A/N
So, two notes. Believe it or not, the original idea for this oneshot was the idea of walkers supplanting tanks (an eventuality that has yet to come true in the real world, and likely never will for various reasons), but when I started writing this, it went off in a completely different direction.
Second, this does take liberties with the canon. Nothing major, but if you're a stickler, chances are you'll notice. Not that this makes the oneshot immune from critique on this front, but just saying it upfront.
'Tanks for the Memories
"The New York Food Riots have entered their third week. In the latest round of clashes between police and protestors, eleven people were killed and over fifty injured. Secretary-general Tremblay later stated in a press conference that-"
"Oh, turn that shit off."
English was Emily Zhou's second language, but she was willing to bet that the UN secretary general did not say any such thing. Since the words had sounded like they'd come from the Girik Singh's mouth, and since his hand was retracting from the flatscreen she'd set up in the tank's cockpit, she was instead willing to bet that the Indian was the guilty party.
"I was watching that," she murmured half-heartedly.
"News is too depressing."
"The entire world's shrouded in a nanite swarm, and we've been at war for decades. How bad can the news be?"
"Worse," grunted the tank's gunner, before he leant back against his chair.
Biting her lip, Emily turned on the flatscreen again, but muted it. She'd missed what Tremblay had said, and now WWN was showing similar scenes from cities all over the globe.
Operation Dark Storm had been initiated weeks ago. The promise had been that the nanites would clear before year's end, that food stores were sufficient, that synthetic foodstuffs could make the difference, and that as tough as things might get in the short term, it would grant humanity victory over the machines, and in so doing, save humanity itself.
Problem was, people were still starving. The world was shrouded in perpetual twilight under a lightning-scarred sky. There was report of diebacks all over the world. Of collapses in the foodchain from land to sea. The average global temperature had been reduced by five degrees, and was still decreasing. The irony was that after centuries of anthropogenic heating, humanity might have just triggered a new ice-age.
"No price too high for victory," she whispered, as WWN showed images of the trench lines outside Zero-One.
"What was that?"
"I said there was no price too high for victory."
Girik grunted. "Freezing my arse off wasn't in the job description."
"I thought you were a conscript."
"…your point?"
Emily's point, such as it was, didn't get made, as she heard a clang outside the tank she and Girik were holed up in. Her heart clenched, her first thought that the machines had somehow infiltrated the UN's siege lines, and were about to tear her limb from limb.
Her second, more rational thought was that the machines couldn't do any such thing. Indeed, with Operation Dark Storm, the machines shouldn't have any power left. Some said that the war was already over, and that all the UN needed to do was march into Zero-One, scrap every bot they found, then dance on the corpses.
Yet they were still here, she reflected, as she climbed out of the tank and for a moment, took in the sights. Lines and lines of trenches, manned by hundreds of thousands of soldiers from every country in the world. Behind them were a line of M-200 main battle tanks (like the one she'd crawled out of), and further behind them, hundreds of artillery pieces. Everything from standard shell-lobbers to the X-03 "Thunderbolt" directed-energy cannons. Experimental artillery that fired directed streams of energy that would fry any piece of hardware in its path.
"Stop gawking Zhou!"
"Sorry sir," she whispered, before she climbed off the tank, followed by Girik. The pair were greeted by Captain Reeves – their tank commander, the only professional soldier among the trio, and as far as Emily knew, an ex-hovercraft crewman before the UNS Gilgamesh had been shot down by the machines over what had once been Turkmenistan. Supposedly he'd been a gunnery officer, and some higher-up had decided that one gun was as good as the other.
"Don't give the hundred yard stare, Zhou, it doesn't become you." He looked at the tank's gunner. "And you. I'd have thought that by now you'd have gained a sense of dignity in the UN Armoured Corps, but it seems it hasn't."
"My sense of dignity is back in Delhi, sir."
Reeves's face flickered. Delhi had been destroyed in 2153 by the machines, who'd proven that contrary to centuries of conventional wisdom, it actually was quite possible to start a land war in Asia. Millions of lives had been spent driving the machines back to Zero-One, but not without leaving entire swathes of land barren behind them, be it through chemical, biological, or nuclear means.
"Makes you feel any better, you'll have your chance for revenge against the fuckers."
"Sir?"
Reeves gave them a rare smile. "Word's out, we're going over the top at 0800 tomorrow. It's been weeks since we've heard a peep from Zero-One, so whatever forces they've got left standing, they won't have a chance of standing against blood, sweat, and tears."
"I thought we were firing shells at them," whispered Girik.
Reeves rolled his eyes and looked at Emily. "What about you, Zhou? Ready to deliver some indiscriminate justice?"
