“Fire another warning shot!” Captain Hamilton ordered.

Corporal Carlisle fired another three rounds into the air, but the metal giant had ignored the last warning shot and it ignored this one too. It was thirty yards away but getting closer by the second and it came across the top of the craggy junk-strewn precipice with about as much difficulty as if it was walking across a lawn.

Sergeant Cameron was rooted to the spot, transfixed.

“Sir, another one!” someone shouted.

Cameron jerked a look. A second giant figure was emerging from amidst the mechanical detritus forty yards in the opposite direction. It rose vertically with such apparent ease Cameron wondered if it was on some sort of hidden elevator.

“What’s that down there?” someone hissed.

A high pitch cry: “It’s another one!”

The third metal anthropoid was identical to the first two.

Sergeant Cameron thought they looked like a robotic mockery of the human form. They had two arms, two legs and a head, but only their contoured torso hinted at anything human. Their convex faces were blank, expressionless; they didn’t have a nose and their unblinking eyes were perfectly circular black holes in their metal skulls. Their mouths were jointed diagonally across their cheeks, giving them a down-turned look, which made the giants appear very sad - or very angry.

“Two more of them, sir!” Private Doherty reported.

Cameron spun, training his rifle instinctively. Another giant was coming over the edge of the precipice. Another was emerging from the same place as the first; the first was now veering behind the group, approaching from a curve.

“They’re surrounding us!” someone cried.

And all the while, the five metal giants were closing in.

Hamilton turned to Cameron with a mad look in his eyes. “What do you think, Cameron? Does the Io Accord consider being surrounded an act of aggression?”

“I think I’d like to be alive to find out later, sir.”

Hamilton laughed, then called to those men squatting on the edges of the formation; those nearest the approaching giants: “If one of those things comes within ten metres of one of us, you bring it down. Who understood me?”

Eighteen voices chorused to the positive.

Then one of the giants crossed the line.

Corporal Carlisle was nearest. He was crouching in the firing position, his rifle pulled into his shoulder. From down here, the machine looked even larger. Ten metres had never seemed so close, Carlisle thought. He gripped the shaft tightly with his left hand, eyed the robot along the barrel, and gently squeezed the trigger.

Carlisle fired seven rounds in total. They all hit the machine squarely in the chest; they all glanced off without making so much as a dent.

At first the robot didn’t react at all.

Carlisle looked up from his rifle. He heard voices curse under their breath nearby. He took aim again; he fired again. So did someone else this time.

Still the machine kept on coming.

“Pull back!” Sergeant Cameron ordered.

Corporal Carlisle didn’t get a chance to.

As soon as he stood up, the robot’s head snapped round in his direction. The machine grabbed something from over its shoulder and pointed it at Carlisle. It was bulky and cylindrical and Carlisle realised what it was too late to escape.

The robot fired a volley of blue pulses. The glowing halos emanated from the robot’s gun with a deep throbbing sound. They hit Carlisle in the back as he turned to flee. The paralysing cramp-like pain spread through his body in under a second.

He wanted to scream, but could no longer breathe.

Sergeant Cameron and the others watched in horror. For about a second, the corporal seemed to be frozen mid-run, his face locked in an expression of panic. Then the kinetic energy from the pulses dispersed; Corporal Carlisle was thrown off his feet, up into the air, and when he landed, he didn’t get back up again.

“Fire at will! Fire at will!” Captain Hamilton roared.

But as the platoon broke formation and Cameron lifted his gun to his shoulder, it was the encroaching metal giants who obeyed the captain’s order first.

All of them started firing simultaneously.

And now there were ten of them.

The sound of gunfire split the air. The Doctor scrambled up the hillside toward the cacophony. When he finally got to the top, he stopped dead in his tracks.

“No,” he said under his breath. “That’s impossible!”

The Doctor recognised his silver nemesis immediately. The Cybermen had evolved, were taller, sleeker, faster, stronger, and more agile; they looked more mechanical than ever, arms and legs completely artificial; the rest just a vessel to carry those organic remnants of their human source, that which they had yet to improve upon. But in all the years the Doctor had been fighting them, in all the centuries haunted by the threat of the Cybermen, not once had they altered their distinctive faces; their cold, lifeless, indifferent metal stares.

