by Tara Basi
“For a moment,” he gave a nervous laugh, “let's postulate that I have a small collection of these clones on the ship. Hypothetically, how could you possibly use one? And, still speaking hypothetically, wouldn’t it be likely that the bodies would be female.”
“A female body is preferred. And it’s true, a jump into anything but a Tuned has never been tried before, but I must try.”
“All Tuned are male, you’re obviously male,” Truculent said, trying to regain control of the conversation.
“I’m a High Angel, and I’m female. My name is Eva.” The Tuned sounded weary now, as if the effort of conversation had exhausted it. “And all I want, is to find a way home.” Her face made a crude attempt at a frown.
“If you’re a High Angel and in touch with the gods, then tell me this: why did the Great Humus leave Manning and descend into the burning Cauldron?” This was one of the most intractable theological questions of the ages in the Empire. Volumes had been written about the matter, sects born and small wars fought over the many incompatible answers. Truculent was an expert on the subject. If this Eva really was a High Angel, it should have an answer.
“Channel shit, who cares? Only Channels, the Three and a way home matter.” The Tuned took a ragged breath and its face contorted. Unexpectedly, it screamed, “The body Truculent, now!”
Truculent was more confused than ever. This creature seemingly had the powers of a High Angel Tuned, the mouth of a cheap whore and uttered one blasphemy after another. Maybe they could do business together after all, even if he had no idea what it or she really was, or wanted.
“What are you?” Truculent asked.
“An indebted, indentured chancer who would be unburdened if I sank into the mud and became flesh. I’ve been a horribly paralysed, incontinent, dribbling bag of sloppy meat for far too long. Then there was the Word, and the Word was Three and that Word might save me and allow me home.” Eva tried to smile again, and her face only became horribly crumpled.
“What does any of that mean?” Truculent asked, a little afraid.
“You wouldn’t understand. I’m here to help you, be grateful and don’t ask questions,” Eva answered.
“Are you Vigilance?” Truculent persisted.
Eva’s body contorted as if she might be suffering a stroke. Her face twisted and twitched. Saliva flew everywhere. What really disturbed Truculent was the noise coming out of the Tuned’s mouth. It sounded as if it had swallowed its own tongue. For a moment Truculent was in a panic. What if it died? As the contortions and the noise continued it dawned on Truculent that Eva was actually laughing, or doing the best she could achieve with the Tuned’s severe physical limitations.
“Vigilance? Very funny, Priest.” Her face went limp and she fixed him with her cold eyes, “Body jump, now.”
Truculent had no idea why she found his suggestion that she might be Vigilance so funny. But then so much about Eva was unfathomable.
He had no doubt the, so called, body jump would be a trick too far, even for her. She had hinted as much herself. Better to get the charade over with as quickly as possible. He summoned a janitor to fetch the Tuned out of the airlock, still strapped to the cot, and bring it to the large storage container holding his collection of clones. He always kept it close and hidden. The clone space was concealed behind false bulkheads and screened from detection by every scanning device known to the Empire. How Eva knew about his bodies was another mystery he couldn’t explain. Truculent arrived before Eva. He was glad to have a few moments alone with his priceless collection. The space was dimly lit, unadorned and unfurnished. Floating between the floor and the high ceiling where row upon row of transparent stasis cylinders. Each clear tube contained a cloned body. Every one of them was an icon of the Vigilance Empire and almost all of them were exceptionally beautiful women. Each had been authentically aged, dressed, styled and exquisitely posed to show them as they were at the peak of their powers. Truculent strolled amongst his women, pausing to admire a great philosopher, a leader who had changed the course of history, an artist whose work had never been surpassed. Truculent’s silent reverie didn’t last long. A janitor wheeled the Tuned in.
“So many lovelies and quite tastefully arranged,” said Eva.
Truculent smiled. His appreciation of his collection had always been a solitary and lonely affair. For once it might be pleasant to have someone else share his aesthetic outlook. Then he remembered why they were there. Eva planned to despoil one of his masterpieces. Or at least try. He wanted to get on with it. “How is this going to work and what exactly are you looking for?”
