Chapter 2: Chapter 2.1

My fingers flipped through the various wires that I exposed when I removed the ‘bot’s, a Dom3 model used for reconnaissance, maintenance hatch. The various colored wires ran every which way, connecting the plethora of circuit boards and sensors that made up the inside of the ‘bot. My tech goggles outlined each wire in a luminescent blue and a data box popped up with the purpose of the wire. Information I really truly had no need for. I already knew which wire I was looking for: the d12 insulted fiberoptic with a green polymer coating. It connected the upper most troop recognition scanner to the software motherboard, which meant if it malfunctioned, the ‘bot couldn’t distinguish between Alliance and Axis troops. So, there had been a few cases of accidental friendly fire.

Finally, I separated out the four green polymer coated wires and found myself nearly blinded by my tech goggles. For whatever reason, it determined it necessary to outline each wire and display the necessary information all at once. Now, thoroughly annoyed with the goggles, I began the slow process of communicating with them in a less the gentle voice.

“One at a time, damn it,” I snapped. The communication chip in my jaw sent the improperly worded command to my wrist interface; which I had programmed to communicate with only my tech goggles at the time. An error message scrolled across my vision and I ground my teeth together.

“Goggles, display settings, information, number of data boxes, one, set,” I said through clenched teeth. The menus scrolled as quickly as I could give the directions, sometimes barely coming completely open before the next one had to open. Finally, the menu vanished, leaving only one data box and wire illuminated. I slowly filtered through the wires until I found the correct one, which happened to be the last one. I gave the wire a gentle tug to see if it had simply come loose and the wire went slack, an end arching towards me.

Instinct took over and I pushed myself back, careening out from underneath the ‘bot. A string of curses left my mouth as I hooked the toe of my boot over the edge of the open maintenance hatch. It was a harmless green wire—a data transfer fiberoptic cable. Getting touched by it was about as harmful as going for a swim.

Okay, bad example, because people drown. Like, all the time. I mean, I can’t swim exceptionally well, so with a bad under current and all of that fluid dynamics stuff, people like me get sucked under and then…not important. What was important is that a green wire was about as dangerous as, um, I dunno…something that wasn’t.

I looked back down to see the wire hanging free from one end, open lead dangling on the ground. I grit my teeth together. Nothing could ever be easy, could it? I pushed myself back under the ‘bot and began the tedious task of looking through the motherboards for the connection point. Already, I would have to thread a new wire through the body of the ‘bot. The last thing I wanted to do involved pulling the entire ‘bot apart to figure out where the cable connected.

Three motherboards later, I got lucky, sort of. The cable connected to a spot very close to the edge. That was about as far as my luck extended. A round had clearly gotten into the interior of the ‘bot—probably through one of the holes in the exterior armor—nearly severed the fiberoptic and nicked the black polymer-coated, power cables, which would also need replaced or covered. Covering the wires would only be a temporary fix, since the electric discharge would begin to wear through the thin tape and the ‘bot would end right back up here to have the cables replaced. Regardless of whether I patched or replaced, I would need a second set of hands.

I grabbed the tool off my belt and reached up carefully, making sure to keep my hands well clear of the black wires before grasping the connection point and pulling it out.  The broken connector went into the pouch on my belt and the pliers went back onto their loop. I pulled myself out carefully the time, controlling the rolling platform underneath me. Once out from underneath the ‘bot, I sat up carefully, trying not to agitate my back.

It happened anyway, that irritating tugging at my skin with my bionic spine augmentation met my lower back. A quarter inch thick bundle of synthetic nerves that connected above the highest point where a training accident had broken my spine. It ran to the base of my spine where they connected the synthetics with the real nerves once more. It had taken me a long time to learn that not everyone with bionic prosthetics had a spine augmentation, most of them didn’t. That same accident shattered my legs, resulting in a double, above the knee amputation and two more fully functional bionic prosthetics, legs.

My hand subconsciously went to my back, fingers bridging the bionic.

“Kitty, you need those kinks worked out of your back?” Allen called from his station to my left. “I could do that for you!”

