Alan and Sara came to the door of the shop that was assigned to them. Along the way he found out it was also now their living space as well. It seemed to be a last minute change. Eventually they came to the entrance of the new place. The stone edges were a little rough. Small stone chips and dust lay on the ground around the door. Saru foot prints covered the area, some fresh, others layered under the debris. The doorway didn’t have the finishing trim yet. A small bag of tools and thin metal strips leaned against the wall.

Alan accessed the panel for the door to see if it even still worked. The metal door slid to the side, disappearing into the stone wall. Alan stepped in with Sara right behind him.

It was at least four times the size of the cavern he had been surviving and working in. Nearby was all the equipment, tools, and furnishings that had been at the cavern. All of it was laid out nearly the same as it had been in the cavern. Some of it was no more than a wrecked heap.

Three very tiny Saru, each one small enough to fit in Alan’s cupped hands, were jumping up and down on what was Alan’s bed. Their strength surprised Alan as they leaped up nearly half a meter with each bounce off the soft surface.

“Awe... such adorable babies.”

A Saru popped up her head from behind a wheeled tool cabinet and looked at the newcomers in the room. Her head turned to the commotion on the bed behind her and she rattled off a string of syllables that Alan actually understood. Roughly translated: “I told you three to nap on your blankets. Get off that thing! For all we know that might be a deadly machine to little ones like you.”

The three little Saru cubs let out what Alan presumed were little giggles as they bounced their way off the bed and down to the floor out of immediate sight.

Sara laughed. Alan smiled, partly at the scene that had transpired, but also witnessing Sara find joy in it. It was a small sense of normalcy that came to him, like a small dose of medicine that ebbed away a little forgotten pain that he had grown accustomed too.

Alan turned his attention to the female Saru and tried out speaking their language for the first time. “What they were bouncing on was actually my bed. Unless it’s broken, it should be fine.”

The Saru was shocked to hear Alan speak. “That’s a relief to me. Still bad behavior for them. I’ve nearly finished my cleaning assignment. I will be done quick and get my little ones out of here as fast as possible!”

Sara complimented the Saru on her children and asked permission to play with them until she finished her task. The Saru mother was thankful to Sara for the offer. Sara sat cross legged on the floor with them an played a common learning game that the younger ones did for pattern recognition.

Alan watched for a minute or two. Peeling his eyes away, he moved on to looking at the state of the contents of his cavern shop. He frowned and let out an exasperated breath at the initial sight.

It looked like everything was brought. The servers that had been crushed to oblivion lay on the floor like it had been run through an industrial trash compactor.

The generator wasn’t much better. One of the four assemblers could be made to work with a major overhaul. The other three were essentially trashed. The projector table only needed a few components replaced to his surprise. Most of the simple furnishing that he has made would only need minor repairs.

Alan was starting to go over the tools when the mother Saru announced she had finished. She gathered up the few things that she had brought and left the area. Her three little ones trailed behind her in a straight line, their little legs running to keep up.

Sara came near Alan as she watched the Saru leave. When the door had closed she spun in place and faced Alan with a huge grin on her face. “I thought the Saru were cute from the first moment we saw them. Their babies are so flipping adorable!”

Alan looked up from the tool he was inspecting to see her face. Her expression made him smile. “I have to admit, they are cute.” He lowered his eyes again to the tools on the table. Most of the tools appeared to be fine. He looked back at the assembler and his small refinery. His smile faded.

Sara watched him intently. “I take it your assessment of things isn’t real good?”

Alan picked up a tool and messed with it’s adjustment, more out of something to do with his hands than anything. “The less important things seemed to have done well. Probably 90% of my manufacturing machinery is scrap metal. The computer systems are all destroyed, save the holoprojector table. How that survived as well as it did is nothing short of miraculous.”

Sara winced. “I only estimated 69% loss. Guess I was a bit off. I’m sorry, Alan.”

“As bad as it is, it does open a door for me. I’m going to have to start over anyway with tooling. I have a good excuse for looking at the tech Father brought with him to get established again. It’s likely better than anything I’ve ever used before, if this,” Alan raise his synthetic hand, “is any indication.”

“Maybe we can just use whatever the Saru have for manufacturing? You wouldn’t have to build your own. At least not to start with.”

Alan looked up at Sara. “I’ll need my own setup. I also need an independent computing system for my projects.”

Sara got a quizzical look on her face. “You think the Saru or Father would steal your designs or something? That seems a little paranoid given all they have done for you.”

“Stealing isn’t an issue. What happens if Father looks at something I’m developing to take down the other Ungar?”

Sara looked down as if contemplating the thought. She looked back up at him. “It could trigger protocols. He might be forced to shut you out of the data systems here at best. Possibly even try to terminate you at worst?”

