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The drilling rig caught the light of the star overhead and reflected it back down on the humans who were busily getting the device to function. Scarecrow gripped the base of the structure with one arm and slowly fed cable through the other. He kept a significant portion of his attention focused on the engineer who was directing the construction process. The human was barking out orders in every direction but seemed to have no specific instructions for him at the moment so Scarecrow continued to let the cable play out. The rig reached the desired height and slammed into place. The resulting clang filled the air with the sound of wasted energy and Scarecrow couldn’t quite restrain a wince. Human construction methods were wasteful almost to the point of comedy.
But it did get the job done. The energy of the work force suddenly changed as the humans began fastening the primitive bolts that would hold the structure together. Scarecrow stepped back from the frame and wrapped the cable around the support intended for it. One of the engineers darted up and began securing the cable in place with a grunt that sounded like absent minded gratitude in Scarecrow’s general direction. That was a surprising enough level of social interaction for an engineer caste, but then she spoke.
“Perfect tension there,” she commented, “thanks Scarecrow. We would never have gotten this up so quickly without your help.”
“You are welcome,” he replied, reverting to his lights in surprise.
He felt an idle wash of irritation as his lights reflected off of her face as she turned back to her work. He and Ben spent as much time as the recovering human could put into working out proper translation matrices but so far he had to be content with mostly one way communication.
“There we go!” the human announced as she sprang lightly to her feet. “Ava. Deadman two is secure. How are deadmen one and three?”
“Three is secure,” Ava’s voice came over the radio. “West and the Robot are just finishing up one.”
“The scabby, mis-formed-scrap turns out to be useful when he’s properly supervised.” Scarecrow said in amber shades.
The human tensed and for one terrifying moment Scarecrow thought his habit of saying whatever passed through his processor was finally about to corrode his joints. However a quick study of the human showed that her eyes were turned away from him. She couldn’t have seen what he said. However her frame was rigid and her heart-rate had spiked. She was clearly fighting to control her breathing.
“One and three are both secured now!” Ava’s voice announced after a moment. “Should I send the boys over to help with the bolting?”
The human beside him drew in a long breath and squeezed her eyes shut.
“Angela?” Ava’s voice came again. “Slag these things. Angela I think the radio’s are fritzing again. West! Get over here and-”
“Copy that Ava,” Angela said in artificially even tones. “Yes, send the boy’s to tighten up the bolts. I’ll be at the control center checking the pressure valves.”
The woman turned and paced quickly back towards the control center without looking at Scarecrow. The bronze robot indulged in a furious flex of his spines even as he controlled his display. There was no reason to distract the mechanics by letting them see him red with fury. Letting his hatred of the scabby, blue and gold pilot impeded the functionality of the colony wasn’t a mistake he was going to make.
Still it was difficult to restrain his sympathetic rage when Angela seemed to share his sensations so closely. She clearly despised the blue plated murderer as much as he did. For much the same reasons too. While her grievance was less encompassing, Scarecrow didn’t imagine that her emotions were less intense because she had only lost one loved one to their brutal tactics. Scarecrow shook himself out in an attempt to dismiss the thought thread.
“Scrap, that’s gorgeous!” an appreciative voice observed.
Scarecrow glanced over curiously and saw the mechanic Andre staring at him with fascinated approval on his face. Andre was one of the larger mechanics, with a frame developed enough to meet the qualifications for a human warrior caste. He was currently leaning against a strut of the drilling rig with a torque multiplier hanging loosely in one hand. Scarecrow felt a warm glow at the praise. It was vanity he knew. But...it was nice to be appreciated again. Even when Craig had kept the guards respectful grateful pity was the best emotional response he could expect from the humans.
“You have aesthetically pleasing movements as well,” Scarecrow replied.
Andre squinted up at his display and a wry smile pulled at his lips.
“Adler best get working on that translation,” Andre commented. “I’d rather like to know if that was a thank you or a buzz off.”
