Six!

[keaalu]

     -Please Lara, talk to me?-

     Silence.

     -please I’m sorry just talk? Promise to change, not be such a brat any more-

     Silence.

     - [position please] Celerity, please. Are ok?-

     Silence.

     -Please Lara. Please please-

     Silence.

     Guilt pressed down rather like a physical weight on Slipstream’s shoulders. Although he knew that they’d probably have got separated regardless of all his hectoring, it didn’t help him feel any less wretched, and besides, if they’d been separated on better terms, she’d know he was looking for her.

      She probably thinks I’m glad to be rid of her, he told himself, miserably, pacing slowly back and forth in the little junction ‘room’. The single dirty bulb set in an alcove in the ceiling burned a sullen off-white, and made all three filthy companions but Slipstream in particular look even dirtier. You stupid little idiot. Poor Lara. Been trying to make it up to me and I’ve just been a bastard to her. She’s probably hurt, lost, maybe even unconscious… and I can’t find her but she’ll probably think I don’t care, am just not looking.

     “What is the matter?” Mirii stood at the centre of the junction and watched as he paced around her; she’d tried to follow him, but his pacing was irregular and he nearly tripped on her a few times. “Is there a problem?”

     “I’m not getting a reply off Lara. She’s not answering my pings,” he replied, curtly, increasingly anxious. “What if she’s hurt? What if she’s really, really hurt?” He paced, back and forth, casting repeated glances back at the tunnel they’d emerged from, clearly wanting to go back. “If she’s got hurt because of me, I’m never going to be able to forgive myself. Such a stupid little-”

     “Maybe she is just busy,” Mirii soothed, gently, before he could work himself into too deep an anxiety. “There were a lot of those creatures, if she is concentrating on scaring them away she may not have time to-”

     “Exactly, there were a lot of those creatures!” Slipstream interrupted, agitated, rubbing his arms. His pacing had grown more erratic. “Maybe-… maybe enough to, to… They’ve hurt her, I know they have. I have to go back-”

     Mirii positioned herself in front of him and blocked his way. “Not just yet,” she counselled. “If you place yourself in danger needlessly-”

     “Don’t you get it? She’s not answering!”

     “I get it.” She brushed off the abrasive tone of voice, calmly. “And I am asking that you consider two things; one, she may be too busy to answer. Two, she put herself in the way of danger to allow us to continue the chase for Firewire. If you return and endanger yourself, you have meant her sacrifice means nothing.”

     He backed up, torn, hugging his arms around himself… and resumed pacing.

     “Is there any chance she is merely out of range?” Mirii wondered, trying to logic him into calming down.

     “No, no. Not at this distance. Unless the pipes are made of lead-” Slipstream stood in the mouth of the tunnel, and shouted, as loudly as he dared; “Lara!” His voice echoed, painfully; and in the background Fred could just be heard scolding, the noise hurting his ears. “Answer me!”

     Nothing. And the silence seemed even closer, when the echoes had finally faded.

     “Slag it. I’m going to check if she’s ok,” he asserted, and vanished into the mouth of the pipe before anyone could advise against it.

     “Fred? You would be well advised to remain here,” Mirii suggested, warily.

     “Not apart,” he disagreed. “I follow.”

     “All right. But be careful!” she cautioned, reluctantly, scrambling over the lip into the pipe and following the errant youngling. “We do not know what Slipstream might have run into…”

     Slipstream had unfortunately ‘run into’ a whole heap of trouble. He should have anticipated that they’d have been followed, and really should have been watching where he was going, regardless. But no. His urgency to get out the other end of the tunnel meant he tripped blindly over the creature, lurking like a piece of detritus in the shallow water. As it lunged up to snap at him, he made a leap for it, and ended up staggering into the midst of another cluster of them, waiting in the shallows of the waterlogged tunnel. He yelped, alarmed, and must have crushed at least two body parts beyond rescue as he landed, unable to maintain his balance on the slippery, semi-motile floor.

     Mirii had the advantage of coming up behind him and seeing what was happening. By the time she got there, the creatures were already swarming her friend, close to a dozen of the serpentine bodies twisting around him, biting at his plating; curls of brilliant blue electrical discharge arced and crackled over his exterior. He was trying ineffectually to dislodge them, but couldn’t get a good grip on any of the slippery bodies and was clearly growing weaker.

