of the Guardian mechs and are never allowed inside. I guess that’s led to the bunkers being robbed too many times before. We were allowed Topside sometimes to see what they had to offer."
"I see. How do they transport the goods?"
“Most carry what they can on the backs of their mechs—they fit them with mag clamps like the one the Minato has—but I have seen a few who use pack animals. They are big, four-legged beasts with hooves and sometimes horns that carry almost as much as a mech could,” Jessica13 said. As she said that, the penny dropped. How had she missed the fact that these animals were impervious to the so-called poison in the air? The thought had never occurred to her before and seemed like another measure of her foolishness.
“What do they take for trade?”
She paused to consider this. “They’re mostly in it for the resources that can be traded like copper, food, and water, but they took the canteen I offered them too.”
“That is unlikely,” Mini pointed out. “There appears to be no centralized currency between the bunkers and so unless they made an agreement to exchange the canteen with the bunker for resources, they would not agree to it.”
She shrugged. "Whatever you say. All I know is that he didn't mind me exchanging my canteen for a couple of manus on how to fix…well, you."
"And I appreciate the effort. What are you doing down there?"
Jessica13 paused in her fiddling and watched the HUD closely. "I'm trying to see how you activated the Bulletfoot mode. It would help us get to the place faster."
"Well, the way to activate it is by giving me the controls," Mini pointed out. "Humans are not the best at running on four legs. It goes against your core programming and hardware, which makes it difficult for the human body to move the mech's controls… Well, there you go."
It was impossible not to smirk when she found the control that activated the all-terrain mode, lowered the mech onto all fours, and settled in. "No power on Earth or in the Cities-that-Were can stop me from finding out how to make a machine work. You should know that better than most, Mini. But, in the interest of helping people who might be in trouble, I'll elect not to spend the day tinkering with the mech to learn how it works. Would you mind picking up from here?"
He didn't speak for a moment but after three or four seconds, an approval message displayed on the HUD.
"Are you sulking in there?" Jessica13 asked.
"Negative. AIs are incapable of sulking."
"Well, that's good because you are the only person I can talk to out here and I would hate to lose that." She patted the inside of the mech.
"My human interaction software tells me that you are attempting what humans call emotional manipulation," Mini pointed out. "You should be aware that AIs are not susceptible to this but, as remaining where we are would put us in danger of being overtaken by possible predators, I say we should continue to move."
The approval message vanished and Mini took control of the mech to guide it between the trees and plants at an ever-increasing speed. Jessica13 wondered how long it could keep going without needing repairs and made a mental note of it by calling up the hardware diagnostics and pinning it to a corner of the screen.
They moved quickly through the forest until she could see an opening in the distance where it had been cleared. If it really was another bunker, it looked like they had a similar thought process as Sanctuary did in wanting to keep as much of the area around them as open as possible. The logic was that it would help them to see any threats that might approach in enough time to prepare for them.
Mini brought the mech to a halt at the edge of the tree line and looked out onto the clearing.
"Well, you were right," she said, softly and leaned forward until her nose pressed against the helmet. "There is a bunker here."
"The correct terminology might be 'there was a bunker here,’" the AI stated.
It was, unfortunately, true. The location looked like the scene of a battle straight out of one of the instruction programs. The minefield around the bunker appeared to have been detonate
d and bodies were strewn everywhere. Mechs had been damaged and left for dead—dozens of them lay in various states of disrepair and some of them still burned.
They weren't the source of the column of smoke that continued to rise into the sky, however. That issued from a heavy concrete structure which she could see was only the tip of what was likely an extensive complex that extended for kilometers underground.
"My electromagnetic sensors detect that we are about to enter a minefield," Mini warned.
"Most of the mines were detonated already," Jessica13 said. "Then again, one can never be too careful. Can your sensors give us an idea of where they are?"
"I am plotting a course now," he said after a second's pause.
The plotting took less than a minute and before too long, they moved cautiously through the open field. The safest places were, of course where the mines had already detonated to leave small, smoking craters in the soil. A couple of mechs in the area had been torn to shreds by the powerful ordinances but most appeared to have been exploded remotely. It almost looked like someone had found the mines themselves and targeted them.
This wasn't a comforting thought, but Mini navigated them through the open areas until the almost incessant beeping from the sensors told her they had found a way through.
"Nice work," Jessica13 said and realized she had held her breath almost the whole way.
As they drew closer to what appeared to be where the battle had been at its hottest, it became very evident that it wasn't only mechs that littered the area.
"Whoever did this might still be around," she warned and scanned their surroundings warily. "It’s not like scavengers to leave behind this many suits without looting them first. Keep your…sensors alert. We might have more company."
"Noted," Mini said as they approached the battlefield.
The largest piece of wreckage appeared to be an observation balloon tethered to the ground to function as something of an elevated station to allow those who used it to see for miles around. Not everyone had the advantage of being protected by a whole damn mountain, after all.
It didn't look like it had done them much good, unfortunately.
"I've only ever seen one of these in books and vids," she said as they approached the wreckage. "Never in person, though, and never…shredded like this one."
"Observations indicate that the steel-reinforced balloon chamber was ruptured using high-caliber explosive shells, not rockets," the AI informed her. "That would suggest the balloon was still deployed when the fighting started. Those kinds of shells have a limited range."
"Agreed." She picked a slow path through the debris. The wreckage was the largest evidence that what had happened there had not been accidental, but there were other signs.
Barbed-wire fencing had been torn down and the electrical components ripped out before the attack. Small craters pock-marked the ground where airburst munitions had been deployed and missed their targets.
Dozens of tracks were visible in the mud as well. These were made by heavy mechs judging by the depth of the indentation and left puddles marked with streaks of oil that gleamed when struck by the rising sun like rainbows.
