Precisely At/In The Right Time

Jaques’s neck tightened; a chill webbed through his circuitry and artificial nerves. He hadn’t time to wonder why the sensation came upon him, or run a diagnostic, for a second later a violent tremor shook the pillars of the shelter. Ancient paint flaked off the ceiling, showering down with dust and sand.

Voices rose and fell, children cried and were shushed, someone wept. The mass of dirty robes, from ragged black to stained gray, some maroon in the mix, and the occasional bright garment of someone who wasn’t a menial, became as though one mass, one herd of frightened livestock from a time when grass still grew, all too conscious of being penned in with only one means of escape, while something in the darkness circled the fences.

Everyone stood on edge, eerily still as only bionic replacements would allow. Like statues they looked to the blast door, waiting for the next twig to snap, or the silence to continue.

Jaques saw two possibilities: either the silence went on, and people would return to their worry and wait, or there would be a rout, a veritable deluge of bodies rushing to the aperture near which Jean, Jaques, Lucia and Rousseau stood.

The cold flashed through Jaques again. His augmented sight flickered, and it seemed to meld with the blurred vision of his ruined organic eye. Suddenly the mass of people, faces distorted with horror, rushed towards him, trampling over each other in a wild frenzy onset by hysteria. Everything was a blur. Just before he was crushed by bionic feet, beyond the screaming faces, he saw the blast door rent open. A massive dark form was charging in. It was painted in gore. It was…

“Jaques?” Jean whispered, shaking him by the shoulder. “Jaques, what’s wrong?”

Jaques blinked. The crowd was still tense and waiting. The blast door was still intact.

“I…” he stopped.

“You what? Jaques, don’t just go catatonic like that. Say something,” Jean insisted.

“I think there’s something I can do,” Jaques said, a small ember of determination kindling in his machine breast.

He got up and clasped Lucia by her shoulder. “Ms. Lucia, you’ve a radio, correct?”

“I do,” she said, “why?”

“Can you hook it to me? I need to send a message to Mr. Limbo. It’s urgent.”

“Just tell me—”

“No. Too many ears here. I still have installations which allow me to send subvocal audio messages from my time working at the bank. Never used them, though. Tom insisted on briefings in person. They were designed for an intranet system, but I think they could be modified to work on radio.”

Rousseau came in closer, sensing the confidential nature of the conversation. “I’ve a feeling there be more to this than just relaying a message to the good hunter?”

Jaques looked around, eyeing the crowd around them. He lowered his voice to near subsonic pitch, ushering the women closer. “We need to evacuate the shelter before it’s too late.”

---

Buddy ducked, swiveled kicked and punched, and at times, when some fool from the Conclave made the mistake of disengaging from the melee, shot. The atomizer had shown him another setting, this one firing thumb sized beads of energy. They didn’t atomize the target like the super shot, or cut like the lance, but instead worked much like ordinary ballistics. Also, it was accurate and kept collateral at the minimum.

Hound was a wild beast let loose. He barked, tugged and tore like a canine, but leapt clawed, kicked and stalked like a feline. Come to think of it, whenever Buddy had the opportunity to glance the dog’s way, he was certain it was some jungle jaguar from one of his ancient vid-chronicles rather than the polite corpse-chassis mutt.

The two weren’t alone. After the enemy breached the gates, See soldiery from the walls descended on grappling lines and thruster packs, depending on their rank, flanking the column of grey clad Conclave soldiers with the typical zeal of fanatics. The tank that had done the dirty work had been focused on and destroyed, too little too late, as the energy weaponry atop the walls finally breached its thick metal hull.

Buddy grimaced as he shoved a titanium elbow into the facemask of an enemy, who promptly collapsed as neurons misfired. “Ey, Hound-o, thought you said you’d scamper off if ever we were outnumbered?” he said through the private line between the two.

Hound’s jaws were clamped on an unfortunate woman’s neck, denting the metal bones and severing arteries as he applied immense pressure. With a ferocious tug he snapped her neck and she fell. Before the body hit the ground, Hound leapt away, landing by the bounty hunter’s side.

“I’ve not yet been paid. Besides, where would I go?”

“Yeah, same,” Buddy drawled, firing off snapshots into oncoming soldiery. Each kill made the atomizer vibrate. Each kill left him a little more numb, but not as numb as the super shot; he wanted to believe it was just the nerve damage speaking, but deep down he knew it was the atomizer’s toll. Either way, he didn’t want to spend a second longer using the eager weapon.

