Toy Wars (32 page)

“Don to Loco 556: Any fauna activity in the neighborhood?”

“Yes.”

One day I’d learn just how literal units could be. “Describe
,
please.”

“Sixteen bug bunnies, 13
,
453
flies,
300—
”

“Stop,” I barked, once against stymied by minutia. “Is there any indication of a fauna attack in the next forty-eight hours?”

“Negative.”

“Great. If anything at all out of normal mission parameters
occurs, contact me over Nine’s normal net with th
e action code Tango-Romeo-Golf.” I set the interrupt in my processor.

“Affirmative.”

I shut down so my body could perform preventative maintenance long overdue.

Sleep held me
until the squeal of the brakes.

T
he
train, now only two cars long, stopped easily at
an end
-
of
-
line marker
. Beyond
, stretching to the horizon in either direction, a forest of
golden foliage
blotted out the sky in an
abundance of
shining
,
boat
-
shaped leaves,
each a meter long.
The main stems
rose from the ground o
ver a meter in diameter
in
a smooth white color.
The
train tracks vanished into the cream and citrine
woods
within meters of entering.

“Why is the
e
nd
-
of
-l
ine marker here?
Why don’t you continue?” I asked the engine as I dismounted.

“Tracks beyon
d this point are not maintained,” it responded over the
LAN
I’d not closed.
“
They have proved to be untenable.
End of line was moved to here two standard months ago as the
7-
kilometer extension was deemed too dangerous and costly to hold.”
I quickly consulted my memory of the map
Nine provided
.
This particular forest
imposed a wall
hundreds of kilometers wide but only a few kilometers across.
It would cost several days to circumvent or just hours to walk through.

“Too dangerous in what way?”

“I do not have that information.”

“
Wonderful,” I remarked absently
.
“Don Quixote calling Nine,” I bellowed raucously over the net.

“Nine,” came the rusty-edged voice.

“What dangers are in the forest at coordinate R10 by 145?”

“Multiple fauna attacks.
”

“What form do they take?”

“
Attacks come at tremendous speed and
units do not
respond after an attack.
No other information available.”

“Thanks for nothing
,
”
I said.
I was getting this sarcasm thing down to a
science
.
Granted
,
only Sancho could understand
it
right now but i
t
did make
me feel better.
“Don out.”

I dismounted and turned back to my friend. As I released
the tie-downs that held him to the flat car
, I thought about the situation.
I ran several simulations on Six’s survival.
My statistical universe of resource data was unfortunately small. I put together several curves and scenarios.
At one extreme
these showed Six
already overrun and yet at the other extreme Six could remain viable for another three years.

“Locomotive, I wish you to deactivate for exactly one hour. When you reactivate you may return to WAN control.”

“Affirmative. Deactivating.”

“Locomotive?” No response.

The answer was obvious.
O
nce
more
we n
eeded
to cast our lives into the breach for Six
.
I didn’t see
that
I had a choice.
Time pressed on us again. Going around the deadly weald could
take an additional week.
Computations stated it might not have the time. Even more, forewarned I couldn’t imagine a fauna that could take both Sancho and I.

My mind made up, I reactivated my friend. Simultaneously
,
I transferred my command pathways through Six’s CCT.
“Wake up, my friend.”

Sancho looked around carefully.
He stood just like on a new morning waking. He climbed off the train and resumed his normal place, a few paces behind me.

“Ready to go into danger again
,
friend?
We need to be very careful because of a reported fauna in this area.
”
I downloaded the pertinent data Nine provided.

I looked at the easy escape available by train.
Then
I walked boldly but stupidly
forward
into my world’s excuse for a forest
with my M16
at the ready
in my arms and my friend at my side.

The yellow canopy
blocked out most light except the area cleared for the rail line. I needed no other variables in this experiment so I
resolved to
follow
this
lighted path.
Sancho and I
crept
forward at less than half
our
normal rate
through the gloom, the muzzle of my weapon training back and forth almost at random
.

Out
of sight of
the train engine, I could almost feel Sancho relax.
I wish I could say the same about me.
My bus voltage fluctuated wildly
.
That did spawn an interesting process
.
Were
Sancho’s feelings because he had been too long alone with me or
had
he
been
truly nervous about our allies
?

