Chapter Text
The morning of his wedding day, Mirage refused to speak.
Perhaps it would have been better understood as refusal if anyone actually needed him to say anything, but they didn’t. His attendants worked silently as they touched up his polish and affixed the components of ceremonial ornamentation to his plating. The more senior members of his lineage did not expect him to contribute anything useful to the conversation held as he was walked out of the halls of Crystal City’s Towers for the last time. A last lecture was hardly about to make him revert and suddenly begin murmuring the acquiescences of an obedient creation and they all knew it. The chancellor standing next to the insectoid-legged palanquin didn’t even bother to look at Mirage before waving him inside with a gold-spattered fan. Mirage didn’t take the opportunity to make a rude gesture. He knew better than to extend his resentment into active rebellion—it was better not to give them any excuse to make his life worse, in the last moments they had.
There would be no fault to be found with his appearance. The gear sequences along his arms were the traditional configuration of his lineage and Crystal City that he was used to wearing for every occasion of formal presentation and the servants were familiar enough by now to assemble them flawlessly. Not to mention that the offering designs clicking in complicated patterns around his torso were new and his house had not been stingy. Mirage was wearing a medium fortune of precious alloys in a spiraling design that must have taken some skilled artisans months to craft, spiraling in complicated patterns designed to draw the optic and keep onlookers entranced. And incidentally, make it obvious if he transformed. The magnetized gears weren’t strong enough to endure being broken out of shape like that. His role in today’s affairs was strictly ornamental.
“You could smile,” the chancellor muttered, once the door closed and they were alone.
Mirage bared his teeth. The chancellor looked away as the palanquin began to move, snapping the fan open to hide his face.
Mirage knew there was an army camped outside the city. Everyone knew there was an army camped outside the city. Mirage had even been very aware they were going to this army, that he was being delivered to the warlord seated at its center as a bribery for peace, and his first thought on seeing the assembled horde was still to wonder where all of these boulders and metallic outcroppings had come from. At least until the side of one of the shelters parted and a trio of heads, one on top of the other, popped through to stare up at the palanquin.
Mirage didn’t bother to wave, not with the chancellor in here to report on Mirage’s actions being too friendly or not friendly enough or otherwise suspicious. He would only be a silhouette through polarized glass to them, anyways. It didn’t matter what they thought of him here on the outskirts of camp. The only opinion that mattered would be the opinion of his future administrator.
The city had been buzzing with rumors since the first messenger had arrived with the news that the nomads of the Fractal Wastes had fallen in behind a warlord for the first time in a vorn, and would be shortly assembling in full force outside of Crystal City to renegotiate an antiquated treaty. The warlord in particular had captured the city’s attention. The rumors said he could hurl lightning from his hands, call up acid rainstorms out of season, summon monsters from the depths of the planet. The ground trembled at the approach of his army. He brought glory to his subordinates and death to his enemies.
And, to Mirage’s joy of joys, he was single.
More precisely, to the joy of joys of the Tower Councils. Someone had gone digging in the precedents and turned up the protocol that suggested whenever the nomads had a leader it was best to place a representative as close to that leader as could be managed. Which meant ordering Mirage into his ports.
There had been other options. There had been lots of other options. The Councils had debated and bargained and wheedled and offered up enough candidates to present the warlord with his own LAN party of brides, all nice and compliant and becoming. And in the end, only Mirage had made the cut.
It might have been nice if he had been ignorant enough to take it as a compliment.
He forcibly redirected his thoughts away from brooding—something he had been doing entirely too much of recently—to observe the passing scenery. One only saw the mysterious camp of nomad barbarians for the first time once, after all. Not to mention that if he survived his first encounter with his new conjunx, Mirage still had no guarantee the warlord would ever allow him to exit his personal quarters again.
No. No brooding. Observing while he still had the privacy to stare without being seen.
The camp was enormous. It was one thing to know that the army camped outside the city, according to the hysterics of the counselors, was the largest gathering of nomads seen assembled in generations. It was quite another to see the vast assembly of tents stretch towards the horizon in all directions from the central passage the palanquin was advancing down. The shelters were decorated with natural patterns, shaped in such a way that even Mirage, who now understood what they were, had trouble detecting the cues that made them distinct from natural features when it wasn’t as obvious as an opening to the interior.
Beyond the first few rows of fairly evenly-spaced structures, Mirage could at least tell that the shelters were arranged to create clusters and gaps, even if he couldn’t quite tell what the arrangements signified. There were more mechs visible as they approached the center of the camp, some of them even lining the road in to see what the fuss was about. Mirage looked out at the empty spaces between the structures. They were distant, and difficult to view—even if he zoomed his optics, the dark background made the contents unintelligible beyond a strange sense of movement that didn’t resemble any mech he’d ever seen.
He continued staring at it just to avoid making eye contact with the mechs on the ground and received a shock when his image recognition finally resolved it to recognize a...creature with a large thinly-spoked wheel and a thin metal frame trundling along. Before he could comprehend what it was it had passed out of sight again.
“My lord, are you quite well?” the chancellor asked sharply.
Mirage realized that he was leaning against the polarized glass—not unduly so, in a way that would betray any apprehension. His hand was simply pressed against it as though he could retract it and get a better look at the whatever-it-was that was now hidden by more structures.
He continued refusing to speak, removing his hand from the window with all of the considerable disdain he could muster and flicking his fingers to dismiss the question.
“I hope you are not considering abandoning your duty,” the chancellor prodded. Mirage favored him with a single, withering look before turning back to his view. The wires holding a valuable nephrite dangle to the chancellor’s fan were fraying and he hadn’t noticed. Maybe Mirage would get lucky and it would fall off while he was in the middle of making one of his long-winded speeches.
When Mirage didn’t answer, the counselor huffed. “On your own head be it.”
Well, yes. That was the point of a hostage bride. Mirage did not educate him on this point.
A crowd three roads deep lined either side when the palanquin slowed and stopped, sinking lower on its legs with a hiss of hydraulics. The road terminated in a large ring, wide enough to be used as a racetrack, around the single largest structure Mirage had seen yet, perimeter jagged and folded to spread outward like the teeth of an enormous gear.
So. This, then, was the seat of the warlord’s power.
The panel at the side of the palanquin slid open, ramp already descended. The chancellor proceeded down the ramp first, guards emerging from their positions on the outside of the carrier to flank him as he strode towards the entrance—itself open and flanked by guards—without the slightest hesitation Mirage would follow.
Mirage, who could not say he shared that confidence, followed anyway. He focused on making his every movement as graceful and precise as possible, keeping his gaze fixed dead ahead. He had no other options.
