“System synchronization complete. Voyager Virtual Assistant Online.” The now moving robotic creature panned its head around the room to gain a sense of its surroundings it stopped once it saw Gabe. “Good morning, Gabe.” The now robotic assistant cocked its head side to side.
Gabe’s eyes had deep bags. Staying up all night typically worked on Earth because the days were only 24 hours. On this planet, day and night seem to be extended. “‘Sup.” He yawned audibly.
The robot looked around the room, presumably scanning. “Where are we?” V.V.A asked.
Gabe had his arms folded onto the table, He rested his head on top, He yawned once more. “Not Kansas.”
The robot continued to scan around the room. Hus gaze ended on the sleeping lizard woman on the floor. “Non-Human detected!” V.V.A went into a defensive stance and lashed his two tails around wildly. His body pulled on the harness that it was still connected to. The claws scraped against the table sending sparks high and low. Gabe's head sprung up from the massive amount of commotion.
The two lizard people also awoke, Zara grabbed jumped to her feet and released her blade from its sling. She yelled at the robot in her native tongue.
“VeVa! Stop!” Gabe was standing in front of the robot’s jump path in case it managed to break free from the harness. At first, the Robot was hesitant to halt its current actions. Eventually, it accepted the command from its now human master. He went into a more relaxed stance, well as relaxed as a robot can get.
Zara placed the sword back in the sling that hung from her hips. She kept her distance, she felt as if she’d need her sword quickly so she kept her hands on the handle for a quick draw.
Gabe let out a long breath of relief, his hands were put on his waist “I’ve been meaning to ask Veva, in the three hundred years, did you ever see any aliens?”
V.V.A was hesitant in disclosing such information, but it released any secrets that were made those years ago were practically pointless to keep.
“Once. They were aggressive on contact.”
“But that was one time?”
“They attacked with an approximately two thousand ships”
Gabe was silent as the robot spilled its databanks.
“Their forces were wiped out in fifteen minutes. Not before sending their doomed ships into colony ships.”
So, VeVa was a robot that held a grudge against aliens because of a conflict, Who knew a robot could even develop such a strong emotion.
“Alright Veva, unless I give the command, do not attack anything.” Gabe had been really tired at this point. He heard the story but changing his mind manually would take way too much effort.
The robot lowered its ahead and accepted the command. Gabe turned around and spoke Caloricean to Zara, “It’s fine, it won’t attack.” Upon hearing those words she slowly released her grip on the handle.
“Gabe,” VeVa called his name. “This design is very inefficient, Mind if I change it?”
Gabe turned around and shrugged. “Go ahead.”
Veva bit down on one of the extra set of the legs. The metal cracked and split as it was ripped from the body. Veva did the same on the other side.
“Okay…”
“This design is forty percent more energy efficient.” The robotic leg spasmed as energy was being depleted.
A six-legged creature didn’t seem like a good idea in a biological stance either. So no wonder to wanted to ditch the extra appendages. Once again signs pointed to Gabe not being a designer.
“Gabe.” Zara moved closer keeping her eyes locked on the construct. “What is that..thing?”
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
“Just a little something from my planet.” Gabe looked out towards the entrance of the shop. The sun hasn’t quite risen yet. He turned back to her. “Wanna see something cool?”
She looked at him perplexed, The mechanist behind her smiled, he was already on board.
“Sure.” From her perspective, the man who defeated her, killed her father, survived a lethal dosage of Saz’k had created life from metal, What else could he have that could amaze her? She was wholeheartedly curious now. They set off in one of the larger speeders.
They traveled outward to a random location. Gabe had not told them where they were headed. The desert sands kicked up high, not enough to blind anyone but enough to be prominent. A familiar now filled cave showed in the horizon.
The winds whipped loudly around the speeder. Talking had to be done in the form of yelling. The old man mechanist yelled something to Zara who repeated to Gabe.
