Crash Deluxe

by Marianne de Pierres

The last bit hung in the air between us.

  I wanted to ask about Glorious but I couldn’t. If she was dead, which I was betting, I was afraid of what I might do. I had a lifetime of revenges stored up. The load was getting heavy.

  Merv’s stare darted to the royal insignia and the cuts and bruises on my face. ‘I d-don’t know. Seems r-risky.’

  Too right. The hair on my body had begun to prickle. Something was wrong.

  Mal must have had the same feeling because she pushed her seat back from the table.

  ‘Decide,’ I hissed. ‘Quick.’

  Take him.

  NO.

  I rejected the Eskaalim voice in my head. I needed Merv to trust me if this was going to work. Besides, I couldn’t drag him out of here without attracting some major aggravation.

  ‘OK,’ said Merv, a little too wild-eyed for my comfort. ‘B-but it’s got to look like a k-kidnap.’

  I was about to argue the point when I heard the noise of too many unfriendly boots. Militia bearing the eyelash insignia on their helmets burst through the doors on the Luxoria side a second later. I caught the briefest glimpse of Lavish, dancing smug behind their riot shields.

  I yanked Merv between Mel and me and shouted for the Intimate to help. But it had disappeared.

  We hauled arse to the opposite entrance, knocking diners off their chairs, but the lifts on that side were already opening for more Lashes.

  ‘Get behind the cafebar and stay down,’ Mal ordered.

  I didn’t argue. I ran back there, hauling Merv with me, and vaulted the bench. Merv followed less easily, and then Mal, struggling, flashing her pylon-thick thighs. When she hit the floor the noise was deafening and the bridge shook.

  No. Not Mal.

  I peered up.

  A hole had appeared in the top of the bridge, punched out by a neat laser-stroke. When the smoke cleared the FlashHawk descended through the shattered glass, the Intimate calm behind the stick.

  Who said it can’t fly this thing?

  The explosion had scattered the Militia Lashes entering from the Cone side but those approaching from the other side were waiting in safety.

  ‘Move,’ I screamed in Merv’s ear.

  Mal catapulted us back over the counter and I scrambled over bodies and slammed a chair atop a table. It got me high enough to hook an arm around the FlashHawk’s landing gear. I swung my feet up and climbed onto the strut.

  Merv imitated me but fell back, unable to hold his own weight.

  I cursed his weak body and jumped down after him.

  Crouching, I ordered him onto my shoulders.

  As he complied, the ’copter tilted dangerously, its rotor blades chopping the long chains of the hanging baskets. Ferns and dirt sprayed in all directions, blinding me.

  The angle gave Merv some purchase, though, and he threw himself into the cockpit.

  I dashed dirt from my eyes and scrambled up after him. Mal climbed the chair to follow but it slipped and the table collapsed.

  The Militia Lashes were nearly on her when I grabbed a mini-gun and started firing.

  ‘Lower the hoist,’ I bellowed at Merv.

  ‘I have the controls,’ the Intimate calmly informed me.

  ‘THEN DROP IT.’

  I sprayed more bullets in an arc around Mal as the cable unravelled. She saw it and grabbed it with one giant fist.

  We sailed up and out of the hole with Mal flashing her softer bits at the soldiers.

  I waited for them to pick her off but no shots came.

  ‘They’re not firing. They’re too worried the bridge will collapse.’ Merv sounded like he might cry.

  ‘Get her in,’ I barked in relief.

  The Intimate set the hoist to rewind. It groaned under Mal’s weight, reeling her in slowly until it jammed just short of the cabin door.

  She clung onto the FlashHawk’s landing struts like a heavyweight boxer trying to rock-climb. The ’copter listed and Merv and I scrambled to the other side to balance it.

  ‘You will have to operate the manual controls on the hoist,’ said the Intimate.

  I climbed over the back seat to the winch mechanism and wound like a demon. Slowly the winch turned over.

  Mal felt the tug and let it lift her.

  With Merv’s help, I managed to haul her in.

  For a few seconds we all lay on the floor, panting.

  ‘Palace,’ Mal rasped at the pilot. And to me, gratefully, ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Yeah, well. Likewise.’ Some kinda ice-breaker.

