Rage Against the Machines Read online

  "Bootlegs," Hammerstein growled. He flew over the plane and assessed how best to attempt a rescue.

  The ABC Warrior looked straight down into the partitioned passenger compartments, from first-class, which was located towards the rear for aerodynamic reasons - because a lot of first-class flyers were obeasts and the plane would never get its nose up, otherwise - to bums-on-seats class at the front where, on most flights, the drunks were to be found. Hammerstein knew that the floppies' social-territorialism meant that, in normal circumstances, they would have nothing to do with each other. That moment, however, they all had one, glaring characteristic that united them and unless he did something about it, they would all soon be dead.

  The tripods were quick. They had already polished off the obeasts and had moved onto business class. The ABC Warrior knew that projectile weapons were useless, so he guessed that he would have to rely on brute force. He flexed his hammer.

  Despite the potential futility of his actions, he waded in.

  BASH! WALLOP! THUD! Hammerstein made his way down the aisle of the plane. Disappointingly, like the projectile weapons, his hammer did no real damage to the tripods, but he was heartened to see that it did knock them back a few feet, which gave their victims time to flee. He could not save them all, of course, because the tripods' arms were everywhere, but he fought manically and saved as many as he could. The tripods, unable to unleash their heat-rays in the confined space, flailed and bashed their arms around, trying desperately to snare the metallic interloper. The ABC Warrior batted them away.

  Hammerstein reached bums-on-seats class and continued his battle. As he fought, his attention became fixed on a frantic conversation between an elfin, dark-haired woman and a small boy, who were in seats near the very front.

  "What's your name, anyway, kid?"

  "Nathaniel. Nathaniel Nibletscratcher."

  "Frag, you poor little sod. Okay, Nathaniel, you and I are getting out of here. You with me?"

  "S... sure."

  "Okay. When I say, we're going to unbuckle our seat belts and head for that hatch over there. I'm going to count to three. You ready? One... Two... Three!"

  Hammerstein watched the boy snap off his seat belt and run. The woman attempted to follow, but couldn't get up. She kicked her feet and thumped the seat, then took a swig from a can. Drunks, Hammerstein thought. Then he realised that her seat belt was jammed.

  "Frag it!" the woman shouted. "What is it with me? Have the gods slapped a sign my head that says 'Good for a laugh'?"

  "Hurry, Missus," the boy urged. "They're coming to drink your blood. They'll come and they'll poke those things into you and they'll-"

  "No, kid, no way," the woman broke in. "Oh no, I get enough of that kind of thing at work, thank you very-"

  Hammerstein battered away a tripod that was clawing at the woman in the seat behind her. The boy stared wide-eyed at him. As he did, the second tripod made a grab for him, and Hammerstein snatched him away in the nick of time.

  "No, Nathaniel!" the woman cried. "Oh no, Nathaniel."

  "It's all right, Ma'am," Hammerstein said reassuringly. "Your boy is in safe hands." He backed up against the cockpit door with Nathaniel tucked under his left arm. The tripods stomped along the side of the plane until they were looming over the two of them. They leered in. The ABC Warrior swung his hammer and delivered a double-whammy that sent the war machines staggering back. The woman cringed as an arm flailed at her and Hammerstein smashed at it until the limb pulled back. The tripods decided that the last of the humans were not worth the hassle and turned away.

  "Don't tell me," Maggie Sidewinder hiccupped, "you're the Smash Martian."

  Hammerstein faltered, unsure of the reference. "Afraid not, Ma'am. I'm an ABC Warrior."

  "An ABC?" Maggie said incredulously. Hammerstein saw that the woman stared at the three letters, which were emblazoned on his armour. "Oh frag. Please don't tell me I'm stuck with a nursery bot."

  "Let's get moving, shall we?" Hammerstein responded, a little flummoxed. He snapped away the seat belt that held her down. He then kicked open the hatch to the runway.

  "Wait," Maggie said. "I have to check..." She forced open the door to the cockpit and turned slowly away. "Forget it," she said sadly. "G'bye, Skip."

  Hammerstein, the boy and Maggie dropped to the tarmac.

  "Name's Maggie."

  Hammerstein nodded. "Sergeant Hammerstein."

