Bad Timing

by Rebecca Levene

  "No!" Johnny bellowed. "We can't afford to split our forces!"

  As he spoke, another wave of fire lashed out towards his head from a tunnel above them. He rolled out of the way just in time and it splashed against the iridescent rock beneath him, leaving a black stain and the sharp smell of plasma in its wake.

  Enigma got the message. She fell to her knees in one of the side entrances to the tunnel, her gun trained on the source of the fire. Johnny could see it now: ten metres above them in the lift shaft, hidden in the shadows of another tunnel entrance, the silver gleam of a smooth robotic body. Johnny saw a small flash and a millisecond later an explosion knocked him off his feet.

  Even as he fell, his mind was working at the accelerated rate that it only seemed to achieve in battle, assessing options, strategies. He could see instantly that it was hopeless. O'Blarney had the high ground and he had cover. Even if he'd been exposed, they'd already discovered their weapons to be worse than useless against him. If they remained where they were, they'd be sitting targets.

  He used the roll to carry him further into the tunnel, then leapt to his feet. "With me!" he shouted back at the others. "Retreat!"

  He ran on without pausing to see if they were following, but after a second he heard the clatter of pursuing feet. Another sweep of white-hot laser fire followed them, then nothing.

  Woman Man ran up beside Johnny. He was a man again. Perhaps the heat of battle had triggered the change. "Where are we going?" he panted as he ran.

  "No idea," Johnny said, not slowing his pace.

  "It's no good," the other mutant continued. "This is his place. He'll always be able to find us, and he's got the advantage of home turf."

  Johnny gritted his teeth. "I know."

  "Then why... the... heeeeellllll." Joe's speech slowed, slurring and distorting.

  For a second, Johnny thought he'd been hit, but when he snapped a look at the other man, he saw his whole body warping, distorting. His nose seemed to be a metre long, pulled out of the front of his head by some invisible force.

  A moment later, it snapped back into place, and everything returned to normal.

  Johnny skidded to a stop. Joe ran on a pace. Then, realising he was alone, spun round and faced Johnny. "What?" he said. "Why are we stopping?"

  Johnny realised that from the other man's point of view nothing had happened. He began to understand. "Time distortion," he said. "You were caught in a pocket."

  "I didn't feel anything," Joe protested.

  Johnny shrugged. "Well, take it from me, something definitely happened. I guess we must be near ground zero of the bomb strike. Bound to be more serious fallout effects round here."

  Min Qi Man and Enigma had caught up with them by now. As they passed through the field, the effects caught them too. Min Qi Man's tail stretched out behind him into infinity for a second, then snapped back into place with an eye-bending twang.

  Joe turned to Johnny. "See what you mean," he said dryly. "Is that gonna hinder or help us?"

  "Oh, hinder I reckon, don't you?" said a voice in front of them.

  It was O'Blarney. He was standing in the centre of the corridor, thin silver lips twisted in a smile, gun hanging casually at his side. He seemed entirely oblivious to the four weapons which instantly centred on his head.

  Johnny yelled "Hold fire!" a moment too late. Every gun but his sprayed out a hail of bullets and fire towards O'Blarney. A second later, the hail of bullets and fire was spraying back toward them, reflected by the mirror screen which had been projecting O'Blarney's image.

  Johnny threw himself at the other three, bowling them over like nine-pins. He felt a searing wash of heat above them and smelt the nasty charred scent of his own burning hair. Above him, he saw Joe's face bubble and blister. The smell of burnt hair was joined by the sickening odour of cooked human flesh.

  The image of O'Blarney laughed, then blinked out of existence.

  Johnny pushed himself to his feet. Enigma rose beside him. Her flowing locks had been reduced to a ragged shock of black, sticking up from her head like a fright wig. Joe remained crouched on the ground, hands over his wounded face, rocking slowly backwards and forwards. Now that he was standing, Johnny could feel his own injury, the small hole in his calf where a lava-bolt from Enigma's gun had passed straight through him. There was no blood - the heat of the bolt had sealed the would as it passed. Only Min Qi Man was unscathed. He bounded up to the now blank holo-screen, and pulled his two swords from it. They had landed point first and with perfect precision exactly where O'Blarney's two eyes would have been.

  Johnny turned to Enigma, who was muttering softly and staring at the ground. She looked shell-shocked. "Have you got an aneastho-jab?" he asked her.

