by S A Asthana
What was concerning, though, was the lack of loups in the chamber—no platoons hiding in the corner, nor any crouched in the back with rifles pointed ahead. Nothing. Despite not seeing them, Cube was certain Parisian soldiers were present. They were most likely sprinkled within the tents, lurking in disguise. Guerrilla warfare was about to play out.
>PLAY {Beethoven.Fur_Elise.mus}
!FILE NOT FOUND
>PLAY {Beethoven.Fur_Elise.mus}
!FILE NOT FOUND
>EMOTION = anger.dat
CHAPTER 21: BASTIEN
Bastien sprinted across the desert with Belle, glancing from side to side all the while. The 1.V10 loomed large in the distance. Columns of smoke escaped it, making the craft appear as if it was a crashed meteor. Corpses were littered around it, their flesh and bones burnt to a crisp—loups unfortunate enough to have faced the vehicle’s wrath head-on. Some still held mangled portable rocket launchers within their blackened fingers. The stink of burnt skin intermingled with the smell of seared steel. Not too far off, the ground caved into a gaping crater. Where the hangar had loomed moments ago there was nothing but scorched metal piled in a heap, lines of flames crisscrossing a hell-scape.
The Eiffel tower still stood tall in the background, but fires spread up its metal lacework like demon creatures bent on consuming the monument whole. Soon it would be in a fiery inferno showing nothing more than a frail, black silhouette at the center. Or perhaps the tower would fall well before that ever happened—the gnarled, twisted pillar was bending at the seams. The 1.V10 must have shot it.
A loud clang echoed into the desert. Large chunks of rust shook off the tower like dust coming off something ancient and unused. “It's going to come down.” Bastien slowed to a trot. He couldn’t snatch away his stare.
The tower cracked. The metallic scream reverberated over the land. Beams snapped in two and crumbled to the desert one atop another, sending up smoke and sand as high as the sky itself. The Earth shook again like it had a hundred years ago under the bombs. A colossus was dead. A connection, some would say the sole connection, to the old-world was severed within a few seconds.
Bastien was still as a statue. “Keep up!” Belle cried over the howling wind. “I see it.” She pointed to a lone, metal shack surrounded by solar arrays in the distance. Snapping out of his lull, Bastien resumed his run, trailing her.
“What is that?” She didn’t seem to hear.
The two made it to the shack a minute later. Solar panels loomed large all around, untouched by the battle that had just played out. Belle swung open the door. “This is our entrance into the North District. This was how Marie had euphoria shipments transported to the surface.”
“A dedicated exit for euphoria?” Bastien stepped into the shack. It was several degrees cooler.
“She didn’t want the addicts in the city stealing shipments headed to Nips.”
“So there is some sense in her,” Bastien quipped while Belle pried open a trapdoor in the concrete floor. A shaft came into view. Its narrow passage fell away into darkness at an angle.
“Can we fit?”
“Yeah, I did it only days back.” Belle had already slid down several feet.
“Correction – can I fit?” Bastien mumbled while sliding his legs into the shaft. He soon confirmed his shoulders were too broad for the passage. He’d get stuck in place. This would not provide his entry into New Paris. Oh, hell.
“Belle!” There was no response. “Belle, I can’t make it down… ” Silence. She’d slipped away. “Not thinking straight.” His jaws clenched as he pulled himself out. She was consumed with emotion, passionate about the task ahead, possibly reckless. He exited the shack and peered into the distance. Smoke rose from the crater, flames burning the metal heap in the middle. Perhaps the destroyed hangar’s elevator was still intact.
CHAPTER 22: CUBE
Shots had been fired from every direction. Countless bullet holes marked the West district chamber’s walls, and plasma blast sites caved its floor. A thick cube of smoke filled the space whole. Tents lay scattered around the scene, their fabric torn to shreds. Burnt human remains were everywhere, replete with ripped flesh and tunics indistinguishable from one another. There were mouths where there should have been eyes, and legs where there should have been arms. The floor was now baptized in a river of red. The fight had been furious but hadn’t lasted longer than twenty minutes and forty-three seconds.
