It was ten in the morning, and Katie could feel insanity caused by inactivity creeping up on her again. Yes, riding on the back of a motorcycle was usually lots of fun, but in this case the scenery never changed. It was just gray dirt ahead with green on either side. The ditch kept behaving erratically, and the three had hunted down more empty tunnels than Katie could be bothered to count. Conversation was non-existent, Ace still giving the Doctor a bit of a cold shoulder, and Katie being unwilling to talk to the Doctor with someone she mistrusted slightly so close. To top it all off, Katie's muscles were starting to twitch, longing for movement.
The only thing that had temporarily given Katie a problem to solve was the problem of holding on. The motorcycle was only a two-seater, so Katie was sitting on the back, her feet dangling over the wheels, cutting out any chance of clinging on with her knees. She couldn't rely on balance, because the ground was uneven and Ace made a lot of sharp turns. This left clinging to the Doctor's waist, something the made Katie rather uncomfortable.
She finally solved the problem by holding on to his shoulders.
Katie sighed, resisting the urge to rest her head on the Doctor's back and fall asleep. Instead, she closed her eyes, desperately hoping that there would be something –anything—new in the energy spectrum to see.
Instantly, her view shifted to third person, like a 3-D computer game, with herself as the character. Shifting her view angle farther out, she stared hard at the horizon, looking for sound. It was the only way to tell if there was actually anything, with all the heat and light.
She was rewarded with a flicker of blue in the distance. She tapped the Doctor's arm to get his attention.
"I think we're getting close. Something's making noise up ahead."
He looked at her quizzically. "How can you tell?"
Katie gave him a half-lidded stare. He nodded. "Right. Can you tell how far?"
She shook her head. "No. I haven't worked out all the perception stuff yet. Horizon area. Ish." Katie closed her eyes and looked again. "I think it's moving, but not as fast as we are."
The Doctor turned back to Ace. "Any towns up ahead we should know about?"
Her voice was muffled, but Katie heard the strain in it. "Only the fourth we should have come across since this morning."
"What?"
"Whoever these ditch diggers are, they're wiping out towns like so many tea stains. And I am not having it."
Ace twisted one of the bike's handles, and their speed doubled.
As they neared, the sounds started reaching them. It was, expectedly, the sound of heavy machinery. But it didn't sound quite right. There were….vacuuming sounds mixed in. A vacuum that crushed rocks at the same time. And an whirr that was electric, clunky, and metallic all at once. Like a transporter.
"Kate, you getting anything?"
Katie was about to correct Ace about her name, but decided to leave it for the moment. She lengthened a blink. "Nothing specific, Cards. I think there might be a building or two left standing. No mental energy, so either the people are extremely smart or there are none."
"No mental energy means the people are smart? What kind of reasoning is that?"
"Well, Cards, let's put it this way: if you lose your mind, a.k.a. mental energy, you can't think and you're stupid. If you hold on to it, you can use it."
"Can you tell how fast the diggers are moving?"
"Hard to tell, but I'd say that if you try to stop and watch them, they'll be gone in a cloud of dust before you can really tell what's going on."
Ace didn't respond to the comment, but veered off to the left. Katie saw instantly that Ace was going to head around the diggers, probably to wait somewhere in the forest that still stood up ahead. Katie clicked her teeth once, and then contorted herself in order to set her feet onto the Doctor's thighs. He started to protest, but Katie ignored him.
With her hands already on his shoulders, she had a fairly easy time of standing. Ace felt the weight shift, glanced back, and slowed a bit so Katie could stay balanced as Katie tried to see what was causing so much destruction.
Katie had seen a lot of different things, and had never shown a bit of surprise, fear, or shock, but what she saw this time forced a gasp out of her throat.
Three enormous metal beings could be seen through the dust, like fearsome creatures in a horror film. Two were clearing huge sections of land, acres square, by simply sucking them through the area where hands would usually be. Smoke and steam belched out through pipes on their shoulders.
The third giant stepped up to the cleared section and scanned it with a lens in his forehead. It took a step back into the place where the ditch stopped, and started…doing something. Katie wasn't sure. It seemed as though it simply had its hands set on the top of the ground, but the area of dirt rapidly changed from rich brown to dull gray. The first two produced drilling lasers from their arms, and started digging again.
Katie was frozen. Though the entire process had taken a mere fraction of the time it takes to tell it, that wasn't what horrified her. She had seen worse enemies; she had killed worse. But it was like a part of her she hadn't known existed was telling her to fear the silver machines, and just run.
