Z14 Read online

  Z14

  By Jim Chaseley

  February 2012 Edition

  Copyright 2012 Jim Chaseley. All rights reserved

  I hope you enjoy this book, and please keep an eye out for my future titles. Please feel free to get in touch with me on Twitter (http://www.twitter.com/jchaseleyauthor), or via email at [email protected]

  I’d like to thank my cover artist, Nathan Edwards for the book cover. Thanks!

  Please visit his website at http://cowfields.co.uk/

  All characters in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Epilogue

  Epilogue Addendum…

  Chapter One

  Life would be so much easier if I was a toaster. Less action-packed, true, but definitely easier.

  Ruminating on my very existence whilst strangling the human I had been sent to assassinate struck me as being unprofessional. Neatly proving that point, my wayward musings were brought to heel, as a burst of gunfire from a previously unseen bodyguard slammed into my chest. Served me right for losing mission focus.

  "Why was I made to feel pain?" I yelled, as I punched through a wall, and the head of the bodyguard who had just ducked back behind it. An internal alert notified me that collateral damage would be deducted from my payment. It couldn't be helped, I'd damage as much collateral as I needed to get out of here alive.

  Alive? Life? Is that what this is? Is that what I am? Ah, nuts to it, a toaster doesn't have to deal with this existential bullshit.

  Two more bodyguards rushed through a doorway, hot lead erupting from their cheap, old-tech weapons. Their fire was wild and only a smattering of bullets peppered my torso. Most riddled the office walls and shattered the grand, panoramic window behind me. I glared at the attackers. Perhaps a bit more collateral damage wouldn't go amiss. After all, these goons had shot me full of holes and that stung like a bastard. But no, if I was ever going to find out who, what, when and where I was – and maybe why, for the full set – I needed to score as close to the maximum fee for this job as I could.

  Yes, toasters have an easy life, but then again, they can't do this! I turned and dived through the shot-out window behind me and – with my internal sensors registering my altitude at fifty-eight feet – I engaged my jetpack and blazed a trail up, up and away.

  Okay, I admit it; I love my job.

  *

  Cruising through the sky, I had one of those moments where you think of something witty to say after an argument, only it's too late to get it in and ‘score’ with it. Bah, it's never too late, I say. I composed an email in what I like to refer to as my mind and fired it off:

  To: [email protected]

  Subject: Parting Shot

  FAO: Surviving bodyguards and security personnel.

  Sorry you missed me, but I had to fly!

  Regards,

  Rampaging Kill-bot

  No, not the greatest of comebacks, and definitely lacking the desired snappiness. I'd have to keep working at expanding my witticism database.

  They would already know my true name, of course. Everyone knows Z14, so signing the email Rampaging Kill-bot was all part of the fun that I sought. I'm not really a rampaging kill-bot, but I had a self-created image to live up to. In truth, I only rampage when I'm severely cheesed off, and only kill when I'm slightly less annoyed than that. No, I'm more of a finely tuned, targeted assassination-bot. To actually be summed up as a ‘bot’ would be a deep insult to the technological marvel that I am, and, if I had feelings they'd be as hurt as my outer flesh was by the guards' bullets back at Fatality Corp.

  Recently, I’ve discovered that I do appear to have feelings; a most puzzling development. Who builds a cyborg and gives it a smart-arse personality and a bad temper? Who thought that was a good idea? Damned if I know, but I'll find out one day, and I'll smash the bastard's teeth in with my big metal fist.

  As I neared my home, ahem, fortress, the fuel ran low in my jetpack, its flame guttering in and out, causing me to lurch up and down in the air as though I'd hit turbulence. No problem, though, I was home. My feet touched down on the grass outside my cave just as the jetpack gave one last little fart and packed up. It’s a very cool device – small, powerful, efficient and controlled via wireless comms – I rarely go out without it strapped to my back. It’s cyborg-level technology, too – nobody else has one of these bad boys. I was pleased with how well I'd done calculating my fuel requirements, but not as chuffed as I was with the fact my course from target to home hadn't been off by so much as a degree. Again, what's a cyborg doing feeling proud? I'm a super computer on legs, of course I can plot a flight path. Pride's a sin, so I’m the sinning cyborg. Better that than a singing one, though, since I’m far more brutal when murdering songs as opposed to humans.

  Ah, my fortress, my castle, my home. It's a modest little place, really. A murderous cyborg-for-hire doesn't require much in the way of creature comforts, which is why you might call the six foot deep, two foot wide gash in the side of a chalky cliff that I call home ‘minimalist’. I don't need a hi-tech base of operations, I am a high-tech base of operations – All my filing, all my admin, all my communications and computer equipment and even my weaponry is me. I just need a pitch-black cleft in a cliff to hide from the scattered splinters of humanity on this lost planet, who all seem to want me melted down and turned into something less terrifying, like, oh I don't know, a new line of luxury toasters. So this was home, but it's not exactly somewhere I'd bring a potential Mrs Rampaging Kill-bot, should I ever bump into one out on a job.

