Aurelia was bopping C4T in the head. James was happy just to watch such a satisfied expression on her face—on the other hand, that’s a robotic killing machine right there, though. If memory served right, then wasn’t that the same cat that had tentacles waving around out of its back, literally swatting away bullets from mid-air?

The cat looked up to him. Its face, besides two camera eyes, was featureless. It still managed to “meow,” though, and he suspected that the Geiger counter-like quality of the meow belied a deeper message.

…Even if that deeper message wasn’t anything more than the Machine equivalent of keyboard racking.

A knock on the door grabbed James’s attention. Eliso poked his head in, and the first thing he saw was Aurelia’s scritching of C4T’s head. He didn’t know what to make of this scene of one purported killing machine cutely patting the head of another killing machine.

This was all, of course, tactically imperative. C4T’s distraction was vital to Eliso’s continued survival. Aurelia still wasn’t quite right in the head, and would go from gleefully bopping C4T in the head, to crying in James’s arms, to throwing a fit the moment she saw Coronel—hence why the latter wasn’t getting himself anywhere near her, and Eliso was the one here instead.

“Uh. Hi,” he said with an awkward wave.

“H-hello,” James replied, mirrorring him.

“I’m just here to ask a few questions. If you have any, I can answer a few. I gotta report back fast.”

“Sure.”

Eliso didn’t come in, shooting glances towards Aurelia. James noticed this. He leaned in closer to Aurelia.

“Hey, one of the soldiers are gonna come inside, okay—”

Aurelia hissed.

“—it’s Eliso. The other guy? On the other side?”

Aurelia twisted her head and peered into Eliso’s soul, narrowing her eyes. The man felt a chill, but Aurelia went back to bopping C4T with a smile.

“Yeah, come in,” James said.

Eliso shook his head and went inside. The former 122 Mercury safehouse was still as they had left it: riddled with bullet holes, letting spears of light slice into the dusty interior every which way.

He picked a bench beside the door, keeping about four meters between himself and them. James couldn’t fault the guy. Aurelia was…not quite okay.

“You remembered my name,” Eliso said.

“Yeah. That wasn’t a good place I was in, but…I heard you.”

“At least you’re doing fine.” Eliso offered a kind smile. “Let me tell you a few things and get the ball rolling. Do you know what you’re fighting?”

“…Zombies?”

Eliso’s translator noted that this was a cultural term. “Well, something like that, but not just.”

James paused. “What do you mean?”

“Do you know where they come from?”

“…Am I about to find out some secret to the world?”

“It’s not exactly secret.” Eliso pointed to the roof. “This is an extraterrestrial invasion by the Kartesh.”

James dug his face into his hands. “Of-fucking-course it’s aliens.” He sighed. He owed Karlson 500 Pesos now.

“We’re humans from the galactic next-door,” Eliso continued. “Supposedly we’re supposed to send the Kartesh packing, but man, we’re on a thin line between extinction and another tomorrow.”

James’s mind blanked out. Aurelia looked plenty happy over there, not concerning herself with things like aliens and extinction.

He pointed at the cat. “That’s not human, though.”

“That’s one of the Machines, our only allies.”

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

“There’s more of them?”

“A lot more than us. The whole of the next quadrant’s their territory, and we’re sort of just renting out a bit of space.”

James stared at C4T. It meowed at him.

“That’s not a real meow, is it?”

“Some kind of bitcode, I think. It’s just simulating a cat’s meow with it.”

“ ‘Simulating’? Wait, so it’s actually pretty smart?”

“You know that thing, where humans like to value logic over emotion, because emotion comes easier for us than rational thinking? It’s the opposite with them.”

“Huh…”

“Anyway, back to business. We need you to help us out.”

James chuckled. “You’ve got fuckin’ robot dogs with guns on their backs. I’m not sure me and…this girl-in-need-of-therapy over here can do much better.”

Aurelia glared at him with an annoyed face. Somehow, her intuitive ability to detect trashtalk coming from his mouth hadn’t been blown away with that bullet he’d put in her head.

He attempted to pat her head as an apology, but she harrumphed and picked up C4T, placing it on her lap. James sighed, but summoned the courage to try again. Reaching further, his hand finally landed on her cool hair. She didn’t pull away.

“Firepower isn’t the issue,” Eliso said. “We can make as many bots as we want, but allies are still allies. We can arm you, train you, multiply your capabilities a hundred, or even a thousand times.”