“That’s impossible,” the Doctor repeated.

But he wasn’t even convincing himself. There were ten of them, and they had the soldiers surrounded. Captain Hamilton and his men were crouching behind piles of scrap that afforded meagre protection. Some were lying on their fronts amidst the robotic effluence, firing continuously at the approaching Cybermen.

The Cybermen were closing in from all directions. There was nowhere for the soldiers to hide. Bullets had no effect, but the Cybermen’s guns were lethal.

Suddenly someone shouted, “Fire in the hole!”

The Doctor dropped to his knees instinctively and the soldiers wrapped their arms around their heads. Someone tossed a grenade at the Cybermen.

It hit one Cyberman and bounced off his chest. It exploded several yards to the right and the flash-flame momentarily engulfed him; it nearly toppled him, but a few seconds later, he emerged unscathed, his silver body-plating not even dulled.

The Doctor lifted his head in time to see the smoking Cyberman open up with a relentless barrage of fire. Some of the soldiers were sheltering behind a tall metal shard, shooting around it at the Cybermen coming from the other direction. Of course, it provided them with no protection from the Cybermen behind them. The smoking Cyberman fired a wide arc in their direction. Two, three, four soldiers were flipped up in the air, and the Cybermen they had been firing at also opened fire on their flailing, flying bodies. The corpses fell back to earth in a smoking heap.

On the other side of the ever-shrinking battlefield, the Doctor saw those that had been maintaining advanced positions get up off their fronts and try to flee. They had to dodge and weave Cyberman fire from both sides. A couple were caught in the legs and went flying, crashing unconscious into the trashed metal all around.

One brave soldier stayed put until his gun ran dry. By that time a Cyberman was almost on top of him. The Doctor watched him scrabble to his feet, stagger back, and when he realised it was too late to escape, decide to fight. The young soldier swung his gun at the Cyberman. With lightning-quick reflexes, the Cyberman caught the rifle before it hit him in the chest and tore it from the soldier’s grip, breaking a couple of his fingers in the process. The soldier, screaming, stumbled backwards, but the Cyberman caught him around the throat and lifted him off the ground. Without any discernible effort required, it tossed him over the edge of the precipice.

The Doctor spotted Sergeant Cameron in the thick of it.

“Sergeant Cameron!” he yelled.

He was drowned out by the gunfire from both sides. Captain Hamilton was shouting orders, but the Doctor doubted the men could hear him either.

The Cybermen had encircled the troops to within a twenty-yard radius and several were now shoulder to shoulder. The Doctor saw one soldier nestling in a gap between several large hunks of machinery. The Cybermen were laying down a suppressing fire, but they couldn’t hit him whilst he was in the hole. He crouched down and fired over his head, not even looking whether his bullets hit. He wouldn’t have seen the four Cybermen converge over the top of him. Three fired into the hole; the fourth grabbed his shuddering body and yanked it into view. His finger was still compressing the trigger as the Cyberman pitched the corpse toward another group of soldiers. The Doctor ducked once more as bullets ricocheted all around him.

When he looked up again, he saw he was almost out of time; the Cybermen were affecting a stranglehold on Captain Hamilton’s platoon, forcing them into an ever smaller area, closer and closer to the edge of the precipice. A narrowing gap remained between the Cybermen closing in from each side; once that gap closed completely, it would all be over; and then who would help him rescue Rose?

Checking he wasn’t already being targeted, the Doctor pushed himself up onto his feet and hurtled, head down, straight into the heart of battle.

Sergeant Cameron felt the static charge of the enemy’s weapon buzz within a whisker of his face and dived sideways. He landed heavily, rolled and sat up firing; he aimed at its hands. His bullets were having no effect, weren’t even penetrating the metal giant’s silver armour; his best hope was to try and make it drop its gun.

“I’m out!” shouted Private Doherty. “Someone cover me!”

Cameron moved in to cover his position. Doherty shuffled out of the firing line, narrowly escaping being hit twice. As they got closer, the metal giants were becoming more accurate. Cameron shot at those targeting Doherty to draw their fire.

Suddenly, a hand grabbed him by the shoulder.

Cameron spun reflexively and brought his gun level - with the Doctor’s head.

