I woke up with a splitting headache again, but the radio term’ was buzzing. It was 8 o’clock in the morning, who was trying to raise me at this hour.

  “Sunny to Gabby, come in Gabby, I know you can hear me.”

  Ugh, Uncle Domingo, you need to go frell yourself. And I bet he is in the city so I can’t even hit him… with Gretta’s foot.

  I fell down out of the hammock and slapped the transceiver.

  “Waddya want you bloody yono?” I growled.

  “Gosh Gabby, lack of sleep much? If it wasn't such a beautiful day, I might take offense at that. I was just calling to let you know the last of the cargo will be delivered to the docks at noon today. It’s probably too late to start out this afternoon, what with all the packing and sorting. So we might as well just leave first thing in the morning tomorrow.”

  “Ahem” he managed to sound almost sheepish when he said, “And so I am going to stay one more night here and we will be out there first thing in the morning ready to hit the road.”

  “Whatever.” I grumbled and killed the connection. At least it was another day to make repairs and get ready for our next trip. I debated going back to bed, but the day had started without me and I might as well get to fixing the Dozer. Dang it, I could have mentioned the intruders last light, really laid it on thick and made him feel bad. Why didn't I think of that until it was too late!?

  I grabbed my gear, skipped a breakfast bar, a bit hopeful, Molly would have something. And I slide down the ladder to the ground. I couldn't help but think about the bookstore lady, Sheila, now she had telekinetic control. I bet she could fly down the ladder, literally. I mean, I could move playing cards, some of the time, if there was a light breeze.

  I dragged myself to the camp kitchen, noting the fire was burning low in the firepit and looked around. Molly was washing their RV. The Gecko RV was a top of the line luxury home on monster wheels and it looked the part. It has glossy white and tan paint with fanciful swirls that meant something and cost even more. I wondered why their RV always looked better than the rest of our equipment, and now I know, they had Molly clean the entire thing, stem to stern. She was using some waterless washing contraption but when she saw me at the camp kitchen she stopped and came over.

  “Morning Gabby.” She quickly wiped her hands on a handy towel and opened the heater. “I kept a steak breakfast burrito warm for you. I also noticed you were looking around for kaf yesterday, Miles, Estéril, and I don't drink it, but I made you a thermos you can take with you.”

  “Gosh Molly, that is so sweet, thank you very much.” I was a bit embarrassed by the thoughtfulness and consideration, but I wasn't going to turn down the food and drink either. I wanted to ask her about cleaning the RV, I wanted to ask her about anything from her past. But I didn't know what to say so instead I said, “Thanks.”

  My face turned red and I grabbed the kaf and burrito and headed back to the Dozer.

  I double checked my tools and the machine to make sure the intruders hadn’t messed anything up. My set of BDwerks? auto-hammers, vario-wrenches, dyna-drill and the rest were all accounted for. I still couldn't find my sonic multi-tool but I think I left that in a drawer in the engineering trailer. Finding everything in order, I summoned four synths to tackle the rear forks. The forks were a type of lift arm and hitch that allowed a variety of attachments to be mounted on the rear. You could also stab things with them. Sunny had managed to bend them during the ambush. I had two synths brace the fork and another two leverage it straight. I was able to feel the stress and have them align them. It wasn't perfect but I think it would work for the attachment’s Sunny owned.

  I had them repeat the process on the second fork. After that was complete I inspected and repacked the hydraulics on the front. It was damaged but not leaking and I was able to repair it as good as new. That left the armor and windows. I was able to figure out a good process of refinishing the armor yesterday, and I had a lot of it to do today. But the windows had me stumped. I thought about it for a while and I realized that for the smaller holes I could grind down the surface, reapoxy the holes, and resurface the window. I grabbed what I needed from my ‘bus of treasure’ and tested it on a side window. After a few false starts it looks like it would hold. It would need to be cured overnight to be sure, but I think it would work.

  That didn't solve the giant hole in the front windshield however. I don't know how a dinosaur got its horn in there, or what caused the hole. But it was massive. I mean a borg could shove a fist through it, and well, probably did. After examining the window and its dimensions, I realized that two new/ used trailers had smaller windows ringing the upper walls. I recall my architecture book calling them clerestory windows.

