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 Title : The World Wreckers

   Author : MeatBot

   Keywords : Pedo, Sci-Fi, Mg

   Date : 20141018

   Mail : meatbot777 at gmail dot com

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   Synopsis : More sci-fi.  A man whos world is being destroyed meets a
young girl and enlists her help in his quest.

   Disclaimer : Copyright by the author.  Permission is granted to archive,
repost, or publish in no-cost or low-cost archives, periodicals,
anthologies of this type of material if unaltered and attributed to the
author.  This is a work of fiction.  The author does not condone any sexual
activity among persons under 16 in real life.

   These are just words, people.  Just words.  If you have a problem with
words see a competent shrink or an English teacher.  This story is all made
up.  It's sci-fi crap.  This story is long on story, and short on sex.  If
you don't like it, read something else.  Don't bitch at me.  You have been
warned.

   Apologies to MZB.



   --==+==-

   There wasn't much left of the village, when the grinder appeared on the
horizon.  The grinder would take two days to arrive at the village proper,
so everyone had plenty of time to get most of their stuff packed up, and
leave.  A few people stayed, mostly old people, sitting on their steps or
in their living rooms, waiting for the end.  For the grinding.  Some
people's spirit was already broken.  Some people seemed to welcome the end.
And the end was on its way.

   Dutch's family fled the day before, when the grinder was just a cloud of
dust on the horizon.  The thing had a path almost two klicks wide, so they
needed extra time just to clear the blades.  No waiting till the last
minute.  As Dutch was helping pull the platform he could feel the
vibrations through the earth beneath his feet.  There was no stopping or
even slowing down the grinder.  It came.

   He'd seen, long ago, a projection of the grinder's path around North Am.
Seven grinders operated on the planet.  They ground up the big cities
first, their paths decided by computers to be the most efficient routes. 
Lots of little towns fell to them during the start, even, of course.  After
the big cities, came the smaller.  Twenty years ago this one had started on
the simple towns.  Now it was basically cleaning up the villages and tiny
towns.  In another ten years it would be done.  Cradle Three would no
longer exist, as an inhabited, civilized world.  The savers would have
finished up by then, and the slavers.  Cradle's people would be spread
throughout the galaxy, some as free citizens, some as slaves, and most as
just more displaced refugees.  The galaxy-wide war was slowly tapering down
into little smoldering brush fires, but there was still plenty of time for
suffering.  Cradle's people had done their share, and would still do a
little more.

   For the next four days, Dutch just felt like they were running away from
the grinder.  Finally the ground no longer trembled, and clouds of smoke
and dust no longer billowed up behind them.  They got the grav engine on
the platform working the third day, and they made pretty good time after
that.  Dutch's father was voted out as leader of their little group, but
the man that took over still followed his plan.  To the south.  The further
south they went, the safer they were.  That was impossible to argue with.
If they could make it out of the plains and into the mountains they would
be safe from everything except slavers.  And they even had a secret weapon
for that problem, a neural grenade that somebody had come up with. 
Although it was only good for one shot.



   --==+==-

   Dutch's status had dropped when his father fell from the pedestal of
leadership.  Another neighbor forced Dutch to care for his kids by secretly
threatening Dutch's invalid mother.  Dutch silently promised himself to
kill the man but gave in, and watched the man's children.  He hated the
boy, but loved the girl.  She was young and sweet, a jewel in the rough. 
And she liked him, too.  He idly thought about taking her one night and
just striking out on his own, on a ninety degree tangent from the group's
path.  He knew they wouldn't waste time hunting him down.  If he could just
take one of the rifles...  he'd do it.  If he could lift a weapon from the
group's stash, he'd do it, he'd go.



   --==+==-

   He was selected for guard duty one night, walking around the floating
platform, carrying one of the group's four beamer rifles.  He carefully got
his charges ready for bed, but made sure the girl was prepared to move
quickly.  He got all her stuff in a bag, and put it under her head, hushing
her when she acted curious.  She trusted him, though, and she accepted all
his instructions.  That night, about an hour before he was supposed to wake
up his replacement guard, he stepped to the side of the platform where the
girl was sleeping.  He put his hand over her mouth, and shook her awake. 
She could see him clearly in the light of the moon, and he felt her smile
beneath his hand.  He removed it slowly, making the "hush" sign with his
finger over his mouth.  She sat up, and he helped her down from the
platform, and took her bag, and his.  She followed him without question. 
They crept away, into the darkness.



   --==+==-

   When the sun came up, they were at least four or five klicks away.  He
finally stopped, and they sat on an escarpment while he talked seriously to
her.

   "Lotus...  It's only fair that I ask you this," she smiled and nodded
expectantly at him, "as you may have figured out, I am leaving the group.
Do you want to come with me?"

   She almost looked puzzled at that, that he would feel the need to ask
her.  She just gazed at him.

   "Do you understand?  Leaving them forever.  I'm going out on my own. 
I'm heading south, into the mountains, where the grinder can't go."

   He gazed at her.  She finally just shrugged.  He wondered if she
realized the foreverness of what he was talking about.  That part about
going to the mountains wasn't really fair, the other group was going to the
mountains, too.  She could go with them as well as him.  But for some
reason, maybe just simple loneliness, he really wanted her to come with
him.

   "Lo...  if you go with me, you'll never see them again.  Anyone.  Your
dad, or anybody.  If they do see me, they'll probably try to kill me.  Do
you understand?  Never."

   "Yes, I understand.  I don't care," she finally said, seeming to realize
a little what he was saying.  He sighed, and they stood.  They continued on
their way.  To the south.



   --==+==-

   A day later she showed him a stunner pistol she had hidden in her bag.

   "Lotus!" he said, "Where the hell did you get that?"

   She giggled.  "I stole it from the armory.  I've had it for weeks."

