Return to rebellion
3
Aurora woke to Kars groaning nearby. Lena stood over them, looking relieved to see her companions recover. Lena had propped their flashlights to provide them with a small pool of light, angled to ward off the shadows. Kars shook as he tried to stand. Aurora was relieved to see he was conscious. Her arm throbbed, but the pain in her head was gone. A fan of burns spread out from three bruised indentations on her arm. She probed the mark. Mottle clouds of purple and blue gathered just beneath the surface.
“You’re awake!” Lena said. “I didn’t know whether I should go back to town for help or stay here with you.”
Aurora rubbed her head, regaining her bearings in the warehouse.
“What happened?” Aurora groaned.
“I was fighting it when it stopped and attacked you. The robot hit you both with some kind of stunner. I tried to stop it after it got you, but it fled,” Lena explained.
Chunks of memories returned. Aurora remembered the glyphs orbiting the machine and how they had responded when she reached for them. Inexplicable concern rose to silence her from sharing.
Kars muttered and swore, winced and sucked air through his teeth as he probed the burn on his arm. “Think it’ll scar?”
“Should’ve been enough warning that there was a war to chase these things out. I should’ve known at least which types are dangerous,” Aurora said.
She had never seen any more than a few backyard machines in action—just a few toys compared to these behemoths. These were capable of such aggressive and destructive force and seemed to act of their own volition. The drone’s act of violence sent a shiver through her.
“Did you see where it went?” Kars asked.
Lena shook her head. “After it stung Aurora, it flew into the darkness. I didn’t see where.”
“Home!” Aurora exclaimed. “I bet it thinks that it’s still at war! We need to let someone know what we found here. I’m afraid we might’ve awakened the last soldier in the Rebellion.”
Kars’s hair was ruffled from the ordeal with the robot, and he held his burn with his good arm. Aurora could tell that he was wrestling with swallowing his pride and returning to the valley.
“You’re right.” He took one last look at the hole in the side of the rock wall, the sound of water still drifting through the quiet air.
“What is it Kars?” Aurora asked. The urgent look on his face was poorly disguised.
“You know,” Kars said.
“He isn’t here,” Aurora said. She softened seeing his face.
His shoulders slumped as though the weight of his optimism had suddenly dropped onto his back.
“Aren’t you curious?” Kars asked. “There must be something somewhere that could at least start answering the question. I want to know for Mom.”
“I want to find your dad too. Not now though,” Aurora said. “Right now, we need to get back to the town and warn them before that machine hurts anyone else.”
As she spoke, she became more convinced that their town was at grave risk and it was their fault. Kars's silence was enough of a response. He cradled his burned arm, knowing that his sister was right.
“We’ll come back and help you look,” Lena said. She touched Kars on the shoulder.
He nodded and adjusted his pack on his shoulders, swatting the dust from his pants.
“I think we better hurry,” Aurora said.
The three of them set off back toward the village.
* * * * *
They rounded the bend on the mountain road and saw black smoke billowing between the thin plumes of chimney smoke. The fire bell echoed through the valley. The sleepy town of Prospector was under attack.
“We’re too late!” Kars exclaimed, and the three friends started sprinting down the road.
Their legs burned from the run, and sweat soaked through the layers of their clothes. They didn't pause as they reached the outskirts of town. Even at the edge, people rushed to action and could be heard crying. Townsfolk scampered through the fire line, sloshing buckets from the creek. The town's pump house must have been one of the fires.
“We’ve got to find mom,” Kars said. Terror filled them as though it might have been in the harsh smoke.
Aurora, Kars, and Lena sprinted through the chaos on the streets. Their eyes and nostrils burned along with the town. They heard shouting as they moved.
“Em’s got it!” a townsperson yelled from the storehouses near the waste digester. More shouts followed.
They turned their path toward the digester building. A crowd had gathered on the road, shouting and cheering. Aurora, Kars, and Lena pushed through the mob to see the drone in a corner in the building’s concrete wall.
Em Koren stood with her knees slightly bent, her shoulders square. She held a large maul in front of her. Her gray-flecked hair was pulled back in a loose bun that fell on the stiff collar of her canvas duster. Tracks of soot streaked her face. Rage glazed her eyes.
“Come on! Not so tough when you’re out in the open are ya?” Em bellowed at the machine.
The drone’s stinging arms bristled, and its remaining eye followed their mother in the makeshift arena. There was a hook lodged in the side of the robot, linking it to a loop of cable and an iron weight.
The townsfolk let out a cheer behind her. The drone darted left, then back into the corner. The mob instinctively shifted with the threat.
“I’m right here,” Em growled, “and the only way out of this is through me.”
The orb drone menaced its arms in the air, floating upward until it met the end of the wire. Despite the pain radiating from her burn, Aurora was conflicted—pride for her mother’s courage but a pang of compassion for the trapped machine as the townsfolk cheered against it.
