Z14 (12 page)

“For the thousandth time, no.”

“Exaggeration. A human trait.”

“Fuck you.”

“That’s another one.”

I picked up the head and drop-kicked it against a wall before leaving the room.

“Flouncing off isn’t something cyborgs do,” Melon’s voice called triumphantly after me.

I barked out a sharp laugh. By the great cyborg god stroke creator, I laughed. And I hadn’t faked it.

Obviously Doctor Melon hadn’t finished his story, but I wanted him to stew for a bit. I followed the sound of humans enjoying themselves, that were coming from the barracks room. I found Lothar, Oxley and Kam doing the thing they did only slightly less often than breathing – playing poker. They dealt me in and we chatted for a bit while we played. I told them that Q4 was now Doctor Melon – which led to me filling them in on what little I knew about the doctor, what he in turn knew about me and the alleged threat the cyborgs were supposed to represent. I got some blank stares and muttered comments like, “Well I’ll be”, and then they got back to the important business of skinning Oxley for all his money.

Poker fascinated me. The balance between skill and chance was sublime. Of course, I left the actual playing of the game to a minimum priority, automated process and tonnes of statistical charts and data about win percentages, card probabilities, etcetera. As I played, I concentrated on my pet-project of absorbing the humans’ banter and seeing how they reacted to my input into the conversational proceedings.

It was strange, but losing most of one arm yesterday had affected me – beyond balance and combat calculations. I couldn’t deny that my human sub-routines seemed to be coming to the fore more frequently of late, and I wondered if that had been Melon’s doing when he had his hands on me five years ago. It seemed he’d changed me so that the human personality wormed its way in, slowly taking over. But that might almost have been a miscalculation. The outpouring of emotion I’d suffered upon seeing a cyborg stalked and killed, felt, at the time, like it had given the Warden code the leverage to attempt a coup, to regain lost silicon ground – to reboot and reset me. It was something else to ask Melon about; although the wily bastard was good at obfuscating his way around touchy subjects.

I broached a summation of my feelings with the three humans, as everyone, like me – in their own way – played their poker hands on autopilot. “It’s a different world out there for me today,” I began.

“How so, Zed?” said Kam as he skimmed his cards back to Lothar in disgust.

“I’ve been top of the food chain on this planet since I ‘arrived’, but now there are weapons and other beings out there that can truly fuck me up.” I windmilled my stump around at a dizzying speed to highlight my point. The breeze ruffled Oxley’s hair.

“Mmmm, don’t stop Zee, baby,” he said.

“So what, Zee?” said Lothar. “Who cares?”

“I do,” I said. Had I been looking for sympathy? Hah, of course not. Not from these guys. “My combat evaluation routines care. My bloody arm does.”

“Fuck them,” said Lothar. “Zee, you despicable, overly-ambitious hair-dryer; fuck them. Fuck the plasma weapons. They’re just guns. Just go back to getting the drop on the weasels using them and stand back when they go critical and overheat. Sounds like these plasma guns are horse shit.”

“What the fuck’s a horse?” said Oxley.

“Your mum,” said Kam. “Oh man, I’m sorry. I’m tired. That was weak. Zed, don’t use that one in your research.”

“I’d never use Oxley’s mum for anything,” I said. “Okay, so plasma guns are still just guns. So, yeah, avoidance tactics. Sound advice. But cyborgs, too, don’t forget – potentially lots of them. I can’t handle more than one at a time, hell, I doubt I can handle one anymore, unless I get the drop on them.”

“My ‘fuck them’ from earlier covers those cyborg assholes too, Zee,” said Lothar. “You’ll always get the drop on them walking nuclear-powered dildos, because you’re Zee.”

“That may not be quite enough, Lo,” I enabled a smile. “But thanks, you’re very sweet.”

“I’m serious, buddy,” said Lothar. “Them other cyborgs ain’t gonna have your style. They ain’t gonna have your class, and they ain’t gonna have the enormous advantage that you’re a seriously fucked up individual. Now all that that makes you unpredictable.”

“Damn straight,” said Oxley. He jumped out of his chair, and started miming the classic stiff-armed robot. “Them other toaster-heads are like, ‘Buzz. Must. Go. Left. Now. Whir. Buzz. Creak. Commencing. Forward. Roll. Initiate!’”

Kam leapt up too. “Yeah, and you’re all like, ‘Aw-yeah, cyborg ninja, coming through! Pow! Smack! What did you say about my mother? Blam! Blam! Take it, bitch’.” Kam jumped around doing lame flying kicks, and karate chopping the wall, a locker, a bed frame…

They both sat down looking very pleased with themselves and picked their cards back up. I stared at each in turn, my gaze ending at rest on Oxley.

“Are you x-raying my cards again, Zee, you cheating hunk of junk?" he said.

“What good would looking through your cards do, you meaty imbecile?” I said. “All I’d see is how tiny your penis is.”

He thought about that for a few seconds. “Good point,” he said at last. He didn’t seem to understand why Lothar nearly drowned on his beer and Kam all but fell off his chair laughing. I allowed myself a simulated chuckle, too.

Eventually I decided I should go and interrogate Melon a little more. I’d accumulated quite a stack of poker chips while we chatted. I pushed it into the middle of the table, stood up, gave the lads a quick bow, and left the room.

I went back to the storage room, picked up the late Q4’s head and put it back on the makeshift tower of buckets and crates.

“There you go Doc,” I said. “Don’t ever say I didn’t put you up on a pedestal.”

“Very droll,” said the doctor. “Now, where was I?”

“I’d been fried,” I said, “but the intrepid Doctor Melon had arrived to save the ship. Except you didn’t save it did you? Because we still only have forty-two original colonies.”

