Artemis

by Philip Palmer

  “Why not?”

  I thought hard on that one. “It’s the way I was raised,” I eventually said.

  “Raised? On Rebus? By your father you mean?” The scorn in her tone was enough to curdle blood.

  “My father was the Clan. I am a gangster, Lena. A capobastone in blood spilled. It is my code.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “I cannot,” I said, “refuse a direct challenge.”

  And it was true. Remember, computers are just machines, which are programmed to behave in certain ways. Whereas humans are—

  Yeah. You got it. Same fucking difference.

  And so, like a fool. I accepted the challenge. Capobastone to capobastone, remember, for I had killed the real Daxox, thus acquiring his Clan rank.5

  Lena was furious with me of course. She didn’t understand the whole business of the Clan code. But I’m stubborn. I get it, I guess, from my mother’s side.

  That’s what I told Lena anyway; it’s her fault I’m such a schmuck.

  And so I travelled to the Main Street of Laguid to meet Hispaniola Morgan, in a duel to the death.

  Main Street is a boulevard in the centre of Laguid which is wide enough to take thousands of pedestrians at any one time. The walkways are like coloured ribbons here. Children can run the width of the boulevard by leaping from walkway to walkway, as if they were stepping stones, though it’s a dangerous business. But now the walkways had been halted. The street was deserted. The sun peeked through black clouds. Luckily I have good night vision; in Laguid, you need it in the day.

  Lena was three blocks away, in a fortified hotel room, still in communion with Tinbrain and hence Magog, and able to speak to me via MI. She was my back-up in case of a double-cross. But I saw no traces of Flanagans or Daxoxes, or Peter Smiths or Baron Lowmans. Just a single Morgan, as promised, standing in Main Street, waiting for me.

  “Lena,” said Hispaniola Morgan.

  “I am Artemis,” I said.

  “The challenge was to Lena.”

  “That wasn’t clear.”

  “It’s clear now.”

  I shrugged. But my spirits soared. Was there a way out for me here?

  “Walk away, Artemis,” said Lena in my head.

  “Then the challenge is void,” I said.

  “I challenge thee,” said Morgan, smiling cruelly.

  Shit. He was just fucking with me.

  “You can’t be serious. Walk away!”

  “Weapons?” I asked.

  “Knives,” Morgan replied.

  I nodded. Up close, and personal, in a knife-fight that would decide the entire war. Everything to play for then. Just the way I like it.

  Morgan put his rifle and pistols down on the floor. He took off his helmet. Then he stripped off his warsuit, to reveal he was wearing a Corporation Navy uniform, with a skull and crossbones sewn on the lapel.

  I put down my own guns. Then took off my helmet, stripped off my warsuit. I was wearing black jeans and a black T-shirt. My arms were bare.

  I drew my knife.

  Morgan drew his knife.

  We began, slowly, walking towards each other.

  It was a long street. I was alert to snipers. I was on the lookout for heliplanes with missiles. I was prepared for Morgan to try and double-cross me by drawing a concealed gun. I was ready, in short, for anything.

  I was barely three feet from Morgan when the mine exploded beneath me. The ground rippled and buckled as if an earthquake had smitten it. It was a bomb that ran the entire length of Main Street – fuck only knows how they’d buried it so well. And my body vanished, engulfed in the inferno.

  Morgan smiled.

  I tapped him on the shoulder.

  The Artemis that died was a holo of course; the real me was waiting in the shadowed area behind a walkway strut for the battle to be over. I had an army of doppelgängers two blocks away, ready to pounce. But for now, it was just me and the cyborg Morgan.

  “Hi,” I said.

  And he turned and looked at me.

  And I realised that I could smell him.

  I could smell his body odour, the warrior’s rank aroma that comes from spending hours or days in a warsuit. I could see sweat beading his brow. I could see the goose bumps on his neck, from the chill wind. I could hear his heart beat. He looked at me and there was a spark of fear in his eyes.