Once inside, it became obvious that this structure was a tent. The material was a mix of thin draping metal, mesh, chainmail, and vinyl, arranged in stripes and striations that changed from section to section. Perhaps it had been made from many smaller tents, all joined together to create a residence befitting a sorcerer and warlord. Perhaps the materials had been harvested from the frames of his enemies.
With his processor gleefully and morbidly spinning that idea, Mirage proceeded to the appropriate distance from the dais at the center of the tent and dropped into his deepest and most formal bow on reflex, tuning out the chancellor’s formal introduction and obsequious speech. The bow required him to press the crest of his helm to the ground, not even peeking at the person he was paying tribute to. He found himself admiring the rug laid across the floor instead, ignoring the susurration that traveled around the room at his introduction.
“—and so, great Warlord, the Lord Mirage offers himself up to your household in the hopes that this closer tie between our courts will provide a lasting and magnificent peace. For his dowry, he brings with him thirteen cases of our city’s finest crystals, the auspicious number of the holy Primes, presented with the compliments of the Crystal City Council. We are sure that they will suit your needs adequately—to the extent that such a great and powerful lord as yourself needs anything, of course.”
Mirage did not snort at the idea that the cases now being unloaded behind him were the city’s finest crystals. The council was panicky enough without handing over the weapons-grade laser-focusing crystals the growing laboratories had only developed recently. He was pretty sure that the crystals filling the cases were very shiny and otherwise functionally useless. He was pretty sure the same descriptors could be applied to himself.
There was a long moment of silence, presumably as the Warlord decided if he was actually going to accept the tribute that had been dropped in his lap with absolutely no warning. Mirage offlined his optics.
“The Chosen Commander thanks you for your generous gift,” said an unfamiliar voice from the dais. “He is happy to accept the Lord Mirage into his household immediately. We will celebrate tonight and tomorrow and prepare to commence negotiations the second sunrise from now.”
“Wonderful.” Mirage heard the series of clanks that indicated the Chancellor was making his own formal bow. “I will take my leave.”
Mirage onlined his optics and unfolded from his position on the floor as the Chancellor backed out of the tent, looking directly at his new conjunx.
The warlord was green as beryllium where his paint was intact. There were scuffs on him, battle damage, but no dents. Some of them were shinier than others, like silver paint. He had a missile turret mounted on one shoulder, like Mirage; unlike Mirage’s, his was loaded. Mirage couldn’t read his expression, but the way he stood was confident and unshaken as a stone pillar. Well. Mirage would be too, if he had acid and lightning at his beck and call and the largest army in recent history.
He didn’t. His choices were limited, and this was the only one left to him. Mirage folded his hands together and waited.
He waited until all the guards were gone, until he had heard the ramp retracting and palanquin re-activating, its oversized footsteps clanking away. The other mechs on the dais were beginning to trade looks like they were sending subtle comm frequencies, their attention already drifting away from Mirage. This was his best chance to act before he lost their regard entirely.
In his clearest vocalizer setting, tone flat with the complete absence of doubt, Mirage announced “I was sent here as a distraction. The Crystal City Council is planning to betray and destroy you.”
He certainly had their attention now. Most especially the warlord’s—the Chosen Commander’s—who looked ready to summon up some lightning and thunder where he stood.
Hound was ready to crawl in a hole and hide the entrance behind him.
He hadn’t asked to get elected Chosen Commander for the latest attempt to nail down a solid trading treaty with Crystal City. He certainly hadn’t asked for enough other tribes to join their banners to his tent in such numbers that their gathering outmatched the largest festival Hound could remember. And he absolutely, in no way, had ever asked for Crystal City to send him a, a, conjunx.
So even before Lord Mirage (who Hound apparently was going to conjunx now, no matter how he felt about it, thanks, Hoist) dropped the bombshell of imminent treachery, Hound was feeling a little overwhelmed.
“Excuse me?” Hound asked. He could still hear the enormous six-legged pneumatic walker the city had sent to deliver this Lord Mirage clomping its way back out down the main drag of the camp.
Lord Mirage didn’t move, though from what Hound knew of most mechs’ senses, even he should have been able to hear the motion of everyone else on the dais with Hound moving weapons into ready position. “I was sent here as a distraction, Chosen Commander,” Lord Mirage repeated. “My orders were to seduce you into signing on as a tribute nation before treaty negotiations conclude, if I could. Should that fail, the plan is to attack with weapons-grade lasers while you are within range and hindered by your numbers.” One of his digits of his joined hands tapped, a counterpoint to the ticking and whirring of the gears and levers on his plating. “If I may be perfectly honest—”
“You had better be,” Cliffjumper growled.
Lord Mirage continued as though there had been no interruption. “—let me just say that I am not who they would have sent if they actually wanted a peaceful resolution.”
-Is he lying?- Seaspray asked over a shortrange comm.
-You know I can’t tell that, - Hound reminded him. -I just met the mech.- He could tell that Lord Mirage’s processor was hot with activity, that he’d been freshly painted, that the pretty little shiny clockwork pieces were held on with magnets, that the mech had no energy weapons on him. Ionizing radiation was difficult to hide. The citylord wasn’t sending out any communication signals, he wasn’t revving his engine, and he wasn’t preparing to transform again.
Hound leaned forward and heard the fans closest to Lord Mirage’s processor kick a notch higher. He wasn’t plotting. He was scared. “These are serious accusations,” Hound pointed out. “Some of the mechs here have crossed a quarter of the planet for these negotiations. Cancelling them will not be taken well. Do you have proof?”
“Yes.” The fans ticked back down and Lord Mirage’s shoulders relaxed. “If you have a holo-table, I can show you.”
Hound paused. -Do we have a holo-table?- he asked on a general frequency.
-I have a holo-projector Grapple bought the last time we were over by Kaon,- Hoist offered.
“We have a holo-projector,” Hound said. Everyone else seemed to have decided that addressing Lord Mirage was his problem now.
“That is acceptable.” Lord Mirage’s jewelry was still ticking a counterpoint to his words.
-Get it. And while you’re at it, get Krok and Ironhide and Blurr.- The three war-leaders hadn’t shown up when the call went out that the citymechs were sending some kind of representative. They had made it clear that treaty negotiations weren’t their problem until he needed them to show up and look scary. Hound could safely assume that they would show up to make a plan of attack, and look scary for it without really trying. “Allow us a moment to adjourn. Can I get you anything?” He felt a sudden squirm of embarrassment at the sense that he had failed his duties as a host. “Energon? Rubber supplements?”
