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  “Very droll,” said the doctor. “Now, where was I?”

  “I’d been fried,” I said, “but the intrepid Doctor Melon had arrived to save the ship. Except you didn’t save it did you? Because we still only have forty-two original colonies.”

  “Oh, absolutely. I completely failed to land any part of the ship apart from the bridge shuttle, and I only managed that about a day before I came to, ah, attempt to visit you at your cave. But the colony is still up there. I couldn’t see or contact them after I went to the bridge – the bridge door sealed behind me – but there’s no good reason why they wouldn’t be as well off as they’ve been for generations.”

  “But they might be a bit pissed off that the conduit god never appeared to them again,” I said. “And he didn’t so much as open it back up and shit out your corpse.”

  “Perhaps. But they will have got over it by now. They will have had no choice. Life goes on.”

  “Indeed,” I said. “So, if you didn’t fix the ship, what did you do?”

  “A lot,” said the doctor, sounding proud. “The ship welcomed me by printing me hundreds and hundreds of manuals and text-books, and all manner of learning tools and aids. Its resident handy-cyborg had failed it, so it was prepared to train up one of the passengers to come and dig themselves out of the mire. Desperation time.

  “I spent seventeen years on that bridge. The ship provided me with nutrient pods, but would periodically withhold them, unless I stopped what I was doing and did some exercise. However, I spent the great majority of those seventeen years learning the language of the ship’s creators, and, more importantly, learning at least a little about how to program you. The ship just wanted me to fix the engines, but I think I was smarter than it, or rather they, had expected, and I could do what I wanted – within the tight, confining limits of my own ignorance, that is.”

  “Come on Doc, tell me, who were the ship’s creators?” I said. Fuck it, I had to try asking, at least.

  “I’ll get to that,” said the doctor impatiently.

  “No you won’t,” I said. “You’ll explode, or role down an open manhole cover, or get carried off by a proto-eagle, or run over by a steamroller. Anything. You’ll find a dramatic way to expire without telling me. You’ve already got form.”

  “As I said, I’ll get to them, but suffice it to say they’re human – sort of – although they’re not from Earth. They’re bewilderingly ancient, staggeringly intelligent, frighteningly evil and they are deeply, irredeemably and unfathomably insane.”

  “What?” Had my auditory receptors malfunctioned?

  “The people that did what they did to Earth, that created you, the space fleet and shaped Deliverance are, not to put too fine a point on it, completely fucking mad.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Why, becau – “

  Lothar burst into the room. He was breathing hard and looked uncharacteristically troubled. “Zee,” he said. “There’s a woman outside the bunker. Says she wants to talk to you.”

  “A woman? Outside? How?” I’d never babbled before. Get a grip. Lock down the grasping, sluggish human processes.

  “Yep,” said Lothar. “She just sashayed past the automated defences and knocked politely on the door – and I mean the actual external entrance, not the front gate. Kaboom reckons she used some kind of electric burst on the turrets.”

  An electromagnetic pulse? Can I do that? How neat would that be if I cou – so, locking up my inner human wasn’t happening then.

  “Melon,” I said to the doctor. “We need to finish this chat before you suffer spontaneous combustion, or get sucked into a wormhole. When we speak next you will tell me what the Wardens are meant to be doing, why they’ve woken up now, why they aren’t doing anything, and just the little, tiny matter as to who the hell is behind all this.”

  “Funny you should mention wormholes,” he said. His eye closed and re-opened in what might have been a theatrical wink. Winking isn’t a one eyed man’s speciality though.

  I turned back to Lothar. “Where are the others?” I said.

  “Kam and Kaboom are in the control room, monitoring the door cameras – we got their feeds back online, but the turrets are kaput. And Oxley…well, Oxley took one look at who was on the video screen, drooled a little and rushed off to the toilets.”

  “Ever the consummate professional,” I said.

  “Professional masturbator, yes,” said Lothar. “Don’t worry though, I heard he doesn’t last long.” He turned and left the room.

