Proxima Riven:

by Harmon Cooper

  Light pours into the forest as pine trees begin to fall. A vehicle – I still don’t know if that’s what I should be calling it – rips up soil, roots, and stone as it advances towards us. For wheels it has twelve-foot-high gears. Instead of a hardened shell, it has smaller gears and pulleys whirring a mile a minute. Attached to the back of the vehicle and dipping over its head are pincers topped by, you guessed it, sharpened gears. It’s a cross between a Transformer, a giant weed whacker, and one of those industrial dump trucks.

  Doc: Info, Sophia, now! Any weaknesses?

  Words flash on my pane of vision.

  Sophia: Here’s the copy/paste from the Steamopedia. Rogue Drill Mechs were used in the Babbage Wars. They were originally created as steam-powered construction vehicles to cut into ridges around Clockpunch Mountain. Their creator, a PC named Bobby Bjurstrom, objected to their use as war machines and destroyed the entire fleet, but not before he stole one and vanished with it.

  “That’s some story, Sophia!”

  Doc pulls an AT-4 out of his list, fires the round to no effect, grunts in disgust and tosses the launcher aside.

  Sophia: I’m not finished yet!

  Me: Sophia tell us its weaknesses, not a goddamn bedtime story!

  Sophia: That wasn’t a bedtime story.

  A Volkswagen-sized rock sails towards me and I hit the AA brakes.

  What I do next would definitely fall under the category of a yoga pose. I drop to my knees and from there, fall backwards without ever touching the ground. I hold this awkward position as the rock passes over me, inches away from my nose. If I were Barbara Streisand, we’d definitely have a problem, but this ain’t nothing for Mrs. Hughes’ Pride and Joy and his little button nose.

  The Rock of Gibraltar passes and mows down a line of trees, spraying splinters of wood into the air.

  “Time for some boom-boom!” I shout. “MA, care to pay a closer visit!”

  As I come up from my extreme asana I give my list a quick scrollski and arrive on item 48. A black Nokia cellphone takes shape in my right hand and a brick of C4 with a jury-rigged cell phone detonator in my left.

  No time to play a game of Snake, I hand off the C4 to Aiden and motion for everyone else to get behind something. Footloose the Assassin slips in and out of reality and appears on top of the rogue drill neck in seconds. He slides the C4 into a compartment on its side and bails out.

  “All clear!?”

  Doc: Blow it!

  Rather than turn what Doc’s just said into a juvenile fellatio joke, I jam my thumb into the send button only to get the annoying ‘sending message’ hourglass. “Come on,” I say, pressing the button repeatedly. “Come … on … ”

  Message sent.

  The resulting explosion is music to my ears.

  The mechanical ground muncher creaks and groans as it collapses to the forest floor. Once the coast is clear, I pop my head up from my cover spot and give the bastard a quick once-over through the lenses of my Reaper mask. Grid lines galore – the weirdest thing about the rogue steam mech is the fact that there are portions inside of its body that are obfuscated, almost as if some crayon happy Valentine’s Day mistake scribbled over the core of the vehicle with his favorite cosmic black.

  Two red eyes appear in the center of its form.

  “It ain’t dead,” I announce to the group. “And if I’m not mistaken, I think there may be someone inside!”

  Doc: Concentrate all firepower on it!

  “I’ve got it!” Frances Euphoria’s mutant hack spills up her arm forming a thick biomass weapon. The tendrils peel back on the place where her hand should be and a barrel rimmed in electric blue takes shape.

  She fires off an icy blast and holds her ground as aqua algo-energy spews out of the hack. It hits the rogue steam mech full on and crackles as it coats the mech’s body using its own steam for fuel.

  “Good, Frances!” Doc gives Aiden the ‘let’s wrap this up’ hand lasso only to be leveled by a huge crystal of ice.

  The steam mech’s gears are still spinning a mile a minute, tearing the hunks of ice off its body and tossing the debris all around the woods. Poor Doc has a mini glacier on his back, his little faun legs kicking from beneath it like he’s auditioning for a role as the Good Witch of the West in the forthcoming sequel to the Wizard of Oz prequel.

  I’d equip my ice pick, item 538, if I thought it would do any good. “Rocket, cast a spell or .... do something! I need to get my Reason Railgun set up!”

