Claim Rights

September 4th, 2381 ESY
Manchester, England

Orin watched the rolling aurora dim as the inky sky sluiced away, turning first indigo then orange and finally blue then bluest. A rare clear morning, but the cobwebbed scratches on his HE-V’s canopy fuzzed all the colors pastel. Cool dampness reached him through the cracked hatch, either evaporating dew or the promise of rain. The damp-fresh smell was tainted with the tang of biodiesel exhaust from the eight-wheeled truck’s creaking engine, parked nearby.

Inside the cavernous assembly building to his right, four friends hustled around in their protective suits. Davis, Sarah, Farhan and Geoff. The satin fabric of each suit was patched with reflective, metallic tape and plenty of prayers. All were busy gathering supplies and pulling the fiber optic cable runs they’d been sent to collect.

Davis radioed as he walked out with a bundle over one shoulder and rifle slung over the other. “Anything from home yet?” Tinny squeals and crackling static intruded over Orin’s headset speaker. The solar flares were intense. Without their suits, those same flares would in time boil his friends’ exposed skin. The radiant warmth would feel pleasant, at first, on such a cool day.

Orin keyed the headset mic. “No, air is bad. I’ve tried them twice. No joy.”

“Okay, then. Just as well. We’ll be ready to head back in a couple hours.” Davis tossed the bundle into the truck’s bed and turned toward the building.

Orin threw him a wave with his left arm inside one of the chunky, articulated master sleeves that translated his movements to the HE-V’s arms. The ramshackle machine waved one blocky arm at Davis in kind. Orin’s “Rooster” was a racecar-red Pitman body, checkered with rust, on a pair of tan, refurbed military legs leftover from one old war or another. Ungainly and desperately maintained, the old bird still got the job done.

Orin loosened the curled fingers of his right hand slightly. The Rooster’s hand relaxed also, and the pommel of the impact hammer slid to the cracked asphalt with a metallic bang. The broad, beveled, monolithic strikeface of the hammer was scarred and pitted from the abuses of countless strikes delivered during countless shifts. It was already an old tool long before it came into Orin’s possession, and he had put on plenty of his own work over the years; breaking down and breaking in, and occasionally breaking skulls when fellow scavengers didn’t mind their manners.

Orin pressed and held left index finger to base of thumb inside the control gauntlet to desync and then reached for his tea. The Rooster’s reactor hummed, healthy and steady, and he was relieved that most of the caution and status lights on his boards stayed dark. He sipped and scanned, alert for any signs of movement among the buildings cloaked with creepers and ivy on either side of the highway fronting the complex.

If anyone happened upon them and if words failed to dissuade he’d rely on the hammer and his other weapons: the stubby howitzer pulled from a broken-down tank with six fat shells in its autoloader, and the shabby eight-tube rocket launcher of dubious trustworthiness perched on the Rooster’s shoulder. Four of the launcher’s tubes were empty. Of the four loaded ivory-colored rockets, two leaked an acrid yellowish oil from creases in their casing. Farhan was a military man, and assured Orin months back that they may not launch but were safe enough to carry. Orin privately doubted this assertion.

Just then he spotted a cloudy haze to the southwest, and watched as it turned onto the vast asphalt apron from the highway. Orin squinted. Two vehicles, a military truck, and a flatbed tractor. Men rode the latter. Some carried rifles. Behind them at a jog came another HE-V, smaller than his own monster and almost as janky. Faded black and yellow hazard stripes lined its limbs. All were coming their way.

Orin hurriedly dropped his insulated cup into the holder, half stood to fully dog the hatch and hastily resynced before keying his radio. "Hey! Hey, hey, we got people!" He stammered.

“Folks from Blackburn?” Davis asked back, his tone desperate, hoping it was friends or at least decent neighbors.

“No, I think not,” Orin replied and squared up to the onrushing strangers. He lifted and took a two-handed grip on the hammer’s haft, one mechanical hand high, one low. Feedback from the sleeves rendered its prodigious weight still hefty in his flesh-and-bone hands.

The vehicles stopped some hundred yards away. Men piled out and scattered, taking up positions in what cover they could find. Among them were many rifle barrels. The other HE-V advanced to the fore, and now Orin could see a multi-barreled gatling gun rigged to its right arm. The left arm was an enormous, articulated jackhammer.

The other machine issued a long horn blast and its pilot radioed on an open channel. "This is our patch. You thieves are trespassing, mate. Shut down and surrender, or we shoot." A woman’s voice. Surly. Serious.

"It's nobody's patch, now, friend. We’re just trying to go on living, same as you. It doesn’t need to be like this," Orin replied coldly.

"Have it your way."

The other HE-V raised its gun and fired. A track of exploding concrete raced toward Orin, and he triggered his howitzer reflexively. The Rooster was shoved back in a billowing cloud of smoke and Orin could not tell if he had been hit or not. The howitzer shell dropped long, a little behind the other HE-V, but the blast was close enough to send it tumbling forward and explode the smaller truck in a fireball. Rifle bullets pinged all over the Rooster’s inches-thick steel hide.

Orin switched firing circuits and tried the rockets, going for the knockout. Only two leapt away and exploded on target. One drunkenly spiraled off to impact somewhere across the highway. The fourth was a dud. His friends were shouting over the radio, but adrenaline turned their words to babel. The hostile HE-V was regaining its feet shakily, leaning on the jackhammer.

Orin pushed forward, sending fifty tons into a brazen charge as the howitzer’s autoloader clanged through its lengthy reload sequence. Reaching his foe he slipped right, planting his feet, rotating, and bringing the impact hammer way, way back just as his enemy’s gun rose again to meet him. The Rooster swung together with its pilot.

The massive head of the hammer smashed through the opposing HE-V’s left arm assembly at the elbow joint and crumpled its left flank like balsa wood. A dazzling sheet of sparks bloomed as the terrible cacophony assailed Orin’s ears. He felt the transmitted jolt of the hammer’s kinetic assist module and flinched at the destruction unfolding mere feet beyond the Rooster’s crystalloy canopy.

His enemy was hurled away from the colossal impact as if an archangel had descended to smite her. Sparks and fluids trailed. The striped machine landed hard and skidded, hull shrieking, over a low concrete barrier, grinding it and the men sheltering behind it to slurry. The wrecked HE-V smoked and smoldered but did not move again.

Orin spun in place, confronted by a trio of men with rifles raised. Brave or desperate, and too close for comfort. Orin raised the hammer high. The head’s shadow fell over the three like an eclipse and they quailed, eyes wide with primal terror, before quickly throwing down their rifles and shrinking away from the Rooster like the ants they were.

Illustration by Florian Mellies