Robot Wrecker

by Paul Tomlinson

  We heard the explosion when Nathan set off the incendiaries: it meant I had very little time before Nathan discovered our robotic ruse. I knelt over the trussed hostages, intending to break their bonds: I should have just taken them out as they were, untying them later. Isn't hindsight a wonderful thing?

  "Well, if it isn't the King of the Rocket Men!" Nathan said, stepping out of the elevator shaft. Smoke was already finding its way up the shaft. "Nice try, hero," Nathan said. "But you didn't quite make it."

  All of this was being relayed live to Network IX viewers, with commentary by Milo Bryce. They intercut shots of the fire engines moving in to tackle the blaze. When the incendiary devices on the second floor were detonated, by the heat from the rising flames, glass sprayed almost as far as the Network IX van, causing Milo to flinch on camera: all very dramatic.

  Nathan and I faced each other in the twentieth floor office, exo-suited gun-slingers on the main street at high noon. Smoke was pouring out of the open elevator doors behind Nathan, and I could see from the sweat on the hostages' faces that the heat was rising too.

  "This whole place'll be ablaze within a few minutes: help me get these people down to safety," I said. "Please, Nathan."

  Nathan shook his head. "Heroics really aren't my line," he said. "If you leaped out of that window now, you'd probably make it to safety before I could stop you."

  "I'm not going without the others," I said.

  "Then we'll all die together!" Nathan flew headlong towards me in a zero-gee rugby tackle: his shoulder caught me in the chest, and he knocked me from my feet, carrying me backwards into the wall behind. The fabric of the wall cracked and crumbled under the impact. I felt almost nothing, though the speed of the assault left me stunned.

  Nathan seized the advantage, taking hold of me by the throat and crotch and hurling me towards a concrete pillar. My helmet passed straight through the pillar, demolishing it, and bringing down part of the roof: I observed this with a kind of detachment. How could my head have passed through solid concrete without sensation?

  I was also aware that although both Nathan and I were virtually invulnerable, Raoul and the others were at risk from the falling debris. I had to get them out, and quickly.

  I picked up a chunk of concrete about the size of a 'fridge, and launched it in Nathan's direction: he batted it aside with his forearm, shattering it.

  Milo appeared in the top left corner of my helmet visor. He had called in our friends from the Tin Man's Head to provide us with a little technical back-up, anything that might shift the odds in our favour.

  "We've tried to hack into the control system of Nathan's suit, but he shut us out: he's broken the Interface link. But that means he can't get at your suit controls either.

  "The aim of this contest, by the way, is to try and damage your opponent's suit so that it no longer provides one hundred percent protection: then you can do him some actual harm.

  "I should warn you that Nathan's suit is newer and better armoured than yours: you'll have to be careful."

  I'd never have thought of that.

  "We've got some of the Tin Man guys looking at the schematics of his suit, trying to find some weakness in it that you can exploit, but it might take a few minutes: it's not the kind of thing the manufacturer's advertise."

  Milo winked out of view as Nathan attacked again: he probably didn't want to distract me by being there, but it looked like he was making his escape before Nathan hit.

  Nathan's shove sent me backwards into a brick wall, which barely slowed me down: I went through it, into the next office and into another wall, which slowed me a little more. I stumbled to a stop in some sort of service stairwell. Through the two ragged holes and swirling masonry dust, I saw Nathan begin his charge.

  If I jumped out of the way at just the right moment, Nathan would go sailing underneath me and slam into the steel safety door behind me. I did and he did. There was an almighty clang!

  When Nathan turned to face me again, I could see that he had left a man-shaped imprint in the steel door, like in a cartoon.

  I decided to carry on upwards in the stairwell, out of Nathan's reach. He followed. I don't know whether I thought I'd have a better chance of beating him up on the roof, or whether I just thought it'd be safer for Raoul and the others if we fought up there. Whatever the reason, that's where we ended up. I was out into the open seconds ahead of Nathan, and ducked out of sight, trying to think up with some way of defeating him.

