This story is in early Alpha.
by that, I mean that this is a first draft. It isn't finished and there are some heavy edits that have to happen. I have a lot of them marked out (change this scene, delete these lines, make this better. That sort of stuff.) but I have a lot more to find. If you want to help me out send any suggestions or edits to me here.
Thanks and have fun!
"Hold up. I see one. Due South"
The Flatbed shuddered and slowed. The armature securing one of the rear wheels hummed to life. The entire assembly twitched and stuttered slightly as if stretching out stiffness after a long sleep. The wheel swung down in a long slow motion, pressing smoothly into the dry earth. Thin swirls of prairie dust coughed from behind the wheel as the flatbed drifted to a halt.
"Damn float plate again." Khary's voice drifted up from the cab "Where. I don't see it."
Jan leaned over the metal frame from her perch behind the cab, stretching so that Khary could see her hand through his side window. She gestured out toward a tuft of waving brome grass. It took a moment for her to realize that Khary hadn't seen her hand at all and was squinting through his glasses at a small row of spindly trees.
Jan slipped the strap of her binoculars over her head and held them down close to the cab window.
"These might help."
"Thanks" Khary reached out and plucked the binoculars from Jan's hand without even looking at them. "So, where?"
"Straight south just beside that grass. The one with the yellowing patch on the left.
Khary slid the faded olive cap from his head and rubbed at the receding islands of tight dark curls on his scalp. He squinted hard and pivoted the binoculars up to his eyes.
"It's left or our left?"
"Our left." Jan screwed up her face knowing that she was fully out of Khary's line of sight. "Grass doesn't have a 'left'"
"I know. I was joking. It's fine I see it. Good eye. Almost perfect camouflage." Khary mumbled the last part more to himself than to Jan, reverence and mild excitement creeping into his voice. Jan grinned.
"Wait, they can't change color can they?" Jan blurted.
"What?"
"The Armours, they can't change color to camouflage can they?"
Khary continued to stare through the binoculars, transfixed. It was a long beat before he answered.
"No. No I don't think so."
"So how can it be camouflaged then? Did it just pick that spot to deplete?"
Khary made a couple of twitchy movements with his head like he was trying to track something moving very fast through the binoculars. He lingered a bit facing, near as Jan could tell, off toward those trees. He made a weak noise in his throat and nodded to himself before lowering the binoculars.
Jan listened to strips of loose canvas flap gently with the warm breeze. The canopy to her perch had a few small holes worn through it. She had never bothered to pull out the scope and check the weave, but it had to be something less durable than the spiraled carbon and spun alloy that most of the flatbed was woven from. Either that or it had been in use far longer than she or Khary knew. A minor curiosity, but not something she planned to examine further with a downed Armour in her line of sight.
"Okay." Khary broke the extended silence. "Are you holding on? Oh wait. Take these."
Khary offered the binoculars up to Jan without taking his eyes off of the Armour. Jan took them and sat down into the perch bench, taking hold of a canopy post.
"Okay, ready."
Jan felt the float plates kick in beneath her and the flatbed started forward. The outrigger wheel dragged along the ground causing vibrations to work their way through the frame. In a few moments the last float plate kicked in and the wheel lifted and stowed itself tight against the side of the vehicle. Jan leaned back against the bench and looked up at the canopy. As the flatbed picked up speed, thin strands of canvas beat out a rhythm against the taught sheet. Maybe when they got back to town, Jan thought, she would have a weaver or fabricator take a look at it. The posts and extension drives could use some cleaning as well. Out here, with a few lonely trees and thin islands of green to comb the wind, fine dust got into everything.
"Hey," Jan yelled down to cab, "where are we going?Aren't we gonna pick up the Armour?"
"We'll come back for it. There's something I want to check out."
"We should put up a flag or set some markers so that we can find it again."
"It'll be fine. That guy ain't going nowhere. We should be back before nightfall."
The radio crackled on and the resonators attached to Jan's perch screeched out shrill static. This was Kharys way of saying the conversation was over. The static hiss cut in and out as Khary searched the spectrum for a signal strong enough to lock onto.
Some drum heavy music faded in. It was fronted by that long rectangular string instrument that Jan could never remember the name of. Radio signals floating in from somewhere to the south most likely. That faded out and was replaced by several seconds of shifting static until an arhytmic choral tune cut in. She wasn't familiar with that style of music and couldn't even speculate what town might have created it. Not something you could dance to though.
As soon as Jan heard it she knew that this is what they would be listening to for the next while. This particular sort of fiddle music was something that Jan liked well enough when she was drunkenly dancing with northern townie boys but Khary never seemed to tire of it.
Jan sunk back into her bench and watched light beams dance through the small holes in the canopy. Some sort of hand drum came in to back up the fiddle. Strong signal, no field. That fact at least was relaxing. She could see clear out to the horizon, not that that meant anything. No field though meant that the next few kilometers of driving should be safe.
She tapped her foot along to the beat of the hand drum and slid a little down the bench to keep out of the path of that sunbeam.
Jan woke to Khary tapping her gently on the shoulder.
"Whatsorrywhat?"
Jan had meant to say where are we or what's going on or sorry I fell asleep when I should have been doing my job as lookout. All of that came out as "whatsorrywhat" through lots of blinking and attempting to lick the dryness from her mouth.
Khary replied by lifting his hand to his lips in a silencing gesture and intently directing her with his eyes to look down range.
Khary leaned close to her ear and whispered "Don't move too quick. Don't be too loud. Should be okay."
Should be okay. Jan rolled the word 'should' over in her head while her eyes attempted to focus.
When Jan had first come ashore and joined up as apprentice to Khary on the flatbed, she started a count of the Armours they had retrieved. She began by scratching a small line into the post supporting her canopy. She could have written it down on the small field notebook she carried, or she could just look through the logbook that Khary kept meticulously filled out. It only took a few days for the post to heal itself, vanishing any trace of the marks. The weave was so tight and precise that Jan had mistaken it for real metal. She should have known better. That sort of thing was only ever really found in town, and even then, only in the oldest structures. Certainly not part of the construction of a cart or flatbed. Vehicles built quickly to be malleable and modular. Vehicles designed to be recycled or remade.
The post would repair itself until it couldn't and then it would be replaced with a new one. Maybe even one rewoven from the same fibers.
The first six or seven Armours she retrieved went unrecorded by her makeshift notation. After that Jan discovered that she could use the back edge of the seaming tool. She normally used it to patch the tires if they impacted a particularly sharp rock. Flipping it over she could drag a thin mark in the weave. It would, Khary explained, untangle the fibers along the surface, slightly relaxing their grip on one another. If you never laid the flat of the tool against that mark to heal it, the indent would remain. As the weave attempted to heal itself, it left a faint scar slightly offset from the rest of the surface. Woven material is tough and resilient, but everything has limits.
The post had forty three marks etched into it, all of them grouped into a tight space near the bottom. Jan had split them into groups based on the type of Armour and where they might originate. They accounted for a sizable chunk of all known Armours. It occurred to her now, she had never made a single mark for an active Armour. She had not seen one. She would never say it out loud of course, but she always wanted to. What other reason would anyone want to be on a retrieval crew, except to see an active Armour with their own eyes.
'Should' continued to ring in her ears as she watched the thing move.
The post had forty three marks on it. Jan had split them into groups based on the type of Armour and where they might originate. She had never made a single mark for an active Armour.
For the first few moments she couldn't quite get her eyes to cooperate. She thought that they hadn't recovered from sleeping and tried to squint away the fatigue. Still the dark shape she saw in the distance swam around the edges. That's when she noticed the geese. Dozens, a hundred even, grey and white mounds dotted the field in front of her. Each one a sharply focused outline against the golding grass. Most of the geese were lying still on the ground but others were preening or milling about on spindly orange legs. Not one of them seemed the slightest bit perturbed by the monster in their midst.
Jan wanted to ask Khary how they had gotten so close without disturbing any of the birds, but she didn't dare breathe heavily let alon speak. She couldn't see his eyes below the brim of his hat, but Khary hadn't so much as twitched. If he was concerened, he wasn't about to share that with her.
She tried again to focus on the Armour. Looking at it felt slippery. Like streak of oil smeared through the air. It was difficult to tell how close was. How large it was. Whether it was moving or not. All at once it was massive and intimidating and intangible and slight. Like the shadow of a terrible thing.
For several long slow breaths they both watched. The geese dozed and milled about. Jan saw one of them nearer to the flatbed lift its head and spread open its bill. It made a motion several times as if to honk but Jan heard nothing. It was then that she realized that she hadn't heard a single noise, save the light whisper of a breeze through the grass, since Khary had woken her. Not one goose honk. Not the crackle of radio static. Not the hum of the float plates.
She could feel a panic rising, steady and hot. Her pulse trobbed up her throat and into her ears. The sound of it overhwelming the uncanny silence. Before she could stop herself she heard the words croak out of her, almost inaudible.
"We are inside the field"
Kharys eyes snapped back but he barely turned his head toward her. Slowly he replied bewteen his teeth.
"Wouldn't be able to see it otherwise. Stay still so she don't think of us as a threat."
Jan gulped back any followup questions and stared straight ahead. Right at that liquid smear in the air. That word 'Should' rolled around in her mind.
She sensed Khary flinch slightly. In front of her the swimming shape snapped suddenly into sharp focus. The movement was so abrupt that it left an afterimage. The Armour had been standing but now it was crouching. Jan saw both. The effect was jarring and frightening.
***
***
By the time Khary returned from the pond Jan had deployed the shelter from the boxes flanking the side of the flatbed. She enjoyed the solitary business of opening hatches and telescoping support posts. Stepping back and looking at the structure gave her a sense of accomplishment, even if most of the smart weave skin was self assembling.
"Can you open the lid for me?" Khary asked, not breaking his stride toward the water purifier hanging off the right side of the flatbed cab.
"Sure"
Jan lifted the sheet metal lid and watched Khary pour a bucket full of truly disgusting sludge into the purifier. Sticks, leaves, and a pair of water beetles settled on the filter screen. Jan lifted the screen and shook the debris out onto a patch of browning grass before putting it back and dropping the lid.
Khary tossed the filthy bucket back into the metal hook welded to the side of the flatbed. He stretched out his shoulders started speaking mid yawn "If you want to have a shower, you'll have to go get the water yourself."
"Yeah, I think I'll wait till we get back to town." She wrinkled her nose, only a little revolted by the thought of all of the things living in that stagnant water.
"Water comes out of the purifier is clean. Clean enough for drinking should be clean enough for washing."
"We'll be back in town tomorrow if nothing else comes up. I think I can wait." Jan offered flatly.
"Fine. Doesn't bother me one way or another." Khary sniffed, rubbed his hand across his jaw and, after a beat, wandered off to retrieve the cooking pot.
All they had left in the dry storage were some mixed beans and lentils. The stabilizer held a few apples that had been picked fresh and two ears of corn. Khary measured out the beans and selected the larger of the two cobs. Jan fished the seasoning mix from the cab and handed it to Khary. He could have stowed it in the dry storage, but he insisted that the seasoning ride up front with him so that he always knew where it was. She could hear his common refrain in her head that 'if it weren't for the seasoning, he might as well not eat'.
Jan removed her boots outside the shelter flopped down cross legged on the woven floor. She felt it tighten and shift beneath her. In seconds it went from being a microns thin barrier between her butt and the hard ground, to a raised surface with a bit of nice cushioning. She didn't have to sit on the floor to activate it, but she liked to.
She watched Khary combine the meager ingredients to the pot of newly filtered pond water, one hand continuously stirring while the other added just the right amount of seasoning. Both of Khary's hands seemed to operate on their own while he stared into the distance.
"So." Jan cracked the silence between them with a practiced bluntness. "You just gonna to be a detached grump all day, or do you want to talk about it."
Khary seemed to take notice of his hands, the pot, the bean soup, but stopped short of actually looking in Jan's direction. He let out a long weathered sigh and continued to stare out at the horizon.
"Kid, you ever wonder why we do this?"
"I figured that was your department. I just work here."
Khary turned and offered a soft chuckle.
"I remember thinking that. I remember saying that. Sure of what I wasn't sure of. Now I'm not even sure of that."
"Okay. Don't really know what that means." Jan said, standing and stepping into her boots.
Khary turned back to the pot and continued to stir the thickening soup. As she approached Jan could smell the seasoning starting to kick in. It really could make anything better.
"Were you scared today?"
Jan squinted at Khary's back like this was the dumbest thing she had ever heard. It wasn't, but she stood by the look all the same.
"Well yeah. Did you see how it moved? And there had to be a hundred geese in that flock. They barely got of the ground."
Khary nodded, his cap bobbing up and down over the soup.
"I was scared too. Scared me damn near senseless the first time I ever saw one active. I've been scared every time I've seen one, active or otherwise, since. But I still do this. Everyday. Like doing it. Strange don't ya think?"
As Jan came up alongside him, pulling bowls, spoons, and a ladle from a compartment in the flatbed, she narrowed her eyes in mock suspicion, studying his profile.
"You having a moment there, old timer?"
Khary's slight grin broadened to a full smile.
"I'm not that old." He paused to breath in the scented steam. "Figure this is about ready though. There ya go, I'm not old, just appropriately seasoned."
Jan collapsed her shoulders miming deflation and pulled a sour face. She passed the ladle to Khary and held up both bowls to be filled, which he did, generously.
The two of them sat and ate in a pleasant silence. They spoke when they needed to, but mostly they didn't. The sun dropped below the soft low hills in the distance. An effervescent sea of stars filled the sky and still they stayed silent. As they headed off to their own small rooms in the shelter to sleep Khary uttered something very quietly that Jan pretended not to hear.
"I think maybe they are scared too."
***
Jan tried to keep her eyes on the fallen armour, but it was difficult to see over the cab. It wouldn't have moved. They never do when they hit the dirt like that. "Depleted" was the word Khary used. It was the word he had learned as an apprentice and the word she would be expected to pass down to her apprentice. Armours were "Active", "Inactive", or "Depleted". Not "Alive". Never "Dead". Talk like that just wasn't appropriate.
Khary drifted the flatbed to a gentle stop a few meters away from the depleted Armour.
"Get the winch ready. Let's see what we got." Khary called up from the cab.
Jan could see from here that this Armour was most likely Concordian, or a Uniune decoy made to appear Concordian. It was easily over a century old, judging by the wear at the joints. The protective plating abraded to a dull smooth finish. In the time she had been riding with Khary they had recovered 43 just like it. They had spotted 4 active Concordian units and stayed well out of their range just be safe. All of those had moved at a slow plod. Khary had called out most of them from the cab before Jan had seen them, despite her riding in the lookout perch and clinging tightly to the binoculars. He knew exactly what type of Armour they were looking at, but he always said 'Let's see what we got'. Probably another phrase that he had inherited from his mentor and was now passing down to her. She had already adopted so many of his verbal tics and mannerisms, but 'Let's see what we got.' seemed like a quaint affection she could skip. Jan suppressed the urge to roll her eyes.
Khary hopped down from the cab, and removed his cap. The original olive green dye still hung on at the seams, but the rest had faded to beige. He ran his hand across patches of tight black curls, islands of hair in an ocean of deep brown scalp. Jan figured that Khary hoped to one day discover handfuls of thick wavy mane up there, but today wasn't the day. He would most likely search again in an hour or so. Until then, he slapped the cap back on and tugged it into place.
Jan had unlocked the winch and replaced the standard clip with the older Concordian forked hook configuration. She jumped down from the side of the flatbed and joined Khary in quizzically assessing the depleted Armour.
Khary shot Jan a sidelong glance. He was clearly considering something, but he hadn't let her in on what it was yet. He looked back at the Armour and pulled out his pocket radio.
"Really? I didn't notice any change in the field riding out." Jan said, and cocked her head in a dubious posture."Still weak enough to pull in signals from Rose Lake. It was fiddle music all the way out here."
Khary ignored her and slid his finger across the flat rectangle. Static, different static, and then a jaunty toe tapper.
"See. Depleted. There is no field here." Jan said flatly.
Khary nodded slowly, not at all convinced. "You go feet. I'll go head"
For all the confident 'depleted' talk, Jan still took a wide, slow path to take up her position at the Armours feet. Khary went toward the head hauling the winch line with him.
The Armour was face down in the dirt, arms and legs splayed but relaxed, like it had laid down to rest ages ago and just never got back up. That probably wasn't far from the truth. Armours were sturdy, but nothing is made to last forever.
Other than being depleted, Jan could see nothing unusual about this Armour. About 3 meters tall, probably 250 kilograms clad head to toe in smooth chitinous plates of meticulously woven filament and engineered fungus. Impacts, heat, cold, radiation, judging by the healed over scars this unit had experienced them all and shrugged them off. The one force it couldn't withstand was time.
"Keep clear of that arm weapon." Khary chided in that parental tone of his. He kept his voice low, but clear, like he was presiding over a casting. Jan felt it was an unnecessary affectation. They could scream, or sing, or laugh. She was pretty sure the Armour wouldn't be offended.
Jan looked over to where the Armours right forearm lay pointing back toward its feet. The launch tubes were empty and the rail was wide open. A tuft of grass was growing through the heat exchange vents. This Armour hadn't created any ammunition or fired that weapon in years.
"Uh yeah. I think it's good"
"Are you talking or listening."
Khary stared back at her. It was the 'take this serious' look. Jan nodded and acquiesced but couldn't hold back a small grin.
"Weapon appears depleted. Staying off axis."
"Good. Okay. So, what have we got?"
Jan made a show of looking the Armour over. Tipping her head and squinting slightly.
"Concordian medium ranger. Fifth gen, maybe?"
Khary gathered the winch line into a loop in his free hand. "Yep, but it's probably a fourth gen with a modification to the back plate for carrying equipment. We'll be able to tell for sure when we flip it over. The sternum is different on-"
Jan heard what sounded like firewood being split and almost at the same instant the weapon spinning down. Small flakes of shredded grass hung in the midday air. Khary still stood across from her looking like a question had just occurred to him and he desperately wanted to ask it. The Armour had both of its arms raised above its head, but nothing else seemed to have moved.
Khary wobbled slightly and looked down. His right leg, from knee to foot, stood perfectly upright like a post driven into the earth. The rest of him did not.
The next instant she was running. She didn't remember deciding to run, but she was already halfway up the Armours back, landing her left foot deftly along its spine plating. Her next step landed on the back of its neck and she felt her foot lose traction. The Armour remained as unperturbed as a stone. Dark fluid had arced up from somewhere splashing across the Armour's shoulder. Jan barely registered it as she crashed down, rolling over until her face was inches from Khary's.
His lips were twisted up in a grimace, gathering the strength to scream or cry out in pain.
Instead, he glared straight back at Jan and grunted out "Stupid!. Damn Stupid!".
Jan wrestled with her tongue trying to get any words out at all. Eventually she croaked out "Are you-"
Khary cut her off. "No. I'm not okay. Look at my damn leg! Hook the winch up! Put us both on the flatbed."
