Chapter 37 - Tools of the Trade

  It was done.

  Well, actually, it was almost done.

  Echo’s frame stood in the centre of the living room, a patchwork of industrial parts and salvaged components that somehow came together to form something cohesive, if not exactly elegant. The frame didn’t try to emulate a human shape—it was blocky, angular, and unapologetically mechanical.

  Thick alloy plates shielded its core, uneven in colour and texture where scavenged parts had been welded into place. The arms were long and slightly mismatched, the left joint assembly clearly newer than the right, which bore the scars of prior use. Despite its scrappy construction, there was a strange harmony to it. The frame was undeniably janky, but it was janky with purpose.

  The lattice of high-tensile fibre composites woven into the frame’s joints provided a flexibility that belied its bulk. The torso, a hollow cavity at its centre, was layered with conduits and couplings designed to house the processor core—the one piece still missing from the design.

  A single optic sensor had been mounted on the head unit, surrounded by a cluster of smaller sensors meant for environmental data. Currently, they were dark and lifeless.

  Darius had never been so proud of anything in his life.

  “It looks like it crawled out of a garbage dump,” he said critically, reaching out to tug at a component in an attempt to hide the smile spreading across his face.

  {It is a functional design, especially when working within the limitations of available resources and construction methods. The cosmetic aspects won’t impact its operation.}

  “Cosmetic aspects?” Darius scoffed. “people are going to take one look at this thing and figure it was slapped together in someone’s garage. Oh wait, it was.” He waved a hand at the room around him, as if the clutter wasn’t proof enough.

  “Yeah, it does look like a piece of crap,” Tarek remarked sourly from where he was leaning against the wall, looking forlornly at the couch still covered in random tools and parts. He’d been all but banned from the living room after a few too many ‘disruptive comments’, as Harlan put it. It hadn’t improved his mood any.

  “Hey! It’s the functionality that matters anyway!” Darius barked defensively.

  “What functionality?” Tarek shot back. “Can’t even switch the thing on yet. Far as I’m concerned, it’s an expensive, messy paperweight.”

  Darius grimaced but couldn’t actually refute the point. The frame was almost finished – but without the processor core, it was little better than a sculpture. And the processor cores could only come from one place – the garrison. Or, more specifically, the expensive, fancy drones that were stored at the garrison.

  There were no alternatives – or, at least, no realistic ones. Not for lack of trying, either; Darius had scoured every source he could think of, from scrapyards to back-alley dealers, all to no avail. While Echo could connect to virtually any device, that didn’t mean those devices could sustain him.

  Darius was still a little fuzzy on the precise details, but essentially the adaptability of the nanite matrix on which Echo’s personality engram was stored was a double-edged sword. The matrix would automatically match the complexity of whatever it was connected to in order to ensure a seamless connection.

  In practice, this meant that with Echo currently connected to his brain – his wet, fleshy, human brain – the nanite matrix would mimic the functionality of his brain. It was why Echo had started to develop more of a personality and was able to better understand human emotions – in a very real way, the AI was beginning to think like a human.

  But the reverse was also true.

  Should the nanite matrix adapt to a less complex system, Echo’s capabilities would be sharply limited. Plugging him into a substandard processor would be like trying to run a starship’s navigation system on an old calculator. Sure, it might technically work, but the results would be... less than optimal.

  And trying to find a processor core that was complex enough to sustain the AI… well, the Empire didn’t exactly let those kinds of parts float around freely. High-grade cores were almost exclusively used in their military drones – the kind that needed to run some pretty advanced VIs of their own.

  And so, he was stuck waiting for the raid on the garrison before Echo could move over to his frame.

  A door creaked open down the hallway, and a moment later, Harlan stepped into the room. He paused just inside, eyeing the frame with a distinct wariness, like he suspected it was about to come to life and kill them all.

  Darius would be lying if he said he didn’t take a little pleasure in the older man’s unease. Probably not wise – the more comfortable Harlan was, the lower the chance he would decide Darius and Echo were more trouble than they were worth and he was better off killing them.

  Oh, well.

  Darius straightened from where he had been tinkering with the frame’s right arm, flicking a loose wire back into place. “What do you think?” he asked, trying—and failing—to sound nonchalant. “She’s not pretty, but she’ll hold up.”