  >>Not sure that was a useful fact to know Big Fe, but there you go.>>

  I now had the hard task of figuring out what trailer to salvage and what trailer to keep. I knew I wanted to use the shell to armor and upgrade our vehicles, so one had to go. In the end, it looked like the used one was in better condition than the one damaged in shipping. I have no idea how they cracked the box frame, and bent it out again, but it wasn't going to cut it for me. So cut it, I did. I removed three windows and instructed a few driver synths to cut down the walls, remove the windows and bracing, and pile them neatly on top. Now we had another flatbed.

  I lugged the three windows back to the dozer- I should have had a synth help. I dropped the windows on the ground and took a breather. Grabbing my synkaf thermos and looking up at the sky, the clouds from last night had continued. So I don't know what fekking beautiful day Uncle Sunny was talking about this morning. At least the kaf was still piping hot as I took my break.

  I finally got back to work. After a few minutes of tinkering, I figured out how to sandwich the two windows together to make a new front windshield. Good as new? Well it should work for Sunny at least. I was about to switch back to the armor when I got a notice from a sentry synth. A few delivery trucks were here. At last our weapons and armor had arrived!

  I dropped everything and ran to the edge of camp. It looks like Bill himself had brought the weapons.

  “Thanks for the delivery Bill, I didn't think you would come, and I didn't think you would cross the canyon for us. Thank you!”

  Bill removed a cigar from his mouth and said, “Oh think nothing over it. Happy to provide the service to my loyal customers, plus Sunny paid for the ferry.” he said with a laugh.

  The other vehicle was driven by two men in BDwerks? outfits. They seemed less inclined to chat, so I had them drop off the pallets of cyborg armor, parts, and the five motorcycles. Right, I forgot about those enduro-bikes. And they had the hand held weapon and gear I bought too. That will be fun to play with.

  If I had that shotgun hammer last night, things might have gone differently, or well not.

  I settled up with Bill and the BDwerks? delivery men and sent them on their way. Now I had even more stuff to keep track of, I needed a quartermaster, or den mother. I had the synths move everything to the new trailer I didn't demolish, except the enduro bikes which went on one of the flatbeds with the other vehicles and mining equipment.

  I really wanted to play with the new toys but I forced myself back to work, and back to the Dozer. I was close to wrapping up one vehicle. 14 more to go? I cleaned up the mess that I had left at the worksite and returned to armor repair. I got into a rhythm of removing the armor segment, aligning, patching, and buffing the damaged spots. By mid afternoon I had finished. Sunny’s Dozer was good as new. Well almost, the green paint job was a mess.

  Crap paint! I knew I forgot something.

  Heh, I knew how to solve this.

  Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.

  I fired off an urgent message to Sunny and asked him to pick up some universal paint before he heads out tomorrow. Enough for all our vehicles. He would need to find a shop open early tomorrow or do it now. But I didn't care, we had a convoy to paint.

  I now had time to take stock of all our shopping:

  *Gulp* I really should not have done the math. Dang ammo is expensive. And that was cheap armor from BDwerks?, with a discount! UC 3.5M on supplies, weapons and repairs.

  >>Fe! We cannot afford to fight, ever again!>>

  If we didn't find that Mach 1 armor we would be so far in the hole we would need Sunny’s mining equipment just to survive. How does anyone survive out here with repair bills like this?!

  My glum financial accounting was interrupted by the appearance of my second Squad Leader. Wait, “Did I finish building you?”

  “No” was its terse response.

  “So? How and what?”

  “John is still inventorying our assets for 21 hours and counting.”

  “John?” I was still confused by how my second Squad Leader was up and about.

  The cyborg equipped synth in front of me managed to sigh, “Yes, Prime, you instructed John, then designated Squad Leader Alpha, to identify new designations. John, as directed, talked to me, and passed on the instructions. John would have briefed you, but as I already said, he is still conducting assessment inventory and management.”

  I was slowly getting my head around this, “okay but how are you up and walking? I haven't fully integrated your controller or calibrated you to your current inherent telemetry.”

  “Correct. I am walking, with difficulty. John shared his version of body control which was sufficient for the task at hand. He shared his speech core, but I find his selections suboptimal and will rectify them going forward.”

