by Mike Wild
The humans in the hall started to clamour. They all wanted to come. It was clear that as long as they'd had their orgy they had ignored the reality of the situation and chosen to bury their heads in the sand. Or bury them in something, anyway.
Deadlock stared, quite taken aback.
"Out of your depth, Mister Robot?" the president's wife said unexpectedly. She was, for a moment, no longer the long-suffering, downtrodden consort to the bumbling half-wit who had recently been usurped from the stage, but a cold and calculating power-monger who had her husband's and, quite obviously, her own interests at heart. "Then it's a good job that I planned ahead."
Deadlock had not seen this in the cards. But then, the whole reading had been strangely clouded.
"What are you saying?" he began.
At that moment Mek-Quake smashed through the main doors of the ballroom, finally responding to Deadlock's summons of earlier. The killdozer was covered with blood. The bodies of a number of federal troopers either dangled from his arms or were inextricably caught up in his tank tracks. His weapons smoked.
"What the frag?" Blackblood exclaimed. "I told ya, Joe - give him an inch and this boy really knows how to enjoy himself."
"Shut it, Blackblood," Joe said.
Mek-Quake shuddered, obviously deeply disturbed - even for him.
"Mek-Quake?" Deadlock queried. He feared, though, that he already knew the answer. The sounds that he had heard earlier from the other wing - Big Jobs, Big Jobs - he'd thought was Mek-Quake having fun.
"Mek-Quake too late to help most," the largest of the ABC Warriors said. "But he save the children and some of the-"
Oh, Great Gaia, Deadlock thought, the north wing. The one that Cobb had said had been turned into a hospital. He leapt from the stage and pinned Mrs George C Cobb against the wall.
"Mek-Quake try to comm Deadlock, but-"
"The wing was shielded," Deadlock guessed. "It's all right, Mek-Quake," he said consolingly. With a sound like an expiring breath, his Ace of Swords was suddenly unsheathed and against the first lady's throat. "What have you-"
"Done?" the president's wife snapped back. "Exactly what you think, Mister Robot. I saw your face up there on the stage - you realised, as well as I, that we can't take them all. The less baggage we have, the greater our own chance for survival. You know that, don't you, what's your name? Deathlock?"
"Different comic," Blackblood said.
"They were not baggage," Deadlock growled.
"They're not now," the first lady said coldly. Despite himself, Deadlock faltered. "You see? I knew you were a pragmatic soul. Now, can we get on with things?"
Deadlock snarled, contemplated putting pressure on the sword, and then drew it away. "We will get on with what needs to be done," he said. "You, the president and his entourage are no longer a part of this exodus. I suggest you make alternative travel arrangements. "
"Tssk, tssk," the first lady said sweetly, waving her finger. "Before you get too carried away, I suggest that you ask my husband about the weapon."
"Weapon?" Joe asked.
"Weapon," the first lady repeated. "I don't know the exact details of it myself but..."
Deadlock studied her, aware that she had already caught him by surprise, which was no mean feat. She was indeed a tricky one, this Nancy Cobb, so to be extra careful he activated his entire battery of psychoanalytical and sociopathological programs to complement those such as the lie-detector that he was already running. Eventually he decided that she was telling the truth. There did indeed appear to be a weapon of some kind - a very powerful one, perhaps even an ultimate one.
"The office," he said to the assembled group.
"This weapon," Deadlock asked Cobb. "What is it?"
Cobb stammered. Even he appeared to have been shocked by the actions of his wife. "I... I don't really know. All I can tell you is that it's very old. Ancient even. It comes from the time of the original colonists. They... they called it GODD."
"God?" Blackblood said. "Shoot the fragger, Deadlock, he's gone religious on us."
"Gee-oh-dee-dee. It's an acronym. I don't know what it stands for. It's just something we presidents are told about, though none of us have ever used it. We've never had cause to."
"And this GODD, you know where it is?"
"Somewhere in the Olympian Heights."
"Oh, that's convenient," Mongrol broke in. "Isn't that where the convoy is meant to be headed?" He pulled a gun and placed it against Cobb's temple. "Deadlock already told you that you aren't coming."
"Do you have the exact co-ordinates?" Deadlock asked.
