Total Conflict Read online

  They slid to a halt, panting, perhaps a hundred metres from the summit.

  “We have to reach the fighter,” said Pippa, a yukana sword in each fist.

  Franco, who was glancing nervously up the slope, nodded. “What the hell is it?”

  “I’ve seen one before,” said Pippa, slowly. “On Hardcore.” Hardcore was a prison world, part of Five Grey Moons where once she had served time for eight counts of murder. “It has Psi powers – can read your mind.” She grinned. “But it can only read one mind at a time… we need a decoy, something to distract the fucker.” Pippa and Keenan both stared at Franco.

  “Hey,” he said, holding up his hands. “No way, guys.”

  “I’m the best pilot,” said Pippa.

  “And I’m the best person to protect the pilot,” said Keenan.

  “Listen,” snarled Franco, “there’s no fucking way I’m being a decoy to that, that… that metal dildo! No way. Not on my watch, compadre. A man would have to be…” his eyes glinted. “Insane.”

  Franco peered over the edge of the slope, mouth pouting, arse clenching. On descent, he’d expected the Psi.copath to come charging after them; now he understood why it had not. The huge metal creature was crouched over the bleeding form of Princess Kuminyana, weeping. However insane Franco might be, he was no fool. He knew tears would come first; and then violence a close second.

  OK, he thought. Distractions. Distractions without getting killed. He glanced right, where Keenan and Pippa were working their way around the mound of scrap. Keenan gave Franco the thumbs-up. Franco gave Keenan the finger.

  Equation:

  Franco+Psi.copath=deadFranco.

  Franco+Kekra
  Franco+fastlegs=possiblerunawayscenario?

  Franco grinned. Seemed like a winner!

  The Psi.copath screamed, an ululation from bass to bleeding ears in a single second, and Franco covered his ears and winced and watched the creature stomp towards him. “Argh,” he said, backed away, and slid down the slope. The Psi.copath leapt after him, and Franco found himself back-pedalling through sliding metal plates as the Psi.copath accelerated and armed its mini guns; bullets roared after Franco and, grimacing, the little ginger squaddie returned fire, sliding backwards, on his behind, down a kilometre high pile of metal debris. Bullets whined and howled and slammed and sparked. Franco was a dam good shot, and even as bullets pinged and hissed around him he kept a cool head and focused and aimed and there came a crash, followed by a second. Franco had taken out its headlamp eyes. He slid to a stop, and lay there, panting, leaning back, guns focused, as the Psi.copath stuttered to a halt, feet clanging amidst ancient brass shell casings.

  “Ha! Blinded you, fucker!” A hundred bullets nearly took his head off as the machine AI tracked him by sound; Franco rolled violently, and the Psi.copath leapt, scooping him up in mini-gun arms and Franco screamed like a woman, beat at the metal creature like a tantrum toddler, and it turned and toiled back up the sliding mountain with Franco cradled like a captured newborn, a bearded infant, and Franco shot point-blank into the Psi.copath’s face but his shells had no effect. The Psi.copath’s face was an engine.

  The Psi.copath walked to the body of Kuminyana. It knelt, and placed Franco by her side. He glanced uneasily at the corpse, and realised… “Hot damn,” he whispered. She was still alive. Breathing, raggedly, quickly, but still alive.

  What had Pippa said? It has Psi powers – can read your mind. But it can only read one mind at once… we need a decoy, something to distract the fucker. Franco looked up at the towering monstrosity above him. He coughed, and spat on the ground. Shit, he thought. I’m dead…

  “Wait.” Pippa was walking across metal rubble, and the Psi.copath orientated on her. It settled back, with a hiss and ejection of steam. Slowly, in an exaggerated gesture, Pippa threw down her weapons. The Psi.copath shifted, watching her, and Franco lay at its feet like a sacrificial lamb. He made frantic gestures to Pippa. Shoot it! he screamed in military sign. Shoot the bugger! She ignored him. Pippa held up her hands, to show she was now unarmed; zero threat. The Psi.copath made no move…

  Time seemed to freeze. Franco was sure he was about to die. His past life rushed before him; and he realised it was a lurid cacophony of brothels, bars, fights and fucking. He grinned inanely. It had been a good life, he realised.

