by Jack Lance
Josep lit a few green stick-lamps and threw them to a few of the others.
They continued on a short way until one of them cried out in pain.
Josep pushed past two of the women with a torch and saw his younger cousin Lukan wrapped up in wire, that was slowly tightening and cutting through his clothes and skin. A light shone from up on the rock hill behind him, illuminating the droid, and the wire it had fed down to his cousin.
“Help him!” Josep yelled, unable to think of anything else to say.
A few of them began clawing at the wires but became cut themselves. Then suddenly the droid retracted it’s wire and pulled Lukan from the other’s arms. He flew up the rock face to the droid, where it wrapped a set of jagged claws around him. Lukan cried out as it squeezed tighter, and then the droid exploded, showering the Fincles with his blood and flesh.
They all cried and groaned, and began running forward toward the small dome, that loomed out of the murky darkness ahead.
Josep watched as more of them were plucked from the group, and dragged away in the direction of the explosion that followed.
“It’s that friend of yours, Josep!” his uncle yelled back at him.
His uncle immediately stopped running, and Josep caught up with him as his head fell away from his shoulders.
Josep cried out in horror, and ran through the crowd, as more of them fell dead or were dragged away through the rocks.
There was laser fire from ahead, hitting and incinerating two screaming women. He jumped aside as one of the shots flew by into the crowd, getting clear of the path where most of the violence seemed to be focused. He landed on a slate of rock that led down to a deep ravine that ran along side the path and then the robot dome.
“Ok, Bailey” Josep yelled, as he skidded to the bottom of the flat of rock. “You want an enemy? Try this!”
Josep took the EMP device from his pocket and threw it up at the scuttling droids. The EMP wave burst out of it slicing through the droids and the rest of his family beside them.
Immediately he felt the dizziness of the blast, and the pouring of blood from his nose. His hearing had been damaged momentarily, and as it returned he heard the screams of his family up on the path.
In a daze he scrambled up to them, and then looking ahead saw that a group had broken away from the main party, and were running along the compacted sand between the rocks and the dome.
Josep made a decision, and left the wounded to die, and began chasing after the others who had now reached the wide arch leading into the dome. He had almost reached it when he heard the voice of a woman.
“Such dangerous ignorance!” it said softly but with a powerful volume.
Josep just reached the opening as a tidal wave of fire coursed out of it, knocking him back onto his bum.
The fire died and Josep crawled forward on his hands and knees, and looked around through the open shaft, into the dome.
The shaft led a distance into it, to a wider cavern, and within it hung the apparition of a blackened woman, fused into the dust of the nano-circuitry. More dust swirled around her, obeying her every command, and threatening to erupt into another blaze should anyone she dislike enter her abode.
The blackened corpses of his family lay on the ground at her feet. Suddenly she looked at him, glaring and judgmental, and Josep scrambled back and to his feet. He ran back toward the others, who he now saw were dead, and being incinerated by fire breathed out from Bailey’s droids.
He stood a moment on the edge of tears beneath the emotionless moons at their different distances, wishing he had some threat to issue Bailey, but there was no point.
One of the droids turned its lens toward Josep and he panicked and ran away. He jumped down the slope of rock again, stopping just before the edge of the deep crevice.
The droid walked after him casually, and Bailey watched through its lens as Josep found a deeper ledge to drop to, then running further along it around the side of the dome.
Bailey instructed the droid to follow but at a safe distance and height.
Josep dropped down to the lowest of the reachable outcrops along the inside of the ravine wall. It was a broad but high sided ledge, where the mists that filled the bottom of the gorge spilled over the ground slightly.
Josep panted in the thick frosted air, and looked up to see if the droid had followed. The droid was standing on the ledge over him, with its stalk craning the camera to watch.
He sighed slightly and looked around, then finding a series of shrouded figures standing at intervals along the far side of the crevice wall. He looked around himself and saw a number of them on the near side too.
“Ah.” Bailey smiled. “I knew they’d come.”
Bailey watched through the lens as one of the strange bounty hunters jumped down into the field of vision, and then walked right up to Josep along the ledge. At the last few steps it lunged at him, while Josep reached down into the knee high mists and brought a large slab of rock around to strike it. The slap cracked hard against the head area of the shrouded figure, and as it staggered back, Josep swung again and again pounding whatever it was within the cloak to a pulp.
The Sheriff wasn’t moving now, and lay with its thin, plastic-bandaged legs and arms protruding from its cloak. Josep kicked it with his foot and then lifted the shroud to look at its face.
Bailey watched closely, unable to see as Josep blocked his view. He frantically tapped out more commands, to call more of the drones to the site, to gain views from other angles.
But it was too late, as Josep dropped the shroud and reeled back in shock. He had a burst of aggression and shoved the sheriff over the ledge with his foot.
It fell out of sight, and then as more views were gained of the scene, two more sheriffs dropped onto the ledge at either side of Josep.
Josep staggered to look around at them both, and reached down to pick up the slab he had used on the other. But the cold mist had begun to freeze his face and body, and he was unable to hold the slab.