Alan slowly nodded.

Sara looked down at the palms of her hands. “I don’t want to lose this.” She looked back up at him. “Now that you got me paranoid too, I’ll help you build a new data system that is only hard wired. No wireless networking.”

She looked around the vast empty room. “You realize your going to have to build walls and a ceiling to conceal yourself from possible prying eyes and ears?”

“A building I don’t think would work. It might give the wrong impression that could trigger Father to want to do an investigation. However, I do have something in mind. Something more mobile.”

“Mobile? Like one of those trucks and manufacturing trailers you have in your blueprint stash?”

“Something more appropriate for this planet. There are no roads and a lot of the wildlife is less than friendly. I was thinking something more a kin to a tank that could expand when deployed in an area. I could design that on their system and maybe even have them make all the parts I need to put it together. I don’t think something like that would cause Father to get cross with any protocols his Masters may have put in him.”

“How long is it going to take you to design all that? The longer it takes us to get that other Ungar dealt with, the more difficult it could be. The Saru are already struggling to keep him contained. It’s not going very well.”

“I’ve got another eleven minutes before the Advanced Engineering module inside me kicks in. I’m hoping it makes a significant difference.”

“I’m kind of jealous you get those. He didn’t do anything like that for me.”

Alan picked up a different tool and fiddled with it. “The Ungar is trying to break away from the Outpost?”

“It actually has a couple of times now. It didn’t get far before the Saru drove them back to the Outpost. The Saru patrol that caught them said the Ungar and the group of Ustobo that was with him were gathering raw materials and a caltherian cow they had managed to kill. Probability calculations are high that the Ungar is trying hard to rebuild. All the surface buildings and walls of the Outpost are gone as well.”

Alan stopped moving and stared into empty space for a long moment. “Any new structures on the surface?”

“None that can be seen.”

“I’d be willing to bet there are more defensive weapons under the surface, like that gun tower that popped up on us.”

“I estimated it be very high probability as well. I’ve warned the Saru of that danger and that they should avoid a surface approach. I also had them change up their tactics a little. Individual patrols have been getting picked off, so I told them to do a buddy system so they patrol in grouped pairs.”

Alan nodded.

Sara shifted to be more in front of Alan. He still stared down at the table. “Beyond small things like that, I don’t know what to tell them.”

He didn’t say anything. Just stood there staring off into nothingness.

“Hey,” there was an edge of irritation in her voice. “Do you really have time to be building some mobile base? The Saru are getting killed out there by this Ungar!”

The Advanced & Reverse Engineering module was incredibly fast. Alan had already completed a small project in a matter of minutes that would normally take him a couple of days to work out. That project had been filed away and a new more advanced project was already in the works.

Now that Alan had practiced using the interface of the module, he worked even faster than last time. To his surprise the module had no problem keeping pace as he picked up speed in his requests and computations. Between the super computer embedded in his prosthetics and the module, he could simulate design functions faster than he could have believed was possible. Failures were found and redesign iterations happened within seconds.

Sara watched him intently. She waved a hand in front of his face. No response. “Alan? Are you okay?”

His expression didn’t change.

Sara moved around the workbench to where Alan was and physically turned him to face her. Her hands held his shoulders. His expression looked vacant. Only occasionally his eyes blinked and twitched like he was shifting focus from one thing to another. “You better respond soon or I’m going to go get help! I can’t tell what’s going on inside that head of yours.”

Alan didn’t even realize Sara was touching him or had even shifted him. He was so absorbed in the creative moment of design. The body armor was finished. It was so rugged that he would actually stand a chance against a smaller vattaux.

Several thoughts hit him rapid fire. What if his design appeared to be for survival on this planet? That shouldn’t trigger Father. He thought of the Saru mech design that allowed two creatures to pilot a creature like mech. What if he did something similar. Something that could take on a vattaux like they did with drones in the clearing. Something that could transport him and Sara wherever they needed to go.

He modified the powered body armor to interface with such a mech. His mind and internal computers pooled known tech and began to assemble a modified looking vattaux mech for them to ride in. He caught a glimpse of Sara standing right in front of him.

“Something is wrong with you! I’m going to get help!” She started to turn around.

Alan caught her arm.

Her attention snapped back to him.

“Wait... Almost done.”

Her eyebrows raise. He still seemed to be staring off into space someplace. “Almost done? With what?”

“Wait...” he let go of her arm.

She looked at him quizzically. “That engineering module of yours kicked in, didn’t it?” Silence. “Are you designing something?”

No answer.

She folded her arms across her chest. “I bet you are. I’m not sure I like this. I used to enjoy watching you work on your designs. Now I feel cut off.”

