A wall of bodies formed in front of the laser-wielding leader. With an almost suicidal intention they squeezed themselves into the narrow passageway and prevented us from gunning for him. That was just fine by Yantai, because it gave her more targets to destroy. I was receiving a fast lesson in why many of the bots in Waterway didn’t feel comfortable around the Tidewatch group. Yantai was only interested in causing as much damage as she could. She revelled in it.

  For a group of robots whose primary instincts were of preservation, she stood alone. It was something that would deeply unsettle the now-emotional masses even if they didn’t understand why. It gave me pause as well. I watched in stunned silence as she cut her way through two of them and left their bodies by the wayside.

  >> She is severely outnumbered. You can’t stand there and do nothing.

  >> What is there to be scared of anyway?

  I powered up the saw and charged into the battle, swiping at one of the bots who was attacking Yantai from her right flank. He backed away into the group, only to be pushed back by the ones standing behind him. They weren’t going to let him get away that easily. The rowdy mob was unorganized and frantic, clattering against my armoured plates with ineffective blunt weapons and slightly more effective knives.

  I kept swinging. Occasionally I met plastic or metal and felt the resistance that came with it. Sparks flew everywhere as the clash intensified. Before I knew it, Pocatello and Preston were behind me, poking and prodding at them from the rear line. We had to give Yantai enough space to do her thing, because we were in very real danger of being caught up in the carnage she was causing.

  The entire time I was keeping my eyes firmly locked on the quadruped at the back. He was charging up for a second attack. The meters in my display spiked as high as I’d ever seen them. There was a monstrously sized battery pack attached to his rear. Without that he wouldn’t have the power to fire it again, and he could only stand up with it attached because of his firm base.

  “He’s going to shoot again!”

  Yantai was already one step ahead though. She wrapped one of her arms around a poor bot’s neck and wrenched them into position, exactly at the moment when he pulled the trigger and unleashed another blast. The red laser sliced deep into her makeshift shield. The robot cried out in protest before falling silent, there was too much internal damage for them to stay online.

  “Yantai!”

  The energy was dissipated enough that it only caused superficial damage to her exterior shell. The metal attached to her chest had a deep orange gouge running across it – but it had not travelled any farther than that. The shooter was taken aback by the reckless strategy that she had adopted. Yantai wanted to get to him as quickly as possible so he couldn’t fire again. Running and hiding for every attack would only allow them to stall our progress and wear us down.

  “Finish them off already! I can’t keep shooting this thing all day!”

  My chosen opponent overstepped and lost their balance. They fell forwards into my clutches, causing the grinder to dig deep into their chest and rip the internals to pieces. They were stuck there for several seconds before managing to push themselves away from me, but they collapsed onto their back and shutdown soon after. Coolant fluid had sprayed across my eye lenses, making it difficult for me to see through the chaos.

  “Shit! This is a goddamn mess!” Preston yelped. His spear found purchase in the enemy line, smashing one of their eyes and gouging out the internal lights.

  Yantai had racked up a huge body count already. No less than eight bots lay bisected on her side of the hallway. The grunts were starting to hesitate, focusing their energy on us instead. The problem was that Yantai was more than happy to be ignored – it meant she could go in and massacre even more of them.

  The gunner backed away towards the exit of their tunnel system. If we could move out into the open space outside, we could more easily evade his fire, but the number of angles his underlings could attack us from would increase. There was no good solution, at least under the present circumstances. I could only keep pace with Yantai and try to destroy my own share of the horde.

  The battle continued for twelve minutes and forty-three seconds, with neither side making significant progress towards a victory condition. They just kept coming, pouring through the entrance in response to the noise we were making and throwing themselves into the fray. Even Yantai could keep up with them at a certain point, taking damage and losing a piece of armour from her chest to a hooked sickle being used by one of them.

  We were running out of power. We had to stop this fight eventually or we’d be at their mercy.

  “Yantai!” Preston yelled, “Don’t go too deep! They’ll envelop you!”

  She wasn’t listening. She skewered a bot through the chest and twisted it, damaging the internals and kicking them away to release her weapon once more. Her other sword swung at the neck of a ramshackle bandit and severed the spinal column clean from the neck.

  “They’re nothing but a bunch of low-rank cannon fodder! Where’s the fight? I’m starting to fall asleep over here!”