“Not getting out that way.” Em shook her head. She bounced on her feet, shifting the splitting axe from hand to hand.
As if it realized it was out of options, the machine backed into the corner. It flexed its arms a final time, then lunged at Em.
Em let out another howl and the crowd followed. She swatted one of the machine’s stinging arms with the wooden handle of the axe, breaking the arm off with the blow. The drone spun in the air before regaining its balance.
Em raised her arms in the air, and the crowd cheered for their champion.
The drone flexed its remaining arm and launched its final attack. Em swung the maul, striking the chassis of the drone with the mallet of the axe. The frame exploded in sparks, hurtling back into the concrete wall of the building.
Em roared. It was a sound of frustration and loneliness. Aurora had seen moments when their mother let her wall down to that grief, but seeing this savage ruthlessness made her think how much sorrow was pent up behind her motherly care.
The crowd had started chanting Em’s name. Their mother shook the maul in the air.
“Find the others! Remind them why they left in the first place!” Em shouted. Her face was flushed and furious. The crowd cheered, but their excitement wavered. Their fury quickly dissipated into babbling concern.
Their mother silenced them as she continued her fierce rant.
“We will send them back to their cities once more,” Em said. She had settled into leaning on her maul as she addressed the crowd.
“Should we try to reach Lannius?” The question rang out above the rest of the rabble like a chime in Aurora’s mind.
“Lannius is gone,” Em said, suddenly solemn and stern.
The name struck the chime again and blossomed into a memory in Aurora’s mind. The disoriented chaos of déjà vu conjured in her and she felt the world spin.
Lannius. Memories swam out from between the memories of her childhood. It was unlike anything Aurora had experienced—a gathering wave beyond the reverie of a daydream. It was as though the memory rose up and swallowed her. The scene of her mother standing in front of the townsfolk dissolved. Kars and Lena standing behind her faded away. Images drifted up from the depths—a separate world that gathered from beyond her memory inundated her mind.
A magnificent patio overlooked an emerald lake. Wisteria decked the supports of the latticed roof work. The terra cotta tiles were warm beneath her feet. She was sitting at a simple table staring down at a chessboard. The pieces were white and black marble.
A gilded robot glided across the patio on sweeping, velvet-padded insect legs. It was all smooth lines and perfectly joined limbs. Its head was an expressionless carving of intricate platinum and gold. It offered her water with cucumber and mint before delicately relocating a black marble knight.
“Jinx, why do I even bother? It’s hardly fair,” she chided, taking the water and moving her own piece. The accent was not her own.
“Hardly fair is knowing what your opponent is going to do at every turn,” the robot responded. “Someday, you will not even bother. You will already know what I can do.”
“What’s to say I don’t already?” she asked.
“Now, now, Mirien. Jinx doesn’t deserve your attitude.” The voice was deep and patient. Lannius.
The old man came forth from the villa, dressed in comfortable, billowing linen robes. His tightly kept gray beard lent him a patrician air. Aurora and Jinx turned to watch his approach. With a wave of his hand he dismissed Jinx, and the pieces soundlessly returned to their starting positions.
He stared thoughtfully at the board. Aurora knew he could see every permutation. Seemingly infinite, yet hopelessly limited, combinations leading to only three stable outcomes. She could see it unfold for a moment too if she focused, but she lacked his patience.
She broke the silence with her old friend. “Any progress?”
He frowned at the board. “No.”
Her heart dropped. The lake breeze kissed her face, her sun-kissed bronze strands of hair gently wafting backward.
“Directive always emerges,” Lannius said, “leading to a short path to destruction.”
He moved a pawn. “I must go deeper.”
“There’s no way?” she asked the question for its own sake.
Aurora snapped back to awareness, ejected from the memory. Her head swam and she felt sick. The daydream had been overpowering. But she still stood between the buildings in her hometown. Kars and Lena stood beside her, discussing.
Groups split from the larger crowd, heading off to various tasks. Em was at the heart of the process, barking orders and pointing to various sections of the town. Prospector sprang to action and woke to its old wartime rituals.
Finally, the last of the groups peeled off, and Em turned her attention to her children loitering on the side street. She had a tired, yet stern look on her face.
“How long have you been watching?” Em asked.
“Long enough,” Aurora said.
Em shrugged. She seemed thoughtful, satisfied, perhaps even embarrassed, that her children may have seen her destroy the machine. Then her eyes narrowed, focusing on them.
“This wasn’t the first time you’ve seen this machine,” Em said, nodding at Kars's arm.
Kars tried to cover the burn. Em already knew what she saw.
“It’s just—I think this may have been our fault,” Aurora said.
“It’s not about fault anymore,” Em said. She pulled up her sleeve to reveal the pale stain of a three-prong scar stretched across the sinew of her forearm. “It’s time we talked.”