Cultwick: The Sweeper Bot Plague (17 page)

Fiona closed her eyes and softly
whispered to herself, “Good night... sleep tight... wake up bright... in the morning light... to do what’s right... with all your might.”

Chapter 17. Vincent the Bank Robber

Vincent walked down the alleyway between the Red Eye Saloon and the general store, where several Cultwick Corps halftracks sat. He pulled a pouch of tobacco out from his shirt’s pocket along with some papers and began rolling a cigarette. He stopped next to one of the vehicles, where he finished rolling the tobacco. He lit the cigarette and released a puff of smoke, rolling out from his mouth.

Vincent placed the pouch and papers back into his pocket and then grabbed two explosives from inside a container hanging at his waist. He knelt down feigning to adjust his boot, but instead stuck the explosives to the tracks of two separate vehicles.

He looked back behind him to ensure no one had seen anything and moved onto another set of halftracks. There he once again stuck the devices to the tracks of the vehicles. Vincent finished his cigarette in the alley before walking back to the side of the bank where the professor, Hirim, and Ruben waited for him.

“Is it done?” Hirim asked.

“They won’t know what hit ‘em,” Vincent responded. “Let’s get this show on the road.”

Vincent pulled the rifle from Polly,
who he had hitched alongside the building. The bounty hunter took from his belt several bullets and loaded them into his rifle. He checked the barrel of his pistol as well and nodded to the others that he was ready.

“Remember,” Hirim said to the others
. “I don’t want any civilian deaths. We don’t want to give the confederacy a bad reputation. We’re supposed to be better than the empire.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Vincent said. “I won’t kill anyone that isn’t asking for it.”

Hirim glared at him and then said, “If you want to continue getting your plague treatment, you’ll make sure you don’t.”

Vincent
didn’t say anything, but instead smiled derisively at the old rebel. He then pulled his handkerchief up from around his neck, partially concealing his face. Ruben and Hirim followed suit and the four men made their way toward the bank entrance.

The bounty hunter opened the door and then shot his pistol
directly up into the air. “This is a stick up!” he yelled.

Rowland ran to a nearby
window, while Hirim, Ruben, and Vincent dealt with the crowd of people.

“Everybody down,” Vincent shouted
, again firing the pistol into the air.

The two security corpsmen made themselves visible, so Vincent holstered his pistol and slung the rifle around from his back. He quickly took aim
, as they began to draw their weapons. He fired off two shots nearly instantaneously, hitting both guards in the skull. They fell to the wooden floor with a sickly splat, and the room briefly became hushed.

“Everybody does as we say, and nobody else gets hurt,” Vincent said
, breaking the silence.

Hirim went around the counter
to where the tellers were already facing down on the ground. “Did one of you go and press one of these buttons?” he asked feeling under the counter and pressing the button himself.

No one responded to him, as they all had their heads firmly planted to the floor in fear. Hirim walked back around to where Vincent
continued watching the crowd, while Rowland watched the second story window in the Callahan’s house.

After passing one of the men on the floor, Hirim told the others, “It’s locked down.”

Rowland heard this news and marked the window he was standing in front of with a vertical red mark.

“Good,” Vincent said. “Now it’s just up to--Look out!”

The man at Hirim’s feet stood up and grabbed him by the neck, pointing a revolver at his temple.

“You all place your weapons on the floor and put your hands in the air,” the man said.

Partially ignoring the threat, Vincent said, “That jackass Benedict didn’t say squat about this. Who the hell are you?”

“Plainclothes security,” the man said. “Guess it’s not your lucky day.”

“I don’t have luck, guy,” Vincent responded. “Least not the good kind.”

Ruben tried to go around to the other side of the man, but the guard simply fired upon him. Ruben fell to the ground, dead before he landed.

“Stay back or things are going to get worse,” the guard said. “Now, like I said - put the weapons down.”

“Can’t say I like that plan much, buddy,” Vincent answered.

“You don’t have to like it - you just have to do it!” the guard shouted.

“Or what?” Vinc
ent asked. “You going to shoot him? Can’t say I’m bothered too much by that, frankly.”

“Fantastic,” Hirim said sarcastically.

“You don’t care if I shoot your buddy here?” the man asked pressing the gun harder against Hirim’s temple.

