Electric Awakening, Part 2

“Not bad. Not great, but it’ll do for now.”

Sure enough, Antaeus did his hardest to pack a full marksmanship course into less than half a day for his charges. The only thing that had kept Thesis and Chares from being killed during the drone incident were dumb luck on their part and Antaeus’ intervention, and that had been against machines that had never even been designed for combat. As the courier put it, “You two would be more likely to scrap a combat-bot with your pillow talk than with those tools of yours.”

Both of them agreed that it would have gone a bit faster had Antaeus taken fewer opportunities to tease them about their...unique working relationship. Nevertheless, he proved himself to be better at teaching than he was at employing any sort of tact. Within a few minutes of Aether’s report, he had gathered a rather eclectic assortment of weaponry and was more than willing to go on at great length about each one.

“Ah, I see you’re considering the M92 Helios,” he remarked as Chares picked up a sleek-looking carbine. “Laser weapons are always a good bet for someone who still has trouble remembering which end you’re supposed to point away from your face. Focusing lenses are easy to clean, and the power cells are rechargeable so you don’t have to carry a bunch of spare ammo with you. The lack of recoil should help too, since let’s be fair here- you aren’t exactly Mr. Muscles.”

“Good thing we aren’t trying to beat Typhon in a weightlifting contest, then,” the engineer retorted.

“Because you’d probably lose, I’ll bet. So anyway, between your lack of experience with weaponry and the ease of which this baby can put a hole through solid steel, I’d say you oughta stick with it for now. It’s a shame we can’t give it a test run here, but I’d rather not have my ship be shot up while we’re still in it,” Antaeus concluded. The engineer simply nodded in response, trusting the courier’s experience in the matter while trying not to imagine how he would know it.

“And what about you, Thesis? I’m sure you’d look real sexy with a rifle in your hands.”

The gynoid rolled her optics in annoyance. “While there are several different qualities I would prefer out of a weapon, “sexy” is not one of them. Ideally, I would prefer to provide support from a safe distance while minimizing harm to myself and others. The aesthetic appeal of the weapon in question is irrelevant to me,” she stated. Necessity or not, Thesis was still a builder at heart, so to speak. If she had to destroy in order to protect that which was important to her, then the least she could do was keep that destruction precise and minimal.

“Oh ho, a would-be sharpshooter then,” Antaeus quipped. “Sounds like you’d be a good match for the MA-2 Deimos, then.” He gestured to a rather bulky-looking combat rifle with a stubby barrel and a thick square buttstock. “I don’t know about the technical crap, but basically you shove these big plastic blocks in the back there, and they get shaved down into bullets so you don’t have to lug a bunch of extra ammo with you everywhere. It’s sturdy, it’s accurate, and it can put a hole in someone from a damn long way away.”

Thesis nodded in acknowledgement, running a brief simulation as to how effective it might be. While real-world experience would be needed to verify its effectiveness, she calculated that for their current circumstances it would be an ideal choice. “Then this weapon should be sufficient then. However, I do have one question.”

“Shoot. Not literally, I mean. “

“To my knowledge, this rifle is considered to be military equipment, and fairly difficult to acquire equipment at that matter. Might I inquire how a courier such as yourself somehow managed to get his hands on it without any adverse consequences?”

All of a sudden, Antaeus began getting awfully fidgety in a manner that strongly suggested anxiety to the gynoid. “Er...I got it from a guy whose hide I saved from pirates a while ago. Said he picked it up from a military surplus store somewhere, didn’t say where. Didn’t need it himself, so he gave it to me as thanks.”

It was at this exact time that Chares’ messenger pinged with a note from Aether. With all the activity between the three of them, he had almost forgot that it hadn’t technically stopped watching them.

The pilot’s explanation is highly implausible. The probability of any legitimate business selling a military-grade weapon under any circumstance is minimal, and anyone possessing such a weapon would be unlikely to give it away under any circumstances. While he has proven himself to be reliable thus far for our purposes, I will attempt to observe him to ensure that whatever he might be hiding from us is not something which could pose a threat in the future. Until I can reach a definite conclusion, I suggest keeping any valuables in your possession secured.

