Author's Note. This story is designed to examine what Sonic's fight against Robotnik would be like if it more closely resembled a conflict on Earth. Further details should be obtained by reading the story. Thanks very much for your readership and any reviews you provide! The story is still being written, and your input can only help to make the story better.

Persona non Grata

a story of Mobius in four parts

Part One: Gardenia

Part Two: Burning Beard

Part Three: Search and Destroy

Part Four: Immigrant Song

(All things are in shadow. Sally Acorn and Sonic Hedgehog lie on the ground, seeming to look up at a sky filled with stars and the milky stripe of a spiral galaxy as seen from the inside. A two tailed fox stands at their feet, seeming to look down at them.)

(1) Imperial Silviculture Base Alpha, Great Forest, 25 Vendemaire 3239. Subject Julianne of Rats struggles with unsought promotions; subject Snively Kolensky plays out the line on subject Renee of Pine Martens.

(2) Robotropolis, 26 Vendemaire 3239. Subjects Sonic Hedgehog and Sally Acorn visit a factory dormitory; subject Miles of Foxes is reassigned.

(3) "Knothole Village" South, Great Forest, 27 Vendemaire 3239. Subjects Antoine D'Coolette retains his solitude; Subjects Lupe of Wolves, Amanda of Skunks, and Julian Robotnik investigate the nature of robots.

(4) "Knothole Village" South, Great Forest, 28 Vendemaire 3239. Subjects Sonic Hedgehog, Sally Acorn, Antoine D'Coolette and May Rabbit prepare for battle.

(5) Robotropolis, 29 Vendemaire 3239. Subject Amanda of Skunks speeks freely with Subject Snively Kolensky.

(6) Robotropolis, 30 Vendemaire 3239. The Battle of Robotropolis begins.

(7) The Egg, Robotropolis, 30 Vendemaire 3239. Subjects Sonic Hedgehog and Julian Robotnik have a conversation.

(8) Imperial Spaceport, Northwest of Robotropolis, 1 Brumaire 3239. Subjects Antoine D'Coolette, May Rabbit, Miles of Foxes and Sally Acorn press onward.

(9) One Hundred Kilometers Off Angel Island, 3 Messidor 3686. Subject Dareth of Foxes learns things about humans, mobians, gods and his Lady.

(10) Citadel of Sarah, Lady Winstone, Winstone, Robian Empire, 28 Messidor 3686. Subject Sarah, Lady Winstone, feels out Subject Miles, Lord Fortune.

(11) Near Range Comet Belt, 12 Nivose 3757. Subject Tails Prower leaves home.

(Copyright Act Admissions/Lanham Act Disclaimers. This piece infringes copyrights owned by Sega and DiC. It is not a product of Sega, DiC, or Archie Comics. All available rights are reserved.)

Imperial Silviculture Base Alpha, Great Forest, 25 Vendemaire 3239

It took Julianne of Rats half an hour to dress. Five minutes for forest-camouflaged cotton-polystyrene uniform of the Imperial Army, five minutes to walk to the auxiliary barracks armory, and twenty to install herself in the heavy exoskeleton of a Swatbot's combat servant. By the time she powered up and checked the boot of the command and control relays and the targeting assistance systems, she was sweating in the stifling breath of the computers that hummed all around her, monitoring the ammo and weapons lock-up. All the bruises had woken up beneath her wheat fur, and she had less than two minutes to 0200 hours.

Her aching muscles called the stronger servos in the exoskeleton to life. She trudged to the door, which opened automatically at silent request from her armor. Instantly she was almost blinded by the blue glare of the xenon arclights mounted on stalks along the five meter perimeter wall. If you looked at them, the light burnt your retinas like bare skin under the sun. If you didn't look, you just felt the eyes watching you, mechanical and biological, from the wall and from the corners of every structure in the base.

Miles is watching, she thought.

Julianne walked with soft whines from the exoskeleton's motors, looking down at the cement through the HUD overlay the suit held in front of her left eye.

The food stockpile was two hundred meters away across the core of the camp in the quartermaster complex and she moved quickly with long steps half her own, half-dictated by the steel and composite that caged her body. Her tail whipped awkwardly, trying instinctively and hopelessly to counterbalance the mass of the exoskeleton. When she reached her station, the door to the provisions shed, she was going too fast and had a moment of terror that she would fall forward onto the Swatbot and scratch its armor, but the onboard laser gyros in the exoskeleton pulled her back upright to attention.

The bot looked out at the starkly lit parade ground, ignoring her. "Excuse me—" She stifled a groan, wondering how tired she had to be to forget to how to address a robot. "I am Private Julianne of Rats, Sir. I am assigned to assist you."

The Swatbot silently lifted its right fist and pressed the datalinks at its knuckles to the ports on her exoskeleton's shoulder. The servos responded by changing her posture, sinking her from attention into a combat stance. Clicks and a brief flash of targeting laser on the ground as her systems rechecked themselves to the Swatbot's satisfaction. A quick message in her HUD and the green outline it superimposed on the contours of the bot in front of her let her know that her systems were married to the bot's. "Form flank left and perform targeting duties."

"Yes, Sir," she replied, her path already laid out for her by the HUD. Flank left meant that the bot would hold its position to the right of the security door leading into the provision shed, and she would be stationed on its left, to provide a triangulation point for its sensors. Already her calves had begun to complain. A digitigrade robot could maintain the ready stance the exoskeleton required indefinitely without pain. She was going to have to make it eight hours, on three hours sleep and a handful of kibble. And only Miles knew what task would be assigned her then, instead of permitting her a full rest cycle.

