‘Send in the cleaners,’ Eliott said.
The bots were in full retreat now. Shots rang out from around Eliott, cutting the the little creatures down as they rank. Two vanished from sight, reappearing around halfway up the mountain of trash, clambering up at speed. Mason sighted and fired. One exploded, struck in the gut. The other tumbled out of sight.
‘We’re supposed to bring those back,’ said Eliott. Penhaligon’s instructions had been clear: salvage as much as possible.
‘One or two missing won’t matter, sir!’
Eliott looked over at him. At some point, the cub would have to be taught some manners. Once upon a time, he would have had Mason whipped for insubordination. You couldn’t run a fighting force with men who disobeyed orders.
But the battle-sharpness showed him Mason: young, afraid, high on the thrill of pumping bullet after bullet into bodies, half-deaf from the ringing of the assault rifle in his hands, and shaking slightly from what must have been his first real battle.
‘When we get back,’ he said. ‘I want whoever was in charge of camp prep debriefed. Preferrably deboned.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Find out how the hell we had our arses kicked before we’d set up.’
‘Yes, sir.’
And Eliott thought, well, at least the kid’s learning, and clapped the Inquisitor on the shoulder.
That night, Mahasen Wijeratne, who everyone called Mason, crouched over a campfire. Three men sat before him.
‘You were supposed to shoot him,’ said Mahasen. The copper strips on his face glimmered malevolently with the fire. ‘Why didn’t you?’
They made excuses. They always did. Too many people around, sir. I fired, but couldn’t get a clear shot, sir. How Ceylonese it was, to make excuses. Mahasen fumed. The carefully set up ambush – the scouts sent ahead to lure in the bots, the general lack of cover around Grimme – all for nothing.
‘Useless, all bloody useless,’ he fumed. ‘The three of you are going back to Gampaha. I’m going to tell him you’re the ones to blame for the mess. You’ve misplaced half our supplies and at least five vehicles, you understand? And I’m sending you to Gampaha to fix things. Understand? Bloody well be glad that you’re getting off lightly.’
They didn’t argue.
‘Are you still going to . . . kill him, sir?’ one ventured.
Mahasen had thought about it. The original plan had been simple: slowly bleed out half the war effort send down here to Colombo; take the people and equipment, stash them over in the LKRF-run villages just beyond Gampaha. One soldier less was one soldier less for Kandy. The part about shooting Eliott Grimme had been Mahasen’s personal touch.
‘No,’ he decided. He had seen how Grimme moved on the battlefield, how quickly and efficiently he set up the lines, how he turned idle sloths into a war machine and a road into a killbox. ‘I still have things to learn from him.’
THREE
Broken Arm held her position on the mountain. Whether it was a mountain was up for debate. Those in Kandy, who saw it up close every year, would have said that it was layers and layers of trash compressed under its own weight, held upright by the skeleton of the building it pushed up against. To Broken Arm, who had seen no other mountains but this one and did not understand trash in the slightest, it was a mountain.
From there, she had the perfect view of Colombo. Directly ahead, and down from where the mountain ended, was a bridge that ran over a fetid, crawling lake; on the other side it became a road that, one the right, gave way to the bleached bone-white hulk of the train station. On the left it split off into innumerable roadlets that snaked and cut crossways through miles of rubble and collapsed buildings.
At first it had been very easy to ambush the Big People from this side; these little back roads stretched out for miles, and the maze of brick and concrete in between was perfect cover some things their size. But the enemy had changed position in the night. Loud explosions had blown away the rubble closest to them, and they climbed now to few tall buildings that still stood; while on the ground they advanced under cover in fast teams, setting up barriers before rushing in to fill a space.
Her scouts had marked out a whole line of them stretching all the way through the back roads of Colombo. In many places they were impossible to fight, they reported; they stood there, blasting away with their thunder-sticks and whatever dread engines they had that blew bots and buildings into so much fine dust. Whenever the lot here advanced, the rest of the line did, too.