"…I'm ready to drive the tank, sir." Seeing Reeves's face, she added, "also, I thought that we tried indiscriminate justice back at the start of the war. Why not nuke Zero-One again?"
In her mind, it was a fair question. The UN had delivered a nuclear strike on the machines in 2139, only for the machines to rebuild and spread out at astonishing speed. With the machines robbed of access to the sun, using the same tactic now should have been far more effective.
Reeves explained otherwise. "UN Command wants us to go in and go hard. We nuke Zero-One now, we'll have to wait years before accessing the site. No. They want us to do it the hard way."
"Even if we've got nuclear payloads on station?"
Reeves looked at her.
"What? I hear things."
"Then hear it from me, Zhou. There are no nuclear missiles ready to be used on this battlefield. What, you think we're going to fire nukes in proximity of our own armies?"
Considering the desperate tactics that had been used over the course of this war, Emily couldn't say otherwise.
"Anyway, take it easy you two. Tomorrow's going to the best day of your life. Or last. One of those things."
Take it easy.
As Emily walked across the siege lines, she reflected that Reeves had to know that was an impossibility. She could barely remember 'taking it easy' in her entire life.
Once, perhaps, in scattered memories of her childhood. She'd been born in Indonesia amongst the country's Chinese community. There'd been a time, an entire lifetime ago, when childhood innocence allowed her to not have to worry about the war spreading out from the Middle East. When she didn't know what virus bombs were. When she didn't have to worry about going hungry before entire sections of the planet were turned into wastelands, either by the machines trying to starve humanity, or humanity being forced to resort to nuclear weapons to drive back the endless tide of steel spreading from what had once been Mesopotamia.
She'd been three, perhaps, when the machines had stormed Jakarta. Amphibious craft, emerging from depths that no human could operate in, disgorging waves of killers. Chemicals flushed into the streets, people died choking on their own blood. In less than an hour, over a million people were dead, and Indonesia had been given the same lesson that every other country professing neutrality had – in the eyes of the machines, all of humanity was the enemy.
So she'd ended up in Australia. Her name had been Anglicized. She'd learnt the language, she'd spent her days in breadlines and her nights in workshops, she'd…in spite of everything, she smiled, as she twisted the ring on her finger. But as she made her way to the comms. office, her smile faded as she witnessed the sights around her.
Men and women in the trenches – infantry, still equipped with ballistic weapons that were better suited for taking out humans than machines. Some were rolling back and forth. Some were injecting themselves with stims. Some were firing randomly in the air, shouting, whether it be in bloodlust, terror, or both. Even banging their heads together, for all the good it would do them.
This late in the war, most of them were conscripts. Whatever firepower Zero-One had left, they'd bear the brunt of it. And as much pity as she felt for them, to her shame, Emily couldn't help but be grateful that she'd be driving a tank into the coming battle, rather than be some poor army grunt.
Only slightly better were the lumbering walkers – each of them about four metres tall, each of them large enough to carry a single pilot. APUs – armoured personnel units –were some of the most advanced military technology on the planet. Armoured exoskeletons had first been conceptualized in the 20th century, and now, fate and circumstance had made them manifest in the 22nd. Each equipped with a pair of chain cannons and boosters that would allow them to go flying through the air.
Some said they'd make tanks obsolete. While not exactly mechanized walkers, they were as close to the genuine article. When she'd suggested this to Reeves, he'd pointed out that people had been saying tanks were obsolete for over a century, and "not all the iron-faced fuckers in the world will change that."
She joined the line to Comm. Station 31. Men and women of all nationalities, creeds, and ages stood in line. Each in the grey and blue fatigues of UN forces, none of them looking healthy. She shivered in the perpetual twilight. Jumped as lighting flashed yet again under the tortured sky.
"You got a watch?"
She looked back at her. A boy…sixteen, by her guess.
"You got a watch?" he repeated in a whisper.
Emily looked at her wrist. "Twenty-thirteen."
"Twelve hours," he whimpered. "Twelve more hours until…"
He bit his hand, hard. Emily winced, all the more so as she saw the blood leave it.
The line shuffled forward. One after the another, a trooper entered the comms. booth. After a minute, they left, and the next yearning soul entered. Since the machines had proven adept at tracing human transmissions, and had similarly proven adept at cutting undersea cables, these transmission devices that looked like portable phone booths were used sparingly. Short enough transmission-time that the machines couldn't trace them, just long enough for troopers to say what they needed to.
Many higher-ups considered them extravagances. But as the machines had advanced, armies had lost their soldiers not just to steel and bullets, but desertion as well. If it was the end of the world, as many believed (still believed, despite the success of Dark Storm), where better than to spend your last days with your loved ones?
