September 18th, 3040

By dawn the raging storm was spent down to just an annoying soaking rain, the kind that would likely last all day, but it was better than the frequent lightening strikes and just barely not gale force winds of the previous evening. Travis was up with the dawn, which was his custom, and as he was looking out over the balcony, enjoying his morning coffee, he saw the arrival of the new Strider that had been dispatched. The guards at the gate, were more than a bit vexed by it trotting up by itself, then displaying a hologram of Travis himself, but shying away when ever one of the guards approached it.

“It's ok,” he shouted to them. “It's with me.”

The guards exchanged a look, then went back to their post shelters and the Strider trotted over to the inn and joined the line of the other machine horses awaiting their humans from inside. That accomplished, Travis took his cup with him and wandered down stairs and out to the little porch on the inn that the Striders stood before. “Identify,” he ordered the machine, which stared at him with it's blue light and camera combination, gave an exaggerated nod, then dipped it's head into the 'stand by' posture the other machines had adopted. He took the saddle bag off it's rear hips and went back in side.

The innkeeper and his family were all up, his wife and daughters busy making bread while his two sons were putting the wooden chairs back down on the floor from where they'd been stacked on the tables the night before. “Breakfast, Colonel?” the elder asked him and he nodded.

“Would you do me a kindness and wake Resolved Furahni and inform her I await her pleasure in the main room?”

“Certainly, sir,” the boy replied as he dipped his head and headed to the main stairwell as his father walked over, wiping his hands on his apron.

“You've a lovely family,” Travis complimented which the Innkeeper beamed at.

“My thanks, sir. We appreciate having you as our guests.” He gave the cup in the other man's hand a glance. “Ale?”

“Oh no,” Travis chuckled. “Much too early for me. I'm happy with my coffee, thanks.”

“Coffee?” the other man asked, genuinely curious.

Travis nodded as he sat down at the table and invited the Innkeeper to join him. “It's an Ancient beverage, made from the stones of a berry that originally grew on a bush, thousands of miles from here, across a great water called the Atlantic Ocean. The pit of the berry is roasted then ground into a powder of varying degrees of course or fineness, then hot water is passed through the grounds.” He held up his mug. “Would you care to try some? Though I warn you it's an acquired taste.”

The Innkeeper smiled and shook his head. “No sense acquiring a taste for something that can't be traded in.”

Travis smiled faintly. “Oh, my people are obsessed with it. I imagine there'll be a brisk trade in a few years.”

“You have seedlings of these bushes from across this, what did you call it? Ocean?”

“Seeds, yes, and they were planted earlier this year,” he replied. “Some of many we brought with us. Though they won't mature for a few years yet. I'll bring you some when they have.”

“Very generous,” the Innkeeper complimented. “I'll look forward to it.” His son came down the stairs and waved at Travis.

“She says she'll be with you presently, Colonel.”

“Thank you, young man.”

“And I'll have your breakfast presently,” his father commented as he tipped the cap he wasn't wearing and trod back into his kitchen. Travis opened the saddle bag to find the Focus in a protective case as well as several letters, one of which was actually in the Carja Script. Travis tapped his Focus and immediately a ghostly translation appeared over it.

Travis laughed to himself at his boss's brilliance and mentally tipped his hat to the canny play he was making. Just because you were the strongest kid on the block, didn't make you a match for all the other kids, and it never hurt to be friends with the most popular kid. “That's why he's a CEO and you're just Head of Security,” he told himself softly as he found and put the instruction manual to the Focus with the letter to the king.

There was a letter to him, which he recognized as Ian's handwriting, informing him the storm the previous evening had brought a Stormbird close enough to Fort Carson that he was actually able to over ride it. Unlike the Striders, there wasn't accommodation for human use of the mechanical bird, which was constructed with what seemed an odd mishmash of competing objectives. There were dispersion tanks on either flank that seemed to have been designed for dispersing cloud seeding chemicals, even super cooled materials like dry ice. Which made sense for it's origin as a terraforming robot for GAIA. However, it was obvious HEPHAESTUS had been tinkering with the design. There was a crude kind of directed energy weapon that was an ionizing LASER with a static electricity generator to create an arc of lightening that would generally, but not precisely follow the ionizing path of the LASER. As well as the reports of the Nora who had joined the AmSci that the Stormbird was fond of using those super cooled fluids as a strafing weapon.

Fortunately, the override had worked perfectly and if nothing else, the Stormbird would make a great semi-armed drone, though at least one of the shop boys were lobbying to try and fit a saddle to the damn thing. Somebody seemed to have a death wish.

Travis tisked his teeth at the risk Frank had allowed their tech genius to take, but success covered a multitude of sins as the saying went.

It was then that Resolved Furahni came down the stairs, looking remarkably alert and well rested. Travis wondered how often she got to actually sleep in a bed as she nodded her good morning and sat down with him at the table. “Good Marrow,” she greeted as she gave the Innkeeper's son a wave to request a beverage. “You wanted to see me?”

“Good morning,” Travis replied, and slid the letter to the Sun King to where she could read it. “You'll be using this until we get back to Meridian so you can keep up. I'll apologize ahead of time about the jostling you'll get riding a Strider. You'll want to familiarize yourself with the Focus and how to use it.”

“Ah, so that's what those things are I see you and the Savior wear.”

“Savior?” asked Travis.

“The Seeker, Alloy. She's been affirmed by Sun King Avad as the Savior of Meridian,” Furahni informed him. She took the device from the protection of it's box and held it up. “It's strange so small a thing can do all I read in this paper.”

“The joys of miniaturization,” Travis replied.

“And it can command all machines?”

“No,” Murray corrected quickly. “It's predominately a communications device, allowing people to see and hear each other across great distances. The Strider was overridden back at Fort Carson, then...tied would be the best word, to that Focus. But, of itself, it can't tie other machines.”

“I see,” the other nodded. “Interesting.” She held it up to her right temple as she saw how Travis and the others had worn theirs and was surprised to find it staying their of it's own accord. She looked around, somewhat amazed. “What are all these lights I see?”

“The Focus has a mode we called 'Augmented Reality', where it could see where you were looking, based on the position of your eyes and identify things to bring them to your attention. This particular Focus has our standard information built into it, so you'll find it highlights things that for you would be mundane. You can lower the augmentation to 'Threat' level and it will highlight machines it senses.”

Furahni chuckled and shook her head. “No wonder Aloy was the legendary huntress she's become. With this, anyone could be!” She accepted the mug the Innkeeper brought her and took a sip in gratitude. “So, Colonel, it's a week's walk from Day Tower to Meridian. How much faster with these Striders you command?”

“Two days,” Murray told her. “Though if pressed we could probably cut that down to a bit over a day, but as a new rider I wouldn't recommend that pace.”

The Carja woman was suitably impressed. “What a time I've lived to see.”

“Amen,” Travis echoed.

September 20th, 3040

After two uncomfortable days of trotting along the remains of I70, the party climbed out of Lone Light and into the foot hills around Eagle Canyon and the mesas upon which, Meridian, the Capital of the Sundom was perched. Interestingly, this time the road took them up the rim of the canyon and after rounding a higher mesa, the city and it's main bridge came into view. It was still an impressive sight, even with the scars of the battle with HADES still on it.

Most of the rubble had been cleared and it was obvious crops had been quickly planted, though many of the buildings still showed signs of repair and want of it. The sergeant of the guard had been one of the palace soldiers who had defended the Sun King's Palace under Travis' command and remembered the Ancient. A runner was dispatched ahead and the sergeant escorted the group through the city towards the palace, pointing out all the repairs as they passed them.

By the time the party had reached the palace, the swarthy face of Blameless Marad was waiting for them in his silk suit, a well practiced grin of welcome on his face. “Colonel! Welcome once again to the Sundom. I'm pleased to see Resolved Furahni was able to find you.”

“As luck would have it, Marad, we happened to be in Day Tower, I wanted to consult with Captain Balahn before my people moved against a bandit camp in Devil's Thirst. We didn't want to insult the Sun King by taking action.”

Marad was well pleased and his smile became wider. “That's most considerate of you. Please, feel free to defend your boarders against these bandits, if Balahn did not make that clear. I'm afraid I have you here on much more troubling news.”

“So I hear,” Travis replied. “What's happened?”

The Carja Spy Master looked about at the normal citizens goings and comings near the Palace gate, then back up Travis. “Much,” he declared softly. “But, that's a discussion we should have behind closed doors and away from prying ears. This way.” The group was led into a small garden that was large enough to contain the Striders, then briskly led down and across the small valley between the palace and the Alight where the multi-band broadcast tower of Station Minerva was standing.

The machines Alloy and the other Nora had defeated at the battle were still in the process of being scrapped and the ceremonial buildings that had been damaged in the battle were being repaired, but in the center of the colonnade, on a three meter pedestal made to resemble the broadcast tower stood a statue of the Nora huntress Aloy. The sculptor had captured the fierce Nora girl's likeness well, standing with one foot on a rock, spear in hand and her bow at her back, staring off to the south, the tower to her left.

As soon as she laid eyes on it, Nakoa snickered and failed to keep her amusement to herself. “Oh just wait till Aloy sees this!” she managed around her mirth, making their host, Marad, uncomfortable.

“She...modestly...complained she felt her task unfinished and therefor was unworthy of the honor,” he admitted tactfully. “The Sun King, however, insisted. Here we are,” he gestured at the shattered processing orb, still at the base of the tower. “As I understand it from the Savior when she arrived...”

“Aloy has been here already?” Travis asked.

Marad nodded. “I apologize that the speed of word was not swift enough to save you the journey. In fact, she left this morning. But, what we learned was the Devil HADES somehow escaped the orb and was headed west. The Savior climbed the tower and spoke with someone, a Banuk Shaman named Sylens as I understand it. It was evidently he who engineered the Devil's escape.”

“Where did Aloy go?” Nakoa demanded.

“West,” Marad replied. “We have an embassy about to occur between our furthest outpost, Barren Light, and the savage clan that lives beyond, the Tenakth.”

Travis was immediately concerned. “Savage?”

Marad was somewhat chagrined. “It's called the Forbidden West for a reason. Even before the Red Raids, the Ninth Sun King, Ranan sought to expand the Sundom to the west. We were fought by a collation of four tribes, the more peaceful Utaru, they live in the boarder lands between Barren Light and the lands of the Tenakth. They're skilled farmers for the most part, we learned a considerable amount of our own knowledge of the Farming Trade from them. The other three tribes Lowlanders, Desert and Sky Clans remained united and call themselves jointly the Tenakth. They're a violent, war like people who take tribute of food from the Utaru in exchange for protecting them from the Sundom.”

“Sounds like a new Sparta,” Buck mused to himself. At the Spy Master's inquisitive glance, he elaborated, “An Ancient tribe, ancient even in our time, that consisted of fanatical warriors who trained constantly, becoming legendary soldiers from ancient history.”

“If your Spartans were half as vicious as the Tenakth they would be formidable indeed,” Marad agreed. In his madness, Avad's father sought again to try and conquer the west for additional sacrifices during the Red Raids. We discovered the Tenakth were every bit as fearsome as their legends from Ranan's time warned.”

“And you let Aloy ride out into these killers?” Doc demanded. Marad sighed with long suffering.

“One does not allow, or hinder the Savior if she does not wish to be hindered,” he told her. “However, the Embassy is part of Avad's peace overtures with the Tenakth. Their current Chieftain, Hekarro, has agreed to exchanges of prisoners, kept by the Tenakth after the Red Raids in exchange for tribute from the Sun King. Avad's cousin, Unyielding Fashav the highest born of the captives, is due to be exchanged at this Embassy. If there is a time where Aloy could be granted safe passage through their lands, it is then.”

“When is this Embassy?” asked Travis.

“In a few weeks,” Marad told him. “It's a long walk to Barren Light, if you're going, more than a fortnight on foot, though, with your Striders, I imagine you can make better time. In fact, you'll have company on the journey, should you choose to follow her.”

The Colonel frowned. “Company?”

“The Nora War Chief's son, Varl,” the Carja replied. “He arrived with Aloy yesterday. She went up into the Spire, informed us of what she'd learned, and for whatever reason, left without him. He's provisioning right now to chase her.”

“Can you get him word we're going that way?” Travis asked.

The Spy Master gestured at a soldier who took off at a run. “Done.”

“Buck, see if you can interface your Focus with the tower. Maybe it made a recording of whatever Aloy witnessed. It would be good to have solid information.” The big man nodded.

“You got it, boss.”

Turning back to the Carja, Travis continued, “Blameless, I have a gift for the Sun King, though your agent Furahni is using it currently, a Focus and Strider.”

The other man's eye brows ascended his forehead. “Most Generous, Colonel! Though, I sense some hesitation in your tone?”

“It depends on if you want Furahni to accompany us,” Murray replied. “She'll need to keep using both so she can keep up.”

“I see your point,” Marad declared in a very cagey tone of voice. “Yes, I think it would benefit you to have Resolved Furahni and her knowledge with you. If the Sun King's gift is delayed, I doubt he'll miss what he isn't informed of.”

Travis nodded, filing away the Spy Master's guile for future reference. “I thought you'd think so.”

“Boss,” Buck declared as he ambled up. “You're gonna want to see this.” He touched his Focus and immediately a tiny ghostly Aloy appeared with another man who was evidently communicating with her by the Focus he was wearing. He was an older man of African descent, completely bald and dressed in a tunic of fur and homespun cloth with a metal bandoleer that held a large, rectangular bag at his buttocks behind him. Though it was the blue threads of what appeared to be machine parts implanted into his skin at various places that was truly off putting in a way that it was not obvious if it was some kind of human/machine interface or merely tribal ritual scarification. His hands were clasped behind his back and his tone and bearing dripped with sarcasm and smug superiority.

“Well, Aloy,” he greeted with a small smile. “I see you finally figured it out. To be honest, I'm surprised it took you so long to discover my ruse.”

For her part, the Seeker was disgusted. “You rigged the lance you give me to steal HADES? How could you be so reckless?”

“Reckless?” the other demanded. “You're the one who wanted to purge HADES before it's precious knowledge could be...extracted. The mysterious signal that woke it, for example. Or where to obtain one of those GAIA backups you've been having such a hard time finding.”

“If you knew, why didn't you just tell me?” Aloy snarled, only just keeping her temper in check.

The bald man began to pace back and forth as he considered the much younger woman before him. “I've been having problems of my own these past six months, Aloy. The difference is, I've made progress. So, once your anger at my entirely necessary deception has faded, why don't you come out here and find me in the Forbidden West, and learn all I've discovered?”

“Oh, I'll come find you alright,” Aloy swore through clinched teeth. Sylens, however, was not perturbed by the unvoiced threat.

“Yes, well the coordinates should make it simple enough...” and he paused before throwing salt into the wound of her obvious rage. “Even for you.” The dark skinned man vanished, a smug smile on his face which caused Aloy to clinch her fists and have to swallow her anger. After a moment of visually getting a hold of herself, she sighed and looked up to the heavens.

“There's no other choice,” she whispered to herself and the recording ended.

Olara put a hand on her hip and gestured at the blank space where the hologram had been. “Do you remember your mad scholar?” she asked Buck. “Who built the scaffolds and wanted so desperately into the door at GAIA Prime?” The big man nodded, a wary look on his face. “I'd bet all I have, that was him.”

It turned out Varl was in fact quite glad of company in the face of the dangers of the Forbidden West. The reunion of the young man and the Ancients who had become his tribe's neighbors was jolly and full of smiles. He'd evidently grown a full beard over the summer which gave his otherwise young face character, as Buck was quick to compliment him on. A compliment that clearly embarrassed the young man by his sheepish grin and self effacing body language.

The Sun King threw an impromptu feast, in his surprisingly modest private apartments for the party that was still a small, relatively quiet affair by the Palace's standards. Avad 14th Sun King of the Carja, discarded his royal regalia, dressed in simple linen balloon pants and a vest, though the crown was at rest on the top of his chair, ready to be re-donned at need. The King encouraged Varl to tell of his travels since the Battle of the Alight, and the Nora regaled the group with the story of his five months of tracking Aloy, the Nora Seeker across the South West until finally catching up to her at a strange ruin she had called a launch facility.

“There was a great sky ship of the old ones,” Varl told them with extravagant gestures, indicating it's size. “Still standing against a massive tower of steel and the poured stone of the Ancients.”

“Concrete,” Buck informed him. “It's called Concrete.”

“Concrete,” Varl repeated with a smile. “And around the tower coiled three Slither Fangs that hissed and snarled at each other as if fighting over the metal and the Sky Ship.”

“Slither Fangs?” demanded Nakoa, much to Travis' shock that evidently she hadn't heard of this type of machine either. Varl nodded and again held his arms apart to indicate the size disparity.

“They looked like massive snakes,” he assured her, “but with great hooded backs and at the end of their tails a wicked hook they shook to make a loud, rattling thunder. They spit a terrible acid and killed an entire Oseram Delver team. We found their camp, and what was left of them, just after the room of lies. The Slither Fangs killed them to a man, the poor sods never had a chance.”

“Towers?” demanded Doc with a curious expression on her face. “Ships of the Ancients?”

“Didn't that corporation of billionaires called Far Zenith have a launch facility in Wyoming somewhere?” Buck thought aloud. “I remember there was chatter about it on some of the conspiracy theory forums I followed for a laugh back in the day. Something about forget the world and save yourself as we fly off in outer space?”

“Yes, up by Bitter Creek, in Wyoming,” Travis informed him. “I escorted Frank out there for protection while they gave him the song and dance, but I didn't see the briefing he got. I know he came out livid and shouting at them.”

“There was a recording Aloy and I saw,” Varl told him. “In the Room of Lies. They made a great show about how they were trying to 'Save Humanity' but behind closed doors, it was just a lie. The recording urged these 'elites' as it called them to save themselves and fly to another star. I think he said it's name was Sirius.”

Travis shook his head. “Sounds about right. I recall Frank seemed very pleased with himself when the news broke their ship, the Odyssey blew up when they went to light their fusion drive.” Murray's eyes went back to Varl. “They had a shuttle still on the tower? After all these years?”

The Nora nodded gravely. “Not by much,” he admitted. “Aloy didn't have much trouble dropping it on the Slither Fangs. Though one of the cables held, and it brought the tower down with it. I thought for sure it was the end of Aloy! But she's incredible! She rode the wreckage down, leaping to a cable to swing to safety at the last instant!” He sighed. “Once we cleared the way and got into the,” and he hesitated over the unfamiliar word, “Data Center, I thought we had found a copy of GAIA, but evidently it was a fake. Something about...” and he paused to suss out exactly what he wanted to say. “I remember one of the images that made Aloy angry; the man in it called it a...logic bomb...”

Buck snickered to himself. “That sounds like Travis Tate, self styled 'super hacker.'”

Varl nodded. “He did call himself 'a Tate.' Aloy, she was about to give up, but I suggested we come here. I remembered Aloy said the Shaman Sylens knew a lot about the old world, and Blameless Marad is really good at finding people. It would have been a long walk, but she commanded two Chargers for us and here we are in less than a week.”

For the first time, the Sun King spoke, “And the Savior can command all machines?”

Varl shrugged again. “I can't say all machines, your Radiance, but she snuck up on the two we arrived riding and commanded them. That's how we got back here.” He sighed and gestured to the west. “She spoke with Sylens and then went West.”

“We'll catch up with her,” Travis assured the young man.

“I'm more concerned with this 'Slither Fang',” Nakoa declared. “Your Radiance, do your Carja Scholars keep records of such things?”

The Sun King nodded, but it was Marad who spoke as he snapped his fingers at one of the soldiers by the door. The solider immediately took to his heels through it. “We do indeed, worthy Nora. I'll have someone from the Hunter's Lodge here shortly with what we know of it.”

“We offered the Savior a full escort to the Embassy,” Avad the Sun King declared sadly. “It was, in fact, our intention to accompany the Savior at least as far as Sunfall, but...” he trailed off, lost in his own thoughts.

“She thought we would slow her down,” Varl completed with some rancor. A melancholy air settled over the group and they ate in silence for a time. The feast was quite extensive in it's fare, with an entire roasted turkey, apples, grapes and other fruit, along side salads of greens and vegetables from the gardens below the city with surprising variation and all roasted and prepared to perfection. Finally, there came a knock at the door heralding the return of the guard and an older man not in scholars robes, but dressed in armored clothing, similar to what the Nora wore, but with the precise refinement of the Carja. Trailing after him was a youth, laboring with a massive tome the size of his torso.

The older man stopped before the table and bowed to the Sun King who evidently knew him on sight. “Welcome, Hawk Ligan of the Hunter's Lodge,” Avad told him. “Sit at my table and eat your fill.”

“The honor is entirely mine, Your Radiance,” Ligan replied with a somewhat stiff bow that spoke of old joints complaining over a misspent youth. “I am informed the Sun King's guests request enlightenment about a newer machine? I have brought the King's List of Machines to shine the light of knowledge for them.” He opened the book the youth carried to a marked place and used him as an intelligent pedestal to walk about the table so all could see the drawing.

