Mission Accomplished

Emma Two Feathers crouched behind a dumpster and studied the street in front of her. Her striking golden eyes were sharper than most people's, a gift of her heritage that went back generations. They were her father's eyes. It was almost cat-like and her mother used to say it made her eyes glow at night.

The setting sun at her back served both to obscure her presence and illuminate the avenue with the final futile rays of the day. Every window was broken, of course, and the street itself was a ruin. The ancient cars that once zoomed along would have a hard time picking their way across a single city block these days. Steam drifted lazily up from a sewer grate, pushing a stray scrap of paper up, up, and away.

A chill ran down her spine and the bootleg early-warning implant in her hip buzzed. She flattened herself against the metal hulk of the dumpster and narrowed her eyes to slits to reduce the glow.

A scandroid, an older one, hummed by. Its casing was dented and scorched by the numerous attacks it had withstood, but it was as deadly as it had been on Zero-Day when the Kirasse had first invaded.

The scandroid paused and Emma held her breath. Being out past curfew was always dicey, but the mission was the mission. If she was caught, she’d be sent for re-education like her mother. Emma was determined not to go out like that.

Forty eternal seconds later the hateful machine moved on. Emma closed her eyes and slumped to the ground, adrenaline draining away and making her head ping. Her hand absently stole up under her chin and fingered the heart-shaped locket around her neck.

Shards of memories pushed their way into Emma’s mind as she carefully picked her way down the street towards the old barbershop. Playing with her water-pistol on a hot Spring day that started as her eleventh birthday, but became Zero-Day. The pistol was a gift from her Uncle Striding Bear, and a welcome one considering the heat. She chased the neighbor boy, what was his name? Preston? Didn’t matter because when she finally caught him, she let him have it with the water-gun and he disintegrated in mid-laugh as the Kirasse began their invasion with a volley of electrified murder.

A few hundred careful yards down the road brought the memory of Grady Two Feathers, her revered father, dragging a bag of black-market canned goods into the house for birthday fifteen. A scandroid attack on his way home had left him bloody and smoldering, but he had promised her baked beans for her birthday. As her mom vainly screamed at him to breathe, to stay with her, Emma lost her taste for baked beans.

The hip-buzzer went off again giving Emma barely enough time to dive into an upended cement mixer, its payload long-since solidified into excellent cover from the approaching scandroid. Her implant indicated this one was one of the new ones, and Emma was not certain even the concrete that nearly surrounded her would be enough to keep her safe, but as the scandroid came into view, Emma saw that it was already busy dragging the limp form of some poor soul to a re-education center, its articulated gripper wrapped around his waist. The man’s ankle caught up on a cracked fire hydrant which made him briefly cry out in pain, but he lost consciousness again and spared her his screams.

But she was not spared the screams in her memory. The unbidden image of her mother, hardened by years of battle, screaming in protest as a scandroid yanked her from under a pile of tires, forced its way to the front of her mind. Helena Two Feathers fought her losing battle well, but the outcome was never in doubt. As the soulless machine worked to secure her, Helena focused on Emma’s striking golden eyes and managed to throw something with all her remaining strength. The scandroid easily avoided it and the object landed harmlessly in the dirt, right in front of nineteen-year-old Emma. It was her mother’s locket.

Now, six years had passed, but mercifully the memories stopped. Since losing her mother, Emma was mostly on auto-pilot. She rose in the ranks of the Underground, sometimes by attrition as much as by skill, and was now a coordinator, but she really only retained tactical data, battle strategies, and supply routes. Memories had proven too painful, so she gave up on them. There was only the mission.

Today was no different. The mission was to deliver her mother’s locket. Thinking about it caused a tear to betray her and trickle down her cheek, but she refused to give in to it. She touched the locket once more and darted out of the cement mixer towards the barbershop down the block. And the world exploded.

Emma tucked as best she could as the concussive blast from the scandroid hurled her across the street. She landed on her shoulder and felt something pop out of place, but it wasn’t something she could deal with right now, so she ignored it and simply rolled to a stop and pushed her way up into a crouch.

“You will halt and submit to re-education,” a metallic voice said.

Emma didn’t so much hear what the scandroid said as simply know based on unfortunate experience. She blinked her eyes to clear them and ran full-out towards the scandroid.

“Like hell I will!” Emma hollered and bounded into the air as another blast turned the road in front of her to powder.

