by Phil Wrede
He hid not a moment too soon, as a spindly metal ball rushed towards the stream, flattening everything in its path. It looked like an evil, autonomous cage, with very little in its core, but dozens of jagged barbs jutting out from the spines that made up its structure. From the ungodly creaking sound it made as it impatiently rocked back and forth, scanning the area, Cyber-Knife suspected he might have laid his eyes upon a Class Three. He didn't have much information on Class Threes in his databanks, only snippets of audio recordings and babbled testimonials given by men on the brink of death. To date, no one had gotten a good look at a Class Three and lived to tell about it.
The machine cage unfolded itself, and Cyber-Knife’s jaw hung open at the sight. What he and all of humanity thought a singular breed of enemy fighter, the Class Three, was actually a pair of Class Twos wrapped about one another, able to travel far faster together than they could hope alone. The metal creature on the bottom pressed itself out flat against the ground as the one on top gingerly disengaged its limbs from the body of its compatriot. As the one on top stepped free, the bottom Class Two raised itself up to its normal position.
The robots walked off in opposite directions, neither towards Cyber-Knife. He risked a slow, quiet breath of relief. He immediately regretted it, as each of the Class Twos raised their foremost limbs and blazed constant, focused laser blades from them, about a meter and a half long each. These enormous shafts immediately began to circle around the point where they'd entered the forest and clear-cut every tree in their path.
“Well, fuck me,” Cyber-Knife said. He could accept the enemy’s forces improving their response to disconnected tracking signals, but now they'd identified the best asset he had at his disposal: the mutated jungle itself. Every tree a Class Two hacked down left one less place for him to hide, one less perch from where he could stalk them. He had definitely found an an advance scout operation.
“Sometimes,” Excalibur whispered, “the better part of valor is -”
“Cold stoicism, I know,” Cyber-Knife replied.
“Discretion, in fact, particularly when staring at a fight you know you can't win.”
Cyber-Knife spared a second to glare at Excalibur. “What do you mean, 'can't?'”
The Class Twos had completed about half of their initial circle, and the nearest one had begun to travel uncomfortably close.
“You know as well as I do that where these things are, a swarm of infantry will follow. You lost too much of your armament in the fight with the aircraft. I don't want to see you throw away resources on a battle we could easily avoid,” Excalibur said.
Cyber-Knife gritted his teeth, still feeling out-of-sorts from the nightmare. “So, yes, you believe I can't.” He couldn't get a sense of himself; fury rose in his throat. “I thought you would've learned your lesson after last time.”
“What?” Excalibur said.
“Fuck it,” Cyber-Knife said, “I'll jump down there and waste both of those things. Remind you who you're dealing with.” He could feel the adrenaline rushing into him, fueling the fire of his rage. He acted in the names of the few people left in the world, and they needed him to fucking kill the enemy.
“Shut up, will you?” Excalibur pleaded. “If we don't rise to the bait, they'll just move along and we can make our way to the spire.”
Cyber-Knife shrugged, shaking his head with little, aggressive shakes. “It sounds like you're calling me a pussy.”
“Christ,” Excalibur sighed, knowing exactly what Cyber-Knife would do next.
Cyber-Knife looked down at the Class Two about to cut into their tree. "I'll show you who the fucking pussy is!" he cried out as he rolled off the branch and dropped right on top of the robot, slicing off the limbs on the left side of its body in a single motion. As they tumbled to the ground, he grabbed the remaining arm bearing a laser machete and heaved against it, his muscles engorged with rage, twisting the limb around and burying the energy blade into the robot's head. Just like that, Cyber-Knife halved his opposition.
The other Class Two spun around in what looked like shock, directly opposite Cyber-Knife from the creek. He brought up Excalibur, ready to deflect any energy beams the robot might see fit to shoot his way, but he didn’t have a monopoly on surprises in this fight. The Class Two bunched its legs together above its body, and curved them around, forming a smaller ball alone than with its partner. As it rolled towards Cyber-Knife and picked up speed, he didn't feel his worry decreasing proportionally.
