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Wow, it was possible to be scared out of your mind, squeezed almost to death, and totally embarrassed.

We hope you will forgive us.

Of course.
What else could she say to what felt like two bright-eyed and innocent puppies in her brain? In an attempt to move past embarrassing, she went on,
I’m sorry about the automaton. I’ll try to get us out of this.
Brave words from someone clutched in an automaton’s metal fist.

It was most heroic to sacrifice yourself to save Robert-oh-my-darling. We wish we could assist your escape.

Yeah, she wished they could, too. Okay, time for a sit-rep—where had that term come from? She would have given her head a shake, but the automaton had it covered, with each, ground-thumping step. The only good news, her head wasn’t banging against metal, so she should be able to think of something. Just because everything but her head hurt—she felt the pain ease and realized it was the nanites.
Thank you.

We do what we can.

What you do is excellent.
It was freaking awesome, which made it her turn to be freaking awesome. So, automaton escape plan. Shouldn’t be a problem. She’d read and day dreamed a variety of steampunk scenarios. This particular capture wasn’t featured in any that she recalled at the moment, but there should still be something useful in her head, somewhere. According to Nod, it was an interesting brain. An interesting brain should be able to come up with a Plan and she would if she could just find a comfortable position. Hard to do with the line of bolts digging into her back—bolts. It was held together with bolts. Of course it was. Steampunk 101. Duh. How fortuitous that she had some experience with bolts.

She squirmed to the side—not easy with gravity not in the friend column—and explored the first one she found. Unlike the automaton, it wasn’t outsized. As if the automaton sensed her mental bid for freedom, his grip tightened another, painful tick around her hips and chest.

Possible the action was reflexive.

If he reflexed anymore, he’d cut her in half. The nanites did what they could to ease the pain, but what she needed was to get free before she passed out. Though if he planned to squeeze her in half, she’d prefer to be unconscious when it happened. But she wasn’t going to pass out or get her head squeezed off. She’d never met a bolt she couldn’t wrench. Some freaking, hulking automaton was not going to ruin her record.

We like the way your brain works.

The problem wasn’t finding her Wonder Wrench 2000—and Ed said infomercials were useless—no, her problem was getting to it.

Where is it?

In my corset.
She felt their incredulity, though neither of them expressed it.
It’s easy access. Usually.
It’s not like she’d been expecting to have an automaton finger blocking access.
I can get it from the other end. Probably.
Though she wished she hadn’t had that second donut this morning. Or whenever it was she’d had the donuts. A good thing she’d learned to work in tight spaces.

* * * *

It took three of them to keep Robert from leaping over the side of the airship after Emily. They held his arms, even after he slumped to the deck.
She was gone
. His brain replayed the sight of that automaton dragging her out of the airship over and over again. Panic still clawed his chest, the way he’d clawed his way toward them in his futile effort to reach her before—

Gone.

“I’m sorry about your friend,” the Colonial almost looked sorry as lightning flashed near the airship, “but if we keep rising, we’re going to hit the horizon up there and get eaten like the ’tons.” He shook Robert and pointed up.

You can’t help her if we’re dead, Robert-on-my-darling.

Robert frowned, almost shook himself.
Nod? She’s alone—

I changed places with Wynken and Blynken. They wished to study Emily’s brain.

Were two peep personalities better than one? He tried to think what they could do to help her as he scrambled upright. Nod and the Colonial were right. He couldn’t do anything if they popped through the upper walls of their prison. He hurried to the engine room, careful not to look at the gaping hole that had allowed the automaton to take Em, and pulled the lever, cutting off the hot air to the envelope.

The airship slowed, but continued to rise. He turned to the air release valve and worked it, releasing hot air from the envelope in controlled bursts. Their rise slowed, leveled out, then they began to drift down. When they dropped down to a safe level, Robert joined the motley crew just outside the engine room, not one of who appeared inclined to meet his gaze.

