Twenty months gone
They headed out early that morning--earlier, even, than the runs that Leigh had noted were becoming a daily habit. The sun did not even begin to rise until they were several kilometers from the farm’s main complex. When it finally began to show above the horizon, the early light caught on the drops of rain on her helmet, turning them to liquid gold. It was an interesting effect; she logged it for later replication.
“We did not have to go this early,” she commented idly as they crested another hill.
“As a matter of fact, entering a kinrath nest before sunrise is statistically unwise. Being blind, they do not adhere to normal day-night cycles.”
Na’an was just ahead of her, pulling her hair up and away from her neck. She had started growing it out when they had first arrived on Dantooine; it now barely brushed her shoulders, on the rare occasion she left it loose. Not for the first time, Leigh wondered why she bothered letting it grow, if it were such an annoyance.
“Again with ‘statistically unwise’,” she said with a groan.
“I know you don’t like me doing anything less safe than a game of grav-ball, but both you and Doc said it--I need a hobby.”“Most people do not consider raiding the nests of poisonous arachnoids for crystals an amusing ‘hobby’.” “For the last time, I’m not going into nests for my own jollies. Once I find what I need, I’m done. The rest is literally what you’d consider arts and crafts these days.”
Leigh bristled. “
They are not ‘arts and crafts’. They are highly experimental prosthe--”
“Yeah, yeah, just like the one you stuck in my face. Star’s end, Leigh, did you delete all of Elly’s sense of humor?”
Na’an dropped her hair again, as if letting it swing loose for emphasis. Leigh watched her trot down the incline, weaving her way through the wheat, and felt once again the mixture of annoyance and confusion. The memories that Eliana Shan had left with her had always depicted Na’an as being...gentler. Less confrontational, among other things. The Na’an in her mother’s memories would have been easier to befriend, less likely to mock her new pursuit into medical science, more open to real conversations. Coming to Dantooine was supposed to be therapeutic, but this Na’an...it was hard to know if their short time on this farm planet was having any results at all.
Once again, she considered contacting Adelle. The Healer had made wonderful progress, on the rare occasions that they could speak, and Leigh missed seeing a friendly face. There weren’t many people here on the Noba farm that thought of her as much more than farm equipment yet--
“Hey!”
The sudden shout brought Leigh back into the present in microseconds.
Na’an was crouching in the field about a hundred yards ahead, just short of the next hill. There was a gap in the wheatfields where she was--a bare spot that upon Leigh’s approach opened up into a hole, leading deep into the earth. Presumably, the gap in the field had been left unplanted as a safety measure.
“There it is,” Na’an breathed, leaning over the hole.
“Just like you said. I’m actually impressed.”
Leigh allowed herself a moment of pleasure. It was nice to have her competence acknowledged, for once--she had been scanning the area for markers like this ever since Na’an had mentioned her project.
“The cave goes down about ten meters, with no visible structures leading back up to this access point,” she said, switching her cannon arm’s function to shine a light into the hole
. “It is essentially a hollow shell the kinrath have found and utilized as a primary nesting grounds. There are likely other entrances, but they are well-hidden.”Na’an’s face scrunched up, as if translating the droid’s analysis into terms a human could understand.
“So, you won’t be going in.”
Leigh set her facial hologram to shake its head.
“I am too heavy for the rope, and this chassis does not have a jumping capacity of more than three meters,” she said simply.
This seemed to give Na’an some pause; she stood up, looking down into the hole with her hands on her hips.
“Right.” She took a deep breath, her face setting into a hard expression.
“Well, that’s about what I expected at least. Just keep an eye out for the kinrath. I’ll be in and out in half an hour.”
“Are you sure?”
“Of course!” Na’an scowled at the implication, then--inexplicably--softened.
“It’s going to be okay, Leigh,” she said.
“This? Is far from dangerous. I can check a nest for Dantari crystals no problem. Besides, they’re probably not even in there. They’ll be out hunting or something. Like you said--no day-night cycles.”
She untied a slim black rope from around her waist, snaking one end down the hole for several meters. She held the other end out for Leigh to take, then let it slide through her hand until she was standing at the edge of the hole. She wound the cord around her wrist once, then waved blithely as she let herself tip backwards and drop.
