Chapter Six

  Yellow

  Nellie checked the signal feed again, watching for any sign of disruption as the Yellow iris slid shut.

  “We have a good feed,” Lucy reassured her, “Nothing is interfering with the signal in the slightest.”

  “Just as long as it stays that way,” Nellie replied. Her nerves were climbing as they sat in the small command center they had set up in the center of the Atrium. “We have no idea what those energy fields are, so there are no guarantees here.”

  Seven screens were arrayed in front of them, while a table covered in nanites rippled and formed a three-dimensional map of the area around the T-Rigs.

  “Sound off,” Cheape’s voice came through clearly on the central monitor.

  “Gas tank, ready,” The screen on the left flickered as the name was added to the feed.

  “Sparks, ready,” The same happened on the right.

  “Andi J, ready. " This process continued until each screen had a tag indicating which feed it was.

  “Squad ready, your highnesses,” Cheape said when they were done. “We will continue forward at your command.”

  Nellie and Lucy exchanged a look.

  “Go,” Nellie said, leaning over the table as the squad moved off into the first segment.

  Nellie watched the table, seeing the walls around the entrance open up as the team moved forward. The little figures matched the team, with three T-Rigs leading the way and the rest of them in exosuits.

  The moment they stepped out of the small entrance corridor, the view opened up.

  “Are you seeing this?” Gas tank said.

  Looking up at the screens, Nellie saw the vista in full color. A heavy fog was cloaking the area, but the forms showing around the team wouldn’t have been out of place in any industrial area on Earth. Large warehouses and what looked like factory buildings in stone and metal siding, while broad pipes dripped who knew what onto the grimy roadways below.

  As they continued on, the illusion shattered as they saw more of the surrounding area. Those factories and buildings were far too large, with some stretching several stories into the air while suspended walkways crisscrossed the roads on the higher floors. Black-painted metal, like iron girders, formed a mesh between the topmost levels, and massive chimneys looked ready to pump smoke at any moment.

  “Stay in formation,” Cheape barked when one of the Exo suits started to stray. “No telling what’s waiting in here.”

  “Or in those,” Sparks pointed above them, where a set of clear pipes carried strange fluids between two factories.

  “Movement scanner is showing clear,” Gas tank reported. “Do we go into the buildings or keep going?”

  “Hold for an answer from the Queens,” Cheape instructed.

  “What do you think?” Lucy asked. “We might find some interesting tech in those factories.”

  “Could we bring it out if we did?” Nellie asked.

  “We could at least get scans of it,” Lucy shrugged. “But it’s your choice. Going inside might incite a response from anything protecting that Segment.”

  “Then it is better to do it now while the team can fall back easily,” Nellie said, opening a line to Cheape; she told them to go ahead and search one of the factories.

  In the best-case scenario, they find something useful inside there or a clue as to what they might be facing. Worst-case, they get attacked while they are still close to the exit and can retreat. Even so, watching the screens as the team moved across to the nearest building with a door facing the exit, she felt her anxiety rising again.

  Anything could be in there.

  “Someone learned a lot in their brief time with Cara,” Lucy nodded to the screen, where Cheape had the team fan out around the door—One on each side of the door, two further back in a firing position, and two across the street, aiming deep into the factory.

  “Yeah, thankfully,” Nellie said, reminding herself these were people she could trust to look after themselves.

  /====<<<>>>====\

  “On three,” Cheape said, moving her Rig into position in front of the door. “If anything moves, fry it.”

  “What about damage?” Gas Tank complained. “We are here to salvage stuff, right?”

  “Worry about lives first,” Cheape said firmly. “We can always nail it back together with a processor.”

  “Aye, Ma’am,” Gas Tank charged his weapons.

  Cheape counted as she charged the shield module and raised her flame unit into a firing position. As soon as she hit three, the two exo-suited team members pulled hard on the doors, whipping them wide open in a single pull.