"He has them," the first lady interrupted. "In his head. And that's where they stay. Unless we come with you."
Now Blackblood pulled his gun. "How about I paint the co-ordinates on the wall?" He leaned over and whispered in Nancy Cobb's ear. "Nice kill, by the way."
Deadlock held up a hand. "This weapon, whatever it is, could be what we need to turn the tide of this war." He sighed. "The president and his wife go with the convoy."
"Oh, for frag's sake!" Joe exploded. "Since when did the ABC Warriors-"
"What do the ABC Warriors matter to you now, Joe?" the Grand Wizard of the Knights Martial asked knowingly.
"What Deadlock mean?" Mek-Quake said.
"Joe is leaving us," Deadlock announced. "Isn't that correct, Joe?"
"It's Juanita," Joe said. "She needs me."
"Oh, not that bint again."
Joe had Blackblood pinned against the wall in a second. Blackblood hissed in his face.
"She needs me."
"I need two volunteers to go with the convoy," Deadlock went on. "One as escort and one to find that weapon."
"Mek-Quake go with convoy. Look after children."
"I'll take the weapon," Mongrol said.
"Why you not just order Joe to stay, like Hammerstein?" Mek-Quake asked. "Then he can come, too."
"Because I have no authority," Deadlock answered. "As of now, I am officially disbanding the ABC Warriors."
"WHAT?" Mongrol said.
"Disband?" said Mek-Quake.
It was unbelievable. All of the ABC Warriors had taken their own paths down the years, but to suggest an actual split... It was unprecedented.
"Think about it," Deadlock said. "We are involved in a war that we could very possibly lose. Even if we were to win it, our mission would be over and our self-destructs would mean the end of the ABC Warriors. Together, all we have managed to do is survive. Together, we form a single target. My last order is that we disband and put to use our individual talents in some hope that we can emerge victorious one last time."
The ABC Warriors stared at each other.
"It has been... interesting serving with you all," the Grand Wizard added. "And now if you'll excuse me, I have my own... preparations to make."
"Frag," Mongrol said, after he had left.
"That's it, then? Just like that?"
"Looks that way."
"Hmm."
"That actually made some sense, you know."
"A-ha."
"So, which of your individual talents are you going to put to use, Blackblood?"
"I will think of... something," Blackblood said.
"What about you, Joe?" Mongrol said. "When are you?"
"Bye, Joe," Mek-Quake said, a little sadly, for he was speaking to an open window. Joe Pineapples had already left the building.
FIVE
The artilleryman in The War Of The Worlds, encountering the book's narrator for the final time atop Putney Hill, encapsulated his paranoia about the tripods perfectly. "One gets to know," he observed, "that birds have shadows these days."
Two thousand years on and forty-six and a half million miles away, Deadlock uploaded the words of Mister Herbert George Wells from deep in his memory dump and reflected that they had never rang more true. One had to watch the shadows at night more than ever.
From his vantage point atop the Red House, the ABC Warrior surveyed the ruins of Vik
ing City, bathed in the hazy red and orange hues of a Martian evening. The demons that had perched here earlier were gone now, no doubt engaged in a hungry exploration of the dead metropolis.
Behind Deadlock rose the cracked dome beneath which they had partied only hours before. It was quiet and dark, the glass snagged with the odd limp streamer and stained here and there with the drinks - and other fluids - of overenthusiastic densers. The streets below were also quiet, empty but for bodies and the wrecks of cars. The rubble-strewn devastation was lit here and there by fires that burned untended, both inside and outside the ruined buildings. A gentle wind stirred in the deserted canyons, flapping the flames with a sound like wet cloth, and where the flames flapped they illuminated the darker recesses that lay just beyond the seat of government. The shapes of machines could be picked out in these recesses, silent and still, their presence there betrayed only by a momentary exaggerated shadow. Here a warped, tall tripod leg; there the eerily extended tendrils of tripod arms, undulating slowly like torpid snakes.
"Tell me again. Why haven't they attacked?"
Deadlock did not turn to acknowledge the presence of Blackblood, who knelt beside him on the roof. His fellow ABC Warrior was wrapping heavy swaddling around his damaged road-drill leg in an attempt to restore some of its lost height. He'd had enough of the drunken sailor jokes.
