by Mike Wild
A white-coated guy flapped his arms and ran towards them, pleading for help. The building subsided and an overhead pipe cracked above him. The ABC Warriors warned the humans to get back in case it contained any experimental toxin. It turned out to be the biol feed to the lab canteen. It became obvious when the liquid poured out in steaming lumps, flattening the scientist and covering him from head to toe in glistening black gunk. In less than a second, it had solidified.
"Now there's something you don't see every day," said Mongrol. "A hard-bioled egghead."
"Better get him out of there," said Joe.
"Yeah."
They found eight more survivors as they moved on. One of the buildings they passed through overlooked the docks, where the river Arid flowed out into the Saharan Sea. The bays along the dock walls were normally crammed with the enormous bulks of berthed cybo-whales. Their hulls ground together as the giant cargo carriers' crews loaded Viking City wares into the metal mammals' stomachs or disgorged exotic imports from their trading partners across Mars. But the docks were deserted and the crews dead, strewn like jetsam amongst their own merchandise. A consignment of crystal cabbages rotted in crates. A cargo of marshrooms, cooked by the passing glance of a heat-ray, steamed in their bins and let out a fetid stench. Brightly coloured clothing - new fashions for a season that would never come - flapped on racks like disembowelled scarecrows, and was tossed on the breeze like designer tumbleweed.
The cybo-whales themselves were leaving.
It was eerie to watch, an almost biblical sight. Those crewless behemoths, with their haunting electronic whale songs, departed slowly from their bays and headed out of the city into the Sand Sea, leaving the empty place to its ghosts.
Only a closer inspection revealed that remote controlled limpets flickered on their dorsal fins, which, in its own way, was just as haunting. The beasts were being summoned away, but to where and by whom? The ABC Warriors had no doubt that they would find out.
More survivors were found nearby, as was the wreckage of the ABC Warrior's jet. It had crashed into the roof of - of all things - a travel agency, where it had spiralled to its final resting place.
The jet was beyond repair, but inside, the ABC Warriors found sufficient parts to replace their more heavily damaged areas. Unfortunately, Blackblood had no spare road drill for his damaged predecessor. Deadlock was able to salvage his motorcycle, but disturbingly, their spare bodies were gone.
They came across a mall, which was the final building before the Red House, according to their route map. Deadlock sighed. It never ceased to amaze him how the floppies valued their ephemera so much. Just looking at this mall was like looking at a microcosmic Mars - with all its ultimately useless self-indulgent gimmickry and business that over the years had contributed to the ruin of a once unspoiled and unpolluted planet. Seeing it, studying these broken shops with their empty aisles and their quiet tills, he could almost sympathise with the desire of Medusa to sweep her world clean.
All the usual suspects were there, of course: the blood and sunshine frontage of a Mek-Donald's; one of the ubiquitous discount stores called the Silver Lo-Costs - everything for an E! The jewellers, John Cartier of Mars; the Soya-bean cowboys' restaurant of choice, Mules Marineris; one of the cloned drinking dens Bar Soom - whose owner, incidentally, was himself a clone of one of the original settlers, Sam Parkhill; and a branch of the obeast fashion chain, Fatter Ted's. The latter had been holding a sale of last season's less than successful hot pants designed for men: the Fireball range. Deadlock noted that the packs were suitable for all sizes ranging from the Fireball XL, to those of a less gifted nature, the Fireball Junior.
One or two shops did catch Deadlock's eye. The first was a Digital Angel outlet called Charlie's Electronics, but that was only because Deadlock figured Charlie had missed the obvious on that one. Someone called Dick Spanner ran the second shop, which was called Phallacy. There were some very interesting looking models in the window and he memory-dumped a note to call Dick when this was all over. If it was ever going to be over and if there would be anything left of Dick to call.
Deadlock waved the party forward, aware how his and the others' feet were crunching in the glass from shattered shop windows. What the ABC Warriors had found odd was that the deeper they had moved into the city, the less obvious the noise of the tripods had become. Their footfalls were slower, less paced, somehow. Their ululations were fewer and farther between. Either the tripods were tiring of their cull, or they were running out of things to kill. The increasing quiet allowed another sound to be heard: a high-pitched screeching that they all recognised.
