Morning came too quickly, pale light creeping through the cracks and crevices of my room and casting long shadows across the floor. I blinked a few times, clinging desperately to the remnants of a fading dream. Something about the base and ‘Merica, Elli and I sitting on thrones.

It felt both wonderful and wrong, and I chuckled at the absurdity of it all. There was still so much to do before anything like that could even come close to reality.

Elli lay beside me, a single bare leg sticking out from under the blankets, her hair a tangled mess on the pillow next to mine. I considered waking her, but decided against it. She’d rise soon enough on her own, and besides, there was no rush. All that lay ahead of us was breakfast and getting CD recharged.

I slipped out of bed, pulling on a pair of pants before padding into the workroom. The morning was still cool, the air crisp and fresh. I stretched my arms high above my head, yawning as I shuffled through the cluttered space towards the crystallization tank. It felt as if it’d been ages ago since I deposited the Zinogar seed and I wanted to see how far along it had gotten. The idea that it could be turned into a mech frame more powerful than any in existence was too great to forget about, and I finally had the time to look.

My head was so far up my ass, filled with dreams of what could be, that I nearly toppled over a workbench when CD’s holographic form materialized right in front of me. His chosen guise was now one of the tribal Torans, complete with scales and a sneer.

“See what I mean? Not a Toran,” he said snidely, crossing his arms. “Not that you savages can tell the difference. You breed and sleep, then snore and growl in your slumber. Do you dream of chasing carts?”

Suppressing a groan, I rubbed my eyes, careful not to wake Elli.

“Good morning to you too, CD,” I muttered. “A little bit of cheer wouldn’t do you any harm.”

“That is the whole point of being an ass. Now, I trust you’ve fathered your lineage? Or will the day be filled with simian rutting? Because if it’s the latter, I kindly request that you put outside into the sun and let me enjoy my shitty life in peace.”

Behind me, the door creaked open, and I turned to see Elli standing there, her mechanics overalls only three-quarters zipped. A wild grin spread across her face.

“Yeah, Al. Have you fathered your lineage yet?” she teased.

“I’ll have you know that solar recharge is quite necessary to my continued operation!” CD protested, and I couldn’t help but laugh.

“Yeah, yeah. I’ll get you sorted out. We’ve got a lot to do today, and then tonight, so we might as well get started now.”

I peeked into the tank, the Zinogar seed, now a miniature core floating in its nutrient bath, pulsing faintly like a heartbeat. A faint electric aura crackled around it, sending tiny static sparks popping here and there along the surface of the liquid.

Popping a hatched panel on the side, I swung it out and checked the conditions in the tank, the scratched mauve-green display giving me basic segmented letters and digits to inform me on its progress.

CORE STABILIZATION: 87% (Steady)

ENERGY SATURATION: 61% (Increasing)

CONDUCTIVITY LEVEL: High

NUTRIENT INTEGRATION EFFICIENCY: 95%

PROJECTED CORE MATURITY: 14 days (Estimated)

The core wasn’t quite ready, but it was getting there.

Elli fluttered her eyelashes, her face assuming a mock pout.

“So no more playtime?” she asked coyly.

“This world is not a game!” CD growled, beginning to stomp around the workshop in a tantrum. “I demand we start my charge immediately!”

“Seems someone missed us,” Elli said with a bark of laughter before zipping her overalls the rest of the way up. “It’s alright, CD, we’re back now. We’ll get you fed soon enough.”

“Soon?” CD retorted, his digital form flickering with irritation. “Forgive me if I find your definition of ‘soon’ lacking. I’ve been stuck here in the middle of ape village, constantly lagging in my connections with you during your honeymoon, and now I demand to be charged!”

I shook my head, still smiling. I wasn’t sure if CD’s tirades were meant as a form of comedy, but his tantrums certainly had a way of brightening the day.

“CD, we appreciate your patience. Elli and I will get it handled right away.”

