Born of Sand (Tales of a Dying Star Book 5) (13 page)

Yet despite the peacekeepers' apathy, they still had a few thousand soldiers and a dozen ground vehicles armed with heavy weapons. Far more than Farrow's band of Freemen could hope to fight, especially in their newly diminished state.

He stopped in the control room and grabbed the receiver to call the outermost lookout post, buried beneath the sand half a mile to the east. "You awake out there?" he asked.

The response came immediately, hollow and metallic. "Stars darken if I'm not."

Farrow liked Geral because the man never slept on his shifts. As a former gaoler at the Governor's Palace, nodding off to sleep could mean a slit throat. "How's it look topside?" Farrow asked.

Geral said, "Nothin' special, unless you count sand as being special, which I don't."

"No stingers this time?"

"Not a one. Thought I heard a rumble to the east in the fourth hour, but nothing ever surfaced."

Good, thought Farrow. The stingers--their name for the subsurface sand beasts--had been quiet lately. With two groups still out on scavenging duty, the stingers suddenly emerging from the sand to feed was always a concern.

"The scavenging teams didn't come back then, I take it?"

A moment of hesitation. "No sir. Not a peep."

Farrow pushed the thought aside. A worry for later, when they could be certain they were gone.
A lot of those worries, lately.

"I did see ships leave last night," Geral said. "Two, instead of the one you told me to expect."

Farrow sighed. "We had to give Akonai two. Plans changed."

"For the better this time, I hope?" Geral asked. "He give us anything useful in exchange?"

"He gave us a lot to think about," Farrow said. "And along those lines: I'm calling an all-heads meeting at breakfast. To go over a few things." He still wasn't sure what some of those things would be, but they needed to do
something
different. More scavenging parties, new weapon sources in the city. Maybe even raid an electroid factory. He wanted to gather opinions from the members of the base, see what they were willing to do.
They've already done so much, trusted more difficult orders than I'd like to give.

"You can take a break in your shift to come," Farrow added. "I'd value your opinion."

"And make the long walk down that star-forsaken tunnel twice?" The receiver snorted. "How'd I get on your bad side?"

That put a smile on Farrow's face as he hung up the call. Geral might make a show of complaining, but he would be there.

Farrow stuck his head back in the kitchen. Maggy still stood behind her plates of food, but she was the only one there. "Where is everyone?" Farrow asked.

Maggy frowned. "Something's going on in the workshop."

"The workshop? What is it?"

She shrugged her huge shoulders. "I don't know."

"You didn't go check?"

"And leave all this food out for fat Oliver and Ben to take?" She hefted her spoon. "But you go tell them the food is ready. If I hear one complaint about how my barleybread is cold..."

Farrow's worry grew as he made his way to the workshop. Although his engineers were cautious, occasional accidents occurred. Especially when handling electronics that have been sitting beneath the sand for years.
If Hob has another battery acid burn...

He found a crowd in the workshop, seven of his people huddled in a semicircle. He pushed between Kari and Mira, steeling himself for what he might find.

Dok sat on the floor with his legs crossed, hunched over the torso of an electroid. Splayed around him on the ground were a variety of metal plates, wires, and circuits. It was as if a bomb had gone off and the debris was made of electroid innards.

Farrow stared, confused.

"What the..." he began, until Kari put a finger to her lips to shush him.

Dok reached behind him and picked up a green circuit board, inserting it into the robot's chest cavity. Some wires followed, and then a screw, his fingers working with expert speed. Abruptly he flipped the whole assembled section over, where the back plate of the electroid would have been if it hadn't been removed. Dok began adding more pieces on that side. The parts scattered on the ground him began disappearing.

"He's been working all night," Kari said. Her eyes appeared pale and swollen from fatigue, but she still watched Dok with awe.

"I told you to set him up in a cell," Farrow said, growing angry. "Who watched him all night? You? What if he--"

Kari grabbed the back of Farrow's head and twisted it toward the far wall.

Two new electroids stood in place. Two that weren't there the night before.

"It takes Hob half a week to assemble a single electroid," he said.

"Like I told you," Kari said, "he's
brilliant
. He took three steps into the workshop last night and dove on the pile of scrap to fish out everything he needed. We didn't have to tell him anything, he just did it himself. He spreads all the parts out on the floor ahead of time, then sits down and completes all the work at once."

Farrow knew his mouth hung open, but he didn't care. "Hob said we didn't have enough secondary processors to make more electroids. That we'd need to get more."

Dok suddenly raised his head. He stared in Farrow's general direction but would not make eye contact. "Secondary processor redundant. Used for ancillary functions, repair analysis, heuristic processing.
Redundant
. Two rowbits now, two later..." He bent his head back down and continued working.

"He gets distracted easily," Kari explained. "Especially if you mention anything mechanical. Keep your voice down."

Hob strolled over to them. "The new ones don't work yet, because he'll need to reprogram them a touch. But..." He whistled through his teeth. "The man is an oddity, but he sure knows his metal."

Dok stood. The crowd of Freemen made way as he shuffled over to the nearest pile of scrap. Parts clattered to the ground as he searched within. His hand emerged with a bundle of colored wires, red and blue and green. He returned to the half-assembled electroid and carefully placed the wires on the ground, adjusting their position as if the precise spot was of great importance.

He repeated this process with two dozen parts, meticulously arranging them on the ground in some pattern known only to him. The last piece was a gear-shaped servo. Finally satisfied, he sat cross-legged in the center of the display like before. He pulled the electroid torso into his lap and grabbed the same servo he had placed just seconds before, beginning the rest of the assembly.

