Theo and I checked underpasses and transit tunnels for a week before I found an armoured hover truck that looked right. It wasn’t military, so the pulse damaged it enough so the crew abandoned it, but it was made to protect high valued passengers and cargo, so the side panels were nice and thick. It also had fifteen heavy duty hover pads. “Yeah, yeah, if we can find enough working parts, this’ll be good.” I looked inside the empty cab and nodded. “This’ll be right if all the pads are okay. If not, they’re just heavy duty models, so most cargo transports will have replacements.”
“Hover pads don’t seem to get damaged by electromagnetic pulses,” Theo said. “I only see superficial damage on these.”
“Yeah, hover pads have to be shielded since so much energy surrounds them when they’re running, so a pulse won’t do much of anything to them. I don’t think it would take much to rebuild the navigational system in this truck, either. I’ll add electromagnetic shielding wherever I can as I rewire it.”
“Why add shielding?”
I almost said; ‘I’m not the only one who can hit a button and make a pulse from that complex happen.’ But instead of informing Theo that I was the one who did it, I changed what I was about to say at the last second. “If a pulse can hit the planet once, it can happen twice. Maybe every Sunday, for all we know.”
“You have a point,” Theo relented.
I looked past it to the hover cars clustered around and shook my head. In the middle of the intersection was a heavy maintenance bot with its lighter friends. They didn’t survive the pulse I sent out way before, and were frozen in place, their cutters poised to assault drivers and the heavy treads of the largest robot placed so he was blocking half the street.
Many of the cars there were empty, telling me that my timing with the pulse probably worked, the people here escaped for the most part. The rest of the cars were occupied. The decaying drivers and passengers were left where they were, trapped inside their car tombs. “There are many stinkers here,” Theo said. He was referring to the hover cars that had rotting corpses trapped inside. I coined the term, but no matter how many times I told him it was in poor taste and I regretted it, he kept using it. “Perhaps I should remove the bodies from the more intact vehicles while you make a more thorough inspection of the truck?”
I didn’t have the energy to think of an alternate plan, so I sat down and nodded. “Thanks, Theo. I’m going to take a break, man.” I took a packaged apple and rhubarb turnover from my bag and activated it. It self-baked in ten seconds, transforming from a flat rectangle to a thick, weighty stuffed pastry.
“It has been nearly an entire day since you had food, you should eat at least three servings over the space of forty minutes then sleep for eight and a half hours,” Theo said. “You are still a growing boy.”
“There’s room for my pocket cot in the truck. Good idea,” I said. Staying on my feet most of the day kept me wired, but my weariness caught up in a hurry. I only ate the one turnover, but I took Theo’s advice and slept.
Part Twenty-Six
I woke up really hungry, so I ended up eating one of the few emergency meal bars I had left. They filled all the dietary requirements for eight hours, so they were precious, much better than the junk food that I tried to stick to. Normally, when I had one I tried to keep from eating for the rest of the day. Not the greatest plan, sure, but every time we had to go hunting for food in a mall, or by raiding someone’s home, or corner shop, we were taking a huge risk. Where there’s supplies, there could be people, or bots guarding them.
Theo let me sleep a little more than fourteen hours, and I was a pissed at first, but that faded by the time I was half way through my meal bar and all the way through a bottle of water. By the time I emerged from that hover truck’s passenger cabin, I felt like all was well with the world again, or at least, like all was well with me. “Good morning, Theo. Let me sleep in, huh?”
“Yes, you were resting so peacefully, I didn’t want to wake you.”
“No worries,” I told him. “Anything interesting happen while I was out?”
