by Andy Remic
“Ahh yes. The Combat Squad.” Monkey had heard the story a thousand times.
Monkey dealt brightly coloured money and Franco leant forward and placed a cube of chocolate, obsessively hoarded from his rations, at the centre of the Monopoly board. It sat, brown and soft, and slightly oozing amidst a scramble of little green houses and red plastic hotels.
Monkey froze, mid-deal, eyes growing wide. His hand moved so fast it was a blur... and the choc had gone: vanished, eaten, dissolved. Monkey continued to deal the money without a word, as if nothing had happened.
Because, deep down inside his head, it hadn’t.
Franco delved into the secret lining of the loose cotton sacking that masqueraded as clothing. Carefully, he placed another cube of chocolate on the board.
Once more, like magic, it vanished.
The two inmates started to play Monopoly. Franco, as usual, started to lose, but on this occasion he refrained from his usual whining. And as Franco fed Monkey more and more choc chunks, a gradual change started to transmogrify the peanut-headed lunatic; a red flush flowed across his pimpled cheeks and down his arms, covering his skin with deep red blotches. His eyes went wide—dinner plate wide—and his nostrils flared alarmingly. Then, like the gradual movement of tectonic plates, Monkey began to tremble. This state of illness rapidly accelerated until it was not just a tremble of dehydration, but a severe DT jiggle of a middle-aged alcoholic junkie during enforced withdrawal.
Not perturbed by these esoteric changes in his companion, Franco continued to feed him choc with the merciless evil of a piranha chewing an injured fish. After all, the pond was deep and wide, and Franco was fed up being the one who always bit the hook.
Monkey suddenly halted, one hand suspended over a card which read: Go To Jail.
Franco glanced around, nervous now, but none of the guards seemed to have noticed. Franco continued to play alone, continued to shuffle his old boot across The Angel of Islington and The Old Kent Road, continued to place choc on the saliva-smeared and modestly melting board... and watched with barely disguised amazement as Monkey stuffed yet more and more brown lumps into his frothing, spasmodically working jaws. Chocolate streamers ran down his chin, connecting him gooely to the game board to create one gelatinous pulsating brown salivating whole.
Then, Monkey stood up.
He quivered, frothed and jerked.
With a blink, Franco became aware of his proximity to a primed bomb, and climbing to his feet he eased away as inconspicuously as possible, leaving Monkey twitching an electric-chair shuffle.
The guards noticed.
One groaned. It was a groan of genuine pain.
“Shit, Monkey’s gone and had chocolate. Again.”
“Jesus wept, don’t you people know what happens to this son of a bitch when he gets even a sniff of a fucking Helix Crunchy Bar?”
Franco grinned nervously. He estimated he’d fed Monkey around seventeen huge choc bars, begged, scrounged, borrowed and stolen from other inmates and his own modest stash during the preceding week. Now it appeared Monkey was going to a) explode, b) take off like a rocket, or c) do something unpredictable. Franco shuffled towards the rear of the rearmost guard... in readiness.
Monkey suddenly screamed and leapt onto the table, stamping bare feet over the Monopoly board and scattering green houses and paper money like escaping butterflies. He tore his gown to reveal a rotund, red-blotched and pulsating body with a belly that squirmed like an alien pregnancy... and as the guards edged forward with grim faces and steel truncheons raised in threat, so Monkey started to fart and defecate, reaching ponderously behind his quivering arse-cheeks and scooping up his own faeces. These he launched with unerring accuracy at the gagging, heaving, whining, retching mental nurses.
“Wow,” whispered Franco in reverent awe, “so that’swhat happens!”
He stretched forward, tapped the guard before him on the shoulder. The man turned... into a savage right-hook that broke his jaw and dropped him. Franco dragged the guard towards the large games cupboard, half-closed the doors, and hurriedly removed the guard’s uniform.
Dull flesh slaps reached Franco’s ears.
He peered out from the cupboard’s crack.
Two shit-covered guards were laid out unconscious on the linoleum as a whirligig of a shit-flinging, plate-fisted inmate whirled and danced and slammed huge hands into flattened faces with a power that belied his size, if not his girth.
