by Mike Wild
"Keep quiet, George."
"Sorry, dear."
"As I said," Nancy Cobb continued, "nothing much... except perhaps for a new world order, beginning here and beginning now."
"New world order?"
"Of course," Nancy Cobb said. "You can't seriously expect us to be in charge of a weapon like GODD and not have a few demands?"
"Demands?" Hammerstein asked ominously. Nancy Cobb chuckled. "We'll be in touch, Mister Robot," she said, and signed off.
"Now there's an interesting turn up," Joe said.
"Yeah," said Blackblood. "And there's another."
He was looking to where the statue of Deadlock still stood in the centre of the battlefield. Its face was glowing. Hammerstein and the others approached.
"Give it up, Medusa," Hammerstein said. "You've lost."
"Yes, she has," said the voice of Senator Diaz. "But I'm afraid that Medusa is no longer in charge of things around here."
The ABC Warriors stared. Where not long before the face of Medusa had looked out at them from the lifeless lump of metal, it was quivering and wavering, her features being distorted, replaced by the leering visage of Diaz himself.
"Oh Gaia, Joe," Juanita said. "He's alive."
"What a pity, eh?" the senator said, referring to the absence of Medusa. "But then, I suppose, all things move on."
His face flickered like a badly tuned television set and for a moment Medusa's features returned. It seemed that to some degree at least Medusa did not want to move on. Diaz suppressed her, however.
"How is this possible, Diaz?" Hammerstein asked.
The senator smiled. "Oh, just a little bargain I drew up with the dear lady," he said. "Making myself one with her."
"One? You mean you are a part of Medusa?" Hammerstein said incredulously.
"Oh frag," Joe said.
"Rather more of a part than she anticipated," Diaz went on, chuckling. "She really should have listened to your friend Deadlock when he said I could not be trusted."
"You've taken her over?"
Again, Medusa's visage returned briefly. If Diaz had indeed taken her over, then it appeared that somewhere within she was still fighting.
"How could I resist?" Diaz said. "The old hag is already nine-tenths fruitcake. It didn't take much for me to insinuate myself into all the empty places in her head."
"Mek-Quake not think Medusa have head. Is planet."
"He means her consciousness, Mek-Quake. Diaz has become a part of the planetary consciousness."
"You planned all this?" Hammerstein asked.
"Not really," said Diaz. He chuckled. It was just the way the cards fell."
The image flickered again. It was Medusa attempting to assert herself once more. Hammerstein was strangely desirous of seeing her face return. Better the devil you know... Come on, Medusa. Hammerstein thought. Show us you're in there. But she couldn't. The effort of keeping her at bay, however, obviously tired Diaz.
"If you will excuse me for a while," the senator said.
"What now, Diaz?" Hammerstein asked.
Diaz sighed. "That one I'll have to think about," he said. "Oh, I know. How about a-"
"Don't tell me," Hammerstein said. "New world order?"
"Something like that, yes."
"You're madder than she was."
"Possibly. We'll just have to see what we can cook up, won't we?"
And with that, he disappeared.
"Two interesting turn-ups," Joe said. "I knew I should never have taken my gun out of that fragger's mouth."
"Oh Gaia, Joe," Juanita said. "Diaz. The biol."
Joe couldn't think about that for the time being as the ABC Warriors had other things on their minds. Approaching them across the desert floor were those of the tripods who had survived. Steelhorn himself led them.
The battle recommenced. Hammerstein and Steelhorn went head to head, but one shocking event was going to draw their battle to a close. Joe Pineapples was engaged in hand-to-hand combat with a particularly tenacious tripod when it happened. In the far distance he saw Juanita double up in pain, clutching at her stomach in agony.
"Juanita?" he said, preparing to run to her. The tripod took advantage of his distraction to wrap its arms about Joe, pinning Joe's arms and his weapons to his side while it began to crush the life out of the ABC Warrior. Joe found himself lifted into the air.
"Juanita?" he said again over the sound of his exoskeleton cracking, his own voice agonized. Juanita fell to her knees. Joe stared wildly at Juanita and then at the tripod.
"Get your arms off me," he said coldly.
"JOE!" Juanita screamed. "Oh Joe, it hurts..."
The tripod was not letting go. Lashed around in the air, Joe summoned all the strength he possessed and managed to flex his arms slightly at the elbows. The barrels of both of his weapons pointed roughly at the side of the tripod. Joe slammed his fingers on the triggers and did not let go. Even when the bullets ricocheted off his own armour, chipping it away, he did not let go.
BUDDA-BUDDA-BUDDA-BUDDA.
"I SAID," Joe commanded, "GET YOUR FRAGGING ARMS OFF ME!"