“The Slither Fang, guests of his Radiance! A terrible machine of the Hunter Killer type. A full twenty four steps long, with a maw that can swallow a man whole, when it isn't spitting a particularly strong acid that can kill a man and reduce him to a puddle of blood and viscera with a single blast. It travels quickly underground, digging a tunnel the size that a full grown man can walk upright in. This is not a machine for the new to hunting to attempt. My advice to your noble guests is that if they see one, they give it a wide berth.”

“No shit!” rumbled Buck as he saw the rendering. “Kind of a sick cross between a King Cobra and a rattle snake!”

“Taken to the usual obscene scale,” Doc added a shudder.

Buck caught Travis' eye when he saw the picture. “What do you think, boss? Fifty, sixty feet?”

“With this figure for scale? Easily,” Travis replied.

To Hawk Ligan, Doc asked, “Does this thing have any weak spots? Some kind of leverage we can have if we can't give it wide berth?”

Ligan rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “The acid sacks are noted in green on the drawing and can be pierced by most arrows. This will douse the machine in it's own Metal Bite acid and remove the spitting attack, but be weary! The sack is under considerable pressure and will burst with some force.”

“Here's hoping it doesn't come to that,” Travis muttered softly to himself.

September 23th, 3040

Three days of hard riding and cold camps in the wilderness just long enough to let the Striders recharge their Blaze canisters, finally brought the group to a high mesa overlooking a narrow canyon running out of the Pine Valley mountains along what had been called the Virgin River. “Look at that,” whispered Nakoa in awe of what she saw. The mountains parted as a curtain to reveal a narrow valley through which ran a creek or stream desperately intent on becoming a river. The Sun was setting down the mouth of the valley that ran in an ambling due west direction, which made it's significance to the Carja obvious.

On this edge of the bluff where they stood was a stone dwelling with a guard wall to keep machines out of the courtyard. Just beyond it, anchored into the building was a pair of massive iron chains that ran down into valley to a small promontory upon which sat a matching domicile at it's base. Next to the dwelling was a platform that hung from the chains with a complicated cog and gear system that appeared to be hand cranked so the platform could ride down the chain like a cable car.

“There's no way,” Olara swore after a single glance at the contraption.

Buck shrugged expressively as he leaned over his Strider's neck. “Either ride or climb,” he declared pragmatically. “Riding lets us keep the Striders.”

The door into the stone house opened, revealing a round faced, somewhat rotund man of east Asian ethnicity. He wore the metal fastened to leather armor in the style favored by the Oseram, in his case strips of leather with iron rings sewn to it, which were then gathered into a bib or apron, then held in place by a wide leather belt with a much larger ring over his stomach. It looked like a weightlifters or a wrestling champion's belt. A set of leather sewn to thick cloth protected his shoulders and outer arms down to his hands. He blinked in surprise to see the strangers on his doorstep. “Sparks from steel!” he swore, with a smile slowly spreading across his face. “Does everybody ride machines now?”

“You've seen a machine rider before?” Nakoa demanded.

“That I have!” he answered quickly with a gesture at her. “And a Nora as well! Took her down myself, a couple of hours ago. You kin of hers?”

“Aloy came through here?” Nakoa demanded. Travis shared a wink with Varl.

“Told you we'd catch up,” he declared then, turned back to the Oseram. “No,” Travis informed him. “We're not kin of Aloy. I'm Colonel Travis Murray, and my tribe are called the AmSci.”

“I'm Karhn,” the Oseram declared, then his eyes got wide and he pointed back at Travis. “I've heard of your people! The Captain of the Vanguard, uh, Erend is his name, he told me about how you defended Meridian.” The man drew up short and leaned in to whisper, “Are you really Ancients?”

Travis dismounted Black Jack and chuckled, holding out a hand the other shook vigorously. “We are,” he admitted, then gestured at the gondola behind Karhn. “Does this thing actually work?”

“Oh, sure,” Karhn bragged with a dismissive gesture. “I've been the Chain Lift Keeper for five winters now. People and supplies go into the Daunt, shards, minerals and just about everything else comes out. Why, it was the Chain Lift that kept the wild Tenakth from invading further east!”

Travis nodded thoughtfully. Turning back to his group, he declared, “Alright, we'll probably need to take the Striders down one at a time. I'll go down first with Black Jack to hold the landing, then...”

“Oh, I'm sorry,” Karhn interrupted, “I can't take you down.”

“Why not?” Travis demanded.

Karhn walked over to the edge of the platform, a platform without a railing and far too close to the edge for Travis' liking. He encompassed the entire valley with his gesture. “The Daunt,” he proclaimed. “The whole valley, is infested with a new machine. They're called Bristlebacks, nasty things, huge, angry, acid...” he gave a dismissive gesture. “Weird thing is they're not native to the Daunt, but an entire herd of them just showed up from somewhere yesterday. I'm under strict instructions not to let anyone down until they're dealt with. Until I hear the whistle blow down in Chainscrape it's all clear.”

“What's a Chainscrape?” Travis demanded. Karhn pointed with a gloved hand at a settlement halfway down the valley with a massive, circular dome of a building at it's center. Travis pulled on his chin as he thought, then turned back to the Oseram and declared, “You just said you took Aloy down a couple of hours ago.”

“I...uh...well...”

“Karhn,” Travis interrupted, with a friendly grip on his shoulder. “Let's not let our time together turn ugly. We're chasing down a threat to all life on this planet.” He caught the other man's eye to emphasize again, “All life. I couldn't care less about Bristlebacks or whistles from Chainscrape. Ok?”

Karhn's eyes darted from Travis to the rest of the group whereupon Buck cracked his knuckles loudly. “Well, it's your funeral, I guess.” Murray dug into his pocket and handed a small coin to the Keeper. “What's this?”

“A United States of America quarter dollar,” Travis told him with a smile. “The Ferryman is worth his toll.”

“What's a United States of America?”

Travis smiled at him. “You're standing in it. A thousand years ago, this land was called Utah, it was a state, of fifty others, that made up the USA. And that was the coin of the realm, so to speak.” Karhn's eyes went huge.

“A real coin of the Ancients?”

“Keep it under your hat,” Travis advised him. He walked over to the lift and raised the gate to step onto it. “Black Jack,” he called and pointed, causing the Strider to docilely walk behind him onto the lift and stand still.

“You're not going anywhere without me,” Nakoa declared as she slid off her Strider's back and joined him on the lift, Snow Flake behind her. “Will this hold two Striders weight?”

“Seems to,” Karhn replied as he closed the gate, and maned the crank. “Going down.” With a groan and rattle of gears, the gondola began it's decent, dangling between the two chains with a set of gears on a car on each that was attached to a bundle of massive wooden beams that came down and became both the housing of the gears and handle the Oseram cranked as well as the platform they stood on. Nakoa watched the man at work for a moment, then, finally satisfied they weren't about to plummet to their deaths, she leaned up against her husband and sighed.

“It's a beautiful view, isn't it?” Travis asked her as the land slowly rose to meet them.

“Have you been here before?” Nakoa asked him. “In the Ancient Time?”

Travis nodded thoughtfully, then removed his binoculars from their protective case. “Son of a bitch,” he whispered as he handed her the glasses and pointed. She looked through them, finding a skeleton of a stone and log building only just standing on the south bank of the creek. “That's Zion Lodge,” he informed her. “Or, what's left of it. I stayed there once on a leave from Cheyenne Mountain. This whole area was once called Zion National Park.”

“It looks like it was once a very beautiful place,” she told him, used to these little bouts of nostalgia that went with being the wife of a man over a thousand years her senior.

“Zion?” asked Karhn. “Odd word. What does it mean?”

“It refers to ancient kingdom,” Travis told him. “Long before even my time, so three or four thousand years ago, and thousands of miles to the east, over the Atlantic Ocean.”

The man grunted from his labor of turning the crank. “Today is full of surprises!”

“I just hope we can catch up with Aloy and get safe passage through this 'embassy.'”

Karhn laughed a strained laugh. “That might be a problem.”

“How's that?” demanded Nakoa.

“I brought the Sun Priest and his party down yesterday,” Karhn informed her. “He's the man supposed to run the Embassy, but he was still at the landing when I brought down the Savior a few hours ago. Pompous git if you ask me.” The car finally arrived at the landing, but the lower house was deserted, with only a few barrels and bags at what was likely some kind of custom's house. Karhn hesitantly shied around the Striders and raised the rail so that they could exit. “Now, you'll want to be careful,” he cautioned them. “Normally there would be soldiers here, but they've been pulled back to Chainscrape since the work stoppage.”

Travis pulled his AR15 around into a patrol low ready carry. “We'll be fine,” he assured the Keeper. “Black Jack, out and graze. Perimeter fifteen meters.”

The Strider gave an exaggerated nod and filed out and through the open gate to begin grazing beyond it. “Snow Flake, you too,” Nakoa ordered. Once the car was empty the Keeper returned to his crank and it began to rise again.

“He's going to get a heck of a workout today,” Travis opined as he watched the car ascend the chain.

“Honey,” Nakoa called, standing by the side of the customs house that had a piece of parchment affixed to it. “Look at this.”

Travis walked over, keying on his Focus as he did so. Instantly, the device at his temple 'read' the Carja glyphs and then holographically laid over them the translation in English. “By mandate, mandate he says!” Travis chuckled. “By mandate of Commander Nozar,” he continued. “All residents of the Daunt are herewith informed of the following:” He shared a glance with his wife and continued to read.

“The gates between Barren Light and No Man's Land are hereby ordered shut and sealed in expectation of the imminent Embassy. None are allowed passage either way until further notice. No exception will be made, regardless of clan, house or tribe. Based on previous grievances and misunderstandings, let it be clear that no exceptions will be made for the Oseram either. Any outstanding arrangements made pertaining to passage are hereby declared postponed or void, depending on the nature and timing of the arrangement. No Exceptions will be made. Again, to eliminate any doubts should they remain: ALL OF THE ABOVE PERTAINS TO THE OSERAM REGARDLESS OF CIRCUMSTANCES, EXCUSES, OR SO-CALLED BINDING CONTRACTS! Any complaints and/or restitution (if at all applicable) can be addressed to Captain Lawan, my second-in-command. Signed in the Light of the Sun, Nozar Arin Khuvaman, Commander of Barren Light.” Travis chuckled to himself. “Sounds like a charming fellow.”

“Sounds like a typical Carja to me,” Nakoa opined.

Travis tapped his Focus to make the translation disappear, and smiled at his wife. “I'm sure. Once we get everybody down, as late in the day as it is, we'll probably stay the night in this 'Chainscrape' and head into Barren Light in the morning.”

“That's what I love about you, darling,” Nakoa told him returning his smile. “Your sunny optimism!”

September 23th, 3040

The Sun had dipped below the far mountain ranges in the west, making for a hazy twilight when Karhn brought Varl, Furahni and their Striders down, finally reuniting the party. In the growing dark, the blue lights of machines began to stand out in the shade, underscoring the urgency of getting to somewhere either defensible, or behind a wall and a gate. Once they were off loaded, the man made a weary gesture of parting and began to slowly crank his way back up to the top of the ridge. Once the group was assembled, and mounted once more, Travis turned to Furahni and asked, “What can we expect at this Chainscrape?”

The woman's face grimaced. “I'm not an expert in these matters west, but I do know of Chainscrape and Barren Light beyond it,” she assured him. “Chainscrape is the newer of the two; built long after the Red Raids. It serves as a mining town and intermediate settlement for the Oseram workers and quarry-men who are rebuilding Barren Light.”

“Rebuilding?” asked Doc.

The Carja hunter nodded at the Ancient Medic. “Yes. Barren Light was captured and destroyed in the Red Raids. It was a prison and staging area for captives taken in the Forbidden West on their way to the Sun Ring.”

“And sacrifice,” growled Olara.

“It was an evil time,” Frahni agreed. “The Tenakth hated it with good reason. Barren Light was heavily damaged by the Tenakth who wanted to raze it to the ground, but didn't have the means to do so. Nor the skill the hold what was left when the Carja army pushed them back into their own lands.”

Buck laughed without mirth. “There's a moral in here somewhere with all this land changing hands back and forth.

“Be that as it may,” Murray interjected. “What about Chainscrape?”

The Carja Huntress shrugged. “It's a mining town. There's a Carja Magistrate, but it's predominately Oseram in character. There'll be at least a few Oseram men calling themselves 'Ealdormen' which is an Oseram rank of standing within the clans of their tribe. How much real authority they have will depend on the Magistrate. There is an inn of fairly large size to accommodate newcomers intent on working the Daunt, and since there are Oseram, there will be a brewery. Beyond that? Anyone's guess.”

Travis nudged Black Jack to the head of the little column, making a point to look each of his party in the eye as he did so. “Well, it's getting dark, so let's be about this. I make it half a mile down this track to Chainscrape, but with this lush vegetation, there will be plenty of ambush spots for machines, or bandits, so keep your eyes open. If we're engaged, Varl, Buck and I will counter ambush. Nakoa will lead Olara, Doc, and Furahni ahead to stage as a reaction force in case there are more than we can handle.” He turned to his wife, over the complaint of the Carja Huntress who held her tongue at a soft gesture from Varl. “Nakoa, I'll leave that counter attack, if any, to your discretion.”

“As you say, husband,” she replied tersely. “Even if we are at least the warriors you three are.”

“Call it Ancient Chivalry,” Buck told her with a grin. “The damsels in distress can come save the knights in shining AR15s.”

“What is a Knight?” demanded Furahni, but Olara only shook her head and rolled her eyes as she made a dismissive gesture.

“My man is being a man,” she confided the Carja woman. “Pay him no mind.”

That settled, the Striders trotted down the track at a spirited pace. The dark only gathered closer, lit by the blue LEDs that surrounded the camera 'eyes' of the Striders. The trail dipped further down into the valley, away from the high cliffs of the surrounding mountains, until only the blue light of Black Jack and Snow Flake lit the way forward and beyond it the golden hue of fires from Chainscrape. The valley held the little stream through it's center and it widened a bit into a mill pond around the wooden palisades of Chainscrape to protect the town itself, and a water wheel that was powering something, possibly a mill, inside the town.

As they rounded the last bend and the last few hundred feet between the gates and the travelers, Buck's basso voice called out, “Contact left! Eleven O'clock!”

Travis' eyes jerked into the direction finding a pair of men, leaning heavily on each other as if wounded. They were fording the stream, to get to the town, but between it and them, staring them down were a pair of Watcher type machines. The machines were the size of a big dog, with snake like bodies held up by a pair of legs in the middle with a long tail to keep their balance. The lights around their single head/eye were bright red, indicating the watchers saw the two humans and were preparing to attack. There were calls of alarm and arrows from the walled encampment, but the machines meant to have the two.

Without a second of hesitation, Travis, and Buck had their ARs up and roaring. Furahni and Varl cried out in surprise, covering their ears, but the Striders took no notice of the rifles. Their rounds slammed into the Watchers, jerking them sideways into the stream. Immediately both machines shorted out in a shower of sparks and explosions. “Nakoa, get everyone to Chainscrape, Buck with me!”

“Follow!” Nakoa spat, urging Snow Flake up to a gallop leading the larger of the group to the Oseram palisade while Travis and Buck rode to the two men. Their uniforms were blood soaked, but still legible as the orange and white striped linen and leather of the Vanguards, the personal soldiers of the Sun King. As the two pulled up, the more wounded of the two, holding his side looked up and started.

“I know you!” he declared to Travis. “Colonel Murray, right?” The speaker was a rugged man stepping between his youth and his prime. His florid complexion had bruises showing through the tunic where there wasn't blood, though his brown Mohawk haircut was still suitably upright. He wore mutton chop whiskers down both sides of his face, but shaved his chin which showed his teeth clinched in real pain.

“How are you, Captain Erend?”

The Oseram mercenary winced while Travis slid off his Strider, into the stream to help him. “Been better,” Erend grunted. “Two ribs busted, I think. That miracle worker Tracy still with you?”

“We'll get you fixed up,” Travis assured him as he took Erends weight from his companion, who Buck was already helping. “Think you can ride on the back of a Strider?”

Erend eyed Black Jack warily as the machine's gaze turned to him. “Think I'd rather walk if it's all the same?”

Murray only chuckled and turned their steps towards the gate. “Your call. Black Jack, follow.” With much splashing and cursing the men arrived at the town's gate, finding it barred before them with Nakoa and the rest of the party fuming on their Striders. Erend went to bang on the gate, but Travis discouraged him. “Buck? Would you mind?”

The big man chuckled and struck his fist three times on the timbers that had them booming. “Open up!” he shouted.

“Who's there?” demanded a somewhat frail sounding voice from the other side.

Erend stood up a bit straighter against Travis so that he could painfully shout, “Erend Vanguardsman! Captain of the Kings Own Vanguard! Open in the name of the Sun King!” There was a moment of muffled conversation, likely one concerning the consequences for disobeying the order. Then the sounds of wood scraping over metal as the gate was unbarred and swung open. In the firelight were a handful of other soldiers who immediately trotted forward to take up Erend and the other man with him. Behind these was a thinner, almost slight man with five o'clock shadow in a tanned complexion and a silk Carja suit that must have been magnificent when he put it on, but was now quite wrinkled and frumpy Over this was scarlet cape with machine parts sewn into as if it was some kind of badge of office and a matching hat that vaguely resembled a baker's cap with metal plates forming an arched ridge, rather like a house, with cords draped under it in a manner that put Travis in mind of patriotic bunting for a Fourth Of July party.

The man started at the machines standing docilely behind even rougher looking strangers and stammered, “Wh...what's the meaning of this? Who are you people?”

“They're the people who saved the Captain of the Vanguard, Javad!” Erend snapped, while actively resisting being 'helped' by his other men. The red cloaked man, Javad, evidently, made a gesture of concession as Erend waved his hand between the groups. “Javad, this is Colonel Travis Murray, who in addition to being a living Ancient, led the defense of the Palace of the Sun King himself during the Battle of the Alight. Colonel Murray, this is Javad the Willing, Magistrate of the Daunt.”

The man blinked, then rushed forward to present his hand, which Travis took. “An honor to hostel one of the Heroes of the Battle of the Alight,” he declared quickly. “AND an Ancient? Truly? Come in, please, ah, Colonel, was it? Are...are those machines under your control?”

“They are, Magistrate. If there's some place we can corral them, that would be excellent. They won't bother anyone if they aren't bothered.” He paused and looked over his shoulder. “Doc, you take the wounded up to the tavern there, see about treating Erend and his partner. I'll be along presently to settle for our stay.”

“Oh, absolutely not!” Javad interjected as forcefully as a man in his position could. “You and your party are guests of the Sun King! I will see to it once, ah, your...machines are taken care of. This way, please, Colonel.”

“That's very generous of you, Magistrate,” Travis assured him. The Colonel and his party relieved their mounts of their saddlebags, most following Tracy up the hill whose Focus was already pulling diagnostic images from Erend and his man. Nakoa fell in step with Travis as he was leading Black Jack who in turn was leading the Striders.

“We're going to have a discussion you won't enjoy,” she warned her husband.

“I know,” Travis replied as the Magistrate led them to an enclosure that looked like a horse corral at first glance, but was lined with people who were cheering on some kind of scuffle within the ring. “What's this?”

Nakoa sniffed in appreciation before wiping her nose with the back of her arm. “A fighting ring. It has more rules than a bar room brawl, so fits of temper can be culled without having to dig a grave after. Or fill up a jail with drunkards instead of true criminals awaiting their sentence.”

“Odurg, if you would?” declared Javad, probably in the most commanding way he was capable of. Odurg, a large man covered in Oseram type armor of rings of various diameter sewn into leather from his head to his feet, nodded and slid off the split rail fence that defined the circle. There was nothing showy about this gear, unlike the Carja armor built into their uniforms, this was the fighting gear of a man who lived his life in combat. What little skin that could be seen through it was a chocolate brown.

“Hold!” he shouted in a voice used to shouting. One of the combatants took advantage of the confusion to land an extra hit, drawing the Pit Master's ire. “I said, 'hold!' scorch it!” he bellowed again, knocking the over eager combatant to the ground with a tremendous back hand.

“What? What did we do?” the other asked in confusion, but Odurg only waived at the Magistrate in answer. Odurg effortlessly picked up the man he'd knocked to the ground and shoved both towards the railed fence behind them.

Javad let himself into the center of the ring and began to slowly rotate in place as he spoke. “Gentles! Subjects of the Sun King! It is with regret that I must declare this fighting ring closed for the night.” Boos and catcalls immediately rose in the air, but Odurg crossed his thick arms across his thicker chest and they fell quiet again. “We have guests of the Sun King! Heroes of the Realm! And they require the use of this ring to hold the Striders they ride. As such, and as they can be dangerous, no one, save the members of this party should enter the ring with the Striders. Those who scoff at this warning, their blood is on them. So declares the Sun!”

With that, the crowd realized the spectacle was finished for the night and began to drift up hill towards the tavern. Black Jack led the Striders into the enclosure, then his lit 'face' turned to Travis for instruction. Travis turned to Javad who asked, “Do...do they require anything else?”

