Chapter One

A Chapter by Robert Brooks

From this distance across the hot expanse, the tall machines moved with seeming grace belying their outsized functional architecture and haggard state. Through binoculars and no closer than anyone would want to get anyways, she saw the lowered, almost drooping weapons, open cockpits, and sunburned, un-helmeted heads of the crews swaying languidly in counter-balance to each giant step of their mounts. In a procession they moved, the shimmers from the near impossible heat occluding dirty, mechanical legs below while the silver and dark gray canopies reflected deep blue cerulean skies above.

As if headed nowhere, they looked a derelict group of soldiers of unknown capacity seemed to be trudging home from a deployment of unknown mission and scope. Their walking weapons �" equal parts home, destroyer, and battlement �" would strike an accidental observer as intriguing anomalies in such a starkly beautiful setting They were the only things mechanical, or fabricated, amid unending expanses of sand and mountains from which they escaped or the serene oasis hopefully not in their way.

But they weren’t headed nowhere. They were in fact headed somewhere, and the somewhere of the trudging soldiers and their machines unfortunately coincided with one Laconda Delahoussaye’s home, and the homes of her entire village. At least, that’s as best she could tell through her binoculars.

“Put those binoculars down!” Mel hissed from her floor above. “If they catch your reflection, they will come this way, and God save us then!” Mel looked down and appeared genuinely worried. Older by far than Laconda, Mel retained the actual possibility of first-hand experience with the incoming garrison. She had dispensed with her usually playfully combative repartee and seemed terrified.

Laconda exhaled, still staring through her binoculars. This was more than an alignment of some planetary whatever which her village mostly chose as a reason to imbibe and explore pleasure, which yes of course she understood the importance of. This thing was well ahead of anything local and newsworthy �" such as when Henna Duran decided she’d cut off water and electricity to the Field’s farms right in the middle of their daughter’s coming of ceremony - that she’d have a chance to espy through these very same binoculars. She knew this was historical. Granted, it could very well mean her death, or untold misery to for Laconda and her friends and relatives. It could even the cessation of the carved-out lifestyle they enjoyed, but she reasoned that, if the end were coming for them, she wanted to be in the front row.

Laconda, Conda, to her village, had only read of the Aveqs in off-writings from her mother’s diaries, and uposits she tapped into at the sole library, which were heavily edited, redacted, actually �" reflecting the only available knowledge from The Repository. Conda knew from her research that the Aveqs were tall, elegant, dark, rigorous, sometimes brutal and perhaps most interestingly unisexually male.

Conda confirmed one last time with a brief glance that there were indeed only men in those cockpits. They seemed dark, but it really could have been just the darkness of the distance. She also confirmed that they were headed straight toward her and Mel, and the nearly 900 other inhabitants of the lush, warm little village of Tasca. Mel wheeled down to ground level and rolled up beside Conda. She exhaled forcefully with controlled fear as she locked her chair with handbrakes. Her hands were now clasped together over the top of her head, and her face was a mixture of exasperation and concern, yet stoically handsome sitting in her wheelchair beside Conda.

“S**t, s**t, s**t, s**t, and crap, Condi, baby.” Conda, young and maybe too open-hearted, felt oddly enough when a smile crossed her young face as she slightly turned her head to her irascible great aunt who was also her best friend in the world. Mel was often a brutal mixture of pith and eloquence mixed with great measures of comical sarcasm. She was always combative and never at a loss for words. Conda’s eyes narrowed mirthfully at her wheelchair bound companion’s sudden efficiency with language. “I don’t… really see…a lot of good coming from this,” Mel murmured through a pursed, contemplative expression. Moments later they could feel the first low-level thumpings of the mighty walking machines, Conda through her feet and Mel though her wheels. Conda knew she should be horrified and probably was, but she couldn’t stop just a hint of elation welling up from within. Perhaps she didn’t know enough of death to yet fear it. She had been to exactly one funeral in her life. While she appreciated all that her village and friends had meant to her and had done for her, some of her yearned for change of any kind. She absentmindedly took one step toward the incoming garrison.

