by Andy Remic
They caught Emerald up swiftly, just in time to hear the sounds of running water, or, to be more precise, a running but sluggish fluid. The trees stopped on a vicious sharp metal overhang to reveal a wide, fast-flowing tributary of oil. The oil was thick brown, just transparent enough to reveal a menagerie of scattered objects: razors, knives, blades, spikes, on the river bed. Anyone attempting to cross would cut their feet to bloody ribbons.
“You see the stepping stones?” said Emerald.
Both Keenan and Pippa squinted, then picked out the tiny oasis of protruding metal: slick, slippery, but a weaving meandering path across the fast-flowing obstacle.
“Looks dangerous,” said Pippa.
“It is, especially the fish.”
“Fish?”
Emerald nodded. “Machine piranha, deadly. Can strip you to the bone in about five seconds, consume your bones in ten. If you fall in, you’ve got a five percent chance of getting out; I advise we proceed with caution.”
Keenan and Pippa nodded.
The jagged near-vertical bank was slippery, and they slithered their way down to the edge of the river. Keenan continually looked around for Cam, but the little PopBot hadn’t returned.
“You worried about him?”
“The fool got himself filled with explosives the last time he went on a jaunt.”
“He’ll be OK.”
Keenan gave a negative grunt, then stared out at the fifty-foot wide expanse. The oil bubbled and churned, gushing between metal stumps that barely rose above the oil level.
“I’m starting to really hate this place,” he said.
“At least you’re still alive.”
“I will go first,” said Emerald. Her black skin seemed to glow, manifest in a vision of human health; even her hair shone, curls filled with a vitality that Combat K had never before witnessed. Emerald was gradually changing, becoming more powerful, more alive the closer they moved to The Factory. Keenan welcomed the change. In his eyes, the stronger and more powerful Emerald became, the more likely she would be to furnish him with information, with a focus for revenge. Pippa, however, gave an internal shiver. Something about Emerald shimmered at the verge of insanity and suspicion; Emerald gave Pippa just a hint of the creeps.
Emerald stepped out onto the first metal stump. Then, in an incredible show of athleticism, she moved with great speed, her body low and sleek, leaping from one to the other, movements precise until she landed, lightly, on the opposite scooped bank.
Keenan glanced at Pippa.
“You next.”
“Cheers.”
“You’ve got more chance of making it across. If I... don’t, find out that name for me, and execute the living piece of shit. Can you do that? For me? For one who loves you?”
“I will try my best,” said Pippa, voice husky, eyes dropping to the floor. She released his hands, turned, and leapt onto the first stump. She slid with a sickening lurch on the slick greasy surface; and exhaled with a hiss. She half-turned, and grinned at Keenan. “It’s damn slippery up here.”
“Be careful, girl.”
Keenan watched, heart in mouth, as Pippa leapt from one metal stump to the next, her balance refined, arms outstretched a little, her face a Picasso of concentration. She finally made it, touching down on the jagged metal shore, boots sliding, and finally sitting down with a thump. She looked over at Keenan, and he gave her a little wave, but something in her face, an integral horror, made him freeze. She was not looking at him, but behind him, past him and through him.
Without wanting to, Keenan turned.
The metal ridgeline was lined with sentinels, metal wolves, monsters, strange spindly things a hybrid of cockroach and spider. They stood, arraigned in observation, unmoving, except for pale metal eyes that blinked.
Keenan drew in a sharp breath... as the metal horde charged, leaping and howling with metal screams, rampaging down the steep bank as Keenan turned back, stumbled, and leapt out over the fast-flowing oil. His boots hammered from one metal mushroom to the next in a sprint born of panic. He slipped many times, nearly pitching into the oil river, but by some miracle of luck and blind panic he landed next to Pippa, and turned, teeth bared, glaring at the creatures of the woods. They had lined the opposite bank, and seemed almost to be swaying.
“They want you,” said Emerald.
“Yeah, well fuck ’em.”
“They likeyou,” she said.
Keenan pumped his shotgun. He aimed across the river of oil, and smashed a volley of shells on trajectories of fire. Several machines were caught, hammered backwards, limbs flailing, and slack shattered jaws yapping, armour dented, eyes buckled. Metal screams tore the air, and the machines joined in, tongues flickering: a rising ululating cry that sang and grew in the gloomy subdued vault. It seemed to circle above the group like a live thing: a beast of electric and violence.
