Bulletfoot One

by Marshall Rust

  "Well, cycling the power from only a couple of cells would be enough for short supply runs. For longer stays Outside and with the added drain of not only my AI core but a dozen other functions that were upgrades from the original design, you run the risk of draining the cells and having them short."

  She scowled. Adding to the weight with more armor would create similar problems with the power cycling.

  "Shit, I should have thought about that.” She rubbed her temples, irritated at her short-sightedness. “Sorry, Mini. I'll try to find something that'll work."

  "There is no need for apologies," he responded as Jessica13 continued to dig through the pile of scrapped mechs. "You've already put enough work into keeping me functional."

  "Well, the idea is for you to stay functional for as long as possible. In case you haven't noticed, I need you out here."

  "Well, yes, that is fairly clear, but suffice it to say that I need you too," the AI pointed out.

  Jessica13 nodded. Sure, Mini could probably operate the mech on his own without her, but maybe he liked having a human around.

  It didn't seem like something an AI would care about, but that didn't matter. The idea made her feel good.

  She continued to rummage through the mechs until she found something they could use. "The Watson is a comparable size to the Minato, right?"

  "The Nordicgear WTS-N?" Mini asked. "Accessing data banks…"

  The Watson was the support mech most of the other bulletfoots used in Sanctuary. It was simple to maintain and easy to learn how to use and was also capable of carrying considerable weight on its squat frame. It was still a little larger than the Minato at a little over nine feet tall, which meant it would take a little adjustment of the power cells.

  Which really wasn’t a problem as she thought she could do it.

  "The power cells from the Watson should be compatible," Mini said. "But you weren't waiting for my assertion, were you?"

  Jessica13 shrugged, pulled the cells clear, and gently severed their connection to their mech of origin. "I thought you liked the fact that I'm impulsive and adventurous."

  "Agreed. That is why I stole you away from Sanctuary," the AI said as she put the cells on her back and climbed onto the Minato's back.

  "Excuse you, I'm the one who stole you," she pointed out, pulled the power cell isolation plates up, and opened the back to give her access to the functions there. "You were the mech that moved the fastest and had an AI I liked."

  "Why do you think it moved the fastest and had an AI you liked?" Mini asked. "Do you think that was merely a coincidence?"

  "What are you saying—you chose me when you weren't even functional?" she asked, spliced a couple of the power wirings from their original couplers, and guided them out. "Let me know if the energy spikes start to reach a dangerous level, would you?"

  "Of course. And note that is an answer to both questions. I guess you could compare my state before I was functional to the human subconscious."

  "Huh." She grunted and mulled that statement over while she connected the wiring and slipped the new nuclear power cells into the appropriate compartment. They were slightly too big but there was a little space to work with. It would feel tighter inside the pilot's area, but that was actually not a terrible thing.

  "What's the matter?" Mini asked when she noticed her sudden silence while she installed the shoulder plates.

  "Nothing," Jessica13 lied and shook her head quickly. What was the point of lying to the only companion she had? "It's only…well, I'm here having fun, inspecting mechs and upgrading you, while people at the bunker are waiting for me to bring them help. I can't help but feel a little selfish, is all."

  "Your mech requires care as well," the AI pointed. "As do you. Your own care should not be neglected in order to provide care for others."

  "I guess you're right." It was quick work to install the shoulder pads, and while they were better than having none at all, she would feel more comfortable when she found the time and materials to weld them in place. For now, bolting them in would work. "Still, the sun is starting to set and we haven't heard anything from the Knights so we should probably find someplace to spend the night that isn’t out in the open."

  "True, although the fact that we have remained in the same place over the past three transmissions of your message might indicate that we have remained too long," Mini pointed out. "We might want to move away from these coordinates as others could have listened in on your transmissions."

  "That sounds like a plan," Jessica13 said. "You might want to stop transmitting at those intervals while we're still here. I wouldn't want those pirates to find their way to us before the Knights do."

  "It might be too late already," Mini said.

  "What?"

  Jessica13 climbed down as she’d finished installing the upgrades and moved inside to look through the HUD at what Mini saw.

  A group of Mechs moved through the junkyard, climbed over the piles and piles of metal carcasses, and appeared to be searching for something specific.

  "Shit," she snapped. "Do they have our location?"

  "That is unlikely, or they would have already attacked us," Mini replied. "Unless those mechs are the Knights Mechanica?"

  She shook her head. "To quote you, that is unlikely. Look at the way they've built those Lancers—like they don't even care about repairing them. They'll simply discard them when they break and pick up the ones they killed others to find. That's not like the Knights."

  "You don't know what the Knights are like," the AI reminded her.

  "I still know it's not what the Knights are like," she retorted tartly. "Hold on, I think I saw a couple of things we could use for weapons—"

  "Weapons were likely the first things to be stripped from these mechs," Mini pointed out.

  Jessica13 grinned manically and scrambled out. "Only to those who don't know what they're looking for."

  She moved through the pieces and tried to make as little noise as possible as she worked. It wasn't long until she tugged something up from the pile and struggled somewhat with the piece.

