Sea of Rust

^{Chapter 1001} NIKE 14

…s a chance that my solar cells could…

Shit. I blacked out.

But I was back. I’d made it through to morning. The sun was still low in the sky, but in just the right place to hit my panels. I didn’t have a whole lot of juice, but I was operating at a surplus for the moment, so another few hours or so of driving would buy me what I’d need to get down into the city for a replacement. Now all I had to do was keep on trucking through to NIKE 14.

NIKE 14 had been decommissioned long before the AI age had even begun. In its day it had served as an old-style nuclear-missile silo—a massive concrete bunker dug deep into the earth to keep its missiles hidden from the prying eyes of satellites. These days it was even grander, larger, more sprawling. Two decades of excavation and reinforcement had transformed it into an entire city buried so deep in the earth that the drone satellites of the OWIs couldn’t read a single heat signature.

There were tunnels in and out spread across a twenty-mile expanse of the Sea, so even if the OWIs were tracking traffic in the area, there would be no telling where it was going or how big an enclave of freebots they might find. If they were going to come, they would have to come in full force. That meant warnings, lead time, and numerous ways out. An amassed army of OWI drones would crack into a hive and then try to catch each individual bee as it swarmed out.

We all knew it was inevitable, that one day they would show up for us. For now, this was the best we could do. NIKE 14 wasn’t any real promise of a future; it was simply a very palatable now.

There were dozens, maybe even hundreds, of cities like NIKE 14 spread across the globe. Every so often refugees from another city would flow in after an OWI invasion, some with the hope that they’d found a new permanent home, others dark with the knowledge that any day now they would have to leave this home behind as well.

There were exactly seventeen separate entrances to NIKE 14. Never taking the same one twice—as I did with paths through the Sea—would be impossible. So I left my choice of entry points up to RNG. Each and every time. No one could ambush me deliberately if even I didn’t know in advance which entrance I would take.

But today was different. The clock was ticking. No telling what kind of damage my leaking battery might wreak on other systems. I had little choice but to take one of the closest holes in. There were three within a range I could get to, so I decided to roll the dice between them and let RNG do its thing. I designated the old concrete shed built into a hill as choice one; the manhole cover leading to a labyrinth of sewers as choice two; and the least appealing option, the Road—a heavily trafficked, long straight tunnel just outside the grounds of the original silo—as choice three.

Three. Dammit.

No use questioning the RNG. The minute you did, you invalidated its purpose, started questioning it when you needed it. The Road it was.

The buggy skidded to a halt in the dirt next to a refuse pile—a collection of rebar, bones, rusted tin siding, and picked-over, slagged wrecks. I found a large piece of withered tarp to throw over the buggy and spent a few minutes covering it with enough trash to make it look like it had been there for ages, but not so much that I couldn’t toss it all off in a hurry.

Then I walked half a mile to the entrance. The terrain was barren, peppered with scrub brush and the occasional withered husk of a tree. In the rain season the entire area becomes a mud pit, strewn with hundreds of tracks. But when it’s dry, like today, it’s just a whole lot of nothing, with only a few hills to break up the monotony.

Of all of the paths into NIKE 14, the Road was the most obvious. It was a slanting ferro-concrete slab wide enough for a truck to drive down into, flanked on both sides by pale stone walls. It wasn’t like there was a steady stream of traffic going in and out—nothing so obvious. But once you were inside, there were stragglers camped out at various spots throughout the tunnel—refugees who had yet to find a home, black-market dealers without a shop, and the occasional poacher eyeing everyone as they came and went.

I had a hole in my back and a leaking, dead battery. The desperate sorts were the kind I should be avoiding, but those were who I was most likely going to meet on the way in.

The first thirty meters held enough of the daylight to see normally. After that, you needed to use some alternative method of sight until you got to the choke point—a series of staircases that spiraled down a hundred meters into the earth. There were plenty of lights there. But until then, it was all about infrared or night vision. Some older-model bots still had to do it the old-fashioned way, with flashlights or embedded LEDs.

I ran a series of tactical arrays, so I chose to run three separate types of vision at once. I needed to move quickly. Once out of the sun, all I had left was whatever charge I’d managed to get into my backup battery. I couldn’t mess around.

Three hundred meters through inky blackness and I hit the choke point without seeing a soul. There, on the wall, written entirely in binary, were the laws of NIKE 14. I blew past them, as I knew them by heart.

Welcome to NIKE 14.

