Chapter Text
There was a saying in Kaon’s foundries: Copper tarnishes; iron rusts; and sentio metallico rots from the inside out .
The factory floor tasted of death, an acrid burnt-plastic note in the stifling air. Gingerly Knock Out knelt in the laborer’s sprawling shadow. He’d fallen where he’d stood. A lazy coil of cobalt-blue smoke rose from his vents; at a whiff of it, Knock Out’s processor reeled.
“Kaput. Fifteen tons of high-quality scrap. Just shovel him into the smelter.”
His saw snagged on the mech’s breastplate. He lifted it aside, neither blinking at the heat nor retching at the smell; beneath, the Spark chamber was blackened and corroded. A mechanical failure.
It was murder, he supposed, to work a mech until he dropped—
But surplus warframes were cheap, and Knock Out’s time was dear. And he had little of it to waste on sentiment.
The mech’s blue-steel faceplate was contorted in something very like relief.
Dusk was falling, the sky black with petcoke. The vast and surly shadows of Kaon leaked into the foundry yard. At the door Knock Out lingered, jabbing the flickering time-clock with a forefinger. Cursing, for all the good it did.
His chronometer ticked away the nanocycles. It’d been three solar cycles since the laborer’s Spark chamber had blown; in all that time he’d seen neither sun nor moons, nor anything but his company berth and the factory floor and his shabby company clinic. He’d had not a klik to spare for anything else.
With every tick his temper rose, his circuits heating.
So he was only half-watching, then, when the guards hustled the warframe past. He had for an instant an impression of size, of an almost languid swagger, and Knock Out whistled (out of habit). None acknowledged him.
Nanocycles passed.
The branding-iron blazed and sparked in the velvety dark; the warframe yelled, in a voice that rocked the night. Knock Out gritted his teeth. “Shame,” he muttered to no one, “what they do to such fine-looking things—”
But it was business as usual, and though his tanks lurched, he turned back to the time-clock.
There were two routes to the foundry floor.
By a thousand bribes and whispered threats, Knock Out had earned his admission to medical school. He’d had no money to pay tuition—but he’d signed the contract of indenture with nary a thought—
Ten thousand stellar cycles’ service had seemed unimaginably distant; he’d been young. He’d reckoned that medical school would never end. That he’d never find himself on a Kaonian factory floor, not really —
Anyone might have signed the contract. An understandable mistake.
His chronometer ticked off the stellar cycles, ceaseless and indifferent. He was on his eighty-fourth. Even his time was not his own. Convicts, he often muttered, had shorter sentences.
The second route was, like all things in Kaon, brutally simple: one could be sold .
The warframe’s hammer kept time as reliably as a chronometer.
The glow of the smelters leaked through the blinds, pooling as bright as daylight on Knock Out’s surgical table. Picking out the gleaming, half-melted burns of his latest patient. Another casualty of molten steel.
All his senses did double duty. He smelled incinerated rubber and slagged sentio metallico ; even from a kilometer away he felt the heat radiating from the laborer’s burns.
And his hands worked, faster than his optics could follow. He probed ragged gashes, feeling for the juddering pulse. Pinched off carbonized fuel lines. Pulled blackened, crumbling rubber away from raw metal. By touch alone he found popped rivets and strained cables—
The foundry had a rhythm, the steady clang of the warframe’s hammer. Like the pulse of a defiant Spark. Knock Out’s hands slipped into the rhythm.
A medic’s hands were his livelihood.
Knock Out’s chronometer ticked away the joors in his shift. Between patients he found himself rapping his claws on his surgical table. As if the rhythm had him in its clutches. As if his Spark reverberated to that punishing beat.
His hands ached, he found, as he listened.
At the beginning of his shifts he dawdled on the steps to his clinic, overlooking the foundry floor. Dawdled—and watched.
The warframe’s shadow almost blotted out the scorching glow. His faceplate gleamed with condensation, his optics as bright as smelted steel. He laughed with every blow; his pistons slammed home in an easy rhythm, and massive cables flexed. As his hammer fell, the world shook—
“Impressive,” muttered Knock Out, and he wiped condensation from his own brow, despite himself, and whistled a lonely whistle.
He could reattach a severed fingertip in twenty-three hammer-blows’ time. It took forty-nine blows’ time to preserve the mangled finger’s function.
Knock Out was not paid for acts of mercy. He took twenty-three blows to reattach the finger, cheaply.
Warframes had short lifespans, and shorter still on factory floors. In the end, gravity and friction were deadlier than the battlefield.
“Pity, isn’t it?” Knock Out told a blank-faced labor-caste. Her arm hung in tatters and strips, a rat-king of mangled plating and tangled wires. Knock Out sterilized his left hand, then his right; his fingers buzzed with anticipation. “Here today. Gone tomorrow. Fine-looking things. Get ‘em while they’re hot—”
She did not appreciate his humor.
