The Nemesis Worm
Page 7
“Now, I will kill you,” said the droid. “I am disappointed, I expected better sport from you. You are a terrible shot.”
Otto coughed as he laughed. “I’m hungover. Bad day yesterday.” A couple of his carbon-fibre ribs were bent out of shape, the bone they were bonded to cracked. “And I wasn’t aiming at you, Scheisskopf.”
“So you are a traitor as well as a weakling. A shame. Goodbye Otto Klein.” The droid pointed its good arm at Otto’s head, the muzzle of the machine gun gaping.
“One last thing,” said Otto, spitting out a mouthful of blood. “Tell me, what occurred in the garden of Gethsemane?”
The droid locked rigid. It juddered and jerked as it fought some internal imperative. For a moment it looked like it would overcome the fit, and Otto tensed, ready to fight to the end. But then the machine spoke gratingly “A burial,” said the copy.
“Thanks. Suicide code 30-0-04,” Otto said.
All life left the droid, it froze and toppled over to lie in the water on the floor. If they were lucky, right now wherever Richard’s copy was dwelling on the Grid it was fizzing gently out of existence.
Otto woozily checked himself over. He hurt in a hundred places, but he’d live. He clutched his wounded hand to his side, the pleasant warmth of his military grade healthtech pushing the pain aside as it got to work. Slowly, leaning against the wall for support, walked past the prone machine and made his way back up to the roof.
Twenty minutes later, Richards came back online. He’d shut himself up in his base unit, locking himself away from the Grid the instant Otto had felled his sheath, depriving the copy of access. It was the only way to be sure the copy could not take him out remotely, if it indeed was capable, but Richards did not want to take that chance.
“It worked?” Richards said over the Grid. His voice was distorted and broken up, Otto’s internal comms suite another thing that had suffered badly in the encounter.
“I am still alive,” said Otto. He sat on the roof, waiting for the car to return. He brought to mind the deactivation code and sent it off to the vehicle’s brain. They’d left it with a surprise package for the copy should it have tried to access the car. A bomb was a poor insurance policy, but it would have annoyed Richards’ double at the least.
“You can’t tell anyone about this,” said Richards. “You literally have my life in your hands now.”
“I won’t. I am going to wipe the wording of the code from my mentaug and have it alter my natural memory, just to be sure. I got the room with a wide spread shot too, enough to fry any hidden surveillance if they bother with that out here on Boris, so I don’t think anyone else will have heard,” Otto hunched over. The weather was hot, stifling so. “How did you know Abuso and his cronies wouldn’t have found the suicide code when they copied you?”
“I figured that they’d ditch all my memories of Thor. They probably thought it would make their little messiah too much like me. You wouldn’t know that he and I had agreed to the code back at the height of the Five crisis unless you went through my entire memory with a fine toothed comb. The code itself was well hidden, I was banking on it being pasted over with the rest of me when they made their ‘Eight’. Those guys were good, good enough to copy a Five, but too arrogant to be careful.”
“When were you sure it was still there? You really were not certain when we went in there, I think.”
“No,” admitted Richards. “I had a hunch. That’s why I had to meet him, I had to find out if the memories had come across or not.”
“Great. Next time, let me know before I’m going to get my ass handed to me that I might be about to die.”
“Sorry. I was right though, so quit complaining.”
“Why don’t you get rid of the code?” the car was coming into view. Otto stood with difficulty. “Someone else could use it against you.”
“I can’t.”
“Jesus, that’s a liability.”
The car came in and landed, turbofans whickering in their housings.
“Get your hand sorted out. I have a new sheath being delivered, should be here soon. I believe I owe you a drink.”
“And the rest,” said Otto.
Otto limped into the car and asked it to take him to the Wellington Arco hospital. His artificial vision was damaged, the patterns it described on the inside of his brain intensifying the tail-end of his hangover into a searing headache. Outside the sun was heavy and orange, pregnant with the night, and that made it worse. He thought about dimming the car canopy to blot it all out, but he didn’t, and watched until Boris island was lost in the distance before he allowed himself to close his eyes.
If you enjoyed this story, head over to your favourite bookstore or eBookstore and buy a copy of the first Richards & Klein novel, Reality 36. Out 4 Aug 2011 (UK and eBook) and Aug 30 2011 (US/Canada).
ANGRY ROBOT
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