Grand Design, page 41
She shook her head.
“Damn.” Was hoping she’d have something else, given the ideas popping into my head. “Well, I’ve got an idea we can try out. Neither of us are going to like it much though, fair warning.”
Fido’s goals were pretty simple. Murder me and bring my dead body back to To’Aacar. In order to get that done, it wanted to starve us out by waiting for our power cells to run dry, after which it could stalk us and murder us easily.
Therefore, the best way to deal with Fido was to do exactly that—pretend we’d run out of juice.
Even without armor, occult blades are still deadly. All we had to do was find a suitable location where we could force Fido into stabbing range. And then stab him first.
Easy.
Hecate, understandably, was against the plan—but for reasons I hadn’t anticipated. “When the power cells are drained, I will not be able to move anymore,” she said, leaning back on the tree trunk where we’d setup a camp to eat and rest.
“I know it might seem dumb to take on a drake without the speed of armor, but I’ve seen one killed up close before,” I said. “All we have to do is get it to focus on me, and while it’s distracted, you can chop its head off. Armor or no armor, you don’t need to hit like a speeder or move as fast as one to do damage. Occult blades will cut through anything no matter what kind of force is behind them.”
She shook her head. “No, you don’t understand what I mean. I-I cannot remove my armor. I won’t be able to move without it.”
My head finally read between the lines of what Hecate was trying to tell me this whole time. Her speed rivaled the Winterblossom Technique for a reason.
“You’re paralyzed? The armor’s what’s letting you move around?”
Hecate nodded.
No wonder she’d been sensitive about that topic. The armor was reading her inputs the same way Journey did mine. This might be how the Imperators Cathida’s always talking about could move as fast, and why they were rare soldiers to run into. For them, wearing armor was far more permanent.
Leave it to Imperials to be this hardcore.
Assuming I was right on my guess here. But Hecate was a new Deathless now. “Can’t you use your Deathless powers to heal yourself?”
Another shake of her head. “My power to heal will only work on others. Not myself. Not in this case.”
Then…if she ran out of power, she’d be stranded here, limp, at the mercy of any wild animal or machine that would pass by. What a horrible way to die. Either slow death from thirst, unable to move, or getting mauled—all while not being able to move either.
Hecate could return to life after death, but that didn’t mean her death wouldn’t be painless. And I wasn’t even sure if her return to life would fix her paralysis. Deathless were supposed to heal rapidly. If she wasn’t healing, it might be some kind of a permanent wound that would follow her, no matter what? And she’d taken the risk of that fate, just to save me, a complete stranger.
I guess that’s why she’s returned as a Deathless. They were heroes for a reason.
“Can you use your hypnosis ability when your armor runs out of power? And how long does it take to cast?” I asked.
She took a moment to think, and then nodded. “When my armor powers down, I’ll remain active for an hour or three more before going into a long sleep. The orders can be sent instantaneously.”
She’d go to sleep when her armor ran out of power? This was all kinds of strange. Unless… “Your armor’s working as a life support of some kind?” It would make sense with her paralysis.
Hecate nodded quickly.
So, it’ll turn off mobility and conserve energy to keep her alive. Or the armor was a lot more morbid than I suspected and would put her under so whatever painful death she’d go through, she wouldn’t have to experience. Poor girl had it rough.
“Right, so here’s my revised plan. We still do the decoy strategy, except once power runs out, we’ll switch places and you’ll be the decoy while I sulk around. If I’m not able to take out the drake alone, hit it with hypnosis as the last second option. I think I’ll be able to kill it with what we’ve got to work with though.”
“Umm, I would prefer if…if you do not kill the drake,” Hecate said. “It is only following orders.”
“You want to leave the giant killer robot running around?”
A nod.
“Just to be perfectly clear, you don’t want us to kill the ten-foot-tall machine with claws and a giant laser? The one that’s constantly asking us to die? That machine?”