“I’ll select a body. You’ll release it from stasis and I’ll try and jump.”
Truculent frowned. Removing a body from stasis would have to be done very carefully. He couldn’t bear to see one of his treasures damaged. “How many times are you going to try?”
“Once. I’ll succeed or I won’t. Now, let’s have a look at these bodies.”
Truculent was relieved. Only one body was going to have to suffer the indignity of Eva’s crazy experiment. He silently instructed the janitor to parade the Tuned past the least treasured items in his collection. For a while that’s all that happened. A largely paralysed Eva lay on the cot and was wheeled slowly past body after body without an indication that any had attracted her interest.
“They’re all rather flimsy. They don’t look like they would stand up too much punishment.”
Truculent was nonplussed. “Surely anything is better than that,” he said pointing at the dribbling wretch Eva claimed to be trapped in.
“Maybe, let’s keep looking. I need something sturdy.”
Truculent’s heart sank. The janitor had run out of lessor bodies to show Eva and she was starting to encroach on his more valuable specimens. “What do you mean by sturdy?”
“There. That one.”
Eva couldn’t point but with her eyes she was looking past his shoulder. He turned to see what she was staring at so hungrily. Gods no. It was one of his most prized if somewhat atypical specimens. “Really? There’s some extraordinarily beautiful bodies over here,” Truculent started to say, hoping to divert Eva’s attention away from one of his very special items.
“That one Truculent. Now.”
A seething Truculent instructed his janitor to very carefully remove the body from stasis and lay it out on a cot. Obviously Eva wasn’t going to succeed but any time out of stasis risked damage and, at the very least, the body would start to age. On Truculent’s command the janitor rolled the dribbling Tuned closer to the wonderful body. It wasn’t at all the right posture for such a magnificent woman: laid out and vulnerable. He shivered. The Tuned wasn’t behaving any differently. Its head was aimlessly lolling to the side while saliva dripped from its chin. “Are you finished? This is never going to work,” Truculent said.
A booming voice from behind made him jump, “It’s a mathematical wonder. I am bodied.”
Nervously he turned around and gasped. His wonderful body was sitting up and speaking. Eva had actually jumped. It was completely impossible. “That’s incredible. How did you do it?”
“It’s a resonance thing Truculent. You wouldn’t begin to comprehend my explanation.”
The High Priest was dumbfounded. One of his beautiful, perfect bodies was speaking and moving. It was a marvel. Even Eva’s implied insult couldn’t spoil the moment. This was something he had always dreamt about. Being able to converse and interact with his clones as if they were the originals.
“The Three, Truculent. How long till we reach the source planet?”
His momentary euphoria evaporated. It might be a mythically famous Vigilance body but the mind inside was alien in every way. Eva jumped down from the cot, causing Truculent to stumble backwards.
“Please, be careful. That’s a very, very valuable and rare specimen.”
“We were mistaken Truculent. All your clones are not the same. Only this one has a field which is compatible. So, yes I will be very c
areful. It’s unlikely I’ll ever find another that isn’t a Tuned. After this… freedom, I could never go back. How long to the planet?”
“We’re close. A Regulator is scouting ahead,” Truculent said. Then another worry came to him. The Tuned’s original body looked unchanged, if less agitated but still breathing. “What about the Tuned? Will the Channels still birth? If we find the Three?”
“Never suggest we won’t have the Three. That would be terrible for both of us. There will be no return to the status quo. Keep the Tuned body in stasis. When we have the Three it will be filled with some poor wretch that has debts to repay, and the birthing will start.”
Truculent resented her constant threats. They unsettled him more than he showed. In her Tuned incarnation she was vulnerable and at his mercy. Not any more. In her new body Eva was a physically terrifying presence.
Chapter 8 – War Games
Explosions mushroomed out of the ground, air charges burst into red-black clouds all around Battery Boy’s Crusher as it pounded across the barren landscape towards the Iowa Block, only three long kilometres ahead.
