Twisted Metal

by Tony Ballantyne

  ‘Look at him!’ called Arban. ‘Look at yourselves. Identical bodies, identical parts, all so that you can rebuild yourselves from your comrades. Submerging yourself in each other for safety. You act like Nicolas the Coward.’ He pushed a finger into the mechanism in the chest of the man he now held, stopping a wheel that turned there. A whining noise emerged from the man’s mouth. The other soldiers shifted, distressed by their comrade’s pain.

  ‘And now you mill about in the midst of a conquered city, taking it easy, running from danger, avoiding the spoils that are rightfully ours. I tell you, better robots than you have died these past few weeks. Better robots than you have mounted attacks and been repulsed, and this is how you repay them. You are a disgrace!’

  The whine had risen to a scream now. Arban looked down at the distressed man, tensed his hand as if he were about to rip the mechanism apart, thought better of it and released the man to collapse painfully to the ground.

  ‘I should kill you all now. You’re practically traitors! Any other time maybe I would, but not today. We are short of robots, even second-rate ones such as yourselves.’

  The infantry looked on thoughtfully, the sun warming their grey skins.

  ‘You killed Carmel,’ said Eleanor.

  Arban shuddered. ‘Even your voices!’ he shouted. ‘So grey and colourless! But, no, I didn’t kill anyone.’ He held up a hand, showing the silver spiral of an interface coil.

  ‘I palmed a coil, just like this one. You saw me crush the coil of a Wiener soldier, not your comrade. Artemisian troops are too valuable to waste. All I did was disconnect Carmel’s coil from her body. You can easily link her back up.’

  Eleanor nodded to Hetfield, who bent down over Carmel’s body.

  Arban turned to address the others. ‘While he’s doing that, the rest of you form yourselves into two lines. You are under my command now. There are still a few towers defended here in Wien. Still a few booby-trapped doors with aristocrats hiding behind them. Robots beyond hope and fear, robots who would rather die than give up what they have, and are quite prepared for their workers to make that sacrifice along with them. Well, my happy crew, you shall be the first to face them!’

  Arban drew himself to his full height. The grey infantry weren’t moving. ‘Didn’t you hear me?’ A note of anger in his voice. ‘I said line up!’

  Slowly, the soldiers began to shuffle into position.

  ‘Faster! Do I have to really kill one of you to set an example? I don’t have any time for sulkers and shirkers who have spent the last few hours hanging around at the edges of the camps, waiting for the danger to pass so that they can creep in amongst the bolder robots and share the spoils and the glory. I tell you, I was the first into this city, and . . .’

  ‘No you weren’t.’

  Everyone turned to look at the robot who had spoken. He seemed identical to the rest: thin grey-painted body armour, unexceptional machinery. He did not pause in the process of taking his place in the line.

  ‘What did you say?’ said Arban, his voice dangerously low.

  ‘I said that you weren’t the first into this city.’

  It was so quiet in the square. From somewhere in the distance a crumbling crash of rubble could be heard as another marble tower slid to oblivion.

  ‘Are you daring to call me a liar?’ hummed Arban, his voice modulated so low. Eleanor reached slowly for her awl. Around her she was aware of other infantryrobots doing the same.

  ‘No,’ said the robot. ‘I believe you to be merely mistaken. You were not the first into this city. We were.’

  Arban held the robot’s gaze. There was something strange about the man, something so still and unafraid. Eleanor felt it, they all felt it, yet they had worked and fought with him for so long. Arban laughed to cover the unease that suddenly arose within him. ‘Hey, who’s to know? We all had our part to play. Maybe I got it wrong. Maybe I owe you an apology. Still, it isn’t done to disagree with your superior.’

  ‘I’m not sure that you are my superior. I’m not sure that such things exist within Artemis.’

  Arban looked the plain grey robot up and down.

  ‘Okay, soldier boy,’ he said. ‘Single combat. You and me.’

  The grey man seemed unimpressed. ‘Are you now going to kill us all one by one? What’s the good of that to Artemis?’

  ‘I don’t intend to kill all of you,’ said Arban. ‘Just enough to ensure discipline.’ And he sprang: his electromuscles had been charging even as he spoke. He went for the quick kill, landing on the man’s chest, his feet scraping down the chest armour and wrenching it clear of the body, his left hand pulling the coil from the back of the robot’s neck, his other hand . . .

