209. Dig for Victory
Chandagnac
Broken Robot
- Location
- Nowhere
Dig for Victory
'We'll take the sword with us,' you decide. 'Perhaps Garrar will be able to make use of it.'
'It's got its own special lead-lined carrying case,' says Nonette. 'I'll just get it for you.'
When the black sword is safely packed away and loaded onto the giant mechanical digger along with the guns, the broken force field generator, and a few other oddments you decide to take with you, you're ready to get going. By this point, it's quite late at night. With Nonette in the driving seat, you're able to sit back and look at the view. The construction vehicle trundles through the mostly deserted streets, attracting a small amount of attention from a few passers-by. When it reaches a checkpoint, you tense, thinking for a moment that there might be trouble, but Mikhail persuades the Seraphs on guard duty that everything is in order and that you have permission to take the ancient excavator out of the museum.
Similarly, when you reach the Warehouse District, he manages to convince the foreman in charge of getting a fresh batch of mining charges ready for transport that you can be trusted to take them along with the mechanical digger which will be ever-so-useful for clearing some of the collapsed caverns and caved-in tunnels.
'Never thought I'd see one of those again,' says the foreman, misty-eyed. 'They built this city, you know. Lotta vehicles similar to this.'
'They built this city on Rock and Roll!' you declare.
The foreman looks mildly baffled. 'Nah,' he says. 'Rock, I'll grant you. Plenty of rocks, earth and mud. But there weren't any rolls involved.'
'I think we'd better get going,' says Mikhail, glaring at you.
'What's the head of the space program doing here, involved in a simple delivery job like this?' the foreman asks him shrewdly.
'Well, I have to justify my paycheck somehow,' says your Russian friend with a shrug. 'They don't pay me to sit on my backside all day, you know.'
'That's not what I heard,' says the foreman, grinning. 'Still, it's good to see you up and working.'
Mikhail gives a stiff nod, supervises the loading of the remaining mining charges onto your vehicle's loading bay, and says, 'We'd better go.'
'Yes, it's getting late,' says the foreman. 'Haven't you got homes to go to?'
It is almost midnight by the time you get to the lift station. It takes all of Mikhail's not-inconsiderable persuasive powers to get the night staff to agree to lower you, your little group, and the mechanical digger into the Bowels.
'I suspect next time I come back this way, I'll be an outlaw,' he says moodily.
'Don't worry,' you tell him. 'Next time you come this way, you might be in an actual spaceship.'
'That would be nice,' he agrees.
When you get the construction vehicle to the bottom of the lift area, near to 'the Hole', you direct Nonette to drive it north, along the old railway line. Then, when you get to the end of the tunnel, you tell her to turn left, to go past Vault Seven, into the Buried Village. By the time you reach the pile of rubble where Glitch lies buried, it is so late at night that it's early in the morning.
'Dig here,' you tell Nonette, showing her where. 'Keep digging.'
'It's a good thing I don't need to sleep when I've absorbed enough energy,' says Mikhail. 'Under normal circumstances, it would have been foolish of me to drink so much alcohol, but tonight… I'm okay.'
While the possibly-artificial girl is operating the mechanical digger, steadily picking apart the pile of rubble, Mikhail amuses himself by setting fire to the occasional zombie that's still skulking around the Buried Village. You're surprised at how well they burn, but it's probably because of his psionic powers.
'I'm surprised there are still so many zombies,' you say with narrowed eyes. 'I thought we'd dealt with Lothangrim. At least for the time being.'
'You didn't finish him off?'
'Nah. His consciousness is spread across more than one host body and we couldn't destroy all of them before the building collapsed,' you explain, conveniently leaving out the fact that you were the one who caused the collapse. With reckless use of your sonic powers, you destroyed a vault which was built to outlast a nuclear holocaust. If not for the fact that one of your best friends ended up broken and buried underneath a pile of rubble, you'd probably be proud of that fact.
Finally, only a couple of hours before most decent folks are getting up for the day, the excavator's spade-like digging claw picks up a last clump of rocks. In the dust and gravel underneath, coated in dirt, grime, and putrid gore, you see the vaguely-rounded body of a large metal man. It appears crumpled in a few places where it was hit especially hard by a falling piece of wreckage. It is limp and unmoving; without even the semblance of life, it might as well be another corpse.
Glitch didn't survive the assault on Vault Six.
'I can rebuild him,' you tell yourself. 'I have the technology.'
What will you do next?
[] Drive back to Vault Three. Let Mikhail and Nonette get some rest.
-[] Stay up until you've repaired Glitch.
OR
-[] Get some rest yourself.
[] Do something else (write in).
