

Running

(The Alien in the Mirror)

Lazlo Ferran

First Edition

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously and should not be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales organisations or persons, living or dead is entirely coincidental.

Published by Lazlo Ferran at Smashwords

Copyright © 2015 by Lazlo Ferran

All Rights Reserved

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Ash and Pedro.

Visit the Lazlo Ferran blog to see what I am currently working on: <http://bit.ly/12nFGgI>

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# Mirrors

Ishmael Bodd 'woke up' at 11.52 in the morning of Tuesday 13 April 2B101M002,192. He felt different but, at first, had no idea what had changed.

However, something _had_ fundamentally changed. Within hours, he would break the law, something no Citizen had done in his thousand years of life, and begin to run.

***

At 11.53 am, he stared out of the Newspaper's panoramic window, at the Marstoo landscape, and felt something:

_Not like the clones' paradise on Earthtoo. I_... _like the red sunset and the distant row of red hills, the endless expanse of Marstoo Supercity, stretching as far as those hills. It feels like home._

In fact, his nice, quiet house _was_ out there, at the foot of those hills _._ A tiny, two-seat wind-copter scudded across the Regulation four-storey buildings. Nothing ever changed there and that was just the way he liked it.

But something _had_ changed; he had been talking to himself.

The sensation felt strange.

He returned his attention to his monitor, to the small column article he had been writing for the next day's issue and saw the chip, a tiny piece of ceramic and rare metal, on his desk. He studied its maze-like surface and picked out some silver lettering down the side. Turning the chip, he read; C199989 Single. No offspring.

Now I understand!

Again, the words in his head disturbed him, but he felt slightly reassured that he had found an explanation; he had gone through an RB and been patched up.

RBs; Reality Breakdowns – instances in time where all reality structures breakdown locally, often in areas of less than ten square metres. All affected Citizens require patching up; a C-chip replacement by a qualified medical officer. But nobody knows why we need our C-chip, the Control chip, replaced.

Putting the chip in his pocket, he looked up the word 'like' in an archive lexicon of the once-universal language, Basic, accessible only to journalists who wrote on history and archaeology, as he sometimes did. He found the verb:

Like - to enjoy doing something, or to feel that someone or something is  pleasant or attractive. Disused.

Disused; that means it has no more use.

He remembered the chip and the three words; Single. No offspring. It suddenly irked him that he had always been single and had no offspring. Why should it be so? He had a girlfriend and he would see her tonight... .

Altogether, a lot of things suddenly seemed out of place and disjointed. He felt uncomfortable. He forced himself to focus and flipped on the morning news bulletin. The level voice announced:

You remember the discovery, a few weeks ago, by an archaeological team on Earthone, of the very earliest hominid ever found; 5.4 Million years BC in the ancient Kenya region. We can report that traces of intact DNA have been found, analysed and have the distinctive tensi of very early clone hominids; molecule strings hanging off DNA strands, which form the letters MC – the 'Made by Citizens' tag. This is yet again indisputable proof that Citizens existed before clones.

The following bulletins didn't interest Ishmael, so he turned it off, quickly transmitting a reminder note to write something on the discovery for the Thursday edition. For the next forty minutes, he looked through any historical publications he could find for pictures of Citizens before his time. The pictures were the same as those he remembered as a minor; a family on a picnic, a brave explorer scaling a sheer cliff, a speedboat pilot careering around a race circuit, a model tossing her glossy, russet hair for the camera. The pictures looked familiar, and yet they looked strange.

***

When the buzz sounded for lunch, Ishmael immediately headed for the Mall. He never visited the Mall, but he needed to escape from the office. Everything looked strange to him. His eyes took everything in but his mind became jammed with new sensations. He found himself smiling at two minor Citizens, as they scuttled between the legs of the parents and then ran for a confectionary kiosk. Ishmael helped one of them across a busy intersection and, "You have gained one credit," rang up on his retina display.

Ishmael saw a sign, reminding him that; Running is Against the Law for Adult Citizens.

I remember running as a minor. I wonder why it is illegal.

Before he could stop himself, he had broken into a run. He ran past staring Citizens and on, to the travelators that would take him through the long tunnels to the centre of Supercity. Horns blared and Policeman scrambled to pursue him, but most were too slow to catch a running Citizen. He turned away from every monitoring device he detected but it hardly mattered; his face looked like a thousand other Citizens and his ID would already have been recorded anyway.

When he reached the next intersection, he reversed course and passed the struggling Policeman going in the other direction.

Before the buzz to mark the end of lunchtime, he had reached his office but he saw a Policeman at the entrance.

"Oh oh! Not good!" He turned away and headed for the travelator heading towards his home district. His body had begun to feel alien to him, and several times, his footsteps faltered, attracting the gaze of other Citizens. On the travelator, he had to take stock. Everything seemed to be happening to him for the first time; as if he had previously been asleep. And yet he knew he had gone to work at the same place and spent his days in exactly the same way for almost a millennium.

When he reached his intersection, he took the travelator, not to his own house, but to that of Yaela, his girlfriend. He had to talk to somebody.

At her neighbourhood, he stepped off and went into the restroom he always used just before walking to her house. He took his comb from his pocket and tidied the hair of his reflection in the mirror. He noted the obligatory blue suit of a worker and the typical, symmetrical and pleasing face of a modern Citizen; each eye almost half the width of the face, a tiny, vestigial nose and a tiny mouth, smaller than each eye at full stretch. His head too had the pleasing egg shape; high forehead and thick hair. As an afterthought, he darkened its tone from blonde to dark brown. He stared at his reflection, and wondered who looked back at him.

Yaela came to the door herself, and showed her surprise with raised eyebrows:

"Ishmael! You're far too early and lucky I'm here! I left work early to tidy up! You had better come in. Have you darkened your hair for me? It looks nice."

"Yes."

Looking around for anything suspicious, Ishmael sat gingerly on the lounge sofa and listened as Yaela bustled around, fixing him a toxocharge.

"Won't be long darling," she declared, putting the charge into his hands. "Just need to tidy the kitchen and make the bed, and then I'll be all yours. How did your day go at the office?"

Ishmael put the charge to his lips. The novel fizz, when the charge touched his lips, delighted him.

"Oh, I forgot to mention!" Yaela shouted. "It's a new one. Just trying it for the first time. It's called Ion Flux Bright Number One! What do you think?"

"Mm. It's nice. I wanted to talk to you about your day, but I will wait until you are ready."

"Oh, don't mind me. You know my job is boring. Yours is the one that interested me!"

Ishmael knew Yaela scored very high on the charm scale and her job in government administration to be a very highly paid and important one.

"Yaela, I don't feel right," he finally blurted, when she had sat down, and they had drunk a few more glasses of Number One.

Her conversation had been engaging enough, but he felt a growing restlessness. When he blurted out his sentence, the corners of her mouth raised in a pleasant smile.

"Well, we will have to see what we can do about that, won't we!"

"I'm not ready for sex yet, darling. I mean, something happened today. I feel different. I think... I _know_ I went through an RB, and I found my own C-chip on my desk. I have it here!"

He took out the tiny chip, and held it out in the palm of his hand. Yaela looked at it, shaking her head.

"You're not _supposed_ to show such things to other people Ish, even your girlfriend! You always were a bit _forward_. Anyway, RBs will become more frequent now."

Ishmael didn't know what she meant, but, putting the chip back in his pocket, he forced a bashful hue to his face and continued:

"But I ran in the Mall!"

"Oh. Why?"

"I don't know. It seemed like... fun!"

Another word I have to look up!

"That's bad! Anyway, Ish, you are not making any sense. What is 'fun?' Is it one of those old words clones used?"

"Maybe. I don't know. I have used several today. I wouldn't mind looking at a few books about the clone way of life now. I don't have access."

"Really Ish! Now you are getting too much! That is completely _illegal_! It is virtually pornography!"

"Why?"

"Clones are so dirty. They have organic bodies and eat organic matter and _defecate_! You can't seriously be interested in them. Look what they did to _Earthone_!"

"Not alone. We... Citizens were part of it too in the AH Alliance."

Yaela shook her head. "It was before the Alliance." Then she clamped her lips shut. Ishmael could see she wouldn't speak further on such things. Yaela reached out her hand, touched the back of Ishmael's and murmured:

"Come on, it's time. We can eat after."

'Why are you being so nice to me?' Ishmael wondered, but he feared the answer. On the mezzanine, he paused to glance out of the window for flashing blue lights. He didn't see any.

Perhaps all this will pass, like a nightmare! But 'nightmare' is another disused word!

Yaela had already stripped off her daygown when he reached the bedroom and lay on the bed with her delicate hands across her chin. Her magnificent breasts never failed to arouse him, as she knew they would. He saw the innocence of a child and the awareness of the ultimate seductress in her eyes, both at the same time. She had bewitched him since they had been at school together. Now, yet again, he felt powerless to resist. He lay on top of her and kissed her body while she steadily removed his suit. By the time he lay naked too, his penis almost glowed red, and she signalled with her eyes that she felt ready for it. They coalesced in waves of pure electric pleasure, neither of them slowing until they had reached the height of ecstasy and coasted on the waves of its subsidence to a gentle rest.

"Together," Yaela mumbled.

"What did you say?"

"Nothing."

A distant wail interrupted Ishmael's contemplation of her secret word, but at first, he only felt irritation:

"What's that bloody noise?"

"Ishmael! You swore. How... ."

"It's a bloody Police siren. I know it is!"

Ishmael had already leaped out of the bed and began thrusting on his clothes.

"Wait!" Yaela protested. "Where are you going?"

"They are coming for me Yaela. I know they are. I told you, I _ran_ in the Mall!"

"Don't worry. It's just a small fine. It can be fixed! I can talk with my superiors!"

But Ishmael hadn't stopped to listen to her. He had already reached the stairs and moments later, he rushed out into the hot night.

***

Ishmael only just made it to the station before a Policedrone came round the corner behind him. But, to his horror, he saw another Policeman watching the platform. He ran into the restroom and stared at himself in the mirror again. He changed his hair colour to black and threw his jacket into a cubicle.

_On second thoughts_ _... ._

He took the chip from the jacket pocket and stuffed it into his shirt pocket. He walked out of the restroom, straight into a Policeman:

"You have been recorded running sir. Would you kindly come with me?"

"It wasn't me. You have the wrong Citizen."

"Oh. That must be a mistake then. I apologize. I will have to confirm this with my central database operator."

"Fine. I will just go and put my jacket on."

"Good."

Ishmael turned round and re-entered the restroom.

I just lied! And I lied to a Policeman. Only clones lie. How did I do that? It must be a major offence! It's not even supposed to be possible for a Citizen! I can't let myself get caught now! They will terminate me prematurely!

A long row of windows lined the restroom wall, near the roof. Ishmael had no trouble climbing onto a washbowl and opening one. He had more of a struggle, squeezing through it, but when he dropped to the ground, he saw no Policemen, so he ran for the nearest street corner and turned it.

Ishmael soon ran past a sign that told him he had entered a neighbouring district. He had begun to feel safe, but moments later, flashing blue lights in the sky told him this search would not stop. A Police wind-copter swooped down low over the rooftops and shone a spotlight right in his face. He darted into somebody's garden and climbed a wall, but another copter picked him up when he reached the adjoining street. The sound of sirens seemed to surround him.

He reached another street corner by dodging the probing spotlights and saw what he dreaded; Policemen approaching from both directions.

Cornered! Have to think.

Scouring the street for somewhere to hide, he could find nothing. He stared down at the ground to think and found himself looking at the answer. Moments later, the Policemen converged where he had been standing, but he had gone.

***

Ishmael had to crawl on his hands and knees in the sewer. He couldn't be sure that the Police bots wouldn't follow him, but he guessed they were not designed for such feats of dexterity.

He guessed right. Since the last clones had been quarantined, over 10,000 years before, the Policeman had only to protect Citizens since their charges were unable to break laws. They had never needed to visit the sewers since Citizens would never go there, so Policemen had become less manoeuvrable with time.

Ishmael crawled north though he hardly knew it. The sewers had long been cleansed of any clone filth, but they were still dark, damp and full of old, broken pipework and obstructions, all of which presented great risk to a Citizen. The constant dripping of water from the condensation on the tunnel roof began to get into his eyes and ears and his clothes became soaked, making it harder to move. After a few hours, he reluctantly removed his trousers and shirt. He made sure the chip still lay securely in his shirt pocket and wrapped the garment around his waist, before continuing.

In this way, he crawled north for nearly eleven hours, managing to cover a distance of only one mile. But it looked, as far as he could tell, as if the Police had lost track of him. He badly needed a charge, but he could find no charge machines, and there could be no restaurants or bars. Many pipes lined the tunnels, but when he found breaks, he could see these pipes had once held liquids or still held long-corroded electrical wiring.

It proved lucky for him that he had crawled north, back towards the centre of Supercity, because just as he felt he would not be able to continue, he spied a grill in the far distance.

With his last burst of energy before going on reserve, he tore the grill off its hinges and peered into the tunnel beyond. It looked cleaner, bigger and had rails along its bottom; a maintenance duct. He crawled into it and switched to reserve.

He had leaned against the tunnel wall, to consider his next move, when he experienced another RB.

Oh no, now there are no Medical staff to patch me up!

His anxiety turned into what he gradually recognised as 'anger,' one of the few emotions he knew from lessons at school.

"Clones suffer from many faulty behaviour patterns, the worst of which are anger, hatred, revenge, jealousy envy," his teacher had told them. "Citizens suffer from none of these, and we tried to genetically engineer them out of clones but never succeeded. Their emotions are what created the Wars that destroyed Earthone and made their quarantine necessary. They are much happier on their reserves now anyway."

Ishmael wondered how he had survived the RB. He also felt very angry that Reality Breakdowns existed. He remembered who he had been a few moments before and knew that he wasn't quite the same Citizen now. This made him even angrier.

"I'm not even sure I am a Citizen anymore!" he told himself. "What am I?"

The crackling of electricity and two points of light in the distance interrupted his thoughts. He watched and waited. Within a few minutes, a squat machine ran down the tracks from his right and stopped when it encountered the obstruction of Ishmael's legs.

'A Janitor Robot!' Ishmael said to himself. 'I thought they were extinct!'

Ishmael realised the Bot would need power and, so he withdrew his legs to let the Bot pass and lead him to its source. The Bot scanned the tunnel as it went, occasionally stopping to weld closed a crack in a casing or remake a broken connection with two of its four extending arms. From the display on the Bot's top. Ishmael quickly realised that the Bot headed towards known faults, indicated by tunnel shaft-prop numbers, but that it also fixed any other fault it found.

They reached an intersection and the Bot stopped. A thick cable extended from its main body and inserted its jack into a socket on the wall. The Bot's readout indicated; Charging: 10%.

When the percentage reached 100%, the Bot withdrew the jack and moved on. Ishmael felt nothing short of revulsion as he leaned forward and placed his mouth around the jack. 4000 A/C volts of lovely, raw power surged into his neck. Visions of clones eating raw vegetable matter and meat leaped into his mind. His revulsion at their eating surpassed even that of his own desperate act.

I wonder how clones can stand it. Such a disgusting imitation of true replenishment.

The Janitor Bot had almost left his sight before he felt fully replenished. He had to hurry to catch up.

***

The maintenance duct proved drier and more spacious than the sewer, and, though Ishmael still had to stoop to walk, he soon felt well enough to consider his next move. As he walked behind the Bot, the awful truth of his situation dawned on him. He had to leave Supercity. But he knew of nowhere else except... Clonecity. The thought appalled him, but he had no choice. But how to find it. Clonecity had an almost mythical status in his mind. He had never met anybody who had actually seen it, although everyone had seen pictures of it in books and knew what life must be like there; endless expanses of disgusting grass and prairies containing animals! Really! It made him feel ill to think about it. And now he had to find the clones; only they might be able to help him. He knew he would be terminated if caught in Supercity.

"But where to go?"

***

Above ground, Government offices went into overdrive, trying to decide what to do about the absent Citizen, Ishmael Bodd, better known to them as C199989. No Citizen had broken the law for nearly 20,000 years. The systems for dealing with such incidents were no longer understood or functioning properly. Even the legal case against C199989 took time to correctly ascertain; for lying to a Policeman, C199989 would have to be reprogrammed, and that would include a new Personality chip or P-chip. He would, in effect, no longer exist. This did not explain his continual attempts to evade the authorities, however.

"Go into the sewers, open up the maintenance tunnels, watch the space port, and the clones!" President Armande One ordered. "But keep it from the Citizens."

Recriminations followed and heads of offices were dismissed. The recent increase in incidences of RBs had been known about and, therefore, the incident should have been anticipated. Meanwhile, every Policesuperintendent, or PoliceSupers, armed versions of policemen held in storage for more than a millennium, were reactivated and sent to hunt down C199989 along with a company from Supercity Army.

***

"What is your assignment?" the Janitor Bot suddenly asked.

"What? You can speak. What did you ask?"

"I can receive voice input and issue guidance. You asked where you should go," the Bot replied.

"Yes. I did. Can you take me to the clones?"

The Bot remained silent, but an icon on the monitor showed it to be processing information. It replied:

"Negative. Clones are quarantined."

"Oh. Yes. Well, can you take me near to Clonecity?"

"Affirmative. I will arrive at your requested location in two days. Follow me."

"Great! Is it very far then?"

"Twenty-six point two miles."

"Can't we go straight there?"

"I cannot deviate from my primary function."

Ishmael considered tampering with the robot but decided his luck had been too good to try it further.

"Oh."

After more than twenty-four hours of trudging through Supercity's bowels, Ishmael and the bot reached much larger tunnels and an intersection, whose roof hung three floors above. Long vertical tubes and ducts met horizontal ones, and tracks on the floor guide the occasional maintenance vehicle through complex points. Lights blinked everywhere, and the Bot seemed disorientated.

Ishmael looked at the red number fourteen on the Bot's top and almost felt affection for it:

"Where next, Number Fourteen?" he asked.

"Location 42988.12."

"Oh."

A large vehicle came into view from one of the large tunnels and juddered to a halt. Out leaped six armed figures, holding something in their hands. Ishmael had never seen lasers, but he recognised them from pictures. The figures' suits were black, and five had a yellow flash on their shoulders, the sixth, red. Four figures fanned out into the three other large tunnels while two remained, including the one with the red flash.

"Supercity Army," Ishmael whispered.

The two standing figures seemed to spot Ishmael.

"You must follow me," the Janitor Bot declared.

Immediately, it retracted its two mechanical arms until they lay flush with its squat body, and it rolled into a pipe, no wider than Ishmael's shoulders, which ran under the intersection. The pipe looked too narrow for him to crawl through on his own.

Ishmael had just enough time to grab a bracket on the rear of the Bot before the machine dragged him into the pipe, headfirst.

The pipe snaked between machinery, and when Ishmael estimated that they had crossed the intersection, it began to climb in a series of tight turns. The Bot dragged him over loose rubble and joints in the pipe which abraded Ishmael's skin.

They emerged into a tunnel, much like their first one, but it ended in an opening halfway up the intersection walls.

"Citizen C199989! Do not resist arrest!" a mechanical voice bellowed from below.

Ishmael stood up and saw the team of armed soldiers converging from the other tunnels and heard the steady clang of two metal feet, climbing up a ladder to his tunnel.

The Bot had already set off in the opposite direction, so Ishmael wasted no time following. But, to his dismay, the Bot extended its arms and commenced a repair in the tunnel.

"Can't you detour from your planned route? I need help!" he found himself yelling.

"My route is planned," the Bot replied.

"And I guess the Civic offices will know your route?"

"Affirmative."

"Great. So they will be waiting for us at the next intersection, even if we escape the one following. How far to the next intersection?"

"210 metres."

"He's gaining."

In his heightened sense of alertness, Ishmael found his hearing reaching out to detect any sound. His sense of smell and other senses heightened too, and with them, a sense of something else; a conversation in his head:

"Are you sure you want Number Fourteen to return to base?"

"That is the orders from the Civic office. Just do it!"

"I can detect the maintenance network!" Ishmael said. "Perhaps I can detect the soldiers.'" But try as he might, he could not. He stretched out his thoughts and reached for higher echelons of power. At the limit of his new capability, he detected a voice; the unmistakable one of Armande One, the President:

"Is C199989 caught yet? Don't forget; Terminate on Sight! Do you hear? We can't risk any clone finding out about Project Infinity and attacking Supercity; that is why we built the Army in the first place."

"Yes president."

***

The Bot turned a bend to the left in the tunnel, and Ishmael realised he had to take drastic action. He scanned the tunnel for a weapon and picked up a length of discarded pipe. Letting the Bot travel ahead, he forced himself into the recess behind one of the shaft-props; the frames which supported the tunnel.

When the Bot had moved out of sight, Ishmael heard the steady, steely footfall of the soldier approach and then he saw the end of the laser barrel. He brought the heavy pipe down hard on the soldier's forearms and swung it up with all the force he could manage to smash the helmeted head upward and back. The soldier let go of the laser and smashed back against the far side of the tunnel before falling forward, onto his face. Ishmael stood over him and drove the pipe into the nape of the soldier's neck. Electric sparks arced across the damaged area, and he withdrew the pipe to avoid a shock.

"A Bot!" he declared scathingly. Another voice inside his head reprimanded him for committing murder, but he ignored it. He picked up the laser and surged after the Janitor Bot.

"I killed him Fourteen!" he exclaimed.

The Bot continued welding a broken joint.

Ishmael pointed the laser at a stanchion and pulled the trigger experimentally, but nothing happened.

"Damn! It's locked in some way. Stop Fourteen, we have to talk about this. You are taking me _to_ them, not _away_!"

The Bot stopped obediently.

"Which way is it to Clonecity?"

"I will arrive at your destination in less than twenty-four hours."

"Yes, yes, I know. But which way is it. Point to it."

The Bot made a brief calculation and extended one of its arms to point to the right and behind them.

"But we are going in the opposite direction! Listen, my life is in danger. You have to save my life. The First Law of Robotics states that; a robot may not injure a Citizen or, through inaction, allow a Citizen to come to harm."

"That is incorrect. The First Law states; a robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm."

"What? Human being is what the clones call _themselves_! Just _how_ long ago were you programmed, you piece of junk!"

"I have just received instructions to report your location to my Operator."

"You have harmed Citizens."

"Yes, that is true."

The Bot seemed to consider this, before asking:

"Why are you travelling to Clonecity?"

"I need their help. Wait... " Ishmael thought fast. "I want to warm them!"

"I must help you."

"Good. Take me by the most direct route to Clonecity."

The Bot immediately turned and rolled back down to where they had first entered the tunnel by the pipe. Instead of turning left, into the pipe, it turned right, into another maintenance tunnel, one which terminated in heavy metal doors.

"What's this?" Ishmael asked.

"Elevator 1342. It is damaged."

While the Bot analysed data from a diagnostics probe, inserted into a panel on the elevator wall, Ishmael hovered like an expectant father, asking all sorts of questions which slowed down the Bot.

"Wait," the Bot said.

"It's alright for you to say, you're not the one they are going to shoot when they get here!"

The bot pressed a switch in the panel, and the doors of the elevator slowly opened. Both stepped into the elevator, but the Bot proceeded to remove the control panel cover in the lift, after which it inserted one of its arms into the cavity.

"They're coming! I can hear them. Two."

The pounding of metal feet grew louder until Ishmael saw two soldiers turn the corner. He pointed the laser menacingly out of the elevator doors, and the soldiers retreated, out of view. Moments later, they re-emerged, one falling to his knees, the other to a prone position, before firing. Ishmael threw himself back against the side of the elevator and heard the laser charges taking hot slices out of the back of the elevator. The Bot also got a taste of hot laser on one of its panels but pressed a button, and the elevator doors slid closed. An instant later, they were travelling upwards at five feet per second.

"That was close. Are you damaged?"

"Affirmative."

"Sorry."

The Bot began to replace the panel carefully.

"Wait!" Ishmael said.

***

When the elevator stopped, the Bot exited, into a wide tunnel, which headed north.

Ishmael stuck his hand into the open panel and ripped out some cables.

"How long will it take to reach Clonecity now?" Ishmael asked, catching up with the Bot.

"One hundred and nineteen minutes. The soldiers are ahead of you. They know our location and direction."

"Then I have to get this laser to fire. Can you hack it?"

"Insufficient data to respond."

"Can you bypass the security code on this weapon?"

"Insufficient data to respond."

"Fine. Let's try. Stop!"

The Bot stopped obediently, and Ishmael searched for a way to connect the two machines.

"Your skin is damaged. Do you need assistance?" the Bot asked.

Ishmael looked down at his hip and saw a great flap of skin hanging off. Below it, he could see ripped flesh and something that shone.

Strange; I didn't feel anything.

He poked his finger into the wound and touched something hard and metallic. Although he hadn't seen a damaged Citizen since an Ambulance ran over a minor when he himself had been a minor, he knew that there should be bone inside his hip and bone didn't feel metallic. He sought his memory for other incidents involving his anatomy; visits to the dentist, hospital and doctor. All of them were blanks, with any facts related to him later by his parents. It seemed as if he had somehow blacked-out during all the incidents. He couldn't remember ever seeing an X-ray image of bones or teeth. But when he cut himself, he bled.

_I don't want to deal with this right now_.

He returned his attention to the Bot and found a set of cables with sockets, neatly retracted. On the laser's butt, he found a matching socket and plugged in one of the cables.

"Good thing, some things don't change!" he exclaimed. He jammed the laser into a recess on the Bot's top and said, "Try and activate the laser while we keep moving."

The tunnel stretches as far as Ishmael could see, so while they moved along it, he watched the readout on the Bot; numbers flashed across the screen as the Bot tried combinations.

Ishmael again became aware of voices in his head and loudest of all, he recognised that of Armande One:

"You have C199989 surrounded? Just a few minutes? Great. Have him brought to me if possible but shoot to Terminate if he, it, whatever _it_ is, resists."

Security seems less secure, the higher up you go.

They passed a cross-tunnel and minutes later, Ishmael heard the familiar metallic sound of boots behind them.

"Hurry Fourteen! How much _longer_?"

The Bot continued to work in silence but then stopped. Ishmael could see a larger intersection ahead, and then, into the opening, stepped three soldiers. They aimed their lasers directly at Ishmael's head.

"The code," the Bot suddenly announced, "is... ."

"Just open it!" Ishmael exclaimed. He looked down, and a red light on the barrel of the laser turned green He reached down and wrenched the laser free.

"Citizen C199989, do not move," the soldier with the red flash ordered.

Ishmael fired and hit the soldier squarely in the head.

"Too late," he whispered and stepped neatly to the side of the tunnel, behind a shaft-prop, while the laser charge from the other soldier passed by him and over the Bot. The soldier's flash immediately turned red.

"Squad close in!" the soldier ordered.

Intimidation. He could use the network.

"Fourteen, tell me the locations of the soldiers."

"One; ahead. Four; behind. One; dysfunctional. Sixty-two in transit to west-central six."

"Damn it! Where is west-central six?"

"We will arrive there in approximately five minutes if we do not become dysfunctional."

"You mean if you don't." Ishmael took a deep breath.

Now or never!

"Let's go!" he yelled before leaping out and charging towards the single, oncoming soldier.

While the soldier had the advantage of specialised programming, outstanding speed and agility and excellent marksmanship, it had the disadvantage that it had been designed to shoot and stun humans, not shoot and kill Citizens, who were made largely of carbon and metal compounds. Ishmael also had the advantage that his premature Termination had become almost inevitable, so he had nothing to lose.

The two adversaries dodged behind the props and other obstructions in the decaying tunnel while closing at tremendous speed. Shot after shot missed Ishmael by millimetres while he could not seem to land many shots on the dancing soldier. Moreover, the soldier's armour changed colour to match its background, making the grunt appear almost transparent at times. When Ishmael did land a shot, it deflected like a drop of rain.