“See that you do,” he huffed. “My power levels are below 15%, and I’ve been using them at sub-optimal efficiency in my assistance of you and your quest… Not that I was concerned or anything. I am simply ensuring efficiency and capability.”

“I bet,” Elli said, giggling.

We moved together, setting up the workshop and grabbing the small metallic cylinder that was his solar charging station and plugged him in. The Toran hologram smirked and disappeared from sight.

“Well, that’s one item off the list,” Elli quipped.

I turned to get breakfast, yanking two Mreh meals from my pack and pouring them into pots and dishes, then prepping them at the stove while she busied herself laying out all of the parts and scavenge that we had taken from our outing.

When the food was ready, I gave a quick once over on CD, seeing that his charge was already at 30%, then sat down at the table with Elli to have our meal.

She looked down at the pot and gave it a long, big whiff.

“What’s this one called?” she asked. “Smells weird if you ask me.”

“Jamaican Jamabalaya,” I said, spooning it into our bowls. “I don’t know what Jamaican or Jambalaya are, but I bet they taste good.”

“Smells like sweetbread mixed with hot spices and beef stew,” she complained, making a face. However, one bite later, she was leaning back in her chair, her eyes wide and excited. “This is good!”

“It’s the ancients’ food. I think all of their stuff is probably good,” I said before stuffing my own mouth with the stuff. “Now, I’m thinking that the knights will have reported in to Boyerman by now. So we should probably get to work on some new tech for him right away. Lay out the stuff we got, get some ideas flowing, and all that. The sooner we get that done, the sooner he’ll pull in his spies.”

“Spies,” she asked, one eyebrow raised.

“Yeah. He doesn’t trust us quite yet, I bet. But he won’t care too much once we start giving him merch to sell. We get him the first shipment and whoever he has hovering over the workshop right now will get the rest of the day off. I can guarantee it.”

“Meaning we can sneak out and do the battlefield stuff,” she replied, nodding.

“Yeah. I wonder what’s out there. I mean, we just came from a human super base! I can’t imagine that anything buried in the dirt will top that.”

“CD came from inside one of the monsters,” Elli said, sticking out her tongue. “Sounds to me like you suffer from a lack of imagination.”

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I chuckled and our conversation moved onto other little things until we finished the last of the meal. Checking CD and finding him to be at a 60% charge, I decided to let him keep powering up while we inventoried the items we’d brought back to use in crafting.

It was a lot of high tech stuff, though we’d been careful to try and only choose things that could actually work with mechs here in Alnda.

Elli and I moved to the workbench.

“Alright,” she said, tying her hair back with a strip of cloth and rolling up her sleeves. “Let’s start with the basics and work our way up. First up, these.”

She picked up a pair of metallic balls, each about the size of a clenched fist. The outer casing was smooth, with faint etchings that pulsed in a dull, blue light. Stamped on each of them in hard matte black were the words Remote Energy Sphere, Patriot Industries.

I glanced between them and the solar charging device that was feeding CD, noticing quite a few similarities.

Elli nodded.

“Yep. Not quite the same, but they’re definitely mech batteries of some sort. My guess is that you can integrate them into designated sockets on the old tech mechs and that’ll give them greater power and capability.”

“And you want to use that to enhance existing mech tech?” CD said, suddenly appearing next to her as a red haired woman in matching coveralls.

Elli didn’t even flinch, almost as if she were expecting his return. We both expected him to pop up at the most random times by now, but it still bothered me when I was too deep in my own thoughts.

“I was hoping you could tell me. How do you charge these things when they run out of juice, and can we use them with new-tech mechs?”

CD sent out lines of lights, scanning the balls once, before nodding.

“The crude, rudimentary essentially stone-age design of your current mechs implies that only the simplest advancements could integrate effectively, yet these spheres’ sophisticated energy diffusion compensates for that limitation. They emit energy in a way that enhances devices indirectly rather than powering them outright. I recommend creating a circular mount for these spheres in one of the elbow or knee joints, as this would increase both power and speed in those areas.”