  Harlan grunted. “Impressive,” he admitted, though his tone was cautious. “Doesn’t look like much at first glance, but… it’s solid. Makes it easier to believe your claims about Echo being an AI.”

  He didn’t seem happy about the fact, but Darius couldn’t help but preen a little in smug satisfaction. “Told you so.”

  After a long moment, Harlan exhaled sharply and shook his head. “Whatever. Doesn’t matter right now. We’ve got bigger things to worry about.”

  Darius slumped onto the couch with his arms crossed, ignoring how the parts and tools strewn about dug into his side. “Such as?”

  “The raid.” Harlan’s voice was clipped, his tone all business now. “We’re meeting with another cell tonight. They’ll be taking charge of most of the goods we pull from the garrison—transporting and storing them until the heat dies down.”

  “Another cell?” Darius frowned. “How’s that going to work? I thought the whole point of scattering like this was so that we didn’t know anything about anybody else.”

  “We meet in a neutral place, we wear masks and use voice changers to make sure we can’t be recognised, and we don’t mention any details about the locations of our safehouses or operations,” Harlan explained bluntly.

  Darius took a moment to digest that. “Not much trust in this line of work, is there?” he observed.

  “I trust them. I’m just not stupid enough to think the Empire doesn’t have ways of making people talk.”

  Darius grinned sardonically. “And you wonder why I’m not keen on joining up.”

  Harlan held his gaze. “I know exactly why you don’t want to join up, Kallan,” he said tiredly. “I don’t hold it against you in the least – hell, I even agree with it. And under normal circumstances, if you wanted to leave, I’d wish you well and see you on your way. We hardly want to force people into this, after all.”

  He ran a hand down his face. “But you’re the one who got involved in all this mess – and while it might not be your fault, that doesn’t mean it’s mine either. I’m trying to make sure my people get out of this in one piece, and if that comes at your expense? Then I’m sorry, but I won’t hesitate.”

  In the face of that, there was really nothing for Darius to say.

  – – –

  Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.

  The location for the meetup turned out to be another abandoned apartment at the edge of the residential zone. It was a hollowed-out shell, its windows long shattered, the walls stained with years of neglect. The faint hum of the city outside seeped through the cracks, muffled and distant. A single bare bulb dangled from the ceiling, its dim light flickering in time with the irregular thrum of an unseen generator.

  Darius scratched idly at the edge of his mask, trying to adjust it so it would stop pressing uncomfortably against his nose. Feeling his own warm breath bouncing off the mask and washing back onto his face was hardly pleasant either.

  “Why did you want me here again?” he asked, the raspy hiss of the voice changer breaking the silence.

  Somehow, despite the identical mask covering his face, Harlan managed to convey a look of exasperation. “Because you need to know this,” he responded shortly, voice similarly distorted.

  “And Lena and Tarek don’t?” Darius pointed out.

  “Don’t use their names,” Corin broke in from the corner.

  Darius raised his hands apologetically. “My bad. But seriously, wouldn’t it make more sense for them to be here instead of me? And why couldn’t everyone come anyway?”

  “It’s a precaution,” Harlan groaned, finally worn down by Darius’s badgering. “We don’t want everyone here just in case the Empire somehow catches wind of it.”

  “So… why not just have one person meet up, then? Or better yet, just do the whole thing over the radio. It’s not like we’re doing anything other than talking, right?”

  “It’s to socialise, actually,” Corin supplied, tone sounding faintly amused despite the distortion. “We tend to spend a lot of time around our own squads, and it’s not hard to get sick of each other. This way, we get to chat with other cells, even if we have to keep things vague.”

  “What, and Le— uh, sorry, the others didn’t want to socialise?” Darius asked, only just remembering to avoid names.

  “Well, one’s too grumpy to be social, and the other one’s too shy most of the time,” Corin responded dryly.

  Darius snorted at the description of Tarek, but something didn’t quite sit right with Corin’s reply.

  {I believe they may not feel comfortable with only a single person to keep an eye on you.} Echo suddenly chimed in.

