Z14 Page 5

  I’d met these guys almost three years ago, when one of the Boram Bay Overlords’ underlings put out a contract on them. Lothar’s fledgling mercenary enterprise was employed by the Overlords’ irregular military forces, and, as part of a larger force was sent to a colony city called Dreary Hole. They’d been tasked with stamping out an ‘armed insurrection’ against the Overlords. It turned out to be little more than an ill-advised demonstration at an illegal – according to the Overlords – college by some students. One clown – a genuine clown, attending night classes in astro-physics – fired an old Earth-tech weapon at the Overlords’ troops and the order to liquidate the area was given. Lothar’s unit refused the order and joined the kids. Of course, the kids, and Lothar’s unit, were all but wiped out – it was utterly inevitable – but Lothar went guerrilla with the remnants of his men and they started doing what they could for the people of Dreary Hole from the shadows.

  When I got the contract to go and sort them out a week after they went rogue I did my research on both contract parties and decided this had to be one of those contracts that I ‘reverse engineered’ – I knew about the college, basically. The Overlords’ underling had forgotten the unofficial rule, that I knew, and they had mostly worked out by now, that you don’t try to have people killed unless they’re more of a bastard than you are. So, I went to visit the underling to ‘negotiate the contract’, stuck a pen into his brain and made an obvious, feeble quip about how mighty it was compared to a laser rifle, in honour of the dead students. Perhaps I should have smashed the underling’s face in with my fist behind a custard pie, in honour of the clown, for whom the Dreary Hole conflict had become known as The Clown Wars. After ‘completing’ the contract I flew to Dreary Hole to meet Lothar.

  I was telling Lothar he was safe from me, and taking the opportunity to talk to him about the Overlords’ military structure, tactics, etcetera, when the Overlords attacked in strength. It was the first and last time I’d fought with humans, or even fought for humans. It was one hell of a battle. I was having a great time – the combat unleashing what, at the time, were very confusing and sometimes performance degrading human emotions – but my presence wasn’t enough to stop the Hole’s last few defenders being crushed. When Lothar and his three surviving men – Ox, Kam and Kaboom – were defending nothing but corpses and rubble, I convinced them to leave and covered their retreat. Lothar and his men went from that defeat to striking against the Overlords where and when they could, all over Deliverance. They’re operational to this day, although they strike tiny, utterly insignificant blows against the Overlords – but what they do is enough for me to choose to provide them with funds. I divert a small part of my assassination income to Lothar, even though I know their cause is hopeless. It just makes good sense to me to help wiggle even the smallest of thorns in the Overlords’ sides. To give them something else to think about besides their constant internal power games and what they call ‘The Cyborg Question’. That question asks if my use to them during those power games is worth the pain it causes when I take a contract from Overlord Thug A to turn Overlord Thug B into a red smear. I’m part of their internal promotion process, it seems.

  To Lothar and his ‘boys’, I’m a comrade-in-arms. I got them out of the shit, so I’m alright and I’m practically one of us. To me, they’re the only group of humans who know anything about me, other than the regular murders and ‘terrorist outrages’ of mine that hit the news and the ‘net. Lothar’s unit are the only humans I trust. True, they’re the only humans I actually know, but I choose to isolate that fact from my reasoning.

  I keep in touch with Lothar every few months, when we all get together in this abandoned bar to play poker, drink beer and plan their missions. For me, it’s also a time to take copious internal notes and learn everything I can about their interaction with each other, and with me. To learn the right and expected things to say to them. To fit in. No, wait – pause a microsecond – that’s what the Warden program wants me to do with my ‘cover’ personality, isn’t it? And yet, I ‘like’ these humans. Or I think I do – I killed that process. Fuck you, Warden program. Yes, I like these burping, farting, sweaty bastards. And fuck you too, Doctor Harold Melon, just for good measure.

