Chapter 5 Fracture
For a moment, the constant sting in my skin, the shudder in my frame, and the vibrating hum in my nerves vanish. I cannot get past the way Roxi’s touch makes me feel. It is a calm patch on my body, numb, quiet…whole. I just wish it didn’t require me first drawing blood.
Roxi doesn’t think it’s worth worrying about because it goes away when she does. But I’ve heard Brothers talk of mates as the only one who eases pain. Roxi definitely does that for me.
And now I can’t stop thinking about wanting her touch all over. Everywhere. I want to feel like a solid being again. I want to touch her and not hurt her.
I know she has lied to me. I can see the blood on her sleeve. But she acts like it isn’t a big deal. To me it is.
I reacted to her. She has flirted with me. But now she seems to have forgotten about all of it.
Perhaps putting on pants was the wrong move. But I won’t expose myself unnecessarily around females. Even Titan females.
Where is Aniah with that nano-receptive armor? I prefer a suit that can shift with me.
When we arrive at Aegis, Roxi and Esthi hurry off and get to work on repairing the recuperation systems like they’ve worked together a thousand times. They sort through the busted power supply system with the help of Thyristor and a host of other humans and Rogues with experience rewiring ships.
Kelta does what she can. Reidar, her brother, and many other Rebels help.
Some have been pulled away to work on getting ship-to-ship coms back online, but not before Roxi spoke with them about the problem in depth.
She is highly intelligent, secretive, and knowledgeable like Esthi.
I’m beginning to wonder if she is also a Grey and a CyberTech.
Armor stands nearby, always keeping an eye on his mate. His wings are folded up against his back now, but he’s still too big to fit into the tiny maintenance shafts after her and Roxi. “This is such bullshit. Why did they make it nearly impossible for us to maintain our own vessels?”
Castor rolls out of a compartment and stands, grabs a tool off a nearby cart, and grins. “It’s just not your role, big guy.”
“No ogling my mate,” Armor bellows, his iridescent eyes narrowing at Castor. “You stay away from Esthielle. She is mine.”
“Oh, I’m looking at something.”
“You little…” Armor swipes at him, but Castor drops into a pile of smaller orbs and quickly rolls back into the shaft with a chuckle. “Pile of loose marbles!”
Through a narrow opening in the guts of Aegis, behind the recuperation pods, I see Castor form back into his Titan shape and return to diligently repairing kinked nanosolution supply systems.
Fracture>>Armor: He is not looking at her. He is working on the ship. Calm your ultro, Brother.
Armor fumes and paces away from us.
Roxi keeps shaking her head like there’s a problem everywhere she turns.
Esthi agrees. I have been staying out of their way and comforting damaged Brothers who are spread out in rows on the floor of the hangers, resting while awaiting recuperation.
Some are so damaged they are offline. Rebel, Atox, and Ribos, our medics, have done what they can.
But only proper hibernation with a charge port and nanosolution can bring Titans back to operation after significant damage.
Nix and Knurl lay among thirty-nine downed Brothers.
Relic Diesel, who chugs oil and anything he can get his hands on so he can fuel his generation system and charge the most critical Titans, tells me that Roxi is the one who brought in Turbo, Brunt, and Echo, who Solcrue had captured.
It’s tough to comprehend how she could drag their metal bodies behind her capsule gun all the way back to her rebel ship.
“Don’t think she’s quite human,” the big greenish brute of a Relic says. “But Rhee is Kilthrian. She’s got different skills too. Maybe…” Diesel burps. “Ugh, I hate old oil. Anyway…” He grimaces and swallows.
“She did say she was on Sevrin’s sister’s ship,” I reply.
“No shit?” Diesel unplugs his charger from Nix and walks to the next. “Navi endured hell. Be good to Roxi, even if she fights you. That is a special kind of torture.”
Roxi crawls out of a compartment in our Rogue mothership and swears. “Esthi!”
Esthi abandons what she’s working on and looks inside the ship with a flashlight. “Well, that sucks.”
Getting up, Roxi begins disassembling a hibernation cell. She looks back at me. “Bring me the worst one first.”
I slide my arms under Nix and carry him to her. “It is badly broken?”
Esthi backs out of the hole. “Totally charred.”
My Brother suddenly feels heavier in my arms.
Roxi waves for me to set Nix by her boots.
“We’re going to have to rebuild the power supply to the entire rail if we want the Titan charging systems back online.
The circuit has to be rebuilt. Whatever bolt hit the ship burned inside like lightning and torched the feeders down the spans for the entire network of recuperation systems.”
I watch in awe as she builds a new nanosolution merge-bracket from parts she pulls off of the recuperation chamber and clips together with a variety of tools from her bag like she’s done this before.
She connects Nix to the fluid replenishing system.
“We’re going to have to connect everyone manually, and all I can engineer is this bare-bones transfer system.
We need a lot of parts… For now, they’re going to have to be replenished by idle pressure in the system.