  “I understand,” said Pippa, reaching the Psi.copath. Behind her, engines roared, and Keenan piloted the stricken Klasp Fighter into the air; it banked, jets glowing purple, and hovered for a moment with huge guns orientating on the bizarre metal AI. If he wanted, he could blast it into eternity. “You’re in love, aren’t you?” said Pippa.

  Franco stared, agog. Pippa was, in his opinion, hardly the intuitive type. A psychopathic man-slaughterer, yes, but not, ergo, a woman who noticed the finer aspects of emotional relationships – especially in a mangled war-scrap AI.

  Franco waited for the machine to blast Pippa into oblivion…

  Instead, it lowered mini-guns and settled further back. There came several groans and clanks. Pippa smiled.

  “Read my mind,” she said.

  Minutes passed. Eventually, Franco climbed to his knees and crawled across the scrap, face elongated in a vulpine scowl, until he reached Pippa and hid behind her.

  Pippa’s eyes were closed. She could feel the intrusion; but it was gentle. Like a breeze passing over her soul.

  Eventually, she said, “Yes. I will.”

  Her eyes opened. She kicked Franco on the shin. “Ow,” he said.

  Pippa moved to the fast-breathing Princess Kuminyana. She stooped, and picked the woman up in her arms, gazing down into her unconscious face. She moved away from the Psi.copath and Keenan touched down, engines roaring, ramp unfolding, and Pippa strode up into the craft’s belly. Franco scampered after her like a wounded spaniel. The ramp lifted, the Klasp banked, and shot off high into a bruised and mocking sky. Within seconds, it was a blip. Within minutes, it had left orbit.

  Franco stared out at blackness, and winced as a MedBot dabbed his cuts with iodine. “Ow. Ow. Ouch!”

  “SOR REE,” said the MedBot.

  “Dickhead!”

  “SOR REE.” It hummed, dropping, and jabbed his arse with a needle.

  “OUCH!”

  “SOR REE.”

  “So then,” scowled Franco, turning to Pippa. “Explain what happened.”

  “It was in love with her. Rather than destroy us, it recognised we could help her. Help repair the damage we caused. I caused.”

  “Yeah, reet, but we caused it because of her!”

  “Maybe so. The fact still remains – it was a simple case of eloping. The W’hore religion wouldn’t allow her to marry an AI; they came up with a deception to side-step primitive ways, and it would have worked if we hadn’t blundered into the web.”

  Franco thought about this. “That Psi.copath,” he said.

  “Yeah?”

  “It could have killed us at any time, right?”

  “Well done,” smiled Pippa. “You catch on fast. It wasn’t just a robot AI you witnessed.”

  “What was it, then?”

  “The Psi.copath was the city,” said Pippa, softly.

  “Say again?”

  “The Psi.copath was the remains of Shenza City in its entirety. We saw an avatar; an intermediate construct with a single purpose: to scare us off. It played to our own specific nightmares.”

  Franco thought about this. “It didn’t play to my nightmares,” he said. “My nightmares consist of buxom naked men with whips.”

  Pippa frowned, but said nothing. She was too busy programming the console.

  “What happens next?” said Franco.

  “We fix her up, then bring her back.” Keenan slumped into a comfort-couch and lit a cigarette. Pippa coughed in annoyance. Keenan ignored her.

  “Erm, isn’t that, like, kind of, like, illegal?”

  Keenan and Pippa stared at him.
r />   Franco coughed. “Well, you know, I’m a kickass hardcore squaddie who laughs in the face of legality, blows bubbles down the wobbling man-tits of donut-scoffing police; but hell, we’ve kinda been given a mission here, and…”

  “We’re bringing her back,” said Pippa, voice hard. “No arguments, and damn the consequences. Quad Gal Military can kiss my arse with their missions.” She sighed. “Franco?”

  “Yeah babe?” He beamed.