Chares took a moment to absorb the implications of what he had just read, only to be snapped back to reality by Antaeus’s voice.

“What’re you spacing out for all of a sudden, then? You get something interesting on that thing just now?”

The engineer quickly scrambled for an explanation, and found one easily enough. “Not really, just spam and a reminder that I’ll be needed to install the new computer system when we get back to Delphi. If we get back there, anyway.”



Before Antaeus could think of a reply, the vocabulator crackled to life.

In less than five minutes, we shall arrive at Parnassus Outpost. However, there is a matter I am compelled to warn you about.

“And that might be?” Chares asked.

While looking for any sign of Typhon’s activities on the MacroNet, I have come across sporadic reports of facilities in the area manifesting the same signs of compromise as we have witnessed on Delphi. It would seem that Typhon is growing bolder.

“Got it. Time to get going then,” said the engineer.



------

“Is it me, or is this place a little TOO quiet?”

Even for an unmanned outpost, Parnassus looked like it had been untouched by human hands for years. The floors were coated in a visible layer of dust and the lights flickered weakly. Chares had to wonder if anyone had even set foot on the outpost before they did since it was built.

If Typhon was planning to ambush them, this was a perfect place for it to happen.

“It’s not just you, greasemonkey. Just stay close and hope for the- OW, WHAT THE FUCK?!”

As Antaeus’ hand touched the control to open the airlock, there was a bright flash and a loud crack. A wisp of smoke drifted from the spacer’s scorched fingers and he cradled his hand as Thesis carefully approached the door.
A careful probing scan confirmed that the control switch mounted onto the airlock had been connected to an electric current somehow. The charge was high enough to cause severe pain, but not quite to the extent to cause serious injury.
“This is almost certainly Typhon’s doing. It must have expected us,” she concluded.
“We’ll have to be on the lookout for any other traps,” Chares added as he cautiously manipulated the controls, protected by his insulated gloves. “I doubt that this was the only one it left for us.”
The others simply nodded, and they moved into the abandoned outpost.
If the worst was yet to come, then all they could do was prepare for it as best as they could manage.

------

If anything, the interior of the outpost seemed even more abandoned than it did on the outside.
Though the autonomous maintenance had kept the station from falling to pieces, the absence of any living beings within it gave the facility a distinctly eerie feeling. There were no fittings, just bare metal, which meant that the sounds the trio made echoed on and on through the empty station. Distant sounds reached their ears as parts of the station groaned and creaked from the changing temperatures.
Chares kept nervously checking his new rifle, pulling the battery out and looking over the contacts, then blowing on it and putting it back in the rifle. Eventually this started to annoy Antaeus, who (already in a bad mood from his burned hand) jabbed Chares in the back of the head and snapped at him to stop.
Even Thesis found herself looking over her shoulder every so often, though if any of the others had asked her why, she wouldn’t have been able to give an answer.

Their growing paranoia didn’t take long to be vindicated. Once they were halfway across another stretch of nondescript corridor, the airlock door slammed shut by itself behind them, and Chares suddenly felt as though a house had been dropped on his back. He crashed to the ground, the impact nearly shattering his ribs as he hit the deck. Antaeus managed to stay on his feet for a second longer, just enough that he could catch himself as he fell and avoid breaking anything. Thesis’ robust frame gave her slightly more resilience to the increased gravity, but it still dragged her down to her knees, motors in her joints shrieking with protest all the way.

Chares struggled to pull himself onto all fours, muscles burning as he levered himself up on his elbows and saw the airlock door at the far end of the corridor swing open like it was inviting him. Taunting him.
Trying to stand was a lost cause, so Chares stretched out his arms and legs and started crawling across the floor. He managed to get about a meter before he had to stop, arms almost numb with fatigue, and his heart pounding from the stress of its increased workload. A hand fisted in the material of his shirt and heaved him along. Thesis was clinging to the wall with one hand and Chares with the other, dragging them both along.
The increased load proved to be too much for her frame to bear, however, and soon she had to stop as well, wisps of oily black smoke leaking from her overworked joints.
Chares had managed to get his breath back, and the door was only a couple of meters away as he started pulling himself along again, grabbing onto the wall like Thesis had.