The robots disappeared from view a second later as Ace drove into the forest. Katie sat down slowly, trying to understand what had frightened – no, terrified—her.
Ace had picked up speed once Katie was sitting again, and was now probably going at her top speed. A few minutes later, Ace parked where she assumed the bike wouldn't be crushed. Katie jumped off, stumbling as she did. This told her exactly how scared she was; even while human, Katie had had an unusually tremendous sense of balance, and now it was even better.
The Doctor must have recognized this, because his tone was concerned when he asked, "Kathryn? What did you see?"
"I'm not sure. They were metal men, perhaps 20 feet tall. Two of them cleared a section of land, and the third did something to it. Extracted something from the soil, I think. Then the first two started digging again."
"There was something else, wasn't there?"
"No. That's all."
"Something's scared you."
Katie smiled lightly. "Exactly."
The Doctor looked at her for a few moments. "You said they took something out of the dirt?"
"Must have. The soil went from brown to gray."
The Doctor turned to Ace. "You said this was an agricultural planet."
"Yeah. Everything flourishes around here."
"But why?" The Doctor got that look that meant he was trying to make the puzzle pieces fit, but wasn't sure of the picture. He started walking quickly back and forth, pausing to grab another fistful of dirt, smelling it and tasting it. "Can't be," he muttered. He pulled out his screwdriver and scanned the dirt.
"Gonna tell us what you found?" Ace asked, her tone telling Katie that the Doctor had always been this way.
"Ronodim."
"You can't be serious."
"Very."
Katie sighed. "Anyone going to clue in the newbie?"
"Ronodim is a mineral," the Doctor said, his voice shifting into that of a teacher, "that human's don't discover until 3026, but in general it's an explosive."
"Gunpowder of the galaxies?"
"More like nuclear bomb of the nebulas. You don't need much of this to make an atom bomb resemble a firework. Whoever sent the mining robots must be trying to collect it."
"What I don't see," Ace said, "is how it would have done anything for the plants."
"Nitrogen. Ronodim is made mostly of nitrogen. It would have been a huge benefit for the plants."
"And the occasional deep pits in the ditch?"
"A particularly rich vein, with large deposits here and there."
"Alright," Katie mused, "if mining bots have been sent to get this stuff, then they probably plan to use it as a bomb rather than fertilizer. How do we stop them?"
"Were there any marks that might identify them?" Ace asked.
Katie closed her eyes, though not all the way, trying to recall the picture. "I want to say no, but there was some kind of embossing on their arms. Sorta looked like a logo."
"Corporate based. Could you tell what the insignia was?" the Doctor said.
Katie clicked her teeth and tilted her head, thinking hard. "It was a little loopy…swirls maybe? Vine kind of swirls. Plain, leafless vines. Not very deep. Almost like it was a cool accident that someone on the manufacturing line decided to keep."
The Doctor's brow furrowed, puzzled again. "Sounds like the Krize. But what would they be doing harvesting explosives?"
"The Krize?" Katie asked, her tone slightly worried. "You told me once they were at war with the Rahki."
"They are. Have been for millennia."
"Not good news if they spot me then, is it?"
"No. Then again..."
Ace sighed, irritated that Katie knew something she didn't. "Who are the Krize, who are the Rahki, and why are they fighting?"
"Rahki are a bunch of lunatic clone-making body swappers that record lives while not changing history," Katie spat out, her disdain showing. "I have no clue who the Krize are."
Ace and Katie turned to the Doctor. His instructors voice came back. "The Krize are a highly advanced civilization. Keep to themselves, for the most part. The epitome of non-interference. The only exception to their rule is the Rahki. The Krize have a major problem with their, as Kathryn so kindly put it, 'lunatic clone making body swapping.'"
"Why would the Krize have a thing against Kate?"
"My name's not Kate, it's Katie."
"Why do they have a problem with you?"
"I'm one of the results of the Rahki's lunatic clone making. I broke out of the system when I found the Doctor," Katie said, giving an extremely condensed version of her backstory. "Why wouldn't it be bad if they saw me?"
"If they think the Rahki have seen them, they might leave."
"Or they might eat me. I think they get their fuel by incinerating the stuff they destroy."
Ace's face paled and hardened. "So all those people…"
"Burned," the Doctor said, his face set.
Katie turned to Ace, rather than the Doctor. She reached into her bag and pulled out a small silver tube, which she tossed in the air. "Well then," she said, catching it. "Let's go take down a robot."
*Constructive critisisim welcome, praise happily accepted, flames not wanted*