Z14 (6 page)

“Doctor Melon’s gift,” I muttered. I assumed he must have buried it here in case he decided not to give it to me, if he’d managed to meet me in person, in my cave. Now, I’m pretty curious for a machine, but stabbing this thing into my ear, just to see what it did, didn’t strike me as a sensible idea, especially considering Melon’s disappointment with the way I was turning out. Well sorry ‘dad’, I don’t want to be like you.

Melon’s buried item inspired me to bury Q4’s body. I could chuck it in the sea but I wasn’t sure if even Deliverance’s voracious sea-life would be able to dispose of that kind of body for me. Besides, a use for a dead, broken cyborg body might materialise one day. So instead I spent twenty precious minutes speed-digging a grave and cramming the cyborg’s remains into it, before covering it up and smoothing the surface over as neatly as I could. I made a note of the exact location in my memory.

I clutched the data storage module in one hand and picked up Q4’s head by its hair with the other. Q4 didn’t speak, but just glared at me like a sulking toddler, whenever its eyes were able to see mine. I shrugged and then made a controlled jetpack descent – pay attention Doctor Melon’s ghost – to my cave. Being a prudent cyborg, I had a bag packed ready for evacuation at all times. I didn’t need much, just jetpack fuel, food and some clothes. I dropped Q4’s head and the storage device into the bag, then I picked up my favourite cuddly toy, wondering just where the fuck a grubby leopard’s arse fitted into all this, if at all. I shoved that in too, zipped the bag up and carried it outside the cave. It was too busy here these days – I’d have guided tour buses pulling up before too long if I stayed.
Come see the mighty fortress of the insane killer cyborg! Please note: We will not be held liable for people falling off the cliff. Novelty toasters can be ordered from our ‘net-page.

I paused on the narrow, bloodstained ledge outside the cave to send a brief message to a few recipients, which read:

Poker night, guys! Two days early, but the usual time. Although this time I’m serious, there’s a ludicrously high chance that I’ll get you all killed.

See you there,

Z.

I wondered momentarily as to why the new Cyborg Net – just my little name for it – had gone silent, since Q4 hollered for backup. Either they didn’t talk much, or they’d revoked my access, which was so sensible a thing to do, that you had to wonder why they’d not done it before they’d let me know reinforcements were coming. I couldn’t detect the network anymore, but then I’d never been able to previously, so that didn’t mean much. If I’d been disconnected I’d try not to cry too much over the rejection. I allowed myself a well-simulated chuckle as I dived off the cliff and fired up the jetpack. Destination: Boram Bay.

Boram Bay by night was just as ugly a sight as it was by day. It had become a huge city by Deliverance standards, with a population estimate of nearly five million. The centre of the city was where this particular colony ship had landed and undergone a remarkable transformation. The settler generation initially carried on living in the ship’s habitation dome, which detached from the rest of the ship, embedded itself in the ground and opened up to Deliverance’s atmosphere. Voila, all the shantytowns that the people had lived in for generations aboard the ship were now part of the planet.

The colony ship’s vast engines converted themselves into power stations – of a type that have never yielded their power source secrets – and the rest of the ship transformed into factories that started churning out all manner of much-needed equipment. The ship’s bridge opened itself up to the humans for the first time and acted as a command centre. It even came with printed instructions on how to get the colony on its feet. Of course, the humans didn’t take advantage of all this near-miraculous setup. No, they collectively went insane for a couple of hundred years and tried to wipe themselves out during the Settler Wars.

As things eventually calmed down, and the victors naturally all but enslaved everybody else, Boram Bay – which was still New America II, back then – and many other colonies prospered and expanded. The old shantytowns were replaced with more factories, and dirty, human-tech power stations and chaotic, sprawling residential areas with houses of every conceivable size and style spread in every direction. The result was that this city was a complete aesthetic disaster, indescribably chaotic in its composition – something that had poetic parallels with both Deliverance’s past and its present.

