Amba lowered her hands, and
pulled out the FRIEND. Her eyes flickered around the chamber. Still, there were
no alarms. She had triggered no sensors. Despite the infiltration, the fight,
the noise, nobody had come rushing to the Battle SIM’s aid.
They trust the AI guns,
said Zi.
Maybe...
“The human is a cheat,” said the
SIM, scowling, his eyes focused on the FRIEND in Amba’s hands. “But then, I
understand now, the human not playing fair, because the human isn’t a
real
human, the human is one of those super-duper snazzy made-in-a-VAT humans, ain’t
that right?”
The SIM looked at Amba with his
tiny piggy eyes, and Amba clamped her mouth shut. She narrowed her eyes, also.
So. He’d realised...
“Androids are not made in vats,”
said Amba, voice soft.
“Ooh, touch a nerve, did I?” said
the SIM. “And you call
me
touchy about my B&S overhang! Well, at
least I not
hated
by the humans, well not much, except bastard comedians
- damn them all to hell and buggery - but at least I not a
slave
like
you. You’re not legal, fucking
android,
and you and I know they kill you
on sight. So do your worst, because even if it take me a hundred years to die,
screaming and bloody on a bloody battlefield, my eyes in my lap and my balls in
my boots, even if it take me a
thousand
years to die, at least I not
suffer the disrespect you suffer. At least I not despised by those who create
me. You is like a plague, android, a pestilence hated by all. You are dirty.
Right down to your clockwork soul.”
Amba stepped forward, touched the
weapon to the SIM’s forehead as if injecting a bolt into cattle, and pulled the
trigger. There came a dull
blam
and the SIM slid slowly sideways. Amba grinned a sickly grin, and looked around
once more, FRIEND in her hand, mind settling to calm.
Good shot,
said Zi.
You put that
aggressive moaning whining warmongering milporn bastard out of his misery, hey?
And don’t listen to him slagging off androids, after all, he’s a fucking Battle
SIM, by all the gods, how the hell could he ever know what he was talking
about? Right?
No,
said Amba, and she seemed to
shrink for a moment.
He was right.
What bullshit is this?
snarled Zi.
He’s right. I am hated. By
everybody. Hated, like a rat. Like a leper. Hated and unclean and infectious.
Awww, bullshit, Amba. Come on,
let’s find this Lady Goo Goo bitch and spread her body parts around the room.
That’ll make you feel better! Just like in the good old days when you’d go on a
Double Kill, a Triple Kill, a fucking
rampage!
You’re unstoppable, Amba, you are
the fucking best, and the only reason you are hated is because you are feared!
You’re the top of the food chain, my girl, and you should be damn happy you’re
there. Because...
Yeah?
If you’re not top of the food
chain, then you’re just meat.
Amba said nothing, simply staring
at the dead SIM. His blood was leaking out onto the rocks and he looked,
strangely, at peace. Even his armoured face plates did nothing to ruin the look
of serenity on his features. He was at peace. At last. At peace...
Don’t get any fucking ideas,
growled Zi.
Not yet,
pulsed Amba, but in the back of
her mind, in the tiny dark cave where nobody was allowed, not even the
intrusive dark angel Zi, back in that dark private recess she thought to
herself -
But soon.
~ * ~
The blast had
tripped
silent alarms.
Amba knelt in a narrow stone
corridor, one hand touching the wall to steady herself as, below her, the world
fell away into a vast deep chamber, like the inside of a volcano. Below, the
world glowed a distant, molten red, and heat streamed past her face.
How do you know
? said Zi.
I can feel it.
And she could. She could
feel
the alarms had been tripped. She wondered if anybody had stumbled across the
body of the Battle SIM back in the groundcar compound. He needed a proper
burial...
There it was again. Regret.
Sorrow. Just like the little girl in the sparkly LLA restroom...
Amba could feel the alarm through
her hands, through her feet, smell it in the air, taste it in the warm volcanic
breeze. She moved a little closer to the edge of the drop, where her tunnel had
come to an abrupt halt. Her hair ruffled in the heated updraft. She felt a
sense of massive space before her, around her; got a sudden injection of how
damn
big
the mountain really was.
Big. No.
Big.
And she was a tiny, insignificant
speck of dust within the
hugeness,
a
tiny morsel of uncooked meat struggling like a worm through soil and rock and
striving to get
up
towards the light. Amba grinned then, face
illuminated like a fiery demon. Yeah. A tiny morsel of meat, admittedly, but
one able to kill
all the other
tiny morsels of meat.
Amba glanced up. Shit. She was
going to have to climb.
Far down the tunnel, she heard
the stomp of boots, the rattle of guns, the murmur of growling voices. SIMs, no
doubt, filled with bloodlust and out to avenge their slaughtered comrade. Which
was a fair motivation. Amba held them no ill-will.
Amba squeezed from the narrow
aperture, twisting with the agility of a cat and hooking fingers into hooks and
cracks in the rough stone of the cavern’s interior. More hot air blasted up,
ruffling her hair, and Amba took a deep breath. She glanced down, not with
fear, just an awareness it was a damn long way to fall, into depths that were
simply a glowing
red.
