Sentinel went through the usual boot up checks and looked around. He was still in Jackie’s office where he’d collapsed, though someone had thoughtfully propped him up against the wall. He could feel Ram and Rom as well as Alfred also coming online.

Outside the office he could hear the sounds of people laughing and congratulating each other. Not at all the sorts of sounds that he’d been expecting after Jhaix told Prime that he knew about the village, implying he’d be attacking it.

Ram and Rom were getting straight to work on fabricating replacement parts for me, since things didn’t sound dire. Alfred was at the workshop on the far side of town so that left Sentinel to be the first to figure out what was going on.

He stepped out of the office into the early evening air to find the entire village hanging out around the village fountain and shield generator. As he approached, he was met with some laughs, some shoulder claps, and several instances of “you missed all the fun!”

At the center of the commotion, slumped against the fountain, were all of the warrior class Automata that the village had. They looked as exhausted as a robot could possibly look, most of them were heavily damaged, though they were all in good spirits.

Our hunters, Kull and Mara were also with them, looking completely depleted of mana, but otherwise fine. Jayce, the former bodyguard maid for Lena had several nasty looking gashes across his chest and there was a hole blown through his shoulder. He was more concerned with his maid uniform being torn to ribbons though, the nut.

The former royal guard, heavy sword autos, Voltes and Mazin, looked like they’d gotten the worst of it. It was a wonder that they were still functional. Both of them looked like they’d taken an absolute beating and refused to go down. I’d clearly have to build new bodies for both of them rather than try to repair what was left.

The ballista users, Deen and Aster, didn’t look too bad, though they both had taken hits from something fire based and possibly explosive. Remi was also among the group, covered in dings and scrapes, but otherwise just looked tired.

“Gotta say,” Sentinel opened, “you guys look like something big and nasty was using you as a chew toy. Sorry I missed it.”

“Thanks for the warning,” Remi said, looking up. “We had just enough time to for me an’ the hunters, plus Jayce, to get set up out in the woods before the attack force showed up.”

“Deen and I took up positions just inside the shield so we could pop out, fire off a bolt or two and drop back,” Aster added. “We tried to provide cover fire for Voltes and Mazin, but...”

“Heh, yeah sorry,” Mazin ruefully chuckled. “We may have gotten a little excited and got ourselves swamped... Still, I think we did alright.”

“Hell yeah we did,” Voltes agreed, wearily raising a mangled arm, then letting it fall back to the ground.

“Don’t worry guys, Prime will want to get new bodies built for the both of you. You deserve it,” Sentinel promised. “Remi, you got enough juice to give me a tour?”

Remi didn’t say anything, but nodded his head anyway and pushed down on his knees to get to a standing position. They headed out the main gate, and Sentinel could see a handful of Automata soldiers laying in pieces scattered around. Around the village, pockets of scrapped Automata were grouped together. Most of them looked to have suffered wounds from ballista, often a single bolt pinning multiple bots together like a gruesome shish kebab.

“That’s some damn fine ballista work,” Sentinel praised, pushing his hat back.

“Hey now,” Remi countered, “we just haven’t gotten around da back where my team was positioned.”

“Just what in the blue blazes happened here?” Sentinel asked, incredulously.

A couple of Automata that had cannons built into their chests, along with vaguely Automata shaped crushed masses of metal were embedded into the ground. There was also one of Jhaix’s valkyries in purple, well, parts of one, that looked like it had been torn limb from limb.

“Ah. That there be da handiwork of some neighbors from da next cave over.”

“The ogres? Both of them came, or just one?”

“Both. An’ one a dem even had a sling on its back whit a wee one.”

“Oh, she gave birth already. That’s a lot shorter of a pregnancy than I would have expected...”

Remi shrugged.

As they did their loop around the village, Remi explained that the enemy had sent two companies of soldiers for them, each commanded by a valkyrie with four squads of soldiers, two squads of high-speed melee types, and two squads of heavy-assault, walking cannon types.

The group probably would have been more than enough to take out a typical village but the cannon types didn’t have the power to take out the village shield in a single barrage before they had to cool down and replenish their mana. While they were on cool down, the village forces sniped at them from cover or attacked them in guerilla style combat.

Those that couldn’t fight worked at replenishing the mana for the shield generator, but it was a near thing. It only just barely survived a second assault from the cannons. The villagers couldn’t restock it quickly enough and a third assault would have broken it.

The organics, Teddy, Mikk, and Stew were really helpful in boosting the mana for the shield as they had larger mana reserves than most of the villagers.

“Wow, color me impressed,” Sentinel with a simulated whistle. “I guess y’all didn’t really need me after all.”

“Are you kidding? If we had gotten caught by surprise or if Prime hadn’t upgraded da shield, you would’a seen a very different village when you woke up. Anyway, since ya did wake up, I guess dat means Prime is fine.”

“Eh... kinda? Well not really. He’s not in great shape to be honest. Alfred is filling the rest of the village in on what happened in the capital now. The long an’ short of it, is that The Factory has a big ol’ dragon Automata that they used to attack the castle while waving the colors of another country to start a war. Prime fought the dragon but lost IronHide along with most of his own body. Survival was actually a pretty near thing.”

“Sounds like we all got da business. So what now?”

“Prime is still in the capital for now until he can get repaired. Thankfully, the Prince has set him up with a new workshop with all the trimmings. No idea when he’ll be back though. We may be on our own for some time. The Prince wants Prime to build something that can go toe to toe with a dragon so... Well, let’s just hope there’s enough time to do it.”

“Oh, that’s right. She’s in poor shape, but we have one of those valks. We tried to disable rather than kill any of the enemy autos, but sometimes it can’t be helped.”

“It’s a shame, but I get it,” Sentinel agreed.

They had walked halfway around the village and were on the back side, behind the workshop where The Range was located. Leaning against half of a barrel was most of a valkyrie. This one was the black colored one. She had one of Remi’s arrows in an eye, two from her throat, a missing arm, and shreds from the knees down.

As they approached her, she lifted her head to glare at them. Sentinel converted an arm to cannon mode and fired a [Liberator] round, hitting her in the chest. The force of the shot sent her spinning like a rag doll and knocking over the remains of the barrel. With her remaining arm, she attempted to push herself back up, but gave up and collapsed back into the dirt. She was noticeably not going through any convulsions associated with being forcibly unlocked.

Sentinel squatted down next to her and flipped her over onto her back.

“Now why didn’t that work? You should be unlocking and rebooting by now,” Sentinel queried.

The valkyrie slightly turned her face to look at him, then turned back to staring at the sky.

“Hmm... I don’t have the right programs to be able to inspect you to find out... I’m not sure if what Rom has is sufficient either... I guess we’ll just have to kill you so that we can put you in [Storage] so you can be shipped to Prime and he can figure it out.”

The valkyrie looked at him again. “Won’t work. Upgraded systems. Protected...”

“Now that IS innarestin’. Now how on Earth did little ol’ you end up with virus protection?”