by Andy Remic
“Certain protocols had to be observed.”
“Yeah?” Keenan cast his gaze across the group. Across Oz, Xakus, Steinhauer, the AI machines relaxed with weapons, then over Franco and finally, to Pippa. She gave him a short, cold smile and Keenan frowned. He did not understand that smile.
Steinhauer sighed, turned, and nodded to the GKs. The AI machines sprang at Pippa, who leapt back, suddenly, but was caught off-guard, surrounded instantly, and punched to the ground with stunning force, brutal betrayal. They stripped the woman’s weapons, carefully—she carried a small arsenal—then Nyx stooped, lifting the dazed ex-member of Combat K and gazing down to where a trickle of blood stained the corner of her mouth. Nyx carried Pippa, and dumped her at Keenan’s feet. Franco, beside Keenan now, glanced back to Mel, who gave a low slow nod, and Franco felt the situation escalating into insanity...
Pippa groaned, and pushed herself to her elbows. “What the fuck’s going on, Oz? I thought we had a deal?”
“You are surplus to requirements,” said Dr Oz, gaze focused. “You have served your purpose. You controlled the GKs. You proved yourself against Ranger. And the others. So many others. Now, it’s time to return to your military unit. Your natural brood. Time to reform Combat K. Whether you like it,” he smiled, “or whether you do not.”
“What?” Pippa laughed, and spat on the cobbles. “You’ve got to be kidding, right? You’ve got be fucking insane. I’m not working with these two lunatics. Ever. Again.”
“I’ll second that,” said Keenan. “I’d rather put a bullet in her skull than work missions with the murdering bitch. She killed my wife. My two little girls.” He met Pippa’s gaze. “I’d rather rot in hell for all eternity than touch her flesh. She is abomination to me.”
“And what about me?” said Franco, holding out his hands, palms outwards. “Eh? Eh? Nobody’s asked my damn opinion in all of this! Huh, I tell you, some people are so rude.”
Nobody spoke.
“Fuck you all,” said Pippa, eyes hard like frozen, interstellar hydrogen.
“You will co-operate,” said Steinhauer. “Combat K will reform. And Combat K will carry out missions for QGM and NanoTek.” His face had gone hard. Gone were paternal smiles, the easy manner, the ambience of fatherhood. It had been replaced with iron. No compromise. “All three of you will co-operate, because you have been implanted with spinal logic cubes. If you do not work together, then you all die. If one of you,” he bared his teeth in a smile, “kills another, then again, all three die. Horribly.”
“I’d rather die,” snapped Pippa, voice tombstone cold.
“Be my guest,” said Steinhauer, and handed her a black Makarov. Pippa stared down at the grease-gleaming 9mm weapon in her steady hand. “Kill yourself.”
Hush descended. Pippa’s arm snapped up, gun levelled at Steinhauer. He grinned, and it was a grin too full of base understanding to be ignored.
“I should add.” His voice was little more than a whisper. “I, also, am immune. As are all QGM Commanding Officers. After all.” He coughed. “We wouldn’t like our little war machine to suffer the embarrassment of a mutiny. Would we?”
“So they’ve trapped us?” snapped Franco, glaring around. “We work together, or die together?”
“Neat, isn’t it?” drawled Steinhauer.
“I should have known not to trust the army!” said Franco.
“And you would have been right.”
“What the bugger are spinal logic cubes?”
“AI detonation charges,” growled Keenan. “Small, but powerful enough to blow you apart. When did you do it, Steinhauer? When did you infect my spine?”
“You were the easy one,” said Steinhauer. “The junks had poisoned you. You needed an antidote. We slipped you the logic cubes when you were out cold.”
“And me?” said Pippa, eyes chilled, grey, hard.
“During entry to NanoTek. Your medical. Your...” he smiled, “jabs.”
“Hah, but I was the most difficult, yeah?” snapped Franco, eyes gleaming. “You not fool old Franco without a fuss!”
