Ishmael’s finger had already been squeezing the laser trigger so he put a few shots into the face of the Bot and swung the barrel towards the distant squad.
A shower of sparks and burning smell told Ishmael he had been hit. He could see a messy hole in his left arm, just below the last wound but he had already been diving to the ledge for cover. His face smacked into the hard material and he began to roll off the narrow ledge. Something slammed into his leg, just as he fell into space. He hit the wider ledge below, breaking a pipe, which spewed a cold liquid all over him. He grabbed the pipe to stop himself falling further but his fist closed around the wrist of the terminated Bot instead. The gushing liquid, coolant of some kind, made Ishmael slide further over the lip of the ledge. He clung to the dead Bot’s wrist and pulled the dead machine down with him when he fell.
Both of them crashed to the floor of the tunnel, the dead Bot falling over Ishmael. Instantly, hot laser pulses slammed into the dead Bot’s carcass, one slamming though Ishmael’s already damaged leg. There seemed nowhere to go.
***
Under the dead Bot, Ishmael listened for the pulse that would carry with it his own termination. He heard something else, the yell of “Charge!” by a familiar voice.
An instant later, the tunnel seemed to erupt in a great gout of orange and yellow flame. A wave of hot air curled the ends of Ishmael’s hair and singed his eye-lashes. A similar flash followed, moments later, followed by silence.
Ishmael dared not move. Somebody pulled the carcass off him and the smiling face of Jonr looked down at him. The leader’s eyelashes and eyebrows had also been singed.
“Can you stand?” Jonr said.
“What happened?” Ishmael stood and saw the terminated carcasses of twelve SA grunts just a few yards away.
“It was close. We wiped out the other squad and they had some rather tasty grenades. Two of them took this lot out just before they reached you!”
“I don’t think I can stand!”
“Let me take a look,” Kris suggested.
They dragged Ishmael to one of the side tunnels and Kris ripped off Ishmael’s legging:
“It’s a wreck, I’m afraid. You won’t use that again.”
“Ishmael looked to Jonr.”
“I don’t know, Ish,” Jonr muttered. “Let me think … Kris, can’t we use a leg from one of these grunts? They look very similar to designs Tri-mex submitted for a new range of androids, based on the C-class. Maybe it will fit?”
“Could be. Do we have time?”
“Don’t know but we need Ishmael. Give it a try.”
“I need tools! Lots of tools!”
“Check the car.”
Between the car’s axles, they found a range of backup supplies, including what, during Earth wars, would have been called a First Aid kit; basically a large toolbox and supply of spare parts. Kris removed the leg of a Bot within ten minutes and started to cut into Ishmael’s leg.
“Ouch!” Ishmael whispered through clenched teeth, watching red liquid dripping from the incisions. Kris quickly exposed the gleaming carbon and alloy joint, which Ishmael saw with mute curiosity. “You know, until today, I still thought I might be … I’m sorry, I’m confused. I mean; I thought I might have an organic body. I guess there’s no doubt now! I guess I would be unconscious if I had one.”
“Lie still.”
“Shame you took out that bazooka,” Jonr said. “It would have been useful but at least we have two more. We need the access codes though!”
“I can only work on one thing at a time!” Kris retorted.
“Grab all the weapons you can carry, men! How long Kris?”
“An hour, at least!”
“Okay. We don’t have time. Get him on the car. We’ll risk a train ride. Get the dead grunts out of sight. Carry the wounded onto the car; we’re leaving!”
Three Rebels had died, two more had serious wounds but could walk. They all piled onto the silver car and Kris put it into reverse, calling out:
“Get down! More SA on the ground!”
Everyone bent down below the level of the windows and they passed six SA squads without hearing a shot fired.
“Must think it can run on automatic!” Kris declared. “More coming. Jesus! There are swarms of them!”
They knew they had almost reached the North Ramp when Jonr saw an undefended side tunnel and ordered:
“Kris, stop the car! We have to find cover for a while. We are close enough to watch for the Type 45 now.”
