Chapter 7
Bas-Teal tapped his foot with impatience as the workers at the distribution center carried the last few loads of food into, and gas-cans out of, his truck.
The truck had come ashore in the ferry boats from the battleship, and been driven to the airport and left for him, while it's driver joined another exploration group.
Bas-Teal had driven it from there to a grocery store, where he'd met Lisa. Then he'd driven it here, where, using the advice Lisa had given before leaving, he'd made a deal.
He could almost certainly have made a better deal - getting a better ratio of grain for gasoline, spices, and chocolate, than he was getting - but it didn't matter. It was Replicated gasoline and would be dismissed after it was burned. Similarly, the chocolate was NC brand assortments and it, and the spices were also Replicated. So everything he was trading away cost him nothing.
And, as things were, he was getting basically all the wheat, oats, and beans the distribution center had to spare, and it still wouldn't quite fill his 10-wheeler truck.
He was letting them take all the rest of his gas-cans and trade goods anyway, as a down payment on the shipment of more grains they were ordering to be brought in by rail. That would take a few days to arrive.
In this dimension, the USA never had enough gasoline. They didn't make enough locally to meet demand, and couldn't ship more from overseas. So using it as something to barter was easy. Everybody could use gasoline, so that had been most of his truck's contents on the way here.
But the spices and chocolate turned out to be even more valuable - the locals hadn't had any of those in years.
Bas-Teal was impatient with the loading process, not because it was slow, which it was, but because there were things going on elsewhere which lent a sense of urgency to this effort.
Crew members out exploring the city were being attacked all over.
Bas-Oon had been destroyed.
Bas-Teal realized he could be shot at any time. That would be annoying, since the food which almost filled the truck was the whole point of coming back to this planet.
That food would be a good insurance policy to help Mars Colony in his own dimension weather any unexpected troubles.
He'd have liked to go help the crew members in need, even though the need was generally being handled.
Some of the already-rescued were sending Duplicates back in to town in various Replicated vehicles to go rescue folks the teleporter hadn't gotten to yet.
And the battleship's hospital was doing marvelous work at saving the wounded, and even getting them back to 100% of their abilities in no time.
So while Bas-Teal would have liked to help them, it had been judged that his main priority was to get the food back intact as soon as possible, so it didn't get attacked too.
Part of the reason it hadn't been attacked yet, Bas-Teal thought, was the presence of the combat robot they had brought with it.
It had been felt that a truck full of valuables needed a guard, so they'd brought one.
Basil's grandpa had used his sense of humor when he'd built his robots.
The repair robots looked just like the robot from the TV series Lost in Space, though it was a lot less awkward than the robot it looked like. It also had much better grippers. Its arms, which had accordion-pleats, could be extended like accordions to give it better reach. And its legs were not fused together, but could separate, letting it walk, climb stairs, or even run.
Similarly the combat robot grandpa had built looked like a robot from a movie - the ED-209 droid from Robocop.
He had modified it too, of course. His version had modular weapon-pods, since not all situations were best addressed by the default 3 short-barrel 20mm auto-cannon, one auto-shotgun, and 1 rocket-launcher that the movie version had.
Grandpa had used long-barrel 20mm auto-cannon, for higher velocity and greater punch.
Grandpa's version also had a rocket-pack enabling it to fly briefly, 2 retractable arms for manipulating things, two retractable tentacles, launchers for smoke grenades over each shoulder, and it's feet articulated more than they had in the movie, such that it could now grip things like an eagle did, and even perch on the railings of the battleship, which had all been specifically strengthened to take its weight.
Grandpa had also made a general purpose, or GP, robot that looked like Robocop, except it was entirely robot - no flesh parts.
Bas-Teal had one of those along for intimidation value. It rode in the passenger seat on the way here, and would be there again on the way out. But right now it was helping with the loading and unloading, both to show it was not just an inert prop, and to speed things up a bit. It was quite strong, and was carrying barrels by itself that normally took two men and a hand-truck to move.
