by Andy Remic
Pippa and her clone watched for a while, gauging the level of intelligence of the Thumper mkIV. After all, if it was an AI model it might, at the very least, alert the authorities or cause some obstruction under some bizarre, corrupt and misplaced Health and Safety legislation. Pippa had seen it before. H&S Bots gone policy crazy and locking people up in restaurants and factories, thinking they were simply "upholding policy" but really "condemning people to horrible deaths." The H&S SafetyBot v2.9 had, on the 15th Julius one year, caused the deaths of three hundred and nineteen workers in an insurance office block because somebody spilt a cup of Hot-O-Coffee CoffeeMax on the stairs. The H&S SafetyBot v2.9 had cordoned off the offending Hot-O-Coffee CoffeeMax with steel struts, effectively sealing the stairwell. On a higher floor containing the Superziplift computers, an electrical fire had subsequently started, rendering all lifts immediately unusable and disconnected because of the H&S SafetyBot 2.9 in charge of "Lift Safety Policy." So, as the fire happily raged out of control, the two H&S SafetyBots had imprisoned everybody in this new cage, effectively sealing them inside the fire zone under the pretext of Health and Safety Policy. Two days later, when the insane inferno was finally wrestled under control and the H&S SafetyBots taken down by TAK squad laser bursts, three hundred and nineteen roasted corpses were found in states of immobilised shock. The H&S SafetyBot 2.9 had been fitted with a PG - a Paralysis Gun - to enable its necessary enforcing of Health and Safety Policy. The dumb bots had immobilised the screaming, panicking people trying to escape the fire. Effectively, frying them like bacon in a pan. Since then, the base unit H&S SafetyBot had been... upgraded.
And so, with lives so readily threatened by the crap machinery invented to protect them, Pippa and her clone were loath to step happily into the workshop environment without at least a few tests. First, they eased into the factory and stood for a while in the Thumper's line of vision (using whatever visual sensory apparatus it used, as nothing was obvious from Pippa's perspective). The machine simply ignored their presence and continued fastening lids on crates - and Pippa shuddered to think what the crates might contain, but she was sure it was something organic, because the place stunk like a charnel pit in high summer after the Twenty Year Plague.
Genetic Urban Necrolatry?
Yeah, right.
Next, Pippa sidled over to a long rough workbench which lined one wall and picked up a heavy metal block. She weighed it thoughtfully, and glanced at her clone - who was tense now, as if sensing the Thumper would kick off with extreme prejudice when it became the butt of Pippa's little test. With a grunt, she launched the metal weight, which hit the Thumper square in the middle of its round body. There was a boom and the weight skittered off across the ground without leaving so much as a mark. Pippa, tensed with MPK at the ready, watched as the Thumper studiously ignored the impact and continued thumping crates and punching lids into position.
Pippa allowed a pent-up breath to escape. It was safe. Safe! For once, safe! Maybe their luck was changing? Maybe her luck was changing? She smiled a grim, narrow-lipped smile. Yeah. Course it was.
"Come on!"
"I don't like this," said her clone.
"What's to like? Let's just get through this shit and move on. We can't be far from the 3Core now. If I'm any gauge of distance, another floor down and we're near the centre. Unless you were mistaken."
"Unless I was mistaken," agreed her clone.
They walked, warily - looking for enemy squibs - past a conveyor of huge crates, rattling and bumping, huge belly-slung motors humming. To their right, the Thumper mkIV was thumping away, arms flailing, with a mechanised rattle like speeding chains. It towered over them, huge and ominous. Pippa stared at the machine, the pin-prick lights reflected from its dull metal casing. The feeling came to her before anything was actually out of place. She sensed rather than saw, as if discovering a crack in the world, like a bad egg with a rotten core, that something was subtly wrong; the Thumper hammered a lid on a crate and Pippa felt the fracture with normality, with the world, with reality, with this GUN Workshop, with this situation, with this machine... and she was moving, MPK coming up, free hand drawing the yukana even as the Thumper's claw slammed through three crates in a long lazy curve that could have demolished a house, and Pippa dropped back onto her arse, a fast movement allowing gravity to save her life as the claw whistled past her head, parting her hair down one side. In pure reflex the yukana hissed up and rattled across armoured casing, and the MPK yammered in her fist, bullets spewing like hot metal parasites and pissing sparks up the Thumper's dulled casing. Pippa rolled, an instinctive movement born of experience - keep moving, keep running - which was fortuitous, because from nowhere came the hammer, slamming down from the gloom and darkness, red lights highlighting a steel head twice the size of Pippa's own and capable of crushing her entire being with one massive splat. Indeed, it was probably capable of crushing a tank.