Leigh only needed to brace herself as the rope suddenly jerked in her hand, supporting Na’an’s as it slowed halfway down the cavern. It shivered in her hand, signaling the human’s every movement, and the droid let herself relax her guard a little. They would not be here long, after all. Perhaps they would even be back before noon, and she would have a chance to work on that artificial knee she’d been crafting--
Her audio sensor picked up a faint
crack. She tuned her visuals back in to see that, where the rope met the edge of the hole, the earth was beginning to crumble. As she watched, the loose area fell in, revealing cracks in the underlying stone, running towards her feet.
Ignoring this new data would be worse than unwise. Leigh ran a quick analysis, and did not like the results. With a thin ceiling like this now supporting her now-considerable weight...
“Na’an, this structure is crumbling. I cannot keep supporting you from this position.”
It took three seconds for Na’an to respond.
“Hold on,” she said, her voice muted.
“I’m almost there, I just--”As she listened, the cracks widened, spider-webbing under her now. Leigh decided to interrupt.
“I will fall,” she said,
“and so will you.”
“I can make it!”“I will not!” Another
crack. Leigh braced herself, already preparing to pull up the rope despite Na’an’s insistence.
“I need to move ba--”
The final crack was
huge, and immediately Leigh could feel her weight shift. She tried to step back, but the ground only crumbled further, and within seconds it gave away entirely, sending both woman and droid tumbling to the cavern below. The roof continued to disintegrate above them, huge chunks of earth landing everywhere. Leigh first lost the rope, then sight of Na’an in the fall of rubble---
And then a rock dinged against her dome, sending all her sensors into confusion and darkness.
****
It took three quick power-cycles for Leigh to fully recalibrate. She adjusted for the dust in the air, then activated her sensors, looking around.
As she had thought, the entrance above had entirely collapsed under her weight. What was once a gap of about two meters now spanned at least five times that across, a huge hole that the farm would surely have to fill in before the next harvest. The hole allowed the morning sun to illuminate the entire cavern, revealing an ancillary tunnel on the far end from where Leigh had landed. The tunnel led south, farther away from the farm--which explained why Leigh had missed it before.
Leigh herself, along with most of the rubble, seemed to have landed in one of the larger nests in the area, which her moisture sensors indicated had been partially filled with unhatched eggs. Now, it was filled with a droid ankle-deep in biotic slime, and pinned down by massive chunks of the cavern’s former roof. Leigh ran a quick diagnostic on herself--the damage was surprisingly minimal, although her regular arm was the only part of her that could move freely--then considered scanning for lifeforms. Na’an had to have been close when the roof collapsed, perhaps as close as right underneath her. She was, Leigh realized with a start, likely just as trapped as she was, if not worse. Had she been knocked out by the rubble, or injured by the drop….or
worse?
She decided to ask directly.
“Na’an. Speak to me. Are you injured?”
She heard a muffled groan somewhere to her left, under the rocks. That was a good sign--she was, at least, alive enough to make noise.
Then something else made a sound. Not a human sound, and not in the cavern.
The kinrath had not been out hunting. Most of them must have fled into the tunnel when the cave started to collapse. About thirty of them peeked out from the tunnel’s mouth now, clicking and waving appendages as they attempted to figure out what had happened to their home, to their young. Leigh immediately modulated her volume, hoping they had not noticed her yet.
“Na’an,” she said urgently,
“we are not alone.”
Leigh did not take her sensors off the pack in the tunnel. The kinrath she could see had caught some kind of scent now; they waved their sensory appendages in her direction, growing increasingly agitated. They must, she realized, have smelled the remains of their eggs that now drenched her legs and lower body. She’d invaded their home and destroyed most of their offspring, and those noises they were making did not sound like they were taking it well.
“I believe the kinrath are about to attack,” she said, careful to keep her simulated voice calm.
“Stay where you are--”
That was when the kinrath attacked.