Gravity-fed. No power assists. Keep them on the floor below the pods. ”
I communicate what she has told me over our local telenet so all Titans know the situation.
Esthi slumps back against the wall, hands stained with grease, ash, and scrapes. “I’m out of ideas other than using Diesel, Sarge, and Reactor to charge the Brothers manually. But that’s going to be a full-time job for them. Maybe your Rebel friends know something?”
“If they do, I’m sure they’ll share. But I haven’t heard anything.” Roxi motions for Knurl.
I retrieve his faceted, abrasive metal body from the group and lay him down by the next station.
Roxi tugs the cables from the pod and builds the same brackets for him that she did for Nix.
Her hands are fast, and she works diligently to connect each Brother.
Esthi watches over her shoulder in mild shock, clearly trying to memorize what Roxi is doing.
We connect Anilius next. He’s conscious. Barely. Esthi mutters as Roxi walks her through it. Then Turbo, Chrome, Brunt, Slasher, and Echo get connected. Armor brings over a Rogue brother. Ricochet has had extensive repairs to a shoulder and is unresponsive.
Roxi connects him while I stay at his side.
Ricochet was made when I was. We weren’t Batch Brothers. But we were hotskins at the same time.
Fracture>>Ricochet: Can you hear me, Brother?
Ricochet>>Fracture: Hibernation mode. Nanotoner awaiting replenishment. Volume too low to engage memory and processing cores. Unit offline.
Fuck.
I take his hand and hold it, wishing I could transfer fluid to him faster or charge him up like Diesel or the others.
But I was made to break like Crackler, Atomizer, and Splinter.
We were designed to shatter, so this didn’t happen to us when we were attacked.
My kind of nanosolution is incompatible with his body type.
I alert Chasm to the situation. Sometimes, I wish I had his skills so I could tear ships apart instead of single enemy combatants in smaller-scale battles. Then again, my anger is not as controlled as his.
Chasm>>Fracture: I need a location for a supply run or at least a list of materials so we can search. Please ask Roxi and Esthi. And also ask them to explain, if they know, why it took so long for the chambers to stop working after the battle. It has been two days.
I relay his questions to Roxi and Esthi.
Roxi doesn’t look up from where she connects the next Titan to the nanosolution supply system. “Because there are battery backups in each cell for this very reason. You were able to escape to a location where it was safer to repair your systems.”
She walks to and takes the striped hand that reaches toward her from down the row of bodies we’ve hooked up. “You will return to normal operation soon, Anilius. You must rest.”
“That feels so much better,” Anilius says, his stripes fading and leaving him in his simple gray Titan husk. It is similar to what happens to me, and I realize Roxi does it to all of us. “Thank you.”
The gentle way she smiles down at him, like she’s proud of him, catches my attention. She is on our side. Roxi is not a frozen-hearted human.
She calms every Titan, but so far, she has only flirted with me. I can’t quite figure her out. She is hot and cold, feisty and then tender.
I send Chasm what Roxi has said via a video file. After I have helped her connect the remaining damaged Titans, I follow her back to the access.
She climbs inside. “You coming or what, my glittery shadow?”
She wants me with her?
I promptly reform myself into a thinner and flatter body and slip in behind her. I don’t want to disaggregate until I’m certain Aniah is waiting with a new uniform outside.
“What is that like, shifting?” she asks as she scours charred parts and annotates them on her tablet.
“Sleeping limbs. If they were all asleep at once and simultaneously made of a million tiny stingers I can direct at anything I consider harmful. It was mind-numbing for months until the thunder of battle made it all seem quiet.”
She looks up at me with pity. “I am sorry that you were given a painful body.”
I don’t want her to think I am weak. “It is fine. I can handle it.”
She points to a part over her head. Roxi is barely as tall as my shoulder, and limited in reach. “Just break it off.”
I do and hand the cylindrical item to her. Roxi takes it slowly.
“Thanks.” She looks it over and makes more notes on her tablet in a language I do not know. “Castor?”
He peeks around a jog in the maintenance tunnel.
“Please work on removing all the damaged parts. I need this system gutted to the bones that work so we know for sure what we have to replace.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Castor disappears back down his passageway.
Roxi stays focused, looking over parts and typing like she’s a machine. “You’re still following me even with the program offline. Why?”
“Curiosity. Are you really just a test subject turned rebel? I mean, why did a crew go after you? How did you save three Titans when you’re one human female? Nothing is adding up. You know a lot about us, about the Relics.”
Roxi pauses and glances up at me long enough that I can focus on her pale gold eyes and pick up hints of tracework in metallic hues in her irises. “I was not born, Fracture. I was made in a lab like you.”
“I’m sorry, what?”
She returns to her work.
“But you bleed.”
“I do.”
I brace my head. “You’re not Titan.”
“No.”
“But you’re not human.”
“I am. I was just made and brought to life in a lab. So they had time to…adjust things.” She leans back and visually counts something that climbs the inside of the power rail channel, which rises toward the next level. “And I am not the only one who was.”