Chapter 4
Date: March 20, 5027
Kulbar, Kulbar System
Military base 173
“You’ve got to make a distraction so I can get out of here.”
“You can’t move anyway!”
“I have my ways.”
“Well what should I do?”
“You can get them all out of here.”
“Well, How??”
“Tell them that a chemical bomb exploded, or that the enemy has forced his way in…”
“Well I’ll try; you just get out of here…where should I meet you?”
“Meet me at our walker.”
“Roger”
I made my way to the staff station. When I got there I was lucky, no one was there. I inserted my keycard into the intercom, and luckily it worked. They must never have expected me to do this, or I wouldn’t have access to this.
“Attention everyone, a chemical package that is harmful to humans has burst, please leave the facility calmly and quickly.”
I heard a bustling in the distance, and suddenly it seemed that every person in the base was going down this corridor. There were nurses pushing men on carts down the hallway, and I was looking for Bud, but I couldn’t find him. So I headed to the walker bay and that was empty, too. Apparently that was the right “distraction”, as Bud called it.
I entered the six legged walker through the front hatch. I found that all the controls, motors, and cannons were warmed up and ready to go.
“Bud?... Bud?…” I called.
“I’ve been waiting for you, where you been?”
“Trying to avoid the Sergeant, I had to use my keycard to announce over the intercom.”
The keycards were a new way for the military, and government, to keep track of everyone. You had to use it from shopping to opening a door. I was disgusted by them.
“Oh, let’s get going,” He said.
“First I want to know how you got out of that room, and up here.”
“I can’t tell you that, kid.”
“What? I’m your partner!”
In crime, too.
“I’m sorry, trade secret.”
“I’ll find out eventually.”
“I’m sure you will.”
We started up the walker and headed toward the door.
“How are we going to open the door? Someone is usually there to do it.”
“If we can’t go through it, then we make a way through it.”
“Are you saying we blow up the door?”
“What else?”
“OK, it’s your fault if we get caught!”
“Just fire them already.”
“I’m just trying to find a spot where I can blow it up with just one hit.”
“You’ll never do that.”
“Why?”
“Those things are five feet thick, with lots of Durasteel.”
“Ok, then here goes, I’m gonna try a plasma burst.”
Plasma was the militaries newest weapon. Just a few nano-seconds of power would rip through a lot of durasteel, at the expense of quite a bit of power. But we were at a terminal, so I hooked up and got ready to fire.
“Go for it, Kid!”
“Here goes!”
Fzzzt…
“I don’t think that worked, Bud.”
“Me neither.”
“Let me try again, but with a longer burst.”
“Three, two, one…”
KABOOM!
The blast threw the ten ton walker back a full hundred yards, nearly flipping us, in the process.
When the smoke cleared we saw the door. Yes, it was still there, though we had created a huge dent in it.
“Maybe we should just get out and open it.”
“Yea, that way we can check the damage on the walker.”
We got out of the side hatch, and while I went to open the door, Bud checked the walker.
“Hey Carson,” He called.
“Just a sec.”
I inserted my keycard onto the lock and the door started to open. Just as soon as it started to open a guy popped in.
“Bud! Get in the walker!”
“Hey, what are you doing,” the guy asked.
“Getting out of here,” I replied.
“Hey you…”
I hated to do this but I smacked him on the side of the head, knocking him out.
“Hurry up, Kid, there’ll be more!”
I sat down at the walker controls, and gunned the throttle. I had never gone full throttle in one of these before, and for their bulk you would think they were slow. But man these were fast! The thing went from rest to all out speed. We must have been going a sixty miles an hour in a vehicle that weighed ten tons!
“Slow it down Carson, we don’t want to flip!”
I lowered the throttle down to forty. We didn’t want to get caught by anyone else.
“I wonder why that guy was standing there.”
“They were probably trying to seal off all the exits, and didn’t want anyone going back in there.”
The terrain was rocky and so I slowed the walker down some more. The walker crushed most of the rocks, but some were pretty large. Stepping on them could topple us.
Finally I asked the question that had been trying to bubble out of me for the last few minutes…
“Bud, where are we going?”
“We can either head back and hope one of the heavy rockets aren’t guarded, or look for a settlement that has one.”
“Why a heavy rocket?” I wondered aloud.
“We want to take our walker, where ever were going, right?”
“Well, we do want some protection…So what are we doing?” I asked again.
“Oh, what the heck. We’ll get better machines back at base.”
“OK, you just get those cannons armed.”
“What for?”
“There’ll be someone guarding the rockets!”