"We'll go back to town. We can be there before sundown." Jan blurted. "The medic, or the monks can help."
Khary grabbed her around the back of her neck and pulled her closer.
"No, Here's what your gonna do. Wrap that winch line around my leg. Hook it up to the armour and put us both on the flatbed. Then you take us to Eliza or Ahmed."
"But we can get to Ashbank. They have-"
"Are you talking, or are you listening?" The bite had left Khary's voice, and his breathing had grown shallow. He squinted into the bright sun and managed slight grin.
Jan Looked down at Khary's leg. She had seen it already, but the image didn't register as real. Now she took it in.
In less than an eyeblink the Armour had reached forward and clamped the long claw-like digits of its hand just above Khary's right ankle. Fibula and tibia shattered to shards and grit instantly. His leg bent awkwardly below the knee. Bits of bone had torn through his coveralls staining them dark and wet.
The weapon of the Armours other arm had aimed and fired, but there was nothing left in it to launch, save dust and blades of unfortunate grass.
Jan snatched up the winch line and looped it just above Khary's knee, leaving enough slack to hook the forks between the Armours shoulder blades.
She looked over at Khary before bolting for the flatbed. He nodded grim approval of her work. She went for the switch that would reel them in.
"Wait!" Khary raised his head up slightly and pulled his cap down snug. "Just a second."
He took a moment to take one deep breath and release it slowly. "Okay. Okay. Do it."
Jan winced as she pressed the switch as if the pain were her own.
Khary didn't cry out. He didn't scream in agony or delirium. He chuckled. A light bouncing of the breath as if he had just thought of a subtle joke. The line pulled taught and Khary and the Armour both were dragged toward the flatbed. The vehicle bowed automatically to receive them forcing it's single metal wheel out to the side.
The winch steadily reeled in the line and soon Khary slid up beside Jan. She stopped the motor for a moment to cradle Khary's head and shoulders lifting him up over the short lip of the flatbed. Tears were streaming down his weathered cheeks. He laughed between choked sobs.
"It doesn't even hurt Jan. I don't feel anything. I just noticed. I don't feel anything. Take me to the Armourer, okay? Take me to the Armourer, Jan. You listening?"
"Yeah. I'm listening." Jan was surprised by the tears running down her own cheeks. "Yeah."
Jan searched the radio dial until she found fiddle music. She left it on all the way to Riverbend.
Chapter 2
Under the shady side of her favorite rock, a plump brown rabbit twitched slightly. She had been nearly asleep when something tickled at her senses. Eyes snapped fully open and ears perked, she searched for the source. A coyote? No. A faint buzz, coming closer. Faint, but alien.
Glassy dark eyes, now hyper alert, scanned the ground in front of her. The same scrub grass, the same low bushes. Nothing in her world had changed. Everything was in its proper place, but the buzzing grew louder.
She backed more tightly into the protective arch of her rock and sat impossibly still. A vast deep shadow flowed over the arid soil toward her. The shadow approached, washing up and across her hiding spot, slipping away without incident. The buzz faded, and everything returned to normal.
A great bulk of metal and glass and carbon had drifted past, unseen on the other side of the rock. The soft electric hum barely audible below a light summer breeze. The mammoth object floated over a small hill down toward a river valley leaving no trace of its passing. The rabbit relaxed and her eyelids sagged a few times before closing fully in an afternoon snooze.
Inside the huge object, bundles of braided cord swung with the changing angle of the hillside. They slid off one another producing a sound like beach sand rolled in a breeze. Bits of clothing dangling from wire hangers brushed against one another. The electric hum of float plates permeated every bit of the structure, but still, those tones were almost imperceptible. A deep, grating, arrhythmic growl rose above it all.
Kee lay awake staring at the ceiling. His eyes drifted over to the gently swaying blackout curtains covering the single window in his quarters. Nope. Not getting back to sleep. At least not with Eliza's snores radiating through the metal plate separating them.
Kee swung his legs over the edge of his bunk and quickly snatched his feet back. The cold metal floor bit at his bare feet. The float plate cooling system ran right under his tiny room. Even in late summer the floor was continually frigid. Maybe he could pick up a rug in the next town. Nothing fancy, just a simple mat to make getting out of bed easier. He tossed on a loose shirt before gingerly placing his feet back down into his slippers. The cold had gotten to them too, but he was thankful for the small buffer from the cold.
It had been 3:30 am when they had finally closed up the large workshop door and pulled up the feeder tendrils, allowing the cart to drift off to its next location. What time was it now? Just after noon. Late, but this was a travel day. It wasn't like they had any work to do. Nothing that couldn't wait for a bit.
Kee pulled the bottoms of his coveralls up over his legs without taking off his slippers. Tricky, but preferable to touching the chill of the floor again.
Kee parted the tattered strips of cloth that were supposed to be his door. They emitted the usual weak bleat that signified that he was not authorized to open this particular door before flapping aside feebly. If the door worked like it was supposed to the strips would adhere to one another creating a sound, insect, and person resistant barrier. As far as he knew, the door had never worked. Maybe that was something else he could look for in the next town, a working door, a repair manual for this one, or, if he was very lucky, a weaver who knew how to fix it. Maybe he could even get it coded to recognize him. The small degree of privacy that a working door could provide seemed almost decadent.
Kee stretched the sleep out of his shoulders and back, before crossing the tiny galley, reflexively tapping the coffee maker start button on his way to the toilet.
Finally ready to start the day and it was already half over.
He plucked his mug from the hook on the wall and filled it with coffee, snatched an apple from the stabilizer and ambled through the narrow hall leading to the workshop. He stepped out of his slippers and into his boots but left them untied. Eliza would leave half eaten food on the counter and unwashed clothes snaking their way down the stairs, but she would tear a strip off you if work boots breached the borders between the workshop, the hallway, and the living quarters. Likewise if you walked into the shop with bare feet or slippers. You had the two meters of disputed territory in the hallway to deal with your boot situation. On or off, in or out, but you had better make up your mind. She was still sleeping, but Kee could hear her voice in his ears telling him to "at least tuck in those laces". Kee ignored her and shuffled his way into the shop. Small rebellions, small victories.
Kee did the customary scan of the shop to make sure nothing had shifted while they were traveling. The auto-drive usually kept things pretty level, but once in a while hammers would slide off their hooks or one of the back cabinets would open. He hadn't heard anything, but he had been so beat tired that hammers could have fallen in his room and he might not have twitched. One bundle of spare nano fibers was loose and rubbing gently against the window, but that was all. Kee quickly tucked it back into the shelf and secured it so that it would stay put. A small thing, but Eliza liked things to be in their place. Well, things in the shop anyway.
Kee plopped down, leaned back in the more heavily patched of the two chairs, and sat there for the next hour or so sipping coffee and watching the prairie landscape roll past through gaps in the louvered windows.
"Why didn't you wake me?"
Eliza leaned against the metal frame that joined the hall to the workshop. Kee hadn't heard her approach and was so startled he tipped his mug into his lap. Thankfully he had emptied it ages ago and had just been holding it out of habit. Liz carried her own mug, full of coffee, cradled lovingly. She hadn't bothered to put on boots, so she wasn't planning on actually entering the shop. The question seemed to be directed as much to her cup as it was to Kee. Her dark eyes, fixed on the drink, never drifted up to meet Kee's.
"I thought you might want to sleep a little late. The-"
Eliza snorted her contempt and cut him off. "We have to test that lift before we set up? Do you want to be under it when it goes? Pneumatics keep bleeding."
Seeing that she wasn't looking at him, Kee rolled his eyes. The pressure had been holding steady for at least three weeks. Since the last time she got him to tune it up, in fact. He was certain that it would hold just fine, but couldn't avoid glancing over at the raised slab supported by three skeletal pillars, if only for a second. He let his held breath out through his nose and shrugged a small resignation.
"And don't put your boots on the workbenches."
"Good morning, Liz." Kee called after her, and swung his legs back down heavily to the floor. Eliza was already across the hall and heading for the stairs leading up to her room. He could hear her grunted reply echo back to him through the metal structure of the cart.
The cart drifted to a gentle stop beside a loose grouping of trees. Several birds perched in the branches above kept watch over the smoothly moving object, but none took flight. The faint burble of float plate coolant peaked slightly as the bulk of the cart began lowering itself down onto a thinly grassed clearing. Thousands of tiny machines built into the base of the cart engaged themselves in one final effort before sighing contentment and falling completely silent.
It would be easy to mistake this cart as a permanent feature of the town. It would be similarly easy to mistake the other dozen or so carts that had rolled in earlier that day, for a market, built and tended by locals.
Most of the carts had unfurled awnings for shade and reconfigured huge sections of wall plates into welcoming ramps with footpaths linking to neighboring carts. The drab corrugated metal exteriors that covered them when they rolled into town had been replaced by brightly colored and inviting decor unique to each vendor. Everyone knew that it was just an enticing application of the carts active camouflage systems, but no one seemed to care. Under all the beautiful graphic designs of big eyed, wide smiling, fresh fruit and vegetables, lay the same flat grey metal. Beneath the convincing illusion of worn wooden walkways and fences, standard mimetic plate.
By contrast, the Armourers cart remained a dull patchwork of muted earthy tones on plates bolted, welded, and woven to one another. Emblazoned on the single functioning active plate was the Uniune emblem lightly embossed from its surface. A stylized shield with two mythical creatures, one serpentine one winged, holding a sword between them. The mimetic plate was an older model and it took a constant flow of energy to maintain the image. Wasteful, but official.
Unseen networks of thin tendrils reached from the bottom of the cart, worming their way into the earth below. Each fine fiber searching for a particular resource. Some went for power and nutrients, others sought out fresh water and waste disposal tendrils already waiting in the ground. In seconds the cart had attached itself to the web of conduits buried under the town. Only then did the onboard engines wind themselves down in a sort of mechanical yawn.
The entire west facing end workshop peeled out and away from the rest of the cart. Unfiltered sunlight streamed in causing Kee to squint and turn his face. He reached up and placed his needles on the workbench before shuffling out from under the lift. Liz had examined and repaired micro-fractures in two of the legs using only her bare fingertips in the same time it took Kee to give the third leg a once over with the needles. None of the fractures would have caused the lift to fail, and the pneumatics were holding pressure, but Liz wanted them all checked thoroughly regardless.
"All done?" Eliza asked standing silhouetted in the the doorway. Kee had to wait a beat for his eyes to adjust before answering.
"Yeah. Sealed two fractures and tagged an abrasion with a marker thread. Should go red if it spreads or splits. This thing's tight enough to hold in a bee fart."
Eliza pivoted smoothly and stomped down the newly assembled ramp. "Good. Tidy up and get your notepad. You're handling triage today."
Kee put away the needles and wiped down the bench top before following Eliza down the ramp. She was already deep in conversation with the constable diligently marking down salient points in her own notebook. Liz and the constable nodded in unison, a theatrical display of grim professionalism. Kee paused in the doorway and rolled his eyes.
The air outside was warmer than he had expected. Dry, intense, and oppressive. He quickly reached back into the workshop to switch on the air curtain and extend the awning that would keep the workshop a temperature a little more balanced. They were tied into the towns network of tendrils now so luxury systems like the air curtain weren't pulling from the carts own batteries. One of the many reasons that Kee preferred towns to working on the road.
"You know my schedule Yousuf. You might have to hold on to some of them."
"Liz, I'm asking for two extra days. Maybe one. I don't want a whole quonset full of depleted Armours sitting here until you or Ahmed can make it back. People are twitchy enough that so many are coming in"
Kee Strolled up to them as casually as he could. Constable Yousuf was staring intently off into the distance, or more specifically he was actively not staring at Eliza. Eliza kept her eyes on her notes, mouth thin and tight. Kee felt his heart quicken reflexively in the silence.
"How's it going?" Kee ventured, as he glanced back and forth between them and then caught himself. "Good afternoon constable."
Yousuf turned and blinked. The concern on his face melted into a wide bright smile. He rolled the stiffness out of his spine and he offered a wide flat palm to Kee. Kee returned the gesture and pressed his own, much smaller hand against Yousuf's.
"Good afternoon, Kee. It's going well. We were just going over the returns. There were a lot this past season. Twenty one. Seven in the last two weeks." Yousuf offered the news in his usual affable booming voice. The only times Kee had ever seen the constable tense or irritated, was when he was talking with Eliza. It was probably not a coincidence that the only time he had ever heard the constable laugh openly was when he was with Eliza as well.
"That's quite a few." Kee glanced over at Eliza, Attempting to ask with his tone and expression if that was even possible. She was busy working something out in her notebook and didn't respond.
"Fifteen. Maybe seventeen if there aren't too many joint replacements." Eliza said, finally looking up from her work. She bypassed Kee and looked sharply at Yousuf. "And no, we can't give you extra days."
"Liz you can't leave us with five Armours sitting around. People need to use that building." Yousuf pleaded.
"Five?" Liz sneered at Yousuf. "You said you had twenty one."
Kee watched the large man turn his head sheepishly and twist the toe of his boot in the dirt. "There is one more coming in from out near the border. We got a signal from them just before you arrived. Should be here in a day or two."
"Just one? A recovery rig is coming back in with just one Armour?"
"They only signaled one. We weren't able to actually talk to them."Eliza sighed heavily and looked back down at her notes. "Sounds like you will have five Armours 'sitting around' then?" She snapped her chin up and and, hands full, used it too point to something behind them. "Looks like you're busy right now."
Eliza turned and marched briskly back up the ramp into the workshop while Kee and Yousuf both turned to look behind them. Sydney, the elder monk, was marching toward them looking tiny among the knot of merchants and townies surrounding her. Her head cocked to one side, nodding reverently, making an obvious show of intently listening to an older cart owners concerns. Sydney was always in control, always dedicated to helping, always ready to accept the burdens of her people. Kee couldn't stand her.
Yousuf opened his mouth to speak, decided against it, and offered a weak grin to Kee. Kee raised his eyebrows a little and returned a conciliatory gesture.
Yousuf looked down at his hands for a long moment before slowly speaking. "How mad do you think she is at me?"
Kee was caught slightly off guard. He liked Yousuf well enough. He even felt friendly toward Yousuf. At least as friendly as he could feel toward someone he only saw during their short stays in town. Kee felt like he knew Liz, and maybe by extension he knew Yousuf, but he didn't really feel comfortable offering the man relationship advice. Then again, maybe Yousuf wasn't asking for advice.
"I think she knows that you didn't bring the Armours here." Kee's own voice sounded weird in his head. He knew what he was saying was true, but saying it felt false. He spoke his next words one at a time as if selecting them from a list. "You should probably talk to her after she has been working for a while."
Yousuf smiled down at his hands and then looked Kee in the eye and nodded slowly. He started to reach up and it looked like he was about to pat Kee on the shoulder, but he seemed to change his mind and let his hand fall again.
"I understand you are on triage? Good, that's good. Well, you had better get to work then. They are in Liam's quonset down past the broadcast tower" Yousuf pointed down a dirt and gravel road lined with low hanging willow trees.
"The one beside your office? I know the place."
"Yes That one. Stop by the Constables office on the way and tell my apprentice, that you need to get in to see the Armours. All the keys and paperwork are there too."
Kee blinked. "Carlo?" The name had caught slightly in his throat.
"Yeah." Yousuf said with a broad genuine grin. "We'll get you sorted out. I have a few things I need to handle here" He flicked his eyes discretely in the direction of Sydney and her gathered mob.
Recognizing that he had just been politely rescued, Kee nodded deferentially and turn to walk down the road in the direction of the broadcast tower.
The constables office was a rough wooden building. Real wood, not just mimetic plate tuned to look like wood. Layers of faded paint couldn't hide the grain and knots. Real wood meant that this might be one of the oldest buildings in all of Riverbend. Something from before the war. It was squarish and barely longer on a side than Kee was tall. It seemed far two small for two people to work in. Yousuf, or one of his predecessors, had reinforced it at the corners with metal weave and support threads, but kept as much of the original wood untouched as possible. Kee noticed the metal weave straight off, but he respected the attempt to blend it in with the natural surface grooves and undulations of the wood grain. He paused briefly in reverence to quality work, imagining the graceful dance of fingers directing filaments through structure of the wood. He completed his jog up the ramp to the door, looking over his own fingers as he flexed and twisted them imagining the care he would need to take to replicate the work.
Kee Rapped his knuckles on the solid wood beside the prominent metal Uniune emblem fixed to the door. The dull but pleasantly resonant thunk made him want to keep knocking, so he did.
As Kee was about to deliver the fifth knock, the door swung wide open. The face that replaced it caught Kee off guard. Wide dark eyes and an incredulous quirked smile. Young, about Kee's age, and strikingly handsome. He wore the the pale grey uniform of a cadet. Kee stood still for a moment, hand hanging in mid knock.
"We have a proximity detector on the door. You don't need to keep hitting it."
"I. Um. huh. yeah. It sounded… nice?" Kee turned his stumbling statement into a question and attempted to recover by pulling his hand down from the air and extending it. "Sorry. I'm Kee. Keegan Fitch Apprentice Armourer to Eliza Quon"
The handsome young man considered Kee curiously for a moment before clasping his hand and returning the greeting. "Yes, I know. Carlo Hassan, Apprentice to Constable Yousuf Grange. "
They looked each other over for a long moment before Kee realized that he had been shaking Carlo's hand for slightly longer than was really necessary. He wasn't sure how much shaking was appropriate for this particular ritual, but this seemed excessive.
"Well that was official" Carlo said, a grin pulling at the corner of his mouth.
"Says the guy in full uniform" Kee retorted reflexively.
Carlo's grin faltered slightly as he released Kee's hand and stuffed his own into the front pockets of his tunic. Kee thought that the uniform looked particularly flattering on Carlo, all sleek lines and fitted at the collar and cuffs. He only ever saw Yousuf wearing looser and lighter fabrics, with small, subtle Uniune logos woven in at the lapels. He couldn't remember when the last time he saw a full uniform, but he thought that was probably because it didn't lend itself to doing real work.
"I suppose you are here for the collection reports. Follow me. I think we can sort you out." Carlo said, before spinning on his heel and heading into the Constables office.
Kee considered for a moment that he might have insulted the apprentice constable. He ran a thousand other comments though his mind that would have been more diplomatic, but none of them seemed to fit the moment so he remained silent and followed behind.
The inside of the Constables office was not what Kee had expected. From the outside, he had thought that it must be some tiny little field office with a desk or workbench built into a wall to save space. He had been trying to imagine how broad chested Yousuf, and the more slender but not much shorter Carlo could even fill out reports without banging elbows.