Tree trunks and branched snapped under the robot's weight, and Cyber-Knife had barely enough time - even by his cybernetically-enhanced standards - to leap out of the way. As the Class Two repositioned itself for another pass, he drew his remaining plasma pistol and fired a pair of shots, but the ball of metal rolled too quickly; they just pinged off its limbs and scorched some of the plant life. An enormous mantrap, heretofore dormant and completely uninvolved in the conflict, awoke as a plasma blast creased its hide and thrashed in pain.
Cyber-Knife dodged clear of the robot's second assault, but as he landed, he immediately felt some vines try to creep up his feet and past his boots. A swipe with Excalibur seemed to do enough to put them off their plan, but he knew the longer this fight dragged on, the more likely he’d antagonize something in the jungle that they couldn't simply crush or cut to pieces. As the Class Two bulled towards him again, Cyber-Knife took off running down the edge of the creek, gambling on a sudden burst of tactical inspiration.
The Class Two altered its course to follow him, crashing into the water and spraying it in every direction. It stayed in the creek as they raced, and gained on him with every step he took. Fortunately, the chemically enhanced water of the creek did to the Class Two's limbs exactly what it had tried to do to Cyber-Knife's skin. Just as it began to start nipping at his heels, the terrific speed the robot had built up started to fade. Once he'd put some legitimate distance between them, Cyber-Knife turned around and found himself greeted by the sight he'd hoped to see: the robot's limbs dissolving around it.
The liquefied metal dripped mostly into the water, but at a few points the dripping metal of its body started to eat through itself. It tumbled to a stop at the edge of the creek, and as it pathetically thrashed there, like video in Cyber-Knife's files of fish on boats. He kicked it away, letting the water finish the job it had started.
He didn't take any time to savor the sweetness of this victory, though - he hurried back at the remains of the first Class Two in seconds, ripping its shell apart to find the tracking beacon inside, which miraculously still functioned. He wrapped it up in a few leaves from the ground and clutched it in his fist, looking up towards the canopy. Cyber-Knife hurled the beacon through the leaves, launching it hundreds of meters away from his current position, hopefully encouraging the enemy to spend more time looking in the wrong direction.
Of course, that would become important if this stage of his hastily cobbled together plan, the one in between “kill the Class Twos” (completed) and ”lead the enemy on a merry chase” (in progress) worked properly. If Cyber-Knife could fight off the Class Ones surely following the scouts swiftly enough, the enemy might actually lose track of him. He could make some more progress towards the spire. But to ensure that, he needed some debris. Maybe, he thought to himself, a plan's ability to get fucked up, relative to its number of steps, was not a constant thing, but fluid.
He bent down and managed to strip some power cells out of the Class Two's body, disconnect some of its arms, and tie those cells into the weapons systems of each arm; now, they could generate enough power for one full-strength laser blast. Coaxing their signal receivers back to life, he bundled together three bunches of arms, set the receivers to an unused frequency, and hid the weapons near the bases of some trees. He switched his external transmitter over to the same frequency, and climbed into a tree. Now, Cyber-Knife just had to wait.
Sure enough, his instincts served him well - he didn't have to wait more than a hundred s
econds before two dozen Class Ones came pouring into his hastily mapped kill zone. They clumped together, leaving no back uncovered and no field of fire isolated. Cyber-Knife didn't give them any time to spread out; he twitched the little finger of his left hand, signaling his improvised weapons, his booby trap, and fearsome laser bolts lanced out from the jungle.
One burst missed outright, blasting a tree into splinters and steam, but the others found home. Another slashed into a quartet of robots, cutting through them just above their waists and dropping them in pieces to the ground. The third zeroed in on a single unlucky robot, tearing through its metal skin and superheating the casing around its energy core, which caused its power core's containment to fail in a spectacular fashion. It exploded in a storm of plasma, tearing apart the six robots nearest it. Cyber-Knife could've sworn the sound the robot made as it ruptured from the inside out was a scream, but he knew that was not so. Class Ones had no apparatus by which they could vocalize.
