Theme Planet (29 page)

Yeah, but here?

Amba climbed up over the ice
spiral, bitterly cold beneath her aching hands. She stood for a moment,
balanced above infinity. At one point, a carriage zipped under her boots, and
it was a long snake of happy faces and screaming maws, hands wiggling in the
air.

“For God’s sake,” snarled Amba.

You don’t have a god. You’re an
android.

Yeah, fucker, thanks for
reminding me of that.

Amba upped her game, increased
her speed. There had to be an access hatch somewhere, and as the spirals and
bridges of ice appeared with more regularity inside the vast hollowed-out
mountain, increased until they crisscrossed the sky and screams and gurgles of
pleasure filled Amba’s ears, so, all of a sudden she came across -

A ladder.

Hmm. Good and bad.
A ladder meant easier egress
from the cavern, further up and out into the military complex itself. However,
it also meant the possibility of men with guns... not that men with guns
bothered Amba, but she recognised she couldn’t take on the whole world in a
game of slaughter. Although she would cheerfully try...

She stopped at the ladder’s
bottom rung, grasped its cool, slick metal. It was by a small Fire Port, and
looking down Amba could see the criss-crossing ride tubes now, woven into the
fabric of the mountain itself, entangled within crystal and ice, whether
natural or created. She could hear the rumble of distant wheels. More CARs shot
through the spinning tunnels, and down into the bowels of the mountain.

Amba glanced at the Fire Port. It
was an emergency measure, in case any of the rides below caught. fire.
Presumably, it would rain down to extinguish flames in the event of an
emergency.

Amba gave a short, neat smile. A
plan formed in her mind. She pulled free her FRIEND, glanced down at the
criss-crossing rides, and focused. She aimed the FRIEND.

I don’t think this is a good
idea, Amba.

Diversions are always a good
idea, Zi...

She mentally selected a function,
and fired; The FRIEND gave a meaty
whump
and the nearest enclosed spiral of ice tubing exploded into a million
glittering sections of ice. There were screams as steel tracks twisted and bent
under the power of the blast, and ice tumbled away towards the void, towards
the red glow, towards oblivion.

There came the thunder of wheels,
the screams of excited riders which suddenly notched up an octave as they
realised the track ahead had disappeared... There were wails of brakes on the
track, there were showers of sparks, more screams of panic and terror. The lead
CAR shunted from the tube and went over the edge, falling, dragging the next
CAR, and the next CAR, until six CARs were dangling like a string of metal
sausages. Steel and alloy groaned, and the CARs finally came to a halt,
dangling, swinging, screams and wails echoing and reverberating around the huge
cavern as the people aboard waved their arms in the air for a different reason.

“Wonderful,” whispered Amba, and
turned the FRIEND on the other enclosed tracks. She began to fire
indiscriminately, the FRIEND shaking in her hand in an extraordinarily modest
way. But what it produced was something more than normal, something
more
than
military. Ice and crystal flew about, scattering like snowflakes into distant
darkness, into the glowing depths, and Amba took out three, five, ten of the
internal tracks of this bizarre Theme Planet ride, through not just the bowels
of a mountain, but through the supposedly highly restricted Monolith-owned
Firelce Mountain High-Security Military Facility.

Shit,
she thought. If I’d realised
this
I would have just hitched a ride! I had to come in the back door. The
hard
way!

More CARs emerged, people
screamed, chaos rioted through the riders. More dangling sausages swayed over
The Pit, and the air was filled with deep metallic clangs and booms, the sounds
of tortured machinery; the sounds of tortured tourists.

Amba narrowed her eyes, and
turned a tiny dial on the edge of the FRIEND. “What we need now is more
drama”
she whispered, and fired the weapon. A sheet of fire roared from the tiny black
FRIEND, and set a huge section of track alight. Flames roared up towards Amba,
but she was already climbing as the whole cavern started to fill with black
smoke. More people screamed. It was rapidly becoming the soundtrack to the
mission...

Amba made good speed up the
ladder, boots clattering on alloy rungs.

Below, an inferno raged.

That was morally reprehensible,
said Zi. Somewhat smugly.

Nobody died...

Many
may
die. You are dangling
their lives by a thread, if you’ll excuse the obvious parallel; and you are
showing a distinct lack of humanity.

That’s because I’m a fucking
android,
snarled
Amba to her own personal demon, and Zi took that as a cue to depart.

~ * ~

Amba reached the
access door, leapt through, but it was clear.
Audible alarms,
fire
alarms, were sounding now, and this was good. Up
here, the corridors were neat and square and alloy. She ran through the sterile
environment, ignoring lifts and shuttles until she located a stairwell. She
glanced back; a lift was opening, disgorging a platoon of SIMs and regular
soldiers, all heavily armoured and carrying automatic weapons. They split up,
heading in different directions. Amba glanced up the stairs, and started to
climb, FRIEND held before her.

