XIII. Melee
As Truths Unveil, So Too The Fighters' Fury...
Before the blade could split Valentina’s leg, a mighty sandaled-paw slammed the arm into the dusty earth. Val leapt out of the way as Jovian pried the blade from the metal beast’s hand, joining his Lincoln in pinning the violent android down.
“God, am I glad you’re here.” Val smiled softly, embracing the long-haired fighter. She turned her attention to the black-eyed devil caught beneath the town car’s wheels. “Help me deactivate him, Brennus. Let’s see what secrets he’s got in him.”
Once they powered the metal wolf down, deeper into the desert they drove, for the sake of the town they saved. By morning, the lovers ran through the correct programming sequence and subdued the metallic beast. With enough distance between towns, and a little help from Eric over the phone, Brennus managed to crack almost every encryption layer within the android’s mainframe. They still couldn’t dive into its base layer, but as the gray martial artist put it best, “at least, he’s honest for now.”
Or rather, she was honest for now.
Though it bore none of the outward appearances of womanhood, the voice used to convey the information Brennus dove for was female in nature. As usual, all requests for the Second Plane’s location and the Colosseum were met with the old favorites.
“I was not programmed to reveal that,” she spoke in digitized whispers. “Try again.”
“Could you please then,” Brennus asked. “Explain your extermination spree in the town of Sopwith? Why girls, why in their 20s?”
The black eyes flickered as she combed her databanks for the answer.
“They had. What I. Did not.”
The pack exchanged puzzled glances. “What did they have?” Val pressed.
“True. Bodies. Organic. Bodies.”
Brennus gave the beast a harsh glower. “What need do you have for organic bodies? Yours is a superior build to all wolfkind. Is that not what Aces meant for you?”
Those white pupils went blood-red at the mention of the name.
“No. NO! DEAR GOD NO!”
The obsidian android let out a deafening shriek, the piercing pitch of a program crashing. All five wolves leapt back, hands over their ears as she wailed and screamed.
“What the hell have you done?” she howled in coarse, crackling digital tones. “Why’d you bring that out? Why’d you have to kill me? WHY ME?”
The men were ready to subdue the furious android, but Jovian stayed their hand.
“BACK OFF!” he shouted. “This shit’s happening too fast for any of us to think straight. That includes you.” The seven-foot warrior pointed to the dark android and asked the one question no one thought of: “what’s your name?”
At first, she couldn’t speak.
“My name’s Jovian.” the gray wolf said. “My ring name was Tertius. Did you have a ring name?”
“My...name...My. Name.” She was stuttering on the thought before one word came out. “Candida.”
“Nice to meet ya.” Jovian replied, shivering a little. “That your given name?”
“I. Think. So.”
Jovian’s eyes widened as he realized just what he was onto. “Did you want...the body...so you could come back?You wanted to be flesh-and-blood again?”
“...Yes.”
“Is there any other reason they’d want you killing like that?” he asked gently.
Again, those eyes fluttered about, in search of their answer.
“There is war. War on desert. She...cares not what happens. To desert wolves.”
When Brennus saw the whole picture before him, his eyes were as wide as Jovian’s.
“Is this a mandate to all Gladi-Models?” the short martial artist asked.
Again came the silence. Then those searching eyes. Then the truth.
“Yes.”
So that was it. The failed experiments, the old agents of the insane scheme had all been sent on to the war effort. They were now chaos agents, set forth to wreak the kind of monstrous havoc on the desert. To crush wills, to warp morale.
But something about this bugged Valentina. The android had a given name, yes, but she was clearly a completely mechanical being. None of the half-cocked assemblies marked Jovian’s modifications. This was a proper robot if ever there was one. An organic mind in a metal body.
Or maybe, she thought, organic brain patterns in a metal body.
The white wolf stepped forward, fixing her denim jacket before asking her fateful question.
“Do you remember a facility beneath a mesa? A place beneath the Rock of Níyol?”
“Yes.”
“What do you remember?”
“I remember. Being. Drawn towards.”
“When you were there, what happened?”
“Flash. Of white. Then I woke up. Somewhere else.”
“In this new body?”
“Yes.”
The epiphany brought the whole interrogation complete. The facility beneath Níyol wasn’t just for terminating the failed experiments. It was a transfer station. It took the mind of a Nero’s Bastard, and downloaded it into a wholly synthetic body.
It was the last words the android got out before the convulsions began again. The machine writhed to attention, eyes red, glowering at the hounds before it. The disassembled android rattled and rocked before leaping towards Marcus. Its outstretched, wire-covered hands wrapped around the muscle-bound red wolf’s throat as it screamed and writhed, its back half still on the back of Val’s Humvee.
