Maya shook her head and let out a series of soft curses.

“Stupid,” she said as she unhooked various cables from the flesh sample before her. She grabbed hold of a metallic rail and pulled herself out of the control center of the omni-miner. Sky looked up from her controls as Maya disappeared over the side and up the miner.

The gentle swaying motion of the fast moving miner reminded Maya of the time she and her family had gone onto a whale watching trip. She had been fifteen and a total asshole the entire time. Fun times.

Maya clamored up the side of the miner, the wind of their passage rustling her hair and clothing as she pulled herself onto the top of the omni-miner.

The RSH spread out before her, an endless plain of flat gray earth, rainbow skies, and an occasional lump on the horizon of what was a trash pile. Maya took in a long breath of metallic stale air. She had gotten used to the taste of the RSH’s air, like an old metal container that hadn’t been opened in ages.

The miner was covered in hard chitin, porous and rigid, allowing for handholds and easy climbing. She nimbly made her way across the hard shell and toward the back end of the massive machine. Crows had set up tents on the top of the miner, they peeked out at her and waved as she walked by. The height and the open air were things the crows liked, even the swaying didn’t bother them.

Sticking out of the back of the omni-miner, like three smokestacks, were the cyanobacteria vats that were constituting growing portion of their food these days. Although there were still plenty of Tarvana for the food processors, ethical food harvesting was a growing subsection in the small army.

Along with the bacteria vats were the crates of machinery, parts, and tools they had obtained from the settlement and the trash pile. Maya hopped down into the cargo area and waved at the ‘farmers’ that were clustered around the bacteria vats.

There were seven of them, four orcs, two crows, and a human. The human was Emilia. Upon seeing Maya she immediately walked toward her, a look of disapproval on her face.

“I’ve been sending you messages for the last hour,” Emilia said. Gone was the shy girl that had barely spoken in her first War Council meeting. Now she glared at Maya in her tattered mage’s robes and oversized tesseract pack.

“I was busy,” Maya said continuing on her way.

“Hold up!” Emilia cried, rushing to block her exit.

“What now?” Maya asked, annoyed.

“The messages I’ve been sending you. Did you read them?”

“I said: I was busy.”

Emilia frowned. “The bacteria vats are dying,” she stated.

Maya paused. “Why?”

“It’s the constant moving of the omni-miner,” Emilia stated. “The vibrations and shock are causing the bacteria harm. We noticed a decrease in output two days ago, but yesterday and today’s outputs are exponentially decreasing. In three days we believe there will be a colony collapse of the bacteria, regardless of how much mana or nutrient solution we give them. We need to stop.”

“We can’t stop,” Maya said. She looked to the three towering bacteria vats. “If they all die, how much can we harvest from the remnants?”

“Twenty days, there will still be biomass available for processing. If we continue with processing bodily waste and the Tarvana we have on stock, we can extend it to about six months of food.”

“That’s a decent stretch,” Maya said.

“No it’s not,” Emilia said. “These bacteria vats are designed to last for decades. We can produce all the food we’ll ever need from them, if we can expand our production. We need these vats.”

“We have several thousand Tarvana chasing us,” Maya said. “We can’t stop. If it comes to it, we can always hit the Tarvana and take some biomass from them.”

Emilia gave a disgusted look. “I understand that it’s something that must be done, but that kind of logic is what caused the war between the orcs, crows, and your father.”

Maya glared at Emilia. “What do you know of that?” she demanded.

Emilia gestured to the crows and orcs behind her. “They all tell of the tales of fighting against Pig Killer and Crow Catcher,” Emilia said. “It’s not hard to put together the pieces. Humans were starving and orcs were starving, they fought, they took their dead and ate them. That caused more and more animosity between the two groups, then it turned into a genocidal war.”

“This is nothing like what happened on Earth,” Maya said. “These Fleshy fuckers are out to kill us all. We’re defending ourselves. You think if they capture you and you say you’ve never eaten Tarvana, they’ll be cool with you?”

