Roboteer

by Alex Lamb

Will staggered back, astonished. Rachel looked at John in stunned disbelief. Then her expression turned to one of loathing. She took a step towards him, but John turned the gun on her.

  ‘Don’t get your corset in a twist. It’s a tranquilliser. I knew he’d make a fuss sooner or later.’

  ‘Bastard!’ Will breathed.

  Rachel took him in her arms as he sank slowly to the floor.

  ‘Don’t let him …’ he said, but before he could get the words out, the apartment faded from view like a puzzle dream.

  12: A CHANGE OF PLANS

  12.1: WILL

  Will woke to the sight of a pale ceiling painted with pink whorls. He lay in a huge bed covered with sheets that had once been luxuriously silky. That was before someone hacked at them with a knife and someone else had tried to repair the damage. The room smelled of chemical perfume and was lit by pink morning light streaming in through a single untinted window. Will suspected it was what passed for suburban normal on New Angeles.

  The garish orange and pink walls were dominated by dead, grey wall-screens. The panels were cracked and bent, so the owner had hung pieces of brightly coloured fabric over them in an attempt to hide the damage. In one corner, an improvised hand crank connected a plastic belt to what was left of a robotic wardrobe.

  Will tilted his head and found Rachel asleep in a chair next to him, still wearing her corset and head-stocking. Framed like this, the prettiness of her face was oddly emphasised. He lay still and watched her for a minute or two, dwelling on the little details – the fullness of her lips, the clear skin of her cheek.

  It was far nicer to think about Rachel than what might have been done to his head. His micromachines were gone. Did that mean his species’ days were numbered? How long would it be before the human stars swelled up and burned them all to ash?

  It came to Will that he’d like to spend as much of the time that remained as possible looking at Rachel’s face.

  She twisted sideways, frowned in sleepy discomfort and woke. She blinked at him in surprise. ‘You’re awake!’ she blurted.

  ‘I guess so,’ said Will.

  She tested his forehead with the back of her hand. ‘Doctor Vamou said it’d be twelve hours before you woke,’ she said. ‘It can’t have been more than six.’ She checked the watch built into her sleeve. ‘How do you feel?’ she asked pensively.

  ‘Fine,’ he replied. ‘Doomed, but fine.’

  A small, uncomfortable smile played on her lips. ‘Stay here a moment. I’ll be back.’

  She got up and hurried into the next room, clutching cumbersome skirts in both hands, then returned moments later with the thin Angeleno in tow.

  ‘More surprises,’ he drawled, his finely chiselled face twisted into an expression of displeasure. He applied a small medical scanner to the side of Will’s neck. ‘Huh! His body has flushed out the neurosuppressant already.’

  ‘Is that bad?’ said Rachel.

  Vamou straightened. ‘I don’t think so,’ he said in a peeved voice. ‘All his metabolic functions appear stable. Everything looks normal. Or as normal as this man can be, anyway. You people with your mods … You’ve messed with his brain chemistry so much, who’s to say what’s normal any more?’

  ‘Is there anything we should do?’ Rachel asked.

  ‘There’s nothing to do. He’s well already. Tell him to get up – my wife would like her bed back.’ He stalked out of the room.

  Rachel broke into a grin. She leaned over and hugged Will hard. Will found himself smiling back.

  She took his hand and sat on the seat, staring earnestly at him. ‘I want to apologise,’ she said.

  ‘For what?’ Will was surprised.

  ‘I should have stuck up for you the moment you said you didn’t want to go ahead with the operation. I had a lot of time to think while you were out cold, and I realise I’ve not exactly shown you a lot of trust these last few weeks.’

  Will made a wry smile. ‘How could you have?’ He meant it, but even so, it was nice to hear her say. ‘I’m not even sure I trusted myself,’ he added.

  Rachel shook her head. ‘I could have done more. It was just so hard to believe in the Transcended after what they did to you. And when that stuff about the black hole came out, it cast a shadow over everything we thought we understood about them. We had no idea how much they were letting you say. Then you got sick. We all thought they’d decided to kill you. John still thinks that bringing you down here was the only thing that saved your life.’

