For twenty minutes we clomp across the plains, trying our best to look through the grass and see whatever’s waiting for us out here. Our primary goal is to stop the machines from advancing on Gray Horse. Secondary goal is to protect the herds of cattle that live out here on the prairie—the lifeblood of the city.
We don’t even know what kind of Rob we’re facing. Only that it’s new varieties. Always something new with our friend Rob.
“Hey, Lark,” calls Carl. “Why they call ’em spider tanks if they only have four legs?”
Lark calls down from the tank, “ ’Cause it beats calling it a large, quadruped walker.”
“Well, I don’t think it does,” mutters Carl.
The first concussion throws dirt and shredded plants into the air, and the screams start coming from the tall grass. A herd of buffalo stampedes, and the world rings with vibration and noise. Instant chaos.
“What’s out there, Jack?” I shout. He’s crouched on top of the spider tank, heavy mounted gun swiveling from one side to the other. Lark steers the tank. His gloved hand is wrapped tight in a rope wrapped around the hull, rodeo style.
“Nothing yet, little brother,” calls Jack.
For a few minutes there are no targets, only faceless screams.
Then something comes crashing through the yellow stalks of grass. We all pivot and aim our weapons at it—a huge Osage man. He’s huffing and puffing and dragging an unconscious body by its blood-slicked arms. The unconscious guy looks like he got hit by a meteorite. There’s a deep, bleeding crater in his upper thigh.
More explosions rip through the soldiers out in front of the tanks. Lark yanks his hand, and Houdini transitions to a trot gait, motors grinding as it moves full speed ahead to provide support. Jack turns and watches me, shrugging as the tank lumbers away into the grass.
“Help,” bawls the big Osage.
Fuck. I signal a stop to the squad and watch our spider tank over the Osage man’s shoulder as it takes another plodding step away from our position, leaving behind a half-crushed swath of grass. Every step it takes leaves us more exposed to whatever is out here.
Cherrah drops to her knee and tourniquets the unconscious man’s damaged leg. I grab the blubbering Osage by the shoulders and give him a little shake.
“What did this?” I ask.
“Bugs, man. They’re like bugs. They get on you and then blow up,” says the Osage, wiping tears off his face with a meaty forearm. “I gotta get Jay out of here. He’s gonna die.”
The concussions and the screams are coming thicker now. We crouch as gunshots ring out and stray bullets tear through the grass. It sounds like a massacre. A fine rain of dirt particles have started to float down from the clear blue sky.
Cherrah looks up from her tourniquet job and we make grim eye contact. It’s a silent agreement: You watch my back and I’ll watch yours. Then I flinch as a shower of dirt cascades through the grass and rattles against my helmet.
Our spider tank is long gone, and Jack with it.
“Okay,” I say, slapping the Osage man on the shoulder. “That should stop the bleeding. Take your friend back. We’re moving forward, so you’re on your own. Keep your eyes open.”
The Osage man throws his friend over his shoulder and hustles away. It sounds like whatever happened to old Jay has already torn through the front ranks and is coming for us, too.
I hear Lark start screaming from somewhere ahead of us.
And for the first time, I see the enemy. Early-model stumpers. They remind me of the scuttle mines from that first moment of Zero Hour in Boston, a million years ago. Each one is the size of a baseball, with a knot of flailing legs that somehow shoves its little body over and through the clumps of grass.
“Shit!” shouts Carl. “Let’s get out of here!”
The lanky soldier starts to run away. By instinct, I catch him by the front of his sweaty shirt and stop him. I yank his face down to my level, look into his wide eyes, and say one word: “Fight.”
My voice is even, but my body is on fire with adrenaline.
Pop. Pop. Pop.
Our guns light up the dirt, dashing the stumpers to pieces. But more are coming. And more after that. It’s a tidal wave of crawling nasties flowing through the grass like ants.
“It is getting too heavy,” calls Tiberius. “What do we do, Cormac?”
“Three-round burst,” I call. A half-dozen rifles snick into auto mode.
Pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop.
