Chapter 2

Clara

Clara spun the wheel in her hands, the combine harvester spinning round in its tight turning circle as she lined it back up to travel back down the field. Her parents owned thousands of acres, but this part was hers. Everything in it, she ploughed, she seeded, she harvested and then ploughed again.

They had automatic farm vehicles that used the planet’s network of Global Positioning Satellites to plough, sow and harvest, but there was something about getting in behind the archaic controls of ancient farm equipment and doing it yourself. The wheat she was harvesting was hers, not some soul-less silicon and solder constructed entity’s, and just because she - technically - owned them did not change their status in her eyes.

Lowering the draper header to the ground, the tines combing the golden harvest onto the reciprocating cutting edges, seventeen year old Clara sang happily to herself. This was the life.

As she neared the far end of her field, the pre-capacity warning light and alarm sounded. She looked at her tank gauge and the remaining strip of un-harvested crop. One of the robotic haulers waited at the entrance to the field, waiting to be summoned to take some of her load. She barely even thought about it, she knew from experience that the remaining space in her storage would be enough. Clara reached the end just as the tank reached capacity and the alarm sounded. She looked towards the awaiting automation with a smug smile.

“Not this time, dip-shit.” Clara typed away on her screen and sent the awaiting hauler back to the AI’s command and control system, where it would be sent to the next auto-harvester that was nearing capacity. Heading back to their farm, she parked her harvester alongside one of the receptacle hoppers, swung her discharge arm over the top and set her tank to empty as she climbed out. By the time she popped home, grabbed a sandwich and headed back, it would have emptied.

Keeping to the clearly painted walkway along the ground - even AI’s weren’t infallible - Clara walked past the towering wheat silos. The haulers dumped their loads from the surrounding fields in a processer, which made sure no vegetation or animal life made it into the system. The wheat was then stored in buffer silos before being fed to the dryer, where a steady stream of hot air ensured the wheat was dry before it was sent next door to the mill, ground to flour and then stored in the nearby silos. Every few days, tankers would arrive to load up - or open top containers to collect the pre-packed one ton bags - and their flour would be shipped locally to bakers or off planet to space stations and planets with eco systems that could not fully support their own populations.

Still humming to herself, sometimes skipping, hopping and twirling on the path when the tune demanded it, Clara passed the silos, waited at one of the main farm roads for a hauler to pass before crossing over and heading into the grounds of her house proper. Her parents’ house was a standard two floor building, dwarfed by the silo’s and autonomous vehicle storage sheds. It was a simple four bedroom house, with each of the bedrooms upstairs having its own bathroom. Downstairs, was a sizable kitchen and dining area, another separate ‘dining’ room for posh occasions and the family ‘living’ room.

Clara’s mother was in the kitchen, the large cooker on the go with a multitude of pans and lights telling Clara that the ovens were on the go as well. Her mother liked cooking as much as Clara liked mucking about with old machinery. A plate with a freshly made sandwich, a glass of her favourite fruit juice next to it, awaited her on one of the countertops that wasn’t covered with open cookery books and awaiting ingredients.

“Thanks Mum.” Clara enfolded her mother in a tight embrace as she glanced up at the screens angling down from the ceiling. The screens showed various views of the farm, the main screen was focused upon Clara’s harvester, others showed various point of views from drones that circled and meandered around the premises. Just because she was inside cooking, did not stop her mother from keeping an eye on things, and she was god-dammed good at it as Clara could attest to during her rebellious time during puberty.

Necking the contents of the glass in one long swallow, she lifted up the thick sandwich. Clara could tell by the smell alone, that it was made from one of her mother’s loafs, made from their own produce. With another twirl and foot dance to the tune in her head, Clara made her way back out of the house, her shoulders jigging to the imaginary music as she took large bites out of the sandwich.

