Unseen Friends, Unseen Foes

by Alcuin Fromm

Table of Contents parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7a, 7b

part 4

Lemm stood on a high balcony and surveyed an ocean of scrap metal. To his right, an enormous furnace sweltered the air and bathed everything in a hellish red glow. Somewhere amidst the chaos lay his recently delivered ship nestled among tons of junk. With three hundred Marks, Lemm had not only gained access to the interior of the foundry, but the location of his ship as well: Sector 43, Site R-98, Locus 4.

Along the ceiling far above him, Lemm saw tracks crossing in all directions. He watched a suspended grappling arm run along the tracks until stopping at a precise point. It plunged into one of the piles with a terrific clamor, crunched closed, then resurfaced with a clawful of scrap, bits of debris dripping like droplets off a hand scooping up water. The claw swiftly moved above a long chute that fed into the furnace. The claw opened and the scrap crashed onto the chute’s surface and slid down it, disappearing into the heart of the molten inferno.

Lemm looked back at the vast expanse of metal. Lightly illuminated paths ran all through the piles in a grid pattern and small rods with glowing letters and numbers poked out of the mess in periodic intervals. After a number of minutes, he located the spot where his ship must be. If he proceeded carefully, he could wind his way through the piles and get to it on foot.

He descended a ladder and began to move cautiously through the scrap. From the ground, he could better see the grid lines and markings on the floor, and within ten minutes, he had reached his destination. The gangway of his ship had been twisted open by the blast, allowing Lemm to crawl into the ship’s interior. He pulled out his datapad and turned on its small flashlight to look around.

He had no idea what he was looking for, and the majority of the ship had been rendered completely inaccessible. The cockpit was a gaping hole, open to the exterior. Lemm abandoned any hope of retrieving Tinnoli’s datachip. He sighed and thought of the chubby man, shuddering at the thought of his and the innocent captain’s demise. A wave of sadness washed over him and he said a quick prayer for their souls. He wandered back to the middle of the central aisle and turned to leave in disappointment when something caught his eye.

A shallow crater had been impressed into one of the bulkheads. In the center was something black. Lemm walked over and shined his flashlight on the oblong head of the assassin robot, crushed on one side by its impact with the wall, but still intact on the other side. Lemm found a severed piece of twisted metal on the ground and pried the head loose.

Suddenly, the ship rocked and swayed with a violent lurch. Lemm fell to the floor. He instinctively put his datapad in his pocket, but doing so cut his light source. Only a vague, reddish glow through the open gangway allowed him to orient himself. He unbuttoned his uniform jacket and stuffed the head inside to free up both his hands, then he scrambled to the opening on all fours. Before he could get there, however, Lemm felt himself pressed to the ground. In an instant, everything became clear. The claw had lifted the ship off the ground. In a few moments, it would drop it together with Lemm onto the chute and into the furnace.

He went to the edge of the gangway and peered down. The claw had lifted the ship to an incredible height, and the unending scrap metal scrolled by far beneath him. To jump then would be suicide, and to stay would mean incineration. Lemm’s mind raced. A dangerous thought came to him. He climbed onto the gangway itself and crawled out to its very edge. Hot air tore at him as he flew across the mountains of metal. The claw had almost reached the furnace, and Lemm saw the chute quickly approaching. The ship slowed and stopped above the chute at about the height of five men. He had no other choice.

Seized by mind-numbing panic, Lemm leapt from the gangway and hit the surface of the chute. He screamed in pain as he twisted his ankle and collapsed. He began sliding down the chute, but stopped himself by pressing a heel against the blazing surface. Above him the suspended ship swayed gently back and forth, ready to drop at any moment. Lemm clawed and crawled his way up the hot metal, dragging his limp foot and tearing his hands and knees against the jagged scoring in the surface of the chute. He heard a scrape of metal on metal and looked up. The claw had released the ship.

With a scream of terror and a final burst of energy, he bent his good leg and launched himself upwards with all his might. The ship crashed to the surface of the chute just below Lemm and slowly began sliding into the furnace. Shrieks of grinding metal filled the scorching air as Lemm watched the ship recede and then disappear into the depths of the furnace.