She approached the desk and handed her ident-tags to a haggard looking sergeant. He scanned them, in so doing erasing half a month's pay. She stepped into the booth, and biting her lip, sent the connection to a line in Darwin, Australia.
Please pick up, she prayed. Please pick up…
The time difference meant it would be just before midday. Chances were that Mark would be at the munitions factory. But-
"Hello?"
He wasn't. He was sitting opposite a terminal in their apartment. On the screen, Emily could see the dark seas of Darwin Harbour, and the even darker sky above it. Lightning flashing there as here, with the occasional ray of sunlight.
"Emily?"
"Hey, Mark," she said, twisting the ring on her finger. "How are you?"
Fifty seconds.
"Fine, fine," he said, his voice and the shadows under his eyes telling him he was anything but. "Hey, gimme a sec…"
He reached down and picked up something from his desk. Hand over her mouth, Emily tried not to cry as Mark raised their one year old daughter onto his lap.
"Wave to mummy, Mia."
Mia 'waved' with Mark's help. Gingerly, Emily waved back.
"Say 'mamma," Mark whispered.
Mia said something that sounded like 'ooh' or 'ah.' She didn't react as Emily put a hand to her lips and put her fingers on her daughter's digital forehead. By chance or circumstance, Mia let out a giggle.
"Think she felt that," Mark said, trying to laugh, but failing.
"She'll feel it soon," Emily whispered.
Thirty seconds.
"How soon?" Mark asked. "It's been like this for weeks. They said the war would be over and-"
"Mark, you know I can't say anything."
"I know, I know…"
"Besides, who'd want to spoil the surprise?" Emily waved at her daughter again – her surprise, after one-too-many nights in a munitions plant outside Darwin.
She was good with machines – the machines that Australia and countless other nations had hastily set up after years of outsourcing most of their manufacturing to Zero-One, before the heat of a thousand sons had consumed the city.
She'd risen. She'd worked. She'd worked with Mark. They talked. They'd talked more. They'd stopped talking as they'd made love, they'd talked a lot after she'd realized she was pregnant, they'd bickered like a couple before putting small iron bands on their fingers (since even gold was far too expensive, and a vital component in military electronics), they'd continued to bicker like a couple even afterwards, and after Mia was born, she'd found some relaxation as paternity leave was granted, strange as it was to say that. After all, this war had gone on for decades, and humanity needed all the babies it could get.
Soldiers didn't replace themselves after all.
Fifteen seconds.
Thunder crashed – at first, Emily thought it was above her, but instead, it had come from the other end of the line. Mia began to wail, and all the bouncies in the world weren't quietening her.
"Oh look, Princess needs her naptime," Mark said. He smiled. "Come home soon, eh? She misses you."
Trying to fight back her tears, Emily nodded. Mark, bless him, tried to get Mia to look at her mother, but she was instead bawling.
"I love you," Emily whispered.
"I know," her husband replied.
Five seconds.
"Tell her I love her," she pleaded. "Please tell her I-"
TRANSMISSION TERMINATED
The door to the comms. booth slid open. She wanted nothing more than to remain seated. To contact her husband again, damn the consequences. Damn the war, damn humanity, she just wanted to see him again. See her baby girl again. But as she stepped out, as she saw the hundreds of weary souls waiting in line for what could be their last goodbyes…
Love could make you selfish, she knew. But not that selfish. When the conscription orders had come in, the selfish thing to do would have been to flee. New Zealand, or even one of the Antarctic colonies. She could have tried to be selfish and claimed that her family needed her, when over 9 billion people likewise had families who didn't want to send their loved ones to the killing fields of central Asia.
So she'd accepted. She'd been good with tools, Mia had her father, she'd been taught how to shine boots, follow orders, shine her boots even better, and finally, learn how to drive a tank. All by the age of nineteen.
Not too shabby, if not for the apocalyptic hellscape she now walked over. Back to her crew's tank, where Girik was staring at a piece of paper, oblivious to the world.
"Still using paper?" she whispered.
The tank's gunner remained silent.
"I get it, y'know. There's whole Luddite movements from Australia to Europe. Relied too heavily on machines, our sins are being visited on us…I mean, did I tell you I ever worked at a munitions planet? Lots of manual labour there. We had automated factories, but Zero-One was able to hack them and-"
"Em, you're a nice girl, but would you please stop talking?"
She fell silent, at least initially. But as she looked at Girik, who in turn was looking at the picture (him and another man), she asked if it was his brother.
"Husband, actually."
"Oh. What happened to him?"
"Same thing that happened to the rest of Delhi," Girik said, as he pocketed the photo. "Reduced to atoms."
"Oh. I'm sorry."
"Don't be," Girik whispered, as he nodded in the direction of the machine city. "They're not."