Pippa covered her ears, face condensed in pain.
The machines halted their noise, turned, and leapt nimbly back up the torn metal bank. Within a second they were gone.
“What an awful sound,” hissed Pippa.
“It is a war cry,” said Emerald. She was sombre. Her eyes shone with a new need. “The hunt has been initiated; the game has begun. We need to move and move fast. There are other ways across this torrent.”
Keenan clasped his shotgun tight. “Let them come,” he said.
The path grew much wider, and Emerald increased their pace, almost leaping ahead in a loping run. Keenan and Pippa sprinted to keep up, and Keenan was soon coughing and wheezing, sweat bathing him, his snarl a constant on a face of pain and suffering.
“Too many cigarettes,” Pippa said.
“Yeah, thanks for the medical advice. If I want a damned nurse I’ll visit a hospital.”
“Just trying to help.”
“Well don’t. I know my bad habits and I’m willing to live with them.”
They made better time, but the wide path made Keenan uneasy. On a narrow path he could hold back the machines with the animal bark of the shotgun; here, it would be much harder, much easier for an enemy to flank him, not a thought he relished.
Something howled in the distance.
They ran for what seemed like hours, moving through the sweeping smash of metal woodland, and then a hot-oil smell came to them, and Emerald abruptly stopped. There was a circular clearing ahead, and Emerald seemed to pause, wary. Keenan and Pippa readied weapons, primed for trouble. Keenan glanced around the clearing; the floor was a detritus of metal shavings, wafer-thin metal discs and scattered iron rods mingled with the gleam and glint of razor blades. The path ended, then continued on the opposite side of the woodland. Keenan frowned, something had created this space, but for what purpose? The only answer he could think of was that it was a killing ground. It didn’t inspire hope.
“We’ve got to cross it,” said Pippa.
“It’s a trap,” said Keenan. He glanced at Emerald. “Where are they? And what are they?”
Before she could answer, they were there, leaping from hiding places in the dense metal woodland, scuttling and soaring twenty feet into the air with spindly metal legs bending, small oval bodies—battered and dented—pulsingwith energy and scatters of light as...
Go on, thought Keenan with a bitter taste in his mouth. Say it...
As the spiders flew above and around in great leaps, perhaps twenty of the machines, sailing over the group with tiny metal teeth chattering and clashing. Keenan’s shotgun boomed, smashing a creature from the air in a flail of thin wire limbs and a splash of hot oil. Pippa’s MPK roared, bullets whining, tracer flashing and lighting up the dark woodland. A spider landed on Emerald, and she ripped it apart with her hands. The body trailed wires, sparking electricity, as Keenan’s D5 boomed again and again. The MPK cut holes through metal and everything seemed to happen so fast, in a confusion of moving metal, bullets, clashing teeth and a metal drone that cut through the scene. Keenan ducked a slash of razor talons, slamming the stock of the shotgu
n into one of the machines, and as it fell his boot pinned it to the ground. Twin barrels touched its casing. Dark eyes coated in a film of thin oil watched him with dazzling intelligence. The shotgun roared and the spider machine disintegrated in fire and shrapnel as something slammed Keenan’s back. He felt legs wrap around him and the shotgun was lifted from him, like sweets from a child, and snapped easily in half as he hit the ground hard. He was smothered by thrashing metal wire, encased in an alloy coffin, and he fought and struggled but there was nothing to punch or kick and it spun him in a web of thin trailing wire which cut into his damaged WarSuit and through the exposed flesh of his wrists, neck and forehead, leaving droplets of blood spattering against the shavings on the ground. Keenan was lifted, then slammed down hard. Jarred, stunned, he was blind for a few moments as unconsciousness teased him. He coughed up phlegm mixed with blood from a broken tooth, and spat into a hazy reflection an inch from his hammered face. He strained, and looking right, he saw Pippa entangled in wires, and Emerald as well. They were all caught and spun and wrapped like wriggling fish on hooks. Keenan spat blood again, and watched the machines moving purposefully around the three cocoons, finally congregating on Emerald. Suddenly, limbs punched out, smashing her head again and again, and again, beating her with sodden solid thumps. Keenan looked away, sure they would crack her skull in half. Instead, her eyes closed and her body shuddered, but she continued to breathe. They were hauled across the clearing and into the close-packed metal trees; bumped along the ground, through tangles of wire and into a frightening stinking darkness.
