I can’t recommend strongly enough that you arm up if you’re going to scavenge in Vancouver or Seattle. Magical Girls can handle Macks with their bare hands, but you need something with a lot of penetration. Their armor is steel, and steel hasn’t been great against tank guns in 80 years, but I don’t know any scavengers with an Abrams. Get a friend and a Barrett 95 and have them do overwatch while you loot the busted robots. Even better, get an old pre-war Humvee with a .50 on top. Anything smaller won’t crack the shell on something bigger than Class One. For melee weapons, I recommend machetes or sledgehammers, not because they’re good for killing Macks, but for taking apart the dead ones.
If you do get into melee with a Class One, you’ve got a decent shot of coming out alive. If you’re ready. Bulletproof gear isn’t as great as you’d expect, but what works well is Mack plating. Most of the smaller ones ride in on the Type Twenty-Ones, so they can’t have too much puncture power. It could buy a second or two. Just, for God’s sake, paint it something bright before you go out, especially if you have overwatch. You do not want to catch a .50 caliber any more than you do a Mack spike.
If you’re good at what you do, Mack components are a hot commodity in Haven’s construction market. If you’re bad at it, you won’t need to worry about the market for long. Stay safe out there, and happy scavenging.
* Excerpt from “Scavenging from the Macks” by Erika Scott, published in Haven Today, July 15, 2038
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Chapter 11
“Rebooting optical augment!” James shouted into my ear.
I blinked the afterimages from my eyes. The empty feeling over my navel felt like it’d grown to cover my whole middle. I’d just thrown a five-foot-wide beam of white light down the hallway and out the door! “What’s my mana at, James?”
“35 out of 60 and rising! Augment in 3…2…1…Back online!” As the afterimages faded and my augment dropped a shader over my vision, two things were obvious.
First, Feu-Follet hadn’t killed the Type One.
And second, it wasn’t going to be in any shape to fight back any time soon.
“I’m going over what the augment recorded before it shut down now, Luciole,” James typed and clicked in the background, and I heard a couple of other boys’ excited voices through his headset. Stress bleeding off from the quickly-ended fight, I walked down the hall past the Type One. Its eye glowed blue, its neck dragged along the ground, and its six legs couldn’t seem to work together to lift its body. As it twitched and spasmed, its armor sloughed off into piles of dust and shards of steel.
“It looks like your Mana Surge is a directed light blast tuned to fry Mack circuits and cripple their armor. Based on the aug’s recording, it would be little better than a flash-bang grenade against a human threat. Against Macks, though…the other Operators are impressed.”
“Tell your audience that you have to get back to work, James. How does a directed light blast break armor?”
“If you’ve left plastic in the sun until it gets discolored and brittle, it’s the same concept. Multiply the speed and intensity by several thousand, tune the electromagnetic frequency correctly, and it can degrade Mack plating.”
I finished walking over to where my spear had landed the day before. The tip was unbent from my terrible throw, so I picked it up and strolled back to the twitching Type One. “I’ve finished my analysis on your Mana Surge’s effectiveness against Mack armor. It looks like it didn’t completely break through, so against a Class Two or higher Mack, you might need more than one burst to cripple its defenses. I need more data to tell you how damaging it would be to a Class Two’s electronics, though.”
“So it’s not an ‘I win’ button, then? Is it an Area of Effect spell?” The Type One had just started to recover, getting its neck off the ground and flicking its light between blue and yellow. I put a foot on its body and the tip of my spear on its neck. The spearhead slid into the plastic easily, and I heard the crunch of delicate parts breaking inside. The light blacked out, black goop started to leak, and the twitching stopped.
“It appears to be, though more testing would be required. Fortunately for science, Luciole, it’s likely we’ll find more Macks en route to the gym.”
“Um, James,” I said, “what weapons are available for creation? The spear is good at what it does, and it’s good after Feu-Follet, but I need something safer.”
“For you, or for everything else?” James typed, humming as he did. “How about a hand crossbow? There’s no proof they were actually used in the Middle Ages, but technology has advanced since then, they’re easy to use, and with mana, I can create any type of payload we can imagine, and a few we can’t. There’s one that should work for ten mana, plus five for a spare magazine of bolts.”
I considered it. My likely build was as a spell-using Red, so I’d probably replace whatever I chose with more Will, more Soul, and a list of spells. Still, Feu-Follet had two more casts before I was too low for another, so I’d need another option. Besides, crossbows were cool! Geralt of Rivia had a crossbow, at least in the really old games. “Yeah, let’s try out a crossbow. Save the bolts for now, just one reload. Can you get something electrical to short out the machines?”
“Great.” James typed some more and…something materialized. “This is a Delphi 460 Small Repeater. It was originally designed in Ohio pre-Emergence and modified by Chuck, who was Ebon Ring’s Operator. It features a resetting reverse draw system, a three-shot magazine, and a snappy trigger system.”
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The thing on the ground didn’t look like Geralt’s crossbow. Four arms connected by a brace pulled the string, which traveled through pulleys before heading back toward the trigger. A small tower in the middle housed a red dot I assumed was a scope, and the crossbow had both a stock for my shoulder and a grip for a single hand by the trigger. “Its narrow profile should help with its speed and the stock is removable if you’d prefer a true hand-crossbow. Maximum range of 100 meters, according to the database, but for you, it’ll be a 25 to 30 meter weapon at most.”
“So why is it red and black?”