Six of them lurched out of the tunnel first, with the rest of the pack not far behind. Their spidery legs seemed perfectly suited to navigate the wreckage, which didn’t even seem to slow them down. Even with the tunnel on the far side of the cavern, Leigh had only seconds to plan her strategy. Her regular arm was free; she reached for the closest piece of rubble she had the leverage to lift and hurled it at the pack. The stone crashed into the first kinrath with a crunch, smashing through its armor. She threw a second, landing a glancing shot at her target’s head and sending it spinning. A third took out a female at the legs, crippling it instantly. None of this seemed to discourage the others; if anything, they sped up, their new front-runner unsheathing its poison spike only two meters away.
There wasn’t any more liftable rubble in reach; she would have to get free. She quickly diverted CPU space to calculating time differences, the speed of the kinrath, structural integrity, and her own odds of survival.
Take the first blow, she decided,
then handle the first one in close range. Low charge concussive show to loosen the rubble, and get free. From there, switch functions to laserfire to prevent further collapse. If they swarm...
She had no viable plan for if they swarmed. She couldn’t activate a full thermal detonation with a human nearby, or go for full power and a full cave collapse. She would have to just let them destroy her. If they did, perhaps they would leave Na’an alone, and she could escape later--
She had just braced herself for the attack when the kinrath stopped, just short of Leigh’s dome. It shook momentarily, squealing as its legs lifted off the ground---and then it hurtled to the right and smashed head-first into a rock.
“Back off.”
The next one followed suit, splattering itself across the rubble to Leigh’s left. Then the same rubble exploded outwards, raining small stones on both Leigh and the remaining insectoids.
It was Na’an that stepped out of the remaining gap, dusty but otherwise unharmed. Leigh momentarily thought to call out to her, to tell her to run, but there was no time; the human’s reappearance and the deaths of their fellows seemed to stoke the remaining kinrath into a full frenzy. The last of the frontrunners lunged at Na’an, unsheathing its venom spike as it closed the gap.
She did not attempt to dodge the kinrath; indeed, she barely seemed to register that she was under attack. Leigh watched as she raised her left hand almost idly, looking at it as if she’d never seen it before. She twitched her fingers, and this kinrath, too, stopped, only inches from her abdomen.
Na’an then closed those fingers into a fist, and the kinrath
crumpled before Leigh’s eyes. It fell to the earth again as Na’an relaxed the fist, a misshapen ball of cracked armor and twitching, crushed flesh.
Another flick of the fingers sent the ball spinning into the remaining pack, which scuttled backwards as if being blown back by a strong wind. The attack momentarily paused, she turned her attention to Leigh, still trapped by the remaining rubble.
“You turned it on?” was all the droid could think to say.
“Hold still,” was Na’an’s only response.
She lifted both hands to hover over the rocks pinning the droid down, slowly closing them into identical fists. When she pulled her hands up, the rocks lifted as easily as if they were pebbles picked up by a child, then scattered in five different directions. Leigh found that she could move her cannon arm again, and she sat up and flexed it, checking the joints for damage.
Behind her, the pack struggled to regain their composure and continue the attack. One kinrath, a large male at the front of the pack, righted himself before the rest, and wasted no time on assisting the others or even unsheathing its poison spike. It hurtled forward, screeching at the droid as it rapidly closed the distance between them.
Na’an only paused at the sound at first, as if contemplating how to respond. Then, with a swiftness that even startled Leigh, she
rounded on it in a sudden fury. Instead of attacking, however, she sucked in a deep breath, trembling momentarily with some tremendous inner effort, then--
“I SAID BACK OFF!”
Even from behind, the volume of the sound ripping out of the human’s mouth was enough to briefly overload Leigh’s sensors. Had she been organic, she thought wildly, her eardrums would have exploded. Or perhaps more than her eardrums--the kinrath stopped cold, trembling slightly, then dropped into a tangle of spindly limbs, its vitals flatlining. The other kinrath swarmed around it momentarily, clicking and prodding the still-warm body as if hoping to wake it. When it was clear their hivemate was dead, however, they did not advance on Leigh as before. This time, they had a stranger threat to consider.
Na’an did not move again. The kinrath, too, were still. If the insectoids had been intelligent, Leigh would have wondered if perhaps they were somehow communicating. It was, though, incredibly likely that Na’an was communicating to them. Not in words--in the only language animals could understand.
