Here is Part 5 of Robot Wasteland. This week it is actually on time for Fiction Friday! If you have not had a chance, you can read chapters One, Two, Three, and Four, first.

Robot Wasteland is a serial that I wrote a while back, based on an RPG I developed of the same name (did not get sold or anything, I just ran it for a bit - so if anybody wants to publish it, you let me know), in which humanity was all but wiped out by a DARPA experiment to create Energetically Autonomous Tactical Robots (An actual real-world DARPA submission, and Yes, the acronym for that is E.A.T.R.) gone completely wild.

A couple of decades after the fall of mankind, surviving humanity has to hide, and survive, in the wasteland left by the rampaging robots who consume any organic material they can find, avoiding the metal monstrosities referred to variously as devourers, eaters, metal, etc.

But maybe there is hope.

Fewer devourers are active as time goes by, their processors fried, or their conversion chambers empty for too long.The Factories, giant moving fortresses that churned out devourers, are a thing of the past.

Maybe it is time for Mankind to stop hiding and reclaim the Robot Wasteland.

In Part Five, we find Kaz sorting things out with her new acquaintances, Roark and Linnie after destroying the reaver than had stalked Kaz the day before. Now they have 800 Kilos of reaver salvage if they can work together and get it to Junkyard - if Kaz can talk the savage tribesman to go there at all.

Robot Wasteland - Part Five

            Of course, Kaz had to negotiate. The only way any of this reaver was getting to Junkyard was on the broad back of her erstwhile ally. He had to weight 140 if he weighed a gram, and must take in a huge calorie-count to keep those thick slabs of muscle, massive torso and girder-like legs. Kaz knew some ferals were none to picky about what they ate. She remembered a couple of cannibal corpses brought in for bounty by a scrapper gang last season. They had been lean and bestial, almost animals themselves, their faces and bodies scoured and mutilated by bizarre rituals and savage lives.

            This one seemed a different breed. She hoped he was more particular as to his diet.

            In his favour, he was traveling with a child obviously not his own. Did that argue for compassion, or self interest. She saw the tension between the two in the distance the little girl maintained, the frequent sidelong looks at both of the adults around her, as if she was trying to determine who was in charge. Kaz wished she knew. Whatever control she had over the situation would evaporate with the single remaining charge in her beamer.

            She wasn’t sure that one shot would take down the moving mountain beside her. It would also mean leaving all that prime reaver in the dust, and stick her with lightning girl to mind.

            But – Lightning Girl! Kaz had seen arcs of white-hot energy leap from this girl’s fingertips – and fry a swarm of serviles! Afer the reaver was dead, she had gone through the pile of tinny little corpses, stuck a few of the best preserved in her bag. All of them were scarred with contact welds and jagged black lines. She had no idea if anything inside was worth a Scrap.

            She needed more information; on her situation; her companions; on shooting lightning from your fingertips.

            “I’m Kaz. You got a name?”

            The mountain didn’t move. But Kaz was convinced that behind that smooth-surfaced helm – that she could see was something close to the twin of the reaver they had just destroyed – he was regarding her. Finally, his voice muffled, “Roark.”

            “All right. Roark. We have 800k of high value Scrap in that reaver, if we can get it to Junkyard. We work together, we could be rich.” She tried to sell it – the dream she and Bel and Fritz had shared for three years running salvage in the outer ruin. Now, it was right there in front of her, and all she felt was empty.

            “Scrap?” 

            “In Junkyard, where I’m from, we can sell this for a lot of Scrap. Split it two, or . . .” she glanced again at the child, “or, three, ways. Even a third of this much means some high living.”

            In truth, it probably meant much more. She’d heard of reaver salvage, but never seen any. Most people ran or hid, or died. No one sought them out. The Moun. . . er, Roark, must need Scrap, or what it could bring, traveling with a kid that, lightning or not, could hardly support herself.

            Also, NO ONE wore a Reaver head as a hat!

            As if reading her mind, Roark lifted a thick-fingered paw to push the reaver’s head up, revealing his face for the first time. Blunt, brutal features, but regular; jaw and cheekbones heavy and strong like the rest of him. A heavy reddish beard, hair greying and shorn surprisingly short, perhaps to accent the shining metal studs across his forehead, down his temples and along his jaw and those knife sharp cheekbones. The combination made him look terribly dangerous, savage and barbaric in a way utterly different from those feral corpses she had seen. Grey eyes, in a habitual squint, regarded her levelly.

            What would the Junkyard make of him? Of them, she amended as she thought again of Lightning Linnie. More words from the monosyllabic giant surprised her back to consideration of their present predicament.

            “Scrap is how you trade?”

