Story 9: Cog 519

Merry Christmas all! Thank you for all the views this year, and many more into the future. I promise to write more and post more this year!

Part 1: Unearth

The amber light glinted off the exposed metal, the strange yellowish glow giving it a dull sheen. It was curved, definitely; Akh Nef brushed a little more of the loose soil off of it and tried to assess his find.

His team stood around him uncertainly. Just an hour ago everything had been going full speed; these tunnels were needed for the incoming refugees, the Matron had said, and needed soon. Digging out hive quarters for over a thousand humans was no small order, though, even with their various labour-saving devices.

Little amber telltales winked all over the objects they held, from small mechanical shovels to a device for turning unearthed chunks of rock into a fine powder. But all were silent now. As soon as the lead digger had struck metal, it was all over.

The site was going to have to be cordoned off, Nef realised. This was too dangerous to simply leave, or go around. The cogs - what else could it be? - would have to be exhumed, examined, learned from and then probably recycled. And the workers… they’d have to be memory-modified. More time. More effort. More expense.

He turned around. “It’s a shield,” he said, “probably a few decades old, no more. Exuding as much confidence as he could, he smiled and shrugged. “I’ll bring it out; go have a cup of something hot and I’ll tell you when you can continue.”

“This going to take long?” the lead worker said. He was a big fellow, piece of cloth fastened across his mouth to prevent dust from choking him. His eyes glistened in the darkness, small, like a desert rat’s.

“Not long,” Nef said. “Sooner I get started, sooner I get finished.”

The workers started to turn and leave, but the big man stayed back. “Well can’t we just go on, pretend like we din’t see it? We’re behind already,” he said.

“I’d… rather you didn’t. Please, go and have a cup of something. Now.”

Nef matched the man’s stare; for a long second, it looked like he might try to dart past and get a closer look. Then the tension ebbed slightly and he turned to follow his team.

Nef let out a sigh of relief, then turned back to the find. A cog! It was unusual to find one of these, a weapon of ages past; it might just turn out to be the chest piece of one or, hopefully, nothing more than a shoulder blade. He reached down to his belt for his dust morph and turned the tiny dial on its top to the correct setting. The tiny shard of amber inside whirred as it rotated on its axis, flooding the device with power, and he moved it close to the hard soil around the cog.

The soil seemed to liquify, becoming dust far faster than human hand could remove it; there was no danger of the armour itself being caught in the effect, as it was set to a density far below that of the metal used in the cog’s construction. As he worked, Nef whistled a little ditty from his youth and cast his mind back to his earliest lessons about the cogs; how they had been used in the great wars that scarred the land, how they had been possessed of great strength, speed, skill, agility, loyalty; how they had been laid low after an assault of weapons and men so incredibly coordinated that it had never been seen since, but had lead to the Grand Concord of the four remaining countries of Ehrian. Now those four countries, Zar, Lyria, Dorth and Koru, viewed the desert wastes with fear and suspicion, though the war was centuries past.

Some of the soil fell down over Nef’s hands and he looked down, snapping out of his reverie. He suddenly found himself staring into the hollow eyes of a skull, light glinting in their depths. He stumbled backwards, heart in his throat, holding his dust morph in front of him like a weapon.

There was silence.

A little more soil tumbled down and the skull sagged. Nef, his heart still racing, leaned forward and poked it, retreating almost as he did it. The skull waggled on its neck joint, leering gleefully at the ground.

It was dead. He breathed a sigh of relief and leaned forward to clear some more of the soil, slightly more wary now. The cog was in incredible condition; it was not a partial, as he had feared, but more and more kept being revealed. The skull, an almost perfect rendition of a human’s, gave way to an ornately armoured body, a cavity where the breastbone should be. Scrollwork was etched into the armour in fantastic patterns, looping whorls and designs that, given time, would give up the name of its maker. The arms were attached and moved, albeit stiffly; as more was revealed, the effect was much like a suit of armour, filled with mechanical contrivances and arcane instruments or sensors.

