Version 43

by Philip Palmer

  So first, I had arranged for Hari to get access to the police forensics report on the arson attack on his club. It had arrived in a file on his virtual computer marked HARI IS A DUMB MOTHERFUCKER. This forensic evidence showed a trace of DNA on the bomb that blew up his House of Pain. The DNA matched Billy Grogan’s; the pathologist surmised that it was a residue of spittle that was left when Billy had kissed the bomb to wish it luck.

  Hari had naturally always believed that Billy was lying when he denied setting the bomb; but this report, which I had carefully forged, goaded him badly, and rubbed salt in his raw wounds.

  Then I spread a rumour that Billy Grogan was laughing at Hari behind his back.

  “Have you heard,” I’d said to a degenerate drinker in a Dark Side bar, “that Billy Grogan says Hari is an evil pervert who fucks his own mother?”

  It was a documented fact that Hari’s mother had borne a child by him, though not willingly. But Hari was touchy about it being mentioned.

  The rumour had spread; naturally, it got back to Hari; that, combined with the forensics report, was enough to send Hari into a blind killing rage.

  Hari had, I knew from my data sources, genuinely adored his mother, which was why he had on numerous occasions coerced her into having sex with him. And, so I had gleaned, Hari was still remorseful that he had killed her in a ninja-rage, on hearing that she had taken a lover her own age instead of remaining faithful to her son.

  Thus, the idea that his undying love for his beloved mother was being mocked was wormwood and gall for Hari.

  And then finally, I had desecrated the grave of Hari’s mother, and destroyed the holo projector that was intended to preserve her image for all eternity. Hari turned up to witness the vandalism, and found there a bottle of Golgothan malt whiskey, whose contents had been splashed over his mother’s now-sodden ashes. That was the Grogan trademark; Dooley was notorious for drowning his victims in malt, then carving a smile on their faces with a knife.

  And so now, Hari Gilles had come to take revenge.

  Billy was truly astonished when his spies informed him that Hari and his Killers were on their way to slay him. And he was enraged when I informed him of what a drinking pal had assured me: that Hari was planning to rape all the women in Billy’s family, then bury them alive in the desert. This rumour was swiftly confirmed by several of Billy’s other associates.

  It was, of course, a rumour I had spread myself.

  Once roused, Billy’s rage was a formidable thing. And, less than thirty minutes after hearing that Hari’s men were planning an attack, he had planned his defence and counterattack, with my devious assistance.

  The truce was off; finally, we had war.

  Hari himself commanded his troops – dressed in black fetish wear, with bizarrely huge black boots, and a scimitar strapped to his back.

  I watched, with my eyes and via my dragonfly spies, as Hari and his army of men moved in.

  “Now!” whispered Hari, and the Killers moved like shadows and blew through the walls of the saloon with cannon blasts and rolled and weaved their way inside.

  There was no one there.

  The Saloon was deserted, apart from a bottle of Golgothan single malt with a label saying Uisce Beatha to show it was made in the traditional Earth-Irish fashion – with a hundred per cent malted barley distilled in a pot still – together with an empty glass, and a note that said: MAKE THIS YOUR LAST DRINK BEFORE YOU DIE, HARI – Billy Grogan.

  Hari and his Killers searched each room, and shot holes in every cupboard and wardrobe, but found no one.

  “Evacuate.”

  The Killers fled the building like shadows fleeing the sun. But the anticipated booby trap did not detonate.

  And finally, there they were, a hundred shadow-like killers standing in Main Street, with Hari hovering ten feet in the air above them.

  From my rooftop vantage point, I looked down at it all. Billy Grogan was beside me. I glanced at him, and kept my attitude casual, though I was being bombarded with vast amounts of visual information from the hundreds of dragonfly cameras below.

  And thus I was able to see, in vivid close-up, Hari’s look of rage as he addressed his men:

  “The cowardly fucking gutless—” Hari began to say.