Lord Mirage stared at him, absolutely unreadable, even as his processor fans ticked down a notch. “I am well. Thank you.”
“Great,” Hound said, and ignored Trailbreaker laughing at him over an open comm channel as the rest of his advisory council started moving into preparations for a meeting.
Mirage didn’t bother removing his jewelry, as the nomads continued to move things around him. He wanted to look as exotic as he could get. Maybe it would inspire them to take him seriously, which he didn’t feel they were right now. The only one who had spoken to him was his new conjunx, the warlord.
Mirage hadn’t taken his offer of energon, or asked for coolant, even though he could probably have used both of them. No point making himself a problem or a burden. Instead, he stood where he was, let things happen around him, and vented. First hurdle cleared. Now he just had to convince them.
“Here’s your holo-projector,” a new mech said to him. He was a dark green with orange accents, strange circular loops picked out on his upper arms in white. Mirage did not allow himself to stare, keeping his optics down modestly, murmuring a thanks as he accepted the projector. It was more limited than he expected—he had to compress the memory file he’d been keeping to make sure it would display. By the time he finished with that, the tent was fuller and the Chosen Commander had descended from the dais to join a circle of mechs around an unfolded table.
They were looking at Mirage expectantly. He did not tremble.
“I observed the members of my lineage without their knowledge shortly after news of your arrival reached Crystal City, Chosen Commander,” he explained, joining the circle. They drew back from him to give space, optic-ing him suspiciously. Of course. Mirage was the exotic one here. He moved deliberately as he placed the holo-projector down on the table, giving them no cause to think he might be about to draw a weapon or behave erratically.
“Now why would a fine upstanding gentlemech like yourself need to do that?” drawled a mech who had not been in the tent when Mirage first arrived. He was bright red, intricate black spiraling drawn on his torso.
“I hold little status in my Tower,” Mirage said, evenly. If they wanted him dead they already had plenty of reasons to kill him. “It was to my advantage to keep track, independently, of any new developments.”And now the advantage is yours, he did not say, because that was a little too glib. He simply activated the holo-projector.
He had played and replayed this footage enough times in the privacy of his own processor that he didn’t need to watch it again. He could observe his new keepers instead, and consider their reactions as on the hologram a pair of mechs stood around and discussed “the barbarian problem” and what exactly they were going to do about it. Of course they weren’t going to actually make a treaty and wait for it to be betrayed. They couldn’t let this insult stand. An entire army mustered on their doorstep, pressuring them into surrendering valuable trade goods? Preposterous. Unacceptable. And yet, not the kind of thing that could easily be gotten rid of. Especially not that sorcerer they had at their helm this time, who knew what he could do. More time, that was what they needed. A distraction.
“You know, they say the barbarians kidnap their conjunxes,” one of them mused. “I’m sure if we send one of the young tarts to flash a bit of plating this warlord’s way, we could have him dancing on a string for us.”
Mirage, anticipating this comment, took a moment to watch the warlord very intently. He revealed, damn him, nothing. The rest of the mechs rumbled in low anger. The bridal jewelry on Mirage’s arm, still extended towards the table, twinkled, and he wished he had pulled it back earlier when the motion would not have been obvious.
The mechs in the recording agreed that if nothing else, sending a tribute as a distraction would buy them time to come up with another plan. The hologram skipped forward. In the interests of preserving time, Mirage had opted to skip the part where the conspirators had brought up his name among other suitably low-cost candidates should the distraction fail, and go straight to when he had caught them plotting violence.
“And how long will it take to get the crystals moved into position?”
“Fourteen days, perhaps? We cannot move with more than deliberate speed. It would raise...inconvenient questions if we were to be caught.”
“And you’re sure they will work.”
“Yes. Once the focusing net is in place, we will be able to manipulate it at our leisure. The weapons will be less flexible, or rather, more—we can’t pre-place them in case the enemy acquires them.”
“Enemy. Feh. Fighting off barbarians. Did you ever think we’d see the day? Well. Perhaps we can commission a sculpture when the whole mess is over with, get something nice out of it.”
The hologram cut off there, flickering out and leaving only the projector in the center of a ring of furious faces. Mirage continued not moving.
“Fraggers,” someone growled, generally.
“I trust this is sufficient proof,” Mirage said, just loud enough to be heard. His fuel pump was working faster than he wanted it to.
“Good audio quality,” observed a mech in purple, green, and black. He had designs drawn on every piece of his plating wide enough to support them, it seemed. “How’d you get close enough to collect it? Doesn’t seem like the kind of thing they would have wanted broadcast.”
“I’m low-ranking within my lineage. Rather invisible, you might say.” Not an untruth, either statement.
That got him a set of various engine and vocalizer grumbles, but no challenges. A relief.
“When was that taken?” the warlord asked, quietly. “The second part.”
“Three days ago,” Mirage informed him. He...sighed.
“So,” he said, putting one hand down on the table. “We’ve got most of the people and creatures this side of the Copper Plains gathered into one easily targeted location, most of them not warriors. We’ve got ten days before the people we came here to make a treaty with bring secret weapons to bear on all of us. And we only have that much time because they think I can shoot lightning out of my hands.” His tone was very sharp, and Mirage risked a look just long enough to confirm that he was glaring at other mechs. “I don’t suppose anyone else has decided they want to toss a new nomination out for Chosen Commander?”
“Not on your functioning, chief,” a bright blue mech said, very fast.
“Great,” the mech who was still Mirage’s conjunx said. He pointed at the tabletop and before Mirage’s eyes a hologram appeared—not out of the generator. That had made a blued and flickering image. This was a clean, colorful map with Crystal City at one end and the vast expanse of the Fractal Wastes on the other, clumps of rock-mimicking tents in between. “Then I’m still in charge and I say I believe Lord Mirage, which means we need to focus on getting out of here. Any ideas?”
There were many ideas. Hound quickly started to get a headache listening to them all. At least war etiquette and his declaration of trust in Lord Mirage meant they had swapped over to all-verbal, so everyone was only shouting over each other in one place.
Hound kept the hologram up, rotating it on request as they discussed options. As soon as they actually counted up the total number of mechs, livestock, and tents, it became obvious that any retreat was going to take long enough Crystal City would be able to inflict more casualties than anyone was initially willing to accept. Everyone in this tent (saving, Hound assumed, Lord Mirage) had led caravans before and they knew how exponentially longer travel got the more mechs you had attached to a train. Given that this group hadn’t even traveled as a full convoy, assembling here as a designated meeting spot instead, no one could say for sure how long it would take to move the collective even a klik away.
