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  I had found a big metal-hafted, rubber-gripped sledgehammer in the bunker storeroom and I got Kam to strip the rubber off and then weld and strap the great iron lump to my stump. It took another hour, during which time Lothar went and put Oxley out of his misery; he walked over to where New and Classic Melon had crashed the wheelchair, and, with a great, struggling heave he righted it. He then had to dive out of the way as the two Melons hit the gas a bit too hard and all but ran him down. When Kam had finished with me, I sort-of had a new arm, but with a dirty-great hammerhead for a fist.

  “Beep beep!” shouted Oxley, laughing and looking over his shoulder at a furious, fist-waving Lothar. He was still laughing when the Melons steered the wheelchair smack bang into a tree. Yeah, they were definitely getting better at it.

  *

  I had decided to ignore the communication from Chester Boram. I was backing my Melons, not him. My theory, assessed and rated against a number of possible scenarios, suggested to me that the Overlords had activated a bunch of Wardens, without really knowing what they were doing, or even where the ones they’d activated were on the planet. The fact they’d then had to kill three of them, with heavy losses despite their plasma weapons, told me they’d not been expecting the Wardens to be hostile upon activation. Not a total disaster though, because, since the Wardens weren’t being given orders by the computer aboard the colony fleet flagship, they had been relatively easy pickings; either for the Overlords, or for me and my gang. Boram Bay might experience a few ructions from the last three active ones, but I’d imagine the Overlords’ troops would cope – even if only by burying the Wardens underneath great mounds of their grey-clad corpses. I did hope though that they’d all refrain from wiping the city out in the process.

  We were hoping to get to the Bay and figure out how to find and board the submerged flagship. From there, Melon should be able to do a better job of activating and controlling the still-sleeping, thirty-two – projected minimum – Wardens.

  We’d get all this done in time to surprise the Kon Ramar when they showed up. The grey-skins and the last three Wardens would be slugging it out with each other, whilst we snuck in and saved the world, and then the universe. Easy. Except, anyone who thought it would actually go down like that needed to re-run their scenario outcome prediction and simulation routines again, with the ‘likely_fuckups’ variable set to ‘lots’.

  We formed an odd little convoy as we rolled out of the bunker, hopefully for the last time. Up front was Kam, astride a normal, unmodified bicycle. He’d donned a pair of shades, against the mid-morning sun and if it weren’t for the laser rifle slung over his shoulder and the company he was keeping, he could have just been out for a jolly bike ride, without a care in the world.

  Next, weaving and lurching all over the narrow dirt track that led away from the bunker came the jetpack-powered, cyborg-steered wheelchair, with a snoring Oxley strapped down tight. The wheelchair was followed up by Lothar and I, back aboard the Kambulance, towing two dead cyborgs, two ‘live’ heads, and all of our worldly possessions, not forgetting the memory module in my own bag that contained poor old Kaboom’s encoded brain. I’d considered replacing at least one – hell even all four – of the Melon’s with Kaboom’s personality, but, Classic Melon said he had not yet thought of a way of preventing an instant repeat of Kaboom’s explosive first and last experience of cyborg life. Melon may, of course, have been lying about that to save himself, or rather save one of his selves. Would Melon move out of one of his four heads if I asked him to. He’d already said once before that he would fight the invading personality if I had tried to put Kaboom into his head. Well, we’d just see how that went when the time came to do try it.

  Even with my newly busted knee-joint, I could still cycle, albeit with one leg. I had to push the pedal down with my left foot, before using the toes of my boot to hook it back up to the top, replant my foot on the top of it and push down again. Fucking awkward, but I could still do it faster, and with more power than old wheezy-fart-pants Lothar next to me.

  The four Melon heads had formed their own silent network now. I was a little worried about that. One Melon had proved to be a bit of a lying, scheming fuck – although I had come to accept his motivations, if not his actions – so I had to wonder what sort of scheme four of them might try to concoct. I wanted those heads though, even if I didn’t want all of them to be part of what Classic Melon was now referring to as the Melon Hive. Blithering idiots, the lot of them.