As much as her mother liked to cook, she - and her husband- were not what you would call ‘padded’ if anything, the opposite. They had both been from poor households and had taken the gauntness of their youth into adulthood and beyond. Her mother had never said as much, but Clara was certain her mother’s drive to cook was a throwback from that time. Most of the food she made was given to friends on hard times or to a food bank for the needy in the local town of Lazeez.

At forty two, her mother was considerably younger than her father who was sixty seven years old. The age discrepancy had caused Clara some issues in early school, where she had been reprimanded on more than one occasion for trying to sort out those issues with her fists. Clara did not share her parents scrawny physiques, a childhood on the farm along with access to good nutrition had given her an athletic, slightly muscly build and personal differences as to who made a good parent in the school playground, had given her deceptive appearing punches that had set more than one girl - and boy - flat out on their back.

Clara had not stayed long in school. Once she had learned her letters and basic numeracy, she had dropped out at age of eleven. Being cooped up in a classroom had been a torment, and she had no interest in higher level maths, language, sociology, geography (planetary or interplanetary) nor any of the other subjects that the educational system had decided that she needed to know. Her parents had done well without them after all, and with no male siblings - or any siblings at all for that matter - the farm was going to be all hers, eventually.

She had finished her sandwich by the time she reached her harvester, and it had finished emptying. She climbed inside and parked it up in her hanger with the rest of her toys. Out in the fields, the autonomous farm equipment was still going, and would still be going throughout the night whilst the weather was still good.

Back in the house, she gave her mother a hand to wash up the many pots and pans. Tubs lay stacked neatly on the counter and the floor with her mother’s hand written notes on the tops, stating where the contents were to go. Her mother didn’t say much, she never did, expressing her love - and displeasure - to Clara through looks, gentle hand placements upon shoulder, hip or back. As Clara finished up, her mother deliberately bumped her shoulder into Clara’s and they shared an intimate smile and a laugh. Leaving her mother alone in her ‘Command and Control Centre’ as her father jokingly called the kitchen.

Heading upstairs, she headed to the room where she knew her father would be busy. She knocked softly.

“Come in, Clara.”

Her father was busy soldering a printed circuit board together when she entered. She waited till he was finished.

“This time?”

“This time.” He agreed with a laugh as he put the soldering iron down. “Do you want to help me test it out?”

“Sure!” She watched as he carefully put his tools away and inserted the PCB into its slot. Clara couldn’t help notice, as she did so often these days, how slow he was becoming. It tore at her soul to see it.

“Here we go.”

He finished up and slowly lowered himself into the seat, flicking over some toggle switches before reaching over to the red power isolator. “Wish me luck...” He twisted the red isolator. The consoles and screens in front of him lit up. Alarms chirruped and beeped, but more importantly, they stayed lit up.

“Well, that’s a good start...” she said.

Clara’s response was dry and not without reason. Though her mother was not often wont to speak, she didn’t hold back when her father killed the power to the house. Especially if her mother was in the middle of a baking. In those situations, her mother was perfectly capable of displaying her hidden talent for a continuous, non-repetitive stream of profanity. It was hard to keep a straight face, or take a situation seriously, when your normally conservative and quiet mother let rip as though, well, Clara never really knew as she had never been to a place where she thought her mother would be at home with that language. She thought maybe some seedy dive of a bar somewhere, would be a good place to start. The sort of place where the toilets were cleaner than the glasses, or something. Clara didn’t know as she had never been to a bar, let alone one of serious ill repute. She only had the descriptions of them in books and fictional holo-vids to go by as a mental reference.

“I can’t hear mother.”

Her father put on his headset and took control of the two substantial looking joysticks mounted to the seat as the screens stabilised to a faux planetary surface.

He turned to her, “Well, you’re not going to keep your father waiting are you?”

Clara laughed and ran with the enthusiasm of youth to her own room. Unlike her father’s setup, this was a simpler affair, just a normal computer, two joysticks a keyboard with a three monitor setup on a desk next to her bed. She didn’t understand her father’s desire to replicate - down to the smallest decal – the inside of a mech. It seemed rather pointless when a bog standard typing keyboard and a couple of cheap gaming joysticks did just as well.

