Chapter Ten

Kiida stood next to the head administrator and her sibling. It had been a harrowing day, and now, Lameera watched the bots on the monitor. The pilots had struggled to get into position, but they had made it. The cheers underground in the bunkers made the entire facility shake.

“Have Morig get to Dif. I want a pilot in him at all times, scanning the skies and the desert around us,” she spoke over her shoulder.

“Morig isn’t capable. She’s pregnant.” Kiida murmured it quietly.

“Fine. Who is next on the roster? I want someone in Dif immediately.”

Kiida flicked her braid over her shoulder. “That would be me.”

Lameera whirled. “What?”

“I am the next on the roster. I will man Dif and defend the valley against incursion, madam. I am sure that Penelope will be able to manage my duties.” Kiida set her clipboard down and inclined her head. “Wish me well.”

“No.”

Kiida chuckled and patted her sister’s shoulder. “I will be fine. Dif is a gentleman, and we get along well. Do excuse me. I need to get to my post.”

Kiida didn’t look at her sister again. She walked out of the main com center and through the maze of tunnels fifty feet below the surface.

It took her thirty minutes to reach the legs buried in the valley floor. Dif was their bot of last resort, and he appeared to be nothing more than a wreck from above. That was a carefully cultivated plan to surprise anyone who came looking for bots. Bot City was not going to part with any one of their precious survivors.

The silver of his skin had been covered with matte grey to blend him in with the doors and walls of the tunnels.

Kiida moved the rock that hid the panel, and she pressed her palm to it for access. “Requesting pilot authorization.”

The secondary screen came up, took blood, and she gave it her name and clan. Otta was an assigned clan, not a birth clan, so it was her genes that let her step into Dif’s lift for a ride to his command deck.

“Hello, Dif.”

“Kiida, to what do I owe the pleasure?”

“We have been attacked and the other bots are making the run for official pilots. You are stuck with me.” She smiled and stepped into the dark confines of the command deck the moment he opened the doors.

“Am I still in concealment?”

“You are. Please route your viewers through the observatory and other long-range telescopes.”

“Very well. So, you are my pilot?”

As he was in decoy mode, he couldn’t run the power. so she used the manual release to bring the pilot’s cradle down. “I am.”

“Excellent. Do you have any good stories about the citizens of the valley? I confess, I wish more of them were prone to converse.”

She smiled and stepped into the footrests of the cradle, using her legs to push her into the back support of the metal. Kiida rested her arms on the graceful sweep of supports and she whispered, “Authorized full connection, minimal power.”

“You are serious?”

“I am. If they come, I will need access to your weapons and the potential for movement. It is vital that we be in sync for that.”

“I agree, but it is a painful process at this power level. I cannot make it quick.”

She settled into the cradle, letting it take her weight. “Take your time. I have a lot of tolerance for pain.”

He whispered, “Good, you will need it.”

The bands that tightened around her wrists were cool but not uncomfortable. It was when the band wrapped around her neck and the tendrils pushed into her skin with excruciating slowness that she understood completely.

At the tip of each probe, electricity crackled. The moment that contact was complete, her mind opened and she lived two hundred years in a matter of seconds, buried to the waist with only shadowed attendants working on her by night.

Dif had led a lonely existence, though he knew why it was necessary. That had been the information that kept him sane. He was the last defense for the valley, and so he remained slumped over, half buried with only the highest-ranking members of the Bot City society doing maintenance on him.

As she lived his life, he lived hers.

He was interested in her early years, and he spent time in her memories of her siblings. The idea of family had become peculiar in Bot City in the last fifty years. You learned of your siblings via blood typing and genetic scans.

Her memory of her sisters mixed with his memory of his brothers. He had mourned for each dead bot and deceased AI, but his feelings about the pilots were more conflicted. He blamed them for not taking care of their bots, but at the same time, the bots had died because of the death of the pilots. The pilot died and the bot went immobile, becoming a stationary target.

Kiida whispered a secret into his mind, and she had to fight to keep them dark when he learned about it. The AIs were not dead. Their units had been removed and were in socialized storage deep beneath their feet.

“How did I not know this?”

“You were not supposed to. We have been using our skills to make new housings for them.”

“New housings?”

“Bodies. They are building them bodies. Smaller versions of the attack bots and larger versions of the attack bots.” Kiida smiled. “I have seen the designs.”

“That’s... its... Thank you for that.”

“You are welcome. So, who do you want to know about first?”

“Tell me about the pilots. Are they good fighters?”

“Two are fighters, two are practical, and two are filled with empathy.”

“Have you met them all?”

“I have. We are only a society of a few thousand. I have met almost everybody in Bot City.”

“Who is your favourite of the pilots?”

Kiida smiled. “I don’t have one. They are all exceptional, even if they weren’t supposed to be there.”

“Tell me about that.”

Kiida chuckled and explained the desperation that administration felt when there wasn’t the selected person heading toward the bots. The lack of planning by one clan, the drunken exploits of another, and the gambling that led to a third, and the vomiting of a fourth. More than half of the current pilots should never have been in that place, but there was no way of knowing if someone else would have been a better choice, choice had been taken out of it.

Dif murmured softly. “Do you think they can defend this world?”

Kiida got the video feed of the skies above slowly filling with alien ships. “I think they are going to have to.”