Great Sky River (33 page)

Hatchet called from behind Killeen, “Crafter say how long it’ll take?”

“No,” Killeen said warningly. If Hatchet pressured him…

Toby jerked. “It…
hurts…”

1. Locked in circuit.

2. Searching for encoded flaw.

Toby trembled. “I… I can’t…
.feel
anything anymore. My guts, it’s creeping up my guts….”

1. Must check his service systems first.
   

“All goin’
cold.”
Toby began gasping. “Dad—I—gettin’ higher up—I—arms—so
cold
—I’m scared—I—”

Killeen tightened his grip with his good arm around Toby. He tried to keep the boy from wrenching away from the effects of
the station. The boy’s hands curled, losing their tension. Killeen watched color drain from fingertips which were red-raw,
the nails split.

Behind him Hatchet said, “What’s wrong? Listen, this don’t work, that’s it. Got that? ’Cause time’s runnin’ and—”

“Shut up!” Shibo spat at him. She held Toby’s legs.

Killeen ignored them. He tried to get more information from Bud but his Face would not answer.

Toby went slack. His eyes rolled up, showing pure white.

“Damn!” Killeen whispered to himself. He massaged the boy’s skin. It was ghostly pale.

1. Subsystems are reactivated.
   
2. Correcting.
   
3. Hold still.
   

Toby let out a sudden explosive breath. His eyes shot from side to side. His arms twitched and the hands danced frantically.
Toby’s entire body seemed to jerk like a doll being animated by something within.

A relay popped loudly in the station panel.

“My… my…” Toby blinked. “My feet hurt.”

Wonderingly, in the sudden quiet, Killeen and Shibo looked at each other.

They pulled him carefully from the receiving sleeve. Toby could move his legs but the muscles were stiff and sore. Killeen
and Shibo started to help him toward the Crafter. Hatchet clapped Killeen on his bad shoulder and spun him around. “You want
fixin’, get back there.”

Killeen levered his dead arm into the receiver. The soft-ply would take the arm only at a steady, slow insertion rate. He
could feel faint throbs and hot flickers of sensation as something probed it.

The team watched in all directions, their feet scuffing nervously, weapons drawn. Fluids burbled in the elaborate frosty glassware
that towered over them all. An orange vapor suddenly vented above, hissing down among the team. They fled from it with racking
coughs.

Hatchet watched this and turned to Killeen, who knelt before the receiver, arm now up to the elbow “Workin’?”

“Can’t tell.”

Around his shoulders ran hot, quick jolts. It was like having pins thrust into him so quickly they were gone before his nerves
could react.

1. Found code.
   
2. Crafter goes fast.
   
3. Says it smells Overseer.
   

“Feel anything?” Hatchet asked.

“Yeasay.” Soundless deep bass tremors echoed in his arm.

“Damn, I wish we’d—”

“Ah!”

The receiving sleeve released him. Killeen yanked his arm free. It ached but the fingers moved. His skin was puckered, hairless,
clammy.

“Damnfine!” Hatchet waved to the team. “Let’s go. Headin’ home!”

Killeen stumbled toward the Crafter. His gait was off balance and he realized how much he had been compensating for the dead
arm. He reached the mudguard and pulled himself up, sprawling on it clumsily with boyish elation. The Crafter churned backward,
freeing itself of the station. Then the Renegade rumbled away, picking up speed. Killeen had to snatch for a venting tube
to stay on the carapace.

Small buildings flashed by. These were set into the slanted decks and ramps of a colossal room. The floor was a labyrinth
of odd, angular buildings. Conduits connected everywhere. Except for an occasional stain there was no sign of mess or sloppiness.
Oddly turned-out mechs worked on some of the high ramps. They did not move when the Crafter shot by them.

Killeen clung to a pipe and hugged Toby. The tingling in his arm seemed to sweep into all parts of his body as his systems
reintegrated. Images washed through his sensorium. Data had been stored in his arm, digital splashes
which jittered and poked in his eyes. He saw sprockets coupling to oily drivechains. Heard long-dead Veronica’s tinkling
laughter. Tasted his mother’s cooking.

Sensations released him into a kind of strength. Impulsively he kissed Shibo. She responded. Killeen laughed, enjoying the
taste of pungent air sucking in and out of his lungs, every scent amplified in the backwash of the onrushing Crafter.

