Cypulchre

by Joseph Travers MacKinnon

  “To hell with this thing,” the taller pilot bellows in a modded voice, pulling off the elephantine helmet. Paul’s weary eyes take a second to adapt to the transport’s red lights. “How can they stand these things?”

  The shorter pilot yanks a cord plugged from the pod into the corpse’s PILOT, and gestures it to Paul’s chest. “Take it off,” the elephant-headed specter demands in a deep monotone.

  “What?”

  The masked pilot similarly tears off her helmet. “Take off your clothes and then hand me the phaser,” Oni says, curtly, her black hair piling back into place. “Put the gear in with the stiff. We’ll burn it all at once.”

  Paul peels off his flight suit, and dumps it onto the corpse.

  “Right,” he says, pick-pocketing the uniform, probing its crumpled pockets. He withdraws the phaser, and looks down the sights affixed to the stubby barrel. “And this’ll do the trick?”

  “Hopefully.”

  Oni strips down, too. Her skin is flawless. No evidence of implants or augs. Just a custom PILOT and some kanji inked between her small breasts.

  She seizes the phaser from Paul, and swiftly vaporizes the body and their costumes. The aftermath smells like dog piss and burnt meatloaf.

  Oni winces. “Okay, get in,” she orders Paul.

  Paul looks at the slurry of human remains, and back at Oni. Touching his newly grafted-on PILOT, he coughs. “Any chance I can blaze beforehand?”

  She raises an eyebrow.

  “I’m a bit claustrophobic.”

  “None,” says Oni, pushing him in. “Might interfere with your synchronization later on. Besides, we only have a minute before they check the cargo, and I still have to wire up.”

  Oni hands Paul the cord, and insinuates with a point what to do with it. He plugs it into his hastily-attached PILOT, still bleeding along the edges. She types a script into the meat pod’s regulator.

  “Jeeze, go easy on me,” Paul blurts. A feeling of hopeless dependence kicks him in the stomach. Having to plug in like a god-damned lamp. “Exactly what about this do people find appealing?”

  “Sounds like a question best tailored to its creator.” She closes the toggle screen. “Your pod’s set to open in twenty-five minutes. Let’s hope our intel was right. Too soon, and they’ll turn the ship around. Too late, and…”

  “Have faith.”

  “Worked for Eddie, right?”

  Smartass.

  Oni bounds down the row with the large case in hand, and tucks it beside a small medical hub fused to the ship’s ribcage. Yanking down a mesh net to secure it in place, she hurriedly obscures it with whatever crap is within reach.

  Fairly pleased with her camouflaging efforts, Oni sprints to her designated pod. She cracks it open, and, again without pause, vaporizes the previous inhabitant. She stows the phaser behind the pod between two sheets of metal grating, and repeats the script. Sloshing into the mold, she turns to Paul. “You’re going to have to hit that green button and retract your arm as fast as humanly possible.”

  Paul looks snug, but is really just mentally separating himself from what’s going on. The human pulp sucks at his spine, and pools around his ass. Not yet in the CLOUD, and he’s already irked about being in tight proximity with another human being, living or otherwise. This kind of intimacy is not the kind he’d envisioned when strategizing how to remedy his anti-social behaviour.

  “Paul?”

  “What?” He snaps out of his self-pity. “Close it?”

  Oni nods.

  Paul slams the button and quickly wrenches his arm back. The lid nearly shears his fingers off, and a plume of muscle relaxant obscures his recovering form beneath the glass.

  “Bloody droid’s just glitching. Déjà vu or what-have-you,” declares a modulated voice down the gangway. “But check on it, anyway. If something’s up, might as well save us the trip now, eh mate?”

  “You’re so paranoid,” snaps another voice in Mandarin, the subtle tones lost across the modulation.

  “A paranoid’s right at least once in a while, Chang. Check it out.”

  Paul, falling fast into a drug-induced stupor, can still hear muffled voices. He uses his last reserve of conscious power to turn his head. He glimpses Oni’s reassuring smile disappear behind her pod-shield.

  Here we come, asshole.

  Chapter 30: SABOTEUR WITH A SAVAGE CURE

  PAUL’s POD yawns open. The muscle relaxant hasn’t fully worn off. His fingers don’t fully respond to his will, curling three-quarters of the way to a fist.

