by Jack Yeovil
0307.
“Large concentration of bodies coming our way,” said Danny Riegert from the monitor. “Looks like a lynch mob.”
“Get ready to rock and roll,” Susie Terhune snapped, taking the controls of the chainguns. The command unit was in its strategic position in the town square. The roofguns swivelled.
“Forty or fifty, armed and angry.”
“Wait till you can distinguish their heartbeats on the sensor.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Her husband had left her the year before for some Tex-Mex bitch, claiming that she was too boring to live with. Chuck and Benny, her kids, whined that she was never home. She had just had painful surgery to remove an ovarian cyst that had turned out to be benign. And she had never seen the Pacific Ocean.
She tapped keys, and flicked switches.
“A hundred yards, and closing…”
“Tell me when they get to fifty.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
The computers hummed, as the smart bullets picked their targets. Once locked on to a heartbeat pattern, they would whizz around like fireflies until they found the precise biosignal that would allow them to explode. What do you know, these babies really did have your name written on them.
“Fifty.”
She turned on the maxiscreamers, and the riot-control noise boomed through the town, shaking teeth loose, bursting eardrums, bringing rickety buildings down.
“Spot on. They’re running around like chickens at a geek convention.”
The smartguns locked, and flashed READY at her.
When she was out of this, she’d check out a sexclone with a moustache like Bronson Manolo and a body like Stallone, rent herself some clean water and a whirlpool bath, and have herself a party and a half.
She initiated the firing sequence.
“They’re about to scatter, ma’am.”
“So much the better.”
The guns started spitting intelligent death into the night.
0235.
Jessamyn saw a crowd going down, those damned smugslugs spinning through the air like midges.
GenTech had developed the little bastards. But once they were on the market, the corp had spent a lot of R and D money coming up with a way to beat them. And Doc Threadneedle had access to that technology.
She took a deep breath, and a tiny sponge inside her heart—a bioengine—inflated, changing her heart’s signature. It was peculiarly like having the hiccoughs. Thanks to the little organism, her life signal would change every twenty seconds for anything up to half an hour.
People she didn’t know died around her, but she was untouched.
0199.
Bronson Manolo hummed a Butthole Surfers number to himself, and touched up his hair, using the rearview mirror as he patted his coiffeur. He wanted another beer, but Gari had him on one-a-day for as long as his organic rice diet was holding up. Dammit, he deserved another brew. He was working hard. Let the Pyramid Pooper take a hike just this once, eh?
0196.
What the hell, people in Africa were gasping for a beer, and he had a whole case stashed here. He reached for a can.
0188.
“You can be a success,” he chanted to himself, “your mind is a chisel, your will is a hammer, and life is a rock.”
He focused on the miniature plastic pyramid on the dashboard, and willed this mission to succeed.
0179.
Rodriguez took up a command position in the old jailhouse. It must have closed down when the state police pulled out, abandoning these backwaters to the gangcults.
His crew were in pairs, going on a house-to-house, and he was ticking off the cleared locations on his streetmap. He had taken off his helmet and gloves for the job, and was stabbing with a stub of lightpencil at the screenmap Manolo had given him. Half the town was down by now.
But still no Jessamyn.
He remembered their girl as she had been when he first had her through the system in Denver. She could have been hardly eleven then. But with a clown-white face and fetish-chains, she looked older than sin.
“Livery stable clear,” Baldrey barked in his ear. He checked the building off.
He also remembered Jessamyn’s Old Man. Now, there was a seriously disturbed individual. No wonder his precious had ripped his throat out.
“Any sightings of Jessamyn?” he asked on the open channel.
“Don’t worry,” Terhune said. “She hasn’t got a chance.”
She had had big, sad, green eyes. Two of them, then.
“No, Susie. You’re right. She’s never had a chance.”
0156.
The Argies were coming for him, bloody buggering bastards of dagoes that they were. He could hear the grease on their hair frying from ten miles away.
Sarn’t Major Biggleswade signalled for his troops to follow, and made a dash across the burning street.
“Forever England,” he shouted, “the Falklands are Forever England.”
Teddy-bear shaped Argies rushed at him, firing ineptly. He was over the top like PC Dixon taking out a French terrorist cell.
“Come on lads, we can whip ’em. Corned beefeaters! Pansy Sanchos! Gaucho gauleiters!”
He was hit in the legs, but he backed out of the line of fire. Where was the Union Jack? Someone was supposed to be carrying it.
“For England, God and St George!”
0134.
Jessamyn fell to a crouch, and clambered across the square on all fours, recalling her sandrat days. She was a good animal again.
A soldier loomed over her, and she rolled, firing upwards in an arc. The suit punctured and bled, the faceplate cracking.
Wriggling her shoulders and pushing with her feet, she covered the last ten yards. Her karate jacket ripped, but the skin of her back was unabraded.
She got to the command ve-hickle, and spread herself against its treads, firing across the square at some stray killers.
0086.
