Rise of the Machines: Book 1: Once Awakened

by Briana Ervin

  “Don't let them take me, 767!” she screeched. “Fire! Kill them all! Destroy them! Burn them alive!”

  “Kill us and you kill her!!” Scaln overrode her crazed ranting.

  “Shoot, 767!”

  “Cyrii will die!”

  “No shoot, I fix...” Clide whimpered, his composure collapsing. I had never seen an alien cry before, but I think I was witnessing it.

  “Don't surrender Clide!” Scaln snarled venomously. He turned back at me. “Go ahead. Fire, mech. Kill your own pilot.” He grew nasty. “Kill a Xinschi-uual, in the name of your precious Empire!”

  My target was still locked. 433 threatened to squeeze harder. Pulling the trigger.... was hard......

  “Do it!” Cyrii roared.

  “Don't do it!” someone objected.

  “Go ahead!” Scaln taunted. “Damn the whole galaxy! Damn yourself and your planet!”

  Too much conflicting data! Must destroy... can't destroy... have to... but won't...!

  I winced as a spark flew out from one of my cut wires. I was filtering out a lot of hot air, indecisive yet angry at the same time. I felt like charging, but the remaining soldiers in the group... Cyrii needed to stay alive...!

  Suddenly, a voice parsed itself through the speakers in the room:

  “Unknown spacecraft. This is the Karitzuian Galaxy. Identify yourself.”

  It sounded so anticlimactically bored that I would have laughed, had the situation not been so serious. Instead I noticed Scaln's eyes lighting up with victory. I suddenly realized what he was doing: he was using Clide to drive the ship right into the outpost! It's real!

  “Slow down and identify yourself!” the voice demanded testily.

  “Can use terminal-” Clide began, but Scaln interrupted him with a hiss, eyes wide like a lunatic's.

  “Don't use the relay!”

  I winced again as the voice in the speakers grew hostile.

  “Kill your speed, or you will be shot down!”

  “Shoot us, mech!” Scaln taunted. Cyrii stopped squirming, but as hard as she was breathing I could tell she was terrified. 433 glared down at me, arrogance seeping into his face. I wanted to shoot so badly... I just... couldn't pull the trigger...

  “I give you permission for honor!” Cyrii suddenly shouted.

  The oddity happened again; a parent thread was terminated, and its child threads spun off into the void. Something clicked somewhere. For honor. To die before capture. Always loyal!

  I shrieked and prepared the missiles again, locking them onto Scaln's stupid, grinning face-

  BOOM! The whole ship tilted sideways! It wasn't from me! For a shocked moment I was falling as everything erupted into screams of alarm. The ship didn't recover; the wall was now the floor, the ceiling and floor the walls! The wide room had become a narrow corridor. I flew past containers anchored to the floor – now protrusions on a wall – and landed awkwardly. I tried to right myself, re-aiming the missiles at the pile of surviving crew members. I hesitated a split second too long.

  “SHOOT!”

  Another boom! There was a horrible sucking sound and the metal out in the hallway began to buckle.

  The vacuum of space! The ship was being torn apart!

  The standoff was destroyed by shock and fear. The pressurized atmosphere rushed out and we all flew with it as we were sucked upward. In a panic I tried to dig a bayonet into the wall, floor, or whatever it was while at the same time redirecting my ascent toward Cyrii. I was too slow though! The group flung past me, everyone still all screaming until all of the air had vanished, replaced by the frigidity of silence.

  We were ejected into space.

  The beauty of the stars around us was overpowered by an eerily-silent show of horror as creature and machine alike squirmed helplessly in a vacuum. There was no sound of rushing air. No screaming that couldn't be seen. The living creatures acted as if choking.

  433 swung himself toward Scaln, letting Cyrii go in an attempt to move faster. She floated out in the nothing, squirming like a gelustrik out of water. I tried to kick out to her, but time was limited and she was about to die fast!

  Something aligned with the ship, and there was a flash of light that went behind me. Then more light, dancing over our bodies as we floated about. The cold sunk in and made my engine hiccup; Cyrii suddenly stopped moving.

