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Fixer in Phase World -- Part 2

2 Months later, Baxta System, 08:23 hrs, Year 683

At this point, the Fixer has discovered a limit to his research with the
Nanopak. After some checking he's found a likely candidate to aid him with
further development. Unfortunately the man works for the Federation and would be
unlikely to cooperate -- at least until the Fixer gets his hands on him. The
Nanopak can manufacture unusual high-technology goods, including precious
stones, weapons and the strange psi-helmet the Fixer wears. Through subterfuge
he discovers the man is vacationing on Baxta, a wilderness world, located inside
the Federation. The four decide to travel there and abduct him, after the Fixer
shows Loptr and the others a magnificent gem, with promises of more...

The Farbauti dropped through the planetary atmosphere from orbit, descending at
a rapid pace, before leveling out near the deck.

"You're sure about this place?" Loptr called from his navigator's seat.

Emerson, standing beside him smiled, then tapped his psi-helmet, another device
Dr. Tobias' electronic box had produced. "I spoke with his secretary. What she
said and what she thought were two different things."

Garm, the pilot, growled but Loptr calmed him with a few words. He checked the
computer panel. "Sensors show should be on the site in about twenty minutes.
We'll put down a little ways away." The team had put over a dozen hours in
orbit, scanning the surface with optics and mapping radar, before finally
discovering a Federation starship, parked on a grassy field.

Emerson grunted and returned to the starship's common area. There was Felum,
dressed in a red suit of light body armor, strapping on a backpack with a
circular device set into a harness. Emerson did likewise. Both had control sets
that strapped onto their arms.

"How much longer til showtime?" asked Marvin.

"Soon. Loptr's going to set the ship down a few miles from the site. We'll use
these contragrav units to scout the area. My detection gear will do the rest.
Use your psionics because once we're separated and I jam radio communications it
will be the only way to keep in touch."

Shortly thereafter, the Farbauti touched down.

Once outside the pair lifted off. They flew for about fifteen minutes before
Emerson's radio detector picked up comm signals. Angling northwest, the pair
headed towards a wooded set of hills and landed.

"The signal is strong," explained Emerson, "I'd say we're within 300 yards of
them. Hmmm," the look on his face soured. The scanner froze on a channel, a
scrambled transmission was taking place. They might have been detected. "Let's
move it!"

The pair jogged for a few moments before cresting the hill-line. There, moving
across a flat expanse below them were six creatures. Radio traffic picked up
again.

"Damn!" cursed Felum, zooming in with his helmet's multi-optics visor. "Those
are combat robots."

"They obviously have sensors. We need to split up," said Emerson. "Head east."

Felum, studied his particle-beam pistol, it looked woefully inadequate to deal
with the armored robots. "I, I don't know."

Emerson smiled, the way he'd smiled at Dr. Tobias, then touched the thick, long
tube that was slung over his shoulder. "That's why I brought this." It was a
portable missle launcher. "Just in case." The smile suddenly disappeared from
Emerson's face, causing Felum to look. One of the bots had broken formation and
was heading towards them.

"I'm outta here!" Marvin Felum fled into the trees.

Emerson found jamming the bot's radio transmission was impossible while he was
running, so he stopped and took his time. He looked up to see the advancing form
of the robot no more than a dozen paces away. He unslung the rocket launcher and
took aim.

* * * * *

Now we'll see what's happening on the prey's side as the vacationing doctor and
his bodyguards are out for a stroll...

Evan Kranz had been retired from the Patrol for nearly four years now. The
scientist he was protecting was under AFact's in-house protection, a group of
four Muramasa combat bots, the top of their line. It was Professor Bingham who'd
asked Kranz to join his staff, after the Patrolman had once helped rescue him
from a damaged starship in space.

Evan noticed the two robots ahead of him had split. The one on his right was
heading towards the tree line at the base of the hill. The other, ahead and to
his left, had stopped and was scanning the other.

"Alert," droned the mechanical voice behind he and Professor Bingham. "Point
Units have confirmed the detection of two energy sources." Evan and the
professor exchanged glances, unsure of what this meant.

"Energy sources?" asked the Patrolman. "What kind of energy sources?"

There was a few seconds of silence, so Evan repeated the question.

"Data unavailable. Communication link unavailable," was all the bot said.

Evan unslung his GR-15 battle rifle. A whooshing sound overtook the area. Both
men and bots turned to see a trail of smoke, culminate in an explosion, centered
on the point robot.

"Professor, get down!" cried Kranz, powering up the battle rifle. "We're under
attack!"

The explosion echoed across the flat expanse and rolled up the surrounding
hills, lingering for a few moments.

Several streaks of bright light raced back up to the treeline as the other point
robot opened fire with its laser. One of the rear bots moved forward and joined
in, pumping several bolts of energy into the trees along the break. Looking down
the barrel of his weapon at the area, Evan Kranz saw nothing.

The ex-Patrolman shifted his gaze towards the two robots who had paired up.
They'd run about a dozen steps and had stopped to scan the area with their
sensors.

Kranz yelled at the robot closest to Bingham, giving it orders. The bot rose
from its combat crouch and turned around, its back towards the men. "Professor,
hitch a ride on the back of that robot," ordered Kranz. "He can run all the way
back to camp without getting tired. You'll slow him down a bit but he can get
you safely away from here. I want you to hide in the starship."

"What about you?" asked Bingham.

"Don't worry about me. AFact needs your nanotech expertise," Kranz scurried over
to the professor and pushed him towards the robot. "If you get hurt, I'll be in
big trouble." The professor jumped up on the bot's back and the machine chugged
off.