Then a perfect excuse came when a voice rung out in his head. It was on the private channel to Lucia he’d left on listen.

“Mr. Limbo, can you hear me?” Jaques’s voice came through. It sounded as though he’d been going at it for a while.

“I hear you loud and clear Mr. Jaques,” Buddy said, switching the channel to two-way with a thought, “bit busy now, though.”

“I don’t care,” Jaques replied, “this is urgent. Get to the shelter. Whatever monster is out there is going to try and break in soon. It knows that the Grower is here.”

“Hold on now, how the hell do you—”

“There is no time, Mr. Limbo! Please. We’re going to try and evacuate the townsfolk to the shores as fast and as quiet as we can. But you need to hurry. You need to distract it.”

Buddy ducked as a severed limb careened through the air towards him. It’s red and metal color denoted See ownership, though in the bloody melee it was hard to tell for sure.

“You hear that?” he asked Hound.

Hound’s hairless face was slick with blood and oil; his neon green eyes glowed in their chrome sockets like small otherworldly flames. In the darkness, his silicone ears resembled horns. He looked like some beast straight from hell. He growled in ascent.

Buddy shot a blurt of binary to the wall commander to inform him of their intentions. He received a response in mere seconds, the code translating into a confirmation and benediction that Buddy didn’t read.

The two were off.

---

Unit Five-One stood by the blast door synth muscles twitching. It had shoved one of its bladed fingers into the command console operating the entrance mechanisms. Why was it taking her so long? It sent a burst of binary to indicate its annoyance at the delay. It received an indignant pulse in response.

“Why do you hesitate/wait, Meridia?” it asked in vocal, knowing that the Wraith could hear it.

“The shelter is on an independent system that is powered from within. I neglected to notice that there was only one pathway to it. Killing the power to the outpost locked me out,” the feminine voice of the conscious code said.

“Hurry,” Unit Five-One hissed, not really listening, instead it basked in the pleasant sensations of its waning bloodlust.

“Did you not comprehend what I said you synthetic oaf? I have no access. I literally have no way of manipulating the internal controls of the door. The outside lights through this panel, yes, but nothing on the inside.”

Unit Five-One snarled, “then how do we enter?”

“There is a fault in the door. Upper left side near the seam. There is a point five centimeter gap. Do with that what you will. Now extract me, I’m done with this place.”

Unit Five-One clenched its fangs, mulling over how it would hurt her once she was in the newly installed piggyback data unit. After deciding, it opened the pathway and felt a cold stream shoot up its arm to the bottom of its skull. Soon the stream dried, and the bank was full. It locked it once she was set.

“Alright, I’m in. I… wait, Unit Five-One, there is an output stream from your tactile enhancers in here. They’re… wait, what the fuck? They’re amped to a hundred.”

Unit Five-One locked the comms line from her side. “You’ll feel every scratch/dent/wound I receive… a hundredfold. Punishment for your lax/inept performance tonight,” it hissed, and smiled as it felt her squirm in horror within her small digital cell.

Then it turned to its work. This shouldn’t be much different to the Grower’s subterranean laboratory, it thought. It’s first clawed strike in the weakened seam sent a reverberating hollow bang through the interior of the shelter. It could almost smell the fear stink of feces, urine and sweat of the tightly packed civilians within.

It was so very eager to be let inside.

---

The black waves lapped against gray and ochre sands. People were moaning and complaining, but the tension that had built within the shelter was dispersing as each ragged townsperson was ushered out and led to the beach. Those with night vision capabilities guided those with less advanced ocular prostheses, children or elderly predominantly, and those with heater units were the centers of cells where people sought warmth in the near subzero temperatures of the night.

Jean and Jaques were ushering people out, taking aside the strongest augmented personages and sending them to seek out nearby boulders from the rocky shore to bring them to the exit. Rousseau and Lucia were going around the townsfolk, instructing them to be as silent as possible and to inform either one of them if any medical or mechanic assistance was needed.

Jaques was helping an old lady through the aperture when a bang resounded through the hollow hall. His blood and lubricant oil froze.

Jean eyed him, the question evident in his face. After Jaques had shared his vision with the others, the Grower had recognized the monster in it and had subsequently been the first to agree with evacuating the shelter.

Another bang resounded, and it was enough to make the remaining ten individuals hurry out into the darkness once the slow senior was out of the way.