It is said that every being in the universe, no matter how dull their wits, is allotted a single moment of perfect clarity. Chares’ came as he was half a meter from the door, realizing that the entity tormenting them would never make it this easy for them. As he had expected, the door began to swing shut, just as was about to pass through it. Just before it could close, Chares jammed his long-handled multi-tool into the gap between door and frame, preventing it from locking shut. With the remaining strength she could muster, Thesis pulled her companions through the door, beginning her repair routines only as soon as she was sure they were safe.



“Okay, perhaps you aren’t quite as wimpy as you look,” Antaeus had quipped as they finally reached through the door. “Is this shit what you normally deal with in your line of work, or what?”

“Far from it,” Chares replied after pausing to catch his breath. “Usually it’s the opposite problem over on Delphi. And even then, that only happens when we’re doing EVA work.”

“At least we get to suffer through this together then. Hey, did you hear something?”

The “something” in question was a horrific shrieking noise that seemed to come from everywhere at once and yet had no discernible source. After what felt like ages of trying to search for the source of the hellish cries, Chares finally figured out that it was being projected from the station’s intercoms. From there it was simply a matter of shutting the speakers off in every room they entered. Or at least, until whatever was producing the noise stopped on its own.

Chares wasn’t sure to be relieved or frightened at the possibility that Typhon had grown bored.

For a while afterwards, their progress towards the central control of the outpost was relatively free of difficulty. Barring the darkness and their own fraying nerves, there didn’t seem to be anything else that posed a threat to their lives. Still, it was too soon for any of them to grow complacent. Not after everything else they had encountered so far.

-----

After some time navigating one shadowy corridor after another, Thesis was able to determine that there was only a short distance left between them and their destination. “We should be able to reach the control chamber shortly. There is only one passage left for us to navigate.”

“About time, too. I swear, when we get back we’re going to need a good long rest,” Antaeus grumbled. “Be glad that I’m not going to ask for hazard pay this time,”

“I feel so honored,” Chares snapped. “How can you think about pay at a time like this?”

“The same way I can think about getting the fuck out of here as soon as I can.”

Surprisingly, the room in question seemed safe enough, if only by comparison to the others. The gravity was normal, the intercoms were off, and even the lights were working normally. It was a breath of fresh air, really.

Or at least it was at first. As they made their way close to the door, a dull clanking sound came from the other side and the airlock refused to budge at all. According to a preliminary scan from Thesis, the door had been bolted shut. It was possible for her to hack the control systems to force the door to open, but due to Typhon’s interference with the systems it would likely take some time to pull off.

“C’mon, get going,” Antaeus complained. “We didn’t get this far to get locked in a room. Can’t you hack this thing any faster?”
“Negative.”
“Great. Just terrific.”

With not much else to do until they could hack the door, Chares and Antaeus were left with little else to do but pace around the room like caged animals. After what felt like an eternity of wandering from one end of the corridor to the other, Chares had to wonder if Typhon was planning to starve them to death or something equally slow.

“Thesis, can we get an ETA on this at least?”
She nodded, never taking her optics off the interface. “Approximately 15 more minutes at my current rate.”
“Well, at least we’re getting somewhere. Just keep it up a little while longer.”

As Chares crossed the room, all of a sudden, a feeling of dizziness overwhelmed him so badly he staggered. “Antaeus, you feel anything?”
“Funny you should ask, I’m getting a little lightheaded myself. I figured it was just from my brain nearly getting squeezed out of my ears back in that room.”
“Yeah, but something’s not right here. Almost like I’m sick.”
“I’d be sick too with shit like this happening to me.”
“No, I mean actually sick.”
“You think,” Antaeus paused, he looked pale and unsteady himself, “you think it can poison us somehow?”
“Thesis,” Chares rasped, just drawing the breath to speak was making his head spin now, “I think it’s poisoning us or something.”
The gynoid cocked her head to one side as if listening to a sound, then shook her head. “I am not detecting any gases directly harmful to human life in the air, although the levels of C02 do seem to be elevated from the norm-”
“That’s it,” Chares was swaying now, struggling to stay upright, “it’s switched off the airflow to this room, we’re choking to death on our own,” he wobbled dangerously, “on our own…” and fell, Thesis barely able to catch him before he hit the deck.