He dropped it beside his feet, and then stood with his fists up as the other two figures crouched in their shrouds, and bared their claws ahead of them. They dashed forward together and bit around his middle with enormous jaws pressed through the hugging fabric.
Bailey watched from each of the lenses as Josep wailed weakly and flopped forward in their grip. Each of the droids focused their lenses from their various ledges on both sides of the lonely gorge.
Some where close by the figures, who seemed to have little interest in them.
After Josep had died, one of them took his corpse like a doll and threw it hard against the wall on the opposite side, where it burst slightly and then dropped down below the mist.
The two that had killed him crouched and leaped up across the crevice, landing on the top at the other side.
One of the closest cameras followed them as they stood up straight and calm, just like the others, and then walked by the lens as they followed the others across the high rocks. Bailey instructed the droid to follow them, keeping enough distance behind so not to threaten them.
The droid reached a high point of rock that looked down on the first area of the flat basin on that side and its perfectly untouched expanse of snow. The sheriffs were returning to a broad shuttle craft that had landed on four low stilts. Once inside the ramp at the rear, the stilts retracted and the ship lifted slowly into the air, and then blasted off toward the shadow security ship in the sky.
After a few more commands the droid that had been observing it all, melted down to liquid and spread over the rocks before cooling again. The others did the same, destroying all evidence of his droid network, and their connection to his bouncer system in the colony trunk.
“Burn, my babies.” he whispered.
Bailey smiled and shut down the computers. He then left the Sagar building and returned as fast as he could to the village of East Syndicate.
He made it back to the Sagar house just as they were waking up. They we
re limping around with sore hangovers, and so Bailey faked one to match.
Bailey walked past them and lay back on the sofa beside Bede as if crashing out. He reached and held her hand, and looked at her as she woke. She smiled and kissed his hand, then held it to her face as she dozed.
She then sat up and smiled warmly “Look at all the presents.”
“I know.” Bailey said. “Robots mailed them in during the night.”
“Just heard on the wire, Old Gang tried to escape last night.” Lazar Sagar said, leaning across the sofa at them. “No word on the damage yet.”
Bailey shrugged at Bede and said “How about that?”
Bede shrugged and said “How about those presents?”
Bailey smiled and knelt beside the big pile of boxes. He took a few of the larger presents out onto the small glass tables and unwrapped them before her. There were some expensive gifts like a bracelet for Bede and a genuine antique global-trials trophy for javelining, from the homeworld. Such were the things of value on a world away from worlds. He unwrapped a few more, keeping the name tag beside each so they would know exactly who had cared, and by how much.
“Oh look at all the gifts!” their grandmother, Kez Sagar said and waved the others to join them on the sofas.
They all gathered around the gifts and began picking them out and examining them.
“You two are so popular!” Kez beamed at them.
Lazar said “It’s good to be with you, Bailey. You’re like a little bit of the world outside.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment… I think.” Bailey smiled at him, and pointed at the small box he had added to the pile earlier. “What’s in the small one?”
Lazar looked at it curiously and then began wrestling to open the wrapping that had been sealed with a lot of sticking tape.
Bailey took from his pocket the ear and nose plugs he had used to buffer the intense sound frequencies in Old Gang central.
I wonder if the rotten party has finally died. God those low lifes make me sick.
Bailey shoved the nose plugs deep into his nose, and then the earplugs, and then stood up and walked across to the windows overlooking the village.
Bede noticed and said “What are you doing? Don’t be silly.”
Lazar pulled the wrapping apart and opened the card box within. He took out the blue device, that had been modded with a square holographic projector. It began ticking the moment it was removed, and then stopped, and emitted its pulse.
The Sagar family were dead. Lazar vomited blood onto a glass table and fell onto it cracking it. Most of the others simply folded over where they sat. Bede’s head snapped back and she lay slumped back on the sofa.
Where Bailey stood at the windows, the pulse struck him, and damaged him enough to make him stagger a few steps aside. He then straightened up slowly, and turned to look over the faces of the people he had killed.
Whores. Corporate whores. They never cared for you.
Bailey stopped as he saw someone he had cared for, and walked across to the sofa, and reached up to close Bede’s eyes. He looked away at the floor a moment, trying to find appropriate thoughts.
The EMP device had done its job, and the holographic projector he had hardwired into it was displaying a worded message over it, that read “We are leaving. Enjoy your lives. Old Gang.”
He removed the nose and ear plugs and swallowed them, then sat slowly down beside his ex fiancé. Bailey began to cry slightly, then stopped as he heard the front door slam open.
There were footsteps approaching and from the streets outside he heard shouting as people who had been hit by the afterwake ran to the house. They found the Sagar family dead, and Bailey lying beside Bede. They found him to be alive, and made pains to bring him back to consciousness.
God in Perfection.
“Just relax.” the nurse said, and dabbed her hand across Bailey’s brow. “You need to rest now. Is there anything I can get you?”
Bailey had been moved to the civil infirmary that was located in one of the blocks of The Octagon, the centermost zone of the metropolis.