His nickname for me brought a small smile to my face. He thought my name was Tabby for the longest time, so he called me Kitty. To say Allen had a small crush on me would be a massive understatement. The big man that worked in the station next to me would probably do anything I asked of him up to and including treason if I asked politely. While he looked physically intimidating, Allen was probably one of the gentlest men I knew, regardless of his blunt attempts to get in my pants.

I twisted around to look at his badly scarred face. A bionic eye piece wrapped around his head. He was currently elbow deep in the chest cavity of a set of armor. Based on the bloody rags he had piled up next to him, I doubted the previous owner of the suit had survived. Allen would have a lot of work ahead of him between cleaning the interior and replacing armor plates.

“How many times do I have to tell you, muscle-head, you aren’t my type!” I called.

“And just what is your type?” Allen asked.

“Clearly not you,” Felix shot back from the other side of me. “Girl needs a real man to take care of her.”

I swiveled around to look at him, surprised he had spoken up against Allen. Metal shavings littered his workbench and the floor around him as he shaped a piece of armor to fit on a new model.

“Says the man who failed out of basic!” Carly laughed. The pretty blonde stood bent over the hood of a hover transport. The hot pink of her thong peaked out over her pants and I had to force myself not to stare.

Felix’s cheeks flushed bright red and he looked back down to his work. Allen began to scold Carly for scaring Felix but I ignored him.

“Hey, Carly, how much more do you have to do?” I called.

Carly straightened up and turned to face me. She wiped her grease covered hands on her pants and smiled. “Just have to get the fuel core out and replaced, why?” she asked.

"I’ve got a black cable issue and I need a second pair of hands to hold the auxiliary power off while I replace them,” I said motioning to the ‘bot. “Then I might need some help running a new fiberoptic.”

“Sure, let me just get the fuel core out and I’ll be right over,” she said.

“Thanks,” I smiled. While I waited, I emptied my pockets into the waist bin in the corner and removed the fiberoptic cable before adding that to the waist bin as well. A quick trip to the stocks earned me one fiberoptic, two black cables, six connectors and a pair of glove suited to draw static discharge from a red coated wire. It wouldn’t protect me completely, but it couldn’t hurt either.

When I returned, Carly was sitting on my desk looking like an angel. An oil and grease smeared angel with a low cut shirt and breasts large enough that had cosmetic surgery not been illegal for the last fifty years, I would have sworn they were fake. “So, what do you need me to do?” she asked.

We spent the next two hours carefully removing and then replacing the power cables. It took another hour to feed the fiberoptic cable from the upper target recognition camera down through the ‘bot and into the motherboard. I reached up and flicked my thumb along the side of the plasma cutter and narrowed down the flame that burst from the end. The flame began to change color, from yellow to orange to blue to white. My tech goggles automatically adjusted to suit the amount of light in the tiny space. With the new black wires installed, I just needed Carly to hold the fiberoptic out of my way so I didn’t destroy it. I touched the wire in my other hand to the connector and applied the heat. Sparks cast off bounced off my spark mask as I soldered the connector to the motherboard.

“That’ll do, Carly!” I shouted as I flicked off the cutter. I pulled myself out and dropped my spark mask down around my neck. The goggles adjusted and I propped them up on my head. Carly jumped down from the stool I had her standing on.

“That all you need?” she asked.

“Yeah, thanks,” I said.

“No problem,” she smiled. I walked over to my workbench and double tapped the top, illuminating the holoscreen. I brought schematic of the ‘bot up and began to filter through for the armor specs. The list of requests of items to be fixed on the ‘bot was displayed in the top right corner of the screen. Fix target identification cameras, install new fuel cells, replace all armor. The list didn’t sound exceptionally long but, the first request took nearly my entire day. The fuel cell was an automatic replacement whenever anything came here to get serviced. Full armor replacement, did they think we had a full stock of new supplies every month?

I looked back to the ‘bot hanging from the ceiling. Almost every armor plate contained several bullet holes, several scorch marks and a plethora of dents and gouges. I’d be spending all of tomorrow at the forge trying to make the armor from pieces we have now. I continued to flip through the schematics, searching in vain to find the armor specs.

