The large man sighed again. "You're not wrong. We have discussed this before, old friend, and have always followed that very principle. The purpose of the Knights Mechanica has always been aid, not governance. Yet we both know that our actions here and those we commit to in the future will have consequences. Perhaps Athena’s insatiable lust for power and disregard for others has stirred up the debate once more. She has reminded me that there will be the kind of consequences we won't be able to anticipate or control, especially if we don't plan to remain to ensure that the stability this area now enjoys is maintained."
Tinker scowled and looked searchingly at his companion. He didn't seem to like what Hammerhand had said but he also appeared to know he had one hell of a good point. It seemed an odd discussion to have since they’d already decided to remove Athena from her position of power.
Perhaps this simply was an attempt to establish a realistic view of what would happen in the area if Athena was defeated. It presented an intriguing side of the Knights’ leader that reminded her how little she really knew the individual members of the group. He’d always been so fixed in vision, and it surprised her to see that he did, in fact, think beyond simply liberating people and worried about their future as well. When she thought about that, she realized that it made him a better and a stronger man.
"Well, these people need us to remove Athena and we will," Hammerhand said finally. He looked around and noticed her watching them but didn’t seem to have any reaction to her uninvited witness to their conversation. "Thereafter, we can perhaps help them to establish some form of government so they can interact with each other. Maybe they could make the centralized bunker a capital of sorts that would allow them all to work together for each other’s benefit."
"It’s a process that could take years," Tinker pointed out. "And that's if we manage to eliminate Athena quickly and cleanly. While it’s unlikely, knowing her, she might run before she engages in a fair fight and will make it a war of attrition that could last months before we finally oust her. Assuming we succeed, of course."
It was Hammerhand's turn to scowl as though the concept of defeat hadn't occurred to him. It couldn't occur to him, she realized. He needed to believe—or know, rather—that the Knights would win every time or his doubts would spread to his team and make it all worse.
Jessica13 wasn't sure how he intended to defeat Athena, but she assumed he had a plan. She always assumed he had a plan. What would they do to survive otherwise?
"Well then," he said. "I suppose we are now locked in. The die is cast, and we cannot take it back. How do you suggest we proceed?"
"One step at a time, my friend," Tinker said, pushed from his seat, and placed a hand on Hammerhand's shoulder. "We will do what the Knights Mechanica have always done, which is to aid those in need so they can rebuild and live decent lives. Part of that aid is to deal with Athena, and we shall find a way to push her back and hopefully, defeat her once and for all. For now, we would be better served focusing our efforts to help the folks of Auburn to rebuild their lives while we are here. At least that way, we can perhaps influence those consequences for the better."
Hammerhand nodded and squeezed his friend’s hand before it fell away. The older bearded man sat again and resumed his work.
The Knights’ leader walked toward the door, no doubt to where his Excalibur had been harnessed outside, looked at Jessica13, and narrowed his eyes.
"I hope you rested well," he said and his voice once again thundered through the Beast as he walked. She fell into step beside him. "There is still a great deal of work for us to do, and those who can should commit their energy to it. Have something to eat and find Windchime. I'm sure he would be most anxious for your help."
She nodded, ate quickly, and had something to drink before she climbed into Mini.
"I trust you rested well?" he asked as she disengaged the harness.
"I still feel like I could sleep for another week or so," she admitted, took the mech's controls, and guided them out of the Beast. "But I don't feel like I'm about to drop off as soon as I don’t focus on staying awake."
"That will have to do," he replied as they headed out and into the city.
She had slept through the night, and the bright sunlight around her made it obvious that morning had already been in evidence for the past few hours. The Auburn townsfolk were out in the fields where they worked to till the earth and used some of the supplies that had been reclaimed to plant another crop.
While she would have been more than willing to assist them, she knew nothing about farming. Aside from possibly improving the mechs they had adapted for that purpose, there was little she could do to help them there.
Mini highlighted a section of the town's map where he suspected Windchime was and noted that it was only a suspicion in writing above the highlight, which made her chuckle. He guided her to the section of the town where most of their water was drawn from under the ground and their equipment was set up to purify it either for human use or for their crops.
Jessica13 still thought she could come up with a couple of ways that would allow them to use the water more efficiently without it being lost to the atmosphere or under the ground again, but it involved considerable time and effort to set drains up under the fields to collect the water, as well as greenhouses over the fields to keep the water contained.
Folks who had no shortage of the resource would see no point in expending so much time and effort for such little gain. While a part of her still reacted to what she’d considered wasteful for so long, she could also see that perhaps the greater waste would be to use resources for something not entirely necessary when they could be more effectively applied elsewhere. It was an interesting notion and she realized that a narrow perspective might not allow for other circumstances.
Sure enough, as Mini had directed, she found Windchime working near some of the wells, watched by a small group of the townsfolk. Most of them were children, who gawked and pointed at the oddity of the four-armed mech that helped to lift parts to another citizen who stood at the top.