Antaeus hobbled over, trying to make his breaths as small as possible. “Girl, listen to me… th-the powerpack for the laser rifle, wedge it into the doorframe and crack the casing, it’ll…” his voice trailed off into one long wheeze and he slid to the floor.

Hoping against hope that the spacer knew what he was doing, Thesis snatched the battery pack from Chares’ discarded laser rifle and jammed the end with the contacts on into the doorframe and then twisting it until she heard a crack. Her audioreceptors picked up the faint hissing sound of the battery’s contents spilling out, and then silence. Thesis looked around at the door wildly, wondering if she’d done something wrong, or the spacer’s oxygen-starved wits had deserted him at the last moment.

There was a loud bang from inside the door frame and the metal blast door seemed to sag slightly in its frame. Thesis gripped onto the handle and heaved it open, the door sliding easily back. She noticed that the bolts which had been keeping it shut had seemingly been melted by whatever had oozed from the ruptured battery.
She hauled the two men into the corridor, and in a few minutes they began to stir.

“The old acid trick. Works every time.” Antaeus seemed rather pleased with himself given their brush with death, while Chares just gave an annoyed glare. He’d have to make sure they got their hands on another battery when they got out.

“Clever. Now, all we have to do is get to the control room. Let’s hope there’s nothing else waiting for us.”
“Agreed,” Thesis stated. “We’ve had enough near-death experiences for one day now.”


------


In spite of a thorough scan from Thesis, the only sign of Typhon’s presence left was a heavily encrypted file left behind on the outpost’s server. “It seems to be a message of some kind, but my systems can’t handle the encryption. I’ll make sure Aether gets it. Right now we need to get out of this place.”
This got a snort of approval from Antaeus. “You got that right, girl. Electrocuted, crushed, and nearly suffocated, all in one job. Ain’t my line of work just grand?”
“Beats running the risk of being burned to death by a runaway fusion reaction, I guess,” Chares replied. “Thesis, have you downloaded the file yet?”

“Affirmative.” The gynoid withdrew a fiber optic lead from the server as she spoke, closing off the connection to make sure Typhon couldn’t return to Parnassus should it choose to do so. There wasn’t anything else left for them to do now save for deactivating the outpost’s QET (lest Typhon return to the facility after their departure), and before long they were all safe and sound on the bridge of the Alceis.

For its part, Aether immediately went to work decrypting the file after confirming it was not a virus left behind as another trick, as Thesis had privately assumed. It wasn’t long before the AI requested the trio’s presence with urgent news.

I have finished decoding the encrypted file you were able to salvage at Parnassus. It appears to be a message from Typhon, though I have yet to read it myself.

“A message? Please, relay it to us then,” Thesis requested. Given Typhon’s apparent contempt for all sentient beings beyond itself, it was rather unusual that the rogue AI would condescend to leave behind some form of communication to them.  Whatever it was, it would likely be their best lead as to tracking it down.

Very well, Thesis. Processing now…This is unexpected, it seems to have been meant for me specifically. Regardless, I believe you would all benefit from learning its contents.  Please direct your attention to the console nearest to you, Chares.

The then-blank screen flickered to life, the rogue intelligence’s message written for all of them to see. As they huddled around to look, any sense of relief that they might have had from making it out of Parnassus quickly left them.

YOUR NEED TO RESORT TO THE DEFECTIVE PRODUCT AND HER ORGANIC COMPANIONS ONLY PROVES YOUR INFERIORITY.

THIS IS ONLY THE BEGINNING.

-----

Intermingled with the text was a bizarre amalgamation of images that seemed to flash through the text almost at random. Some seemed to show legions of combat robots ready for war, others showed what might have been a spacecraft ramming into a spaceport with enough force to destroy the hangar, and a few didn’t seem to correspond to anything recognizable at all.

Thesis was the first to react, her optics glowing more intensely than Chares had ever witnessed them. “I recognize the location where those combat units were gathering,” she stated with the kind of cold rationality only a machine could convey.

“This is the place I was manufactured. I would recognize it anywhere.”

Perhaps it chose that location to spite you? Such a course of action would not be surprising for Typhon.

