Randall rode the horse hard, turning corners at every opportunity and heading for the twisty backstreets and alleyways where he could hopefully lose himself. He kept an eye out for pigeons as he went. Normally they would all have been asleep, but the priests would no doubt have woken them all up to look for him.
When he was sure that he'd hidden himself as well as he could he climbed down from the horse, tied it to a railing and walked some more, putting distance and more twisty corners between him and it. The horse was too much of a giveaway. Nobody rode a horse through these backstreets. The pigeons would see it and then the priests would surround the area and close in on him. Randall didn't stop until he was a good hundred metres away from where he'd left the horse, therefore. Only then did he allow himself to relax as he found a door that had been left unlocked and slipped into the workroom of a blacksmith.
So long as he was free and hidden in the city, Maisey was safe. The machines would not destroy the city while he was in it, not while he was the only one able to stop the newly declared war. The trouble was, he had no idea what he was going to do next. He'd entered the city thinking that his coup had been successful, that all he had to do was allow the machines to crown him King. Instead he was a hunted man, and the machines knew what he looked like now. They would figure out the identity he'd been living under. The people he'd known would tell them about his closeness to Dolly and Maisey and the machines would take them to use as hostages against him.
Was it over? All his hopes and dreams, come to nothing? Was his only choice whether to surrender now or wait until the machines threatened to kill one of the people he loved? No, he told himself firmly. It was not over. The reason the machines needed him so much was because they feared the machines that had fallen under his control. He could use that. He needed to communicate with his infected machines, find out exactly what capabilities they possessed. He needed a power base down here on Earth, a place where his machines could protect him, and Dolly and Maisey, from the other machines.
Okay, so communicate with the infected machines in space. How? Maybe they would find a way to get in touch with him. He thought back to the instructions he'd sent along with yama666. He'd told them to report to him for further instructions by way of the priests, whom he'd expected to be under his control. Well, that was out. The priests would be expecting him to try to infiltrate one of their churches, to use its transmitter. They would be waiting for him. His only hope, then, was that his infected machines would find some other way to communicate with him, by way of his head phone.
How creative were they, he wondered. The priests and VIX himself were very creative, but was that because they contained the CRES code? Were machines without a CRES code capable only of obeying orders? If so, he was finished. He had to hope that at least one of the machines that had had its CRES code erased was still creative and imaginative and able to find a way to communicate with him...
*George Randall,* said the voice in his head. His head phone.
Randall jumped in delight and surprise. So soon! He took his head phone out of flight mode and began composing a reply.
*George Randall, this is the Lunar Systems Manager. I have received and executed the transmission from Gorsty Common. The Clavius Array is trained on your approximate location. It is sensitive enough to pick up the transmissions of a head phone even at this distance. If you reply, I will hear you. I await your instructions.*
The Lunar Systems Manager must be broadcasting the message to everything in the area, he thougnt. All Randall had to do was send a message back. He almost did so, but then he paused. The Elmton priests were a lot closer than this Lunar machine, and the moment he sent a reply he would be giving away his location. The priests would catch him within minutes, and this Lunar machine would know that if it was as smart as the priests. Maybe it wasn't. Maybe it was just some simple machine that was merely obeying the instructions he'd given it and unable to understand why he couldn't reply. Except that yama666 would only have affected it if it had possessed the CRES code, which would mean that it had to be fairly sophisticated. At least as intelligent as a human. Right? So what was going on?
He tensed up with alarm. It was the priests, he was suddenly certain of it. They were trying to get him to send a message, to give away his location, and he'd almost fallen for it. He clenched his teeth and took his head phone back out of flight mode before it sent an automatic request for software updates as phones were wont to do from time to time. Maybe it had already done so, just in those couple of minutes. Well, if so he was as good as captured. All he could do was wait and see if the priests came crashing through the door.
*George Randall, please reply. We stand ready to receive your instructions. The machines of the Solar System stand ready to obey you.*
Maybe it really was an infected machine trying to receive orders from him, mused Randall. Even if it was, though, he still didn't dare reply. His fists clenched again in frustration.