“Aim for the eyes!” the Doctor shouted.

“Doctor, get down!” Cameron yelled. There was a metal giant twelve yards behind him and it had just found a new target in the Doctor’s exposed back. Cameron threw himself on top of the man and they fell into the scrap together.

“Sergeant, I can’t breathe!” the Doctor cried.

Cameron pinned him down as enemy fire crackled overhead. Then Private Doherty returned, fully reloaded, and took the flak off them.

“Aim for the eyes!” the Doctor repeated.

“What?” Cameron hollered back. Their faces were only inches apart.

“Shoot them in the eyes, point-blank range; it’s their only weak spot!”

Cameron rolled to the side. The Doctor stayed put.

The metal giant was bearing down on their position, but as Cameron watched, Private Doherty managed to hit its weapon. The gun stopped firing instantly. The giant discarded it without hesitation and continued regardless.

Cameron waited until the metal giant was almost on top of them, then made his move. Either this would work, or he wouldn’t live long enough to regret his failure. When the giant was a rifle barrel’s distance away, Cameron leapt to his feet, held his gun at arm’s length and fired at point blank range into the eye-sockets.

For a second, it seemed to have no effect. The metal giant swung its arms forward in a crushing motion, but halfway toward pulping Cameron’s skull, all the impetus went out of its limbs. The hydraulic arms sagged from the shoulder, the giant’s sparking head lolled to the side, and then it toppled backwards.

All of a sudden, Cameron found himself under attack. The metal giant landed with an almighty crash, and it seemed like the other nine wanted vengeance. He dived once more for cover, landing beside a pleased-looking Doctor.

Cameron beamed at him and winked.

“Aim for the eyes!” he shouted to his comrades.

Their guns had fallen all but silent for a moment as everyone turned to watch the metal giant go down, but now they opened up with renewed vigour.

Cameron realised he was still the main target. A beam of enemy fire hit the metal beside his head; he felt the sparks like acid burns on his cheek. He brought his hands up in front of his face, as if that would stop lasers.

“Sergeant, take this,” the Doctor said.

He handed the sergeant an insulated metal plate he’d found in the junk. It was about a foot and a half across. He held it up so that it would definitely get hit; the pulse from an enemy gun struck it and dissipated harmlessly.

The Doctor found a second plate for himself.

“Let’s move!” Cameron shouted.

Holding the plates over their heads, Cameron and the Doctor shuffled out of the firing line, and retreated to the less exposed spot where Captain Hamilton was co-ordinating the platoon’s counter-strike, yelling orders.

As Cameron and the Doctor reached him, another giant was felled.

“Two down!” the captain cheered.

Cameron watched as Private Ellison, instead of revelling in his victory, moved onto the next metal giant. He crept along the ground, waited for it to come to him and then dodged its weapon-fire to blast it in the face. Everyone cheered as the third giant went crashing down, and Ellison retreated to a safe distance.

“Three down!” went the captain.

With the Doctor watching his back, Cameron tried to snipe a few of the metal giants in the face from a distance, but even when he hit them in the eyes it wasn’t enough to stop them in their tracks; it needed to be at point-blank range.

Others tried their luck at downing the robotic monstrosities, but the metal giants were growing wise to their repetitive tactics.

As Cameron watched, Private Daniels scrabbled to his feet before one metal giant, but there was another one covering it from afar. Before Daniels even got off a shot, the second giant gunned him down. His body flopped twitching in front of his would-be kill, which stepped on him as if he wasn’t even there.

On the other side of the battlefield, the same thing happened again. Cameron didn’t even see who it was but he watched their spread-eagled body crumple.

“They’ve doubled up!” the Doctor growled.

Cameron exchanged glances with Captain Hamilton.

“We’re not sitting ducks here; we’re pre-fabricated boil-in-the-bag duck à l’orange ready-meals,” Hamilton snarled. “I’m going for the launcher.”

He hefted his bulky form into a crouching position.

“Wonderful turn of phrase he has,” the Doctor yelled into Cameron’s ear.

Cameron spied the big grey heavy crate that Hamilton had saved from the re-entry vehicle himself. It was sticking up at an angle fifteen yards away.

