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He was practically on top of me now. Here we go. Robot rumble in five...four...

  -WARDEN 14 SUBMIT-

  “How about you submit to my fist?” I shouted, taking the last step between us before the other cyborg did. I swung my right fist as I moved and smashed it, hard, into his left cheek. His face split open and he half-spun away from me, stumbling with the impact. I barrelled into him before he could recover, knocking him to the floor, face down. I jumped onto his back with both knees, grabbing his flailing left arm in both hands as I landed. I wrenched his arm up, back and over to his right-hand side with every ounce of force I could muster. I can pull a human’s arm out of its socket like picking a flower, but breaking a cyborg’s skeleton took everything I had. Tortured metal screamed and various internal parts crunched, popped and tore.

  My enemy bucked and thrashed, but he couldn’t dislodge me. I gave his other arm the same treatment and then took his head between my hands and began to twist it.

  “Please, Warden, no,” shouted the other cyborg suddenly. “Please, don’t kill me.”

  I faked a short laugh. It was the kind of plea I’d heard from so many humans. It never worked for them – and at least they managed some emotion with their begging – so why should this guy get special treatment?

  “I’m not going to kill you,” I said, even as I tore his head from his shoulders amid sheets and gouts of red blood and black lubricant. “I’m just disassembling you, you fucking bastard.”

  I threw the head to one side, shuffled my knees off of the ‘corpse’ and got to my feet. I almost wanted to roar with my victory. I’d never felt so...so...alive. Oh, what the hell, “Yes!” I screamed, hoarse and guttural.

  Even if I was capable of surprise, I would not have felt it about the ease of my victory. I could have put it down to how much of an unbelievable badass I was, but the more logical extrapolation was that the other cyborg actually expected me to comply and submit. I don’t think he, or they, if it had been all the Wardens listening in, realised just how rogue I – apparently – was. Not until I partially caved his face in, anyway. Well, they knew now.

  -WARDEN Q4 DISABLED DISPATCH EXTRA UNITS ACCORDING TO PROXIMITY-

  Oh yes, they definitely knew now.

  I looked over at the head on the floor. Its eyes were staring at mine, and they stayed on me as I approached the head and kicked it a few yards along the cliff.

  “Oh that’s right, rat me out to your friends just ‘cos I pulled your head off,” I yelled after it.

  Of course the other cyborg – Q4 apparently – wasn’t dead. Our, as in cyborg, bodies are just vehicles for moving our super computer brains around. The only essential parts of us are our heads, unless you counted our digestive systems, which are really, more of a ‘nice to have’. Personally I think it’s a design flaw; our systems should be distributed throughout our entire bodies, with multiple redundancies built in. But, hey, I’m not the cyborg god who created us, so it’s not really my place to criticise. Hah, funny how I’m all us, us, us, now, when I keep slipping into we with the humans. Fuck me, I’m one confused pile of blood and circuits.

  Shit, though; I wanted this head alive but, of course it would still be able to communicate with its buddies. Questioning it would get a bit dicey if I was fending off constant assaults from more of them – especially as they’d surely wise up now and tackle me with overwhelming force. Taking down this lone cyborg had been easy enough because I struck first, but I very much doubted I could handle two of them. Every one of the thousands of combat scenarios I was running in my head, every second, was coming to the same conclusion.

  Those combat scenarios were taking into account the differences between fighting humans, which was all I had done in the past, and fighting cyborgs. When I get into a fistfight with a human, I can – and do – pulp them in seconds, generally in one hit. Whatever super-hard alloys I’m made of are wonderful for pulverising soft human bones. But, on the other hand, a fight against my own kind is just like a fight between two humans. I was never expecting a titanic showdown where we belted the shit out of each other from sunup till sundown because we’re perfectly equipped with the strength and abilities to do damage to – and take it from – one another. A human can break another human’s leg with a kick, and I can do the same just as easily to another cyborg. Still, it was the first fair fight I’d ever had in my life, and boy had I enjoyed it.