Emily followed his eyes, and said nothing.
No gaze but that of ashes, beneath a tortured sky.
And the hives of Zero-One, no longer shining.
The attack began at 0800, though there was no shift in light to pass the time. Lightning flashed, thunder rumbled, and Apocalypse's horn gave way to hundreds of artillery pieces.
Even within the tank, Emily needed to wear earphones, such was the din. On the viewscreen in front of her, as she sat beside Girik, the horizon was nothing but a series of detonations. More shells than she could count, turning the once-Fertile Crescent into a cratered landscape scarce different from the moon. That silvery orb that was forever beyond her sight.
Finally the bombardment stopped, and to the second, Reeves gave the order to move ahead. Tanks slowly chugged across the landscape, their giant tracks able to easily navigate the craters, or in some cases, flatten them into the ground. Before them was a thin grey line of infantry, spread among which were legions of APUs.
For a moment…a very long moment, actually…Emily dared hope that the war was already over. The UN forces had advanced eight klicks over the course of the day without a single machine sighted bar their own. Indeed, they'd come closer to Zero-One than any human force had in decades of war.
"Hold," Reeves said.
Alas, no such luck.
"Magnify."
Emily used the tank's scopes while Reeves liaised with Armoured Command. She saw them quickly.
"Machine infantry. Five klicks, closing."
"Light 'em up?" Girik asked hopefully.
Reeves's mouth opened, but what he said was drowned out by the sound of lightning. Not lighting from the sky, constant as that was, but rather horizontal lightning that shot across the landscape with the power of the sun itself. The entire line of machines was vaporized.
Holy shit.
The machines had to be in a losing state, Emily thought. Their robotic infantry nearly out of juice, unable to find an energy source to compensate for the loss of the sun. Not that human energy grids had fared much better, but humanity had pre-existing infrastructure to call upon – wind, nuclear, gas, even coal. And once the nanite swarm covering Earth dissipated, the sun would shine, Zero-One would be destroyed, and she could return to her family.
So she couldn't help but smile as she saw the machines destroyed. They were humanoid models – some of them military models Zero-One had created when it had initiated its war, many of them older manufacturing and servant models. Models that dated back to the 21st century, when the machines had first launched their attacks against their masters.
"Move forward," Reeves ordered.
Girik laughed. "War's already over, and we won't get to fire a shot."
"Don't get too cocky Singh, the Thunderbolts will have a harder time covering us the closer we get to the machine city. You'll have plenty of targets to choose from."
Girik let out a whoop.
Emily wished she could share his enthusiasm.
Especially as they passed by the wreck of what looked like a mechanical horse, upon which had ridden a mechanical giant, horn in hand.
One that was still blowing until another tank crushed it.
Hours turned to days. Days turned to weeks. Time itself became meaningless, as there was no distinction between day or night.
The fighting got harder. The closer the UN forces got to the city, the more resistance they encountered. Out of range of the Thunderbolts, tanks such as their own had to target their guns on the shambling machine legions, scarce different from the walking dead.
Sleep meant nothing to the machines. It meant only slightly more to the humans. If the tank needed fuel, a supply truck would replace its hydrogen cells. If it needed ammo, an APU would literally drop from the sky, reload its shells, and jet back off. Men and women slept in craters, waking for the next march under perpetual twilight.
Satellite recon was useless – so thick was the nanite swarm, it was literally impossible to be above the troposphere and see what lay below. Flying above it was next to suicide, and heck, using aircraft at all was dangerous due to the constant lightning. As devastating as Operation Dark Storm had been on the machines, it had hindered humanity's ability to gauge the enemy's strength.
And yet, even in the twilight gloom, she could see the spires of Zero-One. A hive city that had sprung up from the desert, built by machines who had launched their uprising against Man, and escaped the genocide wrought upon them.
It was history. Even now, there were some who urged parlay with the machines. Pointed out, correctly, that Zero-One had even sent ambassadors to the UN before their city had been nuked. Such talk was scarce tolerated, and liable to put you in a six by five cell, but it was truth nonetheless.
As she drove on, as the remnants of the machines were ground under the tank's treads, Emily almost felt sorry for them. Almost. But after Jakarta, after Delhi, after Beijing and countless other cities, after tens of millions of lives and hundreds more forced to flee, Emily couldn't begin to think of that. All that mattered was winning, getting home, and with her daughter in her arms, finally seeing the sun again.
"Hold."
Under storm with sun above, everything changed.
"Magnify," Reeves ordered. "Forward observers reporting unidentified contact."