  It was Morgan. The real Morgan. What a lucky—

  Morgan shot me. I was, of course, in a warsuit; so the bullet bounced off my armour. I fired once, at his face. The bullet went straight through his mouth and out the other side, but didn’t explode en route. Blood gouted out, giving him an evil bloody leer. But my second bullet missed, because Morgan was running. And a flock of Smiths and Daxoxes and Lowmans swooped out of the clouds in their black warsuits and began shooting at me, throwing off my aim and, dammit, hitting me.

  I gave chase.

  This was my city. I knew, as you know, every alley, every building, every cul-de, etc.

  And it didn’t take long to realise that Morgan was not just running; he was luring me. Leading me to the City Hall, a perfect spot for an ambush. I knew; but I didn’t care.

  I sprinted down empty motionless walkways, I vaulted walls, I saw him run up the steps to the City Hall main entrance and I allowed the door to open for him.

  I ran up the steps, spattered with his blood, and reached the door and paused.

  An explosion ripped the door away. Easily predicted. I ran through the smoke. The ambush I’d expected was there. Flanagans and Smiths and Daxoxes lay in wait, hiding behind statuary in this baroque headquarters of the Laguid civil service, firing bullets and energy blasts at me.

  “I’ll take care of these.”

  The doors opened again and an army of doppelgänger robots rattled through, silver bodied and with eerie blank faces that somehow all looked like Lena. Bullets and energy beams flew and the cavernous atrium became a war zone. The City Hall was a baroque extravaganza, with glass pilasters and nude mobiles suspended by magnets and, inevitably, a pair of matching pair of statues of Flanagan and Lena, now shattered and cracked with bullet impacts. I ignored the irony of that; and let Lena fight her virtual war with the cyborgs.

  Deafened by the gunfire, buffeted by the direct hits upon my body armour, I could still manage to follow a trail of blood with my mask’s augmented vision. So I ran into the maelstrom of gunfire and energy blasts and I survived and ran up the stairs to the first floor, where giant tapestries of the founding fathers of Laguid once stood; shredded by the ricochets.

  And there, I found Morgan waiting for me.

  His movements were uncertain; he was clearly in considerable pain. He was carrying a Philos pistol which one of his cyborgs must have thrown to him. As soon as he saw me, he began to shoot.

  It was no contest. I was in a warsuit, he was unarmoured. I walked towards him, his bullets bouncing off my armour. I could have killed him with a single shot but that wouldn’t have been sporting. But his aim, I’ll grant you that, was good; he shot me ninety-three times in a small spot in the heart region in the space of a few seconds, and it was a good chance the next bullet would break through and kill me. But still I did not shoot.

  When I was close enough, I took the gun off him and crushed it in my hand.

  Then I raised my helmet and took it off. I stripped out of my warsuit for the second time. I shook out my arms and took a deep breath. I drew my knife. He drew his knife.

  This time was for real. He could smell my sweat; I could smell his. He was gasping, bloodily grinning. “Boss to boss,” he said, “capobastone to—”

  Expecting me to be distracted by his words, Morgan drew a concealed gun from a holster above his arse and fired, in a single fast and effortless movement. I dodged the bullet, came up slashing. I slashed his throat open with my knife.

  Then, tiring of the knife stuff, I picked up my own gun and delivered the coups de grâce at point-blank range, until his body was a torso with no head.

&nb
sp; It was over. Hispaniola Morgan was dead.

  Lena and I went to a bar for a drink.

  “The battle not the war,” I said.

  We’d been in the bar all afternoon as the fighting continued to rage outside; our minds still controlling doppelgängers on every spot on the planet.

  But by the time we reached the end of the second bottle, Magog told us we had killed the last of our enemies. All the cyborgs were dead. Victory had been achieved.

  We both knew, however, that there were still thousands of evil cyborg Hispaniola Morgans left on other planets in the humanverse; up to the usual no fucking good.

  But do you know what? That was now someone else’s problem.

  “Battle not the war,” Lena echoed. “Isn’t that always the way of it?”

  We chinked glasses.

  It could be years before all the Morgans were killed.6 But, we hoped, the Daxox and Flanagan and Peter Smith and Baron Lowman cyborg bodies had been created more recently. We might have seen the last of those.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Why what?”

