The Rod of Light

4

For hours the makeshift army, after emerging from the outskirts of the township, had proceeded stealthily through the darkness. Just before dawn it halted in a shallow incline. In as near to silence as could be managed, the marshals made themselves busy putting order into the host, getting infantry, vehicles and artillery ready to move forward into the attack.

On the brow of the rise, Jasperodus consulted with others of the defence committee. The enemy was camped four miles to the west. The hope had been to attack in darkness so as to take advantage of the Borgors’ natural need to sleep at night, but due to the cautiousness of the advance the journey had taken longer than anticipated.

Jasperodus was already beginning to take a dim view of the probable outcome of the battle. An emotion fatal to armies was beginning to pervade the expedition: fear, a reaction to which free robots were particularly prone in the face of physical danger. All through the night the army had been steadily melting away. The scouts had intercepted many of the defectors and brought them back, but Jasperodus thought that up to a quarter of the force might have vanished.

The committee itself was staunch, of course, and the robots of the new Bellum class were fearless in all circumstances. But there were only a few of those.

By radio speech, the committee convocator had been receiving reports from the marshals. He looked at each of his colleagues in turn.

‘All appears ready,’ he said.

‘We must not delay,’ Jasperodus urged. ‘Order the attack.’

The Bellum nodded. Silently he used his speech set to send a radio signal to the township.

The plan was simple enough. An air strike for cover while they crossed the four miles to the Borgor camp. Then an onslaught to annihilate the dazed and disorganised Borgors—or at least punish them enough so that they were forced to withdraw. In a resonant, braying voice, the convocator bawled a command.

‘For-W-A-R-R-D’

The assembly was galvanised. The marshals—themselves Bellums for the most part—urged the first rank up the incline. The rest followed closely in a continuous flow of clinking metal and softly roaring engines. Then, on level ground, the assorted cavalcade set off at a frantic rush.

The marshals had learned from their experiences of the night that the main mass of infantry had to be kept penned in. Carrier vehicles, motorised beamers, catapults and rocket racks travelled in two columns that herded the foot soldiery between them, while a few vehicles at the rear dealt with stragglers. Any robots that could clung to the motorised transport, but most carried their weapons at the run, stumbling and falling. All need for caution was gone. The drone of engines, the thudding of metal feet on hard earth, became a rising rumble that from a distance must have sounded like the mutter of thunder.

Jasperodus looked down on the jostling horde from the deck of a rocket launcher. Then, after a few minutes, he looked up and saw the air strike arriving: it consisted of his own transporter and some similar but smaller aircraft, simple in construction and carrying light loads of bombs and rockets. The group whistled in from the south, curved towards the Borgor camp, and began bombing.

In return, beams licked skywards and, with little delay, missiles streaked towards the attackers. Two robot-piloted swept-winged aircraft exploded in midair as they circled to make a second run. Despite that, a ragged cheer came from the advancing army at the sound of explosions and the rising palls of smoke.

Then, with shocking promptness, Borgor warplanes came from out of the sun spitting missiles with practised skill. The impact on the collection of aircraft bombing the camp was devastating. Jasperodus’ carrier came crashing down immediately. The warplanes wheeled over the heads of the robot army, loosed more missiles and a brief burst of cannon fire, and went whirling back the way they had come.

In less than a minute of action they had annihilated the robot shanty town’s improvised air force. Only one plane remained and tried to flee. A camp-launched missile sent it spinning to the ground.

And the approaching column, which had fanned out as it came in sight of the enemy, slowed to a halt, altogether losing momentum.

It became frighteningly clear that the air strike had not achieved its aim, but might instead merely have served to alert the Borgors. Amid a furore of burning tents and mangled machinery the camp bustled. It was arming itself.

Three thousand robots were now able to see what they faced. The encampment was large and well-equipped. The tents that were pitched in rows were dwarfed by the huge half-tracked land-crawlers that were the Borgors’ main means of moving their forces across the continent. From those tents, and from the land-crawlers themselves, the opposition to the robot army was now emerging.

Hulking, armoured figures eight to ten feet in height were forming up into a front rank. Most likely these barbaric, intimidating fighting machines were Borgor warriors in combat suits, or they might have been robot warriors of the simplistic, nearly unsentient kind the Borgors allowed themselves to use—it was impossible to tell which at a glance. Probably, Jasperodus thought, they were a mixture of both. They raised their arms, gesticulating threateningly.