The tripod had little choice. Bullets spat from Joe's weapons in a constant stream, hammering against the war-machine's hull and sending it staggering back under the lethal, unforgiving hail. More bullets came, and still more. On the tripod, rivets began to work themselves loose, structural plates to bend. The tripod let out an ululating wail. And still Joe did not cease firing. The tripod began to smoke; its legs buckled.
BUDDA-BUDDA-BUDDA-BUDDA.
Finally, it blew and Joe found himself blasted through the air in a cloud of plating and shrapnel, still in the grip of a tripod arm but one that was no longer connected to a body. He sloughed it off. What remained of the tripod hull collapsed groaning into a fiery heap but Joe no longer cared. He landed hard on the desert floor, rolled, and began to run across the battlefield towards the fallen Juanita, repeatedly calling her name. His normal robotic coordination seemed to have deserted him and he stumbled a couple of times during his desperate flight, but the mishaps barely slowed him. At last he reached Juanita. He collapsed to his knees at her side and scooped her slowly into his arms.
"Joe... " Juanita said. It was a long, drawn out sigh, as if she wanted to hold onto his name forever.
"I'm here," Joe said softly. Juanita was rigid in his arms, her spine arcing with the sheer intensity of her pain. "Oh, Joe, he's done it," she said through gritted teeth. Her body bucked in his arms. "He's triggered the biol. That crazy bastard Diaz has triggered the - uh..."
Joe held on to his beloved fiercely, one hand cradling her head against his chest. Sweat began to pour from the film star's face and she stared straight ahead, her eyes overflowing with tears of pain.
"Juanita, we'll stop this, it's going to be all right," Joe said desperately.
Juanita quickly brought up a trembling hand, stroking Joe's face as a blind person might. She tried to look at him but her eyes had whitened and lacked focus. "No, Joe... no..." she said, calming him. She convulsed again. "I can feel it spreading... all through me." She sucked in a sudden, shuddering breath. "Oh, Joe, it's like fire..."
For a second, Joe could not speak. "There must be something we..." he said haltingly, helplessly. "We can get help... Deadlock, he can weave a..."
Joe trailed off, remembering that Deadlock could no longer do anything.
He cradled Juanita's head and held it tightly to his chest and rocked her gently in his arms. "I will not let you die!"
Juanita traced his face gently with her fingertips: his eyes, his nose and his mouth. Impossibly, despite her pain, she smiled. "My Joe," she whispered. "My lion..."
Juanita began to tremble and Joe could do nothing but continue to steady her and lull her while she slipped into a deep, long sleep, not understanding what was happening to his love at all, or perhaps understanding, but simply not willing to comprehend or to accept. For Juanita's departure was worse than death. She simply dissolved away. J
oe realised that it was not grey goo that he had been afraid of all of his life. It was red.
"NOOO!" Joe screamed, and it took an eternity for the echo to fade away, travelling over what was a far emptier world than it had been a moment before.
The battlefield fell silent, the last of the tripods defeated. The ABC Warriors and their friends stood motionless on the sands, mute witnesses to what had just unfolded. Even Steelhorn stopped and stared. Even he knew that this was somehow wrong.
"Your new master," Hammerstein said. "Do you still pledge allegiance now?"
Steelhorn said nothing. The remaining ABC Warriors hesitated, unsure of what to do. Then, one by one, they acknowledged the subtle urgings of those with whom they had been brought together by fate. Maggie turned to face the horizon, but not before nodding to Hammerstein, her meaning clear. Two-Ton Carmen gestured to Mek-Quake, who was staring at Joe while rumbling uncertainly to himself, that he transform into humanoid mode, and then pointed where he should go. Number 5 simply lowered his head and walked away, patting Blackblood twice on the side of his road-drill leg. The ABC Warriors regarded each other silently and then as one they moved toward where Joe knelt on the desert floor, silent and broken, his head bowed low, his arms draped by a limp and empty republican flag. And there, in the middle of that mournful place, the ABC Warriors gathered around their friend, their hands coming to rest gently on his shoulders.
Gradually they became aware that a piece of music was playing softly on Joe's personal stereo: a piece by Paganini.
Later, Hammerstein and Maggie walked together in the desert, hand in hand. Maggie asked Hammerstein what he was thinking. The ABC Warrior stared at the desert floor and then up at the desert sky.
"Cobb and Diaz," he said.
The old rivals; transformed by circumstance into positions of power of which they could only have dreamed. Hammerstein did not yet how they were going to use that power. But he knew one thing: there was another battle coming.
It was battle between the forces above and the forces below. A battle between heaven and hell.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mike Wild has been writing for such a long time he wonders why he still hasn't finished. His genre credits include Doctor Who, K9 And Company, Masters of the Universe and Starblazer. He answers to the name Michelle on romance novels, but regrets telling you that. His other jobs include compiling quizzes for BBC Television and trying to sell cryptic crosswords to The Times. Besotted by Amanda Plummer, he lives with the ghostly purring of his dead cat and keeps a villa on the Sword Coast.
