by Andy Remic
Dex stood, and glared down the gun at Jim. Here, and now, an ocean of rage and resentment and frustration surfaced. His finger tightened on the trigger. He could do it. Kill the bastard, right here, right now...
A screeching of distressed timber filled Dex’s head, seemed to fill the entire world. Dex looked up as the entire forest canopy came rushing towards him, crashing down, entire fifty-foot trees breaking and snapping like dry tinder, like children’s toy sticks, as something came stomping into the forest and knocked the woodland aside like skittles.
Dex gawped for a moment, blinking rapidly, confusion his mistress, as through the violet light stomped a dinozen easily a hundred feet high. It lifted its head and gave a massive, mammoth trumpeting cry which shook the ground. It reared up, its huge, armoured, spiked trunk swinging lazily like a pendulum, and its flat-plated feet, each one as big as a house, came down with a colossal thump, which shook the trees out of the earth and sent Dex toppling backwards. The trunk swung towards him, and he swallowed, watching the deadly barbs like sharpened razors. They cut through trunks with a smashing, crashing, screaming sound of tortured wood, of tearing timber, and Dex leapt, flattening himself into the heather as what felt like a skyscraper ploughed overhead and destroyed another hundred trees.
Jim disappeared in a swathe of shredded wood, like a man swallowed by quicksand.
Dex leapt up, and started to run. “Holy mother of God,” he breathed, and sprinted for all he was worth, Jim and the murder of Jim clean forgotten in a whirlwind of panic. The great beast’s head lowered, and its tiny yellow eyes focused on the running man.
Again, the dinozen trumpeted, shaking its great head, and began to charge after him with a clumsy, lumbering gait, which was nevertheless a jog faster than Dex’s sprint.
Dex skidded, leaping behind a tree, and aimed the stolen gun at the great beast’s face. He began shooting - five bullets, ten - and the beast roared now, flicking its great shaggy head from left to right and back, as if blatting away annoying flies. It could certainly feel the bullets, but that was a long way from being dropped like a bastard.
“Son of a bitch,” muttered Dex, and stood, and with a brutal clarity headed for the theme park area, and the women and children beyond. If, as he suspected, these creatures were machines, controlled machines or even AIs, they would have inhibitors built-in. After all, Monolith couldn’t have the bastards running riot all over the Theme Planet, killing tourists! That would make bad economic sense.
Dex sprinted for all he was worth, Jim gone and forgotten and hopefully dead, and pine needles scattered and branches snapped and cracked, and all around him it rained bark and twigs. To his left there came a terrific thump as a fifty-foot trunk hit the ground only a few inches away. Dex shied away, his trajectory changing. His arms pumped, gun forgotten. He knew, deep down, his only salvation from this creature were the tourists...
Through the gloom of the forest ahead there came another scream, blood-curdling and bestial. Dex froze right through to his core, as if the dinozen had reached forward and ripped out his spine. Realisation struck him a hammer blow. They were coordinating, trying to cut him off! His face went hard, forming into a narrow brittle mask. So. They were being controlled. Who by? Earth’s Oblivion Government? Monolith? It had to be. Nobody else had such authority on Theme Planet...
Dex veered left, ducking under branches. He heard hooves on the forest floor, pacing him to his right, and behind him the huge lumbering beast was still cracking and breaking trees, but slowing now, as if it had been called off. It was too big, Dex realised. Too frightening. They wanted the smaller, more inconspicuous dinozens to take over...
Dex gave an evil grin.
And you know what that means, kiddies?
Bring in the predators!
A creature burst from the undergrowth before him, and Dex flipped left, gun cracking in his hand, bullets thumping up fur and into flesh with spurts of blood. Whatever the thing was - part bear, part dinosaur, part lion, a cocktail of fur and armoured bone plates - it sailed past him as he continued to fire, bullets eating into the creature’s body as teeth flashed and gnashed and snarled, straining to get at him, and he hit the ground rolling, gun still pumping. Then he stopped, and smoke was in the air, and he climbed to his feet and stared down at the creature. It was panting hard, fur matted in blood. Pale blue malevolent eyes watched him with hatred. He took a step closer, and it snarled like an injured lion.
“Goodnight, fucker,” he said, and put a bullet between its eyes.
Breathless, his chest hurting, muscles burning, his mind screaming, he orientated himself. Deep in the forest there were three sounds of huge lumbering beasts, all in different directions and cutting off escape routes. The bastards are forcing me into a narrow channel, he realised, mind working fast. They want me away from the tourists. Away, so then they can kill me and bury me in a shallow grave. The bastards. The utter bastards.
So? What did you expect? To find your family and live happily ever after?
Damn. Fucking. Right.
Dex crouched suddenly, and reversed into the centre of a thick bush. The scent of pine resin was all around him, thick and cloying. He closed his eyes, and tuned himself into the forest. The gun was cold and hard in his hand, an alien thing, a part of a different culture, a different world. All I want to do is take my family home, he realised. But no. They’re going to make me fight. Well, I’ll give them a fight they’ll remember...