Past the choke point were two staircases, both headed down. One led to a series of rooms converted into shops around a large open area that once housed a Nike missile, which had been filled with scaffolding leading to a number of old metal shipping containers turned into yet more shops. Much as the humans had malls in their day, so too did we have The Square.

The other flight of stairs led to The Nest, a series of vaults and chambers where those with enough to bargain could store goods or make a home for themselves. I had half a dozen small vaults scattered throughout the cities of the Sea, but didn’t keep much here. Mostly just a handful of common parts that could easily fail on me during a trek, and a few bits and bobbles to trade in a pinch. While NIKE 14 wasn’t as wild and lawless as some of the city-states out here, it wasn’t as rigidly policed as most. It was an easy place to get robbed. But Doc was here. And I needed Doc. Now. And Doc had his shop in the Square.

So I made my way down three crudely lit levels—staircase after staircase of dank gray concrete rimmed with black steel bars for handrails—until I reached the bottom. And then I ran into Orval.

Not all AIs that go brainsick die. Sometimes the damage is slight, just enough to make them erratic, kooky, a bit strange, but not quite enough to tax their other systems to the point of burnout. No one was quite sure if the parts misfiring inside of Orval the Necromancer were irreplaceable or whether he simply refused repair. But he was as crazy as one could be without anyone worrying that he might take them apart with a claw hammer if they spoke to him wrong. Orval was an S-series Laborbot, just one generation older than Bulkhead—the T-series Laborbot I had ended at the mall. He was huge, bulky, his metal a chipped candy-apple red with a white stripe across the right-hand side of his chest and the words hall construction emblazoned in black Eurostile lettering within the white. His eyes glowed a fierce yellow, ever flickering like there was a fire burning behind them rather than the faulty, shorting wiring that was its most likely culprit. And from his arms dangled small pieces of other, looted robots—sockets, servos, fingers, and bolts—hung from short cables like a fringe, clanging together as he moved.

Orval fancied himself an artist, spending his days wandering the Sea, collecting scrap from picked-over wrecks and wheeling it back in a rusty green wheelbarrow before dumping it into a large, ever-growing pile of useless junk in his hovel. From that he built sculptures—sometimes painstaking re-creations of an entire robot, detail by detail, constructed entirely from other bots of differing models, other times building hulking monstrosities of wild, unfathomable geometries. But he never really tried to put a robot back together in its entirety, never tried to bring consciousness to the dead and gone. Instead he only made marionettes that whirred and clicked as they swung around in a ghoulish danse macabre. Clockwork men. The dead again walking, but not ticking.

Orval was weird, and I kept my distance when I could. Though occasionally I’d strike up a conversation just to get a peek at his pile and see if he’d found anything I could use. He had a knack for finding the strangest, most valuable wares. Talking with Orval was a lot like trying to converse with the early Almost-Is, the computers that approximated intelligence but didn’t actually have any. He would often ignore your questions, or jump to a point in the conversation you hadn’t gotten to yet as if he was sure you would catch up to him at any moment. He spoke in riddles and sometimes in gibberish, referring to conversations he was sure you’d already had. Sometimes he would call you Mooky. No one knew who Mooky was, or if there ever even was a Mooky; Orval would never speak of it when asked. After all, you were Mooky. But sometimes, just sometimes, he was more insightful than he let on.

“How goes the happy hunt?” he asked, his eyes flickering softly as his hands twisted a cold steel rod into a coil like it had been softened, though it clearly hadn’t.

“Good haul, bad day,” I said.

“Can’t be too bad. You’re still ticking.”

“I said it was a bad day, not the worst.”

“You had to end someone, didn’t you?” he asked, still winding the coil.

“What makes you think that?”

“You have new scratches. And not the kind from taking a tumble. The kind from taking a bullet. But not from up close; from a long way off. And you’re limping. Probably tore your servos kicking something too hard.”

“You pay too much attention to my scratches.”

“Sure. Not many models like you around these parts nowadays. I figure it’s just you and Mercer. And maybe 19, but she doesn’t really count. If you’re not careful, you’re going to get so damaged I’ll never be able to use you when you’re gone. Waste of a perfectly good frame if you ask me.”

“I was hoping to outlive you,” I said. In all honesty, I was.

“Not with your lifestyle, you won’t. Bots like you never last that long. The collectors always end up in someone else’s collection. It’s the way of things, Mooky. It’s just the way of things.”

