Chapter Eight

 

 

Duel kept looking at the sky while the others around her concentrated on the bots. All of the observers were gone now, it was just metal and dust. Waves of heat were still coming off the valley floor, and those rippling waves blurred the sky above.

The stars in the sky were different. There were new bright beacons in the dark swath above them, and for Duel, that was a concern.

The last report of new stars in the sky had occurred before the attacks two centuries earlier. Duel thought about all the histories she had read during her time watching over the dead. This wasn’t good.

“This isn’t good, Kab. The night has a weird feel about it.”

When the fuelling equipment was stowed, she looked back at the observation decks. It was while she was looking back at the clans that she heard the first impact and the alarm sounded.

“Oh, no. Not good.”

The warning sirens started, and a blast of sound came through the com out and over the valley. “This is not a drill. Code Angur-dock. Get the bots to the city. We are under attack.”

“Damn, damn, damn.” Duel made sure that the fuel system was sealed and lowered back into the safety of the granite shielding.

Once she was sure that everything was tidy, she looked at Kab as she grabbed the pole. “Ready or not, you are getting company.”

She held onto the steel and slid to the ground, sprinting over to the bot access panel and going through the segments of protocol until her blood had been taken and the bot was inviting her inside.

“Hello, Kab.”

“Duel, my favourite engineer. What brings you inside my workings today?”

She wrinkled her nose. “The pilot protocol. We are under attack; we need to get you guys to the city.”

“Well then, come to the command deck and we will begin.”

The lift was the same snug fit as it always had been. Duel closed her eyes and imagined the schematic of the bot as she was pulled through one of his systems after another. It was a relief to pass the power plant and get into the chest where the insulating design of the reinforced shielding would keep the radiation from being a problem at close range.

The valley floor was littered with pieces of bots that were still giving off a radioactive signature. The elders joked that it was what kept the citizens of Bot City healthy and strong.

Duel couldn’t say either way, but in her estimation, they might be right. The most likely means of death for a citizen of the Bot City was a fall from equipment in their twelfth decade. Based on the histories that she had read, that was a definite increase in life span from the human standard.

When the lift opened, she stepped out and stretched. “No offense, Kab, but that is a snug fit.”

“It was created for the first pilots.”

She grinned. “I suppose that men are just shorter.”

“They can be. The engineers of Bot City are simply statuesque.”

Duel laughed. “That is one way of putting it.”

She wandered over to the command consoles and examined the details she had always been too busy to view before.

“This is amazing. It is hard to believe that humans put this together centuries ago.”

Kab chuckled. “It is. Now, I believe we are under an alert?”

She blinked. “Oh. Right. I forgot where we were.”

Duel walked over to the pilot’s area, and the cradle lowered itself from the ceiling. There were wires, cables and a few probes attached to it, but most came from below and were not visible once the cradle was settled into place.

“Right. So, standard pilot authorization, right?” Duel looked at the wires and clamps.

“Do you want access to my weapons systems?”

She wrinkled her nose. “Probably.”

“I will need full access to your mind and body for a seamless connection.”

She looked at the cradle and the probes near the neck. “Right. My own fault for being the one on fuelling duty, I guess.”

Duel sighed and climbed into the cradle. “I, Duel Aka, grant full access to Kab. Mind and body.”

“Thank you.”

She fought to keep her breathing even as the clamps locked around her limbs to bind her body to the harness. When she moved from now on, he would move.

Duel was lashed tight to him and her head was held immobile as the probes entered her neck. The view of his history was just beginning to unfold when a bolt of energy ran through them.

Duel screamed and lay there in the dark. “What was that?”

Lights slowly began to flick on in the darkness. Kab’s voice came out of the shadows. “There was a projectile impact into the fuelling station next to Len. It has shorted out my access to the nanite systems, and we are effectively grounded.”

She blinked and tears started to course down her cheeks. “You are grounded. I am paralyzed.”

