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  “You know me so well,” said Melon.

  “Hah, I distinctly remember telling you to figure it out,” I said. “So, have you come up with anything?”

  “Yes, I have a series of commands a self-destructing cyborg unit would need to execute, but the sequence needs, ah, a field test…”

  “No time like the present then, which button do I press to broadcast the self-destruct?” I couldn’t bring myself to sacrifice the people of Deliverance for some ambiguous and likely unachievable greater good. It was save them, and very probably die trying, or nothing. If Melon and I blew up, then, well, as I’ve said a few times before, I’d not be around to give much of a shit what happened next anyway.

  If we succeeded, then I guess I’d simulate a warm-fuzzy feeling and give Melon a pat on the hea – give Melon a pat.

  Melon showed me what to do to broadcast the self-destruct, then he private-messaged me a complex bunch of commands that would basically make me hack into myself and disable the countdown.

  I hit the button.

  “Ten…” said Melon and I together, in strange voices. Oh, fuck, it was really happening.

  “Nine…” we said. I began executing Melon’s commands, inside my own mind.

  “Eight…” not a lot seemed to be happening. Lots of error messages about invalid this, improper that.

  “Seven…” I started the sequence again.

  “Six…” still no luck.

  “Five…” we said.

  “Melon?” I said. “It’s not working!”

  “Four…”

  “I know, Zed. I’m sorry.”

  “Three…” Shit. Well, this was it then.

  “Don’t worry Doc, it was worth a shot.”

  “Two…”

  “It’s been fun, Melon.”

  “Hasn’t it?” said Doctor Harold Melon.

  “One…”

  “Kaboom!” shouted Melon.

  Then nothing happened. Until Melon started laughing.

  “Doc?”

  “Oh you should have seen the look on your face!” cried Melon. “I mean, your burnt, ravaged face was as stony and impassive as ever, but, even so! Oh my – ” Melon gave in to spluttering laughter.

  “Doc, that tops every bastardly thing I’ve ever done,” I said. But a smile broke out anyway. “You total tosser.”

  “Priceless,” said Melon.

  “So, there was no blanket self destruct?” I said.

  “Oh there, was, I just set a time delay on the hack commands. I just wanted to pay you back for lasering my head, sacrificing my esteemed other selves and all the horrid things you’ve done to me.” Melon was still giggling as he spoke, though.

  “We’re even now,” I said, allowing myself a rueful shake of the head. “What about the Wardens?”

  “All exploded. Well, except for the one who’s body you stole. His head’s still in Lothar’s bag. He was exempt from the destruct order because it only targeted activated Wardens.”

  “Neat,” I said.

  “Yes. Unfortunately, due to the large blast radius of an exploding Warden head, they will have inflicted casualties on any humans in their vicinity at the time.”

  “Can’t be helped Doc. Losing a few is better than losing all of them.”

  “Acceptable losses, eh?”

  “Afraid so, Doc.”

  “So what now?”

  “We go to Iceholme,” I said.

  “That’s what I was going to say, but I thought you would want to stay on Deliverance for a while.”

  “I do, but what could we achieve, really? When the people wake up, it’s going to be chaos. Never mind the fact that they’ll be waking up with tonnes of brainless corpses lying around them, but there will also be a power vacuum, what with Boram being dead, and him having apparently scalped and de-brained many of his own cohorts.”

  “Yes,” said Melon. “It will be like the arrival of the first colonists here, all over again. A terrified scramble for preservation and power.”

  I nodded. “There’s not much two humans, a disembodied head and a retired cyborg assassin could do, really, is there?”

  “No,” said Melon. “Deliverance is going to go through another painful re-birth.”

  “But at least we’ve given them the chance,” I said. I felt…good, about it. We’d saved them and given them a shot at liberating themselves. A new beginning, and other such idealistic bollocks. Sure, they’d probably screw it up, but whatever they did with their new future would be better than becoming grey-matter real-estate for the essence of an alien god. Wouldn’t it?

  “There are people, humans, on Iceholme, who know me and who know a little about what the Kon Ramar are really about,” said Melon. “If we go there, we can get organised, start a proper revolution against the aliens, and then fight our way to co-existence with them.”

  “Fight our way to their extinction, you mean,” I said.

  “Let’s have that discussion when we’re in a better position to achieve either goal, yes?” said Melon.

  “Iceholme it is then,” I said. “I just want to pop back down to Deliverance and see if I can somehow get Lothar into a hospital. Kam can stay with him, look after him. Maybe we can come back for them. Possibly even bring Deliverance some sort of assistance from this Iceholme of yours.”

  “Possibly,” said Melon. “But there’s a more pressing reason to go to Iceholme.”

  “And that is?” I said.

  “It will be where Deevak is heading, as it’s the closest Kon Ramar planet. He will go there and the Kon Ramar will use their vast intellect and resources to decide how to respond to the utterly shocking revelation that someone has stood up to them, successfully.”

  “So we need to go there and jump up and down on Deevak’s massive ball-sack until the Kon Ramar give in,” I said.

  “We do indeed.”

  “Besides, I’ve always wanted to meet the moron who made me feel pain,” I said. “And if my partially restored memory serves me correctly, Deevak was the one who created me, so I’m holding him responsible.” In a way, he’d made me feel mental pain too – I had to admit it. ‘No, Daddy, come back!’ Ah, shit. You bastard, fucking aliens!

  “Oh,” said Melon. “Don’t worry about medical care for Lothar. We can convert one of these light-rafts into a stasis area. Both the humans can slumber there for the month the journey will take. I know people who can look after Lothar.”

  “Sounds good Doc,” I said. “Show me how to fly this thing, and then I’m going to go to sleep and grow a new face. My own cyber-mum wouldn’t recognise me, right now.”

  “Don’t you want to ask Lothar and Kam if they mind coming along?”

  “Do you think they’d want to stay on Deliverance, with the shit storm that’s going to occur down there?”

  “Good point,” said Melon. “Okay then, here’s how you plot a course to Iceholme…”

  Epilogue

  It was little more than a warehouse, and yet, it was probably the largest building I had ever seen.

  The numbering system here was archaic, to say the least, but I was still getting used to the Kon Ramar’s weird ways of doing things.

  Eventually I came to the room with the flashing symbol that matched the one Melon had pulled from the aliens’ archives. There were rows and rows of units in there to check and it took me another hour until I found the one with the serial number I was hunting for.

  I pressed a button at the foot of the unit, and, with a sigh of escaping gas and a gentle whirring hum of machinery, the stasis unit opened up, folding back on itself to reveal its precious, guarded contents.

  Inside, a small boy, just awakened, reached up to his face and rubbed at his eyes with the backs of his fists – one of which clutched the paw of a ripped and torn-open cuddly toy cheetah. He moved his hands away, yawning mightily before opening his eyes. They focused on mine and the boy’s face broke into the warmest, most honest smile I had ever seen.

  “Daddy! You came back!” />
  Epilogue Addendum…

  Oh, shit, now what do I do?

  Table of 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…