'Oh shit,' said Blondie. The creature was trying to wriggle its hips into the cab. The horrible mouth was whirring towards him like a kitchen recycler. Blondie ripped a fingernail off trying to undo his harness.
The creature's head exploded.
Old Sam was in the cab, a big handgun held straight out before him. The headless torso thrashed in the windowframe, two arcs of blood fountained from the arteries in its neck. The next shot blew the creature backwards out of the cab, taking chunks of the bulkhead with it.
'Medic,' bellowed Old Sam.
Lambada got free of her harness and worked her way over to Dogface. Her lips pursed when she saw the extent of the injury. 'We'll have to cut him out,' she said. Old Sam nodded and ducked back into the rear compartment. Lambada looked over at Blondie. 'Medical kit,' she said.
Blondie took a deep breath to calm himself and slapped the strap release. This time the harness slithered off his shoulders back into its holding reels. The first-aid kit was a big beige case marked with a red crescent. There wasn't anywhere to put it down so Blondie cradled it in his arms as Lambada opened the lid. Inside were stacked trays of neatly wrapped packages. Lambada pulled the biggest package out and ripped off its organic cellophane wrapping to reveal a sustainment collar. An unnaturally calm voice speaking Arabic started giving precise fitting instructions. It took Blondie a moment to realize that the voice was coming from the case.
Dogface's head lolled, making it difficult to fit the collar on his neck. His face was grey and blood continued to seep from his mouth. There was hardly any blood where the spike had penetrated his sternum; the skin was ripped and folded in around the shaft. Blondie tried not to look at it; instead his eyes tracked along the spike and out the ragged hole in the nose.
It was attached to the nastiest-looking tunnel board Blondie had ever seen. The board was being pushed along the friction field ahead of the train.
'Lambada,' said Blondie.
Lambada was concentrating on the Arabic instructions, placing derms and staunching foam around the wound. The floor of the cab where she knelt was littered with crumpled cellophane and blood.
'Lambada!'
'What?'
'We're moving,' said Blondie.
Fat Mama was slowly gliding down the length of the station.
With the friction field underneath there was only wind resistance to slow them down, and it wasn't going to be enough. They were thirty metres from the tunnel gateway, if they went through without shielding the torque effects would shred them.
Sam came back into the cab with an Azanian laser torch.
Before Blondie could speak he shook his head and put his finger to his lips. When Sam was sure of their silence he pointed at the ceiling.
Small scrabbling sounds from above, just audible over the coughing syllables of medical Arabic. Somebody moving about on Fat Mama's roof. Lambada caught Old Sam's eye and pointed towards the gateway. The veteran thought for a moment and drew his handgun left handed. It made a sinister whispering sound as it left the holster. Blondie stared at the gun looming butt first towards him.
'Go outside,' said Old Sam, 'and shoot them off the roof.'
The warvids always made a big thing out of the Paris Rock. The classic Violet Sky ran its opening credits over a sustained shot of the asteroid up in the barren spaces above the elliptic, tumbling slowly so that the ideograms blasted into its surface caught the sunlight one after another. The Martians knew that the ideograms would be spotted in the final terminal phase; for them it was a statement, a warning not to pursue a war of retribution against them. The dumb green bastards didn't know who they were dealing with.
The gun was an army surplus Browning recoilless semiautomatic with an airtight locking action chambered for fifteen-millimetre 'Martian' rounds for vacuum firing. It was heavy, the weight dragging at Blondie's arm as he crouched beside the right side emergency hatch. His left hand was wrapped around a big red handle surmounted by the pictogram for DANGER in Cantonese.
Johny Ray played the grunt who couldn't in Violet Sky. Extended close-ups of his sweaty face with the battle action reflected on the visor of his helmet. Freezing up in the sudden firefight when the Greenies came bubbling up through a camouflaged rock hole, bitching and whining through two-thirds of the vid. Long shot of Johny Ray's main squeeze as she sits on the fountain in the Place de la Concorde and writes a letter to her soldier boyfriend. She bites her lip in thought, a strand of black hair is misplaced across her forehead. The background noises of Paris slowly fade as the image bleaches white.
