They left the small city in a riot, the people of Livica all wanted a piece of Shadow Cannon even if it was just one Golem. The pair didn’t seem all that bothered by it; they got what they needed, recharged batteries and a burger.
“This chili is not that bad!” Deacon happily exclaimed with his mouth full. “This sweet potato recipe is pretty good!”
He sat on Ragnar’s shoulder with one arm around its head and the other clutching his half-eaten burger.
“I just didn’t think we would run into problems so soon.” He continued. “Those guys were crazy.”
Ragnar whirred in agreement.
“You know, for a killing machine,” Deacon swallowed his burger. “You pulled your punches pretty well. Not a single body.”
Ragnar shrugged.
“Modest. Nice, you must get all the mechanical ‘ladies’ excited.” Deacon smiled, finishing off the rest of his burger.
Ragnar stayed silent, either because it didn’t catch the joke or just didn’t want to talk anymore.
Deacon took the silence and sat quietly on Ragnar’s shoulder, allowing the titan some peace to get some good mileage into the journey. The night sky sank the area into a dark hue away from the patch of lights they had when they entered Livica. Aside from the occasional critter scurrying through the grass, Ragnar made sure that nothing with fangs and claws got too close.
“You know what’s funny?” Deacon broke the silence again.
Ragnar sent a message: Jokes?
“No! Well, I mean, that’s one thing, but what I mean is that if Shadow Cannon did happen to build you, why did they leave so much code out?”
Ragnar paused its steps to think about the question. It still couldn’t figure out its origin or its original purpose. Something interfered with its “thoughts” whenever it tried to remember. All Ragnar knew was to deliver the fuel cell and make sure it was installed to prevent Shadow Cannon from attacking Elvander. A piece of the plan was gone due to the missing representative; now it had to drag an innocent bystander into the war, so far he’s been a good sport even after the previous kicking and screaming.
“You knew to pull those punches, you weren’t out to kill anyone. You acted against your programming.” Deacon tapped on Ragnar’s head with a thoughtful sigh. “You still don’t know the name of the person that sent you, do you?”
Ragnar shook its head side to side.
“I’m curious. Let’s stop right here. I must’ve missed something while I was doing your repairs.” Deacon climbed down from Ragnar’s shoulder.
The young man tapped on the robot’s chestplate to get it to open it to pull out his bag that had his plug to connect to the hard drive.
Ragnar knew the drill, it sat on the ground to give Deacon an easier chance to access its files. Deacon hooked up his phone to the USB wire from the bag and jammed it into Ragnar’s hard drive port behind its head.
“If we’re lucky, Shadow Cannon’s programmers were organized enough to leave comments on some of the code.” Deacon scrolled through the variety of folders that opened up parts of Ragnar’s source code.
He found a folder that was overlooked when he was doing the diagnostics at his house. His finger tapped it open, giving him access to the contents that were stored in the folder.
“All this won’t mean a thing unless I can find a— here we go!” Deacon located a file that said README. A simple file, but to programmers it usually meant a lot of information that can help them when they tried to do installations or debugging.
The file opened and loaded onto the phone’s screen giving him a good look on what was in the code.
To his amazement, it was dated a few years ago. It was Project Ragnarok in more detail, basically it was to build a unit of robotic Golems to help guard cities, handle heavy construction, and recover large vehicles from wreckages. The opposite of killing, demolishing, and burning cities to the ground. The irony in its name.
The documentation stated that it made small changes to some of the lines of codes in files “Shell Cover” and “Boom_Boom”. The folders were located in the same directory as the README file and gave Deacon a good place to search for the changes.
The “Shell Cover” file had some comments that said that the defensive tactics were switched to offensive while the threat terminating function was activated to always active, which meant Ragnar had to shoot to kill on sight of anything that deemed a threat.
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“Your source code was altered even before the other functions were erased. By the looks of it, you were supposed to be killing people left and right, but then the code here says that it was disabled.” Deacon was surprised by his findings. “The documentation isn’t even Shadow Cannon’s, they were too lazy to make any changes to it. All I have are codenames and redacted info, none of that’s helpful.”
Ragnar sent a message: What am I?
“Not a killer. Far from it, in fact. I don’t know who did the source code, but all I know is that they had better uses for you and the others and none of it involved coldly, burning cities to the ground.” Deacon began to unplug the USB cord from Ragnar’s hard drive and put his tools away into his bag. “The real mystery is how did Shadow Cannon get a hold of you when you were supposed to be a top secret project to begin with?”
Ragnar shrugged.
“Yeah, me too.” Deacon kicked a rock away from him. “Let’s get a move on, we’re not going to get to Elvander if we keep stopping for every little mystery that needs to be solved.”
The pair began walking their previous path to Elvander and with the new information in hand, Deacon felt a little safer being around Ragnar, knowing it was created to be a bodyguard of sorts.