  The robot wasn’t there. He was standing just out of reach of Arban, arms folded. Eleanor and the rest of the infantry were moving, getting into position. Arban unslung the rifle from his back and fired it, dead centre on the infantryman’s chest. The robot was already standing within the length of its barrel, raising his hand to strike, bringing an awl down . . . Eleanor saw the sharp point scrape down the Storm Trooper’s left arm, saw the electro muscles there discharging in a crackle of sparks. The grey soldier had punctured him!

  But now the grey soldier was tumbling backwards, his grey body folding in half, badly dented where Arban had kicked him in the chest. And now he was having trouble getting to his feet. Eleanor saw why: Arban had snatched off his arm. Eleanor nodded to the reanimated Carmel.

  Arban held the arm out for his opponent to see. ‘What’s your name, boy?’ he asked.

  ‘Kavan,’ said the crippled grey man.

  Eleanor watched for Arban’s response

  ‘Kavan?’ said Arban, ‘Kavan. I’ve heard that name before. Now, when was it?’

  The grey robot said nothing. Arban was disturbed, Eleanor could tell. The name obviously struck a bell deep inside him, and not a tinkling little silver bell but a great tolling chime of warning.

  ‘I have heard of you,’ he said. ‘Back when we took Stark. Were you there?’

  ‘I was.’

  We all were, thought Eleanor.

  Arban was picking apart Kavan’s arm, stripping off the grey casing, popping out the joints and peeling away the electromuscles. He dropped them on the ground, one by one.

  ‘I remember. You led the charge through the Tesla towers. A lot of robots died there . . .’

  ‘But we made it through in the end.’

  Arban finished stripping the arm. He rubbed his palms together, scraping off the remnants of Kavan’s grease and lubricant, his left hand moving oddly: the effect of the punctured electromuscle.

  ‘You were offered promotion,’ said Arban. ‘A Storm Trooper’s body, but you preferred to remain as an infantryrobot. Yes, I knew I’d heard of you! You’re not a coward, that’s for certain. I’ve heard you called a hero, but I’m not sure that’s exactly right. Anyone can get others killed. So what are you? You’re not a good soldier or you wouldn’t be skulking in this square. I don’t know what I should do with you.’

  ‘This is single combat,’ replied Kavan. ‘To the death.’

  ‘Don’t be stupid! You don’t stand a chance!’ Arban stepped forward and ground the remains of Kavan’s arm into the flagstones with a hard metal foot. Kavan took a step back. And now Eleanor and the grey infantry were moving. Carmel tossed something towards Kavan. Something long, it bent as it tumbled. Kavan snatched it from the air.

  Arban jumped, kicked out with one foot, bringing the ultrahard, shovel-like edge around and upwards just at Kavan’s knee joint, breaking the leg there, but Kavan moved in at the same time, stabbing out at the metal in Arban’s thigh, puncturing him again, rupturing the electromuscle there. Arban landed and spun around, slightly clumsy, slightly off balance due to the spasming muscles in his left thigh.

  Kavan had two arms again! As Arban moved in to attack, Eleanor nodded to Ulrich, who detached his own leg at the knee and threw it to Kavan, who snapped it into place and then, almost in the
same movement, jumped at Arban.

  Arban anticipated his attack. He grabbed Kavan’s right arm once more, pulling it off, but again Kavan reached out and with his left hand stabbed at the electromuscles in Arban’s arm. They were spasming all the more. With difficulty, Arban tore apart Kavan’s arm again, but the grey robot simply snatched another arm out of the air, thrown by one of his own robots, and reattached it. Eleanor wondered if Arban yet had any real inkling of his peril. This might be single combat, but Arban wasn‘t only fighting Kavan, he was fighting all of them.