“So
are you bothered by
units in general, or are we making a mistake trusting this Factory?”
As usual Sancho said not a single word, but he did look at me.
The look
comforted me enough that my voltages started to sag.
It helped me push on, with Sancho at my side
—
comrades in arms and in life.

“I must be picking up bad habits, Sancho
,” I offered fifteen minutes later. “
I
’m jumping at shadows.” I stopped my unnecessary weapon movements, but continued at a slower pace.

“Splat,” came a sharp sound to my right.
I
jump
ed
left. My M16
unleashed a trio of
random
shots
to the right. Sancho oriented in that direction as well, crouched at the haunches, ready to fire off his main weapon at need.

Crouching
,
I prepared as best I could for the unseen attack. Just then the cupped leaf to my right unfurled, pouring its content of liquid mercury out. It struck the ground with a ringing
s
plat. Several moments later I heard another, and then another.

“What a boob!” I chastised myself, standing back up.

Fear
—
it
made me
want to turn back when I must press forward.
What’s its point?
I can tell you that my hydraulic lines felt like they were full of chilled H
2
O
and my main bus voltage ran as high as I’ve ever measured it. Pushing on in the face of fear
,
Humans call courageous.
I certainly didn’t feel courageous; I felt more like a slag of pre
-
forged metals
—
without
even being tempered.

Together we walked on, but it didn’t take long before my former sense of foreboding returned
. Dusk had fallen and the light available dropped precipitously. The darkness and canopy threatened to remove all light, making nighttime travel not only hazardous but impossible.

“Blast it all. I never even considered the time of day.”
I pushed forward at a slightly accelerated rate until a macabre sight in an open glade
brought us up short
.
Along the partially overgrown path of the tracks
lay
the
deactivated remains of several units, some with legs, arms
,
and even heads torn from the torsos.
As gruesome as these were, I found the remaining corpses even more hideous. T
he hydraulic lines or brain cases
had been
torn open
on the majority
, allowing the hapless units to pump their vital fluids out onto the
ground
.
E
ach of the victims knew they were going to deactivate but had no way to
prevent it
.

Creeping forward I took
the time to investigate each body with one eye, using
the other
on the surrounding terrain
.

“No projectile impacts or
any signs of explosion or flame
.
What do you make of it, Sancho?
Most show the signs of
four parallel
tearing
or cutting
marks.
What could that possibly mean?”

I guess I
talked
to hear myself talk or maybe I was trying to shut out my nervousness.
It didn’t matter
. T
he evidence didn’t make any sense
to my sump and Sancho didn’t share his thoughts
.
I decided that endangering our lives by staying longer didn’t warrant the information I was getting.

“Buddy, let’s make tracks.”

This actually elicited a
small
snort from Sancho.
I interpreted it to mean
, “Yes, let’s get out of here, now!”
We were both edgy.

We walked briskly.
My optics scanned so thoroughly that I
thought
they’d become radar and could
see things in all directions.
Sancho seemed even more alert. Our paranoia failed to save our hides.

T
he attack came only an hour after w
e first stepped into the forest.
It struck faster than the report of a rifle.
A
bright yellow and brilliant black furred form hurled
toward us from the forest canopy.
It moved so rapidly that
my optics couldn’t even resolve its
shape.
Huge scything claws aimed to tear out my vitals.
Only the equally fast pink and purple trunk of my companion saved me, interposing his limb between my attacker and me.
The keen force a
mputated
Sancho’s
proboscis
. It
landed on the ground at the same time as a 2.7
-
meter
-
long leopard
-
shaped unit gracefully alighted on its pads
8
meters away.
All this happened in the space of a handful of my own clock cycles.
I didn’t even have time to react.

The great
cat
moved
like liquid lightning,
turning around its sleek ebony and lemon
-
colored frame
.
Its deadly elegance hypnotized
me
with its beauty.
Again, with the blinding speed of a plummeting flyer, the huge feline pounced aggressively.

I felt I
was
made entirely out of lead and my hydraulic lines filled with air.
Once again my companion saved me.
Sancho interposed his body
between me and the streaking unit.
Sancho’s bulk staggered and fell
over
sideways to the ground.

My body finally began to respond to my processor again.
I got my gun around as the
yellow death
wheeled to pounce for the third time.
Its body position had it moving to
complete the kill of my downed elephant friend.