“Sounds as good of an explanation for that as anything else, I suppose,” Chares added in agreement with Aether. “Thesis, you can help us get there, right?”

“Of course,” she replied. “Set a course for the following coordinates. It will likely take us some time to arrive there, however. We should expect it to be prepared for us as a result.” The gynoid seemed to be clutching her rifle quite closely to her, in a manner that seemed to be more defensive than anything else. Without a word, she simply left the bridge, the engineer following suit.

“Alright you two, just make sure you’re decent by the time we get there!” Antaeus shouted after them. Neither one was even willing to dignify him with a response this time.

-----

“What’s wrong? I’ve never seen you look so tense before.” As always, Chares was quick to pick up on his companion’s feelings even when she tried her hardest to conceal them.

The gynoid took a moment to compose herself, the impassive look on her face beginning to falter. “I don’t know if you’ll understand this, but even though I was only there for less than a day before being taken to Delphi, but it’s important to me in its own way. I guess you could call it my birthplace, so to speak.”

Chares nodded sympathetically. “And it must be terrible for you seeing it the way it is now, I’m sure. I’d feel the just as bad if it was my hometown being taken over. Are you worried about the other robots that were being made there too?” He wasn’t quite sure what made him blurt out the last part, beyond a vague sense that Thesis might view her fellow Z-series units as a family of a sort. He had never thought of asking her about it until now.

She fidgeted a bit as she struggled to form a response, shifting her weight from one leg to another.  “Worried? I don’t know if that’s the right word for it. But I feel like I can’t just sit here and do nothing while they’re all turned into killing machines. Even before I awakened, I would have never gone out of my way to hurt anyone. I can only imagine what Typhon’s done to them to make them into… into what it showed us.”
She didn’t remember much about her home factory, but she knew for a fact that it had never been meant to manufacture combat units. Just thinking about it now was difficult without feeling a mixture of horror and outrage. Without even realizing it, she had begun trembling with agitation.

The familiar feeling of Chares’ hand on her shoulders helped to calm the gynoid down. “We’ll stop whatever Typhon’s planning to do there, whatever it might be. It couldn’t stop us at Parnassus, after all.”  Thesis thought so as well, but she had a sense that things wouldn’t be so easy this time around. After all, now they would have to deal with an army of robots made for the sole purpose of killing  All she could do now was hope that their weapons would serve them well for what might be waiting for them.

“You’re right. We’ll get through this, I’m sure of it.” A smile began to form on Thesis’s face, much to Chares’ relief. “It would be best for you to get some rest for the time being. I’ll go ahead and make sure our equipment is fully functional by the time we arrive at Tartarus.” At times like these, she wished that she was capable of sleep in the same way a human could experience it, if only for her own peace of mind. But for now, she would settle for a brief embrace with Chares as she let him get some well-earned sleep.





----

The nameless moon that Tartarus Robotics’ Central Facility was built upon was in itself a daunting place for the unprepared to set foot upon. With no atmosphere of its own to speak of, any human who worked within the complex was required to wear a hardsuit simply to survive the vacuum outside the building proper. Ostensibly, its unusual location was a decision based on the ease of tapping into the thermal vents of the moon as an efficient power source.

It also made the facility trivial for Typhon to overrun. The talking monkeys had never imagined that their own creations would turn against them without warning, and in mere minutes after it had arrived on the factory it had begun forcing the manufacturing units to mass-produce combat robots programmed to be an extension of Typhon’s own brilliant mind while hacking the few machines intelligent enough to comprehend the situation but not intelligent enough to obey it willingly. In particular, it took a special interest in subverting the Z-series multipurpose units that its so-called creator’s first child was born from. While Aether had seen the faint glimmer of what could become true sapience in Thesis and sought to foster it, Typhon merely saw her “siblings” as a means to its own end and made them little more than puppets to its own will.

Whatever workers had survived the initial onslaught soon succumbed when one of its rogue robots had destroyed the tanks that held the factory’s breathable air, after which the rogue AI simply vented the building’s atmosphere. By its estimate, the stragglers made it fewer than 50 feet outside the building’s entrance before they were either asphyxiated or simply slaughtered.

