ROOT; THEADORA: OPERATIONAL

MISSION: RESOURCE EXTRACTION

PRIORITY 0: PROTECT CLAIRE “ARCH” BRIDGEWELL

PRIORITY 1: SURVIVE

PRIORITY 2: RESEARCH KISSING

PRIORITY 3: EXTRACTION OF STRATEGIC INFORMATION

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MISSION CONTINUE:

 

Claire and Natalia were standing next to each other in silence when Thea returned to the ship’s hatch from her trip to the armory. During her flight to bring Claire to Natalia, Thea had expended a lot more ordnance than she should have. Thea had run a few checks when she had come back online after altering her body and was disappointed in her carelessness. She had pushed her railgun too far, and it was in critical need of maintenance. The rails had warped from the high energy shots she had put them through. 

 

To cover for some of her lost capabilities, Thea had taken the chance to arm herself from the small weapons locker that Natalia had on board her ship. It wasn’t much, mostly low-tech firearms and the power-assist armor Nat had been wearing. Thea had spent time carefully inspecting each item to search for any manufacturing faults. It was so easy to mess up a mechanical system when using unregulated assemblers. Even with a simple weapon, the tolerances were very tight if you wanted something truly reliable, and Thea could accept nothing less. 

 

Having spent enough time to carefully look over each item, Thea ended up picking out an automatic shotgun that looked like it was based on the M742, except it had been re-engineered to accept two magazines and allowed you to switch between them or fire from each one alternating. Grabbing an old olive green military jacket from nearby, Thea loaded its pockets with several spare magazines of various munition types before loading a pair into the shotgun itself, which she strapped to herself with a sling, pulling it tight to keep it concealed under her coat.  Thea grabbed several assorted sidearms of standard design, storing them in the fitted pants and stiff combat belt she had asked Natalia to produce for her before they had left the cabin. 

 

Firearms had changed little in the past two hundred years. Materials science advancements had allowed for weapons to be lighter, thinner, and more reliable, but the basic concept of the self-contained cartridge was hard to usurp. Advanced weapons like Thea’s railgun were certainly powerful, but they would likely never catch up with the reliability that centuries of continuous development had brought to more standard firearms.

 

The two women watched Thea as she joined them by the ladder that let them onto the top of the ship. It was strange having them both looking at her so expectantly. Something had changed in the group dynamic after Natalia had walked in on Claire kissing Thea. Thea wished she could understand what was going on; it had felt so wonderful to have Claire close to her like that. 

 

Thea had watched many couples together during her work with Zeberon. The strange coupling and mashing of bodies had always confused her; it wasn’t a fight. Something where there was a clear route to victory, and the sheer variety of things people would do with each other, and occasionally with comfort bots, drove Thea even deeper into confusion. It had all seemed too repulsive before, but with Claire in her arms, something had bloomed inside Thea that she had never felt before, or maybe had never been allowed to feel. Why had something so enjoyable put such a strain on the social environment? Ever since Thea had noticed the tension in the team, she had split off a few processing nodes and dedicated them to searches on kissing and its connection with relationships and team dynamics. So far she hadn’t turned up anything of much use; her kiss with Claire didn’t really fall under the Platonic field of kissing. Parents and children were generally not supposed to kiss so extensively. Thea had found a surprising amount of information on humans kissing bots, but it was hard to sift through as it was almost entirely related to comfort bots, and much of it seemed likely to be fictional.

 

Natalia gave Thea a silent acknowledgement before leading them out the hatch and onto a nearby dock. Thea did her best to sweep the area around them for hostiles, but the rough, hilly terrain was a nightmare of blindspots. Still, it would be a tall order to catch her unaware. 

 

Letting Natalia lead the way, Thea took up the rear, following Natalia as she led them down a dirt trail that worked its way up the hillside that the docks had been built into. Claire was panting by the time they made it to the top of the steep switchbacks; Thea made a note to pick her up if they needed to move quickly. It was a short walk, devoid of the usual banter that Claire and Natalia usually engaged in. Thea adjusted a few of her search parameters. She still hadn’t found much of any use, but it wasn’t a huge surprise to her that she was struggling to find relevant data. She had been given and even built many tools for ferreting out information, but she simply lacked the relevant experience to be able to sift out the good data from the bad. 