Amba started to climb. Lady Goo
Goo, her target, was up there somewhere. Up in her Ivory Tower. In her High
Castle.
Sweat beaded her brow. Within
seconds her fingers were scratched and scarred by the glass-sharp rock. She
moved with speed, assuredly, mostly looking up. Looking down was a fruitless
exercise; after all, a hundred feet or ten thousand, it all killed you. Killed
you flat and broken like a doll under a hammer.
Amba moved like a well-oiled
machine, always precise, every choice perfect. Up she went, through shades of
orange and red, into darkness above. All around her was a soft humming, as if
the mountain were
alive.
In a moment of connection Amba realised the
mountain was her friend, her partner, her
lover.
It didn’t want her
dead; it wanted her inside, wanted to embrace her... or maybe to kill her, make
her a permanent fixture of its rock and bones? She smiled softly. If that was
the case, then so be it...
It was a strange, spiritual
feeling, and something to which Amba was quite unused. To feel a
connection
with a lump of rock. That was alien. Wrong. Illogical. And yet she felt it
anyway, and her heart fluttered, and sweat beaded her lip, and her fingers were
rigid and filled with pain as she climbed and climbed, upwards, through drifts
of smoke, across patches and slabs of slick rock.
Maybe this is what it feels like
to be human?
Don’t kid yourself, bitch,
said Zi.
Thanks for your support.
That
is
my support.
From the drifts of smoke Amba
could see something ahead, above, and she slowed her climb. She licked her
lips, a frown creasing her brow, her muscles quivering. How could that be? How
could such a thing be
here?
Amba realised she had stopped
climbing, so confused was she by the field of
ice
above her. There were
stalactites and stalagmites of frosted ice, some small, some as big as
skyscrapers, protruding from rocky arms and ledges, spiralling out from the
rock face in all manner of random angles. There were bridges of ice crossing
the chasm above her, distant and twisted and spiralling, like chains of
magnified sugary DNA. And Amba’s internal perspective rearranged itself, seemed
to
magnify
because she started to truly realise, to understand, just how
vast this hollowed-out mountain core was.
As vast as a mountain, perhaps.
But that’s impossible...
Nothing’s impossible on Theme
Planet,
said Zi.
They’re planetary engineers. The provax have machines that can scoop up a
shoreline, lay down a beach, build a mountain range, carve out an ocean; so the
literature reads. Theme Planet is a totally created thing. Theme Planet is a
construct, a built, grown, sculpted theme park. Literally, a Theme Planet.
Amba continued to climb, towards
the ice, towards the spirals above. They glittered, from unknown light sources,
glowing red in places from the distant glow below, but also sparkling as if
shafts of sunlight were striking from far above.
Shafts of sunlight?
But
they were
inside the mountain?
Amba rested for a moment, her
muscles burning with fatigue, fingers numb from clinging to the vast wall of
rock. She’d reached a fissure in the wall, and readying herself for a leap of
faith, breathed deeply, smoothly, and jumped... thudding into a rocky flank,
bouncing a little, hands clamping tightly into cracks, as the world and the
drop flashed through her head and spiralled off below, like a dropped filmy
camera.
Nice,
said Zi.
Of course,
said Amba to her dark demon, her
dark angel, her dark twisted sister.
It’s Firelce Mountain. A juxtaposition
of elements. Indeed, an impossibility of elements, the ice surviving the fire.
Wonder what trickery they used?
Who gives a fuck,
said Zi.
Get climbing. You
need to get the killing done.
Amba bit back a bitter retort.
Although she hated Zi for many reasons, and questioned the dark spirit’s very
existence with regularity, she had to admit it - Zi was focused and deadly.
Even if she
was
a figment of Amba’s tortured imagination.
Up she climbed, muscles
screaming, toes burning inside her boots. And as she came close to the first
twisted spiral of ice she fancied she heard a distant, echoing scream. She
frowned. A scream? Down here? Another climber?
She climbed further.
More screams echoed, and Amba
paused, panting, resting. She glanced below, and still the glow was a constant,
the drifts of smoke from below spinning up towards her on eddies of hot air.
More screams.
She looked up sharply, at the
thick spiral of twisted angling above her.
Screams
?
Something flashed
through
the spiral of ice, a flicker of speed, and
through
the ice wall Amba
spied people in ride CARS, hands in the air, faces images of blurred happiness
as they zoomed through cables of ice, zoomed
through the mountain interior.
Shit! It’s a Theme Planet ride!
What did you expect?
said Zi, stoically.
Not a fucking ride! Not inside a
mountain! Not inside a fucking military installation!
Hey, if Monolith can make money,
Amba, they’ll make money. If they can provide excitement and adventure in any
way possible, they will endeavour to do so. Believe me, if Monolith could sell
sugared shit, they’d package it and flog it on market stalls right across Theme
Planet’s bazaars.