Enemy At The Gates; Monster In The Streets

Seconds after the explosion, during the first notes of the general alarm now wailing across the outpost, advising the citizens to seek shelter, Buddy threw on his poncho and strung his wide hat across his back, atomizer slung at his hip, and Hound was up and ready, tense from clawed feet to cloudy silicone ears, before the others even had time to react.

Similarly, around the entire outpost, the walls, now powered down, were manned with military precision and haste matched only by the swarm of enemy forces now charging from the frigid desert. At their head, the pale mass of limbs and weapons called Unit Five-One, galloped across the dunes in a bestial crouch.

Once everyone was ready, Buddy, his vision in sharp monochrome, scanned the room, his eyes locking to Lucia’s. “Been in combat before?” he asked.

Lucia shook her head.

“Is your comms operational?”              

She nodded.

Even though everything was black and white, Buddy could see she was as pale as a ghost; far more than usual. “That means the shields’re down. They’ll be coming in hot then. Take the Grower and Mr. Jaques to whatever shelter you can find, alright? Me and Hound-o will help with rounding up the townsfolk.”

Lucia nodded again.

Buddy looked to Hound. “Lets go herd some sheep.”

---

Unit Five-One galloped with a beat matching its black heart. With each passing stride the grey walls of the outpost grew, until it could see heads and rifles pop up and pepper the rampart edge. Soon, beams of pale blue shot across the night, and yellow flashes like the petals of long lost flowers began blinking in a rapid rhythm along the line. None of them hit.

The gate was closed. Unit Five-one screamed. Meridia, the bitch, hadn’t done her job properly.

“Longshots/snipers, target anti-armor on the walls. Assault squads forego/forget deploying foldouts. Support the heavy. Suppressing fire on rampart edge,” Unit Five-One listed on the command frequency. Each soldier in the small battalion heard its horrifying overlapping voice.

The tank commander, rolling in behind the charging foot soldiers in his boxy machine of death, was the only one with the nerve to respond to the monster. “Heavy here, I take it we’re blowing that door down?”

“Affirmative/correct!”

“And you, um… Unit Five-One, what will you do?”

Not once during issuing commands had the kill-bot slowed. It was a scant hundred meters from the tall walls, its combat subroutines winding up until they were in overdrive, its motive stimulants pumping chemicals to its synthetic muscle fibers. It was already painfully difficult to focus on the useless minutiae of battlefield tactics. With a snarl of effort, before its consciousness hazed over by the coming blood frenzy, Unit Five-One replied with a single word: “Kill.”

In the time it took the men and women atop the rampart to blink, the kill-bot’s powerful muscles tensed, its knees and secondary arms bent, then shot straight. It was flying, careening toward the cold gray concrete. It slammed against the wall, drills and knife fingers embedding themselves with ease.

It scuttled up the wall like some prehistoric arachnid, gouging rugged furrows in its wake as thought the concrete was mere plaster. Panicked shouts directed weapons fire toward it, but it was too late. It was too fast.

As it crested the rampart, before its clawed feet even touched the walkway, its first two victims fell, their faces mangled craters of electronics and bone.

Then the real killing began.

Alive and full of joy, it relished in the beautiful art of death; red arcs of oil and blood painted the cold night air; the screams of the dying mingled with the buzz of energy weapons and the pop of ballistics, all in a discordant symphony that broke the oppressive silence. Each swing of its claws, each thrust of its drills, each a killing blow, were the strokes of an artist.

Soon the assassin was covered in gore, its translucent skin painted crimson, its eyes glowing with the incredible magnesium white that blinded any who’d be stupid enough to match its gaze.

It howled at the Broken Moon.

---

People were screaming, running, falling over each other. Buddy did his best the stand over them like some lamppost with arms, guiding them to the shelter. Hound was doing his part, running from hab to hab rounding up stragglers and showing them the way, occasionally nipping at heels if words weren’t heeded.

How the hell had he gotten himself in such a mess, Buddy thought. Not so long ago, he’d been wandering around, doing odd jobs, rounding up scum for bounties, or finding some file or scrap of tech from some vault. Now he was playing the hero, even though every fiber of his mostly synthetic form told him to quit the task and bugger off.

