by Andy Remic
~ * ~
BLACK AND WHITE NEWS CLIP
The City’s Premier News Delivery Service
[available in: print, TV, vid, mail, dig.bath, ident.implant, comm., kube, glass.wail, ggg, galaxy.net and eyelid transpose— all for a small monthly fee].
News clip GG/06/12/TBX:
It has been reported by the World Bank that NanoTek are losing as much as one third of their business to the illegal biomod industry which has grown over the last three months. In an astonishing press release to technology industry insiders, NanoTek allowed access to documentation highlighting financial losses and subsequent projected acceleration of losses. It would seem pirated biomod use is on the up and up. Dr Sweeney, MD for NanoTek (Old York) stated, “I cannot believe people are using the much inferior and highly dangerous illegal capsules which purport to be biomod technology. Here at NanoTek we follow stringent safety guidelines and our technology processes are the safest in the business. Illegal capsules are the equivalent of having a back-street abortion, or an amputation with a rusty saw. Dangerous, painful, life-threatening, immoral, illegal—and a threat to the safety and economy of our social structure! I would implore people to use only NanoTek branded merchandise.” When questioned on the, some would say, extortionate pricing system for legitimate biomods and a therefore subsequent understanding for people of limited financial means turning to the much cheaper hacked versions, Sweeney expounded, “The current pricing structure for biomods reflects R&D and the expensive chassis components needed for manufacture. This technology did not invent itself overnight; as such the pricing of this still ground-breaking technology is high and does include a component of profit. NanoTek is, after all, a business. But as with all business models, as take-up escalates so the scale of production will increase and create a more financially palatable product. However, because of the pirated biomods this is actually moving away from the consumer. In effect, in the long run, with this heinous spate of piracies people are effectively cheating themselves.”
News clip: END.
~ * ~
“He’s still out there,” said Slick. His voice was low and disguised the tremor. Sweat painted a sheen on his beautiful, battered brow. Franco nodded, and crept across the warehouse floor, boots crunching bullet-decimated, cubed glass.
Miniguns screamed and bullets slammed through the windows and walls of the warehouse, pounding the building into submission as Franco dived, sliding over glass and covering his head with his hands. Slick cowered in the corner, clutching a length of chain, and glanced right where ten holes had appeared in the powdered brickwork. He could see a swathe of distant warehouses far below.
The firing stopped, and Franco glanced up. His face was sour. He tilted his head and lifted his hand. In old Combat K infantry sign, he said, They are using sonic monitors.
Slick nodded. You sure you can line him up?
I’ll do my best.
Franco eased himself across the floor, trying to avoid the broken glass until he was against the wall. Several storeys below, he could see warehouses stretching off as far as the eye could see. The rotors of the Apache thumped a sonic concussion as it banked and whined. Franco grimaced. Shit. How had he ended up in this predicament? A hunted man? Again?
He locked his D5 shotgun to his back, and checked his Makarov 9mm. A pistol against a thundering war machine? Franco shook his head, then grinned. Hell, he’d had worse odds.
He edged towards the window, careful not to make a sound. Voloshko’s men were monitoring for even the tiniest of movements, hunting Franco and Slick like furry rodents in a burrow.
Franco reached the window. Outside, the sky was brightening. Fireworks still crackled through the heavens and The Quantum Carnival was now, officially, in full swing, despite it being the middle of the night, or ‘night period’ as it had become known.
Again the Apache unleashed a payload of bullets. Franco cowered as metal ate through bricks and spun on trails of red dust through the air. Suddenly, Franco lunged into the space where the window had been—and the Apache squatted, hovering, guns smoking and rotors flickering in a blur. The machine nudged forward and Franco started to fire, Makarov thumping his palm as bullets struck the cockpit and, behind the bullet-proof glass, the pilot smiled. Bullets zipped and whined, ricocheting off the machine. The pilot shrugged—as if to say, “Good try mate. Better luck next time.”
“Now,” hissed Franco.
As the Apache’s pilot took up tension on the mini-gun trigger, so Slick appeared at a second window, heavy chain links in his hands, and watched the pilot’s head snap right to focus on him. He hurled the coil of chain through smashed panels of glass. The chain sailed, uncurling like a huge metal snake, and looped over the Apache’s short, stubby wing and left-hand minigun. In reflex the pilot jerked on his control stick, and the Apache’s engines whined as it lifted, banking. The chain slid across the floor of the old warehouse chamber, Slick nimbly leaping over its fast-slithering length... which went suddenly taut.
Franco and Slick looked at one another.
There came a groan, deep and reverberating, and both men glanced to where they’d fastened the chain to a huge machine of old, rusting iron, bigger than a house, a squat ugly behemoth whose function was lost in time and degradation. It would take more than ten Apaches to lift the hulk. Slick’s face broke into a nasty grimace.