“We need to seal the exit, or all of this is for naught,” Jean hissed, “where are the men and women with the rocks? I can’t see shit?”

Jaques scanned the beach below with his bionic eye. He saw a small train of citizens with boulders on their shoulders coming towards them. A strange, elongated cyborg he had no recollection of was among them. “They’re on their way, but if that banging keeps up it’ll be in before we lay the first stone.”

“Then what the hell are we going to do?” Jean asked.

Jaques felt cold radiate through him. It wasn’t just the night air. If the thing got in… If it got in, then once again, Jaques’s ploy to help people would be a failure. Once again people would die.

“We have to trust that Mr. Limbo and Hound manage to delay it.”

---

Buddy and Hound slowed their pace as they crested the turn leading to the shelter. Buddy had swapped the atomizer back to the lance setting, while Hound had switched his vocalizers to their scrambling frequencies.

Buddy’s red and gray poncho whipped in a gust of wind that blew from the sea. His round hat flapped on his back, and under the white light of the broken moon his copper jaw glinted black. Hound was a dark bloody beast of hell, eyes shining green; fangs, snout and eye sockets glimmering with the spattered blood and oil of his victims. His ears were down, and his two tails were rigid.

Without a word, Buddy raised the atomizer, aiming it at the multilimbed monster presently tearing through the shelter door. The gun was vibrating intensely, eager to heal its wounded pride. Once his optic aim assist locked and confirmed his aim, he looked away and squeezed the firing stud.

The lance of energy cracked through the night. The shot was aimed at the center mass, but due to the assassin’s violent throes in its efforts to breach the door, the beam instead severed the remaining left arm above the elbow, continuing through to the door. There had already been a sizeable rent cut through from the upper left corner to the center, and now Buddy had unintentionally widened it further.

Unit Five-one seized on the opportunity, and with a roar, used its two remaining arms to widen the gap enough for it to slip through.

Hound chased after it the following next second, leaping through the rent, baying and snarling. Buddy lurched to the door, clumsily hopping in long legs first, the dented iron scraping his metal body all over.

His hemispherical feet fought to keep traction on the smooth stairs, but swiftly and surely he made it down to the empty shelter.

Empty but for the three of them.

Hound crouched between the aperture leading out and the monster not a few meters from him. Buddy sauntered further in, atomizer raised, coming up behind the hunched kill-bot, the sound of his clinking footsteps bouncing off the cold walls.

“Give up. We’ve been in this exact spot before. You with two arms, the Grower over yonder, just out of your reach. Checkmate, Mr. Five-One. You’ve got no way out,” Buddy said, “you’ve failed.”

The thing rose from its crouch to its full three meter height, the top of its head scant centimeters from the ceiling. It growled, the sound thoughtful. Then, “I could still kill you…” it said in its overlapping voice.

“I don’t doubt it, but I reckon I’m faster. Jump at Hound-o over there, I shoot. Turn, I shoot. Whichever way you look at it, we got you pinned.”

Unit Five-One’s claws twitched. It clenched its teeth, staring down the dog that was blocking its way. Then its eyes turned to the aperture. It smiled. “Then why don’t you shoot/fire, hunter? Why do you delay/tarry? You could end it, but you hesitate.”

Buddy felt the atomizer buzz, then he smiled. “Good point.”

Hound’s ears focused on the sounds behind him. “Buddy wait!”

Too late.

---

Buddy’s finger squeezed the stud. With a roar, the assassin twisted to the side with such speed and force that three of its titanium ribs fractured, and all of its synth muscles on its left side of its torso tore and snapped under the strain. The beam of energy grazed its severed left arm, going straight through to the aperture. Someone screamed as the atomizer struck.

Unit Five-One braced with its two right arms, rerouting the momentum of its fall to spin and kick back with its avian feet. Both made contact with the bounty hunter, sending him flying back towards the entrance. Too bad the talons weren’t poisoned. Simultaneously it clawed the sandstone floor with one claw, raking up dust and chunks of stone in a wild uppercut, shooting a plume of grit towards Hound’s open maw.

Utilizing the incredible power generated by the upward thrust of its primary arm, kicking back its legs following its attack, it spun up back onto its feet. The entire sequence happened in the span of three seconds.

“Unit Five-One. You need to evacuate. I managed to tap into the See’s combat frequencies. A battleship is on its way,” Meridia blurted in binary, the message translating in a nanosecond.