   Grief, she was useful, he thought.  She was handy to have around.  He
grabbed her and bent her over and scrubbed her hair with his fist, as she
giggled and shrieked and fought him.  He let her win.  She was pretty cool,
he thought.  Pretty damn cool, for a girl.



   --==+==-

   A month later they crossed the grinder's path for the first time.  For a
solid kilometer all they saw were the little pellets the thing spit out,
and finally they were walking on nothing but grinderdust.  The rain had
glued a lot of it together in this area.  Dutch finally got a loose
handful, and he held it inches from his eyes, trying to identify anything.
He couldn't.  It was just a crazy mix of ground-up stuff, rocks, trees,
houses, people, anything that the grinder ran over.  It didn't even smell.



   --==+==-

   "Dutch."

   "Yes, darlin'?"

   "Why did the grinder come, anyway?"

   "Uhm.  That's a good question.  They gave this world away, in some peace
treaty or something.  They gave it to the Freaks.  And the Freaks didn't
want our stuff on it, our cities and stuff.  Part of the deal was to return
it to its natural state.  That's what the grinder does.  It just...  grinds
up the cities.  Crazy, but that's what it does."

   "Were there a lot of cities on Cradle?"

   "Hell yeah.  It was as populated as the core worlds at one time.  I
mean, that was before my time, and yours...  but, hell yeah."

   "Silly."

   "Yeah, silly.  Lotus.  Some people say...  some people say that Cradle
is where...  where our people started from.  That it's the world that
humans came from.  Our home planet."

   She was silent for a while.  Surely, he thought, surely she's heard that
theory before.  In her lessons, if nothing else.

   "Yeah, they told us that in school," she finally said, "I don't guess it
matters much anymore, though...  does it?"

   "Nah, I guess not.  I mean hell, they're giving it away...  to the
Freaks..."

   "Yeah.  Crazy."

   "Yeah.  Crazy."



   --==+==-

   One sunny day, the girl proved her worth to him.  She was about fifty
meters behind him, and she was carrying the rifle.  He was passing a large
clump of stones, when a man stepped out behind it, followed by two others.
The first thing Dutch noticed was their legs.  From their knees down, they
had spindly metal artificial legs, with hydraulic cylinders and springs. 
They were all clothed in dark plastic sheeting, their faces covered, and
each had a large steel blade of some kind in their hands.  The blades were
all pointing at Dutch, and he backed up hurriedly, wondering what this was
all about.  One of the men displayed a small computer strapped to his
forearm.

   "You are logged into the Ephrium, sinner," said the man, in a sonorous
voice.  "Your sins are all entered, sorted and spell-checked.  Prepare to
be penitent.  Say goodbye to your feet and legs.  You are a kneeler from
now on."

   A loud crack split the air, and the man fell, blood spraying behind him
to splash on the other two men.  They regarded it with surprise, but made
no move to save themselves.  The girl carefully shot each of them also, and
then advanced to stand beside Dutch.

   He approached the dead men, and pulled the computer off the man's arm.
That might come in handy, if he could get the sin crap out of it.

   "Lo...  thanks, darlin'," he finally said.  "They were gonna cut off my
legs.  Thank you."

   "No problem," she said, holding the gun balanced on one hip jauntily. 
She looked sexy to him, in her flat black bodysuit, holding the weapon. 
She looked hot.  He felt a surge of lust for her, and realized, to his
surprise, that he loved her.  Just because it was the two of them?  he
wondered.  Just because they were thrown together like this?  How had that
happened, without his knowledge?



   --==+==-

   That night they holed up in a cave, after running a herd of squealing
pigdogs out.  He set up the invisible fence, and turned on a peeper,
setting it for anything larger than a sand shark.  They had a meal of
roasted bi-corns, and drank from their devaporators.  Finally the girl
stretched out on the groundsheet, still looking sexy in her bodysuit.

   Dutch stood.  He began the slightly laborious process of stripping his
bodysuit off.

   "Darling.  Lotus," he said, and she looked at him expectantly, also a
bit surprised that he seemed to be taking his suit off.  "Take it off,
girl." he had the top off by now, and the cool evening air felt good on his
skin.  He motioned her to stand, and she finally did.  He ran his fingers
down her seals, and she helped him take her top off.  He stopped for a
moment and stared down at her, helpless.  She was captivatingly beautiful
to him.  Her little chest was flat, but her two nipples were fat and puffy.
He wondered again how old she was.  Her stomach was flat and hard, and
rippled with muscle.  She was completely muscle, no fat.  For a kid, she
looked hard.  And sexy.  She really looked sexy.

   She began stripping off her leg guards, and he dropped his, also.  He
removed his crotch-guard, and the air felt doubly good on his naked
genitalia.  She stopped for a moment and stared, and he wondered if she'd
ever seen male genitals before.  It was so rare for anyone to get out of
their suit, anymore.  She just stared for a moment, and then went back to
undressing herself.

   He performed some tricks for her, with his penis, just to make her
laugh. Prehensile penises were always good for a laugh.  When he was young
he could even tie it in a knot, but he hadn't done that trick in years.  He
got a smile out of her, at least.

   Finally she stood before him, as naked as he was.  She took his breath
away.  Her muscular thighs were hard, and he hungered to feel them under
his hands.  Her long dark hair reached almost to her waist.  He could
imagine smelling it.  He looked down.  Her beautiful little pussy peeked
out from in between her legs.  He imagined smelling that, too.  He knew it
would smell divine.

   "Lotus," he spoke, and she looked at him expectantly.  "Have you ever
done sex stuff before?  Do you know about sex?"

   She nodded shyly.  Finally she spoke.  "With my dad...  we made love
most every night...  he showed me...  stuff..."

   He idly wondered why his penis had interested her so, if her dad had
fucked her every night.  Surely she'd seen her dad's penis.  She still
seemed fresh and innocent to him, in spite of her sexual experience.  He
knew that the next few hours were going to be wonderful.