            “Right. In Junkyard, everything traded has a Scrap value. A reaver is some of the best. Of course, its internals will be slagged, but there is a lot of good metal there. Probably some of the insides are still worth a bit too. Your headpiece would be worth high Scrap too.” At these last words, Roark’s eyes narrowed further.

            His question was more of an accusation, “What keeps others from taking instead of trading?”

            “In principle, the Scrapper’s Union polices everyone. In practice, if you steal, your don’t get to scrap anymore; or at least you aren’t covered by the Union, which means you are fair game for everyone else. As a system, it works because it uses everyone’s self interest.”

            “I am not a Scrapper.” Kaz adjusted her opinion of the behemoth’s intelligence. The words Scrap and Scrapper were obviously unfamiliar, but it took him no time to figure the fault in the system.

            “That is true. But I can help you. My mom is big in the Union.”

*****

            It took some more explanation, and assurances, but Roark came around. He adroitly levered open the carcass of the reaver with his hammer, allowing her to peer inside, assess in detail.

            The internals were pretty much fused – the plasma had done what it was supposed to, and they would have to live with that. But they were living, so she didn’t feel like she could complain. Roark seemed to have a keen interest in Scrap, or more exactly, what it would buy. As she worked over the body, removing bits with her lighter tools or indicating to the big man which parts to hack or break off, he asked a number of pointed questions about what was available for purchase – if you had the Scrap.

            Unsurprisingly, weapons were high on his list. For all his obvious might, he had nothing more advanced than a retooled pipe that hurled machine gears like 2 kilo throwing disks. While she was willing to admit that it would be impressive backed by all Roark’s muscle, it was unlikely to hold its own in a gun-fight. Kaz was unsure if the Union would sell guns to the likes of Roark. Of course, she didn’t know what “the likes of Roark” was exactly.

            She was still picking over the corpse of the reaver when Roark strode away toward the line of buildings. Linnie looked up as his receding back, then at Kaz, before quickly returning her gaze to where her dirty fingers sifted sand and pebbles idly. Kaz watched as the big man used his hammer to lever out a section of corrugated metal wall, then shimmy through the gap. She took her chance.

            “Hey. Your Linnie, right?” She spoke gently, looking at the girl, smiling but not approaching. She got a quick nod in reply.

            “You’re not his daughter, are you?” She didn’t get the impression that Roark posed a danger to Linnie, but she had could see the tension in those thin shoulders, her pose. She seemed poised to run, bloodied bare feet or not. Linnie just looked back at her. Kaz couldn’t read her expression at all.

            “Are you all right?” The words sounded lame in her own ear, but she got another quick nod as the face turned to follow the sounds of Roark’s rummaging through the building. Kaz rose slowly, afraid to spook the girl, moved to her pack.

            “Let me take a look at those feet,” she said softly as she dug into her pack. Bel’s leather vest, a sleeveless jacket really, should work. She hated to cut it up, but it would do better than her own spare shirt. Shrugging, she kept both, grabbed Bel’s light with her free hand, and moved slowly toward the pale form.

            Winding the handle on the little torch, she soothed the jittery girl, “I can’t do much to clean them, but maybe we can make you some shoes, hey?” The meagre light of the torch reflected from guarded coppery eyes. But the girl didn’t run or shy away as Kaz reached for a tiny foot.

            Up close, Kaz was surprised to see that the girl was older than she thought. A year or so away from puberty, not the eight or nine winters that she had assumed. She wipe down one foot with her old shirt, noting the soft skin of a foot unused to being bare. She drew her knife and cut a pair of square patches. She did the same with the scratched and faded leather, then cut most of the rest into strips as long as she could manage. Folding first the cloth patch, then the leather one, over the foot, tied them in place with several leather strips, figuring that if one strip wore through, the others would keep the crude shoe in place. As she worked she kept up her interrogation.

            “He’s pretty scary,” she indicated Roark with a nod of her head as she whispered.

            “Not really.” Actual words. She had begun to wonder if the girl was mute. Progress. It wasn’t a boast, just a statement. And she didn’t seem frightened of him. Just wary generally. And if she didn’t think she needed to be frightened of a walking mountain wearing the severed head of one of the nastiest devourers breed to stalk the wasteland, she must know something – because Roark was more than a little scary.

            Best get to the tough questions. “Why are you with him?”

            The girl was silent for long enough that Kaz didn’t think she would answer. Then, “He found me. Saved me from . . .” the little face frowned, “he’s going to give me to someone, to get something. I don’t know who, or what.”

            The light from the torch began to fade. When she asked Linnie to wind it, the girl took it tentatively, but wound with enthusiasm, until the area was once more illuminated. When Kaz was done with the left foot, she began with the right.