  Naturally I have unnaturally perfect night vision, so I avoided treading on any of the soft, small cuddly animal toys lying on the floor of the cave. I had no idea why I collected these, but I did. Whenever I saw one I bought it – or stole it on the rare occasions I spotted one whilst out on a job. Most were old, torn and dirty and leaking stuffing. One of them – that I always seemed to keep closest to me – was just the rear-end of a leopard, or possibly even a giraffe – it was so old and worn that it was hard to tell which. I’d found it lying on a pile of rubbish once, when disposing of a body. A whole heap of cuddly animals had been shredded by something, but the leopard’s arse was the best preserved bit, so I’d added it to my collection.

  I had no answer as to why these things – the half-leopard in particular – were so important to me, and cyborg-psychiatry wasn’t exactly an overcrowded profession in these parts. I picked the leopard up and clutched it in one hand as I opened up a communication channel in my head, to my most recent
employer.

  "Fatality Corp have suffered fatalities of their own," I said as soon as the call was answered.

  "How many?" demanded an old man's voice.

  "Just two, and only minor interior damage. I still expect full payment. Their C.E.O. has expired due to lack of oxygen to the brain."

  "Okay, you creepy robot bastard, it's on its way. We're done here."

  "I'm not a robot. But yes, I was assembled outside of wedlock to the best of my knowledge." Another process running inside what I erroneously but unavoidably refer to as my brain indicated that my account had just been credited by the expected amount.

  "You've got your money," said the old man. "I said we're done."

  I could almost visualise the fat blob of flesh reaching for the disconnect button. "We're not done," I said. The words dripped menace. Silence from the other end, which I filled. "Fatality Corp may be short a chief exec, but they still have a contract of their own out on you."

  He would have already suspected I was the one who'd taken that contract. Not just because I'd brought it up, but also because I take on almost all contracts. This planet had a thriving assassination industry when I arrived on the scene, until I got involved and monopolised it. I can get through three or four kills a day. I never fail, I never stop, I never, well, rarely rest. I'm the assassin of choice for the discerning contract setter. It helps, of course, that I'm almost the only assassin left on the planet. I killed most of the rest – my own little side-project to quite literally cut down the competition. Many of those I didn't kill found alternative careers. Flipping burgers may be boring, but it's not usually something I'll kill you for. The few die-hards still in the game, well, they will indeed die hard.

  "You'll never find me!" His sudden desperation was almost palpable, but he wasn't even convincing himself.

  "I found you last week," I said. How odd, my face was smirking. I swear, I lose control of it sometimes.

  "What do you mea – "

  The call cut off because I sent a remote signal to detonate the explosive charge I'd left under his chair a week ago. Smashing through walls and laying waste to entire armed encampments to reach my target is fun, I cheerfully admit, but sometimes the subtle, stealthy approach is almost downright sexy. Sexy? What the hell is wrong with me? There's no way I should have thoughts like that.

  Job done, though. Now I almost hope the – quite rightly – affronted Fatality Corp refuse to pay up. Try it you evil shits, I dare you.

  Chapter Two

  Referring to other entities as evil when I’m a genuine killing machine – who, worse, kills for money – might sound like the garbage-bot calling the sewage-droid dirty, but it wasn’t a bug in my morality processing, a contracted hypocrisy virus or some such techno-babble. No, my records indicate that I can claim with a high degree of certainty that I've only gone after nasty bastards in my life. Well, I can't speak for my whole life, because I have no idea how old I am; what my date of manufacture was, or even what I’ve been doing for all but the last five years of my existence. Guards, soldiers and assorted others die by my hand when I'm going for a target I deem worthy of death, but that's just tough shit for them for working for scum – I'm not going to lose any regenerative cycles over it.

  And yet, humans put out contracts on all sorts of other humans, be they good, bad or totally amoral, and I take on almost all contracts, this is true. The thing is, it’s possible to do a contract backwards. If some utter arsehole puts out a contact on a ‘little Timmy’ type, I pay the would-be employer a visit instead. I have extensive abilities, both electronics-based and physical, to hack and poke into many aspects of people's private lives and I've deemed myself the proverbial judge and executioner. I don't need to be the jury too, that's just twelve more middlemen to cut out.

  Every now and then some idiot seems to forget that I'm like some sort of avenging Santa Claus – yes, it seems Saint Nick came along on the colony ships. It’s like I check their ‘Dear Santa, please can you kill...’ list and know if they've been angelic or demonic. If they show up on my inner litmus test as acidic to society I can go and hack and poke them. Generally though, these days, the message has gone out that you only try to have someone killed if you've got good reason. Sure, the people ordering the hits are rarely any better than the target themselves, but more often than not a contract with their name on it pops through my metaphoric letterbox before too long. I try not to kill paying customers if I reckon there's a good chance someone else will pay me to do it later anyway. Besides, this is Deliverance; there aren’t exactly many ‘little Timmy’’ types around.

