Giant Robots of Tunguska

by Dave Robinson

  “What about Vic? We need to go back for her” Ming repeated, making Doc realize he hadn’t answered her the first time.

  In response he double checked the compass and then turned back to face her, trying to make his voice as gentle as possible. “Vic’s not in Dairen.”

  “Not in Dairen?” Ming’s voice trembled. “But she was just there, we saw her.”

  “When we last saw Vic, she was jumping out of the harbor and heading north at just over two hundred miles an hour. If my theory is right, she’s heading directly for the source of the mineral; and I think I know where it is.”

  “And if your theory is wrong?”

  “She could be anywhere in continental Asia within forty-eight hours.”

  “We’ll find her Ming.” Gilly had come up beside her. “You’ll be driving her from the kitchen with a wooden spoon in no time.”

  Tigress began to chuckle from the co-pilot’s seat. “So fierce, you really are my daughter.”

  Meanwhile the flying wing kept driving into the night, as the four people aboard fell silent. Only Doc knew how many things had to go right if they were ever going to see Vic alive again. Even if everything he surmised was true, there was no way a human body could handle that much energy and survive. Could they catch up before she burned out?

  #

  Everything blurred together as Vic shot up the Liaotung peninsula. Each leap took her another mile northward, following the pull of the energy in her system. Despite her superhuman exertion she wasn’t breathing heavily. In the few moments she worried about it Vic wasn’t even sure if she was breathing at all. Mostly she just existed, half-conscious, driven by the almost magnetic pull from the north. In a matter of minutes she had reached the end of the peninsula and turned northeast.

  Borders and landforms flew by beneath her, drawing almost no attention from what little remained of her conscious mind. Nothing existed beyond the pull and each step. Land, leap, repeat. Faint hints of memory bubbled to the surface of her mind and just as quickly burst into nothingness. Running across a field, hockey stick in hand as she raced for the goal. Hiding on the stairs of a Viscount’s townhouse in London, watching her grandmother hold court and wondering what it all meant for her. Knowing only that she didn’t belong there.

  As each memory evaporated, her drive grew and her sense of self shrank.

  Vic was irrelevant, only her need mattered.

  Pulled like a salmon driven to spawn in its birth river she ran and leaped across the country. Leaving China behind she crossed into Mongolia on her way to Siberia. The land was flat here so she could really open up, peaking at nearly three hundred miles per hour. She wasn’t leaping now, she was running flat out faster than Malcolm Campbell’s Bluebird.

  Her entire world collapsed into a tunnel with nothing beside her but a blur of streaks. Even her enhanced senses could only manage so much at this speed. Her footsteps ran together into a single wave of vibrations that pummeled her spine.

  Even as she ran northward, something tickled at the back of her evaporating self. A face, an image, someone she was leaving behind. Vic knew she was forgetting something important, but every time she tried to focus, her need rose and she found herself accelerating northward.

  Dawn broke as Vic crossed into the Soviet Union, and even after hundreds of miles her energy refused to flag. She was running, she was flying. Now she was into the taiga and even she had to slow down. At first she just put her head down and bulled through, sending saplings flying in splinters. As Vic got deeper into the taiga she ran into bogs; wet soil and mud dragging at her feet and pulling her down. Still, even slowed by the terrain she was still moving at over a hundred miles an hour as she drove deep into Siberia.

  Hours later Vic reached the Stony Tunguska river, crossing it with a single leap near a small settlement. Her muscles burned, her feet ached, but she pressed on. The boundless energy that had pushed her at speeds rivaling a land speed record car was waning. Vic was breathing again, and it was all she could do to manage a mile a minute. She had run through the entire day without eating or drinking and now that the energy driving her was fading Vic was beginning to feel the effects.

  The need was still there, still pulling her northwest, but now the memory bubbles were lasting longer. A name floated to the top of her consciousness: Ming.

  Vic rolled the name in her mouth, letting the emotions wash through her mind. Now she had a face to go with the name. A smile, a glance, soft hands and sparkling eyes. Memories pulled her backwards, south to Dairen. She slowed, but the pull was too strong and she found herself pushing northwest again.

