Amish Vampires in Space (70 page)

“Yes?” I say.

“TreArc property, right?” The kid looks nervous, like this is his first big outage. The first time his master pricked his brain awake.

I do a quick check: He’s level ten. I frown. Probably
is
his first.

“You have an implant,” I say. “Use it.”

He waggles his head. “Sorry,” he squeaks. “Just trying to converse. I know you’re TreArc. Know your rep.”

I nod. “And so…?”

“You got three up front,” he says. “Part of the bottleneck.”

I sniff, squint at the jumbled chaos ahead. “Figures.” I sigh at him. “Three! Really?”

He frowns, waggles again. “I would’ve tried ’em,” he says, “but my master was adamant. Only wants me risking on ours. That’s pretty much spec for tonight.”

Real team effort. “Appreciate the thought,” I say.

I pull the bag from my shoulder and break into a jog. I pass two barges parked side by side, and then a third that has somehow gotten itself sideways in front of them. This last has all four loading arms extended and draped lifelessly over its sides, as if it intended to crabwalk its way free. It has a sickly sweet odor to it too. Perhaps the food within is about to spoil. Faulty refrigeration backup, probably. Glad it isn’t mine.

Then come two newer models. X30s. Clean and polished, with scarcely a nick in their crossed saber logos. Hardiest drift on any lot, the shills claim. Yet here they sit, dead as the rest. Deceit in advertising. You got nothing against A’s lightning, streamshills! I scoff. I hear crosschatter from other debuggers. Someone begging for missed hexspanners. Another whining that they’re low on sheets. Someone describing talk circuits.

Talk circuits? No barge has talk circuits. I shake my head. Low levels…

After passing a few more barges, I catch the sound of two debuggers in disagreement. A stream touch gives me their names: BullHammer and ThreadBare.

“Don’t know,” one says. “Haven’t worked on any from before they had skin.”

“But you got the specs, right? It is in your head.”

I think I know what they’re about. Their location is off to my right and not completely out of my way, so I move that direction.

I find BullHammer and ThreadBare—both older than the last DR I encountered, but still fairly young—crouching before a vaguely humanoid servbot. The bot is clearly meant for industrial applications and has about a decade of wear. My first clue to its age is the flexmetal exterior. Since the invention of synthskin, the old flexmetal models are rarely seen anymore. The bot is the color of burnt umber, with an elliptical yellow logo on its forehead. It is roughly humanoid, though with wheel runners instead of legs. Cold eyes stare out at me. Another casualty of the storm.

“I can handle this myself,” ThreadBare says to BullHammer. “Just go back to your barge.”

“My driftie is like a three nanosecond job,” BullHammer says. “Simple fluid sheer and a possible boot rewrite.” He raps the bot on the shoulder. “Pointless if this hunk is still sitting here. I’ll foul the hovergears running it over.”

Knowing my priority is still ahead, I contemplate moving on. I’m not here for a servbot. Still, should I leave it to them?

ThreadBare reaches into his bag and pulls out a rolled flexible
sheet—
a debugger’s favorite viewing device. He peels off the stickum that holds the roll together, stretches the sheet taut. He’ll kill the bot if he continues.

I can’t watch any longer. I send them a “Stop” in the stream.

They turn to look at me, eyes wide. “You’re from TreArc,” Bull says then. “Your drifts are up front, twelve. Syncs perfectly with what my master always says.” He smiles. “Says Tre’s get preferential treatment.”

I sniff. “Yeah, that’s right,” I say, dripping sarcasm. “Only the Imam’s own mechanicals before ours.” I nod at the bot. “What’s down with this one?”

“I’m fixing it,” Thread says. His unrolled sheet reflects the yard lights above. “Just trying to get a read on what’s wrong.”

I shake my head. “That a new sheet?”

“Of course,” Thread says. “Only the best. Got it at Grim’s yesterday.”

“But what age is it?”

“Current age, I guess. What does it matter?”

I frown. “Because a current age sheet won’t work on this bot,” I say. “The skin won’t stand it. In fact, you’ll probably just make things worse.”

“How could a sheet make things worse?”

I point at the bot’s midsection. “See those ridges there?” He looks and nods. “They’re not resistant to sheets. You slap a sheet on that, and you’ll plug it for life. Then you’ll have to
carry
this bot out of here somehow.” I give Bull and Thread a once-over—they’re slight in build, but that’s not unusual for DRs. All of us are. “I doubt you can manage it.”

