Z14 (13 page)

I’m an idiot. I really am. I deleted one of my favourite jokes; punishment for not realising that, although I could no longer detect the Warden private network, it didn’t mean they couldn’t still detect and pinpoint me. I should have put my own fucking head in a lead-lined box, not just Q4’s.

I thumbed the intercom button as Madame Punchy continued denting the door above.

“Aim for the hinges you daft mare,” I said. “It’ll be quicker and go easier on your knuckles.” She was clearly going to get through eventually anyway, so I might as well save us all the boredom of waiting.

She stopped and looked at a camera. “Warden Fourteen,” she said. “We need to talk.”

“Hey, nice of you not to invade my brain this time. No hive-mind deciding to string me up?”

“That was a mistake. We have learned since then, and besides, you have removed yourself from our network. Come, Warden Fourteen, interface with me,” she said. Well, there’s an offer I don’t get very often. Strange that she said I had disconnected from their network, though. I had assumed they’d barred me from it, but had still been able to track me here using it – but maybe not, then.

“You followed me?” I said.

“Yes,” she said. “There was a high probability you would come to investigate the disturbance that occurred at colony designation Jolly Meadows, so I remained in the area until you arrived and then followed you here.”

“And here you are indeed. Now tell me why.”

“I wish to interface with you, to repair you, to return you to your correct Warden status. Because your programming has been violated, there is much you do not know.”

Well, she was right about that, but she was lying about the rest. I don’t think she expected me to talk to her, which is why she just started pounding on the door after a cursory initial attempt to make contact. If she had seen me at Jolly Meadows, she’d know about my arm, she’d know her combat capabilities now far exceeded mine. If she was anything at all like me, she’d be really fucking over-confident, and the evidence that she was, was that she was here, alone, to kill me. I thought about what Lothar had said earlier, that my actions would be hard for them to predict. Well, let’s hope so, or what I did next would end really badly.

“Who are you, anyway?” I said. “What’s
your
designation?”

“Irrelevant, but I am T9,” she said.

“Well, T9, why did you wait till I got here before making contact a whole day later?”

“I hoped you would lead me to Q4, or leave this facility with him in your presence.”

Okay, so her mission, I reasoned, was to find out what had happened to Q4 and then no doubt to disable me, attempt to re-program me with this ‘interfacing’ of hers, and finally destroy me if all else failed. Not today sister. I cut the intercom just as Oxley walked into the control room zipping up his trousers and not looking the least bit ashamed – quite the reverse in fact. I relayed the plan I had been working on during the intercom conversation.

“I’m going out there,” I said. “And I’m going to punch her in the face, until she’s a pile of blood and inert metal.”

“Bad plan,” said Lothar.

“Does lack subtly,” said Kam.

“When she’s dead, can I, ah, borrow her?” said Oxley.

“Surely you mean
we’re
going out there, Zed,” said Kaboom. “We can jump her with the plasma rifles.”

“No,” I said. “Fuck the plasma rifles. She followed me here and she must know I have them, and yet she’s not bothered in the slightest. That’s how good the plasma rifles are.”

“I’ve been tinkering with mine,” said Kaboom. “Reckon I can get more kaboom out of it now.”

“You sure?” Lothar and I asked in unison.

“Well, not entirely,” said Kaboom. “It’s a very unstable device, from what I can tell, but I’ve made a few tweaks.”

“No,” I said. “That’s not good enough data to go on. If I go out there alone with a plasma rifle, and it doesn’t fire, she’ll get the initiative and I’ll be dead in seconds. Even if you lot come out with me and the plasmas fail, there is still an eighty-two percent chance of us all dying. The combat will be too close-quarters, she’ll go through you four before any of you can blink and, besides, you don’t even have lasers. You can’t hurt her unless you get lucky with a shitty already-fired plasma.”

Lothar nodded. “You’re right Zee, but chances are if she kills you, she’ll just come in here and finish us off anyway. We lose nothing by coming with you.”

“She has no reason to kill you. If I die, just give her the head – Oxley, you know what head I mean – and then leave. I calculate your chances of survival being, well, a lot higher that way than fighting with me, in this instance, under these circumstances.”

“You calculate bullshit, Zee,” said Lothar.

“We’re coming with you,” said Kam.

For fuck’s sake, stupid humans and their stupid loyalty. At what point did humans evolve-out the survival instinct? A loud clang signified T9’s renewed onslaught upon the door.

“I am leaving this control room and going out there, before she comes in here and catches us having this fucking pow-wow,” I said. “If any of you try to follow me,
I
will kill you.” That should settle it. I left the control room.

I stood on the inside of the middle external door and watched another fist-sized dent appear, bulging inward. I’d been timing the – very short – intervals between punches, and I wrenched the door open, hoping she’d over-balance as she swung, stumble in and, hey-presto, I’d be able to kill her before she even knew what had happened. But she simply stopped dead in mid-swing, straightened up and stepped back five paces, clearly inviting me outside. I obliged. Fighting in the cramped entrance space would only end up making my missing arm even more of a deciding factor. If I could move around in the open, I’d stand more of a chance. The door closed behind me automatically.

“So, what is it?” I said looking her up and down. “They sent someone that looks like you to talk to me because I’ve gone human-native, and that of course means I’m thinking with my dick? Because, and don’t tell the guys in the bunker this, I don’t have a dick.”

The intercom crackled. “We heard that,” said Kam
.