  She looked up and after a moment her eyes blinked and seemed to focus on his face. She nodded.

  Johnny gestured at Joe. "Then give it to him."

  She remained staring at him, immobile.

  "Hurry!" Johnny said. "Unless you want to wait around for O'Blarney to finish the job."

  That, finally, seemed to snap her out of her trance. She rushed over to Joe, pulling a dermo-needle out of her pack as she went.

  Min Qi Man returned to the group. His swords remained unsheathed in his hands. "The spider sits in the centre of his web," he said, "so that he may watch the fly struggling."

  Johnny nodded. He thought Min Qi Man was right. O'Blarney wouldn't want to see them die from a distance. He'd like it up close and personal.

  Min Qi Man smiled, then looked Johnny in the eye. "Twice now you have risked your life to save my friends."

  It took Johnny a moment to process the fact that this wasn't one of the little mutant's riddles. When he did, he shrugged. "They'd have done the same for me."

  Min Qi Man held Johnny's gaze. They both knew that wasn't true. Then the other man executed a shrug of his own. Like all his movements, it was fluid and curiously graceful. "I know they are in safe hands." He rocked back slightly on his heels. Then he ran straight at Johnny. Before Johnny had a chance to flinch, Min Qi Man had run up his torso, executed a handstand on Johnny's shoulders, then back flipped over his head and plunged feet-first towards the solid wall behind him.

  But the wall didn't stop him. His feet passed straight through the seemingly solid rock. They didn't stop till they connected with the startled face of Bad Boy O'Blarney, which was peering out at them from behind a bank of instruments. The holo-image of the cave wall in front of him wavered and then died.

  Johnny spun round and trained his blaster on O'Blarney, but it was impossible to get a clear shot. Min Qi Man had settled with his legs wrapped firmly around O'Blarney's neck. The robot was trying to dislodge him, but faced the same problem as Johnny - he couldn't fire any of his built-in armaments without risking blowing off his own head. Instead, he was forced to resort to the old fashioned method of clawing Min Qi Man off with his bare hands. But the simian mutant was stronger than he looked and his prehensile tail gave him an added advantage. Although Johnny could see blood matting his fur where O'Blarney's metallic nails had torn viciously at his flesh, he clung on to the robot like a particularly bloody-minded limpet. And, unlike O'Blarney, he could use his weapons. The swords glowed with a blue fire as they slashed down and bit deep into O'Blarney's silver carapace.

  O'Blarney's finger tightened reflexively on the trigger of his gun. A wild spray of plasma fire shot out, arcing across the room towards the other two members of Team X.

  Enigma dived out of the way. Joe, almost comatose from the tranquillisers which had been pumped into him, stayed where he was. A splash of fire headed straight towards him.

  Desperate, Johnny dived in and grabbed O'Blarney's arm. He pushed down, hard, and the arc of the fire moved away from Joe. "Get him out of here!" he shouted at Enigma. "Find some cover!"

  As the two mutants hobbled out of the chamber, O'Blarney tried to shift his aim to fire after them. Johnny pressed down on O'Blarney's arm with all his weight. It was as immovable as stone. He g
ritted his teeth and, feeling as if his muscles were going to be torn from their moorings on his bones, forced all his strength into his arm. Agonisingly slowly, O'Blarney's gun moved downward. The plasma fire followed a descending path towards them. O'Blarney tried to grab at Johnny with his other arm, but it was tangled up in Min Qi Man's tail. And now the plasma fire had reached O'Blarney's feet.

  O'Blarney cried out in anger and released his finger from the trigger. Johnny shifted his grip, trying to press O'Blarney's finger back down.

  "Get your filthy hands off me!" O'Blarney shouted. He shook himself violently, like a dog getting out of a pond, but all that happened was that he lost his grip on his own plasma rifle and it went spinning across the floor with a metallic ringing noise. His eyes glowed green with rage. "I'll bloody kill you, you freak!"

  Johnny dived to retrieve the gun. O'Blarney realised was he was doing, and stamped a large metal foot down towards his head. Johnny just had time to notice that MADE IN KILBURN was stamped on the heel before he rolled out of the way. O'Blarney's foot slammed into the floor just where his head had been. Then it rose again and slammed down, leaving a deep dent behind it. Johnny was anticipating it this time, and got out of the way easily enough. O'Blarney realised he was never going to get Johnny and concentrated on getting the gun, swinging his foot to kick it out of Johnny's reach. Min Qi Man chose that moment to strike down at O'Blarney's thigh with his sword. The stroke swung wide and whistled through thin air, but the momentum threw the robot of balance, and his foot missed the gun by a wide margin.