In position, she raised her head and squeezed her eyes shut against the arclight glare.

Make this stop. The plea didn't come from her muscles, but another part of her, deep in her chest. This has to stop.

Shut up, Julianne thought back, forcing her eyes open. A mobian stood before her. She and her exoskeleton recognized him at the same time, the HUD painting him green as she jerked hard to attention, pulled a salute.

"Lieutenant Colonel," the Swatbot said, unmoving. Even that was an astonishing amount of deference for a robot to pay an organic.

"Lieutenant Colonel, Sir!" Julianne shouted.

"At ease," Miles ordered. The rat's exoskeleton squeezed a breathy whine from her chest as she spread her legs and forced the suit's arm-actuators as close to permitting her hands to clasp behind her back as they would allow. Swallowing, she forced her arms to remain in place.

Miles of Foxes smiled. As almost always, he was dressed below his rank in loose-fitting dun shorts and a black vest lined with pockets and ablative armor. If Julianne didn't know better she'd think that the commander liked the feel of the forest air in his fur. She knew better: he liked to show his arms. Scarification that cruel and precise marked him as the chosen of a Robian far better than the steel collar around his neck.

"You look tired, rat," he declared.

Julianne forced herself to keep meeting his gaze as she weighed the risk of telling him that her duty schedule hadn't left her desperately exhausted—Miles might reward a mobian eager to serve the Empress with the opportunity to forgo her next shift in bunk in favor of target practice or polishing the Swatbot next to her to a shine—and the risk of saying something that Miles might take as insubordination. "I . . . It's standing ready in the exoskeleton," she said. "Sir. My legs are not used to it, Sir."

Miles kept smiling. Julianne forced herself to stay still as Miles reached out his hand and rubbed his thumb in the fur beside her left eye, feeling the puffy softness of the bruise he had given her two days ago. "Swatbots don't have as much need of targeting servants in the capital, do they?"

"No, Sir."

"How many times have you worn the rig now, Julianne?"

Forever—a week—when had she slept . . . . ". . . six . . . I don't—do not know, Sir."

"You don't remember."

"No, Sir. Not exactly. Five or six times."

"Good," he said. "Forget how many."

"Yes, Sir," she replied without hesitation. Miles sometimes gave her commands that could not be obeyed, like an order to stop feeling a pain she was suffering, to fail to understand words she heard, or to forget something she had just seen. Protesting was unwise.

"Does the Swatbot care how many shifts it has served?" Miles asked.

"No, Sir."

"Does it feel tired?"

"No, Sir."

Miles folded his own hands behind his back—actually folded them, with no metal cage to keep his wrists apart—and lifted his ears with an inquisitive air. "Do you want to be like the Swatbot?"

"Yes, Sir."

He scrutinized her face. After a moment he gave a slight nod. "Good. Aid Sierra-Bravo-Null-Four-Seven with your life. Ambrosia came with the supply run this morning."

Ambrosia. Food of the Robians. The Lady was paying them another visit soon. "Yes, Sir."

Miles turned briefly to the Swatbot beside her. "Carry on," he said, before striding quickly off towards his command quarters.

Once she could no longer hear his steps Julianne realized she was holding her breath and let it go. The ambrosia was a weapon the rebels couldn't make themselves, and they would want it, badly.

And that wasn't a safe thought to have, implying as it did not only that not all Robians obeyed the empress, but that the freedom fighters had ears in the Empire itself. If Miles had been watching her for it, she would have been punished. The fox had an ability to detect dishonesty or disloyalty in her that would have been uncanny if it avoided false positives as easily as it did false negatives. Miles would beat her if she so much as failed to tell the truth hard enough. But he hadn't freshened her swollen eye tonight.

Make this stop. The thing in Julianne reached up out of her belly and pooled the start of tears on her lower eyelids. Make it stop.

The first time Julianne could remember hearing that phrase was over a year ago. She had been on the bottom bunk, on a damp, thin mattress that stank of multiple bodies, an old wire frame beneath it that let her sink into a clammy, close pit. Above her had been the wire outline of the creature in the upper bunk, a fragile pure-white mouse. Julianne tried not to look at the mouse on the assembly line during the day, and closed her eyes at night even before she lay down. But on the bad nights, she wouldn't be able to let the mouse become meaningless noise, like the rattling of the air vents or the buzz of the always burning red lights. Julianne would hear the muttered words over and over, until exhaustion let her sleep.

". . . . . . ."

It felt like her earliest memory, the beginning of her life. There had been other things before, data entry and odd jobs one or two years at a stretch, staying out of the death traps of Mobius's twisted politics, not growing attached to anyone within reach of the army or the front—but that had been someone else, before Lord Robotnik and his Empress crashed down on the world and erased everything that had gone before, like a wave washing over the sand of a beach. The soldiers and bots took her with the others doing day labor on a carrot farm northwest of Fortune Station, took them into the city called Robotropolis again, a strange, unfamiliar place of smoke and cratered roads and shattered windows, cameras and fences and black steel faces.

But the strangeness and size of it were soon beyond her. Julianne's world was the factory and the overstuffed dormitory beside it, with its frigid showers and constantly occupied bunks. She adapted, because she had to. Worked and ate and slept. Slowly learned to ignore the stink of octane exhaust, to rip the hem of her socks and stuff her ears to save herself from the shriek of the presses and the hiss of the spot-welders, to fall asleep without pause or hesitation and make full use of the six hours bunk time she was allotted. Learned all the different tasks of the factory: cleaning, intake, stock, quality check, servicing the assembly robots that welded and formed the Swatbots from the raw materials and prefabricated parts. Learned not to complain and not to hesitate and not to ask questions.