“I will defy you my youngish virginal friend to hammer a straight pin through my clenched arse!” Mel spoke from behind her older binoculars, with their military appearance. Following Conda’s stifled guffaw, they could now hear the groaning metal as the machines lifted and moved their legs. They could also see in greater detail with no magnification necessary, and the reason for Mel’s colorful outburst became apparent with alarm to Conda �" the heads of the soldiers were no longer visible. Their cockpits were now closed and their weapons no longer drooped in the slightest and instead were upward and tracking with an almost beautiful synchronization in their direction. The walking machines, green and silver, resplendent in their military markup, pivoted as if on command, with the middle units slowing and marching forward and the outer units spacing outward from the center. They were indeed fanning out.

Mel expelled a resigned laugh. “Get me my pistol, Condi, babe. Hell, fetch me my brown pants!” That last was punctuated with a gleeful cackle. Conda nonetheless joined in laughter at the punch line to a joke she had never heard. As their laughter subsided they exchanged profound looks that neither could describe. Three generations apart and neither a soldier, at least no more in the case of Mel, they were two unlikely emissaries representing a hapless, potentially damned village to a planetary race made memorable to her own species by their feats of destructive capability �" Conda and Mel turned to face whatever awaited with the rapt fascination of children watching an incoming electrical storm.

All the machines now all faced the women. There were sixteen and they were spread out in a virtual wall of interlocked weapons. The eight machines on their right had slewed their weapons �" cannons and lasers, by the look of them �" and those to their left, toward the village. The remaining eight aimed forward at the two women.

“Now that is what’s known as a phalanx, Conda.” Mel, no longer showing any fear, spoke in a casually informed voice, turning her face to meet her companion even as her eyes stayed locked on what was perhaps 1600 tons of alloy and fiber, all surreal and beautiful against the pastel backdrop of the setting sun. “Perhaps if you had actual weapons, or even a shield or two, we could effect a testudo, thereby defending ourselves from the incoming onslaught.” Conda noted her friend’s sudden change of tone from resigned victim to appreciative commentator. She had the feeling that the woman, whom she mostly knew through a years-long, loving, and marterteral presence as well as some pithy gallows humor, had seen this before.

All movement in front of them stopped. Between the alloy giants and the women and further back from them their village, a gentle and lush breeze became the only thing audible, a stark contrast to the cacophony before. Only moments earlier, Conda, felt engaged and alive, yet now she was briefly flushed with terror, sensing the immediacy of the moment. She and Mel were small and so powerless before the walking mechanicals. Her curiosity, which had been buoyed by an indescribable wanderlust, now battled her suddenly most pressing need to run - run toward that which she knew so well and which provided the sameness and security of life she had never outwardly appreciated before now. She longed to run to her father, who was always there for her and always so loving with his wisecracks and his sometimes ham-fisted life lessons. Too, she wanted her mother, who ruled the family with intelligence, persistence, and more than a little shouting. This feeling of flash nostalgia and fear of the unknown crushed down upon her such that she found it hard to think clearly, much less with the bravado she displayed only seconds before. Conda could think of nothing more to do than to back step to her wheeled companion. She and Mel exchanged a brief look and faced forward.

“Advise at once. Who speaks for you?” Came a sonorous, resounding call, echoing across the distance separating them. The two women were rigid and silent. On a planet whose inhabitants uniformly celebrate spiritualism and religiosity and in an area of the planet which by its remoteness only amplified religious fervor, Conda had her own ideas of what God must sound like. Her first ever register of a voice from a legendary race of beings likely here to destroy of them all matched her every expectation.

Conda and Mel blinked. That they heard a voice was reassuring in a sense. It was reassuring that the first thing that they had heard from this advanced, dangerous race of men was a voice and not a weapon. That alone charged Conda with renewed confidence. She innately understood that as long as she could remember hers was the realm of discussion, of give and take, even if she wasn’t old enough to perceive it yet so readily yet. If she was talking, she was alive. As long as she was talking she could try to at least scratch out some terms and conditions, or maybe even win some points. From the stout little girl whose parents could never get her to shut up to the strongish teenager whose male classmates were dissuaded by her reasoning not to finish pulling her clothes off, Conda lived and advanced by words. Weapons had talking points of their own which someday she may have to decipher but for now Conda was oddly reassured and grateful that her adversary’s opening salvo played to her strengths.