  “Why did Morgan hate Flanagan so much?”

  That’s when she told me the story. Of Morgan’s wife Medea, and Flanagan’s betrayal of his best friend, and Morgan’s subsequent murder of Medea. I’d half guessed it to be honest, so it didn’t come as a great reveal.

  “That explains a lot,” I said, as she reached the end of her tale of treachery and soured friendship.

  “Flanagan was never,” Lena admitted, “a saint.”

  I laughed. “No.”

  “That’s why I—”

  “Yeah.”

  “We always—”

  “I know.”

  “He was my—”

  “I know he was,” I told Lena.

  That’s Lena, my mother, by the way. Saviour of all humanity. Yeah, that Lena. Did I mention she was my mother? I squeezed her hand gently.

  We chinked again.

  “To Flanagan.”

  “To the old rogue, love of my life, liar, cheat, arsehole, lover, friend, Mickey Flanagan,” said Lena.

  Her cheeks were damp with tears. I was glad of that. Earlier on, when she would not cry for him – that’s when I most feared for her.

  “So what next?” I said to Lena.

  She drained another whisky and thought.

  “I retire,” she said, at length. “Find a planet where I can be a grandmother.”

  From this, I swiftly deduced her cunning plan.

  “Near me?” I asked.

  “If you’ll have me.”

  “I’ll try to endure it.”

  “Artemis—”

  “No.”

  “I just want to—”

  “Skip it.”

  “Do you forgive me? Now do you forgive me?”

  “Fuck no.”

  “That’ll do.”

  Lena smiled. She was looking tired. And old, so very old. It was time, I realised, for her to rest.

  We left the saloon and walked back down Main Street.

  And that’s when it happened.

  A sniper’s bullet whistled through the air, so fast we heard its flight after it hit Lena on the face mask. It was a lucky shot, her face mask was already cracked. So the bullet went through and entered her skull and then penetrated into her brain.

  And there, it exploded.

  I drew my gun and laced the rooftops with bullets. As I did so, I called up an army of doppelgängers who drenched the area with gunfire, and swept the sniper away. The report came back to my MI a few minutes later: the killer had been killed.

  It was a cyborg Baron Lowman. Magog had been wrong; we hadn’t killed them all. This was the last.

  I walked back to Lena. Her body was sprawled on the pavement, with her black warsuit armour showing through the rents and gashes in her street clothes. Her face was – gone. I kneeled down, and peered inside her mask, through the gaping hole created by the bullet. I saw nothing but blood and spattered grey tissue. I deduced there was nothing left of her brain. Which means her brainchip was gone too. Her memories. Her updated thought diary. All gone.

  Lena was dead. The latest fatality of a long and soulless war.

  And I never even got to say goodbye.

  Lena Smith

  May she rest in peace

  extras

  meet the author

  Charlie Hopkinson

  This is PHILIP PALMER’s fourth novel for Orbit; he is also a producer and script editor, and writes for film, television and radio. Find out more about the author at www.philippalmer.net.

  introducing

  If you enjoyed

  ARTEMIS,

  look out for

  EQUATIONS OF LIFE

  by Simon Morden

  Samuil Petrovitch is a survivor.

  He survived the nuclear fallout in St. Petersburg and hid in the London Metrozone—the last city in England. He’s lived this long because he’s a man of rules and logic.

  For example, getting involved = a bad idea.

  But when he stumbles into a kidnapping in progress, he acts without even thinking. Before he can stop himself, he’s saved the daughter of the most dangerous man in London.

  And clearly saving the girl = getting involved.

  Now, the equation of Petrovitch’s life is looking increasingly complex.

  Russian mobsters + Yakuza + something called the New Machine Jihad = one dead Petrovitch.

  But Petrovitch has a plan—he always has a plan—he’s just not sure it’s a good one.

  1

  Petrovitch woke up. The room was in the filtered yellow half-light of rain-washed window and thin curtain. He lay perfectly still, listening to the sounds of the city.

