Glitch

by Erik Schubach

  Glitch

  By Erik Schubach

  Copyright © 2017 by Erik Schubach

  Self publishing

  P.O. Box 523

  Nine Mile Falls, WA 99026

  Cover Photo © 2017 Bambi-L-Dingman / Dreamstime.com license

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author / publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, blog, or broadcast.

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  FIRST EDITION

  Chapter 1 – Cat Snack

  I glanced back at Glitch as I guided the Albatross to the farthest point on the perimeter of Agri-Grid A1. The panels showed a malfunction of the sonic fencing that kept the predators of Tau Ceti Prime out of the fields.

  The fences were all that kept the world, where everything was trying to kill us, at bay. Our terraforming of Prime centuries ago had killed off most of the varied native creatures who had lived on the planet, and a lot of the vegetation, when the atmospheric processors thickened the atmosphere and made it more oxygen-rich while stripping out a lot of the carbon dioxide.

  That seemed wrong on so many levels to me, to wipe out so many forms of life just so that a planet, which wasn't ours, was more hospitable for us to colonize. It was even more wrong that just a couple centuries after colonizing, we abandoned the surface of the planet to live in the massive cities floating a mile above the surface of the planet, in the gravitic up-currents that were unique to Tau Ceti Prime.

  Well, mostly abandoned, as not all Primers went topside. There needed to be people to maintain the farms, mines, and even the automated resource processing plants and massive atmospheric processing plants. They called us dirters.

  There were possibly only a hundred or so humans left on the surface tending the support infrastructure for the million or so people living in the cities above. In the agriculture sector alone, there were only twenty people manning the entire farming operation here dirtside, in pinger maintenance. The rest of the farming jobs had been automated by pingers, and I fear one day even my maintenance position will be replaced with the next two or three generations of AI pingers.

  But until that day came, I had a job to do. I called back over the sound of the wind of our passing in my open air tumbril, “Hang on Glitch, were going in.”

  His high pitched squeal of the affirmative served as a thumbs up as he was always holding on for dear life in the bed of the Albatross when I was flying her, so he couldn't give an improvised thumbs up with his grappler. The silly pinger was my best friend down here.

  I reveled in the thrill of flight and wondered why I had put off repairing my mother's old tumbril before my first flight topside a couple months back. If I had known the sense of freedom, it gave me I would have repaired it right away after her passing.

  I glanced back, and I swear that he was just overacting as he tightened his grip on a cargo tie down. This was belied by the iris in the ocular lens that was centered in his spherical body, which was wide in excitement. I grinned. “Drama queen.” He somehow looked indignant, and I grinned. His yellow safety paint was flaking again, I'd have to touch him up soon. The atmosphere on Prime was pretty harsh on metal and ceramic composites.

  I rolled my eyes at him and vectored the turbines and the air breathing airship dove for the edge of the crops near a pylon on the sonic fence that was blinking the warning red of failure. The air breathing engines whined, and we kicked up a plume of dust and debris as we set down in the twenty-meter-wide buffer zone between the corn crop and the barrier.

  I saw the problem already as I pulled off my goggles and leather flight helmet as I deactivated the photon restraints so I could get out of the pilot's chair at the control column. The wild lattice grasses, which thrive in the new thicker atmosphere we had engineered here, got into everything.

  They really needed to get Invasive Species Control down to spray defoliant around the sonic barriers. I had been requesting a dusting flight for weeks. They keep assuring me they will get around to it. This will wake them up I bet. I could see the creeping chain-like surface root system of the grasses forming a veil around the base of the pylon. Blades of the stiff blue, sawlike grass, was clogging the cooling ports of the unit.

  I could hear a low thrum shaking the ground nearby, and I grinned to myself and looked across the sea of corn to see a Mark 9 harvester moving down the rows. It was Bonnie. I waved at the pinger with a smile. She bounced playfully on the suspension of her two-story tall wheels, as she swung her visual port our way. Glitch squealed in greeting as he waved his grappler wildly. I think he may have a crush on her.

  She warbled a deep thrumming honk with her warning horns, then turned back to her work and diligently moved ears of corn up into her massive holding bins. I had the most dedicated workers dirtside, I'd pit my friend's work ethic against any of the other Agri-Grids. We have never once missed a quota.

  I grabbed our maintenance kit, and Glitch and I disembarked. He trundled along beside me on his mobility platform, sparks drizzling from the connectors. I swear I'll fix that one day, we just keep getting sidetracked. At least we fixed one of my other pingers last week, Wrongway. He no longer drives in the wrong direction, though he still does everything else backward.

  As we arrived close to the pylon, he reached over with his grappler and took the kit from me as I looked at the structure and the encroaching vegetation. I asked him, “Movement?”

  I heard a high pitched scree as he scanned a few meters around the area. I didn't want to be surprised by a field viper in the thick grass. The other pylons had a bit of overlap at the outer edges, but the central area between had no coverage.

  I had the misfortune of being bit by one once, we still don't know how it got past the sonic fence. It had felt like my blood was on fire until my field belt administered the anti-venom a few seconds later. I felt nauseous for weeks after that.

