Rip's Adventures: Rip and the Tunnel, Part V

They had been backtracking for about an hour now. First they climbed back up the tunnel and now they were in the sewers again. Soon they would be coming across the dead ratlings if Rip had his bearings right. He smiled at the thought of their grisly remains lying there, a testament to his skill. Still, something was bothing Rip. “Uh, Thebes, I know I ain’t good at mapping and that kinda stuff, but I’m a fair tracker and it seems to me like we’ve been through this part of the sewers before,” Rip observed.

“That’s right. We need to go back to New Roanoke.”

“What? Go back? Why? I thought you said you had a plan!”

“I do. That’s why we have to go back to New Roanoke.”

“What the hell good is that gonna do?”

“We’re not properly equipped.”

“Not properly equipped? We must have brought everything and the kitchen sink too! If it’s not in my backpack we can just get it out of my ATV parked outside the sewers.”

“Nope. I’m pretty sure you didn’t bring what I’m thinking of.”

“Try me.”

“Fusion blocks.”

“What the frag do you need those for? You aren’t planning on making the tunnel bigger are you?”

“No. I’m planning on making a new tunnel.”

“But you said…” Rip was about to say something, but Thebes cut him off.

“Okay, look. When I examined my notes closely I noticed something peculiar.”

At this, Thebes pulled out a pocket computer and put up a holographic projection. It looked like the cavern they had just escaped from. Three sides of the cavern were rough and natural looking. The other side was smooth and somewhat rounded in shape, but it only formed part of a sphere, like the cavern was exposing that part of it and the rest was buried. “This is what the cavern looks like according to data I gathered from the laser distancer. Going off the hypothesis that the Neeman structure is spherical in shape, I examined my maps of the sewers and realized there is actually a portion of the sewers here,” she pointed to an area of space beyond the hologram of the cavern and the computer immediately extrapolated a spherical shape of the structure outward towards her finger, “where the sewers come much closer to the structure than the original tunnel does. It’s so close in fact that a few powerful fusion blocks should get us inside. No need for crawling down long tunnels. No need for walking through huge caverns filled with hostile ‘bots. I didn’t think of it before because I didn’t have my laser distancer to give me an accurate enough picture of the Neeman structure and the cavern. The best part about entering here is that it would take us inside without exposing us to the cavern…and those robot spiders.”

“Okay…” Rip pondered this a moment. He was not stupid, but this sounded a little technical to him and he was not a technical type. Nevertheless, he had one nagging question. “If you’ve got that holographic mapping computer and you already mapped out the entire sewer, why didn’t you just copy a map of the sewer from your notes into the computer before we came down here? Then you might have noticed this the first moment you stepped into the cavern and turned on the laser distancer.”

Thebes sighed and made an apologetic face towards Rip. “I just bought the computer in New Roanoke. I kinda forgot I had it.”

If it had not been pitch black in the sewers, you could have seen Rip’s face turn beet red with frustration. “Fusion blocks it is!” he said, throwing up his arms and pushing past Thebes on his way towards the sewer exit.

“Umm, Rip…” Thebes spoke timidly, not wanting to anger him further.

“What?” he responded with no small amount of resentment.

“Your nose is bleeding.”

Rip put his hand up to his nose. It was not just bleeding, it was gushing blood. He could not imagine why he failed to notice, except that he was extremely frustrated with Thebes right now. However the realization of what was happening hit him as he pulled out a rag to place under his nose. It was the first sign of Last Call. Rip was stunned. He thought he had at least a few more years left in him, but it was now apparent that he would be checking out soon. A wave of worry and concern overcame him for a brief moment.

“Are you okay?” Thebes sounded concerned. After all, Rip was being quiet and acting contemplative for once.

“Everything’s fine,” he lied. “We should get moving.”

He held the rag to his face until the nosebleed clotted, and then he threw it to the ground. Normally, he would worry about someone being able to track his blood, but this time he did not much care. He had not seen any indication of creatures in the sewers that would be able to track him that way. Besides, the rag was soaked with his blood and he did not have any place to put it.

