She hesitated for half a second before scrambling in a crawl for the laser. Mala shot another arrow, trying and missing for the eye. Again, her arrow bounced away without doing much more than making the robot lean a bit to the side. Kiera grabbed the pistol and fumbled it into a firing grip. Both androids reached for weapons.
Mala tossed her bow aside onto the bed and dove at them, landing draped across their arms while screaming, “Get away from my daughter!”
They threw her to the floor with little effort and little care, but before they could recover their aim, Kiera clicked the trigger. The pistol emitted a faint buzz, and fire burst from the left android’s chest. She shot the other one in the head, setting off a geyser of sparks. That android staggered away from the house, spinning in circles while a thick stream of smoke sprayed from the front and back of its head.
She shot the other one twice more in the body. Flaming melt holes appeared at both ends of precise tunnels all the way through it. The robot went rigid like a mannequin and fell over backward, muttering, “System fault” repeatedly.
A handful of villagers outside gasped.
“She throws firelight from her hands,” said a man.
“The child is magic!” yelled a woman.
Teryn wheezed and rolled on his side, clutching his thigh.
“Dad?” yelled Kiera, still holding the gun in a two-handed firing grip pointed at the door.
“More are coming,” shouted a man outside.
The villagers scrambled to hide behind the waist-high wall surrounding the front yard.
“Grr!” Kiera rushed to the door, feeling like the commando from TCS, and aimed around the wall, copying the character’s motions.
“Get back!” shouted Mala.
Kiera sighted over the pistol at the path leading up from the village. Three androids came running out of the area by the water collector. She melted one down before any of them could react to being under fire. Her weapon’s trigger barely moved; it felt like the button of a mouse. With the three robots close together, she clicked off a dozen or more shots, sweeping her aim to the right and cutting them all down before they managed to shoot back.
Ambushing is overpowered.
Neeta, Abel, Juan, and Paoma, four adults from the village, gawked at her from their positions crouched behind the wall. Neeta, Osc’s mother, started to bow worshipfully at her.
“It’s not magic.” Kiera held up the pistol. “It’s a gun. Anyone can pick it up and do the same thing.” She pointed. “Look. All the robots dropped ones just like it.”
Abel leapt to his feet and ran to the house, taking one while Teryn retrieved the other.
“Kiera!” Mala ran up and grabbed her. “That was foolish! They could’ve shot you!”
She frowned. “They were going to shoot me anyway. And their AI is stupid. They didn’t take cover or anything.”
“What?” asked Teryn, Mala, and Abel all at once.
Kiera clung to her mother. “Forget it. What do we do now?”
“I will take a firelight machine to protect the village.” Juan leapt the wall and ran down the road to the fallen robots.
“Hide them,” yelled Teryn. “If the metal men find us with firelight…”
“Yes.” Neeta crept up to one of the dead robots, pointing. “What of the broken metal men?”
“Bring them to Norven.” Mala cradled Kiera’s head to her chest, holding her tight.
Teryn nodded. “Yes. He will know how to get rid of them without trouble. We will hide ourselves for a time, but will return.”
Paoma, a fortyish woman with Chinese features, approached. “I shall watch over your home, despite the curse.”
“It’s not cursed,” muttered Kiera. “Dad plays with dangerous things.”
Teryn laughed.
Other villagers collected around the three downed robots at the base of the path connecting home to the middle of Exxo. Juan, a pistol in hand, jogged back up, smiling. He trotted over to Kiera and took a knee. Almost twenty, he still had a bit of excited little boy in his eyes.
“How does it work?” asked Juan. “You command it to make the firelight. Please show me.”
Kiera explained the sights and the trigger.
“This is the safety.” Pet glided over and projected a red laser pointer on a button near the trigger. “If you push that down, the weapon will not fire. It is a precaution to stop accidents.”
“Yeah, I know what a safety is.” Kiera pushed it. The background of the power screen went from red to green.
“They do not.” Pet wobbled, a gesture Kiera had come to interpret as a smile.
Teryn grasped her shoulder and guided her into the house. “We do not have time. We must move before others come close enough to see us.”