  It was an hour later that Vic found herself in the woods, dragging her way through the muddy soil. She would stagger a few steps, feel a rush of strength and sprint up to thirty miles an hour, and then drop back down to a stagger. Now that her energy was dropping, she could feel the cold. Back in Dairen it had been in the fifties; now she was trudging through snow.

  Vic staggered from tree to tree, mindlessly marching onwards through the darkness. The forest cut the wind, but the cold still cut through her flight jacket and khakis. She was down to one step at a time, the pull of the Tunguskite like knives in the back of her throat. After stumbling down a snowy slope she found herself at the edge of the forest. The barbed fence of a prison camp rose in front of her, machine gun towers rising like beacons.

  All Vic could do was keep moving. The camp meant warmth, warmth meant life. Somewhere beyond lay the Tunguskite, she could feel it, but her legs and arms were growing too heavy. Ice formed in her hair, making it crackle as she moved. Smoke rose from the huts in the middle of the camp.

  Vic stood just outside the ring of lights, watching the pattern. The light and wire joined to form an almost impenetrable barrier at ground level. There was no way through it. Anyone trying to cross that ground was going to die. Even in her exhausted state Vic was aware enough to recognize that. The only ways through were either under or over; and permafrost made under impossible.

  Over it had to be.

  Vic took a deep breath, digging deep inside herself for the energy that had brought her here all the way from China. Deep down she found it, an ember of pure power connecting her to the motherlode beyond. She opened her mind to the power, letting it rise within her. No more staggering, no more stumbling.

  Vic stood upright to her full height; meltwater dripping from her hair. She measured the distance with her eyes, then took three quick strides and jumped. The ground vanished behind her as she hurtled through the darkness above the cordon of light. Huts and towers spread out below her even as her vision began to fade.

  Now the ground rushed up, smacking her out of the sky with the harsh fist of gravity. Vic hit hard, just outside one of the huts. Ming, Tunguskite, she had to move. She had to keep moving, she had to. Drawing on all her strength Vic pushed herself up with one arm, facing the hut.

  A door opened in the side of the hut, revealing a woman haloed in the dim light of the interior. She looked old and tired, but she stepped forward with confidence. Gray hair streaked with red escaped the corners of her headscarf. Even in the shapeless rags of a prison camp she walked like a princess; no, she walked like a Countess.

  Another memory rose in Vic’s fractured mind. “Mama?”

  Moving quickly, the woman knelt beside her cradling Vic’s head in her hands. As the darkness rose inside her eyes, Vic thought she heard something.

  “Viktoriya.”

  #

  Doc stretched in the pilot’s seat. Despite its size the wing was surprisingly easy to fly. It wasn’t particularly fast or maneuverable, but it was stable and forgiving. Two decks above him, twenty engines droned pulling the ship through the air. They had been lucky getting out of Dairen; the Japanese mustn’t have had any pursuits ready to send after them. Or if they had, no-one had been able to get authorization to take off.

  Crossing the Mongolian and Soviet borders had been just as easy. If it weren’t for celestial navigation, even Doc wouldn�
��t have been able to tell when they crossed either border. Neither the Soviets nor the Japanese had enough aircraft in the region for regular patrols, and the route Doc had planned took them between all the known bases.

  It was Gilly’s turn in the co-pilot’s seat. Doc had flown the whole way north, but Gilly and Tigress had swapped off in the second seat. Ming had taken watches at the flight engineer’s station, but she hadn’t managed to bring herself to take the controls even as a co-pilot. After a moment’s reflection, Doc thought he understood: Taking the seat meant acknowledging Vic’s absence and Ming wasn’t ready to do that yet.

  “So how sure are you that we’re going the right way?” Ming had come up beside him while he was thinking.

  “I’m as sure as I can be without instruments.” Doc loosened his grip on the control yoke and began doing isometric exercises to keep from stiffening up while in the pilot’s seat.