The five survivors disembarked and headed into the side tunnel while another Rebel drove the car south to relay all the new Intel to other squads. Three men carried Ishmael, just behind Kris.
“Where to Ishmael?” Jonr asked.
“Look for a ladder or an elevator, if you can find one that works. Go up!”
“Right.”
The third elevator they found worked so they took it to a narrow access tunnel, three levels up and crept to a grill that looked out into the expressway, just under the roof.
“Cut the grate off Ish!” Jonr told one of his men, who pointed Ishmael’s laser at the obstruction and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened.
“Dead!” the man declared.
“Okay, we’ve been lucky today,” Jonr declared. “There’s a room, back down the tunnel. We’ll hole up there for a few hours; get some rest. Somebody get rid of that grill.”
***
While some of the men ate rations and rested, Kris worked away, attaching the soldier Bot’s leg to Ishmael’s stump. The main ball joint seemed simple enough but a maze of connectors and fluid transit tubes required more thought. After an exhausting hour of labour, Kris stitched up the wound and slapped Ishmael’s other thigh:
“Good as new! Let’s look at that arm. Not so bad. The shot went straight through. Just cut a few wires. I’ll soon have them reconnected.”
Ten minutes later, Ishmael stood unsteadily on the new leg and flexed his damaged arm.
“Arm feels okay,” he announced, “But the leg feels strange; disconnected.”
“It will take some getting used to. I have to crack these access codes or we’ll all have no legs!”
Ishmael walked up and down to try the new leg and went to find Jonr:
“The new leg!” he declared, turning it this way and that to show the leader.
“Yeah, looks fine. Put some leggings on!”
“Oh sorry. I forget about the clones’ inhibitions!”
“For the last time, we’re not clones!”
“Sorry Jonr. I will find some leggings.”
“No Ish, I’m sorry, for my bad temper. It hasn’t been a good start to this. I fear the worst … .”
“But we have gone so far and we have a good position.”
“Yes and two men will have to go back for treatment. We have suffered more than 50% losses already; if the other squads are suffering the same … .”
“Give me a few minutes.”
Ishmael hobbled back to the expressway, took an intact pair of fatigue trousers from one of the SA carcasses and returned to Jonr:
“I wanted to ask you about something that has been bothering me Jonr.”
“Go on.”
“First, tell me about the slide of men into apathy as a result of cracking time travel.”
“Ha! Ish, I do believe you would make a great diplomat! Distracting the man from his worries, eh?”
“Yaela, my girlfriend, scores very highly on the charm scale. I learned a lot from her.”
“Do you hope to see her again?”
“Yes, though I don’t think there is much chance of me seeing her while we are still both alive.”
“I know what you mean. Well, as you know, worm holes gave us one means of time travel, way back in the Third Millennium and special recording devices gave us a way to see back in time. But we still couldn’t see forward in time or back or forward for just a short interval. Then Ito discovered vector time; projections of time using quant
um computers – their ability to calculate result sets predetermined by the verifier – that were accurate to .0001% tolerance up to a time interval of almost three days!”
Blankers, user-controlled replicants, were already in use and people quickly employed them to live vicarious lives for them up to three days in the past or future. As long as they could stay hidden, the controller of the clone could still function but avoid all consequences of the Law! Work became a joke and crime escalated. In fact, it proved one of the factors that led to the final, total collapse of Capitalism. But you said you wanted to ask me about something?”
“Yes. But I’m not sure how to put it. I had several long discussions with Chance about evolution and Conservation. He showed me one of your farms; where they are cremating human bodies for fertilizer. It shocked me. He began to convince me that Citizens are not really the benevolent beings they thought they were. And you have almost convinced me that humans created Citizens.”
“‘Shocked,’ ‘they;’ these words convince me there is something non-android about you, Ishmael. We really must do some tests on you when we finish this, if we survive. Maybe we can even take you apart!”
