“Disco Dreamgirl”—Betamaxx

Deadworld… Yeup—that’s what everyone called it because it was so dead, so desolate and junkie after the war. Hakuria hated this place. But it was the only world she knew, having grown up here.

Hakuria, sometimes called Littlehand Hakuria on account of her mech having a small hand she’d lifted off a dead Rem, shambled forward over the unstable terrain. The hand had actually been quite a find, since the Rem had been one of those cyborgs—not the full robots that were everywhere, heaped in scraps among the allied fleets and armies that had been lain to waste here in this scrapyard of a world.

More like graveyard.

The cyborgs were like the gods of the Rems—at least that’s what Hakuria knew about them. The hand was useful because it was made of a strong titanium alloy that couldn’t rust, didn’t wear down, and also, the hand allowed Hakuria to manipulate small things, allowing her to stay in her mech.

The warm humid air of summertime cloyed at her, but the light breeze from the movement of Littlehand felt good on Hakuria’s neck. It was a good thing Littlehand was an open mech—really more of an exoskeleton, but the differences were few and small between.

Pneumatics extended and contracted, hissing with her movements. There were so many rocks, so much debris everywhere, she had to pick through them as she made her way up the hill.

The golden sun was barely rising above the horizon, and the hill was still blocking out most of the light, making shade on this side. But it was still hot.

Summers were awful. Would Ororis Prime be any better? Hakuria had heard that the main city, pristine and clean, was perched atop an old volcano and filled with cool glassy water. There was always wind, so the other children had said, but that was probably just gossip, since like Littlehand Hakuria, none of them had ever gotten off of Deadworld. Born here, they were part of this world in a way, like the rusted scraps.

Craning her neck, the backlit debris ring was beginning to alight, limned in the golden light of the sun. In a way it was beautiful, but like everything else, Hakuria found little beauty in it.

Life was hard on Deadworld. With little food, constant fighting for scraps, both edible and non-edible, you never knew where your next meal or life-saving piece of tech would come from.

Hissing up to a large piece of old debris, some kind of engine, Hakuria found that she needed to get around it, but to her right side, there were too many vines and rocks. Deadworld wasn’t a desert rock—it was quite lush in summertime. The plants didn’t seem to mind the contaminated water.

Her eyes involuntarily cast down as Boco came to mind. He had made the mistake of getting careless, of drinking the collected water on the ground. Streams and rivers were all horrible polluted—undrinkable and risky. Rain water was often polluted as well, but much safer.

Why had he been so stupid?

“Hakuria?” Littlehand asked, her voice little more than a cybernetic chirp of syllables. She nodded, having been pulled out of her reverie. “Debris ahead, Hakuria.”

She nodded. “Mmm.”

Littlehand’s AI was dumb to say the least. A conversation with her was impossible, but Hakuria still talked to her on occasion. When she did talk.

She cast her eyes from her bare toes in the mount sockets toward the stream below. That was definitely deadly liquid—she could tell simply from the color.

“Hakuria, debris ahead.”

“I know, Littlehand.”

Using her arms and feet on the pedals, she angled Littlehand and began to shamble down again. She would have to make her way up by keeping close to the stream. Looking farther up ahead, she couldn’t tell if this path would lead her where she wanted to go.

To the ship.

It looked to Hakuria to be largely intact. It had probably been stripped before, but there was so much junk on Deadworld, that maybe it hadn’t. Often, highly prized pieces of tech were found right there in the midst of the people who were scratching out a living in an area for years.

It was so easy to miss things. “Isn’t that right?”

“To what do you refer, Hakuria?”

The mech could only give her preprogrammed responses. She had tens of thousands to choose from, but Hakuria was familiar with all of them. Her question had been for no one in particular. “Nothing.”

“As you say,” Littlehand chirped.

As she angled past debris and rocks, carefully making her way to the brown-yellow stream, Hakuria wrinkled her nose at the smell. The stream was clearly contaminated—that she could tell just because of the smell. The mud, the poisons had seeped into in, probably, so it was best to keep dry. Her EPO, or environmental protective over clothes, would help with that, but they’d been stitched herself, and she didn’t know if all of the stitching was secure, having not checked in ages and the hot pink silicone layer she’d applied was beginning to dull and harden, definitely cracking in some places. But that fact didn’t matter much, since she didn’t have all the pieces of her EPO to begin with!

Another reason why she hated summers. It was so hot having to wear the EPO, but her neck, face and feet were bare, at least.

To her eyes, she almost thought the water seemed thick. Occasionally there was a viscous sluggishness, as if the liquid were partially congealed, but it was hard to tell and almost seemed to be a trick of the eye. She knew it wasn’t.

This water was highly toxic.

Gingerly she shambled along the stream as it cascaded among the mud and rocks and fossilized debris there. Little mutant creatures scurried. Most of them didn’t even have names, the children simply took to calling them murats, or “mutant rats.” Stupid, since there were several species that were entirely different, but the name was apt in a way.

Hakuria grunted as she angled her foot on the pedal, lifting her leg and swinger her arms for balance, keeping Littlehand’s big hand up front, and her little hand to the side, in case she fell over. A fall was dangerous, but the protective roll cage would help with that.

But not if she fell in this water. She could drown while Littlehand chirped and shuttered.

Who knows how Boco really died. Had he drank the water, or had he ingested it for some other reason? A mystery.

Hakuria shook her head, getting the thoughts out of her mind. Scaring herself now was no way to complete her goal. She needed to get into that ship, find a cyborg Rem and lift its fusion core, and maybe, just maybe, find some of the magic so often spoken about. The cyborgs places of rest often contained power, an emanating magic free for the taking. If Hakuria could just find some, she could approach the Lady-98 and get a ride off this heap.

Her heart beat in her chest.

“We can do this, Littlehand.”

She shambled over the rock. The weight of the mech nearly toppled them over, but she swung her big hand to the front and stabilized herself.

Hakuria breathed out a sigh of relief.

“Only nine hundred and ninety-eight times more, Littlehand.”

“We can do it, Hakuria,” Littlehand said enthusiastically as she ever did.

Something metallic rustled and Hakuria turned. Peering about, she saw nothing, but what had caused a piece of debris to make that noise?

Narrowing her eyes, she glanced about, scanning the area, the debris, the rocks and the vines.

A pack of murats scurried, screeching and fighting. These little pests always made themselves unwelcome in some form or another.

It was nothing.

Hakuria turned to make her away along the treacherous stream.

And then there was definitely some movement behind her.

“Stop!”