Artemis

by Philip Palmer

  “Let me touch,” said Daxox. And he touched the jacket, which was indeed most extraordinarily and erotically soft and – and then I realised.

  “No,” I said.

  “You’re supposed to be a hunter,” said Daxox. “Wear the jacket.”

  “No!”

  “You can say hello to your friend if you like. She’s still alive, just about.”

  “No!”

  Daxox led me into the cellar. The Caipora was there. Flayed. Her tendons red and raw. Her eyes bugging out from her skin-less skull. I was wearing the jacket made from her own hide. There’s no way the Caipora would not have realised that.

  “We were friends?” said the Caipora, accusingly, and I drew my gun in a moment and blew her brains out.

  “Wear the coat,” said Daxox, and I knew that was the test.

  I wore the coat.

  Last memory:

  “Sweetheart, it’s over,” said Daxox, and it felt like I’d been stabbed.

  “Yeah?” I said.

  “Yeah.”

  “What’s over?”

  “Us. Our relationship. Our love. It’s dead and gone. I never want to see you again, you silly bitch,” said Daxox cruelly.

  “No sweat,” I said calmly, smiling.

  Smiling?

  Yeah, I was.

  And this is the thing I want you to understand. It’s the thing I want ME to understand.

  I was smiling, because I actually thought this was just another test. The latest of his very many terrible tests, all of which I had passed with flying colours. I didn’t think he actually MEANT it.

  So I didn’t cry. I didn’t plead. I just shrugged with a hint of crossness, but still smiling, as if my lover had refused to make me breakfast and I was enjoying a minor sulk.

  “See you around,” I said, still playing it cool.

  Daxox was grinning. That big ugly frog grin of his.

  “Where the fuck do you think you’re going?” he crowed.

  That’s when they electrocuted me. They did it through the floor. I had no chance to defend myself. I just started convulsing, with thousands of volts pouring through my body.

  Then I blacked out.

  And when I woke up – well.

  I was bald. They’d cut off all my lovely hair. Baron Lowman was there. He gave me a mirror so I could see the scar in my skull, where they’d cut me open and inserted the whedon chip into my brain. And Daxox of course was gone.

  I tried to leap from my chair and kill Baron Lowman. But when he stared at me I couldn’t move my limbs. Then he handed me a knife and made me cut myself. And then – after that, you don’t need to know.

  I thought at first it was a test, and maybe it was. Maybe Daxox would have taken me back if I’d stuck it out for long enough. I managed nine years six months and four days. Maybe ten years was my target. Maybe if I’d still loved Daxox after ten years of all that horror, he might have considered me worthy of him?

  Or maybe—

  No. No more maybes. Daxox betrayed me, and for that he must die.

  Back to the club.

  I’m in my doppelgänger body. I have just blown a hole in the wall and I am now standing inside the Dahlia Club clutching my Xenos B rifle, which is smaller than the standard Xenos but just as versatile. A fast rap-punk song is playing with a curiously hypnotic spoken chorus and a bassline that strums the sternum and makes breathing difficult. The lightball is scattering petals of red and purple over the diners and drinkers and strippers and I can smell flowery perfume in the air and it reminds me of many wild and wonderful people I used to know here and – no, no time to reminisce—

  Daxox is staring at the unfurling tableau of violent invasion, as walls explode and body-armoured cops with huge guns emerge from the steaming holes screaming, “ARMED POLICE, LIE ON THE FLOOR, HANDS ON YOUR HEAD, ARMED POLICE!” and hurling flash grenades and pop-pellets to disorientate and dazzle and deafen Daxox’s goons.

  I exult at his incredulity; and marvel too at the further look of astonishment on Daxox’s face when two of the scantily clad strippers fly off their poles and come up holding handguns (concealed WHERE?). And at about the same time, four of the sweaty punters stand up, open their jackets, and reveal flashing badges that say POLICE and draw their guns from ankle holsters. And suddenly Daxox and his seven bodyguards at the corner table are facing a forest of pistols and machine guns, in the midst of a maelstrom of blinding light and ear-assailing detonations.