Crushers were the military’s name for the robots Pinkie had spotted in the basement months ago. The machines were huge and looked like mechanical Tyrannosaurs. They had a low head buried between massive shoulders. The thick torsos were covered in angled scales. When they moved, their bodies were held at a forty-five-degree angle, to better suit the two-legged method of locomotion. The nightmarish engines could glide across the ground at a hundred kilometres an hour, their legs a blur of motion. At that speed anyone trying to ride the beast risked snapping their backs, even if they managed to cling on.
Battery Boy scanned the battlefield. In the distance Jugger was being pursued by a buzzing cloud of dog sized mosquitoes, like the monsters from the Yard. They’d been nasty enough before but now they had been weaponised. Each giant mozzie was equipped with missile pods. A wave of them were chasing Jugger as he thundered along making his own drunken path towards the Block. Battery Boy watched as Jugger randomly jinked to one side then the other. Sometimes he tried to cut behind the larger boulders to gain some protection from the storm of projectiles heading his way from his whining pursuers. Following right behind Battery Boy were Stuff, Mina and Tress. All frantically pushing their machines as fast as they could, all headed directly for the Block. Desperately trying to dodge the deadly hail from the swooping insects. Battery Boy clung to the hope that if riders and mounts could just make it under the Block they stood a chance. Underneath it would be easier to shoot the insects out of the air. Until they got there it wasn’t the time to attack or defend, just zig and zag. He could only hope that the decoy micro-flares and blasts of metal chaff, continuously firing from rear weapons pods, stopped the missiles locking on to their target. The decoy defence was probably unnecessary. As far as Battery Boy could tell the missiles weren’t guided at all and the mozzies were lousy shots. But what they lacked in accuracy they made up for in numbers. If the Crushers didn’t get under the Block soon, the mozzies might get lucky.
The usual Block weather helped and hindered. The rain and the wind buffeted their flying attackers making it harder for them to hit their Crusher targets. The thick mud hampered the Crushers’ movements. Battery Boy was encircled by the chaos of battle. The air was filled with flames and thick smoke. The acrid fumes burnt his throat. He could hardly see the ground ahead. Yet one thing amongst the explosive chaos was unwaveringly clear: their target. The vastness of the Block loomed ahead. A wall of slate that reached above the sky and filled his eyes, seemingly indifferent to their approach. Racing towards the Block with Jugger ahead reminded Battery Boy of when Jugger had chased he and Stuff under Block Seven. So much was different now. Only the Blocks were constant. He planned to change that.
Battery Boy was beginning to think the Crushers might just reach the comparative safety of the underneath.
“Shit, what’s that?” Mina screamed over the deafening explosions.
Battery Boy focused. There was a rippling, wriggling wave of metal and flesh pouring out from under the Block heading directly towards them. The swarming horde spread out like a viscous boiling flood completely blocking the way ahead. The vibrations from his wildly dodging Crusher made it difficult to see clearly. He wasn’t sure what was rushing to meet him. Whatever it was, it wasn’t going to be good. Not if it was coming from the Block. A gust of wind created a momentary gap in the smoke from the explosions and he finally caught a clear sight of the flood’s leading edge and wished he hadn’t.
A multitude of grotesque half-human, half-machines were charging towards them. As the gap narrowed he could see the things sported vaguely recognisable human heads, with bare skulls that were capped with metal. He raised his binoculars and tried to keep them steady despite the buffeting. Battery Boy found himself staring into unblinking multifaceted black lenses where eyes should have been. It was obvious that nothing human was left in these monsters. Their faces were hideous. Noses had been sliced off and covered in metal grilles. Pursed lips were sealed with rivets. Each abomination was armed with assault weapons fused to their shoulders that appeared autonomous. They swivelled of their own accord, searching for a target. The creatures had mechanical claws, instead of hands, clutching small arms. Locomotion was provided by a terrible undercarriage of six metallic, spider-like appendages replacing hips and legs. The ugly sea of killing machines swarmed in their thousands across the wastes, rapidly closing on the speeding Crushers, which were still being chased by the mosquitoes and their missiles.