Just then, a little girl, standing in the middle of the bustling, panicking crowd, tripped. She cried, wailed for her mother, and reached out a tiny hand already replaced by a bionic. She wasn’t even spared a glance by the passersby.

Buddy pushed himself through the onrushing crowd flowing into and down to the underground shelter, bent down, and raised the little thing off the dust.

“Hey there little miss. Where’s your mama?” he asked.

She shook her head. Plump cheeks blushed a bright red, and snot and tears rolled down her face. Her hair was wispy, already dying and flaking off due to the harsh environment she’d been sired in.

“Hold on a sec,” he said bringing a finger to his ear, “Lucia, you there? Are Jean and Jaques safe?”

“Yes, I’m down in the shelter with them. God, the people are terrified,” the squire replied over the line, her voice distorted by the static.

“The crowd’s thinning out, and Hound’s here,” Buddy said as the dog trotted up with a couple stragglers, “but I got a kid here without a mom, can you send someone to come and get her?”

“I’ll take the bairn,” a voice cut through before Lucia could respond.

Rousseau, gleaming under the pale moonlight, stood with arms outstretched at the shelter’s door. “Come on now, we’ve no’ the entire night,” she said beckoning hurriedly with both wrists.

Buddy lurched to her and handed over the child. Rousseau smoothed her hair as she instantly clung to the bot’s minty robe.

“Seal the doors,” Buddy said and drew the atomizer, “though I don’t know how much that’ll help if the Conclave succeed.”

“Well, you better no’ fail then, eh?” Rousseau said, “God be with ye, Mr. Hunter.”

With that she disappeared down the steps, and the thick blast door, designed to withstand an atomic, groaned shut on seams older than the most ancient venerable AI.

Buddy adjusted his hat to better sit on his back, the triangular solar panels of which glinted sickly under the light cast from the Broken Moon, then began a slow walk toward the town square near the gates. Hound pattered up beside him and matched pace.

“Are we going up to the walls? I wouldn’t be much use if we did.”

“Negative, Hound-o, we’re going to wait right here in case them doors come a crashing down.”

“You could aid the soldiers on the firing line,” Hound offered.

Buddy let out a soft sigh through his armpit vents. “There ain’t much good one more gun can do. Figured if they come through the gates, there’s a bottleneck, and good ol’ atomizer here ‘ll do more damage. Just as soon as I figure out which way to rotate the barrel to get that super shot back.”

He tried twisting and turning the spiraling barrel, when that failed, he slapped the stock, and shook the thing for good measure, but the porcelain-esque pistol with its lacquered grip refused to budge. Buddy reckoned it was pouting.

“Which way did Tom turn it?” asked Hound.

“Clockwise, I think, but I’m beat. Can’t figure this shit out. I can tell she’s eager but I ain’t going to use her if she won’t cooperate.”

“She?” Hound asked, this time his neon eyes fixed on the handgun.

“Turn of phrase,” Buddy lied, “like how they call ships her.”

Once they crested a corner and were at the square, Hound’s long line of synth fur stood on edge, and his silicone ears perked. “Something is climbing up the wall. I can hear the soldiers, they’re terrified.”

“The hell could be climbing up the…”

“Buddy!” Hound’s ears snapped down to hug his head, and his metal fangs glinted silver when he bared them in a black-gummed snarl, “It’s the assassin!”

As soon as the word left Hound’s throat speakers, as if it knew it was being spoken of, a long metallic screech they’d last heard in Jean’s laboratory pierced through the night. Hunter and dog turned their sights to where the horrid scream had emanated from. Zooming in, they saw the multi-limbed killer standing atop the wall bathed in gore and surrounded by corpses, unscathed and far from the atomizing wreck it had been.

“Oh, fucking hell! Not that thing again!”

“Buddy, we can’t let it stay on the wall, the soldiery have no countermeasures against that thing,” Hound said.

“The hell are you saying?”

“We need to distract it.”

“Oh, God! Why the hell would I ever say yes to that? That thing has one more arm than last time and I think I’m all but limp-dicked here,” Buddy said, waving around the ancient weapon of mass destruction as if it were said limp appendage.

“I don’t think we have any options,” Hound growled, taking a few steps back, claws protracting from clubbed paws.

“The hell you mean?”

“It saw us.”