The whole team was talking, merry whispers sounding over the sensorium net. The Crafter slowed at a corner and Killeen glanced
up. A large transparent panel was lit from within by pale green light. Inside Killeen could see something working. Gargantuan
legs and arms. And connecting them were bodies. Racks of ribs labored like huge bellows. Bruised pouches hung on the bellies,
like bags of entrails. Waxy skins stretched and thrust and wrinkled and stretched again.

He turned away.

The Crafter reached a broad plaza. Navvys crisscrossed it. A few larger mechs scuttled on darting missions. The Crafter speeded
up. The humans held on as the Crafter veered to miss navvys, never slowing. The wind furled their hair and stilled their voices.

Killeen could feel a wordless excitement building in the sensorium net. The distance to home is the sweetest, yet the longest,
as the mind leaps ahead.

They had gone halfway across the plaza. The Crafter went even faster, as if it sensed something.

A faint
whoooong
vibrated with reedy insistence through the sensorium.

Killeen turned. He could see nothing on this side of the Crafter that could have made the sound. There were no mechs bigger
than a navvy within sight.

—See anything?— Hatchet sent.

“Naysay.” Killeen pulled Toby closer.

Shibo’s slitted eyes studied the high buildings. The plaza was so wide that the distance washed out the detail of the bioparts
complex they were leaving behind.

—Keep your…—

—What’s that?— Cermo called. He was on the other side of the Crafter and Killeen could not make out anything.

Something went by—
tsssssip!
—overhead.

“Get over on this side,” Killeen called. “Whatever it is, the Crafter can give some shielding.”

—Right, let’s
move,
— Hatchet sent.

Shibo brought her weapon up. The Crafter plunged ahead. Its treads whined with exertion. Killeen thought he could hear them
grinding against each other. If the treads froze up out here—

Whuuuung.
Louder now The pulse frenzied the air around them.

Hatchet sent, —Watch out!—

—No!—

—ItgotVelez!—

—Get over here! Over the top! The top! Scramble!—

—What
is
it?—

—Just go!—

—Don’t look at it. That’ll open your ’ceptors, it’ll—

Whuuuuuung.

—Ah! Ah! My leg!—

—I’m blind! Gimme hand! Blind!—

—What
is
it?

Killeen did not need to look. He knew the sound of the Mantis.

The Crafter swerved. Its engines rose to a clanking, roaring din. Treads howled over the slick plaza tiles. Killeen could
hear or taste nothing through his sensorium but the snap and sputter of electromagnetic warfare as the Mantis and Crafter
dueled.

The team clambered over the crest of the Crafter, dragging the two Kingsmen who had been hit. Killeen looked into the white-eyed,
startled faces. “Dead,” Hatchet said.

“Suredead,” Killeen added.

The Mantis had extracted their memories, hopes, fears. It now knew of Metropolis, then.

And it had their Aspects as well. An immense corridor of human time collapsed now into vacancy.

The Crafter seemed immune to the hollow
whoooooom
bursts that drove livid tunnels through Killeen’s sensorium. It hammered across the plaza.

They clung to its side like fluttering kites. Their leggings and pelvic cradles rang against the humming hull.

“Toby!” Killeen grabbed just as the boy slipped.

He got a hold on Toby’s right arm, hauled upward—and lost the grip. The boy fell a meter and snagged on an outjutting pipe
fitting. Toby wrenched around, his hands scrabbling for a hold. Killeen hung from a ledge and scissored his legs, stretching.

Toby reached up but lost his precarious hold. His right hand caught Killeen’s legs, gripping the niche where Killeen’s shock
absorbers met the laminated boot guard. Toby whirled, spinning barely above tiles that flashed by
below. Killeen swung him over to a vent collar and he grabbed it.

Then the Crafter skidded.

Killeen thought they were going to go over, roll with the Crafter on top. He sought a solid lip to brace his legs against.
Before he could leap free the Crafter caught itself. It slid shrieking to a stop beside a monolithic slate wall.

“Off!” Hatchet cried. “Something’s after the Renny!”

Killeen called, “And us. It’s the Mantis.”

Stunned silence. For the first time Killeen saw an uncomplicated, true expression in Hatchet’s eyes—simple fear. “Damn-all!”

Shibo called, “We got no big weapons.”

“Hey! Can’t leave the Crafter!” Hatchet shouted as some of the team jumped to the plaza floor. “Hafta protect it.”

Killeen said, “Naysay. Shibo’s right. Our e-beams and cutters no use against Mantis.”