  Nathan floated out of the doorway, scanning the rooftop. The helicopter landing pad was empty, and the rest of the roof offered few hiding places: there were a couple of air vent covers, and a small concrete hut which housed the power supply for the helipad's landing lights. It was an obvious hiding place, and Nathan drifted towards it, as I had expected he would.

  When he found me not hiding there, Nathan turned suddenly, anticipating my attack. I came up over the edge of the building and powered straight towards him. Nathan had no time to deflect my attack, and I carried him horizontally straight over the other side of the rooftop, his suit systems momentarily confused by the actions of my CG unit.

  Flashing by below us was the street, filled with fire trucks and other emergency vehicles. Flames and smoke crawled up the side of the tower: I knew I didn't have much time.

  Our momentum took us across Milton Street towards the roof of the Victoria Centre shopping complex. I released Nathan suddenly, coming to a mid-air stop myself. Nathan sailed on back into the neon Pepsi sign on the shopping mall's roof. I hoped the electricity discharged would weaken his suit somehow, and offer me some chance of victory.

  Nathan disentangled himself from the sign's struts and tore a massive support post free: it was about the size of a telegraph pole, and he carried it like it was a lance. He tucked it under his right arm and charged towards me like a knight in a medieval joust.

  I managed to deflect the lance, but Nathan whirled round almost instantly, wielding the post like an outsized baseball bat, knocking me out of the sky.

  I fell back towards the roof of Talos Tower, and hit the helipad with a jolt that rattled my teeth. That told me straight away that something was wrong. The CG-Field in my suit hadn't fully cushioned me against the impact: my suit was damaged somewhere: it was no longer invulnerable.

  Nathan landed easily on the rooftop beside me and reached down.

  "Time to die, little man," he said.

  He lifted me, hoisting me high above his head, and walked over to the edge of the tower.

  "If I were you," Nathan said. "I'd check the warranty on that suit: it seems to have developed a fault. That kind of thing can prove fatal. I hope."

  He threw me over the side of the building, straight down towards the ground.

  I tried to turn the fall into a controlled dive, hoping to swoop low over the vehicles below and use my momentum to carry me straight back up to the rooftop, but my suit wasn't responding quickly enough. I was heading face-first towards the asphalt. With the damage my suit had suffered, the impact might just kill me.

  "Milo, if you can hear me, I could do with a little help from my friends," I said.

  "We're working on it," Milo said, appearing in my helmet visor. "The collision sensors on the back of your suit are damaged, and that's causing a weakening of the field back there. The guys here are going to try and even the distribution manually, but when we hit the ground, it's going to hurt anyway. Brace yourself!"

  What did he mean 'we'?

  The ground rushed towards me at an alarming rate. I could see the cracks between the kerbstones, and the little green stalks of grass that had taken root there. My speed showed no sign of slowing, and I prepared myself to be smeared all over the inside of the suit.

  Ten seconds to impact.

  "Milo, if you guys're going to pull off a miracle, now's the time to do it."

  Five seconds to splatsville.

  I half-expected to see my whole life go flashing by in my mind's eye, but that particular clic
hé seemed to be out to lunch.

  Two seconds.

  "Goodbye cruel world!"

  One.

  I felt, for one brief second, that I'd been hit head-on by a train. My breast-bone seemed to meet my spine, and then I passed into blissful unconsciousness. Briefly.

  I awoke to pain, and I couldn't breathe. For a couple of seconds, I lay in a state of panic, completely disorientated. Then, hesitantly, my suit's systems came back on line. I could breathe again, but it hurt when I did. There were half a dozen warning signals flashing on my visor, and the visor itself was cracked. I blinked as blood trickled into my eye from a cut on my forehead: I guess that's what cracked the visor.

