The Gaming Outpost

“Cord the entrance, Juniper.” The man in the heavy battle gear said waiting with rifle out, and belted to his shoulder as if it had grown there.  A squat robot, with a laser splashed melt of metal across its middle, tracked on its tread up the white, dusty stone slope, and between the sparse dwarf trees made so by lack of water.  It trailed a scent, for the same laser blast that had rendered it forgetful of who its enemies were, also permanently fixed its scent generator to ‘Mountain Scent Juniper Scent #29′.

Its masters had lost to the army led by the man loaded down with grenades, and ropes, and knives, and bullets, lots of bullets, because they forgot what war was, and had tried to scentizize it.  He had left that universe behind, but recognizing that the robot’s masters might have been twits in most things, but they made good bots, he had taken the ‘Valetbot, Model #4′ with him.

A cord spun out of Juniper’s guts, and spun out like a lariat of white twenty yards wide, and then settled down over the hump of rock that held a solid stone block.  Juniper began to tighten the loop with a two horsepower motor, so it took nearly four minutes for the micro-thin ‘lariat’ to cut through the stone, but there was never any doubt.  A thirty ton circle of white-gray mountanside was cut loose, and Juniper backed up as his master walked to the top of the circle.

The vibrating lariat had not cut molecule thin, which it would have done without vibration and the extra strings of it, or this would have been useless, but still, a tenth of an inch was not much at all. You could not insert a crowbar, and flip over the thirty ton weight of stone.  The man pulled out an eighteen inch long tube of flexible plastic, and with his K-bar knife, he nicked one end before slipping the knife back into his right calf sheath.  He turned the plastic tube upside down, and let the purple powerder inside the translucent tube filter down into the robot-made crack.

When that was done, with one eye he checked on Juniper.  The thing was useful, the man allowed, not wanting to admit how he enjoyed the little comforts of a bot that could cook fish a dozen different ways brought, or just the mere fact of its companionship.  But it was not that bright, and might have stationed itself in the unsafe zone.  But it was well back, and examining the drought-stunted two foot tall pine that was probably a decade old.

The man slipped a cigarette out of his vest pocket, and lit it.  This was one of the very good things about being a verser.  A long time ago, he had used to help him sleep in the wars he had fought, until the doctor brought to the mercenary camp cut out part of his lung, and told him to continue was ‘dumber than charging a tank with a grenade, you stupid ox.’  He had been a doctor who had been rescued from kidnapping by the man, and to see Doc with tears in his eyes had made the man put down his drugs.

But now that he was an immortal verser, well, as long as he got killed off fairly quickly, he thought he was safe.  So he lit up, and took a few precious puffs, until he put the cig down next to the crack where a bit of ash would be sure to fall eventually.

Then he walked away.

Ten minutes later, which was five minutes too long for his impatience, a hot, narrow BLANGrmoof, and then srummsmble and the rock face tumbled forward in slow motion to land in the space between the two ridges.  A few rocks still barred the way, but beyond them, the man could smell old air, cool breeze in the hole into the ground.

Juniper had opened the blocked cave.  Now, the man had to find out where the controls for the Stellar Link were in the midst of what had to be miles of corridors and rooms from what the local indigs called the Old Times.  That is, when men took ship between the stars, and made their wars there too.  Unfortunately for the locals, it looked as if their choice to abandon the steam engine as too disruptive to the planetary goddess was going to earn them a visit from interstellar pirates, again.

Right now, the pirates were on a two year cycle which had started up ten years ago.  They came and slaved mostly.  The locals just shrugged and bore it.  It was not in the man’s nature to stand aside when he saw injustice.

“Juniper. Stealth mode. Wait here.”

Juniper became nearly invisible and moved to a point between several rocks where humans would likely not step as there were several more optimal paths nearby.

“Coffee will be waiting, sir.”  Juniper said.

“Excellent.” The man said shortly as he drifted, like the ghost his instructors at Force Recon had claimed he was, into the darkness under the mountain, in search of a weapon that could turn night into day.  He did not look back at Juniper, and smile his gratitude for the offer of coffee later.  That would be weak, and silly.  And the man prided himself on not being either.  But he still wanted to do so as he stepped into a realm not created for him with no one at his side.