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  "So, how was it?" came Madeleine's familiar voice, laced with excitement, from behind him, as she reached for one of the sandwiches on the little metal table that whoever it was from Lena's team who'd made them had brought out onto the field.

  He knew she was talking about the mecha test, rather than the sex with Lena, but he smirked a little as he answered, simply:

  "Fucking fantastic."

  "So, you really think we'll be able to take on the Aerquan mano a mano with these things without them frying our brains?"

  "Well, I'm yet to try out the weapons, as you can probably tell by how the field isn't full of smoking craters, but you'll soon see for yourself how easy it is to move around and, well, smash shit up in one of these."

  He could see from the almost childlike grin on her face that she was going to love being a mecha pilot as much as he already did. And, well, if having all of that power at her disposal got her as horny as it had him, then maybe he'd help her out with that later.

  Chapter 5

  Madeleine had indeed enjoyed her experience getting to know her new mecha just as much as Curtis had expected, and by the time the sun began to set in the late afternoon, the two twin mechas were lighting up the area above the football stadium with blasts of plasma and lasers, creating a show that drew more and more of the androids working around the college site to watch. It had been an unparalleled success, and so as the following day came, bringing with it a strategy meeting Curtis had scheduled in a while ago, to be held in the 'business suite' of the hotel, he was all set to go with the least conservative timescale for storming the Aerquan city. The completion of the mechas had been the final part he had wanted to have in place. Now, given that they had worked exactly as planned, and he and Maddy had mastered piloting them without any hitches, it seemed like it was time to put all of the work the various teams of androids he had had doing different preparatory tasks to use.

  This was the most formal council of people Curtis had ever seen, and he couldn't help but wonder, as he walked into the hotel's Meeting Room A, set up with a long table in the center and chairs for all of the android team leaders, whether this was what his trial would have been like in Sanctuary, if he'd stayed for it. He'd never been to any of the leadership meetings that Janice had presided over back then, being the youngest person in the community and one whose technology based role didn't require them to be involved in any of the decisions about how the place was run. But now, well, he was the one calling the meetings, the one who would be having the final say on everything. The one all of the eyes around the table were looking to for leadership. He couldn't let his feeling of being a little out of place get in the way of giving it to them.

  Madeleine, who, with her far more important role in Sanctuary, had been involved in plenty of formal meetings and decisions, looked a lot more relaxed than Curtis felt as she took her seat next to where he was to go, at the head of the table. She was, naturally, at his right hand. Both literally and figuratively.

  "Thank you all for coming," he began, though, of course, it was unnecessary to thank them - he was their master, and what else could they possibly have had planned for the day that might have been more important or interesting to them than this? It just seemed like what one said at the start of meetings, though he was basing all of that off of old movies from the archives.

  The androids all smiled back at him, trustingly, waiting for him to continue. Once again, he had to remind himself that he wasn't being judged. He was never, ever being judged. He just needed to get the opinions of each of these experts on what he should do, and then it would happen however he ordered it to. No persuasion, and no flexing necessary. These were his loyal androids.

  "So, as some of you know," he nodded to Lena, who was among the androids present, "work on the mecha suits for Madeleine and I has been successfully completed. That was the last piece of the plan, and so, we are here to look at the intel we have about the city, confirm that all of the preparations we have considered over the last few months have been made, and finalize both our strategy, and when we are going to make this happen. I remind you all that this will be the first time we invade an Aerquan location to liberate human and half-human people the Aerquan have in captivity, but it will not be the last. We will need to use what we have learned already, and what we learn from executing these plans, to deal with other cities in the future."

  They waited for him to continue, still with the same encouraging looks on their faces. They were mostly female, as it seemed that the humans of the past much preferred their working androids to have the female designs, though some of the androids from his military divisions were male, a choice perhaps made to give a more intimidating presence, given they were all big, scary looking guys like Sarge. Naturally, the women of the past must have liked their robot sexual companions, too, because there were male androids in some other roles, including sex robots, but Curtis had let Madeleine become the master of all of those, which she had had no complaints about. Between the two of them, they had achieved their goal of taking command of all of the robots here more than three months ago.

  "So, I know I have never gotten you all together like this while you've all been working on your own parts of the planning and preparation, but that's because I know you have your own ways of sharing information between yourselves that aren't made any easier by also having to explain everything to a human. However, as we draw closer to being ready to making the attack - and I personally think we are there, now - I really need everyone here so I can get the full picture of where we are, and check I'm not missing something important. Can we please start then, with what we know about the city, both from Carla's work using the archive data in the college's libraries, and Osiris' intel from her campaign with the spy drones?"