It was the sound of demons.
This proved that they were near the Red House. The dome of the presidential complex contained an ectoplasmic field, which was designed to prevent any remote viewing of the goings on at the heart of the federal government. This ectoplasm was home to the otherworldly demons - vicious, flitting, snarling things with teeth like razors - or, at least, it had been, because it sounded as if the demons were on the loose. The Red House dome must have been damaged in the tripod attacks.
Deadlock cautioned everyone, as they approached the Red House steps, to be on their guard. But they did not need to.
The demons that were perched on the Red House roof did not swoop. They simply sat there and regarded the burning city below like some strange, new playground and called to each other in their screeching voices. They knew that the city was going to be their playground for a long time. Why risk the fun they could have by taking on robots with guns? They could wait.
Patrolling tripods overlooked the path to the Red House. The ABC Warriors and the survivors dashed for safety in a blaze of gunfire. Some of the human soldiers did not make it. The rest of them burst through the Red House doors.
They were surprised to hear music. A girl in a micro-thong weaved towards them and she regarded the blood-splattered ABC Warriors.
"Hey, are you guys the robots with the pizza?" she asked drunkenly. "Only, if you are, you're six hours late. The President said he ain't payin' if you're-"
Blackblood cocked his weapon and the girl stared at it, open-mouthed. "Do we look," Blackblood challenged, "like the robots with the pizza?"
"Sure..." the girl said. She stared at the entrail-dripping meks. "All the guys from Pavement Pizza look like you."
"Not any more," Joe said.
"Whaddya mean? They broken down or something?"
"This ain't no technological breakdown," Joe said. "Oh no, this is the road to hell."
Deadlock stared at him. Sometimes he wondered if Joe listened to his personal stereo a little too much.
"Your pizzas ain't coming, lady," Blackblood clarified on Joe's behalf. "Nothing is coming except the tripods and us."
"Frag it," the girl exclaimed, stamping her foot. "The President wanted a juicy king-size pepperbioloni. He said so. We was havin' ourselves such a good orgy, too."
There was a pause.
Blackblood looked at Mongrol. Mongrol looked at Blackblood. Deadlock looked at Mongrol. Mongrol looked at Deadlock. They did that for a while. Oh, what the frag, it had been a hard day.
"Orgy?" Blackblood said.
Mongrol cleared his throat. Mek-Quake rumbled.
"How hot," Deadlock asked the girl, "do you like your toppings?"
FOUR
Deadlock had walked through the Red House suffused with a warm glow. After the rigours of the day it had felt very good to be able to... relax. He admitted that he had been more than pleasantly surprised by some of the ladies attending President Cobb's orgy. The party-pieces that they had been kind enough to share with him, during a particularly energetic three hours, had been quite captivating, even for him. Noticing during their time together that the ladies all wore the same style DA tattoo - a frog strapped to a lily pad - Deadlock had discovered that they all came from an escort agency in Marineris City called The Secret Swamps of Wonderland, an establishment that catered strictly and solely to wearers of D
igital Arch Angels. Deadlock had stored its contact number in his memory-dump, ready for when he rose in the social strata. The file was marked "WA-HEY!" It looked like there were some advantages to being a bootleg like Cobb, after all.
All good things had to end, however, and eventually the ABC Warrior had come to a point where even his batteries were thoroughly drained. He allowed his mind to switch to more serious matters.
Since their arrival at the Red House, the ABC Warriors had done three things: the first, and most important, had been to ensure that President Cobb would cater for the injured that they had brought with them. Cobb had done this without hesitation and his wife, Nancy, had arranged for them to be transferred to the Red House's north wing, which, she explained, had recently been converted into a field hospital. The ease with which the normally selfish Cobb had agreed to this made Deadlock suspicious, but he said nothing. War, as he full well knew, changed people.
