Chapter 10

"Price of Forgiveness"

It was not a complicated creature. Only three thoughts crossed it mind, things that had crossed the minds of humankind when it had stood around their fires on the darkest nights of pre-history, when the shadows had crept closer and the eyes that always watched were getting closer.

It looked over its shoulder. The eyes were blue, worried, and incredibly angry. They were getting slowly closer. He sped up, dust starting to cloud behind him.

But back to the thoughts. They were simple, and overall very direct.

Escape

It passed through the outskirts of the town. The Axiom loomed, a mile ahead of it.

Survive

The eyes were catching up.

Protect.

Time was running out.

Burn-E sighed. The cargo bay was a hotbed of activity, the sound hemmed in now that the cargo doors at one end had been shut. He stood motionless in the middle of it all. He didn't want to do this, be here or get involved in whatever was going on. It didn't feel right, and he shook his head slightly at the thought. But he was a welding unit, so they needed someone to cut the joints off the hunter.

It was funny in a way, Burn-E thought. There wasn't any designation marking on the robot that had been set in the center of the room, and no one had bothered looking too hard. An electronic boot had been clamped to its head, and a force field strap had been placed across its back. Someone had even put chains on the front arms like it was a circus animal. Stewards and security guards formed a loose perimeter around it, watching it for anything.

There was a group of repair bots, led by Senior, clustered in a group near the hunter, waiting for their part of the operation. They were going to have the job of pulling the robot's "brain". It needed to be put in storage, cut off from any energy source and hidden away. No one wanted a rogue intelligence plugged into a computer by some later generation and have it turn out that it was completely insane.

Burn-E's job was rather simpler. Cut the limbs from the body, as well as the bolt launchers. Simple enough. It just felt wrong. He couldn't define why, didn't even understand the doubts before him. Somewhere in the back of his mind there was the inkling that an element of some great truth that had always existed, and would always plague him for the rest of his life because of these next few minutes.

"Burn-E, we're ready to start," said Senior, the repair team begin to ready behind him. Burn-E sighed and turned on his torch, the little blue flame activating with a squeak. He wheeled over to the robot, right next to the left arm shoulder joint. It was a bit of a reach, but it would be coming down not going up, so it wasn't going to be a problem. He raised the cutting torch.

It seemed that there was a heavy knock on the chamber doors. Burn-E stopped, and the security guards turned towards the door, perplexed expressions on their faces, or in the cases of the robots a certain posture that showed mild confusion. The decommissioning was more or less a secret. Only essential personal had been told. The knock came again, and a small lump formed on the right door, like something had hit it with a sledgehammer. A few human guards reached for stun guns, while the stewards readied their containment fields. There was a buzz of readying weapons filled the cargo bay. There a third knock, but it was clearly the sound of metal hammering on metal, the doors bulging inward. A few guards backed behind more solid pieces of cover.

The fourth knock came, and the doors simple collapsed. They didn't fly through the air, and there was no dramatic explosion. They simple fell forward with a crash that all heavy objects make when they hit something marginally tougher than themselves. The GOBLY-N's momentum carried it through the doorway in a half dive. It landed on the floor with a crash to equal the doors. It looked at Burn-E with his torch inches from the hunter's left shoulder. It screamed.

It went on for approximately fifteen seconds. It was that kind of piercing scream that borders on the sound that mice hear when things with talons see them from the sky and what one could call the cries of the damned. It was deafening, echoing and re-echoing within the cargo bay. Humans had to cover their ears, and more that one robot warbled as its sensors were blinded. A few human guards raised stunners.

The GOBLY-N raised its remaining arm, and it his upturned hand he held a still shaking Wall-E. Every stunner was lowered and every containment field shut down. Wall-E was a talisman, the very symbol of hope of the colony. He was a hero. He'd brought them home. They'd never forgive themselves if they screwed up and hit him. Burn-E very quickly shut off the cutting torch, and backed away from the hunter.

The GOBLY-N gestured to the door, and his intent was rather clear. Every guard made a slow walk to the door, trying to keep their eyes on the GOBLY-N. Burn-E tried to follow, but the GOBLY-N blocked any path that he could see. After a few minutes, the guards and repair bots had formed a cordon around the outside of the door, all ready to charge in. The GOBLY-N advanced on the hunter, where Burn-E

It moved slowly, like it really didn't care there was mob of guards quite willing hunt down if it made a wrong move. It walked right up to the hunter. It paused. A few sparks fell from a hole in its armor plates.

It very carefully set the Wall-E down without even looking. Wall-E looked at Burn-E, gesturing to follow. Burn-E gestured for Wall-E to run, waving his clamp hand frantically. He had realized that the GOBLY-N hadn't meant for him to get out of this room untouched. Wall-E turned to leave, looking back for a second at Burn-E, and then speeding away. The GOBLY-N was kneeling right in front of the hunter, looking right into its visual units, ignoring Wall-E's departure.

