by Andy Remic
What about this one? she thought.
Put it with the others. Thank you, my little flower.
MICHELLE preened, reached out, plucked the GK from the clamp of the ramp with a pop. Thousands of highly toxic poisonous spikes failed to penetrate MICHELLE’S metal skin; even if they had, they would have had little effect. MICHELLE was alive with billions of nanobots which would have negated the poison—any poison—within seconds. MICHELLE was military grade. Designed for the army. MICHELLE was Hard to Kill.
She strode back to her cage, opened the blast doors, and tossed the tiny GK inside. Nyx rattled from the back wall, limbs flailing, and lay still. With a grunt, MICHELLE heaved the blast doors— each weighing several hundred tonnes—back into well-oiled grooves.
MICHELLE grinned. “I am MICHELLE. Hear me roar!” she said, and roared. It was so loud, many of the light bulbs in the underground vault popped and shattered, littering the floor with broken glass.
Well done, my sweet, said Professor Xakus. Now I’m coming down with some friends. We need transport to another location. Would you please try and not hurt anybody?
Sure thing, thought back MICHELLE in smell-thought.
With a groan, the ramp juddered, and started to descend.
~ * ~
Keenan hunkered down, peering into the gloom. Lights fizzled, beams glittering from shards on the concrete-alloy floor. The booms, crashes and clangs which had filled the underground vault had Keenan and Franco exchanging worried glances, whilst Knuckles, still shaken from his near-death encounter, backed away brandishing his machete stained with congealing zombie blood.
“Follow me.”
Professor Xakus strode down the ramp, boots crunching slivers of twisted alloy where Nyx had been trapped and forcibly wrenched free, leaving long smears in the metal. He stood at the bottom, hands on hips, a broad smile hijacking his features as he gazed up at—
Keenan looked up. And up.
Shit, he thought. It’s big.
MICHELLE was a good fifty feet in height. She was built around an endoskeleton of high-grade military armoured TitaniumIV-alloy. Her hands and feet were huge cubic clumps of steel with braided piping coming from ankles and wrists and feeding into limbs. The trunk, arms and legs were a kind of blended, Kevlar-glass flesh, which looked a little like metal matting but, Xakus assured the Combat K men, was 100% organic matter. A short, squat powerful neck supported a head that was—
“By God, that’s bloody ugly!” snapped Franco, staring up at the biomechanical behemoth.
MICHELLE clanked, took a step back, and lowered her face to within inches of Franco. Her head was as large as he was. He stared into glittering, silver eyes, many-faceted, like those of an insect, each tiny plate fashioned from high polished alloy. The panels and plates slithered and adjusted with the tiniest of metallic grating sounds. The eyes were large, like dinner plates set in the face of a human-insect. MICHELLE’S face was the same alloy matting skin as on the torso, arms and legs. She had no nose, only a horizontal slot for a mouth—which she opened, showing row upon row of razor-sharp teeth.
“They are, actually, industrial standard razors,” said Xakus proudly. He stepped past Franco and patted MICHELLE on the face where her nose should have been. Steam hissed from vents behind her vertical metal ears. It seemed to be a sign of pleasure. “There, there, who’s a good girl?”
MICHELLE beamed, the horizontal slot somehow transferring the idea of a smile.
“So it’s... alive?” rumbled Franco.
“Yes, biological and mechanical. I built her. She is mine.”
“You’re crazier than me, crazy fool!” snapped Franco. “You’s a lunatic, mate. Why, in the name of all that’s holy, did you build that damned monstrosity? And why did you make it so big? And why did you make it so bloody donkey-ugly?”
MICHELLE moved, so fast she was a blur. Her mouth was open, razor teeth inches from Franco’s face. Her breath eased out, smelling of hot oil and ozone. She could have quite easily removed his tiny head. In fact, his entire being.
Franco stared into jaws of impending death. He snuffled a little. “OK,” he managed, after a few moments of careful contemplation. “I retract what I just said. And I... ‘pologise.”