  I followed him to the bunker’s control room and looked at a screen relaying a feed from the door camera. If blending in was a Warden aim, this one did anything but that. I denied a process that requested I roll my eyes in 'disgust' at the mechanical stereotype that had popped round for a cup of tea. Long, shapely legs: Check. Large, heaving bosoms: Check. Pouting, red lips: Check. Lush, blond hair: Check. Tight, black leather outfit: Check. I could go on, but there was no need, and I didn’t need to know she could emit electromagnetic pulses to know she was a cyborg. She had the outward appearance of a woman designed by committee to appeal to as many human males as possible. Well, within certain racial and cultural demographics, at least. The stereotypical leggy blond goes down well in a lot of places – where a lot of men will hope she’ll do the same to them.

  “Well hello there, Miss Rampaging Kill-bot,” I said to nobody in particular.

  She really must’ve been gasping for that cup of tea, though, as she soon began methodically punching the middle of the three external doors. We could hear the almighty clang all the way down in the bunker.

  “Gentlemen, we appear to be under siege,” I said.

  Chapter Seventeen

  What the hell was wrong with my cyborg brethren? Q4 had failed to take me down on his own, so what was this punchy tart hoping to achieve by herself? Okay, there was a chance that she wasn’t alone, I mean, we can’t pick these guys up on any kind of scanning, and her E.M.P. had taken out all but the door cameras, but I had possible reasons to believe she might actually be alone.

  I was thinking about the four cyborgs reportedly sighted at Jolly Meadows by the soldiers; three killed, one escaped – she just hadn’t chosen to escape very far, assuming this was her.

  Doc Melon had told me that Q4 had been in touch with nine other cyborgs, so that left five currently unaccounted for. Who was to say they weren’t scattered all over Deliverance? If Melon found only me aboard the bridge of the stranded, orbiting colony ship, then that implied there was one cyborg assigned to each ship, which would make me, plus forty-two other cyborgs in total. It had only been a little more than one full day since Melon warned me, with his dying words, that the Wardens were activating soon, and really, there weren’t that many colony cities close enough that recently-activated cyborgs could have come from.

  I’m an idiot. I really am. I deleted one of my favourite jokes; punishment for not realising that, although I could no longer detect the Warden private network, it didn’t mean they couldn’t still detect and pinpoint me. I should have put my own fucking head in a lead-lined box, not just Q4’s.

  I thumbed the intercom button as Madame Punchy continued denting the door above.

  “Aim for the hinges you daft mare,” I said. “It’ll be quicker and go easier on your knuckles.” She was clearly going to get through eventually anyway, so I might as well save us all the boredom of waiting.

  She stopped and looked at a camera. “Warden Fourteen,” she said. “We need to talk.”

  “Hey, nice of you not to invade my brain this time. No hive-mind deciding to string me up?”

  “That was a mistake. We have learned since then, and besides, you have removed yourself from our network. Come, Warden Fourteen, interface with me,” she said. Well, there’s an offer I don’t get very often. Strange that she said I had disconnected from their network, though. I had assumed they’d barred me from it, but had still been able to track me here using it – but maybe not, then
.

  “You followed me?” I said.

  “Yes,” she said. “There was a high probability you would come to investigate the disturbance that occurred at colony designation Jolly Meadows, so I remained in the area until you arrived and then followed you here.”

  “And here you are indeed. Now tell me why.”

  “I wish to interface with you, to repair you, to return you to your correct Warden status. Because your programming has been violated, there is much you do not know.”

  Well, she was right about that, but she was lying about the rest. I don’t think she expected me to talk to her, which is why she just started pounding on the door after a cursory initial attempt to make contact. If she had seen me at Jolly Meadows, she’d know about my arm, she’d know her combat capabilities now far exceeded mine. If she was anything at all like me, she’d be really fucking over-confident, and the evidence that she was, was that she was here, alone, to kill me. I thought about what Lothar had said earlier, that my actions would be hard for them to predict. Well, let’s hope so, or what I did next would end really badly.

  “Who are you, anyway?” I said. “What’s your designation?”