Rifle muzzles flash, painting shadows on our dirt-covered faces. Spouts of dirt and twisted metal jet from the ground, along with occasional flares as the liquids inside the stumpers come into contact. We stand in a semicircle and pour lead into the dirt. But the stumpers keep coming, and they’re starting to spread out around us, swarm style.
Jack is gone and somehow I’m in charge, and now we’re going to get blown to pieces. Where the fuck is Jack? My hero brother is supposed to save me from situations like this.
Goddamnit.
As the stumpers close in I call out, “Fall in on me!”
Two minutes later I’m sweating under the sun, my right shoulder pressed into Cherrah’s left shoulder blade, and almost shooting at my own feet. Carl is squeezed tight between big Leo and Ty. I can smell Cherrah’s long black hair and I can picture her smile in my head, but I can’t let myself think of that right now. A shadow passes over my face and the legend himself, Lonnie Wayne Blanton, falls out of the sky.
The old dude is riding a tall walker—one of Lark’s Frankenstein projects. The thing is just two seven-foot-long robotic ostrich legs with an old rodeo saddle grafted onto it. Lonnie Wayne sits up top, cowboy boots pushed into stirrups and hand resting lazily on the pommel. Lonnie rides the tall walker like an old pro, hips swaying with each giraffe step of the machine. Just like a damn cowboy.
“Howdy, y’all,” he says. Then he turns and unloads a couple of shotgun blasts into the tangled pile of stumpers scurrying over the churned dirt toward our position.
“Doin’ great, bud,” Lonnie Wayne says to me. My face is blank. I can’t believe I’m still alive.
Just then, two more tall walkers drop into our clearing, the Osage cowboys on top raining down shotgun blasts that tear big gouges out of the oncoming stumper swarm.
Inside a few seconds, the three tall walkers have used their high vantage points and the spread of shotgun blasts to eradicate most of the stumper swarm. Not all of it, though.
“Watch your leg,” I yell up to Lonnie.
A stumper that’s somehow gotten behind us is climbing the metal of Lonnie’s tall walker leg. He glances down, then leans in the saddle in a way that causes the leg to raise up and shake. The stumper flies away into the underbrush, where it’s promptly blasted by one of my squad.
Why didn’t the stumper trigger?
Lark is yelling again from somewhere up ahead, hoarse this time. I can also hear Jack barking short commands. Lonnie turns his head and motions to his bodyguard. But before he can go, I wrap my hand around the smooth metal shaft of Lonnie’s stilt leg.
“Lonnie,” I say, “stay back where it’s safe, man. You’re not supposed to put your general in the front line.”
“I hear ya,” says the grizzled old man. “But, hell, kid, it’s the cowboy way. The buck’s gotta stop somewhere.” He cocks the shotgun and ejects a spent cartridge, pulls his hat down, and nods. Then, fluid in the stiltlike tall walker, he turns and leaps over the six-foot-tall grass.
“C’mon!” I shout to the squad. We rush forward over the crumpled grass, striving to keep up with Lonnie. As we go, we see corpses through the stalks and, even worse, the ones who are alive and wounded, ashen-faced and mouths murmuring in prayer.
I put my head down and keep going. Got to catch up with Jack. He’ll help us.
I’m moving fast, spitting grass out of my mouth and concentrating on keeping up with the damp spot between Cherrah’s shoulder blades, when we burst into a clearing.
Some seri
ous shit has gone down here.
For roughly a thirty-meter circle, the grass is trampled to mud and the field gouged up in huge chunks. There is only a split second to take in the scene before I throw my arms around Cherrah and tackle her to the ground. She falls on top of me, the butt of her gun driving all the air out of my lungs. But the foot of the spider tank whizzes past her head without knocking her brains out.
Houdini’s legs are covered in stumpers. The tank is leaping around like a bucking bronco. Lark and Jack are both on top, teeth gritted, hanging on for dear life. Hardly any of the stumpers have fallen off; dozens of them are embedded in the belly net, and others are tenaciously climbing the flanks of the armored walker.
