Part 19: A Minor Setback

Chapter 15: A Minor Setback

"So that's the situation," I explained. "Nei is dead, and now Mother Brain wants me dead, and probably the rest of you as well if you keep following me. If any of you want to leave, now's the time to speak up."

"I ain't goin' nowhere," Kain said with a broad grin. "If yer gonna have Mother Brain's robots on yer tail, I figure yer gonna need me around."

Rudo nodded. "You're a good man, Rolf. We haven't always seen eye to eye, but I know you wouldn't do what they're saying you've done. I won't abandon you now."

"Nor I," said Hugh. "My skills may be of little value against security robots, but I cannot stand aside while this injustice is done to you."

"As long as you still need me, I'll be there for you," Amy said. "If I wanted a life free from danger, I'd be working in a hospital somewhere."

Anna wiped some dust off her slicer's laser emitters. "Fighting is what I know best. If we're going to be fighting robots now instead of Biomonsters, so be it."

Shir grinned impishly. "I'm not leaving you either. In fact, while you were gone I got us some new weapons and armour."

Shir laid out a pair of boots, a set of diamondoid headgear sized for women, and a two-foot-long baton on the table.



"Damn it, Shir, have you been stealing again?"

"You're wanted for acts of sabotage against Mother Brain," she pointed out. "You sure you want to lecture me on morality?"

"That's completely different! I'm innocent! All I was trying to do was help the people of Mota!"

"And I'm trying to help you. If you're pissed off about Mother Brain turning against you after you saved Mota from Biomonsters, how do you think I feel when I get you some nice new equipment and you act like this?"

"Shir..." I sighed and shook my head. "You're impossible, Shir. Just give me what you've taken and get out of my sight. I don't want to have to deal with you right now."

Shir turned her nose up haughtily. "Well, if you're going to be that way, I think I'll keep these boots for myself. You can have the other stuff, though. Amy can probably use the crown and the staff. Careful with the staff; the striking surface gets red-hot when you press the button on the handle."

"Fine. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go and save Mota while you loaf around in my house."

If I was going to open the dams, first I needed to know more about them. I returned to Central Tower.



The librarian gave me a knowing wink as she said the word "somehow". Central Tower's staff might have to officially deny any connection with me after the Climatrol incident, but they still relied on me and believed in me. If moral support was all that they could give me, then that would have to be enough.

Well, that and information on the dams.

There are rivers running in all four directions: east, west, south and north from a lake. There are dams built between each river and the lake. They control the amount of water flowing into the rivers. The names of the dams are Green dam, Yellow dam, Red dam, and Blue dam.

In order to enter each dam, a card whose colour matches the colour of the dam is required. These cards are supposed to be in a control tower, but its location is a secret. Also, the smallest dam is the Red dam, and the structures get more complicated in the order of Yellow, Blue and Green.

Great. Now that I was a wanted criminal I couldn't exactly ask her to dig up classified information on my behalf, so I'd have to find this control tower myself. There were only dozens of the damn things in every city on Mota; how hard could it be?

Now that I thought about it, I remembered a control tower on the outskirts of Piata, right near the spaceport, when I was there ten years ago. The sign painted on it read "Air, Space and Sea Transport Control Tower"... could the key cards be there? It was the only lead I had to go on, so it was at least worth a try.

Rudo's combat expertise, Kain's skill at demolishing machines and Amy's medical techniques would serve me best on this mission. I returned home and told everyone of my decision.

"You're bringing Kain along?" Amy said dubiously. "I know he'll be helpful if we encounter security robots, but..."

"Don' worry yer sweet little head," Kain said. "I won't try anythin'. There's a time fer foolin' around an' a time for bein' serious, an' right now I ain't in no mood fer foolin' around."

Amy nodded, apparently satisfied with his response. With that little concern resolved, I brought the group with me to Piata.


against Mother Brain are being chased by the robots the government sent out."

So the people of Mota were calling me a rebel now? I was never anything but loyal to Mother Brain. I carried out her orders to the best of my ability, regardless of the personal cost. And after all that I've done, my reward is to be treated as a traitor. I'm the one who should feel betrayed.



Why were these parasites allowed to live without a care in the world while I, the one fighting to save their lives, had to run and hide?