But she had glimpses of another world. A world that seemed . . . not gentler, but better. Many of the her tasks didn't require full attention—in a way, that was the worst part, the constant understimulation, a mobian forced to perform as simply, unerringly, and endlessly as a machine—and as Julianne worked she watched the soldiers as they watched her and the others. She picked up on the chain of command on the factory floor, starting with the lowest-ranked minders, armed only with their stunsticks for anyone who fouled up, up through the reserve troops with their rifles, the rare tech-infantry servants lost in their cages of metal and wire, all the way up to the rulers of the plant: the finished Swatbots themselves, and the rarely-glimpsed supervisor, the steel collar on his neck flashing back the showers of sparks from the assembly line.

The soldiers carried themselves differently from the workers. The workers looked lost, confused, ashamed. Some, the workers that lasted the longest, or that were moved in from other factories, just seemed blank, empty. The warriors were blank, but they weren't empty; they had a simplicity of purpose that somehow suggested pride without showing it. She caught snatches of their conversation when minders settled behind her, or when she got to move away from the arc-welders for piss and kibble. The blank workers the warriors liked, but when they began to make mistakes—and they always did, the warriors said, always—they called them junk. When a worker couldn't stop thinking on the line, made mistakes, became nervous, they were haywire.

By listening to the warriors, Julianne learned not to make friends with the other workers. In her bunk during off-shift, eyes closed in the red-light dimness, she could hear them talking, muttering. Whispering about the freedom fighters. Plotting escape. Plotting suicide.

And that mouse. On the fritz. Ready to blow.

When the mouse shrieked and turned to rush the minders with a wrench and be shot by the reserve guards, Julianne broke position on the line and tackled her to the ground. In a moment she was writhing in agony under the stunsticks, a screaming ball of fur being soaked with pepper spray and kicked. In fifteen minutes the mouse was dead and Julianne was kneeling with burnt eyes watering at the sharp glint of the overseer's collar. The overseer was a weasel with ice blue eyes that carried no hint of compassion. "Do you want to die, rat?" he asked.

Julianne spat a dribble of blood onto her lower lip and chinfur. "I want to die for the Empress," she croaked. It was better than dying in the factory.

They took her to barracks, for training. She got less sleep, more injuries—after six months as a private, her tail had became as kinky as a wharf brawler's from breaking and rebreaking. But the kibble was different, didn't leave her hungry even after she ate it, and she felt strong, real. She felt like someone again. She slowly stepped up her hand-to-hand combat to match the bluster that was expected of her, accepted the cautious combat style natural to rats even though it meant she would never have the prestige that came to canines and ursines.

After six months she was given the rank of Sergeant, a command of five mobians, and a prestigious post in the chief imperial military base in the Great Forest, hunting the rebels that no one could speak openly about—the unmentioned cause of the "accidental" gas leaks and "negligent" octane tank ruptures that sent factories up in sparks and shrapnel, that on one unspeakable occasion dropped the Empress herself to her knees during a public address, screaming in pain as the EMP ravaged her thoughts.

Julianne's squad and two others were flown in by transport pod to build up the projectable forces for forest sweeps. The pod lurched as the landing stalks hit the cement and sunlight blasted through the rim of the rear combat deployment hatch. "Out! Move, move, move!" she screamed, driving her squad hard into line on the parade ground. They were the first to assemble and when she snapped to attention she had a smile on her snout.

The collared commander, a bright orange-furred dog fox in a combat vest, walked the line, strangely decorated arms clasped behind his back and eyes squinting against the bright, clean sky as he silently inspected his new weapons. When he reached Julianne he stopped and turned and she felt her tail stiffen. He looked her from boots to buzzed headfur and then, ignoring the patch on her vest pocket bearing her name, ordered, "Name, Sergeant."

Unconsciously she slapped her tail sharply against the dry cement. "Julianne of Rats, Sergeant, Robian Imperial Army, Sir!"

He nodded sharply and without emotion. "You're demoted to Private First Class, rat." She didn't have time to react as he turned to her XO. "Mongoose, you're promoted to Sergeant First Class. You have command of the squad."

"Yes Sir!"

"I am Miles, fox of Lady Renee," the commander said loudly, resuming his pacing while Julianne struggled to keep from collapsing, screaming. "Everything in this forest belongs to her. As soon as you entered it, you belonged to her. Outside those walls," he shouted, pointing across rows of hangars and parked aerial stealthbots at tall green oaks rearing behind the perimeter, "are other animals that belong to the Lady. I will use you to remind them of that. All squads report to barracks. The rat will report to the command shed," he added without looking at her. "Dismissed."

The Swatbots stopped her at the entrance of the command shed, which wasn't a shed but a black steel bunker that made her think of the Egg rising at the center of Robotropolis. They walked her to a room with dark composite paneling. A broad desk with sleeping computers and comm linkups. No windows, but a wall filled with video feeds that rotated through the security cameras that blanketed the camp. Across from them, as though watching, a large photograph of a pine marten with bark-brown fur and a cold eyes. At the center of the room a holographic map of the Great Forest showed the deployment of expeditionary forces around the base, ghosts of blue where overflights had found traces of possible rebel encampments.

Julianne dutifully turned a blind eye to all of it, faced the door through which she had been ushered, and waited. Tried to blank her mind, with some success; it was a knack she'd begun to acquire in the factory and polished in training. She didn't know where the cameras were, but there were always cameras.

