Hardcore - 03

by Andy Remic

  Your friendly special friend DumbMutt v1.2 is called [Sax].

  Please be kind to it. And remember. A robot dog is for life not just for [insert applicable religious festival].

  ©hv3801 Metal Mongrels Inc.

  QGSMA Quad-Gal Safety Mark Assured (pending).

  Franco eyed the dog, which panted mechanically. Somewhere deep inside, a heavy flywheel went clunk.

  "So, you're Sax, eh lad?"

  "Ruff."

  "Why did they give you that weird quiff?" He eyed the straggled auburn tangle, sitting atop the dog's alloy head like a mop atop a dustbin; a toupee on a mannequin. Franco sighed, and hunted for his clothes. "Hey, have you seen my pants, boy?"

  "Ruff." Sax padded over to a chair, where Franco's clothes had been neatly folded, and nudged them with his damp metal nose.

  "Good boy." Before he could help himself, Franco patted the mop of hair - and shuddered. Sax wagged its stumpy tail. "Anyway," he shrugged, "I'm not quite sure I understand all this business. After all, I didn't buy you. You're not mine. What indeed was all that nonsense about a deed? Haha. Ha.'

  There came a ticker ticker ticker sound. Sax opened his mouth, and a long stream of punched foil paper ejected. Franco took the paper, and read in letters made up of pin-prick holes:

  Please take good care of your DumbMutt v1.2 [Sax]-model. Your DNA has now been registered with the MMI central core database. Your deed will last: 999 years. Thank you for your custom.

  ©hv3801 Metal Mongrels Inc.

  QGSMA Quad-Gal Safety Mark Assured (pending).

  Franco crouched down, face to muzzle. "Ach. Right. Well. You see, Sax, mate, buddy, faithful fellow, the thing is, I'm a bit of a special man you see, I work covert ops for a Combat-K squad and I'm kind of going on a mission, so I kind of don't need a dog. Sorree."

  He stood.

  Sax gave a whine.

  Franco dressed, and walked to the door. Sax's sad brown eyes followed Franco. Franco opened the door. He frowned. "Look," he said. "I... I give you to yourself. There. Self-ownership. Your deed has been returned. So go on, bugger off, go and do whatever it is that little metal robot dogs do."

  Franco closed the door and stared at the peeling wallpaper of an unfamiliar non-memory. Shit. Where am I? More importantly, who was I with? Even more importantly, why don't I remember her tits? And even more importantly, what's that fish smell?

  There was a crash. A splintering, rending of timber kind of sound.

  Slowly, Franco turned. Sax was sat, surrounded by shards of door, looking sheepishly at the floor.

  "Ruff?" it said.

  "Bad doggie!"

  Sax wagged its tail.

  "No! Bad doggie!" Franco waved a stern finger.

  "Ruff."

  "Hell, dog, can't you say anything other than 'ruff'? I thought you AIs had bloody technically advanced minds, or something?"

  Sax seemed to think for a while, angular metal dog head on one side. Then it ventured, "Sax?"

  "So that's it? You've been programmed with two whole words?"

  "Borrocks?"

  "Sax, and borrocks," said Franco. "That's it?"

  "Ruff." Sax nodded forlornly.

  "Jeez," hissed Franco, and started down the steep stairs. He stepped into a teeming alloy lane, which he dimly remembered as being Pleasure Cruise Central, that happy core artery from which all hedonism stemmed. Franco glanced around. He had a nagging feeling he was late for something. Ah yes! Medical! Covert ops! Mission! Sick World! He grinned, and checked his watch. But his watch had gone. Stolen!

  "Damn and bloody blast!"

  He checked his pants. His wallet had gone as well.

  "Triple damn and hot ring cheese bloody buggering!"

  "Ruff."

  Franco clenched his teeth. "Look! Sax! Will you fuck off?"

  "Ruff." Sax ambled over to Franco, lifted its head, and started licking Franco's groin.

  Franco leapt back. "Ahh! Geddoff! Dirty dumb mutt!"

  "Sax. Borrocks. Ruff."

  "Great," scowled Franco, and set off at a lope through the heaving throng. That's all I need. A hangover. No memory of last night's sex. All my cred and non-poor slots are gone, nay stolen! And now I've to chaperone a bloody robot dog. Well, we'll see what happens when I get to the internal quadrant barriers, yeah? Staff squaddies there'll fry his robot dog-ass! Let's see him say borrocks to that!

