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  Kam knew his priorities, he dropped the rifle and sprinted to Kaboom, as did Oxley and Lothar, emerging from the two open doors, armed to the teeth – with what might as well have been water pistols against T9. Lothar skidded to a halt and ran back into the bunker, no doubt going for a first-aid kit.

  I clambered to my feet and hobbled over to where Kaboom lay. Very still. I could tell right away that he was done for. Oh he’d be a long time dying yet, but he would have severe internal organ damage, internal bleeding. His spine was most likely shattered. We could probably get him to a hospital, but, well, Deliverance medical care hasn’t kept pace with, say, weapons development. There’d be the sum total of fuck all they could do for him.

  “Is he going to be okay?” said Kam, who, really, must’ve known the score.

  Sometimes being a machine was a good thing. It meant I literally didn’t have the heart to tell him.

  Seems my schmaltz chip was fully functional though.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Lothar was back out of the bunker in a flash, the soon to be proved useless first aid kit clutched in one hand – it didn’t take long for everyone else to reach the conclusion I already had. Kaboom was in a coma, and he was dying. He had hours left, maybe a little longer if he was strong.

  It was odd; I felt bad for not feeling bad. I could have simulated the feelings of guilt and regret that Kaboom had all but died for me, but, instead, there was a genuine spark from the human side of me that was calling me a shit, for basically just doing the machine version of shrugging.

  “Come on, Kaboom Baboon,” said Kam. “Pull through this, you tubby great tit.”

  “Oxley,” said Lothar. Then louder, “Oxley. Go get that doctor’s head. He might know something.”

  “Yes sir,” said Oxley. He tore his ashen-faced gaze from Kaboom and ran for the bunker door. He nearly stumbled over T9’s head. “I don’t fancy you anymore,” he said, kicking the head and then shouting in pain – it would have been like trying to toe-punt a bowling ball. Only his combat boots saved his toes from being broken.

  I felt my damaged facial features, scraping broken teeth out of my mouth with a hooked finger. My nose was such a mess that I just pulled it off and threw it in a bush. So much for last night’s beauty sleep.

  “Lothar,” I said. “We’ll need to leave here. Soon.”

  “I hear ya, Zee,” said Lothar. “She followed you, but they can pinpoint her on this network of theirs? So there’s a good chance the rest know where she was?”

  “They know where she is,” I corrected him. “She’s still functional. Neither Kam’s blast, or the Baboon’s dribbly plasma fart damaged her head.”

  Lothar looked his age for a moment. “Kaboom,” he said. “We can’t go until he has. Gone that is. We bury him.”

  I nodded then limped over to Kam and put my hand on his shoulder. “Thanks Kam. I’m sorry.”

  He looked into my eyes for a long moment. “No you’re not,” he said. Then he relaxed and a bit of light came back into his own eyes. “But we know what you are, and we know you’d have done the same for one of us.”

  “Only if there had been sound tactical advantage in doing so,” I said.

  Kam shook his head, “You twat. You did it before in the Hole, there was no tactical advantage there. You were the tactical advantage, and you gave that up to get us all out of there. Don’t try to be the big frosty robot, Zed. We all know you just want a hug.”

  Lothar moved to pick up T9’s head and get it shielded from cyborg communications by taking it into the bunker.

  “Warden Fourteen submit!” the head shouted as he picked it up. He flinched and then underarm tossed the head through the bunker door and down the stairs.

  “Damn things give me the jeebies,” he said as he followed it through the door.

  Oxley came out of one of the other doors, carrying Doc Melon – who was already safely locked out of the cyborg network, just as I apparently was, if T9 was to be believed. Frankly, I did believe T9, because so far these cyborgs were proving to be utterly hopeless at anything resembling guile. Maybe they needed Melon tinkering with them before they could really learn a thing or two from their cover-personalities. So far, they didn’t seem to be firing on all cylinders. This whole activated-without-a-mission thing had them all running around like headless chicke – cyborgs.

  The doctor took in the scene: Partially melted cyborg corpse, two discarded weapons of unknown origin – to him – and a crumpled human. I was interested to see which item would gain his attention first. To his credit, he focused on Kaboom.

  “Oh, is that man dead?” he said.