  “Are the three remaining Wardens still en route to Boram Bay?” I said.

  “Affirmative,” said Classic Melon. “They have converged en route and will all arrive there in an hour.”

  “No more activations?”

  “Negative.”

  “Yes or no will do, Doc,” I said.

  “Roger that,” said Classic Melon. Oxley must’ve heard someone talking about rogering, because he stirred in his sleep.

  It was going to take us a minimum of two hours to get to Boram Bay, go all the way through it and reach the Bay’s bay. I very much hoped that the grey-skins and the last three Wardens took longer than that to wipe each other out, as having to fight whatever remained of the winning side would be a dangerous delay.

  There hadn’t been time for any healing this time, so with crispy flakes of my terribly burned flesh crumbling off of me as I pushed and pulled clumsily at the pedal, I increased my speed, forcing Lothar to redouble his efforts. He stood up out of his saddle and pumped away furiously at the pedals, whilst trumping away just as furiously in his pants. I swear, I had never realised what a gassy individual he was before now.

  Onward then, to the flagship, to fight whoever or whatever got in my way. To save Deliverance from, well, just whatever the fuck was going to happen to it, and perhaps to see if there was a dusty old box lying around with ‘Zach Estramen’s long-dead memories’ scrawled on it in marker-pen. Fuck all good it would do me knowing anything about myself from centuries ago and light-years away, but I was indulging in a certain amount of very human curiosity.

  One hour, three minutes and twelve seconds of steady cycling later, we were still approximately an hour away from the outskirts of Boram Bay. The terrain had been a little more difficult than I’d hoped, before we’d eventually got onto one of Deliverance’s very few tarmac roads. It led to the now destroyed colony city of Jolly Meadows, and, apart for the last few miles into Boram Bay, it was nothing more than a wide dirt track. We came down on it from out of some wooded hills, and joined it just where the tarmac began. We were back in sort-of civilisation. Classic Melon gave me an update on the progress of the three incoming Wardens.

  “Their positions indicate they are just over five hundred feet out to sea, in the bay alongside Boram Bay,” he said. “It would appear they are also fifty-two feet below the seabed.”

  “So they’re aboard the flagship, then?” I said.

  “A logical assumption,” said Classic Melon.

  Shit. That was probably bad. Hopefully it was going to be bad for Chester Boram before it proved to be bad for me, though.

  Ten minutes later, whilst I was scanning the news channels and the ‘net, for news of fighting in Boram Bay – and listening out for the distant crump of explosions – I got yet another email message from the Grand Overlord:

  I gave you a chance. Come and talk to me, I said. I could provide you with answers, to help you, improve you and then you could in turn help me sort this sorry planet out and, eventually, take to the stars and achieve amazing things out there. Re-discover Earth, even. But no, it’s too late now. I don’t need you anymore, and, by all accounts you’re a shadow of the former sleek, efficient killer you once were. No, my dear, I’ve got three brand new friends now. Obedient, loyal and willing. And they aren’t damaged goods like you are.

  You’re obsolete. I won’t waste time and resources looking for you. This planet won’t be my concern much longer, so you can hobble about in its ruins for all I care. But, if you come here now, you wil
l be defeated and junked like the rundown heap of shitty scrap that you are.

  Wow, what an impatient fuck-wit the Grand Dick Head is then. But, oh dear; unless he was full of shit, he had the last three Wardens under control. There’d be no battle in Boram Bay now – until we got there and started one.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  I had been expecting the Grand Overlord to have every road into Boram Bay check-pointed and guarded, but that didn’t seem to be the case. At least not for the road we entered the city by, and the Boram Bay to Jolly Meadows dusty highway was as big as roads got on Deliverance. No sign of soldiers anywhere. Very little sign of life at all, really, although it was still only fairly early morning. The odd civilian buggy trundled around, and a few people here and there dotted the dirty streets, going about their business. Our little bike-based convoy drew some very strange looks, but when you see a charred, living corpse like me riding a bicycle down the main road of your city on Deliverance, you quickly choose to pretend you haven’t seen it.

