Chapter 6

 

“You that senator lady?” The engineer’s voice surprised Dolfuse over the whining and buzzing.

“Linda Dolfuse.”

“I’m Wickey.” The grease-faced woman stepped forward and offered her hand.

Dolfuse regarded the hand as if it were a bomb set to explode as soon as she touched it. All that muck staining the palm. Still, diplomacy rode no high horse. She placed the tips of her fingers in Wickey’s grip, minding to keep her thumb tight so their hands wouldn’t officially link.

Wearing navy blue coveralls, Wickey had tied her blonde hair into a ponytail under a cap she wore backwards. Oil covered it all. Goodness, it was all over her.

Dolfuse afforded a smile. “Thanks for letting me come take a look.”

“No problem. We’re all in service to the continent, yeah?”

“Of course.”

“Right this way.” Wickey turned back to the tall, clean doors she’d come from. They were frosted white where only shadows flitted by every so often, a fog of glass. When Wickey opened the doors, a whining buzz escaped from the workshop.

Dolfuse plugged fingers in her ears.

“Oh, I almost forgot.” Wickey closed the door and trudged over to a wall where an assortment of tools and knickknacks hung from hooks. She returned with a pair of headphones and a hardhat.

“What about you?” Dolfuse asked.

“Nah. I’m used to the sound.”

Dolfuse secured her safety equipment and followed Wickey through the doors. Sparks flitted into the air at her left as an engineer welded on a large metal dome. The senator jumped and released a whimper.

“It’s all right,” Wickey shouted, smiling. “If we stay on the grating here, you shouldn’t get hurt.”

Shouldn’t. An awful lot could be filled into “shouldn’t.”

Dolfuse followed the metal grating to a rust-covered guard rail that circled the entire circumference of the silo. It was nearly a half mile to the other side with nothing but air and flying lifts between there and where she stood.

She tried not to acknowledge the dark pit below, where firefly-sized red lights floated like scavenging sea creatures.

Levels upon levels of work floors rose to the top, engineers bustling endlessly on every single one. The lifts hovering from floor to floor were automated drones, carrying different items in their clawed arms. Hot exhaust warbled the air around their thrusters.

At ground level, Wickey and Dolfuse stood halfway between the silo’s top and bottom. Dolfuse clutched the railing as she looked over and braved vertigo to survey the deep lower levels reaching into the Earth’s recesses. She almost wished she’d brought a penny to see if it could be heard hitting the bottom. Ha! You couldn’t hear anything in this mechanical circus.

“This way, senator,” Wickey shouted. She extended her hand toward a set of stairs several yards away. “It’s a few levels down.”

“You all seem to keep busy,” Dolfuse shouted back as they walked on.

“Yeah, the war sure helps with that. We’ve got recon drones aplenty. Amphibious drones, drones that can climb walls. Heck, I’ve even been working on a drone that can burrow underground.”

“What about this one?”

They’d come to a black monstrosity – a flying ship of some kind that could carry at least a dozen women. Huge guns were mounted at each corner, and the glass covering the cockpit was blacked out. Dolfuse worried what the wrong person at the trigger could do with such a thing.

“Sweet Kiss,” Wickey said.

“What?”

Wickey laughed. “That’s what we call her. She’s a prototype, hasn’t seen much field action, but we show her off to the generals next month. Really versatile, since it can be manned like other fighter jets, but it can also be operated remotely, or set to blow away everything and everyone in the EA. This thing’s packing four plasma cannons, a cluster bomb launcher loaded in the belly, and, my personal touch, a phase scanner that locates and tracks any enemy, human or machine. It’s going to end the war.”

Dolfuse believed it. A machine like that could swing the scales of the planet any way the operator saw fit. They moved on.

“Yeah, I love it here.” Wickey stomped down the third set of steps they’d come to. “When I was sixteen my mom told me I either had to find a job or get ready for Oubliette. Well, I bet you can guess I got my ass in gear and started searching for reasonable employment.”

Dolfuse remembered waking up in the middle of the night when she was a little girl, screaming in terror from dreaming she’d awoken in that terrible city in the sky. Her mother had always comforted her with a glass of water and a back rub. “I’d never do that to you,” she’d say.

Wickey’s life story gave Dolfuse something to focus on besides the onslaught of cantankerous construction, and her own guilty criticism.

“Hell, I figured I love working with my hands and tinkering and stuff, and I sure ain’t afraid to get dirty. About that time was when they were pushing for engineer recruits, and here I am.”

“This drone I called you about,” Dolfuse said. “Is it small enough to get into places, avoid detection?”

“Sure. It’s only about the size of a big pigeon. Noiseless, too. If your op needs to be covert, it’ll be just the thing. But here, see for yourself.”

Wickey exited the steps, upping her pace, and Dolfuse struggled to keep up in her heels. The working noise lessened. No one was ratcheting bolts or burning cuts into metal here. All the drones on this floor were ready for sale and small enough to be displayed on a long table and under a square of glass.

“It’s this one here I told you about.” Wickey extended a hand to the third one from the right.

At Dolfuse’s approach, a light brightened from below the drone display. Wickey had described the particular drone’s size accurately. But its shape – it looked like a sperm, though Dolfuse fought hard to attach a less disturbing description to it. It really was just like one of Bobby’s white swimmers, except the tail stuck out straight and a large camera lens sat in the large, round “head”. The others on the display case were shaped like spheres or mechanical octopi.

“How’s it controlled?”

Wickey picked up a small, white stick from a nearby cart. “This.”

“Even my hands are too big for that.”

Wickey chuckled. “It’s not a remote controller, just a flash drive. You plug it into any computer. Software downloads immediately. The drone follows programmed variables: a certain area, large crowds, specific sounds, whatever.”

Dolfuse looked at the other drones, the ones that looked less like sex cells. “What about those? Why is this one superior?”

“The one I’m suggesting is more maneuverable, for starters. The others are designed for more specific tasks – underwater operations, rough terrain. Plus, the other ones are crones, comparatively.”

“How far away can it be operated?”

“Anywhere in the world. That Dropshot drone is the best.”

Dolfuse stared at the sperm-shaped mechanism. Who cares what it looks like if it gets the job done, she thought. The space gate’s relay would prevent a delay in the video feed, and Martin would know someone who could program it.

“You have any other questions about the drone?” Wickey bent her head a little, concerned.

“Yes,” Dolfuse said, straightening her posture. “Does it come in black?”