The doors sliding open called her back awake. Miles didn't even look at her as she snapped to attention, and walked past her to the table. After he said nothing for half a minute she turned about face. He was sitting on the edge of the desk, half-obscured by the translucent map, quietly tapping a stylus on a minicomp tablet. What looked like a tactical radio was curled around the base of his right ear, pressing the tiny black nub of the speaker inside. He didn't appear to be hearing anything disturbing.

After two minutes, she cleared her throat, softly enough that it could have been an accident. After ten, she stamped her boot and fixed her eyes blindly forward. "Ser—Private First Class Julianne of Rats, reporting for—"

The blunt corner of the minicomp caught her in the forehead. Next she was on the floor and the fox was screaming down at her, his upper lip pulled back from his canines. "I didn't give you permission to speak! If this is how Lord Pierre's animals trained you, Milady will have harsh words with him, and you will labor alongside the workers. You will report to minder Antoinette of Lions and—"

"I've done nothing wrong," Julianne said.

As Miles kicked her side she rolled and grabbed his ankle, clutched it to her belly to try to keep it from hurting her, squealing so loud it hurt her own ears.

"I've earned this!" she shouted. "I'm a warrior!"

He didn't care.

After he was done with her she felt the cold hands of Swatbots drag her to the infirmary. After she was cleaned and bandaged, she reported to the chief minder. For the rest of the day she cleaned toilets, until she was ordered to Miles's quarters, to polish his stained boots.

The next day, she had to clean on hands and knees in the command bunker while Miles discussed aerial reconnaissance photos. The next, minder Antoinette relayed her praise for Julianne's tireless work cleaning the galley, which excused the maintenance robots from performing the menial task. The next, while she was washing uniforms by hand, Miles summoned her to the command shed and ordered her to stand at attention until her limbs began shaking, at which point he began punching her in the belly. At the end of the week, she woke screaming from a dream that she couldn't remember clearly, but in which Miles had been watching her. She was punished with a double shift for waking the workers.

After a month, Miles's Lady paid her camp a visit. News of her imminence circulated in advance as Miles ordered napalm knockback and inspection of every perimeter treeline, twenty-four hour maintenance shifts on Swatbots and all remotely malfunctioning camp systems. In the mass sleep deprivation every organic seemed to sense her coming, like a storm. By the time her transport pod set down on the tarmac Julianne's chest was pounding, her tail flushed and prickly. When the marten strode down the hatch stairs into the burning sun with unsquinting eyes the whole assembled camp seemed to hold its breath.

Lady Renee walked to Lieutenant Colonel Miles, who waited two meters from the pod and did not salute, but stood with arms at his sides, his ears folded to his skull. She had a few millimeters on him and Miles seemed to shrink as she approached, until she was standing immediately before him, looking down at his lowered eyes and snout. After a silent moment she turned, left him standing there, and stepped forward to address her camp.

As Renee began to speak, Julianne looked at her smiling face, thought of the scars on the fox's arms, thought of the blood on his boots, and quietly prayed to the gods whose names she'd forgotten that she'd never attract a Robian's attention.

An hour after the parade assembly was dismissed, her former XO brought her an order to report to the Lady in Miles's command quarters. She went immediately.

The Lady was resting in a chair in the middle of the room, eyes unfocused as she thought. For a Robian, thinking meant striding a world that organics couldn't inhabit. Julianne came to attention and saluted, and the marten blinked her mind back into her body. "Rat Julianne," she said. "I've heard much about you."

Miles had been telling his Lady things about her. Julianne couldn't keep the terror from her face. "I don't—" she coughed haltingly, but she stopped as her eyes followed the robian's brown-furred arm down to where her fingers stroked the fur of Miles's head.

Miles was kneeling on the floor beside the chair, shoulders slumped and arms limp. The tactical radio was out of his ear. His eyes were almost closed. After Julianne watched him for a moment, she could see he was breathing.

"Yes, fox Miles thinks of you very much," Lady Renee said.

Julianne couldn't stop looking at the slivers of Miles's empty eyes. "What is he . . . what did you . . . ."

"I've taken away his power to think, for a little while," she said, rubbing his ears in a way that made his tails wag slowly over his heels, even as his face stayed empty. "It's good for him. Restful. He likes it very much."

"Can he hear . . . hear us?"

The Lady gave a polite but not pleasant grin. "You're thinking about him like an animal, not a robot," she said.

"I can do more than work," Julianne said. "I can. I'm a warrior, Lady. But Colonel Miles demoted me as soon as he saw me, and . . . he . . . ."

"I know. I know everything Miles knows, rat. Miles is mine. Would you like revenge?" she asked idly, as though she were offering coffee. "Come and hurt him."

". . . No," Julianne said. "No thank you, Lady."

"Don't be afraid. He can't resist, and I won't let him remember what you do to him, later. It will be our little secret."

"No thank you, Lady."

"Rat," the Lady said, as though she had not spoken of the subject before, "come and hurt Miles. Twist his ears. It causes him unusual pain and distress without injuring him."

"Please, Lady, I don't want to."

"I've ordered you to, animal," Lady Renee said, not needing to make her voice any colder. "Hurt him."

"Please, Lady."

"It does not please me. My order stands. Hurt him."

"I can't."

"You cannot obey, warrior?"

"I can—I just—I can't hurt Miles, Lady. I can't. I can't stop thinking about him."

"You can't stop—?"

"I can't," Julianne said, a knot in her chest unraveling and spilling out of her mouth as a rope of words. "He's in my mind. He's all I can think about, but even if I make him happy he'll still punish me. I haven't done anything wrong but he still hurts me and makes me crawl with the workers. He's watching me all the time—I dream about him . . . about . . . and I can't . . . ."