  And, meanwhile, the twenty-four genuine punters and the fifteen genuine lap dancers and the seven fetishised waiters and waitresses and bar staff stare open-mouthed, trapped in someone else’s action movie, appalled and half-deaf and half-blinded and consumed with fear and a desperate desire to be elsewhere.

  And at exactly the same time, an automated message is being broadcast directly into Daxox’s brain chip: “This is the Laguid Police Arrest Squad, this is a genuine raid, surrender immediately by kneeling on the ground with your hands on your head. Do not reach into your pocket or make any threatening moves or you will be killed.”

  Daxox turns on his force field and comes out shooting.

  The innocent civilians, whether clothed or near-naked, dive for the floor; the cops take their positions and start firing back. It is a battle of body armour and force fields, because no table can protect you from a bullet or an energy beam; and pretty much every shot hits home. The difference is, the cops are all doppelgänger robots, but Daxox and his bodyguards are made of real flesh. This will be, I predict, no contest.

  The battle rages: it is a son et lumière of blood and bullets and tightly-focused energy beams that can rip through flesh like a sunbeam through space; bodies twitch; blood spurts; naked robot skin is seared; robot lubricating fluid gushes from severed limbs and heads; and mobile force shields are thrown up to protect the genuine and anxiously cowering customers and dancers.

  I can see it all through my doppelgänger eyes, but I have no motor control over my machine. And it annoys me how slow the damned thing is! I long to be there in person; I could easily take all these pintlesucking—

  Then one of Daxox’s goons hits me with an energy blast and it takes off one of my robot arms. My body fires back with a projectile bullet that gets trapped in the goon’s force field. So my robot body fires six more bullets at variable velocity until one breaks through and the goon explodes.

  Daxox sees this and laughs. I can see with my robot eyes that there are bullets embedded in his skull. Their momentum has been sapped by his force field; so though the slugs have hit hard enough to penetrate bone, they have not gone all the way through. And still he laughs.

  At that moment, I hated that evil bastard with all my being!

  And yet—

  I couldn’t help but—

  I couldn’t stop myself from—

  I couldn’t deny that—

  Yes, I’ll say it. I had loved this fucker, once! And somehow, love like that never goes away.

  My doppelgänger was down, shot through the spine, but my eyes could still see.

  I seized the opportunity to throw out the police rider from the doppelgänger brain and take direct control of the robot. I activated the parallel neural circuits and dragged myself up to my knees and watched the gun battle unfold. Projectile bullets bounced off force fields and smashed into walls and bar optics. The bar staff had now vanished, probably into their secure basement.

  But there was no way out for Daxox. His force field was holding up, but the cops were using variable pulses and were alternating plasma bursts with projectile bullets with taser blasts to bombard him ceaselessly. All around, doppelgänger and human bodies were strewn across the floor. Metal limbs and fleshy arms and legs were severed and scattered. Robots with gaping holes in their bodies fired incessant blasts of angry war at the armoured bodyguards in that corner snug.

  Then Daxox’s force field flickered, and a bullet went through. I saw a splash of blood and I knew he was hit.

  I seized my moment. I
tottered across to him, absorbing a hail of bullets and plasma blasts, until I was close to Daxox. He raised his gun to blast my head off and I spoke, with full voice emulation.

  “It’s me,” I said, and Daxox was stopped in his tracks. Fear and rage possessed him. He fired at my skull and the bullet went through my robot brain but I still had enough neural control to put one hand through his force field and grab him by the throat.

  He was scared now. I was shattering his larynx. His eyes burned into mine saying – what? Forgive me, or Fuck you? I would never know.

  Then I grabbed his skull with my other hand and ripped his head off his shoulders. And held the head in my robot hand.

  And still he laughed. His brain kept alive by an oxygen capsule.

