by Mike Wild
Joe was on him on a second, his Magnum Macho 3000 aimed directly at Diaz's forehead.
"I see you've lost none of your charm," Joe snarled.
"Is this the big showdown, Joe?" Diaz asked tauntingly. "Are you going to finish the job now? Because if you are I'd have to tell you something."
"And just what might that be, you bootleg?" Joe asked. Considering that Diaz was more life-support machine than man, Joe considered the robot invective acceptable.
Diaz coughed. His eyes stared defiantly at Joe, almost triumphantly. "I'd welcome it."
Joe's finger hovered on the trigger. "You're trying to tell me that you don't care-"
"Oh he cares, Joe," Juanita whispered weakly. "He just wants you to make it easy."
"Easy?" Joe said.
"Think about it," Juanita explained. "Look at the state of him! Diaz needs a hospital, medical care, but there's nowhere left for him to go. Nowhere that the tripods will not follow, so he's stuck here."
Joe weighed the situation up, staring at Diaz and out across the Sand Sea.
"War of attrition," Joe realised. "All the tripods have to do is wait..."
"A helpless drawn-out death," Juanita agreed. Her face turned suddenly cold. "Just like he'd had planned for me..."
Joe withdrew his Magnum Macho 3000, disarming it with a click.
"We can't just leave him here," Joe said. "What about the trigger?"
"I've a funny feeling he's not going to have the time to do much with that," Juanita said. Oddly, she was smiling.
Joe followed the line of her eyes. On the opposite shore of the Sand Sea, the tripods were changing. Withdrawing their legs and arms, altering the shape of their hulls, becoming a different kind of machine: a smooth, curving crab shell shape that looked also like a strangely streamlined coat hanger, with an elongated neck topped by a pulsating eye.
The coat hanger floated up off of the ground.
"Well, well," Juanita said. "It looks like HG Wells isn't the only creator of war machines that Medusa has chosen as her inspiration tonight."
"George Pal," Joe said.
"George Pal," Juanita agreed.
"Biol," Diaz said.
The floating war machines began to move across the Sand Sea.
"Time to go, I think," Joe pointed out.
"Yes, Joe," Juanita concurred. "But where?"
"Don't worry," Joe reassured her. "The moment has been prepared for."
And, with that, he took Juanita under his arm and leapt from the balcony. Below, Silverhair waited.
Left behind, Diaz gulped slowly. The war machines were almost on him, almost nose to nose.
He had to think of something and fast. He looked up, staring the tripods in their heat-ray eyes. "Take me to your leader," he said.
It wasn't a joke. If anything, Diaz expected it to become deadly serious.
SEVENTEEN
Deadlock's journey through the bowels of hell ended in an unexpected and rather comfortable fashion.
He simply woke up as if it had all been a dream. Quite appropriately, he felt that he was lying in a very warm bed.
The ABC Warrior's head felt fuzzy and his recollection of recent events was hazy. Things felt different, but as yet he was not sure how.
All he knew was that there were no further sounds of battle. The only sound that he could hear, in fact, was that of birdsong.
He wondered if deathkites sang at all.
Deadlock snapped open his eyes. Blinked. Wherever he was, it was bright - an un-Martian brightness - and, oddly for him, it was taking some time to focus. He ran an emergency diagnostic on his self-adapting optical program, but even more oddly, no report was returned. This troubled Deadlock but after a moment he found that his vision cleared anyway.
Without moving, the ABC Warrior looked around and saw that he was, as he had thought, in a bedroom - albeit a bedroom unlike any he had seen before, at least not where he had come from. It appeared to be mediaeval, with stone walls and a single, studded wooden door. A large, arched window, heavily draped, but with no glass, looked out on a sunny and white-clouded sky. The furnishings were few but luxuriant - the bed he was lying in, obviously, a king-sized affair of which he occupied only half, noting with curiosity that the sheets and pillow in the empty half were tussled and indented, as if someone had only recently risen from there. The other furniture consisted of an ornately carved chair of some dragon-like design, a full-length free standing mirror and a heavy wooden dresser topped with - yes, it was a crystal ball. Most striking was a large hanging green pennant that was draped down one wall, emblazoned with the arrowed logo of KHAOS. This appeared to be made from Deadlock's very own cloak.