The ED-209 Bas-Teal had along just stood silent guard over things.
It looked extremely intimidating.
One of its weapons-pods had the standard autocannon, auto-shotgun, and rocket launcher.
The other weapons-pod had a laser, a plasma gun, and a grenade-launcher.
It had ridden here in the back of the truck, and would ride back that way, since that's the only place it would fit. But, if needed, it could open the truck door and fire out while the truck was in motion.
So Bas-Teal felt pretty safe, and had even offered to send one of the two robots - either one - off to help defend crewmates.
But there were more where these two came from, and Replicated robots were already being sent from the battleship to help where needed.
The loading finally finished. The last barrel was firmly secured in place to prevent problems while at sea.
As the robots got in the truck, Bas-Teal exchanged a final handshake with a warehouse manager who was grinning from ear to ear at the good bargain he'd made.
The manager had previously given, when asked, advice on safe routes out of town to the north, skirting gang territory as much as possible.
Bas-Teal would drive that way to get to the ferry boat they'd left at the beach, then use that to head out to the battleship.
The drive was uneventful until Bas-Teal got to the edge of town.
They had told him this was part of the territory claimed by the gang called the Empire, but that gang wasn't likely to interfere with traffic that stayed on the road.
Apparently, the Empire had changed their minds, or possibly they'd heard he was coming and wanted to capture the rich man and hold him for ransom.
Whatever the reason, the fact was that two cars had been pulled nose-to-nose across a bridge so as to form a roadblock.
And by the roadblock, there were armed men in gang colors gesturing for him to pull over.
"Sprich mit base," Bas-Teal said. "FYI. Gang members with guns at a roadblock are threatening to shoot if I don't pull over. They don't seem to realize that I have the deadlier weapon."
Beth's voice responded "You mean ED-209?"
He laughed and stomped on the gas pedal.
"Oh yah, that too. I expect to be there on schedule. Out."
He yelled "brace for impact" to the robots, and steered the truck a little to the right, moving sideways almost as much as if he had merged one lane over, then straightened out again, now aimed at the back half of the rear car in the roadblock.
Bullets spanged off the bulletproof windshield - one of several upgrades he'd had made to this vehicle before scanning it to be Replicated, back on his own Earth before they'd left. It also had a body made of multiple layers of laminated Kevlar - the same way the military made the bodies of attack-helicopters - instead of the usual thin sheet metal which truck bodies and cabs were usually made of.
He'd figured that, if you were going to keep getting copies of the same vehicle, you might as well start with one in tip-top shape, then add several upgrades.
Well, actually his grandfather had started that approach, and he'd continued it, since it was a good idea.
The general purpose robot modeled after Robocop leaned out the side window and returned fire.
Gang members dove for cover, and that probably saved their lives, as the truck's bumper hit the roadblocking car and effortlessly shoved it out of the way.
The truck continued on past the roadblock, with only a few marks on its windshield and some dents in its tough bumper to show for the encounter.
As he passed the roadblock, Bas-Teal heard one gunman yelling for help from someone called SturmTiger.
Bas-Teal, in his rear-view mirror, saw a bare-chested man in a white tiger mask emerge from a parked van near the roadblock.
Lisa had told him that people in masks were likely to have super-powers. And some of the super-powers he'd heard about were potent indeed, such that it would be stupid to placidly wait for them to get in the first blow before deciding what to do.
So he called out towards the back of the truck, "ED-209! Engage masked or armed targets to the rear!"
The GP robot that looked like Robocop took his cue from that, leaned out the passenger-side window, twisted to face backwards, and started firing with the machine-pistol he carried, at the gang members around what was left of the roadblock.
ED-209 had the roll-up door at the back of the truck raised at about the same time. It wasted no time before opening up with the automatic 40mm grenade-launcher and the autocannon.
The masked man - apparently named SturmTiger - had started forming large indistinct claws in the air before him.
When the bullets and cannon shells arrived, SturmTiger used those claws to block them. Apparently the claws were very tough, since they did successfully absorb the bullet and shell impacts, causing those projectiles to waste their energy and fall to the ground.