A line. A net. A trap. She had drawn them on the ground, trying to make the tribe understand. They were being encircled, slowly, steadily.
Behind her, the sea and the Port City, and the skeletons of buildings that had once been hotels and apartment buildings and office towers. The red sun moved into the sea, turning it bloody.
A hand moved in the trash. ‘Down,’ she whispered, and the hand stilled. She kicked a bit of garbage over it.
Sky rustled next to her. He was impatient.
‘Down,’ she hissed again, making her way over to Fast. Fast could run better than anyone else. She gave Fast one of their few precious fuel cakes.
‘Go to the Cinnamon,’ she said. ‘Give them this. Tell them Big People close, careful, watch rooftops.’
She went to Seawater, and repeated the message. This time to the Galle Face Girls.
Fast came back with bad news. The Sons of Cinnamon – the few who could still stand – had broken out last moon. Those left behind believed their brothers and sisters had escaped the net under the cover of night. They repeated this over and over again, their memories failing from the lack of fuel; repeat, smile, black out, reboot. The few who could stand would come back and save them all.
Grit, who Broken Arm had posted to keep an eye on the Cinnamons, was skeptical of their bravado; he had watched the Cinnamons leave and none of them had returned.
Which meant they were probably dead.
Seawater brought better tidings. The Children of the Taj, who knew Broken Arm, wanted to know what wisdom she could share for survival. They had hunted down along the coast, towards the great barriers that enclosed them. There were Big People there, and snarling monsters that they rode in.
The Galle Face Girls, ever spoiling for a fight, proposed that they all work together and take down the Big People.
To this, Broken Arm agreed. Although on her conditions: hiding, subterfuge, carefully planned moves: these were her arsenal. Blind attacks were not. After all, they were the only ones left. She sent messages to and fro, relying on her hoard of leftover fuel from the Cinnamon for diplomacy. They bickered, argued and accepted her leadership at the speed of Fast’s footsteps. Eventually, it was time.
A team of their most battle-ready was selected. The Girls had five, all barely a year old, all spoiling for action. She had … Sky, and seven others. Not enough for a proper raid. Remembering the Big People who had killed Moonlight, she made them promise to sneak up, to find the high ground, to surround instead of charging head on, to leave a couple behind to note how far they could get before the Big People saw them, and, more importantly, before the Big People could actually hit them.
From her place of safety, Broken Arm ordered the first attack and crouched down to see how it would go.
On the ground, Eliott Grimme waited in the dimming light, Mason in the jungle car at his side. Playing bait.
It was the third day of operation. By now the supply chains had been sorted out; and despite a few issues, which Mason had promised to trace, it was so easy now that it was almost automatic. They stood there, the bots saw them, the bots came. Every so often, he would adjust a cell – sniper nest here, flank there, set up there – and the Ceylonese soldiers obeyed, now secure in the knowledge that this terrifying pale soldier knew what he was doing.
Things were going well. For the first two days, he had put himself, the Inquisitors and his hand-picked cohoty right between the waves of bots, gunning down and capturing as many as they could. It
was effective – the bots kept coming, and within a week the rest of the soldiers were ready, the weak winnowed out, the overeager lone wolves dead or dying and the disciplined and obedient remained. This was the first time most of them had seen combat, including the Inquisitors, who were little more than sinister thugs back in their homelands. Here, he sculpted them, rewarding the steadfast and punishing the unfaithful by making an example out of them.
Next wave. It was time for the next wave. He had their timings down almost to a science now. Account for tribe base location, distance, probability of conflict with other tribes, probability of survival. A new gang should be showing up right … about … now.
Nothing.
That sense of wrongness intensified.
He heard the screams from the most outward sniper nest. A gun went off behind him.
‘They’re on the nests! Guard the back! The back!’ he roared, and then he was moving, reloading, running into the buildings before Mason had even turned the keys in the ignition.