He listened again. There were faint sounds of activity from outside. Strange sounds: the whinnying of a horse; laughter; the sawing of wood.
Deadlock pressed his hands onto the mattress to prop himself up - and that was when it hit him. He could feel that the bed sheets beneath his skin were satin.
Beneath his skin.
Slowly, warily, he lifted his hands from beneath the sheets, held them up before his face. They were not the hands of a mek. Deadlock lifted the sheets that covered him. Had he been able, he would have raised an eyebrow. Possibly two.
Deadlock slid from the bed and walked to the mirror. A reflection that was his and yet not his stared back at him. As he had already determined, he was unclothed, the body before him as he had always imagined it would be had his mek physiognomy been rendered flesh. The tall, imposing figure was toned but lean, grey of skin and almost wraith-like but still apparently-
"Admiring your body, human?" a voice said.
Deadlock span. There had been no reflection in the mirror, but directly behind him stood a woman. And what a woman she was. She said nothing, only smiled, but the ABC Warrior knew instinctively that he was looking at Medusa. But this was a Medusa who was presenting herself as never before.
Deadlock let his eyes rove over the striking figure who stood before him, taking in the wild mane of raven hair, the fiery green eyes, the sculpted, defiant perfection of her face. He let his gaze drift down past her neck, her shoulders, where the perfection was echoed in the body of a goddess. Deadlock found it difficult to draw his eyes away, garbed as she was in only a red waist-length cloak and what appeared to be a golden chain-mail bikini. On her head was perched a small, gilded crown. Her olive-hued skin glistened slightly with perspiration. Or a more accurate description would have been glowed.
Medusa giggled, displaying perfect teeth, and placed a single finger to a pair of voluptuous lips.
"Do you like what you see, Deadlock?"
"What folly is this?"
"No folly. I offer myself to you as your princess of Mars. You may call me... Dejah."
Deadlock found his eyes drawn back to the "princess's" cleavage, barely constrained as it was by a tiny metal clasp. Dejah view, he thought.
"You have changed me," Deadlock said softly. He looked down at himself once more and was surprised by how much he wanted the answer to his next question to be yes. "Am I... human?"
Medusa laughed openly in his face. "Human? Oh no, no, never human, you poor, arrogant machine. No more human than I, despite your... aspirations. But I have seen to it that for the time being at least our shells are... compatible." She moved in closer to the transformed mek, the smooth curves of her thighs rubbing against his own, and whispered provocatively. "Tell me, Deadlock, would you like to be... compatible with this shell?" She paused, giggled once more. "Again?"
"Again?" Deadlock said. He nodded slowly.
Medusa ran her palm down his cheek. "Then I have given you this form to prove that you care about me. I have given you the vulnerability to test the resolve of that form. And I have given you the pain with which to measure that resolve. Use all of these gifts wisely, Deadlock, and this shell is yours. Use them wisely and Mars herself is yours."
She licked his earlobe with her tongue, slowly, and he felt her solid breath against his neck. "All
you have to do is prove to me. Prove to me that you care about your damsel in distress."
Deadlock paused. "I will do as you say..." he began.
But Medusa was already gone. Almost immediately there was a scream from outside the chamber window. At the same time Deadlock found that he was suddenly clothed in a light set of armour that resembled his own robotic exoskeleton. Another KHAOS symbol was etched proudly in the centre of the breastplate. A sword, not unlike X-Caliber, hung at his side.
Deadlock ran to the window and stared out. He realised that he was inside the keep of some fantastic castle and that directly below was a courtyard. And there, in the centre of the courtyard, Medusa struggled with a group of blue-skinned, armed men. They held Medusa by her arms, pulling her between them, their intentions clear.
So this was what it was, Deadlock thought. Apart from HG Wells, Medusa had obviously taken dramatic licence with another author of classic fantasy fiction - Mr Edgar Rice Burroughs. And against this backdrop she was acting out a drama of invasion, of rape and of violation. It was clear what Medusa's game was: they were both avatars here.
