Hard Luck Hank: Delovoa & Early Years (13 page)

He had some of the best metallurgical engineers
designing entirely new alloys. He had scientists creating power plants that
were capable of providing electricity for entire countries. Delovoa himself
worked on the vehicle’s mechanical drive.

When completed, ZR1 looked like a 1,800-foot
monster. It had shovels and blades and drills and torches and missiles. The
missiles were added in a bit of overzealousness.

When they turned it on, the heat of the engine
melted the entire vehicle as well as the building it was constructed in, and
the surrounding terrain in a quarter mile radius.

Delovoa then scheduled a slight detour in the
project plan so they could try and extinguish the molten ball, which had dammed
two rivers and was releasing a torrent of radioactive steam.

They finally gave up and simply paid for all
the families downwind to relocate.

But Delovoa learned from that experience that
he needed his teams to be more aligned.

ZR2 was designed to be aerial, thus bypassing
the need for complicated ground maneuvering abilities.

It was so large and powerful that it would be
able to lift an entire two-mile suspension bridge and put it into place all
within an hour. The key was not having traditional rocket thrusters.

Delovoa had hired some of the best Portal
scientists and they came up with a system that could reduce the effective mass
of ZR2, thus making it possible to float with minimal upward propulsion.

The enormous structure was itself the size of
several bridges and required a dozen pilots and operators all across it to
maintain its stability.

When it was activated for the first time, it
flew skyward so fast that it disintegrated in the atmosphere in a quarter
second. The hypervelocity shockwaves and debris and sonic booms devastated a
wide area—as well as killed all those on board.

Despite pumping tens of billions of credits
into the economy, Delovoa and his team were wearing their welcome very thin
indeed on Thremostilly.

Delovoa was working in his lab some months
later when it was attacked by an angry mob and he was dragged out into the
street. He survived an impromptu firing squad only through the timely
intervention of the local military—the police having sided with the mob.

It was at that point Delovoa decided he needed
a new approach to his designs. Before, the motto had been, “whatever’s cool.”
Now it became, “whatever won’t get me killed.”

He decided they needed to go smaller.

ZR3 would be a robot.

Some of the best elements from the previous work
was borrowed and improved upon. The metallic skin of ZR3 was nearly
indestructible. The power plant, despite its small size, could operate for
scores of years without charge or change. Most interestingly, the whole robot
could shift its mass upwards or downwards, allowing it to push or pull tens of
tons if needed or walk over nearly any surface no matter how unstable. This
gravitonic field also made it immune to being scanned.

Delovoa had one of the foremost forensic
linguists join the team to add a bit of esoteric depth to the project. The man
created the definitive history of the ancient Colmarian dialect. He also
programmed ZR3 to respond to and understand that language—which at the time
seemed like a perfectly eccentric idea.

ZR3 took hundreds of engineers and scientists
over three years to build. They were all several miles away when they powered
it on for the first time remotely.

It was eight feet tall, four feet wide, and
three feet deep. Its arms and legs were huge, column-like things and it had no
hands, since it was designed to be fitted into other tools such as shovels or
picks which could be swapped-out as needed. It had no head, just a sensor hole
in its chest which resembled a large eye. Its gleaming white paint was even
cutting-edge in that it was virtually resistant to wear.

ZR3 was amazing!

It did everything they had intended and more.
There was nearly nothing it couldn’t lift, move, pull, or push, over any
terrain under any conditions.

The Lord of the Interior was quite impressed
with ZR3. Having given bogus progress reports to the Colmarian Confederation
for so long, Zolin Roxtelian was more than happy to give a full and detailed
report on ZR3, believing it could have significant use across the empire—and
hoping he could profit from helping foster its invention.

But Zolin Roxtelian, being new to the Colmarian
Confederation, had not grown up with its idiosyncrasies and fears.

While Delovoa was officially free from the
restraints of the Tech Laws, he would never be allowed to build a robot of
ZR3’s capabilities. It was too reminiscent of the nightmare robotic species,
the Dredel Led, who had been the Confederation’s enemy for millennia. Delovoa
had worked on artificial intelligence in the past, but it had been under the
direct auspices of the Colmarian military.

Even though ZR3 was not sentient whatsoever and
was nothing more than a glorified construction device, it so frightened the
Confederation that a squadron of Navy ships was immediately dispatched to
arrest all involved with the project and to destroy ZR3.

The Colmarian Confederation Navy, being the
great supporters of procedure and paperwork that they were, promptly notified
Delovoa of his status as a suspected criminal facing the death penalty for
excessive violation of the Tech Laws, misallocation of resources, failure to
file income taxes for the last thirty years, and treason.

Delovoa thanked the Navy for their
correspondence and promptly fled the solar system with the deactivated ZR3.

Delovoa needed to get out of the area, but he
had no money and he had a lot of things to move, including a very large robot
He wasn’t going to leave it for the Navy to destroy.

The Colmarian Confederation was an enormous
empire. So it was quite easy to go undetected as long as you weren’t too
ostentatious or flagrant.

Delovoa bounced from planet to planet for a
while, doing odd jobs.

“Your kind aren’t welcome here,” the hooded man
said.

Delovoa was at a distant outpost in the middle
of the desert. He only had several small suitcases and ZR3 under a tarp.
Because of ZR3’s gravitational motor, Delovoa could pull it around by himself.

“I only need a place to sleep for a few
months,” Delovoa begged.

“I said leave!”

The man powered on his gun. Bright yellow light
was emitted from the weapon that hurt your eyes and a deep rumble erupted from
it which got your teeth chattering.