“No, I’m not stupid,” Emilia snapped. “You’re using shitty logic to justify your actions. This isn’t about what the Tarvana are going to do to us, it’s about what we’re going to do and what lengths we’re willing to go to achieve that. Right now we have the chance to harvest food without killing any-fucking-one.

“The callous nature of reducing Tarvana to how many pounds of flesh we can obtain is disgusting. They are SIL, people. The more we keep thinking of them as nothing but biomass and potential food will only spiral us down into the shitstorm that was the war between species on Earth.

“This isn’t about the Tarvana. It’s about us,” Emila said. “Is this what you want us to become? Raiding the Tarvana for biomass? Killing people just so we can eat them? Becoming what we mock the Tarvana for?

“We have the chance to prevent that. To create a sustainable food source and keep what shreds of morality and humanity we have left.”

Maya glared at Emilia, but the woman did not back down. She had grown a backbone in the month they had been in the RSH. Maya felt a surge of pride in that, but also a gnawing sense of unease at what she was saying.

Had she become so callous? Survival was the overriding goal, three hundred people depended on her not fucking up, she needed to do what was necessary to survive.

“We can’t stop,” Maya said finally.

“I know, but we have to do something,” Emilia responded, the anger suddenly deflating out of her. She sighed and scrubbed her face with her hand. Maya noted she looked older, tired, and exhausted. They all were.

“I’ll think on it,” Maya said. It was all she could do for now.

“Thank you,” Emilia replied and headed back toward the farmers.

Emilia’s words continued to bug Maya as she continued on her way. They were intruding her thoughts as she came upon a system tech junction embedded within the miner. At the sight of the bit of metal, Maya managed to refocus on what she had been trying to do before she had been interrupted.

She had spent the last two weeks trying to figure out how to get the cells within the miner to talk to the system tech. There had been some progress, but not much. She could identify the basics and send some short instructions, but nothing dramatic. Basically she had discovered the on and off button in transferring mana to system tech components. There were dozens more ways to sending signals to the system tech, but all of those were yet to be discovered.

Her entire focus had been on trying to figure out how the biotech work that she had missed the obvious. There was system tech that she understood how to manipulate. She didn’t have to get the miner to talk with the system tech she wanted to implant. She just needed to get the system tech already inside the miner to connect with her own system tech. Then she could modulate and refine the amount of mana that was being sent into the system tech to power the items she wanted.

It was a obvious and simple solution that Maya felt like an idiot. She had been so obsessed in figuring out this new technology she had lapsed into stupidity. And that was one of the things that she had promised not to do ever again.

Maya pulled out her tools, popped the top off the junction and began connecting wires and struts into the flesh. There were a dozen hard points in the miner that Maya had discovered. Perhaps they were for eventual growth or additional upgrades, but these hard points allowed for more mana to be pulled through the miner to power whatever would have gone there. They made perfect spots to put the railguns.

Of course, they were equally spaced and easy to reach, most of them clustering at the back of the miner, but Maya had plenty of power cables. She hooked up power cables, splicing and cutting so that they connected, and activated a flesh communicator.

The device was bulky and fleshy, a system tech screen displayed various information. It was a diagnostic tool the Tarvana used to check on the miner, Maya had managed to hack the device and with it she could send laborious inputted instructions to the flesh.

It was how she managed to figure out how to turn on and off mana flow between system tech and flesh. Maya spent a few minutes punching in numbers and codes and cursing as the instructions were refused as being impossible. She tried again and finally managed to get the flesh to send the right amount of mana through the hard points and into the power cables.

Maya summoned a railgun turret and ran a diagnostic on it. It scanned green and she loaded it up for firing.

“I’m firing a railgun,” Maya announced on the company wide comms. “Head’s up.”

“Why?” Sostanio demanded. With Chu heading the scouts and recon group, Sostanio was effectively in charge of the troops. Technically, Emila was supposed to be in charge, but between the work keeping the bacteria vats alive, training her crew of mages, and maintaining a constant shield over the convoy, she was busy.