“Take it easy. Your vitals are strong, and the other bots are not going to leave without us.”

“You are very sure of that.”

He chuckled again. “Of course, I am. Not only are we a team, but we are one unit. We all have a speciality, and mine is knowledge.”

“Knowledge?”

“Yes, we all have access to the same information, but we were each given details that the others lacked. When one of our members fell, I gained their detailed knowledge. I know what the incoming army wants, and how badly they want to get it.”

“I would look around suspiciously but that would probably kill me. So, instead of what the aliens want, tell me about why the humans came out to Hera.”

“That is an interesting story.”

“Well, we have nothing but time.”

Kab agreed. “Excellent point. Well, the Terrans looked up to the sky one day and found something that hadn’t been there before. There was a hole between the stars, and within those stars were planets that could support human life. After some probes confirmed the information, a stream of colony vessels were created out of the orbital colonies that existed in clusters around the planet. The newest tech mixed with the old and they became the ships that headed out into the rift in space.”

“Wow. That is new information.”

Kab’s voice was amused. “I told you I was smart. Now, the first ships entered the rift and disappeared. It was believed that they were approaching Gaia, but we don’t have any reference points for it.”

“Wait, there were other planets? Other colonies?”

“At least four. Gaia, Hera, Athena, and Hestia. They were named after goddesses of hearth, home, prosperity, and family.”

“Goddesses? They were religious?”

“Goddesses of antiquity. I have some of the mythology available if you want to hear about that.”

“That would be interesting, but what happened after the Heran ships went through the rift.”

“A celestial storm tossed the ships but put them down on Hera, as if it could read their destination via their systems.”

“That is interesting.”

“Isn’t it? The assumption was that the Athena and Hestia projects had the same fate on their world. Instead of the planets being close together, it appears that they were actually located in other solar systems. Something folded in space and then opened it once they had passed through.”

Duel smiled. “Thanks, by the way, this is helping.”

“Excellent. So, upon landing on Hera, your ancestors began to create a city that was self-sufficient and a base for further explorations of their new world. The ships were scavenged for parts as needed and the seeds of the human species were planted.”

“How many were there?”

“Seventeen thousand humans landed with a majority being engineers and horticulturalists. There were other focuses dotted throughout, but their focus was to build and grow.”

“So, there was a kernel of a society for Bot City.”

“Correct.”

Duel sighed and asked a question she hadn’t thought she could ever ask. “Why are we all girls?”

“Population control. All the genetic material that was sent to the valley was female so that a rival city could not be established in a competition for resources.”

“Well, hell. I thought that girls were just better engineers.”

“That is very likely true, but when the bots came to rest in the valley, the city didn’t want to chance any disgruntled inhabitants of Bot City forming an army and coming to claim their more comfortable living.”

“What happened next?”

“Genetic material was gained from the pilots, and after it was filtered, it was sent to the valley to begin building a support population for Hera’s greatest asset.”

“The bots.”

“Correct.”

Duel smiled slightly. “You are not really the AI from one of the ships.”

“Why would you say that?”

“You are way too amused and free with human information. So, what are you?”

Kab remained silent. “There are bots on either side of us. I believe that they are going to solve the power problem.”

Duel was going to ask another question, but power arced through her, and she screamed as the backed-up data ran into her mind and fire scorched her from the nerves out.

 

She opened her eyes slowly and checked her connection to Kab. He really did have centuries’ worth of information in his mind and not all of it was human.

She opened her mind and the com systems. “That really sucked.”

The croak was enough to get her point across, and she heard chuckles of relief throughout the gathered bots. The six mobile bots were finally up and running, and Duel knew why they needed Kab. He was the communications hub. Through him, they could speak freely and quickly as if they were all in the same space.

The bot that had been the deepest in the valley was the key to all the actions and reactions of the group. He facilitated it all.

“This is Duel piloting Kab. Reporting for duty.”