  Johnny grabbed it a second later, swung it round, and fired a blast of plasma fire straight into O'Blarney's foot. The splashback from the blast singed his eyebrows and scorched his skin but he didn't care. In his experience, people never carried weapons that couldn't do them serious injury. It was simple psychology. If you knew you were immune to your own weapon's effects, how could you be confident that your enemy wasn't too?

  Clearly, this psychology went for robots as well as people. O'Blarney gave a weird, inhuman scream of pain and leapt away from the plasma fire. Behind him he left a stream of molten metal. His feet were melting.

  Johnny gave a smile of triumph and began to play the fire up O'Blarney's legs.

  Just as he reached the robot's knees, O'Blarney finally managed to tear his other arm free of Min Qi Man's grip. With a triumphant smile of his own, he raised it and sighted along the embedded barrel of the integral acid-flechette gun straight towards Johnny's head.

  Then the smile dropped from his face as his arm detached at the shoulder, and dropped clanging to the ground.

  Johnny caught Min Qi Man's eyes. The little mutant was in a sorry way. His fur was more red now than brown. Two fingers from one hand had been ripped free - Johnny could see the ragged white remnants of the bones poking through his knuckles - and one eye was gone forever, a ruined cavity. But the other closed in a small wink as he waved his tail towards Johnny. Clutched in its dextrous tip was a small screw driver.

  O'Blarney's face twisted in a snarl of rage. "I'm gonna kill every sneckin' one of you!" he said.

  Then, Min Qi Man still clinging to his shoulders, he turned on his half-melted heel and fled.

  Johnny set off after him, back through the hidden chamber and further into the depths of the mountain. But, even injured, O'Blarney moved faster than any organic thing could. Johnny followed him through a left, a right, another left, wildly splashing plasma fire at his feet as he ran. Another left, and Johnny skidded to a halt at a crossroads. O'Blarney was nowhere in sight. He could still hear the robot's clanging footsteps, but the sound echoed weirdly round from all sides, obscuring its source.

  Johnny cursed. He scanned the walls, but the jagged white rock gave nothing away. Defeated, Johnny dropped his gaze and saw the trail of molten metal leading down the left-hand fork. Grinning, he set off in pursuit again.

  The corridors all looked the same. For all Johnny knew he could have been running in circles. O'Blarney could have been leading him back into a trap. But Johnny owed it to Min Qi Man to follow. He just hoped it wasn't too late.

  Then he rounded another corner, and realised that it was. For Min Qi Man, and for O'Blarney.

  The pair lay collapsed on the floor, Min Qi Man flattened beneath O'Blarney's bulk. Johnny rushed up, checking pulse, breathing, but he knew it was useless. The little mutant's eyes were glassy and unseeing. When he knelt beside him, Johnny saw that the entire back of his head had been caved in. Perhaps O'Blarney had managed to smash him against one of the cave walls.

  O'Blarney had paid a high price if he had. One of Min Qi Man's swords poked up from the robot's chest plate. It was still glowing a dull blue and sizzling with occasional bursts of electricity.

  O'Blarney's eyes were dead and flat, but Johnny wasn't leaving anything to chance this time. He put his hands to O'Blarney's head, preparing to detach it from O'Blarney's body. But the moment he touched it, the head came away in his hands. Johnny smiled. O'Blarney's arm wasn't the only thing Min Qi Man had been unscrewing.

  He leant down and brushed the other mutant's eyes shut with his hand. Then he dropped O'Blarney's head into his backpack and headed back towards the others.

  Middenface screamed in pain. It wasn't very manly, he knew that, but what else were you supposed to do when someone was performing surgery on you without benefit of an anaesthetic? "Will ye get off o' me, woman!" He bucked against his restraints, but they didn't budge.

  "Don't be such a baby," Durham Red said. Her voice was muffled by the micro-scalpel she had clasped between her lips while her hands dug deep inside Middenface's chest.

  "That's easy fer you tae say, ye're nae the one havin' yer innards pulled out!"