     The siinu voiced a long, hideous shriek, like the call of an angry bird of prey, which echoed all down the tube and was loud enough to startle most of the marauding creatures away. The last were reasonably easy to beat away with the stick she’d had the foresight to bring, and while Mirii dealt with Slipstream, Fred pelted the creatures with bits of broken brick from the crumbling tunnel walls.

     “Come along, Slipstream…” She managed to secure a grasp on his hands, and threw her strength backwards, hauling him slowly along. “This was not the best of ideas you have had! We need to stop and think about how we are going to proceed!”

     He continued to struggle, even as she dragged him carefully backwards down the pipe, but it was an un-co-ordinated, awkward struggle. “…no… no, have-… have to… go find Laah-… Lara…” he insisted, feebly.

     “I know, m’chi, but this is not a good option. We will find an alternative route, one which has not been infested by dangerous vermin!”

     Slipstream had recovered enough to stagger along on his own, by the time they got back to the junction room, and he looked equal parts frustrated, angry and distressed – although whether it was with himself or the creatures, Mirii found it impossible to be completely sure. “Those stupid fragging… things!” he railed against the creatures, frustratedly, looking like he wanted to throw things. “Why can’t they just leave us alone?”

     “It was probably instinctual that they followed us in the first place,” Mirii soothed, watching him pace. “I doubt they have any ulterior motive for doing so.”

     “They’ve stopped me getting back to Lara, that’s what they’ve been doing!” he retorted, stabbing an arm at the tunnel. “I need to get past and they’re stopping me!”

     “So maybe we need to rethink our options. What else can we do that does not include a full-frontal assault on something we do not currently have the facilities to overcome?”

     “If you mean we ought to go somewhere else, you can just frag off,” he snapped, bristling. “We can’t just abandon her!”

     “And we will not,” Mirii agreed, earnestly. “But we do not know what has happened, and we do not know that she has not simply passed into an area of the drain through which radio communications cannot pass. She could even now be looking for us. And we both know that she would want us to carry on, in any eventuality.”

     Slipstream paced, helplessly. “I can’t. I can’t go forwards without knowing what’s happened to her,” he insisted, still looking resentfully at the pipe. “Come on, if we make a good dedicated push we can get through those creatures and-”

     “Slipstream?”

     He gave her a look, semi-resentful at being interrupted. “What?”

     Mirii gave him a long, sombre look. “Had I not startled them away from you, you might well have been more seriously injured,” she reminded. “In a way, you were lucky that you left me behind, because had we been together? We might have both been overcome. Who would have saved us? Fred?”

     He glared at her, but the fire was visibly cooling from his optics.

     “We will find her,” she elaborated, gently. “But we will consider all our options before attacking that one tunnel again. Agreed?”

     He looked at her for a few more long seconds, before sagging dejectedly to his aft, with such a thump it was as if every joint in his body had simultaneously elected to fail.

     “I’ve killed her, haven’t I?” he croaked, miserably, curling his knees up to his chest and resting his face against them. “Slag it all to the deepest fragging Pit.”

     “You do not know that,” Mirii soothed, crouching next to him and setting one of her small hands on top of his. “She may just be busy.”

     “Responses to positional requests are involuntary,” he argued, miserably, voice muffled. “Doesn’t matter what she’s doing, even if she’s recharging she should still be able to answer… The fact she’s not answering means she’s hurt.” His voice fractured into static. “I didn’t mean to hurt her!”

     “Hey, hey...” Mirii caught his fingers, gave them a gentle squeeze, but he barely responded to the touch. “Shh-hh, there. We will find her, m’chi.”

     “Yeah. In bits. All smashed up because I can’t control my stupid temper. Was horrible to her for nothing.”

     “We will find her,” Mirii repeated, softly. “And when we do, it will not be broken up, or hurt.” Ignoring that he was twice her size, she pulled him gently against herself, and cradled his head in her arms, stroking her fingers along his antennae, gently. “We will find her and you will all safely return home to your sister. All right?”

     He wrapped his arms around her and let his head rest against her chest, and cried quietly against her.