Scarecrow tilted his head to the side. Andre had a good point. This lack of communication was hampering his ability to work with the humans. Scarecrow recalled the better times with the guards. The oddly effortless way Craig had understood him. The difference then was that he had been able to exchange touches with the humans. While it was clear that human skin couldn’t conduct the clear impressions that his own outer matrix could perhaps they were not numb.
“Well, there is only one way to test that theory,” Scarecrow said as Andre bent over a bolt and started to secure the safety wires.
Scarecrow stepped forward and lightly tapped the exposed skin on Andre’s shoulder. The chaotic human lights danced up his limbs but Scarecrow didn’t flinch away from it. He had long since grown accustomed to the alien feeling and while he didn’t court it it no longer repulsed him. He could even see the natural beauty in it when his processors was clear.
“Yeah?” Andre glanced up at him curiously.
Scarecrow dipped his head and used the broad surface of the cranial to ridge give a friendly nudge to Andre’s chest. The blow unbalanced Andre more than Scarecrow intended. The human frame was, after all, seemingly devoid of the necessarily third balance point and Andre ended up sprawled on his rump in the dirt, one had grasping the frame and the other splaying to an almost normal base on the ground. Scarecrow had kept the light contact with his talons on Andre’s shoulder, moving with his fall now he released the touch, uncertain how Andre would interpret his closeness.
“The scrap?” Andre demanded squinting up at him as he processed the interaction.
“I appreciated your compliment,” Scarecrow said, putting as much friendly intent into his face as he could muster. “I am glad to have someone of your skill helping the colony.”
Andre stared up at his lights for several long beats of the human’s heart before bursting out in a laugh.
“I guess that’s a thank you then,” Andre said, shifting and holding up a hand.
Scarecrow pondered the gesture for a moment before recognizing it as a request to aid the awkward bipedal frame in rising and reached down to pull the human up.
“Funny that you robots like a friendly head butt,” Andre noted as he bent to begin securing the bolts on this side of the structure. “I haven’t exchanged those since I was a tyke.”
“Well if a social species has heads it seems a logical use of them,” Scarecrow offered with an amused twitch of his dorsal plates.
“They can’t sense your lights when their dorsal side is turned towards you,” came a tentative voice from behind Scarecrow.
Instantly his platting clamped tight to his frame and Scarecrow felt his display burn red with generations of rage. He kept his display focused on Andre’s back, taking in the flexing of the human’s micro-cables visible under his skin in an attempt to calm himself. When he had calmed down to a respectable amber instead of a murderous red he turned and faced the blue and gold pilot.
“I am aware of that,” Scarecrow flashed out. “If you recall, I’ve spent orders of magnitude more time among humans than you have.”
Scarecrow felt something in him writhe with a feeling that was far too much like guilt as the blue and gold pilot flinched back from his venomous colors. By every scrap of his cable weaver he would not be made to feel like this murderer had the moral high ground over him. Not after the pilot and his crew had stolen so much from him. Still, whispered a soft voice in his processors, he is so very young, and he is but a pilot after all.
“A navy man like us,” a soft voice said over his shoulder.
Scarecrow refused to look at the ghost as it laid a warm, comforting, shaking hand on his joint. He refused to listen to the gentle spark as the blue and gold pilot shifted uneasily on his awkward bipedal feet. His display danced with unease and confusion with a trace of determination running through it. The maddeningly persistent little irritant would keep attempting to … Scarecrow didn’t even understand what he was trying to do. Make a peace that hadn’t existed since the creators had passed? Had barely existed before that?
“What do you want?” Scarecrow finally demanded.
The blue and gold flinched again and the precursors to a dozen thoughts flickered across his display before he settled on one clear idea.
“I want us to be able to work together,” the blue and gold said with full earnestness.
He hesitated and then glanced over to where his particular human friend, the one he had clearly grafted too, was trotting around the corner of the drilling rig with an armful of mineral samples and delighted lights dancing in his organic face.
“For their sake,” he added, almost as an after thought.
“I have been working for their sake since I crashed on their planet,” Scarecrow replied in cold blues. “Your presence has not made that any easier so far.”