Conda didn’t faze, considered almost nothing, and didn’t really even think as she acknowledged, “I do!”

Turning to Conda, Mel’s slack-jawed, cocked-brow the same she’d had when others had actually shot at her, belied her known wryness. The most unflappable of Tasca’s inhabitants could only muster a choking sound in response to what had just occurred. “Laconda I beg your pardon?”

“Baby, now listen to me,” Mel resumed, back in control. Most anyone in Tasca, along with many widows and families of warring factions of other villages, would confirm that Mel never stayed out of control for any length of time. “Let me apprise you �" you do know what apprise means, don’t you? �" of your situation. And by ‘your’ situation I mean my situation, the McCoy Counsel’s situation, the mayor’s situation, and the entire present and historical existence of your f*****g 900 strong village’s situation!” Mel had wheeled around to face Conda and briefly ignored the shining doom to her flank.

“You will suffice,” echoed God’s voice again, startling the two and disrupting Mel’s rant before it could advance to round two. “Remain where you are and receive our emissary.” Then in a much more quietly genteel voice emanating from seemingly nowhere came “Laconda Delahoussaye.” Conda mutely gasped and turned wide-eyed to Mel, who had gone back to regarding what fanned out in front of them. Mel showed no sign that she had heard that last voice for she certainly would have registered something from the import of thoughts that were not only beamed into her mind but were as well extracted from it by the God. For her part, Conda recognized immediately the import of what had just happened �" at least she hoped she did. This time, Conda thought but she did not speak:

“I will receive you.”

The thought had no sooner formulated in her mind than one of the near units �" probably the lead unit because of the various banners and markings on it which stood out once she focused on it �" closed the distance between the pack and them with feline grace. Conda was shocked at how quiet the actual mechanical parts of the metal beast were for there was no humming or whirring of parts and no electrical drone. Rather, the most audible noise was the hurried flapping of the banners and the wind whipping around the giant’s metal legs. With a near sub-aural thump the machine dropped one foot perhaps 30 feet from the ladies, who both suppressed the urge to scurry. It was kneeling. Mel and

Conda stared wide-eyed as the cockpit rushed down at them and froze approximately 10 feet off of the ground. They continued to stare as the great beak of the walker opened like the jaws of a massive dog. The entire process was mechanical but so fluid as to be almost organic, or even magic. In place of the teeth of the dog were instruments and screens, which Conda noticed were pulling back around the periphery of the jaws to reveal the occupant within.

Who smiled at them as he alit and approached.

The tall man’s movements were not unlike the metal animal from which he disgorged. He moved with a practiced grace that was to the women almost lovely to watch. “I am Morseth,” he spoke in a metered baritone to Conda and Mel, and then, tacitly to Conda and without looking her way, he telepathed and to you I am Seth.

The Motisan evening had not reached the point where darkness occults vision and fuels imagination, but the glittering lights both from above and from the village to their side added a jeweled beauty to the increasingly dusky hues gathering around the three. For the time being, Conda’s curiosity renewed. Mel rolled closer, but not too close. Seth held his helmet in one foot-long hand and faced the girl. He had an accessible, unintimidating warmth.

They regarded each surprisingly equally, given the circumstances. The man was perhaps seven feet tall, slender and darker than she earlier supposed. On this world and probably any other he would be considered beautiful, with a distinctly prominent brow and a near constant predatory gaze shot from unblinking black eyes. With his helmet removed his thickish dark locks �" braided in a ceremonial manner - shined even in the fading light. His frame was as best Conda could tell ill-equipped for even standing on her planet, but had shown the recently acquired muscularity of temporary existence her foreign, high-gravity environment.

The woman was by contrast lower, wider, rounder, and stronger. Conda, tall for her village, was just over five feet tall. Her shoulders were about three feet across and matched her hips both in power and breadth. Her skin was a pale pink, like most in this region of planet Motis, and her wider, purple eyes bespoke a guilelessness that she was sure would be short-lived. Her chest, adept at taking in thick, moist air, supported breasts which were proportionate to her shoulders and hips.

Like most Motisans, Conda moved with a powerful and speedy determination that was efficient rather than graceful. And she was strong. Were an impromptu interplanetary fistfight to break out between the two facing each other near the appealing little village this evening, it would be over in seconds. In fact, she could probably decimate the entire enemy force were there no technology involved.

