A tricky thing about writing science fiction is dealing with our expectation of technology change. We have an innate sense that the systems used in the future should be more advanced than what we're using today. It doesn't feel right for advanced systems to use technology we ourselves employ. It's largely a terminology problem. A smart phone and an old living room radio set both receive information transmitted via radio waves. If you were to refer to a smart phone as a fancy radio, you wouldn't be wrong, per se... but you would be suggesting a far more primitive device. It wouldn't feel right.
Maybe the Hunters probably do use radio waves to communicate, though the nature of their communications devices themselves might seem alien. Or maybe some technological shift we can scarcely imagine has presented them with some other medium to use. One way to cover all the bases is to genericize- not to refer to things as radios, and use non-specific terms instead. The phrase "communications system" doesn't imply any particular medium... though if it squawks like a radio and talks like a radio, maybe it is a radio after all.
Zero's communications system scanned continuously.
Almost no reploids had the luxury of an internal system. Most operators, from Alia on down, had external systems, though a couple of the newer purpose-built models had internal ones. Almost no field Hunters had internal systems, as power/space/weight were at too much of a premium for combat models.
Then again, almost no Hunters were the masterworks of robotics' greatest artisans.
Zero—and X, of course—had internal comms. So, even as Zero stripped, cleaned, and reassembled buster after buster, his comms system scanned. It was always, always scanning.
From the beginning, he'd been programmed to "guard" three channels. The first two were Light family channels. Zero had enough self-awareness to know he wasn't a Lightbot. How he had the right protocols to communicate on their channels was an unnerving mystery to him. Still, it meant he had two secure ways to communicate with X. That was very comforting.
The third frequency was, in fact, not a specific frequency at all. To monitor this channel Zero's comms, following his programming, jumped from one frequency to another. Both the timing of the jumps and the new frequency were determined by a complex randomizing algorithm running against the output of an atomic clock.
An atomic clock running somewhere else.
Zero's internal clock couldn't remain as precise as an atomic clock; no clock in a machine made for combat could. Zero knew his settings would wander over time. Eventually, they'd be different from anyone else running the same algorithm, and he wouldn't be able to communicate with them on this channel. He also knew that he was supposed to periodically recalibrate his internal clock against that atomic clock to synch up again.
He didn't know where that atomic clock was. He didn't know who the clock belonged to. He didn't know who to ask about it; instinct screamed that asking blindly would be fatal. He was sure his settings were off by now, and he was at a loss as to how to fix them.
Nevertheless, he couldn't shake the feeling that something dreadful would happen if he stopped monitoring that channel. So he let his system scan on.
Those were his pre-programmed channels. Of his own volition he'd added two more. One was the Abel City-wide general alert channel. The other was the Hunter emergency channel.
When the call came out, therefore, Zero heard it.
"Maverick incident, confirmed Maverick in block jay-five. Seventeenth is on-scene. Fourth-one deploy to jay-six. Eleventh-two to aye-five. Standby squad to kay-five. Alert squad, arm and stand by."
Zero was already moving. The buster he'd been cleaning was immediately forgotten. Combat subroutines were devouring all available cycles and memory.
Out the door. He traced his way through Hunter Base at high speed. Down the corridor. He narrowly avoided several collisions. Down the stairs. He left ruffled and bewildered people in his wake.
To the hangar.
In the larger space he was able to move even faster. He was to the hover cycles in the blink of an eye. He gave one the most cursory of visual inspections before deeming it suitable. He mounted it, activated it, set off.
As he exited the hangar he cut off a larger Hunter van that was just leaving. He decided it must have been the transport of the ready squad. He'd beat them out the door.
That was something.
Not relevant, though. Motion was.
The city never let him reach full speed—not for lack of trying, to be sure. Aggressive use of the cycle's altitude controls helped mitigate traffic problems. Even so, the city was still so dense there weren't straightaways long enough to max out speed.
Couldn't they have made the streets straighter? Couldn't they have made the blocks more regular? Couldn't they have, well, planned the city better? There had to be someone who was responsible for this. Whoever it was, their incompetence was costing Zero time. He resented it horribly.
This was a moment of peak danger. Every second counted.