“An Order of Eden bulk transport passed overhead five hours ago. They passed out of my range without slowing down but I could tell it was a larger model. I have begun taking parts from the cars here to replace the finer systems in the hover truck. If I knew how to begin, I would have started preparing the hover truck for you. I also recovered a working communicator, an electronic tool kit and a modest selection of packaged foods.” He gestured to an impressive pile in the trunk of a nearby car. There was enough food there to keep me going for a week. Added to the packaged junk we had in our packs from a mall we raided the week before, and the few things we had left from the Complex, I figured I was set for over a month. My gut craved something fresh and green, sure, and I couldn’t remember what a fresh tomato or blueberry tasted like anymore, but this packaged stuff was good enough to keep me alive.
“Good job, man,” I told Theo. “Let’s pack everything but the parts up, and get started on trying to get this thing running,” I told him, stuffing the packaged snacks into my bag. “I don’t know what I’d do without you, man.”
“Thank you, Noah. I mirror the sentiment, of course,” he replied.
I was under the dash of that hover truck for days. The electronics kit and extra parts were speeding things up so much that I was actually whistling to myself as I replaced some of the more delicate components down there. The kit was super handy, since I could test the spare components that Theo salvaged before trying them in the car, so I knew I was only working with good bits before I wired them in. I was practically half inside the dash, twisting to get access to parts that I really should have removed sections of the car to access. Playing contortionist saved me a lot of time though, so I kept it up.
Theo kept watch, and in the week or so I was waist deep inside that hover truck, he counted nine Order of Eden cargo ships. They would pass somewhere overhead, land somewhere out of sight, then return to the skies without the cargo container they brought with them.
As more and more of them came and went, as time crept on and we stayed in the same place, my curiosity and worry grew. We’d gotten good at keeping on the move, maybe it was part of our survival strategy – an important part – and I was surprised that the cargo shuttles didn’t pay any attention to us. Theo couldn’t figure out what was in the sealed containers, but he knew they were insulated.
I finished working on that truck in the dead of night. I was so tired that my vision was blurry, I was fighting sleep, but I had to see if the electronics inside the cab and the generator were working. I made sure the hover pads were off, they were the loudest part of the hover truck, then I started the rest of the systems. Nothing happened.
“Boost,” Lurk said, pushing a small battery across the top of the dash with his nose.
“Good idea,” I told him, replacing a battery pack in an overhead panel with the charged one. I checked the controls again, then crossed my fingers and activated the truck’s systems by flipping a switch I installed to bypass the security measures in the dash. Everything lit up.
“It’s working?” Theo asked, practically jumping into the passenger seat.
“Yup, keeping the pads off for now though, I don’t want to wake up the whole hemisphere with the sound of fifteen hover pads powering up at three in the morning. Help me run through the checklist, let’s make sure this thing is in shape.”
“My pleasure,” Theo said.
We went through all the systems, and everything from navigation to communication was working. We kept the communications system off just in case anyone was watching for new signals, and I kept the transponder deactivated using a switch I installed as well – a stroke of genius I was maybe a little too proud of – and by the time we went through everything I was dead on my feet. I do remember finishing the checklist, but not going to bed that night.
The next day I activated the whole truck, including the hover pads, and was shocked at the thunderous sou
nd the machine made while hovering a couple metres above the concrete. So startled, that I turned it back off as fast as I could. “Holy crap, that’s loud. They’re going to hear us for kilometres in every direction.”
“It’s actually no louder than a normal hover vehicle, quieter than the last one we had. The hover pads are quite well made and balanced.”
“Okay, maybe it just seems that way because we’ve been on foot for months,” I told him.
“That would make sense,” Theo said.
I spent a little time reducing the power levels of the hover pads until I was happier with the noise levels, but I was still worried about how conspicuous we were. I’d spent a week putting the electronics back together and adding spray-on insulation everywhere I could so the machine was more hardened against electromagnetic pulses, but the thought that we’d be easy to track even after all the work it took to make it difficult to see at a distance never crossed my mind. “If the Order are dropping soldiers or bots in those transport crates, they’re going to hear us way before we can see them. No way we’re surprising anyone in this rig.”
“We could move this to a more secure location and park it, use it as a home instead of a conveyance.”