Scarecrow watched frustrated anger dance through the blue and gold’s display at the statement. One the one talon very true, on the other talon blatantly false. The human came up to them and glanced uneasily between their faces; Scarecrows calm and blue, the other’s dancing with red sparks of anger. The child had to feel the irritation coming off of his graft.
“Hey,” the human said with a strained grin. “Everything’s okay with you two, right?”
“Everything’s fine Will,” the blue and gold said, quickly smoothing out his own lights.
The child smiled up at his graft and shifted the samples in his arms so he could reach out with one hand and grasp the blue and gold’s arm. The child had to be feeling the stress coming off of his graft but seemed to decide to ignore it in favor of starting a conversation about the minerals the drill had pulled up from the subsoil layers. Scarecrow very deliberately turned his spines toward the blue and gold and pretended to be focusing on the bolts Andre was busily tightening.
“Why are you putting grit in the works like this?” the blue and gold demanded in tones only audible to the two of them. “I am just trying to keep my family alive! I had thought that one of you, out of all of us, would understand that!”
Something cold and painful snapped inside Scarecrow and he felt his spines clamp tight to his frame. His display went glittering black. The blue and gold couldn’t have seen it but he seemed to sense Scarecrow’s rage and sensibly backed off, taking his small graft with him. When Scarecrow’s vision had cleared he saw that Andre was staring up at him with a wary expression on his face. The human’s hands were still gripping the torque multipliers that he was using to secure the bolts. His body was contorted to look up at Scarecrow.
“You okay Scarecrow?” Andre asked in a quiet tone.
“If you know enough to ask you should know the answer,” Scarecrow flashed out. “Red display, tight spines, tense cables.”
Unable to understand that, Andre continued to stare at him for several long moments as Scarecrow brought himself under a facsimile of emotional control. Andre shot a look over at the retreating back of the blue and gold and squinted.
“Didn’t he basically save your life?” Andre asked. “That normally wouldn’t torque off a human…”
Scarecrow glanced between the human and the blue and gold several times flexing his primary talons irritably. No matter what he felt around the blue and gold he found he couldn’t hold the mechanic's curiosity against him. Still, even if it were possible to explain the generations of wrong the blue and golds had done Scarecrow wasn’t going to, what had Craig called it? Air his dirty laundry in front of the humans.
Still Andre did deserve some sort of answer. Scarecrow gave a curt nod to get the mechanic’s attention and rotated his torso sideways so he could glare directly at the blue and gold’s back. He extended one arm horizontal to the ground and held in line with his chest. He clenched his opposite primary talons into a fist and dipped it down before raising it just above the level of his arm, and then extended the middle talon to it’s full length. He heard Andre break into choking laughter behind him and found wry amusement tinting his own display when he glanced down at the human now sprawled down in the dirt.
“Where?” Andre gasped. “Where, did you learn that?”
Well, that was easily enough to answer. One of his former guards was walking in a distant corner of the yard and Scarecrow pointed. Andre gave another burst of laughter and leisurely reached up to resume tightening the bolts.
“So we trap and enslave you and you decide to help us out of the goodness of your heart,” Andre said between grunts.
“Hardly,” Scarecrow replied as he reached over the human. “I have my own agenda and helping you is the most logical step towards fulfilling it.”
“And he saves your life,” Andre went on.
“Because he saw me as a useful tool,” Scarecrow interjected. “The same way his caste always views others.”
“And you flip him the bird after sending him packing,” Andre concluded. “Doesn't make a lick of sense to me, but hey, alien means different right?.”
Scarecrow flexed his spines to relieve the tension that had built up there and moved over to the next row of bolts. Despite still not being able to talk to the crew it was nice to be on the friendly end of their chatter once more. And once Ben got a proper translation matrix established he could tell them what he expected in return for helping them. A shiver of anticipation ran up his spines as he recalled the three instructions the human had given him, all those years ago.
“Find John Robinson, trust him, and don’t let him do anything stupid.”
Well, it had taken longer than expected, but two out of three wasn’t bad as the human’s said.