Clanking, MICHELLE stood to her full height, limbs whirring and rotating. Guns appeared along her forearms. Missiles ejected from the sides of her boots.
“She’s a Class H military droid,” said Xakus. “I was researching her for QGM under license to NanoTek. But like all armies with an eye on the cheque book, the miserable whoresons pulled the plug when costs became too great. So... I worked at the university. And built her in my spare time. It would have been churlish to waste so much invested research.”
Franco stared at Xakus. “A regular Doctor Frankenstein, aren’t you pal? What’s your encore? Raising the dead?”
“Franco, shut up!” snapped Keenan. He turned to Xakus. “You said MICHELLE was some form of military transport? Will she carry us? It just seems treacherous to be perched up on her shoulders like some estranged sci-fi hobbit as rockets and bullets whizz around our heads.”
Professor Xakus stroked his white beard. His eyes gleamed. “She is far more ingenious than that, my friend. OK. Listen up.” Olga and Knuckles had moved down the ramp, both staring in awe at the giant biological machine. Knuckles was holding Olga’s hand. In her other, she carried one of Franco’s Kekras. “MICHELLE stocks 7.62mm stowable miniguns in each ankle. She carries Hellcat 55 SAMs, and a wide range of anti-tank shells. However, in battle she is untested.”
“I’m not surprised,” muttered Franco. “If you let her out for a game of fetch, she’d damn well destroy half the city! Then they’d lock up the loony creator.”
“You’re a fine one to talk,” said Keenan, eyeing Franco. “You might be a dab hand with a D5 shotgun in a shit situation, but I needn’t remind you how many missions you’ve put in jeopardy because you can’t keep your parrot in your trousers.”
“Hey! A guy’s got to spread his seed, right? It’s a primitive thing. Part of my genetics.”
Xakus coughed. “Due to MICHELLE’S design brief, and to keep things compact and give her utmost agility, you will notice she resembles a human in physical contours. However, to actually get inside her, you need to traverse a simple rearward injection cylinder.”
“Like a syringe?” frowned Franco.
“More like a tube,” said Xakus. “Don’t worry, once inside her chassis you’ll be completely impervious to bullets and rockets. Her armour is incredibly thick. It’s a bit like being a baby cradled in a mother’s womb. You’ll like it. It’s comfortable.”
Franco was frowning. “Where is this tube?” he asked, suspiciously.
“It’s part of the rearward undercarriage assembly. MICHELLE? Please adopt the position.”
MICHELLE clanked down onto all fours, and the ground shook. From her rear chassis oozed a smooth ejection of a narrow tube. Franco stared at it, then back at Xakus, then to Keenan, then to Xakus again.
“You’re kidding, right?”
Xakus gave a tight smile. “It was the only place to put it.”
“I ain’t climbing up her arse,” said Franco.
“It’s not her arse, Franco, it’s her undercarriage,” said Keenan. “Her rearward assembly. Part of her chassis. She’s a machine, mate. Now get up that pipe before I give you a size 10 persuasion.”
“Actually, she’s part biological,” said Franco, taking a step away from the wide and disturbingly quivering tube. “That’s means she’s alive. And that, in my book, makes that thing her damn arsehole. And I ain’t crawling up it. Oh no.”
“Why not?” said Keenan dryly. “I’m sure you’ve been up a few in your time.”
“Amusing, Keenan. You are a comedy maestro. However, I’ve had my fair share of arse problems in recent years, everything from simple straining injuries to bloody damn well buggering alien arse viruses! It’s a place I think of as being a holy place, a place of quiet calm, so
mewhere to be respected and revered. Now, it can’t be nice for liccle MICHELLE there having lots of strange blokes climbing up her pipe.”
“Keenan,” said Knuckles, who was looking up the ramp. “We got company. I think the zombies are back.” Snarls and moans drifted down from The Great Malkovitch Library chamber.
Keenan nodded. Glanced at Xakus. “After you, mate. Show us how it’s done.”