Broken Arm watched all this with implacable patience. Her tribe fought bravely, of course. Towards the end only Sky stood, bathed in the strange oil of the Big People, tossing their bodies off the roof. They hit the floor with wet thuds. Then the pale Big Person appeared behind him. Sky leaped back, the clever child, landing on the dead, and ducked into the shadows. The pale Big Person watched him go.
Broken Arm sat and thought about this. She then crawled to the others that waited.
‘Second attacks,’ she whispered. ‘Listen, close, listen much. Two types of Big People …’
‘That’s unusual,’ said Mahasen, climbing up to where Eliott stood. He looked around at the bodies of the gunmen … and the blood … and at Eliott’s face. ‘Sir,’ he added, just in case.
‘How many of our sniper cells have gone?’
‘Nothing we can’t replace, sir, they didn’t take the guns—’
‘How many?’
‘Four, sir.’
‘The ones facing the Port City? Or the rest of Colombo?’
‘Actually, all four sides, sir. Do you want me to move them forward—’
‘No. Move them …’ Eliott deliberated. There were killzones and then there were killzones. ‘Two teams there,’ he said, pointing at the cluster of derelict white buildings behind a statue of a hand holding an ancient telephone receiver. ‘Two there … two here, watching our backs … two here …’
‘Set thirty men to guard the bridge,’ he continued. The bridge lay just before the giant hand. A filthy lake ran under it. ‘Sandbags. Put the broken cars there. Tell them to look ahead, but also to watch the water.’
‘That’ll just put them out in the open, sir—’
‘Precisely the point. We need a target-rich environment to see where they’re coming from. Now stop arguing with my orders and carry them out.’
Broken Arm watched this new configuration with interest.
The Girls had asked whether they wanted to be part of the second wave. She had replied yes, but had kept herself at the very back. They advanced, sneaking forward just as Broken Arm had told them to.
The bridge lit up in a flash of thunder sticks. The Girls had a word for them: guns. The guns screamed and spat, and the first third of the second offense – the most direct – died.
‘Now!’ she shrieked.
They turned, as one, and threw their spears towards the sky.
Eliott saw the first of the metal shards land on his left, where the road curved off into a bridge and an old, crumbling apartment cut off their line of sight. It slammed into the crude barricade at the bridge, cutting right through the hull of one of the few jungle cars they had left. Ten others followed in precise formation – five to the right, five to the left. Two soldiers were impaled. The others ducked and fired wildly.
The perfect bait. Louder, noisier and easier to hit than he had ever been.
He waited. Presently teams eight and nine came crawling back, brown faces marked with black camo and dust, ‘It’s a small tribe, sir. Mostly girls. Throwing spears. Two keeping them supplied.’
‘You know what to do.’
They nodded and took the tracks that went around the train station at a crouch. The tracks had once been roads; they led around the bridge the action was on. Eliott waited until they had moved out of sight and counted. One thousand … two thousand … three thousand …
A grenade went off, then two. Then gunfire. Not from the back, but from the front. A dozen bots ran the distracted barricade, terrifying in their silence. Blurred bodies smashed all manner of weapons into panicked soldiers – rocks, barbed wire, sharpened flagpoles. In an instant, the bridge was overrun and the snipers guarding it were falling back, their guns snapping peals of thunder one after the other.
Eliott grabbed the gun he had slung across his back, crouched in the middle of the road and started firing, dropping bots like flies. Then the other teams kicked in, but not for long; a second group of bots charged in out of nowhere, this time with shields, making a stand in front of their retreating spear-throwers. It took him a few seconds to realize what the shields were: car doors strapped to their arms.
He was ready. One bullet he put through the neck of the spear-thrower at the back. Two bots ran up to him with shields, undoubtedly meaning to get close enough to smash him down. He shot one in the head through the broken window, kicked its corpse at the other and kicked both of them off the bridge and into the river below. Seven bots, ten bullets left.
They came at him with spears and rocks. He dropped them one after the other, their little bodies crumpling to the ground. They were shot either in the neck, severing the motor control, or the heart, severing the battery. Four more popped up from hiding. His pistol jammed.