  I went to grab the head. It was time to get out of there. I didn’t know if the other Wardens could track me, specifically, or if they’d just found my cave by following Doctor Melon. I’d take the chance and hope that only the doc had known how to find me, and make myself scarce. I’d go somewhere populated. Perhaps the Wardens weren’t up for a public war just yet, even if they could find me. But if they were, well, so was I.

  As I strolled nonchalantly towards Q4’s head, my metal detector – which I’d left running since the cyborg interrupted me – started beeping. It wasn’t alerting me to Q4’s head, no, there was something else, buried nearby. I followed the beeps to a patch of disturbed earth, where I gouged away the mud with my boot heel, uncovering an object that vaguely resembled the portable data storage devices that even pre-Deliverance humans had developed. I picked it up and inspected it. Apart from one small button, it was a plain and featureless cigar shape with one flat side to prevent it rolling away when put down. I pressed the button and a data spike like those I’d encountered in the space shuttle shot out. I pressed it again and the spike retracted.

  “Doctor Melon’s gift,” I muttered. I assumed he must have buried it here in case he decided not to give it to me, if he’d managed to meet me in person, in my cave. Now, I’m pretty curious for a machine, but stabbing this thing into my ear, just to see what it did, didn’t strike me as a sensible idea, especially considering Melon’s disappointment with the way I was turning out. Well sorry ‘dad’, I don’t want to be like you.

  Melon’s buried item inspired me to bury Q4’s body. I could chuck it in the sea but I wasn’t sure if even Deliverance’s voracious sea-life would be able to dispose of that kind of body for me. Besides, a use for a dead, broken cyborg body might materialise one day. So instead I spent twenty precious minutes speed-digging a grave and cramming the cyborg’s remains into it, before covering it up and smoothing the surface over as neatly as I could. I made a note of the exact location in my memory.

  I clutched the data storage module in one hand and picked up Q4’s head by its hair with the other. Q4 didn’t speak, but just glared at me like a sulking toddler, whenever its eyes were able to see mine. I shrugged and then made a controlled jetpack descent – pay attention Doctor Melon’s ghost – to my cave. Being a prudent cyborg, I had a bag packed ready for evacuation at all times. I didn’t need much, just jetpack fuel, food and some clothes. I dropped Q4’s head and the storage device into the bag, then I picked up my favourite cuddly toy, wondering just where the fuck a grubby leopard’s arse fitted into all this, if at all. I shoved that in too, zipped the bag up and carried it outside the cave. It was too busy here these days – I’d have guided tour buses pulling up before too long if I stayed. Come see the mighty fortress of the insane killer cyborg! Please note: We will not be held liable for people falling off the cliff. Novelty toasters can be ordered from our ‘net-page.

  I paused on the narrow, bloodstained ledge outside the cave to send a brief message to a few recipients, which read:

  Poker night, guys! Two days early, but the usual time. Although this time I’m serious, there’s a ludicrously high chance that I’ll get you all killed.

  See you there,

  Z.

  I wondered momentarily as to why the new Cyborg Net – just my little name for it – had gone silent, since Q4 hollered for backup. Either they didn’t talk much, or they’d revoked my access, which was so sensible a thing to do, that you had to wonder why they’d not done it before they’d let me know reinforcements were coming. I couldn’t detect the network anymore, but then I’d never been able t
o previously, so that didn’t mean much. If I’d been disconnected I’d try not to cry too much over the rejection. I allowed myself a well-simulated chuckle as I dived off the cliff and fired up the jetpack. Destination: Boram Bay.

  Chapter Eight

  Boram Bay by night was just as ugly a sight as it was by day. It had become a huge city by Deliverance standards, with a population estimate of nearly five million. The centre of the city was where this particular colony ship had landed and undergone a remarkable transformation. The settler generation initially carried on living in the ship’s habitation dome, which detached from the rest of the ship, embedded itself in the ground and opened up to Deliverance’s atmosphere. Voila, all the shantytowns that the people had lived in for generations aboard the ship were now part of the planet.

