Shifting Dimensions: A Military Science Fiction Anthology by Justin Sloan & L.O. Addison & Gentry Race & George S. Mahaffey Jr. & Kyle Noe & Jonathan Yanez

Author:Justin Sloan & L.O. Addison & Gentry Race & George S. Mahaffey Jr. & Kyle Noe & Jonathan Yanez
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Elder Tree Press
Published: 2017-09-27T06:00:00+00:00

MINUTES LATER, the passageway connected to a route that Gibbs claimed he was intimately familiar with from his days as a Snout. It would take them longer, but it was safer and they wouldn’t have to expose themselves by running in the open down the streets. Soon the adrenaline from the fire-bombing had ebbed and they were dragging themselves through a tunnel-like corridor, exhausted, running on empty. Haskell’s vigor was renewed, however, when she spotted a few bars of light up ahead. The three stopped and stared.

“Um … there’s light,” Gibbs whispered.

“That’s right,” Haskell said.

“Why is there a light in the tunnel.”

“Because I needed some juice for what I was doing.”

She grinned and motioned for the others to follow her, angling to her left and through a doorway that had been fashioned into the rubble. The others followed, the three entering what looked like a grotto, a low-ceilinged space that had been burrowed into the mountains of rubble. The space was narrow, but long, several orange extension cords visible, tethered to various tools and a small rechargeable battery pack that sat in the middle of the room. At the outer edges of the room were stacks of what looked like building material: lengths of metal, sections of alloy, bundles of wires of all shapes and sizes, and small benches cluttered with tiny gizmos and all manner of machine parts. She had memories of collecting all of this at some point in the recent past.

“This is like the Santa’s workshop,” Gibbs said.

“Yeah, if Santa was on crack,” Gene added, hoisting up a length of entrail-like wire.

“I built this place,” Haskell said.

Gibbs looked over. “Why?”

“To fight back!” Haskell shouted triumphantly.

She dramatically lifted up a section of circuit board.

“I give you a part of what will soon be … Ex Nihlio!” she shouted.

The circuit board broke apart in her hands and clattered to the ground.

“Is ‘Ex Nihlio’ Latin for crap, Haskell?” Gene asked with a smirk.

“Screw you,” Haskell said, dejected, bending to scoop up the pieces of the circuit board. She watched Gene out of the corner of her eye as he moved over and inspected portions of the materials lying near a far wall: several lengths of steel that she’d pried from the frame of a fallen building, a motherboard that she’d extracted from a sentry drone, bundles of coiled cable and conduit that she’d spent hours methodically plucking from a wrecked industrial machine.

“What the hell are you doing with all this stuff?” Gene asked. “Getting ready for the world’s shittiest yard sale?”

“It’s all parts for my machine,” Haskell said.

“What kind of machine?”

“The one I designed,” Haskell said, removing a stack of paper from a plastic snap case lying on the floor. She held the paper up for the others to see.

Gene and Gibbs moved into the light, squinting, examining sheets filled with numbers and calculations and schematics and the sketch of what looked like a cross between a robotic machine and an exosuit used for combat operations. It was crude, but full of notations and cross-sections juxtaposed with lists of materials and parts.

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