Wil McCarthy - To Crush the Moon

“Well, they’re clearly capable of it; we’ve only been away for ten hours, and already they’re responding. Surprise is not entirely ours, though they don’t seem to expect us here .”

“Right,” says Bordi. “So let’s move. Let’s finish this while we can. They’ve seized samples of this armor”—he pinches his own shoulder for emphasis—“and you can bet they’ll soon be wrapping that around their soldiers. I’d give it a day or two at the very most.”

“Indeed,” says Bruno. “An excellent point. Astaroth’s military expenditures clearly need to be capped.” That said, he heads back toward the fax machine with purposeful strides and raps its print plate hard with the butt of his staff. The effect is immediate; it flickers, coughs out a cloud of glittering dust, and then darkens and fades like the eyes of a dying beast.

Still another Queendom treasure removed from the game board that is Lune. It’s a cultural apocalypse and a damned shame, but Bruno can see no other way forward. The past is not quite dead, and that’s the problem.

Unfortunately, while the arrival of back-door intruders didn’t raise any alarms, the interruption of power through the fax machine does. Almost immediately, electric bells are ringing throughout the fortress, and the only clear advantage is that this fills in a lot of echo data on Bruno’s map. He’s seen a fortress or two in his day, and a fair number of palaces, and he knows a throne room when he sees one. And if this king is not on his throne—which seems unlikely, given all that Bruno knows of his character—then he may well be in the apartments behind them, or in one of the hidey-holes nearby.

Bruno gestures and points, then calls out over the clattering bells, “Look for the Glimmer King one floor up, and thirty meters that way. I shall lead.”

“No,” says Radmer. “No way. Men, kindly surround him. Protect him with your lives. Let’s get him there in one piece!”

And with that, their luck has officially run dry; a sea of glass-skinned robotic troopers pours through the workshop’s entrance, with rifles aimed and triggers already halfway pulled. Unsynchronized chemical explosions fire up and down the line, hurling projectiles at the suited Olders and Dolceti.

They really can slap bullets in flight, Bruno sees with wonder, watching Zuq and Bordi—with movements almost too quick to follow—knock away one projectile each. The Olders, for their part, favor a quieter strategy of simply staying out of the firing arcs. It’s like every rifle has a laser beam projecting out of it, showing where its bullets will strike; Radmer and Sidney and the others simply watch these invisible beams and calmly step around them, mostly with very small movements. But it’s not enough. Bruno sees right away that both methods will be overwhelmed by the sheer number of guns and bullets in play.

And it’s worse than that, for the projectiles are no mere bullets of lead, but needle-sharp cones of some material sandwich that’s both charged and highly magnetic. On impact, they pierce a little way into the wellcloth armor and then let go their charge in spiraling bursts. It’s a crude attack as such things go, but it will damage wellstone fibers. Enough hits like that and the suits will develop dead spots, through which these darts should eventually penetrate. And the robots’ rate of fire is impressive; in the first five seconds of the engagement Bruno himself—at the protected center—is struck by ten or twenty.

Still, once the initial shock has worn off the Olders and Dolceti are on the offensive again, pressing forward with blitterstaves, with wirebombs and laser light. The new robots aren’t that tough, and they wither and crumple under the attack. Which is, in its own way, a bad thing for the human side, because it saves the robots the trouble of moving out of the way when they’re out of ammunition. Those bayonets are cute, but against two centimeters of live wellcloth they’re of little use. Bullets are the real danger here, and the hail of them continues. By the time the men are out in the corridor and striking for a stairwell up ahead, their suits are already showing signs of wear.

The darts must have some poison upon them as well, for on the stairs themselves, Bruno watches one penetrate Sidney Lyman’s armor. Lyman flinches and gasps and then crumples to his knees, and is grabbed and hoisted and carried up and away by strong robot hands. There are enemies both behind them and in front, and at the top of the stairs it’s Nick Valdi who yelps and collapses and tumbles backward into certain doom. And then in another hallway it’s Natan’s turn, and his end is uglier than the others, for it involves a spray of bright arterial blood on the inside of his helmet dome. Bruno watches it all through his rearview mirrors, and mourns.

But next they’re at the entrance to the throne room and fighting their way inside, dodging and slapping a storm of projectiles. Bruno even swats one aside himself, feeling the buzz of its approach and reacting without thought.

And then they’re in. Glass windows look out on a set of low hills, illuminated by evening twilight, and if this truly is the south pole, locked in permanent shadow, then it’s always evening here. Or else—Bruno hardly dares to think it—it’s always morning. Each moment beginning the world afresh.

The throne itself is a predictably gaudy affair of golden arms and lion’s feet and a great sunburst disc spreading out behind. But there’s no Glimmer King in it, just another robot. Or is it?

Amid the broken bodies of a dozen determined attackers, Brian Romset, the last of Lyman’s Olders, goes down in a mess of his own guts and hacked-off limbs. But Bruno scarcely notices; his eyes are on that throne. On the robot on that throne. The robot which has no iron box welded to the side of its head, but rather a crown of gold soldered round its brow. The robot whose scratched, worn, battered hull bespeaks long years of wear and tear, and something more, for ordinary robots never show that kind of damage pattern.

Indeed, it’s the clear fingerprint of an emancipated ’bot, left to find its own way in the world. And there is something chillingly familiar about this one, about the tilt of its head and the lazy dangle of its arms. Bruno’s worst fear—his prime suspicion—has proven out.

“Hugo!” he cries to the figure on the throne. “Stop this, I beseech you. Royal Override: stand down and await instructions!”

And just like that, the defending robots are frozen in their tracks. Zuq takes the opportunity to smash another one down with a blow to its exposed armpit, but he sees Bruno’s glare, and does nothing further. Which is good, because Bruno knows full well that his overrides have no power over this seated creature. He has merely intrigued it.

“Hugo,” he says, stepping toward the throne in a daze of sorrow.

But with its blank, mouthless face the robot answers, “Why do you… call us that, Father? Do you not recognize us?”

Bruno pauses, while hope and fear war within him. “Bascal?”

“Don’t be a fool,” says Radmer beside him. “What is this thing? Where is the King of Barnard, who has written so much villainy across our landscape?”

The robot’s laughter is cool, unfriendly, more than a little unhinged. Its face is turned exactly toward Bruno, ignoring Radmer, ignoring everything. “You needn’t act so… shocked, Father. Our condition—my condition—did not arise by accident. Or had you… forgotten?”

Indeed, Bruno had not. That lapse of judgment—a desecration of all that human beings hold dear—is woven deeply through the tatters of his conscience. Pouring a copy of his tyrant son into the only copy of his pet robot!