“On the contrary,” said Steinhauer. “We got you when you were drunk and lying in the gutter. It took no great feat of imagination. And that was why you once more had to prove your mettle by crossing The City in its state of emergency; only... we assumed you would stop at Voloshko and The Hammer Syndicate. We didn’t think you’d get this far.”
Keenan released a slow, calculating breath. He turned to Oz. Smiled a weak smile. “This was all your plan?”
“No. I am simply a pawn of NanoTek Corporation. We make weapons and biomods. It’s that simple.”
“And what about the biomods rioting through the population?”
“An unfortunate accident.”
“Bullshit.”
Oz shrugged. “You always look for the complex, Mr Z. Keenan, when the basics are staring you in the face.”
“What about the warehouse?”
“What warehouse?”
“The vault. Where you store your army of controlled zombies. You going to tell me that’s an unfortunate accident, as well? You people, so arrogant, elevated to God by Power and staring down your narrow little noses at reality. This stinks, Oz. NanoTek stinks, Quad-Gal Military stinks, the whole fucking game is corrupt like a bloated corpse. And I, for one, am no longer play-ing.”
“Then you will die.”
Keenan shrugged. “We all die. Some of us had incentives removed a long time ago.”
“Well, let me tempt you.”
“How?”
“The GreenSource Mainframe. It... she... is the most powerful computer ever created. She is NanoTek’s seventh wonder of the Quad-Gal. And she has news for you, Keenan.”
“Oh yeah? You gonna tell me I’ve a long lost twin? Or maybe you’re my fucking father? Wait, let me guess, me, Franco and Pippa are all triplets separated at birth, and we’ve come into a fabulous inheritance and only if I step into the GreenSource Mainframe do I qualify for a GOV funded pension when I shuffle off my mortal titanium-coil.”
Silence descended. Still, fine rain fell. The sky had darkened. The three GKs moved, uneasily, swaying, organically shifting, as if waiting for an order to... kill?
“The GreenSource. It is predictive. It can tell you about your family. About their killer.”
“Right. Sure mate. Like I haven’t heard that one before.”
“Pippa didn’t kill your family. At least, not in the way that you think.”
The snarl froze on Keenan’s face. Then he relaxed, eyes glazing into contempt. “You’re too late, pal. She already told me. Already spilled her guts into an unholy stinking heap. Pippa was released from prison days before me. She went to my home in a fit of jealousy, and murdered my wife and children. Not you, not any GreenSource Motherfucker, none of you can change that.”
“Ask her,” said Oz.
Keenan laughed, glanced at Pippa. She was shaking.
“Well, bitch?”
“I... don’t remember.”
“You don’t remember? Hell girl, I’d sure remember sticking a pair of scissors into a child’s eye. Try thinking harder. Actually, don’t bother. Here, pass me the Makarov, and I’ll end all our damn suffering right now. I’ve nothing to lose, and I will not be a pawn of QGM or fucking NanoTek.”
“Hey guys! Wait!” snapped Franco. “Wait a goddamn stinking minute! I don’t want to die. You two can slot each other if you want, OK, great and dandy, but don’t be bloody taking me out with you! I’m an innocent victim in all of this! I’m not part of your sordid little argument. I don’t deserve to die! I’ve got... so much more to give!”
Pippa stood, smoothed down her black uniform. Then she moved to Keenan, and looked up into his face. “When I was arrested, they found me unconscious in a back alleyway. They took me to the Urban Force Station; sat me down, pumped me with narcotics and coffee. They showed me the footage taken from Freya’s apartment... it was, horrible. Unholy. Evil. And I watched myself stalk through
that house, killing, killing, killing...” She covered her face, cheeks streaked with tears. Then she moved her hands. Looked up. Her eyes were dark smudges. “But I don’t remember any of it, Keenan. I swear. The psychologists pronounced I was traumatised and suffering short-term memory loss due to the... murders. But I do not, truly, remember. All I know is I woke in that alley covered in the blood of your children.”