Franco leaned out of the window, watched the Apache struggling, engines screaming now. Fire erupted from exhausts. The chain ground a groove against brickwork, and as Slick appeared at a second window both men watched the war machine sway like a kite on a line, then drop, crashing into the wall, runners folding like buckled toffee, spinning rotors connecting with stone and brick and collapsing in on themselves with a grinding smashing howling cacophony of destructing metal. The Apache compressed. Folded. There was a click of detonation and the machine was consumed in a raging fireball as Franco and Slick skipped back, a wall of fire slamming along the vertical flanks of the building.
Fire roared, and metal screeched.
“Merry Quantum Carnival Day,” said Franco.
“You’re a devious bastard.”
“They don’t call me Franco ‘Devious Bugger’ Haggis for nothing, y’know. Come on. Let’s get out of here—before Voloshko sends some more of his goons.”
“Amen to that.”
~ * ~
People were cheering in the streets. Dancing and singing and drinking. Franco and Slick hurried along, glancing regularly behind. They entered an alleyway, littered with burnt-out firework stubs. They moved cautiously, still checking their back-trail, Slick nursing his wounded and battered shell. The two ex-Combat K men stopped outside a Dreg bar named The Fist Fuck. Noise rattled thin glass windows and light and smoke spilled from various bullet holes. Nice place, thought Franco as he sidled warily towards a huge 2400cc Aprilia TSV—a race bike which had been crashed and had its fairings stripped to reveal the brutality of the acid_alloy-cooled engine beneath. A high set of handlebars had been welded to the top yoke and fat bald tyres sat gleaming, oil-drenched, beneath quad sports cans. Franco fingered the wiring, looking around with his Makarov drawn and ready, then deftly made several cuts and twists. Being a bike already abused by the caress of thieves, the triple immobilisers had been bypassed—probably a professional job from one of the outfitters which specialised in stealing rich Tek-side equipment, circumventing advanced protection electronics and then selling it on in the Dregs. Bikes were the favourite mode of transport down in the Dregs due to the physically narrow and restrictive nature of Sub-C life. There were many localities and districts which could not be reached by car. This made Franco’s current position healthier.
Franco fired the motor, revved the bike hard with a scream of raw engine ferocity, threw his leg over the hard sports seat and grinned as Slick jumped on the back. Dropping the clutch he left a line of rubber against concrete and zipped away into the hazy smog-gloom of Dregside early morning. Behind, a group of men spilled from
the pub shouting abuse; Franco banked left between two narrow walls of concrete and wheelied over a long metal ramp, jumping with a roar of disengaged engine to land in a long narrow courtyard beneath towering cube-scrapers.
Franco fed more fuel into the Aprilia’s hungry engine, and the bike bellowed as it stretched its legs and thundered down narrow alleyways, exhaust booms echoing from wall to wall to wall in a curious song of metal synchronicity. Revellers and whores leapt hurriedly out of his way and Franco watched with cool detached amusement as stocky branded men and gangsters with swirling overcoats danced for him at the right-hand blip of this howling weapon of mass corruption.
Left and right he cannoned, the Aprilia’s needle dancing up to over 180 kph—an insane speed for the Dregs. He sped past crash-barriers at head height, protecting roads blockaded from the Dregs and carrying thick streams of city traffic beyond; under arched bridges the Aprilia spun, Franco’s knee dusting the dirt as the Aprilia’s powerful lights cut slices from the gloom pie.
“Franco, slow down!” shouted Slick.
“What?”
“Slowdown!”
“I can’t hear you!”
After twenty minutes of roaring insanity, Franco finally decided he’d put enough distance between the two men and impending murder. He slowed the growling motor and rolled to a halt, tyres crunching and sliding a little on gravel. People were dancing in the street, drinking and gyrating. They ignored the two men.
Franco killed the engine and kicked the bike onto its side-stand where it clicked as if in annoyance at being switched off; and the two men moved down towards the boarded doors of an old metro station, passing between poor ravers and winos getting jiggy into the jig of The Quantum Carnival. Smoke and steam billowed from the murky depths of the disused station, and three figures moved forward with battered scratched Uzis when they saw the approach—but Slick smiled and the men returned grim smiles through dirt-matted beards.
“You know them?” hissed Franco, twitchy, hand straying to his D5.
“Yeah. They’re not bad men. Just your usual Dregside poorlifes.”
“You OK?” asked one man, peering hard at Slick’s battered face. “You look like you’ve been through the shit.”
“I’ll live.” Slick took a proffered cigarette from the man. “Which is more than I can say for the other bastards.”
Slick dropped the men some old dollars, slid through the doors and led Franco into the ancient disused tunnel network. Inside, even the roar of still exploding fireworks was muffled. He picked his way with care through a maze of corridors, and after an hour of walking emerged through more guarded barriers into TekCity Central. Fluttering Search PopBots came whirling over to the two men, little alloy globes with high trailing flexible antennas, and both Franco and Slick allowed them to give retina scans to check their Credit Rating.
The poor weren’t allowed onto NewLon streets.
With tiny blips and green LEDs both men were allowed to move on. If they had failed the test— been found to have negative Credit Status—then Justice SIMs would have been alerted and intrusion from Sub-C logged. Whilst not breaking the law, it was... frowned upon. And people who strayed were persuaded otherwise. Normally with a laser tube.
