The Withered Land: Dragons and Marauders

Dragons and Marauders, Part Fourteen

Synthetic Alpha Progenitors were considered threats of an extreme nature to the security and domestic sovereignty of the peoples of Teshiwahur. As such, the Emperium had engaged in a relentless campaign to identify them, contain them and otherwise wipe them from the face of the planet. Ultra-synths were designated a danger to every natural born human being in the hegemonic dominion, though, truth be told, not one had ever so much as committed even the slightest of crimes.

Pnoom-Ogg and Pnoom-Aig knew him by his true name, which was "Kodespawn 77". Alternately, the name under which he was hiding in plain sight was that of "Emaris Staurqe". For the last five solar heliars, he had been Ureeon Dockyard's Master Engineer. He did not welcome the presence of his fellow Synthetics. He had fought hard to retain his anonymity among the crew of the drydock and did not appreciate being exposed and singled out as a non-human variant created by a shadowy, secretive government program.

"Whatever it is, I am not interested. Leave me be," he said as he stood framed in the machine shop's open doorway, silhouetted against the panoramic mountain vista outside.

"Apologies, Brother Kodespawn. We respect your need for privacy. We require nothing from you but the answer to a few brief questions...," Pnoom-Aig said.

"I am not your brother and it has been many, many long heliars since I have referred to myself by the appellation 'Kodespawn', a term I rejected as a label to designate my status as a slave to the human tyrants who manufactured my body," he said. "My name is Emaris Staurqe."

He strolled deeper into the machine shop and his features took on definition under the ceiling's pale fluorescent lights.

He wore a tunic of dull twilight-purple onto which body contouring designs were etched in pewter-gray piping. Across his wide, massively muscled, chest was a slate-colored breastplate onto which the bas-relief design of the head of a roaring bear was affixed. Banded, silvery-gray gauntlets covered his bulging forearms to just below his elbow joints and a broad mahogany-hued leather belt enwrapped his narrow waist. His leather trousers were purple and a series of chrome bolts ran down the outside of each powerful leg. He wore knee-high boots of a pale graphite color with knee-guards onto which the same fearsome bear's face as on his torso was engraved. Staurqe's hands were huge, veiny and callused tools of corded muscle, the thick fingers wrapped in graphite-colored tape. And on his head was a chrome and gray helmet bisected by a tall, mohawk-like ridged crest, the faceplate of which allowed only teasing glimpses of the fine-featured aristocratic face underneath.

He didn't look like any common Tekk-mechanic of any kind that Pnoom-Ogg and Pnoom-Aig had ever seen.

He looked like a war-god.

Pnoom-Ogg allowed himself a raised eyebrow as an external reaction to the Kodespawn's appearance.

"Where are your co-workers? Surely, you do not work here alone," he said.

"It is time for this work shift's dining break," Staurqe said, his manner reserved and diffident. "Most of that break will be spent lying about the romantic conquests they supposedly experienced last night and the rest will be a lot of grousing about their workloads here at an aging mountaintop dockyard where Management is actively disinterested in what it takes to keep this dilapidated mess running. Wine and mead will be consumed at a rate and volume not recommended for those working around physically heavy, technologically complex machinery."

"I take it this happens regularly enough that they no longer have any expectation you would join them," Pnoom-Aig remarked. "A good cover for the fact you're planning on leaving. So you took advantage of their absence and changed your uniform."