Z14 (26 page)

There were, however, a lot of grey-skins. A lot. But, if Chester took too many of his trusted troops away from any part of his subjugated planet-wide realm, then ambitious company and gang bosses would be rising up faster than a virgin’s cock in a whorehouse – and creating a sticky old mess for Chester in half the time, too. But then again, Chester’s email implied he was nearing some sort of end-game for Deliverance, so maybe he didn’t care. I’d have to expect to be facing a lot of opposition as we neared the city centre.

Classic Melon had been examining the route the three Wardens had taken when they’d entered the city. The locational data suggested they’d landed inside the grounds of Chester’s headquarters – which was a huge mock-medieval castle, with very modern fortifications, like laser turrets linked to video cameras and to computers for precision targeting. The immense castle wall was built around the old colony headquarters, which was now shielded inside a massive, concrete and steel bunker. The Wardens appeared to have entered that, before moving downward and out into the bay, to their current location under the seabed. Tunnel, suggested my massive and incredibly powerful computer brain. Well, duh, said me.

And so, we neared the city-centre, and lots of opposition we faced indeed. We were one-hundred and eighty-two feet away from the castle entrance. I was observing it from the ground-floor window of a disused office block and scanning and tagging the grey-skin targets I could see as they patrolled the battlements. I had tagged and indexed one-hundred and twelve of them so far. I had gone into augmented-reality mode, marking each target with a red dot, and a number that indicated their threat level, based on where they were and what they were armed with. Oddly I could not see any plasma weapons – maybe the grey-skin’s union – hah, as if – had refused to work with such shoddy tools. Still, the machine gun and laser rifle armed troops looked ready to fight off an invading army.

Castle Boram was on top of a hill, providing it with lovely views of the bay to one side, and less lovely views of the filthy, disorganised sprawl that was Boram Bay city to the other. Made of enormous light and dark grey, and black blocks, the castle had four rounded turrets which, along with the walls were crowned with battlements. All very grandiose, but it lacked a lot of the true mock-medieval trappings, like a moat, drawbridge or wrought-iron portcullis. The castle’s tall, arched main entrance which faced the building we were observing from was blocked by a great, steel door ten feet high and six feet wide.

The castle turrets each had a pair of swivel-mounted, computer-controlled, quad-barrelled laser emplacements, which, by themselves made the idea of assaulting the place a terrible one; one that a smart computer like me should dismiss at once. But really, there weren’t any other options. The only other possible plan was to enter the sea, dive down to the seabed and try to tunnel through it and locate the buried alien ship and somehow gain entry. If I wasn’t concerned about Deliverance’s unusual and voracious sea-life and if I had a submersible tunnelling machine on hand, then I’d jump at the chance of not having to crack the castle. As it was…

“Kam, get on the roof. You’re on sniping duty,” I said. I didn’t need to instruct him further. He’d know to pick his targets carefully, starting with killing any plasma troopers, then laser-armed troops or any heavy weapons carriers, then officers and grunts.

“Lothar, do some sniping initially, pop a few heads from range and then come up behind me. You won’t want to be crossing the open ground until I’ve got most of their attention. Is Oxley in position?”

“He sure is, Zee,” said Lothar.

“Good. I’ll go and join him,” I said. “Don’t move until I’m through the entrance. Kam, once you’re out of targets, you run like hell and link up with Lothar.”

“And then?” said Kam.

“And then, what?” I said. “You think the plan’s going to survive the first minute?”

Kam smiled. “Nope. I suggest the plan becomes to stay alive, kill grey-skins, hide from cyborgs and then look for a tunnel that heads towards the sea.”

“That’ll do,” I said. “Okay, good luck, and leave any cyborgs to me.” We were dead if the cyborgs came for us. There were no tricks left and we couldn’t walk into their territory and ask them to leave us alone while we setup an ambush. And yet, with that certain death in mind, we had to move now. We died here, or we died in a day, a week, a month or in a year. Whenever the Grand Overlord activated the rest of the Wardens – or the Kon Ramar did.

