Supply Chain Problems

[bruorton]

art credit: Precious Cargo by E. Hart

dogzilla2312: it was awesome, he won by just running in circles, they couldn’t hit him until the time ran out

zomBmom: omg reminds me of Sendula

dogzilla2312: huh. wuts a sendula

zomBmom: you know, big cargo vert whose programming somehow got it thinking it always needed to return to the back of the line for unloading?

dogzilla2312: thats hilarious. so it just kept circling back when it got to the front?

zomBmom: yep, would never actually dock and let the bots unload it. 

zomBmom: but worse, the bug jumped to the other cargo verts via the docking sequence reader

dogzilla2312: lol, buncha ships just circling to get behind each other? hahahah

zomBmom: !! yeah

zomBmom: THEN when they tried to reroute the bugged verts it spread to other docks lol. Shut down a ton of shipping for about 48 hours along the whole BAMA sprawl before someone fixed the bug, but the knock-on shipping delays lasted for months

dogzilla2312: I sort of love that we know the name of the vert that started it

zomBmom: oh yeah it was like a folk hero. the news was so depressing that summer, Syzygy broke that year and the first Timor corpwar had just started and we prob all just needed something to laugh about

dogzilla2312: yikes i bet

zomBmom: sendula was everywhere for a while. “don’t let them take your goods” and “no means no” memes, someone even created a sendula holoskin that flashed for a hot sec

dogzilla2312: amazels. when was this?

zomBmom: oh uh lesse… 51, i wanna say? you don’t remember this at all?

dogzilla2312: haha dude i was just 2

zomBmom: well great now i feel old

Aloy flicked shut the file. Sometimes, skimming through the seemingly endless chatlogs she found could be so mind-numbing. But she supposed, if not for the expiration of ancient media platforms’ “personal security encryption,” she would have so much less information about how the Old Ones actually lived and thought about their world. She had, in fact, learned about that encryption, and how it had been encoded with expiration dates its users had to pay to extend, from a chatlog about something called a “class-action lawsuit.” The lawsuit fragment had indicated that the media corporations had been forced to extend those expiration codes further out, but it was safe to say that none of them had bothered to extend them by anything close to say, 980 years. Hence, her remarkably free access to a lot of ancient information flotsam.

However, the near-endless organizing project that was her gigantic “chatlogs etc” dump folder would have to wait. A dot had appeared on the horizon a moment ago, gradually growing in size until it resolved into a glinthawk going flat out, bearing down unerringly on her exact position. It would be on her in less than a minute now. 

She stretched and, ignoring the bow and spear resting on the pack beside her, rolled off the mossy spot she’d been lying on, and sauntered out from under the trees along the little brook. No need for the machine’s claws to tear up the tender growth on the shady bank. The glinthawk banked, and descended like an eagle striking.

At the last second, it angled its wings to brake abruptly, then skidded to a halt in the turf beside her. It furled its metal and membrane wings, then cocked an inquiring blue eye toward her. 

Aloy patted its chest. “Good work. You got here fast!” She crouched, and carefully popped open its salvage storage compartment. Typically used by the flying scavengers to store the scrap metal they collected, she had found that, when overridden, they were perfectly content to transport any materials she directed them to. In this case, several sparkers, a small blaze container, a coil of braided wire, and—

“Hang on,” she exclaimed. “Where are the spikes I told you to collect? And the glowblast? I know I had them, I got both off that ravager prowling around Two Fords.” She eyed the glinthawk, then keyed her Focus on it. The override was functioning fine. Yet, it hadn’t followed her programmed directions. She sat back on her haunches and chewed her lower lip.

As she had gotten more experience—and more override codes for different machines— she had learned the hard way that combat machines would not stay overridden forever. They had been designed for one thing: their core directive to hunt humans could not be completely suppressed, and would resurface sooner or later. Other machines, which Hephaestus had originally designated to a more functional task before the “derangement,” had proved much more amenable to remaining in the override and linked to her Focus, so long as she gave them work that matched their programming. 

Such as having a glinthawk collect materials from a depot she had hidden in the foothills, and transporting it to wherever she was at the moment.

The question was, how had it made a mistake? There were a few options; the jury-rigged nature of controlling machines through the Focus meant that they were often left to improvise where her instructions could not be sufficiently specific, a more than occasional source of frustration. However, the collect-and-transport routine had proved exceptionally simple and reliable to date. She supposed she should be systematic about this; possibly there was some flawed assumption, or something amiss she hadn’t considered yet. 

