Blowing off Some Steam (Rust and Ash: Storms over Cogtown #1)

Blowing off Some Steam

  by David M DeMar

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  Blowing off Some Steam

  Copyright © 2011 by David M DeMar

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law.

  For information address: Twit Publishing PO Box 720453 Dallas, Texas 75206 or email Craig Gabrysch at [email protected].

  The following work is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors’ imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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  Publisher’s Note

  This story was originally published in Twit Publishing Presents: PULP! Winter/Spring 2012. David M DeMar has published two stoies previously with Twit Publishing, namely “The Interview” and “A Reason for Living.”

  We here at Twit Publishing love David, and so it is with great pleasure that we present “Blowing Off some Steam.” It’s a sci/fi, futuristic tale of people taking freedom into their own hands on a world riddled with EMP storms that have destroyed all the basic necessities we take for granted: things like the radio and the cell-phone.

  So, enjoy.

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  Blowing off Some Steam

  By David M DeMar

  I hate this place sometimes.

  The young bucks like Charlie have no idea what they’re missing. Charlie, bless his empty little head, was born here; I wasn’t. I still remember making landfall here like it was yesterday.

  Landfall, I thought. That was definitely the right name for it. Once the Aristeia passed through that damned magnetosphere, we plummeted like a rock. Thank goodness the crew evac pod had good old-fashioned explosive bolts or we all would have been smeared across the northern face of the Hesperus range like a banana cream pie across the forehead of a circus clown.

  Speaking of clowns . . . “Dammit, kid, get your head down!” I grabbed the seat of Charlie’s pants and yanked him back behind the embankment. He brought a shower of pebbles down with him. “You tryin’ to get yourself plugged or what?”

  “Aw c’mon Sarge, I just wanna see!” The teenager scowled petulantly, pushing his stringy hair out of his eyes. He looked like a dilapidated scarecrow amidst the rest of us. The grubby blue jumpsuit he was wearing hung from him like a coat off a push broom.

  “You won’t see nothin’ if we’re spotted,” I growled. “Now sit down, shaddap, and pay attention if you don’t want this to be your last night out with us. Wachowski!”

  A squat fireplug of a man scrambled up the rocky slope to me, his jumpsuit as muddy as Charlie’s. “Here, boss.”

  “Take your squad around the left of this embankment when that gorilla suit patrol rounds the corner. You’ve got a thirty count before we come after you.”

  The man nodded, his features creasing in a familiar grin. “This used to be a lot easier when we had radio, boss.”

  “Don’t remind me.” I looked up at the sky. The stars had been snuffed out by a dark, roiling cloudbank. Sickly green lightning bolts had begun to arc in between and the wind had begun to kick up. “Another EM storm rolling in,” I said. “Let’s move, before we get flattened by buckets of hail.”

  Wachowski took his squad left; I started counting in my head. What I wouldn’t give for a damn chronometer, I thought. At thirty I signaled the rest of us forward and we silently scrambled over the embankment.

  Before us, in a small hollow, was one of the supply depots of the New Herculaneum Mining Company. A small warehouse stood at the left side of a gravel lot, constructed of reinforced pressure-alloy; to its right was a collection of administrative buildings cobbled together from scavenged wreckage and corrugated steel. The distinctive amber glow of gaslight emanated from in between the storm shutters of a dozen or so windows.

  I led my squad across the rocky expanse and across the depot’s perimeter. We slipped into the shadows surrounding the warehouse and then skirted around its length to the side entrance to meet up with Wachowski, who had his handful of grubby grease monkeys keeping an eye out for the guard patrol. All of us scrambled inside the open door and then eased it shut just as the gorilla suit, emblazoned with NHMC across its broad pressure-alloy shoulders, came lumbering around the corner.

  We waited, panting, in the darkness as the patrol passed by outside. The thin loading bay door shook as it trudged by, and we all listened in silence as its heavy footsteps disturbed the gravel outside, steam escaping in sharp hisses from its actuators. The boredom of its operator was evident from the sound of his tuneless whistling.

  After a moment the patrol rounded the next corner. Its footsteps faded, and soon the only sound was rain as it began to patter softly on the roof of the warehouse.

  “Alright,” I hissed, “spread out and load up on whatever you can carry. Rations, steam cores, spare parts.” I pulled out my old Zippo and sparked it. Others did the same. At least there’s enough oil distillate in this hellhole for naphtha. “Charlie, stick by me.”

  We fanned out and began ransacking the warehouse. I picked through the laden shelves and began loading Charlie’s pack with torque wrenches and pressure gauges. “Sarge,” he whispered, “what’s a radio?”

  “Pre-landfall tech, kid. Back when we didn’t have to worry about the EM storms constantly turning all our fancy equipment into paperweights.” A peal of thunder split the silence, rolling by overhead as if to emphasize the point. The rain intensified, and the louder, more insistent pounding of hail began thudding against the roof like buckshot from a scattergun.

  I picked up a heavy, eighteen inch long pressure-alloy cylinder and checked the gauge on the front. I nodded and slid it into Charlie’s pack before lashing it shut. “There’s a steam core in there,” I told him.

  He stiffened. “Uh . . . is it full, Sarge?”

  I nodded. “Don’t drop it.” His expression crumpled and in the light thrown off by the dancing flame of my lighter, he suddenly looked very sick — and very, very young.

  Wachowski sidled up to me as Charlie wobbled on his feet under the weight of his pack. “Boss, we’ve got something,” he hissed, hooking a thumb back over his shoulder. “You better come see this.”

  I double checked Charlie’s pack and clapped him on the shoulder, motioning for the kid to fall in behind me. The two of us followed Wachowski through the maze of shelves to the back of the warehouse, where he stood next to a large loading door. Slumped against the wall like a row of drunks was a whole platoon of empty gorilla suits. “Boss, take a close look at these,” Wachowski said. He raised his lighter up to the shoulder of one of the suits. A round insignia was painted there — a streaking comet on a field of stars. “These are Colonial Authority suits!”

  I hunkered down next to Wachowski, listening to my knees pop. I winced. My ass, 1.15 times Earth gravity has no long-term effects. Running a hand across the pressure-alloy torso on one of them, my grease-stained fingers explored a raised mount on the steam core powered exoskeleton’s right hip. “Well I’ll be damned. Wachowski, look at these hardpoints.”

  Wachowski craned his neck around my shoulders, holding his own Zippo close. “Boss, there’s no way these are civvie surplus. We’re lookin’ at military rigs here, for sure.” A violent thunderclap shook the walls of the warehouse, making us all jump. Wachowski dropped his lighter, cursing colo
rfully, and bent over to search for it in the sudden murk.

  “Sarge!” I looked up to see Charlie standing next to a huge corrugated steel crate covered by a heavy plastic tarpaulin. He had the corner of the tarp in his hands, revealing a stenciled CA insignia on the side of the crate. I leaned a hand on the gorilla suit and pushed, regaining my feet with a grunt. I never should have let Diomedes talk me into this, I thought as I steadied myself.

  I walked over and grabbed a handful of the tarp, giving it a yank. It slid off and pooled on the floor with a sibilant hiss. The crate itself was large — about the dimensions of a coffin but twice as deep — and after Wachowski sent one of his men to find a pry bar to jimmy the padlock, we had the top off before you could say Jack Robinson. I had to clamp my