He leaped forward, right into their midst. This they did not expect. He kicked one, smashed the pistol into the face of another – both were cheap metal, so both shattered. He took a punch that he barely felt, ripped the arm out its socket and used it to turn the remaining bot into so much scrap metal. He was fast, precise, brutal – the old battle conditioning was finally humming in full force.
The bots retreated, screaming. Almost all the shielded ones were dead and sparking on the ground. The spear-throwers scrambled with bullets kicking up dust at their feet.
He watched them through the sight of his rifle. This was nothing like the mad rushes he had seen on the endless broadcasts back in Kandy. The first move had been a diversion; the second had also been a diversion. It was a fake-out built on a fake-out: a sophisticated, coordinated testing of an ambush, one that understood sacrificing soldiers for information.
The bots had a commander.
He suddenly felt alive.
The enemy has a commander.
‘Clean up,’ he ordered.
The soldiers he had hidden peeped from behind their cover and hurried over the bridge, casting nervous and awestruck looks at him as they did so.
When he was satisfied, he led them inward and into the heart of chaos.
FOUR
In Kandy, smoke curled in front of television screens in gaudy hotels, accompanied by knowing looks and raucous laughter. Eliott Grimme may have cared little for the political state of the country, but everyone who was anyone knew that the Inquisition showing up in Colombo, along with what clearly looked like the Ceylon Volunteer Rifles, was less about the Big Match itself and more about the optics of the matter. It the Chief Inquisitor’s way of reminding everyone who held the reins in Ceylon, and who, ultimately, was the source of all solutions.
Because while all this was happening, the Bandaranaikes were going under, one after the other. An estate here, confiscated for tax avoidance. A scandal there. An ambassadorship here, recalled. Everybody knew who was behind this knee-capping humiliation: the Chief Inquisitor. Nobody even pretended otherwise anymore. The elder Molligodas had even dared ask, in public, whether Penhaligon would be content with the humiliation of one House, or whether the others would fall as well.
�
�He’s showing off,’ said one dame to another, putting out her cigarette in her teacup. ‘This is all just theater, you know.’
‘I heard there was something actually wrong with the robots,’ murmured her companion. ‘There’s this Indian fellow – Bengali. Doctor at some posh university, you know. He’s living in the old Alagiyawanna mansion, you know, the one they lost to the government in that lawsuit?’
The lady with the ash-stained teacup confirmed that yes, she did know what house and which lawsuit were being referred to.
‘My maid’s husband is doing some security for them. Says there’s always him going to the Ministry and Inquistors and technicians coming in at all hours. And that de Almeida girl. Something, something, something going on there. Anyway, it looks like they are doing some work on the robots, but nobody talks about it.’
‘Eh. Who cares about the robots?’
‘Don’t hate on the bots, I have good money on that one-armed girl.’
‘That’s just money,’ said the smoker derisively. ‘What about him?’
A freshly lit cigarette stabbed in the general direction of the large screen on the Queen’s Hotel’s Summer Terrace, looming large over a row of alfresco diners. The screen in question had a face on it: pale, unsmiling, the eyes somehow burning with a cold and unnatural light, as if lit from within.
Eliott Grimme ‘double t, double m’, as her grandson had said. There had been a huge hue and cry about that one; not one the news, but in the whisper networks where the real information ran. Penhaligon had done an unheard-of thing, exercising in absentia powers of the Governer to put this new man in charge. There were rumours that Eliott was a war hero, or had been, but nobody knew where or who or how; there were rumours that he was some kind of next-generation Inquisitor, but her grandson had said he was actually far older.
She who smoked had carefully laid out to her grandson how symbols worked, how a televised, British superman preyed on the consciousness of those who had to sit here and watch him run around, effortlessly outclassing Ceylonese men and Inquisitors alike. She had explained how much Penhaligon would lose if his pet commando were to fail. ‘Money is nice,’ she had said to him, over and over again, ‘but respect is hard currency.’
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