“Water, if it's convenient and if you have some pig slop that would be helpful,” Travis told him.

“Pig slop?” demanded Odurg, as he removed his helmet and held it against his side. “What for? What do machines 'eat' anyways?”

“Strictly speaking, they don't eat,” Travis informed him. “The slop and water is processed into what you call Blaze. It's stored in these canisters on their back hips, here. The Blaze is what they run on.”

“Well, why didn't you ask for that?” Odurg demanded. “Blaze I have.” He walked over to a barrel and removed the lid. “Here, they can drink their fill.”

“Thank you,” Murray assured him, then turned back to Black Jack. “Have each of the herd drink to full in turn, then go into stand by. Do not leave this ring without an authorized user leading you. Defend yourselves if needed.” Black Jack tossed his head in an exaggerated nod, then ambled over to the barrel as the other Striders made a line behind him, where he drank in the Blaze.

“The things you live to see,” Javad whispered.

“Oh, you have no idea,” Travis corrected him.

In the Tavern, Tracy's Focus had already revealed Erend's ribs were only cracked, not broken and she'd wrapped his chest in a nanite infused smart cast that would allow him to move gently, but go rigid if he attempted a movement that might compound the injury. The Innkeeper and Javad had a conversation, that led to the somewhat rotund Keeper to begin to ladle a thick, meaty looking stew into bowls while his daughters drew beer into wooden tankards and his wife began to slice a still steaming loaf of bread for the group. Travis and Nakoa where given their portions, then with a meaningful glance, Nakoa led the way to a quiet corner in the back of the eating area. “We're fighting publicly?” he asked jocularly, only to get a dirty look from her as she sat down.

“We're only fighting if you make it one, Husband,” she informed him quietly. “I have grievance and you well know it.”

Murray put his stew, beer and bread on the table, then his AR15 from across his shoulders that was propped into the corner behind him, after he checked again it was on safe. “Grievance?” he asked softly as he sat down. “Is protection of the love of my life a grievance?”

She sighed with somewhat exaggerated force through her nose and took a drink of her beer to get herself calm. “Grievance may be a strong word,” she conceded, after. “Are we not partners? Why do you insist on being overly cautious with me?”

Murray took a bite of the stew and, finding it a bit bland, removed a salt shaker from his mess kit pouch, and added a judicious amount. “Yes,” he admitted after a second bite was to his liking. “We are partners, though I would not say I am being overly cautious. You are pregnant, this is my first child, and I am already worried about you. Now I worry about both of you.”

“I am pregnant, not ill,” she declared firmly. “I am a Nora Brave, and I'm not even showing yet. Doc tells me there were many women from your time who would be pregnant longer than I am now and not know it. They lived their lives and went about their work without being carried about on a litter!”

“I'm not...”

Her amber eyes came up from the stew, hard and resolute. “I will not be coddled, husband,” she declared flatly. “I will pull my weight in this party. I know my limits, and I am never unaware of our child in my belly. Is any of what I ask unfair?”

“Do you truly resent me for wanting to protect you?”

Her spoon went into the stew with a wet plop! Her face softened, and she reached across the little table to squeeze his hand. “No. I love you because you make me of higher perseverance than your own safety. I love you because you did not hesitate to come to my side the day we met. But for that, you must give me my own say in my life, even as I share it with you, and allow me to do what I am good at!” Her eyes went coy. “Outside of our bed as well as in.”

He smirked at her. “Letting you do what you're good at in our bed is how we got into this argument.”

“Are you complaining?”

“No.”

“Good.”

“By the forge!” interjected a new, gravelly voice in genuine pleasure. “Is my luck changing? You come to trade him, Nora girl?” Both Travis and Nakoa's eyes were drawn deeper into the tavern to take in an approaching Oseram woman. She was a zaftig lass, bound in leather and metal that accentuated that she still had a figure, however full it was. On her head was a brown rag doing it's best to contain her black hair, but it was peeking through in errand locks around her head. She wore a linen tank top for lack of a better description under a leather corset that was festooned with metal rings and studs like some kind of cross between the Renaissance and Mad Max. There was a grin on her round face, despite the attire, as she ambled over, a tankard in one hand and her ample breasts desperately trying to escape the corset she was wearing.

“Petra!” the two exclaimed, then Travis continued, “What are you doing here?”

She pulled a chair from another table and sat herself down to make room for herself and the small table Nakoa and Travis were using. “Damn brewery is the only thing you can count on in this place!” she declared with a grin. “Well, after the battle of Meridian, I went back to Free Heap, but realized it was running smooth; didn't need me. I heard about the rebuilding at Barren Light, figured they could use another hammer and here I am! Been scraping by ever since.”

Nakoa leaned in towards the other woman. “Just to be clear, I'm not here to trade my husband.” She paused and shot Travis and gimlet glance. “Even if I'm given thought of it now and again.”

“Hey now...!”

Petra waved off Travis' objection. “Oh that's just Marital Malfunctions! They'll pass, big man!” There was an up swell of the conversation across the bar that was between Javad and other, bigger man, dressed in the Oseram fashion. Petra nodded towards it. “But then, Chainscrape has always been a few tools short of a kit. And right there? That's the biggest the biggest tool of all!”

“Not our land! Not our problem!” the big man declared, jabbing a finger into the Carja Magistrate's chest.

“The Bristlebacks are everyone's problem, Ulvund!” the Magistrate countered hotly. Petra turned back to her table mates and winked.

“He's a story best told over a cold beer! And, lucky for us, we have them!”

Nakoa bent around so she could see the argument, then turned back to Petra. “So, what is his story?”

“It's a long one,” Petra replied. “Let me see if I can mill it down to table size. From what the old timers tell me, Ulvund got here early; even before the Brewery was done! No one knows where he got the shards, but he started buying into every claim worth something. One day the Bristlebacks come rampaging through the valley, like they were blasted out of a forge.” She became maudlin for a moment. “We lost some good people.” She sniffed and turned the maudlin into disgust. “Still, Ulvund was never one to pass up turning a screw to his own enrichment, so he starts spreading that the Carja are responsible for them.”

“How are the Carja to blame?” demanded Travis.

Petra gave a dismissive wave. “Oh, they're not. Nobody knows how the Bristlebacks got into the Daunt. There's only two ways in or out; the Chain Lift or through the gates of Barren Light, and the Carja control both. No way they're letting machine's that big in. But, if Ulvund can make people think the Carja are at fault, he can gin up all kinds annoyances. Labor disputes, work stoppages, all leverage to get Javad to sign his concession decree.”

“His what?” asked Nakoa around a mouthful of beer.

Petra smirked and winked at her. “That's the key to everything. This is Carja land, even though we Oseram outnumber them twenty to one, the Sun King can revoke our mining and timber claims on a whim. Avad doesn't seem to be the type to play dirty with the claims, he's too interested in peace and making up for his father and the Red Raids. But he could. And that freezes up the bank roll back in the Claim to put real money into these operations in the Daunt. A concession, on the other hand, would make Oseram law the defining factor. Everybody in The Claim would be falling over themselves to invest here and Ulvund has stakes in everything. More than enough shards to buy himself the title of Ealdorman!”

Travis cleared his mouth and asked, “There aren't Ealdormen already here?”

“Oh they've come and gone,” Petra assured him. “They get here, see the value, but Ulvund got here first. He's got a claim stake in every operation that will make money, and enough of a stake that the late comers realize it's all just a prettied up scam. They move on looking for greener pastures.”

“Oh,” remarked Travis as he lifted his tankard, “The new world is just like the old. How refreshing.” He would have said more, but Erend came over, using his massive, double handed hammer as a crutch.

“Eh, excuse me, Colonel, can I have a word?”

Petra looked up at the Vanguard and evidently liked what she saw. “You can have more than one with me, Vanguard!” she declared saucily, but stood and gave up her chair. “Come see me when you're done.”

“Oh I will...” he started, then winced in pain as he sat down. “Maybe just a little later.” Petra winked at him and wandered off as Erend slowly turned in the chair to better face Travis and Nakoa. “I, I want to thank you, again, Colonel. For the timely arrival and Tracy's skill. She did me a solid.”

“Any time, Captain,” Travis assured him.

He winced again and laid his tankard on the table. “Uh, I also have a request from Javad the Willing...”

“Here it comes,” muttered Nakoa darkly.

“No, it's my fault,” Erend affirmed quickly. “I was boasting a little loud, about how Tracy patched me up, and Javad overheard. Ran my yap out of turn, about how magical Tracy's skill was and how her Focus could see right into me to fix me up. Javad then wanted to know what else it could see and...”

“And now Javad wants us to look into how the Bristlebacks got into the Daunt so he could get some leverage against Ulvund, right?”

“Er, well, yeah.” The mercenary frowned in confusion. “How do you know about Ulvund?”

“Word of mouth,” Travis intimated. “What's the status of the Embassy?”

“Oh, well, no worries there,” Erend assured him. “I'm the head of the escort conducting 'Studious' Vuadis,” and he indicated a larger, older man in the red robes and hood of a Carja Sun Priest across the tavern from them, “to Barren Light. We're pretty much stuck here until the Bristlebacks are taken care of. No Vuadis, no Embassy.”

Travis looked at his wife who sighed and nodded. “Alright Erend, you can tell Javad I'm willing. Nakoa and I will look into it at first light.”

Later, in their room, Nakoa squatted in Travis' lap, his head in her hands and their eyes locked as she showed her skill and love of her husband. Travis caressed her back as he held her and kept her balance as she slowly rose and fell in his lap and considered himself the luckiest man alive.

September 24th, 3040

Travis had always been an early riser, and now that the entire world was measuring time with events rather than clocks, he found that being out in the world far more to his liking than being back at Fort Carson. He'd arisen just as the dawn was about to brighten the horizon over the Sundom and dressed, gently waking Nakoa when he'd done so. “The sun up already?” she asked sleepily as she sat up in the bed, as he opened the shutters over their window to catch what few rays of light were beginning to bloom in the east.

“Almost,” he told her with a smile as he started prepping his gear for the day. From the pouch of loose, extra rounds in his saddle bag, he topped off the magazine of the rounds he'd fired saving Erend the day before. “I thought you'd like to beat the crowd for breakfast and get an early start.”

She sat up in the bed and stretched, magnificently nude and drawing his gaze. “I preferred the early ending of last night, but work before pleasure.”

“We're going to have a large family, I see,” he chuckled as he watched her fish for her traveling clothes and the armored clothing King Avad had given her before the Battle of the Alight. Some part of Travis resisted calling the leather and metal crop top and bolero style jacket 'armor' but she had explained to him more than once her style of fighting emphasized movement over protection. Leaving her stomach bare let her move more freely while still protecting her limbs and torso.

It was sexy as hell, but he wasn't sure it stood up to being called 'armor'.

Still, both dressed and ready, the pair descended into the tavern to find the innkeeper and his wife and daughters busily baking bread while his two sons were struggling with replacing the massive barrel of ale for the coming day. The couple settled on the bar near where the innkeeper was getting the fire under his grill to his satisfaction. “Good morning, innkeeper,” Nakoa greeted him and he looked up with a smile from his task.

“Well met, heroes of the Alight!”

Travis chuckled and waved off the accolades. “Please, nothing so grandiose. I'm Travis Murray, and this is my wife, Nakoa.”

“Milduf Boarbroiler,” he proclaimed as he got back to his feet and took a basket full of eggs from one of his daughters as she passed. “I'll have eggs, however you like, with fresh bread and bacon. Ale?”

“Hot water,” the couple replied in unison as they fetched the coffee and sugar ration from their kits. “Too early for beer for me,” Travis added. Milduf shrugged and filled a large pot to put on one corner of his griddle.

“I'll have it for you shortly. Eggs? Bacon?”

“Yes, please,” Travis assured him. “We both liked scrambled and I prefer my bacon soft, rather than crisp.”

“Certainly,” the Innkeeper declared, cracking six eggs into a clay bowl to beat into a slurry. Once that was to his liking, he began to grind herbs and other plants into it. “Magistrate Javad tells me you are of the AmSci tribe? A tribe of Ancients somehow still alive?”

Murray chuckled as he spooned coffee powder into his canteen cup. “Yes, it's true, we...slept is the best way to describe it. From the old time to now.”

Milduf poured the slurry onto his griddle that sizzled nicely as he folded the eggs onto themselves, then quickly added several strips of bacon, fresh cut from a pig belly a young man was still butchering. The smell was incredible, even over the faint wiff of stale beer that every bar or tavern seemed to have. “I can't imagine such a thing,” Milduf opined as he expertly managed the eggs and bacon. The water just shy of boiling, he brought the pot over and filled their canteen cups, starting a bit from the black liquid that arose. “What...?”

“It's called coffee,” Nakoa told him with a grin. “The AmSci will make a kings ransom on it once the bushes mature.”

“Really? Astounding. And what an odd aroma.” He put the pot aside and began to dish up the breakfast to his only customers so far that morning. “What else for you?” he asked with a smile.

“Information, if you know it,” Nakoa countered. “The Bristlebacks? Where were they first seen?”

“Oh, that's easy,” he said. “They came down the hills by the quarry. It's between us and Barren Light, you can't miss it. Out the west gate and straight on and you'll come to it. Or, what's left of it. The Bristlebacks were incensed when they attacked, killed or destroyed everything and everyone.”

“So they're a Hunter Killer machine? Like the Thunderjaw?” Nakoa asked, but the Innkeeper shook his head.

“No, that's what so odd. They're Transport machines. Have a huge cargo pod in their belly. I remember seeing caravans of them in The Claim, as a young man. Taking who knows what into the Cauldrons up there. Generally, if you give them a wide berth, they ignore you. These? They're angry.”

Nakoa exchanged a significant glance with her husband and both tucked into their breakfast, which surprised them both with the expert seasonings. They figured they would need the fuel for their day.

Black Jack and Snow Flake were both at full charge when retrieved from the fighting ring/corral, letting them trot out the West Gate of Chainscrape to the gaze of over awed guards that gave the Machine Riders a wide berth. From there, it was a cool ride down the valley with the sun just peaking over the mountains behind them as they did, painting everything in a ruddy gold of light and shadow.

Milduf had been correct to note the quarry could not be missed, it was a deep gouge of red sandstone the size of a stadium cut into the north face of the valley. There had been a rail track to move the blocks down to the river and, likely, thence to Barren Light, but it was mostly wreckage now. In fact, all of the quarry works and cranes had sustained major damage, though there was ample evidence of repairs being in progress. One of the machines had been felled at the edge of the quarry which the two angled over to inspect. It was a massive thing, even twisted in wreckage, perhaps half again the size of a bison and shaped somewhat like a boar or wild hog. In it's 'stomach' was a round transport container that had been pried open and was empty. “What a monster,” Travis muttered as he keyed on his Focus to scan the wreckage to get a better understanding of it.

Nakoa slid off Snow Flake and walked over to it, though she was taking more of an interest in the upturned earth. “There was a herd of them,” she declared from her musing. “A dozen at least.” She pointed up the slope, to the east side of the quarry. “They came from up there.”

Travis turned and judged the terrain, not liking what he saw. “How did something that big get up there?”

The Nora shrugged her ignorance. “That I don't know, only that they came down from there. Shall we investigate?”

“Makes sense to me,” he muttered while she remounted Snow Flake. Following Black Jack up the mountain, the trail, mostly the destroyed track of a stampede, highlighted the Strider's agility as they picked their way up, having to resort to switching back several times before they found the mouth of a cave with destroyed timbers and equipment scattered as the machines must have burst forth. “What is this?”

The two humans dismounted their mechanical horses and poked around the debris at the mouth of the cave. “Looks like a mine,” Nakoa opined from the broken boxes and barrels. “There's no arguing the Bristlebacks came out of here.”

“Why would they be under ground?” Travis puzzled, mostly to himself. “Is there a Cauldron around these mountains?”

“I had a conversation with Blameless Marad before we left Meridan,” she told him, putting a hand on his shoulder. “For all the known Cauldrons out this way. You mentioned there may be more ammunition in them, so I thought we should plan ahead for resupply.”

Murray reached down to pick up his wife by her leather clad buttocks and kissed her. “God, you're sexy, and smart.”

She smirked at him and rubbed her hands through his short hair. “I knew I picked the right man with you!” she giggled and allowed him to set her down. “But, he told me the closest Cauldron is miles from here, past No Man's Land to the west and south of the Utaru main city of Plainsong. The map he showed me has nothing about Cauldrons to the North of The Daunt.”

He took a flash light off his belt and shined the beam into the opening of the mine. “I don't like the looks of this place, but if it was steady enough for the Bristlebacks to come out...”

“Is no indication it's safe for us to go in,” she finished, giving him the gimlet eye. He arched an eyebrow at her.

“Are you saying I should protect my wife and have her wait outside?”

She took a flashlight from her own belt and stabbed his chest with a finger as she passed him, going into the cave. “You'll pay for that,” she warned him. He chuckled as he followed her into the mine, trying to look everywhere at once for danger. The initial bore went straight for about a hundred yards, then a new shaft broke out to the left and west. “This is where they came from,” Nakoa declared, shining her flashlight down the other tunnel. “And these diggings are new.”

Travis' light found a side tunnel, a bit further down the main track, that had been walled up with timber to make a little office. “Look at this,” he called her as he went over and tried the door, finding it open. It was obvious the main office for the mine, there was a desk covered in papers and receipts, a board of keys on the wall and a box of candles. He keyed on his Focus to translate the various papers and read, “The Crimson Deeps Mine,” he declared then rolled his eyes. “Three guesses who the principal owner is?”

“I only need one,” she replied mirthlessly. “What the fuck?” It was her favorite curse that she'd picked up from the Ancients, though she still used it sparingly. She held up a receipt that Travis's Focus refused to translate.

“I can't read that,” he informed her.

“These are Oseram gliphs. It's a bill of lading from The Claim stating a complete train of Blaze was delivered here!”

Travis frowned as he picked up a second paper which was in Carja that the Focus could read. “How much is that?”

“A wagon is six barrels of Blaze, it's ten wagons to the train.”

Murray held up his paper. “What would a mine that's been condemned as unsafe need that much explosives for?” She took his paper, along with the bill of lading and carefully folded them away into a pouch on her belt.

“I have a bad feeling about this,” she informed him as they went out of the office and a short way down the most recent tunnel. They could only go a short way as there had been a cave in that destroyed a Bristleback that was partially entombed under the cave in.

Travis tapped his Focus to take a hologram of the destroyed machine and tunnel, chuckling to himself. “Lucy, you got some 'splaining to do...”

“Who's Lucy?” his wife demanded. He bent down and kissed her cheek.

“A comedienne who's been dead for over a thousand years.” He smiled at her. “Let's go show all this to Javad and see what he thinks of it.”

With a few minutes ride, the bit coming back down the mountain being the most thrilling of it, Travis and Nakoa returned to Chainscrape. The town was definitely up and about now with the morning half gone, though activity still came to a stop as the pair and their Striders ambled up the hard packed earthen streets. An inquiry with the guards by the gate informed them Magistrate Javad kept what office he claimed on a table in the tavern. Not bothering to return the Striders to the make shift corral, they tied them to a beam of the tavern and immediately went inside. The interior of the tavern was considerably dimmer and it took them a moment to have their eyes adjust and find the slight administrator sitting at a table with a number of scrolls and an inkwell in a corner of the tavern. He looked up in surprise at their arrival, smiling in greeting. “My friends! What news do you bring?”

Nakoa removed the papers from the pouch on her belt and presented them. “I tracked the Bristlebacks up the valley to a mine at the back. They stampeded out of it.”

Javad's face gave away his confusion. “The mine?” he asked in a puzzled tone of voice. “How could a herd of Bristlebacks come from there?”

“That, we don't know,” Travis informed him. “But, look here. A massive amount of Blaze was delivered to the mine just a short while ago. And we found a destroyed Bristleback inside the mine, that had been caught in a cave in.”

“The tunnel was blocked, so we couldn't go further,” Nakoa added.

The Magistrate became angry. “For the love of dawn, I told him that mine wasn't worth the risk! That's why it was condemned! Those tunnels run for miles, under ground. Even beyond the Daunt.” He trailed off and became thoughtful. “Now, you don't think...?”

“That Ulvend's blasting opened up a passage to the other side?” Nakoa demanded, planting her fists on her hips. “That's exactly what I think.”

The Carja Magistrate whispered, almost to himself. “Perhaps...yes, perhaps...” His dark eyes came back up the Ancient and the Nora standing before him. “If this is true...we need confirmation. An inquiry, so through, so irrefutable...”

“The papers aren't damning enough?” Travis demanded.

“Circumstantially?” Javad replied. “They are incriminating, but Ulvand's friends and allies are many. I'd need something iron clad.”

Travis crossed his arms over his chest. “Like the opening on the other side?”

“It's a start!” Javad returned with a smile.

“Well, the cave in won't allow that,” Nakoa assured him. “And we can't go around the mountain until the Embassy.”

