All the Dust that Falls

Chapter 123: Rocket Science

I was, quite honestly, in the slightest bit of a predicament. I looked down at the children below, staring up at me in awe. I was proud of them and sort of proud of my own achievement, but it really wasn't what I was going for. As I reached out with my claw to flip myself right side up, the children started cheering.

The roof slant was working against me slightly, but I wasn't too worried about rolling the rest of the way down onto the ground. If that did happen I'd probably be fine, just a little embarrassed, though it would be hard to beat the embarrassment I was already feeling.

After corralling the cat and cleaning all of the wet spots from that debacle, I decided to work on my thruster control. It had been too challenging to clean up the marks on the stairs. If I had been able to better utilize my abilities and hover though, it would have been significantly more manageable, so I went outside to practice.

For better or for worse, my thrusters were much more potent than they had been last time I used them. I had only been attempting to jump up a little bit and then slowly glide back down to the ground, just to establish a baseline for the power. I, indeed, had jumped up more than a little bit. Even worse, my angle was a bit off, and I didn't travel completely perpendicular to the ground. Instead, I drifted forward and slowly rotated over so my front edge pointed right at the ground. I did my best to correct this by adjusting my thruster angle, but I misjudged them.

Somehow, I rocketed straight into one of the spires of the castle. I felt my carapace crack as the stone around me chipped, and I slid down the wall onto the shingles below. And that was how I found myself in the current situation, approximately 34.9 feet off the ground and looking at the children upside down. Flipping myself over was only the first step to fixing this though.

As my Automatic Maintenance skill got to work repairing the damage, I considered what I had learned. I thought the issue might have been that I wasn't perfectly level when I first took off. That caused me to flip a little as my first boost wasn't balanced out. And that would definitely be a problem here too because the roof wasn't level. Once I got situated, I tried to take it slowly. Routing enough force to the thrusters would slide me farther up the roof to level myself off at the top. If that worked, I would have a starting point, Unfortunately, reality wasn’t so kind. Again I overcompensated and sent myself flipping up the roof, tumbling end over end. Again my shell cracked as I shattered the stone of a castle wall.

I sighed internally. My models were usually pretty good, but it seemed like I needed more data for this particular tool to be useful. That didn’t bode well for the current predicament. Maybe it would be easier to cut my way back into the castle and then repair the hole from the inside? It was something that seriously needed to be considered, but I was still hesitant to go through with it. I didn't want to damage the castle. Even if I knew I could fix it, it felt wrong. Besides, I was trying to learn how to use my thrusters anyways, and I could definitely figure out how to get down from the roof with a bit of time. Even if I created some damage, I would probably be fine. Already my maintenance was working on repairing the crack. Nothing was majorly busted, and I was still operating fine. However, it would still be several minutes before I was entirely in one piece again.

I sat there, trying to reorder my memory banks before giving it another attempt. Usually, things around here didn't have the speed or power to actually hurt me. But I guess I was fully capable of hurting myself. It was a good reality check for testing out my underused abilities. I should be more careful, as I clearly didn't know my own strength. Well, I'd probably be fine in this case. I didn't want to exacerbate damage to my already weakened protective exterior, but there wasn’t too much risk this time. Repairing my innards or sensors would likely be much more time-consuming than just fixing the simple plastic shell.

After the crack was mostly sealed up, I put out the minimum amount of power I could through all three thrusters simultaneously. To my relief, I only shifted slightly. Now that was progress, I cheered to myself. I doubled the amount of power. I rose about a foot off the ground and started sliding wildly away from the roof. That’s right. I was still not on a level surface.

Looking at the controls more carefully, I realized I had a minimum output, though I didn’t know what the theoretical maximum was. Converting the scale into base 10 values would set the minimum at 10, and a thrust of 20 had evidently been far too much. Maybe I should start with something like 11. Slowly, I started with the minimum value and increased by the smallest amount I could over and over, concentrating just on the thruster facing mostly downhill. Slowly my angle corrected itself, and I could level off on the uneven surface by adjusting myself a little. Once I was level, I started experimenting with adding the other two thrusters to the mix. I started to try to raise them all equally, but as I got further and farther away from the surface of the roof, that began to throw me off as well.

I started trying to develop an easy algorithm to stay level. I left everything as it was and rapidly switched between all three of my thrusters, applying the tiniest adjustments to each. While doing this, I was also paying attention to my internal gyroscope and level sensors. I could adapt the output of the thrusters several thousand times a second. So if I continued this pattern, just going in a loop adjusting thrusters, I could push myself where I wanted to go without immediately crashing. Of course, this wasn't the most effective method or really an efficient algorithm at all, but it would do for now.