Suddenly a peremptory loudspeaker voice broke into the stupefied silence that had fallen over the robot army. ‘CONSTRUCTS! THIS IS ONE OF THE HUMAN MASTERS SPEAKING. YOUR ORDERS ARE TO LAY DOWN YOUR ARMS AND STAND WHERE YOU ARE WITHOUT MOVING. THE MASTERS WILL COME AMONG YOU TO DIRECT YOU. NOW—DISARM!’

With dismay Jasperodus realized that the Borgors’ first tactic was to prey on a robot’s basic weakness. A restless, alarmed motion rustled through the throng. Weapons clattered to the ground. ‘It is useless!’ wailed a robot. ‘Best to flee!’

His voice would have been heeded, had not the threatened route been prevented by the prompt action of the Bellum marshals. Crackling blue rays zipped aslant the scene from the beamers mounted atop their flat heads, striking down those who panicked and tried to run. A mood of utter terror took hold of the army, terror of the marshals as much as of the Borgors. At the same time the artillery was ordered into action. With a woosh the twenty missiles carried by the truck Jasperodus rode on went soaring in a drove towards the camp. They were joined by catapult-hurled ball-bombs, glowing heat beams whose shafts hummed overhead, and a dozen droves of similar rockets.

‘ADVANCE!’ the Bellums bellowed, drowning out the loudspeaker voice. ‘CHARGE!’

The explosions that tore into the Borgors were a once-only volley. With a deafening barrage of stentorious exhortations the marshals herded their now unwilling troops before them, sending them running headlong into the attack, pushing, stumbling, falling, sometimes dropping and losing their weapons.

And then Jasperodus spotted something that instantly told him the day was lost. Four land-crawlers drew up, facing the charging army broadside. Their sides fell away. Big drum-shaped projectors stood revealed, swivel-mounted like searchlights, and from them there shot out crackling blue beams that cut wide swathes through the pell-mell robots.

Flinging himself from the rocket truck, Jasperodus huddled behind a broad tyre. It was the weapon he had feared the Borgors might have developed, but had refrained from saying so to his colleagues on the defence committee.

Beam weapons were of two types: those that emitted intense microwave, infra-red or visible light—essentially blasters or burners of coherent energy—and those emitting an electric beam that obliterated nervous activity, both artificial and biologic. In robots the latter produced instant brain death. It was slightly less effective against humans, needing to be on target for as much as half a second. This was the type Bellums carried on their craniums, as much to maintain morale in their subordinates as for offence.

To produce a broad-beam version was, at one time, an unsolved technical problem. Now the Borgors had it, and therefore were perfectly confident of the outcome of their crusade against robotkind. Wherever the beams touched, pathways of inert metal bodies appeared. It was as if something heavy had rolled through an iron wheatfield, flattening everything as it went. The onrushing charge did not stop. The robots were firing as they ran, shooting wildly and hitting their own as often as not, and a few even got through to the enemy but were cut down as soon as they reached the Borgor ranks.

In front of Jasperodus a pile of bodies helped shield him from the crackling blue beams which roved back and forth, passing sometimes within inches of his brain. After a while the tumult subsided, and he no longer heard the deadly crackling. Slowly, he raised his head a little.

Scattered individuals and occasional forlorn groups were all that remained of the robot army, and these stood as if dazed. The projectors had been switched off, but the big armoured figures were now moving through the scene of metal carnage, carrying huge hammers with which they were clubbing any constructs still moving or showing signs of being operative. Seeing this, the robots the beams had missed began frantically scrambling or crawling over the bodies of their fellows in foredoomed efforts to escape.

Resting his head again, Jasperodus lay still. Could he have planned the attack better, he wondered? Should he have taken more interest in the defence of the township?

To think that a one-time marshal of the Imperial Forces had been party to such a fiasco!

A practical point occurred to him. Human-owned robots of special value were occasionally given secret command languages known only to their masters. Such languages were of necessity simple—usually consisting of a form of back-slang or a coded syllable added to key words—but free robots might be well-advised to adopt their own secret language, one too complicated for human beings to learn. In that way they might guard themselves against the sort of interference he had witnessed today.

It would, too, be one more step towards detaching the construct mind from human civilisation, so necessary if robotic culture was to survive….

The noise of smashing came nearer. He could hear the treading metal feet of the big armoured warriors. He could think of only one way to save himself. Unlike most robots he had the faculty of deep sleep, a faculty given him because of his human consciousness.

He switched himself off.