“
That guy is not my buddy,” Vincent assured the guard. “He put me up to this whole thing. I’m just the patsy, man. Hell, I’ll help you shoot him.” Vincent raised his pistol toward the pair.

“Hold it!” the guard shouted,
turning to aim the gun at Vincent.

While the man repositioned the gun, Vincent fired a shot, hitting the guard in the hand. The guard’s gun triggered a shot as well
, but the weapon immediately fell to the floor, and the bullet simply lodged in the floorboards of the bank. Hirim took this opportunity to escape the man’s grasp and knocked him over the head with the butt of his gun.

The man fell to
the floor with a thud, and Hirim retrieved the guard’s gun, holstering it in his belt. “‘I’ll help you shoot him?’” Hirim asked turning to the bounty hunter.

“What?” Vincent said defensively. “I didn’t. You’re welcome.”

“I think you would’ve done it,” Hirim continued. “You’ve got no loyalties, do you?”

“Well that’s not true,” Vincent said before thinking a moment. “I’m quite fond of my horse.”

Hirim approached Ruben, inspecting his body, while Vincent approached the guard and simply aimed his gun at the man’s skull and pulled the trigger. Before Hirim could come say anything else, however, they heard loud metallic banging sounds coming from somewhere beneath the building. It wasn’t long before the noises ceased and the room fell silent again.

“What the hell was that?” Hirim asked.

“No idea,” Vincent said, genuinely surprised by the interruption.

“Whatever it was,” Rowland
said turning away from the window, “I’m sure Ryn can deal with it.”

It was a few minutes later before Rowland spoke up again, “Gentlemen. It would seem we
have caught the attention of the Cultwick Corps. They are surrounding the building from the looks of things.”

As the corpsmen assembled outside, t
he professor crouched below the pane instead of standing in front of it. It appeared that he was still able to see up at the Callahan house though.

“They finish up in the vault yet, old man?” Vincent asked.

“No, it’s still green,” Rowland responded.

Vincent made his way to the window
and crouched just enough to look out at the police force assembling outside the bank. From down the street he could see the halftracks driving toward them. He pulled a device from his belt and flicked the switch.

A soft explosion could be heard in the distance as the tracks in the vehicles were shredded by debris. The halftracks were forced to stop
, and Vincent could see that the men inside had been somewhat injured. Smoke billowed out from the top of the vehicles’ engines, as the corpsmen wandered away disoriented from the blast.

A small team of men from outside the bank went to assist the corpsmen that had been in the vehicles. Only about a dozen
corpsmen remained stationed outside the bank, and they had a plan for dealing with the rest. They would, however, have to wait until Erynn had finished in the vault below.

One of the corpsmen had acquired a bullhorn and tried to talk to them, “We have the bank surrounded
! Place your weapons on the ground and place your hands on your heads! Slowly exit the building and you will not be fired upon!”

Vincent simply responded by yelling, “No!” He then turned to Rowland and asked, “Anything, old man?”

“Still green,” he answered.

“There’s no reason this can’t come to a peaceful resolution,” the corpsman outside continued. “Is anyone inside injured?”

“Injured? No. Dead? Yeah!” Vincent shouted out the window.

The corpsman in charge outside huddle
d up with some of the other men and began discussing what they were going to do. Vincent, meanwhile, rolled another cigarette. He slowly smoked it, lifting the bandana enough to get the cigarette to his mouth. He released puffs of smoke and occasionally looked over to Rowland to see if he had received the signal yet. After he finished the cigarette, Vincent pulled his flask from the inside of his duster pocket and took a swig. Hirim was still roaming through the crowd of people huddled on the ground ensuring they stayed calm and stationary.

The corps
men outside had begun to make a barricade comprised of whatever was lying in the streets, and the lead corpsman again spoke up, “If you do not comply with our orders and surrender your firearms, we will be forced to breach the bank!”

“Come on, doc,” Vincent said to Rowland. “We’re running out of time.”

The professor shook his head, so Vincent began to load up his rifle.

Hirim saw this and told him,
“No. We’re not starting a firefight in the streets. Stick to the plan.”

“We’re running low on options
,” the bounty hunter responded. “If they don’t hurry up and--”

“They’re done!” Rowland shouted.

Hearing this, Vincent pulled out a special shot from his belt and loaded it into the rifle. “You’re sure this is going to work, old man?” he asked Rowland.