0o0o0o0o0

     Shahr-Pieni Civic Waste Processing Plant – also colloquially known as ‘the Dump’ – was located on the far eastern edge of the city, as far out of sight as was possible and ringed by holographic projectors that made it look like a small wooded area, from the outside. From the inside, the full unappealing picture was entirely visible; it was not the most appealing or attractive place to work in, smelly and dirty and dangerous, not to mention infested by vermin… but every now and then something interesting came up in the rubbish sent there for incineration or recycling. Sometimes it was something valuable, like a piece of lost jewellery. Sometimes it was something useful, like a piece of electronic equipment. Sometimes it was even something valuable to the police, like a body – wouldn’t have been the first time a murder victim got tossed into the sewers for the sawbacks to eat, but the Sweeps fished it out before the hungry reptiles could find it.

     And just sometimes, what they found was… un-interpretable. Like now. Petras and Jeci, two low-ranking but enthusiastic laima spurs, stood alongside their Sweeper truck, and puzzled over what they’d found. It was still in the back of the truck – they’d not found a claw big enough to pick it up, yet.

     “It’s a doll,” Jeci observed, for the third time, sucking quietly on his smokeless flashstick; he was trying hard to quit smoking, and in the last few weeks had managed to wean himself onto something slightly less personally harmful, except to his wallet. “I mean, lookit.” He gestured to each part he listed with the glowing tip of the flashstick. “Arms, legs, head. Got to be some kinda doll.”

     “Pretty damn big doll,” Petras argued, mostly unimpressed and about ready to put it down to a flashstick-induced flight of fancy on his friend’s part. “How’s some kid supposed to play wit that?”

     “Come on, Pete. You know the ladies in the ivory city like everything bigger than normal.” Jeci leered, unattractively, and made a clutching gesture, and Petras snorted back a laugh.

     “So when you say ‘doll’ you mean ‘sexual aid’? Now that’s definitely the drugs talking, Jessie, I told you to lay off the sticks.” Petras waved a dismissive hand.

     “Well then, you try.” Jeci folded his arms and lifted his chin, challengingly. “What are you gonna say it is?”

     “I’unno. Could be anything.” Now his own reputation was on the line, Petras backed down, a little. “If it’s a doll, why not make it, y’know, attractive?” He gestured with one hand. “Not so frickin’ big and ungainly. Looks like it ought to be down a mine, or something.”

     “Or down the drains,” Jeci added, uneasily, sucking harder on his flashstick in an effort to calm his nerves. “Damn it, Pete, what if they’re designing some new automatic sweep? And we found a prototype?”

     Petras gave him a look, and – after a second or two struggling to maintain a straight face – snorted a laugh. “Naah.” He shook his head. “If they were gonna automate the sweeps, they’d, y’know, design something like an all-in-one truck or something, like we drive.” He gestured. “They’d also make it so it can stand up to razorbacks, too. No point dropping your prototype into the sewers and having the wildlife chew it up in a day.”

     Jeci took some small comfort from the logic, and nodded, pinching the tip of the flashstick and deactivating the heating coil. “Well whatever it is,” he resolved, “someone’s lost it. So someone’ll come looking for it, right? If we set up a pinger, we’ll know if someone takes a fancy, and we can claim a reward for finding it…”

     As soon as the two laima had finally manhandled the big ‘doll’ out of their truck and into the ‘reclaim’ area of the Dump, and ambled away to find something to eat, one of the Dump’s larger residents perked her head up from the oil drum she’d been hiding behind.

     Rangi, whose name meant ‘blue sky’ in reference to her bluey-grey fur, was a ‘reclaimer’, a straggly little ruta employed by Nuori-Deuchainn Laboratories. Unlike the Sweeps, she lived on the dump itself; she and her mate Tuuli had built a little den out of old materials high up on the fence above the guard shack in the entrance, where they were protected from the rain and out of reach of the crawling raggle-backs, and they received enough food parcels from their employers in the north to live comfortable if not the most socially-pleasant of lives. But then they had each other, and rarely even set foot outside the plant, so even that wasn’t too major a concern.

     The little ishten had been well trained to spot useful bits and pieces in the detritus. Nuori-Deuchainn usually just wanted anything they could recycle, as a cost-saving exercise – why expend the effort extracting metals from ores if you could just gather up heaps of waste materials and smelt them down instead? But any useful-looking gadgets and gizmos were high on the list, too; holidaymakers often dropped their belongings while they were out and about, and the galaxy-wide nature of the travellers usually meant there was the occasional new, exciting piece of exotic equipment that the researchers could reverse-engineer.

