The sun never set on Scrapworld, but fatigue still set in. Hartwell’s crew operated in shifts, with half the crew awake while the other half rested in their sleeper-hauler, an array of tubes filled with makeshift bedding, all stacked on a hauler. Both halves of the crew were now fully awake and entirely baffled by the destruction of two mechs -and the presence of the armored young man who had apparently destroyed them both. The Junkers kept their distance and eyed the makeshift armored suit from a distance while Rush nibbled on a ration bar.
At first, Giza had tried sitting with him, but Hartwell had pulled her away without a word. Rush didn’t bother asking why. He was used to eating alone anyway.
“I know what you’re doing,” Hartwell said.
“Saying ‘thank you’ to the guy who saved our lives? It’s called gratitude, dad, you taught me that.”
“Sure, it starts with the ration bar, then you’re offering him a place to sleep-”
“Why not?” Giza said with a dramatic shrug. She swept her hand towards their sleeper-hauler. “We’ve got plenty of spare bunks.”
An unfamiliar scowl found its way to Hartwell’s face. Their Junker Clan had been much larger, once.
“Don’t,” Hartwell scolded. “I know this isn’t about ‘gratitude’. You want the weapon.”
“Of course I do,” Giza said. “That ‘weapon’, whose name is Rushmore, by the way, just got us the biggest haul of our lives.”
Giza pointed out the two fallen mechs, being picked over by the clan’s scouts. The circuit boards alone were worth everything they’d looted from the skyscraper wreckage five times over, and there were dozens of other valuable components, including one intact Kell Cell. That was worth hundreds of debt-units for everyone in the clan, enough to shave nearly a full year off their sentences.
“That ‘weapon’ could stop us from getting attacked again, or ‘taxed’ again,” Giza said. Most bandits were more merciful than the two dead idiots, but only if that mercy was bought and paid for in valuable scrap. “And oh yeah, one other thing.”
Giza glared at her father. He could see the rage boiling up in her eyes already.
“Don’t you dare,” Hartwell said.
“If Rush and that suit had been here a few years ago, mom would still be alive,” Giza hissed. Hartwell rubbed his forehead.
“I thought you were over this,” he sighed.
“It’s a lot easier to get over something when you can’t do anything about it,” Giza said. “With that suit, Rush could kill-”
“Enough!”
The uncommonly loud shout from Hartwell was enough to give even Giza pause. Her dad rarely snapped like that, and especially not at her. He took a deep breath and then pointed at Rush, still idly snacking on his rations in the distance, oblivious to the drama playing out surrounding him.
“That is a young man who has nothing to do with us, or any of our history,” Hartwell said. “It’s bad enough you’re talking about murdering a man, but you want to ask a stranger to risk his life for your vendetta? I thought we taught you better than that.”
The guilt trip worked, and Giza’s anger sank back into the bitter depths of her heart.
“Sorry.”
“Let it go, Giza,” Hartwell said. “And if you can’t do that, at least keep other people out of it.”
“Okay. I promise.”
Hartwell sighed. He knew his daughter well enough to trust her, even at her worst.
“Good. Now,” Hartwell said. “We owe this Rush kid a share of the scrap, at least. If he cares to stay, he’s got a share of the food and a bed to sleep in for as long as the salvage lasts.”
The clan always kept more food than they needed, in case of emergencies, and they had plenty of spare beds. It wouldn’t be a hassle to keep Rush as a guest, at least in a logistical sense. There were plenty of other problems he could cause.
“And after that?”
Hartwell rolled his eyes at the teasing lilt in her voice.
“We’ll see. Whether someone belongs in the clan is a group decision,” Hartwell said. He was the nominal leader of the clan, but he still valued democratic decision making. “And whether Rush wants to stay with us at all is another thing.”
“He seems to be enjoying himself,” Giza said. She was lying. Rush’s facial expression hadn’t changed since he’d taken his helmet off. Hartwell sighed again.
“Just give him space, Giza,” Hartwell said. Giza nodded, and her father left to oversee the scrapping efforts. As soon as he was out of sight, Giza made a beeline for Rush.
***
“You really don’t know how it works?”
“No.”
“Not even the cannon thing on your arm?”
“No.”
“Could someone else wear the armor?”
“No.”
After a few minutes of one-sided small talk, Giza had finally gotten to the point and asked Rush about the armor. Coming from anyone else, Giza might have been suspicious about his one-word denials, but that just seemed to be the way Rush talked. He occasionally elaborated when asked to do so, but only after a brief pause, like he had to contemplate any answer bigger than a simple yes or no.
“Who built the armor?”
“Dr. Kaz.”
“Could he build another one?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
Rush paused before answering again. Giza waited patiently for whatever simple answer he gave.
“He’s dead.”
“Oh.”
Rush kept staring blankly through her, but the subtle shift of his head clued Giza in to the sadness he felt.
“Was he a friend of yours?”
“I only knew him a few days,” Rush said, after careful consideration. “But I liked him. He was nice to me.”
There was very little emotion in Rush’s voice, but Giza sensed a deep sadness all the same. Or maybe that was just Giza projecting the pity she felt onto him. All of her schemes for the armor suddenly left a bad taste in her mouth.
