by Andy Remic
Dex pulled out the KidMonitor and placed it on the table. Molly and Toffee were in the Kiddy Kid Quad of Mojojos, designed “For Kids To Have A Super Time! And Parents To Have A Better One!” Molly was eating pizza, and Toffee was devouring huge “chicken dippers” although what the chicken had been dipped in, Dexter couldn’t quite make out on the ten inch plazzy-plasma.
“They’re fine, love. Stuffing their faces. As growing girls do,” he said.
“Go on, what’s wrong with the curry?”
“Nothing... I just, well, obviously I haven’t tasted it yet.”
“Taste it, damn you!”
“It looks a bit green.”
“It’s a decapus curry! What colour would you like it to be?”
“Blue?” said Dex, a tad cheekily...
And the waiter was there, removing the plate. “Sir’s wish is our command...”
“No, wait,” said Dex.
“No, no, please, sir, we will be less than two minutes...”
“Wait!” pleaded Dex as his untouched decapus curry was hurtled away to the kitchens by a man in pink pants.
Katrina stared at him over a forkful of quivering fish steak. He met her gaze. “Idiot,” she said.
“I was only joking.”
“Yeah, well, they take it seriously around here.”
Dex’s food was duly returned, blue now, as requested. Grumbling a little, the sort of grumble that wasn’t really words, just half-mumbled half-curses, Dex tried an experimental forkful... and his tastebuds seemed to explode. He was hit with richness, flavour, spice and heat. It whirled around his mouth and then his belly, and finally his skull. It was a taste explosion. A sensory hijacking. Indeed, it was the best damn curry Dexter Colls had ever, ever experienced.
He looked around at his surroundings with renewed enthusiasm.
“Weil?” said Katrina.
“It’s brill,” he said, with a grin, teeth stained blue.
“Not too hot?”
“No. No, perfect, in fact.”
“You mean,” Kat feigned mock horror, “we’ve found some alien food you actually like? Ye gods! Wonders will never cease, my handsome, hunky and culinarily-retarded husband.”
Dex tucked in. He must have liked it. He stopped talking.
The food was great, the wine superb, and - lulled by a sense of fulfilment and alcohol - Dex didn’t even mind when three jajinga chimps came and played guitaviolins by their table. A most hideous screeching noise, to Dex’s ears, but for some reason Katrina liked it. She must be lulled by the romanticism of the whole situation. No point destroying her fantasy, right?
Later, as Lex led the children back to the hotel and their perfectly climate-controlled rooms, Dex and Katrina walked arm in arm down to the beach. Pretty lights illuminated the walkways in the shapes of various Theme Planet alien constellations. At a low zezub step, they kicked off shoes and walked barefoot in the sand, curling toes, giggling a little, and headed towards the crashing, booming ocean. They stood, holding hands like children, simply staring out at an alien ocean from an alien shore.
“It’s just occurred to me,” said Dex.
“What’s that?”
“I haven’t seen a provax yet.”
“They keep a low profile in Theme Planet areas. You should have read your in-flight literature. I told you, too. They don’t want to get in the way of us humans having a good holiday.”
“Yeah, but we’re on their planet.”
“And they make plenty of money from us, darling. I’ve read a lot about the provax; they’re not that different from us. We share a similar evolutionary arc. They, too, are descended from apes - or the nearest alien equivalent, hammered out by the same kind of gravity.”
“Yeah, well, The Seeding Theory of Dr Chaos isn’t exactly on my reading list.”
They stood in silence for a while. The ocean boomed. Surf rolled up the sand, tickling their toes. It was a long, long moment of perfection.
Dex turned to Katrina. He smiled at her, and felt her face move, shift, a return smile that he couldn’t really define in the gloom but could read in the shift of her stance. He knew her too well, he realised.
“I love you,” he said.
“I know you do, darling. And I love you back. Love you lots.”
“If... if I ever do something bad, or stupid, then I didn’t mean it. All right? I love you more than words can say. I’ll love you ‘til the stars die. I’ll love you until the last ounce of breath leaves my body.”
She stood on tiptoe, and kissed him, and then held him tight as the ocean sighed and fell around them.
~ * ~
Back in the room, Lex the PopBot had worked a miracle. The children were asleep. Trailing sand, Dex and Katrina moved to the massive bed and stood, holding each other. Slowly, Katrina undressed Dex, her hands teasing on his flesh, running through his chest hair, brushing against his erection. He smiled down at her, and then reached forward to hold her face in his hands. He kissed her, languorously.
Next, with Dex naked, Katrina allowed him to undress her. She stepped from her slinky hydra-skirt (made completely from different colours of suspension-matted oiled water) and they held each other tight in the darkness, naked. In alcoves around the room, sensing the mood, sense candles sprang into light and life. Gentle scents wafted across the space; first, the wide ocean, then pine forests after rain, then the crushed ice of a mountain summit.