  I locked all inner wrangling to a sub-process and then reached down beside me, opened my bag, pulled Q4’s head out and tossed it onto the poker table. It knocked over a beer bottle and demolished a neat little poker-chip castle someone had been building before it came to rest, lying on its side and eyeballing Kam. All four of the humans leaned back in their chairs in surprise, but, when the head’s mouth opened and it yelled, “Warden Fourteen, submit. Warden Fourteen, submit,” all of them bar Lothar practically leapt out of their chairs and scrambled away from the table.

  Lothar shook his head calmly. “Zee, that answers precisely fuck all, buddy.”

  Chapter Ten

  “Zed, we’ve told you about littering the place with bits of your latest victims before,” said Kam, reclaiming his seat and staring at the head.

  “Well titty-fuck my grandma, would you look at that,” said Ox, following his own instruction – well, the latter part of it at least.

  “Cyborg,” said Kaboom in an awed drawl. “Can I blow it up?” He too sat back down.

  “Zee, you going to tell us why it seems you’ve decapitated your long lost brother?” said Lothar, giving me a measured look.

  “Okay,” I said. “I’m something called a Warden, and so is he. I’d imagine we’re here to keep you guys in line at some point in the future, when I presume some kind of shit is going to kick off on the planet. I theorise that it will involve the return of those who brought humans here from Earth. I don’t have evidence for that, but if I’m wrong, I’ll eat Lothar’s precious hat.

  “A scientist – who can’t abseil and isn’t big on sharing information – died trying to find me, to finish the job of reprogramming me, to stop me from doing whatever it is I’m supposed to do to the humans. I presume it will be something along the lines of pulping you into massive vats of man-jam to sell at an inter-galactic bazaar, as opposed to tickling you all until you beg for mercy.” I swear I found myself getting more verbally creative when I was around these guys. Another small sign of the Warden program blending in, or the human breaking out?

  “Yeah? Well, I went for a walk along the beach, and then I had an ice-cream,” said Kam. “Top that.”

  “Zee,” said Lothar. “What did you mean by ‘finish the job’?” He knew I’d notice his hand edging towards his sidearm, but he clearly felt he had to do it anyway.

  “Uh-oh,” said Kaboom. “I changed my mind, we should blow up Zed.”

  “Relax, Lothar,” I said. “I’m still me, and even if I ‘turned’ right now, you know you couldn’t stop me. Trust me, the scientist has done something, even if it was a half-arsed job. It seems likely I have had my jam-making potential curtailed.”

  “Okay, Zee, I’ll take your word for it. Give me time to curse you for a treacherous toaster before you snuff me out though, will ya?”

  “Come on, Lothar, a toaster would never try to hurt someone,” I said, experimenting with a cheeky grin. It probably looked a bit out of place, though – hell, it would have even looked odd on me before Manoogla-based shrapnel pebble-dashed my face.

  “My toaster blew up my dad,” said Kaboom. “Kaboom.”

  “We all know that’s going to be because you made it blow up, so be quiet,” said Lothar. Kaboom giggled. Lothar cocked his head at me slightly. “Why now, Zee?” he said. “You’ve had Deliverance as your own little playground for a few years now. Why are more cyborgs showing up now?”

  “I don’t know. The scientist – Doctor Harold Melon by the way, in case that rings any bells with anyone – just said they were activating ‘soon’. As it turns out, ‘soon’ seems to have meant ‘now’, if not sooner,” I said.

  “So, what now? We gonna make this ugly bowling ball talk, or what?” said Oxley, who’d finally sat back down a
nd was trying to flick poker chips into Q4’s mouth.

  “I’m going to try, yes. Doctor Melon gave me a little something, and I have an idea for an experiment with it. But not here, even though he” – I nodded at Q4 – “is the reason why I’ve come to see you guys. Do you still have access to the bunker?”