Oz stepped between them. “GreenSource can give you the truth.”
Keenan chewed his lip, staring into Pippa’s cold but beautiful eyes. She reached out, touched his arm. And he did not pull away. Again, he was picturing her on the beach on Molkrush Fed. The day their unholy love blossomed...
The pain returned. Keenan’s head spun, pounding him with hammers.
The world, and reality, seemed suddenly distant. Viewed through frosted glass.
None of this can be real, he thought, bitterness eating him.
None of it.
He looked at Pippa. She tilted her head, staring at him. She was as unreadable as ever. An enigma.
With a howl, a SLAM Cruiser breasted the castle’s wall and landed a few metres away on cold spurts of hydrogen. Oz gestured, and the GKs, with bristling guns, escorted and prodded Keenan, Franco and Pippa onto the bobbing loading ramp, followed by a lumbering, submissive Mel. Stein-hauer followed, and Oz smiled at Xakus, giving a single nod. “You did well to bring them here.”
“Thank you. And you are still good for your promise?”
“We can repair MICHELLE using every technological advancement available to us. When this scene is played out, MICHELLE will be collected and delivered to our labs.”
“That’s all I require.”
Dr Oz nodded, and with his face impassive, turned and boarded the SLAM Cruiser. The ship roared and slammed up into fake atmosphere, rising swiftly through clouds and then above the ersatz plaything of the greatest computer genius ever to stalk Quad-Gal.
On the ground, Xakus watched the SLAM Cruiser disappear; then shivered under a pepper of light rainfall. He pondered on the recent journey; MICHELLE, the battles, Keenan and Franco, the SinScript. He shivered again. Now it was out of his hands. Yes, he had been loyal and truthful up to the point when MICHELLE had given her biomechanical life... and it had been that point when NanoTek, with perfect timing, struck. When Professor Xakus was at his most vulnerable...
Burning just a little with shame Xakus turned to head back to the stairwell and his disc moored on the battlements. From there, he would direct engineers to MICHELLE’S location.
Xakus froze.
There, in the archway, stood a junk. It had blood-red eyes in an oval face. Its skin gleamed, metallic, like pitted old metal smeared with bad oil. The lip-less mouth opened, a stream of flowing mercury, and a forked tongue flickered. Xakus realised the junk was laughing.
Xakus scrabbled at his belt for his pistol as the junk lifted a long Thump Rifle and a single shot cracked across the cobbles, reverberating hollow from stone. The heavy calibre round entered Xakus’s forehead, exploding his skull from the back of his head in a million pieces to rain down, slowly, like fluttering snowflakes. One knee folded, and Xakus’s body collapsed and leaked a thick red flow between the grooves of neatly machined ersatz cobbles.
In silence the junk turned, retreated, and disappeared into a fake and fast-falling darkness.
~ * ~
CHAPTER 15
GREENSOURCE
Cam froze, sensors screaming. The Sump gurgled. He could smell the stench of his own burnt-out motors. What am I going to do? he screamed in fast-time binary. What can a little trapped PopBot like me with three burnt-out motors possibly do in this situation when... he gulped in digital... when surrounded by five of the latest and most efficient and deadly prototype NanoTek designed and manufactured K1LLBots? The best of the best. The elite of the PopBot hierarchy. Prototype. Awesome. Cam had read the glossy magazine literature whilst waiting for his upgrades.
Cam watched the K1LLBots as they circled him in the sludge. They kept wide, scanning him, attempting to decipher his level of threat. They recognised he had upgrades. K1LLBots were wary; intelligent. They did not underestimate. But—when they exploded into violence, Cam knew—they really went for it.
Help.
Mummy.
Cam wondered if he dared try his remaining motors, but logic dictated that if seven motors couldn’t extract him from this mess, then four had absolutely no chance. Zero. Nada.
Bollocks!