The Overlords of modern-day Boram Bay enjoy that chaos, they rely on it. Founded two hundred and twenty-four years ago by Oswald Boram, The Overlords are a loose alliance of whichever companies and gangs – the differences are negligible – are strong enough at any one time not to be torn apart, or swallowed by their peers. Together they habitually milk the rest of Deliverance’s people for their own, generally twisted and perverse, pleasures.

Ah, Oswald Boram. Has there ever been such an audacious bastard? Amidst the endless wars and strife on Deliverance, he alone brought hope to many humans. He was the foreman of a factory that started creating aid packages and distributing them, under the protection of armed convoys, throughout the planet. It was seen as something of a change of heart at the time, because Oswald’s factory had until then been manufacturing inefficient and dangerous laser-based small arms, that Oswald himself had designed. Nevertheless, Oswald’s Aid, as it came to be known, was welcomed everywhere. His men had gained access to every colony on the planet, as they brought relief to millions. So, it came as a surprise to all when his men suddenly began using every other colony’s defence force as live-fire demonstrations of the power of his – until-then – secret, and very much improved, generation of laser rifles. Oswald’s Aid went down in history as Oswald’s Charade.

Oswald spared a few, murdered many and forged the Boram Bay Overlords, who continue to lord it over everyone else today and generally take the piss while they enjoy the planet’s spoils. I should maybe feel bad that I’ve never cared enough to take them on completely, rather than just assassinating whichever of them and their cronies was brought to my attention, but hey, I can blame Doctor Melon and his shitty hack-job on my coding for that, now. If I had a conscience, I’d consider it absolved. Ah fuck, though, why do I feel...dirty? Get out of my head, guilt, or I’ll start rooting for the Warden program to take over.

The Overlords don’t dare bother me, as much as I’m sure they’d like to see me gone. I was the wolf that sometimes took a sheep from the flock, but the flock barely noticed the loss and just carried on. I can come and go even from the heart of Boram Bay unmolested, lest I molest right back. The people there try to pretend I don’t exist when they see me, even when I land in the middle of a seedy red-light district late at night and start stomping through the alleyways, looking like a man who’d been all but flayed alive. I really should take the time out to regenerate while I’ve got anything left to regenerate from.

I reached my destination – an old bar done up half-heartedly to look like an even older cowboy saloon – and went inside. The dingy room was empty apart from four men sitting around a table in one corner, playing cards. They all stopped and looked at me as I strode in.

“Evening, fellas,” I said. “Deal me in.”

“Hey Zee, how you doing buddy?” said the man dealing cards, as I approached the table. The battered black cowboy hat that he wore was as much at odds with his arctic camouflage jacket and trousers, as were those garments with the climate around Boram Bay – but to see Lothar Krebb without that hat would probably be to see him dead. Even a bullet once ripping through the hat had failed to dislodge it. Lothar looked almost as well worn as his hat. He looked like a tough, grizzled old war veteran – so his appearance was entirely consistent with the life he had led to date.

“It’s ‘Zed’, Lothar. I’ve told you before, I’m ninety-eight point three percent certain that I’m English. Well, kind of English,” I said, composing my facial features into a smile.

“You’re a jumped up calculator, is what you are,” said Lothar, as he slid a card to an empty spot at the table. “From now on your name is Krewson. Besides, England died with Earth – whatever the fuck England ever was, anyway.”

“Krewson also make land mines, Lo, not just calculators,” said the man to Lothar’s left. “I’d check my seat before I sit down when Zed’s been around, if I were you.”

“That’s closer to the truth than you’ve ever been before, Ox,” I said as I slid into the only empty chair at the table, dropping my bag on the floor beside me. “Have you contracted a human virus? Its mere presence in your system would no doubt increase your intelligence quotient considerably.”

Ox, or rather Oxley Drebben, gaped at me. He did that a lot. Not the smartest human I’d ever met, but his accuracy with a sniper rifle was all that had ever mattered to me. He too was wearing arctic camouflage – his scrawny frame seemed barely able to support the bulky cold-weather gear. Oxley’s friends had told me previously that he looked like a chicken in human form, so I had run an image of his face through my morphing software, and I had to say, I was able to affirm that the comparison was a good one.