  I lifted myself up off the ground, and my vision swam drunkenly. Stabilisation was one of the things the warning lights were telling me was in danger of complete failure.

  A face appeared, projected inside my helmet.

  "Sorry about that, Stevie. We had a little problem establishing contact."

  I stared at the face, recognising it despite – or maybe because of – the opaque goggles.

  "Nice to see you, Sammy. How am I doing? I'm feeling a little uncoordinated here."

  "You've lost most of the sensors which make the suit move when you do, so you aren't going to be able to get it to do much," Sammy said. "That's the bad news. The good news is that I can control the suit from here: I can move you like I would a telechiric robot."

  I was going to be Sammy's puppet, not in control of my own movements, oh good.

  A fireman and two paramedics came running towards me; I waved them back, indicating that I was okay. My arm felt incredibly heavy: Sammy was right, the suit wasn't moving in harmony with me.

  "Wait," Sammy said in my ear. "Take the axe from the fireman."

  "An axe against Nathan's state of the art armour?" I said.

  "Trust me, I think I've found a chink in that armour."

  The fireman was a little surprised, and gave up his reluctantly: I promised to bring it straight back.

  "We're going to send some guys in suits up to get those people out," the fireman said. "It'd help if you could keep the psycho distracted for a while."

  What did he think I'd been doing for the last hour? How come they hadn't sent men in suits up before now? I decided not to antagonise the fireman with any implied criticism. I just nodded.

  "He's gone back to the twentieth floor," Milo cut in on another channel, relaying the pictures from the remote camera that was still following Nathan.

  "I suppose he thinks you're finished, and now he's going to kill the others," Milo said. "He's got a gun. Something big – I can't make it out clearly. Be careful."

  "We've got to move now," I said. I was running a diagnostic check on the suit's systems. What is was telling me was too depressing, so I turned it off. "Crap!"

  "We're going to go in on the nineteenth floor, and hopefully come up through the floor directly behind him, catch him unawares," Sammy said. "As soon as we're in position, I'm going to take control of your suit and swing the axe. If I catch him exactly right, it'll completely disable his suit."

  "And if you don't catch him exactly right?" I asked.

  "I'll say something nice at your funeral."

  "Funny guy. Going up. Nineteenth floor – women's lingerie, millinery, and last ditch rescue attempts."

  "As you can see," Milo Bryce was telling his Network IX audience. "The flames are already burning half-way up the thirty storey building, and the fire hoses are having little effect on the blaze.

  "The hostages are being held on the twentieth floor, a mere five storeys above the flames, and we estimate that there is less than twenty minutes left before the fire reaches them. The situation looks increasingly desperate, and only a miracle can now prevent this ending in tragedy."

  We almost made it. We entered the Talos building through a window on the nineteenth floor, and, using the image from the remote television camera on the floor above, Sammy and I managed to position ourselves immediately under and slightly behind Nathan.

  I shot straight up through the floor, and immediately felt Sammy try to take control the suit: I saw my arms raise the axe; and then I heard Sammy shout something about 'losing it', and then the full weight of the suit was on my shoulders. I was on my own, virtually – and literally – powerless.

  I've never played golf, but they reckon its all in the stance and the swing. If Sammy had got the suit in the right position and had begun to swing the axe at the right angle before the shilling in the meter ran out, I figured all I had to do was complete the move. Sounded easy enough, and I made the decision to do it in the split second that the axe was still moving upward: if I'd had any longer to think about it, I'd have realised it was pretty unlikely that I'd get the swing just right, and bring the axe down with enough force, at exactly the spot in Nathan's armour that Sammy's computer had pinpointed as the vulnerable spot. Luckily I didn't have time to think.

  I swung the axe, and brought it round and down in a vicious arc, burying it deep into the joint in Nathan's armour in the small of his back.

  Nathan sensed movement behind him and tried to turn, but was too late. As the axe bit home, he stiffened, stopping mid-turn. His suit had locked up, the controls freezing his limbs.