He was waiting for her when she logged in and they started the mission. It could have been anything, herding cattle, picking fruit, anything that would have required teamwork with her father would have been fine. Not that you could pick fruit as this was a battle simulator. The screen displayed their stats collected over the years. She had a considerable number of deaths - several thousand in fact- to her name, but her father had just one. That one death had been all her doing, even though they always played on the same team when playing against other players. She had become so fed up with him not dying and seeing that ‘0’ every time she logged on, that she had deliberately sucker punched him on a difficult campaign. That was one of her father’s many peculiar quirks, the main one being that he would never ever play against her, and that they always played with the friendly fire option on.

It was a simple take and hold mission, nothing fancy. Clara was in her usual brawler, she had always been one for getting ‘stuck in’ and it was the main reason her death total was so high. Her father always insisted she got that trait from her mother, though Clara didn’t see how. But then, her father always insisted that he knew her mother well. Her mother always displayed an air of innocence upon the matter and refused to discuss her past when Clara casually enquired.

Her father updated the map, marking where he wanted her and she headed there. When she had been young, she had ignored his prompts and did her own thing. He had never stopped though, nor chastised her for ignoring his markers. As she grew older and matured, she started to slowly understand the logic of his markers and positioning and followed them more and more. They started to work better as a team and Clara found the missions becoming easier as they relied more upon each other. Her death count slowly stopped its rapid rise upwards. She hadn’t died for months now, and they were on the hardest difficulty setting. She still missed going toe to toe with other mechs, but that was when she had tended to die the most. Eventually they had joined a clan, where the battles were bigger, the fog of war more chaotic, and the adrenaline rush of success was greater in proportion to the difficulty of the mission.

The symbiosis they had, was such that the other members of their clan thought that they were a couple in real life. Without words, Clara and her father had mutually decided to keep their actual relationship status quiet from the other clan members and let the falsehood stand. As the years progressed, Clara realised that their perceived married status also shielded her from well meaning, but ultimately unwanted, attention from the other male clan members.

Their on-line status became noticed by other clan members and they soon messaged asking if they wanted to partake in a raid or two.

“What say you?” Her father asked on the private channel.

“I’m up for it Dad.”

They agreed and launched from their virtual drop ship to join their fellows. With the inclusion of Clara and her father, the clan’s status had increased substantially, and with the increase, had come more members, bigger battles and harder opposition. One of the things Clara had noticed, was her father’s calm tone and ability to look at problems - and disasters – objectively. Many a time a disaster had been adverted, or a seemingly guaranteed loss, somehow turned into a win by his calm tones over the clan channel, ordering members succinctly through the shouts and screams of laughter and frustration. On more than one occasion, he had been offered commander status, but each time, he politely turned it down. Though when he spoke in battle, the Clan listened and obeyed, earning him the nickname ‘Old Wolf’, which both he and Clara thought intensely funny as everyone thought him to be around early twenties in years of age.

Her father, Old Wolf, preferred a missile artillery support mech, which allowed him to be a serious battlefield threat, whilst also allowing him the relative peace in which to watch the overall big picture. Clara had found herself dropping back from the brutal scrums of the frontline to protect him as his missile loadout tended to make him vulnerable to close attack and he ran reduced armour in favour of carrying more missiles. She had initially thought that this might make her see less ‘action’, but the quality of their opposition now was such that they knew just how much of a threat he posed and acted accordingly. This required Clara to respond, often at short notice, to ever more inventive avenues of attack from an opposition determined to take him out as soon as possible. Which led to some pretty amazingly frantic scraps.

As soon as they touched down, Clara moved forward. To be stationary was to become a target and she trusted that her father would quickly formulate a plan and strategy. Missiles launched behind her.

Clara laughed over the com : Flipping ‘eck Wolf, I’ve not even got my map screen up yet! : Her father, as usual, was quiet.