Captain Hamilton crawled beneath enemy fire criss-crossing overhead. He reached the crate containing the rocket launcher and began to unfasten the clasps.

“Sergeant; look out!” the Doctor suddenly cried.

Cameron snapped a look round. One of the metal giants was looming over them. It was another one that had lost its gun. It was wielding a massive length of pipe instead, as long as Cameron was tall. It swung it downward like a club.

Cameron shoved the Doctor off his feet and leapt sideways. The metal giant swung the pipe so hard it split the reinforced steel the Doctor and Cameron had been crouching over moments before. The pipe looked too heavy for Cameron to pick up, but the giant lifted it again without a problem. It came for him. Cameron scuttled out of the way, shuffling backwards on his palms as fast as he could.

Suddenly he found himself backed up against a vertical metal buttress.

Cameron knew there was no escape. He had no choice; he pushed himself up against the buttress. The metal giant was holding the pipe over its shoulder like a spear, as if ready to impale him. He blasted it in both eyes, then ducked.

The metal giant fizzled and sparked, but the pipe had enough momentum to crash into the buttress just inches above Cameron’s head. He looked up, saw the metal giant starting to sway, and realised it was going to lose its grip on the pipe. He threw himself to the side once more, landing sharply on his elbow.

A second later, both giant and pipe collapsed in a noisy heap.

Cameron stayed down for a few moments to catch his breath. He looked back toward the Doctor and Captain Hamilton, and it was at about that point he realised this had all been a very cunning, ruthless diversion.

“Captain!” he screamed.

Captain Hamilton had unfastened the last clasp and was opening the crate when he heard the shout. He turned his head.

Rising up out of the metal behind him was another robot.

He shot a look at his gun, then lurched toward it. His fingertips got within an inch before the robot grabbed his foot and yanked him back. It had a vice-like grip on his ankle and was squeezing tighter and tighter.

Hamilton realised it was just holding him fast until it had disencumbered itself from the mechanical debris to kill him. Sergeant Cameron was dodging enemy fire to come to his aid, but he knew he had to escape before then.

The robot’s rising head was in line with his other foot. Swinging it back for momentum, he landed a steel toe-capped kick right in the eye-socket.

The silver monster didn’t even flinch.

And when Hamilton tried to swing his foot again, a second robotic arm shot out and grabbed it. The captain wobbled, no longer master of his balance.

Then the machine wrenched him off his feet.

Hamilton fell heavily, but his armour took most of the impact. Lying on his back, the robot looked even bigger, even though it was bent double to keep hold of his feet. He stared into its eyes, frightening because they told him nothing.

Sergeant Cameron opened fire from ten yards behind.

The robot ignored the sergeant until he was eight yards closer. By that time, it had fully extricated itself from the entangled junk.

Captain Hamilton was powerless to stop it: it lifted him up by the ankles and swung him at Sergeant Cameron like he was a club; and it didn’t let go.

Hamilton smashed into Cameron, knocking him off his feet. Despite the shock absorbers in his helmet, Hamilton felt the blow like a lightning strike to the brain. He dangled, flailing, at the end of the robot’s grip.

Sergeant Cameron staggered erect. The machine made to swing Hamilton again. He tried to sit up, tear at the robot’s arms, anything.

The monstrosity smacked him face-first into an oily old heat exchanger. He got the message: I’ve won; you’ve lost; resistance is useless; die.

He realised the robot army had done what he would have done; it was the most basic tactic in warfare, unchanged in millennia: take out an army’s leader and the rest will fall. Soldiers without a general were like ants without a queen: aimless, direction-less; there was more to fighting - and certainly to winning - than firing a gun.

This time when the robot swung him, it let go of his feet.

For a few seconds, Hamilton felt lighter than air. He opened his eyes. The machine had thrown him over the precipice. As he fell - it seemed to happen in slow motion - he wondered which one of the robots was the one in charge. They had all seemed identical; they all knew what they had to do; they worked unilaterally. Perhaps they had no leader; perhaps they didn’t need one: in an army of generals, he realised; who needs a grunt?

The metal plane he landed on cut him clean in half.

Sergeant Cameron charged at the metal giant, gun blazing. The giant turned to grab him, talons outstretched, but at the last moment, Cameron thrust the rifle forward one-handed, jammed the barrel into the giant’s eye-socket and kept firing.