“Where are the armor specs for this thing?” I asked.

“Screen six-B,” Felix called. “They reordered them recently and you haven’t done any armor replacement since then.”

“Six-B?” I repeated. “Where’s six-B?”

Felix placed his tools down and walked over. He backtracked through several layers of the schematic including the wiring prints--I never looked at those before hand, the motherboard outlay--also don’t look at those--and the sensor array layout. He came to page six the armor mechanics and then tapped on the top of the page. I completely missed the new tab beside the page display that read: Six-A.

“Here you go,” he said.

“Thanks,” I smiled. It looked like I’d be doing a lot of work tomorrow at the forge. I’d be there all day, maybe even two. “So, how do you know I haven’t done any armor work since they changed the schematic format?”

A quick glance out of the corner of my eye revealed Felix’s cheeks flushed red as he looked down and away.

“I, uh, no reason,” he said scratching the back of his head. “I should uh, get back to what I was doing.”

He turned away and walked over to his station.

“Aww, Kitty, you scared the lad!” Allen called.

A loud klaxon drowned out his laugh, signaling the end of the work day. I powered down my station and began to clean up the floor, brushing all of the scrapes of wire and metal into the waste bin and lowering the ‘bot until it rested on the ground, the chains holding it up now slack.

“Hey, Tawny, Allen, Felix and I are going out for drinks, wanna come?” Carly asked. “I know this amazing club not far from here.”

I offered her a smile and shook my head. “Sorry, I can’t afford it,” I said.

“Aw, come on, Kitty. You won’t have to buy anything,” Allen offered.

Now I definitely wasn’t going. “No, sorry, I have to get home. I’ll go next time.”

Carly pouted and her shoulders slumped. It made her look cute despite the grease all over her face. “You said that last time!” she whined.

Shit.

“I know. I’m sorry, but I mean it this time, I will save up my meager amount of money and go clubbing next time.”

Carly smiled brightly and straightened up. “Yes, you will because next time I am dragging you along whether you want to go or not. I’ve got a cute little dress you can wear and everything.”

I smiled and waved to them. “You guys have fun.”

“You, be safe,” Allen said. “I don’t want to wake up tomorrow and hear that you were found dead in some alleyway.”

“I am always careful, muscle head,” I said. “Don’t worry about me, please, you three have fun. Allen, don’t drink too much, again. Felix, loosen up and have a few. Carly, you keep control of those two.”

“Will do,” Carly said. She wrapped her arms through Felix and Allen’s elbows and pulled them away. I walked the other direction and exchanged pleasantries with the other people who worked in the hanger bay with me before I went my separate way. The safest way home wouldn’t be the fastest but usually I walked home with Allen, Carly and Felix until we had to split our separate ways. Alone, I would take a longer way home, up through the upper plate. I worked my way through the lower hallways. Harsh lights overhead illuminated the stark grey halls. A sweaty workers, like myself, jostled around for a quick trip lower in the city, most taking the high speed lifts. Once I broke free of the crowds around the lifts, I wandered for a little while and found a stairway up to street level.

Here in Tefen, it was hard to imagine a war waged just a thousand miles away and closing in around us. Well, at least here on the upper levels of the city. The streets were unused by groundcars. The elite of the military and the wealthy men and women were chauffeured around in their private hovercars two stories above my head. A few people walked around on the street. They dressed elegantly and turned their noses up at me.

War propaganda bombarded me from every side as I walked home. Images of digital posters flashed across billboards, news broadcasts showed images of troops on the front lines, ‘victories over the enemy’ the reports were called. Just last night there had been a raid on a suspected Tzi settlement resulting in the arrest of eight and the removal of another twelve. I just blocked the reports out and shoved my hands into my pockets.

“Hey!” a voice shouted.

I continued walking, picking up my speed a little. A thousand thoughts flying around my head. Did someone give me up? Did they know? Who told them?

“You, with the goggles and mask!” the voice shouted again.

I turned around slowly and saw a man clad in police gear walking towards me. His rifle hung from his shoulder and he slid his visor back.