In their heyday they were collectively called mechnots. Later he knew them as ‘mekkies’. Would he be rightly classified as a ‘mekkie’? Yul shook his head. Why was he pondering such inane questions?
He crept forward, bridling his impatience.
So far nothing significant stood out. Whether it was lab, front or depot, Yul did not know, nor did he care. He just wanted this contrived indenture over. What did Mathias want him to find here? That wretched Biogron-thing encased in glass? The machine gave him the creeps. He shrugged, continued his reconnaissance.
The echo of booted feet brought him to a halt. A security guard on regular rounds? Yul glimpsed a solitary figure edge out of the shadows, extending a stun gun. Just some night watchman, he reassured himself, half asleep on the job. He could hear him mumbling about his ill luck at drawing the night shift.
Yul ducked into the shadows. Nothing he couldn’t handle. To get discovered this early in his recon wouldn’t pay. Get in, get out, take some video of this little adventure to show around Mathias’s coffee room gang—Goss and his ugly boxer face, the CEO, and the rest of the bloodsuckers.
He turned his attention back to the disorganized scatter. These bots looked very old—all old parts of models no longer in existence. Who would want to buy such trash? Why no new ones? What was this place used for? A conduit to some other hidden research lab?
Another sound caught his attention. He turned, raising his blaster.
A flitting, human-size feline shape moving on all fours skirted the shadows beyond the stacks. Christ, a live mechnobot? Surely not here?
He watched, waited.
Nothing.
If he took it out, security would be alerted.
Warily he advanced to investigate, his blaster clutched in a tight fist. The figure had pulled back into the gloom behind that large stack of robot parts.
He peered down the space between two rows of crates. Nothing there. He squinted in the gloom. If it had been real, it was gone. He hadn’t time to chase ghosts.
No new development of synthetics, no lab of any kind. Maybe he wasn’t looking in the right place? He had the itchy feeling this was an undermanned facility. A feeling that important events were happening elsewhere. But where?
There was nothing of interest ahead, just some trolleys and carts to transport cargo from the service bay’s double doors, now closed to this junk yard. Likely not the place Mathias wanted him to spy on, but there were several accesses, or tunnels at the back that led elsewhere, he assumed, to the outbuildings that he had glimpsed earlier in the darkness of the service yard.
Yul turned off his video and snapped only a few photos to spite the man. He knew these shots of broken, derelict bots would interest Mathias, keep the heat off him for now. The man seemed to get enough of a hard on over robotic parts as it was. Damn that bastard! He would feed Mathias his balls one of these days.
Shooting photos here was a waste of time.
He entered one of the tunnels, ducking below the grimy windows that overlooked the service yard to avoid being seen by a wandering sentry who might be prowling about.
The tunnel dipped like a ramp and the windows disappeared. He moved on down the dim-lit corridor, halogen lamps glowing every 20 feet, figuring he had descended quite far underground. At the passage’s end appeared another depot three times larger. Something of interest here: bundled canvas cargoes, steel crates, hundreds of stacked wooden boxes. He heard the whirr of front-end loaders and the scuffling and mutterings of men loading cargo aboard what he saw to be a ship.
A ship? It must have been there for some time, for he had seen or heard no ship land in the time it had taken him to get to the warehouse on foot.
The thump of running footfalls came at him from behind. He pressed himself flush to a box, in behind a compact forklift. Shit, trouble.
Just in time. A breathless man came running toward the loading crew, with his weapon raised.
“Security breach! You guys see anything?”
“Nothing.”
The guard frowned, tapping his monitor. “Could be an equipment failure. If you see anything—alert me asap. Keep your eyes open!”
“Yes, sirree, Eugene,” one of the men snorted amusedly. He flicked an exaggerated salute, noting the nameplate.
The security man’s lips twisted sourly. “Let’s make that commitment a little more serious, shall we, ‘Guido’?”
The worker shook his head, smirking, ducking back to his work. “Whatever you say, Eugene.”
His colleagues chuckled, resumed their crude talk and coarse banter which revolved around certain adventures at Dolly’s strip tavern at Paranith.
Yul quietly snapped more photos of crew and cargo. So, there was a ship in active range. Which meant that Mathias’s pics would arrive on his desk instantaneously across the light years, as would his circle-vision feed. The device would upload the digital info to Mathias’s computers, streaming along the light-drive highways.
Yul knelt carefully and using his knife, pried up a crate’s lid, slit open a wrapped package lying within. Aha! These were not old bits of junk as in the last section. New robot parts: gleaming limbs, pristine headpieces, faceplates, masks, perfected skulls, helmets, circuitry, modules, power packs. The circuit boards were packed neatly in cellophane, sawdust lining them for protection against jostling or impact. Ion power packs, bulging with Fe-Al boosters—here was enough evidence to pique Mathias’s interest. He turned
