Z14 Read online

  “This is Zed Fourteen,” I shouted. “We don’t want a fight.”

  A huge boulder in front of me glowed red for a micro-second. That was all it took for my super-fast computer mind to realise a plasma blast had been fired at me through the fucking rock. I threw myself on the floor and the bolt went through where I’d been standing, melting its way through more rock behind me. As I struggled to my feet, three more soldiers appeared where I’d just gunned down their friends. They had projectile weapons, so I could have just laughed at their pathetic wasp stings, but, what I did laugh at was the Manoogla that clambered onto a rock above them before diving into their midst and detonating. I swear the little shit had a lizardy grin on its face.

  We surged – and limped – ahead. Oxley was walking backwards, back to back with Kam, so that Kam could guide him without Oxley having to keep looking over his shoulder. Staccato bursts of gunfire from Oxley’s weapon told me he was holding someone, or something off behind us. He’d shout if he couldn’t deal with the situation. Another Manoogla appeared above us this time, but Lothar coolly shot it through the head with one bullet. It exploded but was too far away to hurt us, although a few razor-sharp stone chips were blasted free, clattering into the rock around us.

  The way forward became a tight maze of natural, rocky corridors, branching off in many directions. I superimposed a red path directly to the shuttle on my vision – augmented reality. Getting lost in this section would be bad news. I led the way, and soon came to a natural tee-junction. I could hear the breathing of a human who thought he was lying in wait for me. Even with my limp I was around the corner before he knew what was happening. I swung my gun with the momentum of my turn and pierced his skull with the weapon’s barrel. I wrenched it free and trampled the corpse. Ahead was a single file of six humans, funnelled into a passage so narrow their shoulders were cramped up against the walls. The lead man couldn’t bring his plasma rifle to bear as I lowered my head and turned myself into a human missile, igniting my jetpack – after checking Lothar hadn’t rounded the corner yet. I flew straight at the human soldier ahead. His jaw dropped and he desperately tried to scrabble backwards, but his mate was right behind him and another behind him, and and so on; ones who had not seen what was happening. In barely a second I crashed into the lead human. My bowed head plunged through his sternum and ribcage and I crushed his heart and his lungs with the top of my head. The transferred force of the impact probably killed the next man too, he certainly crumpled to the floor. I extricated my bloody head and as that corpse also fell, I raised my gun and poured the rest of its magazine into the tightly packed troops ahead of me. When my bullets ran out I threw the gun like a cumbersome javelin into the chest of the last man. Then I limped awkwardly over the squelchy carpet of dead humans.

  A large open area was ahead, but, just as I stepped out into it, a Manoogla came out of some kind of burrow in the stony ground and exploded. The force of the explosion swept my legs from under me and I crashed to the floor. At the other end of the clearing, three laser armed grey-skins started plinking away at me. They all had the default red selection for their laser bolts, so I was unable to make a good note of the one who scored a hit on my right eye, melting the eyeball in a flash, but doing nothing to the ocular array underneath. But, even as I scrabbled to my feet, I was in danger of taking real damage, as the soldiers had gone into continuous fire mode. I was starting to heat up dangerously where two of the lasers converged on my chest.

  “What are you doing?” wailed an object that flew through the air, striking one of the grey-skins in the face. He went down in a heap and the thrown object – Doctor Melon’s head – latched onto one of his calf muscles, chomping on it and growling like a dog. Lothar stepped into view, out of the gore-filled passage behind me and into the clearing. He calmly drew his sidearm as he moved. One of the two remaining grey-skins hurriedly swept his laser beam across the ground between Lothar and me. Lothar hopped over it as it swept past him, firing two shots as he jumped. Both soldiers fell as misty clouds of blood exploded around their heads. I managed to push myself to my feet. Crisis averted, no damage done. Skeleton: Not compromised. Flesh: Yeah, mostly gone again. Why do I bother growing it back, honestly?

  Kam and Oxley came into the clearing too. Oxley was bleeding from the right shoulder and Kam had a gash across his forehead that made his face a bloody mask.