  Chester must’ve known that stopping me getting into the city was futile. I had killed enough of his acquaintances via subterfuge over the years that he knew a roadblock wouldn’t stop me. No, he’d concentrate his defences around his headquarters – which encompassed the old colony command centre; the bridge of the converted colony ship. Besides, I had no idea just how many of his troops the cyborgs had killed, before he had seemingly gotten three of them under control, hopefully his forces were depleted and stretched thin.

  There were, however, a lot of grey-skins. A lot. But, if Chester took too many of his trusted troops away from any part of his subjugated planet-wide realm, then ambitious company and gang bosses would be rising up faster than a virgin’s cock in a whorehouse – and creating a sticky old mess for Chester in half the time, too. But then again, Chester’s email implied he was nearing some sort of end-game for Deliverance, so maybe he didn’t care. I’d have to expect to be facing a lot of opposition as we neared the city centre.

  Classic Melon had been examining the route the three Wardens had taken when they’d entered the city. The locational data suggested they’d landed inside the grounds of Chester’s headquarters – which was a huge mock-medieval castle, with very modern fortifications, like laser turrets linked to video cameras and to computers for precision targeting. The immense castle wall was built around the old colony headquarters, which was now shielded inside a massive, concrete and steel bunker. The Wardens appeared to have entered that, before moving downward and out into the bay, to their current location under the seabed. Tunnel, suggested my massive and incredibly powerful computer brain. Well, duh, said me.

  And so, we neared the city-centre, and lots of opposition we faced indeed. We were one-hundred and eighty-two feet away from the castle entrance. I was observing it from the ground-floor window of a disused office block and scanning and tagging the grey-skin targets I could see as they patrolled the battlements. I had tagged and indexed one-hundred and twelve of them so far. I had gone into augmented-reality mode, marking each target with a red dot, and a number that indicated their threat level, based on where they were and what they were armed with. Oddly I could not see any plasma weapons – maybe the grey-skin’s union – hah, as if – had refused to work with such shoddy tools. Still, the machine gun and laser rifle armed troops looked ready to fight off an invading army.

  Castle Boram was on top of a hill, providing it with lovely views of the bay to one side, and less lovely views of the filthy, disorganised sprawl that was Boram Bay city to the other. Made of enormous light and dark grey, and black blocks, the castle had four rounded turrets which, along with the walls were crowned with battlements. All very grandiose, but it lacked a lot of the true mock-medieval trappings, like a moat, drawbridge or wrought-iron portcullis. The castle’s tall, arched main entrance which faced the building we were observing from was blocked by a great, steel door ten feet high and six feet wide.

  The castle turrets each had a pair of swivel-mounted, computer-controlled, quad-barrelled laser emplacements, which, by themselves made the idea of assaulting the place a terrible one; one that a smart computer like me should dismiss at once. But really, there weren’t any other options. The only other possible plan was to enter the sea, dive down to the seabed and try to tunnel through it and locate the buried alien ship and somehow gain entry. If I wasn’t concerned about Deliverance’s unusual and voracious sea-life and if I had a submersible tunnelling machine on hand, then I’d jump at the chance of not having to crack the castle. As it was…

  “Kam, get on the roof. You’re on sniping duty,” I said. I didn’t need to instruct him further. He’d know to pick his targets carefully, starting with killing any plasma troopers, then laser-armed troops or any heavy weapons carriers, then officers and grunts.

  “Lothar, do some sniping initially, pop a few heads from range and then come up behind me. You won’t want to be crossing the open ground until I’ve got most of their attention. Is Oxley in position?”

  “He sure is, Zee,” said Lothar.

