RTFM: Difference between revisions

The data center was enveloped in uncanny stillness. The hearthkeepers had cut the power to the whole region hours earlier in advance of the enemy's arrival. The backup generators had endured mere minutes before dying in their turn, not that Skywatcher cared. The quiet darkness was punctuated by the sound of something slamming repeatedly against the fortified security door. Muffled barked orders could be heard between the booms.

And then another, and then even more. The two Partisans began shouting incoherently. “A Knight--no there’s three,” one of them barked. There was more yelling, then the shriek of metal on metal as the Immortal engaged the interloping mechs. The din of combat seemed to stretch on forever. The Knights’ mechs were much larger than the Immortal. There were three of them, and each one was manned by both a Knight controlling the mech’s movements and main weapons, and a squire covering secondary weapons and managing the mech’s systems. Even with all those advantages, the Immortal’s preternatural reaction time would make any victory for the Knights hard won.  

"Come on, you old rust bucket." Daybreak flicked one of the mech's controls with his outer thumb, pulling up the hull integrity monitor on his HUD visor. His complaint broke the silence otherwise punctuated only by the low thump of the mech's footfalls.  

"I don't see anything wrong," said Sunbeam, tilting his head back toward the squire seated behind him in the cockpit.  

"I'm telling you, you may drive this mech, but I'm the one patching her up after every sortie. I know every joint, bolt, hose, and wire in this thing. Feel that?," he pressed the palm of his rear paw against the bulkhead in front of him. "That faint rattle every time one of her rear paws goes down. It's her tail. The first joint is coming loose."

Sunbeam checked the hull integrity on his own visor. "Everything's at twelve-dozen per gross," he grunted. "I think I have more faith in your repairs than you do."

"What in the blind void are you doing?!" Sunbeam barked.  

"Giving these piles of shit wrapped in fur what they deserve for all the Wayfarers they slaughtered." Daybreak leveled his reticle on the Partisan's head, the pad of his writing claw quivering over the key that would turn the people ahead to a fine maroon mist.  

Sunbeam jumped out of his seat, jerked the squire's paw away from the keyer, and ripped his HUD visor from his face. The knight's fangs glinted in the dull glow of the running lights. "We do NOT draw first blood!" he snarled. "Knights don't fight because we hate what's in front of us. We fight because we love what's behind us."

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There was an almighty crash as the outer wall and roof of the building were torn away. Sunlight flooded what was left of the office. Whitepaw opened her eyes and saw one of the Knights’ mechs looming over her. It was proportioned much more like a yinrih, with recognizable head, torso, and limbs. Its head turned down to face her. It lifted one of its great metal paws and began deftly removing the debris piled on top of her.

She stood up and shook the dust from her fur. A hatch on the mech’s underbelly lowered, revealing the knight and squire within. The knight pulled off his HUD visor and jumped out. “Praise the Light, you’re alive! Are you hurt?”

“I think I’m OK,” Whitepaw muttered as she stared at the aftermath of the fight. The other two knights had alighted their own mechs. The Immortal was in pieces. The capsule lay off to one side, its occupant still floating serenely within, , the tubes and wires that had connected it to the mini mech chassis spilling out behind it. The rest of its body was scattered far and wide. He hadn’t gone down easily though. The mech that had freed Whitepaw from the rubble was missing its tail, and one of the others had a tail-wide dent on one side of its face, shattering its optics and stripping off the whiskery antennas on that side of its muzzle. The two Partisan handlers stood silently beside one of the mechs. All eight paws were shackled together, the mech’s rear paw resting on the chain, anchoring it in place.  

“Another Preservationist,” the squire called over to his knight. “You know, we could have let those Partisans tear you in half. They would have killed you even if you gave them what they wanted.”  

“Found ’em!” Whitepaw and her rescuer trotted up to the rest of the group. The knight had Skywatcher’s notes wrapped in his tail. “This kind young lady showed me where they were.”

The knight adopted an authoritative tone and addressed Whitepaw, though his eyes remained fixed on the anchorite. “You are free, and your debt is forgiven.”  

“By the decree of her radiance, high hearthkeeper Iris,” the knight responded.  

"That weak blunt-fanged pretender!" Skywatcher hissed with hatred.

"That weak blunt-fanged pretender just captured your entire network segment," said the squire.

“Just get over there.” One of the knights bound Skywatcher and led him to one of the mechs, far away from his former captors.

“Well,” said her rescuer pointing his muzzle at the suspension capsule, “He is currently profaning a blessed instrument of our Holy Work. He’s going back to Hearthside with us, and we’ll hand him off to an order of rehabilitators. They’ll try to wean him off the gel, but by the time most of these poor lickers get plugged into those mini mechs their psyche is so integrated into the simulacrum generated by the amnion that they’ll die without it. If that’s the case they’ll get his metabolism running again and he’ll live out his natural life in sim.”

“You’re right,” said the knight. “It may not be our fault personally, but it is our responsibility as Wayfarers to fix what the Preservationists broke. The Bright Way singing liturgies on Hearthside is the same Bright Way extorting and enslaving people on Yih.”