Lady Renee continued to watch her patiently, with mild interest.

"He's driving me mad," Julianne gasped.

The Lady smiled, silently, scratching behind Miles's ears. "Miles liked you from the moment he saw you," she said. "He's making you very loyal."

Julianne felt like she had been stabbed. " . . . Yes, Lady," she choked.

"I am very pleased with his work."

It took her a few seconds to realize what the Lady was asking for. "Thank you for my training, Lady."

"Good rat. Dismissed."

The Lady returned to the capital the next day, and Miles called Julianne to the command shed. She braced herself, tightened her abdominal muscles as she stamped and saluted. "You are demoted from Private First Class to Private, rat," he announced. "Your bunk shifts and rations are reduced by half. Report immediately to the armory. You are a targeting servant for swatbots on guard duty."

She held her stiff attention a moment. But then her lips blubbered thank you Sir, thank you Sir, she relaxed her shoulders, folded her ears, let him hold her, pet down the fur between her ears, a warrior again.

Make him stop! she shouted silently, thinking of Miles's slack, wet lips as he knelt beside his owner, his empty eyes and head.

Miles was watching her.

She didn't wait for an order; she knew what he wanted. She clenched her jaw and squeezed the voice down out of her head and into her gut, until she couldn't squeeze it any harder.

Shut up.

Please, make this—

Shut up and obey, weakling.

In the days since at the heels of several bot masters, her metal cage squeezed the voice down harder, helping her—if the voice wasn't her. Or if it was, then helping Miles, helping it, this thing that she was becoming.

REPORT STATUS, the HUD commanded. "Targeting unit is nominal," Julianne announced, proving she was awake. She shuffled slightly, the metal struts that held her legs reacting just a moment too late for her not to strain her aching muscles against them. Thank the rig for correcting your posture, animal.

She didn't feel the smirking, cruel pleasure of superiority at the thought. It wasn't her voice this time, this moment. She only felt tired.

Make it stop . . . .

CONTACT SOUTH 4, the HUD screamed in red, punctuating the warning with a buzz in her ear. MULTIPLE CONTACTS, it added, the names of perimeter posts scrolling down her vision while red outlines snapped to life over sections of the perimeter wall.

The order COMBAT STATUS FREEFIRE glared in her eyes and at that moment the fences came alive in a blaze of green and red and blue and flaming chunks of white-hot phosphorous arcing through the air. Julianne stopped her flinch before the rig did; she hadn't seen it in person before, but it was just fireworks—the spray of light confused bot optics worse than a mobian's. A moment later a symphony of echoing staccato rattle reached her as small arms came to life all along the wall.

It felt as though the rig tightened around her, though it didn't.

The HUD tracked her eye movements and kept the translucent targeting reticule at the center of her vision as she scanned the parade ground. It monitored the position of her fingers as she spread them over the virtual controls. All her senses tightened with a rush of adrenaline. Imperial troops ran to the hangers to get the standby stealthbots free of their resupply cables, instincts stopping her hands before she could mark them as targets.

Her rational mind slowly began to catch up. She had to be more careful. The supply sheds were at the center of the camp, behind layers of defense. No mobian would penetrate so far as—

Cement splashed like water as the mass slammed into the tarmac and blasted back into the air. Julianne slapped the invisible target marker and traced the bogey into the air with her eyes, the HUD shaping her plot-points into a parabolic arc as the swatbot's systems built the target profile, quicker than she could track it or even think about what it could be. Flashes burnt the corners of her vision as she automatically took a step forward to keep the bot's rising right arm out of her line of sight, finger still tapping the invisible button even though the bot's own systems could now track anything without its own midair thrust until it reached the ground, when it would already be torn apart by the force of its own plasma-hot evaporating flesh. Julianne's unnecessary systems began to catch up, recognized the target's long rabbit's ears swept back by her tremendous velocity—

A sudden shout from her right turned Julianne's eyes just in time to be blinded by a shower of sparks bursting from the elbow joint of the swat's firing arm. Her rig's arm-actuators didn't offer her enough motion to shield her face and she shrieked as chips of white-hot metal burnt out in her fur, peppering her snout with welts. Alarm chirps blared in her ear. Forcing her eyes open, her vision was filled with glaring red HUD-overlays screaming PROXIMITY WARNING and PRIMARY WEAPON FAILURE. A brown-furred canine had stolen on the swat's right flank and taken off its plasma caster with a combat knife—a sword. The rabbit impacted down into the cement, broad armor around her feet stomping out a shockwave of dust.

Rabbit and coyote shouted. Impact armor parted and collapsed as the coyote's sword drove into the bot's wasp-narrow belly and the rabbit's massive mailed fist crunched deep into its face. A deafening sawtooth tone announced a long scroll of flashing, hysterical text, OPTICS FAILURE, CRITICAL CAPACITOR FAILURE, EMERGENCY SHUTDOWN. The bot fell back against the door. Julianne reached instinctively for a sidearm, but it wasn't there, because targeting servants didn't carry their own guns; they were just a subsystem—

COMMS TO SWATBOT LOST, the HUD declared with the completion of the shutdown sequence. The tone in her ear changed to a needle-sharp sine wave, forcing a scream of pain through her clenched teeth.

The rabbit and coyote both looked at her.

Julianne knew who they were. Every soldier knew Antoine, the weakling king, the fatigues he wore in the field still royal blue, shoulders marked by mud-stained gold epaulettes. Every soldier despised him. He'd become what all of them dreamed of becoming, but his ascension had come without the submission and hard, loyal labor that was its price, and without honor. Even though he was strong enough to slice steel with a monofilament-sharpened blade, the awkward, nervous struggle he made to pull his sword from the fallen swatbot's armor shell belonged to a coward. If he was a Robian, then submitting to a Robian was shameful.