It made sense, but I was still disappointed. “You remember the Remington Centre?” I asked.
“Your prime entertainment, dining and shopping destination. Experiences you can’t order to your door, guaranteed!” Theo said, perfectly imitating the announcer voice that kept repeating the mall’s slogan while we were there. It played every time you passed through a major intersection or opened an outer door, and made me jump at least twice.
“Yeah, they had bulk food and a bunch of stuff there that we had to leave behind. Maybe we should load up now that we have this thing?”
“That’s a good idea. Then we could go anywhere.”
“Well, except for off-world,” I told him.
“Except for that.”
“All right, you’re driving.”
After months on foot, the world seemed to speed by. We made our way down highways, through tall transit tunnels, and across fields that seemed to go on forever. All ten metres above the world whenever we could. After a while it really felt like we were flying, and that all my troubles were left on the ground.
We avoided the places Theo estimated those Order ships landed, but after a couple days we ran across one of their cargo containers by mistake, passing almost right over it before either one of us could notice. To my surprise, there were no bots, nothing was trying to put holes in my new truck, and my worry was replaced with curiosity. “I might regret this, but bring us down and about. I want to see what’s in those things.”
Theo reduced our height, slowed the truck to a crawl and we drove down a rough path leading to the cargo container. I had my pistol in hand, I’d named it Needler. By then I took it out as a habit, like a child who reaches for their favourite toy when they’re nervous or uncertain. There was a camp fire built at the mouth of the container, but someone had doused it.
A blur ran across our path and Theo stopped before hitting it. I looked out my window, looking for it and saw a little girl picking up a small stuffed Nafalli toy, hugging its plush body to her own. Her mother, a streak of motion with blonde hair trailing behind, ran from behind the cargo container to her. “What are your scanners picking up in that cargo container?”
“Human excrement, some nutrient wrappers, but nothing else,” he replied.
“How many people are here? Do you have a good reading?”
Theo activated the truck’s scanners and I watched as seven green humanoid outlines appeared. “There are a total of seven people here, I detect only improvised weapons. A steel bar and two people seem to be brandishing pieces of wood. They are hiding behind the container.”
They were nowhere near the woman and her girl. “Duck down, don’t let them see you, and lock the doors behind me. I want to see if I can make nice.” I grabbed a bunch of junk food from my pack, stuffed my pockets and left the cab. The doors locked and the windows blacked out so no one could see inside.
I put my handgun away and held up a pair of packaged pastries. “Hey, guys and gals, I’m here with food, I’m a friend.”
The guys hiding behind the cargo container came out first, approaching slowly with their improvised clubs raised. They looked like hell, in disposable vacuum suits that looked like white plastic bags, and I could see that they were hungry at a glance. There’s a desperation that comes with days old hunger, and it shows.
The little girl broke free of her mother’s grip and ran right up to me. I didn’t hesitate; there was a package of apple pie in her little hand the second she reached up. I watched as she expertly pulled one end of the package and waited as it rehydrated, inflated and heated, then stuffed as much of it into her mouth as she could.
“Get away from her,” the one with the steel bar in his hands warned.
I stepped away with a smirk. “Looks like she has the right idea,” I looked at him, raising my hands. “I’m really just looking to find out how you folks got here and would like to make a few new friends. If you’re worried about entertainment, I’ve got stories you wouldn’t believe, and I can juggle.”
The little blonde mess a couple metres from me was still digging into her slice of pie, and the guys who were coming out from behind that crate were looking from her to me. “Head’s up!” I said, tossing a preserved burrito at one of the guys not brandishing a club. It hit his chest and he caught it before it hit the ground. “My name’s Noah. I know where there’s food, clothing, and I’ve got enough condenser bottles to keep us hydrated for years.” I could tell I was winning them.
I backed up to the passenger door, and the little one’s mother came out of the shadows, gathering her girl up in her arms as she finished her pie. She was all smiles, with her full tummy and her favourite plushie back in her arms. “We should trust him,” her mother said. “We’re starving, half of us are sick. I don’t see that we have much of a choice.”