They trudged through the sewers for several more minutes. Rip’s bio-comp quickly compensated for any negative emotions and he soon forgot why he was upset with Thebes and the nosebleed. He began to remember the satisfied feeling he was anticipating by the chance to admire his handiwork with the ratlings again. They would be passing the site of the battle by any minute now. Yep, any minute now, they would be coming across the mangled and dismembered corpses of eight ratlings, eight kills that Rip had seen through to the very end with his very eyes. This part of the sewers was very recognizable. They had to be close. He remembered the spurting blood coming from the ratling’s hand and poor Thebes standing there in shock. The blood was all over her, all over the walls. Yes, any second now they would come across that grim scene and Rip would have another good jab at Thebes for that one. Any second…

Rip switched off his thermal enhancer and lit his electric lamp to have a better look. “Thebes?”

“Huh?” Thebes was clearly distracted. She was now using her laser distancer to make a more accurate map of the sewers as they traveled.

“Where are the ratlings? And for that matter, where is the blood? I thought we painted the walls. This place has been scrubbed clean!”

Rip's Adventures: Rip and the Tunnel, Part IV

Thebes was cradled in Rip’s arms as the dust settled around them. She was out like a broken light. Rip set her gently on the ground and listened for breathing. He was no medic, but her breathing seemed normal to him. Hopefully she’d wake up soon. He was already beginning to feel the aftereffects of the adrenaline rush. He knew the biocomp was already kicking in with dopamine to numb the pain and more hormones to compensate for straining himself so hard, but damage had been done. Even though he could not feel it, he knew he had torn several muscles. He would have to rely on his improved juicer healing factor for that. Nevertheless, as he glanced down the tunnel towards the exit, he saw that it had collapsed just like he hoped it would. To add a bit of grim satisfaction to his endeavor, he noticed what seemed to be a metal spider leg sticking out of the rubble.

“Good riddance,” he muttered, but it made him keenly aware of how narrow the escape had been.

Luckily, the cave-in had only occurred behind them and not ahead of them as well—or on top of them. So they weren’t trapped. But if they were going to explore this Neeman ruin Thebes had discovered, they were going to have to find another way in. Rip walked over to Thebes, rifled through her knapsack for a canteen and medical kit, and then dripped some water down her throat. He sprinkled a little on her face to see if he could get her to come to. She sputtered a bit and roused as if from a bad hangover. “Gods what happened?”

Rip dampened some gauze from the medical kit and used it to clean some of the cuts and dirt on Thebes’ face before answering. “Barely made it out alive is what happened. Don’t know what those spider ‘bots were, but they can outrun me. And that’s sayin’ something. If we hadn’t had an impressive lead I doubt we’d have made it.”

“If the legends are true, the Neemans had incredibly advanced technology. It’s possible those ‘bots have stood as guardians for centuries. That doesn’t surprise me.”

“Yea, well, my guns weren’t doing jack-shit. And I didn’t care to stay around to engage in fisticuffs with a ten-foot tall metal spider. We’re gonna have to find another way in.”

“Hold it,” Thebes said, sitting up and grabbing Rip’s arm. “I got lost in these sewers looking for that kid and spent like, three days mapping them out. I know every inch of them by now. There is no other way in. We’ve got to find a way past those things.”

“Sister,” Rip said, looking her straight in the face, “I’ve been in the mercenary business for ten years. I’ve been a juicer for five of those years. I know an unwinnable fight when I see one. We ain’t gettin’ in that way.”

Thebes wiped her forehead with her sleeve. It didn’t accomplish much other than to spread the dirt around. She was covered in dust from the cave-in. “Frag it,” she grumbled.

“Maybe you don’t understand how close we both came to dying back there. You see that pointy piece of metal sticking out of the rubble right over there? That thing was looking to impale you and me as soon as it got close enough. A few more seconds and it would have. Now you give me a platoon of mercenaries or just a handful of juicers with rail guns or plasma weapons and maybe I can deal with that shit, sure. But as it stands, all you got is me, and I don’t think you can afford much else. So unless you’re feeling suicidal, we find another way. Maybe you think just because I’m a juicer I don’t care about death, but I plan to live straight up ‘till Last Call. I got juiced so I’d have a half-way decent chance of surviving a few years into adulthood, not so I could go out in a blaze of glory.”

