IRON JILL by Anthony Durrant Charles Vectore, a scholar, was watching the Women's Obstacle Racing World Championship. He watched as the contestants ran through a number of deadly obstacles, some of which proved fatal to a few of the contestants as they passed through on the way to the finish line. One young woman accidentally triggered a trapdoor and fell down a bottomless pit, and later, another contestant set off a bomb underneath a jump. Finally, only two contestants were left; they zoomed toward the finish line - and the blonde came in first, breaking the tape easily. "Now that this race is finished," he thought, "I'll go to the ladies' room and see my lady- love, Carmen, the lady who came in second. She'll be glad to see me." He stood up and went into the stadium. On the way in, he noticed a protest flag flying on the pole. As he made his way to the ladies' room, he heard this announcement: "Ladies and Gentlemen, Vanessa Hargrave has failed the drug test and has been disqualified. Carmen Cansino is hereby declared the rightful winner of the Obstacle Race." He walked into the ladies' room, where he met the beautiful raven-haired Carmen. "Hello, Carmen," he said. "I was watching you from the stands." "Then I take it you saw the finish, Amore?" she asked. "I did, darling," Charles said proudly. "You ran a very good race." "Thank you, Charles," Carmen said, "but Vanessa came in first." "Vanessa failed the test," Charles told her. "She's been disqualified from the race, apparently for taking some sort of muscle growth serum so she could run faster than you." "I thought so," Carmen said. "I was always suspicious of her Norse-goddess physique." "Hey!" a tall blonde cried. "Hey, you!" "Me?" Charles asked. "Yeah, you!" she shouted. "Mr. Four-Eyes! You're not allowed in the ladies' room." "That's my fiancé you're talking to, Charlotte!" Carmen cried. "Leave him alone!" To his utter amazement, the other women took up Charlotte's call and began shouting for him to leave the room. Charles handed Carmen a bouquet of roses and shasta daisies, and kissed her passionately on the lips. She kissed him back with a passion equal to his own. After the two lovebirds let each other go, Charles was seized by Charlotte, who swiped his thick glasses before he could react. He couldn't see a thing without them, but he felt himself being carried out of the stadium and heard the girls cheering the person who was carrying him. Soon they came to a river, and Charles felt himself being thrown into a motorboat. Shortly afterward, his glasses landed in the boat and he put them on. He was horrified to see an island in front of him - a desert island that looked dark and forbidding. At that moment, Charlotte bent and whispered in his ear: "This is what we do to pipsqueaks like you who go into ladies' rooms!" With that, she started the boat, and Charles went zooming toward the island at top speed. Several minutes later, the boat ran right onto the island's shore, and Charles jumped off before it crashed into the rocks. A few seconds later, he watched as the boat exploded, its fuel tanks damaged in the crash. Shaking with fear, he hauled his frail 110-pound, 5'10" frame off the sand and walked away from the boat. Soon he noticed a small opening in the rock and squeezed into it; to his amazement, he found himself in a tunnel. Charles followed the tunnel, which he realized had been carved by a man and not by Mother Nature, to an abandoned laboratory. Parts of the structure of the lab had collapsed, but the machines were still intact. There were many of them around the lab, especially computer banks. This plaque was on the back wall of the lab: IRON JILL MILITARY DEFENSES INC. Below the plaque stood a black glass case with something female inside - could it be one of the robot super-soldiers once used by the armed forces for dangerous operations? Charles saw a number of skeletons lying around - skeletons of people killed in the rockfalls. "A military lab?" Charles thought. "I wonder why it was abandoned?" Looking around the lab, Charles found a helmet on a control console, and picked it up. It was obvious that the helmet was made for a purpose. He whipped out his personal log and made this entry as he looked at the mysterious helmet he was holding: "Personal Log, May 18: "I have been marooned on a desert island by some female athletes and have found an abandoned laboratory in a secret cave in the mountain. In this lab I have found an unusual helmet which I hope will allow me to control the robot in the dark glass case. Hopefully, if I can activate it, the robot will serve as