I walked out of the back of the office building, and around to one side, where its rubbish strewn and overgrown buggy park was. Behind some giant dumpsters was Oxley, awake in his wheelchair; the two Melons practising tight little turns with tiny, controlled bursts of jetpack thrust. They had perfected their synchronisation by now, becoming one with the wheelchair, or some such bollocks like that. Oxley was practising jerking his handle-bar mounted dual laser rifle around, as though swinging it to meet a threat, or pick out a target. It was probably the most constructive jerking he’d ever done.

“Ready to g – ” I said.

“Hell, yeah!” said Oxley. “Let’s get going already!”

I grabbed my bag off the Kambulance and shrugged into onto my shoulders. I had Melon numbers three and four in there, along with Kaboom’s stored personality.

“Classic,” I said. “Where are the Wardens?”

“Still under the seabed,” he said. “They seem to be moving around in slightly repetitious patterns over a small area.”

“Patrolling?” I said.

“No, more like wandering back and forth between two points, as though carrying out some sort of repetitious function.”

“A bit like patrolling, then?” I said.

“Well, ah, maybe, but not really.”

I poked my head out from behind one of the dumpsters, getting a view of the castle. The ground between here and there consisted of a narrow tarmac road that bisected what would become the battlefield, and then, on the castle side was a gentle grassy slope leading up to the castle walls. Cover consisted of trees, bushes and other flimsy things that wouldn’t stop a modern bullet, let alone a laser bolt. I wondered how long it would take for me, with my damaged right leg and foot, and for Oxley in his wheelchair and then for Lothar and Kam to cover the open ground. Too long. Except perhaps for Oxley.

I tucked my head back in and carried on my conversation with Classic Melon.

“Since you Melons are so useless, I’d like to use Third Melon to host Kaboom’s personality,” I said. “I want to talk to him about a scheme to demolish part of the castle.”

Initially none of the Melons said anything, although I presumed they were debating my “request” on their private network.

“Ah,” said New Melon at last. “We don’t see the point in that, and, with you having destroyed our backup personality storage, we don’t feel it’s safe to allo – ”

“You have four fucking heads,” I said. “That’s your backup. I just want one.”

“Take Fourth Melon,” said Classic Melon, who seemed to be the most reasonable of the set of identical personalities, somehow.

“No,” I said. “I need to talk to Kaboom. Fourth Melon has no audio capabilities…”

“Well,” said Classic Melon. “We can’t stop you, although Third Melon will fight the attempt, regardless. Asking him to roll over and open up his mind to Kaboom’s program would be like asking a human to take a deep breath under water.”

“Well, I’m sorry,” I lied. “But I’m asking Third Melon to take that breath.” I shrugged my bag off onto the floor, ignoring the muffled shout of pain from Third Melon as he struck the concrete ground. I opened the bag up and pulled out first Third Melon’s head, which I placed on the floor, on its side with one well burned ear turned to the sky, and then I grabbed the data storage unit, pressing the button to extend the data spike.

“I can’t watch,” said Classic Melon. He closed his eyes.

Just before I rammed the spike into Third Melon’s ear, I said, “Melons, upon my signal, unleash Oxley.”

“What signal?” said Classic Melon.

“Oh, you’ll know,” I said. “Just drive him straight at the broadest section of wall. Oxley, just shoot everything.”

“Zee,” said Oxley. “I like it when you give me nice, simple instructions like that.”

I rammed the data spike home and watched, hoping that Third Melon wouldn’t be able to fight off Kaboom’s invading personality. Back when there was just one of him, Melon had assured me that there was room for two personalities in these cyborg brains of ours. I guess I’d find out now if that was bullshit. Sure enough, it was Kaboom’s voice that came from the former Third Melon’s head, and there was no trace of conflict. Just a certain confusion that I’d seen before, at the Manoogla Heights.