: Clara, turn East forty points. Two clicks and you will hit a ravine. Follow it North : Clara did as her father said as another salvo left his racks.

Old Wolf has destroyed Orrible Orlay

Clara shouted out loudly so that her father could hear her through the house. “No one likes a show off!!!”

Dumping the empty Tupperware in the back of the pickup, Clara opened the back door and slipped in as her mother put it into gear and slowly pulled off. The road was fairly quiet, light traffic as they were heading out of Lazeez town. Her dad had been looking a bit tired these last few days and she was quietly worried. She wondered if she should bring it up with Mum. They had been in a match a few days ago and he had died, twice. He had laughed it off, saying he was getting old, his reactions slowing and that he was surprised that it had taken this long. But still, it concerned her.

It suddenly went dark, like a thunderous storm cloud had come out of no-where. Clara peered out through her window, looking up. A drop ship was coming in, but it wasn’t using the approved flight path that kept air traffic from above the town. Nor was it one of the regular cargo haulers. There had been no extra shipment orders for wheat recently either. There was a deafening roar, not unlike thunder, causing Clara to turn forward to her dad.

“Dad, what’s that noi...”

The road in front of them lifted and exploded, cars in front of them deforming as though they were being punched from above. Something slammed into the bonnet, with so much force that it lifted the rear wheels clean off the ground and instantly cut the engine out. The back wheels crashed back down, the jolt stabbing through Clara’s spine.

“Everyone, out of the truck Now!!!” Her father’s voice, commanding but calm. Her parents were already half way out of the truck before Clara had even placed her hand on the door release. She stumbled out into the dusty air. “Pick it up Clara.”

People were running, screaming and shouting, and there were many people lying flat on the street doing neither of those things.

“Mum! Dad! What’s happening?”

“We are under attack, get off the road quickly!”

“Attack?” It was probably the most preposterous thing she had ever heard her father say. Her father was breathing hard, the sudden unexpected exertion quickly taking its toll. “Who would do such a thing dad?”

“Now is not the time for the who’s and the why’s.”

Clara couldn’t work out how he was so calm. And her mother for that matter. She was but three breaths from soiling her underwear. Her father was visibly struggling now and unconsciously Clara slipped an arm round him to support him as her mother moved to his other side, not taking hold of him, but there, ready, if need be.

There were louder crashes, which Clara knew from gaming, at least, to be explosions. People were exiting buildings, looking for the source of all the noise and then inevitably looking up. The more astute were already starting to flee and the roads quickly began to snarl to a halt with blocked vehicles at intersections and feeding back from there. More and more people were leaving their cars and fleeing on foot.

There was a high pitched whine and her father violently pushed her to the side. “What the...!” And Clara crashed into the side of a building hard enough to start her crying. She picked herself up, tears running down her cheeks as she turned to her father “Why did...” Her throat closed and words lodged unsaid. Both her parents were down. She could tell by her mother’s flat gaze that she was dead. Her father was alive but dazed. He rolled his head over to his wife. Even with all the surrounding chaos, she heard him speak.

“Fuck.”

Clara raced over to him. His legs were a mess and he had obvious chest wounds, but he still dragged himself over to his wife and took her hand. “Dad. I’ll get help. I’ll get you to help...”

“No Clara. I’m where I need to be.”

“What!? Dad! Your bleeding, you need help!”

“Clara, relax. It’s my time.” With his other hand, he pulled his necklace out with its pendant. Clara remembered playing with it as a child and apart from his wedding ring, it was the only jewellery he ever wore. “Take this. Go to the granary control room, remove the broken key from the control keyboard that annoys you so much, insert the pendant.”

“Why?”

“Shh, let me finish love,” Blood flecked his lips. “Do it and you will understand. I love you, Clara,” his eyes brimmed with tears and he rolled his head over. “and I love your mother like nothing else. One day, I hope you will meet someone who makes you feel the same. I gave up everything for her and I have no regrets.” Clara waited for him to turn back to her, but he didn’t.