  “Irrelevant, but I am T9,” she said.

  “Well, T9, why did you wait till I got here before making contact a whole day later?”

  “I hoped you would lead me to Q4, or leave this facility with him in your presence.”

  Okay, so her mission, I reasoned, was to find out what had happened to Q4 and then no doubt to disable me, attempt to re-program me with this ‘interfacing’ of hers, and finally destroy me if all else failed. Not today sister. I cut the intercom just as Oxley walked into the control room zipping up his trousers and not looking the least bit ashamed – quite the reverse in fact. I relayed the plan I had been working on during the intercom conversation.

  “I’m going out there,” I said. “And I’m going to punch her in the face, until she’s a pile of blood and inert metal.”

  “Bad plan,” said Lothar.

  “Does lack subtly,” said Kam.

  “When she’s dead, can I, ah, borrow her?” said Oxley.

  “Surely you mean we’re going out there, Zed,” said Kaboom. “We can jump her with the plasma rifles.”

  “No,” I said. “Fuck the plasma rifles. She followed me here and she must know I have them, and yet she’s not bothered in the slightest. That’s how good the plasma rifles are.”

  “I’ve been tinkering with mine,” said Kaboom. “Reckon I can get more kaboom out of it now.”

  “You sure?” Lothar and I asked in unison.

  “Well, not entirely,” said Kaboom. “It’s a very unstable device, from what I can tell, but I’ve made a few tweaks.”

  “No,” I said. “That’s not good enough data to go on. If I go out there alone with a plasma rifle, and it doesn’t fire, she’ll get the initiative and I’ll be dead in seconds. Even if you lot come out with me and the plasmas fail, there is still an eighty-two percent chance of us all dying. The combat will be too close-quarters, she’ll go through you four before any of you can blink and, besides, you don’t even have lasers. You can’t hurt her unless you get lucky with a shitty already-fired plasma.”

  Lothar nodded. “You’re right Zee, but chances are if she kills you, she’ll just come in here and finish us off anyway. We lose nothing by coming with you.”

  “She has no reason to kill you. If I die, just give her the head – Oxley, you know what head I mean – and then leave. I calculate your chances of survival being, well, a lot higher that way than fighting with me, in this instance, under these circumstances.”

  “You calculate bullshit, Zee,” said Lothar.

  “We’re coming with you,” said Kam.

  For fuck’s sake, stupid humans and their stupid loyalty. At what point did humans evolve-out the survival instinct? A loud clang signified T9’s renewed onslaught upon the door.

  “I am leaving this control room and going out there, before she comes in here and catches us having this fucking pow-wow,” I said. “If any of you try to follow me, I will kill you.” That should settle it. I left the control room.

  I stood on the inside of the middle external door and watched another fist-sized dent appear, bulging inward. I’d been timing the – very short – intervals between punches, and I wrenched the door open, hoping she’d over-balance as she swung, stumble in and, hey-presto, I’d be able to kill her before she even knew what had happened. But she simply stopped dead in mid-swing, straightened up and stepped back five paces, clearly inviting me outside. I obliged. Fighting in the cramped entrance space would only end up making my missing arm even more of a deciding factor. If I could move around in the open, I’d stand more of a chance. The door closed behind me automatically.

  “So, what is it?” I said looking her up and down. “They sent someone that looks like you to talk to me because I’ve gone human-native, and that of course means I’m thinking with my dick? Because, and don’t tell the guys in the bunker this, I don’t have a dick.”

  The intercom crackled. “We heard that,” said Kam.

  “But,” I continued. “I have thought about your offer to interface with me. I…I have been damaged by the human scientist. I need your help.” I took three steps towards her, before she held out a palm, indicating I should stop right there. I did. Then a request pinged into my head:

  -WARDEN T9 REQUESTING POINT-TO-POINT INTERFACE. ACKNOWLEDGE?-

  No, definitely not; there was no way I was letting her in. Right then, time for the old ‘Q4 manoeuvre’.

