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DESPITE PARKER’S INSTRUCTIONS to get some rest, 62 found himself huddled under a tarp on top of one of the sentry units too excited to sleep. The clouds had moved across the sky, and the moon shone bright over their metal bodies.
62 let out a long sigh. The field of sentries and the fifteen Defense soldiers they carried had bolstered everyone’s spirits, but the new bots created a couple of new problems. First, they now had fifteen bots to recharge and one solar charging station. Second, there were fifteen people with weapons who had never been above ground before.
N302 said she’d given them a crash course in desert living, but they were still jumpy.
Two of the sentries had plugged into the remote station, which had given them each a nearly full charge. But power wouldn’t filter back into its wires until the sun came up and the station was dead. They had the small portable charger, and Tinnie had used it to get a third sentry started, but it only had enough power to get the bot halfway full.
All told, they had one fully charged unit, three partials, and twelve that would die before they made it to Hanford if they didn’t get a turn on the charger. “Plus, the sentry they’ve been pulling apart at the gate,” 62 muttered to himself.
“Boy 62, are you all right?” N302 asked from the sentry he was sitting on.
He smiled under his mask, his automatic response when lying about feeling better than he did. “I’m fine. I’m glad you got the message I gave Pi.”
“He was very clear. You were being naughty.” N302 tittered a small giggle. “And when he told me I’d been shot... I knew it was time to do something.”
“I should have asked him to have you bring a power plant with you,” 62 joked. “Did you tell Pi you were coming out here?”
N302 tilted her head. “It was not necessary. A child his age should not be involved in such dangerous situations.”
“What about a child my age?” 62 asked.
“I have advised you to avoid putting yourself in danger. Yet, you insist on continuing to do it anyway.” N302 paused. “I am shutting down non-essential functions in all units to prevent further power loss.”
62 nodded at her. “Good idea.” A sound of something hard hitting metal thudded in the air. 62 looked around. “What was that?”
“Someone has hit my unit.” N302 turned her head in the direction of the sound. Another sentry parked there lifted its head. Her voice was small in the distance as she spoke from the distant body. “What are you doing?”
62 heard someone answer her in a low voice. The distant bot looked at 62 and N302 said, “It’s Tinnie and Parker. They are uncovering my power storage unit.”
“Why?” 62 dropped his tarp and climbed over her side. N302 watched him go, but didn’t reply. He picked through the shadows of the neatly parked sentries, their heads tracking his movement as he went. When he got close enough to the one chatting with the Men, he called out to them, “What are you doing?”
“We’re jerry rigging batteries together,” Parker answered. He held something up in his hands. They looked like two snakes at first, but when 62 got closer he could see that they were cables from the portable charging station. “We’re going to hook charged sentries to ones that aren’t. Spread the energy around.”
“You can charge a sentry with another sentry?” 62 asked.
“Sort of,” Tinnie said. He kneeled, looking into the dark recess between the unit’s wheels. Someone underneath the bot said, “You wanna explain this experiment?”
They crawled out of the black shadows beneath the sentry. They stood, brushing the dirt off themselves. “It’s easy,” Holly’s voice said. “Let’s say you have two glasses. One is full of water, and the other one is empty. You can pour water out of the full one into the empty one to fill it up, right?”
“Yeah,” 62 answered, “I guess so. But you still have an empty glass at the end.”
“Well, let’s say you take your full glass and you only pour half the water into the other one. Then, you don’t have an empty glass anymore. Instead, you’ve got two that are half full.”
“Okay,” 62 said, “but what does that have to do with batteries?”
“Pretend the glasses of water Holly’s talking about are batteries. If we can get the batteries to pass current to each other,” Tinnie said excitedly, “we can use the three sentries that are charged up to bump up the energy in three others.”
“And have six half-charged sentries?” 62 crossed his arms. “How’s that supposed to help?”
Parker handed the cables to Holly and she dragged them under the next sentry in the line. He turned and wrapped an arm around 62. “A half-charged battery doesn’t take as long to fill up as a dead one. And we don’t need all these batteries to be topped off all the way.”
62 looked up at the sentry. “We don’t?”
“No. We just need them full enough to go to Hanford, drive around a while, and come back here. If we spread the power around a bit, and get N302 to unplug from the charger at, say, eighty percent instead of a hundred, then we’ll be able to get at least six of these babies ready to go by midday tomorrow.”
“I don’t understand your reference to infant children,” N302 said. “Otherwise, this idea has a high probability of success. Units with sufficient power can transport passengers to a safe area outside of Hanford’s visual range while additional units are charging.”
Parker let go of 62’s shoulder and clapped his hands. “Exactly! It’ll be a bit of a pain in the butt, but it will save us time in the end. Charging up and riding the sentries in small groups will take less time than the whole camp walking.”
“Plus,” Tinnie said with a grunt as he reached between the wheels on the second unit, helping Holly with something 62 couldn’t see, “everybody can rest up while they’re waiting on either end of the line and keep a lookout in case something goes down in Hanford before we’re ready. If we send the Adaline soldiers first, we’ll have armed people on the ground, ready to act, even if the last bot hasn’t finished charging yet.”
“Yup,” Parker said, happiness overwhelming the tiredness of his voice. “It’s brilliant.”
“Thank you!” Holly’s voice called out from under the sentry.
“This is really Holly’s idea?” 62 asked in surprise
Tinnie backed away from the sentry. He put his hands on his back, stretching it with a grunt until he was standing upright again. He shrugged. “What can I say? The Girl’s got smarts.”
62 looked up at N302. “You think the guys you brought will be able to handle it out here? I know you set them up with some neat-looking gear, but what if they get confused and shoot one of us?”
“My people have been instructed to not attack unless an enemy attacks them first,” N302 stated. “I have also advised them of the Oosa’s red, white, and blue symbol, and their unique vehicle types.”
“How’d you manage to get them all geared up so nice and tidy, anyway?” Tinnie asked.
N302 looked down at him with an active unit. “Adaline has the capacity to manufacture anything. The Head Machine has been prepared for an altercation with an outside enemy since its earliest design.”
“I guess masks and bullets aren’t any harder to make than clones,” 62 said, troubled.
N302’s head nodded at him. “Indeed.”
“I’m not sure how well they’ll manage all this, but thank you for bringing them,” Parker said to the sentry.
“It is my duty to protect my people,” N302 replied. “All of my people.”