Courier drone #97 was having a very fun day, it was 97’s turn to deliver a package to location designation ‘Pascal’s village’. 97 liked delivering packages there because the people there would actually play with 97.
The other people, the ‘androids’, only wanted 97 to drop off the package and to sometimes take something back, only a few of the androids played with them, and even they only did it on a few occasions. 97 liked delivering packages yes, but when 97 was waiting in between deliveries they wanted to play.
97 was one of the only one hundred series left, most of the others had gone before this new place was even discovered. 97 didn’t really mind that though, their job was fun, but it was also dangerous. And sometimes you just wouldn’t come back from a delivery.
97 had yet to fail at a delivery though, they were a very good courier drone who knew all the best and safest ways to get somewhere. Other courier drones delivered packages quicker, but 97 always delivered.
They were making use of that skill now, and since they traveled to pascals village so often they already knew all the best and safest routes to take. Any machines with red eyes were avoided by climbing on the walls or inside of buildings, and it wasn’t long before 97’s surroundings changed from a ruined city to a forest of giant trees.
There was a wide patch of land between the forest and the city though, one without any cover and full of those machines 97 was supposed to avoid, this was the most dangerous part of their trip. The last time 97 had made this journey a massive gash had been torn in its side and it had barely managed to deliver its package before all its fuel ran out.
Coming that close to failing at a delivery was unacceptable, courier drones had standards to uphold after all. One of the big minds had reviewed 97’s footage and told 97 what to do to get across the gap safely. They needed to stay low to the ground and move quickly, and when they were spotted they needed to spray their fire to blind the machines chasing them.
Then 97 needed to run and climb a tree, once 97 was in a tree they were as safe as they could be, courier drones were very good at climbing and the machines weren’t nearly as fast as a courier drone in the trees.
Plan in mind 97 carefully crept down from the ruined building and crouched down low, quickly loping forward while its sensors kept a keen eye out for any nearby machines, its scratched paint job serving as a decent camouflage.
It wasn’t spotted until it was more than halfway across the gap, three machines let out a warbling screech and charged, so following it’s programing 97 spat fire at the machines and bolted for the tree line, its honed claws easily digging into the hard stone and rapidly propelling it forward. At this commotion more machines turned towards the courier and the cat had to engage dodging subroutines to avoid the projectiles blasting holes in the earth.
97 breathed yet another wall of fire to blind these new machines and then charged straight through its own flames, and after a few more feet it leapt and slammed into a tree, its back legs digging into the bark and pushing it rapidly into the canopy.
That burst of speed had cost 97 three quarters of its emergency battery, and it slowed its pace up the tree to allow its generator to begin refilling the battery. Up in the tree’s there shouldn’t be anything that could chase it, but 97 wasn’t in a hurry and letting its batteries charge when they could was standard protocol.
The journey through the treetops was uneventful, beyond chasing a few birds and squirrels across the tree branches, chase was a very fun game, and the small animals like playing it too. 97 had little happen for the rest of its trip through the treetops.
It leapt onto a wooden walkway, officially in safe territory 97’s mental gears shifted, it still needed to deliver its package but it no longer had to hide in cover and move stealthily. It passed by only a few machines on its way into the village proper, most of which would reach and scratch at 97’s metallic ears.
The guard at the entrance to the village proper nodded at 97 and the courier drone walked in, it knew it was supposed to deliver its package to Unit Designation 'quartermaster’ and then wait in the village until it needed to deliver another package. That usually gave 97 a few hours to engage Subroutine ‘play’ with the machines.
The quartermaster was in the same spot as always, and 97 walked up to the machine and opened up its storage compartments, all 50 pounds of supplies were removed and the compartments slid shut, once the quartermaster had put the supplies on the shelf behind it they pat 97’s head, 97 turned and with wagging tail jumped down from the platforms in the tree.
It was time to run the subroutine “Play”!
There were two machines in particular that 97 always played with, games from tag, chase, hide and seek, and fetch. 97’s advanced sensors picked out the blue bandana belonging to the smaller of the machines Unit Designation ‘Big sister’, but not the larger machine Unit Designation ‘Little sister’. That wasn’t a problem though, once 97 walked up big sister would usually call little sister over to play, or vice versa.
Today was different though, big sister was making crying noises when 97 walked up to her and when she saw 97 she crouched down and hugged 97 before speaking, “I don’t know what I’m going to do, my little sister has been already been gone for a whole day, and it’s not safe enough for anyone else to go to the desert to get her!”
97 only had limited capacity to understand language, but it could still understand that ‘big sister’ was in the desert, that it was a dangerous place, and that no one was able to go and get her. “It’s all my fault! I shouldn’t have told her I needed that plate!” 97 didn’t know what any of those words meant, but it did know that it wouldn’t get to play with ‘little sister’ or ‘big sister’ until someone had retrieved ‘little sister’.
