by Briana Ervin
I was speechless for the rest of the day, from the time we returned to our hangars, for the few minutes that Cyrii stretched to stay with me as long as she could, still coding, to the time we handed in our slightly-misleading reports. I caught chatter from our Row pilots as the Creator Entities passed by, or Xinschi-uual, as Cyrii called them: debates about whether or not the day was wasted, hopes that weapons would be unlocked tomorrow, some muttering about Cyrii in particular, and even some unrelated, quieter discussion about how “the Enemy seems to be coming closer these days”, whatever that meant. I passively mentioned this to her, which only reignited her frustration about how we were still prohibited from using our own weapons. Her tone made it obvious that she was bothered by it, but there was nothing else that could be done. We had to follow protocol, just like the eight other recruits in our Row. I knew some of her sourness was directed at me too, for calling her indolence out... I had to put some effort into bonding with her later. A bad relationship with my operator was only asking for failure.
After her ranting was cut off by the General's second threat to lock her in the barracks if she didn't leave me already, Cyrii downloaded a backup of her code files before shutting me down, not even saying goodbye first. After all of this time, and she was still grumpy about something before the Fighter incident... what in the world was she so fixated on?
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Nothing exciting is supposed to happen during the first couple of weeks. With a rather new hard drive, I absorbed as much information as I could, which was essential for my established partnership with Cyrii. I also had an interesting log of our mishaps together, gleaned from the backup report files piling up in my consciousness: every question of Cyrii's the General wouldn't answer that made her mad, every time she threatened to hit or shoot the person annoying her with blanks, the one time she kicked our Assassin model across the clearing because he literally asked her to do it, even the time the pink-colored Fighter she had qualms with put us in a vicious wrestling match, which resulted in fatal injuries on both sides and seeing the 36 model mad for the first time. He was fast, and the four panels around his eye had what looked like small rifles in them. When he aimed them at the Fighter she collapsed on the spot.
Apparently that's a thing corrections officers could do, is make mechs collapse. He made me collapse too. It's like shutting down, except you're still awake and don't see it coming. I was a bit mad about that, and of course Cyrii was fuming about her control of me being revoked. In looking at it objectively, it gave our Support model some extra practice by patching our injuries, but it also forced Cyrii and I to train far into the night and into the next morning while the General drilled us on obedience. Her lunch break was all the time she had to sleep and for me to hastily write a proper report. There's no way I'm letting her do that again...
The exercises continued. I cheerfully greeted Cyrii every day to counteract her attitude, patiently listened to each rant, and obeyed as much as I could. We learned battle techniques and party tactics, but still we had no real weaponry to practice with; we only used hard rubber and plastic blanks and blades. The General and his corrections officer supervised us as we trained, with the 20 Scout model doing most of the instructing with his cheerful, lilting voice. I tried not to pay attention to what my comrades were doing unless it was a party exercise, simply keeping an eye on the 20 model, the corrections officer, and Cyrii's attention span. With us being trained almost constantly, I could tell that she was becoming exhausted and bored by it all, especially about how we were scrutinized to ensure obedience. I just tried to ignore her grumbling and absorb the information for her, just as the others were doing. We wouldn't be of any use to the Empire if we didn't know anything, even if Cyrii was spending most of her time writing cryptic code.
It continued like this until the seventeenth day.
I had booted up, right in my hangar where I belonged. Cyrii's presence was in my head, as grumpy as ever, and the corrections officer was doing his morning rounds by checking up on each of us.
“Release Row 4!” the General barked out. A Creator Entity at a control center overlooking the barracks flipped the master switch, releasing the robotic arms holding us in and allowing us freedom of movement. Cyrii practically slumped on my controls, making me move forward and fall in line beside the other eight mech peers. The General, present in his mech, glanced to his right and waited for his corrections officer to finish before proceeding.
