Tony Ballantyne - Twisted Metal

He looked around for Eleanor, chided himself for doing so. She would return if she would return. But he wanted to share this moment with her. She would understand. They hadn’t done it in Stark, they hadn’t done it in Wien, they hadn’t done it in Turing City. But they were doing it here. The enemy were giving their all to the fight. These people really believed in something.

He turned to a nearby Scout.

‘Tell the engineers to move quickly. We’re going to need more troops in here soon.’

Olam and the rest had moved virtually unchallenged through the maze of streets that ran amongst the hovels. A few of the pitifully thin robots had tried to form a line in order to defend their homes. Doe Capaldi and Parmissa and the rest had simply marched through it, their kicks and punches easily breaking their opponents’ badly constructed bodies. Olam had crashed into their homes, searching out the robots that sheltered there, shooting the adults, taking the children and swinging them by the legs, cracking open their heads against the sharp ground. Their bodies were left in piles to be collected later by the scavenger teams, the metal to be bundled up and sent back to Artemis City for recycling.

The killing lust was welling up inside him again; it pulsed in time with the movements of his electromuscles. As the streets had lit up with fire and the trees had begun to burn; as the patterns of the flames danced on the silver skins of the Scouts that darted back and forth along the paths; as the sound of metal twisting metal rose up on the gusts of the wind; as the battle moved to its climax, Olam finally surrendered himself totally to Artemis.

He was no longer a Wiener, he was an Artemisian. He was part of the ultimate power, the supreme race, the conquerors of Shull, the future rulers of the entire world of Penrose itself.

Smoke belched from the trees, from the burning ditches, enfolding him, hiding him…

Releasing him.

Karel stood alone in the valley, revving his engines, impatient to be off. Ahead of him the sky was slowly illuminated by a great orange glow, and he wondered what was happening over there. Thick black smoke was feeling its way down the tracks towards him, more and more of it pouring its way south, shouldering aside the falling snowflakes. It lapped over the tracks, lapped around his wheels, and then it slowly rose, engulfing him.

What was going on?

‘Hello?’ he said, tentatively. No reply, not that he had been expecting any.

He waited, seemingly suspended in the darkness. They had taken away his family, then his body… now they had taken away his sight. What next?

He revved the engines, felt the train shudder. The enfolding smoke cleared a little. He saw shapes out there, infantryrobots maybe, running past him. Running away? He revved the engines again. This time he saw nothing.

What was happening out there?

Then there was a voice.

‘Drive! Quickly! Get out of here!’

The voice thrilled with urgency. Karel revved the engines, released the brakes, started to roll. The smoke parted a little, and he saw more infantry running past.

‘Faster!’ urged the voice.

‘I can’t see where we’re going!’

‘It doesn’t matter. We need to get to the front!’

He felt a coughing splutter somewhere inside him.

‘Faster!’ said the voice. It seemed to guess his thoughts. ‘Ignore that sound!’

That splutter again. And then something else.

‘The wheels are slipping!’ protested Karel.

More spluttering. The engines. What was the matter with them?

‘There’s something wrong with the engines!’

‘It’s the smoke, it’s blocking your intakes.’

‘Then I must stop!’

‘No, go faster. You can coast to the front! They need you there!’

Again the engines spluttered. Karel increased his speed. Suspicion suddenly gripped him.

‘Who are you?’ he asked.

‘Banjo Macrodocious.’

‘Banjo Macro…? But aren’t you the robot…?’

And at that the engines gave a final splutter and died.

Karel swore. He had been tricked! Tricked into filling his own engines with the choking black smoke.

He jammed on the brakes, squeezed them hard, but they felt wrong too. They were mushy, and the wheels seemed to slip through his fingers.

‘But whose side are you on, anyway?’ asked Banjo Macrodocious.

Karel didn’t know. He just wanted to stop the train, and the brakes weren’t working. He was rushing through darkness, and then, suddenly, his vision cleared and he was running through a newly formed valley. There was a train in front of him, moving more slowly than he was.

Clenching desperately at the mushy brakes, he rolled forward, frantically trying to avoid a collision…

Olam

Olam killed and killed and killed, and yet his frustration grew.

It was getting harder to find new prey. The houses he came upon were nearly all empty. Those robots that he met were the very young, sheltering behind parents, or the very poor, or those with insufficient metal to make bodies capable of moving.

Fires burned all around him, black smoke engulfed him, and suddenly he realized he was all alone. Where had the rest of his section got to?

He saw a familiar shape through a break in the clouds and ran towards it.

‘Oh, it’s you, Parmissa,’

Parmissa turned awkwardly to look at him. Her legs seemed stiff, her arms hung loose at her sides.

‘Is that you, Olam? Are you feeling okay? I can’t seem to move my arms or neck at all how I want to.’

‘I’m fine,’ said Olam dismissively. ‘Where is everyone?’

‘Spreading out through the houses. Janet said that she’d heard the enemy were retreating. Pulling back to that tower in the centre. They were going to try and cut them off. Are you sure you feel okay?’

‘I told you, I’m fine.’

Although, now he thought about it, Olam did feel an odd stiffness in his own shoulders. He soon dismissed the thought. He didn’t care. He wanted to move on. He wanted to kill.

‘This is a strange place, isn’t it?’ said Parmissa, her arms dangling loose as she turned to look around the buildings that loomed on either side of the street. ‘Have you seen those funny plates they all have in their houses? Not enough metal to panel their own bodies, and yet they waste it on all those little signs. Circle on circle.’

‘Who cares?’ said Olam, impatient to be off. He turned in what he thought was the direction of the tower. ‘I’ll head this way. The others will need help. Are you coming?’

‘I think I need to sit down a moment,’ said Parmissa. ‘I feel tired.’

She slumped down heavily to the ground, slush and mud squirting over her body.

‘You stay here if you want to. I’m going on.’

But now he felt tired too. Like the lifeforce was draining from him.

‘What’s the matter with me, Parmissa?’ he asked, slumping down beside her.

‘Don’t know,’ said Parmissa. ‘Let’s just stay here. Don’t think I can move.’

Nor could Olam. All the killing lust evaporated from him in an instant. Suddenly the ever-present black cloud was not something in which to hide, instead it was something that was watching him. He tried to raise himself back to his feet, but his hand slipped and he fell forward, face-down. Slushy mud began leaking into his body.

‘Listen,’ said Parmissa. ‘I can hear footsteps,’

Eleanor was wrapped in blue-green wire. It had cut through the panelling of her legs, slicing right through the electromuscle beyond; it was tangled around her waist and her right arm. There was no pain, only a rising sense of disgust.

She was caught in the twisted wire of a mind!