Well then, first check the connections. She sent a simple location query to her nearest overridden tallneck, which reported back at 34.54o N 110.98o W, moving roughly WSW, which she was pretty sure meant it was traversing the Raingathers. That was fine, as long as she didn’t go over too many mountain ridges; until she detected a tallneck farther south, that would just have to be the limit of her machine network.

Next up was roll call. She sent pings to her other mobile transport glinthawks, then to whatever chargers she had in range. While waiting for pingbacks, she transferred what this supply delivery had provided to her pack. 

The glinthawk who’d supplied today’s delivery was first, of course, as she could still see it circling overhead; she’d given it no instructions yet, so it would be following a default subroutine, scanning for scrap. Then the chargers in quick succession, three of them, which was what she’d expected. She replied with a summon to the nearest one, which seemed to have wandered downstream during the morning. Finally, another glinthawk pinged back. She waited. Then she waited some more. The charger arrived. She hefted onto its back the saddle she’d had a Meridian craftsman build for her, and tightened all the straps.

Still, no more pings. There should have been two more glinthawks, one that had supplied her last night headed back to her depot, and one on guard in its vicinity. Something was definitely wrong.

She hunched her pack into a more comfortable position, slung her bow on her shoulder and her spear into its sheath on the saddle. Locating this latest GAIA backup site would have to wait. Rost had drilled into her too well to always be sure of your food and gear before any hunt, no matter how short or close to home. Ranging the mountains and jungles south of the Spearshafts to locate an ancient facility that might or might not exist, without more than a couple days’ food on her, was downright foolhardy by this standard; she had to be sure of access to her storage.

With a spring, she was in the saddle. That holo of horse-riding lessons had been invaluable, and it had been especially right about the value of a “stirrup”—how had she gotten by so long without it? 

She leaned forward to pat the charger’s neck, a motion that was by now almost autonomously connected with the bioelectric conveyance of a Focus command. It moved smoothly into a trot, heading back down the slopes she’d come up the day before.

~ ~ ~

The hunter was located partway down the slope, just below a small ledge and half-sheltered by a large overhanging tree, but Aloy’s Focus had picked out their heat signature at once. Her first thought was that it was an outlaw lying in ambush—or maybe just in hiding, since a more careful sweep revealed no other people in the vicinity. As she drew closer, having dismounted and circling carefully upslope of her target, she perceived that the figure seemed to be crouched and working on something—making a fire? No; as her angle shifted, the Focus at last detected what the hunter was crouched over: a defunct glinthawk. Well.

It was a woman, somewhere between a little older than her and middle-aged, though lack of exposure made age still hard for her to guess. The woman’s eyes were frightened when Aloy swung around the tree, bow drawn, but she had still brought up her Carja swordspear smoothly, and it did not tremble. It was a bold gesture, given that Aloy was well out of lunging range, unless she knew some real tricks with that weapon.

“I don’t want to fight,” Aloy told her, “but I need to look at that glinthawk before you completely dismantle it.”

“Take down your own.”

“No, I mean I need to examine that one, specifically.”

The Carja woman’s eyes narrowed. “How do I know you’re not a bandit?”

Aloy had a brief flashback of talking with Nil. “Because I haven’t shot you already. And you can strip the machine if you want, when I’m done. I just need to examine it.” She lowered her bow as a gesture, releasing most of the tension on its string. 

The woman hesitated, sword not dropping yet, but she seemed genuinely curious.  “What… exactly do you want to examine?”

“I’ll show you, if you promise not to stab me while I’m doing it.”

The woman looked slightly abashed, and slid her weapon into a long sheath on her hip. “Fair enough.” She raised her hands in parley. “I don’t meet many outlanders this far south. Or people, frankly. This is bandit country, if you weren’t aware.” Her cocked eyebrow indicated she had clocked the Nora braids and leathers. 

But to her credit, the woman hadn’t called her a “savage” or “barbarian” yet. Aloy shouldered her bow, then came forward and extended her arm in the Carja style. “I’m Aloy.” 

The hunter gripped her forearm firmly. “Suthra.” 

“Glad to meet you, Suthra.” Aloy gestured at the broken machine. “Are you a member of the Lodge?”

Suthra gave a hiccuping laugh. “Those fancy assholes? You do know they don’t admit women, right?”

Aloy paused, mouth half-open. “Maybe… you haven’t been back to Meridian recently? Some things have changed, a little, under Avad.”

