Chapter Seventeen
War
The dissonance of human screams. A metallic whir, a
robot’s tread. A hot zapper in her hands, set to kill. Pedro,
his eyes accusing, looking at her through a blue forcefield.
Up, unblinking as the guts of half a dozen Marines splatter
across his face. The smell of shit and death in each trench
they left behind, each body they left unburied and
unburned. The cold purpose in each robot’s metal face,
faces modelled after their human creators, a constant
reminder of the arrogance that had brought them to this
point, the idea that they could create life, when all they had
created was hell, living, breathing hell...
Taz couldn’t tell her sleeping nightmares from her
waking ones anymore.
She lay awake and shivering, looking at the thin strip of
clouded stars through the opening of the trench they called
home tonight, somewhere in Mexico, deep within robot
territory. The destruction of both the robot and human fleets
had not ended the fighting, merely relocated it to Earth,
where it was hand-to-hand, dirty, real. Taz was a foot
soldier now, one of a few dozen left under Up’s command
after weeks of stark, blooded warfare. They were all that
was left of the Cazadora’s homeless crew. Pedro had only
been the first to die.
She’d woken herself up screaming every night since it
had happened, something she hadn’t done since she was a
girl at the Academy, and she hated herself for it. The only