Hatred smothered the shame before she could feel it, locking into her brain like wires trailing back behind her to Colonel Miles, his Lady, the omnipotent Empress. She was their tool, and that made her better than any wild coyote.

"Merde," Antoine spat, took his right hand away from the blade and pulled a stolen, duct-taped plasma pistol from his belt, pointing the bulbous barrel at Julianne's chest.

Run. Get reinforcements. Julianne turned to—

She grunted as the rig fought her arms and hips, the power from the servo-assists almost entirely gone. Her eye instinctively refocused on the HUD overlay, looking for the errors.

COMMS TO SWATBOT LOST, it still read, and beneath that now: LOW-POWER MODE. HOLD POSITION. AWAIT ORDERS.

Behind the words, Antoine still held his gun on her. Beside him the false queen's pet, May, stood with her steel fist knotted and cocked beside her head, ready to fly forward and punch Julianne's head from her shoulders.

The rig held her in position, watching them with her arms at her sides.

Bunnie dropped her fist and grabbed the Swatbot's leg by the ankle, pulling it away from the entrance to the provisions shed. "Get your bot-sticker, sugaryote," she shouted over the blasts and small arms rattle from the south. "I'll take the door."

The coyote looked at Julianne a moment more before lowering his gun. He reholstered it and moved both hands back to the sword for a yank as the rabbit sank her fingers into the locked blast door, dug her feet into the ground and snapped the locking mechanisms and the automatic door servos, forcing half the entryway open.

Julianne swung her tail, swaying as she tried to at least shuffle away from the enemy, but she only managed to wriggle against her metal cage, defenseless. She winced at the sharp scrape as Antoine jerked his sword free of the hulk, looked behind him with splayed ears at another bulbous orange incendiary mushroom rising into the night at the treeline, and ducked into the food store after the rabbit.

An otherworldly hum arose from the direction of the hangars, the standby stealthbots finally getting on-line and airborne. In forty-five seconds the treeline would be a plasma firestorm, but the rebels would already be on their way with stolen ambrosia, enough to keep their robots strong for months. But Julianne could radio their position, and the stealthbots would deploy an HE warhead. It would erase a good part of the middle of the camp, but the two rogue robians would be dead.

And so would she.

Because the tech servant rig wouldn't let her move. She'd die for a design flaw.

"All forces, priority one orders," Colonel Miles shouted angrily onto general tactical channel. "Redeploy and sweep for hostiles in the camp. Possible augmented mobians; use of EMP is authorized."

Julianne opened her mouth to bark her position and the thing in her belly leapt up and grabbed her throat.

It wasn't a design flaw. It was incentive. Mobian targeting servants did not outlive their masters.

"Faster!" May Rabbit bounded out of food storage, a stainless steel crate slung on her back. "Tails knows we're here!"

Obey Miles, Julianne thought, but the thing in her belly wouldn't let her speak any more than the rig would let her flee. Antoine stumbled coming out of the door, dragging another crate behind him, eyes wide with terror. Julianne felt that thing in her belly pushing up hard into her pounding head, mind locking in terror.

"Help," Julianne called.

They both froze and looked back at her. The coyote's male-apple rose high in his throat. "We have to go," he told her, but however much he wanted it to be true, it was plain from his voice that he didn't believe it. It was like he was begging her.

"Please," Julianne squeaked. "Make it stop—"

The rabbit dropped the crate with a thud, sprinted to her. "You follow us," she said, grabbing the steel frame over her chest with both. "You run as fast as ya can and don't stop, hear?"

Julianne started to nod but clenched her teeth at the pain as the rabbit tensed her arms. Steel shrieked, the cage deforming. Julianne threw her arms back and her chest forward and she screamed as May Rabbit ripped her open, ripped her free.

Still hours to dawn. Julianne sat with her legs folded in the dirt, shivered with cold, straining her eyes at the darkness. Her eyes had acclimated to the camp lights and despite the stars above the tree canopy the night was pitch black to her. No one else seemed to mind. She heard hostiles—rebels, she heard rebels moving close by, sometimes thought she saw a curve of a shoulder or a reaching hand. Quiet voices. "I don't like it," Antoine said.

"I say dump her," hissed an unfamiliar voice. "It's too perfect. She's sitting right by the objective, waiting for you, and she doesn't so much as fire a shot? Tails probably—"

"Geoff, shut up," May said, raising her voice to what might have been a normal volume but sounded like one of the parade ground speakers. The rat winced and hunched down, clutching her sweat-soaked fatigues around her shoulders. She could feel eyes in the darkness. Lenses in the trees, lenses high above, all peering down at her. Watching.

Miles is watching. She grabbed the back of her head in her hands, felt an urge to scream.

"I don't like it either," the rabbit said, quiet again. "But that's how we're doing it. I stay with her and Antoine'll get you back safe and sound. Them's orders, if that's what you need to hear. Get the sweet stuff to Sonic. By now he'll be as hungry as a pothead on a Queensday night."

Julianne heard people moving off. Soft steps, leaves snapping—could leaves snap? The forest was so quiet. Chirping crickets and buzzing cicadas but nothing in the low register. It felt wrong.

She startled as she heard Antoine's voice again, closer than she expected. "Bunnie—"

"I'll be alright," the rabbit said. "I've got a good feeling. Have a drink for yourself, too, huh? All three of us're starvin'. I'll be back with ya in a day or two if the rat keeps quiet."

