Chapter 10 · Continued
Back to the Factory
The officer leaned slightly closer. “Have you had anything to drink today, sir?”
The driver froze.
“Well,” he admitted weakly. “I guess I did.”
Fifteen minutes later, the field-sobriety test ended exactly as everyone had expected.
The driver sat handcuffed in the back of the police cruiser looking miserable while one of the officers radioed for a tow truck.
“Yeah, it’s going to need a heavy wrecker,” the officer said, glancing at the destroyed front end. “The front axle is snapped clean through.”
The second officer walked slowly around the truck, inspecting the damage. At the rear, he looked through the partially open cargo door.
Crates. Loose boxes. Equipment cases scattered everywhere.
Nothing obviously alarming.
Certainly nothing worth climbing into a damaged transport truck for.
He pulled the cargo door down as far as it would go, then stepped away. The tow operator could secure it properly when he arrived.
“This is not how I planned to spend my Friday night,” he said, shaking his head.
“No kidding.”
The flashing lights of the heavy wrecker appeared farther down the road.
No one noticed the empty wooden crate inside the truck.
Several hours later, Cam walked beneath the trees several miles from the crash site.
Branches scraped against his damaged exterior panels as he moved. Behind him, the little Moo Mart delivery bot rattled noisily over roots and fallen leaves, trying very hard to maintain pursuit.
One wheel squeaked rhythmically.
Cam stopped.
His internal diagnostics were still producing alerts.
GPS access failure.
Telemetry unavailable.
RCAM network connection unstable.
He attempted another satellite acquisition.
Nothing.
He scanned for a cellular network.
No reliable connection.
Cam looked down at the deep groove across the front of his chest housing. Part of his external communications array had been crushed inward during the collision. The damaged metal surrounding the impact point carried streaks of paint from the truck’s cargo compartment.
He touched the dent briefly.
The transport interruption had resulted from a major vehicle collision. That conclusion aligned with the sensory information still available to him: loud impact, sudden loss of containment stability, and violent cargo displacement.
Logical.
Behind him, the delivery bot emitted a burst of static.
“MOO MART EXPRESS THANKS YOU FOR YOUR PATIENCE.”
Cam turned slowly toward it.
The little machine sat crooked beside a tree stump. Its side panel was badly scraped, and one wheel continued twitching intermittently. Across its front display, fragmented warnings appeared.
Signal lost.
Route failure.
Reconnecting…
“You are also experiencing navigational failure,” Cam observed.
The bot beeped once.