MECH

by Tim Marquitz

  Squidface roared again, and this time, the producer was able to order a three second delay and spectrum pass on the live audio feed before he lost another dozen of his staff to the indecipherable howl of cosmic emptiness. Tentacles shot out from Squidface’s geometrically suspect body, wrapping themselves around Big Boy One’s legs and chest.

  Big Boy One waited. Douglas couldn’t begin to imagine how loud it was in the FCCCC at that moment. Everyone shouting and screaming and pleading. Do something! Fight back! Douglas wondered what the Protector General was doing, and he surmised the Protector General knew what he and his mother did. Big Boy One would have just one chance to save the world.

  And when he gave the order, Douglas had no doubt that the Protector General’s voice would be heard over the chaotic cacophony of the command center.

  With a snap, Big Boy One launched his attack, and the Channel One camera zoomed in as the giant robot’s fist slammed forward. The camera focused on the inside of the giant robot’s wrist—where, it turned out, someone had managed to paint a decal. Like nose cone art on the old fighter jets from the last century.

  A donkey, sporting a blue cape with white stars, brayed with wide-mouthed laughter.

  The Channel One feed switched to a more removed camera, a brilliant split second decision on the part of the live producer, and the whole world saw Big Boy One’s enormous fist connect with the tentacled face of the grumpy Old One who had been prematurely awakened. It was an image that would be indelibly burned into the collective mind of the entire world. No one would ever forget seeing Big Boy One’s world-saving punch.

  The subsequent collapse of Squidface, a ragged hole leaking non-Euclidean darkness from the center of its head, was looped and replayed and remixed for weeks afterward.

  Claudia informed Douglas of a seismic shift in his account balances.

  “I’ll take Poeseda’s call now, Claudia,” Douglas said as he switched off the video feed.

  “You bought my country,” Poeseda sputtered. His face was splotched with red and white patches, and he seemed as if he had suffered at least two fatal heart attacks during his plane flight to the Sunset Beach Resort. Fortunately for him, in the last year, all airline stewards on transoceanic flights had been required to become fully rated in both medical and security procedures.

  “Please sit down,” Douglas said, indicating the chair opposite him. He was sitting at the same table he had been at months ago. The same waitress brought a chilled caipirinha to the table without being asked, the sort of attention to detail that Douglas liked to see in upwardly mobile wait staff. He had been considering hiring the woman when Poeseda stomped into the bar. “Have a drink,” he said.

  Mr. Poeseda shook his head. “I prefer to stand.” His hands were clenched at his sides.

  “Suit yourself,” Douglas said. He took a sip from his drink, and regarded Poeseda calmly.

  “You bought—” Poeseda started again.

  “I sold it, too,” Douglas said. “If you want to get right to it.” He shrugged. “Strictly a business transaction,” he said. “What do I know about running an entire country? There are other people who are better at that sort of thing than I.”

  “You planned this,” Poeseda sputtered. “You knew the bio vats would be contaminated. That we would default on the contract.”

  “Hey, I didn’t force you to go waking up an incredibly ancient cosmic being that had been sleeping at the bottom of the ocean for hundreds of millennia,” Douglas countered. “You people did that all on your own.”

  “The terms of the contract were egregious. You knew we would have no other choice.”

  “And you think that monster would have thanked you if it had defeated Big Boy One? ‘Hey, Brazil, thanks for waking me up. When I’m done having this snack, you can have what’s left over.’ Is that what you thought was going to happen?”

  Poeseda opened his mouth to argue some more, but all the air slowly leaked out of him instead. His shoulders slumped and he dejectedly flopped into the seat opposite Douglas. He grabbed at the caipirinha and sucked heavily on the straw.

  “Look on the bright side,” Douglas said. “We’re all part of the same happy family now. Consolidated North America and South America are now AmericaOne. It’s global unification at its finest. And it happened because of you.” He raised his drink to Poeseda. “You’re looking at it all wrong,” he said. “You didn’t ruin your country, you saved it. How many more times could Brazil draw the short straw before it collapsed entirely? This way, you’re part of the team making the robot now. Your kids are going to grow up in a world where their dad is part of the winning team. Serrina will be able to attend a good STEM school. Isn’t that worth something? Isn’t that worth everything?”

