“Looks good,” he said.
She gave a nod, but did not return his smile. She was tense; too tense.
Does she sense it too?
thought Keenan.
Suddenly, guns roared outside the steel container, deafening even within its confines, and Keenan, Pippa and Rebekka all flinched, dropping to defensive crouches. Keenan shot Rebekka a scowl, just as bullets scythed through the container’s walls, screaming through steel, cutting shafts through the dust and leaving tracers of pale evening light.
Keenan turned; Pippa’s Makarov touched the back of Rebekka’s head and jabbed, hard.
“Bitch.”
“It’s not what it looks like,” hissed Rebekka through gritted teeth.
“Slow down!” snapped Keenan. A chopper smashed overhead. More automatic guns roared; then came the distinctive
whine
of miniguns. Keenan launched himself across the chamber, hammering into Pippa and Rebekka and taking all three of them to the ridged ground. Bullets screamed through the container punching fist-sized holes in the steel on streams of superheated air. Keenan scrambled towards the doors, just as a Slab cart-wheeled past the opening, body torn open spraying blood, suit holed, head exploding in a shower of bone and brain gristle. Screams echoed. More guns whined and then came several double blast
slams
of a shotgun. Keenan swallowed, throat dry, trying to work out what the hell was going on, and where the enemy was.
The container doors slammed shut, and bolted from the outside
.
“Shit.”
“This isn’t part of the plan,” said Rebekka. Her face was ashen, staring up from the floor. Her fine long dress seemed suddenly tattered, abused. “Please believe me, it’s none of my doing!”
“I say we kill her,” snarled Pippa, gun still covering the prostrate proxer.
“No.”
Keenan, cool now, brain ticking fast and with Techrim in his fist, moved to one of the holes in the wall. Outside, he could see nothing. He glanced up, hearing the smash of the chopper in the distance. It banked.
“He’s coming back. You two move to the corner, away from the explosives.” Pippa cursed, suddenly realising the vulnerability of their predicament. If a stray shot hit a grenade, mine, cluster-bomb or HighJ, they were, quite literally, going to be blown apart: dog meat, porno spaghetti, as they said in the squads.
“Kee, what we gonna do?”
Keenan was at the container doors. They were locked, and he rattled them. Overhead, the chopper howled, and again they heard the whine of charging miniguns. Keenan paled. They would be cut in half within an eye-blink!
There was only one thing he could do.
Blow their way out...
He sprinted to the shelf, grabbed a Babe Grenade and within a second was wedging it between steel planks.
“You’ll kill us all!” hissed Rebekka, orange eyes wide.
Keenan gave her a sour lop-sided grin...
And pulled the pin.
Three minutes into his freedom, Franco entered the nearest Irish bar with a proud sign in Gaelic green. The sign read:
A LONG WAY FROM LIMERICK.
It was, apparently, the Irish bar’s name, and part of the irrefutable truth that no matter where you find yourself across any world, universe, or galaxy, the first bar you’ll always stumble across is an Irish one, which will no doubt serve a fine pint of creamy headed Guinness.
Franco savoured the atmosphere: the warmth, the aromas, the
craic.
He ambled over to the bar, struggled for a moment to find purchase on a high bar stool, placed both elbows in puddles of Tox1C lager, and grinned at the frowning barman.
“A pint of your finest black stuff,” said Franco.
“You any ID?” sniffed the barman.
“ID?” Franco was aghast. “I’m forty-two years old!”
“Not for your age. Your import papers.”
“No.”
“That’s OK. It’s a pain in the arse filling them forms in anyway, so it is.” The barman poured. Franco beamed, licking his lips in anticipation of his first proper pint in years
.
The Guinness was duly delivered. Franco supped, allowed himself the luxury of a cream moustache, and sighed as several dregs of memory from the Mount Pleasant Hilltop Institution, the “nice and caring and friendly home for the mentally challenged” were washed away on a river of warm fuzzing alcohol.
