by Mike Wild
"Do I have to?"
"Move it, Cobb," Mongrol ordered.
The president did as requested, only very hesitantly. It became clear why when he reached the node and began a most extraordinary series of bodily contortions. The problem was that the node had been designed in the days when DAs were sensibly implanted in the temple or near the ear, but requiring as it did direct physical contact, more adventurous modern positioning made things... awkward.
"Where is it?" Mongrol asked wearily.
Cobb pointed.
"Your left buttock?" Mongrol said, flabbergasted. "Aw, frag."
"I already had a tattoo there," Cobb protested. "So I thought..."
Before he had chance to think about it too much, the ABC Warrior thudded over to Cobb, grabbed him by the ankles and tipped him upside down. Turning away, he yanked aside Cobb's trousers and jammed him on the node.
"Ow," Cobb said.
"Stop whingeing and tell me when you're done."
There was a second's pause. Cobb coughed quietly.
"You - er - won't tell anyone about this, will you?"
"No. Oh, definitely not. No... Definitely. Not."
"Good."
Thankfully, the uploading process did not take long.
"Upload complete, Mister President," the voice said. "Access to gee-oh-dee-dee funicular rail launcher is now authorised. Please proceed to the departure pod."
Funicular rail launcher, Mongrol thought. Departure pod?
There was a hiss from the centre of the room. A set of perfectly disguised panels slid open in the floor.
Below them was a small passenger transporter sitting on an underground rail track.
"Three seats," a voice said. Nancy Cobb had wandered in from outside. "Looks as if I'm coming along for the ride."
The three of them took their seats. On a HUD in front of President Cobb was displayed a schematic of a track that stretched kilometres from the launch station, up into the Olympian Heights and beyond, climbing finally up a peak that by far dwarfed them all.
"That's Olympus Mons," Mongrol said. "The weapon is up Olympus Mons?"
"In a manner of speaking," Cobb said.
The capsule rotated slowly on a turntable with a great clanking and clacking of gears until it was pointing into a tunnel that stretched into the distance.
"Clanking and clacking?" Mongrol said. "This ancient piece of junk is gonna take forever. I could run up the side of the mountain before this thing gets into gear."
Cobb looked at him while flicking switches. "I can't tell you how it works, Mister Robot," he said, "but I most certainly know that it does. And believe me - this is not your normal theme-park ride." He cocked his head to the side, retrieving more data from his Arch Angel. "What we have here is a slingshot shuttle, one of a kind, fitted with G-force suppressants and designed for hyper-rapid deployment. This baby moves because the cabling's made of prehensile superstring or some such." Cobb hesitated. "Hell, no, that can't be right - gonna have to look that one up again." His finger hesitated over the last of the banks of switches.
"Whatever, I'd hang onto your hard-drive if I were you, son."
Cobb flicked a switch and an automated audio countdown began. It spoke in a deep rumbling American accent and a resonating chord followed each digit of the countdown. Whoever it was that had chosen this particular program had obviously possessed a flair for the dramatic.
"Five..."
"Four..."
"Three..."
"Two..."
"ONE."
The slingshot shuttle's engines fired with an almighty roar.
The voice said: "THUNDERCHILD IS GO!"
What felt like a small nuclear explosion detonated in the small of Mongrol's back. Behind him, Nancy Cobb grunted like a stuck pig and was slammed back into her seat, unable to speak, unable even to breathe. She lost consciousness.
"About fraggin' time that happened," Mongrol commented, before even he felt like blacking out. But before he had a chance to do that, Thunderchild was in space.
And ahead of the shuttle was a space station.
Cobb seemed to have remained remarkably alert. This was probably because G-force suppressants were intensified in the case of the pilot. He manoeuvred the shuttle towards a docking bay, as if he had been doing it all his life. The craft nestled into a niche made for it and anchoring bolts slammed into place.
Cobb undid his seatbelt and disembarked. Mongrol did the same. An extremely groggy Nancy Cobb followed. But Mongrol noticed that her eyes soon started to absorb her surroundings hungrily. She wandered off.
