The take-off was sudden and unexpected. One moment, Alkemy and Ludokrus were dozing quietly in their cardboard box. The next, the bubbletruck they were in was thundering down a steep slope, into a launch tube and being fired at a narrow gap in the U-shaped highway channel below. The bubbletruck landed, bouncing and jostling the trucks in front and behind as it slotted itself into a stream of hundreds of similar spheres rolling west towards the city’s downtown disrict.
Inside, bumped and shaken awake, Alkemy grabbed the torch from where it had come to rest against the padded side wall. The view through the window slit rocked and swayed. She closed her eyes. It was making her feel sick.
‘That should be the worst,’ Ludokrus said.
‘You forget the harbour gun.’
‘Oh yeah. Oh-oh.’
They could already feel the steady deceleration and the bump and nudge of bubbletrucks behind them.
The world outside went dark as they rolled into the body of the gun. They felt the bubbletruck spin left, felt a shudder followed by a soft phooot then a sharp jolt of acceleration. Slammed back in their makeshift seats, they held on and held their breaths.
Ludokrus thought of all the statistics he’d seen about the discontinuous highway; about its speed, safety and efficiency. There was an occasional system glitch. A faulty gun, a sudden wind gust, a slight misalignment in a guide rail ... but the results were invariably non-fatal, perhaps because bubbletrucks only ever carried freight.
The view through the window slit showed nothing but empty air; blue sky and the pale glint of Halo’s ring. He felt his stomach drop as the bubbletruck passed through the apex of its flight, and for four long seconds there was a delightful sensation of free-falling. Then the tops of buildings on the city side of the harbour flashed into view and there was barely time to brace for impact.
The landing was surprisingly gentle. A soft thump, a bit of rocking and rolling from the inner sphere, but no hard impact. The landing ramps were carefully angled and every truck was weighed as it was launched so its trajectory could be precisely calculated.
He turned to his sister, delighted at their happy landing, but she had her eyes screwed up tight. Looking at the rocking, swaying view ahead as they thundered down a steep, tubular channel picking up speed, he could understand why.
* * *
‘Incompetence, sheer incompetence!’ Administrator Meli roared over the comms link at Wilis in Basic Plaza. There appeared to be a riot going on around him. ‘Get out of there. Now! You’re on all the news feeds. I can see you myself.’
As he spoke, something struck the side of Wilis’s head. It looked like an old boot.
A news-drone followed the augment’s exit from the plaza – at least until he swatted it from the air.
‘I don’t understand,’ Meli continued in a lower tone. ‘How could they escape you and a contingent of the Military Council’s newest war-bots?’
‘They had help, sir. Half the Basic bots in that place were in league with them.’
‘Did you find the ringleader?’
‘Yes, sir. A serve-bot in the food shop.’
‘And ...?’
‘I scrapped it.’
‘Is that all?’
‘Well, what else can you do with a dumb machine?’
‘I’ve been wondering that myself,’ Meli muttered.
Wilis braced himself to deliver the second part of his bad news. ‘Unfortunately, before I managed to scrap it, it told all the other Basic bots to download that English language module too.’
‘You mean in the plaza?’
‘No, sir. I mean all other Basic bots on the planet.’
‘What? So now they can walk into any Basic outlet anywhere and we won’t know about it?’
‘It looks like it.’
Meli slammed a fist on his desk. ‘You ... are ... beyond incompetent, Walis. There are no words to describe how blitheringly incompetent you are!’
‘It’s Wilis, sir.’
‘You alone have the dubious honour of allowing all of these miscreants to escape. All of them! First, the two Eltherians and their simple-minded syntho. Now, a bunch of aliens. They had you and some of our finest military hardware dancing around in circles!’
Wilis only half-listened to his boss’s tirade, distracted by another feed. ‘Excuse me, Administrator,’ he said at length, ‘but it seems Walis has spotted them. I’ll patch him through.’
The image on Meli’s monitor was jerky and confused at first. The only steady parts of the picture were the overlays and readouts from the augment’s sensors. Meli knew that was because the machine was moving at speed. An impressive speed for a thing with two legs.
Walis’s target came into view: three individuals in Concordance Park unaware of his approach. It felt like his vision zoomed in on them, but Meli could see from the readouts that it was Walis himself doing the zooming.
The image steadied, fixing on three startled faces. It was them all right, the aliens. Meli saw two hands shoot out and clamp two arms.
‘Wilis, summon the war-bots and get over there!’
Meli watched as the frightened face of a boy with reddish-coloured hair appeared, challenging the augment who held his friends.
Walis laughed, glanced aside for a moment, then the display flickered and a high-pitched scream erupted from the speaker, so sharp and loud it made Meli jump.
‘Don’t murder them, you idiot,’ he yelled. ‘I want them alive!’
There was no reply. The screaming didn’t stop.