She looked away. “I know I do not have grounds to make an argument. I understand the stakes are against us. I know it will not change its mind within the hour, such a thing would need to be a gradual change and we do not have the time.”
The pause at the end of her speech here was telling me more than anything else she’d said. Despite that, with all that stacked up against us, she didn’t want the drake to get killed.
Oi, Deathless are such a pain with their morals. Atius would have had an easier time tossing the Chosen and their luggage out of the airlock the moment they’d shown up. And now I’d need to deal with Fido in a non-lethal way.
I reached down and grabbed a few local supplies to make my point. “Look, I’ve got pretty rocks, some quality dirt and a few sticks,” I said, lifting a handful of sorry-looking twigs. One snapped and dangled from my hand. I tossed it all backwards. “What do you want me to do here? Tie him up with some imaginary rope?”
She sunk deeper into herself, hugging her legs to her chest. “I’ve made a lot of mistakes, some personal and some by my orders. Mistakes that have cost lives. I’ve come to realize how much that loss can weigh. If I can, I want to avoid adding more destruction into the world.”
If I had to fight Fido without armor, a single swipe of his paws would send me straight into the afterlife, first class with all amenities paid for. And without Journey’s speed, I’d be slower to dodge besides having a time limit before my body grew tired. What Hecate was asking for was outright impossible.
I took a deep sigh and contemplated how I’d pull this one off anyhow. “I can’t make any promises. Fighting without armor is already strapping my right hand to my back and nailing my boot to the ground. But I’ll see what I can do.”
She turned, looking almost incredulously at me, before her features morphed into a soft smile. “That…would be nice. Thank you. I know it’s unlikely to happen. However, it means a lot to me you are considering my request.”
“Are we good with blinding and deafening it?” Not exactly the best follow-up sentence for the mood, talking about brutal mutilation. But times were tough, and I had a murder-machine to befriend.
“That would be preferable to destroying it,” Hecate said. “It can repair those parts in time.”
“Right. That’s what we’ll aim for. We’ve got swords with us, we could use those to cut down branches or through rocks. That might open up some good ideas to work with. Armor parts might be useful, too. Journey has a lot of fabric we can make use of.”
“Perhaps weaknesses in the drake’s shell can help,” Hecate said, now animated and talking. “Their vision suite has highly advanced telescopic features. However, it doesn’t include a large section of the light spectrum. It can see far but cannot see more than a human would. Only machines fitting the long-range support role in the lower strata have a full field of vision, including electromagnetic. Those would be far harder to fool.”
“You’re oddly knowledgeable about these specs,” I said. “Part of your past, or something you picked up as a Deathless?”
She looked away, flinching again. I don’t think I’ll understand what she’s fidgeting over. Someone with this much knowledge of machines should be flaunting that knowledge, in my opinion.
“I learned in my time among the army,” she said, still avoiding my gaze.
I waved a hand in surrender, not wanting to make her feel more called out. “It’s okay, I’m not going to probe you about your past. I’m just asking for more details if you have them on the drake. I need everything I can get my hands on right now.”
She nodded. “Their shells are powered by four separate power cells, one on each leg. Large wiring under their throats is where they channel power into their primary weapon. Any damage there will render their cannon too dangerous to use. Their front claws are highly mobile, but their rear claws are far more limited in range of motion. Their tail is their last weapon, capable of being swung in any direction, however it is not a critical component and can be safely cut off without damage. They have great pattern recognition to help track down targets. Any trail left behind, they will find and follow.”
I swear, she’s like a walking encyclopedia of machine knowledge. Imperials took that saying about knowing the enemy and stepped it up to the logical conclusion here.
This was beyond just keeping your enemies close. Next thing, Hecate will tell me what their favorite colors are, or what food they like to eat. What a laudable work ethic those golden stiffs had.
Location, location, location. First things first: If we wanted any shot at the drake, we had to remove the range advantage. That means either holing up in a tunnel, or finding a nook of trees that forced the critter to get closer.