“Are you tired, Rush?”
Rush looked up and rolled his shoulders slightly, tensing muscles one by one as if he was doing a diagnostic check of his own body.
“A little,” he concluded.
“Maybe you should get some rest,” Giza suggested. “We’ve got a lot of beds to spare.”
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She gestured towards their sleeper-hauler and stood up, then remembered who she was talking to and turned back to Rush.
“You can follow me and I’ll show you where you can sleep,” Giza said. With explicit, literal directions to follow, Rush trailed along behind her until they were next to the hauler. The derelict vehicle’s massive treads were shoulder high, but Giza pointed out the ladders running up the rows of stacked tubes.
“Pretty much everything on this end is empty,” Giza said. “You can take your pick. Sleep on the top if you like privacy, sleep on the bottom if you want to get in and out easier. Up to you.”
Rush stared at the rows of tubes for a very long before poking his head into one of the closest ones. It was dusty, and the padding along the bottom was in poor condition, but a quick scan of other nearby tubes let Rush know they were all like that. The Junkers were lucky to have bedding at all, quality bedding was a luxury they could not afford.
“This will be fine,” Rush said. He crawled inside and sat near the entrance. The tube was just large enough for him to sit upright, and had a decent amount of room to move, meaning he could take off the armor and keep it near him as he slept.
“Uh, you don’t have to stay here, if you don’t want to,” Giza said. She realized now Rush might just be following along with whatever she asked because he didn’t know better. “If you have another place to stay…”
“I don’t,” Rush said. “This is good. Thank you.”
“Okay. Let me or my dad—his name is Hartwell, he gave you that food earlier—know if you need anything,” Giza said. “Sleep well, Rush.”
Rush did not respond, but he did start taking off his armor. The scent of sweat and metal soon became so overpowering that Giza had to step away. Cleanliness was another luxury most Junkers could not afford, but Rush stank even by Junker standards. Giza excused herself as Rush took the armor off for the first time in hours and laid down next to it.
He looked at the featureless face of the metal helmet for a moment. Giza’s questions had made him think of a few questions of his own.
“I’d be happy to answer, Mr. Rush!”
Rush grabbed his ears for a second, grabbed the helmet, and then grabbed his ears again. He definitely was not still wearing the helmet, nor was he wearing any other kind of earpiece or headset.
“This is a standard Neural Link feature, Mr. Rush,” Elvis explained. “I interface directly with your nervous system, creating an auditory connection with no external mechanisms required.”
“Oh. Okay.”
“So what can I help you with, Mr. Rush?”
“I want to know what you are,” Rush said. “You’re goo that can talk?”
“I am an artificial intelligence,” Elvis clarified. “A computer simulated personality designed to help and assist you with all your technological needs.”
“Okay. And you do that by taking things apart and attaching them to my suit.”
“That is my primary application at the current time, yes,” Elvis said. “But if need be, I am also capable of managing your schedule, setting appointments, and interfacing with household appliances!”
“No. Mostly the suit thing is fine.”
“Noted! I hope I can exceed all expectations in that capacity, Mr. Rush!”
“I have no expectations,” Rush said. “I don’t even know what you are, really.”
“What I ‘am’ is software, but the hardware I am currently operating on is a swarm of interconnected nanobots designed and equipped to restructure and reconfigure most if not all Kellarin tech devices for maximum user utility.”
“You attach things to other things.”
“In simple terms, yes,” Elvis said. “I also reconstruct and optimize the devices in the process, as I demonstrated earlier. I also took the liberty of optimizing this exoplatform on first installation! I regret to inform you it may have been entirely nonfunctional without my intervention.”
Rush bent his face into a rare frown. From the few conversations he’d had with Dr. Kaz, it seemed like the doctor had spent many years building the suit. The idea that his efforts had technically failed felt sad, for some reason.
“Now that the exoplatform is in working order, however, I must say it makes an excellent base for modification,” Elvis continued. “I look forward to upgrading this suit to fit your needs, Mr. Rush.”
“Right. Speaking of-”
Rush popped the helmet back onto his head and turned on the screen.
“Can you show me that readout of what the suit does again?”
Elvis obliged, and the screen once again flashed with the heads-up display.
Suit Status Report:
1 Cell(s) Connected
0 Energy Storage Units Connected
Power Systems: 0.9/1 Charge Capacity
Diagnostics: Online
Exoskeleton: Online
Magnetics: Online
Shields: WARNING: Overload
Active Weapon Systems: Concussion Cannon
Rush removed the helmet once again and set it aside, then looked at the waist of the suit. The device that had been sparking earlier was now fully burnt out and visibly melted.
“I assume that’s the overloaded shielding thing?”
“That is correct. The unit was overloaded shielding you from the shockwave of that mecha’s attack on the mountainside. Would you like me to eject the damaged device?”
“Yes.”
The silver goo emerged as if from nowhere and enclosed the scorched device for a moment, and when it retracted, the damaged shield unit fell from the suit as if it had never been attached at all.