“You new around here, mister?” asked a clanging metallic voice from his left. Franco turned, head tilted, eyes taking in the old GE model robot. The machine—or AI as it would have preferred to be called—would have probably been a top-end machine in its day. Now it looked as if it had been in the wars; all panels were dented, scuffed, scratched and battered. One arm had been welded with an irregular emergency repair, and one leg was slightly longer than the other. The GE’s head was not quite straight, listing effortlessly to one side. The bright purple eyes hissed within its head-shell, and Franco rubbed his bearded chin.
“I thought everybody around here was new,” he said, cautiously.
“Could be so, could be so.” The old GE picked up a small glass that contained what looked like used engine oil, complete with iron-filings and sludge.
“Why, are
you
new around here?”
“Been here a week. Waiting for an old friend to show up,” said the GE amiably. “The name’s Louis. I’m an old Razor-droid.”
Franco raised his eyebrows. The Razor-droids were indeed an old breed, but were also as tough as they came, from before a time when the great Japanese Robotics Corp, VWAS and NanoTek introduced legislation to tone down the inherently violent and awesomely destructive capabilities of some of their top-end models. Razor-droids were built for off-world war. They could survive in any climate. They could adapt most household items into terrible weapons of mass destruction. And they had no empathy chips, which meant their grip on AI status was tenuous; which in turn also made them twitchy, and tetchy. Back in barracks during Combat K training, Franco’s old instructor, Sergeant DDB, had once commented, “Don’t ever underestimate a Razor-droid. Tough little bastards, they are. Skewer you with your own pencil as much as look at you.” Franco had never met one, until now.
“Nice to meet you, Louis.” Franco shook the robot’s metallic appendage. “Can I buy you a drink?”
“I’m OK for now. Thanks for the offer. Very much appreciated.”
Hmm. Seems polite enough
, thought Franco, and sank the rest of his Guinness in one; he ordered another, and made a dent in it with a single gulp. “By God that tastes fine,” he said, slapping his lips. “Makes me glad to escape from prison!”
“Prison, you say?”
Franco coughed. “Just a manner of speech. More of a, y’know, mental institution.”
Louis laughed, a tinny metallic sound, and watched Franco finish his second Guinness and order two more. They were delivered. They were devoured.
Franco grinned, some would say, like a maniac.
Thirty minutes and fourteen pints of Guinness later, Franco was swaying on his stool as he recounted his break from the Mount Pleasant Hilltop Institution, the “nice and caring and friendly home for the mentally challenged”. He swayed left and right, and mimed the act of thumping several times in close rhythm. “Yeah, I punched that bastard Betezh in the mush, and he squealed like a chicken, and I said, I said, I did I said, ‘Take that you dastardly Dr. Betezh bastard, that’s for all those electrolicles on my testoids’, you hear what I’m saying?” The surrounding group of entertained punters nodded, indeed hearing exactly what Franco was saying. It would have been hard to ignore the ginger tornado.
The door to the bar opened at that moment, allowing a free flow of toxic air to rush inside. A figure stepped through the portal dripping with rain, and the interruption broke the flow of Franco’s considerably exaggerated retelling.
Franco squinted towards the door. It was filled by a stocky figure, silhouetted against a background of clover leaf. The figure shook rain free of a leather cape and hung it on a nearby peg.
Franco suddenly realised Louis the Razor-droid was by his side. Close, intimatelyclose, like a lover.
“My friend,” said Louis, by way of explanation.
And into the light stepped the bullet shaved head, the shark gaze, the powerful pendulum arms... of Dr. Betezh. Franco gasped. Betezh smiled: a nasty smile, a shark’s grin, in fact.
“Said we’d find you, didn’t I, you little maggot,” breathed Betezh. And suddenly Franco was in the grip of the GE Razor-droid, Louis. Steel claws locked Franco’s arms more effectively than any police handcuffs; his arms became rigid within a simple, elegant, robotic cage.
The circle of punters widened. It was turning into quite an entertaining evening.
“I’m not going back,” said Franco.
