51 (First Part)

They have had 3 days of sunshine and 2 nights of cold. The jeep raises a tail of dust as it travels through the Australian desert. Ash drives, guided at all times by the visor signals. Erika operates the flamethrower, a task that at one point has lost any seriousness, and now turns the weapon from side to side, producing little sounds with her mouth as if she were destroying spaceships. Ash prays to Il Separatio that Erika controls the triggers well.

"Is there any sign of the slavers behind us?" Ash decides to open a chat.

Erika stops playing with the flamethrower, lays her arms on it, and looks at the horizon they leave behind.

"Not a soul" she sounds disappointed.

"Better, right? Shura is terrifying"

"Do you think so?"

Ash nods. During his short time in Thunderdome, she'd heard some pretty lurid stories

"I'm not impressed" Erika says. "She has a nice face and a great ass..... But it's too soft. Those watery buttocks would never beat me to death"

Erika goes back to playing. Ash considers that, to have that kind of conversation, she'd rather keep quiet.

An hour later the visor promises her that it won't be long. Half an hour later, she doesn't even need the visor, she is able to see the 20 meters of the North Star on the line that divides the sky from the earth. Ash increases the speed of the jeep, until they slow down under the shelter of the colossus.

The mechanic girl are fascinated by the vector armor, forms that seek resistance and speed, without ignoring elegance. The diadem on the forehead of the armor is three-pointed, with the center one being thicker and straighter than the side ones. If one takes into account all the sections that end in points, they give it the overall appearance of a blue star, or lightning bolt, traced by incandescent red lines. It is an exquisite piece of technology, built in zero gravity like the rest of the Elon Principality's specimens. Unlike the Crocodile, part of the North Star's arsenal is integrated into the design and cannot be admired with a cursory glance.

Erika gets out of the car and wastes no time, running and jumping to shoo away the herd of koalas that have made Chester's machine their new home. As the German takes off the creatures, Ash pulls out a pair of super-sticky gloves from his toolbox. Each of the thick mittens feature a series of pads, two on each finger and one on each thumb, covered with a special material that mimics the sticky behavior of lizard and spider legs, an effect compounded by several piston-driven suction cups around the pads, which create a tight squeeze when the climber applies pressure.

With a rope wrapped around his arm, she climbs from his feet to his knees, from his knees to his legs, from his legs to his abdomen, and from his abdomen carefully to his back. Above him are the mouths of the North Star's thrusters, five exhausts in all.

"The entrance will be higher up" Ash says to himself.

She continues ascending, not looking down to avoid vertigo. Sits on his left shoulder to catch his breath, from there she observes the back of his neck, protected by a curved plate connected to his head. Behind the skull he locates the lines that form the entrance to the cabin. Ash determines the safest path and climbs up.

The door has a square with the Elon Principality's X on it, but other than that it is totally smooth, with no switches or anything to pull on. Ash stops focusing on the door and starts drumming his fingers on the sides of the frame. Soon she discovers a small area that sounds hollow. Presses his hand, the area outlines itself as a square, and disappears as she moves to the right inside the shell, revealing a latticed sheet with a lock.

From the pockets of his baggy pants, Ash retrieves a cylinder that looks like the knob of a screwdriver with a straight, hollow tip, barely millimeters long and thick. She plugs the screwdriver into the lock, and with his thumb presses the button on the back end of the handle. A set of nanomachines emerge from the tube and obtain the exact shape of the inside of the lock. The knob vibrates indicating that the process is complete, Ash turns his wrist, and with a click the blade is opened. Presses the button again, the nanomachines return to their place, puts the screwdriver away, and takes a look at the emergency lever, which has a red handle in the shape of a claw.

Ash licks his lips, grabs the claw with one hand, and the other keeps it connected to the breastplate. The mitten is grippy enough to support twice his weight. She pulls, lets out a grunt as it takes all his strength, and finally, with a puff of released pressure arising from the armor, the entrance to the cockpit unfolds, revealing a short, narrow corridor leading into darkness.

The inner layer of the folding door has steps that can be used either up or down, depending on the angle of opening. She ties the rope to the door's hydraulic tubes and throws it to the bottom so that Erika can climb up. When the German woman reaches the top and notices Ash a little hesitant, she asks her what's going on.

"What if there's something inside?" Ash tries to keep her voice from shaking, but fails. She's scared of those koalas, they seem mischievous.

"Do you want me to go first?"

"Please"

Erika enter. Seconds later, she shouts that the coast is clear. The mechanic girl dive and reach the cockpit, dimly illuminated by light filtered from the open door, and by a fist-sized hole entering diagonally from the front of the armor, a beam of light that ends at the pilot's seat and passes through a hole left there. Erika bends down, and retrieves a deformed piece of metal from the floor.

"A projectile. The shock and acceleration must have left it that way. It was probably fired from an armor-slayer machine"

Armor-slayer is the colloquial name for the railguns. A type of weapon that can fire with great precision, metallic projectiles at speeds of up to 9000 km/h, without requiring the deflagration of any kind of chemical propellant, such as gunpowder. Thanks to a series of powerful magnets inside its mechanism, the kinetic energy released by the projectiles of a rail gun is far superior to the ammunition of firearms, which is why they are often used against the thick armor of medium and heavy armor.

Ash stares at the hole in the seat. She turns up the brightness on the visor, and the clarity allows him to see the blood that permeates the chair.

"Erika..."

"Yes?"

"This is Chester's armor?"

"That's what he said. I think it's too much of a machine for such a big fool"

"I mean, was he flying it when... He crashed"

"Ask him that. And concentrate on fixing this infernal metal machine, I'll find one of those koalas for lunch"

"I thought everyone in your class was..."

"Hm?"

"Vegetarians..."

"We're not hive mind! I love meat. There's nothing tastier than a good steak, besides pussy, of course"

"E-Eh?"

"Although if you think about it, a vagina is more like a cod"

"Please stop!"

Erika heads for the exit. Ash, her eyes focused on the hole in her forehead, doesn't notice that Erika also stops to look at the seat. The German squints her eyes, clenches a fist, taps her knuckles on the nearby metal a couple of times, and then leaves.

With Erika's help, Ash brings up a few gallons of liquid hydrogen to refill the North Star's tanks. The amount is far from full capacity, but the new addition, coupled with the remnants of unused fuel already in the armor, plus the conjecture that such a state-of-the-art machine is built to perform, Ash deduces that the North Star can give two to three flights, with a medium-intensity combat deployment. That's more than enough to get back to La Cuna quickly and destroy the slavering hosts.

The rest of the inspection is positive. On the outside the damage was minimal (if you ignore the hole), and inside the circuits are intact, more than capable of being put to work without incident. But then why won't it turn on?

After an intensive round of evaluation, and after nightfall, Ash comes to the conclusion that the machine is not mechanically damaged.

"It has to be the software" says near the campfire set up by Erika. She rests his back on the left door of the jeep, holding bits of koala smoke on the stick he's "Early tomorrow morning I'll go up with the PDA to apply a survey"

"You're the expert"

Erika sleeps in the car. Ash spends another couple of hours crawling in the North Star ducts before going and falling asleep in the pilot's seat. A stained bed is preferable to no bed at all, and those who say otherwise, Ash knows they've never experienced it.