Slowly and painfully he crawled to the upper edge of the chute, then inched his way along it to the point where it met the main body of the furnace housing. Once there, he hauled himself over the edge and dropped onto a metal access platform that ran along the outside of an adjacent service building. He stood and hobbled to a relay station for service robots, collapsing to the ground in front of one of them. The last memory he had before losing consciousness was the blurry sight of a robot peering down at him.

* * *

Service robots at the Hahneen Foundry were not programmed to enquire why a human might find himself unconscious and crippled alongside a 500,000-ton industrial incinerator. They dutifully brought Lemm to the robot-led infirmary and bound up his wounds well enough for him to hobble back to the main office building and sneak out onto the city streets again. Despite more obnoxious music in the hovercab, Lemm had no trouble sleeping through it on the ride home.

After another long rest in his own bed, Lemm woke up late that afternoon reasonably refreshed, though in dire need of rejuvenation shots and pain killers. His curiosity about the robot head overpowered the throbbing ache in his ankle, however, and he decided it was time to initiate his AI. All it needed was a personality protocol and a name. Lemm purchased the first cheap package he could find. While he waited for the protocol to download and integrate into his program, he considered a name, but before he could decide on anything, his AI went online.

“Hello, sir,” said a calm, pleasant voice through Lemm’s datapad.

“Hello. My name is Lemm Meetrich. I have programmed you. Do you know what you are?”

“Yes, sir,” it said. “I am a fully functional artificial intelligence program created by the user Lemm Meetrich. I specialize in data and intelligence acquisition and analysis, as well as aggressive, covert security evasion and infiltration. I have been integrated with the TechDor Corporation’s ‘Polite but Honest Butler’ language and personality protocol. I am embedded inside a LR-208 datapad. I feel obliged to mention, sir, that I have already detected a number of low-level advertising viruses that have infected the device.”

“What? Are you sure? I wrote the security program myself.”

“Yes, sir, but you also wrote my programming, and clearly at a later date. Your security protocol, though robust, has become obsolete in a few areas.”

Lemm scratched his head, annoyed at first, but then comforted by the realization that his own programming skills had improved since writing the security code.

“Very good, thank you. Your first task will be to perform a thorough physical, chemical and technological analysis of this object.” Lemm pointed the datapad’s camera toward the robot head sitting next to him on the bed.

“Splendid, sir. However, there is little I shall be able to achieve by means of a simple visual examination.”

Lemm smiled. “Of course not. That’s why I’m going to hardwire you to the thing physically.”

“Ah, that would change the situation immensely, sir.”

Lemm rummaged through the satchel he had brought from Jennok with his most vital tools, removing cables and connection clamps.

“And when you’re done with that, get rid of those ads.”

“Certainly, sir.”

* * *

The AI cleared its nonexistent throat, waking Lemm. He had gone to a local pharmacy and purchased the rejuv shots and a strong anti-inflammatory medicine, which had put him right to sleep. Lemm rubbed his eyes and cautiously tested his ankle.

“What have you found?” he said, walking gingerly up and down the room. His ankle felt almost back to normal.

“Much, sir. There is a greatly damaged CPU within the object which I believe I may be able to access. I think I can reconstruct the damaged portions, though it will take time.”

“Good, do that. I want to know everything that killer robot had in its head. Anything else?”

“Yes, sir. My chemical analysis has yielded a very interesting result. The exoskeleton of the object is the standard titanium used for commercial robots, but the interior is lined with a strange alloy of nickel—”

“Nickel! Hey, that’s not a bad name. I’ll call you Nickel.”

“As you wish, sir. It is perhaps a less inappropriate name than the second metal of the alloy.”

“Which is?”

“Hythurium, sir.”

Lemm’s eyes bulged. “Lining the inside?”

“Yes, sir. It appears to be very uniformly distributed.”

“That explains it,” said Lemm.

“Explains what, sir?”

“How that bomb could march through the Olmenin Central Spaceport without being detected. Hythurium has many legitimate uses, but all those are strictly limited to certain permitted manufacturers. It also has many illegitimate uses. One of those is to block scanners.”

“Correct, sir. The nickel-hythurium weave, if present in the robot’s entire skeletal structure, would have prevented any security scans from penetrating it. A bomb would not have been detected.”

