Crickle-crackle.
The fire burned down to hot coals as the pot sat over it in the fireplace, and Firril watched the orange coals pulse with heat. A mushroom soup bubbled inside the black pot, but Firril could not smell it, feel the heat that came off the fire, or even taste the soup she was making. She was an automaton, and she was forever denied the world of tasting and smelling.
She picked up the top of the pot and inserted her ladle, stirring it with mechanical precision four times before taking it back out and setting it on the small table next to her.
"How's the soup coming along?" Runa asked, her voice creaking like an old floorboard.
"It will be complete in ten minutes," Firril said, turning her glowing eyes across the room to Runa, who was sitting up in bed.
The room was close and warm, unlike the rest of the keep. It took too much wood to fire all the hearths across the keep to maintain warmth, so Firril focused on Runa's room and maintained the temperature there. Years ago, she would maintain the hearth in the workshop as well, with Gary's assistance, but Runa didn't move much from bed anymore.
If not for all the knickknacks and bookshelves in the room, it would have been a much larger space. Runa, however, liked keeping all her work and reading close. Firril never complained about the cramped space. She was an automaton. She never complained at all.
"Come here then, Firril," Runa said, looking out the stained-glass window near her bed. "See what Gary's up to right now."
Firril stood, her mechanical legs whirring as cogs and gears came to life. She shuffled across the floor, her metal body creaking as she took each step. Runa watched her with a patient, wrinkled smile on her face. While her green eyes were as sharp as ever, her grey hair and wrinkled, pale skin reminded Firril of the woman's age. Runa had grown much older than her creations in the last thirty years. Firril knew that humans did not last forever, and Runa would not be long for the world.
That did not mean she would not miss her creator.
"Look, look," Runa whispered as Firril stood next to the bed, pointing down to the keep's internal park below.
Creak.
The bed shook under Firril's weight. She was small for an automaton, the smallest of Runa's creations, but she was still made of metal and heavy. Firril did her best to be careful as she leaned over Runa's body and placed her hands on the stone lip of the window. She looked down and saw Gary below.
Gary was in every way completely different from Firril. He was a giant of an automaton, his form barely able to fit through doors inside the keep. His body was heavily armored, and his large bucket head was built almost like a knight's helmet, with two slits covering his eyes. He swung his massive blade, sending the long, overgrown grass swaying with each stroke.
However, that wasn't what was odd about Gary. No, it was the fact that he was dressed warmly despite his nature as an automaton. He wore a heavy winter coat with a furred white hood, heavy gloves over his fingers, and even fur-lined pants and boots. A long red scarf trailed behind him as he exercised, flowing behind him as he swung his mighty sword.
"He still thinks he is human." Firril shook her head, stepping back from the window and going back to watch her pot boil.
"I would expect no different from my son." Runa laughed before she stopped.
Cough. Cough.
Her body shook with the coughs, and Firril reached over, holding one hand on Runa's back as the coughing fit continued. Runa grasped Firril's hand, closing her eyes as she fought to breathe and gasped. After a few minutes, it was over, and Runa's breathing calmed to a normal rate.
"It is getting worse," Firril said. "We need to get you to a doctor."
"There's no cure for getting old." Runa waved her away, wrapping her blankets tighter around her body. "Go put some more wood on the fire and check the soup. I'll be fine."
Firril did as she was told because that was what automata did. She was made for a purpose, and she would fulfill that purpose. However, that didn't change how she felt. She was unsure how to express it. Feelings were distant for Firril because she didn't have the same biological processes humans did. She stopped mid-way to the pot and turned to face Runa.
"You're doubting again." Runa smiled at her, revealing her few remaining teeth. "Come here."
Creak.
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Firril came back to the bed, sitting down next to Runa and causing the bed to creak again. Runa shuffled to the side to make room for her and placed a hand over Firril's own as they sat together. If she had a mouth, Firril would have smiled. That was one of the odd thoughts that would often cross her mind.
She was an automaton, but there were times and places when she felt things she didn't think she should. As they sat together in silence, she wondered if that was what Gary felt all the time. Was that why he wore clothes?
"We all have our times," Runa said as she patted Firril's hand. "There is a season for everything, and mine is coming to a close. I just need to make sure that these hold bones last long enough for me to complete the mission. Any day now, the ones we've been waiting for will get here, and everything will change. Then you and Gary will have to take care of each other out here."
"What is the mission?" Firril asked. "You never told us."
"The fewer people who know, the better." Runa smiled and sighed. "I'm the last of us that I know of. I haven't heard from everyone on the crew in years."
"I understand," Firril said, her eyes turning toward the pot as it continued to boil. "But I am not a person."
