“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!”
“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!”
No comments:
Post a Comment