Toy Wars (18 page)

My sensors told me the bite
carried
massive force.
It crushed my hard outer casing
and began a sideways sawing motion
.
I reached back and bashed the thing with a handy fist-sized rock, right across the nose.
The only
e
ffect seemed to
be
to knock the huge horn off its nose, but if it felt discomfort it did not give any indications.

I had hoped the creature would stop its attack once it realized I had no meat on my bones.
But alas that was not the case.
It continued mauling my leg, tearing it further asunder, twisting its body over and over in the dirt
like some biologic motor.
I was worried that it might succeed
in wrenching my limb from its socket
.
Instead, my body rolled violently with each motion of the basilisk.

As my head flipped over and my arms flailed uselessly about, I remembered the low fence.
I guess I could blame the inspiration on getting a
repeated
whack on the
sump
.

I spread all my limbs out as far as they would go on the creature
’
s next rotation. The leverage of my left arm against the ground stopped the spin.
The grinding action of his teeth on my leg didn’t.
With trepidation, I
reached down
to feel my damaged leg.
There I tried my best not to get my fingers involved in the mastication of the biologic.
On the whole I was successful.
I slipped my fingers inside the torn fur and even further into the body cavity of my calf.
My
kinesthetic
sense
exceeded even normal units. I quickly found two of my a
nkle servo wires by touch alone.
I only got one of my fingers slightly mangled as I ripp
ed
them right out of their contacts.
I lost one wire as a particularly sharp
attempt to
flip
me again
knocked my hand away.
Retrieving it
and remaining in a single attitude against the determined effort of
a creature half again my mass
,
involved acrobatics and some wild luck.
I caught it on my fourth
attempt
.

The basilisk, to my great fortune,
ignored
my actions.
Apparently it didn’t feel they were of any interest.
I shoved the now exposed wires, one to each opposite side of the creature’s head.
The charge to my servos didn’t reach
over twenty-four volts
but the creature acted as if it had been struck by lightning.
It
jerked heavily, releasing my leg as it did. I jabbed the electrodes into it again before it could catch its mental balance.
I
t
uttered a metallic whistle and
sprinted away at an even more fantastic speed than it
had
stalked me with.
I was free.
I watched the carnivore race out of my sight before I turned my attentions to myself and the mess I was.

My right leg was a disaster below the knee.
Over
70
percent of the armor casing was damaged beyond my simple ability to repair it
,
and
100
percent of the fur was gone.
The
leg’s
main hydraulic lines
slowly leaked
ochre-colored fluid into the wound.
There were also the two wires I had ripped out, but a simple five-minute fix would correct them.
The worst injury was the metal tendon which held my foot in the correct attitude.
My encyclopedic brain named it the Achilles tendon.
It was broken two-thirds down from the knee to the base of the foot and the upper piece bent inward at an extremely awkward angle.

“First things first,” I muttered to myself.
While I was contemplating the other items, I patched the leaking lines.
Of all the items in my body, the fluid I couldn’t easily replace.
My body had no method for the intake of fluids and converting them to use.
It was either the right substance, or I couldn’t function.
I could operate fairly effectively even at a loss of nearly four liters, but after that my capabilities dropped dramatically.
Luckily
,
my sensors registered
less than a
quarter
liter
of loss.
That was good.
I would have to guard against future losses.
Now my other injuries needed attending.

There was little I could do for my Achilles tendon.
I could see no way to repair myself without the aid of a
Nurse Nan
and a replacement part.
I didn’t even have the tools to remove it so that it would cause no further damage.
I took hold of it with both hands and put overload pressure on my arm and leg.
The fine, but extremely tough, metal strut bent back under the force of my pull.
After a quick look I gave one more long pull
,
which straightened the tendon enough so it no longer threatened
hydraulic line integrity or other mechanical works.
That left only the outer casing.

I could, in theory, go without my outer shell entirely.
Its loss caused only a minor pressure imbalance in my system
;
however
,
it left me open to all types of potential problems
including
mechanical failures to dirt contamination, potential damage from flying debris, fluid loss from leaks
that
would otherwise have been of no consequence.
My
body analysis
subroutine
said that if I left it open and continued near normal activity that there was a 3
percent
chance of failure beyond my ability to cope with within one day.
The chance went up to 19
percent
within a week and almost 50
percent
within three weeks.
I couldn’t take those kinds of odds.
I had to do something to improve them.