  Hands, eyes, guns, shadows flitting, view from above, view from below, glances of the hidden ambushers, a view of the blue sky above, the twelve moons barely discernible, clouds in the sky, Hari’s fierce glare, the faces of each of the Gill’s Killers, their hands, their eyes, their swords glittering in sunlight, the plasma guns, another angle on the same, and another angle, and another angle, and—

  “We’ll find ’em – fuck! Boss! Here they are,” said one of Hari’s Killers.

  And Hari glanced around. And he saw Grogan’s men appearing out of the alleys and the doorways, until they formed a semicircular army on Main Street.

  And Billy and I hunched down, shoulder to shoulder, looking down over it all on the rooftop of the two-storey arcade building with three of Billy’s men. All of us were shielded by stealth mirrors as we peered down over the parapet of the roof. We – the mot juste forced itself upon me – skulked as the armies below massed prior to combat.

  But then Hari looked up and spotted a shadow on a wall opposite our rooftop, and raised an arm, and pointed up at us. I admired his swiftness of eye – his vision was augmented without a doubt – and so, grinning like a fool, Billy showed himself, and so did I, and we casually waved down.

  I moved a dragonfly, and got a close-up of the blistering fury on Hari’s face.

  “Begin,” said Hari in calm tones, on the MI circuit to his men.

  And the war began.

  Grogan’s men, including me, all wore heavy body armour and each of us carried a double-barrelled rifle that could fire plasma bursts and explosive bullets either alternately or simultaneously.

  From our rooftop eyrie, we hurled down sniper fire.

  And on Main Street itself, the front line of our army kneeled and fired and then the second rank walked through the gaps and took their position and kneeled and fired too.

  Withering plasma blasts hurled into the ranks of Gill’s Killers, forming a funnelled vortex of heat. But the targets that were aimed at were no longer there. For the Killers charged with superhuman speed around the plasma beams and the fusillades of shells and then they reappeared and their swords lopped the heads off the front rank of heavily armoured Golgothan-Irish gangsters.

  But our second-rank soldiers fired their guns at point-blank range, and plasma fire spurted, and the shadows ignited, and the smell of burning flesh was in the nostrils of all who were on the street. And the Killers charged again, but this time they ran into an invisible electric fence, activated by Billy, and they staggered backwards, hurt and sparking. And as they staggered, explosive bullets were shot at them, and more plasma fire rained upon them, and the still-living shadow Killers retreated, leaving behind burning shadows, and dead shadows, and writhing-in-agony shadows.

  But then the retreat halted abruptly, and the Killers pounced again with astonishing speed, so fast that they flew through the invisible fence without sparking it, and the second tier of Grogan’s men was hewn down, and blood gushed from neck stumps and limbs fell all around.

  Then Hari flew above Grogan’s men, held aloft by rockets in his boots, swooping like a crow. Hari had a multi-nozzle plasma gun strapped to his arm and shoulders and he flew above the mêlée, raining fire on the gangsters beneath him. The other Killers leaped high too and flew and now the war became an aerial dogfight. Grogan’s men scrambled for cover as bullets rained down on them from above. The Killers had abandoned the way of the sword and were now hosing their enemy with dumdum bullets.

  I yearned to leap out and fly against them, but I knew I dared not betray my flight capacity. But Billy had anticipated this stage in the battle, and now he let loose his drone missiles. These squat cylinders took off from a neighbouring rooftop and were remotely controlled by Billy from a
virtual screen. The Killers kinked and dived, and tried to blow the missiles out of the air. Many of them landed back on the ground, and the missiles – locked on to their heat signatures – soared on to the pedestrian path, but the Killers were easily able to leap away before impact.

  And then the fusillade of bullets and plasma beams recommenced and took its toll. Some of the Killers fled, but many were trapped. Bullet injuries had sapped their powers; sheer exhaustion had denied them their ability to move at super-speed. And the slower they got, the less chance they had of escaping the brutal slaughter of Grogan’s men.

  Meanwhile, Billy and his three men and I kept up a steady rhythm of destruction as we fired plasma and bullets from our rooftop battlement. We raised our heads to shoot, then ducked swiftly down again. Then Billy screamed, and I turned, and saw that Hari and three of Gill’s Killers had got on the roof.

