Behind the Bitmask

by Jessica Kagan

  “You’re not so tough without your filthy cronies to back you up, am I right?” said Ravage, who had dropped back down to taunt us. I was expecting another attempt on the shield once she was done.

  “Normally, we’d just kill you and be done with it, but your shenanigans at Mount Amdahl got our older brother killed,” Terrorize added. “Rubovitch wants your brains for his newest creations. He didn’t say anything about the rest of your bodies!”

  “He’s back at the camp, ready to collect your corpses when we’re done with you.”

  “I think he’s going to chop up your limbs for stew.”

  “We’ll precook you for him. He likes his meat charred black.”

  “If you starve to death, there won’t be enough for him to really enjoy-”

  “Fire another shot at them,” I said to Azure. I can usually tolerate a certain degree of verbal abuse, but it’s a lot harder when you can’t retaliate. Azure nodded and started charging up the Arbalest again. Ravage jumped out of its path of fire so quickly (by the standards of a sixty foot tall combat robot, at least) that I was glad we didn’t have to literally face them on an open battlefield. When it became apparent that they weren’t quite foolish enough to stay in the path of the Arbalest, Azure sighed and let its energy fizzle out.

  “You can’t do a thing to us! Even our joints are reinforced against all matter of sorcery, so don’t even try,” Ravage shouted at us from an indeterminate high place. Azure suddenly looked at me like she’d had an epiphany.

  “She’s bluffing! The joints are their weakest points. That much I can sense,” she explained. Given how they’d incinerated my poor defenseless mites that might’ve otherwise found lodgings in whatever exposed crevasses they had, this was surprisingly plausible.

  “We have got to find a way to blow up those joints. Mites would work great if they could get inside,” I responded.

  “Why not throw your acid bomb at them? They’re not chthons, but it should corrode their metal,” offered Noah. What was his obsession with lobbing vitriol at everyone?

  “When has throwing things ever worked out for me? You know, except that one time.” Noah probably didn’t know about my battle with Hyperion back in the day, but I was cranky, and I was going to hold it against him, even if doing so was completely unreasonable. Then a few things occurred to me about what it meant if Noah was right, and the canister was full of corrosive acid.

  Holy shit, I’ve been carrying a deadly acid bomb since we left Mount Amdahl! What if it started leaking?

  Seriously, though, those canisters are dangerous! They do not go in backpacks if you can at all help it. You need a well-trained quartermaster to keep them in reserve for you until the right moment. The other ones back at Mount Amdahl were full of noxious chemicals, too. It’s a wonder the cultists didn’t think to use them against us.

  Throwing it at Terrorize and Ravage is as good a way to dispose of it as any, but there’s no guarantee I have the throwing arm to hit either of them, much less coat enough of their bodies in acid to matter.

  I’ve got magic. Maybe I can improve the acid bomb’s effective radius, thus reducing the need for a good throwing arm.

  Azure’s got magic, too. The last thing I want is for one of Rubovitch’s robots to casually sidle out of the way if I throw the bomb at them. Maybe she can do something to distract them, or lure them closer, or something.

  Between their failed attempts to break our fortifications and their minor injuries, it seemed like Terrorize and Ravage were losing interest in a direct assault, but without going out there and risking myself, I couldn’t be sure. Still, I had enough points to synthesize into an initial plan.

  “Okay, Noah, have it your way. We’re going to lure the robots back here and then hit them with the acid canister,” I began explaining, perhaps more abruptly than they were expecting. But they didn’t object, so that was good.

  “I’m going to load up the canister with exploding mites so that its contents spread further. After that, we need to distract the bots so I can sneak more mites into their joints like I originally intended. Then, I’ll blow them up into a million pieces – and maybe after that, the foot soldiers will finally see reason and let us be,” I continued.

  “What if this doesn’t work?” Noah said after a moment.

  “Well...it was your idea originally, so I guess I’ll just blame you.” Maybe not the best thing to say in what, to be honest, is a pretty tense combat situation, but I think I’ve established my overall opinion on Noah.