  Lothar nodded. The bunker was a small, secure, underground facility that Lothar’s team had found on the eastern outskirts of Boram Bay. It was modern, post-colonial and completely abandoned. Kaboom had gained entrance to it and it made for a superb base of operations – although the team rarely went there so as to minimise the chances of drawing attention to it. Some cyborg-quality research into the bunker by myself revealed it had been constructed in secret by a company from another city, to be used as a staging post for an attack on the Boram Bay Overlords, but the company had been wiped out in an ‘aggressive takeover’ – the kind that lit up the sky at night with laser and tracer fire. Their secret bunker stayed secret, I was sure of that – and I deleted all mention of it, wherever I found it on the ‘net, and on computers attached to it. And yet, I don’t know how Lothar had found it, and that surely meant anyone else could stumble upon it. But, if they did, it had some very impressive automated defences, that Kaboom had rewired and it would be a tough nut for anyone to crack. Even me. I’d need a cyborg army to take it down…Ah. Still, it would suffice, because the Wardens were not going to find it. Not if I could help it.

  “Good,” I said. “I want to take Q4’s head there, so it can’t communicate with the rest of our – I mean his – cousins, through the lead-sheeted walls and whatever else that place is made from, but I need to get it there without it being able to give a running commentary to its friends, so, Kaboo – ”

  “Zee, hold on a minute,” said Lothar using his combat commander voice. “This thing knows where it is?”

  “Almost certainly,” I said.

  “How? We don’t have any of them global satellite arrays they had on Earth, we don’t have any satellites,” said Lothar.

  “True, but I know where I am to the very centimetre, and I expect Q4 here does too.”

  “How?”

  “Cyborg trade secret,” I said, and then, “I don’t know. I just have a constant feed of my coordinates in three dimensions.”

  “You don’t know how you work, but you reckon you’ve got your anti-human sentiments under wraps?” said Lothar. I really hoped he wasn’t losing faith in me. Killing these guys if they attacked me would be…sad.

  “Trust me, Lothar.”

  “Okay, fuck it. Next question: This thing can communicate with other Wardens you said. How many are there and where are they?”

  “I have no idea how many, but at least some of them are probably zeroing in on us as we speak. That’s why I want to get Kaboom to go and find something to put this head in, that will block any form of electronic communication. Then we can get it to the bunker without being tracked. Q4 will probably know where he is, but he won’t be able to blab about it.”

  “Okay, Kaboom. You got any ideas?” said Lothar.

  “Was thinking Faraday cage,” said Kaboom. “Discarded that idea, cos Zed would’a done that already. So, it’s just like the Zed said about the bunker – a lead-lined box. Gotta be totally sure no alien electronic mumbo-jumbo can get out.”

  I nodded. I had let Kaboom figure it out for himself. It wasn’t hard.

  “Can you get one? Fast?” said Lothar.

  “Back in an hour,” said Kaboom as he got up and made for the door.

  “Hey, Baboon,” yelled Kam. “Rig the box to blow in case of emergency.”

  “Well, duh,” called back Kaboom. “I rig everything to blow in case of emergency, curiosity, and or boredom.”

  “Hey, Baboon I’ll be blowing your mom,” yelled Ox.

  “That doesn’t even make sense,” said Kam.

  “I’m nervous. I’m getting all muddled,” said Ox.

  “You weren’t joking about getting us all killed,” said Lothar to me, with the barest hint of a smile, just a fractional crinkling around the eyes.

  “You’ll be okay. I’ll go into the bunker alone if you give me the access codes. I just want you guys to be my eyes and ears out there. Go and do what you do, and just keep in touch. Let me know if you see anything strange.”

  “You know the team, if I see anything normal while they’re around I’d be so shocked I’d call you right away,” said Lothar, crinkling a fraction more. “Now, let’s play cards, he said.”

  We did just that. I put the head back in the bag and we played poker in near silence for forty-three minutes and twelve seconds before the tension that I knew the three humans must be feeling – the ominous feeling that stealthy cyborg killers were gathering outside the bar – became too much for them to bear.

  “Okay,” said Lothar. He put down his cards and stood up. “I think we’ve spent long enough toughing it out and proving how macho and unafraid of the cy-boogiemen we all are. Now, let’s get the fuck out of here before they nuke my bar. Kam, message The Baboon, tell him to meet us at the strip club. Zee, bring your buddy. Oxley, just make sure your dick isn’t hanging out like it usually is.”