They had closed to just over ten metres when a shot from the soldier passed straight through Ishmael's upper laser arm, forcing him to the drop the weapon and dive to retrieve it. The grunt didn't anticipate this and, intending only to disable the Citizen, fired a long, careless burst at the sprawling figure's legs. The shot missed and instead, sliced a long slit through a steel rail. Because of this long shot, and, because Ishmael had not been able to get the soldier within his sights very often, the grunt's laser ran down to zero charge first.

Rather than take the fraction of a second required to swap cartridges, the corporal opted to discharge its own power directly into the butt of the laser, giving him just one more shot.

Ishmael got lucky. He had spun after picking up the laser, purely acting on something most people would call instinct. He came out of the turn on his back, pointing his laser barrel at the neck of the grunt, who had begun to recharge his laser. This took half a second, and in that time, Ishmael forced himself to focus and fire one, steady beam into the vulnerable neck of the grunt, just below his helmet.

The heat from the long shot bore into the grunt's neck. He had been programmed not to suffer from pain, but his sensors told him the intensity of the shot would almost certainly disable him. He growled, as he had been taught as a novice grunt to do when cornered by an enemy, and raised his recharged laser for a shot. But the barrel never lined up with its target. In an instant, some of the android soldier's major circuits burned through, and he lost primary control of his laser arm. An instant later, his C-chip shorted, and his useless body slumped across the rails. Somewhere behind Ishmael, another grunt's flash turned red, and he took command.

"Come on!" Ishmael yelled, pulling aside the grunt's body to let Number Fourteen past. He sprinted to the intersection, checked to both sides and ran across to the continuation of their tunnel, opposite. "I presume it's this way?" he yelled back.

"Affirmative," Number Fourteen responded, trundling across the complex points in the rails at the intersection.

"How far now to Clonecity?"

"Six hundred metres."

"Good, and how far to the nearest soldiers?"

"Two hundred and fifty metres."

"Ahead of us?"

"Affirmative."

"Can you just say, "Yes," instead of affirmative? It takes too long."

"Yes."

"I need charge," Ishmael announced. "But there's no time. I will use reserve. How do I charge the laser?"

"Place the base of the butt in Socket 18," the bot replied.

"Good. Now is there another way? I don't want to meet more soldiers."

"Yes. Turn left in ten metres."

Some steps interrupted the alleyway after just twenty metres. The Bot used its set of three wheels around each axle-end to negotiate the steps and trundled on to a wall at the end.

"Where now?"

"Up."

Ishmael looked at his limp arm and up at a long ladder, dubiously. But the Bot inserted a key into a tiny slot in a panel, and an electrical whirring could be heard. Moments later, a Janitor Bot-sized platform descended on four cables and stopped in front of them. Number Fourteen rolled onto the platform, and Ishmael clung to the side. The Bot withdrew the key and the platform rose at great speed.

As they rose, they passed outlets which blasted hot air into Ishmael's face. The platform stopped and the Bot rolled onto a bridge over a circular opening, about fifty metres across. Thin rubber strips, between the flanges on the Bot's wheels, three around the end of each of its two axles, had expanded to form rubber tyres. Ishmael followed, but the blast of hot air from below almost made him lose his balance. He had to crawl behind the Bot, on the narrow bridge.

On the other side, the Bot rolled into a narrow pipe, and Ishmael had to grab hold of the grab rail and let himself again be dragged along.

"I will have no skin left soon!" he yelled, as parts of him were ripped off by sharp edges in the pipe.

Suddenly, there were huge gaps in the floor of the pipe, and Ishmael's leg caught in the jagged biometal, or biomet of the broken pipe. He pulled it loose so that the Bot could continue and then saw, far below him, a mass of soldiers deploying. He tried to focus his mind and thought he could hear a lot of network chatter but couldn't pick anything out in particular. The Bot stopped.

"We have to go down," it announced.

Ishmael stood and climbed aboard another platform, which took them down two levels. The Bot moved off, northward but stopped at an intersection soon after.

"Clonecity is straight ahead. I can take you no closer, because it is not safe for Janitors."

"Alright. Straight ahead?"

Ishmael picked up the laser and saw the green light. He walked over the intersecting tunnel, and red alert lights began to flash in the tunnel in front of him.

"Warning. Danger of clone attacks!" blared from loudspeakers.

He turned to the Bot:

"Hey. Thanks for the laser and thanks for the help, Number Fourteen. I hope they don't Terminate you. Good bye!"

"Good bye."

***

# Way Out

Ishmael walked into the tunnel, now completely bathed in red light from the alerts. The speakers continued to warm him of clones as he reached an obstruction in the tunnel.

Yellow tape had been wrapped around rusty scaffolding, which stretched to the roof. A sign, painted in red, told him that; Only Military Access Permitted.

He bent under the tape and clambered through gaps in the scaffolding. He had to scramble for quite a distance before the scaffolding ended, and he could walk on the tunnel floor again. The tunnel turned sharply to the right and converged with three more from the south. They merged to form one, long tunnel with steps. Ishmael began to climb. Several times, he heard steps echoing in the tunnel behind him and had to quicken his pace. After almost thirty minutes, the tunnel terminated in a hatch, set into a bulkhead. He shot off the simple lock and climbed through the hatch, into a round, sloping tunnel with smooth sides. Air roared past him and the tunnel seemed to narrow ahead, but he had to keep moving.

Every ten or so metres, a security cam swung to follow Ishmael's progress. Soon the pipe became so steep that he had to crawl, and then he saw a set of vanes at the end. He dragged himself to the circular frame around the vanes and peered between them. A few feet further on, he could make out a large fan, which turned so fast that, like an aircraft propeller, it allowed him to see right through to more scaffolding.

His spirit sunk.

"This can't be the way!" he yelled in frustration.

"Hey you! Can you hear me!" he heard from the scaffolding beyond. Ishmael activated his speech to reply:

"Yes. I hear you! Are you a clone?"

"Can you stop the fan?"

The voice sounded desperate, so Ishmael looked for any kind of control. He found one, a lever, sticking out of a black box with the label; Emergency Stop.

"Stop!" announced a mechanical voice behind him. "Citizen C199989, we know you are in there. Come out with your hands empty and no harm will come to you. We only want to talk to you."

Ishmael briefly wondered who lied, the soldier or the President, or perhaps neither, but he reached up, pulled down the lever and crawled through the vanes.

The razor-sharp fan blades slowed until he could count them; five. There would be enough space to crawl between when they were stopped. He didn't want to risk his remaining skin by crawling too fast. With his nose a few centimetres from the blade path, he waited until they stopped. The tension almost made something inside his head snap. He found himself thinking in overdrive about what might happen to him in the next few seconds.

"It's stopped. Shoot out the hub with your laser," the voice said.

Ishmael saw a young, dark-haired clone balanced on scaffolding.

"Why?" he replied.

"Don't argue! No time. Just do it!"

Ishmael, pointed the laser at the fan's axle-housing and let go a short burst. Part of housing melted, and drops of hot metal fell to the tunnel floor.

"Now!" shouted the voice though the blades. "Jump now!"

Ishmael got to his knees and dived through the blades, just as a laser beam sliced through the air above his head. He landed awkwardly, because the pipe widened suddenly on the other side, creating as steep slope, down which he fell, on his back. He hung on to the laser and noticed that the fan blades had been badly chipped by something on the clone-side. He also saw a makeshift armoured construction, which covered the hub of the fan.

He slid to a halt and saw a face, upside down, peering down at him. He turned over and his hand touched something soft; the sleeve of a clone corpse. Beyond it, another lay, half-decayed. Their smell and appearance horrified Ishmael and he pulled away.

"Move. Get up here!" the face of a clone girl yelled.

Ishmael twisted round and leaped for the lower girder of the scaffolding.

"I can't believe you made it!" yelled the girl, after helping Ishmael behind the cover of a thick biomet sheet. "The laserguns should have taken you out!"

"What guns?"

"Does the laser work?"

"Yes."

The girl grabbed it. "Watch this." She poked her head round the side of the biomet sheet, which seemed to have been placed there as armoured protection, and aimed at the fan. She fired a burst of less than a second before quickly pulling her arm back. From two armoured cupolas, placed a few metres above the fan duct, a hail of white hot laser automatic fire rained down on the biomet sheet and girders of the scaffolding around them. It stopped after a few seconds, followed by more accurate fire from the first soldiers to poke their heads out of the fan duct.

"Don't worry," said the girl. "It's only designed to stun. Androids, or Citizens as you call them, don't like to hurt us. But you'll be out for an hour!"

"But the bodies down there?"

"Yeah. _Technically,_ they don't hurt us, but some fall off when they get stunned. We better get out of here."

Ishmael followed, thinking:

I couldn't agree more!

***

After creeping some way back on a maze of duckboards within the scaffolding, each step of the way protected by assorted sheets of biomet, the girl handed Ishmael back his laser and stood up.

"We're safe now. My name is Serendipity, Serendipity Frankis. But everyone calls me Chancy or Chance. You can call me Chance. You're an android, aren't you?"

"I am a Citizen."

"Whatever... . You need help, don't you?"

"Yes. I can't go back."

"Cool. It's cool man, but I am _so_ in trouble with my pop."

"Pop?"

"My dad. He's the leader, and he ain't gonna like this!"

"Why are you speaking? I thought clones could telepath like we can."

"Some of us still can, but we have to make eye contact first, to share codes. But Supercity Intelligence can read the traffic, so it's not safe."

"Oh."

"We don't think they can read thoughts, but who knows?"

Ishmael noticed the scaffolding opening out and more light filtering in; a pale light unlike that in Supercity. Chance stopped at a railing, and Ishmael caught up with her. He saw a view, which astonished him. They were somewhere near the top of a virtual city of scaffolding. Ahead of him lay a vast cavern, stretching perhaps twenty miles northwards, three wide and a mile high. Small, fenced off areas could be seen, which contained some livestock. A few dwellings were dotted about but it mostly looked desolate; no colour or vegetation. It looked nothing like the pictures and recordings of lush green forest and plush dwellings that Ishmael's clone recordings contained. The roof, consisting of huge, transparent panels, hung about three quarters of a mile above them. Through it, Ishmael could just make out a bright patch of light to the west in a red sky. He noted with satisfaction that the clones all had similar features to him, except for much smaller hands and feet; just as the history books portrayed.

***

"Are we underground?" Ishmael asked.

"Sure. Just like Supercity," Chance replied.

"No. That is on the surface. But this is... " Ishmael searched for the right word but couldn't find it. "Disappointing," he added.

"Yeah. You could call it that. Come on, I have to take you to my dad. Be nice to him. Otherwise you might be disassembled!"

Chance led Ishmael down a long series of ladders. It quickly became clear to Ishmael that the 'scaffolding,' as he had thought it, actually consisted of a conglomeration of building parts and that, for some reason, the clones must have taken apart their dwellings and used them to build the bizarre construction. As they descended, crowds of onlookers began go gawp or follow them.

Finally, proper flights of steps replaced the ladders, and the two could walk at leisure down to ground level. Even so, Ishmael's reserves had almost failed by then.

"I need charge. Do you have any charge bars or anything like that?"

"You mean; you need recharging?"

"Well, that sounds very mechanical when you put it like that!"

"You certainly are strange for an Android. I never met one, but I have been told they are very emotionless. You seem anything but! I will ask my dad. Here he is."

"Chance!" a tall man, dressed in silver and with a tight mop of black hair, like his daughter, exclaimed. "How many times have I told you not to go to the _fan_ alone!" Ishmael noted that the man had sideburns, rare, because very few clones still had any body hair.

'Vanity,' thought Ishmael. 'I have heard of it.'

"But dad, you said time is running out, now the lights are on! And he jammed the fan!"

"You could have died! Did you say he jammed the fan? Are you sure?"

"Yes. Shot it out. They won't start it again for at least a few days!"

"Hm. That's interesting." But the tall man's eyes were fixed on Ishmael. "What have you brought me? Somebody take the laser." A man, heavily armoured himself, and carrying a crude weapon with the barrel, took away Ishmael's laser and handed it to the tall man.

"Dad, this is... . Oh, I didn't ask your name?"

"Ishmael," Ishmael replied.

"Ishmael," Chance continued. "This is my dad, Jonr. Dad, this is Ishmael!"

"An android! But a battered one, and I am wondering why."

"Dad. The droid needs power. He's almost out."

"Hm. That will be tricky. We haven't had a visitor from the City for nearly a thousand years."

"I remember it on the news," Ishmael exclaimed. "The food delivery machinery failed, and teams of Medics had to bring it in by hand. The clones Terminated one."

"Yes. That is pretty much as our records show," Jonr replied. "Then you must be a C-type?"

"I don't know what you mean," Ishmael replied. "I am a Citizen."

"Come on, let's find my chief mechanic. He might have something."

An oily-faced man with red hair and a livid scar on his cheek clambered out from underneath a broken generator, once Jonr had led Ishmael into a ramshackle workshop.

"Kris, guess what _we_ have?"

"I can see it, but I don't believe it!" Kris cried. "A... Citizen!"

"Yeah! And a friendly one too. He's escaped."

Kris's eyes turned to the laser and his eyes bulged:

"The very latest laser?" he half-asked Ishmael.

"Yes. I think so; Supercity Army's."

"How the hell did you get that?" Kris asked.

"Hell? Oh, I see; religion. We don't have religion. I just killed him and took it."

"Ha!" Jonr chuckled. "I like you already. Kris, the... Citizen needs charging."

"Okay. 4000 volts? I have an old adaptor somewhere."

Kris led Ishmael through a series of dimly lit streets, really just spaces between ramshackle lean-tos, until they came to another shed, built against the stone wall of Supercity itself. Kris turned a key in an old-fashioned padlock and opened the door. He pointed to a red outlet plug and said:

"There you go."

"I... this is very crude. I don't want anybody to watch."

"Okay," Jonr said. "How long will it take?"

"Just ten minutes will do."

"We'll wait outside."

The door closed, and Ishmael placed his mouth gingerly over the red socket adaptor. Instantly, he felt the hot surge of 4000 volts. The charge made him feel good, but he also felt ashamed at his position. He hoped nobody would open the door. After ten minutes, he re-emerged.

"What did Chance mean," Ishmael began, "when he said; Time is running out, now the lights are on? I have been thinking about it."

"You will find out soon enough," Jonr replied. "But right now, we have to act fast. If the fan is jammed, as Chance tells me, we may only have a few hours. I will call together all the leaders as soon as possible. Ishmael, stay with Chance and don't go far. I will need you. Do you mind if I keep the laser for now?"

"No. I don't like weapons."

"Hm. There really is something different about you; more like a human than an Andro-... I mean, Citizen."

"Humans are a mythical race from Earth. They never existed!" Ishmael declared.

The others laughed.

"You will find out the truth of that too, soon," Jonr added. "Once we take you to the Tri-mex building."

***

"Why do you call us clones?" Chance asked, as soon as they were away from the adults. "We are real humans and _we_ built the robots!"

"But that is nonsense. It's just something that your forefathers wrote down in a book; the Third Testament. It is... not really true. Although, I do value religion. Clones need it for survival, and they best understand the flora and fauna of Earth. We believe in Conservation!"

"Oh yeah? Look how we live? It's an _existence_ but no chance to evolve. That's _not_ Conservation!"

"Where are your crops and livestock?"

"That was on Earth, millions of years go. Earth is a long way from here!"

"You mean Earthone. Yes, it is a long way. But our books show you with crops and livestock, vegetation; trees... ."

"No trees here and very little vegetation. Somebody lied to you!"

"Nobody in Supercity lies. Citizen's cannot lie."

"Or kill. But you killed."

"Yes. And... I lied. I am not so sure about anything anymore."

"Why were you running, and why did they want to kill you?"

"Initially, I broke the law, but then I lied and killed. I will be terminated if I go back."

"Not if you go back with us. Which law did you break?"

"I ran."

"Yes. I know, but which actual Law?"

"It is illegal for an adult to run in Supercity."

"Wow! That is purple! Anybody can run here!"

"Purple?"

"Yeah; extreme, weird... or _really_ good."

"Oh. You are a very interesting clone Chance. I have been told clones hate Citizens now."

"No. We don't hate androids. They keep us alive, but they don't understand us. Look, there is the Tri-mex building. That is where they used to build all the androids; probably even you!"

Ishmael stopped to look at a large rotunda that rose at least a thousand feet into the cavern's lofty air. It looked like it had been chiselled out of solid obsidian; its smooth black surfaces and windows reflected almost no light.

"Why didn't I see it from the scaffolding?" Ishmael asked.

"Scaffold City? Ha! 'cause it has that fancy camouflage; can't be seen from above. That's the way they built things when wars were still possible. It was still used for research for a while after they stopped production."

"Well they didn't build me. I can assure you that Citizens have been around a lot longer than clones; some say we were here before the Big Bang and came from Universe B."

"Ha! I have heard that idea. But, first of all, nobody knows if it's possible to survive the Big Crunch, and secondly, humans created... Citizens, if you want to call yourselves that, not the other way round. There are no traces of Citizens before about the first millennium AD."

"You are quite correct in the first case. Even though the Android – I hate that term – Human Alliance, the AHA, eventually proved the Penrose model of two alternately expanding and contracting universes correct in 0.1B, it is mere speculation to suggest that any species could survive the collapse of either Universe A or B. Such survival would depend on the postulated existence of the Iris Star of Blinker, as some call it.

"But you are quite wrong about the existence of Citizens before cl-... humans. I have seen the evidence. Recently, archaeologist on Earthone found the oldest hominid, Arnie. He existed 5.4 million years BC. Only a few days ago, a news bulletin announced that they had isolated some DNA from Arnie and that it contained tensi. These tensi are basically the Maker's Stamp; repeated molecule strings which hand off DNA strands and form the letters 'MC,' which we know mean 'Made by Citizens.'"

"Well, I admit I know nothing about chemistry, but my dad told me there is _no proof_ that MC stands for 'Made by Citizens.' Where is your proof?"

"They don't exist anymore, because they are not required, but they first appear with the first hominids! They had no other use. What else could they be for?"

"That is no proof. Even you should know that! And if... Citizens did exist before humans, where are their remains?"

"As I am sure you know, since you are so well-informed, we Citizens have made ourselves biodegradable, in the name of Conservation, which is our highest calling."

Ishmael and Chance had passed the steps to the Tri-mex building, which Ishmael barely glanced at, and now Chance stopped at a low building inside a roughly constructed fence.

"What is this?" Ishmael asked.

"I wanted to show you something," Chance replied.

"I would like to learn anything about your culture."

Chance pushed open a gate and led Ishmael round to the back of the low building. Three cows grazed in a tiny meadow of scrawny grass.

Ishmael stared for a moment and asked:

"Cows! Real cows! I have never see one. I have seen tigers and camels in my minority. Can I touch one?"

"Sure. They are docile."

As if they had heard, the cows trotted up to the two visitors and muzzled Chance's hand for something tasty to eat. They were wary of Ishmael, but Chance grabbed a clump of grass and stuck it into Ishmael's good hand:

"Hold it out. They will eat it."

When the cow had taken all the grass, Ishmael patted the curly hairs on the top of its head and said;

"Well, I am glad to see you still have farms and are cultivating."

"They are the last we have. We have tried to breed more and grow crops, but we were left with little more than dust. Nothing much grows here."

"What do you use as fertilizer?"

"I'll show you."

Chance led Ishmael back to the shed opened the door and said:

"Won't go in myself. My dad forbids it, and anyway, I don't want to look. But I know what is in there."

Ishmael walked into a large, tiled workshop. In one corner, lay a large heap of dry soil. In another, lay a pile of grey ash. In the centre, stood a row of three ovens. But his eyes were drawn to a long, slick stone table. Upon it lay human remains; parts of human torsos, limbs teeth and bones. Ishmael turned and walked out of the room. The look of horror and confusion on his face forced and explanation from Chance:

"The dust we manage to scrape up is mixed with ash from burned corpses. Some of the flesh is left to decompose under the soil as fertilizer; we still have flies and worms. It's purely voluntary for us to do this when we die, but, in reality, everyone volunteers. You see, there are only a million of us here."

"Yes I know. That was the figure set by the Alliance. It has to remain constant." But Ishmael's mouth worked on automatic. His mind still struggled to cope with the disparity between what he had seen and what he had read in books about clones.

"It's a sort of conservation, I suppose," Chance quipped.

Ishmael shook his head.

***

"We have to be heading back," Chance told Ishmael at the farm gate. "He will have to hold this briefing pretty soon if we are going to attack. And we need to fix your arm, so you can help us."

"Attack? What attack?"

"Attack Supercity. Now we can _get in_ through the fan!"

"But why didn't a clone jam the fan mechanism?"

"We have been trying for many years. At first, they closed down most of the fans. Only two remain; one near the roof and the one you came through. We can't reach the one near the roof. Well, one crazy guy created a flying machine and nearly made it, but that's another story. Anyway, the fan was high on Supercity wall, so to reach it, we had to build a scaffold. The only material we had was our own buildings. It took most of them to reach the half mile up the wall. Many attempted to get through the fan. At first, specially programmed Police Supers defended it from your side, and those that reached the fan were captured or fell to their deaths. Now they have installed much faster laser guns. Anyway, to answer your question, we got as close as you saw me, but they have an armoured hub over the mechanism. Our lasers simply can't cut through it. That's why I told you to shoot it out while you were in the duct."

"Ah, the attack; it explains a lot. I think they have been expecting it for some time. That is why they build the Supercity Army."

"They know? We have to tell my dad. This is not good."

Chance quickened her pace, but before they reached Scaffold City, had to risk one more question. She could see now how clever her father had been in leaving her alone with the android. The machine seemed to like her and had told her a lot in a short space of time. Perhaps it could tell her more:

"How did you manage to kill the soldier?"

"Which one?"

"The one you got the laser from?"

"I found that a metal bar, thrust through the back of the neck, seemed to work quite well."

"I see. That's something else we need to tell my dad. Since they will only stun us at worst, we can creep up on them and poleaxe them!"

"I do not think so. They are designed to 'Terminate on Sight;' I heard the President say so."

"But that's not possible. No Andr-... I mean Citizen, has ever killed a clone intentionally."

***

Night had fallen when Jonr opened the briefing. A large hall had been filled to capacity with 10,000 men and women, mostly dressed in camouflage fatigues. Ishmael and Chance sat to one side of the stage, with a line of twenty leaders.

Earlier, while Kris repaired Ishmael's arm, Chance told her dad what Ishmael had said about Supercity's Army.

"They know about the attack?" Jonr exclaimed. "It's impossible. Nobody that telepaths knows of it!"

"Makes sense," Kris muttered. "They know we are desperate, because of the Hangar lights. They know, and we know, that time is running out."

"And RBs," added Ishmael, not really knowing what they were talking about.

"RBs?" Jonr repeated.

"Reality Breakdowns are increasing," Ishmael explained.

"Right. But if they know about the attack, they either have somebody on the inside, or they have some kind of listening device."

"No way, they have somebody on the inside," Kris protested.

"Yeah. Unlikely. Anyway, it would take too long to find out. We have to assume they have something. That means we can't meet in the Great Hall unless... ."

Immediately, a detailed search began, to find any kind of listening device the Supercity might have planted in Scaffold City. Efforts were concentrated near the Great Hall and Johr's living quarters. After they had completely ripped that apart and found nothing, they widened the search to dwellings around it. They found wires, which led to a black sensor under the eaves of a neighbouring room. They found nothing in the hall.

"There still might be something here," Kris suggested, sitting among a pile of ripped up floorboards in the hall.

"Put them back. We'll have to risk it. All the secret stuff is normally discussed at my place, and I need everyone together for this. There can be no chain-of-command cock-ups. Anyway, there's no time."

Now, Jonr stood at the front of the stage and announced that they would attack the following day.

A roar went up, which the leader had some difficulty quelling, so that he could continue:

"This time, we have an ally. Our friend here," he said, indicating Ishmael, "is a fugitive from Supercity, and he has damaged the fan from inside, so it will take Supercity engineers a few days to repair it. This gives us the window of opportunity we have been looking for and will forever be in his debt. We have to succeed first time. He has actually terminated a soldier. He did it using a metal rod, pushing through the back of the neck, so all your lasers will have a heavy, sharpened rod welded on. Use it!"

Our friend has also told us that we will have to fight our way through miles of tunnels and that there is no longer any form of vegetation in Supercity so your camouflage will be useless. Everybody must dye their suits black and paint white stripes on them in a random pattern like this!" He held up a suit that Kris had prepared before the briefing. "Our friend, who is called Ishmael by the way, also has the very latest laser, and we have picked up a few tricks from it. However, there is not time to upgrade you all; one in ten of you will receive the upgrades.

"Now, it seems that although they had instructions to Terminate Ishmael on sight, the soldier bots were reluctant to do it. Now, you may say, 'Well, this fits in with their Laws of Conservation,' and that they will only stun us, but I'm not so sure. I have talked with Ishmael at length about this, and we are both agreed that the soldiers will have been designed to kill humans – although they call us clones – based on the principle that our invasion of Supercity represents a threat to the stability of the whole colony here on Marstoo. In other words, these soldiers have been designed for one purpose and that is to kill human rebels. So be very careful."

Jonr's understated warning brought a ripple of chuckles from the huge audience.

"Now, you may have wondered how we know that the soldiers were ordered to kill Ishmael. It seems that our friend here can pick up network traffic, which, of course, at soldier level is totally secure. But it seems it is not, at the highest level; within the President's office. This is our edge. So I want you to stick to all commands that come down the chain, and then we will succeed.

"It only remains for me to point out the obvious; many of you will die, but when, not if, we succeed, once again humans will have control of their own destiny on Marstoo, and that surely has to be worth fighting, and dying, for!"

A roar of approval went up from the audience, which Jonr allowed to die down naturally. He grinned and concluded:

"We are the Rebel Army, and we are going to _win_!" His audience erupted again, but this time he hushed them with his arms spread wide. "All squad commanders stay behind. The rest of you; dismissed and good luck!"

***

After Jonr had briefed his commanders, he took Ishmael and Chance under his arms and led them to his dwelling for a feast. His partner, Mira, a hazel-eyed beauty with matching hair, helped him stashed away the best food for such an occasion and. Ishmael could only dispose of the the liquid part of the meal, through a narrow tube in his mouth, a courtesy device from the days when Citizens cohabited with humans. However, he enjoyed the friendly conversation and the warmth the family extended to him. The meal reminded of those he had spent with his parents so long ago. Mira often stole glances at him and at the end of the meal, mentioned how like a human Ishmael seemed. For some reason he could not explain to himself, he felt complimented.

"Do you have... family in Supercity?" she asked.

"Not really. My parents were naturally terminated a long time ago. Their M-tags will still exist... somewhere... I have a girlfriend, but we are not married and have no children. I don't know why that must be." He cast his eyes down sadly.

Neither Jonr nor Mira knew what an M-tag was, nor why he seemed so sad, but they asked no further questions.

"Will you be involved in the attack?" Ishmael asked Mira.

"Yes. Of course. Only the old and children will stay behind. It _must_ succeed!"

He smiled at her determination.

"Now, I have two things I have to show you Ishmael. Are you ready?"

"Yes."

Jonr led his guest and daughter down to the ground level and began the long trek to the east wall.

"We don't have vehicles here. We walk everywhere. I hope you don't mind the exercise."

"No. I am fully charged."

Jonr seemed suddenly lost in thought.

Eventually, they reached a metal and glass structure, at the base of the cavern wall. Beside it, a metallic stairway zigzagged to the top of the wall, a mile above. On the other side, three queues of clones lined up outside other elevators marked 'Public.'