Deadlock said nothing and continued to gaze out over the wasteland. For a time, both robots were silent.
"They are feasting," Deadlock said finally. "Gorging themselves on the blood of their captured humans." He sighed, though Blackblood was unsure whether it was a sigh of deep sadness or of a dark contentment. "At this moment," Deadlock went on, "I can feel a great many souls departing on their Great Journey."
Blackblood pictured the helpless floppies incarcerated in the Tripod hulls, caged like herded animals, their bodies holed and punctured by the Martian's feeding tubes, lying weak and helpless as their life blood was slowly sucked away. Despite his past, Blackblood found the image deeply disturbing and repellent. He reflected that to some this might seem odd. He was, after all, known for his own habit of drinking the oil of dead ABC Warriors - not to mention the slaughter of thousands of humans at his own hands during the Volgon war - behaviour he had been purged of during his enforced reprogramming. Blackblood was in no position at all to react with such a level of revulsion. Was it not the case, though, that throughout the history of warfare, warriors on the field of battle had feasted on their fallen enemies? Or, when not feasted, then at least mutilated their remains for tokens of their supremacy - a scalp as a trophy; a head displayed as a spoil of war; and, perhaps, a heart for the empowerment of the victor?
But with the Martians it was different. The victims from which those trophies had been taken had been dead or were already dying, while the Martian's captives were healthy, living, breathing souls, snatched away in their prime. Which was exactly how these creatures liked them. There was no honour in what they did, no glory in the abject humiliation and torture to which they subjected their victims. They were little more than leeches, these alien things, vampiric parasites that had no place in the natural order of life.
Blackblood's train of thought was interrupted as Deadlock shivered beside him. The ABC Warrior realised that his companion was becoming a little too carried away "tuning in" to the souls departing on their Great Journeys. At any second he expected the tall, cloaked robot to start making little Hannibal Lecter slurping sounds, to taste his souls with some fava beans and a nice Chianti.
"Easy, Deadlock," he said. "I think we have a decision to make."
Slowly, Deadlock composed himself and turned to face Blackblood. His eyes flared. The Grand Wizard of the Knights Martial took a deep breath. "The decision is made," he said sonorously. "It is time."
Earlier, though the ABC Warriors had already split as a team, they had decided that they would travel together with the convoy as far as Viking City's edge, leaving as planned at midnight. Though it was still only nine and they were some hours from their ideal level of night-time cover, the Martian's unexpected behaviour had made them rethink their strategy. Having feasted as grandly as they had - with an entire city as their larder - the Martian creatures inside the Tripods were sated, sluggish and possibly even asleep. There was going to be no better time to go, when they could sneak their people right out under the aliens' noses. There were still dangers, of course, but they were fewer than they would be if the Martians awoke in the meantime.
Deadlock and Blackblood walked to the side of the Red House roof and peered down into the outer compound of the presidential complex, to check how Mek-Quake and Mongrol were progressing with the humans. The compound had been Cobb's personal flyer park in peacetime and, though open and uncovered, it was screened from the outside world by a high, fortified wall, which was broken only by a single sealed gate. It had become the perfect place to assemble what was to be the surviving population's final exodus from Viking City.
And what an exodus it was. There were almost a hundred of them down there, of all shapes and sizes, and in all conditions. Most were ill-prepared. The refugees and the injured wore tattered clothing, which was to be expected following their ordeals. Some of it was still durable, but most of it was ready to fall from their backs. Those who had attended the party had gathered together what they could in the way of travelling gear, but the Red House offered little that could really be described as "practical". Some of the them had managed to scrounge a Scargill or a Michael Foot donkey jacket from some dead employee's locker to drape over themselves, but most still wore - or rather, didn't - the orgy garb they had arrived in. Both Deadlock and Blackblood appreciated a red-hot woman in hot pants, given the right circumstances, but here, facing what they faced, the fashion only served to remind them how pathetic, feeble and fragile the exposed bodies of the floppies could be.