Franco pulled on the guard’s uniform, took up the steel truncheon and unclipped the keys from the guard’s belt. Franco grinned. The keys felt good: a symbol of freedom. That solid metal in his hand; well, he thought, it smells like... victory!
As the fight whirled behind him Franco calmly walked to the gate, inserted the correct key and let himself out. He walked down the sterile cream corridor. Suddenly, an alarm sounded and Franco’s pulse quickened. He forced himself to remain calm as five mental nurses stampeded past him with bloody truncheons raised.
Abandoning composure, Franco ran down long corridors, truncheon tight in his sweating fist. He stopped, panting, by a window and gazed out into the rain. His eyes narrowed as he watched the internal fence barriers slamming into place. That could only mean one thing. They didn’t want anybody entering or leaving the premises. Mount Pleasant had entered CLAMPDOWN. That only happened on escape attempts.
“Bugger,” he whispered. They had neutralised Monkey. Done a head count. Now they realised Franco had gone. the Mount Pleasant Hilltop Institution had its own helicopter for the transferral of highly dangerous patients. This was Franco’s target. He tried to orientate himself to find the roof.
“Hello, Franco.” It was Betezh. His voice was smooth.
Franco started to back away. “Go to hell!”
“You did well to get this far. However, you must face reality and come back. Escape is... impossible.” The voice was soothing, hypnotic, tuned in to the drugs that Franco so regularly imbibed.
Franco frowned, whirled, and ran.
Betezh cursed. Together with three burly mental nurses, he took up pursuit.
Down corridors they sped, a little man waving a truncheon pursued by the big bouncing bullies of the playground. Franco dragged bins from their cubby-holes, sending them rolling back down corridors. He overturned a trolley filled with kidney shaped steel pans that clattered deafeningly to merge with the shrieking sounds of the alarm. These acts bought him a few precious seconds. But, ultimately, Dr. Betezh and his cronies were gaining. They had longer legs.
Franco rounded a corner in his frantic search for steps or a lift towards the roof—and Keenan’s promised airlift—only to find a modest square room mid-way down the corridor. It had chest-high counters and cupboards bolted to the walls.
Franco skidded to a halt, rattled the locked cupboards and cursed. His eye fell on a cardboard box. He ripped the retainers free, tore off a long curling strip, and gazed down at a hundred syringes. “Rasta Billy! Now we’re cooking!” He stood up just as Betezh and the guards slowed their pace, approaching with an inculcated instinct that had kept them alive over the years. They noted Franco’s stance. They muttered unhappily. It looked far too business-like...
Like a man on a mission.
Franco pulled free a hypodermic syringe, his arm came back, and he hurled it towards the group. It stuck, quivering like a dart, in the forehead of the lead nurse.
There was a moment of shock.
The nurse screamed.
Franco started to hurl syringes like throwing knives as Betezh and the other nurses fled, leaping into the air with little comedy yelps every time a hypodermic buried its two inch blade into thighs, rumps and unprotected necks.
In an abrupt reversal, the men rounded a corner and were gone. Predator became victim.
Shoving syringes into the pockets of his stolen uniform, Franco turned and sprinted away. Then he saw it. He almost ran past the damned thing, but caught a glimpse of a narrow steel doorway at the last possible moment.
/> It was a lift, a serviceelevator. He pressed the button. There came a distant analogue dring.
Franco jiggled on the spot. “Come on, come on.” Distant gears engaged, followed by a tired aural clanking.
“Comeon!”
Dr. Betezh appeared—warily—like somebody who’s savagely pulled three hypodermics from his throbbing arse. He saw Franco, spotted the lift, and started to run.
The lift binged and Franco fell into its welcoming maw. The doors juddered shut on rusted rails and Franco’s finger jabbed at the button marked Rfor ROOF.
Dr. Betezh pressed his face against the wire-mesh glass. He smiled an evil smile. “We’re going to get you. And when we do, Franco, we’re going to fuck you up, you little maggot.”
Franco gave him a wide grin and pressed a middle finger salute against the portal.
The lift groaned and trundled upwards. Betezh scrolled out of view.