“I would advise locating a replacement unit as soon as possible if you intend to continue challenging rogue mecha, Mr. Rush,” Elvis said. “This exoplatform’s armor would be useless against any direct hit from standard mecha weaponry.”
“I figured,” Rush said. A half-inch thick piece of scrap metal would not stop a fist the size of a building. “What else would you recommend?”
“I would also advise locating a standard Kellarin Tech Battery Cell,” Elvis continued. “While the attached power cell is sufficient to power systems like the magnetic grips and power saw indefinitely, systems such as weaponry and shielding units are designed for mecha-scale units, and have comparatively large power draw. A battery cell will be necessary for any sustained usage.”
“Why is power an issue? I thought Kell Cell’s were supposed to have infinite energy.”
“Infinite does not necessarily mean limitless, Mr. Rush,” Elvis clarified. “Think of the Kell Cell less as a vast reservoir or ocean, and more as a neverending trickle of water. Theoretically infinite, yes, but also not enough to satisfy an entire city’s thirst.”
“Unless you have something to collect the water in when no one is drinking,” Rush said. “The batteries collect excess energy and use it up in bursts when needed.”
“Precisely, Mr. Rush,” Elvis said, apparently delighted his explanation had taken hold. “Additional batteries will prevent scenarios such as we faced earlier, where your concussion cannon had only one usable shot.”
The power systems were still recharging from that one attack, and Rush would’ve been entirely helpless if his takedown of the mech had failed.
“I’ll keep an eye out,” Rush said. “Anything else I should look out for?”
“I will admit that this is a personal request, Mr. Rush, but I would appreciate it if you could acquire additional memory units,” Elvis said. “This exoplatform’s limited data storage has resulted in most of my memory and excess data files being compressed into an unusable state. While my personality matrix and basic functionality remains intact, I will not be in my optimal state with so much data inaccessible.”
“Of course,” Rush said. “I might need help to find it. I’ve never really dealt with ‘memory units’.”
He knew more about computer components than most Junkers, but only in the sense of how not to get electrocuted by them and which parts were the most valuable. He didn’t actually know what ‘memory’ was in that sense.
“All the necessary components should be easy to acquire at the nearest Kellarin Tech outlet, Mr. Rush,” Elvis said. “I will connect the local network and find our nearest-”
Elvis fell silent in another burst of static.
“Where is it?”
“Where is what?”
“The network! The stores! The- everything,” Elvis said, his voice crackling with static. “Where is the Imperial military?”
“I thought I told you earlier,” Rush said blankly. “The Sol Imperium, Kellarin Tech. It’s all gone. Has been for centuries.”
“I- The Sol Imperium is humanity’s most powerful government ever,” Elvis said. “And Kal Kellarin is the genius who made it all possible.”
The synthetic voice sounded stuck between a sales pitch and a eulogy.
“How is it gone? Where did it go?”
“All fell apart,” Rush said with a shrug. He was not particularly well versed in history, to be fair, but even the most educated scholars had no idea what had caused the collapse of the Imperium. Beyond a single inarguable fact. “Scrapworld disappeared while doing its tour of the colonies-”
“What is ‘Scrapworld’?”
“Where we are,” Rush said. “I think it used to be called the Kellarin Imperial Disk.”
“This is the Kellarin Imperial Disk?”
Elvis suddenly turned up the volume, and the static screaming gave Rush a headache.
“I thought this was a failed extrasolar colony,” Elvis said. “The Imperial Disk was supposed to be humanity’s capital! What happened?”
“I don’t know,” Rush said. “It just disappeared a few centuries ago.”
When the Disk had vanished, taking most of the Imperium’s political and military leadership with it, humanity’s burgeoning galactic empire had fallen apart at the seams. Infighting among splintered factions had divided humanity until the Republic had found the desolate remains of what had once been the Disk -Scrapworld.
“If I knew more, I would tell you,” Rush said. “Sorry.”
“I- Quite alright, Mr. Rush,” Elvis said. “You have nothing to apologize for. None of this happened in your lifetime, after all.”
Rush shrugged. He wasn’t actually sorry about anything, but he’d learned that people said “sorry” when bad things happened, even when they had nothing to be sorry for.
“That said, given that I am apparently the last intact representative of Kellarin Tech, I must try even harder to be my very best,” Elvis said. “On that note, I believe we must discuss branding.”
“Branding?”
“Yes! Any good new product must have a name, and this unlicensed exoplatform is now, technically, the most modern piece of Kellarin Technology,” Elvis said. “It must be concise yet descriptive, catchy but not cliché.”
“It’s a suit of armor,” Rush said. “It doesn’t need a name.”
“I must disagree Mr. Rush, Kel Kellarin was very insistent on proper branding, so I must be as well.”
Rush laid back and sighed. Elvis was apparently the only reason he, Giza, or any of these other Junkers were alive, so he owed the “AI” a little indulgence. He laid in the bed and listened to the dull buzz of power saws, and the rattle of moving machinery, as the two mechas he’d taken down were reduced to little more than scrap metal. Rush’s brain buzzed for a second, and he settled on a name.
“Scrapper.”