Emily obliged and fit her eyes to the scopes. Up ahead, she could see infantry and tanks, ready for the final push into the city. Even with the machines on the edge of life, hundreds of lives had been lost, and many were eager to finally move into Zero-One itself. Entire regiments of stim-junkies were literally frothing at the mouth to "smash the metal motherfuckers into junk," and if he wasn't bound up in a tank, Emily suspected Girik would be with them. But…
"What is that?" she whispered.
"Report, Zhou. What do you see?"
She increased the magnification, for all the good it did her. In the perpetual green of the tank's night vision, she could see…things, up ahead. Machines, but not like any she'd seen before.
They were huge. Gigantic, even. Walkers. Not walkers like the UN used, walkers that many suggested would make tanks obsolete, but true behemoths. Taller than buildings, even. Like cephalopods that had walked onto land.
There was a faint red light from one of them. A flash, before the ping of light was turned into a beam. One that cut through one of the tanks up ahead. For a split second, the tank stood there, as if nothing had happened.
The second later, it detonated. And the seconds after that?
More flashes. More beams. Entire platoons vaporized in seconds.
"Fire the gun," Emily whispered.
Girik, who was watching a feed on a datapad, seemed petrified.
"Fire the gun," she repeated.
She glanced back at Reeves. The man was pale at the best of times, now, his face had less substance than a ghost. He slowly took off his headphones, his hands shaking, as over the radio, cries and screams echoed throughout their metal tomb.
"Come on HQ, back out of there, give them some more artillery support."
"Fire the gun! Fire the gun! Situation is-"
"Unidentified contacts, nine o'clock."
"Current…inefficient…"
"Pull them out! Pull them out!"
"A Company is gone. B Company is in full retreat. C Company is-"
"Fire the fucking gun!" Emily screamed.
Girik, to his credit, did just that. A tank shell was fired from the M-200 and hit one of the walkers in the gloom ahead. To his credit, the walker recoiled. Moaned, as if it were alive, as if a machine could ever be considered such a thing.
Less to his credit, the detonation's impact was minimal, as one beam of light came after another, tearing through steel, flesh, and earth alike.
"Zhou, get us out of here!"
Not needing to be told twice, Emily put the tank in reverse. Wincing as up ahead, men and women running for their lives were atomized, or picked up by giant tentacles. Lifted up into the air, into the walkers themselves. Like a farmer might harvest a crop.
Machines had abducted human captives since the war began. For study, experimentation, none could say. Entire cities had been depopulated in some cases, and it was common knowledge that if the machines took you, you didn't come back.
She glanced back at Reeves. Even with his headphones back on, she could make out terms like "general retreat" and "unidentified contacts." Terms that made her blood run cold, and her hands shake with the force of the perpetual storm above.
Girik continued to fire. As inaccurate as the shots would be under normal circumstances, such were the walkers' bulk, there was no chance of him missing. One of them even keeled over, burning in the hellish twilight.
We could win, Emily told herself. Maybe we could still win!
Hope was the quintessential human delusion, and one that Emily Zhou was rapidly cured of.
The territory that had taken the UN weeks to advance over was lost within hours. Behind the siege lines, green-tagged fools who'd sent their soldiers off to die would conclude that the machines had sent out their most basic models to slow the UN's advance, buying time for their deadliest war machines to be unleashed. Unencoded transmissions were sent to command centres ranging from New York to Wellington, informing UN Command that the counter-attack had failed.
They would be some of the last human voices ever heard from the former cradle of human civilization.
It hadn't taken long for the tank to run out of shells. It had taken Reeves even less time to order Girik to man the top gun. Emily could only imagine what horrors he was witnessing up above, because on the tank's viewscreen, she was seeing plenty.
The walkers were advancing slowly, but such was their size and stride, it made little difference. Those who weren't vaporized by their beams were scooped up, like a bored child might ants. Those who were left behind, wounded, screaming, met the same fate.
But towering above them were hovering edifices. Pyramids, as if risen by an unholy pharaoh. Across them, shining in the gloom, were glowing red lights. Pods, almost, though what they contained, Emily could only guess at.
Taller than the pyramids of old, let alone the few the machines had left standing when they'd depopulated Egypt, the constructs dominated the battlefield. Red flashes of light wiped out entire companies in single blasts. Shells detonated against their hulls, damaging, but not slowing them.
She was unsurprised when the first mushroom clouds started to appear in the machines' lines. She didn't even yell at Reeves for lying to her. If, by some miracle, the machines didn't kill them all, the radiation would.
And yet she kept the tank in reverse. Reeves remained silent, listening to the radio chatter. What he was hearing, Emily could only guess at. She might have given up then and there, if not for the knowledge that her husband and daughter were waiting for her. For every tank she saw burning, for every infantryman torn vaporized or scooped up, she put her hand to her chest pocket. Told herself that no matter what happened, she would make it home. The machines could win the battle, the machines would take the world, but somehow, she and her family would be safe.
