Unification - short

“Wakey, wakey, Mr. Jakey.” Hushed words just above his pillow, “We got almost no time to do this; so dress quick, quiet, and now.” Paul moved on silently through the darkened barracks, leaving Jakyb to swim through the remaining cobwebs as he snatched at his pants and boots lying at the foot of his bunk. A slip of folded paper in Jake’s left boot was quietly pocketed, no time to read it just yet. Already moving toward the dim outline of the barracks door while he buttoned his shirt, Jake met with three other shadows prepared to move into the corridor beyond.

“Did everybody get a note?” Charlie murmured, “Those are your shopping lists and meeting places. Everybody goes to a different point, so don’t follow each other. Your contacts are under orders to dispatch anyone not on their roster.”

Paul motioned for silence before tapping his wristtop to life, the time showed nearly two hours past the most recent post change. Guards should be satisfied that all was well, and just beginning the bored period of night watch. “Little less than two hours before they start moving to make breakfast. Don’t get caught on-camera, and keep others out of your business.” Jake barely got to register the last bit of advice before a warm bit of flat metal was pressed into his hand.

“These aren’t much, but they should get us started,” whispered Grit. “The blade is sharp enough, and the handle is solid through. Take care, gentlemen.”

Paul eased the door open and pointed Grit and Charlie down one hall before waving Jake through with him. “Check your paper, that’ll be where to head first.” Paul stood and moved down the corridor as Jake glanced at his slip. ‘Barracks Mess’ was written across the front. Jake shrugged silently and slipped toward the stairs beyond the shower room.

Thirty seconds after breaking away from his clandestine meeting, Jake found himself at the door to the small snack kitchen. Forcing the doorpad here would undoubtedly attract attention on an alarm panel somewhere, so Jake scanned his barracks card to allow entry. Just a peckish worker who couldn’t make it through the night without a snack. Once safely inside the room, he stopped to examine the crude blade Grit had made. The edge was keen, but the sides still showed marks betraying its former existence as a thin file. The tip had been ground into a chisel shape, also useful as a screwdriver. The handle was smooth plastic, and bulbous enough at the back to allow some force to be put into the point.  Kneeling against the wall, he unfolded his paper and checked it over twice. Some of the list was pretty bizarre, but he quickly got to opening panels on several machines as he went throughout the room. From one, he was instructed to remove all the roller bearings, another yielded metal covers for some sensitive electronic bits; this one also had a small knapsack hidden inside that he used to hold all the junk he was collecting. A discarded plastic bag would do to hold the smaller things together and minimize their noise when he moved. Taking the legs from each of the chairs surrounding the small table along the wall completed his list, so he let himself back out and shimmied out a high window on the wall of the basement to avoid having to pass the watchman at the building entrance. The random metal scraps would be impossible to explain, but even the stolen food was a serious offense against the work-group. Any discovery now would undo years of sacrifice anyway, and a thorough physical would reveal secrets that could smash the entire effort. This rebellion was an all or nothing affair, failure and hesitation weren’t options for anybody involved.

Jake’s meeting place turned out to be the heavy worker shed, which was a fine thing for a Hworker pilot like himself. He felt a small flutter of anticipation at the thought of the magnificent machines inside, and was aware of a faint thrumming in his gut, but that was likely just imagination. Jake pulled the heavy shiv from his pocket as he crept along the east wall of the building. Once he turned this corner, there would be a camera watching, and time would be short if he was spotted. A peek from as low as possible showed him that the lens was just starting to swing his way. He ducked back and counted off the camera’s cycle in his head, crouched to dash when it was safe. I hope the guard is on our side, or indisposed, he thought as he hefted the knife in his hand. Jake was all for revolution, but he didn’t need it to be too bloody.

Time to move; a clumsy leap around the corner, scurrying to get under the camera’s field as it swung again, this time away from his destination at the far corner. Rest for a half count, then sprint again, peek around the corner and move before the camera can come about……No guard, good deal. Jake began a silent jog to the personnel door, lit by a faint red bulb, almost colliding with the dark-clad figure as it moved from the shadow of the doorway. Guard! Can’t be caught! Attack first. Jake swung the shiv in a vicious arc toward the guard’s neck, then suddenly found himself flying toward the steel wall before an abrupt change of arc brought him crashing onto the half-frozen ground. His wrist was pinned, breathe driven from his lungs as he began to register his new orientation to the world.

