On his knees, he put the gun
against Katrina’s head. All action ceased.
“Get off her,” he said, his voice
thick with emotion.
Slowly, Katrina climbed free and
stood. Amba got up, panting, her face bruised and bloodied.
“Kill her,” said Amba.
Dex stared down the barrel of the
FRIEND.
“He can’t,” said Katrina, and
glanced sideways at Amba. “He’s a fucking human coward. What did you expect?”
She moved fast, rolling sideways
and... disappearing into the hole she’d blasted through the wall. Dex ran
forward, kneeling at the edge, and saw the newly created corridor went along -
then down, into a deep dark nothingness below...
Even as he knelt, Molly and
Toffee hurtled past him, leaping into the abyss and disappearing in the blink
of an eye. “No!” Dex cried, stretching out to them in a moment of reflex, and
nostalgia, and hurt, and wishing everything was back to normal, to the way it
should be. The way it used to be. But sometimes, you can’t go back. Sometimes,
it’s too broken ever to be fixed.
Dex looked back at Amba. His face
was ashen. He felt like he wanted to be sick. And, he realised, Katrina had
taken her FRIEND. The weapon. The
bomb...
“What now?”
Amba picked up the compressed
ball that was all that remained of the avatar. “SARAH? Can you hear us?”
“Of course,” said SARAH.
“If we were to help you, what
would you have us do?”
“Katrina and the girls are even
now cutting their way towards my crystal core. My Heart. If they plant the
FRIEND, I, and the millions of holidaymakers on Theme Planet, will be
destroyed. I am willing to sacrifice myself -but you have your fellow humans to
worry about.”
“I know what to do,” said Dex.
“Yes?” Amba raised her eyebrows.
“We must bring Romero and his
Ministers of Joy
to us.
Then we can pursue Katrina, stop her planting
the FRIEND.”
“And how do you propose we do
that?” said Amba.
“Easy,” smiled Dex, touching his
face where Molly had given him a beating. “We’ll tell them what we know. Tell
everybody
what we know. SARAH, do you have communication facilities down here?”
“Our Theme Planet Advertising
Broadcast Station, TPABS, is an hour from where you stand. I can direct you. It
has the power to broadcast across the entirety of Quad-Gal. It is the source of
all our Quad-Gal advertising; the selling of Theme Planet holidays. It is
very
powerful.”
“I think it’s time to give
Oblivion Government the publicity they deserve,” said Dex.
“If we do that, Katrina will get
to SARAH’s core. We can only do one thing or the other.”
“We’ll have to split,” said
Dexter.
Amba read the anguish in his
face; and she understood. “You go to the TPABS. I’ll go after Katrina.”
“No. No.”
Dex closed his eyes for a moment,
and then opened them again. He took a deep breath, summoning up courage from
deep within. “I will go after Katrina. I will go after Molly and Toffee.”
“Are you sure you can do this?”
“Yes,” nodded Dexter.
Amba stepped forward, and kissed
him. It was gentle, slow, and sincere. Dex stood, stunned.
“For bringing me back to life,”
said Amba, remembering her daughter, remembering her own cowardice. Then she
turned, and vanished into the cut flesh walls...
~ * ~
Romero sat on
his
dark ebony throne, flanked by a thousand silent, immobile Ministers of Joy -
the enforcers of Earth’s Oblivion Government, and by default, Earth itself.
Romero had his chin on his fist, his long, glossy black hair was drawn back
with a simple circlet of silver, and his dark eyes were like glass, his face
unreadable, his mood tangible and quite obviously
not
filled with joy.
Doors slammed open at the far end
of the chamber, and a tall, powerful soldier strode forward. He wore Oblivion’s
black uniform, and the silver insignia of the military elite, along with the
single bar of a general. This was General Kome of the Chaos Infantry; possibly
the most brutal, harsh and feared soldier within the Ministers of Joy, or
anywhere.
Kome approached and snapped to
attention, delivering a precise salute, and Romero stepped down from his throne
and returned it. Romero, a tall man himself, looked up at the heavily scarred
face before him. Kome refused to have any plastic surgery whatsoever, believing
a man should bear his scars proudly - and on his front. Kome had no scars on
his back. He never turned his back in a fight. Kome was the first of the
Anarchy Androids, and the most deadly. He had been assigned human status by
Romero for services rendered. This was the one thing in his entire existence
for which Kome had shown some gratitude.
“You have news?” said Romero.
“Yes. All your implants, all your
spies, all your rogue humans down there on that shitty ball of diseased fun
-well, between them, they’re doing a fine job of fucking it all up.”
“What’s the sit-rep on the
Anarchy Models?”
“Amba has performed sterling service.
She has assassinated several of the individuals on her list of targets. Katrina
and the two young androids played their parts well, and met with SARAH
inside
and convinced the freak they were human; for a while, at least. For long
enough. Long enough to
infiltrate.
It is this Dexter Colls who presents
a problem.”
“Aah. My old friend Dexter.”
