“There is indeed a Warden in the cyborg storage alcove over there,” said Melon. “One per ship in the fleet holds true for the flagship as well, it seems.”
“Is it active?” I said.
“No.”
“Why not? Why would Chester not activate this one? He activated the one in the city above, and all the other nearby ones.”
“According to the audio logs the computer recorded, Chester and the technicians he had working on the computer here decided to keep this one back as a reserve. I guess we interrupted things before Chester could activate him.”
“Okay, but why did this ship not do what it was meant to do? Why didn’t it keep tabs on the Deliverance population and communicate with the cyborgs?”
“When the ship first landed here, seeking a good place to hide itself, it raised its communication antenna through the rock and the seabed. After a short time, invasive aquatic life-forms destroyed the antenna.”
“Fish ate the radio mast?” I said. “Welcome to Deliverance. Why didn’t the ship relocate to a less hostile local environment?”
“Invasive aquatic life forms destroyed the sub-atmospheric directional and attitude control systems,” said Melon.
“Fish ate the rudder,” I said.
“Quite. What a curious choice of indigenous life the aliens seeded this planet with,” said Melon. “Metal-eating fish?”
“Forty-nine different species,” I said. “They’re partial to dead human scientists, too.”
“A shudder just ran through the body I don’t have.”
“Doc, you knew about the Kon Ramar, you studied them surreptitiously and you spent half your life learning from them. I can accept
you
being able to stick your beak into Kon Ramar business and mess with their tech, but the Boram family, rulers of a backwater pile of shit planet being able to interact with advanced alien technology is not in the least bit credible.”
“You’re right,” said Melon. “The logs show that the ship decided to reveal itself to the planetary authorities. Doing so was actually part of the theme of the Kon Ramar experiment for this planet’s colonisation and growth, not that I can begin to fathom what they were up to – and not that it matters, now that they’ve decided to just switch to the main aim of funnelling their God into a bunch of brains
“Shall I open the cyborg storage alcove?”
“You sure it’s not going to leap out and kick me in the face? Or, best case scenario, it’s not even going to leap out and kick
you
in the face?”
“I’m sure.”
“Do it.”
With a soft whooshing sound the door opened.
“What do you think of your new body, Zed?” said Doctor Melon.
“My new body?” I said.
“Indeed,” said Melon. “My little gift to you, to finally put the past – admittedly much of which you don’t know about – behind us.”
“Aw, Doc, that’s so sweet. I feel terrible, I didn’t get you anything,” I said, with my gruesome grin.
Melon smiled. “I could command the computer to reach down out of the ceiling with a pair of maintenance arms and switch my head with the chap in the alcove there, but, Zed, I want you to have it.”
Inside the alcove was an apparently slumbering, upright figure, with a Slavic look about him – most evident in his prominent cheek-bones. He had neat, short black hair and must’ve been in his mid-forties.
“Well, thanks, Doc,” I said. “How does it work?”
The doctor sent me a network message containing a command that I should run. I did so and my head fell off. It didn’t have far to fall, lying on the floor, as I was. The next thing I knew, a solid rubber hand on the end of a long metal arm shot out of the ceiling and grabbed me by the top of the head. I noticed the alcove-cyborg’s head topple off and then, an instant later the robotic arm placed my own head upon the vacated shoulders. Everything lined up perfectly and clicked into place and I began absorbing reams of internal data about my new body and the condition it was in – which could be summed up in one word: “Prime”. I looked down at the inactive head of the cyborg who’s body I’d just hijacked.
“His name was – ” Doctor Melon started to say.
“No, don’t tell me, Doc. I might end up having to write myself some sort of guilt sub-routines.”
“Ah, okay, then,” said the doctor. “You’ve gained just over an inch in height, but apart from that, the two of your cyborg bodies are very similar – all of the human-stock Wardens were. One of the female members of your old research team who got, ah, converted, was five feet tall, yet she still became a six foot cyborg.”
I stepped out of the alcove, flexing my fingers, rolling my shoulders, turning my head, twisting my torso and lifting my knees high – just revelling in the ease of movement and the full range of humanoid mobility I had again. I allowed my human side to flood me with a quick rush of relief and excitement. Z14, back from the brink.
“What about regeneration, Doc? When I go into regen mode and re-grow my face, am I going to end up looking like that poor fucker on the floor?”
“No,” said Melon. “Your D.N.A. Is encoded deep down in that ugly, burnt head of yours, and it will be used to re-write that of the stem-cell matrix in your new body’s digestive system. You’ll basically grow back your own flesh.”
“Cool,” I said. “These aliens make some awesome shit, it’s almost a shame I’m going to have to exterminate them.”
“Zed, really, there’s no need for that. We just need to show them that we can be their equals, and then we can – ”
“Yawn,” I said, even as I suppressed
that
image from flashing up in my mind – too late though.
“No, Daddy, come back!” reverberated around my head yet again.
“I’ve got another gift for you, Zed,” said Melon, as I did a few squat-thrusts and push-ups, enjoying my new body.
“What’s that?” I said warily.
“I’ve been trawling the computer’s database while we’ve been talking. I’ve found all the original memory files for each of the Wardens created on Earth.”
“I don’t want to know,” I said.
“You don’t? Why? Are you sure?”
“No.”
“Take them, Zed. You might never get the chance again.”
