Assault - pt. 2

The blasters from the golems’ chests activate, rapidly shooting out bursts of energy into the Liberation’s defenses, blowing the equipment into smithereens. The outside becomes a display of explosions and flashing colors, with splatters of blood indicating the tools aren’t the only things being hit. I stumble backward, scrambling to rejoin Shiloh and Jasper sitting on the floor.

“Should we try counting again—”

“No, Shiloh! That won’t do anything!” I yell over the intensifying sounds of destruction. Ace still stands at the window, stoical as he stares at the havoc unfolding. The only thing separating us from death are the walls of the Spearhead, that now seem just a bit too thin. “Hey, you! What the heck is going on?” I ask him. Panic seeps into my voice.

“Something the IPU has kept secret from all of you,” he says grimly. A rocket missile flies by and lands, resulting in an eruption of flames and making the ship shudder. “I’ll explain it this way. Imagine if the IPU was a body. What would the brain be?”

“ … The Queen?” Jasper suggests.

“Correct. If the brain is dead, then the body is considered dead as well. The founders saw potential in this fact, and replicated it— Duck down.”

We lower our heads, then a thump is heard. A golem has just jumped onto the Spearhead, peering into the window with those beady eyes. Never did I think I’d look at one and feel threatened. The scanner emerges from it, penetrating past the glass and into the room. Shiloh clutches both me and Jasper’s hands in her own. But just before the scanner reaches us, lasers are shot at the golem from two directions, right through its head and torso. It jitters, sparks spurting out the holes, then it falls out of sight.

“That was close! Don’t worry guys, it’s all good,” Shiloh says, shaking the most out of all of us.

Ace returns to his feet and gives a nod to the soldiers on the ground. “Close indeed. Now, where was I?” He shifts his position, focusing on a particular spot of the battlefield. “Any attack on the brain – the Queen – is an attack on the body – the IPU. The founders wanted to ensure the IPU would last forever, so they took precautions.”

“Get to the point already,” I say impatiently.

“They designed it so that if the Queen is ever shut off, severely damaged, or destroyed, be that by rebels, reformers, or anybody else who’d want to do away with the IPU… The bots would be released from the Admin System, and revert to their natural state.”

“You call those things their ‘natural state?’ All my life, I’ve never seen the golems like this.”

“What you’ve seen is a façade. The bots weren’t made to serve us – they were made to keep us in line, all in case we ever ‘dared’ to think for ourselves.”

No, that can’t be right. I refuse to believe it – why should I believe anything from the Liberation? Sure, we never knew the golems could become… This, but the IPU never said it couldn’t happen either. There’s probably a good explanation. Yeah, it was just so we wouldn’t get paranoid, that’s it.

I’m about to protest, but Jaspers speaks before me, right as another few missiles soar by. “That’d explain the bot errors, the code 15s… What if instead of malfunctions, it’s their true nature showing?”

My eyes snap to Jasper, but I can’t deny it – he has a point. Still, it doesn’t prove a thing.

“To be honest,” Shiloh says, “I’ve always thought it was pretty weird they just reset the bot when those things happen instead of actually fixing them.”

My hand curls up, fingernails scratching lightly on the hard floorboards. They wouldn’t deceive us like this. Such types of governments are from the old days, incompatible with our modern-day, righteous society. It can’t be true. Can’t be.

From the direction Ace is observing, a flare is shot straight across the window – then another, then a third. Ace straightens up and promptly walks over to the second ladder in the room, the one leading to the main turret.

“I’ll be back,” he says before disappearing into the tower.

Soon after, lasers rain down from above us, turning the sky into a rushing river of scattered light. We cover our ears to withstand the battering noise, though it does very little. Smoke plumes rising into the air might mean impaired golems. But the Spearhead still shakes every now and then, the agonizing cries and machinelike utterances of golems do not cease. The fight isn’t over, far from it.

“AGH!”

The lasers stop, and struggling is heard coming from the tower. Boot steps stomp alongside something a whole lot heavier. A bang against the Spearhead is followed by a brief quietness, one that’s broken by another onslaught of beams. This time, however, the shouts of the soldiers have increased tenfold.

“Ace, Ace!” A soldier yells as loud as he can from below the hatch. “Watch your aim, man! You’re shooting the Mangler at us!”

“He won’t be able to hear him,” Shiloh says, and in a moment, she’s already at the ladder.

“Are you crazy?” I place my hand over her wrist. “It’s dangerous out there, and why do you feel compelled to help the enemy?”

Shiloh frowns, but it’s soon replaced by resolve. “I’m starting to think we’ve been looking at this all wrong,” she moves her hand away from me. “Maybe Petra was right – maybe they are ‘antiheroes.’”

My jaw drops out of both shock and horror. There’s no way she actually just said that. Has she forgotten everything they’ve done, all the lives lost thanks to them? How can they possibly be redeemable? Yet there she goes, up the ladder to alert the Commander of scoundrels. I spin around to face Jasper, hoping to see even a slither of the same sentiment—

But there’s nothing.

“Whoa-ho! You’re not Ace!” Shiloh yelps, quickly shutting back the upper hatch.

“What do you mean?” I ask, stepping forward. “What’s up there?”

Aggressive clangs beat on the hatch, strong enough to make it quake. “Just a friendly golem,” she says nervously.

“I’m hit, I’ve been hit—!”

Again, a soldier from below. But we hear no more of her, and the same clangs are now happening on the lower latch as well. The crate Ace put over it looks like it’s about to break into pieces.

“They’re trying to get in! What do we do?” Jasper says.

Nowhere, there’s nowhere to go. I look around, searching for any escape route, but the hatches remain as the only means of getting out. Even though I’d loathe having to touch one, a laser from one of these guns could easily crash a window, but what good would that do? Out of the frying pan, into the fire?

The tower’s hatch breaks. Like a predator, the golem emerges – blades ready to cut, guns aimed to fire, the blaster set to target.

“Wait!” I raise up my hands, trying to look as non-intimidating as possible. They won’t attack us, not if they know we can’t do any harm. That’s how they’re made, how Katz assured us they’d behave. “We’re not threats, we’ve been captured! We’re on your side!”

“Enemies detected,” the golem declares. “Annihilate.”

What?

A roar produces from the blades as they spin faster. The guns and blaster charge up. My life flashes before my eyes. Shiloh and Jasper, despite being just as afraid as me, whip out their guns. Are they actually— Jasper misses again, but Shiloh screams as she bombards the thing with countless beams, not leaving a part unscathed. Even when the golem lays as a heap, she keeps going.

As soon as I come back to my senses, I snatch Shiloh by the arm and say, “Okay, calm down, you got it! Let’s hurry and climb up before the other one comes!”

One by one, we head up the ladder. When we reach the top, where the Mangler is stationed, is the same time the golem uses a laser to force its way through the hatch. But it can’t see us, not yet – not until it decides to climb the second ladder, if ever. Shiloh and Jasper have their guns pointed downward if it tries.

“Is this… Real?”

I stare out into the open battlefield. Bodies, both human and bot, are spread like lilies in a valley. They lay side by side, or even on top of each other. Disfigured corpses bring a familiar sight from the Capital. I go dizzy. I grip onto the railing. The explosions don’t help. Rocket after rocket, burst after burst, I might discover I’m epileptic by the colors of death’s rainbow.

And just to our right, an energy bomb from a golem, hits the Mangler’s tower.