Lemm shook his head. “These are sophisticated people, Nickel. Anyone who can traffic in black-market hythurium has a large bankroll to play with.”

Lemm adjusted Nickel’s connection, hooking him up to the CPU in the robot head, then lay back down to think.

* * *

Though he scoured every information and news source available, Lemm could find no truthful report on the bombing of his ship. The few mentions of it at all repeated the same claims that the ship had malfunctioned and no one was injured. An official statement by the Office of the Imperial Embassy declared Tinnoli had suddenly and tragically died in an unnamed accident. There were no further details. The ship’s captain was simply not mentioned anywhere.

If news about the bombing had been hard to find, there was no lack of reporting about his actions at the riot. All the media were talking about it and with no small bias towards Lemm’s guilt. They unanimously described the riot as a non-violent protest and the assault victim, Cheenyia Ropan, whose name was becoming synonymous with the struggle for justice, as a freedom fighter and hero. Discussions and debates about the incident often shifted to wholesale indictments of the Empire and its unwelcome presence on Olmenin.

Disgusted and dejected, Lemm gave up his efforts late in the night and settled down to sleep. He was just about to doze off, when a sharp tone rang out. Lemm started. It came again and he realized someone was at the door. He stood up and threw his blanket over Nickel and the robot head on the nearby desk. At the door, he touched a panel.

“Yes?” he said.

Silence followed.

“Who is it?” said Lemm in agitation.

Someone mumbled an inarticulate response.

Lemm opened the door and gazed at the disheveled Fengrick in civilian clothes. Fengrick, the military man at the scene of the riot who could have offered defense testimony but chose not to. Lemm’s nose detected the odor of alcohol swarming around the visitor. Fengrick stared at the ground and swayed.

“Goodness, man, you’re drunk,” said Lemm, twisting his face in disapproval.

“Yes, sir, I am,” said Fengrick with a slight slur.

“Well, get in here before you pass out.”

Lemm stepped aside. The man staggered into the small chamber, flopped down unceremoniously onto the bed, then swung his legs over the side and hunched forward, burying his face in his hands. Lemm stood with his arms folded, glaring at the man with smoldering anger.

“I heard Ruuta interrogated you,” said Lemm.

The man nodded into his hands.

“Apparently you had a sudden attack of acute amnesia and forgot all about the event, hm?”

Fengrick straightened and looked at Lemm, eyes blazing. “I didn’t lie! I’m not a liar!”

“You also didn’t tell the truth. You may as well have lied because without your testimony, Ruuta’s going to convict me.”

The drunk man’s face disappeared into his hands again, muffling his voice. “I’ve got a wife and three kids, sir. I can’t get involved in a... in a criminal trial. Not on the side of the Empire.”

“I’m not saying it’s not a sacrifice, but forget about the Empire for a second, you’re abandoning the truth.”

“No,” he said looking up again, “I’m just staying out of it. I can’t get involved.”

“That’s what Inspector Dinnit also told me in so many words. Everyone is terrified of standing up to these people. Everyone is terrified of standing up to the Revolution. But it’ll never stop if we keep letting them get away with their crimes.”

Fengrick stared at Lemm for a long time. For a moment, Lemm thought he might be getting through to him, but despair returned to the man’s face and he looked back down to the ground.

“Hasn’t anyone else testified for you?” said Fengrick.

Lemm shook his head. “No.”

“No one?”

“Everyone seems to have the same fear you have.”

Fengrick stood suddenly and shuffled to the door as if to leave. A deep frown spread over his face. He hesitated. Lemm softened his tone. “Why are you here, captain?”

Fengrick shook his head. “Not captain... not anymore. I got reassigned to an admin position. That was their warning. Poking datapads with the eighteen-year old interns now. But it’s income. I’ve got a wife and three kids, Ambassador... I...” Fengrick turned away and sighed.

“I was hoping you had good news,” he said finally. “That you’ve got a defense.”

“Well, I don’t. Won’t you help me?”

Fengrick turned to look at Lemm, his eyes glistening. He shook his head. “I... I can’t,” he said in a whisper, then he slapped the panel to open the door and hurried out of the chamber with unsteady steps.

* * *

Proceed to part 5...

Copyright © 2024 by Alcuin Fromm