“Keenan,” he heard Pippa cry. There was a crack, and she was quiet.
He tried to focus on direction, but it was impossible in the gloom, weaving and bumping through an insane tangle of branches and trunks, through intense brutal metal scenery that added up to nothing less than total confusion. The air grew strong with the stench of hot oil. Keenan found it hard to breathe.
They came to another clearing, larger but more tangled, and filled with perhaps a thousand spidery machines. Their eyes glowed, and they scuttled about purposefully, wiry legs bending and stretching, tiny teeth chattering and filling the air with a sound not unlike rainfall.
Grimly, Keenan realised there was no escape, no way out. Even if he managed to throw off the thin razor wires, which bound him and converted him to an unmoving block of flesh, what then? How could he fight a thousand of the things?
The machines had realised, understood, what Emerald was. The threat she represented, carried in her soul like a disease: the unleashed, unrealised power of a returning, regenerating Kahirrim.
For whatever reason, they had neutralised her.
Keenan shuddered as three of the machines stalked towards him with rhythmical steps, and with glittering eyes, without remorse, without understanding, without empathy, they looked down at him, paused, watching him, and delivered a devastating blow that spun his head and sent him reeling down into darkness, and a world where he would drown in blood and oil.
Chapter 19
Factory Floor
He snuggled under a fresh duvet, inhaling lavender and the musk of sleep and last night’s sex. He turned, cuddling into the welcoming flesh of Freya’s back. She mumbled a purr, a growl of awakening necessity, and turned to him, nuzzling him, and rubbing him. Her tongue slid into his mouth, her legs lifting, encircling him, toes teasing down his calf as their bodies pressed hard together and the tease lingered with a tantalising agony. Then the bedroom door burst open in a whirlwind of young girls slamming in, screaming and giggling, “It’s Christmas mummy. Daddy it’s Christmas get up get up get up!”
Keenan blinked and tasted blood. His mind clattered like an aged machine. Memories drifted idly as he lay, face down, staring at shards of shattered steel. Shattered. Just like my past, he thought. Just like my life.
“Keenan.”
The voice was a gentle whisper, the tickle of a blade on a victim’s neck. Keenan blinked and felt a great and terrible fury rise within him. He would not roll over and die. He would not suffer this indignity, this punishment, this fucking pathetic weakness.
“Keenan!”
He grunted an acknowledgement, eyes burning fire, and strength flooded him. He turned his head. Cam was there, dull black and unmoving. “I thought they’d eaten you.”
“Listen very carefully,” said Cam. Grey lights flickered. He was silent for a while. Keenan stared at the PopBot. “There is some sort of war raging down here, between the machines, the sentinels: a civil war, a split, a divide; and the others, those hunting you, are about to arrive.”
“Cam, I...”
“Wait! We have only seconds. I have spoken to Emerald and Pippa; they are ready. When the avalanche falls, I will cut through your bonds, but the wires are deep, slicing your flesh Keenan. I’ll be honest, my friend, it’s going to hurt, and hurt bad.”
Keenan nodded. “We lost our weapons, but we still have our packs under this... web, wire, whatever: more guns... bombs.” He smiled darkly. “I’m feeling the need for some fucking payback.”
“Not a time to fight.” Cam was agitated. “This is a time to run. Keenan, trust me; if you had seen what I’ve seen...”
“And what have you seen?”
“This place is huge. It is big, vast, and filled with thousands upon thousands of these damn machines, these sentinels. The creators of this place did not want infiltration.”
“It seems an elaborate way to go about stopping unwanted visitors.”
“No, Keenan. It’s an equilibrium, a balance of metal and machines. It was designed to last a billion years... machines feeding on machines, a constant rejuvenation, fed by the most incredible power source I have ever come across.”
“What’s at the core?” whispered Keenan.
“Here they come. Brace yourself!”