In the midst of them, Mongrol chewed on a giant-sized cigar and blew out the occasional hellish-looking dark cloud. The ABC Warrior had modified the cigar with dye, having heard that the Martians had a thing for Black Smoke. He was busy marshalling the floppies into ordered ranks alongside Mek-Quake, who had transformed into his humungous tank-mode, complete with added platform extensions. The floppies were made up of soldiers, the injured, children, those men and women who looked capable of mounting some kind of resistance should there come an attack and those who did not. The most vulnerable - the younger children and stretcher-cases - were being carried on Mek-Quake himself, the stretchers shored in amongst supply crates and boxes of medical equipment. The young ones huddled around or actually hugged his serpentine neck. Amazingly, the huge demolition robot appeared to be telling them a story.
Only Cobb's party remained separate to the pack. The president himself, his wife and two of his personal bodyguards were all who had been allowed. They gathered in a dark corner of the compound, uncommunicative and aloof, as if mixing with their electorate would somehow taint them with the reality of their situation.
That would change when they got out there, Deadlock and Blackblood thought simultaneously. Just how long would it take Cobb before he ended up cowering behind one of those sweating, bloodstained subjects that he had been trying so desperately to avoid?
"Mek-Quake?" Deadlock commed.
"Mek-Quake listening," the robot responded. "Mek-Quake talking, too. Mek-Quake telling his little jobs-"
"A story, I know," Deadlock interrupted. He shuddered to think what kind of enlightening fable his psychotic comrade-in-arms would have dredged out of his databanks, especially bearing in mind that he was overdue for what was euphemistically known as his "computer upgrade". The kids were enjoying it - he couldn't deny that. Despite the constraints of time, Deadlock couldn't help himself. He listened in.
"So, Mek-Quake and the three little pigs went to the village where the big bad wolf lived. Mek-Quake took out biiig hammer and demolished front of wolf's house..."
"Mek-Quake..."
"Then Mek-Quake he demolish back of
wolf's house..."
"Mek-Quake..."
"Finally, Mek-Quake take biiig hammer and demolish the wolf's head until brains go splashing all over-"
"MEK-QUAKE!"
"HUR-HUR-HUR-HUR-HUR-"
"Leave it to me, Deadlock," Mongrol commed. The ABC Warrior broke off from marshalling the humans and walked calmly around to the front end of the demolition robot. There, he steeled himself, drew back a fist, and delivered a knockout hay-maker punch straight into the demolition robot's face. Mek-Quake's T-shaped head snapped back and took on a startled look, and then his expression glazed over. Water began dribbling from his hydraulics like drool. After a second, Mek-Quake twitched.
"6/583-#546," Mek-Quake said. His ossified brain had been reset.
"All yours, Deadlock," said Mongrol.
"Thank you, Mongrol." Deadlock sighed. "Mek-Quake, are you listening?"
"Uh... yeeehhh."
"Your story will have to wait."
"What story? Is someone telling me a story?"
Deadlock shook his head and sighed again. "Never mind. Mek-Quake, listen. There has been a change of plan. We are leaving earlier than expected and we have to be very quiet. Are you ready?"
Mek-Quake's neck craned around, surveying his bulk. He jumped slightly in surprise, as if he didn't remember being laden with people and supplies, which, if the truth were known, he didn't. But Mek-Quake did remember THE PLAN. He and his new friends had to leave. And Mek-Quake had to protect his new friends. He knew that they had to be very quiet.
"Mek-Quake ready," he whispered.
"Good. Mongrol?"
Mongrol lifted a thumb and shook it back and forth. "As ready as we'll never be," he said.
"Okay." Deadlock said. "Deploy the defences and let's MOVE OUT."
Mongrol made some signals and there was a sudden flurry of activity in the compound: a final lashing-down of the supplies, people flinging heavy packs onto their backs in preparation for the trek ahead, and those who were armed arranging themselves in positions on and around Mek-Quake, forming a ring of firepower. Both Mongrol and Mek-Quake activated their weapons protocols, cavities opening in their bodies and disgorging a variety of guns, rifles, blasters and grenades. Along each side of Mek-Quake and at his front and rear, banks of cannons rose from his insides. They clicked and revolved on their auto-turrets, whirring with the sound of servomotors as they calibrated themselves in readiness for spitting death.