  The thought of John made Will suddenly sick with anger. The man had shot him, for crying out loud, as well as ignoring everything he or Rachel had to say. Will wondered if he’d ever really known him.

  ‘And what do you think?’ he asked tightly.

  Rachel shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I’ve decided to assume less and listen more. How do you think the Transcended will take this? You losing your micromachines, I mean?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Will. ‘It’s hard to believe this is what they wanted. I keep wondering if we just lost our last chance to save ourselves.’

  Rachel’s face became grave.

  Hugo chose that moment to wander in from the next room. He looked down at Will with something like a smile of triumph curling the corner of his mouth – as if Will losing his machines had righted some injustice.

  ‘Hello, Will,’ he said.

  ‘Hello,’ Will replied coldly. He didn’t particularly feel like talking to Hugo so he returned his attention to Rachel. ‘Where’s John?’ he asked.

  She exhaled. ‘Out. Again. Trying to talk some sense into the resistance. Come on, let’s get you up. I’ll run some basic tests on your interface, make sure you haven’t suffered any loss of function.’

  Will dressed and followed Rachel through to the doctor’s front room. He was surprised and pleased to discover that he could walk unaided. Hugo trailed after them.

  Rachel sat down at a bulky computer console in one corner and passed Will a cable ending in an adhesive patch.

  ‘This is for your interface,’ she said.

  He sat down beside her, and together they ran through a battery of diagnostic tests. Will discovered with some relief that his sensorium functions still all appeared to be intact.

  Rachel collected the test results and blinked in surprise as she examined them.

  ‘Well, if anything, your signal quality has gone up since we took the machines out,’ she said. ‘They must have been interfering with your contact synapses. How about the Transcended – are they still there?’

  Will projected himself into his home node. ‘Anybody home?’ he called. ‘No response. But that doesn’t mean anything. It’s not like they’re all that predictable.’

  Someone knocked on the door. Vamou darted out of a side room to open it and John slipped inside.

  ‘You’re back!’ said Rachel, getting up to meet him.

  Will stayed seated. He felt nothing for the man at this point other than icy dislike.

  ‘Wow!’ said Rachel, looking at John’s face. ‘You look terrible.’

  It was true. John looked more haggard than Will had ever seen him.

  ‘I was up all night,’ said John, giving them a washed-out version of his trademark smile.

  ‘So what did they say?’

  John rubbed his eyes with his hands. ‘They agreed to provide fuel at about five-thirty this morning.’

  Will felt some of his anger sliding away. Despite his unpleasant way of working, John had at least found a way of continuing the mission. Maybe there was still a chance, if Will could just convince Ira to turn back instead of heading home.

  ‘That’s excellent news,’ said Rachel.

  ‘If we ever get out of this, the home world is going to owe New Angeles a lot of support,’ said John. ‘But somehow I think it’ll be worth it. Don’t cheer just yet, though – I still have to talk to their pilot. Apparently he wants a private negotiation, the greedy bastard. But he’s the guy who’ll be risking his life, so I’ll have to
go out again.’

  ‘Again?’ Rachel looked appalled.

  ‘I’ll be gone for the rest of the day and overnight again, I’m afraid,’ said John.

  She made a disgusted sound. ‘This isn’t a resistance movement. It’s a fucking bureaucracy.’

  John shrugged. ‘They’re afraid and they’re angry. And it’s their show. I just stopped by to tell you the arrangements. We’re pretty sure we’ll be able to buy this pilot guy – he’s only holding out for a bit of personal profit. We’ll meet up straight after the deal and go directly back to the shuttle. It’s on the way to the freight depot from here, so it should save us a little time.’ He handed Rachel a scrap of paper. ‘This is where I’ll be. Do you think you can find it?’

  She glanced at it. ‘Sure, if they give me access to the city maps.’

  Hugo wandered over. ‘I go with Will and Rachel?’ he said, looking confused.

  ‘That’s right,’ said John. ‘I’ll meet you there, and then everything will be set.’

  ‘What’s this other address?’ Hugo asked, pointing to the paper.

