Aimee led Kendra and the children between the mechs, irregularly shaped metal monsters lurking in the darkness of the cavern, and down to the fire that was burning merrily; as large as the blaze was, it seemed like nothing so much as a tiny candle compared to the immensity of the space. Twenty or so people, mainly men, were sitting or standing around a fire. They all had the same slightly dirty, weathered look to them, mostly lean and muscular with a few exceptions, and many of them with interesting collections of scars.

“Hey, all,” said Aimee as they came into the light. “Make a little space there, I’ve got a tour coming through.”

Several of the other salvagers greeted Aimee, and all of them looked with curiosity at Kendra and the class.

“You picking up strays now, Aimee?” said an older, wiry man who ambled over. He had a large, frizzy grey beard that obscured most of his chest, and twinkly eyes almost hidden by large bushy eyebrows. He looked exactly like the stereotype of gold prospectors that Kendra had seen in the old cowboy movies that her dad was fond of; it would not have shocked her if he had been wearing a floppy cowboy hat and had a mule following him around.

“Something like that, Alby, found them out in the desert. How’s yourself?” said Aimee.

“Fine, young un, just fine, still finding my way,” said Alby. He had a wheezy voice. “How are you doing?”

“Grand, Alby.” She turned to Kendra. “Alby’s on a spiritual journey in the sands to find himself. On a related note, if he should offer you a cigarette or a sweet to chew on, decline unless you want to go on your own spiritual journey. Definitely don’t let your kids have any.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Mr Alby,” said Kendra, stepping forward to shake the old man’s hand. “Class, say hello to Mr Alby.” There was an incoherent chorus of mumbled greetings.

“Pleasure to meet you all. And please, just Alby. We don’t really go in for formality here,” he said with a wheezing laugh.

“Alby,” said Aimee. “Markov here?” She had been searching the group around the fire and peering off into the shadows, searching for him.

Alby sighed and directed a withering look at Aimee, one that was entirely ignored. “Aye, but he’s keeping himself to himself for now. You know he’s not that bad, just not great with people.”

“He’s an arsehole.”

“Well…not all the time. I think you bring it out in him.” Alby cleared his throat and scratched at his nose. “Actually, since you’re here, Aimee…” He grinned at her.

“Oh no, come on, Alby!”

“She just needs a quick tune up, I swear.” He coughed. “The joint on the back leg might need a bit of a tweak again.”

Aimee glared at him. “It needs replacing, is what it needs. Sure, how many times have I told you?”

Alby just smiled at her.

“Fine, I’ll have a look at it. You keep an eye on my friends here.”

“Thanks. It’s back that way.” Alby pointed with his thumb and smiled benignly.

“Idiot,” said Aimee, wheeling herself away.

Sure enough, there was Alby’s mech; a squat six-legged thing, longer and thinner that Aimee’s. Unlike most of them, Alby had actually tried to decorate his mech, using different coloured metal panels to create a pattern on its hull. It also meant that there were more places for the ubiquitous sand to work its way in and screw up the wiring. That wasn’t what she was looking at today, however. No, today she was looking at the motor on the port-side rearmost leg. Again. She stopped next to the offending limb and locked the wheels on her chair, then she reached underneath the seat and scrabbled around in one of the compartments beneath the seat. Promising herself, as she always did, that she would finally get around to making proper individual compartments for everything, she dragged out the magnetic grapple-gun. It took a moment to get the sling hooked on around her torso and then she fired it up at the mech’s body, aiming for a spot just above the port where the leg connected to the main body. It landed with a thunk, locking in place, and with a push of a button on the side, Aimee rose gracefully up until she was level with the joint.

As she had expected, it was a mess of corroded hydraulic lines and relays gummed up with sand, just as it had been the last time. And the time before that. If she looked closely she could still see fixes she’d done in the past, one on top of another like the strata of a rock formation, each fix accompanied by the warning to get the motor replaced and the solemn promise that this time he would. Grumbling under her breath, she pulled up her spare leg using a loop on her cargo pants, popped open the compartment with her emergency tools in it and set to work with the screwdriver.

She had been working for several minutes, marvelling that the motor was still functional at all, when a familiar but unwelcome voice called up from below.

“Finally found your calling in life as a decoration, Westmorland.”

Aimee didn’t bother looking away from the circuit board she was checking; she’d have been more surprised if he hadn’t shown up. “What do you want, Markov?”

“Nothing, it just amuses me to see you swinging around up there like a yo yo.”

Slotting the circuit board back in place, Aimee finally looked over shoulder at the man standing below her. He looked just the same as ever; tall, lean and rangy, with a gaunt face and the same supercilious smile as ever. Looking at his smirk always made her want to smack him with a wrench. “Markov, the day you learn to tell one end of a screwdriver from the other is the day you can take the piss out of me, or was it not true what I heard about you installing a transformer the wrong way round and blowing half your motors up?”

The smile disappeared, much to Aimee’s satisfaction; if you can’t reach with an actual wrench, sometimes a verbal one will do just as well.

“It was faulty,” he snapped.

“Sure it was.” Aimee went back to working on the motor. There was no reply, and when she looked round again he was gone, and her wheelchair was rolling gently backwards to bump against the legs of a neighbouring mech. “Infantile arsehole,” she muttered, going to work on some wiring that looked like sand-roaches had been chewing on it.

Aimee rolled back to the campfire to find Kendra and the children gathered around Alby while he regaled them with some tall tale or another, something he appeared to have a limitless supply of. The old coot had been spinning these yarns at least as long as Aimee had been travelling out into the desert; even the first time that her da had brought her out, when she was only five or six, she remembered him telling her a story about some giant sand monster or another that lurked out in the deep desert.

“Aimee, welcome back, how’s my old Clara doing?” said Alby, seeing her roll up.