  “We’re a nation of slaves now,” Poeseda argued. “Because of you.”

  “We’re all slaves,” Douglas countered. “It’s what HUGE is. That’s what everyone eagerly signed on for.”

  “UGE,” Poeseda corrected. “U-G-E. It stands for United Global Economy. There’s no ‘H’ in it.”

  Douglas shrugged. “Sure, okay. You say ‘unity.’ I say ‘hegemony.’ Whatever. Toe-may-to. Tah-mah-to. It doesn’t really matter.”

  He put his drink down and leaned toward the other man. “What are you going to do, Poeseda? Go public? Who will run the story? We own the media. Hell, the Protectorate High Command is going to fire your president next week, and no one will bother running that story. Who’s going to listen to a disgruntled scientist with a wild-ass story straight out of an old pulp paperback?” He looked around at the bustling activity around one of the dozen pools at the resort. “So, you were manipulated and coerced into a relationship you didn’t want. Wake up and realize how good you have it. You have a job. The global economy is stable—the most stable it’s been in nearly sixty years. The entire planet is onboard with the same goal. Even China is playing ball. Get with the program, Poeseda. You’re a goddamn patriot, is what you are. The world doesn’t need another conspiracy theory whack job whose pride is permanently bent out shape.”

  Poeseda looked up, and there was a vast emptiness lurking in his eyes. “We didn’t make it,” he whispered. “We didn’t make that monster. It was already there.” A slow shudder ran through his frame.

  Douglas sighed. “I know,” he said. “And I’m truly sorry you had to find out. I really am. Most of the world can’t handle the truth, the truth of what’s out there, waiting for us. But you, you can handle it. I know you can. I know you can help us get ready.” He made a fist and raised it for the inspirational salute. “Come on, Poeseda. Donkey punch me. For all of humanity.”

  Poeseda seemed like he might burst into tears, but he managed to raise his fist. “All for one,” he stammered softly.

  “And one for all,” Douglas finished, lightly tapping his fist against Poeseda’s, sealing the deal.

  A dying Berber tribesman, kneeling in a stinking mound of his own intestines and shit, had named him Rabaa. It wasn’t his real name, that was Octavius Quarto, but his fellow legionaries decided it was a better fit.

  Rabaa was four in the Mauretanian tongue.

  Though the effort of speaking pushed his guts out like emerging snakes, the Berber kept repeating Rabaa over and over in disbelief that the man who’d killed him was still standing.

  Octavius shared that disbelief.

  The tribesman’s takoba blade had struck him four times, twice in the chest, once in the thigh, and a lancing thrust to the groin. The last wound had come closest to killing him. A finger breadth south and they’d have met their gods together.

  But Octavius lived, and the tribesman had died.

  His life had ended slowly and painfully, but none of the legion saw fit to hasten his death. He’d killed Optio Lucentus and laid a filthy hand on the eagle of the XIV Gemina.

  Mercy was not for the likes of him.

  That had been nearly two decades ago in the mountains of Mauritania, crushing the rebellious tribes of western Africa in the
armies of Gaius Suetonius Paulinus.

  Octavius spent the next two decades under the eagle, wetting his gladius in the blood of Rome’s enemies. He’d followed Paulinus across the Atlas Mountains, sailed to Hispania and fought in lands once governed by the Divine Julius.

  Illustration by OKSANA DMITRIENKO

  From Hispania, the Legion had gone north into Gaul and sailed galleons across the ocean to the white cliffs of Dubris and the bellicose tribes of Britannia.

  Twenty years of blood and war, years where Paulinus and the men of the XIV had never tasted defeat.

  Until now.

  The fire burned low, its heat dulled by the rain and night mists coming in off the water. A cold wind blew over the narrow strait separating their camp on the mainland and Mona Insulis, the cursed isle of the druids.

  It carried sounds of midnight revelry, mayhem and savagery, of swords hammering shields, of guttural chants and hurled insults. Somewhere within its oak forests, a vast fire burned, and its dark radiance bathed the island in evil light.

  “Fucking Cambria,” said Quintus, “Rain and misery abound.”