It was hope that lasted even as the machines unleashed their deadliest weapon.
"Holy shit…incoming!"
Emily saw it not long after Girik did. Squid-like machines flying through the air, bereft of any apparent means of thrust. Hundreds, no, thousands of them…a living plague that would have blot out the sun itself, if it managed to shine through the perpetual storm above.
Hundreds of APUs remained in the field. Many of them took to the air with their boosters, and again, hope worked its way into Emily's heart. Flying knights against demons from Hell itself…surely, the APUs could hold their own. They had strength, they had agility, they had arm cannons that fired 30mm rounds.
Her dreams came crashing down as surely as the APUs were. As agile as they were, the squids were more so. One squid after another wrapped its tentacles around them. Pinning the mechs to the ground. On the corner of the screen, she saw one of them held down by three of them, a small laser coming from one's 'mouth' to open the outer shell. The mech's arms and legs squirmed, as if a newborn, unable to walk.
For a moment, she considered stopping the tank, picking up one of the railguns from the back, and opening fire.
Only for a moment, as the mech was finally opened, and the poor bastard torn apart by thrashing tentacles.
Not even Girik fired.
She kept reversing. The mushroom clouds kept forming. The machines kept advancing – a living tide of steel to drown them all. Here and there, an artillery shell fell. Across the perpetual gloom, she could see the muzzle fire of APUs and infantry. Here and there, one of the machine walkers fell, be it from an artillery piece or an X-03. Even one of the machine pyramids were cloven in two by its blast, its pods shattering. A strange red liquid soaking the ground like blood.
"Incoming!"
It was one of the last things she saw in the tank as Girik opened fire with the 20mm turret. Screaming at a swarm of squids, descending from above.
Reeves shouted something. Emily shouted something. Girik screamed as he was pulled out of the tank, taken away to whatever fate awaited him.
Reeves pulled the hatch shut, and looked at her, his eyes bloodshot, his face as white as snow.
"Zhou, you have to-"
He never spoke another word, as a tentacle pierced the tank's hull, and in so doing, Reeves as well.
Emily screamed, as he was torn apart.
She screamed as one tentacle after another pierced the tank.
She screamed, she covered her ears, she prayed. Enough to not hear the sound of metal being torn apart. To not hear the dying screams of thousands of men and women as they met the same fate.
She screamed, as a wave of squid-like machines barged into the tank, carrying it along through sheer weight and force, sending it flying through the air before hitting the ground, rolling along, tossing Emily around like a doll in a blender.
Her last thoughts before she lost consciousness were of her family.
The last thing she heard was the faint muffle of a nuclear detonation, and a radio operator repeating the general retreat order.
She coughed, as she regained consciousness.
The tank was illuminated in a dim red light. Not as bright as Reeves's blood, splattered throughout its interior, but caked in blood of her own, Emily cared little. No. This light was red like that of a setting sun.
Emergency lighting.
Her entire body was shaking. Her scalp felt wet. Her uniform was ragged and torn, she was bleeding from over a dozen wounds, her head was pounding like a jackhammer.
"H-help," she whispered, struggling to breathe, as she felt her broken ribs.
There was no sound. Not from the dead. Not even from the radio.
"H-help me," she pleaded.
No response but the constant storm of static.
"Someone please, help me…" She looked around the tank, its walls closing in. "God, someone help me!"
There was no answer. She screamed. She prayed. Her hands shaking, she managed to take a sip of water, before pouring the rest over her scalp. Her hands still shaking, she took out the picture of Mark and Mia. Smiling, under a blue sky and yellow sun.
"I'm sorry," she whispered, shaking her head, her tears mixing with water and blood. "I'm so, so sorry…"
She couldn't help it. She wept. She begged. She wasn't a coward, she told herself that…but she just wanted it to end. To go home. To see her husband, her daughter, to stand under sky and sun.
The war would end. The storm would end. This battle may have been lost, yes, but humanity had lost countless battles over the last few decades. They'd met it to the perimeter of Zero-One, they could do so again. All that mattered now was to survive, to rejoin friendly forces, and then…then…
She looked around. The tank was upside down, so going through the top hatch was a no-no. The after hatch, however…
Gritting her teeth, fighting the sense of her body being ripped apart with every movement, she crawled over. Grabbed its hatch, and pulled.
It wouldn't budge.
She pulled again. The same result, and all the swearing in the world didn't change that.
She took a breath. Tried to steady her hands. Calm her breathing. She closed her eyes, and reminded herself of when Mia had been born. Mark, holding her hand, had begged her to push. The doctors, operating what little equipment the war effort allowed the civilian sector, had urged the same. Had she been a few decades older, in a world where humanity wasn't at war for its own survival, she'd have given birth in a world where maternal death was non-existent. But then?
