The ungainly craft continued its ascent, spiraling upward lazily. No, not lazily, Drop Man corrected himself. In truth, the colossal thing’s engine pods were at full throttle. The weight of its immense cargo load simply slowed it. Looking out the window, Drop Man could see the tether of the Jakob Orbital Elevator as the cargo hauler circled around it. The elevator spanned as far as could be seen in either direction vertically.
Jakob had been built a few years ago, a towering monument near Neo Arcadia designed to allow for safer, cheaper access to Earth’s low orbit and beyond. A week ago, Mavericks using stolen next-generation form-altering technology had stormed the elevator. Once prepared, the Hunters had fought their way up the elevator, culminating in a bloody battle at the apex station.
After the leader of the Mavericks’ forces had been taken down, there had been a tense search for stragglers, but finally, the all-clear had been given, and Drop Man was called in as the official incident investigator.
With the space elevator’s transit mechanisms damaged and deemed unsafe, the movement of industry to and from space had to be relegated to the standby option- a pair of giant shipping spacecraft converted from obsolete Orbital Corps fleet ships. They were loaded to capacity with all manner of equipment, fuel, spare parts, and processed materials, taking them to the apex’s shipping lattices so craft in orbit could retrieve the goods. In turn, they would come back loaded down with raw materials mined from far out in the asteroid belt. They had been cycling these runs one after the other every hour since the Elevator had been deemed clear of Mavericks.
Drop Man had simply been directed to board one of the ships during a refuel on the surface. Jade had accompanied him to see him off. He hadn’t been involved in the raid, having quit the Hunters shortly after the two robots had first met. After a quick hug, the green-armored robot had waved until the giant boarding ramp closed up, and Drop Man had spotted him through the window, hurrying back toward the covered road back to the city.
Leaning against a shipping container, Drop Man felt relaxed. Earth’s blue limb was still visible below, and on every turn around the tether, the sun briefly brightened the cargo bay through the window. The view wasn’t one he’d seen in quite some time, but it was familiar and comforting. None of the old pre-mission jitters to spoil it, either. As long as the Hunters had done their job right, it was more or less safe, occupational hazards of a damaged space elevator notwithstanding.
The robot idly examined his reflection in the glass of the window. His outer shell was immaculate, with not a crack or scuff to the plates. There was almost none of the usual equipment and pouches strapped to him. He’d elected to paint himself in a solid plum purple with no camo pattern. It was an homage to the Apache Joes, a pilot variant of a line of long-obsolete combat drone, which Drop Man’s body had been designed off of. In fact, if not for the glowing projection of his face, it would be easy to mistake him as a Joe. This pleased him. Joes were cool. Joes were cool as hell.
The ship wasn’t pressurized- with no humans aboard, there was no need to carry an atmosphere. Thus, the ride was quiet but for the hum of the engines and electricity that vibrated in the deck plates. Still, an oddly familiar voice sounded out to Drop Man, carried through vacuum by a proximity comm system. It was shifted to sound like it came from behind him.
“Reporting for duty, sir!”
Turning around, Drop Man froze for a moment. Standing there was a Reploid, almost 8 feet tall, in the aspect of a wolf-man. He was clad in blue and gray plates. Supplemental armor made of ice coated his body, a faint vapor floating off them. The tips of his fingers and toes were capped by claws of the same ice, and his head had a similarly frozen mane comprised of thin crystals.
“Blizzard Wolfang? That really you? I heard you died a couple of years ago, during the shit that went down right after Eurasia…”
The wolf cracked a smile, only partly visible behind the armored mask upon his face. “That was a confusing time. It’s a long story. Doubt there’s a lot of active Hunters from then that don’t have a weird story or two, and more than a few inconsistent records. But, hey, I heard you retired! What gives?”
“Yeah, I did retire. But I missed work, to be perfectly honest. And they wanted someone with my experience. So I got hired back as an incident investigator. No rank, so you don’t have to call me ‘sir’.”
Drop Man had been among the first soldiers in both of the outfits he’d served in. When he switched to the Hunters, his existing experience landed him a leadership role, training new recruits and commanding squads in battle. When he’d left the Orbital Corps, he’d been a Master Sergeant, and when he’d left the Maverick Hunters, he’d been a Captain. It was a fine career as far as he’d been concerned, and he left at a good time.