“Yes, Dad.” Kiera hurried inside.
Mala recovered her bow while Teryn threw the rest of their food stores in a satchel and hoisted it up over his shoulder. Kiera filled a bunch of plastic bottles with water from the pitcher, which she packed in another, smaller satchel.
Soon, Teryn headed out the back door, leading them past the scrapyard, heading in a rapid limp toward the woods. Mala gazed at her garden as they passed it, emitting a soft sigh.
Kiera trudged along, gazing at the half-trailer-half-scrap metal pile of junk that felt like home. Watching it grow distant, not knowing if she’d ever come back, punched her in the gut with a giant guilt fist. She hurried a few steps forward and took Mala’s hand. “I’m sorry for making you leave.”
“You didn’t make us leave. The Administrator did.” Mala scowled.
Teryn’s voice came strained from the effort it took him to walk. “We will return. A few days, perhaps weeks, they will stop looking for you here.”
“It will take days for more robots to arrive,” said Pet. “Unless they drive. There are few vehicles, and robots do not tire, so they are more often sent on foot.”
“There’s not too many places to go,” said Teryn. “Gral Tribe in the east are well-defended, but their swords and armor won’t hold up to the metal men. We cannot go north or northeast for the New Dominion.”
“Slavers,” muttered Kiera, squeezing her pistol. “What do you say to a slaver? Bam! Laser to the face!”
Teryn gestured to his right. “Norz Tribe lives close to the Citadel. It would be foolish to go there, and the Sand Striders could be anywhere in the refuge except New Dominion territory, though they favor the south.”
“Their village moves?” asked Kiera.
“They don’t have a village.” Mala held her hands apart to indicate something huge. “They live in long tubes that crawl over the desert. Giant rods at the front where twenty people have to pull to make it go.”
“Long tubes?” asked Kiera. “Wait… does it look like the Passage?”
Mala shook her head. “No. The Passage has seeing plates on the side. The Sand Striders’ homes are all metal. Only holes cut in to see out.”
Kiera pictured semi-truck trailers converted into hand-pulled wagons, like the bandit’s cart, only with something much bigger than an aluminum pole and set of bike handlebars at the front.
They walked deeper into the woods, as best she could tell, heading to the northwest. Among the trees, the heat grew heavier due to the lack of wind. Shade somewhat made up for it, but the still air made the world into a sauna. Kiera flapped her dress at her chest, adoring how the thinner fabric could ‘breathe.’ Even though the poncho had open sides, the leather-and-fur mix was much hotter than whatever material the dress had been made from.
She cringed now and then whenever her feet found a rock or burr, and mostly stared at the ground to avoid stepping on ouch for the better part of the next few hours until they reached the end of the forest. Powdery silt-desert spanned as far as she could see in all directions except behind, where the oasis of trees grew more and more distant. The cushiony ground held far more heat than the woodland mulch, but had no surprising stones or uncomfortable bits to step on.
Mala gasped, pointing up. “Teryn… look! We are blessed.”
“What? Oh… there…” He stared.
“Hmm?” Kiera looked up and found her mother gazing into the sky. A huge, bell-shaped shadow glided overhead up in the clouds, past the top of the habitable dome of air. It gave off a faint but constant growling whirr. Two bright spots near the front had the appearance of flickering eyes in an otherwise shadowy apparition. “Whoa….”
“A Sky Spirit,” said Teryn, his voice low with reverence.
Kiera squinted at it. The shadow banked to the left, reminding her of a slow airplane. A flying-wing type like that stealth bomber they always had on the news. “It’s a plane.”
“What?” Teryn glanced at her for a second before turning his attention back to the clouds.
“A plane. A machine that flies.” Kiera watched it drift the other way. “It’s turning back and forth. Those spots aren’t eyes, they’re lights… or….”
“Sensor arrays,” said Pet. “You’re right. It is an aircraft, but not a plane. It’s a drone.”
“Oh.” Kiera raised her arms to the side and let them flap against her body. “Right. They have robot cops, so of course they’d have robot planes.”