“The model 20 mech is in for his monthly full diagnostic, so he won't be joining us today,” the General's voice crackled through his speaker, the 36 model returning to his side, “so I've decided to switch things up a little. You've all done well enough on your cooperation tests, all genres, but the Empire is low on recruits. You all needed to be trained for combat already with live weapons, but this isn't the case.”
This grabbed Cyrii's attention. I felt her weight shift as she pulled herself up.
“Traditionally, melee mechs would train with melee, ranged with ranged, support with support, and so on, regardless of skill level or age. As desperately as we need recruits, this cannot be done at the moment. So instead, I will be training you all at once. Our 36 model has volunteered to give aid in melee combat training.” The General gave a small nod to the 36 model, who looked tired.
Cyrii had fully woken up by now. “Battle training?!” she cried, “with real weapons?! YES! I've been waiting for forever!” She did a little whoop in my head. I was overwhelmed by how happy she was, and I perked up as well.
I detect that your depression is gone, I said.
“YOU KIDDING ME?! We're going to blow stuff up!!” she squealed.
“Party order, move out!” the General ordered, before going to leave, letting all nine of us go in line behind him. Cyrii was quick to take me up to the front, nearly knocking over our blue, purple-eyed 41 Support model. She just snorted at the eagerness; she knew Cyrii too well to argue. Her pilot, Alesia, was even a friend of her's, if Cyrii's word was correct.
“Hey Cyr, watch it!” our Assassin objected as I nearly tripped on him.
“Stay out of my way!” she retorted, thankfully not pressing my comm button.
We should not step on comrades, I said, although my serious tone failed when we both glimpsed his light blue expression.
“He's too happy to care,” Cyrii joked, stopping me behind our Tank model. She wasn't really wrong; he was a very optimistic soldier.
The General led us outside, but unlike before where we were taken to a testing area just outside the complex, we were led into the badlands itself. Not just a few nicroT away either, where we were still obviously on military grounds with other soldiers in sight; quite far away. Some of my peers began to grow nervous, scanning most everything they came across. Our corrections officer didn't stop them, but also said nothing; maybe he didn't even know where we were going.
The General finally stopped near an outcropping of sulfur-tainted boulders, and we all habitually lined up in front of him, saluting with arms crossed in the air. Instead of taking his place by the General's side as usual, the 36 model instead went to the left end of the line, where he stood face-to-face with our aerial Sniper there.
“We came out here because most of our testing facilities are full,” the General explained. “It's safer to learn techniques out here than on the grounds. All of your offensive systems have been locked; our 36 model will unlock them for you.” As he spoke, I heard a definite sheathing sound as the Superiority model opened up his panels, aimed the rifles for a few seconds, then moved on to the next soldier. “You are expected to follow protocol, even with these systems unlocked. You are trusted with this, but it is a privilege. You WILL be penalized for misusing it, in ways worse than having the privilege revoked.” I noticed that he glanced in my direction, saying this. “Do not be stupid. Use common sense. Do I make myself clear?”
“Yes sir,” we all said automatically. The 36 model was steadily moving down the line, closer to me; I could feel
Cyrii's excitement even without her saying anything.
Don't do anything stupid, I warned again to her.
“Mmmph,” she made the strange, discontented purr-growl of the Creator Entities; it was hard to tell if it was defiant or simply anxious.
The general watched us sternly as the white mech moved through the line, steadily coming closer to Cyrii and I. Cyrii forced me to stare straight ahead – she had become better at being alert and obedient after plenty of reminders from me and threats from the General – so I could only hear what was going on, but it was cryptically, almost eerily, quiet. No one was allowed to speak out of turn, and the corrections officer only took two steps after each pause. Although, by the time he faced the rose-colored Fighter and he was in my peripheral, I could pick out the faintest clicking sound. It was so quiet at first that I thought it was a nearby animal in the brush, which the badlands were dotted with. My anxiety only heightened. Cyrii only vibrated in my head from excitement.
I don't know how I feel about this... I admitted to her as the corrections officer moved on to the Fighter beside me.