  The Intimate projected the royal insignia ahead of us, making use of its priority rating to slipstream the traffic and jump spots in the queue. A Militia bat even escorted us part of the way until it peeled off to an emergency.

  ‘Why didn’t they blow us out of the sky?’

  ‘Running Man,’ Mal grunted.

  ‘What the freak does that mean?’

  She stared at me. Perspiration and plant food weaved a muddy watercourse down her heavy face. ‘Didn’t you know? The Lashes work for Sera Bau. Running Man works for Monk and Axes are S.K. Laud. They only police on the same side or for the same things when it suits them.’

  Mal wiped her brow with bleeding fingers. The effect was like warpaint.

  I ripped the bottom off my T-shirt and passed it to her. She wound it around her fingers.

  ‘How do they enforce the law?’ I said.

  ‘However they damn well want.’

  Freak. Another thing I didn’t know.

  When we hit the approach exit for M’Grey, I was actually relieved.

  The feeling lasted a microsecond until I heard the No-Fly Zone warnings blaring over our comm. More Militia bats flew sweeping arcs over the island - slick Lockheeds hovering like ’copters on fancy lift-fans.

  ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘Access is denied,’ said the Intimate and peeled us back towards the main traffic stream.

  ‘What do you mean, “access is denied”? What are you doing?’

  ‘The Palace has been destroyed by a projectile. We must go straight to the Burrow.’

  I craned to look behind me. A plume of smoke seemed to be coming from about the right spot on M’Grey.

  I couldn’t take it in. ‘Destroyed? How badly was it hit?’

  ‘I have no way of knowing the true extent of the damage.’

  ‘What about Bras and King Ban?’ I demanded.

  The Intimate didn’t answer until it negotiated its place in-flow and consulted its data-stream.

  ‘The Militia reports are confirming that King Gerwent Ban and Ms Brasella were in residence at the time of the explosion.’

  Bras dead? Ban’s grandiose plans shattered?

  Mal stared out of the window, her expression set.

  We in-flowed north. The Intimate refused to be drawn on an exact destination and I had my hands full with Merv who had gone into shock, his hands icy-cold and shaking. I rummaged through the FlashHawk’s medi-kit and found some glucose.

  I dermed him up and the glaze began to leave his eyes. He drifted off to sleep.

  I had to wake him when we landed.

  We sat on a pad of a wheelport on the border between the burbs and the Medium gyro. It was large without being dangerously busy like the Eastern Interchange.

  ‘Transport will be waiting for you on the fifteenth spoke,’ said the Intimate.

  ‘What about you?’

  ‘My instructions are to hide this. It is easily recognised and not useful now that the King is dead.’

  The King is dead. ‘Instructed by who?’

  It ignored me.

  Mal flung the door open. ‘Hurry.’

  Merv scrambled down alongside me, groggy from the derm still, swaying a little. I helped him to catch Mal.

  ‘Where are we going?’ he asked.

  I shook my head and stepped sideways to avoid a luggage drone. I was trusting Mal, and I wasn’t sure why. ‘Nowhere fun, I suspect.’

  Chapter Eighteen

  I was rig
ht for once. We changed ped-ways and trains half a dozen times before Mal was satisfied that we were alone. Our evasion tactics had taken us in interlinked circles till we ended back close to the original wheelport.

  We walked the last stretch through a maze of tunnels, until she keyed us into a service lift.

  ‘We’re back at the wheelport, aren’t we?’ I marvelled at Gerwent Ban’s audacity. A cell operating underneath a busy transport centre.

  Location, location, location, eh?

  Mal’s confirmed ID sent the lift shooting down at express speed. She braced herself in a corner and I crouched to keep my stomach intact. Lifts were creeping up the rankings on my phobia list. Merv didn’t quite grasp this technique of travel and vomited over Mal’s feet.

  She picked him up by the scruff of the neck like a sick puppy and sat him down on his haunches, pointing in the other direction.

  I watched fascinated while colourless cleaners appeared from a bottom panel and fell upon the mess like tiny transparent crabs. Nano-tek in Viva was subtle and invisible. This must be really old stuff.

  By the time they’d headed back into their hideyhole, the lift slowed and bounced.