  All eight soldiers of the contubernium nodded in agreement. Ever since they’d marched into the west from Deva’s walls, the land of Cambria had fought them as much as the tribal warriors of the Silures and Ordovice. Storms dogged every day of march, together with impenetrable fogs and dense forests that appeared on no maps.

  Octavius saw weariness etched into the faces of his fellow legionaries. They’d fought in countless campaigns, braved interminable hardships in many lands, but this day’s fighting had been the worst they’d known. He felt cold seep into his bones as he kneaded the muscles around his knee. The joint had never been right since a Brigante slinger had cracked a stone against it six years ago outside Eboracum.

  Across the fire, Lucius turned his face to the rocky island where the Ordovice warriors had beaten them back earlier today. His saturnine features were shadowed by gloom and pain. An axe had split his shield and cut his shoulder muscle through the links of his mail.

  “Rain?” he said, shaking his head. “The gods piss on us.”

  “A pox on the gods,” said Tiberius, drinking from a leather wineskin. His hand tremored and wine spilled down his chin. “Where were the gods when the barbarians set their fucking demon upon us?”

  “Watch tongue or see it cut from mouth,” snapped Cato.

  Tiberius glowered, wiping a hand over his face. The skin around his right eye was so swollen it could barely open.

  “Mars himself could not fight such a beast,” said Tiberius, passing the wineskin to Lucius. “What chance did we have?”

  “You insult the war-god and wonder why he denies us victory?” said Cato. “You have the brains of a shit-eating Gaul.”

  The muscles around Tiberius’s mouth tightened, but he said nothing. Cato was a decanus, the leader of this eight-man contubernium. Every soldier here was a veteran, but Cato had marched in the Legions for almost forty years. He’d fought the length and breadth of the empire and slain warriors of every nation. Even General Paulinus knew his name, and Tribune Agricola once said Cato had killed more men than the plague.

  “I put little stock in gods,” said Octavius, raising a hand to stall Cato’s ire, “for they set little stock in me. But when war’s afoot and death breathes down my neck, you won’t find a priest of Mars more devout.”

  “Little stock in you, Rabaa?” laughed Tiberius, his mood mercurial as always. ‘That gladius of yours reaps souls like Jupiter’s thunder. Ever since Mauretania, the lord of the sky, has watched over you.”

  “My brothers watch over me,” said Octavius, extending a hand over the fire and taking the wineskin. “I place trust in your sword arms more than any blade from Heaven.”

  He drank a mouthful of wine. Its taste was sour, but he’d swallowed gallons of bloody, piss-frothed water in the retreat from the druid’s island, so even bad wine was welcome.

  “Tiberius may have the brain of a simpleton,” said Quintus, drawing numerous sage nods from around the fire, “but he speaks true, Octavius. I saw that painted Ordovice with the twin-bladed axe all set to hew you like a sapling when the shaft of a ballista spitted him like a boar.”

  “Some sapling,” said Tiberius. “Rabaa has seen almost as many winters as Cato.”

  “None have known the passing of seasons like Cato,” said Octavius with a wink at the venerable decanus. “For he counts both Romulus and Remus as boyhood comrades in arms.”

  Cato grinned, exposing a mouth of broken teeth.

  “Aye,” he said, “Aeneas himself taught me to wield a blade and, come the morrow, I’ll bury it in the guts of any painted bastard who gets in my way.”

  In the orange light of the fire, it was easy to imagine Cato belonging to a mythic time of savage heroes.

  “Very well, let us speak no more of gods,” said Octavius. “Tonight is for brothers to take strength from one another. We crossed the water to Mona Insulis thinking ourselves invincible, but the Ordovice taught us differently. If god or man pisses on us, then well we deserve it for such arrogance.”

  “It wasn’t the savages that whipped us like curs,” said Lucius. “It was their giant demon.”

  “You have the truth of it,” agreed Octavius. “But we all saw it reel with the shaft of a ballista in its heart. Like as not, it lies dying on yonder island, for if otherwise, why does it not bestride the water to destroy us?”

  No-one had an answer, and he saw the idea of the demon being mortally wounded appealed to their sense of hope.

  He let it bed in some more before saying, “And rumour has it, Ordo Talos marches to us from Camulodunum.”