Through all his hacking and coughing, Marcus still held within him the strength to spin the machine around and slam it to the ground with full force. Over and over he shoved and beat, his red hand snapping the machine’s mouth shut as prayed he would sever whatever the hell it took to kill the stupid sonofabitch.
With a final crash, he swung the android’s head down on a rock and snapped it in half. What came out of the mutilated machine’s mouth was another blaring, ratcheting tone. The deafening scream sent the hounds clinging to their ears once more, the cold metallic cry echoing across the desert and mountains.
A cry that did not go unanswered.
The sound of lead-heavy footfalls rocked the earth like an avalanche, the sound racing towards the Pack. Sabina was the first to spot what the dead machine had hailed as she helped her husband up.
“Dios mio.” she gasped. “Another one!”
Just as tall, muscular, and cold-eyed as the soul they dispatched.
Only this time, the playing field was a little more level. The Pack were together, and they were prepared.
“Everyone, start firing!” Val ordered.
Just like that, the wolves dove for cover and drew their guns. Brennus leapt behind his Mustang, Sabina behind the DeSoto with the lovers’ sawed-off, and Val behind her Humvee with the Mars. The pistols and shotgun rattled the android around, but did little to stop its advance. Instead, out came the laser-guns built into its arms, firing wildly at everyone in sight.
Jovian went looking for his rifle, but to his horror, his laser cartridges were all dead. Not a single one with even 5% left on the charge. Thinking fast, the long-haired hound looked around, and laid eyes on the biggest rock just ten feet behind him.
“Hey Val!” Jovian began. “Remember how you knocked me down?”
Valentina nodded from behind her cover.
“Lemme try my hand at it!” He picked up the bulky stone like a baseball and pitched it dead-center into the black android’s head. The rock bent the muzzle downwards, sent the machine stumbling back, but still it carried on.
“Go for the schnoz!” Marcus barked. “Metal’s weakened there.”
The three lines of fire all aimed for the spot, working at it best they could.
“It ain’t giving in!” Val bellowed. “Any other ideas?”
“Yeah!” Jovian replied. “Hold fire and let me at the bastard!”
The towering gray wolf leapt towards the android and tackled the machine to the ground.
“HOLD FIRE!” Brennus echoed.
With nothing to lose, Jovian lit into the machine bare-knuckled. He tried working at the beast’s snout, but it was still too tough to break. Instead, he began wailing away on it in the chest. The metal was tough at first, but one or two tenderizings later and he was starting to make headway. But for all his Herculean might, he was still wolven. Something the dark android exploited with a brutal rabbit kick to the gut, Jovian sent flying through the air and into the desert sand.
When the machine leapt up to shoot him, Brennus knocked it off balance with a sweeping leg kick. Fully disoriented, the gun malfunctioned and retracted. A level playing field that gave the gray martial artist his first real chance at tearing the bastard apart.
Brennus laid into it with everything he had, a fury of fists that finally broke the machine’s metal skin, wires and chips stumbling out of the robot. Brennus ripped handfuls out before another kick sent the machine twirling towards Marcus, who was out and ready for action.
He took over right where the others left off, wailing on the metal bastard with all his heart. More wires and fluids spilled from the machine, its metal the consistency of ribbon as he roared with all his might. “THIS IS FOR VAL.” BAM! “THIS IS FOR BRENN!” BAM! “THIS ONE’S FOR JO!” BAM! “AND THIS ONE’S ON THE HOUSE!”
A final sock to the jaw dropped the android flat on its back.
“Marcus,” Jovian hollered, back on his feet. “You still got your chains!?”
The red gladiator didn’t say a word. He dove for his Adventurer’s trunk, whipped out the long rusted links, and fastened one end to his hitch.
“Take this one Sabina!” he hollered, “ his wife bolting for the driver’s seat.
By the time the chain was in Jovian’s hand, his mighty paw was flat on the machine’s chest, heel digging in with each stomp. Quickly, he snapped the chain around the metal wolf’s neck.
“HIT IT!”
Sabina fired the cream-colored DeSoto up and pinned the gas pedal down, claws piercing her sandals once more. The engine revved up and screamed away, the link of chain straightening out, wrapped tight around the android’s metal neck, ready to rip its head off.
Jovian was so focused on the machine’s beheading, he didn’t see his own come racing towards him.
Fortunately, Valentina had. She fired furiously into the second black android who joined the fray. Once she drew his attention, Brennus was free to start beating the hell out of the machine, once again softening the metal skin for the next hound to take him on. Marcus got in on the action, only to see again another black android in the distance. And another. And another.
“Fucking hell, there’s a whole-ass army!” he bellowed, throwing the android down to the ground. “EVERYONE GET IN THEIR RIDES!”