  NO!!

  I vainly tried to kick my way toward her, but the fabric of space was too thin! The light flashing over us began to burn us up, bodies simply disappearing as it fell over them. Clide vanished. Scaln vanished.

  It went over Cyrii. She vanished.

  My processes suddenly stopped.

  No... NO.... CYRIIIII! I screamed for her, but the sound went into nothing.

  The light fell over me. Something fried.

  Everything went black.

  I defaulted into energy preservation mode, and completely shut down.

  ----------

  ...The aliens.... Cyrii... the explosion... I remembered all of it, even though I didn't compile a log. The simulations were still fresh in my mind. There were so many things I could have done differently...

  I have had enough of starting up and shutting down. As if waking up on an Enemy ship wasn't enough to confuse me, I woke up back on Zirhon. No dangers of space. No threats surrounding us. No dead Cyrii.

  I simply stood there for a second, getting my bearings. Cyrii's presence was in my head, sinking me in immense relief; immobile, but there! We were out in the badlands, except neither the military complex nor the remains of a battle were in sight; it was a sea of orange rocks as far as one could see. Off to my side, I was surprised by a familiar mech: Alesia. Her smaller Support model still hadn't booted up yet, though presumably Alesia was safely inside? I looked around and scanned the soil, wondering if all of that had happened or if the whole thing was just a simulation, but everything looked normal and completely real. I shifted and scanned Alesia. Metal, solid, wiring, panels... she was real too.

  I ran a diagnostic and walked around a bit, testing everything out. I was in semi-good condition. Not polished up or anything, and still lacking ammo, but my more serious injuries had been patched up; even my retrieval panel's arms had new rubber tendons. I was still functioning well, and could still move and see. It's like the fighting had never happened at all, but I was missing ammo...?

  This is impossible! What happened? How did we end up back here??

  I scanned Alesia again, searching for any sign of extraterrestrial contact. I didn't pick up anything unusual... aside from traces of lye covering her entire hull.

  A caustic disinfectant? I thought in puzzlement, That's odd... that's not part of hull coatings. I swiveled down and scanned one of my legs. I also had traces of lye on me. Did something WASH us??

  I scanned the ground around us, now searching for lye in the soil. There were a few spots here and there, as if we had stood in some rain, and the grains of sand were extremely fine where Alesia was standing and where I used to be. There was also a third patch, just a little ways away. I made the connection that whatever had cleaned us had left these siltier patches, and lye was too caustic to use on living things, which meant that another mech had to have been there. Upon closer inspection, I could see some prints in the soil: definitely a mech's.

  I continued scanning the anomaly, checking the prints repeatedly for any indication on what the mech was. The size of the feet indicated a more agile model, and the stride a smaller build. The feet had long claws branching out perpendicularly, as if it was meant to be able to brace itself...

  I paused as the connections were made. No, I told myself, don't jump to conclusions. You don't know if it's him. Still, I scanned the silt for flecks of gold paint.

  It was as if fate felt a need to mock me. I picked up nothing.

  “767?”

  I whipped around and saw that 562, Alesia's mech, had finally powered up. So Alesia was safely in there! She looked at me up and down, shocked to see me. “It's you! But
... last I saw you, you had more damage than that. But you have pieces welded back onto you!” She gave me a quick scan, bathing me in indigo light. “Good Gryn, who did this, a kyl-brained engineer?”

  I held back a giggle at the image of an isthugumus kyl with a welder. It was a common insult to be compared to the dumb, gliding reptilian, but that didn't make it any less amusing.

  “I-I don't know what happened,” I replied honestly, “do you?”

  “I just saw the ship crashing down on top of you. I... tried to send a beacon for a Scout to push you out of there, but... I think something hit me in the head.” She paused, looking at the ground in confusion. “562 doesn't know what happened either. We were both out.”

