Jack Yeovil - Demon Download

"It's me, Gilbert the Filbert, the Colonel of the Nuts!"

The android clapped its hands and stamped its feet. The metal floor shook, and the noise rung in the air.

"You been doin' good work, sonny. Lots o' nice blood spilled. Jus' the thang for a long, hot afternoon. A tall, cool drink o' deepest-crimson gore."

The android hand-jived to an unheard tune. Its head nodded in time to the rhythm. Lauderdale backed against the door. He fought his fear.

"It's you, isn't it?" he said.

"Who were you expecting? Perhaps, Frank Sinatra?"

Lauderdale sank to his knees, and prayed. He gave thanks to the Summoner.

"Dooby-dooby-doo," sang the demon.

"Praise be to Joseph."

"Aww, quit grovellin', babe. That's such a bring-down. It ain't lawful to be that awful. Lawdy-lawdy, Lauderdale, get yo ass in gear or face the fear."

Lauderdale stood up, unsteadily. He looked into the metal face, trying to see the ghost in the machine.

"That's better, hepcat."

"The power. You have built up the power?"

"Ain't yet, but it's gonna be…"

The plan was going perfectly. Soon, El Paso would fall. And then the Continental Americas would be easy meat. The Hour of Joseph was within sight. Lauderdale felt a great thirst, a ravening hunger, an unquenchable lust, a ferocious aggression, a delicious need for food and drink and women and blood. He remembered Elder Seth's promises of a future untrammelled by laws, restraints and codes, when the strong would have all their desires effortlessly fulfilled, and the weak would exist only to serve them. He could taste it in his dry mouth. "When?"

"Soon, son. But we ain't had all our fun here yet. Are there or are there not people still walkin' around alive in this place?" Lauderdale was overcome by the magnitude of the entity before him. His mind opened in all sorts of interesting ways, and he tasted the rewards that would surely be his before the day was done. The GloJo had loosened him up, but this creature was pulling him apart. The old Lauderdale, the yessir nossir pleasemaylkissyerasssir Lauderdale was as dead as…As dead as Rexroth, Badalamenti, Willeford, Brecher…As dead as all the others.

"Let's get down and boogie to the band, Lauderdale," said the demon. "We're expecting company. Won't that be a treat? A nice lady. She's from Switzerland. A nice country, Switzerland. Lots of nice people live there. Her name is Chantal Juillerat, and she's a nun. A nice name for a nice nun. Isn't that nice, nice, NICE ? I want you to do this one little thing for me, I want you to help me kill her. Do you think you can do that?"

Lauderdale nodded. He was nearly at the door. The wallpanel was open. The console humming.

"Goooooood!"

Lauderdale threw the switches. Slowly, the androids began to stir, to throw off their transparent shrouds, to line up behind their leader.

"Sir?" Lauderdale asked.

The android was straight and tall, its mechanisms ticking gently, the cadre lined up behind it.

"Sir?"

The android saluted again, but it was an automatic response.

The demon was in some other part of the fort. The killing machines waited patiently for his orders.

Chantal let Stack drive. Federico did most of the work, adjusting to the Trooper's slightly different style in the helmet. She was amused to note the Ferrari was slightly more curt with Stack than it usually was with her, as if bridling under a new master.

In the passenger seat, she tried to clear her mind. Mother Kazuko had taught her zen meditation techniques, and explained the equivalence with Western forms of prayer. It was at once a form of self-hypnosis and of devotion, a purging of physical and emotional pains, and a preparation for combat, or for death,

She wished the Mother could be here. She had come through in California last year, at great personal cost. After this was over, if she was still alive, Chantal would visit Kazuko in the San Clemente Retreat.

There was no shortage of parent figures in her life, she realized. Thomas and Isabella, for all their railings. In the church, Rape Georgi, Father Daguerre, Mother Kazuko, Father O'Shaughnessy. Outside, Mlle Fornier, Isabella's admirers, Thomas' bodyguards. Even Federico could seem paternal at odd moments. Of course, there was Our Father Who Art in Heaven. And, though she had never yet met him race to face, there was the Evil Father in Salt Lake City who had probably been distantly involved in the California business, who was certainly the prime mover in the current possession. Fathers, mothers, teachers, confessors. Good parents, evil parents.

She prayed for guidance. She prayed for strength.

If she were to die, she would leave so much undone. She would have liked to have found her father's murderers. Not for vengeance, she told herself, but for Justice and to do his name honour. She would have liked a genuine reconciliation with her mother, to have found in her own prideful heart a way to forgive Isabella her shortfallings. She would have liked to have helped Father O'Shaugnessy find that point where the cybernet and the earthly plane intersect with the Divine. She would have liked to see the church grow under Georgi to the point when it no longer needed to deploy those with her special skills. Then, perhaps, she would seek out an enclosed order and atone for her sins by putting aside computers, martial arts, weapons and learning and devoting herself to tilling the soil.

In her mind, she saw herself as a tough old lady in a nun's penguin suit, working with the sick, wresting crops out of rocky ground, singing in the choir rather than as a soloist, perhaps married, probably not…

"You are an ace, not cannon fodder," Father O'Shaughnessy had told her once, "a gunslinger, not a grunt. And you must live with that for the rest of your rife, always trying to live on a level with the rest of us. It will not be easy."

She prayed wordlessly, inviting God into the void within herself.

She floated back, and found herself cross-legged in the passenger seat, her hands loosely together in her lap.

"There," Stack said, "up ahead. No place like home. Fort Apache."

"Colonel Rintoon," said Lieutenant Colosanto, "we have a ve-hickle on the approach road."

"One of ours?"

"No, but it's been logged out of the fort. It's the Ferrari that came with the Swiss Op, Juillerat."

"She was a Maniak spy. It must be an attack."

Finney swung round in her seat, and saw the Colonel, wild-haired and red-eyed, bending over Colosanto's console.

"Sir," she said, "Juillerat has diplomatic immunity."

Rintoon stared at her balefully. He hadn't shaved, and his stubble was mostly grey. He had bitten his forefingernails to the bleeding quicks, but curiously left his other fingers alone.

"That's what I said, Finney. She's an agent of a foreign power. She is on a mission to subvert this command. I will not be subverted. I will not be liquidated. I will not be terminated. They'll rue the day they crossed swords with Colonel Vladek W. Rintoon!"

Finney observed that Lieutenant-cum-Major Lauderdale had his holster flap undone. The uniform he had scavved from a dead officer was a size or so too large on him. He looked like a little boy dressed up in his father's domes. His face was impassive, as if Rintoon were running through a list of toiletry items the fort needed to restock on. She wondered which of her superiors was the more cracked.

"Colosanto, are the fort's defensive systems operational?"

"Yes sir."

"Then do your duty. Protect us from this aggressive enemy."

Finney got up. Colosanto looked at her, chewing her lower lip.

"Snap to it, woman," spat Rintoon.

Colosanto brought up the defence menu on her screen. In an inset, the bridge road appeared in an aerial view. A blip was advancing along it, tripping a succession of alarms. It wasn't moving with any particular speed.