Richard Needs Help

Richard cursed himself as he stumbled into Bennie’s workshop. His chest heaved with the exertion of his run, his body was slicked with sweat, and he surely must have looked like a madman pelting his way through the streets just to get here.

He didn’t care. He didn’t care about any of that. All he could think of was Kara. His mind was full of clouded thoughts, horrific visions of what she might be facing even now.

How had he not believed that Pump was alive?

Why had he let himself be so stupid?! He should have known! This was supposed to be what he was good at! Dealing with this sort of shit was literally his job!

And he’d failed now, where it mattered most.

“Bennie!”

His voice rang out, filling the machinist workshop below the spare part store. It was shadowed here. Bennie had always liked the dark and the looming presence of the industrial machines cast elongated silhouettes across the bare stone floor. At other times, it might have been frightening or intimidating.

But right now he did not give a damn.

“Bennie, get out here! I don’t have time for any of this mysterious bullshit!”

“Mysterious bullshit? I’m working!”

Richard turned, striding towards a table placed in the far corner of the room. It was shrouded beneath a massive machine - a smelter of some sort with a set of bellows. Bennie was standing before it. A set of precision goggles were wrapped around his skull, a dozen lenses clicking and clacking as they shifted back and forth in response to the small motions of his eyes. One of his hands was encased in a gauntlet that ended in a dozen small, bladed limbs, tools and grasping tendrils. This, he was playing over the table. Or rather, what was on the table.

Kara would have recognised it as a neural core, but to Richard it was just so much scrap to be.

What could be seen of Bennie’s face was a mask of annoyance. His work was complex and intricate and he didn’t take well to people barging into his workshop screaming. But this faded fast as he took in Richard’s bedraggled appearance. He reached up with his free hand, pulling away the goggles and with the click of releasing pressure, the gauntlet fell away from his arm.

“What happened?”

“Kara,” Richard said. “They got Kara! Pump… that machine… it followed me back or it figured out where we were. Isabel lured me away and then he moved in and took her! I have no idea where she is, Bennie.”

“We’ll deal with it,” Bennie said. His voice brooked no doubt and for an instant, Richard saw the ghost of the man he had been before. The soldier. But then, the war had cost them both plenty. The main difference was that Bennie wore it on the outside.

“That’s just it?” Richard asked. “We’ll deal with it? Just like that?”

“Do you really wanna hear anything else right now? They don’t want her dead, do they? You told me they wanted her alive.”

“That’s right,” Richard nodded. “Pump, that thing, it took her. There was no blood that I could see. It must have dragged her out or… or carried her off. Either way, they have her now and I have no idea where to find her.”

He looked up, pinning Bennie with a piercing look.

“They’re going to try and break her again. She just barely made it out before. If they have her for too long…”

He trailed off. There was no need to finish and besides, both of them knew what the end result would be. Richard could still remember the state Kara had been in when he’d found her on the ship. This time, he doubted that Isabel would take it quite so easy.

How long did he have to get to her before she broke? How much of it had already trickled through his hands?

Damnit!

“They won’t have the chance,” Bennie said. “You don’t mind if I use automatons?”

“You could use damn rats for all I care. Just find her. Please.”

“You came to the right man,” Bennie said. “I told you before I nearly ran this joint. I gave it up ‘cus who would want that sort of pressure? But that doesn’t mean I didn’t take a few opportunities to secure my position.”

Richard had no idea what his friend was going on about and frankly didn’t much care. Bennie turned away from the table, the half-finished core left forgotten.

“All right,” he said. His voice was loud, carrying past Richard and into the corners of the massive workshop. “You can come out now. Looks like you’re needed.”

The last time that they had been here, Richard had half wondered about this place. While it was true that it was massive and full of heavy machinery, Richard had also noticed how dark it was. As if Bennie refused to operate on anything but the absolute minimum of light. Truthfully, beyond the odd speculation, he hadn’t put much thought into it. Bennie had always been an odd man.

But now Richard realised there had been a method behind the madness.

From the darkness, from the shadows, from the nooks and corners and odd places of the room there came a sort of mechanical scuttering. A click-click of metal feet that sent chills racing up Richard’s spine. There was a susurrus, a sense that there were a great many things just beyond the edge of your sight staying very still that had suddenly become very active.

A light flickered on. A tiny red dot, floating alone in the void. Then another. Another. Another. Another. A dozen, two dozen, more. Each one flickering on as if Bennie had pulled the stars from the sky. But if they were stars, they were tiny, angry stars.

And then Richard saw them and he wished they were just stars.

They were low, slender things. Each one possessed a dozen glinting, crimson eyes. Their bodies were plated metal, coloured to a dull bronze or sometimes silver. They were sinuous, each one made of multiple interlocking segments from under which they sported dozens of clicking, bladed legs. Their heads were flattened, consisting of a jutting fringe under which a dozen glass eyes beamed red. Steam vents along their sides exhaled softly as they came into the light.