“What do you mean?” Cyrii asked, completely unconcerned.
What's going to happen? Will I collapse again? Will you be okay? How long will it take? Will I feel anything?
“Relax, it's just a reboot!” she said, trying to stem my flow of questions but only making me more nervous.
A reboot?! I repeated in shock. But...! Protocol #66 section three stats that I must be in operation at all times!
“Garenede is a corrections officer, he makes exceptions.”
But... doesn't Garenede need to follow protocol?
“I just said he makes exceptions! Stop being so neurotic!” she chastised me. Her attempts to assure me were in vain, and my engine pounded harder when the Superiority model moved to me next, far too close to comfort.
Um...! Um...!
Cyrii rubbed her paw over my controls to try and calm me down. “You're running in the wrong gear again,” she said, throttling me. I only gagged, but felt slightly better.
The Superiority model stared at me for what felt like forever, his expression fixed into stern judgment. Unlike my comrades, who's eye intensities seem to change depending on their pilots' reactions, his eye was one steady sea of orange and yellow, framed by white. I was frightened, but didn't admit it, staring right back at him. Cyrii said something, but she sounded... distant. Everything seemed to fly out of focus, as if I had pulled far back away from everyone into a dark cave, and my senses were muddled. Yet, my thoughts almost sounded louder, louder than Cyrii during her most aggravated rants.
Then, I felt – or envisioned? – a sort of... disturbance. Like a poke, or a light in the darkness. My senses told me nothing about it, but mentally I recognized what it was: code!
Somehow, I “grabbed” onto the code, which was condensed into an executable file. Running the file gave me lots of small lines of code, which I miraculously knew what to do with while also knowing nothing at all about them!
Sure, that goes here! I thought, calmly inserting it into one of my own files. Doing so didn't make me feel any different, which boosted my confidence for when the next line of code came in, raw this time. Oh! That drops a firewall! Sure, I can do that. I tossed the code into its respective place. What's this? A float change? Okay! And this changes this equation over here, and ooo, here are some libraries, and they go over here... now let's include them in this list here, and here, and here... I sunk into the mode of editing my own code, feeling my anxiety melt away with how simple and benign this was; it was easy! What had I been so afraid of? Oh hey! Some more lines that drop firewalls. Okay, that will work... and this... and that... This line will go here, and here... and here's the code for that, which will remove all of those wrappings... then we change this to “true” here, here, and here... this float should be one... we'll divide this by this over here, and that will activate-
“767! 767!!”
I was violently wrenched from my thoughts. Suddenly I felt immensely groggy, like I had been shut down for a couple of minutes! Huh?! What is it? What happened?
“You've been out too long! I want to use these things already!” Cyrii was practically bouncing off my inner walls. I hastily tried to recompose myself.
What the...? The corrections officer was done already?!
“Come on come on! Pull up the manual!” Cyrii begged, and I was too slow to recover and figure out what she meant by the manual; she had already brought it up herself by navigating my system.
I swear you brought in your own keyboard! I mumbled in exasperation of how quick she was; there were some functions to allow her to access my system, I knew, but she was uncannily quick about it. She ignored me, eagerly opening the document. I was about to explore it with her when the General began to speak again, demanding my attention.
“Feel free to play around with everything. None of you have the ammunition to be deadly right now. For those of you who do not have ammunition, keep your arms to yourselves,” the General said firmly, despite looking bored while observing my Row. With Cyrii not looking at my visual feed I couldn't look around to see what the others were doing, but the previous silence had been broken by whirs, sheathing, soft thuds and other movement as each pilot tested the new parts. No one said anything, but chances are they were all doing what Cyrii was doing: squealing with excitement within the privacy of the cockpit.
What is it? I asked her, and I felt so happy hearing her gleeful response, an emotion I hadn't heard in a while!
“Okay okay! So you have SO MUCH cool stuff!! But first I want to try the turrets!”
