Z14 Page 17

  When not in use, a cyborg jetpack is inert. But when activated it becomes – very rarely – a liability, which is why any cyborg worth his weight in super alloys won’t use one anywhere near a combat zone unless it’s an emergency. Like escaping a trap.

  Oxley and Kam are both fantastic marksmen – I’m very shallow and it’s part of the reason I liked them – so I was not surprised that each of their continuous beams hit R1 as he rose and tracked him unerringly. Their beams played across his body, melting flesh and igniting clothing. Oxley’s orange beam hit the jetpack, so R1, weighed down as he was by me, clumsily twisted his torso out of the beam, which only served to give Kam a clear shot with his lightning-yellow beam. No matter how he twisted and turned, in just a matter of seconds, R1’s jetpack glowed red, then white. I released my grip on the Warden’s ankle and began falling back towards the ground, before snagging a sturdy tree branch with my flailing hand.

  With the sudden loss of weight R1’s maximum thrust jetpack would have propelled him high into the sky, if it hadn’t exploded under the constant laser heat. The jetpack was made of cyborg alloy, so, as it went up in a fireball the resultant shrapnel was strong enough to shred R1’s torso and limbs, sending chunks of the Warden flying out in all directions, even as everything was bathed in burning jetpack fuel.

  A whirling, flaming foot with a snapped, jagged metal shin-bone punched through my chest, and lodged right where a human’s lung would have been. The burning foot sticking out of my chest ignited my own clothing which rapidly turned me into an inhuman torch.

  As I swung from my tree branch like an immolated orangutan, I scanned the ground a few feet below me, looking for the second Warden; Wendy, the young postgraduate student from my science team back on Earth. I quickly appraised the situation on the ground; Wendy had decided to go ahead and storm the bunker. I approved of her reasoning that clearing out the bunker and making us go in after her was the best strategy, but she had been distracted by New Melon’s head rebooting and, as planned, bombarding her with private networking requests. Kam drew a bead on her from the perimeter fence and started peppering her with wonderfully accurate laser bolts. It was like slapping a shark with a glove, but it definitely had a portion of her attention. Oxley was supposed to be doing the same from behind her, but his firepower was ominously absent. I hoped he was just trying to get into a good firing position.

  The bunker door opened, revealing Lothar inside. He shoved Classic Melon’s head along the floor with a heave of his foot. As the head rolled towards Wendy, Lothar opened up on her with a laser rifle in each hand, set to beam mode. Classic Melon joined in, with whatever electronic annoyance he could conjure up, but he and New Melon were just little more than bees buzzing round Wendy’s head.

  Lothar was in imminent danger, being closest to Wendy and with her already taking a run at the bunker. There just wouldn’t be time for his lasers to do real damage. I had to intervene or he was dead. If any one of us went down at this point, we simply would not have enough force to win the battle.

  By now I was basically a big ball of flame, but I had to risk the heat and use my jetpack. I let myself drop from the tree, fired the jetpack – just a tiny burst, at full power – and clattered into Wendy at a horrific speed, with a sound like two steel girders slamming together. The force of my impact practically buried her in the ground. My stump went through her sternum and her left knee smashed my right one, as her left hand, held up to ward me off, was snapped backwards and broken off, leaving the wrist to impale my stomach. Even R1’s foot, still lodged bone-first in my chest, obliterated Wendy’s plain, yet strangely attractive face as we came together.

  As the flames transferred from me to her, we bucked and writhed against each other, as though frenziedly shagging. We were equal parts trying to free our various impaled limbs and trying to use our free ones to batter whatever bits of our opponent we could reach. The laser fire had stopped, as the humans couldn’t tell friend from foe in the burning, squirming heap the two of us had become.

  Kam had started sprinting in from the perimeter, but there was still no sign of Oxley. Lothar dropped his laser rifles, ducked back into the bunker and emerged at a dead run with a gas-based fire-extinguisher. He doused us as we continued biting, kicking, punching and butting each other, neither of us able to free a limb for a decisive blow.

  With the fire put out, Lothar got nice and close and put a laser rifle to Wendy’s charred and blackened head. I knew I must look the same, so maybe Lothar was just guessing who was who. I thought he’d fire, but Wendy seemed to get the message. She stopped attacking me, so I gave her the same truce.