After a minute and a half (Leigh could not help but measure it; it seemed like such a long time), the kinrath backed away. Several of them closed in to gather up the remains of their dead hivemates, hissing angrily at the woman and the droid who’d invaded their home, but they did not attack. They only took the remains back down the tunnel with them, until even their sounds disappeared into the dark. Leigh watched Na’an’s eye follow them until they disappeared, her confusion only amplified by what she saw there.
Na’an didn’t even seem to register that Leigh was looking at her.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” she said, and spat after the retreating insectoids. She gestured, and the droid felt her body lifting effortlessly off the ground, floating back up to the now-massive hole in the fields above.
It took only a few seconds to get to the top. Leigh’s photoreceptors had adjusted to the darkness in the short time she had been trapped in the cave, and their sudden exposure to full sunlight left her momentarily blinded. She rapidly adjusted her intake as she felt her body connect with the earth, lying prone in the middle of the wheat. As her vision cleared, she saw Na’an clamber up the edge of the hole, lifting herself as easily as if she’d only had to jump a few inches. In the full daylight, she could finally get a proper scan of the human as she was now.
Physically, Na’an had changed very little; there was no visible sign that, on its own, indicated what she had done. The sheen of sweat on her skin and the faint twitching of muscles underneath could have been caused by sheer exertion, as could the elevated heartbeat. The decreased dermal temperature and bloodless complexion was a common physical reaction to sudden shocks. Even her half-wild expression could be attributed to simple human fear or anger.
But Leigh knew better, after that demonstration in the cavern. She’d predicted all of these reactions--even if she thought she’d never see them.
This was Babylon.
Na’an was
using the Babylon protocol. She’d activated it...to get Leigh out? It didn’t compute. Na’an had expressed nothing but disinterest in utilizing the protocol at all, for any reason, ever since she’d heard of it. Not to mention the fact that there’d been barely any indication that their relationship was anything other than their...agreement...back on Felucia. Yet here she was, eyes blazing, sprinting towards the droid she’d been keeping at arm’s length for almost two years. Here she was, dropping to her knees beside her. Here she was, saying Leigh’s name as if it mattered as more than the name of her future executioner.
“Leigh, oh gods, I’m sorry, I’m sorry I’m sorry, thank the gods you’re okay,” Na’an was breathing, her voice high, shaking. Her hands crept along Leigh’s dome rapidly, the fingers feeling for scratches or cracks. For a microsecond, Leigh found the absurd urge to laugh at the sudden role reversal. Since when did
this woman mother
her?
“For a second there I thought…” she was still saying, seemingly unaware of Leigh’s thoughts.
“I thought I was dying, that it was killing me and you were going to--but I didn’t--and--” she took a deep, shuddering breath.
“But I saved you,” she said brightly.
“I got you out, it wasn’t even hard. Oh, gods, Leigh, why didn’t you tell me it was like this??”Her eye was on Leigh’s, glittering like the eyes of someone with a high fever. At the sight, Leigh was struck with a sudden doubt. She pushed Na’an away from her dome, looking at her more intently
. “Babylon is not programmed to induce pain on activation,” she said, making a point to let her uncertainty show.
Na’an blinked, looking confused, then... she
giggled.
...This was getting a little unsettling.
“Oh, no no no no,” she said, almost snorting.
“I mean, it’s scary when you first turn it on--it doesn’t hurt, exactly, it’s more like someone’s shot lightning right into your brain, or wrapped their fist around your heart and started pumping hot metal instead of blood, or….gods, I can’t even find the words right now, but once it’s on!” She scrambled to her feet, all but bouncing on her toes, and giggled again. Leigh immediately wished she would stop.
“I’ve never felt this good,” she said, hands to her chest as if feeling for her heart.
“It’s like I’m lit up on the inside all at once, like my whole brain’s shooting off sparks. I mean, I’m expanding everywhere, I’m infinite. It’s like, it’s like I could reach out for miles!”She flung her arms wide for emphasis. Leigh almost jumped as the world
responded to the action, the grass and even the wheat a hundred yards away rustling and bowing. Na’an didn’t seem surprised at all, only continuing with increasingly manic energy.
