Chapter 6: Chapter 5 - Of One Womb Born, on the Self-Same Day

This is the second time that Unit 078 gains consciousness. An experience as unsettling as it is painful with the earth, dust, and chunks of brick, making an uncomfortable bed.

They unscrew the apertures on their lenses, one at a time, four cameras –what they presume to be the source of their current agony, their anterior arm’s shoulder. It’s missing.

078’s coolant pump begins to throb, their wires slowly saturating with panic for every drop of understanding of their current predicament.

They try to move their front-arms but as the actuator-muscles yank, free of a skeleton, The dangling, shoulderless arm it clangs painfully against the open wound, gushing forth purple water and globules of yellow-purple. In silence, 078 lifts their face, jaw opening, soundlessly, two thin fins on the back of their head stretching back, the pulling of muscles in the attempt to exert this pain away.

This buzzing pain. The sky is orange.

Unit 082 crawls forth, pushing silt with its forearms and 078 swings forth an arm that used to hold onto a cannon, the moving creature is recognisable by the large ultraviolet ‘082’ painted on the flat top of the head, relief, an ally. Their face like a triangular prism with the top jaw pointed at a zenith – the ‘point’ at the centre-front of the face being a vertical line for the jaws, four sensors lying on the walls above the teeth, the solar-panel wings on their back are bent, weary, their legs drag uselessly on the floor. Unit 082 was built about 15cm shorter than 078, their vice-jaws opened and they said “You’re losing hydraulic-fluid.”

“What?”

“The fall.” Said the floorbound midget

“What does that mean?” 078 felt their neck weaken, slacking to the side, they grabbed their chin with a hand and had to move their face like a puppet’s.

“Come down here, I’ll save your life.” When the taller fellow crouched, 082 lifted up with their secondary arms, their smaller primary arms, deft with some kind of experience, rushed forth, sliding along the hard muscles, cool plastic skin wrapped across. Four metal thumbs trailed across the sensitive regions where the cytosteel skeleton was hard against the skin. One hand splayed out across the dual shoulders of the right-side, triplet fingers and twin thumbs exploring, pushing, prodding, a soft ‘give’ in the region and… legless 082 forces their palm into the area, thrusting the metal skeleton together with a disgusting squeal, from which 078 couldn’t help but escape from with a hard punch to 082’s head.

“Phfffoooh…” 082 wheezes, the coolant knocked out of their voicebox, “A thank you would be nice.”

“What for!” 078 responded in monotone, clutching their belly in horrific pain, lightning travelling across their back.

“Let me explain something, we’re all built differently, I’m built with medical knowledge. It’s how we make a versatile fighting force.”

“So you’re a medic?”

“I don’t know what that is.”

078’s thoughts and machinations were like a little boat in an ocean of pain, A medic IS valuable. They kicked a metal pipe out of the rubble towards 082. “There’s your thanks. Explain to me what you did.” Please just keep talking ffffff...

082 crunched the pipe in their jaws, belching ozone from out of their whirring digestion-matrix, taking their damn time.

“Your muscle-actuators are electronically driven.” They crunched loudly.

“What’s electricity.”

“Listen.” Crunch, crunch. “So mostly you’re moved by muscles, except for the parts of your body that need the most stability. Your rear, back, and shoulders are all connected to a hydraulic system. That’s why you can move your back with precise, nice, easy motions, it’s much stronger, just fragile and intensive.”

078 flexed their internal struts, including the primary strut in their spine.

“So you were bleeding coolant, which is fine, coolant bleeds from your arms and wherever, so long as you keep a few litres it’s alright. But some of the goo coming out was yellow hydraulic mush, if you leak enough of that then your spine will compress in on itself and also you’ll lose the ability to move your jaws. Hey, wait, what are you doing.”

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078’s functional left arm was keeping their head aloft, but the secondary arms now clutched the medic against a hungry belly. “Let’s go.”“Hey, are you serious?”