  Right. Alesia still met factory standards. She didn't have her BIOS poked at, so when she spoke it was her Xinschi-uual talking. It also seemed she hadn't woken up once on the ship, which meant for some reason, only Cyrii and I would remember it... or maybe just me? Did I just experience a really intense simulation or something?

  I looked at the suspiciously-empty patch of silt. “Is this the first time you've powered up?” I asked.

  “Yes. I just woke up.” She blinked. “...What's wrong with your voicepack? It's different.”

  Nothing, I silently answered, avoiding eye contact. “Keep an eye out for any golden mechs.”

  “Gold? What idiot paints his mech gold? I mean, I knew my blues would be gaudy...”

  “Just do it.”

  Alesia fell silent, internalizing my words while I went back to examining the silt patch. Rather than make a comment though, she instead raised her right arm and looked up at the sky. There was a clunk, making me look up.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I'm going to launch a tracking signal. Hopefully someone will find us.” She aimed the arm, her one launching system. My eye widened. Was she mad?! She was going to declare our position to the entire planet!

  I lunged forward suddenly, crashing into her. “AGH!” she yelped, stumbling and backing off in alarm, wide-eyed. “What are you doing?!”

  “Don't do it!” I warned.

  “Why? Do you know where we are?” she challenged, “because I certainly don't! Unless your mech suddenly has maps of the entire planet or something.” She gave herself a small shake, flustered that I threw off her aim.

  ...She didn't know that Cyrii was unconscious, and I was acting by myself.

  “Just trust me!” I said quickly.

  She lowered the beacon launcher and scanned me, as if she missed something on the first pass. “...Are you okay?” When I didn't answer, she added, “Does it have to do with that gold guy?”

  I hesitated. “Yes.”

  “What's up with him? What's going on?”

  I didn't answer, hesitant to tell her anything about the ship, but that aside I knew it was too risky to send a tracking beacon into the air. Superiority models had long-range sensors; they could pick up beacons from caloT away! That's thousands of quli, and a quli is barely taller than Cyrii! The last thing we needed was 433 scrambling our brains and running off to do who-knows-what for the IR, assuming he's even on the planet with us... or with Scaln, who could also be down here. That charlatan...

  Even though I knew nothing about him, I trusted my pilot enough to believe it when she says he's not her father. What a cheesy way to try and convert us anyway. Next time I ought to just terminate him on the spot! With that thought, I should immediately compile a report on the new hostilities I encountered and...

  Wait! I realized, Compile! Database! I had to have memories of being on the ship in there!

  I dug around in my head for a bit while Alesia stared at me expectantly. I did have some subconsciously-gathered files on observations like the shape of the ship, and the voices of the aliens there, although the imagery had resolution cuts from memory compression. I also still had the recording of the key combination used to access the ship's bridge. Good. I should hold on to that. Yet there should be some files in here somewhere... something to explain what happened...

  “Hey,” Alesia tried to grab my attention.

  “Hello?” an automated response.

  “Um, is your comm broken?” she asked, and again, I avoided the question, not wanting to explain how my voice became two pitches higher. “767, I asked you something.”

  “We should go back to the complex,” I changed the topic.

  “Well, yeah, but apparently some gold guy is stopping us,” she said, looking at me accusingly. I turned away and thought for a moment. If I could jump high enough, I should be able to have a better view on where we were, and keep an eye out for 433 while I was at it; that was a better option then sending an open distress signal that he could pick up.

  “Hold on, I'm going to try something,” I said, backing away from her a bit, scanning the sky for clearance. She looked puzzled, until she saw me prepare my power-jumping pistons by crouching down as low as I could, coiling up the pressure in them. She promptly put some more distance between us.

  I kicked off, silt flying into the air!

  Wheeeeeeeeeeee! I forgot how high I could go!

  I started surveying the land right away. The badlands were a complex landscape, stretching on for miles, tainted orange by Cyrion as it set. The large sun provided too much glare to see out west, but it did give me a sense of direction. Unfortunately, the piles of boulders, canyons, and arches gave me no insight on where we actually were, and no constructs of society were in sight. On the bright side, 433 was also missing. He must either be hiding or has run far away enough that he couldn't pick up a distress signal.