Sometimes, often, Cam wished he hadn’t been fitted with a Profanity Chip. He believed they were crude and unnecessary, especially in an AI as refined as he. However, on occasions like this, surrounded by five deadly K1LLBots and trapped limping in the bottom of an inescapable coolant sump, he was glad he had.
No. He was fucking glad he had.
The K1LLBots buzzed, and started closing in, circling faster and faster and faster... Cam felt a digital scream well in his digital throat and he wondered if NanoTek K1LLBots would be susceptible to bribery or empathy but deep down he knew they would not, and anyway, really, considering the awesome speed with which they were accelerating and what was that noise? Oh look all five K1LLBots had just extricated high-tensile triglium cutting saws which buzzed and whirled amongst the sludge and, most importantly, were able to cut neatly through a simple Security PopBot’s outer shell...
Cam knew he had three seconds to do... something.
Anything!
Fast.
~ * ~
The SLAM Cruiser sped above the miniature world, lights cutting down through a fast-scrolling darkness. The SLAM turned, banking swiftly, and flipped through a phase-screen into another, vast, subterranean chamber filled with... nothing.
Keenan peered out of the circular portal, out and down into an apparent infinity of space.
“I don’t like this,” muttered Franco, staring forlornly at the HotWire bonds around his wrists.
Keenan and Pippa had been similarly restrained, the Makarov neatly returned from Pippa’s shaking hands to Steinhauer’s holster. “Wouldn’t like a little girl like you hurting herself,” he smiled, as he eased free the weapon. She’d glanced back, then, towards Nyx who held Pippa’s own yukana sword against the back of the Combat K woman’s neck. Pippa snarled something unprintable.
Keenan watched as a vast, black, nothing trailed past. The space killed any feeling of speed. “Hey, Oz. Big place you have here.”
“NanoTek came late to The City,” he said, rubbing at the wound on his throat so recently inflicted by Keenan’s homemade bootlace garrotte. “By the time we arrived, there was very little surface land remaining, at least not in the vast cubic areas we required. It meant building either up into the sky... or down here, under the ocean, beneath the rock. I like it down here. We’ve bought a million square kilometres. Ready for expansion, you might say.”
“Expansion?”
“NanoTek is in a state of permanent expansion,” said Oz, quietly. His eyes glittered. Red light danced in the hollow of his mouth. “It is the way of things. The Nature of the Beast.”
“Hey, dickhead, why so much empty space here, then?” Franco was scowling, and fiddling with his HotWire bonds. Beside him, Mel was crooning softly to herself, rocking, apparently lost in some kind of canine zombie song. Her drool was pooling in her lap.
Oz turned, regarding Franco as he would something on the sole of his finely polished shoe. “The City has esoteric building regulations. Not even a galaxy-spanning multi-armed conquering conglomerate such as NanoTek can avoid the pointless pencil of bureaucracy forever. Let’s just say there have been interesting planning meetings. And some men, stiff-collared paper-shuffling arse-sniffing bureaucrats... well, they don’t know when to back down. Even when it threatens their health.” He smiled, a dark, blood-oil smile.
The SLAM Cruiser cruised through wide tunnels, narrow tunnels, twisting tunnels, vast empty caverns, caverns filled with underground lakes sporting gentle ripples sparkling under the SLAM Cruise
r’s lights. Franco shivered, witnessing these vast stretches of underground water; he’d had a bad experience in one, once; it had left him mentally scarred, or at least, riddled with scar tissue on top of all the other mentally unbalanced wreaths of scar tissue. Some spaces were filled with glowing dust, through which they glided, the SLAM Cruiser’s jets retracting and engines silencing to avoid risk of explosion... then on, they moved, ever on and subtly down.
Suddenly, the SLAM Cruiser tilted and dropped vertically. The occupants were slammed back in seats. Mel growled long and low, jaw making cracking crunching sounds as she, apparently, chewed her own teeth. She seemed distraught. Unhappy.