  He squealed in a warbling negative. I nodded my thanks and stepped up to the pylon. He set the kit next to me and looked around. I told him, “Go ahead and strip away the lattice grass around the pylon and I'll see I we can't get it up and operational again.”

  The silly pinger saluted me and turned and started trundling toward the Albatros. I chuckled and called out, “Glitchy?”

  He rotated his orb-like body back to look at me as he continued away. “Is that the pylon silly boy?” His rubberized metal tank treads slowed to a stop as he looked back and forth between the tumbril and the pylon. He rotated like he was cocking his head to think, then he lowered his visual port in embarrassment and rotated back and forth in the negative.

  He moved quickly back to me and started cutting the surface roots with an electric arc between the pincers of his grappler. The roots were strong as steel and would dull any non-carbon hardened blades, but they were extremely susceptible to high temperatures.

  He pulled some of the offending grass from the cooling ports, and I slid in and pulled my multi-tool from my belt, absently typing the code into the handle, and it clinked and clanked as it reconfigured to a larger spanner and I went to work removing the access panel at the base of the unit.

  Glitch got distracted by something in the sky. I followed his gaze and had to grin, a flock of fluffers were arcing high above, out of the range of th
e sonic fence and then down to land in the fields of the Agri-Grid. The little three-eyed, winged critters were the only remaining native mammals who weren't out to eat me like the others.

  They look like a cross between an old Earth sparrow and squirrel. Most people saw them as pests, but I thought they were more helpful than harmful since they enjoyed eating the insects and fungus that blighted a lot of our Terran crops, and didn't have a taste for our vegetation.

  I glanced up at New Terra, floating a mile above the surface of the planet, looking like a pale white cloud hanging in the sky. They certainly wouldn't like if the creeping fungus or skitter mites impacted their food shipments topside.

  Besides, the fuzzy little critters are so flanterskelling cute and like to cuddle up with me when I sleep in the office. They are partial to heat. They are nothing like the other two surviving mammals, their vicious and carnivorous relatives, the Cath Saber and doglike Magna Lupus.

  I swear Glitch was watching them fly with wide-eyed wonder. I smiled at him and went back to work, a moment later he was cutting and tearing grass out from around the immediate area.

  I pulled the panel and groaned. The grass had gotten into everything, there were some shorted circuits. We were lucky the entire unit wasn't burned out. I shuddered, if that had happened, the fence here would be down for a day or two until a new pylon could be brought dirtside as I had used up my spares months ago.

  I really didn't want a hole in the network that long, I'd have to lock myself in the service bay or living quarters to protect myself from predators. Until the Sky Guard could do an aerial sweep of the thousand square miles of my grid to rid it of any predators that got in before the pylon was replaced.

  I opened my kit and pulled out a couple improvised modules I cobbled together with parts I stripped from other dead pylons. I reconfigured my multi-tool into a plasma cutter and went to work stripping out the grass and roots from the guts of the unit.

  I finished the chore and pulled the two shorted modules and placed them in the kit, I could look at them later to see if I could repair or salvage them. I slid the first replacement module into place, and internal power was fully restored. I shared a look with Glitch who looked pleased, then started to install the sonic projector module, it jammed in the rails and then I froze as I pulled it out to examine the rail.

  A high pitched scream sounded out from nearby. My blood ran cold, and I looked at the sonic module in my hand and back at the Albatross. Then turned to see the catlike Cath Saber bounding through the grass toward us. It was moving too fast for me to get back to the Albatros and get it into the air.

  Glitch was squealing in urgency, and I yelled back at him, “I know! I almost have it!”

  I kept an eye on the Saber as I slammed the module back in the rail and it jammed three-quarters of the way down. I was shaking, my hands fumbling as I pushed harder. Then a second Saber dove out from the cover of the grass, they were pack hunting! It out massed me by a factor of three, and it slammed into my side like a runaway tumbril. It snapped its elongated jaws at me, it's fangs bared.

  I got my multitool up just in time, punching in a code as I lifted it. It reconfigured into a lug spanner that I jammed in the cat's mouth. Its three eyes narrowed at me, enraged that I stopped its bite and it lifted a paw tipped with razor sharp claws.

  A moment later it was flying through the air as Glitch squealed at it with a warbling wail that if he were human, I would have said was a cross between anger and fear. He had grabbed the beast's tail and flung him back out into the grasses into the second charging cat.

  He sped off toward them igniting the plasma cutter in his grappler as he issued a challenge. That was just about the bravest thing I had ever seen, their claws could cut through his composites just as easily as flesh. Sparks flew from his connection point to his mobility platform as he sped off.

  One of the cats crouched and started circling him as the second dove wide, avoiding him and coming back for me. I dove at the pylon and screamed in panic and frustration, bringing the lug spanner down on the jammed module. With a clang then a shower of sparks, I drove it home, moving it past the obstruction.