  I give my list a ‘behind the back scroll’ as I get into position. Item 459 to the rescue!

  “One badass spell coming right up!” The kid with more ironic shirts than a Portland thrift store lifts into the air and a huge sphere of radiant energy encompasses his body. He lets loose a supernova’s supernova. which smacks the living bolts out of the rogue steam mech. The mechanical beast sputters, putts, tries to get its pincer gears up, and collapses yet again.

  “What the hell did you just cast?” I ask as more steam sprays out of the rogue drill mech.

  Rocket shrugs. “It’s a spell called Malfunction. It pretty much works on anything robotic here in Steam.”

  “Why in the hell didn’t you cast that from the get-go?”

  “You guys were cool with your weapons! Like some real badasses, especially Doc. The Faun of Steam!”

  “It’s the Faun of War,” the Dream Team’s Cyber Warfare Operative growls as he keeps his weapon trained on the vehicle.

  “You okay?” I ask over my shoulder at Euphoria.

  “Did anything I said or did lead you to believe that I wasn’t okay?”

  A hatch on the side of the vehicle opens and Aiden and Doc advance on it as a man in a greasy tank top stumbles out. A bandana is tied across his head and a pair of suspenders keep his loose trousers from falling.

  “Don’t shoot!” he says as he raises his hand. “I’ll talk, I’ll … I’ll give you what you came here for!”

  ~*~

  “Well hello, Bjurstrom, nice of you to drop in.”

  Sophia: Actually, I don’t know who that is. He’s done something to his handle.

  I approach the man, who has yet to take his hands out of the air. “Alrighty, No Handle, you got all of fifteen seconds to tell us why we shouldn’t send you on a one-way airship to Ray Steampunk’s newest version of Alcatraz in the center of Rusty Trombone Lake.”

  “Impressive!” Rocket says. “The lake is actually called Crankcase Lake, but people jokingly call it that. You read the briefing!”

  “Don’t you dare accuse me of actually doing my job,” I tell the kid.

  The man clears his throat. “Mind if I drop my arms?” he asks, slightly out of breath. “It’s hurting to keep them up like this.”

  Doc and Aiden exchange glances. “Keep ‘em high,” says the faun as he loads one into the chamber of his MK678 pistol.

  “My name is Joe L.” He curls his blackened fingers.

  “All right, Joel.” I tell the dirty yegg. Something about his overbite and the way he carries himself reminds of one of the Three Kings of, well, Three Kings Park.

  “That’s Joe L.,” he says, “but most people call me Joel.”

  “All right, Joel, keep them high.”

  “But it really is Joe L.”

  A wise guy, huh?

  Doc grits, “Well whatever the hell your name is, where’s Bjurstrom?”

  Not ten seconds later, Joel’s laughing like a hyena. A quick glance to Frances, who has a wrist gun aimed at Joel and I’ve got nothing, no read on what she’s thinking. Could be thinking anything.

  “What? You don’t know?” he wheezes.

  I shake my head.

  “The rogue steam mech is Bjurstrom, and your little mage just fried the hell out of him.”

  “To be fair,” Doc says, keeping his pistol trained on the greaseball, “you attacked us first.”

  “It was both our ideas.” He points from his chest to the steam mech. “Both,” he whispers.

  Me:
Crazy much?

  Sophia: You shouldn’t assume someone is crazy just because they say crazy things.

  Me: Quote of the day right there, Dr. Wang!

  “Both of our ideas,” Joel mumbles, “it might not look like it, but I’m the brains behind the operation!”

  “So you’re Bjurstrom then?”

  “No, I’m an extension of Bjurstrom’s D-NAS created through a spliced algospell. Like I told you the first time, I’m Joe L., or Joel.” He nods his head. “That’s Bjurstrom.”

  Frances eyes light up. “I get it, you’re like Bjurstrom’s brain, correct?”

  “The sexy lady is smarter than she looks!”

  Frances ignores him and says, “Good, so you can help us.”

  “Why would I do that?”

  Frances lowers her weapon and approaches him. Doc and Aiden fan out, but neither of them lets Joel out of their sight. “I think we may want the same thing.”

  “Oh?”

  “We need to get into Akrasia, to find some people and see if we can locate some Sky Iron.”

