Rage Against the Machines

by Mike Wild

  Boober plucked the deathkite from the sensor with two fingers and dropped it to the ground with a plop. These damn things weren't even worth taking home for the cook-pot, he reflected. Boober was one of the few people on Mars who refused to eat biol, having once worked at the biol corporation's production plant. They tasted like chicken, sure - didn't everything? But chicken that was in need of a serious detox and colonic irrigation.

  Boober slid a microdriver into the sensor's main board and twisted. He was blown back with a yelp as it spat out a small shower of stinging sparks. Landing heavily on his behind, nothing hurt but his professional pride, he looked up as the clone guards turned, assessing what, if any, damage had been incurred by their charge. Then they turned back and continued to scan the horizon for other potential threats. What the biol would they have done if there had been any damage? Boober asked himself. Terminate the panel with extreme prejudice? Avenge him by turning it off? The mass-produced grunts were good for many things - patrols, reinforcements, cannon-fodder in the main - but put a tool other than some unfeasibly large gun in their hands and they stared at you with those blank expressions that justified the nickname "Dead Eyes".

  Okay, they had their uses. On one of those rare occasions when he was in a generous mood, Diaz had been known to order the females amongst them to partake in an extracurricular bedroom romp, but even then the women first had to be convinced that they were undergoing some new style of unarmed combat training. The boys called it "Night School".

  They were to be killing machines, these things - it was as simple as that. Unfeeling, nasty, deadly and utterly impersonal killing machines. And out here in the desert there was just nothing for them to kill.

  Suddenly, one clone soldier fell to the sand. It took Boober a second to realise that its head was gone. The female clone began to raise its weapon and then joined him, a smoking, cauterized hole in her otherwise genetically perfect chest.

  Frag it! Boober thought. He had enjoyed that chest. He wouldn't anymore. Unless... He checked around to see if there were any bits left. Nope.

  He checked the clones and saw their mouths gaped at him. Obviously they were both as dead as the deathkite, but there hadn't been a sound. Boober scrambled back against the sensor, gasping. He reckoned that the only reason he wasn't lying there with the clones was that he had been on his behind in the hollow in which the sensor sat. He reckoned also that whatever had taken the clones out wasn't going to have gone away. Whatever had just happened had happened quickly and therefore he was still under attack.

  The tripods must be here, he thought. He remembered being told that as well as beefing-up his security the senator had also ordered what he referred to as a "pre-emptive" assault on Tripolis, something that had been intended to cow Medusa.

  Boober thought that was totally stupid at the time. Most of his workmates concurred: there was no way that Medusa could be cowed - Medusa was just a cow.

  Gaia, he wasn't being paid enough for this. Surrender. That was it, surrender...

  He dug in his pocket for a white handkerchief, waved it in the air. But as the handkerchief was the colour of the sand, not to mention a little crispy, it didn't make much of an impression. Instead Boober waved the dead deathkite above his head. He was showered with feathers and deathkite insides.

  The deathkite was blown out of his hands. Spinning in the air, it was hit again. And again. And again.

  It plopped back down into Boober's hands. All three of the deathkite's claw-like feet had been shot neatly off.

  Okay - maybe not tripods. It had to be a sniper, but where?

  Panting madly, Boober threw himself onto his stomach and cursed, as he had to steady himself when he rolled aside. He stretched out a hand, scrambling on the ground for a pair of binoculars dropped by the second clone - Gaia, the hole through her chest was so neat you could have put a lens in it and used that for a 'noc - and trained them on the horizon, panning quickly from left to right.

  Nothing, nothing, nothing... He panned back slowly.

  Nothing, nothing... Wait... There!

  Boober swallowed dryly, his throat clicking. Only just visible on the horizon, a figure was walking out of the desert straight towards him. The figure had not been there a moment before. It can't be, Boober thought. That would have meant that the figure had fired the shots that killed the clones from below the horizon. And that was impossible, wasn't it? There had to be someone else.

  He scanned with the binoculars again. Nothing.

