by Paul Stewart
There is another explosion. And another. A whole series of blasts deep below the ground. The gunkballs that Ellis set in the zoid production lines are going off.
I look back.
The first dome is in ruins. Black smoke from the underground production lines is billowing from the second dome. Exit hatches have burst open and a stream of workzoids – blackened, limbs blown off, sensors flashing – are pouring out. They stumble. They totter. They go in circles, colliding with the killer zoids, who are attempting to regroup.
I realize that without the monstrous death zoid that Ellis destroyed, they lack a central brain to tell them what to do. But it won’t last long. Already, engineer zoids on thin tripod legs are moving among the ranks of the killer zoids, their memory banks glowing red within their chests as they download commands.
Sector 17 is damaged. But these zoids are already adapting. We’ve got to get out of here fast . . .
Hand over hand, Zabe gathers speed as he swings along the cable, over the confused scrum of zoids and on across the fields of zoid parts. When we arrive at the perimeter force field, the Inposters, together with all but two of the scavengers, have made their way through the hole. Garvey and Muldoon are surrounded by the troop of cyclops. The two scavengers greet us as Zabe drops down from the cable.
‘Ellis?’ says Garvey.
I shake my head. Behind me, Zabe lets out a soft, mournful cry. He seems to understand what has happened.
Muldoon and Garvey exchange glances.
‘Join the others,’ says Garvey. ‘Your zoid must get everyone back to the Fulcrum by any route possible.
Can it do that?’ he asks.
‘She!’ I snap. ‘Her name is Belle.’
Garvey frowns. ‘Whatever,’ he says. ‘Just get a move on.’
Belle steps forward, seemingly unaware of our disagreement. She nods. ‘I have the schematics in my memory banks.’
Muldoon shakes his head. ‘Who’d have thought it? A zoid leading humans to safety.’ He smiles. ‘Thank you, Belle.’
‘Go,’ says Garvey urgently. ‘We’ll buy you as much time as we can—’
‘You’d do that for us?’ I say.
‘It’s what Ellis would have wanted.’
I turn and follow Belle through the hole in the force field. Zabe stays behind. He looks lost and bewildered without his master.
A small body stirs, warm against my chest. Caliph, loyal and trusting, is still curled up in the inside pocket of my flakcoat. I reach inside and stroke his small furry head. I look up and see Dek, Lina and the rest of the Inposters staring back at me. They are pale, tired, ill – and waiting for me to tell them what to do next.
Without Bronx, it seems that they see me as their leader.
Alongside them, the rest of the scavengers from the Fulcrum have powered up their weapons, reset their scanners and recon-sights and are ready to move. They’re looking at me too. I look at Belle.
‘Get us out of here,’ I say.
We set off through the sump reserves. Belle leads the way, running at a pace that tests the weaker members of our group. The scavengers fall back. They help the slower ones and cover our backs as we weave in and out between the circular tanks of black oil.
We haven’t gone far when I have to call out for Belle to slow down.
We’re getting strung out and risk losing contact with each other. Belle ducks down behind a tank. I join her. As Inposters gather around us, panting and blowing, I see Lina.
She’s looking at Belle with a mixture of fascination and awe. Beside her, Dek is struggling. His face is grey and he’s gasping to catch his breath.
Laser fire breaks out behind us, vivid flashes of white and yellow and orange, followed by the crack of explosions. I stare back at the perimeter. The cyclops are swinging along the conveyor cables, speeding away from us across the fields of zoid parts.
The killer zoids are in pursuit. And as I watch they pick off cyclops after cyclops – but not before some of the creatures have dropped down onto their pursuers and attacked them with their long curved claws. Zoids topple to the ground as the claws slash through cables, severing limbs and head units. They crash into the neat rows of zoid parts, scattering them in all directions.
But the killer zoids keep coming. More and more of them.
Garvey and Muldoon are doing their best to lure the zoids away from us, raining down a devastating fire of grenades and gunkballs and laser blasts on their pursuers. They’re doing a good job. But not good enough. A phalanx of killer zoids breaks off the chase. They turn back towards the perimeter and head this way.
