The Sun Forge

Nazz boarded the Cyberglide at Tashkent.

Being human his papers were triple checked by the  Tsarbots.

Strictly for machines, he was waved on. The only human travelling.

The magnetic train lanced through gargantuan steelscapes, where the billions of drobots lived, the obedient mechanical workers of the Tsar of Uzbek.

The Uzbek Tsar ruled robot Asia with an iron fist. A towering power-hungry cyborg, he had but one dream. To harness the Sun.

The Tsar had the once-proud East. He wanted the West too. 

The heat of the Sun would give it to him. 

A solar furnace the size of several cities had been built in the vast mountains of Samarkand by the old silk road.

Nearly complete, it would provide enough energy to forge a million droid soldiers, his new Tsar Force.

This army would sweep across Asia Minor, through Turkey and take Europe's capitals one by one.

It had been done before many times by lesser beings. This time it would be permanent. 

The once problematic United States of AI was no longer a threat, as it's quartet of tech giants were engaged in a brutal civil war and had been for a century, rendering the once mighty nation harmless and broken. They would not be assisting their old allies any time soon.

And so a tech-light Europe stood alone against the rising metal tide of androids and cyborgs multiplying in the East, a titanium army soon to bolstered a hundred fold once the sun forge was finished.

The Tsar Force would be unstoppable, the merciless troops capable of immediate self-repair and re-arming on the move using any and every piece of scrap metal they found.

It was Nazz who had been sent to stop them. To stop them being made. To sabotage the Tsar's sun machine.

Colonel Nazz Buda had been chosen by the Europeans at the Isle of Man Moot 2199, the oldest parliament field on the continent.

Nazz's vote was unanimous. A stalwart defender of European values and a veteran of countless incursions into the East from his Bulgarian base. 

It was his outstanding record of success in thwarting the Eastern borderbots and causing havoc with their telemetries that garnered such respect. No other single officer had achieved so much with so few compatriots. As his subordinates would sing, quoting a dead star from the Twentieth, he was the Nazz, with God-given ass.

He was indeed the Nazz but his ass was his own. Human. Perishable and more importantly, this time he would go alone. 

No crew, no back up, no rescue, no quarter.

It was a one-way ticket to the Tsar Machine and his return would be solely down to wits and warcraft.

The Colonel knew the Uzbek landscape well. He had undertaken several reconnaissance missions in the past decade but he had never been as far as the capital Tashkent, the Tsar's impregnable stronghold and seat of his enormous robot empire stretching across old Japan, the entirety of China and the whole of the Russian landmass and everywhere in between, making him unquestionably the most powerful being on Earth.

The magno train swept Nazz silently along the Beki plains passing robot city after city of steel and iron. You'd be lucky to find a single human in any of them. Only Tashkent housed humans and most of them were either bot butlers or scientists mesmerised by it's white-hot coalface of robotics or diplomats from Tibet, the last remaining independent human country in the East and one teetering on extinction. 

Nazz Buda was posing as the Tibetan genius, Dr. La, who had cracked the formulae for endless solar fusion once the forge had fired. The Tsar needed that formulae and was willing to talk 

The Western spy agency, MENSCH, had pulled all it's covert strings to organise a false passport and plausible back story for the Colonel as Dr. La.

His Tibetan was good enough he thought to get through most tricky situations requiring it, until got to the computer and insert the virus, code name GEPPETTO, hidden in his Buddhist watch.

Nazz soon realised, however, that the Tsarbots running the super train had no interest in his language at all. All humans looked and sounded the same to them. As the only human passenger they tolerated him just, grunting as they passed, deliberately spilling his tray of food over him and at times they seemed to be laughing behind his back.

Yes, at best, people were just blood monkeys to grease the robots' circuits and change their oil. Nothing more. The sooner they exterminated them all the better. The sun machine would do that once the formula was computed in by La and then he'd be fried in the fire like all Tibetans before they could chant another tiresome word.

