9.8 – Brothers and Sisters

Three mechs filled the tunnel almost completely. Relics from 2026, carrying something one tenth of their own bodyweight between them, a bomb roughly the size of one of them, while a smaller robot with an angular red head walked ahead, tablet in hand, guiding them toward a newly cut tunnel extension. The three of them moved with visible care, shoulders angled to avoid the rock pressing in from both sides.

Each one stood close to four meters tall and two meters across. Their shoulders had already found the tunnel walls more than once, leaving long pale scrapes in the blue stone, until, apparently, they'd decided that was enough contact for one trip.

One of the mechs produced a sound that landed somewhere between a car horn at high pitch and a deep alarm tone underneath it. No combination of human letters would reproduce it, but the others understood without effort.

The red-head robot replied without looking up from his tablet, in the tone of someone repeating themselves. "I know you could carry it alone, G12-04. The Queen's instructions were specific, no dents, no impact damage, nothing touches the casing."

A second mech complained, higher pitched, carrying something that read as irritation even without translation.

"For the last time, G12-09, I don't know what's inside it, and not knowing doesn't change how careful we need to be." He shook his head. "If it were up to me, I'd have you run the whole route and we'd be there in hours instead of days. But I'm not the one giving orders here. Take it up with E.V.E."

The third mech set the bomb down, slow, deliberate, and folded both arms. The sound he produced was lower and heavier, and carried something close to judgment. His orange visor stayed fixed on the red-head robot. The rest of his green frame didn't move at all.

The other two took a step back.

"Whoa—okay, calm down." The red-head robot rubbed the back of his head. "I get that you're upset, G12-02, but that's a lot of insult for a brother who's just trying to look out for everyone. Fine. Here's what I actually know, and here's why the Queen wanted you three specifically for something this size, in tunnels this size."

He closed the tablet.

"It's not explosive. You won't die if you drop it, and yes, I know that's not even possible for you, but I also know that's not your point." He held up a hand before any of them could respond. "What it actually is, it's built to look identical to the energy regulators in the city's power station. But this one's been converted. Run it through the grid and it puts out a frequency that scrambles androids and small-frame robots. That's the actual reason it has to be the three of you carrying it instead of standard units."

The first mech spoke again, gentler this time, almost a hum.

The red-head robot looked back down at the tablet. "I couldn't say any of that before now. It was classified. And to be clear, this doesn't just take down the E-UNIT. It hits every robot on that frequency across the city. Some of us have brothers out there who'd refuse this outright if they knew." He gestured at all three of them. "All of you would."

The second mech made a sound with nothing in it, shoulders dropping.

"Could you stop with the insults, please?" The red-head robot put his hands on his hips. "I don't have anyone close to me out there. I don't have a stake in this city either way."

The third mech said something low—barely audible, and the other two laughed, the sound carrying even through whatever language it was.

The red-head robot hit the floor with his palm. "What do you mean that tells you everything about me? I'm fine the way I am."

"Sure."

He raised the tablet again. "Keep laughing. We need to get this through the—"

He stopped. Looked around.

"Who said that?"

The mechs turned their heavy heads in sequence, hydraulics groaning through the confined space.

"I did." Frost waved from the far end of the tunnel behind them. "You really don't have friends? He's right, by the way, that's worth thinking about." She reached into her pack and drew both energy knives, the blades catching the faint light. "Want to talk about it?"

The red-head robot turned sharply. "Stay alert, they never travel—"

He looked behind him.

A Bulwark frame filled the tunnel floor to ceiling, one hand already raised.

"Oh no."

Bellatrix closed her hand around his head and lifted him clear of the floor. His frame convulsed, producing a sharp metallic shriek loud enough that all three mechs covered their sensors.

"Sophos, given what it is and its volume, probable weight on the bomb?"

Sophos moved up beside Frost and ran his sensors across the deep blue casing. "Approximately a hundred and twenty-six kilograms." A brief pause. "I see the plan, Frost clears the tunnel and detonates it in the open. I'll bring Azure in for that part."

"I need distance for that!" Frost was already sheathing the knives.

Bellatrix's grip tightened. One last burst of protesting metal—

Crack.

The head gave way. The body went still in her hand all at once. She opened her palm. The head dropped in pieces to the wet floor, and the rest of him followed with a flat, final clank.

The three mechs turned toward her. Frost, for the moment, had stopped existing as far as they were concerned.

"You three should be thinking about yourselves right now." Bellatrix reached behind her back. "From what I heard, he can be revived." The shield came free and she set it down hard enough to send a tremor through the floor. "You can't."

She swung it in a wide arc and threw it. The mechs cleared it without much effort, the disc passing between them, and then none of them moved, because her arm was still extended.

They looked back. The shield was already returning.

Clang.

All three left the ground at once, dragged off their footing and pulled toward her, landing face-first and sliding the last meter across the wet stone. She caught the shield on its return arc and set it down.

"Frost, now."

Frost crossed to the blue cube, lifted it onto her back as if it weighed considerably less than its number suggested, and launched toward the exit at a careful quarter of her top speed, the cargo clearly the priority over getting there fast. Sophos watched Bellatrix give the order and watched Frost simply comply, no argument, no clarifying question.

"Pi doesn't miss," he said, the warmth in his voice unchanged, falling into step behind Frost to guide her out. "Azure, sending coordinates now. Meet us at…" His voice faded as he moved out of range.

The three mechs pushed themselves upright. One had lost part of a shoulder plate. Another's head had taken damage along one side. They stood anyway, they'd been built to survive considerably worse than this. They'd been built for human wars.

Bellatrix threw the shield again. This time they read it and split, a clean lateral dodge on a burst of compressed air, two of them clearing the path while the third dropped back into position behind where the shield would return. The other two closed on her.