Apparently, claws were difficult to block with, since SturmTiger started forming an indistinct wall instead.
In the meantime, the masked bare-chested ambusher had gestured at the incoming 40mm grenades, and swirls of intense wind caught those slow-moving projectiles and blew them back towards the escaping truck.
"Priority targets! Incoming grenades. Shoot them down!" Boz yelled, trying to keep one eye on the rear-view mirror and the other on the road ahead.
He added, "ED-209, stop using grenades in this fight."
The GP robot was a good shot, but not likely so good that he could shoot down grenades using pistol bullets.
So he switched.
His right-hand stowed his machine-pistol while his left hand drew his laser pistol from the opposite side.
Then he started shooting the grenades that ED-209 had not already shot down with his laser.
Some grenade fragments blasted into the truck, but the Kevlar stopped them.
Then Boz had to yell "Shoot down the rockets too!, and stop firing rockets," since the same wind-tricks had turned back a couple light-anti-tank rockets that the combat droid had fired.
They were lucky that the strong winds their masked opponent controlled could not blow ED-209's plasma blasts back their way. He tried, but in the attempt just scattered and dissipated the blasts.
That was good, since they had nothing that could stop a plasma blast directed at them. The lasers had shot down the rockets, but a plasma blast would take a big chunk out of them if it hit.
The plasma had dissipated so quickly that it was worth continuing to use it, despite the risk that the bad guy would try some new trick.
"Keep firing cannon, shotgun, and plasma." Boz instructed. "At least those are keeping him busy on the defensive."
To himself, he mumbled "I don't want to find out what his offense looks like, should he get some time to try that."
Out loud - very loud, to be heard over the gunfire - he added "ED-209 your laser is our primary defense for shooting down anything dangerous coming our way. GP, use your laser to hit the man in the mask."
He thought it was worth a try, since wind could not affect light. Photons have neither mass nor momentum.
But he'd forgotten that light was affected by density - crystals, prisms, glass, water and other things could bend or distort it, and so could compressed air, which apparently SturmTiger could make.
The first two shots missed the target, having been bent slightly out of the way by the compressed-air wall in front of SturmTiger.
While the GP robot was loading in a fresh battery-pack, Boz yelled "GP, adjust your aim to account for the laser light bending to the degree we just observed. It is bending due to densely compressed air in front of the target."
The distance between the roadblock and the fleeing truck was growing with every second.
But it looked like the masked bad-guy was confident and not about to let them get away: he gathered wind around his feet and began to lift off the ground, apparently ready to give chase by flying after them.
Then the GP droid fired his laser again.
The first shot mostly missed, but GP adjusted his aim while firing, so the last brief bit of the beam caught the masked man's arm and burned it pretty good.
The next shot burned a severe gash across StrumTiger's unprotected chest.
The continuous beam setting on the laser had been necessary in order to hit, but it also did less damage than the pulse setting.
That, and the fact that he had been moving, which spread the damage around even more, probably saved StrumTiger's life, assuming, that is, that his friends got him to a hospital quickly.
Bas-Teal released a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding, then concentrated on driving safely towards the ferry and safety.
-0-0-0-
Abe had gone into the city by himself, since he had not found anybody else who wanted to go jogging.
He had learned to love jogging years ago, during basic training in the marines.
In recent weeks, he'd mostly only been able to jog on the battleship, doing laps around the main deck. And the scenery there got old.
Well, mostly. Sometimes they'd been close to other stars and planets, or even on other planets, and that got really interesting.
But he had missed jogging past trees especially, and didn't want to miss this chance.
Jogging past other people could be interesting too, and there weren't usually many on the ship's main deck.
Certainly not people like the ones in two vans which were pulling up by him now.
They were wearing funny-looking costumes.
He wanted to get a picture and paused to fish in his backpack for his camera.
Three teenagers - two female and one male - got out of the first van in a hurry, accompanied by 3 very large dogs.
