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.
