(eng) Marissa Meyer - Lunar Chronicles SSC by Stars Above

Author:Stars Above [Above, Stars]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

The Little Android

Mech6.0 stood against the hangar’s charging wall, one of hundreds of mute sentinels watching the passengers flutter by with their hovering luggage carts and excited chatter. Before her, the massive Triton hunkered imposingly in the center of the hangar, dwarfing the crowd, as greeters scanned the ID chips of their guests and ushered them aboard. A ship’s maiden voyage was always a festive occasion, but this one seemed more vibrant than usual, as the Triton was about to set the record for largest cruiser ever to be launched. Waiters were passing glasses of champagne to the passengers as they boarded and had their belongings escorted away, women were donning their finest kimonos and hanbok and cocktail gowns, and a live orchestra had even been hired for the entertainment.

Against the festive backdrop, the ship itself appeared menacing to Mech6.0, with its polished metal paneling and small round windows glinting beneath the hangar’s lights. It hadn’t seemed so big when she’d been working on it, running wires and soldering frame pieces and screwing on protective paneling. At the time, she’d almost felt like she and her brethren were a part of this enormous metal beast. A thousand tiny moving pieces making one efficient machine. But now the result of their labors was ready to set sail, and she no longer felt attached to it at all. Only dwarfed by its magnificence.

And perhaps a little abandoned.

As the guests giggled and chattered and discussed how many space cruises they’d been on before, and the beauty of the new ship, and all the comforts the ads had promised, Mech6.0 watched and listened and felt the thrumming of electricity warming her insides.

“All aboard! Triton to debark in ten minutes. Ten-minute warning! All aboard!”

The crowd dwindled. The monotonous beep of the ID scanners trickled to an occasional sparse rhythm. One ramp rose up to the ship, closing with a thud that vibrated through the hangar’s floors and up Mech6.0’s treads—then two ramps, then three.

“Wait!” A woman’s voice echoed through the hangar, followed by the hasty padding of feet. “We’re coming! We’re here,” she said, breathlessly dragging a young girl behind her.

“Just in time,” said one of the greeters, scanning the woman’s wrist. “On up you go.”

She thanked him profusely and pushed a lock of messy hair off her face. Retightening her grip on the girl’s wrist, she gave her floating hover cart a push and jogged up the ramp.

Mech6.0’s scanner caught on something small and flat as it dislodged from the young girl’s backpack and fluttered down toward the greeter, who didn’t notice. Her programming alerted her to the incongruence, and she shuffled through proper responses.

If she found something that a human had lost, or that had been stolen, she was to return it.

But she was not to interrupt the boarding process, particularly once the captain had called for the ship to be sealed and prepared for takeoff.

As soon as the ramp began to rise off the ground, Mech6.0 knew that her opportunity to return the item to the girl was lost.

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