  I took my gun and fired it into his eyes. One, two, three, four – fifteen bullets in all. At some point I realised that it was over. Daxox was dead.

  And I was back in Gold Control room, taking deep breaths. Savouring the last moments of Daxox.

  “Happy now?” asked Fraser.

  I thought about it.

  The answer was: No, not really, in truth.

  I felt no joy at the death of Daxox. Because in a way, it meant the end of everything for me. For so many years, hate and rage had possessed me, and motivated me.

  Now I was left with – nothingness.

  But at least I knew what I would be doing next. For Fraser had kept his side of the bargain. Now it was up to me.

  Now I had to – oh fuck.

  Save the universe?

  Edited Highlights from the Thought Diary and Beaconband Blog of Dr Artemis McIvor

  BOOK 2

  WAR1

  Chapter 7

  Dying Many Times

  We jumped from the heliplane and fell like stones, plunging faster and faster towards the cobbles of the citadel city of Kandala. Then I triggered the inertial cocoon on my warsuit that would halt my descent and thus allow me to—

  Fuck.

  I hit the cobbles. Blood spurted. Organs squished. I died.

  We jumped from the heliplane and fell like stones, plunging faster and faster towards the cobbles of the citadel city of Kandala. I triggered the inertial cocoon on my warsuit. And—

  I hit the cobbles, rolled, got back to my feet. This time, I was alive. Billy and Catrin grinned at me. But Andres was crushed and dead inside his rock hard warsuit.

  We moved his body out of sight, dumping it into one of the vast trenches that disfigured this wasteland. This whole area still smelled, after all these years, of burned human flesh. There was a cold breeze. My visual array showed that there were no hostiles in this area. This was the Boneyard, where for so many years the bodies of the Corporation’s victims had been burned and forgotten.

  In the old days this had been a Wargame Planet, and the colonists of Kandala had struggled each year to meet their toll of warriors and virgins for the monthly Slaughters. In the interests of research, I’d tried to experience a few of the more popular Slaughter Shows, but even I found them obscene and intolerable. And I am, for fuck’s sake, a stone cold killer.

  The Boneyard was on the east-flanking side of the Citadel. The Citadel walls loomed high in the distance, bleakly majestic, capped with rounded be-flagged turrets that jutted at intervals along the stone parapet, with meurtrières beneath that stared like eyes. The city itself, I knew from my briefing, was larger than London in its pre-Cheo heyday, and it was TP-blocked. This is why we’d had to parachute down the old fashioned way.

  We stripped off our warsuits and buried them in a shallow grave. We had identity tattoos that would allow us access to secure buildings, and a good working knowledge of the Kandala dialect, which was Norse in origin. This had been a medieval society in the old days, with jousting, sword duels and battlefields. Ancient wars were re-enacted with doppelgänger knights in armour fighting against real human colonists clad in jerkins and penetrable chainmail. The battles would often last for weeks and the dead would be piled high upon the green fields, where the crows and the vultures would peck at them, before eventually being dumped in the Boneyard.

  Now, thankfully, those days were gone. But even though the Corporation itself no longer existed, its former minion, the High Priestess, still ruled supreme here.

  We jogged until the smell of death had left our nostrils, then slipped into the Mercantile Quarter. The market stalls were mostly unattended and sealed up. We struck a swaggering aspect in our kirtles and surcoats (me and Catrin) and doublet and breeches (Billy). We were playing the roles of vangeliste who expected due obeisance from the piccioti and the unranked criminals who we passed; and this we duly received. The ordinary citizens, however, paid us little heed.

  This was a war-torn city. Wherever we went, we saw burned-out houses and gaping holes and trenches gouged out of the roads and pavements by falling bombs and descending energy beams. SNG forces had laid siege to Kandala for two years, according to our briefing. The planet’s force fields and protective anti-missile systems had held, and no major damage had been caused. But the ceaseless fusillade of missiles and energy beams was bound to result in occasional “successes.” Which had duly ripped the shit out of many areas of the city.