  Smoothly, though not as smoothly as before, Arban drew his rifle from his back and shot Ulrich in the head. Twisted wire exploded in a cloud. Ulrich’s arms and legs jerked up and down, thrashing as the curving, expanding wire sent strange signals to the robot’s limbs. Arban fired again, catching Hammett in the chest. Arban’s finger was tightening a third time just as Kavan smashed the rifle from his hand. Arban kicked down, incapacitating both of Kavan’s legs. Kavan stabbed Arban’s left arm once more, and the electromuscle there flashed and died. Kavan took the opportunity to drag himself backwards and out of range, detaching his legs as he went. Arban should have gone for his arms, Eleanor knew, should have stopped Kavan from doing what he was doing now – snapping two more legs into place. Arban jumped, but Kavan was already there, this time scraping at his right arm . . .

  . . . and they fought. Metal puncturing metal, mechanisms sticking, smoke rising in the air and the rhythmic pounding of metal feet in the distance as the infantry-robots anticipated their leader’s victory.

  And with rising incredulity Arban realized he was going to die.

  His body, his great, polished, finely tuned body was being gradually eroded by this grey robot that just didn’t stop. Kavan simply didn’t seem to care about the pain. His patchwork grey body fought on, his mind surely exhausted by the exertion, but still he fought.

  Until eventually Arban lay on his back, his right arm mushy, his arms and legs dead, looking upwards as Kavan stood above him, the other grey bodies of the broken-down infantry haloed by the sun as they too loomed over him. Then Kavan spoke. For a moment, Arban thought he was speaking to him, but he was mistaken. Kavan seemed to no longer count Arban as a sentient being

  ‘Come here, Eleanor,’ Kavan had called.

  ‘What are you going to do?’ asked Arban.

  Kavan bent down and used the awl to pry Arban’s head armour clear. Arban felt the awl tapping on his skull. He looked up at Kavan, felt him doing something there.

  ‘What are you doing?’ he repeated.

  Eleanor was looking into his skull. Kavan had opened him up and Eleanor was looking at the twisted metal of his brain.

  ‘What do you see?’ asked Kavan.

  ‘Nothing,’ replied Eleanor. ‘He’s just a standard Artemisian robot.’

  And then Arban felt an odd sensation down his left side. It was as if his dead arm had come back to life and was waving in the air. He heard the sound of music playing on trumpets, and a rainbow seemed to be forming within his body. He saw Kavan pulling his awl up into the air, the twisted wire of Arban’s own brain around it . . .

  Kavan

  There was enough metal and parts from the dead Wiener soldiers to rebuild the damaged bodies of the robots in his section, but it took time to knit electromuscle.

  Kavan sat on the rim of the fountain in the centre of the square, waiting for his mind to attune itself to his new body. It was always the same when you added new parts: things didn’t feel right for the first few days, and you had to wait for them to bed in properly and become part of you. Kavan had been swapping body parts with gay abandon not twenty minutes ago. No wonder he now felt tired and shaky.

  ‘We’ve got six whole robots left; eight if you count you and me,’ said Eleanor, her hands moving in regular patterns as she knitted wire into muscle.

  ‘Have you got anything out of that pile of bodies we could use?’ Kavan waved a hand towards the dismembered Wiener robots that Arban had been messing around with.

  ‘Some muscle that can be shortened. But frankly, it’s quicker to knit it ourselves.’

  ‘That’s not good. We need to move on. We can’t just stay here like that Choarh.’ He gestured to the broken body of Arban, twisted wire spilling over the ground from the shattered skull. Kavan shook his head. ‘Idiot. Just sitting here with that over-engineered matt-black body. If we hadn’t got to him first the Wiener defence would have. That head would have looked good as a mascot for some Death and Glory last-stand squad.’

  Kavan flexed his arms and legs. They just didn’t feel right.

  ‘What are we going to do now?’ asked Eleanor.

  ‘Send out four of the able-bodied to scout the surrounding buildings. There’ll be some Wiener civilians hiding out in them. Have our robots rip the usable parts from their bodies and bring them back here right away. The more robots we have out cannibalizing, the more parts we can collect.’

  ‘I thought you’d say that,’ said Eleanor, and she gestured to four waiting robots, who loped off towards the edges of the square.

  Kavan moved his new arms and legs in turn, getting the feel of them.

  ‘It’s pretty up here,’ said Eleanor, unexpectedly.