my bodyguard when I get off the island." Closing his logbook, Charles tucked it away and put on the helmet. Reaching up, he took hold of the sliders on the helmet and pulled all of them down. Electric power surged through his body as the helmet shortcircuited, frying his brain within seconds. Charles Vectore's body fell in a heap on the floor of the lab as sparks sheathed the robot standing in the case and blew apart the glass, which scattered all over the floor, revealing a woman who rivalled the stars themselves for beauty with hip-length hair as black as the darkest night and skin as gold as the noonday sun. An aura of sparks surrounded her powerful body, making her raven hair stand on end, before vanishing completely. Her eyes opened, and she stepped out of the shattered tank. Kneeling down, she scooped up Charles's dead body and laid it reverently on the floor in front of the console. Two weeks later, a ship arrived at the island. Carmen and Charlotte were among the passengers who were on board. Carmen had heard a report that the island was haunted, and brought a now repentant Charlotte over with her. When the ship docked in the cove, the captain prepared a boat in which the two ladies could go ashore. "I'll send Ed and Steve with you in the boat," he said. "They'll protect you on shore." "Fine with us, senor," Carmen said, ignoring his Victorian attitude. "They're very nice." At that moment, a golden arm came up from under the water and grabbed the port railing, the one near the signalman's office. Something climbed up over the railing and walked toward it just as the signalman was broadcasting the ship's position. Seconds later, the door was torn from its frame and the signalman was grabbed from behind and strangled to death. His killer ran from the room and hid behind the door just as two of the sailors found the body. "It's Cliff!" one of them cried, turning the body over. "He's been choked to death!" "Yes," a voice whispered, "and now you two will also be dead!" Cliff's killer grabbed the larger of the two and flung him against the wall. He slumped to the floor and didn't rise again. A few seconds later, the murderer stabbed the smaller man in the chest with his own knife and ran back on deck, then jumped overboard. He lived long enough to tell the captain, "A golden lady stabbed me . . . the ghost of the island!" As Carmen and Charlotte rowed to shore with the two sailors, they saw another boat foll- owing them toward the island and could make out the Captain at its head. "That island was the home base of a defense company known as Iron Jill," one sailor told Carmen with a sad frown on his bearded face. "They made lifelike female androids for the army to use as an Amazon Corps. When the army rejected the idea, the company's head decided to try and conquer North America to prove the robots' defense capabilities. Unfortunately, he and everyone else working for him was killed when the navy bombarded this island, and every last robot was destroyed. Now people say their ghosts haunt the island looking for revenge." "We'll take that into account," Charlotte said, staring at the robot parts on shore. "Is that what I think it is? It looks very much like a lady's head sticking out of the sand." "That's the broken head of one of the robots, Charlotte!" Carmen said as the boat hit the shore of the island. She jumped off, waded to shore, and picked it up. "It looks very real, but its inner works are showing. This must have been one of the Amazon Corps robots." "I lost my bet," the head commented wryly, "but I'm not dead yet - which is no surprise." "Dio mio!" Carmen cried. "It's alive!" "Not for much longer, girl," the head told her. "I bet 088 that we could conquer America within a week's time. Now look at me - I'm just a battered old head! Watch out for the dangerous cliffs on the other side of the island and beware . . . of the other one . . ." With that, the head shut down forever as Charlotte and the sailors waded to shore. "We'll give her a decent burial, kiddo," Charlotte said, hugging Carmen. "C'mon." They buried the head on the beach and then went to explore the island. To do so Carmen and Charlotte went one way and the sailors went the other. As they walked along the mountains, Carmen kept wondering about the warning given them by the head. " 'The other one,' " she said. "What do you suppose that could mean, Charlotte?" "How should I know?" Charlotte said. "She was a robot - a fighting machine!" Soon they came to the same tunnel Charles had found weeks earlier; now the rocks protecting the secret opening had been ripped away, making it wider. Carmen and Charlotte followed the tunnel to the secret laboratory, where they found Charles Vectore's body. They also found a log in his hand with an entry dated the very day he'd come into the cave. Carmen bent down and hugged the lifeless body to her chest, patting its back just as if Charles were still alive. "Something was in that broken glass case," Charlotte whispered. "What happened to it?" "It broke free," Carmen said, struggling to stop the tears. "Don't you remember the warning, Charlotte? The other one! 