Steelheart (12 page)

The possibility of an accidental collision was considered and quickly rejected. It didn't take a Class VII processor to backtrack the object's path to The Eye of God and reach the logical conclusion.

Michael fired his steering jets, swore when one of them failed to respond, and made the necessary adjustments. Timing would be critical, since another stone cannonball had already been launched and would arrive soon.

The satellite sent a burst of code to his recently constructed weapons platforms and hurried them into position. They fired at the point where the next meteor should arrive and were rewarded with three direct hits. The object exploded. A thousand tiny fragments spun into space.

Gratified by the fact that he continued to exist, Michael scanned the surrounding volume of space. The Eye of God had adjusted its aim for the second shot—and that suggested some sort of observer. A remote capable of tracking his movements. But where? His scan revealed nothing more than the usual debris.

The third meteor flashed in from the far side of the planet, took evasive action, and escaped platforms one and two. Three and four managed to nail the missile—but it was close.
Too
close.

Michael changed his position, redeployed his defensive screen, and ran a second scan. He used a tighter set of parameters this time—searching for any sign of heat, and listening for telltale radio traffic. Orbital space junk, of which there was plenty, should be cold and silent.

There! A heat signature the size of a pinprick! And a half-second burst of code!

The fourth and fifth meteors arrived in tandem. The platforms hit number five, but four got through. Michael fired his lateral jets, saw something blur past, and knew he'd been lucky.
Very
lucky.

The satellite fixed a targeting laser on the tiny spy eye, blew the device out of existence, and shot upward. Meteors six, seven, and eight passed below. Their passage gave him an idea.

Without a spy eye to guide its efforts, the Eye of God could do little more than guess. The next two flights were miles off target. The poor accuracy wouldn't last forever, though. The spy eye could and would be replaced.

Michael took advantage of the break to redesign platforms three and four. Nano swarmed, metal flowed, and new capabilities came into being.

Michael waited for the nano to complete their work, allowed the next set of meteors to flash by, and used data on past orbits to calculate which one the next set were most likely to take. The Eye of God was a methodical sort—and that meant predictable.

Michael knew where to look by now, and used his long-range sensors to detect the oncoming missiles a full thirty seconds before they arrived. Plenty of time for the reconfigured weapons platforms to accelerate and match velocities.

The meteors flashed into view, wobbled as the platforms fired on them, and accelerated away. The impact of the non-explosive rounds had been intended to
steer
rather than destroy them.

Michael smiled, or would have if satellites had lips. The meteors, stupid rocks that they were, would be herded to the far side of the planet, where they would collide with the machine that sent them. That was the plan, anyway ... and it might even work.

 

The Eye of God was busy. There were newly manufactured spy eyes to dispatch, more meteors to launch, and his regular duties to attend to. That's why he failed to detect the incoming rocks until they were less than a thousand miles away. Troublesome, but far from disastrous, since there was plenty of time to take evasive action.

The satellite elected to boost itself up into a high orbit, fired the necessary jets, and put a vertical mile between itself and the oncoming menace. Or
believed
that it had, only to discover that the attacking objects had developed the ability to track their target, and were changing course. A sentient being might have been surprised, frightened or angry. The Eye of God felt no emotions whatsoever. What was, was.

The Mothri machine managed to dodge two missiles by diving down toward Zuul, but the third rock hit dead center and caused considerable damage. The satellite tumbled through space, went off-line, and nearly ceased to function.

A lesser machine would have been destroyed, but the Eye of God had millions of onboard nano, and they could carry out repairs.

 

Michael considered his options. His opponent was helpless and completely vulnerable. Now was the time to close the distance and kill the evil machine before it could repair itself.

But what of "Thou shalt not kill?" What of the Koran's prohibition against murder? What of the Eightfold Path? And the respect for life?

Not that the Eye of God was alive—or was it? After all, the machine could absorb raw materials, grow, and adapt itself to surrounding conditions. Chances were that it could even reproduce itself with help from onboard nano.

Thoughts whirled, and Michael did likewise. He wanted help, advice of some sort, but the stars were mute.