Johny Ray stumbling over the dunes, guns in both hands, Greenies going down before him. A big spire of rock where the Martians have a pop-up cannon which is chopping up the patrol, Johny Ray saving his last breath to pull the cable on the backpack nuke he's wearing.
Blondie waited until he heard scrabbling sounds from the other side of the hatch and pulled the handle. There was an animal shriek over the roar of explosive bolts as the hatch was thrown outwards. It shot across the platform and rang like a teatray against the station wall. There was a distinct organic crunch underlying the impact of metal on ceramic.
Blondie had never liked Johny Ray much.
He went out of the hatchway, jumping as far as he could to avoid anybody on the roof. His feet skidded as he landed and the momentum drove him into the wall. He was already trying to turn and took the impact on his shoulder and back.
He could see three figures on the roof of the train. Humanoid, their armour was a glistening blue colour and decorated with random clumps of sharp spines. They'd been pulling up the roof plates with their bare hands but as Blondie watched their heads turned slowly in his direction.
The range was about four metres.
Blondie held the gun straight-armed, lining up the sight on the chest of the first figure. It had grey-green human eyes beneath the bony ridges of what Blondie realized was not a helmet at all but its head. The word 'exo-skull' popped into his mind at the same moment he pulled the trigger.
The kick of the Browning stunned the palm of his hand, the figure flipped backwards, a ragged hole in its chest. Blondie swung the aim round to the second figure. It jumped at him just as he fired and the bullet went low, ripping into the abdomen. But even as it fell brokenly towards the platform the third figure was in the air. It jumped like a cat, arms and legs outstretched. This one had claws on both.
Blondie shifted his aim and kept his finger on the trigger but nothing happened. The figure seemed to rapidly expand to fill up his vision. 'Semiautomatic,' said the one calm bit of mind Blondie had left, 'you have to pull the trigger for each shot.'
Big ragged holes opened up in the monster's chest. For one horrible moment Blondie could see right through to Fat Mama behind it and then it fell unmoving at his feet. Blondie jumped away quickly just in case. He ran up the platform until he was level with the cab. Fat Mama was still moving at walking pace towards the tunnel gateway.
'How's it going in there?' he called into the vacant hatchway. He could see bright flashes of light where Old Sam was carefully cutting through the spike.
'How many was that?' asked Old Sam.
One in the cab, three on the roof. Blondie looked down the platform. He could see feet and hands sticking out from both sides of the ejected hatch.
'Five,' he said.
'One left then,' said Old Sam and turned back to his work.
The Stop
Mariko lay face down on one of the trestle tables and picked idly at the remains of the catfish dip. Naran was nowhere to be seen, but she presumed he was off in a comer somewhere having deviant sex with a rep.
Most of the krewe were crashed out on the floor of the cavern. A lone speaker was crooning a French ballad in three part harmony with itself. She noticed an untouched bowl of walnuts on the table ahead of her, picked one out and cracked it between her thumb and forefinger. The meat was dry and sweet.
Since her transformation Mariko's thoughts had taken on an opaque nature as if
she sat in the centre of a room lined with shoji - sliding paper doors. Figures moving outside the room could sometimes be discerned by the shadows cast upon the translucent screens. Mariko was made constantly aware of activity beyond the realm of her physical senses by this kabuki shadowplay. Sometimes one of the shoji would slide open and she would be granted a clear view, information necessary for her functions.
3Boss and her krewe had been discontinued, violently. The network had reacted with more aggression than anticipated. It would be up to Mariko to instigate containment procedures. One of the shoji in the room of her mind was marked with an eye - intelligence assets. Behind it she could sense gathering flux but the door remained closed.
Mariko picked up another walnut and flicked it at 2Boss who was snoring amongst a pile of bodies. The nut completed a perfect arc and bounced off his nose. He caught it before it hit the floor.
'Hey, 2Boss,' Mariko yelled across the cavern, 'we're short six razvedka. Pop out and get some more will you?'