  The veil of gas and preservative masking his body lifts. Leaning forward into the dry cold of the Spirit with a gasp, he sees Oni’s pod similarly open. With wobbly arms, he lifts himself up and out, and sits on the pod’s tongue, waiting for his sense of balance to return.

  Pink flesh blurs past him. Oni’s hair bobs, as she delays the pod-alarm to the cockpit.

  “Get ready,” she orders, trying to fish her phaser out of the grating behind the pods. “Make yourself useful and find some kind of…” she pauses, “brutal implement.”

  “How’s a big-effing gun sound?”

  “Too loud. The Citadel might get a read off of the explosive rounds. We want at least some element of surprise...”

  Paul yanks one of the pod-door’s hydraulic pistons free. “Something heavy like…this?” Wires vomit forth, and the pod jaws to the side, hitting Paul in the kidneys. He grunts, capturing Oni’s attention.

  “Sure,” she says, returning her focus to the pod-interface. “If you can get close enough to use it.”

  Sounds like challenge.

  “We’re two minutes out.” Oni steps back and checks her phaser. “Security system is still overridden. Just have to worry about the pilots.”

  Paul stumbles forward. Oni ratchets a look of concern his way. He dismisses the need with a wave, and catches up to her along the gangway.

  The cockpit door is ajar at the end of the striated-metal path. Oni and Paul slow their approach, and stealthily creep along—phaser drawn and braining-piston ready.

  Paul catches his foot on an unevenly-placed girder, and holds onto a peripheral pod to break his fall. The clang of his initial trip echoes throughout the hull.

  Oni takes cover behind the pod opposite her klutzy accomplice. She steadies the phaser on the pod’s edge, sites framing the doorway.

  “Mate, y’ah mind checking that out?” the pilot asks his co-pilot, arching over his armrest into the doorway. “I think that lug nut’s finally come loose.”

  Paul winks at Oni, and sprints to the far side of the pod grouping to the ship’s perimeter ribcage. Hidden in shadow, he scrambles along the side towards the bow.

  A bug-eyed Ganesh takes the runway, arm stretched with a laser-cannon strapped-on and ready. The co-pilot’s big head cuts right into Oni’s sights. She glimpses Paul creep into the cockpit behind him.

  “Ach no!” screams the pilot, his modulator auto-tuning his terror to a more civil frequency. His digital scream is muted by torrent of his own blood, courtesy of Paul’s makeshift club.

  The laser-wielding co-pilot quickly turns out of Oni’s sights, to see Paul’s aggressive silhouette in the doorway of the cockpit. He readies his cannon and aims at Paul, still hammering the pilot’s trunk into his face.

  Paul—trying the yank the piston free of the gore—hears a sizzle and a loud crack. He looks up to see a molten crater in the Spirit’s dashboard before him, and swivels to see the co-pilot, cleanly beheaded.

  “Quick!” yells Oni. “Make sure the autopilot’s on. I’ll grab the case.”

  A yellow light flickers beneath the melted dash. “Holy shit, I think this one triggered the distress signal,” Paul bellows back, slamming the pilot’s head one more time. He throws the corpse out of the flight-seat and interfaces with the Spirit. “It hasn’t broadcasted yet…”

  “See that it doesn’t.”

  His fingers spider across multiple boards, dominating the Spirit with commands and codes.
The yellow light cones red.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” says Paul. He gets up bombastically—throwing the chair back—and stops Oni at the head of the gangway. “I need this for a second,” he blurts, yanking the phaser out of her hand.

  She reaches out after him, gripping nothing but turbulence. “What the hell are you doing?”

  Paul blasts the security module. Sparks trickle onto the co-pilot’s body, singeing his partially-exposed flesh.

  “Paul! That might have—” Oni stops. The flashing yellow security light returns to a steady green.

  Interfacing with the projected controls, hovering a foot above the analogue dash, Paul locks-in the landing sequence.

  “Citadel force-field twenty-seconds out.” He turns, hoping to find Oni’s confident smile, but she’s already off, getting their gear and clothes.