 

Not long after cresting the hill, they came up to a squat plastibrick structure; seemingly half buried, it was well hidden and would be almost impossible to spot unless you walked right up on it. It seemed Nat’s group was a careful bunch, and they would have to be, to have operated under the corps’ noses for so long. They made their way to the entrance, a simple reinforced steel door held flush with the wall, presumably built into a reinforced section of wall. Nat plugged a datakey into a hidden port on the door and after a moment a series of resounding thunks were heard coming from the door as it unlocked. She waved Claire and Thea over and spoke quietly. 

 

“Stick close while we’re inside; I didn’t have a chance to call ahead and these folks aren’t exactly welcoming of strangers.” Nat led them down dimly lit hallways. The corridors were tight and windy, and the whole environment cranked Thea’s weariness up even higher. The entrance area had been clearly built to ambush and confuse intruders; while getting turned around in the veritable maze wouldn’t be an issue for Thea, she couldn’t be sure she would be able to keep Claire and Natalia safe if even a half-trained group attacked them here. 

 

The barren hallways offered zero cover and the tight corners, dead ends, and random doorways leading to small rooms gave attackers a million hiding spots. Thea was pushing her infrasonic sensors hard, trying to pick up the muted sounds of breathing, or anything that would give someone waiting away. It wasn’t a sure thing, a place like this could easily have automated defenses, but it was the best Thea could think to do.

 

It wasn’t until Claire placed her hand on Thea’s arm that she realized she had been holding the handle of her shotgun in a death grip under her coat. “Hey, Nat says she knows them. Try not to worry so much,” Claire said. The concern in her eyes made Thea assess herself. Her whole body was on edge. The pressure of the situation was pulling her to brink. Thea steadied herself, pushing away the physical signs of her stress to help with Claire’s fears. Releasing her weapon and allowing her gait to steady out to a stroll instead of stalking down the hall, Thea gave Claire a small nod, grinning behind her faceplate at the care in Claire’s dark eyes.

 

Their journey continued through the darkened winding labs for several long quiet minutes before Nat brought them to a stop before another nondescript metal door. Turning to them, Natalia said, “This is the lounge; the guy we’re looking for usually hangs out in here or in his rooms, which are connected. Quick warning, though -- a lot of the people who work here tend to give their products a... uh, taste test when they have time off, and the lounge is where they get together to do so. So there could be not much going on, but there could also be an orgy for all I know.” Nat glanced between them, apparently reading their reaction. Thea could see that Claire had blushed rather furiously even without her thermal readings, the thought of what might be going on obviously taking her aback. The thought mattered little to Thea; she had seen people engaged in all manner of sexual activities during her time with Zeberon. Thea’s stealth capabilities made her an excellent choice to observe people that were privacy-conscious.

 

With a nod, Natalia turned and unlocked the door with a swift entry of digits on a hidden keypad before the door swiftly opened before them. Thea took in the sight only a moment before the smell. Blood, feces, and death assaulted Thea’s olfactory sensors, which she had to quickly tune down to avoid making herself sick. The sight was even worse; more than a dozen people were splayed out around the once-nice room, obviously deep in a drug-fueled escapade before they had been interrupted. Several had clearly been killed outright, but a near majority had been interrogated, tied to pieces of furniture and left in hideous states, their former humanity robbed from them.

 

Thea had her shotgun at the ready in an instant, brushing past Claire and Nat to place herself between them and the room. Thea swept it thoroughly, taking careful angles around small dividing walls and pieces of furniture, more than aware of how easy it would be to hide in such an environment, even from her sensors. It quickly became clear that whoever had done this was long gone. Even the residual thermal signs an intruder would have left if it had been recent were nowhere to be found. It was just the three of them and the dead. Returning to the entrance where Nat and Claire waited, Thea could clearly see the two were shaken. Nat had been sick against the wall and Claire had gone terribly pale, her breathing fast and shallow as she stared dazed at the horror in the room.

 

Taking them both by a shoulder, Thea gently led them back into the hallway leading to the lounge and let the door close behind them. Doing a quick once-over, Thea could see Claire would be fine once she worked through the shock. Sliding out of the long coat she had borrowed from Nat, which would only slow her now that subtlety wasn’t needed, Thea draped the warm leather around Claire’s shoulders, pulling it tight in front of her. The coat was huge on her small frame, but would hopefully help ground her. Turning to Natalia, Thea spoke. “There are no survivors unless someone escaped. Give me a description for our information broker and I’ll check to see if he is among the casualties.” 