     This was slightly more interesting than just a ‘gadget’. Rangi stood for several long minutes in front of the giant figurine laying slumped across the heap of twisted old vehicle parts, visually appraising it, before climbing carefully up to its ‘chest’ to get a closer look; the face – because it was a face, flattish like a laima face, lips and eyes and everything – was slack, the eyes blank and grey and unseeing, the paintwork covered in dirt and scratches… but through the soles of her sensitive feet she could feel flickers of power. Whatever this actually was, doll or prototype or alien device, there was a power source inside it, and to her experienced senses it felt at least partly self-sustaining.

     It piqued her curiosity. If the scratches and gouges on its enamel were anything to go by, it had been brought down by a gathering of sewer razorbacks, which was no surprise. The failed “guard-dogs” that had escaped into the sewers were a constant menace to the electrical systems; they were attracted to electrical currents, for reasons that mystified the labs that developed them – the opinion was that perhaps they mistook it for prey.

     What was unusual was for a machine to still have some functioning components after an attack in the first place, certainly given that this one didn’t appear to have any of the normal kind of protective screens in place. And to have spontaneously reactivated after that – or continued functioning, somewhere in that heavily shielded chest – was pretty much unheard of, especially in a self-contained system like this.

     Leaving Tuuli to guard it, Rangi scampered over to the closest radio post, and dialled her contact in the Sostine-based laboratory. “Found something interesting!” she reported, excitedly, even before her contact had managed to voice the usual surly what? “Sweeps Petras and Jeci fished it out of the drains.”

     Her contact was a bored-looking laima, all makeup and pouting lips. “Zit actually interesting, this time, Hairball?” she challenged, around a wad of gum. “Or is it jus’ some manky little half-decomposed mutant sawback Tuuli found, again?”

     “Interesting, interesting!” Rangi leaned closer over the terminal, earnestly. “Checked it myself! Big machine, biped, biomimic. Self-sustaining cold fusion!”

     At the latter comment, the fessine sat up straighter. “You sure?” she narrowed her eyes to suspicious little slits. “The Boss’ll be mad if I wake him and you’re just exaggerating. You’re not just trying to get me into trouble?”

     “Nono, definitely interesting, important. Is currently inactive,” Rangi explained. “Seems… damaged, little bit.” She hesitated. “Might be hurt.”

     “Hurt? You said it was a machine.” The receptionist waved a hand before Rangi could clarify what she meant. “A’right. I’ll wake the Boss up,” she agreed. “Tell them two Sweeps we’ll compensate ‘em, but now it’s ours. Don’t let ‘em advertise it too far, we don’t want Provident Electronics getting a sniff of it.”

     Provident Electronics were Nuori-Deuchainn’s biggest rivals on the electronics front, an up-and-coming company which was already turning heads for its innovative designs. Nuori could steal a march on them with this.

     “Sending transport?” Rangi prompted.

     “Yeah, I’ll scramble a couple of big-rigs from Shahr-Pieni airport.” The receptionist wrinkled her dainty nose. “And some shampoo. Rangi, you’re disgusting, I can smell ya from here.”

0o0o0o0o0

     This wasn’t so much a pipe, Fred reasoned, making his cautious way down the latest tunnel, as it was an electrical conduit with a wide central access lumen. Not that he minded, too much, he didn’t have to worry about it getting flooded out, and there was plenty of room for him to move along, leaning down and using all eight limbs to walk on, and it was at least pre-lit, with a string of little surly yellow-white LEDs running along one of the bundles of cable and throwing down cones of dirty light from above his head. It was just an awkward squeeze to get through, in places, and full of insects. Ugh. Fred hated insects, especially the hard-shelled scuttling kind that seemed to infest places like this, so most of his journey thus far was spent not looking at them oh holies not looking.

     He’d covered a good third of the distance he had on his safety line when he noticed that the tube ahead of him seemed to be blocked by brown fur; could it be something dead and stuck in the tube? Maybe a nest? He inched closer, warily.