  PAUL’S SHIRT BUNCHES around the PILOT mechanism clipped into his breast. He yanks up his collar, and tucks his shirt in at the side, so nothing’s in the way of his revolver. He digs his piecemeal exoskeleton out of the container, and straps in. Looks like armour, feels like added strength.

  Oni rolls her second skin up her leg, clasping the bands around her knees and ankles. Her tall black boots vacuum-seal, shaking the decorative laces criss-crossing up her thigh. She plunges into the case, and pulls out Gibson’s rope-claw and the knight’s B.F.G.

  “These are yours, I believe.”

  Paul grabs the rope-claw. In the exchange, the grappling hook slides out, trailing a long, fine cable.

  “For crying out loud,” he whispers, seizing up the hook. His armour squeaks as he pipes the hook back down the chamber, and straps the device awkwardly over his shoulder.

  Oni holds out the knight’s gun, smiling.

  Paul collects it from her with both hands, eying its artistry. “Something this beautiful shouldn’t be used for killing.”

  “Don’t go soft on me now, Doc.” Oni smirks, turning to grab more toys from the bin.

  It must be a coping mechanism, Paul thinks, studying the levity impressed on Oni’s visage. She must translate terror into amusement.

  “You’re enjoying this.”

  “Obviously,” she answers back, lightning-quick. “Years of treating symptoms, and today? Today, we’re the cure.”

  Oni pulls a bulbous, satin bag out of the case. She unknots the golden string, and procures the keystone to their plan: the EMP grenade. Her little fingers nimbly crawl along the circumference of the device, finding and flicking-on the micro-primers. The EMP beeps ready. “Good to go.” She turns on her Monocle and hails Gibson. “Booker?”

  “Matsui! How’s my favorite Jill-of-all-trades?”

  “About to touch-down. How’re you holding up?”

  “Surviving. Didn’t realize how much the PILOT was doing on my behalf…”

  “You’ll recover. Where are we at with the diversion?”

  “Can’t hear the cannon fire? It’s already begun. Hacked one of the Burbank gate defenses. PIT rats’ve already targeted the sector’s cypulchre. Lots of fire. Lots of attention.”

  “Perfect. Hopefully that’ll give us a little breathing room…We’re coming in on the Citadel. It’ll be closed-circuit from here on.”

  “Oni, watch your back. I think W’chester knows—” Gibson’s voice crackles and defaults to white noise, which in turn gives way to the sound of the Citadel’s force field engulfing the Spirit—like sand blown against metal sheeting. A fierce hum follows, signalling the end to the shield’s two-second porosity.

  “Gibson?”

  Static.

  “Dammit. Alright, Paul. Eight seconds,” says Oni, palming the grenade contemplatively.

  Paul props the knight’s gun against the wall, and shears off the heavplast guard on the bubble shield. “Everything good?”

  “Have faith,” she murmurs.

  “Ha. Yeah, alright. Try to save whatever gymnastics you’ve got planned for when we split up…Stick close.”

  Oni rolls her eyes.

  “Otherwise the bubble shield will be no good,” he warns.

  Thumbing-in the trigger mechanism on the EMP, Oni leans over and kisses Paul on the cheek.

  The bristles on his haggard face twitch alive, signalling warm currents through his temples. He looks at her with an expression of bewilderment and pleasure.

  She shrugs, secreting a smile. “For good luck.”

  THE SPIRIT TRAIN SAILS towards the Citadel’s re-processing dock on a drift of smoke. Its magnetic levelers take over for the side-engines, and snap as the ship finds its groove. A dozen droids gear out to meet it, hauling it into place with magnetic lassos and harnesses.

  Across the landing pad, under the Citadel’s matte-black awnings, an archway births four heavily-armored Sentinels. They goosestep past the droids, and surround the ship.

  The Spirit’s side-doors automatically slice open, loosing red light. A railing, which threads the Citadel via a dark, labyrinthine corridor, fires into the hold. It locks onto one of the Spirit’s internal rails, suspended just above and between Paul and Oni, and sets with a click. The first of the meat pods is immediately summoned-up and tracked along, out of the Spirit.

  “That’s our cue,” says Paul. He yanks his collar further up, past his cheeks, and marches out—the B.F.G. and rope-claw strapped to his back. Oni follows in tow.

