By David C. Daoust
“…so, then there are those cute little Jerboa,” The small girl continued on with her list, little to no care if anyone was listening. She held her fingers only a couple inches apart as she described, “little mousey-mice with kangaroo legs, that want to eat up all the dates and stuff too. And then there’s ‘fennec foxes’-” abruptly, switched to the next desert animal and described, “that are just crazy-cute and adorable! Cuter than the Jerboa, even. But the foxes eat up the Jerboa so that they can live. But that’s okay, cuz it’s just a just a mousey. But then there are these Cheetahs,” she made a mean face when she brought up the fierce predator, which faded just as fast when she confessed, “I never got to see one, but Sadie said she did…” then explained some more, “I was too little back when we still went from oasis to oasis. But, anyway, the cheetahs eat the foxes! Which I don’t really like cause the foxes are so cute… but I mean that’s all the stuff that live around the oases…” she dismissed them all into an imaginary pile as she rolled out a different set, “there are jackrabbits, addax, and ostrich, that people like hunting so much. But that’s mostly out in the flats. Ostrich are good for eggs too…” she threw in as though someone was keeping track, they weren’t. “‘Canyons got bats, like giant ones! You –never– want to see! But they are special ones. They were made for Twin Crown. Let’s see… what might we see in the dunes? There are camels, but they’re all over the place,” she gave kind of a bored look for the camels, “And scary ones like buzzards and hyenas– I don’t like those. And there are lizards- lots of lizards… and bugs… But they will mostly be underground or hiding behind something- In the shade. They like the shade, so you got to really look if you want to see anything… there’s lots more animals too, though. I mostly just like the cute ones…” Dicey, at last, taking a moment to breath…
“Dicey,” Ratchet, who never really got that nap, interrupted the tiny Blue sister, who, armed with nothing but a series of speculations of what kind of animals they may see while they take the two captured ‘battle-drones’ out for spin in the desert, was, clearly, fighting a nap of her own.
It was not the first time he had tried to interrupt her.
Once he got her attention, he stifled the urge to ask her what moon she thought he was from and instead just asked, “Are you even paying attention?”
“What? Yeah, I’m ready!” Dicey announced as she plopped into a nearby chair, shoved her head back into the visor, and gave Ratchet a thumbs up, “I been ready!”
The two battle drones, atop the massive rover, suddenly sprang back to life. One controlled by Ratchet, the other by the littlest Blue sister, Dicey; both pilots sitting safely in the comfort of the Rover, as the spider-like drones prepared for a recon mission.
Fergus was good enough to reconnect them, as Hamlin had requested. The problem was that they had inadvertently gotten the attention of Dicey when they decided it would be easier to collect visors to use, rather than trying to connect through any of the other options.
Dicey, however, wasn’t about to handover her spider-mecha to anyone, ‘They might wreck it.’
Luckily, Grace had fallen asleep watching Harper play, so there was not any problem with taking over her mecha– that is, as long as they allowed Dicey to man her own.
Ultimately, it did not matter. Dicey was probably better with the controls than any of the rest of them. It was thanks to the two little girls that they had access to the drones at all, considering they were the ones that had dominated that pvp battle.
Dicey had also promised to throw in a few ‘pro-tips’ to sweeten the deal.
Since Ratchet preferred to both, build and pilot, vehicles, out in the real world, rather than toy around with video-games, her experience was welcome.
“Okay! So, see, the cool thing we can do,” Dicey said as her spider suddenly leapt, straight-up, off the top of the Rover, “It’s like a super-jump! It’s all in the legs, so, it doesn’t take up a lot of power. And then you can go straight into a hover, which is pretty much free if you activate straight from a super-jump. But, like, if you want to speed up or move,” the mecha accelerated and did a little zig-zag in mid-air with her words, “that can drain the power-bar pretty quick. It’s always filling back up, but if you use too much at once, you can kind of stall out… that’s hard to do actually.”
Ratchet, whose spider had clumsily hovered from a standing position, and then tried to gain altitude before she had finished her demonstration, stalled out, and then dropped back down; little bit too much of a thump, rang throughout the Rover.