Sheer size wasn’t the end of the problem. Caravans got their speed from pooling communal resources, but there were tribes wheel-by-axle right now that were only under truce for trading season. Trying to convince them to combine flocks to move faster as a single group would be unfair and end badly.
There were just so many people counting on Hound right now, and no strategy presenting itself to avoid being blocked in or ambushed or forced to retreat under fire. Time. The only thing everyone could agree on was that what they needed was time.
Well. Again. Everyone, saving Lord Mirage, who only stared silently at the board as they debated evacuation orders. Hound had to cut that particular debate off after it descended into petty sniping about how many unicycles the Velocitronians should be moving, anyways, just before anyone could be accused of theft.
“We’re under truce,” Hound reminded everyone, banging one hand on the table, through his hologram. “Anyone who starts a new vendetta in the middle of this can surrender a tithe of livestock to me.”
“Right, you need a bride price,” Ironhide joked, and Hound sighed as Lord Mirage’s processing kicked up. At least making him the butt of the joke broke the tension with a ripple of laughter. This was followed by another ripple of silent contemplation as everyone stared down at the table, where it was obvious exactly how trapped they were.
“Are you still getting hitched?” Trailbreaker asked.
“What, you think we should go out with a party?” Krok asked, one eyebrow rising creakily.
“I’m for it,” Blurr said. “Better to die drunk, I always said.” This brought another ripple of laughter out of the group, humor easier than abstract terror.
“We’re not going to die,” Hound said, staring down the hologram like it had the answer to all their problems.
And suddenly, it did. He grinned.
“I have an idea.”
Mirage was staring blankly at the tiny illusion of the camp he was probably going to die in, trying to drown out the fatalistic jokes being cracked at his expense, when he realized that the Chosen Commander was trying to get his attention.
“My lord,” he said, automatically reverting to the Crystal City title before remembering he hadn’t exactly been given leave to call the warlord his lord. Were they going to have a ceremony? Was he about to demand the Ritus immediately?
“What are Crystal City’s surveillance capabilities?”
Mirage’s thoughts fishtailed before he reoriented his mindset into ‘intelligence briefing.’ “Primarily satellite. They won’t bother with physical infiltration, especially in such an unfamiliar environment.” And with Mirage already here. “They might pressure me for information but they won’t expect me to know much. And what they can scout while installing the perimeter, of course.”
The warlord Hound looked around. “We don’t need time . We have the time it’ll take the city to finish their installation. We need something that will make them look away.”
“Misdirection,” Mirage murmured, and his conjunx-to-be favored him with a smile like warmed energon.
“Or at least a sleight-of-hand.”
“What, are you going to do that thing where you make a dragon again?” a red mech with mining horns asked. “Because after that hangover you said—”
“Not a dragon,” the Chosen Commander clarified quickly, glossing over that ‘hangover’ bit almost before Mirage had time to be intrigued. “I’m going to make a hologram to replace the gathering, little by little. We can evacuate one tribe at a time while the city thinks we’re still engaging in negotiations.”
Ah. Holograms. Fitting, that his Tower had quaked and trembled and sold Mirage off to try and backstab someone whose great powers were only smoke and mirrors. Mirage, finally in on the joke, bit down on the impulse to laugh hysterically.
There was a far more productive series of arguments after that. They had to determine how much Hound could reasonably expand his coverage in a single dark-cycle, how long he could actually maintain a holographic field covering the full twenty-three kliks of the camp, and what order the evacuation was going to proceed in.
By the time they had enough of a plan Hound felt he could move away from the board, half the tanks in the room were grinding on empty, so they called for a break while energon was collected. Hound was embarrassed to realize that the Lord Mirage was still here, placidly watching the helms and marshals of several tribes squabble like children about things he had no context for.
“Energon?” he asked, quietly. Lord Mirage stiffened.
“I’m afraid it will take me a moment,” he said carefully before Cliffjumper came back with a tray of cubes and shoved one at Hound. Hound grabbed another one for Lord Mirage.
“If you need to rest you can step out at any time,” Hound promised, holding the cube out to him. “But I’m sure today has been just as long for you as it has for the rest of us, so you should have this.”
Lord Mirage blinked his optics, and carefully took the cube. “Thank you, Chosen Commander.”
Hound made a face. “You really don’t have to call me that. Hound’s fine.”
Lord Mirage inclined his head. “Very well. Then I am Mirage.”
Hound had one brief, bright moment of cherishing the hope that he and Mirage might actually become friends before Ironhide said, loudly, “So we’re staging the hitching as soon as possible, right?”
“Is that necessary ,” the Chosen— Hound asked, vocaliser glitching. Mirage took a polite sip of energon, reverting back to his extant social script ‘another gala attendee is throwing things and security has yet to arrive.’ “Can’t he just. Come with us? And not have to get conjunxed to me?”
The large red mech harrumphed . “Trailbreaker had a point earlier. Don’t see why we should cancel the party even if we’re cancelling the dying.” There were murmurs of agreement. He scratched at the rubber rim of his windshield. “Besides. If word gets out we’ve been betrayed you know some young hotheads are going to go off and blow the whole thing. But if we’re leaving early because you got a conjunx and that settled the negotiations? Different kettle of finish. Peaceweaving’s a respectable tradition.” More murmurs of agreement.
“Besides,” added a dusty blue mech who looked like several miles of bad road had happened to him. “If you knew how many young truce-breaking hotheads I’ve had to pull off each other already... mechs are gonna draw their own conclusions about why we’re leaving early.”
Hound looked at Mirage, somewhat blankly.
“I have no opinion,” Mirage said. “What would I need to do?”
“What are we telling people,” Hound said. “About—the ceremony, and the leaving at night?”
“Obviously we’re just letting you do another scare the citymechs with us all vanishing overnight to impress them with your awesome power,” a mech said cheerfully.
“Hoist, remind me to shove you in a canyon the next time we cross one,” Hound shot back, and Mirage got an up-close view of his expression changing from a scowl to a wicked grin.
“Oh, no,” Hoist said.
“You know,” Hound said. “I’m about to do something very risky that requires me to stay with the rearguard in a trap. I just remembered that I haven’t named a successor in the event of my demise. I name Hoist.”
“You have no sense of humor,” Hoist accused. Mirage, smiling into his cube, thought he might disagree. “Sorry you had to find out this way, Lord Mirage, your new conjunx has no sense of humor.”
“I think I’ll live,” Mirage offered, and he was pleased to realize he actually thought he might.
