Z14
Z14
By Jim Chaseley
February 2012 Edition
Copyright 2012 Jim Chaseley. All rights reserved
I hope you enjoy this book, and please keep an eye out for my future titles. Please feel free to get in touch with me on Twitter (
http://www.twitter.com/jchaseleyauthor
), or via email at
[email protected]
I’d like to thank my cover artist, Nathan Edwards for the book cover. Thanks!
Please visit his website at
http://cowfields.co.uk/
All characters in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are
fictitious
and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental
Chapter One
Life would be so much easier if I was a toaster. Less action-packed, true, but definitely easier.
Ruminating on my very existence whilst strangling the human I had been sent to assassinate struck me as being unprofessional. Neatly proving that point, my wayward musings were brought to heel, as a burst of gunfire from a previously unseen bodyguard slammed into my chest. Served me right for losing mission focus.
"Why was I made to feel pain?" I yelled, as I punched through a wall, and the head of the bodyguard who had just ducked back behind it. An internal alert notified me that collateral damage would be deducted from my payment. It couldn't be helped, I'd damage as much collateral as I needed to get out of here alive.
Alive? Life? Is that what this is? Is that what I am? Ah, nuts to it, a toaster doesn't have to deal with this existential bullshit.
Two more bodyguards rushed through a doorway, hot lead erupting from their cheap, old-tech weapons. Their fire was wild and only a smattering of bullets peppered my torso. Most riddled the office walls and shattered the grand, panoramic window behind me. I glared at the attackers. Perhaps a bit more collateral damage wouldn't go amiss. After all, these goons had shot me full of holes and that stung like a bastard. But no, if I was ever going to find out who, what, when and where I was – and maybe why, for the full set – I needed to score as close to the maximum fee for this job as I could.
Yes, toasters have an easy life, but then again, they can't do this! I turned and dived through the shot-out window behind me and – with my internal sensors registering my altitude at fifty-eight feet – I engaged my jetpack and blazed a trail up, up and away.
Okay, I admit it; I love my job.
*
Cruising through the sky, I had one of those moments where you think of something witty to say after an argument, only it's too late to get it in and ‘score’ with it. Bah, it's never too late, I say. I composed an email in what I like to refer to as my mind and fired it off:
Subject: Parting Shot
FAO: Surviving bodyguards and security personnel.
Sorry you missed me, but I had to fly!
Regards,
Rampaging Kill-bot
No
, not the greatest of comebacks, and definitely lacking the desired snappiness. I'd have to keep working at expanding my witticism database.
They would already know my true name, of course. Everyone knows Z14, so signing the email
Rampaging Kill-bot
was all part of the fun that I sought. I'm not really a rampaging kill-bot, but I had a self-created image to live up to. In truth, I only rampage when I'm severely cheesed off, and only kill when I'm slightly less annoyed than that. No, I'm more of a finely tuned, targeted assassination-bot. To actually be summed up as a ‘bot’ would be a deep insult to the technological marvel that I am, and, if I had feelings they'd be as hurt as my outer flesh was by the guards' bullets back at Fatality Corp.
Recently, I’ve discovered that I do appear to have feelings; a most puzzling development. Who builds a cyborg and gives it a smart-arse personality and a bad temper? Who thought that was a good idea? Damned if I know, but I'll find out one day, and I'll smash the bastard's teeth in with my big metal fist.
As I neared my home, ahem, fortress, the fuel ran low in my jetpack, its flame guttering in and out, causing me to lurch up and down in the air as though I'd hit turbulence. No problem, though, I was home. My feet touched down on the grass outside my cave just as the jetpack gave one last little fart and packed up. It’s a very cool device – small, powerful, efficient and controlled via wireless comms – I rarely go out without it strapped to my back. It’s cyborg-level technology, too – nobody else has one of these bad boys. I was pleased with how well I'd done calculating my fuel requirements, but not as chuffed as I was with the fact my course from target to home hadn't been off by so much as a degree. Again, what's a cyborg doing feeling proud? I'm a super computer on legs, of course I can plot a flight path. Pride's a sin, so I’m the sinning cyborg. Better that than a singing one, though, since I’m far more brutal when murdering songs as opposed to humans.
Ah, my fortress, my castle, my home. It's a modest little place, really. A murderous cyborg-for-hire doesn't require much in the way of creature comforts, which is why you might call the six foot deep, two foot wide gash in the side of a chalky cliff that I call home ‘minimalist’. I don't need a hi-tech base of operations, I
am
a high-tech base of operations – All my filing, all my admin, all my communications and computer equipment and even my weaponry
is
me. I just need a pitch-black cleft in a cliff to hide from the scattered splinters of humanity on this lost planet, who all seem to want me melted down and turned into something less terrifying, like, oh I don't know, a new line of luxury toasters. So this was home, but it's not exactly somewhere I'd bring a potential Mrs Rampaging Kill-bot, should I ever bump into one out on a job.
Naturally I have unnaturally perfect night vision, so I avoided treading on any of the soft, small cuddly animal toys lying on the floor of the cave. I had no idea why I collected these, but I did. Whenever I saw one I bought it – or stole it on the rare occasions I spotted one whilst out on a job. Most were old, torn and dirty and leaking stuffing. One of them – that I always seemed to keep closest to me – was just the rear-end of a leopard, or possibly even a giraffe – it was so old and worn that it was hard to tell which. I’d found it lying on a pile of rubbish once, when disposing of a body. A whole heap of cuddly animals had been shredded by something, but the leopard’s arse was the best preserved bit, so I’d added it to my collection.
I had no answer as to why these things – the half-leopard in particular – were so important to me, and cyborg-psychiatry wasn’t exactly an overcrowded profession in these parts. I picked the leopard up and clutched it in one hand as I opened up a communication channel in my head, to my most recent employer.
"Fatality Corp have suffered fatalities of their own," I said as soon as the call was answered.
"How many?" demanded an old man's voice.
"Just two, and only minor interior damage. I still expect full payment. Their C.E.O. has expired due to lack of oxygen to the brain."