Jack is hunched over, trying to untie Lark from something. The kid’s gotten tangled up in his guide rope. Lonnie and his two guards nimbly leap around the bucking monster on their tall walkers, but they can’t get to a good spot to shoot.
“Y’all jump off!” shouts Lonnie.
The tank careens past, and in a flash I see that Lark’s forearm is twisted under the rope. Jack can’t get him free with all the bucking and heaving. If the spider tank were to sit still though, even for a second, the stumpers would climb on top. Lark is shouting and cursing and crying a little bit, but he can’t get free.
He shouldn’t worry. We all know that Jack won’t leave him behind. The word abandon just isn’t in a hero’s vocabulary.
Watching the stumpers, I notice they’re clustered on the knee joints of the tank. A thought tickles the back of my head. Why don’t the stumpers detonate? And the answer squirms into reach. Heat. Those joints are warm from all the jumping around. The little bastards don’t trigger until they reach someplace hot.
They’re looking for skin temperature.
“Lonnie!” I wave my arms to get his attention. The old man spins around and crouches his tall walker near me. He cups his ear with one hand and with the other dabs his forehead with a white hankie.
“They go for the heat, Lonnie,” I shout. “We’ve got to start a fire.”
“Start a fire and it won’t stop,” he says. “Might kill our stock.”
“It’s that or Lark dies. Maybe we all die.”
Lonnie looks down on me, deep creases in his face. His eyes are watery blue and serious. Then he sets his shotgun into the crook of his elbow and digs into the watch pocket of his jeans. I hear a metallic clink and an antique Zippo lighter drops right into my hand. A double R symbol is painted on the side, along with the words “King of the Cowboys.”
“Let old Roy Rogers help ya out,” says Lonnie Wayne, face breaking into a gap-toothed smile.
“How old is this thing?” I ask, but when I flip the thumb wheel, a strong flame spurts from the top. Lonnie has already wheeled his tall walker around and he’s corralling the rest of the squad while avoiding the out-of-control spider tank.
“Burn it, burn it, burn it all down!” shouts Lonnie Wayne. “That’s all we got left, boys! No choice.”
I toss the lighter into the grass, and within seconds a raging fire begins to grow. The squad retreats to the other side of the clearing and we watch as, one by one, the stumpers drop off the spider tank. In that same idiotic clambering motion, they jounce over the chewed-up ground toward the sheet of flames.
Finally, Houdini stops bucking. On groaning, overheated motors, the huge machine settles down. I see my brother’s hand silhouetted against the sky. Thumbs-up. Time to go.
Thank you, Jesus.
Out of nowhere, Cherrah grabs my face with both hands. She pushes her forehead against mine, bopping our helmets together, and smiles wide. Her face is covered in dirt and blood and sweat, but it’s the most beautiful sight I’ve ever seen. “You done good, Bright Boy,” she says, her breath tickling my lips.
Somehow, my heart is beating faster right now than it has all day.
Then Cherrah and her flashing smile are gone—darted away into the grass for our retreat back to Gray Horse.
One week later, Gray Horse Army heeded Paul Blanton’s call to arms and mustered a force to march on Alaska. Their fearless response likely occurred because none of the soldiers truly understood how close they had come to utter destruction on the Great Plains. Postwar records indicate that the entire battle was recorded in great detail by two squads of military-grade humanoid robots camping two miles outside Gray Horse. Mysteriously, these machines chose to defy Archos’s orders and did not join the battle.
—CORMAC WALLACE, MIL#GHA217
4. AWAKENING
The great akuma will not rest until I am gone.
TAKEO NOMURA
NEW WAR + 1 YEAR, 4 MONTHS
Relying on incredible engineering skills and rather odd viewpoints regarding human-robot relations, Takeo Nomura managed to build Adachi Castle in the year after Zero Hour. Nomura carved this human safe zone into the heart of Tokyo with no outside help. From here he saved thousands of lives and made his final, vital contribution to the New War.