  “Surrender?” I said.

  “Warden Fourteen submit!” she said.

  “Oh not that old shit again, please,” I said. “Okay, Lothar. Fry her.”

  “No, wait,” said one of the Melons from somewhere nearby, I couldn’t see him, although with my head currently jammed into Wendy’s armpit, there wasn’t much I could see at all, really. I could see Lothar, that was about it.

  “Yes, wait,” said the other Melon. “We can kill her before she does any damage to Zed, but we’ve got a chance to capture and take over a whole, well, mostly whole, Warden, here.”

  “Zee, get clear buddy,” said Lothar.

  “No, don’t,” said a Melon. “You’re keeping her pinned down.”

  “I’m pretty sure she’s keeping me pinned down just as much,” I said. “I think we’re pretty much one entity right now.” With arms and legs and broken bits of whatever sticking out at all angles we looked like part of the aftermath from an explosion in a doll factory.

  “Hey, Zed, you need to play it cool around the ladies,” said Kam “Don’t just throw yourself at them like that. Have a bit of self respect. You are more than just an object.”

  “Kam, knock it off,” said Lothar. “Go and find Oxley.”

  “Sir,” said Kam. He jogged past me, muttering, “My god, what a mess.”

  “My colleague and I have both begun assaulting W12 electronically with a view to taking her over,” said one of the Melons.

  “Zed, please remain still,” said the other.

  “I really don’t have a choice,” I said.

  “Good, this will only take about three hours.”

  “Lothar!” called Kam. “Get over here!” Lothar ran towards Kam’s voice. I guess Kam had found Oxley. I hoped the annoying little pervert was alright.

  “New Melon,” I said. “Why isn’t she resisting?”

  “I believe she know what’s happening, and is electing to take subjugation over death,” said New Melon. “I presume she knows that if she fights, we’ll just call Lothar back and melt through her skull. But if she lets us take over her head, perhaps she’s still in there, and maybe she can reassert control at some point.”

  Classic Melon sent us both a smug private message laughing about how we all knew that was never going to happen.

  “Fair enough,” I said. “Take her over then, but, and this is very important. I will not have three Melons talking. You can decide between you which two of you get to speak. But if the third ever utters a word, I swear, I’ll kill two of you.”

  “Fine,” said both the Melons.

  I lay there for an hour, utterly unable to extricate my stump from poor W12’s chest. I was just as unable to get her smashed wrist out of my lower body, where it had gone through my stomach and out of my back. I watched as Lothar and Kam emerged, shuffling their feet backwards, bodies bent forward. They were very slowly, very carefully dragging Oxley’s body along the ground, pulling him by his arms. His legs looked broken; I’d say both his femurs had been broken, in fact.

  “What happened?” I said. “He’s got a good heat-signature, I see.” Oxley was alive but unconscious.

  “Well,” said Kam. “When the weather abruptly changed to cloudy, with a slight chance of fragmented cyborg shrapnel rain, Oxley here neglected to go out without his titanium umbrella, and a hail-stone that looked a lot like a cyborg
’s head hit him in the legs, breaking both of his thighs.”

  “Ouch,” I said.

  “You’re not wrong there, Zed,” said Kam.

  “The breaks both feel very neat,” said Lothar. “We can get him strapped up and splinted. He’ll be okay, but he ain’t going to be much use to us for a while.”

  “No change there then,” I said.

  “Hey, I was going to say that,” said Kam.

  “Oh, and the damn head that hit him is, of course, still alive,” said Lothar, before spitting on the ground in disgust. “Are you done collecting these trophies, Zee? Can I go melt this one?”

  “No, Lothar,” I said. “I’m sure we can find a use for it. Could you bring it here please?” Lothar grumbled but went to get R1’s head.

  “My two-talking-Melons-only rule stands, even when you convert R1, as well as Wendy, here,” I said to the Melons.

  “Head’s up!” shouted Lothar from wherever he’d gone. An object thumped to the floor nearby and rolled into my narrow field of vision.

  Well, that was a relief, at least; seeing as how R1’s head had been separated from his body from the bridge of his nose upwards, another talking Melon wasn’t going to be a problem.