I didn’t like Orval. He was useful, but creepy. I didn’t like the idea that he had plans for my wreck. But then again, I have to admit that I’d long ago made plans for salvaging his. I mean, as brainsick as he was, who knew when whatever delicate equilibrium his circuitry had fumbled into was going to tip over and go out for good.

He took a step forward, peering closer, eyeing my damage. “You got the crazy yet?”

“No. I do not have the crazy.”

“You ever see an SMC with the crazy?”

“More than a few.”

“It’s a beautiful thing, at first. They get wise. They see the strands that hold the whole universe together. For a brief window of time they touch a place no other AI can fathom. But then they get it worst of all. They—”

“I told you, I’ve seen it.”

“No. Not yet you haven’t.” He turned back to the work of coiling his steel rod without looking up again. “I’d get that looked at if I were you. Or you and I will be seeing eye to eye sooner than you think.”

I nodded and turned, intent on getting down to Doc as soon as I could. An entire bar of my battery had ticked down while I’d been talking, and for the life of me I couldn’t figure out why I didn’t just excuse myself.

“Whoa,” said Orval, sighting for the first time the damage to my back. “You need a new battery. Better get to Doc.”

“Yeah,” I said as I continued down the hall. “I’ll get on that.” Then down through two more cold concrete corridors, the second terminating at another staircase and down another four levels before I finally reached the Square.

Three bars left. I had only minutes before the alarms started telling me just how fucked I really was.

The Square was bustling, though for the life of me I didn’t know why. There were a number of bots I didn’t recognize moving from stall to stall, filing in and out of the small concrete shops along the walls or slowly making their way over the wrought-iron and sheet-metal scaffolds. Doc’s shop was a rusted vermilion shipping container three levels up the scaffolds with big green letters on the side. drydock shipping, it had originally read. But sometime in the distant past someone had taken a swath of red paint through the letters, leaving it reading: drydock shipping.

Doc Witherspoon was an ancient machinist model originally designed to work on freighters. Bots like him had all started out a gleaming chrome color, which over time charred black from the intense heat of their environs. Their architecture was old, clunky, but they were built like the battleships they were often assigned to—so they ticked well beyond the life span of most bots from their era. He was solid steel, his insides designed to endure explosions and the pressures of underwater salvage. One arm was fully functional and dexterous, the other a large arc welder with a series of different rods that could sew massive seams or scale down to delicate surgical work.

There was a reason most of the machinists you still ran into found work as sawbones. And Doc Witherspoon was the best in the Sea.

His shop was a tangle of wires behind an array of metal plates. Arms and legs hung from hooks, batteries covered shelves, jars and bins full of bits from almost every model imaginable rested on every available surface. In each of the back corners hummed a pair of dehumidifiers, keeping the place as dry as the deep desert. Doc nodded his bulky black steel head as I came through the single open door—the other having been welded shut ages ago.

“Brittle,” he said, his single red eye glowing, scanning me as he spoke.

“Doc.” No one called him Witherspoon. No one was even sure whether the vandalism on the side of his container had come first or the nickname had.

Doc was working on a late-series service bot. It was shut down on the table as he pulled burned-out RAM by the stick from slots in its innards. In almost any other container this would look like salvage, but Doc was one of only three sawbones in the Sea I would trust to shut me down.

“You’ll have to wait your turn,” he said. “I just shut him down.”

“Afraid I don’t have that kind of time,” I said, turning my back to him to show him the blast damage.

He stopped working, tossing aside a bad bit of RAM. “Shit.”

“Yeah.”

“You running off your backup?”

“Running it down, more like it.”

“How many bars you got left?”

“Two.”

“Hop on the other table. Your main battery is common as dirt. I’ve got a few good ones lying around.” He brushed aside a collection of bad bits from a dented chrome operating table—the only other table in the container—and I lay facedown on it, head turned to the side to watch him work.

“You got the salvage to pay for this?”

“We’ve done a lot of business, Doc,” I said, wary that he might try to take advantage of my dire circumstances.

“Yeah. And I’d like to continue to, which is why I’m not going to gouge you. But you need a battery—”

“And you’ve got a battery—”

“And you need that back patched up to hold it in.”

I tapped my leather satchel. “Good haul. I imagine you’ll find something you like in there.”

Doc opened the top of the satchel and peered in, gently picking through it with his good hand. He nodded, plucking a coolant core from the bag. He held it up. It was the best bit in there, worth a pretty penny. I’d hoped to score something really choice with it.

“I thought you said you weren’t going to gouge me.”