She reached into a pocket and pulled out a small metal cylinder. She clutched the magna-charge tightly and landed just a few feet in front of the menacing robot. She let her legs go limp, anticipating the blast that sizzled over her head, then scrambled to her feet. She rolled directly at the scandroid and managed to place the magna-charge in the scandroid’s recessed charging port. Emma sprinted to the thing’s left and dove back into the cement mixer, slamming her bootleg hip impland painfully into the side. Her magna-charge detonated and the scandroid sustained heavy damage, but it wasn’t dead.

A barrage of energy blasts hit the cement mixer, deafening Emma and buffeting her around, despite the concrete surrounding her. She curled up into a tight ball and remained that way even when the attack surprisingly stopped.

“Two Feathers,” a voice whispered.

Emma opened her eyes and saw a silhouette of a woman in the opening of the mixer. It was crazy, but it looked to Emma like some dark lady, holding the scales of justice.

Emma crawled out and saw it was her partner Merrik, holding up a scrambler unit designed to spoof the scandroid locator signals and send them off chasing false contacts. A rare and powerful weapon, when it worked. The scandroid she had been fighting clanked its way around the corner on its electronic snipe hunt.

“Thanks, Merrik,” Emma sighed and limped her way out of her concrete bunker. “I thought they had me this time.”

“Me too,” Merrik answered. “One of these days, your luck is gonna run out.”

“Maybe, but not today.”

Emma and Merrik picked their way the last few hundred yards and stopped behind a smashed and deteriorating bus. Across the street was a four-story building that had seen better days, the bottom floor of which housed the barbershop. It had been the subject of so many scandroid attacks, only people who were specifically told it was a barbershop at one point would think to call it that. The façade was mostly rubble and the sidewalk and street out front had been pulverized into dirt for twenty feet. It was this very aesthetic that had led Emma to choose it as the safest of their safe houses. This was where precious cargo was kept. This was the mission.

Emma stood up to cross the street, but Merrik put her hand on her shoulder.

“Hold up, Two Feathers. Something feels off. You better let me go first.”

Emma scanned the area. “I don’t see anything. I think we’re okay.”

“Humor me, Boss.”

Merrik crept out into the street and across. She tilted her head, then gave Emma the all clear signal.

Emma Two Feathers stepped around the side of the bus and her striking golden eyes went wide. The damaged scandroid lunged from the roof of the building and blasted her full-on.

Emma was knocked back and away, onto her already injured shoulder. The scandroid didn’t have the power to kill her with a single shot anymore, but Emma’s shoulder was now clearly broken, and it was hard to breathe.

Merrik was on it. She tossed a handful of magna-charges at the scandroid and dove for cover. The charges did their job and the scandroid lay in an inoperative heap in the road.

“Not today,” Emma groaned as she got to her feet. She began to slowly limp across the road.

A portion of the rubble lifted up and away, revealing itself to be a cleverly disguised door. The darkness of the street was pierced by a bright light.

“You will halt and submit to re-education,” a metallic voice said.

Another scandroid, this one undamaged, appeared on the roof of the building. Merrik and Emma both reached for magna-charges when two dots of golden light appeared in the now-open doorway to the barbershop.

“Mommy! You came for my birthday!” a tiny, excited voice proclaimed.

“Adrina, no!” The women shouted in unison. Merrik dove to cover the little girl.

The scandroid turned to the barbershop, but Emma leapt on it, clutching it with her good arm while trying to reach into her pocket with the remains of the other one. Shifting attention once more, the scandroid loosed its gripping arm and secured it around Emma’s waist.

“Mommy!” Adrina called out.

Merrik was trying to pull the little girl back into the building, but the girl was as fierce a fighter as her mother.

Emma pushed at the iron grip of the scandroid, but there was not enough strength left in her to escape.

"The mission. Focus on the mission," she thought.

Emma cleared her head. The mission was the only important thing. Her mission was to bring her baby girl her fifth birthday present and that’s what she was going to do.

She reached up with her still-functioning hand, gripped the locket, and yanked it from her neck.

The scandroid was rapidly retreating with Emma, but focusing with her striking golden eyes on the ones her daughter had inherited from her, she threw the locket with all her remaining strength. It landed harmlessly in the dirt, right in front of five-year-old Adrina. It was her mother’s locket.

Mission accomplished.