Mala eyed the cube. “They’re not spirits?”
“Apparently not,” muttered Kiera.
“What you are seeing is not a spirit. Merely a machine,” said Pet. “They’ve been up there for years, never landing. Solar panels and electric fans keep them airborne with no need to come down.”
“Mom…” Kiera grinned and hugged her. “Remember your book, with the tech stuff about the machines you wanted to fix?”
“Yes.” Mala squinted against a momentary gust. “You are saying it is like that?”
“Same thing.” Kiera kicked her big toe into the silt. “I don’t know if there are or aren’t Sky Spirits, but that thing above us right now isn’t one of them.”
“Testing the air and measuring toxin levels.” Pet orbited Kiera’s head. “They work on automatic, linked to the main computer network of the citadels. Think of them as the processor’s eyes.”
Teryn tensed. “Will it see us?”
“No. Forgive me for not explaining in a way you would understand.” Pet wobbled (smiled) again. “It smells and tastes the air to tell the cleaning machine how it’s doing. The administrator cannot interfere with them. Some parts of the system are restricted even to him.”
“Like the big button?” asked Kiera.
“Correct.” Pet bobbed in midair, simulating a nod. “But even if he had access, he would not activate it.”
“He likes his power too much.” Mala shook her head. “Is that what this is about? He thinks our daughter is a threat?”
Kiera glanced at her. She keeps calling me ‘our daughter’ instead of Kiera. Grinning, she squeezed her mother’s hand.
“If he did not consider her dangerous, why send robots to Exxo?” Teryn slowed to a stop. “My leg. I must rest.”
“That man has often done things that even our elders cannot explain.” Mala spun in a slow circle. “I see no threats.”
Kiera wandered off a few paces to pee. After, she stared into the distance, careful not to look behind her, until certain that her parents had finished doing the same. She hurried back to where her father sat and flopped on the silt beside him, leaning against his shoulder. They drank, sharing one water bottle among them. Kiera gazed into the direction they’d been traveling, noticing a darkening of the haze not too far ahead.
“Is that where we’re going?”
Teryn put an arm around her. “Yes. There is little else of interest in that ruin. The buildings have been peeled to the bones by the wind, but my refuge is under the ground.”
“I’m really sorry for getting in trouble. I didn’t know it would do that. I’m… I love you guys.” She smiled up at them.
Mala beamed. “I have wanted a daughter since I was not much older than you are now. You are precious to me.”
“You make your mother happy and you give an old man hope.” Teryn winked. “And, once you get a little older, you’ll bring in a fat dowry.”
Kiera gawked at him. When he snickered, she poked him in the side and yelled, “Butt!”
“Don’t tease her like that.” Mala threw a handful of silt at him, laughing.
“You’re not old… well for a dad. Bio-Dad was forty something. He had some grey hairs.” Kiera fidgeted with her dress and dug her toes into the dirt. I can’t remember what he looked like.
“At your age, I’d call me old.” Teryn grinned.
She leaned her head back, squinting at him. “Twenty-seven?”
“Almost.” He winked. “Thirty-two.”
Kiera poked his bare ribs again. “Must be that clean paleo lifestyle.”
Both of her parents stared in confusion.
“I don’t think they understood your joke,” said Pet.
“Come, we should be moving.” Teryn groaned and got to his feet.
They walked toward the ruin for a little less than an hour, all the while Kiera explained about paleo diets, vegans, calories, and how everyone used to be obsessed with staying thin. A mixed sense of longing and disgust swirled around her head. All that food people wasted… “We used to look at menus of so much different food and always complain we couldn’t decide what to eat. Now… having food at all is….”
“Don’t worry.” Mala hugged her. “We manage.”
Teryn guided them down a path between concrete monoliths. Where buildings once stood, only spires remained, some with the telltale cutouts of window shapes, but no one who didn’t understand what a skyscraper was would recognize them. He kept gazing around at the structures until spotting something that caught his interest and making an abrupt turn to the left. A short distance later, he came to a stop and crouched, brushing at the ground to expose a manhole cover.
“Here.”
