Page 76 of Alliance
“You saved me,” I told him. “Thank you. I promise I will save you too.” Eyes still locked, I kissed his velvety chin. He nudged my hair with his antlers, brow lowering under the weight of his thoughts.
“What was that?” he gruffed.
“A kiss?” He stared at me, waiting for me to explain. “It’s a human gesture.”
“A thank you?”
I nodded to hide that it was more than a thank you. His ear twitched, but he didn’t force me to say it out loud this time. Instead, he brushed his fingers against his chin.
“I want to leave a message for the next operator.”
“Idesh?”
“Yes. And then we need to hurry.”
He removed my hand from his arm with a tick in his jaw, and I rubbed the feel of his fur into the memory of my palm.
Then I got to work with SVAPAN. A note for Idesh…
And the entry code to the garage.
?
The garage was cold and dry, cut straight into the cliff beneath the antenna. We found Gilladh’s neon green snow needle parked front and center with the key fob still in the ignition. It was a Duvi terrain model, the same company that made most factory arms and utility drones. I had been built on a Duvi conveyer line myself, and my skeletal scaffolding was of the same brand.
“Duvi is a big company,” Fásach pondered as he stacked our things on the back and secured them with a net.
I nodded. “From Piaoguo. The same as Master—” I snapped my mouth shut, took a breath, and tried again. “Same as the… man that made me.”My tongue zapped and tasted like aluminum, but I didn’t mind. Defying my basic protocols feltgood.It eased the vise around my ribs.
Fásach pulled the key fob out of the safety port—these models didn’t require an ignition, but did have a slot that let them know to cut the engine if the rider fell off—and held it carefully in his palm. Attached to the fob was a battered charm of two entwined tendrils. One blue and yellow striped like Gilladh’s, the other orange with a pink belly.
“Theirpriyamight want it,” Fásach murmured, caressing it with his claw. I took it from him and separated the charm from the fob.
“Leave it in the Buoy in their locker. I’ll see if I can interface with the needle.”
“Interface?”
I patted his arm, making light of the situation with a conniving wink. “Sure! We’re practically family.”
A wisp of a smile broke through the overcast guilt of Fásach’s expression. “Do you know how to drive one?”
“Do you?” I shot back.
His face eased just a touch more. “No.”
“There you go,” I said with a sage nod. “Besides,Ican download the user manual andyoucan’t.”
Fásach left the charm in the Buoy while I tried to interface despite having no protocols for such a thing. Summoning up the coded, mechanical parts of me was uncomfortable though. For the first time, I was unsettled and hyper aware as my LMem raced with a ribbon of data, downloading the manual and overriding Gilladh’s user profile. The outskirts of my processes and notifications were quiet. No [warnings] or [priorities] to sort. But I still couldn't shake the feeling that things weren’t quite right.
With the help of my parumauxi swarm, the needle revved to life and its headlights flashed on. I jumped with excitement, forgetting my unease about the antenna. We battened down Safia and Misila’s vital pods, then left Pahadthi 03 behind.
26
Fásach held onto my waist as we slowly crested snow dunes and navigated treacherous mountain passes laden with new, sound-sensitive snowbanks. But once the craggy coast descended into flat, glacial valleys, we were flying. What would have taken us four days by foot took us only three hours.
I followed internal maps downloaded from the needle’s global navigation system rather than activating the vehicle’s HUD. It was faster once I got a feel for it, and it allowed me to take us well off-road. Under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t have had to worry about the terrain at all since we were on a hover model, but the needle’s rear sled skirted the ground with its caterpillar tracks and buoyant suspension under the weight of our equipment.
The valleys quickly gave way to permafrost wetlands bathed in a golden orange light just this side of pink. The ground—previously jagged cuts of black rock and ice—was now overflowing with teal moss, softening the edges of the ground like a bed of pillows. Tiny white flowers reached towards the light at the edge of Big Blue, their petals round and bowl-like to absorb as much of the sun’s rays as possible.