"Jessie!" Windchime called when he saw her. "Nice of you to join us again. I hope you enjoyed your beauty sleep."
"I did, thanks," Jessica13 said and studied her surroundings before she picked one of the pieces up. Her own mech was fairly unique from a mechanic viewpoint but was nowhere near as interesting as the one Windchime piloted, and it earned her little attention from the locals.
Besides, they had already seen her wandering around the place two days earlier. Her Minato was old news to them.
"Sorry, I didn't mean to leave you in the lurch," she continued and handed the part to the man who worked on the tower. She meant her apology, even though she didn’t regret the sleep. There was so much to be done and leaving them to take the whole load felt a little unfair.
"Never you mind that," her teammate replied. "I'll tease you about it, sure, but we all need to reload and recharge from time to time. You're no good to anyone if you keel over from lack of food and sleep. Know your limits and try to push them from time to time, but you learn after a while how to not abuse your body too much."
"Thanks," she said with a smile. "I don't mind the teasing, honestly, but I do feel bad about leaving all the work to you folks while I was getting my beauty sleep."
She'd heard him and others use the term before and like so many others, it seemed a little odd since it was her experience that she and all others looked horrible when they woke.
"So, what have we been working toward out here?" Jessica13 asked as they continued to work together.
Windchime shrugged and the exaggerated action of his mech made the children laugh. "They're still trying to decide what kind of reward they think they can spare for us. We expended considerable resources to get here, so Hammerhand has tried to leverage the position, but our main priority will be to head out and give Athena more grief before too long. If we keep her busy, she won’t be able to focus on this little patch of paradise."
"Who is Athena?" one of the nearby children asked, overhearing their conversation.
"It's the goddess Athena," an older girl said and regarded her companion with something that might have been disappointment. "You know, the one in the books?"
"But they talked about giving Athena grief," the smaller child countered. "You can't give a goddess grief. It's unpossible."
"Impossible," the other corrected and rolled her eyes.
"You know her as Lady Hoot," Jessica13 explained. "We know her as Athena. She gave us some grief in the past, and when we saw she was giving you the same, we thought we'd return the favor."
"Oh!" the little one exclaimed. "Why do you call her Athena, then? She has the owl on her mech and that makes her Lady Hoot."
Jessica13 opened her mouth to speak but shut it when she realized she had no real answer. She wasn't actually sure why they called her Athena. Maybe it was her real name or maybe it was a nickname. In fact, she hadn't even known it was the name of a goddess until the child had mentioned it.
Thankfully, Windchime was quick to step in. "The goddess Athena of times past was said to ride a mech in the sky above us and made her home in the mountains. She's said to have an owl companion that told her everything there was to know in the world. Maybe the owl was an AI-operated mech that gathered information for her. Either way, the woman we call Athena carved the owl's head into her helm and abandoned her past and her name in favor of using the name of the goddess she claimed to represent."
The children leaned in, entranced by the story, and had no idea at all that he didn't want to discuss the woman any further.
"And…well, I guess all that would have been a little too long and drawn out to explain," he said and looked a little uncomfortable. "So, she let you call her Lady Hoot and left it at that."
"I’m not sure why," the smaller child said. "I think Athena is much nicer than Lady Hoot."
Windchime scowled and shook his head, and Jessica13 laughed.
"Leave it to children to take the niceness of the names away from what you told them," she said, still snickering.
"Whatever," he grumbled. He looked like he needed time asleep as well, although it was difficult to tell if it was because he had just woken up himself or because he had been up all night. "All we know is that the woman needs to be stopped, not what kind of name suits her best."
Given what he'd told her about taking care of herself and getting rest when she needed it, she imagined that if he hadn't taken some time to sleep in his hybrid mech, he soon would.
"I heard from Tinker and Hammerhand that we will abandon our search for Citta del Mar for the moment to deal with Athena," she said softly as they returned to work. "They said it could take months and maybe even years to fully remove her from here, but Tinker thought it was important that there was a large population in this area they hadn't known about."
"Oh, right. He's not quite right in the head, but he has something of an ambition to record the numbers of humans in this area to make sure we know how many humans do actually live out here."
"But what does that have to do with the Citta del Mar?" Jessica13 asked.
"Well, the more folks there are in an area, the higher the chance is that someone's heard something, seen something, or knows of something we don't," Windchime explained as she climbed out of her Minato and began to work with her hands as he carried the parts she needed to her. "Someone's bound to know something eventually, and when you meet so many people in one area, there comes a time when the chances of finding someone who knows something actually become a reality."
"But if they've all been here, why would they know any different than their neighbors?" His logic seemed to make her more confused for some reason.
Windchime chuckled. "You ask that like there wasn't shit the admins in your bunker knew that the others didn't. And there are different kinds of knowledge. Some people pay attention and pick up on things that others don't. So if you keep asking, you're bound to find something out eventually."