Battery Boy knew that any hesitation would kill them. It seemed a hopeless prospect that they would reach the underneath.
Jugger’s Crusher was the first to collide with the oncoming wave. And unexpectedly, instead of limbs and metallic legs flying up as the Crusher smashed through them, the wave simply parted around the machine.
Battery Boy couldn’t believe their luck. The wildly firing mozzies were releasing their missiles so chaotically that they smashed into the Block’s own ground forces, inadvertently clearing a path for Jugger.
Battery Boy yelled over his radio, “Stay spread out, let the crazy mozzies blast a way through for us and we might make it.” He couldn’t be sure anyone would hear him over the din of the battle.
Then he heard an answer, “I’ll try Battery Boy, I’ll try. What are those things?” It was Stuff, trying to sound brave and only half succeeding.
Battery Boy didn’t have the time to speculate. He gunned his machine forward and opened up with every weapon he had. The only chance was to trample right through anything that got in his way and keep going. What the mozzie missiles didn’t accidentally blast, his brutal cannons and roaring flame-throwers ripped up and burnt. Somehow, he was carving a path through the wall of flesh and metal charging to meet him. It was working. He was going to smash the Block.
Jugger’s machine stumbled. Despite the older boy’s breakneck speed and constant changes in direction, a mozzie had finally found its target. The Crusher started limping; fire and smoke belched from its thigh. It slowed and started to lose its manoeuvrability. The loss of forward momentum was fatal. In an instant the Crusher was swarmed by hundreds of the spider-people. Discarding their small weapons, their outstretched claws grabbed for any available hold as they threw themselves at the body, the legs, and under the feet of the leviathan. The Crusher wavered and finally toppled onto its side. Jugger’s compartment vanished under a sea of the hideous creatures, now all firing their shoulder armaments at point blank range. A fire ball erupted out of the carcass of the fallen Crusher.
Jugger was gone.
There was nothing Battery Boy could do. He charged on. He couldn’t stop. They were so close. Behind and to his right Stuff screamed so loudly it cut through the din of battle. Battery Boy swivelled in his operator’s cage and looked back in time to see his friend’s machine burst into flames and crash down. Stuff was trapped in a tangled metal frame on the back of the Crusher and was being burnt alive
. A lucky missile had hit the lower spine of Stuff’s machine just as he had tried to spin away and escape from a mass attack by hundreds of the foul Block soldiers.
Battery Boy knew he should leave Stuff to his fate. But he swerved back towards his friend and accelerated as hard as he could. He blasted at the horrors attacking Stuff, trying to clear a path through the concentrated assault, praying the young boy might somehow escape. It was too late; Stuff was already a burning corpse. The cybernetic swarm were picking at his young friend’s crashed machine. A dark cloud of mosquitoes filled the air over the funeral pyre. With Stuff and Jugger dispatched, the attackers turned their fury on Battery Boy. He looked for the others. Tress and Mina were back to back trying to fight off impossible odds as wave after wave of the spider creatures lashed at their machines. Battery Boy wasn’t going to be able to smash his way through or escape the Iowa Block’s onslaught. He wasn’t going to survive for more than a few seconds, and it looked like Mina and Tress would soon follow.
Battery Boy was furious. Before he could say anything, Jugger was already venting his anger at Trinity.
“What the hell were those things? You can’t just throw new stuff at us without any warning.”
“Oh Jugger, I’m so sorry. What was I thinking? A Block would never be so rude as to try and surprise us. Goodness no. I’m such a dunce. I shall stand on the naughty step.” Nurse Trinity spun around and started racing around the training centre, waving its little arms wildly above its head.
Jugger glowered and looked like he wanted to hit something. Battery Boy knew how he felt. They had just started to get the hang of the Crushers, and they’d been doing so well against the mosquito attacks. The new enemies that Trinity had added to the simulation had caught everyone off guard. They were all probably thinking the same thing: how were they ever going to reach the Block? Battery Boy felt deflated.