“Why? That’s not me anymore. I’m Z14, assassin and hopefully soon-to-be saviour of humanity from a short-lived future as lab-rats. Not a scientist who should have died centuries ago, and certainly not a father to some frozen brat, lost somewhere on a completely different planet.”
“Take them anyway, Zed. Store them, don’t access them, avoid them, but take them. You never know, the ones that cover your dealings with the Kon Ramar – your team made
first
contact, Zed – might even hold information that could be useful in fighting them.”
“Okay, that’s logical,” I said. “Have the computer beam them over.” Instead, a cabled data unit fell out of the ceiling. I sighed, stabbed it into my ear with a wince and took the transfer, being sure to mark each of the incoming files with a flag that said “Do Not Open - Shit I Don’t Care About Inside”. If I accessed one of those files, that was it, it would become a memory. I didn’t know if I could purge my
own
memories, and I didn’t want to risk uncovering something I didn’t want to know – whatever that might be, obviously I had no idea – and have no way to rid myself of it.
Through the open door of the flagship, I heard running feet approaching again. With a bit of my old confidence and swagger returned to me along with this new body, I strolled outside to see who it was. I stumbled over my old, broken body and kicked the useless thing out of the way. No trace of human sentimentality there, then. Good.
Lothar and Kam had returned. I was pleased to see they had the two jetpacks from poor Oxley’s wheelchair. That was good, because my new body wasn’t wearing a jetpack. Lothar was just in the act of dropping a bloody brain into the goop-filled aquarium – Oxley, I presumed.
As I emerged from the ship, the two humans levelled their rifles at me, shocked to see an able-bodied human figure coming out.
“Zee?” said Lothar.
“Course it is,” said Kam. “I’d recognise that ugly bastard anywhere. Even with the improvements all of his hideous burns have made.”
“Kam, would you like to be the first human these new hands of mine strangle?” I said. I walked over – walked, not limped, shuffled or dragged – to Kam and took the two jetpacks off of him. I strapped the one with the most fuel in it to my back, created a wireless link to it, and handed the other one back to Kam.
“I wish
we
could use these things,” said Kam wistfully.
“Zee buddy, there’s a freakishly tall blue guy walking around outside,” said Lothar. “We only got a glimpse of him through the gas clouds, but I’ll be guessing he’s one of your aliens.”
“Yeah, we were on our way back here with the ‘packs when we saw him. You told us to take no risks, so we came back,” said Kam.
“Good call,” I said. “Right then, we’ll go back up there. He must have some sort of shuttle or something nearby, maybe even their main ship, who knows?”
“Yee-haw,” shouted Kam. “Let’s go screw some alien ass!”
I looked at him.
“What?” he said. “I’m just filling in for Ox. I miss him.”
“I’m sure we’ll get the little idiot back,” I said.
I ducked back into the flagship. Melon would be interested in this new development.
“It’s no good,” said Melon as I entered. “I’d hoped we’d be able to send commands to all the Wardens on the planet from the flagship’s computer, but the fish-eaten antenna makes that impossible.”
“How the hell did Boram activate ten Wardens from here, then?” I said.
Melon smiled. “Again, according to the audio logs the computer took, he used his modest connections as ruler of a planet to get a replacement antenna built and guided into place from a specially-constructed platform out in the bay.
“The fish ate it, of course, but not before he’d had time to send out the activation commands to the Wardens.”
“So where does that leave us?” I said.
“We need to get into space, get aboard the ship or ships the Kon Ramar have arrived in, take them over and cancel the Deliverance harvest mission from a computer aboard ship.
“I could probably get any of the old colony ship’s bridge shuttles launched. Preferably the one in the Heights. It knows me, so it would be faster there.” I smiled as I remembered the obsequious reverence the doctor had programmed into that ship’s computer. Silly idiot.
“What about if the Kon Ramar had landed on the planet?” I said. “Might they have a more expedient way of getting back to their own orbiting ship?”
“Definitely, why do you ask?”
“Lothar and Kam just a gangly blue thing wandering around topside.”
“They did what?” cried Melon. “Pick me up! Now! Let’s go, go, go!”
With Melon tucked under my arm, we all rushed back to the surface, emerging from the Kaboom-blasted castle bunker entrance. I scanned the area and found a single life sign nearby. A big one. I passed Melon to Kam and walked towards it, a short way. As I drew closer, it must’ve heard me coming because it froze for a moment, before heading our way. Perhaps it felt it had nothing to fear down here. I found that strange, as the timing of their attack had made both Melon and me suspect they’d been watching us for a while from orbit. So they surely knew they had a rogue Warden on this planet, and that I was the only cyborg within four and a half hours of here, but this thing approaching me wasn’t scared. Well, neither was I. A human weakness. None of that rubbish for me, thank you very much. It was time for a balls-out confrontation with the alien antagonists. Except, as the alien emerged from the swirling gas cloud I realised it was way ahead of me on the balls-out front. It was naked.
I called over my shoulder to Melon and the others, a short way behind. “I thought you said they were nearly human, Doc,” I said.
“Well,” called back Melon, “despite outward appearances, the physiological simi-”
“I’ve never seen anything like
this
on a human,” I said. “It looks like a hose.”
“Ah, yes, disgusting isn’t it. Just, well, try not to look at it.” His voice sounded like he’d be shuddering, if he could.