  Carla had previously been the personal assistant to the dean of the college that they were using as the site of a lot of their activities. She revealed a lot about what the dean's tastes had been, in her smart yet short and tight black suit, the neckline of the shirt she was wearing underneath plunging to reveal the tops of her large breasts, and the pencil skirt slit up the thigh showing off the lacy tops of her hold-up stockings. She was also wearing glasses, which was clearly also a callback to her previous master's preferences, because there was no good reason why an android who saw using camera and computer vision technology would need corrective lenses... She stood up first to give her take on the geography of the Aerquan city, which she had learned about both by interviewing Sky and by using old data the college had from before the invasion. Naturally, things would have changed a lot in the city since then, but that was why Osiris and her drones had been doing their part.

  "OK, so we know that the city begins 306.4 miles to the north-north-east of here, and was known, in the times before the invasion, as Brightvale. It was a relatively small and unimportant city at that time, and its most notable geographical feature is its proximity to a river that runs along the northern part. The information I got from Sky leads me to believe that she grew up in what was formerly St Mark's hospital, and that that is the target for one of our liberation efforts - that is where the other half-humans are. As for the alien bred humans, we didn't have enough information from Sky to be completely certain, but there were a couple of places that would have made appropriate sites for keeping a community of humans isolated, and those would be Dame Chandler's Ladies Academy - formerly a boarding school for teenage girls - and a low security prison. My money was on the prison, but actually, Osiris' drones found that the school was the location that saw activity similar to that at the hospital - Aerquan coming and going, that is. Normally they don't visit the old human buildings, apparently, favoring their own structures which are mostly in the western part of the city, so the fact that they have some of their... well, I can't call them people, can I? Units... around the site of Chandler's Academy suggests that they have something there that they are working on, and we can only surmise it's the people we are looking for."

  "OK, thanks
for that Carla," Curtis said. He knew all of this information already, but he wasn't sure how much Maddy had been briefed or exactly who had had the maps and other digital information Carla had put together shared with them, and so having her go over it all in this meeting felt useful in ensuring everybody's disparate work could be consolidated.

  Osiris stood up next. She was a green haired, kind of punky looking android woman in a black leather jumpsuit, who, like Lena, had previously been a research assistant at the college. She had been tasked with planning a spot of espionage using drones, but that had also meant creating new machines that could handle the range between here and the city formerly known as Brightvale. The project hadn't been easy, by all accounts, and she had told him before that should they want to spy on other locations using the drones in future, she would recommend creating some remote stations for other androids to charge and operate the shorter range drones from. These drones had really pushed the limits of what she could do in terms of range and battery efficiency, and she'd also lost a few just flying them to Brightvale and back because of equipment failures and presumed wild animal interference.

  "So, I have been using the drones to see how the city has changed since the records Carla provided were made, and we are lucky in some ways in that the part of the city where we believe the humans and half-humans are being kept hasn't really been rebuilt much, so the old maps are still accurate. The Aerquan living in the city seem to have built their own neighborhood in the western part of Brightvale, as Carla said, and there, we can see some unusual architecture - we don't really know what these buildings are made of or when they were constructed, as we weren't watching the city until now, but I have some images, for those who are interested. Anyway, they seem to have let the rest of the city stand as it was, and are using the old human structures in various ways - warehousing and such - though they have let this area fall into a slummy kind of ruin in many ways. The people of the old Brightvale either didn't have enough androids to hold off the attack, or the androids there realized for whatever reason that this city was one that the Aerquan were going to take by whatever means necessary, and fled, so there isn't really anybody to keep the old buildings clean and maintained, meaning it looks a whole lot more like an urban wasteland than it does here. The blue monsters - I mean... the Aerquan, sorry, Sky hates us calling them that - don't use the vehicles and things that were there, but they didn't clear them out of the area either, so there are a lot of rusted up old cars and trucks. The Aerquan do have people constantly working in sites in this area, like at the old hospital and the old school, but those Aerquan don't live there - they always head back to the western area at, what we can presume is the end of their shift."

  "So, that means we shouldn't meet much resistance, right? To get to the people, and free them, we'll only have to fight the Aerquan working in the area at the time," said an android medic named Charity that Curtis had been using to plan how to treat any injuries on the field if any of the human and half-human people were hurt during the escape.

  "Well, yes and no," Curtis said firmly, and Charity, dressed in a similar 'slutty nurse' outfit to the ones Mercy always wore, only in pale pink rather than white, looked a little scared - she'd been expecting Osiris to answer, not the boss, and he had a stern look about him right now.

  "How do you mean?" she asked, quietly.