“Why are we heading into a Salak ‘Zak nest!?”
“For round two!”
After that, any questions she had was promptly ignored with a smile. After a while of traveling in complete circles, Gabe was able to stir up enough noise to get the worm to chase after him. Since this hovering ship was made specifically to hunt Salak ‘Zak worms it severely outclassed the large worm in speed. He’d slow down to allow it to catch up.
They came to a stop 20 meters away from the advancing creature.
Gabe turned the engine off and faced the large robotic Cherak. “Alright. VeVa, try out your new toy.” He snapped his fingers and gave a wink.
“As you wish.” Its claws bore into the ship’s hull, the metal creaked as the blade-like appendages tore the metal apart, locking itself once it had a good grip. The metal spikes on it’s back started to glow bright orange, the bits of metal covering over them melted off revealing the wiring underneath. Pods extended from being in between spikes and rotated at an insane speed, electricity arced from coil to coil.
Both tails moved wildly as if they were trying to lock onto the moving dust that was kicked up.
“Gabe, I cannot get a lock on the target.”
“That’s fine, we’ll wait for it to get closer. I’ll let you know when.”
“Understood, Gabe.”
The mound of dirt began to turn to flesh as the creature got closer. The occupants of the speeder began to feel unease from the approaching creature. Seconds went by, the creature exposed more of its body.
“Gabe, I have a lock, should I fire?” VeVa questioned, the coils on its back went from a low orange to a blue-white they were almost bright enough to light up the entire desert.
“What're the chances you’ll have a successful hit?”
“Fifty-six percent.”
“Eh, wait like ten seconds then fire.”
“Oh yeah, by the way, Veva. I did some routing around in your chip, I getting annoyed by that pause you did on certain things.”
“I know, I can see everything you changed.”
Zara and the old man were nearly hysterical at this point. Their opinion went from brave man to suicidal maniac in the manner of seconds.
The maw of the creature breached the surface of the sand.
“Percent?”
“Ninety-six percent”
“Cool, Fire!”
Veva’s back arced electricity in the air, It opened its jaws, A glowing blowing trail could be seen leaving. The speed was immense, The sand that was being pushed around cleared a circular path for the projectile. The projectile started to drop in height, it skimmed across the sand digging a trench in its wake. It only took a matter of seconds for the tiny shell to reach its destination. Upon contact with the flesh, it pulled inward ripping away the protective skin. A crater began to form on the impact sight, in seconds the entire upper half of the worm’s face was blown off, What didn’t disintegrate from the force flew away almost twice as far.
The shell continued to travel, the soft flesh wasn’t nearly enough to stop the bullet. It landed into the cave, collapsing it further, A massive dust cloud erupted in the distance.
The smell of burnt oxygen and cooked worm flesh now filled the air. VeVa’s body darkened, his eyes flickered on and off. “Power consumption at eighty-seven percent.”
“Alright, you can disengage railgun mode.”
Veva’s body unhooked from the ship and dropped to the floor, It was still online but in a temporary recharge mode.
Gabe looked out into the distance. The worm had a perfect curve blown out of the side.
This was Gabe’s true skill, he was brilliant with electricity and wiring. He could do almost anything with it, after all, he did wire the transporter himself.
“VeVa, I want you to tell me any optimizations you can think of.”
Zara grabbed Gabe and turned him to look at her. Her face was filled to the brim with confusion.
“What the fuck was that!?” She pointed over to the destruction of the weapon.
“Something harmless being made dangerous.” He yawned as he gave the explanation.
She let go of him and leaned back over the railing to look at the destruction. She’s seen blasters, plasmas. The closest that she could compare this to was a spike thrower, but that used gas to expel it’s bullets and would cause less damage than this thing.
“Hey, Think we can surprise the tribe with this?”
She turned back around to Gabe, Her face was still confused but she still smiled. She knew what she was stuck with. She knew that he was going to do big things, but now her expectation had been raised.