  Above us the sky was lit with trails of fire, as the weary ceaseless fusillade of SNG missiles were blown out of the sky by interceptor drones every few minutes. The sky was like a murky violet canvas spattered with red and yellow paint.

  We made our way to the Citadel, along the Golden Road. This was a vastly broad pedestrian avenue which was literally made of gold, and was unpleasantly spongy underfoot. Stretching out as far as the eye could see and further were the encircling and high and richly jewelled Citadel walls, which we now approached, and marvelled at. Up close, we could see the true beauty of the impregnable fusion-forged bricks, inlaid with mosaics of precious stones that shimmered in the sun’s lazy beams. The wall bore no scars from the many bombs and energy beams that had lashed it over the years; for it was self-healing, and astonishingly strong. Behind these walls, we could see the seven Cathedral domes; and next to those, the Silver Campanile. And to our west, the awe-inspiring Forest of Towers in the midst of which the High Priestess dwelled.

  And all around at street level, where we stood outside the walls, were deserted shops and market stalls that once had bustled with rich traders and shamefully extravagant customers.

  The Kandala Citadel was, the briefing notes had told us, based on detailed accounts of the Welsh citadel of Camelot written in the twenty-second century by a psychic who claimed to be channelling the wizard Merlin. In reality, this place bore no resemblance to any actual medieval castled city. It was a parody of a pastiche based upon a lunatic’s dream.

  “Have you ever wondered—” I began to say to Billy, and then a hidden camera must have spotted us because plasma beams came from nowhere and engulfed us and we died.

  The next time we got as far as the Jousting Court, where I saw the High Priestess herself. And I reached for my tag gun and then—

  Then I died, fuck knows how, but I felt my head fall off my shoulders and that was that.

  The simulations were uncannily detailed, and felt utterly “real.” For the first time in my life I could start to understand why Earth Gamers and doppelgänger riders could become so addicted to—

  No, let’s not go there. Even here, in this thought diary, where—

  Okay let’s go there. I can start to understand. The thrill, the buzz, the addiction, that comes from riding a doppelgänger robot.

  Because living in a virtual universe is like life – but better, more intense, and without consequences. You live, you die, who cares? You can just savour the moment. The smells. The tastes. The sights. The joy of battle. The thrill of slaughter. The exhilaration of experiencing your own death.

  And okay I had a mission, so I wasn’t doing all this for fun. It wasn’t as if – but ah, what the fuck. I couldn’t deny it.

  I was enjoying myself.

  I embarked upon twenty-five
missions to Kandala and died every time. But I came to enjoy the swish of my long tunic dress as I walked on old cobbled stones. I thrilled at the heft of a longsword in my hand. My heart soared with joy every time I impaled a human being on my sword and watched them die, slowly.

  This is how the Earthian élite used to spend their lives. Okay there was a certain amount of genuine work to be done – an empire to maintain – but for most of the time, they would just sit in a virtual booth and hook up to a doppelgänger, and live vicariously.

  And of course, that’s how the Corporation empire endured for so long. It’s astonishing when you think about it. There were thousands of inhabited planets, each with millions if not billions of inhabitants, and probably no more than three or four million Earthian masters to rule them all. But thanks to virtual beaconband technology, a single pimply Earthian could control a regiment of super-powered doppelgänger robots. One of these arrogant mollyfockers could crush a rebellion, massacre the bravest and the best of an entire nation, and still be downstairs in time to have dinner with Mum and Dad.

  I consider myself to be a hard bastard. But I’ve never been able to understand how those evil shits could live with themselves, after doing what they did. They raped, murdered, pillaged, tortured, and hunted humans for sport. The entire Solar Neighbourhood Community of Planets was just a giant interactive snuff movie for these masters of the universe.

  And yet—

  And yet I was, it seemed to me, now experiencing something similar in the battleground sims. A sense of utter power, and a visceral thrill that comes from experiencing danger, without actually being in danger.

  So yeah, it’s addictive.