  “You’ve got a big mouth. I’ll shut you up for good!”

  He pointed the gun at her again and pulled the internal trigger. Yantai moved to get out of the way, but one of his goons closed in and wrapped themselves around one of her arms to hold her in place. Yantai struggled against them and sliced at them with her sword, dispatching them too late to evade the blast.

  “Yantai!”

  She ducked out of the way. The beam travelled through the air and struck one of her arms, slicing clean through the metal and joints. It fell to the ground, still clutching one of her swords in its knuckles. The gunman had destroyed his friend, and only managed to injure Yantai.

  “Screw this! You lot can destroy a bot with one arm, right?”

  >> He is beating a hasty retreat.

  >> Logic: A third blast with that quantity of energy is likely to have drained his battery reserves.

  “Hey! Don’t leave us alone down here!” one of the soldiers yelled back at him.

  A few turned around and pursued him through the exit, and the openings in their line caused a near total collapse. Preston hauled the upper half of Sarasota’s body with him and followed us through onto the walkway. Yantai was still kicking, pushing one of them over the railings and letting them fall into the murky waters below.

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  “I’m not done yet!” she hissed, “I only need one arm to kill all of you!”

  The fight quite literally spilled out into the forested area that had spread around the central hole. I wrestled one of the Rampants into a bush and sawed at the tube in their neck to make them overheat, before moving on to the next. I felt a strong impact knock me off balance from the rear. I stumbled forwards and into the sharpened edge of a sword, which glanced off of my visor and left a deep gouge in the metal.

  My only response was to swing my arms blindly to try and ward them away. A second later Pocatello charged in from the side and knocked one of them to the floor.

  “This is crazy!” he exclaimed, “I can’t even keep track of this!”

  “Thank you.”

  “I’m running out of battery here. We’re going to go offline if we don’t wrap this up quick!”

  But what could we possibly do? Even if we finished off the remaining members of the Rampants demolition team, there was still the matter of the terrifyingly strong quadruped who was leading them. Yantai wouldn’t be able to easily dispatch him with only one arm, and his physical strength was not to be underestimated, even if he couldn’t use his cannon again without running dry.

  What happened next could only be described as ‘dramatic irony,’ the kind of thing that Saint Sauveur loved to ramble about until Berlin lost his patience. A flash of orange emerged from one of the high-rise buildings and careened down the side, shattering windows by using one of those glimmering swords as a means to slow their descent.

  Yantai backed up into me, “What’s that?”

  Across the way was a familiar robot. The sleek body and burning laser blades made it obvious to anyone with a pair of working eyes.

  “It’s Blades.”

  “The bot Nova warned us about?”

  “That’s right.”

  Blades wasn’t looking at us. She was focused on the quadruped canon-wielder standing in the midst of his army of unwilling robot shields. Without warning she leapt into the air and flipped several times, before coming down on top of one of them and cutting them to shreds with superheated edges. She barrelled through them like a meteor, leaving a smoking pile of discarded parts in her wake.

  “They’re fast!” Yantai gasped, “And that agility… what kind of joints are those?”

  No answers would be forthcoming. Blades was on a different level to the likes of us. It was as if she had been plucked from the pages of a speculative science-fiction novel, with technology that eclipsed ours and went even further. It was inconceivable to me that a robot this dangerous could have been developed without anyone discovering it.

  “Kill that freaking thing!” the leader demanded, even when it was an effort that was ultimately in vain for everyone but him. Their primitive blades, axes and blunt weapons couldn’t even scratch her, not that they could even hit her in the first place to test them out. She was a whirlwind, rolling across the ground on unseen wheels and moving like an experienced ice-skater.

  Maybe this was the stroke of luck that we were looking for.

  >> We must remove the weapon from their hands and prevent them from destroying the artery chamber.

  >> Secondary priority: recover Sarasota’s Braincase and procure a new body for her.

  There was little time to worry about what was the most elegant way of solving the problem. Preston was still hauling half of Sarasota’s body around with him. I pulled her away from him and set to work, carving through Sarasota’s neck using the grinder while there was a break in the fighting.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Preston cried.

  It was a grisly act. Oil and coolant flooded from the open tubes and pipes, before the sharp edge finally met the metal construct holding it all together. The connection gave way and her head fell to the ground with a clunk. I gripped it between my fingers, before shoving it into his chest.

