Wien had fallen to Artemis.
Twenty-four hours later and Wien City reverberated to the steady stamping of victory. Artemisian robots marching to take key positions stamped to the rhythm; Artemisian robots guarding forges and metal stores struck time with their feet; Artemisian robots plundering the defeated kept up the shaking beat.
The cracks in the broken streets of Wien City were shaken wider, black lightning zigzagging up the white marble towers until yet another wall collapsed in a white rockslide. Bouncing rubble tumbled over the robot bodies strewn through the streets. There were too many to completely remove, even for the plundering victors and the desperately scavenging defeated searching for upgrades or replacement body parts.
So many dead bodies. Dirty smoke rising into the sky; bent, scorched metal; twisted wire spilling from skulls, twisted wire wound amongst the broken machinery of war, like the trap webs of metal spiders from childhood tales. And everything shaking and rattling to the relentless stamping of the victors. Stamp, stamp, stamp; stamp, stamp, stamp.
Here another cracked marble tower shook and slipped and fell in an accelerating avalanche of rubble that danced and slid through the wrecked streets. Broken stones bounced and rolled to a halt, and then began to bounce and shake again to the relentless stamping. Stamp, stamp, stamp; stamp, stamp, stamp.
Here a Wiener worker family, sheltering in the remains of their forge, heard the approach of Artemisian troops, heard the door slam open, saw the sleek, powerful bodies of their victors as they entered the room, their eyes glowing green in the half-light, their entry accompanied by that never-ending percussion: Stamp, stamp, stamp; stamp, stamp, stamp.
Here in an aristocrat’s hall, the finely engineered and oh-so-delicate bodies of a noble family were being pulled apart by the rough hands of the invaders, spring by spring, plate by plate, electromuscle by electromuscle. And all the while the noblemen thought on the folly of selling coal to the Artemisians. It had been such easy money at the time, but how it had come back to haunt them all.
White dust rose into the smoke-choked evening, the sun barely seen, merely a pale yellow shape across the silver sea. To the accompaniment of endless stamping, it was setting for the last time on Wien.
All that within twenty-four hours. And now the morning sun had risen on this newest corner of the Artemisian Empire.
The robot sat on the cracked rim of the marble fountain that occupied the middle of the square, his matt-black Storm Trooper body seemingly untouched by the bright sun up in the blue sky. He was picking apart the body of a dead Wiener commando with practised efficiency, running a finger down the seams, popping the rivets apart to expose the mechanism underneath. His assault rifle lay propped on the rim of the fountain beside him, matt-black too, even the cruel bayonet at its tip smoke-blackened after last night’s action.
The Storm Trooper had not noticed Eleanor yet; it was too interested in examining the composition of the body it was taking apart. Eleanor knew what it would be thinking: the Storm Trooper’s mind would have been woven by its mother to be a Storm Trooper, and so it would think like a Storm Trooper thought, and it would build its body like a Storm Trooper built a body. The design of the body it held in its hands would seem wrong: more crafted than built. The Wiener body would seem too weak and too fragile. No wonder the Storm Trooper found it so fascinating. No wonder it hadn’t noticed Eleanor’s approach.
Finally, it heard her, heard the measured tread of Eleanor and the rest of the troop as they moved into the square. Without pause, sleekly, silently, it took its rifle and rolled into a crouch position, sighted along the length of the barrel.
‘There’s a Storm Trooper training its gun on us,’ said Eleanor.
‘Ignore it.’
Eleanor did so. She walked on, one of nineteen infantryrobots, dressed in grey-painted armour, their bodies identically built and maintained. They had been walking through the broken city all morning, looking for a place to rest and repair themselves. The sun had nearly reached midday in a blue sky still tainted by streamers of rising black smoke. That same sunlight failed to find a purchase on the Storm Trooper’s matt body. Eleanor glanced back towards it and saw, to her surprise, that it had vanished.
‘It’s gone!’ she said, scanning the square for movement. There was a scraping sound, and rattle of bricks and suddenly it was there beside her, rising up behind another of the grey-painted infantry, an awl pressing up against the soldier’s chin.
‘Gotcha,’ he said, peripheral vision tracking the grey bodies that were still turning in his direction. He was already releasing the soldier, spinning around, coming to stand in the middle of the group. ‘My name is Arban. Who’s in charge here?’ he asked.
The infantry looked from one to the other.
Eleanor spoke up. ‘Our sergeant was caught by a grappling hook five days ago and dragged down into the sea.’
‘Dragged into the sea, sir,’ corrected Arban.
Carmel stepped forward, just another grey infantry-robot, identical in every way to Eleanor.
‘There’s no calling of “sir” in Artemis,’ she said calmly. ‘Why should there be when we are all nothing but twisted metal working to a common purpose?’
Arban exploded into flashing movement, pushing her arms to one side, reaching around behind her neck to snatch out the interface coil there. The light in Carmel’s eyes went out, and her metal body slumped to the ground. Arban held up the silver coil that was the link between the twisted wire of the brain and the rest of the body. Slowly, he crushed it between his fingers.
‘Answering back a superior? I don’t like this sort of thing, you know,’ he said, conversationally. ‘There are minds and there are minds. Soldiers who are more loyal to themselves than to the state. Only fighting when they can see the advantage to themselves…’ He dropped the broken coil to the stone flags and ground it beneath his foot. ‘… and not for the greater good of Artemis.’ His electromuscles were powering up with an audible hum. ‘Now, some people say you should blame the parents. Blame the mothers. They twist a mind that follows Nyro’s pattern for most of the way, making a child loyal to the Artemisian state, but then they leave that last little inch at the end, that little voice telling the child that when things get really tough, when things aren’t going well, they should just cut and run. Their mothers make them put their own survival first. Can you blame the child if its mother made it that way? They ask. Maybe they have a point.’ He looked thoughtful for a moment. ‘But I don’t think so.’
The remainder of the grey infantry looked on warily as Arban tapped the side of his head with one metal hand. ‘I wasn’t made that way,’ he explained. ‘My mother twisted my mind to think first and last of the greater good of Artemis. That’s why I keep my body strong and in tune. That is why I constantly seek to improve it.’
The power in Arban’s electromuscles was building to a peak. It must hurt, thought Eleanor. Arban held that pain for just a moment longer, revelling in it, and then he released it in one great explosion of movement, springing upwards and backwards to land by the soldier behind him, who had been on the point of raising his gun. Arban gripped the top of the soldier’s body armour and tore at it, electromuscles in his arm discharging painfully as he ripped the metal free of the man’s body. The mechanism beneath was exposed to the sunlight, pitiful and embarrassing.
‘Look at him!’ called Arban. ‘Look at yourselves. Identical bodies, identical parts, all so that you can rebuild yourselves from your comrades. Submerging yourself in each other for safety. You act like Nicolas the Coward.’ He pushed a finger into the mechanism in the chest of the man he now held, stopping a wheel that turned there. A whining noise emerged from the man’s mouth. The other soldiers shifted, distressed by their comrade’s pain.