  Billy’s three warriors – Mary, Jim and Shelley – opened fire but suddenly their heads had been lopped off. Billy hosed plasma at them and took down two of the Killers. The surviving Killer leaped over the flame and tried to slice off my head with his sword, but I caught the blade and ripped the Killer’s eyes out with two karate strikes. These superhumans were fast; but I was faster.

  Billy nodded at me; awed and impressed.

  And only Hari Gilles survived. He bowed, and drew his sword. And Billy emptied his pistol at him at point-blank range.

  Hari dodged every bullet, then lunged at Billy with the scimitar.

  Billy glanced at me, expecting me to intervene. But I merely stood and watched.

  This was what I had intended all along: for Hari to kill Billy. Then, I would have my just cause to arrest or true-kill Hari for his act of murder.

  Hari’s sword swept, and Billy went rolling to one side. He threw a flash grenade but Hari ignored it. He fired bullets from his pistol but Hari dodged them all.

  Finally, Billy lay gasping, defeated. Hari lifted his sword.

  And a missile soared out of the sky and finally found its target, and plunged through Hari’s back and exited from the front. A hole appeared in his chest. Hari made a face – fuck! – and fell to the ground.

  His ripped and holed body lay bloodied on the rooftop, dead though not yet true-dead.

  “Coup de grâce,” said Billy, but I didn’t move.

  Billy staggered to his feet, walked across, and held a pistol to Hari’s head, and blew Hari’s brains out.

  And I thought about all that Hari had done on this planet. I thought about the Sheriff, and his dead son. I thought about the phantom hospital and the patients who had died there, and whose bodies had been plundered, all thanks to Hari. Finally, justice had been done.

  I allowed myself a moment of satisfaction.

  “You were a lot of fucking use!” roared Billy Grogan, coming up close to me, spittle dripping down his chin.

  “I could not intervene,” I said stiffly, “for I lacked just cause.”

  Billy looked blankly at me.

  And I thought about what I had said.

  Just cause? The words echoed in my mind, like shackles dropped on a dungeon floor.

  For at that precise moment, in a process of ratiocination that occupied no more than a split second, but which ripped apart every value I held, and every moral certainty to which I adhered, it occurred to me that over the last few weeks I had been highly inconsistent in applying my engagement protocols.

  For my Galactic Cop’s programming ensured that I could kill only in self-defence, or in defence of a fellow law enforcement officer, or when a capital crime had been committed and the suspect’s guilt was certain, or in accordance with a limited range of other “just causes.” That was my raison d’être, my modus operandi.

  However! In the course of this long battle, I had killed and killed and killed. And almost all of the deaths were true-deaths, for my cybernetic aim allowed me to plant an explosive bullet through the brain of a moving Gill’s Killer with unerring accuracy.

  What was my just cause then? Was I in mortal danger?, I wondered to myself.

  Yes I was, I replied to myself! Gill’s Killers were shooting at me, after all. And hence, I further reasoned, I was fully justified in using deadly force in self-defence!

  But that was utter nonsense, as a moment’s frank introspection revealed to me. For the only reason I was in mortal danger was because I had provoked a war that would otherwise not have occurred. What kind of moral sophistry allowed me to do such a thing?, I wondered.

  And furthermore, as I vividly and agonisingly recalled, during my raid on Grogan’s Saloon and Casino, I had fired several shots into the brain of a security guard (Harry Barker, married man, father of six, amateur footballer) who – despite an appalling reputation for domestic violence and racial abuse – had not to my certain knowledge committed or been about to commit a capital offence.

  And yet I had executed him.

  How?

  Why?

  I was bewildered.

  “What the fuck?” said Billy, baffled, as he saw something outside my field of vision.

  My withering self-analysis had lasted barely a fraction of a second. I now refocused, in order to address the urgency of my current situation.

  I glanced across, following Billy’s gaze – and saw Annie Grogan, clambering up the fire escape, and then on to the roof. Her face was pale and frightened, and she held a half-size plasma rifle like a pro.

  “Are you okay? Did you—?” Then she saw Hari Gilles’s body, and beamed.

