Kane Koanui's Arc

Chapter 1 of 2

Kane Koanui heard the sweep sirens before he saw the drones. He was hunched over his workbench inside the hut his grandfather built, sanding a fresh wooden grip onto a tattoo iron that hummed with a soft green light. The sirens meant an enforcer patrol had flagged his district. If they found the irons, or the ink, or the old family designs pinned above his bench, he would be dragged out and wiped from the record like the rest of his line. He had one hour, maybe less. The overlords had erased his bloodline's rite a generation ago. They called the sacred marks a security risk. Kane had spent three years rebuilding the tools in secret, matching wood to circuit, needle to current. He was the last person alive who knew the pattern of the first mark. If the patrol took the irons tonight, the rite died with him. He wrapped the three irons in oilcloth and looked around the hut. The floor panels were bolted. The walls were thin thatch over pipe. Every hiding place he had ever used was on a scanner list by now. Then his eyes landed on the heavy shape crouched in the corner under a tarp: the old cargo ape his father had rebuilt, a scarred gray machine with dented plating and hands the size of dinner plates. Unibot. Dormant for a year. Kane pulled the tarp off and pressed his thumb to the chest port. The machine woke with a low growl. Kane worked fast. He unlatched the ape's back hatch, tucked the oilcloth bundle deep inside the coolant cavity, sealed it, and sent Unibot out the rear door with a single command: walk the ridge road until dawn. The ape thudded off through the brush just as the front lock sparked. A blue steel enforcer stepped through, red visor sweeping, a yellow seven stamped on its chest. Its claw arm clicked open. Its multitool arm scanned the bench, the walls, the floor. It found nothing. Kane stood with his hands out while the enforcer catalogued sawdust and empty ink bottles and a wooden grip with no needle. After eleven minutes it logged the hut clean and left. Kane locked the door and sat on the floor. The irons were safe, but Unibot was carrying every piece of the rite into open country with a tracker somewhere on his frame that Kane had not checked in a year. He pulled on his coat. He would have to catch the ape before the patrol widened its sweep, and before whatever signal Unibot still carried called them straight to the tools.