Franco and Slick stood for a while, watching the insanity of the early morning party. The City had come... alive. Humans and aliens, SIMs and Slabs, all danced and sang in the streets, drank and fornicated in the gutters, huge walls of living flesh meandering and joyful and the feeling of celebration crept into them, into their veins and souls and Franco sagged, weariness slamming him.
“You OK?” Slick looked concerned.
“A long night,” grinned Franco. “How you holding up?”
Slick, who had been analysing his wounds, shook his head. “Three cracked ribs, a broken finger, and torn ligaments in my groin and ankle. Plus the usual cuts and scrapes. But it could have been worse.” He stared hard into Franco’s eyes. Took the little man by his shoulders and smiled. “I owe you one, mate.”
“Ach, think nothing of it.”
“I still have contacts. Combat K contacts. You ever need a favour, you look me up.”
Franco nodded. Sighed. “I’ll keep it in mind, Slick. Now, you look after yourself.”
“Be careful, Franco.”
“Voloshko doesn’t even know where I live. I faked my application. I’ve never trusted the Seven Syndicates. Bastards, to a man.”
“Even so.”
Franco watched Slick disappear into the throng. Music blatted around him, an irritant. And, despite Franco’s usual party-animal nature, his love of sex and drugs and rock ‘n roll, all he wanted now, amazingly, was a hot mug of cocoa, a kiss from Mel, and his comfy bed.
Franco trudged through the cheering, singing crowds, towards his rest, and only when he was on the fifty-eighth step leading to his apartment did he curse.
“Hot damn and bloody buggers!” He’d forgotten the fireworks. And the jasmine oil.
~ * ~
The apartment squatted in gloom, black-out curtains killing early-morning light. A strange silence seemed to have enveloped the room, and Franco, remembering his action-packed night, shivered.
What if...
What if Voloshko had discovered where he lived?
What if Voloshko had sent killers, or kidnappers, for Mel?
What if they’d rumbled Franco, and linked him to the jewel heist of a few years previous? Five of the Seven Syndicates had money in on that deal... which meant Franco had now made enemies of six of The City’s toughest criminal underworld organisations.
Makarov in hand, his weariness evaporating, he called out in a wavering warble. “Mel? Mel?”
“In here.”
Franco scowled, but his racing heart calmed a little. He holstered his weapon, locked the door carefully behind him, and picked his way across the rubble of his apartment.
Franco peered into the bedroom. “You OK, honey?”
“Mmm. Mmm.” Mel turned, still half-asleep, hair tousled. “Hiya. You’re back late.”
“Busy day at the office,” grinned Franco.
“Hope you didn’t cause any trouble?”
Picturing the headless body of Keg, and the exploding inferno of the Apache F52, Franco shrugged powerful shoulders. “Nah. Nothing little old Franco couldn’t handle. After all, they don’t call me Franco ‘Trouble Free’ Haggis for nothing!”
Mel frowned. “Franco...”
“Yeah yeah, I know. They don’t call me Franco ‘Trouble Free’ Haggis at all. But hey...”
“Did you get the jasmine oil?”
“Sorry. Slipped my mind. I’ll pick it up in the morning.” He yawned. “Listen. You go back to sleep, I’m gonna grab a few beers and wind down before I hit the AM pillow.”
“Don’t stay up too late. You know we’re going to the Tek Central Carnival Opening with Jim and Sandra tomorrow afternoon. I don’t want you yawning all the way through the presentations.”
“I know. I know.”
Franco grabbed himself a ten-pack of Wife-Beater and slumped on the settee. Despite there being truth in what he’d told Mel, there was also another reason.
He cracked open a beer. Placed his D5 shotgun across his knees. And waited to see if he’d been followed.
Unlikely. But always possible,
Outside, millions thronged the streets, singing and dancing and drinking and drugging. The thump of distant music became a mantra. Screams and laughter the chorus. And the Carnival Song dropped a gear, wound itself up, and trillions really started to get jiggy.
~ * ~
Franco opened his eyes, slowly. Confusion was his master. Rat-spit his saliva. Tom-tom drums his skull. “Shit,” was all he managed. Then his wandering blurred vision fell on the ten empty tinnies of Wife-Beater. Stupid. Stupid. And into the thunder of his skull intruded a white-hiss cackle of vacant TV broadcast.
“Ugh. What channel was I watching?” Most ran 24 hours. That meant it was a pirate channel. He reddened. T
hat usually meant cartoon alien porn.
Franco sat up, his bones creaking, empty tins rattling from his body. His D5 shotgun hit the carpet with a thump. His feet were encased in his large fluffy comedy rabbit slippers. His tired eyes tried to focus on the clock. 11.17 AM. Hot damn, he’d overslept!
Franco climbed wearily to his feet, clutched his head in his hands, and wrenched his skull sideways. There was a sickening crack of crunching neck tendons. “Ahh,” said Franco. “Ahh. Ahh. That feels better.” Outside, the siren of an emergency vehicle wailed across The City.
But... he thought.
But but but.
But why was he still sleeping at 11.17 AM?
Why hadn’t Mel woken him?