Daron thanked me perfusely on the walk back to the guild’s halls, my only response had been a causal, “No wakas,” to which he had cocked an eyebrow and looked at me queerly. “I mean, it was no problem,” I said, correcting my slang to an understandable level. Then came the tirade of questions, “Which Guild are you with?”

“How long have you been with them?”

“Which planet are you from?”

“Earth? I’ve never heard of Earth. How long has it been linked? Were you scared when the ships showed up? Dad said it was scary when they came to our planet, but he was just a kid.”

“They haven’t come yet? You’re still in the induction? That’s crazy!”

I withstood the unending questions, wondering why I bothered to save the kid, and for the last week, I had found myself shadowed as I went about my day. Daron’s face appeared in lectures for local law and I found him conversing with Diera when I entered the training hall three days after saving him. His peppy smile and upbeat personality worked on almost everyone around him until we found ourselves wandering through the forest, lead by Keg who was navigating the unfamiliar terrain for an assignment, and Daron trailing hot on Sam’s heels.

“The fuck did you volunteer us for?” Sam complained again for the seventh time in the hour.

We were walking in the standard patrol formation, rifles cradled like babies in our arms, boots squishing, and sliding in the icy mud as we pushed up a mountainside.

“I can’t pass if I don’t lead a team, who the fuck else was I meant to get? Besides, blame Jack, I only asked, he volunteered you lot.” Keg hissed in a whisper.

Keg's assignment was for his wilderness survival course, tasked with navigating us forty kilometers through the landscape back to the campus, all while avoiding an ‘enemy force’ which, in reality, were just groups of the thousands of bots that Nerion used for training. The difficult part of the task was that Keg had only had thirty seconds to look at a topographic map before we were dropped in the middle of nowhere and told to get back. That and Keg would be graded on how well he could impart some small amount of bushcraft on the rest of us, enough to keep us all alive at least.

We trudged through the undergrowth, carefully reminded by Keg to avoid breaking loose bush limbs and to step carefully around the thick succulent plants that littered the forest floor. This was all second nature to Jack, Keg, Sam, and Mia, having had the information drilled into them in the Special forces. While I struggled to manage my foot placement, ensuring I didn’t leave too many deep footprints or crush too many plants, resorting to dilating time just a fraction so I could look where I was going and scan the surrounding trees, Daron had to be reminded time and time again to watch his feet, tasking him with only worrying about the noise he made. This was very far out of his comfort zone, having admitted to us that he had spent most of his life behind a console, he took everything in stride with a smile and enthusiasm, which made us all unable to think poorly of him for his ill performance.

“New Idea, We just run. If we find any bots, I’ll just cut them up and we can keep going. We could be back before dark,” I hissed through a jaw clenched against the cold.

“I’ve seen you take four hours to stalk a deer a hundred meters, yet now you want to run,” Jack said quietly, shaking his head.

“Shhhh, they could be right there for all we know,” Keg whispered pointing,

I shook my head, and tapped my temple, “Nothing for at least a hundred meters either side, except some kind of snake, two legs,” I whispered back at him, then turned to Jack, “You can eat deer, and I was poor. I can’t eat robots,”

“What’s a deer? Are they dangerous?” Daron asked quietly, and Sam began answering in a hushed tone as Jack and Keg both looked at me.

“Really nothing around?” They both asked as if they had forgotten that I had an EM sense.

“Really really,” I answered in my best Shrek voice. There really wasn’t, small rodents and flying lizards that pinged weakly against my senses were the only things moving around us. In the last two weeks I had ‘integrated’ more with my augments, now able to extend my scan out to one hundred meters.

“Fuck, well in that case we could probably pick up the pace a little, I didn’t think about that,” Keg said scratching his head and raising his voice to barely above a whisper.

After that, we began to jog, and I put all my effort into staying on my feet over the exposed roots and lumps in the game trail while I furiously scanned our surroundings. Two hours later I felt a tingle of a body and movement to our left, holding my hand up to stop the group we all slid to a stop while dropping to our knees, breath forming a thin cloud of mist as it condensed in the cold.

“Two Bodies, People not bots. They’re running. Shit, Four bots following, they’re cutting east to west, Fuck they’re coming this way.” I hissed.

I followed Jack and Keg as they dove from the thing trail and behind a set of trees, clipping my rifle to my back and drawing my swords. If this got violent, they would be close enough for the blades. Just as Sam was pulling Daron around the back of a bush, two bodies smashed through the undergrowth and they were not what I was expecting.

Instead of two heavily armed and armored fighters, it was a young woman and a small boy. Their tattered clothes stained with the mud and it caked he exposed patches of skin where their clothing had given way. They scrambled through the bush, the woman dragging the boy along as the battered branches aside. Blood dripped down her arm from a wound on her shoulder, but she seemed to ignore the pain but the terror darkening her eyes. Are they students? I wondered. The boy looked too young and no student would ever be dressed in tattered rags. Almost as soon as they appeared, a bot pushed through the bush close behind them, raising a rifle to take a shot.

Two rifles cracked in the snow muffled quiet, Jacks rifle was raised and pointed at the bot, while the bots rifle was aiming wide of the woman and child, the end of his rifle smoking with a hole in its side.

Jack had acted in the moment, knowing the bot would likely shrug off a single bullet, he had aimed for its weapon, knocking it wide in the second that it fired and saving the woman or child. At that moment, three of us jumped free from our cover.