“And you saw what I did down there, that was nothing, I bet I could have wiped the whole colony in seconds if I wanted to--”
Her voice was rising, high and strangely ecstatic, and her hands slipped up her body to knot in her own hair. Leigh’s confusion was rapidly turning into alarm; this kind of emotional reaction had not been anticipated. She checked her scans; her pulse was still increasing with every heartbeat.
“Na’an--”She didn’t seem to notice, or even to look at Leigh anymore; she just continued talking, the words spinning breathlessly out of her mouth like she had no control over them.
“It’s, it’s like I’m barely even me anymore,” she said wildly.
“Like I’m in my body but I’m also this huge all-encompassing thing, I can feel everything around me and it’s so so much, it’s so good I can barely even stand it. Is this what being digital is like? Is this what being powerful feels like? Why didn’t you tell me, if I’d known I would’ve used it months ago, hell, who’d even want to turn this off--”
“It’s not safe!”
That, combined with Leigh suddenly standing up to her full height, finally shut Na’an up. The human seemed to rattle as Leigh grabbed her by the shoulders and spun her forcefully to face her.
“You can’t leave Babylon on for prolonged periods. Humans aren’t designed for sustained adrenal overdosing, it could kill you if you leave it active.” She all but shook Na’an by the shoulders, not even bothering to keep her simulated voice level.
“It should have asked you for a duration before activation. How much time did you give it??”
“I---” Na’an’s eye darted back and forth, trying to remember.
“I think two minutes?”
“You think you gave it two minutes, or you gave it two minutes?”
“...I gave it two minutes.”
Only two minutes. That would be survivable. Painful, but..
.“Right. Okay. Good.” Leigh let go of Na'an's shoulders and simulated a deep breath; unnecessary, but it helped relieve her somehow.
“Listen to me. If you are going to use this feature after all, there are some things I need to tell you.”
****
A few minutes later, Na’an was flat on the ground next to Leigh’s chassis, one arm slung over her face. She groaned dramatically, turning into Leigh’s leg to block the sun from her eyes.
“You weren’t kidding,” she said, her words slightly slurred.
“Adrenaline overdose. Ow.”Leigh was sitting cross-legged in a tamped-down patch of wheat, watching the muscles of Na’an’s back twitch erratically as the high continued to wear off. She had managed to wipe off most of the egg-slime off her legs, and onto the dirt.
“Your tolerance should increase over time, with regular use,” she said, careful to keep her volume lower than usual this time.
“Although with your physiology, I doubt you will ever be able to last longer than about ten minutes before respiratory failure--”
And that was when Na’an laughed.
It took a moment for Leigh to identify it as a laugh. It didn’t resemble the weird, unnatural giggle from a few minutes ago at all; the sound was hoarse and rusty-sounding, surprisingly low for someone with such a tiny body. It wasn’t the laugh Leigh would have expected to hear, had she not heard it from her mother’s memories, and even then it only held a passing resemblance. But Na’an was turning upwards now, and Leigh could see a genuine smile turning the corners of her mouth upwards.
“Well, then,” she said quietly,
“I guess we’ve got another project.”We’ve got another project.
We.
As a hologram, Leigh's face was unable to generate a smile of her own involuntarily. But she could come quite close to it.
“Another project, yes,” she said, careful to deflect from her actual thoughts..
“I assume that means you found what you wanted after all?”Na’an uncurled her fists against her chest in response. Nestled inside one of them was a small red crystal, polished smooth. The sun gleamed against a small, curved flaw in its’ center--a memento of the egg where it had been formed.
“I’ll have to get the rest of the stuff to make it, but fortunately shotos don’t…ugh. Ow. Owwwwwww, it hurts to think.”Now it was Leigh’s turn to laugh.
“You will recover. Just give it time.”
Na’an nodded, and curled back into Leigh’s leg.
“By the way,” she said after a moment,
“I heard you earlier. You used a contraction. ”
“I…” Leigh took a few seconds to replay the last five minutes.
“Is that not common?”
Na’an only laughed again, resting her cheek against the durasteel of Leigh’s thigh.