  Kam fetched a medical kit and pumped the unconscious Oxley full of drugs. Laying there in the cooling, smoking heap that was Wendy and I, I watched as Lothar and Kam built a pair of full leg-length splints for Oxley’s injuries. They used more of the spare bicycle frames that were still in the bunker. Who’d have thought such ancient tech would come in so handy for us? They strapped Oxley up, nice and firm, and left him to a blissful, drug induced sleep, lest he wake up and start screaming.

  Whilst New Melon continued his computerised brain-washing of R1’s cloven head, and Classic Melon put his spell on W12, I took stock of the aftermath of battle. Did this count as a victory, or a tie? Our little army of smashed up useless cyborgs was growing day by day, even as our compliment of useful, mobile or even living humans dwindled. That’s right Kon Ramar, fear us, we’re coming for you, even if we do it in a bunch of wheelchairs made from antique bicycles. I could just see Kam and Lothar pushing Oxley and I into battle, as we let rip with mis-firing plasma rifles from nice comfy cushions – resorting to hurling whining, grumbling Melon heads at the bemused aliens as the range closed. Bloody Melon and his bloody heads. I really did wish I could just throw them away.

  Actually, that gave me an idea. Far from being inundated with heads, I now didn’t think I’d be able to get my hand on enough of the things.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  “Part man,” said Oxley, putting on a deep, dramatic voice. “Part machine. All sex god. It’s super jet-powered, laser-death, rocket-man! Whoosh!”

  Oxley burned past me, practically a blur but close enough for me to feel the heat from the borrowed jetpacks, as he and the two original Melons tested out Kam’s latest antique-bicycle-based project.

  “Stop, Melons! Stop!” came Oxley’s distant yell, shortly before I heard a muted, jingling crash – he’d ploughed into the perimeter fence.

  “Woo!” said Kam. “Complete success. Sort of. The Melons just need to synchronise their thrusting a bit better and we’ll even have Oxley avoiding obstacles.”

  “Again! Again!” shouted Oxley. “Lo, Kam, come pick me up! And see if you can find my tooth!”

  Four bicycle frames laser-welded together and attached to a crude four-wheeled chassis supported half a mattress that had been cut and folded into a chair shape, which in turn supported Oxley. He was strapped into the seat with his splinted legs stretched out in front of him, and they in turn were strapped to the – I’ll guess I’d call it a wheelchair – chassis. Two laser rifles welded together and mounted on a set of handlebars, sprouted up from between Oxley’s legs, giving him a mobile gun turret of sorts.

  Mounted like macabre wing-mirrors to either side of Oxley’s head; Classic and Original Melon had had their heads mounted on poles that jutted from the wheelchair chassis. Just below and behind them were my and W12’s jetpacks. A Melon controlled one each via wireless command, steering and powering the whole monstrous contraption with minimal, barely perceptible thrust; a tiny increase of which from either one could make the wheelchair turn. It was a setup that could power the wheelchair constantly for over a week, if needed. Light on fuel, it was a much easier thing to move than a great lump of a cyborg, buzzing around, defying gravity.

  I wondered how much Oxley would be enjoying himself, crashes and all, when the drugs ran out – although we should have enough to last us until we reached Boram Bay, for that was where we had to go next.

  Kam and Lothar walked around and around W12 and I – although she had by now become yet another copy of Doctor Harold Melon, who would be known as Third Melon, and who would remain mute on pain of death. The two humans poked, prodded and pulled at various parts of us two entangled cyborgs, stopping to shake their heads and suck their teeth like a pair of oily old buggy mechanics. As they continued to asses the situation, an email came in from none other than Grand Overlord Chester Boram. It basically said that I should stop fucking around in the wilderness and get my butt to Boram Bay, pronto, because only someone who wasn’t a friend of his would continually decline his invitations. Yeah, Chester, I’m already no friend of yours, arsehole. Even so, for reasons of my own I’d have blasted off and gone right there, even with ninety percent of my body looking like badly burned bacon. However, I just couldn’t seem to tear myself away from the intimate delights of the equally charred Third Melon. That in turn was why I’d very grudgingly consented to lending my jetpack to the Oxley-Mobile project.