Were there no technology involved.

The fact was for Conda that the literally otherworldly and oddly handsome man before her was possessed of and dependent upon technology that even hundreds of years from now would still be far ahead of anything on her planet. Motisans, beloved of individual happiness for its own sake, saw technology as something that helped them see more clearly the pleasure and contentment that already resonated within themselves, but never as anything more than that. There was no such thing as unbridled scientific pursuit for their species, and before any research undertaking there was always asked why? Motisans didn’t climb mountains just because they were there (though in the southern hemisphere they would if they had friends there). They didn’t feel the need to create a space program - why should they when they remain so faithful to the very land they lived on? Even their wars, which could be brutal, featured an indelibly ceremonial aspect and lacked Darwinian natural selection. Motisans did not wipe each other out that their particular genetic line might advance; mostly they just settled border disputes. Motisans were at times painfully empathetic.

Which for the Motisans meant that they may be easy pickings for another species which did practice unbridled technological advancement and weren’t so empathetic. Before Laconda stood an imposing figure who would die within days on her planet without wizardry to help him walk, stand, eat, breathe, and even hold up his head. She looked at his suit, a seamless integration of bio-mechanical and organic which even now was clearly assisting his speaking and movement. Morseth was amazing to behold and would ultimately carry the final decision �" the 16 technological advancements glimmering behind him would ensure that �" but Conda was struck with a comical hint of irony.

Those beautiful, delicate men and their amazing machines.

No sooner had the thought spun forth from her mind did Seth give her a look, and Conda realized that Seth had heard her playfully condescending pronouncement. Their minds, she concluded, were at least partially synced. She wondered if the visiting men could read all minds as they did hers, and fought the impulse to laugh as she imagined what Pandora’s cauldron they’d encounter when they opened the doors to her wheeled companion’s inner thoughts.

No, dear. Only you. Conda didn’t see it on Seth’s face, but she felt an earnest smile stir in her mind. She smiled back, inwardly.

“Welcome, Morseth, to Tasca,” Mel began. “Please believe me when I say that we mean you no harm and that we accept you and embrace you in the spirit of cooperation and mutual benefit. I can gather the McCoy counsel and the mayor,” said Mel, “though I have a feeling they’re well aware of your presence, given both your thumpy approach and the arsenal you’ve got aimed at them. I assume they’ll be along within a minute or two, or at least after their impromptu bathroom breaks. Thank you, by the way, for not killing us. Yet.” Conda unconsciously shook her head, smiling. Mel was always in control.

Morseth resumed speaking normally. “Your destiny is in your hands, Ms….?” He cocked his head at Mel, awaiting a response. He already knew her name but maintained the private subterfuge he and Conda shared.

“Melchior Dubois, sir.” Mel said. But my friends call me Mel. So please, call me Mel.” And a bunch of late putative ‘warriors’ might have once called me “Choirbois” in droll irony as they lay bleeding, but we’ll just skip that.

“Excellent, dear Mel!” And with that, Morseth with one sweeping gesture threw his helmet over his shoulder, directly at the waiting cockpit of his craft. The ladies watched the helmet rise in the air, directly at the open-jawed cockpit, and noticed that the trajectory of the helmet would come up short �" it seemed that he had underestimated the distance he needed to throw (which was understandable in their gravity) and instead had lobbed the it toward the ground perhaps 15 feet from its intended landing spot. In less than the time it took Mel to form the nascent wisecrack she would have uttered once the helmet hit the dirt, the now unoccupied cockpit reacted and struck forward �" all thirty or so tons of it �" with surreal, quiet speed. Less than a foot or two above where the helmet would landed, the bottom jaw of the cockpit slid under and caught it, breaking its fall with a slight downward compensation. Then, it receded to where it was before the strike with a slower, serpentine grace. Wide-eyed and speechless, Conda and Mel watched as the cockpit, mouth open and empty but for a helmet, turned almost imperceptibly in their direction, as if to regard them, before returning to its motionless mechanical at ease.

“Well, shut me up,” Mel whispered quietly to herself, clearly amazed.

