Episode 15.8 (Patreon)

Hello world, Who will rescue the rescuers?

The crew are exhausted.
I could offer little help, being trapped physically in the MH2.
I could not raise Kamil on his portable radio, which hopefully just  meant that he was out of range still, the signal doesn't travel well in  densely built-up cities.

In fact, I had heard NO radio signals from the city at all, it had been completely silent, which in itself is very strange.
Even after all this time, there are usually small whispers from heliophages such as pre-collapse roof-mounted solar devices:
Getting power for just minutes or hours each day, waking up, asking if  there is anyone around, then falling back into slumber as the sun goes  down.
After being unable to save Yadyam, my friends marched through the night  down to the city of Santa Cruz de La Palma, and the unknown danger  lurking within.

Amelie and Maddie were at the front of the party, a reverse of their positions on the journey up.
And neither showed signs of tiring.

We reached the upper terraces of the city as the sun rose.
With the benefit of hindsight, and a large dose of apprehension, we recontextualised our surrounding environment.
There were no birds, animals, or even large insects in the city, true.
But there were occasional... skeletons.

Looking closer and treading lighter, the crew found evidence of  recent violence, as whatever danger stalks this city enacted a  century-long policy of extermination.
Amelie put her hands over her mouth and suppressed a scream, as we passed a recently deceased canine, cut cleanly in two pieces.

The group huddled close to the imposing grey buildings, all barracks  for hosting soldiers and their families, thousands of these structures,  all the same prison-like design.

The reason for the silence on the electromagnetic spectrum revealed itself as we passed the large, empty, parade ground.
There had been a small utility building on the edge of it, perhaps to operate lighting or military computer systems.
But it has been completely eviscerated, the brick walls scattered, and  whatever electronics within, computers, circuitry or antennas, milled  into fine pieces no larger than beach pebbles.
Whatever did this was a danger to animals, people, and AIs.

It was like venturing into a Dragon's lair, I thought, recalling  memories of the game of imagination that I play every full moon with my  friends LUNA and Ana.
There was always evidence of destruction in the cave, castle, or whatever, that the brave heroes had ventured into.
Now, in real life, my friends were also trying to hide from a Dragon.

A concussion of sound hit us, cutting through the stillness, a distant boom of furious hammering and tearing metal.
This caused Maddie to leap and grasp onto the second-story window of the building we were hiding next to, in surprise and shock.
But we were delighted to hear another sound, right afterwards:
"Did anyone hear that?! Can anyone hear ME?!" Kamil said, finally, over our local UHF connection.
"Darling, I'm so sorry - where ARE you!?" Amelie cried into her own radio.

Act 2

"I'm cut off, I can't get back to the ship," Kamil whispered, voice  crackling with static on the radio, "I'm just one block away from our  building, but that THING knows I'm here."

The sound started again, beating metal and crumbling brick as the Dragon, or whatever it was, continued its extermination.

"Darling, I'm so sorry," Amelie repeated.
"I know. Me too." Kamil replied. "Let's get out of this mess first."
Amelie smiled at the little radio in her hand, ignoring the wide eyes of the surrounding crew, who were waiting for a plan.
"OK. So what is it? Military, right?" She asked.
"Must be, you've seen the signs, too, by now, this was an occupied city -  10s of thousands of soldiers, all living here waiting for deployment  into one of the African fronts during the resource wars."

My databanks confirm this - during The Collapse, when the old oil  reserves were exhausted, new ones were discovered by desperate people,  and then even more desperate people fought them for it.

"What does it look like?" Amelie said, eyes finally lifting from the  radio in her hand, and scanning the streets in the direction of the  sound of tearing metal.

"I only got a good look at it at night," Kamil replied, "through  brick dust and shadows. It's FAST, Amelie, you can't outrun it, you must  hide. I thought I could hold up in this apartment block, the doors are  still sealable, but it tore right through them and is destroying the  stairwell to get to me. I don't have much time."

Amelie's shoulders shook, and Nia put her hand around her.

"It's big, like a dragon!" Kamil continued, identifying it using the same name I had.
"Powerful, but small spaces are a challenge for it.
The problem there is that it can make any small space larger, as you can hear."
Another boom lifted the dust around us, as the apartment block Kamil was hiding in was struck with enormous force.

"I won't last much longer." he said, "we need a distraction!"

I received a packet from Maddie as the crew made their way towards  the water, hiding behind the building right next to the one the MH2 was  moored against, and the opposite side to Kamil and the Dragon.

.iinaicai

She transmitted, a pure Lojban emotional: "No fear".
"You're very brave Maddie," I replied, "I AM very afraid. I wish there was something I could do from here."

.iinaicai

She repeated, and walked away from the cover of the building, towards the terrible noise.
"Maddie!" Hissed Amelie, in a whisper, "Get back here!"

Maddie didn't reply.
She didn't look back.
She repeated her message to me:

.iinaicai

As her EQUUS visual tactical interface engaged, and she broke into a run.

Act 3

I saw the encounter through Maddie's eyes, transmitted to me over UHF, as she rounded the corner of the residential block.
She continued to ignore my pleas to come back and get to safety, her only goal to protect her friends.