He counted down the days. Through the cracked blinds he watched the warframe; his fingers flexed, aching to wipe the grime and smoke-stains from that broad back.
In the depths of the night the warframe bellowed Helexian work-songs, lustily and badly. His voice was almost jubilant, though cracked with pain—
(And Knock Out tapped his fingers on his table, keeping time.)
The warframe had two megacycles’ labor left in him, perhaps. No frame could sustain that pace forever—
Knock Out supposed he’d miss the view.
The sun was setting in earnest as Knock Out sauntered into the foundry. The big warframe was not at his post.
Knock Out found him hunched over, cradling his right arm, by the clinic’s closed door. No — he thought, and not yet—
The warframe raised his head. “Had a little accident.” A trickle of Energon ran through the soot on his cheek. He grinned, with a little whimper. “You gonna recycle me?”
No quip came. Over the subterranean rumble of the foundry floor, he heard—bright and clear—the whistle of dry air through his own vents.
The warframe sank back, with a rusty groan, into the dust. “I’ve got a lotta life in me still.”
His smirk was all the sweeter for the pain in it. The air between them shimmered with heat.
“Yes,” said Knock Out, and, “yes. Don’t you just?”
Three quartexes passed, feeling at once like millennia and like no time at all.
The night was stifling; the cacophony of the foundry-floor felt muffled, as if the silence in the clinic had its own choking presence.
Knock Out poured warm bootlegged Energon into two cubes. After a moment’s thought, he added a double measure of Engex to each. “Cheers.”
Breakdown drank hesitantly at first, making his ration last; then his pretty optics widened, and he gulped the rest down, thumping his chest and coughing.
“First time?” said Knock Out, raising a brow.
Breakdown managed to look worldly, sprawling like a barroom tough. “Been a dry spell.” A neat black scorch-mark branded his left palm; he grimaced as he waved his hand.
“Mm.” And then: “Y’know, I’ve been told I’m a real knockout, but hurting yourself to see me again—” He savored the words, rolled them around his mouth like rich Betelgeusian brandy. “Music to my audials.”
“Don’t flatter yourself. Not just to see you.” Breakdown flexed his fingers; they were startlingly long, Knock Out noticed, and dextrous. (His own fingers twitched.) “Had to get off the line.”
The Energon left a queasy film in Knock Out’s mouth. He swallowed. Plunged his hands, for long nanocycles, into the autoclave. The heat was grounding.
“All right. Show me the goods.”
His own fingers tingled. His processor rattled with anticipation. Breakdown smelled of overheating rubber, musky grease, and petcoke; on him it was virile.
Knock Out took Breakdown’s hand in both of his own, turning it over. Static jumped between them, and he hissed but tightened his grip. Felt for the scarred metal.
Breakdown watched him, with optics as lively as fire.
“Not much of a burn.”
“Didn’t need to be,” said Breakdown mildly. “Got the job done.”
Knock Out traced lazy circles around Breakdown’s knuckle-studs. The sheer strength in those thick fingers made him gasp; an effort to maintain cool indifference. “You’re left-handed?”
“Not really.” Breakdown shrugged. He talked with his hands, Knock Out noticed; his fingers curled, interlacing with Knock Out’s. Their fingertips brushed. “Had to pick one of ‘em. Didn’t matter which. Sooner or later, they’re both gonna break down—”
He said it casually.
Knock Out’s grip tightened on Breakdown’s wrist, feeling for the dings in the cheap paint and wax. “Show me the other one.” Anything to prolong this moment. Anything to keep Breakdown off the foundry floor for one cycle, two cycles, a breem. To prolong his life.
“Should get back to work,” said Breakdown. But he made no move to leave.
“The other one , Breakdown.”
He took Breakdown’s right hand. Marveled at the solid weight of it. “What’s a little time-theft between friends?” He felt for what he could not see: imbalanced pistons; snagged wires; and always, the worn-down edges of aging plates.
It was agonizing; it was unbearable. He drew it out, until he thought his circuits might scorch with desire.
“Looks like you could use a fresh screw —”
And then he was burying his face in Breakdown’s knuckles, all thoughts of medicine forgotten.
Like thieves they carried on, in stolen moments in Knock Out's clinic. Breakdown burned himself three times in a quartex; after that, Knock Out taught him how to fake a virus.
In hushed voices, they wove mad plans. They'd burn the foundry down in the night; no, they'd shove the foreman into the smelter; no, they'd rig the smelter to blow and sneak away, unnoticed in the chaos—
"They won't miss you," said Breakdown. "They can get another doctor—"
"Ouch," said Knock Out, raising his brows. "I was top-of-the-line. Very expensive."
And indentured doctors were.
