with a pair of binoculars in his hand. The sun-while still very new that day-grew hot fast, drying the air.
Towering above the city to the south were the Sierra Madre Oriental Mountains. That range trailed off into the distance in a line of dramatic ridges and steeply banked slopes of brown and fading green. The sound that had roused them from their slumber reverberated everywhere, like a million heads of cattle stampeding.
Between their position and those mountains lay several square miles of what had once been Monterrey. The rising sun shed light on the devil's work.
'What the Hell is this?' Nina's brow furled tight but her mouth fell wide open.
She expected to see the singed and melted remains of the city and the Centurian base. Indeed, the smoldering smoke rising from the flattened ruins there did not surprise her, she had witnessed the handiwork of dreadnought belly boppers before.
However, it did surprise them to find that half of those ruins were gone, combed neat and flat into graded dirt. Indeed, the view from the hill resembled a before and after advertisement for a vacuum cleaner: the western side of the city cleansed of debris with only sand-like dirt remaining. The east still a tangled mess of flattened concrete, melted metal, and scorched land with the tallest piles of debris rising no more than six feet.
'Good God,' Gordon mumbled in a choppy voice. 'It's…it's being erased.'
The droning sound came from a swirling cloud hovering and moving southward nearly a mile away from Nina and Gordon's observation point. At the rear of that cloud shot streams of freshly-cleaned dirt, for some reason reminding Nina of the combine harvesters on the farms in her home town in Pennsylvania.
Something worked within that cloud, but it hid inside one of the last remaining shadows at the base of the mountain peaks. Nonetheless, the path the thing followed was easy to see, in its wake it left flat, featureless soil.
'They're cleaning it all up,' Knox managed a better handle on his words. 'Whatever evidence is down there… we have to hurry.'
Nina and Gordon retrieved their hover bikes and swooped down the hill. At the base of that hill stretched a field of debris so flat that the two could see-unhindered-all the way across the remains of town to where that large dust cloud moved at the base of the mountains.
They stopped at a series of stone blocks piled one atop each other to the height of five feet. They stopped because that great cloud on the far side of the old city began to pivot as it reached the end of another line of cleansing. As it turned to head north-to head toward Nina and Gordon-the veil of dust blew off, revealing the machine.
It stretched a half a mile long from side to side and rose some fifty feet into the air. It took Nina's eyes several seconds to understand what she saw. At first, her mind likened the sight to the head of a gigantic push broom, but with squirming bristles. As the dust dissipated, she thought it more a long, hovering wing with thousands of tubes hanging down to the ground, each scrubbing the earth below while a great suction of wind scooped up burnt buildings, melted cars, broken planks, and shattered steel.
It moved slow and methodic tearing away the old, sifting through the mess, and leaving behind a trail of soil cleaned of any evidence the ruins of Monterrey might hold.
'Listen, we have to get in there and find something.'
Gordon said, 'If I'm right, you're going to need a Centurian body. I'm thinking a head alone would do the trick.'
A flash from somewhere between them and the machine caught both their eyes. A stream of liquid light tore between the two people and slammed into the stone pillars. Those pillars evaporated into grains of sand. The explosion knocked both Nina and Gordon from their mounts.
'It's armed!'
Nina corrected, 'No. There's something else out there.'
She dared a peek from a prone position. Far away the great machine did its work, ripping evidence from the ground a half-mile at a time. But closer…about five hundred yards away…Nina spotted three dark figures, each standing nearly eight feet tall and spread in a picket line with fifty yards between one another.
She raised binoculars for a better view.
The machine's guardians wore dark cloaks, hiding any features. They walked in determined but slow steps, traversing the ground ahead of the cleansing unit. As she watched, one of the two robed arms raised. She saw something that resembled the exhaust end of a jet engine. A golden ball glowed from its end 'Get down!'
Another blast of energy streaked toward the infiltrators. It missed high and slammed into the hillside behind them where it knocked great clumps of rock and dirt off a ridge.
'Damn it,' Knox groaned. 'We can't get anything with these things around!'
Nina's head snapped around and she glared at him through slits-for-eyes. In that instant he clearly saw that she would not retreat after having come so far.
'I'll take care of this.'
Before he could protest, Nina jumped into the saddle of her hover bike. While one hand worked the throttle, her other hand slipped the sword from her leg.
Meanwhile, Gordon pulled a Dessert Eagle. 44 from a thigh rig and gripped it tight.
Nina kept working the throttle as she swept to the east flying over the remains of the city. One of the things defending the machine raised its arm, took aim, and fired, but its weapon moved too slow and too clumsy to hit the speeding craft.
Like a dive bomber aiming for a target, she turned the hover bike hard and accelerated at the robed creatures. As she did, she spied another glob of gold…she waited…waited…and jogged to her left as the watery fire streamed by.
Faster…faster…her sword raised…the creature turned to try and follow her approach but moved too slow.
Her sword-moving with her at an incredible speed-slammed into the thing's outstretched gun. The impact nearly threw her from the bike. And then she was passed, her sword still in her hand but her elbow aching from a near-hyperextension.
She dared a glance behind in time to see golden energy consume the thing from the inside out. Its robe exploded in a sunburst. As it did, she saw the hood fall away revealing a translucent skull encasing an organic brain above a metallic jaw. Two eyes-maybe lenses, maybe flesh-bulged from the face of the thing.
Nina turned forward in time to see that she closed on the massive eraser machine. The roar of its toil blocked out all other noise. She felt the first pull of sucking wind. She saw the feelers reaching to the ground and scrubbing away traces of the Centurian base.
She banked hard and sought out the other two robed defenders, accelerating toward another of the guardians. It fired and missed as she raised her sword…closed the distance…
BLAM!
Her ride wobbled. She yanked the handle grip brakes. A yellow blast from the farthest away of the two remaining creatures changed her course. Her bike slammed into the eight-foot tall robot she had intended to decapitate, knocking it over and her from her mount. She fell amidst a pile of twisted, blackened metal beams.
Sword in hand, she staggered to her feet, ignoring the sting of a laceration in her upper arm and fighting a wobble in her walk.
The creature she had collided with remained on its back for the moment. Nina swiveled about to spy the other robotic guardian, the one that had scored a near-hit on her hover bike. It stood fifty yards away with its gun barrel preparing to target her again.
Before it could fire, Gordon Knox zipped in behind the monster on his own ride, pulled his automatic cannon, and with both hands gripping the pistol he fired again and again and again at close range. The heavy shells tore through the robe and into the machine-body beneath. A series of electrical surges burst from the thing, knocking off its hood and revealing a frying brain and chattering jaw.
The creature stopped working and froze in place.
Nina's eyes found Gordon with the intention of saying thank you. He, however, urgently pointed behind her