  The colony ship’s vast engines converted themselves into power stations – of a type that have never yielded their power source secrets – and the rest of the ship transformed into factories that started churning out all manner of much-needed equipment. The ship’s bridge opened itself up to the humans for the first time and acted as a command centre. It even came with printed instructions on how to get the colony on its feet. Of course, the humans didn’t take advantage of all this near-miraculous setup. No, they collectively went insane for a couple of hundred years and tried to wipe themselves out during the Settler Wars.

  As things eventually calmed down, and the victors naturally all but enslaved everybody else, Boram Bay – which was still New America II, back then – and many other colonies prospered and expanded. The old shantytowns were replaced with more factories, and dirty, human-tech power stations and chaotic, sprawling residential areas with houses of every conceivable size and style spread in every direction. The result was that this city was a complete aesthetic disaster, indescribably chaotic in its composition – something that had poetic parallels with both Deliverance’s past and its present.

  The Overlords of modern-day Boram Bay enjoy that chaos, they rely on it. Founded two hundred and twenty-four years ago by Oswald Boram, The Overlords are a loose alliance of whichever companies and gangs – the differences are negligible – are strong enough at any one time not to be torn apart, or swallowed by their peers. Together they habitually milk the rest of Deliverance’s people for their own, generally twisted and perverse, pleasures.

  Ah, Oswald Boram. Has there ever been such an audacious bastard? Amidst the endless wars and strife on Deliverance, he alone brought hope to many humans. He was the foreman of a factory that started creating aid packages and distributing them, under the protection of armed convoys, throughout the planet. It was seen as something of a change of heart at the time, because Oswald’s factory had until then been manufacturing inefficient and dangerous laser-based small arms, that Oswald himself had designed. Nevertheless, Oswald’s Aid, as it came to be known, was welcomed everywhere. His men had gained access to every colony on the planet, as they brought relief to millions. So, it came as a surprise to all when his men suddenly began using every other colony’s defence force as live-fire demonstrations of the power of his – until-then – secret, and very much improved, generation of laser rifles. Oswald’s Aid went down in history as Oswald’s Charade.

  Oswald spared a few, murdered many and forged the Boram Bay Overlords, who continue to lord it over everyone else today and generally take the piss while they enjoy the planet’s spoils. I should maybe feel bad that I’ve never cared enough to take them on completely, rather than just assassinating whichever of them and their cronies was brought to my attention, but hey, I can blame Doctor Melon and his shitty hack-job on my coding for that, now. If I had a conscience, I’d consider it absolved. Ah fuck, though, why do I feel...dirty? Get out of my head, guilt, or I’ll start rooting for the Warden program to take over.

  The Overlords don’t dare bother me, as much as I’m sure they’d like to see me gone. I was the wolf that sometimes took a sheep from the flock, but the flock barely noticed the loss and just carried on. I can come and go even from the heart of Boram Bay unmolested, lest I molest right back. The people there try to pretend I don’t exist when they see me, even when I land in the middle of a seedy red-light district late at night and start stomping through the alleyways, looking like a man who’d been all but flayed alive. I really should take the time out to regenerate while I’ve got anything left to regenerate from.

  I reached my destination – an old bar done up half-heartedly to look like an even older cowboy saloon – and went inside. The dingy room was empty apart from four men sitting around a table in one corner, playing cards. They all stopped and looked at me as I strode in.

  “Evening, fellas,” I said. “Deal me in.”

  Chapter Nine

  “Hey Zee, how you doing buddy?” said the man dealing cards, as I approached the table. The battered black cowboy hat that he wore was as much at odds with his arctic camouflage jacket and trousers, as were those garments with the climate around Boram Bay – but to see Lothar Krebb without that hat would probably be to see him dead. Even a bullet once ripping through the hat had failed to dislodge it. Lothar looked almost as well worn as his hat. He looked like a tough, grizzled old war veteran – so his appearance was entirely consistent with the life he had led to date.

  “It’s ‘Zed’, Lothar. I’ve told you before, I’m ninety-eight point three percent certain that I’m English. Well, kind of English,” I said, composing my facial features into a smile.