>EMOTION = happiness.dat
Cube stood in the middle of it all, its bloodstained skull turning from side to side, surveying the scene. Machines couldn’t smell or taste, but at moment Cube desired those senses so it could take in the stench of human death. It hypothesized the odor would be sweet. No reason that stupid, fragile cellular entities couldn’t smell pleasant when killed.
The headless corpse of the navigator lay not too far away. Cube reached down and recovered the unharmed tablet from his hands. According to the map, two more chambers lay beyond this one, separating the invaders from Bastille Market.
Cube took stock of the Alpha unit. It now numbered only seventy-five soldiers. There had been losses. But a quarter reduction was not a showstopper. Most appeared healthy, although some had sustained non-fatal injuries. Their Shift X rifles had helped cement their survival in the first round. The weapon’s firepower was unmatched. It used a gas-operated action and was chambered for a .50 BMG cartridge. Capable of accurately taking out targets from 1,500 meters away, the rifle also doubled as an anti-material rifle. That meant it was highly effective against both personnel and military equipment. The Parisians’ Howa Type 89 couldn’t keep up, and it showed in the results. A majority of the military casualties had been loups.
“Victory is ours.” Cube eyed its three tanks. They stood unharmed. “We move forward.” Cube turned to the exit. It was too small for the tanks to get through. “Shoot down the wall.”
“That could bring down the ceiling ahead as well,” a TopGunner controller warned.
“Do it.” Cube’s tone was machine-like. “For the High Council!”
The controller aimed his cannons at the target. A blast of blue plasma burst forth and destroyed the chamber’s wall immediately. Stone slabs and packed concrete crumbled to the floor like toy building blocks. The ceiling held. The Martians released a collective breath of relief. “For the High Council!” they yelled and surged forward.
The 99 percent victory projection still stood. So did the twelve-hour window, which was now down to eight hours, thirty-five minutes and ten seconds. Cube remained confident. Barring unforeseen circumstances, victory would belong to Martians soon enough.
>PLAY {Beethoven.Fur_Elise.mus}
!FILE NOT FOUND
>EMOTION = anger.dat
>REPEAT EMOTION = anger.dat
>REPEAT EMOTION = anger.dat
Cube’s right hand clenched into a fist. Perhaps the Martian databases had a copy of the file. It sent up a wireless link.
> TARGET ID = 536
> TARGET NAME = Beethoven.Fur_Elise.mus
> TARGET MATCH AGAINST {DB 1 – DB 23450} = FALSE
> EMOTION = anger.dat
> LOOP Scan.exe
There were zero matches. The file was gone. Perhaps forever.
The cries of a child became audible. Some feet away lay a boy of no more than eleven. A gunshot wound had ripped open his abdomen. Guts seeped out and Cube’s eye darkened. It stomped over and shot off the child’s red-haired head. Stupid, fragile cellular entities.
CHAPTER 23: BELLE
By the time Belle made it to Marché Bastille, it was in complete chaos. People fell over one another as if they were cockroaches darting from stomping feet. Desperate adults crushed children to death. Word had spread like wildfire—the Martians had broken into the West district, destroyed much of it, and were now marching their way to the market. Parisians were being mowed down indiscriminately.
A pit formed in Belle’s stomach. It was too late. The catacombs, the Jacobins, the r
eligious—they could only be reached by way of the West District. There was no way to get to any of them. How could she save now?
A loud blast rocked the market. Belle was blinded by a flash of light. The far left wall had been blown through, and Martian soldiers burst into the market with loud hurrahs. They were carving their own path forward, disregarding the tunnel passageways. Buttresses and columns seemed minor inconveniences meant to be flattened. How much longer before the ceilings come crashing down?
Four large machines marched with them, three of which were alien, their structure hard to comprehend—some type of man-controlled mechs. But the fourth was familiar.