“Your poor old Clara has knackered joints and thrombosis - when did you last get her a service? The hydraulic fluid had lumps in it.” It had looked like something bacterial had started breeding in the gunk that oozed out of the corroded fluid lines.

“Well…” Alby looked away rather than meet Aimee’s accusing gaze.

“And that motor. How many times do I need to tell you, Alby, it needs replacing - it’s held together with bodged welds and hope.”

“But why do I need to replace it when I have you, my little mechanical marvel?” He smiled at her. Aimee suspected it was a smile meant to charm and ingratiate - it didn’t work.

“There’s only so much I can do. You want my advice, you head straight back to the mesa and get someone to fit a new one - Hell, I’ll do it if you wait around for me to finish my current run - but if you don’t get it sorted then it’s going to give out on you in the middle of bloody nowhere and there won’t be a damn thing I or anyone else will be able to do to fix it.”

Alby winked at Kendra and the children. “I know she sounds angry but she loves me really.”

“I’m going to smack you round the back of the head with a spanner, daft old bugger. Now go and get me a drink.”

“To hear is to obey, my queen.” He wandered off in the direction of the fire where there was a large box of bottles.

“Wish it was, he might actually fix his bloody mech,” muttered Aimee. She sighed and looked over the others; the children were all either asleep or looking tired. Even Kendra’s eyes were drooping shut. “How’re you all doing?” she said.

Kendra’s head snapped up and, after a moment, she focused on Aimee. “We’re fine, I think. Tired. It’s been a long day.”

“You can stay out by the fire if you want, it’ll be safe enough. Can’t promise you an undisturbed night’s rest though, after a few more drinks someone usually starts singing. It can get a bit rowdy.”

“I think we’d rather be back in your mech, if that’s okay,” said Kendra. Her eyes were drooping closed again.

“Fair enough. I’ll open it up for you - it’s keyed to my bio-signature so no one can open the doors but me.” Aimee noticed the frown on Kendra’s brow. “Don’t worry, you won’t be trapped in there, there’s an emergency override on the internal control panel of each door.”

“How will I know how to use it?” asked Kendra, still frowning.

“It’s a big, red, brightly illuminated switch marked ‘EMERGENCY RELEASE’. I’m confident that, thanks to the excellent levels of education with which you’re providing your wee darlings, at least one of them will be able to figure it out.”

They were woken the next morning by the earth shaking and the sound of thunder. Children started screaming and shouting, some of them clinging to Kendra as she staggered out of the bunk.

“Shush, shush, shush,” said a voice from the cockpit. Aimee rolled in, one hand over her eyes, the other flapping vaguely in what was supposed to be a calming gesture. “It’s just the others leaving. Probably should have mentioned that. Now stop with the loudness, please.”

“Has the storm passed, then?” said Kendra. There was ice in her voice, sharp little icicles that penetrated even the fog that surrounded Aimee’s brain.

“The worst of it has, yes,” replied Aimee, focusing on the teacher. “You do not look as thrilled as I would expect.”

“I am tired. Possibly as a result of the singing that woke us all up in the middle of the night.” It had been loud, raucous, tuneless and filled with words that Kendra had ordered the children to pretend they hadn’t heard.

“Oh. Sorry about that. It’s not normally that bad but Danislav had this homemade wine he wanted us to try - it was awful, more like engine degreaser, but it had a hell of a kick to it. There was lots of singing. There may have been dancing as well. On a possibly related note I seem to have a bruise on my elbow.”

“You were dancing? Sorry, that sounded far worse than it was supposed to.”

“Oh yeah!” said Aimee, clicking her fingers. “You may be surprised to learn that I can still dance the light fantastic when the mood is upon me.” She rocked back in the chair so it was up on the two rear wheels and span it around, pirouetting on the spot. “Oh wow, that was a mistake.” She let the chair drop back on to four wheels and clutched at her head. “Could there be coffee? Is there any kind and benevolent force in this pitiless universe that could produce a cup of coffee, black, no sugar? And also a protein bar.”

Coffee in hand, protein bar on her lap, Aimee settled herself into the pilot’s chair and started powering up the mech’s systems, arrays of lights illuminating on the various control panels. A vibration ran through the metal body as the engines came on line with a low hum.

“Ah, here we go,” said Aimee. She ripped the wrapper of the protein bar open with her teeth and dunked the olive-coloured block of nutrients into the coffee before taking a bite of the dripping, soggy section. “That’s the stuff. The trick is to time it just right so the wet bit doesn’t fall in.”

“That is disgusting,” said Kendra. She was nibbling unenthusiastically on the end of a similar bar. “What flavour are these supposed to be?”

Aimee shrugged. “Brown,” she said with her mouth full. “Doesn’t matter what it says on the packet, they’re all flavoured brown. Hold on tight, boys and girls!” With a jolt, the six huge legs lifted the mech’s body clear of the ground and started to turn around. Up the slope, the entrance to the cave glowed like a bright sapphire jewel in a pitch black sky. There was no sign of the sandy maelstrom of the previous day. A minute later, the emerged into a bright, clear morning, the sun still quite low in the sky. The sky was a clear, cloudless blue, not uncommon in this vast, barren expanse. A press of a button on the pilot’s console from Aimee and the thick, toughened windows scrolled down, letting a gust of cool, dry air into the cockpit.

Aimee took a deep breath, chewing on the last little bit of her protein bar. “Nothing like a beautiful desert morning,” she said.

“Feel better for that do you?” said Kendra. Her voice had thawed but not by much.

Aimee grinned at her. “Always. No regrets, ever. Life’s too short.” She brought up a display on one of the console’s screens. “Signal is strong, connection to the mesa is good and stable - time to call home and reassure the worried parents that their little treasures didn’t end up inside a jackal.”