The second thing they had done was to attend a private meeting with Cobb himself, during which the president had asked the ABC Warriors if, when they left, they would be good enough take him and his wife with them, wherever they were going. No one knew why the tripods had not launched an assault on the Red House, but everyone knew that an assault was coming. None of them trusted or even liked Cobb, but in exchange for his help with their injured, the ABC Warriors had agreed to take his entourage under their protection.
The third the thing they did, of course, had been to join in the orgy. None of them felt guilty about indulging in a little hedonism given the circumstances. After Hammerstein's apparent demise, all of the ABC Warriors felt that they needed some serious "down time".
The only thing left to do was to decide what to do. Deadlock sat in Cobb's office, meticulously laying out his Tarot cards on the presidential desk and reading with great care the future that they imparted to him. In fact, he was reading with great care for the fourth time, because what the cards told him then, they had never told him before.
What they told him could have very well meant the end for the ABC Warriors.
Sighing, Deadlock stood up from the desk. He walked slowly around Cobb's office, deep in thought. He came to a window that looked out over the ballroom and stared out to where the orgy was still going strong below. For the moment his teammates - like himself - appeared to have had their fill of its more obvious attractions. Amidst a floating crowd of other upper-popped obeasts and orgy-goers, Mongrol densed the blubber-shudder with the same scantily-clad bint whom he had copped off with earlier. Or, at least doing their own equivalent of densing the blubber-shudder, as neither she nor Mongrol had the stomach for it, thank Gaia. They were dancing then, Deadlock supposed. He noticed that the girl was laughing at something that Mongrol was saying, obviously thoroughly enjoying herself in the company of his fellow mek. This made a refreshing change. It was unusual to see any girl last with Mongrol for more than a minute, his repertoire of chat-up lines consisting as they once did of "Mongrol Smush", or the more forceful and direct "MONGROL SMUSH!" But since the shock of Morrigun's death, Mongrol had mekamorphosised into the articulate robot commander that he had once been and his chat-ups had obviously improved. Deadlock also thought that he performed surprisingly well in the air. It was expected from an ex-paratrooper, he supposed.
Unless you were the kind of ex-paratrooper who fell out of the sky and reduced himself to scrap, of course. The thought made Deadlock chuckle dryly to himself.
He turned his gaze onto Blackblood. The general had given up on the women and, with a case of Brent Crude beside him, had settled himself into one of the bank of SIN-ulators that had been provided for those guests who preferred to go places the orgy couldn't take them. Blackblood was fully jacked-in and already dribbling, Deadlock noted, and he could not resist zooming in on the SIN that the mek was running. Rather disappointingly for Deadlock, the keywords that he had inputted were "Daddy-Long-Legs", "Innocent Civilians" and "Massacre". He had, of course, turned the gore quotient up to full.
Ah well, Deadlock thought. As he himself knew, it wasn't just the old slap and tickle that got your rocks off.
Joe. Unusually, it was Joe who was being the wallflower. Or perhaps it was not unusual at all, any more. Deadlock had seen how, since Joe had met Juanita, the assassin had become a different mek. It was not hard to guess where his thoughts were.
Joe had met Juanita Perez here in this very building not so many months before, becoming stricken by the beautiful film star and RedPeace campaigner as soon as he had laid eyes on her. She had fallen for Joe, too. The couple had soon realised they were in love. But Juanita had been kidnapped by Senator Diaz, leader of the Martian Republicans, and subjected to a particularly insidious form of brainwashing called love-bombing. It had one purpose: to make Juanita fall in love with him. Soon after, Joe had learned that the two were to be married.
Joe had travelled to Camp Diaz, the ancestral home of the senator, to reclaim Juanita, who was free of the brainwashing. Then, the war with Medusa had broken out. Juanita had insisted that Joe do what he had to do: be an ABC Warrior, and so he had been forced to leave her there, facing more love-bombing at the hands of Senator Diaz. He had heard nothing from her since, which explained his behaviour. Joe had spent most of the time cocooned in his personal stereo, the track that he played over and over from the soundtrack of Juanita's movie, The Music Box. It was a poignant piece: Variations on a Theme by Paganini. It was their "song".