"That's the military for you." Bellatrix moved and reached the first one before he'd finished resetting his stance. He threw a fist. She met it with hers.

Clang.

The shockwave pushed the standing water out in a ring, clearing the floor down to bare stone for several meters. Her arm shattered from the wrist to the shoulder on impact, and his arm failed to respond at all, the servos locking mid-extension.

The second mech used the opening and launched himself at her, full weight, aiming to land directly on top of her.

Bellatrix raised one of her three free shields. A red hexagonal field unfolded above her, small cells of light filling in one by one, and the mech landed on it instead of her. She drove her good arm up. The shield rose with it.

He was caught between the shield and the ceiling now. As she pushed, the gap closed, the rock above complaining, his frame complaining louder, metal deforming under pressure from both directions at once. The first mech recovered and threw a punch aimed at freeing his partner.

She caught the fist with her shattered arm, the impact ringing through what was left of the joint, while her other arm kept the shield climbing. He leaned into it, using his full weight to drive her down.

Bellatrix dropped to one knee. The water surged back into the cleared space and splashed up around her. The first mech kept pressing, and she felt the shield arm losing ground as the second mech sensed the shift and pushed back against it from above.

Two opponents, both bigger than her, both at full output. Sustainable for a moment. Not longer.

She started compressing, folding inward, gathering mass toward her center, holding both contact points as the right side of her vision filled with red.

[Frame integrity below 70%. Drop excess load immediately.]

"Not—" She drove upward. "—now." Her thrusters fired, the small burst that gave Bulwark units a short hop, and she went vertical fast enough that the first mech, suddenly with nothing to push against, pitched forward and hit the floor face-first under his own momentum.

She came back down already forming the other two shields beneath the first. Her arms moved faster than the shields could render, the hex-fields still assembling as all three rose together.

Crash.

The second mech, pinned against the ceiling, came apart all at once, internals bursting outward and raining down across Bellatrix and the first mech below. The combined force of three shields had left nothing recognizable. Just pieces, falling.

The first mech was still trying to get up when his partner's orange visor landed near his face, intact, dark, rolling to a stop. He stood without finishing the thought and charged at Bellatrix with no visible plan. Fast, and silent in a way that was somehow worse than noise would have been.

She drew the energy pistol and locked onto him. He didn't slow.

Bang.

The shot connected. He flinched but kept his pace.

Bang.

A second hit slowed him, fractionally, before he corrected and kept coming.

Bang.

The third shot staggered him half a step back. He kept walking, slower now, each step deliberate against whatever his systems were telling him.

Bellatrix hesitated, watching him keep coming anyway. Then she fired again, this time directly into the orange visor.

He stopped. Both hands went to his face, stumbling back. Blue arcs of electricity ran across his frame in branching lines, and still he tried to keep moving forward, half a step, then a smaller half-step, one hand reaching toward her, and then he went down.

She aimed at his head. He couldn't see her behind the mask. She fired.

Clang.

The head hit the tunnel floor and the impact carried both directions down the passage in a low tremor. The body went still, the great green frame finally giving up on the idea of moving. The visor held its orange glow for one more second, then dimmed permanently, cracks spreading from the impact point at the edges.

Bellatrix looked at the unmoving frame for a moment. He'd been alive, moving, fighting, complaining in his own language, seconds ago.

Then she turned to the third mech.

He was still where he'd positioned himself, waiting for a shield that had never come back his way. He'd stopped hearing fight noises from the others, no more impacts, no more of his brothers' voices, just one set of footsteps, lighter than theirs, moving steadily closer. His head dropped slightly, swiveling between the direction the shield had gone and the direction the fighting had been.

She arrived.

Bellatrix walked toward him in slow, heavy, deliberate steps, one hand extended ahead of her. "Look away from me for more than a second and one of us hits you. Me, or the shield. Your choice which."

He stood between two threats, one hand toward where the shield had vanished, the other toward her, his head snapping between the two ends of the tunnel in increasingly short cycles.

She didn't slow down. By the time he turned fully toward her, it was already too late.

Clang.

The shield arrived on schedule and caught him between itself and her outstretched hand, her arm driving forward into the impact point and sinking into the frame to the shoulder. He convulsed once. The visor went dark orange. The green frame settled into stillness, another statue added to the tunnel's collection.

She pulled her arm free with a wet metallic sound and swung it sideways, sending the body into the wall. With the same hand, she tapped the side of her head.

"Bellatrix here. Status on the bomb?"

"Done, but we're stuck." Frost's voice came through with a layer of static riding underneath it. "Azure took it out with a sniper round from distance. The detonation left an EMP field that's locked me in place. Azure's holding position with me."

Sophos cut in. "It won't last forever. An hour is the longest EMP field of this type ever recorded, across—"

"An hour?!" Frost's voice climbed. "And why aren't you affected?"

"I knew the field's range in advance and adjusted my position before detonation."

"Why didn't you tell me that part?!"

"Everyone within range should already know, Frost." Sophos kept the same even tone he always did. "I'll make sure Dave is aware of how this is affecting your situational processing. It's a bigger factor in combat performance than I'd anticipated."

"You anticipated it?!"

Azure spoke for the first time on the channel. One word.

"Burned."

Bellatrix smiled under the mask, small and brief, then looked back at the three frames scattered across the tunnel floor. Pieces of one. The flattened shell of another. The third, slumped against the wall where she'd thrown it.

'Did they have a bond like ours? The way we talk to each other—was any of that real, for them too? Was this the only way it could go?'

"Don't." Azure's voice came through again, flat and even. "They wouldn't have hesitated if the positions were reversed."

Bellatrix tilted her head slightly.

'How did she know what I was thinking?'

- BELLATRIX -