“
It seems probable,” the professor answered.

“Wonderful...” Vincent said. He lifted up an elbow and knocked out the glass of one of the
windowpanes. Turning and pointing the rifle out the window, Vincent fired the shot into the neck of the corpsman outside.

The man swatted at it like a fly and yelled, “What the...” He fell to the ground and disappeared behind the
makeshift barricade.

“What about him?” Hirim asked pointing to Ruben’s body.

“Leave him,” Vincent answered coldly. “We can’t carry him.”

Surprised by the bounty hunter’s indifference to the death of the rebel, Hirim simply kept his mouth shut. He watched as Vincent surveyed the scene outside.

“Alright, fellas,” Vincent said to Rowland and Hirim. “Get ready to run.”

A few moments passed as the other corpsmen inspected their leader.
Eventually, the man stood back up, drenched in sweat and breathing heavily. “What did you do to me?!” he screamed.

The man began to grow larger, his clothes ripping as he did so. Pieces of his skin began to fall off in chunks
, and they were replaced by tentacles that came squirming out. The fingers on his hands elongated, crackling painfully, as the bones broke and shattered. His hair slid off his scalp, quickly replaced with sharp spikes of bone fragments.

The
abomination slammed its fist into the barricade and then slashed out at the other corpsmen, knocking many of them back. It let out a savage roar with globs of drool slavering from its mouth, and successfully distracted all the soldiers stationed around the bank.

“Now,” Vincent told the others.

Amidst the chaos, the three men exited the bank and rushed around to the side of the bank where their horses were waiting. One of the corpsman stationed on top of an adjacent building saw them and fired off a few shots, but before he could strike any of them, Rowland aimed his gauntlet at the man. Out came an incendiary blast, hitting a chunk of the building and knocking the man back and off the other side of the roof.

The mechanical contraption on Rowland’s arm sputtered
, and sparks flew out erratically. It continued to shower him in flickers of flames, so the professor winced away from the device, as they ran towards the horses.

They climbed onto the
ir horses and quickly made their way out of town. Behind them in the distance, they heard a clamor of gunfire and the roars of the mutant creature that they had created.

Vincent looked back and said to the others, “That oughta hold ‘em for awhile.”

Chapter 18. Ryn the Safecracker

Erynn and Pearl looked out the window of the second story of the safe house. They could see the bank quite clearly from the room and had seen Rowland, Vincent, Hirim, and Ruben go inside the building. They were waiting for a signal indicating that the vault had been sealed.

“
This is your last chance to get out before you’re lumped in with the rest of the rebellion,” Erynn said to Pearl.

“
Ya can’t get ridda me now, kitten,” Pearl answered. “Things are just startin’ to get interestin’.”

They could see inside the bank window where Rowland was standing. He
painted a red line down one of the panes, and in response Pearl placed a green piece of paper in the window while Erynn ran downstairs to start breaking into the safe.

When
she got into the basement, she yelled down the long winding tunnel, “Tern! Break open the wall! Now!”

She could hear at the end of the tunnel a banging sound of metal
colliding with metal. Pearl soon joined them, and Germ handed each of them a few empty bags as they all made their way through the tunnel.

By the time they reached the end of the tunnel
, Tern had made his way through the metal wall encasing the safe deposit box room. He was standing in the middle of the room waiting for instructions.

Climbing out of the hole she told him, “Tern, tear open the doors on boxes
one-hundred three, six seventy-two, and eight ninety four.”

“Acknowledged, debugger,” he said and set to work
on the task.

Erynn
meanwhile had approached the door leading into the vault.

Behind her Pearl
said, “That looks pretty complicated. Ya gonna to be able to get through that thing, kitten?”

“I sure hope so,” Erynn answered. “Otherwise
we’re going to have risked this whole bank robbery for nothing.”

She pulled out the device and the blood sample that Rowland had given her
, and she poured the blood into the machine that analyzed it. Simultaneously she watched the numbers on the device flip to the next series. When they reset, she typed those numbers into the console on the door. She took a deep breath as the security slowly authorized the information that she had presented, and soon the door opened to reveal the bank vault.