  A few paces behind, like night follows day, like salmon swimming upstream, like birds flying south for winter, on sheer instinct Sax trustingly followed its new master at a steady, solid, rolling pace. The sort of pace it could keep up for, ooh, centuries.

  Keenan and Pippa were emerging from their medicals when at the far end of the corridor a door opened, somewhat sheepishly, and there was a major kerfuffle. Franco barged his way in, red in the face and looking distinctly hung-over. Close behind followed a large robot dog, fashioned from silver and black alloy (and apparently beaten into shape with a hammer), which seemed to be wearing a wig. Franco was arguing with the wigged dog as he stormed past the patient queue and pushed in at the front, ignoring a range of sarcastic comments and evil glares.

  The dog sat down with a clang, a few feet from the squaddie. "Borrocks," it said.

  "You OK mate?" said Keenan, head tilted.

  Franco beamed suddenly. "Hi Kee! Hi Pippa! Yep. Never better."

  "Where did you get to last night?" Keenan, although smiling, had a face set in steel. His teeth were just a little too bared. His jaw line just a little too tense. Muscles in Keenan's jaw flexed, and Pippa placed a restraining hand on Keenan's arm and hushed him.

  "Apparently, Franco," said Pippa, "Keenan's PopBot ran into a bit of trouble last night. Got trapped in the sewage canal which runs beneath the living quarters."

  "Ha!" said Franco. "That'll teach him to sniff the toilet seats in the ladies quarters! Damn freaky little robot pervert."

  "Franco!" Keenan's voice was far beyond warning.

  "OK! OK! It's a fair cop guv'nor. But before you bust me back down to private just think of the horrific night I've had, and be thankful I'm here at all. And I've got to put up with that metal heap of shit! It just won't leave me alone! Tell it, Keenan, go on, tell it!"

  "Tell it what?"

  "Tell it to go away!"

  "Why?"

  "It's latched onto me. Is like a bloody parasite. A leech sucking on my testicules."

  Keenan grinned. "Well, it's not the first dog to do that."

  "Oh har har, don't start mate, I ain't in the mood."

  "How was she? Did you get to party?"

  The interruption came from a young soldier, in front of which Franco had so inelegantly pushed.

  "Eh?"

  The soldier smiled, and it was a smile filled with superior knowledge. "The alien you took home last night. You were going for a dance, and stuff. How was she?"

  Franco's face had formed a painful rictus of pain. "What alien?"

  "The one we tried to warn you about. Franco mate, you were so out of it you just waved away our advice like annoying drug smoke. She was called Amil. She was a Prakku."

  "A whattu?"

  "A Prakku. They're a marine-based alien lifeform."

  A disconcerting image flashed into Franco's mind. He instinctively grabbed his groin. "Um?" he said.

  "I've heard of them," said Pippa, eyeing Franco carefully. "Said to be human on top, but..."

  "But what?"

  "Kind of fishy down below."

  "What do you mean, fishy?"

  The door clanged open. "NEXT!" bawled a hefty female sergeant with biceps like slabs of ham and a No.1 shaved head.

  Franco was dragged into the cubicle. The door clanged shut, but they could still hear the exchange.

  "Drop 'em."

  "But... I'm not wearing any underwear!"

  There came a big sigh. "Why not?"

  "It's a long story. About fish, apparently."

  "Gods, there's always one, isn't there?"

  The Rapid Off
ence SLAM Cruiser Rearward Entry howled down the docking hole and hit space in glorious... silence. Like fleas on a dog, it carried three precious DropShips attached to its underbelly as it left a trail of purple carbide pollution in its fast curve from the Titan Pleasure Cruiser Razzle towards the glowing ball that was Sick World...

  Krakken IV.

  The Planet of the Damned.

  Once a glistening jewel in Quad-Gal's crown, the Sick World had originally been at the pinnacle forefront of medical exploration and research into the hybrid crossover diseases which mutated when humankind and alienkind finally clicked. Man, being predominantly a creature of fluid, had a weaker organic chassis than he originally anticipated and proceeded to collect and transmit a variety of interesting, challenging and downright dangerous diseases the minute he began his cosmological integration.