“Slow up, drekeater, it’s just me.” Grit waited for Jake to relax before he allowed him to roll into a sitting position. “Admirable effort, but we already took care of whatever guards won’t be noticed for a bit. Come on inside.” Grit led the way through the metal door.

Inside the shed, faint lights showed outlines of the large Hworkers in their paddocks. Maintenance bots shuttled about, refueling and resupplying the machines for another day of toil. Paul was waiting inside for them, also with a bulging pack full of random items. He winked at Jake, and produced a small control pad from his pocket; grinning, he tapped a command on the pad. The result was immediate; several bots scrambled toward one of the machines, and set to a bizarre maintenance routine with the frenzy of rabid tailors. Those not in use slid obediently into their charging slots and shut down. Paul noticed Jake staring at the control pad, and showed it off with pride.

“Our friends higher up got these made up for us, some of the code was what I was able to smuggle out.” Paul had been scanning comm chatter between the bots for months, but had been unable to break their security codes without causing an override surge in the tamper programming. Obviously, the problem had been solved, and this pad contained a few preset routines to aid their cause. “Notice which machine they’re setting up, Jakey boy. Your personal favorite.” Jake saw now that the bots were swarming over a model 25 Hworker, a versatile and tough machine that could do just about anything with the right attachments. Jakyb was very fond of this model, and could make it dance through the roughest jobs.

Grit interrupted the scene with a soft grunt. “You got anything in that pad to help make sense of this junk we stole from all over the damned compound? Making shivs and bombs I get, but this stuff is just too odd to be used for anything.”

“As a matter of fact, I do; and it’s going to give us a bit more breathing room once this machine is done.” Said Paul, jerking a thumb at the busy robots. “Empty your packs over here,” He said, sweeping a nearby table clear of the clutter that all working garages somehow accumulated. Grit and Jakyb obeyed, with Paul adding his own roll to the mess before sorting all like items into neat rows. Paul handed Grit two jugs, and Jakyb one more. “Get these over to that corner, along with those buckets.” Tapping another selection on the command box brought two bots to life, who both turned on their neighbors and began removing parts from each of them in turn. When they had a filled their quota of destruction, both bots wheeled over to the table and began sorting through the items there, intent on making something functional from the bits of scrap.

Over in the corner, Paul joined them with a plastic rod in hand, and began opening the jugs. Using a large syringe to measure each chemical in turn, he filled a small pail about halfway with a volatile-smelling mixture. Paul set Jakyb to stirring the mixture extremely slowly while he jogged over to the table and collected some bits that the robots had finished assembling. Coming back with a clanking bundle, he dumped it into Grit’s waiting arms and started readying another syringe with yet another chemical. “Got those ready yet, pal?”

“You bet, just take your time and do this right. I don’t want any fewer fingers than I’m s’posed to have.” Jake saw that Grit was now holding several of the hollow bearings that he had filched before slipping out of the barrack window. Grit handed these to Paul in turn, who dosed each cylinder with a precise amount before handing it back to be set in a row. Once several dozen of these were prepared, Grit gathered them back up and called Jake over with a jerk of his head. “When we hand you these, they’re gonna be warm. Use that box to set them vertical in, and try not to jostle them too much for the first couple minutes.” Jake nodded and waited nervously for his part in the bizarre chemistry experiment. As Paul filled each cylinder with the first mixture from the bucket, he immediately handed it off for Jakyb to stack in the waiting box at his feet. The cases were indeed quite warm as the catalyst worked its magic, and some foam spewed from the hole atop each; already hardening the moment it hit the atmosphere. Filling the small box took some hundred and fifty cylinders, which Grit then began trimming the foam from, as Paul and Jake set over to the table where the two maintenance bots waited patiently.

