Mechanical Maniacs: Life After Life
By Hadrian (Hardman) Howell
CHAPTER 17: Wrong
I've mentioned before that Magnetman's ability makes the bottom drop out of my stomach. Let me give you a brief explaination why so that you can fully appreciate how much I HATED this part of the day.
I am, as has been stated, an incredibly solid and armored build of robot. Triple layers of Ceramic-Titanium, with insulating layers of rubber and heat-resistance panels underneath it all make me one of the hardest shells to crack in the world. About the only thing that has more armor than me are some highly classified building materials, and those are reserved for command bunkers and protecting the President of the United States. As far as mobile entities are concerned, I'm about tops for armor. Small arms fire is a joke, I don't notice fire or electricity unless someone points it out to me, armor-piercing rounds suffer a greatly reduced amount of effectiveness due to both my resilience and the common sense that I have to move the hell out of the way, and explosives push me around a little, but there's a very small number of things on this planet that will actually out-and-out punch a hole right through me.
Now, I am a robot, which means I, like everyone else with a computer for a brain, suffer under the effects of magnetism. However, where everyone else gets off light by being made of polymers and non-ferrous metals, I have a tremendous disadvantage in the construction of my inner self. I've mentioned my jet engine a lot, and it's the most glaring point of contention I have with my own build. Unlike the rest of me, the jet engine in housed and bolted into the whole of my frame in very basic, high-heat tolerance steel which also happens to be, even as a compasite, VERY ferrous in my case.
This means magnets of all sorts can latch onto the damn thing and pull me around, effectively, by my guts. As one might imagine, a large portion of your insides bounding around with a life of their own does a LOT of damage to the rest of you, and I'm no different. The lost sense of balance, the tendancy to fall over and even hallucinate, and the more alarming inevitability of blacking out are all anagalous to the damage my various systems sustain while this is going on.
Even worse, my Hard Knuckles operate on a very precise set of guidance software and a vaugely magnetic locking system to actually work as arms when not in use, so strong magnetic fields render them nigh useless as well, as if I could aim them anyway.
And, seriously, I do NOT want to discuss Magnetically Accelerated Cannons. Those DO punch holes in me, and for ALL the wrong reasons.
But I had a chance to think to myself as I wrapped one arm around Sparkchan's waist and another around one of Geminiman's clones (he insisted on coming. PLEASE do not ask why) and prepared to be launched into the mouth of a monster several hunder times my size, and I remebered all the other times Magnetman had tossed me at something.
I didn't like any of them either. I guess some things never change.
The rest of the Maniacs charged past the line of tanks as the Abigails opened fire, spraying Cityman's 'head' with 135mm shells that exploded in a wreath of fire around what could roughly be called his chin. Cityman roared in response, his mouth opening wide, and suddenly I felt ill and airborne all at the same time.
Cityman's gaping maw zoomed closer, and I could hear someone screaming. Might have been Spark, Gemini, or me. Couldn't say for sure. At the last second, Cityman's head dipped low as he closed his mouth and prepared to rain battleship ordnance down on the tanks again. This meant that instead of hitting his mouth, I grazed the end of one massive barrel and tumbled into a second, smashing it sideways as Gemini, Spark and I all landed on the deck of the ship that was, even now, wildly moving up, down, and every which way.
Geminiman swore and dug into the deck with his nightsticks, trying hard to get his footing. I had a bit more purchase to work with due to the massive hole I'd put into the deck when I landed, so I had enough stability to fire a Hard Knuckle to catch Sparkchan before she went rolling off the edge. My other hand smashed into the floor, punching into one of the lower decks of the battleship, which I uncerimoniously shoved Sparkchan into before retrieving Geminiman in the same way.
Now inside the ship, we took a moment to catch our collective breath.
"Not entirely according to plan," Geminiman coughed, "but we're in."
"Where do we go from here?" Sparkchan asked.
"Down," Geminiman nodded. "He has two ships that he shoved together to form his body. That's the best bet we have of causing a chain reaction."
"So we gotta find 'is neck," I rasped, still trying to clear spots out of my vision from both the fall and the magnetism.
"That means we have to go this way," Geminiman said, pointing in a direction that was, a large percentage of the time, up. Or at least uphill.