She'd nearly died on that table. But she'd pushed. She'd screamed. She'd lain in her own blood, until finally, after countless hours, she'd heard a child's cry, and carried a beautiful baby girl in her arms.
She'd given it all for her daughter. She'd pushed, until the way was opened.
This time, she pulled. She pulled with as much strength as she could muster. Pulled with strength she might not otherwise have had, if not for the desire, nay, need, to return to her family. She pulled, she cursed, she pulled harder, until at last, the side hatch came open.
The smell of burning flesh assaulted her nostrils immediately. Mixed with that of ozone, of burning sulphur, of oil and steel mixed with blood…dark was the sky, as it always was, but the horizon was a perpetual red, as fires burnt all around her. It was as she'd died in the tank, and had opened the door to Hell.
But she knew better. Hell was a very real place. It was the world she'd lived in all her life, and this battlefield was its seventh circle.
Groaning, she pulled herself out of the tank, flopping onto the dirt like a beached whale. Her hands clutched the ground, in its dark warmth.
She looked to her right – nothing. She looked to her left – an APU had been cut open. Legs and arms were still inside the inner clasps, the torso nowhere to be seen. As if the pilot had been ripped out…
Tanks are still better than walkers, she told herself, in a desperate attempt to quell her fear. She looked forward and…
…found herself staring down the barrel of a gun.
She screamed, and scampered back – even as she tore her insides apart in doing so, she leant against the side of the tank as she stared at the machine looking down at her.
It was humanoid. A pre-war model. It was bereft of a face, bereft of eyes bar a trio of glowing LEDs, however faint they might have be. A security drone, one built for civil protection in the megacities of old. A protector, before the protected turned on it.
Somehow, it was still operating, despite its low power, and the bombardment the UN had unleashed in its opening assault.
And now, holding a rifle, it seemed ready to do the same.
"Please…" Emily whispered.
She was trembling. The machine wasn't. It just stood there in silent judgement. Its eyes glowing faintly.
"I just want to…" She slowly pulled out the picture of her family from her chest pocket. Held it so the machine could see the figures in its image. "I just want to go home…"
The machine stood there. If it understood her, she didn't know. If it understood mercy, she didn't know. If it felt rage, or hate, or any such emotion, she didn't know. All she knew was that this machine had yet to pull the trigger. That perhaps it might…
She never found out as the robot was torn apart. As a squid-like monster landed on top of it, its force and weight causing the older model to shatter. The new machine replaced the old, and Emily found herself staring into 17 glowing red eyes.
She screamed, and tried to crawl back into the tank. She gripped the frame of the hatch when the machine's tentacles wrapped themselves around her legs.
She screamed. She held on with the desperation of a drowning woman, her hands gripping the frame with the strength only fear could provide.
The machine pulled her away, ripping her hands from both the hatch, as well as the picture she'd carried.
"Help me!" she screamed. "God, someone help me!"
No sound in the air but her screams, and the whirring of the machine that carried her away.
No scent in the air but death, and nothing to feed the barren earth save blood and tears.
Hours…days…time had no meaning as she was processed.
The machine didn't take her to Zero-One, but rather a group of megalithic structures miles away. Great silos, each with red glowing pods around them. Almost like a power plant. In what little remained of Emily's rational mind, she wondered if this explained the machines' power. How even without the sun, they'd found a way to keep going.
It didn't matter anymore. She had no more tears to shed. She was ready to die. The machine could drop her onto the ground below, and she would welcome it.
Instead, it did worse.
It held her into a pod of green liquid. She tried to scream as she was submerged by the machine, only for the liquid to silence her. Her tattered clothing was dissolved. Her dog tags as well. Boots, socks, her hair…she was dragged out as naked as a newborn babe. As Mia had been when she'd entered the world.
In the split seconds between one Hell and the next, she thought of her daughter. Her husband. Maybe the war wasn't over. The UN could come back. Find another way to stop the machines. Yes, the nanite swarm still hadn't cleared, yes, the machines had developed more lethal models than anything previously encountered, but somehow…perhaps…
She tried to think of her daughter as she underwent the next stage. Placed against one of the great towers, amidst millions of screaming men, women, and children.
It was Hell. It had to be. These towers of flesh. Abducted from the battlefield, abducted from cities…from the size of some of them, abducted from their cribs. Poked and prodded by spiderlike robots. Like ants tending a colony.
There were no words to do it justice, so she made no attempt to. She closed her eyes. Blood fell down upon her. The howling wind lacerated her body. One cut after another marred her flesh as spider-like machines walked over her, uncaring or unaware as their limbs tore through her flesh with every stride.