  “The shuttle’s hidden in the rock wall just across this clearing,” I said. Lothar finished off the soldier that Doctor Melon was chewing on, trying to do his little bit to help.

  “Good throw Mister Krebb,” said the doctor to Lothar as Lothar reached down and picked him up.

  “I know,” said Lothar.

  It had gone quiet. I stepped towards the shuttle’s fake wall, but before I got close, it shimmered and vanished as a man in a suit, jacket and tie stepped out, his hands raised above his head.

  “Don’t shoot!” he said. “I’m an Overlord. I… I was trying to get out of the shuttle, to call these idiots off. I know it’s you, Zed. We don’t want to be at war with you.”

  I gestured at the scattered corpses. “This war’s over,” I said. “How did you get in there?”

  “Well I – ” A fast-moving Manoogla appeared around a corner, close, too close to the suited man. Lothar shot it before it got more than its head clear of the wall, but it still exploded, blowing a chunk out of the rock next to it. A cloud of dust and wicked stone splinters was thrown over the suited guy, and he let out a bubbly gurgle of a scream, collapsed, shuddered and lay still.

  “Well fuck that,” I said. I waited a few seconds, to see what would happen next. How this Overlord had gained entry to the ship could wait, but chasing down my Grand Overlord lead had seen a sudden priority upgrade on my to-do list.

  “Lothar, that’s the doorway into the shuttle,” I said. “Roll Melon in there, and then if you three would be so kind as to wait out here and murder the living shit out of anything that moves, or even looks like it might move, I’d be very grateful. Kam, keep T9 in your pack for now.” I had Kaboom in my bag already, so I followed the rolling Melon into the ship. The door closed behind me.

  “Okay Melon,” I said. “Talk me through it, and do it fast, trust me, I can keep up. What do I need to do, and is there still time to save Kaboom?”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “Warden Fourteen submit!” shouted a voice as I followed Melon’s head into the ship. I glanced to the right and there, resting on one of the command seats was yet another cyborg head. Apart from lacking a body it appeared to be entirely undamaged. It had the skin of a fat-cheeked, thin-lipped male of possible Chinese origin and a tall, black Mohawk haircut. These other cyborgs really needed to get their shit together, calm down, work out a plan and stop losing their heads.

  “Warden Fourte – ” I stepped forward and slapped the head, it spun on the spot, then toppled over, and came to rest staring at me with blank-eyed indifference. It got the hint though, and it shut up.

  “Let’s up the head-count in here,” I said as I pulled Kaboom’s cold, grey-faced head out of my bag. I put it on the other command seat and then I picked up Melon, who, after being rolled in here by Lothar, had come to rest with his face pressed up against a wall.

  “Quickly, Doc, get Kaboom downloaded and then we can talk about you giving me my memories back.”

  “Computer,” Melon said. “Human: Melon. Voice-print ident. Please.”

  “The ship knows you?”

  “I spent seventeen years in here, it knows me well.”

  “Human. Melon. Confirmed,” said the ship. And then, in what sounded very much like a recording of Melon’s voice, “Master, what do you require?”

  Melon looked sheepish. “I got bored,” he said. I may have jazzed a few things up here and there.

  “Well I’m just glad you didn’t jazz me up,” I said.

  “Oh I did, you were terribly dull when we first met. You’ve seen what your cousins are like.” Melon then spoke to the
ceiling, “Computer, brain pattern encoding tool. Species: Human. Data storage unit. Please and thanks.”

  The hatch in the ceiling that I’d seen before opened and a cabled data storage unit just like the one that contained Melon’s personality – and still did, even though a copy of him had been uploaded into Q4 – dropped and dangled from the darkness inside. There was one difference between this unit and Melon’s one, though, in that it had a bigger, even meaner-looking data transfer spike attached to its built in one.

  “Put me on the chair next to Kaboom would you?” said Melon to me. I obliged. “Great, now grab that data unit. The big data spike is the brain pattern encoding tool. It will enter Kaboom’s brain and map his neural network, read his brain’s exact chemical composition and do a whole bunch of other stuff that even I have never quite understood. Kaboom may be dead, but most of him is still in there somewhere; his core, although it’s slipping away by the minute now.”