“If the Crafter disables it—”

“We’ll be better off spot if we can maneuver,” Killeen said.

Cermo called, “Yeasay, go! Use Crafter for cover.”

Hatchet hesitated, eyes darting to the crest of the Crafter, where the suredead hung among struts. Killeen thought the man
was considering carrying them away. Kingsmen made a solemn point of never leaving dead behind.

But no—Hatchet was watching for a sign from the Crafter. None came. The mech was busy filling the air with echoing booms.

Hatchet grimaced and nodded. He led the team directly away from the motionless Crafter. They left the
two suredead without speaking of it. Another Kingsman stumbled away with no control of his arms. He staggered grimly, eyes
fixed.

Killeen made sure Toby could move well. They headed for an alleyway in the slate wall.

The Crafter’s antennae swiveled, sending sharp slaps through his sensorium.

Shibo called, “EM only.”

Killeen saw her point. He had heard only electromagnetic cracklings. Humans might not be vulnerable to the EM assault now
raging. The Mantis was using no guns against the Crafter, though that would be the easiest way to immobilize it.

Hatchet panted as he trotted toward the alley, “Cermo, you go left.”

There was a loading dock for mechs left of the alley, covered with a jumble of yellow fan-shaped devices as big as a man.
“Try hit the Mantis,” Hatchet ordered. He sent a Kingsman to a different angle from the right.

Cermo started firing rounds at once. Killeen ducked down the alley and kept going. He dodged around large steel conduit housings,
waving to Toby to follow.

“Where you goin’?” Hatchet cried.

“Mantis can’t get back in here,” Killeen answered. “Too tight for it.” He did not slow.

“We got to help the Renny!”

Shibo called dryly, “Mice don’t help mountains.”

“Get your ass back here!”

Cermo said coolly, “Mantis comin’.”

The rest of the team glanced at one another. They had been readying their weapons. The Crafter had not moved since they jumped
off. It blocked their view of the plaza.

Now they heard through their sensoria regular thuds,
like logs rolling over rocks. As though a giant were walking across the plaza. They started edging away from the mouth of
the alley.

Hatchet shouted, “Lay down some fire!”

“Dumb,” Shibo said.

Cermo came pounding over, yelling that the Mantis had disabled the Crafter’s treads.

Hatchet looked wildly at the Crafter, then back at the beckoning alleyway.

“Renny knows the way out,” he said desperately. “Back to Metropolis.”

The team saw his confusion and took the opportunity to fall back a few paces. The thudding noise got louder. Killeen had never
heard the Mantis make such a sound. Hatchet hesitated, then spat and backed down the alley. He stopped beside Killeen. “If
you hadn’t—”

“Look.” Killeen pointed.

The Mantis reared into view over the riveted crest of the Crafter. Its antennae swept all angles methodically. Killeen whispered,
“Shut down your systems. Quick!”

His sensorium dwindled, a multicolored fluid sucked down a black drain.

The Mantis was a spindly network of moving rods. Like carbosteel bones, they jointed at gleaming chrome sockets. Thin cables
gave it jerky, oddly swift agility. This time it struck Killeen as more like a framework for a building, a mobile lattice,
than an integrated mech.

Its antennae swept past them without pausing. Did that mean it had not seen them?

The Crafter still offered some combat. Killeen saw a small armament poke from a turret and fire at the Mantis. An instant
later it dissolved in orange sparks.

“Move,” Killeen whispered to Toby. They slipped
around a bulky cylindrical array of valves and wheels, out of direct sight from the alley.

The Mantis reached the Crafter. It towered over the crescent back and seemed to be working at the Crafter’s side.

The team edged back, following Killeen. Hatchet saw that he could not stop them without either making a lot of noise or making
a fool of himself. He trotted after them.

Down a narrowing cleft between throbbing factories they ran. Muffled explosions followed them. Killeen thought it was the
Crafter dying. He looked back and saw a small missile shoot down the alley they had just left. It was gone in an instant.
Then it returned and hovered like a gleaming steel hummingbird at the intersection. Killeen felt a faint
ping
as it recognized them. The missile surged forward. Killeen had time to bring up his weapon. The missile vanished in a ball
of white smoke and thunder slapped him in the face. The missile had detonated long before its fragments could have reached
them. Killeen wasted no time wondering why. He ducked down a side passage, following the others, and gave himself over to
running.