Pippa's clone, the instant Pippa's gun fired, whirled and unleashed a hail of MPK bullets. Sparks flew and spat, and the Thumper spun around on its bendy hydraulics, bubble tyres hissing, and it shot towards her faster than something so big and ponderous should be able to move. The cone slammed towards Pippa's clone, and there came a whumpf as it ejaculated a gush of flame, and Pippa's clone squealed, sprinting, diving for cover. Fire splashed up the walls, and Pippa's jaw dropped open as the Thumper - twisting, tyres squeaking like a large child's toy - turned, reversed, and spun towards her with a billowing arc of bright blossoming fire, sending demons racing up the walls. The stench of fire met her nostrils, and pure, hot razor fear filled her from cunt to scalp.
Nothing freaked Pippa more than fire. It was buried in her psyche like a cancer, an evil drug. Like a maggot eating her brain from the inside out. It was her torture. Her breaking point. Her event horizon. For Pippa, fire, the fear of burning to death, the stench of her own flesh roasting, filled her worse than any other terror. "Every person has a breaking point," Keenan once told her, as they sat curled on the beach of Molkrush Fed after the crash, the sea hissing against the shore. A warm wind blew in from the jungle. But Pippa crawled backwards from the flames, and looked up at Keenan, in his arms, a little girl again, a tortured little girl afraid of the flames.
"I didn't expect that," she said, pulling away from his kiss. Sand stuck to her golden skin. Her eyes sparkled.
"Neither did I."
"What is this, Kee?"
"What is what?"
"Stop being evasive."
He grinned. "I'm not evading anything," he evaded.
She slapped his thick bicep and leant forward, part of her fringe dropping across her forehead. Her hair was damp from her swim; her lips were rimed with salt.
"Do it again," she said.
"What, evade you?"
And they were kissing, touching, easing gently down to the sand. Pippa suddenly pulled away. "We might have to spend our lives here," she said.
"OK."
"Together."
"That's fine."
"That would be like... a dream to me." Only, now he was dead and gone, vanished into the flames, into the heart and soul of VOLOS, and she was alone, alone against the fucking void and in the fire she saw Keenan's face, in the fire she saw her own face, and the faces of a thousand tormentors, a million clones, and she was going to die, but even worse, she was going to
burn.
"No!" screamed Pippa's clone, and sprinted, dived, slammed into Pippa so violently she was knocked across the floor, yukana sword skittering away under a teetering stack of crates. Fire ravaged her clone's back, the force of the flames' impact slapping her clean across the factory floor, where she hit hard and rolled fast, and lay in a heap, clothes smoking, tiny flames dancing up and down her spine.
Pippa growled, and rolled, and came up fast. The Thumper towered over her, all four arms lifting and wavering, each with a threatening appendage. All four smashed towards her at once, and Pippa leapt forward, under its reach, as the four arms crashed and screamed
through the conveyor belt, wrenching it from pulleys and steel struts, and the whole rattling giant ensemble came to a grinding, squealing halt. Pippa rolled under the creature, firing up into what she assumed, hoped, would be a less-protected underbelly. It wasn't. Bullets pinged and squealed, and ricocheted dangerously close to Pippa's face, sparks scorching her skin. Balloon tyres hissed and nearly crushed her head, and she rolled, slamming herself sideways with a grunt that was more rage than effort. Her eyes searched frantically in the gloom, lit now by several burning crates. There were no convenient hatches. No little banks of computer chips. Nothing! The Thumper was industrial, built to operate in factories on and off-world, built to work on heavy industrial sites where a rogue AI Crane or AI Dumper might go meltwire AWOL and chew up half the bloody site. The Thumper was built to be tough. The Thumper was built to last.