The smoke billowed ash into the sky and it had begun to cover the sun somewhat. Small flakes drifted down to settle on them.
Jessica13 scowled and brushed some of them off the mech's shoulder. She didn’t want the fine ash to get inside the joints and turn the grease into goop, which would definitely screw everything up.
"It might not be my place to say this, but if we are to survive indefinitely Outside, we might need to collect parts and supplies from the wrecked mechs," Mini said.
"I…" Jessica13 whispered but was unable to finish. It had been different, somehow, when she had scavenged dead mechs on A7's orders. Now that she was able to choose what she did, she wasn't sure if she wanted to do that anymore.
Mini did have a point, of course. She would need parts and she couldn't really afford to turn her nose up at how she was able to get them.
She sighed. "I'll think about it. For now, though, let's focus on whether there is anyone inside who needs our help. If not…well, the supplies won’t benefit the dead."
Her last statement sounded decidedly weird. Even as she said it, she realized that it sounded like something A7 would shout at her when she had cold feet. Did she miss the old man? Maybe.
Moving around the ruined mechs, she managed to find a small path that had already been beaten down by heavy tracks. The leaking oil and the irregular shapes of the tracks told her these weren't the regular mechs they would have in the bunkers. These were pirates like the ones who had attacked Sanctuary.
"Mini, I don't know if this is possible, but is there any way for you to compare the mechs on the ground, those that are wrecked out here, against the models that attacked Sanctuary?" Jessica13 asked as Mini moved them over one of the ruined ones and nudged an ill-fitting piece with a boot.
"I have some footage in my data banks," the AI said. "I'll perform the scans. You can keep moving while I do, though."
"That won't heat your core up too much?"
"Not if you take control of the mech."
She nodded and took the controls as they straightened out of Bulletfoot mode.
"Let’s see if there's anyone here to save." Both inherently curious and excessively cautious, she moved toward the concrete building in front of her. The tether for the balloon came up to what looked like the second story of the bunker, one that had probably been used for observation and defense.
Maybe they had it set up in case? She couldn't tell but it was an interesting design that gave them a way to peek out instead of being buried underground and reliant solely on sensors to see around them.
Again, it hadn’t done them much good. It was difficult to really determine exactly what had happened, but it was easy enough to tell from this close that the smoke issued from inside the structure. Whatever—or whoever—had attacked had gained entry.
It was a horrifying, harrowing thought. The same fear had been drilled into her since she was a child and it wasn't the kind of thing that went away, no matter how far away from Sanctuary she was.
The closer she got, the more she began to notice the smells that made it through even the filters in the mech. While she thought they were heavy chemicals, she wasn't sure which ones were present. Still, it meant the fire had burned for a few hours, at least, and had penetrated to the lower levels and seeped up slowly.
"What did they do in there?" Jessica13 asked and immediately coughed from the stench. Hell, she could even taste it on her tongue.
"My banks suggest they took what they could carry," Mini replied. "They didn't want anyone else to profit from their work, so they likely placed magnesium charges inside and set them off. It'll burn through virtually anything in the bunker and render anything that's not burned toxic. Food, supplies, and even weapons."
"That’s annoyingly thorough," Jessica13 said softly. "What about the people inside?"
"There would have been evacuation plans in place like there were in Sanctuary," the AI explained. “Once the exterior was breached, alarms would have sounded and everyone taken out through other escape entrances."
"And those who didn't make it?"
A pause actually made the answer unnecessary. "They would be either killed by the pirates, fire, or smoke."
She nodded and tried to stop tears from welling up. It seemed a perfectly irrational response to cry. After all, it wasn’t like she knew any of these people.
They circled the perimeter and found the entrance, from which most of the smoke escaped. As they approached the door, she could see something blocking it, at least partially.
It was large enough to cover most of the entry but there were chunks missing from it.
A few more steps revealed that it was one of the larger mechs. An Argonaut V grasped the sides of the door and shielded as much of it as possible. It had been able to slow the pirates, as evidenced by the chunks they'd nee
ded to hack from it to get through.
They'd cut it while the pilot was still inside. Pieces of his body protruded, blackened where the blood had stopped flowing.
"A damn hero," she whispered and patted the chest plate of the mech. A7 had always said that about their fallen, and it felt fitting there too.
He had tried to slow them. The logical explanation was that he'd run out of ammo, couldn't fight much more than what his mech's fists could do, and had made sure his enemy paid dearly in time and bodies from the looks of the three pirate mechs sprawled in front of him.
Those Argonauts could do tremendous damage with their fists, she could give them that.
"Hold on, I'm picking something up," Mini said and yanked Jessica13 out of the stupor she hadn’t realized she'd fallen into.
"Picking up what?"
In lieu of an answer, the AI displayed an audio file on the HUD's screen. She pressed to play it.
"Mommy!" a voice cried through static and background noise. "Mommy, where are you?"
"Where's this coming from?" she asked.
"Inside." Mini highlighted the location.
Jessica surged forward almost before she knew what she was doing, shoved past the ruined Argonaut, and slipped through the doors to stare into what looked like a massive elevator shaft like they had in Sanctuary. The cables had been cut but she could see evidence of others that had been set up to enable the pirates to descend and ascend again.
"Where?" she asked.
"At the bottom of the shaft." The AI once again highlighted the location on the HUD.
"I can't see anything."
"I pick it up based on the motion sensors and partially from the sound still coming through. It's a child. Based on voice-recognition patterns, it’s a female no older than the age of ten."
"Shit." She hissed her frustration and leaned over the gaping shaft below her. "Do you have any suggestions? Could I climb down there?"
Bulletfoot One Page 13