Mirage had heard all kinds of salacious things about barbarian conjugations, which made it somewhat nerve-wracking when he was whisked away into a private space, but the trio of mechs who came with him mostly just exclaimed over his jewelry in between wiping the dust off his plating.
“It’s powered by your spark pulses?” one asked, carefully examining a ticking gear. “Very practical.”
Mirage had heard plenty about how romantic and demonstrative bridal jewelry was, especially in the context of proving a strong spark was being offered to the match for the creation of sparklings, but practical was new. “It certainly keeps anyone from sending a corpse to a ceremony,” he said, which made them all laugh.
The actual ceremony turned out to require very little on his part. It was meant to be conducted privately, and to ensure they had privacy, all of Hound’s friends and family gathered outside of his tent and started making noise—shouting and dancing and playing instruments. Mirage, now left alone after some entirely unsolicited and absolutely filthy advice from his unexpected handmaidens, activated his field disruptor so he could stand next to the faint separation of the door’s panels of fabric and watch what happened outside.
The vacant landscape from earlier had vanished as the night-cycle approached and the sides of tents rolled up or pulled back, transforming the central pavilion into a bright and lively space with canopies spaced out around the ring surrounding the tent that had quickly become a combined dancefloor and racetrack. The commotion was loud enough that Mirage almost missed the additional cacophony of a troop of mechs escorting his new conjunx back to the tent. He just had enough time to get away from the flap, drop his cloaking, and settle his expression.
The Chosen Commander of the largest army Mirage had ever seen, a great warlord with powers that inspired terrifying rumors, was tipped unceremoniously through the tent flap and sent sprawling on the floor with a groan.
“I don’t suppose I could convince you to pretend you didn’t see that,” Hound said into the rubber mats.
“See what?” Mirage asked.
Hound laughed and pushed himself up into a sitting position. He and Mirage stared at each other from across the tent. Cymbals crashed somewhere outside.
“I know this isn’t what you expected,” Hound said, after a moment. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be,” said Mirage. “I was expecting much worse.” He took a seat of his own on the floor, and they stared at each other again, on an equal footing this time. “Do we spend all night in here?”
“Just long enough for um. Things,” Hound said, vaguely. “We’re not actually expected to miss the party.”
“Any suggestions?” Mirage asked, shoving all of the handmaidens’ advice about pleasure and sensitive zones out of his immediate processing. He needed to not think about that.
Hound produced a small set of analogue random number generators out of his subspace, rolling them across the floor towards Mirage. “Dice game?”
They played dice for long enough that any nosy parkers outside would think it had been long enough for them to have...done what needed doing, for the marriage to be legitimate, and then Hound scooped his dice collection back up and stood. “Ready?”
“Should I scuff my paint?” Mirage asked, standing in one smooth motion. No uncertainty, just polite curiosity.
“Um!” Hound said. “I think. We’ll be fine.”
“Alright,” Mirage said and reached for one of his little gears. Hound held very still as Mirage approached and pressed it over his spark casing.
It started ticking almost immediately, somehow far less appealing when removed from Mirage’s elegant cacophony. Hound could already tell it was going to drive him crazy in short order.
“Some pieces are meant to be exchanged,” Mirage said. “A signifier that we’re matched.”
Hound wasn’t going to take this off until Mirage told him to. “Thanks. I—” He started to feel in his subspace before he remembered that his spirographs were with his personal effects, in his private tent. “...I might have something for you, later. If that’s okay.”
“Of course,” Mirage said, and wafted out through the tent curtain. Hound followed, feeling the ticking gear on his chest steadily move him along into this strange new world where he was conjunxed.
Mirage later remembered bits and pieces of the night that followed his conjugation. He didn’t mean to indulge in high-grade, but Hound had offered him a cup while they were watching a performer dance with hot glass, pulling the glowing melt into ethereal, burning shapes, and he’d decided abruptly that all of this was a hallucination. A kind mech where he’d expected a tyrant. Dice games on a conjugation night. He’d had a strange recharge flux and now he was vividly constructing a world that couldn’t possibly exist. He could indulge and not be hurt, so he deactivated his FIM chip and took the drink.
The high grade was as cold as melting glass. The melting glass was as bright as the stars. The stars were so bright out here, and when Hound caught Mirage tripping because he kept staring at the sky he gently tugged him into lying down behind one of the tents that hadn’t been pulled up and made a hologram of the stars close enough for Mirage to touch. Mirage was close enough to touch the other dancers on the floor, whirling in a pounding circle to the rhythm of drums and whistling pipes and the singing of strings. The singing was like nothing he’d ever heard, wild and filling the air telling stories of places he’d never seen.
He found himself sitting down without prelude, listening to a mech standing on a box tell him a story. Him and a number of other mechs.
“...Micronus found himself, as usual, outmatched in terms of size, but never in terms of cleverness or underhanded bastardry.” The audience laughed and cheered at this moral denunciation of a Prime that would have had the Temple in a snit. “So he set to weaving, and wove himself a net with cord as rusty as the rest of the Sea, and submerged it in the water, waiting for a hot day when Obsidian came down to the water to keep from overheating. When he did, Micronus swam to the center of his net and waited.
“‘Oh!’ he cried. ‘I’ve tangled myself in the kelp! Help! Help!’ So Obsidian, always pleased to earn a favor, waded over to him…”
Mirage’s last clear memory of the night was in a small draping tent enclosure, carefully pulling off the magnetic gears in the exact sequence that would preserve them from damage. Even inebriation couldn’t impede him, though it did make him move slower. One by one, he plucked them off, placing them in Hound’s waiting hands to be set on top of an intricately carved chest.
“Now I can recharge,” Mirage said, once the last piece was removed. He frowned at Hound’s chest. “Yours is missing.”
“It’s right here,” Hound said patiently, and pointed to where the gear-and-arm Mirage had given him earlier was set on its own corner of the chest.
“Alright then,” Mirage said, vaguely satisfied that he had done this task correctly. At least satisfied enough he could lie down on the tarp-draped ground and fall into recharge, drums still sounding outside.
Hound always knew when he was waking up to the morning after a celebration because those were the only times he onlined with the bulk of his sensory suite completely deactivated. He tried to leave on touch, height, and cyberspatial navigation, so it didn’t take him very long to realize that he was bumping into another mech. Another mech who was hogging the recharge tarps.
Right. He’d supposedly gotten hitched last night and now he actually had another mech in his berth. This was going to be great.
Hound pried open one optic to peer at the mech who looked a lot less like he was about to launch into a cross-country race or challenge Unicron for control of the starry sky, either one, while he was in recharge. Just another still form under Hound’s protection. He still smelled like electrons from last night’s high-grade.