"Shit," she snarled, and glanced to her clone. She wasn't moving.
There came a squeal of hydraulics, and suddenly the Thumper careered off, ten foot into the sky, on struts still connected to the wheels, leaving Pippa suddenly exposed and vulnerable beneath the machine's not-so-vulnerable underside. She yelled in surprise as a stench of hot oil and grease - and the ever-present stench of organic ganger corruption - flooded over her, as if... as if the damn machine was powered by some kind of distilled human oil ejecting burned ganger fumes. Shit, shit, she realised. The ganger shells and fuck-only-knew what else was being used as fuel to power the Slush Pits! It was all one big horrible charnel house, a place for the dying, a place for the dead. An eco-nut's recyclable wet-dream. No waste. No fucking waste!
The hammer swung between the Thumper's legs, and Pippa narrowly missed being crushed. She scampered to one side and dived, rolling behind a section of the destroyed conveyor belt. Her MPK screamed, and bullets tracked up the shell of the Thumper - causing no damage whatsoever. It turned on her, and she swore the bastard was grinning, despite having no mouth. It levelled another arm at her. What was it? She rattled her combat brain. What the hell had it used it for? Nailing shut crate lids? Surely that couldn't... be... a weapon.
"Fuck!" she growled, and was already running as the Thumper started pumping out nails - a hundred nails a second. They howled and whistled through the air, decimating anything and everything in their path. Pippa dived long and low, sliding across the warm soft floor as nails struck - thud thud thud - down one arm. She squealed and let out a breath of hot agony. She looked down at her left arm, where five six-inch pins - thinner that a pencil, admittedly, but still long bastard slivers of steel - had punched completely through her bicep. She flexed her fingers, formed a fist, and every single movement burned her bicep with raw hot fire. "Motherfucker," she growled, and her head snapped left, and the pain fuelled her hate and she wanted it now, her temper was up and she wanted to kill! Nothing mattered anymore, not pain, not fear, she would destroy this fucking machine and eat its machine heart!
She stood. "You want a piece of me, you big useless testicle? Come on, let's see what you're made of!" But it was quite obvious what it was made of. Steel. Steel impenetrable to bullets. Her MPK was useless. Like waving a plastic fucking gun.
She needed her sword. Her yukana. Forged from a single molecule, it could cut hull steel; before, she must have hits its armoured plating at an angle. She wouldn't make the same dumb-ass mistake again.
Sword. Under crate. Shit.
She stared at the Thumper. It had hunkered down again on its tyres, and its four wavering tentacles had stretched out, the clawed one closing around a section of conveyor belt. What's it doing? What's the slimeball actually doing? Pippa's question was answered painfully quickly, as the Thumper suddenly wrenched back its claw and pulled a ten foot length of steel conveyor belt loose. Pippa blinked.
"You've got to be joking, right? Come on, give me a break!" as the Thumper started to swing the ten-foot length of jagged steel-links around and around, like the world's biggest, deadliest bicycle chain.
Pippa was backing away. She knew she was being foolish. Backed into a corner.
Door? If she could get to the door...
She glanced right. It had sealed shut. Convenient. She grinned like a skull in a tomb. After all, why would it ever be that easy? When would it ever go that smooth? If the bastard wanted to lure them into a trap like a rabbit in a snare, it had done a brilliant job.
Pippa slung her MPK on her back. It was useless against armour. She spread her arms wide, and watched the Thumper approaching, bubbling tyres rising and falling over the crushed and torn conveyor system like some kind of deviated moon buggy.
The whirling conveyor section made a slow whum-whum-whum sound as Pippa watched, eyes focused, lips dry, waiting for the onslaught, timing its movements... would it go up, or down, or cut her completely in half?
The Thumper disengaged, and at the very same moment Pippa's clone screamed "Fucker!" and the Thumper twitched. Pippa dived left, and the whirling conveyor belt scythed overhead, embedding itself in the wall, creaking and groaning. The Thumper strode over to Pippa's clone as Pippa picked herself up off the floor, and the claw rose high in the air.