  ‘That’s the location of a safe house. If anything goes wrong while I’m away, that’s where you should go. If Will has a relapse, or if you think you’re being followed, someone there can help.’

  ‘Are you expecting complications?’ said Hugo.

  John shook his head. ‘As far as I can tell, we’re on the downhill stretch now. I only insisted they give you an address to up my bargaining position. But hey – better safe than sorry.’ He looked past the others to where Will was still sitting, watching, by the console. ‘So how’s our roboteer?’ he asked.

  ‘Fine,’ said Will curtly.

  John stepped over to him. ‘Hey, I want to say sorry. I was just doing what I thought was best. Really.’ He looked genuinely uncomfortable. ‘No hard feelings?’

  John held out a hand for Will to shake.

  Will looked at it. What else could he do? If he didn’t trust John now, it was only going to make things worse. He sighed and stood to face the shorter man, then took John’s hand and shook it.

  ‘No hard feelings,’ he muttered.

  John looked down and fumbled in his pockets. ‘Look, I know it’s not much of a consolation after what I did, but I got you this.’ He took out a flat, flesh-coloured oval about the size of the palm of Will’s hand. ‘It’s a patch for your interface. With it, you should be able to reach pretty much all of Goldwin’s public network, both Earther and native. It has some of my hackpack code on it, with SAP interfaces, so you should be able to access their command structures. I had the resistance make it for you specially.’ John tried for another smile. ‘I figured that while we’ve got you down here, we might as well make proper use of your talents. It puts you in the driving seat, I guess.’

  Will was touched. It was a gesture of trust he hadn’t expected. John was basically appointing Will chief hacker in his absence.

  ‘Take care of Hugo and Rachel, won’t you?’ said John, with something like real concern in his eyes.

  Will nodded. Maybe he’d misjudged the man.

  John exhaled. ‘I should go.’ He turned for the door.

  ‘Wait,’ said Rachel. She hugged him quickly. ‘Good luck.’

  He gave her a crooked smile and winked at Will. ‘Thanks,’ he said, and slipped out.

  12.2: WILL

  The following morning, Will drove them through Goldwin’s gaudy streets to the rendezvous point. It was in a row of derelict-looking houses that had once clearly been the homes of New Angeles’s wealthy. The pastel-coloured onion domes had sagged in, and the fairy-tale spires were scorched and broken. Playful jumbles of silver boxes had been scraped back to the bland polycrete underneath as if by gigantic claws.

  The rendezvous house was a historical fantasy – a miniature re-creation of a cluster of twentieth-century skyscrapers, complete with hundreds of tiny windows. It was set in a garden arranged in striped, semi-regular sections, like little Surplus Age agribusiness fields. A path resembling a freeway led to the front door. The place was in better shape than most of its neighbours, but the garden had been trampled flat and left to rot.

  Will pulled the transport up in front of the house and checked along the street. It was surprisingly empty, given how close it was to a main traffic artery. The resistance had chosen the location well.

  ‘This is it,’ he told the others. ‘And we’re right on time. John should be out any minute.’

  Once again, they sat and waited.

  ‘I don’t like this,’ Rachel said after a while. ‘John’s usually pretty punctual.’

  ‘True,’ said Will. ‘But we’re not exactly running on his schedule. The resistance here appears to specialise in delays.’

  Eventually, the door moved. Rachel spotted it first.

  ‘Look!’ she exclaimed.

  John stumbled out of the house, looking even more haggard than before. His clothes hung off him. Two sleepless nights had clearly taken their toll. Then Will noticed that John was clutching a gun in his hand.

  ‘Oh my God!’ said Rachel. ‘What’s he doing with that thing?’

  John blinked at the bright sunlight and then started slowly down the path. Will opened the front passenger door for him. John turned blearily to look at it, but in that moment there came a growl of gunfire.

  John was ripped apart. Shreds of his flesh sprayed across the garden like red confetti. What was left of him sloughed forward onto the ground.

  A voice blared from loudspeakers somewhere. ‘This is the Protectorate Police! Surrender your weapons and step away from the vehicle!’