  Then with a squee that rose almost instantly out of my range of hearing, the sonic fence snapped up. The beast screeched out its scream and twisted in the air, closing its eyes against the onslaught of the wall of sound that was far above my hearing range as it landed ungracefully. The two cats were shaking their heads wildly and made mewling sounds of pain as they gave us one last look then ran back into the grasses, getting as far away from the pylon as possible.

  I moved quickly to Glitch, who was shaking so hard in fear that he was apt to vibrate himself apart. I dove onto his mobility platform and hugged him tight then pulled back and gave him a kiss on his visual port. “Mwah! You're my hero, Glitchy.”

  He stopped shaking and looked down almost bashfully and warbled out a noise that sounded like, “Really?”

  I patted his orb and grinned. “Yes, I mean it. Now come on, let's get this pylon buttoned up.” My legs were rubbery, and my heart still felt like it was going to beat out of my chest, I didn't want him to know just how scared I had really been.

  A couple minutes later we packed up and headed to the Albatros. Once we were settled in, I opted for the autopilot to get us home, I was still working off the adrenaline, and my hands were shaking. I had almost become a cat snack.

  By the time we got back to the landing pad at the huge Quonset hut that housed my repair bay, I had myself back under control. We disembarked, and I checked the time on my chrono as we headed in, then I paused as a huge smile spread across my face when looked up toward New Terra.

  I saw one of the specs that moved to and from the city above growing larger as it approached. She was coming! I quickly smoothed down my hair and dusted my leather jacket as I looked down at myself, I looked like cut-rate trollite. I started running for the office, I had a change of clothing in there.

  Glitch looked up to the sky at the rapidly approaching Sky Guard tumbril. He made an “Ooooooo,” sound and trundled after me.

  I blushed and said, “Shut up. Yes, it's Vashon. Our weekly date night.” I couldn't believe how excited I was. I still can't believe that a Sky Guard Ranger had actually chosen me. Vashon was so amazing and looked like an Amazon standing next to me. I flushed as I thought about how all encompassing her kisses felt.

  I was positive that once the novelty of dating a dirter wore off, she'd move on to someone more deserving of her affections. But week after week these past two months, she has kept our date night. I caught myself biting my lower lip as I ran into the office giggling, waving to the other pingers working on the suspension of a harvester support tender. They waved back and that unbalanced poor Blip, who fell over with an audible, “Blip!”

  I turned my thoughts back to Vashon as I changed my clothes. I lived for the long walks and conversations we shared, and... other things. And let me tell you, mother of all crystal was that woman pretty. I loved her long flowing black hair.

  I giggled as I heard my favorite Sky Guard Ranger calling out from the service bay floor below, “Knock knock, Fixit?”

  I called back, “Be right down, Vashon.”

  Then I looked at Glitch. “So? Passable?” He nodded.

  I grinned and told him, “Well, looks like I have a date.”

  He squeed like a proud parent, and I almost skipped out of the office, looking forward to a relaxing night with a certain raven haired beauty, after almost becoming a cat snack.

  Chapter 2 – Recall

  I woke the next morning and stretched down to my toes. I felt like purring, remembering Vashon's lips on mine last night. I swear she is teasing me, making me want her by not going much further than heavy petting as we make out. Well, let me tell you, it's working, I want that Amazonian Sky Guard so badly it physically hurts.

  A passel of Crop Hatches hopped off of my cot where they shared my body heat while I slept, and the little fluffers quickly fluttered
up to the rafters where they lived. If they weren't so flanterskelling cute, I'd have chased them out of the building long ago.

  I looked down, and a young one was still nestled at my side gazing up at me with his three wide brown eyes, the cute factor was strong in that one. I grinned at him and ruffled his downy soft belly fur and prompted, “Go on, shoo, the others are waiting for you.”

  It tilted its head the other way, then with a squeaky chirp it hopped a couple times, gaining more air each time until it fluttered on up to roost with its kin. It was barely old enough to fly, I hoped the others would teach it to be more wary of predators.

  I hopped up and got ready for the day, taking a long sonic shower, then stepping outside. I looked up into the green and blue sky, which still had some tints of red and orange from the sunrise, training my eyes on New Terra. The ethereal looking city was just floating up there in the clouds on its gravity wake, and I wondered if a certain ranger was looking down on me. I smiled and almost skipped into the repair bay to see who needed the most work.

  I waved at my mechanical friends, and they greeted me, and I looked at the repair records on my iso-pad. Hmmm... it looked like Bert needed the most TLC today. His electromagnetic bearings were giving out. And for a thirty-three-ton harvester tender, that wasn't good, especially if they failed when he had a full load of corn or potatoes on board.

  I checked the rest of the records and was pleased to see that my crew of pingers had worked through the night on most of the routine repairs for two-thirds of the vehicles that were in for servicing. I just needed to check up on them and sign off, and we would have the bulk of our harvesting pingers out in the field. We were going to surpass all our quotas by a long shot this season.

  I was so proud of my friends. Agri-Grid A1 was the only grid who consistently made the quotas. Mom had never missed one, and by the mother of all crystal, I'd never miss one. I credit my maintenance pingers for that, there wasn't a harder working crew here on Prime.