Athel (2 page)

Chapter One

Athel

Day Number: 1,583

Event: We found a scavenger droid by the
mouth of the gorge.

Number of Mayakes left: 430

Goal for today: Create a weapon that will
destroy the Gaijins’ supremacy.

Scavenger droids look like enormous
crabs. About ten feet tall, they prowl the rugged terrain at the foot of the
mesa, scoop dirt with their robotic hands, and shove it into their mouths.

Except
theirs aren’t really mouths.

They’re sophisticated spectrometers
, Lukas
explains, his hastily typed message streaming along the bottom corner of my
retina
. Their detectors are so well
calibrated they can distinguish copper from steel.

What if they find neither
? I ask.

They vomit the dirt out. Watch
.

The droid
bends its three pairs of clawed legs, lowers its huge abdomen, and releases a
whole pile of dirt from a chute in the middle of its lower belly.

It looks more like pooping than vomiting
, I
comment.

Crouched
behind me, my fast-running friend Wes snickers. I turn to him and say, “Looks
worse than you after a sugar binge.”

“No way,”
he replies, still laughing.

We both
keep low, hiding in the aspen grove just outside the gorge. Lukas types more
specs and tech jargon on our retinas. Apparently, this one droid we found roaming
just outside the gorge is a new model, and our geek friend is peeing in his
pants with excitement. He climbed all the way to the top of the cliff to
observe every movement the droid makes and is now taking note of every new
spec.
 

Guys
, he messages.
Look at the smooth movements from those
actuators! You wouldn’t even think they’re robots. I’m guessing at least one
million neuromorphic chips and 50 petabytes of RAM
.

I’ve no
idea what he’s talking about, and honestly I don’t give a damn. Where Lukas sees
chips and nanowires, I see graphene to make bulletproof shields and carbon
nanotubes for body armor. With a few tricks, their shooting hands can be turned
into firearms.

“Man,” I
whisper, pushing away some of the aspen leaves the wind keeps blowing in my
face. “This baby has so much tech it’s gonna make us win the Kiva challenge.”

Behind me,
Wes scuffs the ground and says nothing.

I turn and
nudge him. “What’s up, Wes? You’re not getting cold feet, are you? Oh, wait.
Yours are always cold!” I laugh, as Wes doesn’t have feet. His lower limbs are
titanium blades screwed directly into his femurs.

Wes
shrugs, not sharing my humor. “I don’t know. I just wish we could win the war
against the Gaijins. Like, fast and painless, you know?”

I grab his
arm and squeeze it. “Dude. If we get hold of this big carbon fiber guy and win
the Kiva challenge, ours will be the weapon that wins the war too. It
will
be fast and painless.”

Not sure
about the painless part, but I gotta keep our spirits up. Wes had one of his
legs reinstalled just a couple of weeks ago, after it got torn while we were
inside the gorge. He’s recovered pretty well, although he’s still not one
hundred percent back to the super-fast speed he used to reach.

Truth is,
we’re all in pretty bad shape. At a current head count of 430 people, our race
is doomed to extinction. We no longer have the resources to produce the
technology that keeps us alive. The only chance we have is to rebel against the
Gaijins, the people who dominate us by sending scavenger droids to rob our land
and kill our men. But in order to fight back, we need to make weapons. The Kiva
Council instituted a challenge last week. A bunch of men, lead by Kiva Member
Hennessy, will be in charge of organizing a military strategic plan to attack the
Gaijins. Every Mayake is invited to submit a weapon prototype, and the best one
will be mass-produced for our war. Lukas, Wes and I are determined to win the
challenge.

Lukas
resumes his frantic messaging.
Guys, we
need to lure the big bot away from the gorge
.
It’s come the farthest away from the others
.
The next closest droid is about half a mile away—I can see it
from up here.

Great,
I reply, stooping down to open my
backpack
. Leave it to us. I’ve got a
plan.

Wes
becomes suddenly serious and starts massaging his thighs.

“Are you
ok?” I ask. One of Wes’s blades had to be surgically reattached after he was
badly injured in the gorge, three weeks ago.

He brushes
off my concern with a brisk wave of his hand. “Course I am. Ready to sprint any
minute now.”

Not so fast,
Lukas
messages.
These new models are fifty
times faster than the previous version in reaction time and response. They have
a more sophisticated mapping algorithm and a wider radius of communication
.

As he
reads Lukas’s message, Wes’s eyes bulge. “You sure about this, Athel?”

I roll my
eyes. Lukas always has to ruin momentum with his tech specs. “How often do you
find a scavenger droid this far away from its pals?”

Lukas’s
words reappear at the bottom of my retina.
Scavenger
droids tend to stick together. This one must’ve found an unusual scattering of
metal to come this far out of the gorge. It’s a unique chance. I say we go for
it
.

“Very
brave of him to say,” Wes says, “when you and I are the ones who have to face
all those tons of carbon fibers and chips.”
 

“Dude’s
got brains,” I reply. “Gotta give him credit for that.”

I whistle,
and my trained falcon Kael comes swooping out of the sky. It dives a few feet
away from the droid and then swerves away. The M4—that’s the new model
name Lukas just coined—pivots on its midsection and elongates its lenses
to track the bird, yet no bullets come out of its deadly hands. As soon as Kael
soars up again, the droid bends over and nibbles another rock.

Kael needs to get closer
, Lukas
sends.

Closer
? I reply.

They changed the algorithm. These droids are
smarter, they don’t just randomly shoot. They no longer waste ammunition.

Now he
tells me.
Do they shoot faster, too
?
I ask.

Lukas
doesn’t reply.