“But,” I continued. “I have thought about your offer to interface with me. I…I have been damaged by the human scientist. I need your help.” I took three steps towards her, before she held out a palm, indicating I should stop right there. I did. Then a request pinged into my head:

-WARDEN T9 REQUESTING POINT-TO-POINT INTERFACE. ACKNOWLEDGE?-

No, definitely not; there was no way I was letting her in. Right then, time for the old ‘Q4 manoeuvre’.

“How about you interface with my fist?” I shouted, closing the gap and swinging my fist at her head. It was no good, even if she
had
truly been here to communicate with me, she’d certainly not fallen for my willingness to go for it. She knocked my arm away with her left forearm and swung her right fist at me in the same movement. A knuckle brushed my nose as I leaned backwards, unable to block her punch with my stump. Her other fist came straight at my unprotected stomach. It connected, sending me stumbling backwards into the dented door. I dropped to a crouch as her right fist went through where my head had been an instant ago, pounding into the door and adding the deepest dent yet. I turned my crouch into a rising head-butt, connecting underneath her chin, rocking her back on her heels. I gave her an opportunistic shove, which was all I could manage at such close quarters but it was enough to send her staggering back a step and a half.

I turned to face her side-on, showing her only my good arm, my weakness hidden. She couldn’t flank me because of the bunker behind me – so she came at me, feinting a stamping kick at my ankle to divert my attention from the hooked right coming at the side of my head. I lashed out with a midriff kick and got there first. The kick heaved her backwards and her punch went wild above and in front of my head. I remained standing on one leg after my kick, my right knee raised so that I could snap out a flurry of kicks without pause, that kept her on the defensive. But, she punched away my last kick, damaging something in my foot and leaving me seriously unbalanced, just for the instant it took for her to drop low and round-house sweep my standing leg from under me.

I fell to my left, where there was no hand to hold out to break and control my fall, to push away into a roll that would give me a chance to get back to my feet. Instead, all I could do was flop onto my back and begin madly scrabbling backwards on elbow and stump, as she sprang back to her feet from her sweep and advanced on me. She kicked the ankle above my already damaged foot and the metal joint buckled. My systems reported that the foot was 'non-operational'. I think I’d already worked that out and it was my death sentence; losing my mobility. Although really, I was fucked the moment I hit the floor. My scrabbling retreat ended when my head knocked against the same fucking door she’d been pounding on not two minutes ago.

She walked around to my left side, casually knocking aside a feeble attempt to trip her with my good left leg. I couldn’t touch her there, although I did conjure up a good inner-image of my lost left hand still being there, flipping her the finger. It made me feel a little bit better and I forced a smile as she stepped forward and swung a vicious kick into my face. My nose exploded, most of my teeth were driven into my throat and my lips split in a hundred places. My head snapped back and bounced off the door. My vision became static for a moment. Damage control reported my skull was still intact but that maintaining structural integrity under much more stress was, ah fuck the stats, it was just really fucking unlikely.

I looked up at the thing that was going to kill me. Was she really any different from me? Apart from the ludicrous tits, that is.

She pulled back her blood-spattered foot for the final kick and was just about to let fly when the bunker doors to the left and right of us swung open and Kam and Kaboom leapt out, plasma rifles snapping up as soon as they were clear of the door. Kaboom was behind T9, less than a foot away, and Kam was in front of her. Kam dropped to a crouch as Kaboom pressed the muzzle of his plasma rifle against the back of her head and fired.

His plasma rifle whined and then coughed out the most minuscule dribble of plasma. It vaporised T9’s hair, the skin on the back of her head and both of her ears. But, really, he might as well have just waved a candle at her. Without a pause she shifted her weight and drove an elbow back and up into Kaboom’s ample stomach. He made an
oof
noise as he was lifted off his fleet and sent flying, a good three metres, where he slammed into a tree before slumping into an immobile heap.

Kam, professional soldier that he was, didn’t blink. He knew he was fucked as well unless. Unle – A bright, searing bolt of pure, beautiful energy leapt from the barrel of his rifle, fizzed across the space between it and T9 and burned straight through her chest and neck, before erupting out of her back and flying on, through several trees. The bolt vanished from sight, leaving smoke and burning wood to mark its passage.

T9’s detached head fell into the gory mess of melted flesh and molten metal that had been the top half of her torso a moment before, and then she toppled over and the head rolled in a clumsy half circle on the ground, thumping to a stop against the bunker wall.

Kam knew his priorities, he dropped the rifle and sprinted to Kaboom, as did Oxley and Lothar, emerging from the two open doors, armed to the teeth – with what might as well have been water pistols against T9. Lothar skidded to a halt and ran back into the bunker, no doubt going for a first-aid kit.

I clambered to my feet and hobbled over to where Kaboom lay. Very still. I could tell right away that he was done for. Oh he’d be a long time dying yet, but he would have severe internal organ damage, internal bleeding. His spine was most likely shattered. We could probably get him to a hospital, but, well, Deliverance medical care hasn’t kept pace with, say, weapons development. There’d be the sum total of fuck all they could do for him.

“Is he going to be okay?” said Kam, who, really, must’ve known the score.

Sometimes being a machine was a good thing. It meant I literally didn’t have the heart to tell him.

Seems my schmaltz chip was fully functional though.

Lothar was back out of the bunker in a flash, the soon to be proved useless first aid kit clutched in one hand – it didn’t take long for everyone else to reach the conclusion I already had. Kaboom was in a coma, and he was dying. He had hours left, maybe a little longer if he was strong.