  “It just seems like a wild goose chase.” Ming shook her head. “She jumped north and that tells you to go two thousand miles out of our way?”

  “There’s a little more to it, but that’s a big part of it. If she was acting of her own volition, she wouldn’t have left us behind,” Doc explained even as a small part of his mind wondered if he was making up for Gus’s absence by lecturing in his stead. It was an interesting thought.

  “But she did.”

  “Exactly, and based on the way she demolished that robot she could have easily caught up with us, even after we took off. The fact that she didn’t rejoin us, told me that she couldn’t. Since there was nothing that could physically stop her, it must have been something mental. The most likely suspect was her desire for the Tunguskite mineral. Since she wasn’t going after the other robot, she must have been going after a bigger concentration.

  “I’d seen a map in General Ueda’s office, so we’re going where the mineral is calling her.”

  “That still sounds like one Hell of a leap of faith,” Ming didn’t sound convinced.

  “Not really.” Doc pointed out through the windscreen. “Take a look at the forest down there.”

  Ming glanced forward. “What am I looking for?”

  “What’s Vic really good at? Apart from flying.”

  “Making a mess?” Ming shrugged, a quizzical expression on her face.

  “Exactly.” Doc gestured toward the ground below. “See that?”

  A giant scar slashed across the forest, drawing a bee line towards a point in northern Siberia. Something had smashed its way through the taiga like a wrecking ball; leaving churned soil, splintered saplings, and uprooted stumps in its wake. It looked like a runaway train without the train, except it stretched for hundreds of miles through central Asia.

  Ming nodded and then started to chuckle. “Vic’s clothes on her way to bed; strewn everywhere. I’m surprised she doesn’t leave her blouses on the ceiling.”

  “Don’t tell her that, or she won’t stop until she’s done it,” Gilly muttered darkly. “You can tell she grew up with servants.”

  Doc kept his mouth shut. He’d had servitor remotes to clean up after him when he was a child; the whole idea of people cleaning hadn’t come to him until later in life. It was like sharing a room; he hadn’t even met another human being until he was eighteen.

  “All right, I believe you,” Ming finally said. “So where are we actually going.”

  “There’s a lake about five miles from the impact site. We’ll put down there and start looking for the source of the mineral. Once we find it we should be able to find Vic easily enough.”

  #

  Vic ached all over. She was lying on her side on a hard bed; squeezed between another woman and the wall. Wherever she was, it was cold; she would have been freezing if she wasn’t sharing body heat. Without opening her eyes, she pulled the blanket tighter. “Turn up the heat, Ming.”

  “Ming? Who’s Ming?” a voice replied in Russian.

  The voice triggered long-lost memories and Vic snapped her eyes open. “Mama?”

  “Da, Viktoriya.”It had been almost twenty years, but there was no mistaking the contralto of Countess Ekaterina Frankova. There were some things Vic could never forget even if the present was hazy. She remembered sharing a bed with her mother when she was five, but she had been much smaller then.

  Suddenly it all crashed into her head; Viktor’s appearance in New York, Tunguskite, the trip to Dairen, her solo run to Siberia. Somehow she wasn’t quite as drained as the last few times she had crashed, but she was still weak and shaky. “Wh-what happened?”

  “I found you collapsed on the ground outside the hut and brought you in,” her mother whispered.

  “I mean, what happened to you? Viktor told me you had survived the Revolution, but I never thought I would see you again.”

  The old Countess shrugged. “God works in mysterious ways; I don’t think you want to hear about my years in the camps.”

  “Not now, maybe after we get you out of here.”

  “Get me out of here?” Vic’s mother sighed. “I’m afraid the only way out is in a pine box. The ground’s so hard they can’t even dig holes to bury us when we die. The guards just pile the coffins outside the fence.”

  Vic shivered involuntarily. “That’s not going to happen. Doc will get us out; if I can’t manage it before he gets here.”

  “Doc, who is this Doc?”

  “Doc Vandal, I don’t know if you’ve heard of him here.”

