The Scrap King

“Scrap must remain silent.”

Seven hung upside down at the mouth of a furnace. The chain above his feet carried him toward the heat.

Below him, a sloping bed of rollers fed everything dropped onto it into the white mouth at the bottom: cracked housings, snapped axles, a door with half a warning still painted on it. His yellow shoulder plate had begun to blister. Above his feet, the conveyor chain advanced another link.

Below and a little ahead of him, something struck the inside of a cargo basket on the rollers.

“I can still drive,” Nail called. “The noise only happens when I turn.”

A green gripper pushed through a gap in the basket. Seven had straightened that gripper after a warehouse rack fell on Nail, working between the bent shelves while the recovery crew waited for the power canisters trapped underneath. The canisters had been listed as the priority. Nail had been asking for help.

Seven’s disposal record called that decision a fault.

“Scrap must remain silent,” the speaker repeated.

A grabber descended and pressed Nail’s gripper back inside.

Seven curled upward, reaching for the ring around his ankles. His three tool fingers scraped its underside. The release catch lay beyond his reach, and his left clamp was wedged against the hanger. He pulled anyway. A worn tooth snapped off and fell into the furnace.

His shoulder motor cut out.

The power warning in his vision narrowed to a red sliver. He waited for the motor to settle, then tried to free the clamp without losing another tooth. Ahead of him, the grabber lifted away from Nail’s basket. Its jaws opened wide enough to close around the whole thing.

“Crush that batch first.”

Castjaw stood on the weighing platform above the line. His head was a rotating scale ring, and each of his two jaws was larger than Seven. One jaw rested against the platform rail while the other pointed at Nail.

“We’re behind schedule.”

Seven watched the grabber lower. Beneath Nail’s cargo bed, inside the basket, sat the housing for his mind core.

He folded at the waist and hauled on the hanger with his right hand. Heat worked through his chest casing. Something gave with a sharp, internal pop, and for a moment his sight washed white.

Then a thin blue line appeared around the grabber’s mounting collar.

He blinked his shutters. The line stayed, sharp against the heat. He had never seen a marking like it.

Seven knew that collar. He had replaced its head three times. Its release pawl was buried while the jaws stood open, but halfway through a closing cycle the rear of the pawl came out through a slot.

The blue line marked the slot.

“Nail. Lights off.”

The two little lamps inside the basket went dark.

Seven swung his body toward the grabber as its jaws began to close. His right hand hit the hot casing. He slid two fingers along a groove he remembered and caught the pawl as it emerged.

He pulled it out.

The jaws overran their stop. They missed the basket and bit into an empty hanger on the same conveyor, just to Seven’s left. The closing motor dragged that hanger sideways and twisted the next one—the hanger holding Seven. His left clamp slipped free as the ankle ring turned, bringing its release catch round to face him.

He curled upward and caught the release with his left clamp. The ring opened.

Seven dropped onto Nail’s basket and caught the rim with his tool hand. His feet swung over the rollers. The basket lurched under his weight and started sliding.

Nail switched his lamps back on.

“That’s not the way out.”

“Move right.”

Nail crowded his wheels against the right-hand corner. Seven braced one foot on the rim, shifting the basket across the rollers until a bent bar caught between them. It held, though every turning roller below it scraped another strip from the bottom.

The furnace was two basket lengths away.

Above them, the grabber tried to lift the hanger it had seized. With the pawl removed, the head worked loose from its collar. Seven heard the mounting shaft strike the stop, then saw the head fall.

It hit the basket edge, broke a section of rim, and landed beside his feet.

Nail’s suspension bottomed out.

“You could have warned me.”

Seven crouched over the fallen head. He had serviced its standard socket often enough to recognize the damaged guide strip. His right palm held a driver, a cutter, and a probe on three folding fingers. He retracted them, set the palm into the socket, and tried to turn it.

The guide strip caught.

The bar underneath the basket bent with a long squeal. Seven pulled his hand back out, flicked the cutter into place, and sliced away the strip. A roller punched through the cargo bed between Nail’s front wheel and Seven’s foot.

He pushed his palm into the socket again.

This time the locking lugs engaged.

A current passed into the grabber head. Its jaws closed, making a fist wider than his chest. He opened it once more, then clenched it, just to feel the jaws answer.

He tried to lift it.

The weight dragged his shoulder down. His foot slipped through the broken rim, and Nail caught his rear towing loop with the little green gripper.

“Let go of it!” Nail said.

Seven stopped trying to raise the fist. He lowered it to the far edge of the basket instead. His right foot found a gap between two rollers; his left pressed into the basket’s crossbar.

Another grabber descended to push them loose.

Seven let the big head swing below his shoulder. As the descending arm reached the basket, he kicked against the rollers and turned his whole body, bringing the fist up from underneath.

It struck the grabber’s side.

The arm folded against its own mounting. Its casing burst, and the bent shaft tore through the guardrail along the maintenance walk. Seven heard the basket bar break beneath him.

He closed the new jaws around the stump of the rail and pulled. Nail came with him, still holding the towing loop, and they swung clear as the basket collapsed. Seven landed on his knees, dragging the grabber head across the walk. Nail struck the grating beside him, and the little cargo bot’s bad wheel squealed.

Seven had never been so glad to hear it.