Mitsubishi (Triton Central)
'I could murder a gumbo,' said Kadiatu, but the arcade off Walkman Square was wall-to-wall tampopo bars. There were a lot of people mooching in the arcade, passengers mostly, stranded by the sudden termination of the Pluto-bound train. Ronin under contract to the local zaibatsu were posted at the intersections to keep an eye on the crowd. Kadiatu watched as a couple of old white women were gently turned away from the staging gate to the suburban lines. Despite thirty years of civil-rights legislation Mitsubishi was still Sol's most segregated metropolis. Some of the suburbs wouldn't even take Koreans.
'There must be an alternative route,' said the Doctor, studying an STS map on the side of a Jade Tea stand.
All the trains were terminating one stop short of Pluto due to unspecified 'incidents' at Lowell Depot. Worse than that, alighting passengers were being herded off the platforms into Walkman Square.
'There's always an alternative,' muttered Kadiatu.
The Doctor turned and smiled at her. 'Absolutely,' he said.
The map's polychromatic surface was pristine; even the touch icons were unmarked by fingerprints. The map's default setting was of the interworld routes and some of the major feeder lines. Kadiatu touched Triton Central first, then Lowell Depot, and then a stylized icon of an arrow.
The map rippled as it rescaled. Triton Central in the lower third, Lowell Depot in the upper. Commuter lines appeared in a starburst pattern around Yamaha, Dentsu and Nagorno-Karabakh - Pluto's three other main cities. The Central Line link between Triton and Lowell pulsed red - the suggested optimum route.
'The map hasn't updated yet,' said Kadiatu.
'Is that unusual?' asked the Doctor.
'You get data lags at the peripheries,' said Kadiatu, 'but this is a major information nexus.'
'It's confused,' said the Doctor. 'The trains are running all right it's just that we're not on them. Is there another route?'
Kadiatu glanced at the map. There were no obvious connections. The only other InterWorld line that came this far outsystem was Outreach and that terminated at Nagorno-Karabakh. There were no obvious feeder or commuter routes between the Pluto and Triton local networks. There was a trick to this, Kadiatu knew; you let the map go out of focus and thought about what pretty patterns all those coloured lines made.
It was an article of faith amongst the undergraduates in the engineering department that the most efficient way to navigate the transit system was stoned out of your box.
'There,' she said touching the map, 'this feeder's connected to the branch line and the branch line's connected to the transverse line ...'
'And the legbone's connected to the thighbone,' said the Doctor.
'Which will put us on Pluto ninety-five,' said Kadiatu.
The Doctor wanted to go immediately but Kadiatu forced him to wait while she sniffed out a snack bar that sold something other than bean sprouts and exquisite slivers of pork. It turned out to be the inevitable Kwik-Kurry franchise tucked in between a branch of Bodyshop and a stall that sold suspicious-looking lingerie. From it she bought half a kilo of fufu wrapped in heat-resistant paper, and a medium-sized tub of fish soup.
Giant colour-coded arrows, hung above the various station gateways, indicated which exit led where. The signs were made of hand-crafted neon rather than the usual holograms. Mitsubishi was full of touches like that as the Japanese tried to hang on to their traditions. Following the blue arrows they found the accessway to the platform they wanted. As they approached the pair of ronin on guard stepped forward, politely blocking their way. Kadiatu wondered what their problem was when she remembered - the Doctor was white and this close to Pluto the ronin were making some broad assumptions. She wondered how she could have forgotten.
The Doctor said something in Japanese - at least Kadiatu assumed that was what the language was. Short staccato bursts of words with shortened vowels and hacked-off consonants. The two ronin looked at the Doctor in surprise and backed off. The Doctor strode on through the gate. As he passed by the ronin they performed deep bows of respect. Kadiatu trotted to catch up with the Doctor before whatever it was wore off.
She waited until they were two hundred metres down the corridor. 'What did you do?'
'I asked them politely to let us pass.'
'What was with the bowing and scraping then?'
'I used an eighth-century dialect that has since become accepted as the formal tongue of the Japanese royal family,' said the Doctor. 'I expect they were a bit surprised.'