  "I can't help it if O'Blarney didn't have any anaesthetic, can I? He obviously wasn't intending to perform these operations for health or humanitarian reasons!"

  Middenface had a pithy response ready for that, but settled for letting out another groan of pain as Red's ministrations tore open the wound on his chest another centimetre.

  "Don't worry, I've nearly got it..." Her voice trailed into silence as her fingers continued to probe the depths of his chest. "Yes... Yes... I've got it!" She smiled triumphantly, and held her fingers up in front of his face. Middenface squinted through the haze of pain, and could just make out something small, round and black clasped between them - the micro-balloon which Chick Delater had implanted in him.

  He gave a weak smile of his own. "Nice one." Then he fainted.

  By the time he woke up, Red had sewn him back up and undone his restraints. The first sight that greeted him was her pink tongue lapping out to lick his blood from her fingers.

  He screwed his face up in disgust. "Will ye stop that right now!"

  Red shrugged and carried on licking. "Just be grateful I'm not drinking straight from the source."

  Middenface sat up, meaning to grab her and make her stop. But as soon as he moved, a white-hot lance of pain shot through him, and he thought he might pass out again.

  He lay back down again, then, once his head had stopped swimming, eased himself very gently to his feet. He felt terrible. Still, all things considered, it was a miracle he didn't feel worse.

  "Right," Red said, heading towards the operating slab. "My turn."

  Middenface shook his head. "Dinnae be daft, lassie. I'm in nae condition tae be operatin' on any one. I'd probably chop yer heid off by mistake." He started staggering towards the door.

  Red hurried up to him and grabbed his arm. "Where the hell do you think you're going?"

  "Tae help Johnny!" Middenface said. "I think he's doon in the mines. I've got ta let him know O'Blarney's after him!"

  Suddenly, a loud klaxon started blaring out in the room, and a melodious computer voice announced. "Perimeter alert! Perimeter alert! Large unknown vessel approaching. Repeat, large unknown vessel approaching."

  "That'll be Chick," Middenface said, stumbling through the doorway.

  Red stood her ground. "All
the more reason to operate on me so the two of us can take him on."

  Middenface paused to turn back to her. "Jings, will ye hurry up, hen! We've got tae warn Johnny. Besides, I reckon I can handle Chick by myself. He didnae look that tough."

  He disappeared through the door. After a moment, Red reluctantly ran after him.

  Outside, a very large spaceship settled with surprising gentleness on the ground. A huge cloud of dust blew up around it and settled on its surface, marring the matt black finish for which Chick Delater had paid a great deal of money.

  After a second, there was the hiss of well-oiled hydraulics, and a door hinged open in the side of the craft. It was easily thirty metres high but the figure that emerged still had to stoop to get through it.

  It was a vast structure of metallic struts and armour plating. Hanging in its centre, dwarfed by the awesome machinery around it, was a tiny pink blob. Only when the structure walked casually towards O'Blarney's base did it become obvious that it was an exo-skeleton. A slightly larger one than Chick's everyday suit, but then he was expecting trouble.

  21 / BAIT AND SWITCH

  It took Johnny longer to walk back than he'd expected. O'Blarney's head was heavy on his back, and his thoughts roiled in his head, heavier still. Min Qi Man had said he trusted Johnny to take care of Team X, but he didn't seem to have taken very good care of anyone lately. Red, missing. Middenface was captured, maybe dead. The Sloth, the Blimp, Min Qi Man himself - all gone. Johnny could hardly have done worse if he'd been trying.

  He wondered bitterly why it had taken him so long to identify One-Eyed Jack as the traitor. But of course, President Hillary had chosen her disguise well. Jack had seemed as suspicious as hell, which was exactly why Johnny had dismissed him as a candidate for the position of traitor. A real traitor, he'd reasoned, would have made more of an effort to ingratiate himself. He would have been less obviously out for himself. Idiot!

  Now he'd finished off O'Blarney, but their problems were far from over. Chick Delater would be coming to collect his prize, and Johnny didn't think there was a bookie in the galaxy who'd give good odds on the crime boss honouring his word, paying the bounty and removing the bombs from their bodies. Besides, there was no way they could let Chick have O'Blarney's head. Hillary had been right about that, if nothing else. The information inside it was far too dangerous to be allowed to fall into Delater's hands. Johnny wondered grimly how many more would have to die before this mission was ended, whether any of them would leave Speed alive.