Hound fished around in his subspace for one of the manual FIM chip activators he kept around for when Cliffjumper decided to once again ignore his frame specs and carefully set it down next to Mirage’s head before going off in search of energon.
The camp was slowly starting to stir, because revelry or not the livestock needed checking, so it was easy enough to find a common pot and pull a couple cubes of low-grade. Mechs nodded blearily as he passed, with some jokesters cackling at him having left his conjugal berth already. Hound nobly ignored them, because being Chosen Commander precluded dueling. It did mean he could make jokes about having them executed that set off waves of cackling and moaning.
Mirage was awake when he got back, still wrapped in the tarp, squinting at the FIM activator like he didn’t recognize it. Maybe he didn’t.
“For your FIM chip,” Hound said, setting down a cube of low-grade. “It’ll help pull the extra energy out of your systems.”
Mirage blinked both optics and headlights at him.
“Put it on your neck and it’ll kill the hangover,” Hound said, sticking to small words. He pulled open his own low-grade and watched Mirage fumble the activator into place. Offering to help didn’t seem appropriate when he looked bundled up tight enough to fall over.
The activator helped, at least, and they sipped their low-grade in silence together as the tent warmed in infrared with the approaching sun.
“I need to go start memorizing the camp before anyone packs up,” Hound said once his drink was done. “Want to come?”
“Are you comfortable with a stranger seeing your home?” Mirage asked, vocalizer slightly monotoned from sleep.
“Well, as far as anyone else is concerned, it’s your home now,” Hound said cheerfully.
Mirage went very still at that, hummed his engine, and drained the rest of his drink. “Yes. Will my things be safe here?”
“Absolutely,” Hound promised. The one perk of the biggest tent in the center of everything was that it was almost impossible to sneak into or out of. You needed an enhancement like his holographic generator to pass unseen enough not to enter into the daily gossip circuit.
“Hm,” Mirage said, and started picking through his ornaments. He came up with a few of them, fixing them to his pauldrons, greaves, and directly below the symbol on his chassis. They ticked far more pleasantly on him than the one that had been on Hound.
Mirage picked that one up slowly, glancing over at Hound.
“Does it have to be that one?” Hound asked.
“...No,” Mirage said. “Is this one flawed?” He examined it with a critical and disapproving optic.
“It’s just...very ticky,” Hound said delicately.
“Ticky.”
“Is there a quieter one?” He shifted and apologetically offered, “My sensory suite is...extensive.”
“Hm,” Mirage said, impenetrably. He set the piece back down and plucked a different one, setting it over Hound’s grille and attaching another a few inches away. They moved a small bar back and forth between them, not close enough to tick against each other. “How’s that?”
It didn’t feel like it was going to be too much. “Good so far.”
Mirage stepped back, putting distance between them again. “You said last night you had something for me?”
"Oh, right!” Hound had to fish around in his subspace to find his spirograph kit. “These are clan markings.” He tapped the one on his shoulder, from Beachcomber when they had become amicae. It was getting a little scruffy, but the Chosen Commander renewing an endura bond was a whole political ordeal neither of them wanted to go through so it hadn’t been re-etched in a while. “I can paint mine on you while we’re doing this. It’ll make it clear you belong here.”
Mirage peered at the spirograph tools as Hound unpacked them. They were heirlooms, the particular dots that were used to draw Hound’s clan symbols identifiable by the different layers of ink and paint stained faintly on the metal. He had a silver paint marker that would sit brightly on Mirage’s blue paint, or subtly on his white.
“Where do you want it?” Hound asked.
Mirage considered him, and then removed his own hood ornament and tapped a place that mirrored where the gears were still moving on Hound’s grille. “Here, if you would.”
He was still as a statue while Hound worked on him, arm gears moving in tune with the pulse of his spark. Hound found himself, bizarrely, wanting to linger. He didn’t.
They wandered together away from the way Mirage had entered the camp yesterday, over the packed ground in between the rocky tents. Hound had transformed into a pleasantly boxy all-terrain vehicle, which meant at some point Mirage might have to shift to root mode to keep up with him, and popped out a little satellite dish to collect data.
Mirage had been rather mortified to online and realize that not only had last night not been a dream, he had gotten rather disgracefully overcharged and then rather disgracefully hungover in front of someone to whom he had to maintain the appearance of a competent ally in subterfuge. That would need to be rectified.
“How much concentration does it take you to gather data?” he asked, hoping that the answer wouldn’t be ‘enough that your question has ruined a critical amount.’
“Not much at all,” Hound said, and Mirage’s brakes relaxed in relief. “I’m only gathering the visible spectrum. Did you need something?”
“I suppose I was curious,” Mirage said, drifting closer. “Where are we going?”
“Around,” Hound said unhelpfully. “I figure we can get to the edge and start working our way back. Is there anything you want to see?”
“I don’t even know enough about what I can see here to ask,” Mirage admitted. “When I was told I was being sold to a warlord, I assumed I wouldn’t leave your tent much. Ever again.”
“Ah,” Hound said.
Well, that joke had not only failed miserably but been undiplomatic to boot. Mirage cast around for something he could use to steer the conversation politely back onto the road Hound had offered. He was rewarded by a glimpse of motion between two passing tents. “Wait. There is something. What are those?”
“Oh, the forklifts?” Hound slowed, turning off the road to drive into a smaller cluster of dwellings. “Let’s go take a look.”
“The what?”
Mirage’s confusion was not diminished by reaching a circled-pipe fence with several moving... things inside it. Hound had transformed back to root mode and climbed right in, making strange little whirring and clicking noises at the things. The...forklifts.
Mirage stayed at the fence, staring at the forklift slowly rolling up to the fence, puttering along low to the ground. There was nowhere for a spark chamber. Just a motor whirring—a lot like the sounds Hound was making. The front of the creature had two prongs of metal jutting out, joined together by one long bar near the chassis.
As Mirage stared at it, the forklift drew right up to the fence, and slowly raised the metal prongs up to the height of the chassis, and then beyond , some extending arm mechanism within its workings allowing the protrusion to go from just above Mirage’s pede to nearly level with his elbows.
At this point he was not only staring, he was gawking , but he couldn’t stop himself. He took a step backwards, and the forklift rolled even closer to the fence, prongs sticking out over it.
In the middle of the field, Hound was laughing—not unkindly. Just warmly.