Inside was an enormous automaton that came to life, as the heavy vault door swung open. It powered on, making whirring noises, while its eyes flickered, until there were two steady red beams shining out at Erynn. The construct stood upright, nearly scraping the ceiling with its head, and it began moving forward.

“Intruders will be destroyed,” it declared in a booming, echoing voice.

“Rusty cogs,” she said to herself.

The automaton reached out with his enormous arm and grabbed her by the throat. It raised her up to eye level and pulled her close.

Through the pressure on her throat, she barely managed to say, “Tern… help…”

“Acknowledged, debugger,” it replied.

Tern dropped the last
safe deposit box’s door on the floor and lunged toward the other automaton and Erynn. He swung his fist at the construct’s arm, knocking Erynn free. She fell to the vault floor and crawled back, coughing. Pearl and Germ helped her get to her feet, as they all backed toward the tunnel.

The security automaton swung at Tern’s head, knocking him back several feet and followed the attack up with a second blow to Tern’s chest. Tern ejected his blade from inside his arm and swung at the mechanical guard. It managed to block the attack, grabbing Tern’s arm with its
hand. The automaton squeezed Tern’s wrist, crushing his circuitry, wiring, and framework, causing the blade to become unhinged and fall from Tern’s arm.

With the guard’s other arm, it grabbed Tern by the neck and crushed the metal between its strong metallic fingers. Tern’s yellow eyes flickered, and sparks shot from his
framework, as his neck was broken inside the automaton’s hand. Tern’s head fell backward toward Erynn, while the security bot flung Tern’s lifeless body to the floor, and bashed his chest into a chaotic amassment of pieces.

“Get back
to the basement,” Erynn warned Pearl and Germ.

They squeezed through the tunnel, while Erynn retrieved Tern’s head from the floor and followed them through the hole. The security automaton finished smashing Tern to his satisfaction and stood. It walked to the tunnel and stretched an arm into the hole, but Erynn had crawled far enough away that his big, bulky body
couldn’t fit inside. They arrived back in the basement of the Callahan home, and the guard had halted its attempts to reach them.

“What now,
Madam Clover?” Germ inquired.

“
It may have taken Tern apart, but that thing has to have a weakness,” she said. “And Tern is going to tell me what it is.”

Erynn sat down at the table with Tern’s head, and she flipped open his eye lenses, revealing a tape wound throughout his headpiece. She pulled the tape out and looked at it carefully, sliding the tape forward between her fingers. It was comprised of a series of pictures, showing her the last moments Tern had recorded with his ocular sensors.

In the images, she was able to discern several pieces of information about the security bot. His frame consisted of thick chrome plating, his processor was a Plexnode 575 with front cooling and a halo recalibrator, and he had three corrosion-resistant plasteel memory units. Everything was very advanced and didn’t offer any easy solutions.

She thought back to the bright red eyes he stared at her with, however, and remembered that behind the red light, she had seen a whirling pulse behind his lenses.
Looking through several images of the automaton’s eyes, she was able to verify her theory. She knew that the whirling pulse was a telltale sign that his optics could read in new commands if in the proper syntax.

“Germ!” she exclaimed. “You have your journal handy?”

He nodded and replied, “Yes, Madam--”

“Let me see it… and ink and a quill,” she said.

The rat took the journal from his vest pocket along with a long white feather quill. From his trouser pocket, he retrieved a corked bottle of ink. He placed the items on the table in front of Erynn, and she flipped through the book to an empty page.

She dipped the quill into the ink and began scribbling the following:

def Loop():

              while true:

             
              print ‘I’m a dumb robot’

Erynn stood up from the table and said, “You two stay here. I’m going to try something.”

She proceeded down the tunnel with worried glances from both Pearl and Germ. When she had reached the end of the tunnel, she looked around before exiting. She saw no sign of the guard, so she dropped from the hole and walked toward the vault. Creeping around the corner, she could hear the automaton’s
machines whirring.

Taking a deep breath, Erynn turned the corner and walked toward the hulking machine, passing the splayed parts of Tern on the floor. She held the journal upright, where it could read the commands, and it moved forward to meet her. Its heavy stomps came closer and closer, as the vault floor slightly shook from its weight. From behind the book, she could see its optic sensors studying the page, and she hoped that it understood
the method she had written out for it.