  "For the purposes of providing any care needed to the people we liberate, yes, you should only need to worry about attacks from the relatively small number of Aerquan workers in that area, however, the broader scope of the operation involves us first destroying the Aerquan neighborhood and everyone in it, and so for those of us fighting, the workers are far from the biggest threat. We are going to assault Brightvale, and wipe them out. The fact that they have made it nice and easy for us to get the bulk of them without touching the part of the city where the people we're going to rescue are just means that we may face some of them trying to flee into the human part of the city, as the rest of it burns."

  "Oh!" said Charity, "I get it now, sorry, I wasn't sure what the military plan was. But yeah, that makes sense."

  Curtis smiled. He had worried for a moment there that when the few people in the room, such as Charity, who weren't already aware that this was a plan to wipe out a population of Aerquan, as well as to save people, heard the plan, they may not approve, and he may have to spend the next hours convincing them. They may think it unnecessary or even wrong to assault the city. Again, he should have known. His plan was the only plan they'd approve of, because it was his. And the aliens had to die. Not just because he hated them, or because they deserved some retribution for what they'd done, but because if there were any left, then they'd follow them back here, maybe even get reinforcements from other Aerquan cities. And sure, his city was fortified - there were androids keeping watch all over the place with heavy weapons, and he'd planned for tight security on the college campus once he'd moved the refugees there - but it'd be better to fight them on his terms, to send a message that he was out here, and he was coming for them, rather than sitting here under fear of attack. Nothing but a total wipeout of Brightvale (which no doubt the fucking monsters had their own unpronounceable new name for) would count as a success, in his book.

  Chapter 6

  The meeting went on all afternoon, but everything that Curtis heard pleased him. As far as he could see, he hadn't made any oversights - everything was ready, and all that was left to do was set a date for the strike. The fleet of electric vehicles that would take them all close to Brightvale, ready for them to make their assault, was prepared. The charging points, which would allow them to ensure they could get all of the androids and vehicles topped up with power routed from the city's android-run energy farms had been installed at 100 mile intervals between here and Brightvale. The cars had a 300 mile range, but they definitely wanted to have a good bit of power left when it was time to leave Brightvale, with the cars then full of refugees, as well as the androids who'd arrived there in them. The drones had identified the layout of the Aerquan part of the city, so they knew where their ground troops could enter, but also where they were going to position the androids with the missile launchers, who would make the initial attack, and try to annihilate the buildings. A place outside of the city to leave their vehicles had been identified, leaving the androids, and Curtis and Maddy's mechas, only to have to walk down into the fairly shallow ditch that the Aerquan appeared to have made around the city as either a basic form of protection or a way of creating city limits, and up out of it to reach Brightvale itself. The communications methods and protocols had been finalized. It was all prepared.

  Curtis stood once more at the end of the meeting - for he had taken a seat just because his legs were getting tired some three hours earlier - and announced that taking all of this into account, the day he had chosen for them to depart, making the 24 hour journey (with charging stops for the androids and vehicles and rest breaks for himself and Maddy, who' be 'walking' there in their mechas, taken into account) to their positions outside of Brightvale, was Saturday, at 07:00 hours. Today was Wednesday, and so that just left time for a little bit more training with the mechas, and for everybody to make any final preparations and tweaks they needed for their teams.

  "I think this is going to be a success, you know," Maddy said, after everyone else had left the room. "At first I was scared, when you said back at the start that we would be taking on all of those Aerquan, rather than going with some stealthy plan to sneak out the humans, but now I can really feel how powerful we are. The androids, the weapons, the mechas - this city already had everything we needed to succeed in it. It just needed someone to make it all happen."

  "Well, to be honest, when I was back in the Lucky Buy, before we met Sky, before... well, you know... all I wanted to do was have fun, be free, keep things the way I wanted them. I didn't think I'd end up doing something like this - I was just going to let the androids carry on as they had been, and just try and carve out a good life
for me and you here. But since I've had a reason to take the fight to these monsters, well, everything's changed for me. I feel like what we're doing is important, and that I've got to step up and lead it all, or it won't happen. But I never expected, when I left Sanctuary, that I'd be trying to change the world out here, just to survive in it and try to have a better life than I would have if I'd stayed and had Janice castrate me... It's all been..."

  He hadn't said any of this out loud before. It had been bothering him the whole time, the way that things seemed to have snowballed, the way that he had suddenly become some kind of leader when he'd only ever planned to be free. The way that none of this seemed like something he'd ever thought himself to have the mettle for. It felt good to tell Maddy, to tell her that a lot of the way he was around the androids, so certain of what he was doing and ready to command them, was just a front. To tell her that he was only doing any of this because somebody had to, that it wasn't what he'd wanted.