Ultimately, Ratchet learned that gaining altitude used up the most power– all on his own. Once his power-bar filled back up, he did a super-jump, like she had showed him— found himself in a hover; easy-peasy.
“Okay, that’s better. So, then, if you look, the mecha’s-eyes are always scanning. You see, it can see everything around us,” Dicey was explaining things Ratchet was pretty sure he already knew, but there were tid-bits, that came only from experience, hidden within.
Ratchet turned his head side to side and found he could get a complete three-sixty view, as though he was actually out in the real world. Better even, considering there was no blind spot where a vehicle may be. In the distance he noted a single targeting reticle on the swarm of battle drones they were there to investigate.
“When it detects movement…” Dicey began to say as they approached the swarm, though the sentence was lost behind an ‘um…’ which carried on a little long, with a couple littler ums to follow, ’til she found what she was looking for: Once the individual drones started to visually separate from the mass, new targeting reticles appeared, superimposed upon each one’s location, she quickly asked, “There, like, see all those target spots?”
“Yes,” Ratchet answered.
“Yeah, so then you can pick which is the greatest threat, and focus on it,” Dicey finished.
As she said this, Ratchet selected the closest: the image shifted and zoomed in tight. The whole mecha realigned on its target. And he got a series of attack choices; not that he planned to attack anything. The rest of the reticles were still there, but ghosted.
Little by little, as the drones gained definition from the swarm, more reticles cropped up as they got closer. The targeting system was isolating them and offering them up as possible targets. All this, without Ratchet having to do anything but absorb the information.
“So, like, we are getting constant alerts to what’s going on, even the stuff that’s behind us… but you got to be ready to look back for that stuff back there,” as she said this her battle drone suddenly spun about, faced their six in a split second.
Ratchet, craned his head around, which shifted the image in his visor as though he was looking over his shoulder, and tried the same maneuver. Targeting the Rover behind them, he locked on, and suddenly the whole machine shifted in midair to face it. Once again, it offered up attack options; he, especially, should not attack that! It was pretty neat though.
All those other reticles, that had shifted behind him, became a list of arrows on the edge of his vision, indicating there were target options back there. Turning his head, he found the closest again and flipped back around.
“A little arrow will appear, on the side there, if a target is actually behind you. Just look back and it becomes a target,” Dicey explained what he’d already figured out, too late, then added, “I save Grace’s booty all the time. Grace uses that hand held view screen though, so she can’t really get as much information as I can. But, you know, she doesn’t like to be under the visor. Her brain works funny, so she gets nervous if she can’t see what’s around her while she plays…”
“So, as we get closer, I’ll show you what else it does,” Dicey said as she raced ahead, after a beat or two, “See now, if you hold down the button on the bottom. Under your finger– on this controller.”
‘This controller’ did not actually tell Ratchet anything, considering his head was in a visor, but since the left button did not do anything, and the right suddenly called up a graph over the entire image…
“See all the squares?” Dicey piped in.
“Yes,” Ratchet answered clearly.
“Yeah so, it’s like a genius,” Dicey said simply, “It builds a complete copy of the world as it sees it.”
As Ratchet held that bottom button, the graph stretched out and formed around the local terrain. It fit and structured itself around the dunes, and formed nets for all the separate drones. It even enveloped the gas-giant, Neo Vir’ees that sat on the horizon. All, as though it was a computer-generated image. (Or possibly used to create a computer-generated image.)
“So, what do you do with it?” Ratchet asked as, ultimately, it just looked like a bunch of doodles on everything.
“Whatever you want!” Dicey announced, “It measures it all too… You can figure out all kinds of crazy maneuvers– on the fly. Well… I mean, Grace can.”
Suddenly, Ratchet felt a tiny finger poke his arm. Lifting the visor up, just enough to see who was trying to get his attention, he found Grace- arms crossed…
“What do you think you’re doing with my Spider-mecha?” Grace asked from behind a scowl.
Ratchet realized he’d probably woken her up with that loud thump.
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