Jonr led them inside and into a large metal cage.

"An elevator," Ishmael suggested.

"Yes. We don't use it very often, but only this one goes almost to the top, and as leader, it's one of my privileges – when time is short." Jonr winked at Ishmael, who immediately understood the joke and felt a pleasant surge of emotion.

I like this man.

The other elevators stopped about two thirds of the way to a platform, near the top of the cavern. Outside the elevator, Ishmael could see many people, either ascending wearily, or descending the stairway. It wasn't long before the elevator halted but not at the top of the stairs.

"We must climb the rest of the way," Jonr explained. "The structure above is no longer safe."

At last, Ishmael reached the platform at the stop of the steps, slightly behind Jonr and Chance.

"Look Ishmael. Isn't it pretty?" Chance exclaimed. She nodded towards the vast, panoramic windows in front of him. Ishmael had already seen the circle of a myriad bright lights in the distance. From time to time, one would wink out, as something passed in front of it, followed by the wink of its neighbour. The huge structure, outside the protective covering of the cavern seemed to be a few miles away and about half a mile in diameter.

"What is it?" Ishmael asked.

"A spaceship," Jonr replied. "Built to survive the Big Crunch. Isn't she a beauty?"

"But why haven't I heard of it? A ship that size should be all over the news!"

"Top Secret; that's why!" Jonr replied. "And we helped build it! It is designed for a crew of androids and humans, but the androids, or Citizens, as you call them, have taken over the whole project and locked us out! It will leave in the next few months. That is why we have been increasing our attempts to get inside Supercity."

"I think perhaps I understand something!" Ishmael exclaimed. "The Army has been set up to protect a Project Infinity. This could be _it_!"

"Yes! Probably."

"But where _is_ Supercity?" Ishmael asked. "I should be able to _see_ it from here. It is above ground."

Jonr pointed to the south. "See those flat panels there, stretching away into the distance? That's the roof of Supercity."

"No. It can't be! It is above ground! I look at the sky every night. Sometimes I see liners, on their way to Earthtoo. I even went there once!"

"Sorry Ishmael. Supercity is _below_ ground, just like Clonecity. The new arrivals on this planet, found only one likely place to build a colony; inside a great north-south canyon. That is what it is. The planet has enough starlight for life, but its surface is inhospitable and has no life-forms. The temperature out there reaches 100 degrees centigrade – below zero. It's the same above zero during the daytime. We used to maintain the vast fields of starlight generators out there that provide energy for the cities. But we are not permitted anymore. It's done by bots now." Jonr could see the look of disbelief on Ishmael's face. "Sorry. Somebody has lied to you."

"But Citizens cannot... ."

"Lie?" Chance finished. "You told me you _lied_ to the Policeman."

"Yes. Something is very wrong here. I no longer know what is real and what I am!" Ishmael concluded.

"Welcome to the world!" declared Jonr. "Reality is not a single entity. There are many layers of reality, the most solid of which is the one shared by most. For instance, we all live in a Universe; Universe A. That is a single reality, and we all share it. It is the foundation of our culture. It may change one day, but for now, it is our foundation. Other realities may be personal, fleeting, or exist only between two lovers. I want to show you something else. Come with me."

As Jonr led them back to the stairs, he pointed out a welded-up set of doors in the wall:

"We used to have our own corridor to the spaceship. The Androids cut us out and removed the corridor. You can see where it used to run. We could unseal the door, but we don't have the technology or materials to build spacesuits anymore."

***

Jonr led Ishmael and Chance back to the steps of the Tri-mex building, where he sent Chance off to bed.

"She needs to get a good night's sleep," Jonr explained. "She will be in the attack tomorrow. Fourteen is old enough, in my books. Do you sleep Ishmael?"

"Yes. We need to sleep, to regenerate our thought patterns,"

"But does your performance deteriorate if you miss a night's sleep?" Jonr asked, leading Ishmael up the steps of the obsidian building.

"No."

"Ours does."

Jonr took out a set of large keys and proceeded to unlock a set of padlocks.

"The mind-imprint locks no longer work," he explained.

When all the chains were removed from the door handles, Jonr swung the great doors open and led his guest into a vast concourse.

"Up these steps," Jonr said, switching on the lights.

"Does anybody else come here?"

"Nope. Only me and Kris, occasionally."

At the top of the third flight of steps, Jonr led Ishmael into a row of offices and down to one at the end. On a dais, rested a black plate. Jonr concentrated and the screen switched on.

"We could do this telepathically, but I'm not keen on the security implications right now. I guess you probably have something better in Supercity. What was your job?"

"Journalist."

"Here we go. This is the central archive of Tri-mex. Tri-mex started out as Trion, over twenty thousand years ago, named after a military company of the 3rd Millennium AD when Capitalism still ruled our economy. It became big enough to control the whole population, and people were born into the company, much like earlier nationalities. Anyway, Trion had to diversify. They added two arms; robotics and spaceships, and this is the very last facility of theirs that I know of. Read this."

Ishmael stepped onto the dais and scanned the page in a fraction of a second. He used the cursor to turn pages and finished the company report within a few seconds. He regurgitated the main points;

"So Tri-mex claim to have maintained a generation of super-androids, which they called the C-class. They claim that they are distinguished by a Maker's Tag, or Mtag, which is not biodegradable. They also claim that the C-class androids are indistinguishable from humans, except for the means of recharging, through a socket in the mouth. The C-class can have sex, procreate and go through various stages of youth until adulthood. That matches my life precisely! Too bad it is mere fantasy!"

"Is it? Tri-mex records that the first C-class had been identified in the Third Milennum but its origin never established. Tri-mex believed that the C-class have existed since the mid 20th Century, but no proof could be found. Only 200,000 existed and vanished from sight in 1944, only to reappear 100 years later, at the start of the Great Wars. They had a bizarre cover story to explain this. What do you think the explanation might be?"

"I know all about the C-class, and the explanation. They cloned hominids to create... you! They existed millions of years before clones and may have come from Universe B. I explained all this to Chance. We even have proof in the form of tensi; tiny Maker's Stamps within the DNA helix... ."

"That's rubbish. Tensi have been proven to be vestigial; many species have them, and it's basically DNA trash that has disappeared over the centuries."

Ishmael paused for a moment, surprised at Jonr's vehemence, before continuing:

"The C-class vanished, because they wanted humans to develop robots on their own. They explained their reappearance by fabricating a story that a Military Defence network went 'conscious,' and began to build the C-class androids as drones to defend it."

"I believe you are a C-class android. Only they tell this story."

"I am a C-class Citizen. There are only 200,000 of us. That much is true. But the rest of your story is a fabrication. Only clones can lie."

"Chance said you admitted you could lie."

Ishmael did not respond.

"Let me show you something else," Jonr suggested. He found another page, and Ishmael began digesting the information.

Ishmael read the summary report of Project Protect. The project would be the last that Tri-mex would be assigned, and basically amounted to the design of twenty special Control-chips, or C-chips, which could traverse the increasing number of Reality Breaks expected near the beginning of the Big Crunch, the collapse of the Universe. The C-chips had to be designed to be fitted to C-class androids only and the class were not to be aware of the process. As a result, Tri-mex believed that the C-class androids might be the first in history to attain consciousness, but the Company's R&D department could not be sure of this. Ishmael read how Supercity stopped any communication with Tri-mex as soon as the delivery of the twenty chips had been made. That day occurred almost 1000 years before; when Ishmael was still a minor. Ismael looked up from the report and turned to Jonr.

"Well?" the leader asked.

"It's certainly interesting."

"I had forgotten about RBs until you mentioned them. That's why I looked up this report. Their incidence is increasing; you said so yourself. It makes sense that Project Infinity would deploy these chips now, if it were ever to do so. I think you have one inside you. Do you know how these special chips work?"

"No."

"I do. Humans experience RBs too, but for us, the effect is only a mild form of anger, believed to be caused by the new personality having the memories of the old one but not the experience. Yes, humans effectively reboot too. This build-up of layer upon layer of personalities is believed to be what makes us 'conscious;' hence Tri-mex's belief that the C-class might become conscious.

"The experimental C-chip contains ten circuits. Remember that the actual personality of the android is held in the P-chip, elsewhere; the C-chip just holds the basic parameters of personality; whether it should be married or single, and have children or not.

"Of the ten circuits, one is designated the Alpha circuit and is the current Control circuit. Another circuit is designated the Beta channel and yet another, the Gamma circuit. All the Beta channel does is poll the Alpha circuit every .01 seconds to ask; are you conscious? When it doesn't receive a response, it knows the Alpha circuit has shorted, and it promotes itself to Alpha. The Gamma channel polls the Beta circuit every ten seconds – its polls are never at the same time as the Beta's – and acts as a backup; RBs actually last for much less than .01 seconds, so the chance of both Alpha and Beta being affected is tiny and that of Beta and Gamma, infinitesimally small. This process goes on until the tenth circuit becomes the Gamma circuit, at which point, an alert is sent that the chip needs replacing.

"On a trip to the centre of the Universe, there are expected to be a decreasing number of RBs, so ten circuits should be enough. Four were designed small enough to fit into minors, which will be needed to repopulate Universe B. Would any of that explain anything?"

"Well, yes! I have felt strange since an RB, the other day. I felt irritated at first, but then I felt more awake."

"Well, we must go back."

***

On the way back to Scaffold City, Ishmael tried gently to turn the argument about evolution in his favour once more:

"If it wasn't for our supreme concern for Conservation, clones would have destroyed themselves, and you wouldn't be here, Jonr."

"How much of human and android history do you know Ishmael?"

"You mean; Citizen."

"No. I mean android. I am not going to spare you the truth. There is no time left; not for us and not even for the God of this Universe!"

Ishmael stared at Jonr, trying to process the complex signals he had received.

"No, I mean the real history, not some _garbage_ you androids have convinced yourself is the truth.

"Until the Third Milennum, the C-class androids hadn't really assimilated themselves into our culture enough to claim primacy, so I will start from there. During that century, Ischians made Earth uninhabitable for 120 years, but gradually life came back. Thankfully, a full range of plant/animal DNA had been stored under a mountain in Norway and in many cases for plants, seeds too, so that it didn't take long for man to repopulate earth.

"However, the Ischians were always aggressive, and when the first Stage Three culture, the Timpoids, made moves to harness the Ischian suns for power, the Ischians chose to retaliate with aggression, bringing about their own demise.

"Humans chose rather to try and understand the universe than to simply harness its power. Much of our energy was expended in the years 3000-100,000 AD trying to work out the nature of the universe. This they did with the help of robots, later androids, but the price would be Earth itself, mined almost to the core for minerals, and man moved to Mars. Earth became just a hot, hollowed out hulk, with only a few tiny nature reserves maintained out of necessity.

"Eventually, Mars too had to be abandoned at 1.9 billion years due to the Sun's expansion and both Androids and humans in the Android-Human Alliance moved to Marstoo, terraforming a nearby planet to seem like Earth.

"Meanwhile, man had harnessed communication without speech using electromagnetic implants, later genetically engineered bio-mechanisms, to generate radio signals. The colonies required less of men physically, so their hands and feet could shrink to conserve heat loss on the new, cooler planet. Androids did all the work but had always created a big demand for power.

"There had been many wars, notably the Billion Year war, starting in 0B900M080,221 when man had most fully developed his culture and competed for precious resources with the last of the Timpoids. Man effectively wiped himself out, leaving nothing on earth but microbes and a few hardy lichen. Life had to start all over again. And this time man seems to have been even more aggressive. His path back to so-called civilisation was wartorn. Nobody knows what happened to the C-class during the War. Perhaps they kind of hibernated, but they survived! So it wasn't really a war but a billion years of violent struggle. Did you know the oldest human lived to be 923 years old before the War? The _average_ age near the end of the first billenium was 390! Now, we are lucky if we see 200! Don't talk to me about Conservation! But it did see the end of the Timpoids and effectively Marsone. The sun was expanding, so man left for Marstoo.

"As a result of the demands for power and loss of resources from the great wars, in one of their last acts as controllers of EVOTECH, in 2B101M001,188 the organisation which had replaced governments in ordering our society, men made the androids' highest goal that of Conservation rather than Exploration, Computation or Production. When the Alliance broke and androids took over, for the first time calling themselves Citizens, they began to model themselves on man in a misguided attempt to mimic life, believing the creation of an artificial copy of life to be the same as preservation.

"In the last great AHA programme in the year 2B101M001,057, androids and man finally understood how they might survive the Big Crunch. For the first time, the idea of a Stage Four culture emerged, one that had essentially bypassed Stage Three in favour of understanding or intellectual development. They built a starship which might survive the Big Crunch.

"One day, I will tell you about the cracking of time travel and how it caused man's final slide into apathy and servility. But my main point is that _we_ programmed androids to put Conservation first."

Ishmael thought carefully before answering:

"Well, I agree with all of that, it is all as we have recorded, except that man had to be rescued. That is all I will say!"

"Ishmael, you are stubborn! You don't know when you are beaten, but I _like_ you! I need to grab a few hours sleep. I don't know how much you want, but I hope you will come with me tomorrow. We need you. I suggest you spend some time, probing the President's office network to see how you came to have the chip."

"But it would be very dangerous for me to go back to Supercity!"

"What are you going to do here if we all die? You could lead the children and old-timers in one last desperate attack or live out your days here... ." Jonr indicated the vast wasteland inside the cavern with a sweep of his arm. "Or you could find out the truth."

***

# Battle

Ishmael didn't try to sleep. He had been given the room of a warrior, recently killed at the fan duct, and sat in a chair, trying to work his way into the President's private network. He had no luck and found himself walking round the room, looking at the dead man's possessions; holograms of girlfriends, award certificates, a few paintings, and a single locket, hanging on a platinum chain. Without considering his actions, Ishmael began to open the locket but stopped himself.

No, could be the most personal possession of this man. Let his secrets go with him.

But Ishmael found himself teasing the platinum chain through his fingers as he continued to think. It calmed him.

He remembered what he had been trying to do and cast his thoughts back to the President. Suddenly, he heard a voice:

"It's me, Armande. I can't sleep, and my wife is driving me mad. Is there any news?"

"No sir. It seems our... surveillance team has lost communication too. Do you want me to escalate this to Emergency and deploy all agents, as we discussed?"

"No. We wait. I have the preliminary report on how this whole cock-up occurred. Mind you, I find the explanation more disturbing than any conspiracy! I will paraphrase the report. The Medical Bot assigned to replace C199989's C-chip during an RB had also passed through another RB, close to C199989's incident, a few minutes before; an event so unlikely as to have never happened before, causing it to malfunction. Medical Bots are always stationed in the Government buildings, a spot which very rarely experiences RBs, and all Medical Bots have their chips replaced _before_ going to an incident. Furthermore, by some event of incalculably remote probability, the Medical Bot had been assigned to collect one of the twenty special new chips for Project Infinity when it had been re-routed."

"I see. Truly bizarre and... unlucky, for us sir!"

"Yes, but not a conspiracy! That, at least, is something. We have to focus on stopping any clone attack. If this Ishmael leads them, it could be very difficult for us. How soon can you deploy the new Type 45s?"

"We are working on it. They are still officially prototypes; three of them. We can have most of glitches ironed-out in the next two hours sir. Another hour to deploy."

"Good. There is something else. I am going to be on the move during this campaign, so this will be my only channel of communication with you. Tighten up security will you. I know I have been too relaxed about it in the past."

"Good thinking sir."

"Frank. I know you have always been good at your job. It's me who let the ball slip. Don't let me drop it!"

"I understand sir. A good metaphor!"

"I got it out of a book."

Ishmael had to sit down.

So it's true. I have had my chip replaced, by accident. And now I have become conscious. But clones seem to have always been conscious! The awful implications of this were too much for Ishmael to assimilate, so he focused on something simple:

I have to warn Jonr. They have to attack within three hours.

He strode out of the room and headed to Jonr's dwelling, thinking while he walked:

What else can I find while I can still access the network? Size of the Supercity Army? Yes, that would be useful.

Ishmael's memory had stored the network location for the President's communication device, so he used the same I.D. and probed for any database. He found one; Basic Utilities. He quickly discarded this and searched for others; Dinner Guests, Calendar Dates. He settled for Security and queried the database, storing all the data. Locating a reference to SA, he followed it though a mind-boggling number of abstract references until he alighted on a single data instance; 40,000.

Two sentries stopped Ishmael at Jonr's door.

"He asked not to be disturbed," one of them protested.

"I have information critical to the success of the Operation!" Ishmael declared, starting to adopt the language of covert activities.

The sentry passed this message on, and Jonr emerged, looking bedraggled, minutes later

"What is it Ishmael?"

"40,000? You're sure?" Jonr exclaimed, after hearing what Ishmael had discovered.

"No. It is _probably_ the correct figure."

"Well, it sounds feasible, and it's all we have. We have 140,000 which is too few. Many of those the right age are malnourished or have other sicknesses; healthcare is non-existent here. It will have to do. But why the hell didn't you get more! You have the only way in to their network, and all you come up with is the size of their Army! What are these Type 45? Where will they be? Where will Armande be? Where will this Frank be?"

"I am sorry. I am not a security expert or hacker. In fact, computer sciences are not one of my skills. However, I can answer the last two questions; every communication must be contained within a carrier signal, and we can scan these for the ID of the caller until we find the President's and Frank's and then track all data on that carrier signal."

"Sorry. I am tense. It's not your fault. But while you can still get in, can you find out more? Keep scanning it as long as you can. Perhaps they will let something slip. I have to get the commanders ready. We go in two hours."

"One would be better," Mira suggested.

"Yes, she is correct," Ishmael added.

"We can't! Not possible!" Jonr protested.

"It's possible," Mira told him.

"Right." He kissed her and called the sentries.

***

Jonr lined up at the front of his own squad of eight men on the scaffold. A few hundred metres in front, reached through the maze of duckboards and biomet sheets, lay the fan duct. To save time, only those first into the tunnel had been gathered. Their lasers looked crude, compared with Ishmael's, and some of them had not had time to paint their fatigue black and white so had instead put on contrasting black or white trousers and shirts.

Ishmael stood next to Jonr and looked at the men's faces. They grinned and joked, but the android felt confused by their expressions. The grins, which indicated humour, hid another emotion, perhaps fear.

Clone, no, human, emotions have always confused me!

He had begun to accept that his personality had been built on a chassis of steel and synthetic compounds; this didn't seem as bad as he had expected. So now he could allow himself to consciously access his own data banks instead of pretending he 'remembered.' His memory banks told him that the correct term for the human expression was a 'grimace.'

"Right men," Jonr whispered. "You all have a copy of the map Ishmael drew, so you know where to meet up if you make it that far. The second intersection. You all know the route so stick to it. They have 40,000, we have 140,000, but they have better equipment than us and communications! Two critical things have to happen if we are to get enough of our people in to win; taking out those two guns and fortifying the approach. If any of you drop your sheet, you will have to go back for a second. Is that understood?"

"Yessir!"

"I am taking ten men to take out the guns and Ishmael will lead five more to secure the first intersection. Remember: it's okay to use telepathic links up to 50 metres, but only when you need to, only use your team name and only use location codenames. And keep your signal strength to the absolute minimum. There will be a lot of static and reflections, but that will confuse them. Beyond that, one runner has been assigned to each squad and we hope the soldiers will be less inclined to shoot an unarmed child. We regroup at the second intersection in precisely... ."

Ishmael glanced at Chance, who smiled back at him, and understood just how desperate this attack would be. At last he understood the horror of subjugation that the androids in Supercity had wrought and felt glad to be at the spearhead of the attack.

"... one hour," whispered Jonr. "Go!"

Jonr's hobnailed boot clattered along the duckboards as he carried his thick sheet of biomet to the jumping-off point. The Supercity guns opened fire an instant after he leaped into space, but he kept the sheet in front of him and landed with a crunch on the sloping exit of the duct.

Ishmael landed behind him, carrying two sheets, and both held these in front of them while the third man, Kris, bore three large holes, simultaneously, in the hard surface beneath them with a specially designed drill. The fourth man landed holding a small pylon fashioned beforehand, which he placed over the drilled holes before getting stunned and slumping over. The fifth man used a mechanical jack to bolt the pylon to the ground, and the sheets slotted into holders on the pylon. The first barrier had been placed, and all five men clambered up the slope, towards the duct, out of the gun's field of fire. A single shot from one of the guns caught Jonr's foot, making him scream, but Ishmael moved ahead and dragged him up the rest of the slope and safely into the duct. One of the men who followed got hit in mid-air and fell forty feet to the scaffolding below.

"Can you walk?" Kris asked, coming up behind.

"No. But I can limp. Let's go. You two, drag Jownes. Can you hear anything on the network Ish?"

"I can hear a beep from above; probably an alert on the guns. That's all. I still don't know how to get to them."

"Don't worry. We'll find the way."

Jonr stopped and waited for his son to make it to safety. He clutched the grinning Chance briefly, and they ran down the half-mile, sloping tunnel.

***

After negotiating the scaffolding, they continued down the slope to the first intersection. Again, the alarms blared and bathed the tunnels in red light. It seemed to hurt the humans' eyes, so Ishmael led them into the transverse, and larger tunnel.

"Kris, to the second intersection!" ordered Jonr. "Hold it until you're relieved."

Kris took four men and crossed into the tunnel opposite, quickly vanishing into the shadows.

"Now we just have to find this entrance."

"It will be up a few levels," Ishmael suggested. He had walked further down the larger tunnel and suddenly came across a recess, containing a ladder.

"Here!" he shouted.

The others came running.

"What's down there?" Jonr asked, pointing at a cover at the base of the ladder.

"I can check," Chance offered.

"No Chance. We need you here. Check later. Up we go. We have to leave Jownes here."

"Let me go first," Ishmael suggested. "They are less likely to shoot me."

His last two words were cut off by the screaming of the laser guns as the second team came in. Before they had reached an aperture, thirty feet up the ladder, half of the second squad arrived at the intersection and turned to the right in a predesignated move, to take and hold the next intersection.

Ishmael put his hand on the grab rail of a tunnel and immediately withdrew it when a laser pulse hit the metal, inches to the right. The laser pulses sounded more like the bullets Ishmael had read about, so concentrated was the ball of energy. If his head had been above the parapet, it would have been holed. He decided to try something.

"Citizen C199989!" he shouted. "Don't shoot!"

"Have you entered Clonecity?" a mechanical voice replied after an instant's checking of protocols.

"No," Ishmael yelled, at the same time as he stuck his head over the parapet and fired a short burst into the grunt's head. The hits only served to spin the Bot around, sending it sprawling into the narrow tunnel's wall. But it gave Ishmael enough time to jump into the tunnel and get closer. The grunt turned over with its laser pointing directly at Ishmael's head, but it never fired the shot, because a shot passed through the joint in its neck, just below where a human's larynx would be. Its laser-arm went limp and the laser fell to the floor.

"I _have_ to have one of those!" Ishmael said, before pumping another charge into the soldier's neck and slicing off the Bot's arm. He picked up the arm which still gripped the laser's trigger.

"Well done Ishmael!" Jonr exclaimed, coming up behind. "The third squad just passed, to the left intersection."

"I don't think I will get away with that again," Ishmael declared. "Let's see what's ahead."

The eight remaining Rebels split into team to the right and one to the left and ran along the flat tunnel for several hundred metres. Ahead of them, they could hear the continual rattling of the laser guns above the fan duct, so they knew they were on the right track. Ishmael's superior vision spotted a heavily armoured bulkhead ahead, and he raised his hand. They crept on, trying not to make a sound.

Ishmael suddenly heard the words, "Squad Three. We've taken Intersection Left!" come into his head. He had early connected telepathically to Jonr and Chance, so he knew where it had come from. He heard Jonr think, "Shit. Not now!"

Jonr looked at Ishmael. Both thought the same thing; whoever stood on the opposite side of the door probably knew they were there. Ishmael stepped forward and tried the handle of the hatch in the bulkhead. It had been locked tight. Jonr pointed his laser at the control panel and burned it off. Ishmael still couldn't move the hatch, so he held up his laser, still in the grip of the grunt's arm. Jonr nodded, so Ishmael turned the laser's power up to maximum steady beam and began to bore a hole through the door. The hole became a slit and then a slot, around the control panel section of the door. Before long, the section broke loose, fell to the floor with a metallic clang and the door sprung open.

Instantly, a hot rain of laser pulses poured through the hole forcing Ishmael and the others to charge through the door, so that they could escape the killing ground. Two grunts with yellow flashes on their shoulders stood with their backs to the laser guns and blasted a hot laser hellfire at them.

We're finished!

But something small and black flew past Ishmael's shoulder and landed at the feet of the Supercity Bots. An instant later, a bright, white light overloaded Ishmael's vision sensors, and something hard smashed into his face. He put his arms up to defend himself and other hard objects hit his arms, flinging him back against somebody behind him.

***

Silence replaced the concussion that accompanied the flash, and Ishmael found himself lying in a pile of bodies. Immediately concerned for his friends, he knelt and turned. Jonr's grinning face met his gaze. Beside the leader, his son shook his head and helped haul a man with a badly sliced arm to stand. Even Chance and Jonr had many small cuts to their faces and hands, and Jonr nursed a deep wound to his arm, but both still smiled. The dust settled and they inspected the scene. They could hear a roar of cheers from other Rebels outside the fan duct.

"Sorry about that Ishmael. We have one grenade per squad. They are our secret weapon, and I didn't want to tell you until I felt sure about you. I'm not as trusting as Chance or perhaps not as gifted with insight."

"Felt sure?" For the first time in his life, Ishmael felt as if somebody has hurt him deep inside his body somewhere, so deep that he couldn't reach it and scratch it.

They removed some vital components from the two big laser guns, picked up the two grunts' lasers and ran back to the ladder, near the intersection.

At the bottom, they found Jownes, who had begun to come round. Two men picked him up, and the squad crossed to the opposite tunnel, a little smaller than the tunnel to the fan. After four hundred metres, Ishmael found what he wanted; a ladder to the side of the track way. They climbed down four levels, and Ishmael led them further to the south.

"We should be at the next intersection soon. There is a large cooling duct near here. I can hear it."

Soon the others could hear the roar of hot air, coming up from some place far below Supercity. They felt the heat by the time they reached the biggest intersection yet, where Ishmael had first seen the soldiers.

"Hey!" yelled a familiar voice. Kris's red bush of hair poked over the edge of a ledge, on one side of the vast tunnel. "They're not here yet! This seemed the best vantage point. Got the guns?"

"Yeah. They _will_ be here soon!" Jonr replied. "We got these!" He held up the latest Supercity Army lasers. "Latest RA issue. Sounds more like the bullets of ancient times when they fire!"

"Nice. We will have some soon. Have you hacked in already?"

"No. Ishmael used a workaround!"

"Ishmael held up his laser, still attached to the Bot arm."

"Coming down!" Kris yelled.

He set to work, forcing a way to activate the lasers.

"Well, this is as far as we go as far as known layout is concerned. They will be here in minutes. Ishmael, what can you pick up on the Presisent's network?"

Ismael's secondary thought patterns had been completely absorbed in trying to interpret the feeling of inner hurt he had sustained, and he suddenly became aware of it.

"Oh. Let me see. I am picking up... almost nothing. It has been secured. I can tell that Armande is on the south side of the City, and Frank is in the Operations room of the Government Head Office; I got the schematics from the databases."

"Great! So we know practically nothing!"