A scream, signature in its horrible grinding and squealing pitch, pierced through the staccato cacophony of gunfire. Buddy turned his eyes back to where the thing had been, only to see that section of the wall vacant. Then his eyes locked on the mass of glinting killing instruments and corded synthetic muscle arcing toward them.

“Oh, fuck.”

Unit Five-One landed ten meters from them with a massive thud. The atomizer’s barrel was already trained at the central mass of the thing, and Hound’s vocal actuators had switched settings so that the next sound from his speakers would be the neuron scrambling bark. The kill-bot rose, spreading its massive upper limbs, displaying all its killing accoutrements. Its black metal teeth glittered silver, and its magnesium eyes burned with a hatred that was so pure it was mesmerizing.

“Greetings/salutations, Hunter Limbo, Canine Hound,” the thing hissed in its demoniac overlapping, tortured voice.

Buddy raised an eyebrow. “Well, salutations to you as well, Mr. Five-One. Thought I’d seen the last of you when good ‘ol atomizer here caved you in.”

The monster growled. “My master/father repaired me. He seeks your weapon, in addition to the Grower. I have come to retrieve/collect.”

“May I say you’re more articulate than when last we spoke. Not all synth-fibers and metal anymore, I see,” Buddy said, rapidly flicking the atomizer’s activation switch with his thumb without effect. “I say, you’re a little late, though. The good Grower has taken the ship over to Roma Prima and I don’t think you have time to catch up.”

Buddy was banking on two things: one, that honest Hound wouldn’t reveal his bluff, and two, that the damn atomizer would quit sulking and do its job.

Unit Five-One looked at the gun and cocked its head, “I see/perceive that you are having issues with your weapon. Neptunes have a temperament; they need to be fed.”

“Thank you kindly for noticing. Am I to understand that we’re to be gentlemanly about our little affair here and you’ll let me figure this out before we start killing each other?” Buddy asked.

Hound was growling.

The translucent, blood soaked skin around Unit Five-One’s lipless mouth stretched tighter, revealing the wide set of sharpened teeth within the maw. It was the most terrifying smile both Buddy and Hound had ever seen in their lives. A whisper, almost gentle if it had not been spoken by the hulking killing machine, passed through those black teeth. “No,” it hissed.

Buddy gave the atomizer one more whack for good measure, shrugged, smiled and said, “well, figures.” Then he turned and ran.

---

Once, centuries before the cataclysm of centuries ago, the shelter beneath Decimum Iuxta Mari had been a temple carved out from a cliff by the water’s edge, used by some sect of a religion now lost to the dusty annals of an ill kept history. After the bombs that bored holes into the atmosphere and killed Earth fell, it had been forgotten. Until, of course, it had been rediscovered, repurposed and reinforced into what it was today.

It was nothing more than a cavernous, long room with a slightly curved ceiling. Each side of the shelter had eight pillars, equidistantly placed and leading to the back entrance. They had once been adorned with paintings but now were cradled by rusted iron and strangled by electrical wiring. The ceiling had likewise been reinforced with long steel beams that stretched from side to side. In the low glow of torchlight, one could still see patches of sky blue peek from places the paint hadn’t worn off.

Jaques sat by the circular back entrance that had once been a window to the sea but now served its purpose as an emergency evacuation route to the shores of the Mediterranean should the See soldiery fail in their duty. Lucia was nearby talking to the doctor, Rousseau, and Jean was a few meters away nibbling on another protein block, making faces each time he had to gulp a bite down.

Jaques looked at the chipped paint on the ceiling and wondered if the sky truly had been that color once. He sighed. This was all his fault. If he’d just died out in the desert he would have never brought the Wraith to the outpost, he would’ve never led the Conclave here. Two times now he had been the reason for the distress of others. Two times now he’d been the reason that people died.

“Want some?” Jean asked.

Jaques turned his mechanical eye to the Grower. He was offering the dark brick with a smile. He seemed unbothered by all that was happening.

Jaques shook his head. “I can’t fathom how you’re so nonchalant about this situation. Live or die, it’s as if you don’t care one way or the other.”