“These took some time to engineer. We had to hide bits of the design throughout legitimate equipment upgrades, and other pieces were what we happened to find worked.” Paul spread his arm over the table to indicate several firearms laid out on the table. There were also plenty of half-finished weapons where the robots had obviously run out of parts to complete whole mechanisms. Beside the weapons were what appeared to be magazines, made from the chair legs Jake had raided. The realization hit him hard enough to make him step backward. We’re making guns…and not just that, ammunition too; an explosive foam in place of powder or plastique, and we did it with materials found in any town. The government was right to be suspicious of everyone; we really are putting codes and subversion in every drop of sweat from the brow of the working man. This is going to be bad for the men who stand in our way. Paul interrupted Jake’s epiphany with a clap on the back. “One man’s trash, eh. Well, shake a leg, Jakey. Get these weapons stowed on your machine, put the completed ones separate and accessible. Take one for yourself too; and hurry up, we still gotta load these mags for when the fun really starts.”

Paul sauntered over to Grit, and the two of them began filling tube after tube with the packed metal cylinders. Jake packed up three crates full of weapons and walked them over to the Hworker readied in its stall. The robots had added several plates to reinforce the cab and jointed legs from arms fire, and it appeared that a personnel cage had been added to the rear portion of the enormous machine. The forward legs had been tipped with flamers and demolition claws. Just behind the cab, Jake noticed a maintenance bot sitting in a basket. A hole in the casing showed where some module had been ripped out as part of the modification program, probably the central control link; this bot was just a dumb slave now, no coordinated tasks with other machines possible. Setting the crates inside a storage panel, Jake went back to place the good weapons where they could be used by those riding on the benches at the rear. Running on wheels would be just fine for whoever was there, but high mobility on the legs would whip them around fiercely. I’ll have to be careful, he thought. The organ in his belly again seemed to twitch, and he absentmindedly raised his shirt to feel the strange not-quite skin over his left hip. This was his contribution, one which few shared. Jake knew that it had been difficult for the group doctor to grow so much tissue under the noses of government snoops. Social guardians, they called themselves. Nothing more than polite spies really, and those who seemed out of their favor often disappeared for “further training”.

A convenient diagnosis of appendicitis had brought Jakyb into the clinic and under a carefully orchestrated surgery, where a new organ was added and tied into a blood supply and brought on line. Grown over a collagen matrice from his own cardiac tissue, the new organ was a closed loop that pumped fluid through a small generator imbedded within it. The power was routed to a small port disguised by pseudo-skin, allowing Jake to swim and shower normally after his recovery. Even before that moment, Jakyb had been a traitor. Now it would be obvious to any government inspector that discovered him. None did, and eight months later, he was about to test the function of his unifier; for that was the name he had coined for this fantastic new part of him. Something to tie him into his machine more thoroughly than previously imagined. His own heartbeat giving the Hworker range and duration not attainable by an ordinary pilot. He stepped up into the cab of the machine and looked it over. Aside from the armor added around the pilot’s seat, the only new feature was a cable attached to the harness. Grit climbed up to the edge of the cab and pointed at the cable. “They explain that thing to you?”

“Yeah,” replied Jake. ”The cable is a simple contact fit to my port. The pseudo-skin is going to slide open around the port and keep a watertight seal on the cable plug. When I open my harness, the cable will retract and the skin will cover the port again.” He closed his eyes and remarked, “I hope Doc Petrie was right on about all that stuff he shoehorned into me.”

“Don’t you worry about ol’ Doc’s work, I already got a chance to check it out, and it’s as good as promised.” Jake turned to Grit with amazement.

“You got a unifier too…I mean the organ, that’s kinda what I been calling it.”

“As good a name as one could think up; and yeah, I got mine about two months before you got brought into this whole conspiracy.” A pause. “Do you remember me getting hurt a few years back? That was the cover to get me into surgery.”

“But you’re not a pilot. Why would a parts wrangler need a unifier?” Jake sounded worried about not being the superstar of their escape plan, and he hated the way his question mewled out, like a child who discovers that he wasn’t the only one to get a cookie from mama.

“Well, I may be lost among all those switches and buttons you get; but can you think what I might do in a nice armor suit like those soldier boys get? You know I’m not dumb, and I can whomp any three people in town with one arm…That smug Paul who insists on calling you baby names was in line after me, but he had some glitch in his genes that wouldn’t let the donor tissue take right. You got lucky to be part of this, and only through your father’s word.”