Ishmael scowled at Jonr’s before continuing:
“We believe ourselves to be organic, the ultimate and original species, but I have searched my memories and now I can find no evidence that I ever had an organic body, even as a minor. And when Kris opened up my leg, it became obvious what my body really is; artificial. But my brain could still be organic, or at least some part of it. What I can’t understand is why, or how, we could be deceived by our society or State into believing that we are organic? It seems to me that my memory has been wiped, by somebody, of any memories of surgical procedures in my life. Who could do this and why? My model of the Universe cannot explain this!”
“Your reality?”
“Yes, my reality, or one of my main realities, as you would put it.”
“Ha! Ah, well now we come to the strangest tale of all. Mind you, this is all rumour; the truth is wrapped up in layers of official secrets. But my grandfather told me he heard a rumour that when the Alliance broke up and humans chose instead to be ruled by androids, they took a last precaution to safeguard the existence of our Culture. They programed a special range of androids so that they would rule the C-class androids in a culture built around the myth that the all androids were created before man and that, in fact, they created man. These special androids have ruled our culture ever since. Your President is certainly one. But, for obvious reasons, they don’t believe the myth themselves. It sounds like they have been controlling your memory so that you need not question this myth.”
Of course the C-class androids are different; nobody knows who created them or why, but they have always believed they are the progenitors of all men, whom they choose to call clones. I guess somebody programed them … you, that way. Some say it was the Russians, some the Germans and some believe America did it at the height of its powers … .
“I don’t believe any of it! I was beginning to believe many of your ideas Jonr but I can’t believe this! But there is something you should know … it might convince you that you are wrong … .”
“Here it comes!” the Rebel on watch shouted.
Everyone roused and crawled to the grill. Ishmael and Jonr peered over the lookout’s shoulders. Far to their left, in the expressway, they saw a silver maintenance car pushing a flat waggon before it. On the waggon sat an enormous device with a barrel, whose bore would comfortably accommodate a man, if it were a conventional gun.
“The Type 45, I presume,” Jonr whispered. “Look at that red lens on the end of the barrel.” A red eye blinked like a sleeping dragon, once every second. Behind the car, walked a battalion of SA soldiers, each armed to the teeth.
“Looks like it is primed and ready to go!” Kris whispered, poking his head through a gap beneath them.
“Yeah, but we’re not!” the Rebel leader replied. “Have you got those codes sorted?”
“Almost … . Just a few more minutes. We have fourteen of the sixteen placeholders. It’s neat; a different encryption for each placeholder … .”
“Don’t want to hear. Just do it. We have to get out there and stop this thing.”
“I don’t think we have a chance, in front of it, but if we can get behind it and disable the car and wagon … .” Ishmael suggested.
“The rest of you, come on!” Jonr whispered, crawling past the rest of his men.
***
Jonr led his men into the expressway, only seconds before the rolling wagon reached them. Watching the approaching machine from the corner, he could not have timed his attack better. The Type 45’s operators swung the great laser gun to point at the Rebels but they were too close and under its greatest angle of depression. Even if the SA grunts had opened fire, they would have only caused an explosion so close that it would have disabled the gun and killed them. Instead, fifty-six SA grunts, eight of them with red flashes, poured through the doors of the silver car, onto the waggon to defend the artillery laser.
“With me!” yelled Jonr, leaping onto the flatbed, under the barrel. The two remaining able men, followed by Ishmael, leaped onto the waggon and opened fire on the SA grunts. The Rebel lasers were hopelessly underpowered and Jonr found himself grappling with a yellow-flashed grunt while his two comrades got blasted to pieces behind him. The silver car kept on rolling
“Jonr!” Ishmael yelled, poking his head over the side of the waggon and picking up a laser from a fallen Rebel. He rammed the poleaxe though the neck of an enemy, “We have to get out of here. It’s no use.”