"Hah." Runa gripped Firril's hands tighter as she began to laugh.
She sat there for a long time, her body shaking as the laugh cycled through her. Firril tilted her head as she watched her creator struggle to breathe as she laughed and laughed. It wasn't until another coughing fit ripped through her frail frame that she stopped, holding one hand over her mouth and gasping for breath. Firril didn't understand what was so funny, but then again, she wasn't programmed to understand such things.
"Sometimes I forget how you two work." Runa smiled as she gripped Firril's hand. "I created you, but you continue to surprise me every day. When I etched the algorithms for behavior in you, I had no idea what I was doing. I made mistakes. I made errors. However, you two still woke up and worked like I had expected. Whether it is Gary down there swinging his sword or you cooking soup for me, you are more of a person than some people have the right to claim to be. You will always be my children."
Firril wished she could feel more than she did at those words, but they weren't the first time she had heard them. Even now, as they sat together, Runa looked back out the window and down at Gary below, what she had just said already forgotten.
"Oh, look at Gary go down there, Firril."
Firril stood up, shuffling across the floor again on her mechanical legs as she went to check on the soup. She left Runa behind, but that was okay. Runa would come back again from where she had gone later and be the same old woman that Firril knew her to be.
"Oh, what's that?" Runa asked as Firril opened the pot to check on the soup.
Firril suppressed a faint hiss of electrical feedback as she turned yet again and walked to the window.
A black spot in the sky stuck out against the clouds as it floated down toward the island. Firril turned her head as her eyes tried to focus on the object. She wasn't sure, but she had a few things in her knowledge banks that could fly through the sky. She couldn't be sure unless she went outside to check, but she thought it might have been a slipship. There was a slipship coming in for a landing on Diamond Peak.
"Why would they come here?" Firril asked herself as she leaned over Runa's legs. "The island is supposed to be abandoned."
Bam. Thud. Bam. Thud.
Metal legs churned up the stairs as Gary ran to the room. Firril stood, crossing her arms over her chest as he came. Gary was neither quiet nor subtle, but that was just who he was. He only seemed to slow down as he approached the door and opened it gently.
"A ship!" Gary's electric voice warbled as he ducked inside the room. "There's a slipship in the sky!"
"It looks like things are about to get interesting." Runa chuckled softly as she pushed away her blankets. "Get my coat and get ready to move. We need to prepare to greet our visitors."
Firril watched as a new energy seemed to fill Runa. She pushed her tiny, frail body out of bed in her white pajamas and began to walk across the floor. Runa smiled at Gary as she made her way carefully over to the closet, and Firril followed. She had no idea what was happening, but she would fulfill her programming and help Runa prepare.
That was her job as an automaton.
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Beep. Beep.
Captain Frank Drake, a captain in the Military Police in command of his current vessel, the Arbiter, reached up and clicked the tube next to his desk with one long black claw. It was a small thing, his own private cabin on the ship with enough space for a bed and his desk, but it was a luxury he never wanted to go without.
"Report," he said into the tube.
"Sir, we've gotten several reports of people sighting the Robin. The information says that they spotted it heading to the far end of the First Quadrant, heading out of Grey Lagoon."
Frank looked up at the small flat-plane map of the nightsea above his desk. There were several islands at the far end of the First Quadrant. They could get headed in the right direction, but the islands in that area were either part of the Fringes or quarantined. There were no Military Police outposts beyond one near Haven.
"Get the ship moving toward Grey Lagoon," Drake said, smoke billowing out of his lizard mouth as he stood up from his desk. "Tell Captain Greyson that I'll meet him in the cabin. I want him to know he's in the loop on this."
"Yes, sir!" He could practically hear the soldier salute through the line.
With a click, Drake hung up on the call and took out a sheet of paper. With delicate red-scaled claws, he began jotting down each of the possible islands in the direction that the Robin might have run. There were about twenty possibilities in total, and he would have to work with Grayson to help narrow them down.
The Robin had been Grayson's ship, and a run-in with some outlaws had left him facing a discharge if the news made its way back to Rockford. Drake had intercepted the report and discretely brought it back to meet with the other captain. There, he made the man an offer he couldn't refuse. Join Drake on his mission to find the outlaws responsible for stealing the ship and save his job in the process. If Grayson hadn't, he would have faced a discharge that would see him out on his end with no severance or retirement pay.
Drake's interest wasn't in the ship, however. It was in the outlaw that had taken it. He stood with his list of islands, exited his cabin door, and entered the ship proper. Only one thought was on his mind as he made his way to the deck.
"We'll catch you this time, 'Tin Man' Ortega."