"Welcome to GODD," Cobb said. "Geological Off-world Destabilising Disseminator. A solar channelling station designed to provide terraforming assistance through the use of low-level solar beams."
"This is the ultimate weapon?" Mongrol observed. "It's a glorified landscape gardener." The ABC Warrior slammed his hand onto a support beam. "Mek-Quake would love it."
"I said it was a solar channelling station," Cobb pointed out. He was enjoying having the upper hand, even if it was artificially generated. "GODD was appropriated by the military two thousand years ago, just before you and the other ABC Warriors came to Mars. Their justification was that the Garganteks were sufficient to finish the terraforming operations."
"Shift a mountain range here..." Mongrol interjected.
"Something like that, yes. The point is that the military refined GODD for a far more singular purpose. And that purpose was to preclude planetary insurrection. All of the solar collectors were redesigned so that they could concentrate an intense beam, targetable anywhere - biol, targetable everywhere - on the planet's surface. It was rather neatly summed up by its new acronym."
"Which was?"
"Genocide Ordnance Deployment Device."
"The military were going to exterminate the colonists?" Mongrol said, aghast.
"Exactly that. You know as well as I that at that time Mars was a complete mess. They were going to eliminate that mess and simply start over. But then someone stepped in and provided an alternative solution."
"Colonel Lash," Mongrol realised.
Cobb nodded. "And the ABC Warriors were the solution."
"You said that they were going to start over? How was that exactly?"
"Clones," Cobb said. "GODD also stores the DNA of all the original Martian colonists. Even those who applied but never came."
"A complete DNA bank?" Mongrol said, amazed.
"Oh yes," Nancy Cobb said. She stood in the doorway and held a vial in her hand. "A DNA bank - complete, I might add, with memory integration cloning tanks - stored right here on GODD itself. And one of the deposits will, I think, interest you very much indeed - Mister Robot."
"What are you talking about?"
"A certain battlecomber? Called Lara?"
Lara, Mongrol thought. No, it was impossible. And yet the time would have been right; Colonel Lash might somehow have...
He stared at the vial and felt that he was looking at the essence of his beloved's soul. Was it possible?
Suddenly all of Mongrol's recently reacquired intellect evaporated to nothing. All that he could hear was his own voice screaming the name he had always used to scream: "LARA! LAAAAAAAAARA!"
"Catch her if you can, Mister Robot," Nancy Cobb said, and threw the vial along the corridor behind her.
"No," Mongrol cried, and pounded after it desperately, throwing himself into the air to catch the tumbling glass. He did so, but too late he realised his mistake.
This was not a corridor; behind him he heard voices.
"Nancy, what the frag are you doing?"
"We don't need this mek, George. We have all the power here that we'll ever need."
"But the tripods-"
"Oh, don't you worry, we'll take care of the tripods, my dear. And then you and I are going to have a serious talk."
"But Nan-"
The voices were abruptly silenced as the airlock sealed behind Mongrol and an emergency purge emptied it to
the vacuum of space.
Blasted out with the expunged air, Mongrol and the vial he held onto for dear life tumbled inexorably towards the sun.
TWENTY-ONE
Medusa invited the ABC Warriors to a funeral.
Deadlock's funeral.
She had understood the true extent of the powers that were at her disposal - namely that she could strip her world of its human infestation at any time she wished, even at her merest whim. Medusa reckoned that the mechanical warriors and their mission to "increase the peace" were the only remaining thorn in her side.
She could not leave them alone to keep on busybodying. If she left them alone they would continue to interfere. And she wanted them out of her way.
So the invitations were sent.
Medusa spread her consciousness across the surface of Mars, seeking the warriors out wherever their travels had taken them and instilling in their super computer brains a command imperative that purported to come from Deadlock himself. Deadlock was, of course, in no position to send any such imperative.
It came from Medusa alone, the executor of his estate. Deadlock, Medusa thought with a smile. Never has there been such an appropriate name. Dead. Lock. On second thoughts, forget the "lock" bit. That's redundant.