They were both quiet for a few minutes. Rip pulled out some dried smoked ham and drank some water from his canteen while Thebes pulled out a fairly bright electric lantern and began to pin her notes up on the wall. While Rip wasn’t a cartographer, it quickly became obvious to him that Thebes had made a very detailed map of the area. She clearly was not lying when she said she had mapped the entire sewer complex.

When Thebes hired him, she told him that she had initially discovered the ruins of the pre-Rifts city of Blacksburg, Virginia quite by accident. A small kingdom by the name of New Roanoke had its capital in a town nearby and a child of the ruling house from that town had gone missing. Thebes and an elf wilderness scout by the name of Lorr had set out to find the boy and tracked him to what appeared to be an old cave. However, upon further investigation, it turned out to be an old sewer drainage system. Although the earth had apparently covered up much of the ruins of the city above, the drainage system below continued to feed into a nearby river from an unknown source. It had remained relatively intact since the Great Cataclysm, and they were able to identify the name of the city above by plaques written in American located at various points in the sewer.

During their exploration of the sewers, Thebes and Lorr got separated when they heard an unusual noise. Lorr told Thebes to wait for a moment while he went to investigate. But he never returned. Thebes wandered the sewer for three days, using some of the mapping notes Lorr had left with her and building upon it on her own until she finally found the exit. At that point she found her way back to New Roanoke. Though she never found Lorr or the child, she had come across the tunnel that led to the Neeman ruin. It was at that point she decided she needed some muscle if she were to go back. After interviewing several potential applicants in town, she found Rip, a veteran of both the Juicer Uprising and the Siege of Tolkeen and hired him on the spot.

“You just gonna keep tacking up pages from your notepad all day?” Rip asked. “’Cuz I’m gettin’ bored. And juicers don’t like bein’ bored.”

“Calm down, Julian Amici,” Thebes said with a smirk. “I believe I have a plan.”

Rip's Adventures: Rip and the Tunnel, Part III

Rip was running at a break-neck pace, carrying Thebes the whole way; there was no way she could outrun these monsters so dragging her along was her best chance at survival (and his best chance of getting paid). He let off a wild blast from his NG-57. It was a lucky shot. It hit the nearest one leaving a scorch mark square in the chest, but it didn’t seem to phase the thing one bit. “Damnit!” he screamed. “Thebes, I don’t suppose you have any idea what these fraggers are!”

“Um, shit, lemmie think a minute,” Thebes was at a loss for words, which wasn’t a good sign. She was always happy to brag about all the stuff she knew about. With every passing second, Rip grew more unnerved. Thebes could identify just about every creepy, crawly D-Bee or supernatural being that walked the earth and she had never seen these, whatever kind of spidery things they were.

“Maybe they’re automated guardians,” Thebes conjectured as Rip let off another blast from his gun more out of blind hope than anything else. It had the same result as before.

“Wait a second. Now you’re guessing?” Rip roared in fury as he looked back to see the two spider-like creatures were gaining fast. He was hot-footing it to the tunnel, but he wasn’t sure he was going to make it. “I thought you were supposed to be some great know-it-all rogue scholar.”

“There’s a reason I’m a scholar, juice-for-brains. I haven’t learned everything yet!”

Rip let off another blast as he trod harder and harder towards the tunnel. It was his only hope. These things were clearly out of his league. They were way too big, and his ion guns were just tickling them. His mind flirted with the idea of leaving Thebes behind, but even that would probably distract only one of them, and even if it worked, he wouldn’t get paid. He had an idea, but he would have to get inside the tunnel first.