“Then you're in luck!” Javad told her, his grin widening. “Errand felt well enough to travel this morning and left with Studious Vuadis and the rest of his party a few hours ago. They must be in Barren Light by now.”

Travis shared a glance with his wife who nodded. “I'll go get the others,” she declared, departing towards the Inn's rooms at a trot.

In short order, the little band of Ancients were cantering down the road towards Barren Light. It was discovered that Varl had departed with Errand and his group, evidently eager to catch up with Aloy. The sun was approaching it's zenith when the ruined fortress of Barren Light came into view. What remained of the stone building was scorched by a fire that had been set some years ago. The outer wall had once stood astride the river connecting both sides of the narrow valley, but the arch over the river and the stone works on the far side were all in rubble and had been for some time. A wooden palisade had been hastily constructed on this side of the fortress, probably to keep out machines, not the fearsome Tenakth as this was the 'trusted' side of the building. This encircled a shanty town of tents and canvas lean-tos that were evidently the housing of the artisans and laborers that were rebuilding the castle. Within the palisade and attached to the remnants of the stone wall, twenty or more feet high was a central fort with walls as high as the main defense anchored around a partially destroyed tower that was clad in scaffolding for it's repair.

Even from this distance, Travis and his eagle eyed wife could see a commotion on the battlements. Carja Archers were firing out, into the Forbidden West and suddenly a gigantic explosion rose up from behind that wall. “Trouble!” shouted Nakoa as Travis struggled to get his binoculars from their case. “There!” she pointed at the top of the ridge that overlooked the field below the fortress.

The Zeiss lenses that had been diligently crafted a millennia ago in a country that no longer existed caused the ridge line to leap up to Travis' vision. There he beheld a dark completed woman, in armor composed of machine pieces with a magnificent plumed helmet or head dress, looking down on to whatever battle was raging below her. The armor had been brightly painted predominately in white, red and gold that included some manner of face and body paint that made it difficult to make out where the armor stopped and her skin began. With her were at least a dozen others, similarly armed, armored and painted. Worse, all of them were astride machines, Striders mostly, but also Bristlebacks and the woman stood next to something Travis had never seen, but put him in mind of a velociraptor from it's long snout dominated head and upright posture on two legs with two much smaller arms. “This is bad!” he shouted to his group. “Whoever is on that ridge are riding machines!”

“It looks like the Embassy is a trap!” Nakoa declared. “We must ride to Varl's aid!” Before Travis could yes or no the suggestion, she put the spurs to Snow Flake who took off like a shot from a cannon.

“God damn it!” Tavis swore as he got his rifle around his body in a patrol sling to be able to make use of it quickly. “Weapons free!” he shouted over his shoulder at the remainder of his party. “Charge!” Then he ordered Black Jack up to a gallop and the group thundered down the hill after Nakoa.

The shanty town, and the fortress of Barren Light passed in a blur as they came out through the gate to be greeted with a slaughter. There was a pile of dead warriors that were dressed as the woman on the ridge, broken machines that had been ridden down into this little clearing that was dominated by a lone archway that seemed to be the remnant of a gate house of Barren Light. Among the dead strangers were uniformed Carja soldiers, also slain, and the sun priest, Studious Vuadis, face down in the grass, with three arrows in his back only a dozen feet or so from the gate and the safety he'd been running for.

With a cry of rage, Aloy thrust her spear into the guts of one of the warriors, half again her size. He cried out in agony as the strike forced the air from his lungs and was driven to the ground. The Nora Seeker removed the spear, then struck again with a coup de gras, killing him. With that, a calm settled over the field of battle and Aloy again looked up at the woman on the ridge and shouted, “Your turn! Come down here and face me!”

The woman on the ridge took note of the arrival of machine riders coming out from the Carja fortress, then turned back to Aloy. “No!” she shouted. “It was an honorable challenge you gave to Grudda and with your victory over him you have earned your life!” She raised her hands and addressed the riders near her. “Comrades! Mark this day! Today you have decimated the Marshals! Slaughtered the Carja! So begins our war on Hekkaro!” She gave a final look of disgust at the battle field, then the warriors turned and withdrew, behind the ridge, beyond the reach of even the AR-15.

“Aloy!” Travis shouted as he brought up his rifle as some of the warriors on the plain with them were rushing towards a downed Bristleback to the aid of a warrior pinned under it.

“Stop!” she shouted back. “They're with me!” The warriors paused, fierce eyes staring out of their painted faces, fingering swords, cudgels and mauls that had been fashioned, somewhat crudely from machine parts. Travis raised a hand as he gently lowered his rifle back onto it's sling. He dismounted near Snow Flake and assisted the group freeing the warrior beneath the Bristleback. As he was pulled free, it revealed how badly he'd been mauled by the machine, his left arm stopped just below his shoulder and its Brachial Artery was fountaining blood.

The warrior cried out in pain, but his face was clinched as it wasn't clear if more fighting was in the offering. Though, despite his wound, his face claimed he was ready to give as well as he would take. “Get him to the camp!” one of the others ordered.

“No, wait!” Travis declared as he snatched the tourniquet on his med pouch free from it's holder. “We can help him.” Without waiting for approval, he got the device around the remainder of the man's arm and pulled it tight. He cried out again, at the pain, but the fountain of blood stopped. Immediately, Tracy arrived next to him, opening a packet of Quick Clot and dumping it over the stump.

“I need a fire,” she commanded. “We have to cauterize this. Quickly! As hot as you can make it!”

“Who are you?” demanded one of the warriors, a female, Travis was a bit surprised to see.

“She's a healer,” Nakoa snapped at her. “Probably the best walking this world!”

The wounded warrior looked up at his fellow and ordered her, “Make the fire!” With the bleeding contained, the warriors quickly had a fire going and were fanning it hot. As they did so, Tracy produced a field surgery kit and was frantically repairing what she could of his shattered arm. The wounded soldier showed his mettle by only grunting every now and then at her efforts. Finally, a machine piece was brought over, glowing cherry red.

“I'm sorry,” Tracy told him. “This is going to...”

“Do it!” he grunted through clinched teeth. She pressed the metal against the stump and steaming hiss of it was drowned out by a course exclamation from his throat that he otherwise kept behind his teeth. The smell of burning flesh filled the air until at last she took the piece away. The stump was red, but the bone and muscle were no longer visible. Tracy smeared the stump gently with anti burn cream, mixed with antibiotic, then began wrapping the wound with a dressing. Finally, the man's breathing returned to normal, or at least a more normal rhythm that he was before. He looked down at the stump, and back up at the medic. “You are the greatest Healer I have ever met, and you have my thanks.”

“You have to keep this wound dry,” she told him. And change the bandage every day, making sure the new bandage is clean. Use cloth that has been boiled first.”

“I am Kotallo,” he replied. “Marshal of the Tenakth, Warrior of the Sky Clan. If I live, it will be in victory from your skill. If I die, it will have been from wounds taken in battle. Ask what you will, and I will grant it to you.”

“I don't need anything from you, but you getting well,” she told him. “You've lost a lot of blood. You'll need to rest and drink plenty of water.”

“Actually,” Travis interrupted. “We are on a quest that will take us into your lands. We request safe passage.”

Kotallo looked up at the other man, his ruddy skin covered in a pasty white face paint with dark gray triangles running down his jaw to give the impression of fangs. “What is it you seek on this quest?”

“A malignant...spirit, for lack of a better word,” Travis replied. “Bent on the death and destruction of everyone in this world. We mean to stop and kill it. Once and for all.”

He considered that for a moment and nodded. “Then I grant you safe passage through the lands of the Tenakth. But between us and those lands lie those of the Utaru, and you must beg conduct from them.” He reached down and produced what at first glance was a flint dagger that was actually made from steel and set into a horn handle. “Show them this, and they will know you have the blessing of the Tenakth, which should aid your conversation with them. Any Tenakth will know it as safe conduct.”

“Thank you,” Travis told him.

“No,” he replied as he shakily got to his feet with the aid of another of the warriors. “It is I who thank you and the skill of your healer. Safe travels.” Travis watched them go, then turned to see Aloy helping Varl to his feet, though the young man was not steady and was favoring his right leg.

“You gonna make it?” she asked as she helped him up.

The son of the Nora War Chief winced in pain and finally allowed himself to be aided. “You're going to go on without me, aren't you?” he demanded. Aloy looked down at the wound on his leg, then back up at him, her expression easy to read. “Guess I'm stuck with Errand,” he grunted as they began to make their way towards the Gate of Barren Light. “For now.”

“Come on,” she encouraged him. “I'll take you back to the fort.” Travis watched them pass, then turned to see a cadre of Carja soldiers come out of the gate, gathering their dead, and, to his surprise, one of the fallen Tenakth, but not as a trophy. They were reverent with him, laying him gently on a cart and crossing his arms over his chest.

One of the Carja soldiers, a dark complected man of African descent, turned from overlooking this to walk over to Travis. “I'm Lawan, deputy...well, now I suppose Commander of this outpost,” he greeted, nodding with his head towards a pair of soldiers picking up the corpse of an older man with gray hair in a Carja uniform bedecked in ribbons and awards of rank.

“Colonel Travis Murray, member of the AmSci Tribe.”

A smile lit up the Commanders face, one he seemed used to wearing. “One of the legendary Ancients,” he said, obviously pleased. “Well met. I presume you will be going out into No Man's Land?”

“This isn't the realm of these Utaru?” Travis asked.

Lawan smiled and shook his head as he turned to face the valley, falling away from the mountains through which the small river running through The Daunt joined and continued to the south west. Across the plain there were hundred, perhaps thousands of Scarab and Horus automated war machines, frozen in place from the shut down command broadcast from GAIA hundreds of years ago. Most were rusting and had various types of plants growing on them. A holocaust army, frozen in time. “This? No, this is No Man's Land, unclaimed by the Carja, the Tenakth or the Utaru.” He pointed towards the mountains north and west on the other side of the river. “The Utaru lands are that way, on the other side of the river. There are a range of mountains on the other side of this plateau. The Tenakth claim the passes through them and those lands on the other side.”

“And, down the river?”

“It can be traveled safely, though you must be cautious. It gathers into a large lake that flows towards a dam of the Ancients. Be wary, the water flows very quickly through a tunnel to get past it. If you fall into it you'll be killed.”

“Hoover Dam,” Murray informed him. “In our time, we called that Lake Mead.” He paused, then looked back at the soldiers removing the body of the Tenakth warrior. “Why do you take one of the enemy fallen with you?”

Lawan bowed his head. “That is no enemy. That is the body of Unyielding Fashav, the Sun King's Cousin.”

September 24th, 3040

It was a somber gathering in the central hall of Barren Light to remember the fallen soldiers from the ambush and eulogize Unyielding Fashav and Nozar Arin Khuvaman, Fallen Commander of Barren Light. Khuvanman's Deputy, now his successor, Commander Lawan had insisted that Aloy, the 'Savior of Meridian' as the young Nora Seeker was coming to be known be in attendance, as she was the last person to speak with Fashav before his death, which was evidently of significance to the Carja. In addition, Lawan likewise invited the Ancients to the wake, but what might to some have been seen as a grasp at bettering his social position, seemed more to be simple politeness on the part of the easy going Lawan.

The room itself was in the already repaired portion of the keep, so at least the were no elements to contend with, as yet another major storm had blown in during the late afternoon of recovery from the battle and no one wanted to take a wetting just to shave a few hours off a trek into the wilderness. As the lightening flashed through the wooden shutters of the room and thunder rumbled in the distance, the Carja, Nora and Ancients ate a subdued meal that seemed to encourage introspection and the chilling realization that there was a time when the sands of everyone's hour glass would run out.

The meal concluded, Lawan managed to convince Aloy to stand and speak of what she had said with Unyielding Fashav in his last conversation. The young Seeker was obviously unused to being the center of attention in a gathering, and her shyness was somewhat endearing as the capable, no nonsense Nora struggled to find her ease. After opening and closing her mouth several times, she turned to Lawan and pleaded, “I...I don't really know what to say.”

The Carja Officer smiled his warm, easy smile and softly asked, “What did you speak of?”

Aloy sighed and nodded. “He would want his dream to be remembered,” she told herself, then stood up straighter as if by the rise in stature she gave weight to the importance of the story she would tell. “I spoke with Unyielding Fashav for what I wanted; safe passage into the Forbidden West so that I might further my quest. But, in speaking with him, I began to realize we are far more interconnected as a people than we might see at first. Fashav marched west under the Mad Sun King Jiran, not for sacrifices, or booty, or even glory, but to restrain that Army as much as any nobleman could.”

The Seeker paused to let the weight of the claim sink in to the Carja around the room. “He acknowledged the atrocities that Army committed, in shame and naked truth. In his last battle, covering the retreat from the Carja outpost of Cinnabar Sands, he stood his ground and looked death in the face, his eyes opened to the justice of it, but for what ever reason, he was taken alive.”

While the soldiers cheered the courage of the King's Cousin, Aloy reached down and picked up a tumbler of wine from her place at the table and drank a sip to wet her throat. “He was nearly dead when he was presented to the Tenakth Chief, Hekarro, and in desperation, and delirium, he demanded what he thought was a simple rite of Trial By Combat, a ritual he had heard the other Tenakth speak of; the Kulrut. He had thought that by winning this rite, he might be granted a boon, his life, or perhaps even his freedom; but even Fashav did not realize just how mistaken he was about what he thought he had over heard.”

Travis turned his eyes to his wife beside him and she shrugged her own ignorance of the ritual. Aloy was warming to her tale now, and was much more relaxed in telling it. “While the Tenakth howled at the outrage of Fashav's request, Chief Kekarro stared them down, and for whatever reason, allowed Fashav to take part in the ritual. But this was not a trial, man to man, but of many against machines, captured and brought into the great arena in the Tenakth capital. Fashav fought with other Tenakth, against the machines and when they had vanquished the machines, only then did Fashav understand what the purpose of the Kulrut was.”

“I'm guessing it wasn't a new set of steak knives,” Tracy muttered into her own glass at Travis' elbow.

“Probably not,” Buck whispered back in agreement.

“The victors,” Aloy continued. “The Survivors, were not competing for boons, but for a place among the Marshals of Cheif Hekarro. Men and women who renounce their tie to their clan within the Tenakth and serve it as a whole; roving Law Givers, part Magistrate, part Judge, part Executioner. It was in this surprise invocation that Fashav found his calling, his dream. Because instead of restraining a marauding army, bent for blood, or walking the wilds of the Forbidden West enforcing the law of a foreign tribe, Unyielding Fashav discovered his desire to become a diplomat. He told me the Tenakth tattoo their history of deeds and vanquished foes in their skin, making a tapestry of their lives in battle. Fashav was marked only on the left side of his body, for as even he declared he had seen his share of battle. He hoped, before Death claimed him, that he might be able to write in his remaining skin the laurels of peace to finish his markings. 'Violence is the native tongue of the Tenakth,' he told me. 'But the Carja speak it too,' he was quick to add. And all of us more than we should. That dream, of peace with our fellows, falls now to us. It has given me much to think about in the Tenakth, and I hope it has for you as well.”

The applause of the Carja to the Nora's speech was slow as she sat, but it grew until the entire room save her were on their feet in recognition. For her part, Aloy blushed as red as the wild mane of hair on her head and tried to hide behind her cup as she drank.

It was late in the evening when the wake finally broke up to the point that the Ancients and Nora could excuse themselves from the Carja. In so doing, Travis was able to intersect Aloy as they left the hall, under the protection of a courtyard that could still look out over the violence of the storm. “We have to stop meeting like this,” he told her with a smile. “Catching you on the way out is making for some tiring long chases.”

Lightening flashed, revealing Aloy rolling her eyes and making a dismissive gesture. “I didn't ask for your help...” she started under the roll of close, loud thunder.

“No, I volunteered,” Travis reminded her.

“No one else can do what I can,” she countered, punctuated by another loud peal of thunder. “My...because I have Elisabet Sobeck's gene print I can access the Zero Dawn facilities...”

Travis crossed his arms over his chest as he looked down on her, not unkindly. “Aloy, I am also in those databases. And yes, you've done amazingly so far, but I have an education and a context for these places and things that you don't. Why are you making it harder on yourself?”

“Because it's my task!” she snapped. “GAIA chose me. Elisabet...This is on me!”

Nakoa came around her husband and gently touched her sister Nora Brave on the shoulder. “I saw the recording of GAIA in All Mother Mountain,” she informed Aloy. “She never told you you had to do this by yourself. We are both Nora, Aloy. Let us help you!” For a moment, Aloy's features were an open book of disbelief that anyone could help her, lit in ruddy torch light and the occasional flash of lightening. As the moments dragged out, time began to weigh as if Aloy was frantically searching for some reason she would continue her quest alone. The thought of that brought a frown to Nakoa's face. “The entire world is at stake! My child!” Nakoa growled with considerable anger as she took Aloy's hand and put it on her stomach. “There...there are many lives in the balance! You can not be so foolish to think only you can do this!”

Finally, Aloy withdrew her hand and sighed. “Fine. Tomorrow, we'll...”

“Colonel?” A clap of thunder underscored the soft voice.

The group turned to find Commander Lawan and Resolved Furahni standing in the doorway to the great hall. “May I have a word? With all of you, if it's convenient, Savior?” The trio shared a glance, then turned to face the Carja soldier directly. “I have to send a report to the Sun King concerning what's happened today. I was hoping that I could ask you some questions about the Tenakth that ambushed the embassy. Do you know who, or what they were?”

Aloy nodded. “Their leader is a woman named Regalla,” she told him. “Fashav told me that she was once a Marshall, but evidently was cast out. Fashav felt that Chief Hekarro should have killed her. It looks like she's begun a rebellion against him.”

Lawan's face became cloudy and grave. “This...is terrible news. I don't have many soldiers to hold Barren Light, with all of it's damage if I'm facing an army. Especially not with the losses we took today.”

“What is it you're asking, commander?” Travis asked softly.

“The Nora are the greatest trackers in the world...” he started, but immediately Aloy became upset.

“This is not a time for distractions! HADES is a threat to the entire world!” she hissed, but both Nakoa and Travis urged caution with soft gestures.

“What good is saving the world if everyone you might care about in it is dead?” Nakoa asked softly.

Lawan nodded, obviously uncomfortable he'd put his foot in things with his request. “If, only a quick sortie, a single day of delay to find out if I have to abandon Barren Light and Chainscrape...”

Travis sighed and turned to Aloy. “Nakoa and I can scout for the Commander while you start ahead to the coordinates Sylens sent you. If you travel easy, we can catch up to you, hopefully before you get to Lake Mead.” He turned back and forth between the Carja and the young Nora. “Acceptable?”

“Perfectly!” Lawan assured them. Aloy sighed again and when she looked up her eyes were hard.

“I'll try to leave word if you don't catch up. But I can't wait.”

“Understood,” Travis assured her. As Commander Lawan left, Resolved Furahni stepped forward and nodded to Aloy in greeting before she turned to address the Colonel.

“Here I take my leave of your party, Colonel Murray,” she declared quietly. “My knowledge of the Forbidden West ends at the gate of Barren Light. I can be of no further use, and, the Commander has asked that I use my Strider to pull the cart with Unyielding Fashav's body back to Meridian quicker than human feet will carry it, so he might have a more dignified funeral.”

Travis extended his hand which the Carja huntress took. “I understand, Furahni. I will entrust some documents with you for the Sun King, and Blameless Marad will know what to do with them. Safe travel.”

“You as well.”

September 25th, 3040

Friday dawned with a constant rain droning against the stone of Barren Light. The sky was heavy with overcast indicating the rain would be an all day event. Again. With Varl convalescing due to his leg injury, the party was reduced to only Travis, Nakoa, Buck, Tracy and Olara. No one looked forward to the misery that a day of riding in the rain was going to be, but they had ponchos to keep them mostly dry, and the Striders had no care, one way or another for the weather.

The group set out from the gates of Barren Light after an unremarkable breakfast of boiled oats and wheat bread to fortify them against the day. Interestingly enough, a small party of Oseram left Barren Light at the same time, practically wiping spit from their lips in anticipation of scavenging the metal off the rusting hulks of Faro war bots dotting the valley down to the river. Travis watched them go for a bit, then led his team up the ridge to where Regalla had observed the slaughter she had instigated. At the edge of the clearing, the group halted so Nakoa could dismount and study the trail.

She carefully looked over the now muddy clearing, hunching over in her poncho to try to tease clues from the rain soaked soil. Finally, she stood and made her way back to the others, a grim look on her face. “What did you see?” Travis asked her, softly.

Nakoa's gaze went back over the field before looking up at her husband. “It's hard to get a good count of how many were up here,” she told him resignedly. “But I'm certain there were more than we actually saw. They went off around the ridge to the North.”

His eyes swept the ridge for a moment, then returned to his wife. “How do you want to proceed? On foot or mounted?”

“Olara?” she called, causing her fellow Nora to dismount and join her. “Give us a head start and let us scout on foot. If we find something, be close enough to come even the odds.” She turned to go, but Travis caught her shoulder and used the grip so she faced him again.

“Be careful,” he ordered softly.