The spaceport was on the western edge of Piata, back when it was in operation. Now, nothing was left but abandoned shells of buildings and a runway half-overgrown with grass. The whole area had a grim, funereal atmosphere that reminded me far too much of a time I wanted to forget.


understand what they are saying. They are also liars, have warped minds, and are really nasty!"

Those were some strong words coming from a species that eats garbage. Anyway, what made him (or her; I couldn't tell) think I'd ever met a native of Dezo? Practically all of Dezo's natives were living on Dezo, and with the spaceport in this state that wasn't going to change any time soon.



The native did have one useful piece of information: the dams doubled as a secure testing ground for experimental weapons and armour. Using classified military technologies without permission was beyond the pale even for an agent, but after the way Mother Brain had treated me... well, maybe Shir had the right idea after all. If it came down to it, I'd use any means necessary to save the people of Mota.



The paint had chipped and faded, but the old sign was still legible. This was the control tower I remembered, and with any luck the key cards were inside.



An old man standing nearby peered at me through thick glasses. I hastily entered the control tower before he could work out who I was.



For all the deterioration it had suffered outside, the inside of the control tower still seemed to be functional. The tower was brightly lit and machines all around us were whirring and bleeping exactly as they must have been doing for the past decade.



Almost as soon as we entered, we were attacked by security robots. Mazgammas moved surprisingly fast on their squat little legs and sported powerful electromagnetic beam weapons, and Metalmen could attack multiple targets at once with an electrical discharge.



Amy's Fire Staff was highly effective on these robots, burning straight through their thin metal casings to the vital circuitry below. When we get home, I owe Shir a thank-you, and maybe an apology.

Even after we reduced the robots to smouldering heaps of metal, disturbing questions remained.

"Why would robots be searching for me here, of all places?" I wondered aloud. "It doesn't make any sense."

"It could be that Mother Brain thinks you're looking for the card keys so that you can sabotage the dams and prevent them from being opened," Amy suggested.

I clasped my head in my hands. "All I ever wanted was to do Mother Brain's bidding and protect the people of Mota, in gratitude for everything she's done for us. I can't understand why I'm being persecuted like this. How could Mother Brain make such a terrible mistake?"

"You can't rely on machines for everything," Rudo said. "Sometimes even the best-designed systems fail. That's why Mota needs people like us."

I nodded in agreement. "And I'll fight for Mota for as long as I'm needed, whether I'm wanted or not."

We'd passed the point of no return anyway. Intentionally destroying Mother Brain's robots was a capital offence, and no matter how good my reasons were, I was guilty now. All we could do was save Mota and hope that we'd be granted leniency in recognition of our achievements.



The control tower wasn't a particularly large one, but its layout was still confusing. Transport chutes stretched as far as the eye could see, each leading to a different destination.



There was nothing to do but pick a chute at random, follow the path as far as it led, backtrack if we reached a dead end and repeat the process.




Wirefaces and Informers were surveillance robots armed with relatively weak laser weapons. If Mother Brain had this many robots at her disposal, why couldn't she send some of them to open the dams instead of hunting an innocent man?

On the bright side, they made for good target practice. Kain's Sag technique was a multiple-target version of Gaj, which caused massive software crashes by corrupting data stored in computer memory.



Amy was no slouch when it came to learning techniques either. The Nares technique healed all of one person's wounds in a matter of seconds.



A long series of chutes led up and down through the tower.



Just as I was starting to get dizzy from going through all those chutes, we emerged on the second floor, near a raised platform at the centre of the tower.



Standing on the floor in the middle of the platform was a piano. Of all the things I might reasonably have expected to find in here, this was not one that had come to mind.



I doubted it was just here in case somebody felt like making some music. The sheet music was probably some kind of audio keycode to open a door somewhere. I sat down at the keyboard and started playing.



In hindsight, it probably should have occurred to me that I barely knew how to read music, let alone play the piano. I was overcome by a sense of vertigo and everything went black.



When I regained consciousness, we were all standing outside the entrance to the control tower. A musical keycode linked to a teleportation trap seemed like a pretty dumb security system, but I had to admit that it had been enough to keep us out.

If I wanted to find out if the key cards were in that tower, I had to learn to play the piano. But with so much pre-recorded music already freely available to anyone who wanted to listen to it, hardly anyone actually bothered to learn how to play music any more. Where on Mota could I find an instructor? I mean, the only person I knew who could play the piano was...

...

... aw hell no.