He did a power slide ("power", in this case, meaning heavy goosing of the hover controls, with the side effect of knocking over some streetside garbage and vending receptacles) around a corner. Final approach. Ahead was the engagement zone. Typical Seventeenth—two Hunters manning a heavy weapons station behind cover, another separate and angled to cover their blind spots. Their fourth was doubtless on the Hunt inside the building they faced.
Zero belatedly realized that the sudden, unannounced appearance of a combat model might cause those Hunters to start shooting. He didn't want that, it would complicate things. He swapped over to Seventeenth Squad's working channel. "Seventeenth, Zero, I am on approach."
He finished saying it just as he arrived at the scene. He kicked off from the cycle in mid-air (it drifted away and settled gently to the ground at the end of the block); a backflip ended with his feet on the ground, facing the same building as the Seventeenth's heavy weapons. His left arm was up and slightly extended, either to act as a guard or to project his buster; his right hand was perched by his saber handle.
He was ready.
He took just a moment to assess the building, and derive its likely floorplan. Then he bent forward to dash inside…
"All, X. Maverick dead. Conducting sweep to ensure no runners."
Zero shuffled his foot to keep his balance. His torso rocked forward regardless. He recovered his footing in a moment. Recovering mentally wasn't as clean.
That was it? That was it?
His senses, still at full combat capacity, swept over the scene. Now that he was taking his time, he noticed things that weren't as important before. Like: there wasn't much damage on the building he was facing. Like: there was no evidence that the heavy weapons team had actually fired. Like: there was no billowing smoke, no blown out windows, no sounding fire alarms, no streams of terrified humans.
This had only barely been a Maverick incident.
What a letdown.
"All, X. Sweep complete. Maverick appears to have been a solo Thirdie. Area clear for emergency services. Request medical—I have two injured humans requiring attention."
A solo Thirdie? A lone reploid who wanted escape and decided to commit suicide-by-Hunter? That wasn't even a Maverick incident, that was…
Zero frowned. He wasn't sure what it was; his vocabulary was limited and he had no mind for metaphor.
It was disappointing, is what it was.
He lowered his arms. He didn't leave combat mode—he didn't know how—but he did marginally lower his state of readiness. His systems complained about this. How, after all, could combat be over when he hadn't killed anything yet? That wasn't right. That was a waste, a missed opportunity. There was a physical dimension to this as well. His busters and sabers were still primed and in a state of high charge. It made Zero even more anxious, to have that unspent energy bouncing around inside of him.
There was nothing for it, though. There would be no fighting here.
He was frustrated, but also… relieved, maybe? Or at least reassured? Because it meant the moment of danger had passed, that moment when someone had triggered the very top of Zero's list of Most Dangerous Acts.
Even Zero wasn't totally sure if he meant dangerous for him or dangerous for whomever was committing the act. In the end, he supposed they were the same thing. Someone doing the dangerous thing was threatening Zero, which meant he was also courting termination.
With a small puff of pride, Zero realized that his list wasn't ambiguous. It was efficient.
He was fluent in the language of violence. Languages that required flimsy things like words were so much trickier. He swore that he'd master them yet.
Regardless, it was a good list, he thought as he retrieved the hover cycle. He'd put a lot of work into it. Occasionally he had to revise parts of it up or down, based upon bad things he saw happen or how he felt about them potentially happening. The top two items hadn't shifted—had, in fact, been the basis of the list in the first place.
The second most dangerous thing: attack Zero.
The most dangerous thing: attack X.
With some embarrassment, Zero realized X had been in no danger. A solo Thirdie would never be a threat to the Avenging Angel. He was still glad he'd come. It had been a chance to kill something, even if he'd missed that chance, and X might have needed him. He trusted X, of course, trusted him to take care of himself. Still, if there were a chance X needed him, Zero wanted to be there. He would be there.
He didn't need to linger to prove that point to X. Teasing himself with the unrealized possibility of violence was… not good. No. Best to return to base.
He kicked the hover cycle into gear. At a still-aggressive but less-frenzied pace, he made his way back towards Hunter Base.
He never did remember the buster he'd been cleaning.