The male was wearing black motorcycle leathers and a black helmet with a full face visor sculpted to look like a skull.
The first female was in a black bodysuit with yellow lenses on a face-mask.
And the second female - the one with the dogs - wore a heavy black jacket with a thick fur hood and a cheap disposable dog mask.
Abe took a moment to mumble to himself "what is it with this town and the color black? It seems like most of them wear nothing but that."
The male teenager approached Abe while waving a gun and said, "we planned to take hostages anyway during this bank robbery. Congratulations, you're the first. Drop your stuff and come with me."
Dark tendrils of some kind of vapor were leaking from vents in the sides of his mask. Abe wondered if maybe he was puffing on a doobie in there.
The two females, one with a gun visible, were tensely standing by a side-door into a building they'd pulled up next to.
Not just a building - a bank.
Abe was disgusted with himself for not paying enough attention. He should have seen and understood the clues - vans full of masked people pulling up fast to park by a bank's rear entrance.
As Abe's hand changed what it was fishing for within his backpack, he had the wry though that his drill sergeant would have yelled at him for allowing himself to be caught off-guard like this.
At least he was used to thinking fast and keeping focused in stressful situations. Abe had been a marine, a firefighter, and, more recently, a skydiving instructor on Tortola, which mostly wasn't stressful, but when it was, it really was - like when you noticed you were about to land in a rose-bush or something and had to think clearly and quickly about how and where to steer your parachute.
This teenager approaching him with a gun seemed to be one of the ones who think a gun is some kind of magic wand, and that just by virtue of having it, everyone must do exactly as you say.
In other words, he had no practical experience with them.
So, as the approaching teenager used his gun to gesture and thereby had it pointed in the wrong direction - that is, pointed at anything other than what you expect to shoot - Abe pulled his own gun out of his backpack and got down to business in earnest.
He'd pulled out the Mac-10, which seemed better than his Colt 1911 pistol in this situation, due to the multiple targets closely packed together.
The Military Armaments Corporation model 10, or Mac-10 as people often called it, had once famously been described by a weapons researcher for a police chiefs association as "fit only for combat in a phone booth" due to its poor accuracy.
And indeed, rapidly spraying bullets which went everywhere except on target was no use to anyone except for movie-directors.
But Abe had high hopes for this Mac-10: Basil's grandpa had worked on it.
Most Mac-10's were cheaply made from metal stamped into the right shapes, resulting in imprecision and poor tolerances.
This one had been custom made using the same techniques employed in making precision weapons, like sniper rifles or guns intended to be used in high-end competitions.
It had been precisely machined from a larger block of metal, resulting in very tight tolerances.
It still wasn't a weapon you would take to high-end competitions - there were things about its fundamental design that inherently limited its accuracy - but the changes should make it much more effective than most Mac-10's.
And it had lots of extras added on.
It had a long recoil compensator on the front to make it easier to control while firing. That was nomex-covered so it could be used as a secondary grip to better control the weapon, and a small strap underneath for the same purpose.
It had a select-fire mode added, to allow 3-round bursts.
And it had a laser sight - one of the nice green ones which were visible twice as far in daylight as the standard red ones.
The moment the muzzle of Abe's Mac-10 cleared the edge of his backpack, he caught sight of the green dot from his laser sight. It was on the wall near the nearby teenager.
The Mac-10 was barely out of the backpack when the laser sight settled onto the target's abdomen.
Abe briefly stroked the trigger and a 3-round burst stitched its way from the target's abdomen up across his chest.
Sergeant had always said aim low and let muzzle-climb work for you.
That target began to fall and Abe was already sighting on the next target.
The green dot reached a torso and Abe fired again.
As he fired, he felt a couple stings, as if bugs were biting him. He had not heard any shots though - other than his own - so he filed it away for wondering about it later.
While in combat, it was stupid to let anything but combat have your attention.
It certainly wasn't the time to do things like confess your love for someone else, like they did in movies.