  “I don’t have a straight shot to either Terrorize or Ravage. Sure hope they aren’t learning valuable lessons from their previous experiences,” Azure informed me. From a perspective of pure antagonism, this presented some unique difficulties.

  “Maybe try shouting something mean spirited at them? I’m still kind of sore about the whole ‘lesbian sluts’ thing. It misrepresents us badly,” suggested Haxabalatnar. For all I knew, I might be able to shout loud enough (with magic amplification) to get Terrorize and Ravage’s attention, but how exactly do you goad a sixty-foot tall gold-plated prostitute robot of war into doing something stupid?

  “Terrorize said something about us killing her older brother at Mount Amdahl. She couldn’t possibly mean that robot Hector’s company had to deal with, could she?” he continued.

  “Leave it to giant robots to care so much about family,” Noah added.

  “If that’s the case, you should try telling them you’re going to torture and kill Adrian Rubovitch or something… Maybe you should actually torture and kill Rubovitch if you get the chance.”

  Being so recklessly cavalier about death and depravity is MY thing! Haxabalatnar still had a point, though, so I resolved to try doing things his way. I checked my phone’s scripts and noticed that I didn’t have anything for voice amplification, but whipping up something serviceable with the speaker wasn’t going to take long, even with the dread alphanumeric keypad. Still, typing was horribly slow. I wished I’d bought a Blackberry handset instead.

  “I’m bored. Either hurry up, or let me send the message with the Arbalest,” Azure whined. In her defense, I would be bored in her situation, but I didn’t want to risk the integrity of the shield, no matter how much magic Azure could now cast in parallel.

  “Just give me a minute,” I responded. It was the diplomatic option, that’s for certain. I hurried along with the spellscript as much as my device would let me, but it was three minutes before I was ready to broadcast some invective for Terrorize and Ravage. I decided to go with Haxabalatnar’s suggestion for content, and as a result, I said things so unspeakable that were I to record them or write them down, merely perceiving them would sear off your flesh. Maybe I exaggerate. I seem to remember saying something about skullfucking, so you can imagine the tone of the rest of the message.

  After a few seconds of silence, I heard two screeches of unfathomable rage, and a thundering of limbs that Terrorize and Ravage hadn’t quite managed in their earlier charges. It sounded like they were out to preemptively avenge Rubovitch.

  “I don’t care what Sigmar wants – I will tear you from limb to limb again and again and again AND AGAIN!” Ravage screamed at us, still from some distance away. I didn’t intend to find out how she were going to do this. I hurriedly clawed at my phone to bring up the mite script (this time, configuring the mites to explode), and kept it running until the canister was crawling with as many explosive mites as there are maggots on a putrefying chunk of rotten meat. I briefly worried that some of them would get on my hands, but luckily, the mites moved to accommodate me. I lobbed the canister as hard as I could at the ground in front of us, just as Terrorize and Ravage crested the hill yet again. They came to a screeching halt some distance away from the canister. Terrorize’s jaw dropped with a clank.

  “Are you fucking serious? We’re doing this again?” she shouted. “All you do is hide in your li
ttle cave and throw things at us!”

  “We should show them that this goes both ways,” Ravage told her sister. I’m not sure how, but Terrorize responded with a nasty rictus that I could call a smile if I were being charitable. Then, she knelt down and picked up the canister, swarming with mites as it was. This had to be one of the all time stupidest things you could ever do in a battle.

  “Hey, Charlotte! Play hot potato with us-”

  BOOM.

  I wasted no time in triggering the mites. The ensuing explosion knocked me off my feet even through Azure’s shield, and enough debris fell from the ceiling that for a split second, I thought I’d just killed us all by causing a cave in. Someone was screaming again. Once I recovered from the shockwave, I stood up and appraised the situation. Everyone else seemed okay, if perhaps dusty and rattled compared to what they were before the blast.

  What of Terrorize and Ravage, though? If my allies weren’t screaming, yet someone else was... Could it be that the canister had some useful effect?