“It wants to be rubbed!” he called. “Right where the bars meet.” Mirage could see that he was doing the same to a small flock that had gathered around his feet and raised their own protrusions up to various heights in reach of hands. He’d produced a small polishing cloth in one hand, but the creatures seemed equally as content with digits.
Steeling himself, Mirage stepped forward and carefully put out his hand, rubbing at the corner where the left prong joined the bar. The forklift trembled and he froze, worried he’d somehow broken it, but it rolled slightly backward and slightly forward again, nudging his hand, so he continued. The tiny engine rumbled contentedly.
“You should not exist,” Mirage informed it, and continued rubbing.
“Cute, right?” Hound had wandered back over to the fence, forklifts trailing at his pedes and one or two nudging his back. He pushed those away. “Go on, I’m not your herdsmech.”
“I have never seen anything like it before in my life,” Mirage said. “Yes. They’re cute.” Somehow.
“Want to see more?” Hound asked.
Since Hound had no set route in mind, apparently, the cycle quickly transformed into touring Mirage around every single different livestock pen—as he was now aware they were called—on this side of camp. Mirage met more forklifts, as well as pallet jacks, velocipedes, low mowers, tractors, bicycles, and other things he was too busy staring at to retain the name of. He discovered the purpose of all of these halfway through the camp tour, when they arrived to find a scooter efficiently being stripped of metal and rubber.
“Does it have pain sensors?” Mirage asked, studying the process of tire removal. It was clearly inert but he had no idea what that meant in the context of a drone.
“Not pain, really. It can tell when it’s been damaged but it doesn’t get distressed,” the mech said. “Besides. With the engine out, it goes back to being no more than the metal it came from. Like all of us.” He rubbed tenderly over the tall central pole. “This’ll be useful for some repairs I’ve got going. And when those go back to scrap, maybe we’ll make another scooter from it. The great cycle, y’know?” He sounded somewhat dreamy.
“Of course,” said Mirage, who did not know.
“Here,” said the mech, tossing Mirage a tire. “You look like you’re getting a little treadworn there. That’ll help your self-repair.”
“Thank you,” Mirage said, and bowed the way he would to a counselor in Crystal City. Surely erring on the side of more polite couldn’t hurt.
“Aw, it’s nothing,” the mech said easily, and tossed the other one to Hound. “For you too, friend. Happy hitching.”
“Thanks, Beachcomber,” Hound said. He looked fonder than Mirage had yet seen him, and he bumped his knuckles against Beachcomber’s shoulder where there was a mark—Mirage noticed—matching the one he had painted on Mirage this morning, scratched into the paint. Clearly these two were familiar with each other. Mirage studied the scooter tire and tried to figure out what he was supposed to do with it. “Come by later, all right?”
“Sure will,” Beachcomber said and went back to his work.
“My amica,” Hound explained as they walked away. Mirage fought down both the irrational surge of relief and the urge to touch the silver mark on his chassis.
“He seemed nice,” Mirage said. “What do I...do with this?”
Hound showed him how to peel the rubber coating of the tire off and chew on it, crunching into the central plastic once all the scraps had been integrated. Mirage was still trying to pry the central bolt out from where it had gotten caught in his dentae when Hound slowed and stopped.
“And these are my clan’s pennyfarthings,” Hound said, sounding prouder than Mirage had yet heard him. These were the creatures Mirage had seen from the palanquin yesterday, with an enormous spoked wheel at the front of a slender frame and two more small wheels at the back.
“Why are they called that?” Mirage asked.
“No idea,” Hound said cheerfully, and swung himself over the fence. These were nowhere near as friendly as the forklifts had been—a few of the closest pulled away, and the rest didn’t react, continuing to rock back and forth or circle idly. He creaked at one, holding out his digits, and it just swiveled its front wheel away and trundled off. “Come on, please?”
None of them seemed in a mood to cooperate. Mirage leaned against the railing, not bothering to hide his amusement.
Hound attempted to grab one by the hornlike bars that rose above the central wheel, only for it to move away from his grasp and rattle backwards.
“They don’t seem to be in a mood for visitors,” Mirage said.
“They never are,” Hound said in a tone of long-suffering familiarity. “I don’t even have an oil can—” He cut himself off and then extended one hand, an oil can popping into view. Mirage was excited to see where this was going.
Hound made swishing noises, slowly approaching one of the pennyfarthings that had yet to run away from him. His other hand shimmered, so he was probably hiding something under a separate hologram there. The creature spun its back wheels against the ground, producing a small cloud of dust, but stayed put as Hound approached slowly, from the side.
Before they had come to this pen, Mirage would have considered himself content to go back to the large tent Hound occupied, or see if the racetrack was still set up and burn some charge on it. Now he was invested in getting to touch a pennyfarthing. He settled himself on the railing to watch intently.
Hound got within grabbing distance, slowly extending the holographic oilcan, and right as the large front wheel turned curiously in his direction, lunged forward to grab. The pennyfarthing didn’t have time to turn again but it squealed and shot straight forward, right past Hound, who grabbed a moment too soon for the handlebars and missed entirely. Hound tumbled forward as the pennyfarthing crashed into another, setting off a chain reaction of squealing, ramming oversized bicycles as they tried to run away from that end of the pen. Mirage covered his laugh.
Hound shouted in exasperation, his other hand shimmering as the hologram fell to reveal a length of nylon rope with a loop at one end. A neat flick of his wrist sent it sailing over the handlebars of the original culprit, who came to an unhappy stop with wheels spinning up a cloud of carbon dust.
Holding tension on the rope, Hound approached the pennyfarthing briskly from the side, and when he reached it did some complicated maneuver that ended with him seated on the back of the pennyfarthing. He was perched on the strange protrusion Mirage had been wondering about the purpose of, balanced even as the creature tipped forward to launch its back wheels up towards the sun. The sun itself wasn’t quite managing to outshine the brilliance of Hound’s joyful laugh.
Hound looked satisfied with himself for a whole five astroseconds before the slow and creaky stampede he had started knocked into his mount and he went down under a wave of large front tires.
Mirage couldn’t help himself. He fell against the fence laughing.
The pennyfarthing, when Hound finally extricated himself from a pile of spokes and brought it over for Mirage’s attention, was perfectly docile. The rest of the creatures had gone back to milling about, occasionally squeaking at each other. Hound had tire marks across his chest, and Mirage touched those first, carefully checking for damages.
“I’m sorry for laughing,” he apologized. “Being bombarded like that couldn’t have been fun.”
“Oh, it’s fine,” Hound said. “They’re very light.” He demonstrated by scooping the pennyfarthing into the air with one hand. It spun its front wheel in protest.