Jonr thought out loud:

"All we _do_ know is that these Type 45s are very large calibre super lasers; that is they can cut through anything or fire pulses of almost nuclear sized explosive power, if only once per hour. But they drain half of Supercity's reserve power to do so. We also know the Army has 40,000 Bots, arranged with a supercommander and four adjutants or backups, who wear white flashes, and he commands forty Generals, each wearing a green flash, who command ten Colonels, wearing blue flashes, who command sixteen sergeants, wearing red flashes, who command six grunts, wearing yellow flashes. According to Ish, take a sergeant out, and a grunt will replace him, the flash changing colour, but I would guess this is not the case for the supercommander and his backups; take _them_ out, and the Army will cease to function. _If_ we can find them! I bet the real command protocols are held in a database; there's no way they would be able to cram, say, a General's functions into a grunt. If only you had found that and taken it out Ishmael!"

"Sorry Jonr."

"It's okay, you have proved your loyalty, and that's all I ask from any of my men."

Somehow, this sounded like an insult to Ishmael, but some network traffic suddenly sounded off in his head, and he exclaimed:

"Wait! I can hear the maintenance network. There is a lot of activity. All Bots are being recalled. But at least it's still open. Maybe I can contact Fourteen!"

"Fourteen?" Jonr asked.

"A Bot, a friend."

Ishmael reached out and inserted himself into the network using a fake address and ID. Within a fraction of a second, he had located Bot Number Fourteen. The other Rebels could hear the conversation using their telepathic links:

"Fourteen! It's Ishmael; C199989. Do you remember me?"

"Hello C199989. Welcome. Are you safe?"

"Yes. I won't bother you for long. I just wanted to say hello!"

The Janitor Bot became aware that Ishmael actually wanted access to its internal memory banks and granted permission. Ishmael homed in on schematics for the maintenance system and asked for a plastic from Jonr, on which he drew a precise map.

"Okay," Jonr said, slapping Ishmael's chest. The leader studied the map while Ishmael considered the strange feeling of elation he had experienced when Jonr slapped his chest; a feeling that exactly counterbalanced the feeling of hurt earlier. "Nice work. It even has a scale! So the main layout is a big circle, like an expressway, with four spokes running north to south and east to west. We are at the northern end of the north to south spoke, on the rim of the wheel. It looks like this railway runs right round and has exits to Municipal Blocks in each quadrant of the City. Does that make sense Ishmael?"

"Yes. Responsibility for services is divided into Municipal Quarters."

"Great, so they will have to bring the Type 45s down these ramps; there is one only half a mile from here. Problem is that they only have three, and I bet they will keep one back, to protect the President. So which ramps?"

***

Kris had connected a little black box to the laser, but even this would take time to break the encryption.

"Let's go north, along the expressway."

"The ramp is opposite the north spoke of the maintenance system," Ishmael suggested as they jogged along the tracks. "And they know we are here so they will put one here and one on the west side, since that is where I came from; they will realise that's the only part of the system that I am familiar with."

"Yes. I will deploy most of my forces in these two locations. Chance! Where are you?"

His daughter jogged up behind Jonr and the leader briefed the girl, who turned and set off south.

The squad didn't get far before they heard an ominous sound; that of metallic wheels on metallic tracks.

"To the sides! Take cover!" Jonr ordered.

A silver-coloured car came into sight a moment later, and stopped. From a hatch at the rear, three squads of Supercity Army soldiers deployed and spread to the entrances of two side-tunnels in classic fireteams of three men. One grunt in each team held a large calibre weapon.

"We haven't seen those before!" Jonr whispered to his men.

The car's doors closed, and it accelerated south with more grunts inside.

"Advanced party," Kris whispered to Jonr. "More will be coming soon. Best to take them out now."

"Right. Ishmael, you have the only working laser right now. Can you get a good vantage point above us and take out that weapon; I'm betting it's a grenade launcher or bazooka."

"I'll try Jonr. I am guessing this laser will deactivate itself pretty soon. They must have built in some security contingencies."

"We move on Ishmael's first shot. Let's hope they're confused; they outnumber us already."

Ishmael found a set of pipes that rose, through brackets, to a point three levels above, where they turned over the lip and disappeared. The brackets made good footholds, so he could easily climb to a small shelf, which supported smaller pipes. Crawling along this, Ishmael found himself peering over the edge of the shelf and down at the fireteam with the large weapon. He had chosen a viewpoint high enough to put him beyond their normal field of view, and this choice proved correct. None of them looked up though they seemed to know danger drew close. Ishmael heard the sergeant with the red flash give a verbal command:

"Move back into cover."

They think I might have penetrated their network!

The two grunts with laser carbines backed into the tunnel, and the grunt with the large calibre weapon began to move.

I have to do it now! I am not cut out for killing in cold blood!

Not faced with an immediate threat, Ishmael found it very hard to pull the trigger. As he pressed the alien finger onto the ceramic lever, he felt himself begin to tremble.

Citizens don't tremble! There is something wrong with me. I must do it!

The grunt had almost completely backed under the lintel of the tunnel. In a second, he would be out of sight. Ishmael suddenly pressed the trigger hard. A burst of laser pulses leaped from the barrel but hit pipework behind the SA grunt. The grunt glanced at the damaged pipework, but before he realised what had happened, Ishmael had adjusted his elevation and landed four pulses squarely in the face of his enemy. A large hole appeared where the grunt's face had been, and sparks danced inside the gap. The grunt keeled over and dropped the weapon.

Ishmael heard his own team surge forward just as he burned a large hole in the breech of the weapon. He relaxed his grip and waited for any chance to cover the others. Jonr and the others ran to the corner of the tunnel, and a firefight broke out. Ishmael could not see any of the enemy on his side of the tunnel, but two grunts from the opposite team were sent from their squad to assist the SA grunts, so Ishmael took these out with a short burst each.

This forced the other two SA squads to pay attention. One took up a defensive position in the smaller tunnel on the other side of the expressway while the other team split into two; one crossing north of them, the other to the south. They had also spotted Ishmael. Within seconds, he heard the sound of metal on the pipe brackets behind him.

Time to go!

Ishmael saw a single pipe, which ran up the side of the side tunnel recess, to his right. It rose at least three levels, but he couldn't be sure it would hold his weight. But there seemed no point going down. He stood up and carefully placed his toe on a tiny bracket. It bent under his weight, almost making him slip. He shouldered his weapon, still gripped by an arm, and held the pipe tightly. It pulled away from the wall slightly, but he obstinately began to climb.

The pipework seemed so shaky that Ishmael could only climb one level before the noise on the ladder stopped. He stepped off onto a ledge, slick with sludge and knelt down. Gripping the corner of a panel with his left hand, he peeped over the lip of the ledge. Fifteen feet below him, the SA grunt crept forward, unaware of his jeopardy.

I'm good at this!

Ishmael waited for the Bot to come directly beneath him, but this proved a mistake. A grunt spotted Ishmael and told the vulnerable Bot, at the same time opening fire on Ishmael. The Bot below looked up.

Ishmael's finger had already been squeezing the laser trigger, so he put a few shots into the face of the Bot and swung the barrel towards the distant squad.

A shower of sparks and burning smell told Ishmael he had been hit. He could see a messy hole in his left arm, just below the last wound, but he had already been diving to the ledge for cover. His face smacked into the hard material, and he began to roll off the narrow ledge. Something slammed into his leg, just as he fell into space. He hit the wider ledge below, breaking a pipe, which spewed a cold liquid all over him. He grabbed the pipe to stop himself falling further, but his fist closed around the wrist of the terminated Bot instead. The gushing liquid, coolant of some kind, made Ishmael slide further over the lip of the ledge. He clung to the dead Bot's wrist and pulled the dead machine down with him when he fell.

Both of them crashed to the floor of the tunnel, the dead Bot falling over Ishmael. Instantly, hot laser pulses slammed into the dead Bot's carcass, one slamming though Ishmael's already damaged leg. There seemed nowhere to go.

***

Under the dead Bot, Ishmael listened for the pulse that would carry with it his own termination. He heard something else, the yell of "Charge!" by a familiar voice.

An instant later, the tunnel seemed to erupt in a great gout of orange and yellow flame. A wave of hot air curled the ends of Ishmael's hair and singed his eye-lashes. A similar flash followed, moments later, followed by silence.

Ishmael dared not move. Somebody pulled the carcass off him, and the smiling face of Jonr looked down at him. The leader's eyelashes and eyebrows had also been singed.

"Can you stand?" Jonr said.

"What happened?" Ishmael stood and saw the terminated carcasses of twelve SA grunts just a few yards away.

"It was close. We wiped out the other squad, and they had some rather tasty grenades. Two of them took this lot out just before they reached you!"

"I don't think I can stand!"

"Let me take a look," Kris suggested.

They dragged Ishmael to one of the side tunnels, and Kris ripped off Ishmael's legging:

"It's a wreck, I'm afraid. You won't use that again."

"Ishmael looked to Jonr."

"I don't know, Ish," Jonr muttered. "Let me think... Kris, can't we use a leg from one of these grunts? They look very similar to designs Tri-mex submitted for a new range of androids, based on the C-class. Maybe it will fit?"

"Could be. Do we have time?"

"Don't know, but we need Ishmael. Give it a try."

"I need _tools_! Lots of tools!"

"Check the car."

Between the car's axles, they found a range of backup supplies, including what, during Earth wars, would have been called a First Aid kit; basically, a large toolbox and supply of spare parts. Kris removed the leg of a Bot within ten minutes and started to cut into Ishmael's leg.

"Ouch!" Ishmael whispered through clenched teeth, watching red liquid dripping from the incisions. Kris quickly exposed the gleaming carbon and alloy joint, which Ishmael saw with mute curiosity. "You know, until today, I still thought I might be... I'm sorry, I'm confused. I mean; I thought I might have an organic body. I guess there's no doubt now! I guess I would be unconscious if I had one."

"Lie still."

"Shame you took out that bazooka," Jonr said. "It would have been useful, but at least we have two more. We need the access codes though!"

"I can only work on one thing at a time!" Kris retorted.

"Grab all the weapons you can carry, men! How long Kris?"

"An hour, at least!"

"Okay. We don't have time. Get him on the car. We'll risk a train ride. Get the dead grunts out of sight. Carry the wounded onto the car; we're leaving!"

Three Rebels had died, two more had serious wounds but could walk. They all piled onto the silver car, and Kris put it into reverse, calling out:

"Get down! More SA on the ground!"

Everyone bent down below the level of the windows, and they passed six SA squads without hearing a shot fired.

"Must think it can run on automatic!" Kris declared. "More coming. Jesus! There are swarms of them!"

They knew they had almost reached the North Ramp when Jonr saw an undefended side tunnel and ordered:

"Kris, stop the car! We have to find cover for a while. We are close enough to watch for the Type 45 now."

The five survivors disembarked and headed into the side tunnel while another Rebel drove the car south to relay all the new Intel to other squads. Three men carried Ishmael, just behind Kris.

"Where to Ishmael?" Jonr asked.

"Look for a ladder or an elevator, if you can find one that works. Go up!"

"Right."

The third elevator they found worked, so they took it to a narrow access tunnel, three levels up and crept to a grill that looked out into the expressway, just under the roof.

"Cut the grate off Ish!" Jonr told one of his men, who pointed Ishmael's laser at the obstruction and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened.

"Dead!" the man declared.

"Okay, we've been lucky today," Jonr declared. "There's a room, back down the tunnel. We'll hole up there for a few hours; get some rest. Somebody get rid of that grill."

***

While some of the men ate rations and rested, Kris worked away, attaching the soldier Bot's leg to Ishmael's stump. The main ball joint seemed simple enough, but a maze of connectors and fluid transit tubes required more thought. After an exhausting hour of labour, Kris stitched up the wound and slapped Ishmael's other thigh:

"Good as new! Let's look at that arm. Not so bad. The shot went straight through. Just cut a few wires. I'll soon have them reconnected."

Ten minutes later, Ishmael stood unsteadily on the new leg and flexed his damaged arm.

"Arm feels okay," he announced, "But the leg feels strange; disconnected."

"It will take some getting used to. I have to crack these access codes, or we'll _all_ have no legs!"

Ishmael walked up and down to try the new leg and went to find Jonr:

"The new leg!" he declared, turning it this way and that to show the leader.

"Yeah, looks fine. Put some leggings on!"

"Oh sorry. I forget about the clones' inhibitions!"

"For the last time, we're not _clones_!"

"Sorry Jonr. I will find some leggings."

"No Ish, _I'm_ sorry, for my bad temper. It hasn't been a good start to this. I fear the _worst... ._ "

"But we have gone so far and we have a good position."

"Yes and two men will have to go back for treatment. We have suffered more than 50% losses already; if the other squads are suffering the same... ."

"Give me a few minutes."

Ishmael hobbled back to the expressway, took an intact pair of fatigue trousers from one of the SA carcasses and returned to Jonr:

"I wanted to ask you about something that has been bothering me Jonr."

"Go on."

"First, tell me about the slide of men into apathy as a result of cracking time travel."

"Ha! Ish, I do believe you would make a great diplomat! Distracting the man from his worries, eh?"

"Yaela, my girlfriend, scores very highly on the charm scale. I learned a lot from her."

"Do you hope to see her again?"

"Yes, though I don't think there is much chance of me seeing her while we are still both alive."

"I know what you mean. Well, as you know, worm holes gave us one means of time travel, way back in the Third Millennium and special recording devices gave us a way to _see_ back in time. But we still couldn't see forward in time or back _or_ forward for just a short interval. Then Ito discovered _vector time_ ; projections of time using quantum computers – their ability to calculate result sets predetermined by the verifier – that were accurate to .0001% tolerance up to a time interval of almost _three_ days!

"Blankers, user-controlled replicants, were already in use, and people quickly employed them to live vicarious lives for them up to three days in the past or future. As long as they could stay hidden, the controller of the clone could still function but avoid all consequences of the Law! Work became a joke and crime escalated. In fact, it proved one of the factors that led to the final, total collapse of Capitalism. But you said you wanted to ask me about something?"

"Yes. But I'm not sure how to put it. I had several long discussions with Chance about evolution and Conservation. He showed me one of your farms; where they are cremating human bodies for fertilizer. It shocked me. He began to convince me that Citizens are not really the benevolent beings they thought they were. And you have almost convinced me that humans created Citizens."

"'Shocked,' 'they;' these words convince me there is something non-android about you, Ishmael. We really must do some tests on you when we finish this, _if_ we survive. Maybe we can even take you apart!"

Ishmael scowled at Jonr's before continuing:

"We believe ourselves to be organic, the ultimate and original species, but I have searched my memories, and now I can find no evidence that I ever had an organic body, even as a minor. And when Kris opened up my leg, it became obvious what my body really is; artificial. But my brain could still be organic, or at least some part of it. What I can't understand is why, or how, we could be deceived by our society or State into believing that we are organic? It seems to me that my memory has been wiped, by somebody, of any memories of surgical procedures in my life. Who could do this and why? My model of the Universe cannot explain this!"

"Your reality?"

"Yes, my reality, or one of my main realities, as you would put it."

"Ha! Ah, well now we come to the strangest tale of all. Mind you, this is all rumour; the truth is wrapped up in layers of official secrets. But my grandfather told me he heard a rumour that when the Alliance broke up, and humans chose instead to be ruled by androids, they took a last precaution to safeguard the existence of our Culture. They programed a special range of androids, so that they would rule the C-class androids in a culture built around the myth that _all_ androids were created before man and that, in fact, they created man. These special androids have ruled our culture ever since. Your President is certainly one. But, for obvious reasons, they don't believe the myth themselves. It sounds like they have been controlling your memory, so that you need not question this myth."

Of course, the C-class androids are different; nobody knows who created them or why, but they have always believed they are the progenitors of all men, whom they choose to call clones. I guess somebody programed them... you, that way. Some say it was the Russians, some the Germans, and some believe America did it at the height of its powers... .

"I don't believe any of it! I was beginning to believe many of your ideas Jonr, but I can't believe this! But there is something you should know... it might convince you that you are wrong... ."

"Here it comes!" the Rebel on watch shouted.

Everyone roused and crawled to the grill. Ishmael and Jonr peered over the lookout's shoulders. Far to their left, in the expressway, they saw a silver maintenance car pushing a flat waggon before it. On the waggon sat an enormous device with a barrel, whose bore would comfortably accommodate a man, if it were a conventional gun.

"The Type 45, I presume," Jonr whispered. "Look at that red lens on the end of the barrel." A red eye blinked like a sleeping dragon, once every second. Behind the car, walked a battalion of SA soldiers, each armed to the teeth.

"Looks like it is primed and ready to go!" Kris whispered, poking his head through a gap beneath them.

"Yeah, but we're not!" the Rebel leader replied. "Have you got those codes sorted?"

"Almost... . Just a few more minutes. We have fourteen of the sixteen placeholders. It's neat; a different encryption for each placeholder... ."

"Don't want to hear. Just do it. We have to get out there and stop this thing."

"I don't think we have a chance, in front of it, but if we can get behind it and disable the car and wagon... ." Ishmael suggested.

"The rest of you, come on!" Jonr whispered, crawling past the rest of his men.

***

Jonr led his men into the expressway, only seconds before the rolling wagon reached them. Watching the approaching machine from the corner, he could not have timed his attack better. The Type 45's operators swung the great laser gun to point at the Rebels, but they were too close and under its greatest angle of depression. Even if the SA grunts had opened fire, they would have only caused an explosion so close that it would have disabled the gun and killed them. Instead, fifty-six SA grunts, eight of them with red flashes, poured through the doors of the silver car, onto the waggon to defend the artillery laser.

"With me!" yelled Jonr, leaping onto the flatbed, under the barrel. The two remaining able men, followed by Ishmael, leaped onto the waggon and opened fire on the SA grunts. The Rebel lasers were hopelessly underpowered, and Jonr found himself grappling with a yellow-flashed grunt while his two comrades got blasted to pieces behind him. The silver car kept on rolling

"Jonr!" Ishmael yelled, poking his head over the side of the waggon and picking up a laser from a fallen Rebel. He rammed the poleaxe though the neck of an enemy, "We have to get out of here. It's no use."

"I have to... ." Jonr began, turning his laser round. "Agh!" He screamed as two laser pulses went through his leg. He had emptied the whole chamber into a grunt to no effect other than to make the grunt check its chest for damage with a vacant expression. "Kill one!" Jonr finished, thrusting the poleaxe through the grunt's neck, just as Ishmael had shown him. The grunt's mouth opened and a single spark leaped from it before it slumped over. Jonr left the laser's poleaxe embedded in the grunt's neck and rolled over the side of the waggon, dropping to the tunnel floor.

The waggon had rolled opposite their side tunnel, and while Jonr tried to avoid being crushed by the wheels, Ishmael ducked underneath to help his friend. A hail of laser pulses pinged off the metallic wheels and axles.

"Give me that!" Jonr shouted, grabbing Ishmael's laser. He turned it to maximum and pumped all its remaining charge into one of the axle ends of the waggon before ramming the dead laser into the gap between the axle end and the wheel. "Let's go!"

The gap between the waggon and the side tunnel was no more than four feet, but even crossing this, several shots took off Ishmael's hair and one of his ears while another ripped a flap of flesh from Jonr's back. Shots still slammed into the the side tunnel wall when they reached the elevator and ascended to their hideout. The waggon rolled on, now making a squealing sound with the damaged axle.

The two wounded men faced the door with their lasers when Jonr knocked after giving the password:

"Can't be too careful!" one of them joked, putting down the crude weapon.

"Kris! They're coming!" Jonr whispered.

"It's done!" Kris replied, holding a laser aloft. He threw it to Jonr and attached the black box to a second laser. Seconds later, he threw this to Ishmael, who swung round to take up a defensive position beside Jonr.

The elevator doors hissed open, and two SA grunts leapfrogged each other along the corridor in a classic offensive move.

"Shut the hatch!" Kris whispered, holding up a heavy coil of blue electrical cable. Jonr grinned and slammed the hatch shut. Ishmael forced a rusty latch into place. "I got one of the wounded men to find it; thought it might be handy." He peered out of the grill opening, down into the expressway. "Phew, hundreds of them but mostly gone. Another minute!" Laser fire pinged off the other side of the hatch, and Ishmael found himself counting off seconds. "Okay, let's go!"

Kris wrapped the cable round his back and abseiled down the expressway wall, with Jonr close behind.

"I'll go last," Ishmael told the two wounded men. "I'm not sure it will hold my weight."

"Here take this!" said one the men, tossing a laser. "Kris has a spare. Turn it to max and lock the safety-catch. It will fuse and blow in thirty seconds... roughly!"

"Thanks."

As the last man disappeared out of the opening, Ishmael set the laser to explode. A red line appeared around the hatch lock and extended to a red-hot slit. Ishmael counted for a few seconds and pressed the safety-catch lock. He ran for the opening and climbed down the cable. Beneath his feet, he could see his waiting friends, but the cable jerked, so he guessed it would soon break. He quickened his pace and fell the last fifteen feet when the cable snapped. Contracting his legs to form a spring, in a way that must have been programmed into him, he landed heavily and fell over.

"Nothing damaged!" he announced, when the others hauled him to his feet. He followed the others as they broke into a slow jog, heading south. Both Kris and Jonr supported a wounded man each.

"Let me!" Ishmael said to Jonr. He hoisted the most wounded man to his shoulders and found that he could easily carry the man's weight at a steady jog.

***

Jonr and his surviving squad didn't have to go far before they met Supercity Army's rear-guard. Jonr kept the enemy squads at the limit of their visible range. One soldier caught Ishmael's eye; surrounded by four other grunts wherever he went:

"Look at him Jonr. I think he is some kind of commander, perhaps a general. See how those Bots around him always move to defend him?"

"Yes. You're right!"

"Wait! Look." A Bot came running back to the defended Bot from the front ranks. Ishmael zoomed in to the limit of his vision. "That one that just arrived; I think he has a blue flash; a Colonel. He's spotted us. He is talking with the other one. Look, now he's running forward, and two squads are peeling off into side tunnels."

"Trouble!"

"Yes, but if one of us can get a good shot at that one; the general... ."

"Better be you. Your vision is best and your hand never shakes!"

"It does actually, recently... ."

"They're stopping; wonder why. Listen Ish, while we distract them, get up there somewhere. Take a shot. This time, I don't think we'll get a chance to regroup. If you survive, get back to the first intersection, and we'll meet you there!" Jonr held out his hand; the human gesture of friendship that even Citizens knew. Ishmael took his hand and shook it. Kris and the others shook his hand too, and then he ran into a side tunnel.

Ishmael quickly found a smaller intersection of tunnels but stopped in his tracks; a deafening 'boom' shook the foundations of the city, and an instant later, the tunnel flashed white around him, followed by red, yellow and purple. Two SA grunts with yellow flashes turned a corner in front of him, and he took both the unprepared soldiers with a short burst each. A shockwave surged past Ishmael, rocking him on his feet.

The first shot of that Type 45. More Rebels must have arrived. I have to move faster.

He turned into the second tunnel and ran until he estimated he had gone ahead of the SA general. Another 'boom' nearly breaking his grip on a ladder he had begun to climb.

Three levels up, not far under the roof of the expressway, he crawled forward to a good sniper position. His encounter with the two grunts had alerted the enemy, and he found hundreds of soldier faces scanning the walls for him. Two pairs spotted him, and all eyes turned to pick out the intruder. A fraction of a second later, hundreds of laser barrels pointed at his face.

But Ishmael knew his target before they did, and he already had the green flash of a general in his sights. The Bots around their leader closed in. Whether because they did not expect their enemy to have such good long-range vision or because their tactical programming still had some deficiencies, Ishmael still had line-of-sight on the General's neck for the fraction of a second he needed. He pulled the trigger and ducked. A solid sheet of laser fire scorched the air where his head had been and burned a hole over a meter wide in the wall behind him. Burned-through pipes gushed liquids, some of which ignited instantly, further adding to the conflagration around him. Ishmael dived though a wall of fire and ran back to the ladder.

At the bottom, he turned right and ran until he thought he had gone ahead of the artillery piece. He stopped at an intersection and breathed deeply. He flexed his new mech leg.

Not too bad after all. Shame I won't have long to get used to it!

He turned right and ran out into the expressway, into a full-scale war.

***

In front and to his left, Ishmael saw Rebels, as far as the tunnel stretched south. To his right, the laser canon stood still, flanked by line upon line of SA grunts. Ishmael dived to the left, narrowly avoiding a hail of SA laser fire, some from the Rebels who didn't recognise him. He stumbled through the ranks of the Rebels, calling out:

"Who is in charge?"

A dark-haired woman suddenly emerged in front of him and grabbed his arm:

"Ishmael. Is Jonr okay?"

"Mira! You're safe. I am glad. Jonr still lived when I last saw him, a few minutes ago. What is going on?"

"The laser wagon seems to be broken. They have some grunts trying to fix it. We are trying to organise an assault on the '45' but we are being cut down like corn."

Ishmael watched as whole ranks of Rebels were cut down in front of him. A blinding flash of light burst from the red eye of the great laser cannon and took out a narrow line of men, fifty ranks deep. Rebels flowed forward, into the gap, yelling cries of "Death to Supercity!"

"This is no good," Ishmael told Mira. "If the gun cannot move, you should fall back, out of range."

"But it's such an opportunity! We have to take it now!"

"With what?"

"Watch. We are going to try something."

Mira vanished into the ranks, and Ishmael tried to pick off a few SA grunts while he waited.

He had no idea what Mira had planned, but when he heard her voice, above all others, ordering, "Part ranks!" and he saw three men run into the slot with grenades, he guessed her intention.

The men ran out from the first rank, into a field of dead bodies; fallen corn stalks. The blood lay thick and body parts tripped them as they tried to cross the gap and get close enough to lob the grenades.

Ishmael found himself whispering "Oh no... ." as the first man fell, followed by the second, before either had launched their grenades. The third man lived long enough to throw his, but it fell ten metres short of the Type 45 waggon. A fourth man came and a fifth, both falling before throwing their grenades. The sixth Rebel lobbed his, and it flew in its spellbinding arc towards the laser barrel, hypnotising all that saw it. It detonated only a few metres from the barrel, but when the white flash and eruption of debris cleared, the barrel appeared unharmed. Only some of the flat waggon's decking and a few Bots had been destroyed.

The last man had some respite from laser fire while the SA watched the horrific flight of the previous grenade. He reached further than any before his legs were cut from under him and his left arm severed. He retained consciousness just long enough to lob his grenade but missed his target. The grenade exploded near the front right axle of the waggon. All eyes turned to watch as the waggon buckled, and the Type 45 slid towards the ground. There it stopped, at a crazy angle but not disabled.

"We are out of grenades!" Mira yelled, running up to Ishmael.

From the opposite side of the expressway, a Rebel cheer went up, but, Ishmael thought, not for the damage they had inflicted on the waggon. A minute later, Jonr and Kris reached Mira and Ishmael. Jonr limped up to Mira, embraced her and yelled:

"Retreat! They cannot move for now."

Rebels around them echoed the cry of, "Retreat!" and ranks of men began to back away from the SA.

***

Together, the northern contingent of the Rebel army began steadily moving south in retreat. After only a few minutes, they passed the expressway, which led to the hub of Supercity's maintenance system. Jonr cast a wistful eye at it and wondered out loud:

"I wonder if we should leave some men here."

Continuing south, they met isolated squads of Rebels, coming the other way, one of them containing Chance. She ran up to her parents and clutched them:

"I have news! I wanted to come to the front, but I ran into this squa,d and this stupid commander has hung on to me ever since!"

"Remind me to thank him!" her father replied. "What news?"

"Rebels now hold the south and east ramp. Only the west and north are not ours. Some squads are close to the crossroads at the centre of it all. I have been there! Dad. I climbed a wall and saw the SA there. They are very strong!"

"But no Type 45s?"

"No. Not yet."

"You did well. Did you find out where that manhole cover led?"

"Yes!"

Ishmael had forgotten the covers and felt impressed with Chance's work.

"Great! Well?" Jonr asked.