  “What? Why? Either one of them would kick my ass,” Darius replied, confused. His mask hid his grin as Harlan and Corin both stiffened at the non-sequitur, clearly realising he was talking to Echo.

  Honestly, who knew that messing with people by having one-sided conversations with a voice in his head could be so fun? Darius spared a moment to wonder if that was why crazy people talked out loud all the time. Maybe they were perfectly sane and just doing it for fun?

  He spared another moment to worry about his own mental state.

  {While it is true you are not physically impressive,} Echo said, blithely ignoring his offended “Hey!” {There is also the recently constructed robotic frame to consider. It would not surprise me if they thought you might attempt to use it to overpower them.}

  That… sounded like an accurate, if unhealthy, level of paranoia to ascribe to the Freeholders. And, in fairness, if the frame was fully operational, Darius couldn’t swear that he wouldn’t take the opportunity to make a run for it.

  “Hey, do we at least get codenames or something?” he asked, mostly to annoy Harlan.

  “Sure,” the older man replied, much to his surprise. “I’m ‘One’, he’s ‘Two’, and you’re ‘Three’,” he said, gesturing to himself, Corin, and Darius in order.

  “Wow,” Darius deadpanned. “That’s so creative. Really… rolls off the tongue.”

  “Glad you like it,” Harlan responded, just as dryly.

  They settled back into silence, waiting. Just as Darius was starting to consider whether humming or singing would annoy Harlan more, the sound of footsteps echoed from the hallway beyond the door, deliberate but unhurried.

  The door creaked open, revealing three figures, each wearing the same cheap, featureless mask and voice changer as Harlan’s group. They stepped inside without hesitation, their postures relaxed but purposeful. The first figure, taller and broader than the others, took a moment to scan the room before speaking in a voice rendered flat and mechanical by the changer.

  “One,” they said simply, inclining their head slightly toward Harlan.

  “One,” Harlan acknowledged in return, his tone clipped but cordial.

  The second figure followed close behind, smaller and wiry, with a sense of barely-contained energy radiating from them. They raised a hand in a friendly wave.

  “Two,” the figure chirped, their voice somehow managing to convey a grin through the distortion.

  “Two,” Corin responded with a chuckle, giving a mock salute in return.

  The last figure bounced through the door, throwing finger guns at Darius. “Three!” they cheered at him.

  Darius searched for words, utterly befuddled. “I… three?” he replied, feeling faintly ridiculous. “Sorry, what’s going on? Am I drunk?”

  “Eyy, looks like we got a newbie in the house!” Two commented, not unkindly. “First time?”

  “None of that now – you know how we run things,” a fourth figure commented, stepping into the room, dressed in similarly nondescript clothing and wearing the same type of mask. Unlike the others, their stance was loose and unhurried, almost deliberately detached. “Business before pleasure.”

  Two held their hands up apologetically. They were wearing thick, concealing clothing, but Darius was reasonably sure it was a guy. “My bad,” he said.

  The fourth figure nodded. “Right then, evening everybody – I’ll be your friendly neighbourhood middleman tonight.”

  “Contact,” Harlan acknowledged with a slight nod. “Glad you could make it.”

  Darius assumed that ‘contact’ was this guy’s codename – though why he got a word and not a number was anyone’s guess. He had to admit to feeling a little wrong-footed here – the masks, location, voice-changers, and Harlan telling him not to share any personal details had led him to believe this was going to be… serious.

  Instead, the room settled into a surprisingly relaxed energy as everyone began to claim spots around the space. The Contact, meanwhile, stepped to the centre of the room, their voice calm but efficient as they spoke.

  “Alright, ground rules. No operational details—no safehouses, no locations, no personal identifiers. You’ll get what you need, when you need it. I’m just here to facilitate, not to join your raid. Any questions?”

  “Not from us,” Harlan said, his tone measured.

  One from the other cell raised a hand in a mock gesture of camaraderie. “None here, either. Thanks for playing messenger—makes our lives easier.”

  The Contact inclined their head, acknowledging the comment without breaking stride. “Good. Then, let’s get down to business. The vehicle you’ll need has been secured—it’ll be in position at the agreed-upon time. I’ve scouted the route; it’s clear enough to get you to the garrison and back without drawing attention.”