"I was cheap," said Breakdown, and in the light leaking through the blinds, his lopsided grin gleamed.
They kept their backs to the camera. (The foreman could read lips at a hundred meters, it was said.) Knock Out ran clever fingers along Breakdown's pistons, feeling for injuries that weren't there.
But some nights, Breakdown did not have to feign injury. His agonized groans lingered in Knock Out's memory, so vivid and so sweet; heat rolled off him as if he carried the smelter in his breast. He smelled of burnt rubber and greasy metal, and Knock Out drank deep of that, as if in his sense-memory he could hold Breakdown with him.
"Such a pretty thing," Knock Out would mutter. "Maybe I'll keep you for myself—"
Breakdown would snort, every time.
"The big boss's stolen so much from us," Knock Out would whisper into his audial. "Why not steal a little back?"
And as Knock Out leaned in to check Breakdown's twisted shoulder, they'd steal a kiss, too.
And then half a quartex would pass without a word between them. For they were watched, always watched—
"Pit-damned lousy job you're doing," said Forge. "That big lug's been out of order a dozen times, if he's been off once—" His voice carried, a strident whisper over the roar of the smelter.
"Hard to call that my fault," said Knock Out with an easy shrug. "You work him like machinery."
"He is machinery." Forge glinted, all gilding and silver inlay; he shimmered like a mirage in the hot foundry air. "Next time you fix my property, fix it good. Or—"
And he placed cool fingers to the nape of Knock Out's neck, as a mnemosurgeon might.
"Yes, yes," said Knock Out. "The old stabby-stabby." But he shivered. "I'll behave."
"We paid for your education," said Forge with a laugh. "That's our property too, Doctor, and you oughtn't give us reason to repossess."
The smelter crackled; the hammer fell. Breakdown's voice reverberated through the foundry, raised in booming song: "It's a wretched hard life in Kaon—"
Knock Out had six joors each day to bathe, refuel, and recharge; he lay awake that day for five joors, shaking.
And for nights to come, his sole companion was Breakdown's voice. At times, the other foundrymechs picked up the refrain; more often Breakdown sang a bitter solo.
"A mech's made out of steel, bots, and a mech's made outta iron—"
"You got that right," muttered Knock Out, listening. And with every swing, he swore he could hear the squeak of Breakdown's shoulder-joint wearing down, centimeter by centimeter, century by century.
"—and a mech's made outta scrap and slag, to fuel the hungry fires—"
Or on other nights:
"Got a pretty mech in Nova Cronum, send him every scrap I get—"
And Breakdown's hammer kept a furious pace.
"—he'll be living free and easy while I'm smelting in the Pit—"
"Don't count on it," said Knock Out, and he wiped condensation from his own brow at the thought.
Perhaps Forge had threatened Breakdown, too, for he made no appearance at Knock Out's clinic door that quartex.
Yet between verses he whimpered, and Knock Out clenched his jaw until his motor squealed.
"They're worried," murmured a blast operator as Knock Out debrided her burns. "Worried we'll talk to each other."
With a tug, sharper than it ought to have been, Knock Out pulled a brittle chunk of carbonized rubber free. "They let you wretches sing, don't they?"
She met his gaze, her optics round and bright as the twin moons. "You see all of us eventually." And then: "You've got to stop this. You're educated. The Guild might listen to you."
"Or they'll lobotomize me," said Knock Out. "Good day to you."
And in the darkness of his clinic, he snarled wordless and helpless, his hands balling into fists.
Breakdown's voice echoed, rough and sweet, through the foundry. "Got a mech in Nova Cronum, gives me pain and gives me strife—"
Knock Out tasted his own engine-grease, hot with indignation. "Going to blow out that shoulder, big boy."
"But to touch that shiny armor, bots, I'd gladly give my life—"
"You will," muttered Knock Out, "and I'm going to call your time of death, pretty thing, and—"
And he hauled off. With a short cry he buried his fist in the wall. It took him an instant to realize that he was shaking, not from the pain of it, but from the helpless injustice.
"Darling," he mouthed to Breakdown as he left. If Breakdown saw, he gave no sign.
Yet something moved in the darkness, the suggestion of blank visor and writhing cables.
And when Knock Out stepped next into his clinic, someone had rearranged his surgical tools. For an instant he gaped at the audacity of it, at this latest small violation—
—but then his gaze found the data slug, slipped snugly between scalpel and hand-drill.
So in his company habsuite he rewired his terminal. Red Kaonian sunlight pooled, through the slit of a window, on tangled wires and broken chips. He was no engineer; he cursed, blinking away exhaustion. Twice he nearly abandoned the effort.
But as the sun slipped below the city skyline, he inserted the data slug, and the jailbroken terminal clicked on with a hiss.
The words flickered, almost insultingly simple: WILL YOU RISE UP?
And below them:
TOWARDS PEACE.