"Just be safe, Bunnie."

"You know it. Antoine?" she spoke again, stilling the sound of the coyote's footsteps. "Thanks for savin' my tail back there. You're shaping up a real fighter."

There weren't any further words. Julianne kept pulling at the fur on the back of her neck with her fingers, working the flesh raw. A sudden thump and her eyes just barely made out a shape sitting down close by her, about a meter away. "You okay, honey?" the rabbit asked.

Julianne didn't say anything, just breathed, deep and fast. The forest stunk. It smelled like rotting things, wet things.

"What's your name?" the rabbit said.

She straightened up, putting her hands on her legs. "Julianne of Rats," she declared, then bit her lip. Her voice was too loud. "Private," she whispered.

The rabbit was quiet for a very long moment, not moving. ". . . Your name?" she said again.

The pity in the rabbit's voice was terrible.

"Julie," she managed after a moment.

"Julie what, honey?"

" . . . Fairfield." The words fell out of her slowly. "Julie Fairfield."

"That's a pretty name," the rabbit said. "Mine's Bunnie. Last name Rabbit, but that's just a bit too much comin' after Bunnie, what I think. Where you from?"

Base Alpha, she thought automatically, before trying to answer, thinking about the farm, about the city. "I . . . . Nowhere. I don't know." She swallowed, her eyes hurting. "It's been a long time . . . ."

"That's okay," Bunnie said, leaping off the subject. "You hungry?"

"Hungry?" she replied, before something landed heavy in her lap. It was cold, softer than a rock, somehow papery and oily against her fingers.

"Sorry, but boiled taters is the only cooked stuff I got. We ain't makin' a fire; Tails'll have overflights going out."

The rat brought the thing to her face in both hands and . . . opened her mouth and bit into it, like . . . like an apple. In a moment she was eating like a wild beast, crumbs of the tuber falling out the side of her mouth—

"Fffwo—!" she coughed, spitting wet chunks onto her hands. "Overflights," she squeaked. "The stealthbots—their infrared—"

"We'll be alright," Bunnie said. There was a sharp crunch and a faint scent of carrot as she continued with her mouth full. "I'll hear radio chatter before they get a bird within a quarter-click of us, and I got these things in my backpack we rigged outta camo and these emergency blankets. Ain't cuddly, but it's the best way to hide from IR short of freezing to death."

Julie relaxed a little. But still: Miles was watching. Her stomach was sure of it.

And Bunnie could tell. "Seriously, hon, we'll be okay from the air. You should get some sleep if you can, we're gonna have to make some good klicks in a few hours, case Tails sends out some deep ground patrols to beat the bushes."

" Knothole Village?" she asked, forcing herself to say it. Of all the words that sometimes showed up in spraypaint on the walls of Robotropolis, those two were among the most forbidden.

"Not right away," Bunnie said, and her voice was far more strained than a moment before. "We're gonna take a long route, real long, to be safe."

"They can track us?"

". . . . I'm worried they can track you."

"Track me?"

"With a transmitter. It's happened to us before when we busted a crew out of a factory. We lost a camp and a lot of good people."

Miles is watching you.

"We'll get rid of . . . ." Julie faltered. Miles knows what you did. "We'll get rid of . . . of everything." Miles will punish you until you're factory junk. She began to furiously unbutton her jacket. "I don't care. It's not cold—"

Bunnie reached out of the darkness and grabbed her by the wrist. "Not a transmitter you can get rid of," she said.

Julie said nothing.

"They wouldn't have told you," Bunnie said. "But if you got surgery—for anything, wisdom teeth, appendicitis—any time you lost a day you can't account for—they might have . . . put something inside you."

You are a very, very bad rat, the thing in her belly said.

Julie didn't remember any surgery or lost time. But she still started to cry.

All of the Robians had chambers with windows that gave them a view of the Egg. The Empress commanded it. The command was well-known, and was for the benefit of their animals rather than the Lords and Ladies themselves. They could observe whenever they wanted, wherever they were; if the Empress wished, she could force them to turn their minds' eyes to the cameras that watched the construction from inside and out once an hour, once a minute. But the command had led the ruling nobility to take or construct their domains in a ring around the city center, and workers and scientists and soldiers could feel the power radiating out and through them in the very geography of Robotropolis, binding them like iron filings in a magnetic field.

It was a wise choice, Snively thought, annoyed.

Behind him, the Lady Renee sat deep in a communication trance that had broken off their breakfast visit. Anyone with fur would have had to sit at the table, not touching the tray of honeydew and pineapple from her hydroponic gardens, and wait respectfully for her to return to her body and the room, but Snively had gotten up from his chair. Like her fellow Robians, Renee felt no need to decorate her chambers: black tile and black carbon fiber plated most surfaces, with white-veined black marble highlighting contours for the eye. Snively preferred to view the progress.

The Egg was still far from completion. Without the end in mind it would now be the Bowl or the Cup, a wide, slowly tapering steel shell cylinder coated with hardened concrete and ablative armor, rising above the surrounding buildings. Impossibly massive cranes rose out of the middle, laying hardened support struts and routing heavy tubes of special composite into molds for walls and braces. The palace had already been erased, but the Egg would surmount it in every possible way, an impregnable skull for the brain of the Empire, its softly tapering black walls built so hard as to save the bulk of the building even from the direct nuclear blast that Robotnik and the Empress were convinced the nations of the human alliance would soon lob in a frantic, total effort to stave off their extinction.