Betezh pulled free a long hypodermic. A tiny squirt of amber fluid ejected from the tip.
“Oh, I think you are, my boy,” he said.
And advanced.
Chapter 6
Red Zone
Keenan sprinted for safety, grabbing a pile of flak jackets and diving towards the two women. They huddled in a heap beneath the protective clothing as two things happened simultaneously. Instead of an unleashing of mini-gun rounds, there was a solid
clank
from above the container and it shuddered, like some great creature in the throes of extinction. Then the Babe Grenade detonated. Fire billowed and screamed, and shrapnel smashed out in all directions. Behind their huddle of flak jackets, Keenan, Pippa and Rebekka heard a pattering of thuds as the shrapnel was absorbed. Chemical heat washed over them, scorching hair and searing little bits of exposed flesh. The container shuddered again, and Keenan kicked free the protective jackets, holed and smoking, and was canted forward as the container lurched, picked bodily up and hauled high into the neon sky. The container’s ridged floor suddenly tipped to become a violent slope, and the doors—now blasted open—swung wide revealing a fast disappearing landscape. Everything on the shelves began to slide, and Pippa grabbed Keenan, hauling him back with a grunt so he could grab a steel strut. Then the chopper righted itself, the container levelled, and the world disappeared in a swathe of heavy cloud.
Wind blasted inside, chilling them.
Hailstones smashed the flying container.
“What the hell is happening?” growled Keenan, rounding on Rebekka.
“I don’t know! I swear!” She held her hands up in supplication. “We’ve been attacked! They must have been scoping us, checking us out for a heist. Why would I want to have my own damn men killed?”
“Or maybe you led somebody to us?” snapped Pippa.
“Why, who the fuck are you? I don’t know you!” There was pleading in Rebekka’s voice and tears in her eyes. Her flesh was pale. Her hands were shaking.
Pippa prodded her with the Makarov. “I say we waste her.”
Keenan shook his head. “No. If this is a gang rape then she may come in useful; after all, she brought us to this place.” He gave a smile, full of teeth. “If she is party to any conspiracy, then she may be a useful bartering tool.”
Rebekka grabbed Keenan’s arm. “I swear to you. I had nothing to do with this. I carry out five or six deals like this every month; three times in the past we’ve had criminals try to take us down. Or maybe this is the work of rogue terrorists from one of the Syndicates in need of a few free weapons. My men are—were—good men, tough. Out there, they were cut down like wheat.”
“Not easy to fight off a mini-gun,” observed Pippa dryly. Her Makarov still targeted Rebekka’s head.
Rebekka turned, dark hair whipping. “Hey, let me tell you something. They may have looked like scumbag mercenaries, but they were loyal to me and they did their jobs well. Some had wives, families, so don’t be flapping your mouth like a bitch just because your man was making eyes at me.”
“Myman?” Pippa snarled.
“If you took care of things at the home nest, his hand wouldn’t be sliding up my leg. You understand what I’m saying?”
“Keenan is not my man.”
“Then your chemistry lies.”
“Girls, girls! Calm down.” Keenan waved them into silence, and ignored Pippa’s menacing looks. Overhead, the chopper clattered and they dropped in a series of jerks, the floor of the suspended container rocking violently, until they fell from the pall of heavy cloud cover, and below spread the ocean, or what would have been the ocean if it hadn’t been industrialised. A fifty lane highway soared beneath them, a glittering crescent of emerald steel-tarmac a hundred feet above the waves. It swayed gently, rippling almost like a slow-motion snake, altering its floatation stance with the undulation of the waves. Around this tributary stood buildings, skyscrapers; some were built down into the roots of the ocean, and rose like glittering fingers of glass pointing accusingly at the heavens. Myriad squat blocks of tenements and shops, car parks and malls all spread like some frothy scum across the ocean surface. As night had started to fall, lights glittered through the dusk. The one obvious omission from the surface of the ocean was, well, the ocean itself. The City had spread and conquered, even across the sea.
“Do you recognise our location?” asked Keenan.