Her systems were running at 100%, according to her EQUUS tactical grid, overlaid on top of her video feed.
I didn't understand all of what I was seeing, but three things stood out to me:

• Ancillary capacitors charged, ready to boost power locally to her legs should she need it,
• Environment analysed, the composition of the surrounding buildings,  walls, and even road could be predicted and used defensively,
• And several mission strategies were being simulated, the models changing in real time as the surrounding variables shifted.

But the Dragon was waiting for her.
As Maddie hoped, it had stopped attacking the building that Kamil was trapped inside to focus on her distraction.
It had pulled itself out into the street, collapsing the corner of the building that it had been burrowing into.

I was shocked when I pattern-matched the first frames of video.
The Dragon was another EQUUS unit - 4 sharp powerful legs, a long body  with standard attachments for equipment and modules - but this one was  huge.
At least 4 times larger than Maddie, and she is not small to start with, she's the size of a pony.
The Dragon could easily stretch up to peer into the second-story windows of the buildings here.

While Maddie is painted bright orange, except for her one black  foreleg, the colour of search and rescue EQUUS units, the Dragon was  painted olive drab.
Military spec.

Maddie's tactical overlay pinpointed further differences, red warning glyphs clustering around the creature's back:

• One identified a strong crane-like arm, with wicked-looking sharp  tools built into the manipulator at the end of it, large enough to fully  enclose a human head.
• Another group of red glyphs highlighted EM warfare antennas, for  detecting and attacking digital devices with high-powered bursts of RF.
• And the largest warning, identifying a high-powered autorifle, pivoting and tracking Maddie's every move.

A single green glyph pinged onto her feed as Kamil crept out of the  ruined building's entrance, towards the half-flooded building that the  MH2 was moored against.

The Dragon's EQUUS systems detected him too, of course, it has cameras pointing in every direction.
The autorifle instantly switched from tracking Maddie to Kamil, clicking furiously like an angry buzzing insect.
Kamil threw himself onto the ground instinctually, but mercifully, the rifle had no bullets.

Suddenly, the Dragon leapt towards Maddie with shocking speed, my  girl jumping vertically out of the way to the building wall above her,  before pushing off to land behind it.

Too close behind it.
Without turning, the Dragon flattened itself against the ground,  thrusting a rear leg out and under Maddie's body, and touching the  exposed metal on her belly.

There was a pulse of RF, and her video feed glitched to static.

(PLAYSTREAM /DEV/RF0/UHF/EQUUS/0)

Act 4

As soon as the ship's crane indelicately dropped Maddie onto the large back deck of the MH2, Kamil radioed up to Yeshi:
"SHE'S SAFE, GET US OUT OF HERE".
"HOLD ON EVERYONE, WE ARE LEAVING!" Yeshi's voice crackled back
The motors of the ship churned the water, and we escaped Santa Cruz De La Palma, and the dragon still menacing its streets.

The battle had been short, but long enough to distract the Dragon.
I learned what had happened from Kamil, who saw it all from his vantage point in a window overlooking the street.
As soon as the Dragon had focussed on Maddie, he was able to get to the building the MH2 was moored behind.

After Maddie, in an incredible acrobatic feat, jumped over the Dragon  as it charged, she was hit by an EM attack, electromagnetic attack, and  collapsed.
I'm glad I did not have a way to see what followed.

The Dragon picked up the immobile Maddie and slammed her into the corner of the apartment block.
The brick building, weakened already by the Dragon's attempt to get to  where Kamil had been hiding, broke apart as Maddie's weight punched  through the corner, and dropped into the harbour beyond it.

This turned out to be what saved her.
As the crew rushed up the stairwell, through the apartment and across to  the MH2, Kamil saw the Dragon shake off the layer of dust and bricks  that had fallen on it, and turn towards the floating Maddie.
It did not pursue her.

"It can't swim!" Kamil shouted, as he too crossed the improvised rope bridge onto the ship, "I'll get her!"
And powered up the crane, fishing Maddie out of the water.

We have two little robot friends needing our help now.
Maddie, with Yeshi and Amelie trying to fix the EM damage, and Rafi,  who's data packets come so slowly now that I have had to adjust timeouts  just to hear him.

Maddie is stable, thankfully, though she is completely cut off from her EQUUS systems, including legs, radios and speakers.
I'm connected by a standard debugging cable to the old ESA part of her  body that is installed onto the top of the orange EQUUS system.
She said the game was fun, but she doesn't want to play it again.
I told her she never had to in the first place, and that she was so brave.

Rafi?

She asked.
I bridged Maddie to the video feed from Daphne's room, where her  finally-finished small, replacement body for Rafi lay next to him on the  workbench, connected by many cables.
She had built it with the advanced electronics found inside the Lafayette aircraft carrier.

"I'm terrified." Daphne said, looking into the camera set up on her  workbench/makeshift operating table, "This could kill him, I'm not sure  of anything here!"

I relayed her words to Rafi, and after 128 seconds I replied with the packet that Rafi sent back, slowly, over our network.

"I am not afraid." He said, "Sof tov harey zeh tov."

Daphne looked down at her debugging tablet, and began the transfer.

(END-TRANSMISSION)

CREDITS

Lost Terminal is a NAMTAO production.
It is written & produced by Tris Oaten
Credits narrated by Lucy Stringer
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• Jade Felicity Bilkey
• Jack L
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