The second thing was the constant voice in the back of my head saying I was being monumentally stupid to go this far to avoid killing a machine. Just kill the drake and call it an accident. Sure, Hecate will be sad, but even she was telling me earlier how difficult of a request this would be.
That voice had to be squashed by sheer willpower. Was all this beyond stupid? Yes. Unequivocally. If I could get away with it, I’d kill the drake without ever being in the same area. Leave it a mine to walk over or something civilized like that.
But this was Hecate’s wish, and I owed that girl a life already. Not to mention she’d staked possibly dying a slow, agonizing death in exchange for powering up Journey. Worse, I’d come to enjoy my time with her, which made it even harder to say no.
I had to set my pragmatism aside for this one.
We found a nice campground that was well obscured by trees that would serve well for what I had in mind. Which left only the third and last objective: We had to remove or hinder the drake’s mobility. Without the range, it had to get close. And tangling up its front paws would be enough to let us take some calculated stabs in the right place.
I wasn’t going to reinvent the wheel with the cave dweller tools I had to work with here. Instead, I banked on the more classic traps. Potholes.
Hecate in this situation turned out to be a natural. She knew everything I could possibly ask about setting traps up. From what we could do with the tools we had here, to the best placements for them. She was like a living book, telling me all kinds of facts and tips to help the plan out. As expected of a forest hermit like herself, she knew how to survive out here.
With swords, we could cut into the ground. And with Journey’s cape as a tarp, we could stake it into the ground with solid branches and layer the whole thing with dirt and sticks until it looked no different from the rest of the ground, especially in the low light of a campfire nearby.
At the bottom of that hole were occult-sharpened rocks that looked more like large thin triangles. Hecate confirmed the dimensions we’d need to cut in order to have the rock be sturdy enough to resist the dake’s weight, while sharp enough to puncture through the plating. We made three until we ran out of cape to work with. One less than I’d hoped for, but enough to work with.
Now, the only thing between me and the drake would be a flimsy oversized shrub where I hid in, waiting for the right moment to leap out in surprise.
Last part of all traps was the distraction and bait. For that part, I removed Journey plate by plate and put it back together, using cut branches and twigs as the skeleton. I had no helmet, so no way to hide that part, but I left the armor behind a tree. Journey had a lower skirt. It wasn’t difficult to cut off a section and build a makeshift white flag. A bit of artistic license, and now it looked like my twin was holding onto a white flag and lazing back against the tree. Almost as if I were sleeping. The rest of the armor’s features, including the missing head, wouldn’t be noticed from the only direction the drake could slink into here from.
Some might call me a war criminal for abusing the white flag, to which I’d say that’s a little harsh. I’m only dabbling in light war crimes here. Besides, the drake started it.
It certainly felt like someone was judging me. The entire time Hecate and I worked on setting up the trap, I couldn’t shake the feeling of being watched. More to the point, ever since I’d woken up, I’d had that nagging sense. I’d mostly put it to Fido being Fido, because he really was watching us. Except right now, if it was Fido watching, he’d have already tried shooting at us or we would have seen his snout somewhere. There are not a lot of places to slink inside this little nook of the forest, which is exactly why we picked this spot. So, where was this feeling coming from?
Nerves were getting in the way.
The only thing left was to wait until the guest of honor showed up and not think about my gut feelings here. That could be in the next hour or the next day, with no way to tell.
Hecate climbed up a tree and promptly went to sleep like a cat. She told me she’d be dozing off like this to conserve energy, but she’ll wake up if the drake showed up. After which, the feral witch went to sleep on pure command. She made those branches look comfortable, given how limp she’d gone.