Suddenly, the automaton’s movement stopped, and Erynn could hear the sound of paper being printed out from the guard. She dropped the journal to her side, and went behind the robot to find a string of paper jutting from the machine. It was a thin strip of paper that simply read,
‘I’m a dumb robot’ over and over.

She went back to the tunnel and shouted up, “It’s clear, come on down!”

Pearl and Germ soon joined Erynn back in the bank room to find her already stuffing the contents of the safe deposit boxes into the bags. Both of them stared in confusion at the giant automaton sitting motionlessly in the corner.

“What’d ya do to it?” Pearl asked.

“Stuck it in an infinite loop,” Erynn answered.

“How’d ya manage that?” Pearl again asked.

“There’s a huge security design flaw with its optic sensors,” Erynn began. “It can read in commands, interpret and compile them, and then run them. I just wrote it in a way it understood, and it obeyed.” She turned to Germ and continued, “Your journal is on the table, Germy. You can take it back now.”

They loaded up the bags with the rest of the contents from the
safe deposit boxes as well as the coins, jewels, and rare metals from inside the vault. Pearl helped Erynn fill up the last remaining loot, while Germ carried the bags back to the house. They had soon emptied out the entire room and were taking the last remaining bags back out of the vault when Erynn spotted something she had failed to see earlier.

“
Rusty damn cogs!” she yelled out.

Pearl
jumped and looked around the room. “What is it, kitten?” she asked.

Erynn nodded up toward a camera that was taking periodic pictures.

“Well, yer already a heretic,” Pearl said. “What’s the harm in tackin’ on bank robber to the list?”

“That’s not my concern,” Erynn answered. “Now they will know we’ve joined up with the rebels. We’ll have to be more careful.” Erynn pulled out her pistol and fired a single shot at the camera, causing
the contraption to explode and shoot sparks out of its frame.

With the vault loaded up, Erynn set to picking up the various pieces of Tern and loading them into a bag. His arm had been completely crushed, his chest was in complete disarray, leaving the key input and the monitor output useless, and even the punch card input in his back was demolished.

“Alright,” she continued, as she stood up with the bag of Tern. “Let’s hurry and get the rest of these bags out of here.”

They carried out the last few
sacks through the tunnel, and on her last trip Erynn placed a small explosive just inside the base of the tunnel nearest the vault. She made her way through the tunnel back to the house and Germ immediately began filling up a bucket with the dirt he had used to dig the tunnel.

“When you’ve got a good amount of the dirt back in there, push this button to explode the tunnel from that end,” Erynn said to Germ
, handing him a small device with a large red button. “Don’t want them realizing it was the Callahan’s that helped us do this.”

Germ nodded, taking the device and quickly scurrying down the tunnel to fill it back in with dirt.
Erynn meanwhile ran to the second floor, where the green paper was still stuck in the window frame. She pulled it out and replaced it with a black piece of paper instead.

Erynn ran back down to the first floor and went to the back door. Pearl was there
with Gerrit Callahan loading up a stolen corps halftrack with the bags. She joined them in doing so, and they quickly finished the job.

Pearl and Gerrit began to tie a tarp over the bags, while Erynn ran back downstairs to check in with Germ. She found him making quick work of the pile of dirt.

“It’s about half way filled in now, ma’am,” he told her. “Should that be sufficient to conceal the tunnel?”

“I think so,” she answered. “Go ahead and blow it.”

Germ took the device from his trouser pocket and placed his whole paw on the button. In the distance, they could hear a muffled explosion as the ground shook and caused the house to creak a bit.

“The half
track is loaded and ready to move,” Erynn told Germ. “Let’s go ahead and leave. It’s a long road back to Chrome City.”

“Do you think the professor and the others made it out alright, ma’am?” Germ asked.

“Yeah,” she answered walking up the stairs. “He may be crazy, but it tends to be the useful kind of crazy. Moreover, Hirim, Vincent, and that other rebel are with him. I’m sure they’ll get along just fine.”

Erynn and Germ made their way out to the halftrack
, where Pearl waited patiently for them. Gerrit saw them off before making his way back inside the house. As they left the town limits of Ash Cloud, they could hear behind them the roar of a monstrous creature followed by a loud thud.

“Guess the professor’s mutagen worked pretty well,” Erynn said. “Hopefully we can all meet back in Chrome City tonight and find out what all we got from the bank.”