Bull looks annoyed. “Might as well start pushing now then. ThreadBare is slow going.”

Thread raises a fist. “Bull, you blinking—” I see a flash of pain in Thread’s eyes then and the fist lowers. His whole countenance changes. “Peace be to you, brother.”

Bull smiles brightly. “And to you be peace, together with A’s mercy,” he says. But he doesn’t really mean it. None of us do.

I shake my head. “Now that you’ve got that out of the way, do you want me to give it a pitch?”

Thread frowns. “Rails, man, I got it. How hard can it be?” Returning to the bot, he slides a hand over its chest and midsection. He next attempts to peer into the aforementioned ridges.

“What are you doing?” BullHammer asks.

Thread keeps looking. “Trying to find what’s wrong.” I let him search a couple seconds longer. “Rails,” he says then. “I give. How do you see inside this thing?”

I open the side pocket of my bag and take out a small hex pin. I feel along the surface of the bot until I find a tiny depression, work the pin into place. I’m rewarded with an audible
Chunk.

“Access plate,” I say. I find the side of the plate, swing it forward. It opens to reveal the inner workings of the bot. Everything is dark.

I check the bot’s specs on the stream, just to be certain. “These things have a hard reset,” I say. “Only way to get to it is through the plate. Can’t stream it. Can’t probe it.” I point to a place just below the bot’s midsection. “Shine a light here.”

Bull and Thread exchange glances, and then race to see who can retrieve a light from their bags first. Bull wins.

With the light, it is easy to see the finger-sized hole. I slide a finger in, find the sliver of the reset switch, and trip it up. The bot’s eyes respond with a flickering glow. Success!

“It needs a full thirty seconds to check itself,” I say. “Then give it the usual ready command and stream it to get out of the way.”

Thread looks at Bull, whose smile has long since departed. “That was hip work there, twelve.”

“Sandfly,” I say. “Twelve is just a level.”

Bull flushes, looks apologetic. “Right.” Both bow then, which I answer with a quick nod of my head. “Keep your bits flowing, boys.”

Leaving them to their waiting, I turn toward the mass of dead barges again and just run.

“HardCandy is up there somewhere,” Thread streams to me. “Be careful.”

I almost chuckle at that. Leave it to a low level to notice the only girl in the yard. In our entire universe, really. Not that it makes any difference.

• • •

It isn’t long before I’m debugging my second driftbarge. The first was an easy fix. It had partially fixed itself by the time I reached it, in fact. That’s the beauty of integrated nanotech. Sometimes the problems just erase themselves.

But this second one, well…

This particular model is an X15—a ten-ton behemoth—and it has needed attention for some time. The lightning was just the straw, you know? The final cap.

I’m near the top of the front section, where the bulk of the mover’s mind is located. Higher than I like to go without a harness, but I’m okay this time. Both the back and front surfaces are sloped and kept slick to prevent unwanted boarding. For a normal human, that makes things difficult. But I’m far from normal. The barge will extend handholds for those who speak its language. Which I do.

I have a string of sheets laid across a section of its tubular brain pan, and all they’re showing me is chaos. Pipes are sheared, pathways fried, the nanos are in a state of panic—scurrying like ants in a downpour.

Working two barges over is HardCandy. I’ve attempted to touch with her a few times on the stream in the last couple of hours. Mostly casual stuff. Work stuff. But I’ve been curious to meet her. Had to see what she was like. That’s part of being a debugger. We like to
know
things. I can’t say the conversation was entirely reciprocal. But that’s to be expected. She has inherent stops in her head, just like I do. It is better to be cautious.

Only a handful of debuggers are left in the yard now. Most have finished with their chores and quickly downridden away. Masters keep a tight rein on their investments. Especially in a thunderstorm. Wouldn’t want to fry an implant. The barges that were able already headed down the road toward their offloading destinations. Others idle patiently, waiting for me to get my other two out of the way.

For its part, the storm seems to have quieted, moved away. It still feels dark out here, though. Really dark.

