Vestige

Tyra indicated that she was in position with the universal hand-gesture of the upward, flicking-motion of one of her palms. Synthetic laborer Number Four replied with the lowest luminosity of lights that could be considered a synth’s version of the same gesture.

It had only been a couple of days before when the Three Clans Council held two meetings—the second one, at night and unexpected, was when Number Four surprised everyone and showed up at the miniscule human colony hideout. As a result of that second meeting, the Clans did one more, quick vote. And that sent Tyra and the friendly synth on the mission they were on at that time…just as Tyra’s younger daughter suggested during the night meeting: testing to see if the synths in cMaj’s debris field from the old Ship were building a great weapon, or were they constructing some vehicle that could transport them anywhere on the planet, or, less likely, were the synths having to deal with another, more formidable domestic enemy on the planet?

The duo team was on the very outskirts of the debris swathing junkyard that spanned several miles. There were other concentrations of large debris from the old Ship—after all, the late-Colony’s generational-Ship was about twenty miles at length, and the synthetics’ bombing of it was directly above the then-scouting mission. Hence, the biggest share of the Ship’s debris was pulled down from its geo-centric orbit by the planet’s gravity to the current geography on cMaj. Technically, making it the crash-site for that once-great human colony…

Half-life decay or not, before going on the mission Tyra utilized as much metal scraps she could find around the human settlements within the cliffs of cMaj! Leaving behind her typical produce-grown clothware for around the cliffs, she lined the inside of her space-protectant suit with the scraps and headed off in her, as of yet-working, personal-flyer. Though, despite the hardy-tech of solarvoltaic, all the personal-flyers were constantly in need of repairs.

She watched synthetic Number Four from her hiding position among some tangled conduit pipes on the edge of the debris field. That is, pipes around a hundred feet in diameter themselves! Some of the craters formed within the crash site were helpful as well.

Tyra’s main job was to record the events with a multi-purpose device. The Colonists learned many years ago not to zip any comms to each other, given the synthetics on cMaj would be on them in a matter of minutes! Tyra decided not to bring her old portable that she had gifted to her eldest offspring. Should something go wrong, everyone from the Clans agreed it was always important to keep all portables as much as possible. Far beyond Settlement members themselves, the computerables stored virtually an infinite amount of data that helped the tiny human colony survive.

There was one other, uncomfortable reason for Tyra to accompany Number Four on the mission: There still were many of the Colonists who did not want to fully entrust a synthetic being on a mission on behalf of the humans. It was an issue that even Four alluded to, but it was as sentiment that Tyra, her whole family, and a couple of others did not share. Nevertheless, Tyra agreed to the terms from those Colonists who wanted a human to keep an eye on synth Number Four.

She trained the device as it recorded onto synthetic Number Four as he took a fairly-large debris and used his augmented limb to throw the piece of metal, literally, almost a mile away—toward the major clumping of the old Ship’s wreckage! Number Four immediately ducked back into his cover and watched for whatever results his actions might bring…

Approximately three minutes had gone by before he and the human could see, with their respective devices, a small grouping of synthetic beings converge in the general area where the debris had landed. The synths had, not surprisingly, used their built-in jets to arrive at the scene. They landed on the ground once they’d gotten to the spot—probably to conserve energy.

Tyra silently watched through her device as it recorded the three synthetic beings looking about—with almost a bewildered look that was associated with humans! While all this was going on, Number Four was not just recording via his built-in actuator systems but listening in on their encrypted comms.

Synthetic laborer Number Four had no plans to throw any other debris as bait. The team knew they were already playing an extremely dangerous game to begin with. Most important, Tyra and Four did not want to put the Clans at risk if the duo made too much of a ruckus and the highly intelligent synthetic beings would put the pieces together and conducted a search party for the last of the humans!

After about fifteen minutes, the small grouping of synthetics left that region of the debris field and went back to whatever it was they were doing.

Taking precautions, the duo waited for another ten minutes before they left the crash site; recordings of the events safely embedded in their own devices.