 

It took a moment for Nat to respond, clearly still shaken by what they had walked into. She briefly described the man. He was short, dark-skinned, and had modded himself to grow leaves from his hair last Nat had seen him. Not wanting to leave them for long in case intruders had waited for them to pass by as they made their way to the lounge, Thea swept the lounge as quickly as she could. After only a moment sifting through the mauled bodies, Thea managed to ID one of the interrogation victims as the man they had been looking for. 

 

Taking in his pathetic form, it was clear he had been subjected much longer than the other victims had. Thea could see nearly every manner of painful information extraction she had been trained in written across the flesh of his body. Sloppy rushed work, she knew; pain was a terrible way to get good info, but sometimes people were in a rush and a bot would be left to work over a suspect. Thea shuddered and pushed down the sudden rush of memories, flashes of people screaming, begging, crying as she was forced to inflict unspeakable agony. Hot shame pricked at her eyes, but Thea pushed it all down and focused on the moment, a thought occurring to her.

 

Pushing the man’s head forward, she looked at the back of his head, where her suspicions were confirmed by a gaping cavity at the base of his skull where a large implant of some kind had been indelicately removed. Information brokers worked with so much data, and so much of it was important enough that they didn’t want it not on their person. The solution many had come to was large compute modules interfaced directly to their brain. It was dangerous using such powerful implants, but in the underground world they worked in, you had to be ready to do anything to get ahead.

 

Having found the person they had come for already dead, and the information they had sought to acquire likely in the hands of Zeberon, Thea knew it was time to leave as quickly as possible. Leading the others along the route they had come through at a jog, Thea stuck close, keeping herself between them and any potential ambush points. Long minutes passed as they made their way out, silence broken only by the other two’s breathing, and the quiet padding of their boots on the halls. 

 

Thea had carefully memorized the route they had taken on their way in and was able to use the detailed map she had made to move much more quickly as they fled. The tight corners were much less mysterious, but possibly more dangerous as she carefully swept every point with focused blasts from every sensor she had, carefully comparing what she had recorded earlier to what she saw, trying to see the most subtle clues to a threat.

 

As they rounded the last corner, Thea saw what she had feared would be waiting for them. Her ultrasonic sensors picked up a large shape that hadn’t been there before on the other side of the corner. By bouncing ultrasonic pulses around the corner and sifting through what echoed back, she was able to make out a fuzzy reading of the other side. 

 

An instant before Thea even had a clear picture of what was waiting for them, she threw herself against Claire and Nat, throwing them to the ground, trying to shield them with her body, and just as she did, an explosion of light and sound tore apart the world around her. Thea forced herself up, grasping the two women still trying to understand what was happening by the scruff of their coats, and slid them bodily back down the hall with a grunt as she kicked off, throwing herself closer to the threat.

 

The world swirled in slow motion as Thea brought her shotgun up to the target.  Where the cover of the wall had been, there was now a gaping hole, the plastics blown away by the hulking bot before her. A foot taller than her, twice as wide, and covered in layered composite plating, the heavy assault bot was nearly as intimidating as the smoking chain cannon it had for an arm. 

 

Thea juked again; throwing herself through a door and bursting into a darkened room filled with lab equipment, she slid across the floor into the room, her momentum carrying her as she flicked the shotgun to the secondary magazine she had loaded, changing it from flesh-shredding flechettes to a load of shaped charge explosives built to pierce armor. She pulled herself behind a shelf; it would break the bot’s visual on her if not actually provide any real protection.

 

Claire’s voice broke through to Thea as the massive bot stomped its way into the room after Thea, ignoring the wall like tissue paper. “What is happening, Thea!? Where are you?” Claire asked. The panic was obvious in her voice, but Thea didn’t have time to chat.

 

Thea closed her coms off, quickly squirting a message to Claire: “RUN,” before drawing every bit of processing power she had to focus on the monster coming her way. Her training had covered how to fight military bots. In short, it simply said “don’t.” If you had to, though, the best option was to send one bot in as a sacrifice and use the distraction as a chance to sneak yourself around it. Thea knew this was her death, but if she didn’t stall it, Claire would die too. It wasn’t a choice.

