Theme Planet (43 page)

She’d killed it. Killed the ride
engine!

Amba climbed off the engine-block
creature, makeshift weapon raised, and looked around for more enemies. From
somewhere distant she heard a metallic roar, loud and reverberating, which
echoed down the corridor and was answered by more metal roars. The ground began
to shake, and dust rained down through the oily atmosphere. The quake increased
in violence, and Amba staggered over and steadied herself against a
hundred-foot high machine, which clanked and moaned and vibrated. The
tower-block-sized machine lurched up on battered metal legs, wrenching itself
from its steel-and-concrete roots with
giant’s screams
of violence and
more rolling quakes through the machinery room.

Amba staggered back, eyes wide,
face smeared with black oil. Everything was shaking now, the air filled with
dust and squirting oil from fractured rubber hoses. Steam hissed and engines
growled, a million engines all howling their ride-hatred at the stray bolt in
the system, the lost spanner in the works; the bad ghost in the machine. A weak
and fragile piece of meat in the deepest pit of hard, spinning metal.

“Shit,” said Amba, and began to run,
arms pumping hard, as behind her bellows and horns blasted from angry ride
machinery and all the giant engines in the place seemed to come alive, watching
her, calling to her, mocking her.

The rhythm of the engine voices
had subtly changed. They were singing to her once again, metal songs born of
iron and steel and oil.
Mash-you-mash-you-mash-you,
said the machines.
Pulp
you up, pulp you up, mash you up, fuck you up,
faster and faster and
faster, like a ground car engine accelerating with gravelly piston grinding
voices,
pulp you up, mash you up, fuck you up, pulp you up, mash you up,
fuck you up...

Amba sprinted. And the Theme
Planet ride machines sprinted after her on stubby legs of steel.

Behind her, it was as if a
tornado smashed through the cavern, as a hundred giant machines came alive,
belts and cogs and gears and pistons, whipping belts and giant flywheels, all
grinding and pounding. The noise was incredible. A stench of hot oil and melted
grease and hot, crushed bearings washed over Amba, spurring her on. As if she
needed invitation. Her makeshift weapon was gone, lost, dropped and trampled by
the giant screaming machines pursuing her.

Amba ran hard, harder than she’d
ever run.

Behind her, slowly, the machines
started to reel her in...

She glanced over her shoulder,
and gave a little gasp. They were close now, only a few feet away, a wall of
grinding, screaming machinery as high and as wide as a Cubescraper. It was a
wall, a squirming wall of metal, made from individual units in a million
different sizes and configurations.

But one thing was clear...

They were out to crush her. Grind
her.

Stamp her into an oily pulp.

~ * ~

It was never
going to be so obvious as walking in the front door. What, into a waiting
machine gun nest? Into a horde of police armed with SMKKs? Yeah, right. So Dex
took another path, around the treacherous cliffs, and as evening passed into
night and the glowing neon lights of the Monolith Ride Museum seemed even more
gaudy, even more...
fake,
Dex found himself clamped to a rocky
cliff-side, fingers aching, toes clenched, a restless ocean beneath him
beckoning with rhythmic hisses, far too like laughter for Dex to relax. Not
that he could relax when clamped like an idiot to a rock wall. Climbing was
something that other people did; not Dex. He had way too much common sense. Why
climb walls of rock? Because they were there to be climbed? What an absolute
pile of goat’s bollocks. Dex’s old school friend, William Braggs, had been an
avid climber, and Dex remembered the day vividly when William had been just
twenty years old, three days before his twenty-first birthday, and he’d fallen
from a ridge and landed on his face. The fall hadn’t killed Braggs, but it
destroyed his face. Even after a hundred operations, after rebuilding his bones
with titanium, after skin grafts and sessions on the doctor’s couch filled with
tears and angst, he still looked like part of his face had melted. Finally, two
years later, he’d stuck a needle in his arm and succumbed to the fatality of
Black Orchid, a designer narcotic of the time.

Dex had carried the coffin.

Dex hated carrying coffins. It
reminded him way too much of his own mortality.

A cool breeze ruffled Dex’s hair,
and he looked down, and he remembered his old friend, remembered the shock when
he’d rushed to the hospital - to see him, cranked up in bed on wires and
supports, his face a purple flat blotch. He’d been so high on painkillers at
the time he didn’t know what planet he was on, and Dex had stared, and stared,
and stared... just as he stared now, in his memories, and glanced down again,
and wondered about the sanity of what he was doing.

For Kat. For Moll. For Toff.

It had become his mantra; the
only thing keeping him sane.

Dex struggled on, edging around
the cliff, waves hissing and cracking beneath him, neon lights glittering on
the surging silver ocean. His mouth was dry with fear, and even the SMKK and
Makarov gave him little satisfaction; what use were bullets when you were a
broken corpse on the rocks below?
Maybe I should have gone in the front
door. Maybe I should have taken my chances with the guards... shit. Triple shit
and blue wanking monkeys.

On he moved, the Ride Museum
rearing above him and merging seamlessly with the rocky cliffs. Dex started to
angle his traverse upwards, until it became an ascent, and darkness tumbled
down around him like molten velvet and the stars popped out, twinkling with a
distant cold malevolence. Such vast spaces. Such coldness. An eternity of
emptiness. Not good. Not good.

Dex edged up, and at one point
his boot slipped. His fingers dug in tight, so tight he thought his bones would
force their splintered way from his flesh. He felt a fingernail pop off and
wanted to scream as agony flooded up his finger, tendons and forearm.