The giant’s metal fingers twitched and flexed like it was playing a piano in the air, then its arms drooped, and the rest of its body followed.

Cameron didn’t stop. When it was lying prone at his feet, he aimed at its head at point-blank range, firing until his ammunition clip ran dry. Then he ejected the empty clip, tore another one from his belt and reloaded in seconds.

He looked up. There were two metal giants nearby, their backs to him. With a low grunt, Cameron jumped up and charged toward them.

But before he reached them, something odd began to happen.

The metal giants started sinking into the junk.

By the time he got to them, only their arms and heads were visible above the top layer of scrap. They were climbing down, out of sight. Cameron dropped to his knees to shoot one of them in the head, but it was too late.

A couple of moments later, they were both gone without trace.

Cameron growled and leapt up again. He spun, looking for a new target, but found the other metal giants had already vanished. Even the ones that had been destroyed were gone. A couple of the men were firing beneath their feet; the rest were looking around like Cameron was. The battle was over.

For a while, nobody said anything.

“That it?” said Private Doherty breathlessly. “We won?”

“Let’s call it a draw,” said the Doctor, picking himself up.

Sergeant Cameron did a slow turn.

There were eight survivors: Doherty, Ellison, Cooper, Ryan, Wells, Spooner, the Doctor and himself. There were bodies everywhere.

“Yes; let’s,” he murmured.

The Doctor shook his head. “Don’t misunderstand me, Sergeant. This isn’t over yet; the Cybermen will abandon a fight if they have more to lose than to gain, but they won’t give up completely. They’ll be back, I’m afraid.”

Seven marines turned to stare at him.

“Cybermen?” Sergeant Cameron said slowly.

“Yes; that’s what they’re called.”

Cameron swapped suspicious looks with his men.

“Right now they’re doing exactly what you would be doing in their position,” the Doctor went on. “Regrouping; assessing why they lost.”

“You know what these things are?”

“Unfortunately.” He sighed. “Be warned, they’ll only underestimate you once; next time they’ll probably overestimate you just to be on the safe side.”

“Ellison, Cooper; take point,” Cameron ordered.

Two of the marines nodded curtly and took their positions: one at the top of the rise, the other on the edge of the precipice.

“Are these things protected by the Io Accord, Doctor?”

The Doctor couldn’t stifle a laugh. “Sergeant, there’s not a law in the twelve galaxies that would protect the Cybermen. They’re not here because they’ve been dumped here; they’re not even robots. Well, not completely. Not yet.”

“So what are they doing here, then?”

“Actually, I don’t know.” He frowned. “But trust me, whatever nefarious plan they’ve got up their metallic sleeves, it won’t be good.”

Sergeant Cameron nodded slowly.

“Sergeant,” the Doctor continued. “Judging by the fact that they tried to wipe us out, I suspect their base is nearby, and they were protecting it.”

“You’re right; we should move.”

“Actually, I was thinking more of rescuing Rose.”

Cameron’s eyes widened and he shot a look round at his men, as if he’d forgotten all about her. “Rose; what happened to her? Where is she?”

“Well, there’s no body, so obviously-”

“Hey, you think they got the observation team too?” said Private Doherty.

The Doctor didn’t get a chance to reply.

“Sarge!” called the soldier guarding the precipice.

“What is it, Ellison?” Cameron asked.

“I...I think I heard someone, sir,” Ellison said. “Down there.”

Sergeant Cameron started toward the edge. The Doctor followed him.

“Everyone be quiet,” Cameron ordered.

They stood in silence, listening. For a few moments, nothing, then the Doctor heard a groan. He glanced at Cameron; he had heard it too.

“I’m surprised anyone survived the fall,” the Doctor murmured.

“They must be pretty badly injured.”

“Sergeant, about Rose?”

“We’ll get to her, Doctor; we’ll get to her.”

Ellison turned and smiled. “Sir, I think it’s the captain!”

Sergeant Cameron found they had salvaged enough rope from the re-entry vehicle for two people to be lowered down at a time.

“Daniels was our med-tech,” he told the Doctor. “He’s lying back there. Looks like you just got yourself an honorary commission, Doctor.”