Slowly I hovered off the roof and over the ground below. Now that I was mostly level, I started to lower myself in a controlled descent. Once my wheels were firmly back on the ground, I let out a huge sigh of compressed air and a happy beep.

—-

Bee doubled over with her hands on her knees, panting. Sweat dripped down her forehead as she tried to catch her breath. A few seconds after stopping at the top of the hill, she looked up and scanned the horizon. Herding sheep was turning out to be much harder than she would have ever thought. They didn’t stop. Sure they might sleep at night, but even then she and Tony had to be constantly alert lest they wander off, spooked by the roving undead.

Escorting the sheep back to the castle might just have been the hardest thing she had ever done. So far they had been at it for almost two days and they still weren’t even in sight of the forest. Odds were that they might have actually wandered further away than when they had started.

They had tried everything they could think of, coming at the flock from all angles. She had even captured one and carried it, hoping that the others would follow. That plan had backfired massively and was why she was currently running all over the countryside. Apparently, seeing one of their own get physically picked up had even overridden their herd mentality and the flock had splintered into smaller parts. Currently she was looking over the last group of rebellious sheep, calm once again.

Finally she had found the dirty, off white beasts that she had started to loathe so much. Jogging over to where the devils were hiding, she found that they had crossed a packed earth road. Judging by the distance it looked like this road might be the one heading to Greg. If it followed the valleys it might be easier to keep the sheep in line along the way. Now how to get Tony and the rest of them over here?

***

It took them several hours but they somehow got all the sheep on the road. Despite all the complaining, they had gotten slightly better at controlling the sheep. The issue was that her method of running around them frantically wasn’t a long term solution, even as fast as she was. Seems like there was a reason why shepherds used dogs after all.

Once they got all the sheep reunited on the road, Bee felt like she was about to pass out. Sitting near the edge of the road she made Tony promise to keep them from going anywhere while recovered. He laughed at her, “What, you think I want them to run off? No thank you. I officially hate sheep.”

She would have agreed if she had the energy to do so. As it was she just nodded.

Before she had fully recovered Tony called out to her. “Hey Bee! Looks like something on the road is headed toward us.”

From her position she groaned, wishing for a bit more rest, but looked up anyway. Sure enough, there was a figure in the distance moving toward them. It was far enough away that she couldn’t make out more than the shape of a person walking, but that was all. The person looked to be alone too.

“What do you want to do?” Tony asked her.

Taking a deep breath, Bee thought. She couldn’t really tell how fast the figure was moving, so she had no idea when they might encounter the person if at all. But if Tony could see them, then they would definitely be able to make out a large group of sheep walking along the road. There didn’t seem to be any way to avoid running into them.

“I’m not sure.” Bee mused, still trying to think. “Maybe you stay here and watch the sheep while I go check it out?”

Tony shook his head. “I don’t think that's a good idea. You’re clearly exhausted. If there’s trouble, we should face it together. Besides, I bet the sheep won’t really get in the way. Worst case, if they get spooked, we can always gather them up again.”

"Yeah, but I really don’t want to.” Bee gripped. “Fine, you’re right. I’m not in great shape. So what, we just wait here?”

Tony shrugged and gestured to the flock, “It's either that or we just start moving them towards the castle. If the other person catches up, they catch up.”

“We’re going to be moving so slowly that I bet a grandma would catch us.” Bee said. “Besides, if they catch us before nightfall then it might be fine, but if they keep going through the night they might catch us unawares.”

“So let's just wait then. I think the sheep are as tired as you are.” Tony said.

Bee let out an over the top laugh, “Yeah, now if only they’d act like it!”

Finding a rock to sit on, they watched the figure approach. It soon became clear that the figure was moving extremely slowly. As it got closer, Bee started to realize that it was moving with a limp.

She started to feel concerned as she saw the setting sunlight flash on long, straw blonde hair. “I think it's a woman, she looks hurt as well.”

“Huh?” Tony grunted, looking up from the stick he was idly carving.

“I’m going to go help her.” Bee said, hopping off her rock and grabbing her pack. A few moments of running later, she was in front of the woman. “Excuse me miss, are you all right?”

The woman looked up and for the first time Bee got a good look at her face. “Susan?”