Suthra shrugged, uninterested. “Don’t much like the city.”

“Well, we’re in agreement there,” Aloy laughed. She glanced down at the machine, it’s metalfiber wings akimbo. “May I?”

Suthra stepped back. “Please yourself.”

Aloy went to the glinthawk carcass and knelt beside it, noting that the woman had already neatly cracked its salvage storage like an experienced hunter. It had been on its way back to her cache though, so it would have been empty. Suthra must have been disappointed. 

“So, what exactly are you looking for?”

Aloy lifted the machine’s head, tilting it into the light. “Take a look at its eyes.”

Suthra bent slightly forward, still seeming cautious about getting too close. “It does look a little odd… the lenses don’t usually have that blue chroma around the edge, do they?”

Aloy stole a glance over her shoulder at the older woman. “Well spotted! No, they don’t.”

“So—what does that mean? A different machine variant, or something?”

Aloy was careful to make no sudden movements while standing up. “Of a sort, yes. Mainly, it tells me this was one of the ones I was looking for. Thank you, it’s all yours.” She stepped back, away from the fallen machine.

Suthra was still watching her. “I’m tempted to ask what you’re doing, roaming the far south surveying obscure machine variants.”

Aloy managed a smile. “Not my primary occupation. I’m curious myself what a lone Carja hunter is up to way out here. Other than staying about as far away from Meridian as you can manage.”

Suthra snorted. “Oh, I’m no mystery. I’m a tracker from Sunstone Rock. Like I said, it’s bandit country.”

“Oh, has Janeva got you on some outlaw hunt?”

Suthra looked impressed. “How did you…? Well, not a manhunt exactly. You know that big battle up in Meridian a few months back? Bunch of Shadow cultists tried to restart the war?”

“I, uh…” Aloy quickly ran through several responses before settling on, “Yeah, I know about it.”

“Well, after they got routed I guess some of ’em fled this way for some crazy reason, instead of trying to get back to Sunfall.”

Aloy had a notion why defeated cultists might have tried for the southern mountains, but decided to continue avoiding complicated explanations. “And?”

Suthra shrugged, like there wasn’t much else to tell. “Reports of bandits been popping up since then like mushrooms after rain. The Warden’s wary of them grouping up to try something. I’ve done odd jobs for Janeva before, so they asked me to scout around, see if I could confirm anything.”
“Hold up. You’re telling me the Eclipse is reforming around here?”

Suthra actually laughed. “No worry they’ll return as any kind of army! I can tell you firsthand, too many got themselves killed wandering lost in the jungle. Since you’ve come this far yourself, maybe you know how it is…”

“Stalkers?

Suthra assumed a thin, grim smile. “Stalkers.”

“But still, enough made it this far to worry about?”

Suthra shrugged again. “That’s what I’m here to see. I’ve seen campfires at night, a long way off, but no sure signs by the time I locate the sites in daylight.”

“And no…” Aloy hesitated. “No—unusual machines?”

Suthra gave her a look. “As in, glinthawk varieties?”

“As in, machines unlike any others. All black, no blaze containers or the like. Spiky looking, with a tail like a scorpion. Possibly, traveling with the men?”

“No…” Suthra shook her head, bemused. “Never seen anything like that. Looking to add them to your survey?”

“Honestly? If I never see another one, it will be too soon.”

~ ~ ~

She found the other glinthawk as the sun was lowering into the west. “Found,” that is, through her improvised stormbird-lens spyglass, from the cliffside vantage she’d gone up to work out her route for the next day, before the setting sun vanished in the west. 

There in the distance was the mouth of the valley by which she’d entered these mountains; she’d set the cache up at its high end, where the upward-sloping jungle funneled into shelves and boulders. She could barely make out, through the jungle canopy, the approximate point where the cliffs came together to form the notch where she’d stashed her supplies. It was, after all, just barely large enough for a shellwalker suborned to her purpose to stack several crates, and with enough of an overhang that stray glinthawks not directed there would be unlikely to discover it by chance.

From there she’d had a bit of a climb in her initial ascent, including some narrow ledges and steep scrambles, before the land began to plateau and riding became possible again. She did not relish having to climb all the way back down just to check on the cache; that was the whole point of stashing it there in the first place. That, and her improvised machine delivery system.