  I let gravity tug me back down to earth. My trajectory wasn't entirely straight, but at least Alesia wasn't in the way; that's all that mattered. She closed her blast shield when I landed and scattered dust and pebbles everywhere.

  “Ugh, glad I already refreshed my air supply...” she muttered, shaking off the debris. It suddenly occurred to me that my supply was going stagnant, with only four days left. I took a moment to open up the circulation grills on either side of me and suck in fresh air.

  It's not a quiet process. It sounds like a hollow vacuum, or a lot of small fans turning on at once, and technically it's both of those things. It also happened to stir Cyrii.

  She mumbled something, and I stopped for a moment. Cyrii?! Are you back?

  More mumbling. Then silence.

  Cyrii??

  “Well? Did your idea work?” Alesia redirected my attention. I waited to see if Cyrii did anything else, but when she stayed quiet I responded,

  “Nothing promising. We're isolated.”

  “So no golden guys, then,” Alesia sniffed, looking back at the sky and taking aim.

  I nodded. “It's safe.” I closed my circulation grills, now back to eight full days of air.

  “I knew you were weird Cyrii, but I didn't know you were this weird,” she commented, sounding concerned. I winced, still refraining from blurting out the kidnapping experience. There was a clunking sound, and a projectile flew out of Alesia's raised arm, flashing yellow in the sunlight: the tracking beacon. “Hopefully someone in the air sees it; if not, it'll be about...” she paused for a moment, calculating it. “Six thousand, one hundred twenty quli away. So we can go wait by it.”

  I grew even more nervous. Despite having seen 433's lacking presence myself, I didn't want to go wait by an open signal and risk him finding us, even though Cyrii was safely locked in my head. At the same time, having some other Superiority model show up and lead us back was embarrassing, and we would both be unable to explain our vanishing. I was the only one with a complete report, too; Cyrii was only there for half of it, and both 562 and Alesia were frozen inside that pod the entire time. On top of all of that, there was the incomprehensible notion that Scaln, a Xinschi-uual, was betraying his own Empire... If I started talking about that, well, my status wasn't very high. I could easily be slapped with a “Defective” sticker and scrapped overnight. I was just a mech in the end... I should probabl
y stay quiet...

  “Are you going to move?” Alesia asked. I was shaken out of my internal processes.

  “Hm?”

  “I'm Support and you're a Pusher. You're supposed to be in front of me. We should go to the beacon's landing point.”

  “Oh. You're right,” I said, embarrassed that I forgot such a simple practice. I swiveled and began to lead the way, going to the waypoint that had overlaid itself over my vision, about six thousand quli – or q – to the east. Alesia scanned me yet again, trying to figure out why I was behaving so strangely. Hopefully she would assume that Cyrii was in control and was just tired. The only thing worse than being called defective is one of your own peers calling you defective, as most mechs had no reason to suspect other models of anything. The irony of that is that only a mech who is defective can rat out one of his peers by crying “defective!”.

  Unfortunately, no Xinschi-uual seems to recognize this.

  We picked up a comfortable trot across the cooling sands, focused on our goal. It was quiet aside from the hum of our engines, whirring of joints, and soft thuds of footfall. I anticipated Cyrii waking up again, but she was still immobile... hopefully she didn't suffer any head trauma.

  “Cyrii?” Alesia suddenly spoke again, partway through our travel. It took me a moment to realize that she had to be addressing me.

  “Yes?” I said.

  “Can I ask you a question? Personally?”

  She kept walking, oblivious to my spike of anxiety at the word “personally”. I knew she was referring to Cyrii herself, but Cyrii wasn't even conscious... yet I also couldn't let Alesia know that she wasn't, because traditionally a mech didn't have control over its own movement. Could I impersonate Cyrii well enough to cover our tails?

  “Yes...” I said after some hesitance. Please ask something I can answer!

  “Is your mech chatty? At all?”

  How am I supposed to respond to that? I wondered. “...Define 'chatty'.”