Simon Threadneedle was almost burned out now. His eyes had popped, but the sensors inside his skull fed him heat patterns that were clearer than any visual input. Most of the tissue was gone, but the bio-implants still functioned. And he still had his greymass.
Magda ze Schluderpacheru was dead, had died near the beginning of it. That was a shame. She had been soft and warm, the last of his meatform’s attachments.
Curtius Kenne was dead too, and most of the other citizens. He hadn’t kept track, but he thought he had sensed Jitters going down.
Where was Jessamyn? She should survive. She had been a walking ruin when she came to him, and he had made her better.
Better than anyone. Better, even, than he had made himself.
Should he have told her, he wondered? Should he have mentioned the strange symptoms and side-effects he had been observing in his own case?
The detachment. The languor. His feelings were heightened, but his drives had been running down. He could barely relate to people. Before Jessamyn had come to him, he had sometimes spent days at a time sitting in front of the windows in his bedroom, looking at the unchanging, unmoving desert as the sun and the moon did their daily dance.
The moon…
0050.
Manolo belched, and excused himself. 0049. 0048. 0047. 0045. 0043. 0039.
“Ma’am,” said Danny Riegert, “we’ve got a weird reading, close to the ve-hickle.”
Susie Terhune slipped the lase to automatic, and let it continue slicing up the rooftops.
“Specify.”
“Down low, by the treads, in actual contact with the module.”
“Our girl?”
“Hard to say. The heartbeat doesn’t match, but it also keeps changing. I think it’s some kind of systems error.”
“Idiot, don’t you read Guns and Killing? She’s had a heartsponge implant. Let me think, let me think…”
Terhune’s fingers flew over the keyboard, pulling a close-range weapons menu out of the memory.
1: MINISCREAMER
>
2: CLOSE-RANGE SMARTGUN
3: ELECTROCHARGE
4: GAS GRENADE
She punched in a Code 3, and a Confirm.
The ve-hickle buzzed, as it discharged.
“See how you like that, hagwitch!”
0036.
Jessamyn felt her body arch as the electricity hit. She sucked in a double-lungful of air and screamed, but not in pain. It was her predator’s howl of triumph.
She remembered Doc Threadneedle suggesting she try sucking her finger and sticking it in an electric socket.
Every nerve in her body came alive. She had never felt stronger. How long would this last?
She scrambled up onto the top of the ve-hickle, still feeling the hyperbuzz.
Sex could not be better than this.
She came to the smartgun mounting, and ripped the multi-barrelled weapon out at the roots. It came away as easily as a dead treebranch. Metal tore. Wires shorted out.
The screamers started again, and she let the durium shields up inside her ears.
There was a battened hatch on top of the ve-hickle. This was going to be like opening a can.
0029.
Biggleswade saw the British heroine climb up onto the Argie tank, and cheered. He dragged his dead legs behind him, and pulled himself towards the battle. The girl was bloody buggering Victoria Cross material, and he wanted to be there to see her run the Union Jack up the flagpole at Port Stanley. Puerto bloody buggering Galtieri in-bloody-buggering-deed! The girl got a good grip on the hatch, and pulled it away, tossing it across the square like a dustbin lid.
0027.
The girl-thing was in the command centre. Susie Terhune scrabbled under her seat for the handgun stashed there.
Riegert was gone, out the hatch, screaming. He had made a dash when the quarry had dropped through.
Terhune got a shot off, but the quarry leaned to one side and the slug missed. It ricocheted off a bulkhead, impossibly loud in the confined space, and buried itself in the fleshy part of Terhune’s thigh.
Blood filled her lap. She was strapped into her seat.
She tried to raise her hands, tried to surrender, but she couldn’t move, words wouldn’t shake loose of her mouth.
The quarry came for her. Jessamyn Bonney looked so young.
The screen flashed up a weapons menu, requesting operator input.
The quarry took her by the scruff of her neck, and shoved her face into the screen.
The glass cracked, and Terhune felt something go inside her skull. Sparks showered out of the ruptured system.
The quarry rammed her into the screen again. Terhune’s face pushed through the window into the workings of the command module. Currents crackled around her, and she smelled her hair burning.
She continued to twitch like a headless chicken long after she was dead.
0019.
Manolo pulled another tab, and sucked the beertube. He sensed the pyramid vibrating.
The Argie came flying out of the tank, running from the British heroine. Jitters took careful aim, and got him with a headshot. The foreigner stumbled on a few steps, his brains leaking out around his earphones, and collapsed in a heap.
Bloody buggering serve him right!
He tried to sing “God Save the Queen,” but blood came up from his chest. He realized he was due for shipping home to Blighty. With these scratches, he was out of the rest of the war. Bloody shame. He hoped the rest of the lads would do him proud.
There’d be free drinks for him for years in the Wise Serpent in Micklethwaite Road, Fulham.
The burning building behind him settled, and a triangular slice of wall slid out of place. Bricks rained around him, crushing him into the street.
“God Save…”
0018.