   --==+==-

   He was right.  They were.  And she tasted...  divine.  He bent his head
down, and licked her sweet cunt for all he was worth.  It tasted fabulous,
sweaty and tart, just the right amount...  deadly sexy.  He knew her
bodysuit kept her clean and aired out...  but still, pussies developed
their own tastes.  Their own wonderful tastes.  She was totally hairless,
she was still that young.  Well, she could have been depped, true...  but
he knew she was young.  Hell, she didn't even have tits yet.  Her clit was
huge, as big as the tip of his index finger.  He wondered, not for the
first time, if she was enhanced.

   Though he figured there wasn't much danger of it because of her age, he
had asked her if she'd had the shot yet.  Yes, she replied, last year. 
Good, no danger of babies, no matter where she was developmentally, then.
He was relieved.

   Her beautiful puffy nipples were exquisite.  They felt fabulous in his
mouth.  He pulled as much of them as he could into his mouth, and sucked,
feeling them stiffen.  He wrapped his arms around her waist, and sucked on
her nipples.  Gods, she was beautiful.

   Dutch hadn't had a lot of sexual experience...  times had been hard, the
last few years...  he hadn't had time or energy to get out and look...  but
this.  This was unreal, to him.  And she was so sexy.  It didn't matter to
him that she was still a kid.  She was sexy.

   He finally laid her down on the sheet, and turned her over.  She seemed
willing to let him do whatever he wished.  She seemed to be enjoying
herself, especially the pussy licking.  He raised her little butt in the
air, and bent down, spreading her ass cheeks apart.  He fitted his face
into her ass, and licked her asshole.  Oh, her asshole tasted good, he
thought.  It definitely tasted, and it tasted good.  It was spicy, and
tasted like ass.  Bitter, with just a hint of shit.  Perfect.  He licked
and lapped, and finally drove his tongue into her body, feeling her
sphincter muscle tighten on his tongue.  She tasted the sexiest, then.  His
dick was as hard as iron.  He imagined his dick in her sweet asshole, then
and there.  Maybe it would happen.  Maybe it would happen, tonight.

   She finally wiggled around a bit, impatient, it seemed.  He decided to
see if she wanted to play.  He laid her back, and lay beside her, face to
crotch.  As he began to lick her upside-down pussy, he felt her hands on
his hard dick.  Yes, she did want to play.  She stroked him and rubbed him,
and finally he felt her mouth take the cap of his cock.  He could have come
at that moment, but he did not, he held it.  She finally sucked him all the
way in, hard and deep.  She was good at it.  Her father had taught her
well, he realized.  She slurped him in and out, in and out, running her
tongue over the cap and down the front side.  Damn, she was good.

   He let her squeeze his head between her legs as he probed deeper and
deeper between them.  He wished there was a way to lick her asshole while
she sucked him, but that would require practice and flexibility.  He'd
heard of people using wormholes for things like that.  A nice, body-sized
wormhole would be fun to have.  Damn.  Of course, he'd probably spend most
of his time sucking himself off if he had one of those.

   He felt like they had been doing this for hours.  Maybe they had.  He
finally stopped her, and turned himself to be even with her.

   "Darling, make love to me," he said, and she giggled.  She came to him,
and clung tightly, hugging him.  His cock was so hard it had lost its
motility, but he wiggled and squirmed around until he felt the mouth of her
sweet cunt on it, and he began to push in.  She was tight, was she ever
tight.  He pumped in and out slowly, wetting his cock with her juices, and
at last his groin touched hers, and he knew he was all the way in.  He
began to stroke in and out, and she wiggled and squirmed beneath him.  She
seemed to draw so much pleasure from just simple fucking that he wondered
again if she was enhanced somehow.  He had barely started fucking her when
she came, and she came a dozen more times, until at last he let himself
cum. He felt his legs lock, and his muscles tighten until they almost
snapped.  She was a good fuck, goodness, she was good.  Her little pussy
almost milked him dry.

   They just lay there, and hugged after that.  She felt so good, she was
soft and warm, and she smelled like heaven to him.  The night got a little
cooler, and she warmed him up.  Her smooth bare naked skin...  he felt
himself getting turned on again, getting hard again.  This was better than
he'd ever dreamed.  He was glad all over again he'd taken her and run off.
He had no idea now, looking back, why he'd decided to take her, he wasn't
thinking of sex, then...  he'd just known, somehow.  Maybe his subconscious
had seen how sexy she was.

   Four hours later, they were kissing again.  He pulled back, and said,
"Darling...  Lo...  can I...  can I put it in your butt?"

   She just looked puzzled.

   "Lo...  did your dad ever do that?" he asked her.  "Did he ever put his
dick in your butt?"

   "No..." she said, shyly.  He almost laughed.  She was shy, after they
things she'd done so far?

   "Can I?" he asked.

   "I don' care...  I guess..." she said.  He slowly turned her over, and
pulled her knees back, sticking her cute little butt up in the air.

   He stopped for a while, and bent his face to her ass, again.  She tasted
as good as she had the first time.  There was just something about ass...
He licked and probed, and she wiggled beneath him.  He played with her clit
with his finger, just in case the ass stuff wasn't doing it for her.  She
seemed to be having a good time, at least.

   He finally slobbered saliva all over her sweet asshole, and then raised
himself up.  He swished the cap of his cock in the spit, and then began
pressing it into her wonderful little asshole.  She moaned, and positively
growled at one point, but she seemed to take it well.  He got the cap all
the way in, and began pressing deeper, finally having to go in and out to
wet it with her juices.

   "Do you like it, darling?" he stopped and asked her.  "Does it hurt?"

   "Yes...  no..." he hoped he understood her answers in the correct order.
She had sounded breathless.  He laughed softly and pressed deeper into her
body.  Finally he was at the bottom.  She was tight, way tight.  He could
feel her pucker up, and tighten some more.  His hands were on the sides of
her hips, pulling her to him.  He began to pump in and out, in and out. 
She sighed and moaned beneath him.  It was obvious she was getting great
pleasure from it.  He knew that if she was enhanced she would have clitoral
tissue around her asshole, also, and she'd enjoy it.  Hell, just taking a
shit would be a pleasure, if she was enhanced.  He hoped, for her sake,
that she was.