The third teenager was screaming and charging him, with her hands clenched before her as if she intended to choke him to death.
In her obvious rage, she'd forgotten her own gun.
Her 3 very large dogs came with her.
They didn't have far to travel, but it was enough time for Abe to put the rest of his 30 rounds of .45 acp into them.
He used the muzzle-climb to walk his fire across all 4 closely-packed targets and then back again.
All 4 went down, with the closest dog actually slumping at Abe's feet.
He wasted no time dwelling on that.
He was busy reloading.
The 2nd van, also full of masked people, had parked behind the first.
He hadn't seen anyone from it yet, though only seconds had elapsed since he'd started firing.
Something weird was going on here, but Abe could not put his finger on what it was.
He'd think about it later. The time for contemplation was *after* all targets were dealt-with.
His sergeant had always said it was stupid to wait for the enemy to act, and then try to react to what they did.
He always said to take the initiative - that to keep your enemy off-balance and responding to you, gave you the advantage.
So Abe chose a direction, and charged, weapon up and ready.
He went straight at the first van, then suddenly swerved to go around its left side.
There he surprised a teenager who had been creeping forward, wearing loose black clothing like you'd see at a Renaissance Festival, plus a Venetian mask and silver cornet.
The laser-sight's green dot was already on the target's torso - one advantage of keeping your weapon pointed in the direction where you expect targets - and so Abe wasted no time in firing.
A sudden muscle-spasm made two of the 3 bullets miss, though the target was still falling over.
Abe fired 3 more into his opponent to be sure.
As he was doing so, he felt a bullet strike his back.
His Kevlar vest stopped it, but the impact still hurt.
Abe started to spin to face the assailant behind him.
As he did so, 3 more rounds hit his back and side.
Then a teenager in a skintight black and lavender outfit with a black domino mask came into view.
She was adjusting her aim, to try to shoot him in the head, when his green dot got to the right place and he fired.
He realized he'd gone to his knees sometime while being shot.
He didn't remember doing so - he was tightly focused at the time.
During his glimpse on their arrival, he'd only seen two in the second van. That didn't mean there weren't more, so he reloaded again, since the convenient little indicators in the side of his magazine said he was out.
Apparently he'd gone full-auto on the last target.
He didn't remember that either.
While reloading, he listened. But if anyone was moving nearby, he couldn't hear it.
He felt his back and side for injuries. There were bruises, but no blood, so the vest had stopped anything from penetrating.
That tickled his memory somehow - like there was something there that needed attention.
But more urgent yet, was the business of staying alive.
As quickly as he could - staggering a bit from the pain and what might be a broken rib - he checked out the two vans, inside and out, and even underneath.
He noted the keys had been left in them, as if for a quick getaway.
But nobody was in them.
Realizing that all his opponents were down, he sighed in relief.
Then it hit him - there had been no blood. None of the people or dogs he had shot had bled at all.
That could be bad - it could mean they all had bullet-proof gear and were potentially regrouping to come after him again.
He readied his weapon and went immediately to check. It was good that he had. The last two were still down but the first 3 were stirring.
One seemed to be trying to roll over, so Abe started aiming his weapon.
But before he could fire, he was fired at, by someone yelling "Freeze! Drop your weapon!"
A quick glance told him 2 bank guards had arrived from the front of the bank.
Abe was fine with shooting bank-robbers, but not bank guards.
But he didn't want to be shot, detained, interrogated etc either.
So he sprayed half a clip of ammo in the direction of the guards, but up high so he'd be sure to miss.
This he did, to keep their heads down while he fled.
He got in the second van, and backed it around a corner, and down the next alley while the guards stayed behind cover and probably called for backup.
Abe backed out onto a street, shifted into drive, and started forward down that road, driving just like all the other cars so as not to attract attention.
He drove several blocks until he saw what he wanted - a parking structure. He pulled in, parked, then walked calmly away, joining pedestrian traffic at a strip mall and headed, not coincidentally, away from the bank.