“Dad?” Then she noticed his chest wasn’t moving “Dad?” Stupidly, she shook him, “Dad?”

He was gone. Nothing else registered. It was as though she was in a bubble. It was all a dream, she would wake up in a minute. Yet she didn’t. She watched her hands reach out, slip her father’s pendant from his head and over hers. “I love you, Dad. Mom.” The voice was distant. Not hers, yet hers.

Rough hands grabbed her, lifted her easily into the air. “They’re dead, girl. Save yourself.” A burly man had grabbed her, carried her away from the corpses of her parents. After twenty meters or so, he dropped her back down, forcing her legs to function least she be dragged along the ground by him.

There was further gunfire and almost continual explosions behind them. The man let her go, stooping to pick up a small boy, who was alone and crying in the chaos. It looked as though he had already been trampled a few times by those fleeing.

The shock and grief within Clara gave way to rage, pure incandescent anger. Someone was responsible, someone had to pay. She pictured the old rifle above the fireplace. It looked to be an antique, but it still worked. Her dad had shown her to use it as a child. It had been needed back in the day, before she had been born, he had said.

They had herded cattle in those days and there still had been some natural predators that were a risk to them. But the colonists had soon killed most of them and chased the remainder deeper into the unspoilt wilderness. Though by then the wildlife was no longer a threat, as her parents had moved from cattle to crops as the money was more and the work easier.

Clara knew where the ammunition was kept, though. She orientated herself and headed towards the farm. It would take hours on foot, but then she spotted a motorised bike, upright next to a crashed car. Most of the rider’s helmet and the head beneath were missing, the only thing keeping the bike upright was its internal gyro, which implied it was still functioning.

“I’m sorry...” Clara said, crying, as she dragged the dead rider off the bike and straddled it herself. The controls were simple enough and she set it into motion, the bike’s AI compensated for her lack of skill. She screwed her eyes up against the wind and her tears and went as fast as she dared between the stationary vehicles and pedestrians. Once out of town, the road became clearer and less congested as the traffic picked up speed and those on foot fled into the surrounding countryside. The bike was considerably faster than the truck and her mums driving. She still couldn’t see what had attacked the town as she pulled up outside their house. Whatever it had been had most likely landed. She slid off the bike and ran inside, grabbing the rifle off the wall. Running into her dads play room, she grabbed some magazines and started filling them with boxed rounds.

The first magazine filled went into the rifle and she filled another three, only to realise that she had no-where to put them, so she ran into her room to grab a jacket with deep pockets. As she put on the jacket, she saw her father’s pendant, and his last words come back to her. Neither grief nor rage had settled much, and as she left the house, rifle in hand, she let out a primal scream of rage.

It helped, the scream, but only a little. There was a lift next to the access ladder. A fairly recent addition, due to her father’s failing health. Clara slung the rifle over her back and scampered easily up the ladder since it was faster than the lift and she couldn’t face the enforced idleness that being restricted in the lift would entail. Inside the granary control room, most of which could be remotely controlled from the house anyway, she ran over to the command console and it’s keyboard. One of the keyboard buttons was stuck, had been for as long as Clara could remember, but her father had never let her fix it. ‘It wasn’t a key they needed or used anyway’ He would always say as he gently deflected her away from the subject.

Clara slipped long finger nails down between the surrounding keys, hooked them under the key and lifted. The key came away far easier than she had been expecting, revealing a circular hole where one shouldn’t have been. Clara removed her father’s pendant and slipped the tube into the hole. The pendant slipped most of its length inside, before coming to a halt. There followed a hum from the book shelves containing all the hard back copies of all their machinery, along with the rules and regulations for running them that they were required to keep required by local laws. The book shelves swung out into the room with a gust of warm air from the driers.