There had to be twenty of them at least! Thirty, perhaps! They all shared the same basic design, but even Richard could tell there were variants. Some were broad, tough-looking. Others were slender and fast. Some were as small as a man’s arm while others were as tall and broad as Richard himself.

His eyes widened, his heart danced. Cold terror washed through him as he turned his eyes on the proud machinist.

“My creations!” Bennie said. “I told you they wouldn’t give me Conquerors! So I’ve been building my own.”

“Centipedes?”

“Efficient design! Overlapping plates! Good armour cover! Multiple legs serve as redundancy! Oooh, these little beauties can take a hit and keep going! And they’re fast! Can you imagine being chased by one?”

“I’d rather not!”

“Exactly! Trust me, Richard, these little guys will make Conquerors totally worthless!”

He deflated visibly.

“When they’re done, anyway. We’re experiencing some slight technical errors.”

“Such as?”

“Neural cores are designed for a humanoid bodytype. I’m having to modify them by hand. Takes time, and it’s a delicate process. Even one slip and you’ve just got a pile of junk. Not to mention, I am having to import the weapons and armour. Secretly, I mean. Even for me, asking for Conqueror grade stuff is a bit much.”

“I would think so!” Richard said. “Bennie, you are absolutely nuts but right now it’s exactly what I need. How many of these things can fight?”

“One.”

Richard gave him a cold stare.

“After all that you have one that can fight?”

“Well, technically a few could fight but they wouldn’t last long. Armour components and weapons are lacking. And also the steam assemblies need to be augmented to handle combat stress. If they tried to fight like this, they’d overheat and burn out.”

He must have seen the look on Richard’s face because he quickly raised a hand.

“Relax, relax! I didn’t call them to fight! My little guys know the whole city! I told you. Each and every one of them has a core that I modified by hand. And well, you know me. Think I didn’t make other improvements? They’re smart. They don’t miss a thing and everything they see they remember.”

He turned to the creature - Richard tried not to think of them as ‘’a mass of claws, chitin and lurking danger’ but the words certainly leapt to mind. The very presence of these things was making him twitchy.

But he’d put up with them for Kara.

Speaking of which.

“Kara,” Bennie spoke loudly. “You know who she is. You saw her before. Confirm for me.”

The insects looked to one another. The one, the largest, gave a clicking sound with its claws, snapping them open and shut. This apparently was a confirmation.

“Good,” Bennie said. “Find her. Priority locate, seek her out. Don’t engage unless you have to. Do not attempt to rescue her. Find her. Track her. Tell us where she is. Start at the location where she was kidnapped. I’m rescinding your standing orders to remain hidden. If you have to be seen by people to complete this mission, you may do so. But please try to avoid it. The headache I’d have trying to explain this…”

At some unspoken signal, the creatures scattered. The sound of so many metal claws clicking against the ground and the sight of the almost organic way that they swayed and tilted as they moved would fill Richard’s nightmares for years to come.

“They’ll find her,” Bennie said. “If Isabel and Pump are in the city, my little treasures will seek them out. They see everything and they can’t be fooled. Conquerors are only designed to fight, but I made something far more useful.”

“You made spies,” Richard said weakly.

“Spies. Soldiers. They can be damn rescue workers if they have to! High intelligence! Dexterity! Multi-mission capability! They’ll leave Conquerors in the dust.”

“Oh, good.”

Richard shook his head, trying to get past the idea that he was seeing the birth of a whole new legacy of bloodshed. Bennie might have been focused on the capabilities of his creations, but Richard could well imagine the tasks to which that capability would be tasked.

And the idea of finding a horse-sized one of these things glittering on the battlefield? Gunshots bouncing off its slanted armour, its slicing, thrashing blades spilling oceans of blood as it rampaged through the ranks of an army?

Utterly terrifying.

But he had no time to worry about that. And besides, it was an argument they’d had before.

Richard tried to find something to say. His heart was hammering, adrenaline washing through him like a tide. His instincts from the war told him that he needed to relax. Burning himself out would do no good for anyone.

But just like it had been then, that was easy to know and hard to do.

The clicking sound came again. Richard spun, one of the centipedes had emerged from the darkness. This one was a big boy, almost as tall as Richard. Its upper body wove back and forth as it levered itself onto its tail end. It had five crimson eyes, and they rotated, twisting and turning in focus in the disquieting way that seemed so natural to Automatons.

It clicked. Three quick repetitions. Richard had no idea what it was trying to say.

But Bennie did.

“Still got that gun?”

“I have my pistol, yeah. Why?”

“Because it seems someone has grown impatient.”

Bennie gestured towards the stairs to the shop.

“We have a visitor.”