Tony Ballantyne - Twisted Metal

‘What am I?’ he repeated. ‘What am I?’

Eleanor took hold of his arm, dragged him onward.

‘You’re wearing the body of an Artemisian, soldier, so get marching. If you are still a Turing Citizen, then think on that when you meet Kavan.’

Down they descended into the bowl.

‘Look.’ Karel pointed. Faint red lines traced their way across the stone landscape. ‘The hillside is burning on the far side.’

‘Does that matter? Come on!’

She pushed and pulled and cajoled him forward, eager to rejoin the fight. A group of Scouts, limbering up against the wind, saw them coming. They gazed at them as they approached, their blades now half exposed.

‘Get this soldier a rifle,’ called out Eleanor. ‘We’re going to join Kavan.’

The Scouts recognized her and moved apart. One of them found a rifle and lazily tossed it to her. She caught it, slapped it into Karel’s hands.

‘Get behind him,’ said Eleanor, right there at his ear as they walked on. ‘Then shoot him through the back of the head.’

Kavan

All was ready. Wet snow blew through the mist that rolled around the hillside; it barrelled around the copper sphere atop the skeletal tower. The red cracks of fire in the slope opposite were widening.

Kavan was ready. ‘Give the order to advance.’ The call went out. Rifles slapped against metal hands, feet stamped on rock. Silver metal flashed as the Scouts scattered, running forwards and sideways to secure ground. The Storm Troopers stamped their feet as they advanced, rattling stones from the few buildings that were still standing ahead of them. Such was the force of their advance that one or two of the smaller hovels seemed to give up their hold on life, suddenly collapsing in a tumble of stones. Iron feet stamped through the rubble as the stream of metal flowed around the larger buildings.

‘Hello, Kavan.’

Eleanor appeared at his shoulder, paintwork scorched and body scratched. As ever. There was another robot with her. An infantryrobot.

‘Who is that?’ he asked.

‘Karel.’ She gazed at him intently with her yellow eyes, as if trying to read him, and he wondered what game Eleanor was now playing, right in the middle of an attack. It hardly mattered.

Metal spheres curved through the air, before landing amongst the advancing troops.

‘Keep formation,’ ordered Kavan. The troops did so. The wire bombs exploded in a blue tangle of wire that quickly contracted, snaring the arms and legs of infantry-robots. Grey soldiers collapsed, some of them emitting electronic squeals of pain. A few of them snapped off useless limbs, attached new ones, and rejoined the march.

‘Some of the bombs didn’t contract,’ observed Wolfgang, staring at one blue tangle of wire that washed across the snow.

The wind whipped the sound of the crackling rifles towards them. Over there, on the left flank, enemy robots were attacking. So thin and fragile, they were reduced to throwing rocks that bounced ineffectually from the Artemisian bodies.

Two Scouts had seen what was happening and they ran towards the enemy, a length of razor wire held taut between them. The wire sliced through the thin bodies of the northern robots, cutting them down.

Now more of the enemy appeared, running headlong towards them. The infantry shot at them, the impact of the bullets flinging their light bodies backwards in the snow. They wore only tin and pig-iron, their metal shattering and shrieking under each blow delivered against them. Still they came running, more and more of them.

Children now, tiny bodies dodging closer and closer. Coming in amongst the troops, they rubbed themselves against the Artemisians, they rubbed their hands over arm joints and knee joints. They clasped heads and embraced necks, they clung tightly onto the infantry, even as they were stabbed and shot, even as the twisted metal of their minds was unwound.

The Artemisians tried to prise those dead children free. But the corpses were unmovable, they clung on, the sand and adhesive that covered their bodies hardened, gluing up the joints of the Artemisians. Kavan watched as soldier after soldier stumbled, fell to his knees, gripped hold of a tiny body and tried to tear it loose, only to find that his hands were stuck to it.

And all the while the network of red fire that covered the hillside was widening, the glow was spreading.

Even the children, thought Kavan. Even the children believe.

‘Shoot the sticky ones,’ shouted Eleanor, unnecessarily. The troops had realized what was happening. ‘Don’t let them get close.’

Another wave of resistance was now advancing: thin, pig-iron bodies almost lost in the snow. They carried slingshots, each loaded with a metal sphere. Kavan watched as they swung them around their heads and launched another volley of wire bombs…

Olam

Olam had regained the sense of seeing by grey light, but there was nothing to see. He was wrapped up in something, so that all he caught sight of was a glimpse of stone, a glimpse of sky. He guessed he was being carried from the hovel.

He had no gyros, he felt no motion. He could hear, though: hear the whistle of the wind, the stamping of feet, the crack of rifles. And he could hear the voice of the robot that carried him.

‘Can you hear me, mind? Can you hear me in there? Wrapped in a sling, all ready for throwing?’

He hated that voice, hated its tinny vibrato, hated its false jollity. Give him his old body and he would have taken such pleasure in taking hold of the robot’s puny neck, squeezing the brittle pig iron, feeling it shatter in his hands, feeling the slipperiness of the coil in his hand as he crushed it and crippled his tormentor.

Most of all though, he hated the fear welled up inside the metal of his own mind: the cold, aching fear that made him feel as if his gyros, his non-existent gyros, were lurching and bouncing and breaking loose inside him. He wanted to cry, to run, to curl up, but he could do none of those things.

‘Where have you come from? I wonder. What did you see as you marched here to our land? All those memories, there in your wire.’

All those memories. And yet the only memory that played through Olam’s mind at that moment was of a detonator being pushed into Parmissa’s mind by long steel fingers.

‘We’re coming to the battle now. There go the sticky-robots. My daughter is one of them. She’s only five years old, but she’s covered in glue and she goes to fulfil her purpose. I wove her that way. I wove her so that she would not be afraid to die.’

Her daughter? She had sent her own daughter to her death?

‘But what about you? What do you believe in? Are you frightened of dying? Will you try and keep your mind together, or will you relax and save your friends? Which will it be?’

Olam wanted to live. He thought of Wien and of his family. Where were they now? he wondered. Dead, most likely. He tried to picture them, but he couldn’t. He tried to picture Wien, with its towers and its islands. Nothing. All he could see now was his section, Doe Capaldi and his fellow Artemisians. All he could remember was what it was like to march through the streets of Turing City, the feel of the gun in his hands, the feeling of welling joy as he fired, as he saw another robot drop dead before him. Such elation!

‘What are you going to be? A bomb, or a dud? What will your final purpose be?’

No! He wasn’t ready. He didn’t want to die. That wasn’t his purpose!

‘Here we go. I will whirl you round three times, and then let you go. Are you going to count with me?’

No! Not yet. He wasn’t going to die. He deserved to live. He possessed the lifeforce, he knew it. All he had to do was concentrate.

‘I can see your troops over there. They look so big, so powerful. All that metal. What a mind I could weave with one of them…’