"How many can he make?" Farrow asked.

Hob shrugged. "Ask him."

Farrow took a step forward, careful not to step on any of Dok's parts. "Dok, how many electroids can you build with these parts?"

Dok looked over at the piles of scrap. Farrow had the distinct impression he was doing some special math in his head. "Three rowbits. Two from that pile, one from the other.
Three rowbits.
"

Farrow gave a wry grin. Three was better than none, but it hardly made much of a difference. Though maybe Dok could help with...

"Limiting factor is power source," Dok continued, muttering to himself while working. "Only possess three DK-4 batteries. Only three. But DK-2 or DK-3 also acceptable. Older but acceptable. Parts enough for twenty-two rowbits, if batteries obtained."

Farrow blinked. "Twenty-two?" He looked at the pile of scrap and tried to imagine it.
That would nearly put us back to where we were before Akonai came.
"You're telling me that if we acquire these batteries..."

Dok shook his head. "Twenty-two from first pile. Fifteen in second. Thirty-seven. Thirty-seven rowbits additional."

"Plus the two already made, and the one he's working on," Hob said.

"Forty rowbits," Dok agreed, bobbing his head while twisting two wires into place.

The crowd began muttering excitedly. Word had no doubt spread among the base that Akonai left the night before with all of their electroids and two of their ships. Dok's arrival was a sudden burst of hope the Freemen so desperately needed.

It almost seems too good to be true
. Akonai leaving this savant made Farrow immediately suspicious. He remained skeptical that he could piece together forty electroids from their piles of scrap, even if they collected the batteries he needed.

But it was something, and it gave him a starting point around which to build a plan.

"Everyone report to breakfast before Maggy grinds her teeth down to nothing," Farrow said, raising his voice. "I'll address the base there shortly."

The men and women obeyed without hesitation, and Farrow remained there for a long while, watching the small man work, parts moving like a desert whirlwind.

Farrow found the kitchen as full as ever, the base's thirty-three occupants crowded around tables while they ate and drank. A soft, excited chatter filled the room. Whether at Dok's arrival, or Akonai's departure--which heralded a beginning to the true war against the Empire--Farrow could not be certain.
Thirty-seven Freemen total, if you include the two scavenging parties already out.
Those numbers had declined along with all their other resources.
And they'll decline more before we're done, no matter what I do.

Binny came running up and shoved something at him. "Maggy wants me to make you eat this," she said, gesturing with the barleybread.

Farrow crouched down to eye-level and forced a smile. "I already ate. Can you eat that piece for me? I need some help."

"Of course I can help!" she grinned, and ran off as quickly as she appeared, already munching down on the bread. She never required much convincing. From across the room Maggy glowered at him, arms crossed over her chest.

The room grew quiet as they noticed him standing in the doorway. Every Praetari emotion looked back at him: worry and fear, excitement and eagerness, the silence of anticipation.

"There'll be questions now that our visitors have left," Farrow began. "I would have you ask them before I speak."

He always addressed his men and women like that, allowing them to ask whatever they wanted to know before he gave commands. He found that it made for a patient, thoughtful group. One of the men seated closest to the door had been waiting, and blurted out his question the moment Farrow finished speaking. "Are they ready? Are we near?" Grumbles of agreement and metal cups banged on tables.

Farrow raised a hand until they became quiet. "Not yet, but soon. Within two Melisao months, I am told."

That brought more cheers. When they died down someone asked, "Where did the
Children
take our electroids and ships? Do they plan to attack Praetar City from the other side when the time is right, in a pincer maneuver with our forces here?"

He wished he could lie to them, to keep their spirits high and say that the electroids were still on Praetar. He shifted uncomfortably, pushing around a pile of sand with his boot. "No. The electroids are being sent to Melis to assist in whatever they have planned there."

"What do they have planned there?" Kari asked. She stood against the wall, staring at him intently.

"Stars if I know. Akonai hasn't deigned to tell us. But he seemed certain it is near. I could see it in his eyes."

There were a few heartbeats of silence as the group chewed on that. "If we are only two months away from beginning the final battle," someone asked, "then why did they take the electroids? Why would they weaken our force so soon before the attack? Did they leave us with anything in return?"

And there it is.
Farrow grimaced.
Might as well begin my shitty pitch now.
"They left us with information, and interplanetary coordination. When the signal comes the Empire will be at its most vulnerable. A greater prize we could not have asked for.

"But we're not ready to attack, not yet. If we tried to overthrow the peacekeepers we'd be pushed back with hardly a fight. We need three things: manpower, ships, and electroids. We're low on all three."

"We need more food, too!" someone yelled. "Or at least a new cook!" Everyone roared with laughter, until Maggy strode forward and tossed her spoon at the man. Then they laughed even harder.

"What's the point of acquiring more ships," Hob said, "if we don't have anyone to fly them? We've only four trained pilots, and one is out with the scavenging party."

The two scavenging parties had been scheduled to return the day before. Either their hauls were so large they needed more time to return, or else... Farrow shook his head. The former was as unlikely as the Emperor himself floating down to their base and declaring them masters of their planet again. Best to just accept that now they only had
three
pilots.

But still, Hob made a good point. "I'm working on a plan to recruit more pilots," Farrow said. "But for now we need to focus on the other two. The
Children
did leave us something. A man, quirky but valuable in his knowledge." He squinted around the room, searching for him. "Where is Dok?"