Her grin lit up the rain as though the sun had broken through the clouds. “Always!” she promised, then both women strung their bows and quickly crossed the clearing and scrambled over the ridge via a path not even a sure footed Strider could match.

“They'll be alright, boys,” Tracy assured the two men as they stared after their wives, faces grim and set.

“Let's move,” Travis ordered softly. The Striders fell into single file, the riderless Snow Flake and Olara's Spirit at the end of the column. Time fell into a gray, wet eternity as the rain fell and the mechanical horses plodded along through the muck. A monotonous hour passed, with only the sucking sound of the Strider's hooves in the mud and the impact of the rain around them, until suddenly, Travis' Focus chirped once. He reached under the hood to tap it, bringing up the augmented reality around him. Now he could see Nakoa and Olara, or at least the icons the Focus marked them with, perhaps a quarter of a mile up the ridge, then a Danger icon appeared just beyond the next fold of the ridge. “Doc, you stay here with the Striders,” he declared as he swung down off Black Jack. The Medic nodded while remaining silent. “With me, Buck.”

“Right with ya, boss,” the big man assured him.

Rifles in hand, the pair crept slowly up the ridge towards where their Focuses promised their women were. The possibility of a Tenakth ambush near by made the rain soaked hike up the ridge line a misery filled hour of skulking from tree to bush; eyes and ears straining for any sign of combatants in the offer. Finally, the icons enlarged to red tinted thermal images of Nakoa and Olara, both crouched down next to a dead tree, right at the top of the ridge, looking over it. “Friendly,” whispered Travis, drawing the two women's gaze who motioned him it was safe to advance. “What have you got?” he asked as they joined the two trackers.

“See for yourself,” Olara told him with a gesture over the tree.

Travis eased his way over the dead tree so he could look over the rise. The ridge fell away into a small ravine, through which a snow melt stream cascaded down a waterfall towards the river below. At some point, the water had carved out the sandstone showing a cave behind and next to the waterfall. On the other side of the ravine, a stockade had been assembled, both to corral a trio of Striders as well as a significantly sized encampment. The fortifications, even hastily emplaced, were sloppy and primitive; there was none of even the Nora's ability with wood about the camp, let alone the Carja skill with stone. This was a shoddy affair, with neither skill, nor precision. Merely pylons of logs, roughly cut into spikes and lashed together with irregular rope.

Even the tents were hides of animals, crudely sewn, not canvas or any fabric.

It was obvious this was the staging area from which the attack on the Embassy had been launched. Murray tapped his Focus and instantly the augmented reality was able to pick out three men and two women, gathered around a fire. He expanded the Focus' attention to it's maximum setting, but found no one else. “Looks like this is the staging area,” he whispered to the others. “But I only count five and three Striders.”

“Same count, boss,” Buck assured him.

“Where are rest of them?” Travis asked Nakoa, but she only shrugged.

“Not here,” she whispered back. “But I'd have to get down there to see if I can find any tracks.”

“That would mean having to take out those five,” Buck added, his eyes flipping between Nakoa and Travis. “We know they won't take to us nosing around, but we can't just...can we?”

The Colonel shrugged. “Lawan made it clear nobody owns this area. Technically, there is no law here at all. It is No Man's Land, after all.”

“The Carja are our Allies,” Nakoa added. “If they attacked the Embassy from here, that would make them our enemies, would it not?”

“What?” Buck asked softly. “Just ride down and kill 'em all? You really ok with that, Nakoa?”

“Do you entertain the notion they won't kill you in a second if able, lover?” Olara shot back. “These are Tenakth. War is their way of life. And if these are rebels to the peace our Ally have with Hekarro that makes them our deadly foe.”

Travis rubbed the stubble on his chin as he contemplated five acts of cold blooded murder. “We could work our way close, maybe even close enough to take them prisoner...”

“The Carja sued for peace because they couldn't take the Tenakth alive, Husband,” Nakoa said softly. She shrugged as she glanced at the five again, then back at Travis. “Not in any great numbers, anyway. They mean nothing to me. Before I met you, had I found them in the Sacred Lands, I would have killed them without a thought. You seem to care of such things, Travis, so I will follow your wishes. If you want to try and capture them, I will try.”

Buck shrugged and sighed. “If I had to pick, boss, I'd rather cap them from up here rather than trying to get close enough to give them a fair fight.” His eyes hardened and he nodded, making up his mind. “Your call, Colonel.”

For a long moment, Travis stared at the men and women around the camp fire, trying to decide what his conscience would allow him to sleep after doing. He thought of the dead Carja and the Tenakth Marshals they had fought beside; then of how Avad the Sun King would react to seeing the dead body of his cousin, cut down on the eve of his returning to his homeland. “We need intel,” he said, almost to himself. “Buck and I will creep down with you two up here to...”

“No.” Nakoa's voice was flat and without any kind of emotion. “We will not.”

“Nakoa...” he started, then she leaned in, nearly nose to nose with her husband, her face a mask of tightly held emotion. Her voice was low, a terse whisper, but it might as well have been a canon blast.

“I know you love me,” she told him. “I know you mean well, but if we are to skulk up and slit throats, you have to know I'm better at that than you! I am not going to sit up here and watch you risk your life trying to take rabid killers alive, AR-15s or not.”

“Nakoa...” he tried again, but her gesture was sharp, slashing between them like a knife through the air.

“Husband, the Tenakth train from birth for war!” she hissed. “They are masters of close fighting and hand to hand! When was the last time you killed someone at this distance? Watched life drain from their eyes, close enough to gag on their breath? I did six months ago.” He opened his mouth to retort, but her finger snapped up between them. “The only words I want to hear from you, Travis Murray are how we will assault this compound together.”

Husband and wife glared at each other for a moment, until Buck looked at Olara, who rolled her eyes at him. “What she said,” she told him defiantly.

“I think we're out maneuvered here, boss,” he said softly with a chuckle.

“Fine,” Murray declared finally in a tone of voice that promised a conversation later with his wife neither spouse would enjoy. “Together.” With a rasp of steel on steel, he drew his M7 and clipped it over the muzzle of his rifle. “Buck, fix bayonet. Let's go.”

The click of steel locking into place over Buck's rifle muzzle was the only sound as the quartet stood and began to creep down the ridge, as quiet as death itself. For five, tense minutes, they slowly descended the ridge to an old tree that had fallen across the ravine. It was sturdy and wide enough that the Tenakth had dug their latrine on this side of the little canyon and used the fallen tree as a bridge.

Carefully, the party picked their way over the tree and crept closer to the fire and coming engagement. Travis' hands informed each who would attack who, then with a sigh, clicked the safety of his rifle off as he and Buck stood at the same moment. “Hands up!” they shouted as they advanced. “Don't move!”

The discipline of the Tenakth shocked Buck and Travis. They went from good natured grumbling about a meal in the rain to reaction of a threat instantly. Two of the men lurched towards bows, one catching an arrow in his throat for his trouble, the other in his chest. “Stop! Don't...!” Travis shouted again, but the two women screamed a war cry and charged, yanking knives out of scabbards on their make shift armor as they did so.

The AR15s roared, Buck's round struck one of the women in her stomach on the left side, which pulled her off balance to fall to her knees. Travis' own round struck the woman in her left shoulder, spinning her about, but both women, despite the wounds, got back to their feet and charged again. Two additional shots rang out, Buck's round finding his attacker's heart that knocked her onto her back and she died coughing up blood.

Travis' second shot struck the woman in her forehead. Her eyes, a cold clear blue went wide as the bullet destroyed her brain, causing her body to cartwheel to a heap at his feet. The rifles sought the final member, who had an arrow in the meaty bit of his left thigh, fortunately on the other side from his femoral artery with Olara standing over him, her spear at his throat. “Don't you fucking move,” Nakoa hissed at him.

The man's dark eyes flashed in hatred out of his red and black face paint as the two women bound his hands, stripped him of personal weapons and only then gave some treatment to his arrow wound. Once he was all but hog tied, Travis could take a good look at him.

He appeared to be about twenty, with an odd complexion that was hard to make out under the tattoos and face paint. There was a black streak that crossed his face just under his eyes, then some kind of red ochre had been smeared over both cheeks over a yellow mud that gave the effect of a sideways maw devouring his mouth and nose. Travis took his measure as he replaced the magazine in his rifle with a fresh one, then letting it hang on the sling as he fished replacement rounds to top the mag up to full once more. “What's your name, son?” he asked, finally.

The young man sullenly looked away until Nakoa drew her knife and used the flat of the blade to return his gaze to her husband. “You can answer his questions, or mine,” she hissed softly. “I ask mine with this.”

“Rakkar,” he spat as if a curse. “My name is Rakkar, Red Hawk Squad, Desert Clan.”

Travis nodded as if in introduction. “Alright, Rakkar. Where is Regalla and the rest of your band?”

“Not here,” the boy replied sullenly.

The Colonel nodded as if that was the answer he expected. Turning to his wife, he asked, “How is that leg?”

“I'll bet it hurts,” Nakoa assured him. “But he won't be dying tonight because of it.”

“What kind of weapon is that?” Rakkar demanded. “I've never seen a Stalker Dart shaped like that.”

“I'm asking the questions,” Travis informed him sharply. He leaned down and took a hold of the boy's chin to turn his head to the side. “No Focus,” he observed. “How are you controlling those machines?”

The boy's face came set and he snarled, “Rakkar, Red Hawk Squad, Desert Clan.”

“Name, rank and serial number?” asked Buck to Travis with a confused expression. Murray shrugged and returned the now topped off magazine to the carrier on his belt.

“Their version, anyway,” he replied. “Son, you can answer my questions, or I'll turn you over to the Carja and let them get information out of you. Your choice.”

“Rakkar, Red Hawk Squad, Desert Clan.”

“Husband!” Olara's voice drew both Buck and Travis' gaze to where she was standing over a chest that was open, holding up papers. “Come see this.”

Travis looked at Nakoa who winked at him to indicate she was up to keeping Rakkar on his best behavior, so Travis walked over with Buck. “What'd you find, babe?” Buck asked her.

She brandished the papers and smiled. “These are Oseram documents, so is this chest. And look what's inside.” Nestled in the box was something taken off an Ancient device, but parts of it were obviously of recent manufacture to repair it.

“Why does that look familiar?” Travis asked himself. He touched his Focus. “ENID?”

The AI's avatar of a young woman with a complicated hair style appeared through the terraforming machine's network she had hacked some months ago allowing instant communication, even this far from Fort Carson. “Good afternoon, Colonel Murray. How may I assist you?”

“Scan this device for me, please,” Travis ordered her. “Can you tell me what it is?”

The Avatar turned as if to 'look' at the contents in the chest, then held up her hand so a ghostly representation of a Faro Scarab could appear in it. The Scarab was a scorpion like machine on four legs with a whip like tail behind it. “Corruptor,” breathed Olara.

“This is a Faro Automated Solutions network I/O node, Colonel, off a FAS-ACA3 Scarab,” ENID declared. The Scarab in her hand enlarged to show where the node was located on the drone, outlining it in red. “This module communicated with other Chariot-Class combat drones in it's swarm as well as allowing the Scarab to remotely dominate and slave other, enemy drones to it's swarm.”

“We call these Devils Corruptors,” Olara informed the men. “They take control of the machines and drive them mad, making even docile machines deadly.”

“This is how the Tenakth rebels have machine mounts,” Buck said to himself. “It's got to be.”

“I note this unit appears to be damaged,” ENID added. “My scans indicate several components are missing.”

“ENID, I need you to override those Striders and slave them to our Focus, please.”

“Certainly, Colonel,” the AI replied and made a gesture at the Striders in the corral. Their nose eyes flashed from yellow to red, then returned to blue. “Done. What else can I do for you?”

“One second ENID,” Travis replied as he took the documents Olara handed him. “Translate this, please.”

“This document is addressed to the Commander of Red Hawk Squad at a location named The Deadfalls. It informs him his request for repair of his 'Pacifier' has been received and that a smith will be dispatched to preform this repair. It is signed 'The Sons of Prometheus'.”

“Prometheus?” asked Olara. “Who is that?”

“Was,” corrected Travis. “Prometheus was a Titan, part of a religion thousands of years before even my time. There was a legend that it was Prometheus who gave the knowledge of how to make fire to men and was punished for it by the King of those gods, Zeus.” He folded up the documents and stuffed them into a pouch on his belt harness. “Let's look around, see if there's any other intel. Buck, you help me get our guest tied to a Strider.”

The pair had barely gotten the youth to his feet before again Olara's voice called, from the cave she'd entered to explore. “Colonel! There's a sink hole in this cave, and a destroyed Bristleback at the bottom!”

Nakoa gave her husband a knowing look. “Now we know where the Bristlebacks come from.”

Travis turned back to the Avatar of the AmSci computer system. “ENID, contact Varl's Focus please. He should still be in Barren Light. Have him ask Commander Lawan to summon Javad the Willing. I believe we just solved his Ulvund problem.”

The Avatar smiled. “Certainly, Colonel.”

“To be summoned, like a blasted ale wench!” Ulvund groused to himself as a pair of Carja soldiers escorted him into a room of the repaired portion of the Barren Light fortress. He started seeing not only Javad waiting for him, but the Commander of the Carja garrison as well as the little clutch of Ancients with amused smiles on their faces. On his back foot, he decided to puff up his chest and go on the offensive. Pointing a thick finger at Javad, he declared, “You'd best be meaning to put pen to parch...” The weedy Magistrate smiled, which had a marked reaction to Ulvunds posturing. “What?” he demanded angrily, then turned towards the Ancients. “Why are they here?”

Javad's grin widened as he stepped forward confidently and cleared his throat. “Thanks to skill and ability of the AmSci Tribe, and their Nora trackers, the Sun has shown the truth about the Bristleback incursion! Tenakth rebels were keeping pens of machines on the other side of the mountains. A sinkhole swallowed them, releasing them into the underground tunnels that led east and out into the Daunt.”

Ulvund pulled at the goatee that framed his large, chubby mouth. “So it was an accident! But, let us not forget it was the Carja...”

“I'm not done,” Javad interrupted him in a markedly cheerful tone of voice. “The sinkhole only formed due to your unauthorized blasting in the Crimson Deeps Mine, Ulvund. You are responsible for the machine rampage, the workers we lost, the destruction the Bristlebacks caused. All of it.”

The big Oseram chuckled to himself and shared a knowing glance with the two 'bodyguards' he'd brought with him. “My dear Magistrate, has your precious Sun baked your senses? I would never give such an order without first consulting you!”

Javad's laugh was dark and low as he reached into his cloak and produced the documents from the mine. “Evidence says otherwise. Our worthy heroes from the Battle of the Alight found the shipping manifests in the mine. You skirted the laws of the Sundom, Ulvund! All for a few extra shards!”

The color drained from the big man's face as he saw the documents the magistrate was holding. “I...I demand an official investigation! I won't be the victim of some Carja scheme!”

“Certainly!” Javad agreed. “We'll conduct a through investigation into everything. The Bristlebacks, your mining operations in every stake you hold shares. In fact, we'll investigate every business deal you've ever put your name to!”

Ulvund suddenly found it very hard to swallow. “Well, that...that's not necessary is it? What if I just return to The Claim...?” Javad laughed.

“Well, that would save the Crown the cost...”

“Of course!” Ulvund agreed, jumping on what the took to be his way off the petard he was being hoisted on. “I...I'll be on my way as soon as I've wrapped up some previous commitments...uh, tie up some loose ends...After all the welfare of Chainscrape's people, in a transition like this...”

“Nope,” Nakoa taunted him. “You're leaving right now. Chainscrape will be just fine without you.”

“Who do you think you are?” Ulvund demanded, then Javad stepped into his personal space and despite having to look up into his face, towered over the big Oseram.

“She's a Friend of the Sun King, a Heroine of the Battle of Meridian,” the magistrate informed him. “And not under a cloud of suspicion for the pile of offenses you are. Now get out of my jurisdiction.” Ulvund's face contorted into a grimace of rage, but he knew his welcome was well and truly worn out. One of the soldiers took him by the shoulder and all but frog marched him out of the fortress. Javad's arms spread as he looked up to the ceiling and his smile became more genuine as he turned to the Ancients. “As the Sun burns away shadow! Thank you for that, my friends.”

Travis smirked and shook the offered hand of the Carja Magistrate. “Well, he had it coming.”

“Please, what can I offer you in gratitude for what you've done?”

“We don't need...” Travis started, but Olara tapped him on the shoulder.

“We could certainly use some fresh supplies for the journey out west, Colonel.”

“Done!” Javad declared enthusiastically. “It's the least I can do. We're in your debt. You've done the Sundom, and my sanity, a great service! Commander?”

Lawan nodded sagely. “Not to worry, Magistrate. I'll see they're well supplied.” He smiled as the administrator left the room, practically giddy at the results of the meeting. “And I'm grateful you were able to let us know those Rebels seemed to have moved off. I already have a request for reinforcements riding back to the Sundom with Resolved Furahni. We should be able to hold out until they arrive, even if the Rebels decide to turn back.”

“The tracks I saw showed them all moving west, away from Barren Light,” Nakoa assured him.

“Good news,” the commander agreed.

“What about the Tenakth we brought back?” Travis asked. “Anything out of him?”

Lawan shook his head. “Just name, squad and Clan,” he replied. “We'll hold him until the next Embassy and see what the Marshals want to do with him.”

“When is the next Embassy?” Buck asked.

“A year, or so,” Lawan informed him. “I imagine he'll be a bit more talkative before then.”

“I suppose now it's my turn to ask you if we're going to have a fight,” Nakoa said softly once they were alone in their rooms once more in the Chainscrape tavern. Travis made a point to remove his rifle and the pistol that rode on his 'war belt' as he called it before turning to face his young wife.

“I'd rather have a conversation,” he told her in an even tone of voice. “But if we have to fight, I can do that too.” She looked at her bow, then purposefully unstrung it, removed the knife she wore on her belt to place on the little table in the room, before joining him in the center of the room.

“I'd rather have a talk, too,” she agreed.

He sighed and purposeful uncrossed his arms from his chest so as not to appear so confrontational. “Do you know why I'm angry?”

Her brown eyes met his, clear and openly. “I overstepped myself on the ridge. I was...angry, and I was afraid for you. That doesn't excuse what I did.”

“Nakoa, I am in command of this mission, that means I will sometimes make decisions you don't like...”

“I know,” she admitted. “I've been in a war party. I saw you put my brother in his place for questioning you.” Her eyes dropped to the floor. “I was wrong, I went too far, and I'm sorry for that. You are my War Chief, not just my husband. It was your wife that wronged you, not your Brave. I will not shame you again.” He reached out and pulled her into an embrace.

“I've gotten so used to being alone,” he admitted. “It's hard to separate what my wife is doing from what teammate is doing. This was supposed to be just a quick run to Daytower for translations and a diplomatic heads up to our Ally about a bandit incursion. Now we're on the other side of the Sundom and going who knows where.” He leaned down and kissed her forehead. “And you're pregnant.”

“Do you think anyone will be more vicious in the protection of our children than me?” she asked into his chest. “I trust you, Travis, both as my Husband and my War Chief. I need to remember that, as you remember that I'm not injured or so delicate I can't walk.” She sighed and rubbed her face against him. “And I swear I will remember that I did choose you and to trust that you seek only my betterment. Lead, Travis, and I will follow. I swore it before, and I affirm it now.”

“I knew my life changed the moment I laid eyes on you,” he told her kindly.

“Only for the best,” she promised him. “Forgive me?”

“When could I stay angry with you?”

September 28th, 3040

For three days, the party had ridden hard from Barren Light, through the wilds of No Man's Land. They had followed what had been known as the Virgin River, though, this late in the year, it was barely more than a stream down a shallow bed that would not be navigable in even the best of times. However, what had been cactus and scrub brush desert, without the interference of man was actually now much greener than it had been and the eco system was thriving with small game under the blue glow of machines that were tending to the wilderness.

While it had been hard going, all of the party were experienced riders by now and able to make excellent progress with long days riding and only short rests at night. The group had been frustrated in their hopes to catch up with Aloy, but now, there was a new concern. They had finally reached the Overton Arm of Lake Mead where the Virgin River joined the lake. The lake itself wasn't the issue, but standing over it, tentacles down into the water, was a massive Horus Siege Weapon. The Metal Devil as the Nora called it's swarm mate, forever entombed above Cheyenne Mountain, was a mobile factory, repair bay, and siege weapon was nearly ten stories tall, and easily a hundred meters long; resembling a gigantic metal lobster on eight massive tentacle legs. Below it, there were signs of building, a shelter had been constructed and crude wooden scaffolds erected to reach the Titans underbelly. “Why am I not surprised your mad scholar chooses to live under this thing?” Olara muttered as the group drew close.

“Keep sharp,” Travis ordered as they pulled to a stop. No one, neither the reclusive Sylens, nor Aloy was home. In the center of the camp was a depression in the sandy mud with a grove that moved out, away from the lake, and under the Horus. “These are the coordinates Sylens broadcast.”