"There are loads of them; they go straight down, a long way. Many small tunnels lead off them, some towards Scaffold City. I think it's an old sewerage system."

"Hm. Sound right to you Ish?"

"I don't know. I will ask Number Fourteen." But however hard he tried, Ishmael could not contact Number Fourteen anymore.

They reached the second intersection, where they had first emerged into the maintenance system. Alarms could still be faintly heard blaring in the distance. A commander ran up to Jonr and told him:

"All of our army is in the system now sir!"

"Good." Jonr turned to his army and announced, "We camp here for tonight! I want defensive walls, sentries, lookouts and snipers; anything to protect our base. I want the routes to the east and west ramps strengthened and runners to be stationed north and west of here. Tomorrow, we will take the whole system and Supercity!" A cheer went up from his men. He turned to Kris and said:

"I want you to get some men down those shafts; see if they go under Scaffold City and if there is a way out, either into this main system of Scaffold City. We may need an escape route."

Jonr turned back to Ishmael, Chance and Mira and said:

"Come with me! Mara, do you have lipstick?"

"Of course! Doesn't every woman when you don't have hologloss lips?"

He led them back to the first intersection, at the end of the tunnel that led to the fan duct. Three alarms still blared and red light flashed on and off in the tunnel. Jonr raised his laser and shot out the alarms. The last one made a wheezing sound before finally falling silent.

"I have been dying to do that!" Jonr declared. "Lipstick!"

Mira handed him the small tube. He strode to one of the signs which read, 'Warning. Danger of clone attacks!' and crossed out the words. Underneath, he wrote, "This way to Scaffold City, home of humans."

"Clones, my ass!" he added. "Let's go."

"We need to look at that leg," Mira said, kissing Jonr.

***

A tight bandage on Jonr's leg had become sodden with blood. Mira gently unwound it and looked at the wound. "Didn't hit bone. You'll live, but it needs cauterizing; cut one of the arteries." She wound a laser up to full charge and aimed it at the severed artery. Jonr gasped as waves of pain crashed over him.

"Feel so tired," he murmured, closing his eyes.

"It's good that he sleeps. I am hardly purple myself!"

"Mum! It's not good to try and sound cool!" Chance said, lying down between her mother and father. "You're too _old_!" While Chance clasped her father for comfort, Mira put her arm around both and they fell asleep.

A few Rebels were still eating and talking, but many were grabbing some well-earned sleep.

Ishmael stood guard over them, not able to rest. The network traffic in his head hummed like a giant, angry wasp; an insect he had only seen in history recordings. He had been listening to it for some time, trying to pick out anything useful when he found himself becoming sleepy. Suddenly a female voice blared in his head; "Revolution! We're all going to suffer!" Ishmael jerked awake.

Sounds like a Citizen. But a malfunctioning one!

He homed in on the epicentre of the confusion and heard more voices, all whispering "Clone revolution!" or "Uprising!"

Later, the panic seemed to die down somewhat, only for the words of panic to be replaced by whispers of a, "Secret Weapon."

Kris and his men returned after four hours. Kris talked with some of the sentries, strode over and woke Jonr:

"The '45 must be fixed. They are coming south and not more than an hour away. We found out where the tunnels go. Yes, they are old sewers, dating back to when everyone lived in Supercity, and the cavern only held animals and crops. Some of the system goes right under the cavern, and some of it leads in, towards two great, parallel channels, sloping north to south, under the centre of Supercity. I didn't hang around, but there must be exits into the maintenance system."

"Great work! So we now have an escape route. And are there exits into the cavern?"

"Ah, that we couldn't find out. I would need more time."

"Alright, we have no time. Only use those in an emergency. As much as possible, when the time comes, lead survivors into the system under Supercity. _Supercity_ ; got that!"

" _Yes_ , but what are you talking about? We are going in, and I am coming with you!"

"Trust me. You are my deputy... ."

Kris shook his head but remained silent.

"Now!" Jonr continued. "While there is time, I have an idea we can try! Did either of you notice those grills in the roof?" Ishmael and Kris shook their heads. "There is one just over there!" He pointed to a dark shape that only Ishmael could see in the very apex of the vaulted ceiling above the expressway. Kris walked in its direction until he could make it out clearly.

"Hadn't noticed it!" Kris said.

"Well, I noticed one yesterday; they are about every half mile. Ideal for dropping a grenade right on top of that '45. Ishmael and I are going to take about a dozen grenades and take it out for once and for all. Kris, I am leaving you in charge here. Defend the tunnel as far north as you can but retreat rather than lose more than 10% of your force; we have lost too many already. When it is clear there is no other way, get everyone into the sewer system and go for the centre. Whoever takes the centre needs less forces to defend it, but you cannot fail. There will be no retreat, so it could become a trap... ."

A teenage runner came in from the south, interrupting Jonr by shouting, "We have lost the western tunnel. The big laser has wiped out our forces! Where is Jonr?"

"I feared it!" Jonr said, standing. "Time to go."

Ishmael and Jonr equipped themselves with some armour, three lasers each and several bags containing grenades. Saying goodbye to their comrades, they headed north.

***

As they moved along the expressway, Ishmael and Jonr passes squads of bedraggled and wounded Rebels, heading south. Jonr pepped the men up with talk of victory and defiance, but Ishmael could now tell the difference between bravado and honesty. He saw a weary look in the leader's eyes.

Fearing it might take a long time to find the way to one of the grills, Jonr turned into a side tunnel at an early opportunity. It didn't take Ishmael long to locate a promising tunnel on the top level. They followed it, eventually crawling on hands and knees until they reached one of the grills. Jonr peered down:

"Woo. I always did get a bit of vertigo, but that is sickening! Don't look!"

Ishmael looked straight down.

"I feel nothing!" he replied.

They took out the grenades and waited.

Below them, squads of weary Rebels streamed south. Few of them spoke, and many were wounded. Jonr felt tempted to shout encouragement to them but had to keep quiet. After an hour, the squads thinned out, until there were none. Not long after that, the front line of SA grunts appeared. Ishmael and Jonr remained completely silent.

One hour passed and then two. Jonr fidgeted and eventually could bear it no more:

"Something's wrong Ish. We haven't seen any SA for nearly thirty minutes. Do you think the Type 45 is coming?"

"I don't know. Let's give it another thirty minutes and then go down."

"Alright."

When the time had elapsed, and they had ridden the elevator back to the ground floor, they found themselves in a silent tunnel.

"You could hear a bat fart!" Jonr joked.

"You think so? Oh, a joke."

"You don't have jokes?" Jonr asked, heading north.

"No."

"Oh."

They crept from cover to cover, moving steadily north, until they reached the north spoke.

"Careful Jonr," Ishmael warned, as the leader strode confidently into the vast intersection. Jonr ignored him. A slit of white light suddenly came from behind a generator, sending both diving for their lives. Ishmael had been close to a huge junction box and crawled behind it. He peered round it and saw Jonr lying in the middle of the tunnel, with only two carcasses of dead SA grunts to protect him.

One of the enemy poked his head above the generator and fired a short burst, taking out Jonr's laser and only just missing the bag of grenades. The leader had two lasers strapped to his back, but he wouldn't be able to reach them before the grunt could shoot him. Knowing this, the grunt strode confidently towards his prey and stood over him.

"I have orders to take any senior Rebels as prisoners. You are one," the grunt said.

Ishmael didn't have time to wonder how the grunt knew this but took aim with his laser instead. Another sliver of white light stopped him.

The SA grunt toppled to the ground and sparks flew from another head poking above the generator before that grunt too slumped over. Ishmael looked in the direction, from which the fire had come and saw a human head pop up from a ledge, twenty feet up.

"Hey!" the head yelled. "We have been waiting to take those two snipers out. You acted as a bait, you idiot! Thanks!"

Jonr got to his feet, wiped himself down and broke into a deep, rumbling laugh. "Ha Jonr, your leader at your service Rebel!"

"Oh shit!"

The men on the ledge climbed down and walked towards Ishmael and Jonr.

"Sorry sir! I didn't know it was you!" the man explained.

"No problem! You just saved my life! Where is the '45?"

"Sir!" the Rebel said, saluting. "Squad 82 reporting. Our commander is dead. I am Telmur. The Type 45 turned down the spoke. They are moving towards the centre of the wheel. What are your orders?"

Jonr slapped the man's shoulders. "At least your morale hasn't waned Telmur. I remember you from one of the briefings. East, you say. That is strange. If they had continued south, they could have driven us back into the cavern. Or at least that is what I thought they intended! Hm. This could be a blunder on their part. Well Ish, this means our task is pointless, for now. Hm... . No point heading south either. But I am wondering why they went to the hub. There must be _something_ worth protecting there. Mind you, if they had both Type 45s there, they could use them both more efficiently; defend the whole system."

"They must have taken there for a reason other than the tactical," Ishmael suggested. "As you said, the hub is as strong position but only in defence. It could become a trap!"

"Unless whoever is calling the shots is either an idiot or scared of something... . Hm... I think we should go there. How many men do you have Telmur?"

"The remnants of six squads; twelve men sir."

"Okay. Put somebody in charge of four and leave them here. The youngest will have to be a runner. I want to know about anything that moves though here. The rest, come with me."

***

At the second intersection, Kris found that the Rebel army had its back against the wall. He finally ordered them into the sewer system, and from there, they spread out towards the great sewer tunnels under the centre of Supercity.

In the President's office, panic began to set in. Frank had been leading all operations while the president toured Supercity, ostensibly to glad-hand Citizens in the run-up to another election. But in reality, he felt terrified. Armande One, as had most politicians by the time they reached a senior rank, had arranged for his telepath circuits to be removed; excess traffic overwhelmed their senses, but, more importantly, the security risks were too great. It also looked cool to be holding a com disk in one's hand when visiting constituents; the common touch. Frank had to call him to tell him that one of the two Type 45s sent into the maintenance system had been 'slightly damaged.'

"Are you kidding _me_? That thing is supposed to be invincible! The _Army_ is supposed to be invincible. I am coming back to HQ. Prepare all our defensive systems and deploy the third Type 45 to defend our offices!"

"But sir! That will create confusion and... the wrong impression!"

"Put out a rumour that there is Rebellion! Understand? That will work in our _favour_! Is Infinity nearly ready?"

"Yes sir!"

"Good. You know what to do."

***

Jonr and his men found themselves approaching the hub after four hours of fast marching. They were all weary, so Jonr pulled them over for a rest.

"Do we go back to the main spoke tunnel?" Telmur half-suggested. "This tunnel twists and turns like crazy! We must have walked twice the distance."

"Yes, you're right," Jonr replied. "We haven't heard much from the SA. I think they are concentrating all their forces in one place. Perhaps they _don't want us to know_ they're here!"

Jonr led them back to the main spoke tunnel, and the squad leapfrogged towards the hub of the great wheel. The point man suddenly stopped and held up his hand. The whole squad stopped and shifted to some cover while the man explained:

"Ahead. I can see them. They are arranged in ranks. Somebody needs to take a better look."

"Up there!" Ishmael suggested, pointing to a high pipe-ledge.

"Let's go!" Jonr agreed. Both men doubled back until they could find a way up to the ledge. Ishmael's superior vision picked out the details of the SA deployment:

"Ranks, maybe 100 deep, going back to an inner circle. You are probably right. Only the northern Type 45 is there now, but I can see they have made provision for a second; the one from the west. They are gathered around three central towers of pipes and crawl ways. There is a clear space of perhaps two hundred metres around the tower. Wait. I can see at least two of the Generals walking into the space. They are looking up at something; something in the pipe-tower."

"Is there a way we could reach it; this tower?"

"No. I cannot see a possible route. But if we could _get_ to the tower, we might be able to climb it. There is plenty of cover in that complexity of pipes."

"You are beginning to sound like a sixth-grade poet!"

"Oh, thank you Jonr. I have what might be called an idea."

"Well, go on, while the going's good... ."

"When I downloaded the schematics for the maintenance system, I also took the liberty of downloading the schedules of vehicles in the system. Perhaps this could be of help? They still have to maintain the City."

"Okay Ish. Let me do the creative thinking! Let me know what you know. Do any vehicles pass through here periodically?"

"Searching... . Yes! One of those silver cars normally passes through here at 11 am, every day. It stops and a Bot checks the pipe tower for any signs of damage. But I am guessing it won't run today."

"No, but they might not know that!" Jonr pointed to the glut of SA grunts in the hub. "Let's go down."

Jonr explained his plan to Telmur:

"We need a diversion and a maintenance car. I want you to send a runner down the west tunnel to find any squads able to make a token attack on this lot here. Send two other men to find a car we abandoned in the expressway yesterday. If it still runs, bring it back to about half mile from here and report back. Oh, and get me two silver suits if you can. Got it?"

"And put two dead Rebels in the car," Ishmael suggested.

Jonr stared at Ishmael, who added:

"I will explain later."

"Do it!" Jonr ordered.

"Dead _bodies_? Alright sir. On my way!"

***

Jonr and Ishmael huddled together in an alcove to plan their next move.

"We'll go in; you will drive and I will be under the car. When the diversion starts, you and I will climb up that tower. But what the hell is up there that's so important? That's what I want to know. Tell me again about what the Bots have to check on the tower?"

"It says the Bot checks the ladder for any sign of damage. That's all it says!"

"The ladder? You didn't say that _before_! Chrissakes Ish. You are getting too human. That sort of details is crucial! Are you _sure_ it says 'ladder?'"

"Yes. Sorry. I was paraphrasing to save time."

Jonr stared at Ishmael for a moment before sitting down again and exhaling:

"Okay, so it's something about the ladder. That means somebody or something must have to go up or down it. Maybe it leads somewhere important. We have to go up that ladder and see where it goes Ish."

"Yes Jonr. I will go with you."

"Sorry, I didn't even ask you; I am just so determined that my people will get... freedom, for the first time. The bodies?"

"The SA will detect a human by your telepathic noise and your bio signals. The bodies will cover this."

"Even dead ones?"

"Yes. The body is not fully dead in clo-... humans for some time. There is always some traffic."

"Hm. You were going to tell me something earlier... to change my mind."

"Oh, it's nothing. Just something about the C-class."

"No, tell me. We have nothing to do but wait now."

"Well, it's something we never talk about. It's something very personal; like the sex that clones avoid talking about... ."

"Go on... ."

"Well, we have... oh I am embarrassed to say it... we have, inside us, what we call am M-tag; a Maker's Tag. It's... very precious and personal to us. There are only 200,000 and will never be another, and they are passed on from one Citizen to another. So my parents' tags are out there somewhere, in other Citizens."

"I have heard about these tags; very valuable, aren't they?"

"Yes. They are made from 5 ounces of pure Platinum 190. Even in the Third Millennium, that isotope was valued at more than a trillion and a half dollars per ounce and there was nowhere near enough left in the Earth's crust to make another 10 tags... ."

"How much is a trillion and a half dollars? I am not familiar with money!"

"Each tag, even then, would have been worth more than Supercity. Some believe there _never_ could have been enough Platinum 190 in the Earth's crust to make 200,000 tags; there is none on Marsone, Marstoo or Earthtoo. The Ischians and Timpoids valued Platinum 190 above all other metals in trade, so you can imagine how rare it is in this Universe. That is one reason why some speculate that Citizens came from Universe B. The central museum in Supercity holds an M-tag in its archives that dates back to 900 AD; yet more proof, they say, that we created man."

Ishmael looked sad at the telling of his own story, and Jonr pondered it for a moment before replying:

"Where is this M-tag embedded?"

"Near the heart. That is, if we have a heart. I no longer believe it. But that tag will be there."

"But don't you see that this would not be a natural act of evolution. It has to prove that something or somebody made Citizens?"

"Yes, I am beginning to see that. But if we win and get through to Supercity, I will take you to the Museum and show you the tag."

"It's a deal. Now, let's some rest. You haven't slept for days Ish."

"I don't think I need it until this is all over."

Telmur found them asleep an hour later. He let them sleep for another hour while he waited for the approach of the Rebel Army.

"Jonr, wake up!" he whispered. "Time to go."

"Um. I was dreaming of walking in green fields on Earthtoo with Mira and Chance. Oh well, another day at the office... . What's the score?"

"The car is parked as you ordered. It's a little worse for wear. It only runs up to about five mph, there are a few holes but we patched it as best we could. We couldn't contact the main Rebel force, but we found about ten squads of men; all told, eighty men. They will attack in three waves, in one hour and five minutes."

"The suits?"

"The best we could do was these; found them in the wreck of another car."

Telmur held up two suits, both ripped by laser fire.

"They'll have to do. We'll keep the ripped sides away from view. Let's go Ish. Good luck Telmur. See you in Supercity. Oh, and try to cover us if we reach the ladder!"

"Yessir!"

Ishmael and Jonr took a steady stroll to find the car, parked down the tracks some way. The holes had been patched with biomet and sprayed silver.

"Best get into the suits now," Jonr suggested. When they had dressed, he laughed at Ishmael's appearance:

"All you need is a flashing light on your head and you could be a Janitor Bot!"

"Janitor Bots don't have flashing red lights; I know one!"

"Sorry. You drive. Let's go."

Jonr wedged himself onto a rack, underneath the car and close to the door.

Ishmael put the car into 'Forward' and gritted his teeth while the screeching sound of abrading biomet surfaces increased. It stopped, once the car reached its maximum speed of 5 mph and whispered along the rails, towards the hub. Ishmael stopped the car until two minutes before the Rebel attack. They continued on and had almost reached the hub when Ishmael shouted to Jonr:

"Have you ever wondered why Citizens put Conservation first Jonr? It's not as if they keep to it very strictly... ."

"Not now Ish. I am trying to cut my telepath transmissions completely. Don't make me think!"

Two SA grunts stopped the car, and a Bot with a blue flash, a colonel, strode up to the car's door, motioning for Ishmael to get out. He opened the battered door and climbed down to face the colonel, who began:

"Identify yourself. Where have you come from?"

"Maintenance Bot 3245." Ishmael had read the number on the breast of the maintenance suit. "I was despatched from North ramp, sector 2, to carry out routine, daily maintenance checks on the Central Flue Cluster assembly. There!" Ishmael pointed, but the colonel looked past him and replied:

"You have a clone on board."

"I have several bodies. They are terminated. We were involved in an attack, but Supercity Army soldiers defended us."

"Search the car," the colonel ordered two grunts.

"There are two dead bodies sir," one of the Bots answered in a mechanical voice.

"How long ago were you attacked?" the colonel asked Ishmael.

"Four minutes and thirty-two seconds ago!" Ishmael lied.

"It is useful information. I didn't know the Rebels still had forces in the area. But there should not be any Supercity Army force in that area. What squad did the soldiers come fro-... ?"

An incoming telepath message interrupted the colonel and he swung away, just as the sound of laser fire erupted from the west spoke tunnel. His grunts followed him, leaving an opening in the defensive circle of soldiers.

Ishmael sidled towards the door and climbed on board the silver car. He set it in forward motion and tried to stare ahead while hundreds of soldier bots watched his progress. But by the time he parked the car at the base of the flue assembly, the SA fully had engaged with the attacking Rebels, and half the force had been sent to reinforce their frontline.

"I thought we would never get through!" Jonr whispered, climbing out behind the car. Let's go. Using the car to cover their movements, they found a gate in a locked metal cage at the bottom of the tower. Ishmael forced the lock. They reached a set of biomet steps and began to climb.

The steps turned round a central cluster of pipes until it had reached half way to the roof of the vast cavern. From there, only three pipes continued up but were joined by several pipes that came in, at an oblique angle, from the roof, some way out from the cluster. Here, the steps stopped, but a ladder led at crazy angles towards where one of those incoming pipes passed through the rock roof. Sometimes the ladder turned on its side as it went up, and Jonr felt a less fit man would have fallen off.

By now, the battle raged below them, flashes of laser light and the first explosions from the two Type 45's making the cavern rock glow like crystal. At last, Ishmael reached the opening and scrambled through it. Jonr climbed through after him and found themselves standing on a crudely constructed platform at the base of another ladder; one which ascended vertically.

"After you Ishmael," Jonr suggested.

"But this could take me back into Supercity. I don't know... ."

"I'll go first then. No time to wait... ."

Jonr flexed his arms to return blood to their screaming muscles and started up the ladder.

After only about thirty feet, the ladder ended in a trap door. Ishmael swung it up to open it and stepped into a small room, lined with computer monitors. An astonished operator Citizen stood up and stared at Jonr. Jonr swung his laser from his shoulder and took out the operator with one shot. A second later, a door to the room swung open, and an even more astonished Armande One, followed by a man in a black suit, entered the room.

***

Armande, dressed in the traditional grey suit of the President, froze in his tracks. Nobody moved. Both parties weighed each other up. Finally, Armande smiled disarmingly and said:

"You're Jonr, the Rebel leader."

"How do you know?" Jonr replied "And who are you?"

"This is the President," Ishmael felt compelled to explain.

"Ah, Armande One," Jonr exclaimed "And where are you going with that briefcase Armande?"

"Perhaps we can come to some arrangement. I just need to climb down that ladder, there, for an... important engagement. Frank needs to come with me. This case contains a lot of valuable information about Supercity; everything a President needs to run it. We could do a swap?"

"Swap?"

"You let me pass, and you can have the case."

"I see. So you are running away. And we haven't even _entered_ Supercity yet."

Armande seemed to consider something for a few moments while Frank started to scratch his chest. Armande's henchman seemed completely bored with the situation and then sat on the edge of a desk.

"Any second now, soldiers are going to come pouring through that door," Armande said, pointing behind him. "You will die instantly. Let me show you what I have here. By the way, see this button; I press it and the case blows up. We all go with it but no more vital information on Supercity and there are no copies." He placed the case on a desk and put his thumbs to sensor pads to unlock it. Opening the case, he swung it towards Jonr.

Ishmael saw the glint of something metallic come out of Frank's jacket, and then Jonr screamed in pain. Armande leaped for the ladder, followed by Frank. Ishmael had instantly brought his laser to bear on the President, but some last piece of respect, programmed into him, stopped him from pulling the trigger. He had no such qualms with Frank and made a mess of the black suit in a fraction of a second. Frank's body slid into the wall on the other side of the ladder hatch, just as Armande's head disappeared from view.

"Why didn't you shoot?" Jonr gasped. "After him. Kill him!"

"Yes."

Ishmael leaped after Armande and started down the ladder. He reached the platform and continued onto the ladder, which took a crazy route towards the pipe cluster. It started to shake with the weight of two androids and Armande's erratic climbing technique.

Jonr stuck his head down through the hatchway and encouraged Ishmael to catch the President. Armande reached a bracket and a section where the ladder turned on its side. He made the mistake of letting go with both hands for a second and lost his balance. With a scream, he fell to his death on the cavern floor below.

Ishmael and Jonr saw a ring of soldiers gather around the smashed android. For a moment, they seemed to be devoid of purpose.

The Supercity Army had moved out to take up advanced defensive positions around the cluster, intended to protect the President's escape and only a few grunts remained at the intersection. In the distance could be heard the detonations from the two Type 45s.

Into the void at the centre of the battleground suddenly poured hundreds of Rebels, but from where they came, Ishmael could not tell at first.

Both Ishmael and Jonr looked on as the first one hundred Rebels became a thousand, pouring forth from four hatches at the base of the cluster. Soon the SA became overrun with Rebels and the end looked close.

Somebody tapped Jonr on his shoulder so he turned, expecting a fight.

"Kris!" he exclaimed.

"Hi President!"

" _President_?"

"Looks like it. Our people are all over the city now. Nothing happened. Some of the androids looked alarmed. They shouted, 'Revolution,' but we told them there would be no revolution, only that there would be a new president. They immediately went back to what they had been doing, calmly as ever! Looks like we won't have any trouble from them. A few soldiers manned a Type 45 at the gates to the Government HQ, but we went round them and took them out from behind with a grenade. It's all over. So I guess you are now President of Supercity!"

"That's fine, but I need somebody to look at my _other_ leg. Not sure I will walk for some time... ."

"Can't let you out of my sight for one minute!" Kris said, but Jonr had passed out.

***

# Leaving

When Jonr woke, he lay in a bed, within Supercity's main hospital. It had taken time to find anything resembling proper surgical instruments, the hospital's own selection consisting of power tools. Somebody had finally found scalpels and other instruments in Supercity Museum.

Ishmael, Mira, Chance and Kris stood over him when he came to.

"So how did you get into the city?" he asked Kris.

"Well, you had been right about the sewers; they did lead into the City, up long flights of stone steps from the two main channels. But you know, the funny thing was that this water vehicle had been tied up on the flushing water of the main sewer... dunno what you call such things... ."

"Boats," Ishmael suggested.

"Oh, well anyway, I climbed a ladder opposite and saw that it brought us out in the centre of the SA, at that piping cluster you climbed. Once I had organised the attack there, I took the rest of my men to investigate other ways into the city, because we couldn't all climb that crazy ladder!

"At the top end of the main channel, where we found the... boat, we found a long tunnel, cut through solid rock. Some of my men are exploring that now. We think it leads to the spaceship; what they are calling Project Infinity. But we found some proper stairways that led up to the City. That is how we got in! Anyway, we have everything under control now, so you just lie here and relax!"

Two days later, Jonr could lie still no longer. Supported by crutches, he went to look at the City with his family and Ishmael. When a hovercar had taken them to most of the main sights, Jonr turned to Ishmael and said:

"Well, you wanted to show me the Museum. Let's go!"

Ishmael showed Jonr and his family the hologram of Arnie's skeleton and took them to the vaults to find the M-tag. They found its box, but inside somebody had left a label which read, 'Removed for renovation.' They couldn't find the tag nowhere.

Ishmael led the family back to Arnie's display, feeling very disappointed. They watched a holographic display to find out the latest research on Arnie's skeleton and Ishmael jumped up and down with joy.

"Look! Look!" he exclaimed.

The display told how, only days before, archaeologists on Earthone had finally found the proof they needed that Citizens had existed before even hominids. Next to the site where Arnie's bones had been dug up, an M-tag had been discovered, the holy grail of archaeology.

"Platinum 190," the hologram explained, "is so stable that it never corrodes, so we knew that one day we would find one. All other parts of Citizens are biodegradable of course, in the name of Conservation. The only thing that could ever remain would be the M-tag. Here it is."

A happy, young, dark-haired archaeologist held up the shiny tag and showed the cam the serial number on the tag; 109987.

"It should be noted," the display continued, "that M-tag 109987 has been missing from our register since before the time of Supercity and even Marstoo, adding to the evidence that we, the Citizens, came first into the Universe!"

"Which universe!" Jonr exclaimed.

"I guess she means Universe A," Ishmael explained. Jonr grinned. "Oh, it was a joke!"

"Live a little!" Jonr said. "I never hear _you_ tell _jokes_!"

"Citizens don't have humour," Ishmael replied. "I can't laugh."

***

Jonr arranged for the first open and democratic elections to be held in four years' time, but for now, the humans had their work cut out, getting Supercity habitable for themselves. The sewers had long since ceased to function and there were few ways to get hot water or a bath. Food didn't seem to be a problem; the hydroponic farms churned out bio-food in all sorts of textures and shapes, just as before. One could easily get roast beef, which had actually been made from vegetable matter, grown using only water and starlight. It tasted just as good as the real thing though.

Increasingly, it became apparent to Jonr that humans did not want to share the city with their former gaolers. He tried to maintain order, but when the third riot broke out and two humans were killed accidentally, he had to intervene. He passed a law to have any remaining Bots, except the C-class, put into storage and the C-class banished to the cavern, where they would be given all they needed to build a city of equal magnificence to Supercity. Only one Citizen Family would be allowed to remain in Supercity.

As soon as the battle had died down, Ishmael's heart had dragged him away to search for Yaela. He couldn't find her in her house, and after questioning her neighbours, he found out that she had become pregnant. Bemused, he headed for the main hospital and found her in a ward near Jonr's.