“Cube? But the crash destroyed it.”
The robot stomped forward, its broad chest held out. It appeared to squash a cowering old man on purpose, its metal foot going out of the way to splatter flesh and bones. Parisians were insects, nothing more. Between Marie and the Sydneysiders, they will get wasted—Belle had spoken those words to Bastien. If only he’d been able to keep up. Where the fuck is he?
Opposite the Martians, on the other end of the market, stood a platoon of loups in rank and file. They blocked the entrance to Marie’s district with rifles pointed forward. A firefight was about to break out.
“Tirer!” The platoon commander ordered his men to shoot. There was despair in his voice. Gunfire erupted from both ends—a storm of bullets buzzed through the chamber. Parisians screamed and screeched as the ground became slimy with guts. The smell of burnt skin filled the air. Belle fell to the ground, her face slapping mud with a splat, and scrambled over to a shadowy corner of the market on her stomach. Fuck! A bullet zipped past, just missing her ear.
Four bystanders hid in the darkness. Upon seeing her, one spindly young man protested through clenched teeth, “Get away! More of us will attract attention.”
Belle crawled to him. “I can save you!” The man’s head snapped back in a spray of blood. A bullet had shattered his temple. Salty blood covered Belle’s lips. “No!”
Loud booms shook the ground like the rumbling of thunder. The mechs were shooting at the loups, their plasma beams blasting through tents, humans, and bricks. The chamber lit up with each explosion, its brick walls flashing white. Bodies flew into the air. Flames twisted skin. Total carnage.
Two loups came crashing forward, their dead bodies badly mangled. A Howa rifle remained within one’s grip. Something needed to be done. Cowering in the corner wasn’t going help her Parisian brothers and sisters. Belle scrambled over to the corpse and pried away the weapon.
Her attention shifted to the battlefield. A cloud of dust cleared and Cube came into view, its armor shining cruelly under the bursts of white from the mechs’ cannons. There was a clear shot—the rifle was aimed and the trigger was pressed. Cube’s head jerked to the side. The bullet had lodged in the skull, denting it. Before the robot could look over, another bullet dinged its skull. And then a third. Belle’s aim was no less true than Bastien’s.
“Fuck!” She struggled with the trigger. It’d jammed.
Cube ran towards her, its metal feet clanging over dirt and ruble.
Belle pulled out a small sphere from her knapsack. With quick aim, she threw it at the machine and shouted, “Activate!”
The device exploded a split-second later, a burst of white flashing just ahead. Belle leaped away as a hot, bright flame singed her hair. Cube lay flat on the ground, unmoving. Belle let out a silent cheer.
The machine-demon sprang upright, though. It was as if a coil had snapped abruptly somewhere within its gears. Although burn marks littered its frame, the robot was mobile as ever. That thing was indestructible. Belle clambered away behind a metal shack. A quick search of the knapsack revealed two more sphere bombs. It was all the weaponry she had left. Fuck! She held the items in tight fists, one in each hand. Two chances left to destroy Cube. That’s all she had left. Had to make it count.
The ground shook—another explosion somewhere in the market. The metal shack trembled, its walls ready to give. Screams resounded in the chamber. Belle took a deep breath and crouched against the shack. Get a grip, girl, get a fucking grip!
For about three seconds nothing happened. It felt like three years. Everything was silent like the battle was finally over.
Then shit hit the fan.
The shack was obliterated, its flimsy walls ripped from the ground and thrown to the side in a heap. Cube. The machine shredded her cover like it was a cardboard box. It stood with black eye focused on her, its pistol drawn and aimed.
Belle dived right, away from the pistol’s plasma. The blast burned the ground black but missed her by a centimeter. Landing in a pile of bricks, she threw a sphere at Cube. “Activate!”
Another star-bright flash accompanied the detonation and Cube fell back a few feet. The earth shook under the weight. The plasma pistol crashed uselessly several meters away, parts of its exterior melted. Belle had the advantage. The window to act would shut soon. Cube already sat upright, seemingly unfazed by the attack. Why can’t it just die?