Something paced into the clearing from the right. It was like a panther, but its body was an oiled green. Its eyes were bright and old and reptilian, and its jaws were open, panting softly. A tongue flickered out, red and forked. Dex watched the creature, analysing it carefully. It moved with all the grace of a big cat, fluid, muscles rolling easily and powerfully beneath thick skin. It dropped its nose to the ground, seeking his scent. Aah, thought Dex. Aaah.
He readied his gun. He was going to come out fighting!
And then he saw the second oiled green cat; it slunk into the clearing, circling its comrade. Both of them, Dex realised with a start, weren’t sniffing the ground, they were tasting it, with their flickering forked tongues. A sibilant hissing came to him. Shivers ran up and down his spine. What are they ? his mind screamed at him.
“We’re danjos,” said a soft voice, right by Dex’s ear, the words tickling him with proximity; and very, very slowly, he turned, to look straight into the eyes of the third oil-skinned beast. It was so close they could kiss, and Dex’s nostrils twitched at the scent of its sleek hard body. He became suddenly, painfully aware of the creature’s sheer mass. Its bulged with muscle, with power, and exuded a force that far outweighed Dex’s meagre human form; his shell.
The other two creatures had stopped their search, their bluff, he realised, and orientated on Dex’s hiding position.
But he didn’t dare shift his gaze from that ancient reptilian stare, sat so close...
As close as lovers.
Because to do so, to move, to act, to fight, would be to die...
~ * ~
CHAPTER SEVEN
INTERNAL EXILE
Amba Miskalov stood in the shadows of the Spikefist Mountain Range, boots planted firmly on pale rock as she shaded her eyes and studied the distant mountain. The Firelce Mountain High-Security Military Facility was clearly visible, two-thirds of the way up the towering rockface of the largest mountain dominating the range. There was an open-sided hangar, like a rectangular maw in the bulk of the mountain. All it was missing were teeth.
Looks impenetrable, said Zi in her mind, her words like the cool kiss of an iced lover.
Nothing’s impenetrable.
You don’t have the equipment.
I have you.
Zi chuckled then, and Amba got a momentary glimpse of the woman inside the FRIEND, the spirit/ghost/demon not just inside the FRIEND, but inside Amba’s own body, in her mind, in her fucking soul.
Yes, Amba. You will always have me. Until you die. Until we both die.
Why do you think Romero wants her dead? Why do you think Oblivion want her dead?
Our role is not to question why, Amba. Zi actually sounded shocked. Amba had never before asked such a question. For some reason, this amused Amba immensely.
What are you smiling for?
You, dickhead. Getting all noble with me, when we both know what I do - hell, what we do is about as low as it goes. We’re the scum at the bottom of the barrel, Zi. We’re the dregs, my friend.
I disagree.
Why so?
We are the elite. We do the things nobody else would ever dream... or be physically able to do.
Bullshit. I’m an android, Zi. I’m an android, and I’m hated by the humans because I look like them, act like them, but they think I’m inferior because they created me, they fucking played at God and I was the abortion. I’m hated by other androids because that’s just the way with androids, isn’t it? We hate each other, as if we’re all competing for the same gulp of air, the same slice of life, and we’re afraid it’ll suddenly turn into a scrum and so we’re always looking over our shoulders, always keeping our eyes on the ball. Who knows when the order will come from Oblivion to have us all put down? Not murdered, you understand, but like in an old filmy: “retired.” As if we’re so much old useless scum, detritus, something not real, not living, not breathing, but a machine to be decommissioned. Well, I’m no machine, Zi, and I’m getting tired of being treated like a second-class citizen by every motherfucker who discovers I’m an android.
So what’s the answer?
I’m sick of doing another man’s work.
So you want to retire yourself?
If by “retire” you mean murder myself, then no. But if by “retire” you mean turn against my masters, rend and slay, then find a cave somewhere to sit and live out my life in a simple, honest existence - then maybe.
Zi remained silent. She was considering.
Don’t worry, Zi. I know you report back to Romero. I’m going to get this job done. Then I’ll decide what to do.
Amba, I’m shocked you think so little of me! I promise you, I am not a puppet of Romero, Oblivion, or any other organisation; I am here... for you. I am here to help you. Here to help you achieve what you want.
Yeah. Right.
I am hurt you do not believe me.
Explain yourself, then. What the fuck are you, Zi? Where did you come from? Where did the FRIEND come from? Why me? Why choose me? Why help me? I never asked for your help, and I can get by just fine on my own.
There was a long pause, and Amba moved across the rocky ground to the hover bike she’d stolen ten hours earlier. It had been a long, uncomfortable ride through the night, under cold stars and spirals of fusing hydrogen sculpting patterns in the sky. But now she was here. The sun was up, and it was warming her android skin. It felt good. All of a sudden, it felt good to be alive.
I cannot explain it, said Zi, and her voice was soft, a gentle tickling in Amba’s mind. What I can say, though, is that you are barking up the wrong tree, my dangerously fragile human machine. Have you ever stopped to consider that maybe I’m not here just for your benefit? Maybe I’m here for myself, as well.
