Twisted Metal (40 page)

He found himself in a small, dome-shaped room, its two occupants cowering against the far wall. Thin, pathetic things, they looked up at Olam, holding out their hands in supplication. Poorly made hands of impure metal, blotched and stained. Bodies shaking and quivering from badly tuned electromuscle.

‘Please . . .’ said one of them, whether man or woman, Olam couldn’t tell. His rage surged up through the electromuscle. They didn’t even deserve a bullet, it told him. His awl was already in his right hand, striking down through the skull of the pleading robot: it tore through the thin metal without any difficulty, tangling in the sick green-blue wire that lay beneath. The other robot began a pitiful wailing; it clung to Olam’s legs. He kneed it, felt the metal of its chin crack, then with a savage joy he brought down the awl once more, splitting open the second skull.

They were both dead. That’s when the frenzy overtook him. He began to tear apart their pathetic bodies, scattering them around the room. He tore electromuscle, he snapped metal bones riddled with impurities. Blue-green twisted wire unravelled on the floor, and he looked at it with disgust. There was a little fire in the corner of the room, barely fit to be described as a forge. He pushed twisted metal towards the flames with his foot, watched it begin to glow and then collapse in on itself.

And then rage passed, and in the lull that followed his attention was caught by a sheet of metal hanging on the wall above the forge. A sheet of steel, the quality of this metal easily superior to anything else in the hovel, and yet it had been hung there on the wall rather than used to improve the build of a body.

Olam moved closer to the sheet, puzzled. There was a symbol engraved on its face: a large circle, a smaller circle on the top of its circumference. What did it mean?

He heard more noise, the sound of gunfire, and that brought him back to his senses. Outside, the attack continued.

He tore the sheet from the wall, crumpled it and dropped it on the fire. The lust was rising again.

Karel

Karel had no ears to hear what was happening around him; his eyes could only see the railway lines in front. Even so, he knew that the attack had begun. He could tell by the purposeful movement of those robots around him. He saw the grey troops piled on the trains pulling out of the valley ahead of him.

He was impressed, despite himself. They worked quickly, the Artemisians. Fast and efficient.

Karel waited in a shallow valley, twilight falling with the swirling snowflakes. He counted eight sets of lines squeezed between the valley walls, all for the benefit of the constantly moving traffic of Artemis as it prosecuted another war.

Karel had drawn his train up amongst all the others that morning, and had spent the long day waiting, watching the snow piling up around the tracks. He had watched the other trains leaving the temporary marshalling yard, their wagons stacked with rails and sleepers, hoppers filled with ballast, and he had pondered the fact that Artemis was moving north again and another state was about to fall.

All day long, Karel had revved his engines, felt the rumble of the diesel shaking his frame. He had been told to keep his engine running, to be ready to move at a moment’s notice. But that moment had not come, and as the day progressed the shallow valley had slowly emptied. He began to hope – and to fear – he had been forgotten about.

He watched the wind chase a flurry of snowflakes down the tracks towards him, and then realized that there was movement to his right. The long line of ballast hoppers that had been parked there since lunchtime was moving forward, red-rimmed wheels spinning slowly.

Again, Karel wondered if he had been forgotten.

He watched the hoppers departing to the north, leaving him alone in the valley.

Artemis was on the move.

Eleanor

Eleanor stood at the edge of the North Kingdom, looking down over a view that she almost recognized from the stories she had heard as a child. Not that there had been that many tales, growing up in Artemis, but robots talked, and sometimes the infantry that returned to the forges to rebuild themselves would tell what they had seen and heard on their travels over the continent.

But even those stories had not prepared her for this. She had never seen a land so desolate. She felt something almost like pity for the robots that lived here.

‘I never realized,’ she began.

‘The poverty?’ said Kavan. ‘I suppose it provides an answer . . .’

‘An answer? To what?’

But Kavan didn’t reply, and Eleanor felt a stab of annoyance at his recent attitude. There had been a time when Kavan had shared his confidence with Eleanor. As he rose in importance he seemed to regard her more and more as a threat.

Irritated, she turned her attention back to the scene before her.

The attack was going well. The rising storm gusted clouds of snow, obscuring parts of the scene before her, but then the wind would shift to reveal a line of black Storm Troopers marching forward, pushing hovels over with their heavy hands and feet. Another gust and she saw a line of grey infantryrobots firing patiently at the few pathetic robots that emerged from the rubble. And, throughout it all, the silver shapes of Scouts slipping back and forth, flashing and spinning and kicking.

‘There doesn’t seem to be much resistance,’ she offered.

‘There won’t be straight away,’ said Kavan. ‘They’ll still be reeling from the shock of the bombs. They will have fallen back and regrouped. They’ll launch their counter-attack when they are ready.’

As if on cue, the wind blew a differently patterned sound towards them.

‘Not our rifles,’ observed Eleanor, thoughtfully.

She stared across the expanse of the bowl to where a handful of Scouts lay unmoving in a bank of snow. It took her a moment, and then she spotted them. Black iron robots advancing steadily. Big bodies, heavy panelling. Mining robots. A squad of infantry saw them, fell back, hesitated, then raised their rifles and let off a volley before falling back again.

‘Fools,’ said Eleanor. ‘Their rifles won’t pierce that metal.’

‘They’re panicking,’ said Kavan. ‘Eleanor, get yourself down there.’

‘I’m gone.’

She unslung her rifle and ran off down the hillside, heading straight for the infantry troop. It was only when she was gone that she realized that Kavan had done it again. He had sent her away from the command position.

It was too late to worry about that now. The mining robots were already upon the infantry. Slow-moving, they sought to catch hold of the Artemisians and crush them. The grey soldiers dodged them easily, but discipline had broken down. There was no order to their movements, they were panicking, firing their rifles at random.