  Boober retrained the binoculars on the figure, watched as it drew nearer with a brisk and determined pace. As yet, he could make out no details. All he could think of was, there's nothing out there, where the frag has it come from?

  He remembered his musings of earlier. Hell, he thought.

  Something was coming out of hell.

  Wallace T Boober's imagery was compounded by the fact that at that moment the figure, whatever it was, walked into the first of Diaz's defences, and was consumed by fire. Minefields.

  Even though they were fifteen kilometres out, Diaz had not skimped on the defences even here. Out in the sands ahead of him were minefields, superstring meshing, sonic disruptor beds, acid trenches, scrambler swamps and Gaia knew what else. Diaz had flown in hundreds of labourers - paying them quintuple time, the rich bastard - with but a single remit: to clear and to fortify the desert in the fastest time they could. And clear and fortify they had, including, it was rumoured, an inhabited Oasis and a small town of Soya-bean cowboys waiting for their next stampede. It was also rumoured that the Oasis' inhabitants and the cowboys had themselves been stampeded - to a relocation point six-feet under.

  The point was that the desert was a deathtrap, awaiting and prepared for the tripod army. The tripod army, for frag's sake!

  This lone figure - even if it was from hell -- had no chance.

  Boober watched the cascading balls of flame spread over the sand as one mine after another detonated in a chain-reaction, as if the desert had been napalmed. The sky was filled with smoke and the infernal cloud billowed and rolled and flared like the uncontrolled sneeze of some gigantic dragon. He could feel the heat even there, which was a kilometre away. It was impossible to imagine that anything within remained alive, but, remain alive it did.

  The figure emerged from the wall of fire, continued to advance.

  Oh biol...

  Boober fiddled with his binoculars, trying to pull some more magnification from the things. He wiped sweat from his brow and looked back.

  More traps were being triggered, or, more exactly, the figure was triggering the traps, pre-empting their detonation close to it. Boober saw the flashes of weapons fire from the figure, aiming at and eliminating the sonic disruptors and scramblers as it came. Again, it walked on through. As it reached the acid trenches and superstring meshes it fired dehydration grenades and scintilla bombs, in turn removing or exposing the hazards ahead.

  Boom! Boom! Boom!

  One thing's for sure, Boober thought. This is not a stealth approach. This figure didn't care a jot if it was picked up on the metaphorical radar - it was simply coming and nothing in the world was going to stop it.

  Boober rubbed his eyes. Approaching through the desert heat, the figure appeared ethereal, insubstantial, flickering and wavering in the distance. It was as if some feverish artist were hurriedly trying to capture the figure on canvas, finding himself dissatisfied with the result, and then smudging it out over and over with his thumb. Boober knew it was only a trick of the light and the heat, but it made the figure resemble some spectral demon.

  The figure was close enough to make out detail now. A set of sleek, blue-tinted armour and cladding, a visor. Or were they sunglasses? With servo-mechanics visible at the joints, the lean and sharply angular body of an athlete, the figure was also equipped with integrated weaponry of devastating variety. And, presumably in case that technology failed it, it wielded a deadly-looking laser knife.

  But most of all, the figure favoured its
primary weapon, a long sniper rifle that looked to him like... Boober gasped. Despite the predicament he was in, he was suddenly excited. It couldn't be, he thought. But it was.

  The figure's primary weapon was a Magnum Macho 3000.

  Boober slavered. The Magnum Macho 3000 was, as far as he was concerned, the King of Sniper Rifles, an antique, sure, but one that to his mind had never been bettered. Frag, if he could get his hands on that. The thing would start a bidding war on E-Buy-Gun, the north Mars auction site. He might even make enough to get off the dustbowl for good.

  A sudden realisation struck Boober. No human arm could wield a weapon that size so freely. The figure approaching was not a man but a mek and, quite obviously, a warrior mek.

  He squinted through the binoculars.

  The mek was wearing a scuffed but otherwise pretty cool looking leather jacket. And on the sleeve of the jacket he could make out some identification letters.

  A... B... C...

  ABC... ABC... Boober thought, and it slowly dawned.

  He realised he was looking at his childhood hero. He was looking at Joe Pineapples, the greatest sniper in the galaxy.