  The moment we got outside, my attention was partially diverted to one of the many news transmissions I constantly monitored. There had been weapons fire and explosions reported at the next nearest colony city, Jolly Meadows. I played the transmission’s audio aloud for the whole team to hear. The visuals of the report, that only I could see, showed a lot of buildings burning in the night sky.

  “…Security forces are saying that, despite the extreme measures they had to take and the massive loss of life they have inadvertently caused, the cyborg terrorist has been destroyed. We repeat, the cyborg terrorist, Z14 has been destroyed.”

  “Another cousin?” said Lothar.

  “Sounds like it,” I said. “Change of plan. You guys take the head. Keep moving around randomly until you meet up with Kaboom and then get to the bunker, quickly. I’ll be there as soon as I can. I have to check this news report out.”

  Lothar considered briefly. He knew me leaving them with the head left them as not just targets, but vulnerable targets. “Okay, Zee, you crazy machine bastard. We’ll see you there. Happy hunting.” It was a calculated risk. Lothar would only have Q4’s head in the open for a short time, but I needed to be at Jolly Meadows as soon as possible, if I was going to be able to find out what had happened there before the area got cleaned up.

  I pulled Q4 out of my bag again – he didn’t have anything to say this time. I tossed him to Oxley and threw Doctor Melon’s storage device to Lothar. “Look after this for me too, Lothar,” I said. “Destroy it if that’s what happens to me.” I shouldered my bag, took a few steps away from the flammable humans and ignited my jetpack.

  Oxley gave Q4 a strange look as I took to the air. “Hey, do you think he’d bite my dick off if I stuck it in his mou – “ Thankfully I rapidly left audible range as I blazed off in the direction of Jolly Meadows.

  Chapter Eleven

  Jolly Meadows had always been a misleading name – far from being, say, a sprawling city amidst lush and fertile fields, it’s actually a jumbled heap of a city, in a narrow, rocky valley. It’s the most densely populated city in Deliverance’s Northern hemisphere. Or rather, it used to be.

  The city appeared on the horizon as a smoky orange glow against the midnight sky. ‘Extreme measures’, the news report had said. Extreme understatement. As I neared the city I flew high enough to get a good overview of it, but without getting close enough to worry about being seen. But seen by whom? With so much smoke, and so many fires still burning, even I could only estimate the amount of damage done here, but I’d say a good seventy-five percent of the city was now rubble, ash and slag. Most of the rest would yet go the same way. Judging by where the fires still burned brightest, it would seem that the trouble had initially begun at the city’s historic centre, where the colony ship’s bridge would have become the early he
adquarters. I landed on the outskirts of the dying city, switched all my scanning systems on and began a steady, measured jog towards the centre.

  After the fight with Q4, I reasoned that since I was likely to be facing other, better-prepared cyborgs in combat, now might be time to break the habit of a – known – lifetime and arm myself. Doing my assassination work unarmed had been a fun little challenge I’d set myself – a way to keep me on my toes rather than just being boring and mechanically gunning everyone down all the time. I’ve never had to fight fair before, but now that an unknown number of hostile cyborgs who wanted to do me mischief had potentially reversed the scales, I should do what I could to make things unfair again.

  There are plenty of things already on Deliverance that can kill me, mind you. Some of the more wealthy humans and their underlings have various laser weapons, with which they could actually permanently harm, or even destroy me – if only they could hold the things on me long enough in the same area to heat up and melt part of my skeleton. The rare times I came up against laser-wielding foes though, I’d known it in advance – it pays to swot up on a target – and generally taken them out first, or avoided them. When I did get hit by them they melted the flesh off me in an instant. But hey, it looks like I’m done wearing skin these days anyway – fuck knows when I’ll get time for some regeneration in the near future.

  The humans could also do away with me by crushing me with immense pressure; by sawing at my skull for long enough with diamond-tipped tools; by throwing me into molten lava, or by detonating nuclear weapons in my personal space. Or they could wise up a bit and develop theoretically viable plasma-based energy weapons…which, unfortunately, is what I suddenly went on to discover they had now done.