From my
backpack I pull out the coil of wire rope Lukas and I found at the landfill.
We’ve found all sorts of useful stuff from the pre-Plague world at the
landfill, like old cell phones and pieces of motor vehicles. It’s become our
primary source of tech and recyclable junk these days.

I don’t care
what Lukas says, I’m not putting Kael through that kind of risk.

“Stay here
and watch my back,” I tell Wes.

“What are
you going to do?”

I wink.
“Time to introduce myself to the big barfing boy.”

I crawl
out of the small grove we’ve been hiding in and crouch behind a tall shrub,
waiting for the droid to step out of the gorge. Unaware of my presence, the M4
treads over the pile of dirt it just vomited and moves over to the next patch
of terrain. The diode at the top of its head blinks as it processes new
information.

The
droid’s carbon nanotube ears register the sound of my boots scraping the
ground, and its sensor arrays capture the scent molecules released by my sweat.
The robot turns and its lenses zoom until they detect me.

A simple
algorithm—this is what it comes down to. So long as I hold still and
don’t move, the droid will not react. The minute I twitch, jerk or jump, the
software will perceive my movements as a threat and instruct the M4 to shoot
first, then deploy its firing hands.

Kael
circles up in the sky for a few more seconds, then gives out a loud squawk and
dives. The M4 raises its head, but Kael’s faster. The falcon clasps the droid’s
lenses between its talons, forcing the big machine to yank backwards, its
robotic arms flailing in the air.

I sprint
out of my hiding spot and run, ignoring the blur of furiously typed messages
streaming at the bottom of my retina. Kael’s distraction lasts only seconds
before the falcon takes off again, dodging the bullets the droid finally fires
into the air. I clutch the coil of wire rope in my hands and duck under the
droid’s massive claw legs.

I hear
Kael coming back for a second attack. Bullets zip through the air. I uncoil the
rope and wrap it around the M4’s robotic joints. Its legs looked like toothpicks
from afar, but now, as I dodge their swift movements, they’re more like mining
picks stabbing at me.

Kael lets
out another caw, farther away this time. The droid freezes and then whirs, its
pistons releasing a long hiss.

Athel!
Lukas messages.
Get outta there now
!
  

I look up
and see the paneled underbelly of the droid lowering, the chute about to open
and dump its fresh load of dirt. I dive between two legs, but the stabbing
point of a third leg tears through the hem of my shirt and pins me to the ground.
The big bot bends over and yanks me off the ground, squeezing my waist with its
big metal fingers.

The world
spins around me. The M4 lifts me, its lenses bulging at me.

Relax
, I think
. As long as its hands are digging into my flesh they can’t shoot me
.

Talk about
the bright side.

The wire
I’ve coiled around the droid’s legs comes loose. Enraged, the big machine
shakes me in the air and crawls up the wall of the gorge. It’s so focused on
destroying me that it doesn’t notice Wes hopping up and down and waving his
hands to attract its attention. Wes, on the other hand, is too frightened to
come closer and try harder to distract the droid.

Up at the
top, Lukas jumps to his feet and screams. He holds his data feeder like a
drowning man clinging to his lifesaver.

Helpful
friends I have.

“Dude!” I
yell, kicking my legs in the air. “Think of something!”

“Flash
drive!” he shouts, tossing a little cube at me. I stretch forward trying to
catch it, but droid whisks me away before I can snatch it. The drive skids off
the edge of the mesa and down into the gorge.

Still
clutching me in its right hand, the droid darts after the flash drive, scraping
chunks of rock as it plunges down the cliff. I feel like barfing, but the view
of the steep walls opening below has me frozen in terror.

This is
not exactly the kind of death I’d envisioned.

“The flash
drive!” Lukas shouts from the top of the mesa. “Get it before the droid does!”

Right. My
top priority at the moment.

The droid
skids down to the bottom and comes to a halt as the flash drive bounces right
between its legs and lands at the foot of a sapling.

And then
the unexpected happens. Wes darts out of the aspen grove yelling at the top of
his lungs. He swoops to catch the flash drive and then runs off again, sprinting
past the droid like a gazelle with a burning tail. The M4’s movement sensors
immediately track him. It lowers its entire body, tosses me onto one of the
piles of dirt it pooped minutes earlier, and gives chase, the useless wire I
wrapped around its legs dangling behind. I grab one end of the wire as it flies
past me, dash around a large boulder, and manage to get the wire stuck
underneath the rock.
 

The droid
gets caught in its momentum and stumbles. The wire rope tenses and then snaps,
causing the droid to slam forward onto its face and hands. It comes down with a
huge thud, sending flaps of carbon resin flying through the air. The diodes on
its back start blinking, a few wires buzz. Smoke hisses out of the sides of its
head.

“The flash
drive!” Lukas yells. He tucks his precious data feeder back into his satchel
and rushes down the cliff.

“What’s up
with the freaking flash drive?” I shout back at him, wheezing.

Wes
doubles back, pounding hard on his titanium blades. “Guys! They’re coming! The
other droids are coming!”

I turn.
The ground shakes. A cloud of dust rises in the distance between the walls of
the gorge.

Oh, shit
.

The M4 on
the ground rattles. Its long legs tweak. Lukas tumbles down the last bit of
incline, shouting, “Get the flash drive into the droid now!”

Wes
screeches to a halt by the droid’s massive frame and looks at me dumbfounded. I
don’t know what Lukas’s up to, but at this point it’s not like we have many
options. So I dart over to Wes, snatch the flash drive from his hand, and climb
over the big robot piled up on the ground.

“Where,
Lukas?”

Lukas
reaches the bottom of the cliff and scuttles over. He’s short of breath, his
gaunt face flushed. He points to the side of his head.