"No!" screamed Pippa, as the appendage slammed down through the clone's body, which convulsed violently, legs kicking under the impact. The claw rose again, slowly, drooling blood, and hovered over the clone's convulsing body. Pippa's clone lay gurgling and twitching, and Pippa stared with open hatred and glaring fury as the Thumper turned towards her, its claw worse than any gun pointed at Pippa's face.
She was trapped. Trapped inside this smashed-up place with a psychopathic factory robot. What the hell was she going to do? How the fuck was she going to escape? How could she escape?
And the answer was simple.
She couldn't escape.
She'd have to kill it. Kill it, or it'd kill her.
"Son of a bitch," she growled, and wiped sweating hands on her pants. Think, girl, think! There must be a way round its armour. There must be a service hatch. Despite evidence to the contrary, the fucker had to have a brain. Memory. Instruction sets. It was a construction model. Where would they put the access hatch?
She needed her sword.
She needed her sword...
She ran, leaping up a series of crates to stand above the Thumper, boots planted firm, hands on hips, hatred on her face. "Come on, you heap of cheap tin shit!" she screamed, and the Thumper reversed, turning away from Pippa's wounded, dying clone and charging towards her, bubble tyres thumping over debris. The claw and the hammer whirled, clacking and yammering, and converged on the crates, and Pippa's position, shattering the wood as Pippa back-flipped from the crate to land in a crouch, eyes down, lips snarling. The crates had been sent flying, reduced to tinder, and there amongst the debris was her -
yukana.
Pippa rolled forward, coming up with the blade in hand and leaping as the hammer whirred over her at waist-height. It would have crushed every rib in her body, and more. The Thumper's arms whirled about, and Pippa dodged more heavy blows and stepped in, ramming the sword into the Thumper in one straight, swift blow, right up to the hilt. The Thumper paused, a sudden, shocking stillness, and Pippa withdrew the yukana and rammed it into the Thumper again. It sparked and fizzled, and with a screech of metal on metal reversed fast, bubble tyres pounding the floor as Pippa took a step back and lifted her sword, dark eyes fixed on the machine, which, she assumed, had realised she could damage it.
"What's the matter, fucker, armour not as tough as you thought?"
The Thumper spun around and seemed to utter a low growl, almost below hearing. And Pippa realised it was angry. She'd stuck her little needle into its innards, and now it was angry. She laughed at the machine, and realised with a shocking chill that it was an AI after all, not just some dumb Bot with the intelligence of a brick. It had the ability to think. To analyse, and rationalise, and problem solve and, supposedly, empathise. Yeah. Right. Like that thing gives a fuck whether I live or die! But it did give a fuck. It wanted her dead. Wanted her dead rea
l bad...
The Thumper sped at Pippa, who ran towards the machine and dived at the last moment, claw and hammer swishing through the air. Her yukana slashed left, then right, as she passed beneath the machine; huge chunks of rubber were cut from the bubble tyres, and as Pippa slowed she twisted, saw the wheel struts, and lashed out again in a shower of sparks. There came a clunk and the Thumper seemed to sit down with a jerk, collapsing off its wheels. Pippa grinned and lifted her yukana, matt black blade gleaming in the dull light of the red pin-prick lights and the glowing embers of burning crates. The arm with the cone lashed towards Pippa and she knew what was coming, heard the whoosh in its pipes, and she bit down on her fear like an apple filled with maggots, and she grimaced, and yelled, and charged forward, and her yukana met the lashing arm with all her force, the blade sliding and sparking up the scaled hose until she reached the Thumper's hull. The blade bit, and detached the limb at its core joint. Pippa grabbed the protruding bolts and climbed up onto the Thumper's hull, and standing, panting, streaked with sweat and dirt and smoke from the fires, she lifted the yukana high and rammed it down through the Thumper. With a shower of sparks, and a roar, as if Pippa swam beneath the ocean during a vast earthquake or tidal wave, the Thumper's remaining arms settled on the ground and the machine was still.