—CORMAC WALLACE, MIL#GHA217
At long last, my queen opens her eyes.
“Anata,” she says, lying on her back and looking up into my face. You.
“You,” I whisper.
I imagined this moment many times as I marched across the dark factory floor, fighting against the endless attacks that came from outside my castle walls. Always I wondered whether I would be afraid of her, after what happened before. But there is no doubt in my voice now. I am not afraid. I smile and then smile wider to see my happiness reflected in her features.
Her face was still for so long. Her voice silenced.
A tear tickles my cheek and drops from my face. She feels it and wipes it away, eyes focusing on mine. I notice again that the lens of her right eye is spiderwebbed with thin cracks. A melted patch of skin mars the right side of her head. There is nothing I can do to fix it. Not until I find the right part.
“I missed you,” I say.
Mikiko is silent for a moment. She looks past me, at the curved metal ceiling that soars thirty meters above. Perhaps she is confused. The factory has changed so much since the New War began.
It is an architecture of necessity. Over the years, my factory senshi worked ceaselessly to rivet together a defensive shell. The outermost layers are a complicated array of junk: scraps of metal, jutting poles, and crushed plastic. It forms a labyrinth built to confuse the swarms of small, wriggling akuma that constantly try to creep inside.
Monstrous steel beams line the ceiling like the rib cage of a whale. These were built to stop the greater akuma—like the talking one that died here at the beginning of the war. It gave me the secret to awakening Mikiko, but it also nearly destroyed my castle.
The scrap metal throne was not my idea. After a few months, people began to arrive. Many millions of my countrymen were led out into the country and slaughtered. They trusted too much in the machines and went willingly to their destruction. But others came to me. The people without so much trust, those with an instinct for survival, found me naturally.
And I could not turn the survivors away. They crouched on my factory floor as akuma beat down the walls again and again. My loyal senshi wheeled across the broken concrete to protect us. After each attack, we all worked together to defend ourselves from the next.
Broken concrete became metal-riveted floors, polished and gleaming. My old workbench became a throne set atop a dais with twenty-two steps leading to the top. An old man became an emperor.
Mikiko focuses on me.
“I am alive,” she says.
“Yes.”
“Why am I alive?”
“Because the great akuma gave you the breath of life. The akuma thought that this meant you belonged to him. But he was wrong. You belong to no one. I set you free.”
“Takeo. There are others like me. Tens of thousands.”
“Yes, humanoid machines are everywhere. But I do not care for them. I care for you.”
“I … remember you. So many years. Why?”
&n
bsp; “Everything has a mind. You have a good mind. You always did.”
Mikiko hugs me, tight. Her smooth plastic lips brush against my throat. Her arms are weak but I can feel that she puts her full strength into this embrace.
Then she stiffens.
“Takeo,” she says. “We are in danger.”
“Always.”
“No. The akuma. It will fear what you’ve done. It will be afraid that more of us will awaken. It will attack at once.”
And indeed, I hear the first hollow thud against the outer battlements. I let go of Mikiko and look down the stairs of the dais. The factory floor—what my people call the throne room—has filled with concerned citizens. They stand in groups of two or three, whispering to each other and politely not looking up the steps to Mikiko and me.
My rolling arms—the senshi—have already gathered in a defensive formation around the vulnerable humans. Overhead, the master senshi, a massive bridge crane, has silently rolled into position over the throne. Its two mighty arms hang in the air, poised to defend the battle floor.
Once again, we are under attack.
I rush to the bank of video monitors that ring the throne and see only static. The akuma have blinded me to the attack outside. They have never been able to do this before.
This time I feel the attack will not end. I have finally gone too far. Living here is one thing. But to compromise the entire humanoid portion of the akuma army? The great akuma will not rest until I am gone—until my secret is crushed where it lies inside my fragile skull.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
The rhythmic beating seems to come from everywhere. The akuma are relentlessly battering through our meters-thick defensive fortifications. Each soft thud we hear is the equivalent of a bomb exploding outside. I think back on my moat and chuckle to myself. How much has changed since those early times.
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