The courier drone was far too small to deliver a package as big as ‘little sister’ though, 97 had been instructed to help the machines with deliveries but it couldn’t deliver something this large, so it needed to take the delivery order to something else that could. For a package of that size the logistics or construction drones would group up to carry it, but those drones weren’t capable of going anywhere dangerous.
There was one drone that was large enough and capable of defending itself though, the big courier drone Unit Designation ‘Panther’. 97 liked her, she taught it a lot of new games and she was always bringing the other courier drones toys to play with.
Maybe it was time for 97 to bring a game for the big courier? She liked games like hide and seek, and finding ‘little sister’ was like a game of hide and seek, just a game outside a safe area.
Still 97 needed something to use in tracking the ‘little sister’, a quick look around showed one such object on ‘big sister’s’ side, one of the pink ribbons ‘little sister’ wore, that would work as something to track, turning its head as best it could in ‘big sisters’ embrace 97 grabbed the ribbon and wiggled its way out of her arm’s.
It had a delivery to make.
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Panther walked back into the outpost, and sent a request to the network, moments later a few logistic drones were dispatched to refill her missile cache. The machines were just as fun to hunt down as the bugs had been, the new environment just added to the experience, machines could be lurking in any building just waiting to jump out.
The only problem was that the other combat drones were patrolling so much that there weren’t any machines nearby to hunt, so she had to venture further out to find anything, and she couldn’t bring any of the machines back to play with, only animals and the logistics drones always took the few she could catch.
Still the new environment was nice, and the only thing that marred her surface was a thin layer of dust, none of the machines had anything to get around her shields, and the few that had enough firepower were easily out maneuvered or out ran.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
She was just walking back towards the courier depo, to play some other games with the other courier drones when a courier drone appeared in front of her, a small pink ribbon in its mouth. She immediately recognized the drone, both by its IFF and it’s scratched armor, courier drone 97 was the oldest remaining courier drone and it showed.
Its learning programs had used that time well though, and it was easily the second smartest courier drone. It was one of the few courier drones that could actually keep up with her in most games, it’s experience helping it compensate for its comparatively lacking speed and strength.
Still, it didn’t often seek her out, and it had never actually brought her anything before. The courier drone sent her a ping with an attached video file, anytime a courier drone was given a delivery order by something other than a factory mind they would record the order, so that a mind could review it and make sure the courier drone was actually delivering the right thing to the right place.
But instead of sending the recording to a mind, 97 had sent the recording to her. That was technically allowed, as she was similarly technically a superior to the courier drones, it had just never happened before.
The contents of the recording explained the situation though, 97 wasn’t sending her the recording so that she could review it, it was sending her the order because it expected her to complete the delivery. The courier drone had sent her the recording because the delivery was now her responsibility, and in 97’s mind if she was completing the delivery she needed to have the recording to send to the minds.
That was a rather large leap for the drones programing to make, and she was more than a little impressed at how quickly this new environment was forcing it to grow.
And she had been looking for something to do, so reaching down to 97’s height she snagged the ribbon with her own teeth, if she was heading all the way to the desert she would need more fuel, and probably some backup.
Two requests were sent out this time, one to Balistraia to requisition a squad of destroyer drones, and another to Byzantine, for fuel and for permission to take some courier drones with her. They were technically the best drones for searching a large area and carrying extra fuel and ammunition.
It took less than a second for both request’s to be approved, saving a non-hostile machine would be excellent for improving relations between the factory and the village. Byzantine was also sending a construction drone with repair supplies, just in case the machine was injured, and Balistraia had sent a map with details on the desert, and how to get there in the first place.
Panther hadn’t actually thought of any of that. And she made a note to prepare more in the future.
With that done she made a 180 and headed back towards the gate, 97 following at her heels where it was soon joined by 3 more courier drones, the squad of 4 destroyer drones were already waiting for her at the gate, and they took guard positions in front and behind her.
With the basic formation set up she started to sprint down the street, towards the desert.
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The first thing Panther decided about the desert was that she was never coming back, not without being ordered to at least. She was not designed with sand in mind, her claws couldn’t get any traction in the grains and she kept slipping. The sun was blinding when it reflected off the sand, messing with her longer ranged sensors, and the sand was getting in between a few of her armor plates.
Turning on her shield generators to harden the air in a shell around her stopped the sand though, and the other courier drones weren’t handling it much better, sure their lighter weight meant they sank less but they were even slower at adapting then she was.
The only drones that seemed unbothered were the destroyers, who simply floated over the sands while the other drones struggled to walk.
Already she spotted dozens of hostile machines in the distance, when they said the desert was dangerous they had not been lying. A fair few were models that stood a decent chance of hurting her if she wasn’t careful, and almost all the machines were a threat to the other courier drones. Still that was what the destroyer drones were for, pairing up a courier and a destroyer would keep the couriers safe enough while they searched.