‘We’ve got to keep moving!’ I tell the others as I get to my feet.
We set off at a run again. Belle is up front, leading us towards the grid-plate sector in the distance. The scavengers form a firing line behind us, using the sump tanks as cover. Peering through their recon-sights, they take aim.
The force field barely flickers as, along its length, killer zoids pass through the perimeter and advance towards us. As they approach, the scavengers release a hail of laser fire. It strikes the zoids. Splinters of light fly off in all directions as the laser bolts are deflected by the killer zoids’ urilium armour-plating.
The killer zoids open fire and sump tanks explode into burning torches. They’re directing their fire over our heads, hitting tanks ahead of us, to the sides and behind, until we’re trapped inside a ring of fire.
The heat is intense, forcing the Inposters and scavengers to huddle together in a group. I look at Belle. Her face is impassive. I know that she could leap high over the burning tanks and make her escape, but she doesn’t. She stays with us.
Lina and Dek look at me.
‘What are we going to do, York?’ Lina sobs.
This isn’t like the raid on the Inpost. The killer zoids are taking no prisoners. Not now. Their zoid leader is dead and with it whatever warped plan it was up to. Now the zoids are back to their primary directive. To exterminate the human race.
Us.
In the distance, the firing in Sector 17 abruptly stops. It can only mean one thing . . .
Muldoon, Garvey and the brave cyclops have bought us all the time they could. I only wish that we had made more use of it. But at least we can die as bravely as they did.
More killer zoids are streaming out of Sector 17 to join the ones in front of us. Their weapon systems whine as they lock on.
It’s all over.
Then I see a flash of white. A wing tip, broad and fine-boned, darts across my vision. I glimpse a head-ridge, a glowing snout . . .
Huge winged critters are swooping down through the air. Glimmermouths. Hundreds of them. They dip low, gathering Inposters and scavengers in their claws and soaring back into the air.
A heavy pall of smoke from the burning sump tanks is blowing across the front ranks of the killer zoids like a curtain. It shields us from their visual units, and the blazing tanks mask us from their heat sensors.
A glimmermouth grasps my shoulders and I feel myself being lifted off the ground. I look up. There’s a scar at the top of the left leg. It’s my glimmermouth. It’s come back to rescue me and, judging by the look of things, it has brought the entire flock with it.
It allows me to pull myself up onto its back and we fly up through the blanket of dense smoke, high above the hanging hull lights and into the shadows of the hull structure. Far below, I hear the killer zoids blindly raining a hailstorm of laser fire onto the sump tanks we have just left.
As we weave in and out of massive hull struts I see the landscape of the Biosphere laid out below me. The grid plates. The pylon forests. The dead havens . . . My world: rusted, overgrown, infested with life that clings to toeholds wherever it can. I’m beginning to realize just how we humans must appear to the zoids – an infestation of parasites in their robot-built world . . .
I look across and see Belle, Lina, Dek and the others held in the claws of slowly flapping glimmermouths. Are they thinking the same as I am? The scave
ngers I see nod back at me, clearly impressed by the control I seem to have over my glimmermouth as it leads the flock. At the Fulcrum they understand cooperation between humans and critters. With my hands gripping its shoulders, I gently guide the glimmermouth around flux-columns and on through lines of generator towers until I see the dark outline of the convection lakes coming into view. High above them, through the tangle of the tube-forest, I spot the unmistakable pod-clusters of the Fulcrum nestling against the hull structure.
The scavengers see it too, and a cheer goes up, taken up by the Inposters.
Responding to my touch, the glimmermouth swoops down and lands on a broad platform between two of the pods. As the others come in to land, the cyclops in the surrounding nests start up an excited chorus of whoops and cries that bring men, women and children streaming out onto the gantries and viewing platforms all around the Fulcrum to see what’s happening.
They soon see that not everyone has returned, and the excitement is mixed with sadness. Wives embrace their husbands. Children cluster round their parents. The scavengers talk of our extraordinary escape and the bravery of Ellis and the other fallen scavengers. I hear my name being repeated over and over in breathless conversations between the scavengers and their loved ones. And I hear Belle’s name.
