by Viola Grace
“Are we under attack?” Xaia whispered it softly.
“Yes.”
“Shit. Is it Corbyn in Myx?”
“I am checking... That does appear to be the designation of his pilot.”
She could see Myx pivoting and firing with increasing accuracy at incoming targets.
“Are your weapon systems online?”
“They are.”
“How do I use them?”
“Open your mind, and I will explain.”
She exhaled, inhaled, and relaxed with her mind blank. Hundreds of years of information streamed through her brain, the original navigation through the stars to Hera, being placed into storage, being woken and set into the bot body, and then, things got blurry. She saw battles, broken bots, and blood on the decking within the command area.
After that came the rush of the engineers, the next pilot and then more battles and pilots after that.
With the information came the muscle memory of the pilots who had been in the cradle before her. She began to line her body up with Ai’s position, and then she flexed her fingers. She could feel the motion in the metal around her.
“Long-range targeting.”
“Online.”
She lifted her head, and his array moved with her. She saw what Myx was shooting at and raised her arm to fire her own pulse.
The weapon that was in most common use by the bots was a magnetic railgun that propelled a minute speck of radioactive material toward their targets. The hyper-dense material travelled along her targeting line toward her intended destination.
The ball of material shattered into flaming chunks, but it was lower than she had hoped. Her rear cameras showed that the observation stands were clear, and the only remaining visible humans were the ones on the armoured towers.
“Are your coms up?”
“They are.”
“Are the other bots up and running?”
“Myx is the only one currently capable of communication.”
“Put me through to him.”
“You are on coms.”
“This is Xaia-Ai, are you receiving me?”
There was a pause. “Xaia-Ai, this is Corbyn-Myx. Are you ready to run?”
“I have complete function.”
“Good. Can you defend two of the others?”
Xaia smiled. “I can. I will guard Len and Kab.”
“Great. I am going defend Cio and Iff. When we are all mobile, we will run for the city.”
“Good. I will get the boys up on their feet.” Xaia grinned, fired a few more rounds at incoming projectiles, and then, she took her first steps back into the valley to protect two of the bots who had not come to rest on their feet.
The balance of the bot was nowhere near her own. She took careful first steps, sliding her feet slightly above the surface of the valley floor before taking the next step.
“You are doing very well, Xaia. All those dance classes are paying off.”
She blushed. “I am amazed that you remember that with all the engineers who have come and gone since I was a teen.”
“It was very amusing to see you dancing through my systems.”
She adjusted the angle of the cradle and took a more natural step. “It was such fun to be here back then. You were all I had dreamed of.”
“Well, I know you are worried right now, but I am having fun.”
Xaia quirked her lips. “I know. I can feel it.”
“Can you blame me? I was made for this, and it is the first exercise I have gotten in centuries.”
“I don’t blame you, but keep your sensors sharp; we are trying to get all the surviving bots up and running. We can’t afford to—whoa!”
The bright light from ahead of her stunned her for a moment. Ai’s sensors told her what she already knew. There was a fire next to a bot.
Ai’s sensors identified the bot in question as Len, and the fire was coming from the fuelling station next to him. If there was a maintenance person there, she was dead already.
Xaia did what she could. She moved faster.
Chapter Five
Lido was sipping at a glass of water when the pomp and circumstance was over. It was the same every time and she had only been on the observation deck for three of them.
“So, are you really happy digging in the dirt?” Her cousin Morian asked as if she hadn’t asked the same question thirty times already.
“I really am. The soil of Hera can do so much with the seeds that our ancestors brought, if only I were allowed to use them. The power of the planet beneath our feet is constantly underrated.”
A cheer brought her attention to the arrival of the monorail. Lido listened to the women talking about the arrival of the fabric supplies.
“Who’s refuelling Cio?”
Morian shrugged. “We will do it before the next Burning Day.”
Lido was shocked and walked to the line. She ignored her family calling out to her as she zipped down to Cio, kneeling in a runner’s crouch and ready to run.
The dust on the refuelling pad was an even layer that spoke of wind and weather. She pressed her palm to the pad after she cleaned it off, and the nozzle extended slowly toward the bot.
Clan Padu had a lot to answer for if the slowness of the nozzle was any indication of the last month of service. The refuel went slowly, and there was very little left in the tank when she was done, but Cio managed to get back into burn condition.
“Damn. I had better get a system status update.” Lido slid down the pole and walked to the secondary access panel in Cio’s thigh. She pressed her palm to the panel and said, “Lido Padu requesting system status.”
“Status sixty-five percent.”
She was about to ask for specifics when the alarm sounded and the command to head to the city was sent out.
“Lido Padu requesting pilot access. Access code Cio-Korm-Padu.”