  Will looked frantically up and down the street. As if from nowhere, red and yellow military vehicles like glittering, poisonous insects had appeared to block both ends.

  ‘Shit!’ Rachel gasped.

  Will looked to her. She was the superior officer now. ‘What do we do?’ he said.

  ‘What do you think we do?’ yelled Hugo. His eyes were wild. ‘We get out of the car, you oaf!’ Hugo thrust open his door.

  ‘Hugo, wait!’ Rachel shouted, but it was too late.

  Hugo stood and started waving to the police. ‘I’m unarmed!’ he warbled.

  The words were barely out of his mouth before the police guns growled again. They ripped into the transport door and chewed a chunk of flesh from Hugo’s side, spraying a cloud of red mist into the air.

  Hugo screamed. He spun as he crumpled to the floor. Rachel leapt across the transport’s back seat and reached out an arm to grab him. She managed to yank him back inside just before the guns sounded again.

  The polycrete road surface exploded in a cloud of grey dust as combat flechs raked the place where Hugo had lain. The door rippled and sagged under the impact of ultra-high-speed steel. Rachel and Hugo collapsed across the back seat together in a bloody heap. Will hurled himself sideways as flechs transformed the windscreen into plastic snow.

  ‘Drive!’ Rachel yelled.

  Will rammed his mind into the transport’s tiny control node. He could see the street from above now, blocked at either end by the flashing squares of police vehicles. As he watched, the police began to dash towards them from both ends, personal assault cannons cradled in their arms.

  ‘Stay down!’ Will warned and kicked the transport into motion.

  He reversed violently, straight into the police lines. The men barely had time to aim before they were forced to scatter for their lives. Then Will hurled the transport forwards as flechs pounded the vehicle from all directions with a deafening roar. Half of Will’s sensors winked out, but he could still see through the traffic-control cameras situated on the canopy overhead.

  He accelerated towards the other police line and then swerved at the last moment, into one of the gardens to the right. He smashed through the hedge, showering the transport with vegetable shrapnel. It bounced madly as it ploughed over the landscaped ground, its ruined door flapping uselessly like a broken wing. Police flechs scoured them from behind.
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br />   Will drove straight through an untended pond of brackish water and over a cluttered lawn beyond it towards a high fence. He smashed through it and raced across a second garden while the wail of sirens mounted behind him.

  In seconds, Will was out into open street. He threw the transport sideways into the traffic and sped away, weaving between the trucks and personal pods as fast as the engine would permit. He knew where they had to go: the safe house. The problem was how to get there. Will doubted the place would be much use to them surrounded by Protectorate Police.

  He glanced between the seats at where Rachel was frantically trying to staunch the flow of Hugo’s blood. They were both drenched in it. Will was astonished that so much could come out of just one person. Hugo was gasping like a landed fish while Rachel ripped strips of her skirt to make bandages.

  ‘How’s he doing?’ said Will.

  ‘He was lucky,’ said Rachel. ‘That was a standard-issue Earther cannon, as far as I could tell – no toxins or nerve agents so it’s just tissue damage.’

  ‘How long has he got?’ said Will.

  She looked up at him worriedly. ‘I don’t know. An hour, perhaps.’

  Will could see no police behind them, but that didn’t mean a thing. Police only chased people in historical dramas. Modern law enforcement used surveillance and simply trapped you.

  He jumped his mind back into the transport, and through it out to the traffic system. Sure enough, their progress was leaving a wake of alarms wide enough for the whole city to see. Flashing police units were converging on them from all directions.

  Will turned to the hacking code John had left him. It was depressingly limited – much less than John had given him reason to hope for, just some worms and cracking tools along with a handful of basic SAPs. He’d have to make the best of it.

  Leaving the transport to drive itself for a moment, Will jumped through the traffic-control software till he found a portal to the Protectorate Police network. He fired a generic crash virus through it. That wouldn’t buy them much time, but it’d have to be enough. All across Will’s display, the police markers went dark. He threw the transport into a tight turn up an alley behind a commercial thoroughfare, keeping his eyes peeled. Unless they changed vehicles before the police came back online, they were dead.