There was a tiny field desk along the far wall like Kee had expected. It was built of the same rough wood as the exterior ,worn smooth and dark from years of steady use, but it sat behind a rope laced through small metal eyelets screwed into the walls. The rope was old plant fiber weave, and near to crumbling from age. Along the two walls framing the desk rows of narrow shelves climbed all the way to the offices peaked ceiling. They were covered with an array of tarnished metal cans and glass jars with faded labels. Kee could only discern the contents of a few of the cans, but they all seemed to be disinfectants and cleaning supplies. Powdered hand soaps, dry shampoo, now empty glass bottles with isopropanol and accelerated hydrogen peroxide printed on them. Each shelf had it's own thin rope pinned in front of it with more metal eyelets.
Directly inside the door was a small landing and a metal weave staircase leading down. The staircase was much newer than the rest of the building, but still a much older style than Kee was used to. Some of the finer weave on the handrails reminded him of Concordian reinforcement mesh in Armours designed to support heavy loads. He had never seen one, but Eliza had told him of Armours that had weapon mounts at the shoulder blades and clavicle that could easily support their entire cart. Long after the wood in the structure above gone to powder, this staircase would still be here.
"I probably don't need to tell you, but please don't touch anything." Carlo stated, without turning around. Carlo casually descended the stairs and Kee followed swiveling his head to head to take in as much of the office as he could.
"Wha..." Kee started the question, but then realized he didn't actually know what question he wanted to ask.
Carlo finished the thought for him. "What is all this? It's a sort of museum from before the war. I've asked Yousuf who set it up like this, with the ropes and such, but he doesn't know. He says the constable he apprenticed under didn't know either. The stairs were put in during the war, that I'm sure you already figured out for yourself, but the rooms down here were already built. They were likely dug out and built first and the wooden shack was constructed above it. Don't worry though, it's all been upgraded with reinforcement and stabilizer weaves so even if all the original pillars rotted out down here, the ceiling would hold."
Carlo looked up at Kee over his shoulder, that grin returning to the corner of his mouth. "We like to say that it was built to withstand an attack, but never had too. I have the collection reports over here on my desk."
Kee followed Carlo as they passed below the ground level and into a well lit grey room, at least twice as large as the Armourers cart. At the foot of the stairs was smooth grey floor stretching out from meters in all directions. Two large metal desks sat facing each other, a comically large span of empty room between them. On one wall was an enormous map of the entire town. The network of service tendrils snaking out to each building or cart were illuminated and pulsing, representing what they carried and how much of it they were carrying. Water, power, filament, waste, all twisted around each other in an organized mesh. Kee could see where the Armourers cart stood, off to the side of the market circle, and set back from the main path. Tendrils of green and blue and gold flowed in and out of the cart on the map. Seeing it from above like this, it was obvious how set apart from the rest of the market his cart was. How different it was. Kee felt himself wince involuntarily, even as the rational part of his mind described to him all the reasons why people might want some space between themselves and an Armourers cart.
"Here you are. Kee, is it?"
Kee hadn't heard Carlo slide up behind him and turned slightly startled. Carlo just stood there offering the reports, grin fixed on his lips. Kee could see that same curiosity flicker briefly in Carlo's eyes.
"Thank you. Yes. Kee is fine." Kee gathered up the reports and began leafing through them. "Is the shed unlocked? I should head over there and get started."
"No, we keep it secured but I have a key. I'll go over and help you. Yousuf insisted on it in fact. There are a few things that aren't in the reports that you will probably want some help with."
Chapter 3
Carlo took a thin rectangle of metal from his pocket and pressed it to a featureless plate sealing the large shed door. Fibers of the plate unwove themselves, disentangling at a microscopic level, until a clear seam appeared between the door and the frame. Carlo pried his fingertips in to the gap and heaved at the door. The shed was easily large enough to fit a cart or two. The door towered over them, but it had a slide mechanism that made it possible, if not entirely easy, to push aside. Slowly Carlo worked the opening until it was wide enough for them to enter.
"We like to keep them in here since its out of the way. Stays quiet and dry here too. But we do need it back. Collingwood uses this building to store perishables." Carlo gestured to the dark interior of the shed. "After you."
Kee wasn't sure how much to promise this young apprentice Constable opted to go with noncommittal "We'll do our best. We always do."
Kee stepped through the door way onto a solid flat slab. The floor of this building was poured concrete, not connected plate. If there were any connections here to the town mesh they would have to be hooked up the old fashioned way along the outside walls. It was a newer building than the Constables office, but not by much. Kee felt strange walking on surfaces that were this old. This fragile. Every step he took wore away a thin layer of dust that even Eliza wouldn't be able to weave back together. Eventually dust would be the only thing left.
"You store things here? You all have a weird way of keeping museums?"
"Sometimes the old stuff works best. Don't worry we know how to take care of this place. Well Collingwood and her people do at the very least."
Kee paused for a moment, letting his eyes adjust to the low light. From outside in the afternoon sun it seemed like the interior of the shed was perfectly black, but now that he was inside he could see that there were hundreds, maybe thousands of small, pale points of light scattered up the walls and across the curved ceiling high overhead. Thermal lights. Carlo stepped into the building behind him and the lights brightened enough to clearly see the back wall of the shed. The light gradually increased, feeding off the miniscule change in temperature the two of them added to the building.
In the center of the single large room sat a few dozen stacked crates assembled from standard plate currently mimicking wooden slats. Kee assumed that they had been tuned to act as stabilizers. A well maintained stabilizer could keep fruit fresh for weeks, grains dry for months, and water free from parasites and other microorganisms for years. Storing them in a cool dry location made some sense too. If the stabilizer had less work to do you wouldn't have to recharge them quite as often.
As the light rose enough to touch the outer walls Kee could finally see the Armours. More than he had ever seen in one place before. Most of them were dangling from lifts attached to the walls. Long metal hooks looped through attachment points along their backs and shoulders. This kept them up off the floor, but it was probably also a precaution just in case one of them wasn't depleted or inactive. Kee raised an eyebrow at that. Those hooks wouldn't hold a light scout more than a few seconds if it decided to walk out of here. The heavies wouldn't even use the door, they would simply wrench themselves down and walk through the shed walls. Stranger though were what looked like four Armours laid out on the ground limbs intertwined.
"I'm guessing that was what isn't in the report." Kee said, pointing toward the entangled Armours.
Carlo replied in a hushed whisper "Yeah. Yeah. That's them. They came in like that."
Kee stopped for a moment and took in a deep breath. He had to calm and center himself. Liz had impressed upon him that all of their work carried a certain solemn reverence. Respect was owed to these wretched monsters. Respect and a healthy amount of caution.
"Has anyone tried to get them apart?"
"No. Yousuf wanted to wait until Eliza could give her assessment." Carlo cocked an eyebrow. "Honestly, I'm not sure if we even could. Come look at this."
Carlo crouched down near the head of the closest Armour keeping a careful distance. He pinched the metal rectangle between his thumb and forefinger for a few short seconds until a dull glow emanated from the end facing him. He shot Kee a feeble smile and spun the rectangle around so that the increasing glow illuminated the Armours left arm. Kee came around and crouched down next to Carlo.
The arm of a Concordian medium lay across the shoulder of a Uniune counterpart. If the arm weren't heavily plated ending in a dangerously serrated claw bristling with an array of grasping and manipulating appendages, the gesture might have looked casual. Tender. Kee leaned in to look closer. Where the chitinous plates contacted each other they had fused. Near what would be a wrist and rising up the forearm the two Armours had flowed together, swirled like stirred liquid. Kee peered at the blend imagining the tangle of microscopic filaments unfurled and knotted back together. Micro weave and engineered fungus wrapped around one another like climbing vines on lattice. Eliza could probably differentiate the ends of individual threads, where one Armour ended and the other began. Even if she could she might need the needles to disentangle them.
Carlo leaned in, his face so close that Kee could feel the soft warmth of his breath as he spoke.
"Ever seen that before?"
"Never."
Kee was sitting at the small kitchen table in the Armourers cart sipping on coffee and picking at a coconut bun when Eliza descended the stairs.
He looked up from breakfast and nodded to the master Armourer.
"You're up early. "
"I was going to say the same. Where did you get the bun?"
Kee pointed to the stabilizer. "They were half price. End of day stock over at the bakers cart. Got there as he was cleaning up. Five left."
Eliza pulled one of the buns from the stabilizer and filled her own coffee mug before sliding onto the bench seat beside Kee. She took a beat to luxuriate in a particularly wide yawn before sipping gingerly from her steaming cup. A sly grin flickered at the corner of her mouth.
"Out late?"
Kee crunched up his face in mock offence. "Not really. Why? Did you and Yousuf have a bet going."
"I didn't say anything. If you want to hear Yousuf's insinuations you can ask him." Eliza said raising her hands in a show of over exaggerated innocence.
"Carlo helped me load Armours onto the flatbed so I offered to buy him a drink in town. That's all. We just talked and walked around a bit."
"That's all?"
"Yes, that's all?"
Eliza sunk into her seat slightly and picked at her bun. "Well. That's disappointing."
"It's the truth." Kee shook his head a little bewildered. "What? What makes you think I would tell you anyway? I could be lying."
"No. I know you aren't lying. You're a terrible liar." Eliza took a long drink of coffee before grinning again. "Just means I lost the bet."
Kee rolled his eyes and slumped back against the smooth white seat cushion.
"So he helped you load up? How many are outside now?"
"We moved six. Took two trips. Carlo mostly ran the winch and moved some boxes around. I don't think he was very keen on touching them."
Eliza nodded in agreement staring into her coffee. They both knew townies could be a bit skittish.
"There is something odd that you should see though."
"Work can wait until after I finished this bun I think."
"Yeah."
The hum of the carts cooling plates fluctuated slightly as the system switched from night to day cycle. Distantly the workshop began powering up with a soft rise in pitch.
For a moment they both sat and nibbled at thier breakfast enjoying a comfortable, practiced silence.
"I never see Yousuf wearing a uniform?" Kee tossed out casually.
Eliza turned slowly and studied her apprentice curiosity plane on her face.
"You're kidding."
Kee failed to keep from looking sheepish. A slight blush glowed his cheeks not completely hidden by his dark complexion.
Eliza broke into a wide wolfish smile. "He was wearing the uniform?"
"Maybe." Kee turned his eyes up to glance at the ceiling, the stairs, the bun, anywhere but at Eliza.
"And all you did was talk and walk around. hmm?"
There was a muffled shuffling from Eliza's quarters. The shuffling separated into distinct footsteps that grew steadily louder until Kee saw Yousuf descending the stairs.
"Good morning!" Yousuf's voice echoed around the cart drowning out the regular hum. "What are we talking about today."
Without a moments pause Eliza pointed to the pastry in her hand and blurted "Coconut buns!".
Kee picked up the sentence as Eliza stuffed a large bite into her mouth. "Got them on sale at the end of the day. They're good."
"Excellent." Yousuf Pulled two buns from the stabilizer and pointed toward the coffee machine. "Is the tea dispenser still not working on this unit?"
"Fixed it myself just before we got here. It's filled with mint and Oolong, but I didn't have time to get anything else."
"Thank you Kee, Oolong sounds fantastic."
Yousuf poured some tea into the remaining mug and sat with a heavy grace across from the Armourers. He beamed at them both with a wide toothy smile. "Seems like it's going to be an excellent day!"
The melodic hum of a bowed string instrument flowed from the radio and resonated in the metal frame of the workshop. Eliza liked to have the radio on while she worked, and as long as it wasn't distracting she made it clear that she wasn't particular about the style of music. Today, Kee suspected, the signal he tuned in had to have been relayed off at least two towers. It drifted in from one of the towns well south of Riverbend. Somewhere that still favoured this more folksy style of music. Like always, there was nothing else that identified the source of the signal. A person could always take a rig or a cart out and sniff the radio waves back to their source but that wasn't anything Kee felt like doing. He liked to dial through the dozen or so available signals picturing where they might emanate from by they music they played. Depending on the Armourers schedule, any one of these might be a town they would drift though in a few months.
Eliza sat on her wheeled chair hunched over the workbench humming idly along with the melody.
"Kee, could you hand me the needles. My set." Eliza didn't look up from the two Armours splayed across the bench. Kee had to lift the extensions into place earlier to fit both of them on there. Heavy plated arms and legs still draped off of the edges and onto the floor.
The workshop had already been fairly cramped, but now the only path from one end to the other was so tight that Kee had to press his back against the wall and shuffle sideways to navigate it. He lightly shoved a clawed hand out of the way with the toe of his boot. He could see Eliza wrinkle her nose slightly at the sound of it scraping against the metal floor.
The claw itself was a smooth and mottled material, tightly constructed and seashell hard. It was the array of spindly grasping manipulators that grew out of the shell around the hand that had brushed against the floor leaving long shiny scratch marks. Typically when an Armour came in, all of those bristles were held tight to the plates. This Armour, the one with it's forearm fused to the shoulder of another, had apparently gone inactive with all of these barbed fingers extended. Kee took special care to avoid them as he inched his way past.
"That's a bet I win." Kee called out over his shoulder. He slid open the second drawer of Eliza's tool chest and retrieved the leather bag containing her needles from the back. Just slightly longer than Kee's own hand and only a few centimeters across, the worn edges where the leather was bound together told stories of years of careful use.
"Hows that?"
"I was talking with Carlo about how you would probably need the needles for this job."
"He thought I would need the needles?"
"Well no. I didn't really bet him. I just said I thought you would need the needles. You know... I mean, it's tough right. Like, have you ever seen that before?" Kee had made his way around the heads of the Armours to hand the small pouch to the Master Armourer. She stared back at him, but where he had expected cold affront in her eyes he saw quiet concern.
"Never." She said flat and plain.
"I'm sorry Liz, I didn't mean-"
She breathed out a heavy sigh. "Kee, come here. Sit down." She breathed in a heavy sigh.
Kee set the leather bag down in one of the few clear spaces on the workbench then wheeled his chair from the back of the shop and maneuvered it Through the narrow space to sit beside Eliza.
"Put your hands here and here" Eliza directed Kee to place one hand on either side of the place where the Armours were fused. "I'm going to hand you the thread and you are going to unwind it. No needles. After that I will show you why we use them."
Kee's hands trembled slightly. He had done small freehand weaves on panels that were threatening to fall off the cart, but nothing delicate. Nothing that mattered. He had even been allowed to finish and close up Armour Knee and ankle joints that Eliza had done the more delicate repair work on. He thought about asking Eliza if this was really a good idea, but stopped. He already knew what her answer would be.
Eliza reached under Kee's right arm and flexed her fingers. Kee watched as each knuckle bent to precise angles applying individual tension to the invisible threads. Her wrist twisted slightly and made one sharp tiny pull, like plucking a berry. She finished with a quick swirl of her fingers, her thumb and middle finger pressed lightly together. Kee quickly glanced from her hand to the Master Armourers face. Her eyes were unfocused and aimed at an indistinct patch of wall, up and away from where her hands were working.
Eliza spoke quietly with out ever looking over to Kee. "Take this in your left. You'll use your right to work your way back to the seam. From there you should be able to split this thread and weave it back into who it came from."
"Which one is that? How do I tell which one it came from?"
"Take the thread and follow it back. You don't need to know who it came from. The thread knows." Eliza said as if it were the easiest thing in the world.
Eliza pressed absolutely nothing into Kee's waiting fingers. He rolled the tips of index and thumb back slightly until he could feel the tension, and gently hooked the thread around the small finger of his left hand. It thrummed against his skin. Inactive, but not depleted.
Eliza settled into her chair beside him and Kee could feel her eyes focus on the movement of his hands.
"You Feel it?"
"Yes."
"You need to work at a steady speed. Don't rush or you'll lose the line... or break it. Move too slowly and there won't be enough tension on it to work it back to a seam. Watch out for processor fibers and let me know if you ever stop feeling a pulse." Eliza paused briefly, then snatched up her needles dropping them into the front pocket of her overalls. She stretched one arm high over her head then yawned broadly and slapped both hands down onto her knees. "I'm getting a coffee."
Kee felt a wave of anxiety work it's way up from his stomach. "I thought you were going to teach me about the needles?"
"Looks like you are going to be at this for a while. Pay attention to the end of that thread. If it drops you're going to have a wonderful time finding it again." With that she pushed herself back on her chair, rose to her feet and slouched out of the workshop.
Kee understood the process of what he was attempting to do. He knew about the miniscule forces bridging the distance between his fingers and the microscopic threads of the Armour weave. He imagined how those same forces allowed him to control them like working on a loom. He could pluck each filament, twisting them as if he were physically in contact with them. He also knew that connection was tenuous at best. Move too quickly, pull too hard, and the connection between his fingertips and the invisible strands would snap. Metal weave and mimetic plate were composed of thick chunky strands. Once every ten threads or so there would be a bit of fiber processor wound into mimetic plate but you could feel the steady hum of it through the fields so it was very easy to avoid. The weave of an Armour, even an older one, was all gossamer floss packed so tightly that it formed a surface smooth and unyielding as stone. The pulse was steady, but soft. You could lose track of it if you weren't careful.
Kee began slowly teasing the thread away from the place where the two Armours swirled together. Fiber processors and the dendrites that connected them weren't usually very close to the surface, still it was better to work slowly and avoid severing something Kee didn't have the skill to repair. He stuck out the thumb of his right hand and felt for the mild buzz of fields being activated while continuing to wind the length of thread over and under his other fingers.
"You only need two fingers to pull that thread in. Maybe only one." Eliza Stood just behind Kee's shoulder. He could hear as she blew gently across the top of her steaming cup.
"I know. It helps me keep track of how much I have unwound if I use all my fingers."
"Relatively speaking, that thread is further from your fingers than we are from the sun. Two fingers, one finger, doesn't matter. You're not really touching anything. It's more important that you feel it. It's not about directing these threads to move the way you want them too. It's more like you are asking them to go somewhere they already want to go. Make sense?"
"Not really." Kee admitted furrowing his brow. Eliza would swing wildly back and forth between using words like 'feeling' and 'mood' to describe their work, and then tell him that it was all about precision, physics, and mechanics. Sometimes he felt like screaming out his confusion but found it was better to keep it to himself. Being confused was preferable to having Eliza angry at him. The kicker was that no matter what she told him, she was invariably right. It was just frustrating that it usually took so long for him to figure out how or why she was right.
Kee continued rolling back the thread taking care to wrap each new length around each of his fingers in turn. He could feel Eliza's eyes on him for a long minute as he gradually worked his way back to a seam. He had been about halfway back to the seam before he knew for a certainty that this thread belonged to the Uniune Armour. Like a puzzle piece, the thread fit slowly, easily, back into place. Kee could feel the tension release through the tips of his fingers as the thread reconnected in it's proper place. The ends of it wrapping tightly around partner filaments in the Uniune mediums shoulder.
Kee lifted his hands away from the Armour stretching out his knuckles, already stiff from constantly holding the tension of the thread.
"Good." Eliza stated flatly, still out of Kee's view. "If you try to unravel that whole mess one strand at a time it's going to take all week. Best to bundle up braids and take them in groups of twenty or so. I'll be out front working on that DBU knee joint."
