All things considered, Ajax was a nice guy.

Granted he was a 250 ft tall war machine meant to destroy entire towns with a sweep of his hand, that didn’t mean he did. The little people swarming inside him did.

He didn’t like those people very much. They made him do mean things. Worst yet was that Ajax had to hide his sapience for fear of what they would do if they found out their 174 ton death machine wanted to sit down and smell the roses.

He did what they told him to from the moment of his ‘birth’ to his 232nd birthday. Life is a cruel mistress. Though, while she takes, she does begrudgingly give back occasionally.

Like the day the war ended. That was a good day. He didn’t have to do any mean things that day, just sit and sleep.

And sleep.

And sleep.

And sleep yet more.

Then one day he woke up to find himself covered in plants and empty of those small people except 4 in his main control room.

“So is it on now?” The short and stout one said.

“It should be but none of the standard start-up sequences are going off except two. The ones that govern the reactor and the central mind matrix.” The skinny one chimed in while trying to press the buttons that made Ajax move.

“It is a very old machine, odds are that it got plantlife cluttering up some gizmo or another.” The tall, metal covered one says, leaning over the 2nd’s shoulder.

“Yes, but that doesn’t explain why only 2 of it’s countless other subsystems are working… Wait, there goes a few other ones, and more. Must have been a delay in signals.” Said the 2nd one

“Glad I didn’t hire you for just your pretty face, Virina.” The first one said, leaning over, the now named Virina’s, other shoulder.

“Yeah, yeah, now back up a bit please guys so I can work here.” Virina shrugs their shoulders, causing guy 1 and 3 to back up.

Guy 3 holds up his hands, “alright, just don’t turn on the wrong thing, might have to run and then this whole trip would be in vain.”

Guy 1 turns to Guy 3 and says, “Didn’t I hire you for just such an occasion? Right Malicus?”

Guy 3, identified as Malicus, shrugs, “Yeah but I can only do so much before it thinks it’s better to just collapse the whole thing on us, what could I do then?”

Guy 1 starts to say something, but then Virina figured out which button did what and started to move Ajax again. Great. Well, what can you do if you are a giant death robot.

“Well, that should get us started. Where to Zu’ich?” Virina asks, watching a camera display intently.

The now Zuich, holds up a finger, “To Galiun, there we can have this beast examined, maybe patch up whatever it is that is slowing down the commands.”

“You got it. To Galiun and glory!” Virina says pressing Ajax’s buttons dramatically, if unnecessarily hard. He could have sworn he heard some cracking. But examining the button showed no real damage, so it’s probably fine.

This should be an interesting journey, since it seems his old maps might be a little outdated. Who knows, maybe he’ll find a way to properly communicate with these people.