  “You’re a jumped up calculator, is what you are,” said Lothar, as he slid a card to an empty spot at the table. “From now on your name is Krewson. Besides, England died with Earth – whatever the fuck England ever was, anyway.”

  “Krewson also make land mines, Lo, not just calculators,” said the man to Lothar’s left. “I’d check my seat before I sit down when Zed’s been around, if I were you.”

  “That’s closer to the truth than you’ve ever been before, Ox,” I said as I slid into the only empty chair at the table, dropping my bag on the floor beside me. “Have you contracted a human virus? Its mere presence in your system would no doubt increase your intelligence quotient considerably.”

  Ox, or rather Oxley Drebben, gaped at me. He did that a lot. Not the smartest human I’d ever met, but his accuracy with a sniper rifle was all that had ever mattered to me. He too was wearing arctic camouflage – his scrawny frame seemed barely able to support the bulky cold-weather gear. Oxley’s friends had told me previously that he looked like a chicken in human form, so I had run an image of his face through my morphing software, and I had to say, I was able to affirm that the comparison was a good one.

  The man to Lothar’s right had been playing with his poker chips, performing acts of reasonable dexterity on them with his fingers, which no doubt looked quite skillful to other humans.

  “Holy cyborg, Zed, we’ve seen you shot to shit before, but, fella, I can see through you. In several places,” said the chip-fiddler.

  Where Lothar was grizzled, by comparison, Kamalnayan Chennappan looked like he’d just gone through a particularly efficient regenerative cycle, his baby-smooth skin accentuated by a near-perfect physique. “Call me Kam,” he’d said when we first met. I assured him that while the name Kamalnayan Chennappan might be too many syllables for his squad-mates to get their tongues around, I was more than capable of addressing him correctly. “Just call me Kam, fella, it’ll just confuse these lunk-heads else wise,” he had insisted. He was wearing a bright, retro Earth-style Hawaiian tee-shirt, a tartan kilt and a pair of antique, but empty, ammo bandoleers that criss-crossed his chest. Kam’s a very trendy human. My sarcasm chip is fully operational and is reporting zero percent activity.

  “I walked into some Manooglas,” I said to the group, as Lothar cast a second and final card my way.

  “Kaboom,” said the fourth man, as he flicked at some black powder that dusted the breast of his dark blue coveralls. That would be something like gunpowder, no doubt. The Kaboom Baboon, was this group’s de
molitions expert, and a good one. Although, accomplished as he was, he saw me as a grand master of the explosive arts, who could teach him how to make ever bigger and better ‘kabooms’.

  Kaboom had been a baboon farmer before he’d joined Lothar’s unit – baboons being one of very few monkey and ape species to come along for the ride from Earth. They had become quite common as pets, although people also ate them. The numerous baboon farms on the planet served either market and sometimes, both. Others would swap their end product, from live companion, to dead meat at the drop of a slaughtered ape, to stay abreast of market trends.

  There’s an old human saying that people look like their pets – which didn’t explain why Kaboom looked like a horse – yes, I ran him through the morphing software too. I’m not usually in the habit of comparing human faces to those of animals, but I’ve found that saying you know; the one that looks like a rat, is often a much better memory prod to some humans than saying you know, Dave. Dave! No, no, Dave.

  “Manooglas?” said Ox. “You try getting close enough to one to screw it, or something?” Reaching for the bottom of the barrel was often Ox’s first lunge into a conversation.

  “Zed,” said Kam with mock concern, “did the Manooglas blow your dick off?”

  “Does your washing machine have a dick, Kam?” said Lothar. “No? Then why would Zee have ever had one?”

  “Your mom’s got a dick, Lo,” said Ox.

  “Yeah, she cut yours off and mounted it on a miniature plaque,” said Lothar.

  “It’s a long story,” I said, cutting in before a fistfight did. “About the Manooglas that is, not about the existence of my penis.”

  “Then this’ll be where your message about getting us all killed gets explained,” said Lothar. I couldn’t see his eyebrows past the brim of his hat, but the quizzical expression on his face suggested that both were raised. Lothar was usually sparing with his expressions – this was his way of screaming what the hell is going on?