“Zed, is that you?” said the Kaboom Baboon, squinting at my ravaged form. “I saved you? And I didn’t die?”

I smiled – a gruesome sight. “Hello again. No, you didn’t save me, and yes, you did die. But, once again, thanks for trying. You’re in a cyborg head now, again. And we’re still a bit short on bodies.”

“Oh,” said Kaboom. “This is going to take some serious getting used t – Oh, wow look at all this shit in here! I’m on the ‘net…I can, fuck, I can do anything.”

“If you come across a virtual button labelled electromagnetic pulse, give it a big press for me in, oh, about twelve seconds, will you?”

“I will. I will. Wow, there’s so much to play with.”

“Melons, can you see the way this is going?” I said.

“Just so,” said Classic Melon.

“Hey, Kaboom,” I said. “We’re going to be parting in a few seconds, but I want you to know, we’re all very proud of you.”

“Ah, sure, Zed. That’s whatever you’re talking about for you,” said Kaboom. “Oh, wow, look what I found.” Bang on time Baboon. Well done.

“Ten…” said Kaboom, in a voice that was not his own. This was that much more mechanical, computerised voice. The one last heard at the Heights. “Nine…Ah, Zed? Eight…help...seven…”

I picked Kaboom’s head up, clamping it against my body as I awkwardly wrestled it into the crook of my elbow, fingers wrapped across his face, before unfurling my arm, holding it out behind me, like a discus thrower. “You’re a hero, Kaboom,” I said

“Six…I couldn’t resist,” said Kaboom forlornly.

“That’s what I counted on,” I said.

“Five…shiny, red button.”

“Quick, look for that electromagnetic pulse command,” I said. I walked – dragging my fucked up right leg – clear of the dumpsters, bringing the castle into full view. Even if any of the defenders saw me, I was too far away for them to instantly know that I was the feared cyborg assassin Zed Fourteen, holding a severed cyborg head that was about to explode. You’d have to be a pretty paranoid, jumpy, green recruit on your first day on the job to assume something like that and start firing at shadows. So that is of course what happened. A wildly inaccurate purple laser bolt flashed down from the castle, but went many feet high and wide. Nobody else fired, so I imagined a sergeant would be bawling out mister twitchy-trigger by now. Well, that sergeant would soon have egg on his face, or rather, hopefully, hot cyborg shrapnel.

“Four…this might be it,” said Kaboom.

“Good enough for me,” I said and brought my arm forward as hard and fast as I could, releasing Kaboom’s head into the air at speed, aimed right at the castle wall.

“Three…yes, I’ve got it,” shouted Kaboom as his head flew through the air. I felt that momentary blackout, like the one I’d felt at the bunker when Melon tripped T9’s E.M.P. device. Hopefully that would deal with the powerful automated defences. Human technology on Deliverance wasn’t ready for E.M.P. attacks.

“For fuck’s sake, Melons, stop just sitting there,” I said. “That was my signal. Unleash Oxley!” The Melons leapt into action. Well, as much as two heads bolted to a chair can leap, anyway. They steered the wheelchair out from behind the dumpsters and began blazing a fast, but careful trail around obstacles and up the grassy hill, following the trajectory of Kaboom’s flying head.

“Two...” Yelled Kaboom. A flurry of laser bolts and beams in a riot of colours started trying to track the castle-bound head, but it was a fast moving, relatively small object. Kam and Lothar both opened up from the roof and a window of the office block. More lasers joined in from the castle, some trying to nail me and the wheelchair as I ran as fast as I could – dragged leg and all – in pursuit of the wheelchair. Not that I could keep up. It hadn’t helped that I’d had to stop to re-shoulder my bag, so I could bring the data storage device and Fourth Melon with me.

Kaboom’s head was just about to collide with the base of the castle wall. He was still within cyborg earshot. “One…kaboo – ” The ‘kaboom’ was long and drawn out, but was cut off – just like last time – by a tremendous explosion.