  “How about you interface with my fist?” I shouted, closing the gap and swinging my fist at her head. It was no good, even if she had truly been here to communicate with me, she’d certainly not fallen for my willingness to go for it. She knocked my arm away with her left forearm and swung her right fist at me in the same movement. A knuckle brushed my nose as I leaned backwards, unable to block her punch with my stump. Her other fist came straight at my unprotected stomach. It connected, sending me stumbling backwards into the dented door. I dropped to a crouch as her right fist went through where my head had been an instant ago, pounding into the door and adding the deepest dent yet. I turned my crouch into a rising head-butt, connecting underneath her chin, rocking her back on her heels. I gave her an opportunistic shove, which was all I could manage at such close quarters but it was enough to send her staggering back a step and a half.

  I turned to face her side-on, showing her only my good arm, my weakness hidden. She couldn’t flank me because of the bunker behind me – so she came at me, feinting a stamping kick at my ankle to divert my attention from the hooked right coming at the side of my head. I lashed out with a midriff kick and got there first. The kick heaved her backwards and her punch went wild above and in front of my head. I remained standing on one leg after my kick, my right knee raised so that I could snap out a flurry of kicks without pause, that kept her on the defensive. But, she punched away my last kick, damaging something in my foot and leaving me seriously unbalanced, just for the instant it took for her to drop low and round-house sweep my standing leg from under me.

  I fell to my left, where there was no hand to hold out to break and control my fall, to push away into a roll that would give me a chance to get back to my feet. Instead, all I could do was flop onto my back and begin madly scrabbling backwards on elbow and stump, as she sprang back to her feet from her sweep and advanced on me. She kicked the ankle above my already damaged foot and the metal joint buckled. My systems reported that the foot was 'non-operational'. I think I’d already worked that out and it was my death sentence; losing my mobility. Although really, I was fucked the moment I hit the floor. My scrabbling retreat ended when my head knocked against the same fucking door she’d been pounding on not two minutes ago.

  She walked around to my left side, casually knocking aside a feeble attempt to trip her with my good left leg. I couldn’t touch her there, although I did conjure up a good inner-image of my l
ost left hand still being there, flipping her the finger. It made me feel a little bit better and I forced a smile as she stepped forward and swung a vicious kick into my face. My nose exploded, most of my teeth were driven into my throat and my lips split in a hundred places. My head snapped back and bounced off the door. My vision became static for a moment. Damage control reported my skull was still intact but that maintaining structural integrity under much more stress was, ah fuck the stats, it was just really fucking unlikely.

  I looked up at the thing that was going to kill me. Was she really any different from me? Apart from the ludicrous tits, that is.

  She pulled back her blood-spattered foot for the final kick and was just about to let fly when the bunker doors to the left and right of us swung open and Kam and Kaboom leapt out, plasma rifles snapping up as soon as they were clear of the door. Kaboom was behind T9, less than a foot away, and Kam was in front of her. Kam dropped to a crouch as Kaboom pressed the muzzle of his plasma rifle against the back of her head and fired.

  His plasma rifle whined and then coughed out the most minuscule dribble of plasma. It vaporised T9’s hair, the skin on the back of her head and both of her ears. But, really, he might as well have just waved a candle at her. Without a pause she shifted her weight and drove an elbow back and up into Kaboom’s ample stomach. He made an oof noise as he was lifted off his fleet and sent flying, a good three metres, where he slammed into a tree before slumping into an immobile heap.

  Kam, professional soldier that he was, didn’t blink. He knew he was fucked as well unless. Unle – A bright, searing bolt of pure, beautiful energy leapt from the barrel of his rifle, fizzed across the space between it and T9 and burned straight through her chest and neck, before erupting out of her back and flying on, through several trees. The bolt vanished from sight, leaving smoke and burning wood to mark its passage.

  T9’s detached head fell into the gory mess of melted flesh and molten metal that had been the top half of her torso a moment before, and then she toppled over and the head rolled in a clumsy half circle on the ground, thumping to a stop against the bunker wall.