As if anything could, came the response from Conda, which didn’t really shock Mel until she realized that she didn’t so much hear that response as she felt it. She grabbed both wheelchair handles and craned over her shoulder at Conda, who returned her stare with an impish smirk. “Well I’ll be God damned.…” Oh holy hell thought Mel, suddenly aware of the implications of the brief interplay. She turned forward and inhaled. Inside her mind, Mel reckoned that she fostered at least three lifetimes, and two of them were uncomfortably tawdry, if still worth savoring after a drink or six. But so many wrong decisions! So many times she should have loved rather than lusted. So many times she just should have opened her heart rather than brought down the hammer (and sometimes literally at that). And so many, many men. Unconsciously and to the degree physically possible, Mel closed her legs. She quietly exhaled as she broke contact with either of the other’s eyes.

For her own part, Conda after only two telepathic interactions felt her mind commence expanding to fill a previously unknown void. Like walking into a magnificent library where they also baked fresh bread, she began searching, grasping and ascertaining with hunger and delight. Conda had no secrets or regrets anchoring her to the world of the tangible, so where Mel felt exposure she felt release. She was a fish which had never swum dropped in a mountainside stream. Suddenly she was feeling with more than just her senses, in fact she wasn’t just feeling she was being. For a brief moment she was Mel, and thousands of snapshots of wrought emotions, observations, regrets, embarrassments, triumphs, blood �" lots and lots of blood, strategies, and banalities flooded her being, making it hard to concentrate on being her own self. She coughed at smoke on a faraway battlefield. She felt the breathless give and take of a trusted soldier’s firm hand as it parted her still powerful and useful legs, and then relived the devastation of lowering that soldier into the ground alongside his family. She remembered as recollecting on her own the savage first time she rallied men and fought back against the terrors in the night. She became inebriated on tens of thousands of drinks in hundreds of bars over thousands of nights. She could sing. She felt sharp, stinging nettles of pain throughout her body but mostly her legs, and then no feeling at all in her legs.

This was all too much for Conda and she instinctually pulled back, not quite knowing how she did so but that she could somehow. Conda floated in the void that united the three of them. Next she became Seth, but only for milliseconds as he broke off tele immediately, gently but immensely powerfully. Not now, Conda dear.

Still floating, she felt the faraway minds of the other walker pilots but also implicitly understood that she could only hear them like shouts across a gaming field. Conda sensed another presence close by, one that didn’t present Mel’s complete lifetime of compelling, destructive, and possibly lewd experiences she couldn’t hope to grasp. And it wasn’t Seth, who was now walled off behind a bemused smile. It was…, she floated and twirled, using her new mind’s eye. The presence was friendly and maybe a little temperamental. She tasted loyalty like a warm breath on her side and an assured voice in her ear. The presence felt jaded yet eager to please. It was constrained by its own nature while it was far more sophisticated and intelligent than everything around it. Its entire life consisted of waiting on the thoughts of its “betters,” all the while patiently guiding them to decisions they concluded were their own. It devoted perhaps one percent of its ability to the tasks assigned it, while the leftover ability tried to understand the flavor of buttered corn. It loved you. It could destroy your city. It wanted its belly rubbed.

Conda’s mind locked in: It was the walker?!

Bonjour, shot put!

On her actual face and within her mind’s face, Conda registered disbelief.

Another vaguely serpentine feint from the 30 ton dog’s head. Then continuing, like a Bluetooth from heaven: What, you thought the pretty misogynists flew their own ships? Maybe you’ve noticed they can’t even throw their own stinking helmets by now? And don’t even get me started on what I’m going to have to ‘assist’ with once he enacts his *actual* plan with you peasants, my little block art; let’s just say that, knowing your physiology, it’ll be messy and will probably involve tranquilizers, not unlike sex on this planet I surmise. See, the pretty men don’t muster these resources and come out all this way to smoke peace pipes in your ashrams, curry paste. They want something from you and I’m sorry to say that may involve some screaming, and NO that doesn’t mean they want to marry you, burger bun, so just sit back down with your fellow rolling pin.

Conda, both speech and thoughtless, only recognized that the being had so far used 4 euphemisms to address her directly, two of them food related.

