Part 27: Troglodyte

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Troglodyte was special, even for one that rides the Lightning. Lightning Trucks have, of necessity, secondary drives for use when off the Bridge. Usually electric hub motors.

Troglodyte had that….kinda sorta.

Most lightning trucks run those hub motors from a Gas-Turbine-Genset. A jet engine in other words, similar to the Lycoming Textron that the old Abrams Tank used. Most Lightning Truck GenSet Turbines are lighter in weight and much more powerful than that of that old war machine since they are made from advanced materials. A Lycoming Textron only put out about fifteen hundred horsepower. Lighting Trucks Gensets produce much more. Even while using their turbine they can still outperform an piston engine Truck.

A normal Lightning Truck’s primary drive, however, was maglev. It is magnetically levitated and thus rode the lightning. It moved at half the speed of a jet airliner or faster.

Remember airplanes? I do. I’m old. Youngster’s today rarely see airplanes. The economy won’t support them. They been almost entirely replaced by ground transport, the Bifrost Bridge in particular.

Troglodyte was like other Lightning Trucks only better. He wasn’t a normal lightning truck. He was one of an elite few... a nuke.... powered by one of my clan’s proprietary cold fusion power plants. It ran on water so, oddly enough, they called it a water battery. This gave him unlimited range and power.

NO ONE needed to know that. I didn’t advertise it.

I thought for a minute and decided that I was hungry, again. That is….still. Talking to Chris's sister had been exhausting. I was still weak from my stay in the hospital, and those dreams. The dreams were taking a toll. I was whupped…and I had an appetite.

I ordered a pizza. It was delivered by low flying drone. Drones were almost the only flying vehicle used any more and they were used almost everywhere. They flew low, rather slow, and could land anywhere. If they was unexpectedly destroyed, no one died. They were unmanned and cheap...no big loss. Shortly thereafter my ammo was delivered the same way.

Ubiquitous drones might have led to the demise of airplanes. I’d have to think about that one. Who’d a thunk?

I paid for the Pizza digitally, with my ThumBrain. The ammo was prepaid. That done, I snapped the ThumBrain into it’s slot in the dash, I only wore it around my neck when I went outside.

Mostly.

Trog was top shelf. He used a Turbo Holographic User Maintained Basic Recursive Algorithmic Integrated Node. (A ThumBrain) as the main component of his command and control network. Same as the Bloody Mary come to think.

Geeks…bless their heart. They do SO love their Acronyms. The “user maintained” part was Geek Snark. What it actually meant was that the user, in this case…Me…just thought. A neural interface picked up my thoughts, then bent,folded, and spindled them to control the cybernetics. I wore a neuro-loop around my neck.

I was an Aesir. The Ancient Aesir were devotees of Thor and Odin. We, the modern Aesir, weren’t the least bit religious but we were snarks. We thought it was cute to emulate our namesakes. We dressed the part. People thought we were crazy and consequently they underestimated us. That gave us a tactical advantage. My ThumBrain was fashioned in the manner of a Hammer of Thor and I wore it snapped onto a neuro-loop collar which was disguised as a Bronze Age Torque.

Now that I thought about it…so had Chris. Our similar tastes in jewelry had been a topic of our conversation that last night in the Bar.

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To Be Continued
The Next Episode is
Part 28: Interlude - 4…
The Last episode was
Part 26: Call to Chris's Sister…
the first episode was
Part 1 : Winter Storm

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