     It turned out to be a long, fuzzy tail, curled up out of the way, belonging to a small, serious-faced ruta. It was sitting with its knees tucked up, just small enough to be able to do so, working busily on one of the electrical conduits, its delicate little hands covered in insulating gloves and goggles over its eyes to protect it from the light from its microwelding torch.

     Whether Fred’s footsteps rustled loudly enough to be heard, or he cast a shadow, or something unrelated, the ruta finally noticed him there. It froze, first of all, deactivating its little torch, then looked round at him, visibly puffing out into a bipedal thistledown.

     They stared at each other for a second or two, fur all puffed out. Fred showed his fangs, briefly, alarmed, and the ruta responded by flaring its crest, flashing crimson at him. Little bronze rings studding the crest’s margins flashed brilliantly in the low lighting.

     The native broke the stalemate – turned tail and fled, heading away down the pipe in the direction it had presumably come in. Fred gave chase, wishing he knew its language to ask it to come back, explain he meant no harm, just wanted to talk, ask if it had seen anything!

     The safety line tied around his waist jerked him impolitely – and painfully – to a halt. Damnit! Mirii had agreed to pull him back if he got into trouble, and this sudden burst of speed must have worried her. He gave the line two sharp tugs, as agreed, confirming he was ok (and slightly peeved!), and it slackened back up, but by now the ruta had vanished into the twisting gloom.

     He finally emerged from the end of the pipe above the gully, the storm drain where they’d got separated from Celerity. The bundles of thickly-insulated electrical cable spread out in all directions like an obscene, wall-clinging geometric flower. The ruta had already managed to cross to the other side without even getting its feet wet, and as Fred watched, it disappeared down another pipe – a second or two of scrutiny revealed a series of dull, greyish ropes strung across the ceiling, one of which was still undulating softly in the wake of the small creature’s passage.

     The water below was flat, uninteresting… and empty. He sighed, softly, and paddled his feet against the rim of the pipe. No Celerity. None of those creatures, either, but he strongly doubted they’d have dragged her away. Too busy squabbling with each other to achieve something as co-ordinated as that. He moved out onto the wall, scaling the gully’s sheer face with a natural ease, and went to investigate the largest pipes, in the vain hope he’d get a few clues about what might have happened. Footprints, maybe. A trace of paint, transferred if she’d tripped and bumped against the wall. Even maybe some sort of message, because he doubted she’d have moved on willingly without at least trying to give them a clue where she’d gone…

     At the outer entrance of one of the largest tubes were the transfers he’d been looking for, half-hidden under silt, close to the flat-bottom and next to what looked like the prints of caterpillar treads heading inwards over the tunnel’s lip. Long, stark white-blue smears against the grimy rock, and low down. Too low down, almost at the water level. For her to have made these sort of scuffmarks on her own, she’d have had to have been crawling, and it seemed a lot more likely that she’d have simply been dragged or shoved. He ran his fingers over the marks, almost tenderly, as if hoping she’d somehow sense his touch and draw comfort from it, wherever she was…

     Knowing he’d got as far as he was going to be able to get, Fred turned back, and followed his security line. He was going to have to somehow explain to Slipstream that yes, his aunt had vanished from where they’d last seen her, and he had no idea where she might be. That she could have been dragged away, perhaps. That it was more likely those creatures had managed to overload something critical and she was even now wandering around in delirious circles? Holies, he couldn’t tell him that, not after seeing how he’d got after merely being unable to get in contact with her!

     Two sets of blue eyes – one glowing disappointed lilac, the other a considering sky blue – were watching the tunnel, when Fred finally emerged, disappointed and grubby.

     “Anything?” Slipstream wondered, hopefully, as Mirii carefully untied the safety line from around Fred’s midsection and began to coil it back up.

     “Celerity not there,” the felnid explained, softly, then added, as a half-lie; “But paint marks on tunnels. Might be seeking. We keep seeking also, yes?”

     Slipstream thankfully didn’t ask where the paint-marks were, and Fred certainly didn’t volunteer it; the lost Policebot seemed marginally more happy at the assumed idea that his aunt had left the scene under her own power.

     “All right.” He still seemed beaten, but… not quite as completely so as he had seemed earlier. “We’ll keep looking.”

     “Good idea.” Mirii gave him a comforting smile. “For both of them?”

     “For both of them.”

28048 / 80000 words. 35% done!