            “Look,” she said, “No one is going to sell you, or give you away. I have friends in Junkard.”

            About to say more, they both turned at the sound of Roark emerging from the building. He was pulling something after him by a slender handle that rose form the low body of a machine that rolled on four rubberized wheels. Kaz knew the lawn mower from Jules stories, though she could scarce imagine a world where people used to cut grass because there was too much of it. He left the machine at the edge of the circle of light, and returned to the building, where his progress through its interior could be measured by the din they heard.

            He emerged a short time later, carrying something else; in one hand a blackened metal half cylinder that she could have easily sat in, in the other his hammer. He deposited the cylinder before them where is sounded like a metal drum. The inside had a residue of ash and the outside was charred black. Roark toed it over open side down, drove his hammer’s spike through it near the middle of the cylinder. As he pried and worked, Kaz saw what he was about, moving around the cylinder, shaping the hole he had begun, until it was a rough square about two hands across. Heedless of the grime, he took the cylinder and tested the fit over the projecting engine of the lawnmower before removing it to pry the opening wider. Another test fit and the engine stuck up through the hole. The body of the cylinder rested on the frame of the machine, wedged in place by the bars of the handle. Kaz couldn’t help but grin at the makeshift wagon’s creator as he rubbed the worst of the filth from his hands with gravel from the road. As he turned back, Roark noted her smile and returned it.

            “Big. Not stupid,” he chided, showing strong teeth.

            At first light of day, they set off. They still couldn’t take all the reaver. Even with her pushing the wagon, and Roark carrying more, they left over half if it behind, along with the remains of the swarm, secreted in the bottom of the pit in the swarm building, under a pile of thoroughly dismembered and laser-burned, former walkers.

            They met no one. After putting several K behind them, Kaz stopped and fished what little food she had from her pack: a pair of wizened rubbler haunches from Candy’s, to Linnie, who devoured them as though she had not eaten for days. She heard the big man’s stomach growl like a reaver as he watched the girl eat, saw his normally harsh expression war with something else.

            The harsh one won. Roark tossed his hammer on top of the dead reaver’s parts and shoved the wagon into motion, rocking, but not overturning its contents. The others picked themselves up to follow, both staying out of the big man’s way. 

*****

            The day was well advanced, the sun burning wan under its shroud in the west, when they saw dust on the road to Junkyard. Roark, helmet down again, saw it first. Tentatively, he took the handle of the wagon from Kaz, maneuvered it off the trail, heading for broken ground a hundred or so paces to the north. Kaz took Linnie’s hand, and they trotted behind.

            It was possible they had not been seen. They sent up little dust, and the darkening east would aid them against perception from those to westward. Kaz and Linnie caught up to Roark as he hunkered down amid the rubble of what might once have been a building, but was now simply an uneven pile of rubble. Kaz knew it, and knew that it had been picked over of even the more easily transportable bricks.

            It didn’t take long to realized that those who approached had seen them head for cover. Roark grunted, pointing at five shapes, spread out over a hundred metres of ground. As she watched, Kaz saw the outliers move to encircle their position. They were still too far to shoot, or even be recognizable, but she could see that their hands were not empty.

            She had not been idle. She had the bow out, one arrows laid beside it in the dirt and one the string. She swung the baldric for the scattergun to her front for an easier draw, stuck Fritz’s pick in her belt awkwardly as she knelt. This looked like it was going to go badly. Behind an up-thrust building corner a few meters away, Roark had begun to growl under his breath. Linnie was further back, her fair skin blending well with the chalk-colored brick. Kaz had no idea whether the girl would be of any use in a fight. She preferred not to find out.

            A moment later 200 meters out, one of the advancing figures stopped, the others nearby followed suit as the flankers continued around to either side. Something about his posture gave him away. She cursed softly, but with venom.

            Roark’s featureless helm turned in her direction.

            “I know him,” she said around clenched teeth, “just my luck. Callum Reaves. He has a gang – they give Scrappers a bad reputation.”

            “So we fight,” Roark’s voice was more than just muffled, like there was something extra there, something frightening and cold and eager all at the same time, “I want to fight.” He shifted and she feared he was going to break from cover in a mad charge, right into the mix of slug guns and crossbows she could see in evidence.

            She had to do something.

            She yelled from where she hid, sure that they were close enough to hear, “Reaves!” She motioned Roark to wait. He did, barely, muscles quivering under his weathered skin.

            “Casandra, that you?” Kaz could see the grin on the brigand’s face across a a distance too far for anything she had. He had called her by the name she had been known by as Jules’s daughter, a lifetime ago – before Bel and Fritz.