  “Appreciate it,” Harlan said, nodding.

  The Contact turned to the group from the other cell. “You’ll handle post-op transport. Storage locations are already set up, and you’ll have twenty-four hours to move the goods before switching sites. Details are in the packet.” They held up a small, nondescript device, setting it on the table with a faint clink.

  “Understood,” One said. “Appreciate the efficiency.”

  The Contact inclined their head in acknowledgment and stepped back, folding their arms as they leaned casually against the wall. “Alright then, that’s pretty much all I had to say. You lot can hash out some of the finer details now. I’ll stick around in case you need to arrange anything else, or if you need to discuss sensitive info, I can head out now.”

  One glanced over to Harlan, tilting his head inquisitively. “I’m happy with you sticking around?” he posed it as a question, to which Harlan nodded.

  “No problems here.”

  “Wonderful!” Contact said cheerfully.

  One from the other cell turned back to Harlan, their posture shifting subtly to something more engaged. “Alright, let’s talk specifics. What kind of haul are we looking at here? We need a sense of how much we’ll be transporting.”

  Harlan straightened, his tone calm but authoritative. “The primary objective is equipment, weapons, and information. With a little luck, we’ll have at least a few crates of weapons and ammo, and we’re planning on snagging a few of their combat drones as well. These aren’t small parts—each crate is roughly two cubic meters and weighs about as much as you’d expect for high-grade Imperial tech. Conservatively, we’re looking at six to eight crates.”

  One gave a low whistle, their distorted voice cutting through the room’s ambient hum. “That’s a solid haul. And how tight is the timeline for getting in and out?”

  “As quickly as possible,” Harlan deadpanned. “Conservatively, we’d like to be out of there within five minutes.”

  The other One cocked their head, intrigued. “Five minutes? That’s tight even by optimistic standards. How are you planning to pull that off?”

  Harlan leaned forward, resting his forearms on the table as he outlined the plan. “We’ll have a jammer set up to disrupt their communications, creating a blind spot around the garrison. We’ve timed it so that a patrol will have just left the area, giving us a short window of reduced security. That’ll get us in and out before they can properly coordinate a response.”

  “Ambitious,” Two from the other cell remarked, crossing their arms. “And the alarms? Unless the garrison’s gotten sloppy, you can’t just stroll in without tripping something.”

  “We’ve got it handled,” Harlan replied smoothly, his tone deliberately vague. “With a little luck, we’ll keep things quiet long enough to grab what we need. If not—” he shrugged, “—we’ll adapt.”

  One tilted their head, clearly intrigued but wisely choosing not to press. “Alright. And these drones you’re planning to take—what’s the play there? I didn’t think we had the tech to repurpose Imperial hardware like that.”

  “Normally, we don’t,” Harlan admitted, his tone still carefully neutral. “But we’ve got a lead on how to handle it. We’ll reprogram the ones we take—or at least enough of them to make it worth the trouble.”

  Three from the other cell let out a low, impressed whistle, leaning forward on the table. “Reprogramming Imperial drones? That’s bold. If you can actually pull it off, it’ll be a game changer.”

  Harlan nodded slightly. “That’s the idea. The drones are a secondary objective—we’re prioritising weapons and intel, but the drones could make a significant difference for the cells that need them.”

  One tapped their fingers thoughtfully on the table, their masked gaze shifting briefly toward the Contact, who remained a silent observer against the wall. “And the intel? What are you targeting?”

  “That’s probably information best kept as need-to-know,” Contact interrupted, taking a step forward.

  One nodded, unoffended. “Fair enough. Big plans like this, I’m not surprised you’re keeping things tight to your chest. Alright, we can make it happen. Any idea on how long we have to prep?”

  Harlan shrugged. “A week or so? Pretty flexible, to be honest. If you need more time, we can make it happen.”

  One shared a glance with Two and Three, silently asking them if they had any questions. “I think we’ve covered the essentials. Just let us know if anything changes before we head out.”

  “Same here,” Harlan replied. “We’ll send an update if the timeline shifts.”

  With that, Two and Three shifted their attention to Darius, who suddenly felt vaguely hunted.

  “And now we get to the fun,” purred Three menacingly.