LINES OF SUCCESSION

The great Nomad Walker Jameela groaned to a halt as the sun reached its zenith over the Salaam oasis, its massive legs settling into the sand with tremors that ran through every deck plate. Jouri felt the familiar shift in her bones as the hydraulic systems she tended entered rest mode, their constant whisper finally falling silent after months of ceaseless motion.

From her position on the engineering deck, she could see the other Walkers of the gathering through a porthole, dozens of mechanical titans arranged in their ancient circle around the sacred waters. Already, the rope bridges were being strung between Walkers, and the colorful pavilions of the Medha traders bloomed like desert flowers around the oasis edge.

Jouri's hands unconsciously traced the hydraulic pressure diagrams tattooed along her forearms, her fingers following paths of ink that had guided her through a hundred crises. Every line told a story, the emergency bypass procedure that had saved them during the sandstorm last month, the pressure release sequence that had prevented a catastrophic explosion when sand infiltrated the primary lines. Jouri was a Muhandi - an engineer - and her body was a living manual for Walker Jameela's portside rear leg assembly, the responsibility literally etched into her skin.

The clan elders were soon departing for their negotiations with the Medha merchants. Jouri had seen this ritual many times - the careful dance of negotiation and the exchange of currency that would bring new crew members to replace those the desert had claimed. This year, the losses had been heavier than most. The plague that had swept through the lower decks during the Season of Dust had taken twelve of their number, and the mechanical failure that had crushed young Yasmin and several others in the main drive shaft assembly still haunted Jouri's dreams.

She watched from one of the many observation decks as the transaction unfolded below. Twenty-three female clones stood in formation in front of a pavilion, their near identical faces suggesting they came from the same template, the same birthing even. Elder Fatima, inspected them with the efficiency of someone buying equipment rather than people. Jouri's stomach turned, but she understood the necessity. Without new hands, Walker Jameela would slowly die as its aging crew succumbed to accident and disease. She herself had been purchased here over ten years ago.

The clones were brought aboard that evening, bearing nothing but their skimpy white cloning facility garments with large barcodes printed across their chests. They had clearly been meant for a different destination and had found their way to the bazaar by illicit means. “Just like myself,” Jouri reminded herself. She watched them board the Walker from the engineering deck, noting how they flinched at every sound, how their eyes darted constantly around. They had been told they were beginning new employment, but their instincts recognized that this was no ordinary deployment.

Three days out from Salaam, the first one died.

Jouri heard the screams from two decks away - a sound that would echo in her nightmares for months to come. By the time she reached the gear assembly, it was over. The clone, designated LRN-447, had somehow become caught between the massive drive gears while performing a routine maintenance check. The hydraulics had cycled automatically, and the gears had pulled her in with inexorable mechanical force.

The cleanup of blood and tiny bone fragments took hours. The Walker never stopped moving.

A week later, another clone simply stepped off the observation deck during the night watch. The Walker never stopped. No-one survived a fall from that height.

The following night, unable to sleep, Jouri climbed to the stern observation deck for air. She found another of the new clones standing at the railing, her hands gripping the metal so tightly her knuckles had gone white. The woman's designation read AZR-203 and Jouri had overheard her being called Azra.

"The drop is a long one," Jouri said quietly, not approaching. "But the death at the end will be quick."

Azra turned, her eyes wide with a fear that she couldn't quite suppress. "I'm sorry. I was just... looking at the stars."

"No, you weren't." Jouri moved closer, her voice gentle. "I've stood at that railing myself ten years ago. Wondered if the fall would hurt."

They stood in silence for a long moment, listening to the rhythmic thunder of the Walker's steps and the whisper of wind through the rigging.

"What stopped you?" Azra asked finally.

Jouri touched the tattoos on her neck, feeling the raised lines of the cooling system schematics. "Purpose. Someone needs to tend the machines. And someone needed to tend to me, once upon a time."

Azra looked at her with a sad smile. “I was made as a factory clone, but none of my neural conditioning matches what needs to be done here. I feel like an accident waiting to happen.”

Jouri smiled back at her. “Portside rear leg assembly. Come and find me in the morning. Ask for Muhandi Jouri. I’ll speak to your overseer, make them transfer you to me. And I’ll give you purpose, I promise.”

—

Over the following weeks, Jouri began taking Azra with her on maintenance rounds. The clone proved to have an intuitive understanding of mechanical systems, she just needed to adjust her neural programming to the particulars of the Walker. Her hands seemed to know how to feel for stress fractures and she could soon diagnose hydraulic irregularities by touch alone.