“Branding. I’ll introduce you to Maybelle-1 after this Emergence. She’s retired, but she gets how to help a Magical Girl build her public persona.”
I rolled my eyes, picked up the crossbow and headed down the hall, away from the shattered door toward the art wing, the spear still stuck in the fried Type One as a warning. Did robots pay attention to warnings? I had no idea.
Hey, James,” I murmured as I paused at the entrance to the art hallway, “the machines are in West End High, but all we’ve seen are little ones. The Type Four that almost…that almost got me is the biggest thing I’ve seen in the building so far. Why hasn’t that Type Twenty-One outside tried to come in?”
“There are two possible reasons, Luciole. The first is that the Type Twenty-One isn’t actually a combat Mack. It did a number on Overclock, yes, but that was mostly a consequence of poor self-preservation in the name of protecting people and a weak solo Mana Surge. Type Twenty-Ones are considered to be mobile Emergence zones. They can bring a steady stream of Class One and Two Macks to bear.
“The second is that it hasn’t been threatened yet, and since your graduation ceremony, it may not have seen any prey to activate its hunter programs. If that’s the case, it’ll be content to ‘nest’ near where it Emerged and use its energy to create a ‘hive’ of Macks. The longer it has, the worse the situation in West End High will get. Within 24 hours of an Emergence, a single Twenty-One can make enough Type Ones to root out survivors in non-shelter hiding places and enough Type Fours to overrun most makeshift defenses. You have about two hours before we hit that point.”
Two hours… Sora was out here somewhere, either in the gym or upstairs, and I didn’t have much time to find her. Overclock would be in the gym by now. Someone like Pixie Punch would have taken out the Type Twenty-One already. I had to go down that hall. I had to.
I pulled the door open and pushed down a wave of anxiety as I strode into the art wing. The floor sparkled in the scant light and crunched under my feet - shattered glass from the open, glass-wall classrooms covered the hall. I’d just reached the halfway point when the telltale yellow lights played across the hall. They were in the pottery room!
I carefully sidled up to the only solid wall in the hallway and peered inside Mr. Brysac’s room. He’d never been organized, but the quartet of Type Ones tearing apart shelves of green sculptures and knocking over pottery wheels made him look clean. “Can I beat four of them?”
“If you can hit three with your Mana Surge, yes. You’re currently at 27 mana, so you have one cast available. I’m shutting off your optical augment to reboot more quickly.”
“Okay, here goes.” I took a deep breath, setting my crossbow where I’d be able to grab it easily, and rounded the corner. “Feu-Follet!”
Light poured into the dark pottery room. It scattered off glazed bowls and bounced off mirrors on the far wall to light up the painting room behind me. I shut my eyes as the full light of the sun poured into the room, chasing away every shadow it could find.
The room grew dark. I opened my eyes and blinked.
“3…2…1…Aug is back online!” I knelt and grabbed my hand crossbow while I scanned the room. The closest two Type Ones were down, blue-eyed and twitching into pottery wheels as their armor peeled and cracked. A third behind them seemed to have taken a glancing shot - its front armor and right legs seemed intact and its eye glowed red, but the left half of its body had malfunctioned. It clawed around in circles, trying to get to me.
The fourth was intact. And it was rushing right at me!
I panicked and pulled the trigger on my Delphi. The strings slapped against the pulleys and a bolt whispered out into the room. Pottery shattered on a top shelf and blue sparks arced across a mirror for a moment before going out.
I threw myself to the side. The air whooshed out of my lungs as I landed hard on a potter’s wheel. I saw stars and shook my head, coughing.
The Type One crawled over a table, spikes ripping the laminated wood apart as it loomed over me. I pulled the trigger again and the bolt shot out - right between its legs!
“Last shot, Luciole!”
“I know! Knife! Now!”
I felt the empty feeling of mana at work, but before the knife could appear, the Type One was on me. I rolled away from it. My head smacked against a pile of soft clay cubes, and I raised my bow again.
“Now!”
I fired. The last bolt punched into the Type One as it skittered around and started charging at me. Crackling blue sparks arced across the exposed wiring on its body, and its neck crashed to the ground next to me. I pulled my legs in and curled into a ball as the rest of it toppled over next to me. Its claws slowly poked into my back. Not enough to draw blood, but enough to feel their sharpness.
The red light went out. The claws stopped moving. I’d won! I lay there in a ball for one second. Two seconds. Three seconds. A flickering blue-and-yellow light passed across the room. The other Macks were starting to function! Well, function-ish.
I crawled over the destroyed Type One toward the knife and extra magazine of bolts. “Excellent work. I’m taking notes for later review so we can refine your fighting style, but overall, not bad at all for a Level Two.”
“Thanks…I think...” My lungs burned as I tried to fill them back up. The dagger had a thin steel blade almost 30 centimeters long, with a copper inlay in the pattern of fireflies. Its guards were copper and steel as well, perhaps five centimeters long each. A stiletto. I gripped it. It fit my hand perfectly, just like the backpack had.
“Hey, James, remind me to get my backpack back from the shelter when this is over.” I coughed again and stretched my body. Hurrying toward the semi-malfunctioning Mack, I slid the dagger into its body as it walked in circles. It took a couple thrusts before it stopped moving and black goop dripped out of its plastic casing. The other two followed right behind it.
Level Up! Congratulations!
You have reached Level Three! Consult your operator for help assigning points to your statistics.