   He came quickly, he didn't want to wear her out, and it was hard to hold
back, she was so tight.  He filled her ass with sperm, moaning as she
moaned, pumping hard.  He finally pulled out, and collapsed beside her.

   They lay there for a while, holding each other, loving on each other. 
She finally dragged herself up, and crouched by the side of the sheet, and
pooped out his sperm, giggling.  She wiped her butt with a rag, sniffed it,
and tossed it into the back of the cave.  He was turned on just watching
her.  She was sexy.  How had he not noticed that, until now?  So what if
she was a kid, she was sexier than fuck.

   He pulled a thermal blanket out of his pack, and they cuddled up beneath
it.  She felt nice and warm in his arms.  He loved her a lot, at that
moment.  He was glad he'd taken her with him.



   --==+==-

   "Dutch." They were walking down a narrow canyon.  They'd spent three
nights in the cave, just devouring each other.  Dutch was almost worn out.
Lotus had seemed insatiable, once she got started.

   "Yes, Darlin'?"

   "Can we do that again, sometimes?  If we find a safe place?"

   He laughed.  "Oh yeah, hell yeah.  We'll do it again, even if we don't
find a safe place.  But we will.  Yes, Darlin', you bet your ass we'll do
it again."

   They walked a while in silence.

   "Lo?  Did you really like it?"

   "Yes...  it was fun...  it was better than when my dad did it...  he
just wanted to put it in me, he didn't do all the licking and stuff."

   "Damn, he was missing the best part, then."

   She laughed.

   "Yeah.  He was."



   --==+==-

   Later, Dutch had no idea how he'd gotten the idea.  Or why he'd gotten
it.  It just didn't seem fair to him that a bunch of suits in a boardroom
somewhere had decided that his world must die.  That it must be turned over
to the Freaks.  Wiped clean of all sign of human occupation, and turned
over.  Crazy.  Cradle had belonged to humans for over thirty thousand
years. And then some big shots gave it away, in the hopes of ending a war a
little quicker?  Double crazy.

   The grinder was big, but he knew it was vulnerable.  Any big machine
was. It was just a matter of finding its weak points.  Well, if he had a
nuke, screw the weak points.  But where the hell would he get a nuke?  He'd
have to look for weak points.

   Dutch stopped, one day, and thought.  He knew where the grinder was,
roughly.  It moved fast, but not that fast.  It was probably a month and a
half's walk north of them, by now.  He slowly, without much thought
involved, began turning their path around in a big half circle.  He talked
to Lotus about his plan, but she didn't seem to give a damn, if she
understood at all.  Hell, she was just a kid.

   He knew the trouble he'd be in if he got caught.  They'd just kill him
out of hand, zap him.  But the more he thought about it, the more he felt
like he just had to try.  It gave him a purpose, a meaning, he felt like.
And, it was the right thing to do.



   --==+==-

   Dutch ran.  He could hear Lotus pounding along right behind him.  In
twenty minutes, he was out of breath, panting hard.  In another ten, they
were in the grinder's shadow.  A thousand meters further, and a giant tread
loomed.  Dust filled the air.  The body of the grinder started a hundred
meters above them.  They ran around the tread, and looked between it. 
Damn. No stairs.  They headed for the next one.

   Dutch had been able to use the computer to locate the grinder.  The
grinder sent out all kinds of crazy signals, and the computer had no
trouble seeing it klicks away.  He tried to crack into the grinder using
it, but the grinder wouldn't let it log on.  Well, maybe when they were
close enough to use his fone, he thought.  He had some specialized software
that might get him in.  He tried to port his cracking software into the
computer, but then the computer wouldn't take it.  Grief.  All these
incompatible machines.  Give me a break, he thought.

   Five treads later, Dutch was ready to give up.  And maybe die.  "One
more!" he gasped to Lotus, and they headed for a particularly large one a
quarter of a klick away.  They arrived in the middle of it, and ran around
the end.  At last Dutch was pleased.  A stairway ascended into the body of
the grinder.  But he was not pleased to see a guard sitting near the bottom
step, lighting a choker.  The guard saw them about that time, and jumped,
reaching for his rifle.  Lotus nailed him with her stunner, as she ran. 
Damn, the girl was good.  The guy tumbled off the step, and rolled to a
stop on the smooth, still smoking ground.  Dutch rolled him over so he
wouldn't choke on the grinderdust, and they ran for the stairs.

   Grief, the grinder moved fast.  For a machine as big as a small city, it
just trucked right long.  He was intensely aware of the immense steelex
treads, just fifty meters to his left and right.  They were passing by at a
pretty good clip.  The noise was deafening, rollers hissing, metal things
pounding together, and an overall loud squealing of metal on metal that
could not be ignored.

   Dutch and Lotus ran.  She was younger and quicker than he, of course,
and she finally reached the steps and leapt aboard.  She grabbed a railing,
and leaned out, her hand reaching for his.  He didn't figure she was really
strong enough to pull him on board, but she did a pretty good job, yanking
and straining.  He finally got a foot on the first step, and jumped aboard.

   Dutch picked up the guard's rifle as they climbed the stairs, and he was
pleased to see it was a stunner.  A full sized, long-range stunner.  It had
a UFP sticker on it, even.  The Feds were involved in this?  That was
certainly no surprise.

   They climbed for half a hundred meters.  He held his breath as Lotus
pushed the button on the door, and the door hissed open.  Good.  Not
locked. They were inside the machine.

   Up another flight of stairs, and they were truly inside the machine. 
They were in a room hundreds of meters across, filled with incomprehensible
machines.  It was noisy, but not nearly as bad as outside.  Pathways led
here and there.  Dutch hurriedly checked the compass in his fone, while he
still knew which way the front of the grinder was.  They headed forward.