The secondary panel flipped into position. This was the part Lido hated. She pressed her hand into the panel, and the blood sample was taken.
“Identity confirmed. Access granted. Welcome aboard, Lido Padu.”
She stepped into the lift and held on as the mechanism took her from ground level to the command deck in the centre of the bot.
“Hello, Cio. Did you hear the alert?”
The deck was quiet and very still. “I heard it. I am unable to move in my current condition.”
She swallowed. “I am aware of that. I am offering you full connection in order to repair your systems. Do you accept?”
The lights came on, and the pilot cradle descended. “That is the best offer I have had in decades.”
She was queasy at the thought, but every organism she was aware of needed another to help catalyse their biological systems. While her own experience with Cio had been external, she understood that his mechanisms were designed to mimic that of a living being. He needed a heart to start the repair process, so she was going to be that pulse.
Lido climbed into the cradle and settled in, leaning back as the wires caressed her skin. The sudden incursion of memory was a shock, and she lay there and focused on her breathing as memories of over two hundred years rippled through her, including the parties held by the Padu clan in the last four years. They had turned their clan duty into a private headquarters.
“Bastards. I am going to turn them into our clan head for that.”
“The clan leader was the one who decided that I was a lot of wasted empty space. After the first few parties, the novelty wore off and I locked them out. I haven’t had internal maintenance in four years.”
She was seething. “I was always on corrosion control.”
“I know, and you have done a very good job, or you wouldn’t be here.”
She let the memories drift through her and felt him tiptoeing through her own. “What are you doing?”
“You are a gardener?”
“Horticulturalist.”
&nb
sp; “You value life. It’s a good thing. This is the time when life is most important. If you help me, I will assist in keeping you and your clan safe.”
“Take what you need, just get up and moving as fast as you can.”
Cio chuckled. “I already have. Full mobility in eight minutes.”
“What is going on out there?”
She was suddenly given control of the exterior scanners. Cio had always been in a runner’s kneel and getting ready to run, so his head was up and back. She could see the sky, and when she zoomed in, she could see the ships.
“Are those the same...”
“Yes. They are the same alien species who tried to claim Hera before. They are the same ones that I was built to fight, and my nanites are now making much needed repairs to my propulsion system so that I can do it again.”
Lido lay back, and she watched the external cams. Myx appeared to be alert, and his pilot had enough control to fire in defense of the valley.
Ai was firing and shooting, but Len appeared to have a fire in what was left of the refuelling station. Iff was slowly turning toward Cio, and Kab was straightening his posture with glacial speed. It looked like Len’s temporary pilot may have been destroyed in the flames.
“Shit.” She turned her gaze forward and watched Myx walking toward her, backward. “Why isn’t he turning around?”
“He is keeping his primary sensors on the incoming blasts. His clan was always focused on the weaponry side of things, so his defenses were online first.”
“All of the clans have specialities. I didn’t realize that it extended to their bot maintenance.”
“It does. The Padu are the least attentive, if it makes you worry less about the others.”
“I apologize on behalf of my clan.”
“You are already making amends. The nano machines are clearing the debris and using it for spot repairs.”
If Lido concentrated, she could actually see the invisible bots working on wiring and the muscle cables. The percentage to completion was ticking down, and the time was now less than six minutes.
“What are the names of the alien race attacking us?”
“I have never spoken to one of them.”
She wrinkled her nose. “Do you have access to the archives of the city?”
“I have never checked.”
Lido sighed. “Please check.”
She felt the signal go out toward the city, and it reached a barrier of grey static. “What is that?”
“The city. I can feel the block they have on my communications.”
“That isn’t right. If they aren’t open to communication, how did they even send the supplies? How did they send their congratulations as displayed on the screens?”
“That? That was a recording. It comes in with the shipment, and they play it on Burning Day. It is the way your folk have done things for the last fifty years.”
Lido was shocked. “I always thought that the message was live.”
“You were supposed to. It would have been demoralizing to spread it about that the city had cut off ties with Bot City. You were never supposed to realize that you had been left for dead.”
“What about the textile shipments?”
“They go out on schedule, and the train returns to the station. If they didn’t unload it, and the train would return full, the city would simply stop sending the shipments on Burning Day.”
Lido grimaced. “That makes me very angry.”
“It is just a statement of facts.”
“If they didn’t have the proper pilots, I wouldn’t even bother with them.”
Cio’s voice was amused. “It is a good thing that that is where the pilots are then.”
“Yeah, that makes me rather eager to get there for a chat.”
“They won’t tell you much.”
“It will be more than my own people have told me.”
“To be frank, you were not in a position to know. You are a gardener. What could this information possibly do for you?”
She muttered, “Horticulturalist, and I still have the right to be informed.”
“No, you don’t. Oh, my systems are set. You can stand me up.”