“I have some emergency meds that will probably clear whatever you’ve got up,” I said. “Or I could move on.”
The thin guy holding the steel bar up looked to his companion, who was digging into the burrito I tossed at him, and dropped his club. “I’m too tired to argue. We’re the Pearsons.”
Part Twenty-Seven
Not for the first time, my best friend was my biggest problem. Theodore was sitting in the driver’s seat of my truck. Perfectly hidden, sure, but as I did the rounds, meeting the Pearsons first: Donna, her husband Harry and her daughter Izzie, I dreaded the moment when I’d have to reveal Theo. The other four with them were Gabe, a guy with these bulging eyes, Nate who was the shortest, Sherman with the flattest nose I’ve ever seen and Pete who had shining red hair. They seemed all right, but still pretty wary. Sherman kept checking out my guns, something I’d have to put an end to before long if he didn’t earn a lot of trust in a hurry.
After the hand shaking was over, I opened the back door of the truck a crack and was relieved to see that the partition between the passenger cabin and the cab was up. I grabbed Theo’s bag and started handing out food along with a couple full condenser bottles of water. “I just finished fixing this truck up a couple days ago, so we haven’t gotten a chance to make any big supply runs. Are you the only ones who came in that container?”
“No, we were captured on the Tawny Flats. Bots came charging after us and instead of tearing us apart, they grabbed us and took us to a redistribution centre. Are we still on Shir Cana?” asked Harry.
I knew that world. It was originally a mining colony that got terraformed really well. There were some nice green cities, I got to visit Dardown, but we set up in an old mining pit well outside the city limits. I remembered a lot of middle classers, who had a surprising amount of extra plat to spend on us. “We’re on Iora,” I replied.
“I told you,” Sherman said. “They moved everyone. It’s a forced relocation.”
&nb
sp; “How many people were in there?” I asked, looking over their shoulder to the cargo crate.
“One hundred thirty-three per crate,” Pete said. “I heard that was the maximum tolerance from one of the guards. We buried nine when we got here, they didn’t make it.”
“Are all the cargo containers filled with people?” I asked. “I mean, we’ve been seeing them all week.”
“Yeah, there were hundreds of cargo pods like that when I got loaded,” Pete said. “I kept asking where they were sending us, but the bots wouldn’t say, the guards ignored me. Couldn’t find out why we were all being relocated, either. I was just glad the bots we saw weren’t attacking anymore.”
“Iora, there aren’t many natural resources here,” Harry said. “Mostly agriculture and commerce services, right?”
“From what I’ve seen so far,” I agreed. “I’m not from here either, I was forced to land. Listen, we’ve got a bunch of food we can spare, so let’s dig in. May as well talk and eat at the same time. We were also on our way to a big mall, so there should be clothes and other supplies for you there if you want to come.”
“Who’s ‘we?’” asked Donna. I didn’t realize I’d used the word until she pointed it out. She didn’t start rehydrating the brownie I passed her, and she looked worse than everyone, but her attention was laser focused on me.
“Yeah, how much do you know about the virus?” I asked.
“The one that turned our AI’s bad?” she asked. “I know I lost my sister, and the galaxy’s getting torn apart.”
“Well, not all the bots got infected,” I told her. “Some of them didn’t go crazy, and they want to…”
“Every bot goes bad eventually,” Donna said, tossing the brownie back at me. “Doesn’t matter if it doesn’t have an artificial intelligence, sometimes another bot will install one so it can get infected. Doesn’t matter if it has override safeguards installed either, those can get disabled. Whatever you’ve got, you’ve got to break it into a million pieces and leave it behind. You’ll be sleeping one day, and it’ll find some reason to install something, and then you’ll find its hand around your throat.”
Spinward Fringe Broadcast 10.5: Carnie's Tale Page 17