She jumped to her feet, her right side aching. A rib had cracked against the edge of a brick, but no matter—the shooting pain needed to be ignored. She raised her left hand and readied to launch the last bomb. It would detonate soon enough in Cube’s face. Perhaps, this time, it would do the trick. Third time’s the charm, baby!
A stray bullet blasted her hand before the bomb could be released. Fingers splintered away, blood, nails, and flesh clinging to the pieces still. The sphere fell to her feet, its dark exterior disappearing into the brown mud. A pain, the kind Belle had never known, burned through her left arm.
She splattered to the ground, clutching her bloody stump. Her mind was sludge. No plan—just agony.
“N-no,” she stammered. This was not how it was supposed to end.
Cube stood.
“I was supposed to save New P-Paris.” A fog clouded Belle’s vision. New Paris was in the throes of death. And so was she.
Cube marched over and raised its right foot.
Belle shut her eyes. No use fighting it now. She’d been defeated. It was over. The revolution, the fight—everything. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
But, there was one last thing she could do.
“Activate,” she mumbled.
CHAPTER 24: BASTIEN
Bastien couldn’t believe Belle was dead. He watched Cube crush her, breaking bones and ripping flesh with its foot. The detonation followed. Flames burst from underneath Belle’s mangled corpse in a flash, charring metal and spewing mud and guts. The metal monster was hurled several meters away.
“No!” He fell to his knees. Nothing could have been done from such distance—he was at the market’s opposite end and descending on the platform elevator without a weapon. Hell, even if there were a gun on hand, it would have made no difference; an entire war was playing out in between. Not a goddamned difference! She didn’t deserve to die. And definitely not like this. No, she was supposed to have lived to save the lives of others, then go on to become the great leader she was born to be.
The platform jolted to a halt and Bastien jumped off. He ran straight into the action. No running away anymore, only running towards. Burning rage swept over him like a fire. Belle’s death needed avenging.
Cube was already on its feet, the left side of its body aflame. It was damaged but still functional. Belle had harmed it and that was commendable, but battling such a machine one on one was suicide and she’d found out the hard way. With her death, though, she’d rendered Cube vulnerable. Bastien would destroy it once and for all. A weapon was needed though, preferably a Shift-X rifle.
Bastien crouched behind a mound of dead bodies, ignoring the stench of guts and shit. There were no stray guns nearby. A little luck would go a long way. An Alpha soldier exited a plume of smoke some ten meters ahead, his rifle aimed forward. Thank you, Lady Luck.
The man was unmistakably Blake—or was it Jason? Funny how much could be forgotten in just a week when on the
run from the law. These men and Bastien had shared plenty of single malts during training camps. There was no loyalty left, though. This soldier with the rifle was nothing more than a pawn, just like his brethren around him. They went along with whatever was ordered of them. So did their spineless leader Crone. And so an entire city was being destroyed and its women and children murdered. Once peacekeepers, the Martians were now ordered to be coldblooded killers. Purges and slayings of innocents were the new mission. They clearly didn’t give a shit about human life. And Bastien didn’t give a shit about them. Not after Belle’s death. That left him with zero allegiance to Port Sydney.
The soldier turned away, distracted by wails behind smokestacks in the background. An opportunity for Bastien. Ten years of martial training kicked in—he was lightning quick. He crackled down onto the target a second later with disciplined ferocity, delivering a side-kick to the forehead, and then breaking the neck with a swift elbow-strike. One more kill to add to his murderous streak, but it didn’t matter. Not anymore.
He grabbed the Shift X. “Let’s have a look.” The rifle was fully loaded and sans damage—perfect.
Two bullets whizzed past his ear. A loup stood two hundred feet away and pointed his Howa, taking a bead on what he must have figured was an Alpha soldier. In the space of a single breath Bastien fell to his stomach, aimed and fired three rounds. Bursts of red exploded from the loup’s chest.