Chapter 3 #2
Ronin unslung his rifle to swing his pack off his shoulders.
Unclasping the flap, he loosened the drawstring and upended the bag.
Scrap clattered onto the scuffed countertop.
Zeke watched, expression neutral, as bundles of tangled copper wire bounced over plates of lead and steel, as plastic chips and long-dead power cells clattered into a haphazard pile.
Plunging a hand into his pocket, Ronin added the ammunition he’d taken from the reavers to the haul.
“Never seen one as productive as you.” Zeke’s hands hovered over the scrap, fingers twitching. “You’re a far-rover, to be sure. Creators programmed you special.”
Ronin’s core programming was shrouded within a deep, corrupted memory bank. If the Creators had instilled him with a special purpose, they’d also gone out of their way to hide it from him. He was the same as any bot without a discernable directive.
“How much?” Ronin asked.
Zeke sifted through the pile, rubbing and tapping various items and occasionally lifting a piece to test its weight. “Forty units advance. Give me an hour, and I’ll have your full tally.”
“Estimate.”
The middle and little fingers on Zeke’s right hand curled for an instant, spasmed, and straightened. “Three fifty. Depends on the damage to the cells, and the precious metals in the chips.”
Nodding, Ronin slung his rucksack over one shoulder and his rifle over the other. Would the human woman dance for hard credit?
Zeke counted out the chits and stacked them on the counter. Two yellows and a green made forty units. Each plastic disk had Warlord’s symbol etched at its center, with grooves radiating outward from it like spokes.
Ronin slid them off the counter and dropped them into his pocket. Credit units were good enough for now, but they held no value outside Cheyenne. He’d have to convert them into solid goods before he moved on to another town.
“One hour,” he said, walking away from the scrapper’s.
He ran his optics over the market, noting the presence of the merchants he’d need to visit. More than anything, he required ammunition, which was rare and therefore expensive. Forty credits wouldn’t get him much, and he didn’t care to negotiate prices without the chits in hand.
Kitty’s gaudy lights caught his attention again.
The recording of the red-haired woman dancing rose to the forefront of his attention.
An hour spent satisfying his curiosity couldn’t be considered wasted time, and would perhaps be enough to help him understand why she had so intrigued him. He walked toward the building.
Maybe he’d been in the Dust too long. Diagnostics checks told him his processors were functioning normally, that there was no new corrupted data, but how could he be certain?
It was always his choice to venture into the wasteland and scavenge, at immense risk to his functionality.
Often, he was forced to fight. Rarely did those fights end without Ronin having sustained some sort of damage.
Yet it was only in those instances, in the chaos of combat, that he felt closest to realizing his core programming, that he felt something… familiar.
It had been that way for Ronin since the Prophet had awakened him one hundred and eighty-five years ago, fifteen years after the Blackout had shattered the world.
So why had the woman’s dance invaded his thoughts so thoroughly? What about her had so utterly captivated him?
He stopped at the front door, staring up at the neon sign. He’d never been tempted to enter before tonight. But change was a natural part of existence for all things. Even mountains changed over the eons. Why not bots, as well?
Ronin opened the door and stepped inside.
There was a partial wall directly ahead, creating a small foyer and dulling the rhythmic thump of music from beyond.
The space was dominated by a broad, blocky bot that stood at least nine feet tall.
The bot’s twin optics audibly shifted to focus on Ronin as it raised its thick arms and folded them over its dented metal chest. Warlord’s symbol was displayed on its left shoulder in bright red paint.
Though the source of the knowledge was unclear, Ronin knew this bot had been made for warfare.
“Ten units to watch,” it said, voice projecting from somewhere within its suspension-cable neck. It had no moving mouth.
One frivolous expenditure couldn’t hurt. It might mean a few less bullets, but Ronin needed to conserve ammunition, anyway. He plucked a yellow chit from his pocket and dropped it into the bot’s waiting hand.
The bot curled its fingers over the chit. “You the dustwalker the boss mentioned?”
“I’m a dustwalker,” Ronin responded. “Couldn’t tell you which one he meant.”