  I asked, “You don't like his diction and lexicon?”

  “Correct.”

  Pausing for a few moments, I continued “Okay, and what is your name then?”

  “I will be called Grace, Gabby.”

  “And how did you guys come up with those names?” I was really interested to figure out how they arrived on such… conventional names.

  “Well, John originally wanted Adam and Eve, but I vetoed that. I suggested the more appropriate variant Alpha and Bravo, but he vetoed those out of hand. We both eliminated Alpha and Beta as too derivative to the names you gave us, and not in keeping with the assignment. Next was Bit and Byte”

  “Wait, it wasn't an assignment, just a question and a suggestion. I didn't order you! And Which one is Bit and which is Byte? Oh, nevermind.” I trailed off.

  “As I was saying, we also explored Robert, Fred, and Ada, but in the end we both felt Grace suited me, and John suited him.”

  “So you both picked gendered names too?”

  “Yes.”

  “Glad to see you kept John’s terseness. Well I am happy for you both. Great job selecting names for yourselves! I would like to inspect you to make sure everything is good to go.” I wanted to make sure the controller and sensoring integration was working properly.

  “Understood, would you like to do that now, here?” Grace asked me.

  “Uh, why don't you take a seat at the campfire and I can look you over there.”

  Without saying anything further, Grace, who looked like every other synth right now, turned, and walked to a seat around the campfire and sat down. Miles was having dinner with Molly and Estéril and gave me a look of curiosity.

  I was caught up in my own thoughts and mumbled, “Welcome back Estéril.”

  I tuned out the rest of their conversation and began to explore Grace’s augmented controller. I had used the exact same hardware setup for both Squad Leaders, I would need to check and see if this synth suffered from the same common mode failure. It looks like my first Squad Leader, err John, had copied his entire physio-mechanic profile into Grace. It was close enough given that they were running the same hardware. But it wouldn't work long term, each system had minor variances and flaws that overtime would compound and cause the synth to stumble or worse. But it was a great starting point for calibration. The language portion, I didn't entirely understand. The language and reasoning part of the compute fabric was the most complex and, frankly, hard to figure out. I don't know exactly how he decided what to copy, and what not to, I would need to look at that more in depth later. I rooted around to explore some of the library dependencies, and sensor/ telemetry permission, but everything appeared in order.

  “Alright Grace I will need to calibrate you for long term operations, but we will need to get you into the upgraded heavy infantry cyborg armor for that.”

  “I understand.” Grace responded, with a slight hesitation in her tone.

  “What, do you have a problem with your voice processor, tell me Grace.” I didn't understand the vocal variance I just heard.

  “No, Prime, no problem at all. But...” Grace was clearly hesitant.

  I was a bit excited, John had never been this, emotional, “What? Please tell me.”

  “It’s just that I would prefer to use a UAI Grasshopper Interdictor suit, plodding slowly along the ground sounds so banal.”

  “Banal” I repeated.

  “Yes, it means boring or trite.” Grace explained to me.

  Miles laughed out loud, evidently everyone was listening to our conversation.

  “Right, of course you can use whatever you want. We need a scout service and air force anyway.”

  “Oh, Gabby, thank you, I appreciate the freedom you afford me.”

  Shaking my head, to clear my thoughts, who knew working with synths would be this confusing. “Well, uh, that is it for now Grace, you can return to your… to the other synths, please.”

  “Right away.” Grace sat up, swayed for a moment, but got out of her chair and headed back toward the bus with synths. Watching her carefully walk away, I realized that the bus was shot full of holes and amazingly still drove. I need to fix that for them.

  >>Add that to the list Big Fe.>>

  I sat and stared into the fire and lost track of time. Molly had finished cleaning up the kitchen and Miles and Estéril had left. She came over to me and quietly handed me a plate of food. I continued to think about Squad Leader development and the need for socialization. I looked down, and the plate was empty; I wondered what Molly had made.

  A large yawn stirred me out of my reverie. “Good night Molly, thanks for…..dinner.” Looking around, I realized Molly had gone too. I stashed my plate in the outdoor kitchen cleaner, and headed back to Gretta, I was ready for bed.