  Maggie made an impressed face and offered him a slug of Wooze. "Not on duty, Ma'am."

  "Thanks," Maggie said after a moment. "For that."

  "Are you really an ABC Warrior?" Nathaniel asked from under his arm.

  "He sure is, kid. Works with children every day."

  Hammerstein raised a finger. He was about to point out Maggie's error when three tripods stomped slowly around the front of the plane. They looked somehow different to the others - imperious and more polished, as if they were an honour guard for someone important.

  Hammerstein didn't like this at all. He lowered Nathaniel to the ground. He scanned the airfield quickly, located the position of the other ABCs and pointed the way to them. "There are some friends of mine nearby," he instructed Nathaniel. "They'll try to look after you. Run towards them." The boy looked at him. "Go, lad-" Hammerstein said. "NOW!"

  Nathaniel ran.

  "You too, Maggie," Hammerstein said.

  "No," she replied, inexplicably. She stared at the ABC Warrior and a strange expression crossed her face. Even she didn't know why she said what she said next. "I'm not leaving you."

  Hammerstein wanted to ask her why, but he didn't get a chance. One of the tripods fired a heat-ray that smacked him in the chest, and Hammerstein looked at his armour in amazement, as it became molten liquid before his eyes. His super-computer brain automatically ran its self-learning program and analysed the nature of the threat so that it could modify his molecular infrastructure with his inbuilt state-of-the-art nanobots, but for the first time he had ever known, his HUD flashed back the message: molecular transconfiguration failure: unknown offensive quantity.

  Hammerstein mind-commed the other ABC Warriors, their whole exchange taking less than a second.

  "This," he said, "could get painful."

  He could barely hear their reply for the sounds of heated battle.

  "Thank you, my patriotic, peacock-chested pal," Mongrol replied. "But we had noticed."

  Patriotic, peacock chested...? Hammerstein repeated to himself. Frag, I liked him better when he was a moron.

  "Suggestions?"

  There was a slight delay. "Head between our legs and kiss our ass goodbye?" Blackblood offered.

  "Anything helpful, anyone?"

  "Always put toilet roll in fridge before an oil curry."

  "Yeah, thanks, Mek-Quake."

  "Seriously, Hammerstein," Deadlock broke in. "We don't know. These things just keep coming and we're just not hurting enough of them to slow them down. All we can do is dodge. I hate to say it but I think we're looking at a strategic withdrawal here."

  "You're talking about retreat?"

  "Think of it more as a regroup. But essentially, yeah, you got it."

  "What about the rest of you?"

  "No point in dyin' before we have to," Blackblood said.

  "Who dares wines," Joe concurred.

  "Sorry?"

  "Well, there's gotta be a bar round here someplace. We can get out heads together there."

  "Right. Mek-Quake? Serious answer this time?"

  "Mek-Quake sorry. Could you repeat question?"

  "Just follow us, Mek-Quake," Deadlock advised.

  "Okay."

  Hammerstein's jaw was set hard as he digested the consensus of opinion. "Understood," he commed. "Recommend the Red House as a rendezvous point. See you later."

  "You bet."

  Hammerstein severed the link. So this is it, then, he thought. He was on his own. On his own with... Maggie.

  Ordering Maggie to stay behind him, Hammerstein poun
ded towards the tripods.

  "Sarge, look out-"

  A second heat-ray severed his right leg at the knee, followed by a third, which turned his hammer arm to molten slag.

  "Maggie-" Hammerstein said. His voice had taken on a deep timbre, so much so that it almost gurgled. "Please... get out of here."

  Hammerstein collapsed on to his remaining knee and listed to the side. A figure approached him from behind, but only Maggie was in any state to see it coming. It was another mek, a biped like Hammerstein, not one of the three-legged freaks. The mek was tall and had an imposing air about him. He wore a Viking-style helmet that was encrusted with crystals. He possessed projecting mandibles and a chain-mail beard and he carried with him a heavy-duty combat hammer, not unlike the one Hammerstein had. Had. Maggie thought that he had the look of... well, the look of a hero about him, albeit a slightly intimidating one. The figure raised his hammer and it was an easy mistake for her to assume he was going to help Hammerstein, that he was a friend.

