Feeling even more tired than usual, I still was eager to get back to my synth and its mysterious shutdowns. I quickly got ready, grabbed a meal bar and headed out to get my usual morning synkaf. And again, Sunny was waiting at the campsite.
“How ya doing Gabby,” he greeted me.
“Meh, didn't sleep great but I'm looking forward to getting back to my broken synth. I meant to ask yesterday. How is the salvaging going?”
He put his empty kaf mug down, “Eh you know how it goes. Three days and no salvage or material identified. I am going to give it one more day and then transition to prospecting and mineral testing. I will drill some deeper pilot holes and see what minerals are laying around. After all there is gold in ‘dem hills!”
He ruefully laughed. The life of a miner is one of hope springs eternal. I replied, “Well my premonition really did seem to indicate a worthwhile find was in this area, but who knows how long ago, or what kind of ‘worth’ it meant.”
He nodded and said, “I am glad to see you taking it easy, you got all the time you need to keep working on those drone, err ‘bot, ... things. After we finish with this site we can head back to Neu Ca?on proper and see what we can get for the stuff we already found. Cya at dinner kiddo.”
With that he rolled back and left the campfire heading back up into the foothills.
I grabbed a thermos and mug of kaf and headed to my engineering trailer. “They are called synths, Sunny”. I muttered to myself. My Squad Leader was right where I had left him, in pieces. Sighing, just a little bit, I put my mug on my hoverseat and grabbed my tools. Today I was going to get the body up to snuff and ignore the freezing and reset bug. With that goal in mind, I began to remove the broken arm and shoulder.
In a few hours I had the broken limbs (two legs, the shoulder joint and arm) removed and set out on the workbench. The shoulder and arm were slag and would need to be scrapped. The two legs had clean breaks and could be repaired but that would require time to fill, reinforce and reconnect the telemetry and control lines. Instead I opted to throw the legs on a future work pile and went to my junkyard for repairs.
And by junkyard I meant my kombi-buses. Bus #2 specifically. I hobbled over to the second of three buses and managed to force the door open. Inside was an utter mess. Wall to wall, floor to ceiling the bus was jam packed full of broken drones, cybernetics, battlefield salvage and equipment. Fortunately, I had the mostly intact cybernetic parts located toward the front of the bus. After 30 minutes of looking, and shoving piles around, I managed to find two matching clean legs, from two different cyborgs, of course. A quick psychic inspection and I was sure these legs would work. I had trouble finding a left arm and shoulder that wasn't already damaged. But an hour later I had everything I needed. I asked a Road-synth from bus #1 to come and carry the somewhat macabre pile of robo-limbs back to my engineering bay. I took an unusual break for lunch and said hi to Estéril before getting back to the synth. She was cooking a delicious vegetable stew and the smells might have been the real reason I stopped for lunch. I ate quickly and headed back to the engineering trailer. I had the legs swapped in record time, they were just plug and play. The shoulder joint was smashed and I took my time reshaping and linking the articulation before I could replace the arm. In the end, it was nearing evening before I had a complete synth again. I was hoping to calibrate the movement for my Squad Leader today, but that wasn't going to happen. One of the challenges I had to overcome with my modifications was the body identity for each synth, an artificial sense of proprioception. A cyborg, and the overlay kinematic processor knows exactly how long their reach is and how far they can move their limbs. But when I place them in Roadrunner, Grasshopper, or cyborg armor, their length, height and weight changes. Essentially, I give the synths a case of body dysmorphia. I need to retrain and calibrate each synth to adapt to their new ‘bodies.’ I need to redo calibration and training for the Squad leader because it had new limbs installed. I debated having the Squad Leader run by itself overnight, but I decided a zombie-like drone wandering around camp might not be the best of ideas, even if the camp Road-synth guards would recognize it.
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
I decided to risk climbing Gretta and I headed toward my mech which was towering behind the engineering trailer. My dad gave me Gretta on my birthday nearly 2 years ago. He had just finished the entire design run of the newest flying power armor suits and was given a nice bonus. He surprised me with the ‘Power Construction Corp? 54r Provender Mecha.’ The PCC technology was well ahead of anything we could manufacture locally, including Black Market resources, even if the 54r was an older model. It was solid, dependable, and perfect for me out here in the wastelands. It stood 10m tall upright, add another meter for the shoulder mounted missile pods. The thick arms were capable of combat as well as digging, forestry, and construction. It wouldn't win any races with a top speed of 100 kph, but our normal cruising speed was a sedate 50 kph to make sure the entire convoy could stick together. In addition to the two medium range missile pods, the other weapon of note was an arm mounted dual plasma caster. Capable of dealing with smaller and closer targets, the twin casters were a nice back up, especially when I didn't want to waste the serious credits with launching missiles. I debated switching out one of the medium launchers for a more versatile energy based weapon but I hadn't got around to doing that yet. My custom green and gold paint job didn't really blend in with the environment, but to be fair, a 11m battle mech doesn't really blend in much, period.
I gently began to climb the footholds up the left leg. My chest still smarted far more than I would have liked, but I persevered. I palmed the bio-lock on the top hatch and fell into the small pilot compartment. 2 passenger chairs were raised and behind the pilot and copilot seats. A water tank with fresh chilled water, and a mini-food reefer rounded out the amenities. There was enough room for 4 lockers that were supposed to contain a full complement of body armor, rifles and ammo for the 4 occupants. But at this moment I only had a pilot jumpsuit, which only got used on longer trips, my city clothes, and my body armor. After my dad sprung for the Provender, I thought I should get some PCC body armor to go with it.
The utilitarian Field Engineer Body Armor ? had called my name. While not available on the open market, at least for non-corpo civilians, a few Black Market contacts found a brand new suit that fell off the back of a hover-truck, convenient enough for me. I thought about augmenting the suit with an exoskeleton to increase speed, strength, and endurance, much like Power Construction Corp? had done for their exo-power armor troops, but it was yet another thing on my list. And my broken power armor was calling my name more than modifying my body armor. For now it was a vanilla suit with a suite of sensors in the helmet- with a wide central band multi-sensor in the middle of the chest. It made me look like a mega-city cyberpunk, but I didn't care. It had additional sensors built in for a mechanic like me. The integrated plasma torch, micro disassembler, and autodriver rounded out the mechanic focused features. I had a belt of various tools and a pistol attached to its waist. Where did I put my sonic multi-too? Sunny had recommended a simple plasma pistol courtesy of BDwerks? and our massive loan (a PGE knockoff platform, naturally). This suit had become my daily wear out on our travels.
After I finished hanging my armor in its alcove, I grabbed a self warming readi-meal ? and reviewed my repair logs. Gretta was in fine shape and ready to go, the micro-fusion power supply was in perfect order and the internal body sensors were all within normal ranges. The squad of 10 Road-synths and 10 Hopper-synths were all in the green as well. I finished up my report to Big Fe and turned in.
My hammock swayed gently back and forth as I drifted off to sleep, concerned my nocturnal headaches would return.