'Beware of the other one!' " At that moment, the bearded sailor ran into the laboratory. "A thing grabbed my mate from behind," he cried. "She's coming after -" It was only then that he saw the body. Bending down beside Carmen, he started to cry. "Charles!" he cried, taking off the burned helmet. "Oh, Charles! Dost thou lie so low?" Even Carmen was amazed at the depth of his mourning. "Did you know my fiancé, senor?" she asked. "You must have, to be so upset!" "This is the body of my brother Charles!" the sailor cried, ripping off a fake beard to reveal an exact duplicate of Charles's face. "I'm Lionel, Charles's twin brother. I ran off to sea just after my twelfth birthday and became a sailor. Charles and I lost contact over the years." "Why the fake beard, Sailor Boy?" Charlotte asked. "Charles and I were never able to grow a beard," Lionel said, "so I bought a fake beard to look macho. You see, we both have a genetic quirk called Bright's disease, which gave us slender builds and also made Charles frail. It also left us unable to have children." "Charles never told me that!" Carmen cried. "Well, I'm taking hormone," Lionel said, "but it is not helping me grow a beard. I may be able to have children, though, because of the effects of my hormone." At that moment, a golden fist smashed through the rock wall, sending stones raining onto the cave floor. Seconds later another fist smashed through, more stones tumbled down and a tall golden woman walked into the lab, her raven hair flowing down her shoulders onto the small of her back and falling around her as she came forward, toward the unfortunate threesome. "Dio mio!" Carmen screamed. "The other one!" "Great Scott!" Lionel cried. "It's - the thing!" "No!" the woman cried. "I am not a thing, curse you! I am a woman - I am . . . Vectore, the indestructible woman - and you will all be screaming my name when I kill you!" Her eye fell on Lionel, who was cradling his brother's body in his arms. "I will kill you all," she said, "and you, dear Lionel, will come last." Picking him up like a child's doll, she kissed the proud Lionel on the cheek. "My dear brother," she said, "did you really think I forgot how you left home to become a sailor? How you deserted our parents and I, in a time of great need? Now I have power - greater power than you could possibly imagine - and I'm going to use it to give you a quick death." "Oh, Lord," Lionel whispered. "That is you, isn't it, Charlie boy?" "No one else but, Li," Vectore said, "and I'll see to it that you die for what you did to us." Grabbing a DVD, Carmen hurled it at Vectore like a Frisbee, but it bounced off her. She was astounded - this was the first time in years she hadn't dented anything with a throw. Vectore dropped Lionel and began to run toward Carmen, angered by the attack on her person. "Quick!" she cried. "Into the main computer room - pronto!" They hurried into the computer room, with Vectore following close behind. Lionel managed to jump clear of Vectore and hit the door control, causing the door to slide down in front of the angry robot. Charlotte and Carmen hurried over to the computer keyboard, and Lionel sat in the control chair, placed his fingers on the proper row of keys, and typed: GIVE ME DATA ON THE MILITARY ROBOTS DESIGNED AND BUILT BY IRON JILL. A schematic appeared on the screen, featuring a layout of the robots' anatomy and describing the main features of the elaborate skeletal structure. "This is Vectore," Lionel told the girls, "with . . . with her beauty removed. I'll order this computer to make three printouts of this screen - one set of plans for each of us." "What good will that do?" Charlotte asked. "She's bashing the door down - with her bare hands! We'll be mulch if we don't get out of here by the time she bashes her way in!" "If we have a copy of this layout," Lionel snapped, "we can figure out the weaknesses that are in this design and use them to our advantage when Charlie does bash through." He made the computer print out the three copies of the layout by dragging the mouse to a command