Once he seemed to be in the clear, with nobody nearby to listen, he said "Sprich mit Basil Snodgrass. Hey Boz, I just got done with a shootout and wanted to check with you about something weird."
"Ok," Boz's voice replied in his inner-ear, "Go ahead."
"I hit the targets but they didn't bleed. At first I thought maybe they had bullet-proof vests or such things. But then I saw places where I had hit on bare skin - an arm, a calf, and a shoulder - that didn't penetrate. They just had red inflamed areas as if they'd been slapped hard there. I wanted to ask you if your grandpa made some kind of funny bullets I grabbed while I was in a hurry."
Basil asked "what do they look like?"
Abe checked, careful to keep everything inside the backpack so no bystanders saw and became concerned.
Then he replied, "they have a white plastic tip, like a Glaser Safety Slug - very good bullets those: like a shotgun going off in contact with the target. Anyway, the tip on these is slightly transparent and it looks like there is a liquid inside."
Basil laughed, and joked "Ladies and gentlemen, we have a successful test! Tell us, Abe, how did they work out?"
Abe was not amused. "The targets went down, but only stayed down for a couple minutes. I had to leave as they started getting up, since more folks arrived to join the party. So I can't say what happened after that. Spill - what do you know?"
Basil got serious "I'm glad you're OK. Sorry about the mixup. I told the folks preparing for the briefing to put out some samples of every type of gun - except the Scrooch gun, not until we know what it does, if it even works at all - and ammo that Grandpa had scanned into the Replicator, so that folks could choose. I'd forgotten those existed. Grandpa called them 'Reset Bullets'."
"What do they do?"
Basil said "well, Grandpa called it one of his better failed experiments. He was looking for a better tranquilizer - one that could reliably knock out anyone with no chance of killing them by overdose - and he stumbled across the chemical in those white-tipped bullets. I forget what he called it. But he explained it this way."
He took a breath and continued. "We know that the part of the brain we call the pleasure center releases certain chemicals like endorphins and dopamine at certain times, like when you're happy or experiencing pleasure. Grandpa found that there is a similar, but more or less opposite center of the brain he called the trauma center. It releases certain other chemicals when you're miserable, depressed, or otherwise suffering. You can get rid of those - process them - but it takes time. And the trauma center stores them - sometimes leaking some out - until they all get processed. The chemicals, good and bad, seem to play a huge part in the emotions we experience. And somebody that has been through a lot of bad stuff has more of these negative chemicals than the trauma center can store, so they are constantly re-experiencing - to some degree - the bad stuff they went through. Clear so far?"
"Yah"
"Ok, So Grandpa found a chemical that absorbs through the skin, and dissolves the negative chemicals held in the trauma center. All of them. And it does it more or less immediately. He said the effect on somebody would be like getting at least 10 years of effective, professional, counseling, all in a moment. He said he wouldn't be surprised if the shock of the change made people faint for a while. He designed the bullet to carry it to a target while he still thought it was a tranquilizer, and I guess he carried through with that on sheer momentum, even after he learned the combat effect of them would be, at most, a minute or two of unconsciousness. The people you shot probably woke up feeling better than they had in years, despite the minor bruising at the impact sites."
"Well," snorted Abe, "then they feel better than I do. I was hit 4 times on the Kevlar - that seems to be mere bruising, but I also picked up several bug bites somehow, and those are starting to itch and get inflamed. I'm coming back to the ship."
"Do you need pickup by teleport portal? We have a backlog for that right now - lots of people are getting attacked - but could fit you in if its urgent."
"Nah," responded Abe, "even if they are going to be a problem, most bug bites take a while - like 30 to 40 minutes - to really get bad, if they are going to. So I'll just link up with the nearest crewmembers with a car, then drive to the ferry and take that to the ship. If I have trouble before getting there, you'll hear from me. Now where are the nearest explorers from the crew?"
Boz replied, "just one block east of you. I'll let them know you're coming. And I'll send some more ferries - with drivers and vehicles - to the shore to meet you and the others like you. Let me know if you need anything more. Out."