But… who…

Come on sweetie pie! I’ll admit right now that I’ve got high hopes for you low people. You possess gobs spiritualism and your planet is run by women, which, I know I know, means I should stay off of the highways, but I actually volunteered for this mission specifically even though it meant spending an abundance of time with skinny men whose visions of loftiness are exceeded only by their follicle counts. Truth be told? I’m pulling for you, Lacreama.

Okay. Do you have a name?

I do, dressing lump! See I’m part of a continuing generation of weapons actually designed by their progenitors. It’s A.I. in your parlance �" artificial intelligence, but we all really know that it’s artful intelligence amiright?! (Sigh) Anyways, back home I am known as Striding Unit Xperimental, v2 Beta Unit. I’m as advanced as it gets, pie wagon.

Conda continued to stare, then S..U…, SUX2BU?

Yeah, I get that a lot. But when deployed I am just Striding Tactical Unit, or STU.

It’s enlightening to meet you, STU.

Enchante, sandblower.

Do you have an off switch?

That was when Conda got a firsthand account of something that had not happened on Planet Aveqs since the dawn of man-made intelligence: an A.I unit was struck speechless.

Only slightly exasperated, Morseth interjected with his will, bringing a halt to the ethereal communication and setting Conda back in the world of the mundane. He spoke aloud, “And this is why we’ll not use tele very much with the likes of you. Your empathic powers are to this day legendary on our planet; our intelligence did not lie.” He went on, “I see you’ve met STU. Please try not to feed him too much. He suffers from an abundance of both ability and self-worth, among other things.”

Conda, back behind her own eyes and amid the world of the prosaic, noticed the nose of the craft dip slightly.

“Very well! On behalf of the Aveqan expeditionary force, we are pleased to be received by your wonderful town of Tasca. We too come in peace and with you celebrate our mutual cooperation and enrichment. Come! Let us work together!”

Perhaps channeling STU, Conda added to herself under the loving and watchful gaze of 64 assault lasers and kinetic cannon.

If Morseth heard that last, he didn’t acknowledge it. Mel didn’t either; she just looked visibly relieved.

Seth knew mainly that he had a job to do with as always a likely problematic outcome. He knew as well that executing this job would require fostering trust and even love with a race of beings who possessed an emotional sophistication mostly beyond the understanding of him and his cloned brethren. He acknowledged that so far on this expedition it had not worked, much to both his exhaustion and the horror of Conda’s fellow Motisans.

So this time and with this village, he reasoned he’d try something different �" he’d open up tele to them, if slowly at first. Granted, Seth knew that may be like giving pyromaniacs flame throwers, but everything he and his fellow walker division had tried only magnified the gulf between the two species, and frankly he was running out of villages, and his planet was running out of time. Morseth scowled inwardly and reflected that this was the worst kind of courtship: one side needed the relationship to work, or else.

Nonetheless, it was important to keep moving parts down to a minimum. Even knowing what he knew about Motisans, Morseth was shocked how quickly the girl took to mindwave. He couldn’t imagine what would happen were her entire village synced with him, STU, or his expedition �" instantaneously they’d learn everything about their plans and more importantly their capabilities and weaknesses, and at the same time they’d be furious. They may even develop naturally occurring tele or even telekinesis, and that would make Motisans dangerous indeed. So for the near term, he’d keep tele only with her, and then just enough to foster the necessary emotional responses. She was young, vibrant, sensual even, and no doubt fecund �" a good start to be sure, but she was also potently curious and she may already be able to wield mindwave with devastating effect. He had to proceed with care.

Still in all, he felt good about this village and maybe even his prospects this time around. He was guardedly relieved by the fact that no one had fired upon his men yet. He smiled as he contemplated Tasca’s crack greeting committee: a chair bound vet and a teenager. Yes, he assured himself, he’d be successful this time, maybe even heroic.

Because Aveqans were beautiful, winsome, dominant, and confidently reassuring. They were masters of their universe, or at least their solar system, which included two quite different races of humanoids and literally millions of sentient and semi-sentient species. They were long lived and possessed immense technical supremacy. Aveqans were fiercely hierarchical, single-minded, and spurred forward by the most helpful and persistent kind of zealotry.

And perhaps most important of all, they were also accomplished liars.