  A chunk of gold-plated gears and servos took time out of its busy schedule to embed itself in the ground before us, where it fizzed angrily but otherwise seemed to remain mostly solid. I looked up in an attempt to see where it’d come from – Terrorize and Ravage were no longer in any condition to fight. The canister and mites had completely blown off Terrorize’s left arm, stripped away the gold plating from the upper halves of their bodies, and apparently coated everything in a thin layer of caustics. If I learned anything from high school chemistry, it’s that even the strong acids don’t immediately dissolve things. It takes a while, which gives overprotective teachers plenty of time to drag contaminated students to the showers to flush the affected areas. Odds were, though, that nothing of that sort was going to come to the robots’ aid.

  Therefore, all Terrorize and Ravage could really do to mitigate their suffering was scream, moan, and clutch their possibly liquefying bodies in agony. I would not wish this fate on any human, but these were tools of war; every iota of humanity or at least sentience Rubovitch had imbued into them was a regrettable mistake.

  *Azure, would you care to put these two out of their misery?* I transmitted, since I didn’t want to have to shout to make myself heard over our agonized enemies. Azure responded by giving me (and presumably Hax and Noah) a thumbs up before charging up her largest and most powerful blast of energy yet. She thus used the Arbalest to fire some sort of electrically-charged bolt into each robot’s head. They stopped moving, leaving us to deal with only the bubbling of residual acid on the rocks above us. We’d probably have to stay put for a while longer, but as far as I was concerned, the siege itself was over.

  “Word is starting to get out at camp that Terrorize and Ravage have fallen in battle,” Azure soberly informed us. For the sake of my dignity, I had to suppress a fist pump. Besides, we still had to kill Sigmar before we could truly claim a victory. After my last attempt, I wasn’t looking forward to it. But I was stronger now, my allies were in closer harmony with me, and we’d just scored a moral victory for Azure by taking down the robots that had lead the invasion of her realm. If that didn’t help, nothing would.

  “Now, we just have to walk on over to Sigmar’s place and shoot him in the face when he opens the door,” I quipped. The first half of that statement was more serious than the second one. I didn’t know how long it was going to take for him to find out that we’d melted one of his battalions.

  THE IDEA THAT AZURE HAS SLAIN TERRORIZE AND RAVAGE NO LONGER STRAINS THE LIMITS OF CREDIBILITY. I FELT THEIR SOULS LEAVE THEIR BODIES FOR GOOD JUST NOW.

  That was also encouraging.

  “Robots have souls?” Noah asked, rather foolishly if my opinion on the quality of his question is to be believed.

  UNLIKE ORGANIC LIFE FORMS, WE MACHINES ACTUALLY DO HAVE IMMORTAL SOULS.

  “Good thing you didn’t say that when we were back at the church,” Azure responded. “We’d be debating theology from a dirty jail cell.”

  Leaving the Arbalest’s religious convictions aside, the implicit question remained unanswered – did we have to hunt Sigmar down? “Most dangerous game” didn’t even begin to describe it. Before we could make a decision, a white flag appeared at the crest of the hill.

  “It’s legitimate,” Azure said, preempting us all. “Or at least, its bearer thinks so. He might be unknowingly rigged to explode, so I’ll keep the shield up if you don’t mind.” The flag’s bearer followed the flag – one particularly dejected-looking soldier whose remaining armor looked like it’d fallen apart before he could even get to the battlefield.

  “Don’t shoot! I come bringing a message from Sigmar,” he shouted. I guess metaphorical lambs can bleat...though he lost major irony points for appearing human, instead of being some sort of chthonic wether. Haxabalatnar and Noah came to the entrance for the first time in a while, so I’m guessing our latest visitor intrigued them at least on some level.

  “Is Sigmar finally admitting to being a moron?” Hax shouted back; he was really doubling down on the insults, and were it not for my firsthand experience, I would be half inclined to believe him.

  “No! He... He wants to negotiate a temporary ceasefire.”

  Hold on, what?

  “This could be amusing, Hax. Give the poor boy a chance,” I said. I felt like maybe against a more civilized enemy, I wouldn’t be inclined to be quite so patronizing.

