No one in New Baghdad could take him, and he knew it. The great threat of air attacks and worse, space lasers, ha, they couldn’t touch him down here on the ninth city level. Oh no. If everything worked out right, it was city duty from here on in.
He shot off fifty tracers to punctuate his thought.
Tremble, worms. Hear me roar and flee like the vermin you are.
His radar and visuals had picked up movement and weaponry. He knew that several bio-beasts with strange mechanical readings prowled his precinct. What the Mark 2042 didn’t know was that he’d fallen prey to one of man’s oldest vices, arrogance.
Suddenly, three of the strange bio-beasts rolled onto the street, heavy rocket launchers aimed at him. Whooshes and rocket ignition sped the missiles on their way.
How pathetic, a rookie’s assault.
The Mark 2042 chugged shrapnel from a single beehive. He meant it as a shrug. The missiles blew apart. Then he revved the mighty Zeitzler 5000 and let his treads rip, tearing chunks of pavement as he gave chase.
But these three were different then other bio-beasts. Their legs pumped fast, and they moved. Each time he shot at them, they zipped around another corner.
Well, watch this.
He swiveled his 100-ton bulk and charged into a building. Masonry exploded. He plowed, his treads churning over desks, chairs and waiting sofas. Glass shattered and walls disappeared. Bricks rained on him.
I am unstoppable.
He burst through the rear wall and onto the next street.
The three bio-beasts had nowhere to hide. He had them dead in his sights. Usually bio-beasts gaped in horror right about now, or they started crying. He got a kick out of that. But these three were different. It’s why he’d gone through the building. They dropped to their bellies and aimed their rocket launchers.
Now that’s a sweet try, rookies. But I’m the big boy.
A thousand antipersonnel shells disintegrated them.
Hey, where’d you go?
As a joke, pretending he was looking for them, he clanked atop their gory shreds and then wheeled, smearing them into the pavement.
Then his sensors pinged with a new attack.
Twenty of them popped up from twenty different locations, firing lasers and rocket launchers. He shrugged off their feeble efforts, but it was nice to see they were trying. Then his probability indicator flashed a warning.
Why were they all ready for him here? Why was this particular spot seemingly point-zero?
Are you rookies trying to trap me?
Twenty of these tougher, weird-reading bio-beasts dropped from the ceiling. They dropped from the sunlamps way up there. Oh, this was going to be rich. He knew bio-beasts, what their water-sack bodies could take and what they couldn’t. From that high up…
I have to get this on video.
They would go splat, gushing organs and blood everywhere.
The probability indicator flashed another warning.
Pipe down and let me have some fun, will you?
Radar and visuals showed that the twenty falling bio-beasts lacked weapons or breaching bombs.
It’s raining men.
Slam, slam, slam, they dropped atop him. But they didn’t go splat.
Warning!—that from the probability indicator.
Servos in the bio-beasts whined. The Mark 2042 could hear them. A few of them had broken limbs or hands, but now they started crawling over him.
Die!
All forty beehives exploded shrapnel, lifting and killing fifteen of them.
Now let’s try the new grid, shall we.
An electrical grid had been installed onto him twelve days ago. He charged it with power. ZAP!
Two of them actually screamed.
It was a dance of death.
But one of them still crawled.
A pesky rookie, aren’t you?
A camera showed him the bio-beast’s screwed up face. That was beautiful. This one was really trying, fighting through the pain and everything.
Warning!
He understood. The beast crawled for the crevice where the red suits had put the new server.
ZAP!
The bio-beast bellowed, but he kept crawling. And then he dropped into that crevice.
“DON’T TOUCH THAT!” The Mark 2042 cranked his speakers to full volume.
The bio-beast didn’t listen.
And suddenly the Mark 2042 felt disoriented, dizzy, and not so certain about everything.
“Cybertank 2042,” said someone via comlink.
“Yes?”
“Prepare for transmission.”
“I… 2042 ready,” said the Mark 2042.
20.
Colonel Manteuffel typed in the CT code and pressed transmit. Then he studied the return reading before looking up at General Hawthorne.
“He’s ours.”
“Yes, after twenty-three good men died,” Hawthorne said.
“We can use the Mark 2042 to approach the other cybertanks.”
“But we could still lose more men,” said Hawthorne. “I wasn’t counting on those electrical surges.”
“PHC must have put that in,” said Manteuffel. “It’s clever. You must give them that.”
Hawthorne stared at the small Colonel. Finally, he forced a smile as he patted the man’s shoulder. “Well done, Manteuffel. Now let’s convert the other cybertanks.”
21.
The old woman in the wheelchair heard gunfire.
She peered over the balcony railing and at the squat buildings below. Fruitless apple trees lined the empty streets. Well, empty of people, at least. Dropped placards and crumpled papers lay everywhere, but that no longer concerned her. She counted five cybertanks. Like giant watchdogs, they surrounded her building. An hour ago, she had considered them protection from the protesting mobs that had been chased away by PHC shock squads. After listening to General Hawthorne, she wondered if the cybertanks were the final move in an intricate PHC plot to overthrow the government.
She was one hundred and sixty-two, kept alive by longevity treatments and her special chair. She sat in a bulky, gleaming-white unit. A withered old crone, said her detractors. The medical unit in back of the wheelchair gurgled. Tubes from it snaked into her. Fluids surged through the tubes. Her unnaturally smooth face seemed brittle, although it was dotted by several stubborn liver spots that none of the skin specialists had been able to remove. She wore a white turban to cover her baldness, while a red plaid blanket hid her useless legs. A jutting, narrow nose and bright eyes, dangerously vibrant, belied any idea that she was senile.
Madam Director Blanche-Aster wasn’t native to New Baghdad, the famed city of seventy-seven levels. She cocked her head. There it was again. Gunfire! According to Chief Yezhov of Political Harmony Corps, the rioting had been spontaneous and sudden, catching everyone by surprise. PHC most of all.
Dropping her trembling hand onto the chair’s controls, she wheeled around, off the balcony and into her office. It was minimalist, with a few white cubes randomly placed as objects d’art and her chrome desk that was keyed to her voice.
General James Hawthorne sat on one of the cubes. He was flanked by someone he called Captain Mune. She shivered. She didn’t like the bionic men. It was unnatural doing that to a person. The General against all the rules of someone in her presence wore a holster and sidearm. His face that her profilers had called granite gave little away. But she was practiced in body kinetics and read the tension in him.
“It’s most incredible,” she said. “Air Marshal Ulrich. How were they able to turn him?”