082’s legs trailed a wake of dust behind the pair, the taller soldier gritting their mandibles together, forcefully. The “teeth” or protrusions in the metal compressed in on themselves slightly from the force, every step the broken shards of a shoulder knocked, hard, tremors rubbing on the raw cabling, the kinaesthetic sensors screaming, rubbing, pulling, dragging against eachother.

Looking around, the grey and brown environment was nothing much, all of the rubble manifested in something like corridors, 078 looked around thinking of the chest-high walls, the knee-high walls, the little tunnels of broken buildings that were dead ends, they called on memories given to them at birth, marked the potential defilade, decided what firing positions were best for occupying, it was fun to designate such things, simple fun.

A soldier trapped beneath the rubble, their twin jaws warped from heat, their front arms splayed out in front of them while the rest of their body stayed under stone and bricks.

Unit 078’s belly hummed, slightly less painfully than what the shoulder offered, but at the sight of the three numbers painted on top of the battered flat section of the head, ‘112’ 078 stopped, stooped, “I’m gonna put you down now, okay?”

“Ok.” And as 082 carefully rested on their four arms, 078 beckoned to the fallen soldier, “Hey?” They tapped with hard knuckles on the dead one, “112?”

“Their circulation is cut off, we need to lift that beam off of them.”

Already crouching, Two big-toes rotating away from the others, making leverage from behind the foot, actuator-muscles began to stretch and whir, pumping heat into the coolant, two arms held under the concrete beam, the remaining arm found an awkward grip but couldn’t give much strength – which didn’t matter, as the spine itself was what demanded the most support, every muscle in the core pulling at the hydraulic rods which carefully, carefully, pushed the concrete up. 078 heard their spine click, likely not a good noise.

“C-C-C-C- Pull them cCCc – out – CCCc” Their voicebox crackled with the strain and 082 dragged themselves and 112 from out of the rubble before the able-bodied among them collapsed from the weight of material, falling backwards. The solar-panel-frills on their back, like three pairs of tiny yellow wings, drooped, depressedly. They saw that 112’s frills had been entirely rubbed off from under the rocks though for the first time, they got to see an infantry with all limbs functional as 112 stretched out flat, rubbing its hands across the back of its neck, the two fin-ears on its face bent, the jaws melted and warped, but everything functional as it stood up, rocked to one side, opened its ocular sensors from a head that had been beaten into the shape of a bird’s beak, compared to the rigid triangular prisms of the other soldiers.

“I knew we would find more in this direction.” 078 announced, triumphant, as 082 beckoned to the new member of the party,

“How do you feel?” 112 was unresponsive, they were the new tallest member of the group, 078 measured it at about 213cm tall, then waved a face in front of the giant’s face, it waved back. 112 startled themselves with their own voice, “Hello,” hands put on their headfins, tapping them.

The medic guided them down, placed their hands on the two fins and forced them into place, which 112 recoiled from, “Ow!”

“Yeah, you can hear me now can you?”

“You could have warned me!” “By what? Telling you? Or do you expect me to write it down for you!”

078 chucked, “Medic does that to everyone. So you can hear now?”

“Yeah, where are we?” Responded the wingless giant.

“What’s more important is where we’re going,” responded the self-designated commander, not wanting to reveal their lack of understanding, “We’re going to the city!” They pointed ahead.

“What’s a city.” 082 asked.

“I don’t like explaining things.”

Darkness began growing, the orange sky retracted for that peaceful darkness which the Mothership lived in, way up above from before they had all dropped. As they walked, 078 began,

“I counted, just in my bay there were something like two hundred-twenty other infantry, a couple should’ve survived the drop.”

078 pulled the medic onto their back. “I can only see one landmark, the city,” they let their head slack to the side as they pointed ahead with their free arm, “I assume most soldiers will travel to a landmark, curiosity, you know? And I want to be where there are soldiers. It’ll help us all feed our hungry matrices!”

082 wrapped one set of arms around their mount, holding on for dear life, “What happens if some of us go away from the landmark.”

“Now you’re overthinking it.”

112 turned their head, cords swaying with the motion.

“The city is where the bombs came from.”

“The what.”