  A loud squeal of protest from the doors split the air, making Sparks jump. A round from her railgun buzzed into the darkness of the building, sending out a series of loud clangs as it struck things within.

  “Nice,” Gas Tank complained. “Why not just set off a fucking siren, Sparks?”

  “Kiss my ass, Gas Tank,” Sparks had her RIg flip him off.

  “A little reminder that the Queens are watching,” Cheape said through gritted teeth. “Now, focus!”

  Flicking the light banks on her rig to full, Cheape moved into the building, not even having to duck through the tall doors. Her lights swept the place, copying the movements of her head and eyes.

  Dust-covered and rusted machinery stood in rows that stretched into the distance beneath the high ceiling. Looking up, she saw metal gratings and railings leaning off the walls, some already fallen in.

  “We have power readings from the walls,” Sparks said as she brought her Rig in to Cheape’s left. “Shall we try the lights?”

  Cheape hesitated, but the Queens were right. It was better to get attacked closer to the entrance if it was going to happen.

  The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

  “Go for it.”

  The lights came on in a wave, starting from the back of the building. Occasional flashes and sparks came as ancient lighting failed with loud cracks and pops.

  “Firing positions,” Cheape called, taking a defensive stance as her team got ready for a fight.

  The seconds ticked by as silence reigned in the building.

  “Gas Tank?” Cheape called, “Sparks?”

  “Clear!” They confirmed.

  “Okay, split up and walk the rows,” Cheape ordered. “Two exos with each Rig. Andy, watch the door.”

  While the other rigs moved to walk along the walls, Cheape walked on down the main path between the hulking machines. As she walked, Cheape noted the tech on display. “Rollers, pistons, presses, mechanical arms, cutting plates… it’s all pretty basic so far.”

  “Too basic,” Queen Nellie warned her. “Nothing this basic belongs in a museum. There has to be a trick somewhere.”

  “Aye, Ma’am,” Cheape replied, a shiver running down her spine.

  They cleared the ground floor, finding nothing of note. The machinery was all sizable but contained nothing you couldn’t find in any industrialized world. Moving up was impossible for the Rigs, given how weak and shaky the walkways and supports looked.

  “Andy, how’s the street looking?” Cheape checked.

  “All clear, Ma’am.”

  “In that case, Exos head up and search above. Retreat at the first sign of resistance.” Cheape ordered, turning and walking back through the factory to take over guarding their exit.

  Halfway there, she paused.

  “Your Highnesses, can you read these?” She slowly panned her front camera over the faded posters on the wall beside her.

  “Sending a translation to your implant now. It’s only partially complete; some areas were just too faded.” Queen Lucy replied.

  It was scary how fast those two’s minds worked at times.

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  Long May They Light the Way!

  [The rest is too faded to read.]

  “Whoever they were,” Cheape muttered, “They certainly seemed to like their gadgets. Who wants a hundred versions of the same bit of kit?”

  “I’m more interested in the mentions of the Houses,” Queen Nellie replied. “They clearly had a system of nobles, but it looks like they chose them pretty much on merit.”

  “I thought you would like that part,” Queen Lucy said with a smile in her voice.

  “Nothing up here, Ma’am,” A voice called from above. “Just some smaller machines.”

  Looking up, Cheape saw a pair of glowing goggles looking over the railing above.

  “Looks like this place is clear. Permission to move on?”

  When she got the go-ahead from the Queens, Cheape led her people back out. There was still a lot more of this place to go, and she had a suspicion it wouldn’t all be this easy.

  Or safe.

  Two blocks further into the segment, the fog started to lift, and a massive structure was revealed in the distance. It was clearly visible even above the oversized factories.

  A tower stretched up toward the yellow energy shield that guarded the segment. Metal girders formed a framework supporting the colossal obelisk that ended in a massive half-sphere that flashed with arcing blue light every few seconds. Estimating from the surrounding buildings, Cheape put it at over ten stories tall, and the obelisk itself must have been the size of a city block in Stone Break.