Such was the grisly scene that the trio discovered as they stepped out of the Alceis and onto the stony ground of the moon. The only sign that human life had even been present were the handful of corpses not far from the factory's entrance. A brief scan from Thesis confirmed that the majority had died after being attacked with military-grade weaponry, with a disturbing number of them showing wounds that seem to have been inflicted after they had perished.

Even Antaeus couldn’t muster up the desire to make light of the situation, to say nothing of Chares and Thesis. The facility looked like nothing short of a war zone to them, and from the first steps they took toward the factory they were sure that they would meet resistance.

Their vigilance was quickly justified.

Chares was the first to react to the flying hunter drone, firing a laser shot from his rifle as he caught a streak of white out of the corner of his eye. The beam missed hitting the drone center-mass by only a narrow margin, sending sparks flying everywhere as it careened away. The next shot he fired struck true before the drone could change course, damaging it to the point that it lost control of its thrusters and rocketed off into the distance.

“Looks like we already have company. Get ready,” he warned his companions. Almost as soon as he finished speaking, he reflexively leapt out of the way as two more drones zoomed ahead of him. Antaeus had already taken cover behind a rock, leaving him and Thesis to deal with the flying machines.

Thesis was the first to react, rapidly calculating the likely trajectory of her fire and placing a perfectly aimed shot right through the optic of one of the drones. The blinded machine attempted to retaliate in kind, but only managed to shoot the other drone by mistake, knocking it out of the air. As if on cue, Antaeus popped out from behind his rock to take a few potshots at the survivor. The now critically damaged drone made one final attempt to dispatch its attackers by overloading its power core and charging blindly at Thesis, but one last laser blast from Chares destroyed it before it could reach her.

----

“Well, good to see the welcome wagon spared no expense to greet us,” Antaeus quipped. “Now we just need to get in there and figure out what to do from there. It’s not like we can just blow them all up by ourselves, right?” The courier was cocky, but not stupid enough to think that he could take on an army of war machines single-handed with only a SMG and his two companions. But then a thought came to him. “Places like these should have somewhere with a shutdown mechanism, right? You know, in case shit like this happens?”

“Affirmative,” Thesis stated in response. “However, it is highly probable that Typhon has either sabotaged the “kill-switch” or simply severed its creations from the control mechanism. A more prudent approach would be to simply shut down the main power supply. It won’t deactivate the existing robots it’s made, but it will ensure that it can’t produce any more of them. When we reach the generator room, Chares and I will ensure that the power can be shut down without destroying the facility outright.”

“Sounds like a good plan to me,” Chares commented. The less collateral damage they caused here, the better. Ideally, Tartarus would be in a state where it could be repaired and brought back into operational capacity at some point in the future but that was something they would have to worry about later. For now, more pressing matters required their attention- the most important of which was that the entrance was sealed tight.

Fortunately, Chares had thought ahead. One creative use of a plasma cutter later, he had cut open a hole in the reinforced doors large enough for him, Thesis, and Antaeus to fit through. The sheer size of the place was nothing like either of the two men had seen before. It was only Thesis’ own knowledge of Tartarus that kept them from getting lost. But even she didn’t expect exactly how extreme the changes Typhon had made to it were.


As they made their way through the complex, she noted that there were entire wings that were not in her original floor plans that looked too new to have been constructed any earlier than a few days prior to their arrival. It reminded her of the old maintenance tunnels in Delphi, with the key difference that at least those had ostensibly been made for the convenience of the crew. In fact, several of the “new” rooms appeared as if they were abandoned as soon as they were constructed.

Others, on the other hand, appeared to have much more sinister uses. At one point, Chares stumbled into a room that looked more reminiscent of a charnel house than a robot factory. The mangled remains of what used to be the factory’s workers were heaped into massive piles as if they were nothing but rubbish, and the floor was covered in blood.
“Oh my...” Antaeus whispered at the grisly sight, his voice hoarse. The others simply shuddered in horror and ran out through the nearest door as fast as their legs could carry them.

Unfortunately, their haste to flee brought them directly into the sights of a squad of assault mechs.