"You have a gift," Jouri told her as they completed one of their shifts that had been especially demanding. "The machines speak to you."

Azra's cheeks flushed, as she still wasn’t used to hearing praise from Jouri. "My batch was designed for industrial applications. We're supposed to have enhanced mechanical intuition."

"Call it what you want," Jouri said, watching how Azra's fingers traced the housing assembly with unconscious reverence. "But I think Jameela speaks to you." They both laughed and Jouri playfully jabbed Azra in the ribs. “Your turn to buy me a drink, come on.”

The months that followed blurred together in a rhythm of maintenance, instruction, and growing understanding. Azra proved not just capable but intuitive, absorbing knowledge with a hunger that went far beyond her original neural programming. She began to anticipate Jameela’s needs, reading the Walker’s groans and clanking noises with uncanny accuracy.

After their shifts, their conversations often extended long into their rest periods. The professional distance between teacher and student gradually gave way to something warmer, and much more complex.

The night it changed was during a routine inspection of the primary hydraulic manifold. They had been working in the cramped maintenance crawlway for hours, their sweating bodies pressed close together in the confined space. Azra had been tracing a hydraulic pressure line with one hand, following its path across the blueprint on Jouri's shoulder blade where the schematic was tattooed with her other hand.

"The ink is beautiful," Azra whispered, her breath warm against Jouri's neck. "Like art, but with purpose."

Jouri turned to face her, their faces inches apart in the dim emergency lighting. "Would you like to see all of them?"

In Jouri's private quarters, the revelation unfolded slowly. Jouri wore little to begin with to keep the blueprints accessible during work, but there were lines Azra had not yet seen. Pressure gauge settings ran across her ribs, gear ratios spiraled around her thighs, emergency protocols written in precise script ran along her spine. Azra's hands followed the lines with reverent fingers, reading the story of Jouri's calling written in permanent ink.

"This one," Azra whispered, tracing a complex diagram across Jouri's chest, "what does it mean?"

"Emergency override sequence," Jouri breathed, her skin alive with sensation where Azra touched. "If any leg assembly ever goes critical, that sequence brings the Walker to a controlled stop to avoid catastrophic damage to the gears."

Azra’s fingers kept tracing hydraulic lines, eventually finding her way to the gear diagrams around Jouri’s legs, tracing them upwards along her inner thighs. Jouri gasped as Azra’s fingers touched her more intimately. She sat up and began to undress Azra, her untouched skin in stark contrast to her own. Azra was clearly embarrassed by the absence of any tattoos on herself. “I want to be as beautiful as you,” she whispered in Jouris' ear. Jouri smiled at her. She began to kiss Azra’s breasts and stomach, sending shivers down her spine. “You’ll get your own lines soon enough, but for now, I want to enjoy how pure you are.” Their lovemaking was tender and desperate, charged with the knowledge that in their world, nothing lasted forever. Afterward, as they lay entwined in Jouri's narrow bunk.

"If anything happens to me, you’ll be my successor," Jouri said quietly. "You'll carry on with this work, promise?"

Azra's eyes filled with tears. "I'm just a clone. I'm not supposed to succeed at anything."

"You're not just a clone," Jouri replied, pressing a kiss to her forehead. "Don’t you realise that I’m a clone myself, that I came here the same way you did? You're the future of this Walker. Promise me."

“I promise,” Azra replied finally. Jouri nodded. “Good,” she said. She sat up and gently rolled Azra onto her back, her hand softly tracing up and down Azra’s legs, parting them gently. “And we’ll get some ink onto you soon, but not just yet.” Azra’s breath caught as Jouri’s hands continued their journey over her body.

—

The attack came a few months later, as Walker Jameela crested the Dune of Mourning after departing the annual gathering at Salaam. The enemy Walker appeared from behind a sand ridge like a mountain of metal and malice - Clan Khayin, their ancient rivals, came to settle old grudges with blade and fire.

The boarding action was swift and brutal. Grappling hooks flew between the Walkers, and within minutes, Khayin warriors were swarming through Walker Jameela's corridors. The fighting was close and desperate, conducted with knives and clubs in spaces too narrow for proper weapons.

Jouri and Azra had been conducting routine maintenance when the attack began. They heard the screams and clash of metal from two decks above, felt the vibrations as the Walker's defensive systems engaged.