Kee watched in silence as she stomped her way down the ramp and out into the sunlight.
Lights from the market carts across the square flicked to life. All of them had strands wound through them that detected the oncoming evening. Some of them might have even had internal clock logic set up to turn them on at the optimal time. The lights kept in good repair increased their incandescence so slowly that you could hardly notice the change from natural reflected light to internal artificial light. The other ones, the ones that were out of tune, went from dull filament to full brightness in an instant. A blink of vivid blue danced it's way through the workshop window. Kee noticed it around the edge of his perception and finished replacing the bundle of fibers he was holding. He felt like he was pushing the boundaries of his patience, but he kept tension on the strands with one hand until he could loop them back into place tying each one off to a mated thread with the other. Letting his hands fall to his lap, fatigue hit him full force. When was the last time he had closed his eyes?
Kee put his palms together and stretched out each hand one finger at a time. Hours ago he had thought that there was no way that he would be able to disentangle these two wretched creatures. Now there was only a thin umbilical linking the two. If they had some hefty cutting tool on the cart he could probably just snip them apart and be done with it. Eliza would never let him do it. Kee's own sense of pride would never let him do it. Besides, most of the tools in the cart were created for fine precision work on a nanometer scale. Even if he absolutely had too, he couldn't imagine any way that he would be able to slice through solid Armour plate.
"Very good work Kee." Eliza's voice startled him out of his reverie. The way she spoke was edgeless, but a Kee still felt a nervous shiver run up his spine.
"Thanks. There is probably 2 hours or so left. I can finish up tonight and help you with the rest tomorrow."
Kee turned to see Eliza leaning against the wall at the top of the ramp. She was looking down at her hands as she ran her wrists through a series of stretches.
"It's fine. Leave it for now. We will finish that up together tomorrow. I want to have a look at the last strands to see if we can figure out how that even happened in the first place. Didn't use the needles I see."
Kee grinned reflexively. "No. No I didn't. You were right. I could feel where each thread needed to go. I panicked for a while there when you left, but it wasn't really that much different than working on ankle joints or mimetic plate. Just finer and tougher. More nerve wracking."
Eliza smiled slyly and looked up from her hands "Uniune Grey-blue plate like that is self healing. You wouldn't be able to lay a thread wrong if you tried. It wouldn't let you."
Kee rolled his eyes back as far as they would go and slumped down into his chair. "Is that the only reason you trusted me to work on these two? There was no way to actually mess it up."
"No, there were lots of ways to mess it up." Eliza looked Kee in the eyes and he grin softened "Kee, you're good at this. You just need some practice to figure that out."
Kee smiled surreptitiously, glancing away.
"Anyway, we'll have to shut down for tonight. Go get cleaned up. The monks want everyone down at the beach in an hour or so."
Kee felt his smile melt away. There had been depleted Armours among the ones recovered. Or maybe they had become depleted while they waited for repair. It was always impossible to know.
Kee swallowed to find his voice before speaking. "How many?"
"Four."
Eliza offered a sympathetic half smile that slowly took on a dangerous edge. "You might want to wear something nice. Carlo will be there. Probably in uniform."
Kee turned in his chair, deliberately casual. He could feel Eliza's eyes burning into him, searching for any outward signs of embarrassment that she could exploit. Privately, he began wondering which of his shirts, the blue or the orange one, would suit a Casting ceremony, and match well with grey.
Fussing with the front of his orange shirt, Kee fell in line among the procession of vendors. In most places it was considered good form to let the townies head down to the beach first. They would have all the best spots staked out anyway, so anyone living out of a cart would have to sit farther back. If the monks started ringing bells at 7:05, cart folk, market folk, would start walking down at 7:20. Then all the townies would be able to look over their shoulders at all the late market folk and click thier tongues. Kee found it all a ridiculous bit of theatre but he had the good sense to go along with it.
Kee stepped on the heels of one of the clothing venders. He apologised profusely but she stared javelins into his chest. She complained to her companion and shifted the tall woven grass mat she was carrying to position it between Kee and herself. Between her dismissive reaction and the anxiety in his stomach at the thought of seeing Marco again, Kee was in confused sorts when the procession finally arrived at the beach.
Most of the townies had already set up mats and low seats along the beach leaving a respectful amount of space between themselves and the water. The monks would have to have a place to conduct the Casting and no one wanted to be underfoot for that.
Eliza waved him over from her seat halfway down the slope, conspicuously in the center of the awaiting audience. She was lounging atop a pile of loose cushions spread out on a wide grass mat. The crisply pressed pants and jacket she wore were a sharp diversion from her usual stained and torn coveralls.
Kee sheepishly wound his way past the cart folk setting up higher on the beach. "Liz, why do you feel the need to antagonize everyone."
"What they think is their business. Yousuf invited me to sit with him and I accepted.", she pointed regally toward a few loose cushions that had spilled from her stack. "Would you care to take a seat? I saved you one."
Kee sighed heavily and lowered down onto the cushions taking care not to get sand on his clean pants. He avoided pointed looks from the clothing vendor further up the beach as she spread her own grass mat.
"Yousuf is helping the monks?" Kee asked pulling at his shirt to straighten it in a way that he hoped flattered him.
"Yes. I got them set up earlier today, but they still need the council to oversee any transport. Yousuf is on the council, so he has to be there."
"Yousuf leads the council-
Eliza interjected "The council doesn't have a leader"
Kee plowed on "-but that's not what I meant."
Eliza kept her eyes fixed out over the water for a moment. "Yes. I know what you meant. The monks, contrary to what you think, do know how to do their job."
Kee muttered an inarticulate grunt and tugged at his cuff.
Eliza side eyed him strongly enough to make her point, 'sit down, shut up, and be respectful.'. It was a lot for one look, but Liz had a way with looks.
Kee took a long moment to stare out at the lake gently rolling up the bottom of the beach. The light breeze against his cheeks still had some warmth to it. He tried to focus on the sound of the water and worked on some long slow breaths. The low hum of conversations around him made it difficult.
Eliza leaned down and spoke quietly enough that only Kee could hear. "Nervous?"
Kee snorted a light puff from his nose and nodded his head. "I think I am, yeah. Could you tell?"
"Oh yeah."
"Great." Kee said leaning back on his cushion. "Anxiety is super attractive I hear."
"Listen, If he's anything like Yousuf, he won't even notice."
Kee narrowed his eyes at Eliza. "You know that doesn't actually me feel any better. Yousuf notices everything. He's just too polite to tell you."
"I know." Eliza stretched out on her pile of cushions. "That's why I like him. Smart and good looking. Winning combination."
The miniscule procession of four monks emerged from the rickety looking covered structure further down the beach and made it's slow way toward them. Trailing behind them, a flatbed draped in yellow-orange drifted silent and looming. Behind that the eight members of the council dragged four long dart-like boats. Each member tugged at a thick rope of metal weave embedded natural fibers, wrapped in the ceremonial fashion over the left shoulder, around the waist, and back across the chest over the right shoulder. One person could pull a boat alone that way, but they would feel it. If the discomfort was supposed to be symbolic of something, Kee didn't know, and he wasn't going to hang around the Monks long enough that they would tell him.
Two figures in hoods walked on either side of each boat to keep them running in a straight line. One of them had to be Carlo, but from this distance it was hard to tell which one.
Kee wondered to himself why they didn't just attach some float plates to the boats instead of gouging deep laborious trenches into the sand. Efficiency wasn't really the point of ritual, he supposed. This spot and time had been selected specifically so that the monks could conduct the casting ceremony against the backdrop of the setting sun. Equal parts tradition and staged spectacle.
When they finally hit their mark in front of the crowd, the lead monk, Sidney, raised her hands, palms out, and pressed them slowly forward. The sunset tinted cloth slid smoothly off the flatbed behind her, uncovering four depleted Armours. Kee recognized the move as a clumsy version of guiding a thread. Impressive in scale, but not really very useful. He scanned the audience for weavers or vendors who encode fiber processors. Anyone he could share this silent joke with. Everyone seemed enthralled with the performance. Kee sighed heavily and leaned back into cushions. He watched as the waves washed gently up and down the sand, thinking about what he would say to Carlo after the ceremony, but feeling the length of the day too heavily to be anxious about it.
Kee felt Eliza nudge him on the shoulder. On the third jostle, his eyes snapped open. His mouth was dry and a heavy film coated his tongue. The world spun around him for bit while he blinked the crust from his eyes.
Then he remembered where he was and snapped up to sitting.
"I'm sorry Liz, I'm sorry. What did I miss?"
Eliza looked as him quizzically. "Nothing. You don't care about these things."
"Then what-"
"Kee. Get up we have to go to work."
When the flatbed drifted into view they were all there waiting for it. Eliza and Kee stood shoulder to shoulder nearest to the Armourers cart. The had run back from the beach with just enough time to toss on their coveralls. Kee could feel his breathing finally slowing down to a normal rhythm. He had gathered a pouch of hand tools. Needles, light guides, radio calipers, and the like. He wasn't sure what he was going to do with them, but they made him feel better nestled there in his front pocket. Eliza stood empty handed. On Kee's other side stood Yousuf and Carlo. Beyond them, all four monks stood at the very edge of the small pool of light cast by the cart. None of the others had a chance to change out of what they were wearing during the casting ceremony. Kee felt awkward and under dressed.
Kee stole the occasional glance down the line at Carlo. Hood pulled back, hair in general disarray, chin out, eyes narrowed. Carlo had all the naive readiness of an excited puppy. Besides unloading the flatbed Kee wasn't sure how useful the rest of them were going to be. Still he couldn't say he was disappointed that Carlo was there.
"Quit fidgeting" Eliza whispered from the corner of her mouth without turning her head.
"I'm not"
"You are."
"Why is the flatbed moving so slow."
When Eliza did turn to look at Kee the look in her eyes silenced him.
Yousuf leaned in from the other side. "Are you two done?"
Eliza leaned across in front of Kee and spoke at a normal volume. "Probably. Why is it moving so slow? It's a long range flatbed. Should be going two or three times that fast."
Yousuf turned to consider the flatbed "I don't know. Seems to have an outrigger wheel, so at least one bad float plate, but that shouldn't slow it down much. Only one crew in the cab too."
Kee followed Yousuf's gaze. The sky was darkening quickly now, and the flatbed looked like it had a haze of mist around it. He had trouble picking out the same details. Maybe Yousuf really did notice everything.
"Did they tell you what the problem was?" Eliza asked.
"No. Bad radio. I only got the alert signal and a request for an armourer. It was all in old squawk code." Yousuf looked back over his shoulder at no one in particular. He considered Kee for a moment, before sighing, lowering his voice and whispering to both armourers. "Probably mechanical issues with the rig. Busted water purifier or burned out plates. At least I hope that's all it is."
Eliza nodded slightly and looked down at her boots.
Kee side eyed the monks. Now it made a bit more sense why they were here. If Yousuf suspected an active armour he must have held some dim hope that the monks could settle it down. Kee didn't share that lofty appraisal of their abilities. Eliza never really talked about the monks, but every townie had a story or two about them subduing an active armour. Every single one of those stories, second or third hand. All of them involved some sort of mystical nonsense that Kee had never seen or experienced. Unbreakable ropes, hypnotic flutes, and even hand to hand combat with a monster three times thier size. Kee was pretty certain that the robes, the secretive nature of monks amounted to a lot of theatre. If they had to deal with an active Armour, the monks would do what they rest of them were told to do. Run. Run for the cart and don't look back.
The faint hum of the rig spun down to silent as it pulled in under the Armourer cart spotlights. The outrigger wheel descended with a soft thump into the dirt and the whole flatbed pitched slightly to the side as the wheel took up the weight. There was a tarp pulled tight over the flatbed, but Kee could still spot the shoulder and leg of a medium long range model. Probably Concordian. Only one though. It usually isn't worth the time to haul back fewer than three inactives. He looked over to Eliza to see if she had an idea what was going on. Her eyes were intently focused on the cab and her eyebrows were tight, but she stood perfectly still. Kee decided it would be best to follow her lead.
The driver slowly pushed open the door and stepped out of the cab. She seemed for a moment like she was staring at them to stare at them, but Kee couldn't see her eyes under the brim of her cap. She lifted one foot and started to step toward them, but instead she tilted forward and slammed, rigid, to the ground.
Kee caught the glance between Eliza and Yousuf a split second before they both bolted for the flatbed. It had been wordlessly decided between them what needed to be done. Yousuf covered the distance to the driver in three long strides. Eliza broke right and scrambled to the rear of the flatbed slapping button to lower the bed with an open palm on the way by. It was already descending by the time the monks let out their held breath. Useless, Kee thought as he jogged to meet up with Eliza at the back of the rig.
Kee rounded the back corner of the rig just as it was settling to the ground. He could feel his feet trying to backpedal him as far away as possible before he had fully registered what he was looking at. Everything in his chest clench tight and he had to make a few short stuttering steps to keep his balance. The man on the flatbed was waving his arms around weakly, mouth opening and closing without making any sound. It looked to Kee like he was trying to warn them off. Eliza already had one hand resting on his shoulder in a gentle attempt to keep him from moving too much while her other hand went through the familiar motions of catching and winding a thread. Her eyes unfocused, her teeth clenched in concentration. She was pointedly not looking at his leg.
Kee couldn't stop himself from staring at it. The leg was being devoured. That is the only way that he could frame it in his mind. Devoured. The Armour had clamped one claw tightly around the leg just below the knee. So tightly that it had obviously been crushed beyond any hope of repair. A skilled medic might have been able to save the man's life by removing it, but Eliza wasn't a medic. What she was doing now wasn't surgery.
Devoured. The mans shin had been slurped up like a noodle. His foot was only partially jutting out of the claw The rest of his leg was swirled into the armour plate. Streaks of dark brown swept through the surface of the armour plate. In places close to the place where leg and claw met, Kee could also see streaks of tan matching the fabric of his pants, black lines that smoothly blended with the toe of his boot. His leg had been unwound, the filaments of it unwoven. Like the synthetic plate of the cart. Like the tough mesh skin of an Armour.
"What are you doing?"
Kee blurted the words, even though he knew exactly what she was doing. Kee had repeated those same motions using the needles countless times. Gripping a thread and disentangling it from the weave around it. Taking it up with deft tugs and swirls of the wrist and fingers. In answer she reached up and extended the last two fingers on her left hand, keeping her right splayed across the man's shoulder. Thumb flexed and tucked tight beside her palm, middle finger bent and applying pressure just below the man's clavicle. The implication struck Kee like a spear through the chest. Eliza wasn't holding the man down. She was to feeling for the pulse in his threads. In her left hand she held fibers of the man's leg and she needed Kee's help to keep unwinding them. To detach him from the Armour that was consuming him.
Kee dropped to his knees beside the Master Armourer and took up the thread in his own hands. He could feel the pulse of it. Active but weakening. He let the familiarity of the work take over. Hands twisting and wrapping automatically. Inside he was screaming. Like he knew the flex of his fingers and the angles of his wrist, he knew that what he was doing wasn't possible. This man wasn't woven and constructed like an Armour. He must still be sleeping on the beach. Eliza's strained voice told him otherwise.
"Save as much as you can. Weave the threads back in as they separate." Eliza indicated with her chin where the man and the Armour were beginning to separate. "Watch out for threads from that Armour in case I miss and start handing you the wrong ones. The Armour is not our priority. Got it?"
Kee nodded making a wordless noise from his throat telling Eliza that he got it.
Eliza took the briefest moment to look Kee in the eyes. She nodded very slightly once. It was a single look that said everything they both needed to know. Nothing about this is right. Set your questions and fears aside. Go to work.
The two armourers took a simultaneous breath and returned to the process. From the outside it looked like two sets of hands working in perfect synchronization. Rising, falling, and twisting in concert. Kee, for his part, felt he was just barely keeping up as Eliza peeled off threads and divided them into groups for him. Despite her warning, every single thread she handed off to him came bundled and aligned exactly how he needed it. Using his left hand he would take up the new threads guide them back into position.
It very quickly became obvious that there were simply not enough filaments of the mans leg left to recreate it. Kee would have to weave it back together just below the knee. Everything else had been absorbed into the Armour, buried beneath layers of impenetrable plate and composite support structures. It would take a skilled weaver days, maybe months to puncture even the outer layers of plate. Retrieving those threads simply wasn't possible. Kee was focused on his task. Equal parts intense concentration and numbing repetition. He hadn't even noticed the monks approaching and encircling the rig. His eyes were unfocused, considering something in the middle distance while his mind worked on feeling the pulses humming through the threads in his hands. The motion caught his attention a split second before Sidney plunged both of her hands deep into the Armours back.The Armour went from laying immobile on its front to standing at its full height instantly.
Sydney disengaged from the Armour in that exact instant and took one sharp stabilizing step back.
In the shock of the moment Kee reeled, breaking his connection to bundles of loose threads. It felt like the bite of solid twine wrapped around each finger. Just enough sudden pain to draw his attention back to his hands. They weren't his. They felt like his hands, but he saw them splayed out in unraveling coils of thread. He was peeling apart into individual strands being spread out thin before him. Then just as suddenly, everything snapped back.
Sydney stood above him, both of her hands contorted and tensed, stained black nearly to the elbows. The muscles of her arms flexed and tight as if she were hoisting a heavy load. She dropped her arms pulling outward sharply.
Kee flinched. His hands flew up in front of his face in a defensive reflex. A thick warm liquid splattered over him. Some made it past his arms and hands landing on his closed eyes, in his hair, in his mouth. It was bitter like liquid ash. He heard Eliza howl. Her voice went from pained surprise to furious rage in one continuous sound. With his eyes still closed he could hear rapid movements and something tumble from the flatbed and land heavily in the dirt.
The scuffle ended and Kee heard utterances of recovering voices around him.
He slowly opened his eyes, cracking apart the thin layer of rapidly solidifying liquid coating his lids.
The legs of the Armour stood bolt upright like pillars. Above that the torso had been peeled and layed open like a soft fruit. Small waterfalls of dark liquid extended from the flayed segments, now hardened. It looked like a macabre sculpture. Some thin rivulets made their way down to the man laying on the flatbed. Deposited like a frozen spray across his chest.
The man breathed deeply and suddenly. Kee was startled enough to move his own arms, cracking the dark substance away from his elbow, tearing out the fine hairs along his right forearm. He saw shards of the same stuff fall away from the man in front of him. Kee shot a quick glance down toward the man’s leg. Completely separated, just below the knee.
Kee heard someone shouting from behind the Armours legs and reacted without processing what he was doing. He snaked one arm under each of the man’s shoulders and tried as hard as he could to join his hand across the man’s chest. Kee couldn’t quite reach, but it didn’t matter, he pulled as hard as he could without fully securing his grip. With a couple of massive heaves he pulled the man off the back of the flatbed and they both crashed into a pile in the dust.
by that, I mean that this is a first draft. It isn't finished and there are some heavy edits that have to happen. I have a lot of them marked out (change this scene, delete these lines, make this better. That sort of stuff.) but I have a lot more to find. If you want to help me out send any suggestions or edits to me here.