She stood there for several minutes watching him. Eventually she rolled her eyes and walked to the doorway.

Alan watched as parts and pieces came together with an assembly order. It was all happening so fast. He didn’t even notice when Sara left the room and came back with some cart that had a device on it. He also didn’t realize she had been gone for over two hours. The design was nearly complete. Some electrical needed to be rerouted and two pumps needed to be swapped out and replaced with three.

Sara went back to the door. A Saru handed her a tray which she gracefully accepted. She carried it over to the bench and set it down near Alan. “Hey you! You need to eat something. We both do actually.”

No response.

She playfully jabbed him in the left shoulder where his real flesh existed.

He finished his design just after she hit him. He closed down all the VR screens and holograms he was looking at that only he could see.

“About time you snapped out of it. Come on, we need to eat something.”

What she said took a few seconds to register with him. “Wait, what? You have a need to eat?”

“Yeah,” she motioned with her hands from head to toe as if to present herself, “There is a lot of synthetic flesh on me. It has needs just like normal flesh. Go figure. Somewhere inside me is some sort of bio-reactor too that keeps my power levels topped off. Father has some seriously amazing tech.”

“Hmmmm... That might have sorted some of my issues I was running into. I need to tap into the system and fill out knowledge of what he has available that I don’t have on me yet.”

Sara uncovered the meal delivered to them. It was something that could pass for finger steaks and baked roots that Alan thought tasted kinda like a carrot.

“So what were you designing, that I didn’t get to see?”

“I started with an advanced pump that I got an idea for a while back. Nothing extreme, but it helped me learn the new computer in my head and module that’s plugged into me.”

“How did that go?”

“Fast! As in, what would take me a couple days, happened in a couple minutes.”

“Wow!”

“Then I jumped right in and designed a powered body armor. Something similar to the Marine Mobile Defense Armor.”

“Planning on taking on an army on your own?” She looked at him sternly. “You better have one built for me as well. You are not leaving me behind!”

Alan stopped eating and looked at her. “I’m not going to leave you behind. And yes, I designed it with you in mind as well. I actually designed it with taking on the wildlife on this planet in mind. Particularly the vattaux. I think between the two of us, we could take a smaller one down. Maybe even a medium one.”

Her smile quickly faded. “Can we skip that trial run? We don’t actually have to do that, right?”

Alan chuckled. “I already ran the simulations for it. The design can handle it. I don’t plan to take another one on just to prove it. There isn’t time for that.” Alan took a deep breath and exhaled. “Based on what you’ve told me, we may end up battle testing it on the Ustobo first. Which brought me to the next design.”

“Wait, you did three designs? That last one had to be pretty involved!”

“Yes, three designs. Between the computer in my head and the module I’m able to do designs so fast it’s almost scary. My third design was a mech that we can ride in like the Saru do in their guerrilla like mechs. Only ours is mostly based on the vattaux in form.”

Sara’s jaw dropped open. “You’ve got to be kidding me! You did all that in three hours, 22 minutes!?”

“Yeah! The best part, the designs are geared around survival and local wildlife. It shouldn’t trip up Father if we have them made here. I’ll deal with the mobile manufacturing later. Maybe after we deal with the warrior Ungar problem.”

“You might want to drum up something for the Saru as well. Something to show your good will toward them. Many of the Saru are very welcoming. There is some animosity towards humans among others. They fault us for changing the status quo when the Outpost was built. Then drastically changed again when you and I arrived on the scene.

“Word is also spreading about the warrior Ungar. Coupled with Father’s not helping them anymore. Their patrols getting wiped out... there is a growing fear that all they know is going to be destroyed. Including them.”

Alan buried his face in his hands. “I’m just an engineer, not some battlefield commander!” Alan let his hands fall to his sides and found Sara standing right in front of him.

She put a hand to the side of his face. Her touch was soft and warm. “I know you’re not. Remember what I told you when we went to salvage the Neri’s Opportunity?”

Alan didn’t want to remember that night.

“I said to you the warrior either finds the war he was meant to fight, or the war will find him.”

He just looked her in the eyes, that faint purple glow deep within just noticeable.

“The war has found it’s warrior inside of you. You just need to let that part that is in you out. Yes... you’re an engineer. But, how much of a leap is it really to ‘engineer’ a battle plan? You’ve already done it a couple of times now.”

He tried to come up with a logical explanation for how she was wrong. Every argument he came up with fell apart. He closed his eyes in frustration.

“Just consider it,” she whispered. He felt her light breath near his face. She lightly kissed his lips before drifting back away.

His eyes snapped open as his train of thought wrecked like a starship plowing face first into a giant asteroid. No survivors and completely unrecoverable.

She started to laugh. “Are you okay? You should see the look on your face!”