“Oh, absolutely. I completely failed to land any part of the ship apart from the bridge shuttle, and I only managed that about a day before I came to, ah, attempt to visit you at your cave. But the colony is still up there. I couldn’t see or contact them after I went to the bridge – the bridge door sealed behind me – but there’s no good reason why they wouldn’t be as well off as they’ve been for generations.”

“But they might be a bit pissed off that the conduit god never appeared to them again,” I said. “And he didn’t so much as open it back up and shit out your corpse.”

“Perhaps. But they will have got over it by now. They will have had no choice. Life goes on.”

“Indeed,” I said. “So, if you didn’t fix the ship, what did you do?”

“A lot,” said the doctor, sounding proud. “The ship welcomed me by printing me hundreds and hundreds of manuals and text-books, and all manner of learning tools and aids. Its resident handy-cyborg had failed it, so it was prepared to train up one of the passengers to come and dig themselves out of the mire. Desperation time.

“I spent seventeen years on that bridge. The ship provided me with nutrient pods, but would periodically withhold them, unless I stopped what I was doing and did some exercise. However, I spent the great majority of those seventeen years learning the language of the ship’s creators, and, more importantly, learning at least a little about how to program
you
. The ship just wanted me to fix the engines, but I think I was smarter than it, or rather they, had expected, and I could do what I wanted – within the tight, confining limits of my own ignorance, that is.”

“Come on Doc, tell me, who were the ship’s creators?” I said. Fuck it, I had to try asking, at least.

“I’ll get to that,” said the doctor impatiently.

“No you won’t,” I said. “You’ll explode, or role down an open manhole cover, or get carried off by a proto-eagle, or run over by a steamroller. Anything. You’ll find a dramatic way to expire without telling me. You’ve already got form.”

“As I said, I’ll get to them, but suffice it to say they’re human – sort of – although they’re not from Earth. They’re bewilderingly ancient, staggeringly intelligent, frighteningly evil and they are deeply, irredeemably and unfathomably insane.”

“What?” Had my auditory receptors malfunctioned?

“The people that did what they did to Earth, that created you, the space fleet and shaped Deliverance are, not to put too fine a point on it, completely fucking mad.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Why, becau – “

Lothar burst into the room. He was breathing hard and looked uncharacteristically troubled. “Zee,” he said. “There’s a woman outside the bunker. Says she wants to talk to you.”

“A woman? Outside? How?” I’d never babbled before. Get a grip. Lock down the grasping, sluggish human processes.

“Yep,” said Lothar. “She just sashayed past the automated defences and knocked politely on the door – and I mean the actual external entrance, not the front gate. Kaboom reckons she used some kind of electric burst on the turrets.”

An electromagnetic pulse? Can I do that? How neat would that be if I cou – so, locking up my inner human wasn’t happening then.

“Melon,” I said to the doctor. “We need to finish this chat before you suffer spontaneous combustion, or get sucked into a wormhole. When we speak next you
will
tell me what the Wardens are meant to be doing, why they’ve woken up now, why they aren’t doing anything, and just the little, tiny matter as to who the hell is behind all this.”

“Funny you should mention wormholes,” he said. His eye closed and re-opened in what might have been a theatrical wink. Winking isn’t a one eyed man’s speciality though.

I turned back to Lothar. “Where are the others?” I said.

“Kam and Kaboom are in the control room, monitoring the door cameras – we got their feeds back online, but the turrets are kaput. And Oxley…well, Oxley took one look at who was on the video screen, drooled a little and rushed off to the toilets.”

“Ever the consummate professional,” I said.

“Professional masturbator, yes,” said Lothar. “Don’t worry though, I heard he doesn’t last long.” He turned and left the room.

I followed him to the bunker’s control room and looked at a screen relaying a feed from the door camera. If blending in was a Warden aim, this one did anything but that. I denied a process that requested I roll my eyes in 'disgust' at the mechanical stereotype that had popped round for a cup of tea. Long, shapely legs: Check. Large, heaving bosoms: Check. Pouting, red lips: Check. Lush, blond hair: Check. Tight, black leather outfit: Check. I could go on, but there was no need, and I didn’t need to know she could emit electromagnetic pulses to know she was a cyborg. She had the outward appearance of a woman designed by committee to appeal to as many human males as possible. Well, within certain racial and cultural demographics, at least. The stereotypical leggy blond goes down well in a lot of places – where a lot of men will hope she’ll do the same to them.

“Well hello there, Miss Rampaging Kill-bot,” I said to nobody in particular.

She really must’ve been gasping for that cup of tea, though, as she soon began methodically punching the middle of the three external doors. We could hear the almighty clang all the way down in the bunker.

“Gentlemen, we appear to be under siege,” I said.

What the hell was wrong with my cyborg brethren? Q4 had failed to take me down on his own, so what was this punchy tart hoping to achieve by herself? Okay, there was a chance that she wasn’t alone, I mean, we can’t pick these guys up on any kind of scanning, and her E.M.P. had taken out all but the door cameras, but I had possible reasons to believe she might actually be alone.

I was thinking about the four cyborgs reportedly sighted at Jolly Meadows by the soldiers; three killed, one escaped – she just hadn’t chosen to escape very far, assuming this was her.

Doc Melon had told me that Q4 had been in touch with nine other cyborgs, so that left five currently unaccounted for. Who was to say they weren’t scattered all over Deliverance? If Melon found only me aboard the bridge of the stranded, orbiting colony ship, then that implied there was one cyborg assigned to each ship, which would make me, plus forty-two other cyborgs in total. It had only been a little more than one full day since Melon warned me, with his dying words, that the Wardens were activating
soon
, and really, there weren’t that many colony cities close enough that recently-activated cyborgs could have come from.