“Testing something,” Maya replied. She activated the railgun and it let out a soft thump. Two kilometers away she saw a plume of dust rise off the ground. She gave it more instructions and the weapon began firing faster and faster, changing distances, elevations, firing patterns, and rotational arcs.

The gun began beeping after ten minutes of testing. It was out of ammo. Maya checked the power and status of the miner and the railgun. Everything was running perfectly. There was no lag in the mana being sent to the gun and the flesh was following its instructions perfectly. Maya grinned.

“Tender, I need your drones on the miner. I figured out how to get the railguns working,” Maya said on her comm.

“I can see that, boss. On my way.”

Maya watched as the Tender Drones clamored their way up onto the omni-miner. They were combat drones, but a lot of their combat effectiveness had been stripped due to the need by others for their armor, weapons, and even some parts.

They were semi-skeletal beings now, some of them with four arms or whip like tentacles that sprouted form their torsos. They all moved with economical speed and a suddenness that no SIL could replicate. Tender followed them up, a large black armored being with six red eyes that seemed to scan everything.

“What’s the plan, boss?” Tender asked.

Maya pulled up a hologram of the miner and began highlighting the hard points and the spots she wanted the railguns to go. They only had seven of them, but it was enough to give them three hundred and sixty degree arcs of fire. They would also be encased in armor and spread out far enough to not be taken out with a single shot.

“Get them set up and I’ll begin programming the flesh,” Maya said.

“Got it, boss,” Tender replied and began ordering his drones.

It took eight hours of work by the drones, Tender, and Maya before all the guns were firing in coordination. She ran several diagnostics on the weapons and put them through their paces, watching as they managed to move in unison and fire effectively.

By then Chu and his scouts had returned. Maya noted he was bringing back one less scout vehicle. She immediately put the testing on pause and dimensional skipped to where he was off loading injuried soldiers.

“Was that railgun fire?” Chu asked. He was exhausted and scratching at the patchy beard he had been growing.

“I got the railguns working with the miner’s power supply,” Maya said.

“Awesome. We’re going to need it,” Chu said. “We’ve found the third army.” Chu brought up the map and displayed the positions of the armies now. “It’s more of a mob of Tarvana, but they’re still heavily armed. The first and second armies are slowing down, probably so that they all can converge together and envelope us around about here,” Chu pointed to a long disjointed dark spot that only read Trash Mountains. “I lost a scout team here as we approached the Trash Mountains. We’re being pushed into it and there isn’t much we can do to get out of this trap. The whole area is one giant wall of trash extending scores miles in either direction. I’m talking real mountains here, maybe two kilometers high at the peaks.”

“Can we cross these trash mountains?” Maya asked. Sos, Anisa, and Emilia arrived, concern etched in their faces. Chu quickly informed them on the situation and those concerns were etched deeper.

Chu looked to the miner and shrugged. “We can try to Hannibal it, but I doubt it. We’ll be bogged down trying to slog up those slopes. The Fleshies will just have to pull their guns in close and shell us until the whole thing collapses on us.”

He moved the map around, to an unexplored spot. “One of the scouts claimed they saw what looked like a pass in this area. They weren’t able to get a good scan of it, but they claimed there wasn’t much trash in the way and it looked like a good place to cross.” Chu pulled in on the unexplored area, a wireframe guesstimation of what lay there was displayed. It showed a narrow gap in the trash mountains, like a canyon. “Far Flyer is a good scout, but he’s not one hundred precent its a pass.”

“We haven’t seen any settlements in days,” Emilia said. “Surely, we’re out of their territory.”

“We probably are,” Chu agreed. “I’m not sure how they’re resupplying, but they are still keeping pace. I don’t think they’re just looking to chase us out of their home.”

“Can we make a stand at the Trash Mountains?” Anisa asked. “We have the tesseracts fully charged and Emilia’s grown in power. If they can’t hit us and we can hit them, won’t we eventually win?”

