Tony Ballantyne - Twisted Metal

Concentrate. Don’t let her distract you!

‘One… two… three…’

The words were fainter now, lost in the wind as he spun, and then he had left the sling, he was flying forward. All those stars above. All that expanse of ground below. Soldiers. Artemisian soldiers. Is that what we look like from the air? What about the explosive charge? What would it feel like to die?

He wouldn’t die. All he had to do was concentrate. Concentr…

Karel

Metal spheres continued to fall amongst the troops, each exploding in a tangle of blue wire that instantly contracted, snaring anything within range, choking it, cutting it, destroying it. Eleanor and Kavan and the rest ignored them, even when they fell at their feet, and Karel attempted to do the same. Still, he couldn’t help but duck down when one of the shells sailed over his head. It hit the robot behind in the chest, blue wire swarming over his grey body and tightening. Ripping into the panelling, tightening behind the neck, slipping through the joints and into the coil.

‘Wolfgang!’ called out Kavan.

Karel was amazed. Kavan seemed genuinely upset about the robot’s death. This was not what he had expected. Karel watched as Wolfgang slumped forward, and then tumbled down to the ground.

‘Hey,’ said Eleanor, standing at his side, ‘it’s just metal. Just like the rest of us.’

She was taunting Kavan, realized Karel. She was taunting the robot she wanted him to kill. But why me? wondered Karel. He gazed at the dying Wolfgang. The blue wire was still tightening, still squeezing. That had been a powerful bomb, he thought. More so than the others.

‘Don’t taunt me,’ said Kavan to Eleanor. ‘Wolfgang was a valuable resource.’

Karel looked up. Were the pair of them about to start a fight, here and now? What would he do? Kavan didn’t carry a gun, he noticed.

The front of Kavan’s shell was covered in condensation. They were all similarly covered, noticed Karel, covered in beads of water that ran in hurried little streams down fingers and arms and legs. The heat from the fires across the far side of the bowl was increasing. Red cracks were spreading wider: they now ran red fingers around the base of the skeletal tower.

‘Keep up, Karel,’ ordered Eleanor, and he looked up to see that Kavan was now gone ahead, marching on again, following his troops’ thrust into the heart of the Northern Kingdom.

Karel hefted the rifle, condensation running down his fingers. The wind was lessening noticeably, being pushed aside by the rising heat. The snow had turned to slushy rain.

There is Kavan, just ahead. Why not raise the rifle and shoot him? I could do it right now. I would be killed straight away, but what does that matter? I’ve nothing left to live for, so what’s stopping me? Is it because I don’t want to be a part of Eleanor’s game? Or is it something else?

Because I can see it: that we’re both so alike, Kavan and me. Does anyone else realize that? All those people who whispered and hinted about how my mind was twisted, asking me what I was thinking: as if anybody could really tell what their mother had woven into their mind. And yet, I can see something of Kavan in myself.

He raised the rifle, sighted along its length, took aim at Kavan’s head.

Pull the trigger. Kill him.

A shrieking metal noise rang out. The skeletal tower was sagging, its legs twisting, giving way.

The Artemisian troops sensed victory. They began to stamp their feet as they marched forward.

Slowly, oh so slowly, the great copper sphere at the top of the tower toppled forward.

Kavan

Kavan watched the copper sphere falling; saw the thin, undersized enemy robots running out from its base.

‘You’ve done it,’ said Eleanor, marching at his side. ‘You’ve done it again. And now the whole continent is yours.’

‘The whole continent belongs to Artemis,’ he corrected her.

The copper sphere hit the stony ground and crumpled, split along one side.

‘You’ve defeated the Wizard,’ said Eleanor, and there was wonder in her voice. As if she had really believed in the Wizard.

Kavan had halted. He wanted to call Wolfgang, but Wolfgang was now dead.

‘Look at the sphere,’ he said to Eleanor. ‘Look at it! What do you see inside?’

The sphere was collapsing, like a bubble of glass blown too large. It was splitting into two pieces under its own weight.

Eleanor gazed through the gathering mist.

‘It’s empty,’ she said. ‘Hollow. There’s nothing inside.’

Kavan was becoming quite animated. ‘And look at the fire on the hillside: charcoal, coal, all burning. They’re leaving it all to burn.’ He looked around. ‘They lit the fires when we first attacked. The petrol in the trenches, the trees burning, they ignited their whole kingdom. They are destroying their own kingdom!’ Kavan felt something fierce burning within himself. A fierce joy, a glowing respect.

‘Of all the peoples on Shull, only these people truly believe,’ he said. ‘They would rather destroy their kingdom than have it fall to us!’

‘But why?’ asked Eleanor.

‘I don’t know! Perhaps because they really do believe in the Book of Robots.’

‘But look at this place! If the book does exist, it will burn with the rest of them! It will be melted to slag!’

‘I know, I know…’ Kavan gazed around the bowl again. Something wasn’t right, and he knew it. ‘Where are the slave robots?’ he asked suddenly. ‘Where have they gone? Why aren’t they defending this place any more? They were here when we first attacked…’

The mist billowed around them, threatening to smother them in a pink world of muffled calm. The metal of their shells was growing warmer, and the night was lit by red fire. He scanned the scene, looking through the gaps in the fog for any of the slave robots, searching for robots wearing mining bodies. He saw none.

‘We’ve been tricked!’ he announced. ‘Fetch the Scouts!’ he commanded. ‘Get them to fan out into the surrounding countryside. Find the slave robots!’

‘What about the infantry?’

‘Tell them to keep marching on. We will recover the metal of their bodies from the slag that will eventually run to the centre of this bowl.’

The order went out.

Kavan turned and ran back up the train tracks, heading out of the bowl.

The wind blew cold over Artemis City. The snowflakes danced in the light of the fires of the forges; they danced around the smoke that belched from the chimneys.

Spoole stood alone on the roof of the Basilica, gazing to the north.

Even through the howl of the wind, he heard the sound of footsteps behind him. A Scout, judging by the light tread.

He wondered if this was the time. Was this when his reign as leader would end? Down below, in the Basilica, were they already making ready to welcome back Kavan? He was being paranoid, he told himself. General Sandale and the rest still congratulated him on Artemis’s advance. They recognized Spoole as a brilliant tactician, using his troops to their best advantage. Or was that just what they wanted him to believe?

‘Excuse me, Spoole.’

He turned, and a Scout waited there.

‘This message just came through on the radio,’ she said. Her blades were withdrawn, she held out a piece of foil in her hands.

‘Thank you,’ said Spoole, taking it.

He read the words imprinted there.

The Northern Kingdom had fallen.

The wind blew, and still he gazed at the words.

The Northern Kingdom had fallen.

What now? he wondered.

The three Scouts had spotted the slave robot making his way along a river, iron shoulders leaving a wake in the dark water. The Scouts had crippled him, cutting electromuscle in his arms and legs, then they had dragged him clear of the water onto the snow-covered bank. The slave had accepted his treatment without complaint.