  “Go and put the coffee on. There’s a good lad.”

  Unaccounted

  Lauren Beukes

  The ittaca is wedged into the uneven corner of cell 81C, as if it is trying to osmose right through the walls and out of here. It is starting to dessiccate around the edges, the plump sulphur-coloured frills of its membrane turning shrivelled and grey. Maybe it’s over, Staff Sergeant Chip Holloway thinks, looking in through the organic lattice of the viewing grate. The thought clenches in his gut.

  He has been having problems with his gut lately. He blames it on the relentless crackle of the blister bombs topside. The impact reverberates through the building, even here, three floors down. You’d think, eventually, you would get used to such things.

  The Co-operative Intelligence Resource Manual does not cover this exact situation. The CIRM advises a recovery period for the delegate, a show of mutual respect to re-establish trust and better yet to instil gratitude. But the CIRM also advises that if a delegate is critical, it is critical to press on.

  Terminal is not an ideal result. Terminal can be attributed to lack of due diligence.

  The corridor stinks of urine. Not from the ittaca, which is anaerobic and recycles its waste through its body again and again, reabsorbing nutrients. Strip-mining food. It excretes sharp chlorine farts that puff from the arrangement of spongy tubes like organ pipes fanning down its dorsal side. Just one of the chemical weapons to watch out for in the ittaca’s natural biological armament according to The Xenowarfare Handbook: Reaching Out To Viable Lifeforms.

  There is a splatter of piss on the door. He will need to have a word with K Squadron. He knows they’re just frustrated. That camaraderie sometimes takes itself out in casual acts of hooliganism. And still. The Co-Operative Intelligence Resource Manual does not cover what to do when respect for your authority is fraying like the ripped membrane frills of an ittaca’s gastropod foot.

  When they took occupation of the prison, there were ittaca med-scanners installed in all the cells and bacterial-powered screens mounted outside, monitoring vital signs: heart-rate, brain activity, adrenal spikes in the endocrine system that might indicate a prisoner about to erupt into violence. The first thing the military did was dismantle them.

  Security risk, command said. He never saw a formal directive. Good for morale, General Labuschagne said, when he queried it. C’mon Holloway. Was he honestly saying his people didn’t deserve a little celebration? After everything they’d been through? It still made him feel uneasy. A waste of resources, he told himself.

  They’d torn the screens off the walls, whooping and hollering, then piled up the ittacan tech in the open courtyard under the shadow of the guard tower – back when it was still standing – and set it alight.

  He turned a mostly blind-eye to the mulch moonshine being not-so-covertly distributed between the reserves because maybe the general had a point. A special occasion. But he circled the groups, making sure no one drank too much of the mildly psychotropic guano distillate and made a note to find out who was brewing it. He’d have to have a word with them.

  It all went wrong, of course. The light from the bonfire or maybe the music seemed to enrage the insurgents, drawing down a fresh assault by the blisters. Chip was the last one through the doors. Dragging Reserve Lieutenant Woyzeck with him, reeling drunk, despite his best efforts, and swearing at him to let her go. Asshat. Shithead. Partypooper.

  His eyebrows were seared off by the heat of a strike, even as the explosion scoured the reinforced coralcrete with venomous pus and shrapnel. Fucking Kazis, he heard, as someone slammed the door. He’d tried to discourage them from using the term as disrespectful to both the ittaca and those reserves of Japanese heritage. But the blisters are aerial suicide bombers and what are you going to do?

  Fucking lucky, Chip, Ensign Tatum said, leaving out the ‘sergeant’, leaving out the ‘sir’ because Holloway encouraged his people to call him by his first name. And was that grudging admiration in Tatum’s voice?

  Chip found an unexploded blister in the courtyard once, deflated on one side and gagging on its own blood from the shrapnel tearing up its insides. Blisters swallow improvised weaponry whole, choking down nails and sharpened scrap metal and bits of coral through their gill slits, like an athlete carbo-loading before a game. Some of the reserves were using the blister as a football. He chased them off with a warning. But he couldn’t bring himself to shoot it.