James pulled his hand away from Aurelia’s hair. He thought—and sighed. “I don’t get it. If you can make even more—”

“We need decisionmakers more than we need fighters. The Machines can spawn new Machines pretty fast, but they’ve agreed that because this is a human world, that it’s going to be a human fight.”

“How considerate of them—and stupid.”

At that, C4T looked at him and meowed.

“No offense,” he added. If it were up to James, he’d welcome his new Machine overlords as long as it upped their chances of survival.

“They can get philosophical at times. Anyway, the point still stands. We need allies”—Eliso paused—“and intel.”

James rubbed his head on this. He was sure they’d figured something out—that it wasn’t just him and Aurelia, that there was a whole group involved in stringing up that net and holding back that horde. Even if they didn’t know the scouts’ exact numbers, the implication was clear: they wanted all of their help.

On the other hand, these space guys got the firepower to take on a horde and one-shot Rams. The moment James started deeply cooperating with these people, they’ll have access to that same firepower, and only in exchange, possibly, for their freedom. They’d be part of someone else’s personal army, after all.

Toss on the fact that Troy had been making suspicious moves lately. It wouldn’t be a surprise if the guy had made a move by now. Even if James and Aurelia were to come back to Diliman, they wouldn’t be getting a warm welcome.

He hadn’t heard from the other scouts, either. He couldn’t. They’d all agreed to go radio silent to throw off Troy, and there were still two days before they could go loud again.

…and the Troy problem could be immediately solved with overwhelming force, too. Really, Eliso’s offer was just too tempting.

—Work for us, and we’ll let you in on the good stuff.

Cut off from communications and being the only sane one between himself and Aurelia, the fate of everything—and everyone—rested on James’s decision in this one moment.

He was mistaken about something, though. Eliso and the Alliance weren’t concerned with playing political games. Their focus was singular and direct: not being outgunned and outmaneuvered by the Kartesh. Anyone with a little bit of sanity was a candidate for being an ally.

“I know a few guys,” James said. “I can only guess where they are. You’re gonna have to help me find them.”

Eliso smiled. “We’ll put everything in writing, don’t worry.”

They shook hands. “Castellano,” James said. “James Castellano.”

***

A new safehouse had popped up in the convenience store beside the old one. Its all-glass front had been smashed to bits, and the shutters were still up when they’d inspected it. A little bit of cleanup and modification later, and it became a decent base of operations. The shutters could move up and down at will, and several sentry turrets guarded its exterior.

Meanwhile, the former 122 Mercury safehouse remained, at the moment, reserved for James and Aurelia—mostly Aurelia.

Inside the new safehouse, a Bernard fab-bot was busy managing the nanostruction of the first ARAK-pattern Tenprint, which would soon give birth to even more Bernard fab-bots, and maybe other Tenprints. The Bernards would be converted back to their original role as packbots once there were enough Tenprints to specialize on fabrication.

“I’m…still surprised,” Eliso said. He was having shitty instant coffee with Saito across the cash register. At least it wasn’t expired yet. “It took you, what, the whole of seven seconds to figure out what to do?”

“When everyone around you has a point, what would you do?” Saito countered. “And the TL’s scary, man. I’m sure he’s got you on his shitlist by now.”

“I wish that were the case.” Coronel’s voice was low and tired, but it still roused the two pilots from their seats, standing at attention. He momentarily looked both of them in the eyes. “At ease.”

Alliance protocol about events just like a while ago was straightforward: if the dissenter had a point and it proved valid, you let it slide. It didn’t make the CO’s happy, but if humanity’s fighting forces were made incapable of making independent decisions down to the very last pigeon, Kartesian battle prediction algorithms would be having a field day. It’s not like humanity could afford to take soldiers off the field, anyway.

“Thanks to Mister Castellano’s cooperation and a fuckton of drone recon, we’ve found four probable locations between us and their Diliman camp where his fellow ‘scouts’ might be hiding,” Coronel said.

“Sir.” Saito raised his hand. “What about the situation in Diliman? Didn’t he say something about an attempted coup there?”

“We’ll deal with it when we get there.” Coronel eyed both soldiers. “We’re pressed for time. We’ll split up and rendezvous with any scouts, then rally outside of Diliman.”

Coronel hoisted up two backpacks onto the counter at the same time as nanostruct templates streamed into Saito’s and Eliso’s personal AIs. “I’m sure you’re tired of our shitty rate of fire,” he said, holding his eyes on Eliso’s. Consider us even.