A faint noise sounded from behind them. Almost as loud as an engine, but silent enough to not cause a disturbance in the area. Deacon looked behind his shoulders first to get a good look for anything that was out of the ordinary. His eyes were limited to just whatever he can see. Ragnar decided to give its eyes a try with its high-zoom capabilities, it might have a better shot at looking for whatever was behind them.
Its head stopped at an angle of its turn then with its large fingers pointed out into the distance, but Deacon still couldn’t see a thing.
“What is it?” He whispered to Ragnar.
Ragnar messaged: Ship.
“What kind of ship? Like a cargo airship or maybe like an airplane?” Deacon nervously asked.
No. Ragnar sent his response, picked up Deacon, and began to sprint away from the oncoming ship.
“Okay, let’s think this through, Ragnar!” Deacon tried to get some clarity into what Ragnar saw. “Who is it?! The Elvander Army?!”
Ragnar beeped with a tone of urgency: Shadow Cannon.
“What?!” Deacon tried to regain his balance to climb on Ragnar’s shoulder to get a good view.
From his perspective, he saw a black ship with minimal lights to avoid getting seen by other forces that could attempt to shoot them down. Ragnar’s superior eyesight was able to bypass that little trick to get a good look at the oncoming ship.
“Look! There’s another forest just up the path from here.” Deacon pointed ahead of Ragnar. “If they are looking for us, the trees can give us a good hiding spot just until they pass us.”
Ragnar knelt on the ground with its full speed to create a drifting motion to get a sharp turn into the dense forest. It pushed the trees with its strength to clear up a path for them and continued to walk deep inside to get a good lead from the ship that was still far away from them. The trees glowed from the lightest of touches giving off a bright blue light. The sight made the pair pause from the action of escaping a possible warship to absorbing the view as much as they can.
“Okay, this should be a good spot for set up camp, just until the first sight of sunlight.” Deacon took deep breaths to get his adrenaline down and his heart rate to a more manageable pace. “I wonder why they’re already by here.”
Ragnar responded: The diner?
“Yeah, I think you’re right about that. I think we… er… well, mostly you, were a little too heavy on the combat there.”
Ragnar sadly whirred.
“On the bright side, no one died, so good job on that!”
Ragnar’s tone changed to a happy beep and gave a thumbs-up gesture.
The titan used its eyes again to look out through the dense trees to see where the ship was heading toward, but a sudden change of direction threw the machine off.
The ship’s course went from their general direction and made a large u-turn toward Livica, where the pair had that little meeting with the bikers from before.
Ragnar sent Deacon a message of his findings: Leaving.
“Where are they headed?” Deacon stretched his body to get comfortable.
Ragnar replied: Chili?
“Damn, those bikers might still be around and are probably still going to be mad about the whole fee thing.” Deacon worried. “Should we just leave right now?”
Ragnar shook its head in disagreement and sat down to keep watch while Deacon slept for the night.
“Took the words out of my mouth.” Deacon yawned.
#
Inside the Shadow Cannon airship, Reves stood by the cockpit while the pilot continued his way around the countryside.
“Is this where you intercepted the call?” Reves stood directly behind the pilot. It was obvious the man grew uncomfortable with his boss standing at a close proximity from him, but what could he do in his position?
“Yes sir.” The pilot uneasily replied. He cleared his throat hoping that his fear wouldn’t show in his voice. “I heard someone mention a man and a robot destroying the bar and assaulting the customers while they stole food and beer.”
“Sounded like a hell of a party!” Reves smiled. “Good, then if they are on foot with that much trail of destruction following behind them, they shouldn’t be too hard to find then.”
“It says it’s the home of Livica’s famous sweet potato chili.” The pilot added.
“What kind of monster would do that to chili?!” Reves went from a calm expression to one of heavy disgust. “Looks like we’re going to have to make an order while we do some investigating.”
“Looks as if the targets aren’t in the surrounding area anymore.” The pilot read his scanner.
“Hmm, looks like they were a little faster than us, but that’s okay. Let’s see what we can get from the bar and move on. I really don’t want to stay there anymore than I have to.”
The pilot changed the ship’s course to land by Valiant Diner to get some questions about their missing Golem and whoever was in cahoots with Truce. The terrorist leader didn’t want to chalk it up as a coincidence, but maybe, just maybe, Truce had set up a contingency plan in case he was captured by Shadow Cannon and was forced to give up the fuel cell. Reves always refused to underestimate his enemies since it helped him come up with his tactics to cover all openings in his plans.
“So who is this other guy and what are they trying to do with my Golem and that damn fuel cell?” Reves walked out of the cockpit and to his seat to wait for their landing. In front of him laid his handgun, a .50 caliber pistol that was made to leave people speechless whenever he drew it out of his holster. The gun never failed him to get his answers, but when it did, that’s why they invented triggers. He pulled back the slide to get a bullet into the chamber and holstered it, ready to hit the ground running.