imagine one of them leading armies.
“Oh, the Stalker Fang is nothing like the rest,” Dr. Zero assured him. “She is beautiful, and brilliant. She has an Old Tech brain, like yours, and all sorts of special adaptations. And she was built using the body of a famous League agent, Anna Fang. The Storm like people to think that Anna Fang has come back from the dead to lead our glorious war against the barbarians.”
The thought of war stirred instincts deep in Grike’s Stalker brain. He flexed his hands, but the blades that he knew should be housed inside them did not spring out.
Dr. Zero said, “I have removed your finger-glaives.”
“HOW AM I TO FIGHT IF I AM UNARMED?” he asked.
“Mr. Grike,” Dr. Zero told him, “if we just wanted another lumbering battle-Stalker, I could have built one myself. There is no shortage of dead bodies to Resurrect. But you are an antique, more complex than anything we can build. You’re not just a thing, you’re a person.” She touched his harmless hands. “It made a nice change, to work on a Stalker who was not just another soldier.”
An airship named
“This land was all captured in the first weeks of the war, nearly fourteen years ago’’ said Dr. Zero, still keen to educate her patient. “At first the barbarians were taken completely by surprise when our air fleets came sweeping down on them out of the mountains. We drove west, herding terrified cities ahead of us, smashing any that dared turn and fight. But slowly the cities started to group together and defend themselves. A union of German-speaking industrials called the Traktionstadtsgesellschaft stopped our advance westward and pushed us back to the Rustwater Marshes, and a rabble of Slavic Traction Towns attacked our settlements in Khamchatka and the Altai Shan.
“There has been stalemate ever since. Sometimes we push west and destroy a few more cities; sometimes they push east and devour a few of our forts or farms.”
The landscape below was changing, pitted and scarred by recent fighting. Enormous shell craters shone like mirrors stitched into a blanket of mud. From this height, the vast track marks of the enemy’s fighting suburbs and the complicated entrenchments and fortifications of the Storm looked almost identical.
“They say we are making the world green again,” sighed Dr. Zero, “but all we are doing is turning it into mud…”
Forward Command turned out to be a captured city, a small four-tiered place standing motionless on the slopes of a hill at the northern end of the Rustwater Marshes. Its tracks lay curled on the mud around it. The wheels and lower tiers were scorched and ruined, but on the upper levels lights showed dimly in the deepening twilight. Warships came and went from makeshift air harbors, and flocks of birds wheeled above the wrecked rooftops. Grike was surprised at the intelligent way the flocks veered to avoid the airships, until
“THE GREEN STORM HAS MANY STALKERS,” he said.
“The Green Storm has need of many, with so many battles to fight,” replied Dr. Zero.
Grike’s brain, which used to hold images often thousand Once-Born faces, now remembered only Dr. Zero and a few technicians from the Stalker Works. He studied the old man’s yellowing teeth, the tattoo of a red wheel sunk in the wrinkles between his bushy eyebrows, then turned to Dr. Zero like a child looking to its mother for reassurance.
“This is Dr. Popjoy,” she told him softly. “Founder of the Resurrection Corps, and our leader’s personal surgeon-mechanic.” Then, to the old man, she said, “I am afraid that Mr. Grike has few memories of his former career, Dr. Popjoy. That section of his brain was severely damaged; I was unable to unlock it.”
“Pity,” said Popjoy absentmindedly. “Might have been nice to have a chin-wag about the old times. Still, maybe it’s for the best.” He walked all round the Stalker twice, reaching out to pat Grike’s shiny new bodywork and tweak the electric cords that trailed from his steel skull. “Excellent’” he chuckled. “A right proper job, Treacle! Couldn’t have done it better myself!”
“I seek only to please the Stalker Fang,” said Dr. Zero meekly.
“As do we all, Treacle. Come on now, we’d best go up; she’s expecting us.”
Hurricane lanterns burned in the long corridors of the building. Uniformed Once-Borns hurried about, shouting commands, waving sheets of paper, talking loudly into field telephones. Many of them had dyed their hair green as a symbol of their loyalty to the Storm. They spoke in clipped battle codes that Grike found he could understand perfectly; Dr. Zero’s doing, no doubt. As he followed her and Popjoy up the broad stairways, he wondered what other adjustments she had made.
At the top of the stairs was a pair of bullet-pecked bronze doors. “Resurrection Corps,” said Popjoy as the sentries slammed to attention. “Delivery for Her Excellency.”
The doors swung wide. The room beyond was big and dark. Grike’s new eyes switched automatically to night vision, and he saw that the far wall had been reinforced with armor plate. One long slot of a window, like the slit in a visor, remained open, glassless, gazing toward the west. The figure who stood at it was not entirely human. “Your Excellency…” Popjoy said.
“Wait.” A voice from the darkness, a commanding whisper.
Popjoy waited. In the silence, Grike detected the faint sound of Dr. Zero’s teeth chattering and the nervous drumming of her heart.
Suddenly a huge pulse of light arose from the western marshes, filling the room with an orange glow that fluttered and stabbed as the first great burst of fire separated into the muzzle flash of countless individual guns and the drifting white pinpoints of phosphorus flares. Forward Command shifted slightly, dead metal creaking under Grike’s feet. After a few more seconds the sound reached him, a far-off rumbling and banging, like somebody moving furniture about in a distant room.
Bathed in the light of her war, the Stalker Fang turned from the viewing slit to greet her visitors. She wore long gray robes, and her face was a woman’s death mask cast in bronze. She said, “Our artillery has just launched a bombardment on the forward cities of the Traktionstadtsgesellschaft. I shall be flying out shortly to lead the ground attack.”
“Another glorious victory, I’m sure, Fang,” said Popjoy’s voice from somewhere near Grike’s ankles, and Grike noticed that both Popjoy and Dr. Zero had fallen to their knees, pressing their faces to the smooth wood of the floor.
“But not a final victory.” The Stalker’s voice was a winter wind rustling among frozen reeds. “We need more-powerful weapons, Popjoy.”
“And you shall have them, Your Excellency,” Popjoy promised. “I’m always on the lookout for odd bits of Old Tech that might serve. In the meantime, we’ve brought you a small token of the Stalker Corps’s esteem.”
The Stalker Fang’s almond-shaped eyes flared green as they focused on Grike. “You are the Stalker Grike,” she said, gliding closer. “I have seen images of you. I was told that you had ceased to function.”
“He is fully repaired, Excellency,” said Popjoy.
The Stalker stopped a few paces from Grike, studying him. “What is the meaning of this, Popjoy?” she asked.
“A birthday present, Excellency!” Popjoy raised himself, grunting with the effort. “A little surprise that Dr. Zero here dreamed up. I’m sure you remember Oenone Zero, daughter of old Hiraku Zero, the airship ace. She’s a prodigy, already the finest surgeon-mechanic in the Corps. (Apart from yours truly, of course.) Well, Oenone had the