‘. . . Belle disabled the force field. Downloaded the schematics of the entire sector . . .’
‘We’d never have got into the place, let alone got out again, without Belle . . .’
‘Belle protected us humans from her own kind.’
The survivors from the Inpost look dazed but relieved. Lev, Spalding, Tara, Delaware, Fitch, and all the other familiar faces . . . I see them looking wonderingly at the pods, the viewing platforms and the nests of the cyclops tucked between. This settlement is so different from our underground home – a home we know we can never return to. Not now the killer zoids have discovered it. It’s no longer safe.
The inhabitants of the Fulcrum welcome the Inposters, help the injured and sick to their infirmary and guide the rest to the refectory in the central pod. Lina goes with Dek, who looks about to collapse. A Fulcrum nurse gently reassures them both as they disappear inside. Belle and I watch them go.
On the pod roofs and gantries all around us, the glimmermouths flex their wings and hoot softly to one another. I turn to my glimmermouth and pat its head.
‘Thank you,’ I say.
The glimmermouth’s red eyes fix on mine and its snout glows. I don’t know where these strange creatures have come from, or how they’ve evolved, but I’m glad we humans share our world with them. Unlike the zoids.
Suddenly the whole flock of glimmermouths takes to the air with hardly a sound – just the soft rustling of the slowly beating wings and their strange haunting calls. My glimmermouth leads them as they wheel in the air and disappear into the depths of the tube-forest.
Everyone else has gone inside the Fulcrum. Belle and I are alone. Then I feel her hand on my arm and look up to see Jayda standing in the doorway. She is staring intently at Belle, then looks at me. Her critter, Gimbel, is sitting on her shoulder, its eight eyes blinking back at us.
‘They told me what happened to Ellis,’ she says quietly. ‘And Garvey and Muldoon.’
‘They died bravely,’ I say.
Jayda nods. ‘They will be missed. But great damage has been done to the zoid cause, York, and your people have been rescued. You and they are welcome to stay here with us . . .’ Jayda hesitates, swallows hard then turns her gaze back to Belle. She takes a step forward and reaches out a hand to her. ‘As are you,’ she says.
The Fulcrum is quiet. The central pod has emptied and only Lina and I remain, sitting at one of the refectory tables. Even Caliph is somewhere else, off exploring the nooks and crannies of his new home.
I haven’t seen Belle since supper, when she was surrounded by grateful Fulcrum people, who kept pushing food at her that she could not eat. She must be recharging somewhere and I realize that I’m thinking about this zoid girl when a human girl is sitting right in front of me, holding my hand and staring into my eyes.
‘This place is wonderful, York,’ she’s saying. ‘Those critters of theirs! And the food! I even love being up here in the hull structure, so high above it all . . .’
I smile and feel a pang as I remember the Inpost. And Bronx. I was happy there, and I miss him.
‘We can make a new life here,’ says Lina, squeezing my hand. ‘Can’t we, York? . . . York? You haven’t heard a word I’ve said, have you?’ She smiles.
‘I’m sorry, Lina,’ I say. ‘It’s just that there’s so much to take in – and so much has happened since the zoid attack on the Inpost . . .’
‘Please, York, I don’t want to think about it,’ she says, tears welling up. ‘That terrible place. My grandpa . . . Can’t we just be happy here? Now? Together – you and me?’
She pauses. Looks past me, then wipes her eyes. ‘Of course, if you’d rather be with that,’ she says.
I turn. Belle has entered the refectory pod. She’s standing over by the black mind-tomb.
It is not working. The Half-Life within it faded away completely while we were in Sector 17. The people of the Fulcrum don’t mention it. According to Jayda the mood was downcast and sombre, with everyone mourning the loss of their Half-Life, even though it hadn’t spoken for years. But all that has changed now we’re back.
The atmosphere is joyful, full of celebration – despite the deaths of Ellis and the others. They died for the common good. What’s more, their sacrifice will not be in vain. Everyone senses that, with the addition of the Inposters, this is a new beginning for the Fulcrum.