Sam, Mia, and I flew through the trees, straight into bots at two more emerged. I sliced out, ripping through the unarmoured wires in the stomach while ducking under the elbow attached blades of the nearest bot as it dropped its rifles and cut at my neck. Warm hydraulic fluid spilled out over my hands and I thrust up underneath the metallic jaw to sever its main processing cable before moving on the next.

As we sliced and stabbed the bots into scrap metal, Keg and Jack had sprinted to catch the woman and boy, slowing them and pulling them behind the cover of trees. As Sam and Mia’s spears pierced the face of one bot and I beheaded the other, the last one appeared through two trees.

Having reacted to the fight ahead of it, the final bot had moved sideways through the trees and now raised a rifle down the sightline. I felt the impulse that flashed down its wires in my EM sense and was knocked sideways as a bullet slammed into my armored shoulder. I spun around, gritting my teeth in preparation for the second shot, but it never came. I looked around to see the bot frozen in place, then it extended its arm out to the side, swung the rifle around, and fired. Directly into its own head, collapsing in a heap on the forest floor. “What the fuck,” I muttered, looking around at the others. Mia and Sam stood looking at the destroyed bot, confusion painted on their faces. Daron stood hidden behind the trees, his face visible in the gap between two trunks, a wide grin spread from cheek to cheek. He waved his pistol in front of his face and his smile grew, I gave him a, ‘care to explain,’ look.

“I hacked him, haven’t tried it in the field yet, but it worked well enough?” Daron said.

When I didn’t respond he elaborated, “This gun,” he waved his pistol at me again, “Shoots nanite bullets, they burrow into the wiring of a bot, or a scanner, or an implant and I can normally gain access. Giving me complete control.”

I smiled back at him, for the first time thankful that he was with us. The bot wouldn’t have killed me, but he saved me from a bit of pain and I was grateful. “Thanks,” I said.

“All gee!” Daron said, in his best impression of Keg, who had been teaching him kiwi slang. And we all laughed, quietly.

I wiped the hydraulic fluid off me swords on a cloth I kept especially for cleaning them and re-sheathed them as I walked over to Jack and Keg who were kneeling in the dirt beside the woman and child. Jack was offering a synthetic skin and med spray while Keg was trying to hand the child a bar of chocolate he had produced from his backpack. They were having neither, the woman was clutching the small boy and shielding him from them. Their white hair was caked in muck through their fiery red eyes still shone in the shadowy canopy against their dirty purple skin. Their features were delicate and almost identical. Mother and son? Siblings? I wasn’t sure exactly how alien genetics worked but I would have bet that the two were related.

When I approached, the boy flinched, his eyes wide as he stared up at my face. My scarred face. I felt my face flush, as though dunked in cold water and I couldn’t help as my expression darkened. I turned away from them looking back at Mia, Sam, and Daron as they followed. Mia took one look at me, her eyes softening in recognition and she placed a hand on my cheek, leaning forward she kissed me softly then moved past.

Stupid, I shouldn’t care what a child thought. I don’t care what anyone thinks. That was the lie I told myself for the thousandth time, and I knew that a child’s opinion was more honest than anyone else. They didn’t pull their punches and couldn’t hide their emotions, and this one was scared by the sight of me.

“Give me that,” Mia whispered to Jack, taking the spray from his hand and slowly shuffling forward and holding her hands up, palms open with the spray hanging from her thumb by the tag. “Please, we can help with that,” she said, moving as a mirror of the woman and touching the injured shoulder. The woman hesitated, then nodded, pulling the boy behind her and allowing Mia to shuffle forward and tend to her injury.

I moved away from the group, taking a seat on a fallen log I drew a sword and began rubbing the residue left by the flight free from the dark metal. Never a wasted moment, I reminded myself. I watched the others with my EM sense.

Mia sat herself down in the dirt in front of the woman, pulling her sleeve back, “This might sting,” she told her before beginning to spray down the bullet hole. The synthetic skin would nit together with the edges of the wound while nanites would dig into the hole, patching up exposed veins and speeding up the healing process.

“I’m Mia. That’s Jack, and Keg, my sister Sam over their with Daron. Erick is the one over there,” she said, pointing to us all, “What are your names?” Mia asked.

The woman was silent for a moment, then she spoke. Her voice was deep and echoed without an enclosed space, as though she was speaking through a long tube, “ My name is Senta, this is my brother Geren. Are you going to sell us?” She asked, taking all of us off guard.

“Why would we sell you?” Mia asked, treading carefully.

“The elders say that if we are caught by the Invasives, we will be sold as slaves and taken from this world.”

“We will not sell you,” I muttered. My jaw clenching at the thought of slaves being taken from Nerion.

“What did he say? Senta asked the others.

“He said you’re safe. No one is going to sell you, where are you heading?” Jack asked softly.

“They found our village, The metal ones. Our father tried to save us but he was killed,” the words choked in her throat. Everyone waited patiently for her to gather herself and begin again. “He saved us, but we have to get to our uncle, he is in the closest settlement, it's over this mountain on the western side, we were so close when they began chasing us,” she said, pointing to the metal scrap that was once the bots.

“Keg, what’s the penalty for being late?” Jack asked.

“Depends,” Keg said with a disgruntled sigh,

Mia nodded to Jack then looked back to Senta, “We will help you get there, promise.”

Then a voice broke all our quiet agreement, I had been so caught up in what was happening with our two refugees that I hadn’t been scanning our surroundings with my EM sense, and now I looked up, into the barrel of a rifle held by Darons brother, Faron.

“Those two are coming with us, do you know how much they pay for natives back at campus.”