  “So, uh... He says that a far greater threat to hell is rising, and the time for petty vengeance is over, so you should cease aggressive acts against him until such threats have been dealt with.”

  I immediately decided that I didn’t really give a shit whether or not Sigmar was telling the truth. So what if it turned out that he actually was dealing with something on the sidelines? That just increased his odds of getting killed, as far as I was concerned. If it turned out that some of these hypothetical bogeys managed to off Sigmar, my sadness at not being able to deal the killing blow myself would pale in comparison to my joy at his defeat. At least, that’s what I thought.

  “Will you accept this offer? Please, say yes. I don’t want to die,” Sigmar’s apparent negotiator pleaded.

  “What do we say, team?” I asked my allies.

  From Azure: “No.”

  From Haxabalatnar: “Fuck, no!”

  From Noah: “I definitely don’t trust you or Sigmar.”

  So that settled it, at least from a democratic perspective.

  “No deal,” I told the negotiator.

  “...I wasn’t really expecting anything else,” the negotiator responded before promptly exploding into a sticky mess of gore. That’s not a good look on an aspiring diplomat.

  “Really bad idea on Sigmar’s part,” Haxabalatnar snarked. This was well within the expectations his previous reactions to Sigmar’s plans had set.

  “We’re back to the status quo,” I responded. “How do we find Sigmar, and how do we get to him?”

  Before anyone could offer a suggestion, though, a tempest of electric current shot through the messenger’s remains. Several chunks of semi-solid human flesh rose off the ground and formed themselves into a small archway, which promptly filled up with magical energy and disgorged a blood-soaked platypus.

  “Okay, maybe I shouldn’t have shot my own messenger. But what a grand entrance!” Sigmar said to us. I felt my adrenaline surge, though I had the vague sense that Haxabalatnar had just buried his face in his palm.

  “Your friend doesn’t seem to like it when I’m around, Charlotte. Why have you got to keep making such dour friends?” he quipped. He was beginning to spin his trident like he used to back in my subordinate days. I realized that Azure hadn’t freaked out and fired a volley out of fear at Sigmar. I didn’t know if that was good or not.

  *What should I do?* she asked me.

  *Last time I fought him, I was able to land damaging blows, but he just shr
ugged them off and regenerated-*

  Huh, that’s odd. Did someone just make a loud bleating noise?

  “Are you even listening to me?” Sigmar shouted. “I’ve got this fun little plan where I kill all of your subordinates and leave you for last, and it’s beginning to look like you’re not going to cooperate!”

  “Sigmar, do you actually want a ceasefire, or are you just trying to mess with us?” Noah asked. Now that I think about it, he’d done little for us except occasional commentary. Surprisingly, Sigmar didn’t respond. I was expecting at least some sort of cruel joke.

  “Whatever. Let’s start with the spellbreaker. His fancy equipment is no match for good old fashioned titanic magicks.” Sigmar spun the trident again, made an obscene gesture with his left hand, and used the right to fire out a beam of energy that passed through Azure’s shield as if it were nothing. It curved around us to grasp Noah, and faster than I could really comprehend, his entire body was pressed up against the back of the shield.

  “I’d let him through, Azure,” Sigmar sneered. “It would be awfully pointless if he were to die because he got crushed against a wall you could easily lower...”

  “Don’t do it! He’ll fry you...all...for sure,” choked Noah, who now just looked like he was in excruciating pain. Exactly how was Noah vulnerable to this sort of telekinetic grab? Sigmar hadn’t used it on me when we fought, and he certainly wasn’t using it on someone useful, like Azure. Maybe it was some sort of abuse of electromagnetism? Noah had packed more battery power on his person than was strictly average – or even healthy.

  “Oh, what the hell, I’ll just pull him through myself!” Sigmar made a face I’d heretofore associated only with extreme constipation, and with that, Noah passed through Azure’s shield, leaving a gaping, growing hole. He ended up on the ground a few meters away from Sigmar; the best I could say for his landing is that he hadn’t managed to plant on his face or detonate his batteries.