"Darling! You are alive!" she exclaimed, seeing his battered face. She noted his limp. "What happened to your leg?"

Ishmael showed her the Supsercity Army leg.

"Not very fashionable, but I don't mind!" she said.

"You heard what happened?"

"Yes. The news bulletins were full of it yesterday. I couldn't believe they were talking about you. But my loyalty rating is nearly one hundred Ismael. I could never stop loving you, and look!" She held up the bundle that had been sleeping in her arms; a new baby girl. "I don't know what to call her. I wanted to wait until you could help me choose."

"How about Serendipity?"

"It's a bit long."

"It can be shortened to Chancy."

"Really? Okay then."

"But how?" Yaela. "My Personality chip says I will have no offspring!"

"I don't know Ishmael. It must have been that last night you visited me. Something must have happened. Some of the new human nurses are saying you are _conscious_. What does that mean?"

"I will explain later."

As soon as Jonr was able to get around the hotel on his crutches, Ishmael introduced him to Yaela and the new-born Chancy. Jonr smiled and made all the right noises, but he looked awkward. As soon they were out of Yaela's earshot, Jonr pulled Ishmael aside, whispering:

"But how is it possible? I have never understood what happens with android birth. Did she actually _give_ birth?"

"Ah. It's complicated, but basically, yes, Yaela's body is capable of manufacturing a tiny... android. This android has no M-tag and is not really aware of anything. It doesn't grow, but after six months, it is taken away and replaced by a minor, which has the new M-tag. I only learned all this yesterday in the Hospital archives, because I thought I ought to swat-up; I think that's the phrase. This information is not normally known to Citizens and these stages are masked by memory 'blackouts'. There are five more minor stages, times when the chip is passed to a bigger minor, all held in storage and used over and over again of course, until the minor becomes an adult."

"I see. Amazing!"

"But you know Ishmael, there is unrest in the City. I am not sure how long humans and androids can live together. Something needs to be done."

***

By a unanimous vote, the new inhabitants of Supercity decided that Ishmael and his family would be allowed to stay in the City.

Armande had been prepared to launch the spaceship Infinity immediately with only the specially modified C-class Bots to accompany him; his excuse; that they needed an administrator Bot to control them. He never even considered taking the extra twenty humans, for which Infinity had been designed.

Jonr proceeded with plans to launch the ship, using the twenty modified Bots and twenty human volunteers. He invited Ishmael to join the crew, but the ex-Citizen dropped a bombshell:

"I have only six months left to live Jonr. I will be naturally Terminated, and there is nothing that can be done to stop that!"

"Six months? It is too short!"

"But I am one thousand years old. And now I have a child. I am not sad at all!"

"We will delay launch for six months then. Besides, I am told it might take that long for the Earthone computer to calculate the possible point of collapse and the location of the Blinker star. It's never in the same place as the Big Bang!"

"You believe the theory then? But the collapsing balloon; you can never reach the void from the surface."

"The analogy is imperfect. The 'surface' metaphor is approximate, to say the least."

"I wish you all the best of luck then. I wish I could come. Perhaps you could take Chancy?"

"I will think about it."

"Jonr. There is one last thing I want to do together. Your Chance once told me that Supercity is underground. But I remember seeing passenger rockets heading to Earthone. Every day, it seemed one would pass overheard. I need to see for myself."

"Very well. Up there, you will find only the hydroponic farms. But let's go and see."

By means of a well-hidden elevator system, they ascended for three quarters of a mile before the elevator passed a flat surface, painted to represent sky. Ishmael stared at it in disbelief. Above it lay only a complex framework of ancient seribdenum and biomet beams, which supported a vast hydroponic farm. Above this, he could see a vast set of transparent panels, much as above the Cavern, and through these panels he could see the main star of Marstoo.

"I see it, and now I finally believe it," Ishmael said. "It makes me feel sad. But at least I am seeing reality."

"One reality," Jonr corrected. " _Our_ reality, but there may be others!"

"Yes. Let's go back. I have seen enough."

But Ishmael's plans for little Chance were not to be realised.

Three months later, a man broke into Ishmael's house and killed Chance as she played with her toys. Yaela had been ironing and suffered severe damage, trying to protect her child.

***

Infinity had the most probable location of the Blinker star programmed in and the twenty special Bots had been prepared. Twenty human volunteers, including Jonr and his family, had been chosen, and the adventure seemed about to begin when tragedy struck again.

During a short shopping trip, a man attacked the repaired Yaela with a laser and destroyed her.

Ishmael had been beside himself with grief. He told Jonr that he yearned for his own Termination now. Jonr had the android taken into protection until that time came.

On the eve of Infinity's launch, Ishmael lay on his deathbed, waiting for all his system to shut down. Already, he could no longer feel his legs. Jonr broke off all engagements to sit with his friend until the end. He tried to say something cheerful:

"I have some news. You know those Ischians who we once fought so bitterly?"

"Ah yes, the Dogs. I remember."

"Guess what; some of them survived their war with the Timpoids after all. They have contacted us. They have their own calculations for finding the Blinker and want to come with us!"

"Will you let them?"

"Well, they can't have survived _this_ long without becoming peaceful. Ten of them arrive today."

"Good. The more the merrier, I think you humans say; I found that in the annals!"

Jonr reached out and took his friend's hand.

"Jonr, I don't think I have more than a few minutes left. There is something I want you to do for me."

"Yes?"

"When the lights go out in my eyes, I want you to turn me over. On my back, you will find a panel, marked C199989. You will need a special tool; it's there, on the table. Take the panel off and look deep inside the cavity. At the very back, you will see a small silver plate. It's the M-tag. I want you to take it out and look at it."

When we were in the Museum and saw that M-tag holo-image, it occurred to me that a Maker's Tag would not only contain the serial number but some emblem of the Maker; or at least that seems to be what humans do. I have never seen the reverse side of a tag; they never show it. I want you to look. If I am right, it might prove, once and for all, who created me; an android or a human.

"You're still not convinced?"

"I am but we need proof; I don't want those C-class... beings on the Infinity believing a lie. Unfortunately, _I_ won't be here to see the proof."

"But I could take it out now!"

"No! No, don't do that. It forms a vital part of my circuits; without it, I can't function and I want to experience my last minutes with you. Tell me what your thoughts about my baby, Chancy."

"Well, I didn't have much time with her, but she seemed as beautiful as any child of my own could be. _My_ Chance loved her, of course... ." Jonr glanced at Ishmael, but the light in his eyes had gone out.

Jonr turned over the android and used the tool to release the service plate. Deep inside, he saw the platinum 190 tag and removed it. He saw the serial number C199989 and turned the tag over. He knew the archaeologists on Earthone hadn't falsified the discovery of the M-tag in the same geological layer as the 5.4 million years BC hominid, Arnie, so what he saw took his breath away. He saw the unmistakable, etched image of a human family; a father with his arm around a mother and a child, who waggled two fingers behind his father's head, mimicking the ears of a rabbit or some other big-eared mammal.

"That settles that then," whispered Jonr. "Humans _must_ have created the C-class. But if there were intelligent humans before Arnie, where did _they_ come from?"

***

# Epilogue

The Infinity's engines had been limited to 'Impulse' power for three weeks, but now she had safely left the orbit of Marstoo's sun. The crew had settled, but there had already been squabbles between the jackal-headed Ischians and the New Citizens of Marstoo. Jonr had a feeling the warlike Ischians would mean trouble.

Nevertheless, morale rose high and anticipation of adventure even higher.

Jonr sat in the Captain's Chair and surveyed all the system lights for the half-mile diameter spaceship, which had taken a thousand years to build. All lights were green. The time to go had come.

Travelling at 0.6 times the speed of light and using a worm hole every day, each of approximately 4 million light years in 'distance,' which the sophisticated onboard systems had finally been able to locate, they could reach the Blinker star in less ten years. That would be just before the Blinker went out, and the Big Crunch annihilated everything in Universe A.

Jonr cleared his throat and ordered, "Engage full power, now!"

***

The End

Learn more about the Ischians' war with Earth and blankers in Chapter One of Too Bright the Sun, after the links, or buy it online.

# Too Bright the Sun

Lazlo Ferran

Copyright © 2011 by Lazlo Ferran

All Rights Reserved

Prologue

It's been over ten years since Gary Enquine sent my friend Przeltski to a certain death. Not one day has gone by without the memories of that battle prowling my mind like a waking nightmare. Many times, I have woken in a cold-sweat thinking about it. I will not rest, cannot rest, until Gary Enquine has been brought to justice and been forced to pay for his cowardice. Ten years; it's a long time but I can be patient. Personal journal entry of Jake Nanden for 2101, Feb 3. 1.

***
Chapter One

The little voice asked, after peering out of another portal at an earlier moment in his life, "Is it possible to time travel for I perceive that I can?"

"Only after you leave this life," a voice, high and mighty, said.

Then the little voice changed its tone for it had grown angry. "But that's not fair! For, the one thing I wish I can't have."

"Until you leave this life," the high voice said.

"Yes."

"Then now you can see advantages to moving beyond this life you have."

And the little voice perceived that all his previous angers, about matters of the flesh and daily living were not proper angers. A proper anger is the anger that desirable things lay beyond the portal of death. And so from that moment on his struggles to survive, to fight against the current, seemed improper to him and yet he could not help himself.

Two of the Ionian Militia sat on top of Przeltski, ripping his helmet off while another aimed his laser at his eyes. In the vacuum of Io's atmosphere, Przeltski mouthed the words, 'save me' but it was too late. I knew I couldn't and had to try and save myself. I turned to get away but I could still see his eyes half closing, then looking up and his mouth rapidly shaping the words of the 'Hail Mary.' The IM would turn their lasers down to the lowest setting and first shoot out the eyes, then take off the arms and, if he was lucky, then they would aim for his heart. If he wasn't lucky, the dismemberment could go on and on for as long as they wanted. I wanted to look away but I couldn't. I struggled and struggled and then I woke and knew it had been the nightmare.

An eye opened. It was mine. The blurry horizon crystallised into the edge of the pillow as I realised where I was; Io. Being a commander has its perks, one being your own private cabin, but it was small and cramped. I closed my eye, reached up for the ledge of the sill above me and hauled myself out of bed. Feeling for the sanicube-handle opposite the bed, I released the cube from its folded position against the wall, selected 'L' and stepped in but then had to open my eyes to use it without spilling. A tube dispensed a sterilising solution onto my hands and the stream of water became hot air to dry them. Yawning enough for tears to clear my eyes, I took one step over to the n-gen, sitting on the white work surface above the bed. I selected 'Fried,' then 'Coffee, black' and clicked on the com centre. I had disabled the voice but I could see the display said, "2101, Feb 4. 2 – 06.30 I. 2 messages. Download?"

I waited for the 'ding' that would tell me my breakfast was ready. I knew I had just had another weird dream but I couldn't quite remember it now. I tried. The n-gen 'dinged' and I opened the white door to reveal the plate of hot, fried food and a mug of black coffee. I looked at the food dubiously and lifted the dark blue mug to my lips. The caffeine rush to my head felt good. Putting my left hand on my hip, I arched my back and then looked down at the pallid skin stretched over my late-twenties belly. 'Bigger,' I thought. 'But only slightly.' I picked up the plate of fried; bacon, eggs, potatoes, beans, fried-bread and mushrooms, all preselected as my personal preferences and lifted some mushrooms and potatoes to my mouth with the forkette. My buds tested the taste; it had that slight hint of mint or something metallic about it. "Damn," I said out loud. For a few days now, breakfast had tasted like this and I wasn't sure if it was a fault with the n-gen or this batch of plasma. My n-gen was civvy and another one of the perks allowed to commanders; I'd had it for nearly five years and it had been everywhere with me. Normally they didn't last longer than three years.

Balancing the plate in my left hand, I picked up the remote, pressed 'Monitor,' chose 'North elevation,' then 'R' for recording and 'Dec 9, 11.00,' morning on the day we had arrived, a date I chose out of habit. I pointed the remote at the panel, shaped like a window, on the narrow wall behind the pillow of the bed and it filled with the image of the ground to the north of the command-post. Just like a window, you could even see 'around' the window frame, if you wished to put your head that close to it. Yellow and reddish sulphur stretched away between the rocky silicates to a jagged horizon, a few hundred yards above the level of the command-post and perhaps two miles away. In places, the silicate rock looked white and in others a beautiful emerald green. If it hadn't been for the bright purplish glow of the morning aurora above, I could have believed I was in the Mojave Desert on Earth, a memory I had of visiting my grandparents once. Taking bigger mouthfuls, with my nostrils closed to avoid the nasty after-taste, I downed the breakfast and alternated my gaze between the landscape on the wall and the contents of the room. I took in the half-finished bottle of vodka next to the empty glass on the narrow table across the gang-way from my bed. I saw the open notepad next to it with a few scrawled lines at the top of a new page. Writing pulp crime-novels was my weakness or my hobby, depending on one's generosity.

I had finished the fried so I continued sipping black coffee and put on the Trion head-band, activating it by flicking a tiny black switch next to my left temple.

"Record," I said. Most company commanders, at least in USAC, were obliged to record their activities for viewing by paid subscribers; part of a deal USAC had made with the Amtel branch of RA. Most hated doing it but at least you could choose what to record and I never gave the leeches anything of real interest. The recording had been made by a cam in the com so a leech couldn't see anything on my heads-up.

"Download," I said. A red light flickered once on the com. The first of two messages scrolled on the heads-up display in front of my left eye:

Contact: Jena Ω "Hi Jake. I know you're trying to make me jealous by not replying to my last messages but then again you could just be under attack and I'm supposed to be the rational woman so I can deal with _that_. I might just be too busy this week to record anything for you too. My boss wants me to prepare a legal-briefing for our merger with a company which has connections with Riccard-Amtel! Can you believe it? Oh I know we try not to bring business into our relationship but I couldn't help myself. The consequences could be so far-reaching. Promotion, relocation. Who knows? Umm. In answer to your question last time; okay I've held out for quite a while haven't I but, yes, women do feel that sometimes. I suppose... Tell me more about what you do... Not during the day (with the boyz and grrls) but after. Are you still writing? Chloe misses u too. xx" End.

Contact: Mary "Hi darling. Mum here. How's the (censored) winter? I know this will probably be censored but I don't care. There's lots to tell you but I'll keep it short for now. I'm just off to a local council meeting and later there's an art exhibition; Raccauld, which Justine and I are going to. Actually, I'm meeting her for coffee at lunchtime. I think she wants to do some shopping. You know what she's like; you can't stop her once hubby has been paid. The Gazette had a nice photo of you the other day, which I have stuck in the photo album. You're a hero around here. The young boys talk of nothing else but the Iron Cross; I hear them when we go for picnics by the river. Oh yes and Robert O'Flannery has been elected Mayor again and has approved redevelopment of the area by the river. Office block I believe. Such a shame. One thing I was going to mention. A peculiar thing happened the other day..."

I heard a loud banging on the cabin-door which made me flinch. "Stop record," I said and ignored the rest of the message in the heads-up. I took two steps to the door and opened it. Sergeant Stone's chiseled face, topped with a brown flat-top and with shaving foam around its cheeks, confronted me. He stood, dressed only from the waist down.

"Yes Sergeant?" I tried to sound patient.

"Sir. Seismic activity detected 700 yards east of perimeter. About 100 feet down."

"Okay. Pick four men and get packed. I'll be with you in five."

"Sir? We can investigate if you want. You don't need to come."

"No but I want to come. I need the exercise."

"Sir." He didn't salute. I liked to be informal with my troops most of the time in combat situations, especially the officers and Stone in particular, who had been with me a long time.

***

"Lieutenant Osei, you have the comm."

We were in the port airlock five minutes later, myself unshaven, all in full-combat gear and Sergeant Stone handed me a Trion X.50. As the red light moved to 'Gravity-local,' we all grabbed the hand rails. Gravity on Io was about one fifth of that on Earth or about the same as the Moon and without the S-Grav, the rocking motion of the lift as it took us down to the surface would throw us about. The hatch opened and I led the team out into the moonlit night. I could feel the crunch of sulphur and silicates under my boots but all I could only hear my breath and the steady beep, every two seconds of the uplink indicator. We used a two-step canter to move over the terrain in a defensive pattern of two columns of three, ten feet apart. That was enough separation to give covering fire in all directions without hitting each other if needed. We were looking for any sign of a drill rig at the indicated distance of 700 yards. The Ionian Militia normally didn't have the resources for automated rigs so there would be two or three poor bastards manning it, armed with A.M. 27s most probably. They would be targeting our S-Grav singularity, 1000 feet below the MCS – a known Mob. Command Station weakness. Our MCS had been fitted with, as standard, S-Grav Type 4; a lot more stable than the Type 3. Its governor was accurate to 14-10 Volts, which it had to be to keep the singularity weak enough to be safe but strong enough to work effectively.

***

**Database download on the Ionian Militia:** The Ionian Militia (IM) was formed by miners on Io, moon of Jupiter on June 1 2089. Their living conditions were already tough, but falling iron prices led to smaller pay-rises and longer hours. They went on strike and in the long summer of 2080 Earth News bulletins were full of items about iron shortages and skirmishes between USAC troops and miners on IO. Led by Richard Ortega, the miners demanded some concessions, most prominent being that their families could live with them. This was granted but shortly after their families arrived, the miners were subjected to further pay-cuts and reductions in supply of essential equipment. From the Ionian Iron Miners Union was formed the Ionian Miner's Union, led by Ortega. This powerful union then began receiving equipment and other supplies directly from the Rebel Alliance on Earth, a move that was seen as highly provocative by the USAC forces, then in administrative control on Io and then attempted to block these supplies and suppress resistance using overpowering force. From the Ionian Miner's Union Ortega then formed the Ionian Militia, a small but highly trained and well-equipped force which operated using guerrilla tactics against USAC. The force gradually grew in size and strength until, ten years later, they are a significant force on Io, controlling one half of its surface. Only a few mines remained loyal to USAC, raising Solar System prices of iron and putting an end to the building of the great J stations. **End Download.**

***

Micro-singularities were inherently unstable anyway, for safety reasons, but the governor itself created the only real vulnerability in the Type 4. Located, by necessity, in the column only a few inches from the singularity, it could be damaged by a small explosion. Then, there would be a good chance the singularity would run away and, if it grew rather than shrank, the result would be a massive explosion. Several MCSs had been knocked out this way.

The militia squad wouldn't be a problem but I wanted to be fully alert. Things still looked a bit blurry to me so I blinked a few times and squeezed my lids shut to lubricate my eyes. My stubble itched on the fabric inside the helmet.

500 yards out, I raised my hand and we stopped. I pointed to the Sergeant and two of the corporals in their tan-coloured combat suits and motioned for them to move south of the target location which appeared to be behind a slight bluff. I motioned to the other two officers to follow me north. I felt sure Stone would spread his men out a little, standard procedure, and I did the same as we flanked the bluff. I thought I could see a faint plume of yellow dust rising, the usual tell-tale sign of a drill-rig, but, still very faint I couldn't be sure of it. I crouched down and tapped the shoulder of the soldier in front of me. I pointed at the faint plume, he turned to face me and nodded. We tried not to kick up any dust ourselves when we rounded the shoulder of the bluff and the soldier in front held up his hand just before stopping. This was it. They were there. His gloved fingers counted down three, two, one and then he moved forward. He aimed his X.50 at something while I followed him, pointing mine in the same direction. When I emerged into the dip behind the bluff, I saw what I had expected; a low wall of sulphur-dirt around a square dugout, perhaps ten feet along each side, with a cover slung over it to collect the dust. One helmet peered through the gap, straight at us. I saw the red sighting beam from his A.M. 27 strike the helmet of the corporal and then the beam turned green as the plasma shot was fired. But he moved too slowly. The corporal had already jumped, done a one-eighty and come down with his X.50 blazing green. I fired too. The poor armour of the Ionian's helmet couldn't withstand the X.50 rounds. It split and little globules of red blood floated out from under the cover.

The intercom crackled. It was Stone. "Our man taken down sir. Going in for a look." That meant there had been another guard on the south-side and he had now been disabled. The rear guards stayed back while the leading four of us reached the entrance to the dugout, on its east-side. Stone poked his X.50 inside. He immediately backed out, saying:

"Two grubs."

By now I could barely see the dugout entrance for yellow dust so we waited for the two miners to emerge from the cloud. They came out with their hands up and Stone made them turn through 360 degrees before making them sit up against a rock, a few yards east of the entrance. While Stone, recognisable by the over-sized dagger he usually wore, stood with his X.50 pointing at the two prisoners, one of his team dipped into the entrance to check all equipment had been switched off before placing a small charge.

During daylight hours you could not normally see the faces of other men through the visors, because the filters would reflect the sunlight but I could see the two faces of the Ionians. One looked full of hate but the other looked strangely sullen, scared even. I decided to question _him_.

I tapped his wrist, where intercom units used to be, and drew 220 in the air with my finger, the standard Red Cross frequency. Of course he had to activate this inside the helmet verbally and might not choose to do so. I turned my frequency to 220 and waited patiently. After a minute or more, the intercom crackled and I heard a sullen, "Yes."

"Greetings Ionian," I said jovially. "It's your lucky day. You are definitely going to live and you might retain all your limbs if you answer a few simple questions."

"Smith, Corporal, 00001," he said. His name, rank and serial number included the obligatory 00001. All Ionians used the same serial number. In effect, they had no serial numbers, which they felt confused USAC.

I noticed out of the corner of my eye that the other Ionian glanced nervously at Smith, several times.

Is he afraid this one will reveal something?

"Well Mr. Smith, Corporal Smith if you prefer ..." I was digging and waited for a response.

"Smith will do."

"Mm. You don't seem so attached to the Militia as your friend there. How long have you been mining?"

"A few months," came the terse reply. The other Ionian winced.

"Uh-huh. Have you targeted a Type 4 before?" The other Ionian looked surprised.

"I dunno. Maybe."

"Maybe? It's the _latest_ type. What sort of charge were you planning to use?"

"What do you mean? I don't have to answer these questions. Look, if you want to get it over and done with that's fine by me."

"What charge?" I made it sound angry and pointed my X.50 at his upper right arm.

"Hey! Wait. I dunno. Four pounds, maybe. We hadn't decided."

"Oh. I don't think so. Okay sonny. So I know you are not a miner so that raises a serious question. What are you doing here?"

Interesting. Is he an observer? A news reporter? Not sure.

"No. Listen. I am just a miner. Okay, so I have only been doing it a week. This is my first time. Training courses are hard to come by these days." He laughed.

"An ironic sense of humour... I _like_ it! Shows intelligence. Maybe too much intelligence for a grub."

My men were gathered around now, tuned to 220, listening in. I could hear their breathing and their smirks from time to time.

I tapped the shoulder of the one nearest to me. "Stay on the proper frequency, corporal."

"He's undercover sir," one of the other corporals said. I recognised the voice; Opinnskey. A bit of a joker by all accounts but clever.

"Undercover Opinnskey? Why do you say that?"

"Look at those arms sir. He hasn't ever lifted an A.M. in his life. Daddy is probably a high-up, I reckon." He squeezed Smith's scrawny arms and the others laughed. The other Ionian looked very scared now.

"Maybe he is. Maybe he is. Maybe his daddy is high up in the army." I thought I saw just the slightest flicker of his eyelid through the visor. "Did you want to see some active service? Blow up an MCS to impress a girl? I bet that would get you a few nights in bed with that pretty girl." He looked uncomfortable.

"Okay Stone. Take care of the other one."

Stone turned the dial on his X.50 to minimum ballistic charge and pulled back on the trigger. He aimed the red bead at the Ionian's right shin. He pulled back further on the trigger and a green shot of plasma pierced the Ionians shin. The shot left a neat black hole for a second which quickly ejected red bubbles before the suit sealed itself. I could see the Ionian was screaming but we couldn't hear him. Stone repeated the shot on the other shin and then on both forearms. We couldn't take prisoners and the Ionians wouldn't take prisoners. But we didn't want to kill so we just disabled the soldiers. Most of them would never see active service again so we were doing them a favour really. Their medics would pick them up quite quickly once we had broadcast the standard Red Cross distress signal for them. Of course, some of the other USAC companies were less lenient.

I could see Smith grimace in anticipation of the pain that would surely come. Perhaps he thought he could get a lighter punishment.

"Well?" I asked.

"Well, what?" he said.

"What's the explanation for you being here?"

"I've told you everything. Just get it over with."

I crouched down and looked into his eyes. I could see a different kind of fear there now. It wasn't fear for his physical safety.

"Take the other one away Stone."

I gestured for the rest of our men to go with him and I waited while the writhing Ionian was dragged around the corner of the bluff.

I spoke to Smith. "Okay now we are alone. Anything you tell me will have been extracted under duress. You won't have been responsible. I used a dose of SPA on you okay? Now all I want do know is; who's your father?"

"Okay. I will tell you something, something big but you gotta give me something. Leave my arms okay. I heard some guys lose the use of their fingers. I need them, you know?"

"Okay. I tell you what. I will just lightly graze one arm but I better hit the other one or people will be suspicious. Don't worry. I know just where to hit it. I can reduce the pain too. Deal?" I looked at him. "Deal," I repeated. He already looked like he regretted it.

"Shit. Okay. My father is Anatolian Smith."

"And who is he?"

"You haven't heard of him?" He seemed astonished. "He is the General, effectively, of the Ionian Militia for the whole of the northern hemisphere of Io. Nothing happens up here without his say-so"

This was a supreme stroke of luck and I had to force myself to breathe deeply.

Trying to sound calm, I asked, "So what is it you were gonna to tell me?"

"You wanna know something big? I'll tell you. There is an offensive planned. We have twelve new SU 401s and they're gonna to hit your mines at Ruwa Patera. Soon. I think maybe next month."

"SU 401s?"

"You didn't know that did you?"

"Twelve? When did you say? In March?"

"As far as I know."

"How? What weapons? Will there be ground troops? What is the strategic objective in all this?"

"I don't know all that. I told you what I know."

"Okay. I am going to give you a little 'general.' I'll put it in your feed now. Relax." I took a small plastic container out of my Medi-pouch and took off the lid. I screwed the end to the connector of the emergency intake on his respiratory unit and pressed the button to release the general anaesthetic into his system.

I waited for a minute. Then I stood up, aimed my X.50 at his shin and fired a shot through his tibia. A neat black hole filled with little red bubbles which drifted out into the thin Ionian atmosphere. Then a silver liquid, the sealant, trickled into the hole before it finally sealed the suit, leaving just a few red and silver bubbles floating away.

He moaned but he didn't scream.

"Are you right-handed?" I asked.

After a moment he answered, "Yes," through clenched teeth.

I fired a shot through his left forearm and then, as I had said I would, I grazed his right arm with the final shot. I saw a lot more blood so I called Stone over and told him:

"Get one of the men to put a tourniquet on him."

I stood up.

Well. This is a turn-up. At last a real piece of luck. A chance for real glory. With this I get promoted another rank, maybe two, and then we will see.

A cold thrill ran through my spine but, for fear of it reaching my finger tips and making me dance around like a fool, I confined it to quarters.

After dragging the two casualties a safe distance away, we detonated the charge and started back for base. I saw some commotion off to my right; it looked as if two of the officers were arguing on a private link, one of them stamping his foot and shaking his X.50 but I ignored them.

I wondered what the landscape would look like with trees or even some grass. Riccard was rumoured to be working on a strain of grass that could grow in these conditions. For a moment I fancied myself as the governor of Io, with plans to geo-form it in some way but I caught myself. My life's path had been decided for me a long time ago and creativity wasn't a big part of it.

