Gavin Smith - The Age of Scorpio

Scab screamed out as twin thermal oscillating blades cut through his armoured clothes, hardened skin and into real flesh and soft-machine augments. The half-and-half had got behind him. Scab’s altered neuro-chemistry and internal narcotics deadened pain, leaving only the strange sensation of the knives moving through his flesh like it was water, and the smell of burning flesh.

Vic’s power disc, which Scab had hacked, cut through both the berserker’s legs. As the lizard tumbled to the floor, Scab jammed the metalforma blade into his neck and then spun, trying to elbow the half-and-half. S/he ducked the elbow, but at least the blades had come out of his flesh now. Scab’s nanite and biotech medical applications tried to cope with the massive internal damage: biological systems shut down as redundant tech ones came online. Scab turned the elbow into a spin, bringing his leg up into a rear turning kick. The half-and-half flipped back out of the way.

Scab threw himself forward into a roll to get out of the way of the crippled berserker’s floor-bound attacks. The berserker continued pulling himself after Scab even as the metalforma knife grew to shovel-head size in his neck.

Another P-sat exploded in the air above them. Scab turned into a strobing neon-red grid as the half-and-half fired burst after burst from a folding laser carbine. Scab rapidly reloaded the spit gun and covered his face with his arm to protect it.

Vic sprinted towards right twin, firing one laser pistol at the man-plus, the other at one of the remaining P-sats. Right twin sat up glowing red as he fired the cut-down disc gun. Discs impacted Vic’s hard-tech armour, some making their way through. The ’sect felt no pain. He was too much machine. He just had the odd sensation of things moving inside him. Each shot sent him staggering, but he continued running forward, firing. The P-sat Vic was firing at exploded. Vic brought both pistols to bear on right twin. At the same time he finished reloading the shotgun pistol with his lower limbs and aimed the triple-barrelled weapon to the left under his outstretched upper arms and fired all three barrels. The sabots fell away as their mini-missile payloads locked on to one of the P-sats. The P-sat tried to flee, using the bridges and stanchions as cover. The micro-missiles’ miniature ram jets ignited. The electronic warfare transmissions from Scab’s P-sat prevented the targeted and locked P-sat from jamming the incoming micro-missile’s guidance systems.

Scab stalked towards the half-and-half, emptying the clip from the spit gun into him/her. The berserker crawled rapidly after him. Penetrator flechettes from the spit gun pierced the half-and-half’s armour and exploded. Those that hit flesh fragmented in the wound. Each fragment was coated in neurotoxin. Not enough to overwhelm the hermaphrodite’s internal systems but enough to keep them busy and slow him/her down.

The battery on the half-and-half’s folding laser carbine ran down as Scab tossed the empty spit gun away with a flourish. The hermaphrodite staggered as s/he tried to cope with the toxins. Scab, still glowing and smoking from the laser fire, leaped high into the air. He hit him/her in the chest with both knees, riding him/her to the ground as he repeatedly struck him/her in the face with sharpened envenomed fingernails. Fingers pierced armour and a combination of trauma and venom killed the half-and-half before s/he hit the ground. The berserker was still crawling towards Scab, reaching for him as the metalforma blade finished growing in the lizard’s neck and its head fell off. The headless corpse slumped to the cold marble.

With bloody fingers, Scab reached into his suit jacket and took out his cigarette case. He removed a cigarette and lit it.

Vic reached right twin and kicked him hard. His power-assisted leg shattered the disc gun, and his clawed foot tore off half of right twin’s face.

The micro-missiles caught the P-sat just below the transparent ceiling. The P-sat exploded.

Mandibles wide open and making a hissing clicking noise, Vic fired both pistols point-blank. Right twin’s face became red steam.

Vic looked around. He was sure there were more P-sats, but he guessed they were following dead-owner protocols. The collateral damage wasn’t too bad. Some stray beams, flechettes and discs had caught passers-by, but anyone who was dead probably had clone insurance.

Scab stood up. His coat had stopped glowing but was still smoking. He kicked the lizard berserker’s corpse. The headless body had still been trying to crawl. He found the metalforma knife and picked it up. He jammed the blade into the half-and-half’s neck, neunonically ‘facing instructions to sever the hermaphrodite’s head.

‘Take their heads,’ Scab said. Vic ignored him. He was running cooling cycles on his pistols, recharging them from his internal energy supplies through the matrices in his palms. He reloaded the shotgun, though he’d used the last of his saboted micro-missile loads. At the same time he was using his neunonics to buy, and have upgraded to his spec, a new P-sat.

Scab retrieved his spit gun and the tumbler pistol. Then once the metalforma knife had finished doing its job, he picked that up and collected the three severed heads, holding them by hair, fur and crest in one hand while he licked the blood off the fingers of the other.

Some bounty killers, particularly high-profile ones, made immersions of their jobs to augment their income. Vic wondered if Jide and his crew’s experience of being killed at their hands was currently being auctioned to help cover their resurrection expenses. Neither Scab nor Vic, however, sold their experiences as immersions. The only recordings of them were audiovisual or other people’s, normally fatal, immersion experiences of them.

Scab used the metalforma knife on both the twins, decapitating them. He held all five severed heads up to show the remote cameras. The message to other bounty crews was clear. Come looking for them, you’ll end up having to get cloned.

Vic stared at Scab. Something wasn’t sitting right with him. Scab was ignoring him.

‘They’ll come after us properly prepared,’ Vic finally said, making his tone neutral, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that his suspicions were written all over his insectile face and in his pheromone secretions.

Scab shook his head.

‘Why not? The bounty from the cartel’s got to be pretty big.’

They were in the private medical facility on their own habitat. The habitat had stepped up their security in light of what had happened. Scab had done his own medical work and was in the process of purging the local systems of all medical information on himself. Vic was lying on one of the couches as his damaged internal organs and components were speedily being regrown, and his armour and hardened skin were knitted back together. The featureless white room that was the medical facility transmitted progress straight to his neunonics.

‘They won’t be cloned,’ Scab said. He made it sound like an afterthought.

‘You transmitted a scramble code for the personality and memory uplink?’ Vic asked, trying to keep his voice even. Scab just nodded. It was an expensive viral program. The uplinks were very heavily protected and had multiple redundant systems to prevent this sort of thing. ‘That’s pretty illegal stuff for Pythia.’ Personality/memory-uplink scrambling software had been on the list of proscribed ware.

‘Nothing’s illegal with enough debt relief,’ Scab said, still distracted. Then he turned to look directly at Vic with his dead eyes. ‘They had to know.’ Vic tried to meet the look but turned away. ‘It’s time for an answer.’

Scab headed towards one of the white walls. The smears of blood they had left when they first entered had long ago been eaten by nano-cleaners. Part of the wall opened for them.