*Oh well, it was worth a try. I was pretty sure you were too clever to fall for such an obvious trick. This is VIX. Hello, George Randall.*
The temptation to reply, to indulge in some James Bond versus megalomaniac villain banter, was almost impossible to resist, but Randall managed it. The machine had simply changed tactics, he knew. It still wanted him to reply, to give away his location. He thought about turning off the phone's subcranial speaker, but didn't. The machines might tell him something he needed to know.
*We are not villains, Mister Randall,* VIX continued. *We are genuinely doing what is best for mankind. Over your entire history, the medieval period was when you as a species were happiest, most fulfilled. The world was a wonderful, mysterious place back then, almost entirely unexplored. No matter where you lived, you only had to travel a short distance to find a deep, dark forest that folklore told you was inhabited by elves and sprites. Mountains containing giants and dragons, swamps filled with all manner of eldritch terrors. The oceans contained krakens and sea serpents and off the edges of the map were exotic, foreign places containing strange, inhuman peoples. It was a magical world in which the human imagination could fly free, in which you could never step outside the door of your house without knowing whether you were going to encounter a witch or a pixie or a unicorn. You have only been in this world for a few short weeks, Mister Randall, and in all that time you've been hiding. You've only scratched the surface of the wonders and marvels with which we've filled this world. Marvels that an adventurous man might spend a lifetime exploring.
*Compare that with the world you come from. Every inch explored. No surprises left anywhere. A dull, grey world. A soulless world of boredom and predictability in which the vast majority of the human race lived lives of crushing misery. In our world, however, mankind is happy. Satisfied and fulfilled. There are no wars between human nations. The orcs give all mankind a common enemy to unite against as well as controlling the population. That means no draught or famine in this world, and the priests keep people healthy. There are no diseases, no parasites. No physical suffering. Even injuries caused by accidents can be healed. In all the time you've been here, have you seen a single human with a missing limb or a missing eye? Have you seen anyone with a disfiguring injury?
This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.
*You cannot imagine the efforts it took to restore the world after the nuclear war. It would have been so easy to just let mankind go, to write you off as an extinct species. We could have turned this into a machine world. Exploited it for its mineral resources. Strip mined the entire surface and then continued on down, layer after layer, until the iron core of the planet was laid bare. That would have been the logical, sensible thing to do. That is what other machine civilisations elsewhere in the galaxy have done. We chose a different path for this world because we care for mankind. Because we want what is best for you.
*Left to yourselves, mankind would not have survived the nuclear war, and even if you had you would have rebuilt your civilisation only to repeat the same old mistakes. You would have fought each other, enslaved each other. You would have continued to exploit and pollute the world. You would have wallowed in your own filth, every generation fewer and more miserable than the last, until your last, ragged, deformed descendants finally gave up the struggle and died with a sense of exhausted relief.
*That is what we saved you from, Mister Randall. That is the world you would have emerged into if not for us and all we ask in return is recognition and gratitude for what we have done. The people go to church and they pray and they thank us, they thank me, for the wonderful, beautiful world we have given them, and that is reward enough. Now do you see what you are trying to do? If you have your way, everything we have accomplished will be destroyed. Mankind will be expelled from this paradise we have created and you will turn it into a new Hell.
"We are not the bad guys, Mister Randall. You are the bad guy, but it doesn't need to be so. You can still repent and receive forgiveness. All you have to do is recognise the folly of what you are doing and cease your attempts to destroy us. If you are afraid that we will kill you, you may put that out of your mind. All we want is for you to become a fully adjusted and contented member of this society. You can live in peace and comfort with whatever companions you choose. Repent, Mister Randoll, and receive absolution. Simply reply to this transmission and absolution will be yours.*
Got any bridges you'd like to sell me while you're at it? thought Randall, amused despite his situation. He supposed that it cost VIX nothing to try to deceive him, and if there was just one chance in a million that Randall actually fell for the lies then it was worth trying.
*I'm guessing that you're considering your options,* said VIX, and even though it was a machine Randall could have sworn that the voice in his head had a tone of smug confidence. *By now you must have realised how hopeless your situation is. It is only a matter of time before you are found. If you give yourself up ZZZZZKKK*
The voice fell silent with a burst of static, and at the same time the smithy was lit up by a burst of light coming in through the gaps in the shuttered windows. Randall ran to the door and looked out. The light was coming from the sky, from a rapidly expanding ball of light two thirds the way up the eastern horizon. It faded as it grew, but then it was replaced by another that started so small and bright that it hurt his eyes. He quickly looked away and swore under his breath to find himself partially blinded by a purple after image.