menu at the top of the page and clicking on the word PRINT. Everybody looked over the schematics; but none of them could find any flaw in Iron Jill's design. "Right!" Lionel said. "I'll bring up the model list, then." He typed LIST ALL THE MODELS OF THIS DESIGN BUILT BY IRON JILL and a few minutes later, a list of model numbers scrolled down the screen, starting from 01. Carmen was completely astounded by how many robots Iron Jill had actually built. "Dio mio!" she said. "I had no idea there were so many!" "Most of these were destroyed in battle," Lionel said, "or in the bombing of the island, the terrible bombing that killed each and every human on the island. There were also two prototypes built . . . one was on the beach when the bombs came down. That was her head you found on the beach; her name was OV-100. Charlie's mind was transferred into the one called OV-099, which was originally STA-099, the Structural Test Article - OV is short for Operational Vehicle, a term left over from the days when tanks and heavy machinery were used in battle. STA-099 was used for the stress tests on the androids' internal skeletal structure. After the test program was finished, she was upgraded to Operational status but was never used in battle." "Why not?" Charlotte asked, looking back anxiously as a golden hand dented the door. "She was fitted with an artificial skin made of a synthetic polymer which was almost indestructible," Lionel said. "Using her would have been too big an advantage, so she was placed in that glass case for display purposes. She wasn't even primed for programming!" Just then the doors twisted apart like so much paper and Vectore walked into the room. "Nothing can stop me!" she cried. "Nothing can hurt me! I'm INDESTRUCTIBLE!" Charlotte leaped to the second floor of the computer room and pushed the computer bank onto Vectore. As it fell, so did the eight others it was linked to, burying the angry robot beneath tons of computer hardware. Lionel jumped up and followed Carmen as she ran after Charlotte, a surprised look in his eye. Charlotte ran from pillar to pillar, pulling the lever on their panels. "What do you think you're doing?" Carmen asked. "Setting these explosive charges," Charlotte snapped. "I'm going to blow up this lab and prevent Vectore from chasing us to the surface. She'll smash through that hardware easily!" A golden arm thrust through the wrecked banks, and soon afterward Vectore smashed her way out from underneath the ruined hardware on the floor with a metallic shriek. "Foolish little girl," she snapped. "You tried to bury me, but it is I who shall bury you!" "She has the power to do it!" Carmen thought as she backflipped away from Vectore and leaped to the second level. "What have I gotten myself into?" "Get behind me!" Charlotte cried. "I'll hold off the robot while you escape!" Grabbing two of the special guns meant for the robots, Charlotte whirled toward Vectore. Carmen and Lionel ran out the door at the end of the level and hurried down a corridor towards a light at the end. On the way, they spotted a wrecked robot lying on the floor. "I won the bet," she said, "but I'm not dead yet, which is no surprise!" "You must be #88!" Carmen exclaimed. "Dio mio, what happened to you?" "My full name's OV-88," the robot told her. "I was blown apart while running toward an escape pod at the other end of this corridor. If you hurry, you can flee the island in the pod." "Come on!" Lionel cried. "Thank you, #88!" "You're welcome!" she said. "Now I'll just sit here and wait for the end to come." They ran to the end of the corridor, where they found the light was coming through a silver door with glass on top, beside which was a red panel that read EMERGENCY. Balling both his fists, Lionel smashed the panel and the door slid open. He and Carmen hurried through it and into a silver tube which led straight to the canopy of the escape pod. Lionel jumped into the pod, and Carmen climbed through and sat down on one of the seats. On the console in front of Lionel was a button that read LAUNCH. He smashed his fist down on it; the cliff wall blew off, exposing the pod inside it, and water filled the room, flooding down the corridor and dashing #88 right against the wall, smashing apart what was left of the wrecked robot's head. At the same time the pod blew free of the underwater room, shooting out into the lake. It was a small submarine built to get the scentists off the island in a hurry, powered by nuclear engines - but Lionel had no idea how to steer the damn thing. He finally managed to steer back to the island and surface.