I’ve been listening to the creaks and groans of hindered barges and an occasional curse from a climbing DR. We aren’t the most agile. But now I hear a new sound. It is of multiple men—young Abduls—walking between the barges. I hear their footsteps and laughing. They aren’t children, these Abbys, they’re older than that. Old enough to know the rules.

There is the crash of breaking glass then. Something thrown hard against a barge.

“Fix
that
, implant!” one of them yells. Next comes laughter. Giggling malevolence. The voice is far away, but discernable just the same.

I get a message in the stream from someone named FrontLot: “We’ve got company in the yard, brothers. Careful. I almost got hit.”

“There’s work to do,” HardCandy answers. “Ignore them. Another storm is coming.”

“How did they get here?” Front asks. “There’s supposed to be a fence…” The dialog goes cold then. There’s still work to do.

Shaking my head I grab a handhold, move to the highest sheet I’ve placed. I think I see the problem. A metal fitting, a blinking piece of hardware, is completely misaligned. I stream for the barge’s code, give it a once over. The system could never handle that variation. Parameters just aren’t there. No wonder the thing is—

“What is
this?
” An Abby voice again, closer now. I can almost smell him. No way can he see me, though. I’m hidden above, atop the barge.

“I do believe it is a
woman
skin,” a voice says. “Fellows, look!”

I get a feeling in my stomach. Like I’ve tasted raw spiders. “HardCandy?” I whisper in the stream. “You good?”

No answer.

I pull myself to the center of the barge’s top surface. I skirt the bay section in the middle, moving forward. Toward the voices.

“Grab her!” someone yells. “Bring her here!”

There’s the sound of movement then. A struggle, a female groan.

This is against the rules, and they know it. Hard’s master will be ticked. But what about Hard? What about right now?

The next barge is within jumping distance of my own. Barely. It might hurt a little…

I try anyway.

My feet crash against the edge of the bay, but I make it safely, stand tall. There is such a ruckus in front of me that nobody heard. I’m grateful. I just have to see. Have to know. I scamper ahead.

I reach the edge of the bay and look over. Nearly ten meters separate me from the next barge. That is irrelevant, though. The shadows are long here. And the stench is all below.

One Abdul has a woman—Hard, I have to guess, mainly because she’s bald—by the back of her beige jumpsuit and is pulling her backward toward him. Two others are in front, near her wildly kicking feet.

“It is forbidden,” she says, almost hissing. “Touch me and lose your hands.”

The Abbys just laugh. Probably sons of masters. Confident that the law won’t find them.

Plus there are three of them. Courage in numbers.

“Where is security?” I stream to no one in particular.

“It makes no difference,” FrontLot streams back. “Anyone who can help will be too late.”

I watch, feebly, as HardCandy continues to struggle. One of the Abduls near her feet manages to grab an ankle. She shrieks in anger. Kicks harder with the other foot.

The stream has grown completely silent. Like everyone is waiting in fear. A half-dozen debuggers. Frozen. I don’t blame them, though. Stops are fully in place. Tweaks only a forbidden thought away. There is only so much any of us can do. The rest leads to pain.

I glance down at my own slight frame. There’s nothing I can do that way either…

The Abduls have Hard gripped tighter now. She’s struggling, but it isn’t getting her anything. Only seconds are left.

Part of me wants to return to my job. Hide. Leave her to these Abbys who skirt their own laws.

I make a fist at my chest, fight the interference. I glance at the machine in front of me. The one beyond, on the far side of them. Can I reach it?

Not by jumping. No, of course not. That is the machine Hard was nurturing, though. What did she accomplish?

I sing out to her drift barge: Are you ready?

The barge feeds me a list of small problems: unequal lift, slight friction on one arm. The big answer is “Yes,” though. He’s ready to go.

“Extend!” I stream. I watch as one of the barge’s vertical loading arms grows from the side of its bay. Quiet. Frictionless. So far, so good.

Below, one Abby is looking around. Thinks he’s heard something. “What was that?”

I contemplate how nice it might be to have that mechanical arm simply pulverize him into the ground. To leave them all just smelly, hairy spots in the cement. I begin to stream an order to the barge—

Ouch!

A headbuzz hits me, igniting a storm in my synapses. Not enough to debilitate me. Just enough to make its warning clear: the mental path I’m traveling down is filled with danger. Stupid “stops.” That wasn’t an external tweak from my master. Just the inherent stops from the implant. The bridle on my brain.