Snively doubted that Lachels would have the imagination or the will. Vorland, Grunsetz and Ostian had all gotten in line, but Lachels was the only nation with the resources for the project, and the Lakolska were still clinging with stubborn, childish post-revolutionary fervor to their democracy. Even with all its desperate emergency powers the government hit its limits every day trying to nationalize the economy for total war in the plains near Corukas and Kingsport, where the last of free mobians were trying to die rather than surrender—without much success, thanks to Lord Pierre's advances in nerve agents and other nonlethal combat techniques that brought the Empress more slaves by the day. The humans couldn't even properly censor their press, which gave the Empire such reliable strategic information that it was almost beside the point to web the nation with spies. Amanda had done so anyway, of course. Lady Lupe had a passion for controlling her animal's thoughts. Not only did her deep-cover agents not miss their collars, they actually believed their cover identities when not in the act of carrying out her will.

But even though it wasn't strictly necessary, Snively liked the Egg—the idea of it, what it would become. The black had an incredible gravity that was only increased by the morning light drizzling through the smog; it lurked at the center of the Empire like the supermassive collapsed star thought to reside at the center of the galaxy. It was a perfect fortress for a ruler. In it, Snively would be invincible.

His uncle was there now, in the already-functioning command center in its subterranean heart. Amanda, too, "ruling" "her" Empire as she waited slavishly on Julian's every word.

Snively continued to watch, silently. Thinking.

His wristcomp vibrated.

It wasn't actually a wristcomp so much as a part of a sophisticated system of electronic equipment woven throughout the fabric of his clothing, sensors and processors fitted along the heavy seams of his emerald uniform and smarttools hanging along his belt, that made engineering and mechanical work easy in any environment. But the wrist-display was basically a simple minicomp. The vibration meant a priority message, broad distribution to nobility and high-level military.

The vibration, along with Renee's long, deep communication trance, meant trouble. He held his arm before his chest at the ideal height for the holoprojector, and ordered the message to "display."

Renee's face popped up before him. Her electronic avatar, but the resemblance was uncannily perfect. "Early this morning, rebel forces attacked and raided Silviculture Base Alpha, in the process stealing a large supply of ambrosia."

Snively's face did not change.

"As all know, the long history of low production of workers and other forest products at Base Alpha is unacceptable. Therefore, at the command and by the permission of the almighty Robian Empress Amanda, I am surrendering control and command of her base to the Lady Lupe of Wolves, effective at 2400 hours today. All hail our Empress."

By the time the message finished and Snively turned, Renee was already back, and devastated. She was dressed in a tight black workout top and slacks, baring the armor implants on her arms. Her head hung over her balled fists on the black carbon-fiber tabletop. Her display of simple submission to the Empress in her communication was formal and involved no display of shame, but the humiliation at her loss of Base Alpha was implicit.

Snively put on a frown of concern, sat down across from her. The concern was real. He liked Renee. She was smart, fierce, dedicated, but that was expected of any Robian. It was her searching mind that intrigued him, a loyalty to the Empress that reached far beyond a simple desire for glory and to impress. "Will she give you part of the human front?" he asked.

"To hell with the human front!" she snarled. "I should have been there! I told her! Three robians!"

"I know," Snively said sadly, shaking his head, smoothly reaching out a hand for a slice of honeydew. Amanda had the continent well in hand, her position was very strong, but Robotnik still had her playing a defensive game. The west was being taken slowly, city by city; the capital was being reinforced, the Great Forest was being harassed and probed rather than burned down to the bedrock. From a strategic standpoint, it was not a bad idea.

But the Empress's soldiers looked at it from an ideological standpoint. Snively looked at it from the psychological standpoint—almost the same thing, but not quite.

"I could have had their heads on stakes," Renee spat. "If I'd lived there, led the patrols myself, Sonic the Hedgehog would be at her feet, in chains."

"But think of it Amanda's way, Renee," Snively replied, his tone one of resignation. "When the rodent killed Lord Anton, what could the mobians have thought? Robians, mortal? The first death is underhanded, a sneak attack, a crime that the omnipotent Empress will repay. But if the she loses another, just how omnipotent—"

"Just how omnipotent is she when she won't use her power? Three robians. I pitted Miles against three robians of my own strength. Who would have welcomed him if he betrayed me. And he did the impossible for me for eight months. Now I must punish him because he didn't do more. If I am chastised, he must be humiliated. Anything less would be an affront to the Empress."

Snively decided that he'd baited her enough. He gave a sad sigh, one which did not come easy as he thought back almost a decade to when the fox, merely a demonic runt of a child, had almost ruined his life. "How is Miles?" he asked.

Renee didn't answer. Nominally, a Robian's collared servants were equals, but one had only to see the effort she had put into sculpting the fox's body and mind to know that Miles was his Lady's favorite.

"Renee." The human leaned forward, widening his eyes as though he was opening his soul to her. "I understand how you feel. And your arguments make sense to me. But she is your Empress. What can you do?"

She shut her brown eyes, splayed her ears. "What can I do," she echoed with frustration.

Snively sighed slightly, grimacing so as not to smile.

Renee did not dislike Amanda, and her loyalty was strong. But Snively knew that, deep within her, Renee still chafed at her subjugation to the Empress. He understood how she felt, empathized with her deeply. He himself had never entirely gotten over Amanda betraying him. Betraying him, her creator, betraying him, giving him to his uncle to be tortured and degraded and reduced from the re-discoverer, almost the re-creator of the roboticizer to Robotnik's lackey, his troubleshooter. A slave to a thief, a thief and a whore who'd let herself be stolen. And he was expected to give thanks because he had been given a special exemption from the death sentence passed upon the rest of his species.

What could he do.

He had some ideas.

Kain Blackwood - 2012