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Your enemies? the payload asks, stepping up beside him to survey the
damage.
Yours now as well, Radmer corrects. I m sorry, sir, but they will likely
kill you on sight.
Perhaps, the payload says thoughtfully. Or perhaps not.
To the east, the city of Timoch is visible in all its glory, a cluster of
towers surrounding the Central Lake, with smaller buildings sprawling around
it for many kilometers in a starburst of arrow-straight roads. In time, the
sprawling, spreading city might have reached the slopes of Aden Plateau
itself, had this bitter war not intervened.
Almost ten million people live here. And on Lune, that makes it a big city
indeed. That s the city of Timoch, Radmer says.
But de Towaji isn t even looking. His eyes are to the south. There are
glints of light, he says.
Radmer looks. Damn. The reflections are plainly visible in the midday sun,
probably a squad of twenty. Radmer s luck which has held remarkably well up to
now has finally run out. But a glance back in de Towaji s direction reveals
the old man now studying the sky with that same slack interest.
Did you lose something up there? Radmer asks impatiently.
The payload says nothing for a moment and then murmurs, Such a beautiful
day. One forgets what a real sky is supposed to look like, so pale. Why, the
horizon is nearly as white as the clouds! And to think, the sky of Earth was
paler and brighter still. Terrible about the Earth, isn t it? How I miss that
place, that enormous collection of places. Forged by God himself.
Lune s atmosphere is almost eighty kilometers thick, Radmer says, and
dynamically stable. Thermal motion is well below escape velocity. These
clouds, this weather it s not fake.
I recall that, yes. I did help design this place.
Ah. So you did. My apologies, sir.
It was a long time ago. It hardly matters. We ve come down in a bad spot,
here, haven t we?
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Shielding his eyes against the sun, Radmer counts the glints. Twenty of them,
yes. For whatever reason, though the enemy have no discernible officers or
other command hierarchy, they travel in platoons, which are quickly combined
and re-formed on the rare occasions when they suffer significant casualties.
They re only five kilometers away, perhaps six. Radmer watches them for
several minutes.
They shouldn t be this far north already. Imbrian forces should have held
them at the border. And as you say, it is an unusually clear day. That s bad,
for they ll have seen us come down. Seen the parachute, seen the sphere. This
is probably the same force that raided the tower, now on its way back to home
territory with a load of nails and wheel hubs and such. But two tons of brass
will interest them greatly. They re headed this way again.
Why do they shine so? the payload asks. What are they wearing?
They re not human, Radmer reminds him, again impatiently. The word Sire
hangs unspoken on his lips.
Radmer hands the binoculars over, and the payload, examining the glints more
closely, gasps. Then laughs. This is your enemy? Your army of doom? Tiptoeing
around on those dainty feet?
Angrily, Radmer snatches back the binoculars. Try facing one up close, then.
Try facing twenty of them, or a hundred, or a thousand. This may seem unreal
to you, Bruno an awakening from your own dreams into the nightmares of someone
else but that is a tiny piece, yes, of the army which has devastated this
world. Don t make light of it in my hearing.
But those are household robots! the old man protests. They should be
mopping your floors, shining your shoes. Those aren t soldiers. They aren t
even in good condition; what are those boxes sticking out of their heads?
They have been fashioned into soldiers, Radmer says. They ve been
modified, multiplied beyond number. The last I heard, there were four million
of them. They will kill anyone who opposes them, and quite efficiently, thank
you. In Nubia, the Senatoria Plurum commanded a full surrender by all forces
and citizens no resistance of any kind but discovered to their woe that if
unopposed, the enemy will also dismantle any signs of authority or government
or the rule of law.
What happens after that is anyone s guess; in the final reports from Nubia,
these household robots were trampling cities into the dust, carrying away
every scrap of metal they could find. To make more of themselves? To make
something else? Some siege engine to lay waste to our final strongholds? You
laugh, Sire, but my children are dead. A great many children are dead, and the
fates of those behind enemy lines are unknown. The handful of reports we ve
received are, shall we say, not encouraging.
Hearing this, the payload visibly reconsiders his stance, his position in the
world of Lune. Radmer feels a burst of sympathy for the man; in truth, very
little has been explained to him, and Radmer s own voice may have lost some
urgency through the ages, ground away to deadpan by the wars and peaces and
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