One thing was certain, it did seem like Thebes’ guess was right. As he glanced over his shoulder for another blast, he got the distinct feeling that they looked robotic in some way. Perhaps it was the way they were shaped, or the way their legs moved, but it just wasn’t organic. He could also swear he saw some kind of long tubes protruding from their chests which he presumed to be cannons of some sort. That brought him to a new realization—if they did have guns, they hadn’t used them yet, meaning the robots may have been ordered to capture and not kill. He wasn’t sure if that made him feel better or worse.

The tunnel was getting closer. He could already see the faint drafts of air that outlined it within the extent of his thermal vision. The last time he had turned around to catch sight of the ‘bots the metal wall was out of view. Closer now. The ‘bots felt like they were on his heels. With every foot step he could feel the pounding of their metal legs get closer and closer. He knew they were ‘bots for certain now. He could hear the grinding of gears, the whirling of internal belts, the faint scent of electricity in the air. He could almost feel the wind in their steps. He stopped worrying about turning to shoot and focused all his energy on making that last final sprint for the tunnel. He engaged in a mental exercise he had learned up north from another juicer to instill a false sense of terror, even though these creatures didn’t really horrify him. This induced his bio-comp to increase his adrenaline, giving him a slight increase in speed. It wasn’t much, and he would pay for it later, but it might just be enough to get to the tunnel in time.

When he could see the tunnel within a few leaps and strides he quickly performed the following maneuvers. First, he tossed his NG-57 inside as far up the tunnel as it would go. Then he ripped the top half of his grenade belt off, telling Thebes to hold on to the two parts, five grenades on each side. As he made his first stride he slid one finger and a thumb into each grenade pin. On his second stride, he yanked the pins out. On the third stride he chucked the top half of his grenade belt down towards the exit then kept running like hell up the tunnel, stopping only briefly to grab his gun. A few moments later a great tremor shook the tunnel as the grenades exploded, throwing rock and dust violently about and tossing Rip and Thebes to the ground. Then all was quiet.

Rip's Adventures: Rip and the Tunnel, Part II

“Holy hells, Rip!” the woman exclaimed. “Did you kill all six of the others yourself already?”

“I told you, Thebes,” the juicer replied coolly, wiping ratling blood off his body armor. “It’s what I do.”

“Ugh, its hand is still spurting blood. My body armor is covered in it,” Thebes grimaced as she looked down. Like her companion, Rip, she was covered in ratling blood. It had sprayed all over her when she had sliced off the hand. Now it lay lifeless on the ground, and while its neck wound was instantly cauterized by the ion beam, the hand wound was gushing blood.

“Are we gonna get on with this or what?” Rip asked. “Don’t tell me you got a problem with blood.”

“No, it’s not that. Let’s keep going.”

Thebes pulled out her notepad and began to examine her notes.

“You know I still don’t get why you have to use that thing,” Rip noted with more than a hint of frustration.

“Well, you’ll pardon me,” Thebes chided, “if I didn’t know I was going to stumble upon an unmarked ruin last time I was here. I didn’t realize I’d need an auto-mapper. I was just looking for a lost kid, not the lost city of Indianapolis. So I was forced to do it the old-fashioned way. Nevertheless, you shouldn’t be worried. I’m quite a skilled cartographer, even if all I had to work with was charcoal and a 3” by 5” notepad.”

“Remind me. Why are we tromping around in sewers again? Anything could just jump out of the shadows and surprise us here. I know you found something interesting down here, but there’s got to be another way.”

“Nope. The entire city above seems to have been covered with rocks and dirt at some point after the arrival of the Rifts. Nowadays it is completely overgrown. I don’t have the resources to bring a whole excavation team out here. On top of that, an excavation team on the surface is far more likely to be spotted by something much more dangerous than ratlings.”

“Humph. I guess we should consider ourselves lucky that you at least mapped out the place.”

They walked for several more minutes in silence. Rip held on to one of his NG-57s and kept his other hand on his grenade belt in case anything really dicey came along. He took point while Thebes took up rear guard, not that he was sure she would keep them safe from anything that tried to sneak up behind them. She was fairly perceptive, but her reflexes left a lot to be desired. Of course, compared to Rip, just about everyone’s reflexes left something to be desired.