In Tripolis Cathedral, Deadlock had said that he would be her champion, and Medusa had obviously taken his words quite literally. Everything there, the cloak, the tower in which he stood, the crystal ball, they were all echoes of his true existence. She had made him grand wizard of her fantasy court, the guardian of her personal watchtower. It was a blatant analogy for the plight she was suffering as a planet, but one that, if he were to succeed in turning her, in stopping the war, with which he had no choice but to comply. Deadlock summoned an elemental spell and let fly with lightning bolts from his fingertips. Then he leapt out of the window and into the fray.
The four armed-warriors fell before him easily. Medusa summoned a dragon. It too fell before Deadlock's magic and his blade. She summoned a roc. Deadlock cut it from the sky.
"I knew that you were the only one who could save me," Medusa said. "The only one truly worthy."
As if to prove her point, Medusa summoned simulacrums of his fellow ABC Warriors to the courtyard. They were grotesque parodies of their real selves, performing a series of posturing, useless routines meant to display them as the ineffectual machines she thought they were.
Hammerstein stood on the battlements in a marching band uniform, beating his patriotic chest with sticks as if it were a drum; Joe Pineapples fired haphazardly at targets, too preoccupied to hit them because he was dancing along to his personal stereo; Blackblood had been transformed into a pantomime pirate, complete with parrot, who hissed at his enemies and nothing else; and Mek-Quake was reined up as a carthorse, an unintelligent beast of burden. Of all of them, though, Mongrol's simulacrum was the most cutting. Medusa had him running up the circular stairway of a tower, throwing himself from the top to land wrecked at its base where he was rebuilt by Lara, and then to commence the whole cycle again. Deadlock had to admit that he found them all quite amusing.
They did not detract from his challenge, though.
Medusa delivered to him swarm after swarm of enemies, and in turn Deadlock dealt with them all. She kept them coming and he despatched them. In the end, though, he had to admit to himself that he was becoming really quite exhausted.
But he dared not let Medusa know that even though she noticed anyway.
"Is my champion becoming weary?" she taunted. "Would he like a little rest?"
"Your champion remains your champion, lady," Deadlock said.
Medusa smiled. "We'll see, Deadlock," she said. "We'll see."
Medusa clapped her hands and from a doorway across the courtyard a figure appeared and walked towards them. He nodded pleasantly at Deadlock. Deadlock found himself looking at a thin, balding human. He was dressed in the fashions of old Earth - a pair of baggy trousers, shirt, a sleeveless sweater.
"This is my other wizard - Ray," Medusa said. "If you please, Ray."
The balding man shook a clenched fist, as if he were preparing to roll dice. The contents of his fist rattled like bone. Suddenly he opened it, scattering a number of small yellowy-white objects on the ground. He looked as if he were sowing seeds.
But these were not seeds; they looked like teeth.
"Thank you, Ray," Medusa said, and the human vanished as quickly as he had appeared.
Deadlock waited. For a moment, nothing happened. Then suddenly one patch of earth erupted, as though visited by a mole. Another followed it closely. Then another.
All in all, six patches of earth began to push towards the sky. Deadlock looked at Medusa and swallowed. He was unsure whether the dry cracking sound came from his throat or the ground beneath his feet.
From the first mound, a skeletal hand appeared. Again, the other mounds followed suit. A second set of hands appeared clutching rusted swords. They flattened themselves against the ground, pushing hard, forcing the rest of their unnatural bodies from the ground. Soil fell away as they rose, revealing first skulls, then ribcages, the knobbly protrusions of shoulder-bones and pelvis, and finally the whole skeleton. The figures wavered before Deadlock, unmoving but evidently ready to strike.
"The Daughters of Medusa," Medusa said. "Say hello, girls."
Six heads snapped around and six sets of very bared teeth grinned widely at the ABC Warrior.
And Deadlock found himself in the fight of his life.
Sword clanged against sword, bone against blade. The ABC Warrior had no choice but to rely solely on his melee skills, as magic seemed simply not to work.
As the battle went on, Deadlock began to flag; he began to take wounds.
He knew that the wounds could not be real - he was not flesh, after all - but his blood was hot and thick, the waves of dizziness undeniable.