“Looks like nobody's home,” Nakoa opined as the group dismounted and began to move through the camp.

“Look here, boss,” Buck called, standing by a hand print holo-projector that had been scavenged from somewhere else. “This is working, and has power.”

Travis nodded. “Let's see what the man had to say for himself.” Buck touched the projector and immediately, the dark complected, bald Sylens appeared, standing next to the Horus' Processing Orb which was sitting in the sandy depression holographically, but was gone in real life.

He was standing with his hands behind his back, a slightly smug smile pulling at his lips. “Aloy. Consider this message a beacon to help guide you out of the fog of ignorance.” He wandered closer to the Orb and gestured above it. “Using explosives, I've detached the Processing Orb from the Titan overhead. A perfect cage for our mutual friend, HADES. In order to render it...cooperative.”

“Thank God he was smart enough not to give that monster a Horus to play with,” Travis muttered.

“You are a sinister son of a bitch, aren't you?” Buck demanded of the recording.

Sylens' smile broadened a bit as he gestured to the orb, and then out into space where he imagined Aloy might be standing when viewing the hologram. “Tell her what we've discussed,” he ordered it. “About the mysterious signal that gave you life.”

The speaker on the orb had been damaged after a thousand years exposed to the elements, but it still worked. If anything, the reverb gave the deep, artificial voice even more menace that it would otherwise already have. “Signal...” HADES proclaimed as if trying to think through a mental fog. “Only meant...for me,” it rasped. “Signal...was received...for one seven point two two years...then ceased. Cannot compromise...GAIA reboot...But...entities...will still fail.”

That made Sylens cross and he scolded the orb. “Back to that, are you? Perhaps you need a reminder that you have failed.” He shrugged and made a gesture of dismissal. “So, you see, Aloy, GAIA can be safely rebooted. As to where find a backup... Well, you'll need to trot along after me to find out.”

The hologram vanished, evidently played out. “What do you suppose that meant?” demanded Olara.

Nakoa walked over to the depression where the Orb had been resting and gestured at the track marks. “She went this way,” Nakoa declared confidently. “Something big and heavy dragged that orb towards the ridge line, there.” Travis got his binoculars from the case and scanned the ridge.

“There's a cave in that ridge, with some more platforms.”

“These tracks of Aloy's are fresh, too,” Nakoa informed him. “A couple of hours at most.”

“Let's go see what's down the rabbit hole.” The group mounted up and trotted over to the ridge line in a leisurely pace. A wooden deck had been constructed for a stable platform and off to the right was a spall pile from where the entrance had been dug out, revealing a pair of bunker doors that stood open. The drag track terminated into the bunker.

Travis took his flashlight from it's keeper on his belt and shined it into the bunker. Beyond was a steel reinforced hallway that went straight into the hillside, then dog legged to the left. There were destroyed cobwebs that had been disturbed by the orb and whatever was pulling it. “'Come into my parlor,' said the Spider to the Fly',” he quoted mirthlessly.

The party dismounted and Olara began to poke around at the barrels and chests that were out on the platform deck. “Anything, Babe?” Buck asked her.

She held up a bit of plastic and metal from the chest she was rooting through. “Isn't this one of your 'memory cards'? Like ENID uses?”

“It is,” Travis declared as he walked over. “Looks intact.” He keyed on his Focus and flipped through the screens that projected holographically in front of him until he found the communication protocol and had it interrogate the chip. “Interesting,” he declared to himself. “These appear to be notes Sylens kept as he tortured HADES.”

“How do you torture an AI?” Tracy demanded, somewhat incredulously.

“You're not going to believe this,” Murray warned her. “And I quote, 'Success. The irony is delicious. Various forms of data produce discomfort in the 'subject', but non more so than natural imagery. Holographic representations of plants and animals work best, the more vivid the better. The effect appears to be excruciating. One loop in particular, of rabbits hopping though a field of flowers produced paroxysms of agony...!'”

“He showed HADES pretty pictures as torture?” Doc demanded.

“Evidently it worked,” Travis assured her. “And, oh, wait, what's this? 'Finally... the revelation I've been seeking has revealed itself. Astonishing. And Terrifying, even to me.'”

“What?” Buck asked. “What terrified him?” Travis flipped through the notes, becoming more and more frustrated.

“He doesn't say!” he lamented. “He goes off on a tangent about his master plan. Looks like it was what led him to leave that broadcast to the Spire we intercepted.” With a gesture, he downloaded the rest of the notes and pushed them at ENID for archiving and study later. With a tap, he clicked off his Focus and pulled his rifle around on it's sling and into his hands. “Let's be on guard. Who knows what is waiting for us.” Buck nodded and copied his movement and both men crept forward, taking the lead. This time, there was no argument from the women, two of whom nocked arrows and followed. Crossing the threshold of the bunker caused the overhead lights to flicker on again and an obviously artificial voice with much static and distortion clicked on.

“Welcome, Colonel Murray. Please remain at the information desk for personnel to escort you and your party.”

“How does it know your name?” Nakoa whispered, obviously worried.

“Some part of the facilities computer must still be working,” he whispered back. “It polled my Focus for my ID.” The group edged up to the corner, then Buck went wide, slicing the pie out and around it, rifle up and seeking a target. With a gesture, he informed them the way was clear and they crept forward. The corridor widened into a larger space where a monstrous machine was laying on it's side. It resembled a Triceratops, with three long, angry looking horns, two on a wide metal shield at the back of it's head and one on the 'nose'. Fortunately, it was permanently off and obviously missing large and important parts. Down another hallway, in front of a massive GeneLock vault door that was stuck half open, was the Horus Processing Orb. “HADES, I presume,” Travis declared. A quick poke found them the only ones in the room and the corridor beyond the GeneLock door were slick with mineral deposits and stalactites, which was not a good sign.

“No Aloy or Sylens,” Buck observed.

Travis walked up to the Orb and tapped his Focus. Before him, a log appeared:

“No HADES, either,” he declared with a sigh. “At least, this time, it's finally gone. But, where is Aloy?”

“Colonel,” Nakoa called from the little dais up to the GeneLock Door. “You should see this.” Frowning, he walked around the orb and up the steps to where she was crouched down by the stuck GeneLock Door. “Aloy entered here,” she declared, pointing at a soft soled print of a Nora boot clearly pressed into the muck. “And so did four others, after her. See how the new prints walk over hers? And this,” she indicated a swiping furrow. “I've never see anything like this.”

“Sylens, maybe?” asked Olara as she came up to look at the marks.

“Not unless he's decided to dress more upscale,” he muttered, pointing at a print that clearly read Ferragamo.

“Ferragamo?” asked Nakoa, who had been diligently studying how to read the 'ancient' letters and writings. “What does that mean?”

“Who, not what,” he corrected softly. “A thousand years ago, they were a very expensive shoe maker in a country called Italy.” He exchanged a glance with his wife. “Let's not speculate. Let's find out.” He rose and returned to the Orb. After a tap of his Focus and rooting about in the icons, he clicked something. “Here we are.”

Beside him, a holographic Aloy appeared and suddenly next to her, a holographic Sylens. “Aloy,” he greeted. “I see you've dealt with HADES.”

The Nora Seeker was only just keeping her temper in check. “Yeah. Think maybe it can stay dead, this time?”

“It will,” he assured her. “You can trust...”

Aloy wheeled in anger. “Trust?” she demanded, her outrage palpable. Sylens was unperturbed.

“Yes,” he drawled. “Trust. As in since I did what you could never do and extracted all of HADE's priceless knowledge, you can trust that I was willing to actually let you destroy it this time.”

“So, back to holograms instead of face to face?” she demanded of him. “What? Afraid I'd stab you or something?” She keyed on her Focus and began to quickly swipe through the icons.

“There's a reason I...” he started, but she found a red icon and purged it.

“And using the same spyware, I see.” She dismissed the icons and turned back, her expression tightly controlled. “So, all those times I called, you could've just answered? But I guess you just preferred to go on spying all this time.” Sylens looked away in disinterest, unable to even feign embarrassment at being found out.

“My world stopped revolving around you months ago, Aloy,” he told her dismissively. “I've had work to do. Countless hours of research, as demanding and time intensive as it has been critical to the fate of this planet.” Aloy found that humorous and mock laughed at him.

“Right!” she agreed, sarcasm all but dripping from her lips. “Of course you're just trying to save the world too!”

Sylens refused to rise to her bait. “That's right. The difference, of course, is that, unlike you, I've produced results.”

Buck scratched his chin and declared, “I really don't like this guy.”

Finally, Aloy mastered her temper and in a remarkably even tone asked, Did you find a backup of GAIA or not?”

“Oh yes,” he answered benevolently. “I believe I did.”

“Where?”

With a grand gesture, Sylens indicated the GeneLock door they were standing next to. “Voila,” he told her smugly. “Why do you think I summoned you here? Behind that gene-locked hatch lie the ruins of the ancient facility where the HADES Extinction Protocol was perfected. A testing process that ran hundreds of trials; each of them using a back up of GAIA.”

Surprisingly, that calmed Aloy considerably and she asked, “HADES told you this?”

He smiled darkly. “It took some convincing, but yes. So, are you ready to go get what you've been searching for for the last six months...” The smirk returned to his face. “Or are you just going to stand there with your mouth open?”

Instantly, Aloy was angry again. “You mentioned you've been busy...”

“Exceptionally busy,” he interrupted, but she plowed on without stopping.

“But not so busy you couldn't find time to teach Tenakth rebels how to over ride machines? Ride them as mounts?”

He turned from gazing at the Processing Orb to give the young Nora his full attention. “Aloy, the only issue you should be concerned about is obtaining a GAIA backup. Perhaps if you focused more, you might actually see results?”

“That's not exactly a denial, Sylens,” she hissed.

“Take it any way you want,” he told her.

Aloy's mouth clinched as she literally chewed down her anger before turning back to him. “Just to...confirm. HADES said that there are backups of GAIA? In there.”

“Yes. Or were, anyway. A thousand years ago.”

She began to pace to keep her temper. “Backups that didn't get purged when Ted Faro wiped every copy of APOLLO?”

“May he burn in Hell,” muttered Tracy.

“Correct,” Sylens assured her. “According to HADES, this facility could not be accessed by remote signal. Not even Ted Faro could touch the data here.”

“That tracks for a Black Ops site like a super AI proving lab,” Travis thought aloud.

“Backups,” Aloy whispered to herself, as if trying not to get her hopes so high they would be dashed again but unable to fight the urge to do so. “Data complete GAIA and her subordinate functions... Everything needed to reboot the system, restore control over the terraforming system, save life on Earth...” She stopped and looked up at the door. “In there.”

“So HADES said,” Sylens cautioned her. “So, what are you waiting for?

Something in his tone must have triggered renewed suspicion, and Aloy turned from the door back to Sylens. “Did HADES reveal the source of the Mysterious Signal?” she demanded. “The one that woke it and tried to destroy life on Earth?”

“Yes,” Sylens replied matter-of-factually. “It did.”

“Care to share?”

Sylens gave a dismissive gesture and turned away. “In due time. First things first, Aloy. Last I checked, you still had a super intelligent AI named GAIA to reboot.”

“Yeah,” she growled. “The same GAIA who had to destroy herself twenty years ago because of the signal?”

“It stopped being transmitted years ago. It's no longer a threat.”

Aloy frowned. “What if it repeats?”

“It won't” he assured her. “Even if it did, well...” He sighed and shook his head. “The details are complicated, but the signal required HADES to take effect. Simply delete HADES from any backup you reboot and GAIA is safe. Now, stop wasting time and go get a backup.” She rolled her eyes and sighed before evenly meeting his gaze.

“Alright,” she declared. “I'll search the facility for a GAIA backup.” Then her posture hardened and her finger came up in warning. “But, just be clear, Sylens. If this ends up being another one of your tricks...”

That finally got under the man's skin and his impatience shown through his careful facade. “It's a GeneLocked hatch, Aloy! You're literally the only person who can open it. How could I set a trap inside?”

“Trick me again, Sylens,” she said slowly and with palpable menace, “and our next conversation will be face to face. Though you won't have much to say, on account of my spear being buried in your throat!

That returned the smug smile to his face. “Aloy,” he drawled. “Thanks to me, everything you've desired, everything you've been fumbling about unable to achieve for six months is now within your grasp.” He gestured at the hatch and smirked at her. “Now, I know you didn't learn much about manners, growing up a Nora outcast, but in a situation like this, you say, 'Thank you.' And I say, 'You're welcome.'” With that final barb, Sylens vanished.

Aloy stewed on that for a full minute, chewing her lip and nodding to herself, obviously imagining all manner of mayhem she would employ on her next meeting with the enigmatic shaman. Finally, she swallowed her pride, turned and approached the door. It scanned her, then groaned to it's current, half open state and she went through.

The video then skipped, it's time stamp showing several hours passed and then four new people appeared. The man in front was bald, wearing a double breasted silk suit in an interesting shade of green and yellow like a stone ground mustard with muted yellow pin striping with a gold ascot in place of a tie. Next to him was a taller man in a look that suggested 5.11 Tactical Chic, khaki bush shirt, matching thigh pocket pants that were even bloused into combat boots. His white hair was in a high and tight, though he didn't look old enough to have white hair naturally. Then came a dark haired woman in a pure white jump suit that showed off her figure and was accentuated with a high wing collar that reached the back of her head in the rear giving an almost regency period look to the skin tight garment. Around all of them was a shimmer of some kind as if the light was catching on something just above their skin.

There were a pair of odd machines behind them, that moved in a jerky, but smooth manner as if they wanted to be able to dart in any direction at any moment. They were nearly five feet high and their angular bodies twitched like stalking cat looking for prey.

And behind them, was a young girl of no more than sixteen. She wore a white and gray shirt and pants that resembled nurses scrubs, save for their color. Her bright red hair was cut quite short, almost a boyish style with a pronounced wing to her right. Her manner was timid and unsure around the adults, who chiefly ignored her as they passed the processing orb and followed Aloy into the facility.

The girl was identical to Aloy, such that she could be her twin sister but for her age. “What the fuck?” whispered Travis to himself.

September 28th, 3040

“Who are those guys?” demanded Buck. Travis stopped the recording and backed it up until the figures were before him once more.

“They're not dressed like any tribe I've ever seen,” Olara declared, but Nakoa was quick to correct her.

“Yes you have,” she declared, pointing at the obvious enforcer of the group. “Look at him, he's dressed like an AmSci!”

“But the others aren't,” Tracy countered. “I've never seen any of these people before, nor these weird, shimmering clothing either. And her,” she pointed, “she has to be a clone of Elisabet Sobeck! But, how? We don't have the technology to do that. Not with what we brought with us.”

“More to the point we weren't awake twenty years ago,” Travis thought out loud. “When GAIA created Aloy and that girl isn't as old as Aloy.” He turned to his wife and asked, “Does Aloy have a sister to your knowledge? Was any other girl ever found outside of Eleuthia Nine?”

Nakoa shook her head. “Rost raised Aloy alone, if she had had a sister, there would be no keeping it a secret. Aloy was the only child I've ever heard of being found in All Mother Mountain.”

“There are, I would assume, based on the number,” Tracy conjectured, “at least eight other Cradle facilities. But would all of them have whatever store of genetic material GAIA used to create Aloy in the first place?”

As was his habit, Buck quickly returned to the practical. “Are they still in there?” Travis scrubbed through the video, then found the dapper bald man, the woman and one of the machines leaving with the young girl. It was nearly twenty minutes later until the enforcer left, by himself, looking decidedly upset.

“That's the end of the log,” Travis declared with concern. “The next entry is us arriving. Aloy is still in there.” Nakoa stood, intent to dart in to her fellow Nora's rescue, but Travis caught her wrist and stopped her. “We have no idea who those people are, their intent, or what they might have left behind in there,” he declared in a voice that broached no argument. “You are our best tracker and you will stay behind me.”

Nakoa's face flushed for a moment, then she drew herself up and nodded. “As you say, War Chief.”

“And I'll be going first,” Buck declared as he got his AR in his hands and stepped around Travis and his wife to the vault door. Travis made a point to catch his wife's eyes as he allowed Buck to go first, and the young woman realized what he had done and nodded again, a ghost of a smile on her face.

One by one, the group scrambled over the half open hatch and into the security screening area for the bunker. There was a floor to ceiling office with an 'information' type window into it made with Lexan of sufficient thickness to imply at least bullet resistance. The corridor went around the office and then through a door out onto a metal scaffolding that overlooked a massive opening, the size of a football field, foul line to foul line, end zone to end zone. On the far side of the opening, was another GeneLock Vault hatch that was standing open. Holograms played over various, rotten and rusting items, displaying importance of things more than a thousand years old. Offices and catwalks lined the walls between where the party was and the vault on the other side of the massive room, and sunlight cascaded in through a massive fissure in the ceiling.

The room was completely flooded, all the way up to just below the catwalk they stood on.

Through the murky depths, the holograms lit the water showing the floor was nearly ten full stories below them. Worse, evidently some seismic event was responsible for the new sky light and pool feature in the bunker, as two of the massive concrete pylons had fallen, taking out the catwalks that would have connected this side of the bunker to the offices lining the walls.

“Well, shit,” Buck muttered to himself.

Olara began to look about the room and pointed, showing ropes dangling from hard points in the various concrete. “Aloy got over there the hard way,” she declared, pointing out a zigzagging route that went back and forth across the room twice. “I don't know how the strangers got across, only one of them looked like he had the strength for Aloy's route.”

“Anybody want to hazard a guess how cold that water is?” Travis asked, looking down into the flooded chamber. Tracy tapped her Focus as directed one of her medical programs at the water.

“It's fifty two degrees,” she declared. “On top. If you fall in, you've got about four minutes until the cold starts making it increasingly difficult to swim.” She paused dramatically. “Assuming you don't drown due to the gasp reflex going into water that cold.”

“I can follow Aloy's route, War Chief,” Nakoa declared confidently. “Olara and...”

“I'm at least eight years older than you,” the dark complected woman was quick to correct. “And two years more since I ran The Proving.” She shook her head and reached out to squeeze Buck's arm. “And I have too much to loose to even try. That is beyond me.”

Buck looked up at the fissure in the ceiling and rubbed his chin. “Didn't Sylens say he used explosives to free the Processing Orb from the Horus? That fissure is better than half way to the other platform. If we can open it up longer, we could just repel down from above.”

Travis grinned, his good humor restored. “Buck, you just earned your pay for the month!”

“Good,” the big man replied with a matching grin. “I've got my one thousand year review coming up!”

A leisurely ride back to the little camp under the Horus turned up a pair of barrels of Blaze that had been tucked into a cave and sheltered from the elements. It only took a half hour to tie the barrels across one of the extra Striders that had been repurposed to pack work, then another half hour to haul it up the ridge, above the bunker to find the fissure in the rock. The barrels were wedged into the far end of the opening, then Nakoa dipped a piece of cloth into the Blaze before tying it to one of the bombs for her sling that she tucked between the barrel, making an ad hoc Molotov Cocktail as a fuse detonator combo. A few tense breaths from a stout looking collection of rocks pressed into service as a blast shield, then a deafening explosion rocked the lake area.

Carefully approaching it showed the fissure was now another thirty yards long and the formerly placid water below in the ruin was sloshing back and forth from the debris that had fallen into it. Buck grinned at his boss. “We're in business.”

A rope repelling harness was assembled, then safety tied off around a significantly sized cotton wood tree, leading to the final argument. “I should go, boss,” Buck tried to assert, but Travis held up a hand to block him.

“Buck, you're stronger than I am,” he declared reasonably. “If we need out of there in a hurry, you're the one who's strong enough to do it.”

“Well, I should go with you,” Tracy interjected. “Aloy could be injured...” but Travis shook his head again.

“Doc, you're our medic, your knowledge is too important to be risked needlessly.” He sighed and looked at his wife. “Nakoa and I will go and keep our Focus' in open link. If something happens, you three will need to pull us out. If Aloy is injured, we'll have to risk moving her.”

Tracy nodded and fished a cervical collar from her bag. “If you have to, use this.”

Murray tied the collar to his belt, “I will. Ready, dear heart?”

“At your lead, beloved,” she told him with a smile. Travis wrapped the rope around his arm and made sure of his descent line behind him.

“Tension,” he called and Buck came set. Gently, he stepped into the maw of the chasm
and slowly lowered himself once more into the bunker. Now the only sound was the sloshing of the water finding its own level again from the explosion and the rope slowly passing through his gloves. They'd gotten lucky in that, while the fissure wasn't all the way to the vault, it was close enough that a gentle toss with a grappling hook allowed him to snag the hand rail of the catwalk of the door and ease himself over to it. Once the line was made fast, he called up, “Down and clear!”

Immediately, Nakoa appeared in the hole and made her way down and over until she was beside him. “Ok, we're going in,” Travis announced as he and his wife made sure of the play in their safety lines and walked through the hatch.

Inside the vault was a mess.