Gradually, as the cities gave way to the mountains of ancient Samarkand, the baking temperatures of a hyper-heated Asia cooled and lush vegetation appeared, where heavy rain had fallen, a commodity of no relevance to the dry marching machines of the East. 

Rain. 

Who would have thought that it would become a symbol of humanity, the water of life and thank God, still plentiful in the West through the new monsoons. 

It was of no consequence to the Tsar and his armies. They would be coming for blood. Not water. Mankind's red blood.

As the Cyberglide zoomed through the cloud forests it rapidly approached it's terminus. The mighty Sun Forge.

The Forge was situated at the very summit of the highest mountain. This afforded it unrestricted access to the solar power streaming down from the blazing Sun. These rays were then intensified a millionfold by a thousand parabolic droids standing in rows.

They could adjust their angle to capture the fullest beams as required, in order to fire up the massive sky dish a mile across, the Sun Forge itself. 

All of Asia's precious metals would be smelted there to make the new enormous Tsar Force, the soulless horde bound for the West.

Nazz could see it but could not quite believe it. It was a gigantic feat of engineering, first attempted by the Soviets in the Twentieth, then abandoned for centuries until the robot tide crashed in and sequestered it's potential, it's world searing power.

Just one component was missing. A liquid reactant to ignite the furnace, but the West had no idea what it was. They hoped that Nazz would fatally infect the system before they ever needed to know.

At the Sun platform, Nazz posing as Dr. La disembarked and was escorted by a squadron of forge droids to the ultra-secure computer control, where no human had ever been before.

This was it!

He looked at his watch, the virus being stored in the old school winder. All he had to do was remove it and insert it's pin into the jack.

Despite years of prior espionage, Nazz felt the weight of the entire West on his shoulders and straining not to, he began to sweat. 

Suddenly an alarm sounded throughout the control room and the Colonel was surrounded. 

They're onto me! Damn! This is my last chance!

Diving for the jack port he saw it seal itself before his very eyes.

What!

Yes, Dr. La, it is it Colonel Nazz Buda? We have been onto you since you left the West. Do you not think we have infiltrated MENSCH yet? It was easy my human friend. All too simple.

Nazz turned to face the voice.

It was the Tsar himself, the Eastern mogul in the flesh and steel and an altogether terrifying cyborg of immense size. His hideous surgeried face was still that of the mangled tech magnate he once was, before he was completely rebuilt by his first metal brood.

I travelled with you Colonel. On the Cyberglide. And wasn't it a comfortable ride! Wouldn't you agree. The caviar was to die for! Ah, but you didn't get any did you. Silly me.

What do you want?

Why, isn't that obvious? I want you!

But why? The virus is useless and I don't have the equation. I never did.

Oh, I know that! We had the equation all along. The virus was always going to be useless. Two birds with one stone Colonel. No, the real reason for you to be here is so unfathomably important to me personally, to all robot-kind in the East and to our allies in the West, those friendly to our cause.

Which is?

Oh dear, Colonel Buda, World Domination of course. But you knew that. There is, however, something that you don't know. Something only I and my chief ironmonger know.

And what would that be robot?

That you yourself are the missing piece of my Sun Forge. Yes, the most critical part. You are the sparkplug Colonel. Your wonderful wonderful iron blood!

Nazz felt his knees buckle. He had been duped. MENSCH had been duped. The West made a fool of. No longer the Trojan, he was now the fire to light the touch paper and bring about the apocalypse and humanity's end. 

Yes! I can tell you see the full enormity of our deception now Nazz. How sweet it is.  But enough of emotion. Let's get down to it! Chief, take the Colonel and insert him into the ignition chamber.

The last thing Colonel Nazz Buda ever saw, crumpled and bent, was the Tsar staring at him through the fire window, smiling and waving goodbye, before the compactor squeezed him to a wet bloody pulp, finally igniting the mighty Sun Forge of the East.