Innate Wright

A human colony preparing to celebrate three hundred years on its new world is suddenly faced with an enemy that hearkens back to their early days on Hera. The giant bots that saved the colony have been dormant for nearly two centuries. During a celebration that proves the engineers have kept them ready for battle, the party turns into a race to save lives and get to the bots. The engineers have been responsible for the mechanical stability of the bots. They are not pilots. The pilots are in the city, two hundred kilometers away. There are six surviving bots and six engineering clans that care for them. It is up to the engineers to get the bots up and running so that they can get the right pilot for the right job. If they can get the bots moving. Six women, six stories, and six very different AIs giving them attitude.

The six engineers of Bot City cross the wasteland in a desperate attempt to gain the trained pilots for the bots they are driving need. While the women can make the bots move, they don't know how to use them as weapons. That is a skill that the original pilots had, and they need.

With the transformation from engineers to pilots, the ladies must fight the memories of their ancestors in order to keep their focus on finding the defensive weaponry that goes with their bots. The city holds the key to the weapons, but the bots are on the outside of the gates and the caches are on the inside. Each ancient pilot knew where the weapons had been buried, and those memories are now pressed into service as the engineers break through the city gates to get what they need to save their own people.

The pilots have gotten their bots under their control and are now ready for the next phase in the attack strategy. They are meeting that plan with one of their own. Back to the city yet again, the pilots are charged with activating the final weapon of the first war, if they can find the stations that will start the machine up after its long sleep. Being outside the bots is difficult for the pilots, but when they begin taking fire, there is nothing that they want more than the safety of their recent metal companions. Whose plan was this anyway?

The pilots of Bot City have been focused on securing the safety of their people, and incidentally the human city, for the last few days. With one final battle to expunge the Tokkel before they can try and get a foothold on Hera, the bot pilots are ready to take up the customized weapons and use them to show the alien invasion who is in charge. Their goal is clear. They have to repel the Tokkel and learn the actual history of the valley as not one version of the tale has rung entirely true. The Nine have their version, the elders have their version, the city has their version, and then there is the truth. It is past time for the truth to be heard. The pilots have earned it.