"We need to initiate an emergency lockdown," Jouri said, her face pale but determined. "Otherwise, if they reach the leg assembly, they could cripple us."

They fought their way through corridors slick with blood, past bodies of friends and enemies alike. The Khayin warriors had penetrated deeper than anyone expected, and when Jouri and Azra reached the gear assembly, they found an invader ramming a metal bar between the gears, damaging the leg’s primary drive system.

The battle was brief but vicious. Jouri threw herself at the Khayin warrior, shielding Azra but also getting the warrior away from the assembly. As they rolled on the ground, each trying to get on top of the other, Azra grabbed a large spanner without thinking. The Khayin warrior, a trained fighter, quickly got the better of Jouri and ended up on top of her, driving a blade into the screaming engineer’s chest. With a desperate howl, Azra launched herself at the warrior and smashed the heavy spanner into her skull. The warrior collapsed, her head smashing into the drive assembly as she fell with a hideous cracking sound. 

"Override sequence," Jouri whispered, her voice already growing weak. "Stop the Walker or our leg will pull out and Jameela falls."

"Don't leave me," Azra sobbed, pressing her hands against the wound that was already losing too much blood.

"Not leaving," Jouri managed, her fingers touching Azra's face one last time. "I’ll stay with you forever my love."

Fighting back tears, Azra followed the emergency sequence tattooed across Jouri’s chest. She had traced it and touched it many times in the last few months and knew it by heart, punching buttons and pulling levers to bring the Walker to a controlled emergency stop without damaging any of the gear assemblies on the other legs.

When Jameela came to a shuddering halt, Jouri was already dead.

—

The ritual began three days after the attack, when Walker Jameela had reached safe distance from clan Khayin's territory after emergency repairs. The surviving engineers gathered in the sacred workshop where such ceremonies had been conducted for generations. Azra lay on her back on the preparation table, her skin bared to receive the inheritance that would transform her from clone to engineer. Next to her lay the dead body of Jouri, cold to the touch and cleaned from blood and grime.

Master Amira, the Walker's chief engineer, gave a brief ceremonial speech. Each line would be copied with perfect precision, each symbol transferred with ritual care. The process would take days, and the pain would be beyond description, but knowledge too precious to lose demanded such sacrifice.

"Are you ready, Azra?" Amira asked, her voice gentle despite the ordeal to come.

Azra nodded, tears already streaming down her face. But these were not tears of fear - they were tears of love, of loss, and of the anticipation of having the lines from Jouri’s skin inked into her very own flesh.

The first needle touched her skin, and Jouri's knowledge began its journey onto Azra's body. Every pressure reading, every system specification, every emergency protocol was inked into Azra with careful precision. Through the haze of pain, Azra could feel Jouri's presence, her love and expertise flowing through the ink into herself.

Endless hours passed. The tattoo artists worked in shifts, their hands steady despite the magnitude of their task. Azra bit down on a leather strip to muffle her screams, her body convulsing with each line of ink. But she endured, because Jameela demanded such sacrifice.

When it was finished, when the last line had been drawn and the final symbol completed, Azra had become something new. She was no longer just a clone, but a living repository of knowledge and memory. She bore Jouri's expertise in her flesh, and carried her lover's legacy in permanent ink.

—

One year later, Walker Jameela approached the Salaam oasis once again, its mechanical legs carrying the clan toward another gathering, another season of trade and renewal. From the observation deck, the new Muhandi for the port side rear leg watched the other Walkers converging on the sacred waters.

Azra’s hands unconsciously traced the hydraulic pressure diagrams tattooed along her forearms, her fingers following lines of ink that had guided her through a dozen crises. She had proven herself over the past year, earning the respect of the clan through competence and dedication. But she carried more than just technical expertise - she carried the memory of love, of sacrifice, of the teacher who had seen potential in a frightened clone and nurtured it into something greater.

Below, the Medha traders were already setting up their pavilions, their goods displayed for the coming negotiations. Soon, the clan elders would return with new faces, new lives purchased with precious currency. And among those new arrivals would be someone lost and frightened, someone who might be standing at a railing in the darkness, wondering if the fall would hurt. And she would be there for that lost soul.

Azra touched the tattoo over her chest - a small modification she had asked to be added, a stylized gear intertwined with a desert flower. It was not part of any technical manual, but it was perhaps the most important symbol she carried.

"You’ll stay with me forever my love," she whispered to the wind and sand.