No matter how much I looked or manipulated the
old crushed casing
it would
do me no good. Not only were the sizes of the pieces much too small to be of any use, the
full casing now lay
scattered over a
400-
square
-
meter area where the creature
had
wrestled me around.

That didn’t leave much.
I glanced around to see what might be in the vicinity, but I was in a desolate part of the world.
The
gentle rolling hills
of cropped thorn grass were
barren of even a stick for as far as I could see.
That left only the things in my combat pack.
The canvass of the pack itself wasn’t good enough to provide the kind of protection I needed.
The odds with a canvas seal were still dismal out past two weeks and Humans alone knew how much longer I
needed to
operate
independent of resources
.

Looking about again, I spilled the contents of my battle pack to inventory
—
eight
clips of ammunition
,
one
empty
plastic canteen
,
two sticks black and green camouflage makeup
,
one heavy-duty combat knife in sheath
,
and
one
gun
-
cleaning kit.
In other words, it held nothing useful for the current crisis.
In fact
,
the inappropriately colored camouflage paint and canteen seemed
worthless for any use.

I sat for several hours thinking before I finally gave up.
I would just have to hope I found replacement parts before I wore myself into uselessness.
As I reloaded my
pack
, my
hands accidentally
brushed up against the basilisk’s horn that lay almost underneath me.
I was about to cast it aside when my processor stopped me.
I mulled over that dapple gray horn
—
60
centimeters long, nearly
50
centimeters in diameter at the base, and up by the rounded end, it was about
25
, in a nice
,
gradual slope.
Not quite the cylindrical shape of my calf, but it might just work.

I took the combat knife, an implement I had once thought
nearly
useless, out of my pack and began to work in earnest.
I smoothed off the broken end of the horn before moving on to remove the blunt end.
In a perfect world the knife wouldn’t have been
my first choice in implements to saw through the biologic’s horn
but Hobson’s choice blocked me. The
tedious
, repetitive
work took the better part of eight hours.
With the blunt tip removed, t
he inside needed cleaning out as there was some form of flesh still inside.
The insides cleared out with my knife much more easily than cutting through the tough outer membrane.
Then it needed to be fitted.
I slipped it on over the damaged foot.

My new bone shell fit fairly well, but it was clear that it would slide off with nothing to hold it in place.
I could bandage it up with some pieces of my backpack, but that would be marginal at best.
Then it struck me.
I could use my infirmity to my benefit.
If I notched the bone, top and bottom, I could use my broken Achilles tendon to hold it in place.
It was an excellent plan.
I whittled on the bone for another six hours to get just the right notches, sliding the
horn
over my leg time and time again to ensure a perfect fit.
Finally
,
I decided that it was as good as I could make it.

I slid the finished product over the bottom half of my
tendon
,
fitting it carefully into the lower indent and then pulling the bent upper half over the top lip of the bone.
The fit was almost as snug at the original.
It did slide around approximately
0
.3
millimeters in any direction, but I felt the risk of further contamination or injury had fallen sharply.

With my body in as good shape as I could make it, my mission called
.
I stood up with some caution.
I realized right away that walking
required some modifications
.
I now had what Humans call a limp.
I could not use my right foot to push off with, so it just stumped along
—
thump
, drag, thump, drag.
I was only making about 40
percent
of my previous speed.

By alternating strides and gaits, I had finally worked out the optimal walking algorithm.
If I pushed off with 120
percent
of rated power on my left foot it improved speed performance without any risk of damage to my left limb.
Additionally
,
I learned that if I locked my right knee joint and swiveled the entire leg around the hip joint, it not only improved speed but decreased the chance that my wound would get contaminated by reducing the lower leg movement.

After about three hours of tinkering to find optimax traveling solution, I was making 73
percent
of my former speed.
It would have to do until I could perform more effective repairs.
I decided to make one more minor change before I lit out on any long distances.
The servo wires I
had
used as a weapon against the basilisk
powered my ankle
.
I reconnected them just long enough to place my foot in an even better “stump” position needed for my newfound walking mode.
Then I disconnected them again and ran them outside of my bone splint, fastening them down to my new “skin” with a tiny bit of thread from my backpack strap.
This kept them from moving about and accidentally touching one another.
More importantly, if another basilisk decided to take a bite out of my leg, he might very well get a rude electric shock in the process.
If not, they were immediate and available for use if the brute would be so inconsiderate as to grab my other leg.