It was mostly administered by robots, but there was also a workforce of nurses, he found, that were used to provide that bedside manner that the robots sorely lacked.
They had given him a particularly attractive room, with holographic wallpaper that gave the faint illusion that he was lying in a bed, in the middle of a mustard coloured meadow. He could see the wall of the room through the illusion, but it still gave a pleasant effect.
“I’d like a pack of cigarettes.” Bailey said, then caught the nurses attention again as she made to leave. “Oh and the Narcosia Chronicle. Oh and maybe… a milkshake. And errr… maybe a box of biscuits.”
“No problem, Mr Bailey.” she said and leaned on the bed toward him. “I’m sorry for your loss. We all loved Bede Sagar. It would have been so good to see her raise a family here.”
Bailey poked a tear in his left eye and said “We were one of the classic love stories of the cosmos. But like all the classics it has had a tragic end.”
“I’m so sorry, Mr Bailey.” she said and left before he could see her cry.
Bailey waited until she had gone then put his hands behind his head and closed his eyes. He smiled, full of self satisfaction having completed all things he had envisioned, and lay that way for a moment more before opening his eyes.
The first thing he saw was Thom Gubichayan standing in the doorway, with the second being Flynn Randall at his bedside. The last thing he saw in the hospital was Randall’s fist, as he landed a punch square in his face.
Bailey woke up with a hood over his head, and his hands tied behind his back. He was lying on his side in a cramped space, which he guessed to be the boot of a car. He could hear the faint hum of an engine, and the sway as they turned each corner.
The car stopped and the boot was opened, and two very strong hands grabbed him and pulled him out.
There were no pleasantries as Bailey was pushed back away from the car. He staggered back, panting in the hood, and then heard footsteps approach, and the sound of skates on a wet surface.
The hood was whipped off suddenly and a hand pushed him back hard. Bailey staggered back, and fell as his heels caught on something.
He hit the ground and sat looking up as the two men came back into view in the car lights.
Behind them he could see the fake night sky of the biosphere hologram, and then looking around he saw that they were on a single laned crystal highway at the very edge of the forest. The thin road had been smashed, with the rest of it half in and out of the water below. The covering tube here had been removed so they were out at the end of an open length of glass-like crystal.
“What do you want?” Bailey stammered, genuinely afraid now.
Randall laughed a slightly mad, lost laugh.
“He wants to know what we want.” he said, and Thom shook his head.
“What do you think this is about, creep?” Thom said.
“Do you want money? I can get you…” Bailey stopped as Thom skated fast by him, hitting him across the side of the head with a knuckle duster.
Thom skated around to stop where he had started, and watched as Bailey, who had been knocked back slightly, righted himself and then opened his eyes to look. There was a red slyness in his eyes now, and it was clear that the mask had slipped.
Thom and Randall were ready.
“You know I could let myself out of these binds quite easily.” Bailey hissed. “I could kill you both so quickly and you’d never even know what struck you.”
“Oh, we know.” Randall said. “That’s why we’re here.”
“And why is that?” Bailey smirked blatantly. “What have I done? What can you prove?”
“We’re not proving anything.” Thom smiled coldly. “You show us what we want or we spill your intestines all over those expensive shoes.”
“Show you what, exactly?” he hissed.
“Only what I’ve already seen.�
� Thom said. “Warehouse number B.”
Bailey grinned with gritted teeth for a moment then burst out in a raucous laughter, that echoed out over the place.
They drove Bailey to the Sagar building and hung a coat over his shoulders as they walked him into the block. They took an inner elevator upstairs to warehouse floor five, and made their way to the Colec properties.
“I’ll need my hands.” Bailey said quietly, and Randall tore apart the plastic cuffs with his fingers.
“Thank you.” he said and then walked up to the smaller office unit outside of Colec Warehouse B.
He huddled around the keypad, as if they didn’t already know the access code. Thom and Randall stood inches behind him at either side.
The locks within clipped open, and Bailey turned the handle, and smiled at them both before shouldering against it slightly. He hadn’t cleaned the place very much it seemed and now everything with was beginning to clam up.
Bailey opened the first then the second doors and flicked the switch on the wall as he strode ahead of them into the darkness. The strip lighting all up and down the lockup came on in its way, shedding light on Bailey and his Romano fighting dog that he seemed to have fully domesticated somehow.
Randall walked in apprehensively, as Thom rolled ahead of him. As they moved to the rear workstation Randall gained a shaky view of Bailey and his dog.
Thom rolled around the dog and stopped with his back to the man. He reached down and stabbed a small needle into the Romano, causing it to stagger slightly and then fall on its side. Bailey remained quiet, watching.
As Randall stepped into the workroom, he surveyed all of the various half-built robotics that Bailey had been working on here in secret, and then following Thom’s childish pointing, he turned to look at the right hand wall.
Randall began to see a mural of names, faces and dates, connected by pins and tied thread of different colours. It was intricate, and spanned the height and breadth of the wall right up to the gangway to the door.