I wasn’t exactly sure how reliable Hecate would be on waking up in time. It depends on how sardonic the drake was. If it showed up all high and mighty and started talking, that’ll probably wake her up. But the drake could also play the part of a stealthy hunter out to slit throats in the middle of the night, in which case I’ll be alone against it at least for the first few seconds of the fight until Hecate woke up. I couldn’t exactly shout to get her attention without also revealing where I was to the drake.
No matter what, there was a ticking time limit in which Hecate’s power cells would run out just from idle operation. And given my luck, the drake was probably taking its time breaking down all the ways to working power fountains before it got back to tracking us down.
I had to prepare myself for the worst-case situation, in which I’d be alone, no armor, a single occult blade to my name and a few hastily made stone age traps to annoy Fido with. And if Hecate died in the fight or her suit ran out of juice to sustain her, there’d be no healing for whatever damage I took.
No problem at all. What’s the worst that could happen?
CHAPTER 37
FOLLOW THE TRAIL
The drake slithered slowly into the clearing, head rocking back and forth, taking slow steps. Greedy, but cautious. I hardly heard him arrive, and I had been on alert the entire time.
He’d clearly taken detours before arriving here, dirt and all kinds of twigs had gotten stuck around the body’s chassis on all the nooks and crannies, evidence of it lurking around. It lumbered slowly past my position, the foliage around me having done the trick.
Fido could have showed up days later once he was absolutely sure that we were drained of energy to fight with. Then again, I’ve seen machines chase me down to the ends of the earth only because I’d had the audacity to escape them. They can be vindictive little monsters and want nothing short of instant gratification.
Hecate’s survival knowledge on constructing traps, right down to the exact measurements needed for optimal rock-impaling goodness, was a godsend. Like having access to a librarian who knew where all the good books were at. The engineer in me approved with two thumbs up.
Once it caught sight of my decoy, white flag limp in the armor’s hands, as if the owner were sleeping, the monster froze. Still a few steps away from the traps.
Its mouth slowly opened and charged the laser.
Look at him go. Didn’t bother to gloat or talk. Just wanted me dead. I could respect that sort of focused mind. Regrettable that he didn’t come closer to the traps, but I could make do.
In the past, Father had waited until the monster had fired before he took action. Hindsight made it clear why—they couldn’t rapid-fire that sort of beam. Each attack incurred a cooldown period. So, the best time to fight a drake was when it couldn’t threaten anyone with that beam. Once Fido made his move, I’d make mine. Hecate should join in right after, given the noise that his beam would make.
If I angle myself right, the drake wouldn’t have any other choice but to rush over the traps in order to get to me. Without range, Fido only had those claws to work with.
Except the machine didn’t follow the script. He had his own plan in mind. At the last moment, his head swung up, aiming straight into the canopy—right where Hecate would be sleeping.
My blood froze as the beam speared through the tree, drilling a hole right through everything—trunk, branch, and leaves. The forest exploded into noise as flocks of birds flew off in a frenzy, away from where the beam of light had come from.
A dark chuckle came from the beast. No sounds came from the singed branches above.
In a single moment, he’d taken out Hecate. And now I was deep in the shit.
The drake twisted its head to look in my direction. “Sssss…. Did you think to trick…a hunter? Did you think…this was enough?”
I could feel the panic well inside and I crushed it ruthlessly with everything I had. Hecate would be fine. She’s Deathless. She’d return to life. I needed to focus and follow the script. Out here without armor, I felt weak and slow. But that’s the life most surface scavengers. If they could do it, so could I.
Atius’s occult blade lit up, and I launched myself out of the shrub to the side. The plan was a bust, but the best I could do was follow through. Fido clawed the air, and I dodged backwards, taking careful steps to weave in between the traps, putting the danger zone between Fido and myself.
He didn’t move. No, instead he waited, grinning at me. “Sssss… Simple construction of dirt and wood, crafted in desperation. I can smell it from here, little child. It will not trick me. You have nothing. No one. No hope. Run…hide…or wait for but a moment longer. I will set you free, regardlessssss.”