“They think of everything,” murmured Kat, squeezing her husband.
“They can only add to the experience,” he said.
“They certainly can’t add to this,” she murmured, her hands stroking down his body as she slowly lowered herself to her knees. Dex shuddered, winding his hands through her hair, his eyes closed and his face lifted to the ceiling.
“Didn’t realise it was my birthday,” he managed.
Pausing, Kat said, “Just as long as you’ve got those batteries charged...”
“All charged and ready, my love,” he sighed.
She stood, and pushed him back onto the bed, which gave a soft hissing sound and contoured itself around him - almost a water-bed, but not quite. “Comfy,” he managed.
“It better be strong,” said Kat, moving to him, climbing atop him, straddling him. He could smell her want, her lust, her animal need. She oozed sex. What a wife...
“You were right,” said Dex.
“What’s that?” purred Kat.
“This is definitely the best holiday we’ll ever have…”
~ * ~
CHAPTER THREE
MISSION
Amba walked down long, bleak corridors formed from tarnished steel. She was naked, her bare feet treading softly, and she looked neither left nor right.
This is humiliating. You should not be treated like this. You are their top killer, their top assassin! Never have you failed your task. Not once has your target escaped. You always get the job done, and done well.
Be quiet, Zi. This is not the time, nor the place.
Amba continued to walk. She passed two heavily-armoured, mounted AI machinegun turrets. They could decimate a human in a heart-beat. Amba ignored their looming menace.
I still think they treat you like scum. Like a prisoner. You deserve more respect. You deserve more... honour! The FRIEND was hard against her heart; a machine threat Amba was oh-so-reluctant to use. The FRIEND was the most savage weapon she’d ever encountered. Simply terrifying.
No, I disagree, Zi. There is no honour in what I do. And they treat me in the way I would expect they treat any dangerous, barely controllable animal. I am not proud of what I do, Zi. Killing is not something I relish... it’s simply a means to an end.
What end?
Amba smiled internally. “Aah, you cannot see that deep, can you?” Her voice seemed unnaturally loud, metallic and abrasive in the hollow reverberating corridor. She felt Zi shrink back, like the toad she was, and Amba found some small gratification in the flash of Zi’s bright red fury before her dark sister departed.
> Amba felt Zi’s mental connection fade like smoke.
Good fucking riddance, she thought.
The corridor ended, leading to a massive chamber -more like the inside of some vast aquatic tank. The floor was corrugated, the walls streaked with rust. High, high above swung several ancient chains, thick enough to moor an Anti-Grav War Frigate.
Amba looked around for a moment, lips pursed, searching for weaponry or a threat of any kind. Warily - Amba was always wary - she strode out towards the centre of the chamber, footsteps echoing. Then she stood, and folded her arms across her breasts, and waited, eyes forward, no expression on her gentle features. And that was the problem, she knew. The way she had been designed. Amba was gently pretty. Not stunningly beautiful – no - that would defeat the object. She was designed to be typical. Average. A grey woman. Engineered normality -on the surface, at least. Until she sprang into action. Until she began the killing...
Amba.
Anarchy Android.
The most lethal lifeform ever created...
There came a clang, and across the empty steel tank a wheel spun and a heavy door opened, very much in the manner of a submarine hatch. A figure stepped through. He wore an ankle-length black leather coat, and his hair was long and black, slicked back around neat, powerful features. He strode forwards, and in his right hand he carried a Zippo lighter, and his thumb constantly flicked the lid open, and then closed it; open, then closed.
He stopped several paces from Amba, and stared at her without expression.
She returned his stare, face neutral.
“Welcome home,” said the man, finally.
“It is good to be home, Cardinal Romero,” said Amba, showing just the right amount of formal respect.
Romero stepped forward then and embraced her, and she held him for a while, thinking how easy it would be to kill him. But then, why would she kill the man who created her? The man who gave her life? To all intents, her living God?
“Come with me, Amba. There have been developments.”
“You have another mission?”
“Yes. Perhaps your most dangerous yet.”
“They are all the same to me, Cardinal. Five or five thousand. It just takes more time.”
Romero glanced across at her as they walked, and he marvelled at her normality. At her modesty. At her... average features, average physique. And despite everything, despite her deliberate lack of what were fashionably considered “attractive” qualities in contemporary society, he was aroused by Amba. More than she could have ever believed. Like a sister, he thought. A very special sister.
Still.
There was a job to do.
They reached the doorway, and stepped through into a warmer environment filled with carpets and glass wall-coverings. A slender robot stood there holding a gown, and Romero gestured. Amba allowed the robot to place the robe over her shoulders, and she stared for just a few moments too long at its polished metal face.