Jean pocketed the brick of what constituted food in a mostly mechanized society. “Look, Jaques, I do care. To be honest I’m terrified. Just as terrified as when I was hiding in my laboratory. I may not show it, but I’m soiling my robes. Figuratively, of course.” He smiled, smoothed his ornate green robe and went on, “thing is, my progenitor hated the war cast, and detested our art being used to augment our bodies into weapons. I think that was one of his biggest flaws, seeing as he was woefully unprepared for what the Conclave sent after him. Virtuous ideals are good and all, but on this Earth they’re useless if you happen upon someone who doesn’t subscribe to them and happens to have a gun.”

Jaques rubbed his hoary eye. “What’re you saying?”

Jean shrugged. “I’m saying, you and me, we’re not made for fighting. In my case quite literally. So, it really isn’t up to us whether we live or die. It’s up to the guys with the guns, and it has been like that since the bombs fell all that time ago. Hell, maybe even before that. And I don’t think any amount of idealism or civilization can change that.”

Jaques ground his teeth. “Are you saying we have no choice?”

Jean leaned his head on the cool sandstone wall. He too was looking up at the faded patches of paint on the ceiling. “Most of you are filled with circuits and machines. The behavior that isn’t programmed into them is instilled into your wetware by the surroundings you happened to be born in. It applies to me as well. My progenitor was quite diligent in developing me to be as harmless as possible. I’m saying that while I can lift upwards of a thousand kilograms, I’m unable to slap you even if I wanted to. I’m saying we are made to be what we are, nothing more.”

Jaques turned away to hide the tear that fell from his useless biological eye. “If that’s so, then it seems I was made to fail…”

Jean didn’t comment, and the silence stung. After a while he said, “but the people up there, they’re the ones made for the fighting. And I trust that even now Mr. Limbo and Hound are doing all they can to see that we’re safe.”

---

The habitation buildings, or habs as they were called, were tight-knit, low, and standard. Each little box was, at least during construction, fabricated to have an identical layout within the four by four by four meter cube. Of course, as humans do, despite being more machine than flesh, each soulless box became a home by the little artefacts and memories, scuffs and dents, and discarded clothes the tenants left behind. Though cramped, they were safe, they were home.

Now they were empty, for a monster roamed the streets. Now, the wall of one of these habs, belonging to a poor old woman, a menial tasked with the upkeep of the harvester boats, was completely obliterated as the lanky-limbed bounty hunter was violently thrown through it. The dog too followed shortly after, having been flung by one of his tails. He landed on Buddy, the latter groaning under the blow, still reeling from being tossed like a ragdoll through concrete and corroded mesh nets. Luckily, they’d landed by the door.

“Get up, Buddy,” Hound said, coughed, then began barking at the rent their entrance had made, through which the monstrous Unit Five-One had shoved its leering head, widening the impromptu window with its weapon hands.

It started, and reeled back, clasping its head and howling as its internal workings scrambled at the sonic attack.

Buddy grabbed the corner of some counter and pulled himself up. His entire arm shook as though palsied, and he cursed, knowing that he’d suffered major nerve damage to his arm, or worse, his spine. No using his sword arm for some time then.

“Come on you bitch, now’s the time if ever for you to just work,” he said aiming the atomizer dead at the assassin.

No ding. No response from the stud. But, through the sounds of gunfire, shouting, barking, and screaming from the assassin, Buddy heard a whisper.

He brought a wobbly arm to his ear, listening to his radio receiver. The line was open. No one was speaking. Then he heard it again, though this time, the atomizer vibrated.

Hound snapped his head back. “Are we leaving? I can’t keep this up for long!” as soon as he got the words out he continued baying. Each bark rattled the tight interior of the hab, and the concrete around the rent crumbled bit by bit as the intolerable decibels literally shook pieces loose.

“You’re talking to me… ain’t you?” Buddy whispered.

The atomizer vibrated again, and a sense of lifted exasperation oozed from it.

“Buddy!” Hound shouted.

“Yeah,” the bounty hunter said and opened the door. “Gimme a head start, I’ll get his focus so you can scram, okay. I think this time the lady is going to cooperate.”

Buddy ducked below the squat door frame; within a few lurching strides he was jogging. He held the atomizer, scrutinizing its spiraling grooves and overall cylindrical shape. The day he’d stolen it from the conclave was the same day he’d killed something with it. It was also the first and last time he’d looked at what it did. The horrifying way this thing killed its victims was such that, though he kept it to himself, he never wanted to subject anyone to it, lest necessary.

