Free Stormhaven Rising (Atlas and the Winds Book 1) by Eric Michael Craig

looked like a sure collision, only to blow it back out a second later when they twisted themselves past and rolled on about their task.
    He stared down on the demonic square-dance for several minutes until he realized that Sophie was trying to pry his fingers free from the railing. “Come on. You look like you need to get out of here,” she said.
    “No,” he said. His eyes were huge, white edged in a caricature of terror that refused to be torn from the intricate waves of near cataclysmic encounters playing out below.
    Laughing at his frightened expression, Glen grabbed his other arm and pushed him toward the control room. “It’ll be ok, she speaks their language.” Putting himself between the bulk of the fabricator’s body and the railing, he gave a firm shove and the two of them marshaled him away.
    Inside, he stared in shock. Instead of the glowing consoles and visual readouts of the system monitors, everything was dead. Mica interfaced directly with everything, so keeping the screens active had been unnecessary. The control room was a silent and darkened crypt, a dozen onyx slabs that had formerly been command consoles, now stood as tombstones.
    Frozen by the strangeness, he looked at the two of them. “Oh my,” he croaked. Glancing over Glen’s shoulder he saw the top of an autobot swinging its load of hull panels over its head while it rotated towards some other unlikely dance partner.
    Sophia grinned and tried to keep from laughing. “Maybe you should call it a day. What do you think?"
    He shook his head, but this time he managed to look away from the window. “I spent two years writing the codes for the ‘bots. I really didn’t expect there to be that much—"
    “Difference?” Glen offered, trying to keep Daryl moving toward the door.
    “Yeah that too, but they’re doing things that are just impossible.” He studied the floor fighting the urge to look.
    “Actually it’s pretty cool,” Sophia said, pressing her face to the window and whistling in amazement. “Damn, those things had to scrape against each other that time.”
    “What?” Daryl gasped, shaking loose from Glen to jump to the window.
    “I assure you Dr. Creswell, I have maintained a twenty-five centimeter proximity tolerance because of uncertainty in the friction coefficient of the floor surface,” Mica responded.
    “Twenty-five centimeters?” Daryl gasped.
    “Yes. I set this distance as an acceptable safety margin given the variability of the environment. Unfortunately, this has limited the increase in operational efficiency to 296%, and not the 300% I had projected."
    “So, in five minutes you’ve tripled the production rate out there?” Glen watched the insane ballet for a few seconds.
    “Not precisely true, but a close approximation,” it replied. “Within the hour I will have collected sufficient data from movement vector analysis to reduce this tolerance to five centimeters, and provide a cumulative five hundred percent increase."
    “Don’t bother.” Daryl sat on the corner of one of the deactivated consoles, rubbing his forehead. “Our suppliers won’t be able to keep up."
    “Perhaps we should offer to assist them in improving their efficiency?” Mica suggested, almost managing to sound disappointed at its lost opportunity to show off.
    ***
     
    Northern Arizona:
     
    The storm was worse on the ground than it had been in the air, and Agent Shapiro’s attitude had slipped steadily as a result. On the ground, without exception, the roads between Phoenix and the high mountain plateau that was his destination, had been closed.
    This was Arizona. It was supposed to be desert, not frozen tundra.
    Forced to accept that the weather had trumped the urgency of his mission, Shapiro found a Best Western in a little town just below the rim of the plateau and got a room. Calling in to explain his delay, he spent a night trying to sleep. What he’d originally planned to take just over an hour to drive, had now become an