Walking in silence got boring quickly. The only sounds were their footsteps and the occasional turn of a page on Thebes’ notepad. “So what is it you’re looking for down here anyway?” Rip asked.

“A computer.”

“Well what kind of a computer?”

“A super-computer. Artificial Intelligence. REAL Artificial Intelligence. I’m not talking about the kind of programmed crud that comes with your standard issue Coalition Skelebot.”

“Bullshit. I thought all that stuff got destroyed in the Great Cataclysm. Even Triax doesn’t have that kind of tech.”

“Yes but there are some of us who think there might be A.I.s that survived the Great Cataclysm. Erin Tarn is one of them. She has speculated on it many times in a number of her writings.”

“Erin Tarn is a hack,” Rip replied. “A crackpot with a bug up her ass about the Coalition. She’ll say anything if it gives average people hope enough to fight the goose-stepping bastards.”

Thebes didn’t respond, but she did stop to closely examine her notes.

“Look,” Rip explained, “I don’t care why you’re here as long as you’re paying me. I’m just saying you’re wasting your time.”

“Your position on the matter is noted. And we turn left here.”

Turning left meant exiting the sewers at a place where it seemed someone had blown a hole away from the side and into the bedrock. A rough-hewn tunnel lay beyond.

“Who the hell did this?” Rip asked in amazement. The tunnel looked fairly recent, yet it was hard to imagine someone carrying so much earth and stone out of the sewer all those miles they had traveled to dump it someplace. More likely it was some type of magic.

“A warlock—or maybe a shifter—summoning earth elementals I imagine,” Thebes theorized. “Whoever it was would have had to know where he—or she—was going though.”

“Why would practitioners of magic care about an A.I.?” a confused Rip asked.

“Hard to say. Maybe they didn’t think they were pursuing an A.I. Perhaps someone gave them reason to believe they were hunting down a rare magical item or a spell of legend.”

They proceeded down the rough-hewn passageway which was sloped downward at roughly a thirty degree angle. Because of this, they got out their climbing gear and secured a grapple and lightweight rope to the top. They only had a thousand feet of rope between them however, so they couldn’t say for certain if that would last them. Sure enough, the rope ran out after about a half hour of difficult climbing and they were forced to go the rest of the distance the hard way. Thankfully, the slope had begun to level off a little bit by this time and they believed they were getting close to their destination, at least by Thebes’ recollection.

When the slope finally leveled out, they found themselves entering a fairly enormous cavern. “Just like I told you,” Thebes smirked.

“No kidding,” Rip remarked as he stepped out of the tunnel and into a gigantic underground expanse. Even with his Multi-Optics Helmet (M.O.H.) the dimensions of the cavern were inscrutable. It had to be more than a mile wide and a half a mile long. He could already see Thebes pulling out a laser distancer, a tool she was not equipped with the last time she was here.

“Just as I remember,” she said. “There’s a solid structure dead ahead of us about 2500 feet. We should head that way.”

Rip complied, but he kept his wits about him. Wide open spaces like this in the dark were not the kind of places he liked to be. Within a couple minutes, he began to see a wall ahead of him on the edge of his thermal imager. But it wasn’t what he was expecting. Instead of a cavern wall there was what appeared to be hardened plates, a panel of steel or M.D.C. alloys or composites, probably the latter judging by its construction and sheer immensity. As they approached closer, he could see that there was a separate panel built into it large enough for a man to fit through. On this second panel was the emblem of an eagle and the letters N.E.M.A. below it. Rip wasn’t great with letters, but there was hardly a soul in North America who hadn’t heard the legend and couldn’t recognize the insignia on sight.

“Nemans?” Rip asked in astonishment.

“The very same. Now do you see why I brought you down here?”

But she didn’t have time to elaborate. Rip suddenly detected something on the ceiling about a thousand feet above them. A spider-shaped creature—no two of them—were crawling down the wall, moving towards their position. They needed to get back to the relative shelter of the tunnel quickly. He grabbed Thebes without thinking and shouted, “Back to the tunnel!”