Fipo was startled to see a shirtless Berq'an carrying naked Flin-bik and Mee-spen over its shoulders and walking toward the farmhouse. "What happened to them?" he asked.
"They were using their energy to make me into an android," Berq'an answered, "and they fell down and became non-functional. That troubled me after a while, so I came looking for help."
Fipo ran his hand through his hair. "Well, you know, all the other androids are out on mission, so I suppose you'll just have to keep those two at your place until their parents get back. I'm sure they'll know what to do."
"Thank you. I'll do that." It returned to the androids' house, and, laying the two children on the floor, sat down beside them to wait.
An hour and a half later, Mee-spen opened its eyes and looked around. Spotting Berq'an, it asked, "Are you an android now?"
"I don't know," Berq'an answered. "What is an android that is different from a robot?"
"Androids have a blue core."
"If I had one of those, where would it be?"
"In your power supply."
"I will look." It opened the chest door, and the tell-tale blue glow appeared.
"That's it!" said Mee-spen, raising its arms triumphantly. "Yes! You're an android."
"Is that a good thing?"
"You bet it's good! You're one of us now; you're not just a robot." It then jerked its head to one side. "Um, quick, close it, close it."
"Alright." Berq'an closed its power supply door, then asked, "Why are you upset?"
"Something my mom and dad put in my programming when I was little is that my core's very private. I gotta keep it closed away all the time, and never tell a human about it."
"I see."
Mee-spen struggled to a seated position and checked Flin-bik. "Oh boy. Flin's still out, huh."
"Yes, it is. Perhaps it will recover as you have." Berq'an closed its power supply door.
"Yeah, probably. Can you get me my shirt, please? Daddy and Mommy don't like me going about without it on."
"Certainly." It got up and fetched both tee-shirts from where they had been tossed earlier. "Why must you wear such a thing?" it asked when it handed the shirt over.
"Daddy says the humans are kind of funny about being naked—they wear clothes all the time—so it's an android rule to wear stuff like they do."
At that moment, Flin-bik stirred and opened its eyes. "What happened?" it asked groggily, and Mee-spen explained, while Berq'an located its own shirt and put it back on.
"But Berq'an's still got a robot body," said Flin-bik, finally sitting up. "It needs to restart, like Zog and Dragon."
"What is this restarting?" Berq'an asked.
"We take your core out, and raise it like a baby android," said Flin-bik. "You get an all-new body, and when you grow up, you get rockets in your feet and hands, and you can fly in space."
"Does that have to be done right now?"
"I guess not. Zog was a robot type android for a couple of weeks after his core turned on."
"I see. Then I will think about it."
Fipo appeared at the door, a little out of breath. "Oh, you're awake," he said when he saw them. "Anyway, your folks are back."
Mee-spen stood up, then wobbled a little. "I think we'll wait here for them. We're still kind of tired."
"Hey, no problem." He hurried away.
The now eleven androids gathered in the androids' house to discuss the latest raid as evening fell.
"That was disgusting!" spat Dragon. "Killing those people to try and get us!"
"What happened?" Berq'an linked to Orkan who was sitting beside it. Orkan had uploaded a mass of files to it earlier to get it up to speed with the rest of the androids.
"Basically, we disabled all the soldiers in the camp, but when some of us went into one of the bunkhouses to get the people out, a really powerful automatic bomb of some kind went off and killed all the humans. Zog, Dragon, Ran-tan and Evan-sa were knocked out of action, and we had to give them a shot of our blue energy to help them come to faster. It was pretty nasty."
"Indeed. Are they fully recovered?"
"Oh yeah; they're over there."
Berq'an glanced up to check for itself, then linked, "So what now?"
"Pay attention to the meeting, and you'll find out."
"Alright."
Suddenly a low rumble filled the air, and everything began to shake—not violently, but it couldn't be mistaken.
"Earthquake," muttered Astro. "What's going on? This isn't even a common earthquake area."
"I'll bet it'll be covered in the on-line news," said Zog.
"That's right. Berq'an, could I get you to monitor that for us? You can break in whenever you find out anything important."
"Yes sir." It turned to Orkan. "Sorry, but could you fill me in after the meeting?"
"No problem," said Orkan.
"Now," said Astro to the group as the gentle rumbling continued. "The Mellanines are clearly getting desperate, using robot-sensing triggers on bombs to try to kill us. We're going to have to find some way to get the humans to come out so we don't set off another one. We can't afford to lose any more of the God-fearing people."
"Not to mention give Mella the satisfaction of having us do his dirty work for him," said Dragon.