  For a moment, all he could hear was the all-pervading hum of machines: those that made power, those that used it, pushing, pulling, winding, spinning, sucking, blowing, filtering, pumping, heating and cooling.

  In the next moment, he did the city-dweller’s trick of blanking that whole frequency out. In the gap it left, he could discern individual sources of noise: traffic on the street fluxing in phase with the cycle of red-amber-green, the rhythmic metallic grinding of a worn windmill bearing on the roof, helicopter blades cutting the gray dawn air. A door slamming, voices rising—-a man’s low bellow and a woman’s shriek, going at it hard. Leaking in through the steel walls, the babel chatter of a hundred different channels all turned up too high.

  Another morning in the London Metrozone, and Petrovitch had survived to see it: God, I love this place.

  Closer, in the same room as him, was another sound, one that carried meaning and promise. He blinked his pale eyes, flicking his unfocused gaze to search his world, searching…

  There. His hand snaked out, his fingers closed around thin wire, and he turned his head slightly to allow the approaching glasses to fit over his ears. There was a thumbprint dead center on his right lens. He looked around it as he sat up.

  It was two steps from his bed to the chair where he’d thrown his clothes the night before. It was May, and it wasn’t cold, so he sat down naked, moving his belt buckle from under one ass cheek. He looked at the screen glued to the wall.

  His reflection stared back, high-cheeked, white-skinned, pale-haired. Like an angel, or maybe a ghost: he could count the faint shadows cast by his ribs.

  Back on the screen, an icon was flashing. Two telephone numbers had appeared in a self-opening box: one was his, albeit temporarily, to be discarded after a single use. In front of him on the desk were two fine black gloves and a small red switch. He slipped the gloves on, and pressed the switch.

  “Yeah?” he said into the air.

  A woman’s voice, breathless from effort. “I’m looking for Petrovitch.”

  His index finger was poised to cut the connection. “You are who?”

  “Triple A couriers. I’ve got a package for an S. Petrovitch.” She was panting less now, and her cut-glass accent started to reassert itself. “I’m at the drop-off:
the café on the corner of South Side and Rookery Road. The proprietor says he doesn’t know you.”

  “Yeah, and Wong’s a pizdobol,” he said. His finger drifted from the cut-off switch and dragged through the air, pulling a window open to display all his current transactions. “Give me the order number.”

  “Fine,” sighed the courier woman. He could hear traffic noise over her headset, and the sound of clattering plates in the background. He would never have described Wong’s as a café, and resolved to tell him later. They’d both laugh. She read off a number, and it matched one of his purchases. It was here at last.

  “I’ll be with you in five,” he said, and cut off her protests about another job to go to with a slap of the red switch.

  He peeled off the gloves. He pulled on yesterday’s clothes and scraped his fingers through his hair, scratching his scalp vigorously. He stepped into his boots and grabbed his own battered courier bag.

  Urban camouflage. Just another immigrant, not worth shaking down. He pushed his glasses back up his nose and palmed the door open. When it closed behind him, it locked repeatedly, automatically.

  The corridor echoed with noise, with voices, music, footsteps. Above all, the soft moan of poverty. People were everywhere, their shoulders against his, their feet under his, their faces—wet-mouthed, hollow-eyed, filthy skinned—close to his.

  The floor, the walls, the ceiling were made from bare sheet metal that boomed. Doors punctured the way to the stairs, which had been dropped into deliberately-left voids and welded into place. There was a lift, which sometimes even worked, but he wasn’t stupid. The stairs were safer because he was fitter than the addicts who’d try to roll him.

  Fitness was relative, of course, but it was enough.

  He clanked his way down to the ground floor, five stories away, ten landings, squeezing past the stair dwellers and avoiding spatters of noxious waste. At no point did he look up in case he caught someone’s eye.

  It wasn’t safe, calling a post-Armageddon container home, but neither was living in a smart, surveillance-rich neighborhood with no visible means of support—something that was going to attract police attention, which wasn’t what he wanted at all. As it stood, he was just another immigrant with a clean record renting an identikit two-by-four domik module in the middle of Clapham Common. He’d never given anyone an excuse to notice him, had no intention of ever doing so.