Tony Ballantyne - Twisted Metal

The sky above her was dark, as if time had suddenly jumped forward to deepest night. Everything was in the wrong place, and the fighting had suddenly moved away from her. What was going on? It was as if she had fallen asleep.

But she hadn’t slept since she was a child!

Her body was half covered in snow. Nearby lay the body of the mining robot she had killed, the wire of its mind still trailing from its head. And there were other bodies there, too – Artemisian infantry, also wrapped in wire. She had been lucky, she realized, that this wire bomb had caught her around the legs. She gazed at what remained of another infantryrobot lying on the ground nearby. Blue-green wire had sliced into his skull, wrapping itself around the blue wire of the Artemisian‘s mind.

Carefully, Eleanor began to pull at the wire that entangled her own body. It peeled back easily, the lifeforce long drained from it. She freed her right arm and looked down at her ruined legs. There was no saving them, she decided. She detached them and then dragged herself over to the nearest dead infantryrobot, where she set about stripping the working parts from its body and attaching them to her own. Soon she was back on her feet again.

Where would Kavan be now, and why hadn’t he sent anyone to look for her?

She laughed at the thought. Like Kavan would care! He was probably just grateful to be rid of his rival.

The spot where she and Kavan had stood earlier had changed. The engineers had excavated deeper into the rock, cut a notch deep into the side of the bowl and had then run a railway line through it. The line now extended a few tens of feet into the Northern Kingdom and then petered out, first into bare sleepers and then ballast. There was no sign of the engineers who should have still been working on it.

Eleanor turned slowly, taking in the scene. Below, the bowl was filled with the dying flames of fire trenches, the snow gradually beating its way back against the heat. The trees that had once lined the paths of the kingdom were crumbling into glowing ash. What had she missed? She got the impression that the Artemis advance was faltering.

What had Kavan done, to throw away his advantage so?

Oh, Nyro, she thought, what would you have me do here?

Eleanor didn’t believe in signs. She wasn’t superstitious, like these robots of the north, but if she were ever to believe in such things, it would have been then. Because at that moment there was a rumbling and a shaking. A scraping noise screeched out into the night, and something came skidding and tumbling along the newly laid track.

A train. It ran to the edge of the rails and then slewed across the empty sleepers, tumbling and skidding its way down into the bowl of the North Kingdom.

What had caused it to do that, wondered Eleanor? Then she saw the second train that pushed along the first, saw how it was desperately trying to brake. Without success. It too came off the end of the rails, but this one skidded to a slow halt, only the engine and the first wagon resting on the freshly laid ballast. Slowly, that second engine tipped over and landed with a crash on its side.

An accident, she realized. There were always accidents in war. This was not a sign: Nyro was not speaking to her.

And then she recognized the train.

First their artefacts will fail, then their bodies will fail, and finally their minds will fail.

‘Superstition,’ declared Kavan.

‘That black smoke, full of carbon particles from the burning trees,’ said Wolfgang. ‘It’s getting into the electromuscle of the troops. It shorts out the spaces between the weave, stops it working properly. Wipe the residue away and they’ll be fine.’

An aide pushed her way forward. ‘What about the machinery?’ she asked. ‘The engines have stopped working,’ It was Ruth, General Fallan’s former aide, now wearing a Scout’s body. If only she had a Scout’s courage, thought Kavan. She had never dared to question him until now. Funny how people gained a little courage when things started going wrong.

‘It’s sabotage,’ said Kavan, firmly. ‘We are fighting a clever enemy, nothing more.’

‘Don’t forget the atomic bombs,’ said Ruth. ‘They didn’t go off either, and that was before the fires started. What about them?’

‘They obviously found our bombs in time and disarmed them. These things happen in war. The attack is otherwise proceeding satisfactorily.’

‘I don’t think so,’ said Ruth. ‘We’ve lost too many troops on the left flank. The smoke is lifting now, and our troops that were fighting there have disappeared. So have the enemy, what little of them there was for us to engage with.’

‘They’ll be falling back to the centre,’ said Kavan. ‘Make no mistake, they will attack us, but, when they do, we will be more than their match.’

‘No,’ said Ruth, gaining confidence all the time. ‘We should stop now; send for reinforcements from Artemis City. The railway lines are in place.’

‘No,’ insisted Kavan. ‘We still have sufficient numbers. There are three companies of infantry in reserve on the right flank. They will be enough.’

‘I hope you’re right,’ said Ruth.

Kavan gazed at her, wondered if he should discipline her, decided against it. She was merely raising valid concerns.

Just for one treacherous moment he wondered if three companies would be sufficient, but those doubts were quickly quashed. Yes, he decided. Yes, they would be enough.

It was at that same moment that the darkness over to their right lit up. They felt the wind increase. Kavan turned away, only just managed to turn down his ears in time. The explosion hit them with so much force it knocked them off their feet.

Even as he fell, even as he rolled himself to safety, Kavan realized that the explosion was centred just where his reserve troops had been waiting. Even so, he took a certain pleasure in realizing where his two missing atomic bombs had got to.

Halfway around the world of Penrose, the continent of Yukawa baked in yellow sunlight. All was in harmony.

It was the time of morning changeover.

In the silver cities, lower-caste robots gave way to their superiors as they stepped from the shade of metal awnings into the cool dimness of the lime groves.

In the farmlands, robots harvested the hemp and cotton that would be spun into a rope or thread more flexible than could be made from any metal, their silent labours observed by the aesthetes of the upper class, who relaxed in their woven pagodas.

Around the mines of the central plains, the gentle wind peeled thin streamers of brown dust from the baked land and sent it ribboning south. The son of a mine prefect watched the unfolding streams of dust and saw a poem written in the air, a poem speaking of the harmony of the Yukawan Empire, its peoples unchanging throughout all these centuries.

It was a harmony that would soon be lost.

Cha-Lo-Ell-Curriah strode across the runway, his steps too light in his flying body.

Flying required a body made to be as light as possible, and so Cha-Lo-Ell-Curriah wore aluminium bones draped with thinly knitted electromuscle that was only just sufficient to control the aeroplane. He wore a mesh skull and plastic fingers. And as for his panelling.. .

It was a fine day for flying, at least in Yukawa. According to the meteorologists, there were ice storms over Shull, but that was another continent, far away. For the moment, it was enough that the sun polished the shiny green leaves of the organic life that waxed strongly along the edge of the runway, it was enough that the sun reflected brightly off the simple aluminium roofs that covered the flight buildings.

The sun did not reflect from Cha-Lo-Ell-Curriah’s body, however, for Cha-Lo-Ell-Curriah was dressed in organic matter. Not half an hour before he had stood in the centre of the dressing room, arms held wide, as two young women stripped away thin aluminium panelling from his body. They had oiled his joints, straightened the weave of electromuscle in his arms and legs with their delicate fingers and then they had brought forth the flying skin.