Dale Brown - Puppet Master

Peter had bulled its way through a second-story window. Crawling up the frame, it clawed at the shingles, moving up the outer wall like a slow-motion spider.

“Hey! Get back!” Someone grabbed Massina’s shoulder, pulling him around. It was a policeman. “The place is going to explode!”

“We have to get that woman out of the building!” yelled Chelsea.

“Let the firemen work!”

The officer began pushing Massina back. Massina raised his right arm, took hold of the officer’s uniform, and lifted him backward and out of the way.

Clearly surprised by the strength of the rather short man before him, the officer grabbed at Massina’s arm. It was then that he got his second surprise — never much on appearances, Massina hadn’t bothered to put the “flesh” covering on today, so the cop gripped several tubes of steel and protective carbon tunnels for the wiring.

A fresh explosion rent the air. Flames shot from the top of the building next to them. Massina released the policeman and turned back, searching for Chelsea through the smoke and dust.

“Chelsea!”

“I have her,” yelled Chelsea, emerging from smoke with the baby in her arms.

RBT PJT 23.A followed, moving on three legs; the fourth held the woman it had rescued a foot above the pavement, as if it were an ant retrieving a prize grasshopper for the queen.

Standing at the edge of the small crowd that had gathered to watch the fire, Stephan Stratowich felt a surge of relief as the woman was helped to the paramedic van that had just pulled up. It wasn’t because he would have felt any guilt over her death; rather, his boss had told him to avoid unnecessary complications. The woman’s death would have counted as one.

Stephan had blown up two other similar buildings over the past several years; it was a sideline he didn’t particularly like, but the assignments were something he couldn’t refuse, especially when they came from Medved and the other associated with the clans that kept him employed. The trick wasn’t in making a gas explosion look like an accident; it was in limiting the damage. There was always an unpredictability that the most thorough plan could not eliminate. In this case, the explosion had occurred nearly ten minutes after Stephan had intended, greatly increasing the collateral damage — only the commercial building at the end of the row was supposed to have been destroyed. It was empty; the job was probably part of an insurance scam, though Stephan never knew, or wanted to know, the particulars.

Now that the woman was out of the building, Stephan turned his attention to the odd-looking creature that had retrieved her. It was mechanical, some sort of robot, very unlike anything Stephan had ever seen at a fire.

He had other work to do today, a full agenda. Still, the contraption intrigued him enough that he decided to get a better look, so he edged around the back of the crowd. He took his phone from his pocket and slipped over to the video screen. This was definitely something worth taking a video of.

Any other boss would have canceled Peter’s tests — surely the bot could not do more to prove itself that day — but any other boss would not have been Louis Massina.

Seeing his frown deepen as he watched the robot climb over a pile of rubble in the test area, Chelsea couldn’t help but wonder at the two sides of the man. At work he was demanding and taciturn, eschewing even the tiniest chitchat in favor of a cold stare that seemed borderline autistic. It was a remarkable contrast to the person he was outside the job, one known not only for charity but also for taking a real interest in the people he helped, always anonymously.

“Why is it moving so slow?” demanded Massina as Peter picked its way over the tangle of steel beams and wire placed at the center of the old rail yard they leased for these sorts of tests. “Isn’t it receiving the sensor information?”

“It is,” said Bobby James, who was watching the bot’s “brain” functions on the array of monitors nearby. “It’s picking a safe route to the target.”

“Hmmmph.” Massina folded his arms. RBT PJT 23.A had been tasked with finding and retrieving a small box that contained gunpowder hidden in the tangle. Besides its own sensors, it was receiving data from a sensor robot stationed nearby. The mech contained a sophisticated “sniffer,” which scanned a fifty-meter circle. Peter took the data and mapped chemicals in the air; the sensor had detected the minuscule plume emitted by the stash and provided the data to Peter.

“It’s got it,” said Chelsea as the robot dug its claw into the pile. “We just have to be patient.”

“Patience should not be programmed into the system,” snapped Massina. There was still soot from the fire on his pants and a smudge on his face.

“Prudence is,” retorted Bobby.

“Where’s the line between prudence and negligence?” said Massina.

“We’re not near it.”

Impatient as he was, Massina generally tolerated a decent amount of back talk — as long as he felt you were dedicated to your job. But his manner of questioning could be cold, and even at times cruel. Any employee who couldn’t deal with that — and stand up for themselves and their project — generally left; there were plenty of rivals who would pay handsomely for someone with experience here. Chelsea wondered if Bobby was getting close to that point; he’d recently complained about how much time he was working, something she’d never heard him do before.

“Chelsea?”

Chelsea turned and looked up into the face of Bill “Beefy” Bozzone, the head of Smart Metal’s security team. Dressed in a dark blue suit, Beefy looked more like an accountant than a policeman… albeit one in very good physical condition.

“A couple of detectives want to talk to you and Mr. Massina about the fire,” said Beefy.

“Not really a good time,” said Chelsea.

“What?” snapped Massina, turning around.

“Sorry to bother you, Lou.” Beefy started to apologize. “But there are some policemen to see you. I didn’t know if—”

“I’ll handle it.” Massina looked at Chelsea. “Finish this, would you?”

Massina followed Beefy out past the rows of parked trailers to the whitewashed cement building at the entrance to the yard. He didn’t like to be interrupted while working, though at this point there wasn’t more he could do with the mech. It had passed all of its tests, albeit a little slower than he wanted.

Two men in ill-fitting suits stood just inside the doorway, shifting nervously. They smelled of cigarette smoke.

“We understand you were at the gas explosion this morning,” said the taller of the two men. He withdrew a well-worn leather case from his jacket pocket and let the front flap drop, flashing a Boston Police Department badge; the other man did likewise.

“Yes?”

“Well, if you could give us your thoughts—”

“My thoughts on what?” snapped Massina.

“Run down what happened,” said the shorter man. “What you saw.”

“I saw a fire.”

“And an explosion?” asked the shorter man. “My name’s Bill Doyle. This is my partner, Cliff Lycum.”

“A flash of light. It was dark. I heard someone say it was gas.”

“You wouldn’t have had anything recording, did you?” asked Lycum. “Because of your… your robot thing? Did you take pictures?”

Massina bristled. Now that the woman and her child were OK, he wanted to avoid giving out any information about the “robot thing” that had been involved.

“No, I’m sorry. We had no photos. We stopped for coffee. We were on our way here. My staff told you I was here?”