  He can’t blame them. There isn’t exactly much in the way of recreational facilities for the reserves. Mainly they take pot-shots at the rats. Which are not rats, but something like them. Bald skittering things the size of Rottweilers with too many legs. They dig up body parts from shallow graves from the former regime and drag them around, scraping off the dried membrane with nubs like teeth, cracking the mantle spines to get to the marrow.

  Let it not be said that the ittaca did not cast the first stone. Let it not be said that this was ever a good place to be.

  Inside the cell, a spasm flutters through the ittaca’s membrane, setting the spines along its mantle clattering. A xylophone made from insect’s legs. Alive then.

  The ittaca doesn’t bleed exactly. It extrudes a clear viscous liquid. Tacky, like sap. The first time, it took him 48 minutes and a full bottle of military issue stainEZ (guaranteed to take care of even the most stubborn bio-matter tarnish with just one drop!) to get the stickiness out of his greens. The third time he wore an improvised poncho made out of a foil body bag. He wasn’t prepared for a second time.

  He made a note of it in his weekly report. 1x body bag. He is careful to account for almost everything.

  407 Military Reserve Soldiers (human) stationed at Strandford Military Base formerly known as Nyoka Prison Satellite Facility. (Temporary posting). Broken down as follows: 241 Male. 113 Female. 53 NGS (non-gender-spec).

  0 Indigenous translators. (Complement of 7 were dismissed on charges of info leaks.)

  123 ittaca delegates (alive) kept separate in 123 cells.

  4 ittaca delegates (deceased) in morgue-lab.

  18 blister delegates (deceased) in morgue-lab.

  6037 blister delegates (deceased) processed through central crematorium

  550 TK-R surface-to-surface RPGs. Effective coralcrete penetration: 0.2%.

  25 MGL-900s, HE grenades. Effective coralcrete penetration: 100%

  200 MXR-63 multifunction assault rifles plus parts + 80 000 x 45mm rounds

  50 000 x 30mm U-238 rounds, incendiary, armour-piercing + 5 x chainfed autocannons + mountings. Shelved. Useless. Who would have predicted that ittaca would be able to metabolise uranium?

  263 268 carb-blasters (nutritional value as per military recommendations.) Sufficient for 213 days of rations for full staff complement. They have been here for 189 days already. This does not fit the military definition of “temporary posting”.

  700 re-breathers, including ample issue for visitors. And there are ample visitors. No rankings. No name tags. If it weren’t for the re-breathers taken off their hooks, set back to recharge, they might be ghosts.

  23 field decontamination tents. 12 carbon atmosphere recyclers; includes 3 overflow tanks and 250 biohazard disposal bags. 2 tents unaccounted for.

  24 x 12-tray silver sulfadiazine 1% topical cream packs for treatment of chemical burns. 1 tray missing. He blames the ghosts.

  1050 field dressing packs plus standard meds.

  800 Standard saline packs plus first aid supply kits. All date-stamps have expired. Bandages are bandages. Aspirin is aspirin, General Labuschagne
said when he raised his concerns.

  499 body bags aka meat sacks aka take me home daddy.

  He came here on the highest commendation. In the provinces, planet-side, he was a core cultural liaison with the ittaca in the villages. Strategically critical, they said. Hearts and minds. This was before everything went to shit. Sorry. Before relations devolved with the indigenous population and assertive action became necessary.

  He learned the basics of the language with its clicks and liquid gurgles using a translator pod. But it turned out a lot of it is in the nuance of how you arrange your mantle spines. He was popular with the young potentials, who would trail behind him on his rounds, popping and clicking, anthropological in their interest. He still feels a flicker of shame that he ever thought of them as grubs.

  They detonated the central guard tower in the courtyard. Too much of a target, command said. It didn’t make a difference. The blisters kept launching themselves off the balconies of the apartment mounds surrounding the prison on a single propeller wing, spinning downwards like maple seeds, making that godawful crackling screaming sound through their gills. Isn’t static supposed to bethe sound of the Big Bang?