Thanks and have fun!
"Hold up. I see one. Due South"
The Flatbed shuddered and slowed. The armature securing one of the rear wheels hummed to life. The entire assembly twitched and stuttered slightly as if stretching out stiffness after a long sleep. The wheel swung down in a long slow motion, pressing smoothly into the dry earth. Thin swirls of prairie dust coughed from behind the wheel as the flatbed drifted to a halt.
"Damn float plate again." Khary's voice drifted up from the cab "Where. I don't see it."
Jan leaned over the metal frame from her perch behind the cab, stretching so that Khary could see her hand through his side window. She gestured out toward a tuft of waving brome grass. It took a moment for her to realize that Khary hadn't seen her hand at all and was squinting through his glasses at a small row of spindly trees.
Jan slipped the strap of her binoculars over her head and held them down close to the cab window.
"These might help."
"Thanks" Khary reached out and plucked the binoculars from Jan's hand without even looking at them. "So, where?"
"Straight south just beside that grass. The one with the yellowing patch on the left.
Khary slid the faded olive cap from his head and rubbed at the receding islands of tight dark curls on his scalp. He squinted hard and pivoted the binoculars up to his eyes.
"It's left or our left?"
"Our left." Jan screwed up her face knowing that she was fully out of Khary's line of sight. "Grass doesn't have a 'left'"
"I know. I was joking. It's fine I see it. Good eye. Almost perfect camouflage." Khary mumbled the last part more to himself than to Jan, reverence and mild excitement creeping into his voice. Jan grinned.
"Wait, they can't change color can they?" Jan blurted.
"What?"
"The Armours, they can't change color to camouflage can they?"
Khary continued to stare through the binoculars, transfixed. It was a long beat before he answered.
"No. No I don't think so."
"So how can it be camouflaged then? Did it just pick that spot to deplete?"
Khary made a couple of twitchy movements with his head like he was trying to track something moving very fast through the binoculars. He lingered a bit facing, near as Jan could tell, off toward those trees. He made a weak noise in his throat and nodded to himself before lowering the binoculars.
Jan listened to strips of loose canvas flap gently with the warm breeze. The canopy to her perch had a few small holes worn through it. She had never bothered to pull out the scope and check the weave, but it had to be something less durable than the spiraled carbon and spun alloy that most of the flatbed was woven from. Either that or it had been in use far longer than she or Khary knew. A minor curiosity, but not something she planned to examine further with a downed Armour in her line of sight.
"Okay." Khary broke the extended silence. "Are you holding on? Oh wait. Take these."
Khary offered the binoculars up to Jan without taking his eyes off of the Armour. Jan took them and sat down into the perch bench, taking hold of a canopy post.
"Okay, ready."
Jan felt the float plates kick in beneath her and the flatbed started forward. The outrigger wheel dragged along the ground causing vibrations to work their way through the frame. In a few moments the last float plate kicked in and the wheel lifted and stowed itself tight against the side of the vehicle. Jan leaned back against the bench and looked up at the canopy. As the flatbed picked up speed, thin strands of canvas beat out a rhythm against the taught sheet. Maybe when they got back to town, Jan thought, she would have a weaver or fabricator take a look at it. The posts and extension drives could use some cleaning as well. Out here, with a few lonely trees and thin islands of green to comb the wind, fine dust got into everything.
"Hey," Jan yelled down to cab, "where are we going?Aren't we gonna pick up the Armour?"
"We'll come back for it. There's something I want to check out."
"We should put up a flag or set some markers so that we can find it again."
"It'll be fine. That guy ain't going nowhere. We should be back before nightfall."
The radio crackled on and the resonators attached to Jan's perch screeched out shrill static. This was Kharys way of saying the conversation was over. The static hiss cut in and out as Khary searched the spectrum for a signal strong enough to lock onto.
Some drum heavy music faded in. It was fronted by that long rectangular string instrument that Jan could never remember the name of. Radio signals floating in from somewhere to the south most likely. That faded out and was replaced by several seconds of shifting static until an arhytmic choral tune cut in. She wasn't familiar with that style of music and couldn't even speculate what town might have created it. Not something you could dance to though.
As soon as Jan heard it she knew that this is what they would be listening to for the next while. This particular sort of fiddle music was something that Jan liked well enough when she was drunkenly dancing with northern townie boys but Khary never seemed to tire of it.
Jan sunk back into her bench and watched light beams dance through the small holes in the canopy. Some sort of hand drum came in to back up the fiddle. Strong signal, no field. That fact at least was relaxing. She could see clear out to the horizon, not that that meant anything. No field though meant that the next few kilometers of driving should be safe.
She tapped her foot along to the beat of the hand drum and slid a little down the bench to keep out of the path of that sunbeam.
Jan woke to Khary tapping her gently on the shoulder.
"Whatsorrywhat?"
Jan had meant to say where are we or what's going on or sorry I fell asleep when I should have been doing my job as lookout. All of that came out as "whatsorrywhat" through lots of blinking and attempting to lick the dryness from her mouth.
Khary replied by lifting his hand to his lips in a silencing gesture and intently directing her with his eyes to look down range.
Khary leaned close to her ear and whispered "Don't move too quick. Don't be too loud. Should be okay."
Should be okay. Jan rolled the word 'should' over in her head while her eyes attempted to focus.
When Jan had first come ashore and joined up as apprentice to Khary on the flatbed, she started a count of the Armours they had retrieved. She began by scratching a small line into the post supporting her canopy. She could have written it down on the small field notebook she carried, or she could just look through the logbook that Khary kept meticulously filled out. It only took a few days for the post to heal itself, vanishing any trace of the marks. The weave was so tight and precise that Jan had mistaken it for real metal. She should have known better. That sort of thing was only ever really found in town, and even then, only in the oldest structures. Certainly not part of the construction of a cart or flatbed. Vehicles built quickly to be malleable and modular. Vehicles designed to be recycled or remade.
The post would repair itself until it couldn't and then it would be replaced with a new one. Maybe even one rewoven from the same fibers.
The first six or seven Armours she retrieved went unrecorded by her makeshift notation. After that Jan discovered that she could use the back edge of the seaming tool. She normally used it to patch the tires if they impacted a particularly sharp rock. Flipping it over she could drag a thin mark in the weave. It would, Khary explained, untangle the fibers along the surface, slightly relaxing their grip on one another. If you never laid the flat of the tool against that mark to heal it, the indent would remain. As the weave attempted to heal itself, it left a faint scar slightly offset from the rest of the surface. Woven material is tough and resilient, but everything has limits.
The post had forty three marks etched into it, all of them grouped into a tight space near the bottom. Jan had split them into groups based on the type of Armour and where they might originate. They accounted for a sizable chunk of all known Armours. It occurred to her now, she had never made a single mark for an active Armour. She had not seen one. She would never say it out loud of course, but she always wanted to. What other reason would anyone want to be on a retrieval crew, except to see an active Armour with their own eyes.
'Should' continued to ring in her ears as she watched the thing move.
The post had forty three marks on it. Jan had split them into groups based on the type of Armour and where they might originate. She had never made a single mark for an active Armour.
For the first few moments she couldn't quite get her eyes to cooperate. She thought that they hadn't recovered from sleeping and tried to squint away the fatigue. Still the dark shape she saw in the distance swam around the edges. That's when she noticed the geese. Dozens, a hundred even, grey and white mounds dotted the field in front of her. Each one a sharply focused outline against the golding grass. Most of the geese were lying still on the ground but others were preening or milling about on spindly orange legs. Not one of them seemed the slightest bit perturbed by the monster in their midst.
Jan wanted to ask Khary how they had gotten so close without disturbing any of the birds, but she didn't dare breathe heavily let alon speak. She couldn't see his eyes below the brim of his hat, but Khary hadn't so much as twitched. If he was concerened, he wasn't about to share that with her.
She tried again to focus on the Armour. Looking at it felt slippery. Like streak of oil smeared through the air. It was difficult to tell how close was. How large it was. Whether it was moving or not. All at once it was massive and intimidating and intangible and slight. Like the shadow of a terrible thing.
For several long slow breaths they both watched. The geese dozed and milled about. Jan saw one of them nearer to the flatbed lift its head and spread open its bill. It made a motion several times as if to honk but Jan heard nothing. It was then that she realized that she hadn't heard a single noise, save the light whisper of a breeze through the grass, since Khary had woken her. Not one goose honk. Not the crackle of radio static. Not the hum of the float plates.
She could feel a panic rising, steady and hot. Her pulse trobbed up her throat and into her ears. The sound of it overhwelming the uncanny silence. Before she could stop herself she heard the words croak out of her, almost inaudible.
"We are inside the field"
Kharys eyes snapped back but he barely turned his head toward her. Slowly he replied bewteen his teeth.
"Wouldn't be able to see it otherwise. Stay still so she don't think of us as a threat."
Jan gulped back any followup questions and stared straight ahead. Right at that liquid smear in the air. That word 'Should' rolled around in her mind.
She sensed Khary flinch slightly. In front of her the swimming shape snapped suddenly into sharp focus. The movement was so abrupt that it left an afterimage. The Armour had been standing but now it was crouching. Jan saw both. The effect was jarring and frightening.
***
***
By the time Khary returned from the pond Jan had deployed the shelter from the boxes flanking the side of the flatbed. She enjoyed the solitary business of opening hatches and telescoping support posts. Stepping back and looking at the structure gave her a sense of accomplishment, even if most of the smart weave skin was self assembling.
"Can you open the lid for me?" Khary asked, not breaking his stride toward the water purifier hanging off the right side of the flatbed cab.
"Sure"
Jan lifted the sheet metal lid and watched Khary pour a bucket full of truly disgusting sludge into the purifier. Sticks, leaves, and a pair of water beetles settled on the filter screen. Jan lifted the screen and shook the debris out onto a patch of browning grass before putting it back and dropping the lid.
Khary tossed the filthy bucket back into the metal hook welded to the side of the flatbed. He stretched out his shoulders started speaking mid yawn "If you want to have a shower, you'll have to go get the water yourself."
"Yeah, I think I'll wait till we get back to town." She wrinkled her nose, only a little revolted by the thought of all of the things living in that stagnant water.
"Water comes out of the purifier is clean. Clean enough for drinking should be clean enough for washing."
"We'll be back in town tomorrow if nothing else comes up. I think I can wait." Jan offered flatly.
"Fine. Doesn't bother me one way or another." Khary sniffed, rubbed his hand across his jaw and, after a beat, wandered off to retrieve the cooking pot.
All they had left in the dry storage were some mixed beans and lentils. The stabilizer held a few apples that had been picked fresh and two ears of corn. Khary measured out the beans and selected the larger of the two cobs. Jan fished the seasoning mix from the cab and handed it to Khary. He could have stowed it in the dry storage, but he insisted that the seasoning ride up front with him so that he always knew where it was. She could hear his common refrain in her head that 'if it weren't for the seasoning, he might as well not eat'.
Jan removed her boots outside the shelter flopped down cross legged on the woven floor. She felt it tighten and shift beneath her. In seconds it went from being a microns thin barrier between her butt and the hard ground, to a raised surface with a bit of nice cushioning. She didn't have to sit on the floor to activate it, but she liked to.
She watched Khary combine the meager ingredients to the pot of newly filtered pond water, one hand continuously stirring while the other added just the right amount of seasoning. Both of Khary's hands seemed to operate on their own while he stared into the distance.
"So." Jan cracked the silence between them with a practiced bluntness. "You just gonna to be a detached grump all day, or do you want to talk about it."
Khary seemed to take notice of his hands, the pot, the bean soup, but stopped short of actually looking in Jan's direction. He let out a long weathered sigh and continued to stare out at the horizon.
"Kid, you ever wonder why we do this?"
"I figured that was your department. I just work here."
Khary turned and offered a soft chuckle.
"I remember thinking that. I remember saying that. Sure of what I wasn't sure of. Now I'm not even sure of that."
"Okay. Don't really know what that means." Jan said, standing and stepping into her boots.
Khary turned back to the pot and continued to stir the thickening soup. As she approached Jan could smell the seasoning starting to kick in. It really could make anything better.
"Were you scared today?"
Jan squinted at Khary's back like this was the dumbest thing she had ever heard. It wasn't, but she stood by the look all the same.
"Well yeah. Did you see how it moved? And there had to be a hundred geese in that flock. They barely got of the ground."
Khary nodded, his cap bobbing up and down over the soup.
"I was scared too. Scared me damn near senseless the first time I ever saw one active. I've been scared every time I've seen one, active or otherwise, since. But I still do this. Everyday. Like doing it. Strange don't ya think?"
As Jan came up alongside him, pulling bowls, spoons, and a ladle from a compartment in the flatbed, she narrowed her eyes in mock suspicion, studying his profile.
"You having a moment there, old timer?"
Khary's slight grin broadened to a full smile.
"I'm not that old." He paused to breath in the scented steam. "Figure this is about ready though. There ya go, I'm not old, just appropriately seasoned."
Jan collapsed her shoulders miming deflation and pulled a sour face. She passed the ladle to Khary and held up both bowls to be filled, which he did, generously.
The two of them sat and ate in a pleasant silence. They spoke when they needed to, but mostly they didn't. The sun dropped below the soft low hills in the distance. An effervescent sea of stars filled the sky and still they stayed silent. As they headed off to their own small rooms in the shelter to sleep Khary uttered something very quietly that Jan pretended not to hear.
"I think maybe they are scared too."
***
Jan tried to keep her eyes on the fallen armour, but it was difficult to see over the cab. It wouldn't have moved. They never do when they hit the dirt like that. "Depleted" was the word Khary used. It was the word he had learned as an apprentice and the word she would be expected to pass down to her apprentice. Armours were "Active", "Inactive", or "Depleted". Not "Alive". Never "Dead". Talk like that just wasn't appropriate.
Khary drifted the flatbed to a gentle stop a few meters away from the depleted Armour.
"Get the winch ready. Let's see what we got." Khary called up from the cab.
Jan could see from here that this Armour was most likely Concordian, or a Uniune decoy made to appear Concordian. It was easily over a century old, judging by the wear at the joints. The protective plating abraded to a dull smooth finish. In the time she had been riding with Khary they had recovered 43 just like it. They had spotted 4 active Concordian units and stayed well out of their range just be safe. All of those had moved at a slow plod. Khary had called out most of them from the cab before Jan had seen them, despite her riding in the lookout perch and clinging tightly to the binoculars. He knew exactly what type of Armour they were looking at, but he always said 'Let's see what we got'. Probably another phrase that he had inherited from his mentor and was now passing down to her. She had already adopted so many of his verbal tics and mannerisms, but 'Let's see what we got.' seemed like a quaint affection she could skip. Jan suppressed the urge to roll her eyes.
Khary hopped down from the cab, and removed his cap. The original olive green dye still hung on at the seams, but the rest had faded to beige. He ran his hand across patches of tight black curls, islands of hair in an ocean of deep brown scalp. Jan figured that Khary hoped to one day discover handfuls of thick wavy mane up there, but today wasn't the day. He would most likely search again in an hour or so. Until then, he slapped the cap back on and tugged it into place.
Jan had unlocked the winch and replaced the standard clip with the older Concordian forked hook configuration. She jumped down from the side of the flatbed and joined Khary in quizzically assessing the depleted Armour.
Khary shot Jan a sidelong glance. He was clearly considering something, but he hadn't let her in on what it was yet. He looked back at the Armour and pulled out his pocket radio.
"Really? I didn't notice any change in the field riding out." Jan said, and cocked her head in a dubious posture."Still weak enough to pull in signals from Rose Lake. It was fiddle music all the way out here."
Khary ignored her and slid his finger across the flat rectangle. Static, different static, and then a jaunty toe tapper.
"See. Depleted. There is no field here." Jan said flatly.
Khary nodded slowly, not at all convinced. "You go feet. I'll go head"
For all the confident 'depleted' talk, Jan still took a wide, slow path to take up her position at the Armours feet. Khary went toward the head hauling the winch line with him.
The Armour was face down in the dirt, arms and legs splayed but relaxed, like it had laid down to rest ages ago and just never got back up. That probably wasn't far from the truth. Armours were sturdy, but nothing is made to last forever.
Other than being depleted, Jan could see nothing unusual about this Armour. About 3 meters tall, probably 250 kilograms clad head to toe in smooth chitinous plates of meticulously woven filament and engineered fungus. Impacts, heat, cold, radiation, judging by the healed over scars this unit had experienced them all and shrugged them off. The one force it couldn't withstand was time.
"Keep clear of that arm weapon." Khary chided in that parental tone of his. He kept his voice low, but clear, like he was presiding over a casting. Jan felt it was an unnecessary affectation. They could scream, or sing, or laugh. She was pretty sure the Armour wouldn't be offended.
Jan looked over to where the Armours right forearm lay pointing back toward its feet. The launch tubes were empty and the rail was wide open. A tuft of grass was growing through the heat exchange vents. This Armour hadn't created any ammunition or fired that weapon in years.
"Uh yeah. I think it's good"
"Are you talking or listening."
Khary stared back at her. It was the 'take this serious' look. Jan nodded and acquiesced but couldn't hold back a small grin.
"Weapon appears depleted. Staying off axis."
"Good. Okay. So, what have we got?"
Jan made a show of looking the Armour over. Tipping her head and squinting slightly.
"Concordian medium ranger. Fifth gen, maybe?"
Khary gathered the winch line into a loop in his free hand. "Yep, but it's probably a fourth gen with a modification to the back plate for carrying equipment. We'll be able to tell for sure when we flip it over. The sternum is different on-"
Jan heard what sounded like firewood being split and almost at the same instant the weapon spinning down. Small flakes of shredded grass hung in the midday air. Khary still stood across from her looking like a question had just occurred to him and he desperately wanted to ask it. The Armour had both of its arms raised above its head, but nothing else seemed to have moved.
Khary wobbled slightly and looked down. His right leg, from knee to foot, stood perfectly upright like a post driven into the earth. The rest of him did not.
The next instant she was running. She didn't remember deciding to run, but she was already halfway up the Armours back, landing her left foot deftly along its spine plating. Her next step landed on the back of its neck and she felt her foot lose traction. The Armour remained as unperturbed as a stone. Dark fluid had arced up from somewhere splashing across the Armour's shoulder. Jan barely registered it as she crashed down, rolling over until her face was inches from Khary's.
His lips were twisted up in a grimace, gathering the strength to scream or cry out in pain.
Instead, he glared straight back at Jan and grunted out "Stupid!. Damn Stupid!".
Jan wrestled with her tongue trying to get any words out at all. Eventually she croaked out "Are you-"
Khary cut her off. "No. I'm not okay. Look at my damn leg! Hook the winch up! Put us both on the flatbed."