“How long?”

“Five cables. The shits were navigating dark.”

The kill-bot looked at the canine and the hunter in turn. The former was unconscious while the latter was forced by its systems to hack and cough.

“We’re not leaving empty handed,” it said and turned to the aperture.

It stopped dead in its tracks.

Inches from its face, a white mask with three black voids regarded the assassin with cool repose. A feminine voice emanated from it. “Thou shalt leave presently and take with you naught but the weight of thine failure.”

Unit Five-One hesitated, it sensed no fear from the stranger. Then it snarled and made to strike, but a violent burst of binary stopped it.

“Don’t touch it! It’s a Chronologist you fool! Do as it says or the master will have us both repurposed.”

“No… NO!” the assassin roared at the impassive mask. “I will not be denied vengeance/murder!”

The Chronologist remained motionless. “Thou art not denied, merely delayed. Leave. Thine time has not yet come. Touch not the hunter or the hound.”

“Do as it says… The master will understand,” Meridia pleaded.

Unit Five-One stood its ground, then, reluctantly, it took a step back. Then another, and another. It stomped to the entrance, scraping the stone floor with its taloned feet. It stopped by the downed hunter.

“You shan’t have the weapon either,” the Chronologist said.

Unit Five-One shot back a burning glance, then left, simmering with fury.

---

Jaques watched in horror as Jean twisted in pain on the cold rocky shore. Buddy’s shot had struck clean, severing the Grower’s right arm from his shoulder. It lay discarded in the sand, the green sleeve singed where the lancing shot had cut. Rousseau and Lucia knelt by him, the latter keeping him down while the former checked and dressed the wound.

If he’d stood but a foot to the right, he’d be dead, thought Jaques.

He wanted to do something, he wanted to help, but he knew he’d just be in the way. So, he waited in hopes that someone would call his name, that someone would need him.

Beyond the cells of evacuees huddled along the coast, out on the black churning sea, a colossal dark mass flicked its lights on. A war horn blared, its magnificent boom lifting the hopes of everyone who witnessed the battleship’s arrival. Smaller lights lowered down and raced across the breakers, their engines roaring where the battleship was silent.

“Once more, salvation cometh from outside,” a melodious voice whispered from beside Jaques.

He turned to see a long serpentine form crouched beside him. It was the same one that had rushed in and confronted the assassin. Though it was down low, the porcelain mask was raised on a long neck, over which draped white robes and thin silver chains. Jaques found nothing to say. A strange sensation emanated from the oddly shaped cyborg, almost as though it was not there, but at the same time, was the only thing that there was.

It turned its aloof regard to Jean, who had by now calmed, then to Jaques. “Ah, thine eyes,” it said, “the specter has left its mark, I see. Though I’m unsure that it knows what it hast done.”

“What do you mean?” Jaques asked after finding his voice. If this thing was brave enough to stand face to face with that horrifying kill-bot, making it retreat no less, then there sure as hell was more to it than what it let on.

“Ah, comprehension hast yet to dawn. It shall, one day,” it said, hollow eyes boring into Jaques’s soul.

“Mr. Jaques,” Lucia called, “could you come over here?”

Jaques lingered a moment, held to one spot by the passive gaze of the white cyborg. He broke free when Lucia called him again, and he came to kneel by the prone Grower.

“Could you fetch something to wrap that arm in? If we move fast, we can still reattach it,” said Lucia.

Jean groaned. “I said, I don’t need it! What part of that do you two not understand? It’ll grow back.”

“Mr. Grower,” Rousseau said, “in my long career as a medical professional I’ve yet to see a limb regrow. You’re in shock. Let us do our jobs.”

“I’m telling you; my progenitor spliced me with certain reptilian DNA strands; the limb will regrow.”

Before either squire or chief medic could speak, Jaques said, “I think we should take him on his word. He is a Grower after all. None of us really know what they’re capable of doing. Maybe he can regrow limbs.”

“Thank you!” Jean said, “now please, give me more morphine, knock me out cold and let me sleep this off. I need to be unconscious for the regenerative process to start.”

After a moment Rousseau shrugged. “Well, I am curious to see if he’s telling the truth. G’night Mr. Grower,” she said.

A panel in her brassy forearm popped open, revealing a needle that she then jabbed into Jean’s thigh. Seconds later, the Grower was still.

 

<Previous                                                                                                                            Next>