Lido grunted and set the positional match. Her limbs were matching the kneeling position of his, and when she looked up, the bright bursts of light from her defender filled her view. Myx was earning his keep.
“Prepare to go upright.” Lido straightened her back with the resistance of the huge weight scaled down but translated to her body.
“Interesting tactic. You will bring me up in a very stable position. Huh. That’s a new one. My last pilot liked to push the limits of my capabilities.”
“I just want to get us both out of here alive, so to speak.” She braced her hands on her thigh and dragged the rear leg forward until it pushed them both upright. It was a slow and torturous balancing act, but she got Cio to his feet, flexed her arms, and checked the status of the weapon systems. “Thank goodness for that, at least.”
“Your nervous system has allowed me to propagate the nanites quite efficiently. All systems are up and running.”
“Can I contact Myx?”
“Connection is made.”
She flexed her fingers. “Myx, this is Lido, piloting Cio. May I speak with your pilot?”
A familiar voice came through the com, “Hiya, Lido, this is Corbyn. How are Cio’s systems?”
“Up and running.”
“Great. Can you give me a hand with the incoming projectiles? They are thickening up.”
“I can try. This isn’t what I am used to.”
“Tell me about it. Together, we can block for Iff until he gets moving.”
Lido smiled. “Yeah, at least we know that Iff is well supplied.”
Corbyn snorted into the com. “There is that. Well, we can protect him. The rest of the revellers are in a bot or in the bunkers. We can do this.”
Lido started to move back toward Iff. His standing pose meant that he should have been moving already, but if his substitute pilot hadn’t gotten there straight away, he could be in for a few more minutes of recovery.
Iff was the domain of the administration, so whatever his systems contained, it was the best that Bot City could offer.
“Cio, contact Iff and see if his pilot is in position.”
There was a pause, and then, Cio answered with an amused tone, “His pilot is in position, but she is trying to negotiate access to her mind.”
Lido grinned. “I am going to lay odds on who is in that bot.”
“Her name is Nyvett.”
Lido cackled. “I am a winner.”
“I like to think so; you got stuck with me after all.”
Lido blinked. If she didn’t know better, she would think that Cio was flirting. That was impossible.
Chapter Six
Nyvett watched the burn with a calculated eye. Iff was a little slow off the trigger, but that could have been the clan member in charge of the signal.
When the burn was over and the canned message was replayed, Nyvett walked over to the edge of the platform and drew the lot with ten others.
“Open your hands.”
She turned her closed fist over, and the green stone was glowing in her palm.
“Well, that settles that.” She dropped the stone back in the bin where the whites had been drawn.
She nodded to her mother, aunts, and cousins before walking to the zipline platform and grabbing the bar.
She could see other refuelers heading for their bots, and she didn’t want to be the last. Nyvett jumped off the platform and slid away from the clashing parties and down to the relative silence of the metal ticking from heat exposure and the scent of burnt fuel.
The platform swayed slightly as she landed, and with the normal and precise motions she favoured, she set the station to refuel Iff.
The motion of the injection system was hypnotizing. It was like she wa
s watching a snake that could strike metal. The port that accepted the new offering was a tiny target, but the platform station struck it without fail, like the snakes in the deep desert.
When the fuelling was finished, she retracted the system, and the coils were returning to storage when the alarm sounded. “This is not a drill. Code Angur-dock. Get the bots to the city. We are under attack.”
She slid down the pole and was headed to Iff in under a minute. She pressed her palm to the reader and stated, “Override Norm-Iff-Beta. Permission to come aboard for pseudo pilot action.”
The secondary screen came around and required proof of identity. She pressed her fingers in, felt the sting and stepped inside the bot when the access door opened.
“Hello, Iff.”
“Nyvett. It has been a while. You haven’t been on standard rotation.” Iff’s rich tones were the same as they always were. It didn’t matter what the crisis was, he was calm.
She crossed her arms as the lift took her ever upward. “You know. Work. There is always more paperwork to do.”
“Indeed. It appears that I am being taken out of storage.”
Nyvett nodded toward the camera in the lift. “That is correct. All bots are being taken to the city for proper pilots to be installed.”
“So, how am I getting there?”
The lift stopped and the door opened. “I am going to drive you if you will give me some pointers.”
“That depends. What are you willing to offer me?”
Nyvett paused. “What?”
“I am the only bot supplied with the surface-to-air weaponry that can make a difference right now. What are you willing to offer me in exchange for my assistance targeting those missiles?”
She was stunned. “Are you blackmailing me?”
“I want a pilot. I don’t want to have to fight you for access to your nervous system the entire time.”
“My what?”
“For full access to my systems, I need full access to yours.”
“No.”
“Then I don’t go anywhere.”
She paused. “What?”