  As much as he hated Mars, Wallace T Boober had nothing but admiration for Mars' legendary robotic saviours, the ABC Warriors. The tales of their deeds had reached even Terra and Boober had grown up recounting their exploits to his few friends, only to be disappointed when they didn't find them quite so fascinating as he did. Boober hadn't been exactly sure what it was about the warriors - maybe the fact that they were robotic heroes - but he did know that it was they who had inspired him to become an engineer. He had wanted to be a robotics engineer, of course, but as it turned out he had failed his competency certificate, the WD40.

  Anyway, chief among his ABC Warrior heroes had been Joe Pineapples. Boober had collected everything he could on the ex-X-Terminator, from the Borealis model kits to the Photon Bazooka Joe bubble gum cards. He had a pair of Joe Pineapple's officially endorsed sunglasses, two sets of character socks, and a Magnum Macho 3000 toothbrush with the slogan, "Rub Out That Plaque!" He had even subscribed to the 100-issue, part-work, Home Mek-Aniks, spending month after month lovingly assembling his own one tenth scale ABC Warrior.

  Was it any wonder that his eyes remained glued to the binoculars? Right up to the point, in fact, that the robot called Joe Pineapples took the binoculars from his hands.

  "Hi," said Joe.

  "Hi," said Wallace T Boober. "Can I stroke your gun?"

  "Pardon?"

  "Your... er... gun," Boober repeated. "Can I?"

  "No," Joe said. "I'm a little busy right now."

  "Are you going to kill me?" Boober asked. The question was a little too eager. If he was going to die, he quite liked the idea of being blown away by his childhood hero.

  "No," Joe said, looking at him strangely. "I'm going to kill Diaz."

  Diaz? Boober thought. Yes, of course. The scuttlebutt had it that there was a reason other than the tripods why Diaz had beefed up security to such a degree. Some feud with a robot over that film star he'd copped off with - what was the name of the flick the chick was in, The Music Box? Juanita whatchamacallit? That Diaz and his hero were feuding didn't surprise Boober at all; Diaz's treatment of women - in particular, his first two wives - was the stuff of horror stories, while Joe Pineapples... well, Joe Pineapples was a gentleman.

  If it was Joe Pineapples that the senator had cheesed off, Boober thought, then he'd better start looking for another job.

  Boober pointed in the direction of Camp Diaz.

  "That way," he said.

  "I know," said Joe, and shot him.

  Joe continued on out of the desert, leaving the prone figure of Wallace T Boober slumped against sensor number 39, the tattered pair of Joe Pineapples character socks that he wore peeking out beneath his trouser legs. Good thing I spotted those, Joe thought. I would hate to kill a fan...

  Joe reached the shores of the Sand Sea that surrounded Camp Diaz and stopped. Well, that was easy, he thought. Amazing what you can do with a little determination.

  There was something different about the shore since the last time he'd been here. Then, that first time he had come to rescue Juanita, he had waded on into it without hesitation, tackling the remains of Diaz's security as it came.

  This time something was holding him back: a feeling in the air.

  Or was it a feeling in the "water".

  Joe wondered why there were no visible defences this close to the camp, and why the one bridge across the Sand Sea - visible slightly just off to the east - appeared to have been demolished. And, most of all, he wondered why the surface of the Sand Sea undulated as it did.

  One of the undulations approached the shore.

  Uh-oh, Joe thought, stepping back. There were defences here all right. A second later, Joe was sent staggering as the sea in front of him blew into the sky like a volcano, the quicksand erupting into the air with a deafening roar as the awesome shape of a cybo-whale broke through the surface.

  Joe's last thought as the behemoth bore down on him was of Viking City and its docks. So that's where they were going, he thought.

  FOURTEEN

  "Biol... Bootleg... Frag it!"

  Blackblood ducked and dived as bullets slammed into the wall next to him, following him as he ran desperately for cover. Again.

  He fired back, destroying a small turret that hung from the corridor ceiling. By his reckoning he had a little over two seconds before it reconstructed itself. To buy himself time, he immediately shot a round of corrosives into its destroyed housing, pre-empting and - hopefully - dissolving the new circuitry as it began to form.

