The superior took the jack from La-Challen and plugged it directly into his body, a serene expression on his face.
‘It will come again in less than a minute, my master.’
‘Silence, La-Challen. I am listening…’
It had been raining for days, raining in cold gusts that seeped between the panels and dampened the electromuscles. The broken rocks of the mountain were shiny wet, and Olam’s feet were sodden from wading through puddles that jumped under the never-ending impact of raindrops. There was nowhere to shelter, no chance to take apart a shorting limb to dry and clean and oil it. There was nothing here but rain and rock and dust. Lots of dust. So much wet grey dust, it worked its way into body and mechanism. Dust that stuck to the hands and the face and body so that everything was constantly gritty and damp.
Not for the first time, Olam wished he were back in Wien, dressed in his old body, feeling its metal warming in the sun’s heat. Standing in a marble tower and looking out over the bay…
‘Get ready,’ called Doe Capaldi, jerking him from his reverie. His section crouched in the limited shelter of a sheer rock face, their metal skins glistening with diamond drops of rain. Doe Capaldi didn’t seem to care about the weather. Why does he always look so calm? wondered Olam. Why doesn’t this upset him as much as it affects me? After all, he has lost far more than I ever had.
People were running towards him. Olam heard the splash of feet, the clink of metal on rock and the squeaking, unhealthy sound of robots that had spent too long being wet. He looked up the valley to see Spuran’s section pelting back down the newly carved valley, running from…
‘Cover your eyes! Turn off your ears!’ ordered Doe Capaldi. Olam obeyed, just as a hammer struck down on the world.
His mind seemed to bend for a moment, his thoughts elongating. Electromuscle crackled, sending clouds of colour dancing inside his head. And then there was a white light so bright that it filled the inside of his skull. It illuminated the receptors of his covered eyes, sending a lance of lightning deep into his twisted metal, right back to the very start of the pattern – to the first knot tied by his mother.
The ground was shaking, rattling him around like a wingnut discarded on a forge floor. A shower of stone was falling, rocks and rubble rumbling and crashing. His whole body vibrated, he could feel screws loosening under the harsh percussion. A howling wind threatened to tear his fingers from the crack in the rock to which he clung so tightly…
And then the white light faded. So did the rain, for the moment at least.
Doe Capaldi was banging on his head. Immediately, he turned his ears back up, just like he had been drilled.
‘Bomb’s still ticking,’ called Doe Capaldi. ‘We’ve got fifteen minutes. That’s twelve minutes to get it into position, and then three to run to safety. Let’s go!’
The whole section was up now, grabbing hold of the trolley, which ran on big plastic wheels. They were running, up the valley, towards the source of the explosion. Olam ran to the front, kicking aside smaller stones, shoulder-charging larger rocks to push them aside and help clear a path for the trolley and its deadly, ticking load.
The gusting rain returned in cold cannonballs that raised fountains of moisture on the slippery rock. Still Olam ran on, the trolley bouncing behind him. Be careful with the trolley, he muttered to himself, be careful with the trolley.
Doe Capaldi was now by his side, urging the other robots onwards, and Olam felt a familiar stab of hatred.
Further up the newly excavated valley, closer to the source of the previous explosion, and the going was soon becoming harder, the broken rock beneath their feet ever more unstable. There was a rumble to the right, and an avalanche of scree spilled downwards.
‘Zuse,’ swore Olam, dancing over the sliding rock, struggling to keep his feet.
‘Plenty of time,’ called Doe Capaldi. ‘Clear from the left-hand side, where the rubble is shallowest.’
Olam bent and shovelled away fragments of stone with his hands, throwing it back across the valley floor. Later, the sappers would use the stone to fill in the gaps and cracks in the ground as they levelled it, or maybe use it as ballast for the railway lines they were laying northwards. Slowly and inevitably, Kavan’s path to the north – and conquest – was taking shape.
Not that Olam cared at this moment. Behind him, the trolley bounced along, and the bomb was ticking. All he cared about was laying it and getting clear. He had already seen too many dented and half-melted robot bodies along the path, caught too close to the EMP and the subsequent heat of the blast. Above him, the jagged and broken peaks of the valley reached up into low clouds. Olam shovelled rock, making a path for the trolley.
And now the path was clear. Clear enough, anyway. The trolley bumped forward, and Olam got a proper look at the bomb: an evil-looking black glass cylinder, with a metal plate fastened to one end.
‘Go, go, go,’ called Doe Capaldi.
On they went, running for the new head of the valley, seeking the best location to site their bomb. The new valley snaked through the mountains, following the faults in the rock that the nuclear explosions had found. The robots living in the mountains had been totally confused by the haphazard course of Kavan’s clearance, had been unable to plan an attack on the excavation. No one could have predicted which way the track would travel next, not even Kavan and the Artemisians.
But it was hard work, reflected Olam, as he and Doe Capaldi tipped an enormous boulder off balance and rolled it clear of the new path they were forming. Behind them was a line of nuclear bombs, their timers set a week previously in Artemis City itself, each one of them ticking down to zero, carefully timed to explode at fifteen-minute intervals.
Each bomb had its own attendant team, all waiting their turn to rush forward to the head of the growing valley to plant their deadly cargo. After that they would rush back to collect their next bomb and rejoin the lethal carousel. Doe Capaldi’s team had now done this twice; they reckoned they would have to do it twice more before Kavan’s forces finally pierced a way through the central mountain range.
But what audacity! Even Olam was grudgingly impressed. Everyone had wondered at Kavan’s strategy for advance upon the northern part of the continent. There were so few avenues of approach. Would he take them through Raman and Born? Would they establish base camps in the mountains, gradually taking ground? No one could have guessed at this. Kavan had simply put in a request to Spoole and had waited, safely clear of Artemis City, until the bombs he required had been delivered. Black cylinders, doubly sealed and already ticking. Security: a way to prevent Kavan using them upon Artemis City itself. Not that Olam thought Kavan ever would. Why should he try that, when a whole new land was awaiting conquest, just the other side of the mountains?
Now the dust started to fall again: powdered grey stone, sucked up by the explosion, it took a while to find its way to earth again. It covered his body, it covered Doe Capaldi, too. It was washed away by raindrops that ran down robot bodies and hung from robot fingers like diamonds. Still they bounced the trolley forward.
‘Eight minutes,’ called Doe Capaldi. ‘Olam, Black-more, Lord, come with me. We’ll clear a space in the rocks there and site the bomb at the base of that column.’
The four of them ran ahead of the trolley, up to where the heavier boulders had fallen. Shattered pillars and daggers of stone big enough to spear a robot as they plunged into the ground. They worked at shifting them, prying a space to drop the bomb into. The trolley came bouncing closer.
‘What’s that?’ asked Blackmore, pointing up into the shafts of rain. Olam looked up. He couldn’t see anything.
‘Paragliders,’ shouted Doe Capaldi. ‘The idiots are attacking again! Don’t they realize that we have a bomb?’
Olam looked up, caught a glimpse of a silver-foil sail, cutting across the sky.
‘No time for that,’ called Doe Capaldi. ‘Get the bomb into place.’
The trolley crew had formed a line and were already passing the heavy black cylinder up over the uneven rocks towards Olam and the rest. There was a hissing noise and a silver sail passed over them, momentarily cutting off the fall of rain.