Xakus approached the tube, lifted his arms, and was sucked into the biological machine’s cabin. Olga followed, then Knuckles, with another requisitioned PERMAFROST BIO FIRE EXTINGUISHER in gloved hands. Keenan and Franco stood alone.
“After you,” said Keenan, gesturing.
“Oh no, no, no.” Franco shook his head. “You first, Keenan. I bloody insist.”
Zombies lined the top of the ramp now, glaring down with feral yellow eyes. One lifted an Uzi, and bullets whined, howling down at the two men and spitting sparks on the ramp.
Keenan ran to the tube, lifted his arms, and was accepted into the bowels of MICHELLE.
Franco stood alone.
He stamped his foot.
“Damn and bloody bollocks!” he shouted, sent a round of Kekra fire at the zombies, smacking several from their feet with wet blood showers, then turning, he grimaced, screamed, and took a sprint towards the quivering tube...
He soon discovered violent, rearward entry hurt just as much as he thought it would.
~ * ~
Franco opened his eyes. Inside MICHELLE it was cool, and the machine hummed softly around him. The others were seated in front of a large screen—the view from MICHELLE’S eyes. As she stood, clanking and stomping a boot to the concrete-alloy, so the interior cabin rolled smooth, keeping them constantly upright. Gyroscopes buzzed. Tiny computer readouts on the walls blinked and flickered.
“Wow!” said Franco.
Keenan turned. “You OK now, Big Man?”
“I kinda thought we’d be covered in shit. Or something.”
“It’s a machine, Franco. Get it in your head!”
“Yeah but, like, when her bio side does need a shit, where does it come out? I’m guessing this chamber can get a bit a stinky after she’s had a few beers and a kebab.”
The zombies streamed into the underground chamber, and MICHELLE whirled, ducking, one huge metal arm smashing through their ranks and sending ten flying through the air to compress with crunches against the metal wall. Her cubic fist slammed down, crushing another three. Yet still more zombies appeared. Guns whined, bullets flashing and screaming. MICHELLE punched and stomped, killing and crushing and breaking. She stomped, clanking, backwards and miniguns in her ankles ejected with neat whirrs. Bullets scythed through the zombies, cutting them in half. Within a few short seconds the chamber was a charnel house, thick with rivers of black blood pooling the floor, walls plastered and splattered with gore and zombie gristle.
“That’s savage,” said Franco, quietly.
“Better them than us,” said Keenan.
“Damn right,” snapped Knuckles. He still held Olga’s hand, and his eyes carried a strange, haunted look.
“Time for us to get out of here,” said Professor Xakus. His eyes were gleaming, as, for the first time in history, he tested his sparkling new toy.
MICHELLE turned and stomped across the chamber. Reaching the wall, she lifted mighty alloy fists above herself and grasped a thick, swinging chain. She pulled with a tremendous effort and there came a grinding of distant heavy gears. Before their eyes, the wall opened with a rugged shuddering of steel and stone panels. Night air flooded in, and within their cocoon they could smell the freshness of the night, still laced with a scent of smoke from recent fires.
MICHELLE stomped up massive blocks which formed steps, and out onto the street. Dark cube-scrapers towered around them. Zombies were milling everywhere, like insects. MICHELLE stepped on a few, whirling and whirring, and Keenan leant close to Xakus. “I’ll give you directions,” he whispered, feeling somehow that inside this creature, this machine, this metal foetal sack, it just seemed the right thing to do.
“No need,” said Xakus. He pointed at a small display. “MonkeyMan Sat-Nav. The Happy Friendly Sunshine Assurance Company, you say? We’re on it. Come on MICHELLE, baby, show us what you can do.”
And Keenan caught it. Heard it. Like a whisper on the wind. A ghost-voice. A communion of spirit. Yes, Professor Xakus. Anything you ask my love. Keenan shuddered, and decided that in this life, in this world, in this teeming, confusing, whirlwind Quad-Galaxy in which he suffered some kind of existence, there were some things he would never understand, and even if he was offered the key to such knowledge, would happily decline. Some things, thought Keenan, were better left undiscovered. He glanced back at Franco. “You OK, buddy?”