  Fatality Corp and their rivals, the newly decapitated Murder Funtime Association were a special pair of cases. Squabbling over the business of death and misery they were in, they'd had a little falling out and each had ordered the deaths of the other's chief exec. They were – hah, emphasis on were – little more than gang bosses in suits, running companies that televised various death-based games in the subjugated towns and cities around the planet's capital, Boram Bay.

  Ah, and what a planet this is. Deliverance, most people call it, because the people were basically delivered here. Records of Earth show us this is a very similar place to the home planet – eerily so, say some. To me it seems pretty obvious this planet has been terraformed; customised to our, I mean the humans’, liking. Just a little theory of mine, although I couldn't tell you who, how or why. It certainly wasn't the humans, as they don't even really know how they ended up here. Something we share in common. One day, back in the Earth year twenty twenty-three, more than thirty million people were scooped up from Earth and carried off aboard a fleet of spaceships. Aboard those ships they lived and died over the course of generations, before arriving here and watching in awe as their spaceships automatically converted themselves into efficient little colony creation centres.

  Now, one obvious oddity about that story is that Earth's entire space fleet consisted at the time of a couple of private orbital pleasure craft and a scientific research ship, that had crashed into the moon. Carrying tens of millions of people to however far across the galaxy Deliverance is, has been estimated as being a feat Earth could not have achieved in less than three hundred years from that point in time. People tend to make of that what they will. Personally, I've added extraterrestrials to my ‘mysterious terraformers’ theory. Strangely, whoever did it imparted nothing of themselves, or their plans, to their guests-come-captives.

  The immense colony ships were like tiny, flat planets, containing simulated Earth-like environments inside unimaginably large domes, that each housed up to a million people. There were resources aplenty within these environments and the people were able to build shanty towns inside their domes and exist in relative comfort – standards which, for many, were vast improvements over their living conditions on Earth. Animals, tools and all kinds of human technology had been brought along from Earth, too. Nobody knew how they had ended up on board the ships, nor what had happened to Earth – a collective amnesia affected every single one of them. One second they were on Earth, the next they just became aware that they were wandering around inside an artificial environment, with month-long chunks of their memories missing. Call me an unimaginative machine, but I cannot begin to picture the scale of the chaos, fear and panic that would have erupted as people came to their senses and began to wonder just what the fuck was going on. The conditions aboard ship may have been comfortable, but the rioting would not have been.

  The people who had been taken – kidnapped or rescued, depending on your world view – had been spirited away in the cultural groups they lived in on Earth, and then scattered around Deliverance in those same groups; their ships landing and bedding down in geographical regions much like those they had come from. It really was very strange. Nobody had seen anybody or anything from off-planet since.

  Technology has mostly been stagnant since the people – from every conceivable stratum of Earth society – found themselves aboard the mysterious space fleet
. There's been the odd advance here and there, mostly in weapons technology, but then there's also been the odd slip in important fields like medicine and health care. Oh, and a somewhat relevant and perplexing point of self-interest: Cyborg technology hadn't been invented on Earth, to the best of anyone's knowledge. Even robotics had stalled in its infancy. And yet, here I am baby, doing my thing, amassing a vast personal fortune, and looking for a way to get to Earth. I would happily place a large amount of that personal wealth of mine on a bet that I was created by my theorised terraforming extraterrestrial kidnappers. It'd be nice to find out one day. I will find out one day.

  Early life on Deliverance must have come somewhere close to the original kidnap generation's awakening for being what I'll severely understate as ‘confusing’. Humans have always asked, ‘Why?’ but they have rarely had to wonder, ‘Where?’ and, ‘How?’ and, ‘Just what the hell?’ at the same time before. I can forgive them for having so much on their plate that they let imagination and originality pass them by when they came to name their new, what, countries? States? Enclaves? Whatever they were, they named them such exciting things as New America, New Europe and New Australia. I think there were three New Americas at one point. After a few years of settling in to their new home, people looked at their neighbours in New Whatever and decided they had more of Widget X than they themselves did. Innumerable mini-wars kicked off and quickly merged into a chaotic global conflict, and New This 'n That fell in smoke and chaos. The old cultural boundaries were swished around with the flow of blood and people, and the battered survivors of the Settler Wars eventually calmed down, realising they were on the brink of total collapse and extinction – on Deliverance, at least. New settlements spread like a rash all around the planet and the original colony-cities began to flourish. New America II in particular outgrew, and soon outgunned just about everybody else, and, as it sought to exert its influence, the period known as The Last Great Gold Rush began – violently, of course. New America II was soon to be renamed Boram Bay, in honour of the man who finally ‘united’ the planet, albeit by crushing and subjugating almost everything and everyone that wasn’t him.