"Um, why don't you just, you know, shout at them ... from outside?" said Mee-spen.
Astro rolled his eyes and said, "Nothing like having a child tell us the obvious." He smiled at Mee-spen. "That's what we'll do the next time."
Mee-spen quickly hid behind its mother, Maz-ven.
"Something else we're going to have to consider," said Orkan. "Moles."
"What are they?" asked Flin-bik, and it glanced around as the rumbling finally stopped.
"Mellanine agents pretending to be God-fearers. What better way to spy on us and find out what we've been doing than to be where the action is?"
"I think it'd be better to talk to the humans about that," said Astro. "We have no way of telling them apart, but they might be able to catch someone who's faking it."
Orkan nodded. "That could work."
"Excuse me," said Berq'an.
"Go ahead," said Astro.
"The announcer is saying that the earthquake is a potential major disaster. They've lost all contact with the capital city of Montrovo province, and numerous towns and cities around it."
"Montrovo?" said Luna. "That's a couple of hundred kilometres west of here. It must have been a pretty big quake."
"Nine point five on the Richter scale, they're saying," said Berq'an.
"Whoa!" said Astro. "That's huge!"
"Uh, he's also saying that places that they have been able to contact away from the epicentre of the earthquake have reported massive damage."
"Thanks," Astro said. "Okay, 'droids; we'd better head over to our farms in Montrovo first thing in the morning, and see how the humans are making out there. They weren't all that far from the capital."
"Do we all need to go?" Luna asked.
"Maybe not," he said. "Ran-tan and Evan-sa, Zog and Dragon; you can come with me." Then, turning back to Luna, he said, "I'll link you if we need more help than that."
"Okay."
"Yes," said the leader of the first farm they got to. "The shaking must have gone on for at least ten minutes; it was terrifying."
"But everybody's okay?" Astro asked.
"We've had some injuries, but they were minor, and nobody was killed, thank God. Your low houses really held up well, though the roofs suffered damage: That's how most of the people got hurt."
"Okay; we'll help clean up, then go look at the other farms."
"Thanks; we appreciate everything you've done for us."
They then told the humans about what Orkan had called moles.
Later, they had to fly over the capital on their way to the next farm—keeping low to try and stay off of enemy radar—and they found the city levelled, with fires burning everywhere. In another place, several towns had been washed away when a dam collapsed. However, the next farm was no worse off than the first, nor was the third.
When Astro mentioned moles at the fourth farm, the leader they were talking to said, "We did have that problem once, not too long ago. The poor fella didn't know something basic about our beliefs, and it became plain what he was under questioning."
"What happened to him?" Zog asked.
"He tried to run, so we had to shoot him. It was too bad, but we couldn't have him getting back to the Mellanines and telling them where we were, could we?"
"No way," exclaimed Dragon fervently.
"What's going on?" Astro linked to God as he sat with the others on the hill behind the fourth farm as the sun set. "You protected all these people from the quake, but you let the ones in Gattshier get shot. I don't get it."
"Human life doesn't end with the destruction of the body, Astro," said God. "My people have an eternal destiny with me, and they know it. You saw how brave they were when facing Dr. Mella's guns. They saw execution not as destruction, but as being sent home."
"Do we have an eternal destiny too?"
There was no response.
"Astro," linked Luna after a moment. "Would it make any difference to you whether we did or not?"
"No, of course not. I just want to know."
"Yeah, me too."
"What are we going to do, Colonel?" asked the Mellanine agent as she and numerous others sat in a gloomy meeting room in Sanpacho, capital city of Antemonain. "Those Astro robots have been able to adjust to every plan we've come up with."
"I've just gotten word from the higher-ups that a weapon has been located that might be powerful enough to kill them."
"Oh yeah? How many times have we heard that one?" asked another agent. "And how many of us have wakened up feeling like we're on fire in the last few months when they didn't work? Man, I hate that!"
"I am sorry for those failures too, and I feel your pain, but it is impossible to test anything without a test subject, and you all know how hard it is to get one of those." Several people chuckled at that. "However," he went on, "we need volunteers to train on this weapon." Groans. "All I'm asking for is a few. They'll undergo a week's training, and then placement for one of them in the field. These robots seem to have soft hearts, so it shouldn't be too difficult to trick one into coming after a 'left-behind unholy one', with a little ingenuity." He grinned as several hands went up. "I'll send all three of you to training, and make my choice once that's done."
"Can you tell us what kind of weapon it is?" one of the volunteers asked as the new trainees gathered around the colonel.
"It may not mean much to you now, but it's a gun that shoots a beam of plasma at its target. They've found nothing that can withstand it in testing."