Grunting under the weight, Nef dragged the cog out into the wider tunnel. Dust and soil streamed off it, pouring without end out of the joints; it would be doubtful if the thing could even move given the condition its insides might be in, but it had to be tried.

Turning it over revealed a small missing section of skull, and Nef frowned. He leaned over and had a closer look inside skull; it was a small cavity that lead to a semi-circular depression, no more than a finger’s depth inside. The cavity was empty.

“Strange,” Nef murmured. Its control circuits were absent. Not just deactivated, like all the other complete examples they had found, but absent.

He turned the cog back over, mulling over his choices. He could reactivate it and lead it to one of the service tunnels, but normally when cogs were recovered their control circuits were rewired to prevent simply attacking the nearest person. Without instructions at all, of course, it should default to the original workshop settings and mindlessly obey him. Finally, he could drag it there himself. Over a mile.

“For science, then,” he murmured. He reached into his pocket for the small logbook that all amberic research teams were required to keep, and pressed the little stud on its top. The amber domed in it lit up.

“Akh Nef, researcher 345. Report that, as of this evening- ” he broke off and checked his small brass chronometer. “As of this evening, 7.56, I have encountered a complete cog specimen. Cog is missing its control circuit entirely and should be in workshop settings mode. Will power up, move to laboratory and power down. Unit seems in good working order, but was deep in a clay-like seam of soil and may be too soil-logged to function. Report ends.”

There. At least if anyone found his headless corpse they could probably work out what had happened, if the rampaging cog didn’t tell them first. He knelt down and pulled his pack over. He pulled out a blue cloth which he placed on the floor and unrolled. Inside, amber of every size, shape and lustre gleamed out at him, and he ran his fingers over both them and the empty space on the chest plate until he found one that looked like it might fit. Slowly, taking care not to chip the sides of the stone on the claws that would hold it in place, he clicked it into the empty slot on the chest plate and started to put the claws into place. Each one connected with the slightest hum until only one remained.

Nef double checked everything. He put the amber away in his pack, slung the pack onto his back and prepared to run should it go horribly wrong. Of course, he might not get the chance. Cogs were notoriously fast.

Then, a small amount of sweat beading on his upper lip, Nef slid the final claw home.

The hum intensified, rising up a scale and disappearing into nothingness. Nef scuttled backwards as little vibrations sent more dust pouring out of the cog’s joints. Its hand twitched, fingers closing, crushing inwards. The movement shuddered up its arm, the shoulder joint grinding as the ball rolled in the socket. With an incredible noise of ground-up stone, metal screeching on metal and incredible weight settling on ancient joints, each section of the cog began to move; it wiggled its pointed feet, flexed its biceps, sat up without any apparent effort and rolled its head around on the neck joint. Then it clambered to its feet.

It looked all around, its sightless eyes roving around the entire chamber, finally settling on Nef.

“H-hello,” Nef said, trying and failing to keep the quaver out of his voice. He dug in his memory for the correct commands. “Unit, report.”

The cog took a step forward and it was all Nef could do to stay where he was. The first footsteps were painfully grinding, but then the powered armour was moving more fluidly. It stopped, five feet from Nef, and he suddenly realised how much taller it was than even him, who looked down on most.

It spoke, the voice issuing from somewhere within its chest. “Unit 519. Special tactics cog, fifth battalion. Self testing.” There were some whirrs from inside, then a strange sound like someone stepping on a grape. “Joints require lubrication; applied. Some damage to interior mechanism. Control circuits… missing. Memory corrupted. Some disparity between internal chronometer and external sensors.” Its voice was strange, like a human speaking with his head in a large cooking pot. It looked down at Nef. “What is your designation?”

“Designation… Cog controller,” he said, blurting out the words. “You are to accompany me to a service station where your… damage and corruption will be assessed in advance of you returning to work.”

There was a silence, and Nef turned to go. After two steps he heard the crunching sound of heavy metal feet, and it was all he could do to keep facing forward as the immense threat behind him padded on, like a faithful dog.