  My busted arm, that had punched through W12’s sternum as we collided, had bent inside her chest and become hopelessly snarled with the torn and twisted metal ‘bone’ that joined the two halves of her ribcage together.

  My right knee was now as useless as the foot below it, so ignominious leg-dragging was how I’d be getting around for the foreseeable. That was if I could actually be extricated from this embrace in the first place. Lothar had grabbed R1’s foot and pulled and wiggled the busted lower leg free from my chest, before hurling it into a bush with a grunt. Lothar then used a laser to melt away enough of my abdominal flesh so that Third Melon could extract his own recently maimed, now handless left arm. It left me with a football-sized chunk missing from my side, showing part of my spine and digestive system to the whole world.

  Third Melon’s left knee was just as fucked as my right one was, so we’d be hopping along beside each other before too long, no doubt.

  “Well,” said Lothar. “The only way to pull you two apart is to melt the rest of your arm off with lasers.”

  “No,” I said. “I don’t want that. I don’t want my shoulder socket damaged. The plan is that one day I’ll get a new arm and just plug it in.”

  “Well then,” said Kam. “We’ll have to melt through Third Melon’s chest, then. It’ll probably render the whole cyborg non-viable as an operational unit, though.”

  “Bugger it,” I said. “Can’t be helped. It’s hardly in the pristine condition I’d have liked to capture it in anyway. Let’s cut our losses and cut me out.”

  They did so, taking a good hour to heat and partially melt enough of Third Melon’s skeleton that I could pull out my stub of an arm. It was all warm and drippy at its end, although it rapidly cooled and hardened. It now vaguely resembled a melted then re-solidified piece of plastic.

  No sooner had we finished, and I was assessing just how useless Third Melon’s own broken body was, Third Melon broke my law and spoke.

  “Zed?” he said.

  “If this isn’t very, very important,” I said. “I will kill all four of you Melon fuckers.” R1’s bisected head was also now part of the growing collection of transferred Melon personalities. I seriously considered going back to the ship in the Heights with three randomly snatched humans and forcibly encoding their brains just so that I could have some different people to chit-chat to about cyborgy
stuff, other than the burgeoning empire of Melons.

  “It is indeed important,” said Third Melon.

  “Hey,” shouted Oxley from his crash site at the fence. “Have you guys forgotten about me? Guys?” Everyone ignored him.

  “What is it?” I said to Third Melon, instead.

  “Well, since we’re going to be abandoning this body,” he said. “Could somebody please cut my throat?”

  “I beg your pardon,” I said.

  “If someone separates all the flesh of my neck from my torso, I have something as clever as it is useful to show you.”

  “Hell, I’ll do it,” said Kam eagerly. He had already produced a large, wickedly serrated combat knife from some hidden sheath – a neat trick for a man wearing just a kilt and a Hawaiian shirt underneath those crossed bandoleers of his.

  Kam walked up to Third Melon and began to saw and chop at his neck. The crispy burnt skin crackled under the knife and it wasn’t long before Kam stepped away, task complete.

  “We have achieved separation,” he said. Then he jumped back a step further because Third Melon’s head made a clicking sound and then fell off, and thumped to the floor.

  “I have just discovered how to disconnect body parts at will,” said Third Melon from the ground. His tone resonated with pride.

  “Fantastic,” I said, seeing a glimmer of hope for my lost arm and my effectively lost leg. “I take it you can reattach, too?”

  “Ah,” said Third Melon. “Not yet, no. I have yet to figure that part out.”

  “So, you didn’t think to pop off W12’s undamaged limbs before you ejected the head?”

  “Oh. Ah. No. Sorry.”

  “You absolute moron,” I said. “Pass your findings onto the other idiot Melons, and then, not another bloody word. Got it?” Beautiful silence was my confirmation that he got it.

  “Find out if there’s a way to get dead, headless cyborgs to relinquish their limbs.” I told Third Melon. We still had T9’s corpse on the Kambulance. She had a fully functional left arm, and both her and W12’s bodies had perfect right legs that I could make use of too. In the meantime though, I might as well do what I could to make my left arm a bit more useful. Especially whilst Kam seemed to be in a mood where if it wasn’t welded down, then, well, he’d weld it down.