  Merv vomited again while I prayed that someone had bothered to maintain the cables.

  The door finally opened but the lift had pulled up too late. I could see a bunch of legs waiting for us.

  ‘Wait,’ Mal ordered us. ‘They’ll fix it but it could take a while.’

  I started to shiver. Although crawling through the opening seemed like a good way to get chopped in half, I couldn’t stand being trapped in here.

  I had to get out.

  Now.

  Mal sank down onto the floor on her hands and knees, her heavy face flushed and weary with effort.

  I took one step over to her, avoiding the crab-cleaners who were out and about again. Before she could argue I climbed onto her shoulders and launched myself through the gap.

  ‘Don’t be so stup—’

  I got my torso out. Then the lift shifted a fraction, trapping my thighs. Pain blocked out the sound of Merv screaming on my behalf.

  Stay conscious, human. I need you yet.

  I was too tired to listen to the internal voice. Everything that kept me wanting to be alive faded.

  I waited for the cavalry, the I-don’t-want-to-die-like-this rush that always gave me a last burst of determination.

  Nothing.

  I laid my head in my hands and vaguely wondered who was talking to me in a child’s voice. Children shouldn’t have need to be members of a resistance.

  ‘Parrish. Open your eyes.’ The voice didn’t let up, angry and insistent.

  I tried to focus. Got a jaw outline and two huge shadowy hollows. Big, unnatural eyes.

  ‘PARRISH.’

  Bras? Alive?

  There. She had me. Adrenalin spiked and the world got sharper.

  I watched her derm my arm three times like it belonged to someone else. ‘Stay awake until we get you to the pracdoc,’ she ordered.

  I nodded, grateful that the pain had begun to recede.

  ‘Ban?’

  Tears spilled from her eyes. She didn’t answer.

  The lift shifted, releasing my legs, and with difficulty two sweating, sunlight-allergic hacks lifted me and staggered into a room humming with tek and then down a corridor leading to rows of bunks. At the end was a pracdoc like the one Anna Schaum had had at her compound.

  They rolled me onto the slab.

  I flashed back to how it had felt at Anna Schaum’s - the lid sliding over me, the blast of recycled air - and I began flailing before they could activate the device.

  ‘Keep her still.’ Bras came at me with a knife.

  I grabbed the nerdy boy holding my head and flung him against the wall.

  ‘Get that knife away from her,’ I screamed at the other one.

  Instead, he let go of my hips and tried to push my shoulders down.

  I head-butted him, reopening the wound on my forehead.

  He fell down, holding his nose.

  I flopped my body over to the edge of the slab, ready to throw myself off. Then the world fell on me.

  Mal.

  She heaved me back into place with a shovel-sized hand and held me down.

  Someone snapped ties in place.

  Bras ran the knife along the seam of my pants off, cutting them off.

  I screamed again as more old-fashioned nanos skittered up my nose and into my ear.

  Memories. The spider thing in MoVay - its abdomen exploding crawlers over me. Roo frozen with fear. My past came at me with waking fright.

  Mal let go and the lid slid shut. I started to cry.

  Something glanced against my cheek and sucked the salty fluid away. My claustrophobia expanded with each light touch. I battered my head against the lid.

  Let me out.

  Be still, moronic human. I’m working.

  The Eskaalim’s insult stopped me thrashing. Made me think.

  It had healed me before. I just had to let it be and try and forget where I was. Imagine Hein’s after a feed and four beers. Or the glitter trails along the Stretch at night. Or the view over The Tert from Loyl Daac’s tenements. Think about home. Think about what Loyl Daac is up to in Viva. Who is he balling?

  I took a deep breath and forced the air out of my nose.

  Gradually I grew calmer.

  No rush still, but a cold, calculating comprehension of what I wanted to do.

  Another caress. This time from the sedation monitor - and I was gone.

  Chapter Nineteen

  ‘We’re running out of time.’ Bras sat next to me in front of the screens, studying the different Net news strands.

  Nothing.

  I was stunned. Nothing about the FlashHawk punching a hole in the bridge. Nothing about the attack on the palace. Nothing about the King being dead.