The point was that the command imperative that she had sent on Deadlock's behalf was an Omega Alert, an ABC Warrior's SOS. It was sent to Viking City. To Marineris City. To the Olympian Heights -- an invitation to respond.
RSVP, ABC Warriors, Medusa thought.
Réspondez s'il vous plaît. Or, as she preferred, Robots... Suffering... Violent... Pain.
Medusa watched as the invitations were received. And waited. And the poor unsuspecting fools came.
Hammerstein was the first arrive, appearing through the sandstorm that Medusa had whipped up to conceal her true intentions until the time was right, battering his way through the wind.
That Hammerstein was here at all was a surprise; Medusa had thought him dead at the hands of her faithful warrior Steelhorn. That he had company was an even greater surprise, especially as the company seemed to be one of her very own tripods. In high heels, swearing and drinking Wooze.
Medusa hissed to herself. Had they no respect, these people?
Joe Pineapples was second, emerging rather unexpectedly from a nearby sand river inside what seemed to be a huge armoured fish, which was the cybo-whale.
An armoured fish? Where the frag do they find these things? Medusa asked herself with amazement. A woman was with the assassin. She seemed to be mostly unclothed but had been draped in a red Republican flag. She appeared weak, drawn but looked strangely familiar.
Her postman? Nope, didn't have one.
Hairdresser? Nope, didn't have one of those either.
Personal masseuse? Had to make a note of that one.
Medusa became quite weak at the knees - or would have done had she possessed any - when she realised she was looking at that film star woman... Juanita Perez.
The Music Box - it had been one of her favourite films!
Not to mention The Lament Configuration, which was like The Music Box, only more painful.
And that was after all the ones with World War II in them, of course.
She reminded herself to ask for an autograph and an interview for MitBits, obviously. Before she killed her, that was.
Third to arrive was the lumbering bulldozer that called itself Mek-Quake. Mek-Quake, for biol's sake. How that ludicrously named thing possessed even the intelligence to put one tank-track in front of the other, she'd never know.
It, too, had brought a friend.
Oh, that was disgusting: they were holding hands... Now who would be stupid enough to...? Medusa recognised Two-Ton Carmen.
Oh Gaia, no, she thought. Not Two-Ton Carmen. She'd had enough of that particular freak when she had bought into the Invention Exchange.
Medusa muttered to herself: "I hear just one coo-ee, or yoo-hoo, out here on the battlefield... Oops. Shouldn't mention battlefield yet. That's a surprise."
Returning to her thoughts, Medusa made a mental note to give the janitor-or-whatever-the hell-it-was-robot a daily upgrade along with her moronic mate. An upgrade to the pearly gates.
Hold on. Do I - Mars - have pearly gates, Medusa thought? If not, have to invent them. They'll be needed after today.
The last of the group to arrive was Blackblood, a robot who for some reason always reminded her of Rolf Harris - whoever he was. Maybe it was something to do with the leg.
Medusa thought that maybe she might actually quite like Blackblood.
He was hostile, slimy, treacherous and evil. All the qualities she had come to admire in a man, even if the man was a robot. But, alas, she would still have to kill him. Soon...
For the meantime, there they all were. All in all, it was quite a reunion.
Only two of the ABC Warriors were missing. The one called Mongrol. Medusa had no idea where he was. He had not responded to her summons. And, of course, the one called Deadlock.
Ah, Deadlock. Medusa knew exactly where Deadlock was. She thought she might show the others. Oh, she was so going to enjoy this...
Medusa willed a change in the weather, and very slowly the sandstorm began to clear. Not that the ABC Warriors and their friends noticed at first. After all, they had a lot to catch up on.
"Good to have you back, Hammerstein," Joe was saying.
"Hur... yeah."
"I wouldn't be here at all if it wasn't for Maggie," Hammerstein said.
"The tripod?" Blackblood asked.
"Hey, I'm not a tripod, biolhead!"
"Looks that way to me." Blackblood hissed. He let his gaze wander up and down her tripod body. "Nice pins, by the way."
"Thanks. Wish I could say the same for yours."
"You not tripod?" Mek-Quake asked.
"No, Mek-Quake," Maggie said. "The tripod is just, er, well, my house."