She kicked through another door
into the astonished path of three provax carrying machine guns. Her arm snapped
out, and the first provax was punched back with a hole in his skull, the second
sent spinning sideways with a bullet in his ear, and the third backed away,
hands coming up fast in sudden supplication. Amba shot him in the throat, and
stood over him whilst he scrabbled at the wound, kicking around and leaving
marks on the floor with his flailing boots. She crouched by him, looking up and
down the corridor, then put another bullet in his head, and he lay still, milky
blood bubbling on his lips.

Amba was hit in the back by a
shotgun, the blast picking her up and accelerating her down the corridor with a
boom,
where she bounced from a railing and spun out, arms and legs
flailing, and hit the floor hard. She lay still.

The android, for it was an
android - she could smell him now, all of a sudden, like bad garbage; smell his
fake stench, smell the distinctive metallic aroma which humans couldn’t detect,
but androids could, oh, yes, they could smell it like a rancid fish in a
locked-down room. He moved closer, padding softly. Amba lay, bent and broken,
head on the floor, one leg twisted up against the wall, blood pooling from her
back where the shotgun had rioted through her flesh.

You missed him...

Shit, you think I don’t know that
?

Want me to take care of him for
you
? Amba could
almost
sense
the pleading.

Oh, no. This fucker’s mine...

He stopped. His boot reached out
and prodded her face, once, twice. On the third prod she sunk her teeth straight
through the leather of his boot, and straight through the toes within, severing
them cleanly - or as clean as a bite can be. The android screamed, discharging
the shotgun into the roof panels, which buckled and clattered down, clanging
and wobbling. Amba grabbed his leg in both hands and twisted viciously,
breaking the bone at the knee. But he was advanced, and he didn’t scream again;
he’d cut off the pain receptors, dropping back into
android
mode,
instead of
fake human.
He punched down, the blow catching Amba on the
cheek, as she punched up, feeling his testicles compress under her knuckles.

The android staggered back,
supporting himself against the wall as his useless leg flopped free, and Amba
rolled smoothly to her feet.

“What generation are you?” he
said.

Amba leapt, punching straight,
straight, right hook, left uppercut; he blocked the blows, returned several
punches of his own, but Amba took them on her forearms, stepping back a little.

“Stop! I didn’t realise you were
one
of us...”

Amba didn’t speak, just stared,
and kept her fists raised.

Sensing the advantage, the
hiatus, the break in combat rhythm, the android spoke quickly, “We can help
each other! I can get you out of here, I can...”

“Can you get me up to see Lady
Goo Goo?”

“The researcher? You mean the
woman, right? Ride Organics? That sort of thing?”

“Yes.”

“Yes, I can get you up there...”

Amba lowered her fists, stepped
forward, dropped to her knees before him and held out her hand.

“What?”

“Shotgun. We’ll use it as a splint.
You’re not walking anywhere like that.”

“You don’t know what I want, yet,”
said the android, looking up and down the corridor, nervous now.

“Of course I do. You want to be
more human.”

His mouth flapped a little, then
he grinned. “Despite the broken leg, I like you, little lady. You have spirit.
I’m Jonno.”

Amba’s face went hard. “I don’t
need to know. Take me to Goo Goo.”

~ * ~

Limping hard, Jonno
took Amba through a maze of corridors. He was
talking all the time, not as if he were nervous, but as if he didn’t get out
much; as if he’d spent a decade in solitary confinement. Which, being an
android, was a possibility. They came to several junctions, and at the tenth,
Amba froze. There was a T52 AI Automatic Sentry. It buzzed and whirred, heavy
calibre barrels tracking them.

“Aah, that’s okay. This gun’s
called Bob. Say ‘Hi,’ Bob.”

“Hello,” said Bob, in a metallic,
robotic voice.

“They’re bad news,” said Amba,
mouth dry, brain sour. “I’ve seen them take out a fucking battalion.”

“Ah, yes, I see. Well, only if
you get on the wrong side of one. That’s why there’s not many personnel up
here. Because of the T52s, and the fires down below. Ride fires. Did you hear
about the ride
explosions
that took off, just a few minutes ago? An
amazing coincidence. I know we’ve got keep it all
hush-hush
from the
media, because if stuff like this got out, then we’d all be losing our jobs,”
he laughed weakly, “but you’re a fellow android, so I know it’s okay to trust
you. Come on, Bob!” He whacked the lethal gun on its flat head as they strode
past, and the AI T52 gave a buzz - presumably of enjoyment and metal
camaraderie.

“They’re not so bad, once you get
to know them.”

Amba followed Jonno down the next
alloy corridor. “What do you mean,
not so bad?
They kill absolutely
anything and everything that moves. Including each other. They were banned on
Earth.”

Jonno stopped, mouth dropping in
awe. “What, you’ve been to
Earth?”
he said in wonderment. “Cradle of all
humanity? The place that made
humans
bloody human? You are so honoured!
So... experienced! I could learn a lot from you... I can see my trust was not
misplaced, and when you’ve spoken to Lady Goo Goo, then we can really get down
to the business of making me more human!”

“Of course,” said Amba, smoothly.
“Jonno?”

“Yeah?”

“How
long
have you been
here?”

“I’m Generation Five.”