  “Get him closer, Ox,” I said. “Kam, take the plasma guns inside. Just throw them in the storeroom, they’re useless to us. Both have now fired twice, and it won’t be happening again, they’re burned out.” Kam took a last look at Kaboom and then did as I’d asked.

  Oxley crouched in front of Kaboom, holding Melon’s head with outstretched arms, so the doctor could appraise Kaboom’s injuries. I joined them and felt Kaboom’s ribcage, sternum and spine. Just about everything felt broken and splintered. It was a wonder he was still alive.

  “We can save him,” said Doctor Melon.

  “We can?” said Oxley, full of hope. He stood up, faced me and, very obligingly, held Melon out at an angle, head turned so he could see both of us.

  “We can?” I said, caught between doubt and suspicion. This was Doctor Melon I was talking to, after all.

  “The colony ship, the one I hid at the Manoogla Heights,” he said.

  “The brain reading tech?” I said. Then I spat out a tooth that had been stuck in the roof of my mouth.

  Melon looked suddenly puzzled, then irritated. “Oh bloody hell,” he said. “Mr Ox, can you please tip my head forward then back a few times?” Oxley did just that. “Thank you. That was a nod, by the way,” said Melon.

  “I don’t follow ya, Doc,” said Oxley.

  “He wants to download Kaboom’s brain, encode it into a cyborg sub-program and then, I suppose, upload it into our latest captured cyborg head,” I said.

  “Doc, I don’t follow Zee.”

  “We can put your friend Kaboom into a robot head,” tried Melon.

  “Gotcha. Great idea,” said Oxley. “No, wait. Bad idea. Very bad. The Baboon wouldn’t want to live like that.”

  “Why don’t we do it anyway?” I said. “Then we can ask him how he feels about not being completely dead. We can always shut him down if he’d rather cease to exist.”

  “I dunno, Zee,” said Oxley. “Will he become the cool, sophisticated, likable kind of cyborg? Or will he just be another big metal bollock-face, like you?”

  “When I re-programmed Zed,” said Melon. “I had to try to subvert his Warden code with his human sub-personality. I didn’t know what I was doing back then, and, well, the mess that is Zed is the result.”

  “Thanks, Doctor,” I said, deliberately using a flat tone of voice.

  “However,” continued Melon. “When I came to alter the brain-encoding software – to encode my own, more complex and challenging personality – I was much more versed in the alien programming methods and languages, and was able to encode a brain pattern so complex that it contained a personality strong enough to lock away the Warden and throw away the key. The shoe of domination to now be worn by the underdog’s foot, indeed. Therefore, Kaboom will basically be himself, as much as I am me.”

  “And meanwhile cyber-guinea pig Zed, here, just has to carry on figuring out how his human bits are supposed to work,” I said. Factual statement – not resentment. Ha-ha, right.

  “Uh, okay. I followed every word of that, Doc,” said Oxley, who genuinely had gone cross-eyed as he glazed over and stared into space. “I’d best ask Lothar.”

  The intercom crackled. “Lothar’s here and he says let’s do it,” said Lothar’s voice. He did not sound happy at all, but I knew he’d feel it was his duty to do anything he possibly could to keep one of his men al
ive.

  “Lothar,” I said. “You guys walked here from the Bay, yes?”

  “Forced march. Jog-walking. Just over four hours in total. Like I said, it was two hours before you got back from not so Jolly Meadows.”

  “Moving Kaboom without killing him will be difficult,” I said.

  “Ah, even if – I mean when – he dies,” said Melon, “we’ll still have two hours to use the, ah, the technique on him. Although there will be somewhat less of him to retrieve, the longer we tarry here.”

  I fired up my mapping and navigation software and drew a triangle between our location, Boram Bay and the Manoogla Heights coordinates where the space shuttle was hidden. The city was less than half an hour’s jetpack flight to the west. I could fly there, steal a vehicle and drive it back in just under another hour. It would then be about two hours of driving across dirt tracks to reach the Heights. We could do it. Even if Kaboom died right this second we might still be able to save something.

  “I’ll get a vehicle,” I said. “Be ready to leave in ninety minutes. Get a bed up here and lay Kaboom out on it. If anyone else shows up here, kill them if they’re human, or get the fuck away if they’re not.”

  I checked my jetpack fuel: Plenty – which was good as I only had two tanks left in my bag in the bunker. I hobbled clear of people and trees and blasted off.