It slitted its optic shutters and released an electronic grunt. “I’m Comp. You—”
“Comp?”
“Yeah. Short for Compactor. You start trouble, you deal with me. You don’t want that.”
“Astute observation.”
Comp grunted again and extended a thumb, jabbing it to the side. Ronin walked across the foyer, giving Comp a wide berth, and entered the main room.
It took two seconds for his optics to adjust to the confused lighting.
More pink and violet bulbs cast conflicting glows upon numerous reflective surfaces, strengthening the contrasting gloom hanging in the air.
Mirrors and polished chrome poles and rails gleamed on the stage, on the bar, around the doors, and even on the ceiling.
More so than the bot district, this place was a blatant statement of defiance against the Dust, a callback to an era no one remembered.
An era before broken people scurried through a broken world.
Before dirt had worked its way into everything, before metal had rusted and corroded and electronic minds had deteriorated alongside it.
People, bots and humans, were scattered in the chairs.
Some were in small groups at the tables, but most were sitting along the stage.
Two synths stood behind the bar, one of them a tall, white-skinned female in a tight dress that accentuated her body, the other a bare-chested, brown-skinned male in black leather pants.
Apart from the pulsing music, the place was quiet.
No conversation, no cheering. In one corner, a naked woman writhed sensually on a man’s lap, but the rest of the patrons just stared at the stage with rapt, hungry eyes.
Ronin sat at an empty table.
Two women danced at opposite ends of the stage, swaying their hips, running their hands over their bare skin and across their painted lips, stroking their nipples.
Something stirred within him. He’d gone a long time without sexual stimulation.
The brown-haired woman on the left moved with slow precision. Her dark brown skin was flawless, her curves generous, her breasts perky, and her face was perfectly symmetrical. A synth. She caught his gaze, smiled, and squeezed her ample bosom.
Ronin looked to the other woman. In comparison, her movements were erratic, varying in direction and speed.
The subtle motion of muscles beneath her skin and the hint of ribs at her sides said she was human.
Her breasts were smaller, and pale scars ran up the inside of her right arm.
There was a mole on her abdomen, near her navel—which synths lacked—and another on her inner thigh.
As he watched her, he allocated extra processing cores to map her movements.
There had to be a pattern, had to be a way to predict them.
Minutes passed in the gloom; forgotten, insignificant minutes dominated by droning music and teasing flesh.
Credit units were tossed onto the stage at the dancers’ feet by silent onlookers, disrupting the ambient rhythm.
Though there was no predictable pattern, she had several tells.
Her movements were simple, sensual, and ultimately repetitive.
When she slid her hands down along her sides and hesitated, it meant they were about to converge over her pubis.
If she didn’t hesitate, she would instead run her palms over her thighs.
Would the woman in the shack have betrayed such signs, had there been enough time to observe her?
He compared their forms. This woman was slightly taller and seemed better fed, though the redhead in the shack had more muscle tone on her calves. Both had long legs and thin waists.
But they danced in drastically different manners.
Ronin raised his optics to the dancer’s face.
The rare times she opened her eyes, she fixed her gaze on the ceiling or the wall rather than looking at the crowd.
Her lips were parted slightly, as though in arousal, but it didn’t carry to the rest of her expression.
Ronin had seen the way human bodies reacted to sexual stimuli.
There was no color on her cheeks, no muscles tightening in anticipation of pleasure, not so much as a flicker of movement in her passive brow.
This was all performative, an act for the gratification of the audience. And it was ultimately empty.
The red-haired woman hadn’t feigned her emotions.
She’d worn them as plainly as her clothing, and they’d been genuine, powerful, and alluring.
And there was something about her physical form, something about her features, that Ronin found far more enticing.
He’d seen beautiful people before. There were many here, right now.
But the human in that shack on the edge of the slums, she had a beauty that outshone any he’d witnessed.
“I was told you gave my guards trouble when you came into town,” someone said from beside Ronin.
Ronin turned his head. He’d heard no approaching footsteps. Whether due to the music or his focused analysis, his carelessness was inexcusable.