Mirage finally let himself run one hand over the wheel as it spun, petting the nubbly rubber affectionately. “These are amazing. They’re your clan’s?”
“Yeah. They’re good for storing metal, and you can hook a lot of them together to pull things, even if they aren’t good for cargo.” Hound slowly lowered the pennyfarthing to the ground, pointing at a symbol pinned between its handlebars. “I have a direct claim on this one, actually. Do you want it?”
Mirage looked up from where he’d moved to scratching the handlebars, sheathed at the tips with a curiously textured rubber derivative. “Want it?”
“I owe you a bride price,” Hound said. “In exchange for your dowry. This would make a good start.” He patted the pennyfarthing’s strange central protrusion.
Mirage glanced around to make sure there were no audials close enough to hear before quietly saying “We’re not actually conjunxed. You don’t owe me anything.”
“Well...it’s kind of my fault you can’t go home again.” Hound’s optics were steady where they fixed on him. Mirage resisted the urge to look away. “There’s a lot I can’t do right now. I can’t get everyone out of here safely. I can’t recreate the deeds of the Age of Primes. I can’t shield the sky. I can give you the resources you deserve.” He held the nylon rope out to Mirage, one end still wrapped around the pennyfarthing’s frame. “Mirage, even if you don’t want to stay with us and tend a herd of your own, you can use it as a foundation to start a new life, when our route takes us back by other cities. Let me do this for you.”
Mirage was used to offers that had far more metaphorical strings attached. The urge to decline was queued for his vocalizer.
He looked at Hound’s optics, and took the nylon rope anyway. “Very well. If you insist.”
Hound grinned at him. “Believe me, I do.”
The pennyfarthing, no longer receiving enough attention for its needs, trundled away and the rope slid out of Mirage’s hands before he knew to catch it. Trying to get it back gave him a thorough understanding of Hound’s assertion that the creatures were light. And a matching set of tire tracks.
Hound had a full map of camp by the time the dark drew in that day. He kept a miniature version up on the map table for the war council to examine when they came in to give their reports, and it was obvious that the image of it reassured a lot of them.
“Can’t believe your crazy plan might actually work,” Gears muttered, and Hound couldn’t even disagree.
Not too many people seemed to be arguing with the plan to move. Hound had a feeling that they’d have to implement patrols to clear areas right before Crystal City’s forces could come down and do it with lethal force, but that was a future problem.
Immediately, envoys from Crystal City would be arriving for negotiations tomorrow. There had been a series of agreements about who would be attending to provide input on the treaty, but that had been when they still thought they would be negotiating in at least mediocre faith. Now the demands of the meeting were different. Also Ironhide was trying to explain why he shouldn’t have to attend.
“Ironhide, if I have to suffer through this, you do too,” Hound said finally.
“Yeah, but you get your conjunx!”
“Nothing’s stopping you from inviting Chromia. I like Chromia. Chromia can be here.” Hound went back to trying to make sure that he had the details of the Bursting Sun tribe’s tents right.
“She said she doesn’t want to come,” Ironhide grumbled.
“I can’t blame her for that,” Hound admitted. Chromia had been his tribe’s marshal for more rotations than Hound had been alive and had announced shortly before Hound had been elected Chosen Commander that she would be taking a well deserved break and only to call her into official meetings if a critical number of people had died. “I guess you’ have to suck it up and come alone, then.”
Hound forgot about this conversation in the rest of the noise that followed everyone laughing at Ironhide and moving on to defense concerns. Eventually, though, everyone left his tent, and he was alone with his little hologram model and Mirage standing quiet in the corner.
“Am I really attending the talks tomorrow?”
Or...not-so-quiet. Hound dismissed the hologram to let his projector rest and looked up at Mirage. “Do you want to?”
“No.” That answer was immediate. “No, I don’t.”
“Then don’t.”
“It’s not that simple.”
Hound sighed all of his vents out, drawing in a cycle. The little gear attached to his chest was still ticking. He’d been hearing it all day. “Mirage, if you don’t want to be there, I’m not going to make you come.”
“They need to believe I’ve suborned you,” Mirage said stiffly. “If they can’t see me, they won’t trust that I’m succeeding.”
“So are you asking me or telling me that you’re coming?” Hound asked. It may have came out sharper than he meant for it to. Mirage’s processor was heating up again.
“I’m telling you I should. I’m asking you, as the commander here, what my approach should be. Hound.” He was staring past Hound’s head at the tent wall, like if they didn’t look directly at each other this wouldn’t really be happening.
“What would it look like if you’d actually done what they sent you here to do?” Hound asked. He felt like he was trying to talk down a skittish pennyfarthing for an oil treatment.
“Like I’d been seducing you, I suppose,” Mirage said. “How are favored concubines treated around here?”
“Um,” Hound said. “I’ve never met one?”
Mirage stared at him, gaze drawn away from the tent.
“I don’t think anyone has concubines anymore,” Hound said, apologetically. “They’re kind of old-fashioned. Maybe you could lounge around while I fed you peeled grates?”
Mirage’s engine backfired. “I don’t think that will be necessary,” he said. “I can just sit on your lap.”
Hound’s processor immediately spat out five conflicting emotional responses that contraindicated each other and he ended up saying “That will be fine,” with absolutely no emotional input.
“Unless that would bother you,” Mirage said.
“It won’t,” Hound said. “You’re not that heavy.”
“Thank you,” Mirage said, dryly ironic even as his processor heat output decreased. “I’ll try to avoid scuffing your paint. If you don’t mind, I’m going to retire for the night.”
“Of course,” Hound said and tried not to watch him go.
He pulled up a map of the camp on his internal systems, marking out the Bursting Sun’s tents with a red line. Their tent cluster was close to the center of the camp, mostly because they had a group of hotspot newsparks less than a quarter of a vorn old with them this gathering. No one had objected to them leaving first.
In-vent. Ex-vent. Draw the image in his processor. Lock the distance and proportions into place. Throw up the hologram with a single line of code.
Hound had made a lot of holograms. Generating twenty-eight tents and three herds was barely a blip in his system’s power consumption. Sustaining it at this level and proximity took even less. It would only be a pain later. He sent a message to Kup that the Bursting Sun was clear to start moving out and went to rest.
Mirage, already in recharge, was hogging the tarps again. Hound slowly pried the edge of one out from under his legs, removed the gearpiece from his thorax and set it on a chest, and stretched out on the tarp pulled flat. Mirage’s engine was puttering in sleep mode.
“Goodnight,” Hound mumbled and let himself drop off.