  Going back to the shuttle hidden in the Heights, with Doctor Melon, might actually turn out to be quite revealing. Perhaps I could get him to restore more of my memories. At the very least, there was still a lot that he needed to tell me – even if he didn’t think so. Or didn’t want to.

  *

  I was gone for ninety-three minutes and twelve seconds. Stealing a vehicle had been as trivial as it had been uneventful, and I pulled up to the bunker perimeter gates in a big, all-terrain flat-bed truggy – both the word and the vehicle were an ugly mash-up of a truck and a buggy. Driving with one arm hadn’t been a problem, as the truggy didn’t have a gearstick, but with my right foot now little more than a frozen, dead weight, it made speed control challenging.

  I leaned out of the window and pressed the intercom. “Let me in. How’s the patient?”

  The reply, from Lothar, was almost instant, “He’s the same. Come on in. We were just about to leave without you.”

  How could they have hoped to move Kaboom on foot? I wondered, as the gate swung open and I jammed my brick of a foot down on the accelerator, lurching the truggy forward. I saw what Lothar meant as I pulled up at the bunker. They’d got all the old, practically antique push-bikes out of the store room, brought them outside and cannibalised some of them to make a kind of chariot-cum-rickshaw. They’d dragged a bed up, cut the legs off and attached two bicycle wheels to one end. The other end was joined, via a framework constructed from a pair of bicycle frames, to another pair of otherwise unmodified bicycles – unmodified, but held together by a welded-on cross bar, which I presumed was so that one couldn’t get ahead of the other, causing the chariot contraption to just turn in circles. The mattresses from two more beds lay next to the as-of-yet unmoved Kaboom.

  I had to allow a smile – smashed face and all – not just because I wanted to, but to show them I was pleased that they’d been so industrious in my absence, just in case I hadn’t come back, or hadn’t sourced a vehicle.

  “Well, there’ll be no need for that heap of shit you’ve built,” I said. “Let’s get trugging.”

  I then noticed Doc Melon and T9’s heads, sitting on the floor, face-to-face, just a foot apart. They were engaged in what looked like the world’s most pointless staring competition. Why wasn’t she in the box Lothar had brought Q4 in?

  Lothar caught my gaze. “Doc says he’s interrogating the prisoner.”

  I didn’t like that. I did not trust Melon at all. Just what the hell he might have been doing with the former Miss Rampaging Kill-bot was anyone’s guess.

  “Doc,” I called, modulating my voice with a clear note of warning. “Don’t you be doing anything I wouldn’t like over there.”

  “Oh, don’t worry about a thing, you,” said the Doc. “You’ll be pleased to know I’ve linked minds with T9 here and have her internal defences on the run. I’ve hidden her presence on the cyborg network. They can’t see her, they can’t hear her. We, ah, we can’t see or hear them either, but I’m working on that. We may be able to track them soon.”

  “That’s well done then, I suppose. Carry on.” Grudging praise indeed.

  “Lothar told me about the electro pulse she used. I think, yes, yes, I’ve got that figured out. I, ah, I’d best disable it, for now,” the doctor said.

  “Doc, don’t be messing with things you don’t understa – ” I said. Too late. A noise like a light switch being flicked came from T9 and for a micro-second I was deaf, dumb and blind. I ‘came to’ realising I’d just survived an E.M.P. attack. My cyborg tech was protected, it seemed, which would make sense if Wardens were going to run around chucking out electrical pulses.

  “Oh my,” said Doc Melon. “That didn’t go quite as planned, but I have disabled that feature, in a roundabout way – I’ve burnt out her pulse generator, you see. Sorry.”

  “That’s not all you’ve burnt out you pillock,” I said. Only the very newest vehicles on Deliverance have any hint of computer technology inside them, but, this truggy was absolutely state of the art. Or it had been until the E.M.P. had fried its electronics, making it about as useful a lump of metal as my right foot.

  “Ah. Whoops?” said Melon.

  “Idiot,” I said. “Lothar, it looks like we fall back on your backup plan. We’ve simply got to get moving or Kaboom’s fucked.” There wasn’t time for me to fly off and get another vehicle. We just had to get moving. If I let the rest of them go ahead with the bike-chariot rig while I went buggy-jacking again, I might not find them very easily. No, the best chance now was plan-B; cold, hard, computerised analysis of the facts said so.