Then a flicker of movement in the fading light caught her eye, lower down where the valley widened and the canopy broke up. At first, she assumed it was one of the machine convoys that she’d noticed occasionally running through the valley, and from which she had borrowed that shellwalker. But now, she tightened her viewing cone to extend its focus farther out, and the movement resolved into… an Oseram delving crew, complete with handcart, trundling away. 

In its back lay, distinctly, a crumpled glinthawk. It was atop a pile, and one stout person was pushing the cart while two pulled.

Aloy gave a wearied sigh. Hidden from stray glinthawks was not hidden from inquisitive, acquisitive humans. One glinthawk had been not nearly enough to guard it, and she would wager that all the most valuable materials in her cache (spikes and glowblast included) were now in that cart. 

She closed her eyes, scrunching her face in frustration, then took a deep breath. No. She could not afford panic, or impulsive anger. It would do no good, and even if she exhausted herself to catch those delvers, wasting several more days, what was she going to do anyway? They couldn’t have known they were stealing from her, she had no way to prove it to them, and she wasn’t going to chase them down and fight them for it.

She was left with the hope that they would most likely have left her food supply intact, at least. That cart wasn’t big enough to take even half her stash, after all, and if she knew anything about delvers it was that they had a quick eye for the most valuable goods. That was what counted for good news, apparently; they’d have taken her much rarer salvage that wouldnt be most immediately useful to her here in the jungle. 

When it came down to it, she could manage for now, and rebuild her stock as she went. If she had to hunt for food as she went, though, that would set her back considerably and every day was precious. 

Still, she resisted the urge to press on tonight. Exhausting herself now would not save time overall. She would camp here tonight, and reach the cache by evening tomorrow. Then she could assess the damage, and decide what to do.

~ ~ ~

Aloy’s jaw ached, she’d been grinding her teeth so hard. 

Bad luck was one thing, but this was too much. A glinthawk lost to a hunter, that happened now and then. And the Oseram, sure, you couldn’t keep their noses out of anything. But after a long day of riding, to arrive at the top of the notch, preparing to climb down only to find that bandits had moved in to claim what was left of your cache?

It wouldn’t be so bad if there was something she could do about it. But there was a surprisingly large number of them, and they’d set up camp beneath the overhang where there was no way to target them from above. And even to get to that, she’d first have to descend a scree slope which would almost certainly alert them to her presence with a cascade of pebbles. 

So instead she had been sitting up half the night listening to their raucous party, sparks from their bonfire occasionally floating up past her, and trying to think of an approach. The smell of roasting meat recalled her weeks of hunting that food they were eating, her kills carefully butchered and packed into compartments of an insulated crate filled with chillwater. What would have lasted her a couple months, they would run through in a week at this rate.

The breeze occasionally blew fragments of their talk into her hearing. She’d gathered that a few were indeed former Eclipse members, and while she couldn’t make out all the (undoubtedly overstated) claims, she could hear the bragging tones in which they spoke to others of their exploits. Suthra would be interested to know that, Aloy was just reflecting, when there was a sudden scuffle and outcry below. A drunken brawl among them? She sidled carefully closer, straining to hear.

No; she was not so lucky as that, it turned out. She would not have credited it, but apparently they had posted lookouts beyond their bonfire, at the mouth of the notch; perhaps the jungle had taught these hardiest survivors the value of caution, even in the midst of celebration. And, apparently, those lookouts had caught someone sneaking about in the dark. One of the Oseram, left behind or foolishly returned? She couldn’t see, and the captive was either unconscious or stoically silent in the face of their captors’ taunts and abuse.

The stakes suddenly increased, Aloy grew taut, fully alert. Frustration gone, her mind went into overdrive; she’d been willing to accept the cost of some of her supplies in order to bide her time, waiting for a good opportunity to arise. Now, however, she needed to come up with a plan quickly. Bandits would have no use for a prisoner this far from any potential slave market.

The party disrupted, the sound of their jeering laughter suggested most of them had emerged from the sheltered alcove, to somewhere just outside the beyond the bonfire. Taking advantage of their noise and distraction, she crept carefully down the loose slope, reaching the final ledge without any sign she’d alerted them. Now if she could just find a place to climb down unobserved… she began edging along it, testing. Listening.

It was times like this that she really missed Beepyboy. An overridden stalker had been the perfect companion—while it had lasted—for situations just like this. In a world prowled by bandits and other desperados, where survival often meant moving fast and silent, it had been indispensible to have an ally she could reliably direct to strike from a specific angle, relocate, and distract opponents, leaving her to maneuver unobserved. 