  “Captain Kassel, Lieutenant Chang. Please wait for security to assist you,” shouts an augmented abomination strapped into a heavy-steel exo-suit, clearly not paying close-enough attention. He has a skull grafted to his helmet.

  Paul whispers to Oni over their local-area-comm: “I know that guy. He was with the group that attacked the camp.”

  Suppressing her murderous desire, Oni runs a Monocle scan. “No prisoners.”

  A second mech, checking the Spirit’s undercarriage, notices something odd about the pilots—their civilian clothes and the massive appendage oscillating on Paul’s back. “Unauthorized weapon on the tarmac! Intruders!”

  “Lock and load!” another cries.

  Oni lunges forward, side-swiping Paul, and rolls the EMP to the middle of the landing pad.

  The skull-plated abomination snarls, and raises his hand-cannon. “Call it in!”

  Paul hammers the shield into the ground at his feet. A peach-coloured field enshrouds him and Oni.

  The Sentinels ready their Gatling guns and mark their targets.

  “Open fire!” orders the skull-plated mech.

  Oni’s EMP expels its poles to the sides, releasing an electrical storm. Blue and white bands spider out, whipping and whooshing over and past anything with a charge. It crinkles at the bubble shield as it combs past Oni and Paul, sweaty and entangled in their shared shell. Paul closes his eyes as the storm begins to strobe white light like old xenon flashbulbs at a press scrum. Oni squeezes his wrist as the mechs squawk and scream in cognitive pain.

  A magma-flow of undirected bullets pours left and right. The closest shooter stumbles towards Paul and Oni, but the hydraulics on his exo-suit fail him. He oversteps and keels over the side of the dock. Oni hears the mercenary’s body tear and mangle against the protuberances below, his gun still firing every-which-way.

  The bubble shield hisses. Oni falls through its lingering residue. Paul scrambles to pick her up, and drags her over to the scissor doors for shelter. Oni covers their retreat with her phaser, only there’s nothing left to shoot; nothing but smoking corpses and whining mechanical parts.

  “Look,” cries Oni. “The cameras. They’re fuming too.”

  “Fantastic!” Paul unstraps the B.F.G., and swings it around. “Now, to see a man about an elevator door.”

  “The bodies…” Oni warns Paul in a strained voice. She brushes herself off, and walks over to the skull-plated mech. She crouches over its twitching body.

  “What about them?” asks Paul, his rage-induced focus offsetting any peripheral worry.

  Oni tears the skull bone off of the mech’s helmet, and peels the v
isor back. Inside: a piecemeal face, loaded-up with augs and circuitry. All the tech embedded in the pink pincushion is charred, but the host is still breathing.

  “We should hide them,” she says.

  “Why?” Paul clenches his teeth. “There’ll only be more.”

  Staring into the black eyes of the felled mech, Oni nods in agreement. “Fine.”

  She strides over to Paul, seizes his revolver, and returns to their familiar foe. She whispers to the mech: “The only part of you still alive is human.” She presses the gun to its silicon-speckled forehead. “And that part,” she thumbs the hammer back, “can go straight to Hell.”

  Chapter 31: ASCENSION

  “GIBSON WAS RIGHT,” Paul says, dropping a severed finger belonging to one of the mechs. The scanner on the elevator beeps repeatedly, rejecting the bloody fingerprint. “Biometrics and security implants are toast. Surprised they’re still lighting up.” He stitches the horizontal seam in the door with his fingers, and readies an opening attempt.

  Oni prods Paul, directing a raised eyebrow at the gun strapped to his back.

  “Of course.” He smiles, stepping clear of the door.

  “And this,” she says, returning the revolver to Paul, warm around the cylinder. “Five shots left. Hopefully Winchester only needs one.”

  Paul, the saboteur-turned-gun-rack, juggles the weapons until he’s comfortable with their arrangement. He joins Oni in walking over to a safe distance, and aims the B.F.G.

  “For sunny days!” he exclaims, lobbing a round at the door.

  The round clinks into the door’s blast shielding. Apart from a loud pop and a hairline fracture, the target looks unperturbed, with the big-effing grenade lodged no more than an inch into the plating.

  “I imagine that was supposed to go differently,” Paul says, gloomily. He steps forward, but Oni grabs his arm.

  “What?”