"We'll go back to town. We can be there before sundown." Jan blurted. "The medic, or the monks can help."
Khary grabbed her around the back of her neck and pulled her closer.
"No, Here's what your gonna do. Wrap that winch line around my leg. Hook it up to the armour and put us both on the flatbed. Then you take us to Eliza or Ahmed."
"But we can get to Ashbank. They have-"
"Are you talking, or are you listening?" The bite had left Khary's voice, and his breathing had grown shallow. He squinted into the bright sun and managed slight grin.
Jan Looked down at Khary's leg. She had seen it already, but the image didn't register as real. Now she took it in.
In less than an eyeblink the Armour had reached forward and clamped the long claw-like digits of its hand just above Khary's right ankle. Fibula and tibia shattered to shards and grit instantly. His leg bent awkwardly below the knee. Bits of bone had torn through his coveralls staining them dark and wet.
The weapon of the Armours other arm had aimed and fired, but there was nothing left in it to launch, save dust and blades of unfortunate grass.
Jan snatched up the winch line and looped it just above Khary's knee, leaving enough slack to hook the forks between the Armours shoulder blades.
She looked over at Khary before bolting for the flatbed. He nodded grim approval of her work. She went for the switch that would reel them in.
"Wait!" Khary raised his head up slightly and pulled his cap down snug. "Just a second."
He took a moment to take one deep breath and release it slowly. "Okay. Okay. Do it."
Jan winced as she pressed the switch as if the pain were her own.
Khary didn't cry out. He didn't scream in agony or delirium. He chuckled. A light bouncing of the breath as if he had just thought of a subtle joke. The line pulled taught and Khary and the Armour both were dragged toward the flatbed. The vehicle bowed automatically to receive them forcing it's single metal wheel out to the side.
The winch steadily reeled in the line and soon Khary slid up beside Jan. She stopped the motor for a moment to cradle Khary's head and shoulders lifting him up over the short lip of the flatbed. Tears were streaming down his weathered cheeks. He laughed between choked sobs.
"It doesn't even hurt Jan. I don't feel anything. I just noticed. I don't feel anything. Take me to the Armourer, okay? Take me to the Armourer, Jan. You listening?"
"Yeah. I'm listening." Jan was surprised by the tears running down her own cheeks. "Yeah."
Jan searched the radio dial until she found fiddle music. She left it on all the way to Riverbend.
Chapter 2
Under the shady side of her favorite rock, a plump brown rabbit twitched slightly. She had been nearly asleep when something tickled at her senses. Eyes snapped fully open and ears perked, she searched for the source. A coyote? No. A faint buzz, coming closer. Faint, but alien.
Glassy dark eyes, now hyper alert, scanned the ground in front of her. The same scrub grass, the same low bushes. Nothing in her world had changed. Everything was in its proper place, but the buzzing grew louder.
She backed more tightly into the protective arch of her rock and sat impossibly still. A vast deep shadow flowed over the arid soil toward her. The shadow approached, washing up and across her hiding spot, slipping away without incident. The buzz faded, and everything returned to normal.
A great bulk of metal and glass and carbon had drifted past, unseen on the other side of the rock. The soft electric hum barely audible below a light summer breeze. The mammoth object floated over a small hill down toward a river valley leaving no trace of its passing. The rabbit relaxed and her eyelids sagged a few times before closing fully in an afternoon snooze.
Inside the huge object, bundles of braided cord swung with the changing angle of the hillside. They slid off one another producing a sound like beach sand rolled in a breeze. Bits of clothing dangling from wire hangers brushed against one another. The electric hum of float plates permeated every bit of the structure, but still, those tones were almost imperceptible. A deep, grating, arrhythmic growl rose above it all.
Kee lay awake staring at the ceiling. His eyes drifted over to the gently swaying blackout curtains covering the single window in his quarters. Nope. Not getting back to sleep. At least not with Eliza's snores radiating through the metal plate separating them.
Kee swung his legs over the edge of his bunk and quickly snatched his feet back. The cold metal floor bit at his bare feet. The float plate cooling system ran right under his tiny room. Even in late summer the floor was continually frigid. Maybe he could pick up a rug in the next town. Nothing fancy, just a simple mat to make getting out of bed easier. He tossed on a loose shirt before gingerly placing his feet back down into his slippers. The cold had gotten to them too, but he was thankful for the small buffer from the cold.
It had been 3:30 am when they had finally closed up the large workshop door and pulled up the feeder tendrils, allowing the cart to drift off to its next location. What time was it now? Just after noon. Late, but this was a travel day. It wasn't like they had any work to do. Nothing that couldn't wait for a bit.
Kee pulled the bottoms of his coveralls up over his legs without taking off his slippers. Tricky, but preferable to touching the chill of the floor again.
Kee parted the tattered strips of cloth that were supposed to be his door. They emitted the usual weak bleat that signified that he was not authorized to open this particular door before flapping aside feebly. If the door worked like it was supposed to the strips would adhere to one another creating a sound, insect, and person resistant barrier. As far as he knew, the door had never worked. Maybe that was something else he could look for in the next town, a working door, a repair manual for this one, or, if he was very lucky, a weaver who knew how to fix it. Maybe he could even get it coded to recognize him. The small degree of privacy that a working door could provide seemed almost decadent.
Kee stretched the sleep out of his shoulders and back, before crossing the tiny galley, reflexively tapping the coffee maker start button on his way to the toilet.
Finally ready to start the day and it was already half over.
He plucked his mug from the hook on the wall and filled it with coffee, snatched an apple from the stabilizer and ambled through the narrow hall leading to the workshop. He stepped out of his slippers and into his boots but left them untied. Eliza would leave half eaten food on the counter and unwashed clothes snaking their way down the stairs, but she would tear a strip off you if work boots breached the borders between the workshop, the hallway, and the living quarters. Likewise if you walked into the shop with bare feet or slippers. You had the two meters of disputed territory in the hallway to deal with your boot situation. On or off, in or out, but you had better make up your mind. She was still sleeping, but Kee could hear her voice in his ears telling him to "at least tuck in those laces". Kee ignored her and shuffled his way into the shop. Small rebellions, small victories.
Kee did the customary scan of the shop to make sure nothing had shifted while they were traveling. The auto-drive usually kept things pretty level, but once in a while hammers would slide off their hooks or one of the back cabinets would open. He hadn't heard anything, but he had been so beat tired that hammers could have fallen in his room and he might not have twitched. One bundle of spare nano fibers was loose and rubbing gently against the window, but that was all. Kee quickly tucked it back into the shelf and secured it so that it would stay put. A small thing, but Eliza liked things to be in their place. Well, things in the shop anyway.
Kee plopped down, leaned back in the more heavily patched of the two chairs, and sat there for the next hour or so sipping coffee and watching the prairie landscape roll past through gaps in the louvered windows.
"Why didn't you wake me?"
Eliza leaned against the metal frame that joined the hall to the workshop. Kee hadn't heard her approach and was so startled he tipped his mug into his lap. Thankfully he had emptied it ages ago and had just been holding it out of habit. Liz carried her own mug, full of coffee, cradled lovingly. She hadn't bothered to put on boots, so she wasn't planning on actually entering the shop. The question seemed to be directed as much to her cup as it was to Kee. Her dark eyes, fixed on the drink, never drifted up to meet Kee's.
"I thought you might want to sleep a little late. The-"
Eliza snorted her contempt and cut him off. "We have to test that lift before we set up? Do you want to be under it when it goes? Pneumatics keep bleeding."
Seeing that she wasn't looking at him, Kee rolled his eyes. The pressure had been holding steady for at least three weeks. Since the last time she got him to tune it up, in fact. He was certain that it would hold just fine, but couldn't avoid glancing over at the raised slab supported by three skeletal pillars, if only for a second. He let his held breath out through his nose and shrugged a small resignation.
"And don't put your boots on the workbenches."
"Good morning, Liz." Kee called after her, and swung his legs back down heavily to the floor. Eliza was already across the hall and heading for the stairs leading up to her room. He could hear her grunted reply echo back to him through the metal structure of the cart.
The cart drifted to a gentle stop beside a loose grouping of trees. Several birds perched in the branches above kept watch over the smoothly moving object, but none took flight. The faint burble of float plate coolant peaked slightly as the bulk of the cart began lowering itself down onto a thinly grassed clearing. Thousands of tiny machines built into the base of the cart engaged themselves in one final effort before sighing contentment and falling completely silent.
It would be easy to mistake this cart as a permanent feature of the town. It would be similarly easy to mistake the other dozen or so carts that had rolled in earlier that day, for a market, built and tended by locals.
Most of the carts had unfurled awnings for shade and reconfigured huge sections of wall plates into welcoming ramps with footpaths linking to neighboring carts. The drab corrugated metal exteriors that covered them when they rolled into town had been replaced by brightly colored and inviting decor unique to each vendor. Everyone knew that it was just an enticing application of the carts active camouflage systems, but no one seemed to care. Under all the beautiful graphic designs of big eyed, wide smiling, fresh fruit and vegetables, lay the same flat grey metal. Beneath the convincing illusion of worn wooden walkways and fences, standard mimetic plate.
By contrast, the Armourers cart remained a dull patchwork of muted earthy tones on plates bolted, welded, and woven to one another. Emblazoned on the single functioning active plate was the Uniune emblem lightly embossed from its surface. A stylized shield with two mythical creatures, one serpentine one winged, holding a sword between them. The mimetic plate was an older model and it took a constant flow of energy to maintain the image. Wasteful, but official.
Unseen networks of thin tendrils reached from the bottom of the cart, worming their way into the earth below. Each fine fiber searching for a particular resource. Some went for power and nutrients, others sought out fresh water and waste disposal tendrils already waiting in the ground. In seconds the cart had attached itself to the web of conduits buried under the town. Only then did the onboard engines wind themselves down in a sort of mechanical yawn.
The entire west facing end workshop peeled out and away from the rest of the cart. Unfiltered sunlight streamed in causing Kee to squint and turn his face. He reached up and placed his needles on the workbench before shuffling out from under the lift. Liz had examined and repaired micro-fractures in two of the legs using only her bare fingertips in the same time it took Kee to give the third leg a once over with the needles. None of the fractures would have caused the lift to fail, and the pneumatics were holding pressure, but Liz wanted them all checked thoroughly regardless.
"All done?" Eliza asked standing silhouetted in the the doorway. Kee had to wait a beat for his eyes to adjust before answering.
"Yeah. Sealed two fractures and tagged an abrasion with a marker thread. Should go red if it spreads or splits. This thing's tight enough to hold in a bee fart."
Eliza pivoted smoothly and stomped down the newly assembled ramp. "Good. Tidy up and get your notepad. You're handling triage today."
Kee put away the needles and wiped down the bench top before following Eliza down the ramp. She was already deep in conversation with the constable diligently marking down salient points in her own notebook. Liz and the constable nodded in unison, a theatrical display of grim professionalism. Kee paused in the doorway and rolled his eyes.
The air outside was warmer than he had expected. Dry, intense, and oppressive. He quickly reached back into the workshop to switch on the air curtain and extend the awning that would keep the workshop a temperature a little more balanced. They were tied into the towns network of tendrils now so luxury systems like the air curtain weren't pulling from the carts own batteries. One of the many reasons that Kee preferred towns to working on the road.
"You know my schedule Yousuf. You might have to hold on to some of them."
"Liz, I'm asking for two extra days. Maybe one. I don't want a whole quonset full of depleted Armours sitting here until you or Ahmed can make it back. People are twitchy enough that so many are coming in"
Kee Strolled up to them as casually as he could. Constable Yousuf was staring intently off into the distance, or more specifically he was actively not staring at Eliza. Eliza kept her eyes on her notes, mouth thin and tight. Kee felt his heart quicken reflexively in the silence.
"How's it going?" Kee ventured, as he glanced back and forth between them and then caught himself. "Good afternoon constable."
Yousuf turned and blinked. The concern on his face melted into a wide bright smile. He rolled the stiffness out of his spine and he offered a wide flat palm to Kee. Kee returned the gesture and pressed his own, much smaller hand against Yousuf's.
"Good afternoon, Kee. It's going well. We were just going over the returns. There were a lot this past season. Twenty one. Seven in the last two weeks." Yousuf offered the news in his usual affable booming voice. The only times Kee had ever seen the constable tense or irritated, was when he was talking with Eliza. It was probably not a coincidence that the only time he had ever heard the constable laugh openly was when he was with Eliza as well.
"That's quite a few." Kee glanced over at Eliza, Attempting to ask with his tone and expression if that was even possible. She was busy working something out in her notebook and didn't respond.
"Fifteen. Maybe seventeen if there aren't too many joint replacements." Eliza said, finally looking up from her work. She bypassed Kee and looked sharply at Yousuf. "And no, we can't give you extra days."
"Liz you can't leave us with five Armours sitting around. People need to use that building." Yousuf pleaded.
"Five?" Liz sneered at Yousuf. "You said you had twenty one."
Kee watched the large man turn his head sheepishly and twist the toe of his boot in the dirt. "There is one more coming in from out near the border. We got a signal from them just before you arrived. Should be here in a day or two."
"Just one? A recovery rig is coming back in with just one Armour?"
"They only signaled one. We weren't able to actually talk to them."Eliza sighed heavily and looked back down at her notes. "Sounds like you will have five Armours 'sitting around' then?" She snapped her chin up and and, hands full, used it too point to something behind them. "Looks like you're busy right now."
Eliza turned and marched briskly back up the ramp into the workshop while Kee and Yousuf both turned to look behind them. Sydney, the elder monk, was marching toward them looking tiny among the knot of merchants and townies surrounding her. Her head cocked to one side, nodding reverently, making an obvious show of intently listening to an older cart owners concerns. Sydney was always in control, always dedicated to helping, always ready to accept the burdens of her people. Kee couldn't stand her.
Yousuf opened his mouth to speak, decided against it, and offered a weak grin to Kee. Kee raised his eyebrows a little and returned a conciliatory gesture.
Yousuf looked down at his hands for a long moment before slowly speaking. "How mad do you think she is at me?"
Kee was caught slightly off guard. He liked Yousuf well enough. He even felt friendly toward Yousuf. At least as friendly as he could feel toward someone he only saw during their short stays in town. Kee felt like he knew Liz, and maybe by extension he knew Yousuf, but he didn't really feel comfortable offering the man relationship advice. Then again, maybe Yousuf wasn't asking for advice.
"I think she knows that you didn't bring the Armours here." Kee's own voice sounded weird in his head. He knew what he was saying was true, but saying it felt false. He spoke his next words one at a time as if selecting them from a list. "You should probably talk to her after she has been working for a while."
Yousuf smiled down at his hands and then looked Kee in the eye and nodded slowly. He started to reach up and it looked like he was about to pat Kee on the shoulder, but he seemed to change his mind and let his hand fall again.
"I understand you are on triage? Good, that's good. Well, you had better get to work then. They are in Liam's quonset down past the broadcast tower" Yousuf pointed down a dirt and gravel road lined with low hanging willow trees.
"The one beside your office? I know the place."
"Yes That one. Stop by the Constables office on the way and tell my apprentice, that you need to get in to see the Armours. All the keys and paperwork are there too."
Kee blinked. "Carlo?" The name had caught slightly in his throat.
"Yeah." Yousuf said with a broad genuine grin. "We'll get you sorted out. I have a few things I need to handle here" He flicked his eyes discretely in the direction of Sydney and her gathered mob.
Recognizing that he had just been politely rescued, Kee nodded deferentially and turn to walk down the road in the direction of the broadcast tower.
The constables office was a rough wooden building. Real wood, not just mimetic plate tuned to look like wood. Layers of faded paint couldn't hide the grain and knots. Real wood meant that this might be one of the oldest buildings in all of Riverbend. Something from before the war. It was squarish and barely longer on a side than Kee was tall. It seemed far two small for two people to work in. Yousuf, or one of his predecessors, had reinforced it at the corners with metal weave and support threads, but kept as much of the original wood untouched as possible. Kee noticed the metal weave straight off, but he respected the attempt to blend it in with the natural surface grooves and undulations of the wood grain. He paused briefly in reverence to quality work, imagining the graceful dance of fingers directing filaments through structure of the wood. He completed his jog up the ramp to the door, looking over his own fingers as he flexed and twisted them imagining the care he would need to take to replicate the work.
Kee Rapped his knuckles on the solid wood beside the prominent metal Uniune emblem fixed to the door. The dull but pleasantly resonant thunk made him want to keep knocking, so he did.
As Kee was about to deliver the fifth knock, the door swung wide open. The face that replaced it caught Kee off guard. Wide dark eyes and an incredulous quirked smile. Young, about Kee's age, and strikingly handsome. He wore the the pale grey uniform of a cadet. Kee stood still for a moment, hand hanging in mid knock.
"We have a proximity detector on the door. You don't need to keep hitting it."
"I. Um. huh. yeah. It sounded… nice?" Kee turned his stumbling statement into a question and attempted to recover by pulling his hand down from the air and extending it. "Sorry. I'm Kee. Keegan Fitch Apprentice Armourer to Eliza Quon"
The handsome young man considered Kee curiously for a moment before clasping his hand and returning the greeting. "Yes, I know. Carlo Hassan, Apprentice to Constable Yousuf Grange. "
They looked each other over for a long moment before Kee realized that he had been shaking Carlo's hand for slightly longer than was really necessary. He wasn't sure how much shaking was appropriate for this particular ritual, but this seemed excessive.
"Well that was official" Carlo said, a grin pulling at the corner of his mouth.
"Says the guy in full uniform" Kee retorted reflexively.
Carlo's grin faltered slightly as he released Kee's hand and stuffed his own into the front pockets of his tunic. Kee thought that the uniform looked particularly flattering on Carlo, all sleek lines and fitted at the collar and cuffs. He only ever saw Yousuf wearing looser and lighter fabrics, with small, subtle Uniune logos woven in at the lapels. He couldn't remember when the last time he saw a full uniform, but he thought that was probably because it didn't lend itself to doing real work.
"I suppose you are here for the collection reports. Follow me. I think we can sort you out." Carlo said, before spinning on his heel and heading into the Constables office.
Kee considered for a moment that he might have insulted the apprentice constable. He ran a thousand other comments though his mind that would have been more diplomatic, but none of them seemed to fit the moment so he remained silent and followed behind.
The inside of the Constables office was not what Kee had expected. From the outside, he had thought that it must be some tiny little field office with a desk or workbench built into a wall to save space. He had been trying to imagine how broad chested Yousuf, and the more slender but not much shorter Carlo could even fill out reports without banging elbows.