And now, as he tried scanning the weapon for any inherent broadcast signal it might be emitting, he remember all the times he’d attributed feelings to the weapon. He’d heard somewhere, and confirmed it with his own experiences, that some guns have rudimentary AI that latch to their wielders to maximize optimal usage, but nothing more than that. He’d never heard of a talking gun.

Though, within the past month, he’d met a talking dog and a Grower, even a Chronologist, so mayhap it wasn’t completely out of the question to think that the atomizer, being a Neptune, might be more sentient than he’d like.

“Ok, look here, I rescued you from them Conclave way back when, and ever since you’ve stuck by me. Now I don’t know what I’ve done to upset you, but whatever it was, I’m sorry, alright. Just please work.”

The atomizer vibrated again, though this time it was slow, almost sheepish.

“Wait, didn’t do nothing wrong? Are you…” Buddy stopped, spun on his hemispherical foot, then looked at the flailing assassin, “are you saying you’re pissy cause that thing ain’t dead!?”

The atomizer was still for a long second, then gave a quick buzz, half irritated, half moody.

Buddy worked his jaw, his lips were jumping between incredulous smile and indignant scowl, then he coughed up a laugh. He drowned the myriad questions that surfaced in his mind that instant and instead decided on placating the gun and interviewing it later should he survive.

“Well, I never. I take it nothing’s ever got up after you kissed ‘em good. I get it. It’s tough on your pride. Him surviving has nothing to do with you or me, though. I bet someone who knows how you work was quick to the scene. But listen here, if you stop sulking, and just tell me how you work, we can end that bastard tonight. I just need you to trust me. I trust you.”

Hound was still barking, the assassin was still thrashing, but it seemed that it was slowly closing in on the lonesome dog, fighting against the scrambling sonic attack.

For a long moment the atomizer was inert, then, its grooved porcelain surface vibrated, and Buddy felt a familiar heat emanate from the lacquered grip. Then a thought, not his own, entered his mind. It showed him what to do.

Buddy grabbed the twisting cylindrical barrel, as Tom had done back in the no name town, and rotated it. This time it let him. As the thought had showed, he turned it twice counterclockwise. He somehow knew this wasn’t the same setting he’d used since finding the atomizer, the horrible super shot, this was something different.

The gun vibrated, eager, and an indistinct whisper floated through Buddy’s mind. Now it was ready to kill again, its confidence partially restored.

Buddy smiled his noble metal smile and raised the atomizer. His damaged arm hung limp by his side.

“Hey bastard!” he shouted across the empty dirt road.

The assassins thrashing calmed, but didn’t stop, though its attention was now on him.

“This time stay down,” Buddy said, and pressed the firing stud

A peal of thunder echoed through the deserted outpost as a line of white energy instantly appeared between the gun and the assassin, connecting the empty air between the two. All glass windows beside the path shattered and blew inward. The beam hit Unit Five-One’s upper left shoulder, cutting through the corded synth-muscle and titanium bones. Black blood vaporized before it had time to spurt out, and in the millisecond before the beam disappeared, it cauterized the wound. Dust billowed as displaced air sucked back in.

“Hound, get out of there, now!” Buddy called over the line.

The baying ceased, and soon the dog came sprinting across the dirt along the same path Buddy had taken, his neon eyes glowing in the gloom, ears folded back.

Unit Five-One screamed. It grabbed its useless arm hanging by mere strips of wiring and cables and tore it off. Then with a great heave it hurled it at Buddy. The arm cartwheeled in the air, killing implements glinting in the moonlight.

Buddy and Hound easily sidestepped the projectile, but once the former retook his firing stance and aimed, the assassin had disappeared.

“Shit. Can you sniff him out, Hound-o?”

“The assassin itself, no, but the scent of blood on it is powerful.”

“Good. We need to take care of it before…”

Buddy didn’t have time to finish his sentence, for, at that moment, outside the walls, the tank commander had found perfect positioning and let loose a massive energy shell. The impact blew the wide, six inch steel gates of the outpost clean off their mountings. The resulting shockwave knocked down the lanky bounty hunter and caused Hound to stumble.

A long dread moment of silence followed, then the triumphant roar of enemy warriors pierced through the night as they charged in through the breach.

 

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