...
Mie found herself lingering over the "Go"-han, the pre-packaged, fortified rice she was making a lunch of. The metal of the mech was warm under her, and dust still hung in the air from when they had knocked off. She wiped her forehead with the arm of the pale blue cotton ship-suit, sighed inaudibly.
"You about ready, Nakamura?" a voice called from the ground.
"Ara, give me a moment!" Mie said under her breath. She dropped the remains of her lunch, the hashi spinning end-over-end like tiny pinwheels until they hit the pile of loose earth.
Mie slid off the mech's shoulder, hit the canopy bar and plumped back into the saddle. She wriggled into the shoulder harness and snapped the waist belt, instinctively checking the tell-tales before punching up the MHD. The ultra-speed turbine whined for a moment before coming up to quiet efficiency, and the power graph crawled up to the mark.
Mie twisted her right arm back to catch the grip and picked up the length of ten-centimeter bar stock she'd been using as a pinch bar. Motors whined briefly as she planted the mech's feet more firmly and crouched slightly.
It was a marvelous piece of machinery. Not particularly humanoid, it was still more flexible than any back-hoe, able to yank a stump, roll a boulder, trample brush, and otherwise hustle out a basic road, landing site, or whatever. She could lift five-hundred kilo logs and plant them in the shape of a dam or bridge. Pile up rocks a meter or two in diameter for an aqueduct or shelter.
Or dig away twenty thousand years of rock-slide, packed earth and deep-rooted trees from the mysterious doorway leading into the ground. They were working delicately, trying to keep from damaging the Okiimono structure. For much of the morning shift Chief Goemon had been at the controls himself.
Privately, Mie felt her supervisor was rusty at best. He had difficulty even stabilizing the mech on this rough ground, much less planting a shovel blade accurately. Mie also wondered what harm her mech could do to a tomb many millennia old. If there was anything humanity had come to know about the "Big Ones," it was that they built solid.
Mie wiped her forehead again, sweating despite the environmental systems of the mech's sealed cab. She checked her strain gauges again, running a fore-finger along them as she did. "Stand back," she radioed. Waited a minute, then pushed at the bar. The stump of the ancient tree shuddered, roots straining and popping from where they were wedged in the rock-hard soil. Mie's arms began to tremble, the grips slick with her sweat, and she wondered if she should drop the force-feedback another notch. Instead she clenched her jaw and leaned into the harness.
Suddenly the stump was free. With dust and dirt clods a comet's tail behind it, it flew fifty meters into the air, landing in the brush far to her left.
Mie shifted her weight quickly, kept her balance as loosened rock and soil avalanched from where the stump had been. "Yoi!" Captain Toma exclaimed from the radio. "You're an artist!"
"It'll be completely clear in another hour," Mie judged, planting the bar stock deep in the pile of loose earth.
Mie, resting now in the mech's cab, waist strap loosened, had an odd thought. Look at it from the Okiimono point of view and we're tomb robbers, she thought. We don't usually consider that. I mean, they're not our ancestors.
They vanished from the universe before we had a written language. Leaving a plinth here, a carved stone there. And sometimes, a tomb. Filled with inexplicable artifacts of an alien beauty. And, even rarer, artifacts that retained some power. Now that was the stuff of legends!
Mie was jolted out of her daydreaming by a rumble under her feet. "The door!" she shouted. "He's done it!"
The eight-meter tall stone panel tilted slowly, stone dust and dirt streaming, as the onlookers cheered. When it had crawled about half-way open, baring a slice of mysterious black, the rumbling stopped.
"Well, get the thing open!" Captain Toma ordered.
"I'll take the mech, and force it," Chief Goemon said, reaching for the access ladder.
"Oi, Kacho, let the girl do it," the captain stopped him. "Nakamura-kun, can you get a purchase?"
"Yes, sir!" Mie cried. Balancing expertly, she climbed the mech up the loose dirt and twisted into a solid position. She wriggled free of the straps to check how the mech's back was braced against the edge of the entrance. Adjusted the force-feedback carefully and pressed.
The door moved a fraction and stopped. "Something's jammed," Mie reported on the radio. "Should I push harder?"
"Yoi," the captain affirmed; Mie wiped her hands, took the grips again.
Suddenly a new sound cut across the clearing. "What is -- gunfire!" she cried. She craned her neck, looking at the clearing from behind the bumper bars. A group of men had appeared from the woods.
Their clothing was patterned in jagged green and grey and heavy belts and suspenders held equipment to their bodies. Their hands held the slim dark shapes of weapons. "Not a move!" one of them ordered. "Drop whatever you're holding! And you, in the mech, shut it down!"
Moving slowly, Mie reached for the canopy release and the power down.
"Nakamura-san!" a voice shouted from the clearing. It was Ryo Okita. "Don't do it! Run!" One of the men reached him, clubbed him down with a long swing of rifle butt. Mie gasped. She felt frozen. But her hands moved as if by instinct, punching up full power, throwing off the force-feedback and the overload safeties.
And she shoved. Motors whined protest, metal groaning under the strain, and the ancient stone began to crack under the full power of the fifteen-ton mech. Even as the soldiers brought their weapons around, bullets clanging against the metal and twanging off in all directions, the panel smashed open.
With a terrible clattering the mech fell into the tomb.