  I pushed Nathan with the palm of my hand, and he crashed to the ground, not moving, trapped inside the dead suit, still clutching the gun.

  "Yes!" Milo hissed in my ear.

  "You okay?" I heard Sammy asking in my ear, patched in on Milo's signal. "Your suit cut me off: you have some non-standard security software that thought I was trying to take control of it."

  "I'm fine," I said. "I got lucky and hit the weak spot in the small of Nathan's back. When all this is over, Sammy, you and I should go and play a few holes of golf, I think we've got the swing – "

  "Tell me you said the top of his thigh and not the small of his back," Sammy said.

  "He's down," I said. "Suit's disabled."

  A thick layer of black smoke was drifting around at ceiling level, and flames were beginning to lick over the rim of the open elevator shaft.

  "Just in time," Phyllis said, as I cut her bonds. She freed Raoul, while I untied Beth.

  "We had to make it look like a close thing, so it'd make for good television," I said. "Stay close to the ground, out of the smoke."

  There was much coughing all round, and their smoke-stained faces were streaked with tears from reddened eyes.

  "The firemen are on their way up, you should see them at the window that faces east," Milo said in my ear.

  "Where's east?" I asked.

  Raoul pointed.

  "The firemen are coming up in suits: they'll have harnesses to carry you all down in. It'll be fun," I told them.

  A fireman in a lobster-red suit rose into view at the east-facing window.

  "Okay, Phyllis, you're up first. Ready?"

  She nodded.

  "I'll be right behind you," Raoul assured her.

  There was a shot, and the fireman's chest exploded: he fell out of the sky.

  We all turned together: Nathan was propped up on one elbow, his face flushed and beaded with sweat. The gun was still smoking in his hand.

  "What are you doing?" Phyllis demanded.

  "No last minute rescues," Nathan said. "We're all just going to sit here quietly and die together." He dragged himself to his feet.

  "No!" Phyllis shouted. She rushed towards Nathan.

  He raised the gun to fire.

  Somehow I got myself between the two of them: this time it was my chest that exploded.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  I threw myself at Nathan as he fired and the blast caught me full in the chest. I felt a searing pain as the plastics of the suit melted and fused with my flesh. My forward rush became a staggering fall, and I collided with Nathan before he could fire again. I clung to him like a tired boxer staying close to avoid the blows of an opponent. Our faces were only inches apart, and for a brief moment I was
looking into the eyes of the old Nathan: his expression was a mixture of regret, fear, and resignation. Then he threw himself backwards out of the window and the two of us plunged towards the ground, embracing each other like the ultimate safe sex couple.

  The TV news footage shows our armoured figures falling in a long, graceful arc from the twentieth floor window, looking like we were still locked in battle. Both of our suits were dead now, there was nothing to slow our fall, little protection for our fragile bodies.

  We hit the roof of a police car, crumpling it like a paper cup. I looked down at Nathan, and I knew from the angle of his neck that he was dead. His eyes were closed and his face was pale.

  I slumped into unconsciousness.

  I watched a lot of television during the time I lay recovering in the hospital.

  The news footage showing the rescue of the hostages from Talos Tower was very dramatic – I saw recordings of it a couple of days after the event. Just seconds after Nathan shot me, two men in red CG suits rose out of the flames in the elevator shaft, the shiny surfaces of their suits making them look like robot demons who were on fire themselves. Two more suited figures entered through the window. They fitted Raoul, and Phyllis, and Beth with harnesses and carried them down to safety and waiting ambulances. The three of them were treated for smoke inhalation, and released from hospital within twenty-four hours. I wasn't quite so lucky.

  I was still lying in hospital almost a month after it was all over, with no chest hair and shiny new skin across much of my upper torso: the suit had absorbed the blast, but I'd suffered burns from the molten plastic. The nurse promised me that the hair would grow back eventually, but he also said I looked fine without it.