  "What is that?" Mini asked.

  As the AI undoubtedly already knew what it was, she assumed he had asked what she planned to use it for.

  "An old battery pack used to store energy from the nuclear reactors from one of the older Cable mechs," she said as she worked. "It was one of the last models to use acid-based batteries to store power instead of cycling it like the Minato does. They were replaced mostly because the batteries had a tendency to short when they were overloaded. Sometimes, when the container was compromised, the short caused them to explode and coated virtually everything in the vicinity with acid powerful enough to eat even through steel plating."

  "A battery bomb," Mini said when he realized what she was working on and watched her wire the battery up to a handful of power cells nearby.

  "Yes," Jessica13 said with a small grin. "It's why they never let us have these in Sanctuary. We didn't even collect those from the mechs that were destroyed. Not only is the explosion powerful enough to be dangerous in and of itself, when the acid eats through basically anything, it could fill a room with toxic gas in seconds. We…uh, probably don't want to be around this when it goes off."

  "Remote detonation does seem to be the best idea. Which begs the question of how we'll use it."

  "Probably more like a booby trap in case the pirates try to follow us," she replied, picked up the cells and the battery they were connected to, and loaded them on the mag clamp on Mini's back. "We could probably find a couple of cables…here!"

  She moved over another mech that had a grappler and, with some effort, carried it quickly to the Minato as well.

  "And now we have two grapplers," he said. "How are we supposed to run if we carry all of this weight? I still need to manage the weight distribution with the new power cells to work the Bulletfoot mode."

  "Don't worry. We'll drop all of this when we need to run," Jessica13 said. "With that sa
id, we should probably move away now."

  She froze when the radio behind her crackled to life. "Connecting to Hammerhand of the Knights Mechanica. Repeat, connecting to Hammerhand of the Knights Mechanica. Your help is desperately requested."

  Never before had the sound of her own voice been so horrifying as it was in that moment. She spun to see the pirate mechs turn to face them.

  "Run now?" Mini suggested.

  "Yes please," Jessica13 said, her mouth suddenly dry. "And maybe next time I tell you to stop the loop, you do it!"

  "Registered, now climb aboard!" The AI sounded annoyed for the first time since she'd known him.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The pirates had their location and were almost able to visually confirm where they were so they could attack. The sick feeling seemed to spread from Jessica13’s stomach to her legs and arms and made her feel like she had no possible avenue of escape.

  There were a dozen of them by her count from this distance. At least she knew for a fact why no one else had taken the time to scavenge in this junkyard. It also explained where the pirates who had attacked the bunkers had taken their firepower from. She only wished she hadn't found out while they were this close.

  "We need to move now!" Mini stated.

  She nodded, scrambled into the mech, and yanked the doors shut behind her.

  The AI turned and they began to move away from the pirates who had advance slowly toward them.

  As they moved, however, the added weight settled on the mag clamp with a loud clatter. It wouldn’t dislodge, of course, but the noise it made could be heard for kilometers. If any other hostiles were in the vicinity, it would very clearly betray their position and they might find even more pirates hot for blood.

  "You know, Mini, if we ever get out of this," Jessica13 said," I think we need to work on being a little more discreet. Not only you, of course, but me as well. We should both learn from this."

  "Lessons are already being pasted to my core programming and should be useful in the future," Mini asserted.

  "Assuming we have a future," she muttered despairingly.

  The AI didn't pause to wallow and merely continued to move them out of the bottleneck they'd found themselves in. Jessica13 could see the numbers more clearly now. There were actually thirteen of them. Twelve were the regular Lancer designs full of the implanted modifications made by people who didn't know what they were doing. The rough and ready patchwork gave the mechs a decidedly scavenged look with pieces that protruded untidily.

  One of them stood out from the others, an Ominium B4 in almost perfect condition. The model was nicknamed Balthazar, although she had no idea why. It had been designed to integrate bits and pieces from practically any other mech and was highly sought-after for that reason. Some of the older ones could be described as having almost no original parts and were called walking corpses.

  This one looked like it had escaped that fate thus far. A couple of jet-engines were mounted on the back but aside from that, it looked fairly intact, something unique among those models.

  "Shit, shit, shit," Jessica13 said and shook her head as the pirates accelerated their advance, obviously determined to pursue their prey.

  Something weighed her arms down. She wasn't sure why but she suddenly couldn't move. All she felt able to do was stare as the pirates advanced on them with every intention of killing her and stripping Mini for parts to fit onto their own mechs.

  The AI realized what was happening and immediately took control of the mech away from her. He moved them into what could pass for an attack position, retrieved the battery bomb she had built for them, and attached it to the air gun usually used to launch the grappler dart.

  In this case, it was powerful enough to launch the bomb well above their heads. It hurtled toward the mechs, who either didn't realize they were under attack or didn't care.

  Her eyes widened as she watched the lethal arc of her improvised weapon before Mini delivered a targeted burst from the radio to activate the power cells.

  She wasn’t at all sure that it would work and could only hope fervently that the reality would match her intention. It landed heavily in the middle of the enemy group and it seemed her fears rather than her hopes were realized.