“I have to … .” Jonr began, turning his laser round. “Agh!” He screamed as two laser pulses went through his leg. He had emptied the whole chamber into a grunt to no effect other than to make the grunt check its chest for damage with a vacant expression. “Kill one!” Jonr finished, thrusting the poleaxe through the grunt’s neck, just as Ishmael had shown him. The grunt’s mouth opened and a single spark leaped from it before it slumped over. Jonr left the laser’s poleaxe embedded in the grunt’s neck and rolled over the side of the waggon, dropping to the tunnel floor.
The waggon had rolled opposite their side tunnel and while Jonr tried to avoid being crushed by the wheels, Ishmael ducked underneath to help his friend. A hail of laser pulses pinged off the metallic wheels and axles.
“Give me that!” Jonr shouted, grabbing Ishmael’s laser. He turned it to maximum and pumped all its remaining charge into one of the axle ends of the waggon before ramming the dead laser into the gap between the axle end and the wheel. “Let’s go!”
The gap between the waggon and the side tunnel was no more than four feet but even crossing this, several shots took off Ishmael’s hair and one of his ears while another ripped a flap of flesh from Jonr’s back. Shots still slammed into the the side tunnel wall when they reached the elevator and ascended to their hideout. The waggon rolled on, now making a squealing sound with the damaged axle.
The two wounded men faced the door with their lasers when Jonr knocked after giving the password:
“Can’t be too careful!” one of them joked, putting down the crude weapon.
“Kris! They’re coming!” Jonr whispered.
“It’s done!” Kris replied, holding a laser aloft. He threw it to Jonr and attached the black box to a second laser. Seconds later, he threw this to Ishmael, who swung round to take up a defensive position beside Jonr.
The elevator doors hissed open and two SA grunts leapfrogged each other along the corridor in a classic offensive move.
“Shut the hatch!” Kris whispered, holding up a heavy coil of blue electrical cable. Jonr grinned and slammed the hatch shut. Ishmael forced a rusty latch into place. “I got one of the wounded men to find it; thought it might be handy.” He peered out of the grill opening, down into the expressway. “Phew, hundreds of them but mostly gone. Another minute!” Laser fire pinged off the other side of the hatch and Ishma
el found himself counting off seconds. “Okay, let’s go!”
Kris wrapped the cable round his back and abseiled down the expressway wall, with Jonr close behind.
“I’ll go last,” Ishmael told the two wounded men. “I’m not sure it will hold my weight.”
“Here take this!” said one the men, tossing a laser. “Kris has a spare. Turn it to max and lock the safety-catch. It will fuse and blow in thirty seconds … roughly!”
“Thanks.”
As the last man disappeared out of the opening, Ishmael set the laser to explode. A red line appeared around the hatch lock and extended to a red hot slit. Ishmael counted for a few seconds and pressed the safety-catch lock. He ran for the opening and climbed down the cable. Beneath his feet, he could see his waiting friends but the cable jerked so he guessed it would soon break. He quickened his pace and fell the last fifteen feet when the cable snapped. Contracting his legs to form a spring, in a way that must have been programmed into him, he landed heavily and fell over.
“Nothing damaged!” he announced, when the others hauled him to his feet. He followed the others as they broke into a slow jog, heading south. Both Kris and Jonr supported a wounded man each.
“Let me!” Ishmael said to Jonr. He hoisted the most wounded man to his shoulders and found that he could easily carry the man’s weight at a steady jog.
***
Jonr and his surviving squad didn’t have to go far before they met Supercity Army’s rear-guard. Jonr kept the enemy squads at the limit of their visible range. One soldier caught Ishmael’s eye; surrounded by four other grunts wherever he went:
“Look at him Jonr. I think he is some kind of commander, perhaps a general. See how those Bots around him always move to defend him?”
“Yes. You’re right!”
“Wait! Look.” A Bot came running back to the defended Bot from the front ranks. Ishmael zoomed in to the limit of his vision. “That one that just arrived; I think he has a blue flash; a Colonel. He’s spotted us. He is talking with the other one. Look, now he’s running forward and two squads are peeling off into side tunnels.”
“Trouble!”
“Yes, but if one of us can get a good shot at that one; the general … .”