  Joel considers this for a moment. “Do you mind if I lower my hands? I need to scratch my ass.”

  Frances looks to Doc and he shakes his head no.

  “Sorry,” she says, “but you’ll be able to lower them soon, I assure you.”

  A bead of sweat appears on Joel’s forehead. “My arms are really starting to hurt.”

  “I’ll handle that.” Aiden appears behind him, pulls his arms down and cuffs his wrists together. He lowers Joel to the ground and forces him to sit.

  “What do you know about Sky Iron and where we can find it?” Frances crouches in front of Joel, still playing the good cop role.

  “Sky Iron hasn’t been mined for years. Not since … before the War of Gibson and Sterling, that’s for damn sure.”

  Doc asks, “Can Bjurstrom mine it?”

  A grin creeps across Joel’s face. “If he’s feeling up to it, yes. And he knows exactly where to find it, so it shouldn’t take him that long to get it either.”

  “Then we’d like him to feel up to it,” Doc grits.

  “For him to feel up to it, there are two things that need to be addressed: one, your spell rusted out Bjurstrom completely.”

  “Go me?” Rocket looks to each of us for approval.

  “Yeah, go you, wise guy,” I tell him.

  “You aren’t powerful enough to reverse the spell,” Joel informs him.

  Rocket smiles bigly. “My girlfriend can definitely do it. She’s at a way higher level than I am. She’s pretty much been here since the start of the world!”

  “Get her on the horn then,” I tell him under my breath.

  “Which horn is that again?” he asks, being sly.

  “You know what I mean.”

  “She’s halfway around the world and sleeping at the moment. Usually, she uses a Somnium Skip Box to skip sleep, but not tonight. She was tired. We had a lot of fun last night.”

  A half-smoked coffin nail takes shape in Doc’s mouth. He takes a quick puff of it and says, “All right, we’ll get Bjurstrom fixed, Joel. That’s easy, doable. What’s your next demand.”

  “It’s not my demand … ” He again nods at the vehicle. “It’s his. Bjurstrom wants to bring down all three walls, Wall Maria, Wall Rose, and Wall Titan.”

  “The walls separating Akrasia from the rest of Morlock?” Frances asks.

  He nods, dead serious. “It will create utter havoc.”

  Sophia: That will destroy the city entirely; it may even pit Marauders against the Boilerplate Army! This is totally a bad idea. I know no one will listen to me, but it’s on the record!

  I glance to Doc and he shrugs as if to say, not my world, not my problem.

  “As long as it entails sticking it to our own enemies holed up in Akrasia,” I finally tell the greaser, “the Dream Team is game. Let’s bring down the walls.”

  Chapter Seven

  “Let me guess,” I ask as we follow Joel through the dark pines, “We have to go through a sewer to get into the city.”

  Rocket snorts. “Is your mind in the gutter or something – see what I did there?”

  He looks to me for approval and I offer him a slight nod. Rocket takes this as an indication to continue. “We’re not going through a sewer, Q Run, we’re gonna waltz in like some big bad wolves!”

  “Quantum,” I remind him, “Call me Quantum.”

  “I’ll get a nickname that sticks one day!”

  “Steamboy is pretty good,” Frances offers.

  “Keep it up,” I tell them both under my breath. I see a few pine cones and go to step on them. Damn that crunch is satisfying.

  “He’s right, no sewers,” Joel says. “There are multiple entrances along two of the three walls, which are fully open for people to come and go. Remember, if they have an ankle bracelet, they can’t leave, and the bracelets can’t be removed, so there is really no reason to make entry difficult. Nope. No sewers, tunnels, nineteen-feet-tall ladders, or teleportation devices. You may be wondering what good destroying the walls will do.”

  I shoot Doc a quick glance. He’s too busy keeping a trained eye on the dark, piney woods to acknowledge my look. “I’m wondering,” I finally tell Joel.

  “The three walls are … how do I put this?” He considers this for a moment. “They are the algospell keeping all those with ankle bracelets trapped inside. If we destroy the walls, the worst of the worst will be released back into Morlock.”

  Frances Euphoria stops. “And the subsequent chaos will spread.”