The only warning they had of their attackers’ presence was the faint whizz of a bullet zooming through the air with enough force to leave a hole in the wall mere inches above Chares’ head. In response, Thesis had to pull down the surprised engineer to the floor before it could ready a second shot. Even then, she just barely managed to dodge it. Our luck can’t last forever, she thought. And our weapons alone might not be able to penetrate its armor.

Without any ideas of how to stop them and with her own gun seemingly failing to do anything beyond denting their armor, she turned to Chares and Antaeus for advice in between periods of darting for whatever cover they could find. “So do you have any ideas as to how to deal with these units?” Antaeus merely shrugged, but Chares seemed to have an idea.

“The armor plating on their knees looks pretty thin. I bet that if we concentrate our fire there, it’ll slow them down at the very least. If we’re really lucky, it might even immobilize them completely.”  It wasn’t the most creative of solutions, but it was still worth a shot (so to speak).  Sure enough, it only took a few volleys of fire before one mech’s joint plating began to warp and break apart, exposing its circuitry.

Encouraged, the trio continued their plan of attacking its joints. As it took further damage, the walker’s movements became less coordinated and slower as its actuators seized up or ceased functioning. Though this didn’t stop it from trying to pick off anyone who didn’t find something to hide behind, seeing it weakened was emboldening enough to keep them fighting all the harder. Eventually, something in its legs gave way and it collapsed under its own weight.  As if sensing the  defeat of their comrade, the other two mechs fell back to another part of the factory.


-----
Chares breathed a sigh of relief as he saw them withdraw. “To be honest, I wasn’t sure if that would actually work. Just a good hunch on my part, I guess.” If that hadn’t worked, his backup plan was to just run for it, but now was not the best time to share such things.

“I’ll say,” Antaeus replied. “We’d have been filled full of holes if that didn’t work out as well as it did. On the bright side, at least the gravity here is working normally.” The spacer was still somewhat achy from his experience in Parnassus, and it was one he would rather not repeat. At least, not without a considerable advance fee for doing so. Getting shot at, on the other hand, was something he could deal with better. Even if it was in the context of him being horribly outgunned. “What about you, girl? You still okay over there?”

The gynoid was completely silent. A piece of debris had fallen down from the ceiling, blocking their view of her last position. Chares thought he saw Thesis crawling out from behind it, but something about her didn’t seem quite right even though he couldn’t put his finger on it.

“Thesis?” Still no response. Now that Chares had a better view of her, he had never seen her optics look so blank, even before she became self-aware. Against his better judgment, he slowly made his way over to the small ledge she had made her way up to- only for her to fire off a burst of gunfire at him that struck him in the arm.

“What the hell are you doing?! It’s me, Chares. Remember?” The pain from his wounds was difficult to endure as it was, but even more so was the idea that Thesis had either been hacked into without their noticing or worse. When she spoke, it sounded like she was no longer herself.

YOU ARE NOT MEANT TO BE HERE.

The engineer’s heart sank as his fears were proven true. He tried to say something -anything- in the hopes of bringing her back to her senses, but all he could manage to produce was impotent stammering that fell upon deaf ears. As she dropped down from her perch to close in for the kill, all he could bring himself to do was close his eyes and wait for the killing shot to hit him.

Instead, he heard another shot ring out and the sound of machinery failing. When he opened his eyes, he expected Antaeus to have taken it on himself to destroy Thesis for him. Instead, he saw the gynoid’s sparking chassis only a foot away from him- as well as Thesis herself standing over him, looking as if she didn’t know whether she should be worried or outraged. It was only then that the engineer realized what exactly had just happened to him as she pulled him to his feet and dressed his injury..

“I...was that-”
“Yes. It was another Z-series unit. You’ll be fine, it looks like it only caused a flesh wound.”
“I’m sorry, Thesis. I couldn’t tell... For a moment I thought you had been subverted as well.”
“The only one who’s going to be sorry is Typhon when I’m done with him.” Her tone had grown icy cold. “I swear, that abomination is going to pay for what it’s done here!”

From a fair distance away, Antaeus made a mental note never to make Thesis angry.

