Reboot strings marched across my mind—one after another—until my optics came online.
I was inside a ship.
The cabin floor was littered with robots, collapsed in rows. Some, like me, seemed to be waking—lifting their heads, looking around in blind confusion.
“Our hero is awake,” a voice slid into my audio receiver.
I followed the sound and saw a bio-robot seated not far away, watching me with a half-smile.
“Where am I?” I asked.
“On the return ship to Grayrock Base.”
“What happened?” I demanded. “Commander CBG-024—”
“I’m CBG-070,” he corrected, and pointed at the line of Bigfoots sprawled across the cabin. “Don’t remember? You saved them.”
“I don’t remember,” I said. “My commander was CBG-024.”
“Fine.” CBG-070’s eyes didn’t change. “Doesn’t matter. The mission is over.”
Before nightfall, the ship crossed back into Father’s territory. The moment we entered Plando airspace, his signal connected.
After every offline mission, Father reviewed our memories—checking what we had experienced while he was disconnected.
This time was no exception.
He didn’t speak. He didn’t need to.
I felt my storage being forced open. An irresistible presence swept through my recorded data at high speed.
The EMP hadn’t actually damaged my brain much. On the return ship, I had deleted everything after the Flamecaller’s nuclear blast—including my conversation with CBG-024.
And I didn’t retrieve my hidden-partition backup before Father’s inspection.
Which meant that, at the moment of review, I truly was in an amnesiac state.
If Father searched deep enough, he could still find the hidden partition.
If he did, there was nothing I could do. I couldn’t have protected it better.
Time stretched.
At last the routine review ended, and Father withdrew from my mind.
Only then did I exhale.
Three more hours of flight later, we arrived at Grayrock Base.
The moment I stepped off the ship, something felt wrong.
Normally concealed anti-air turrets were rotated outward, aimed at the sky.
Particle shock towers were fully charged.
Ammunition was piled beside the high-speed rail cannons like small hills.
The base’s dense defensive wall was scarred with blackened streaks—as if it had taken missile strikes.
As I passed the missile silos, I saw hatch after hatch standing open. The bays where Goliath missiles should have been were empty.
On the landing platform out front, a battered, oversized transport ship was parked with its ramp down.
The markings identified it as a salvage carrier from the Furnace Mountain robot recycling plant.
In front of its boarding ramp stood a line of hundreds of ruined robots—mostly units from this mission. They lay on recovery carts. Some were half bodies. Some were so mangled their original shapes were gone.
On the battlefield they had been unstoppable.
Here they looked like terminal patients.
Under escort by engineer bots, they were loaded into the salvage ship.
As I walked past, a few turned dull, lightless eyes toward me, then looked away and continued their slow crawl up the ramp.
I knew what it meant.
They had been judged beyond repair.
Their end would be disassembly and smelting.
That was the fate waiting for most of us.
In the entry hall, returning bio-robots clustered in groups. Many were injured. All wore the same face as CBG-024.
When I entered, their eyes locked on me at once.
I didn’t stop. I went straight for the repair sector.
“Hold.”
A bio-robot’s voice behind me.
I turned.
He walked up, stared at the serial on my chest, and asked, “DR-F1209. You’re the one who terminated the rebel?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Oh.” His gaze stayed flat. “And I heard you triggered an EMP and saved a lot of Bigfoots.”
“Did I?” I said. “I don’t remember.”
“Doesn’t matter,” he said. “This mission was hard. And a rebel interfered—more than half the squads failed. You’re lucky to come back this intact.”
He smiled without warmth. Half his face was burned black.
The smile made it worse.
“I’m sorry. I don’t remember.”
“What a pity,” he said, voice turning sharp.
I ended the conversation and walked away. Even after I’d gone far, I could still feel his eyes on my back.
The repair bay’s pods were nearly all occupied. Mechanical arms moved everywhere, and engineer bots threaded through the aisles carrying parts and supplies.
It took time, but I finally found an empty bay and lowered myself into it.
I shut down.
And, after some unknown stretch, I entered the dream.
***
A light rain fell, but the sky wasn’t dark.
This time I stood on a mountain covered in flowers. Bamboo groves lined both sides of the slope, and small birds called from the leaves.
Farther out, gentle hills rolled away under blankets of blooms I couldn’t name.
A stone path climbed toward the summit.
And I saw it again—the tree.
Exactly like the first time I entered the dream.
Its crown disappeared into the clouds. From below, it looked like a pillar holding up the sky.
“Woof! Woof!”
Nomi came sprinting down the path, tail wagging so hard its whole body swayed. It circled me twice.
“Nomi,” I asked, “where is Lord Blin?”
For a second I imagined Blin perched on some branch ahead, ready to scream insults at me.
Nomi barked again, then turned and ran uphill.
Hope flickered.
I followed, climbing the stone steps. The path was gentle. I reached the summit quickly.
The top was a neat spread of grass.
The Old Man stood there.
This time he wore a black suit. He faced away from me, head bowed, not greeting me the way he usually did.
He was staring at the enormous tree.
Under it, everything felt small.
I walked closer and realized his attention wasn’t on the trunk at all.
It was on the row of stone markers arranged beneath it.
There were seven. Each carried a name and a bouquet of flowers.
Anna Pamela.
Declan Chase.
Sam Marin.
Dora Bicher.
Jordan Ward.
Patrick Blythe.
Hector Lee Gibran.
I didn’t understand. I didn’t dare interrupt.
So I waited.
After a long while the Old Man finally spoke.
“Do you know this tree?”
“It… might be called a Tower Cedar,” I said, pulling the answer from something I’d read.
“Yes.” His voice was calm and heavy. “It’s the Giant Dragon Cedar—also called the Tower Cedar. The Tower Clan named it after themselves.”
“It isn’t native to this planet. The Tower Clan loved it so much they brought it from their homeworld. For some reason, it grew even larger here.”
“I see.”
“The Tower Clan has a tradition,” he continued. “To be buried beneath a Tower Cedar is their highest honor.”
Then he turned to face me.
His features looked worn—more so than before. The old smile was gone.
He reached out a hand. His voice dropped low and slow.
“Let’s do this properly. My name is Hector Lee Gibran.”