Just as Evan turned, another smoke trail streaked out from the trees and
impacted on the nearest robot, blowing it to pieces. "Crap" muttered the
ex-Patrolman, dropping to one knee. He waited for the other bot to fire, to get
a sense of the enemy's position, then let loose a few bursts from his rifle.

A tingling sensation overtook Evan Kranz, causing him to turn around. He'd
figured there was more than one attacker, but now he felt certain. The lead bot
stopped, pivoted and opened fire on the opposite side of the clearing. Evan
spotted a figure in red, making his way down the slope. The bot's laser beam
struck him several times, causing the figure to drop to the ground. Kranz stood,
from his position, he could see the man clearly. He raised his rifle, took aim
then opened fire.

Dirt kicked up all around the figure's midsection and his arm popped up
suddenly, puppet-like. He heard the figure groan, before falling quiet. The
intruder had stopped moving.

"One down," said the ex-patrolman, turning back the opposite way, just in time
to see another missle destroy the last robot.

* * * * *

"Felum! Felum!" Emerson used the psi-scanner in his helm, to try and locate his
associate, but nothing came back. Norbert had fired the rocket and moved
in-between a pair of boulders about a dozen yards away. Peering out carefully,
he scanned the base of the opposite ridge, spotting a red dot. He zoomed in with
his helm's multi-optic visor, onto the lifeless form of Marvin Felum, stretched
out on the ground. Cursing, he shut the comset and raised his rocket launcher.

The last target was a man, who was half-covered by a pair of small rocks.
According to the rocket launcher's readout, he had single fire-and-forget missle
left.

The figure in his sights wasn't firing, instead concentrating on the trees
Emerson had just come from. Lowering the rocket launcher, he activated his
psi-helm's neural scanner. The figure looked back towards the retreating
scientist. Emerson heard a whisper in his mind: rock, rock...

A dozen paces behind his target was a larger rock.

Emerson raised the rocket launcher and targeted the medium-sized boulder. The
figure darted. Emerson counted to three, then fired. The rocket streaked across
the intervening distance in an eyeblink and impacted on the rock, just as the
man arrived.

* * * * *

"This is amusing," thought Emerson as he flew up behind the combat robot
chugging along, with the professor on his back.

Slowing to a hover, he aimed a sonic stun pistol at the professor's back, firing
again and again until the scientist dropped off. Surprisingly the man didn't
fall down, and stood paralyzed and grunting.

The robot turned and fired, but Emerson's well-armored suit handled the red-hot
laser beam easily. Executing a daring maneuver with the aid of the grav-belt,
Emerson vaulted upwards, thrusting his legs out and somersaulted in mid-air,
landing behind the frozen scientist.

"Don't fire!" he clamped his left arm around the scientist's neck and pressed
the stunner against the side of the man's head. He studied the robot. "You're a
fine specimen, but I am the technologically superior one here."

With the push of a button, his contragrav belt kicked in, and the pair lifted
off, the robot watching helplessly as the man he'd been programmed to protect
flew away.

* * * * *

"These blaster pistols are amazing!" cried Loptr when Emerson had returned.
Norbert had given one to each man on the trip, including Garm. While he and
Felum had gone off, Loptr and Garm had done some target shooting.

"This geezer Bingham -- I know the perfect place to stash him."

Emerson let go of Professor Bingham and pushed the half-conscious man at Garm.
"Stow him inside the ship," he ordered.

Garm growled, causing Emerson to add, "But gently. He's worth a great deal."

Loptr looked around, "Where's, uh, Marvin?"

Norbert removed his helm, and wiped the perspiration from his face, "He didn't
make it."

"When do you want to leave?" asked Loptr without missing a beat. Felum meant
nothing to him. His thoughts were on the diamond Emerson had promised them for
helping. The man had offered two to the starship captain as payment for the
trip.

"As soon as I stow my gear," Emerson began undressing. "You've made the
necessary arrangements for the cabin?"

"Just like you said. Uh, my money?"

Emerson smiled, "As soon as we reach orbit."

* * * * *

Two Days Later, Baxta System, 08:23 hrs, Year 683
When Evan Kranz and his charge Professor Bingham don't report in Federation
authorities contact the Patrol, to investigate...

Nick Furcas shook his head. In all his years in the Patrol this never got easy:
finding a friend dead.

Summoned to the planet of Baxta when professor Bingham's associate reported the
scientist missing, Furcas had been uncertain of what lay ahead.

His friend, Evan Kranz was dead. He'd served briefly with Kranz at HQ on
Treville.

"Well sir," explained Furcas's lieutenant, "It looks like high-explosive rounds
took out the Muramasa bots. Good news is they got one of the bad guys, sir."
Furcas watched the crime scene bot cradle the dead body of Marvin Felum.

The lieutenant examined the shredded armor jumpsuit the dead man wore. A few
needles shown through.

"Looks like Evan got him," Furcas was all choked up. He stood by silently as the
crime bot fingerprinted then photographed the dead man for a facial comparison
scan later. "Any idea of who they were?"

"No sir, I've never seen him before."

Furcas picked up Kranz's gravity rifle and looked around. Despite the size of
the crime scene, he figured his team would take another three days to scour the
area and gather evidence. The forensic microbots would be invaluable in this
terrain.

But the details didn't matter to Furcas. The bottom line was the same: Professor
Bingham was gone and Evan was dead.

to be continued...