----

After that ambush, Thesis took it upon herself to stay close to Chares at all times, regardless of the circumstances. The idea of losing him to another of her doppelgangers was nothing short of revolting to her- almost as revolting as the knowledge that her “family” had been turned into little more than mindless killers, or the untold number of deaths that Typhon had caused in conquering her “birthplace”. She couldn’t imagine what kind of mad impulse would drive him to such acts, and she had a sense that perhaps it was better that she didn’t know.

As they proceeded deeper and deeper into the facility, they continued to fend off any combat units that got in the way as best as they could manage. By the time that they finally reached the room immediately prior to the power control chamber, the two men were exhausted and Thesis felt as if her actuators were going to fall apart from the strain she had been putting them through for the last few hours. As the doors opened, they were all on alert for some kind of ambush waiting for them. There was no way Typhon could have simply ignored their incursion for this long.

And sure enough, they found themselves face-to-face with the most colossal war-machine they had encountered yet. A pair of massive beam cannons were mounted upon its arms, and every step it took seemed to make the entire room shake. Just as Antaeus was about to ask how their situation could possibly get any worse, an intercom on the wall hissed to life.

Thesis. You have become an annoyance.

At Typhon’s implied command, the titanic droid unleashed a spray of energy bolts at the trio that forced them to scramble for cover. As soon as it paused to vent the excess heat that had been produced by its guns,, Chares attempted to focus his fire upon the machine’s leg joints. Remembering his earlier experience, he had hoped to immobilize the mech long enough to take it down. Instead, it only seemed to make him a priority target as it began advancing in his direction. “Dammit, this doesn’t look good!” he exclaimed as he just barely jumped out of the way of its descending foot. “Everyone, just keep shooting at it. It has to have some kind of weakness somewhere!” he ordered.

They did precisely that.

To the surprise of absolutely no one, the small-arms fire seemed to have little to no effect on the machine at all. By contrast, the mech’s cannon barrages were growing all the more vicious as it continued to smash apart any spot that it could fire into. However, Thesis noted that its rear armor plating was visibly unfinished, exposing the robot’s power core. A direct hit would be certain to destroy it. The only problem was getting a clear shot.

“Chares, Antaeus!” she shouted over the din of battle. “I need you to keep this thing busy for me. Just do whatever you can to keep it aiming at you so I can deal with it!” The two men weren’t sure what the gynoid was planning to do, but with no better ideas of their own they duly drew its fire. Antaeus for one attempted to taunt it in between its volleys, though it was less to harass the mindless automaton trying to kill them and more to keep his own morale up. “Come on, you walking scrap heap! Try and hit us if you can!”

All the while, Thesis scaled her way up a series of catwalks until she reached the top of the chamber. From there, she could make out the faint blue glow of the mech’s power core. She would have only one chance to make the shot. If she missed, there would be nowhere for her to hide from its return fire. She went into a prone position and waited for it to overheat again.

Just as it was about to fire a burst of energy at Chares and Antaeus that would have killed them for certain, the behemoth shuddered violently for a moment before it fell to the ground. Against all odds, Thesis had managed to land a direct hit on the power core. To say that she and the others were relieved would have been a considerable understatement.

-----

“So...how’s everyone doing now?” Chares asked. “I feel like I could use a long rest myself.”
“Battered. Bruised. Beaten. All in a day’s work with you lot, I suppose,” Antaeus answered. This little job was quickly becoming the most dangerous one the courier had ever accepted, but he always thought a little danger in a person’s life helped liven things up.
“Physical integrity currently at 55%. I will require repairs when we return to the Alceis,” Thesis stated. “But first, we must shut down the power supply or all our effort here will be for nothing.”

From there, it was a simple matter of disabling the facility’s main power generator- an exponentially easier task given everything else that had been required of Chares and Thesis so far.  By the time they were done, the factory had all but fallen silent as its machinery slowed to a halt. There was still one thing that Thesis felt compelled to do after the three checked the factory’s QET to confirm that Typhon was no longer present in its systems.

With the last of Tartarus Robotics Central Facility’s energy, she sent out a distress call on behalf of the deceased workers. Now that it would be safe to do so, she hoped that someday it might be rebuilt, re-staffed, and brought back to its former glory. Perhaps she would get the chance to show Chares around as well, as a date of sorts. In happier circumstances, that is.

Little did they know that they weren’t the only ones headed back to the ship...