  Lothar nodded, tight-lipped. He oh-so-accidentally knocked Melon’s head over as he walked past. “C’mon people,” he said, slipping into easy command. “Pack only what you can carry in your backpacks and in the baskets and panniers on the bicycles. Kam, Oxley, get Baboon onto a mattress, nice ‘n gentle. Then we’ll all lift it into the…whatever the fuck we’re calling this contraption of yours, Kam.”

  “Well, we’re taking Kaboom to get medical help – sort of – and it’s my invention, so, how about, ‘Kambulance’?”

  “Brilliant,” said Oxley with a grin. “Wait a second, isn’t that just your full name?” Lothar sighed. Kam face-palmed.

  Everything got loaded up. Weapons, ammo and food, basically. Kam handed me my own bag and told me Melon’s memory device was in there. Speaking of Melon, someone had put both him and T9 in the front basket of one the bicycles that would pull the Kambulance. I strode over and pulled Melon out by his hair, then tossed him into the basket on the other bike in the pair.

  “Let’s not put all our heads in one basket,” I said.

  “Melon, carry on hacking around with the cyborg network and let me know if T9’s got anything interesting to say about her mission, or, well, about anything going on in cyborg land,” I said.

  The four of us who had bodies carefully loaded a mattress bearing Kaboom onto the back of the Kambulance. We strapped him to the mattress and converted bed frame using rolled up bedsheets. Then we strapped the body of T9 in beside him – they made for very macabre bed-mates. We were taking T9’s body with us, as I was hoping to find a way to utilise her for spare parts – neither I nor Melon knew how to detach or install body parts.

  Lothar wheeled a bike up to me and handed me Kaboom’s old-tech automatic weapon, which I slung awkwardly over my shoulder. I looked at the bike: If I strapped my broken foot to one pedal I should be okay. I could steer it with one arm easily enough, it was just a matter of having the arm strength to control the bike.

  “Zee, buddy,” said Lothar. “You and me are the outriders. Or at least, we are until th
ose other two pussies get tired-out, which, knowing them will be around about the time we exit the perimeter gate.”

  We all saddled up, ready to go. This was the Earth year twenty twenty-three, plus an unknown number of centuries aboard the colony ships, and another, slightly better estimated, but still unknown number of centuries on Deliverance. So, basically, what the fuck were we doing on bicycles?

  “Has anyone ever ridden a bicycle before?” I said.

  “Negative,” said Lothar.

  “Nope,” said Kam.

  “What’s a bicycle?” said Oxley.

  “I have,” said Doctor Melon.

  “Warden Fourteen submit!” shouted T9.

  We got on our wobbly way.

  Chapter Nineteen

  It was a good job that Oxley and Kam’s bikes were held upright by the frame of the Kambulance, because they clearly had no sense of balance. I found that odd in a pair of humans who were both excellent snipers. You’d imagine there’d be some correlation between being able to keep a sniper rifle rock steady and being able to ride a bike in a straight line, without weaving around like a human, on fire, running through a minefield – but no, apparently there wasn’t with these two.

  After the first hour, they slowly seemed to get it and we made surprisingly good progress. The sparsely wooded terrain had only gentle slopes here and there, and the dry ground was tightly packed; good going for bicycles. Perhaps more importantly though, the trees around here had deep roots, so we weren’t constantly bouncing poor Kaboom over them.

  Oxley wouldn’t stop complaining, though. “Ah, man, my ass hasn’t hurt this bad since that time I shoved – well, that is to say, my ass has never hurt this bad,” he said.

  I was cycling in front of the Kambulance and Lothar, who had taken to the cycling like a grizzled combat veteran to grizzly combat, was bringing up the rear. He suddenly shouted for us to make a stop. Time to swap with the guys pulling Kaboom’s near-death-bed. I planted my good foot on the ground, leaned over and untied my broken foot from the pedal. Cycling was easy enough with the foot strapped to the pedal, and I certainly wasn’t going to get tired like the flesh-bags did. I could easily pull the Kambulance along by myself, but telling these stubborn monkey-spawn that didn’t so much as dent their insistence that they had to do their bit. We swapped over. Kam and Oxley dropped to the rear on the free-running bikes and I took the Kambulance into the lead, since I was the one who knew where we were going.