eugenesis-text

ducking Tridents, and watch the Endgame in action. So why was smoke escaping from cracks in the
ground
He knew why: their battle had warped the City. Release plates, de-pressurisers, collapsible holding
chambers, failsafe catches – everything had been crimped and skewed and joined at the hip. Something had
to give, and it did. Thin streaks of fire outlined every fault line, and then 839 explosions removed the
pressure locks en bloc.
The City itself was bronzed and bare-chested: pumped with fire and air, it flexed and heaved and,
finally, tore itself apart. A ring of light fled the base of the explosion and crossed the moat, the marsh, the
mountains. Tridents were skinned and gutted, deconstructed layer by layer. The central precinct
boomeranged into the sky, Sharkticons clinging like fungus to its moistened bark.
A rippling pillar of flame punched a hole through low-lying cloud. When the smoke cleared, and the
screams died, and the sun lay dull and defeated behind the mountains, Metroplex stood to his full height,
smoke rising from acres of bodywork. He stood there, burnt and brutalised, while the fading daylight
hacked out his monstrous silhouette.
He lifted his head and it seemed like the end of everything. The sky was full of competing colours, as
if someone had tipped the world and emptied its gutters. Tridents bobbed in the dew, waspish and drugged
on sugar, waiting for the sting.
And there was the Enslaver, hiding behind the mountains.
Pulling his leg from a warm puddle of wreckage, Metroplex stepped clear of his coffin and began
walking towards the enemy ship.
‘It’s, er, heading this way, general.’
‘Excellent!’
‘Perhaps you did not hear me, General Rodern: the titan is coming towards us.’
‘I heard you, trooper! Take us in! Re-route all energy reserves and prepare for transformation!’
Outside, Rodern watched the more energetically stupid Quintesson pilots go in low for the killing
blow, their hot heads bulging with the fifth-generation vid-cap pap they’d been brainwashed with prior to
launch. Every grunt had been spoon-fed ‘genuine frontline footage from the CyberWar of 2008’ – footage
that had been dragged across the cutting room until fuzzy and frosted, until Ghyrik’s Last Stand had been
MTV’d into a glorious near-victory. The proto-freaks and low-grades really bought into all that gung-ho
crap, but then they really were the runts of Gnaw’s litter; they were there to make up numbers and catch
bullets in the head, to soak up laser for the commandos and wep-heads. Barely sentient, this stunted breed
of Neoseeds were little more than facsimile constructs: a low-watt brain-box, pilfered mem-files and an
upright body, life story as follows: on-line, ID stamp, gunplay, mission download and bang! Seal them into
Tridents, fuse their hands to their joysticks and flush the buggers into battle: that was his philosophy.
The wiser ones - the mid-graders and eco-marines – held back and fought with photon; laserfire
rippled across Metroplex’s bodywork like raindrops on glass. Their target, however, did not register feeling,
let alone pain. Sceptics on the bridge of Enslaver began to wonder whether their enemy even had a nervous
system. Perhaps he was merely a city-sized puppet, a cold-wired colossus animated by orbital satellites or
subterranean magnets the size of tectonic plates.
Rodern watched and waited. When the last pilots had steered their Tridents into Metroplex’s
bodywork he leant back in his seat, crossed his arms and said, ‘Fire.’
Every weapon on the Enslaver rose to the occasion: thermal lances, turbic lasers, quad-cannons,
excet-flares, DD-guns, PVTs, air/air shredders and row upon row of fragmentation bombs.
Not every shot hit home, of course, but Metroplex bore the brunt. In seconds, his body was as grey
and cratered as a lunar landscape. He bowed his head and held out his hands, as if shielding himself from
headlights. The pain raced through his fingers, through his arms, through his shoulders and into his scalp,
searching for the pool of consciousness.
A moment of concentration was all it took for him to activate his own arsenal. Grubby shoulder
plates folded away and multi-barrelled proton cannons swivelled into position. Chest plating was jettisoned
to reveal thousands of splinter missiles, racked and ready, tight as spikes on a running shoe. MASER
cannons sprung from his upper arms and glowed in the twilight.
With one tiny mental command, Metroplex fired back.