'I'll bet.'
'And I doubt they understood more than one word in ten. Which is just as well.'
'Why?'
'Because what I actually said was "Make way! For I am the official keeper of the Emperor's penguins and I must hurry because his majesty's laundry basket is on fire." '
The platform was spotless. The few waiting passengers were clustered around a public-service TV at one end. It was tuned to one of the 24-hour Kabuki soap channels. It looked like a historical drama, Kadiatu caught glimpses of businessmen in black single-breasted suits striking attitudes in front of vast windows.
The indicator board at the far end of the station gave waiting times in Japanese characters, the regulation alphanumeric display was tucked away underneath. The next train was scheduled in five minutes.
They sat down to wait and Kadiatu opened up the paper bag and gouged out a handful of fufu. She offered the bag to the Doctor but he shook his head. Kadiatu kneaded the cassava dough into a sausage shape and dunked it in her fish soup. It was a bit too bland for her taste but you didn't expect that much from Kwik-Kurry.
The Doctor watched the TV, apparently absorbed in the unfolding drama of corporate infighting. A woman had entered the scene wearing heavy eye make-up, to identify herself as gaijin.
'What do you see in that?' asked Kadiatu.
'The principle of Kanzen-choaku,' said the Doctor, 'the reward of the virtuous and the punishment of the wicked.'
'Your eyesight must be better than mine.' Kadiatu pulled another lump of fufu from the bag.
'You eat a lot,' said the Doctor turning back to the TV.
'I get hungry a lot,' said Kadiatu, 'I suppose I've got a fast metabolism.' She reflexively glanced at the indicator board -the arrival time seemed to be stuck at five minutes. 'Why are we going to Pluto?'
'We have to rescue someone.'
'What makes you think they need rescuing?'
'Trust me.'
The Stop
Roberta was dead and the neighbourhood was on fire. The power grid had failed and with it the skylights. Main Street was coloured red and yellow by the light of burning shops.
Zamina stayed low, trying to pull Roberta's body to shelter A thick strata of black smoke had formed under the ceiling panels and visibility at street level was less than ten metres. She wondered how long it would take before the Stop's life support went into terminal crisis.
Zamina caught occasional glimpses of figures stalking through the haze. S
he didn't know if they were rioters or cops. There had been rumours earlier that troops were being sent but she hadn't seen any yet. She could hear the firecracker sound of gunfire in the distance.
Across the street was the bolthole Zamina had picked out.' It was the entrance to a Baptist orphanage. She dragged Roberta by the leg towards it. She couldn't bring herself to touch the woman anywhere near the chest. Who'd have thought that Roberta would be so heavy. Zamina had always envied that narrow waist and the thin legs. Elegant, Roberta said, not thin. Stupid to be trying to drag her off the street with that great sucking wound between her breasts. Plenty of others lying on the concrete, gangbangers, catfood monsters, looters, people dumb enough to be out when the cops opened fire.
Zamina flung herself down as something whispered overhead.
A three-metre-long drone painted red and yellow was swooping into position in front of a burning shop. A vent popped open at the rear and there was a rushing sound as air was sucked in. The smoke haze made Mandelbrot patterns behind the drone as it closed to lay bursts of freezing CO2 on the fire.
Zamina started to crawl again, pulling Roberta behind her. The first fire-drones to respond had been shot down by the gangs, if they were active in this area it meant that the riot had moved on. She was four metres from the orphanage when the second drone went overhead. This one was slightly larger and blue-coloured with Chinese characters painted on its underside. Like the first it arrived from the opposite direction to Lowell Station; their controllers must have been routing them in from the service tunnels that honeycombed the crust beneath the projects. The second drone took up a sentry position above and behind the first.
More drones swept into Main Street. Another firefighter took up position in front of a burning building. The blue police-drone shifted position to cover both. Some of the drones were difficult to see, their chassis blending into the background. Mimetic polycarbon, Zamina sensed rather than saw them moving. Random dips and swerves designed to complicate hostile target resolutions. Their weapons would be hidden under jack turrets, waiting to pop out and return fire.