There was a tiny field desk along the far wall like Kee had expected. It was built of the same rough wood as the exterior ,worn smooth and dark from years of steady use, but it sat behind a rope laced through small metal eyelets screwed into the walls. The rope was old plant fiber weave, and near to crumbling from age. Along the two walls framing the desk rows of narrow shelves climbed all the way to the offices peaked ceiling. They were covered with an array of tarnished metal cans and glass jars with faded labels. Kee could only discern the contents of a few of the cans, but they all seemed to be disinfectants and cleaning supplies. Powdered hand soaps, dry shampoo, now empty glass bottles with isopropanol and accelerated hydrogen peroxide printed on them. Each shelf had it's own thin rope pinned in front of it with more metal eyelets.
Directly inside the door was a small landing and a metal weave staircase leading down. The staircase was much newer than the rest of the building, but still a much older style than Kee was used to. Some of the finer weave on the handrails reminded him of Concordian reinforcement mesh in Armours designed to support heavy loads. He had never seen one, but Eliza had told him of Armours that had weapon mounts at the shoulder blades and clavicle that could easily support their entire cart. Long after the wood in the structure above gone to powder, this staircase would still be here.
"I probably don't need to tell you, but please don't touch anything." Carlo stated, without turning around. Carlo casually descended the stairs and Kee followed swiveling his head to head to take in as much of the office as he could.
"Wha..." Kee started the question, but then realized he didn't actually know what question he wanted to ask.
Carlo finished the thought for him. "What is all this? It's a sort of museum from before the war. I've asked Yousuf who set it up like this, with the ropes and such, but he doesn't know. He says the constable he apprenticed under didn't know either. The stairs were put in during the war, that I'm sure you already figured out for yourself, but the rooms down here were already built. They were likely dug out and built first and the wooden shack was constructed above it. Don't worry though, it's all been upgraded with reinforcement and stabilizer weaves so even if all the original pillars rotted out down here, the ceiling would hold."
Carlo looked up at Kee over his shoulder, that grin returning to the corner of his mouth. "We like to say that it was built to withstand an attack, but never had too. I have the collection reports over here on my desk."
Kee followed Carlo as they passed below the ground level and into a well lit grey room, at least twice as large as the Armourers cart. At the foot of the stairs was smooth grey floor stretching out from meters in all directions. Two large metal desks sat facing each other, a comically large span of empty room between them. On one wall was an enormous map of the entire town. The network of service tendrils snaking out to each building or cart were illuminated and pulsing, representing what they carried and how much of it they were carrying. Water, power, filament, waste, all twisted around each other in an organized mesh. Kee could see where the Armourers cart stood, off to the side of the market circle, and set back from the main path. Tendrils of green and blue and gold flowed in and out of the cart on the map. Seeing it from above like this, it was obvious how set apart from the rest of the market his cart was. How different it was. Kee felt himself wince involuntarily, even as the rational part of his mind described to him all the reasons why people might want some space between themselves and an Armourers cart.
"Here you are. Kee, is it?"
Kee hadn't heard Carlo slide up behind him and turned slightly startled. Carlo just stood there offering the reports, grin fixed on his lips. Kee could see that same curiosity flicker briefly in Carlo's eyes.
"Thank you. Yes. Kee is fine." Kee gathered up the reports and began leafing through them. "Is the shed unlocked? I should head over there and get started."
"No, we keep it secured but I have a key. I'll go over and help you. Yousuf insisted on it in fact. There are a few things that aren't in the reports that you will probably want some help with."
Chapter 3
Carlo took a thin rectangle of metal from his pocket and pressed it to a featureless plate sealing the large shed door. Fibers of the plate unwove themselves, disentangling at a microscopic level, until a clear seam appeared between the door and the frame. Carlo pried his fingertips in to the gap and heaved at the door. The shed was easily large enough to fit a cart or two. The door towered over them, but it had a slide mechanism that made it possible, if not entirely easy, to push aside. Slowly Carlo worked the opening until it was wide enough for them to enter.
"We like to keep them in here since its out of the way. Stays quiet and dry here too. But we do need it back. Collingwood uses this building to store perishables." Carlo gestured to the dark interior of the shed. "After you."
Kee wasn't sure how much to promise this young apprentice Constable opted to go with noncommittal "We'll do our best. We always do."
Kee stepped through the door way onto a solid flat slab. The floor of this building was poured concrete, not connected plate. If there were any connections here to the town mesh they would have to be hooked up the old fashioned way along the outside walls. It was a newer building than the Constables office, but not by much. Kee felt strange walking on surfaces that were this old. This fragile. Every step he took wore away a thin layer of dust that even Eliza wouldn't be able to weave back together. Eventually dust would be the only thing left.
"You store things here? You all have a weird way of keeping museums?"
"Sometimes the old stuff works best. Don't worry we know how to take care of this place. Well Collingwood and her people do at the very least."
Kee paused for a moment, letting his eyes adjust to the low light. From outside in the afternoon sun it seemed like the interior of the shed was perfectly black, but now that he was inside he could see that there were hundreds, maybe thousands of small, pale points of light scattered up the walls and across the curved ceiling high overhead. Thermal lights. Carlo stepped into the building behind him and the lights brightened enough to clearly see the back wall of the shed. The light gradually increased, feeding off the miniscule change in temperature the two of them added to the building.
In the center of the single large room sat a few dozen stacked crates assembled from standard plate currently mimicking wooden slats. Kee assumed that they had been tuned to act as stabilizers. A well maintained stabilizer could keep fruit fresh for weeks, grains dry for months, and water free from parasites and other microorganisms for years. Storing them in a cool dry location made some sense too. If the stabilizer had less work to do you wouldn't have to recharge them quite as often.
As the light rose enough to touch the outer walls Kee could finally see the Armours. More than he had ever seen in one place before. Most of them were dangling from lifts attached to the walls. Long metal hooks looped through attachment points along their backs and shoulders. This kept them up off the floor, but it was probably also a precaution just in case one of them wasn't depleted or inactive. Kee raised an eyebrow at that. Those hooks wouldn't hold a light scout more than a few seconds if it decided to walk out of here. The heavies wouldn't even use the door, they would simply wrench themselves down and walk through the shed walls. Stranger though were what looked like four Armours laid out on the ground limbs intertwined.
"I'm guessing that was what isn't in the report." Kee said, pointing toward the entangled Armours.
Carlo replied in a hushed whisper "Yeah. Yeah. That's them. They came in like that."
Kee stopped for a moment and took in a deep breath. He had to calm and center himself. Liz had impressed upon him that all of their work carried a certain solemn reverence. Respect was owed to these wretched monsters. Respect and a healthy amount of caution.
"Has anyone tried to get them apart?"
"No. Yousuf wanted to wait until Eliza could give her assessment." Carlo cocked an eyebrow. "Honestly, I'm not sure if we even could. Come look at this."
Carlo crouched down near the head of the closest Armour keeping a careful distance. He pinched the metal rectangle between his thumb and forefinger for a few short seconds until a dull glow emanated from the end facing him. He shot Kee a feeble smile and spun the rectangle around so that the increasing glow illuminated the Armours left arm. Kee came around and crouched down next to Carlo.
The arm of a Concordian medium lay across the shoulder of a Uniune counterpart. If the arm weren't heavily plated ending in a dangerously serrated claw bristling with an array of grasping and manipulating appendages, the gesture might have looked casual. Tender. Kee leaned in to look closer. Where the chitinous plates contacted each other they had fused. Near what would be a wrist and rising up the forearm the two Armours had flowed together, swirled like stirred liquid. Kee peered at the blend imagining the tangle of microscopic filaments unfurled and knotted back together. Micro weave and engineered fungus wrapped around one another like climbing vines on lattice. Eliza could probably differentiate the ends of individual threads, where one Armour ended and the other began. Even if she could she might need the needles to disentangle them.
Carlo leaned in, his face so close that Kee could feel the soft warmth of his breath as he spoke.
"Ever seen that before?"
"Never."
Kee was sitting at the small kitchen table in the Armourers cart sipping on coffee and picking at a coconut bun when Eliza descended the stairs.
He looked up from breakfast and nodded to the master Armourer.
"You're up early. "
"I was going to say the same. Where did you get the bun?"
Kee pointed to the stabilizer. "They were half price. End of day stock over at the bakers cart. Got there as he was cleaning up. Five left."
Eliza pulled one of the buns from the stabilizer and filled her own coffee mug before sliding onto the bench seat beside Kee. She took a beat to luxuriate in a particularly wide yawn before sipping gingerly from her steaming cup. A sly grin flickered at the corner of her mouth.
"Out late?"
Kee crunched up his face in mock offence. "Not really. Why? Did you and Yousuf have a bet going."
"I didn't say anything. If you want to hear Yousuf's insinuations you can ask him." Eliza said raising her hands in a show of over exaggerated innocence.
"Carlo helped me load Armours onto the flatbed so I offered to buy him a drink in town. That's all. We just talked and walked around a bit."
"That's all?"
"Yes, that's all?"
Eliza sunk into her seat slightly and picked at her bun. "Well. That's disappointing."
"It's the truth." Kee shook his head a little bewildered. "What? What makes you think I would tell you anyway? I could be lying."
"No. I know you aren't lying. You're a terrible liar." Eliza took a long drink of coffee before grinning again. "Just means I lost the bet."
Kee rolled his eyes and slumped back against the smooth white seat cushion.
"So he helped you load up? How many are outside now?"
"We moved six. Took two trips. Carlo mostly ran the winch and moved some boxes around. I don't think he was very keen on touching them."
Eliza nodded in agreement staring into her coffee. They both knew townies could be a bit skittish.
"There is something odd that you should see though."
"Work can wait until after I finished this bun I think."
"Yeah."
The hum of the carts cooling plates fluctuated slightly as the system switched from night to day cycle. Distantly the workshop began powering up with a soft rise in pitch.
For a moment they both sat and nibbled at thier breakfast enjoying a comfortable, practiced silence.
"I never see Yousuf wearing a uniform?" Kee tossed out casually.
Eliza turned slowly and studied her apprentice curiosity plane on her face.
"You're kidding."
Kee failed to keep from looking sheepish. A slight blush glowed his cheeks not completely hidden by his dark complexion.
Eliza broke into a wide wolfish smile. "He was wearing the uniform?"
"Maybe." Kee turned his eyes up to glance at the ceiling, the stairs, the bun, anywhere but at Eliza.
"And all you did was talk and walk around. hmm?"
There was a muffled shuffling from Eliza's quarters. The shuffling separated into distinct footsteps that grew steadily louder until Kee saw Yousuf descending the stairs.
"Good morning!" Yousuf's voice echoed around the cart drowning out the regular hum. "What are we talking about today."
Without a moments pause Eliza pointed to the pastry in her hand and blurted "Coconut buns!".
Kee picked up the sentence as Eliza stuffed a large bite into her mouth. "Got them on sale at the end of the day. They're good."
"Excellent." Yousuf Pulled two buns from the stabilizer and pointed toward the coffee machine. "Is the tea dispenser still not working on this unit?"
"Fixed it myself just before we got here. It's filled with mint and Oolong, but I didn't have time to get anything else."
"Thank you Kee, Oolong sounds fantastic."
Yousuf poured some tea into the remaining mug and sat with a heavy grace across from the Armourers. He beamed at them both with a wide toothy smile. "Seems like it's going to be an excellent day!"
The melodic hum of a bowed string instrument flowed from the radio and resonated in the metal frame of the workshop. Eliza liked to have the radio on while she worked, and as long as it wasn't distracting she made it clear that she wasn't particular about the style of music. Today, Kee suspected, the signal he tuned in had to have been relayed off at least two towers. It drifted in from one of the towns well south of Riverbend. Somewhere that still favoured this more folksy style of music. Like always, there was nothing else that identified the source of the signal. A person could always take a rig or a cart out and sniff the radio waves back to their source but that wasn't anything Kee felt like doing. He liked to dial through the dozen or so available signals picturing where they might emanate from by they music they played. Depending on the Armourers schedule, any one of these might be a town they would drift though in a few months.
Eliza sat on her wheeled chair hunched over the workbench humming idly along with the melody.
"Kee, could you hand me the needles. My set." Eliza didn't look up from the two Armours splayed across the bench. Kee had to lift the extensions into place earlier to fit both of them on there. Heavy plated arms and legs still draped off of the edges and onto the floor.
The workshop had already been fairly cramped, but now the only path from one end to the other was so tight that Kee had to press his back against the wall and shuffle sideways to navigate it. He lightly shoved a clawed hand out of the way with the toe of his boot. He could see Eliza wrinkle her nose slightly at the sound of it scraping against the metal floor.
The claw itself was a smooth and mottled material, tightly constructed and seashell hard. It was the array of spindly grasping manipulators that grew out of the shell around the hand that had brushed against the floor leaving long shiny scratch marks. Typically when an Armour came in, all of those bristles were held tight to the plates. This Armour, the one with it's forearm fused to the shoulder of another, had apparently gone inactive with all of these barbed fingers extended. Kee took special care to avoid them as he inched his way past.
"That's a bet I win." Kee called out over his shoulder. He slid open the second drawer of Eliza's tool chest and retrieved the leather bag containing her needles from the back. Just slightly longer than Kee's own hand and only a few centimeters across, the worn edges where the leather was bound together told stories of years of careful use.
"Hows that?"
"I was talking with Carlo about how you would probably need the needles for this job."
"He thought I would need the needles?"
"Well no. I didn't really bet him. I just said I thought you would need the needles. You know... I mean, it's tough right. Like, have you ever seen that before?" Kee had made his way around the heads of the Armours to hand the small pouch to the Master Armourer. She stared back at him, but where he had expected cold affront in her eyes he saw quiet concern.
"Never." She said flat and plain.
"I'm sorry Liz, I didn't mean-"
She breathed out a heavy sigh. "Kee, come here. Sit down." She breathed in a heavy sigh.
Kee set the leather bag down in one of the few clear spaces on the workbench then wheeled his chair from the back of the shop and maneuvered it Through the narrow space to sit beside Eliza.
"Put your hands here and here" Eliza directed Kee to place one hand on either side of the place where the Armours were fused. "I'm going to hand you the thread and you are going to unwind it. No needles. After that I will show you why we use them."
Kee's hands trembled slightly. He had done small freehand weaves on panels that were threatening to fall off the cart, but nothing delicate. Nothing that mattered. He had even been allowed to finish and close up Armour Knee and ankle joints that Eliza had done the more delicate repair work on. He thought about asking Eliza if this was really a good idea, but stopped. He already knew what her answer would be.
Eliza reached under Kee's right arm and flexed her fingers. Kee watched as each knuckle bent to precise angles applying individual tension to the invisible threads. Her wrist twisted slightly and made one sharp tiny pull, like plucking a berry. She finished with a quick swirl of her fingers, her thumb and middle finger pressed lightly together. Kee quickly glanced from her hand to the Master Armourers face. Her eyes were unfocused and aimed at an indistinct patch of wall, up and away from where her hands were working.
Eliza spoke quietly with out ever looking over to Kee. "Take this in your left. You'll use your right to work your way back to the seam. From there you should be able to split this thread and weave it back into who it came from."
"Which one is that? How do I tell which one it came from?"
"Take the thread and follow it back. You don't need to know who it came from. The thread knows." Eliza said as if it were the easiest thing in the world.
Eliza pressed absolutely nothing into Kee's waiting fingers. He rolled the tips of index and thumb back slightly until he could feel the tension, and gently hooked the thread around the small finger of his left hand. It thrummed against his skin. Inactive, but not depleted.
Eliza settled into her chair beside him and Kee could feel her eyes focus on the movement of his hands.
"You Feel it?"
"Yes."
"You need to work at a steady speed. Don't rush or you'll lose the line... or break it. Move too slowly and there won't be enough tension on it to work it back to a seam. Watch out for processor fibers and let me know if you ever stop feeling a pulse." Eliza paused briefly, then snatched up her needles dropping them into the front pocket of her overalls. She stretched one arm high over her head then yawned broadly and slapped both hands down onto her knees. "I'm getting a coffee."
Kee felt a wave of anxiety work it's way up from his stomach. "I thought you were going to teach me about the needles?"
"Looks like you are going to be at this for a while. Pay attention to the end of that thread. If it drops you're going to have a wonderful time finding it again." With that she pushed herself back on her chair, rose to her feet and slouched out of the workshop.
Kee understood the process of what he was attempting to do. He knew about the miniscule forces bridging the distance between his fingers and the microscopic threads of the Armour weave. He imagined how those same forces allowed him to control them like working on a loom. He could pluck each filament, twisting them as if he were physically in contact with them. He also knew that connection was tenuous at best. Move too quickly, pull too hard, and the connection between his fingertips and the invisible strands would snap. Metal weave and mimetic plate were composed of thick chunky strands. Once every ten threads or so there would be a bit of fiber processor wound into mimetic plate but you could feel the steady hum of it through the fields so it was very easy to avoid. The weave of an Armour, even an older one, was all gossamer floss packed so tightly that it formed a surface smooth and unyielding as stone. The pulse was steady, but soft. You could lose track of it if you weren't careful.
Kee began slowly teasing the thread away from the place where the two Armours swirled together. Fiber processors and the dendrites that connected them weren't usually very close to the surface, still it was better to work slowly and avoid severing something Kee didn't have the skill to repair. He stuck out the thumb of his right hand and felt for the mild buzz of fields being activated while continuing to wind the length of thread over and under his other fingers.
"You only need two fingers to pull that thread in. Maybe only one." Eliza Stood just behind Kee's shoulder. He could hear as she blew gently across the top of her steaming cup.
"I know. It helps me keep track of how much I have unwound if I use all my fingers."
"Relatively speaking, that thread is further from your fingers than we are from the sun. Two fingers, one finger, doesn't matter. You're not really touching anything. It's more important that you feel it. It's not about directing these threads to move the way you want them too. It's more like you are asking them to go somewhere they already want to go. Make sense?"
"Not really." Kee admitted furrowing his brow. Eliza would swing wildly back and forth between using words like 'feeling' and 'mood' to describe their work, and then tell him that it was all about precision, physics, and mechanics. Sometimes he felt like screaming out his confusion but found it was better to keep it to himself. Being confused was preferable to having Eliza angry at him. The kicker was that no matter what she told him, she was invariably right. It was just frustrating that it usually took so long for him to figure out how or why she was right.
Kee continued rolling back the thread taking care to wrap each new length around each of his fingers in turn. He could feel Eliza's eyes on him for a long minute as he gradually worked his way back to a seam. He had been about halfway back to the seam before he knew for a certainty that this thread belonged to the Uniune Armour. Like a puzzle piece, the thread fit slowly, easily, back into place. Kee could feel the tension release through the tips of his fingers as the thread reconnected in it's proper place. The ends of it wrapping tightly around partner filaments in the Uniune mediums shoulder.
Kee lifted his hands away from the Armour stretching out his knuckles, already stiff from constantly holding the tension of the thread.
"Good." Eliza stated flatly, still out of Kee's view. "If you try to unravel that whole mess one strand at a time it's going to take all week. Best to bundle up braids and take them in groups of twenty or so. I'll be out front working on that DBU knee joint."
