“Maybe I could have mechanical tear ducts installed on this drone. So I could be like you, and leak? You become less efficient with your secretions when you’re emotional.”
I took a deep breath. In the stories, the heroines always had trusty steeds—who could not talk—or loyal, quiet sidekicks. I could see why. The Lone Ranger probably wouldn’t have accomplished much if his horse had been a mushroom-obsessed blabbermouth.
Still, I was really glad to see him. I glanced toward my captors. They were holding down the sick burl, who seemed to be having a spasm. My heart went out to her, but her distress was timed perfectly. The pirates would have noticed M-Bot for sure otherwise.
“Spensa?” he said. “Oh! Are you tied up?”
“You’re only now noticing?” I growled. “What did you think I was doing with these ropes?”
“I thought you were trying to scratch an itch! That’s why I pointed out the rough part of the root. You biological beings are always scratching things. Skin must be awful.” He hesitated. “To be honest, I should have figured out you were captive. It’s actually rather obvious. I was distracted by all these emotions my processors are inexplicably simulating. Hmm… Yup. Those are ropes.”
“Help get me out of them?”
“Uh…right. I will…search for knot-untying solutions in my database…”
“Or you could untie them!” I hissed.
“I’m not sure how.”
“It’s not that hard.”
“For you, maybe. I’m not exactly used to being able to do things, Spensa. I’m an information-support AI. I…don’t know how to act. In fact, I’ve needed to send my self-shutdown protocols into an infinite loop. They don’t like me being able to fly myself around.”
The people who had made his old ship had implanted deep controls on his personality. It said a lot that he had progressed enough to circumvent some of those.
An outburst from the pirates pulled my attention back to the sick burl. She was struggling and thrashing, and had thrown one of the heklo away with incredible strength.
“Quickly,” I hissed. “Do you have anything that could help me escape?”
“I have a light-line,” M-Bot said. “I found one in the shop on a worker drone and moved it to myself. I was planning to use it in my escape. Maybe I could drag you away?”
A light-line was a plus. Though his acclivity rings were small, and the drone was only about the size of a lunch tray, if quite a bit thicker. It wouldn’t have a lot of power.
“Attach the light-line to the ropes on my hands,” I said. “Maybe with your added strength we can rip this root out of the ground and I can pull myself free. Get ready. We have to do this before the pirates notice what we’re doing.”
“Yeah,” M-Bot said. “About that…”
The pirates were running for their ships, having apparently decided to abandon the one with the melting face. The male burl didn’t like this. “Give me the icon, Vlep!” the burl shouted. “We have to try! Maybe it will work!”
But Vlep wasn’t listening. As the others were running for their ships, he’d turned to look at me. He’d seen M-Bot. He immediately raised the rifle toward us, apparently deciding I was too dangerous to let live.
Get ready, a voice said in my mind.
Ready? I thought, staring down that rifle. For what?
The ground started shaking. Trees trembled. Vlep swung the gun away from me and pointed it toward the approaching sounds.
Then a scudding dinosaur came rampaging into camp—with a mustachioed human man riding on its back.
Yes, a dinosaur. I mean, I’d never seen one before, but this thing was reptilian, walked on two legs, and had a long tail trailing behind it. Yeah, the eyes appeared to be on its shoulders, and its “neck” was long like a trunk and ended in a toothy mouth. So maybe “enormous demonic anteater” would have been a better description. But I’m going with dinosaur.
The human was almost as baffling to me. He wore a flight jacket and combat trousers, and looked to be in his fifties. He was square jawed, muscular for his age, and his mustache stuck out a good fifteen centimeters to either side. As the dinosaur stormed forward, the man slipped expertly down the animal’s flank, then hit the ground and rolled.
It was just about the most incredible entrance I’d ever seen. Why hadn’t I ever been able to ride a dinosaur into combat, then dismount with a flourish?
Oh, wait. Escaping. Right. The stranger’s arrival had taken all attention off me.