 

 

 

11

 

guild /
n / an association for mutual aid and the promotion of common interests

 

 

The "Mountain Express," as Bolano and his crew liked to call it, consisted of twelve tractors and two trailers each.

The tractors, also referred to as "crawlers," were huge machines that rode on six-foot-high tracks. Originally intended for surface exploration, they had been adapted for commercial use when the humans discovered that the most desirable portion of the planet's surface had not only been colonized by other species, but parceled out as well. That was earlier, of course—before everything turned to shit.

Owned by the Guild, and theoretically protected by Guild troops, the crawlers were a critical link between Shipdown and the brave souls who had colonized the eastern slope of the north-south mountain range known as God's Teeth. Without the trains, and the supplies they brought, the subsurface farms would fail. The reverse was true as well— without the farms, the citizens of Shipdown would starve. It was a precarious commerce, subject to interference from the Antitechnic Church, bandit raids, and the vagaries of the weather. Not that the weather is especially vague, Bolano thought as he squinted into the wind-driven hail. It sucks.

Each tractor had a name, and in most cases, a lovingly maintained emblem. The lead unit, easily recognized by the monster mouth painted across the surface of its enormous dozer blade, was called "Bullet Eater," or just plain "Eater" for short. The name appeared within the mouth, as if held in position by large white teeth.

The moniker stemmed from the fact that the number one machine was the first to be fired on—especially if the bandits were poorly disciplined, which most of them were.

Bolano followed the big yellow track back to where light flared under the tractor. That's where Casey would be, flat on her back, patching the hole left by a homemade mine. He crouched where the technician could see him and waited for her to finish what she was doing.

A full minute passed as Casey ran the final weld, killed the torch, and used a thickly gloved hand to push the shield away from her face. She had short brown hair, freckles that seemed to have been splattered across her face, and a nearly perpetual grin. "So, boss-man, what gives? Must be important to bring your ancient butt all the way out here."

Pete Bolano was thirty-one but felt ten years older. "Good morning to you too, Casey—nice to see you doing some work for a change. The Guild will be pleased."

Both of them laughed. The woman rolled out from under the tractor, used the coupler to pull herself up, and removed the gloves. "Damned scavs are gettin' too big for their britches. Another half inch and the blast would have cracked the transfer casing."

Bolano nodded. He was a good-looking man, or had been back before worry had etched deep lines into his skin, and a bullet had entered his open mouth and exited through his cheek. When Casey spoke, he listened. "I hear you, Case— I'll talk to the colonel. Maybe he'll actually do something this time."

"Good. So what's up?"

Bolano shrugged. "I might have a pusher for unit one. A pusher
and
an electronics tech. They're married. Wanta meet them?"

Casey remembered how the last pusher had gone for a midnight stroll, fallen into a ravine, and broken both of his legs. Months would pass before the idiot would push steel again—assuming Bolano wanted him back. The tech nodded emphatically. "Damned right I do! We've got enough maintenance problems without having another dickhead behind the controls."

Bolano grinned. "That's what I thought you'd say ... let's go."

 

Endslope's so-called "terminal" had been created by bolting a couple of full-sized cargo modules together and removing the shared walls. The simple addition of some wooden stairs, a porch, and a hand-painted sign completed the structure.

Rumor had it that the mountains made for a spectacular backdrop, but they were cloaked in clouds, and Doon hadn't seen them yet. Not on this trip, anyway.

The office occupied one comer of the terminal and was separated from the rest of the "lounge" by a series of flimsy partitions. They'd been waiting for half an hour, and their packs lay heaped in a comer. A mishmash of photos had been taped, pinned, and tacked to one of the dividers.

Doon had seen the picture of Earth many times before. Mostly blue floating against the blackness of space. The image evoked none of the homesickness that humans seemed to experience, only a sense of curiosity. How could they have been so stupid? Yet simultaneously brilliant? Capable of destroying one world and fleeing to another? Even if it had been colonized by others. The folly boggled his mind. Or his CPU, as the case might be. Mary touched his arm. "Look."

Doon looked. This photo showed an enormous boulder sitting on top of a scrap pile. Except that the scrap had been a trailer once. Before the rocks fell on it.