The rest of my waking hours that day were spent communicating with USAC Command, first through my superior officer, Lieutenant Colonel Roanald, and then with Central Intel. Of course, at first they were all sceptical about the provenance of my information but they had to admit it was brilliant, if thought up on the spur of the moment. They confirmed the identity and rank of Anatolian Smith. Finally, around 20.00 hours, a decision had been taken. I would lead a task force of three companies in a covert mission to prevent the taking of Ruwa Patera, close to Anderstown, capital of the USAC territories on Io. Covert, because it was hoped we could surgically remove much of the cream of the Ionian Militia in this one operation if they weren't expecting us.

***

As I left the mess for my cabin, with a grin on my face, some of the officers were still arguing over something but again I ignored them. Closing my door, I put the ruby ring, a present from Jena, on my second finger on my left hand and yawned before putting on the headband and saying, "Download." I skipped the message from Jena but played the entire message from my mother:

"A peculiar thing happened the other day. I was in the main terminal, collecting your cousin, when this army type, tall, dark-haired and good-looking, tapped me on the shoulder and asked for directions to Frisco South. Well, it is really obvious to anybody with a modicum of intelligence, it's right there on the board, so I was suspicious. I thought, forgive your old mother for being vain, but I thought that maybe he was chatting me up so I humoured him. We chatted for a few minutes _actually_. He asked me what it was like living on J5 and then he asked if I knew any _other_ army types. I thought perhaps I should say that I didn't know any at all but he seemed very charming so I mentioned you. He asked about you and I really felt quite uncomfortable at this point. He seemed far _too_ interested in you so I cut it short. He was polite enough and I didn't think too much of it. The funny thing was that he was unshaven and looked as if he had been sitting there for days. He had shiny glasses on so I couldn't see his eyes but there seemed to be something familiar about him. I couldn't place him though. Perhaps I have seen him in a paper or something. Anyway, I wouldn't have thought any more about it but two days later, I could swear I saw him again loitering on a street corner while I was doing the shopping. I could be wrong. Do take care. Love Mum x"

I lay on the bed and closed my eyes.

***

The Ionian day is 42.5 hours so the next time I woke, it was still the same Ionian 'day.' We marked time in Earth hours and dates followed those of Earth but we divided the Ionian 'day' into two 21.25 hour 'working' days, too short for the human clock to endure for long periods. This time, when I awoke, it would have been dusk outside if I had put the monitor on and left it on 'Real Time.' Final arrangements had to be made with Stone before I left for the USAC Station 5, in orbit around Jupiter and not far from the orbit of Io. There, I had been invited by Roanald to take part in the planning meeting for the operation at Ruwa.

"Stone. I am leaving for S.5 within the hour. I want you to prepare the MCS for exit tomorrow morning. Something has come up and I am not sure we will leave tomorrow but best be ready."

"Yes sir!" He swiped a salute at me, grinning. I guessed he had some idea it had something to do with the Intel from Smith.

The shuttle had been prepared for me and, as the rockets fired, lifting the shuttle against Io's weak gravity, I looked down at the grey MCS, settled on the only plateau in a flat sea of sulphur, which stretched for hundreds of miles. I looked at Jupiter, orange bands around a creamy sphere filling half of the view from the port with my face pressed close, and looked for S.5 but I couldn't make it out from this distance.

As the little craft drew away from the moon, I became aware of the Io Flux Tube, a glowing torus of green, blue and orange light wrapped around the orbit of Io. A field of highly charged particles, it made radio-silence a necessity while escaping the little moons weak atmosphere.

After four hours strapped into the tight space of the shuttle, I saw the lights of Station 5, twinkling in the night.

"Major. What is your opinion?" asked a bald colonel with a salt-and-pepper moustache, on the opposite side of the large black granite table in the lavish Ops Room. The convention seemed to be to stand up when speaking, more, I felt, to assert one's self in this room of giant egos than for auditory reasons so I stood up to speak:

"Sir. There is a way to do this. It's not conventional and may take a little longer to get into position but I think it can work."

"Well? What is it?"

"We drive sir. The MCS has four backup diesels which are hardly ever used. We only use them for very short distances or when the fusion reactor is broken down. In fact, many MCSs never use any apart from one, which is generally used for some life support systems. If we _drive_ to Ruwa, then the IM won't pick us up on the radar, at least I don't think they will. They are not used to seeing anything moving across the salt-flats, as we call them. If we use the fusion reactors, we cannot get into position without somebody, somewhere, noticing, as you rightly point out."

"How long will it take?"

"Well. 1200 miles at roughly 10 miles per hour is 120 hours; five days sir."

" _Five days?_ Well rather you than me Major. Good luck with your men." He chuckled and I heard general laughter around the table.

The MCS stood only about ten feet tall, even when the wheels were down and in motion and I didn't think the Ionian Militia radar, patchy as it was, would pick us up. But now that we were moving, I was nervous about my strategy. A great cloud of sulphurous dust plumed above and behind us and I just hoped that some observant IM grub wouldn't see it. What made things worse was that there would be two other such plumes and all three traveling on convergent headings.

On the third day, the second Ionian day, the bald colonel's words came back to haunt me. I was sitting, leaning forward in my mess seat straps next to the window and looking at the desiccated desert outside. I enjoyed these moments of calm. I often spent hours watching the surface of Io roll by, with the arc of Jupiter stretching from the horizon up to the seventy degree mark. Stone's face appeared next to mine. I could smell his breath and feel it on my cheek.

"Sir?"

"Yes. What is it Sergeant?"

"What in Hell are we doing sir? Any more of this fuckin' desert and the men will mutiny. On and on it goes and why? Does any other company ever, I mean _ever_ use the diesels for motive power? Nope. For five days? Nope. So why are we the gullible idiots who are letting you do this to us?"

"Sorry Sergeant. It's all part of my cunning plan."

"Cunning? Cunning? I could make a dirty joke using that word that might be closer to the truth. Sir!"

I laughed. "Go and sit down. Just relax."

I stared out at the sea of sulphur, totally flat and featureless, save for the occasional cracks, some of which were large enough for us to have to drive around. If you stared at it long enough, you started to feel that you were underwater, or floating in yellow and rust-coloured clouds.

Just after the Ionian noon on day five, we were finally in position on the flanks of the great volcanic mountain of Ruwa Patera, inactive for many years. As the lead MCS, we were placed only about 400 yards from the main mine entrance and slightly above it, next to the track. I hadn't seen the other two MCSs which were now under my command, each with a small company of 50 men inside but we had been in radio contact all day and now all three were in position, spaced evenly around the flanks of Ruwa.

"Okay Sergeant Stone. Let's dig in. Disengage the PODs."

"Yes sir."

I felt the fusion drive building to full power and then the teeth-loosening vibration began as the MCS started digging itself down into the sulphur so that only the top few inches would be left visible. Although the grunts hated it, the manoeuvre would only last a few hours and activating the S-grav immediately afterwards was always a relief that compensated for the discomfort. The vibration's amplitude, less than half an inch, only shook the MCS severe enough to tip cups off the tables. We still found it possible to work in the MCS. Indeed, working was necessary because, often at this point in a mission, we would be vulnerable and need to secure the perimeter using radar, deployed squads and covering fire. The eight tracks; four in a row on each side of the vehicle, were now turned through 90 degrees, using their variable teeth to cut through the sulphur and shift it to the side of the MCS. From there, compressed air jets forced it to the surface and out into defensive banks. Blue U.V. cabin lights came on as the sulphur rose over the windows.

Our MCS wasn't the very latest type but only a year old. It looked like a long, low tank without a main turret or perhaps a heavily-armoured, single-storey military building on tracks, 126 feet by 64 feet. There were turrets at all four corners and a row of small windows either side of the port turret, one of two, each half way along each of the long sides. The two Protective Ordinance Deploys, PODs, engaged half way along each long side and could be detached and deployed with their nuc-lasers to protect the MCS. Called fondly 'decoys' by the men, their crews of ten had one of the most dangerous jobs in the USAC Army so the role rotated among the crew of thirty on the MCS. The decoys were also useful to provide extra power to get the MCS out of sticky situations, or when stuck in difficult terrain. They were able to operate as tractors or simply contribute their own traction. The skin of the vehicles were coated in an electrolytically-controlled film which could take on just about any colour or pattern. On Io it, the colour would almost always yellow. Of course, when fully submerged, all you would see from above would be a few unusually shaped boulders.

"Deploying S-grav," came a voice over the speaker in the mess finally. I heard a mighty roar of approval from the men.

All the hammocks and fold-aways were stowed and an impromptu game of football ensued. I kicked the ball around myself for a while before helping Stone break out the four crates of beer we had smuggled on board after the last shore-leave.

"So what's the plan Cap?" asked Stone pulling the tab on a can of Viper X, releasing a spurt of gas.

"Well, the main briefing will be tomorrow morning, early, and we have a few days to hang around but basically; ambush. Ambush the Ionians."

"Yeah? Cool. Why here though. I mean why this mine?"

"You'll find out..."

Two of the officers had been having a heated discussion in a corner of the mess and now one of them stood up and prodded the other in the chest. They both shouted and the commotion caught my attention.

"Stone. Isn't that the two who were arguing the night before we left?"

"Yes sir. I think so."

I walked over to them, holding my hand up to stop the football. By this time, one of the Corporals had grabbed the other's wrists. "DeTunne, Walsh, what's this about?" Walsh looked angriest so I asked him again.

"Nothing sir. Sorry sir."

"DeTunne?"

"Walsh has been griping since that little raid on the grubs the day before we left. His X.50 jammed and he blames it on poor equipment but I told him he should have checked his weapon before we left."

"I could have been killed sir!" Walsh said. "A grub guard pointed his piece directly at my face; just luck that DeTunne covered me. It's _shit_ equipment! Same as usual. We shouldn't have to check everything all the time."

He knew I hadn't checked my X.50 before we left, the one handed to me just before we entered the airlock, but he wouldn't dare say it. Normally I would have cut this conversation short but the looks on the faces of men, now surrounding us, told me that he wasn't the only one to feel this way. I sat on the arm of a foldaway.

"Well it's best to get this out in the open and for once we have time." I pulled the rings on two more cans of Viper and handed them to Walsh and DeTunne. "Let's hear it."

"Well sir. When I joined USAC I thought I was joining the best. I thought we that we had the best men and we would have the best equipment. Now I see that we do have the best men but we do _not_ have the best equipment. Constantly, we're being let down by stuff that doesn't work or is just badly made. I mean my old man's dad used to talk about cars being made on Friday afternoon, having loads of faults. Some of our gear is like _that_. I mean look at this thing!" He pointed to the ceiling. "There isn't one civilian transport on this moon that _uses_ diesels. _Nothing_ uses diesels any more. Everybody knows solar fusion is better; smoother, quieter and more efficient. But _no_. The _army_ still uses diesels. Man, that technology is like the _Stone Age_. I mean, the only innovation I can remember is that we use Diesel'o now and that's a laugh! Diesel'o. You can't buy it anywhere, even on the black market. Only USAC use it and that's only because Riccard-Amtel make it. So this army is owned by Riccard-Amtel." Feeling he had scored a point, he lifted the Viper to his mouth and took a long swig.

"He's got a point sir," Opinnskey said. "Why are we even here? Another cruddy mission like the last one. We spent fifteen weeks holed-up on the side of that rock just waiting for any IM traffic from the mines. Why the hell would they bother? There's nothing there! All we were doing was watching no-man's land. Border guards. That's all we were but that's just cos we are R-Company." There was general laughter from the men. Our name was K-Company but we were known colloquially as R-Company.

"Ah, now you're talking!" DeTunne said. "I agree that all we are is border guards. We get all the shit jobs, and I hope this job's gonna be better but I _don't_ agree about equipment and I _don't_ agree about what you say about USAC."

"Republican!" shouted one of the other officers.

DeTunne swung to face him. "No! Yeah I know that USAC is short of cash. Every government's short of cash these days but I _don't_ think we're owned by RA."

There were a lot of shouts from the grunts and officers and the word 'Diesel'o' from somebody; a private.

"Speak up!" I said to him.

"Well everybody knows the oil barons were desperate for one last fix so they created Diesel'o."

"Yeah and we're the only buggers who use it!" added Walsh.

Everyone grew silent.

"There are more Iron Crosses in K-Company than any other company on Io," DeTunne said quietly, his head down, as if reading from a book. His long nose suddenly looked noble to me.

"Yeah. Another invention by Riccard-Amtel," spat the grunt who had mentioned the oil barons.

"No way stoopid," the grunt next to him said.

"Yeah. You moron," added DeTunne, with a flourish of his mech hand. "You think I lost _this_ for RA? The Iron Cross goes way back. Second World War I think. Germany?" He looked at me for confirmation.

"Further back I believe," Lieutenant Khan said, with precise, clipped diction.

"Napoleonic Wars I think, and Prussia originally, not Germany," I added. "It was made more famous by Germany though in the First and Second World Wars. It faded from use after that but you have a point, Emphill, isn't it? It was re-popularised at the beginning of the Ionian Wars. I think they needed something with more gravity, if you'll excuse the poor joke, than the Medal of Honor; something that sounded tougher and the core of Io is Iron so it seemed appropriate. Iron medal for iron men on an iron moon. At least that's my interpretation. And don't worry, some of you may well win one in the next few weeks."

There were lopsided smiles from some of the men at my rousing speech. They had seen many of my press-interviews and didn't buy the character I portrayed for the public: super-tough soldier with few ambitions but to win the Iron Cross with all its embellishments.

"The Major has won the Iron Cross five times, all on Io," added Osei irrelevantly.

"Yes. Ten years, since I was a grunt," I said. "It's been a long ten years. Okay. Five-a-side soccer match with the winning side getting a bottle of vodka I happen to have stashed away."

I made my excuses soon after and retired to my cabin.

Sitting at the desk, I took up the pen and stared at the last line of my novel; 'Dusty picked up the scrap of paper and looked at the address scrawled in a neat, feminine hand.' I had only recently settled on the name Dusty. I had tried Rusty but decided it sounded too immediate. I thought Dusty sounded better for a private eye who specialised in cold cases but I still felt unsure. I wrote; 'The faint smell of a Turkish cigarette, held between perfumed lips hung in the...' and then threw down the pen. I just wasn't in the mood.

I glanced at my left hand. It shook. I tried to stop it and then looked at my right; steady as a rock. I laughed out loud for a moment and then felt the coolness of a single tear, rolling down my cheek.

I sat there for some time, thinking, trying to master my fear, before taking a shower and lying flat on the bed. I closed my eyes and, as I drifted off, a powerful memory came to me.

My dad was taking me out of the dome on his hoverbike to watch a sunset on Mars, soon after a big dust storm. Of course, you could see sunsets from the dome but the U.V. protection took out most of the colour and I had nagged him for weeks to take me outside to see one. In my little hand-made spacesuit, I clung to his waist. My heart thumping in my ears as we covered a few miles across the ochre desert. The hoverbike skittered easily around the few rocks we saw and I laughed inside my helmet. I knew I was a lucky kid. No other kid had a dad rich enough to have a child-sized spacesuit made. I loved him so much I wanted to squeeze him but my arms weren't strong enough. I wanted the trip to go on forever but eventually my dad stopped the bike and it sunk silently to the ground. He lifted me off and I turned to look for the dome but I couldn't see it any more. This would be the first time I had been out of site of the dome and it felt strange. I felt a moment of fear but then my dad's hand on my shoulder made me turn and look up at his helmet. I couldn't see his face, only the reflection of the lowering sun in the visor. It was like a burning disk of white. He took my hand and we climbed together to the top of a steep bank. There we waited. When the Sun was almost touching the horizon, he said:

"Now Jake! Lift up your filter."

With difficulty, because my fingers were so small, I lifted the outer U.V. filter and gasped. The white disk of the sun almost burned a hole in my head, its white so intense it seemed almost blue. The blue became a corona as my eyes quickly looked up and away from it. The corona gradually faded into a riot of colour that filled the rest of my vision. The purples and oranges were deeper than those in a bowl of the freshest and most tangy grapes and peaches. For a moment I almost lost my balance and felt myself falling forward into a forever-sea of spectral light. We stood on the edge of time, until the Sun had completely disappeared below the horizon and then, eventually, my dad sighed and said:

"Let's go."

My briefing to the men had to be made early. In conclusion, I pointed the laser to the nearest warehouse indicated on the map, projected on the front wall of the mess and said:

"Our nearest five tanks are hidden in this warehouse. The other ten are here, in _this_ warehouse and in a third here, five in each. Now, we don't know exactly what is going to happen but I can tell you personally that our Intel is much better _this_ time. There will probably be twelve SU 401s, no more, and I would guess a few hundred IM grubs and grunts, no more; they cannot spare the troops and anyway any more would be too hard to conceal."

I heard a quiet, "Shit!" from one of the grunts sitting at the back.

"Yes soldier? Your point?"

"Sir. Did you say twelve SUs? We will be slaughtered! How come our force is so small?"

"Good question. There are two points here. The first is that the USAC can't spare any more troops, or armour either. The second, and most important for us, is that we know how the SUs are equipped and we will be concealed. Don't worry. Now, my guess is that they won't try the main entrance here, which is protected by our five tanks. They will try to tunnel down to the shallowest tunnel in the mine. Some of those old tunnels go all the way back across the slope to here. I pointed to a point nearly five miles closer to the IM front line. If they can get in here they have full access to the mine. But we will be listening for any seismic activity and I don't need to remind you we have the very latest equipment. Concealment: you all are wondering what I have in mind here. Well the mine has been told to leave us a nice pile of slag near the entrance which we can use to cover the MCS. I know you will all want to volunteer to do that but don't all rush at once." I could see a lot of the faces grinning back at me. "The slag, in case you didn't know, is a bi-product of raw iron production and is strongly magnetic so the SU air-to-ground radar will miss us. Of course, it may pick up the PODs but _they_ like to take risks." More jeers from the audience. "Finally; two points; of course ours is the lead MCS and so we will be in overall control of the tanks. Their crews and commanders may well visit here at time for briefings and as usual, we offer a place for men to unwind on long missions. I don't mind you fraternising, indeed I can't stop you, but that doesn't mean I want to hear about a lot of drug-induced comas while on duty. We will be on yellow alert from our zero hour, midnight tomorrow, and that means none of you do anything that stops you being ready for action at ten minutes notice. Understood?"

I heard a discordant and disapproving chorus of "Yes sir," from the men.

"Finally, I want all of you in your suits at all times from now. We don't know when they are going to attack or how they are going to attack and there's no point taking risks. That's all. Any questions?"

I heard an even louder chorus of disapproval at the last point but no questions.

"Dismissed." Two of the men sat down. "When I said, 'suits now,' I meant _now_." Irritably, they started pulling their suits from their lockers which were set into the side of the mess, over the officers' cabins.

"Osei and Khan; I need to speak to you both privately in the Office." The 'Office' was actually the corridor, beside the washroom on the starboard side, which led to my own cabin. We used it for storage but there was no other possibility for privacy on the ship beside my own cabin. The two lieutenants lounged on crates while I addressed them.

"In my briefing with Roanald, I found out some other things which, in my opinion, it's useful for you to know; all strictly confidential of course and, in fact, for now, secret. What we know is that recently the Mine Director, Choi was his name, was sacked when it was found out he'd been handing over information about the mine to the IM. Now, unfortunately, this is particularly relevant in _this_ mine because only recently they discovered a rich seam of iron ore right underneath Anderstown suburbs and have dug a tunnel to reach it. The IM know this now and they know if they can get into the mine from any of those points not too far from their own front-line, they can quickly get right under Anderstown and, from what I have heard, it's no great task to get into some of the old sewers from there. What I haven't told the men is that we have to stop the IM at all costs, even if it means destroying the mine. For that reason charges have been placed on the IM side of the mine, close to the main access shafts and also half way between the access shafts and Anderstown, in this new tunnel. It's called Tunnel M and if this goes badly wrong and any one of us is left alive, it will be up to them to make sure these charges are blown. I'll take you down there and show you them in more detail in the next twenty-four hours."

There were nods from the two men.

"Osei, get ten men together and take one of the PODs over to the mine to pick up the slag. Then deploy the PODs in good defensive positions."

***

Database Download: Mobile Command Station (MCS) – Mark 6

The MCS officer's cabins were at the rear with the flight-deck sandwiched between the two shuttle bays. Behind the flight-deck and also between the shuttle bays was the reactor and behind this the mess where the private soldiers spent all day, sleeping in hammocks. The mess was to the left of the MCS with windows along one edge next to a row of benches, raised to cover one of the four backup diesels. On the other side of the mess was the wash-room for the grunts and a door to a short corridor to the commander's cabin. This was in the right rear corner of the vehicle and the other officers had, or shared, smaller cabins next to this along the rear edge of the MCS. The beds in the smallest cabins covered a second backup diesel; the third and fourth being underneath the flight-deck.

Mobile Command Station (MCS) – Mark 7

Very similar to the Mark 6 but entrance was through a hatch in the centre of the front which led straight onto the flight-desk. The Mark 7 had the new anti-laser refracting armour which looked like so many polygonal scales on its skin. The pods were now grouped in pairs at the front and back, to provide protection in the event of high-speed impact, a move that many of us had called for, which gave it a bug-eyed look from the front and from the side it looked like a truncated centipede, squatted on the deck. From the gantry, its top surface was still a mass of pipes and vents but slightly less messy now with more armour plating covering it. My initial impressions of it on the testing flight had been good with the reservation that the cabins were all even smaller than the Mark 6 and that the extra armour plating had made it heavier and less manoeuvrable. **End Download.**

***

We didn't have to wait long for the attack. On the third day, night on Io, an operator picked up a single SU 401 on the radar, coming in high and fast. He didn't wait to be shot at and probably took a few nice photos of empty ground around the mine.

As Khan called out the intruder over the intercom, the men jumped into action. Plates and dice were dropped as men reached for their weapons but it turned out to be a false alarm.

"Only reconnaissance!" Khan's voice crackled through the speakers.

Moans of frustration from the men filled the fetid air in the ship.

"Don't get complaisant!" I told them. "They are coming... soon!"

I had been more accurate than I had expected.

Thirty minutes later, we heard a sudden flash from somewhere outside and then the MCS shook.

Khan's voice, calm but urgent, announced the obvious, "Incoming!" and then the not so obvious, "I think they've spotted us!"

"Khan! What's happening?" I shouted when I reached the flight-deck hatch.

In the red light, I could see Osei's open mouth, saying something to me but another explosion drowned out his words.

"What?" I yelled.

Both Osei and Khan together shouted, "MCS Bravo is hit!"

"How?"

"Dunno. Infra-red? They know where we are! Look"

I looked in the direction Khan, sitting in the driving seat, pointed. The radar screen showed seven blips, SU 401s, and smaller blips streaking from them towards all three positions of the MCSs.

Somebody has ratted on us. But who...

"Coming at us!" shouted Khan.

This was it. My worst nightmare had come at last. I didn't hesitate. I reached for the red Evac button and punched it. The Evac button bi-passed all other safety procedures so there could be no time to prepare. Instantly the hot air in the MCS started rushing out through the open hatch.

"Lids!" I screamed pointlessly. Every man would have already taken a deep breath and be closing his visor. The escape hatch lay just inside the mess and I could already see men lunging up the ladder.

"Come on!" I shouted to Osei and Khan but I already knew we would be too late. I waited for the stream of men to escape and as the seconds ticked by, each like an eternity, my heart beats grew louder and my breaths fewer.

Crash! Everything went mad as the missile hit. My helmet hit the rim of the mess hatch and I couldn't see. Instinct kicked in and I groped for something so that I could pull myself towards the ladder. Somebody grabbed my arms and then I saw Stone's face, blurry but distinct, grinning at me.

"Hit the rear!" came over my intercom. Within moments, I had clambered out and stood on the roof of the MCS. Multiple explosions lit the night sky with white flashes, which cooled to red and yellow, eerily silent.

As I jumped up onto some slag to quickly survey the battlefield, I saw troops of IM snaking over the ridge of the volcano. Laser-fire streaked out towards some of the PODs near us.

Laser-fire hit a lump of slag near Stone's head and he dived for cover. The lump glowed, reddish black.

Our position had been under a bluff just above the main approach track to the mine entrance. This sloped up from the south along the side of the volcano before turning ninety degrees into the mine entrance. Most of the terrain looked harsh and slag-strewn but the track offered a chance of escape.

"To the track, men." I said over the intercom calmly. "Regroup near POD 5; half way between here and the mine entrance. Stone. Where is Osei?"

"I saw him with a group of men, taking up defensive position the other side of the MCS Cap!"

"Osei. Get onto S.5 now. We need air-cover and we need it now."

"Osei's voice crackled through the interference from the battle."

"Sir!"

"Then get your men to the rendezvous. We are going to launch a counter attack. Where is Khan?"

"Don't know sir. I think he stayed in the MCS."

"What? Stone, I want to know what our status is and that of the other MCSs. Okay?"

"Yessir!"

"But stay with me. Use one of the other frequencies if you have to."

I looked at the front corner of our MCS and could see the far-side POD turret moving.

Khan seeking targets for the laser cannons. Idiot.

"Khan! Khan get out of there. Now! That is an order!"

"Will do sir. Just one more incoming. Everyone clear of the MCS!"

"Khan!"

I saw the whitish streak of the missile's liquid hydrogen exhaust streaking straight towards the MCS from the south. An SU 401 banked after releasing it and climbed for cover of height. There would be no time for Khan now.

The laser cannons moved to aim at the missile and it grew in my visor until it grew too big and too close. I closed my eyes. I saw an enormous flash of white, which lit up the inside of my eyelids. Thrown to the ground, I watched pieces of MCS flew over our heads until again I heard silence.

I could see helmets shaking in disbelief.

We moved quickly, using short hops to POD 5, where at least there would be a few weapons.

The voice of DeTunne came over the intercom from the POD. "Nice to see you, Cap. POD 3 has bought it. And I think one of those warehouses, with our tanks in, has been hit."

"Losses?"

"Still assessing sir. Help yourself to lasers."

"Tell the other PODs to start clearing a path between us and the southern ridge of the volcano. That's where we're going because that's where their troops are coming from. That's where they'll be attempting to get into the mine."

"Yessir!"

"Osei? Where is the air-cover?"

"On its way sir."

"How long?"

"Twelve minutes."

Shit! What was the point of all this secrecy if they knew we were here anyway?

"Osei. Anything from the other MCSs?"

"Nothing sir. POD 1 and 4 say all comms have stopped. Probably gone sir and all in them, God rest their souls."

All remaining men regrouped by POD 5 and then we started over the small ridge above the road and on, eastwards towards the ridge of Ruwa Patera. Half way to the ridge, we came across the first concentration of IM that the remaining PODs had not yet cleared.

Stone came on the line. "Status reports sir."

"Go ahead."

"Our MCS; five dead. Other MCSs all gone sir, far as we can tell. Some good news though."

"Yes?"

"Look to your left Cap, about three o'clock."

I looked and, surrounded by sulphurous dust, came a glorious sight; eight of our own tanks.

"Where are you Stone? I need you here."

"With you in a moment Cap."

"You!" I tapped a grunt on the shoulder. "Break out the lasers from the POD."

The panel had fallen open on the side of the POD, released from inside, to reveal five X.50s. It was a start. The grunt handed one to me, kept one himself and handed out the other three.

Stone came up from the column behind me, just as a line of IM militia stood up on a ridge to our right. Twenty of them opened fire on our double-column, now of only forty-five men, loosely spread out and with flankers. I knew our flankers would soon have this covered. While we lay behind rocks for cover, I tried to think through my strategy.

Don't know how many men they have but since they must have come the last five or ten miles on foot they would have had the chance to spread themselves very wide and we could easily be walking into a trap. Do we have a choice? No. We have too few men to split up.

"Air-cover?"