What, by killing on my behalf, by doing the things you do - that helps you?
Yes.
Why, Zi, what are you?
“Lay down your weapons and put your hands in the air!” commanded the loudhailer of the police drone, which swept around the rocky outcropping with flashing green and yellow lights, and hovered, nose down, in an aggressive attack position. Amba breathed out slowly, eyes fixed on the twin mini-guns that had her in their sights. She smiled, lifted her hands in the air, then whipped out the FRIEND, selected and fired quicker than a striking cobra...
The police drone was roughly the size of a groundcar, and early morning sunlight gleamed from its alloy panels. Little eddies of dust swirled under its hover jets, and a heat haze shimmered to the left from hot exhaust ports. Despite there being no human - or android - occupant, the drone was considered AI, considered alive. This was often a point of bitterness for Amba; after all, an AI - openly a machine - had more rights than an android. This police drone had more right to exist than a living, breathing, organic created human.
The FRIEND went blam even as the drone realised, a picosecond too late, that this meat creature wasn’t in fact subserviently doing what it was told (as most creatures did when faced by the terrible barrels of twin mini-guns) and there came a rattling as the weapons started to spin up... but by then, it was too late.
For such a small weapon, the FRIEND had an almighty kick. The police drone was picked up and tossed across the desert, but it wasn’t a simple blast of energy, this was what was known in the industry as a cube blast, something physicists still claimed was impossible and attempted to disprove. Maybe it was impossible. But the FRIEND still delivered one...
When the drone had spun for thirty feet, it was suddenly thrust up into the air and folded down and in upon itself, over and over, with rhythmical crunches of crushing alloy, then thumped down to the ground in a quivering, gleaming, raw-metal block.
A silence resonated, and Amba gave a sideways look at the FRIEND, then placed it back in her chest. She walked across the rock, eyes scanning left and right to check there weren’t other drones in the vicinity.
It must have followed you, said Zi. When you stole the hover bike.
Hmm. Yeah. You fucked that up pretty bad, didn’t you?
You wanted him quiet in the quickest possible way, yes? You didn’t want to attract any attention from the damned Military Facility, yes? Well, he got put down and out of the game.
You said “him.”
So?
It was a machine.
Oh don’t start that again, Amba...
Amba crouched by the compacted police drone. Inside, there was a buzzing noise, and metallic scraping - as of metal spinning against metal. Amba stood, and stretched in the early morning sunshine. She yawned, and moved back to the hover bike.
“Time to go to work,” she said.
How are we going in?
That’s the easy bit.
Through the front door?
Yeah.
~ * ~
The hover bike cruised across rock and sand, the hover jets sending out a swirl in the machine’s wake. Amba, hair tousled from the wind, focused on the perimeter fence at ground level, and the fifty towers which lay scattered across the valley, each mounted with a heavy, automatic, AI pulse laser. She slowed the bike as she approached the fence, eyes flickering up to the walls of sheer rock beyond - the mountain, and the high rectangular mouth of the facility entrance. All along the fence, in a variety of languages, sensory field warnings made the message clear and simple:
KEEP OUT OR YOU WILL DIE.
Amba slowed the hover bike at the foot of a tower, and lowered it to the ground. She sensed the AI pulse laser watching her from above.
Amba climbed from the bike, staggered theatrically, and went down on one knee, hand slapping out to break her fall.
“YOU MUST VACATE THIS LOCATION AT ONCE,” boomed a suitably metallic robot voice. “Or you shall be shot!”
Amba fell to her other knee, and held up a hand to the tower. “It’s okay, I’m okay, just give me a minute...”
“You WILL GET BACK ON YOUR HOVER BIKE AND LEAVE IMMEDIATELY - OR YOU WILL BE SHOT. I WILL SHOOT YOU. I AM NOT JOKING ABOUT THIS SCENARIO. I REPEAT, YOU WILL BE SHOT. Shot dead. By me. In the head. With a laser.”
Amba vomited on the floor, then flopped to her side and lay still.
The AI pulse laser shuffled forward to the edge of the guard tower and peered down past its wide, flat barrel containing metal eyes.
“Are you all right, human meat?”
Amba remained motionless.
The AI pulse laser considered its options for a while, and then sent a buzz back to the guard tower control block at the foot of the mountain. A few minutes later, a JEEP snorted into life and thro
ttled across the rough rocky ground, tyres thudding and bouncing over rocks, its engine growling, thick black fumes spitting from its exhaust. Aboard, there was a Battle SIM in full desert camouflage combats, heavy armour, and carrying an MP7000. The SIM was a big man, with a helmet and a face that screamed Sonny, there just ain’t no comedy in war. SIMs were universally renowned for having a serious lack of a sense of humour - so bad, in fact, that many a comedy stand-up routine on Earth poked fun at SIMs and their anal retention, saying they didn’t just lack a funny bone, they did in fact have negative comedy appreciation. Obviously, serious SIMs found these comedy routines seriously non-funny, and took every opportunity to shoot up, massacre and generally exterminate comedians at every opportunity. They considered it fair payback.