Franco stumbled into the fresh night air. The rain had stopped, and it smelled good. “Keenan?” he bellowed, hurrying forward. “Keenan? Where are you, man?”
There was no sign of life.
Did I get the right time? After all, I am a little... mad. Then Franco’s eyes fell on the chopper with a look of apprehension. Well, he thought, if Keenan ain’t here to meet me, I’ll just have to improvise.
He sprinted to the chopper, bare feet slapping puddles. Lights strobed the edges of the flat roof, and Franco could hear distant shouts and the deep throb from the hospital’s alarm.
He opened the chopper’s door, climbed into the cockpit and stared in disbelief and reliefat the keys dangling from the ignition. Did Keenan leave these here for me? Was that part of The Plan? Shit. I can’t remember can’t remember can’t remember.
He turned the ignition, flicked the switch for power, and listened as the rotors began to turn. Slowly at first, flinging free suspended raindrops, then faster and faster until they became a blur above the tinted glass of the cockpit.
“Yes. Yes! YES!” Franco Haggis grasped the joystick and engaged the drive. Then his head snapped right as Betezh and his entourage stumbled onto the glass-slick roof. They were red in the face from sixteen flights of stairs, mouths contorted as they spat obscenities drowned by the noise of the chopper’s engines. They sprinted towards him, size twelve boots splashing puddles.
Franco lifted the chopper into the air, nose dipping a little, and with only a gentle whine of misappropriated power. “Yes!” he shouted, punching the air with glee. “Yes! YES! YEEEEESSSSSS!” But suddenly the helicopter lurched to one side and Franco peered out with mouth agape. There, hanging grimly from the runners, was Dr. Betezh, his eyes dark glittering pools of hatred. Below, the useless gaggle of open-mouthed guards fell rapidly away and became nothing more than tiny toys.
“Land this helicopter now!” screamed Betezh.
Franco slid open the helicopter’s window, lifted his stolen truncheon and smacked Betezh between the eyes with as much force as he could muster. There came a heavy dull slap. Betezh blinked. But instead of falling—which was Franco’s preferred outcome—Betezh started to climb quickly, ape-arms wrenching open the helicopter’s door and reaching towards the befuddled inmate.
The helicopter veered to one side with a warning drone of alarms. Lights flickered dangerously across the console: all red. Below, the landscape swept and swirled with a nauseating lurch. The Mount Pleasant Hilltop Institution spun in giddying circles, distant, a dollhouse, a remote red-brick painting.
The helicopter rocked again as Betezh’s boots found grip on the runner. A punch found Franco’s head and the escaped inmate fell sideways making the chopper groan and shudder, and then fall into a rapid dive towards the ground.
Engines screamed... and stalled. Slivers of shaved engine spat from exhausts.
Betezh’s body flapped like a rag doll in the slipstream.
Franco groaned on the precipice of consciousness.
The ground rushed towards him.
“Keenan, you bastard!” he howled. “Where are you when I need you?”
Chapter 3
A Violent Interlude
The Five Grey Moons described a broad elliptical orbit around Tox12, otherwise known as Toxic World, or one of the Long Dead Planets. It was the perfect place for a high security prison, and allowed for a purely nominal staff. The place was almost self-governing.
Each moon housed a colony for criminals slotted neatly into categories rated by severity of crime and judged on a points basis. One moon contained low-risk criminals, such as thieves and traffic offenders on repeat charges. Another was designated for certain species of criminal life-form or AI, yet another for hardcore criminal elements: tax evaders, murderers, sexual terrorists. The fifth moon had been unofficially named Hardcore by its inhabitants. This moon housed the worst of the worst: multiple murderers, the criminally insane, soft-target terrorists, combat AIs guilty of slaughtering large groups of humans, burned-out tek-soldiers caught AWOL and drunk with stolen nukes; that sort of thing.
Each moon was considered a self-contained unit protected by air and anti-spacecraft (ASPAC) defences. Each moon was divided into compounds ruled over by small squads of Merc Police and Justice SIMs working four-weekly shift patterns—just in case of mass breakout attempts or riot—but, on the whole, prisoners were basically dumped with a few possessions and allowed to get on with it. There were no cells. There was no order... just the Law of the Jungle.