Gleaming stalks of metal roared through the silence making a sound like a tidal wave hissing and surging. The horizon became a vista filled with charging buzzing chittering metal monsters, insects and lizards. The iron woodland around Keenan teemed with thousands of spider-machines, screeching and clattering, and came alive as the two hosts rushed one another, clashing with a sonic steel boom that reverberated through the ground. Keenan squinted, but saw only a blur of moving metal, as if he was staring down into a whirling turbine. Everything was too fast for him to see; he could only hear and feel a vast ocean flowing over him with a brutal caress.
There was a buzz. Keenan bit his tongue on a yelp. Wire glowed and fell away. More buzzessparked from Cam, and within a few seconds Keenan was rubbing at his wrists, his throat, and his scored and punctured face, hands coming away with flakes of dried blood. Then, Cam was gone, and Keenan crawled after him. Twenty feet away a battle raged. Something hot scythed over Keenan’s head making him duck, and rattled off among the trees. Screeches hurt his ears. Metal raped metal, bars hammered bars, gears ground and cogs whirred, and Pippa and Emerald crouched beside him, their faces a hideous criss-cross of wounds. Cam led them, bobbing ahead like a tiny silent ghost, away from the flurry and insanity of battle, down a narrow slope filled with grease, and under exposed metal tree roots as thick as a man’s waist. They clambered over serrated knife branches, cursing, and slipping and sliding through a mire of metal waste.
It took them long, long minutes to pick up their previous pathway, but Cam took them through the tangled woodland, his direction unerring, and only when they stepped onto what they perceived as their immediate salvation did they halt, Keenan and Pippa sweating and panting heavily. Emerald was cool, controlled, her eyes fixed with a bright but furious focus.
Keenan un-shouldered his pack, and pulled free a variety of guns and bombs. He also checked his MPK for damage; despite a battering and scratching and scuffing, the weapon was still true. Pippa, however, had lost her automatic weapon. She consoled herself by grasping two powerful Makarov pistols.
“It’s not far to the Shrine,” said Emerald. “There we can perform the Shift, and the machines wo
n’t be able to pursue. They are not designed to enter The Factory.”
“Will I be able to follow?” said Cam.
Emerald gave a short shake of her head. “No sentient machines are permitted there; the Shift is an impossibility.” Cam remained silent, but Keenan could sense the PopBot’s frustration.
“Come on,” he growled, then glanced over his shoulder. The cacophony of the warring creatures had dimmed; the metal screeches and bangs had diminished. “When they realise we’ve escaped—”
“They’ll come after us,” finished Pippa.
They started to run, sweat pouring down their faces. Emerald and Cam took the lead, and Keenan and Pippa ran side by side, metal trees flashing past them, the air hot, humid, and stinking of hot metal and oil, filling their senses with a cloying perfume of dead machinery. Behind them, the fighting seemed to have ceased; several deafening booms echoed across the Woods of Mekkra. Then, at the edge of hearing, a skittering chattering noise could be heard, like the gnashing of billions of teeth, the spinning of heavy gears, and the grinding of metal into paste. The noise increased in pace, growing louder and louder.
Pippa glanced behind, but Keenan grabbed her, forcing her on. “Don’t look back,” he barked, and they increased their pace down the weaving metal pathway. Suddenly the trees ended and there was a hill, a perfect hummock from a single cast of steel. It rose before them like a giant teardrop from the eye of a metal god, shining softly: a beacon, a promise, a tease.
Emerald bounded easily up the steep incline, and Keenan and Pippa followed, hands and feet scrabbling at the slippery, burnished steel slope. Behind, the noise of the pursuing machines had risen to a crescendo, a clashing jarring mash of metal music... which stopped.
Keenan glanced back. They were at the foot of the hill: thousands upon thousands of sentinels, metal bodies, metal claws, gnashing metal teeth. They bled oil, and salivated grease. Copper smeared their joints, and silver paste glittered on scaled metal tongues. The machines charged as one host. With a scream that built and echoed and boomed, they leapt from the Woods of Mekkra to the foot of the steel hillside. Keenan fired wildly behind him, the MPK spitting fire and glowing bullets. Machines went down, tumbling, trampled by allies. Hot oil spurted into the air. Severed pipes hung like severed arteries, but it made no difference to the mass. They came on with a roar so loud it drowned out Creation.