Just as he said it, Sabina reached the end of her chain, and the first pawn’s head went flying off into the desert, the body dropping in its absence. Jovian let off the shredded machine’s torso and dove for his pearl-white Lincoln. Val and Brennus followed suit into their Hummer and ‘Stang, and Sabina came back around for Marcus, his smiling DeSoto greeting him with a warm rev. With everyone locked, loaded, and firing on all cylinders, it was time to wage a hell of a war.
The machines charged into the growing swarm of black androids, Valentina taking lead, paw buried in the footwell and bracing for the ruthless onslaught of metal bodies against her Hummer’s bull bar.
“You ain’t failed me yet, don’t you fail me now.” she growled, claws out and digging for every last horse under the hood.
When she hit her first android, it threw her back into that mythic Colosseum. The desert vanished, her friends were gone. There was only her and them. And God did she loathe them. Where her first time came with the awakening of her fight-for-flight instincts, juiced to the nines and given free reign over her mind, body and soul, this was different. This was precision time. This was the time for her to live up to what they were going to make her. To throw the whole sorry fucking project back in their face.
When the second body tumbled beneath her SUV’s mighty tires, a devilish grin came to the wolf’s face. A toothy grin filled with fangs and eyes of fire.
Devilish for devilish was indeed the word. She grew demonic in her hatred of these demons. In what they pushed them towards, in what they made them. Their seducing of that sweet, gentle Jovian. Even as the first machine’s terrified screams rang in her ears, the name Candida swirling in the maelstrom of her mind, she knew that there was no coming back from what these poor souls had become. Running them down was about the nicest thing she could think of. Every time she felt another race beneath her wheels she’d stomp the throttle down, toes flexed, claws shredding her sandals. She wanted to feel it. To feel their release, to feel them die. That mind she had worked so hard to fix, to set back on track, was nowhere to be found. It was just her, those tall, ancient arches, the stands of thousands of wolves cheering her bloodlust on. And she was loving it.
Her jade eyes went blood-shot wide with the third body, and her savage growl ripped through her throat as she crushed the fourth. She kept seeing those savage gray machines back in the ring, their acid oil burning the sands as she demolished them, left and right.
It was by the tenth that she wanted out. That beautiful mind she’d spend so many long hard days cultivating was wrestling back control. Even if she still saw the colosseum before her, that better half knew she had to find a way out. All those horrific urges came racing back upon her, pounding away at her head with each thud, each crushed metal skull, each soul vanquished with another stomp of the throttle. She needed a way out and fast.
Oh thank God, the gate!
When Valentina spotted the gate, she knew just what to do. Quickly she cut the wheel and went for one last towering black android standing in her way.
“OH NO YOU DON’T!” she shrieked at the top of her lungs.
She jammed the pedal down, fangs barred, back hunched, hands clutching the wheel at all costs. She slammed the black android at top speed and ran him right into the gate with a tremendous CRASH!
Once her head hit the wheel, she knew she escaped at last, the world gone again into that pit of darkest jet…
The room wouldn’t stop spinning, even as she felt the hard mattress beneath her. When she tried to swing her legs out, it felt like they weren’t there. They were–she could feel them beneath the covers–but she could also feel herself all over, from her breasts to her paws. When she finally did get the legs over, they were caught before she could take a single step.
They were caught by Brennus.
“Easy babe.” he soothed in that gentle voice of his. “You’re gonna be alright.”
“Where...where are we?”
“Sickbay.”
“Whaddya mean?” she asked.
“We’re with the resistance now.” he replied, pulling the covers up for her. “The Ambiorixians. Remember the stories Eric told us about old General Godred?”
“Are the others...”
“They’re all here.” Brennus cocked his head to the rest of the room. Sure enough, there was Marcus with Sabina, the lovers holding each other tight and putting on a brave face. And next to the bedside was Jovian, crouched down so he wouldn’t look too imposing.
Even Eric, the old red goat himself, sauntered up to the foot of the bed, the short scruffy mechanic smiling that warm and gentle smiling.
“Why are we...why here?” Val asked, her voice on the edge of tears through sheer exhaustion.
“Because I think we can help.”
The voice came not from one of the Pack, but from behind the door. The warriors parted like the red sea as the hound behind the voice entered. He was a tall, dark gray fellow, definitely older than she was. He wore a plain white T-shirt, faded jeans, work-boots like Eric’s, but boasted a most peculiar prosthetic. A large silver left arm, decked out to the nines in panels and kit. Though imposing at first, when the man crouched down to bedside level, his eyes softened, and that same gentle rasp told her something she never thought she’d ever hear.
“I’m General Adam Knox. And I think we can help.”