If a prisoner wanted to murder another prisoner? Fine. After all, criminals usually operated within their own frameworks anyway. Better to let them police themselves and form self-governing criminal hierarchies (so the principle went), but in an enclosed and ultimately controlled environment where they could be of little harm to what were considered normal civilized cultures and communities. They were still confined, and, if the worst came to the worst, easily exterminated on a mass scale. This was called Global Scrubbing and usually involved a contemporary version of napalm.
Pippa, having been charged with eight counts of murder, found herself on Hardcore—the fifth of the Grey Moons—the most violent, lawless and radically non-policed prison available for the imprisoned criminal element. After sentencing, Pippa was jet-dropped to a desolate outcropping of mountain rock, left crouching in nothing more than canvas trousers, a jumper, a pair of old boots, and holding a kitbag containing a knife, some smokes and basic camping gear. Staring up in hatred as the jet-craft fired a glittering path back into low-slung orbit, her future life expectancy had not looked entirely promising, especially for one so apparently naïve and pretty, with her dark bobbed hair, perfect skin, voluptuous and athletic physique. Only those grey eyes set her apart; they spoke of a soul carrying murder and mayhem.
Gathering her kit, Pippa headed off the mountain plateau and gazed down into the gloom of a distant valley as the wind screeched around her, buffeting her. Firelight shimmered from a large scatter of buildings assembled from local grey stone. Pippa descended with trepidation, shivering as the wind bit through thin clothing.
This was it. This place was home... forlife, and death: no parole, no community service, no bit of decorating with tea and scones for Mangy Betty; no spot of gardening for Old Uncle Roger; no cleaning condoms from the local canal. Five Grey Moons was a permanent lifestyle choice; a lifestyle change. Where life was life, and death came far too easy.
Pippa was ambushed on her way down a narrow path by three men, bulky and haggard, with gaunt scarred faces and the air of the desperate. They could see her pretty skin, lusted after pale flesh. They knew she was a Fresh Drop...
Easy meat.
It took five seconds of intensity before the hardcore murderers were dead, skewered and gutted like boneless fish on the blade of Pippa’s folding knife. She wiped blood from the blade, searched the attackers’ holed clothing, pocketed their weapons and copper money, and in an even, cool, calculating voice, said, “So, it’s going to be like that, is it?”
With a frown, she strode purposefully toward
s the raging fires.
I am going to die, realised Franco Haggis.
The ground rushed towards him, chopper vibrating and shaking violently in its terminal plummet. The dash sparkled red with warning lights. Franco’s eyes were wide. He could not breathe... could not move...
Then there was The Voice...
Calm, and cool, and gentle: a simple lullaby.
A feeling of euphoria flooded Franco. He felt like he’d taken an afternoon nap and woken into a fuzzy, dream-like, unreal focus.
Hello, said The Voice.
“Hello,” said Franco in return.
I am a Security Systems PopBot version 2.8 running entwined ARISTOTLE and HOMER (PARA-OP) parallel operating systems. My name is Cam. I work for Keenan. First, let’s get you awake.
There was a jolt,which slapped Franco rudely and painfully from his rabbit-freeze.
Reality slammed him. Squawking, he reached for the joystick and grappled with the helicopter’s stalled controls. The machine shuddered, engines coughed into life, and with rotors wailing, Franco lifted the machine’s nose as the runners cut the heads neatly from a bank of pink flowers. A trailing Dr. Betezh ploughed a furrow through ripe soil, boots juddering.
The thumping machine soared skywards. It spun like a metal toy. It performed rolls and finally pulled up level with the upper storeys of the Mount Pleasant Hilltop Institution. Patients waved enthusiastically at Franco from the barred windows. Those in straightjackets banged their heads against the unbreakable glass in happy appreciation of his aerial display and escape attempt.
The helicopter, barely under Franco’s control, spun in huge, lazy, sweeping circles. Below, trees rushed past. Betezh’s boots somehow scrambled and found purchase on the runner, and he growled a stream of expletives, hoisted himself up, yanked open the door and threw another punch.
Franco dodged erratically.
Suddenly the world seemed to slip into treacle.
