Chapter Six
Truly great acts are never transitory. They last into eternity.
—Master Noah Watanabe
It had been a hard day of supervising digging operations in the deep tunnels of the subterranean Guardian base, and Giovanni Nehr felt the leaden weight of fatigue. He still wore the armored, machine-like shell that had been custom-fitted to his body by his robot companions, but it now had green-and-brown colors, like the uniforms of Noah’s Guardians. All of the fighters under Thinker’s command sported such colors on their bodies now. Gio remained the only Human directly under the command of the robot leader, although he was beginning to work more closely with other Humans all the time.
Subi Danvar greeted Gio in the main cavern, near one of the makeshift barracks. “You want to grab a beer?” the portly adjutant asked. He grinned. “You’re the only ‘machine’ who will drink with me.”
“I was going to take a shower, but what the hell. That can wait, eh?” Gio patted Subi on the back, and they trudged off toward the drinking chamber that the Guardians had named the Brew Room.
The bar inside the dimly lit space was a conversation piece in and of itself. The elongated, silvery shell of a decommissioned Digger machine sat on huge treads that were now bar seats on two sides, fitted with dirty pillows and mattresses to ease the discomforts that even heavy drinking could not mask. Thinker had devised a mechanized method of serving drinks, with glasses of beer popping out of openings all along the hull of the machine onto little platforms that formed tables in front of each seat.
As the two men climbed on a tread and sat down, Gio felt he was making good progress toward getting close to Danvar, who had taken charge of the Guardians in Noah’s absence. Already Gio’s strong personality had gained him an important position in charge of ongoing construction activities at the base, and he expected further personal gains. That goal was much easier to achieve now that he had gotten rid of those two troublesome boys, Acey and Dux, by drugging them and dispatching them into space. He smiled, thinking about the confusion they must have felt upon waking up inside a cargo box in some distant star system, and not knowing who did it to them … although they must have had some suspicion. No matter, they were far away now and couldn’t get back anyway, because podship travel had been shut down.
Just then a squat, female Tulyan entered the chamber. Zigzia was one of the few of her race who worked as a Guardian. Like Eshaz did before his departure, she performed ecological recovery and inspection operations. Now, she went to Subi and spoke to him briefly about an environmental-impact class she was starting for younger Guardians.
While ordering a beer, Gio adjusted his armor so that he was more comfortable. He rested his arm on one of the machine’s nonfunctioning drill bits, a rough metal bar wrapped in padded cloth. Subi did the same with the drill bit beside him.
The beer flowed while men and women in Guardian uniforms chattered noisily around them, drinking and telling stories, using alcohol to relieve the stresses inflicted on them by the continuing war against the combined forces of the Doge’s Red Berets and the corporate army of Francella Watanabe.
In the midst of that conflict, Noah’s Guardian forces had been substantially restored on Canopa, and now amounted to thousands of Human and machine soldiers, and equipment. All were housed in an elaborate network of underground burrows and large caverns that had been hollowed out by Digger machines that the Guardians had reclaimed. For the past month they had been raiding both Red Beret and CorpOne storehouses, and had also made a number of successful guerrilla attacks against troop barracks, weapons depots, and other military installations.
“I find it amusing and ironic,” Gio said to Subi, “that we inhabit a warren of tunnels and caverns deep underground, with much of it directly beneath Noah’s old ecological demonstration compound.”
“By design, my friend,” Subi said. He finished his fourth beer, then shoved the glass under a tap and watched it refill. “Noah chose this place right under the noses of his enemies, where they would not think to look.”
“We lead a dangerous life,” Gio said, “though we do have a multifunction scrambler system that masks our heat, sound, and visual signatures.”
The adjutant nodded. He had set the system up himself with Thinker.
Suddenly Subi Danvar felt the hum of machinery, but in a place where he hadn’t expected it, in the Digger bar itself. With a series of percussive clicks, the drill-bit armrests retracted and the tread began to move, propelling the entire bar slowly to Subi’s right. All along the tread, Guardians cried out and jumped off. Beer spilled.