The Ontakians were not friends of the Colmarian
Confederation after the Ontakian War had destroyed their home world.

“Cool, an Ontakian plasma rifle! Look, I’m
hiding from the Navy as well. And I can work for my stay.”

“What can you possibly provide us, Colmarian?”

“I can manufacture you some more plasma
weapons.”

The Ontakian man raised an eyebrow.

The Ontakians had lost nearly everything in the
war. Most of their scientists were gone and they were a dying species with
dying technology.

But after six months, Delovoa turned the
outpost of Undin-Dairo into the Ontokian’s rebirth. They sent out word of what
was happening and thousands of Ontakians visited the outpost over the duration.

In exchange for money and protection and a
chance to work on highly illegal technology, Delovoa tinkered with their plasma
weapons. He didn’t entirely understand the Ontakian designs, but he understood enough
to repair and upgrade them.

The Ontakians, ever fearful of being
exterminated completely, would not stay long and quickly took their new
equipment and dispersed back across the galaxy.

Delovoa was finally getting bored of hanging
out with the perpetually angry Ontakians, who were about as much fun as any
race whose sole purpose was to exterminate his species.

Besides, Delovoa was worried he might be found.
With so many Ontakians coming and going all the time, the Navy might stumble on
him by accident in their efforts to snuff out the last of the troublemakers.

“Well, guys, I think I should be going now. I
think this has been a mutually-beneficial relationship.”

And it had been. But the Ontakians wished it to
continue, so they simply refused Delovoa to leave. Delovoa couldn’t overpower
his captors, and he didn’t speak a word of ancient Colmarian, so he couldn’t
use ZR3—a design decision he now deeply regretted.

He was essentially chained to his workstation
and forced to build plasma weapons. He had enough guards on him that he
couldn’t overpower them even if he took one of the guns for himself.

This went on for months, and Delovoa, in a fit
of passive aggressive angst, started putting flaws in the Ontakian gadgets.

He had to make the first few shots work,
because they always tested them. But he made the guns intermittently power down
or even explode. The hope was he could kill some of them down the road once the
Ontakians tried to use the weapons in real combat situations.

He made hundreds of such devices.

However, he realized his time was limited. At
some point word would come back that he was creating defective equipment and he
would face the wrath of the Ontakians. And they weren’t too friendly when they
were unwrathed.

They had confiscated his tele so he couldn’t
contact anyone for help. And he couldn’t even watch tele shows.

He just ate, slept, and built plasma weapons.

When Delovoa complained about his lack of
stimulation, his Ontakian captors beat him silly. But he took a page from
Freddie in being obstinate. He figured the Ontakians wanted his designs more
than they wanted to punch his face—though only just.

“I just want a book to read. That’s it,”
Delovoa pleaded.

“We aren’t going to give you your tele.”

“Fine. Then give me it in paper. I don’t care.
I’m just going crazy staring at sand and plasma fuel cells.”

The Ontakian glared at him. As usual.

“What book do you want to read?” he asked
suspiciously.

“I don’t know. Some history. Or language. Or
history of language. How about, “The Birth and Transformation of Ancient
Colmarian by O.O. Onoston?”

Delovoa did his best to hide his nervousness.

“We’ll see,” the Ontakian said.

Delovoa continued to work as usual, but he was
really starting to worry about being discovered as a saboteur.

One day, his captor dropped a book on his lab
table.

“Here,” he said with disgust.

It was indeed his former linguist’s book!

Delovoa was not sure how ZR3 had been
programmed. Did it really speak ancient Colmarian? It was basically just a
really expensive tractor. If Delovoa told ZR3 to “kill” his captors, would it
know what that meant? Or would Delovoa have to run around behind it yelling
“left, right, forward ten feet?” Because he didn’t think that was going to be
very effective.

As Delovoa was flipping through the extremely
large book with extremely small type, several more Ontakians entered looking
angrier than usual.

“He has been deliberately putting flaws in our
weaponry! We lost seven brothers because their rifles exploded!”

Seven. Cool.

But all the Ontakians glared at Delovoa and
walked toward him.

Delovoa held up his finger to pause for a
moment.

“Um. Gelent Beldon’es Meyarodon Anosh Nesosh
G’Denot.”

ZR3 had remained in Delovoa’s lab collecting
dust. The Ontakians had assumed it was some stupid Colmarian decoration because
of its insignificant weight.

But O.O. Onoston, the ancient Colmarian
linguist, was nothing if not thorough. ZR3 not only had a basic understanding
of ancient Colmarian it could be considered the second most proficient speaker,
or at least listener, next to the author himself.

When Delovoa had instructed ZR3 to destroy
everything except Delovoa, the robot had no difficulty translating that into
suitable action.

ZR3 activated its gravitonic field and shifted
its weight to be about ten tons, stomped forward, and killed the Ontakian
guards in less than a few seconds.

But language wasn’t exactly a binary system. It
had whole shadows of meaning and context. Which makes it a horrible choice to
program a giant construction—or destruction—robot with.

ZR3 stomped around the settlement for the next
three days literally demolishing everything. If it wasn’t pancake-flat, ZR3
pounded on it until it was.

Delovoa’s tele had been pulverized and he had
lost the dictionary in his attempt to escape the building that collapsed around
his ears.

Later, when Delovoa would kick through the
rubble trying to find anything of value, thus stirring up debris into a
non-destroyed state, ZR3 would immediately hurry over and smash it back down.