‘Belle,’ I tell Lina softly. I can’t be angry. ‘Her name is Belle.’
Lina frowns. ‘Listen to yourself, York. It’s a machine. A zoid . . .’ She looks down at the tabletop to avoid eye contact with Belle. ‘And you saw what the zoids did to us,’ she whispers. ‘To my grandpa. To Bronx . . .’
At the sound of Bronx’s name Belle steps forward. ‘York,’ she says. ‘There’s something I must show you . . .’
I’m about to get to my feet when Lina beats me to it. She jumps up and bangs her fist on the table. ‘Go to your zoid, York!’ she says bitterly. ‘See if I care!’
And she storms out.
Belle is looking at me quizzically. ‘Why has your face gone red?’ she asks me.
I ignore her, and feel my face redden even more. ‘What did you want to show me?’ I say.
Belle turns to the mind-tomb and presses a hand to its smooth black surface. And as I watch, her synth-skin glows and pulses of energy ripple down her arm and into it.
She’s downloading from her memory banks.
When she’s finished, she steps back and turns to me. ‘I retrieved this from the zoid leader,’ Belle says. ‘Before Ellis destroyed it . . .’
‘York? York, is that you?’
I stare past Belle at the data-tower. It has become a mind-tomb. Glowing beneath its surface is a face.
Bronx’s face.
‘Where am I? What happened?’ the glowing face says. ‘The last thing I remember is being dragged off by the zoids and dunked in a great vat of plasma gel . . .’
‘Bronx!’ I say, rushing up to the mind-tomb and bringing my face close to its surface. ‘We tried to save you. But we were too late. Your consciousness was uploaded.’
‘You mean . . . that’s what that was? I thought it was a dream. A nightmare. The screaming voices, the tortured thoughts . . .’
Bronx’s face glows beneath the surface, his expression a mixture of shock and astonishment as he grapples to understand what has happened to him. He’s a bio-tech expert – the best the Inpost had ever known – and it doesn’t take him long. ‘I’ve become a Half-Life,’ he breathes.
I nod, my feelings a mixture of sadness and joy.
‘What a strange sensation it is,’ Bronx is saying. ‘Almost like floating. I feel perfectly fine – and yet I have no sense of my body . . .’<
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‘Your body died, Bronx,’ I say. ‘I tried to revive you. Did everything I could. But I couldn’t bring you back.’ I pause. I look at Belle, then back at Bronx, the Half-Life. ‘But Belle did . . .’
‘Belle?’ says Bronx. His eyes focus on the girl standing beside me.
‘Belle is a zoid,’ I tell him. ‘She was created by a tech-doc like you. His name was Dale. But she isn’t like the zoids we know, Bronx, the ones we scavenged in the tube-forests around the Inpost. Belle’s different. She isn’t controlled like they are. Dale engineered her to learn and understand emotions, and to make decisions for herself.’
‘A zoid with free will?’ Bronx sounds incredulous. ‘But that means this zoid is almost . . .’
‘. . . human,’ I say.
I reach out and take Belle by the hand. But Bronx doesn’t seem to be listening. His eyes have closed and he appears to be concentrating. I wait. When he finally opens his eyes again and speaks, he sounds calm and measured. There’s a new sense of purpose in his voice.
‘I’ve just been communicating with someone who says he’s a friend of yours, York,’ he says. ‘Atherton. From the viewing deck. He’s promised to help me adjust to being a Half-Life. He says the life of the mind takes some getting used to, but with his help he’s sure that I’ll be able to use my tech-knowledge to guide and advise the people here at . . . at . . . What’s this place called?’
‘The Fulcrum,’ I tell him.
‘That’s it, the Fulcrum,’ he says, nodding. ‘Oh, and York,’ he says, ‘Atherton said to remind you of your promise. What did he mean?’
‘Atherton believes that the cause of the zoid rebellion lies deeper inside the Biosphere, below this level. I promised him that once I’d rescued you and the others, that I would do everything I could to find the answer. But I’m not sure where to start . . .’