Elli and I turned to each other.

“Knees,” we said in unison, before barking out a hard laugh.

“Yeah, okay. Obviously knights are going to pay top cred for a mech that can run faster and carry more weight, move around more easily in combat…the possibilities are vast. But, CD, how do we keep the damn things charged?” I asked.

The red-haired CD cocked her head, regarding me as if I were the stupidest man on the planet.

“Kinetic energy enforcement micro-circuitry lines all of the spheres' ridges. It recharges through motion, running on bursts of energy at a time, then replenishing that energy during the inbetween, going completely dormant when not needed.”

I stared at her open-mouthed, and then at our little finds.

“Magic. The orbs are magic. When is the brain surgery at the human base scheduled for, just out of curiosity?” CD asked.

Elli giggled.

“The enhancement surgeries better not make him smarter than me.”

CD snorted.

“As if such a miracle could ever be achieved. He’s barely smarter than an ape, mind you.”

We slapped the rest of our loot into crates for storage, content that this first production would do for the time being, and soon the workshop was alive with activity as Elli and I prepped our tools and equipment for our first new tech under the auspices of the Scavenger’s Guild.

We didn’t have any actual mech knees on hand, given how enormous and expensive they would be, but instead I pulled out a couple of Toxotai knee drives, both the size of a human head. Stumbling a little under their weight but in too much of a hurry to use the hoist, I dumped them on our prepped work table and we dove into the task.

CD peered over our shoulders, despite certainly not needing to in order to see what was going on. I hammered at a bent hinge on one of the knee drives, trying to get it back into place, and he tsked at my ear.

“Monkey smash hard and monkey not have banana. Do you not have matter manipulators?”

Elli flashed him a toothy grin.

“Nope. We’re savages, remember? When we’re done, I’m going to wrap everything in bloody rabbit fur then dance around it singing for the spirits to infuse it with power.”

CD glared.

“I can’t tell if you actually mean to do just that.”

Elli winked, her hands moving deftly as she reached for a set of precision tools, selecting a slender screwdriver and a pair of needle-nose pliers. With a practiced touch, she began disassembling the outer casing of one of the drives, laying the layers down beside her left to right as she removed them.

I stopped to wipe sweat from my forehead as I finished brute forcing my part into place, and paused to examine the mostly disassembled joint next to her. The whole thing was impressive, a complex assembly of gears, hydraulic pistons, and reinforced alloy plates filled with toothy gear wheels and long bands of steel chains.

“We can remachine those chains, make them more resistant to wear and tear,” I blurted as I looked them over. Elli stopped her work, and I looked up to see both their eyes on me. “Oh, come on, that couldn’t have been that stupid an idea.”

“On the contrary,” CD said. “It was a good one. Remachine them at once, and leave the good woman to do her work in peace.”

As Elli’s fingers worked over the insides of the drives with the precision of a surgeon, I moved to the forge, first reshaping the bulkier outer plates to fit over where the new energy spheres would be placed. It wasn’t so long before the metal was pliable and ready to be shaped. I laid it across a mid-tech auto anvil, letting the device do some heavy hammering before I took over, adding nuance to where the blows rang and molded its shape.

Then, plunging it into a vat of oily water, I moved onto the chains, this time lighting the microforge and working to create links that would mesh hard, and high-quality steel with plastic polymers that promised to make them ten times stronger.

Elli’s voice cut through the workshop as I worked, carrying over the clatter of tools and machinery.

“CD, I’m going to need you to double-check the alignment on these connectors before we go any further. I want to make sure they’re perfectly calibrated to handle the energy flow from the spheres.”

“Naturally,” CD replied, extending thin lines of light to scan over the components. “Alignment is optimal,” he confirmed after a moment.