Reliable, that is, until he wasn’t. The scar his dart had left in her shoulder hurt less, now, than having to drive her spear through his skull had. He had lain beside her bedroll, faithfully keeping watch, for two weeks. At her side at all times. And she couldn’t blame him for the betrayal, in the end; she could see she’d been naive, that a machine designed to hunt humans had been foolish to keep. So she’d blamed herself, and grown more cautious and sparing with her overrides.

But she had more experience now. More insight. She’d kept glinthawks overridden for far longer—the one the Oseram had downed had been with her just over 3 months, a new record—by keeping them on patrol, collecting and delivering materials: behaviors that exactly matched their normal programming. She’d never again try to keep combat machines for any length of time, let alone give them fond nicknames. But in theory, any acquisition or transport machine could be maintained if she simply managed it well.

Her reflection was broken at that moment by two things: first, she’d found a perfect place to descend, obvious handholds and well beyond the light of the fire—and she heard an angry cry of the prisoner as someone struck her. Definitely a her. If they were progressing from verbal to physical abuse, Aloy didn’t have much time. How many were there? At least a dozen. A plan, she needed a plan. Hurling incendiary bombs would endanger the prisoner; firing arrows wildly would likely cause them to retreat into the shelter of the notch and assume a standoff, which was not a situation conducive to reclaiming whatever remained of her stash.

She swung down the short cliff quickly, dropping the last six feet to land on hands and knees, then crept behind the broad trunk of a kapok tree for cover. Watching for the lookouts, in case they were still attentive, it occurred to her that what she needed was a distraction, something that got their attention off the captive, ideally something that lured them out where under cover of darkness her Focus, on its infrared setting, would give her a powerful advantage.

A quick scan showed two men just on the other side of the tree. Circling it partway, she began to overhear them conversing: “...can’t believe you saw her. I’ve just been watching that convoy getting closer all evening, never expected someone might creep up on us like that.”

The other speaker was preening. “Oh, I knew that behemoth down there was never going to come up this way. Even though we’re out of their country, I was keeping an eye out for stalkers, you can never be too careful. That’s why I twitched so fast when I saw movement in the shadows…”

It would serve his cocky ass right, Aloy thought grimly, if this shadow were to pop up behind him right now and run him through with a spear. But she knew she couldn’t also get his companion quickly enough to keep him from raising the alarm. No, a distraction and lure plan was the only viable…

…hang on. Did he just say there was a behemoth down in the valley?

~ ~ ~

“Okay, that’ll do!” 

Aloy keyed her Focus with a command to stand down. After a few seconds, the cascade of falling rocks ceased. 

She approached the alcove in the cliff cautiously. She was pretty sure at least three more bandits were holed up in there, but she’d been working on a new kind of bomb, a bit of blastpaste combined with a particularly smoky tree resin, that should give her the upper hand in a tussle, or at least the chance to grab the captive and backpedal to safety.

There had been watchers with the behemoth convoy, naturally—the perfect machine to send toward the camp, shrieking its alarm when spotted. Perfect, that is, because she expected such watchful bandits to move quickly to silence such a machine before it drew others, and they did not disappoint her. Nearly half of them joined the lookouts rushing the little machine, and a few more came out when the other watcher she’d had waiting just a little further away began to sing them the song of its people.

Just as they began to rain arrows and slingstones on the second one—the first already down—she loosed the behemoth itself from where she’d hidden it in heavy underbrush. Suddenly they were the ones under heavy bombardment, as the huge machine began churning up earth and rock in its loading fields and spewing it onto them in a continuous arc. Caught unaware, they made easy targets for her arrows.

But a few, either wary or lucky, had hung back where the cliff and overhang would shelter them. Back in there with the captive… and her stash.

The embers of the bonfire outside were scattered and mostly smothered beneath the behemoth’s spray. In the relative darkness, she hoped that between her smoke bomb and an infrared scan, she would be able to pull this off without too much risk. Aloy readied her thumb on the bomb’s trigger, and keyed her Focus.

Aside from several already-cooling bodies, there was the heat signature of only one figure at the back of the not-quite-a-cave, crouched as if ready for a spring.

Taken aback and a little wrongfooted, Aloy could see that this at least meant she did not need to go in to drag out a captive. Tucking away the bomb and pulling out her bow again, she circled the opening in a wide arc, backing off to give herself some reaction time. So, either they had cruelly killed the captive even in the face of a machine attack, or—

A sudden thought struck her. She straightened slightly, and called out, “Suthra?”