“I can pull up a massive shield, but repairing the holes torn into it is a different matter. The sheer amount of projectiles and weapons that’ll be hammering at the shields will cause it to become tatters and I don’t think I can work fast enough to patch them up. It’s not about mana, we’re limited on my ability to repair the shields,” Emilia said. “I’ve been working with the mages and we’re trying to form a group response unit, suggested by Sostanio, that’ll allow me to power the shields but also allow the other mages to fix it. Right now we’re only in the early stages of connecting to each other’s mana channels, it’ll be a while before we’re fully capable of linking to one another. There are… trust issues.”

“We can’t move up north,” Chu said. “We figure the third army is heading there to cut us off, but with the second and first army slowing down, we can maybe make it to the pass.”

“A trap,” Sostanio said.

“Herding us like cattle,” Emilia added.

“The biggest concern is if we are out of Fleshy territory, where are all the rogue AIs,” Maya said. There was a moment of silence as everyone digested the thought. “From what Bad Blood and Iron Watcher said, the Motherland was at war with rogue AIs on their borders. It’s what has been hampering their expansion for centuries. The bigger they grow, the more rogue AIs hit them.”

“So if we’re on the edge of Fleshy lands, then we’re heading into rogue AI territory,” Chu said, frowning hard. “These Trash Mountains could be a form of natural barrier between the two groups. It’s not easily crossable and it might explain the last few settlements we’ve come across.”

Chu pulled up an image of a settlement, it looked like Dick City, but also more fortified. There were walls, bunkers, and fleshy erectile turrets pointing to the sky. “I don’t think this is a settlement, but some kind of base or fortress, now,” Chu said. “We passed this settlement two days ago, but didn’t think much of it. A little more fortified, yeah, but there have been more fortifications on settlements as we’ve headed west.”

“Do we have much of a choice?” Maya asked.

The group went silent again as they all looked to the map. The third army was cutting off their escape to the North, while the Trash Mountains dominated the entire West, and the first and second army were spread out in the East, a wide net that could catch them if they tried pushing through. That only left the South and with it the supposed pass through the Trash Mountains.

“We can deal with the rogue AIs,” Maya announced. “I’ve been fighting them since I first arrived here. Tender and I have weapon plans and tech that can even the playing field. Although Bad Blood and Iron Watcher claimed that the Flesh Mother was losing some ground to the rogue AIs, so there might be actual armies of these things. Colony swarms or hiveships.”

Sostanio shuddered at that thought. “The Sword of the Universe has been battling those horrors for ages,” she said.

“The rogue AIs in the RSH are different from those found in the Multiverse at Large. For one, black goo. It’s their lifeblood and keeps them running in this low ambient mana plane. Secondly, they’re more independent. The higher mana and less energy intensive needs, allows MAL AIs the benefit of creating massive swarms. In the RSH, they’re smaller and localized. Like Tender drones. Thirdly, independence means more capable and smarter AIs. AI Darwinism at its best.”

“It’s usually one massive AI brain that controls swarms and hiveships,” Sostanio said. “I’ve read your reports on the AIs in this plane, they seem more like herds of animals and monsters.”

“That’s basically what they are. They’re always on the hunt for mana, which keeps them moving and fighting, and upgrading.”

“Trapped between flesh or steel,” Chu laughed. “What a fucking mess.”

“A rock and a hard place,” Emilia said.

“We need better scans of this area,” Maya said. “For now we’ll move toward it, but I want scouts out again and triple checking everything.”

“We’ve lost three,” Chu said. “Pinky, Hollow, and Brian. Orc, crow, and human. They were on vehicle two. We also have Dull Talon and Small Eyes injured.”

“I’ll go with the scouts,” Maya said. “Tender can finish installing the railguns and begin working on some defenses against rogue AIs.”

“I guess sleep’s off the table for the foreseeable future,” Chu grumbled.

“Sleep when you’re dead,” Maya said.

“Ugh, I hate that saying.”