"What do you think they'll do?" Windchime asked.
"I'm sure they will simply rebuild once they know how to use all the mechanisms in the bunker," Jessica13 replied.
"No, I mean about the prisoners."
"They're running a vote now," Tinker said. "I think their choice will be to strip them and send them out into the wild."
"Which is a death sentence," the other man stated grimly. "Why not simply kill them outright?"
"Probably because no one wants to get their hands dirty," his teammate replied. "Or maybe they don't want to spare the bullets."
"They could always use the corpses for fertilizer," she pointed out and grimaced internally at the almost callous way she’d said that. It wasn’t at all like her, and she assumed that all that had happened and her part in it had somehow derailed her a little.
"They already have a few bodies with the ones Jessie and I killed," Windchime added.
The group around them finally came to the conclusion that Tinker had assumed they would. The men were stripped of all their possessions, even their clothes and boots, and driven out of town.
"All in all, it’s not the worst mission I've been a part of." Tinker rolled his shoulders and climbed into his mech. "I'll contact Hammerhand and ask him what we should do next."
Chapter Twenty-Five
Jessica13 folded her arms and scowled. She wasn't sure why she no longer liked being underground but for some reason, it really irritated her. Maybe she had become too used to the benefits of being above ground to enjoy the safety of a bunker again.
"Jessica13," Mini said softly. "We have a problem."
"Of course we do," Windchime grumbled and looked as happy with their current circumstances as she was.
"I have been able to connect to the bunker's software and it would appear that it is part of a network," the AI continued and displayed the system on the screen. "There appear to be five more—four satellite bunkers and one central bunker."
"It sounds like the kind of place Athena would set herself up in," Tinker said over the comms.
"Agreed," the other man replied. "She would be holed up in the location whenever she isn't in her Excalibur."
"The news only grows worse," Mini said. "The smaller systems of the local bunkers are accessible to me but the major functions to control the weather and water functions are isolated to the main bunker, which is about sixty clicks north of this position."
"Shouldn't we be able to access the functions from here?" she asked. "Maybe pick up the actual physical wiring?"
"It would be possible," he confirmed. "But the wiring is isolated behind fifty meters of steel-reinforced concrete. It would take months to reach with the current equipment we have, even in the Beast. With that in mind, we would be able to manage the balloons that maintain the local weather but the underground water supplies are controlled from the central bunker and are therefore beyond our control."
"It sounds like we need to take control of the central bunker," Tinker said.
"And that sounds far easier said than done," Windchime said. "We need to make contact with Hammerhand and see if it’s even possible."
"For the moment, though," Jessica13 said and looked at her teammates. "Athena took a large amount of food from these people—supplies. They would be left almost destitute without it, especially if the underground water is cut off. Mechs wouldn't be able to carry it alone, which means Athena would have a supply train."
"And you think we should take the train?" the younger Knight asked. "How would we know where it's going?"
She shrugged. "Well, it should be obvious enough. There aren't any roads between the main bunker and this one, so if they are going there, it will be directly toward the bunker, which gives us a clear path toward them. If they're anything like Tinker's Beast, it should make a little under fifty klicks a day on an actual road. By my estimation, they're less than twenty ahead of us if they are moving across the open ground. We can overtake them fairly quickly. And even if they aren’t going to the bunker, if it’s anything like the Beast, we should be able to find the tracks and follow them easily."
"It would make for a problem if that supply train is escorted in the same way ours is," Tinker said. "But I suppose it can't hurt to have a quick look to see if there’s anything we can do to give them trouble, right?"
"Agreed." She nodded emphatically, even though he couldn’t see her.
All she really wanted was to escape the bunker but delivering a little justice to the folks who had controlled and abused the locals on Athena’s orders would certainly not hurt.
She and Windchime returned to the surface, where Tinker waited for them.
The reaction from the town once they fully comprehended their freedom from under Athena's heel was rewarding. A handful was celebrating while another group sifted through what had been taken from those they had banished and distributed them among the rest of the populace. Some set up streamers and prepared a larger celebration for later in the day. With supplies as limited as they were, it could hardly be considered a feast, but it was encouraging to see how they made do with what they had. What they lacked in food and drink they made up with enthusiasm and determination.
It would be difficult for all of them to gather until the evening since a large number of them needed to head out to the fields to work. Jessica13 wondered how they would be able to continue with their efforts to cultivate what they needed if they didn't resolve the water situation. There was only so much that could be done with rainwater, especially with this many people.
"Are you ready?" Windchime asked.
She looked at him, a little surprised. "Now?"
"Do you think we should wait until our quarry is inside the bunker and beyond our reach?" he asked, clearly sarcastic.
"No, but—"
"But nothing. If we want to