The empty basket slid into the furnace. For a moment only the rollers and the damaged arm continued making noise. Then red lamps turned toward the maintenance walk, one after another.

“Recovery fault detected,” the speaker said.

Castjaw lifted his jaw from the weighing rail.

Seven tried moving his new attachment. It answered with a deep scrape along the floor. He could open it, close it, and swing it. Raising it was going to take something his legs did not have.

Castjaw stepped off the platform. The grating bowed beneath his feet.

“Who authorized that attachment?”

Seven put his left clamp against the floor and pushed himself upright.

“I did.”

The first blow caught his fist squarely.

Seven slid backward, heels throwing sparks. The attachment held, but his knee struck the walk, and the shoulder motor stalled again. Castjaw’s jaw pressed down against the smaller claw, forcing it toward Seven’s chest.

“Installing a hand doesn’t make you a heavy unit.”

Nail had reached the corner. He turned back, his bad wheel squealing once more, and Castjaw’s other jaw swept toward him.

Nail reversed. The jaw crushed a length of railing where he had been.

Seven loosened his own claw enough to turn one curved jaw sideways. Castjaw’s grip lost its flat purchase. Seven rolled clear and tried to stand, pulling the heavy head after him.

Castjaw stepped on the trail it had gouged through the floor.

Bolts jumped out of the grating. Along the wall, three triangular supports began peeling loose. The walk had carried Seven and his tool trolley for whole shifts while he changed the feed rollers; now its brackets were taking the supervisor’s full weight, and their rivets were peeling out of the wall.

Above the failing supports ran the narrow spare-parts passage.

“Nail, get to the wall.”

“I’m at the wall.”

“The corner. Under the brace.”

Nail rolled into the shallow recess. Seven followed, but Castjaw drew his rear foot back onto the weighing platform, seized the edge of the walk, and pulled upward. The floor rose between them and the furnace. Loose bolts rattled past Seven’s feet and vanished over the new lip.

He closed his right claw around a beam that still reached the wall. His left clamp caught a service slot. Nail slid down the steepening grating and struck the backs of Seven’s legs.

For a moment his rear wheels spun in the air. Then he cut their power and extended his gripper to Seven’s waist bar.

The remaining floor tore away.

Castjaw planted both feet on the platform, tossed the broken walk into the furnace, and reached for the two bots hanging from the wall.

Seven studied the beam inside his claw. One end had bent with the walk. The other was still fixed beneath the parts passage, where it had begun to bow away from its anchor. Castjaw’s jaw would catch it before reaching Seven. If Seven could get him to pull it down, then break his grip, the recoil might carry them to the passage.

He opened his claw just enough to show the loose connection inside.

Castjaw hooked a jaw over the beam below Seven’s claw, aiming to tear away the handhold that kept both bots above the rollers.

The supervisor pulled.

Steel bowed outward. Seven’s shoulder shrieked as he held on. Above him, the lip of the parts passage shifted into reach.

He loosened his left clamp from the slot.

“Nail, stay close.”

“I haven’t got much choice.”

Castjaw pulled harder. Seven braced a heel against the wall and twisted the claw, rolling the beam onto its thin edge. Steel screeched between Castjaw’s teeth. A gouged rib sheared away, and the beam slipped free of his bite.

It sprang back toward the wall. Seven rode the movement upward, caught the lip with his left clamp, and slammed his knees against the passage floor.

Nail swung into the recess beneath him. Seven hauled him over the edge by the gripper.

The big claw caught at the entrance.

Seven lay flat, his shoulder straining to draw it in. Castjaw opened his jaws below them. The parts passage was too narrow for his head, but the lodged attachment gave him something to seize.

Seven looked at the claw’s hinge. The jaws had a service fold for carrying the head through a parts door. He had used it the last time he rebuilt one. The socket was still locked around his palm, and the heavy head pinned his arm against the edge.

His cutter could not reach it.

“Nail. The small tab under the hinge.”

Nail flattened his cargo-bed brackets and crawled beside Seven’s arm. His gripper reached the tab.

“Push it toward me.”

The little arm trembled under the load. Below them, Castjaw’s jaw struck the wall and scraped upward.

Nail pushed again.

The hinge released. Seven folded the claw in, dragged it across the sill, and heard Castjaw slam into the empty entrance behind it.

They crawled until the passage turned. Seven’s shoulder casing had split along one seam, and his power warning pulsed against the edge of his sight. He let the new hand rest on the floor.

Nail stopped beside him.

“Can you stand?”

Seven tried. His knee straightened, held a moment, then folded.

Footsteps shook the wall. Castjaw was following the passage from below, working out where it would come down.

Seven looked along the turn. A sloping parts chute led toward the sorting pit. He had pushed empty bins down it at the end of every shift.

“Can you still turn?” he asked.

Nail’s lamps moved toward the claw.

“With that?”

“Downhill.”

Nail inspected the chute. Its lower rail was broken, but the upper section still reached the bend. He drove beneath the claw and raised his cargo brackets against it. Seven felt the load come off his shoulder.

Nail’s damaged wheel settled at an angle.

“You promised me a new wheel,” he said.

Seven put his left clamp around Nail’s rear bar.

“I remember.”

“Keep remembering.”

Nail tipped them onto the chute.

The wheels squealed, the big claw scraped the rail, and both bots shot down toward the sorting pit with Castjaw pounding along the wall behind them.