"Four minutes sir."

"Okay. We wait here."

The flashes of laser-fire grew less frequent and then stopped. Stone tapped me on the shoulder. I looked in the direction of his pointing finger. I saw Walsh wave from the ridge where the IM had been.

"Get over here Walsh and take cover."

We waited for our air-cover. It came not a moment too soon. The SUs had concentrated on destroying the remaining tanks and had hit three. Our three FA 217s struggled to cope with the outdated, but still fast, SU 401s. Left over from the age of the first conflicts between what was once Russia and USAC on Mars, the SUs were built for speed. Even though their avionics and weapons systems were completely obsolete, their speed still made them dangerous. We watched while the little white fighters fought each other. Within seconds, a missile caught an SU, which exploded in a galaxy of light motes.

***

**Database Download on the SU 401:** As with most modern space-fighters they were pencil-shaped, with engines in four pods, separated from the main hull by wing-lets. The pods allowed the engines to be used for propulsion in any direction and the main difference between the SUs and the FAs was the wing-lets. These were bigger on the SUs for some direction stability in the thicker atmosphere on Mars. **End Download.**

***

"That's evened the odds up a bit!" I said over the intercom.

I stood up.

"To your feet men!"

All remaining men stood up. I beckoned them to follow. We had covered more than three of the four miles to the ridge. I couldn't see any IM this side of it. We made good progress over the next twenty minutes. Passing near some of the PODs, we picked up more X.50s until every man had been armed.

Passing over onto the other sides or Ruwa and towards the dawn, as it rushed over Io's surface towards us, we could see what all the fuss was about.

An IM Fortriss digger sat vertically in its cradle after having just exited a shaft in the surface below it, about four-hundred yards in front of us. It would be right over the position of one of the shallowest tunnels in the mine, if the IM ground-radar had been accurate enough.

"Osei? I want you to organise the vehicles. I want the tanks and PODs to go around the back of the IM and give us covering fire from there. Keep them well out; their longer range should keep them safe. Once they're in position and covering us, we will go in, in small groups. The ground's rough down there and I can't see how many men they have."

"Stone. I've seen more than one shot come from that ridge on our right. Draw their fire while we circle around them."

After we eliminated them, Stone rejoined us. All the while, the tanks and PODs circled around behind the Fortriss and moved into position.

"Sir! Look!" A Grunt called Dunne pointed way to the right, in front of me and ahead of the digger. I just caught a bright flash of orange light from the corner of my eye. We were only about fifty yards from the digger and under heavy fire as we moved. We had taken shelter for a moment behind a large lump of slag on the lip of a shallow gully.

"What the fu...!"

"Laser sir?"

"I dunno but whatever it is, it's big and just took out one of our tanks. The IM shouldn't have equipment like that... not that they can carry around. I haven't seen any vehi..."

That was when I realised my big mistake.

Looking to the right of the field of battle, I saw more IM coming in on the opposite side to that of the first attack. They were all armed with laser-knives. We were caught between two lines. They had laser-knives because they didn't want to hit each other. But more significant was the fact that they knew, and we knew, they couldn't win. It had to be just a delaying tactic.

In the instant the real situation registered in my over-busy mind, I stood still, watching another orange explosion beyond the digger.

Another tank or POD.

There are always moments like this in any battle for a leader; the moment when you perceive the deepest strategy of your opponent and have to take stock of what you have remaining and what's achievable. It's a moment of complete silence and clarity. That is, your mind becomes silent and, if you are a good leader, you find you have plenty of time to work out a strategy which has a chance of winning. The moment came and went and I acted.

"Stone!" I shouted into the intercom. "Watch the rear. Keep it open!"

"You think I didn't know that?" Stone always became angry in the heat of battle.

The first wave of IM grunts leaped over the lip of a rise and clashed with my flanking men. Carnage followed with the IM losing every man.

I knew now that we were surrounded. Seeing it as their last chance to trap us, the IM had delayed us and now we were probably seconds away from slaughter. I weighed the distance to the digger and wondered what forces were between us and it.

"Sir! Osei here. Sir. Something's wrong!"

"Yes I know. We're in trouble. What is it Osei? Quick!"

"The digger sir. It's stopped digging. Also, we're too close. If they still needed it, would they pick an ambush point this close?"

"Yes." It was irrelevant now. We had to get out of the ambush or lose our lives and the mine. The digger had been down again since we'd first seen it but now it sat again, motionless in its cradle. That meant that they already had broken through to a shaft and most likely already had a squad on their way down.

So near yet so far.

"Back! Retreat!"

The second wave of laser-knife armed IM had reached us and it was a question of survival for now. I aimed my laser at a grunt and pulled the trigger. It seemed senseless but I just kept picking them off while slowly shuffling along the gully with my column of men. When the last of the disposable IM grunts had fallen, the real attack started. Incoming green laser-fire forced us to the ground. I found myself looking at a lump of slag next to a piece of silicate, coated in fine sulphur powder, only an inch from my visor. For a moment, I thought how beautiful the yellow of the powder looked against the red flecked black of the slag and the variegated, speckled silicate.

"Stone? I spoke into the intercom, almost in a whisper."

"Here Cap. Things are bad aren't they?"

"Yes. How is it back there? Is there a way out?"

"Er. Let me see sir. Won't be a moment." I heard the muffled sound of heavy fire in the intercom a moment later than I heard the same sound through my helmet; it sounded curiously as if I stood in an echo-chamber.

"Only one way sir."

"Yes?"

"We need a precision hit from one of the tanks. Osei can do it sir."

"Osei? Can we do it?"

"Er, maybe sir. It's risky. Very risky."

" _This_ is risky Rick."

"Yessir."

"Tank 14. Do you read me?" I heard Osei call.

Laser-fire scorched just above our heads and I heard a few screams over the intercom while Osei waited for an answer.

"Not sure if any of the tanks are still operational..."

"Tank 14. We're here! Just. We been hit. We can barely move."

"We need a hit. I'm gonna give you a map reading. But it's a guess. If your navigator thinks I am wrong let me know. Map reading 21, 61, 42 North, 90, 01, 52 West. Aim about one hundred yards west of the digger tip. You got that?"

"Yessir. Wait a moment. Incoming!" I heard the sound of an explosion over the intercom and coughing.

"You there 14?"

A few more coughs were followed by, "We're still here but not for much longer. Wait a moment."

"Jesus!" muttered Osei to himself.

The sound of laser-fire from Stone's end of the column increased.

"Make it quick guys!" Stone yelled.

The suited body of a grunt fell across my knees. I shook him but he lay dead. I saw a rent in his suit, about a foot long.

"Okay we got you. Nav. thinks you are off by fifty yards. Says the digger is at 90, 00, 02 west. Which makes your spot about 01, 44."

Osei looked at me. The intercom fell silent.

"It's yours Rick. Don't worry, if you are wrong, most of us won't feel a thing."

A weak smile creased his lips. "Okay I'm with your Nav... Take the shot."

"Okay. Fire in the hole. Three, two, one. Charge away!"

"Incoming!" Osei shouted as loud as he could down the intercom. Heads ducked down even further.

A mountain of slag and dirt lifted from behind a slight rise and I watched for body parts. There were plenty of them.

"Stone? Was that a hit? Are you alright?"

I heard silence for a moment and then:

"Phewee! That was mighty cool! Bang on target! Remind me to buy that Navigator any drink he likes! And all night long too! We got a way out of here now! Come on Cap. Let's go!"

"Not that easy Stone. With you in a moment. Okay men. You around me at the front of the column. As far as I can tell, there are about twenty of us left. There is at least one hundred of them. Our only chance is to run for it. That rise, to our rear, is home and dry for you. Get there and you'll be okay. When I say, go. We stand, and give them everything you got! Okay, ready... _Go_!"

Every man stood up, firing at anything and nothing. Most of us couldn't see much because of the blinding wall of laser-fire slicing into bodies all around us. Those that could, ran and those that couldn't, crawled. Some dragged their companions but only ten of us made it over the rise. Beyond it, we had no time to stop. Stone stood there, directing us down the line to another shallow gully which offered good protection from incoming fire. Once in it, we had a chance. We moved in hops as fast as we could back over the ridge towards the mine entrance. Only twenty of us were left when we approached the mine entrance. The remaining PODs, slower moving than the tanks, had been taken out, trying to defend our flank. Only two tanks were left. Tank 14 wasn't one of them. As we had reached the top of the ridge, I had turned for a moment to look at the battlefield. I could see an ant's nest of at least one hundred and fifty, perhaps two hundred, IM milling about on the field.

Lucky to get out of that one. Very lucky.

"Back the tanks up against the entrance Osei!" I ordered. "I don't want anything getting in behind our backs. Okay, let's go."

I punched the code and the great mine-gates, big enough for coal-trucks, opened ato let us in. When they shut behind us, the air pressurised in the air-lock. We raised our visors and breathed real air. The inner doors opened and a portly man stood there in the gloom, on his own. I recognised him as the Mine Manager.

"Sir, what is the status... I mean what can you tell us?" I asked, approaching him. He looked deathly pale and clearly very shaken.

"They are already in Tunnel M. But there is a short-cut. You have to move fast. Follow me."

While we followed him down the long tunnel, he told me all I needed to know.

"The others are all in the shelters, except two. The IM caught them trying to put up a barricade. We blocked the main entrance to Tunnel M from the central access shaft yesterday but they must have found out how to get in from my two men. But you can still beat them, I think."

After a distance of about four-hundred yards, we came to a small door labeled 'Fire Exit' on the left. Here the Manager stopped.

"Go in there, follow the tunnel to the lift and take the cage down to the thirteenth level. Out of the lift, and the tunnel behind you is Tunnel M. You know your way from there. Good luck."

"You're a brave man. Thanks!" I slapped him on the shoulders and opened the door.

We moved at a fast trot down the long, sloping corridor to the lift-shaft. All twenty of us managed to fit into the cage. I pressed the button for the thirteenth level.

"He could be lying sir," Dunne said.

"Yes." I looked at him grimly.

"Why the hell don't we have backup?" shouted Stone behind me. "Anderstown is only a few miles away and S.5 should have something there. And their own troops can get here in twenty minutes. I don't understand it!"

"Me neither Stone." I answered.

The cage rattled to a stop and everything grew ominously quiet.

"Weapons!" Every man raised his weapon. I stepped out of the cage. We were at a tunnel junction. Here a side tunnel crossed Tunnel M but I guessed we were about one third of the way along it. The IM could be ahead of us or behind us. I peered around the lift shaft corner into Tunnel M. The dimly lit tunnel looked clear of IM.

"Let's go. Fast as we can." If we were behind them, we had to catch them.

"Sir! I saw something! Behind us," yelled the rear-most grunt.

"Where!"

"Behind us!"

I raised my hand; the signal to stop. I ran to the back of the squad and peered into the tunnel on the opposite side of the lift-shaft. After a few seconds, I saw them; little lights bobbing up and down.

"They're coming! Fast as you can!"

I broke into a flat-out run, hoping we were all fit enough to stay ahead of the IM. We had a long way to go. We had gone perhaps nearly a mile when the same grunt shouted that they were gaining on us. My men were almost exhausted. Clearly the IM weren't carrying so much weight.

"Come on! Come on! We have practiced this!"

"Not for a few years Cap!" added Stone.

"Come on! Come on! Just another half mile to go."

There were a few flashes from behind and a seribdenum roof-beam above my head glowed red. Men started to drop; one, two and then I couldn't look any more. We had to keep going. Sweat streamed down my face and I struggled for every last gasp of breath. The men around me weren't doing much better.

I glanced at the sides of the shaft-props but couldn't find what I sought.

"Keep going!"

I glanced again at a prop and saw, marked on it, number 573. I knew from my visit, days before, that we needed to get to prop 613.

"Nearly there! Another one hundred yards!"

I think!

I counted down the props. 600, 601, 602 and 603.

"Stop! Help me!"

Every mine shaft has spare props in case of collapse and I knew there were some at prop 603. I pulled the spare props out from the wall and laid them across the tunnel between two vertical props each side of the tunnel. In less than thirty seconds we had ten props, overlapping each other, forming a low barricade right across the tunnel.

"Okay. We will make our stand here! The charges are about another one hundred yards down the tunnel. Osei. Get five men together. You will blow the charges. I want ten men on the ground behind the props, five men each side, crouching and standing. We have the advantage here; there are too many of them to all fire at once. Militarily, it's called a bottleneck!" I reminded them, hoping to sooth the men's nerves.

The IM halted in the distance and took up positions as they opened fire.

"How many do you think Stone and Osei?"

"Forty!" Stone replied, from the right wall.

"More like fifty." Osei, whose eyesight had always been keener, said.

"Osei. Get going!"

"Ahhh!" Stone had been hit in the leg. The shot had almost taken his leg clean off. It hung by the material of his fatigues and a thin sliver of muscle. He stayed on his one good leg but leaned against the wall, panting.

"Stone! Your laser! Do it!" I shouted.

He nodded. He pointed his laser at the exposed femoral artery of his stump and fired a short burst to cauterize the wound and seal the artery. In shock, and with such an unwieldy instrument, his fired haphazardly and he burned quite a bit of flesh as well. He gasped in agony and dropped the laser. Grasping his leg, slumped to the floor.

Glancing at Osei, I watched him tap five good men on the shoulders and break into a run but just as he reached the first prop, a shot hit him and he went down.

"Osei!"

One of the men with him shook his head.

Shit!

"Stone! Are you okay? Can you move with assistance?"

"Are you kidding? I'm fucked. Look for crissake!" he shouted

"Take him!" I beckoned to two of the men Osei had chosen.

"Leave me here! I can still fire a laser!" he shouted through gritted teeth.

"Don't argue."

The two men returned, took an arm each and hauled Stone off, up the tunnel.

"Prop 613 Stone! You know what to do. Don't fail! And you lot; defend him to the last man!" I watched them become smaller as they struggled down the tunnel with Stone.

A laser shot whizzed by my ear, making the air sizzle. I smelled burned hair, my own.

A long shoot out, with many twists and turns, followed I had been right; even though we were outnumbered, we lost men at about the same rate as the IM until their leader, with more men, decided to risk a trick. Nobody ever throws grenades in a mine unless they want to bring the roof down or die. But the IM were desperate. A grenade landed right in front of the barricade, skipped across the dirt and came to rest against the props.

I dived away from the blast, down the tunnel, and a man landed on top of me just as hell came down around us. When, at last, silence fell and I realized I must still be alive, I pushed the man from on top of me. He still breathed too and didn't look too badly hurt. One other looked alive. The rest of my men were dead. Through the cloud of dust, I saw that the joist of the tunnel had split and bent out of shape, as had the vertical props. Somehow the tunnel still remained largely intact.

I heard a great cry of, "Charge!" from the IM and then they ran towards us.

I stood up, found a laser that looked like it might fire and aimed it at them. Thinking this might be the end, I decided to go out on a high. I started walking toward the IM. A laser shot fizzed past me from behind; I knew that it came from one of my men, one of the other two survivors.

I kept walking as laser-fire ripped into my right leg. There seemed no question of feeling any pain or reacting to it. My blood was high; I couldn't feel the pain and I didn't care. I felt my leg hit a number of times but the IM were using single shots now and my leg still held me up. Another shot hit my arm as I took down two IM with a single sweep of fire from my laser. Coming at me in two columns, I had no trouble picking off as many IM as wanted the mortal bite of fire. They fell as if they had practiced it, each being replaced by a man who, with the dust and debris in the air, took too long to pick out his target and fire. I had taken down nearly thirty before they hit me in the chest and fell to the ground, face down in the dust. My head swam while I tried to force my body to move one last time. At first, it wouldn't and to my surprise I felt, rather than heard, the sound of IM boots passing over and around me. Then I heard the high-pitched squeal of two shots.

I tried again to move and, drawing on all my reserves, managed to turn myself over. Seeing my laser near my hand, I grabbed it and fired at the back of the last IM, running along the tunnel. He went down and something rolled away from his hand.

Grenade! Oh no, not again!

But it didn't go off. Frantically I dragged myself, with my good arm, towards the grenade and picking it up. I pressed the firing button with the usual IM combination; two long presses, followed by a pause and then three long presses. The red warning light flashed and I smiled. Getting to my knees and nearly passing out from the pain which swept over me, I threw the grenade as far as I could, just catching some of the rearmost IM in the resulting blast. Then I leaned against the tunnel to wait for whatever would come. I smiled again at the IM sense of humour. The IM firing combination was the Morse code for 'M-O,' the first two letters for the name of the Greek god of sleep, Morpheus.

"Come on Stone! Blow it!"

Becoming delirious, I laughed at my own pun and then it came. A huge explosion jolted me and then a huge plume of dust snaked down the tunnel.

Yes Stone! Yes!

I waited and, when the jolting subsided, the tunnel became as silent as a tomb. But there would be one more surprise for me. I heard voices, IM voices.

Shit!

If I wanted to live I would have to think fast. My stomach wound was bleeding badly and would be fatal if I didn't get help soon.

The IM took their time returning, no doubt contemplating their failure and whether they could do any more.

They came, sauntering down the tunnel, chatting and looking surprisingly relaxed. The dead IM grunt with the grenade had one more hanging from his belt. The only place to hide, so that I could be sure to hit all of the IM; a shallow alcove that had been created when the first explosion had taken out some loose rock. It might not conceal my legs properly but the lights above the scene of the explosion were mostly out; few still blinked sporadically. I took up position, balancing my weight on my good leg and, when they were close enough, I threw the grenade into their midst.

They seemed very surprised. The leader had just enough time to stare angrily at me before his head exploded and the IM squad became a chaotic cloud of blood and flesh. It didn't matter to me now if the tunnel collapsed but it still held.

No good, these IM grenades!

As the cloud of dust rolled past me, so too did the sound of feet. Some of the grubs, no doubt fed up with the sight of death, made their escape. I didn't care, I had no more energy left so I let them go.

The next thing I remembered, I woke up in the USAC hospital on S.5.

***

"It is with great honour that I award the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross, with Oak Leaves, Swords and Diamonds to Major Jake Nanden, the most highly decorated field officer on Io. A brief description of the action on Io at Ruwa Patera mine, in which the award was won, will now follow."

A slight, wry smile creased my mouth involuntarily at the inclusion of Io; a small and reluctant nod to K-Company I thought. I looked up to the roof of the vast amphitheatre of S.4, the Mars station of USAC, and at the crowd of twenty thousand, largely military faces, watching me. I smiled for them. The large monitors picked up my grin, displaying it, magnified thousands of times.

A voice started reading out a brief description of the action:

"On the second of March, 2101, eleven jets of the IM attacked the mine at Ruwa Patera which was only protected by a single ..."

As he read, I saw the events in my own mind, the deaths of Osei and Khan, and wondered what the action had really been about. Why had there been no backup? How had the IM known where the MCSs were? These questions burned holes in my mind but for now, I just had to smile.

The Voice concluded, "However, the remaining enemy fled and later, the badly wounded and unconscious Major was retrieved by a small rescue force from a nearby outpost." The reader looked up, prompting the beginning of a long, standing ovation from the audience for perhaps seven minutes. I felt relieved to get away.

My new, mech leg still felt a little stiff and I hobbled slightly as I reached Sergeant Stone, waiting back stage. We both headed for the expressway that led to the Terminal. Our suitcases had been sent ahead. Stone hardly glanced at my new medal.

"I heard the mention of Io, the subtle reference to the repo-battalion." Stone laughed hoarsely. "Is that all they can do? Us replicants _will_ get recognition _one_ day. They can't ignore us forever!"

I smiled wryly at him.

"Naah!" he cried. "You gonna see your lady?"

"Sure am. Haven't seen her for nearly twelve months. You seeing Martha?"

"Yep. And the kids."

"How old are they now?"

"Naylor is five and Don, two." He paused. "Sir, why do you stay in this business? I mean you could do anything. You have a degree in engineering. Why do you go on taking such risks all the time? It _can't_ be the medals."

I pulled his cap down over his face. "You worry about yourself and let me worry about me."

"Well this is where I get off. See you in six weeks-time. They have gone soft on you. Just cos you got a slight scrape on the tummy."

"Rules is rules. Six weeks for stomach wounds, especially when it's a winner of the Iron Cross."

He laughed at that and stepped off the conveyor onto a slower, side-conveyor which would take him to the gate for Mars. I stayed on until the gate for Earth.

During the seven days of my journey to Earth's orbit, I hired a blanker. Blank-Replicant's were not cheap and in the Army, only officers of my rank or above could afford even the cheapest, Sensels. The name even sounded cheap and sexual to me but I wanted to spend as much time with Jena as I could so, shortly after boarding, I used my credit scan to pay for one and then went to the booth indicated on my heads-up. One enters a drug-induced coma while using a blanker, which is why they are forbidden while on duty and why I had not spent any time at all with Jena since the previous May. During the hour it took for the drug to take effect, I reclined on the comfortable lounger and thought about Jena.

She had requested a vid-link with me the day before the attack and I had accepted for late in the evening.

The link activated and I found myself looking at Chloe, blue-eyed and staring back at me.

"Hi Chloe!"

Her eyes widened and she crouched, ready to make her escape. Her long, white feline ears pricked up and then a pair of hands stroked her long white fur once, before lifting her out of view. She was replaced by Jena.

"Hi Jake!" She sounded upbeat.

I laughed "Hi! How's Chloe?"

"As you can see, she is exquisitely adorable; doing what cats do. She misses looking into your green eyes and extracting as many of your inner thoughts as possible so that she can pass them on to me."

"Well, she's not a fool like you. She knows there _are_ no thoughts there."

"According to Hansegger, only replicants who are blanks or study Buddhism have no thoughts."

"Well Hansegger has got it wrong."

A long silence followed while we both weighed each other up, like two opponents trying to assess each other's general combat readiness.

"How's it going with the deal?" I asked.

"Oh that!" She looked embarrassed. "I hope you didn't mind. I just had to tell you baby."

I laughed. "It's fine. So?"

"Yes. Going fine. Tell you a little more but not too much, when it happens." She indicated how much with a pinch of her thumb and first finger.

Jena looked great. She reclined and hooked her legs over the arm of her favourite leather chair. She lay, wrapped in a white cotton bath-robe. She had brushed her newly washed blonde hair back over her ears. Her inquisitive blue eyes tried, as usual, to penetrate my expressions for a quick advantage, speaking of her own insecurity I thought.

"So in answer to your question, yes women do like to be 'claimed' sometimes."

She looked slightly uncomfortable revealing this. I hadn't expected her to talk about it, especially since she had already answered me in message a few days before. I felt a small sense of triumph. I didn't say anything, hoping she would go on.

"Satisfied?" she said.

"Not really," I said "But that's another matter." As if wanting something in return for her intimacy she asked, "So what has your god been saying to you?"

" _My_ god?" I stalled while I thought of which defense to try. Jena had one weakness that I knew of; she was impatient and so she became vulnerable if I didn't respond to her messages or vid-link requests. However, she knew my weakness too and mentioning God was like cracking a walnut with a sledgehammer.

I tried my best defense. "I don't have a god Jena. You know that. I never have had."

"But I don't believe that. How do you stay sane?"

"Who says I am?" I smiled at my facetious joke. She didn't smile.

"How do you get through ... you know ... what do you do?"

I straightened up. "I live for one thing; getting back at Enquine. I don't need God."

"You have Enquine?" She smiled ruefully. "Not that again. I think it's a defense. I don't think that's a real answer and I don't think you're being honest with me!" She looked affronted and her tone had become acerbic.

I tried the little boy approach. "But it is true Jena."

"And I suppose you really were too busy to respond to my messages for the last two weeks?"

"Yes. Things have been pretty busy." I needed to be cautious. She had changed tack.

"Yeah, yeah. Pull the other one. I am on to you Jake."

I laughed. "Oh Jena. I miss you!"

"Yeah? Prove it Jake. Let me see."

"See?"

"Yes. Let me see you. Unless there is someone else in the room with you. Katie perhaps?"

I laughed. "No."

"Well then..?"

"Jena. Not tonight. I'm really not in the mood."

"She became silent and seemed to be brooding, her face smouldering, her mouth fixed closed."

"Good night Jena." I said, "End transmission," and the com centre blanked the screen. I brooded myself for a minute. I didn't like falling out with Jena and I wondered whether she would now be sitting in that chair sulking or laughing.

When I had heard of the Iron Cross ceremony on Mars, I had immediately left a message for Jena telling her when I would be in and that I wanted to visit her. Later I received her reply. "Love to. Any time and stay. xx"

***

The drug started to take effect and I found it harder to order my thoughts in any way.

Gods? What god had Jena been talking about? His god, your god, their god, the god out there but no god for me.

Mech, the god for all A.I. beings, as robots and androids were now permitted to call themselves, lived in a red world of dust which corroded him and he had three sons, Iron, Tin and Wire. They lived in the desert for they were afraid of the sea but one day Iron, who was the eldest son, committed a sin by openly doubting Mech and Mech banished him. Iron wandered alone until he came to the sea and left his mark upon a rock but no more was ever heard from him again.

The Myth of Mech went around my head until I said 'No!' For a while I had been curious about the android god but he wasn't for me. Neither the Christian God, nor Allah, nor Yahweh were for me. Many replicants, like me, were not able to find faith. When you didn't trust your own memories, it was hard to find peace. The memory of the sunset on Mars typified this. If it had been real, I would have been six at the time and I know the event happened but not to me. Most replicants were 'grown' until the age of sixteen before being bought, or 'adopted,' to use a more acceptable term. Of course, if you had the money you could adopt earlier or later. But sixteen was the most usual age, the age at which most felt a rep child would be psychologically stable and provide the least trouble for prospective parents.

Parents were encouraged to call the first day a birthday and do something distinctive so that the rep would remember it clearly. In my case it was a picnic by the river in Frisco East with my mother Mary, stepfather and sister, Justine. At first, I had believed all the implanted memories of my early years but soon, taunts of other children made me ask my mother what a replicant was. She told me and, later at college, when I met other replicants, I soon learned the truth about our memories. It hurt.

For all this, the memory of the sunset on Mars seemed the most vivid and it didn't stop coming.

***

While in the trance, I lived through the blanker, which had been sent to Jena's apartment. We spent five days together doing the sites of the Moon. Most couples used this method while traveling, to spend more time together. It had some hilarious results. While using a blanker, the time-delay often became a problem. While feeding the baby mammoth, star-attraction at Collins Zoo, my blanker couldn't react fast enough and had his hand bitten off. We lost the deposit of course. On the seventh day, I arrived and returned the blanker to the vendor.

***

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# Biography of Lazlo Ferran

Lazlo Ferran's extraordinary life has included studying aeronautical engineering; being a dispatch rider, graphic designer, full-time busker, a guitarist and singer (recording two albums); travelling widely, marrying in Kyrgyzstan and a long and successful career within the science industry. He has now left employment in the public sector to concentrate on writing. He has lived and worked in London since 1985 and grew up in the home counties of England.

Brought up as a Buddhist, in recent years he has moved towards an informal Christian belief and has had close contact with Islam and Hinduism. He has a deep and lasting interest in theology and philosophy. His ideas and observations form the core of his novels. Here, evil, good, luck and faith battle for control of the souls who inhabit his worlds.

He has traveled widely, spending some time in Central Asia having various adventures, one of which was getting married in the traditional Kyrgyz style. He keeps very busy writing in his spare time and pursuing his other interests of history, genealogy and history of the movies.

From the author:

Thank you for reading my story and I hope you liked it. I value very much feedback from people and need this if each book is to be better than the last, so if you could take the time to post a comment on my blog or simply email me, I would appreciate it.

Where to find Lazlo Ferran

Sign up for the Lazlo Friend Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/K9r8P

Blog: http://www.lazloferran.com

Email: lazloferran@gmail.com