  “Good. I’ll go and join him,” I said. “Don’t move until I’m through the entrance. Kam, once you’re out of targets, you run like hell and link up with Lothar.”

  “And then?” said Kam.

  “And then, what?” I said. “You think the plan’s going to survive the first minute?”

  Kam smiled. “Nope. I suggest the plan becomes to stay alive, kill grey-skins, hide from cyborgs and then look for a tunnel that heads towards the sea.”

  “That’ll do,” I said. “Okay, good luck, and leave any cyborgs to me.” We were dead if the cyborgs came for us. There were no tricks left and we couldn’t walk into their territory and ask them to leave us alone while we setup an ambush. And yet, with that certain death in mind, we had to move now. We died here, or we died in a day, a week, a month or in a year. Whenever the Grand Overlord activated the rest of the Wardens – or the Kon Ramar did.

  I walked out of the back of the office building, and around to one side, where its rubbish strewn and overgrown buggy park was. Behind some giant dumpsters was Oxley, awake in his wheelchair; the two Melons practising tight little turns with tiny, controlled bursts of jetpack thrust. They had perfected their synchronisation by now, becoming one with the wheelchair, or some such bollocks like that. Oxley was practising jerking his handle-bar mounted dual laser rifle around, as though swinging it to meet a threat, or pick out a target. It was probably the most constructive jerking he’d ever done.

  “Ready to g – ” I said.

  “Hell, yeah!” said Oxley. “Let’s get going already!”

  I grabbed my bag off the Kambulance and shrugged into onto my shoulders. I had Melon numbers three and four in there, along with Kaboom’s stored personality.

  “Classic,” I said. “Where are the Wardens?”

  “Still under the seabed,” he said. “They seem to be moving around in slightly repetitious patterns over a small area.”

  “Patrolling?” I said.

  “No, more like wandering back and forth between two points, as though carrying out some sort of repetitious function.”

  “A bit like patrolling, then?” I said.

  “Well, ah, maybe, but not really.”

  I poked my head out from behind one of the dumpsters, getting a view of the castle. The ground between here and there consisted of a narrow tarmac road that bisected what would become the battlefield, and then, on the castle side was a gentle grassy slope leading up to the castle walls. Cover consisted of trees, bushes and other flimsy things that wouldn’t stop a modern bullet, let alone a laser bolt. I wondered how long it would take for me, with my damaged right leg and foot, and for Oxley in his wheelchair and then for Lothar and Kam to cover the open ground. Too long. Except perhaps for Oxley.

  I tucked my head back in and carried on my conversation with Classic Melon.

  “Since you Melons are so useless, I’d like to use Third Melon to host Kaboom’s personality,” I said. �
��I want to talk to him about a scheme to demolish part of the castle.”

  Initially none of the Melons said anything, although I presumed they were debating my “request” on their private network.

  “Ah,” said New Melon at last. “We don’t see the point in that, and, with you having destroyed our backup personality storage, we don’t feel it’s safe to allo – ”

  “You have four fucking heads,” I said. “That’s your backup. I just want one.”

  “Take Fourth Melon,” said Classic Melon, who seemed to be the most reasonable of the set of identical personalities, somehow.

  “No,” I said. “I need to talk to Kaboom. Fourth Melon has no audio capabilities…”

  “Well,” said Classic Melon. “We can’t stop you, although Third Melon will fight the attempt, regardless. Asking him to roll over and open up his mind to Kaboom’s program would be like asking a human to take a deep breath under water.”

  “Well, I’m sorry,” I lied. “But I’m asking Third Melon to take that breath.” I shrugged my bag off onto the floor, ignoring the muffled shout of pain from Third Melon as he struck the concrete ground. I opened the bag up and pulled out first Third Melon’s head, which I placed on the floor, on its side with one well burned ear turned to the sky, and then I grabbed the data storage unit, pressing the button to extend the data spike.

  “I can’t watch,” said Classic Melon. He closed his eyes.