   They crept through the machine for two hours before they saw their first
person.  Dutch and Lotus had been going slow the whole time, being careful,
stopping at each open area and looking all around before they moved. 
Finally, Lotus poked him, and pointed.  There, obviously working on some
machine, were five or six teks, with a floater full of tools.  Dutch pulled
her back into the stacks of machines, and they gave the guys a wide berth.
Several other times they passed other groups, almost always teks working on
stuff.  He could imagine the maintenance crew this monster needed.  He was
surprised they hadn't seen more.

   Hours later, they were moving way slower.  They had finally passed into
the more populated area of the grinder.  Dutch was surprised to see younger
people, like Lotus.  Kids.  Did they live here, too?  What a life, he
thought, growing up on a machine that ate worlds.  But it did give him an
idea.

   That night, they found a cranny between two apparently idle machine
clusters, and crawled beneath, to find a comfortable hiding spot where they
could sleep.  Dutch was tired, and ready to sleep, but Lotus had other
ideas.  They made soft slow gentle love for an hour, and then she got up on
her knees and he pounded her.  They tried to keep quiet, but there was so
much ambient noise from the machines it probably didn't matter.  Lotus came
like the little volcano she was, and collapsed in a heap on the floor. 
After that they just wrapped their arms around each other, and slept.  They
were both pretty tired from chasing the machine for the last few days.

   Before he went to sleep, Dutch had tentatively reached out for networks
with his fone, ready to slam it down if anything saw them and tried to get
a location on them.  He had some illegal software for network cracking that
would hide his location and other things, but he knew he could be probably
pinned down pretty close just by the network node he was on.  He tried to
be careful, but warned Lotus that they might have to move quickly.

   The networks he found seemed pretty simple and open, and he saw no signs
of tracking.  He didn't find much of interest, either, just massive
industrial control crap, and a little "our world" kind of BB thing that
showed him that people did truly live on board this beast.  He caught a
video feed of an aircraft landing on top, and one of a wheeled vehicle
being dropped from underneath to scout something.  It was interesting, but
ultimately didn't tell them much about the grinder.

   He finally found a map, buried in a maintenance site.  That was better.
He found the bridge, quickly.  It was at least a kilometer on into the body
of the thing, and quite a ways in front of them.  He copied the file onto
his fone, and finally dropped off the networks completely.  They slept.

   After they'd slept a while, a noise woke them both.  A few meters in
front of them, a small 'bot crouched, and spoke again in some funky
dialect. Dutch had no idea what it had tried to say.  He had no idea,
either, if it was simply a maintenance 'bot, or something sent to
investigate them due to his network snooping.  He jumped as the 'bot
disintegrated into a shower of shards as Lotus blasted it with the beamer.
He kind of wished she hadn't done that, the 'bot seemed harmless, at least
it had tried to talk before it had done anything.  And the noise.  They
grabbed their stuff, and got out of there.

   They headed in, towards the center, now, as they made their way forward.
Finally Dutch decided that they had to fit in a little better, and they
holed up alongside what seemed to be a major thoroughfare.  A few dozen
people passed them, before the right ones came along.  Dutch nodded to
Lotus, and they stepped out and blasted a couple from behind with the
stunners.  A man and a girl.  Perfect.  They dragged them back, and into a
machine room.  The clothes were crazy, but they finally got them stripped,
and got themselves dressed.  The clothes were adjustable, thank goodness,
and fit well.  They left their bodysuits for the people, for when they woke
up.  Dutch was still trying to be as nice as he could, in spite of breaking
into the grinder, and in spite of whatever he intended on doing to it.  He
was having more ideas in that department, too.

   Lotus found a tarp in the room, and covered the beamer rifle with it, in
such a fashion that she could keep her hand on the grip.  It didn't look
that weaponish, they decided, at a casual glance.  Dutch fitted the pistol
in his waistband, and it hid pretty well, too.  They had to leave the large
stunner, though.  That was alright, Lotus had her stun pistol in her waist.
He felt reasonably armed, for people who shouldn't look or be armed at all.

   The man's suit had some kind of symbol on it, but he had no idea what it
meant.  The suit Lotus had on was bare of symbols.  They bravely walked out
into the walking lane, and took off for the bridge.

   At the first meeting with grinder folk, Dutch was surprised.  A knot of
people they had passed had greeted them with enthusiasm, and recognition,
it seemed.  By about the fourth time, he realized that it must be the
symbol on his breast.  The man must have been important.  Finally they both
acted like it was no big deal, and strode down the walkways like they owned
the place.

   The mood and the style of the interior of the grinder slowly changed, as
they made their way forward.  It seemed more like a city.  Like people
lived here.  Obviously, people did.  There were people everywhere, now. 
Men and women.  Kids, younger than Lotus, even.  The thing was basically a
giant, mobile city.  A giant mobile city that ate other cities.  Dutch idly
wondered how they'd got it here, if it had been built on site, or if they'd
flown it in from orbit.  The thing might have gravs, even.  If it had
gravs, though, why the treads?  Crazy.

   The thing he worried about the most was the language.  If someone tried
to talk to him, he'd be lost.  What they'd heard so far was
incomprehensible, with no hint of Irregular Standard at all.  Many people
had made signals to him, salutes, and hand signals, but luckily no one had
tried to talk to him.  He imagined he had seen puzzled looks on a few
faces, and wondered if they were people who knew everyone of the rank he
pretended to, and if they were trying to figure out who the hell he was.

   Why are we here?  He asked himself again.  He had it made, with Lotus.
They could live out the rest of their lives in the hills, the mountains. 
They would be here long after the grinder was gone.  And if the Space
Freaks did come, if they moved into this world, they could worry about it
then.  Who knows, maybe they could steal a ship at some distant point in
time.  He could be happy with Lotus, he knew.  He was happy with Lotus. 
Why was he inside the grinder, plotting its destruction?  Why had this
mattered to him so much?  He didn't have that much love for this world...
did he?