Looking over my own finished work, I carried the newly forged components over to Elli, who had already prepped the area for installation. She glanced up as I approached, nodding in approval and sweeping a sweaty errant lock of hair back from out of her eyes.

“Looks good, Al,” she said. “Time to slap it all together.”

We began the painstaking process of assembling the new knee joint. The metal plates were positioned first, secured with a series of bolts that I tightened with a heavy wrench. Elli followed behind, connecting the hydraulic pistons and threading the tubing through the conduits.

Once the structural elements were in place, Elli turned her attention to the Remote Energy Sphere. She picked up one of the metallic orbs, its surface still pulsing with that dull blue light, and carefully slotted it into the circular mount we had designed within the joint.

“Perfect fit,” she murmured. “CD, give it a final scan,” she said. “I want to make sure everything’s in order before we deliver this thing to Boyerman. I can’t even imagine what would happen if we got it sent, and it all exploded in his face.”

CD scanned them once more.

“Energy diffusion is at 98% efficiency. Considering the primitive state of this shop, and the material within, that is quite the feat. When the energy surge is activated, it may achieve up to a 235% increase in knee strength and speed for the duration of its energy life.”

“That sounds amazing,” I said, wiping my hands on a cloth and stepping back to admire the work we’d done. Elli came to my side, putting an arm around my shoulder and sighing.

“Gonna be sad to see them go,” she said.

I blew a raspberry.

“As if. I’ll go get a porter.”

I left Elli to keep CD company and stepped out of the workshop. It was late afternoon and a nice cool breeze made me aware of just how sweaty all the work had made me. Hungry too, as my stomach rumbled over the scent of roasted meats and fresh bread riding the wind from some inn or stall.

I made my way towards the cluster of porters who loitered the streets of our neighborhood. With all of the manufacturing that we did, it was always good business for them to stay near and keep their eyes sharp for any additional work. As I approached, a few of them straightened up, hoping to catch my eye. I picked out a sturdy-looking man with broad shoulders and a weathered face, someone who looked dependable and trustworthy.

“You looking for work?” I asked, motioning towards the workshop.

He nodded, a slight grin breaking through his otherwise serious demeanor. “Always. What do you need moved?”

“Got a couple of crates in the workshop that need delivering to the Scavenger’s Guild,” I replied, reaching into my pocket and pulling out my credit chip. “Pay’s decent, and I’ll throw in a bit extra if you can get it there without any delays.”

The man’s eyes lit up at the sight of the cred, and he scanned it in.

“You got it, sir. Let me fetch my cart.”

I watched as he hurried off, returning a few minutes later with a small, horse-drawn cart. We moved quickly, loading the crates onto the cart with care, making sure each one was securely fastened with ropes to prevent them from shifting during transit.

Once everything was loaded, I handed the porter the cred chip again. He scanned it and tipped his cap in thanks.

“I’ll have these at the guild in no time,” he assured me.

“Good,” I said, nodding towards the street. “Get going.”

The porter climbed onto the cart, giving the reins a light flick. The horse trotted forward, the cart rattling as it moved over the uneven cobblestones. I watched it go, feeling a sense of satisfaction at a job well done. The mechs would be enhanced, the guild would be pleased, and we’d be one step closer to securing our position in the city.

But as the cart rounded the corner, something caught my eye. A man, tall and lanky with a hood pulled low over his face, emerged from behind a nearby stall. His movements were deliberate, his eyes locked onto the departing cart. He started walking, keeping a respectable distance but never losing sight of the porter and his cargo.

“There goes the spy,” I muttered to myself, my suspicions confirmed.

I had expected Boyerman to keep an eye on us, but seeing it in action was still unsettling. I turned and made my way back to the workshop, where Elli was waiting. She looked up as I entered, her face questioning.

“Everything go alright?” she asked.

“Yeah, the porter’s on his way to the guild,” I said, wiping my hands on my pants. “Along with Boyerman’s spy. Guess it’s time to get ready for the battlefield run.”