Now they just needed to find the ‘little sister’ she had been sent out here to retrieve so that she could leave as soon as possible.
Her sensors were more than capable of tracking the ‘scent’ the machine had left on the ribbon, and she had already found a faint trail. So the pack set off in that direction.
And were immediately ambushed by over 20 small machines, with a flick of her tail an equal number of missiles were launched from her shoulders, and within seconds they had punctured the machines armor and detonated.
With that minor irritation out of the way she resumed her trek through the desert, the occasional ambush met with missiles or lasers, the destroyer drones only needing to act when a larger machine arrived and took most of her attention and firepower.
She occasionally lost the scent of the machine, but with 5 different sets of sensors it never took long to get back on the trail, and she only took a few hits, once from a large machine with a sword and twice from the odd balls the machines occasionally shot, her shields absorbed those hits with ease though, and she gained not a scratch.
It took 3 hours and 70 percent of Panthers missile stockpile to finally find the machine, the ‘little sister’ had taken a winding path through what felt like the entire desert area, still find the oddly large machine they did, when the machine laid eyes on 97 she ran out from where she was hiding behind a rock and hugged the comparatively small courier, making crying noises all the while.
That was all well and good, but Panther did not want to be in the desert anymore and the machine was not moving. A quick ping to 97 got the drone to extract itself and they all started walking out of the desert, the little sister machine following 97, ironically like a lost puppy.
It only takes Panther a few seconds to identify the next problem, or more accurately annoyance, the machine child is slow, abysmally so. Still that problem is easily solved, reaching down and gently grabbing the child with her teeth she places them on her back, the machine quickly settling into place and rubbing Panthers metal armor.
The child was also talking, but Panther didn’t care enough to listen, both because she didn’t need to and couldn’t respond anyway.
The added weight caused her to sink a bit deeper into the sand but she quickly adapted and the group set out at a much faster pace, the journey out of the desert would take significantly less time than the journey into it.
The third ambush since the child had been found quickly disabused Panther of that idea, and by that point she was nearly out of missles, making the fights drag on significantly longer as the lasers needed longer to melt through the machine's armor. The longer fights led to her taking a few more hits, but the most draining part was hardening the air around the child machine to block any hits that would have hit her.
Hardening air was already inefficient, and needing to do so often quickly drained her shields; the third ambush had brought her below 20 percent before all the machines were destroyed, and needing to balance the child on her back only made it harder to dodge. Her master's armor had magnetic clamps and its own shields, negating both those problems, while the machine had neither.
The exit of the desert was literally in sight before the 4th ambush came, but it was by far the worst, one of giant machines and dozens of the smaller variants launched up from the sand, and attacked before any through beyond “how were they even hiding?” could run through her electronic mind.
Outnumbered and outgunned Panther did what any courier drone would do, she breathed fire. Before a second had even passed a massive cone of white hot flame engulfed all the machines, the other drones sheltering behind her bulk as their armor glowed red hot, and still she pumped more and more flame out.
If it hadn’t been for the cocoon of air around the child machine she would have melted from the sheer heat, and the other machines in front of her had no such defenses, Panther watched as the smaller machines were reduced to puddles. Still it wasn’t enough, even as her lasers joined the flames the larger machine reared back a fist, so Panther made to leap out of the way of the overly telegraphed attack.
Only to have her legs slip in the sand, not generating any lift nor pushing her out of the way, the fist slammed into Panthers head and shoulders, her shield barely keeping the child machine safe as the child was flung from the force, Panther was not so lucky, with a flicker and a crack the shield failed and one of her front legs bent under the force.
Still now the machine was overextended, finally regaining her footing Panther jumped onto the red hot arm of the machine as her lasers and flames reduced it’s joints to slag, with one of its arms lost and fused to the sand the machine couldn’t do anything as Panther’s lasers and flame melted off its head.
Its lone functioning arm incapable of reaching her, but without her own shields her flame warped and melted her front armor, her entire body turning a glowing red from the heat. By the time the machine had died half her laser emitters were slag, only those on her sides and tail remaining. And her front cannon had melted shut.
But she had survived, and besides those injuries and her bent and broken leg she was functional. The other drones and the machine child were safe and the end of the desert was in sight. Once it was obvious the fight was over and she had one the lone construction drone flew over to her, and while It couldn’t do anything about her slagged weapons and armor it could get her leg as functionally as possible without getting a replacement.
After ten minutes of repairs, during which the machine child pestered both her and 97 with her worrying and fussing, her leg was good enough to limp, if not walk or run. So the group headed off, now with Panther being the slowest member.
Once the group was out of the desert the machine child and 97 headed off in the direction of the village, with 2 destroyer drones for an escort, it was only a nominally safe area after all, the occasional hostile machine did appear, while Panther and the rest of the drones headed back to the outpost, and Panther only reaffirmed her desire to never again set foot in the desert.