They moved silently through the caves like shadows in the darkness.
Down through tunnels, passing the silent machines that still made their slow climb from the depths and up to the sun, their minds as yet unwoken. The passageways through which Nicolas moved became softer and more polished by the tread of ancient feet.
There was the sound of water, the playing of a stream mixing with the rolling crash of a waterfall. Nicolas and his troop sensed a deep pool somewhere near. They heard the echoes of a huge space; they felt the ionization in the air increasing.
In those days the Raman state counted the caves as their own. They sent men and women out from their mountain-top cities to patrol the twisting passes and slate-covered slopes that led to the caves. Though Nicolas and his squad had moved so carefully, they had been observed and followed down into the earth by Raman soldiers.
The Raman feared those caves and the passageways that led back through time all the way to Oneill, yet their anger at the intrusion by Artemis was even greater.
The Raman carried steel discs, magnetic chaff and awls.
The Artemisians carried blades and guns, for the Artemisians were not used to fighting in the Raman mountains.
The Raman came close in the darkness, moving silently on plastic-soled feet, crawling silently on plastic- bound hands. They attacked.
A steel disc spun through the darkness, its polished surface reflecting nothing but the night, its razor edge silent as it cut the air.
Nicolas and his squad had paused near the stream. They were adjusting joints and calibrating senses, rubbing in grease and cleaning away grit. Nicolas was watching Kathy as she rubbed the casing of her thighs with emery cloth, as she used a fingertip to tease out swarf from the seams. Nicolas saw her head smashed to one side, saw her fall to the ground, arms and legs twitching, the top of her head half sliced open by the black disc that had lodged there.
Nicolas stifled the cry that arose in his throat, and rose to fighting stance, his troop smoothly echoing his action. Twenty-three robots turning to cover all directions, the gentle hum of electromuscles charging with energy, ready to move with explosive force. Eye shields slid into place, rifles were cocked, ears were turned up to detect any sound, and then turned straight back down again as the noise of the waterfall and the splashing stream overwhelmed them. This was a good spot for an ambush.
And then the air was full of the harsh percussive beat of steel discs, ricocheting from the stone walls. Two more robots were decapitated.
‘Up there!’ called someone, and twenty-one rifles swung and fired simultaneously. Three bodies fell, splashing into the pool.
‘Raman,’ said someone. ‘Look at the build on those bodies.’
But now it was getting harder to see and to move. Nicolas’s ears were cutting out, silences punctuating the noise of the battle all around. His vision flashed with white noise and he felt his electromuscles twitching.
‘Chaff!’ he called, wiping the back of one hand over his eyes. It came away covered with charged black iron filings. Somewhere off to his side there was a loud buzzing as someone began setting up a magnetic perimeter, drawing the chaff away from his troop. The air was becoming clearer already.
Now Nicolas had time to think. He counted seventeen robots still standing.
‘Report!’ he called. ‘Where are they?’
Calmly, the robots relayed the information back to him. There was a group up in the roof, a second blocking the passageway by which they had entered this cave.
‘Take out the ones above first,’ called Nicolas. ‘Then we can mount an assault on the ones behind us.’
Seventeen rifles swung back upwards. They began to fire infrequently, but with thoughtful precision.
‘Not so well trained,’ said the man to Nicolas’s right. ‘Soon be out of here.’
Nicolas felt uneasy. He knew the Raman lived in the mountains. He knew they were expert at this sort of fighting. Nicolas thought about this, Nicolas dredged his memory.
‘Anyone here got a nose?’ he asked.
‘I have,’ said a woman nearby, still gazing at the ceiling along the length of her rifle.
‘What can you smell?’
The woman paused, sniffing.
‘Organics. A lot of them. Petrol.’
‘Zuse!’ swore Nicolas.
‘Hey, they’re retreating!’
‘Of course they are. It’s a…’
The world exploded. The petroleum vapour with which the Raman had been flooding the cavern ignited and sucked up all the oxygen. Nicolas was left standing in a near-vacuum.
His electromuscles were weak and shrivelled.
His brain hurt.
He was deaf; the delicate connections in his ears had burned away.
His casing was so hot that it glowed blue-white.
The Raman were charging now. Only a dozen of them, but more than enough to defeat his weakened, crippled squad.
The Raman had long bodies plated in chrome. They carried short, sharp awls in their fists, held low, ready to punch up beneath a robot’s chin, right up into the brain.
‘Stand firm,’ said Nicolas.
Fourteen robots formed up in line. They dropped their rifles, barrels breached after the ammunition had exploded in the blast, they drew out their knives, held them in hands over which plastic had melted and dripped away. Held them weakly in their glowing hands. Still the Raman came, metal feet pounding on the stone floor. But now the Raman paused and put away their awls. They turned, looked back, fear crossing their faces.
‘What is it?’ asked someone.
‘I don’t know,’ said Nicolas. And then they, too, felt it and heard it. A trickle of water. A stream. A torrent of water released from somewhere, bearing down upon them. Flashing white foam on dark water, set free in the petroleum explosion, released from some other cave by the cracking of the walls.
It engulfed the Raman, swept them before it. And then it engulfed Nicolas and his squad, still glowing blue- white hot from the burning petrol.
The pain was like a shaft of lightning.
The pain was almost beyond endurance.
Hot metal steamed and then cooled too quickly. It snapped tight around robot bodies, it crystallized, hard and brittle. The world was full of the crash of water, and Nicolas’s squad was sent tumbling down through the earth, pushed deeper and deeper down caves and passageways, all spinning and crashing as they went. They bashed against rocks, and metal that had been heated and cooled too quickly shattered. Brain casing splintered and twisted wire unravelled and sent minds spilling and then untangling into nothing more than so much metal.
Bashing and crashing, tumbling and swirling. Dizzy and hurting. Gradually the motion slowed down, and the percussion of the unheard noise died away, and Nicolas was left beached on cold stone, his body dented and aching.
Other men and women lay around him, along with broken and shattered parts from dead robots. Water dripped from metal onto stone.
People began to stir. Nicolas looked around in anguish. There were no other Artemisians there present, only Raman.
Nicolas rose unsteadily to his feet. His balance felt off. He needed to strip apart his body and get a close look at the gyroscopes, but he didn’t have time. The Raman soldiers had noticed him. They were already pointing in his direction.
‘Hey,’ said Nicolas. ‘I surrender.’
They were looking at him oddly. Pointing to the dented casing around his body. Nicolas looked down and saw why.
He had changed. In the light from his own eyes, his body shone with a dull grey lustre.