The man to Lothar’s right had been playing with his poker chips, performing acts of reasonable dexterity on them with his fingers, which no doubt looked quite skillful to other humans.

“Holy cyborg, Zed, we’ve seen you shot to shit before, but, fella, I can see
through
you. In several places,” said the chip-fiddler.

Where Lothar was grizzled, by comparison, Kamalnayan Chennappan looked like he’d just gone through a particularly efficient regenerative cycle, his baby-smooth skin accentuated by a near-perfect physique. “Call me Kam,” he’d said when we first met. I assured him that while the name Kamalnayan Chennappan might be too many syllables for his squad-mates to get their tongues around, I was more than capable of addressing him correctly. “Just call me Kam, fella, it’ll just confuse these lunk-heads else wise,” he had insisted. He was wearing a bright, retro Earth-style Hawaiian tee-shirt, a tartan kilt and a pair of antique, but empty, ammo bandoleers that criss-crossed his chest. Kam’s a very trendy human. My sarcasm chip is fully operational and is reporting zero percent activity.

“I walked into some Manooglas,” I said to the group, as Lothar cast a second and final card my way.

“Kaboom,” said the fourth man, as he flicked at some black powder that dusted the breast of his dark blue coveralls. That would be something like gunpowder, no doubt. The Kaboom Baboon, was this group’s demolitions expert, and a good one. Although, accomplished as he was, he saw me as a grand master of the explosive arts, who could teach him how to make ever bigger and better ‘kabooms’.

Kaboom had been a baboon farmer before he’d joined Lothar’s unit – baboons being one of very few monkey and ape species to come along for the ride from Earth. They had become quite common as pets, although people also ate them. The numerous baboon farms on the planet served either market and sometimes, both. Others would swap their end product, from live companion, to dead meat at the drop of a slaughtered ape, to stay abreast of market trends.

There’s an old human saying that people look like their pets – which didn’t explain why Kaboom looked like a horse – yes, I ran him through the morphing software too. I’m not usually in the habit of comparing human faces to those of animals, but I’ve found that saying
you know; the one that looks like a rat,
is often a much better memory prod to some humans than saying
you know, Dave. Dave! No, no, Dave
.

“Manooglas?” said Ox. “You try getting close enough to one to screw it, or something?” Reaching for the bottom of the barrel was often Ox’s first lunge into a conversation.

“Zed,” said Kam with mock concern, “did the Manooglas blow your dick off?”

“Does your washing machine have a dick, Kam?” said Lothar. “No? Then why would Zee have ever had one?”

“Your mom’s got a dick, Lo,” said Ox.

“Yeah, she cut yours off and mounted it on a miniature plaque,” said Lothar.

“It’s a long story,” I said, cutting in before a fistfight did. “About the Manooglas that is, not about the existence of my penis.”

“Then this’ll be where your message about getting us all killed gets explained,” said Lothar. I couldn’t see his eyebrows past the brim of his hat, but the quizzical expression on his face suggested that both were raised. Lothar was usually sparing with his expressions – this was his way of screaming
what the hell is going on?

I’d met these guys almost three years ago, when one of the Boram Bay Overlords’ underlings put out a contract on them. Lothar’s fledgling mercenary enterprise was employed by the Overlords’ irregular military forces, and, as part of a larger force was sent to a colony city called Dreary Hole. They’d been tasked with stamping out an ‘armed insurrection’ against the Overlords. It turned out to be little more than an ill-advised demonstration at an illegal – according to the Overlords – college by some students. One clown – a genuine clown, attending night classes in astro-physics – fired an old Earth-tech weapon at the Overlords’ troops and the order to liquidate the area was given. Lothar’s unit refused the order and joined the kids. Of course, the kids, and Lothar’s unit, were all but wiped out – it was utterly inevitable – but Lothar went guerrilla with the remnants of his men and they started doing what they could for the people of Dreary Hole from the shadows.