  That got their attention.

  “Truly?” said Quintus.

  “A messenger rode into camp last night with scrolls for General Paulinus,” said Octavius. “I saw one bearing the seal of a bull’s head, the sigil of Domitus Viridius Maximian.”

  “I saw them once,” said Lucius. “Not long after we first came ashore on this gods-forsaken isle.”

  “Where?”

  “Outside the ruins of Caesaromagus, after the Cantiaci revolt,” said Lucius, his eyes darkening at the memory. “The morning after the march from the coast.”

  “A hard march,” said Octavius, and heads nodded at the memory of the shared hardship.

  “I remember Caesaromgaus,” said Octavius, “Its walls were sundered and the rebels slaughtered, aye, but I do not recall hearing of Ordo Talos being responsible.”

  “Wasn’t even sure what I saw,” said Lucius with a wry shake of the head. “We were exhausted, remember? Barely had we reached the city and dug our ditches and thrown up the earthworks when we fell to our bedrolls. Seemed like I had just laid head to the earth when I woke, feeling the ground shake underfoot like it did throughout the Lydian province four decades ago. I was barely out of swaddling clothes when it happened, but I will never forget that night, like the world was shaking itself apart.”

  “Took half of Asia Minor with it as I recall,” said Cato.

  Lucius nodded. “I thought it was happening again, so I ran to the guard towers to ring the watch bell, but when I got there, the soldiers had already fled.”

  “And you saw them?” asked Tiberius. “Ordo Talos? The shield bearers of the Gods?”

  “Aye,” said Lucius, “Just a glimpse as they marched north towards Trinovante lands, but that was enough. Greater than the tallest siege tower ever built, armored in blood red plate and bearing swords longer than war galleys.”

  “A war-dream or an omen?” said Quintus with a nervous laugh.

  Lucius shook his head. “No, it was real, and the only thing that kept me pissing my sandals was the thought that they fought with us and not against us.”

  “And they will fight with us on the morrow,” said Octivius. “Take heart from that, Lucius.”

  Buoyed by that thought, more wine was produced and talk turned, as it always did when soldiers gathered, to grand plans for a
n imagined time when wars were done; modest dreams of farming, horse-breaking, wives to bed, and sons to raise.

  “And what of you, Octavius?” asked Tiberius. “What path in life will you choose when the time comes to lay down sword?”

  “I do not see such a time ahead,” replied Octavius.

  “Come now, brother,” said Lucius. “Even you must have dreams of peace. The Pax Romana is for all sons of Rome.”

  “Peace?” said Octavius. “What peace? When this island falls, we will still march. When all Britannia is Roman, the Emperor’s gaze will cross the seas in search of new wars to fight. War is the lifeblood of the empire, and Rome its beating heart. I am part of that and will be until I die.”

  “Saturn’s balls, that’s soured the mood,” said Tiberius.

  “Aye, mayhap it has,” replied Octavius, sealing the wineskin and drawing his cloak about his shoulders as a gust of wind sent a flurry of embers spiralling into the night sky. He leaned over the fire and lowered his voice.

  “But I felt the kiss of the Dea Tacita when that Berber cut me all those years ago.”

  “The Silent Goddess,” whispered Lucius.

  “Aye,” said Octavius. “And when that takoba sliced open my thigh, she gave me a glimpse into her realm of the dead.”

  “What did you see?” asked Tiberius.

  “I saw the fate of us all,” said Octavius, warming to his theme and seeing the amusement of his brothers. “Endless porphyry halls of the slain, stretching from the clay men of Prometheus to those yet to face Saturn’s scythe in all the centuries to come.”

  “Did you see tomorrow’s battle?” asked Quintus.

  “I did,” nodded Octavius, playing the role to the hilt.

  “So what does the Silent Goddess have to say about the painted men’s demon?” said Tiberius.

  Octavius grinned. “She says that Ordo Talos will cut its fucking heart out!”

  Blood encrusted Branoc’s tattooed chest. It gummed his long hair stiff and clotted in his armpits, but he wasn’t going to wash it off. Since he didn’t have metal armour, a bloody skin was the next best thing; perhaps even better when the Romans saw him caked in the gore of their brothers.