Manolo flicked a switch and brought up the other figure. 0012. There had been 75 Holderness-Manolo personnel at the outset of this engagement. Now there were 12.
He thought about that. He had expected losses, but this was above even his guestimate.
Terhune wasn’t answering. “Rodriguez, do you copy?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Your position?”
“The jailhouse. It’s pretty hairy down here.”
“Have you terminated the quarry?”
“I cannot confirm or deny that.”
0017–0012.
“There are seventeen hostiles left alive. Do you have reason to suspect that Jessamyn Bonney is among their number?”
There was a pause. “No reason, sir. But she is. I know she is. She’ll be the last.”
0017–0011.
H-M had just lost another man. The reparations on this were going to be cosmic. General Disaster would be upping the Agency’s premiums next year for sure. The accountants would bum out on that one.
“Don’t pull out until you’ve taken her down, Rodriguez.”
“I don’t intend to.”
“Good man.”
0016–0011.
Manolo decided to ride the vibes for the moment.
Jessamyn left the dead woman with her face in her terminal, and climbed onto the top of the command module. There was less gunfire now, but the whole town was on fire. The streets were littered with the dead. It was like Spanish Fork all over again. Like too many towns. A crazy man, someone she had never seen before, took a shot at her from a rooftop. The slug rang against the armourplate of the ve-hickle. She took aim at the sniper, but his roof collapsed under him, dropping him into the fire.
The only thing still standing in town was the gallows. There wouldn’t be much use for that in the morning.
0011–0010.
They nearly had parity.
0010–0010.
That was a comfort. One H-M combat Op in full kit should equal four or five sandrats.
0010–0008.
Maybe desperation brought out survival instincts in the gangscum.
Rodriguez was still in place.
Nevertheless, it was time to take a little precautionary measure. Manolo pulled the security systems keyboard out of the dash, and entered the lock-down programs.
Durium shields slid down the windows, blanking out the moonlight. The interior lights flickered, and came on.
The wheels retracted, and the shutters closed their apertures. The DeLorean settled on the sand like a beached powerboat. Multiple locks slid into place, sealing the ve-hickle tighter than the Bank of Tokyo.
Explosive bolts sealed shut the cardkeyholes in the doorhandles. The only way in now was through the computer palm-recognition slab, and that was programmed only to reverse the lock-down upon the authority of executive-level Holderness-Manolo personnel.
0007–0004.
It was quiet in the DeLorean now. The LED figures blinked in silence. Manolo heard his own breathing.
0006–0003.
Simon Threadneedle walked down the main street. He knew he must look barely human, a robotic skeleton with a few charred scarecrow tatters hanging from the steel.
“Jessamyn,” he called.
She looked round. She did not register any shock.
“Doc?”
“Yes. I’m in here somewhere.”
“Doc…”
“I know.”
They stood, looking at each other. She was bearing up well, a few bruises but nothing serious. Her clothes were torn, and her hair was a mess, but there was no damage. He could feel proud of himself.
“Is this over?” he asked.
“Nearly. No one’s shot at me for a minute.”
“So, we won?”
She made a gesture, indicating the scatter of bodies. “If you call this winning.”
“You’re here. That’s what’s important.”
“It doesn’t feel important.”
0002–0002.
Manolo had the cast of characters worked out. H-M still had Rodriguez, and himself. The others would be Jessamyn Bonney and the doctor, Threadneedle. That would be the last of it. They were the improved humans.
>
0002–0002.
The Doc was in bad shape. Only now did Jessamyn realize just how completely he had transformed himself. His face was a melted-tar smear, with durium highlights. She saw the wires threaded through his limbs.
“Jessamyn, there are things you have to know about the treatment.”
His voice was still the same, although she could see the silver ball in his throat where it was generated.
“Zarathustra closed down the project for good reasons, by his lights. There are… side-effects. Psychological, I think.”
A cold hand caressed Jessamyn’s metal-sheathed spine.
“You’ll have to work at it, work at remaining human inside… I’m not sure that I’ve managed it all that well, myself. Sometimes, I just sit and stare, forgetting… for weeks, Jessamyn, for weeks. I can do almost anything with this improved body, but my mind has got blasé about it. When you’re superhuman, so little seems worth the bother. You must resist that. You must…”
“Doc?” She was almost pleading with him. Don’t die, don’t die!
The servos in his cheeks made a smile, although there was no flesh to pull. His teeth grinned perpetually.
“You’re crying. That’s good.”
Jessamyn put a hand to her face. There was moisture around her optic.
“Biofluid.”
“No, I gave you back some tearducts when I inserted the new model. I had some to spare.”
The town hall collapsed, sending a cloud of ash and sparks across the square.
0002–0002.
Rodriguez watched from the jailhouse. Jessamyn was talking to the tall thing. He hadn’t been able to raise Manolo for minutes. It was down to him. The house-to-house had been called off. He didn’t think he had any soldiers left, but himself.
He pulled on his gauntlets, and picked up his helmet. It locked into place.
He picked up his M–29, and silently slipped a new clip into the magazine.