"He's thick," Blackblood pointed out. "Not three years old."
"Oh, sorry."
"It's her house for the time being only." Hammerstein thought he had better make it clear.
"Until I regenerate," Maggie said, nodding.
She looked at Hammerstein and seemed to smile. The ABC Warrior harrumphed loudly. Even Mek-Quake was intrigued by the way Hammerstein and Maggie looked at each other.
"Hammerstein got girlfriend now?"
Hammerstein glared at the killdozer.
"Oh look," Maggie said. "You've embarrassed him now."
"Sorry, Ms."
"Miss, that's miss, okay. This whole Ms business makes it sound as if I'm not interested in marriage and, I gotta tell you, after what happened to me..."
Hammerstein stared at her. Didn't that used to be the other way round? Was this something to do with him?
"The prison was made of mushrooms?" Juanita asked with some disbelief.
"Hur... mushrooms, yeah."
"Marshrooms, my sweet," Two-Ton Carmen corrected.
"Doh. Mek-Quake sorry, Carmen. Coo-eee."
"Coo-eee, my humungous hunk."
"So... Carmen, is it?" Joe said.
"Two-Ton Carmen."
"Sorry," Joe said. "So, Two-Ton Carmen, you're a janitor, right?"
She took a sharp intake of breath. "YOU ARE VERY RUDE ROBOT!"
"Carmen is janitorial, defence and distribution droid," Mek-Quake said remarkably accurately. "A photo-type."
"Nice of you to say so, dear."
"Hur."
"Mongrol actually found GODD?" Blackblood asked.
"GODD?" Hammerstein said.
"Long story, fearless leader," Joe interjected. He thought mailed the whole, sorry affair.
"Ah," Hammerstein said. "Do you trust Cobb?"
"Cobb, maybe. It's the missus that worries me," Blackblood said.
"Anyway," Joe continued, "he didn't so much find as go to see. Trouble is, no one knows what GODD is. Can't be sure of anything as no one's heard from Mongrol since."
"Anyone try to '
comm him?"
"Out of range."
"Oh, he's Mongrol - he'll be fine. Don't forget, the guy used to jump out of aircraft for a living. Now what could be worse than that?"
And so it went on. At last someone asked the pertinent question and at just the right time.
"Deadlock sent the Omega Code. So where is he?"
"Mek-Quake not know," Mek-Quake answered. "But someone build statue of Deadlock over there."
"Yeah thanks, Mek-Quake," Joe said. "But we're not that interested in a Deadlock statue right now-"
He paused, as did the rest of the assembled group.
Statue, the ABC Warriors thought.
"Frag."
"Biol."
"Unscrew me."
They had turned and looked where Mek-Quake was looking.
Just a few yards distant, only then revealed by the carefully shifted sand of Medusa, Deadlock stared at them from his grave.
Well, not so much grave, exactly, as memorial.
And done in very fine taste it was, too. The ABC Warriors and their assorted friends moved over to the construction, hardly believing what it was that they were seeing.
A life-sized statue of the ABC Warrior stood there in the middle of the swirling sand, a smooth representation of Deadlock sculpted from metal and complete with iron cloak. It stared sightlessly - it could do nothing else because the statue's eyes were simply shapes in the face - down at a companion piece that was constructed in front of it. This was his Ace of Swords, embedded firmly in a boulder-sized chunk of rock.
The way it was positioned it seemed to be challenging the statue to pull it out. Naturally, it was just out of the statue's reach. It was like looking at King Arthur's Excalibur, except that the rock containing Excalibur hadn't had a plaque on it, as far as anyone knew, anyway.
Deadlock's plaque read: RUST IN PIECES.
"Biol," Joe said. "Do you think it's really him?"
Hammerstein ran a complete spectroscopic and analytic scan of the construction. Mass, weight, displacement and density - all matched Deadlock's profile perfectly. Hammerstein nodded.
Joe whistled.
There was another way that they could tell it was Deadlock. It was the fact that his transponder - normally buried deep within an ABC Warrior - was visibly merged into the front of his chest.