Franco nodded, but looked far from OK. He looked like he was going to be sick. Exorcist sick.
“Travel for one kilometre, then take a left,” said the MonkeyMan Sat-Nav.
Keenan reached out. Touched Franco on the arm. “It’s just like a tank,” he said, kindly.
“It’s messing with my head! We’re in its—her— belly. It’s rank, Keenan. Just totally gross. What kind of nutcase builds something like this? What kind of warped and freaky freaked-out fucking individual?”
“Yeah Franco, but what kind of maniac built the atomic bomb? Or the BABE grenade? Or the Halo Smash? Our history is littered with those who only desire to kill. It’s in our nature.”
“And what about us?” said Franco, as MICHELLE stomped across the city, squeezing between towering blocks of endless, blank-windowed skyscrapers. His eyes looked distant; his demeanour wounded. “We’re just part of this terrible machine, aren’t we?”
“We fight for a greater good,” said Keenan.
“And you believe that?” said Franco.
“I have to. Or I’d surely go mad.”
“That explains my affliction, then,” muttered Franco, and suddenly remembering something, dragged his pack to his knees and rummaged inside. He found something, and placed it on his tongue without looking at Keenan.
“What’s that?”
“Something to help.”
“Something to keep you sane?”
Franco shook his head. He grinned then. “You’ve got it all wrong, Keenan, my friend. You have a twisted perspective. A deviated standpoint. This world. This life. This nightmare.” He chuckled. “I’m the only sane thing in it. It’s everybody else that’s mad. The pills just make your insanity bearable.”
Keenan stared at Franco. Stared hard. Trying to understand the little ginger soldier was like trying to walk on a razor, or cycle on water, like trying to peel yourself with a spoon. And Keenan realised; in Franco’s bubble, he believed in himself. And that worked for him. Made the world make sense.
I wish I could be like you, he thought.
I really do.
~ * ~
“Please take the next right. Take the next right. Take the next right. Take the next right. Take the next right.”
Xakus thumped the MonkeyMan Sat-Nav.
“Please take the next right,” it said. “Oo.”
“Why did it say oo?” frowned Franco.
“It’s a MonkeyMan,” said Xakus, as if that was explanation enough.
MICHELLE clanked through The City with a heavy, weighted, rolling motion. Huge swathes of urban sprawl now seemed strangely uninhabited, and for an hour they met no resistance, MICHELLE’S scanners picking up little or no localised zombie activity. It was as if the creatures had clubbed together, for strength in numbers; either that, or simply vanished. Keenan pointed out that this trait, again, indicated intelligence, a need for survival, a common goal. Not activity usually associated with the undead—even if they were a nanobot deviated zombification.
Franco managed to calm down after a while, and Keenan fell into a brooding silence, a half-sleep of exhaustion, no doubt reminiscing on his past, his dead wife Freya, and his slaughtered girls. They filled his thoughts often, and Fran
co caught him reaching for a Jataxa bottle in his inside pocket; a bottle that was no longer there.
Eventually, Keenan drifted in and out of sleep. And in his dreams, he remembered Freya. He remembered his girls. But most of all, he remembered Pippa...
As a Combat K squad proficient in infiltration, assassination, demolition, the original unity of Keenan, Franco and Pippa had been tighter than tight. They were a finely honed fighting instrument working for the Quad-Gal’s Peace Unification Army with the original intent of ending the Helix War. However, events transpired to reveal that his love of Pippa—which led to his rejection of her love, and a perceived betrayal—eventually directed the psychotic and deranged female assassin to Keenan’s family, where she slaughtered them without mercy. Keenan had sworn he would avenge his family, and Pippa had fled—with Keenan in pursuit. He had chased her for a year... and three times came close to wiping her from the face of existence.