            “It’s me. Look Callum, we don’t need to fight. You go on your way, we go on ours, and we’ll leave you a little present – something nice we found in the ruin. Nobody bleeds.” Normally she would balk at leaving a servile behind as a bribe. Right now it was cheap passage, and they had much, much better. Also, she and Roark were outnumbered nearly three to one. She didn’t figure Lightning Girl in to her planning.

            Reaves considered her offer as he swung the rifle up to balance on his shoulder, appeared to stand easy. He was too far off to see the weathered features with their habitual shades and cap, but she imagined him grinning that superior grin he got when he had the advantage. After a moment, in which his flankers continued to flank, he spoke again.

            “Deal. You leave everything your carrying, and come out. We see you empty hands, we let you go.”

            “That’s not the deal, Callum!” Why did this bastard have to push.

            “Yeah, it is. Leave your gear, all of it. We let you go. If we have to come in there, we’re are going to come down on you. Fritz! You know I’ll keep my word, and my threat.”

            Kaz looked over at Roark. There was no way Callum could know about Fritz and Bel, must have assumed the three shaped heading for cover had been her, Bel and Fritz. Could she use that in the fight? And there would be a fight. This was just Callum stalling to get his men into position. She looked at Roark. The shiny reaver mask told her nothing, but his growl was constant now. The feral tribesman was ready to go.

            Then she saw the gear thrower in his fist, a 3k gear loaded and ready. The mask turned to the flanker on Roark’s side. She looked to her own target. If fighting was inevitable, taking out the two flankers evened out the odds and made this a fight with the three of them in cover and Callum’s crew in the open. Bow in hand, arrows knocked, fingers ready to draw and loose, she gauged the distance, wishing that Bel was the one using the bow.

            She heard Roark move as he straightened, sensed his thrower arm’s motion, heard him grunt as he put all his might behind the throw. They were in it now. She hoped Linnie would stay down, but she couldn’t spare a moment for the girl.    

            A figure appeared in the gap in the rubble. Without thought Kaz drew, loosing as she raised the bow, trusting her instinct to guide the shot. Bel had always tried to teach her sighting, careful aim and consistent technique. Kaz seemed to get better results the less she thought about the process of shooting. She saw the arrow speed across the distance, dropping slightly and drifting in the breeze. In that moment, Kaz knew she had missed, she had forgotten to adjust for the wind. A scream from behind her told her that Roark’s accuracy had been true.

            Roark heard the impact of the gear on his targets torso, saw his man stagger back and disappear with a scream. The big man ducked, trembling fingers fumbling another gear from his pouch, fitting it to his thrower, as a pair of bullets spanged off the cover before and behind them.

            His machine-brother howled for blood, urging him to charge, to smash, to drink the blood of his victims. Roark squashed his brother’s thoughts and fitted another gear to his thrower. He respected the deadly power and accuracy of firearms. To charge now would only allow the enemy ample opportunity to shoot him down.

            His target did not reappear, so Roark commanded the machine spirit to show him the locations of their foes. His machine-sight painted red dots over places to their fore, a yellow one representing the man on Kaz’s side to show his brother’s uncertainty. Ahead, he saw that the speaker and his two men had dropped prone. The two to either side had rectangular shields propped before them. The one his companion had called Callum lay, sighting along the barrel to their position.

            He looked to Kaz’s side, but saw no movement. His machine-brother was no help, the yellow dot faded in recognition of the absence of any foe the machine could detect. The spirit growled its frustration, and was echoed by Roark.

            Kaz had her remaining arrow knocked, awaited a target with the bow drawn. It’s counter-balancing arms and wheels allowed her to hold the position with comparative ease for such a heavy bow. Her first shot had missed as the darting shape got behind cover. Kaz had heard it impact the broken wall behind. Her luck it would have broken, she thought. But she had other things to worry about.

            A figure appeared, crossbow pointing in their direction. She loosed her arrow at the same time she saw the other bow shudder. Ducking, she knew her shot had been true. She waited for the sound of the bolt striking, prayed that Roark – or Linnie – had not been its target.

            Kaz was rewarded by the sound of the bolt striking stone with a crack, only to cry out as the gas from the bolts bulbous head began to fill their redoubt. In a heartbeat, she could see nothing but the yellowish cloud. She began to cough as the gas began to burn her eyes and nose, knowing that to run outside was to be dropped by any of the long weapons to their fore. She heard Roark Stand, roaring, heard him vault the over the rubble they had bee using as a screen, heard the shot of a rifle as she crawled toward Roarck’s side of their little redoubt, eyes watering, afraid and out of ideas.

End of Part Five