They all looked shell shocked by the encounter with the automatons. The only good news, they’d taken down two of them. He’d seen that before they pulled him back from the edge. It wasn’t enough. Robert wanted to sink to his knees and howl. He’d brought Em to this place and now someone was going to cut into her head—he sucked in deep and looked at them. He wanted to yell, “Follow that automaton,” but he could see mulish resistance in their faces. They knew what he wanted and they didn’t want to do it. Emily didn’t matter to them, even though she’d saved all of their sorry asses from the automatons.

“Where is it taking her?” They all shifted from side to side, avoiding his gaze. “You can drop me off and find your way from here.” While the view from up here might improve their SITREP, it wasn’t going to give them a way out. The key to getting out rested with whoever had brought them here. But they didn’t want to hear that, so fine. “Just put me down as close to where it will take her as you can.”

“I,” Green cleared his throat, “I think we need you. You seem to know things we don’t.”

Robert crossed his arms. “Do you really think I’ll help you if you abandon my friend to that thing? She saved all of us. She did her part. You—” He fought his way back to calm. “I’ve helped you as much as I’m going to. You’re on your own.”

“He has a point,” Biker said. “That thing would have brought the ship down if it hadn’t dragged her out.”

“If we get caught again, her sacrifice is for nothing,” the Belle cooed, stepping close and batting her lashes at him. “She did it for you. You owe it to her to save yourself.”

“You won’t save her, you’ll join her,” Colonial pointed out.

“Just get close to a building.” Robert shrugged the Belle off. Inside, Nod scowled at her. “I’ll find her by myself.”

One of the captured zombies shifted and moaned. The motley crew jumped like they’d been shot and shifted as far away from the two as possible.

“Don’t let them see us!” Belle shrieked.

“It might reveal our position,” the Colonial said, shifting uneasily.

Because the big automaton wasn’t going to tell the evil overlord what he’d seen and where. Robert blinked a bit. Evil overlord?

You sound like Em.
Nod felt sad.

His chest tightened with a pain even Nod couldn’t fix. He had to save her. He had to find a way—the other zombie stirred. Robert knelt and blindfolded them both, using pieces of their clothing. He turned one of them over again, leaning in to study the scar as his spinning thoughts homed in on something. An idea? The seeds of a plan? Could whatever was under that scar be a communication device? Or maybe a tracking device? It had to be what controlled them, but to what extent? Data about the Dusan communication device scrolled into one of his data streams. A team on the outpost had been studying them since the Dusan defeat. They had piles of them taken from the Dusan dead. Was it possible to use the device to turn the tables on the evil overlord? It must have at least rudimentary two-way communications to be effective. Rudimentary on purpose? It might mean their control of the communications was less than secure.

He’d have to study it, crack it open, though. Which meant he’d have to open one of the zombies to get at it.

Creepy, dude, but it might work.

He smiled at how much of Em Nod had assimilated. It made her seem less gone—and hardened his resolve. Creepy but necessary. The surgery would be risky, since he’d be working with downloaded surgical skills in a non-sterile environment, but being a zombie in this place wasn’t something he had chosen. If it were he, he’d rather be dead. Granted, he didn’t know this guy felt that way, but he couldn’t afford to believe otherwise.

Okay, he knew what he didn’t have—no medical supplies, not even a Band-Aid, no monitoring equipment, and if he did get it out, he didn’t have a computer to crack the device.

The impossible just takes longer.

What he did have was the best incentive ever. He had to save the girl.

* * * *

Extracting the Wonder Wrench 2000 required her to expose more bare skin, and the hooks weren’t that easy to undo while getting jostled, but she had lots of incentive to achieve this particular goal. Once it was free of her corset, she adjusted it to the right size for the bolt—because she knew her bolts, even without looking. Now all she needed to do was apply it to said bolt, easier said than done with her head outside the automaton fist, the rest of her was inside with the bolts. Luckily she’d done a lot of blind wrenching on her steam engine—though she’d never had to do it while getting bounced by an automaton.