   They were suddenly confronted with a gate, and a guard.  The guard
snapped to attention when he saw Dutch, rather when he saw the symbol on
Dutch's chest.  The man opened the gate, and they passed right through. 
Easy.  Was it going to be this easy?

   Two more gates, and two more guards.  Now they were in a whole other
atmosphere, quiet and serene.  Important.  It just felt important.  Offices
were off to the sides, and occasionally rooms full of underlings, busy at
terms, most of them never even looking up as Dutch and Lotus passed by.

   For the first time, he saw a sign on the wall in Irregular.  It
basically said "bridge" although it translated a little more like "control
room", but his mind fed him "bridge" when he saw it.  He knew, at least,
that they were on the right track.

   At last, at long last, they approached a last guarded gate, and the sign
on the door behind it read, in Irregular, among others, "Bridge." They were
there, it seemed.

   The guard bowed his head respectfully, and said something in a language
that Dutch did not understand.  Before he could figure out what to do,
Lotus spoke behind him.  She reached up and touched his throat, still
talking to the man.  Shit, thought Dutch, she is handy to have around.  The
way she chattered, he knew she understood the language well.

   The man pressed a button, the gate opened, and the door slid into the
wall.  Dutch nodded his thanks to the guard, and they passed through the
door.  They were in a corridor that seemed to be a kilometer long.  He
stopped and grabbed Lotus, after the door had shut behind him.

   "What was that about?  What did he say?"

   Lotus smiled.  "He told you that a man named Orville was already here.
He said to go right on in.  I told him you had a virus and couldn't talk."

   "Thanks, Lotus," he hugged her.  "What language was that?"

   "It's something called Central Redux.  It's all they speak, in the core
now."

   "Damn.  I'm glad you knew it."

   She nodded, and they continued on down the corridor.

   "Dutch," she said, and he made a noise of assent.

   "What are we going to do here?" she asked.

   "I don't really know yet..." he said.  "If I could keep everyone out of
the control room long enough, I'd drive this thing into the sea.  But we
must be a thousand klicks away from the sea.  Maybe I can find a lake big
enough.  If I could get it mired down to where they could never get it
out...  or I could flood the lower floors of it...  I dunno...  there's
gotta be a way to stop it, though."

   "I guess," she said, "Dutch.  Will we get captured?"

   "Probably," he said, "but don't worry, they'll let you go, you're a
kid."

   "Dutch.  I wanna be with you.  I don't want you to be thrown in prison,
or zapped."

   "I know, Lotus...  I'm sorry...  we're not caught, yet...  maybe
something will work out..."



   --==+==-

   They passed through four or five anterooms and control rooms before they
finally entered the bridge.  It was huge.  Dutch's heart sank as he
realized the real estate he'd have to control, if he took over the bridge.
A sniper could nail him from a hundred meters away.  Amazingly, it seemed
totally deserted, though.  Damn.

   They walked down a walkway, and along the front of the bridge.  Huge
windows looked out over the world below, though it was a little difficult
to see right below, because of the height of the bridge.  They were above
the dust, at least.

   Everywhere were huge vid screens, showing things going on all over the
grinder.  A lot of them were ground views of where the grinding took place,
of what would happen a few hundred meters below them.  Right now it was
just the ground racing by.  In the lower right hand corner of each screen
was a stylized heart, in green.  Dutch knew that was the grinder's health
status.  He wanted to see it red.  Or better yet, black.

   They walked a few hundred meters, and then came out into the center of
the room.  It was truly huge, and almost no one was in it.  That was
incredible.  Of course, a machine like this would be so automated, probably
just one person could drive it.  That's the way machines were made.

   To the front of the area were a half-dozen consoles, manned by teks. 
Several of them had neural helmets on, and Dutch figured they were the guys
actually running the grinder.  Probably the pilot, and a few teks to keep
things going smoothly.  The men were relaxed, leaning back, with their eyes
hidden by the helmets.

   A man sat in an elevated chair, and watched a screen with a stylized
graphic on it.  He finally looked at them, his eyebrows raised.

   "Pardon me.  Is this the bridge?  Is this where the grinder is run
from?" Dutch said, feeling stupid.  He knew that he was basically giving
himself up, with a question that dumb.  The man would know instantly that
he didn't deserve the symbol he wore.

   The man acted like it didn't bother him, though.  Maybe he thought this
was for the benefit of Lotus.  Maybe he thinks she's my daughter or
something.

   "Yes, this is the brain trust," the man said, smiling, also speaking in
Irregular.  He motioned to his chair.  "Would you like to sit in the
captain's chair, darling?"

   Lotus nodded, handing Dutch the gun, still wrapped in the tarp.  The man
held her hand and helped her into the captain's chair, and she nodded her
thanks to him.

   Dutch had studied the map in front of him, on one of the large vid
screens.  The grinder was easy to identify, at the bottom of the screen. 
Above it, and off to one side, he identified what he thought was a large
lake.  It was blue, big, and irregular shaped.  The line of the grinder's
path went off to the side of it, quite close, actually.

   "Okay," said Dutch.  The man turned from his attentions to Lotus, and
looked at Dutch quizzically.

   "Okay," said Dutch again, loudly, this time.  "This is a stick-up." He
brought the beamer rifle out from the tarp, and brandished it in the man's
face.  The man blanched.  He knew what a beamer was, apparently.

   Dutch turned to the men at the console.  There were six of them.  They
knew something was going on now, it seemed.  All but the three in the
neural helmets.

   "Okay," said Dutch, a third time.  He was having trouble getting
started. Even Lotus appeared impatient for him to say something other than
"Okay."