Kee watched in silence as she stomped her way down the ramp and out into the sunlight.
Lights from the market carts across the square flicked to life. All of them had strands wound through them that detected the oncoming evening. Some of them might have even had internal clock logic set up to turn them on at the optimal time. The lights kept in good repair increased their incandescence so slowly that you could hardly notice the change from natural reflected light to internal artificial light. The other ones, the ones that were out of tune, went from dull filament to full brightness in an instant. A blink of vivid blue danced it's way through the workshop window. Kee noticed it around the edge of his perception and finished replacing the bundle of fibers he was holding. He felt like he was pushing the boundaries of his patience, but he kept tension on the strands with one hand until he could loop them back into place tying each one off to a mated thread with the other. Letting his hands fall to his lap, fatigue hit him full force. When was the last time he had closed his eyes?
Kee put his palms together and stretched out each hand one finger at a time. Hours ago he had thought that there was no way that he would be able to disentangle these two wretched creatures. Now there was only a thin umbilical linking the two. If they had some hefty cutting tool on the cart he could probably just snip them apart and be done with it. Eliza would never let him do it. Kee's own sense of pride would never let him do it. Besides, most of the tools in the cart were created for fine precision work on a nanometer scale. Even if he absolutely had too, he couldn't imagine any way that he would be able to slice through solid Armour plate.
"Very good work Kee." Eliza's voice startled him out of his reverie. The way she spoke was edgeless, but a Kee still felt a nervous shiver run up his spine.
"Thanks. There is probably 2 hours or so left. I can finish up tonight and help you with the rest tomorrow."
Kee turned to see Eliza leaning against the wall at the top of the ramp. She was looking down at her hands as she ran her wrists through a series of stretches.
"It's fine. Leave it for now. We will finish that up together tomorrow. I want to have a look at the last strands to see if we can figure out how that even happened in the first place. Didn't use the needles I see."
Kee grinned reflexively. "No. No I didn't. You were right. I could feel where each thread needed to go. I panicked for a while there when you left, but it wasn't really that much different than working on ankle joints or mimetic plate. Just finer and tougher. More nerve wracking."
Eliza smiled slyly and looked up from her hands "Uniune Grey-blue plate like that is self healing. You wouldn't be able to lay a thread wrong if you tried. It wouldn't let you."
Kee rolled his eyes back as far as they would go and slumped down into his chair. "Is that the only reason you trusted me to work on these two? There was no way to actually mess it up."
"No, there were lots of ways to mess it up." Eliza looked Kee in the eyes and he grin softened "Kee, you're good at this. You just need some practice to figure that out."
Kee smiled surreptitiously, glancing away.
"Anyway, we'll have to shut down for tonight. Go get cleaned up. The monks want everyone down at the beach in an hour or so."
Kee felt his smile melt away. There had been depleted Armours among the ones recovered. Or maybe they had become depleted while they waited for repair. It was always impossible to know.
Kee swallowed to find his voice before speaking. "How many?"
"Four."
Eliza offered a sympathetic half smile that slowly took on a dangerous edge. "You might want to wear something nice. Carlo will be there. Probably in uniform."
Kee turned in his chair, deliberately casual. He could feel Eliza's eyes burning into him, searching for any outward signs of embarrassment that she could exploit. Privately, he began wondering which of his shirts, the blue or the orange one, would suit a Casting ceremony, and match well with grey.
Fussing with the front of his orange shirt, Kee fell in line among the procession of vendors. In most places it was considered good form to let the townies head down to the beach first. They would have all the best spots staked out anyway, so anyone living out of a cart would have to sit farther back. If the monks started ringing bells at 7:05, cart folk, market folk, would start walking down at 7:20. Then all the townies would be able to look over their shoulders at all the late market folk and click thier tongues. Kee found it all a ridiculous bit of theatre but he had the good sense to go along with it.
Kee stepped on the heels of one of the clothing venders. He apologised profusely but she stared javelins into his chest. She complained to her companion and shifted the tall woven grass mat she was carrying to position it between Kee and herself. Between her dismissive reaction and the anxiety in his stomach at the thought of seeing Marco again, Kee was in confused sorts when the procession finally arrived at the beach.
Most of the townies had already set up mats and low seats along the beach leaving a respectful amount of space between themselves and the water. The monks would have to have a place to conduct the Casting and no one wanted to be underfoot for that.
Eliza waved him over from her seat halfway down the slope, conspicuously in the center of the awaiting audience. She was lounging atop a pile of loose cushions spread out on a wide grass mat. The crisply pressed pants and jacket she wore were a sharp diversion from her usual stained and torn coveralls.
Kee sheepishly wound his way past the cart folk setting up higher on the beach. "Liz, why do you feel the need to antagonize everyone."
"What they think is their business. Yousuf invited me to sit with him and I accepted.", she pointed regally toward a few loose cushions that had spilled from her stack. "Would you care to take a seat? I saved you one."
Kee sighed heavily and lowered down onto the cushions taking care not to get sand on his clean pants. He avoided pointed looks from the clothing vendor further up the beach as she spread her own grass mat.
"Yousuf is helping the monks?" Kee asked pulling at his shirt to straighten it in a way that he hoped flattered him.
"Yes. I got them set up earlier today, but they still need the council to oversee any transport. Yousuf is on the council, so he has to be there."
"Yousuf leads the council-
Eliza interjected "The council doesn't have a leader"
Kee plowed on "-but that's not what I meant."
Eliza kept her eyes fixed out over the water for a moment. "Yes. I know what you meant. The monks, contrary to what you think, do know how to do their job."
Kee muttered an inarticulate grunt and tugged at his cuff.
Eliza side eyed him strongly enough to make her point, 'sit down, shut up, and be respectful.'. It was a lot for one look, but Liz had a way with looks.
Kee took a long moment to stare out at the lake gently rolling up the bottom of the beach. The light breeze against his cheeks still had some warmth to it. He tried to focus on the sound of the water and worked on some long slow breaths. The low hum of conversations around him made it difficult.
Eliza leaned down and spoke quietly enough that only Kee could hear. "Nervous?"
Kee snorted a light puff from his nose and nodded his head. "I think I am, yeah. Could you tell?"
"Oh yeah."
"Great." Kee said leaning back on his cushion. "Anxiety is super attractive I hear."
"Listen, If he's anything like Yousuf, he won't even notice."
Kee narrowed his eyes at Eliza. "You know that doesn't actually me feel any better. Yousuf notices everything. He's just too polite to tell you."
"I know." Eliza stretched out on her pile of cushions. "That's why I like him. Smart and good looking. Winning combination."
The miniscule procession of four monks emerged from the rickety looking covered structure further down the beach and made it's slow way toward them. Trailing behind them, a flatbed draped in yellow-orange drifted silent and looming. Behind that the eight members of the council dragged four long dart-like boats. Each member tugged at a thick rope of metal weave embedded natural fibers, wrapped in the ceremonial fashion over the left shoulder, around the waist, and back across the chest over the right shoulder. One person could pull a boat alone that way, but they would feel it. If the discomfort was supposed to be symbolic of something, Kee didn't know, and he wasn't going to hang around the Monks long enough that they would tell him.
Two figures in hoods walked on either side of each boat to keep them running in a straight line. One of them had to be Carlo, but from this distance it was hard to tell which one.
Kee wondered to himself why they didn't just attach some float plates to the boats instead of gouging deep laborious trenches into the sand. Efficiency wasn't really the point of ritual, he supposed. This spot and time had been selected specifically so that the monks could conduct the casting ceremony against the backdrop of the setting sun. Equal parts tradition and staged spectacle.
When they finally hit their mark in front of the crowd, the lead monk, Sidney, raised her hands, palms out, and pressed them slowly forward. The sunset tinted cloth slid smoothly off the flatbed behind her, uncovering four depleted Armours. Kee recognized the move as a clumsy version of guiding a thread. Impressive in scale, but not really very useful. He scanned the audience for weavers or vendors who encode fiber processors. Anyone he could share this silent joke with. Everyone seemed enthralled with the performance. Kee sighed heavily and leaned back into cushions. He watched as the waves washed gently up and down the sand, thinking about what he would say to Carlo after the ceremony, but feeling the length of the day too heavily to be anxious about it.
Kee felt Eliza nudge him on the shoulder. On the third jostle, his eyes snapped open. His mouth was dry and a heavy film coated his tongue. The world spun around him for bit while he blinked the crust from his eyes.
Then he remembered where he was and snapped up to sitting.
"I'm sorry Liz, I'm sorry. What did I miss?"
Eliza looked as him quizzically. "Nothing. You don't care about these things."
"Then what-"
"Kee. Get up we have to go to work."
When the flatbed drifted into view they were all there waiting for it. Eliza and Kee stood shoulder to shoulder nearest to the Armourers cart. The had run back from the beach with just enough time to toss on their coveralls. Kee could feel his breathing finally slowing down to a normal rhythm. He had gathered a pouch of hand tools. Needles, light guides, radio calipers, and the like. He wasn't sure what he was going to do with them, but they made him feel better nestled there in his front pocket. Eliza stood empty handed. On Kee's other side stood Yousuf and Carlo. Beyond them, all four monks stood at the very edge of the small pool of light cast by the cart. None of the others had a chance to change out of what they were wearing during the casting ceremony. Kee felt awkward and under dressed.
Kee stole the occasional glance down the line at Carlo. Hood pulled back, hair in general disarray, chin out, eyes narrowed. Carlo had all the naive readiness of an excited puppy. Besides unloading the flatbed Kee wasn't sure how useful the rest of them were going to be. Still he couldn't say he was disappointed that Carlo was there.
"Quit fidgeting" Eliza whispered from the corner of her mouth without turning her head.
"I'm not"
"You are."
"Why is the flatbed moving so slow."
When Eliza did turn to look at Kee the look in her eyes silenced him.
Yousuf leaned in from the other side. "Are you two done?"
Eliza leaned across in front of Kee and spoke at a normal volume. "Probably. Why is it moving so slow? It's a long range flatbed. Should be going two or three times that fast."
Yousuf turned to consider the flatbed "I don't know. Seems to have an outrigger wheel, so at least one bad float plate, but that shouldn't slow it down much. Only one crew in the cab too."
Kee followed Yousuf's gaze. The sky was darkening quickly now, and the flatbed looked like it had a haze of mist around it. He had trouble picking out the same details. Maybe Yousuf really did notice everything.
"Did they tell you what the problem was?" Eliza asked.
"No. Bad radio. I only got the alert signal and a request for an armourer. It was all in old squawk code." Yousuf looked back over his shoulder at no one in particular. He considered Kee for a moment, before sighing, lowering his voice and whispering to both armourers. "Probably mechanical issues with the rig. Busted water purifier or burned out plates. At least I hope that's all it is."
Eliza nodded slightly and looked down at her boots.
Kee side eyed the monks. Now it made a bit more sense why they were here. If Yousuf suspected an active armour he must have held some dim hope that the monks could settle it down. Kee didn't share that lofty appraisal of their abilities. Eliza never really talked about the monks, but every townie had a story or two about them subduing an active armour. Every single one of those stories, second or third hand. All of them involved some sort of mystical nonsense that Kee had never seen or experienced. Unbreakable ropes, hypnotic flutes, and even hand to hand combat with a monster three times thier size. Kee was pretty certain that the robes, the secretive nature of monks amounted to a lot of theatre. If they had to deal with an active Armour, the monks would do what they rest of them were told to do. Run. Run for the cart and don't look back.
The faint hum of the rig spun down to silent as it pulled in under the Armourer cart spotlights. The outrigger wheel descended with a soft thump into the dirt and the whole flatbed pitched slightly to the side as the wheel took up the weight. There was a tarp pulled tight over the flatbed, but Kee could still spot the shoulder and leg of a medium long range model. Probably Concordian. Only one though. It usually isn't worth the time to haul back fewer than three inactives. He looked over to Eliza to see if she had an idea what was going on. Her eyes were intently focused on the cab and her eyebrows were tight, but she stood perfectly still. Kee decided it would be best to follow her lead.
The driver slowly pushed open the door and stepped out of the cab. She seemed for a moment like she was staring at them to stare at them, but Kee couldn't see her eyes under the brim of her cap. She lifted one foot and started to step toward them, but instead she tilted forward and slammed, rigid, to the ground.
Kee caught the glance between Eliza and Yousuf a split second before they both bolted for the flatbed. It had been wordlessly decided between them what needed to be done. Yousuf covered the distance to the driver in three long strides. Eliza broke right and scrambled to the rear of the flatbed slapping button to lower the bed with an open palm on the way by. It was already descending by the time the monks let out their held breath. Useless, Kee thought as he jogged to meet up with Eliza at the back of the rig.
Kee rounded the back corner of the rig just as it was settling to the ground. He could feel his feet trying to backpedal him as far away as possible before he had fully registered what he was looking at. Everything in his chest clench tight and he had to make a few short stuttering steps to keep his balance. The man on the flatbed was waving his arms around weakly, mouth opening and closing without making any sound. It looked to Kee like he was trying to warn them off. Eliza already had one hand resting on his shoulder in a gentle attempt to keep him from moving too much while her other hand went through the familiar motions of catching and winding a thread. Her eyes unfocused, her teeth clenched in concentration. She was pointedly not looking at his leg.
Kee couldn't stop himself from staring at it. The leg was being devoured. That is the only way that he could frame it in his mind. Devoured. The Armour had clamped one claw tightly around the leg just below the knee. So tightly that it had obviously been crushed beyond any hope of repair. A skilled medic might have been able to save the man's life by removing it, but Eliza wasn't a medic. What she was doing now wasn't surgery.
Devoured. The mans shin had been slurped up like a noodle. His foot was only partially jutting out of the claw The rest of his leg was swirled into the armour plate. Streaks of dark brown swept through the surface of the armour plate. In places close to the place where leg and claw met, Kee could also see streaks of tan matching the fabric of his pants, black lines that smoothly blended with the toe of his boot. His leg had been unwound, the filaments of it unwoven. Like the synthetic plate of the cart. Like the tough mesh skin of an Armour.
"What are you doing?"
Kee blurted the words, even though he knew exactly what she was doing. Kee had repeated those same motions using the needles countless times. Gripping a thread and disentangling it from the weave around it. Taking it up with deft tugs and swirls of the wrist and fingers. In answer she reached up and extended the last two fingers on her left hand, keeping her right splayed across the man's shoulder. Thumb flexed and tucked tight beside her palm, middle finger bent and applying pressure just below the man's clavicle. The implication struck Kee like a spear through the chest. Eliza wasn't holding the man down. She was to feeling for the pulse in his threads. In her left hand she held fibers of the man's leg and she needed Kee's help to keep unwinding them. To detach him from the Armour that was consuming him.
Kee dropped to his knees beside the Master Armourer and took up the thread in his own hands. He could feel the pulse of it. Active but weakening. He let the familiarity of the work take over. Hands twisting and wrapping automatically. Inside he was screaming. Like he knew the flex of his fingers and the angles of his wrist, he knew that what he was doing wasn't possible. This man wasn't woven and constructed like an Armour. He must still be sleeping on the beach. Eliza's strained voice told him otherwise.
"Save as much as you can. Weave the threads back in as they separate." Eliza indicated with her chin where the man and the Armour were beginning to separate. "Watch out for threads from that Armour in case I miss and start handing you the wrong ones. The Armour is not our priority. Got it?"
Kee nodded making a wordless noise from his throat telling Eliza that he got it.
Eliza took the briefest moment to look Kee in the eyes. She nodded very slightly once. It was a single look that said everything they both needed to know. Nothing about this is right. Set your questions and fears aside. Go to work.
The two armourers took a simultaneous breath and returned to the process. From the outside it looked like two sets of hands working in perfect synchronization. Rising, falling, and twisting in concert. Kee, for his part, felt he was just barely keeping up as Eliza peeled off threads and divided them into groups for him. Despite her warning, every single thread she handed off to him came bundled and aligned exactly how he needed it. Using his left hand he would take up the new threads guide them back into position.
It very quickly became obvious that there were simply not enough filaments of the mans leg left to recreate it. Kee would have to weave it back together just below the knee. Everything else had been absorbed into the Armour, buried beneath layers of impenetrable plate and composite support structures. It would take a skilled weaver days, maybe months to puncture even the outer layers of plate. Retrieving those threads simply wasn't possible. Kee was focused on his task. Equal parts intense concentration and numbing repetition. He hadn't even noticed the monks approaching and encircling the rig. His eyes were unfocused, considering something in the middle distance while his mind worked on feeling the pulses humming through the threads in his hands. The motion caught his attention a split second before Sidney plunged both of her hands deep into the Armours back.The Armour went from laying immobile on its front to standing at its full height instantly.
Sydney disengaged from the Armour in that exact instant and took one sharp stabilizing step back.
In the shock of the moment Kee reeled, breaking his connection to bundles of loose threads. It felt like the bite of solid twine wrapped around each finger. Just enough sudden pain to draw his attention back to his hands. They weren't his. They felt like his hands, but he saw them splayed out in unraveling coils of thread. He was peeling apart into individual strands being spread out thin before him. Then just as suddenly, everything snapped back.
Sydney stood above him, both of her hands contorted and tensed, stained black nearly to the elbows. The muscles of her arms flexed and tight as if she were hoisting a heavy load. She dropped her arms pulling outward sharply.
Kee flinched. His hands flew up in front of his face in a defensive reflex. A thick warm liquid splattered over him. Some made it past his arms and hands landing on his closed eyes, in his hair, in his mouth. It was bitter like liquid ash. He heard Eliza howl. Her voice went from pained surprise to furious rage in one continuous sound. With his eyes still closed he could hear rapid movements and something tumble from the flatbed and land heavily in the dirt.
The scuffle ended and Kee heard utterances of recovering voices around him.
He slowly opened his eyes, cracking apart the thin layer of rapidly solidifying liquid coating his lids.
The legs of the Armour stood bolt upright like pillars. Above that the torso had been peeled and layed open like a soft fruit. Small waterfalls of dark liquid extended from the flayed segments, now hardened. It looked like a macabre sculpture. Some thin rivulets made their way down to the man laying on the flatbed. Deposited like a frozen spray across his chest.
The man breathed deeply and suddenly. Kee was startled enough to move his own arms, cracking the dark substance away from his elbow, tearing out the fine hairs along his right forearm. He saw shards of the same stuff fall away from the man in front of him. Kee shot a quick glance down toward the man’s leg. Completely separated, just below the knee.
Kee heard someone shouting from behind the Armours legs and reacted without processing what he was doing. He snaked one arm under each of the man’s shoulders and tried as hard as he could to join his hand across the man’s chest. Kee couldn’t quite reach, but it didn’t matter, he pulled as hard as he could without fully securing his grip. With a couple of massive heaves he pulled the man off the back of the flatbed and they both crashed into a pile in the dust.