  “Why yes,” says Joel with a crazy grin on his face. “It will spread, and will likely pit the military against the populous. Remember, the leadership of the Boilerplate Army has had it out for the Morlockian governmental authorities for years. If the walls come down, the chaos will give both sides a chance to go at one another. And Locus doesn’t need to worry, Steampunk’s forces will quell those that reach his territory. Easily quell, I might add. He’s the NVA Seed. All he has to do is snap his fingers and anyone in front of him – PC, NPC, RPC – will crumble to ash. You guys should know this. Don’t think I can’t see the golden indicators above your heads. You are his emissaries.”

  “I wouldn’t call us that,” I tell the vagabond. “Have you ever met Ray Steampunk? I’m not gonna call him an asshole, because he’s probably listening to our conversation right now, but he ain’t far off.”

  “So he’s a taint then?” Rocket asks.

  Doc snorts.

  Sophia: WHAT ARE YOU SAYING ABOUT RAY STEAMPUNK?

  Rocket: SOPHIA, PLEASE DO NOT SEND MESSAGES IN ALL CAPS. IT MEANS YOU ARE SCREAMING AT US!

  Sophia: I AM SCREAMING! RAY STEAMPUNK IS THE NVA SEED!

  “What the hell is wrong with her?” I ask so only Frances can hear. “I get the feeling that’d she’d fit right in at Jonestown or North Korea. Show Sophia some kind of authoritarian figurehead and she goes loopy gaga whenever anyone disagrees with them.”

  “Loopy gaga?”

  “What?” I ask with a shrug. “I can’t make up phrases?”

  “I have a question,” Rocket tells Joel. “You said all walls must be destroyed to cancel the algospell, right?”

  “Yes, the only way to cancel the spell is to destroy all three walls, and the destruction doesn’t need to be what you’re thinking – I’m not talking about trying to bring down the Great Wall here; just a good-sized hole will dispel the algomagic, and I already have explosives ready to go at Wall Titan and Wall Maria.”

  “So why do you need our help?” I ask as I dip under a low hanging branch.

  “It is Wall Rose that has been giving me issues for years, years.”

  “Well, that blows my plan.”

  He stops and turns to me. “What do you mean?”

  “Not gonna lie, and Doc, you will appreciate this – I have GBU-43 Mother of all Bombs in my list, item 358.”

  Doc stops and considers. “Dirty Dave?”

  “Who else? Never us
ed it before, but that’s not because I didn’t want to use it. Hell, I’ve been itching to find a way to use it for a while now.”

  “A MOAB is way, way too large for what we are trying to do,” Joel says. “We’re not trying to kill people, we’re trying to force a situation in which they kill themselves.”

  Aiden appears next to Joel. “You said Wall Rose has been giving you issues – why’s that? Shouldn’t it be just as accessible as the others?”

  “Wall Maria and Wall Titan are lined with retail stores, from contraband to souvenir shops. Wall Rose is a different story entirely. You can’t access the wall from within Akrasia because of Tent City.”

  Sophia: That’s right! I knew I was forgetting something!

  I roll my eyes. Why can’t something just be easy for once?

  Joel clears his throat. “Tent City runs along the mile-long interior of Wall Rose. Steam Breeds are housed there. And before you ask, Steam Breeds are man and robot amalgams.”

  “So cyborgs.” I lose my footing and stumble forward, catching myself just before I go head first into a pine.

  “If that explanation helps you get a grasp on what I’m saying, fine, they’re cyborgs, but Steam Breeds are much more dangerous than a cyborg,” Joel says. “They’re usually two to three times the size of a normal man. I think of them as mutants.”

  “So they are NPCs?” Doc asks.

  “Most are, and nearly all of them are housed in Tent City due to an instability in their D-NAS. They lashed out randomly and they are incredibly brutal.”

  “So they are prisoners within a prison city that is actually a tourist destination.”

  “Self-imposed prisoners,” he reminds me. “The Steam Breeds can move around the city, but they don’t. They keep to themselves. Then there’s the Chain Gang.”

  “Chain Gang?” Frances asks.

  “Those are the scum of the Proxima galaxy. They are people who’ve been arrested in Akrasia, and boy is it hard to get arrested in Akrasia due to the fact that the place is practically lawless. The Chain Gang takes care of keeping the place relatively clean. They are policed by the SRT Mondoshawans, which are bulbous, big metal bastards that remind you of what would happen if you mixed The Penguin with Art Deco stylings.”