  Common Net and OutWorld had loose reportage of a disturbance on M’Grey that they put down to a religious sect. OneWorld had even less interesting Prier reports of floods up on the Cape and of Northern Hem terrorists being detained on the equatorial border.

  Everything remained focused on the upcoming Pan-Sats.

  How extensively the world was being filtered to me. My naivety was pathetic. In its own strange, brutal way, The Tert was a way more honest place than Viva City.

  ‘How often do they do that? Not show things?’

  She blinked. ‘Father always said that history is built on selective recall.’

  I thought about it for a while. ‘That’s a pretty human thing, I guess. Every time we remember something it’s only our side of it. But this . . .’ I thumped the arm of my chair. ‘This is gross freaking manipulation. Why isn’t the Editing Intelligence showing what happened on M’Grey?’

  ‘Sera Bau’s Priers are her feed for news. Maybe Bau ordered a blackout on the footage?’

  Bras’s eyes had seemed to get larger every day we’d been in there - four now - the hollows under them deeper. She’d blacked out twice. She ate little. Unprovoked anger attacks racked her thin body. We tied her to her bunk but even then her ranting filled our dreams.

  Ban’s hired teks deserted on day three. I didn’t blame them. We were a hide of crazies.

  My own healing was too slow. I could walk but the pain sucked. I kept the painblocks for sleeping, so they didn’t muddle my daytime thinking.

  That way they just muddled my dreams. And I’d been having plenty of them.

  Sometimes it was Teece.

  Last night it had been Billy Myora, the suited Cabal shaman. He seemed to be watching me mess up from a sullen, I-told-you-so distance.

  Mainly, though, it was Leesa Tulu. I woke from those sweating, scared that in some way Marinette could reach me in my dreams.

  This morning I’d woken with the heavy feeling that I was letting everyone down. I went straight away and collared Merv.

  He surfaced from his 6-Gen interface jerkily, as though he’d been speeding. We’d spen
t the last few days vrealing together, working up some rumour chaos on the news bays and boards until exhaustion claimed me.

  Merv’s vreal stamina was humbling.

  ‘Merv, tell me what you really know. What happened to the AI?’

  Fear filled his tired eyes. I hadn’t seen that look in them since he’d left the Luxoria.

  ‘M-my job when I worked for S-sera Bau was 5-Gen on the Prier feeds. One t-time I got s-stuck in vreal during a sh-shiver. I heard whispering, s-saw sh-shadows. When I came out I had this damn s-s-stutter. I don’t know what h-happened . . . and v-vreal is so c-crowded with shit I thought maybe I imagined it. But after that the anomalies s-started. The shadows are there n-now, every time I go in.’

  ‘Is that why you call Brilliance “she”?

  He nodded. ‘It’s like she got a personality then. I-I mean she had one before but it was j-juvenile and p-pedantic like m-most AI’s. After the sh-shiver she s-seemed older. Almost c-canny.’ He gave me a look. ‘B-bit like Jales and P-Parrish.’

  I ignored the last. ‘King Ban believes she has a bio component now. What do you think?’

  Merv’s eyes widened. ‘Th-that makes sense. But how?’

  ‘How should I know?’ I snapped at him. Then I pulled myself up. Merv was doing everything he could. It wasn’t his fault that it wasn’t enough. ‘How’s Snout?

  ‘She’s still lighting hot spots but Brilliance is getting s-suspicious,’ he said.

  Merv had wormed Snout a channel into Monk and Sera Bau’s raw-material streams thanks to his knowledge. By falsifying Priers’ reports, Snout was force-feeding Brilliance news. It added to the list of sensational reports we’d generated: child abduction, abused children, a celebrity baby, celebrity chemodeath, sports-star injuries - everything that might register high on DramaNews and Sport - competing stories vying for attention.

  ‘She’s g-got her own veracity markers and not all my s-sims are good enough.’

  ‘How suspicious?’

  ‘I’m going to have to take Snout out of the l-loop for a couple of days.’

  Days? The Pan-Sats screened in less than that.

  ‘It’s not working.’ I said.

  ‘It is. The newsfeeds are backing up. There have already been a few blackouts in Tasmania and the Interior, so her p-processing capacity must be under stress but it’s t-taking time.’