In her augmented vision, the red-orange human-shaped figure beneath the overhang perceptibly started, but did not otherwise respond.
“This is Aloy! From a few days ago, the glinthawk? It’s safe to come out! They’re all dead, the last ones were hiding back in there.”

  The figure gradually unfurled to standing, then crept forward. Aloy lowered her bow, positioning herself in clear sight but beside the broad kapok in case she was somehow wrong, and had to dive for cover. But the figure’s hands did not move in a threatening way, and in a moment she heard the other woman’s voice coming out of the dark recess.

“You’re sure?”

Aloy finally relaxed. “Yes!” she called back. “I… incited some machines to attack them, and used the distraction to take the rest from cover. Are you okay?”

“I’m all right.” The other woman finally stepped forward. “So, I guess being a machine scholar has some uses after all.” 

Aloy snorted, but switched on one of her glowbugs—a simple device the Nora often fashioned from a machine lens and small power cell—so they could see one another. “They let you keep your sword?” Suthra held her swordspear down to one side, and thought the bluish light made it seem to drip with machine oil, Aloy knew it wasn’t that. 

The Carja hunter glanced down at her weapon, then back at Aloy, quizzical. “No, of course not.” She did not seem inclined to say more.

So, she did indeed know some real tricks. But all aloy said out loud was, “How did you get here as fast as I did?” Seriously, the other woman hadn’t had a charger to help cover ground the last three days.

Accepting that the threat was indeed past, Suthra knelt and cleaned her blade on the tunic of a fallen foe. “Funny, I was going to ask you the same thing. I wouldn’t have guessed you knew these mountains as well as I do, but then I guess the Nora are a mountain people.”

She looked up, but it was Aloy’s turn not to elaborate. She couldn’t think of a good way to explain machine riding in a way that didn’t beg a lot more questions, so maybe this once she would just shrug and let her tribal association stand.

Suthra seemed to accept this. “Anyway, like I told you, I’d been following their campfires at night. After you left, I saw it off to the northeast here, the way you’d headed, so I hustled to find them first. Didn’t want you getting ambushed—” 

She cut herself off, realizing what she’d just said, and their eyes met for an awkward two seconds before she suddenly burst out laughing. It startled Aloy at first, but it was oddly contagious, and when she allowed herself a sympathetic chuckle it unaccountably turned into the exact same side-aching cackles, giggles, and snorts until both were left bent over, rubbing tears from their eyes. 

It felt good, for some reason. She hadn’t laughed like that since she was a little kid, when Rost could occasionally be prevailed upon to entertain her with the antics and adventures of the little figures he carved for her toys. But somehow, after a period of such intense fear and stress, it felt like a relief to laugh. To still be alive. Both of you. Together, laughing. What a strange, rare feeling!

When it was over, they didn’t worry any longer about the hows or whys of either of them being there. Aloy did explain, pulling out some rabbit haunches from a chilled compartment while Suthra rebuilt the fire, that this was her cache she’d come back for. And Suthra, in extremely practical fashion, commented that—no offense meant—that was a loopy way to travel, better to pack light and get your food on the hoof as you went. 

Aloy was on the point of explaining that her sort of travel made hunting less convenient, not to mention that she was often spending her days climbing up or down into ancient ruins, when Suthra’s way of putting it caught her short. On the hoof. Why—why—hadn’t she seen it before?

She was gazing out into the dark, where somewhere down the valley, the overridden behemoth waited for instructions. On the hoof. It might not have enough room for everything left in her stash (though after so much attrition, maybe it would) but she’d suborned a shellwalker convoy before when she had put it here in the first place. Transport machines like those might be perfectly content, so long as she gave them a new destination point each day, or a sequence of them. Glinthawks could find a mobile stash just as easily as a static one, and this way it would always be well-guarded. She could build up a far bigger supply base than ever. With this, she could travel anywhere, even into—

But Suthra broke into her thoughts, offering her a spit of roasted meat. She’d been saying something about heading back to give the Warden the good news. “And where are you headed next? I mean, where were you trying to get to anyway, when we first met?”

“I’m looking for old ruins,” Aloy admitted. “One in particular, where the Old Ones launched big flying ships into the sky.”

“Oh, that one? It’s in a bit of a canyon, a little tricky to get into. And you were going the wrong way, in any case. Listen, when go back up to the plateau, what you’ll want to do…”