He glanced down, boot clawing at
the rocks like some spastic disco dance, and gritting his teeth hard, jaw
muscles clenching, he fought - fought to stay alive.

“Son of a bitch!”

He found his footing and pushed
himself into the rocks, sweat heavy on his face, making his hair lank. He
blinked, as stars flashed before his eyes, and sucked in oxygen like a dying
man surfacing from the bottom of a lake.

“Oh, you son of a bitch!”

Dex composed himself, and climbed
again until he reached the glossy flanks of the Monolith Ride Museum. Twenty
feet above him was a vast neon sign, flickering and winking and glittering. He
was too close to read what the actual words spelled out, which was probably for
the best, for Dex had no desire to clamber over junk advertising. Especially if
it was for Fatty Fat Burgers or Fizzy Sperm Cola products...

Dex was panting, pain piercing
his chest and making him wince. His lungs felt like they’d been grated. His leg
muscles felt like they’d been stripped from his bones and beaten with a hammer.
And his finger-tips... soaked in hydrochloric acid. It was not a good way to
feel.

He calmed his body, looked left
and right, checking for cameras or to see if he’d been observed in any way.
Then he edged up the smooth wall, fingers finding cracks between huge black
blocks, until with a grunt he grabbed the neon sign and lifted himself up onto
the bottom leg of an E. Holding tight, he leant back and looked upwards,
searching for the lowest window or other entry point. There were “medieval
arrow loops” as, no doubt, Theme Planet advertising literature described them,
but the ones Dex had seen, even from a distance, could easily fit a man’s body
through the cavity - thus negating the whole point of an arrow loop. This wasn’t
a castle for defending; this was a castle to please cash-paying tourists. Dex
had to keep reminding himself about that, about the nature of Theme Planet.

Built by morons, visited by idiots!
That should be their advertising
motto!

Dex climbed. The wind snapped at
him like an annoying dog.

He climbed more. Sweat dripped
from his brow, running into his eyes and stinging him with salt.

He climbed. His fingers bled. His
legs screamed like they were on fire.

From the top of the E he made it
to a P, and climbed the huge vast letter, praying it would take his weight.
Which it did; it was big enough to support a hover tank. Dex ascended, and the
ocean and the Theme Planet spread out before him in cooling darkness, and he
paused in the valley of a V, sat with legs dangling, looking out over the
ocean.
What I’d give for a smoke,
he realised, then pictured Katrina’s
stern face chastising him his carnal weaknesses - and he had a lot - and she was
frowning in his mind’s eye. He grinned at that, and she spurred him on; gave
him strength. He turned, stood, and continued to climb.

When his fingers found the lip of
the “arrow loop,” he was just about ready to give up and dive into the cool,
welcoming ocean. At least it would be his friend. At least it would take him
in, invite him down, down into an eternal, idle embrace...

Dex hauled his sorry arse over
the edge and slapped down on cool stone flags, worn uneven by the passages of
time (nice marketing touch, that). He lay there for a while, not caring who
walked past or pointed a gun at his head. He was in no condition to fight. He
was in no condition to
walk.

Slowly, his strength returned,
seeping into his limbs like honey through waffle cracks. He sat up, cradling
his numb, bloodied fingers. He worked them softly, kneading life back into the
tortured joints and muscles. Spasms of cramp arced like lightning flashes
through his thighs and calves, and Dex spent a good few minutes contorting on
the stone floor like a werewolf caught in the throes of some rabid
transmogrification. He rubbed at his screaming muscles with screaming fingers,
and after a while the pains subsided and Dex was able to stand, leaning heavily
against a rough stone wall, panting, tears in his eyes. He stretched his
muscles, and took deep breaths, and knew he needed salt to combat the cramps.
In fact, now he thought about it, it had been an age since he had eaten or
drunk. No wonder he was weak. No wonder he was cramping up.

Dex slid the SMKK to his back
and, with Makarov to cheek, peered out into the corridor. Theme Planet
designers had gone all-out for a medieval experience here, and proper live fire
brands burned at regular intervals, giving off an acrid stench. Dex crept down
the corridor, wary, gun poised and ready for combat. Down the steps he trotted,
worn into grooves by thousands of years of use (although Dex
knew
this
place had only existed for a couple of decades; such attention to detail!) and
down more corridors until he came to a large room with a vaulted ceiling. High
above, rich paintings filled the arches, showing plump, naked ladies at play,
and cherubic angels strumming lyres and harps. Around the large chamber were
all manner of glass cabinets, and Dex peered inside. There were a hundred
different machines, all black and gleaming with oil. They were intricate, and
like no machines Dex had ever seen in his life; they twisted and turned like
puzzle boxes. A plaque on one glass cabinet explained these were some of the
first ride engines, or “ride drives” as TP so snappily put it, employed in
rides when Theme Planet first opened.

Dex moved around the cases,
keeping a wary eye on the doorways, to witness yet more machines. Here, there
was a prototype for brake systems; there, a controller for piston firing, and
over there a controller unit used for timing ride drops and the release of
passengers from safety collars.

It was all extremely dull.

Dex left the chamber, padded down
more corridors, and emerged into yet more interlinked chambers. Again, they
were full of glass display cabinets, and Dex glided past various wax statues of
provax in outfits depicting different “Ages” of Theme Planet’s progression
towards the entertainment behemoth it had become today.

“Wonderful,” he muttered,
stopping by what must have been the hundredth wax statue. “By God, they’ve had
a lot of uniform changes over the years. Even more than your average football
club!”