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.
Olam took hold of the bomb, placed one end on the ground and wedged it with his foot as Doe Capaldi and the others levered it up.
‘That’s the angle,’ decided Doe Capaldi, and they slid the heavy black shape into the crack in the rocks.
‘Easy, easy. Okay, it’s in! Now let’s get out of here.’
There was a crack, and Blackmore fell to the ground, a neat hole drilled in his head.
A robot seized her rifle from where it lay on the trolley, turned and shot at the enemy robot that had landed nearby, the silver foil of its paraglider slowly settling to the ground. The rest of the section grabbed their guns, turning them on the other robots that now fluttered to the ground all around them.
‘Leave them!’ ordered Doe Capaldi. ‘Only three minutes. Run!’
They turned and ran, rain splashing, silver foil folding down around them, the crack of rifle fire behind them, the sound of ticking echoing in their heads.
A shadow swooped over Olam’s head and he looked up to see one of the paragliders. A robot gazed down at him. Its body was small, it gripped the wires of the paraglider with short arms and legs. Olam watched as it pulled at a cord and sent the craft spinning around and he realized, with a thrill of horror, that it was coming straight for him. The rest of his squad was running on, but he was frozen, transfixed by the sight of the strange robot as it settled on the ground before him. Olam raised his rifle. There was a crack and the robot fell down, dead. Olam hadn’t fired.
‘Run!’ yelled Doe Capaldi, lowering his rifle.
Olam ran. There was a flash and he was falling, his leg crackling and shorting in agony. He twisted as he fell, firing one, two, three shots into the air at random.
Doe Capaldi bent over him.
‘Save yourself,’ snarled Olam.
Doe Capaldi was scanning the area.
‘Get away,’ shouted Olam. ‘You owe me nothing!’
Still Doe Capaldi remained silent. He pushed Olam down to the ground, rolled him onto his front. Rainwater ran into Olam’s eyes, blurring his vision. Doe Capaldi was kneeling on his back, grappling at his neck.
‘Is a bullet too quick for me?’ Olam asked, with some satisfaction. ‘You’d rather crush my coil?’ Still Doe Capaldi said nothing. He felt the sensation switch off in his arms and legs. Doe Capaldi was unhooking his head.
Then his vision was bouncing, jumping. He saw the ground, the clouds, the ground again. He could hear Doe Capaldi counting off the seconds.
‘… forty-three, forty-two, forty-one…’
Was he actually trying to save him?
‘… thirty-eight, thirty-seven…’
On and on they ran. Gunshots ricocheted off rocks. Why didn’t they hit Doe Capaldi? Little weak bodies, couldn’t they aim straight?
‘… sixteen, fifteen…’
They weren’t clear. Surely they weren’t clear? The rocks would be shaken loose by the explosion. They would fall and crush them, bury them alive. And who from Artemis would come to search for them?
Then they were diving, diving for cover…
‘Close your eyes!’ screamed Doe Capaldi.
Olam did so. He only just remembered to turn off his ears in time, too.
Spoole
Gearheart dragged herself across the floor, her dented metal shell scraping on the sandstone.
‘Don’t stare at me,’ she shouted, silver eyes flashing.
Spoole ignored her request. He squatted, the better to see the way she swung her left arm. The useless hand had been replaced by a hooked shape that she dug into the grooves of the floor to pull herself forward. The delicate panelling that covered her body was dented and scratched, peeling back at the seams, but she refused to let them replace it with something more suitable and hard-wearing. There was a dent near the top of her head, but she refused to let anyone hammer it out, claiming, probably correctly, that no one would be able to do the job as well as she herself could.
As good a job as she herself could once have done, Spoole corrected himself.
She had reached the foot of her chair. ‘Go on, then, help me up!’
One of the two sentry robots that now accompanied her every movement made to lift her, but Spoole waved him back.
‘I’ll do it,’ he said, and he took hold of Gearheart and gently placed her in the chair. She weighed so little: a combination of rare alloys and her once-superb engineering skills.
‘Speak to me, Spoole. I’m bored.’
‘What do you want to talk about?’
‘Tell me about Kavan. Where is he now? Have the mountains defeated him?’
‘No, Gearheart. He blasted a passage straight through the mountains with atomic bombs. He is exploring the north now.’
‘You gave him bombs? Foolish, Spoole, you should have let him break himself on the mountains. The more you indulge him, the more powerful he becomes.’
‘Gearheart, I cannot go against Nyro’s will. Kavan and I both serve Artemis. At the end of the day, we are each nothing but metal.’
‘We’re nothing but twisted metal, Kavan,’ she said bitterly. ‘I truly understand that now.’