  “I see,” I said. I looked at the big evil-looking spike. This procedure isn’t designed to be survivable, is it?”

  “Well, that hardly matters to mister Kaboom here, now, does it?”

  “No. So, where does the spike go?”

  “Anywhere, just as long as the tip reaches the middle of his brain.”

  “Wait a fucking minute, Doc. You survived the encoding process.”

  “Oh okay, yes I did. There’s a much subtler, gentler tool that can be used, but it takes months for it to...to kind of...get to know the brain it’s encoding. We don’t have time.”

  I grabbed the unit and swiftly used the bigger spike to pierce through to what would hopefully still be Kaboom’s ‘core’.

  “Data. Transfer. Complete,” said the computer instantly. “Harold, you’re looking mighty fine today,” it said, in Melon’s voice again.

  “Melon, you twat,” I said, laughter routine stifled. “Can we tell how much of him the device got?”

  “Not really, not until we upload him into a custom-designed computer unit. Also known as a Warden series cyborg.”

  “Well, that was pretty much my plan anyway,” I said. “I was going to give him a dream moment and allow him to enter a beautiful woman; stick him into our captured lady bot, but whoever this other fella is will do fine instead.”

  “Don’t you want me to try and interrogate this new head?” said Melon.

  “No, what’s the point? These cyborgs are complete prats. They don’t know a thing.”

  “Okay, if you’re sure,” said Melon. “Remove the storage unit from Kaboom’s head, take the encoding unit off and drop it on the floor – the ship will clear it up and recycle it – and then just do to the unknown cyborg here what you did when you uploaded me.”

  “What would happen if I used your head as the upload target?” I said. I wanted to see if he was worried at that prospect. It would give me a clue as to whether he had actually intended to overwrite my personality with his all along.

  “Well, then I’d share this head with not only a locked-down Warden and his own untapped human cover personality, but with a pyromaniac mercenary with a hard-on for explosions. It wouldn’t be pretty, but I’d get by.” Okay then, he wasn’t scared. I was starting to trust Melon a bit more.

  I pulled the whole device out of Kaboom’s head – with just a slightly wet squelch – put it down on the chair next to his head to free up my hand and twisted off the encoding spike with my fingers. I dropped it on the floor and picked up the storage unit, with it’s smaller, less offensive-looking data spike already extended. The mystery cyborg’s head, lying obligingly on its side made an easy target as I plunged the data spike into its ear.

  Just as had happened with the doctor and Q4, the cyborg’s face relaxed into a death-like repose, only to spark up again looking different, more alive…more human.

  “Ow, fuck that hurt,” said the perfectly computer simulated voice of Kaboom. How on Deliverance it did that when it had no knowledge of the physiology of his body, his vocal chords, his tongue, his lips and all the parts of him that made his voice what it was, I had no idea. But Kaboom had just spoken. I pulled the storage unit out of his ear and quickly shoved it into my bag, where it would nestle next to Melon’s own backed-up mind.

  “Kaboom?” I said. I picked his head up by the mohican, and held it up level with my own head, facing me.

  “Oh, hi Zed,” he said. “I saved you? And I didn’t die?”

  I smiled – a gruesome sight with my ravaged face, showing mostly metal skull. “No, you didn’t save me, and yes, you did die. But thanks for trying. You’re in a cyborg head now. We’re a bit short on bodies.”

  “Oh,” said Kaboom. “This is going to take some serious getting used t – Oh, wow look at all this shit in here! I’m on the ‘net…I can, fuck, I can do anything.”

  “If you come across a virtual button labelled electromagnetic pulse, leave it the fuck alone.”

  “I will. I will…but wow…there’s so much to play with.”

  “Doc, how come even Kaboom has managed to overrun the Warden program?”