  And so, as Man spread enthusiastically across the Quad-Gal, eyes wide like a newborn kitten, he developed new diseases, ailments, organic oddities and deviations. As Man fucked and fought, bonked and bled his way across a new set of galaxies so the interesting mix of organics led to some really weird shit. Sick World was born, brainchild of Professor Malkus Malkovitch, original creator of The Great Malkovitch University down on The City. On Krakken IV, Malkovitch gathered together the greatest medical minds of the age, and the planet was divided into discrete sections across the weirdly shaped landmass of the three major stable land continents.

  Around the equator, the major, desert-like, rocky barren continent of Second Djio was given over to the exploration, research, quarantine and cure of rare conditions and diseases. South of the equator was nothing but deep green sea circumventing the globe, but north, on the verdant and lush mid-latitude continent of Kludek, populated by rich forests, lakes and beautiful thrusting purple mountains, were built the finest medical and surgical care and rehabilitation suites the mind could dream. And finally, far north, as the snow and ice began to eat the land, was the continent of Yax, a freezing wilderness given over to research, experimentation and confinement for those cases that were... not quite so simple.

  To all intents and purposes, the entirety of the planet Krakken IV became Sick World: the premier planet for curing mankind's and alienkind's ills. And, just a few hundred years after inception, as glittering alloy hospitals lay scattered across the planet like diamonds on velvet, it was mooted that no sickness would go uncured, no disease could not be tamed, nothing broken that could not be fixed.

  Sick World became Paradise for the Plague Crowd.

  Until...

  Something went wrong. No history refers to the incident, a thousand years past. No text books, no vid, no kubes, no stacks, nothing had specific detail on Sick World and the reason five million people pulled out. And they pulled out fast on giant TEC; Titan Emergency Craft. In the space of a single day...

  All that was known was Krakken IV was quarantined Quad-Gal wide.

  For a thousand years.

  And since then, officially, nobody had ever been back.

  Keenan stepped into the cockpit with a smoke dangling from his lips, and froze. There was a man, seated, in a blue and white pinstriped shirt, dark trousers and polished shoes. He smiled in a strained but friendly fashion down the barrel-eye of Keenan's Techrim 11mm.

  "Hello, my name is Professor Miller," said the man, and gave a broad smile. His teeth gleamed white in a face so tanned it was orange. He ran a hand through the grey square-cut hair of a politician, and watched uneasily as the gun tracked him.

  "Keenan!" Pippa slammed into the cockpit, and gently lowered his arm. "Shit, Keenan. I'm sorry. I meant to say, this fucker was allowed on board at the last moment. Steinhauer's instructions."

  Keenan, cigarette between his lips, smoke making him squint, holstered his weapon. "What the fuck," he said, staring hard at Miller, "are you doing on my ship?"

  "Quad-Gal's ship," said the man, curtly. He stood, and Keenan glanced down at the polished leather briefcase. With twin clicks the man opened the briefcase, and produced a sheaf of papers. He sat down again. Looked up at Keenan. "If you'd like to be seated."

  "I'll stand."

  "This is Miller, Chief Health and Safety Officer for QGM."

  "What?"

  "Chief Health and Safety Officer." Pippa forced her face to remain straight, and stared hard into Keenan's eyes. "It's orders, Keenan. Orders. I've seen the paperwork. Triple-stamped. All official. You can't mess with army bureaucracy, you of all men know that irrefutable truth."

  "I thought we'd left that shit behind."

  "You never leave that shit behind," said Pippa, a hand on his arm. "Just hear the guy out."

  "Yeah, then throw him out," muttered Keenan. He sighed, eyed Professor Miller, then took a seat opposite the neat, prim, fastidious bureaucrat. "Go on. Hit me with it. What the hell do you want? And don't even try and tell me you're coming down to Sick World..."

  "I have been commissioned by the Quad-Gal Military Authorities to carry out certain, shall we say, official surveys of combat practice in the field. You will find my authority comes not just from Steinhauer, but from his superiors and their superiors. Right the way to the top of the ziggurat." He eyed Keenan coolly, and Keenan suddenly saw beyond the bad tan, neat-clipped hair and expensive shirt. Miller had ego. He was a pedant. He had a damn agenda.