  “The American do-gooder and adventurer? Yes, I have heard of him. The one with the gorilla and the red-headed mistress? He will rescue you?”

  “I am not his mistress!” Vic glared at her mother. “Our relationship isn’t like that. He’s more like a brother.”

  “Does that mean you’re married? Have you found a good man to settle down with?”

  Vic laughed. “No, I don’t want a man. I’ve found a good woman. Ming’s a doctor.”

  Her mother frowned. “I have seen it in the camps; I had no idea America was so lacking in good men.”

  “Good or bad doesn’t matter; the best borscht in the world won’t satisfy your hunger for blini.” Vic would have shrugged if she wasn’t lying down. “Even when grandmother was bringing the young men by in London, I never understood why I was supposed to marry one.”

  “You are my daughter, and I love you; even if I don’t understand how you turned out.” Ekaterina kissed Vic on the forehead. “At least I was able to see the woman you’ve become before I die.”

  “Before you die? I’ve just found you!”

  Ekaterina reached forward and stroked Vic’s hair. “I’m almost fifty and I’ve been sent to the mines, child. I won’t last long doing hard labor.”

  She broke into a coughing fit, her whole body shaking. Beads of sweat burst out on her forehead. Vic wrapped her arm around her mother, trying to comfort her during the fit.

  “This is how it always begins,” Ekaterina gasped. “In another week, perhaps two, I will be gone. The mines are deadly. They talk about radioactivity; I don’t know what that is, but I know the dust gets in your lungs and you die.”

  She started coughing again, and Vic did her best to hold her through the fit. “Don’t worry, I’m here Mama; everything will work out.”

  Ekaterina’s smile didn’t reach her eyes. “It already has.”

  She sighed and sat up in the bed. “It’s almost time. I have to go to the mines. With luck you can hide in here; the guards are sloppy. They don’t feed us until we finish the shift, so there’s no way to eat unless you work. I’ll try to sneak you something.”

  Vic worked her way around to sit up beside her mother in the darkness. “I’ll come with you. If they’re that sloppy they won’t notice an extra worker.”

  “You couldn’t even stand last night, and now you want to spend the day in the mines?” Ekaterina hissed. “They’ll drag your body out before noon.”

  Vic shook her head. “If I’m right, your mine’s the one thing that will get me back on my feet.”

&
nbsp; “Are you sure you’re alright?” Ekaterina squeezed Vic’s hand. “I know I haven’t long, but I don’t want to lose you.”

  “I don’t want to lose you either; not now.”

  Ekaterina fell silent and then hugged Vic.

  Vic buried her face in her mother’s shoulder and blinked away tears. Getting to the mine was going to be Hell. But if she was right, she’d be able to break both of them out by the end of the day. If she was wrong… that didn’t bear thinking about.”

  The slam of the opening door drew her attention as a burly figure stomped into the hut. “Get up, get up! The mine’s waiting!”

  Dark figures stirred from the other beds that lined the walls of the hut. Vic took a deep breath and readied herself for the job. Just standing up was going to be enough of a challenge, but the stakes had just doubled; it wasn’t just her life on the line anymore.

  #

  Doc was actually surprised how well the pilot’s seat had fit his six-foot four-inch frame throughout the flight. If the stars were right, they were coming up on Lake Cheko any time. At least the Moon was just past full so he had plenty of light to fly by. It was almost three-thirty in the morning and he’d been in the seat for close to twenty-four hours flying by dead-reckoning.

  “Are we close?” Ming slipped back onto the flight deck.

  “Should be.” Gilly lifted his arms and stretched. “Tired of flying this without a full crew; it’s hard work.”

  “Blame the Japanese for taking it back,” Tigress added. “I had to let the crew go.”

  “That’s why it’s your turn to help Doc land it.” Gilly grinned, his teeth white on the darkened flight deck. He rose from the co-pilot’s seat, and bowed her towards it.

  “I kept the seat warm for you.”

  “Why thank you, young man.” Tigress slipped in beside Doc. “If you need to get up, I have the conn.”