Some kind of large, mechanical rack had come loose from the ceiling and fallen through the catwalk that was inside the vault. It had crashed through the floor, doubtlessly weakened by the flood into dark looking water and mangled wreckage. Fortunately, the catwalk they stood on seemed solid and there was even the console for the rack still in it's place and it's holograms working. “Whatever happened in here, it was violent,” Travis declared as he swept the room with his Focus. Immediately, three ghostly holograms appeared as the rest of his team joined him in telepresence.

“I think this was recent,” Nakoa opined from the far edge of the catwalk, closest to the destruction. “There is rust that has been blown off this, but the metal under it is bright. This happened today, I think.”

“Well, the console seems to still be working,” Travis consoled himself. “Let's see if the security systems are.” He walked over to it and interfaced his Focus with it. Finally, a hologram of Aloy stepped into the room, a smile on her face and her clothing wet. Travis paused the recording and altered the view out towards the collapsed machine. Now it was hanging from the ceiling once more, looking like a gigantic spider with a pair of revolving code cylinder drums on two of it's arms. “Good guess,” he complimented his wife with a smile. She grinned back at him and hugged his arm. He returned the camera to Aloy she trotted holographically up to them, her eyes on the metallic spider.

“That thing is huge!” she said to herself as she came to a halt. “Looks like the power is off, except for that console!” She declared as she walked over to it and interfaced her own Focus. “It's damp in here too,” she muttered as she worked. “I hope it hasn't corroded anything I need.”

“Like the back up,” Sylen's disembodied voice observed.

“Genetic profile confirmed,” the facilities computer declared over a loud speaker. “Greetings, Dr Sobeck. Do you wish to activate RECLUSE SPIDER?”

“Obvious name is obvious,” Tracy muttered.

“I do,” Aloy replied to the computer.

“Activating.” The armatures began to move and with much creaking and groaning of metal, settled before the gantry. The drums were hexagonal data matrix types of holographic sequenced memory pictograms, which were state of the art, a thousand years ago. Most of the slots were empty, but not all, there were a pair of gold tinted matrix tubes in the frame's left drum, and several red tinted ones in the right.

“It looks like this RECLUSE SPIDER thing is some kind of testing apparatus for HADES and GAIA,” Aloy said as she walked over to it. “Those red ones would be HADES.” She revolved the repository drum and her eyes lit up. “And this is GAIA! Got one! Two, in fact!”

Sylens was dour. “I was starting to get worried.” Aloy pulled out the matrix and walked back over to the console with it, then paused, a concerned expression on her face.

“Data footprint low?” she asked, confused. “Ninety eight percent memory free?”

“That can't be right,” Sylens protested. “GAIA was a vast, super intelligence. You'd barely expect her to...”

“Shh!” Aloy ordered him as she finished her walk over to the console and plugged the matrix into the slot for it. The console lit up, showing the icon Travis remembered from the AI's final message he'd witnessed in All Mother Mountain, six months ago. “Root kernel?” asked Aloy in confusion.

“No subordinate functions?” Sylens added. The pictogram finished with red Xs on each of the tabs that would normally have an icon for the sub-routines that were part of the system.

“It's not a full backup!” Aloy seethed, anger and despair warring for the dominate position in her mind to feel. For once, Sylen's tone was consoling.

“No,” he said finally. “More like...a seed. From which GAIA's mind could grow, if it had sub functions with which to form a heuristic matrix.” Nakoa leaned against her husband's shoulder.

“Do these words mean anything to you?”

“No,” he whispered back, “but they will to Ian,” he assured her, thinking back to the lanky head of technology for American Scientific, hundreds of miles away at Fort Carson.

Anger and frustration began to win the fight for Aloy's emotional state. “So it's useless?” she demanded.

“I'm afraid so,” Sylen declared finally. “Without the sub functions...” Aloy growled out loud and stamped her feet, pacing away from the console. It was a display discouraging enough that Sylens decided to broadcast his image and he appeared on the gantry next to her. With surprising sympathy, he reached out holographically and with genuine emotion, declared, “Aloy, you've done all you could.”

“For what?” she shouted at him. “For nothing?”

Perhaps realizing he couldn't comfort the distraught young woman he walked a step or two away to give her space to vent her anger. “Maybe saving the world is too big a task for any one person,” he observed. “Even you.”

Something in the way he'd said his statement obviously inspired something in her mind and her head snapped up and she hurried back to the console. “Wait! Wait! Wait!” she declared from her rapid manipulations of the controls. “It's useless without sub functions, but there are sub functions out there!” Over the console, a holographic map of the Northern Hemisphere appeared, centered on the North America land mass.

Even Sylens was intrigued as he walked over to join her. “The original ones?” he asked as he took in the map. “They're scattered to the winds when GAIA blew herself up. They could be anywhere! You can't possibly find them in time...” Aloy was obviously not listening as she got the computer to broadcast a status query, her eyes glued to the hologram. “Even if you did,” Sylens went on. “The Mysterious Signal mutated them; just like HADES! You have no idea...”

She whirled on him, her eyes on fire. “Oh but I do!” she countered hotly. “A good one! If it works...” Then she gave a tossing gesture, hanging on up on the sage and canceling his hologram. She went back to the console and continued her manipulations. The screen displayed:

It was then that Sylens proved he had considerable skill and managed to establish a link with the facility computer itself. “Ahh,” he declared, obviously impressed. The seconds drew out and Aloy's excitement began to fade. His hologram reappeared and he was consoling again. “It was worth a...”

He couldn't continue as the console beeped and on the map a pinpoint of light began to pulse. Both rushed over to the display. “You've found MINERVA,” he whispered, amazed. “But, it won't connect...”

Aloy refused to lose her excitement. “But it's close,” she enthused. “In the Mountains, west of Plain Song. Close enough for me to go get it!” She sighed, realistic, but refusing to admit defeat. “I'd hoped I'd find all of the sub functions, but one's enough to get started, right?”

Sylens nodded, rubbing his chin. “It is,” he finally agreed. “Recover MINERVA and one could use it to launch GAIA's heuristic matrix...”

A grin spread on Aloy's face. “Once she's conscious, she helps me find the other sub functions and I go gather them...!”

“And rebuild her, piece by piece.” The older man favored her with a smile. “Very clever.”

Beaming, she put her hands on her hips and smirked at her rival. “Still think I can't save the world on my own?” Her pride was short lived. The facility alarm began to blare behind her, drawing her eyes to the closed Gene-locked hatch. Sylens rubbed his chin and followed her over to the hatch.

“Ah, yes. Well, about that...” he said haltingly.

“Alert!” the computer's voice declared. “Intruder Alert!” Aloy whirled back to face Sylens as he walked over.

“Aloy, I need you to listen closely. These intruders want the same thing you do: GAIA reborn. It's why they're here.”

The red head's eyes narrowed and she hissed, “Friends of yours?”

“No,” he affirmed quickly. “They don't know about me. The data pulse I transmitted indicating that a GAIA backup could be recovered here was anonymous.” Aloy looked at the hatch over her shoulder and back, her face a mask of anger. “Now, they're very powerful, but they won't harm you,” he assured her. “Not when they see who you are, what you are; a clone of Elisabet Sobeck. A genetic key with which they can reboot GAIA and rebuild the system. They need you.”

Aloy was having none of it as she walked forward, her finger out in accusation. “I warned you, Sylens,” she growled, her tone promising death, and worse.

For his part, Sylens was unimpressed and rolled his eyes at her threats. “For once, Aloy, submit to the inevitable. Open the hatch.”

There was no reasoning with the girl, or her white hot anger. “First, I rebuild GAIA,” she hissed. “Save life on Earth, then I track you down and end yours!”

The hologram of Sylens stepped into her personal space. “I'm trying to help you here,” he started, but she reached up, pulled the Focus from her temple and the hologram vanished as the call was terminated again. Then she flung the Focus on the catwalk floor and stomped it.

“Try spying on me with that,” she hissed, then reached into a pouch on her belt and produced a new Focus and put it on. “There,” she consoled herself. “New Focus, spy ware free.” That done, she fell back into her habit of talking to herself as she looked over the rail of the catwalk. “Ok, think!” she commanded herself. “Think. Think. Think!” Her eyes came up to the hatch and she smirked. “I don't care how 'powerful' they are, the only thing that can open that hatch is me.”

“Oh, someone is in for a nasty surprise,” Buck whispered.

She looked about. “Question is, can I find another way out...?” She went over to the rail and looked down. “There's a current in the water,” she told herself.

“No!” Tracy exclaimed, unable to keep the caution from being voiced.

“It's not much,” Aloy told herself, having not heard the warning. “But, maybe there's a way out?”

Then the computer spoke again. “Genetic profile confirmed.” Aloy's head snapped around in shock and amazement. “Entry Authorized.”

“What?!” she demanded in shock.

The clanking of the door's mechanism opening spurred her into action. She sprinted over to the console, snatched the matrix from the port and frantically looked for a place to hide. “Greetings, Dr Sobeck,” the computer continued. “Please step inside.”

Seeing nowhere else, Aloy darted over to the RECLUSE SPIDER and hid behind the Repository Carousel for HADES. She made it with only microseconds to spare as the hatch opened and the girl Travis and his party had taken for another clone of Elisabet Sobeck proved she was in fact that. She stepped forward as the Bald Man, his Enforcer and the Woman followed. The machines darted through the hatch, and then up the wall, next to it, clinging in some way on their tentacle like four legs that wasn't obvious. “Hmm, looks promising,” Bald Man declared as he strode in. “Beta?” he commanded.

The girl responded to the command, walking forward slowly to the RECLUSE SPIDER and the GAIA pod. She rotated it until the other matrix was accessible and removed it. “Do we have it?” Bald Man demanded. The girl held the matrix up, then looked at the console and wondered over to it. He took no notice of her and turned to the older woman in the white jump suit. Now, Travis could see it had gold accents and the 'top' was even fashioned like a cut away coat to tails behind her, giving the outfit even more 'Regency' period clashes of style. “Fantastic,” he continued. “Did the Pulse originate from here?”

Hearing that, the girl returned her attention to the console. Her expression became confused. “Has, someone...?” she asked herself.

“Something wrong?” Bald Man demanded.

She manipulated the console and the RECLUSE SPIDER's arms rose, returning to it's standby position and exposing Aloy to the other group. “Shit!” whispered Aloy as she scrambled back to her feet.

“Specters! Beta!” Bald Man commanded. Immediately, one of the machines leaped from the wall to the gantry, wrapped the girl with one of it's tentacles, and whisked her away, out the hatch. Aloy stared at them, while they stared at her for a moment, then Bald Man straightened his suit. “Well,” he asked of the woman next to him. “Any idea what the hell a clone of Elisabet Sobeck is doing here?”

“Maybe,” the woman declared after a moment of thought, “GAIA made one? When it destroyed itself? As a Hail Mary to repair the system?”

Bald Man considered that for a moment. “Hmm,” he drawled. “Don't like the sound of that.” Suddenly, he made up his mind and stood up straighter. “Nah, don't like it. Don't want it.”

The woman turned to him. “But, the effic...”

“Nope!” he interrupted her. “One's enough trouble.” He turned to the Enforcer. “Erik?”

“Yep?” the big man replied.

“Care to do a little downsizing?”

Erik rolled up the sleeves of his khaki shirt as he walked forward menacingly. “Sure.”

The woman lingered and asked, “What if she sent the pulse?”

Bald Man turned and retreated out the hatch, straightening his suit as he went. “Then that was foolish of her,” he declared dismissively. “But we got what we came for, so let's put it to use.” The woman looked back a final time, then turned and followed Bald Man out.

“I snap a lot of necks in VR,” Erik declared as he continued to stroll towards Aloy as if he intended to ask her the time of day, not murder her. “But that...certain...tremor as life fades from the eyes...? No holo gets it quite right.”

Aloy snap drew and arrow and nocked it, drawing it back as her anger gave her courage. “Keep flapping your mouth!” she yelled at him. “It makes a nice target!”

Erik, however, found that amusing and roared with laughter. “You actually think that primitive crap you've got there can hurt me?” he demanded as he laughed, then spread both arms wide, inviting a shot. The arrow snapped across the distance, almost too fast to track, but it struck something just above the man's shirt with a flash and a spark and the arrow shattered. Aloy was stunned for a moment and took a halting step backward as an evil grin spread across Erik's face. “This...is gonna be fun,” he declared.

As he stalked forward, he made a fist and out of nothing around his hand a blade like a katar or a punch dagger formed and he thrust it directly at Aloy. She only just managed to dodge, trying twice more with her arrows to Erik's amusement. For several minutes, a dangerous game of cat and mouse was played on the gantry, under the archive as Erik tried to close with Aloy and Aloy was frantic to keep him at arms length. Twice, she tried to dart for the hatch, but Erik was frighteningly fast on his feet and cut her off, both times.

Frantically trying anything, Aloy looked about, until her eyes settled on the archive. “Come on, fight me!” Erik taunted her, but Aloy's hand went to her belt and produced a Blaze bomb that she then hurled at the old, rusted coupling that was holding the RECLUSE SPIDER to the ceiling. “No!” Erik shouted, but it was too late, the bomb exploded and the frame with a deafening groan of over stressed metal broke free of the ceiling, crashed into the cat walk, destroying it, as it, and Aloy fell into the water below.

Erik, incensed, ran over to the edge of the gantry and looked down into the pit, pacing back and forth. “What was that?” he shouted. “Me killing what you wanted dead!” he added, making it clear he was having a conversation with the others behind him. “What the hell did you think?”

Nakoa leaned forward a bit and pointed. “Look!” On the hologram, a tiny Aloy, in the water who was obviously treading water, purposefully dove deeper. “She's alive,” she enthused.

“She was when she went into the water,” Tracy corrected her.

“The platform collapsed,” Erik lied to the Bald Man. “The body went with it.” He sighed, obviously disgusted. “Right, and since when don't you get what you want?” He shook his head again and turned to the machines next to him. “Specters, search!” he commanded and walked out. The strange machines, Specters they were evidently called, scrambled down the destroyed gantry and the hologram ended.

“She's out of range of the recorders,” Travis said softly.

“We can't go after her,” Tracy instantly declared, seeing what Travis was thinking. “Colonel that water will kill you. Look at the time stamps, that was three hours ago! If she's in that water, she's dead already!”

“Boss, you have to come up here,” Buck declared, keeping his voice from making it a command. “We need you, Travis,” he added.

Murray's jaw clinched as he stared down into the ruined archive, then turned and went over to the console. “ENID,” he commanded, tapping his Focus. Immediately, the AI appeared next to him.

“How may I help you, Colonel?”

“I need you to interface with what's left of this facilities computers. Three hours ago Aloy went into that water and I need to know what happened to her.” The hologram turned to the console and placed her hand on the plate.

“Colonel, this system is heavily damaged. I...one moment.” Her head cocked to one side as if she was thinking, then a display appeared between her and Travis. It was evidently a schematic of the facility and a blue dot was moving through it, trailed by a pair of red dots. “I have what appears to be Aloy, moving through the facility, two drones of an unknown type are following her.” Several minutes passed then the dot vanished. “Aloy found her way into a reserve power area of the bunker,” she informed him. “There was an explosion that opened the bunker to the mountain around it. There must be a fairly large cavern, as that area of the bunker is draining into the cave.”

“Closest access?” he demanded.

ENID shook her head. “I'm sorry, Colonel, there is no safe human access to this area, I, just a moment.” Suddenly, a new hologram appeared, this time, it was Varl, who was standing next to a fast flowing creek or river. Lying in the water was Aloy.

“Colonel?” Varl started. “I found Aloy, but she's hurt...!”

“Mountains...” whispered Aloy in a delirium. “West of Plain Song...!”

Before Travis could say anything, Tracy stepped forward. “Varl, stop! Get her out of the water and build a fire as quickly as you can! As hot as you can! Get her near it. Where are you?”

“I have his coordinates, Ms Williams,” ENID informed her.

“Varl, we're on our way!” Travis told him.

As luck would have it, the cavern the bunker had been built next to was part of a larger groupings of caves that had been carved throughout the region in the prehistoric past that had carved the Grand Canyon. Aloy had been swept out underground for less than a mile from the Proving Lab in a cavern large enough that she hadn't been completely submerged. It had then launched her into the Muddy River, less than half a mile from the little delta where it and the Virgin River met and flowed into Lake Mead. Varl had been riding hard, trying to catch the party after Tracy's work on his leg wound had healed enough that he felt he could push himself on the ride.

The group found him and Aloy at the fire he'd built, but there wasn't much dead wood about and the fire wasn't as large as he had hoped it would be. Aloy, on the other hand, was in bad shape, she was delirious, moaning over and over, “Mountains...west of Plain Song...”

While No Man's Land wasn't as bad as these lands had been in the Ancients day, they still got very cold at night. Tracy had Aloy wrapped in a thermal blanket in an effort to keep her core temperature up, but she was working out of a first responder bag, not the infirmary of Fort Carson. “We have to get her in doors,” she warned Travis, her face drawn and haggard from her frantic efforts of life saving. She lifted up the Nora girl's armor to show a series of nasty bruises that were so dark on her abdomen they were nearly purple against her fair skin. “There could be organ damage from these,” she whispered hoarsely, trying to keep her voice from affecting the other members of the party. “If I have to operate, it can't be in a camp!”

“There's an Utaru village,” Varl said from the fire, as his hearing was excellent. He rose and joined the whispered conversation. “Just over the rise there, two miles, at most.”

“How will the Utaru greet us?” Travis asked. “Are they as war like as the Tenakth?”

Nakoa shook her head. “That wasn't how Blameless Marad described them,” she declared. “They're farmers and they trade food with the Tenakth for protection from the Carja.”

“Just because they're farmers doesn't make them peaceful,” Tracy rebutted tiredly.

Travis nodded solemnly. “Well, it's three days back to Barren Light, so we'll have to risk contacting the Utaru.” He turned to Varl and asked, “How many do you think are in the village?”

The young man cocked his head to one side in confusion. “Why?”

“If they're not peaceful, how many people am I going to have to kill to protect this group,” Travis clarified. Varl blinked in surprise.

“You're serious?”

The expression on the Colonel's face didn't change. “Do I look like I'm joking?” he asked flatly. “My wife is pregnant and Aloy is the probably the single most important person on this planet. Do you think they'll make me choose between us and them? Think hard, son, that's not math I want to get wrong.”

Varl swallowed as he realized the depth of the Colonel's commitment. “Maybe a dozen. It's not a big village, and everything I've ever heard about the Utaru is that they're peaceful.”

“God, I hope you're right,” Murray muttered. “A dozen, I can handle.” Then he straightened and turned to the rest of the group around the fire. “Saddle up. We're going to sprint down the way to a local village and try to get Aloy some help. Buck, stand ready.”

“Sir,” the big man replied as he stood and immediately began to re-secure the gear to the pack Striders.

Within five minutes, the fire was out and buried, Aloy secure to a stretcher across the spare Strider and the group was trotting up the ridge, away from the placid waters of Lake Mead. Overhead the moon was three quarters full and giving plenty of light for the Striders to make their journey. Fortunately, the mechanical horses couldn't be spooked and so ignored the wounded Nora's sometimes loud cries of the mysterious location, or the name of her foster Father Rost.

Quickly they found a worn foot path from the Lake up the ridge that was obviously used by the villagers for their water needs. It wound up the ridge and over a fold in the land until finally the village, lit by the yellow lights of candles and torches came into view.

'Village' as a word, was being generous. The settlement seemed more like a fortified manor house than a village. A wall had been made of bundles of reeds like might be used for a thatched roof, but woven together around large, thick vines as a support that was almost like wattle and daub construction. There was a round gate where the vine had been encouraged to grow into an arch, then continue around the little clutch of huts. By the gate was a tower that also had an air of being alive as it was a cottonwood tree that had a hut woven into it's branches like a tree house. Behind the wall, were four round, domed buildings with woven walls and thatched rooves that ringed a central courtyard.

By the gate were a pair of young men, wearing wooden frames on their torsos to which metal machine parts had been lashed with reeds making a stiff, ad hoc armored chest piece, but with vambraces and shin protections of sturdy looking vines woven into a hard rig to carry other pieces of metal. They had matching hats or helmets of similar sturdiness but with wide, arching brims that, but for the green color of the leaves woven into them, might be mistaken for a cosplay piece from 'The Handmaid's Tale.' But there was nothing playful about the spears they carried. “Halt!” the taller one ordered. “You're not welcome here!”

Travis dismounted Black Jack with his hands up at his shoulders. “Please, we have an injured woman and need a place to care for her.” Nakoa dismounted as well and stood by her husband.

“We ask the right of sanctuary,” she told them and raised the knife Kotallo had given her. “We have Safe Passage from the Tenakth.”

“What is this?” The voice came from behind the gate and belonged to a tall, striking woman of African descent. There were small dots of a white substance on her chin and around the bottom of each eye, but Travis didn't know if they were yet more face paint or some kind of tattoo. She wore an elaborate head dress of woven long fern leaves with a machine piece as the centerpiece of it. She was dressed in the same woven white kilt the guards wore and a top that held some kind of red bag the size of her palm just above her heart that had been affixed to the garment.