   "Get those guys out of those helmets," Dutch said, waving the gun at the
men.  The three of them did just that, tapping the others on shoulders, and
the three men finally took their helmets off.

   "What is it?" one man asked.  "Look, I gotta..." his voice tapered off
as he noticed the beamer rifle.  "Oh shit!" he finally said.

   "Look, you guys, I know you're just doing your job, but I'm just doing
mine, too.  My job is to run this machine into that lake." He nodded to the
screen.  The men just gazed at him.

   He swept the beamer across them, and they all flinched.  Lotus had
gotten up from the captain's chair, and joined him.  He handed her the
beamer.

   "Lo.  Don't let them move, or flip any switches.  And please don't shoot
anyone unless you just have to.  We're trying to be nice," he said.  She
waved her stunner to reassure him, and held the beamer in one hand and the
stunner in the other.  He approached a console, motioning the guy sitting
there to move away.  This was where he imagined the actual driver sat. 
Dutch sat, and put the neural helmet on his head.  Instantly, with an
almost palpable vacuum in his skull, a million new pathways opened in his
brain.  In an instant, he was the grinder.  He felt it.  He saw from its
eyes.  He listened from its ears.  Its blood pulsed in his veins.  He felt
madly alive, and a million times larger.

   The grinder's force blades were off at the moment, they were just racing
across the plains, headed for their next appointment.  Their next town to
eat.  Dutch looked out, and saw the town, maybe twenty klicks ahead. 
Everything from cameras on the top of the grinder to drone eyes to
satellites fed into one immense image in his mind.  He saw the lake, off to
the side.  It was huge, as large as an inland sea.  It was an inland sea.
He tried to guide the grinder towards it, but he didn't understand how to
pilot it.  He snooped around further, and finally found the directional
controls.  He turned the forward treads three degrees, and felt the whole
machine lurch in his mind.  Goodness, he thought.  This big baby builds up
a lot of inertia.

   Within a few seconds, all kinds of alarms began going off.  A large
presence made itself known in his mind, the presence of the AI that was the
mind of the grinder.  It was projecting inquisitiveness into his mind, and
he knew that it was basically asking him if he was sure he wanted to go
this direction.  Towards the lake.

   Yes, he sent to it.  There is an emergency.  This is the only
resolution. The presence backed off a bit, but was still there, strong in
his forebrain.  As far as he could tell, the grinder was still headed for
the lake.  He cranked up the speed as far as he could, feeling the whole
machine accelerate.  A slight vibration shook the floor.  This was
incredible, he thought.  How much does this bitch weigh?  The AI dropped
the answer into his forebrain.  Eighty-six million metric tons, roughly. 
And it was burning across the plains at almost sixty kilometers an hour? 
Just incredible.  He wondered if the lake was deep enough, if the mud went
far enough down to mire the tracks.  In...  let's see...  three hours we'll
know.

   He removed the helmet.  The prisoners were sullenly sitting on the deck,
guarded by Lotus, who was looking sexy and tough.  Dutch, on impulse, took
her stunner and knocked all seven of the men out.  That made life a little
easier.  He took Lotus's arm, and walked her down the aisle, back to the
door they'd entered the control room from.  To his surprise and
satisfaction, it had a physical lock on it, a bar that could be lowered and
screwed down tight.  He locked it, and they spent the next thirty minutes
going along the back wall, looking for more lockable doors.  They found
four of them, and locked them all.  He was sure there were hatchways and
other secret and semi-secret ways to enter, but this got the obvious ones,
at least.  They returned to the main console.

   Dutch put the helmet back on, and on impulse, motioned for Lotus to put
one on, also.  She did, and he felt her prescence in his mind, seemingly
right beneath him, strong and unmistakeable.  They puttered around in the
system together, looking out at the countryside as it raced by, seeing the
lake ahead of them growing larger and larger.

   "Unknown human," a voice spoke to him.  It was the grinder, the AI that
was the grinder.

   "Yes?" he replied.

   "What is the nature of the emergency?  I am unable so far to discern any
type of emergency."

   "Machine.  I am sorry.  It is a purely human emergency, a mind thing. 
Machines will not understand it or even be aware of it."

   "I see.  That is hard for me to understand, but I accept it," the
machine seemed satisfied with his answer.  He knew that machines were easy
to fool, they were so guileless.  He hoped that had done it.

   "The alternate day shift is seeking entrance to the bridge.  What shall
I tell them?" the grinder spoke again.

   "Tell them an emergency is in progress.  Tell them to return to their
quarters immediately and speak to no one."

   He heard nothing more from the grinder.  Good.

   He felt Lotus touch his arm.  He felt her, inside his mind, gesture
towards the window in front of them.  An aircraft was hovering directly in
front of it, obviously trying to see in.  He searched through the system as
fast as he could for some kind of anti-aircraft weaponry, but found
nothing. He finally settled for opaquing the window.  The craft finally got
discouraged and left.  The lake loomed larger in front of them.

   He smelled something burning.  He raced around inside the system, and
finally found a graphic from the other side of the door.  Sure enough, they
were burning through it with firearms.  Crap.  He turned on the fire
control system, and foamed them, watching the men run down the corridor
with satisfaction.  He sprayed some electrical-fire foam in front of the
door, knowing it would harden quickly, and take hours to remove.  That was
such a good idea he did it to all the other doors, and also to half a dozen
access hatches the AI located for him.  He felt reasonably sure they'd be
locked in now, until they hit the water.

   The AI told him it was less than an hour until they hit the lake.  Cool.
It looked like this was actually going to work.  He stopped for a few
minutes, and talked to the AI about what would happen if the grinder did go
into the water.  The AI wasn't too happy about that scenario.  If the lower
decks flooded, which they probably would, the lake being deep enough and
dropping off quickly enough, the grinder would be stuck.  The tread system
was large enough that it might get them out, but way too many things would
short out in the lake water.  The grinder would be stuck for a long, long
time.  And the hardware didn't exist on this world to pull them out. 
Spacecraft couldn't lift them.  Aircraft couldn't lift them.  It looked
like Dutch's plan was going to be a success, if he could just keep the
bridge locked up for another hour.  That would be increasingly hard, now
that the crew of the grinder knew that something was going on in here.