Eleven down, thirteen to go. The alien robot ninjas did exactly as their programming dictated, and unleashed a torrent of plasma fire on the sources of their attack, tearing the wilderness to pieces in seconds. They finished their attack, and started to creep out in all directions. Cyber-Knife looked down, and in a moment, had mapped out several overlapping strategies to take those remaining down with maximum efficiency.
He dropped out of the tree and landed square atop one robot, smashing it into the ground with such force that its head and arms just popped off, little jets of green plasma sailing out from its body. He drew his pistol without stepping off the body and shot one more through its armored neck, dropping its head unceremoniously to the ground like rotten fruit. A third he shot through the knee before the others had any chance to respond.
In a display of perfect mechanical calm, the rest of the Class Ones split into small groups and backed away from Cyber-Knife, laying down suppressing fire that, while it didn't hit him, forced him to take some cover. When he emerged, they'd retreated wholly into nearby shadow, dark enough to combat even his low-light vision. Those that remained, clearly, had little interest in giving Cyber-Knife an easy time.
He wrenched the head off the third Class One, jabbing his probe into a port on the side of its head. Cyber-Knife reprogrammed the alien robot ninja almost immediately; practice made perfect. He jammed its severed head on the body of the second Class One, and his new friend began to twitch. Cyber-Knife couldn't watch the fruits of his labor for long, though, as a dim roaring sound thrummed in his ears. After their retreat into the darkness, the remaining alien robot ninjas had taken to concentrating their efforts, and their plasma fire, arcing it overhead like artillery.
Cyber-Knife drew Excalibur forth, partly as a defensive measure and partly because holding the sword in his fist made him feel a little better. His prudence was rewarded a few moments later as another volley of shots soared towards him. This time, he stood his ground and swung Excalibur in a furious arc, deflecting the plasma up into the sky, causing it to form a brief green constellation before the bursts lost cohesion and evaporated.
His new ally, freshly enslaved to his will, had made its way to its feet. The plasma projectors on its arms heated up, and Cyber-Knife's Class One started returning fire into the darkness. As he deflected a third attack – it had come faster this time - and felt burning as the plasma's heat radiated through Excalibur's blade and into the soft flesh of his organic hand, he knew he had to go on the offensive.
He took a deep breath and focused all of his discretionary energy into a swing of the blade, bringing Excalibur clear through the trunk of a nearby tree and sending it crashing at his feet. The enemy Class Ones turned their attention to his robot, and Cyber-Knife took off running.
The world blurred - he wrapped himself around tree trunks, maintaining as much of his momentum as he could, and leapt clear of grabbing vines and patches of spiny brush, running a perfect circle around his enemies. He jumped into the air, tumbling to bring his feet around to land on the trunk of a particularly thick tree, and pushed off towards one robot. He buried the tip of the blade into its head, heard the shrieking sound of metal against metal. Cyber-Knife planted on the Class One's shoulder and jumped off, forcing Excalibur free.
Cyber-Knife caught a tree branch and ripped it off the trunk, throwing it up into the canopy and producing all manner of cracking and snapping noises. Another Class One turned its attention skyward, and paid a heavy price for its diligence when he punched its head free of its body. That head landed at the feet of yet another robot, and it received some company on the ground shortly thereafter as he cut that thing in half, and those halves in half again.
He landed back-to-back with the friendly Class One, which had activated the rapid-fire function on its plasma cannons, laying down enough suppressing fire to force the remaining hostile forces into cover. Its systems wouldn't be able to maintain that rate of attack for long, but Cyber-Knife didn't need more than a second to catch his breath and map out the rest of his attack.
Their enemies didn't need much beyond a moment, themselves. A quintet of tightly-packed plasma bolts flew in from the sides, and while Cyber-Knife knocked away the three that came from his right, the two on the left crashed into his Class One's torso, melting through its armor almost immediately and sending it slumping to the ground. The spinning lens of its plasma projector clicked until it came to a stop. Cyber-Knife didn't plan to mourn his loss, but he would feel it.