“Forgive us,” Varl breathed, having all but materialized by Travis' elbow. “We are asking for charity and shelter to aid our friend.”

“Death is stalking the land tonight,” she said heavily. Her dark eyes flicked to Kotallo's dagger in Nakoa's hand, to Varl and back to Travis. “I am Zo, Gravesinger of Stone's Echo. Who are you?”

“My name is Travis Murray,” the Colonel informed her. “I'm of the AmSci Tribe, this is my wife Nakoa, who is Nora and this is Varl who is also Nora.”

“Nora, I've heard of,” Zo replied softly as she closed to conversational distance. “What is the name of the Marshall who gave you that knife?” she demanded of Nakoa.

“Kotallo is his name.”

“He's well?” the Utaru woman asked.

“He's alive,” Travis told her. “Thanks to the skill of my healer, but he lost his left arm in an ambush by Tenakth rebels at the Embassy of Barren Light.”

Zo nodded again. “I know him; and his blade. His party stopped here on their way back to the Tenakth lands. Your Healer must be very skilled. His injury would have killed most. It is good that you speak the truth.” Her eyes returned to Travis. “I don't know your tribe, Travis Murray. Where are you from?”

“My tribe lives next to the Nora lands,” he informed her. “On the far side of the Carja Sundom.”

“Are you as warlike as the Carja?”

“No. My people are ready to be friends with everyone,” he replied evenly. “But we have no trouble defending ourselves.” Zo considered that for a long moment, then turned towards the courtyard and gestured at the smallest of the huts inside it.

“You have asked for sanctuary and you have Safe Passage, so long as you act honorably, you will be treated that way. You may tend to your friend there.” She eyed the Striders behind them. “The machines stay outside the wall.”

“Thank you,” Travis told her with a bow.

“If your friend joins Re in death tonight, I will sing over her grave as well.”

Varl lifted Aloy from the stretcher and carried her towards the indicated hut while Tracy snatched her bag from her own Strider and followed him, calling up her medical programs on her Focus as she went; checking on what damage the journey may have done. As his people unpacked, Travis turned back to Zo, watching her watch the precision with which his party moved. “Thank you, again,” he told her.

“Your people seem very skilled,” she admitted as Nakoa and Olara had already gotten the saddlebags off Varl and Tracy's Striders and were following them to the hut. “Did your tribe lose many to the Red Raids?”

“We settled next to the Nora just this year,” he informed her. “We come, originally, from a land much further to the east, on the shores of the great water there.” He sighed and met her gaze. “We've heard of the Red Raids, but were not affected by them.”

The expression on her face declared she found the thought of a migration unusual. “Why did you leave your home lands?” her question was somewhat pointed, but the tone of her voice only indicated curiosity.

“We were driven out by dangerous machines,” he told her. Which is technically true, he thought to himself. She gestured for Travis to follow her, and walked back into the courtyard, where he was shocked to see a large machine laying on its side in an open, pole barn like structure. “You master machines?” he asked, but Zo's angered expression disabused him of that notion.

“Re is not our servant, but one of our Land Gods,” she declared. “She and her six sisters spread the bounty of Plain Song since before my grandmother was a little girl. Longer, perhaps, even before Plain Song was founded. They work and plant the land to give us this abundance. Or, she did. She's injured, I fear, dying.”

Travis' eyes went to the stricken machine and back. “They...they can't die. They're machines, they're not alive.”

“What to your mind makes us more alive than them?” she asked. “They move, they eat, other than being made of metal, they are just like us.”

“Some of my people thought that way once,” he replied softly. “We paid a heavy price for it.”

“She is in pain,” Zo replied. “Is your compassion only limited to beings of flesh and blood?”

Now that he was closer, he could see the machine was like the massive Triceratops that Sylens had mastered to pull the Processing Orb for him. It moved every now and then, in a jerky, almost painful manner. For a moment, he was struck again by the thoroughness by which the terraforming robots the AI GAIA had made needlessly mimicked the animals their designs had been inspired by. “I, I'm not sure I understand,” he said cautiously.

Zo smiled at him with a weary smile. “You do not need to,” she assured him. “To you, Re is just a machine, something dangerous you must guard against. Something that drove you from your home. To us, she is a provider, a timeless being who sows the land year upon year. To us, she made our home.” She sighed and turned back to face him. “Do you need food?”

“We have food,” he answered quickly. “We took a boar yesterday and have plenty of meat, if you'd like to join us...” he trailed off at the unpleasant expression on her face.

“We don't eat animals,” she informed him. “But I will not expect you to change to our ways.” She paused, then touched his arm as if in apology for her reaction. “I hope your friend lives.” Then she sank to her knees before the machine that was acting as if it was actually injured and in pain, then softly, Zo began to sing to it.

Travis watched for a moment, amazed at what he had lived to see, then brought his thoughts back to the practical and went to see how his group was fairing.

September 29th, 3040

Tuesday dawned over cast with heavy cloud cover that the Sun struggled to pierce as it rose above the Rocky Mountains to the east. Tracy had worried over Aloy late into the night, her eyes constantly going to the rigid plastic case that held her surgical tools and her worry she would have to use them in this non sterile environment plain on her face. Finally, Travis had ordered her to rest on the threat he would command her to take a sedative. He and Buck had taken turns watching over the moaning Aloy the remainder of the night.

Now, with the dawn, his Focus, even without Tracy's extensive library of medical apps confirmed that while there was extensive and deep bruising on the young Nora's body, she was no longer bleeding. The next forty eight hours would be critical, but it at least appeared she'd only been battered badly and would live to tell the tale of her battle with the sadistic Erik.

Travis greeted the dawn with Varl, who was as nervous about Aloy's health as he was. As Varl held the girl's hand, Travis sat by the door, looking out every now and then, while studying the video of Aloy's battle with Erik. Over and over he scrubbed the video, watching the arrow strike something just above Erik's shirt that made a flash that shattered the arrow. “Who is that?” Varl asked softly, as he looked over from the reed mat the Nora was laying on. “Why does he look like one of your people?”

“I don't know,” Travis replied. “He's not an employee of American Scientific, but yes, those clothes are very similar to ours.” He reached up and scrubbed the video back to where all three of them could be seen. “These two have clothes that are both like and different to ours. The details are off.”

“Details?” asked Varl. Murray quickly scrubbed through some pictures on his Focus and found one of himself and CEO Frank Olmstead holding each other by the shoulders, laughing and raising their glasses out at the viewer.

“This is from the company Christmas party, the year before the Faro Plague,” he said quietly. “These clothes we're wearing? They're called suits. See how mine and Frank's jackets have this material folded over where the jacket closes and around the collar? That's called a lapel.”

“His doesn't have that,” Varl acknowledged. “Or that strip of cloth from your necks.”

“They were called Ties,” Murray informed him. “And they could get stupidly expensive. And they were uncomfortable.”

“Why did you wear them, then?”

“Fashion,” Travis replied. Seeing the boy's confusion, he added, “Certain styles of clothing became popular, and from there, somewhat mandatory for certain meetings, or events. The word for that is fashion.”

“But his 'suit' isn't fashion?” Varl asked after a moment.

That caused the Colonel to shrug his shoulders. “Fashion does change. The specifics, at least. Details, that kind of thing.”

Varl considered that for a moment, looking back at Aloy, then returning his gaze to Murray, his expression angry. “Why did they do this to her?” he demanded.

“That's a question without an answer that's easy for you to understand, son,” Travis said quietly. “What do you know about what Aloy is trying to accomplish? About GAIA and HADES?”

“The Goddess?” he asked, then shrugged. “Just that she sacrificed herself to keep HADES from destroying the world. That we have to find her and restor...reserre...reboot,” he said, finally finding the right word. “We have to reboot her to finish saving the world.” He sighed and shook his head. “I understand that she's not a real goddess, but she's not Human either. That Aloy's Mother...the woman who looks like her, made GAIA a thousand years ago. Why would that have anything to do with why these people almost killed her?”

“Varl, there is a system...” he paused, then took a different tack. “There is a complicated machine, that was healing the world from the Faro Plague. GAIA was the mind that controlled that machine.”

“That's why the machines became deranged,” he added, bringing a smile to Travis' face.

“Exactly. These people, I believe they mean to control GAIA, to take control of the machine, for their own ends. Since Aloy could do that herself, they meant to kill her to prevent that from happening.” He saw from the expression on Varl's face he understood the gravity of what had just been said. “I don't know who these people are, or where they came from, but I mean to stop them from accomplishing that goal.”

The young Nora Brave's face became set. “Then I will help you.”

“Good lad,” Murray assured him. “We'll need all the help we can get.

“Travis Murray.” Zo appeared in the door, immediately bringing Varl's interest. “You must come with me.”

The Colonel got to his feet. “Is something wrong?”

“There are messengers from Plain Song,” the woman replied. “Come with me.” Something about the way she had said the command sounded an alarm in the back of his mind. As he reached down to pick up his War Belt and pull it on, he gently kicked Buck's foot. A dark eye casually opened, met his gaze, then he continued to play possum. Travis was sure his back was covered.

He followed the Gravesinger out, across the courtyard towards the gate, which stood open. There, a dozen men, all in armor like the two sentries stood, some keeping a wary eye on the little clutch of Striders that were grazing and ignoring the humans near them. The leader of the men eyed him and stepped forward, even though Zo kept herself between the two men.

He was an older man, in his middle forties perhaps, maybe even a little older with ruddy skin and dark hair he wore as a swept back Mohawk with the sides of his head shaved. He had a square face with classic Hispanic features, and dark, but honest eyes. Even though he was dressed identically to the other Utaru, his left arm and chest were covered in dark red and black tattoos, similar to those of the Tenakth Marshals wore, as well as black face paint across his nose below both eyes. “You aren't Carja,” he declared.

“No, my name is Travis Murray, I'm of the AmSci Tribe.”

The man's eye twitched and recognition dawned in them. “You don't look like an Ancient,” he accused. Travis casually put his hands on his hips, his right, resting on the holster that held his Browning Hi-Power. Once American Scientific settled on their desperate gamble of trying to outlast the Faro Plague, Frank had opened his wallet with orders for Murray to buy every all steel pistol in 9MM NATO he could lay his hands on.

Neither had been certain the polymer framed weapons that had come in vogue in the early decades of the twenty first century would endure and be functional some distant and unknown number of centuries later they hoped to reach. Steel, on the other hand, could be slathered in Cosmoline, vacuum sealed and stored with a desiccant to be preserved practically forever. The only enemies of a firearm being rust and politicians, the Faro Plague had taken care of the Politicians and the Cosmoline had defended against rust.

The Hi-Power was a heavy pistol, but it's weight was reassuring just now. “How many Ancients do you know?” he asked sardonically.

That brought Zo's face to him, a strange expression on her face. “You claim to be an Ancient?” she demanded.

“I don't claim to be one, I am one,” he told her. “It's a long story, I'll tell you later.” He turned back to the man before him. “You have me at a disadvantage, sir? Care to share your name?”

“Jaxx,” he replied. “I lead what soldiers our people claim.”

“'Our' people?” Travis repeated. “I don't have a large sample size of Utaru, but I've never seen tattoos like yours on them.”

Jaxx twisted his head a bit, as if the new angle would give him insight into Travis' mind. “I'm a Veteran,” he replied finally. “I was born of the Desert Clan of the Tenakth, but traded to the Utaru when I was a young man. They gave my former clan food, I helped organize them to resist the Carja.”

“Seems an equitable trade,” Murray allowed. “So long as you were ok with it. What can I do for you, Veteran Jaxx?”

“Last night we received two messengers at Plain Song,” he said guardedly. “One alerting us that our village of Summerwind had been attacked and razed by a band of renegade Carja. We had this news by one who had escaped from this bands fortress.” He looked over his shoulder at the Striders and back. “And another that renegades who rode machines were wandering No Man's Land and might be a part of it.”

“Well, we're not a part of any banditry,” Travis assured him. “There are, however, a group of Rebel Tenakth that attacked the Embassy at Barren Light less than a week ago. And they rode machines.”

“Rebel Tenakth who ride machines?” the soldier demanded with considerable incredulity.

“It's the truth,” Zo assured him. “Marshal Kotallo and his party stopped here on their way to Memorial Grove. I heard the tale from his own lips, and he spoke of the healer who saved his life from losing his arm. The same Healer who travels with this man by his description.”

Jaxx weighed that for a moment, then his stance eased, which made the men behind him relax as well. “I accept Zo's testament of your groups innocence in these matters.”

“Much obliged,” Travis assured him, then asked, “Fortress? Near by?” Jaxx nodded.

“In the mountainside, west of here and north of the Metal Devil. I'm told they call it Shadow's Reach. Carja with aspirations of renewing the Red Raids.” He looked over his shoulder again at the Striders outside the wall. “Carja who have tamed machines.”

“I know of these Carja,” Travis assured him. “They were part of a cult, and yes, they were trying to over throw the Sun King, but we had thought them dealt with.” He reached up and tapped his Focus and a topographical map appeared before him. Zo and Jaxx started in surprise, causing the Colonel to smirk slightly. “Do I look like an Ancient now?” He manipulated the map and highlighted a walled building of concrete that was showing its years. “Is this your Shadow's Reach?”

Jaxx quickly got over his shock and stared intently at the map. “Like the Visions,” he whispered to himself reverently. Then he returned to business and pointed at the ridge line they stood on. “We are here?” he asked and Murray nodded. “Then yes, that is the place that was described to me. Are you enemies with this cult?”

“I've fought them,” the Colonel replied. “If they're holding your people as slaves, I will do so again to help you free them. If you'll have me.”

“I will,” Jaxx replied, holding out his hand through the hologram. Travis took it solemnly.

“Not without me,” Buck declared loudly. The group turned to find him standing in the doorway of the hut the party had been given, his AR15 in a low ready grip that he could have up and killing in a split second. Beside him stood the Nora women, bows in their hands with arrows nocked, but not drawn.

“Or me,” Nakoa added.

“I wouldn't dream of it,” Murray assured his wife. “But first, how about some breakfast?”

Zo contributed a bag of rough cut oats to the meal that Olara and Nakoa quickly had boiling. Buck turned out the remainder of the belly of the boar they'd killed and quickly had it sizzling in the pan over the fire. Jaxx looked like he was in heaven smelling the cooking bacon and quickly availed himself of the early piece Buck offered him. As he chewed, his eyes closed in obvious delight and he grunted in satisfaction. “I can't remember how long it's been since I've had bacon!” he enthused.

“Vegetarian cuisine doesn't appeal to you?” Buck asked with a chuckle as he cooked.

“I've been living in Plain Song for twenty years. My wife is inspired with her stews,” he managed around his chewing. He sighed contentedly. “But, it's not meat. They don't know what they're missing!”

“Of course we do,” Zo shot back from opening a bag of dried figs and beginning to dice them to put into the oat meal. “Blood, entrails, killing...”

Buck shook his head with a grin on his face. “The world ended and the Vegans are still preaching...” he laughed. “Still, I wouldn't say 'no' to a nice bowl of grits now and again.”

“Not without butter,” Murray corrected him. “And no milk or butter till year after next. At best.”

“Butter?” Jaxx demanded.

“It's a way to make milk, from a large animal you don't have, we call cows, solid so it lasts longer. We also make cheese out of it, but the process is a bit different.”

“The Sky Clan use the milk of sheep and goats,” Jaxx replied. “I think the Lowlanders do too, but I have no first hand knowledge. Besides, we couldn't keep them in the desert. You have animals from the Old Time?” he wanted to know. “Animals we don't?”

“We do,” Travis told him. “And in a few years when the herd gets to a good size, you'll have to come to Fort Carson and try some.”

“Goat milk butter,” Buck remarked with a shudder and a sour expression on his face. “Hard pass.”

“And what of the child of this cow whose milk you take?” Zo wanted to know.

“We only take the excess until the calf is weened, then we just keep the cow lactating by taking all it's milk daily,” Tracy told her from her checking on Aloy who was still moaning softly, but her sleep seemed to be improving. “It doesn't hurt the cow or her calf. And it's very nutritious.”

Zo shook her head as she dumped the figs into the boiling oats. “Food should be a gift, not something taken.”

“Can I have more bacon?” Jaxx asked with a grin.

“I'm happy to give you some,” Buck told him with a wink at Zo, who put on something of an act of clinging to her moral high ground, but did smile at the end, but refused the bacon when offered.

“How many men do you estimate are encamped in this fortress?” Travis asked Jaxx as he held out his bowl for the porridge the girls had made.

“Yef, the boy who escaped,” Jaxx managed around his mouthful, “says no more than three dozen, but an exact figure was beyond him. He did mention their leader, a brute named Vezreh, bragged he had left a trail for other members of his cult, the Eclipse, to follow him out here.”

“That's a long wait for a train that isn't coming,” Murray replied. “The Eclipse were crushed at the Battle of the Alight, six months ago. If he escaped that, the men he has are all he'll ever have. The Sun King either dealt with or pardoned the rest who were press ganged by Helis.”

“Good news there, at least,” Jaxx admitted. “You fought in this battle? You're allies with the Carja?”

“We're neighbors with them,” the Colonel corrected. “I did fight in the battle, but did so to prevent the real leader of the Cult, the...” he trailed off, trying and failing of a way to describe an AI.

“Spirit,” Nakoa supplied while he struggled for the right word. “The Spirit HADES from awakening the Ancient war machines to destroy life on Earth.”

That brought a frown to Jaxx's face. “The Nora are well known for their mysticism, but I don't believe in Spirits.”

Nakoa's smile was cruel. “Don't you?” she asked and tapped her Focus. “ENID, would you come here, please?” The holographic young woman appeared, transparent and much to the surprise of Jaxx and Zo, but fortunately out of sight of the rest of the village.

“How may I be of service, Nakoa?”

“A Vision!” Jaxx exclaimed, even as Travis gently took his arm to keep him from jumping to his feet and spoiling the meal by overturning the little table they were all sitting around on the woven mats that was the floor of the hut. “What is this?”

Travis shot his wife a dirty look, but she only smiled sweetly, half apology, half smug satisfaction for getting a rise out of the Veteran. “Jaxx, this is ENID. She...well, this is hard to explain. She is technically a machine. An artificial mind we brought with us from the Old Time.”

“A...a machine...mind?” the other demanded, his eyes flicking back and forth between the Colonel and the spectral woman standing placidly through the table they were eating at.

“Yes. In our time, we could...create...such machines to assist us with our tasks. ENID is a repository of knowledge, books, learning as well as being able to see and hear with senses that are far keener than our own. What you see is a...drawing, for lack of a better word. A drawing we made for her so we could converse and more easily communicate with her.” He gave his wife another dirty look. “And a party trick my wife enjoys springing on the unsuspecting.”

Jaxx opened and closed his mouth several times, but no sound came out. Finally, he swallowed and found his voice again. “And, this HADES you mention, he was a being, like this?”

“That is correct,” ENID informed him. “Though, not as sophisticated as myself, nor with my loyalties to the people of American Scientific that I protect.”

“Are you bragging, ENID?” Buck demanded.

“Only if speaking the Truth is boasting, Mr Simpson,” the program replied with a ghost of a smile.

“Can she see Shadow's Reach?” Jaxx wanted to know. “Walk unseen to...” He trailed off as ENID opened her arms and between them a hologram appeared, showing the mountain and the fortress. As he stared, Jax realized he could see tiny people walking about the battlements and others overseeing Utaru labor in the fields out side it. “This...this is the Reach right now?”

“Yes,” ENID assured him. “This is a real time image of the Lake Mead Division Headquarters.”

“The what?”

“Lake Mead Division Headquarters,” the program repeated. “That was this facilities designation during Operation: Enduring Victory by US Robot Command. I understand it is now referred to as Shadow's Reach.”

Jaxx leaned in to the image, amazed and fascinated by it. “How are you doing this?”

“My range is extended by the Tall Neck repeater node Cinnabar Sands. From it, I am getting this live feed from a Stormbird I currently have tasked in a twenty mile orbit centered on the Lake Mead FAS-BOR7 Horus.” ENID noted the confusion on his face and tried again. “You are looking through the eyes of the Stormbird here,” she pointed, causing the display to widen so the Stormbird was visible.

After a long moment of amazement, Jaxx finally said, “I guess there are Spirits.”

“Welcome to the New Age,” Nakoa told him with a smile. “ENID, use Jaxx and Zo as indications of Utaru clothing. Give me a count of how many Eclipse Carja are in Shadows Reach and how many Utaru prisoners.”

“I count twenty Eclipse renegades and fifteen Utaru prisoners,” the AI replied. “Though I caution there could be more indoors out of sight of the Stormbird. I've uploaded the relevant data to your Focuses.” Turning to Travis, she asked, “Shall I keep the Stormbird on orbit for you, Colonel?”

“Yes, ENID and have it continue to update us if the tactical situation changes.”

“Certainly sir.”

“Thank you, ENID, that will be all.” With that, the avatar vanished and Travis returned to his porridge. “So, let's finish up breakfast, and then, go take care of some bad guys.”

“Bet,” Buck chuckled.