A flash of silver nearby, and Eleanor saw three Scouts emerging from a nearby doorway. They were carrying something.

‘Drop it!’ called Eleanor. ‘Come with me!’

The leader extended her eyes, spread her claws at having been spoken to in this fashion. Then she realized who had addressed her.

‘Look at these, Eleanor,’ she said, holding out a metal sphere, roughly the size of a skull. ‘I think they’re important.’

Eleanor didn’t give the object a second glance.

‘Leave them for later. Come on,’

The three Scouts dropped their loads and followed Eleanor down the hill.

Ahead, one of the mining robots had succeeded in grabbing hold of an Artemisian. It lifted it in the air, one great hand taking hold of the head and crushing it. It dropped the crumpled body and immediately made a grab for another.

The remaining infantry raised their rifles and let loose a hail of bullets that spanged ineffectually from its body.

‘Get back in line!’ yelled Eleanor. The milling troop turned to see who had shouted at them. There was a moment’s confusion, and then recognition.

‘We can’t hurt them,’ called an infantryrobot.

‘Not with your rifles,’ said Eleanor. ‘But that doesn’t mean you give up. Do it like this!’ And a wild recklessness overtook her as she plunged forward over broken rubble, dancing around in front of one of the huge mining robots. Slowly, it lunged to grab at her arm; she quickly dodged out of its way. But it was a trick: it reached out and grabbed her other arm easily. One of the Scouts raised its rifle. ‘Leave it,’ called Eleanor, as she was lifted up into the air. She twisted around in its grasp and saw how the dark metal of its body was scratched by the rocks through which it burrowed, saw the thick grease that oiled its joints, saw the thick glass lenses of its eyes. Now the other arm was reaching in for her head, hand extended, ready to crush her thin skull and the wire beneath it. She waited, waited for the right moment . . . And now she swung herself forward, detached her pinioned arm, leaving the big miner stupidly holding it. As she gripped the robot’s head between her thighs, she reached out with her remaining arm, popped the lid of its head open, took hold of her awl, dipped it into the big black skull and tangled and pulled loose the blue-green wire nestling within.

The mining robot died, slumping forward, and Eleanor fell to the ground awkwardly, her balance gone. One of the Storm Troopers retrieved her arm from the fallen robot’s grip and slotted it back in place. She flexed it, found it was dented at the elbow, but it would do. She turned back to the remaining infantry.

‘That’s how it’s done,’ she called. ‘Come on!’

Heartened, they attacked. She saw one mining robot fall, then another. Just as she began to feel the first wave of satisfaction at her work, there was a shout and then something tumbled down close to her feet.

A rough sphere, slightly smaller than a head.

It exploded in a tangle of blue wire.

Kavan

Through the swirling snow, in the last of the evening light, Kavan watched as Eleanor defeated the mining robot.

‘Good work,’ he noted approvingly. ‘If nothing else, she is a fighter.’

Then he noticed that dark shapes had begun falling amongst the right flank of the attack. One of them fell at Eleanor’s feet: he saw the explosion, he saw her fall.

‘They’re coming from farther around the bowl,’ said Wolfgang, pointing.

‘What are they?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Send Anders’ troop up there to deal with them.’

Wolfgang relayed the order to a waiting Scout. Kavan turned back to observe the unfolding attack. Things were going well. Losses were still acceptable.

He looked towards the skeletal tower that squatted at the centre of the valley: a ball of riveted copper plate, supported on iron legs. Was the Wizard waiting in there, directing his defence?

‘What about Eleanor?’ asked Wolfgang.

‘What about her?’ Kavan gazed out over the darkening battlefield. ‘Artemis is not about individuals. Either she lived or she died. The attack goes on.’

A sudden blast of snow covered Kavan’s metal body, and he staggered. The wind was particularly strong here at the end of the corridor of rock, blasted through the mountain by their bombs.

‘We need to move,’ said Wolfgang. ‘The engineers need to clear this area if we are going to run a railway into here.’

‘Very well.’ Kavan was looking at the fractured rock walls around them. ‘We’ll move over to the left, I think. It should give us a good view over the battle when daylight returns.’

Kavan and his aides began to pick their way along a path that led around the rim of the stone crater. They compacted the snow with their metal feet or scuffed it aside. Kavan looked with interest at the line of trees planted along the side of the path. Their branches had been carefully pruned away along one side, keeping the way clear. Someone had been taking proper care of these organic life forms.

Across the expanse of the bowl, the skeletal tower seemed to be watching him.

‘Maybe we should regroup?’ suggested Wolfgang. ‘Hold off until the light is better?’

‘No.
We
don’t need to see to destroy.
They
are at a disadvantage.’

And as he spoke, light flared up from the skeletal tower: a golden fountain of light that rose into the deepening night, illuminating all of the battle. And then a ribbon of fire spilled out along the ground, unrolling from the flimsy-looking structure of the tower. And then another, and another. It became a crisscrossing net of flame that spread throughout the land below them.

‘What is it?’ wondered Kavan.

‘Petrol,’ said Wolfgang. ‘They’ve filled trenches with petrol! They’re lighting up the night so that they can see the battle!’

The orange light became like a solid wall sweeping across the North Kingdom, till it evinced an almost tangible presence: Kavan saw the way the falling snow danced and billowed upwards, repelled by the heat of the flames. Black smoke belched out and began to flow west.

‘West, not south!’ observed Wolfgang. ‘The heat’s affecting the wind,’

Something else was burning. One by one, great hands of fire were igniting, fiery fists brandished at the sky. And then Kavan realized what he was seeing: the trees that lined the paths through the North Kingdom were igniting, bursting forth with blossoms of red fire, adding more smoke to the line snaking west.