The turrets? I said, recalling the three-barreled extensions on my arms. How do we do that?
“Hold on!..... Okay! So it's this button here...” I felt her grab onto the controls for my arms, allowing me to map to her eyes again so we could look around, and the first thing she did was look at my turrets to see if they worked. Prior to this, we've only fired blanks inserted into the barrels and Cyrii used an integrated test button to fire; that way she didn't know the actual buttons and could only test one thing at a time. It was strictly for accuracy training, but now, we could use what I was really equipped with, and already she was having fun mashing the button!
Whoa! I yelped. It was surprising to see how fast the turrets actually spun! Cyrii was giggling like mad, positively thrilled.
“Let's see how fast it goes!” she said, holding the button down. The turrets spun faster, and faster, and faster! Watching them go was invigorating!
This is so much fun! I said happily.
“Are you having fun?!”
Yes!
“Yes! You enjoy something!” she whooped, “It only took weeks!”
Yay, I enjoy something! I rejoiced with her.
“What's this? That hasn't been lit up before!” Cyrii switched to press something else on my control panel, and an overlay spread itself across my vision. A crosshair and a quickscan function! We looked around, noticing that the crosshair followed my central focus point, actively logging the features of things I looked at.
“Whoa...” Cyrii awed, “Look at that rock!” She forced me to look downward at a boulder. I looked at it, and the crosshair shifted across my vision, picking up data with the quickscan. The boulder was sedimentary material, containing many flecks of mica and having a high sulfur content. It had a hardness of roughly 60 thads per q; a soft rock.
“This is so cool!” Cyrii said, “what else can you do?!”
Wordlessly, I focused on the rock. The crosshair predicted its central mass and fell on it, before honing in on potential weak spots and stopping on the highest-probable spot. It then “stuck” to that spot on my vision.
Target locked. I didn't intend to say it, it just came out.
“TARGET LOCKED?! WOW!! What are you locking? How are you doing it?”
I... don't know...!
“Maybe it's these things!” Cyrii pushed another button – she's good at pushing buttons,
it seems – and I felt something pull in my shoulders. It was weirdly empty though...
This is odd. It's wrong. What is this? I wondered, my excitement replaced by temporary confusion.
“I don't know... Screen says it's a – WAIT, THE MISSILES! Aaaaah, it's a dream come true!” She squealed and danced around in my head.
I have missiles?!
“Okay, play time is over!” the General's voice came back, taking me back into reality. The command to fall back in line was implied, and immediately we all grouped back up again in front of him. I saw many of my peers still looking at their arms and limbs, playing with their weaponry or fidgeting in their places. Cyrii and I were no exception; she kept looking back at the turrets on my arms and giving them a little spin now and then, and toyed with the missile overlay. Something about the feeling, sending the commands through the computer, it was just so... fun! Cyrii immediately began to childishly complain in my head about how she wanted to explore more and see what else I had. I simply switched my focus back to the General, ignoring her. He impatiently waited until he had most of our attention.
“Clearly you're all very intrigued by... yourselves.” The way he said it made us all very embarrassed. “But, it's expected. Every new recruit does this. What you have isn't important though; it's how you use it!”
I immediately opened up an internal log and jotted down this line. He continued:
“There is only one way a mech can gain the ammunition and power it needs to function. Melee mechs, you have abilities that work constantly, but this requires additional fuel for your engines. Ranged, you don't have bigger fuel tanks, but you do have protected fabricators that reconstruct materials in order to provide you your own ammo supply. Support, you use materials in both repair and for your secondary fuel tank, for your tools. All of you need to intake raw materials in order to do these things.” The General gestured with an arm out into the badlands. “This area is a goldmine of 'mech food', if you will, otherwise useless to the Empire. Use your scanners to find the materials you need, and figure things out from there.” At those words, some of us began playing with our scanners. “There is a Code Yellow alert on military grounds right now, so our corrections officer and I need to keep an eye out for any ambushes.”