  "Shit."

  Miller gave a tombstone smile. "Yes, I will be accompanying your outfit down to Kraken IV. And I will require certain paperwork tasks to be completed before, during, and after all said missions in the vicinity."

  "What kind of paperwork tasks?"

  "Could I ask you to put out the cigarette?"

  "No."

  "I insist."

  "So do I."

  Miller coughed, staring hard at Keenan. "I can see we are going to have some initial problems, as I see you have issue with authority."

  "Only when it's on my fucking ship."

  "Amusing, Keenan." He handed over a slim metal volume. "Before we land on Krakken IV, I need each member of military personnel to fill in this questionnaire."

  "Why?"

  "For my records."

  "What is it?"

  "A risk assessment."

  "A fucking what?"

  "A risk assessment." Professor Miller bristled, and a shadow of arrogance sleeted his features. "It is a bureaucratic necessity to carry out certain distinct levels of assessment pertaining to the nature of risk in specific situations."

  "We're entering a possible combat zone," said Keenan, voice low. "Of course there's gonna be a risk. The whole damn place was evacuated a thousand years ago! And despite DropBot scans, nobody really knows what's down there."

  "As you readily admit there to be risk present, we therefore need to assess the probability of given situations throwing up foreseeable threat to the safety and health of those men, and women -"

  "And deviants."

  Miller paused, then continued, "- and deviants under your command."

  Keenan flicked through the slim volume, and picked out a question at random. "'In the eventuality that you may come under enemy fire, please list three ways in which you should attempt to minimise being shot, as per Minimising Being Shot Regulations, hv3717.'" Keenan eyed Miller thoughtfully, and turned to another page. "'When working with dangerous explosives, you first need to familiarise yourself with the Working Safely With Dangerous Life-Threatening Explosives Regulations, hv3721, and list five precautions you might take in order to help save lives and not cause damage or vandalism to property not belonging to yourself.'" Keenan removed his cigarette, scratched his forehead, then put the weed back between his lips. "You ain't joking, are you?"

  "No, Mr. Keenan. Health and Safety is no place for comedy."

  "Damn right. Listen to this one, "'When engaging an enemy combatant, first you must take time to assess the situation and answer the following simple three-stage question: a] Before firing your weapon, is the enemy combatant a direct threat to you at this precise moment in time? b] Before firing on
an enemy combatant, can you be absolutely sure he (she/it) is insistent on causing you harm beyond reasonable doubt? c] If possible, ask the enemy combatant to fill in a Risk Assessment Co-combatant Strategy Assessment form in order for both combatants to properly understand the seriousness of their situation, and thus decide on the best course of action for the future [as per Working Safely with the Enemy Regulations, hv3719].'"

  "I don't need to listen to this, Mr. Keenan. I wrote it."

  "The whole book?"

  "The whole book."

  Keenan stood, and drew out his Techrim. He toyed with the weapon thoughtfully, and flicked free the safety. Professor Miller paled, despite his deviant tan. Keenan smiled. "When it comes to risk assessment, Mr. Miller, I want you to consider one thing."

  "Which is?" Miller bristled.

  "Did you carry out a risk assessment prior to entering this situation? Because, if you did, and if you know me, then you're putting your sorry skinny arse on the line, my friend. I suggest you take your self-published pamphlet and fuck off out of my face before my bullet carries out an intimate Risk Assessment of your Fucking Skull Interior."

  Miller hurriedly packed his things in his briefcase, and tripped on his way to the door. He turned at the portal.

  "You will regret this, Mr. Keenan."

  "I doubt it, mate," said Keenan, lighting another cigarette. "I very much doubt it."

  Keenan clicked off the kube and rubbed his eyes. "What makes Sick World so damn safe now, then?"

  Cam, hovering near the ceiling, apparently analysing the alloy roof tiles of the Rapid Offence SLAM Cruiser, buzzed down low with a glittering of orange lights. "Quad-Gal Military have been steadily compiling a database of worlds during the past few years. Using swarms of AnalysisBots and DropBots, they snap down to the surface, take samples, search for life using the most advanced equipment imaginable, and re-post back to the military Core DB. Sick World has been scanned, Keenan. It's dead as a dead duck."