The other two took the lead, allowing me to use my bulk in the cramped corridor to make sure niether of them fell past ne where they'd have to play catch up. It was difficult to move in here, partially because of the cramped spaces, but more so because of the movement. A rocking ship on rough waters has NOTHING on the amount of nasuea-inducing bucking this particular ship was managing.
After what seemed like an eternity, we arrived at a sturdy-looking bulkhead. "Hard, could you...?" Sparkchan asked.
"No problem," I grunted, launching a Knuckle between them that broke the door clean out of the wall and through the other side.
Geminiman looked through, offering only a "Huh, THAT'S interesting," before stepping through and, for some reason, disappearing from sight. Sparkchan followed him cautiously, and after a bit more difficult movement, I managed to poke my head through as well.
The interior of the ship looked like it had been hollowed out, or torn open. Scraps of what might have been walls and floor littered the room, but the focal point was a massive column of interlocked metal tendrils that ran along the cieling, which was the underside of the deck. These tendrils formed into a thick cylinder which went from the cieling to the floor at an angle, and continued through into a hole through which only the barest hints of daylight could be seen, shifting like crazy.
"I'd say we found th' neck," I ventured, clambering out of the tiny hallway and into the open space again.
"Why aren't the Macrobots attacking us?" Geminiman wondered, looking warily at the column over his head. "Last time we fought Cityman, these things were all over us as soon as we set foot on him."
"Maybe their processing power is consumed with the weapons on the ship. It'd take more than one Macrobot to aim, fire, and load those guns, let alone as fast as they've been firing," Sparkchan said. It sounded good to me. If the Macrobots were as simple as 'Take. Use. Destroy.' then each individual Macrobot would only be able to accomplish one task, like pulling the trigger. Several Macrobots would be needed to operate the weapons aboard the ship, maybe even thousands.
Of course, it looked like there were millions here, but that was beside the point.
Sparkchan took a few tenative steps toward the 'neck', looking at it carefully. "Why is it pulsing?"
"Creepy question," Geminiman sai, walking up beside her. He took a look himself and then took an involuntary step back. "But fair."
It occured to me. "Ammunition," I said, coming up behind them. There seemed to be several 'lumps' within the cluster of Macrobots, and the bots themselves would bulge and shift to move the lumps upward, not quite unlike the human circulatory system with blood or food. "He's gotta be gettin' th' shells fer th' guns up there from some o' th' other ships too."
"Which means we're looking for fuel tanks, then," Geminiman said.
"No," Sparkchan said, shaking her head. "We still looking for either the fuel or the ammunition. Setting one of ammo stores off, especially if there's Macrobots inside collecting the shells, might set off every shell in the chain. Even if the munitions don't destroy him, it'll put those guns out of comission."
"Oh good," I said. "I was thinkin' this might be too easy." I approached the area of the floor that had been torn open to allow the 'neck' to pass through, There was about a fifteen foot drop to the next section of Cityman's body, which was covered in a patchwork of masonry. There were a few cables that led out of the neck and toward the front of the omnster's body, and I could see by craning my neck when Cityman's head was pointing mostly down that they were attached to a neckguard of sorts.
It was a blessing that Cityman had been driven by his own wieght to crawl, beyond the head was a much more stable set of terrain, and I motioned for the others to come up where I was. "Come on," I said, "All aboard."
They got in front of me and I pushed them over the edge at a shallow angle with my Hard Knuckles. They don't ALWAYS have to be sluggers, after all. The extra force behind their own jumps meant that they landed on much more solid ground near the base of the neck instead of inside of the network of support cables that held onto the neckguard. I, however, would have no such luck, and as my hands returned to me, I leapt, landing heavily in a mass of Macrobots.
Some of them simply bent and twanged like guitar strings, and some of them snapped. Odd pieces fell out of the neckguard that was now behind me, and I stuggled to my feet. I pushed and tore my way throuh some more cables before I reached to other two Maniacs, and as I did so something in my head went click.
"How's the rodeo, guys?" Snakeman asked over the team comm line.
"So far so good, which is a little worrying," Geminiman reported. "The Macrobots up here are too busy handling the load of operating the weapons and focusing on the tanks to give us any trouble."
