Coronel discussed future plans with Saito and Eliso.

“If there’s a Lanan controller in the area, they’ll know where we are because of this one stunt we pulled,” he explained. “We’ll have to increase combat bot production and start putting them on auto. Micro-management is out the window.”

“Sir”—Saito raised his hand—“isn’t our power and resource base too flimsy right now? We’ve only got solar, and we only have five fab-bots.”

“That’s why we have this.” Coronel unveiled a hologram of an arachnid-like bot with nanostruct projectors on the inside of its legs and under its belly.

Unlike general-purpose nanostruct swarms whose manites and maxites weld nanostuff on top of each other—building up first a scaffolding, then a skeleton, then the innards and everything of a construct—a nanostruct projector creates laser energy channels on which manites and maxites may ride for material transport, and from which they can directly receive energy to do work, and from which they receive signals and instructions. This makes the manites and maxites simpler in design, allowing for larger SMR swarms to be used, and thus allowing for larger constructs to be made.

In short, it was a mobile printer that could shit out other bots like no tomorrow.

“Sir, what’s it called? ‘Fab-bot-2’ ?” Saito asked.

“That’s Alliance standard naming compliant, so…yes,” Coronel said. In reality, he’d never actually thought of it.

“It’s so different, though…” Eliso pulled up a hologram of the DOG-based fab-bot. “And we just call them ’fab-bot’s because that’s what they generically are. It’s not really their model or pattern or anything.”

“Ah, well, jury-rigging a packbot into a fab-bot isn’t Alliance standard and all…” Saito said. “What’s the packbots’ pattern name, anyway?”

“Mule-bot, I think,” Eliso replied.

“Seriously? They’re DOGs, though.”

“They’re called Bernards.” Coronel suppressed a sigh. “We can’t call this a Bernard-2, though, I see…”

The design had been an original by C4T. Galactic humanity’s ARAK pattern was similar, but they were used in recon, not fabrication.

“How about ‘Tenprint’ ?” Saito said matter-of-factly. Eliso nodded, mildly impressed.

Coronel nodded once. “Full designation ‘C4T-9L, Expedient, Fabrication, Tenprint’ confirmed.”

C4T took offense to ‘expedient,’ but it admitted to itself that if it just had a shared network connection, it could’ve run a hundred-million simulations instead of just one million.

Incidentally, it had dedicated a few simulations to the humans somehow managing to toss the whole bot at the enemy. It found that the most effective method was by dropping it on the enemy’s head, upside-down so that its armored topside would take the brunt of the impact. Hence, it optimized to this possibility, adding pneumatic shock dampeners so that the humans wouldn’t outright destroy it in the attempt, at least.

It was then that a familiar crackling in Coronel’s radio receiver entered his ear.

He tensed up, immediately drawing his handgun towards Aurelia’s body.

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“Gamma!” Coronel shouted. Saito and Eliso pulled out their handguns as well, deploying small close combat shields from their arms.

“No!” James shouted. He put himself between Coronel’s gun and Aurelia’s body.

Still, Coronel fired. He won’t let James’s sentiments get them all killed.

A metallic whip swatted away the golden bullet, deflecting it over James’s shoulder. The bullet went straight through the glass without so much as cracking it, leaving only a clean hole.

Coronel’s eyes widened.

Before he could interrogate C4T, an arm went around James’s neck—and Aurelia threw him to the floor.

“Open fire!” Coronel ordered.

C4T swatted away most of the hail of gunfire, but some of the bullets still made it through—straight through Aurelia’s head. James was screaming, getting up to catch the falling Aurelia, but her bullet-riddled body hugged him, her dense bones catching the gold bullets in loud cracks. James screamed for them to stop.

Eliso noticed the oddity—Gammas should be more violent than this—then he noticed C4T’s data brief, listing all the abnormalities in Aurelia’s condition in a confused trail mix of green and red text. He couldn’t pull the trigger anymore.

[Cease fire or I will retaliate.]

That message spread from one edge of their vision to another. C4T had hacked the tac net.

The gunfire stopped all at once. Only James’s sobbing could be heard. “Aurelia! Aurelia!” he cried.

“Explain yourself,” Coronel said. His aim didn’t waver.

“Abnormal conditions,” C4T messaged. “This is not a Gamma.”

“But it has the receptor organs, doesn’t it?”

“Affirmative.”

“So it’s a Gamma.”

“It has no core.”

Aurelia started growling.

“It’s a fucking Gamma, Cat,” Coronel spat.

“Stand down, or—”

Coronel fired twice. C4T swatted both rounds away. Before he could fire a third time, the gun in his hand was shot off—by Eliso.

Galactic humanity did not make slaves of its soldiers. They each had their own thoughts. From infancy to mortality, they were taught to express themselves—to make their own decisions, and suck up to the consequences.

Coronel glared at the First Lieutenant. Eliso glared back. “I trust the cat,” he said.

“Captain Saito. Disarm the First Lieutenant,” Coronel ordered.

Saito’s aim was still towards Aurelia, but it wavered, and so did his thoughts. He thought he could get away with just following orders, but what the fuck, now what?

“Captain,” Coronel said. “You have your orders.”

Tactically-speaking, Saito was in a bad spot. Aurelia’s bloodied mess of a bullet-ridden corpse started reforming like Gammas were supposed to, and yet, C4T was undeterred. Eliso was to his left with a gun pointed past him, pointed to Coronel to his right.

“Cat,” Saito asked, “why?”

“Coreless means no control system,” it stated, the text on everyone’s retinal HUDs plain, minimized, and sans serif. “No control system means free will. This survivor is, therefore, human.”

“That’s putting it in a fucking perspective. You think that’s human?” Coronel pointed at Aurelia’s rising figure, her bones snapping back into place.

C4T glared at Coronel. “Half of your body can be destroyed, yet you can be reassembled anew. Is that human?”

Coronel didn’t have an answer to that.

James scrambled to his feet, embracing Aurelia, even as her skin mended and bits of gold popped out of her wounds. “Aurelia!” he cried.

She growled like a monster in response, and her slit-eyes blinked. She grasped James.

For a moment, Saito, Eliso, and Coronel thought he was going to be killed. James himself was just relieved. Maybe he’d gone crazy, he thought deep inside, but Aurelia was Aurelia, and there was something in those eyes that told him she was still there.

With the delicacy of a sneaky cat, she tossed James to the floor again and put herself between him and the humans behind the counter. She hissed and her legs were bent, ready to pounce—yet she did not.

“The fuck,” Eliso muttered. Saito slowly put away his gun, earning Aurelia’s confidence that the only confirmed asshole was the terminator himself.

Even Coronel, however, was having second thoughts. She was demonstrating the intelligence of a Delta, but the wildness of a Gamma. Was she some sort of half-baked Delta? Above all, however, was the fact that she wasn’t attacking. That’s just fucking impossible.

“Fuck you,” Aurelia said. “Fucking bitch. Fucking—fuck you!” She kicked a nearby shelf, and her leg just went through. She had some trouble pulling it out, but once she did, she continued beating the whole shelf into a two-inch ball of crumpled steel.

This was all clearly directed at Coronel. He was stumped.

James was just happy that Aurelia was still alive. He was laughing on the floor. Laughing hurt. Some of his bones were broken. That was fine.