The GOBLY-N began to make a slow inspection of the hunter. Burn-E realized that staying alive for a few more minutes depended on him not running. He heard the GOBLY-N move almost silently in its little circuit of the robot. There was the sound of whispering something in machine code. After a minute or two, he felt the GOBLY-N had pause behind him like a massive shadow.

Burn-E hung his head. Better to end it all quickly. He thought he felt something being raised behind him. He closed his eyes and sighed. Life he reflected could have been worse. He expected a swift blow that would separate his head from his shoulders.

What he got was a cry of rage and an ion blast. He was thrown to the floor. There was another ion blast and a roared challenge from the GOBLY-N. It took him several moments to realize, that against the odds, he was still alive. He pushed himself onto his side.

The scene that greeted him was insane. The GOBLY-N was swiping madly at air, its clawed hands and feet often only missing Eve by inches. And the probe didn't seem to be any state to actually mind. She just seemed to fly like a very fast bee, jinking and shooting ion blasts. And not all of them were hitting on target. A good deal were just smashing into the walls, blowing away chunks of walls, or stacked cargo crates, spewing molten slag through the air. Burn-E shielded his face as an ion blast hit the ground not ten feet from him. He pushed himself back onto his wheel, moving to shelter behind the hunter. Another ion blast flashed past over head, impacting near the door, sending the guards and stewards ducking back into the doorway for cover.

Burn-E realized that the fight would end when one of the combatants was dead. The Eve probe looked like the sure winner by any measure, but one hit from the GOBLY-N's fist would be enough for him to gain the advantage. And that ion cannon was even more worrying. If it hit the wrong place, there was a chance a critical Axiom system could be damaged.

Burn-E made a decision. It would later be reflected that this was both the best and stupidest decision made in recent history.

Eve wasn't very sane at the moment. Of course, sanity will always be a technically relative term when applied to a robot. But the term works well enough.

She'd tried forging a life with Wall-E. He was the love of her life. The fact that he was a mass produced garbage compactor with a tape recorder was immaterial as the fact that she was an incredibly advanced botany probe armed with a high powered ion cannon. They'd moved on in ten years. Things were at a level of normalcy, and she learned to put away a decades worth of worry about their meeting, and Wall-E's near death at the hands of Auto into the mental equivalent of a small box under the bed. She'd been well and truly happy for a long time. Her life was simple.

And now that very carefully crafted little life had been shattered again. She'd nearly died. Wall-E had been threatened. There were dead and damaged stewards and EVE probes. There were people in the square who were most likely dead. And the GOBLY-N was at the core of it all. It had shattered the peace of this colony like a cannonade. It was chaos, antithesis of life. And it had brought back the doubts, worries, and anger like a slide show of her life. She could hear the damned thing's laughter in the back of her mind, taunting her as it pulled everything she'd worked for apart.

She fired her ion cannon again, clipping the GOBLY-N in the shoulder, sending it spinning to the ground. Ion fire danced across its body like it had been doused in napalm. Eve screamed at it, a wordless cry of all rage. She would end it here and now. She sighted and on the GOBLY-N's head and fired as it tried to smash out the ion flames.

The shot missed the robot's head by a meter, the GOBLY-N managing to roll just clear of the blast. Liquid metal was sprayed across its armor. The robot roared its pain at Eve. Eve sighted again.

The bolt missed Eve's head by a fraction of an inch. It passed her visor like it as sparrow. It hit the wall and stuck there. Eve made a run for cover, ducking behind a supply crate. She knew what it meant. Somehow, the GOBLY-N had reawakened the hunter, and now she'd just have the pleasure of destroying them both. Then everything would be fine and they'd be safe. It was a heartwarming thought. She checked her energy level for the ion cannon. Fifty percent, more than enough to finish both, even if each shot was at half power. She didn't want to drain the thing too quickly. She peered around the side of the crate.

The hunter was kneeling at the side of the GOBLY-N and was slowly putting out the ion flames with a methodical method of crushing the flame out with its hands. The GOBLY-N had stopped struggling, but it was looking straight into the face. Eve could just catch the sound of sing song machine code, like a nursery rhyme. She brought her ion canon up. With luck she could nail both in one shot. The hunter raised an arm, and without even looking, fired a hail of bolts at Eve.

Eve ducked back behind the crate. A bolt passed where here head had been, two more passing close to where she ion cannon had been. Another bolt came through the crate and passed between her left arm and torso.

Eve pulled herself together. She could still win this. She was faster. She readied her ion cannon

She charged around the side of the container again. The hunter grabbed her ion cannon with its left hand, directing it upwards in the same second that Eve fired. A sizable chunk of ceiling was vaporized, and little droplets of molten steel rained down. With its right it grabbed Eve by the head and body. Its face was in her face, the single green eye staring. It spoke in clear Axiom machine code, almost a slightly deeper version of Eve's.

"I really have no qualms about ending you right here, right now. None."

Eve flailed ineffectually with her one free hand at the face of the hunter, whose grip seemed to tighten slightly.

"One squeeze more and you're gone. Goodbye light, hello nothing."