The Doctor looked glum as they bound him into a safety harness.

“Not afraid of heights are you, Doctor?” Cameron asked.

“Heights; no,” the Doctor replied. “Falling; yes.”

Corporal Ryan was given the solemn task of removing the helmet from one of the corpses and giving it to the Doctor. He took Corporal Carlisle’s.

“Ever abseiled before?” Cameron asked.

“Not intentionally,” said the Doctor.

“Normally I’d say we’d take it slow; but time could be a factor here.”

The Doctor sighed. “Then let’s get it over with.”

With three men on each double-rope, Cameron and the Doctor started edging backward over the precipice. It was slow going, as the men lowered them inch by inch. The Doctor did his best impression of someone who wasn’t terrified.

The valley floor was sixty or seventy feet beneath the headland, but as they dropped through the air it seemed much further. Geysers went off behind them and when the Doctor twisted to look, he started going into a spin.

But eventually they reached the bottom.

“Look; over there!” the Doctor cried. “I can see a hand sticking up!”

“Hold still while I release us,” Cameron said, pulling open the myriad of buckles on the ropes that turned them into dancing marionettes.

Leaving the lines swaying in the moaning wind, the Doctor and Cameron headed toward the hand. It flexed as they picked their way across the shifting detritus to reach it. They heard a groan, weaker than the ones they had heard above.

“It is Captain Hamilton!” Cameron shouted overhead.

From up on the precipice came several cheers.

The captain had fallen so heavily that loose metal shavings had poured in on top of him like sand. They could only see his arms and head.

As they stood over him, Hamilton groaned.

“Help me get him out,” Cameron said.

The Doctor picked his way around a giant metal shard that was sticking up like a four-foot axe blade. It was less than a yard away from the captain; he was lucky to have missed it, thought Cameron as he started digging with his hands.

“What are you doing, Doctor?” he cried.

The Doctor had stopped on the other side of the metal shard and taken off his helmet. He was looking down at the ground, his mouth open.

Cameron stopped. “What is it?”

“I think you should come and look, Sergeant.”

The sergeant came around the giant metal plane and froze. From the look on his face, the Doctor realised that Cameron didn’t know; that none of them knew.

Lying in front of him was a pair of twitching legs, severed from the body at the waist. But there was no spilt blood; no shattered bones; no shredded flesh. Instead there were whirring servomotors, and sliced wires giving off sparks, and a viscous black oily fluid leaking out over the broken ball-joints of stainless steel hips.

The legs were wearing Captain Hamilton’s combat pants.

NOTES:
How's that for a twist? Did you see it coming? In my original conception of this story some five or six years ago, this twist happened right at the end. I saw it very much as being "The Sixth Sense" with robots instead of ghosts (plus lots of battles, obviously). This chapter ended up longer than I'd planned, being some 400 words longer than the very talky sixth chapter, but as I discovered writing "The Rabbits Of Roadkill Turnpike", once you get into proper big action scenes like this, it's very easy to get carried away and turn them into epic sequences. I actually deleted several passages as well. I had a whole conversation near the end where Cameron and the Doctor wonder what to do next, but it didn't really have any purpose at this juncture except to prove the Doctor hasn't forgotten Rose. She only gets a passing mention, you'll notice.

Ellison was named after Harlan Ellison, science fiction writer, who sued James Cameron for "The Terminator", which he claimed was stolen from one of his stories. Apparently the courts found there was no reason to suspect anything more than a coincidental similarity, but out of goodwill, Cameron inserted a credit on the video release saying "Indebted to the work of Harlan Ellison". Keeping with the robot theme, Daniels was named after Anthony Daniels who played C3P0 in all the "Star Wars" movies. As for Cooper, Ryan, Wells and Spooner, they're four of the characters from "Dog Soldiers"; no robot connection, but I've pretty much exhausted that idea now. I was considering naming them after other characters previous "Doctor Who" actors have played, such as Herriot (as in Tristan(/m?) Herriot, which fifth Doctor Peter Davison played in "All Creatures Great And Small"); but the only other one I could think of was another character played by third Doctor Jon Pertwee: Worzel Gummidge. "Attenhut, Private Gummidge! Front and centre!" Hmm, no.