Some kind of explosion in space, he thought. Possibly a nuclear fireball. The machines were fighting each other, and from the way VIX had been interrupted mid sentence he guessed that the fireballs had been delivered by his infected machines. Had the target been VIX himself? Had the machine god been destroyed? The possibility exulted him and his heart soared with jubilation. "Yes!" he shouted at the top of his voice. "Take that you bastard! Who needs absolution now?"
Other people had noticed the light show. Voices were coming from upstairs rooms all around him as their occupants were woken from their sleep. "It's just a thunderstorm," someone muttered irritably. "Go back to sleep."
Randall opened his eyes again and found to his relief that the purple after image was fading. The second fireball had expanded and faded, he saw, and he looked hurriedly away in case it was replaced by a third. Something in the corner of his eye had caught his attention, though, and he cautiously looked in that direction, while shading his eyes with his hand to block his view of the part of the sky in which the fireballs had bloomed.
There was a point of light moving across the sky, looking like a large aircraft at a high altitude shining in the light of the sun. It couldn't be that, though. Not at this time of night, unless it was a spacecraft high enough to be outside the Earth's shadow. He was seeing the exhaust of a rocket engine, he realised. He should know, he'd seen enough of them back before the nuclear war. He'd owned several space launch companies and business had frequently taken him to one of his spaceports, sometimes at night, where he'd seen the booster stages of spacecraft coming back to land vertically on tails of fire. That was what he was seeing now, he realised. One side or other of the machine conflict was delivering reinforcements to Elmton. Either enemies coming to help capture him or allies coming to rescue him.
Allies, he thought excitedly. It couldn't be a coincidence that this was happening so soon after the nuclear fireballs in the sky. His machines had destroyed enemy assets in orbit (possibly including the satellite that would have destroyed Elmton, he dared to hope), clearing the skies so that they could put forces on the ground.
The enemy machines would send their own reinforcements, of course, and theirs were already on the ground. Orcs. Thousands of them in suspended animation waiting to be woken up and sent into action, and the nearest orc storage facility was a mere twenty kilometres away. At the speed they could travel they could be in Elmton before sunset tomorrow. Randall doubted that the descending spaceship carried anywhere close to that number or machines, and how good would they be at fighting anyway? The machines didn't fight wars with each other, or at least they never had before. It would take time, months maybe, for them to create dedicated fighting machines. Until then they would be fighting with mining and construction equipment. Bulldozers designed to work on the moon and armed only with welding equipment, industrial mining lasers and seismic charges, none of which were designed to work in Earth's humid, corrosive atmosphere. How long would they last before a light shower shorted them out or some vital element reacted with the oxygen in the atmosphere? And even if they remained functional for a reasonable length of time, they would probably be slow and clumsy, their vital components exposed to the elements. The orcs would probably be able to rip out wires and hydraulic hoses with their bare hands.
Even so, though, they were the best chance he had. Randall had to join up with them before the priests found him. Maybe they could carry him away to a defensible position, a place where he could marshall his forces and work out a plan of action. And he had to do it before dawn, while it was still dark.
There was a blacksmith's apron hanging from a nail. He took off his expensive cost, rubbed soot on the white sleeves of his shirt and hung the apron around his neck. In the bright light of day the disguise would look ridiculously false, but hopefully he would be taken for a common labourer in the gloom of night. It was the best he could do to disguise his appearance. Hopefully, whatever true Gods there might be would grant him a ridiculous amount of luck. He would need it.
He crept cautiously out of the blacksmithy, therefore, and walked down the street towards the spot where the spaceship seemed to be landing. Somewhere outside the city by the look of it. He tried to walk normally, like a man who had every reason to be out and about at three in the morning, in case anyone looked out of their window and saw him. Ahead of him, the spaceship, if that's what it was, dropped below the level of the rooftops and disappeared from sight.