Jakyb was at a loss after Grit’s frank talk. My father? Part of the rebels? Of course; he hadn’t always been a broken-down mechanic, something had to happen to make him so vocally opposed to anybody criticizing government policy in his home, without actually condemning the speaker’s opinion. And the thing with Paul constantly patronizing me, that was understandable if he had been passed over for some kid that had no clue what half of tonight’s plan was. Grit climbed down the boarding ladder, leaving Jake alone in the cockpit. Turning to the remaining boxes of supplies, he hoisted several and continued loading the back of the Hworker. Paul dropped off a final crate and left Grit to secure the load.

“Jake, we need one final bit for these guns before we blow town. We can trust you to do what it takes, right?” Jake managed only to swallow and nod at the serious set to Paul’s face. “Good man,” Paul almost smiled at him, though visibly tense. “We’re going to drive right through the front door, and you need to make left immediately and get us over to the tool shack. Open up the southwest corner with those claws, so we can get what we need without being seen by too many folks. Do you have it?” Jake repeated the directions back to him quickly, and readied himself at the controls. “Alright then. Strap in and wait for my yell, cause this has got to be fast.”

Jakyb noticed that Paul had said “man” instead of “boy,” but it didn’t help his mood much that he was still being kept deliberately out of the loop. He reached over for his harness and buckled in. He lifted his shirt slightly and placed the cable head on the patch of pseudo-skin; he felt the polymer shift, and something connected inside. There was no tingle of current or any other sort of stimulus at first, then something came alive, and he felt the unifier throb a little more strongly as it accepted a current load and began feeding electricity to the machine. He had been told not to expect much more than enough to power the instruments, but even that would allow him to loiter indefinitely if he wasn’t moving. He could scan radio traffic and satellite data without using any additional power, saving the batteries for actual mobility. It might be enough for an edge if they expected to get away from the patrols that would undoubtedly look for them. A shout from behind the cab let Jake know that Paul and Grit were strapped in for the assault on the tool shed.

Engaging the throttle pushed Jake back in his seat as he prepared to ram the heavy roll-door ahead of him. Screaming metal and tortured fasteners were all he felt through the shuddering cab as he broke through into the night outside. Jake was a bit startled when the lights around the compound suddenly went dark, emergency lighting came on immediately, but left many of the buildings swathed in shadows. The off-spectrum display in the cab showed him the way as if there were a bright green sun overhead, and Jake threaded the monstrous vehicle to the back corner of the tool shed in no time at all. He unfolded the clawed arms as the Hworker slowed, and was chewing through the metal wall before the suspension had even settled. Keeping one arm inside the rubble to keep the roof from sagging or collapsing, he watched as Paul and Grit scrambled to the hole. Grit was holding one of the machine guns as if ready to use it, while Paul kept his slung as they both disappeared inside. About twenty breathless seconds passed before there was movement at the opening. Charlie was with them, now holding his Paul's rifle. Paul and Grit followed close behind, all three men had bulging packs, and Grit also carried a large bag in his right hand. The three clambered into the cage and strapped into seats before giving the go-ahead over the intercom. “Go East!” Shouted Charlie. Jake backed the Hworker away from the shed, and swatted the roof down as he passed, just one more mess to clean up and maybe buy them some time.

As the wheels hummed over the blacktop, Charlie began relaying instructions over the intercom. “We’ll be coming to a guard shack soon. They got their last check-in already, and we’ve disabled all transmitters and phone lines in town. We should be able to smash through with no trouble, I would suggest using the machine as a shield. And make sure there is nobody left to tell stories or call for help.” A muffled voice added something else, and Charlie continued. “Go ahead kid, hit that guard station with the claws and flamers going, your canopy is going to do fine against anything short of a heavy machine gun, and they keep that pointed the other way.” Top speed on this Hworker was normally 50 klicks, slightly slower than a good racehorse. He was now moving at almost 110, faster than ever in his life. Knowing that the hum of tires would carry far along the road, Jake ran the last two kilometers on the short grass at the shoulder to keep quiet. He was nearly on top of the shack just as one guard peeked out to look around. The man dove back inside as Jake swept the roof away with one clawed arm. The opening created was summarily roasted with one of the flamethrowers, leaving both guards smoking, and their radio a useless pile of molten circuitry.