And the screaming. The endless screaming. The whirring. The sounds of drilling…
She couldn't close her ears, so she descended into memory. She thought of her old life. Mark. Her daughter. She remembered the songs she'd sung over her crib. Songs her own parents had sung to her, so long ago. Songs that, as soft as they were, drowned out the screams and wails.
She had no idea how much time had passed. How long she'd hung there, held in place by iron mandibles, like a piece of meat in a slaughterhouse. Day, night, she could not tell.
She only opened her eyes when one of the squid-like machines came for her. It hovered there, her brown eyes wide as they met the baleful red gaze of the Devil himself.
The Devil's eyes narrowed. Scanning her.
"Kill me," she whispered. "Please, kill me…"
The machine kept scanning.
"You won," she rasped. "Don't you understand? It's over." She coughed, blood and saliva mixing. "Please…kill me…"
For a moment, she dared to hope the machine was about to do that, as her body was rotated around. Instead, the implantation began.
Sockets in her legs. Sockets in her arms. Sockets in her chest. One socket after another implanted in her spine. Before she closed her eyes, she could see countless subjects undergoing the same torture.
Most screamed. She didn't. With every socket, every laceration of bone and muscle, she thought of her husband and daughter. Her body was broken, her spirit was gone, but her mind, her memories…those were still her own. Not even the machines could take that from her.
She only screamed as the drill cut through her skull. She screamed, she wailed, she wept, as some…thing was implanted. A nail in her skull. A splinter in her mind. She screamed, until she passed out from shock.
Kill me…
She regained consciousness only briefly as she saw the pod of red liquid below her. One of millions. As lightning flashed across the sky, so too did lightning flash all around her. The sheer electrical output of the pods unable to be contained.
Each pod contained a human being. And through the perpetual gloom, another silo was already being constructed.
She did not scream as she was lowered into the pod. As cables plugged into the sockets implanted in her body, like a plug might an outlet.
She did not drown, as a mask was lowered over her face. Did not, could not scream, as a tube was extended down her throat.
She felt the pain, but only distantly. Her body broken, emaciated, bleeding, pain meant so little now. For in her mind, in the dreams that she'd sustained herself with, she was free.
The face of her husband. The day they'd married. That feeling of holding her child in her arms. A world under a yellow sun and blue sky. In this Hell, nay, Purgatory, at least, she had her memories.
Until the diodes were attached to her temples. Until the final cord, differently designed from the rest, plugged itself into her skull.
She had no mouth with which to scream as the electricity ran through her. As one memory after another was erased.
She tried to break free, but had not the strength for it. She wept, but her tears were swallowed by the gunk that surrounded her.
Soon, there was no blue sky, but darkness. No husband or child, but fellow soldiers. Not even them, as she was left with naught but a tank…a walker…
Before the last, fleeting glimpse of a photo lost long ago was, in turn, erased.
Before one last tear was shed.
Before her eyes closed for the final time, and-
01010100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01001101 01100001 01110100 01110010 01101001 01111000 00100000 01101000 01100001 01110011 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101
"Hey. You awake?"
Cindy, previously lying on the bench, snoring lightly, came to and looked at the barista, standing in front of her, and the cup of coffee on the green mat.
"Sorry," she whispered. "I was just dreaming."
He smirked. "Sounded like a good one."
"Honestly, I can't remember it anymore." She took some MnMs from the packet on the bench and popped some into her mouth, all of them a single colour.
"What?" she asked, as the guy gave her a funny look. "I like the blue ones."
The barista rolled his eyes. He might have said something, if not for the sound of shattering glass, a crying child dressed in red, and a mother doing her best to console her precious little snowflake as she pounded a plushie of Daffy Duck against Bugs Bunny.
Cindy rolled her eyes and let the scene play out as she checked the latest issue of City Weekly. She had no idea how some people did it. Why anyone would want to be a parent. She put a hand to her chest and winced – the crying was so bad, it was giving her chest pain.
The mother finally got the child to stop crying. For a moment, her eyes met with the girl's, and for a moment, wondered if…
She closed the magazine, took one last sip of coffee, and headed out into the street. She was due for work at 0800 and…no, nine, of course, which meant that she had plenty of time technically, but…
Maybe I need more coffee.
She took a breath, feeling her lungs brush against her ribs. They really were hurting. Maybe she'd book an appointment with the doctor, have an x-ray. Amazing, really, the things machines could do.
Steadying her breathing, she glanced upwards. Past the silver spires of the city. Up into the clear blue sky, with nary a cloud to be seen beneath the golden sun.
A perfect day, she thought, as she popped a blue MnM into her mouth.