Jessica13 nodded, focused on her work, and began to clean the purifiers again. Many of them were positioned around the town and plugged into the wells. Water continued to flow from underground, albeit far less than there should be thanks to Athena. With a little work, Tinker appeared to be able to control the balloons over the bunker so they worked to regulate the weather in the area.
She still wasn't sure how a balloon could make it rain, but that was science beyond her realm of knowledge. Maybe when she had a few quiet moments, she would be able to read books and manus about how that worked. Tinker had a whole stack of books he had admitted he'd never taken the time to read, and most towns and population centers tended to have at least one person who collected books and those kinds of resources.
The children came and went. Some were called to do their own work while others seemed to have to attend some form of learning. A few remained but even they grew bored and played their games on the sidelines. Jessica13 found herself caught in the drudgery of repetitive work that machines required if they were to continue to function effectively.
An hour before the sun reached its peak, however, the clattering of metal on metal heralded the arrival of something that moved noisily over the uneven streets of Auburn. A quick look determined that it was a cart but it took her a moment to recognize it. She realized that the man who pushed it was the one who had given her work when she had posed as a peddler.
"Hello there!" he called, raised a hand, and waved at the two of them. "I’m not sure if you remember me, Jessie, but I was one of the folks you helped when you first came along."
She nodded and Windchime merely watched the man curiously.
"Caysom," she said when his name slid easily into her mind. It was odd that she hadn’t been able to recall it the last time she’d seen him, but maybe that had simply been lack of sleep and too much adrenaline. "I remember you needed a solar charger repaired."
"Damn right I did, and I'm still using it too," he replied with a laugh and patted the device on the roof of his stall. "It works like a dream, for the most part."
"Well, I'm glad I could help," she replied.
"I wish you could have told me you weren't really a peddler," he said. "I have folk saying I'm blind as a damn cave bat now since I didn't see you weren’t the kind to peddle. Although in fairness, you did have the skill set to match what you claimed to be."
"I didn't mean to ruin your rep with the folk of Auburn," Jessica13 said. "But like you said, I wasn't actually a peddler and didn’t know the folks to trust when I came in. As far as I knew, you were all happy to be under Lady Hoot's boot and would have turned me in if you found out I wasn't who I said I was."
"Oh, I understand your predicament, and I certainly don't hold that kind of thing against you," Caysom replied and watched her hands as she continued to work while she spoke. "And I don't mean to say I blame you for fooling me. Hell, you and the Knights pulled us out from the clutches of Lady Hoot and for that, I am willing to open my special stores to you and your friend here."
"What kind of special stores?" Windchime asked. "You sell parts, usually ones that need some kind of repair before they're useful. We have piles of those on the Beast."
"Well, see, I'm not only a seller of bits and pieces, mind," the man snapped. "It turns out that's what folks want the most, so I always have those on hand, but the real treasure I carry is from my time as a trapper and a hunter in the woods around here. I’m a great provider of nice fresh meat if you like the taste and haven't the time to raise chickens or pigs."
"Why would they eat the chickens?" Jessica13 asked as her personal dilemma once more raised its head, albeit with a slightly different perspective this time. "A chicken will provide more eggs in its lifetime than the little meat you get if you kill it."
"A chicken doesn’t lay eggs forever," Caysom replied. "Anyway, meat isn't the only thing I get to pull off the beasties that I trap and hunt."
"We have animal grease too," her tea
mmate said. "Tinker was actually hoping to trade some of it for what you folks have in terms of food and the like."
"Well, there's more to be taken from the fallen beasties," the other man explained, pulled what looked like a handful of furs from under his cart, and spread them on top for them to look at.
She recalled that a couple of the townsfolk liked to wear them over more tattered clothes, probably to make them a little warmer when the cold months rolled around. They were less thermally efficient than something made from nylon, though, and certainly bulkier. She couldn't wear something like that in the Minato either for fear of chunks being lost in the recyclers and starting a fire.
It still looked nice, though. The way the fur caught the light and shone like something made from metal was certainly appealing in a way. It wasn’t the kind of thing she would wear herself, but maybe she could put it on Mini's pauldrons to help the mech fade into the background and be more difficult to see in some circumstances.
It might be especially helpful if she needed to take more shots from a distance. She still had the rifle, although she would have to find or fashion a better holster than the mag clamp on her back. Engaging and disengaging the damn thing was a nightmare in the middle of combat and impossible if she was supposed to carry something into the heat of battle.
Jessica13 made a mental note that she needed to find a solution.
"I’m fairly sure that's the kind of thing that would be worn by someone who doesn't spend most of their time in a mech," Windchime pointed out and raised her own concerns on the matter.
"You don't have to be inside those mechs all the time, do you?" Caysom asked, obviously keen to make some kind of sale.
"Basically all the damn time," the other man said. "It might be nice to have them on the outside of the mech, though, to make them a little swankier. It's a problem when your mech has six limbs, or so I've heard. Folks say I look like a giant insect walking on two legs."
"I'm sure you take that as a compliment," she interjected and chuckled at the thought.
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