Cyber-Knife swung Excalibur around, scanning the air to track more incoming plasma, but the blasts had just decided to stop. A quick check with his tracking systems confirmed what he suspected: the seven remaining hostile Class Ones had surrounded them, and they had begun to march, closing in the circle around him.
The Class Ones started firing again, blasts came in parallel to the ground, carving out huge sections of tree trunks and leaving blister-like tracks of their heat along the ground. Cyber-Knife pressed Excalibur against his left arm as he began to dodge around the plasma. As he pivoted, pirouetted, and pounced, the lethal wads of energy sailed past him, sometimes wide, but most often far too close. With every move he made, every aggressive action taken against him, he more closely locked down angles and speed. After an improvised routine that would've impressed the best-trained dancers - assuming any still remained on Earth - he'd calculated what he needed to do.
Leaping and spinning over a particularly fast-traveling blast, Cyber-Knife batted at the plasma with Excalibur, redirecting it and knocking down the robot on the other side of the circle. Another burst and another swipe with the sword, and he'd done it again. They just winked out on his HUD in silent, ignominious collapse.
The third foe Cyber-Knife attempted to destroy this way anticipated his move and cartwheeled away, right into a pair of shots fired from the commando's own plasma pistol. Cyber-Knife's plasma cut right through the Class One, turning its head into Swiss cheese. He dropped to the ground and shot two more in the legs, dissolving their kneecaps and knocking them over with heavy metal thuds.
Cyber-Knife crossed to the nearest one first, dispassionately knocking away its last-ditch panic fire with efficient swipes. He brought Excalibur down into its arms, severing them at the elbows, one by one. The robot's eyes seemed to bulge as Cyber-Knife forced open a hatch on its chest and removed a pair of power cells. He crushed the Class One's head under his boot.
The other, instead of mechanically attacking to the bitter end, actually tried to pull itself away from the fight, dragging itself pathetically forward with its plasma blades. Cyber-Knife caught up to it in a few long strides and just tore its head off its neck. He lifted the machine off the ground, staring into its eyes as they went dark. He counted five of seven down, for certain.
Cyber-Knife had managed to lose sight of two robots in the commotion, and felt honest surprise when their targeting icons appeared on his HUD, nearly on top of him. They'd activated plasma blades from each arm and silently rushed at him through the underbr
ush.
One twisted its arms at the elbows, slashing at him from side to side. Cyber-Knife ducked and kicked it away sharply, and barely had enough time to bring Excalibur up as the other crashed its arms down from above. Green sparks flew off their blades as they grappled for leverage; after too-long seconds, Cyber-Knife slid to the robot's side and brought Excalibur with him, ripping through the robot's torso.
The other robot returned and cut into his right arm about the bicep, drawing blood that steamed as it dripped onto the energy blade. Cyber-Knife grunted and smashed it in the head with Excalibur's grip, denting its metal casing and sending the robot reeling. Cyber-Knife readied himself to attack, only to see the Class One's chest cave in from a perfectly placed plasma blast. Its eyes flared an even more furious shade of red for a moment before dying out completely. He spun around in time to see his Class One, the friendly one, finally expire as its last bit of power drained from its system. Not knowing what else to do, Cyber-Knife drew Excalibur up to his face - light shining across his strong cheekbones for a second - and swung it down to his side, saluting his fallen ally.
Wiping blood from the wound on his arm, which had already begun to close, Cyber-Knife sheathed Excalibur and rummaged through the robot corpses, uncovering one more functional pair of power cores and two matched sets of near-mint Class One arms. He had to work quickly, so as to leave the briefest trace of his activity behind.
Cyber-Knife threw the scavenged equipment out in front of him, and began stripping away the casing from the focusing emitters at the core of the Class Ones' arms. He tore off the thin scorched armor plating, snapped off the endoskeletal circuitry and the flexi-mesh, and the internal armor, until only the thin focusing tubes - each a little less than a quarter of a meter long - and emitter lenses remained. Fortunately, he'd severed the robots' arms at precisely the right spots to ensure the integrity of the structures. All four arms contained well-preserved equipment.