A Displaced Samurai

Thursday, January 16th, 2048

The first half of the month had been mostly routine. Building more of the little first generation 3D printers that were my cash cow. Practice with the militia. Planning the third generation of my fabber, but I was still a few points short for the catalogs I would need.

But there was also some specific progress.

First, I had been remodeling part of the shelter into a small apartment. That project went ahead nicely, I was almost ready to move in.

Second, I had figured out how to make certain magnetic coils with the second generation 3D printer. The things were awkward and tedious to wind before, but now I could just print the wires into place. Much easier.

Said printer was booked solid. Magnetic coils, ammunition for Alan and me, spare parts for Roger’s truck… the list went on

Time to work on the captured Macks. First I dissected the broken Type One, taking measurements all the way. Locations of battery, servos and electronics all went into Elya’s data banks. The electronics were peculiar, they all converged at the eye. Was the eye also the controller for the whole body?

“Elya, reactivate the intact Type One”

The glowing eye came on.

“First, what can you tell me about the AI capabilities of this model?”

Rather limited. On the level of a Class I drone, but this unit needs significantly more energy and bulkier hardware for similar compute performance.

“Let’s do some more tests. Strength and movement range of the limbs, visual acuity of the eye and so on.”

Over a few hours of testing, Elya and I developed a detailed model of a Type One’s physical capabilities. Dangerous, but not impossible to defeat even with simple melee weapons. The servos were better than what Humanity built pre-First Emergence, perhaps we could sell those or utilize them ourselves.

The Type Four was more interesting. The spikes at the tip of the tentacles looked like they might be able to pierce average body armor. The number and size of the cables going to the remnants of the eye suggested better capabilities than the Type One robo-brain, but a similar concept.

The battery appeared to be intact and had a decent amount of charge left. I managed to power up one tentacle and mount it to an unused bunk bed.

“Elya, I’d like to test this spike against various types of armor. What do you need to control it, especially to hit something with maximal force?”

Elya listed a few electronics parts I could not build myself yet, so I had to order them. I also talked Ralph the range owner into lending me some small pieces of armor for testing. When he heard what I wanted to test, he insisted on coming himself.

Sunday, January 19th, 2048

The parts had arrived the day before, and I had already assembled them. I also had prepared some mumbo-jumbo to hide Elya’s part in the process, as I still wanted to hide her full capabilities.

I mounted the first piece of armor on my test contraption and said to Ralph:

“Body armor class 3, polymer-based.” I demonstratively pressed ENTER, but it was Elya who triggered the spike in the background.

WHACK. Penetration. This armor was clearly too weak. Next I picked a steel plate from a premium brand.

“Steel body armor class 3+, 5 mm thickness, from a renowned manufacturer.”

CLANG. The plate was severely dented and the back side showed a tiny crack, but the armor held.

“Steel body armor class 3+, 5 mm thickness, random Asia brand.”

CLANG. This time the spike penetrated.

Finally I took a piece of plate I had cut out of the Type Four. “Mack plate 6 mm, the same type you showed me at the range”.

CLANG. Made a tiny dimple in the plate, otherwise only scratched it. Also, the spike was definitely blunted now.

“Interesting”, Ralph said, “so the Macks are clearly better at defense than at offense.”

“Yes. I want to find out what thickness is needed for stopping this spike, if I use the best quality plate my printer can make.”

It would have to wait a few more days until my current printer queue was done though.

Friday, January 31th, 2048

16:15

I was on my way to a meeting at the gun range, proudly wearing my new body armor. For weight reasons it only covered the torso, like a cuirass from medieval times. Even so, the total weight with the gambeson underneath was eight kilograms. Outside of an emergence, this would be a one time showing off.

I also carried my own gun and twenty-five rounds of AP ammo I had made for Alan. Sorry buddy, but tungsten was a bottleneck at the moment. Otherwise I might have made more.

Ralph greeted me at the entrance. “Is that from your 3D printer? Looks sexy!” His eyes went to my chest. I had given my armor some modest boobs. Not so much it would be impractical, just enough to say “I’m a girl!”.

“Yep. It’s a bit heavy, but it does stop a spike from a Type Four. I did some tests”

Promptly an emergence warning came over the net. “Speak of the devil.”

The people at the gun range spontaneously decided to band together against the threat. All of them. We had to persuade some who had only dinky .22 LR rifles to go into a shelter instead.

I did not have my EMP grenades with me. Also, I had a hundred rounds of ammo, but only twenty of them were my special armor piercing brand. After all, my plan for the day had been training, not blowing through scarce reserves of AP ammunition.

Multiple minor emergences expected. One hotspot is Goldstream. ETA 10-20 minutes.