He managed to kill just four of the daughters of Medusa before he dropped. He tried to claw his way along the ground, away from them. Medusa clapped her hands and they were gone. Deadlock looked to her in gratitude. A well appeared next to him.
"Drink," Medusa advised. "Refresh yourself before your next quest."
Next quest? Deadlock thought. No longer caring, he wheeled up the bucket from the well and plunged cupped hands inside, desperate to slake his thirst. He scooped the contents into his mouth but instead of refreshing water the well offered only congealing and rancid biol - lukewarm, thick and cloggy. Deadlock gagged.
"Come along, champion, pick your quest," Medusa taunted him. The bleeding and battered Deadlock slumped down against the well, breathing hard. "Come on, don't be a spoilsport - how much of a challenge do you think you can handle? The Sock of N'Shara? The One Rung?" Medusa giggled and grabbed for the bucket from the well. "I know - how about the Holey Pail?"
Medusa dashed suddenly forward with superhuman speed, grabbing Deadlock about the neck. She hauled him to an upright position, his overheated body slumped against her own, and as Deadlock struggled to breathe, she kissed him full and hard, locking her lips on his and sucking away what little breath he had left. She snapped her head to the side and exhaled it away like smoke from an exotic cigarette, as if she were some film noir femme fatale. Then she clamped herself against his mouth again, this time forcing her breath into him. Deadlock struggled as a noxious gas redolent of infernos and marshrooms flooded his lungs, expanding them but offering nothing in the way of oxygen, nothing in the way of relief.
"No?" she said, flinging his head back hard. Deadlock's face had turned blue, every vein and artery distended. His eyeballs were shot with blood, bulging and ready to burst. His mouth gaped and he wheezed hoarsely, his legs buckling as if he were drunk.
Medusa smiled. "Oh well, time to die."
She gripped Deadlock by the remnants of his armour and lifted him completely from the ground. The defeated ABC Warrior dangled from her grip like a slaughterhouse carcass, lacking the strength even to twitch.
"You disappoint me, Deadlock," Medusa said, sighing, and with a look of disgust and with absolutely no effort at all, she hurled Deadlock aside and watched as his limp body hurtl
ed on a collision course with the tower wall.
"Robots," she hissed dismissively. "What can they know of Gods?"
Moments from certain death, Deadlock struggled to order his thoughts. Mistake, he told himself. Medusa has made a mistake. He knew that in her eagerness to end this she had betrayed herself not once, but twice. The first thing had been the kiss - that kiss had far too much of the planet itself within it. Burning as it had been with its soul of fire and brimstone, Medusa had exposed the turmoil that lay at her inner core and with it the sham that the fantasy really was. Her overwhelming error, though, was to strip him of the illusion that she herself had created, to drop the pretence that he could be ever be anything more - or anything less - than what he actually was.
She had been careless; she had called him by his true name:
Robot.
She had meant the comment to belittle him. Conversely, Deadlock found it empowering. In an instant, the tenuous grip she had held on his cybernetic psyche fell away.
At that same moment, Deadlock rewrote her illusion and recreated it in his own language. As he catapulted through the air, he rolled, beginning to transform. The armour he was wearing simply faded from his battered body and then his flesh itself began to crumble and fall away in a leprous shower. The musculature below changed tone, becoming harder, more metallic, and finally took on the appearance of a different type of armour altogether: Mek armour.
This had not been a fair fight. Not so long as he had been made flesh.
This charade had been rewritten in Deadlock's language, and Deadlock's language had its own alphabet.
It began with the letters ABC.
Deadlock impacted with the tower wall with a sickening crunch. A split-second before he would have been nothing more than a champion-shaped bloodstain on the stonework, but his newly reclaimed body could no longer be stopped by anything so inconsequential. Deadlock's robotic frame buried itself deep into the stonework and continued going, and Deadlock phased, passing through the remaining obstruction without hindrance, appearing momentarily as a ghost-like figure on its opposite side, in a small dark chamber. He phased back in immediately and turned, his fists raised, before delivering a destructive blow to the wall. The stonework crumbled away in a cloud of dust.