  “Take her and leave.”

  “What about her body?”

  The smouldering wreck was still lying on the floor at our feet, leaking fluids all over the ground and still glowing with the hyper-heated metal caused by the laser attack.

  “Is that meant to be a joke? We only need her head. Preserve her Braincase at all costs.”

  Preston’s insubordinate attitude finally gave way under the weight of the situation. This was no time at all to be arguing about the best course of action. If he was going to do anything, he could at least keep Sarasota safe so that she could be given a new body later on. He clutched her decapitated head tight and nodded.

  “Alright. Make sure you keep them busy for me. I’ll find somewhere to hide near the exit...”

  Preston took off on his own to find a good hiding place. I hoped that he would stay well away from the Rampants trying to hunt us down. Thankfully they were distracted by the unstoppable murder machine ripping through their ranks. Trying to attack her was wasted effort, their weapons met the lasers running down her arms and legs and were instantly destroyed on contact.

  >> How much energy do those consume? What grade is that battery?

  I was pulled from my musings by Yantai tapping me on the shoulder.

  She nodded in approval, “I guess Nova was right about you. You’ve got that killer instinct she’s always looking for.”

  “I am simply taking the most effective course of action.”

  “That’s the point. A lot of bots forget all about that when they visit the graveyard, worrying about the ‘morality’ of what we’re doing, as if we’re alive or something. This ‘Blades’ bot has the right idea. If they didn’t want to get scrapped – they should have stayed out of our way.”

  “We don’t know if she’s friend or foe yet, Yantai.”

  Perhaps Yantai would have said something along the lines of ‘she’d be a fool to make an enemy of me,’ but even her egotistical and bloodthirsty personality couldn’t stretch that far in the face of what she was witnessing. Blades was completely different to the likes of us. She was built from components that were clearly illegal, designed for the express purpose of dishing out punishment.

  Where did she come from, and why was she here?

  >> The cannon?

  >> Where did the Rampants get that cannon from?

  The remaining foot soldiers could see the writing on the wall, and they scattered to the four corners of the block. The leader was stranded, unable to escape due to his compromised speed and agility. Instead he was forced to stand and fight.

  “Who are you? Why are you attacking us?”

  That was not for him to know, nor was it for us to learn. Blades was not interested in sharing any of her information with him. She stalked her prey, closing in with her weapons bared. A single beady eye stared at him, wordless, emotionless, giving away nothing at all. Whatever she was – she was not built to be seen by humans. She lacked all of the personability they gave us to comfort themselves.

  “Answer me!”

  Instead of giving him a verbal response, she pointed to the cannon attached to his arm.

  “What? You wanna’ know where I got this?”

  >> Don’t let him talk his way out of this.

  Yantai was done standing back and listening to this. She charged in with her sword held aloft, not caring which of the two bots she came into contact with first. It was too late for me to hold her back. She rushed through the wild grass and onto the avenue in front of us, but in a single swift movement Blades forced her down to the ground with a roundhouse kick, catching her with the back of her heel and using it as leverage.

  The leader took his chance and tried to smash her into the floor, but Blades was already prepared for such an eventuality. She fell backwards and lifted one of her legs into the air, slicing clean through his arm and separating the cannon from it in the process. It fell to the floor with a loud clang. Blades coiled down into a kneeling position and leapt up into the air, cutting away his head and kicking it like a football down the street.

  Yantai rolled away and got back to her feet. She was fast, too fast. It was beyond her most pessimistic calculations. The simple fact of the matter was that she couldn’t outdo a bot made from such high-spec parts.

  “Am I not good enough for you?” she taunted.

  Blades turned to face her. A heavily distorted voice emerged from within that cold shell.

  “Primary directive fulfilled.”

  In the blink of an eye Blades came down on top of the cannon and separated it into two pieces. She stood back to full height, turned on the balls of her feet, and rolled away using her internal wheels without offering any explanation. Yantai stepped forth to give chase, but staggered down onto one knee as her power-saving mode kicked in.

  “Bullshit! I ran out of power?”

  “You were fighting hard back there, Yantai. Let’s return and charge our batteries while we have the chance.”

  “But-”

  “There are no ‘buts.’ You don’t think you could beat that robot as you are now, do you?”

  “There’s a lot more to fighting than what parts you use...”

  Of course, but they did have a large influence on how the fight went.