Orbital Research Lagrange Station Chiron β - December 25, 310 XGY
"Don't blame me about this one," Sterling finally said from the other side of the enclave constructed from a couple of barely sufficiently thick force fields. "I did my best to try to teach them about life and what it's worth."
"Doesn't matter much if they're all trying to kill us..." Julien was examining the ruined bits of about half of her dematerialization gun in a way which was about half detached and half impatient. "Incidentally, if you could explain the whole warrior robot race thing to us--"
"I'm a mad scientist!" he replied, defensively. "Logic doesn't really figure into the whole affair, apart from a few glancing blows in a back alley somewhere."
From somewhere around the corner, a piercingly intense flicker of blue light and an electrical crackle gave the others enough of a warning to deactivate part of the force field still undergoing fire as Mikkau ducked under its shielding. Immediately afterwards a number of bullets slammed back into the floor behind him as the shield went back up, vaporizing the rest of the latest volley.
After snatching his staff focuser from where it had landed beside him, the newest arrival began blasting over his shoulder through the shield as best he could, despite the energy dispersion due to that sort of thing. "Right then! Can we move this thing towards the exit?"
"No," both of the others said in more or less unison.
"Explain why not." Mikkau turned around, in order to better handle what recoil there was.
Julien sort of stared off into space in a somewhat innocent manner. "I didn't design it to be moved, you know."
The staff clattered to the ground as its wielder focused one of his better irritated piercing stares at her. "And you built a non-movable, immensely powerful force-shield generator in the middle of a robot war uprising far away from any entrances or other safe spots why?..."
"Madness tends to imply a lack of logical forethought."
"Riiiight." Mikkau was quite clearly considering the many pleasant possibilities offered in the way of hitting his head against solid objects nearby. "I forgot about that. While working with the Bureau my mind must have been rewired to expect scientific advances to make any sort of sense. I should really get that fixed." His facial expression reset to a vaguely stony silence as he picked up the staff again and continued a largely vain attempt to clear the area around them.
Sterling gestured at the staff in his hands by way of making a point. "You build that, put in the extra work to go back and power it down to become a powerful stun versus a kill setting, and then criticize our logic?"
"That should be self-evident," Mikkau said between gritting his teeth, "as it's what I'm in the process of doing."
Part of the shield near them began unexpectedly collapsing, forcing Julien to give part of the generator yet another kick. Even the boundless applications of Kicking Technology were beginning to die down due to the extended miniature siege situation they had recently found themselves in; the kitchen had gone out of their reach a few hours earlier, and at this point the trail mix bars and dark chocolate were wearing a bit thin.
[A/N: For some reason, too much music. Another vignette. If I keep making these up out of nowhere, I can completely avoid actually finishing my novel...]
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