The silos were ninety percent full, so flour should have poured out, since the book case was fixed to the wall of one of the silos. But all that flowed out was acrid smelling warm air. Clara pulled her father’s pendant out, expecting the bookcase to swing shut again. It didn’t. The warm air escaping into the control room was bringing with it the easily identifiable smell of grease. Curious, she peered round the door and let out a little gasp.

The silo was lit inside, when it shouldn’t have been and a gantry led from the open door to something that definitely shouldn’t have been there. It was one thing to read about them, play them and see them as holo-vids, but to actually see a mech, with her own eyes, in the flesh, as it were, was something else. Coated, as it was with grease, there was no disguising its form. It wasn’t quite what her father played as, but she knew all the mechs in the game and the one her father played was as close as you could get to the one in front of her.

There were no mechs on the planet, or any on the nearby ones that Clara knew about. But then, that meant nothing now since she hadn’t even been aware that one existed right under her very own nose. Her feet made the decision for her and she walked along the gantry, round to the back of the mech. The rear hatch was open, with just a sheet of thin plastic over the doorway. Two shoulder mounted missile pods were in the storage position on the back, at either side of the open pilot’s hatch. The pods looked empty. Simple packaging tape held the plastic sheet in place and a thick electrical cable was plugged into the back and ran along the gantry and disappeared into the silo wall roughly where the granary control panel was.

Clara peeled the plastic aside and peered in. The cockpit was almost identical to the one in her father’s ‘play’ room. Almost identical, though this one was more worn and aged. It looked more lived in. Things about her father started falling into place and Clara wondered how she had never noticed before now. Even the seat was the same, albeit more scuffed and faded. She noticed a thick envelope on the console in front of the seat. It had her name on it. It was aged and covered with a fine layer of dust, so it had been there a long while. She picked it up and turned it over.

Clara, if you are reading this, well, shit. I hope it was a good death. Quick. Serves me right for leaving it for so long, but I wanted to be there for your first time, to see your face. Anyway...

1) Insert biometric key. The one normally around my neck. Where the flag is.

The flag? Clara looked around the console, looking for a large flag. In the end, it turned out to be a cocktail stick with a faded triangle of coloured paper glued to the end. The whole thing was popped into a small circular recession much like the one that had been under the fake key.

Clara pulled out the cocktail stick with its little flag and removed her father’s pendant yet again. As soon as she inserted it, the console lit up and all the screens came to life, running diagnostic checks.

2) Remove plastic and press A16 to shut door. (Press A16 to open again)

Clara did so and the heavy hatch gently shut.

3) Press A17 to open silo door.

The wall of the silo in front of her, according to one of the monitors, started to slide downwards into the ground.

4) Press A18 to disconnect auxiliary power umbilical and gantry.

Clara did so.

5) Try not to flatten the house. Please.

Unlimbering the rifle she stacked it up against the hatch and dumped her coat on top of it, Clara sat down on the seat and took control of the joysticks. She had played enough times on her father’s rig to have a rough idea of what to do in real life. It was one thing to sit in a simulator, something else entirely to do it in real life. The joy sticks had a feel to them, a presence, and the simulation rig did not send strange signals to your inner ear when you moved your computerised mech.

Clara stuffed the envelope in a pocket, as she turned on the weapons systems. The screens confirmed what she suspected. There were no missile’s on board, nor any hard ammunition. All she appeared to have functioning, were the photon pulse cannons. And unfortunately she only had two of them. Would that be enough to take on a spacecraft? There was only one way to find out.

The sensor package lacked the feeds from other mechs, so she was forced to rely on local knowledge. The mech had a fair turn of speed and she didn’t have to worry about following roads either. Splashing through streams and small rivers alike as she didn’t trust the mech on any bridges. Besides, she lived here and didn’t want to be responsible for their destruction. Or repair. She did flatten a fair few fences, but it was her land so it was nothing she spent time worrying about. Clara armed the two PPC cannons, prayed that they were functional or the mech would be nigh on useless.