She’s still touchy, then, thought Romero. And gave a tight, fleeting smile. That was good. That was information he could use.
They moved past guards and automated AI turrets, down a maze of corridors and through several bullet-lifts which dropped them at dizzying speed further and further below the streets of London.
Eventually, they emerged into a large, plush room. Fountains tinkled, whiskey running through crystal. The walls were decorated in fifty-metre high gold and silver murals. Statues in obsidian were placed at strategic locations, and Amba sensed their hidden high-power weaponry.
“This way.”
Romero led her across the vast, garish office, to a genuine oak table around which fifty men could have comfortably sat. Romero took a seat, but Amba remained standing.
“Your tastes grow ever more extravagant,” she observed.
“It is a privilege of status.”
“Some would call it tacky.” Amba gave a smile, but Romero caught the falseness behind the movement. After all, he had designed her. He had engineered her to... perfection.
“You are well, then, Amba? You know, you are my personal favourite of all the Anarchy models. You do know that, don’t you?”
“I know,” said Amba, gently, not looking at him. “What is the mission?”
“So clinical.”
“You made me this way.”
“So we did.”
Romero smiled, reclined, took a cigar from a box and lit it with his golden Zippo. He smoked for a while, watching her. She had left the robe open a touch, and he had a tantalising glimpse of her modest breasts. Am I that sad? That I lust after the androids I create? Or is it the danger element... even though I created her, even though I designed and coded her genetic structure, she has far surpassed all expectations; has fought and clawed her way to the top of the hierarchy. She has made killing an artform. Even now, she is expecting the random test of her abilities... waiting for it. But then, a creature like Amba sees death and murder in every possible situation...
They fast-roped from the ceiling, dropped like stones down a well. There were five Anarchy Androids dressed from head-to-foot in black cotton. Each carried a curved black sword and had been trained to the point of extinction with said weapon. They were experts. Masters.
They attacked, their movements fluid, from between the statues. Amba somersaulted backwards from a standing position without even tensing her muscles, and swords whistled through the air beneath her; she twisted and kicked off a statue, spinning her trajectory and taking a blade against her arm on its flat side: landing, sliding her arm down the blade to its owner’s wrists and breaking them with a swift twist and crack. She dropped to one knee, taking the sword from unresisting hands, and rammed the point into the attacking android’s groin before standing and front-kicking him from the blade, then reversing it as another leapt from behind and skewering his throat. She stepped left, ripping the blade out sideways in a shower of gore and twirling it expertly as she turned to face the remaining three. They spun their blades slowly, spreading out to surround Amba, and charged as one, and Amba stepped back to the nearest statue, slicing her sword through its protective shell and dropping flat to the floor as the AI’s self-preservation took over and all the statues in the room came alive with heavy-calibre machine-gun fire. Bullets screamed through the air, and the three remaining Anarchy Androids were slammed and peppered with bullets, jigging like marionettes with tangled strings.
They hit the ground like roadkill.
Smoke curled through the suddenly silent room.
Slowly, Amba stood, and tossed the sword onto one of the torn, ragged corpses. She walked over to the desk, tilting her head to watch Romero. He was smiling, and still smoking. None of the bullets had gone near him. The AIs were well-programmed like that.
“Predictable,” she said, and took a seat across from him, folding her arms.
Romero shrugged. “It’s good to see you still have the edge.”
“What’s the mission?”
“Again, straight to the point. As usual.”
“It’s what I do. There’s no point pretending otherwise.”
“Don’t you have... downtime, Amba? Don’t you have any hobbies?”
Amba fixed him with a baleful glare, and a chill ran through Romero. She might be plain. She might be a grey woman. But when that stare drilled through your soul, you knew you were dealing with somebody who had sidestepped from the path of humanity. This was no pussycat. This was a psychopath.
“No,” she said.
Romero gave a curt nod, and slid a tablet to her. Amba took up what appeared to be a small grey slate, and accessed it with her thumb-print. The grey flickered and displayed an image: an old man, dressed in a smart black suit. The image animated in fits and starts, moving, then freezing, then moving again. To the left, data scrolled in bright green letters.
“He works for the Monolith Corporation.”
“Yes. They all do.”
“All?”
“Six. Six hits.”
&
nbsp; Amba gave a nod, and scrolled through the selection of targets on the tablet. Three men. Two women. One teenage, female, and only just sixteen. “No provax?” She gave a wry smile. “You could almost call this race hate.”
“No provax,” said Romero. “This is political. All six work for Monolith and help with public relations, and the marketing of the Theme Planet, on behalf of the aliens.”
“The aliens. I like that.” Amba smiled. It was only the old school who used the word “alien.” Part of humanity’s superiority complex - as if they still believed they were the centre of the universe, of an Empire, when in fact they were outclassed in every damn direction, be it genetic or technological.