"I wish I could say the same!" Topman's voice replied. There was a sharp whistling sound over the radio before he continued. "This anti-body system is murder! Hurry up!"
"We're moving into the main body right now," Geminiman said. "Just hold on, guys."
We set off over the plating-like layers of ruined buildings. In the distance we could see an area of dull grey, the underside of one of the two battleships we figured we'd need to blow up. It was just a matter of getting there before something bad happened. Or at least unexpected.
Of course, me and my big mouth.
Sparkchan screamed as a hand shot up from the rubble. It was a good distance away from her, but still. I admit it startled the hell out of me, too. As the hand set down on the rest of the rubble and began to haul, Geminiman swore aloud.
"Zombies," he said. "Just freaking great."
As more of the ruined form began to emerge, other arms began to bring their own owners out of what could roughly be called ground. I recognized one of them straight off the bat. "Concreteman?" I shouted, watching the jawless, dented robot crawl out into the open.
"The Macrobots!" Sparkchan shouted, pointing near Concreteman's feet. "They're using the defeated members of the Sterling Sentinels as puppets!"
Now I began to recognize some of the other forms, six in all, as they emerged. Tornadoman's face bore an emotionless expression, half of his armor literally worn away from his earlier impact with the road. A squat robot with the definite look of Magmaman was short an eye and still covered in bent and broken shards of Shadow Blades. Jewelman's broken form looked even moreso than his contemporaries because Geminiman had obviously taken a lot of pleasure in breaking each and every jewel on him. Spalshwoman stayed a crawling corpse, literally missing from the stomach down after her loss to Needlegal. Hornetman actually looked the most intact, a hole bored neatly through his head.
Each and every one of them were bound into the ground by a set of very familiar yet infinitely more unsettling set of cable-like Macrobots, reducing each of the former minions to mere playthings at Cityman's disposal.
"This is just freakin' WRONG," I declared as they began to shamble forward. I let loose two Hard Knuckles into the hulking form of Concreteman, who rocked backwards but did not fall as the rocket fists tore off his broken arm. Geminiman let loose his signature Gemini Laser, the azure beam seperating one of Jewelman's legs at the knee from the rest of his body. Sparkchan unleashed electric hell, jagged lines of furious lightning gouging huge rents into Magmaman.
They kept coming, despite the punishment.
"Target the Macrobots. Seperate them from the whole, and they should go back to being dead robots!" Geminiman shouted, leaping backward to avoid the grasping hands of Splashwoman.
I thanked whatever higher power I was believing in at the time that these zombies were unable to use their original powers. This fight would have been MUCH harder with Concreteman's penchant for making the terrain fight back on the already sketchy landscape, let alone having to deal with the abilities of the other members of the Sterling Sentinels. I took the liberty of stepping forward to smash Splashwoman in the face, driving her corpse into the rubble and stopping her cold for the instant I needed to grab the cables that fed into her and pull.
They screeched as they came apart, and Splashwoman immediately returned to being a very dead piece of hardware. Sparkchan slammed Magmaman with another storm of jovian anger that drove him to his knees, giving Geminiman ample time to sever the cables that controlled him. He hit the ground with a dull sound and stopped moving.
Concreteman reached out for me and was rewarded for his trouble with a solid one-two combination that sent him tumbling backward. As he fell, I grabbed one of his legs and pulled with all my might, throwing him to one side and dragging a large length of Macrobot behind him. I stepped down on the tendril heavily and pulled even more on its point of origin until it came free with a snap. As I did this, Geminiman and Geminiman (I think there were three of him now) relieved Hornetman of his various limbs with their Gemini Lasers before cutting his own connection to Cityman.
Sparkchan winced away from her own attack as she blasted Jewelman into a smoldering pile of usless parts, as if he'd been anything else anyway really, and took care to make sure he didn't try to stand back up as the third Geminiman beat Tornadoman to the ground with his nightsticks before blowing the Macrobot controlling him to ash.
"Honestly, I was expectin' that ta be tougher," I said, surveying the mess.
"It was certianly creepy," Sparkchan said.
"Let's keep moving," Geminiman told us, starting at a brisk pace toward the patch of battleship we could see. Sparkchan and I followed, and I glanced over my shoulder occasionally to make sure the remains of the Sterling Sentinels didn't start to follow us.
