Tony Ballantyne - Twisted Metal

Stored in a box made from organic matter – black polished wood from one of the tall trees that grew in the plantation just south of the airport – the flying skin was cut from a living animal by specially trained women. Working with sharp knives, they held the terrified, kicking, bleating animal between their legs as they drew the short blades up the creature’s seams. Along its legs, under its belly, around its throat. The skin had been removed in three parts, and then it had been taken to the tanning room, where it was smoked and stamped and cured. It had been cut and shaped and sewn to make the garment that was now carefully rolled over Cha-Lo-Ell-Curriah’s body.

Up his arms, over his feet, and up to his thighs. A waistcoat was then fastened around his chest by long, clever fingers, and Cha-Lo-Ell-Curriah, only half immersed in the dressing contemplation, wondered at what minds these women would make, should they ever be allowed to twist metal.

It took time to dress for flying – the ritual could not be hurried – but eventually it was done, and now Cha-Lo-Ell-Curriah caught his reflection in the polished aluminium side of the aircraft as he climbed up to the cockpit.

His body was short and thin, and pale. He looked almost like an organic creature himself. Like the Nightwalker from the old legends.

He settled into the cockpit.

Me-Ka-Purhara helped to strap him into position.

‘All is Harmony?’ asked Cha-Lo-Ell-Curriah.

‘All is Harmony,’ replied Me-Ka-Purhara.

There was a high-pitched whine as the turboprop awoke.

Cha-Lo-Ell-Curriah lost himself in the takeoff contemplation.

Kavan stood in the middle of the chaos, thinking.

The howling wind of the nuclear explosion was dying, the flames of the trenches and the trees had gone, their fuel charred and evaporated by the blast. Dark shadows cast by their bodies were scored into the grey ash, and stone covered the ground.

The snow that had been blown away by the atomic blast was only just returning; melting even as it mixed with the ash from the fallout.

Down below, Artemisian troops were milling, disorientated. A white glare erupted on the battlefield, followed by another and another, as a few of the more experienced commanders set off magnesium flares.

More flares were ignited alongside the railway line that had been laid into the kingdom. Kavan was pleased to see figures down there, already darting about, beginning to clear the wreckage of the trains.

Nearby, his aides were becoming frantic. Kavan decided it was time to rejoin them.

Ruth wasted no time in offering her opinion. ‘We should withdraw now,’ she called. ‘We need to regroup and prepare for the second attack.’

‘Why?’ asked Kavan.

‘Why? Isn’t it obvious? They are all over us! We don’t stand a chance against their…’ She stopped herself just in time.

‘Their what?’ asked Kavan. ‘Their magical powers? Are you so gullible? They operate by superstition alone! Look at them. Yes, they have severely disrupted our attack, our troops are milling in confusion, but ask yourself this: have they pressed home their advantage? No! And why not? I suspect they have nothing to attack us with. Why else would they have destroyed a major part of their own kingdom? This last display was nothing but desperation on their part.’

‘Desperation? They are destroying us! We gain nothing by continuing with this attack!’

‘We weaken them! I tell you, you have become too soft after the easy victories of the last few months! You forget what it is like for us to fight as people of principle. Are we only to fight when victory is easily grasped? Now that you finally encounter a people such as these, physically weak but gripped by great principle themselves, would you just give up? If so, then you’re not acting as Nyro would wish you!’

That silenced Ruth. That silenced all of them. But Kavan pressed on.

‘And should the worst come to the worst and they defeat us tonight, then what of it? Artemis will return in greater force and reclaim the metal of our bodies.’

It took a moment, but Kavan noted the horrified realization creeping across their faces as they understood that he really meant what he was saying. He lowered his voice.

‘For did not Nyro say, there is no mind, there is just metal?’

He turned back to the centre of the bowl, which was now filling with the light of magnesium flares, and he gazed over at the skeletal tower.

‘I think it is time to see what we all really believe in, both us and the Northern Kingdom. Get the wreckage of those trains moved. I want railway lines laid right into the heart of this place! Tonight, we will conquer, or we will die!’

Olam was dragged through rocky alleys, his useless electromuscles cold with the muddy slush that filled his metal shell. He tried to see where he was going, tried to look at who had captured him, but he couldn’t move his head, only gaze up at the sky as he was dragged left and right, deeper and deeper into the shanty city, until finally he was pulled through a doorway. His last sight was of the night lighting up with the glare of the nuclear explosion, and he felt a surge of hope. Artemis was still attacking. They would surely find him!

But that feeling soon passed as Olam was dragged across the floor and manoeuvred into a sitting position, the walls and floor of the stone-built shanty in which he found himself vibrating with the shock of the explosion. Loose fragments of rock were shaken down from the ceiling.

Now that he had time to look around, Olam saw that there were other grey robots in the room with him. With growing horror, he recognized Doe Capaldi and Janet. And now Parmissa was being dragged into the room, and he finally got a look at their captors. To his surprise, they were nothing special. They were just the same thin, poorly made, pig-iron robots that he had killed so many of. They propped Parmissa up against the wall right beside him and then they moved to the centre of the room. There was a poor fire burning there, a little forge, but the warmth it gave off was enough to melt the snow from his broken body, sending dark rivulets of water running away from him across the floor.

The door opened, and a new robot came in, this one better made than the rest. Its panelling was of good-quality steel, polished to a shine. It moved with the grace and poise afforded by finely tuned electromuscle.

It took in the captured Artemisian robots at a glance. ‘Bring one of them to the middle,’ it commanded.

The other robots immediately deferred to it, two of them dragging Janet’s limp metal body to the centre of the room.

The steel robot ignored her. It turned instead to the remaining captives, bending forward a little as it addressed them.

‘Artemisians,’ it said, ‘the twisted metal of the mind is a wonderful thing.’

Somebody took hold of Olam’s head, turning it slightly so he could see the steel robot all the better.

‘Metal can move, it can bend and crack and snap. Metal can melt, it can be drawn, it can conduct electricity.’

The steel robot turned its attention to Janet. Ever so carefully it began prying apart the metal of her skull. Peeling back the pieces and dropping them on the floor, as the poor thin robots hungrily watched them fall.

‘What is he doing?’ asked Janet, her body still immobile. No one spoke; no one interrupted the steel robot.

‘But when metal is twisted just so, it transcends itself,’ it said. ‘It becomes a mind.’

‘Tell me what it’s doing!’ Janet looked around the assembled captives, pleading for an answer. She tried to look up, to see what was happening.

Now the blue wire of her mind was exposed, nestling in the cup of the skull base. Olam watched, terror struck, as the steel robot ran a hand over that wire.