  All the more so when he rumbled a greeting. "Hello, Hammerstein," the mek said.

  "Steelho-" Hammerstein managed.

  But before he could finish, the mek swung his hammer hard and smashed off Hammerstein's head.

  THREE

  "FRAG, HAMMERSTEIN!" Joe Pineapples watched Hammerstein go down - saw the extent of the damage to his friend - and there was not a thing he could do to save him.

  As he yomped with the remaining ABC Warriors and the humans they had managed to save, searching for a safe exit from the airfield, Joe picked-off feeding Martians with his Magnum Macho 3000, pleased to discover that outside the tripods, the vampiric aliens in no way shared the irritating invulnerability of their host craft. Joe just loved the way they exploded as if he was shooting at ripe tomatoes.

  He lined up to blow another one of their nasty little heads off, when in the very corner of his scope the sun glinted off something like ice. Joe swung the bulky weapon round and zoomed. What he saw made the normally cool and unflappable marksman blink twice.

  It wasn't ice that he saw - it was crystal. A crystal encrusted helmet, and wearing it was a figure from the past. Joe fired a shot at the hammer but it had already swung.

  Steelhorn was as quick as he ever used to be. And just as merciless. With Hammerstein gone, he was turning his attention to some woman, about to deliver another killing blow.

  "I have no idea where you came from, you bootleg," Joe said to himself. "But this one's for Ham."

  He fired again and his crosshairs were centred on Steelhorn's heart. The Viking-like figure staggered back slightly, but stagger back was all that he did. Unharmed, the mek looked towards the origin of the bullet that had hit him.

  He stared straight at Joe, and smiled. He ignored the woman and walked calmly towards the ABC Warrior. Joe fired again, at Steelhorn's head. He realised that whatever it was that was making the tripods indestructible applied to Steelhorn, too.

  The ABC Warriors ground assault was going almost as badly as the aerial one had, perhaps even worse.

  "Biol!" he cursed.

  Then, all hell broke loose.

  A wave of tripods came at the ABC Warriors from left field. Heat-rays blasted the ground before them and transformed it into a rolling wave of scree that headed straight towards the meks. The rumbling, crumbling, tumbling wall of debris generated its own dust-cloud cover, which forced the ABCs to switch on their enhanced vision. The trouble was, in enhanced vision, the heat-rays became blinding shafts of light.

  "Bootlegs," Blackblood growled when his vision flared. He shifted spectrums quickly and rubbed his eyes. "These fraggers know some tricks."

  "Odds on that it's Steelhorn who knows the tricks," Joe said.

  "Come again?" Mongrol said. "This ain't a good time to develop CJH, Joe!"

  CJH stood for Combat Jump Hallucinations. It was a robot paratrooper thing - a kind of post-traumatic disorder that manifested itself during battle when robots realised they had just jumped out of a plane and that they were, in fact, made of very heavy metal.

  "He just killed Hammerstein," Joe said.

  Deadlock snapped a look towards him. "Are you sure?"

  "Of course I'm fragging sure!"

  "Hammerstein dead?" said Mek-Quake.

  There was a pause.

  "Hmm, " said Blackblood. Joe could almost hear him rubbing his chin.

  There was a burst of machine-gun fire from one of the soldiers.

  "What the frag is it with these mothers?" he shouted. "We do 'em damage but it just ain't ever enough."

  The tripods loomed through the dust cloud and began to target the meks and their charges. The damage the ABCs had taken so far - Mongrol's arm, Mek-Quake's tracks, Deadlock's leg, and Joe's pride- - was nothing to what they'd take if the heat-rays caught them that close.

  They had to keep inside the heat-ray's blind spot. It was time for a bit of one-on-one.

  "Mongrol, take the troopers and get the floppies out of here," Deadlock commanded, pointing to the pitifully few civilians that they had rescued. "The rest of you, come with me."

  Deadlock unsheathed his Ace of Swords; it generated a sound like a dying breath. He turned to face the nearest tripod and the KHAOS imbued blade sliced the air before him like a scythe.

  Joe pulled his laser knife with a zing, somersaulted into the air, and landed with a clang on top of a tripod hull. He crouched. His long, sleek body resembled that of a preying mantis. Blackblood drew twin daggers, twirled them dramatically until they blurred, and with a long, low hiss, he advanced. Mek-Quake swung his Maniaxe and rumbled forward.