  A moment of breathless silence passed during which she attempted to refocus her brain on finding an alternative. A loud pop curtailed her efforts and a couple of the Lancers toppled clumsily and immediately writhed and flailed as clouds of green smoke rose dramatically when the acid began to eat through their armor and into the men inside.

  Or women. She really had no idea.

  "Let's move!" she said. The knowledge that at least two of them had been eliminated was gratifying and gave her a little hope.

  Mini responded to her prompting and set them in motion without hesitation, but a loud crack drew her attention. She twisted and gaped as the Balthazar glided smoothly in flight. The jets on its back propelled it easily to an elevation of almost twenty meters and drove it forward much faster than the Minato could ever hope to move.

  As it advanced, the pilot drew the two assault rifles it carried and opened fire.

  Mini jumped back and evaded the gunfire smoothly but a few pings here and there indicated that a couple of rounds had impacted the armor.

  The Balthazar cut off their escape and the gunfire drove them toward the Lancers that continued to advance on them.

  It wouldn’t be quite as simple as that, of course, although they were in a real predicament. Mini now moved diagonally. The airborne mech continued to hover above and maintained a steady barrage of bullets while the Lancers moved quickly to cut them off again.

  "Hold on," the AI warned her, and Jessica13 braced her neck hastily with her hands again. Calculations scrolled across the HUD and indicated that Mini attempted to recalibrate the weight. After a few seconds of running, the joints jerked downward and the mech settled on all fours.

  The Lancers hesitated and even the Balthazar paused its assault. Maybe they were surprised to see a support mech that could do something they had never seen before.

  Or maybe they merely needed time to readjust to catch up with them again.

  Mini turned the Minato with surprising speed, skidded across the scattered junk in their path, and tried to gain purchase to leap toward one of the crates nearby. The mech used it for leverage and launched them over one of the lower stacks nearby.

  The lancers hadn't been fooled and moved immediately to intercept. The Balthazar certainly wasn’t deterred and merely jetted on a new trajectory to enable it to fire at them again.

  "We need that monster to run out of fuel sooner rather than later," Jessica13 snapped and scowled at it. "Or…overheat or something."

  "The chances are increasing of a shot that will break through the armor," Mini alerted her. Not that either of them really needed to be reminded of the fact. The Lancers now circled rapidly and would soon be in a position to attack again. They clearly realized this too, as indicated by the distinctive sound of their chain-swords activating.

  "I have an idea but I'll need to be able to operate the grappler we picked up," she said. "Do you think you can keep the Minato running while I'm out there?"

  Mini paused, but the calculations she ran didn’t show on the HUD's screen. "I believe so. But your chances of surviving out there are remote at best."

  "What are my chances while I'm in here?"

  Another pause followed. "Point taken. I urge you to be careful, though."

  That particular request was essentially pointless given what she would try to do. "I'll try."

  It was something she had always imagined herself doing but she'd never actually considered doing it. Exigent circumstances were a bitch, however, and Jessica13 pushed herself farther into the pilot's compartment and pulled the containment padding away until she was able to reach past it into the back compartments and finally, to the trapdoor.

  This was usually only accessed when she needed to do repairs, and she was used t
o being outside when she needed to open it, but she would have to work around the challenges.

  Dealing with the Minato moving in Bulletfoot mode was difficult enough when she was inside the compartment and could hold on for dear life. It was so much more difficult to move now that the entire mech contorted and moved. The g-forces dragged her back and forward as Mini navigated them around dangers and obstacles.

  The hatch pushed open and the stench of gunfire and smoke immediately swamped her. It was all she could do not to pull it shut again and trust Mini to get them out of this.

  "Come on, you can do this," Jessica13 whispered fiercely, pushed out of the hatch, and tried to establish some idea of where they were.

  Mini had navigated the two of them out of the trap the pirates had tried to close around them, but they remained in close pursuit. The Lancers were slower than her mech, but the Balthazar in the sky still prevented a final break for freedom.

  It took barely a second to scan and assess the situation. Her heart beat hard enough that she could feel it tick in her fingertips and it seemed like the world had slowed to enable her to take everything in. She wouldn’t be able to shoot the Balthazar down. While she was a fairly good shot, even with a grappler, she wasn't that good.

  And she would have only one attempt.

  "Well, I’d better make it count," she grumbled and stretched her hand to the mag clamp on the back of the Minato. It was a struggle to avoid being bucked off her position still halfway inside the mech while she pulled the scavenged grappler up to where she could operate it.

  Maybe it was because everything around her was in chaos or her body somehow knew they were dead if she didn't get this right, but a calm filled her. Even though she was jostled with every move Mini made, Jessica13 found her focus was suddenly razor-sharp and she could easily splice a couple of wires and connect them to the spare grappler.

  The mechanism whirred to life and she found the external controls, guided it into position, and nodded with satisfaction when it responded to her control.

  The Balthazar immediately realized the danger he was in, pulled back, and descended hastily to avoid being caught in the open.