Not enough time to go home and fetch more equipment. The spontaneously enlarged militia and I set off towards the center of Goldstream, from where we could reach every part of the small town quickly. Fifteen minutes later we were standing in the front yard of Wilway Elementary School. Under other circumstances a bunch of armed people in front of a school might have disturbed the locals, but right now they were busy cowering in the shelter. Lots of them, there was a special event at the school and many parents were there.

Then we heard a pleading woman’s voice from inside the school. “Cassie, come out of the restroom, we need to get to the shelter.”

The voice of a child: “I’m too afraid!”

From behind the school: Sounds of breaking glass.

A Type One came around the corner. Three people fired on it, and it collapsed. I slapped in my lone magazine with AP ammunition, The Macks were in the school, we would have to clear them out, and standing in front of a Four without armor piercing ammo was not desirable, to put it mildly.

The school doors were open, so we went in to secure the corridors. Those of us with semi-automatic rifles first, including myself. Two Ones lingered around the hallway. Michael and another guy I did not know perforated them with bullets. Which was fine by me, I was going to reserve my armor piercing stuff for Type Fours. Once those were cleared out, I could switch to practice ammo and go plinking Ones.

“Elya, overlay the positions of the Macks’ components on my augs!”

We had established those when we cut up the robots from the New Year’s emergence. Now Elya would give me a wireframe display of where the mecha-critters had their servos and batteries.

Proceeding further into the school, I heard the child’s voice from before again. This time, hysterically crying. I had a really bad feeling about that. Where was the teacher who had tried to save the little girl?

The answer became clear when I looked through the open door of the restroom. A woman lay in her blood, and I could see several puncture wounds in her body. A Type Four was standing in front of her and looking at a closed toilet stall. It seemed as if it contemplated the best way to break down the flimsy door. From inside the stall, the cries continued.

I kneeled down to shoot from an angle that was safe-ish for the injured teacher and aimed at the battery.

Crash. Bang.

At the same time I fired, the Four smashed through the particle board of the toilet stall.

My bullet slammed through the Mack’s armor. Smoke and some oil gushed out of the bullet hole. The Mack retracted its blood-spattered spike for a second strike, but then its power appeared to run out. Slowly it sagged to the ground and its eye went dim.

I waved two of the guests from the gun range over and told them to drag the Four away. They dragged it out of the toilet and I directed them to dump it in a corner of the corridor. Which they did not a moment too soon. As they stepped away from the thing, it started to stir again. I did not give it time to recover, instead I fired two more rounds into its battery. That would hopefully shut it up for good.

Meanwhile, another two men were putting improvised pressure bandages on the woman but ran out of material halfway. One of them got up and started walking across the hallway.

I asked “Where are you going?”

“The school nurse’s office is over there, I hope we can find more first aid supplies there.”

“OK, but let me check out the room first.”

I went ahead and entered the tiny office first, looking left and right. Then I heard a noise from behind the door. I turned around just in time to take the spike on my armor instead of the unprotected gap between front and rear plate. It still felt like getting a pickaxe between the ribs. While falling down, I put three wild shots into the Type Four that had attacked me. That damaged it but it still crawled towards me. As I managed to control my panic slightly better, my aim became steady enough that I could place a shot in its eye. That shut it down immediately.

Getting up, I saw a major dent in my armor, and a rib might be broken. Still, better than getting a lung punctured. Even better, across the office I discovered the first aid materials I had been looking for. There were even some QuikClots. Expensive, but apparently the school took first aid seriously.

I pointed the stuff out to the guy who was with me and moved out again. Our job was not done yet. Outside the window I could see a Type Three eating the slides on the playground northwest of the school.

It was among the smaller non-combat Macks. Rather than the school bus size of the more common Type 21, this one was on the scale of an average RV, but on eight legs. With two arms, a hybrid of hand and hydraulic cutter on each arm and a mouth full of shredder blades it still looked terrifying.

From the southeast end of the school, I heard gunfire. But Roger and Alan soon came back and reported that they had cleared out that end of the school. Roger accompanied Alan up the stairs near the middle of the building, as backup for clearing the roof. I shouted after them “Alan, are you going on overwatch?”

“Yes, I’ll stay on the roof and snipe the robo critter from there!”

“OK, I might be able to lure it near you.”

With Roger as backup and ignoring my aching ribs, I made my way along the east side of the building, until I reached the northeast corner. From there I had line of sight to the metal monster and started peppering it with bullets. Unfortunately, my first shot missed the eye. Shooting that had so far been a great way to kill the machines fast.

The Mack immediately covered its single eye with its hands and arms. My attempts to shoot the eye were stopped by the massive metal hands. It started approaching me, every two or three seconds uncovering its eye for a moment.

BANG.

The Mack had passed close to the building below Alan’s position, and it was unable to cover its eye both from ahead and above. Alan’s powerful sniper rifle smashed the eye into little shards.