   Dutch spent a while inside the system, looking for an escape route from
the bridge.  The best he found was a series of knock-out panels on the top
of the window structure, that could get them onto the roof.  He finally
took Lotus and the pair of neural helmets and found the panels, on a
spidery walkway far above the floor.  He put the helmet back on, and tried
to find out how the attempts to enter the bridge were going.  The fire
control systems had been turned off, and some kind of large burner was
being wheeled into place.  That should make short work of both the foam,
and the door.  Dutch shut down the power mains to the whole area, hoping
the burner was plugged in and not self-contained.

   Dutch spent some time communicating with the AI, trying to solidify
their approach into the lake.  He did everything he could to shut down the
AI's contact with the outside world, finally locating some emergency
systems, and using that to strengthen his grip on the poor machine.  He
tried to make it understand that it must go into the lake, no matter what.
He found all kinds of safeguards, and stripped what he could out.  By the
time he was finished he was reasonably sure that he had convinced the
machine that it wanted to go into the water, that it believed that it was
the only course of action.  If he could just keep people off the bridge. 
He left the walkway and returned to the bridge, and destroyed the remaining
neural helmets with the beamer.  After a moment's thought, he blasted all
the control panels and screens he could see.  He returned to the catwalk.
Lotus helped him remove the panels, and suddenly they were buffeted by
gusts of wind.  They moved out onto the roof, and Dutch sent one of the
remaining neural helmets over the side, to crash to the ground two thousand
meters below.  He didn't know the range of the things, but he kept one,
just in case.

   The grinder was complex and convoluted, on the top.  Antennas and dishes
were everywhere, and walkways snaked here and there.  They moved down one,
towards the back of the grinder, a kilometer away.  Dutch stopped
occasionally to try the helmet, and finally it showed him the large beamer
burning through the wall.

   "They're about in," he told Lotus, and he checked their location with
the AI.  They were less than ten minutes from the lake.  He knew that they
would succeed, now.  He felt confident.  The door would have to cool for a
while, before the men could pass through it.  Then, they'd have to figure
out how to shut the grinder down without the neural helmets or control
panels.  He pulled off the helmet, after one last chore.  He looked for a
hanger with an aircraft, and found one, less than a quarter kilometer from
their location.  He grabbed Lotus's hand, and they ran towards it.



   --==+==-

   From the air it looked pretty impressive.  A huge wave was headed out
into the lake, from the front of the grinder.  Most of the treads were
underwater, as it made its way into deeper water.  The body of the grinder
was still close to fifty meters above the water, though.  He hoped that
would change, soon.

   The helmet had stopped functioning shortly after they had taken off, and
he'd opened the window and tossed it out.  The last thing he'd seen through
it was the grinder's health icon, now completely yellow with lots of red
blobs.  He was letting Lotus fly, and she was doing a good job, although
her only flight training had been some virtual games.  They were in a long
slow circle around the grinder, as it plunged into ever deeper water.  At
least a half-dozen other aircraft were in the air, also, watching the giant
machine attempt to drown itself.  The grinder was completely in the water
now, leaving huge deep ruts in the muddy shore where it had gone in.  He
knew eventually the treads would get mired, or short out or something.  He
just hoped it was in deep water by then.  He had left the AI with
instructions to stop in the middle of the lake, if it made it that far.  He
didn't figure it would.

   "Dutch.  Look," Lotus spoke, motioning towards the back of the grinder.
Sparks and blue fire were shooting up from something, and he figured that
something had shorted out.  Still the grinder bored on, into the lake. 
Lotus had the flier out in front now, flying backwards, watching the beast
go, when the front treads went off some kind of undersea shelf or
something. The whole structure lurched, and pointed downwards, and huge
waves erupted from beneath it, where the pylons down to the treads were. 
The water rose rapidly after that, and within a few minutes they could see
the waves touching the bottom of structure.  Dutch cackled with glee. 
Lotus laughed at him and shook her head.

   The grinder went slower and slower after that.  Finally, maybe forty
minutes after it had gone into the water, it halted completely.  The belly
of the beast was at least a hundred meters deep in the water by then, and
Dutch knew that, just as the AI had feared, the water was in the lower
compartments.  The AI had equated that with the death of the whole machine.
Dutch hoped that it was so.  The thing wasn't a spacecraft, sealed tight.
It didn't even have atmospheric seals.

   Lotus turned on the wave receiver, and every channel was full of
shouting and excitement.  The people below were freaking out.  Dutch felt a
little sorrow for the normal people, the everyday people just doing their
jobs whose lives he had disrupted, but he still felt like he'd done the
right thing.  This wouldn't stop the Freaks from getting Cradle, but it was
the right thing.  Even if the other grinders were still operating, and even
if only a few villages were saved, it was the right thing.

   They finally turned away, and headed south.  The pile in the aircraft
was almost brand new, and Dutch knew it'd last a dozen years.  They could
find a nice tall hill, settle down, build a shack, and relax.  Keep the
aircraft in a barn, for emergencies.  When the Space Freaks showed up, no
telling what, then.  From what he understood, in spite of what Guv had
tried to tell them, the Freaks were just normal folk, too...  just a little
different.  Maybe they could all get along.  He wondered how long Lotus
would be impregnable.  The shot was usually for ten years.  That would be
okay, if she could spit out a few rugrats someday.  He would be ready, by
then.

   He reached out, and took her hand.  She squeezed back.  He loved her
even more, in that instant.  They'd done this together.  They were bonded,
now.  They were a pair, a couple.  Together, they'd brought the grinder
down, just the two of them, and gotten away with it.  He was happy.  On
they flew.



   --==+==-

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