  One thing that the ABC Warriors had discovered was that in close-quarter combat, using melee weapons, the tripods appeared less resistant to damage than was otherwise the case. Deadlock had hypothesised why this might be - a flaw in the barrier technology, perhaps, or some program that recognised only projectile weaponry, but his theories remained just that: theories. Joe had made up a hypothesis of his own, namely that when their knives were actually sticking in the fraggers, the tripods had a tendency to forget they were meant to be indestructible. In other words, they didn't like it up 'em.

  None of the ABC Warriors pondered the problem too much, though, just as long as the tripods were hurting. And they made them hurt as much as they could. Chuk! Schik! Uuuull-aaargh!

  As effective as these tactics were, five warriors with melee weapons could not hold back an army, and more tripods were coming. More tripods always came. They had to get out of there.

  "There's an alley between some hangars just ahead," one of the soldiers commed. "Make for that... The mek and our men will cover you." The soldiers and Mongrol began to lay down suppression fire. Their deadly hail, combined with the still thickening dust-cloud, temporarily blinded the tripods.

  The ABC Warriors sheathed their weapons and raced for the shelter of the alley, haphazardly dodging heat-rays as they went. One tripod spotted them. It pounded in pursuit, but the alley was too narrow for access and was filled with too much detritus for the tripod to be able to target its quarry. In some degree of frustration, the war machine let loose with the full fury of its heat-ray, ignited some fuel tanks and sent an immense ball of fire rolling down the alley.

  Luckily, the alley was blocked at the end only by a fence, which Mongrol soon lasered through. Beyond the barrier lay Viking City. Once into the city they could make for the buildings and obtain cover. They could get the humans indoors.

  The fence severed. Everyone except Joe ducked through and leapt to the sides. Before he followed them, Joe turned back, the sight on his Magnum Macho 3000 primed and focused for one last look at Hammerstein, but something blurred the centre of his view. Joe quickly refocused.

  There was a child running.

  "There's a kid-" Joe said, but nobody heard him over the roar of the advancing ball of flame.

  "What the frag are you doing, Pineapples? Move it."

  "I said there's a-" Joe began, but the ball of flame hit him and engulfed him
, exploding through the fence behind him. Joe stood there smouldering, fanning himself down and coughing smoke. Oh frag it, he said to himself. "Back in a mo."

  Joe pounded up the alley as the kid began to run down it. A tripod spotted the boy as he ran beneath the machine, which flailed at him with one of its arms. Joe ran and fired a few shots to discourage it. Suddenly, the boy fell. The tripod saw its chance and grabbed him, lifting him to its maw, intending to drop him in.

  "I don't think so," Joe said.

  The ABC Warrior fired launching bolts from his Achilles tendons, catapulted into the air and landed once more with a clang on the tripod's hull. Without hesitation he threw himself into the still-closing maw, drew his laser knife and killed everything that showed the slightest interest in blood. He scanned for any survivors, but found nobody. He grabbed the boy, fired his launching bolts once more and was gone.

  Steelhorn watched the acrobatics from the start of the alley. Later, he thought.

  The other ABCs and the humans waited for Joe beyond the fence.

  "Everybody, meet Nathaniel Nibletscratcher," Joe said. He ignored the sniggers.

  "Mister, that was cool," Nathaniel said.

  "Yeah, I know. Why didn't I think of it before?"

  The ABC Warriors and the survivors moved into the city. Deadlock reckoned their best chance to reach the Red House lay in staying indoors all the way, or at least as much of it as was practical. There was some debate about why they were bothering with the Red House at all - after all, it was a rendezvous point that had been suggested by Hammerstein and he wasn't going to come. But the Red House was one of the better-fortified buildings in Viking City and they needed somewhere to catch their breath.

  They planned a route and began to move. Beyond the walls, the heavy footfalls of tripods dogged them all the way. They encountered the first of the city's survivors in the third building they passed through. It was a lab of some kind - that being a guess based on the fact that it was filled with bubbling test tubes and lots of dead people in white coats. Alarm panels still flashed and everything exploded.