  Kavan followed her gaze and looked out through the wide gate at the bottom of the square, out over Wien bay. The city had been built on a hillside that sloped gently downwards to the sands below, sands that were lapped by the clear green sea. A number of rocky islands studded the bay on which robots had long ago originally built their forges and sunk their mineshafts for ease of defence. And, once they had built those forges, they had then raised towers to proclaim their status. Marble towers. When most other robots on Shull were still only forming metal, the Wieners had used what they had learned in mining coal and developed that into the skill to work rock. Quarryrobots, sawyers and banker masons had dressed stone; carvers and fixer masons had raised the beautiful towers for which the state had become famous.

  Over the years the islands had grown more powerful, the mine shafts beneath the sea had joined together, and alliances had been made, and eventually Wiener State had been formed. The islands had been joined by brass bridges, and a wall of marble and brass had been raised around the landward perimeter of the new state.

  Kavan and his robots had breached that wall, though not without losses.

  There was an abruptly silenced scream from one of the broken buildings into which the four Artemisian robots had recently entered.

  ‘Careless!’ said Kavan.

  ‘They’re getting tired,’ said Eleanor. ‘We’ve been fighting for six days solid now.’

  ‘Everyone’s tired,’ said Kavan. ‘That’s why this is the perfect time to move.’ He kicked at the metal shell of Arban’s body. ‘You know, we could use this,’ he said thoughtfully. He glanced across at Eleanor. ‘Do you think you can control it?’

  The woman put her hands on her hips and tilted her head. ‘I know you’re tired,’ she said. ‘That’s why I’ll pretend I didn’t hear you insult my ability to ride metal.’

  Kavan jerked his head at the sudden movement at the edge of the square and then relaxed when he saw two infantryrobots coming back with long strips of electromuscle trailing from their arms.

  He turned back to Eleanor. ‘Technically we’re still both infantry, Eleanor. So tell me now; do you think that you would make a better leader than me?’

  Eleanor held his gaze. She didn’t reply, though.

  ‘We’re both Artemisians, Eleanor.’

  ‘Your mind wasn’t twisted in Artemis, Kavan.’

  ‘Maybe not. But I was in Segre when it fell, and I saw how the Artemisians fought and I saw how the Segreans fought, and I realized then that the metal of my mind was twisted in the Artemisian fashion. My mother had read the signs, she had followed the propaganda. Artemis is a philosophy, not the place you are born. I am therefore an Artemisian, just as much as you are, Eleanor.’

  ‘I know that, Kavan.’


  ‘And yet you still think you would make a better leader than me?’

  Again, Eleanor didn’t answer.

  ‘We both serve the state to the best of our abilities, Eleanor. Tell me now if you think you would make a better leader of this section.’

  Again Eleanor said nothing.

  ‘Go on then,’ said Kavan. ‘Get undressed.’

  First there were four robots harvesting parts, then six, then nine. Soon Kavan’s full troop was rebuilt. He took a last sweep through a random selection of buildings, checking on his team’s work.

  There was a Wiener family lying dead in the living space of one apartment. Two children, noted Kavan with interest. The Wieners had this thing about building kids in pairs. He never quite understood it. Still, he bent and inspected the little bodies. Interface coils crushed, but brains untouched. It was a neat job. A soldier’s job. The minds in those skulls were still alive, but now cast adrift in eternal darkness and silence. It would be merciful to kill them, but mercy took time, and anyway they weren’t Artemisians. Just metal to be reclaimed by the salvage squads. The railway lines would be approaching Wien even now. Soon these bodies would be crushed, the metal loaded onto flat trucks and taken back to feed the forges of Artemis.

  It was time to get back, but Kavan paused just a moment longer. This apartment was unusual. Foreign. Built in the Wiener way, half stone and half metal. There was even biological life growing in it. Deliberately cultivated by the looks of it. Long green strands of – what were they called, leaves? – trailing from pots.

  Really odd.

  From outside, Kavan heard the sound of unfamiliar voices.

  He hurried out to see what was going on.

  There were three Storm Troopers out there now. One of them was Eleanor. Kavan deliberately took his time walking up to the group. He could hear Eleanor speaking as he approached.

  ‘. . . requisitioned these troops for myself,’ she was saying. ‘I’m taking them out to the islands to sweep and comb.’

  ‘What did you say your name was?’ asked one of the newly arrived Storm Troopers.