Subi swore, using the most choice selections in his colorful vocabulary. He jumped up on a platform, then noticed that Gio was walking on top of the moving tread, going against the motion and holding onto his glass of beer.
After traveling a few meters to one side, still a good distance from the cavern wall, the mechanism stopped, and drill bits popped back out, still with their padding.
Calmly, Gio placed his beer on a drinking platform that was directly in front of him now, and sat down again on the tread. Looking over at Subi he said, “A little musical-barstool trick we added,” he said. “I suggested it to Thinker and he thought it was a fine idea, to keep the Guardians alert to anything.”
“They look more than alert now,” Subi said, resuming his seat beside Gio. “In fact, I’d say they’re in an ornery mood.”
“Drinks are on me!” Gio said, as he watched people wipe dirt off their uniforms. “Set ’em up.”
Actually, none of them had to pay for beers. It was one of the fringe benefits of their dangerous jobs.
Gradually the word got out about what Gio Nehr and the machines had done, and nervous laughter erupted in the Brew Room.
“When will it go on again?” a man shouted, as he climbed back up onto the tread.
“When you least expect it,” Gio said.
O O O
Beer and hard drinks flowed, while Subi turned the conversation to the one that had grown closest to his heart, the whereabouts and safety of their missing leader, Noah Watanabe.
“I’d like to break him out,” the adjutant said, “But we have conflicting reports on where he is.”
“I’ve been on two of the recon missions,” Gio said.
“Yeah, I know.”
“Thinker got all the data, and doesn’t think our chances of finding Master Noah are very good, since there are too many possible holding places for him. This is a very large planet.”
“No matter,” Subi said. “We’ll keep sending out robots and people like you. I promise you, we’ll find him no matter how long it takes. Some reports have him in one of the fifteen prisons on Canopa, or in one of the smaller jails, or even underground. I don’t think they took him off-planet, not with the cessation of podship travel and the slowness of other means of space travel.”
“Sounds like you’ve analyzed every detail yourself,” Gio said.
“I have, and I’ll never give up until we find him.”
“I know you won’t. None of us will. At this very moment, Thinker is undoubtedly assembling all available data on where Noah could be, and running probability programs. Unfortunately, the Master’s captors have covered their tracks, and have dispersed many false clues as to his whereabouts.”
As the buzz of conversation died down, Gio excused himself and walked wearily out into the main chamber, to the barracks there. Most of the other Guardians did the same, but Subi remained behind, nursing his last glass of dark ale.
Whatever method the Guardians used to rescue Noah, it would have to be a guerrilla strike, in and out quickly, like the successful attacks they had been making against Red Beret and CorpOne facilities. The Guardians, even with the inclusion of Thinker’s small army, did not have the force necessary to fight their powerful foes any other way. They had to use cunning and subterfuge.
Finally, Subi trudged back out into the main cavern, moving slowly and purposefully through the low illumination. As he climbed the stairs of the barracks, his thoughts drifted back to Giovanni Nehr.
While Subi was impressed by the man’s energy and ideas, he was troubled that he could not quite figure him out, could not quite get a comfortable handle on him. At times, Gio could be smooth and erudite, while on other occasions he mixed easily with the lowest ranks, the grunts and trainees. He certainly was an independent sort with potentially strong leadership qualities. But something troubled Subi about him, something he couldn’t quite grasp.
In bed, he lay awake thinking about it. The teenage cousins had not liked Gio, based upon their prior relationship, but so far those details had not surfaced, and probably never would, now that they had gone AWOL. Before that he’d asked the boys and Gio for more information, without receiving any satisfactory answers. Acey and Dux had probably gone off to join another treasure ship, or they were on some other space adventure. They were known to have talked about such things on the night before disappearing.
Gradually the calming effects of alcohol sank in, and Noah’s loyal adjutant drifted off to sleep.
***