"Just one of the problems we face," Bolano said mildly. "Still interested in the job?"

Doon turned to find that Bolano had returned. A woman stood at his side. She wore a crewcut, shoulder holster, and badly stained overalls. Her fingernails were short and rimmed with grease. The handshake was firm. "Hi, my name's Casey, and you are?"

The synthetic checked, found her file, and brought it up. Her face aged slightly as his Law Package updated the file. She was clean, or had been prior to the quakes, and their paths had never crossed. "Doon, Harley Doon. This is my wife Mary."

The women shook hands. Bolano perched on the corner of his makeshift desk, and Casey leaned against the wall. The heel of her right boot added one more half-moon-shaped mark to the twenty or thirty that were already there. "Casey's our senior power tech," Bolano explained, "and takes an interest in the folks who push her rigs. Hope you don't mind."

"Don't blame her," Doon replied evenly. "I'd do the same."

Bolano nodded. "All right, then.—let's get to it. You say you can push a rig—where'd you learn?"

"In a class two VR simulator," Doon lied. "Aboard the ship."

The truth was that Doon had been "born" knowing how to tie his shoes, conjugate verbs, cook a gourmet dinner, fieldstrip a grenade launcher, fly a plane, and operate heavy equipment. In short, anything and everything that might come in handy. Still, the answer
sounded
believable, and that was sufficient.

"How 'bout actual experience?" Bolano prompted. "Simulators are one thing... pushing a rig through a landslide while bullets ricochet off the cab is something else."

"I did some work around Ditch," the android answered vaguely, "just before the mudflow took it."

"And you're an E-tech?" Casey asked, directing the question to Mary. "Ever rewire a Class A tractor?"

"No," the roboticist answered truthfully, "but I'm cleared to troubleshoot Class C construction droids. Sorry."

"Don't be," Casey replied. "Our tractors are bigger than construction droids—but a lot less complex. Anyone who can scope a CD won't have any trouble with a crawler."

"So," Bolano said cheerfully, "how 'bout a little spin around the parking lot? No offense, but talk is cheap."

Doon shrugged. "I'm ready ... let's do it."

Bolano led them out into a sea of track-churned mud. It was half frozen and difficult to walk on. The android followed the trainmaster as he headed for a tractor. A skull and crossbones had been emblazoned on its side. Doon took notice of the fact that a turret had been mounted on top of the rig. A pair of automatic slug throwers threatened the lead-gray sky.

"That's unit twelve," Bolano said by way of explanation. "Better known as 'Tail Bone.' You'll notice she mounts a dozer blade. The first unit wears one too. That's how we deal with landslides. Most are caused by the tremors ... but some are planned. That's why speed is important. The longer we sit there, the longer they can work us over. Small arms for the most part... but command-detonated mines are popular of late. Some are bandits and the rest work for the Church. Got any questions?"

The android placed a boot on the lowest rung of the cab's access ladder. He looked up, then back to Bolano. "Just one. How many of these things have you lost?''

The trainmaster looked grim. Two tractors—four trailers— twenty-three people."

Doon nodded. "Just wondered."

Mary watched the android climb toward the cab and wondered how he would do. The synthetic had the programming but lacked the experience to go with it—something synthetics needed the same way people did.

Artificial intelligence, of the sort Garrison favored anyway, was modeled on the human brain. Doon knew which lever to pull, and when to pull it, but how much pressure was the right amount? The answer would determine whether they walked or rode.

Doon came level with the cab, opened the bullet-pocked door, and swung inside. The first thing he noticed was the smell. A rich amalgam of body odor, stale cooking, and the tang of ozone.

Bolano waited for the android to settle into the driver's seat and took the passenger position. Doon scanned the instrument panel and associated controls. The drive-by-wire system originally intended for use by cyborgs and robots had been junked or stolen. Not that it made any difference, given the role he was playing. The control levers were bare where hands had worn through the rubber grips. The foot pedals gleamed from contact with countless boots. A crucifix had been taped to the dash. It looked like an old-fashioned gun-sight. The chair whirred as Doon made adjustments.