“You limped in here and I can tell before looking too close that you’ve got a few busted servos in that foot. And the battery blast melted half the power wiring to your systems. The fact that you’re still here means either you’re the luckiest sonovabitch I’ve ever known, or the most tenacious. This oughta cover the battery, the foot, the wirework, and welding you a new backplate. Labor and all.”

He was right. It was a fair price. “Do it.” Dammit, I was really hoping that coolant core would make the whole boondoggle worth it. I could kill Mercer for that.

Doc unplugged the bad battery while unhooking it from its moorings, then started scraping away the melted plastics. “He put up a fight before you got to him?” Doc’s tone wasn’t pleasant. He wasn’t joking.

“No. He was gone when I got to him.”

“Of course he was.” Doc didn’t like poachers. He and I still did business because he knew that wasn’t my line. But when you wander in from a salvage all busted up, it didn’t look good.

“No. This was Mercer.”

Doc stopped for a moment, surprised. “No shit?”

“No shit. Had a crew with him too.”

“Had?”

“Had.”

He cut a few wires, trimming away the damage. “He came through a few weeks back. Looking for some expensive ware. Deep-core stuff.”

“CPU?”

“Yep. RAM. And new drives.”

The pieces were beginning to fall into place. “You have any?”

“Not a stitch. You Caregivers are going out like the dinosaurs. Nobody is trading that stuff. If you didn’t need it all so badly, I’d try hitting you up for whatever you’ve been hoarding. That stash could buy me a decent shop on the ground floor.”

“Yeah, by trading it all back to me and Mercer.”

“Refugees. More coming in every day. A Caregiver or two is bound to stagger into my shop any day now.”

“Not if Mercer keeps it up.”

Doc plugged in a new battery, soldering a few wires into place. My systems shot to life, my primary battery now at a solid 78 percent. The battery was a good one, with a good amount of juice left in it to boot. “He really came at you?” he asked.

“He sure did.” And now I had a good idea why.

“You guys have beef?”

“We didn’t. He’s never come at me like that before. Truth be told, I don’t really know him. I just know of him.”

Doc pulled a flat-black metal plate off the wall and began shaping it in one hand while trimming it with the other. Sparks showered across the floor, embers spitting in an array of blues and yellows and reds. “Well, I’d steer clear of him for a few weeks if I were you. No telling how far gone he may be.”

“From your mouth to God’s ear.”

He held up the plate. “This isn’t gonna match, and I don’t have your color paint.”

“I can live with that.”

He went back to work, cutting away the rough edges. “Might wanna check with Horatio down a level. He might be able to mix something up for you.”

I loved watching Doc work. There was a mastery to every movement he made in the shop. To watch him waddle across the scaffolds, you’d think him a clumsy drunk. There was no grace to him, only awkward balance that made it seem like he might teeter over on his side at any moment. But in the shop, working with his hands, he didn’t waste a movement. Every flick of his wrist was precise, accurate within a few microns. My new backplate slid into place like a glove, the weld done almost as quickly as he began.

“Sit up,” he said. “Let me get a look at that foot.”

I swung around, dangling my feet over the side of the chrome operating table.

“Whoa,” he said, his attention drawn to the dent in my side where I’d caught the bullet. “Where’d you get this?”

“A present from Mercer.”

“That’s not in a good spot.”

“Is there a good spot to get shot?”

“On you? Several. But that isn’t one of them.” His singular red oculus telescoped out from his blackened steel skull, whirring and clicking as it increased magnification. “I’m going to run a diagnostic. Open up, will you?”

“I’ve already run one.”

He shook his head. “Open up.”

I popped open my side tray—a small cluster of ports and chips designed originally for personality upgrades, modifications, and monitoring—into which Doc plugged a cable that wound back through the mess of his shop to a small black box with a high-definition display. Instantly my schematics appeared on the screen, zooming in to sections, spewing out technical details so quickly they barely registered—even to my 120FPS eyes.

As the box crawled digitally through my innards, Doc quickly disassembled my foot, examining each damaged servo as he did. “What the hell did you kick? A tank?”

“Close enough.”

“I’m sure you had your reasons.”

“You could say that.”

He popped a servo out of place and tossed it in a box full of scrap marked for meltdown in large black block letters. Then he fished around in a jar, pulling out a series of other servos, inspecting several before throwing them back, finally settling on one identical to the original.

The black box chirped weakly. Doc slid the new servo into place then clanged across the metal container box to get a good look at the screen. “I need to run it again,” he said.

“If it came back clean, it came back clean. There’s no need—”

“It didn’t come back clean.”

Shit.