  On the street below us, police flying cars were arriving at the scene, and trembling cops marvelled at the bloody carnage, and yelled “Disperse, disperse!” But they were ignored.

  “Bastard’s dead,” said Billy Grogan triumphantly. He took off his armoured helmet, and surveyed the destruction of Gill’s feared killers. “No thanks to this gutless—”

  I drew my two pistols fast and fired a dozen shots at point-blank range into Billy’s armour. The armour resisted the bullets; but their impact rocked him to the core.

  “What the fuck is it with you?” said Billy, looking hurt and shocked.

  “I am arresting you for the murder of Hari Gilles,” I said flatly.

  Billy was stunned. Then, finally, he comprehended the nature of my treachery.

  And his gun was in his hand and he fired three fast shots at me.

  I caught them all, and fired a single explosive bullet into Billy’s temple. Billy’s head exploded. Fragments of his warm brains splashed my living-flesh face.

  Annie Grogan stared in blind horror, as her friend Tom Dunnigan gunned down her brother.

  I smiled a cruel smile.

  Then Annie pulled a gun and began to shoot me.

  Bullets rained upon my body, piercing “flesh” but bouncing off my armoured body beneath. Then I rolled and dived, and punched her, and knocked the gun out of her hand. Annie Grogan cowered, scared and confused.

  I held my pistol to her head. I considered administering the coup de grâce. She had, after all, tried to kill me, which in this instance gave me ample cause to execute her.

  But she was, I realised, only sixteen years old.

  And she had, I reminded myself, been provoked beyond all measure by my violent murder of her brother a few seconds earlier.

  And come to think of it, I further mused, who could blame the poor girl for wanting to kill a duplicitous bastard like me?

  I lowered my gun.

  “Who the fuck are you?” whispered Annie.

  I considered a series of retorts, some witty, some philosophical, but none seemed appropriate.

  I ran for the fire escape, and made my getaway.

  The battle raged through the night; the images of death and destruction were captured by hundreds of my dragonfly cameras that hovered in every street and bar and whose images were downloaded almost instantaneously into my angry mind.

  I sat in a cramped and soulless hotel room and saw it all. I saw the chaos as Billy Grogan’s men burned down all th
e Houses of Pain in the city centre. I witnessed the carnage as the surviving Gill’s Killers, with the help of Fernando Gracias’s men, took revenge for the murder of Hari Gilles by slaughtering all of Billy’s cousins and uncles and associates.

  And, too, I saw how – exhilarated by blood-lust, and enraged at her supposed treachery – Fernando Gracias tried to assassinate Kim Ji. It happened outside her house, as she got into her limo. A flying car swept down and fired two torpedoes directly at Kim. But the torpedoes flew through her body without touching, and exploded on the pathway of her house. This was not the real Kim: it was just a holographic projection.

  For Kim had laid her own plans. She sat out the entire Gang Wars in an underground hideout, safe from attack, but shadowed secretly by one of my dragonflies.

  And meanwhile, Fernando sat in his club, waiting for news of her death, listening to a chanteuse, absorbing endorphins through a catheter in his neck. And, as he tapped along to the rhythm of the music, two exotic dancers approached him. They wrapped their arms around him and kissed him, and he beamed back stupidly. And one of them pulled a tiny gun and shot Fernando’s two bodyguards through their hearts, with unerring accuracy. Meanwhile, the second dancer looped a piano wire around Fernando’s neck and garrotted him.

  I watched as Fernando writhed desperately, his hands flailing, but could not get free.

  The wire was diamond-hard, and bit into his throat, and blood gushed as the dancer tugged and tugged, grunting wildly, until she had sliced his head off.

  The singer didn’t lose a beat, or a word of her lyrics. And then, scantily clad and beautiful, drenched in blood, the two dancers calmly walked away with the head of Fernando Gracias in a bag.

  This was Kim’s revenge for what Fernando had done to her daughter: a crime that, in fact, Fernando had never committed.

  And as I watched, I felt a pang of regret, at the loss of such a talented and inspirational man.

  But I quenched the pang. Fernando was an enemy to society, a cruel-hearted killer. He had to die. He had to die!