The automaton gave her more incentive to succeed. The race to loosen the bolt before she passed out tightened. And then loosened. And tightened again. His hand seemed to flex on a schedule, though each reflex got worse for her survival odds. She thought she saw stars, or maybe that “go toward” light, until she realized dawn had arrived in steampunk hell. Okay, that sounded wrong—and kind of cool. And the fact she thought it was cool probably meant she might be a tad light-headed.

The index finger bolt clattered free, dropping between its fingers and bouncing against the ground. She tensed, but he didn’t seem to notice. It didn’t help her squeezing problem, though the palm plate shifted. She eased her fingers under the edge and found what felt like a thick rope of wire cable. It should have shocked her if he ran on electrical power, but it didn’t so he mustn’t. Might hear steam hissing but hard to tell with his big feet hitting the ground hard enough to register on a Richter scale.

Can you cut the cables?
No surprise the nanites gave off waves of anxiety.

She had cutters in the pocket of her coat. The coat twisted into a knot around her body. She pulled. She tugged. She shifted and squirmed. Felt the cutters. Couldn’t get at them—what? She explored a hole, trying to remember—

The edge of the anomaly, perhaps?

Oh yeah. The sizzle along her back. She groped into the hole as the automaton’s fingers tried to meet at her backbone. The cutters were in reach, yet inaccessible. In desperation, she tugged at the fabric and felt it give. The cutters slipped free—and almost slipped out between its fingers. She caught them, wished she could catch her breath. She eased them back inside between two fingers.

Little stars started to dance across her sight line. Guess they didn’t get the memo about dawn.

Cut the cable, Em.

They sounded urgent. Somewhere, through the narrowing world, Emily sensed they had eased the pain to her ribs and shoulders, but they couldn’t give her air. She needed air. A cracking sound. Could be her rib. Or ribs.

She lifted the plate, the horizon shrinking to the area around it and the cutters. A little of her fingers. Unless that wasn’t her fingers. Starting to lose feeling in them now.

Do it, Em. Do it now.

They sounded far away now. The horizon shrank some more. It was going to eat them, like the automatons. In some part of her brain, she wondered if cutting it might make the fingers flex closed, but that didn’t seem like the worst thing that could happen if it stopped the pain.

She felt the cutters slide around something.

With her last gasp, she squeezed.

So did the automaton.

* * * *

You have to try.
Nod’s anxiety joined with Robert’s, but Nod had something Robert lacked: confidence.
You can do it, Robert-oh-my-darling. For Em. For Wynken and Blynken. If you don’t, they are lost.

He looked at the motley crew.

The motley crew looked at him.

Robert didn’t have to sense resistance. He could see it on their faces, which ran the gamut from worried resistance to the Belle’s highly unattractive mulish. He’d have to persuade them. Em was better at persuading, but he had to get better for her, to save her.
Just the facts, ma’am.

“The automaton saw us take the ship. If someone is monitoring these things, which it seems apparent that they are,” he shouldn’t have to point out the obvious, but he did, just in case he needed to, “as soon as it gets light, the other airships will be looking for us. We’re not equipped to fight an air battle in this thing.” Not that it would be much of a battle. As slow as the things moved, they could surround and board them.

It was clear they hadn’t thought this far in advance. Em would have, but he couldn’t think about that, think about her yet. Resistance gave way to panic. When they’d all done their version of “what can we do,” in varying levels of panic, Robert stood up, though it annoyed him that they looked to him for rescue after refusing to help him rescue Em. He crossed his arms, arched his brows and tried to look confident. And indifferent. Because they would make a deal before there’d be any rescuing.

The Colonial, who seemed to have most of the available motley brainpower, lowered his brows. “You have an idea.”

“I might.”

“If we agree to help you.” The Colonial glanced at his crew.

“We can’t take on the automatons and the altered people!” Green put his hands on his hips. “We’d like to help you, but we can’t. We are too few!”

“We’ve barely managed to elude them for as long as we have,” Purple added, though he actually sounded sorry.

“Steampunk 101.” Robert almost felt like he’d started channeling Em. He liked it.

“We don’t actually know what that means,” Biker said. “Though it worked pretty well for taking the airship.”