Wolfang was, as with all Reploids, younger than Drop Man, although not by much- he’d been in that first generation that had been built for the Second Invasion, and had also been an early candidate for the Hunters. “That’s crazy. We thought you’d never retire. Nobody ends up in the Hunters if they don’t like the work at least a little, but you were into it, man.”
Drop Man thought back to his crowded home back in Neo Arcadia. According to his system clock, the humans among his lovers were probably sitting down to have dinner, right about now. “I had a bad drop. Almost bought it on impact. Gave me the chance to think about what was really important. Still, you’re right, I totally do miss it. That’s why I took this job. Hours’re inconsistent- I only work when there’s a big incident like this. Sort of shit where the higher ups need to know how it happened and why. Plenty of time for living life, but every once in a while, I get to be in my element.”
Not for the first time, Blizzard Wolfang felt keenly aware that he didn’t have much of a life outside of the Hunters. He’d been born into the structures of military, literally built as a component of Earth’s final stand, and immediately after, he’d joined the Maverick Hunters, lacking for any better ideas of what to do. He had plenty of downtime, but it was mostly spent reading, conversing with his fellow soldiers, training, and meticulously carving floral patterns into his icy arsenal.
After an awkward pause, Wolfang figured out what to say. “You should come visit HQ sometime. It’s a totally different place. Much bigger.”
Drop Man responded, “Right, I heard they’re slowly merging the Hunters with the military proper- or was it the other way around? I never really got the hang of how they do things nowadays. Hell, sometimes I still call it the UN, instead of Neo Arcadia. Hah.”
Wolfang grunted affirmatively in response. Presently, the light of the sun through the window disappeared behind a wall of metal. The cargo ship was entering a landing area at the space elevator’s apex. “Shit, right. I got your attention in the first place because I’ve been assigned as your escort. I’m to keep you safe on the off chance there’s any Mavericks we missed in our sweep. It’s not likely. I feel stupid for even asking, but you can handle yourself, right?”
Drop Man chuckled. “Don’t worry about me. I may be out of active duty, but I’m as mission-ready as ever.”
He tapped at his hip, indicating his buster pistol. The thing was large and angular, a model issued to him during his time in the Hunters. It’d been an upgrade over his previous integral weapon system, an experimental suppressed rapid fire buster that had started to show its weaknesses in the age of highly-armored Reploid insurgents. Though it was several models out of date by now, the pistol still packed more than a sufficient punch. Without indicating them to the wolf-man, Drop Man also thought of the pair of high-frequency combat knives hidden on his person. A good last resort.
A loud clunk reverberated through the hull of the ship, up the bodies of the robots, into their respective audio receptors. It was the sound of docking clamps grabbing the ship out of the air and securing it to the deck of the station. An androgynous voice sounded over the local comms. “Hauler-02 has arrived at its destination. All occupants, please make your ways to the loading ramp in an orderly fashion.”
“Well, you heard ‘em, Wolfang. Let’s get movin’.”
Drop Man started walking towards the ship’s exit, the wolf following closely behind. It took almost a minute to reach it, walking past rows and rows of shipping containers. Despite the miserable state of the world, business was positively booming for space industry. Idly, Drop Man observed the stencil lettering on several of the containers. It identified them as carbon nanotube weave, bound for the construction constellation for the future Neo BosNYWash Orbital Elevator Project. The installation was set to go online in a year or so. It would serve the industries of the sprawling Neo Arcadian client city that had been built atop the ruins of what had once been several major cities clustered on the eastern coast of the United States, a country from before the former UN had covered the globe.
Finally, the two robots reached the exit ramp. It was already half open, spinning warning lights indicating that it was in active motion. After a moment, it was down, locked to the space station by a pair of automated claws that emerged from the deck plates. Immediately, two-unit teams of large crab-like Mechaniloids with flat tines for claws scuttled in. They were the contemporary equivalent of forklifts.
They got to work lifting the shipping containers down the ramp as Drop Man and Blizzard Wolfang walked down it. They were finally aboard the top station of the Jakob Orbital Elevator, ready to investigate the strange fate that had befallen it.
“It’s good to see you again, Wolfang. Glad you didn’t buy it after all.”
Drop Man reached over to pat the wolf on the back. Owing to the gulf in their heights, his hand got nowhere near Wolfang’s shoulder level, instead hitting him on the small of the back.
“Yeah. It’s cool to catch up with you, sir.”
“Let’s get this investigation over with. Based on the schematics I read of this place, we should be good to head back home in only a few days.”