 

Thea kicked the shelf towards the bot as it brought its cannon towards her, quickly following the shelf with a shrieking hail from the automatic shotgun. A dozen HEAT shells tore through the recycled wood as Thea’s weapon discharged them in an instant, lighting up the room with its flash and throwing itself against Thea’s unmoving form. Several simply deflected off the bot’s angled armor, exploding and spattering the surroundings with superheated copper. The rest connected solidly, smashing into the bot’s upper chest and right arm servo, exploding against it and forcing jets of copper plasma tearing through the bot’s body.

 

Military bots were built to take a beating, though, and it didn’t even slow as its chain cannon spooled up, instantly releasing a thunderous roar that overwhelmed all of Thea’s audio sensors. Its intense flash was nearly blinding. Thea would have been cut in half had she not kept moving. Thea threw herself diagonally towards the bot and off to the side, barely edging away from the burst of fire. Half way through her roll to get to her feet, something struck her in the chest. An incredible force lifted her bodily off the ground and sent her crashing through the lab’s wall and clear of the building. She tumbled ass over tits, leaving a trail through the dirt. Suddenly a crushing weight was pressing down on her, forcing her into the dirt.

 

It took a moment for her processing to catch up, but in a blink the assault bot had managed to get her pinned. Thea could feel her carapace groaning under the incredible pressure, and warnings blared in her readout. In just a moment this thing was going to squish her like a bug, and there wasn’t a damn thing she could do about it. Her hand scrabbled uselessly at the thing’s arm, which was as thick as her torso. Suddenly a long needle sprouted from its free arm; a data probe. Ice filled Thea’s core as she realized this thing had just been playing with her, working her into a position that it could take her alive.

 

She thrashed wildly, her legs kicking helplessly in the dirt as she punched at the bot’s arm with all her force and not accomplishing a damned thing. It moved in slowly, trying to carefully align its probe to Thea’s struggling form. Gods, she couldn’t go like this, she couldn’t go back; raw animal fear filled Thea, they were going to strip away everything she was, and she’d never find her way out again. Never be able to be there for Claire, or Nat.

 

“Fuck you!” she screamed, her vocal output cracking and peaking as she threw everything she had at the cursed thing to no avail. The probe finally found its mark, slipping between the plates of her carapace and into Thea. Just as it did, several things happened all at once. Thea’s body went limp as all her power was rapidly shunted into her electronic warfare suite, a window in the building a few rooms away from where Thea had been thrown through the wall exploded, the bot trying to break into her mind got struck hard, and with a flash the bot’s arm that had been delving her was blown clean off. 

 

The assault bot jerked sideways as glowing scrap rained down over Thea, just barely dodging another round that went shrieking over Thea. It wasn’t quick enough to get away from the third shot, and an explosion ripped the front of it open right before Thea’s eyes, peeling away the thick armor plating like tinfoil, and gutting its compute core. The bot spasmed as it fell, the large pit in its torso still glowing and smoking. The bot’s heavy frame slumped into the dirt with a thump that rattled Thea, her control only just starting to come back as she tried to push herself up, scrambling away from the downed bot.

 

Several more shots rang out, thunderously loud, and punched more holes into the bot that had attacked them. Thea stumbled as she tried getting to her feet. She needed to get back to the compound. She needed to find Claire and Natalia, but she was disoriented, and she realized for the first time, she was scared. Her body shook as she took wobbly steps back towards the compound, slowly regaining her footing. They had almost taken her again; she had felt the connection forcing its way into her core, trying to rip away what she had only just found, and it had scared her.

 

Thea took a few more steps before finally managing to pull herself back together. She forced down the rising storm of emotion inside her, something she was starting to get a lot of practice doing. The remains of the window that had shattered a moment ago were forced out, and Thea whirled on the movement, trying to assess the threat, and was taken back when Nat forced her way out, hefting a cannon nearly as big as herself.

 

It was dusk now, and the setting sun cast Nat in a reddish hue as she strode towards Thea. Nat’s armor was clearly doing a lot to help her, but even still she walked heavily cradling what Thea identified as a modified Solothurn anti-tank rifle. Claire trailed behind her, the oversized coat Thea had wrapped her in giving her the look of someone poking their head out of a mound of blankets. Thea had thrown herself to her death to save Nat and Claire, but they had ended up saving her. Thea had no idea what to do with that, the feeling of being the one who had been protected. This had been a hell of a day.