It’s a sewer… She scrunched up her nose. No one’s pooped in it for almost a century. Maybe it won’t smell.
Teryn took a crowbar from his satchel and worked the manhole cover up. Mala descended first. He waved for Kiera to go next. She edged up to the hole and peered down a concrete pipe with a narrow metal ladder.
“Umm….”
“It’s safe,” said Mala from below.
Kiera took a deep breath, squatted, and stepped down. Teryn held her steady until she got her balance. He attached a rope to the big satchel of provisions, and lowered it in after her.
Mala’s hands grasped her sides when she neared the bottom. Pet glided down and around, its ion emitter giving off a lantern’s amount of light. A section of old sewer tunnel had been ‘furnished’ with a number of rugs and pillows, and a few plastic crates serving as shelves. Teryn kept another compound bow stashed here, as well as some arrows, and several gallon-bottles of water. He’d even added a fire pit with a flue patched into a pipe coming out of the ceiling. The tunnel kept going in both directions, too dark to see.
Fortunately, it didn’t stink.
Kiera reached up to catch the satchel when it came into view and guided it to the ground.
“Your friend is quite the help,” said Mala. “We do not need to waste candles.”
Grunting, Teryn dragged the manhole cover closed before descending the ladder. Mala rushed to help him. He hopped to the side and fell seated on the bank of pillows and carpet, clutching his thigh. Pet hung in space, acting like a lamp, its engine giving off a wavering, cyan light that made the space ghostly, and Kiera’s skin blue.
She wrapped her arms around herself, close to shivering. “Wow… this place… Do you spend a lot of time here?”
“I found it while scavenging. Slept here a night. Forgot my flashlight. Came back in a couple of months, flashlight was still here, so I figured it a safe place. Been building it up little by little in case the bandits ever came back in large numbers and we had to flee Exxo.”
Kiera hurried to sit between her parents. Worry raised her voice wi
th a hint of squeak. “Bandits?”
He palmed the back of her head and pulled her into a hug. “They haven’t been around in a long time… longer ago than you’ve been alive.”
I doubt that. She curled up. If there are Sky Spirits, please don’t let bandits kidnap me again!
“You’re shaking,” said Teryn. “Are you cold or frightened?”
Kiera bit her lip, shifting her eyes up to meet his gaze. “Is ‘yes’ an answer?”
“Do not worry about bandits.” Mala rubbed her back. “They fear the Citadel.”
“Is the Citadel good or bad? You keep talking about it like they’re cruel, but also like they’re keeping us all alive.”
Teryn chuckled. “It’s not good or bad. It is.”
“Both good and bad.” Mala combed Kiera’s hair with her fingers in slow, soothing strokes. “Because we need a thing does not mean that thing cannot harm us.”
Kiera nodded. “Like ice cream. Too much will hurt.”
“What?” asked Teryn.
“Diabeetus,” said Kiera, making her voice low in an attempt to sound like a man.
Mala and Teryn exchanged a glance.
“I believe you’ve confused them again.” Pet wobbled.
“Okay.” Kiera forgot about being afraid of bandits, and put on a teacher-lecture voice, pointing one finger skyward. “I shall explain the greatest creation of all humankind: ice cream.”
25
Ten Thousand Souls
Kiera slept with her parents in a pile that night, huddled for warmth under a thick blanket that smelled of wet dog. The ‘bathroom’ turned out to be about twenty yards deeper in where a drop off separated the upper section from a longer stretch of sewer half-full of water. The surface rippled about four feet down from the top of the ledge. A ladder offered a way down, so as Teryn put it, “you can either perch at the top or go swimming.”
Kiera did not like his answer to, “Where are the books?”
“Jump in the water and use your left hand,” sounded even worse when the inevitable need occurred a few hours later.
The unwanted bath in a damp underground tunnel had frozen her to the core. Even putting her dress back on once she’d dried off didn’t warm her up much. Worse, the disgust of using her bare hand to wipe kept her constantly looking for something to scrub it with. No amount of ‘looks clean’ chased away her nausea.
Citadel: The Concordant Sequence Page 24