  She was staring past a small metal orb on the top of the nearest factory when she saw the blue light flash on the top of the tower. The same light crawled over the nearby sphere. Capturing the image and zooming in, the screen in the Rig’s cab showed the blue light was actually electricity arcing back and forth across the surface.

  “What in the stars?” Cheape frowned. Before she had a chance to examine it further, Sparks called out.

  “Hey, Ma’am. Is this normal?”

  That was never a good thing to hear.

  Quickly moving over to the other Rig, Cheape saw the woman crouched over what looked like a simplistic robot. The wheels on the base had clearly been designed to have tires, but from the look of the rims, they had worn away long ago. The rest of it was a mess. Parts didn’t match and had been welded on haphazardly.

  “It looks like it fell from above,” Sparks pointed up at a broken section of walkway over the street.

  “It looks like it’s been repaired a bit,” Cheape said, noting how a couple of the parts looked familiar. “And some of the parts came from the factory we were in.”

  Looking around at the creepily empty streets, she had a bad feeling about the little mess of parts at the feet of her Rig. A place this basic shouldn’t have had a bunch of robots running around, even simple ones.

  More than that, why was everything here rusted and failing? This was supposed to be some kind of museum. If they went to the trouble of putting all this stuff here, they must have designed a way to maintain it.

  Her eyes were drawn again to the random collection of parts used in the robot. Some were definitely from the factory they had visited.

  No, this was looking worse and worse.

  “Let’s check out this building next,” Cheape said, gesturing to the wall they were standing next to. It was the same one this robot had been headed into. If there were something to confirm her idea, it would be in there. “Gas Tank, come put this thing in a carrier. I want to get a better look at it later.”

  /====<<<>>>====\

  Nellie looked at the scans on the robot, comparing parts and welding methods as she and Lucy worked through it from top to bottom.

  “There is no way this was all done by a machine,” Nellie sighed. “Not the same machine, anyway.”

  “Cheape’s right about the parts,” Lucy nodded to a wireframe copy of one of the smaller linkages and a still from the factory. It was a perfect match.

  “How come they even have robots in there?” Nellie asked. “This level of technology shouldn’t be able to make them.”

  “I know, but look,” Lucy wound a few feeds back to show various shots of the skyline. Or rather, it showed the curved moon segment rising into the distance. “These buildings further in don’t match the ones at the start. At all.”

  Now that she looked, Nellie agreed. In fact, they seemed to be from entirely different places—or rather, different times.

  “They look more advanced, more modern,” Nellie nodded, seeing what could have been a city block from Earth in a couple of spots while others looked like the kind of thing you saw in early sci-fi stuff.

  “The posters did talk about it being an interstellar empire,” Lucy said thoughtfully. “So they were at least at the space age in this first era. Maybe advanced space age.”

  “So, yeah, robots,” Nellie nodded. “But why are they in this bit?”

  “Scavenging,” Lucy said with a shrug. “They must have run out of spares over the years.”

  “You might be right,” Nellie said, “Look, they have a welding torch on one arm and a cutting disk on the other. I’d guess maintenance droids.”

  “Logical choice to send them scavenging,” Lucy agreed. “Oh, they’re heading in.”

  Nellie looked back at the feeds, seeing the Rigs moving into another dark building.

  “These cuts look fresh,” Gas Tank played his light over a bit of machinery that looked like it had been stripped for parts.

  “I’ve got the lights,” Sparks said, her voice wavering a little as something interfered with the relay.

  “What was that?” Nellie sat forward.

  “We got some feedback on the signal,” Lucy frowned. “Like we crossed… with… another.”

  On the feeds, the lights came on in a series of pops and flashes. For a moment, they saw what looked like a floor covered with random parts. Then, something moved.

  “GET OUT!” Nellie yelled, but it was too late as the screen exploded with motion.