“Yessir,” Diesel replied.
Grimm nodded at Lemon, and together, he and Diesel marched through the greenhouse, boots clomping in unison, back up the stairs. Fix heaved a heavy sigh, rose unsteadily to his feet. The big boy looked like ten kilometers of rough road.
“Are you all right, soldier?” the Major asked.
The boy nodded. “Took a little from myself. Didn’t wanna hurt the garden too much.”
“Get yourself a meal, then get some rack time.” The old man nodded at the bloodstained concrete. “You’ve earned it. Good work, soldier.”
Fix grinned at the praise, seemed to stand a foot taller despite his obvious fatigue. He offered a brisk salute, which the Major returned, and with a nod to Lemon, the boy left the greenhouse by the stairwell. The Major watched him go, turned to the girl with a twinkling eye and a gentle smile.
“All right,” he said. “Where do you want to start?”
“How…,” Lemon began. “He…You…This…”
“How did he do that?” the Major asked.
Lemon nodded, rubbed her eyes. “Right. That. Yeah.”
“We call it transference,” the Major explained. “Fix has the ability to repair damaged tissue. As far as I can tell, he accelerates the body’s natural regenerative properties. But, for want of a better term, he has to take the energy from another living thing to fuel the process.” The old man sighed, looking at one of the dead trees. “Shame. I was very much looking forward to a few more of those pears.”
The Major looked at Lemon to see if she had more questions, but the girl was gawping around the room and just trying to stop her head exploding.
“What is this place?” she finally managed.
“An abandoned military installation,” the Major replied. “I served here many years ago. Before the war. But in answer to what I think you’re asking, it’s a sanctuary. A training facility, where Homo superior can live free of persecution, and help in the search for more of our kind.”
“Wait…Homo superior?” Lemon asked.
The Major knelt in front of Lemon, that gentle smile on his face. “That’s right.”
“Wassat mean?”
“It means people like you, young lady.”
The old man grinned, scruffed the hair on her head.
“It means people like us.”
“How’s that?” Abraham asked.
“BETTER,” Cricket replied. “TWENTY-SEVEN POINT FOUR PERCENT IMPROVEMENT.”
“This gyro got cut up pretty good. Think I’ve got a replacement, though.”
The big bot tilted his head, more than a little put off by the feeling of this strange boy tinkering with his innards. He was laid out belly-down on the floor of the New Bethlehem workshop, Abraham hanging from a work-sling above. The walls were lined with racks of salvage and tech-gear, the half-built bodies of a dozen WarBots arrayed around them. A voice-controlled servo arm assisted Abraham as he worked, another remote loading crane transporting parts to and fro. The bots looked homemade, scavved together out of repurposed parts. Cricket could see a long drafting table on one side of the workshop, several grubby whiteboards stuck to the wall above it, all covered in a dizzying array of hand-drawn schematics.
This boy was obviously something of a technical wizard.
“You know, it’s strange,” Abraham said, screwdriver between his teeth.
“WHAT’S STRANGE, MASTER ABRAHAM?” Cricket replied.
“You can stop calling me master, Paladin. Abraham’s fine when we’re alone.”
Paladin…
Cricket rankled at the new name Sister Dee had given him, but he couldn’t tell Abraham his real one—not unless he wanted the boy to work out his secret. He knew from his history banks that paladins were holy knights, back in the days when it was fashionable to wear metal underwear and bash people in the heads with sharp bits of metal and say “prithee” a lot. But in the grand scheme of things, Cricket supposed Paladin wasn’t so bad. He’d been called worse in his time, true cert.
“AS YOU WISH,” he replied, trying to sound as impressive and WarDome-y as he could. “WHAT’S STRANGE, ABRAHAM?”
The boy spoke softly, his features lit by the arc welder in his hands. “WarDome fights were about the only thing Grandfather would let me watch on the feeds as a kid. I saw all your Megopolis bouts—back when you were called the Quixote, I mean. But you never fought hand to hand back then. You always finished your opponents at range if possible. Why the change in tactics last night?”
The big bot felt his self-preservation subroutines kick in at the boy’s question. Abraham obviously had no idea the Quixote’s persona had been replaced with Cricket’s own—the boy thought he was dealing with seventy tons of robotic badass, with years of Dome brawls stored in its memory. If Abraham found out the mind inside this body belonged to a helperbot with no combat experience beyond “running awaaaaay,” he might be inclined to simply wipe Cricket’s core drives and start over.
For a logika, that was basically the same as dying.
“I SOUGHT TO IMPRESS MY NEW OWNER,” Cricket said in his best Domefighter voice. “I AM PROGRAMMED TO ENTERTAIN.”
“Well, you certainly did that.” Abraham nodded, finishing up and replacing Cricket’s armor plating. “The Thunderstorm was a finalist in the regional championship last year. Taking it out was a huge win for New Bethlehem. WarDome is the most popular pastime out here in the wastes…well, besides murder and robbery, I guess. But having a champion WarBot is a great way for a settlement to appear legitimate, attract more people, more talent, more revenue.” The boy glanced to the small portrait hanging on the wall—a middle-aged man with flaming eyes and a halo of light around his head. “Grandpa would be proud.”
“THEY HAD THOSE PICTURES ALL OVER THE WARDOME,” Cricket said, looking the portrait over. “HE’S YOUR GRANDFATHER?”
“Yeah.” The boy rubbed his neck and sighed. “He started the Brotherhood years ago. Ran everything, back when it was just a scattered cult with a few rusty churches. I bet he never imagined we’d have our own city. Our own champion.”
“WHERE IS HE?”
“A few years back, before we took over New Bethlehem…we got ambushed by deviates.” Abraham’s voice went soft. “They killed him. Right in front of us. Almost killed me and Mother, too.”
“I’M SORRY,” Cricket said, not sure if he actually was.