Deadlock was about to turn and leave Joe to his misery when a female robot, a model by the look of her, ran up to Joe in some distress. Deadlock turned on his audio boost and picked up the important snippets.
"It's me, Sheer Herren Sad... I was at Camp Diaz with Sheen Zano... She sent me... Oh biol! It's Juanita... Diaz, he, I think he's mad... The things he's doing to her..."
Deadlock had heard enough. The first of his card's prophecies was coming true.
Out of all the ABC Warriors, only Mek-Quake was nowhere to be seen. But from somewhere in a distant wing of the Red House complex - the wing that was juddering like an earthquake aftershock, Deadlock guessed - he could hear the distant and breathless repetition of "Big Jobs! Big Jobs!"
My apologies, you large, lunatic lummox, he thought.
He mind-commed the killdozer, "Ballroom... Now!"
Deadlock returned to the desk, stacked the cards and slipped them away in his robes. Time, he reflected, to be a party-pooper.
"Gentlemen and ladies," President Cobb said from the stage as Deadlock walked into the ballroom. The politician was flushed, dishevelled and drunk, obviously fresh from some conquest as a discarded pair of hot pants dangled conspicuously from his pocket. His wife stared at them, and him, stonily from the sideline. He flicked the microphone with a finger. "Can you hear me? One... Three... Two..."
Oh biol, the idiot couldn't even get that right, Deadlock thought.
The president lurched into an inspirational speech. "Once," Cobb intoned, "there was a time when I believed without hesitation... that the power of love and truth would conquer all in the name of salvation..."
Deadlock looked at the other ABC Warriors. They were thinking the same as he. Isn't that?
"...feeding on the power of our fear and the evil within us-"
"That's goodness, sir," an aide whispered. "Remember, we changed that bit?"
Joe nodded to Deadlock and tapped his personal stereo. Apart from anything else, he'd once had a thing for Julie Covington.
"The goodness within us," Cobb corrected.
The ABC Warriors stared at Cobb, aghast.
"Isn't Cobb crawling illegal?" Mongrol interjected.
"...incarnation of Satan's creation of all that we dread..."
Oh, for frag's sake.
"There must be something worth living for..." he was prattling on.
Deadlock had had enough. He had no time for this. He began to move towards the stage.
"...There must be something worth trying for..."
Deadlock laid his hand on
his Ace of Swords, ensuring that Cobb saw the action plainly.
" Even, er, some things are..." Cobb said hesitantly.
"Worth dying for?" Deadlock finished for him. He stood beside Cobb and whispered in his ear, "This isn't Stars In Your Eyes, Mister President. Get off the stage. We need to talk."
Surprisingly - and quite bravely - Cobb hugged Deadlock by the shoulders, his politician's instinct overcoming his common sense. He was not quite yet willing to relinquish his moment of glory to the ABC Warrior, or perhaps even less willing to lose face in front of his adoring audience. Nevertheless, he finished quickly.
"And if one man can stand tall," he said, adding the quite startling ad-lib, "if one mek can stand tall... there must be hope for us all... somewhere... somewhere in the spirit of... uh... Mars."
The audience broke into rapturous applause and Cobb strutted across the stage, power-punching the air.
"Frag off," Deadlock said.
As the president left the stage, Deadlock took the mic for himself. Drawing a finger across his throat, he ordered the band to stop playing. Then he passed on some, though not all, of what the cards had told him to the gathered and expectant audience.
He was far more to the point than Cobb had been.
"Tomorrow morning," he said, "the tripods will attack the Red House. They will slaughter all of you who remain here. They will do so horribly."
Deadlock paused and began to slaver. Joe had to step up on stage and nudge him.
"It is pointless to try to fight," Deadlock continued. "You must leave here tonight."
The audience mumbled apprehensively.
"A convoy will leave for the mountains sometime around midnight," Deadlock stated. "It will take the injured, medical and food supplies, and those of you who wish to join it. It is hoped the convoy will find a place of safety for you flop - for you humans to flop, somewhere in the hills."