Romero thought back, remembering the android’s engineering, his breeding, his
growing, his implanting. Romero had taken a very special interest in Dexter
Colls. It was a matter of personal pride. “I have high hopes for Dexter.”
“Don’t get them too high,
sir.
It would appear he has malfunctioned.”
“Malfunctioned? How?”
“We tried to activate his
internal switch; but it refuses to work. He remains in his fake human form -
working with the same thought patterns, the same emotional concepts, the same
empathy. We cannot regress him to base android status. It is a crying fucking
shame. An abomination, in fact.”
Romero considered this. “What are
the computers saying with regards probability of mission success?”
“Ninety five percent success
rate. The Monolith Mainframe, the organic computer which calls itself SARAH and
is, as we suspected, covering the entirety of the planet, is completely
non-violent. There will be no fight there. Our War Machine will roll over her
and fuck her violently from behind.”
“How is the Fleet?”
“We are positioning in readiness
for the initial bombing runs. Cardinal, when this begins, the whole surface of
that fucking place is going to be a warzone. Those dumb-ass pleasure seekers
won’t know what the fuck hit them.”
“Good,” said Romero, rubbing his
chin. “Serves them right for being so weak. If they had backbone, they’d be a
part of our plans for expansion!”
“Of course, sir,” said General
Kome.
“One last thing. I want you to
initiate contact with Amba and Katrina. I want to know where they are, how far
into the game they are - yes?”
“You will break their cover.”
“I think we’re so far into the
game, Kome, it matters little. We are in position to began our wonderful Act of
Aggression in... how long?”
“One hour, sir.”
“Then one hour it is,” said
Romero, dark eyes showing no emotion. Indeed, very like an android’s.
~ * ~
Katrina lay on
the trolley, smiling bravely up at Dex. She wore a
blue hospital gown and her dark hair was tied back, face radiant with the
beauty of being “with child. “ Dex leaned forward and kissed her gently, first
on the lips, then on the forehead, and his hand touched her lips, then moved
down across the coarse fabric of the hospital gown, over her breasts, coming to
rest gently and protectively on the pregnant bump.
“Everything’s going to be all
right,” said Dex, eyes bright with tears.
“Who you trying to convince? Me,
or yourself?”
“Both of us,” admitted Dex, with
a grin.
“It
will
be all right,“ Katrina
said, and her hand moved and took Dex’s fingers. She squeezed his hand as if to
reassure him, and then the doors opened and the doctors and midwives appeared;
they smiled warmly, kindly, at Dexter and there were far too many teeth. Dex
didn’t like people smiling. In the real world, he didn’t trust anybody.
“I’ll be okay,“ said Kat, as they
wheeled her away into the birthing suite.
“I love you,“ said Dex.
“I love you too,“ mouthed back
Kat.
The doors closed, leaving a
generously bosomed midwife with Dex. “We’ll prepare her for the section,” she
said, “and then you can come in and watch - if you like. Is that your
preference?”
“Yes,” said Dexter.
“The Caesarean is being carried
out by Jojo Brunstfield III, a Doc+7 birthing machine with, as you’ve probably
guessed, a Doc+ rating of 7. That means, to the layman, that it’s as
technically accurate as seven whole doctors put together!”
“I’d still rather have a human
doctor do it,“ said Dex, unhappily.
“We’ve been through this several
times, Mr Colls.“
“I know, I know, it’s just...”
“You don’t trust machines,
especially machines that are trying to be human. I understand. I’m the same...
and as for those new androids!” She shivered. “They give me the creeps, they’re
so human! Thank God they have no emotions and they’re easy to spot and
exterminate, that’s what I always say!”
“Yes, thank God,” said Dexter.
“We call them Plastic Hearts down
our street,” said the midwife, and Dex clicked. She’d been sent out to make
small talk whilst they prepped Katrina for surgery. Keep him occupied. Keep his
mind on other things. Dex frowned.
“I’d rather be alone,“ he said.
The generously bosomed midwife
gave a little “huff” and shook her shoulders (and her ample bosom) as if to
say,
Ha, very
well, stuff you, bozo!
and she mooched away to examine various wall posters
about contracting the vast range of weird and wonderful alien viruses that had
presented themselves across Quad-Gal.
Dex waited patiently, heart
booming in his chest, hands clammy with fear. What if something happened? What
if something went terribly wrong? Yeah, but all these professional people are
here to help! Here
in case
something does go wrong!
Still Dex fretted, and he’d never
thought of himself as a worrier before, but he was shitting bricks right now.
The doors opened.
“You can come inside, Mr Colls.”
Dex hurried through the doors.
Katrina was lying on her back with some kind of frame over her midriff. Dex was
guided to stand beside her head, so that he couldn’t exactly see what was going
on below.
He took her hand, and squeezed
it, and stared suspiciously at the huge machine, the size of an upended groundcar,
that squatted patiently, awaiting its chance to perform the caesarean and
remove his breech child from his wife’s womb.