  “Well,” said the doctor. “I made some modifications to the personality encoding software, so that it basically lays siege to the Warden code and then goes straight through its main gate with a battering ram and storms the keep. It’s then up to the strength of the simulated human personality as to how well its virtual besiegers do at hunting down the Warden’s defending troops around the interior of its castle.”

  “That’s a bit of an overly-elaborate analogy, Doc,” I said.

  Melon looked puzzled. “Analogy?” he said. “No, I actually coded it all up as a little game that the human personality plays. It all happens in a micro-second, but it’s a bloody good game.”

  You can’t render a computer speechless, but all I could manage was, “Ok, that’s nice…” I said.

  “It seems mister Kaboom has completed his game successfully,” said Melon.

  “Hey, Kaboom,” I said. “Come outside, there are a few people who want to meet you.”

  I limped towards the shuttle’s door. When I was here yesterday it tried to close on me after I attempted some petty vandalism, but this time it slid open upon my approach and didn’t impede my exit. Lothar, Kam and Oxley were all being professional and diligent outside, covering every approach, prepared for any attack. I’d not heard anything from inside the ship though, and as I emerged carrying an unfamiliar head they all deemed the area secure enough to drop their guards and gather around me.

  “Is that…?” said Kam, with hope in his eyes.

  “Hi guys,” said Kaboom.

  “I have now seen everything,” said Lothar. “I feel old. Tired. But welcome back, Baboon.”

  “Well poke a ferret with a purple dildo,” said Oxley. “What’s it like being one of the metal heads, Kaboom?”

  “Guys,” said Kaboom, unable to disguise his excitement. “It’s amazing! I heartily recommend everyone undergo this conversion. This upgrade. I haven’t even begun to discover everything I can do yet.”

  “Nice to see you, mate,” said Kam.

  “Where’d you find the spare head, Zee?” said Lothar.

  “They give these things away with magazine subscriptions these days,” I said.

  “Ten…” said Kaboom, in a voice that was not his own. This was a much more mechanical, computerised voice.

  “You what, mate?” said Kam.

  “Nine…” said Kaboom’s new voice, then, Kaboom again, “Ah, guys…”

  “Eight…help...seven…”

  “What have you done?” said Lothar.

  “Six…I couldn’t resist.”

  “What?” said Oxley, although to me the answer seemed obvious.

  “Five…shiny, red, virtual button.”

  “Self-destruct,” I said. I quickly began to hobble clear of the humans, still holding Kaboom by the hair.

  “Four…whoops.”

  With everyone else out of the way, I fired my jetpack, leaping into the air as it ignited.
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  “Three…can’t stop it.”

  As Kaboom’s friends watched from below, their heads turned skyward with aghast expressions, I wound back my arm.

  “Two…do it, Zed.”

  And I threw Kaboom as hard and far as I could. My auditory receptors could still pick his voice, or rather his voices, up, even as he disappeared into a large rocky outcrop.

  “One…kaboo – ” The kaboom was long and drawn out, but was cut off by a tremendous explosion. A spate of secondary explosions told me that I must have hurled Kaboom’s head into a nest of Manooglas. Good. Fucking lizards. Coming back here one day and making them extinct was officially on my task list.

  I landed and hobbled over to the stunned humans.

  “I had no idea we could do that,” I said, searching for any trace of a real self-destruct function in my hacked-up, Melon-censored database. “Wait here, guys.” I went back into the ship, collected Melon and Kaboom’s dead, human head and returned to the once more.

  “Kaboom?” said Kam, hope still showing on his confused face.

  “That just about sums it up,” I said. Could any of you imagine Kaboom not being able to play with something that made things go boom?”

  Kam sighed. “I guess,” he said. “But, for fuck’s sake, Zed, we came all this way, for nothing.”

  “Not true,” I said. “We’ve still got Kaboom on data storage. Although I suggest we don’t stick him into another cyborg until Melon can find a way to disable the self-destruct feature.”

  “I ah, I shall begin researching it on a high-priority sub-routine,” said Melon.

  “Zee, how come none of these other cyborgs we’ve captured have blown themselves up?” said Lothar.