‘You summoned them,’ said Spoole. He sounded more disappointed than anything else.
‘Sorry, Spoole. I was ordered to report if you ever came here.’
‘Do you know what they’re doing, Geraint? They are weaving robot minds to serve the animals. They are weaving minds that do not follow Nyro!’
Geraint hesitated.
‘It’s true,’ said Susan. ‘Go downstairs and ask the robot!’
‘I’m sorry, Spoole. I am woven to be loyal to Nyro.’
‘Loyal to Nyro, or loyal to the leaders of Artemis?’
Geraint thought about it.
‘The second one.’
‘That was a mistake.’ Spoole looked at Susan. ‘We have got things so badly wrong.’ He turned back to the Storm Trooper, powerful black hands gripping the rifle. The bullet in there would pierce his skull and expand inside his mind, melting the wire as it tore it apart. ‘What are your orders, Geraint?’
‘Arrest you. If you resist arrest, I’m to kill you.’
‘No, I can’t let you do that! Come with me, Geraint, and hear the truth.’
‘I’m sorry, Spoole.’
Geraint raised the gun.
‘Your leaders never fought in battles, Geraint, you know that?’
‘That doesn’t matter.’
‘It does, Geraint. They’d have known never to give a robot a rifle in room as small as this.’
Spoole simply stepped forward, within the length of the barrel.
‘I’m still stronger than you, Spoole.’
‘But I was made to fight, as well as lead.’ He slammed a hand forward into Geraint’s chest, slammed the other up under the robot’s chin. ‘Knock your gyros out of sync for a moment,’ he said, as Geraint wobbled unsteadily on his feet, and he snatched the rifle from his hands, placed the stock on the floor, the barrel pointing up beneath Geraint’s chin, and fired. Blue wire expanded, slippery and sparking. Susan felt the percussion of the shot rattling inside her head: her ears were still turned up to their fullest extent.
‘Sorry, Geraint,’ said Spoole. Below them they could hear the pounding of feet. The other soldiers were coming towards them.
‘Now what?’ said Susan. Spoole told her what to do.
Susan flung open the door to the database. Three infantry-robots waited outside under the bright stars.
‘This way!’ she called.
The infantryrobots saw her grey body, saw she was one of their own, and ran into the building.
‘Down there,’ called Susan, pointing down the steps. She watched as they vanished from sight. Spoole emerged from the other branch of the tree.
‘Made to lead,’ said Spoole, emerging into the night. ‘Strategy. It’s all about strategy.’
‘Well done,’ said Susan with grudging admiration. ‘Where now?’
‘Barrack 245. Find Nettie and the rest. Get the proof. Raise an army and throw these animals out of the city.’
‘What about the Generals?’ asked Susan.
‘I was talking about the Generals,’ said Spoole.
Calor couldn’t help herself. She would run ahead of Kavan, then turn and wait for him to catch up. As soon as he reached her she was off again, another couple of hundred yards. Kavan hurried along behind her, his feet kicking loose stones into the little stream.
‘Not far,’ she said. ‘Just around the bend.’
Kavan respected the animals. They didn’t think like robots, it was true, but they had established themselves upon Shull with a ruthless logic he admired.
Their main base was close to Artemis City, but not too close. Any enemies approaching them would be seen from miles away across the plain, then either picked off by the Artemisians or the humans in their flying craft. Kavan hadn’t actually seen the human base, hiding as he was amongst the broken landscape near Stark, but he had had it described to him by Scouts and engineers who had observed it from as close as they could manage, dodging the Artemisian patrols and hiding from the craft that criss-crossed the sky.
The base was well constructed, he understood. Two gigantic craft, surrounded by a perimeter of guns that moved of their own accord, turning to fire at robots that came too close. Even the Artemisians didn’t dare approach those guns: the plain was littered with the shattered metal remains of the bodies of robots that had gone too close. So much metal left to go to waste was unheard of in Artemis.
Several buildings had already been constructed within the compound, and it was Kavan’s understanding that the perimeter of the base was expanding as time passed and more and more materials were brought into the base. Materials taken from Shull.
Two railway lines led into the animals’ camp; they drew up alongside long platforms lined with cranes and other paraphernalia used to unload and load the trains that constantly ran back and forth between the camp and Artemis City.
Kavan had thought of a possible weakness at this point, he had asked his Scouts for further information. Two of them had died – picked off as they crossed the plain by missiles fired from high above – in order to bring Kavan the answer. The humans were well ahead of Kavan: the Scouts had confirmed that there were many guns at the point where the railway lines pierced the camp. Furthermore, their placement showed they were ready to be turned upon the trains, or indeed in the direction of Artemis City, should the current alliance break down.
‘This way, this way,’ said Calor, running back to meet him.
‘I can’t keep my feet on this loose stone like you can,’ said Kavan, stumbling on a loose gravel bank. Stark had stripped this land of metal with devastating efficiency. The ground was a maze of pits and broken rubble, criss-crossed by hard packed roads. It was a great place to hide out, a difficult place to traverse.
‘Nearly there!’
Yes, Kavan respected the animals. Yet he felt disgusted by them at the same time. They were so fragile. The robots had captured only three of them, so far as he knew, and each one of them had been broken and accidentally killed by its captors. The first had been trapped in the wreckage of a crashed flying craft. The Scout that had found it had cut off its limbs and lower torso to drag it free. According to her account, the creature had screamed horribly as she did this, and had sent masses of red fluid squirting in all directions before it had died.
A second pair had been captured almost immediately afterwards. They had been cut from their craft intact, and then sealed in an oil container whilst Kavan was sent for. It was a good plan; the idea had been the steel of the container would block any signals the prisoners might try to send to searching humans. Unfortunately, by the time Kavan had arrived there, the creatures were dead, their skin turned a strange blue colour, at least those parts that hadn’t been burned red on contact with the hot metal, heated by the sun.
It was only after the second fatalities that Kavan had sent out a message asking for advice on the handling of animals. The advice that came back to him from the Wieners and the few conscripts from the Northern Kingdoms made him more aware than ever just how feeble these humans were. They needed water, grass and leaves to consume, they had to be kept within a narrow temperature range, they had to be exposed to the air. They couldn’t be punctured, they couldn’t be disassembled in any way. It made Kavan wonder if they were worth the bother.
But he persevered, and when the message came through that two Scouts had finally managed to capture an animal on the ground, one that had walked over a hundred yards from its flying craft, trusting to what turned out to be a faulty robot detector, Kavan had come running.
The animal had been hurried from the site of the craft by the two Scouts. They had followed standing orders and cut from the creature anything plastic or metal, all the while being careful not pierce any part of its fleshy body.
They had then led it at blade point across the rocky land to an old Stark village, abandoned after the invasion by Artemis over ten years ago. Kavan had been lucky; he was only fifty miles away at the time. He had immediately begun to travel towards the captive, hoping to reach it before the fragile creature died. It had taken him nearly two