  He had probably a half-second more and he needed it.

  Blackblood ran with Number 5 skittering behind. They had just made it to the relative sanctuary of the corner of the corridor when the turret came back on line. As he was becoming used to, it had better armour and was more powerful than before.

  It began to fire again. Welcome to the Invention Exchange, Blackblood thought. It wasn't as if the little fragger hadn't warned him. Deadlock leapt for cover, but not before the latest round of bullets slammed into his side, puncturing his armour and exposed fizzing patches of wires and electronics up and down his flank. He took a nasty hit to the temple that caused the vision in his right eye to flicker like a badly tuned vid station. It felt like a red-hot stiletto was being rammed into the socket. Mek migraine.

  "Medic!" Number 5 shouted.

  Blackblood slumped against the corridor wall while the small tripod tended to his new wounds with his nano-nanos and patched up older "scrapes and grazes" while he had the chance. Thankfully, that section of corridor was turret-free - most likely because it was adjacent to one of the building's power nodes - so for the moment at least they had a brief respite from the onslaught that had plagued them since they had arrived. Blackblood contemplated shooting out the power-node and risking the resultant explosion, but knew that it wouldn't take long before that, too, would simply rebuild itself - better and more powerful than it had been before.

  "I wanna nuke this fragging place," Blackblood snarled.

  "Not far now," Number 5 said. "Around next corner."

  "That's what you said seven corners ago!"

  "Number 5 did?" the tripod queried. He hung his head in shame and shook it. "Oh, Number 5 wrong." He raised one of his arms, a thought hitting him suddenly. "Maybe Invention Exchange is inventing new corridors!"

  The barrel of Blackblood's gun levelled itself against Number 5's head with a small clang. "Guess what?"

  There was a robotic gulp.

  "You don't want to hear that?"

  "I don't want to hear that."

  "Okay."

  It had been like that since they had arrived in the building, an unceasing, obstinate persistence on the part of its particularly dedicated security system that it was not going to let them in. To penetrate the Invention Exchange would have been less difficult, though still far from easy, in peacet
ime - but since war had been declared by Medusa, it had effectively become mission: impossible. Every security protocol, every siphon system and every anti-intruder device that the building possessed was in Def-Con Omega mode.

  Blackblood had become really fragged off by being shot at by ice bullets, fire bullets, acid bullets, and even fragging candyfloss bullets. The latter, despite their sweet-sounding name, tended to cling like biol on impact, seriously hampering his moves.

  The problem was that every bullet being fired by the Invention Exchange was a smart bullet. It weighed things up as it went along, and more often than not, reinvented itself in mid-air in the process. Blackblood's defence grid was having difficulty keeping up with the bullets as they sought out every chink in his armour and more often than not found it.

  Du-du-du-du-du!

  "Frag!"

  Here we go again.

  He only hoped that the anti-nano-nano technology he was after was going to be worth it. At least Blackblood knew how the technology had come about and it was all actually quite ironic, because the nano-nanos had been invented at the Sunset Motors planet - and as with all great inventions they had come about entirely by accident.

  All that Botwright, the owner of the plant, had been trying to do was find a way to prevent scratching on his cars' paintwork, to give his customers that little extra for their money. He had developed a simple nano strain that did the job perfectly: he scratched a car, the dedicated nanos did their job, and the scratch was gone. Simple.

  One day he had accidentally sprayed a second coating on a run of cars. The nanos reacted with the nanos. They mated. They became something else.

  And suddenly Botwright had a run of indestructible cars.

  Indestructible cars, of course, were no good to Mr Botwright, because indestructible cars didn't sell new cars. So the cars had to go. They had to be destroyed so that no one could find out he could make them, and Botwright hired the finest inventors on Mars to develop an anti-nano-nano spray.

  They did it; the cars were destroyed; then for everyone's sakes - not to mention their commercial interests - both inventions were locked away forever in the Invention Exchange warehouse. Until, of course, Medusa had taken an interest in those first nano-nanos.